19 posts tagged “holiday diary”

It's been an odd sort of summer - disjointed and fractured - kids and Handsome all over the place! I got a bit tired and dispirited before my holidays, and I didn't feel like writing much, but now I am revitalised and raring to go again. We made it back from Lindisfarne at the end of Saint Cuthbert's way today, and I have some retrospective blogging to do, once I've downloaded the photos and deciphered the additions that Handsome wrote to the writing in my notebook (longhand blogging) and removed the bits I don't agree with.

To be honest, I'm amazed we made it back - I knew we could do the walking, but we had to use public transport to get to where we'd left the car, and that was far more of an adventure for us!

We were followed out of Wooler by yet more jets. I've seen (and heard) so many now that I can actually work out where they are in the sky from the noise - a completely useless skill but one that I'm strangely proud of. The first part of this morning was over a small hill completely covered in over-head-high ferns. We couldn't see our feet, we couldn't see the view and for large parts of it we couldn't even see each other. After fern hill however, we had a lot of road walking, then track walking, then more road, then more track - very hard on the feet.

We made St Cuthberts Cave by lunchtime - allegedly where the monks shoved his body overnight when they were taking him to Durham. It wasn't very exciting, frankly, a bit damp and cavish. The interesting bit, however, were the inscriptions on some of the surrounding rocks, which appeared to be memorials to the Leather family, presumably they owned the land? There were some other, slightly less erudite inscriptions as well...

After lunch Handsome made me walk through three fields of mad cows one after another (Sheep says to a cow 'aren't you worried about mad cow disease?' cow says 'why should I be worried? I'm a pig.') - and there were bulls in two of them and obstreperous calves which wouldn't move from the path in the third. We came that close to being annihilated although Handsome claims it's all in my imagination - that's just because he hasn't got one!

Just before the mad cow fields we saw Lindisfarne for the first time, and by the end of the mad cow fields we could see it clearly, although all my photographs have come out looking like grey lumps in grey mist... After that we just had a lot of meandering through bits of woodland (St Cuthbert was completely unable to go in a straight line from a to b) and mud until we reached Fenwick.

Tonight's B&B operate a free taxi service to the nearest pub-with-food, so that's where we are now. There don't appear to be any mints with the coffee, but there are dark chocolates!

Today was the day of the low flying jets: we must have seen about ten of them all somewhat closer than felt safe, although Handsome assures me that they have to be at least 500 feet above sea level - not very comforting when you're up a hill and looking down on them! The day was topped off by the one which directly overflew us as we approached Wooler this evening. I don't know how high it actually was, but it felt "not very" as it flew towards me right over Handsome's head. I ducked. So did he!

Today was a day full of pretty moors and hills. I really enjoyed the walking and the views - it was lovely to be finally off roads and doing 'proper' walking on hills. We had a couple of detours, firstly to some very unexciting waterfalls at Hethpool Linn (Hethpool itself was a very beautiful and very tiny Arts and Crafts village), however more excitingly, there were some countryside rangers repairing the bridge there which had been swept away by floods last Friday. The bridge was a good sixteen feet above the water...

The other detour was to Tom Tallon's Crag which was just like one of the rocky tors on Dartmoor. the view from the top was amazing, but unfortunately we didn't have long there before it started raining. After that we had showers for the rest of the afternoon, so we just kept walking with some occasional stops to put waterproofs on or off depending.

The route into Wooler is definitely torturous - you can actually see the town below, but the St Cuthberts Way runs away from Wooler, over the common (and another hill - really quite unnecessary at this point) before it meanders back in some kilometers later. Wooler looks interesting, but unfortunately we got here after most of it was shut - oh well.

We ate in an (recommended by the landlady in Kirk Yetholm) Italian restaurant tonight, very pleasant meal, but I've rarely been asked if everything was all right quite so many times!

Straight out after breakfast this morning, and then up Wideopen Hill (great name). it was a lovely walk up to the top of the hill, which is also the halfway point of the whole walk. Tremendous 360˚ views looking backwards (bloody Eildons are still there) and forwards (Cheviots tomorrow, and Handsome says we should be able to see the sea from the top). The walk felt really remote today, there was no-one else in sight on the hill, and little moving in the valleys below (apart from the occasional yellow digger). There were however, lots of sheep and millions of rabbits. The field at the bottom of Wideopen Hill was so under-burrowed (yes I just made that word up) that we felt as though it might collapse if we walked on the wrong bit. I have seldom seen so many rabbit burrows in such a small area.

Towards the end of the walk we had to cross a field of weird and spooky cows - they all looked at us in odd ways, and then commoonicated with each other behind our backs...

We failed to find anywhere to get money in the Yetholms (we had to pay cash last night and are temporarily bankrupt) so we dropped one of the ruksacs in the "shed" at tonight's B&B and took the bus into Kelso - it cost an absolutely astonishing £4.50 each, so we had to take out extra money to cover the fare...

Kelso was shut. It always is when I go there.

Lovely B&B tonight (the Mill House), we've got a suite with our own sitting room, and there's a big shared lounge downstairs as well. We ate at the Borders Hotel - really good food and beer (it's got a 2009 Camra pub of the year award...), we had a shoulder of lamb that was just melting off the bone. We spent dinner working out the blue-print for the documentary series that will allow us to stop working for long enough to walk some more long-distance footpaths. We don't think we'll be allowed to do it as CPD, so we need another route. Our plan is a documentary about a librarian who uses long-distance footpaths to join independent book-shops together - we've already managed to link Linlithgow, Biggar, Peebles and St Boswells. However, because Handsome can't leave a good idea alone, he added a motorbike (on footpaths?) so that the librarian could be in leather. Obviously he would need to drive said motorbike... And then we decided that there should be an animal (for that ahhhhh appeal) so we could give the cat a little leather flying helmet and goggles and strap him to the side of the bike in a wicker basket... it would be better if the cat started with L, purely for alliterative reasons - librarian, literature, leather, loneliness, long-distance and cat.

The weather forecast for today was absolutely dismal - torrential rain all day, 4mm predicted where we were walking - so we were sorted this morning, with all the waterproof gear ready. Over breakfast (salmon and cherry tomato fritata - very nice) we watched the continual precipitation from the rather large dining room window. Then, as if by magic, as soon as we stepped out of the doors, it stopped! We only needed the waterproofs for about ten minutes of today, and even then, we probably would have managed without.

We spent a lot of today zig-zagging around things - big houses (there's a diversion around Mont Teviot House that even diverts Dere Street - Roman roads are surely supposed to be in straight lines!), river crossings, and fields of corn and oats and barley. All very picturesque, if a bit yellow... We saw swans and a single cygnet on the Teviot - the cygnet was attempting to hide behind a parent, and first thing at Harestanes, before we'd even started properly, we saw three deer in the barley-field - just their heads showing - until I spoke and they ran for it. Handsome was trying to take a photo at the time...

Today we've been walking away from the Eildons (thankfully) and towards tomorrow's hills, which look a lot more lumpy (technical term) and a little forbidding, although that might be because that's where the rain is today. We were slower today - I'm paying for yesterday's speed, and I think for some of the road stretches, and I'm a bit stretched-sore in some muscles, but we still made it to the pub in Morebattle in plenty of time - fourish. The room's a lot more basic than last night, but the shower works so that's really all that matters.

Handsome got all grumpy because I hadn't paid him back for pinching half of his chocolate mint on Friday night (he really shouldn't leave these things unattended), so we had to work out an after-dinner-mint repayment scheme, luckily there were more mints with dinner tonight, because I'd already eaten two out of the three biscuits left in the room...

We took the bikes down to Windsor Great Park this morning (recommended by A, and definitely a good call). Managed to find several entrances, after we'd negotiated the appalling traffic through Windsor and Eton, but none of them had any sort of information point where we could grab a map - we had to go back into Windsor and find a tourist information office for that. And pay £1.

However, the park was a lovely place to cycle - beautiful views, very few people and broad paved paths. We had lunch in an overblown garden centre then cycled on to find a totem pole that A had mentioned. The only photos I took today, and none of them worked!

We did roughly 20k in a very leisurely way the drove back into Windsor town centre for a brief wander around the outside of the castle (good gargoyles) and through some of the twistier streets. Mouse found a Games Workshop and bought himself some skeletons, so he's a happy bunny.

Mouse has been very cuddly today, much as I love him, it's a bit overpowering to be constantly bear-hugged, jumped on, leant on and generally overpowered - but it's better than if he didn't. I just feel a little bowed...

A&J took us out to their favourite Indian restaurant tonight. Mouse, I think, tried a bit of everything and ended up with something very hot with prawns. He is complaining that he was misinformed, but actually think he secretly enjoyed it.

 

Today was our big day out in London - the train service from A&J's is regular and easy and only takes about thirty minutes, so we left straight after breakfast. Our plans were mostly vague with some specifics - Mouse wanted to see famous places as well as some of the statues in a book he's read recently; I wanted to see the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre; Handsome said he was happy just to wander. So wander we did.

We started at Hyde Park Corner, looked at the Gunner, went past Buck Pally and through St James park to Big Ben and Westminster. We crossed Westminster Bridge to the London Eye, but Handsome and Mouse decided that they didn't really want to go on it. It's my idea of hell being shut in a small glass box and then hoisted up into the air, but I was quite happy to sit and have a cup of coffee if they wanted to experience hell...

We walked along to the footpath at Embankment through a positive crowd of living statues. Quite creepy, although clever and well done - no, come to think of it, just creepy. Crossed the bridge and walked down to Cleopatra's Needle and ad a chat with the Sphinxes. Luckily Mouse knew the answer to their riddle so we carried on as far down as Blackfriars Bridge. Waved to the Black Friar, then crossed the bridge to the Tate Modern.

There was a piece of (absolutely huge) installation art involving bunk beds in blue and yellow, a giant spider, damp paperbacks and a screen which sometimes showed falling rain and sometimes showed clips from famous science fiction films. I didn't get it.

Had lunch at the Swan at the Globe - very expensive, very posy, very very nice food. It'll be even more expensive, because Handsome managed to break a tooth on a seedy roll... Then into the Globe, where you have to go 'round in a tour. I loved the Globe, even Mouse enjoyed it (or perhaps he was just pretending well). The only downer was that they were re-thatching the roof, so there was a certain amount of scaffolding about.

Crossed back over on the Millennium bridge to St Paul's and walked from there down to Fleet Street (avoided getting too close to the Fleet Street Dragon, but had a chat with Dictionary at Aldgate). Carried on via a coffee stop,down the Strand to Trafalger Squat and Nelson's Column. By this point we'd all had enough, so we hopped on to the tube to work our way back to Marylebone Station.

Mouse and my tickets stopped working quite early on today, which quite frankly was a bit of a pain as we had to find someone to let us through all the automatic gates, while Handsome just sailed through. 

Left after breakfast this morning with lots of snotty kisses from Cutesocks. He even climbed into the front seat of the car in an attempt to kiss Mouse goodbye, but Mouse was having none of it. Fourteen-year-olds don't do kisses, even from their little cousins. Cutesocks, after initially being quite wary of Mouse has grown quite fond of him, and in revenge, Mouse has taught him several new words from Warhammer - totally unsuitable for an eighteen-month-old to run around the house shouting 'krute' and 'nemesis'.

We went back to the sculpture park at Goodwood this morning - got there at about 10am to find that it doesn't open until 10:30... we nearly turned around and went away, but instead we went for morning coffee at a (very posh) pub down the road. I'm glad we didn't go away, it's an amazing place. All the sculptures are set in woodland, and you follow a map to find your way around, only it's more like a treasure hunt than a map, because it's done by written instructions and squiggly yellow arrows (which are also sculptures).

It was an interesting experience, because we all liked different things. Mouse thoroughly enjoyed it which quite surprised me.

 

We went on to Arundel for lunch - not hugely impressed.

After that we headed off for Penn - by the scenic route. Handsome decided that he didn't want to touch motorway, so we picked up one A road after another. I'm not sure that it saved us any time at all and it was really very stressful trying to do intricate navigation on a huge road map!

We've got bikes and bike bits strung all over the car, but Handsome forgot to cover the seats and it's chucking it down with rain...

I talked to Hairy on the 'phone last night, to remind him that we were away this week - just in case he needed us. He sounded so happy about everything that I came off the 'phone grinning from ear to ear. He loves university, he loves Glasgow. He's having a fantastic time at all the clubs he's joined (apparently his gm at gugs knows his cool gameplaying uncle - smallworld stuff). He was even bubbling over last night about a Biology lab where they get to dissect a sheep's heart and lungs (yeuch).

I'm happy that he's happy.

Later - Got to C&Gs to find out that they weren't expecting us until tomorrow - how embarrassing! We offered to go away again, but thankfully they refused.

My eighteen-month-old nephew (Cutesocks) thinks I'm his Nana (my Mama) - I'm not that old yet!

Vicenza to Edinburgh

I was right, Vicenza was lovely and potterable, and a great place to spend our last morning. We visited the theatre, which was the first ever indoor theatre, and has a painted trompe d’oeil backdrop for scenery. It’s all to do with perspective and vanishing points and stuff like that, but it’s absolutely fascinating, because if you sit at the top of the theatre it looks as if the streets are going downhill, and if you sit at the bottom they look as if they’re going uphill, and if you sit in the middle – well you can probably guess! Handsome spent some time talking to Mouse about how it all works (Mouse is doing graphics next year at school, and is actually interested in this stuff).

We bought our last Italian ice-creams (for this year anyway), and we ate them sitting next to a rather wonderful fountain.

Wandered up and down a few more streets, and looked at some pens that no-one in their right mind could afford, but Handsome coveted....

And then it was time to go. The trains were very hot and airless, and I'm afraid none of us were very nice to sit next to on the plane (sweatyness), but the staff at Gatwick only have themselves to blame for making me take off my boots - after all, I had cycled in them for six days...