More random photos

Aug 18th

the old girl front on

captains barbecue

king neptune performing "passing gibralta ceremony" on the cadets

the cadets with woody(wearing glasses)

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

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 !!

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

yet more pics

 bob and daphne

 24 million dog bath.. bradford

beamish

 yourstruley sampling real ale cropton brewery

beamish tram

some more pics

 i am not amused

 

thats why i only took two photos all day

 back view of bob and daphne at wet and windy bradford

becky and michael

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

Some photos

install 11 Yorkshire

Instal 11
Sun 17 june
Well just when you thought i had dried up...bad luck ..here is an update
As per the last instal...we got back to peter and julia's 10 days ago (thur 7th )...spent the weekend there on a few chores...some horse transporting and whacked down some errant tree branches in garden.....however on the sat we went to the "east of england show "...it is near east grinstead and is an annual 3 day "agricultural "show......well there was a lot of car parks so guessed it was going to be big...first thing we noticed when we finally footslogged it from distant car park to entrance was that they wanted nz $36 per per adult or $80 for a family ...and that was per day!!...holy moses it was huge and it was packed...welcome to britain in a financial recession....the trade displays were endless and while the area would be greater than the field-days at home...the emphasis was more domestic than agricultural...ag equipment stands were quite small as was livestock...although a lot of horses of course.....it all came to a finish about 6.00pm and we decided to wander around while the trade stands packed up so as to let the traffic get away...we were talking to a guy who sells medical beds...high tech sort of gurneys that you lie on and they massage you....i said how was the show given that times are hard in the uk and not everyone would have a vibrating bed high on their priority list....he said the thur was so windy 10 marques blew away so things were quite that day and same on friday cause it rained all day...but today he said "i couldnt get a cup of tea in as too busy writing out sales dockets for beds "nz$6000 each.....an over all he had a sucessful show....so not much recession in the south east of england anyway
Mon 11th june
Caught train up to st pancreas station...it is an old station that has been renovated and the eurostar leaves from there to Paris....we got lost looking for megabus terminal(they are like naked bus at home...fares are cheap and on spot market)..after a bit of running about we discovered we were on a megabus train up into the midlands and from there we got an old tired double decker to york but cant complain as total fare london to york was nz$36 for both of us !!(getting the relatively short distance from peter and julia's cost nz $44 on conventional district train)
From york we got local bus to malton which is in the vale of pickering ie east yorkshire...scarborough to the east and north yorkshire moors to north....picked up by les and elaine who are cobbers of ours...i used to work with les around york in the 70s mission and him and elaine stayed with us in nz back 2004......they have been spoiling us all this week and we have seen a fair bit of the territory which we didnt see when we last stayed with them in 2007.we have roamed a lot of small villages on the edge of the moors which all fall into the "north yorkshire moors national park"..one of such is called hutton le hole and there went to the rydale folk museum which is a large outdoor museum which gives you a good idea of the history of the area going back to the iron age ...
Les and elaine live in a detached house which was once the coachhouse for the coaching inn which is attached at the other end of the row....it dates from 1776 and is called the "coachman inn".....the village we are on the outskirts of is called snainton and a tidy little spot it is too ....just outside of village live a young couple which are cobbers of les and elaines....they have 20 odd acres and he is a stock agent and has a transhipping terminal for sheep there....they also have a free-range egg operation which his wife runs ....it is a purpose built shed holding 7500 hens...they are free to go out in the paddocks but two-thirds of them dont bother....feeding is automatic and right through the length of the shed is a conveyor and on top of this are the nest boxes......so with a bit of training , they lay in there and the eggs all turn up in the packing room off the end of the conveyor...so the only manual work then is grading them into trays ...600doz per day....hens last 13 months before change over to next batch....payment from wholesaler is every tue so cashflow good and it is a slick operation....apparently this is a growth industry as battery hens have been banned since the start of this year and there is a shortage of eggs as a result .
Sun 17th june
fathers day if you live here....today les and elaine are taling us to another couple of cobbers we have down by york so more from yorkshire later

summary of trip at sea
...well i wouldnt have missed this i can tell you but it would not be every-ones cup of tea thats for sure(the main thing that really gutted me looking back was the ship being two weeks late at the start which means we have missed the big golden jubilee celebrations in london on the last weekend ie june 2nd ).....if you were going to do it to see heaps of things on land....forget it....take a bus trip....but if you want to see a working ship in action , this is the way to go....when we dropped jr and 2mp off in cypress and easy rider off in salerno , we were the only passengers left on board for the rest of the trip and we thought that we might be adopted into the crew environment a bit closer but this was not the case.....the italian officers remained friendly but distant at same time if you get the idea....in fact you could say that italians are quite big on mood swings , even chabal with whom we have had most to do with is like that....one day you can pass him and hardly get the time of day and the next he will come and find you to point out something of interest (one day i was up on the top deck looking over the side minding my own business when he shot up alongside me in a ford focus and said to jump in he was going down into the bowels of the ship and thought i might like a ride ! )....mostly the body language of the other italians is that passengers are a pain in the arse...and they insist on addressing you in english and calling me sir and kate maam(as in ham)....i have an italian phrase book with me and had gone to pains to learn all the basics like hello , goodmorning/afternoon/evening...count to 10 etc and i tried answering them in that way for a week or two but in the end i decided to fight fire with fire and threw that away and answered the italians english with a bit of kiwi (howsitgoin.....gidday...seeyalater etc )and generally stayed a bit aloof myself and this seemed to work a lot better except that i allways use the italian on the cook as he is most impressed and i dont mind greasing around him....i alternate between "complimenti al cuoco" (compliments to the chef) and " era squisito" (that was delicious)....the officer we got on best with was jessie the philippino second mate who has good english and of course joselle our messman ....i overwrote the italian phrase book with philippino andwe had some real laughs as whatever you said in philly jo-jo would sing-song it back to you at least once with much laughter so wasnt wasted and i rather hoped it was annoying the crap out of some of the goory italians as well...as i got the impression that they feel superior to the phillies and probably cant understand that we dont (as afterall , we are "pacific" people !!!)
..so here some tips if you want to go grimaldi cruising.....firstly find out from namesake if booking thru him (or me if you are booking direct ) as to what vessel you are going to be on(this is one of the best) and more importantly...who is the master....im not putting real names in this blog but woody is regarded as being one of the best and walrus is very friendly but the atmosphere was very much more restrained after they changed....jr came up to england on the grande britagna and he said that the captain on it was an 18 carat arshole so you want to avoid the likes of him or would spoil your trip
......if bookings are light and you have any like minded friends who might like to go too you would be best to make up a party as you need to have enough passengers to get a bit of "passenger power"....but bare in mind that it is a long trip so make sure you dont take friends with you who will turn into enemies before you get back.....
dont forget to take binnoculars and a world atlas.. and do some homework on the countries you are passing....get a phone modem for your laptop that will take sim cards as i kick myself for not doing that as you are often in cellphone range of compatible networks when at sea and also when you are alongside but cant get off.....while on the subject of phones....take your telecom one and it will automatically go onto global roaming but try not to use it except in emergencies as it is not cheap....a few days before we left nz i got a new phone as i knew the old cmda network was closing while we were away...i specifically asked the pea-brained woman from whom i bought it (no prizes for guessing what south otago shop ) "do i have to worry about it down loading stuff from the internet ?....." oh no says she just dont log on and you will be ok".......well fortunately not long after i arrived in the uk i got a text from telecom telling me "welcome to telecom global roaming" etc etc and a number to ring for prices so thought i should do that to see what the rates actually are.....got straight thru to telecom (india of course )...a well spoken gal gave me all the prices and also emailed them to us as well.....then she said 'are you aware that your internet device on your phone is not disabled ?"....i repeated what i was told in good old balclutha and she said....not so , it will do updates if you dont disable the function said she and would i like her to do it for me ....yes says i and i thought i wont say anything nasty about punjabies ever again !!

instal 10
fri june 2nd
well the town centre of esbjerg is handy alright and while we flew into town in 07 and were picked up by siff and gitta for our denmark experience ,we didnt actually go into the town centre on that occassion....but we did today it was almost deserted and down-right bloody cold and i no jersey....there was a few youngies on the street though at 10.00am and they looked in a fairly good mood and i guessed why......it wasnt long before we were accosted by one and i could tell by the stamp on the back of his hand and the fact that he was fairly fumey that he had been out clubbing all night and heading home.....he looked a bit like he might have had an affiliation to a right-wing organisation but he was very well spoken and polite....could i phone a taxi for him as he had run out of money on his cel....which i did but had to use kiwi cel (see my notes on phones in trip summary) and it would probably have been cheaper to have piggy backed him !!
...one thing you notice about towns in denmark is that they are very tidy and orderly....here we were sat morning and no rubbish around streets from last night....went to public toilets...they are as clean and tidy as most homes would have...no dickheads writing graffiti up the walls there....and later phoned siff and birgette by putting my card in a public phone and it actually worked....nobody had even pinched the book !!....however not much action as shops dont open till after 10 on a sat and because we were feeling the cold we had to repair to mcdonalds where their wifi was a good speed and i set up more blogs which of course i had pre written but as i explained some of them got scrambled when they copied over which annoyed the crap out of me as apart from annoying you all with them i do intend to keep them for my own reference.....so all in all didnt get to see much else in town as had to be back at 12.00 and to make matters worse i got a stab of guilt at having spent an hr sheltering in macca's so i bought us burgers for lunch instead of going and getting something danish for lunch and the burgers were not flash....where the hell has the colonel gone to in continental europe !!......but it was good to catch up with the danish gals by phone but a pity we couldnt fine tune our arrival times or we might have been able to catch up in person....but as if to justify making us go back to the ship at 12.00 sharp, we actually sailed early.....denmark is a real good country and i think they are in pretty good financial position too....they have real good looking stock as well!!
* a little aside.....the north sea in that area is festooned with oil rigs and you would have trouble free sailing thru there in the dark without charts and radar , thats for sure....also windfarms galore out there....miles out of sight of land , they are in all sorts of configurations but the ones we sailed past were in rows like you would do grape vines ....about 100 in each block i counted.
sun 3rd june
got up sharp to see that we were not far off entering the channel into wallhamn on swedens west coast....is a toss up as to whether this port or corks , is the most scenic to sail into....wallhamn has heaps of rocky islands dotted around throughout the long channel in and some of them are very small but the odd thing is that a lot of people live on them....one was probably only about 3 or 4 ha but looked to have about 100 houses crammed onto it.....no roads how odd..i should have spent my productive years in local body planning as the first thing that occured to me aside from the asthetic side to it was ....what do they do for the two "p"s( power and poos) as there was no overhead lines anywhere and not much scope for septic tanks on solid rock and cant see a green country like sweden pumping it into the harbour.....plus what do they do for a living if there permanently and how do they get on and off....we docked about 9.0 am and we were straight off as no shore pass needed here....had a yarn with one of the wharfies and he said a lot of the people who live on those islands commute to gothenburg and other cities and keep their cars on mainland and use boats/small ferries to get on and off...said he himself lives on one and is 80km each way plus a ferry trip....forgot to ask about the 2 ps......
.wallhamn is miles from anywhere but like portbury in england it is a big car port for distribution purposes....the big car transporters like us unload there and a lot go by road into the hinterland of sweden and also small car carriers come along and load them up again and haul them north to norway and russia....man when you see all the acres of cars at these ports you just got to wonder if theres enough people on the planet with cash to buy them ......and theres a ship from this company alone in these ports every week!!
...port agent took us to gates and rang a taxi for us .....was about 20mins to closest town as there is nothing at wallhamn ....the town of stenunsund....about 25000 people but not much doing on a sunday morning ....(.however i did have in my head , the name and address of the people i worked for in central sweden back in the 70s ( tore and gunvor torstensson )and i gave that to the taxi driver who punched it into his computer and hey-presto there was their phone number......rang them and they are still alive and kicking in same place....now i wished that i had given them some notice as there would have been enough time for them to have driven over for the day.....sod it).......uncharacteristically we were told we could be away all day so we jumped on a bus to gothenberg which is swedens second biggest city and were there in under an hour and we were tourists for the day....did the open top bus tour and then the canalboat/harbour cruise (not that we haven't seen a lot of harbours lately)....and as an extra bonus when we got off boat , we found out why there were so many people on streets ....it was the annual "hero " parade which was big and there were some very strange sights from drag queens to gay dwarfs etc etc plus the two girls standing next to us kept giving each other mouth-to-mouth resusitation so that should make for some interesting video editing......
.we had a young swedish girl woofing for us the week before we left nz and she is actively involved in left-wing politics already and has her sights set on becoming pm one day....one of the policies she is keen on is the open door one ...ie open the borders to any refugee be they muslim,black white or brindle and unfortunately sweden has already been doing that for years....when i worked in sweden in the 70s they were taking vietnamese like there was no tomorrow along with any political refugees like draft dodgers and anybody else who floated past.....the result i noticed when walking through those streets today is that its hard to pick the vikings out anymore ....there are so many eastern europeans and liquorish alsorts.....(.denmark on the other hand seems to have kept there bloodlines a bit more pure)...anyway we had a good day in gothenberg and went back to stenunsund by fast train....arriving there by about 5.30pm so plenty of time to get something for tea but not a lot of places open due to sun night but we did find "harry's" down at the marina....an english themed pub built in an octagonal shape....they did a very tender medium-rare hereford fillet with salad and chips which i had been hanging out for for some time (there was also a macca's open and a pizza joint...but i think i am getting enough of that on board here thanks !!)...only peculiar thing for the day was that kate wanted lavy in gothenburg and sneaked into mcdonalds....found it was coin operated but crafty woman that she is , she waited until someone came out and grabbed door before it closed.....i felt urge at train/bus station(its a big one ) and found same thing...springboarding off kates experiences , did the door thing but found i was in an anti room and girl cashier parked there with till.....wanted 10 kr(they are not in euro)...we were having a credit card day as not worth changing money and no banks open anyway....well bugger me 10kr is about $1.50nz and not something you would use card for...cost you more than that in fees.....so i negotiated that she would accept 1 euro coin....only problem is i didnt take any euro with me ....so had to hunt around to find kate,shake her down for a coin.....just as well i wasnt busting....to rub in the insult....dunny on train was free !!
....so that was sweden...but as usual we were back at ship on time (8.0pm) but due to some cargo hassles it was 1.30 mon morning before we actually sailed....we got up to see all those islands sliding past in the moonlight....very scenic !!!
* here is a little aside on sweden that tore told me on the phone when i rang him.....when i worked in england in1975 i bought an old mk1 cortina off the next door neighbour....it was lying in her garden and she was sick of spending money on it as it was always breaking down so gave it to me for 50 quid.(i think it was about about a 1965 model)...and i took it to sweden where i worked for tore and gunvor torstensson and after that i did 10,000 miles in it up through finland , into the artic circle and down through norway..(never laid a spanner on it )..then i had to go back to england prior to heading for nz.....cortina was out of mot and rego for britain so not worth taking it back.....left it in tore's shed and there it stayed for a year or so till they made sure i wasnt going back.....then they needed the shed so they gave cortina to a local engineer and he was going to make it into an agricultural trailer.....but he must have fired her up and started driving it around and apparently he kept her on the road for about the next 30years and cortina only went to big scrap yard in the sky 2005...the engineer fellow just clocked up his 96thyear too so hope that cortina gives me a bit of longevity as well !!!
tue 5th june
well from wallhamn to the mouth of antwerp harbour is about 12 hours so we picked up the pilot off there about 1.30pm today....bugger me but it is a long way up the skelt (think thats what its called ...its like a big canal)...40 nautical miles in fact and it took about 5and a half hours to get up to the lock gates but a very interesting trip it was.....lot of industry on the banks ....all the big guys in the chemical world have vast plants on the banks...god knows what the air samples come out like..and theres nuclear power stations and you name it...also..off out starboard side as we first went in were a lot of crops and farming and on one of the flood banks was a sight becoming rare even in south otago....a flock of sheep !!...and out there on the horizon reside countless thousands of kiwis for that of course is the fields of flanders....and on my next trip up here i am going to the menin gates at ypres by hook or by crook ..the big german rivers link in via locks and the biggest lock in the world is up here somewhere.....by the time we are thru lock and tied up is 9.00pm......this bit of the port is big by the standards of where we have been but found out where we were was just the grimaldi terminal ( two other grimaldis already tied up)....the rest of the port is vast...no 8 in the world av turn around is 40 ships perday........the port is miles from the town as the old town port was too small and was overrun by commerce and shut down so they moved out here in the 70s and knocked down a few towns to build this port ( you see a few chuches around the skyline...these were from the deceased villages but they were not allowed to knock them down as they are historic places so they now maintain them but they are closed.)....we sneaked ashore and found port security and hit them with the dumb kiwi looking for awifi site....there wasnt any unencrypted ones but in the end they took pity on us and let us into a multistoried admin building where he wandered around various offices till he found a machine that was on line and left us to it till about midnight....bit tricky though trying to log onto email sites from a foreign site as servers were concinced we were hackers....but we got there and that was good of him and he gave us a good tip cause we wanted to go into town the next day.....said dont get a taxi in the 7.0 to 9.0 time as traffic queues and costs a fortune so off to bed we went
wed 6th....up at 5.0 and to port gates to order taxi 5.45.....pouring with bloody rain.....a little aside from yesterday was that nobody from belgium immigration called on board so they left a message with 3rd mate that if passengers coming ashore they should get a taxi to immigration and get their own passports stamped (as obviously they are not in the shangran area)....yea right....by the time we got to the outskirts of the old city , the meter was already over 40euro...so we were illegal immigrants in belgium for a day!!!....the taxi driver was also a good sort and he dropped us off on the opposite bank of the river schelde from where the old city was......the idea is that along with people on pushbikes , you go into a huge lift which takes you down into the bowels of the earth where you come out into a 500m long tunnel which is one of several under the river but the only one you can walk or bike thru and you go into an identical lift at the other end and you walk out into old antwerp....it is by far the most interesting city we struck if you are into old buildings and how they blend the old in with the new.(brussels is the political center of belgium and the european union..antwerp is the commercial center of belgium famous for diamond finishing factories but i dont agree with the concept of diamonds and that even before i saw "blood diamond"...so kate was out of luck !!)..only problem was that it was hosing down without letup..first thing we did when we got there was wait until 7.30 for nearest cafe to open and we had huge bacon and egg omlettes and french bread cause we are missing the b&e breckys....we are a bit pizza..d out.....
we were meant to be back at ship by 12.00 but 3rd took us aside and said "this capitano very conservative...3.00pm will be fine"....so we took a bus tour of the city but fortunately and unfortunately they had the roof on the top deck so couldnt stand up for the photo op and windows fairly steamed up but we got the idea.....eventually we found our way back thru the tunnel and best way to get a taxi (esp since we know not a word of flemish)...is to get someone to call one for us and since there was a restaurant/tavern right next door that is how we did it nd of course they have some very good beer in belgium about 500 different brews i believe so that would be a challenge ....only managed a couple of them im afraid but they made quite a fuss of us and sent us on our way with about half a kg of the snack mix that they supply when you have a beer because we commented that it was very moorish!! and that was wet and windy belgium
thur 7th june day 35
apparently we went thru the dover straits about 4.0am so both passes in the dark....off the mouth of the solent just after our last breakfast on board...it is heavy mist and raining welcome back to drought stricken england...we take on a pilot and plod off up the solent...we on bridge and normally when you have pilot on bridge passengers have to stand over in the bridge wings and generally keep alow profile ....however this pilot who was an ex super tanker skipper was very keen on being our tour guide as well as getting ship up thru the maze....he came over and pointed out the three victorian forts that stand out in the mouth of the solent....they were built out there in the 19th century to counter some potential french threat as longrange artillery was just being developed....dont thinkthey fired a shot in anger and one of them is now a luxury hotel if for some reason you want to spend a fortune for a night on a lump of concrete out in the middle of nowhere.....as we progressed up past the isle of wight he pointed out various buildings of interest and their history and when we came opposite cowes we had a bit of friendly banter over the americas cup and of course i had to remind him which countries managed to get a hand on that cup when the english have never been able to....over on the mainland is the remains of the worlds longest building...it was a hospital (netley)with its own wharf and was used extensively during the ww1 and by the americans in ww11....now only the chapel still stands and it is not tiny either....all the time he is showing us this , he is calling out course changes to the helmsman and keeping his eye out for the masses of yachts sailing about in the mist in front of us....i said was there a regatta on ?...he said "did we sail ourselves?" ...i said "no"...he said "good ...because we call them w.p.f.i's...which he translated to "wind powered fn idiots "...no regatta on ...is always like that and while theoretically power gives way to sail , it doesnt work that way in controlled areas like that so he eventually got a coast guard boat to shoo some of them out of the road and we eventually came alongside the same dock at southampton that we started from 35 days ago.... pouring rain and poor visibility....then pilot turned into travel adviser and showed us on chart where railwaystation was and suggested best way out....(.good old smyth had kindly offered to come and get us but let us know in antwerp that he couldnt) ...we managed to con the grimaldi agent to bring his car onto the ship(the crew insisted that he do that as they were worried that kate would get wet and they stopped the unloading while he did it....good old kate!!) and grab our gear and then he took us to railway stn which was actually quite close to the docks(he also gave us an immigration certificate to say we are allowed back into britain as once again no actual pass required and nobody from immigration.......so there we were standing in shampton railway stn with not much idea of what comes next....went to ticketing and suggested route that pilot had come up with and bugger me but he hit a few buttons and gave us a really good deal right back to tumbridge wells which is only 10mins from peter and julia's....it involved 4 different trains and 4 hrs but that was no problem....picked up by julia and here we are back at stone cross........summary of trip follows just in case i have inspired any of you to follow in our tracks

Instal 9
tue may 29
well....apparently portbury is the biggest car port in britain because it is well placed to the motorway network.....and i figured there must be a reason for it as it takes forever to get here as i said at the end of last blog...we were off the mouth of the bristol channel about 9.30am yesterday and plodded up it till 12.00 when we took on a pilot and then its on and on....you have to go thru a lock to get into the harbour and it was about 3.30pm before we got that done and tied up....one of the annoying things about being a passenger is there is always a long wait for customs and shipping agent and was about an hr and a half before we got off...but for the first time we had a long stay ie 17 hrs but that was a bit double edged as you will see.....first up we went to the seafarers centre which is in the port complex....it is a great place for the sea boys as they have high-speed broadband, telephone networks, games room, library, guitars,organs etcetc.....plus they have a curtesy-coach to pick up sea-men from avonmouth dock which was nearby.....did the blog and email thingy there and the guys that run it said that bristol was about 7 miles away but there is no bus link , only taxi....which we would have done but by that time was 6.30pm and thought , what is point of going there at that time on a monday night...plus we had gone thru bristol on one of our previous missions .so decided to go for option b. which was to walk to local pub for tea....only one mile.....fortunately the coach turned up and offered to give us ride... just as well ...the only people that would have reckoned it was only a mile would have been irish or maori , as if we had been on foot i would have turned back ages before we had got there on the assumption we were going wrong way..(i reckon 5km.).so that is how we got to "the kings arms"....a good old village pub in what i guess by the accents...was summerset?....this was also indicated by the amount of cider that was on tap....but also they had real ale as well...plus they did very good pub-grub...which for us always revolves around scampi and chips ....plus we had a bit of craik with the locals (thats gaelic for a yarn....not a mis-spelling of a type of cocaine! )....all in all a good night and to cap it off the seafarers centre sent the coach to get us at closing time ..
..today we sailed about 11.30am and are through locks and hauling for it down the channel...seems to be going a lot faster might be something to do with the tide......cork in ireland is next 12 hrs which means another middle of the nighter but might be ok as i dont think we can onload ourselves in some of these ports due to union issues so might be in port for tomorrow morning as well ...as kate will be wanting to set foot on her beloved ireland again.
wed 30 may
woke up to nice spring day in ireland , showered up and were ready to go...but bugger me we couldnt find 3rd mate who usually handles our travel (namesake stresses in the info that comes with your ticket , that you need a lot of patience on a cargo ship and i usually have but sometimes it gets very strained !!)....in the end i ran into the walrus and asked him about chances of a shore pass.....he has fairly good english but takes a bit of time to produce it..."there is no shore pass " says he....and i must have looked fairly astonished and was about to enquire why not in as diplomatic a way as possible....when he continued...."noo need for shore pass this port .....you just go ashore when you are ready but need you back 12.00noon as we sailing soon after that "....well wait till i get that mate thinks i...if the tosser had said that last night we could have offed at 7.00 oc(as you will see we did manage to salvage victory from the jaws of defeat !!)....anyway we hit the wharf at 9.30 and took route to gates that walrus had shown us....there was a philiy on the gates and you wont believe me but for the first time on the trip apart from israel...he asked us for our shore pass!!....bugger me yet again....i said we dont have one and he must have been a local-philly as he said " oohwell we wont bother about one today then"....and we walked into ireland
.....about 500 meters down road and we were in the village of ringaskiddy.....it is a small village on the port side of a very picturesque harbour and the bigger town on the opposite side i will describe in a while.....had a bit of a look at bus timetable and wondered if time to go to cork which is about 40mins away.....saw a small shop nearby which was in a virtual sort of car garage....had a good bit of craik with owner barry and he told us of the woes of ireland and indeed they are not flash with high unemployment and houses worth about half of what they were prior to 2008 , people have mortgages worth more than the houses and indeed barry looked like he was just hanging on by the skin of his teeth too as he had hardly any stock ....but we relieved him of some irish newspapers and 2 winning (we hope ) lucky dips in the wed nite 4 mil lotto draw....he also talked us out of going to cork in the short time we had (we have actually been to cork before anyway compliments of our friend tara from galway ).so..apart from him the only other enterprise in ringaskiddy was the "ferry boat inn"...the other two pubs in town having closed due to the recession....so 10.am i walked in and asked the two women behind the bar one of the most stupid questions you can ask in ireland "is it too early in the day for a guiness?"....they of course immediatly answered in unison .."its never too early in ireland for a guiness"....plus one said" if you were still in australia it would be night time and you could have several"....got her put right on the geography and tried a local brew and of course a good yarn since we were only patrons....transpired they had bought the pub between them and were giving it a good go....and a nice wee irish pub it was too.....one of them was called sarah and when i enquired as to where nearest bank would be she said that she had a bit of shopping to do in nearest bigger town and she would take us with her....she was intrigued as she had never met anyone called "heemish" before......so we installed ourselves in one of the smallest cars i have been in since greece...a ka (just as well 2 meter peter wasnt with us or he would have had to sit on roof )...and off we went to carrigaline...which was twenty mins away....a vibrant town with plenty of shops banks etc...she showed us the spot where we would meet up and off we went ....got some more euros at a good price as i am only carrying aus$ this trip and they were good rate even at bank(over 76cents)and some other stuff we needed so all good....we were way up the other end of town and suddenly we heard someone calling out "heemish" and there was sarah parked up in a line of traffic...transpired the stuff she had gone to pick up wasnt ready....so the trip was really only in aid of us....on the way out of town we saw a funeral forming at one of the churches and a lot of foot traffic heading that way...."ah it will be a big funeral" saya sarah..."she was a very popular woman who has 6 teenage sons"...i said that would account for the younguns heading down the street..."ah well now, her husband has 12 brothers you know and each of them has a dozen or so kids you know now"...says sarah....also we got the run down on how the whole event is run in ireland....as i had asked if they would be having a "wake" as my kiwi idea on what that involves is when you all go to the "oak tree inn" or similar after the event to lighten up a bit....but no...they probably do a bit of that as well but a wake in ireland is the whole deal and goes from the "viewing" of the body the day before , the service and ends at the graveside.....so i am further educated ...
...we whistled back to the "ferry boat inn" and sarah knocked up kate a chicken and veg stir fry as kate is getting veg withdrawl symptoms...and me a full irish breakfast of bacon eggs saus. black and white pudding and chips....yum a nice change from our regulation piza breakfasts....and of course washed down with another guiness....and then alas we were off ...but that woman was a real good stick (and along with the cafe mercanti couple from salerno.)...is "right up there with the fighter pilots ".and we got a good wee snapshot of ireland........well we got back to the ellade and bugger me if they didnt have some problem wtih the locks on the ramp when they folded it up and we wasted nearly 3 hours while they played about with that but finally we were on the move out into the harbour about 5.30pm.....now the town on the opposite side of the harbour that i mentioned above is called cobh (prounounced "cove") and we passed right along it only a couple of hundred meters away from shore and a right scenic spot it is too.....on that very spot 100 years ago in april a very well know liner owned by the "white star line "....anchored here to take on the last of her passengers which i think were irish immigrants heading for better places (now adays liners come here and anchor at the quay because the modern harbour has been dredged but in the titanic's time they had to anchor in the channel and barge the passengers out)...so was worth a bit of pondering as we sailed out of that harbour as most of those buildings..esp the lighthouse etc were probably standing when the titanic sailed past and for a lot of them it was the last bit of land they would ever see!!.....(.back in april they re-enacted the titanics voyage on exactly the same day ).....so as night fell we plodded off out into the irish sea hoping that we will have better luck than the worlds most famous ship..
...heading around bottom of england and up through the channel and next port of call is esberj in denmark in a couple of days eta 4.0am sat 2nd june
friday 1 june
past through the dover straits in the night and now plodding up thru the north sea...a lot of shipping around but an even greater number of oil rigs and gas platforms....man they are everywhere and i noticed on the charts that off holland there are also a lot of offshore wind-farms although we are too far out to have seen them....managed to get a guided tour of engine room today....had dropped a few requests in earlier in trip but nothing eventuated until today....engine surprisingly small in size compared with the old waitangi where the engine extended up through 3 decks.....this one is 7 cylinder 22,000kw which is something in hp i am not sure of...cylinders are only about the size of the old standard dust bin but are obviously a lot more efficient than in days of old....incidentally apart from maintenance , the main engine is never shut down even in port....she has done about 70,000hrs and has a shelf life of over 24yrs (she is a 2001 model) but they gradually replace all the parts over a period of time anyway as everything is compartmentalised.....one variable pitch propellor that can push us along at a max of about 22knots but mostly we potter along at about 17 to save fuel....bunkering is done in antwerp of about 250tonnes and that is sufficient for the round trip....the bow thrusters are the side on props that are used to manouver in port and they are both powered by a massive electrical motor.....there are also 4 large 7 cylinder generator sets for electricity and a large fuel fired boiler which produces enough hot water that we could shower all day long if we wanted to
.....something that i have not previously mentioned is that on one of the bulkheads at the back of the bridge is the makers plaque which in this case is daewoo from korea .....on the other bulkhead is a painting of the makers makers son if that makes sence ie...jc in the arms of his mother and this is surrounded by a dried flower arrangement and some religious verse......there were more pictures in that vein in the engine room....and i have noticed in passing at least one officers cabin with the door open , a large depiction of jc over the head of the bunk as well but this is hardly surprising as italy is home to the old fellow with the funny hat and they obviously take it quite seriously.....there is also a small statue of one of the patron saints on top of the bridge consul , facing forward.....so we are in good hands
....one of the most difficult things i find on board is to not walk around absentmindedly whistling as i am prone to do as you well know......it is not just because of the fact that i may not sometimes be in tune....it is because the sailors say..".whistling onboard ship makes the wind blow"....and i must say there has been a lot of offenders before me as it never stops bloody blowing at sea and the north-sea is no exception , i can tell you.
2nd june in esbjerg....sending this from good old macca's free wifi

instal 8
sat 26 may
well we sneaked into setabul , portugal about mid afternoon yesterday.....no haze ...mountainous hills around town look to be covered with something like wild olives and wilding pines....sort of has that sort of canadian look to it if you can invisage canada turning up on the 40th parallel......great sandy white beaches on way into harbour with not many people on them(reminded me of the way round to the nuggets at home )...town is a picture postcard one ....terracotta roofs are order of day
i told you a lie previously ....some of the crew are allowed shore leave depending on what their role is on the ship.....several of the italian deck officers were away into town like dogs shot up the proverbial as they all have eu passpoarts.....(it was a text book day...wall to wall sunshine.... probably better than any we had in the med because very clear and no haze....25deg which i found out later , the locals count as a winters day as apparently summer doesnt start till june)....jessie, several of the philly crew and ourselves are of course on foreign passports and apparently setabul is not in the shangran area so we all need visa,s for the day....we are told to wait down at ramp for immigration to bring them...10mins max.....after an hour the philies drifted off back upstairs and i nearly wore the paint off the ramp pacing up and down it....i should have bloody known it as looking over the town as we came in you could tell that traffic and people in no hurry to go anywhere and if youve ever been to spain you will know the significance of the word maunjana......eventually the prick turned up about 5.15 and said to me (who was fighting loosing battle to be civil)..."very sorry for delay...i have been very busy immigration"......what a crock of manure....turns out they are like the israelis in that they sit awhile search engine is going through everyones history , if any
....anyway is only short walk into town....very senic as kilroy would say....lot of buildings have mosaic tiles on facades and cobbled pavements....an absolute rabbit warren of extremely narrow streets all opening onto their own little squares....lot of big churches in the plain mexican style(as seen through clint eastwoods spagetti westerns )....zillions of little cafes and tiny shops selling womans ware and watches....man there is no excuse for people not knowing the time in setabul....by now is after 6 .0 pm and its friday night but most shops still open....i suspect that they have siesta during day and stay open later at night (iguess they probably shut from about 12.0 till 4.0ish....anyway we did what namesake said in travel notes supplied with tickets (by the way "namesake" runs "nz freighter travel" from napier....he is blessed with having the same h first name as me )....we did some serious people watching ( unfortunately the open top sightseeing buses dont operate in "winter").....and ive got to say that "grading on the hoof" is most difficult in setubal....the portugese there seem to come in all shapes and sizes and it is hard to describe what a typical one looks like....they certainly wernt as dark and moorish like the spanish or italians as i thought they would be ..so hard to describe...liquorish allsorts maybe
....if you ever do one of these missions take a world atlas (one i have at home would have been ideal as it has brief history of country as well as maps andof course googleearth is no good without web and naval charts only tell you what towns are on the coast.).....anyway i didnt read up anything on portugal but remember from the old school days that they were at one stage a colonial power in europe and asia and did a lot of the shooting of cheeky darkies , sending the gunboat up the river etc etc....in fact i think they were fairly brutal pricks at the best of times .......anyway the legacy of being a colonial power you will find ( britain is a prime example ) is that a lot of the natives of the countries that you have conquered tend to come and live in your own counry over a long period of time afterwards and portugal is no exception and there are a lot of faces on the streets of setubal that are as black as your hat....probably from african countries like senegal etc....virtually the first one we struck when we got off the ship was a woman coming towards us with a large bag of something perched expertly on the top of her head....look mum...no hands.....something you western ladies should try....great for the posture !! and ergonomically very efficient( if it was a crate of beer up top...you would still have both hands free for the groceries !! )
.....well was annoyed that couldnt find anywhere to get a city/outskirts tour and did even contemplate a taxi but thought that would be a prime way to set oneself up with having to extend mortgage on house and besides the thing we found most lacking in setubal ....was a basic understanding of the queens english...so flagged that idea....decided to have our first meal off the ship and i was fantisizing about the "colonel" but alas he was nowhere to be seen....mcdonalds were there (in white oddly enough and no arches) but drew the line at going there.......
...when we first got on the main drag after leaving ship we came across a gaggle of restaurants one of which was called "the capitano cook"....which i thought was a real dag as jimbob cook certainly didnt discover portugal , but i guessed it was the portugeese style of recognising a fellow sea-farer....i made a mental note to go back there later for our meal....but when we got there , capitano cook was deserted of patrons and remembering what carol said all those weeks ago when we were sunday lunching in kent....."beware of empty eating establishments"....we went next door to one that was populated....actually we were recruited by the doorman who was a slightly more olive skinned version of robbie reid (if you don't happen to know robbie , he is a guide on the keppler)......we were hanging out for something different to the cusine onboard (like steak,eggs and chips or similar) but it looked like this was a specialty seafood restaurant and the waitress who apart from very dark hair , was as white skinned as your average pakeha....but no english and she was determined that we were going to have fish so she brought out a large tray of whole fish all around that one to two kilo size, uncooked for us to select from.....we gave in and put tthe steak on things to do in britain....i selected one that looked a bit like a trumpeter......next was the drinks...bedlieve it or not i happen to have an uncanny knowledge of world beer languages and i was ok on cerveca and thought a house red vinno for kate.....she came out with a glass of white which kate said was slightly bubbly and therefore tolerable and gave that the nod but bugger me if "helpful- hariet" didnt scuttle off and come back with a glass of what i guessed was dry white....kate took a sip and if you know kate you will have experienced one of her famous involuntary shudders which is more felt than seen.....no good and hariet still very keen to rush off for something else but we do by now convince her that option one is ok.....bugger me she scuttles off and gets a jug of the stuff..also as seemed to be common where ever we have been sofar drinks also include snacks and this was no exception....large plate of olives and some sort of beans, 2 dips a round of cheese and half a loaf of bread....by now the fish has arrived and bugger me yet again but it is not one fish between us....it is one each...they are cooked opened up like a book , each one about half the size of the otago daily times....accompanying fish is a large salad and two bowls of new spuds.....now hariet was determined i needed a wine and to save a major event , i had a flashback to the 73 beerfest trip as previously mentioned....when martin ,merv and i got to the french riviera , we didnt get around to turning right and we ended up in a camping ground outside barcelona....where we discovered a very good breakfast wine called sangria....and spain is next door to portugal so i threw this word into the conversation and hariet new exactly what i was talking about and produced 2 jugs during the meal.....it is a slightly grenashy type red poured over a sliced up orange in a jug(something you can try at home if you have got a red thats a bit dodgy....slice an orange into a jug....put the wine through your sodaflow machine to give it a bit of a buzz and hay presto !!!).......by now it was coming up to ship boarding time and we were getting a bit anxious as to whether we had enough cash to pay for all of this as we had by now eaten ourselves to a standstill didnt have a clue what the bill was going to be and couldnt see any mention of visa and hoped it wasnt like greece where cash- was -king exclusively......not to worry...the whole lot 52euro...small change in europe for a meal like that........robbie reid now very inquisitive as to where we come from...i pointed over the road at the service station which puzzled him for a moment....then i got his eyesight organised to go higher where the top deck of the ellade was visible across town....." ah grimaldi" says he.....and we sailed out on a great balmy breeze 10.30pm.....definitely put setabul on list for next time though).....
sun 27 may
all day yesterday plodding through north atlantic...sea fresh and cool......today into bay of biscay...sea nasty grey colour white tops and old girl is now having a good roll as anti heeling obviously cant compensate for this swell which along with the wind is now side on or "on the beam" as the pros. call it....is also persisting down with rain and visibility less than 2 cables which is standard passing distance for ships of this size (about half a km i think is 2 cables ).......sea reminds me of a bit of light reading you could take on after tea...."the cruel sea" by nicholas monserat
...there was hardly any radio stations this morning and bugger all ships ....did see a big tanker through the gloom going other way while we were having lunch....and even she was putting up a fair bit of white water in the air (tankers usually ride better as lower in water and they also pay better cause of danger money but crew says they arnt flash to work on as very fumey all the time )
...speaking of radio....if it wasnt for george horton (a little quizz for you)and many other singers right through to the present day like lady ga.......then half these european radio stations couldnt survive....some stations esp spain play nonstop english lyrics songs with only bit of local language between them and a lot of it is old stuff.....i noticed though that there is a distinct lack of elvis songs .....perhaps the europeans have the mistaken view that he is dead!!
...a couple of days ago when i was on the bridge , chabal was up there trimming the ship(there is a very complicated control panel on the bridge for organising the balast and that is part of his job.....you have got to have her as trim as possible so she scoots through the water with the minimum of friction to keep fuel costs down......bit like having your tyre pressure right in your car
...anyway there is a small tv on bridge hooked up to the satelite reciever and its pulling in a italian radio station via web cam.....its playing an american song from days gone by and chabal calls out "do i know this group"(its a bit like when our kids came home from school once with a tape of a new artist called cat stevens , that they had just discovered...yea right)......i said to chabal ...too right i do in fact have one of their albums on my mp3 and have been playing it a lot on the treadmill in the gym lately....i did point out that the big chick who was the lead singer choked to death on a sandwich about 35 years ago!!!....but it illustrates what i have been saying about radio up here ..."classic hits rule "...after we did the music talk i asked chabal what all the hoo-haa was on their tv in mess that day....church services and black and white images of cars riddled with bullet holes...dead bods....and who is corleonie......ah says chabal...is aniversary 10 years ago when very high up govt prosecuter take on the mafiosa and they (the mafia) kill him...i actually remember that ....i think his name was something like falconia and the mob put a radio controlled bomb in a large culvert under a motor way they new he was going to use....it blew a hole about the size of this ship....killed him , his family....all the escorts and quite a lot of casual passerbys as well and 2 months later they executed another leading figure and apparently the italian public were so enraged the govt had a major crackdown......chabal says most mafia bosses are inside....i ask does that mean that the mafia is a spent force.....he says the italian equivalent of "does the wild bear no longer shit in the woods " or as tui's would say....yea right..........the mafia strong holds were right in the southern tip of mainland italy and across the straits of massina in sicily....this company has its head office in naples but the ships are registered in palermo right in the heart of scicily...hmmm...not theorising any more on that issue ...bunk not big enough for me and horses head....but..having watched the sapranos you would have to wonder if "wheels" have had to be greased in the past........those of you who were watching "secret war" on prime about the time i left would have seen the one on the american mafia when america entered the world war 11.......the yanks couldnt get the ports geared up to do anything at speed and mysterious things were happening....a large ocean liner was being converted to a troop carrier (was it the "france" ?) and it caught on fire and burnt to the waterline etc etc.....the problem being that the wharves were controlled by the mafia and some over zealous g-men had managed to get their main boss , lucky luchiana ....banged up for a 70year jail term.....in the end they cut a secret deal with lucky ....the ports suddenly burst into activity and he got reduced to 10 years and wiled away his retirement years back in sicily......the end of that
mon 28 may
came on deck to find we are plodding up the coast of cornwall and devon....looks to be jolly fine day and just like it would be on our own coast on such a morning....clear and no haze.....got a news fix from the bbc..another station going on in some foreign lingo...suddenly realised it was the "boys from the valleys" boyo..
.we have 1000 cars to drop off here (including the alphas and fiats) so hope to get into portsbury(the port which services bristol) for a wander , a full english lunch and an internet cafe to unload more of this torture on you...rh.......