Travel

Edinburgh itself entranced me immediately. The train station is smack dab in the middle of the city and I emerged practically in the shadow of the castle. To be fair of course pretty much anything in downtown Edinburgh is loomed over by the castle, the mount is that imposing. I eventually found my way to the hostel after a few wrong turns, not the world’s best map and I had to pull out my laptop and look at my thankfully cached google map while standing in the fringe crowds. It turns out that the hostel is actually a University of Edinburgh residence that seems to be used as one just for the summer. Reception even seemed to be in an RA room.

August in Edinburgh is festival time, this means of course the Fringe but also the art festival, the Royal Military Tattoo and others. Most of you know how much I love Winnipeg’s fringe which if you count the actual theatre is more or less tied with Edmonton as the world’s second biggest. They both pale in comparison to this. It’s incredibly massive. Yet almost immediately I can see why many performers who do (or have done) both say they prefer Winnipeg and Edmonton because they’re more personal. It’s insane how much competition there is here. The leaflet handouts are incredibly aggressive at times and even if I hadn’t been told that many artists entire year of wages rests on this month I would have guessed. Still historically having a hit show in Edinburgh is the gateway to being picked up for the major BritCom touring circuit or a guest spot on one of the panel shows so popular over here. As a result the marketing here is ridiculous with what seems like the entire cast of some shows making an cordon across the high street and passing out leaflets with production values you generally only see on the top end shows in Canada. In addition many of the groups have ridiculously elaborate standees, flags, sandwich boards or other elaborate attention grabbers. If everyone here who claimed to have “new comedy from Cambridge” was telling the truth the university drama department would have an enrolment equivalent to some small South American nation. Overall it’s quite sad in many ways as you know that there’s simply too many companies/artists here for some people not to lose their shirts.

The streets are therefore packed with performers and tourists and it makes things completely impassable at times. My first exposure to this was made even wilder by what can only be described as a massive pack of almost universally bra-less Dutch girls running around at high speed on some sort of scavenger hunt. Apparently a Canadian or North American was one of the things required and I had on my RCAF hat so I ended up in a few photos. I saw the same couple with a pair of dogs stopped at least 5 times as well. “Pleashhh can we have your fotosh!” The crowd was quite diverse though, besides Dutch girls I saw a pack of kids (pipers I think) from Kitchener-Waterloo where I lived for a while during co-op, several large Japanese or Korean tour groups and of course thousands of English. This last group was somewhat split in emotion (be they performer or attendee) as every time they went near a television they saw the ridiculousness going on down south. The riots are very much on everyone’s mind here and it’s all anyone talks about if they aren’t discussing the shows they just saw.

On that initial walkaround the walkway up to the castle was absolutely jammed and it wasn’t long before I discovered that was the tattoo. If you’ve never been to one it’s basically a giant military marching/music display and the Edinburgh one is considered one of the best. It runs nearly every night and I think one of the things I read mentioned something like 150,000 people attend annually. This also explained why I heard a fighter fly over a bit later while going online to buy fringe tickets.

I picked up tickets to some of my favourite brit comedians that I’ve seen on TV (more about that later) and headed back out to grab something to eat and look for something cheaper to see that night. Some of us have been bitching about increasing prices at fringe back home, but we still max out around $10, but for three headlining shows here I paid the equivalent of $65cdn. There’s of course also a street theatre portion of the fest and I finally got rid of a bit of the 10 pounds of change in my pocket while watching a few jugglers, a Canadian acrobat/unicycle guy and a set of fantastic saxophone players who I sat watching for nearly half an hour. I also had a giant nerdgasm moment when I saw Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer walking around with his daughter. I didn’t want to be one of the douchey fans that run up and gush at a star when they’re on holiday though, much as I would love to meet them both so I just smiled and moved on. Mostly though I just wandered around appreciating the gorgeous (if sometimes severe) architecture and falling in love with the city.

I ended up seeing a couple short, cheap shows that night that were quite good. I couldn’t help making comparisons to home though. They have a fantastic surplus of really neat venues that the Winnipeg fest would die for. My first show was in a former wine cellar in what seems like it was probably a 16^th century building, the second was in a loft built under a bridge with a gorgeous vaulted ceiling. The only problem is that they aren’t huge on risers so if you’re late your sightline will likely suck. Making up for this is that I have yet to be to a venue that doesn’t have a bar that provides drinks for it, even if you (shockingly by Canuck standards) have to walk out and down the street to another entrance to go in. There’s also a weird lack of uniformity that explains some of the comments about preferring Winnipeg for the community feel. It seems like there are a variety of larger mega-venues that are each made of a bar, a separate merch area, and 3-10 venues in some large building. It’s hard to describe (I’ll post some pictures later) but it’s as if Winnipeg Fringe was made up of MTCZone which is all the MTC/Pantages venues surrounded by their own fence/entrance  then a few scattered independent ones, usually in bars (think the king’s head), before you get to say Artspace, but an Artspace which has 10 different rooms, their own specialized programs, beer gardens, marketing banners and teeshirts etc… Very very different. The shows themselves run on nothing like the strict schedule we’re used to and it wasn’t until the Ed Byrne show I caught that one was really spot on time. I finished the evening with a pint at a place called the brass monkey before turning in, unfortunately hearing that someone had thrown themselves off the bridge that night, explaining the sirens that had almost drowned out one of the earlier shows.

Waking up the next morning I really was glad that I hadn’t gone to school and stayed in this rez. Never mind that the only access to this massive complex is down a VERY dark alley that I wouldn’t be super keen on entering after midnight myself, much less as a woman on her own. It’s also quite grim inside and every door slams heavily meaning that whenever someone goes to the toilet, comes back from the bar, or leaves for a train (or class) at 7am you’re going to hear it. Also, five flights of stairs after a long day sucks. I kept going back to sleep though, enjoying the chance to lie in a bit since I’ll be on the move more come Europe. Once I was up and about I booked my next steps in the trip then headed up to Edinburgh castle. Unfortunately the rain and cold had followed behind my train, Shilpa confirming that it was sunny back in London. Umbrella etiquette is as lacking as at home too, particularly while I was waiting in line for my ticket/audio guide and the Spanish woman behind me nearly incessantly poked me with the razor sharp edges of hers. When she wasn’t doing that she has holding it in a way that every drop ran off it and down my back. Whenever I tried to give myself some extra space she’d come right back up to me as if crowding me would get her there sooner, eventually I had to turn around (after several excuse me’s) and literally push the umbrella backwards every minute or so. Her husband eventually got embarrassed and made her put it away but not until we’d been through most of the line. Luckily it was soon forgotten (except for being stored for a blog anecdote) as I got to explore the castle. The history nerd in me enjoyed a lot of the ancestral stuff (having been told many times how I was descended from King Robert the Bruce by my grandmother) and the views from the mount when the fog and rain faded from time to time were breathtaking. I’d love to be there on a sunnier day though so I’d go again for sure. Got to see the Scottish crown jewels (which somewhat pale in comparison to the English ones, but are older since most of the English date from post-restoration) the stone of scone and various other relics as well as the Scots war museum. It’s definitely the most visually impressive and together (and beautifully sited) of the castles I’ve visited this trip, I still think Caerphilli is my favourite though.

That night I got to see David O’Doherty who I’ve been a fan of since seeing him on Never Mind The Buzzcocks. He was absolutely brilliant and I’ll be hoping he makes a trip to Canada at some point. Today I saw the Phill Jupitus quartet (also of NMTB) which was a pretty standard but hilarious improve show and an absolutely fantastic set by Ed Byrne of Mock the Week fame. I’ve loved Ed’s stuff forever, but he’s even better live. He’s a good sport too, jokingly ripping a guy who went to the bathroom in the fourth row then looking on in increasingly bewilderment as 3 other people from the same party went on to do so over the rest of his show. He even gave a shoutout to the walnut bladders at the end of the show. For the last night I had a couple pints in a couple interesting pubs on the way back to the hostel, watched the end of tattoo fireworks (and the typhoon soaring overhead.) I also had an incredibly hilarious few minutes listening to a pair of Scotsmen cover Outkast. Imagine a less talented version of the Proclaimers (of 500 miles fame) doing Hey Ya, then imagine how I had to struggle not to laugh. They were earnest, I’ll give them that but I don’t think it’s the greatest song choice for them.

Tomorrow it’s back to London before catching the Eurostar to Belgium the next morning.

The last couple days with the parents were eventful to say the least. Our Cotswolds B&B was fantastic given how randomly we’d chosen it and the region itself was quite pretty. Lots of little villages with cute shops and restaurants and supposedly great antiquing. I stayed out of the antique shops though, sure I’d see something I’d either love and couldn’t afford or couldn’t afford to ship home even if I could afford the price. The village of Bourton-on-water closest to us was particularly pretty being mostly set along a picturesque river/canal and made up of mostly old stone cottages. I doubt the photos will really evoke the charm of the place but we’ll see when I get them back from the parents. We ended up enjoying another proper cream tea as well as some other tasty meals. I must say thought that it’s quite the older folks area and I’d probably have started to go a little stir crazy had we stayed there as long as we’d stayed some other places.

The next morning we were off to the Reading area to meet some distant cousins that my mother has been in contact with on the net. Amazingly enough I managed to get us there despite no real map of the area and some pretty shoddy google map info I’d transferred onto a notepad. They turned out to be quite friendly and wonderful hosts and shared some stories of distant relatives on my mother’s side of the family. Unfortunately we needed to have the car back by 3 so our time with them was short, but they’d been busy when we’d been near London initially so we had to make do with this time slot. They warned us that we’d have to leave reasonably early to beat the potentially terrible M25 (ring road around London) traffic. How right they were…

We’d seen signs warning of a shutdown on the traffic warning signs, it turned out the M25 was shut down completely right around the exit we needed.  Long story short apparently there had been some sort of epic accident that closed all 8 lanes (both directions) for over 24 hours. Needless to say, we didn’t have the car back by 3, in fact we spent over 5 hours in the jam and only got it back around 8 pm, collapsing in exhaustion in the Airport Holiday Inn at Gatwick in preparation for my parent’s flight home the next day. Terrible end to an awesome trip for them, still we got them off safely the next morning and they’re home now. As I write this they’re probably bathing kennel-stinky dogs.

I on the other hand made my way slowly into London, collapsed into a hostel I’d booked for my first night and slept for a couple hours before stumbling down to the common room and hopping on the internet. This time the hostel had a pretty great food service so I actually just ate there. Big pizza with chicken and brie for about $10 cdn is hard to beat in London. Even better that they sell alcohol during pub hours so I had a tall beer. I followed it up with a quick walk over to a cinema and finally saw the last Harry Potter movie. Much like my Sydney experience this was an overpriced small place (though with a great projector) with that weirdest of things to us North Americans… assigned seats. Still, I figured it was my last chance to see an English movie on the big screen for a while so I took it. Probably the weirdest moment was the pre-show music, I hadn’t really been listening but then I was suddenly struck by exactly what it was. The Aleksandr Nevsky suite by Prokofiev for the epic Eisenstein Stalinist propaganda film. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself, it’s always been a favourite piece of music but seemed somewhat out of place there.

Today I transferred to a new hotel as recommended by a friend, it’s in somewhat of a shambles due to some renovations but I do at least have a single with ensuite. Of course the internet is broken and the tv near non functional but I went out for the afternoon/evening anyway. My friend Shilpa from my RIM days invited me to meet her out for dinner in Windsor so I decided to go out and see the castle first. Luckily the new hotel is more or less directly opposite Paddington station so it was an easy trip to catch the train which was helpful. Less so was the guy who told me it was two stops when in fact I needed to transfer at the first one… costing me extra to come back and almost making me too late to do the full tour.

Windsor Castle is even more beautiful than I imagined. The outside architecture a mix of really old and relatively new, most of the older more rugged bits having been prettied up as the castle passed from being a fortress to a more ostentatious royal residence first. St. George’s within the grounds is every bit as pretty as it always looks in pictures as well, incredibly Gothic inside and out with one of the prettiest ceilings I’ve seen yet. It’s home to the Order of the Garter so the quire is surrounded by the heraldic arms of the current members. I actually just got into the chapel though as it closes before the rest of the castle. Moving on from there I went to see Queen Mary’s Doll’s House which is incredibly intricate, every miniature crafted with precision and care. Some of the paintings inside are actually miniature versions of other works painted by famous artists. Moving on from there I toured the state apartments, many of which were restored to 17^th century state after the fire back in 1992. So many old masters on display, beautiful art by Reubens, Bronzino, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and others. I really can’t even describe what tickled my fancy as every room had some kind of feast for the eyes. I really hadn’t considered Windsor anywhere near top of my list to visit but it turned out to be amazing.

Eventually I met up with Shilpa and her friend Wilfred and we had a drink in Starbucks (they don’t make the one hot drink I like there over here) before heading on for a tasty Asian dinner.  It was great to see Shilpa after a year or so and catch up. Annoyingly I forgot to take a picture of us all, but oh well. Was definitely a good night though as I’d started to feel the stirrings of melancholy I felt in Sydney after saying goodbye to my NZ friends. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issues setting off alone but something about switching over to that mode makes me a little mopey. Of course, now I’ve returned to Paddington and I’m watching on my TV as riots rage at various places around the city. There is the smell of smoke in the air and straining out my window I can see a few red glows. The sirens passing both nearby and in the distance around the city are endless. I’d been planning to go out and have a pint but I think I’ll stay in and write instead as the violence has been spreading and the Met Police are begging people to stay off the streets. Hopefully I’ll be able to post this tomorrow with wifi as I’m expecting about 20 “are you ok” messages on facebook when I log on. So in short, yes I’m ok and I’m heading to Edinburgh tomorrow so things shouldn’t be an issue.

Oof, I’ve fallen quite behind in the old travelogue. Mostly this is because of a barrage of quite busy days combined with questionable or non-existent internet. Overall we’ve been having a blast and have ended up seeing a lot more of the country than I’d really expected to. Continuing on from the previous post…

On Friday we decided to head a bit further afield in Cornwall by heading west. We didn’t quite get to Land’s End (and we’d heard it’s gotten super commercial and tacky anyway) but made it to Penzance before indulging in some proper Cornish Cream Tea. I have to say that the Cornish clotted cream is fantastic, at that point we had in on scones, but we’ve since also had it on various cakes and puddings as well. Before now I’ve actually only had it on a British Airways flight over a decade ago, the real thing is so much better.

On the way to Penzance we stopped at Pendennis castle in Falmouth. Originally a coastal keep for Henry VIII, it was various enlarged and modified right up until World War 2 where it was more of an AA battery than a coastal fortress. It has a fantastic view over the mouth of the harbour, displays of the various bits of weaponry as well as different  buildings created during the various eras of the fort. The vast numbers of sailboats, fishing trawlers and oil tankers made looking through the gunsights on the shore guns a little more true to life. Sadly you weren’t able to traverse the big guns with the cranks.

After tea in Penzance we were actually pretty wiped so we started heading back planning to stop at St. Michael’s Mount but were foiled again by England’s terrible signage. We’d seen a few different signs for the turnoff on the way into town, on the way out there were either zero or only the tiniest of signs at the actual turnoff because we missed it. By the time we were sure it seemed best to head back home as Dad was getting quite tired and we didn’t need him drifting off and putting us off a cliff on the drive back. Back in Looe we ended up in another incredibly old pub, this time sharing space with various costumed weirdos who had just participated in a three-legged race for adults. Given that it was 18 plus and more than a few of them were tanked we got the feeling that pre and post game drinking was encouraged. Of particular note were a pair of Smurfettes, two bunches of grapes and some quite cute lego men.

The next day we ended up heading to Tintagel a beautiful castle site vaguely associated with the Arthur myth (but not really other than in a tourist sense of things.) There’s the remains of a much later castle that’s quite visible but the earlier castle site is a near empty plateau out on a tiny isthmus high above the sea. It’s quite a walk as you nearly walk down to the sea, then up narrow cliff inset steps to the top. An incredibly beautiful site but somewhat rampant with loud French school children on holiday. Down below by the seashore there is a cave running deep into the rocks, it’s actually the lower divide of the isthmus and is now known as Merlin’s Cave for reasons entirely random. Despite the shaky association I couldn’t resist buying a couple quite nerdy gifts for myself in the little giftshops before I navigated us down a different road in hopes of avoiding some of the traffic on the way out.

This turned out to be a stroke of luck as we ended up in the absolutely gorgeous little village of Boscastle. Nestled at the end of a very protected inlet it’s a tiny village with large chunks recently refurbished due to a devastating flash flood. In the visitor center we watched a video of the flood, it’s truly amazing no one was killed in it. I think the video is on youtube, really quite wild. If I end up back in Cornwall anytime soon I’ll likely end up staying there in one of the gorgeous B&B’s. We walked out to the coast along the inlet enjoying the gardens. If I could draw at all I probably could spend days out there. On the way back to Looe we headed across Bodwin moor and stopped for a pint at Jamaica Inn of Daphne DuMaurier novel fame. It’s not quite the isolated place it once was apparently and (though nice enough) was far from the most isolated old place we visited. Coming back into Looe it was the night of the Lions carnival ending the week of strange events but we managed to just miss it (but thankfully late enough that the roads were no longer blocked)

Thankfully we’d managed to again get an extra night in our current digs as the family friends were having a big lunch that we were invited to, it was nice to not have to take off afterwards to find new lodgings. Before lunch I got to visit with their donkeys, once they apparently had quite a few and were a sanctuary. Even now they have five donkeys and a mule, all adorable and attention seeking when you go in to pat them. The lunch itself was at one of the few small towns near Looe that we hadn’t yet visited. It was a great lunch at a sea side beach, gorgeous despite a grey day. After saying our goodbyes we went to a somewhat famous old fishing village called Polperro, ultra narrow streets (no one non-resident allowed to drive in) and lots of gift-shops/restaurants. There were a ton of very neat looking holiday rentals (many of which looked empty) that would make a fantastic place to spend a couple weeks. Still, there were so many rentals there that I wasn’t surprised to hear from our host back in Looe that the town is basically closed in winter.

Our plan for the rest of the night was to pack for the next day when we’d be leaving, apparently unsuccessfully. We later found out we left some of our laundry behind. Oddly enough (especially given the number of yachts and ships) there didn’t seem to be a laundromat in town. When they found out we needed to do some, one of the B&B owners went ahead and did our laundry for us. Ridiculous service, if anyone’s planning to head to Cornwall anytime soon I really recommend you check them out.

Once we finally hit the road we decided to explore northward by first heading up to the coast near Tintagel again and heading east across the Cornwall coast into Devon. Our main goal was to visit Clovelly, another narrow street seafront town. The difference with this one is that they use donkeys and sledges to import and export goods and refuse. Unfortunately my parent’s recollections of the place will have to do because the place rather ridiculously charges a fee roughly equivalent to $10cdn a head to enter the village. Apparently this is possible because the feudal lord’s family still owns more or less the entire village. I’m sure it’s pretty, but I’m also sure it’s not THAT different from the other places and $30 for the three of us even before buying lunch etc is Crazy McNuts.

Still, we visited a number of other gorgeous towns and villages before having to call it a night due to driver fatigue at a lonely inn at the top of a hill. This turned out to be the Blue Ball Inn, formerly known as the something or other sandpiper. The current incarnation opened in about 1800 as a coach inn and was called The Blue Ball for 180 years before some genius bought the place and decided to rename it (first to the blue bear inn) Perhaps this was due to the other meanings of blue ball, but seriously… 180 years of history trumps that. Despite the location it wasn’t cheap, but included a fantastic breakfast with their own raised pork sausages and bacon.

We actually had dinner there as well since Dad didn’t really feel up to driving back down the massive 25% hill to the village. This place really had the feeling that Jamaica Inn should have had. We even had a number of sheep wandering past the door bleating incredibly loudly. Given the fog rolling in I was actually pretty glad that we’d stopped after seeing the fuzzy little thing since there was no way we’d see them coming around corners. No idea how the dogs handle it though. That’s actually one of the weirdest things about Cornwall and Devon, pretty much any pub is happy for you to bring your (well behaved) dog into the pub with you or onto a patio. The innkeepers themselves had a couple dogs, once of which followed dad back up to the room after he went to the front desk the next morning. I heard a tail slapping the door as I had a shower and had flashbacks to home. Definitely miss the dogs, but having the occasional furball to give a pat helps.

The next morning we gunned fairly hard with only one big stop. This time it was at a castle though it was heavily remodelled so it should really be called a manor. We enjoyed the displays, most of the rooms have been kept as they were last used as a family home into the 50s. Before long we pressed on, hoping to get to Wales and have a couple days to look around. This was somewhat “interesting” though as my navigation basically consisted of some educated guessing of what might be a pretty region of Wales with somewhere to stay. It turns out I managed to stumble upon one of the prettiest sections of the south end of the country and we stayed a night near Brecon just outside the Brecon Beacons national park. We actually ended up driving a gorgeous road at sunset through the heart of the park common, basically a giant grazing area for thousands of sheep and more horses/ponies. Definitely kept dad on his toes driving since apparently the sheep feel the tastiest grass is the stuff right next to the road, but the views were very worth it. It’s the place in the UK most like New Zealand for me honestly. Rugged (if not massively tall) mountains and vast open plateaus. We ended up driving this road a few times and we loved it every time.

The next day was more of the same randomness. Starting from the Brecon place we took a spin down the wild road then stopped for a roughly two hour hike up to see some very pretty waterfalls on the edge of the park. It was quite a nice walk, until I slipped on some moss and went ass over tea kettle, managing to protect the expensive camera but hurting my thumb quite badly. I’ve since woken up with a sore back and hip as well, but of course this is the first time in a while that I haven’t had access to a bathtub to soak away my aches. Clumsy me L

We ended the day nearly all the way to the west coast of Wales in a small walled town on the coast called Tenby. It turned out to be a very neat little place, but it was the day of a Fireman’s carnival so again we just missed a parade and had some issues finding some place to spend the night. The seaside aspect pleased dad though as we had what was probably in the top two orders of Fish and chips for the trip (so far he says.) On my side I had to keep myself from laughing again at the girls coming into these pubs where all ages are eating and drinking who are all tarted up in short dresses and ridiculously over the top makeupfor a night on the town. It’s just not something you see as much in small towns back home, even in places where there’s no actual dance club type place.

Much as we would have enjoyed spending more time in Wales we have one more personal visit to make as well as a need to bring the rental car back in time, so we decided to head back into England the next morning. Thankfully we felt we had time for another castle stop, this time at Caerphilli. This place is a serious fortress and is even surrounded by restored water defences (and, somewhat incongruously to us, Canada Geese.) It’s very much a strategic fortress, built with multiple rings of defences and battle sight lines. It fell into ruin in the 16^th century before being somewhat restored in the Victorian era, oddly enough by someone who made a point of using different stone so it was clear what was original and what wasn’t. These days the heritage folks have simply made the great hall livable for state events and preserved what’s left for safe viewing. The towers command imposing views of the surrounding town and you definitely get a taste of just how much command of the area archers lining the battlements would have had.

Once back in England we ended up in the Cotswolds area as planned to give ourselves some flexibility in our last few days. Oddly enough we’re very close to Swindon again and had we known might have been able to play with some earlier plans a bit. We had a fantastic meal at a little pub called the Mousetrap hereabouts tonight and we’re planning on spending tomorrow exploring somewhat randomly round the area. After which I really need to get off my butt and plan my post-parental departure meanderings.

That’s the lightning round version of the past week, more info to follow with pics about stuff that’s particularly interesting.

We ended up staying an extra day in the New Forest since the B&B had an opening for the next day and it was so nice. The next morning we took a trip down to Bournemouth to first stock up on some goodies for the room and the car before heading to the seaside. Summer holidays had just started for Brit kids though so it was quite busy. It was actually quite a nice beach though the water was fairly cold. Very British beach experience though, the shore being lined by miles of long beach sheds. Some of these are very involved with paintings and whatnot and some are little more than a place to change into your suit. In between these sheds (some of which are for rent and some which have apparently been in the family forever) there are ice cream shops or amusement arcades full of the terrible sort of coin gobbling “games” you only see in the worst midways over here. That said, we did through a few 10 and 20 pence coins into one of them but had no luck.

After walking back to the car via the surf (brrrr…) we traipsed back up the hill and into the car to hop along the coast to Highcliff Castle. This place is actually a manor house of sorts, built in the 1830s in the style of a much older home to encompass ancient stonework bought by the owner from medieval French buildings. It actually burned multiple times after being abandoned but over the past couple decades has been slowly restored. It’s now quite pretty again and actually one of Britain’s busier wedding sites. They had a good number of exhibits on the history of the castle and the various people who had owned and visited the place. It turned out to be quite a good random stop.

The next morning we got quite an early start and began somewhat of a marathon day by heading first to Swindon where my Great-Grandparents are buried and my mother spent 6 months during her childhood. We spent a few hours visiting an old friend of my grandmother’s before finding the gravesite and visiting a few landmarks with my mother. It was interesting to get to see a few of these places and get a bit of a window into the family’s past. Lots of things had changed since she was last there though, but she was able to find most of the locations she could remember.

Once we’d finished up there we headed on to Cornwall, again giving us a bit of scale we managed to cross a big chunk of southern England in all of 3 hours going from Swindon to Looe. This was also Tristan’s introduction to REALLY narrow English roads. We’d done a few narrow semi scary ones in the New Forest etc, but the final approach to Looe was a whole lot of the single lanes with massive hedges creating a canyon effect. We inadvertently took a B road approach which was a number of these narrow sections then a sudden dive down into a river canyon along narrow switchbacks before suddenly popping out onto a busy street filled with pedestrians and tourist traffic. Scary to get used to.

Looe itself is an ancient fishing port and center for the smuggling trade. It’s actually two little towns linked by a medieval bridge. In modern times it’s of course now relying as much on tourism as fishing (including fishing trips for tourists.) Our B&B turned out to be a beautiful old Georgian three story directly overlooking the tidal river that flows between the two halves. The joy of things being that this is of course an ancient town which in our modern world can easily be summed up by: lack of parking. We quickly unloaded the cases and had to transfer over to a car park about a 5-10 minute walk (dependent on busyness) from the place. Even a large number of the residents on this side of the river have to use the big lot but I expect they get a substantial discount. The B&B itself was quite nice and before long we were ensconced on the veranda with a drink poured enjoying the view, or as the host put it: “Watching nothing happen.”

Eventually we roused ourselves and went for a long walk round the town following the host’s advice and heading well down the restaurant row before we stopped at what turned out to be a quite good Thai place. Not spicey enough for my tastes (unsurprising in tame taste bud Britain) but lovely flavours. The couple that own it are an English man and his Thai wife, they run the restaurant most of the year then take off for Thailand in the winter. Can’t say I disagree with that choice of life. After a nice dinner we headed down to the shore of the channel again and walked along the waterfront and took some great photos. I particularly enjoyed a family of tourists playing around with a basketball at the beachfront hoop who were absolutely the most terrible players I’ve ever seen outside of a first grade class back home. I’m guessing their hotel had a ball and they went down for some fun but I’ve never seen so many creatively wrong ways to throw at the hoop.

We ended up finishing the night back on our side of the river at a pub called the Jolly Sailor which has apparently in been in operation since sometime around 1516. It’s one of the local’s pubs and in fact on the night in question it was local music night. A bunch of locals had brought down a wide variety of instruments and were playing their hearts out in turn. When we first arrived a quite talented man was playing irish flute with accompaniment. Despite the rather varying skill level of the rest of the musicians we would have liked to listen, sadly the only table available was near a table of germans who felt the need to talk incredibly loudly so you couldn’t hear a damned thing over them. We ended up giving up and moving to the farthest end of the bar.  It was a pretty neat place, though of course my father smacked his head more than once on the low hanging beams that looked like ship lumber.

A bit later we returned to the B&B to find out the Cornish family friends had called the place to ask if we wanted to head out on a beach day with them the following morning. After a quick phone call we agreed to get an early start and join up with them to head out early. Thankfully our host was able to get our breakfast going early (this turned to be kind of unnecessary in the end as they weren’t really ready to go until long after we got there.) We ended up caravanning with them down to a gorgeous beach on the north coast that was absolutely swarmed with people. The Cornish coast is so rugged that the beaches tend to be smaller but deeper, apparently this one called Penzeath is often completely covered at high spring tide. After a ridiculously elaborate and tasty lunch round the back of the car we basked in an incredibly un-England sun for a while then dove into the cold waves. Between the swimming, sunning and everything else we ended up staying until long after most other people had left. We even grabbed a wood-fired pizza before a walk along the coast to finish the day. I absolutely understand why smuggling was (and maybe is) big business along the coast here. I keep saying rugged but it really is the best descriptor for it, notches and caves everywhere, long narrow inlets with high cliffs to keep out prying eyes.

We’ve thus far avoided driving much at night but we got an… interesting introduction to it. One of the A-roads we needed to take back was closed for works. We took the detour to start, but soon our friend took a winding garden road to bypass the bypass. Probably one of the scarier trips I’ve ever taken. Quite black everywhere, 7 foot wide road with other locals having the same idea in either direction. One particularly fun moment was a bridge labelled “weak bridge” that was apparently only 6 feet wide and had steel bars to keep you away from the weaker sides. My father isn’t really fantastic yet at the gear changes heading uphill so once or twice we fell behind and we became worried we’d lose our guide. I can’t imagine what we would have done since none of the turn offs were marked and it would have been a matter of wandering round single lane roads until we stumbled out onto a marked A road probably. Thankfully we eventually popped out onto a proper road and we waved goodbye to them at a place I knew and I navigated dad home in one piece. A quick drink and it was bedtime

It was time for a bit of a lie in the next morning so we slept in until *gasp* 8:45 before eventually heading out on a wandering trip to the ancestral home of my grandfather’s family in Fowey (pronounced Foye.) Along the way we stopped at the ruins of a 13^th century castle with fantastic views. It’s apparently a favourite picnic spot and you can see why. It’s fantastically sited on a spire hill with a near 360 view that would only have better in the days when the trees would have been cleared for field of fire. After enjoying the view and exploring the castle we headed on to Fowey. Fowey was another interesting reminder of how non-hilly Winnipeg is as we had to go down at at least a 30 degree slope for a 15 minute walk or so. It’s a beautiful little town (I definitely prefer Looe though) with a number of touristy shops and restaurants and a bay full of sailboats. We checked out the shops and had a lunch Cornish pasty (amazing) sitting by the sea. It another lovely relaxing day but we’re hoping to perhaps go a bit farther tomorrow.

Tonight ended up being quite the experience as we went back to the Jolly Sailor for Sea Shanty night and spent 2 hours and a few ciders/beers singing along with the “Miner Quay” group. These guys knew their stuff and took us through any number of old tyme type chanties while explaining a lot of the history behind many of them. The ancient pub combined with the singing made for a quite special evening, especially with the help of the mega-powerful local cider.

European Adventure: London Calling

I must admit, it was very nice for a change to not have to be up at the absolute crack of dawn for a flight. My flight out wasn’t until 4:15pm and the first flight was to Montreal so there was no need to worry much about the line ups. Mom and Dad dropped me off then went off home to almost immediately turn around to catch their Iceland Express flight later on. Interestingly Iceland Express apparently leased the iron maiden tour plane when restarting the Winnipeg-Rejkjavik run and Iron Maiden’s lead singer actually pilots some of the runs since he’s qualified to do so. Hopefully they get him on the flight back and they can request Run to the Hills as they fly over the Reykyanes Ridge. I ran into a few mild delays due to some thunderstorm-power outages in Montreal and the resulting delays from us missing our slot in the busy London-Heathrow air traffic corridors.

Regardless, the flight was otherwise great. Had my usual problems in managing to sleep, but it wasn’t from lack of space. The cabin was laid out in a 2-3-2 pattern for economy and out entire section of the cabin had no one in the middle 3 seats. The attendant let me move over to have a row to myself and I was quickly curled up watching Rango and a few other movies as the night wore on. London appeared below  around 10am and we were beginning the 18 mile hike to customs soon after. Thankfully my travel lady’s recommendation to have a firm departure paid off and after a quick query about my plans to leave from Rome I was waved through.

I loved every little bit of my exposure to England, few views over the edge as we popped out above ground at points. The anglophile nerd in me thinking “Oh that looks like Privet Drive” or “That looks like something out of Eastenders or Corrie St.” As we got closer I caught a few glimpses of skyline in the distance recognizable from one of the many British shows I watch. My enthusiasm level for finally actually having made it here was skyrocketing.

The hotel we were booked into turned out to be incredibly convenient, located right on the Piccadilly tube line it only took about 30 mins from platform to platform and soon after popping out of the Earl’s Court  station I was in the lobby. So ended the easy part of day one though as the hotel didn’t have the room ready and in fact didn’t have it ready until 2 hours later after I’d done a walk of the area and found a scotch egg in a deli. By this point I’d been awake something like 26 hours so I wasn’t incredibly impressed. I was at that lovely level of tiredness where your emotions are a total roller coaster and your mood swings like a bipolar off her meds. My earlier excitement had faded completely and I was wishing my flight had been later. Sentiments only compounded when I finally got to go up to the room and found it was not the requested triple but a simple double of tiny proportions. It turns out the single bed went into the already tiny room and had been removed for some renos. I ended up on the bench in the lobby again for another 20 minutes while they rectified things.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to Europe before, I’m well aware that hotel rooms over here are generally tiny by comparison. This one is just particularly funny because they bathroom is incredibly spacious, honestly it’s probably the size of half of the rest of the room and has a full bathtub. I settled in to wait for mom and dad, napping lightly until the phone rang from the lobby announcing their arrival. They’d had a few larger delays and some issues getting luggage so they ended up arriving later than expected. Our lack of love for the hotel has only grown though, broken ice machine, paid internet (in Europe, really?) and various other issues. Once they arrived we all settled in for a short nap to rest up a bit and ease the transition over to this timezone.

We made sure to set an alarm though so we didn’t sleep until 4am and wake up starving. Of course, being London it had since started to rain so it was a wet walk we went for to explore our surrounding neighbourhood. Food finally beckoned for us as we tried to figured out what time it was for us internally and we found a great pub on Glouchester Road and went for some solidly stereotypically English food with a Steak and Ale Pie, Bangers and Mash and Fish and Chips. Absolutely fantastic grub, and given the current exchange rate nowhere near the horror show price wise I’d been lead to expect. Dinner for 3 with a beer or cider each for around $55 cdn, can’t really beat that.

Tuesday was an incredibly full day as we went out for our first real journeys into the city. Being that close to the tube line has been great though, a quick run took us to Leicester Square where we ended up picking up some tickets to Agatha Christie’s the Mousetrap which has been on stage here for 59 years. Mom has wanted to see it forever apparently but hasn’t had the chance until now. We ended up doing quite the walking tour after that though and headed to Piccadilly Circus since Leicester square was mostly closed off for pre-olympics renovations.

I found things very strange round this part of London. Absolutely gorgeous buildings all around extending into the distance on narrow streets, so surreal that both my mother and I felt like it should be a matte painting. At the same time, there are very sad things mostly related to global commercialization that depressed me intensely. Oddly enough this wasn’t McDonalds who actually seem to have tasteful signs a lot of the time. TGIFridays was the biggest offender to me, a location that looked like any other one with the stupid canopy but surrounded by all these gorgeous buildings. Blech.

Next we went over to Covent Garden and looked around the markets (strong resemblance to St. Jacobs and Sandy’s for me) The walking adventure continued with a trip down The Strand, spotting famous names from books and tv shows and generally just being a giant nerd in my own mind. We ended up walking down to Trafalgar Square and enjoying the first real sun of the day as we looked round. We’ll likely end up back there to go to the National Gallery.

We ended up deciding to hit Westminster as well as it was still early and headed off in that direction soon after. The recent scandal with Rupert Murdoch et al meant that the PM was recalled from a diplomatic trip and as we walked down Whitehall there were a vast number of media camped out waiting for Cameron’s return. It was really fantastic to finally see Westminster Abbey and the Parliament Buildings as I’ve always really loved those buildings but obviously have never seen them in person. The tour of the abbey was absolutely fantastic and unlike some others I could mention included the audio tour as part of the cost to enter. So many different tombs with such incredibly carvings and engravings in marble or other materials. We spent easily a few hours  exploring the various niches of the abbey, learning the history and enjoying Jeremy Irons’ voice leading us around with the stories behind the monuments.

After leaving the abbey we actually started randomly searching for somewhere to eat, but before we realized it we’d gone partway to Buckingham Palace and decided to go the rest of the way. It turned out there was some sort of massive event going on, a large number of ambassadorial cars were parking and massive lines of people in various formal garbs and giant floppy hats were filing through security into the palace. Architecturally the Palace is really quite boring on the exterior but the gates and fittings are really gorgeous, and it was quite neat to see a big event in progress.

By this point our poor feet were getting quite sore and we were quite honestly starving. Again we set off in a random direction looking for somewhere to eat, making quite a wrong decision as we headed down into Knightsbridge and found nothing but high end shops and a few quite pricey restaurants. We got all the way to Harrods before we actually ended up finding somewhere that looked promising. Of course, I can’t skip the really exciting part of the day though. Walking across the street with dad I heard a sudden squeal and crunch from behind me then something bouncing along the road. Mom was either looking the wrong way or not looking at all and was clipped by a car’s wing mirror. She was pretty lucky not to be sent to hospital or worse and managed to only get a sliced open arm that was solved by a bandaid. She gave us quite a scare, something about coming to England is quite the jinx it seems, we’re just thankful it wasn’t more serious though I’m sure she scared the hell out of the driver.

The next morning Dad finally found a staff member to do something about our issues and we ended up moving to a room in the basement. This one hasn’t been perfect either since there’s a crew excavating just outside our window, but at least they don’t start until after 8 each morning and we can lower the temperature to something that can actually keep us from feeling like we have a fever. That morning we ended up getting a slower start that morning because of the move and it was actually almost lunchtime before we got to our destination for the day, the Tower of London. It actually took me a while to realize that though until I smelled Fish and Chips while waiting in line.

The tower itself was so much bigger than I expected, fully four different audio tours of various sections, some focused on the violent history of the tower, execution and such with others focused on the Crown Jewels or other things. The tower itself is really impressive with a mishmash of architectural styles in place from various construction projects and restorations. Despite that, it definitely has a sad vibe pervading it. Whether it’s intellectually knowing the history of the place or seeing the preserved graffiti of various prisoners who spent years locked within its walls there is a darkness there. It was a fascinating trip and despite the late start we managed to see almost everything on offer. The jewels were of course impressive (with an impressively long queue) but the armoury presentations were just as interesting as we moved through the other exhibits. We ended up staying there right til it closed. Of course we also took the chance to take a few shots of Tower Bridge and walked along underneath, buying some nuts from a street vendor and enjoying the view of the Thames.

The next morning we ended up heading to one of the places that had been on my destination list for a long time: The British Museum. I continue to be in awe of the London Tube, every bit as good as the New York system (and with much more pleasant clientele) as it got us there within about 30 mins with a short walk included. The building was impressive, and while I could list off a ton of things that we managed to see I’ll simply give you the highlights. The Parthenon marbles are of course what springs immediately to mind when you think of the museum, and having written a paper about them for my Art History course two summers back I wanted to have a good look. They’re every bit as amazing as I expected, but having written the paper I have to wonder just how much better they looked before the british “cleaning” scraped a ton of the surface layer off. I had to laugh at them saying there’s been precious little evidence for them previously being painted (evidence that they destroyed…) Their discussion of the controversy was equally disappointing making no mention of the other side of the argument most places in a really dishonest matter. On a more pleasant note I really enjoyed the Egyptian and Medieval sections as well, seeing the Rosetta Stone in person was quite neat though. More because of the history of the thing and what it has meant to understanding the culture than for its (still admittedly cool) looks.

After spending most of the day in the museum I think all our walking the previous few days had caught up with us. We were wiped, it was (unsurprisingly) raining again and we felt the need to go back to the hotel for a bit of a rest before dinner and another walk. Nearly every night the weather later in the evening has been quite pleasant and made for nice walks around the city. That night we went for a walk north to Kensington High Street and near the palace, (new home of Will and Kate I believe) checking out a few swanky looking restaurants. One of them even had a pepto pink Bentley Continental GT out front… revolting waste of a neat car.

As per usual the night ended with a pint of cider in a nice pub. My waitress turned out to be an auburn haired irish last with a charming lilt and pale skin. I was instantly smitten and wished I was better looking and living in London. Sigh…