Quieter interlude

Last few days have been a bit quiet, but yesterday we took another trip back to Sheringham, Celia’s childhood home.

We typed Sheringham into the Sat Nav, and for some reason she took us all round the back roads. Fortunately, because it was a pleasant day, this wasn’t a big issue – just a surprise. In fact, we when we turned off to chase up a notice that said antiques at one point, we wound up going past the rest home where Celia’s former English teacher now lives. So we popped in to see him. And then a couple of miles down the road we came across one of roadside vans that sell food, so we stopped and had some lunch. (These vans are all over the place: they get towed to the site in the morning and the guy running it makes sandwiches and hot potatoes and buns and provides coffees and so on. Often they’re in the lay-bys on the motorways.)

It was exceedingly bracing at Sheringham Beach, but we survived. Though the streets weren’t as crowded as they’d been last time we were there, there were still a lot of people around.

Celia wanted to go up to Sheringham Woods as well; just as we set out it started to pour, but then it decided that we didn’t need any more rain, and by the time we’d had a cup of coffee in the woods entrance, it had cleared up again. So we had the pleasure of a glistening wet woods with the sun shining through the branches. Celia wanted to find some chestnuts, but they weren’t ready yet, even though she insisted on crushing a good number of them in the process in order to discover this fact. Chestnuts, in their little spiky shells look like baby hedgehogs might look; seeing Celia stomping on these was not for the fainthearted.

Today we’ve been trying to get our teeth into planning this train trip in Europe. It’s proving more complex than we imagined, even given the combined forces of the Internet, the various books we’ve got of timetables and ways to get around and the maps. Just when you think you’ve got it sussed you find you can’t get a hotel at a reasonable enough price, or that the train doesn’t go where you’d like it to go.

However, we think we’ve got the first leg of it sorted.

Just resting

The last couple of days have been rest days – mostly. Both of us were zonked when we got back from our tenting trip, more tired than we’d been for weeks. The tiredness had kind of crept up on us both, and we were both irritable, and just plain weary of traveling and erecting and de-erecting tents.

It’s nice to be back to a bit of normality at our ‘base camp’ and to have some people to talk to. In the campsites it’s been amazing how few people there have been who’ve stopped and talked, or showed any interest in us. Which means we’ve been thrown back on each other for all our resource: we both need other company as well as each other.

We’re now going to plan our train trip in the five European countries in more detail than we originally intended, because part of the problem with the tenting holiday was just not knowing where we might end up, and whether we’d have somewhere to stay. It meant that a certain side of the trip was unrelaxing, and almost unenjoyable.

Home from the Holiday

Well, home in English terms. We’re back to base after our tenting/travelling trip. Both exhausted, perhaps because we travelled too much and didn’t rest enough. We’ll try not to make the same mistake when we go to Europe next month.

Our trip today was from Kidderminster to Attleborough, some three and a half hours drive if we’d done it all in one go. We didn’t, as both of us were very tired from last night, and anyway, driving that far in one go just isn’t the sort of thing we do very often.

We were tired because we had the heaviest rainfall last night that we’ve experienced while tenting. It poured, and poured – and did I mention? It poured.

But not only that. Sometime between three and four, the wind came up out of nowhere, with huge force, and we were startled to find the tent rocking back and forth, as though it was planning to take off into outer space. We thought it was going to do itself some damage, but nothing got broken, and the worst that happened was that some plastic plates and stuff on one of the tables inside the tent got thrown around, and wound up on the floor. Celia got up and rescued the laptop, which was in its bag in the front section of the tent – the part that doesn’t have an inner skin. Where we were, things were perfectly dry, amazingly enough, but the front section does tend to get a bit of water inside.

I got quite agitated about the tent doing its crazy house thing; started praying loudly, rather like the disciples on the boat when the storm blew up on the Sea of Galilee. Of course Jesus told them to cool it – after he’d dispensed with the activity of the storm. Celia did much the same, finding my agitation somewhat amusing.

It turned out that various mini-cyclones (that’s what the radio was calling them) flickered throughout the country last night: we may have got the tail-end of one.

Wrapped everything up this morning. It had stopped raining by then, but because the tent was so wet outside and the grass too, we stayed in our pyjamas until we’d got everything sorted out, and then went and had a hot shower. I cleaned my teeth, and went to put my dental plate in. For some reason it seemed to catch on one of my other teeth, and next moment there was a nasty little crack as I shifted it in my mouth. The front false tooth had snapped clean off the plate. Great.

We went into Kidderminster and found a denture specialist, but he couldn’t do anything till four in the afternoon. Decided that it wasn’t the end of the world and that it would be easier to get it done back in Norfolk, so I walked around today with a gap in the front of my teeth.

Got ourselves some breakfast – on a takeaway plate (Celia had seen the place advertised at the camp, and it was just across the road from the denture place), and bought some lunch for later too.

Photo on the right is from a site called Dental Distortions. The teeth bear no resemblance to mine.

Sleeping Policemen

Keep meaning to mention Sleeping Policemen. We just call them something subtle like judder bars at home, but in England this phrase is a reference to those annoying humps in suburban roads which are meant to stop people hooning down the street.

Mamble and Crowl, Worcs

Finally got to Mamble, which was a bit of a disappointment, to say the least. A little place with its most open area on a downward piece of the hill, a pub and a church and almost nothing else. Plainly we’ll have to rewrite the song:
Now we’ve been to Mamble
That lies above the Teme,
And there’s no one much in Mamble,
At least as we have seen.
No doubt they breed and brew there,
Still lazy as the claim,
But I doubt that any song there
Sets the local pub aflame.
However, we also went to the other Crowle, in Worcestshire. This has a totally different atmosphere to the Crowle up north, which seemed run down and devitalised. Crowle, Worcs, is probably a dormitory suburb, but the houses are both old thatched roof style and modern, the church has a sense of quiet about it, and there’s a modern parish hall at one end of the village. No sign of any Crowls in the church graveyard, so maybe we’re a hardy lot!
This morning, however, we went to church at the local place just down the road, in the village of Wolverley. This was a fairly High Anglican place, seemingly occupied by widows (only a couple of blokes that I could see) and not very many of them. There was a choir, however, all in heavenly-blue robes, and there were a couple of guys in amongst them too, so that supplemented the numbers on both sides.
The minister was a woman, but she isn’t the vicar, apparently. He was away doing a service elsewhere. She spoke well in her short sermon, and made a good point about reaching out to others in her comments on John’s Gospel.
At the end we took a brief look around the place, and there was a list of former vicars, going way back to the 13th century. One John Crowle stood out among them. He was vicar around 1545, and had an alias: Yewes. Not sure what that had to do with anything!
Of course he may have no connection with my part of the family, but it’s good to see someone in the wider clan doing a good job all that time ago.
Anyway, both the Wolverley church and the Crowle church are named after St John the Baptist. The Wolverley one, which is in the picture, is built on a hill. This is probably a good thing, apart from its biblical significance, because in June this year, Wolverley's lower reaches were flooded twice. We saw a man digging out the stream that runs past his house, and replacing the rocks that had been shifted from his garden wall. He's planning on building a much higher wall around that side of the house, even though the stream is at present more than a metre below the foundations.

Camp sites

The variation in camps is enormous. I still haven’t quite figured out the difference between the official Camp and Caravanning Association sites, where we get a little booklet stamped (ten stamps and a free night!) and where we get senior citizen discounts (even Celia) and where it costs virtually nothing for being here, and the sites where we pay twice the price, and where there are signs saying CACA people welcome and where the friendliness is far less. Oh, well, we’ll only be camping a few more days, and so the problem won’t bother me after that.
Some camps you have to pay for showers, some require a key to get into the toilets (!), some have laundry facilities, some have virtually no facilities - like the one the night before last near Chester, where there was one urinal and one WC for the men, one shower and one hand basin. Two WCs for the women, a shower and a hand basin. No hot water for washing up dishes. And other places, like the one here in Kidderminster, has so many showers and toilets and urinals and basins that you have to stop and choose which to use. It’s a bigger site, certainly, but not that much bigger.
And then there’s electric power. Most people can plug into a socket in the middle of the field and get their power from it. There may be a dozen of these units, with four sockets each, scattered around. Here at Kidderminster, we can’t get at one, unfortunately, so this may be the last message you get for a while…
But there is a ping-pong table here, so if you don’t hear from us, that’s probably what we’re doing. And resting.

One of those days

Saturday. Left Chester around lunchtime, visited Oswestry (which may be pronounced Ostry, but don‘t bank on it) and arrived in Kidderminster. Didn’t really explore Chester’s Cathedral or City Walls, or Oswestry‘s more interesting haunts. Did explore op shops and supermarkets. Bought a pair of waterproof boots for £7.99 in one of the op shops, as my other pair of shoes are letting the water through. Arrived in camp near Kidderminster, exhausted. All this setting up house, cooking meals over a gas stove, getting up in the morning, cooking meals over a gas stove, taking house down again, packing car so that everything gets fitted in, and driving somewhere, and then starting the whole process over has worn us out.

What is Mamble?

Mamble is the name of a fairly small place on the map, near Worcester. Our interest in it stems back a long way. I used to play for a singing farmer - he sometimes bought us large amounts of beef as a gift - and the song we remember him singing was:
I’ve never been to Mamble,
That lies above the Teme,
And I wonder who’s in Mamble
And whether people seem
Dum dum dee dumty dum dum
As lazy as the name,
And whether any song there
Sets alehouse wits aflame.
As you can see, there’s a line neither Celia or I can remember. I've just found the original on the Net, so you can read it as it was writ, and not as we remembered it.
Anyway, the name Mamble so struck us that we gave the name to a kitten we got not long after. Mamble was a family animal for at least a decade afterwards, until she vanished one day.

Chester

Overnight it poured, so by this morning the tent was soaked - only on the outside, thank goodness. But that was enough to make it something of a task trying to get it down and shaken off without covering the inside of the car with water. As it was, I donned my swim shorts to go to the loo: it was easier than getting my pyjamas wet.
Anyway, we left the campsite by the river Ouse where we’ve been for a couple of days and decided to head for Worcester, once again to try and get to see Crowle (and Mamble). Before we left York we stopped off at a café for some breakfast, as neither of us had managed to have more than some muesli, with all the dampness around. We were sitting there waiting for our order, sorting out the most recent lot of photos we’ve taken, when my son Ben rang! And then we realised we’d forgotten it was his birthday, although that wasn’t why he was ringing. Celia explained to the young lady who was witnessing that we were talking to one of our children in NZ, but she looked as though she had no idea where NZ was and if she did, hadn’t a clue how we could be talking to anyone anywhere else.
After breakfast we headed off for Manchester, as a first port of call, and though we thought we’d put the city centre in, found ourselves outside somewhere in a suburb called Heywood. There was an indoor market there, and so we went in and had some lunch: it wasn’t very busy inside, probably because it was still raining a good deal, and the young feller behind the counter was interested in our being from NZ, wanting to check whether it was as dry as Australia. We assured him it wasn’t. It’s constantly interesting how many people have relatives in either Australia or NZ, or who have a desire to go and visit one or both of the countries. There are still many links between the places, even though the European Union is such a dominant force now in this part of the world. I don’t think most English people really think they’re part of the EU, and they wonder at all the Europeans coming over to find work, especially the Poles.
There was a long slow patch on the motorway heading south, so on a whim we decided to head for Chester, as the road was clear. Chester is near the border of Wales, and at one point, while we’d taken a wrong turn in looking for a campsite, we found ourselves crossing the border - while I was typing an email, as it happened.
We’re camping in Chester - the rain has stopped for the most part, although it was extremely heavy in places on the way - and we’ll see whether we spend any time here tomorrow or not.

Bridlington and Scarborough

Today we got off to a bit of a late start: Celia wasn’t feeling 100%, so I drove into York to meet my nephew, who was up on business, and had offered to take some of our excess baggage home. Thought I wasn’t going to find the place we’d designated as a meeting point, but suddenly at the last minute it was there.
In the early afternoon we drove to Bridlington, a seaside town, because we’d been feeling landlocked and were missing the sea. The place was still fairly busy, although it’s well past the holiday season. On the spur of the moment we decided to move onto Scarborough, and that was more impressive altogether. A really pleasant looking town, probably about the same size as Dunedin, from what we could gauge while standing inside the old castle up at the top of the city. Like Dunedin it has great stretches of beach and sea extending away from it in both directions, plus plenty of fishing boats, and all the usual conglomerate of British seaside towns. But it has more style than many of those, and has obviously been a prosperous place in its time - maybe it still is.
There has been some sort of lookout on the site of the castle since long before the Romans came; they were merely one of many to make use of it. Now all that’s left is a long wall, and the ruins of the keep. The Chapel has long gone (it was almost on the cliff edge) and the only ‘modern’ building is the master gunner’s house (now the tea rooms).
The Roundheads destroyed a lot of the old castle - they seem, like Mao Tse Tung’s Red Army, to have had little inclination to do anything else but destroy. Their legacy of destruction is everywhere throughout the land.
The thing that remains is the sense of space, and the wonderful vista in every direction. I don’t know how high the castle area is, but certainly ít seems far above Scarborough’s town and above the ocean.

Beningbrough

Because we were staying in York yesterday we went to another National Trust place, a few miles out of the city. This was Beningbrough, a place built in the Georgian period. It now acts as home to a large number of portraits, in conjunction with the National Portrait Gallery. It’s a rather unusual place, as the portraits are what dominate it: there’s much less furniture and fittings than in many of the NT houses, although there are a couple of very grand beds with their original furnishings. We listened to a lot of info on the audio phone-thingees, which made it more interesting. It’s not a very appealing house, in a way: the grand hall that you first walk into, is three storeys high, and very white and cold. It doesn’t have much of a sense of ever having been lived in, although it passed from one family to another from the time it was built - but it was different families, rather than successive generations, and that may have made a difference.

York, Day Two

We spent a second night at the camp site near Acaster Malbis last night and a nasty cold night it was too. With rain.
(Before I forget I came across two more peculiar village names today, both within spitting distance of York and of each other: Askham Bryan, and Askham Richard. I kid you not!)
Fortunately the pub is only a few yards down the road, so we stayed there both last night and the night before until about 9.30. It was warmer than inside the tent.
Both of us had a dose of homesickness last night, and debated whether we should change our air tickets and fly home on the next available plane. Hang the expense, we said.
Came to our senses, but it took a bit of time.
This morning we were going to head south again, still trying to get to the elusive other village of Crowle (and Mamble) but two or three cellphone calls to places south didn’t encourage us much (one was actually closed, in spite of being listed as open all year around), and Celia’s tooth was playing up again, and she finally got an appointment for 4.30 this afternoon, so that kind of put the kibosh on going anywhere today.
Plus our nephew rang and said he was coming to York tomorrow, and would we like him to take anything excess back home with him? Would we! It’ll be nice to meet a familiar face: think that’s part of our homesickness. I keep saying to Celia that I want to meet somebody, anybody that I know from home. But we haven’t so far, which I’ve found disappointing. It’s not as though such a thing is an impossibility: last time I was in England, on the second day, I met someone I knew, in London. And when Celia was over here, twenty-plus years ago, with our daughter, there was a similar occurrence, one that was even more amazing. My daughter went out with some of her English relatives, to Milton Keynes, and they met my cousin from New Zealand…

York, day one

Spent most of today in York, which turns out to be a pleasant city, with no apparent excess of traffic. Celia had to visit the dentist first thing, and got an appointment for 11.40 am. She’s had a painful toothache on and off for about a week, and it was time to deal with it. Fortunately the dentist diagnosed it as a problem of the gum receding and exposing too much of the tooth. Some particular dental gel sorted it out, and the problem was resolved with a small fee - smaller than we expected.
It’s always complicated having to go to the doctor or dentist or whatever while on holiday - especially in another country. So we were relieved that this particular issue was dealt with relatively easily.
The inner city of York still has its old city wall mostly intact (or well restored) and you can walk for more than three kilometres along it. The pathway is quite narrow, and now has a metal fence alongside to stop you falling off, but it can’t have been much fun in the past if people started rushing along it in a crisis - knocking somebody from your own side off the wall would have been a common hazard, I’d suspect.
On our initial sortie into the city this morning, we found that the first street we entered inside the wall had no less than six op shops almost in a row, plus the SPCK bookshop (a Christian bookshop for those who don’t know the magic letters SPCK), and a National Trust shop. Too many riches!
We did a quick tour round York Minster and then had to go back to the car and find the dentist again. After that we came back into town, found Sainsbury’s supermarket by accident, bought some lunch, ate it in the carpark, and then went for our second trip inside the wall.
Now we had more time to explore. After dealing to the op shops, and the SPCK, and the National Trust (where we found that the toilets were very convenient), we went on and checked out The Treasurer’s House. This is a place near York Minster which was restored (rather oddly) by a former City Treasurer. He seldom lived there, apparently, but used it to house his collection of paintings and treasures. It didn’t strike either of us as very inspiring. Many of the paintings looked rather like copies by lesser hands than paintings by original masters, and the antiques and such weren’t up to much compared to the usual NT standards. Or maybe we’ve just had enough of those sorts of places for the moment.
Anyway, on to York Minster, that extraordinary cathedral in the centre of the city. It’s large - very large - and yet, when I walked around inside it didn’t somehow appeal. Maybe it’s overwhelming, and doesn’t inspire much reverence. Having to pay to get inside it, and having guides all over the place telling people at the top of their voices what this was and what that was, and having crowds everywhere, rather took away from the sense that this is really a church. It seems very much geared towards making money. Though admittedly the money is being put to good use in the sense that there’s been an enormous amount of restoration done. And things look very good inside. Maybe the grand scale doesn’t appeal so much to me. We went inside a much smaller church just down the road (York, like Norwich, has a church on every corner) and you felt that God probably did visit the place more than once in a blue moon.

Towards York

We had another look at Crowle this morning before we left the area, but couldn’t get into the Library because it didn’t open till 2 pm, and couldn’t get into the church because there was no local vicar any more. Did get into the Regen shop (a kind of charity shop, though I’m not clear what group it was supporting). Picked up another couple of pair of cufflinks to add to the dozen or more I’ve bought since I came here. One of these was of Big Ben (though it took the shopkeeper and me a while to work it out).
Thought we’d take a look at Scunthorpe, which is close by. It’s been highly redeveloped in the Centre, with new shops and pedestrian malls everywhere. We thought that was all there was, but some of the older buildings remain. Plenty of op shops, of course, but not a lot else that was exciting.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned a chain of shops over here called Poundland. We first came across one of these in Kentish Town, (in London) and they have a remarkable variety of goods, many of them top quality. How they manage to get to sell them at a pound a piece is something they know and I don’t, but they’re obviously very successful. They’re nothing like the $2 shops in NZ, which mostly seem to sell el cheapo stuff.
Anyway, after an all-you-can-eat lunch for £4.95 each in a Chinese restaurant, we moved on towards York. We haven’t quite got to York yet, because by the time we got here it was getting late enough, and we wanted to get our tent up somewhere. The place we went to first said it was booked out, although there was little evidence of it at that point; they helpfully sent us next door (there were at least three camping grounds in a row) and the man there led us on his bicycle to our pitch which is next to the river that flows through the strangely-named village (another dormitory one, I‘d guess) of Acaster Malbis - sounds like some sort of odd wine, doesn‘t it? Seems as though the Acaster part relates to the word, Castra, which means a Roman camp. Those Romans must have been everywhere...!
Before we’d got the tent up completely we were visited by a duck and her family of eight ducklings - nearly full grown. They even made their way into the tent checking out whether we had any food hanging around. Bloomin’ cheek.
Celia has had a toothache for the last few days, and we’re definitely going to have to find a dentist tomorrow: she won’t be able to carry on treating it with Panadol.

Other bits of the day

Forgot to mention that the day began a little inauspiciously. One of our sets of car keys had been left in the ignition over night, turned partly on. Which meant that the battery was flat this morning when we left the hotel. No one in the large breakfast room of guests had jumper leads on them, which seemed rather remarkable, and neither did some other people who came into the car park while we were standing there wondering what to do.
Finally I went over to the McDonald’s next door, and saw a young couple sitting finishing their breakfast. Asked them if by any remote chance they had jumper leads. Yes, says the girl, who obviously owned the car they were driving (this McDonald’s, like the hotel, is out of the way), but she had no idea how to use them. I told her that was no problem - we knew how to use them - and so as soon as they finished their drinks, they came round and Celia joined up the leads and we were off running. Phew! Seek and ye shall find, though sometimes the seeking takes a bit of doing.
While we were in Derby we went to the Denby Pottery Factory. Celia’s always had a great liking for Denbyware, and so we checked out the ‘home shop’ (where the prices were top of the line) and the Factory shop, where there were lots of seconds and ends of runs, and trial pieces. The prices were marginally cheaper, but not much. We bought two large breakfast bowls, and that was enough. Popped into the museum for a few minutes and discovered that the two lots of Denbyware we’ve had or still have, are on display as museum pieces. Oh, dear.
The thing about Denbyware is that while you may like the style of one part of a set, the other items don’t necessarily grab you. I liked some things in a range called Oyster, like the jugs and some of the bowls, but the plates left me cold. It was the same with most sets.

Owl or Crow?

Mike standing in the Market Square at Crowle, under a specially provided cover. Note that the toilets are to hand, as is a telephone box. Full marks for the people of Crowle.

We finally made it to Crowle today - or Kroll, as the locals pronounce it. Seemingly even the locals have a bit of difficulty deciding which way to go on the pronunciation side of things: we spoke to two or three people and got mixed responses.
Anyway, this isn’t the Crowle we originally aimed for a few days ago - that one was in ,. This one is up north, closer to Scunthorpe. We’re camped at the only Crowle site listed in our book, although in fact, the site is three or four miles away from the village of Crowle.
Crowle is not a small village, but I’d suspect it’s a dormitory suburb for some larger town - the aforementioned Scunthorpe, for instance - rather than a town that survives by itself. At first sight, it’s not that appealing: there are quite a lot of run-down buildings in the centre of the village, and there’s a kind of uninspiring look to the buildings that aren’t run down. None of the charm of some of the country villages we’ve come across, not helped by the colour of the bricks they use here.
It didn’t help either, perhaps, that it’s Sunday, and so most things were closed and most people weren‘t out and about. We’ll go in again tomorrow, and check it when there’s a bit more life on the streets.
The most lively thing were the hoons: motorbikes roaring through the main street (so narrow at one point it has to have lights so traffic going one way doesn’t bang into traffic going the other), or youths on three-wheeler motor bikes doing wheelies, or open-top cars trying to do full speed in a 30 mph area. Or the boys playing football in a car park with a huge sign: No Ball Games.
There’s a canal going past Crowle, and a large water area surrounded by caravans and permanent holiday homes. Again there wasn’t much life there, but it is well after the summer holidays, so no doubt in season, the place is humming.
We stopped off at Derby on our way here. It's quite a large place, at least the size of Dunedin, I'd think. The service at the Cathedral was just ending as we arrived outside the door, and so we went in, to see what the building looked like. And joined in the queue for a cup of coffee. One woman asked Celia whether she'd enjoyed the service, and Celia had to say, Yes, she had.
The Cathedral isn't one of the old 12th or 13th century places that abound in England. It's obviously been rebuilt at some point; the style is 18th century perhaps for the most part, although the front of the building appears to date from a lot earlier. Consequently it's a very light building inside, clean and with bright colouring. The congregation appeared to be a good mix of ages, and there was a good sense of fellowship going on.
We walked further into the town, and came across the Australian bar, but the young man putting signs out didn't seem quite to appreciate me asking him if you had to be an Australian to work there.

Hay fever

For the first time in over thirty-three years, we used a laundrette today. A more pleasant experience than it used to be, I must say. While we were doing this a window-cleaner was cleaning a shop window nearby. I went over and asked if it would be possible to borrow his squeegee for a moment to clean my car windscreen; it had got covered in some gritty stuff yesterday, and smeared when Celia used the wipers this morning.
‘I’ll come over and do it, mate,’ says the window-cleaner, and he did, far better than I would have done.
Later in the morning we went to the craft centre, just a couple of miles out of town, where we were going to the course in enamelling we booked some time ago. I’ve written about it in more detail on another blog.
And tomorrow we head off - somewhere else. We’ve yet to decide where.
For the last few days I’ve had some kind of hay fever, the first time I’ve had it for quite a few years. Nothing I’ve taken seems to be shifting it very well, and I spent much of this afternoon at the enamelling blowing my nose. Very annoying.

Not to Crowle yet

We set out this morning to go to Crowle. We are fated not to go to Crowle as yet.
Both of us woke up early - around six - and we finished up getting up not much later. It takes virtually three hours to get ourselves sorted out in the morning when we’re tenting. Three different locations in two tents in four days. Certainly the new tent allowed us to stand upright - a great joy for homo erectus - and after we’d had tea, we sat inside and read - or blogged, as in my case.
The site was quieter than the one the night before, but there was still an ongoing motor cavalcade hum going on in our left ears.
Anyway, we began heading towards Crowle, and found that the Sat Nav seemed to be taking us in a rather long way round route, which required us to go towards Birmingham, virtually, before we went south again. The day wasn’t that exciting in terms of the weather, and we read on one of the electronic road signs that there was some blockage with long queues on the road we were about to take, and I was feeling too tired to cope with dragging through snail-pace traffic - and I think Celia was too.
In the end, since we were heading towards Lichfield (where we were booked in for tonight and tomorrow in a hotel) anyway, we decided to have a day that didn’t consist of driving. Instead we went straight onto Lichfield, found a parking building, and wandered around the town.
The weather gradually improved, and we checked out the usual places: charity shops, secondhand bookshops, and so on, and visited the Samuel Johnson museum. Had a pub lunch, and headed on towards the Cathedral. (Which had its spire toppled by the Roundheads).
The Cathedral entrance is just extraordinary: dozens of statues of saints and kings, many of them lifesize, fitted into the face of the building. And there are dozens more inside. At first the place struck me as being overly militaristic in its trappings, with a lot of memorials dedicated to people who died in various wars, but it improved as we went on. And we discovered that Bishop Selwyn has his resting place there. He has a great deal to do with New Zealand, so that was a bonus. As was meeting a New Zealander at the door - he was welcoming people as they came in. Both Celia and I felt we knew him, once he started talking about himself a bit, but he didn’t seem to know us. I knew his mother, however: she’s the Anglican minister in Stewart Island.
(It’s been a strange thing that we haven’t met anyone we know from New Zealand since we’ve been here: usually NZeders are thick on the ground.)
The stained-glass window around the main altar is dazzling, full of wonderful colours. Much of it was rescued from a convent on the Continent, bought for £200 and sold to the cathedral for the same amount. The glass was then restored into its new location.
Finally we found our hotel where I’m blogging and Celia’s snoozing. She was tired.

Wimpole Hall

While travelling down to London on Tuesday, we went into Royston, and discovered that Wimpole Hall was just along the road. This is another of the seemingly endless National Trust places, and has a working farm attached. In fact, people have been farming on this spot since before the Domesday Book was written, which makes our individual lives seem rather insignificant. Wimpole also has a large walled garden, with a great variety of dahlias in particular, along with the usual vegetables, and scarecrows - one is a Humpty Dumpty not yet fallen off the wall. And it has very extensive walks.
We got to the House after we’d been to the farm and through the gardens, so we’d already done quite a bit of walking. The sight that greeted us on arriving at the house, however, was something the National Trust presumably hadn’t provided: hundreds of swallows flittering and scattering around the façade, in preparation for doing their major trip overseas. They were swooping and diving and clinging to the front of the building and in general making a wonderful spectacle.
The House itself is yet another example of the wonders of a past age, and how money was spent wisely on all manner of beautiful things. But perhaps what was most impressive to us in this House was the servants’ level. Down in the basement, of course, but not without windows looking onto the grounds. In fact, one of the bedrooms down there would have made a great room for any guest, with its lovely views across the grounds. There was a steward’s room, with a writing desk and table for the other male servants to press their clothes, and there was the housekeeper’s room, with a small piano which she no doubt could use to while away her (very) few idle hours.
While I don’t remember a lot about the other floors of the house - unfortunately after a while all these great houses tend to blur into one big amalgam - I do remember that there was one long room that had originally been three smaller ones. It had become a room for walking in on wet days, or for putting on concerts, or playing the piano in. Another large room had been, for a time, converted into three small rooms by one of the more impoverished ladies of the house. Doors in this room were covered over, the wonderful plaster ceiling was obscured and in general there had been a lack of concern for the look of the place. Yet another room now houses all the odd sketches and paintings and drawings: pictures of servants’ livery, of various carriages, dozens of extravagant cartoons by some forgotten political satirist, pictures of horses.
Rudyard Kipling’s daughter married into the family that owned the house, early in the 20th century, and she was the final owner. There are a number of books and papers by Kipling on display.

Yes, I know this is a long post

On Monday we spent the night in a tent at a camp site called Quiet Waters. On Tuesday we were in London, so slept in beds again, but last night we tented in a place that was anything but quiet. To say that having Niagara Falls nearby would have been peaceful by comparison would be an understatement. The camp site was fine, (though we were almost as far away from the toilet block as it was possible to be), but it was within the flight path of some local airport, and jets went over with great regularity. That would have been okay, but the M25 was just up the road as well, and there was a constant noise with no obvious cessation. It was there when we went to sleep, and there when we woke. We had to drive on it briefly this morning, and there were trucks by the thousand.
The name of the place we stayed at last night has gone from my mind at the moment, but it was in the very north of London - and rabbits seemed to be allowed to run wild. Though not in the camping area, thank goodness. The woman who ran the place gave us a brochure for the Camping and Caravanning Association (I think that’s the order it goes in) and after looking through it we thought it would be worth joining. It gave us a much wider range of camp sites, and as members we’d get in considerably cheaper. In fact, when we did sign up, the woman gave us back the five pounds we’d paid as non-members, and then gave us a discount on the price as well!
I forgot to mention that we had lunch yesterday with another old friend whom we hadn’t seen since I was last here: an Irish Catholic nun who was on the course at Stephenson Hall where Celia and I met. This sister now lives with three others in a large house in Mottingham which shouldn’t have been too long a trip from where we were staying on Tuesday night, but in fact it took twice as long as we’d planned, due to the usual London traffic. She has had gum cancer in the last year, and has had a terrible time with it, not to mention operations not working as well as they should. While we were there she got yet another call from the consultant, telling her when she could go back to another go at the problem, one that she hopes will bring the whole thing to an end.
Today has been a long haul from that London camping site to one in a place called Corley, which is just out of Coventry. We weren’t supposed to be anywhere near Coventry, but something went wrong with our calculations.
Our intention for today had been to visit a little town in Worcester called Crowle. Once we’d been there we would go onto a camp site near Worcester city itself. However, we first got sidetracked by discovering Waddesdon Manor in the village of Waddesdon. Waddesdon Manor? Doesn’t sound anything special. Well, that’s what we might have thought until we discovered it was actually built only around 150 years ago by one of the Rothschilds, who wanted it as a place to have dinner parties and such during the week. So he built it along the lines of a French Chateau, on an enormous scale, with huge gardens and parks, and then began collecting umpteen wondrous articles from around the world. It has paintings by every painter you could name, especially Gainsborough; it has wonderful porcelain by the mile; it has statues and bric-a-brac, and endless decoration. It’s quite overwhelming, and there’s no way I could do it justice. In fact, we’d have had to stay there all day to even take in half of it. As it was we were a little hurried, and Waddesdon didn’t get its due.
After this Celia wanted to see if we could pick up a slightly larger tent - the one we’ve borrowed requires us to wander around on our knees, and since that isn’t quite our normal mode of movement, it’s a little difficult. It’s been adequate and kept us dry and reasonably warm, but Celia being Celia wanted to ‘explore the possibility’ of larger accommodation. That was where the day went slightly out of kilter. We looked up on the Net to find a camping place that sold tents, and decided on somewhere near Stratford upon Avon. However it happened, I don’t know, but our Sat Nav took us off up past where we thought we ought to be going, and next thing we knew we saw a sign: Welcome to Coventry. We didn’t actually believe it until some time later when we checked it with someone in a shop!
Anyway, the first place we looked for proved extremely difficult to find, and several wrong starts and wrong turns made us a little fretful. Quite fretful, in fact. Eventually we found the place only to discover that caravans were their big thing and tents were not. In fact, the bloke in there was so offhand and casual about us as customers, and kept saying to his offsider (I don’t know anything about tents) that I said to the woman who finally did offer some help: is he always like this?
She redirected us to a much better and bigger place - a huge place, in fact - where they not only knew how to treat customers but had everything you could wish for. And now I’m typing this in a tent that is stand-uppable in. Which is good.
But the day wasn’t finished. Since it was late we decided to find somewhere near Coventry to stay in our new tent. The first on the list was so difficult to find that I spent a quarter of an hour in a pub with the publican and his two barmaids trying to figure out where the heck it was. We eventually found it and apart from being almost non-sign-posted, there was little sign of any amenities, any life, anyone else staying there - anything except a bunch of rough looking caravans that had seen better days. I refused to give it any more time in the day, and we headed for another one, that is vastly superior. Where it took us three-quarters of an hour to put up the new tent. We’ll improve, no doubt!

God is Good!

Yesterday we travelled down from Cambridgeshire to London. We made a long stop on the way at a National Trust house, which I’ll write about in another post.
Our trip into London was both what we expected and more than we expected. We haven’t really driven in the capital much, apart from our trip to Rochester, and this time we were actually having to go through areas that were very built-up and traffic-heavy. So it was stop-start, brake-accelerate, in and out of first and second gear (we could well do with an automatic) and in general rather stressful (though to give me a modicum of credit, I kept my cool - and I wasn’t even driving!)
The trip took far longer than our poor little Sat Nav had estimated at the beginning, because there were so many blockages and hold-ups (a normal London day, it seems). In the end, we were about five to ten minutes from our destination when Celia suddenly yelled that the brake had given up the ghost (well, she communicated that without words almost), grabbed the handbrake and we swerved to the side of the road. Fortunately we weren’t going fast, so it wasn’t a completely awful moment. We held fire for about ten minutes, while I suggested that perhaps with all the braking we’d been doing the brakes had overheated and given up temporarily. Celia gave things another go, tentatively, when we thought it might be safe, but they were still kaput.
Frazzlement.
We looked up the number of the AA on the Net: our little mobile connect friend was working wonderfully at full speed, as has done so everywhere in London. There was a number to ring for mobile phones, so we tried that. After some discussion as to who we were and why we should be ringing them, we were informed that there was no reciprocal agreement between the UK and NZ, as we’d been informed, and that just to get someone to come out would cost us £99! To join, according to the friendly lady, would cost even more. Meanwhile Celia was looking at the AA page on the Net where there was no indication that the price was anything like that. In the end we said we’d think about it.
By this time I was needing to go to the loo rather desperately (it’s one of the hazards of travelling) and because I’d seen a boy talking to the a man in the house we were parked outside, and because the bloke had seemed friendly enough, I thought I’d try and see if he’d let me use his toilet.
He was extremely friendly, and when I’d done my bit, he asked what the problem was with our car. I explained. He said, just give me a minute to get the kids in bed, and I’ll come and see if I can do anything. While we waited he must talked to his wife because she appeared and suggested we come in and have a cup of tea and that she was just ringing her Bank who covered her family for roadside mishaps to see if they would help us.
Amazingly that was fine: as long as she was with us when the RAC driver arrived, we’d be covered. Isn’t that extraordinary? We sat in the couple’s front room and talked about who they were and who we were (he’s a publisher of little children’s books - Little Tiger Press) and apart from the fact that we were still feeling rather frazzled by the incident, it couldn’t have been a more pleasant experience. (We’d called to the place we were going to, to tell them we might be running late - and they rang back suggesting a similar approach to the problem!)
But the two virtual strangers were like a couple of angels sent from heaven. Bless ‘em, as they say a lot over here.
Anyway the RAC man arrived, and of course the brakes were fine. No oil on the road, no obvious problems except that the brake fluid was hot. He recommended we get the car to a garage in the morning and have the fluid flushed and changed. And then followed us all the way to where we were staying for the night to make sure we got there safely. And we got there at the time we were supposed to!
This morning we went to the garage our overnight hosts recommended and they did the job within an hour! We thought we might be looking at a matter of days. Since then, we’ve driven twice through London traffic with the same stop-start issues, and the brakes have held.
Good old God.

On the road again

After a couple of days recovering from the Luxembourg leg of our trip, as it were, we’ve now begun the next stage: tenting our way around England for about three weeks. The idea of tenting rather than going to places where we have a proper roof over our head has been debated for a few weeks; Celia wants to save money and certainly this approach will help. But I’m not the world’s most enthusiastic tent person. Especially when it means we have to set up every night in a new place and take down every morning.
Well, tonight’s the first night, and we managed to get into a caravan/holiday home place by a river in a village called Huntingford Abbots. (Yes, I know.) The village is full of old thatched roof houses, and some more modern ones that fit into the scheme of things, and it’s very quiet. It’s near the town of Huntingdon.
We came here via Newmarket, a place that was a bit of a disappointment. Probably not Newmarket’s fault at all, but having read so many Dick Francis books in which it appears, and listening at the moment on a cassette in the car to yet another of Francis’ Syd Halley stories, perhaps my expectations were too high. I didn’t think there was much atmosphere in Newmarket, and I only saw one jockey the whole time we were there. Perhaps we should have gone there to see the races, as I’d suggested a while ago.
We were going to check in at a camping site nearer to Newmarket, but we noticed in the book as we were heading there that we couldn’t park our car beside our tent. Which would have been painful when it came to hoisting all the gear out of the car and into the tent, or when we were cooking and so on. As it is we seem to have taken over the place.
Anyway, tomorrow night we have to be in London (New Malden, to be precise, which is more like Kent than London proper) and we’ll be sleeping in a real bed there. So we’ll hardly have got used to tenting than we’ll be back to ‘normality.

Museum of History and Art

Friday was a big day, in terms of walking anyway. We were going to be meeting our host and hostess and their daughter for an evening meal and to catch up with a free jazz concert, but during the day we’d planned to go the Museum of History and Art, which we’d tried to get into on Monday, but it was closed.
This is an amazing building, quite apart from the exhibits. When you go in on the ground level, you think the building will just go upwards from there. In fact there are four lower levels going deep into the ground, and the new foundations are mixed with the old walls of much earlier buildings - and you can actually touch these wall, which date back to who knows when. (Someone will; I don’t.)
On level -2 or thereabouts is the recreation of an actual Roman mosaic floor - almost complete. And on the walls down there are the pieces that have been found of some murals from Roman times. Down in this area are items from thousands of years ago, long before Christ, little items that probably were of no great significance in their day but which take on great significance because of their age and the fact that they’ve survived.
As you work your way up the building you progressively come closer to your own times, although there’s a sudden lurch from the mediaeval period to the 19th century. And what’s there from the 19th century is mostly military material: guns, portraits of famous soldiers and battles.
And then another leap forward into the 20th century, which is where most of the art is. One painter, Joseph Kutter is very well-represented; he’s a Luxembourg painter who uses colours somewhat akin to Chagall but his subject matter and style is different. I liked his paintings, especially his portraits (including two or three autoportraits, as they’re known.
Of course there’s plenty of other art, but more in the area of sculpted works from the Romans and from churches - huge lumps of stone sometimes with carvings intact, sometimes not. Or metalwork and the like from all eras. It’s a great place, though its focus is a little diffuse…!

Joseph Kutter is considered one of Luxembourg's most important painters. He lived from 1894 to 1941 and was greatly influenced by the Impressionists.

Echternacht

On Thursday our hostess drove us to Echternacht, a smallish town north-east of Luxembourg city. It’s famous for a couple of things, particularly, the Catholic Abbey and its surrounding university, and the Roman remains. The latter is particularly special: for instance out near the local lake are the foundations of an old Roman villa, still intact (with some restoration as well) and showing the extent of the building as well as the pool in the front of the house. This is almost as long as the main building. I presume it was decorative rather than for swimming purposes (!)
The Romans populated this area pretty thoroughly in the past, and, as I’ll mention in the next post, their ‘leftovers’ are everywhere.
In the town of Echternacht itself we went and visited the Abbey which is primarily known for its association with Willebrod, [sometimes Willebrord] a British bloke who decided that the people of the area needed evangelising - some 1300 years ago. He was so popular that people have been making pilgrimages along the routes he took in his evangelising ever since. The church he built in Echternacht at first, was soon too small, and one of the wealthy Christians of the area donated funds to build a much bigger one. (Willebrod was dead by this time.) This second church was destroyed by fire around the year 1000, if I remember rightly, and so a third (and bigger) church was built. The French Revolution damaged this one to a great extent, and with the ensuing secularisation of the area, the shell of the church was used as a place for tradesmen to work in.
In due course, Christianity (particularly Catholicism) came into its own again, and in the 19th century the church was restored to such an extent that it was virtually a new church. Unfortunately, this church was thoroughly bombed in the Second World War, and so a fifth reincarnation of Willebrod’s church came into existence. This is virtually a new building, with absolutely superb modern stained glass (wonderfully colourful) but little else in the way of decoration. The old crypts are still there and Willebrod’s tomb is in one part of them. A sketch of his effigy on one of the tombs (the one we saw has a kind of stone boxing over the top) shows the effigy not in the usual state of repose, hands folded across the chest and eyes closed, looking as though the work is done. Nope, Willebrod is on his back, but is up on his elbows, eyes open, looking for all the world as though he’s had a rest and ready to go again.
Echternacht is full of cafes and gift shops - in the area we were in - but has lots of charm. We stayed and had lunch - onion soup with soggy croutons in it for mine hostess and me, and some sort of sausage dish for Celia. She’s been very keen to try out the sausages, but hasn’t quite made it generally. There’s such a choice of sausages, it’s hard to know where to start. And of course, they don’t exactly fit into the Weight Watchers’ scheme of things.

Luxembourg 2

More travelling around Luxembourg today. This time we walked down to the Place de la Constitution and caught one of the green buses that do a continual loop around the city - the hop on hop off fellers. Near the Philharmonie (a wonderful round building where concerts and such are presented) we got off and went into the Musée d’Arte Moderne Grand-Duc Jean. This has been built partly over old city walls and battlements - the originals are still there, but they’ve been built up again with modern stones and plaster. It’s a large glass and stone building, very light and airy, and with a very open feeling. And, after yesterday’s trials, it was great to find that not only did they have free lockers for our bags, but free toilets! (So we both went twice.)
The exhibitions are another story. At present there is a great deal on Science Fiction and Modern Life scattered around the place. Some of it is interesting, and some of it is very strange, and some of it is more philosophy than art. It was worth going to, but we might have felt more aesthetically satisfied if we’d made it to the Gallery that we keep missing out on seeing, which is in the older town.
The photo is of a house that was to have been the prototype of many similar places - until the 1973 oil crisis caused problems. The houses were to be made in plastic. Curiously enough, there’s a house constructed on exactly the same lines near Warrington, close to Dunedin. I think in fact that that house is bigger - and I don’t think it’s made of plastic.
After the Musée we got the bus again and went to the building which has a name that sounds like Ocean, but isn’t. It’s a large mall with an enormous supermarket on the first two floors (Celia was in her element in the supermarket: the choice!), and then up above are offices, in one of which our host actually works.
We had waited at the bus stop with a woman from Belgium. She’d been to Luxembourg a number of years ago and was astonished by the rapid rate of building along the area where the Musée and the Ocean are. The place has been taken over by Banks - Luxembourg has some 200, apparently - and not all of them are squeaky clean, according to what she was saying. There has been some scandal with Clearstream Banking and the French Government and others, for starters. But the EU also came in for some criticism: a man from one of the EU countries wanted to retire to Greece (I can’t remember at the moment where he came from). This should be perfectly acceptable under EU terms, but he’s been blocked from doing so. Not being the sort of person to take this lying down, he has made aggressive protest in the EU Justice System (which is in Luxembourg), talking in terms of dictatorship and other such pleasantries. He’s now been in Luxembourg for 250 days, fighting his case.
Luxembourgers are losing their own status in the face of thousands of workers who stream into the place daily from nearby countries, and through the many foreigners who live there permanently. I was asked by a German tourist how to get to the autobahn while I was waiting at the bus stop - of course I didn’t know, and neither did a young couple who came along, and neither did someone else. ‘Luxembourg is a city of strangers,’ I said to a woman standing by, and she agreed. No one really lives there, so no one knows anything about it.

Luxembourgish

Just to clarify a note I made a couple of posts ago. Luxembourgish is an old language, dating back a thousand years or more. I’d thought that it hadn’t ever been written down properly until the last few years, but that’s a mistake. There were plenty of books in the language in the 19th century alone. But its spelling has been revised, and only as recently as 1976 when a new spelling system was adopted. You can read some Luxembourgish in the street names (Nie Wee has to New Way, surely), but you don’t see it written much around the city. In the suburb we’re staying in, Senningerberg (which is spelt differently on a sign just along the road!) the street names are all Luxembourgish. There are several streets with Gaass as part of the name. I assume it’s something like the English word, Close, though these Gaass aren’t cul-de-sacs. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear in the only Luxembourgeois (see what I mean?) dictionary I could find on the Net.
And something else about the language here: the children are taught in German in primary school, and in French in secondary school. (Not all subjects, but several.) So they don’t just learn these languages; they’re immersed in them. I gather that German got its foothold during the War, when the Germans occupied all sorts of European states. And then French took over after that.
There's a curiosity just along the road: Charly's Gare. A Gare, as I mentioned in the last post, is a railway station (although the airport is also called a Gare!). Charly's Gare is a former railway station that's now a restaurant. But where did the possessive apostrophe come from? The French don't use apostrophes in that way: for them it's always the railway station of the Charly. (I don't think Charly was a person, by the way; more likely the place.) So how come this looks like an English possessive apostrophe?

Getting to grips with Luxembourg

Two of the Express trains meeting in the Pétrusse Gardens. The tail of the train we were on is at the right of the picture.

This afternoon Celia and I went into Luxembourg city again, and caught the Pétrusse Express for a trip round the gardens and through various streets and byways. It’s a kind of train, in that it has an engine and engine driver, and three or so carriages. The travellers sit in little sections each for three people - though we managed to get a section to ourselves for some reason. The train doesn’t go on rails, however, but drives about on the road, a little like those children’s trains you see at festivals and such; in fact, it seemed debatable that this train would manage to carry its fairly large number of passengers up and down the steep roads. It did.
We’d booked online, but when we took the printed out email to the booth, the woman looked at it in some bewilderment. Seems as though online bookings are fairly rare, and that her boss wasn’t being very helpful at the other end of the phone. Nevertheless we got the tickets, and caught the train. There’s an ongoing commentary in various languages presented on earphones (you plug into the ceiling) and though it’s a little odd, because it dramatises some of the history (and one bloke even breaks into song) it gave us some background to the places we were passing. Though it wasn’t as clear as the commentary on the bus that we got on next. This hop on hop off bus (how is it that English is used for some things here?) goes round the main city and outskirts, and you can get on and off at various points along the way using the same ticket. We didn’t get off but decided to go the whole way and get an overview. Tomorrow we’ll hop on again and hop off a bit more readily. (We can still use the same ticket within a 24-hour period.)
When we got off the bus at the Gare (Railway Station for those who’ve forgotten their French) we went to look for a loo. Luxembourg is still one of the places where they make you pay for going to the toilet. We’d kind of got used to Celia having to fork out 50c while I went for free in the older shopping area, but she baulked at 1Euro 10c at the Gare. (And I would have had to pay 60c which didn’t grab me either.) Foolish pair. If you find a toilet in Luxembourg, go. We spent the next half hour trying to find another; went into McDonald’s and they didn’t have one; in Quik, and they required you to get a token from the counter - and presumably buy something; and even into some smaller malls. No joy.
Finally came across one up near the bridge leading back to the old town. Occupé. Well, that’s what the light said, but whoever was occupeying it was taking forever, literally. Desperate straits. Finally, gritting our teeth, we walked towards the Cathedral and the old town. And just when I was planning (in my head) to sneak behind a bush or building, we came across a portaloo in the Cathedral grounds. Don’t ask me why it was there, but obviously God had decided enough was enough.

Luxembourg

A view of William III Square with the Cathedral in the background.

Today was our first full day in Luxembourg. It started somewhat late, as we were both very tired, and slept in - Celia more than me, in fact. And it was raining quite heavily. However, in spite of the rain we donned the raincoats we’d bought in the market at Norwich, and walked to the bus stop. Found the right bus just coming along, and twenty minutes or so later we were in the centre of Luxembourg.
Much of our day was spent in getting orientated and finding our way around the main streets. It’s the end of some sort of retail period when all the old stock is got rid of, so, even though it was raining (and raining heavily at some points) the retailers all had stalls outside their shops and were selling off stuff. I wish I’d had my camera with me, because the site of all the streets filled with umbrellas and stalls was quite delightful to the eye.
We found all sorts of interesting things: the old fish market which has several narrow lanes and odd street levels, and interconnections between buildings and lanes, and spiral staircases and about a dozen restaurants all crammed on top of each other. We found the Cathedral later in the day, a splendid building with wonderful modern stained glass fabulously coloured, and a display (I think) on the original altar of various gold monstrances and thurifers. The altar area just shimmered with colour. I’ve written elsewhere about the exhibition that was on.
The modern art museum was closed today, so we’ll have to catch up with it another time. It’s apparently well worth a look.
The day improved as we went on and was quite sunny by the time we were worn out. We still bought a couple of fold-up umbrellas for future use - they were going out at 50% off. We also found a supermarket hidden away inside another building - Celia was pleased. After all, what is a shopping area without a supermarket (or a DIY store)?
In the market we came across a stall where they were warning of the dangers of the Internet to children, and the need to be vigilant. But as a crowd eye catcher, there were two Sony model dogs on display, electronic machines that would sit, and beg, and take a ‘bone’ in their mouths, and walk, and wag their tails, and flick their ears - and in general be remarkable. But they only understood English!
In the next day or so we’ll go on one of the sightseeing trips and see what the rest of the place looks like.
Luxembourg is a curious place: the basic language spoken by children at home is Luxembourgish, which, according to Stephen (whom we’re staying with) has only begun to be written down in the last three years! The children then learn German very early on in their school careers, and then French a bit later. English comes fourth on the list. But when you go to a shop you can find the staff speaking both French and German (and English). Librairies (bookshops) have a mix of French and German books - and a very few English ones, but there are still many familiar faces and names on the covers. The street signage is in both German and French - but not necessarily both at the same time, or seemingly in any consistent approach. For all that Luxembourg is a very organised place: the environment is very important, and recycling is a big thing. Yet, there are very few shops where you can buy secondhand stuff. (Though Kim, our host’s wife, is going to take us to a large one at some point.)
We hadn’t realised that with the European Union in force, borders are no longer places where you have to present passports and be inspected. You sail through. The border between Germany and Luxembourg is halfway across a bridge, as far as the road is concerned, but the passport inspection offices are all derelict and closed. My host works for the European Union as a statistician, and he says that things are becoming more uniform throughout the Union (something that he, as a statistician, would appreciate I suspect!). Countries still retain their own identity, but things have more similarity than they used to have. They’re even similar to England: the parking ticket machine at the airport was an exact model of the ones we’ve been using in Norwich.

Gadding about

I don’t think I’ve travelled so much in a car since I was with the Opera Quartet in New Zealand back in the 60s. Because everything you want to go to is somewhere else, as it were, and by somewhere else I mean not within walkable distance or hop in the car distance, we seem to spend a lot of time driving. Trips that in NZ would have been considered major are here just part of the day. Driving to Norwich regularly is a good twenty-five-minute trip, or driving to Birmingham yesterday was like driving from Dunedin to Timaru, except that we had to drive on three lane highways regularly at speeds of up to 120 kph. You kind of get used to it, but it isn’t my idea of fun. Fortunately we’ve bought lots of audio books at various op shops and have been listening to them to pass the time on the long hauls. I’ve even driven to Norwich and back twice by myself. Now for someone who wasn’t keen on driving in England at all when we came, that’s pretty good going.
I spent much of yesterday (Saturday) at the PodCamp in Birmingham. I’ll be writing about it in due course on another blog or two, but suffice to say for the moment it was a stimulating and unusual experience. Celia went wandering in Birmingham itself, wore herself out, joined me at the PodCamp and listened in on a conversation between a dozen or more highly articulate podcasters, and then we drove home via Coventry Cathedral. (Which was terrific, but very focused on the sombre.) Then we had to sort out stuff for coming to Luxembourg, and this morning I was up just after six, because we had to leave fairly early to get to Stansted Airport for our flight. My brother-in-law drove us to the airport, we had to wait around for something like two and a half hours, often in queues, get onto a cramped plane, fly for an hour, meet up with Stephen C, whom I haven’t seen for around 35 years, and be driven by him from Frankfurt Hahn airport to his home in Luxembourg. And then of course it was catch-up time for Stephen and his wife, and Celia and me. Celia has retired exhausted to bed at an hour almost unheard of for her (8.30 English time, 9.30 Luxembourg time) and I’m sitting in a half-darkened room trying to get down some notes about what’s been happening.

Heading for Birmingham and the PodCamp

We drove to Birmingham today, after having spent most of the morning cleaning up the house we’ve been staying in for a month. Celia doesn’t do a cleaning-up job by halves, so the place is probably better off than it’s been in months! (Nah, my niece is a pretty thorough cleaner too…)
The trip to Birmingham was supposed to take two and a half hours, and would have done if we hadn’t got slowed down in a couple of place. All in all it was a pretty straightforward trip, even if our Sat Nav did seem to be taking us an awful long way south before she sent us west. But we had a couple of mishaps with reading what she said, and had one detour while on the M1, and then another couple when we got to Birmingham city itself. We didn’t either of us see much of the city because we were so focused on Malvina that we had little time to notice anything else.
Anyway, we’re ensconced in a hotel out in the suburb of Edgbaston, which seems to be on one edge of the city (there’s a Welcome to Birmingham sign just along the road). Edgbaston has seen better days, I think, and a major rebuilding program must be due to go on. More than a dozen grand old three-storey houses on the other side of the main road are due for demolition, and the hotel we’re in has seen better days by far. It’s a bit of a rabbit warren. After we’d parked the car round the side of the building, we went in the front and were then taken by the proprietor along two or three corridors and through the dining room (one table and four chairs, tv, fridge, two microwaves), through another corridor and found that our room was right beside where we’d parked the car.
Later on we went out and found a Chinese (sorry, Cantonese) restaurant, and ordered takeaways. While we were waiting we were asked to sit in an area lower than the main restaurant. It smelt dank and musty, and there was no carpet on the floor. Turned out that with all the rain this summer, the place has been flooded out, and they’ve had a real job drying it.
I’m in Birmingham to go to the Pod Camp - not sure what it’ll be like, and whether I’ll enjoy it at all (I’ve lost some of my initial enthusiasm for the idea), and I’ll probably be the oldest there. Time will tell. Celia is going to check Birmingham out on her own tomorrow, which will probably mean we’ll go home with a good deal more than we came with. As it was we loaded up the car when we left the place we’d been staying in for a month.