Hurling

We started yesterday (30th) earliness - with a little scare about daylight savings - luckily it was good for us and we gained an hour.

Heading off to a the Hurling Finals in Dublin, unfortunately we didn't get to watch a game at Croke Park but instead we went to the smaller concrete park 'Parnell Park' It was a long drive to the game (about 2.30 minutes) the boys got home late last night so I drove - much much easier to drive during the day.
Our first impressions of Hurling were that is was crazy with people throwing sticks and bodies around everywhere, but eventually it became less aggressive and almost boring with just the game to watch! The game was very interesting to see though, and I'm glad that we extended our stay by 2 days - I got to play soccer for a team there, and we got to see hurling.

That was pretty much our day. We saw two games of hurling, and then we drove home (getting home late at about 9pm) watched some tv, and went to bed after saying goodbye to John our host as he had to get up to go to work at 6am.

The next day (today the 1st, so I will have to write in the current tense) we went to the shipyard and pretty much breezed through customs - no passport checks or anything, I assume we will meet them on the other side. Hopefully we don't get a hard time coming out - cause it is just plain annoying. The ship again has wifi - but for some reason it doesn't want to load my email or skype very well. It is getting quite rough on this boat at the moment as the weather isn't so good, but it just adds to the fun.

Until later - and hello Scotland.

Glenariff park, Soccer and a night of boxing

In the morning we had a 7.15am wake up time to leave to go to Glenariff National park, which is a park near the east cost just south of waterfoot. A really beautiful place, with a 7km walk that follows the river along with a series of cool waterfalls. We were lucky there because the trees were dropping their leaves and the leaves displaying their classic autumn colours. Andrew slept in the car cause he was too tired to get out and walk.. I just don't understand why he keeps staying in the car. But - not my problem really. The was one of the better walks that we have been on, although we were pretty stuffed when we got back to the top. We then went the caves in cushandun (they have small unimpressive sea caves on the beach) and then onto Tor head via the small coastal road with amazing views of the coast (with not as many hedgerows as normal so we could see things more) Tor head was pretty remote, an old burnt out house with good views over to Scotland and along the coast - boy it was windy up there.

We then headed back to play soccer (well I did)- I played for draperstown - my couch surfing host John's team. I played fullback (or center half it is called in football/center back) with a few other boys that hadn't played much, which made it very hard going early on. The team we were playing was much better than us, and in the first 20 minutes we were down 4-0. We went on to lose 7-1... in a muddy but fun display of football. I would have posted some pictures, but the boys forgot to take them... grrrrrrrr.

Oh well, we then were going to a charity boxing match in another town over - so I drove over the mountains down the small lanes in the rain to this boxing match (it was a selection of just ordinary people that were boxing to raise money) One of John's friends was fighting there, so we watched him and left. It was interesting to see people who were not very good at boxing try it out. Having only watched boxing on tv. I guess it is just like watching anyone at a sport that they have no idea about.

We then went out to a live music venue after we got home - but it was terrible music (too loud and I didn't enjoy it, so I went back to the house to go to bed). It was a long day and I was stuffed.


Today we went to see a hurling game - will comment on it later.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I get to play soccer for the team here! - Stay tuned!

Draperstown and the causeway

The day before yesterday evening, we met John after a few minutes tentatively waiting in his street not knowing what house he was in.We saw someone come out, I thought of going over and saying "John?" I didn't, but we did discuss the possibliities of the chances of his name being john - and teh awkwardness of the conversation that would follow.
Something like this"

Me: John?
John: - Yes....
Me: It's steve,
John: So.....
Me: From couchsurfing....
John: What.....
Awkwardness would have been overflowing... Luckily I stayed in the car and smsed john (who would arrive in the next couple of minutes.

Anyway, we have our first real irish accent host, which is nice for a change. We went and order pizza (not doing much help for my running!) and then went to meet his brothers at the sports bar. They were so funny, with thick irish accents, and irish humour it was such a fun time there listening to their stories.

We got hosted in a nice house with an upstairs guest room with 2 double beds and a single (yay - no mattresses for us) and got up the next morning refreshed (although I only had 6 hours sleep, which seems to be the norm nowdays)

That morning we headed off to the giants causeway, the coastline was really nice - although it was very similar to other coastlines that we had seen around 'the Ireland' as they say. The causeway itself was a bit of a let down for me. It was cool the way that it had been formed etc etc, but the whole tourist notion of it spoiled it a little. The tops of the rocks were worn where millions of people had stepped before I did, which is a bit of a shame, I have seen this at lots of places in Europe, the stairs at famous churches and tourist attractions such as Windsor castle, and the Tower of London. It also made it very slippery, the smoothed out top of stones so you had to be extra careful. We walked around the coast a little to see the organ (much the same as the organ pipe national park near calder park) just a little bigger. To reiterate - the coastline is very beautiful - countless shades of green and ragged cliffs which makes the walk that much better.
Our next stop and last for the day was the rope bridge (about 20 minutes drive east of the giants causeway) which was well, also not as cool as I thought it would be, mainly because of the 5.09 entry fee to cross the bridge - to which it didn't go anywhere!!! Again, you pay the money, but you always have the sense of that you are being ripped off cause if you don't see it they don't care, and we have traveled halfway across the world to see this....      It still was pretty good, but it wasn't the canyon swaying ropebridge I was hoping for.

We just made it back to the car and the heavens opened and it poured again - we had been lucky so far. It was about 4.30 at this time, and we had a hour trip home, and we ere going to  cook dinner that night.

We got to the supermarket - bought stuff for chicken casserole, and put some sun-dried tomatoes in it. When john got home he was going to soccer training - to which I kinda hinted if I could go, and he let me came along. So we took a walk to soccer training, which was very fun, the guys were nice and the ground was a hybrid - type of artificial/real grass pitch.

So after an hour and a bit of running around playing soccer, back to eat dinner then bed.

Organ pipes

Belfast tomorrow.

Dublin and heading to Belfast (Kinda)

This is the stone fence - note it going over the hill

The overflow at the dam

The marble - town newry in the background

Yesterday – or Tuesday as I will try and keep this as current as possible – we were in Dublin – not really knowing what we wanted to do there. A little bit of research found a few things that sounded interesting (mainly from trip adviser) and Andrew wanted to go to the Guinness storehouse (which after having gone to 4 brewery tours I went along for moral support. (after all I did take them to a few things that they didn’t really want to go to). But anyway, I woke up about 7 and finalised the things that we could do, and then mapped them out. The rain was still coming down as it was the night before, and there was water everywhere on the roads – making it take 4 times as long as the GPS said to get to places. Our first destination was the pearse museum, to which we were hallway there with 5 times the time it took to get there (seriously, it said it would take 12 mins and it was 35 before I pulled the pin and said lets go to our next place , and we weren’t even halfway there!) Our next stop was the home of Hurling and Gaelic football, which was corke park (spelt wrong) and arrived just on time! 11.00 for 11.00 start tour time. So we were taken on a very interesting tour by an Irish guy who told us all about the games of hurling (interesting points being

-          They don’t get paid for playing $0

-          From the teams, they are all volunteers (the coaches, managers etc)

-          There are teams that play in the Irish league that are from America, and the UK

-          All the shirts are made in Ireland (not in Asia))

There was other things that I can’t remember now, but it was cool, and they told us all about bloody Sunday and the English firing into the crowd in retaliation to 16 of their agents being killed by the Irish. (Michael Collins)
We then went from the stadium to the cemetery in Dublin, which the only reason we went was to because it was the no1 on trip advisor. I’m glad I went as well, because the guy was really interesting to listen to, he told great stories and let us know a huge amount of Irish history that we didn’t know. For 6 euro it was well worth it. We had a quick bite to eat at the café there and headed off to the Guinness museum – which wasn’t really interesting as I said above. The most interesting thing was how the Guinness book of records came about – guys taking about the speeds of birds, then thinking that there should be a book about it.  (a much shorter version than the original story but you get the jist of it)

Dinner and then we planned to go out to hear some Irish music. (traditional) Andrew didn’t come but mark and I found 2 nice places that had Violins and Guitars and one had a banjo! Well… it was a very fun night. Pity they didn’t have a tin whistle – but you can’t get everything.

We got home after it closed about 2am which was too late, but twas a fun night. The next morning was another early morning – and onto the pearse museum for ‘take two’. It took us 10 minutes to get there (after the hassle of walking 10 minutes to get our car from the multistory car park….) Me and mark then went into the the pearse museum which I thought but disappointing. I was hoping to find out some real information about what he did and why etc. But instead it was about the school he ran and paintings that he had created. So it was a little bit of a letdown.  WE then took off for Belfast, the only thing I know about Belfast is the rival in Belfast, I wonder if that is in the history books here, Will check it out. Anyway, reading on my computer in the car, the lonely planet helped me find a few places that were interesting (we went to Cloughmore stone which is in the Kibroney national park, which was a nice view over the town of Newry. (see picture of the boulder) . We then went to the Silent valley park which contains a dam where they tunnelled from one dam to another to sure up the water supply for Belfast – a pretty amazing feat considering that it had never been done before – except that we couldn’t see any of it! So they could have been making it up for all I knew! (I’m sure they weren’t) Mark and I also saw the a 32km wall of stones that was built over the mountains to keep the sheep and cattle together and out of the water catchment area. It was about a 3km walk from the gate to the dam and back without doing one of the longer walks. The path went  past the man who let us in for free! Yay to him!

We were going to stop by another place on the way but we had to make it to our next Couchsurfing host – John (and it was getting dark) There is a fair bit to see in northern Ireland, so we will be busy over the next few days before we head off to Scotland.

Galway - kinda and Arriving in Dublin

Dinner involved going to the supermarket and eating noodles via the kettle in our room, plus some fruit. Then bed – falling asleep almost immediately.
The next morning, reluctantly hauling myself out of bed to go for a short jog – about 28 minutes (a tick under 5 minute Kms) which was surprising considering how bad I felt, and also upto 33 Pushups (adding 1 per day from the 1^st – so you can see tell where I started from.

Our next stop was a place called Sports and skills, or something like that in Galway. Basically it is a place where you can play ten sports in a skill test area where you get scored based on your performance in that sport. For example, in hurling you have to hit various targets and you get a points for hitting the ball into targets. Other sports included (basketball – free throws, golf chipping into a hole, Gaelic football shooting, rugby shooting, baseball hit from a machine, cricket bowl, soccer kick etc) It was much harder than it looked, and I only scored 48/100 I think Mark and Andrew scored 37 and 38). (the record was 68) If we got to go around again, I think we would have gone better, as we were learning how the drill worked, usually the last 4 or 5 attempts we scored points from. It was a great idea and was very fun to go to – a nice change of tempo for us, away from the museums and churches and castles and what not. We then were going onto Dublin – we had strayed from our plan a few days ago, taking an extra day to go horse riding in the south and see the ring of Kerry for a whole day rather than squeezing it into half a day. We had a brief stop off in the city trying to find the Spanish arch – unsuccessfully really, so we had a walk around the city centre before heading to Dublin. The drive to Dublin was thankfully on freeway (or the most part of it) so through the pouring rain we didn’t have tight corners and narrow roads. We have stayed in hostels a few nights in a row, which has been a nice change from sleeping in people’s houses where you have to be ‘on’ in a sense, and talk to your host about things – where at this point if it isn’t interesting, then I’m quickly losing interest. (especially after a long day of seeing things, you get home and just want to chill out and eat dinner and watch an hour or two of tv and then go to sleep – instead some nights I can be up till 1am talking. (I’m not complaining – just a thought) (Although I do find it terribly interesting to meet people and see their homes.)
At the hostel you can just watch tv or lie around relaxing rather than answering the question of “where have you been so far” which at times can be tremendously tiring. “We started in Holland and then went down to……” see previous blogs if this is your first time reading this. J  That is not saying that I didn’t look for a place to stay in Galway and in Dublin, but finding it almost impossible to find a place on couchsurfing in the major cities – we were very lucky in Berlin I think. An interesting thing about Irish people, they all seem very ahh I will say it nicely – in a lower social class than the places that we have been so far. Most people look unhappy and a little rough. When you talk to them though, they are nice enough – although the conversations have been a little limited.

I have been getting a few emails from my old work (oops - I mean current) about work stuff and it doesn’t look like fun and I’m glad that I’m not there anymore. Not having to work for very long and taking a 6 month holiday (plus 3 months of kinda work) makes you adjust to (and it sounds stupid – but) not working – you just don’t think about it. The only thing that keeps me busy is trying to make the most of the time that I have overseas, so seeing as much as possible in the time available. Coming to the UK in oct/nov has been as expected – rain and poor weather, but the crowds have been far less than what we would have encountered in September.

So tomorrow we are going to be in Dublin – plans to see a few things and then head up to north of Belfast – let’s hope that the weather holds – cause at the moment it is pouring and pouring with rain.  This evening we tried to look for a car park that was reasonably priced in the city center… wow… that was difficult – with pouring rain and water everywhere, just finding our hostel was an issue – we illegally parked, dumped our bags and then went on a car park search… Our first one was 50 euro a day!! Paris was 25! We finally found one for around 30 a day. That will do – we got soaked coming back to the hostel, and then had a nice dinner at a restaurant closeby…  

Cliffs and rain

Today – and for the first time in months I am uptodate with my blog! My day included a 7am wake get up and a 30 minute run, for which wasn’t that difficult although I wasn’t running that quick. I arrived back to watch with annoyance NZ win the World cup final in rugby. We got going after that finished, about 11am – which was late considering what we wanted to do, but we weren’t in a great hurry. Andrew wanted to watch the Manchester United Vs Man City game in a sports bar somewhere – so I found a place or two that we could stop depending on where we were at the time. We headed from Limerick to Kilkee (a small town on the west coast of Ireland in the county of Clare (pronounced ‘Claire’ much to my annoyance). We rolled into the town and found our football spot and then took the loop road (tourist road) along the cliffs to be rewarded for our effort by being presented by one spectacular cliff after another, all with green tops and white crashing waves below. We stopped for a photo shot – reasonably excited and raced across the mud (oh yeah it was pouring rain) and mark slipped and fell right in the mud – see video J
It was rugged coastline at its best, and I think that they must have stolen some of our apostles. We drove along the road for about 40 minutes and then headed back into town to watch the football. The result I didn’t care about, but I was going for the opposite team Andrew was going for (just cause I could) and that proved to be a excellent decision (they won 6-1!!) woop. We then headed to the cliffs of Moher. The rain had stopped for a bit while we were in town, but then came again and with decent ferocity. We arrived to the cliffs with a huge amount of mist covering the cliffs – bah…. Andrew stayed in the car again for some reason ( hasn’t been out of the car for about 4 car stops) and mark and I walked up in the rain to see the fog ( I mean cliffs) so I made us wait for a little bit – and then suddenly the wind picked up a bit and the fog rolled away! So we got  to see and take decent photos of the cliffs of Moher! We had a quick look in the visitors center on the way out (free for us cause we walked through as it was closing in 10 minutes) and we saw it in about 7 minutes. Don’t think it would have been worth the 7 euro to get in. We then hit the road again to stay in Galway at a bit past 8pm.

Cardiff and Ireland (Cork and the Ring of Kerry)

Today we were going to see Cardiff – after getting up after Alun (Pronounced Alan)  we had a chat to his parents who had come over to fix a window and then we took off to see the Museum of Welsh Life museum (free entry) which aim was to show you how people from the 1800’s lived in Wales. The exhibits included a tannery, a water wheel, a bunch of old farm machinery, and then a series of houses which to be honest got a little boring after a while. The most interesting things was that there were houses that had exactly the same furnishings and fittings as what my nan’s house had. We spent about 2.30 minutes there – but I think it lacked information – although they did have a lot of staff there to inform you about things if you asked them.

We then went to walk around the docks in Cardiff – popped into the Norwegian church where Roald Dahl the author was baptised. Then into the city and walked past the Cardiff Castle – which was nice, but we didn’t go in (13 Pounds) and we had seen too many castles in the past few days. So we walked on around the city, saw the stadium which is right in the CBD, great location. By this time it was 5 so we went back – bought some dinner on the way, cooked it up (Some snags and pasta if you were wondering J )and then went to bed after chatting to Alun for awhile, watching some rugby shows as the whole country is obsessed with rugby. (no problem it is sport – we get along fine)

The next morning I woke up early to go for a run in the freezing cold, it was like wales was in another climate compared with England, but a nice run was had next to the stream. (funny looks were received from people walking their dogs with large jackets and beanies while I was wearing shorts and T-shirt!)
We were then off to Ireland, having booked our ferry at the outrageous price of 180 Pounds, we left at about 11 (after I watched some of the great escape – thoroughly enjoying it, but we had to leave before it was finished – I was surprised that I hadn’t seen it before). So we drove through Wales – the scenery wasn’t much different to southern England I thought. (but I wouldn’t say that to a Welshman!) We arrived a tad late but with no problems, we then arrived to the most strict searching I have ever been subjected to by customs officers. We drove into the customs shed – there was about 7 officers there waiting for us, and they swarmed all over us like a pack of hyenas. They searched my backpack, turned our car inside out searching it for drugs, and other things – picked up our Stanley knife and pocket knives and threatened to take them off us! Geez…. We also got personally searched and we all had our wallets searched. Ridiculous. SO it took us about 30 minutes to clear customs. But once on the boat, we had internet again which was good (for 180 pounds we had better of) and had dinner and a nice trip over.

We arrived in Ireland to no customs to be seen, just drove straight off the boat. That was amusing, and a little annoying. But we drove about 2 hours from Rosslare to Cork that night to meet Patrick (our new couch surfing host)  He was a little short of money which was no problem, but he let us stay in his spare rooms. He cooked us a nice pasta stew the first night we were there, and then we went to bed. I had my own room which was nice, and it was the first time in a long time that I was so nice and warm in the morning that I didn’t want to get out of bed. (I think we all know that feeling). Nothing like a good quilt!

The city of Cork was our next day, and we basically wasted the day. Tarks misread the dates of the festival that he wanted to see, so we ended up doing a mini walking tour and then having afternoon dinner at the pub. We bought some things from the shop in the town, and then went to buy dinner to cook. We cooked dinner that night, (pasta bake with cream sauce)  and then went to bed. Sometimes when you can go and visit places for the sake of saying that you went to a place, rather than actually going to a place because there is something you want to do or experience in the town.

The next day we had organised to go sailing with Patrick in really small sailing boats – as an alternative to paying 35 Euro on a whale and Dolphin sightseeing cruise. We didn’t know the chances of seeing one, I thought that they only like warm water, and it was cold  - I read some reviews, and found out that people in the past few months had seen nothing, so we organised that he would take us out to the spot that the tour goes anyway.

Sailing was funish, the boats were extremely tippy, we almost capsized once, but it wasn’t as fun as the boat filled up with water as the seals on the boat weren’t very tight, and our feet got really wet and consequently cold. It was fun to be out on the water, but we didn’t really want to fall in, and we weren’t really given a huge amount of freedom to make mistakes. So we were out there for about maybe 40 minutes, and then we got taken around in his dingy to see if we could spot some animals. We got 1 seal. The annoying thing was that he asked for 20 euro each after we had finished. Sure he was a sailing instructor and that was what he did, and we don’t mind paying for things, but couchsurfing is not about using it as a advertising range, and the fact that he didn’t ask us before we went out! We would have still gone and happily paid him, but it felt a little dirty him asking us afterwards. Communication is the cause of 95% of conflicts. Oh well, we then went and had lunch/dinner at the local pub and then went home to plan our next day,

Our next day was horse riding, the 1 of 5 things that I really wanted to do in Ireland, and very glad I did, although there were a few drawbacks. We drove from Cork to Glenbiegh to Burke’s Horse trekking. It cost 80 euro for 3 hours on horseback, it was expensive, but I’m glad I did it; My first 20 minutes on the horse was very frustrating – when I learnt that I couldn’t ride a horse! Trotting was very painful! And then we tried cantering!! Finally got the hang of it, and then it was ok, cantering along the windswept beach with mountains alongside was awesome – a pity I couldn’t ride better and wasn’t so conscious of actually holding on to enjoy the scenery more. The other thing that was very frustrating is that our horses were trail horses, they just followed the other horses, which was specifically what I asked not to have. So I was constantly annoying my horse by turning him away from the horse in front and slowing him down so he was 10m behind the other horse, not right behind it. We all enjoyed it, I will put some photos up. The boys legs were quite sore by about halfway through  - mine were ok for some reason. We finished up and headed back to Cork. That night we didn’t do a lot – just bought dinner (I went to bed for a few hours (1/69) and then went to bed properly. (Note – smoking hallway).

The next morning we had to get up early and go – I woke up early but couldn’t be bothered waking them up, so I let them sleep in again. Couldn’t be bothered dealing with grumpy morning people so I just packed my bags and then jumped on the internet. We headed off through pouring rain along the southern coast of Ireland – making our way to the ring of Beara (don’t know if that is spelt right). We had approximately 8 hours driving to do. The southern coast was a bit well – coasty. Nothing special, just some hills, the odd beach and a bit more green then what is in Australia. So we gave up and headed towards the first ring. (Annoyingly we had to skip something due to time constraints). Along the way the rain finally eased off and then somehow the sun came out? The forecast for many days had said that it was going to pour rain on the west coast, and we were fully prepared not to see anything. What we did see was really great, rocky craggy mountains, with full hills with multiple shades of green – there is a reason the they call Ireland the green country (and it isn’t because of their energy production!). We drove al the way down to the cable car – to island durry I think it was called. We didn’t go on the cable car and walk around the island as we were again out of time – but I think it was for the best in a way. That morning when waking up I felt like I had been hit by a bus – but just in my lower back – the cause – obviously horse riding for 3 hours the day before. Getting in and out of the car was difficult. Amusing…  We then headed off towards the ring of Kerry.The sun was slowly setting as we arrived at Staigue fort which was pretty cool, 6 meters high in some places and 4m thick, it was also made completely without mortar.
On the way out we saw a nice waterfall, and then continued out drive around the ring of Kerry – the southeast side was the best – I will only put a few photos up though – they are pretty much all the same.

A long drive back and we are now staying in limerick at a hostel here. A long drive today – but a nice day.

Just some pictures today

Cardiff Castle

A track up into the hill that an early morning run was had

On the ferry to Ireland... Cold.

Tintagel

South west english coastline

Small town north of tintagel - got heavily flooded few years ago

Bath

The roman baths - in bath....

The next day we went to Tintagel, apparently the birthplace of King Arthur. Which I might add is a mythical legend, not fact. Anyway, we stopped at the castle of tintagel (or the ruins) and walked around the headlands for some nice views. The castle itself was rubbish, but the beach and the caves were cool. It was a 2 hour drive there, and 2 hour drive back – really not good use of time. On the way back we went through small lanes and backroads with huge hendges and nice green hills. Interesting to see the hedgerows and how tall they are – some were over 4 meters high!.

We got back that night – had a nice dinner of Chilli and Baked potatoes – a very amusing dinner as Andrew never ever eats spicy food and almost instantly started sweating and drinking as much juice as he could (they did offer him milk – but he doesn’t drink milk, so he continued to suffer hahaha)

I helped fix Gitte’s computer that night that was beyond dead in her books, (just needed a reinstall of windows – although I didn’t have one I found one for her) and went to bed late (2am booo) got up the next morning watched Australia’s pitiful display against NZ and then we headed for bath.

Bath was a nice city, we found a tour guide that was free and free and he took us around and showed us the sites. It had some really cool building and he knew a lot about the architecture of the building also. (see pictures) The most interesting site was the Circus (which was a colosseum type building) We then went into the Roman baths, which was pretty boring to be honest. The baths were cool, but the relentless information about the inscriptions and things were too much. We left there after about 50 mins and then had some English scones and cotted cream…. (whipped anyone?) We then checked out the front door of a pub that cuth told us to go to – not only was it shut, it looked like it had been shut for a while – good suggestion cuth! We then drove off to our next destination (north of Newport in walas) to meet ALun, a welsh guy who just bought his own house. We arrived about 8.00 – got some fish and chips for dinner (had a nice chat to the guy in the supermarket) and then went to bed latish.

The next day we went to the National Welsh Museum –but that is another story.

Briport

We were heading from London to Bridport to meet Gitte and Tim and their daughter Samantha. We had a stop off at Stonehenge for a look, we didn’t go into the compound as you couldn’t walk amongst the stones, you could only walk up to them. So we saved ourselves 23 pounds for another day and took some pictures from 2 meters behind people that were taking photos inside the fence. It was impressive, but I couldn’t help but think that other wonders are more impressive. Anyway, we didn’t know what to do in the area after that – as I thought it would take 1-2 hours there, so we thought about buying a heritage pass for 21 pounds, but we didn’t really know what to see in the area anyway. Mostly things like castles, and abbey’s and old ruins etc. We have seen a lot of these things, so we picked two (where robin hood the film was shot for a little bit) and another castle – I don’t care enough about it to say where we actually went. They were both closed so we went to our next host’s house – really to end a counter productive day…

That night we went to the local pub for dinner, having a curry for 5 pounds which included a drink which was good value. We spoke to our hosts for a fair while – Gitte being from Sweden and moving to England about 20 years ago (still has a little of her accent). She loved to talk, and we were answering her enthusiastic questions for the next couple of days. We slept in their son’s room whom had moved out of home, which was cosy and comfy.

The next day was the best day that we had for a while – going to the Safari Park in Longleat with a stopoff at supermarket to pick up lunch. We arrived about 11:00.
Apparently they had tigers and lions – but in my experience they have been sleeping when seeing them. There was a walking section as well as a driving section – we did the walking part first. We saw animals that we hadn’t seen before, Giant Anteaters, Quates (or something like that), binturong, and other south American animals that looked so weird so us. We also saw chipmunks, meercats and other animals that were free to run around free and you could walk around within their enclosure. They also had a butterfly house, and a bird show where we saw a large parrot (forget what they were called) play basketball and dribble a soccer ball. A few mazes, a deer enclosure a virtual money helicopter ride! and we were then onto the car section. We saw close up Giraffes (the last time I saw them I was in primary school) and then saw Rhino’s (All the animals were really really close) and then we wntered the money section. Well – the monkeys jumped all over our car, and took to everything that we had outside the car – chewing the aerials, pulling on the windscreen wipers, and pulling on the window seals. Only luck kept us from losing anything. Stupid monkeys. We then went on to the Tiger Enclosure. Amazing. They were playing like small cats – running in and out of the cars, stalking each other, chasing the rangers van and walking extremely close to our car, which let us understand how big they actually are. We then went into the Lion enclosure, they weren’t as playful as the tigers, but the cubs were. We then saw the wolf enclosure, which we were treated to a cool site, the pack was standing in the middle of the road howling. It was pretty cool – until this idiot ranger came up – and blocked our view of seeing the dogs. Then when I put my window down to take a photo around her car, she then reversed back madly and told me to put it up – the dogs would attack me…. Hahahaha. Yes of course they would.  So that was a little bit of a sour note to an excellent day. We drove back to where we were staying and we were then treated to an awesome home cooked roast dinner!! Woop!! Yay for couch surfing hey. Roast vegies, pork and a pastie with fetta cheese and spinach. Bed time was about 1am after talking for a while after dinner. Andrew was tired and went to bed quickly after dinner..

I have left out two days, but I will get to them.

London Day 2 – Wimbledon and Westminster.

The students wear these jackets so they don't get lost!

Proof of theater!

Abby road

The famous balcony at Lords Cricket ground

Wimbledon center court

We got up early to see a few certain sites in London  - our first (unofficial) site was the tube (again) the amount of people that were packed into the train was astounding. Of course I don’[t think that it can rival some Asian countries, but it was still impressive, especially when we try and suggest solutions to the commuters. We were lucky that we didn’t have any bags with us, which would have been very fun getting that on the train. Our first stop was the Churchill war rooms and museum. This was the situation room where lots of decisions were made by the English planning teams etc. They also had an extensive museum about churchill’s life and how he came to be the leader of the war effort. It was interesting. It costs 13.50 to get in I think.  It was a good museum, mainly I think because all the newspaper articles and things were in English. Westminster abby was our next destination – located very close to war rooms, it cost 19 pounds to enter, and you weren’t even allowed to take photos! I found that very annoying, it was impressive – but nothing that we haven’t seen anywhere else really. We then left to go to on a Wimbledon tour. This was about 30 minutes on the train to get there. I thoroughly enjoyed the tour at Wimbledon (20 pounds), the women taking us around knew her stuff, and we saw all the sites there, Henman hill, the show courts, the major stadium and the museum there. An interesting fact is how prestige everything is, the club is only allowed to have 500 members – and to enter they have a vote to see if you are allowed to be a member! We left there after a look through the museum (a little underwhelming) and left to go back into the city. We then went bowling (10 pounds) and tarks pipped me on the last bowl 111 to 110! My hand came back to haunt me a little though – I guess resting for 3 months doesn’t fix things all the time! Oh well, we then went on to find a film to go to – but the we missed the times so we went home – thoroughly tired from walking around the and seeing things all day.

The next day our plans were to go to Lords – cricket ground and then see abby road – the Beatles famous picture site. We arrived at Lords (about 30 mins train) to see the cricket ground there – ‘The home of cricket’ it was pretty cool to see the Australian dressing room (otherwise known as the away dressing room) and he told us where all the players used to sit etc. Such a place covered in cricket history – the museum was crap really – the Ashes were there (which you weren’t allowed to take a photo of which I think is ridiculous photo’s without flash have no chance of damaging anything, just stupid. Damn English) but you saw the Ashes on the tour before you got a chance to see the museum alone anyway. So in summary – tour of Lords : Excellent. Museum – poor.

We then went to Abby road (much to kind of my dismay) as I don’t really like the Beatles or their music, and the fact that it is a road that has not even a plaque to look at – I thought it was useless. There was though multiple people trying to recreate the photo, much to the annoyance of the local traffic going over the crossing.

We walked on to have lunch at a place near London bridge – the microwave lunch that says ‘home cooked meals on the front. A bit ordinary.  Well I have popped into a macca’s – so I will send this and then continue writing in the car.

Resuming

So I was in the center of London eating I had just eaten some crap café food, and we headed off to see tower bridge (8.50). The bridge itself it pretty cool, mainly because it is so old, and looks pretty cool. When reaching the top of the tower you get shown a short film on the bridge, and then get to walk along the top platform that shows various other bridges and other lots of information about the bridge. The most disappointing thing is that it is fully enclosed.
If you don’t want to hear my next rant – then skip this paragraph.

Everywhere we have been the high structures have been enclosed so (I assume) people don’t throw themselves off it. (so many bridges now have these measures in place. Eiffel tower, Koln cathedral, harbour bridge, Berlin tower, even thinking back, the Bendigo tower in the park has a huge fence to stop people from jumping off – now you can’t tell me that it is to stop people from falling. A fence that is chest height is sufficient enough to stop people from falling off. Now usually when writing you can’t write things are not politically correct, but I think that for at least a few people I share my thoughts on this. When people die from a car accident in Australia, the media is all over it – more funding for roads, stricter road laws, lower the drink driving limit, etc etc. Now I agree that the death toll of ~ 400 a year is tragic, and the related cost to the community is up into the hundreds of millions of dollars – making TAC advertise more so they don’t have to pay out as much money. What goes on behind closed doors (the media’s doors if you catch my angle there) is that hundreds of people are committing suicide every year, but we hear nothing of it. Should it become a published event? We plaster the smashed up car on the front page of the newspaper – probably to the distress of the families who are ‘touched by this road toll’, whereby we are erecting fences and barriers on all sorts of things that people don’t question or ever hear about. Why do we have a higher fence on the Westgate bridge now? Why do train drivers have mnay sleepless nights and endless counselling after striking someone who has decided to end their life.It is only recently that some high profile athletes and sportspersons have stepped forward and said that they suffered from depression. Jeff Kennett and his beyond blue foundation is a start, but I guess my point is that a huge amount of money and publicity is being spent on road safety heavily outweighs the amount of funding that is put into mental health and trying to prevent people from wanting to end their life. I can’t quote a number but it is over 1000 per year for Australia. Someone should work out the $ per death for cars and for suicides.

Anyway – enough of that, back to a brighter topic. We then ventured over to The Tower of London (18 pounds) which holds the Crown jewels, when you pay your entry fee you get a free tour (leaves every 30 mins) and then you can walk around with a guy in uniform who tells you things about the monarch and the castle walls etc etc. You can also get a free audioguide which seems to be the norm when you go to tourist sites nowdays. (usually for a fee) We then went almost reluctantly into see the Crown jewels – which if we had of gone in June or July I believe would have been unbearable, there was 4 rooms of Queues – all of which we could walk through unimpeded (thankfully). We were treated to some pretty cool stuff in the Crown Jewel chamber, Jewel encrusted swords, crowns, and that like, I was actually impressed at how nice it was. Would I go again if I was there – probably, which says something for it. Andrew didn’t come with us because he had already seen it, we then went and saw the weapons exhibitions and the chapel. I didn’t care much for the weapons section as we had seen multiple things that were similar in the various museums and castles that we had been to before – pistols, swords, spears, shields etc. Andrew went home after that – must have been tired, so Mark and I went took the tour boat along the Thames back to Westminster and walked into Leicester Square to buy some tickets to a musical. After some convincing mark agreed to come, and we saw Pricilla – Queen of the Desert. It was good, but I have seen other shows that are better. I think Mark enjoyed it to – exceeded his expectations by 1.2 so must have been better then he thought it was going to be J Kabab for dinner and home on the not so crowded train now to bed.

The final day Andrew wanted to go out to see stadiums  (Chelsea and Wimberley) but Mark and I wanted to go to see Windsor Castle (19 pounds). We drove the car out to the castle (foud some cheaper public parking (2 poundss an hour though) and hoofed in wading through bunches of French school kids. We got ourselves a free tour also which was included like with the Tower of London. The size of Windsor castle was impressive, as well as how much security was around. They had lots of rooms that you could walk through to see – including the long room used for formal dinners for the royal family, golden rooms, rooms with crazy portraits and other things. It was nice to see – but I think that seeing another castle with that stuff would have been too much. We then took the car back to our hostel and took the train into the city. We went straight to the London bridge experience (23Pounds) which was pretty terrible. Laughable is a more accurate word. It is basically the history of the London bridge put together by some actors trying to make it scary with a ghost train style walk through a series of rooms with guys in masks jumping out and trying to scare you…  There was no jumping done by either of us, it was more amusing to see the girls being scared. For the scariest place in the UK (3 years in a row it claims)– it has a lot of work to do. We then left to go to the war experience museum(13.50) which we missed the light show (supposed to give you a experience like the place is being bombed) we just got the museum, but it was still interesting enough. We left – grabbed some dinner and saw an independent film (12 pounds)  titled ‘tyrannosaur’ which was ok, lots of themes going on, but not so easy going on the happy story telling.

Back to our hostel – almost knowing our way around the stations by now, the tube is pretty easy to navigate and then to bed.

The only way that we could afford to see all those sites (prices I put next to them) was to buy the London card for 3 days. It cost us 64 pounds for 3 days, and we used 155 of a possible 180 pounds worth of value. (only restricted by time) I enjoyed London, and it might be a place I go back to again.

The next day we were leaving, which is the day I am writing this – but I will leave that for a few days because we haven’t done much today.

Southern England and London Day 1

So we came to England – over on the ferry from Dunkirk, seeing the cliffs of dover on the way in – I thought they were just like our cliffs on the great ocean road except white. But they were ok I guess. We went up to the lookout and had a small walk around there. There weren’t many people there. We then drove to Tunbridge wells, and met our host kwok – born and bred in England and showed us around there. On our first night we met someone that was from northern england, her accent was clearly different, but not difficult to understand. We went to watch England play against Montenegro in the football(soccer) and watched the pub go crazy as they squandered a 2-0 lead to draw 2-2. Amusing.

The next day we were trying to work out what was best to do, it is hard to plan places to go in a country that costs a lot of money – eg: 16 pounds to get into a castle that you might not even like, and other gardens that might be nice to see – but cost over 12 pounds also. So a good couple of hours were spent trying to work out what we were going to do. We ended up going to Brighton, and seeing the Brighton Pier, which was like luna park in Melbourne, but on a Pier. Free entry and then what you buy/go on rides you paid for yourself. We played a couple of mini gambling machines for 1 pound (2 pence per go) for about 30 mins, cost us a pound each – which was good entertainment/fun and then we went to look at the pavilion in Brighton – which according to Kwok was an indian style medical hospital in the war times. Interesting.

At this point the cold that I was starting to get in Boxmeer was well and truly set in, and I was feeling miserable. Kwok was really nice, he cooked us almost every meal we ate while we were there, which was so cool. Spanish chicken, breakfast of beans and toast and eggs, Spaghetti marinara, toasted sandwiches and so on. We had some fish and chips the last night we were there which was so interesting “Mushy Peas” what the hell? Pea fritter? Do we have this in Australia? I had never seen it, and they didn’t know what a dim sim was, and no potato cakes! Strange.

Ever wondered what the 'home of fish and chips sell'

The second day I didn’t feel like going anywhere, and the guys didn’t need any convincing either and we stayed indoors, and tried to come up with a plan or what to do and where to stay in the UK. For 3-4 hours we worked on things to see, and finally came up with a basic itinerary for our month – clearly not going to put it on here, but if you would like it – send me an email. Couch surfing has been good, but finding a host is becoming increasingly difficult as its’ popularity  increases, add to that the fact that there is 3 of us, and we quickly get less replies then answers of ‘no’ which is so disheartening when I spend at least 15 mins sending 1 request. To put it in perspective,  in boxmeer I sent 12 to London, 2 to south east England, 5 to central England and 3 to Northern England, and I received 4 replies – all with ‘sorry I can’t’ or similar, and 1 yes. With a hit rate of 20% for at least an answer, it is quite frustrating. It is any wonder people get annoyed at people ‘spamming’ and sending out 200 requests in 10 minutes.

The abby

So our next destination was London, and organised a hostel to stay at after a long search to find a place (everything was booked out almost) but I am looking forward to the next few weeks as I am almost over my cold as we know what we are going to see, and Ireland and Scotland are much less populated. ( so I hear). I forgot to mention that the traffic and parking in England is crazy. We have been all over Europe so far – and nowhere has it been like this, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and other places have nothing on how crazy the car parking is where we have been in England so far.

We arrived at our hostel – run by some polite Indians in nothernfields – about 30 minutes away from the center of London on the tube. The hostel man tried to con us by charging us almost 95 more pounds cause he thought we didn't book on the internet. Quite quickly we fixed the problem :)  

We rolled into the city on the tube - and to my amazement as the train rolled into the station - I commented "Where is the rest of the train?" I was shocked to notice that the trains were much narrower than the trains in Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Brussels, Stockholm - or anywhere else that we have been... What is going on London?  I'm sure I will get around to looking it up.

So we got on a packed train on sunday afternoon... my goodness it was sunday afternoon!! Crazy. Tomorrow we are going to try and get on during rush hour.... Wish us luck!!!

Big ben and something else...

We walked around London! Wow, what an experience. I like the city - apart from the fact that rent is 2000 a month for a small apartment (that is pounds) and parking is almost impossible, the trains are overcrowded and things are horribly expensive, but the city itself seems to be wrapped in history and bursting to provide you with entertainment. We walked to Trafalgar Square (let down a little - I thought it was going to be better) - I took 20 mins to see some Leonardo paintings in the Gallary, we then walked through the St James park, then to Buckingham palace, then to Big Ben and Westminster Abby and then to leischester square to see the crazy busy theater hawkers etc. It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon - even though we didn't go into anywhere, cause we are buying a London card, and it goes for 3 days - we will get our money worth (it is 64 pounds) and we will see how much value we get out of it (we think at least 100).

We came back on the tube... and then had some cheap Kabab food, and then back to our hostel where a fight with the internet broke out - so so slow, and so temperamental - but we managed to book a few things, and work them all out for the next few days. I will try to get some pictures in, but I don't know how I will go with this internet.

Look how much food we got

Anyway - pretty much over my cold now, so a run tomorrow might be on the cards.

later later!!

Finish of Germany - and onto england (on boat - way too slow for pictures)

Arrived in Koln – or Cologne in Germany for those who don’t know where it is, and stayed a night at the Weltempfänger Backpacker Hostel which is 3 subways stops or a 15-20 minute walk into the center of the city. Before I talk about the hostel, I will backtrack a little – we woke up the final morning, packed up our tent (Tarks had already left to see his mum in Paris for a night) and then went to Dachau – our last concentration camp that we would see. We had the intention of just going and walking around it and just looking – rather than reading everything like we had done at the previous other 2 camps (Buchenwald and Mauthausen). The film at Dachau was the ‘best’ part – containing a lot of gruesome and insane images of people in the camps. But on the whole, it was more of what we had seen before – but we had only seen 3 camps in the whole of our trip, Mauthausen and the death stairs was the most influencing by far.

Bye bye Dreadlocks!

We had lunch at a small Chinese restaurant opposite the gate of Dachau, which was unexpectedly excellent. Great food, large portions and delicious. I forget what the name is, but you can’t miss it if you are parking in the Dachau car park. – oh and cheap too – 6 euro for drinks and food.

We headed to Koln (German spelling kind of), and then got hit by constant traffic jams… the autobahn that was designed/built back just before the war times might have been a good idea, but the traffic we constantly hit was incredible – just on the road – not in the city or anything, and for 100’s of kilometres at a time. To give you an idea, we travelled 500kms in 9 hours, and that is on a road that has no speed limit!!!  It was a frustrating day.

So back to the hostel, it was ok I guess. The rooms were horribly hot, to the point where the doona that was provided was thrown to the floor, the café and reception area was the same place and quite small, but for a stop over for 1 night, it was good enough. The next morning I went for my first run for pre pre season (a 30 minute jog)around the city of Cologne, stopping at the irish pub (Jamison’s) to see if they had the AFL grand final on – to which they only had a reply at 12.00 that afternoon. So on I went through a park, saw a guy with a huge telephoto lens taking pictures of all the trains going past on a bridge – strange, but I obliged and snapped my own photo of the trains too.

Into the inner city of Cologne, we visted the Gestapo prison and museum, which was very interesting – I didn’t even know that it existed! It had personal accounts and incriptions on the walls of the cells about what happened in the prison. Awful.It also had a large amount of information about Koln and the political situation there in the 30’s and 40’s. We obviously went to the Cathedral climbed the 533ish stairs with everyone else – an amusing thing was how unfit the general public was, they were puffing and panting and sweating etc. It was heaps of stairs, but come on! No need for preseason if we were playing against the general public! The views from the top were nice – but a disappointing thing was the fact that there was graffiti everywhere at the peak. We went down the stairs – fighting the masses of tourists that were coming up, and went to watch a street performer (doing the same stuff that was being done in Sweden) and then picked mark up at the station. We then walked to the car, and headed off to boxmeer.

We arrived in boxmeer to wouters house for dinner at about 5.30. Was nice to see him and our old town after about 2 months of being away, and another month before that. The south Africans that have inherited our house came along and had dinner with us, which was excellent (chicken casserole). We stayed until latish – having a very entertaining chat with the boys and Wouter. We then went and caught up with Koen and Koen at a party before heading back to Koen’s house where we stayed for the next few days.

The next few days we didn’t do a lot really, but I managed to find a couch surfer that would accept us ‘Kwok’ who seems nice. I also sent a few requests to London and further north. To couch surf properly, and with a group, it is very very time consuming. Hours and hours are spent wading through profiles, and trying to find a suitable host – then they have to accept you!! It really has quite a bit of luck involved. I guess if it is meant to be then it is meant to be – I just make the chances bigger to find someone to stay with. Saying that – we have met some amazing people – I hope that UK is nothing different.  A funny but annoying thing happened with our visa – we got sent our ‘visa to pick up letter’ in late july, which by this time, we were in Norway. The visa offer ‘expires’ after 2 months if you haven’t picked it up. So technically, we were illegal as we arrived back to Holland on the 1^st of October. So we drove to immigration fearing the unkown – would we have to wait another 2 months for another application, would we have to leave and reenter? All the previous were incorrect – we just walked in, showed our letter, and picked up our Dutch residency card – not bad that it is now October! The main reason that we were worried was that in order to get into England, you can’t be in Europe without a Visa for more than 3 months. It is fine around mainland Europe, as there are no/slim border checks.

So we are now on the way to England – I’m sure we will get battered with poor weather, but it will be interesting to see what things are like as we have such an English influence in Australia.

We arrived at the port - and the stupid customs officer gave me 1000 questions on if we were going to be working in london or not, ridiculous. I came here to holiday, not to work - although some more money at this point would be nice, but not enough time to do that now!

I thought this was interesting

On the boat - nice enough weather with some odd waves and with Wifi on the boat, twas a nice touch.