Christmas again

 Christmas is sometimes for family and maybe friends, but this year it was for exercise because I went away to the Malvern Hills to stay in a hotel for four nights and walk three days. I can't remember enjoying my Christmas food as much as this year because I'd walked so much that I had room for lots of courses including puddings. Staying in a hotel meant I didn't have to plan the meals, shop and prepare and serve them and then do the washing up. A super staff of younger people did it all.

I went with Ramble Worldwide again (like I went to Nepal with, & to NI, and husband & I used to go to Europe with them). About 18 regular ramblers were in this group, two couples and a load of single people, men and women, all of us of a certain age and older. Only two of us are still working and that only two days a week. We both work because we enjoy the work and feel it's worth doing. The group included managers, a policeman, HR specialist, teacher, radiographer, a conductor (music). The leader had been a musician and music teacher (at Kings, Canterbury) for years, playing the flute and piano.

The first walking day was from Upper Wyche (near Great Malvern) to the town of Ledbury, a walk of nine miles. My app said 17 kilometers. Eeh! it was muddy. We tramped some of it off in Ledbury where we arrived with time to explore the shops that hadn't yet closed for Christmas but back at the hotel, we took off our boots in the foyer rather than tramp mud on the lovely carpets.

Christmas day was a short walk (five miles) from the hotel and up on to the Malvern ridge. Half way up the leader stopped and took out of her laden rucksack 18 mince pies and a bottle of sloe gin to share among us. Nice.

On Boxing day, the coach took us to Ledbury and we walked again through mud to Birtsmorton. It's about 8.5 miles and well over 20,000 steps. We should have seen distant views but it was atmospherically misty day. We reached the obelix on Somers hill but couldn't see it until we were almost there. Arriving at Birtsmorton well before four (we had to be sure to finish the walk by four, before it gets dark) we had time for a drink at the Farmers Arms before the mini bus took us back to the hotel.

You can see photos on Rockin' Roy's FB page.

Busy, busy first day when we visited Niagara
and then drove in this newly hired car to Waterford to see Glen's karate class. We didn't get back to our B&B in St George till well after ten o'clock, so I got to drive in Canada in the dark.
We got to eat poutine.

Ship's cabins

Cruise cabin

Our cruise bedroom, nay, cabin, was adequate with around 160 square feet, twin beds, a space between the beds for husband to stand with his arms on hips and his elbows at my eye height. It was an 'exterior' cabin, meaning it had a window or a porthole. It also had a bathroom, an easy chair, a small round glass-topped table, space for our empty suitcases, more space to store things under the beds, a desk with a screen on it to watch the ship's news and a tray for the kettle and tea mugs.  And there were four mirrored wardrobes with a dozen drawers.
I remember the cabins on the SS St Britain at Bristol, about half the length of this cabin, and not as wide. Each side held three bunk beds, where you berthed perhaps with five strangers.
I wonder how they  managed noro-virus on such ships in the mid 19th century. Here, on the Balmoral, at every entrance to cafe or restaurant or bar or lounge we are exhorted to use the sanitizer on our hands.  "wash, wash, wash" the captain tells us every midday.

Preparing for October

This last week I've mostly been preparing for our holiday. I've packed and repacked, listed what to pack, found a suitcase to pack, window shopped for other suitcases. So all rather muddly and messy.
The hens have someone to keep an eye on them and collect their eggs - not many at the moment.
WE're going on our first cruise ever. Normally we go on rambling holidays with the company Ramblers.
But this time we're going on one of their Cruise and Walk to Discover the Baltic. We go through the Kiel Canal, to Copenhagen, then Tallinin in Estonia, and spend a day at St Petersburg. We return via Riga in Latvia and Warnemunde with a trip to Rostock, before coming home. It'll take two weeks.

"Slightly nutty Nanna"

"Slightly nutty Nanna" is the fond epithet afforded me by one of my relations, a SiL. I quite like SNN. If I weren't slightly nutty, I wouldn't at my age be able to do the physical things I can do, like tae kwon do. It's thanks to another relation that I took that up in my early fifties, keeping a teenager company. Now another teenage relative keeps me company at tae kwon do.
Slightly nutty Nanna last week had the good luck to be invited on holiday in Bavaria with a family of young relations, where we climbed every mountain (well we walked up one),  and drank copious amounts of Bavarian beer, that is, some of us drank beer and none of us drank copious amounts.
One afternoon, leaving Gran'pa behind, we went for a first ride ever for some of the shorter members of the family, in a cable car, and a round trip walk in the lower slopes of the mountains. We saw black butterflies with white tips, a huge ant hill, and several cows or bullocks with bells called scheller.

We crossed a bridge on the way.
"Beware of the trolls!" warned SiL. SNN threatened to puke on them to scare them off.

Our Ferienhaus (holiday cottage) was near the bottom of the mountains, but still an 800m walk up from the town (Oberstdorf). Each day, above the summit of the mountain, we watched yellow, flamingo pink and white sails of hang gliders whose pilots must have taken the cable car on and on further to the very top. Somewhere up there, they jumped off into the air a couple of thousand feet above our Ferienhaus, soared in any thermals they could find, then glided down to the landing field in the valley below us. You could hear a raucous chain saw and the rushing of the river, an occasional bird twitter and an engine from the cable car vibrate far off from the house. Husband alias G'pa stretches out on the path sunbathing his hands sheltering his eyes

Visiting the city of Barcelona

Our holiday includes two day trips to Barcelona, the first being last Wednesday and the second tomorrow. On Wednesday, we looked round the old Gothic quarter, going round and round till I was utterly lost. I made an audioboom recording and took a few photos. See Swarm, Instagram and FB. Then husband and I dashed, short of time over to see the Sagrada Familia, Church of the Holy Family,which was fantastic worth a visit.  Gaudi designed it and despite building starting nearly 100 years ago it is not yet complete.

Here's the front door: a dove amongst the flowers

What most impressed me were the towering pillars, splitting at the top into branches, emulating a high forest, and the archways - effigies something between Disney world and Gothic.

East window of Sadrada Familia

The west windows reflected warm colours of sunset (above and here) and the east were cold colours (here).
 But time was short. We learned how the metro works, used it and arrived at the meeting point in time. But the meeting point was place de Catalunya, a huge square , and it took us half an hour to find our group. Too stressful and exciting.

Tomorrow we go back there, after seeing the Hospital  de Pau, to meet my cousin and his partner for lunch. Looking forward to it.

Back to Catalunya

Roman bridge

Years ago I was in Catalunya, La Escala to be precise, on holiday with a French family. Now I'm back again, on holiday with my husband. We're staying in this ancient castle in Cardona and learning about Catalan battles and history, and salt mines. Here's the misty view from our bedroom window one morning.

Salt mine

This enormous salt mine, 1300 metres deep, is here, has been here since the Romans paid salaries in salt.

But in the twentieth century rather than mining for edible salt they mined for potassium chloride for explosives.

And quite an explosive history was round here. In 1711, the Bourbons thought they had the right to the city of Cardona, laid siege, but allies fought against them. The history of the siege and its outcome is here.

Corfu visit: sun, sea, smells and sounds

We went to visit an old Norwegian friend who has a holiday house in Corfu, leaving just as the first English autumn morning dawned clear and crisp. In Corfu, there were so many flowers still blooming and the air was warm and the sea warmer - I summarised the week in two minutes at https://vimeo.com/141837801
Then we came back to the English autumn. Here, I see no flowers, but fruits everywhere and the bottom of the garden under the apple and pear trees smells of perry and cider. The leaves, though not yet fallen, are shades of red, russet, orange and yellow. I need three times as many layers of clothes as I needed last week in Corfu and next week I  might even use gloves in the morning.

Helsinki

Four tranquil days by the sea, even on the sea too, sailing round the islands, like Isosaari we spent this week.  'Iso' is the Finnish for 'big and once I lived on Big Robert's Street - Isorobertinkatu.  'Katu', the Finnish equivalent of the Swedish word 'Gatu', means gate or street.
Daughter and I wandered the streets of Helsinki
and the market

Red cathedral, Helsinki

and the cathedrals, red and white.
We had a lovely evening meal with a Sibelius concert - we should have stayed there longer.

Finland is full of trees, pine trees and delicate silver birch trees. And water seems to make up half its land in lakes, not rivers.  In the fields of Suomenalinnea (an island off Helsinki where the Russians built a Finnish fortress - the Gibraltar of the North), we saw no cows or sheep or signs of rabbits, though I noticed that several Helsinki women walked poodles or dogs that looked a bit like poodles.  The streets were clean and clear, and pavements were wide for pedestrians and separate tracks for cyclists.


We ate reindeer meat, and berries - lingonberries and something like blue berries that were very palatable.
The ligon berries were however so tart that your cheeks watered.  I found a use for them by mixing them in with the butter-fired mushrooms I cooked in the evenings at the YHA hostel.
In the hostel, we met the usual friendly sort of foreigners.  An Indian couple from Ahmedabad advised me to visit again, and a very English gentleman with bottle-bottom thick spectacles introduced himself with "how do you do?"  After the usual pleasantries about where we came from he started a long story about how he came to lose his driving licence, a story that entailed him drawing my attention to the braces that held up his yellow knee length dungarees that he'd made for himself so he could attach his wooden leg more easily. Eccentric?

Eurokangas fabric store

Helsinki train station

Daughter found the most magnificently well stocked fabric shop and had a whale of a time examining various cloths to turn into coats, capes and costumes.

Damp Devon

Each year for some seven or eight years, husband and I have taken two or three grandchildren youth hostelling.  This year we aimed to do it again, but this time two parents came with us, and my daughter. This year the company made up for the rainy weather.
We visited SS Great Britain in Bristol on the way down there, the most fascinating old ship I've been on.  I've been on older ships (in Stockholm and in Portsmouth) but this one related to relatives that I could imagine in the 19th century who might have travelled to Australia on such a ship. Its engineering is amazing.  How did they work out the maths to create those structures?  They must have applied calculus and had the machinery to create the propellor and the bows.
On the Monday,  thought we'd hide from the rain by investigating the hidden underground passages of Exeter.  Unfortunately too many others had had the same idea and it was fully booked.  So we paddled around,saw the outside of the cathedral, picked some blackberries at the park and ride car park and went to see my revered first mother-in-law.
Later in the week some of us walked up Dunkery Beacon, and we visited Dunster Mill and went round  Dunster Castle, which was probably the most exciting event of the break - husband left his brolly there.  Yes we needed umbrellas all week.

Holiday topics

Toastmaster topics master this week asked us to speak about holidays, e.g.

• "What is the best holiday you have ever had?"  
• "Do you prefer to holiday on the beach, or have a more active holiday like cycling?  Explain"
• "Would you holiday in the UK or go overseas?    Why"

One of us had to speak to, "Have you ever had a disaster on holiday", which should elicit a humorous litany of woes, but had she asked me to speak, it would have upset the room. The most disastrous holiday I ever had ended at a quarter to one on 23 August 1996. When the disaster happened, the holiday ended. Another of the topic questions was, "would you take out holiday insurance?" That August we had insurance as usual, but only for the usual four out of the five of our party, and I had to pay out a couple of hundred pounds to get one of us home!  Do I need to assure you that now I always have insurance?

The last topic was open to the room, "has anyone gone abroad on Xmas day?".  Yes - and that was probably one of my most memorable holiday, if only because it was the first one I had away from my parents and family when I was 22.  Booked in summer, whilst suffering from a party-induced hangover, my housemate and I flew to an Austrian skiing resort, Mayerhofen.  Housemate got all the gear, onesie ski-suit, gloves, hat, and I, not knowing if I'd like it, wore my English weather water-proofs.  Housemate put on her skis for the first time in our first class, faced up the hill, stood up, and slid backwards, thus promptly falling over.  She went back to the hotel where she spent the rest of the week, kindly donating me her fantastic onesie, a  garment I wore there and then, and for many years after both skiing and later on winter gliding fields.  I discovered I loved skiing and had some aptitude for it. I spent Christmas lunch alone on the top of a mountain, outside an Austrian ski restaurant, eating my sandwich and enjoying the cold crisp wonderful Alpine air - a good Christmas holiday.

Dublin visit

We visited daughter in Dublin, youngest of our combined children, and took the eldest of the grandchildren.

Daughter did us proud in hosting us, escorting us, showing us interesting places:

• Kilmainham gaol, 
• Dublin castle, 
• museum - there was ever so much gold jewellery in Ireland thousands of years ago
• Trinity College Library where we saw the book of Kells
• Guinness Storehouse mmm - I don't normally drink Guinness, but there it tastes different, creamy and less bitter
• St Stephen's Green - a relaxing park of beauty

and eateries: Queen of Tarts, Joy of Chai.

We met up with an old friend, saw the marathon, and went to the theatre (Brecht's 'The Threepenny Opera'). All in three days.

Of great interest to daughter and me was the house in Grafton Street where my grandfather and his six siblings grew up.  It's a shop, as it was in 1900 and something, but no one lives above it any more

Scent from Rhodes

Pine, bay, sage and thyme... The air is full of herbal scents. Sun,sea and sand, architecture and archaeology we're rambling through Rhodes sampling them all.

Furtling about with vehicles in San Francisco

Here's husband ineffectually fiddling around with his hand-me down camera in China Town, San Francisco, photographing an exciting trolley bus - interesting NOT.

We spent four nights here, a lovely city for its steeply angled streets, its characterful transport and its shops (I'd love to come here with a daughter), and stayed in this wonderful bed and breakfast, at the Golden Gate Hotel.  I loved the way their cat sat on the desk by the front door to welcome us.  Their dining room is tiny; although they must have around seven rooms on each of three floors, there are only two large round tables and one small one in the breakfast area, so you have to talk to other guests, which is lovely.  We met people who were also on holiday, from all over the States, or from Holland, or from Australia, and people who were here for conferences, or with a spouse at a conference.  In the afternoon, the hotel proprietors provide tea in this same area, and whilst not as busy as at breakfast time that gives you a break, a light fruity tea, and the most delicious cookies, something like my mother-in-law used to make.  Yummy.

And did I mention San Francisco's vehicles?  It has trolley buses, buses, tram cars and cable cars, not to mention the BART - Bay Area Rapid Transport.  We bought a 3-day ticket and travelled on most of the vehicles.  People talked to each other on these vehicles and we saw a variety of  San Franciscan life.  On one trolley bus, there were forty small boys, a class of eight-year-olds all very smartly dressed in school uniform with blazer and pressed trousers, and white shirts and ties - obviously a private school (Sacred Heart).  On  another trolley bus, wheelchairs were easily and readily accepted and stowed, in a way that I've never seen in the UK.

 I even made a sound recording of the cable car bells to share with my mother when I get back.  You can see one coming up the hill here.  I didn't fancy hanging on a pole on the outside, but even getting on and off can be a bit scary as they stop, on the tracks, right in the middle of a junction, and you have to check what traffic is around you, and that it has stopped like it's meant to!

Husband is less stressed since he bought a new camera.  Now he can effectively shoot a series of photos of the trolley buses and might use them to illustrate a piece for his model railway club magazine.  

Trains at the Grand Canyon

Last weekend we visited the Grand Canyon. Here's husband ineffectually faffing about with his camera, taking photos of a train, for goodness sake. We had half a day in that Grand Canyon park, and we spent a hour of it walking to this station, waiting to see and photo the blooming train. Was I grumpy!

We got back up to the rim (south) to glimpse the view, though husband stressed about other tourists who were off the track, near the cliff.

Versailles kir

Nice trip to Versailles with nearest and dearest to finish off my PhD with a celebratory glass of kir at the Open University degree ceremony.

That's my third trip to France this year.

Tired on holiday

I thought on this, the last day, I would walk a bit, but I've woken too lethargic to be bothered to eat breakfast. Today's walk, despite starting gently, finishes with a long walk and no-get out clause.

Nevertheless, this week I've walked round Foix, and the village of Montsegur, visited Mirepoix and Carcassonne and its old city - I went up there on the navette train, and I've met some interesting people amongst the other ramblers.

I spent a happy couple of hours yesterday on the Canal du Midi, on a boat trip from Carcassone up to the lock, l'Ecluse de Ladouce. At the end of the nineteenth century, the tow paths, used by tow horses were eroding, so they planted plane trees to protect the bank because these trees have a strong root system. However, the problem now is a fungus that is attacking the trees, which may need to be replaced.

Montsegur

I visited Montsegur with the group. They went walking; I went on the bus down to the village, chatted over coffee in French with the driver, visited the museum and all but fell asleep in the sunshire. The others came down from the castle covered in mud, smelly and dirty and they loved it.

From Foix to Carcassonne

We been on a week long Ramblers tour in the foothills of the Pyrenees, landed at Toulouse on Friday, the last day of my radiotherapy. I had the last treatment at 8.30 in Oxford, and we caught the plane from Heathrow at 2.30.

We spent four nights at Foix, and four at Carcassonne, stopping en route at the picturesque village of Mirepoix, where I had my usual espresso and glass of water.

French colonies de vacances threatened

Today's French paper says that fewer children are going to colonies de vacances - a holidaying tradition of the French for decades, perhaps for nearly a century. These camps, lasting three to four weeks , are organised and run on a day-to-day basis by moniteurs and monitrices, themselves young people on the cusp of adulthood, people who love children, love enlivening their holidays with games, crafts and songs and are willing to spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week with them for all the holiday, eating with them, sleeping in their dormitories. The only break the moniteurs get is a half day off once a week.

It's hard work, and you have to enjoy it. If you're English, you get a unique opportunity to live and speak the young French culture. I know. I did it in the 1970s. Watch "Nos jours heureuse" for a reflection of the episodes of frustration, worry, joy and love that being a monitor on a colo can bring you. Excerpts of it are on YouTube and it was a hit movie in France in 2006.

But now fewer French children go to colo as more parents take them on more exciting trips.

An even bigger threat is European employment law that requires minimum wage (SMIC) and longer breaks.

It's arguable that the provision of board and lodging makes up some of the wage, but even so, it is appallingly low for the 24/7 job that monos do.

Worse than the wage, to my mind and memory is the time off - hardly time to go anywhere (if you had the transport, money or remaining energy) or to sleep (if it were quiet enough). But the French 35 hour work week might put paid finally to this unique tradition.