For the time being, I won't be doing any travel - at least not in the sense that I've been doing it over the last six months. We're settling back down to normal life (a bit of a task after being away so long) and getting back to enjoying life in the home town.
At first we were unsettled being here, but meeting familiar faces at every turn, and being greeted with enthusiasm by people who've known we've been away and are glad to see us back, is actually very pleasant. Plus we're both back at work, and that makes a difference too, as we have some purpose to our days again!
The house is a bit chaotic, as Celia got into renovation within days of our return - the tenant's toddler had pulled some wallpaper off the wall in one of the bedrooms upstairs, so Celia pulled the rest of it off. And off the bedroom next door. And will paint the lounge upstairs too.
She's been plastering the two bedrooms preparatory to painting them as well, so the place isn't quite in its tidiest state. And things aren't going to change in that respect for a while. My daughter's coming to live with us - with her four-year-old son - and that means more shifting around of furniture. I'm starting to get my muscles back again, the ones I've used constantly over the years in shifting furniture around our house, or in and out of our house and in and out of various children's flats and so on. Might get fit again after all!
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Friday, December 07, 2007
What we saw and didn't
I mentioned quite a while ago in this blog that while we were camping in a place in North London we saw a host of rabbits in the next field. Bunnies everywhere!
In fact, we saw quite a lot of wildlife while we were travelling around: a fox in a churchyard in Kentish Town (a London suburb); plenty of squirrels around the Norfolk lanes and even one in the backyard of my niece’s house in Braintree. He was running along the fence as if he owned the place, stopping when he felt like it, and taking stock of the situation.
We saw a deer one day – apparently they’re quite common in the forest areas on the sides of roads, and there are signs warning motorists to watch out for them in places. I’m told there are some deer in the woods at my great-nephew’s school in Taverham.
Pheasant were common hopping in and out of the hedgerows, and pigeons were everywhere on the country roads. They appeared to have no common sense. One of them flew up in front of us when we driving along one day, and instead of flying to the side, it kept going straight. It didn’t even go higher than the car – just straight. Fortunately at the last minute it swerved, but I thought we were going to make impact at some point.
At my other niece’s house, there were frogs in the garden, and even on the roadside near where she lives. And in the place we stayed in near Bury St Edmunds, there was an infestation of moles – though we never actually saw them, only what they left behind: large mounds in the grass.
Domestic animals were a different matter. We hardly ever saw a cat, though there were plenty of dogs around. Dogs everywhere: held in their owner’s arms, tangling up their owner’s feet; on the buses, on the tube; in the museums, and other public places.
And the only place we ever saw sparrows were in some of the cities. I never saw one in the gardens of the houses I stayed in. Isn’t that strange? I really missed the little critters.
This photo was taken by Tony Northrup; you can see a large version of it on his site, as well as other nature photography.
In fact, we saw quite a lot of wildlife while we were travelling around: a fox in a churchyard in Kentish Town (a London suburb); plenty of squirrels around the Norfolk lanes and even one in the backyard of my niece’s house in Braintree. He was running along the fence as if he owned the place, stopping when he felt like it, and taking stock of the situation.
We saw a deer one day – apparently they’re quite common in the forest areas on the sides of roads, and there are signs warning motorists to watch out for them in places. I’m told there are some deer in the woods at my great-nephew’s school in Taverham.
Pheasant were common hopping in and out of the hedgerows, and pigeons were everywhere on the country roads. They appeared to have no common sense. One of them flew up in front of us when we driving along one day, and instead of flying to the side, it kept going straight. It didn’t even go higher than the car – just straight. Fortunately at the last minute it swerved, but I thought we were going to make impact at some point.
At my other niece’s house, there were frogs in the garden, and even on the roadside near where she lives. And in the place we stayed in near Bury St Edmunds, there was an infestation of moles – though we never actually saw them, only what they left behind: large mounds in the grass.
Domestic animals were a different matter. We hardly ever saw a cat, though there were plenty of dogs around. Dogs everywhere: held in their owner’s arms, tangling up their owner’s feet; on the buses, on the tube; in the museums, and other public places.
And the only place we ever saw sparrows were in some of the cities. I never saw one in the gardens of the houses I stayed in. Isn’t that strange? I really missed the little critters.
This photo was taken by Tony Northrup; you can see a large version of it on his site, as well as other nature photography.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Back in our own bed
My rough calculations as to how many beds we slept in while we were away from home comes to just under thirty, some of which we slept in more than once.
Some were drastic, most were okay. Probably the best one was at my sister-in-law's place in Northampton. They'd bought a new bed before we came (I think for us, in fact), and it was very good to sleep in.
Perhaps the worst was in a room above a cafe we stayed at in West London. The middle leg was broken, and had to be propped back in place. Consequently sleeping on it was a bit of a ‘take care’ situation, in case it suddenly collapsed.
On the Continent we found that in Germany and Switzerland, they don’t have pillows the same shape as those at home. They’re large and almost square, and virtually flat, and it’s hard to know how they’re supposed to function. We never quite found out.
Some Continental hotels put two single beds together as though they were a double. You discovered the gap fairly quickly. Others were double beds, but they had separate covers on them. This worked quite well, except when Celia threw her cover over on mine. Still, it’s something she does at home anyway, so what’s the difference?
Many places don’t use a top sheet any more, including many of the places we stayed at in England. And they use duvets almost everywhere. I found the problem with these was they were often too heavy for the summertime, and I’ve lost count of the number of nights I woke up sweating.
The great thing about it all, I suppose, is that we became more flexible about just getting on and sleeping, whether it was in our tent with airbeds, or in a king size double bed in Valencia. Many places don’t have curtains heavy enough to keep out the light – many places, especially in Spain, don’t have curtains at all. So sleeping under these conditions is a test of how tired you are and whether you’re going to make a fuss about it.
Anyway, we’re home, and we’re back in the bed we belong in – and it’s great.
Some were drastic, most were okay. Probably the best one was at my sister-in-law's place in Northampton. They'd bought a new bed before we came (I think for us, in fact), and it was very good to sleep in.
Perhaps the worst was in a room above a cafe we stayed at in West London. The middle leg was broken, and had to be propped back in place. Consequently sleeping on it was a bit of a ‘take care’ situation, in case it suddenly collapsed.
On the Continent we found that in Germany and Switzerland, they don’t have pillows the same shape as those at home. They’re large and almost square, and virtually flat, and it’s hard to know how they’re supposed to function. We never quite found out.
Some Continental hotels put two single beds together as though they were a double. You discovered the gap fairly quickly. Others were double beds, but they had separate covers on them. This worked quite well, except when Celia threw her cover over on mine. Still, it’s something she does at home anyway, so what’s the difference?
Many places don’t use a top sheet any more, including many of the places we stayed at in England. And they use duvets almost everywhere. I found the problem with these was they were often too heavy for the summertime, and I’ve lost count of the number of nights I woke up sweating.
The great thing about it all, I suppose, is that we became more flexible about just getting on and sleeping, whether it was in our tent with airbeds, or in a king size double bed in Valencia. Many places don’t have curtains heavy enough to keep out the light – many places, especially in Spain, don’t have curtains at all. So sleeping under these conditions is a test of how tired you are and whether you’re going to make a fuss about it.
Anyway, we’re home, and we’re back in the bed we belong in – and it’s great.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Korea, and the return home
On our second day in Korea we left our bags at the hotel reception and went on a bus tour with Seoul City Tours. We’d asked the man at reception if there were ‘hop on hop off’ tours in the city, and he was most intrigued by the phrase, repeating it several times to get it into his head. The SCT was the best bet, though they weren’t quite as hop on hop off as the European tours we’d done. You had to state where you were going to get off, and couldn’t just keep going round the tour when you passed your initial stop. That was okay, we didn’t have time to do too much anyway.
Seoul is an enormous city, full of contrasts in terms of the buildings. There are skyscrapers, modern apartment buildings, little old one-storey shops and multi-storey department stores, ancient buildings (such as the palaces and the original city gate) and winding alleyways full of tiny shops. The streets are so narrow in some places only a motor scooter can safely drive down them, and so wide in other places that there are four lanes on either side of the road. The motorways are extensive and there are several long bridges over the (very wide) river. It takes an hour and a half to get from any of the major hotels in the city to the airport, and for much of that distance there are buildings or industry. We passed a quarry at one point which went on
for at least a couple of miles alongside the road. The city has churches everywhere, both ‘foreign’ style designs, and more modern buildings. Yonggi Cho’s church is a great modern building (it doesn’t look like a church on the outside) that rises several storeys high.
And there are gardens everywhere, from tiny ones to huge botanical parks.
Our flight from Korea was longer than the one from Heathrow by a couple of hours, so by the time we got to Auckland we were very glad to get off the plane. I actually slept an hour or so at one point, which was a major achievement, and kept the material shades on over my eyes at another point, just to get some rest from the light.
This time we didn’t have the little tv screens on the back of the seats in front of us, and had to watch whatever was showing on the main screen. One film - which I watched part of without the sound - was Gracie, a rather second-rate piece about a girl who wants to become a soccer player, and the other was the Simpsons Movie, which turned out to be a lot of fun, full of clever lines and crazy ideas.
I managed to read another Ian Rankin book between the time we began the flight and the time we reached Dunedin, but neither of us enjoyed the flight much: Celia wasn’t feeling great, having got a solid dose of the cold I had a couple of weeks ago, and I still had leftovers of the cold itself. Besides that we were both just tired, and couldn’t get enough sleep to catch up.
And then there was the stress that Security on planes causes these days. Both of our main
suitcases were large and fully-packed. Apart from lugging them about they turned out to be the least of our problems. In Heathrow, we’d been told in no uncertain terms that we couldn’t carry more than one bag into the plane itself. This meant that we had to try and shove stuff from Celia’s handbag into the backpack she was carrying and the computer bag I had. Both were already full of bits, so it was a major task. Yet Korean Air didn’t have any such restrictions at all, and when we got past security we just reverted to what we’d started with. In fact, they’d taken the third overnight case with the other two big ones without a qualm or any extra cost.
Likewise when we left Korea there was little difficulty; even in their security area, they didn’t worry about us carrying both our handbag and manbag as well as the other two large items - and a stone plate Celia had decided she had to have at the last minute. (We’d been for lunch in a restaurant where they presented the food on utterly hot stone plates, and also cooked meat and vegetables on a little stove on the table.)
However, when we came to leave Auckland, they charged us for extra kilos on the large cases, and told us if we’d come via America it wouldn’t have cost us anything. Weird.
It all adds to the stress of travelling.
Seoul is an enormous city, full of contrasts in terms of the buildings. There are skyscrapers, modern apartment buildings, little old one-storey shops and multi-storey department stores, ancient buildings (such as the palaces and the original city gate) and winding alleyways full of tiny shops. The streets are so narrow in some places only a motor scooter can safely drive down them, and so wide in other places that there are four lanes on either side of the road. The motorways are extensive and there are several long bridges over the (very wide) river. It takes an hour and a half to get from any of the major hotels in the city to the airport, and for much of that distance there are buildings or industry. We passed a quarry at one point which went on
for at least a couple of miles alongside the road. The city has churches everywhere, both ‘foreign’ style designs, and more modern buildings. Yonggi Cho’s church is a great modern building (it doesn’t look like a church on the outside) that rises several storeys high.And there are gardens everywhere, from tiny ones to huge botanical parks.
Our flight from Korea was longer than the one from Heathrow by a couple of hours, so by the time we got to Auckland we were very glad to get off the plane. I actually slept an hour or so at one point, which was a major achievement, and kept the material shades on over my eyes at another point, just to get some rest from the light.
This time we didn’t have the little tv screens on the back of the seats in front of us, and had to watch whatever was showing on the main screen. One film - which I watched part of without the sound - was Gracie, a rather second-rate piece about a girl who wants to become a soccer player, and the other was the Simpsons Movie, which turned out to be a lot of fun, full of clever lines and crazy ideas.
I managed to read another Ian Rankin book between the time we began the flight and the time we reached Dunedin, but neither of us enjoyed the flight much: Celia wasn’t feeling great, having got a solid dose of the cold I had a couple of weeks ago, and I still had leftovers of the cold itself. Besides that we were both just tired, and couldn’t get enough sleep to catch up.
And then there was the stress that Security on planes causes these days. Both of our main
suitcases were large and fully-packed. Apart from lugging them about they turned out to be the least of our problems. In Heathrow, we’d been told in no uncertain terms that we couldn’t carry more than one bag into the plane itself. This meant that we had to try and shove stuff from Celia’s handbag into the backpack she was carrying and the computer bag I had. Both were already full of bits, so it was a major task. Yet Korean Air didn’t have any such restrictions at all, and when we got past security we just reverted to what we’d started with. In fact, they’d taken the third overnight case with the other two big ones without a qualm or any extra cost.Likewise when we left Korea there was little difficulty; even in their security area, they didn’t worry about us carrying both our handbag and manbag as well as the other two large items - and a stone plate Celia had decided she had to have at the last minute. (We’d been for lunch in a restaurant where they presented the food on utterly hot stone plates, and also cooked meat and vegetables on a little stove on the table.)
However, when we came to leave Auckland, they charged us for extra kilos on the large cases, and told us if we’d come via America it wouldn’t have cost us anything. Weird.
It all adds to the stress of travelling.
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