All posts by bpheasant

Asia, city, Europe, travel

Bosphorus Cruising

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I saw a completely different side of Istanbul today as I got the very reasonably priced ferry up the Bosphorus. It does make a few stops along the way, but seems to be mostly used by tourists. For some reason I’d always thought the Bosphorus was a dirty, mucky waterway mostly used by commercial boats. That may be to do with one end being at the Black Sea and the connotations of that name. Interestingly there are two currents (countercurrent naturally) – the one on the surface is due to a height differential, while the one down below is due to a concentration differential (salinity) between the Black and the Marmara Seas.

But on another stunning warm & clear day, the Bosphorus turned out to be an exceptionally beautiful stretch of water. For most of the ninety minute trip Istanbul kept stretching towards the end of the Strait. It wasn’t more of the same housing either – there were many palatial buildings and it was easy to see why some of the highest property prices in the world are here. Istanbul surprises again. Many nice yachts and other boats too.

At the end of the route there was three hours to occupy before the ferry headed back. I, & many others, climbed fifteen minutes up to an old castle to get a glimpse of the Black Sea – which is more of the same vivid blue. Back down at the dockside town, I shared a seabass with a group of Americans I’d met on the boat. They were on a faculty trip from some liberal arts college in Allentown, PA. Once I told them I’d spent a month just down the road in Doylestown, I was very well received.

There were a few big tankers & naval ships to see on the return voyage – as well as some wonderfully turned out polished wooden launches. Back in town, I crossed the Golden Horn & climbed up to the base of Galata Tower – which was closing just as I got there yesterday. Unfortunately you are not allowed to climb up it, just take the elevator. Decent views of the city – the only picture I have to share today.

On the way down the hill I found myself in yet another market. Belwilderingly, yet interestingly, this market near a lot of tourists, seemed to be given over to small process and maintenance equipment. I was eying up things that we need in the plant back at work. Alas, the photos of that are on my camera – so the only person who is likely to care, Farmer Liz, will have to wait.

around home, city, Europe, food, friends, travel, UK

Reading to Istanbul – quite the contrast

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A dash home straight after work Friday & a mad pack for nine nights away was all to try & beat the holiday traffic (4 day Diamond Jubilee weekend). I’m not sure I did, but it only took ninety minutes until Reading’s awful road system had me going around in circles.

A delightful evening was spent with Anna & Luke and their NZ visitors – Penny, Kathryn & Megan. That is over half of one of my “second families” from my childhood in Te Puke. As always when visiting Anna & Luke, we ate well – Luke cooked up a storm, before we went out for dessert. A great evening of that easy conversation & banter you get with old friends was topped off with sublime lemon curd tart at Jamie’s (Oliver) Italian. So far away from home, a lot of talk was of travels past, present & future. I did actually remember to snap a photo of visitors from afar – it’s rather unflattering as people seem too interested in their phones. Leaving everyone after breakfast Saturday, I boarded a train to Gatwick to start my week’s holiday. Arriving in Istanbul and walking from the metro, I suddenly realised that this is the first Islamic country I’ve been too – the mosques & evening prayer call gave it away.

As usual, it’s a lot hotter here than home & I’ve spent most of the day walking all around the Old City. The public buildings, mostly mosques, are incredible, things seem cheap, it’s busy and away from the main touristy area the place is filthy – litter, feral cats & dogs everywhere. The food is varied and well good. That’s enough of a brief introduction to Turkey for now, I’m sick of typing on my phone. Here’s all the relevant photos on my phone at once – as Blogger for Android is not particularly useful.

around home, engineering, history, UK

Gosport Museums

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After last weekend, a switch was flicked somewhere & it’s been summer ever since. All week with temperatures sitting in the high twenties, it’s been rather uncomfortable wandering around the plant at work. At least being pretty close to the Solent, there is usually a breeze around. With it not getting dark until well after nine now, I’ve been enjoying getting the only outdoors exercise my shoulder allows at the moment (walking) in the Forest, along the beach at Lepe and across numerous fields in the heat.

With a relatively free weekend on the cards, I thought it was a good weekend to visit Portsmouth for the first time in two and a half years. Considering it’s less than an hour’s drive away, a day-trip there was well overdue. Pleasingly, I remembered just in time that I’d stored the fact that Gosport would be worth a visit one day, after reading about it some months ago, somewhere in my mind. So I headed off to park at the wonderfully named museum, Explosion!, on the west side of Portsmouth Harbour just before anything opened. As I wandered around the old buildings, it was obvious that it’s not far across the harbour to Portsmouth and all its things naval – both old & new. While the groundsmen finished off mowing the lawns, I ducked inside right at ten o’clock & bought my multi-pass ticket – Explosion!, the Royal Navy Submarine Musuem & a day-pass on a water-taxi between the two, Portsmouth & HMS Victory.

Explosion! (really the Museum of Naval Firepower) is at Priddy’s Hard & centres around Grand Magazine which is an impressive brick structure built in 1771 to house gunpowder. I got through the first room, which was based around the memories of those that used to work at the Ordnance Depot, before ducking out to get the first water-taxi of the day to the submarine museum. The schedule is well timed so that when you step off the boat, having cruised past hundreds of boats packed in the marinas & numerous waterside apartments, you are soon able to get on a guided tour of the HMS Alliance. (Although not for long as major maintenance work is soon to begin.)

Being early in the day, there were only fifteen on the tour – which is more than plenty on a sub, I wouldn’t have been keen on being a submariner in here with sixty other men – none of whom have showered for six weeks. A diesel sub laid down near the end of WWII, it was fairly antiquated – but that just makes all the various valves, large batteries, pipes & so forth more interesting compared to what I imagine are much less cluttered modern designs.

I usually struggle to get representative photos of the cramped conditions on subs, so here’s a standard torpedo tube shot.

Our guide was excellent, having been a submariner for many, many years & actually having served on the Alliance. It’s so much more interesting with stories of what being on the watch was like, the thrill of chasing & evading the Russians in the Artic, & as it’s about the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands War – a first hand account of being on the sub that sunk the Argentine cruiser Belgrano.

HMS Alliance – looking quite shabby outside, showing why it’s down for major work starting soon

Other submarines of interest at the museum include Holland I, the Royal Navy’s first submarine – built in 1901. It had a crew of just eight (it was quite small & used for coastal defence and basically to see what this submarining thing was all about), with a petrol engine and 25 tons of batteries for use under water. Having spent a little too long underwater (almost seventy years) after sinking while being towed to be scraped, she was raised again in 1982 and has been on display around various restoration works since.  In the main inside display area is the midget sub HMS X24 that was used in WWII to sneak in to heavily guarded harbours & deposit its two large bombs under targets (docks, ships & so on).

Holland I tail-fins & propellor

I rushed around the last of the very informative displays so that I could catch the next water-taxi across the harbour to Portsmouth for a spot of lunch (Italian market – yum) & some much needed clothes shopping (something that is always needed as I put it off so often) for an hour.  It was great tootling across the harbour dodging small yachts, superyachts, ferries & large power boats under the sun.

An hour was enough to scoff a couple of calzonnes, buy some clothes, gaze around at the sights – so it was back on the Jenny R for the double-leg back to Explosion! – via the main visitor attraction in town HMS Victory & HMS Warrior.

HMS Warrior

Back at Explosion! there was time to learn/be reminded about fighting sailships & various explosives before a very good multimedia presentation in the Grand Magazine. The Grand Magazine, with its eight foot thick brick walls, took three years to build and then another three years for the mortar to dry out (gunpowder doesn’t like moisture so much). I was pleased to learn I was standing in the very room where explosives for Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar were stored prior to the battle. There was a great mix of military history, social history, physics & chemistry to keep me well interested. The stories of all the precautions that had to be taken over the 150+ years of work here were fascinating. As with many industries in both world wars, many women took over the jobs of the men that had gone to the front. Hearing how the women had to work with cordite (which had replaced gunpowder by that stage) was especially neat as it was in a munitions factory that my great-grandmother (Mum’s mum’s mum) worked and was awarded an OBE for preventing some sort of explosive disaster.

The rest of the museum is given over to various large mines, torpedos, shells, missiles & such forth. All very interesting & technical – but didn’t hold my attention as much as the tales of the people that had to work in such a large & dangerous facility. All in all, a great day out with two fantastic museums & a time lounging in the sun on the back of a little boat pootling around the harbour – not bad for fifteen quid.

I had a bit of time to spare at the end so wandered in to Gosport – fifteen minutes past large old barracks that are now nice looking housing & newer apartment blocks. Gosport’s High Street isn’t so much to wander around, especially as I’d been over the harbour wandering around Gunwharf Quays a few hours previous.

city, family, food, friends, London, UK

On the Thames

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After two rather strange events at the end of last week – I joined a gym & bought runners (need to burn energy somehow while I’m off the bike) – I headed up to London for the weekend. Mostly it was to catch up with people I haven’t seen for some time. Since I last saw them two months ago just after my operation, Levi & Marki and Jeff have been to NYC, Czech & Turkey in different permutations. So with my Rome trip as well, there was a fair amount to discuss. Time was a bit limited as they were heading off to the O2 to see Kayne & Jay-Z (maybe I’m just boring, but I didn’t see the attraction). However, someone had decided that a good way to get to the O2 (which is well away from the centre of London) was to get a ThamesClipper (a pretty fast catamaran passenger ferry) down the river.

I jumped at the chance as while I’ve walked over, under & beside; driven over, under & beside; cycled over, under & beside; and ridden trains over, under & beside the Thames many times over the last four years I’ve previously never found reason to get on a boat on the river. It was good fun watching so many landmarks slide by from a different vantage point – I particularly liked going under Tower Bridge.

Meeting up with more concert-going friends in the O2 (I’d never been in before – it really is an incredibly large tent with all sorts of shops, restaurants, a squash competition & of course the arena), I joined them for a very late lunch before riding buses back to Sidcup. Trish picked me up & went out to watch the Bexley Village world go by as we savoured our Moroccan meal. I’m not sure acoustic Lily Allen & Lady Gaga is traditional Moroccan music, but whatever.

Sunday was spent driving north into Essex & visiting various family – the main point of the weekend away. A very pleasant cup of tea with my great-uncle (Grandad’s brother) as he regaled me with stories of his travels in WWII as a wireless operator. Still can’t picture Blackpool as a place to go & learn Morse code or why exactly Alan was shipped to Brazil, Durban, Bombay, Iraq, Cairo & Libya. But then war doesn’t make a lot of sense on much higher levels than that, so I’m really not too fussed. Always a delight to spend time with a very switched older generation (with a surprisingly good grasp on current news) – there’s some small hope that I won’t completely lose my marbles in fifty-odd years. Plus Alan was interested in my USA roadtrip (particularly Yellowstone) photos, so I got to show some of those.

A little bit back towards London, I spent the afternoon with Carly & her family. One of only two second-cousins on my maternal grandmother’s side (compared to the plenty on grandad’s side), it’s been sometime since I’ve seen them – the kids & house are now much bigger. As Carly & David honeymooned in Banff, there’s always plenty of Canada talk which is good fun; family also is a hot topic, as Carly’s brother, father & grandfather are all quite funny (/crazy) there is generally much amusement.