Category Archives: family

around home, family, friends, history, London, UK

Planes, bikes & houses

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The sky is strangely quiet over London at the moment – as I expect it over much of the rest of the British Isles & parts of Western Europe. I can’t say that I mind too much; but I’m glad I have no plans to go anywhere near an airport in immediate future – for those that were planning on traveling by air, the disruption due to the volcanic ash floating on down from Iceland must be horrific. Two days of closure – unprecedented & surely a right nightmare for travelers & the airlines. On a brighter note with regards to air travel (pending the clearing of the ash in the next four weeks) – the paper work for my application for a one-year working holiday visa to Canada came through a few days ago & I have since booked my flight to Calgary (May 15). It would be fair to say I’m more excited than a “Frenchman who has just invented a pair of self-removing trousers”.

The weather has continued to improve & that has made the days out in the last ten days nicer & in some cases possible. Trish & I have also managed to watch quite a bit of Hornblower, I’ve got hooked on Alexander McCall Smith’s second series of books (the 44 Scotland St series) – set in Edinburgh & full of very interesting interconnected (as I suppose most are in novels) characters in which one often sees parts of one’s self reflected, been sorting a few things out for Canada & we have played quite a few visits to Trish’s mother, Nora, in hospital. Such hospital visits are still consisting of countless games of gin-rummy, which is good for Nora as she remembers how to play & is known to beat us on occasion; sadly, it looks as though she will not be going home after being discharged, rather she will only be discharged when she has a place to go to in a residential care home.

Eltham Palace is but a few miles from home & I had been meaning to visit for some time. Trish & I took the opportunity last Tuesday as the sunny day was good for viewing the extensive gardens. It’s a slightly strange palace, as while it was originally built for Edward IV in the late fifteenth century & Henry VIII spent a lot of his childhood there, it fell in to disrepair in the 1800s (the Great Hall being used as a barn) before Stephen & Virginia Courtauld extensively renovated it in the 1930s. The Great Hall was restored in medieval, the buildings were extended & the exterior kept in the right period, but the inside is a bold mixture of Art Deco, ocean-liner & Swedish styling. It makes for a rather curious contrast – but it’s fantastic. The house has been restored well by English Heritage & they have a lot of the original furniture & paintings. As well as the great design work (the huge glass dome in the entrance foyer is spectacular), the house had a lot of up-to-the-minute technology – underfloor heating, multi-room audio system, central vacuum & an early PABX. As expected, the gardens were beautiful & very pleasant to walk around – there were even some tunnels surviving from four or five hundred years ago.

Battle was to be the next place visited, but as Andrew was taking his two young daughters (Shelley is now back at work two days a week) to see all the planes at the RAF museum in North London, I thought I would tag along & tick that off my list. In the end I only got to half tick it off, as there are so many planes & so much history to read that I still have the Battle of Britain hall & the History of Flight hall to go back & see. The collection of WWI era aircraft was quite fascinating, as it is not so often one sees surviving examples of these plane. A couple of them had no fuselage – just a cockpit, then a big gap & then the tail.

I quite liked the Bomber Hall too; it’s always quite difficult to get photos of planes in museums as it is difficult get far enough away from the planes (particularly bombers) – but here is a Lancaster (WWII) & a Vulcan (built to drop nuclear bombs in the ’50s & ’60s).

There was a good doco film about the Dambuster raids – an event, that if not entirely successful, never fails to catch the imagination. That Barnes-Wallis sure was a smart guy – also was able to appreciate the size of a Grand Slam that he designed (a massive bomb that only specially modified Lancasters could carry that would penetrate deep in to the ground before exploding with earthquake effect – used against infrastructure [bridges & so on]). I was impressed that the girls were so well behaved – hardly heard a peep out of Amelie & Vittoria was able to be amused most of the time, even if she did seem to think she had spent the day looking at dinosaurs. Andrew was pretty good too.

Saturday was perhaps the warmest day of the year so far, & I took the opportunity to go for another ride through the northwest Kentish countryside. I managed a loop down to Shoreham & up the other side of the valley (good views out towards the Thames Estuary), through Eynsford again (brief stop at the ruins of Lullingstone Castle). It was a great day to be out & plenty of other people thought so – a lot of ramblers, people sitting roadside at pubs & it would seem every one in a twenty mile radius with convertible drove past with the top down. I managed about forty kilometres & some reasonable hills in there too – but not particularly long. Along the spine of the hills back down to Eynsford I was intrigued by the sound of a motor behind a large hedgerow – it didn’t sound like farm machinery, more like a circular saw. As I reached a gap in the hedge I spied a group of people gathered in a field for an afternoon of model helicopter flying. At first, the helicopter looked barely in control as the pilot (I suppose you could call him that) took it flew a whole lot of turns, dives, spins, loop-the-loops; but as I watched it fly around in a cloud of smoke the manoeuvrability as it seemed to bounce around on thin air was quite incredible. That’s more than enough of that.

Another outing I had been meaning to go on for a while was to ride to Down House near Biggin Hill. Down House was of course the home of Charles & Emma Darwin for about forty years in the nineteenth century. I went for the just-about-countryside-all-the-way route to get out to Downe & some how managed to get another forty-odd kilometres of road riding in. The house itself is recreated as it was in Darwin’s day downstairs with a lot of original furniture, paintings & decor; while, upstairs is an very good exhibition on the family history, the Beagle voyage & his subsequent work. The garden was also quite interesting (unfortunately a bit of it was closed, so good photos of the house were difficult to take), as quite a few of Darwin’s experiments were done here over many years. It seems Darwin was not the typical Victorian father, so there quite a few amusing family-life anecdotes.

around home, family, friends, London, UK

Limbo

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If I thought I was coming back to England to reduce my food intake, I was badly mistaken on my first day back from Spain. Andrew had organised a surprise birthday party for Shelley the day after I got back (that timing was planned, I would have stayed longer in Spain otherwise). Heading out to West Harrow I was quickly reminded why I rarely travel in to the city on a weekend – Transport for London find it necessary to take down half the tube lines on a regular basis for engineering work. Just as well I had given myself plenty of time – a train from Marylebone to Harrow-on-the-Hill (with a lot of waiting) & I was, somehow, at the venue first (I never could pull off fashionably late – it’s pretty difficult when you are never fashionable & usually are punctual). Anyway, Shelley was suitable surprised & it was great to finally meet some of their London friends that crop up in conversation when I am visiting. Plus there was a huge meal laid on by various people.

I think the calorific intake of the previous week inspired me to replace the rear brake pads on my bike – the current ones having been all but destroyed on that wet Farnborough ride. Even though I had bled the brakes quite recently, there was no way that the new pads were going in – no matter how much I tried to persuade them. Somewhere in the act of persuasion the centre of one of the pistons snapped off, rendering the brakes inoperable. Damn, no riding for a little while. I wasn’t overly keen on forking out eighty to a hundred quid for a new set, so was pleased when I eventually got a secondhand set of similar vintage off eBay for about half the price. These are now on the bike (an easy switch) some two or three weeks after returning from Spain – but more of the resulting (road – boring, I know) rides later.

A few days later, Louis (a friend I grew up with in Te Puke & then flatted with during some of my time at university – now living in Ipswich with his wife, Emma) was in the city for a training day for work. We arranged to meet late in the afternoon at one of the NZ stores after he had bought Emma some NZ goodies of the confectionery kind. The days were finally starting to get a little longer & more pleasant in this part of the world, so I made the most of it by heading in & trying to get some value out of my English Heritage card (bought all those months ago at Osborn House, Isle of Wight). First stop was Apsley House on Hyde Park Corner – the home of the Dukes of Wellington since the early 1800s.

This was quite fitting as I had seen signs on the coach drive back to Madrid to places where notable battles of the Peninsular War had taken place – specifically Talavera & Salamanca. The house was gifted to the nation in 1947, but the family still has use of some of the building as their London home. I quite enjoyed my visit to the house as there is a good collection of art, & plenty of gifts from various nations & interesting artefacts from & commemorating many famous battles (such as swords that both Wellington & Napoleon carried at Waterloo). It was interesting to learn that Wellington & Nelson only met once – & that was while waiting to report to senior officer & at first Nelson had no idea who Wellesley was. Opposite the house is Wellington Arch, which gives good views of the royal parks in the area & over to Westminster.

Inside the arch – as well as a display detailing the history of the arch & one explaining London’s blue plaque system – there is a small display devoted to the nearby NZ Memorial, which is always nice to pass by & remind one of home (the Australian memorial on the opposite side of the arch is pretty neat too, but of course does not have as much significance for me).

I still had a bit of time to kill before meeting Louis, so a pleasant stroll down the side of St James’s park took me to Westminster & a couple of small English Heritage attractions in the abbey complex.

Walking back through Trafalgar Square I was pleasantly surprised to see a new Jack Reacher novel in the window of Waterstone’s – buying that straight away & going & sitting in St James’s Park & reading for an hour was a bit of a no brainer. Met Louis eventually & had a good catch up while walking around trying to find a GBK (Gourmet Burger Kitchen) for dinner.

I’ve been racking my brains to remember what else has filled the last few weeks & then I remembered that for a while I was actively looking for gainful employment. So that was a few hours every day trolling through various websites, ringing recruiters, preparing CVs & cover letters and so on. As one would expect, the job market over here is a little on the tight side (which is akin to saying I like mountain-biking a little bit) & I didn’t really find any jobs that appealed a great deal. Not having much of a clue as to what I really want to do either doesn’t exactly aid in narrowing things down. Somewhat out of the blue, I landed an interview up in Tamworth (about twenty minutes north-east of Birmingham) for the role of process engineer for at a small (compared with the steel mill anyway) factory that makes PCBs (printed circuit boards). At about that time I was really starting to wonder if I wanted to head back to a real job, settle in one place, get a car & all that. I started tossing around the idea of going back to Spain & teaching English – while an attractive option for a variety of different reasons, in the end I really didn’t want to have to study for a TEFL qualification & while I really enjoyed the one-on-one tutoring style of Vaughan Town, I hate teaching classes. Working on a farm up in Scotland or north England even crossed my mind, & then I got a reply to an email I had forgotten that I had even sent. It turns out that, even though the website isn’t very clear on the issue, applications for NZers wanting a one-year working holiday in Canada were still open for 2010. After the fantastic (dislocated shoulder excluded) five weeks recently spent in Canada, I always thought I would return one day, I just didn’t expect that it may be so soon. I’ve really missed being able to get out of the house & go for a mountain-bike ride in London & a summer spent riding in Alberta & BC just seems fantastic – not to mention the next ski season. You can only apply for this visa before you turn thirty, so I figured it was better to do something about it now while I am not settled in a real job – I can always come back to Britain & Europe any time I wish thanks to my British citizenship. So in the space of about two days I had gone from not really thinking about Canada, downloaded & completed the forms, got my ugly mug on a couple of passport photos & posted it all off to Mum & Dad for them to organise a bank cheque for me. So with a bit of luck, this will go through easily & I’ll hear back in five or so weeks.

So that took any impetus that there was out of the job hunt – but I still had an interview to go & do. I went mainly just for the experience & to see if the job was a blinder. Consequently, the suit (yes I only have one & I hardly need that) came out of its bag for the first time since August, I drove a few hours north (all motorway driving – enough of that boredom to make me want to go to Canada even more), checked out the small town of Tamworth (not too bad, but I struggled to kill the two hours before my interview) & rocked up for the interview. It was a strange experience – having a interview for a job you really don’t care if you get or not, actually one you would prefer that they don’t offer you – I was super relaxed & had to stop myself lounging on the arm rests of the chair & wasn’t at all concerned with how it went. It seemed to go pretty well, but that was mostly due to my indifference. The factory was so clean compared to the Iron Plant & the process so much more precise. The making of PCBs was quite interesting with a lot of baths & electrolysis for coating the boards with various things – copper, gold, platinum, tin; it was a nice change to be thinking of such geeky things. Was quite happy to get back on the road & visit Carol (first cousin once removed), Barry & their daughter Catherine near Stansted for a great dinner & a very talkative evening. Home exhausted from the six or so hours of driving.

I’ve become disturbingly well acquainted with the local hospital, Queen Mary’s over the last few weeks. (Incidentally, it started off as a medical camp during WWI & a Kiwi, Harold Gillies, performed a lot of pioneering plastic surgery work with facial reconstruction of servicemen badly burnt in the war.) Firstly, Trish has to go there every so often with the recovery from her broken leg – last time it was to have a screw removed. Secondly, I’ve finally started physio there – trying to strengthen my shoulder up so it is less likely to dislocate; I’m a little ashamed to say I’ve had to buy a Swiss (gym) ball as part of the rehab, I hate gym equipment – I would much rather be outside riding or even walking. But most of the visits have been to do with Trish’s mother, Nora (my great-aunt) & my role as taxi-driver & errand-boy (as Trish can’t drive at the moment). There was one eye appointment, & then Nora had a fall walking home from Tesco & ended up in A&E with nasty bruising above & below her right eye & low blood pressure. I think Trish & I were there until midnight that night. Almost two weeks later, Nora is still there – but that is more to do with social work & OT assessments. So there have been quite a few visits & countless games of gin-rummy.

Much of one week was spent doing the most physical labour (although not particularly onerous) I have done in a long time – Ray (Trish’s brother & another first-cousin-once-removed) & his wife, Jill own & run a cattery. I’m not too sure who builds roofs out of plywood, but one of the catteries had a rotten roof so I spent all of one Sunday removing the rotten roof & cladding & installing a new roof with Ray & his son Tim. My thighs hurt for days after that – from all the crouching & going up & down ladders. I was out at Ray’s for the few days after tidying up the mess we had made & cleaning out the cattery & doing other odd jobs. If the weather improves – that is, if we manage to have a day that isn’t rainy or windy – I’ll be back out there this week doing a spot of painting. It was great to be working outside for the week. Trish & I also had dinner at Clare (Ray & Jill’s daughter) & Mark’s recently – great to catch up, as although they only live half an hour’s bike ride away, I hadn’t seen them since late September.

It was cool to spend a bit of time at Andrew & Shelley’s over a couple of days at the beginning of last week. The first was a Sunday afternoon/evening & strangely, the weather was pretty nice. I think we had a good time keeping the girls amused at a nearby park – even if Vittoria did have ten or fifteen minutes of the “terrible twos”, something I never mind too much as I’m very much an avuncular figure & don’t have to live with screaming kids & can quite easily ignore them (reminded my a lot of my time in Pennsylvania!). Shelley soundly beat Andrew & me in a game of Knights & Cities – a step up in complication from normal Settlers of Catan & one I haven’t quite mastered yet – which I will tell you is because I have not played it very much, a good story & I’m sticking to it. The Tuesday after I was back at the Patricks’ house, after a day in London, for a spot of babysitting. The day in London is probably of more interest to you (& me) – it started off at the Tate Modern. The level of my appreciation of modern art is easily illustrated by the fact that I found the most interesting part of the whole gallery is that it used to be a power station – what was left of the turbine hall had me imagining boilers, turbines, steam lines, pulverisation & so forth. I popped up to Euston to complete my look around the British Library galleries – quite a few months since I had last been there; saw two of the remaining four copies of the Magna Carta, some pretty cool Shakespeare & Beatles texts. With a bit of time to fill before heading out west on the Metropolitan Line, I spent an hour brushing up on my British royal history, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery’s first eight rooms & the placards that go with the great pieces. The Patrick girls were as well behaved as usual – Andrew & Shelley seemed to return with most of a normal sized store after their shopping trip, just as well it was a large store that they went to.

Thursday last was forecast to be snowy or sleety, but I awoke (eventually) to a clear blue sky – enough for me to get on the aforementioned fixed bike & go for a ride. Of course, by the time I got organised it had clouded over – but I managed to avoid any rain lingering around SE London & NW Kent. It was great to be out pushing the pedals around again – even if it was only a twenty-two mile (close to 35 km for those of you in more sensible countries – really, who thought it was a good idea to use a mixture of imperial & metric units? What a royally stupid idea.). I headed east past Swanley, over the M25 & to the small village of Eynsford. Pretty flat generally, but with a few long gentle hills on which to push the legs a bit harder. By the time I got to Eynsford, it was well past lunch time & with no cash & a £10 minimum on the debit-card (eftpos for the Kiwis) machine I had to force down a large mexican pizza & a bowl of fries (I say force, but it was pretty nice & I was rather hungry – not too much of a hardship really) while enjoying banter at the bar with all sorts of accents you wouldn’t expect in the Kentish countryside. Before returning home, I checked out the ruins of the Lullingstone Roman Villa – which was started in about 100 AD & expanded over the next three or four hundred years as the owners grew more & more wealthy. What remained of the mosaic on the floor of the dining room was quite impressive, as were many of the other artefacts that had been excavated over the last sixty years.

Saturday just gone was the famous Oxford v Cambridge Boat Race up the Thames. Happily I didn’t have a lot planned for the Easter weekend so was able to go & take a look at this British institution. With way too much time on my hands, wanting to spend some time on the bike & as a chance to see a different part of London (even if I was mostly constrained to the Southern Circular route – the A205) I decided I would ride out there. This didn’t look like a good idea earlier in the week with thunderstorms forecast, but thankfully British meteorologists seem to be even worse at their jobs than their Kiwi counterparts & the weather was quite reasonable. As pointed out by Andrew earlier in the week, on my bike I would be able to move down the course as the race progressed. It took me ninety minutes to ride across south London & arrive at Putney & find a good spot on the south bank of the Thames to sit & wait for the boats to come past – I could just see the start. Unfortunately, I overestimated how long it would take for me to get there, so I had an hour to while away (without my iPod, dammit – I have three Hamish & Andy episodes to catch up on) – it did get a bit colder, so I was glad I had put the leggings on under my Dobies (I was quite the picture of NZ MTB clothes – Krank top; Ground Effect leggings & socks; NZO shorts & gloves & Buff – with an Icebreaker layer to top things off). There were plenty of people about & every one was pretty well behaved – just over the river was Bishops Park (which featured on one of my earlier walks) & Craven Cottage – home of Fulham FC. The tide was well in & the race started at 4.30 – Oxford in the dark blue on the near side (Surrey side of the course) & Cambridge in the light blue on the far (Middlesex) side.

Oxford had the better of the early part of the race & I was on my bike shortly after they passed & riding across to Barnes Bridge to see them come past again. There seemed to be many more people at Barnes Bridge – probably as it was closer to the end of the just-over-four-mile-long-course. By this stage, Cambridge was ahead by about two-thirds of a length – a lead that they would not relinquish as the race ended, just short of Chiswick Bridge, to win the race against the bookies’ odds & prevent what would have been a three year losing streak.

The ride home took slightly longer, but thankfully summer time has started here in the the UK & there was still plenty of light when I made it back at 7.00. A good afternoon out & I was pleased at how well I had stood up to over sixty kilometres of road-riding – not that there was any real pace involved.

Easter seems to be a bigger deal over here than at home – I’ve had so many toasted hot cross buns & so much chocolate; Easter Sunday saw Trish & I drive out to Jan’s (Trish’s sister) place just north of Dover. Last time we were out this way it was Christmas & the M20 was similarly quiet. While the Sunday dinner was being prepared, I skived off to visit Dover Castle. Being Easter Sunday & the start or middle of the school holidays (depending on the school) there were plenty of people around – just as well it’s a pretty big complex.

The castle, perched atop the white cliffs, commands great views of the Channel & over to France.

There have been fortifications here since shortly after William the Conqueror successfully invaded Britain in 1066 & the main castle dates from the reign of Henry II in the 1160s. Garrisoned until 1958, it was a military installation for nine centuries continuously until 1958. At the centre of the castle is the Great Tower that Henry had built – a symbol of his power, greatness & wealth. The Great Tower has recently been recreated as to how it would have been to receive important visitors in 1184 (Dover Castle was on the pilgrimage path to Canterbury from the continent); the six large rooms recreated include the King’s Hall with the throne & numerous wall hangings & banners – all quite splendid.

Being a bank holiday weekend there was a bit more than usual going on around the castle – including a small group dressed up as Grenadier Guards of the Napoleonic War period. After having watched too many episodes of Sharpe (a bit like Hornblower, but in Wellington’s army not the Royal Navy) I was interested to see them loading & firing their muskets at three rounds a minute.

Considering there was only five muskets, the noise was tremendous (I wonder if they had extra loud blanks – in case they wanted to “deafen them to death”); I can’t begin to imagine what it would have been like in the ranks – the smoke was something else too.

A part of the complex that I wasn’t expecting to encounter was the secret war time tunnels. Tunnels had been made in the cliffs from 1797 to provide extra accommodation for two thousand odd troops. Come the second world war, these tunnels were recommissioned & used for the command of the defence of the south-east coast. It was from here that Vice Admiral Bertrand Ramsay organised & commanded over the space of ten days the evacuation of over 300,000 British, French & Belgian troops from Dunkirk in 1940. There are three layers of tunnels & access was open to the top two – a field hospital & the command centre. I managed to make it back in time for dinner & then Jan’s eldest son Luke & his wife, Katy, dropped round to say hello & show us photos of their recent wedding in Antigua. After all that & way too much food, it was a struggle staying awake on the couch – just as well the drive home was uneventful.

So now I’m in a state of limbo waiting to hear about my visa, not looking for jobs in the UK, not wanting to waste my (potentially) last six or eight weeks in the UK for a year & not really wanting to spend too many pounds as I will need them to get in to & set myself up in Canada. But I seem to find enough to do around London; who knows, maybe another week in Spain at Vaughan Town or elsewhere could be a good option. That is an exceedingly long post (pity I haven’t taken heaps of photos – damn clouds), I really didn’t think I had been up to all that much – just as well I didn’t detail all the books I’ve read, TV & movies I’ve watched (although I am back on to The Young Ones – “I better get back to the lentil casserole before I get disorientated”) & so on.

Finally – go Lyon!

around home, bikes, family, friends, history, London, MTB, UK

Back to the gloom – but now we see the sun

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The London weather has turned over a new leaf for March – the last two days have heralded brilliant sunshine & something bordering on warmth. Apart from that, the last two and a half weeks since returning from Canada have been pretty gloomy & wet. Not that that has mattered too much as I’ve been staying up much too late watching the Winter Olympics – fantastic & quite addictive viewing Consequently, I haven’t taken a single photo since my return & may have some trouble remembering what I’ve been up to. Nice to catch up with NZ cousin Chris for his birthday the day after my return – & good to see the expecting couple Sasha & Blair, who are planning their return to NZ in a couple of months.

I haven’t been quite the tourist around London that I was when the weather was more conducive. Nonetheless, I’ve managed to finish off looking around the National Gallery – unfortunately mostly during the very busy period of half-term. I particularly enjoyed the English landscape work of Constable, Turner & so on. While the National Portrait Gallery is a lot smaller, I enjoyed looking around there yesterday – will be back some time to finish – I liked to see the pictures of various scientists from the 1800s, especially Faraday & Lord Kelvin.

A couple of days last week I had to head in to the city briefly & it was definitely museum weather. The first time I went to the Hunterian Museum (Royal College of Surgeons) before heading out to catch up with the Patricks. The museum is roughly a third of what it was before it got hit during the Blitz and is what remains of John Hunter’s collection of all sorts of anatomical specimens from humans & animals – from the days of surgery with public viewing, a shortage of corpses for scientific study, & grave-robbers supplying the demand for bodies. It was much larger than I was expecting & the history of the medical profession was fascinating; I’m sure all the displays would have been even more interesting if I was medically trained. The best part however was the rather extensive display of surgical instruments (some quite disturbing of course) & the history of the surgical instrument making trade. This was of interest to me as it was in this trade that my grandfather apprenticed in for seven years from 1939 & then worked in. It was great to see quite a few (ten to a dozen) instruments made by the company he trained & worked in (Down Brothers) during the period in which he was there – even if he didn’t make the exact instruments I saw, I’m sure he must have made some ones that were identical to those on display.

Opposite the Hunterian Museum, across Lincoln’s Inn Field is another fantastic free museum. The Sir John Soane Museum was left to the nation by Soane on the condition that it be free for everyone to enter & it be left in the state in which it was when he died. Soane was one of Britain’s greatest architects (his work on the Bank of England) may be his most well known, even if little of it except the imposing outer walls survives after expansion in the 1920s & ’30s. The museum is based on his three adjoining houses – Number 12, 13 & 14 & is filled with his vast collection of paintings, architectural drawings, sculptures & ancient artefacts. Soane was famous for his use & exploitation of natural light in a time when there was no electric or gas lighting in buildings. This was perhaps best demonstrated in ‘The Picture Room’, a reasonably small room in which there are over a hundred paintings (& not all that small ones at that) ingeniously hung on the front & back of large hinged false walls. The two series of Hogarths in there are quite something; there are also numerous pictures of Soane’s designs & buildings. Outside of The Picture Room two Canalettos of Venice are pretty neat, as is the sarcophagus of the Egyptian King Seti I (died 1290 BC) that Soane bought after the British Museum refused to pay £2000 for it. The Bank of England museum was only a couple of tube stops away & with spare time, I very happily whiled away a couple of hours learning about the history of the bank, the British currency & currency in general. As one would expect there is a bit of loose change of various ages lying around – also some ingots of gold, one of which you can pick up ever slightly (the case it is in is somewhat restrictive).

Saturday last I was down in Farnborough staying & riding with a MTB mate – Andy. It turned out to be the largest group ride I’ve ever been on – almost thirty people (& one dog, not on a bike) I think. Naturally, it had been raining for quite a few days before so the forest (mostly in & around MOD) land was pretty wet & muddy – just as well the sand drains reasonably well, or else it would have been even worse! We all met at nine o’clock (the earliest I had been up & out of the house in a couple of weeks) near the Basingstoke Canal – after general flaffing around & waiting for a straggler we were out riding just after half past. Thankfully the ride was a pretty easy pace, mostly due to the size of the group I think, & there were no real hills – this was good as it was my first MTB ride for the year & it was really wet (but not cold). There were some nice bits of singletrack & as always, I was pleased to be back on the bike. It was a little odd riding near a military firing range – there were some pretty decent booms not all that far away from where we were. Returning back to Andy’s place we were of course soaked & needing to clean bikes & ourselves (with the final bike clean this morning I’ve found I am in need of a new pair of rear brake pads – I’m sure they weren’t that old). After sorting myself out & watching Italy beat Scotland in the Six Nations, it was a pretty short drive up the M3 & M25 to the Patricks where I was babysitting for the night.

Yesterday was the first of the cracking days of sunshine, so Walking London came off the book shelf & I tried to find a walk that I hadn’t done yet in the central city (didn’t want to head too far out as the ground is still pretty soggy). Found I hadn’t done the Covent Garden walk yet, so that was a pleasant stroll. Not too much I hadn’t seen before – a lot of theatres of course, & the houses of all sorts of literary figure & the rather fancy Savoy.

That’s about all the news – apart from the half-hearted start to the job-hunt; it’s a bit of a trade off between finding a job I could do & starting to earn some pounds or waiting for a job that I like the look of & might be a bit more challenging. And I’m going to Madrid on Thursday for ten days – that all happened very quickly. For half the time I’m volunteering at some English language internment – where basically you sit & speak English to Spanish people who are learning the language. I don’t know too much about Madrid, but it looks pretty neat, so it should be a good week & a bit.

Canada, family, friends, hiking, national park, snow, travel

A lot more skiing

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The ten days or so after returning from Bow Hut until departing Canada is a bit of a blur of various types of skiing & a few other activities. Having decided my arm had had enough rest (not exactly a medical opinion – more not wanting to miss the chance of any more skiing without testing it), the day after Bow Hut James & I headed up to Sunshine. We skiied a few runs off the top of Strawberry lift before I headed off to my second lesson – hoping to get a bit more control & more consistent parallel turns. I didn’t have the instructor to myself this time, but three wasn’t a bad sized class – & as last time, the lunch was huge & fantastic. During the course of the lesson I became a real skier & was bowled over by an out of control snowboarder. Apart from that it was good day with much improvement. A quiet DVD night with an ever filling lounge as people finished work (James) & got back from collecting new cars in Calgary (Megan & Alex). Megan had the rather exciting news that she was off for four days of heli-skiing courtesy of her new employers.

On Mark’s last day on Canmore, he, Adele & I went to the Nordic Center for a spot of cross-country skiing.

It turns out Mark is quite the accomplished skate skier & he spent a lot of time waiting for Adele & I as we slid along in the XC tracks (tracks groomed in the snow to fit the skinny XC skis in them).

I had not been on XC skis before, so it took a little while to get used to them – I was fine as long as I was in the tracks, but when the tracks ran out it was quite difficult to stop in a hurry as the XC skis don’t exactly have edges. Nonetheless I survived the 110 minute loop we did without falling over – XC skiing turned out to be quite the workout as you use the poles to propel you up the hills & along the flat & try to tie the propulsion with a gliding/skating action on the skis. <

Although enjoyable, it was a little boring being limited by my skill to the tracks; on the bright side, the day lodge serves a good plate of poutine. One last dip in the hot springs in Banff & we back to Canmore for our last dinner with Mark – at the Grizzly Paw. As well as making great beer (which I was not surprised about) they also make a good Ginger Beer – a rarity in North America – the sirloin was very good too. I said my goodbyes to Mark that evening as there was not much chance I was going to get up at half past four in the morning to do so. Sunday was pretty lazy as Adele & I spent the morning cleaning the cabin & the afternoon relaxing before moving back to James & Becca’s house.

Becca got the day off work for her birthday, so unsurprisingly she, Adele & I were up to the hill to celebrate with a day of skiing.

Over the course of the day we were joined by a few of her friends from working on the glacier over the previous summer. Sunshine had even managed to have a bit of fresh snow overnight to aid in the celebrations – not quite the metre Becca was asking for, but that may have been perhaps a little hopeful. Of course, we had masses of food & lunch was a pleasantly drawn out affair – it quickly wore off after a run or two. Twas a great day & I was able to explore some new lifts (new to me anyway) & didn’t fall until the ski out to the car park when I accidentally took a side route that should have had a black diamond posted before it.

The light at the top of Goat’s Eye was really flat & the snow quite icy, but the second half of that mountain was great fun. After James cooked up another storm for the birthday dinner & then it was endless games of Monopoly Deal until Becca finally picked up a “It’s My Birthday” card from the draw pile – Murphy of course saw that these cards were in short supply, & when they did come around they went in to the hands of other players.

While Adele was off climbing Cascade Falls (the formation of ice that we had seen from the TransCanada every time we drove to or past Banff) with Craig, I had a relaxing morning until Becca came home in the middle of a split shift with XC skis. After a large lunch of last night’s left over roast, we were off to the Nordic Center (not before we had broken in to Scoobie [the Soobie – bare bones, but reliable Legacy] with a coat-hanger to retrieve the keys; honestly, who keeps the spare key to their car inside the car?) for another good workout. There were far fewer people on the trails this time, the sun was out & the temperature must have almost been reaching 0ºC – it was very pleasant. Unfortunately, the trails weren’t quite as groomed and further away from the pavilion the snow was getting quite thin & at times we were skiing on a little grass. Still, we managed to hardly stop (except for the odd photo)

& finished well worn out in forty minutes less than I had the previous time. XC skiing started to make a bit more sense.

For Adele’s last full day in Canmore (sniff, sniff) we were of course back to Sunshine for a day on the slopes (well, Becca, Adele & I were – James was off super early to climb some multi-pitch piece of ice). There was more powder around up the hill than there had been two days previous & it continued to snow for most of the day. We had a pretty good day – although Becca seemed to have a target on her back & a big flashing neon sign attached to her helmet that said “Try & Crash in to ME”; to say she had a few close calls would be putting it mildly, I was not completely without blame in one of them but managed to cross behind her just avoiding what would have been a spectacular tangle. We spent a lot of time trying to find little tracks through the untouched powder in between trees – some were better trails than others, no-one managed to wrap themselves around a tree although some tried a little harder than others.

Finding little jumps to hit also provided a good diversion from just skiing runs; of course Adele’s last runs for this trip to Canada were off the top of Strawberry.

Despite Megan having just returned from her four days of heli-skiing, we took her & Alex out dinner – ended up back at the Grizzly Paw after Adele & I rather rudely shot down the idea of sushi in flames. Adele & I were completely boring & both took the same option for mains that we had had on Saturday. I think the night will be remembered for Megan being so tired that she could hardly eat any of her pasta & me getting some of my own back on Adele – after having endured a month of conversations about gear & climbing, it was nice to have others around who would happily quote Blackadder, The Big Bang Theory & so on & Adele didn’t have a clue as to what we were talking about. Not to mention Alex’s rather amusing Communist Party T-Shirt – with the emphasis on ‘Party’.

Adele had the rather gargantuan task of trying to pack all the gear she had bought over the last month in to her Macpac & a ski-bag before James, Becca, Adele & I headed off for yet more gear shopping in Calgary before heading to the airport to drop Adele off. Surprisingly, I took an early lead in the gear-buying stakes with a pair of shoes, a pocket knife & very pleasingly a replacement pen for my Swiss Army card (yes, I still have it if you are reading this Kate Southern – it’s fantastic) – one of the most useful things in the card, at least it was until the ink ran out. Eventually, Adele found the jacket she’d been looking for for weeks & Becca got some elusive soft shell trousers (I quite happily relinquished my lead). A grand (had to get that word in once more) Indian dinner in Calgary & it was off to the airport for (dammit) goodbyes (& a few more TimBits of course).

The XC World Cup was in town over the weekend & Friday morning James & I headed out to the Nordic Center to catch a bit of the action. Now that Adele had left, the sun decided to shine all day & it was a glorious day. The event that day was the Free Technique (10 & 15 km for women & men respectively) – which was the skate style of XC skiing, not in tracks. We had enough time before James had to start work to see the sixty-odd women start & finish their time trials (staggered starts).

Some of them were really quick, I was surprised to see a Kiwi out there – apparently she is living in Canmore, she got quite a cheer from us. There was a great crowd out & the ones around us were really chatty & helpful in explaining things about the sport & the competitors. Catching the shuttle back in to town it was funny to see the main street closed off & covered in one and a half feet of snow with XC tracks set in the sides – all part of the festivities.

Back home for a quick lunch, James was off to work & I had the afternoon to myself – I seem to remember sleeping a bit before making an early dinner, Becca came home, we ate & headed to Norquay for a bit of night skiing. Norquay had just the one lift open with a couple of short floodlit runs coming back down to the daylodge. It was just as well the runs were quite wide as I probably would have plastered myself on to a tree if they were narrow – both the runs were quite fast & after a few quick runs down I started to work on my technique & stopping a bit more.

It definitely novel skiing at night; we had a much easier drive home after the dust was wiped off Scoobie’s headlights & our vision was increased by orders of magnitude. Picking James up from work we were off to watch some mixed-climbing at the local indoor rock wall; from what I could work out the competition was basically indoor rock climbing with ice axes to help. Only one competitor finished the route that we saw.

After good sleep-ins (Megan I think was still recovering from the heli-skiing) we rode the few kilometres to the Nordic Center to catch a bit more of the World Cup action. It was much more exciting the second day as the racing was head to head around a much shorter course – what we couldn’t see live, we could see relayed on the big screen. Having six racers on the course at once, with only four sets of tracks led to a few entanglements. The biggest crashes were on a tight right-hander on the last down hill. It was interesting to see the different techniques that the racers used depending on the gradient they were on. In the gap before qualifying & the finals we left the bikes (it must be noted that this was my first bike ride of the year – in February! Shocking!) at the Nordic Center before heading down to town for no reason other than to lunch – my last bagel & chocolate chai at the Bagel Company. The racing was even better after lunch, with only three & a half minute races we were quickly through the quarters & semis & in to the finals. In both finals the champion completely dominated the field to win by a large margin – a Pole in the women’s & a Swede in the men’s. The biggest cheer of course was for the local Canadian who finished third in the women’s. As an aside, I was very surprised at how many Kazakhs were competing – a lot of them made it in to the latter finals too.

With such a beautiful & warm day we couldn’t waste the rest of it. A short drive from town & we were at the start of the track to the summit of Hi Lung (or Chinaman’s Peak). It wasn’t long before our shoes were shod with YakTraks – a wide rubber mesh surrounded by steel coil that enables one to walk on snow & ice, not quite as hardcore as crampons. We climbed pretty steadily for an hour before breaking through the tree line & the view towards Banff started to open up. After another twenty or thirty minutes of climbing through a mixture of snow, scree & slabs of rock we were at the summit looking out over Canmore, the Bow Valley, Kananaskis Country & up towards the summit of Lawrence Grassi. It was very still at the top & the sun was still out so we managed to keep warm – we had been shedding layers most of the way up as the weather was so good.

Sunday was also spent with Megan – she is the only person in Canmore that I know that has normal Saturday & Sunday weekends (& she’s pretty cool too). After some indecision as to what to do with another stunner day close to Canmore (thinking of the head gasket on the way out in the Outback) we went & paid Becca a visit & hired light touring skis (a little bit wider than XC skis). Parking in the same lot as yesterday’s walk to Hi Lung, but heading in the opposite direction we headed off (mostly) down the Goat Creek Track – this goes 19 km to Banff, but as we didn’t have someone to meet us we decided to see how far we got in a couple of hours & then turn back. It wasn’t long before I discovered that it is really hard to stop easily on these skis as there are no edges – it just so happened that the steepest hill of the day was heading down from the parking lot & I spent a fair chunk of it on the ground sliding. The trail was of course no where near as groomed & nice as those at the Nordic Center & of course the tracks were no set, rather just those that had been worn out by many previous tourers. This mean that they were generally pretty shallow & usually disappeared altogether on the downhills. We kept up quite a reasonable pace & stopped for the occasional photograph as it was a beautiful area. Just before our two hour turnaround we reached the Spray River – the snow on the hand rails over the bridge has started to turn in to pretty cool crystals. Turning around, it was of course mostly uphill back up the valley – a few people we passed thought we were nuts & perhaps we were. But as it were, as I wasn’t falling over so much & we weren’t stopping to take duplicate photos we got back to the car in the same time as it took to get to the river. Believably, half way through the return journey I was beginning to feel the lack of lunch & my gliding technique was suffering – never mind, made it back quite alright & it was another great little adventure. Who would have thought so many different types of skis existed? Not me.

For my last full day in the Rockies, I was also keen to spend it at Sunshine. It turned out to be the clearest day that I had out there. I caught a ride up there with Craig & Kelly – we did a couple of runs off Wawa together before they headed out slack-country to do a little touring. I was keen to get my money’s worth out of my lift pass for the day so I spent the day exploring bits of the hill that I hadn’t been on yet & visiting favourites. As I was by myself with no one to keep up to or avoid, I was much slower than normal & could spend the time working on my turns & stops. There was also plenty of time to take photos of the spectacular mountains.

It was also the quietest day that I had visited Sunshine – I don’t think I waited for a lift all day. It was especially dead when I hit the lifts & slopes again after an early lunch – the few people that had been on the mountain were all still inside eating. It was bliss. The light and snow at the top of Goat’s Eye was much better than it had been last week so I spent quite a bit of time on the blue runs there – a couple of the new ones were a bit steeper than I was used to, but I somehow managed without planting myself in the snow.

After Craig & Kelly got back from their little mission we did a couple of hours of Angel, Tee Pee Town, Strawberry, Jack Rabbit & Wolverine together – some amusing moments going through the trees in various parts.

When we left for the ski out at 4.30, we must pretty much had the run to ourselves – I did manage hit a big hole in Upper Canyon, but some how recovered. For the first time I managed to ride all ten lifts & not fall on a whole day on the hill. I even threw in a couple of easy black diamond runs – it turned out they were easier than some of the blue runs I’d been doing previously, go figure. Final dinner with Megan & Alex – which of course included a couple of Big Bang episodes – unfortunately, I discovered I quite like port, particularly the bottle I bought Alex, just as well I was leaving.

Not much of note on the Tuesday – somehow crammed all my gear in to my pack & small suitcase, a bit of cleaning of my room & bathroom; Becca kindly came home during her split shift & then dropped me to meet the shuttle. A few lasts – last A&W burger (they are pretty good) & last box of TimBits (these are pretty good to take on the plane – good snacks between the inadequate Air Canada meals). A great holiday – thanks especially to James & Becca, Megan & Alex, Adele, Mark, Craig & Kelly and the staff at Gear-Up for such a wonderful five weeks in & around Canmore. I would like to be back some time in the reasonably near future.