weeks late

So, now that I’ve got a representative portion of my photos onto Flickr, and now that it’s several weeks irrelevant, I can update you all on the final days of our time in Scot-Land (to quote a movie I’m working on.)

Sunday: Leisurely breakfast at a window seat with harbour view, not a standard fry-up this time, but a kipper fried in butter with toast for me (very salty indeed!) and smoked halibut on a muffin with a poached egg and cream sauce for Linda.
Next stop, the hunt for fresh lodgings, so we headed to the tourist information centre, where once again they, despite being run off their collective feet by swarms of similarly disorganized tourists, showed us the Scottish hospitality that we’ve seen so much of, and found us a B&B south of Uig at a place called Cnoc Preasach. Don’t ask me to pronounce it (though we did learn that Gaelic is pronounced “gallic” in these parts.)
That sorted, it was off to Talisker, the distillery of which is beside a tiny village called Carbost (not to be confused with Skeabost, Orbost, or the other Carbost, for the second whiskey tour (and the purchase of otherwise impossible to get fine beverages,) and the discovery of Isle of Skye Oysters – just up the hill from the distillery, we found a man selling his local rock oysters, farmed right there in Loch Harport, and sold out of his shed, shucked by the man himself, for 50p an oyster. If we’d had the oysters in Applecross, he told us, they’re his work. Best of luck to him (shame we didn’t have the oysters in Applecross.) Delicious!
We followed that up with a visit to Mrs Nicolson, our hostess and breakfast provider, to drop off luggage and do some much overdue washing (well, she did the washing for us.) Then a drive around looking for places which exist on maps but are only marked in the real world by, I don’t know, a tuft of grass identifiable only to locals. Saw lots of signposts indicating things that appeared not to exists on maps. Our search for the ancient MacKinnon crofting grounds was thwarted.
Dinner proved difficult, as the only two places to eat in Uig were packed, and looked like places where backwoods greasy spoons from the mid-seventies went to die, along with the families that were in them at the time of their reported demise. Too scary to eat in by a long shot, so drove back to Portree, and roamed the streets with packs of similarly hungry tourists in search of the facilities we associate with civilization, all of us only now remembering the Skye is small and remote. Strangely, there are quite a few places to eat and drink in Portree on a Sunday night, but they all seem to be massively in too much demand, or to have priced themselves out of the market and are therefore empty. And then it rains some more, and there are packs of hungry, bedraggled, desperate-looking tourists roaming the streets. We stopped at a terrible-looking place called Well Plaid, which was neither full nor expensive, but so ugly that even the desperate punters weren’t coming in. We had local mussels, dependably good; Cullen skink, which is much better than it sounds – it’s a thick smoked haddock and potato soup – and langoustines on a bed of undistinguished wild rice. Once again, we were impressed by the quality of the food in an establishment which looked like it should have offered up the creme de la blurgh. And then back to Mrs Nicolson’s house for a good night’s sleep.
The next morning we had the choice of looking at Skye’s hills and not climbing them some more, or moving on and seeing a little of the Great Glen. What’s another 200km driving, we’re Antipodean? We’ll check out the great long line of lochs south of Nessie territory. Sounds like fun. And so it was, once we got off the main road (I hate those things!) The scenic trail around the Lochs is precisely that, and deserves to be driven touristically slowly. We had been heading for Glen Coe, famously scenic, surrounded by peaks that Himalayan climbers train on, and were almost foiled by a complete lack of B&Bs with vacancy signs posted, until we found a large pub/hotel whose name I could not spell, nor pronounce (nor remember, though I could look it up, but I’m strangely disinclined.) Room at the inn, for two nights, even, though not in the same room. We’ve not spent two consecutive nights in the same room the whole time in Scotland. Our own fault, but we’ve gotten to see quite a lot of the place!
The guy at the desk warns us off every slope in the neighbourhood, clearly discerning at a glance our unintrepid natures, and recommends a sightseeing walk around a small local lochan
gradients maxed out at about 1:30, safe for grandmothers with hip replacements overdue, and he seemed disappointed when we reported back that we’d walked every trail in the area in an hour, with rest stops, and photography stops, and sound recording stops included. He then gave us some vaguely accurate directions to a slightly more interesting walk, but it would have involved being rained copiously on, so we bailed. Especially once we determined that we had almost no idea what he was talking about once we’d scoped the landscape he’d allegedly described.
Never mind, the whiskey menu at the hotel was truly exceptional , and the food wasn’t half bad (though the haggis was so heavily spiced as to be more of a meaty cinnamon roll…)
Then we drove back to Edinburgh, to rid ourselves of the rental. On the way we stopped for lunch at Crieff. Good food, but watching the pedestrian traffic was a painful exercise, given that nearly all of it was on the way to starting friction fires with pure thigh on thigh action, and waddling to keep the friction up.
The return to Edinburgh was complicated by the cloud cover. I completely lost my sense of direction, and we got the car back with minutes to spare, with the help of a friendly service station attendant (thank you, who ever you are!) with accurate comprehensible directions.
Nice hotel, central-ish Edinburgh, cheap on Wotif, (or similar), then the next morning we met the wonderful bootpainter. Look at her photos. A truly wonderful sense of colour and form. And humour. Met Mr bootpainter, too, and then had to run and catch a train back to London. Here endeth the story…
The pictures tell much of the rest.

Tour o’ Scotland part the second

Friday: over the highlands after a black pudding fry-up breakfast, past Inverell to the west coast, over vast tracts of rainy mountains devoid of humanity bar the road and the odd abandoned decrepit crofter’s cottage, lunch in Poolewe (mussels and scampi – and chips) and a B&B in Mellon Charles, Aultbea. Dinner was prawn cocktail and fish pie with new spuds, at the Aultbea Hotel. Again, much better than we could have expected from anywhere similar we’ve been to in England. Watched the sun go down as we ate, the long summer evening drawing out to 21.30-ish, and almost an hour later still not dark. Fog on our breath as we headed for the car, though. Summer.
We were pleased to make the acquaintance of Sidney (the seagull,) who had a bad leg and was helped by the owners of the B&B when they first arrived – 14 years later he’s still in regular attendance at the kitchen window (he likes cat-food, they say,) having brought generations of his offspring by, and his leg is long since well-recovered. Since the dog died, he’s now the family pet, albeit a wild and standoffish one (sadly didn’t get a photo.)

Saturday: Another Scottish fry-up, all the usuals, again with black pudding, alongside two slightly hung-over Scots lads from Inverell who were in town for the local annual raft race (they came 4/6.) The very loud and jolly landlady, Pauline, served tea and teased them while they winced, while her husband Phil did a fine job in the kitchen (they make their own bread, their own jam, their own marmalade – which was nice.
Off, then, to the Inverewe Gardens which were impressive, if rhododendron heavy. After two hours of plant-gazing we set off via the scenic route to Skye, around the rugged and sheep-filled coastline past Sheldaig, through Applecross where we had another surprisingly good Scottish pub lunch. Halibut with a local prawn (which looked like scampi to me) sauce, and local wild salmon, new potatoes and asparagus. Then over the Bealach Na Ba mountain pass (impassable in winter), which we’re told is the highest road in the UK, and spectacular and hair-raising, especially with its one-lane road. The one lane road thing (very common in these parts) works well – every so often there’s a ‘passing place,’ a little bulge on the side of the road, and almost all the drivers are very aware and careful and courteous in the face of the difficulty that the system imposes, especially with the number of tourists and campervans and left-hand drive vehicles.
So, some time later, we found the bridge at the Kyle of Lochalsh and drove over the sea to Skye. Not quite in the manner of Bonnie Prince Charlie (we weren’t disguised in drag as servant girls, for a start.) Found a wi-fi hotspot, checked the email to confirm our accommodation, only to find the offer of same, happily confirmed from our end, had been retracted. So, we drove to north to Portree and saw a sign to the Cuillin Hills Hotel which seemed like a good, though potentially expensive, option for a place to sleep, and it was (good, that is. More expensive than we would have liked, but arriving so late in the day we got a good deal on the room.) No view from the room to speak of, but a lovely view over Loch Portree was to be had from the front of the hotel, on the lawn, restorative dram in hand (21 year-old Ben Riach.) Then Linda met the midgies, which we’d been warned of that morning, and we had to move indoors. And so to dinner, where we had oatmeal-crusted herring, and lobster with pea risotto. Very fine, and everyone was lovely and helpful and accommodating (especially the receptionist, who had given us a surprisingly good price, and warned us to take the word of travel agents as we would politicians’.)

Tour o’ Scotland part the first

Tuesday, up at the proverbial crack of dawn for the 7AM train out of KX. Next stop, bonnie Edinburgh!

Nightmare finding the bus to the (very substandard) B&B, it turns out that Princes St (and most of the rest of Edinburgh) is being dug up for a tramway. Just the one. None of this mucking about with multiple routes – just simple, good old-fashioned A to B transportation. Perhaps needless to say, many Edinburghians are less than thrilled.

Leaving the accommodation (‘petite’ they told us, before sending us and our baggage down the hallway with a magnifying glass,) we head to Leith; some buses and some walking in drizzle, to see the sights, and eat some fine Scots fare – oysters, mussels and smoked haddock with fishcake at the Ship on Shore (which proclaimed sustainable seafood on the menu but sold dredged scallops. Not impressed with that little bit of greenwashing.) Not much really in the way of sights – tourists by the horde up the Royal Mile to the castle – but we start a walk in Holyrood Park, as it started to rain again. So, caught a bus back to the B&B (we had day passes, v. good value at £3) to dry out and check emails and suchlike things. Managed to get hold of a Flickr friend, and we arranged, despite a reprise of the Princes St shambles, to meet for a quick drink and chat and some (not so great) Chinese. So now I’ve met someone, in person, though the interwebs. Even my mother beat me to that.

Weds: haggis with trad fry-up for breakfast, pick up car drive to Elgin via Perth, Pitlochrie, Blair Athol (where I had “Sporran o’ Plenty” for lunch – a steak stuffed with haggis – with chips) &c.

Indian nosh in Elgin, much better than expected, for dinner. So much for my ambition of three meals of haggis in a day.

Thurs: around Elgin to beachy place with very blue water called Findhorn – crab and the biggest fish and chips (haddock) known to humanity. Chips, always chips. No Mars bars yet, deep fried or otherwise. We watched the rain roll in from the west as we ate, and headed back to the car just in time to get wet. Post lunch – Speyside whisky tour – visited the Cardhu distillery at Knockando and toured, discovered there are many cute names for bits of whisky making. Also discovered that peaty whiskey isn’t the be all and end all of whisky. ‘Plain’ whisky stills are beautiful and look like giant gramophone horns, in copper. Rained on again. Stopped also at Aberlour, and passed by many other famous names. Drank water directly from the River Spey – yum!

Dinner – Thai restaurant in Elgin – best fishcakes we’ve ever tasted, the rest average but by no means bad – waitress delightful, we slipped her a very large tip because her bosses looked evil. Didn’t leave a general meal tip, which could have been a terrible mistake.

Brussels – not always boring!

I’m working, at the moment, at the arse-end of Evere, on the north-eastern fringe of Brussels, just shy of NATO headquarters, and halfway between the city and the airport.
At least the locals, Flemish, Walloon, Moroccan, Turkish, whatever, seem friendly enough. I visited a small pub with a cow orker, and it’s the only place I’ve ever been where everyone in the place bought a round for everyone else. There were only about 6 of us, but still…

And then there was the ‘manifestation.’ No, Belgium is not noticeably haunted – it’s apparently the word they use when Something Important is happening at NATO, just around the corner from where I’ve been working.

I noticed a lot of police activity in the morning, convoys of (mostly empty) police buses, but that happens. I thought nothing of it, until I tried to go to work. I unlocked the gate to the driveway – the building I work in is set in a largeish yard with lawn (kept tidy by bunnies) and trees and a car-park – and locked it behind me. Suddenly a small car with four un-uniformed but very efficient looking men pulled into the drive. They got out, and the driver came forward. “How did you get in there?” he asked. “I have a key,” I replied. I could see lots of heavy-duty equipment bristling under his jacket. This is where I learnt about the ‘manifestation.’ “Manifestation?” I asked, wondering if Belgium really took its ghostbusting that seriously. He explained briefly that it was a term that was used in the context of NATO ’security,’ then asked me to prove that I actually let myself in with the key I had brandished. So I opened the gate, not having seen any form of ID from these fairly threatening-looking dudes, and a little voice in the back of my head said “this a the part where they rush the gate, kick the crap out of you and cut off your thumb for the biometric front door lock.” Luckily that little voice had been watching too many Hollywood movies. The men thanked me and went about their other business.
But this is the kind of security that, a couple of hours later, had 5 mounted (heavily armed) police come into the company’s premises because my colleague, who is a lightly-built blonde Kiwi girl (that day wearing a miniskirt, presumably that’s interpreted as terrorist chic here), wanted to go home. 100 metres around the corner. They came onto the company’s privaat eigendom (what they call private property in Belgium) and bailed her up against a hedge, and told her that she needed to go back inside – forbidding her to leave work, or indeed be on the streets at all!
Our manager was not pleased when he heard about it, but that was an hour later and the ‘manifestation’ was more or less all over by then, save for the constant drone of helicopters…

Note to self: stay the hell away from centres of bureaucracy, military or otherwise, and other hotbeds of security theatre. They do nothing to reinforce ones faith in humanity.

The newt world order

Yes, the title is particularly misleading. This post has nothing to do with amphibians, nor their emergence as our (probably deserving) overlords.

Instead, I’m going to tell you about walks in the country in England.

First a quick description of my terms – well, term: when I say country, I feel confident in saying that anytime you see two patches of greenery bigger than a footy field that are more mud than grass you’re probably in ‘the country’, even if it’s not even an hour on the train out of central London. Suddenly it turns into a weird mixture of field, rolling hills, and ticky-tacky box-shaped housing. If you look another couple of hundred metres beyond the train-tracks you’ll see some houses built before the ’50s, and possibly before the 1850s.

The funny thing about the English hobby of rambling (as opposed to bushwalking in Australia or tramping in NZ) is that you can walk from some convenient town for five hours, and in the course of that walk pass through three villages, including two pub stops, and have high tea in the meantime, before catching your train home. My experience of bushwalking in Australia is: get off train, walk for five hours through dry bush while praying that the water you brought with you will last the distance, pray also that track finishes where it started, and catch train home, parched and hungry. Much more satisfying! You really know you’ve been on a walk!

It seems to drive a small economy, though, the walking thing – we stopped at a little pub called the Stag and Huntsman at midday the other day, after walking for a pleasant couple of hours along the Thames, and luckily we were dead on midday – by half past there wasn’t a seat in the house, and the collection of hiking boots in the entryway was second to none by the time we left, nothing you’d find in an Australian pub, half the clientele were in (as I suppose they call them here) stockinged feet! Quaint, I like to think =^), but rather civilised.

The pub food (most important, besides the locally brewed ale – I keep saying that English ale actually makes sense when it’s sub 10 degrees outside) was not so bad, though huge – Linda ordered the chicken liver pate, and I got the ploughman’s lunch. There was probably 3/4 of a kilo of pate, with 4 large triangles of white toast, sad salad and Sauerkraut of the most scooped from a bucket description, whereas mine consisted of a pickled onion (pretty good) the same sad salad and Sauerkraut, but with a brown roll, chutney, and half a kilo of Oxford blue and Cheddar*. We were keen do set off and do some serious walking afterwards. And we didn’t stop for tea in the next village. We just kept walking.

Henley. Check it out.

Jo, the ball’s in your court.

*Amounts may be exaggerated for comedic purposes. Though not by much.

A pedestrian observation

Londoners are a weird mob (some might say it goes without saying, but we’ll leave them to their opinions), but I mean specifically on the footpath. I’m not the only one to notice it, it seems to be a standard tactic here: as you walk towards a fellow (or lady) pedestrian, even on an otherwise uninhabited pavement, they will swing towards you, into a possible collision path. As a newcomer to London you might (not unreasonably) think them drunk, and step lightly aside as necessary to avoid collision. Fair enough, problem solved, you might think.

At this juncture, some of you have no doubt already leapt mentally ahead (the story can’t be that simple, can it?) to the next possibility, and I fear you’re on the right track. At that time of day, whatever time that might be, that class of person (that’s a big deal here) can’t be drunk. Yet. So they’re doing it deliberately.

I’ve tested this. Show weakness, and they’ll walk straight ahead on their new course as if that was their birthright. They were born in Leicester or Worcester or Cirencester or Auckland or some such, after all (London’s not that great a probability, in my experience). But! If you refuse to give ground at the onset of swerve, their path will subtly alter, as though it was all simply a mistake, and there may be a gentle brushing of sleeves. That’s your bold customers. If you have a more tentative swerver you’ll miss them altogether. If, on the other hand, you take the initiative before them, and give a subtle (but readable) sidestep in their direction, they will, depending on the timidity or otherwise of their demeanour, either suddenly give way, all but leaping into the gutter to give you the room you obviously feel you need to function adequately on the footway, or hold their course, leaving what was usually actually more than enough room in the first place for all concerned.

In the immortal words of Arthur Atkinson, “‘ow queer!”

Luckily the vehicular traffic operates less idiosyncratically.

Last day

In Richmond.

A little background, to put things in perspective for the Sydneysiders: Richmond is to London what Rose Bay (or Vaucluse, or Double Bay, or Mosman) is to Sydney, more or less. But in Richmond.

Full of the moneyed, the SUVed, the once-famous (but now more like institutional) and the far-flung suburb faux-hippy, or artsy-aspirational. You know the type.

It’s quite lovely and terribly pleasant. But we’re giving all that up, this afternoon, for the inner-city lifestyle once again, this time without somebody else’s family photos, 80’s records, and Moroccan souvenir crockery.

Looking forward to Islington, and London rental…

TdF day two

Out the house by 7.30 am, on the bike into the city – I’m determined to catch the pre-Tour roadshow this morning, and score Tour free crap souvenirs and keepsakes which I somehow missed getting on Day One.

People ride quite quite a bit in this city, which is not surprising, given the congestion charge that all private cars pay to drive in central London, and the sense that while bombs are perhaps inevitable (and Londoners have at least a couple of generations of being bombed on and off on a fairly regular basis, for which they largely thank the US), you’re definitely a smaller target on a bike. At the same time I hear many stories of cyclists being abused by motorists, particularly cab-drivers, and of riders being killed in Trafalgar Square, and similar, but my natural tendency is to assume that that’s all part of a normal Gaussian distribution of cycle-related incidents – that is, where there are a lot of bikes, there will be a lot of incidents. I’ve survived as long as I have on bikes simply by keeping well clear of the bad part of the bell-curve. Easy =^)

That being said, though, the streets here are often verging on the medieval in their bumpiness and narrowness and quaintness. This is London, after all. It often makes navigation in general, and car-dodging in particular, that much more demanding. So it was nice to ride around central London on this day with 90% of the traffic removed.

I saw the roadshow go by in Trafalgar Sq., but the only swag available seemed to be Skoda hats, which were not cycling caps, and made the people wearing them look even more like they should have been turning lobster-red on Bondi Beach rather than toddling around in London town. Hmm, not for me.

So I cycled around some more, watched the team coaches for a bit as they arrived at the start line, but no celebrity rider sightings, sadly; cycled over to the Tour village – nope, too early for that – cycled around some more, this time down the previous day’s time-trial course around the Serpentine in Hyde Park. That was fun! Then back to the start line to watch the proceedings for a bit, with the boys in busbys belting out marching tunes, and then I headed down the course to find a spot to watch the race from. I decided Blackfriars Bridge was not a bad spot – nice and wide, long and straight, and not too crowded. Perfect. Photos here. The Bobbies were ever vigilant making sure that no-one’s toes extended beyond the cordon, advice which was taken farily loosely as soon as they moved on, I mean, this was London on Day One, not a critical stage finish on the Col de Whatever. The crowd, and not this British crowd , simply wasn’t going to hurl itself into the path of the riders in a lather of excitement. We heard the immortal Phil Liggett say later that with close to 4 million people lining the roads over the 2 days in England there wasn’t one Tour-related arrest.

Then it was all over so quickly! The cavalcade of official cars went by, with their squeaky musical horns – yes that sound on telly is them, really – then the cyclists. I literally had time to take about 4 photos and they were gone.

I went back to the Tour village – scored a couple of t-shirts, only available in medium, sadly, but not too unstylish as these things go: black with yellow London TdF logo (hands up if you want one), and bought a very tasty sausage at the French Village, before a lovely quiet ride home, to watch the rest of the stage on TV.

Those for whom cycling means nothing, read on. It’s not all bad.

Finally! The Rourkie, pictured here for those of you you may have forgotten, is finally really on the road.

It came with Look pedals, and I had my old trusty Carnac shoes shipped over, thank you Danya, in the hope that I could actualise the theoretical capability of said shoes to convert from SPD cleats to the more roadie Look ones. I mentioned this conversion process to my Dutch colleague Kamilla Bak who said “don’t you just put your feet on the pedals and push down?” No wonder the Dutch have such a terrible Tour de France record (especially compared to their Luxembourger and Belgian neighbours).

So the conversion process remained theoretical, and I opted for the cheaper and quicker process of getting old SPD pedals on eBay, quickly accomplished in an afternoon at work for about £6.

Getting the old pedals off turned out to be the challenge – the bike had for some time lived by the Welsh seaside, and the pedals were heavily oxidised in the thread. It was delivered into the hands of the men of Putney Cycles, which luckily held large spanners dedicated to the task of removing recalcitrant pedals. While I was there I had the good fortune to meet one of the locals, who seemed to know a thing or two about bikes: “You don’t want to use those pedals – they’re rubbish! – you want to get some toe-clips. Just look at my bike out there! And you want to get some paint onto that bike…” I interjected that I would indeed get a respray done as soon as my budget allowed, but “…you don’t want to wait that long! just get some <insert brand name I’ve forgotten, but sounded dangerously like hammertone – you know, the stuff that looks suspiciously like hammered metal, in a really cheesy way> just look at my bike out there, just get a half-inch brush and slap it on (with sound effects and gestures)…” I got the impression that my interjection was wasted, then “…you don’t want to be riding on those tyres, what you want is…” you get the picture.

The mechanic with the large spanner (still trying to unbond the pedals from the cranks) said “he’s one of our more eccentric customers.” I said something to the effect of “you don’t say!” with a mildly ironic intonation. At last the pedals came off, the new pedals went on, I got extended unsolicited advice about the correct mudguards to purchase and/or construct from objects frequently found in the houses of the eccentric, with invitations to inspect the bike on which said objects were appropriately installed, and £4 poorer, left the shop. For the pedal removal alone I would have paid the £4, but the vast amount of advice offered was priceless.

What really made my day, though was the stream of shop staff coming to ogle the majesty of the vintage hand-built frame.

I’ve only taken it out a couple of times on public roads now, but it feels light and nimble. I have to adjust the gear-shifting a little, I’ve moved the seat

(thank you Richard! I had that shipped over as well as shoes and helmet – it seemed a bit weird importing a Brooks saddle into England) around a couple of times, replaced the brake-pads and generally wiped, cleaned and lubed, and it’s starting to feel like mine.

A Quick Jaunt East

So we went walkabout in East London yesterday, not really a comprehensive tour, just a quick squiz at Spitalfields Market (Lidna saw someone spitting, but it was probably pure coincidence), where we bought some very tasty salami, one infused with truffle, and the other with fennel,

then plunged down some small streets for a stroll up Brick Lane, the home of London student chic. Much as expected: lots of cheap food of various ethnicity, vast emporia full of old clothes, shoes & bags, funky street music things, stolen bikes for sale, you know the kind of thing. Not as much cool bizarro fashion as expected.

Then a stroll down the very downbeat Bethnal Green Road, and back towards the city, with a reminder that despite its vast and venerable decorative content, London public art, as has been noted elsewhere, in regard to Sydney’s collection, sometimes goes horribly wrong…