I Would Walk, well drive, 500 miles – part two: Orkney

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When you think you are as far north as you can go in Scotland, there’s always another set of islands. And another. We take a day trip to Orkney, driving the car onto the ferry and across to the main island. There’s around 70 of various sizes and habitation. Orkney’s got a bit of everything: prehistoric sites, Viking history, WW2 sites, and breathtaking landscapes. And generally inclement weather, though the sun blesses us, eventually, for our trip. The ferry trip is an easy one and a half hours from Scrabster, west of Thurso to the port of Stromness.

arriving in Stromness

Our guide, Dave, meets us off the ferry while we are still musing about the Dog Lounge, and wondering if it’s something New Zealand’s Interislander might care to adopt.

What do they do in here?

Dave jumps in the back of our car and starts guiding, directing us first to Skara Brae. This is a village built 5,000 years ago, but undiscovered until 1850, when a big (bigger than usual) storm blew the deep sand away, proving that while Orkney’s weather might ruin your picnic, it can be quite handy for archaeology. The group of dwellings are kind of intact – it’s a bit like Pompeii without the murals. Picture a bunch of Neolithic farmers, cosying up around a central fire in stone homes that feature built-in furniture. These prehistoric Orcadians made sideboards and cupboards that have a longer life than an IKEA bookshelf.

Continuing along the Neolithic highway we arrive at the Ring of Brodgar, aka Stonehenge without as many tourists.  A stone circle, surprise, around 4000 years old, where you can ponder life’s big questions – like how the hell did they drag those stones up there. Any why? A bus tour departs as we arrive and we have the stones to ourselves. I search within for the meaning of life, or the urge to wear a flower crown and dance around the stones, but nothing surfaces.

The Ring of Brodgar, older than Stonehenge

Nearby, in a smaller area than Brodgar, the Standing Stones of Stenness another ring of racks, loom very large. Archaeologists think the stones were part of a larger ceremonial complex, but we find they’re an excellent windbreak.

The very upstanding Stone of Stenness

A more modern and much more charming surprise is the Italian Chapel. Now as a recovering Catholic I am not drawn to houses of worship, but this wee church is a gem. In World War II, Italian prisoners of war performed a small miracle, transforming two Nissen huts into a masterpiece of devotion that would not be out of place in a low rent version of Grand Designs. It just shows that by begging, borrowing and possibly stealing materials to recycle, in the middle of a dreary peat bog you can have a little slice of home. The chapel is full of intricate paintings, and ingenious use of recycled or surplus materials, such as the altar and altar rail, constructed from concrete left over from work on the barriers – more on these soon.

The Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm, otherwise uninhabited

Most of the interior decoration was done by Domenico Chiocchetti, a prisoner from northern Italy. He painted the sanctuary end of the chapel and fellow prisoners decorated the entire interior. They created a facade out of concrete, concealing the shape of the hut and making the building look like a church. The light holders were made out of corned beef tins, so corned beef is of some use. The baptismal font was made from the inside of a car exhaust covered in a layer of concrete. Chiocchetti returned to assist with the refurbishment of the Chapel in 1960.

To get to the Chapel Dave guides us over the first of the Churchill Barriers. The what? I hear you ask. I’ll try and make it brief, but go to google for more info. In both WW1 and WW2 Scapa Flow, a large bay in Orkney, was the Royal Navy’s crucial base and stronghold in the north. After a German submarine famously slipped into Scapa Flow in 1939 and sank the battleship HMS Royal Oak, Churchill decided it was time to plug the gaps – literally. He orders the building of barriers, a series of causeways made of old sunken ships, sandbags, rocks, and concrete blocks, stretching across the gaps between small islands. A testament to Churchill’s unique ability to find a silver lining, or in this case, a concrete one, the barriers would also serve as causeways connecting the Orkney Islands like some kind of WWII-era public works project. Turning a strategic vulnerability into a seaside civil engineering project: genius, though one that would not meet environmental standards today.

The barriers are now popular dive sites, if you like your water close to hypothermic, as are the German submarines, sunk here after the German defeat.

The day ends with us farewelling Dave, off to his other job, his farm, and another calm trip across the North Atlantic. I have new knowledge to take away, never having heard of most of the places we enjoyed. It’s true, travel broadens the mind, though I suspect the Italians would rather have stayed home.

Bye, Orkney, see ya later

PS – Some of you may be confused but this is not written in real time – we have not returned to Scotland.

I wandered lonely as a cloud – as if

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Cockermouth. Now there’s a name to reckon with.

Enough reckoning, you’ve had your fun. We are staying in a cosy cottage just outside a village with this very name, to spend a week exploring the Lake District. Cockermouth is the birthplace of not only William Wordsworth, who shares my birth date if not the year, and his sister Dorothy, but also Fletcher Christian of Bounty fame; John Dalton, who was the first to advance a quantitative atomic theory and to establish a table of atomic weights; and Fearon Fellows. Who? Well only the Royal Astronomer to King George IV, and who mapped 300 stars the Southern skies.  What a town! Not content with being an incubator of brilliant minds, it is cute as a button. 

To visualise how charming this town is, know that it is one of only 51 towns in Great Britain designated as a ‘Gem’ town – recommended for preservation by the state as part of the national heritage because their historic buildings and planned town layouts are considered worthy of preservation.  Which typically means buildings are decaying props in a theatre of nostalgia. Not so in this town. We are happy to find local services are also preserved, and in a town of about 9,000 there are two excellent butchers, a fishmonger with fabulous produce, and a traditional greengrocer. The butchers wear white coats, like a doctor, and call me love.  We spend an enjoyable hour poking around in the “museum”, aka collection of rusty old stuff from yesteryear, in the back of J. B. Banks & Son, the ironmongers. Yes! The ironmonger.  You can see his sophisticated accounting system is as organised as the artefacts. My father would have loved this place.

But we are not here to reminisce and go misty eyed, but to take in the majesty of the scenery.  Wordsworth may have wandered lonely a cloud, but he’d be hard pressed to do so now. We’re here in September, allegedly the off season, and there’s as much chance of wandering alone as there is of encountering Wordsworth himself. It’s not exactly heaving, like Everest in climbing season, but there are plenty of holidaymakers.

Clambering up Catbells

Against all expectations, we have a mostly fine weather week. Not so the day we walk around Derwent Water*. We drive to Keswick, and as difficult as it is, we resist the draw of the Pencil Museum, and board the wee boat to our start point. It starts pouring down. We’re huddled in the cabin of the boat, but armed with stoicism and a stiff upper lip, several Brits sit outside. There’s nothing like a good downpour to bring out the spirit of the Blitz. It’s practically a national pastime, a badge of honour, ignoring the rain. Soldier on. Our plan differs somewhat: we identify a handy pub near where the boats lets us off. If it’s still raining, that’s us for the day. Fortunately, or not, the weather clears, and the tender peace of the day is broken only by F15s doing low level manoeuvres directly overhead.

Derwent water and its mean and moody weather

Rather naively, we believe the Lake District to be flat. We are driving home from a lake ramble one day and the road narrows and ascends at an alarming rate. At first I think the GPS has betrayed us, but no. The concept of on-coming traffic is sphincter-tightening as there is a not insignificant drop over the edge. We console ourselves that this time at least we aren’t towing a caravan. This is country where goats are comfortable. Goats and sturdy hikers, who may be part goat. We stop at the top, and with teeth chattering remark on the magnificence of the landscape before scampering back to the shelter of the car. I’m fairly sure I saw a goat laughing at us.

The wind whistles around the tops – it was freezing
  • *For conflicting definitions of what constitutes a lake or a water, ask google

Blackpool – it’s a wonder

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Welcome to Blackpool, where dreams come to die. Where else can you experience the charm of a British seaside resort stuck in a time warp, circa 1970? Sitting on a long unappealing coast, Blackpool proudly boasts the world’s tallest and most bewildering collection of tacky souvenirs.  Ready to view the Blackpool Tower, an architectural triumph unashamed in its imitation of the Eiffel Tower – but without the charm.

Or perhaps you would enjoy the iconic Pleasure Beach, a name that somehow conjures a slight sense of unease, sounding as it does like a low budget porn movie.  It’s an amusement park – that isn’t on the beach – but does have ten roller coasters that look like they’re held together by wishful thinking and the occasional prayer. Our hotel sits underneath the tallest one, so we’re grateful the park is closed the day we get in. We’re only here overnight. Although I lived in the UK for four years in the 1980s, I never experienced the famous, in England, Illuminations. More on that in a minute.  

In the late afternoon we walk the promenade and it’s a lonely walk. A Monday in September is not a lively day in Blackpool.  I expect tumbleweeds to roll down the road. In the dubious season known as an English summer, Brits, apparently willingly, choose Blackpool for their holidays. The array of entertainment options on offer includes the refined elegance of the arcades, as well as a fine selection of deeply discounted plastic trinkets and polyester soft toys. Today, the three piers (north, central and south, spaced along 3 or 4 kms of beach) are empty: the amusements have no one to amuse. Except me. On a merry-go-round that’s going nowhere.

The tide is well out and exposes a deep stretch of damp grey sand – it’s a long walk for a swim, if you don’t mind hypothermia. At high tide the beach disappears completely- it’s water entry via concrete steps.

Low tide: a route march to the water
High tide: entry by concrete

But we’re here for the Blackpool Illuminations, a dazzling spectacle where the town lights up with such gusto that it practically screams, “Look, we’re fun! Really, we are”. The first show, in 1879, preceded Edison’s patent of the lightbulb by 12 months. You can imagine the genuine awe and wonder at the time. Now, even with a million bulbs festooning six miles along the waterfront, the general decay of the town makes it feel less wondrous and more desperate. This year, the Illuminations run every night from about 7:45 through til 10:30, from August to January in an asthmatic gasp to attract off season tourists.

But before we leave town, let’s not forget the gourmet dining. Blackpool is second only to Southend in having the greatest number of fish and chip shops in Britain – 71 in fact. Perfect if you want the dinner we had tonight – greasy fish and chips with a side of regret. 

Blackpool feels like the perfect destination if you’re looking for a holiday experience that will make you appreciate literally anywhere else.

I Would Walk, well drive, 500 Miles – part one

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Unlike the Proclaimers, we are not prepared to walk 500 miles, or 500 more for that matter. We will drive the North Coast 500 (NC500), a road trip north from Inverness, up the east coast, across the top and down the west coast. We hear/read rumours of campervans clogging up the roads, and of locals, pissed off with tourists clogging up the roads, waving pitchforks and shouting curses.  Far from it. The locals we encounter could not be more friendly or helpful, traffic is sparse, particularly on the West Coast and almost everyone understands how to drive on narrow winding roads. Even Germans in campervans. 

Our friend Fiona, you’ll remember her as she who shall remain nameless, frequently describes the weather as ‘mean and moody’ – in a Scottish accent it sounds more exotic and mysterious. It really means threatening dark clouds, and we get to use the expression a lot. But there’s never enough rain to thwart our plans. 

The great thing about Scotland, and the Highlands in particular, is that it does what it says on the tin. Castles and kilts? Check. Ancient ruins? Check. Amazing history and battle sites? Check. Wild heather-clad landscape? Check. Whiskey distilleries? Multiple checks. Shortbread, haggis, tattie scones, black pudding? Check, mate.

We find two or three types of castles: those in ruins; those partly lived in by fading gentry with accents like a half chewed brussel sprout, where some areas open to the public in a desperate effort to defray the enormous running costs; and those where the families have fled the mounting mountains of debt and given over the ownership/running to a trust or the National Trust. Ruins are easy. You’ve seen one pile of ancient ruins you’ve seen them all, the Dowager Lady Grantham not withstanding.

Glamis Castle, ancestral seat of the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne since 1372.

The others are more interesting. I’m not exactly obsessed with Macbeth, but it’s my favourite Shakespeare play so I’m very keen to visit Glamis Castle, said to be the inspiration for the play. They’re not afraid to milk the story either. In the grounds there’s a series of sculptures of scenes from the play, carved from oak or Douglas fir from the forest in the massive grounds. This allows me to run out my favourite lines; “Is this a dagger I see before me?” I don’t know why, but I always hear this in a John Wayne voice; and “Out damned spot” which makes me think of my mother shouting at the farm dogs, even though we never had one called Spot.

When shall we three meet again
Banquo “ O treachery”
Macduff “I have no words: my voice is my sword “

There’s more contemporary history associated with the castle as, in news to me, it was the childhood home of the late Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. In more new news, unless you are an unashamed monarchist (you know who you are), the late Princess Margaret was born in this very castle, and there’s a memorial to her in the gardens. I think it must be coincidence that it looks like a giant glass of gin.

After Glamis, we don’t think we need to see inside another castle, but Dunrobin is highly recommended, especially the gardens. And it’s well worth the stop, as it’s one of Britain’s oldest continuously inhabited houses dating back to the early 1300s, home to the Earls and Dukes of Sutherland, not that that means anything to us. It’s massive, with 189 rooms. Imagine the upkeep. Do I have to say we don’t access all areas? They like to keep the paying public at sword’s length. But, as advertised, the gardens are fabulous, especially when we view them from above, from the castle terrace. There’s a falcon flying demonstration in play.

We reach Dunnet Head, the most northerly point of both mainland Scotland and the island of Great Britain. Yes, I know everyone says it’s John O’Groats, and we tick that off the list as well, but John O’Groats is the northernmost VILLAGE, not land. Apparently these differences are important, but it’s all fairly windswept and bleak.

Anyhoo, we stay in Thurso (the northernmost TOWN), and the most intriguing thing about it is the weird contraption in the corner of our rather shabby hotel room. What the heck is it? Answers in the comments please. A day trip from Thurso to Orkney is fantastic, but I’ll save that for another blog.

Once we leave Thurso and head west life gets more interesting. No more two way roads, it’s all narrow one way traffic with a passing place every 100 yards or so, so theoretically it all runs smoothly. There’s the odd muppet who thinks they own the road and barrel on regardless, but not many. We take random side roads and find the unexpected. In one case an excellent chocolate shop quite literally in the middle of nowhere. And it’s busy. Clearly the siren song of chocolate is as addictive as crack cocaine. The landscape is magnificent: wide open, heather clad low hills which, in some places, if you took out the heather and put in tussock, could be the Desert Road in central North Island New Zealand. Then in a few miles (we somehow revert to imperial distance measures) you’ll be driving through boulder strewn paddocks, then shortly after, granite banks crowd the road. It’s all stunning.

The Summer Isles live up to their name on the second day there. Lucky we stayed on. Brilliant clear skiers and a very light breeze. Scott, with the instincts of a homing pigeon, has gotten himself a spot on a boat for a fishing competition nearby.  I set off on our planned walk around Achlochan Coastal Path. Did I mention it’s a stunning day? Not hot, this is Scotland, just pleasant. The walk winds down to the remains of a broch – a circular dry-stone tower large enough to serve as a fortified home on the coast. There are also remains of crofters’ cottages, built from stone taken from the broch, and kelp kilns.  

I grew up on a farm, but on this walk I encounter a bull with the biggest set of testicles I’ve ever seen. He also has a big set of horns. And I have my bright red fleece tied around my waist. I quickly revise everything I know about bullfighting. My matador skills have never been tested. I’m not confident. Luckily he’s more interested in grazing than goring and I sidle past, red fleece clutched in a small bundle. It’s such a lovely day I don’t need it anyway.

We continue south, our NC500 behind us. Highly recommend the drive, or walk if you prefer, no matter the weather, and weather you will have. By now we are considerably more well padded, having our daily “Full Scottish” breakfast. This is a “Full English” – bacon, sausage, tomato, mushrooms, baked beans, eggs – with the addition of black pudding, haggis, and a potato scone – the type of breakfast that suggests a heart attack before lunch.

The Tattoo, Trainspotting, and Thoroghbreds

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We arrive in Edinburgh in the middle of the second week of the Fringe Festival. As it’s the world’s largest performance arts festival, the town is heaving. Over 25 days, there are more than 51,446 scheduled performances of 3,317 different shows across 262 venues from 58 different countries. And the only show to sell out it’s full run before the Festival even starts, is NZ’s own Rose Matafeo, who is something of a festival darling after winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2018, an a subsequent hit TV show in the UK.

Before we leave NZ I look at the program online, but with over 3,000 shows to choose from, my eyes glaze over, my decision making capabilities fall off the cliff, and my brain says FFS just wing it. So we wing it. And it’s easy. Turn up at one of the multi venue performance areas, and get tickets for whatever’s on next. You might be offended, or bored, or challenged, or laugh out loud, or think deeply, or be annoyed. In this careful world there are audience warnings posted outside shows, but you don’t come to the Fringe if you’re of a sensitive disposition. The only one that scares most people is audience participation.

Over five days we see 10 shows: drag, comedy, drama, music, theatre and love nearly all of it. Then there’s the showpiece, the famous Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, which doesn’t come with warnings, except for possible rain, and there’s zero chance of audience participation. We’re looking forward to this. Several years ago the New Zealand International Festival brought the Edinburgh Tattoo to NZ. We went, and it was a fantastic display of synchronised marching, band music, and drumming precision. The Royal Navy is the boss this year, so after a rousing opening with about 72,000 drummers and pipers, they form up into the shape of an anchor.

We enjoy most of what follows, but somewhere along the way the Tattoo has morphed. There’s no commentary so it’s a guessing game as to who’s who. We recognise the Swiss drummers from seeing them in Wellington a few years ago. Their coordinated exchanges of drumsticks is mesmerising and very memorable. There are some American marines – for some extraordinary reason they sing the theme to Top Gun. I half expect Tom Cruise to rappel down the castle. We have Highland dancing. O-kaaayyy. However we’re a bit confused when Bollywood comes to town. We have the Taj Mahal projected onto the Castle, two glittery singers, a troupe of Bhangra dancers and Rajasthani bagpipers. We’re more confused when women in floaty frocks drift into the arena and sing songs we don’t recognise but hope have so ething to do with the sea. We have more singing and dancing than displays of military skills. I’m all for cultural diversity but failing to see the military connection. The clue is in the title: Military Tattoo. This show feels like a version of Britain’s Got Talent. The creative director of the show needs some time in the naughty corner to think about their decisions.

A day trip to Dundee is full of surprises. Towards the end of the Victorian era, the city was famous for Jute, Jam and Journalism. By the end of the 19th century, about 40,000 families relied on jute production for their living, as a majority of the city’s workers were employed in jute mills and related industries. Jute, which is a kind of grass, came from the Indian subcontinent and was processsed using whale oil, another big industry. The jam is marmalade as we know it, traditionally made from deliciously bitter Seville oranges. Journalism refers to the publishing firm DC Thomson, founded in 1905, still operating today, and publishing newspapers, magazines and children’s comics including Beano and Dandy. Remember Dennis the Menace, and Desperate Dan? So important the comic industry to the fortunes of the town, there’s a massive sculpture of Desperate Dan in the square.

Our friend Fiona, a former policewoman who shall remain anonymous, says junkies can be added to the list. And she’s right. The release that week of the national statistics on drug deaths show Glasgow and Dundee are top of the list in Scotland, with rates twice those of other cities. This really is Trainspotting country. The movie not the anoraks.

On the other hand, there’s the first V&A museum in the world outside London and the first ever dedicated design museum in Scotland. It stands at the centre of a 1 billion pound transformation of Dundee’s waterfront, and the building itself is gobsmacking. The Japanese architect Kengo Kuma (I’ve never heard of him either) used the cliffs along the east coast of Scotland as inspiration, and seeing said cliffs I can make the connection. The shape also echoes the Antarctic research ship Discovery which was built in Dundee in 1900 and took Captain Scott on his first Antarctic expedition. The ship returned home to Dundee in 1986 and is open for visitor tours.

While the weather doesn’t scream “it’s a great day to go to the Blair Atholl International Horse Trials, that take place against the stunning backdrop of Blair Castle and the Highlands” we are going anyway. It’s on our way to Inverness to start the North Coast 500, but more importantly our friend Lynne has qualified to compete and we want to show support. This thing is huge. And muddy. And there’s a lot of whisky tasting.

It runs over five days with all the usual suspects: show jumping, dressage, cross country, showing and so on. It’s an education to see the water jumps for the cross country up close. They are terrifying. We’re only there for a half day, bundled up against the weather, ducking showers, tiptoeing around the mud, and wave goodbye and good luck. Even without our presence to cheer her on later in the weekend, Lynne and Delboy snag ribbons, and qualify for the Grand Final to be held at an unknown future date. Congratulations! That calls for a whisky.

Adventures in Wonderland

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We arrive in Hull at the beginning of August, a couple of days after the riots that followed the tragic stabbings of three young girls in Southport, the other side of the country.  The rioting is, as usual, an excuse for racism, violence and looting, with far right extremists exploiting the tragedy to promote their own agendas. Hull and Leeds riots result in numbers of arrests. As we’re on our way to Leeds to visit friends and pick up a rental car for the next six weeks in England and Scotland, we have some trepidation. 

It turns out the greatest risk to our safety is being hit with a giant foam bone by Fred Flintstone.  A big group of people in cartoon character fancy dress board our train on their way to engage in a long running Leeds tradition: the Otley Run. Not for the faint hearted, this is a two-and-a-half-mile pub crawl, where the requirement is a pint at all 19 pubs.  Some days I do not miss being young. 

On a more sedate outing, our friends and their gorgeous new baby girl take us for a wonderful afternoon at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, about 30 minutes south of Leeds. It’s set in the 500-acre, 18th-century Bretton Hall estate, and is the largest sculpture park of its kind in Europe.  It rolls across gentle slopes, through wooded paths, around a lake. With so much spread over such a large area we give up on the map and just wander. We find Barbara Hepworth’s The Family of Man in its entirety, but miss Henry Moore’s bronzes; find wonderfully anarchic Damien Hirsts, such as the giant pregnant virgin below, and miss Andy Goldsworthy.  

As you can tell, I’m just name dropping the famous names I know – there’s a myriad of other just as famous (but not to me) artists dotted all over the grounds, and plenty of people to appreciate them. 

We’re driving to Edinburgh to catch some of the Fringe Festival, and have a few days before our booking. I randomly select a small coastal town about halfway from Leeds.  I choose it purely on its name: Amble.  And it is a pretty old fishing village that’s reinvented itself as a tourist destination, having decimated the fishing over successive generations. Same old story.

A good decision – mostly. Very excited to find we can do a boat trip out to Coquet Island where there’s a puffin colony. I’m keen to see these excessively cute birds up close. The small boat, with the name Puffin Cruises, takes us around the southern end of the island to the west, where there’s a seal colony. We watch them duck and dive, but  for us it’s ho hum, yes seals, heaps of those at home, bring on the puffins. We skirt around the northern end and meet a zillion kind of terns – arctic terns, sandwich terns, roseate terns – and hear about the lighthouse and former monastery.  Okay, I think, saving the best til last. Bring on the puffins. Then, a word about the puffins. Turns out they’ve shagged themselves silly and buggered off north and won’t return til next season. 

However Hadrian’s Wall is still around, and has been since AD122 so we’re confident that, unlike the puffins, it will be there when we visit. The wall, in various states of repair or ruin, depending on how you look at it, is 117 kms (73 miles) and straddles the country, built to secure the Roman Empire and prevent incursions by the barbarians from the North. It’s a shame Hadrian isn’t running Waka Kotahi (NZ’s transport agency), as the so called ‘roads of national significance’ would be built in a jiffy. It’s drizzling when we arrive at the access point, but we trudge up the hill and take a walk along the wall. What can I say? It’s a wall, a very old wall, that stretches into the distance. The marvel of it is that it was ever built, by hand, with no modern machinery. 

I was last in the UK sometime in the 2010s, but it’s long enough that the leftover pounds I had have been replaced by polymer notes.  I have to go to a bank to change them, and for the length of time I stand in the queue I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d changed currencies again. There’s a list of things I’d forgotten about:

  • White transit vans, the preferred mode of transport for serial killers, are everywhere.
  • Imperial measures, with distances in miles and speed in mph, which, weirdly, makes everything feel further. It also causes European drivers to drive very, very slowly, as when they see a speed sign of 50, they think it’s kph and crawl along.
  • Random parking either direction. You need to be prepared for a car to veer across the street into oncoming traffic to snaffle a park on the other side of the street..Very unnerving. 
  • Smoking, meaning piles of butts all over the street. We see this in Europe too, especially Estonia and Latvia, and in Germany. Very little vaping, just hard core tobacco. 
  • There’s a law that requires every British person to have a dog and take it everywhere. Jumping ahead, on our ferry to the Orkney Islands, there’s a dog lounge. I check it out, and sure enough there’s a couple of pooches sitting back with brandy and cigars. 
  • The lure of the fish and chip shop cannot be underestimated, especially by the sea. However, it’s tempered by the smell of rancid frying. I’m guessing nine out of 10 people order fish and chips and twelve out of ten of them are disappointed.

A Tale of Two Cities

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The surprises of the trip to date are Hamburg and Rotterdam. Two inland cities, both situated on long rivers and both huge port hubs for shipping.  In my mind they also have long held reputations for crime, prostitution and red light areas where tourists go to ogle prostitutes sitting in windows, but that may be a reputation long gone. Full disclosure, I’ve not been to either city before, but am basing my memory from my 20s in Amsterdam when I did go and look at prostitutes sitting in windows. 

We arrive in Hamburg and are immediately swept up by drag queens, S&M costumed party people, and the entire sequinned and skimpily clad LGBTI+ community and all their supporters from Hamburg and surrounds- they are here to par-tay. We land quite literally over the rainbow. It’s the opening weekend of Pride month and there’s a parade and party that just won’t stop. Even if you wish it would, just for a few minutes. It does slow down with the Sunday handovers arriving.  

The most remarkable thing about Hamburg, aside from its many canals and fabulous waterfront, is the stunning Elbphilharmonie Concert Hall which dominates the harbour. It looks ready to set sail. To visit the public area at Plaza level, 37 metres above the water, we take the world’s longest curved escalator (80 metres).  From here we have a 360° panorama of the city. 

Sit down, cos here come some breathtaking statistics. Hamburg is the second largest port in Europe with four container terminals and 8,000 ships passing through each year, with 9.3 million TEUs, 125 million tonnes.  Big? You betcha. But hang on a minute. Rotterdam is way bigger – the largest port in Europe with over 30 container terminals handling more than 13,000 container vessels annually. It processes around 16 million containers aka twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), over 516.8 million tonnes of goods. That’s really hard to get your head around, so in both cities we take harbour cruises and have our minds blown. 

It’s hard to find words to convey the magnitude of Rotterdam’s shipping activity. In an hour we see only a fraction of its capacity: there are what seems like hundreds of canal basins fringed with so many cranes you could never hope to count them. Then there’s storage warehouses, cool stores, barge docks, truck and trailer parks – it goes on and on. 

For a complete contrast, we take a ferry further inland to Kinderdijk, a village in famous for its 19 original 18th-century windmills that still do the job. They’re part of a water-management network that also includes three pumping stations – these are rather more modern – plus dykes and reservoirs that control flooding in the low lying land.  In the original pumping station museum sits the old steam engine, which, in the olden days, would pump out 425,000 litres per minute at full power, before the conversion to electricity in 1924. Walking and cycling paths run through the area and the countryside here is beautiful of course, with the old mills contributing the charm. We do not see the little boy plugging a dyke with his finger to save his country as per the old story. 

What we do see is the equally fabulous Depot gallery. This mirror glassed round tower is the working heart of the (currently closed for refurbishment) Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. The Depot is the world’s first publicly accessible art storage facility, with hundreds of collection pieces on display almost everyday, alongside the working spaces of conservators and artists. I love that, as the gallery spaces are constantly changing, the current favourites are hung against glass so you see the back of the paintings. 

It’s funny to think we only choose to come to Rotterdam because we want to take the ferry to England rather than fly. I can only take so much airport security. We end up loving our time here and find it both fascinating and aesthetically interesting.

The architecture is engaging: apartments are never blocks, but off-set, or with interesting balcony arrangements. Buildings have a twist, or in one singular example, possibly never repeated, the cube houses (built 40 years ago)are rotated 45 degrees.  If you are fascinated, read more here. Kijk-kubusHome | Uncategorised | Englishkubuswoning Unfortunately we don’t get a chance to visit. 

The ferry to Hull is massive. We leave at 9:00pm while it is still light, so get to enjoy our last views of the lowlands, out into the North Sea. Let’s hope those windmills keep turning and the pumps keep pumping. If it all fails, fingers in the dykes will not stop the flood.

I still don’t see the point of clogs.

We’ve had a day

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It all starts well enough. We are on time for our train leaving from Hamburg to Rotterdam. It’s a long day, about 7 hours, of travel, with a couple of easy train changes. Hamburg to Osnabruek is a smooth couple of hours. Our 1st class Eurail pass has us sitting comfortably, drinking coffee and reading. We change, as scheduled at Osnabruek and settle in for the long haul to Amsterdam and our final change for Rotterdam. 

But a short way out of Osnabruek I become aware of restlessness in the forest. There’s monkey chatter and the odd screech from group of loud Americans – We were at the concert. I’m from Kansas City and I could’ve reached out and touched him! It was amazing. Yes, that’s all well and good but why are you gathering your bags to get off when we’re all going to Amsterdam. Further investigation reveals the train we should all catch is not happening and we need to transfer to a regional train then change again a bit further down the track. Why? No one knows, but we follow the herd. We gather bags and get off along with 50,000 others and move to the new platform, and wait. 

Then Scott realises he’s left his phone on the train. He takes off at a run back up to the platform, but the proverbial train has left the proverbial station. Faarrrkk.. The best the information office can offer is to give details to lost property. That fills us with confidence. 

Feeling pretty good about now as you can imagine. 

Nothing to be done but board the next train and consider options. Now the train we are boarding is about half the size of the train we just left, and everyone is hell bent on getting on. It’s like trying to squeeze the filling back into a sausage casing.  Then there’s half a dozen people with bikes and they’re determined to get on first so they can block the entry for everyone else.  Cheers. 

Half an hour on the sausage express and we change trains again. The only upside so far is no one is checking tickets. Because Scott’s train pass is on his phone. Which is on a train. And not the same train we are on. 

A WhatsApp arrives. From Scott’s mate Tony, who’s in Rome. Text as follows: Hi Bev, I just got a call from a person in Germany, he has Scott’s phone that he left on the train. We are embarking on our cruise today from Rome and basically are doing one night stops all the way to Barcelona where we then fly home to NZ, no overnight stop in Barcelona. One option might be to get the phone couriered to the Barcelona airport???  Let me know if I can help in anyway.

Like me, you’ll be curious as why Tony got a message. So is he. He received this:

Scott Wilson lost his iPhone in Our Train in Germany. The Phone is in Cologne Mainstation. You are his emergency contact. I would inform You About this. Maybe You can inform his wife About the Situation.

Scott says I’m his emergency contact, but clearly not. Perhaps he and Tony are now married? Or perhaps it’s a hangover from a motorbike trip. Maybe we have a “situation”.

Anyway, I engage in a long round of texts with the train conductor who has the phone. He doesn’t tell me his name, but I christen him Thomas (the tank engine). In a game of pass the parcel, the phone enjoys a tour of Germany and Thomas and his mates engage in an all new Olympic relay event. The phone leaves Cologne and continues to Munich, the final destination of our initial train. 

Good – we have friends near there and will visit them later in September. Maybe they can help. More texting and WhatsApping. They can help and give Thomas a call. It’s now in their hands. 

We arrive in Rotterdam after another train change. Scott looks pale and  is getting shaky, suffering device withdrawal. We have to make a beeline for the nearest apple reseller. €299 for a stopgap iPhone SE sees the colour return to his cheeks. He perks up even more when we check in to the accommodation and see the view. 

A Brief Trip to the Baltics

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We are walking up through the parks and leafy suburbs of Riga to check out the streets famous for stunning Art Nouveau architecture. There are stunning facades everywhere you look.

It is also the area where several embassies are located.  We find ourselves opposite the Russian Embassy, standing amid a bouquet of Ukrainian flags, one huge one demanding “Stop Putin Stop War”.  The Latvian Government has renamed the street address the Russian Embassy stands on as Ukraine Independence Street, so all mail must have this address or it isn’t delivered. Directly across the street, the building facing the Embassy hangs a massive, ugly skeletal image of Putin, which the Russian staff must look at every day. No room for doubt.

Riga is a really pretty town with expansive parks and gardens.  The Daugava river bisects the city, and there’s an off shoot canal which means the old town with its churches, Cathedral, and buildings dating back several centuries, is sandwiched between the waterways.  The most historic building is part of a complex known as the Three Brothers. The oldest, on the right of the picture,  dates from the 15th Century; the middle in the style of Dutch Mannerist, from the 16th; and on the left, the narrow Baroque house, probably from the 17th. 

The  Freedom  Monument is visible from all parts of the city and honours the soldiers killed in the Latvian War of Independence and symbolises, well, freedom, sovereignty and independence.  

Monuments and sculptures are everywhere, honouring the past and looking to the future.  We walk for kilometres through beautifully planted gardens along the canal, then board a boat trip out onto the river, passing under a total of 19 bridges over the river and canal. Across from the old town, the National Library is a striking modern building, inspired by the Castle of Light and Glass Mountain from Latvian mythology.  

We’re in Riga after a four and a half hour bus trip from Tallinn, where we flew from Prague. We abandon our initial plan to take train from Tallinn to Berlin via Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The trains are very slow, requiring several changes and, while cheap, just feel like a waste of time. The bus is almost half the time of the train, is very luxe with wifi, movies, coffee machine, and, of course, a toilet. 

Tallinn, another UNESCO world heritage site, does attract a lot of tourists, but it is nowhere near as crowded as Vienna or Prague. Being on the coast does mean, however, cruise ships.  The buses ferry them from the port, and long suffering guides wield numbered paddles aloft to lead the aged and infirm up hill into, yes, you guessed it, the old town. Red faced, they pant their way along we think it might be wise for some groups to have another guide at the back wielding a defibrillator. 

We walk the city walls, and up a very narrow steep spiral staircase to the top of the Hellemann Tower, which gets very squeezy when there’s oncoming traffic. Imagine running up and down the stairs with your sword or bow and arrows when defending the town.

As luck, not mine, would have it, there’s a Maritime Museum in a large round tower built in the 1520s, with the charming name of Fat Margaret. We start at the bottom where the star exhibit is a wreck found on 2015. It’s a 20 metre long koge, a specific style of vessel, and it was buried in the mud for 700 years. if you squint at the roughly boat shaped pile of crusty broken lumber you can see it. Or just look at the drawings on the wall. As we wind our way up Fat Marg the exhibits take you through the age of sail, to steam, and into the modern age. Far too many models for my liking, but some good stories in the audio and video sections. At the top of the tower there are more great views. All the way to Finland.

Reflecting on our limited experience in the two Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia, they appear less economically successful and very wary of their neighbour to the east. It’s cheaper than our experience in Austrian cities and in Prague – to visit, to stay and to eat and drink – but not significantly. In fact the costs are closer to those in New Zealand. Bear in mind we are in the tourist part of town, doing tourist stuff. That is why we’re there after all.

Clocks ticking

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It’s time to board our flight. Why are we the only ones at the gate aside from four over excited teenage boys rocking full body gold lamé – we don’t ask.  I check my boarding pass. This is what happens when you get up at 4:30am: you confuse your seat number, 8C, for the gate number 6D, which is at the other end of the concourse and on a different floor. We arrive as boarding starts. You could say it was perfect timing, but I prefer it without the heart attack. 

 We’re leaving Prague after a busy five days. The airline is Eurowings, Lufthansa’s low cost (it’s all relative) arm. Being German run, it is well organised, unlike the bun fight I remember from flying Ryanair one time. The first and last time. The PTSD lingers. 

The old town is positively heaving with tourists, mostly European, though it is still a destination for sad Brit-boy stag parties wandering aimlessly and shouting. We see a dozen extras from Dazed and Confused wearing t-shirts with a bare chested big bellied picture of James, who looks like a real catch.  I want to tell the bride, whoever she is, to run very fast. We witness one “hen” party tottering over the cobblestones and they all look like they’d rather be at home watching Love Island.  Those cobblestones are rugged and tough on your feet. Scott is keen for us to hire bikes, but when I see people juddering along, possibly losing teeth, I lose enthusiasm. I fear the flapping of my bingo wings would give me so much lift I’d take off. 

A walking tour is a better bet and local Mikel takes us around the old town to, among other places, the Jewish Quarter. While the Nazis plundered Jewish artefacts from other occupied cities, Hitler preserved the Jewish Quarter in Prague as a “Museum of an Extinct Race”. I guess the laugh is on him, as there are six synagogues still operating. That said, the Old Jewish Cemetery is thought to hold 100,000 bodies although the 12,000 tombstones indicate they are buried between six and twelve bodies deep. 

The most popular site in the old town is also, according to google, one tourists rank among the most overrated attractions in Europe. The Astronomical Clock on the tower of the old town hall dates back to 1410, reason enough, I would think, to be interesting.  It’s complex. It shows four different times known as Old Czech time, planetary hours, sidereal time – useful only to astronomers – and German hours, useful not just to Germans but all of us as it shows the current time, marked with 24 golden Roman numerals along the circle of the astrolabe.  The clock not only tells us what time and day it is, but also tracks the movement of celestial bodies like the Sun and Moon. Wow. So much information. Why then do people think it’s overrated? I’m not sure what they expect, but thousands turn up on the hour to watch the four figures that flank the clock, vanity and greed on the left, death and lust on the right, come “alive”when the skeleton (death) rings the bell. The two blue doors at the top open, and for 30 seconds the twelve apostles pass by, presumably trying to drive out vanity, greed and lust. Maybe that’s why people don’t rate it. They’re happy being vain, greedy and lustful. 

Kafka, the novelist was born in the Jewish area and there’s a statue commemorating him there. He was a depressive and morose bugger, as you will know if you’ve ever read Metamorphosis. Consequently there’s another sculpture of Kafka that takes you by surprise. If you come at it from a certain angle, looks like he’s hanging, but then you realise he’s holding on by one hand. This is the work of Czech artist, David Černý.

In recent years Prague has become a bit of an exhibition ground for Černý’s unusual and frequently provocative and controversial sculptures.  Of course I love them. If you follow my instagram you’ll have seen one already: two men pissing into a pool the shape of the Czech Republic. We stumble across Černý’s work all over the city, but still see only a fraction of it. There’s a prominent statue of St. Wenceslas on horseback at Wenceslas Square, but Černý turns tradition on its head, literally, with a sculpture that has horse upside down. 


Butterfly Effect is an installation of two Spitfire aircraft fuselages fitted with butterfly wings, attached to the sides of a mega store. Every few minutes the wings move, reminding us of the butterfly effect. In the words of the artist, referring to the Czech pilots who flew in the Second World War: “A small fighter plane with a skillful pilot can ignite the fire of a battle that will eventually sweep away even a large aggressor. The butterfly effect is the theory that the flapping of an insect’s wings can trigger a chain of events that will cause a hurricane on the opposite side of the planet.”

Never mind the Charles Bridge, or Prague Castle, or even the Astronomical Clock, all groaning under the weight of tourist expectations, Černý’s work alone is worth the trip to Prague.