Friday 31 July 2015

Bournemouth: Portland ho!

I seem to be going on rather a lot of trips at the moment. The latest was to see my friend Claire in Bournemouth for a long weekend.

Great plan, save that the weather forecast for the weekend turned out to be less than brilliant.

Trip started with a super long train journey down from Grimsby to Bournemouth. 6 hours, to be precise. That said, it wasn't too bad - the tube wasn't busy, the trains all ran on time and I only encountered one weirdo (read: addict of some description) a few stops away from Bournemouth. So far, so good.

Of course, as soon as I left the station building, I got a lovely reminder of that weather forecast. Rain. Rain. Rain. Ugh. Managed to find my way to the town centre (with instruction from Claire) and then on to the Pier for Claire's work summer do. Spent the afternoon drinking rum, running out to the zip line when the rain stopped and trying out the indoor climbing walls.

I've only been climbing once and it was amazing fun, so it was great to have another go at it. Apparently it's still fun. 'Nuff said. I'm not sure how much it costs normally at RockReef, but I think it's probably worth checking out. They have high ropes too, which were great fun even if Claire did get a little bit stuck at one point.

Aside from that, not much to say about the first day of the trip. It ended with muffins and tea at Claire's new flat. Yeah...

Day 2 got off to a much better start - the sun was out! Yay! We'd initially considered going to the Isle of Wight but been told that without a car it would be difficult to get around. Then Claire had found a tour of the Jurassic Coast, which would have been cool had it run on a Saturday and not a Sunday. We could have done the tour on our own, but train and bus connections to Lyme Regis and Charmouth aren't brilliant from Bournemouth.

So we settled instead for a day trip to Weymouth. Train tickets proved to be really reasonably priced (£10.10 return using a railcard), the trains run regularly throughout the day and take just short of an hour to make the trip. Great for us.

First stop, tourist info. Only, we couldn't find tourist info... Managed to grab some leaflets with bus times though. At which point we decided it was lunch time. Quick perusal of timetables over sandwiches suggested that while we could feasibly take a bus to Charmouth and/or Lyme Regis from Weymouth, it would take an hour and a half so most of our afternoon would be spent sitting on a bus.

Decided to catch the bus down to Portland in the end. The bus only runs once an hour from Weymouth, so we made a beeline for a cafe to pass the time. Had a delicious chocolate digestive milkshake. Sounds like it should be gross, actually amazing. If you're in Weymouth, head to Tom & Erin's cafe on the seafront and try it yourself. Seriously good.

Anyhoo, sugar high achieved, we hopped on the bus and instead of going all the way to Portland, hopped off on the causeway and went for a walk down Chesil Beach. Really nice views. Look.



There was also a dead (or dying) jellyfish.



We also found some funky pebbles and made silly faces with them.



I'm not sure we really planned on spending so long on the beach, but it was a lovely day so we lounged around for an hour or so, throwing stones at the sea and inspecting the washed up jellyfish that was just along from us.



Stomachs started grumbling ever so slightly, so we strolled down the causeway to Portland proper. Nice walk, that. Mile and a half or so from the end of the beach to the village. Sadly disappointed to find that there was very little in the way of eateries - at least not as far as we could see. Grabbed a drink instead at a pub and then caught the bus back into Weymouth.

By which point Weymouth was much quieter and we managed to get a table in King Edwards fish and chip shop before the big rush of people turned up for tea. Pretty good, actually. Much better than the last time I ate in Weymouth when the fish cake blatantly came out of a packet. This time I had prawns in filo pastry with some rather excellent chips. Not bad value either - about £8 for the meal and £2 for a pot of tea.

And then it was back to Bournemouth on the train with some very drunk men who were hilarious the entire trip back. The day ended with a lovely cup of tea up on the roof of Claire's flat. Bournemouth's really quite pretty from up there. Great day. More on this trip next time.

Monday 27 July 2015

Ireland: The Car Hire Saga

So, it's now just a couple of months until I head off to Ireland with Claire and Gemma. Most of the hostels are booked, we've started looking at trips and whatnot that we want to take and we've got the car hire sorted.

Except, wait a minute, is the care hire sorted? Up until a week or so ago, nope. Indeed, the care hire became, for a while at least, a bit of a saga. When we first started looking at hire cars a few months back we quickly realised that unlike New Zealand, where you can hire a car from the age of 21, Ireland won't let you hire a car until you're 25.

First day with Ead, our trusty Ford Focus in NZ

Which, you know, from a safety point of view is obviously great, but Claire is only going to be 24 when we're in Ireland. Problem the first.

So we set about finding companies that would hire to under 25s. Of which there were very few.

The first of these, Dooleys, has ludicrously expensive hire in the first place and then charges an extra ludicrously expensive charge on top for a driver under 25. Reject.

Next up, Avis, who hire at reasonable prices and while they do charge extra for a driver under 25, it's much less expensive than Dooleys. Possibility.

Then Sixt, who hire at cheaper rates than Avis but charge much more for a driver under 25. Another possibility.

Finally, after much research and emailing of companies by Gemma, Thrifty came up. These guys hire at a similar price to Avis but more importantly, according to their response to Gemma's email, don't charge extra for a driver under 25, so long as the driver in question fulfils their other criteria - namely that the driver must have been eligible to hold a licence for 6 years and actually had one for 2 years. Which Claire does fulfil. Happy times.

So we're going with Thrifty. They've been really good about getting back to Gemma about a few last bits like if they charge to take the car into Northern Ireland. From a quick scan through other companies, it seems to be a bit hit and miss - some charge a one off fee, others don't charge at all as long as you bring the car back into the Republic of Ireland, which is what we intend to do.

Let's just hope we get a car as awesome and reliable as Ead, the Ford Focus we rented in New Zealand. Look at him - so brilliant we even took a selfie with him!


Oh, by the way, I'd totally recommend About New Zealand for car hire over there - no problems at all with this little dude.

Anyways, we'll see how attached we get to the Irish car. Maybe that'll get blessed with selfies too...

We'll see.

Friday 24 July 2015

Destination Daydreams: Alaska

Well, would you look at that. I'm capable of maintaining a blog. For a few weeks at least...

On with the show. Destination Daydreams is back and this time I'm looking at Alaska. Ahh, Alaska. Baked Alaska. Mmmm...

Anyhoo... what to do in Alaska? What indeed to do in Alaska? Let's start with how I'm getting there. I could fly up from Vancouver. That'd be the quickest way to do it and quite reasonably priced.

Bit boring though, innit? Just flying over all that beautiful coast. All those little fjords and islands and whatnot. So I figure I could get on a boat instead. There's ferries all the way up that western coast from Prince Rupert in Canada all the way round to the far west and the Aleutian Islands. Takes longer - 4-5 days instead of the 3.5 hours or so it'd take for a flight.

But imagine how much you could see from the ferry. And it'd be a nice change of pace for a few days. Just sit back, relax and take in the view.

So sure, maybe I'd have to put up with rough seas, but I've not yet had a problem with seasickness, so I figure I'd be OK. Coped with Lake Taupo when poor Claire was doing this:



Getting there aside, what could I actually do in Alaska? Well, for a start the ferry I'm currently looking at stops at Whittier. I could disembark there and then explore the Kenai Peninsula for a day or two - glacier boat trip, anyone? Oh yeah.

After that I could make a move north on the Alaska Railroad to Anchorage. Anchorage might not be the state capital but it's very much the biggest city in Alaska and a quick search suggests there's plenty to explore there - museums and the like. So perhaps 4 days or so in Anchorage? They're claiming a great music scene as well, so perhaps I could even catch a gig. Hurray, live music.

From Anchorage, I could go for several places. The first of these is Denali National Park. I'd possibly consider taking a small group tour up here, but I could do it solo. The Alaska Railroad runs north from Anchorage to Denali or there's a whole host of small bus services that could get me there for less cost. I think the nicest option would be to get the bus in one direction and the train in the other - you know, to get the best of both.

The second place to go from Anchorage is down into the south west, heading down towards the Aleutian Islands. From there, I could visit the Kodiak Archipelago or keep on heading west into the Aleutians proper. It all looks beautiful down there, but I have concerns about the transport and in the end it would probably mean having to take a cruise of some sort which might be just a bit out of my price range. Still, this is all a long way off and there's plenty of options to explore.

I had initially considered heading further north into Alaska, past Denali into Fairbanks. And then I discovered that a) there's not a lot to do in and around Fairbanks that I couldn't do elsewhere and b) Fairbanks has one of the highest crime rates in the States (more on that in a future post). At which point I figured maybe I'd only go as far as Denali. Yeah...

And from there... the lower 50 states?

Wednesday 22 July 2015

London: Global Connections and Olympic Legacies

Day 2 of our weekend in London started with the inevitable search for breakfast. Not much interesting to say about that other than that the blueberries in Costa were a bit... yick.

We headed out from the hotel back towards Greenwich Park where we made a beeline for the National Maritime Museum. I love this place. I visited it with family a few years back and I was keen to take another look around.



There are some wonderful exhibitions covering everything from the role of Trinity House in maintaining our lighthouses to the importance of the oceans in building the British Empire. The displays are heavy on artefacts, which is great if you just want to marvel at the weird and wonderful things that make up the collection.



An interesting part of the Museum at the moment is an area about migration, both to the UK and around the world. Visitors are invited to fill in a card to answer various questions and then hang them on the wall. This was one of my favourites, silly as it is.



Another highlight of the collection is the Baltic Exchange Memorial Glass, formerly, as the name suggests, of the Baltic Exchange in London. This is a huge artwork of stained glass, partially destroyed during WWII and then painstakingly restored in the 1990s. This photo doesn't really do it justice.



A brilliant addition to the Museum is the Compass Card. This is just a little card with a barcode and you can scan it at various points in the Museum to save information to explore later. I've just logged mine on the viewing site and unfortunately some of the things I'd scanned haven't saved, but the bits that have are great. The whole thing links back through to the Museum's online collection so I figure I could easily get lost for hours link hopping through curiosities.



Moccasin belonging to one of the folks who went looking for Franklin's lost expedition, anyone?

Anyway, our trip to the Museum ended with a trip to the shop (obviously). I've acquired the inevitable book - Simon Garfield's On The Map, which is a history of cartography. I love maps. Hence why I also acquired some postcards of old maps to add to my postcard wall.



By this point I was starving hungry. Ugh.

Hopped back on the DLR then, changing at Canary Wharf to make our way over to Stratford. I feel I should mention here that there are a series of bizarre stations on the DLR which are no more than about 100m apart. Very odd standing at one station and being able to see the stop before and the one after.

Got to Stratford without a problem. Unfortunately we then had to find our way through the Westfield shopping centre to find Gemma and Rebecca's friend Jo. I really don't like shopping and the place was heaving. Several wrong turns later we did eventually find our way to Las Iguanas and enjoyed a nice leisurely tapas lunch. Mmmm, tapas. Definitely recommended.

After lunch we bid farewell to Jo and family and headed into the Olympic Park. I actually visited it in 2012 when I went to the Paralympics for the weekend (so awesome), so it was nice to see how it had changed. Here's the Swimming Centre:



Been there. They've taken out the extra seating now though. And here's the stadium itself:



And here is a random photo of a mirrored bridge that we passed when we took a walk down by the river.



Fun times. Anyway, by this point Gemma and I were getting a bit hot and tired so we cut short the walk and headed down to Stratford International Station to catch a train back to Kings Cross. Hurray for having a railcard and getting money off the fare because I was loathe to spend £6 on a train journey that would only last 10 minutes. Point to note: you can't use Oyster cards on the high speed train from Stratford International to Kings Cross.

Bid farewell to Rebecca's friend Huw who'd joined us for the stroll around the park and then it was off back to Kings Cross for the journey home.

All in all, a great weekend. Absolutely knackered by the end of it, but definitely good fun.

Monday 20 July 2015

London: Maritime Heritage and Local Heroes

5:15am on a Saturday morning is a bizarre time to be listening to podcasts teaching Spanish. But hey, it woke me up. Obviously, there was a reason for being up so early in that the train I was catching that morning left the station at 6:30am.

Spanish lesson consumed, I headed off to the station with Rebecca, caught the train, acquired Gemma at Scunthorpe and then carried on down to London. Much boredom ensued - train journeys are relaxing, but not all that interesting. Woo.

Arrival in London resulted in the inevitable "yay, no Oyster Card" discussion. Fortunately Gemma's got a contactless card, so I've commandeered her Oyster Card. Makes travelling on the Underground so much easier. Why didn't I think of this before? Also met up with Rebecca's friend Huw and then set off in search of adventure.

I say adventure... what actually happened was that we got on the Tube heading for Embankment and got off at Charing Cross because I can't stand the Tube. Clarification here: I'm really not very tall, I do not cope well with crowds, the Tube has been known to well and truly freak me out. Oh, and I have this weird irrational fear that the doors will open while the train's in the tunnel and someone will fall out. I know this is irrational and highly unlikely (the logical part of my brain thinks I'm being an idiot) but it doesn't help.

Ahem, anyhoo...

So we hopped off at Charing Cross and took the very short walk down to the Embankment. Someone had suggested we took a boat trip down the river since we were staying in Greenwich. Sounded like a great plan to me. So we joined the queue for tickets. For 15 minutes. In the sun. With no suncream. I'm amazed I'm not bright pink. And then we joined another queue. In the sun. With no suncream. For 20 minutes. Huw went and found us ice cream, which rather made up for the heat. And then we joined yet another damn queue.

Fortunately this was the last one and we finally made it aboard one of the Thames Clippers. £7.15 for a single ticket (if you don't have an Oyster Card). Not bad considering how far down the river it takes you - about 7 miles from Embankment down to Greenwich Pier. It's also a really lovely way to see the city, as demonstrated in this wonderful series of photos. Yes, I know some of the horizons are wonky - let's see you take perfect photos from the deck of a speeding catamaran.









Well, that's two of Torchwood's sites I've seen. I jumped up and down on the perception filter in Cardiff, but they wouldn't let me in.

Moving on. Having admired London from the water, it seems oddly apt that we then headed into Greenwich with it's maritime heritage. The first real stop of our trip was the Old Royal Naval College (free entry! Yay!) and its beautiful Painted Hall.



I think the photo makes it clear that the Painted Hall does what it says on the tin - almost the entire thing is painted. Even the columns are painted to give the impression of carving - they're completely flat, but at first glance it's very convincing.

Across the way from the Hall is the Chapel, which is lovely, but not quite so impressive. Personally, I found the two memorials in the foyer more interesting.



The first is to Franklin's lost expedition to the Arctic in 1845. History time: Franklin went to explore the last section of the Northwest Passage, the two ships got icebound and everyone on board, 129 people, died. Little traces were found in the intervening years and finally one of the ships, HMS Erebus, was located in 2014.



The second is to the convoys operated during the Second World War.

The Old Royal Naval College itself is a gorgeous building - I'd quite like to explore some more of it if I get the chance.




Oh, and for the film fans, this building turns up in the second Thor film. And promptly gets wrecked. Such a shame...

Flying visit to the College over, we headed on up the hill intent on visiting the Royal Observatory. Timed to perfection, evidently, because just as we reached the National Maritime Museum at the bottom of the hill, the Time Ball dropped to mark 1pm. Here's a close up of it from later in the day.



The Time Ball was used back in the day when clocks were needed to determine longitude at sea - sailors moored on the Thames would use the dropping of the Time Ball up on the hill to set their clocks to the right time so that they could make accurate measurements of their position once they got out into the ocean. More on this later.

Bit of a trek up the hill, given how warm it was. Made it up to the Observatory in the end though and went for a wander around the exhibition. Some amazing old timepieces and of course the wonderful timekeepers of John Harrison.

John Harrison should be a bit of a local hero around Northern Lincolnshire. He grew up in Barrow on the south bank of the Humber and was a carpenter by trade. He also had a fascination with clocks, later to prove useful when the Longitude Act was passed in order to find a solution to the Longitude Problem.

The problem was this: finding latitude while at sea had been fairly easy for centuries, but longitude proved more difficult. As such, when long distance voyages became more common, it became necessary to find a way round this. One way of doing this was to measure the time difference between your position at sea and a fixed point - say, London. If you knew what time it was in London and what time it was where you were, you could work out the longitude.

Unfortunately, this hinged on having with you an accurate clock telling the time in London and at the time of the Longitude Act no such clock existed. John Harrison set out to build such a clock. Here's the first attempt, H1:



The Board of Longitude obviously found it promising, because they funded work into further timekeepers. Harrison produced H2 and H3, was rewarded some more and then created this beautiful object, H4:



H4 was brilliant. It was accurate and kept time even in rough seas. It's the first accurate marine chronometer and it's such a shame Harrison isn't more well known in his home patch.

Well, that was a bit of an extended ramble about keeping time at sea...

Moving on.




By this point it was becoming apparent that all the science and history wasn't really to Rebecca's liking, but I did at least manage to drag both her and Gemma up the old Observatory tower to have a look at this lovely telescope.



I think by then we were all just a little bit worn out - it had been an early start and gone 2pm and we still hadn't had any lunch, so we toddled off down to the cafe. Expensive, but to be expected in such a touristy area.

Took a nice walk back down the hill through Greenwich Park to the Cutty Sark, where we left Huw for a while. Woo, pictures of the Cutty Sark. Somewhere else I would have liked to have a look around if we'd had the time.



Rebecca then got her first taste of the DLR. I'm not sure she was entirely convinced. Personally I find it much more pleasant than the Tube - not as busy for a start. Does make some funny noises sometimes though...

Checked into the hotel, refreshed tired feet and grabbed a cuppa before Huw joined us again and we headed out for the evening. We took the scenic route - DLR to Canary Wharf, stroll through Canary Wharf to Poplar DLR Station, DLR to Royal Victoria on the north bank. From there we hopped on the Emirates Air Line, the cable car over the Thames. A nice little detour - it's not overly expensive and there's commentary included on the 10 minute crossing. Another lovely way to see a bit more of London - first time I'd seen the Thames Barrier, for example.



Safely back on the ground, where Rebecca was much happier, we strolled over to the O2 - another place I'd never been - and went in search of tea. We were planning on going to a gig at the Brooklyn Bowl, so that was of course the obvious place to grab some food. Considering what a tourist trap it must be, the prices weren't bad and the food was great. Would definitely recommend.

The gig was also good. A brass band by the name of Old Dirty Brasstards who play covers of pop songs. So much fun and helped along by a couple of pints of fairly decent cider (expensive by my standards).

Having missed out on the cliched photo on the Greenwich Meridian at the Observatory, I grabbed this last shot of Gemma and Rebecca on the Meridian Line outside the O2 - had to be done!



All in all, a lovely day and a great evening. Day 2 recap will be coming later in the week.

Friday 17 July 2015

Castleton: Mines, hills and wonky roads

Took another day trip with my dad and sister last Sunday, this time to the little Peak District village of Castleton.

Well, I say Castleton. We parked out the far end of the village past the Treak Cliff Cavern and I'd recommend everyone did so - parking is fairly limited in the village itself (there's two or three car parks, at varying prices per hour) and parking on the road leading out of the village towards the famous caves is metered until you get nearly a mile out. So being the cheapskates we are, we parked up at the end of the old Mam Tor road.

Nice little spot of lunch and then we set off for a walk. The weather wasn't looking too great - black clouds kept drifting over but fortunately we missed the rain. First up we took a quick stroll up to what we think was part of the Odin Mine.


The photo above is from the little cave near the old mine workings called Odin Cave. The mine itself is down this 'ere ravine.


Supposedly the mine was worked as far back as the Roman occupation, so potentially nearly 2,000 years. Wikipedia (un)reliably informs me that the first reference to the mine was in 1280 and is the oldest documented lead mine in Derbyshire and possibly even in England. Pretty impressive. I would have liked to explore a bit down the ravine, but it was absolutely sodden - obviously the rain water just collects down there - so we gave it a miss.

Oh my, British Summer!
Odin Mine appreciated we set off up the hill along the route of the old Mam Tor road. Geology lesson ahoy, feel free to skip. The rocks of Mam Tor, the "Mother Hill", are in the region of 320 million years old. The layers at the bottom are shales, which forms in thin sheets (hence why we use it for roof tiles), overlain with sandstone. Said shales are just a little bit unstable. Just a bit...

You'll note I said we were following the route of the old Mam Tor road. The old Mam Tor road being the former A625 between Sheffield and Chapel-en-le-Frith on the other side of the Peak District National Park. Those unstable shales underlying the sandstone of the upper part of Mam Tor have caused a landslip of the hill that started at least 3,000 years ago. The road builders in their great wisdom decided to build their road straight across the landslip. Oh yeah. Look what happened to it.


This one might give you more idea of just how far the road has slipped - using my sister for scale.


Nice. So the road now goes another way around Mam Tor. Got to say though, there's so much tarmac left of the old road it makes it a nice easy walk up the hill from the Odin Mine at the bottom(ish) to the Blue John Cavern where the road used to go.


We decided against going up to the top of the Tor - black clouds flew in again and we got a few spots of rain - and instead made our way back down to the road past the Treak Cliff Cavern. If you're interested, there's an old hill fort at the top, which I'd love to have a poke around at some point. Not that I imagine you can see much of it...

Some beautiful views of the Tor (and my dad and sister) from the track we took from the Blue John Cavern down to the road.




And then just past the Treak Cliff Cavern I spotted this lovely looking crag (all the geology/geography feels).


Anyhoo... short walk back up the road to the car and then a very short drive into the village to find the loos and to raid the fudge shop we'd spotted on the way through earlier. Point to note here: there's parking at the Peak Hotel that's fairly cheap but it's only a tiny car park. I believe you can get your money back if you spend more than £10 in the pub... if the sign was right...

Anyway, nice clean facilities at the National Park visitor centre on the main road, plus a free little museum in the visitor centre itself. Worth checking out if you want to know a bit more about the history of the Peaks and whatnot.

Finally, we made a quick trip to one of the little shops and acquired some fudge. Nice, but not as good as the stuff from the Remarkables Sweet Shop in Arrowtown, New Zealand. And then, sadly, it was time to leave.

All in all, a nice little trip, but I'd have liked to have spent the whole day there. As it was, we didn't get there until after 1pm so we didn't really have time to do that much. There's some beautiful walking up there and a whole host of little places to visit. From past experience, it's worth checking out the caves - I've done the Blue John Cavern many years ago, but I'd imagine Treak Cliff, Peak and Speedwell are also interesting - and Peveril Castle, which is perched up on top of a cliff overlooking Castleton.

At least we had nice weather!

Monday 13 July 2015

Language Barriers: No hablo español...

Well, that’s gone and done it. I’ve committed myself to learning Spanish. I plan to achieve a high enough level of proficiency that by the time I hit the South American legs of the Grand Tour I’ll be able to hold a decent conversation with people. Even if they do still laugh at my pronunciation.

What do you mean, Spanish is pronounced differently depending on where in the world you are? Psht.

Seriously, though, I think this could be good fun. Prior to the beginning of July, my grasp of Spanish was limited to por favor and gracias. In the space of 2 days that expanded to cover a whole range of greetings and basic questions. You know, the usual – what’s your name, where are you from, etc etc.

And all achieved in the space of little over an hour. Wahey. This is courtesy not to my amazing language learning skills (although I do rather love them and it’s a shame I didn’t keep up my German and what little French I had) and more to the fact that I found a great little language learning programme online that teaches through bitesized podcasts. So I can do an hour, half an hour or even just 15 minutes of an evening and still feel like I’m achieving something. If I really wanted, I could do it in my lunch break or on the walk home from work.

Puedes hablar más despacio?

Ok, so sure the first few lessons weren’t all that taxing. I’m sure there must be something coming up about genders and tenses and all those yummy things I remember from German and Latin, but I must have a bit of a head start there, right? I studied Latin for 4 years (highest GCSE grade in my class, fuck yeah) and there’s enough similarities between the two that I’m hoping I won’t find it too difficult to grasp. Plus, there’s also quite a few similarities between Spanish and English so hurray for that too.

From starting the course, it’s over a year until I plan to be in South America. Plenty of time, right? I might even start on the French and Italian courses and maybe take a little refresher in German given that currently my German has diminished to yelling Was ist los mit dir? at my laptop when it’s refusing to work. Obviously I do actually remember more than that, but that’s just such a lovely phrase when Bob the Third is throwing a hissy fit and I’m getting hacked off with him.

Moving on.

The programme is called Coffee Break Spanish and it's presented by a couple of Scots. The podcasts themselves are free but you can pay for additional content like lesson notes and whatnot. We'll see how well I do with just the podcasts first, I think, and then maybe I'll look at forking out for the extras.

At the time of posting this, nearly three quarters of the way through the first season of 40 episodes. No doubt I'll need to go back over certain episodes and recap on things that I'm not sure on, but I think that's pretty good progress from knowing just a few words to being able to hold at least a small conversation. I'm also now able to ask for directions and use that delightful phrase beloved of travellers:

Lo siento no entiendo

I'm sorry, I don't understand.

I'm pretty sure that at the moment my understanding of Spanish is better than my spoken Spanish - that is, I can understand what people are saying, but I haven't quite got the hang of speaking it myself. Like I mentioned above, though, I'm not going to be anywhere Spanish-speaking for over a year, so I've got plenty of time to work it out. For a start, there's 3 more seasons of 40 episodes each of Coffee Break Spanish to go at.

Should be fun. Let's face it, learning a language has to be more fun than that time I had a fever and my brain decided to try to operate in Latin. Failing that it switched to German. For an entire night. It was awful...

I'll be making Language Barriers a regular thing, so look out for more posts about my language learning adventures! Maybe by the next time I post, I'll be able to say:

Hablo un poco de español

You can find more info about Coffee Break Spanish and the other courses offered by the Radio Lingua Network here: http://radiolingua.com/

Friday 10 July 2015

Destination Daydreams: Maritime Canada

The Grand Tour. Le Grand Tour. The Epic Magical Round The World Adventure.

... is nearly a year away. Oh, the sadness. Oh, the impatience. I'd love to be off gallivanting right now, but in the mean time, I have a solution to this.

Welcome to Destination Daydreams in which I plan to babble inanely about all of the lovely things I plan to do on the Grand Tour.

I thought I'd kick this off with some of the places I want to visit in the various provinces of Maritime Canada, the first planned stop on the Canadian leg of the trip. Here goes.


I figure it might run something like this: I'll take a flight from Reykjavik (Iceland being my first port of call) into Halfiax, Nova Scotia. I think I'll spend a few days there relaxing and exploring the city and then head off down the coast to Lunenburg to gawp at the pretties. The Old Town of Lunenburg is a World Heritage site and full of beautiful old buildings. Looks quite Scandinavian to me, but apparently it's old British. I've found a bus company that seems to go round the southern end of Nova Scotia, so I could use them to hippity hop between towns around the coast, all the while soaking up the awesome. I figure then I can take a boat trip or similar on the Bay of Fundy, snap way too many photos of the tidal bore and cliffs. The Bay is known for having the highest tidal range in the world. So I've got to see that. Apparently you can go rafting on the tidal bore too, which looks pretty damn cool. According to the ever (un)reliable Wikipedia, there's a Mi'kmaq legend that the tides are caused by a giant whale splashing about. Sounds interesting. Will have to look into more of these tales - I love these sort of myths.

After that, I'd have to find a way to visit the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. Even if it means taking a taxi - there's no public transport to Joggins. The closest you can get by bus or train is Amherst which is a half hour drive away. The Cliffs are a World Heritage site on the Bay of Fundy, known (obviously) for fossils. I like fossils. I used to have a bucket full of ammonite fossils we picked up off the beach in Charmouth... Anyhoo, I'd love to see this place. 300 million year old fossils. Sounds good to me.

Or maybe I'll first go from Halifax to Cape Breton National Park up in the northern tip of the province and spend a day or two up there admiring the scenery (and, as ever, taking too many photos). The whole area looks gorgeous and I figure it'd be a nice place to wander around for a bit and get away from the towns a while. There's also the Acadian settlement of Cheticamp and I'd love to know more about Acadia and its history.


From there I can head to Sydney to catch a ferry over to Newfoundland and spend a few days out there - I'd love to go and see St Johns, plus I hear it's good for whales and icebergs. What a wonderful idea.

Getting around Newfoundland looks a bit difficult if you don't drive (which I don't), but I'm sure I could find a way round that. There's a bus service between Port Aux Basques in the west and St John's in the east - it just takes about 13 1/2 hours. Hmm... Maybe if I took the ferry to the port closer to St Johns and based myself solely out of there instead of covering the whole island. It would be cool though.

Newfoundland partially covered, I'd head back the way I came into Nova Scotia and then hop on the Via Rail trains to carry on into New Brunswick. I hadn't originally planned to stop in New Brunswick but a quick look is changing my mind - it looks like a lovely area and I feel like I'll be wanting to see some more of the Acadian culture of the Maritimes by the time I get there. So maybe I'll give myself a few days there too.

That would let me a large part of the Maritimes - Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and New Brunswick. It does miss out Prince Edward Island, which I could possibly fit in but would potentially mean rushing throught things and likewise with Labrador. Much as I'd love to visit every part of the Maritime region, I'm not going to rush myself just to say I've got the set.

But I would really love the set...

No worries. This is still a year away. Plenty of time to adjust plans and come up with new ideas. Maybe I'll decide I don't fancy some of my planned destinations as much as I think I do and then I'll have more time for the Maritimes. Maybe.

Alternatively, maybe I'll just want to spend longer everywhere and the year will have to be stretched a bit... umm...

Monday 6 July 2015

Lincoln: Sunshine, history & museum etiquette

Took a little Sunday afternoon trip to Lincoln with my dad and sister at the weekend, seeing as how the weather decided to stay nice for a change and we needed some fresh air. We headed straight for the castle, having not been in it for, by my sister's reckoning, about 15 years (discounting those awful few times at the Christmas Market where you couldn't actually see the craft stalls because the crowd was so big you just had to go with it...)

Having been asked by the cashier if we wanted adult or child tickets (neither me nor sister having been child price for years) we headed up onto the walls to make the most of the sunshine before the rain inevitably set in. Some gorgeous views from up there (and some great little info boards) plus they were ringing the bells at the cathedral which is just across the way.



Having last properly visited the castle when I was still at primary school it was really rather nice to have a wander round the walls again, although like all things you revisit from your youth, I could have sworn the walls were bigger and took longer to walk when I last went.



On the plus side, because it's so long since we'd visited, the Lucy Tower was open again - my sister seems to recall it was closed to the public because it was falling down or something last time. So here's the inside of the tower and the graves of hanged prisoners buried within it.




Cheerful. The last bit of our wall walk was a trip up an incredibly narrow spiral staircase to the top of the Observatory Tower. Not sure I've ever been up such a narrow one. Indeed, my sister's a bellringer and has been up loads of the damn things and even she thought it was a bit tight. Anyhoo, there's some even more amazing views from the top of this tower - all the way out to the Belmont transmitting station out on the Wolds.



Wall walk completed, we headed into the old Victorian gaol to check out the newest attraction at the castle. Lincoln's had a copy of Magna Carta since the very beginning 800 years ago. Impressive, given that there's only 4 surviving copies of those original ones. So, of course, this being the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, Lincoln Castle has got itself a brand new Magna Carta Vault to display its treasured copy in, plus a copy of the Charter of the Forest issued around the same time. Alongside this there's a small cinema showing films to explain the history and impact that Magna Carta has had not only on Britain but on other nations and laws around the world.

I love this sort of stuff and I can't really remember having seen Magna Carta when I last went to the castle, so getting the chance to see it sounded pretty damn cool to me. Of course, there's a hell of a lot of other people who obviously wanted to see it too. Some of whom seemed to have no sense of what I like to call "museum etiquette". The first of which is "don't ignore the signs that say no photography". The second of which is "don't just shove in front of people to get a better view because those people are trying to have a look too, you ignorant little shit".

OK, so let's just say the display room isn't very big, there were a lot of people in it and I don't take kindly to people looking at me, deciding I'm not important and then standing directly in front of me when it was clear that I was trying to drink in the history. Fuck you, dickhead.

So I didn't get as good a look at Magna Carta as I might have liked, or the Charter of the Forest which I'd not even heard of up until then. The cinematic display was brilliant though - awesome graphics and detailed enough to keep me interested without (hopefully) boring those who weren't after too much depth.

Offense over lack of museum etiquette subsided, we headed into the gaol proper, including some little displays of artefacts uncovered during the construction of the Magna Carta Vault alongside more of life in the 30 years the gaol operated.

Got to say though, still my favourite and yet most feared place in the castle is the prison chapel. This is what it looks like from the pulpit.



See those mannequins? Scared the crap out of me as a kid and they're still bloody creepy now. Oh, and you see how there are partitions between each of the creepy ass mannequins? Part of something called the separate system, which effectively meant limiting contact between prisoners so they'd think on their sins and wouldn't rub off bad habits on each other. Claustrophobic as anything, as my sister kindly demonstrated.



Woo, out of focus photos. This is what happens when you try to take a photo over the top of a partition and you're too short to see the screen of your phone. Yay.




Anyway, creepy ass mannequins abandoned to their sermon, we had a quick wander around the grounds and then departed the castle in search of fluids, it being rather hot and us being rather dehydrated. Drinks got delayed when Amy wanted a photo taking with this dude.



There's a trail of these guys all the way round Lincoln to celebrate... commemorate... oh, whatever - they're to do with the 25 barons involved in making King John sign Magna Carta. We've already decided that we're going to have to go back and find them all. So far we've got these 3, plus one I forgot to take a pic of and 1 we spotted out the back of the castle.




All in all, a nice summer afternoon trip. Such fun...

More info on Lincoln Castle: http://www.lincolncastle.com/
More info about the Lincoln Barons' Charter Trail: http://www.lincolnbarons.com/
More info about the Magna Carta 800th Anniversary events: http://magnacarta800th.com/