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