A Day in Edinburgh

We had a lovely first evening in Edinburgh.  The sun was shining and Nicola had booked a table at her favourite local, The Bailie, so we could meet two of her friends there for dinner.  After the meal, we adjourned to another place just down the road to enjoy dome local music – a great informal group of musicians on fiddle, banjo, guitar and accordion.  Wonderful toe-tapping stuff – but we were both pretty weary so we finally headed home just after 10pm.  In daylight.

Nicola had to go to work today, so we planned to spend the day just sightseeing around the city.  There were still a few things Grant needed to email to London so we had a quiet morning in the flat taking care of all of that.  Today is not so nice s yesterday, with the sunshine and the rain vying for supremacy; at some stages we were getting both at once.  While we are very keen to see Edinburgh Castle, we had used up all of our morning doing admin tasks and we don’t want our castle visit rushed.  So today we walked into the city centre and just enjoyed the wonderful stone building whenever we could safely put our hoods back.  We also took Nicola’s advice and climbed the Sir Walter Scott Memorial Tower.  This gave us spectacular views out over the city, and even better we managed to time it so that the sky was quite clear.  The climb up the 287 spiral steps was well worth it.

The Scott Memorial

One of the windows on the first level

Edinburgh Castle from the Memorial

Proof that Edinburgh is by the sea

We made our way slowly back to the flat, taking a different route and settled down to rest and make the most of a television set by watching some of Wimbledon for the rest of the afternoon, followed by a quiet evening in.

The Lake District

This has been a pretty full-on week.  It started with Siobhan's interview at Collingwood College in Camberley, Surrey - a two hour drive from Bristol.  Siobhan set off at 7.30, even though she was not expected at the school until 10.45, as she was awake early and also hoped to talk the school into letting her print some bits and pieces for the class she was to teach.  She had managed to print out the application form the night before on Tony's printer - 45 minutes to print a nine page Word document so trying to print the resources was too daunting.

The receptionist at the school was fantastic; the resource printing was completed well before 10.45.  The 4.5 hour interview process was unlike anything Siobhan has come across before.  The HOD met her at 10.45 and gave her a short campus tour.  Interval was spent in the staff room chatting to some of the other teachers.  While the HOD had already warned her that the class she was to teach weren’t angels, another teacher’s request that she not judge the school by the class she was to teach set the alarm bells ringing!  After interval she went to observe a junior class before being taken to teach the Year 9’s.  They certainly weren’t angels – but they weren’t demons either and it all went well.  So well in fact that the principal offered Siobhan the job during the formal interview after lunch.  Siobhan was hugely relieved, but said she would be unable to accept on the spot.  After all, if Grant didn’t get his job all bets were off!

The result of the digging

Siobhan made a detour to Addlestone (only about half an hour from Camberley) to say hi to Mark, Paula and the girls and collect our post, then hit the road to return to Bristol, where Grant had been working hard in the garden.  While Siobhan was on the road, Grant got a call offering him his job in London so now we both have jobs!  Grant is under a little bit more pressure, as he will have to start within the fortnight while Siobhan’s job doesn’t start until September.

The job offers have changed the shape of the next couple of weeks in terms of our plans.  We shifted our departure to the Lake District to Tuesday, as we thought that having a whole day to explore would be good.  So on Tuesday we packed up our car after lunch and said our farewells to Tony and Ingrid.  We are so grateful for their kindness in letting us use their house in their absence.

The drive to the Lake District (or Windermere where we had booked a B & B) was expected to take about four hours.  In fact, due to an accident on the motorway, it ended up taking us over six hours so we were very glad we had decided to stay an extra night.  The B & B host was very welcoming and not at all put out by our late arrival.  She had all sorts of maps and things handy for us as well as advice on activities for the following day.  We put our bags into our (very small) room and went in search of some dinner.  We found a pub and eventually managed to choose a meal that actually was available (most of the menu wasn’t!).  After all our driving we were pretty weary so we didn’t hang around long.

The next day dawned a bit grey and drizzly so, fortified with a delicious cooked breakfast, we spent the morning answering emails and sorting things that Grant’s employer-to-be needed.  By midday the rain had become intermittent so we took the car down to Bowness (instead of walking) and organised a boat trip up Lake Windermere to Ambleside.  The lake is so pretty and we enjoyed the boat trip.  The rain even held off enough for us to enjoy some of the trip on the top deck.  The water level of the lake is ridiculously high though – the trees at the shoreline are under water and some of the boat houses look suitable only for submarines!  Grant spoke to the boat staff about it and apparently only 48 hours before, the lakeside dock we had used to board the boat had been under six inches of water.  We expect it is again by now, but more on that later.

Rowing boats on the shore at Ambleside

Ambleside is a lovely village, and quite a good size.  The boat captain had told us it was the anorak capital of the world, and it certainly has more sporting/climbing goods stores (of the Kathmandu type) than we have ever seen in one place.  We are told the hills around this area have some of the loveliest tramping in England.  We can’t be sure, as we aren’t yet convinced there actually are any hills.  No. that’s not quite true, as we did walk up a small hill on the outskirts of Ambleside to see some lovely waterfalls before catching our return boat to Bowness.

It had been a very pleasant afternoon, and we decided to round out our evening by have a nice dinner out to celebrate our respective jobs.  We found a nice-looking Chines restaurant and enjoyed a delicious banquet (literally) involving quite a lot of duck.  Yum.

We spent the evening looking up potential places to live, that will make train travel easy for Grant and driving to Camberley easy for Siobhan.  Woking is looking like our best bet, and has the added advantage of being only 10- 15 minutes’ drive from Mark and Paula too.  Unfortunately, we can’t look at anything until we return to Surrey so it is still all just speculation. 

Siobhan woke first the next day, and was excited to note that while the sky was not actually blue, it looked far more promising than the previous day had been.  Sadly, in the time it took to shower the weather closed in again.  Today we were heading north to Edinburgh to visit our friend Nicola, but we (or at least Siobhan) really wanted to visit Beatrix Potter’s home, Hilltop, near Hawkshead.  This was on the other side of the lake, so after another great breakfast we bid our host farewell and loaded to car during a brief dry spell.  We then drove down to the car ferry about halfway down Lake Windermere.  This was great, hardly any waiting required and just £4.30 for the car including both of us. 

Flopsy and Mopsy (Cottontail was out of range)

The drive to Hilltop didn’t take too long, but the attraction was very busy; there is timed entry to this National Trust Property, mostly because of the difficulty of providing sufficient parking.  We had about thirty minutes to wait for our time, so we went to a local teashop.  This had a lovely lawn out the back where three brown bunnies were hard at work keeping the grass short.  Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, of course!  Sadly our camera doesn’t zoom in well and these wild bunnies certainly didn’t want us getting too close.

It was raining lightly again as we walked up to the actual farmhouse and Grant had left his coat in the car.  He decided it wasn’t too bad, and we got into the house quite quickly after walking through a very pretty cottage garden.  The house has no electricity, and is very dark; Beatrix Potter insisted that the house be displayed as it would have been used and she would never have wasted oil or even candles to produce additional light during the day.  She made do with the daylight, and so must we.  That might be all right on sunny days but we found it quite gloomy.  It is a lovely place though, and Siobhan particularly enjoyed flicking through the copies of Beatrix Potter’s books that were scattered throughout the house.  The Tale of Samuel Whiskers was particular fun as many of the sketches are of the house itself – the upstairs landing and the kitchen especially.  Great fun!

The heavens really opened while we were in the house, so we made slow work of our visit so Grant wouldn’t get too soaked as we returned to our car.  Luckily our ploy worked and we got underway for the rest of our journey.

We saw some truly beautiful views as we made our way north along the shores along the shores of Esthwaite Water, Thirlmere and Derwent Water.  By the time we made the village of Keswick, however, and headed east to the M6, the rain had truly set in.  It was torrential, and stayed that way for over an hour – until we crossed into Scotland, when it cleared nicely.  Not what we were led to expect really.  We reached Nicola’s place in Edinburgh at about 4.45.  She has the top floor flat in a lovely old stone building only 15 minutes’ walk from the city – great for sightseeing but a bit tricky for parking, so after unloading what we needed we drove further afield to park the car and settle in for our next adventure.

Sunshine in Scotland

Berkeley

Having arrived back in Bristol on Monday and got ourselves settled back in with groceries etc, Tuesday was a quiet stay-at-home day.  Siobhan baked some more bread and already seems to have the hang of it.  The book that she has been reading about bread must have helped so that she is learning from someone else’s mistakes rather than having to make them herself.  Siobhan made these great little buns so we had sliders for dinner on Tuesday night.  Sliders were big in the US for pub food – they are little burgers each being a different flavour.  Yum!

Jenner Museum

St Mary's church

On Wednesday we found a walk in “Walks Through History – Gloucestershire” that looked interesting.  It involved walking around the villages of Berkeley and Ham.  Berkeley was only about 30mins from where we are staying in Bristol and it had a public carpark not far from the centre of the village. Before setting out on our 6 mile walk, we thought that we had better steel ourselves with coffee.  It was very pleasant too.  That done, we first wandered past the Jenner museum.  This is where Edward Jenner set about discovering a vaccine for smallpox.  Out the back there remains a thatched hut where he used to treat the poor for free.  While we were too early in the day for it to be open, we spoke with one of the locals who told us a lot about it all anyway.

Our journey then continued past St Mary’s church which apparently dates back to Norman times.  It also was closed and looked as if it had seen better days.  Berkeley Castle was only just down the road, but rather than going inside it, we wandered through the fields next to it which provided a great view of the castle.  

Berkeley Castle

Edward II had something to do with this castle but we never got to the bottom of that as we didn’t go in.  England seems to be covered with these walkways and public footpaths that go across farmland.  They are great places to walk as it is so nice to be out in the countryside on a nice day.  Anyway, the walk across the farmland took us along the banks of the Avon river for quite a while.  Some of the fields must have been destined to become hay as the grass was at least knee-high as we wandered through.  When we left the banks of the Avon, we proceeded through some wheat fields.  This was harder going as we didn’t really want to walk through the wheat crop – but it had been planted right up to the hedge boundary (and, yes, this is all still public walkway).  We compromised by walking down the tractor tracks through the wheat.  We eventually emerged on to a lane and walked up the road into the village of Stone.

 

This is where the walk got a bit tricky.  We followed the instructions and went through the village green in Stone (slightly bigger than a back yard) and down another lane and into a bridal path.  To say that we might have been the first people to venture down the bridal path in a few years is an understatement.  It was so overgrown with blackberry and nettles that I doubt that anyone would have even used it for its intrinsic purpose and taken a horse down there.  We were both in shorts as well, and so there were a few encounters with the nettles despite our best dodging efforts.  Grant ventured down the path to see if it got better as we were supposed to take a turn in 20 metres.  While the turn was evident, the level of foliage was even higher so we abandoned that as a potential route.  That was pretty annoying as we now couldn’t follow the instructions to get to the deer park built by the 3rd Earl of Berkeley.  The iPhone map app came in handy here as at least we could work out where we needed to be at the end of the walk.  The app doesn’t show the public footpaths though, so we could either retrace our steps or walk back on the roads.  We chose the latter as at least it would be different.  We got to a point where we could see the deer park up on the hill and ended up walking parallel to the fence, about 100 metres away across more farmland.  The deer park had a high stone wall as a fence, so we didn’t fancy our chances crossing the farmland and then having to vault the fence.  We still got to see it anyway.

This then led us into the village of Ham.  Ham is home to the Salutation Inn which has just won the CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ales – like our NZ SOBA) award for Gloucestershire Pub of the Year – for the 4^th or 5^th year in a row.  It was very friendly and welcoming and they had a great range of real ales.  We had a great chat with the owners and a couple of locals while sampling some nice local ales.  Siobhan made friends with the pub cat who took Grant’s seat as soon as he got up to get another beer.  It was a welcome interlude and by the end of the session, Grant wasn’t complaining about the stinging nettles any more.

It wasn’t very far back up the road until we made it back to Berkeley and where we had left the car.  We’d had a really nice walk but decided that we would head back to Bristol rather than visit the Jenner museum or the Castle.

The rest of the week has been spent in a very relaxed state.  Siobhan got a call from one of her teaching agencies and has an interview on Monday.  This is not an ordinary interview – it is potentially going to take about 4 hours.  She has to prepare and take a lesson on linear equations for a class of 29 Year 9 kids.  The lesson goes for an hour.  If the school likes how she does with that, there is a proper interview with the principal etc later in the afternoon.  Exciting times, and Siobhan has put a lot of time into preparing a lesson for these kids – they had better appreciate it.  On Friday we went to the movies and saw “The Five Year Engagement”.  Don’t bother unless you really have nothing better to do.  We have also been for a few walks but the weather has been average and it has rained most days.














Today is Sunday and Tony & Ingrid get back from two weeks in Germany later today.  It will be good to see them and hear about their adventures. Tony & Ingrid are having some work done in their garden that starts tomorrow.  They are having a retaining wall rebuilt as it is in need of some maintenance.  Grant is going to help out with that while Siobhan goes to her interview on Monday and then on Wednesday we are going to head up to see Nicola in Edinburgh, stopping for a night in the Lake District on the way.  Off on another adventure soon!

A quiet weekend

First thing Friday morning we took the car in to get it looked at.  The place that we went to was very good and showed me how the exhaust pipe was completely rusted through and no longer attached to the muffler.  More money that we’d sooner spend on other things, but the car has been a great asset too, and allowed us to do our own thing.  After that Grant went with Mark and family out to help set up the weekend Brownie camp.  We got out there about midday and put up about six different tents.  While we dodged the very brief shower that came through, the wind was of Wellington proportions.  It made it very tricky to put up the tents, but we got there in the end.  Mark had to come back as he had to take a training session at the gym so Grant came back before all the Brownies started showing up.

Siobhan had not been idle during this time either and had called and visited a number of letting places looking for somewhere for us to live in the event that we become employed.  When Grant returned, we both headed off to look at a place that is not too far from one of the main train lines out of Waterloo.  It was a newly built or renovated 3-storey house.  Each of the first two floors has 2 two-bedroom flats and there are 2 one-bedroom flats on the top floor.  It was so nicely appointed and the workmanship looked superb.  It was very exciting, but that was quickly tempered by finding out how much we need to pay up-front for the bond, fees, the first month’s rent in advance etc.  Still, quite keen for the jobs to come to fruition and to have a place of our own.  It would be nice to properly unpack the suitcases and put them away.

The weekend then passed uneventfully.  We called a number of the pubs around the Addlestone area on Friday night to see if they would be playing the All Blacks game on Saturday morning (our time).  The pubs either didn’t have Sky or weren’t opening at 8.30am.  Nick came to the rescue though and we were able to use his Sky-Go to watch it on the laptop.  It was very stressful with the ABs only just scraping home.  We went for a couple of walks and got the ingredients for a roast dinner for Sunday night for when Mark & family got back from camp.  We had a nice roast beef and Yorkshire pudding followed by fruit salad & ice cream.  The campers seemed pretty appreciative and very weary.

On Monday we got packed up (again) and headed back to Bristol.  Ingrid's roses along the front of their house are in full bloom and look gorgeous.

A change of plans

On Wednesday we thought that we would visit some more National Trust properties.  We ventured north into Gloucestershire to Newark Park.  Once again, this had an interesting history.  It was originally built as a hunting lodge for one of Henry VIII’s mates.  Subsequently it was bought by another family who doubled the size of it by building a duplicate of the original building and joined them together to form an “H”.  Another family got hold of it after that and filled in the gaps so that now it is a squarish rather grand house.  After that, it fell into a state of disrepair until rescued by a Texan architect.  Sadly, he passed away a few years ago, but not before he had significantly restored the property. 

It has spectacular views over the surrounding countryside.  England continues to amaze us with its wide-open swathes of green in a country not much bigger than NZ but with many more times the population.  We started a tour of the garden but quickly got bored with that.  There seems a little bit of the garden that the Texan has restored.  The rest of the garden tour required people to use their imagination more and guess what it might have looked like.  We went inside and took a tour of the house instead.  A number of changes have been made over the years and it was quite interesting. It had nothing like the grandeur that we have seen in other places though.  As a result we didn’t stay long.














From there we decided to have a look at another property – the Westbury Court Garden.  It is the only restored Dutch water garden in England.  It was a very pleasant setting for our picnic lunch.  The gardens were very nice – it really makes you appreciate how big a job it must be trying to maintain these on entry fees and donations.  It also had one of the oldest holm oaks in England (if not the oldest one).  It looked like the inspiration for the Whomping Willow in the Harry Potter books.














The day was still relatively young and we were a distance from Bristol when I had a brilliant idea.  I had heard of a brewery in Wales that had been recommended to me by a guy we met in Lostwithiel.  On looking it up on my phone I found that we were only 40 mins away from it.  Importantly, it also meant that we’d get to go to Wales (we haven’t been there yet), and through the Wye valley, and be heading back to Bristol too.  A convergence of good ideas.  So we headed off to the Kingstone Brewery.  On the way there two things happened.  First, the car started making lots of noise like it was a boy racer car.  The second thing was Grant’s phone rang.  He had an interview for a job in London at 12.30 on Thursday.  Unfazed, we carried on to the brewery and didn’t head back to Addlestone straight away.  The brewery was a small husband and wife operation but it looked to be very successful.  A few beers were sampled and we got a few to take home (along with some flour for bread making and home-made marmalade).

Back at Bristol we had dinner and packed up heading back to Addlestone to Mark’s place.  Siobhan had also contacted another teaching agency and arranged to meet them in London on Thursday too.  So we were both up and dressed in our finest catching the train into London on Thursday morning.  Both interviews went very well and so it is now a matter of waiting to see what they bring.

Wookey Hole

Having sat around for a couple of days, we decided that we had better go exploring again.  We set off to explore the Wookey Hole caves.  After driving through the Chew valley to get there, we reckon George Lucas must have been there sometime in the early ‘70’s.  Seems too much of a coincidence really!

 

It was another interesting drive – the beautiful country lanes and gorgeous cottages, spring green woods and rolling hills were lovely; idiots driving badly in the opposite direction were not.  We made it safely to the village of Wookey Hole and bought our tickets for the caves.  The cave visit is by tour only, and while the entry booth seemed pretty quiet there was quite a queue at the cave entrance.  The crowd wasn’t too bad once we went in as the cave chambers are pretty big; if only people could be a little more considerate so the guide didn’t have to shout to be heard it would have been better.

The caves themselves are really quite beautiful but the whole thing has been really commercialised with coloured lights and the theme of the Wookey Hole Witch which is a bit tacky really.  The later chambers were the best as the cheesy story is over – and gives way to actual cheese.  Truly, they cave-age the local cheddar in the caves and you can tell by the smell.  And the long shelves of mouldy rounds of cheese.  Yum.

After exiting the caves we sat in the valley and had our picnic lunch before trying to exit the complex.  Honestly, it was worse than a Las Vegas casino – there was a History of the Circus exhibit, a paper-making exhibit, a history of cave-diving exhibit, an indoor funfair, a hall of mirrors!  All we wanted to do was buy some cheese and get out of there, which was easier said than done.  We finally made it though, and while the cheese was a little expensive it is also very nice.

The drive home was reasonably uneventful (we are gradually realising that being nearly run off the tiny roads by hoons in big cars doesn’t count as an event in England) and we have spent the afternoon in domestic tasks.

Siobhan is discovering that when you aren’t working full-time, cooking actually becomes quite fun, and after the success of homemade flaky pastry (very rich) for the onion and feta tart the other night, she turned her hand to bread-making (thanks Fleur and Nick for the loan of the book “Dough”).  This first effort has actually turned out well, so she might try getting even more creative as the week goes on.  Certainly the weather forecast makes bread-making look quite appealing.

Back to Bristol in the rain...

On Friday we packed up and went back to Mark & Paula’s.  Nick had suggested a different public transport route back that avoided the city centre and saved us a few pounds.  When we arrived at Mark’s place, Callum & Caitlin were there preparing for their flight back to NZ.  Callum is Paula’s cousin and who we bought the car from.  They seemed to be pretty much sorted as they headed off to the airport.  Because the weather was such rubbish, we decided to get on the road not long after lunch and get to Bristol.  With the meetings on Thursday, unfortunately we weren’t able to get back to Bristol before Tony & Ingrid went to Germany for 2 weeks.  We made it safely to Bristol, although it was a long trip as traffic on a Friday afternoon anywhere around this country seems to be fraught. 

As it was late, we thought that we’d grab dinner at pub that is just around the corner from Tony & Ingrid’s.  The local pubs in England can be quite weird.  On entering this pub, there was a group of a dozen or so guys who had obviously come from work.  That is normal enough.  However, on asking whether we could get some dinner we were informed that we probably could if we could find a table that wasn’t set.  The landlady had set tables for those that had booked.  It really seemed that anyone who was not a local wasn’t really that welcome.  We ate and left – the food was ok though.  We wouldn’t go back there again.

Swans snoozing on the canal

Saturday got off to a slow start as when we woke we turned on the computer and listened to the Radio Sport commentary from NZ on the All Blacks v Ireland rugby test.  Having the ABs carry on from last year was a good start to the day, and having Wellington lad Julian Savea score a hat-trick on debut made it even better.  We then headed into town to go for a wander around the harbour area.  We had found a walk that looked nice in one of Tony & Ingrid’s books.  The walk was very enjoyable and made great use of the sunshine that we haven’t seen for a while.  We popped into a bar on the waterfront that was showing the women’s final from the French Open.  Watching Sharapova take the title was a pleasant way to break up our wanderings.  We had been watching the tennis with Nick & Fleur and it was good to get to see the first final.

Where Kate would eat in Bristol

Sunday was back to rainy drizzle and so we just hung around home.  We ventured out at about 2pm to go to one of the local pubs (and not the one from Friday night) to watch the Men’s tennis final.  That was quite enjoyable, with the staff and locals being a lot friendlier at this establishment.  The final got rained out though, which was probably quite good as Siobhan seemed to be getting quite restless, and I’d probably had enough beers for the afternoon anyway.  When we got home, Siobhan made a yummy red onion and feta tart for dinner.

We decided that Monday was going to be another quiet day too, as it was still raining.  We went into town for midday so that we could see the end of the Nadal v Djokovic match.  As I had wanted to see Federer win, I wasn’t really sure who I wanted to win.  In the end, it was pretty satisfying watching Nadal take a record seventh title.  You get the feeling that Djokovic will do the slam at some stage in his career – he is such a tenacious player.  After that we wandered around again.  We decided to go to the movies – the only thing that really grabbed our attention was The Angel’s Share.  It wasn’t on until 5.40pm so we got some lunch and went exploring in the rain.   

We found the St Mary Redcliffe church. Given that Bristol already has a cathedral, it is certainly blessed having both of these structures. St Mary’s was just as beautiful, if perhaps not quite as grand. Some of it dates back to Norman times – it was amazing.

We still had some time to kill so we grabbed a newspaper and took shelter from the rain – you guessed it – in a pub.  It started out as a very pleasant and quiet pursuit, but the pub started to fill up and get more raucous.  The reason for this was England’s first match in Euro 2012.  And it was against France, who seem to be the old foe, like NZ v Australia.  Some people asked if they could join us at our table, and it was cool to find out that one of them had just returned from 8 months in Wellington.  He had played cricket for the University club on Kelburn park.  Small world alright.  We had to leave part way through the first half which resulted in plenty of jostling for our seats.  We made it safely out of the pub though and off to the movies.  The film was quite enjoyable – set in Scotland so while it is in English, there are still bits that you can’t understand what they’re saying.  A good story and a warm place away from the rain.

Diamond Jubilee Weekend

Uncle Tony and Aunty Ingrid returned safely on Friday, and we spent Saturday with them hearing about their trip to Snowdonia.  It sounds lovely, and they had some beautiful photos.  We already had North Wales on our (very flexible) to see list, but who knows when we will be able to fit it in.

On Sunday we returned to Mark and Paula’s place to sort a few bits and pieces out before heading to London.  We had a great trip through, leaving Bristol about 9am and getting to Addlestone before 11am.  Mark and Paula took us along to their local garden centre (which is more like a farmlet really, and they have a pick-your-own berries section too) which was having a Jubilee “Hog Roast”.  This was great – it threatened to drizzle now and then but stayed mostly dry, and the spit roast pig in a bun (with apple sauce and stuffing) was delicious.  Siobhan and Emma also enjoyed sharing a bowl of fresh strawberries and cream.  Emma looked very beautiful after a visit to the face-painting stall, and also got to hold a lovely barn owl briefly. 

After the owl visit, Emma insisted that we had ice-cream – she told us that the garden centre had the best ice-cream.  Well, we won’t dispute that – we all enjoyed a very delicious ice-cream, and as an illustration of how tired Alice was, Mark got to enjoy all of his by himself.  This is apparently quite rare as Alice can usually hoover up one of these kiddy ice creams in record time.

It was a good thing that we had walked to this hog roast event, as after watching the Thames River Pageant on the TV, the day concluded with an equally delicious roast beef dinner at Sue’s house – thanks everyone for a lovely Jubilee Sunday.

On Monday morning we were off to Nick and Fleur’s place in Hampstead.  Since the Queen is celebrating 60 years on the throne, the British got an extra bank holiday tacked on to Queen’s Birthday weekend.  This made it an ideal time to visit as both Fleur and Nick had Monday and Tuesday off work.  Nick had Wednesday too, and on both Wednesday and Thursday Grant was meeting with people about job prospects. 

We got going a bit later than planned, but made it across London on the train easily and reached the flat in Hampstead by lunchtime.  The plan for the evening was to meet some other friends at the pub before going to Golder’s Green to watch Jubilee fireworks and the lighting of a special beacon.  The weather had completely cleared, although it was quite chilly, so the walk across the Heath was lovely.  The fireworks were not until about 9.45 (when it would be dark enough!) but they were great.  We had a superb view, and were so close that many of them seemed to be going off right above us.  Sadly the beacon malfunctioned, and after several failed countdowns they instead released a small floating light as a substitute.  We got the best beacon possible on our walk home though – a glorious full moon.

On Tuesday, the final Jubilee event was the Queen’s carriage procession from Westminster along the Mall to Buckingham Palace.  We had not originally planned to try seeing this (we are not overly fond of crowds), but it was to now include the air force fly-over that had had to be cancelled on Sunday due to bad weather.   Nick persuaded us to head into the city after all, and we made a morning of it, running some errands before getting close to the Mall just before 1pm.  Her Majesty was due to ride her carriage at around 3pm – but already there was no getting close enough to actually see her.  We had left our run too late.  So we found a pub that had the procession showing on the big screen (on the ground floor of New Zealand House in fact), and settled in for a couple of hours.  We still wanted to see that fly-over.  It proved to be worth the wait.  We headed out into Trafalgar Square a few minutes before the planes were due.  It wasn’t raining too badly and we had our coats.  The first three planes were war planes, and quite neat.  The next formation was led by a Lancaster bomber – it was an impressive sight.  Finally a perfect formation of the Red Arrow jets went over, with their jet streams of red, white and blue.  It was a beautiful tribute, and so cool to see how many people had turned out in (let’s face it) pretty poor weather to celebrate with their Queen.  We headed home via Fortnum & Mason’s – a gorgeous emporium – and got home again without getting too soaked.

Fleur had to go to work on Wednesday but Nick took us to see some of the sights.  We caught the overground train through to Greenwich which is where some of the Olympics will be held.  We saw the gymnastics stadium and the swimming venue from the outside.  We then headed down to the Thames, and walked under it through the pedestrian tunnel.  This brought us out by the old Royal Naval College.  It was also the site of one of Henry VIII’s palaces.  The Royal Naval College was originally built as a place for the old and infirm sailors who had finished their naval service.  Over the years its use has changed with it more recently being used as the training college for all officers above sub-lieutenant.

Apart from being a cool old stone building, it also houses the Painted Hall.  This is England’s Sistine Chapel, painted by James Thornhill, an English artist.  It is a huge hall with massive paintings on the ceilings and walls of the different spaces.

After this we headed up the hill towards the Greenwich museum where the time ball and the meridian line are.  On the way up the hill we went past where the Olympic equestrian events are going to be held.  The show-jumping arena was well on its way to being finished, although it is probably good that they have a month or so to get it finished.  We got to see the time ball and the meridian line, but didn’t go into the museum as we were running out of time as we had arranged to meet Fleur for lunch.  We headed back to Canary Wharf and rescued Fleur from work and had sushi.  After we had lunch, we then travelled to Austin Friars so that I could meet up with a recruitment consultant.  He had helped both Nick and Fleur find work when they came to the UK.  It was good talking to him and he had a few suggestions that I’m sure will be helpful.

Meanwhile, Nick had been thinking about the current recruitment process that his work was currently in the middle of undertaking, and whether there might have been a role there that would interest me.  We discussed this a bit, and Nick suggested that it would be a good idea for me to meet another of his colleagues to give me a better appreciation for what they do.  Fleur had also been busy arranging for Siobhan to meet a friend of hers who is head of Maths in a school in London.  So Thursday was spent going in to the city centre for Grant to meet Nick and his colleague and then Siobhan meeting Fleur’s friend in Camden town on the way home to Nick & Fleur’s.  We were then allowed to cook dinner for them – a real token given all of the things that Nick & Fleur arranged for us.

Bathtime

The temperature finally dropped a little – enough for us to splurge a bit and try out the Thermal Baths in Bath.  We miss our spa pool…

We decided we wanted to check out their Twilight Package, which involved a three-hour session in the pool complex and included a main course each at their café, plus the use of towel, robe and slippers.  We arrived in Bath a little before 4pm and did some more sightseeing before going in to the baths.  It really is a very beautiful town (although we were quite surprised, during a search for public loos, that the park had a £1.20 entry fee).

We finally started our spa adventure just before 5pm.  This meant we could soak in the pools for a while before eating at a civilised time and then warming back up in the water.  The facilities are pretty impressive; there are two large heated pools, one downstairs and one on the roof, plus a steam room with four different aromatherapy steam capsules.  We started with the roof top pool which had lovely views across the roofs of Bath in one direction, and out across the hills the other way.  The pool was very lovely, not too crowded, but it was ‘heated’ rather than ‘hot’.  Too warm for swimming, but not really soaking temperature – or not for us anyway.  It was still very relaxing, so we stayed for a while to enjoy the view before heading down to the steam rooms.

This was a whole new experience.  We had chilled down a little coming down the stairs from the pool, and the main area of the steam room was toasty warm.  We decided to check out the red capsule first.  A note on the ‘capsules’ – these were round glass rooms with a stone bench all the way around the inside.  Under the bench were lights and steam pipes that released scented steam into the capsule.  There was a notice outside in the corridor that said which colour light had which fragrance but we forgot to look before going in.

Right. Red capsule.  We opened the door and stepped in.  Siobhan nearly had a panic attack.  It must have been close to 50°C and 100% humidity – it felt like we were not breathing because our lungs didn’t actually register the air going in.  We sat down on the (hot) benches and gradually adjusted.  As Siobhan noted later, we must have been breathing some actual air because we didn’t pass out.

We only spent a few minutes in each capsule, rinsing of under a huge ‘rainforest’ shower in the centre between each capsule.  It really was something completely different, and the different scents were all lovely (for the record, red was sandalwood, green was eucalyptus and mint, purple was frankincense, and we can’t remember what the blue one was!).

From here, we went down to the basement pool, which was essentially like the rooftop one but without the view.  It turns out there is a properly hot pool in the complex but you can only use it if you are getting one of their (exorbitantly expensive) spa treatments.  Never mind.

Dinner was quite yummy – and quite surreal.  All the diners (including ourselves) were in the white robes supplied by the spa.  The tables and chairs were white plastic, the walls were painted white.  It felt like something out of a science fiction film.  It was also a little chilly as they had a couple of windows open and we were still in damp togs.  It did mean the water in the rooftop pool felt lovely and warm when we returned to it.

We finished off our evening with a return to the steam room to get fully warmed up before going home.

River Cottage

As fans of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “River Cottage” series’, we did a little research and found that the original River Cottage Canteen (the first of the cafes associated with River Cottage) was in Axminster, about one and a half hours drive from Bristol.  We decided that would be an easy day trip, so we hopped into the car and hit the M5 heading south.  It was a surprisingly easy drive, although we once more found ourselves a bit shocked by the price of petrol.  We only have a little car (1.5 litre engine), but filling it costs over $150 NZ.  Luckily the car seems to be pretty economical and we don’t have to fill it too often.

The Canteen is, somewhat surprisingly, right in the middle of Axminster.  We had expected it to be out wherever the River Cottage farm is – possibly by a river or a cottage even.  But no, it is really just a café.  A nice one, and with a great atmosphere, but the service left something to be desired.  We got a warm welcome, and a waitress came to us promptly to take our order.  Sadly though something went amiss from here and it was about 20 minutes before Grant’s starter came (bread and hummus dips, not exactly a tricky one), and nearly an hour before our main dishes arrived.  Once the food did come, it was absolutely delicious so overall the experience was fun.  

After lunch we had a little wander about the village, since we couldn't find the actual River Cottage farm, and had a long conversation with the woman who runs the information centre.  She clearly loves the South West!

Our drive home became a little stressful at times.  As a result of our chat with the tourism lady, we decided to take the scenic route home rather than the M5.  We believe our satnav decided to punish us for rejecting its first suggestion (the M5) by sending us down the most ridiculous little lanes and farm roads, when really all we had wanted was the A37 instead of the motorway.  We did make it home safely in the end, and that’s what really matters.

Thanks satnav