11 Aug 2010
Posted in Travel at 4:15 pm by alby
We went on holiday not so long back. We’d bought loads of camping gear which only just managed to fit in the car – a roof box or trailer (or both) needed next time I reckon.
We’d done a run-through of using the stuff in Derbyshire but this time we headed into the depths of the New Forest in Hampshire. Campsite was called Hollands Wood. Nice place with clear rules and decent facilities (in the main).
We arrived and were told the rules. The main one of note was “no camping closer than 6m from other campers”. Now groups could obviously all gather together but they wanted to give strangers some space. We spent a good while driving around trying to live within the rule. Eventually we found ourselves a pretty nice spot at the furthest end of the site. It was away from the main road, near a huge field and had unfeasibly hard ground.
After setting up and scouting around a bit we headed out to the local village. We were probably away for an hour or 2. On our return there was a tent being put up about 2m away from us. We decided to be nice and let them get on with it.
Later we looked again and their tent had grown immensely. It was huge. And the nearest bit pretty much was up to our guy ropes. Never mind they might still be pleasant enough and it was at the back of us rather than in our face.
Well the night was fun. Woken by fireworks and a “scared of fireworks” child at 9pm (it’d been a long day with an early start ok!) The rest of the late evening was spent listening to the woman in the next tent struggling with her 3 boys and dog. The conversation was the sort you always love to overhear.
“Stop doing that, he doesn’t like it…I said stop doing it…STOP IT NOW OR I’LL %*%&ING SMACK YA!”
Repeat ad absurdum.
The management were on the case sharp enough though and they asked them to shift. They did but only to their 6m limit. I wasn’t expecting a massive change but the extra distance improved things loads.
The field was a godsend for N. Loads of kids around all playing together. Friends were made and lost as people left on different days. Logs crossing ditches were crossed and occasionally fallen off. Generally there were plenty of smiles with occasional tears. Fantastic fun all round. And days were long.
In the week we went to a few places and did the tourist thing.
Highlights were “Bucklers Hard” (snigger) where the ice-cream was gorgeous and I got a free sample which was as large as the ice-cream I eventually bought. A local kids’ theme park was rather good too. Not many scary rides and it cost a lot but did give me a chance to go on some rides with N including her first proper roller-coaster. So scared but yet so determined to stick it out. Grand. And there were horses and cows on site. Wild New Forest (and Shetland) ponies just coming and going as they pleased. And lots of people with dogs but no piles of dog poo anywhere that we saw.
Lowlight was Bournemouth. Actually Boscombe as we failed to get to Bournemouth because of the frankly ludicrous amounts of traffic. Anyway Dorset county council please sort out your road signing.
At one point we saw a sign to somewhere called “Qinetiq”. No idea what it is (and I can’t be bothered to google it neither) but it was an obvious sign. Later we saw a sign to Boscombe beach. 20 mins later after driving for ages we saw a sign to “Qinetiq”. We’d gone in a huge circle with no sign of the sea, no directions to get us there and no hint that they wanted anyone to spend any time out of their cars. Once we ended up there we weren’t in the best of moods so it didn’t end up as a day to celebrate.
We tried again later in the week in the vain hope of finding decent fish and chips. More misery this time as we arrived late after more avoiding traffic jams. There is no fish and chip place in Boscombe (at least not on the beach). This is ludicrous!
There was a kiosk. They do fish and chips! Woo! Actually they heated us up a “cod portion” and some fast food fries. Was horrible food. Made all the worse by the stress of getting there to “enjoy” it.
Oh and part of my plastic fork came off. I think I ate it.
And the weather was excellent. We had about 20mins of rain one day, but it was very light. In fact we thought we’d get through the lot without much disruption. Unfortunately on our last morning we woke to heavy rain. It slackened a bit but then tipped it down more as we neared fully decamped. So we had a sodden tent to cart home. Any other time the rain wouldn’t have been an issue. Ah well.
Photos may well be along at some point.
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16 Jun 2010
Posted in Life, People, Travel at 5:34 pm by alby
We’ve recently bought a whole bunch of camping gear with an eye to more and longer camping trips. To test said kit we headed off into darkest Derbyshire on Friday last for an outdoor weekend. Place called “Rivendale” it was.
When I arrived the tent was already spread out ready for me. The thing claims a 45 minute pitch time. It took us over an hour but I reckon this will be much reduced next time round.
I then discovered that I needed a spanner for the gas connection. But apart from that things went quite well.
Saturday saw me driving into Ashbourne for a photo-shoot of all things. The new clinic I’m at is moving into swish new premises and the owner wanted as many staff to show up for the mandatory staff group photo in front of said new swish premises.
Got there to find a huge skip in front of the building and a fretting boss. Luckily the photographer was a dab hand at this sort of thing and managed a decent few pics whilst avoiding dodgy skips and various other building remnants.
After the group photo (where I unfortunately got to stand right in the middle at the back cos I was tallest) we all had to do individual face shots.
Not a great thing for me is having portraits done immediately after getting up at a campsite after a reasonably unrestful night’s sleep.
But hopefully this points to me being a bit more than maternity cover (as I currently officially am).
I briefly shopped in the town discovering such delights as “Vampire Relish” and a Waitrose. It’s quite a wealthy place. At the local car park I parked behind an Aston DBS and a v swanky Jag. My 03 Avensis really bringing the tone down.
Later that day P, C, D and d showed up for chats and games and barbie and beer in the campsite. Fun was had. We also discovered that kites don’t fly when it’s not windy. And I burnt, badly.
Sunday was rainy. I woke up to rain and spent the morning worrying about decamping with a wet tent. Luckily the rain stopped for long enough to get the thing down dry. Pretty much as soon as it was down the rain started again and then didn’t let up.
This was a great shame as 2 family’s worth of friends showed up to join us for fun and frolics. Ah well. I did discover that kites do fly when it’s windy tho.
The campsite itself was ok. Decent enough showers, a bit close to the road mind (and the on-site shop was appalling – v limited and not best friendly) but worth the entrance money. Lovely views.
At least we figured out what to take and what doesn’t need to come with. Next time will be a longer, more distant trip. Maybe Norfolk would be nice.
Have fun.
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21 Dec 2009
Posted in Travel at 8:49 pm by alby
Now this is why I bothered to come all the way to Aus. Been wanting to get to Tasmania since I was little. No idea why it grabbed me at that time in my life but the older I got the more I wanted to see Tas.
But first I had to get there from Melbourne.
Tanya had booked us on a ferry so we could take her car over and have easy transport for the time there. Nice idea.
Shame she’s a bad traveller. Not that she dislikes travel. More that she doesn’t manage to keep her lunch down when moving on a boat or plane.
And the weather forecasts were not looking good for the crossing. (The day of the crossing was the Aussie rules final day)
“An Antarctic blast is set to hit today’s AFL Grand Final, making it the coldest premiership decider in history. Hail as well as heavy rain and thunder are expected.”
Nice. The isobars were squeezing ever closer together over the Bass Straits as well.
At one point R texted me with the words:
“I’ve just looked at the weather for your crossing. Are you sure it’s a good idea? It just smacks of Northumberland again but more dangerous.”
The seats we had (yes seats, not even a cabin) had not 1, not 2 but no fewer than 3 vomit bags each. All the loos had a huge stash of them too.
And then the captain comes on.
“Hello ladies and gentlemen. As you know the weather’s quite bad today. The swell on the crossing tonight is expected to be 3-5 metres on average so it should be a little bouncy out there.”
Thankfully he didn’t say “fingers crossed” or some such at the end.
Now miraculously I managed to get through the journey with no vom from me. Unfortunately I was surrounded by people of all ages, creeds and nationalities projectile vomming from about 10 minutes into the trip. And we didn’t even hit open rough water until about 2 hours through.
Not the comfiest night I’ve ever had.
We made it into Tas at about 7am on a Sunday so there wasn’t even much open to see. No cafes to get breakfast. Pah.
That day was spent travelling along the north coast as far as “Table Cape” through such metropoli as “Penguin”.
On the way back to the hostel we stopped at a place where the Little penguins come ashore for the night. There are a bunch of volunteers show up most nights to tell tourists what they are seeing. In our case we saw absolutely nothing. Until a feral cat showed up. Hence the lack of penguins. Poor show. Apparently they’re not even allowed to shoot the cats. What is the world coming to?
The next day we drove over the river Don to the dinky town of Sheffield. This place had a mural painting thing going on where many of the buildings had murals on and they market this as a thing to come and see. Wasn’t really worth it as far as I could tell.
So from there to the longest and most disappointing tangent ever as we drove miles and miles to a place called the “Devil’s Gullet”. This was a view point with a rather nice view and it was perched precariously on a high and sheer cliff but it was just too far for the hit. A shame.
From there we headed to the Marakoopa cave. Our guide was a bloke called Brian (this seems to be a common name in cave guides). Nice caves with lots of glow worms.
Eventually got to the Cradle Mountain national park and found that they had been hit by some pretty awful storms which had left them without power. This meant no card payments (a problem) and free frozen food ‘cos their freezers had switched off (a nice bonus).
But before settling in for the night we had a bit of a scout out of the local area. One place “Waldheim” was an ancient (in Aus terms) wooden house where some mad Austrian lived many years ago with his family. They seemed to have been the founders of getting Cradle Mountain its National Park status. His kids were the ones who set up the Overland Trail. It’s also where I saw a stack of small kangaroo type things. They turned out to be called “Pademelons”. Never heard of them.
We were in a bunkhouse next to a couple of germans and a young aussie bloke. Dinner was spent with them in the communal kitchen. It was here that we figured out a route for the planned hike tomorrow and chatted a lot. I also discovered that the german girl was of the same mind as me re Tim-Tams. IE that they’re massively over-rated and nowhere near as nice as Penguins. And that was it for the day until we were woken by a bunch of annoying Mercans who seemed to think that shouting and banging around late into the night in thin sided wooden huts was the thing to do. Tan went over and did her “Oi shut up” thing with the learned authority of being a law enforcement officer.
Next day was big hike day. I’d have loved to have done the overland trail but we didn’t have the 6 days necessary, nor the equipment. So instead we headed up towards the Cradle Mountain summit. It wasn’t the plan to make it to the top but we did have a decent long hike planned around a couple of lakes with a few steep climbs thrown in for good measure.
Started at a car park and walked through rain forest complete with waterfalls and then into alpine territory. Marion’s Lookout was the main target and the views of Cradle Mountain from there were stunning. At this point we were above the snow line (which I’d really not expected). From here it was down to Dove Lake via an unfeasibly steep descent route. At the bottom of this we met a small but bickering family. The kids were complaining about the walking at this point but the dad was keen for them to make it to the lookout. Somehow I think the kids and wife would have over-ruled him well before they made it.
And back to the car park. A good few hours hike. Completely loved it. We were extremely lucky with the weather too, apparently they only get about 30 days of clear, sunny weather there a year. Nice.
And on to “Strahan” on the west coast. More wandering through the evening and back to the hostel. At this point I was sat and started to scratch my leg. And there was blood! Loads of it. I found a small hole in my leg which had bled copiously and the clotting had gone weird. I think I’ve gone and got myself leeched! Whoot! Shame one of my socks got rather badly manked up with matted blood.
Strahan was nice but nothing very exciting going on so we spent a day driving to Hobart via Lake St Clair (the other end of the 6 day hike). We ended up in a quiet hostel in north Hobart where we spent about an hour being talked at by the receptionist. We heard tales of wanting to leave Tas and seeing photos of her new house on the mainland and why the new place is better than Tas and that the crime here is getting worse and how the Tassers are small-minded colloquial idiots and on and on and on…. This was odd but not quite as odd as her habit of saying “Air air” to signal her agreement with you when you were talking. Very strange indeed. But she was a hive of info and pointed us at a very decent Indian restaurant.
The next day’s travel was Hobart – Huonville – Franklin – Kettering – Margate – Hobart. Best bits were drive up Mount Wellington into unfeasible gales and a town called Geeveston where we ate in a little place called “The Bears Went Over the Mountain” which was stuffed full with cuddly toys. This while region felt very American. When we put the local radio on they even had country and western playing.
Next day to the Cadbury factory in Hobart where they make far more varieties of chocolate than they make at Bournville. Most disappointing that I can’t get hold of these varieties here. Much nicer than boring old “Fruit and Nut”.
And then to Port Arthur. This is the site of two rather depressing things. One is the old penal colony – now people thought Tasmania was hell on Earth at the time and Port Arthur was where they sent you if you didn’t behave. It was cold and mournful. But still quite pretty and you can imagine rather liking it if you came here voluntarily and there were nice things around. As it was though almost everyone feared it and hated it and the work was horrific even on good days.
The second event was sadder more through being more recent. In 1996 a gunman killed 35 people at the site. Today there’s a memorial garden for the victims both tourists and staff. And a portion in the visitor guide asking people not to ask the current staff about it as many lost friends and were there that day.
After a sombre sort of day we headed north to Swansea and the most prison like of the hostels we stayed at. There were loads of tedious house rules starting with “no shoes” and a stern woman enforcing things. Nice new place tho. Would have been a great place to stop if it hadn’t been for the excessive rule giving.
Everything in Swansea was shut. Except one restaurant. So we ended up there and it was sort of ok. Nicer food than expected but expensive.
The following morning’s brekkie was in a nearby bakery that seemed to be attached to the local tourist spot “Tasmania’s only working bark mill” museum. We didn’t stay to see if it was worth a look. But they were very proud of it. They even had a certificate they’d won. “1983 Museum of the Year”.
The day’s trip was to Wineglass Bay in the Freycinet national park. This beach was beautiful (high praise from me considering I firmly believe that sand adds nothing of value to any form of endeavour except maybe sand castle building). A hard walk to get to it though. Something they don’t bother to mention in most of the tourist articles.
That night we stopped in another hostel, this time in St Helens. After yesterday’s clean but miserable hostel this was much more relaxed but it had the filthiest floors and surfaces, the worst beds and coldest rooms of any in the state. Minging it was. I got bitten loads by crawly things.
And that was about it. Tasmania was bloody marvellous. If it wasn’t so far I’d be back there with no hesitation.
The mainland has a strange relationship with Tassie tho. It’s a bit like England’s view of East Anglia. They’re all seen to be inbred and mutant in some way. I had no preconceptions but then I saw an advert for a local event that I’d loved to have seen but we weren’t going to be there.
Here’s the advert in full:
The Ulverstone Show
Many great attractions including
- Performing ducks direct from Queensland
- Chopping
- Beaut Ute display
- Alpaca judging
- Ferret display and races
Sounds utterly brilliant but really doesn’t favour the “they aren’t rural hicks” view of the locals.
Tasmania – bloody lovely, beautiful, cold and welcoming. Go there if you get the time on an Aus trip.
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09 Nov 2009
Posted in Travel at 8:55 pm by alby
Righto finally I get to the main bits of the trip. I’ve decided not to bother with a day by day account of it all as there’s going to be too much to write. And as you can see I’ve not had a vast amount of time to get writing.
I decided to split the thing up into Tasmania and the rest. Tas comes last as it was the main thing I wanted to do over in Aus.
But anyway, what happened after the MJC.
Photos of the whole post-MJC trip here (some will be linked to directly in the post as well).
Nice zoo type place where my first roo was seen. They had a few shows on and I managed to catch a couple with birds. The first was native parrots, the second, birds of prey. They did a decent job of showing different birds and their behaviours. The irritating bit was some of the kids running wild and trashing the show amphitheatre and not seeing their parents do a damn thing about it. Scum.
After the bird shows there was an aborigine who did a boomerang throwing show. He was quite an old bloke who turned out to be only half aborigine. The other half was, oddly enough, Scottish.
At the end of the visit I managed to stroke a roo but sadly not a koala as such a thing is banned in the state of Victoria. Harumph.
Home of lots of penguins and very very windy. I ate a picnic near to the bridge and met a few very greedy silvergulls including one particularly persistent pair of hangers-on. One was a bully fighting for everything, the other was a one-footed bird who just kept avoiding the first gull and being quieter about wanting food. He got fed. The bully didn’t.
Once on the island there were opportunities for photos of wind resisting and huge numbers of gulls.
The main tourist thing is the penguin viewing place. Sadly they milk this horribly. The prices were staggering so the decision was made – stuff that! A shame but there was no way those prices were worth it.
I’d heard a lot about this park. There’d been some bloody awful bush fires in Victoria back in Feb this year and “the Prom” hadn’t escaped the carnage. The scars were still clearly there both in the landscape and when talking to locals.
But it’s an extremely beautiful place. An ace place for walking and I managed to get me up a mountain. Ok it was a little one and the walk wasn’t too hard but it was still a mountain.
There were quite a few beaches of note. The one that stuck out was “Squeaky Beach”. When dry the sand squeaks when you walk on it. Very odd.
Quite a nice city. The day me and Tan were there was the AFL Grand Final Day. Now this match happens at the Melbourne Cricket Ground so it was proper big for the locals. Walking around Federation Square in town there were people in team colours everywhere and then I noticed a vast telly screen. It was showing a panel discussion rather like “Football Focus” in the UK. It took me a while to realise that the people on this huge telly were actually sitting below it. The whole show was being shown live and the presenters and guests were sitting out in the square. It was really quite cold (so much that local shops and cafes had signs like this in their windows). The presenters really were working for their money.
There were lots of fans milling about and finding their seats to watch the game on the telly. Apparently the winning team were going to come to the square after the match too. So a big day of fun for one set of fans. The teams were St Kilda (local Melbournites) and Geelong (industrial city a short drive away) so no real travel problems stopping huge numbers coming into town.
We ended up watching the show from a bar at the port (waiting for the Tas ferry). It’s a fun experience watching the most passionately followed sport in the country in a pub full of obsessed supporters.
I should say that I still have no idea what the hell the rules of the sport are. But, for a brawl, it seems to take up an awful lot of space.
During my time in Aus there was a bit of a scandal about one player. Guy called Brendan Fevola got off his skull on booze at the big end of season awards thing (here and here). Apparently he has form. It was a huge news story at the time. Flintoff after the Ashes was nothing compared this bloke.
Away from sport I saw a fantastic museum called ACMI where I saw Mad Max’s car among other things and I ate burek at the Queen Victoria market (ace place).
Coming back from Tasmania, Geelong was the first stop before getting to the Great Ocean Road. We were there early and nothing was open. But the weather was clear but there were some very strange skies that morning.
They were big on bollards there too. There were rather a lot of them done up in odd styles, some were pirates or policemen. One notable group were bathing beauties. Not the nicest statues but certainly diverting.
It’s a very winding road along the coast. Very pretty and twisty and there are loads of accidents here. Most of these come from foreigners not remembering to drive on the left, or by those looking at the views rather than the road.
A way down the road you get to the 12 Apostles. Well 8. Actually 7. In fact I have no clue how many there are as some have collapsed. I was told one fell whilst I was in Australia.
This is also where I saw an echidna. Cute!
One of the unexpected highlights. I’d never heard of the Aussie Grampians but had a lovely time here.
Started with walks and climbs with magic views and scary sheer drops and continued with huge waterfalls and animals galore. One waterfall managed to flow without any sign of a pool at its bottom. I’ve never seen anything like it before.
At the town we saw a huge number of roos including a very large group of females with 2 males fighting for dominance. They’re very odd looking critters. Even more so when fighting. Two big fellows standing on their tails so they could kick each other. This went on for an age. The ladies just carried on munching the grass (all this happened on a cricket pitch).
The place was also the site of one of the more memorable events of the trip. I’d occasionally phoned R on the trip but the time difference was a major pain. A good time for her is around 8pm. This translated to 5am Aus time. At the hostel there was a public phone but it was on the corridor where all the rooms were. So I couldn’t really use this phone as I’d be waking everyone up with conversation that I’m sure they’d not really wanted to listen to anyway.
Luckily there was a public phone about 5 mins walk into town. So at 5am I was walking down a dark road in the very cold to find me the phone.
It wasn’t too far but I was damn cold. In fact it was near the cricket field with the roos on. But it dark enough for me not to be able to see them at this point.
In the middle of the phone call I turned around to see about a dozen kangaroos bounce past me down the road about 2m away from where I was standing. I was also battling the dawn chorus during the call. I’m used to this being sparrows and starlings and tits and the like. There’s a distinctly different feel to the chorus when the majority of the birds making the thing are parrots or some such.
The final bit of this early morning cake was when I got back to the hostel to discover that my key card didn’t open the front door. There was a key pad thing but no-one had mentioned this to me so I had no clue what the number was. It was about an hour before the reception opened up too. So I was banging on the door for a while. My toes were really very nippy by the time I was finally let in.
Adelaide is a lovely city. Small enough to get around easily but big enough to have lots of things to do. And big enough for bits of it to feel slightly seedy.
Some great museums and galleries too.
The hostel was notable for a couple of things too. One was a german man shaving in the bathroom. He was making awfy orgasmic noises during the process. Very odd.
Second was I saw the man with possibly the acest job ever. As I left the hostel there was a tour bus parked up and the driver got out to let his passengers out. He was about 40 and dressed in full-on Ocker Aussie outdoorsy type clothes. His passengers were 18-30 year old women. All of them. He got a hug from all of them too. Nice job if you can get it.
I’d only picked Sydney to visit as I was in Aus anyway and I thought I shouldn’t really miss Sydney out. I sort of wish I had now. I wasn’t really that impressed.
I think my view may well have been different if I’d been with someone who knows the place rather than on my own. It’s too big to get a handle on in 36 hours or so.
Sure the bridge is a bridge and the Opera House looks like it does on every tourist info blurb re Aus you’ve ever seen (apart from it not actually being white). But once you’ve seen those then there’s nothing else there that really separates it from other big and rich cities.
A bay? Tick. Lots of museums? Tick. Lots of tourists? Tick.
Sydney was the first place I met English folk out and about. There were none in Adelaide, nor in Melbourne (except Dave at the MJC), nor in Tasmania. It was nice to go so far and seem far away. Sydney felt just too familiar even to the extent of me getting annoyed with 2 english women on the bus gossiping about one of their “friends”.
Not as god-awful, smelly, rude, expensive, obnoxious, self-satisfied, self-deluded, over-hyped and generally shitty as Paris though. But that’s hardly a recommendation. I really can’t see much of a reason to visit Sydney. It’s a city; if you like that sort of thing then go for it.
Oh yes and this bridge business. Ok so you copied the Tyne Bridge well done you. Now how about NOT charging $160 to climb the thing and then banning climbers from even taking a camera with them just so you can screw more cash out of them by charging for photos once they’re up there?
NB I really do like the Opera House. Was just a shame there wasn’t anything on that I wanted to see when I was there.
Australia then. Has some amazing bits and some cities. I know which bits I’d go to again. Actually if I ever do get that far again I doubt I’d go to the same places. I imagine I’d do the middle and the far north instead.
Top trip.
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21 Oct 2009
Posted in Reviews, Travel at 10:26 pm by alby
Well done me. I managed not to remember a note pad. Sigh. But this did mean I bought one at Singapore airport. This wouldn’t ordinarily be bothered with but this is a special one. The front cover is a serene photo of footprints in a snowy landscape with the words
“CHALLENGE – Do not follow where the path may lead. Go where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Then on each page is a sort of water mark (not actually, just a cheap bit of very light grey writing) which states
“Destined to win”
With this notepad I can hardly go wrong this whole trip! Woot.
Anyway back to the trip.
I was off to the airport via a coach from Leicester city centre and I was planning to get a cab to the coach station. Well 40 mins before my coach was due off I phoned up the taxi cab and was told they had an hour wait at best. Eek. This was at about 4am. Must be mighty busy or maybe they only had the one guy on. So off I trot on foot dragging a large case and lugging a full day pack. Luckily I bumped into a cab on the way who gave me a lift. Not a great start.
All my flights to Aus and back were on Singapore Airlines. I’d happily recommend them. Decent space, nice service, good entertainment system etc. Very good. The food was top notch too. I brought back a menu with me so I could remember the food offered. How about this for a dinner menu (in economy no less):
Appetiser: Thai Papaya salad with shrimps
Mains: Beef fillet with port wine sauce, roasted assorted vegetables and potato, or
Indian style butter chicken with jalfereizi [sic] vegetable and basmati rice, or
Char Siew pork with steamed rice and leafy greens.
Cheese: Cheese and crackers.
Dessert: Chocolate delight.
Not bad at all.
The flight to Singapore lasted nearly 13 hours though which is a bugger of a long time in anyone’s book. The A380 is quite large too – good for cutting down turbulence and loads of space to move about.
My prep worked though. The iPod gave me plenty of entertainment (and with a seat back USB port available, it didn’t run out of juice no matter how many vids watched or games played), the sound cancelling headphones were well worth it too; I was surprised they worked as well as they did to be honest – most impressed.
On the seat back thingy I finally got to see Monsters vs Aliens which I annoyingly missed down the cinema. And as we were nearing our destination I sat back and watched Kooza too. This may be stating the obvious but some of those performers are awfy good. The wheel of death folk were spectacular, they even had me gasping at one or two points. Stunning stuff.
Regarding the seat back entertainment wotsit. I had a huge bullock of a man sitting next to me and he looked quite dim. At one point he was fiddling with the handset and looking dumbly at his screen. Which was blank. He kept looking at the screen and then at the handset and then at the screen again. All with a blank look on his face. Now the “on” button wasn’t on the handset it was on the bottom of the screen. I helpfully, I thought, leaned over and jabbed his on button for him. He looked very confused and then annoyed and then confused again.
Turns out that his screen was on but the LCD screen didn’t allow me to see it from my viewing angle! Luckily he didn’t get annoyed when we figured out what was going on. Well done me again. Sigh.
Once landed (in an excellent airport – it has about 9 gardens, one of which is a butterfly garden!) I was going to meet up with a couchsurfer who was landing from Kuala Lumpur at roughly the same time. I had 24 hours in Singapore so I though seeing it with a fellow traveller would be a good way to spend the day. He had said he knew Singapore a bit so could show me around. Well we met up, got the train into town and then he had to sod off. Nice.
So I wandered a bit and then went to the zoo.
Now just about the only thing I really knew about Singapore was that it is somewhat clammy. Ross Noble went on and on about this somewhat in his show from there. (I agree with him that the Merlion is a bit rubbish too) When I landed I was in the air conditioned airport and then the air conditioned train. The first I noticed of this clamminess was when the train doors opened at over-ground stops and the air rushing in made it feel like the moment you enter a sauna. Hot and damp. Lovely mix.
But it wasn’t sunny. The photos I got show it as quite gloomy. Strange atmos really.
The zoo was right good tho. Saw a few animals including a saki monkey, some shagging baboons, a couple of pygmy hippos and more. Slightly depressing white tiger exhibit sadly. One of them was just pacing left and right – poor thing probably had too much energy to be cooped up in that size compound. Oh yes they had polar bears too. In Singapore! Talk about wrong habitat.
Next to the zoo was the “Night Safari” which was all about the nocturnal animals. This had a nice, if overly worthy, show about the night timers.
Oh yes there was a woman there at the zoo who was the exact image of Ginormica from Monsters vs Aliens. Only she had black rather than white hair.
By this time I was getting more than a little tired. At one point I fell asleep in the zoo’s cafe. I also managed to fall asleep on the bus from the zoo to the train station.
I got back the airport with a few hours to go before check in so availed myself of the facilities there. And they’re fantastic. Sadly the transit hotel was full but there was something called the transit lounge. This offered showers and short term beds for a low price. A bed! I’d had about 4 hours sleep in the preceding 2 days. So I had me a 3 hour snooze (could have done with much more) and a lovely shower thus making the onward journey much nicer for whomever got to sit next to me on the plane.
Singapore was an interesting stop with far more to see than I managed. Possibly worth a return visit one day. Maybe I’d lump in a Malaysia visit too.
Photos from Singapore (not that I’m best happy with them tbh) here.
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16 Aug 2009
Posted in People, Travel at 8:34 pm by alby
As P and C get ever closer to being parents it was noted that P would have fewer time to go off and do his own thing in the near future. Thus was born the plan of me and him charging up and down a stonking great hill.
We decided on Snowdon as I’ve never been up it before. No really.
We headed off later than planned on Saturday but ended up at the correct camp site around 4pm. The plan was smaller hill on Saturday and then Snowdon on Sunday.
The camp was under the minor hillock known as Tryfan. The weather wasn’t wonderful but that was expected. So off we went.
After a good while of off-route scrambling we figured that we’d not have enough time to reach the summit and get down again before dark so we reluctantly headed down before we’d planned. We did manage to get to a high ridge between two peaks though. No idea if it’s called anything, prolly.
So down we went. Quite a steep route down but for the most part pretty easy.
But then. Oh then.
My legs were a little worn out and were trembling a touch with the effort when I missed a step and my body went further forward than my legs. There was a large stone to my side that I tried to grab and vaguely managed but I couldn’t stop myself sliding further forward and down. At this point I was still confident that I was going to be fine. My head seemed to be coping happily. Unfortunately for it (and the rest of me) it was mistaken.
My chin smacked into the stone with a mild thwack. It hurt a bit but I was more worried that I had hurt my jaw. I’ve had problems with it before and don’t want the bother of dealing with it again.
(Incidentally, while I’m typing this it’s making my chin and jaw ache a tad.)
P saw me on my face and shot back up from where he was to make sure I was ok. I felt not too bad but was bleeding a bit from my chin.
P didn’t look too impressed when I showed him the cut.
But no matter there was no other option but to carry on walking down. The next hour was tedious descent whilst noticing that the bleeding hadn’t stopped. By the bottom of the descent my shirt was mildly gory. P looked at it again and thought that it now looked worse than it did when I first cut it.
So off to A&E to get it looked at. I did wonder whether this was an over-reaction but I preferred to get it at least checked.
Once there the triage nurse thought it might have been ok to just tape together but was concerned enough to ask me to wait to see a doctor just in case. I think our A&E plan was justified right there.
After some waiting I was called in to see the doc and he said just one word (other than pleasantries); “glue”.
So my chin wound was superglued together!
Well not actual superglue but something very like. The stuff they used is not water-proof. Meaning I can’t wash, shave or shower (that bit) for a couple of days.
Main concern now was “what about Snowdon?” We’d come all this way and I didn’t want to let the side down. We’d already wasted our one evening there waiting in a bleedin’ hospital.
We’ll see in the morning I guess.
Now we needed food. We’d had to come to Bangor to get to an A&E dept so we found ourselves a sit-in Chinese place called The Garden. Very nice it was. I’d changed from gory shirt to “near-rags” shirt but they had a big mirror in their waiting area and when I saw my chin I wanted to walk straight back out again.
It looked like it was still bleeding badly. One of the waitresses gave me a paper napkin using which I discovered that the big blob of blood on the chin was set solid, rather than still oozing.
I still wasn’t best pleased sitting in a public eatery looking mildly gored up. Never mind they found us a quiet place. Food turned out to be rather good too.
Back to the camp-site via some extremely strange directions from P’s satnav. We finally figured it out when I used mine instead.
Windy night in my new one man tent. It worked fine. I may be a touch too tall for it however.
And then to Snowdon. Started at Pen-y-Pas and headed up the pig track (PYG track). Harder work than I’d thought it would be and took ages. Oh and the weather was quite close so once a certain height up there the visibility dropped right off. We walk these things to get the views yes?
I rather liked the gallows humour of the other walkers and it was a proper sense of achievement getting to the top. Woot.
Coming down P had picked the Miner’s track. Some fools seemed to have chosen to try and ascend this way. It’s far steeper than the PYG and that’s after a long slow incline to the start of the scramble. I did feel quite sorry for those at the bottom of the scramble who asked how far they had to go.
“Well about 300-400m straight up and then you’re about half way”. Seemed a rude answer to give those who were already struggling.
I should note that P had originally planned to go via Crib Goch. But the weather conditions really did suggest that this would be a more bad idea than it already was. The combination of very strong (to 50mph) winds and poor visibility meant that only the loons would bother this route on this day. But there still were some folk trying it. Idiots.
As we headed back along the easy end of the Miner’s track we saw some very unfit looking folk heading up the hill. I’d say a good few of them should have turned straight round and gone home. The depression they were setting themselves up for didn’t seem worth it to me. These were people red-faced and wheezing up a mild incline with 1km to go before the really harsh bit.
At the other end of the fitness scale there were a few lunatic fell runners. One of whom passed us 3 times. Once on the way up and again coming down (as we were still going up). Later, on our way down, he passed us again on his way up again! Fool.
There was a couple who made it to the top with a baby being carried in a rucksack thing. Fools.
And back to the car.
Pics of the weekend (including mild gore) here. No summit shots though as it didn’t seem worth getting the camera out in howling winds and no visibility.
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09 Aug 2009
Posted in People, Self-indulgence, Travel at 9:33 pm by alby
Hi all
Most of the locals know by now but I’d like to make a welcome to the woman who shall be known as R on here now and again. She lovely and I’m happy.
[edit: just spotted that this pic looks rubbish in IE. You should be using a decent browser anyway but there's a better version of this pic in the weekend photos, link at end of post]
Anyways we went away this weekend. We ended up camping near Edale in the Peak District. Beautiful place and we had stunning weather.
The field we were in had rather more than the average amount of sheep poo but was well located near an ice-cream shop and some wonderful scenery.
The owner seemed to be an very old man who lived in a decrepit farmhouse. The house itself didn’t look too habitable but he seemed to manage.
On Saturday we walked and walked. We started going up from the site to Edale and then up Mam Tor and along Rushup Edge before getting lost and finally making our way back to the campsite.
We’d bought barbecue stuff and a crappy portable BBQ. We managed adequately with food but that was enough for us.
Sunday was spent de-camping (slowly) and then more walking, including a trip down Blue John Cavern. Nice guide by the name of Brian and worth a look.
Then it was back home via rellies (hers) and more food.
Photos here.
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07 Aug 2009
Posted in Juggling, Travel at 6:15 pm by alby
Yay! After my call for liftees to the BJC this year I got a call from one Ms Biskup and Mr Mats.
Looks like I have myself a pair of hitchhikers. Huzzah!
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03 Aug 2009
Posted in Juggling, Travel at 1:05 pm by alby
I’m a heading to the BJC in a couple of weeks and after travelling types to come with (since my usual liftees ain’t going this year).
I’ll be heading there, from Leicester, on the evening of Wednesday 19th and coming back on the Sunday afternoon.
If you want to come along then let me know soon. Can pick up on the way if necessary.
Have fun.
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28 Jul 2009
Posted in Juggling, Travel at 12:24 pm by alby
This is awfy early but I’ve an idea that I want to put out there.
I want to go to Finland’s EJC next year. That’s not the idea btw.
I want to drive there. I reckon it’ll take me a couple of days going at full speed and not seeing anything. So stuff that.
I want to take a week getting there going through Germany, Poland, the Baltic states before getting a ferry to Helsinki and then up to the site.
After the EJC the idea is to take a further week to drive through Finland, Sweden and Norway before coming home to the UK via the Bergen-Newcastle ferry.
So a 3 week trip then.
If I decide to go for this then I’d like companions to come along for the craic.
I’d expect it to be one set of 3 passengers there and another set of 3 back, maybe.
If you know of anyone who might be up for that sort of hols then let me know. First come, first served!
Have fun.
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