Category Archives: Travel

Austin, Visits to People and Places

Bertie goes to Sudeley

I don’t think that cars get jealous, but given the recent arrival of the GT6 it would have been perfectly natural for Bertie to ‘get the hump’ just a little.  So when we found out about a classic car event taking place at Sudeley Castle on Sunday we decided that this would be an excellent opportunity to give him an outing.  Fortunately we were blessed with a lovely early autumn day and I’m pleased to say that Bertie behaved himself impeccably, making the  35 mile round trip without complaint, though parts of the long and steady climbs up Cleve Hill and Seven Springs had to be tackled in third gear.

Bertie on Parade
Bertie on Parade

No prizes won but we were the oldest of the 180 cars taking part – and its no dishonour to lose out to a 1933 Bentley!

Sudeley is lovely.  The one time home and the final resting place of Katherine Parr, the gardens are very attractive and the house/castle houses a nice little museum which is certainly worth a visit. DSCN7851

Travel

Zab, Zakopane and the Tatra Mountains

At 1033 metres above sea level the improbably named ‘Zab’ is apparently the highest inhabited village in Poland – not something we knew when we booked our five nights accommodation in the Redyk hotel, though it became pretty obvious when we saw the mountain views on our arrival.  Wonderful on a lovely sunny day, but unfortunately it does mean that at least some of our time here will be spent with our heads rather more in the clouds than usual.

Zakopane, the local metropolis, is a busy (not so) little place sitting within a few kilometres of the Slovakian border and nestled nicely in the foothills of the Tatra mountains, beloved of walkers all the year round and skiers during the winter months.

As Tuesday dawned bright and sunny we decided to take a stroll into the Tatrzanski National Park.  Three hours and what felt like several thousand vertical metres later we emerged with a few new aches and pains but with that  smug glow of satisfaction that comes from knowing that we’re probably reasonably fit – or at least quite a lot fitter than some of our fellow walkers.  That said there were one or two fairly ancient Poles who looked as though they could have kept on going long after we’d decided that enough was enough for day one.

Today (Wednesday) started cloudy and as the BBC Weather App seemed pretty certain that it would stay that way all day we decided to try some sightseeing a little further afield.  The medieval castles at Niedzica and Czorsztyn (no, don’t ask me to pronounce them) are only about 45km off to the NE and feature in most of the tourist blurb so seemed like a good choice for a visit – though to be fair probably weren’t looking at their best on what turned out to be a dry, but pretty overcast, expedition.

Niedzica Castle
Niedzica Castle
Travel

Oswiecim – better known as Auschwitz

DSCN7779I wasn’t too sure about wanting to visit Auschwitz.  There’s something very  uncomfortable, almost voyeuristic, about visiting the scene of something so very terrible; but I was persuaded to make the visit, and in truth I’m glad to have done so.  We only made it as far as Auschwitz I, which is the original camp established by the Germans on the site of a former Polish Army barracks about 40km to the west of Krakow – there are two more, and I think larger, camps and a number of smaller ones nearby – but one was enough.

The place itself is well preserved and contains a number of extremely informative exhibitions that explain exactly what went on there and just how inhumane and brutal the Germans were to those they regarded as being less human than themselves.  The scale and the depth of the depravity that was displayed at Auschwitz and elsewhere is overwhelming and highlights just how thin the veneer of our so called civilisation really is – look around the world even now and you don’t have to strain the eyes or the imagination too hard to see what man can be capable of.

And with that depressing thought perhaps we should move on and get back to our holiday!

Travel

Krakow – September 2014

Having indulged ourselves with our ‘big trip’ to Australia and New Zealand earlier in the year we thought that we’d stick a little closer to home for our summer/autumn break this year.  Poland has been on my ‘bucket list’ (if Obama can have one why not me?) for quite a while, so this seemed like a good time to see what the south of the country has to offer.  The plan is to start with a spot of sightseeing in Krakow before heading down about 100km to the south to do some exploring and walking in the Tatra mountains around Zakopane.

PENT6106Our first impression of Krakow is that it’s a gem.  We’re staying B&B pretty much in the heart of the old town which, despite the horrors that befell Poland between 1939 and 1990, seems to have survived remarkably well.  Plenty of medieval squares, a castle rising up in the centre of the city and more churches than you could genuflect at in a month of Sundays.PENT6108But the really good thing is that it’s cheap!  Good beer at around £3 a pint and a wide selection of restaurants where you can get a reasonable choice of meals (not just pork, cabbage and potatoes) for around £30 for two.  If these are city prices I can’t wait to see what’s on offer in the rural areas to the south.

The weather, I’m happy to say, looks good so far. Bright sun and temperatures in the mid 20s for most of today – hopefully the threatened thunderstorms will give us a miss this evening!

At Home in Woodmancote, Visits to People and Places

Fairport’s Cropredy Convention

I don’t think that you could consider either of us to be regular festival goers.  Denise had never been to one before, and the last time that I let my hair down (metaphorically) at a ‘pop’ festival was on the Isle of Wight in 1969 – at this rate I shall be 107 just in time for my third festival attendance.  Though I have to say that we enjoyed Cropredy so much that we may just shorten that cycle by a few years.D-at-Cropredy

For those who don’t know (and why should you?) Fairport Convention have run annual gatherings in the Oxfordshire village of Cropredy for the past four decades, with growing attendances which this year topped 20,000 for most of the three days.  Not being entirely familiar with the style and flavour of other such events (unfortunately I simply can’t remember anything about the Isle of Wight – such was the devastating effect of too much cider!) we can’t really make comparisons, but suffice to say that this was a really chilled experience in the company of lots of like-minded Saga members – in some cases accompanied by their children, grandchildren and pets.

.. a life of the ocean waves, a home on the rolling sea....
.. a life of the ocean waves, a home on the rolling sea….

The weather was reasonably kind and the site, which straddles the Oxford Canal, is lovely – lots of scope for walks and for getting away from the music if and when it all gets just a touch too much.   The music ……….. oh yes, that was pretty good too.  An interesting mix of folk and prog rock and quite a few things in-between – really nothing that we could take exception to, and quite a few acts that we’d probably be happy to see again – if only we could remember what they were ………… well, with cider being sold in four pint milk cartons, what do you expect?

Hackett does Genesis - not bad at 64!
Hackett does Genesis – not bad at 64!
Visits to People and Places

The Joys of Camping

After an almost unbroken two-month long spell of good weather it was probably inevitable that for the few days we chose to go camping in Scotland the clouds would gather and we’d have a few spots of rain to remind us that British weather really can’t be trusted.  Although ‘north of the border’ probably wouldn’t have been our first choice for a few days away, I have to admit that our destination, Kirkcudbright, on the northern  shore of the Solway Firth, turned out to be a beautiful and interesting little spot that was well worth the journey.

The occasion for the visit was an opportunity to celebrate Jennie’s birthday in company with her and Nathan and to have an opportunity to get to know Steve, Ann, Jan and Gordon – the prospective ‘outlaws’.  As it turned out, the weather threatened rather more than it delivered and we were able to get out and about and see something of what the area has to offer.  Kirkcudbright has an interesting history, not least as the destination of choice for many of Scotland’s early and mid-twentieth century painters – notably the so called ‘Glasgow Girls’; the town celebrates this connection with a series of exhibitions and a huge number of small galleries where their work can be seen and bought.  The Glasgow GirlsFascinating stuff and a couple of hours very well spent on Saturday afternoon prior to the ‘crabbing’ grudge match in which Gordon, more or less ably assisted by Denise, produced an outstanding performance to catch no less than 48 crabs in the space of around an hour!  Jacques Cousteau could have done no better.

Sunday was an equally relaxed affair involving an afternoon visit to a local wildlife park followed by an evening beach barbeque accompanied by a little singing and guitar playing.  (note to self … next time learn some songs before you go!)

A quick round of ‘pitch and putt’ on Monday morning gave Jennie yet another opportunity to demonstrate her competitive spirit before we had to say our fond farewells to our fellow campers and set off for home.  Altogether a very pleasant long weekend in good company and in a lovely part of Scotland – who knows, next time we go we may have to take our passports!

Thailand

Out and About in Bangkok

The flight from Sydney to Bangkok went as planned – fortunately our kamikaze Russian minibus driver wasn’t at the controls.  As we learnt afterwards, our flight over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam was around six hours after the Malaysian Airways flight to Beijing went missing in the same area – not a nice thought.  Bangkok airport was bathed in bright smog/haze but the temperature was still a cosy 34o with humidity right up there.

After the rural peace and quiet of New Zealand  the Bangkok experience comes as a bit of shock – noisy, not a little bit smelly, crowded as hell and you take your life in your hands whenever you atempt to cross the road.  The moped riders are the worst and the safest thing is to expect them to attack you from any direction at any time.IMGP4583Our itinerary (how to squeeze a quart into a pint pot):

IMGP4484Day One.  Covered Market (15,000 stalls, its enormous), Skytrain, River Taxi, Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaeo.

 

IMGP4647Day Two.  Jim Thompson’s House, the MBK and Pantip Malls (dodgy software), Wat Pho, sat on the riverbank to get an evening photo of Wat Arun and then walked down past the Flower Market to get a street meal in Chinatown.

DSCN7612Day Three.  Made our way to the central railway station and took the train to Ayutthaya (about 70km north, former capital of Siam until sacked by the Burmese in 1787) and toured the temple ruins by tuk-tuk.  Rode an elephant!  Excellent day only marred slightly by my new lens deciding to fall apart for no particular reason.  The railway system is fascinating  – on the way there we went  by 2nd Class train (they have different classes of train , not carriages) which cost the princely sum of 345 bhat each (around £7), coming back we travelled 3rd Class (no aircon, but with the windows wide open it was fine) at a cost of 20 bhat (40p) each.  Wonderful!

Day Four.  Washout – I succumbed to a case of Bangkok Belly and was laid low for much of the day.  We managed a short shopping expedition around midday and an evening meal in a Japanese restaurant but for much of the day my attention was elsewhere. IMGP4562 IMGP4642 IMGP4522 IMGP4676

Australia

Sydney Stopover

We booked our fights with Thomas Cook and were pretty pleased with the price and the service they provided – except that about a week before we came away we noticed that they’d managed to arrange our flights so that we were due to leave Sydney twenty minutes before we would have arrived.  As a result we had to sacrifice a day in New Zealand and stay overnight in Sydney – at their expense.  They booked us into the same hotel in Darling Harbour that we’d stayed in when we visited Australia a couple of years ago, so at least we knew where we’d be staying and could plan a little bit of exploring for yesterday afternoon.

We mulled over whether to take a boat over to Manly or to catch the bus to Bondi Beach, but in the end decided to join the thousands of  kids (anyone between the ages of 16 and 36) showing off their tans on the golden sands of Bondi.  If anything’s guaranteed to make you feel your age it’s to sit on the beach in the middle of  a sea of suntanned flesh trying to hold your tummy in for a couple of hours.  To add insult to injury, as we were sat there a young guy who was going surfing asked us to keep an eye on his possessions – he said that we looked ‘trustworthy’, which I reckon meant that he thought we were too old to be dishonest!

DSCN7416We booked a shuttle bus from the hotel to the airport this morning.  I think that the driver must have been a tuk-tuk driver in another life – if you’d think that traveling at 500mph at 35,000ft over the ocean in a thin steel tube would be more dangerous than to be driven though Sydney by a suicidal Russian you’d be wrong!

New Zealand, North Island

Auckland

DSCN7381As New Zealand’s largest city Auckland has quite a different feel to it than Christchurch or Wellington, both of which seem to have retained a bit of small town charm about them as they’ve grown.  Not that Auckland is unpleasant, or at least the bits of the city centre that we’ve seen anyway, but the place has a little bit of big city bustle about it that we’ve not experienced elsewhere in New Zealand.  After five weeks of what’s been a very rural experience it feels ever so slightly frenetic., but perhaps that’s just a sign of a busy town and a healthy economy.

IMGP4465That said, you can’t build a city on the edge of the Pacific Ocean without it taking on a maritime character and Auckland has done that very successfully.  We spent a couple of very pleasant hours this afternoon walking through the harbour area and ogling some of the significant nautical hardware moored alongside.  I’ve avoided calling them yachts because these titanic (!) vessels are about as far away from my experience of yachting as you can get.  No doubt a helicopter is an absolutely essential accessory if you own something that’s the size of village and cost rather more than the GNP of a small country – jealous, me, surely not?

This morning we met with Ed Verner , a chum of sons Richard and Thomas, who made the move to Auckland around three years ago and is now prospering here as a professional chef.  It was great to hear how well he and his partner Laura are doing and to hear something about their plans for the future.  Good luck Ed, and thanks for finding the time to meet up.DSCN7390

New Zealand, North Island

Heading back towards Auckland

We had a bit of a technical disaster the other evening.  Before we set off on our travels I’d cunningly copied a number of films from DVD onto my ‘tablet’ for viewing during the holiday – among them I’d included all 20 episodes of The Killing – in Danish with English sub-titles.  Anyway, we got as far as Episode 13 to find that for some reason the last eight episodes had been copied without subtitles.  It took about two minutes to realize that our command of Danish is limited to two words – ‘smorgasbord’ and ‘sauna’, neither of which seems to come up too regularly in The Killing. So now we’ll have to wait until we get home to find out whether Troels did the dirty deed, whether Sarah Lund will marry Bengt move to Sweden and live happily ever after, and if Meyer is going to smoke himself to death before the end of the series.

For the last two days we’ve been heading south back towards Auckland.  Tonight is our last night in the van and then we’ve got a couple of nights in a hotel before we fly off to Bangkok with a night’s stopover in Sydney on the way.  Time for reflections then……..

  • New Zealand is a truly fabulous country – virtually everywhere we’ve visited has been absurdly stunning, in fact I can’t think of one part of the country we’ve seen that I wouldn’t be happy to return to, or recommend to others.
  • The North and South Islands have their own characters but the differences are more subtle than you’d expect – the South is probably a tad more spectacular and wild but the North is no less beautiful and perhaps has the edge when it comes to beaches.  The fact of the matter is that it’s not a question of either/or …. if you’re coming all this way, make the time to do both North and South Islands.
    • People talk about New Zealand as being like stepping back into a UK of 20 or 30 years ago but I’m not sure that’s quite right.  Yes, it’s much quieter, less crowded and more relaxed than the UK of 2014 but there’s something else as well.  I can’t recall the UK as ever being quite as ‘chilled’ as most of the Kiwis we’ve met have seemed to be.  I’m sure that it’s not perfect and as a nation they have some social and cultural problems, but the national character and very obvious focus on enjoying and protecting their environment is hugely attractive.
    • ……….and contrary to expectations it has been possible for Denise and I to live in the confines of a campervan for five weeks without coming even remotely close to killing each other!

      Denise in one of her moods after four weeks in the campervan with John
      Denise in one of her moods after four weeks in the campervan with John!