the old girl front on
captains barbecue
king neptune performing "passing gibralta ceremony" on the cadets
the cadets with woody(wearing glasses)
Saturday, 18 August 2012
More random photos
Aug 18th
Contact me if you are keen on freighter travel and i can put you onto namesake.There is a range of european/med/south america and africa trips with grimaldi and there are also a number of lines operating out of nz as well who take passengers .There is also a line which doesnt actually call here but can be joined in singapore...they do heavy lift jobs which means they are normally in port for a number of days as the type of cargo they carry is big stuff that takes a longer time to unload....they do a circuit right round the world stopping at multiple ports and the average length of voyage is 4and half months.....remember that if you want to track a ship go to www.marinetraffic.com for vessel type in grande ellade for example and you can see where she is , what course she is on etc plus all the data on her and there are about 70 something photos of her as well
Sunday, 12 August 2012
Follow up
Aug 13
Well the weather has been a lot drier down here than it was in britain with only one wet day sofar and this is start of week 4 back at work.
As a follow up to the trip , kate sent an email to the company who ran the endless bus tours in seoul as good old yours truley had kept their brochure as part of my memorabilia , which had the address on it......and bugger me but someone had handed in her camera......that was the easy bit!!....getting it back has proven difficultr to say the least and has involved trading heaps of emails.....basically they cant just post it as we wanted as they are not allowed to post anything that contains lithium batteries and they couldnt send it with a courier company as you ahve to be registered customer as well as fronting up about $50.....so in the end we resolved for them to mail the card out of it which we just received this week and they will hang onto the camera and send it with somebody from the company who is coming over here on holiday some time......but that is ok as getting card back was main thing.......a good lesson to remember to back up camera card onto netbook every other night !!
Well the weather has been a lot drier down here than it was in britain with only one wet day sofar and this is start of week 4 back at work.
As a follow up to the trip , kate sent an email to the company who ran the endless bus tours in seoul as good old yours truley had kept their brochure as part of my memorabilia , which had the address on it......and bugger me but someone had handed in her camera......that was the easy bit!!....getting it back has proven difficultr to say the least and has involved trading heaps of emails.....basically they cant just post it as we wanted as they are not allowed to post anything that contains lithium batteries and they couldnt send it with a courier company as you ahve to be registered customer as well as fronting up about $50.....so in the end we resolved for them to mail the card out of it which we just received this week and they will hang onto the camera and send it with somebody from the company who is coming over here on holiday some time......but that is ok as getting card back was main thing.......a good lesson to remember to back up camera card onto netbook every other night !!
Saturday, 21 July 2012
instal 13 The End Is Nigh
Instal 13
Mon July 2
Well had a good relaxing week with dick and yvonne.....he had plenty of hedgecutting lined up and we managed to talk him into doing that while we lounged around during day and caught up with him at nights.....as we didnt want him taking the week off to cart us around everywhere as we were ready for a feet up...we did poke into york and managed to get us a couple of cabin bags for the swedish trip as best way with ryanair is to have one carry-on bag each which can weigh up to 10kg but has to be the right dimensions so got a couple from oxfam (an op. shop) for a fiver each both brand new ....if you book other bags onto those flights they cost fifty quid each !!
The downside of cheap airflights is that they usually originate at satelite airports and at odd times of the day and this was no exception......so today we had to megabus down to london which involved a bus/train replica of the trip up....standing at st pancreas station in the pouring rain and only half an hour to fight our way through the underground in the rush hour to get to stanstead bus ....in a rare moment of financial suicide i decided to lash out on a taxi to baker st where easy-bus depats for stanstead and couldnt be stuffed trying to fight thru underground with all our luggage and anyway only just got there in time by direct taxi.....arrived baker st passed no 22/1b...no sign of sherlock but we did find bus only just in time.....got up to stanstead and found that our so-called airport lodge is about 10km away in small village called takely....an indian company goes round buying up old houses and converting them to units for b&b and call them lodges...a room cost 55 quid and they look after your bags while you were away and the breakfast was continental but plenty of options
Tue 2 july
Up 4.0am breakfast and manager takes us to airport 5.0am (9 quid of course for ride)....stanstead is bloody bedlam even at that time of day and there are 99 departure gates , the trick being which one to pick....but we got thru pretty good as no check in luggage and we had already printed out our boarding passes online which is just as well as there was huge lines of people who were waiting at ryanaire counters to check in bags and or get boarding passes(costs another 25 quid each if you havent printed them yourself)so we waltzed straight thru so i am now a big fan of travelling with just carry-on luggage as you gan get a lot into 10kg bags anyway
Flew out towards sweden 6.30am...fortunately tore and gunvor had done a bit of research on line as i had only told them the flight no and gothenburg city airport and never thought much more about it but when we landed about 3 hours later immediatly realised that we were not at a big airport as there was agricultural aircraft parked up and we were the only passenger jet in site....and a piddly little terminal (should have thought of that as ryanair likes that type of airport as landing fees are cheap)...anyway they were there to meet us and we headed off across into central sweden to where they live which is a town called jarpas near to the bigger town of lidkoping........
The first thing you notice about sweden is that the country is very green and very open...can see for miles....there are trees but they tend to be in blocks as no shelter belts as such because no fences.......like britain , a lot of the country is in crop
At godesgarden which is the torstenssons main farm, along with a lot of other farms in sweden , they have gone out of milking cows....in their case about about 4 years ago...along with other farms the big livestock barns sit empty....the farm is run by tore and gunvors son roland and he works partly off farm as a loans officer for a rural type bank....on the farm he has believe it or not a small flock of suffolk sheep but the majority of the farms are in grain(organic)...he has had a massive grain dryer built to do both their own grain and others as well..to operate the dryer and heat the houses they have built a seriously big hot water boiler....it is about 30 meters long and 3 high....60,000 liters of hot water and the firebox opens up for access by front-end loader ....is big enough to burn big logs, stumps,rubbish of all kinds and as a back--up, large bales of straw......funding for it came from themselves , plus the church which is nearby and gets it and its houses heated as well , and the swedish govt.(the church/graveyard and top part of the village are right in the middle of the farm)
Around this part of sweden it is very neat and tidy although tore says that he thinks it is rough compared to norway where their oldest son lives
When i lived in sweden the church (lutheran) was run by the state and everyone was deemed to be in it at birth and had to apply in later life if they didnt want to be in it....in the 80s the state cut the church loose but it is still a very dominant institution and all its members pay a tithe of about 1.5% of their income which is how come they can lash out on such things as part ownership of boilers etc...the church also funds maitenance of grounds around its houses and the graveyard
The grave yard is a work of art in its self....immaculate with most graves having small gardens in front and if an inmates family die out and there is no-one left to visit and help maintain the grave then the headstone is removed and someone else is installed.....tore says in that way they have buried over 30,000 people in that graveyard since about the year 1200.
Speaking of graveyards , i was out with tore having a look at their big cultivator/air seeder which was a fair way away doing a job for a research farm and on the way home he stopped to show me a graveyard with a big wooden structure in the middle of it ....hanging from it was the oldest recorded church bell in sweden.....i was getting the photo and he wandered off to talk to a woman who was tending a grave.....there was a big bell-pull rope hanging from the bell and the small boy came out in me and somehow or other my hands got hold of that rope and i started to get that bell to swing.....just before i got it to strike, tore came running over to say not good idea as is only to be rung for a death and it wouldnt be cool to give the attached village a false alarm.....so you could say..."i was saved from the bell !! )
While i was swanning around on such ventures kate was with gunvor learning to be a bee keeper(despite kate not being a great fan of bees !)...something that gunvor has been getting into more and more in later years and the old milkroom from the cow days is now the extraction room....i also got involved at one stage and kate and i both attached the wax sheets to a heap of frames and we spun out the honey from a lot of hives as well....the little buggers are actually a lot of work during the honey season and each full box will have up to 20kgs of honey init and it is a sticky business as well so dont think i will rush into doing same at home !!
In the 5 days we were up there we were invited to a 61st birthday one night which was at the victims house and involved a full sitdown meal and we met a couple of women there who were fairly radical in their circumstances (both fans of "allo allo " and there was much humour when they found out that i was once general ludvig von schmelling
On another night we went to the annual dinner for a village group which they are involved in ....they have an outdoor museum which involves a number of restored buildings which they have shifted in from various locations over the years....they are all restored and some are old residences , others are barns , a grain mill etc and there was about 60 there....the meal was outdoor and involved pickled herrings which are an aquired taste....quite strong and sweet served with new spuds and salads etc....a small band of a drummer, a keyboard and a sax player....in between this there was a course of games which we had to split up into teams for such as darts,weight guessing ,rolling pin throwing etc and singing as well...all in swedish of course and us not called on to do a kiwi item fortunately
One day we bused into lidkoping which is the main town in the territory and had a poke around there..in my working days there sweden was very conservative and the town which i think was about 16000 pop only had two pubs ..found my old pub and bugger me it has been turned into a bank....what is the world coming to
July 7
next minute the week was over and gunvor and tore insisted on taking us back to airport despite us suggesting we train.......on the way we stopped at trollhatten to see the big lock system...this is where the river heading towards gothenburg is linked to the gota canal......so you can travel right thru sweden via the two big lakes and come out into the baltic on the east coast or visa versa....something peter wilson and we are going to do when we get our barge organised!!
flew out 9.40 and arrived stanstead 10.30 with the change of time zones....had a bitch of a time finding the shuttle for the b&b as we were waiting in wrong place but an hr and a half later we were back and reunited with our main luggage
July 8
Well this was something we organised on way down to catch plane before we went to sweden.....kate has had this endless determination to get to austria but it was not a go this time but just before we left for sweden she had spied an advt in a paper for a cheap package trip down to the channel island of guernsey which involved 3 days and two nights and a free rental car thrown in....so on a whim we rang to see if we could go today while we were still at stanstead and they confirmed that was a go so had a leisurly start today....left the main cases at the b&b again and got a ride to stanstead and we were away on air aurigny in an atr 72/42(which is what air nz fly locally)......landed guernsey an hour later......needless to say there is no such thing as a free rental car as the bastards always get you on having to buy out the 1500 quid insurance excess(they said there was already some scratches on the ka to be noted and i couldnt see them so figured we would get lumbered if we didnt esp when i saw that a scratch on a wing mirror could be $80nz alone and full cover only $70 for the two days plus had to reimburse $20 petrol they put in it .(you can then take it back empty but....that half filled tank as fuel cheap down there and try as i could , i only managed to use half of it
When i saw the guernsey roads i was glad we bought out the insurance!!...they are pretty tight and high sided like cornish hedges....the sides may have grass or weeds on them but under that lurks a wall of grannit and not enough room to pass in a lot of cases so you either have to back off or shoot up someones driveway....they have an interesting thing at intersections called a "filter" where you all take turns to go in order ....the speed limit is 25mph in built up area or 35mph for so called open roads but not easy to tell which is which......and there are speed cameras and cops galore ....must be more cops per population than anywhere else in europe and all they have to do is speeding and parking fines...road names are sort of a mixture of old english and mongrolised french.....must be a bit of irish influence there too as our hotel was only 10 mins from airport and at one stage we saw a sign post to it but no mention of it at the next junction which is fairly typical of what you get in ireland....i actually fluked to find "green acres hotel" about 20 mins later which wasnt bad cause the couple we sat next to at breakfast next morn , took an hour and a half to find it!.....the hotel was sort of like something out of a timewarp....sort of a cross between the chateau tongariro and faulty towers....but quite ok ....had a good roast beef dinner but drinkies fairly steep
One of the main reasons we went to guernsey was that when billy berwick lived with us in nz , he had a mate on guersey and then his mate started sending us little bits and pieces over the years as he said he always felt indebted to nz because of the new zealand red cross parcels they got during the war when they were starving (just before the german invasion a lot of the kids were evacuated to england but malcolms mother got the call in the middle of the night and malc. was sound asleep and his ma thought he looked so peacful that she didnt like to wake him so he spent the entire occupation on the island).......well day 2 on the island we went and visited malcolm and his wife pam....for a cup of char and a yarn.....asked pam about her war experiences as well and she said she was a kid in england at the time and nothing too dramatic happened ....then she added in a by-the-by sort of way that a german parachute mine fell on their house and they were buried in the rubble but fortunately they had a "morrison shelter" in their living room which was essentially a big oblong steel box which doubled as a table and they had all been huddled in that.....the firewardens had a record of which families in a street , had these shelters and when the heavy rescue teams arrived , these were the houses that they started serching thru first and a day later they were dug out of the rubble....apart from that it was pretty uneventful she said except for a rogue jerry aircraft machine-gunning them in the street on another occassion that is.........
Asked Malcolm what is a must see on the island.......he said "the occupation museum"....i could just see the look of joy on kates face....but hey it was my only military museum of the trip and only took 4 hrs so not too bad.......when the germans invaded they shifted a heap of slave labourers onto the channel islands to fortify it and they used vast quantities of concrete to build large gun emplacements and a chain of huge observation towers around the island , the job of which was to range-find for the guns.....the british were tickled pink as they had no intention of mounting a counter invasion against the germans as adolf had figured they would.....they simply stayed outside the 26odd mile range of the guns and let the germans spend all that time and resources for nought.....the only cock-up was that at invasion time jerry bombed the wharf and killed 35 odd islanders and then found out that the islands were not defended and they had only to walk in....they blamed the brits for not telling them but apparently that was crap as from france apparently you can see cars driving on the roads of the channel islands with a good set of binnoculars so they should have known without being told
Other than that we cruised around the island looking at various sites and on the last morning gave it a last circumnavigation to try and use up that petrol and promptly got lost which caused kate to squirm a bit as we were cutting it fine for the plane....got on right road and got stuck behind a convoy of tractor and trailers which were carting rock to a job near the airport and had to stay there as no options to pass.....more squirming......but we got there in the end .....advantage of buying out insurance is that you dont have to have an inspection at the end....you just throw them the keys at their airport desk as you run past.....back on aurigny .........had to go to jersey first and pick up some more passengers there before back to stanstead aboout 1.30......didnt go back to b&b...got them to drop bags down to airport for us and then we jumped on a pre-booked easy-bus down to london
Arrived baker st....took tube to london bridge station which is where you get district train to kent right on 5.00 rush time.....picked wrong day as they were having an olympic games practise....half station closed off.... crawling with cops and everybody had to go out in the street to get between the two stations(underground and district)....talk about a crowd....i got a vantage point up above the street and did the tv nz bit....was like a big herd of ants......saw a pub over road and we repaired across there to have tea and wait for the rush hour to finish......just coming out of that which is beside a large church when the top of the church sort of exploded into flame....they had probably advertised it locally but it still scared the bejeebers out of those who didnt know....a fireworks practise for the olympics....a pity it was broad daylight....you would have thought they could have waited till dark
Got the train to kent arriving 8.00pm
July 11th
Back at long-suffering julia and peter's stonecross for a couple of days.....did a few jobs for them....weather in england still crap....fine at start of day...thunder showers in arvo every bloody day...worst summer in uk for the last century
Sited up a couple of tanks for rainwater collection , cut a hedge and actually helped shift some sheep....normally the share farmer does all the work but on this occassion we had a few hundred ewes and lambs in a section below the house....whilst mustering them without dogs ....a woman of african origins turned up in the middle of it with two large alsatians and a border collie (there is a public walkway right thru the farm....one of the reasons the sf told me he doesnt like having ewes with young lambs on this property....fortunately these lambs were all of weaning age cause this woman who was probably walking dogs for other people , couldnt hang onto the dogs when they saw the sheep and one of the alsatians broke free and into the mob.....what a circus....sheep everywhere and this woman chasing after this dog whilst still hanging on to the other two....sheep jumping fences and her screaming like a banshee....fortunately the dog was mostly just pouncing on them and not ripping great hunks out of them but it would only have been a matter of time....the sheep were wondering what the hell was going on too as they are not normally scared of dogs as there is a constant stream of people with dogs going thru them every day , normally on leads though....so just as well helen clark didnt get the " right-to-roam" law passed when they were in power.......oh for my parker hale 30-06 at a moment like that , but eventually she managed to catch the bloody thing which by now had run an old ewe to ground and was about to start eating it.....she apologised about a thousand times and i put in a plug about her buying a good quality dog muzzle for next time she cant hang on to her pooches
Fri 13th july
Julia dropped us up to ewan and carol's (smyth )as their loft conversion is finally finished and we wanted to get a weekend in with them....went to their local ....the ""snooty fox at three bridges...met all their immediate circle of pals and they were all good troops so a good night....
Sat 14th......had a look around smyths business which is based around ground anchoring systems and they are on a roll at the moment as smyth has developed and patented a special anchor which is much in demand by various large firms....at night went to one of the pals birthday partys which started as a chineese meal and finished at one of the houses where we did a bit of boogeying
Sun15...roast beef and yorkshire puddings.....the last in britain
Mon 16 july
good old smyth again....volunteered to take us to heathrow just after lunch....great to have a ride not from the economics but from not having to haul cases on and off trains as we would have had to train to victoria and change to underground for heathrow
Got there 5 hrs before takeoff and were virtually first in line when booking opened but still couldnt get the premo seats which are the ones at the bulkheads or by the doors which dont have seats in front of them.....what obviously happens is that a lot of people must book on line or by machine and in both those cases you get to pick seats....but never to mind we were away 8.0pm heading for korea on korean air again.777-300.....ka are not as good as singapore air in my opinion ....the level of service is a bit lower and they have crap inflight movies....i only managed 1 movie and was reduced to watching old episodes of tv series V......i actually went to sleep for a few hours which is something i dont usually manage to do on planes
Tue 17 july
On way up korean air had paid for our stopover at airport and it was top-hole but this time on way home namesake had us booked into a hotel in the city and we had to get there off our own bats.(we were told both stop-overs would be included but apparently no-one told korean air so think namesake might have had to lash out for this one himself)...took a bit of advice and headed across to airport railway stn...the terminal is linked to the station by a huge atrium which is probably as big as the dunedin stadium alone the whole complex is massive.....got ouselves on the economy arex train and takes about an hour into town to seoul station.....then we had to get to our hotel which was at dongdaemun...so we had to take on the seoul metro in the rush hour....the tickets are all by machine which fortunately are able to be worked in english and a helpful guy gave us a bit of a hand(koreans are pretty good at wandering up and volunteering to help if they can speak english )....however i dont think we would have had as much of a good run if we hadnt done our time in the london underground on our various trips as the trick is not just to find your station on the map...it is to work out which way the train coming in is heading....could be towards your station which is good or could be coming from your station which is bad as you then have to find your way over onto the opposite platform
Anyway we got to the selected station ok (we had checked our big bags thru to auckland fortunately and only had the ones we bought to go to sweden and guernsey) and came out into what could be described as a fairly cosmopolitan area ....couldnt find hotel...eventually helpfiul korean turned up and transpired we were right outside of it............aand it was a bloody dump so just as well we were not paying for it but will be having a word about it to namesake when we have the debrief
Anyway it was survivable and at least it had an ensuite but that was about it ...had a jug but no tea or coffeemaking equipment...was dirty and didnt smell too good either...i have seen better center-city backpackers ....anyway we resolved to make the most of it and wernt going to eat there as meals wernt included in the deal and it wasnt the sort of place to go fine-dining....so we hit the streets about 8.30pm......im not a real big fan of asia as my limited experiences there always reminds me of the smell of cooked cabbage and this area was no exception......dongdaemun is a main market area of town and during the day there are about 35,000 small shops/stalls operating as well as big shopping centers....its a bit seedy and there was a lot of other smells that wernt cabbage and a fair bit of litter to trudge thu...i should have added that in daylight the whole of seoul was enveloped in smog....hence quite a few people wearing sars masks...it was about 28degrees and very humid......by night it wasnt much better but the worms were biting and we trudged along bypassing subway , mcdonalds and various indian restaurants as we wanted to try something local....spied an upsairs restaurant across street ...quite small but a good view so we headed up a set of stairs and in we went....i have never seen such a look of horror on a waitresses face as then.....poor bugger she was mortified that two westeners had just appeared and no-one on staff with any english at all....so she scooted over to a couple of young fellows at a table and found that one of them could speak a little english....i explained that we wanted something korean....he say this not korean restaurant , this is trditional chinese ....i say never mind this will do so what can we eat....he say you like lamb and he does a bit of baaing to get the idea across....i say that would be good....he brightened and said...is australian lamb...i said that is bad but we will try and not choke......so waitress opens up a stainless steel trapdoor in the middle of our table and comes out with a frame full of flaming ceramic pipes ....she slots this into the hole in the table and opens a lever ....this is an extarctor which draws the smoke away down a pipe so you dont get smoked out and the lamb turned up on about 20 small skewers and between the waitress and kate they proceeded to cook these on the frame....sort of a version of the stonegrills you get here in places....the "sauce" to dip them in was actually dried powder and some of it was fairly hot and there was a few side salads a bits and pieces to go with it and they showed us how the frame had slots in it so you can slowly pull your meat to the end of the skewer each time you want a mouthful and you dont have to become a sword swallower....it was bloody delicious and was washed down with large bottles of tsingtao beer....they were very impressed that i was familiar with their beer and i said i usually have one of those at the asian restaurant in dunedin when going to movies at rialto but obviously all that was lost in translation
Now you can say what you like about where the maori came from.....but the theory about islands off the coast of china looks the best bet as these chinese which were serving us looked pretty much like bros to me
Wed 18th july
Foolishly turned off aircon in night which made it too hot to sleep properly and besides we were up early as wanted a look around in morning.....asked the numb-nuts behind the reception desk where we could get a short city tour....he said ah yes good tour endless bus hop-on-hop-off take two hours and showed us a station on the metro where it left from so we checked out 8.0am and away on metro in rush hour again.....an hour and a half later we got there but couldnt find anyone who could speak english and direct us as to which exit to take to find bloody bus....these stations are big and each exit goes to a different street so by 10.0...no good we decide to head back to airport in disgust....back to seoul station and about to buy ticket for train back to airport when see tourist info counter.....yes the bus we were looking for stops right outside and next one is at 11.30 am and takes 2 hours...thought that could be cutting it a bit fine but we could make up time by taking express train to aport when we got back...twice the price as normal one but damn the expense...full steam ahead......so off we went....as ive just said before....there is a lot of haze in seoul which you could call smog if you felt that way and it was no better today despite the fact that it was raining....bloody stuff chases us around the world this trip
So we got a bit of a cooks tour around seoul in a bus that had a set ofheadphones and a prerecorded commentary in advance telling you inadavnce one stop at a time what you were going to see and a number came up on the panel in front of you corresponding to one on the supplied map......was staggered to find that bus went right past our hotel too so a gypsy curse on that receptionist......now i should have studdied that map a bit better when we started as we got on at stop number 5 and when we got to stop number 27 they announced that thankyou i hope you enjoyed the trip bla-de-bla....and i said to girl who was hostess...."you told us this was an endless bus"...she said it is but now we stop for lunch before we start off at no one again....................well you can imagine the sinking feeling in the old tummy about that and i am afraid to say i did a bit of a hissy fit and the result was that she flagged down a taxi for us to get back to seoul station but we had such a rush to get our gear off bus and into taxi that we realised later in nz that kate had left her camera on the seat of the bus.....which was a major disaster as i hadnt copied any onto our portable hard drive since the end of the boat cruise so all her photos since then lost................so have mixed memories of korea
Got back to airport in plenty of time on express which in fact was only about 20mins quicker than ordinary train would have been.......plane full and we should have got our boarding passes yesterday before we went into the city ...so i end up at one end of plane and kate at the other
Thur 19 july
well not a scaric of sleep on flight over night....read a book and watched about 5 more episodes of V but neither put me to sleep although kate did get a bit of kip.....into auckland 7.30am and got things into perspective....you dont realise how small we are here.....all of auckland airport would fit into the atrium outside of seoul's airport i reckon and the domestic terminal at auckland is a dump to boot
Down to ch ch at lunchtime....anne had broken her arm a few days ago and couldnt pick us up so got taxi which is usually $20 to their place but now they have to pay $8 to come into the airport each time and they pass that onto you as well so what a bloody rip off......welcome home indeed !!!
In the afternoon i really tempted fate by going with brendy and annes son david to transfere their plane from rangiora to chch airport where they needed it to go to a fly-in to omarama the following day....it was my 13th plane flight for the trip but it all went off without a hitch....david is a good pilot and is normally flying in africa doing low level surveying for mining companies but home for a holiday at the moment......so for the second time today i flew into chch
Fri 20th.....heavy frost...caught naked bus home a couple of weeks earlier than we have done in the past....looks a bit wintery
Main regrets of trip........boat being late which meant we missed lizzies diamond jubilee weekend.......missed big trooping of the colours because we were in yorkshire but it rained anyway......same for the dedication of the monument to bomber command that was opened shortly afterwards as the lancaster of the queens flight flew over hyde park and dropped a million poppies out of the bomb bay......also wanted to go to "war and peace" which is a monster 4 day 200 acre event for people who own military hardware (started the day we flew out )and also wouldnt have minded a tour of the olympic games site but otherwise have pronounced the trip a successful mission
Well thats it for now but i will add some more photos when i get organised......kate emailing tour bus company in faint hope someone handed camera in
Mon July 2
Well had a good relaxing week with dick and yvonne.....he had plenty of hedgecutting lined up and we managed to talk him into doing that while we lounged around during day and caught up with him at nights.....as we didnt want him taking the week off to cart us around everywhere as we were ready for a feet up...we did poke into york and managed to get us a couple of cabin bags for the swedish trip as best way with ryanair is to have one carry-on bag each which can weigh up to 10kg but has to be the right dimensions so got a couple from oxfam (an op. shop) for a fiver each both brand new ....if you book other bags onto those flights they cost fifty quid each !!
The downside of cheap airflights is that they usually originate at satelite airports and at odd times of the day and this was no exception......so today we had to megabus down to london which involved a bus/train replica of the trip up....standing at st pancreas station in the pouring rain and only half an hour to fight our way through the underground in the rush hour to get to stanstead bus ....in a rare moment of financial suicide i decided to lash out on a taxi to baker st where easy-bus depats for stanstead and couldnt be stuffed trying to fight thru underground with all our luggage and anyway only just got there in time by direct taxi.....arrived baker st passed no 22/1b...no sign of sherlock but we did find bus only just in time.....got up to stanstead and found that our so-called airport lodge is about 10km away in small village called takely....an indian company goes round buying up old houses and converting them to units for b&b and call them lodges...a room cost 55 quid and they look after your bags while you were away and the breakfast was continental but plenty of options
Tue 2 july
Up 4.0am breakfast and manager takes us to airport 5.0am (9 quid of course for ride)....stanstead is bloody bedlam even at that time of day and there are 99 departure gates , the trick being which one to pick....but we got thru pretty good as no check in luggage and we had already printed out our boarding passes online which is just as well as there was huge lines of people who were waiting at ryanaire counters to check in bags and or get boarding passes(costs another 25 quid each if you havent printed them yourself)so we waltzed straight thru so i am now a big fan of travelling with just carry-on luggage as you gan get a lot into 10kg bags anyway
Flew out towards sweden 6.30am...fortunately tore and gunvor had done a bit of research on line as i had only told them the flight no and gothenburg city airport and never thought much more about it but when we landed about 3 hours later immediatly realised that we were not at a big airport as there was agricultural aircraft parked up and we were the only passenger jet in site....and a piddly little terminal (should have thought of that as ryanair likes that type of airport as landing fees are cheap)...anyway they were there to meet us and we headed off across into central sweden to where they live which is a town called jarpas near to the bigger town of lidkoping........
The first thing you notice about sweden is that the country is very green and very open...can see for miles....there are trees but they tend to be in blocks as no shelter belts as such because no fences.......like britain , a lot of the country is in crop
At godesgarden which is the torstenssons main farm, along with a lot of other farms in sweden , they have gone out of milking cows....in their case about about 4 years ago...along with other farms the big livestock barns sit empty....the farm is run by tore and gunvors son roland and he works partly off farm as a loans officer for a rural type bank....on the farm he has believe it or not a small flock of suffolk sheep but the majority of the farms are in grain(organic)...he has had a massive grain dryer built to do both their own grain and others as well..to operate the dryer and heat the houses they have built a seriously big hot water boiler....it is about 30 meters long and 3 high....60,000 liters of hot water and the firebox opens up for access by front-end loader ....is big enough to burn big logs, stumps,rubbish of all kinds and as a back--up, large bales of straw......funding for it came from themselves , plus the church which is nearby and gets it and its houses heated as well , and the swedish govt.(the church/graveyard and top part of the village are right in the middle of the farm)
Around this part of sweden it is very neat and tidy although tore says that he thinks it is rough compared to norway where their oldest son lives
When i lived in sweden the church (lutheran) was run by the state and everyone was deemed to be in it at birth and had to apply in later life if they didnt want to be in it....in the 80s the state cut the church loose but it is still a very dominant institution and all its members pay a tithe of about 1.5% of their income which is how come they can lash out on such things as part ownership of boilers etc...the church also funds maitenance of grounds around its houses and the graveyard
The grave yard is a work of art in its self....immaculate with most graves having small gardens in front and if an inmates family die out and there is no-one left to visit and help maintain the grave then the headstone is removed and someone else is installed.....tore says in that way they have buried over 30,000 people in that graveyard since about the year 1200.
Speaking of graveyards , i was out with tore having a look at their big cultivator/air seeder which was a fair way away doing a job for a research farm and on the way home he stopped to show me a graveyard with a big wooden structure in the middle of it ....hanging from it was the oldest recorded church bell in sweden.....i was getting the photo and he wandered off to talk to a woman who was tending a grave.....there was a big bell-pull rope hanging from the bell and the small boy came out in me and somehow or other my hands got hold of that rope and i started to get that bell to swing.....just before i got it to strike, tore came running over to say not good idea as is only to be rung for a death and it wouldnt be cool to give the attached village a false alarm.....so you could say..."i was saved from the bell !! )
While i was swanning around on such ventures kate was with gunvor learning to be a bee keeper(despite kate not being a great fan of bees !)...something that gunvor has been getting into more and more in later years and the old milkroom from the cow days is now the extraction room....i also got involved at one stage and kate and i both attached the wax sheets to a heap of frames and we spun out the honey from a lot of hives as well....the little buggers are actually a lot of work during the honey season and each full box will have up to 20kgs of honey init and it is a sticky business as well so dont think i will rush into doing same at home !!
In the 5 days we were up there we were invited to a 61st birthday one night which was at the victims house and involved a full sitdown meal and we met a couple of women there who were fairly radical in their circumstances (both fans of "allo allo " and there was much humour when they found out that i was once general ludvig von schmelling
On another night we went to the annual dinner for a village group which they are involved in ....they have an outdoor museum which involves a number of restored buildings which they have shifted in from various locations over the years....they are all restored and some are old residences , others are barns , a grain mill etc and there was about 60 there....the meal was outdoor and involved pickled herrings which are an aquired taste....quite strong and sweet served with new spuds and salads etc....a small band of a drummer, a keyboard and a sax player....in between this there was a course of games which we had to split up into teams for such as darts,weight guessing ,rolling pin throwing etc and singing as well...all in swedish of course and us not called on to do a kiwi item fortunately
One day we bused into lidkoping which is the main town in the territory and had a poke around there..in my working days there sweden was very conservative and the town which i think was about 16000 pop only had two pubs ..found my old pub and bugger me it has been turned into a bank....what is the world coming to
July 7
next minute the week was over and gunvor and tore insisted on taking us back to airport despite us suggesting we train.......on the way we stopped at trollhatten to see the big lock system...this is where the river heading towards gothenburg is linked to the gota canal......so you can travel right thru sweden via the two big lakes and come out into the baltic on the east coast or visa versa....something peter wilson and we are going to do when we get our barge organised!!
flew out 9.40 and arrived stanstead 10.30 with the change of time zones....had a bitch of a time finding the shuttle for the b&b as we were waiting in wrong place but an hr and a half later we were back and reunited with our main luggage
July 8
Well this was something we organised on way down to catch plane before we went to sweden.....kate has had this endless determination to get to austria but it was not a go this time but just before we left for sweden she had spied an advt in a paper for a cheap package trip down to the channel island of guernsey which involved 3 days and two nights and a free rental car thrown in....so on a whim we rang to see if we could go today while we were still at stanstead and they confirmed that was a go so had a leisurly start today....left the main cases at the b&b again and got a ride to stanstead and we were away on air aurigny in an atr 72/42(which is what air nz fly locally)......landed guernsey an hour later......needless to say there is no such thing as a free rental car as the bastards always get you on having to buy out the 1500 quid insurance excess(they said there was already some scratches on the ka to be noted and i couldnt see them so figured we would get lumbered if we didnt esp when i saw that a scratch on a wing mirror could be $80nz alone and full cover only $70 for the two days plus had to reimburse $20 petrol they put in it .(you can then take it back empty but....that half filled tank as fuel cheap down there and try as i could , i only managed to use half of it
When i saw the guernsey roads i was glad we bought out the insurance!!...they are pretty tight and high sided like cornish hedges....the sides may have grass or weeds on them but under that lurks a wall of grannit and not enough room to pass in a lot of cases so you either have to back off or shoot up someones driveway....they have an interesting thing at intersections called a "filter" where you all take turns to go in order ....the speed limit is 25mph in built up area or 35mph for so called open roads but not easy to tell which is which......and there are speed cameras and cops galore ....must be more cops per population than anywhere else in europe and all they have to do is speeding and parking fines...road names are sort of a mixture of old english and mongrolised french.....must be a bit of irish influence there too as our hotel was only 10 mins from airport and at one stage we saw a sign post to it but no mention of it at the next junction which is fairly typical of what you get in ireland....i actually fluked to find "green acres hotel" about 20 mins later which wasnt bad cause the couple we sat next to at breakfast next morn , took an hour and a half to find it!.....the hotel was sort of like something out of a timewarp....sort of a cross between the chateau tongariro and faulty towers....but quite ok ....had a good roast beef dinner but drinkies fairly steep
One of the main reasons we went to guernsey was that when billy berwick lived with us in nz , he had a mate on guersey and then his mate started sending us little bits and pieces over the years as he said he always felt indebted to nz because of the new zealand red cross parcels they got during the war when they were starving (just before the german invasion a lot of the kids were evacuated to england but malcolms mother got the call in the middle of the night and malc. was sound asleep and his ma thought he looked so peacful that she didnt like to wake him so he spent the entire occupation on the island).......well day 2 on the island we went and visited malcolm and his wife pam....for a cup of char and a yarn.....asked pam about her war experiences as well and she said she was a kid in england at the time and nothing too dramatic happened ....then she added in a by-the-by sort of way that a german parachute mine fell on their house and they were buried in the rubble but fortunately they had a "morrison shelter" in their living room which was essentially a big oblong steel box which doubled as a table and they had all been huddled in that.....the firewardens had a record of which families in a street , had these shelters and when the heavy rescue teams arrived , these were the houses that they started serching thru first and a day later they were dug out of the rubble....apart from that it was pretty uneventful she said except for a rogue jerry aircraft machine-gunning them in the street on another occassion that is.........
Asked Malcolm what is a must see on the island.......he said "the occupation museum"....i could just see the look of joy on kates face....but hey it was my only military museum of the trip and only took 4 hrs so not too bad.......when the germans invaded they shifted a heap of slave labourers onto the channel islands to fortify it and they used vast quantities of concrete to build large gun emplacements and a chain of huge observation towers around the island , the job of which was to range-find for the guns.....the british were tickled pink as they had no intention of mounting a counter invasion against the germans as adolf had figured they would.....they simply stayed outside the 26odd mile range of the guns and let the germans spend all that time and resources for nought.....the only cock-up was that at invasion time jerry bombed the wharf and killed 35 odd islanders and then found out that the islands were not defended and they had only to walk in....they blamed the brits for not telling them but apparently that was crap as from france apparently you can see cars driving on the roads of the channel islands with a good set of binnoculars so they should have known without being told
Other than that we cruised around the island looking at various sites and on the last morning gave it a last circumnavigation to try and use up that petrol and promptly got lost which caused kate to squirm a bit as we were cutting it fine for the plane....got on right road and got stuck behind a convoy of tractor and trailers which were carting rock to a job near the airport and had to stay there as no options to pass.....more squirming......but we got there in the end .....advantage of buying out insurance is that you dont have to have an inspection at the end....you just throw them the keys at their airport desk as you run past.....back on aurigny .........had to go to jersey first and pick up some more passengers there before back to stanstead aboout 1.30......didnt go back to b&b...got them to drop bags down to airport for us and then we jumped on a pre-booked easy-bus down to london
Arrived baker st....took tube to london bridge station which is where you get district train to kent right on 5.00 rush time.....picked wrong day as they were having an olympic games practise....half station closed off.... crawling with cops and everybody had to go out in the street to get between the two stations(underground and district)....talk about a crowd....i got a vantage point up above the street and did the tv nz bit....was like a big herd of ants......saw a pub over road and we repaired across there to have tea and wait for the rush hour to finish......just coming out of that which is beside a large church when the top of the church sort of exploded into flame....they had probably advertised it locally but it still scared the bejeebers out of those who didnt know....a fireworks practise for the olympics....a pity it was broad daylight....you would have thought they could have waited till dark
Got the train to kent arriving 8.00pm
July 11th
Back at long-suffering julia and peter's stonecross for a couple of days.....did a few jobs for them....weather in england still crap....fine at start of day...thunder showers in arvo every bloody day...worst summer in uk for the last century
Sited up a couple of tanks for rainwater collection , cut a hedge and actually helped shift some sheep....normally the share farmer does all the work but on this occassion we had a few hundred ewes and lambs in a section below the house....whilst mustering them without dogs ....a woman of african origins turned up in the middle of it with two large alsatians and a border collie (there is a public walkway right thru the farm....one of the reasons the sf told me he doesnt like having ewes with young lambs on this property....fortunately these lambs were all of weaning age cause this woman who was probably walking dogs for other people , couldnt hang onto the dogs when they saw the sheep and one of the alsatians broke free and into the mob.....what a circus....sheep everywhere and this woman chasing after this dog whilst still hanging on to the other two....sheep jumping fences and her screaming like a banshee....fortunately the dog was mostly just pouncing on them and not ripping great hunks out of them but it would only have been a matter of time....the sheep were wondering what the hell was going on too as they are not normally scared of dogs as there is a constant stream of people with dogs going thru them every day , normally on leads though....so just as well helen clark didnt get the " right-to-roam" law passed when they were in power.......oh for my parker hale 30-06 at a moment like that , but eventually she managed to catch the bloody thing which by now had run an old ewe to ground and was about to start eating it.....she apologised about a thousand times and i put in a plug about her buying a good quality dog muzzle for next time she cant hang on to her pooches
Fri 13th july
Julia dropped us up to ewan and carol's (smyth )as their loft conversion is finally finished and we wanted to get a weekend in with them....went to their local ....the ""snooty fox at three bridges...met all their immediate circle of pals and they were all good troops so a good night....
Sat 14th......had a look around smyths business which is based around ground anchoring systems and they are on a roll at the moment as smyth has developed and patented a special anchor which is much in demand by various large firms....at night went to one of the pals birthday partys which started as a chineese meal and finished at one of the houses where we did a bit of boogeying
Sun15...roast beef and yorkshire puddings.....the last in britain
Mon 16 july
good old smyth again....volunteered to take us to heathrow just after lunch....great to have a ride not from the economics but from not having to haul cases on and off trains as we would have had to train to victoria and change to underground for heathrow
Got there 5 hrs before takeoff and were virtually first in line when booking opened but still couldnt get the premo seats which are the ones at the bulkheads or by the doors which dont have seats in front of them.....what obviously happens is that a lot of people must book on line or by machine and in both those cases you get to pick seats....but never to mind we were away 8.0pm heading for korea on korean air again.777-300.....ka are not as good as singapore air in my opinion ....the level of service is a bit lower and they have crap inflight movies....i only managed 1 movie and was reduced to watching old episodes of tv series V......i actually went to sleep for a few hours which is something i dont usually manage to do on planes
Tue 17 july
On way up korean air had paid for our stopover at airport and it was top-hole but this time on way home namesake had us booked into a hotel in the city and we had to get there off our own bats.(we were told both stop-overs would be included but apparently no-one told korean air so think namesake might have had to lash out for this one himself)...took a bit of advice and headed across to airport railway stn...the terminal is linked to the station by a huge atrium which is probably as big as the dunedin stadium alone the whole complex is massive.....got ouselves on the economy arex train and takes about an hour into town to seoul station.....then we had to get to our hotel which was at dongdaemun...so we had to take on the seoul metro in the rush hour....the tickets are all by machine which fortunately are able to be worked in english and a helpful guy gave us a bit of a hand(koreans are pretty good at wandering up and volunteering to help if they can speak english )....however i dont think we would have had as much of a good run if we hadnt done our time in the london underground on our various trips as the trick is not just to find your station on the map...it is to work out which way the train coming in is heading....could be towards your station which is good or could be coming from your station which is bad as you then have to find your way over onto the opposite platform
Anyway we got to the selected station ok (we had checked our big bags thru to auckland fortunately and only had the ones we bought to go to sweden and guernsey) and came out into what could be described as a fairly cosmopolitan area ....couldnt find hotel...eventually helpfiul korean turned up and transpired we were right outside of it............aand it was a bloody dump so just as well we were not paying for it but will be having a word about it to namesake when we have the debrief
Anyway it was survivable and at least it had an ensuite but that was about it ...had a jug but no tea or coffeemaking equipment...was dirty and didnt smell too good either...i have seen better center-city backpackers ....anyway we resolved to make the most of it and wernt going to eat there as meals wernt included in the deal and it wasnt the sort of place to go fine-dining....so we hit the streets about 8.30pm......im not a real big fan of asia as my limited experiences there always reminds me of the smell of cooked cabbage and this area was no exception......dongdaemun is a main market area of town and during the day there are about 35,000 small shops/stalls operating as well as big shopping centers....its a bit seedy and there was a lot of other smells that wernt cabbage and a fair bit of litter to trudge thu...i should have added that in daylight the whole of seoul was enveloped in smog....hence quite a few people wearing sars masks...it was about 28degrees and very humid......by night it wasnt much better but the worms were biting and we trudged along bypassing subway , mcdonalds and various indian restaurants as we wanted to try something local....spied an upsairs restaurant across street ...quite small but a good view so we headed up a set of stairs and in we went....i have never seen such a look of horror on a waitresses face as then.....poor bugger she was mortified that two westeners had just appeared and no-one on staff with any english at all....so she scooted over to a couple of young fellows at a table and found that one of them could speak a little english....i explained that we wanted something korean....he say this not korean restaurant , this is trditional chinese ....i say never mind this will do so what can we eat....he say you like lamb and he does a bit of baaing to get the idea across....i say that would be good....he brightened and said...is australian lamb...i said that is bad but we will try and not choke......so waitress opens up a stainless steel trapdoor in the middle of our table and comes out with a frame full of flaming ceramic pipes ....she slots this into the hole in the table and opens a lever ....this is an extarctor which draws the smoke away down a pipe so you dont get smoked out and the lamb turned up on about 20 small skewers and between the waitress and kate they proceeded to cook these on the frame....sort of a version of the stonegrills you get here in places....the "sauce" to dip them in was actually dried powder and some of it was fairly hot and there was a few side salads a bits and pieces to go with it and they showed us how the frame had slots in it so you can slowly pull your meat to the end of the skewer each time you want a mouthful and you dont have to become a sword swallower....it was bloody delicious and was washed down with large bottles of tsingtao beer....they were very impressed that i was familiar with their beer and i said i usually have one of those at the asian restaurant in dunedin when going to movies at rialto but obviously all that was lost in translation
Now you can say what you like about where the maori came from.....but the theory about islands off the coast of china looks the best bet as these chinese which were serving us looked pretty much like bros to me
Wed 18th july
Foolishly turned off aircon in night which made it too hot to sleep properly and besides we were up early as wanted a look around in morning.....asked the numb-nuts behind the reception desk where we could get a short city tour....he said ah yes good tour endless bus hop-on-hop-off take two hours and showed us a station on the metro where it left from so we checked out 8.0am and away on metro in rush hour again.....an hour and a half later we got there but couldnt find anyone who could speak english and direct us as to which exit to take to find bloody bus....these stations are big and each exit goes to a different street so by 10.0...no good we decide to head back to airport in disgust....back to seoul station and about to buy ticket for train back to airport when see tourist info counter.....yes the bus we were looking for stops right outside and next one is at 11.30 am and takes 2 hours...thought that could be cutting it a bit fine but we could make up time by taking express train to aport when we got back...twice the price as normal one but damn the expense...full steam ahead......so off we went....as ive just said before....there is a lot of haze in seoul which you could call smog if you felt that way and it was no better today despite the fact that it was raining....bloody stuff chases us around the world this trip
So we got a bit of a cooks tour around seoul in a bus that had a set ofheadphones and a prerecorded commentary in advance telling you inadavnce one stop at a time what you were going to see and a number came up on the panel in front of you corresponding to one on the supplied map......was staggered to find that bus went right past our hotel too so a gypsy curse on that receptionist......now i should have studdied that map a bit better when we started as we got on at stop number 5 and when we got to stop number 27 they announced that thankyou i hope you enjoyed the trip bla-de-bla....and i said to girl who was hostess...."you told us this was an endless bus"...she said it is but now we stop for lunch before we start off at no one again....................well you can imagine the sinking feeling in the old tummy about that and i am afraid to say i did a bit of a hissy fit and the result was that she flagged down a taxi for us to get back to seoul station but we had such a rush to get our gear off bus and into taxi that we realised later in nz that kate had left her camera on the seat of the bus.....which was a major disaster as i hadnt copied any onto our portable hard drive since the end of the boat cruise so all her photos since then lost................so have mixed memories of korea
Got back to airport in plenty of time on express which in fact was only about 20mins quicker than ordinary train would have been.......plane full and we should have got our boarding passes yesterday before we went into the city ...so i end up at one end of plane and kate at the other
Thur 19 july
well not a scaric of sleep on flight over night....read a book and watched about 5 more episodes of V but neither put me to sleep although kate did get a bit of kip.....into auckland 7.30am and got things into perspective....you dont realise how small we are here.....all of auckland airport would fit into the atrium outside of seoul's airport i reckon and the domestic terminal at auckland is a dump to boot
Down to ch ch at lunchtime....anne had broken her arm a few days ago and couldnt pick us up so got taxi which is usually $20 to their place but now they have to pay $8 to come into the airport each time and they pass that onto you as well so what a bloody rip off......welcome home indeed !!!
In the afternoon i really tempted fate by going with brendy and annes son david to transfere their plane from rangiora to chch airport where they needed it to go to a fly-in to omarama the following day....it was my 13th plane flight for the trip but it all went off without a hitch....david is a good pilot and is normally flying in africa doing low level surveying for mining companies but home for a holiday at the moment......so for the second time today i flew into chch
Fri 20th.....heavy frost...caught naked bus home a couple of weeks earlier than we have done in the past....looks a bit wintery
Main regrets of trip........boat being late which meant we missed lizzies diamond jubilee weekend.......missed big trooping of the colours because we were in yorkshire but it rained anyway......same for the dedication of the monument to bomber command that was opened shortly afterwards as the lancaster of the queens flight flew over hyde park and dropped a million poppies out of the bomb bay......also wanted to go to "war and peace" which is a monster 4 day 200 acre event for people who own military hardware (started the day we flew out )and also wouldnt have minded a tour of the olympic games site but otherwise have pronounced the trip a successful mission
Well thats it for now but i will add some more photos when i get organised......kate emailing tour bus company in faint hope someone handed camera in
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
yet more pics
beamish
some more pics
thats why i only took two photos all day
install 12
Install 12 Mon 18 june
Well yesterday we moved down to just north of york to bob and daphne....have known them since the 70s also and they farm near the town of tollerton...although they have downsized in recent years and lease out a fair bit of their property these days....bob has a small flock of texel stud ewes to keep him out of trouble and he drives part time for a fairly big bus company....they have also stayed with us in nz a few years ago
Today we went over to the coast to whitby for daphne's birthday..(where capitano cook came from)....on the way we stopped in pickering as we were going to take the scenic steam train over the moors to whitby....however train fully occupied with carrying what has become a new-age british institution...ie the olympic torch...or to be more specific...some of the 8500 olympic torches which they have made....what they do is cart them around by bus mostly and when they come to a village they get a member of the uk olympic team or some noted sportsman to run with one for about 300 meters and then he or she uses their torch to light the next one who repeats the process and they then get to keep the torch....so there are a lot of torches floating about and a huge enterage to cart them around and no-one can understand why they dont just use one torch....anyway relay was over when we arrived and they were all lining up for the photo shoot.....i asked one of them what he was going to do with his torch...."use it to light the barbecue" says he....i asked him what his sport was...rowing says he....i said "keep an eye out for kiwis coming past"...he thought we were looking good in the singles and doubles but thought he might be in for a chance as he is in the 8s
Whitby is a good little town to wander around though there are always a lot of "loopies"(tourists for the uninitiated) under your feet....and a lot of the town excluding the concrete entrance to the harbour, would have been standing when jimmy sailed out in the 1760s.......
The trip over to whitby crosses the north yorkshire moors which are pretty spectacular and where in one place is the town of gotland where they filmed "heartbeat"
Tue 19th june
Well had a boys version of what women call "shopping therapy"....bob and i hauled the back wheels of his ford 4000 and replaced them with rowcrop ones ....then we put the spray unit on the back and i sprayed a paddock of barley for him with a fungaside....at home all of our spraying is on grass paddocks using gps tracking....here it is mostly crop spraying and crops are sowed with tramlines at whatever spacing you want (ie the sowing unit leaves a wheel sized strip for later on) and all you have to do when spraying is to drive up and down the tramlines which is easy- peasy...and made a nice change from being a tourist for so long !!
Wed 20th
Today bob and daphne took us up north to county durham where we went to the beamish outdoor museum.....about 1970 an estate gifted a preservation society a 300 acre farm....what they proceeded to do then was to transplant old buildings from all over britain to the site where they rebuilt them as seperate villages....a 1920s one ,...an edwardian one..a coalmining one complete with pit and of course the farm and i would defy anyone to pick out that these sites have not always been there , such is the detail that they put into rebuilding them....a lot of people work there as each shop business ,etc is staffed by people in period dress and they actually sale a selection of what they would have originally....including the pub of course !! and the villages are all linked together by a vintage tram and bus network...entry ticket is not expensive and is valid for a year
On the way home we called into the centre of durham to have a weatherspoons tea and a look at the cathederal which has the largest gothic arch in europe...it was closed but had a good look around outside....is made of sandstone and is badly eroded ...man what a huge bill will be required to restore the outside of that.....dont think i would like to be inside there in a decent earthquake !!
Thur 21st
More "shopping therapy" today...cut down some "crack" willows that were blocking the house drains....same variety of bloody weeds that we have in nz and they are also chocking a lot of rivers up here as well......job made more interesting by raining all day as well
Fri 22nd
Still bloody raining....man are they having a crap summer up here....just as well we didnt come for the sun.....got a bit of a break after brecky and we manage to load 3 big fadges of wool onto back of bobs double cab which we fortunately covered and we all set off for bradford....man it hosed down all the way and these big motor ways up here have so much spray coming off vehicles , it is like driving through a carwash.......got to bradford and dropped off wool at woolstore....hopefully not too much water has forced its way in.....went to center of city to see what a 24million pound fountain looks like.....by looks of it it a good place to take your dog for a bath and not very spectacular....i think a working bee of cockies or a school comittee workday could have knocked it up for 24 thou....is of course very contoversial in bradford as most people talked about prefering more housing to a white elephant like that but it is bang in the middle of town ouside a very impressive city hall.and they say it looks better at night!!....but there was high wind , rain and very cold....and from what ive heard of bradford before or since....ideal conditions to get a feel for the city......thank the stars for a good warm pub lunch across the square...weatherspoons....my favorite pup chain
After lunch bob and daphne took me to one of my favorite institutions and my first one for the whole trip.......a museum...in this case the museum of photography and cinemotography.....very interesting and free as well...appears to be heavily sponsored by the bbc and other big corps....they have recording studios from across time all set up and you can wander around them and fiddle with the equipment like cameras etc and special effects...film yourself wandering among the dinosaurs etc etcwatch countless stuff from the past ...also contained a full sized imax cinema ....so could have spent a week there but reluctantly we had to move on
B & D dropped us to the nearby village of steeton where we were taken over by becky and michael who a lot of you may have met at home late last year and earlier this year......they were woofers at home for us on two occassions (willing workers on organic farms) and in january the three of us tramped the northwest circuit of stewart island in 7 days instead of the suggested 9 and it was a gut buster and if it hadnt been for those two driving me on each day , then i would probably still be down there.....they say they would be happier over in west otago tailing lambs but alas they had to come back up here to regroup...michael is a structural engineer who works from home and consults on projects all over central britain....over here they have a lot of privately funded public works and becky works for one such group who are building state houses...she is qualified as an estimater and or quantity surveyor and her job is to make sure they are using the right materials and not cutting any corners.....but there are a lot of people living over in that part of west yorkshire and commuting is tedious so she works about 4 twelve hour days a week and has three off...they are both keen trampers and push bikers....michael is lining them up to do "the three peaks" which are 3 hills spread over 25 miles and you have about 12 hours to do it in
They sacrifised their weekend to take us up into the yorkshire dales which lead north from the town of skipton and are part of another national park...very scenic but a lot of flood water around due to continual rain
And on the sunday we went to a world war 1 and 11 reinactment day nearby ......here boys (and gals) who happen to own tanks ,field artillary and machine guns dress up in period uniforms and attack each other across a very boggy field....on this particular day the germans won and kate who only had on open towed shoes had mud up to her knees much to someones mirth....and bugger me but on the way home in the middle of the town of keighly we came upon crowds of people lining the streets....stopped to inspect...olympic bloody flame again , but this time it hadnt arrived yet so we waited while a convoy of support buses and sponsors vehicles came thru the route not to mention heaps of police escorts on motor bikes....an finally the torch bearer ran past.....a good keen englishman who was grinning from ear to ear and waving his free hand like he was trying to detach it.....the humorous thing that struck me was that his country of birth was obviously......................................china !!
Mon 25
Very good of michael it was to cart us back across to bob and daphnes this morning ,a bit of timewith them and we were picked up by derick and yvonne....i worked mostly with dick in the 70s and for part of it lived in his parents pub(the station hotel) at tollerton (now a chinese restaurant )....they live in a village on the outskirts of york called wiggington and dick has a hedge cutting business and believe me there are a lot of hedges in this part of the world so he is real busy
We are ty-howing at dick and vons this week and next mon we fly back up to sweden ( having made phone contact with the people i worked with up there when we called there on boat , it struck me afterwards that it was a pity that we couldnt catch up in person as i havent seen them for 37 years and who knows when we will be up here next.....so while we were at bobs , he went on line with ryanair and managed to get us a good deal...so next mon morn that is where we will be for most of that week so more later
Well yesterday we moved down to just north of york to bob and daphne....have known them since the 70s also and they farm near the town of tollerton...although they have downsized in recent years and lease out a fair bit of their property these days....bob has a small flock of texel stud ewes to keep him out of trouble and he drives part time for a fairly big bus company....they have also stayed with us in nz a few years ago
Today we went over to the coast to whitby for daphne's birthday..(where capitano cook came from)....on the way we stopped in pickering as we were going to take the scenic steam train over the moors to whitby....however train fully occupied with carrying what has become a new-age british institution...ie the olympic torch...or to be more specific...some of the 8500 olympic torches which they have made....what they do is cart them around by bus mostly and when they come to a village they get a member of the uk olympic team or some noted sportsman to run with one for about 300 meters and then he or she uses their torch to light the next one who repeats the process and they then get to keep the torch....so there are a lot of torches floating about and a huge enterage to cart them around and no-one can understand why they dont just use one torch....anyway relay was over when we arrived and they were all lining up for the photo shoot.....i asked one of them what he was going to do with his torch...."use it to light the barbecue" says he....i asked him what his sport was...rowing says he....i said "keep an eye out for kiwis coming past"...he thought we were looking good in the singles and doubles but thought he might be in for a chance as he is in the 8s
Whitby is a good little town to wander around though there are always a lot of "loopies"(tourists for the uninitiated) under your feet....and a lot of the town excluding the concrete entrance to the harbour, would have been standing when jimmy sailed out in the 1760s.......
The trip over to whitby crosses the north yorkshire moors which are pretty spectacular and where in one place is the town of gotland where they filmed "heartbeat"
Tue 19th june
Well had a boys version of what women call "shopping therapy"....bob and i hauled the back wheels of his ford 4000 and replaced them with rowcrop ones ....then we put the spray unit on the back and i sprayed a paddock of barley for him with a fungaside....at home all of our spraying is on grass paddocks using gps tracking....here it is mostly crop spraying and crops are sowed with tramlines at whatever spacing you want (ie the sowing unit leaves a wheel sized strip for later on) and all you have to do when spraying is to drive up and down the tramlines which is easy- peasy...and made a nice change from being a tourist for so long !!
Wed 20th
Today bob and daphne took us up north to county durham where we went to the beamish outdoor museum.....about 1970 an estate gifted a preservation society a 300 acre farm....what they proceeded to do then was to transplant old buildings from all over britain to the site where they rebuilt them as seperate villages....a 1920s one ,...an edwardian one..a coalmining one complete with pit and of course the farm and i would defy anyone to pick out that these sites have not always been there , such is the detail that they put into rebuilding them....a lot of people work there as each shop business ,etc is staffed by people in period dress and they actually sale a selection of what they would have originally....including the pub of course !! and the villages are all linked together by a vintage tram and bus network...entry ticket is not expensive and is valid for a year
On the way home we called into the centre of durham to have a weatherspoons tea and a look at the cathederal which has the largest gothic arch in europe...it was closed but had a good look around outside....is made of sandstone and is badly eroded ...man what a huge bill will be required to restore the outside of that.....dont think i would like to be inside there in a decent earthquake !!
Thur 21st
More "shopping therapy" today...cut down some "crack" willows that were blocking the house drains....same variety of bloody weeds that we have in nz and they are also chocking a lot of rivers up here as well......job made more interesting by raining all day as well
Fri 22nd
Still bloody raining....man are they having a crap summer up here....just as well we didnt come for the sun.....got a bit of a break after brecky and we manage to load 3 big fadges of wool onto back of bobs double cab which we fortunately covered and we all set off for bradford....man it hosed down all the way and these big motor ways up here have so much spray coming off vehicles , it is like driving through a carwash.......got to bradford and dropped off wool at woolstore....hopefully not too much water has forced its way in.....went to center of city to see what a 24million pound fountain looks like.....by looks of it it a good place to take your dog for a bath and not very spectacular....i think a working bee of cockies or a school comittee workday could have knocked it up for 24 thou....is of course very contoversial in bradford as most people talked about prefering more housing to a white elephant like that but it is bang in the middle of town ouside a very impressive city hall.and they say it looks better at night!!....but there was high wind , rain and very cold....and from what ive heard of bradford before or since....ideal conditions to get a feel for the city......thank the stars for a good warm pub lunch across the square...weatherspoons....my favorite pup chain
After lunch bob and daphne took me to one of my favorite institutions and my first one for the whole trip.......a museum...in this case the museum of photography and cinemotography.....very interesting and free as well...appears to be heavily sponsored by the bbc and other big corps....they have recording studios from across time all set up and you can wander around them and fiddle with the equipment like cameras etc and special effects...film yourself wandering among the dinosaurs etc etcwatch countless stuff from the past ...also contained a full sized imax cinema ....so could have spent a week there but reluctantly we had to move on
B & D dropped us to the nearby village of steeton where we were taken over by becky and michael who a lot of you may have met at home late last year and earlier this year......they were woofers at home for us on two occassions (willing workers on organic farms) and in january the three of us tramped the northwest circuit of stewart island in 7 days instead of the suggested 9 and it was a gut buster and if it hadnt been for those two driving me on each day , then i would probably still be down there.....they say they would be happier over in west otago tailing lambs but alas they had to come back up here to regroup...michael is a structural engineer who works from home and consults on projects all over central britain....over here they have a lot of privately funded public works and becky works for one such group who are building state houses...she is qualified as an estimater and or quantity surveyor and her job is to make sure they are using the right materials and not cutting any corners.....but there are a lot of people living over in that part of west yorkshire and commuting is tedious so she works about 4 twelve hour days a week and has three off...they are both keen trampers and push bikers....michael is lining them up to do "the three peaks" which are 3 hills spread over 25 miles and you have about 12 hours to do it in
They sacrifised their weekend to take us up into the yorkshire dales which lead north from the town of skipton and are part of another national park...very scenic but a lot of flood water around due to continual rain
And on the sunday we went to a world war 1 and 11 reinactment day nearby ......here boys (and gals) who happen to own tanks ,field artillary and machine guns dress up in period uniforms and attack each other across a very boggy field....on this particular day the germans won and kate who only had on open towed shoes had mud up to her knees much to someones mirth....and bugger me but on the way home in the middle of the town of keighly we came upon crowds of people lining the streets....stopped to inspect...olympic bloody flame again , but this time it hadnt arrived yet so we waited while a convoy of support buses and sponsors vehicles came thru the route not to mention heaps of police escorts on motor bikes....an finally the torch bearer ran past.....a good keen englishman who was grinning from ear to ear and waving his free hand like he was trying to detach it.....the humorous thing that struck me was that his country of birth was obviously......................................china !!
Mon 25
Very good of michael it was to cart us back across to bob and daphnes this morning ,a bit of timewith them and we were picked up by derick and yvonne....i worked mostly with dick in the 70s and for part of it lived in his parents pub(the station hotel) at tollerton (now a chinese restaurant )....they live in a village on the outskirts of york called wiggington and dick has a hedge cutting business and believe me there are a lot of hedges in this part of the world so he is real busy
We are ty-howing at dick and vons this week and next mon we fly back up to sweden ( having made phone contact with the people i worked with up there when we called there on boat , it struck me afterwards that it was a pity that we couldnt catch up in person as i havent seen them for 37 years and who knows when we will be up here next.....so while we were at bobs , he went on line with ryanair and managed to get us a good deal...so next mon morn that is where we will be for most of that week so more later
Sunday, 17 June 2012
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