The NZ tourist's wife paddles

Celia sampling the not too cold water of the Mediterranean, in a Valencia beach.

A little frustration

We decided to go to Alacante today and use up at least some of the remaining money on our Eurail Pass. This meant getting up at 5.45 in order to catch a train at 7 am. (This was Celia’s idea, not mine.) We managed this task, although for some reason (I think I’d eaten too many grapes in one go) I had to get up during the night at least three times, and I had the most incredible dreams which didn’t make me feel as though I’d slept well at all. In fact I actually went to sleep on the train for a half an hour, something I rarely do.
We arrived in Alacante without any hitch and without having to pay any additional supplement on our Pass. The sun wasn’t shining much when we got there and I anticipated a chilly day, but it got hotter and hotter and finally we were shedding stuff in order to survive.
We discovered that there’s a tram system in Alacante and thought we’d take it to one of the beach stops, Costa Blanca. But finding the tram was a major issue. We found the place the main stop was named after - the Mercato, a two-storeyed market with dozens of fish and meat stalls - but couldn’t find the tram. Celia saw a sign for the tourist information - and then we couldn’t find that. But we did come across a small museum dedicated to the artists who are involved in the St John’s Festival time. (Hogueras St Juan is the Spanish name.) Seemingly they elect a Princess (and possibly a Prince sometimes) and they make all these extraordinarily imaginative installations (Celia’s word, and apt) which in some cases stand several metres high - and seemingly at some point they burn them! Now I may have got something wrong here, so don’t quote me on this yet.
Anyway, in the museum were posters, photographs and even better, working models of the installations, mostly done in plaster. At least that’s what I gathered they were: things rescued from oblivion by some interested parties. They were a delight: fantastic and detailed and very creative, done by men who were superb artists and sculptors, men who had great senses of humour and weren’t afraid to be robust in their humour!
After this we found the Information place, and had to walk back up the street (and a short hill) to get to the Tram. Still no sign of it and then we realised it was underground - again. Certainly it is a tram, but it begins its run underground and only gets to look like a tram after about five minutes.
We got to the beach and had lunch and sat and read and probably got burnt a bit, and were greeted with a Buenos Dias by two elderly Spanish ladies, but ignored by the Brits. And finally we decided it was time to come home.
We were going to catch the 15.25 but when I checked I was told it was full. So I booked on the next one at 16.16 and even got a refund on the booking charge we’d had to pay last weekend for our tickets to Madrid. But then the fun started.
You might remember that we had to get a bus from Barcelona Sants to Tarragona last week before we could get on the train. This is still happening, and today it caused a great long delay. The train from Barcelona arrived about 16.35, and because they then had to clean the thing before anyone could board it, no one was allowed on board till well after 17.00. I don’t suppose we were the only frustrated people, but the Spaniards in general kept it hidden from view.
The train shuffled off at 17.25 and meandered its way to Valencia. Instead of taking only about an hour and a half, it took nearly two hours, the same as it had in the morning, when we’d been on a slower train.
Got into Valencia and intended to catch a 5B which goes down our street. 5Bs were few and far between apparently. In the end, (frustrated) we got on an 8, which we’d taken this morning, only to find that the board that allows disabled people to get on the bus wouldn’t retract after a person in a wheelchair was put on. Several people got off, intending to get the next number 8 (they were much more frequent), and then a 5B turned up! We raced for it - even Celia with her sore foot - only to find that the driver refused to accept our tickets. ‘But the ramp was stuck!’ cried Celia, frustrated. The driver hadn’t a clue what she was saying but there was no doubt that he wasn’t going to let us on his bus with another driver’s tickets.
I got off in a little dudgeon. (It wasn’t ‘high’ just moderate.) And we boarded the number 8 again, which had now got itself sorted out (a mechanic had appeared from somewhere). Amazingly they offloaded the person in the wheelchair and left him sitting on the pavement! The ways of the Spanish are beyond the ken of English-speaking people.
Finally got to the famous Towers of Serranos once more and crawled back to the apartment. Which we have to vacate tomorrow morning, so as to move to our next apartment five minutes away.
And then home on Friday. Well, home to Norfolk.

Of course, I found out all about the Bonfires Festival on the Net after I'd written the stuff above. Check it out here.

Bury St Edmunds

Spent most of today in Bury St Edmunds – once we’d woken up (at around 9.30 – very late even for us). Did the touristy thing, checking out the Abbey, and taking lots of photographs. The place is a constant reminder of its Christian heritage, with most of the streets in the centre having saints’ names or names associated with the church. There are other names, too, such as the usual market names, but the place is rife with Christian associations.
I didn’t know a thing about St Edmund until today. He was a king of East Anglia in the 9th century, and was slaughtered by the invading Danes (who camped at Thetford, incidentally). Whether he died on the battlefield or whether he was martyred by refusing to take up a sword against the invaders is not known for sure. The typical picture of Edmund is of him punctured with arrows, rather like Sebastian – there’s just such a picture in the Lady Chapel in the Abbey, with the angels pulling the ‘soul’ of Edmund out of his body and bringing him before God.
Bury is relatively hilly: not so much as my home town, but with enough hills to keep you fit. It has several op shops (charity shops), so we had plenty to keep us occupied. I found a pair of cufflinks in one of these shops and offered them £10 (they were marked at £11.99). They ‘weren’t allowed to change the prices,’ so I didn’t buy them. But in another op shop they were selling everything for a pound or less, and I got a more interesting and outlandish pair of cufflinks and a matching tiepin for a pound. Every town we’ve gone to has several op shops, often within spitting distance of each other. Literally, if you’re a good spitter.

The photo is of the Abbeygate, which stands alone at the moment, leading into the Abbey gardens, which are open to the public. I met an Black American woman in there yesterday with an albino ferret on a lead.

Blickling Hall

Today we finally did a bit of real sightseeing stuff and went to Blickling Hall. No, not Blinking, but Blickling, which is a marvellous old house/mansion/stately home near Aylsham (pronounced Aylsham!).

It’s a Jacobean house, which means it’s nearly four hundred years old – it was built between 1616 and 1627 – but it’s in great condition, and much of the original interior is as it was when it was built. There have been numerous alterations as well – like my wife, the owners of this house have never been content to keep it as it was – and the main staircase in the front hall is different to the way it began, and now goes in a different direction; various bathrooms have been substantially altered and rooms that were something before are now something else. Sounds so much like our place!

The house is full of paintings – most of them portraits, including one of Henry VIII by Holbein. There are a couple of Van Dyks, and no doubt there are other famous ones that I missed noting because I was overawed by the place.

The library is a massive long room with a plaster ceiling, which has a basic pattern to it, but between the pattern are a considerable number of separate sculptured sections of people and insignias and so forth. Below this is a painted frieze that goes all the way round the hall; it must be very early as the colours have faded a good deal and the detail isn’t as clear as it would have been. Below this again are some 12,000 books, scholarly works that a cousin of the then owner collected.

The plaster ceilings throughout the house are extraordinary, filled with detail, as are the fireplaces, some of which stretch from floor to ceiling. They’re enormous works of art, two or three metres wide, and three or four metres high.

The house we saw today is the second to built on the site: the original house was substantially pulled down and rebuilt for the Hobarts in the early 1600s. It had a proper moat – there’s no water in the current ‘moat’ – and it was also famous as being the family home of the Boleyns. Anne Boleyn, as you might recall, became the second wife of Henry VIII (who can’t keep out of the picture, apparently). Her ghost is still supposed to haunt the place, as is that of her father. He runs about the place once a year, and Anne appears on the anniversary of her execution. Which apparently wasn’t today.

I said to Celia on the way into the building: this is like the setting for some film, and it turns out the The Wicked Lady, with Margaret Lockwood and James Mason, was filmed there in 1945.

Blickling Hall – and 4,500 acres of estate - was left to the National Trust in 1940. It was used as an Officers’ Mess during the War, and finally opened to the public in 1962.

For more detail on its history, click here.

Photo by Nick Meers, copyright National Trust