Category Archives: England

5 January, 2012 · 6:08 am

London Day 1

Our first proper day in London started with… wait for it… a very exciting trip to the Launderette!!! Well, I have to say I was quite enamoured of the prospect of clean clothes that I hadn’t hand-washed in the bathroom basin and draped over the furniture for a while.

The day properly started after this nail-biting interlude, with a wander through Hyde Park. I’d started the morning by reading a regency romance, to really get me psyched up for this, so I was imagining dashing heroes and swooning maidens meeting in a secluded corner of the park to exchange pleasantries and maybe even hold hands, before promenading on Rotten Row at the fashionable hour!

Well there may have been some illicit meetings behind the trees, but probably not many. We did see lots of birdlife (Canadian Geese are huge, btw) and wildlife (squirrels are still very cute, but rats aren’t) and human life (but the only people allowed to swim in the Serpentine are the Serpentine Swim Club, and only between 6.30 and 9am) and joggers.

Rotten Row was pretty devoid of Fashionables as well, unfortunately, but we fixed that by promenading up to the Albert Hall and memorial.

Next stop was the V&A Museum, which I’d been looking forward to, as I’ve got some fabulous books on their fashion collection. Unfortunately (this did cause a lot of indignant squeaking from the peanut gallery) the Fashion Collection is closed for remodelling and not opening again until Spring! How could they do this to me? Many exclamation marks later, I managed to drown my sorrows in lunch, a fish pie from the cafe. (I didn’t see they’ve got a salad bar until after we’d procured pies. Once again I was eating potato. Sigh.)

Thankfully, the Theatre and Performance collection was open, otherwise I think I may have staged a one-woman riot. They had an Annie Lennox exhibit, which was great, and included some of her fabulous stage/video costumes. Other pieces of interest included Pete Townshend’s broken guitar (one of them), and stage costumes from Adam Ant and Mick Jagger. And of course, there was some scribbles from Mr Shakespeare.

The jewellery rooms were pretty drool-worthy as well – some pretty blingy pieces there. Well worth a look!

Next up was the British Galleries, and we focused on the 19th century ones. Luckily I was able to catch a glimpse of a Regency gown in the early section, to appease my costume hunger. They had a lot of furniture, tapestries, crockery and all sorts of accoutrements of life, which was very fabulous.

Our last stop at the V&A was to see the Raphael exhibit, on loan from the Queen, apparently! These were on a huge scale, of course, and were very imposing.

The gift shop provided lots of opportunities for pressies for people back home, and while the bookshop had lots of books I wanted to add to my collection, taking coffee-table hardbacks in long-haul luggage just isn’t fun. Good thing bookdepository.com has a nice range of V&A books with free shipping. Woohoo!

Our next stop was the Natural History Museum, just across the road from the V&A. R wanted to come here to see the dinosaur skeleton, and it was pretty amazing! Their exhibits on the whole were great – like the Roman Baths at Bath, these guys do a great job at organising and arranging their stuff so that it’s interesting and relatively easy to manage wandering around finding things out. Well worth a visit, especially for kids! The gift shop here also had some great things – anything nature, science, or dinosaur related you could think of, and more you wouldn’t think of!

By the time we finished here, the gates to Hyde Park had closed, so we walked the long way around, past Kensington Gardens, back to the hotel.

Dinner was a Malaysian place around the corner that we spied this morning while finding the launderette (see? Great things came of that launderette trip!) which was very tasty, especially the black glutinous rice pudding. Yum!

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5 January, 2012 · 3:12 am

Arrival in London

We left Edinburgh at some ungodly hour of the morning, with the promise of dirty bad weather ahead: gale force winds and blizzards in the north. Good time to get out of Dodge!

More fun awaited us at the train station, as all the trains on the board had a platform assigned, except for our trusty 8.30am to King’s Cross. Hmm. We wandered about, looking for info, and at 8.15am all the screens went blank. More hmm. Lots of people were now wandering around looking slightly panicked. Since it was now 8.25am and no info on the screens, I found a harried-looking person with an official-looking badge and asked her where our train might be. She said she “guessed” it would be Platform 11, so we rushed over there, and successfully boarded before the train left.

The wifi system gave us free access to the train update webpage, which was a font of information, such as telling us that all further trains north of Newcastle were now cancelled due to the weather, and apparently shortly after we left Edinburgh, Waverley Train Station was closed until engineers could assess the building! Scary stuff.

We were continuing nicely until I used my 15 mins of free wifi to post this on facebook. This apparently jinxed us well and truly, and we stopped. This was apparently due to signal failure somewhere, but since at least three trains passed us in the opposite direction I’m forced to conclude that it was actually Signal Jinxing that caused the problem. We started again, then stopped. Then started, and stopped.

Eventually we limped into King’s Cross Station almost two hours late, but hey, at least we hadn’t been blown over like the truck in Scotland!

After two short tube hops, we burrowed out from the Underground at Lancaster Gate, to be faced with Hyde Park on one side, and our hotel on the other. Great location.

The same can’t be said for the state of the hotel. It’s a bit similar to the Tyddyn Llan: it’s an old building that is a bit in need of some love, but this one is even more so. The furnishings are all a bit old, the carpet has bare patches, the floor creaks and we can hear the people in the room upstairs – whenever they move it sounds like elephants tapdancing on the ceiling, the tiles in the bathroom are cracked, there’s a bit of a musty aroma, mixed with stale cigarette smoke from the “smoking” rooms… and the lift is only big enough for two people, or one with luggage!

Nevertheless, the bed is big (it’s two single beds squashed together, which at least gives us room!) and the bathroom has hot water, even if the pressure isn’t great and it’s liable to change temperature if you look at it funny. The room size isn’t too bad: there’s room for all our stuff, and it’s conveniently located and relatively reasonably priced.

We wandered out quite early for dinner, as we’d missed lunch due to the train fracas, and stopped at a pub near Paddington Station which looked quite nice. The food was pretty dull, but at least they had Aspell on tap.

Next stop was the Sainsbury’s in Paddington Station (like everyone else in London, it seemed!) for supplies: yoghurt and pineapple for dessert and some GF bread to augment brekky.

The walk back to the hotel was pleasant; while it’s cold here, it’s nowhere near as cold as Edinburgh was!

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1 January, 2012 · 10:59 am

Hello Scotland

After packing up, driving two hours and dropping the car back to its owners Thrifty in Wolverhampton, we hopped on the train and headed north to Edinburgh. The train was a bit squishy and quite warm, and although the booking page had assured us we were booking two window seats facing each other over a table, in reality we had two window seats one behind the other. We nabbed one of the aisle seats so we could sit together, and I sat there holding my breath at each stop waiting for someone to tell me that was their seat, as people seemed to be doing at every other seat!

We arrived at Waverley Station as it was raining (of course) so we hailed a taxi to take us the short drive to the hotel. We’re staying at one of the Holiday Inn Expresses, and it’s very boring and anonymous, but still it’s kind of nice to be in somewhere boring after all the “character” hotels we’ve stayed at! The outside is lovely anyway, as the building is an “historic” one. There was a moment of panic on check-in, as they couldn’t find our reservation, which I had dutifully carried out on their website, and prepaid! Thank goodness I had the reservation confirmation with me, as apparently their reservations department hadn’t passed it on. Only eight months of notice, thanks guys! We managed to get a room at least, and they gave us a drinks voucher, which was nice.

As we were settling in, there was some noise out on the street, and noticed they’d put on fireworks, obviously to welcome us to town. Yay!

There are the occasional creaky “character” floorboards we’ve come to expect, and breakfast is a bunfight (almost literally) as there is nowhere near enough space for everyone booked into the hotel to eat breakfast. Wonderful shower though – awesome pressure and nice and hot.

After checking in we wandered out into the chilly evening to find some food. I was craving something not hearty or traditionally British or Moroccan after the huge servings of meat we’ve been having so far on this holiday, so we were looking for Thai or Chinese or something similar. We found the No. 1 Chinese Restaurant a couple of blocks from the hotel, and set on combination stir fry with gusto! Yay for crunchy vegies!

This morning after the breakfast skirmish, we wandered around to the Royal Mile. Because it’s New Year’s Eve, there were thousands of tourists wandering around. We walked up to Edinburgh Castle, but were put off by the huge crowds.

We had a look in some of the souvenir shops, and contemplated tartans, but R already has a traditional kilt from his last trip, and my family doesn’t seem to have any affiliations. I’ll pick up a few souvenirs before we leave though. We did see dog kilts, which would be a hoot next Christmas on the family doggies, but the largest size they had as for Scottish Terriers, and all our dogs are much bigger than that!

After wandering down the Royal Mile to see Holyrood Palace, we started walking up it again in search of lunch.

After popping into a whisky shop to R could taste a couple of new and different expressions (the shop had a resident dog, Maggie), we ended up stopping at the oldest pub on the Royal Mile, which was first opened in 1740-something. Not bad! Unsurprisingly, they had some “traditional” Scottish food, so R had a lamb hotpot, and I explored the “Stovies” – basically potato and beef, mashed together. Imagine cottage pie mooshed. Tasted pretty good, but bland and salty at the same time.

After lunch we wended our way through the ever-increasing crowds, through a shopping centre (and over a scarily see-through pedestrian bridge – my fear of heights was on full alert!) and back to the hotel to prepare for our Hogmanay evening.

 

 

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28 December, 2011 · 5:45 am

Bath

Bath is a gorgeous town, in muted shades of sandstone cream and pinky-beige. Even in the rain, it’s very regal (or is it just that I’ve read too many Regency romances set here, which are all about the peerage, or at least the upper vestiges of Society?)

The B&B is another gorgeous one, situated in a terrace along one of the main roads into town. Lovely rooms, full English breakfast delivered to your room in the morning, not too noisy even considering the road, and it boasts free parking up the back for our large beastie of a hire car. Yes, it took about 10 mins of inching backwards and forwards to the sound of the parking sensors beeping in an ever-rising crescendo to get it parked, but it’s there until we leave tomorrow morning.

The English brekky this morning was yum, especially as our hosts had kindly sourced GF bread and sausages to add to my plate, as well as the welcoming biscuits yesterday afternoon.

We set off to visit a few of the must-dos of Bath (or at least, the must-dos for us. Or me, anyway…) The Roman Baths complex was our first stop, and we were amazed at the well-managed and organised centre. There are free audio guides to listen to as you wander around (multiple languages, for adults and separate ones for kids, plus Bill Bryson doing a couple of commentaries at a couple of exhibits as well), as well as info beside most exhibits, and video reconstructions of Roman life and people, plus a couple of actors looking pretty cold out next to the pool in their Roman costumes. Definitely worth a look for anyone heading to Bath.

We paused briefly for a snack at the very poshe and very famous Pump Room. R had the Georgian Elevenses: a cup of hot chocolate with cream, a glass of The Bath Waters, and a Bath Bun with cinnamon butter. Yum! I fortified myself with the waters for wusses: Bath Waters mixed with either lemon or strawberry (mine was strawberry), and gluten free scones with jam. More yum!

Bath Waters taste kinda like you’d expect: very mineral-y, and warm. Too warm, but not hot. Just… strange. Not an experience I’ll pay for again!

Next stop was my Mecca, the Fashion Museum. Housed in the old Assembly Rooms, the Fashion Museum has huge amounts of stock. The exhibits show a select few, and have cupboards and racks full of other items behind them!

This is the Silver Tissue Dress, which is the oldest complete dress they have. It’s about 350 years old. I don’t think I’ll get that long out of any of my garments!

They have corsets and crinolines to try on for adults, and children’s replica clothing for them, too! I loved the corsets, as each was made almost like an abseiling harness – webbing and connectors and canvas, with instructions like this one: This way up, and Front and Back written on them!

I especially loved the “behind the scenes” section, which showed the nineteenth century in clothes for each decade as if they were in the storage areas, with annotations discussing the various changes to the female silhouette as society’s attitudes changed, and the variations in materials and fabrication as England moved into the Industrial Revolution. Very, very, very cool.

The twentieth century exhibition was also exhaustive, showing a diverse range of designers and shapes as the century went on.

The Assembly Rooms upstairs were also really interesting. I could picture the heroines of some of my favourite Regency-set stories there, peeping at their heroes over their fans, hoping to be asked to dance.

Our next destination was the Jane Austen Centre, which many, many people have looked pained at the idea of. Actually, as we were standing on a corner checking our map, a pair of locals asked us if we needed any help, and were a bit disapproving of the idea when we told them what we were looking for, saying “that’s not my favourite place”! It turns out the museum was opened by a couple of pub owners, and it’s got a very strong reputation as a place to rip off tourists! (Especially, I might add, as Jane Austen didn’t like Bath at all!) In any case, I was after some souvenirs, so we wandered up and visited the gift shop at least, purchasing various Austenish tatt, and taking a picture with the Jane statue and the (real) doorman.

We stopped at this point for lunch at The Salamander, a pub around the corner, starting with local brews of cider and porter, and pigging out (hur hur) on pork sausages and mash, and pork belly with black pudding and mash, respectively.

Once we could walk again, we waddled up the hill to the Circus, and on to Royal Crescent, an imposing semi-circle. Number 1 Royal Crescent, a house restored to Georgian gorgeousness, wasn’t open, so we satisfied ourselves by watching other tourists taking photos of the vista and wandered past the Royal Victoria Gardens (spying a squirrel on the way) and back to the B&B for a refresh before heading out for dinner.

We went to the Garrick’s Head Pub for dinner, which was great. R had the chowder for entree, oxtail for main, and I went straight for the steak with salad and thrice-cooked chips (yum). We both had homemade icecream for dessert before waddling (again! I’m sensing a theme here) back to the B&B to pack up before hitting the road again tomorrow, this time to Wales.

 

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27 December, 2011 · 2:04 am

Charlton Horethorne for Christmas

After a bustling present-giving and receiving on Christmas morning, the four of us bundled into our hire car (along with our luggage it was a tight squeeze) and headed to Dorset to spend Christmas with Aunty J’s extended family. This means they’re cousins of mine of some description, but none of us can work it out properly. Nevertheless, they were amazingly warm and welcoming, giving up their bedrooms to us and sleeping in their lounge room for the night!

As we were leaving Plymouth, we stopped at what we think was called The Block House, a ruined building on top of a hill where we had a great view of the town and port.

Then it was the drive to Charlton Horethorne (I keep wanting to say Charlton Heston, but no…) We’d heard the story of last Christmas, when the family was shovelling ice off their driveway (it’s incredibly mild this year – no snow!) and they saw Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz coming out of the village pub. We were quite interested to see who the visiting celebrities were this year, bt they had to make do with us!

The Christmas lunch was unbelievable – a huge turkey and ham, potatoes, tiny baby carrots, leeks in white sauce, Brussels sprouts with bacon bits and chestnuts, parsnips, sausages wrapped in bacon, gravy, bread sauce, free-flowing champagne, wine, cider and beer. I think I’m still digesting, a day and a half later! Everyone loved the Australian teatowels and Moroccan Babouche keyrings we’d brought them, and we received some thoughtful and lovely gifts in return. We even watched the Queen’s Christmas speech together!

S set a fire up in their summer house out the back, and we sat around that for a while, drinking champagne (from New Zealand, would you believe) and watching the kids set off a Chinese lantern/hot air balloon thing, before heading back inside for more food! Dinner was slightly smaller but not by much, consisting of tapas-style dishes. Yum.

H had given her room up to us: the attic room, with a snuggly soft bed built into the A-frame of the house. It was difficult to get our cases up the ladder-style steps, but it was so worth it!

Boxing Day started with panetone for breakfast (I had marmalade on GF muffins) and then we set off on the traditional family Boxing Day Walk. They wanted to show us the remains of the Hill Fort, believed by many to be the remains of King Arthur’s Camelot. We walked up a very muddy, steep track (everyone else had wellies, but we were wearing our walking boots, which suffered from mud somewhat) and came out on a huge mound overlooking the Somerset Flats. Fantastic views.

We trooped back to have yet another meal, this time of leftovers and salad, before saying a sad farewell, amidst many promises on both sides to visit. Then we headed off to drop Robbie in Bristol to catch a flight to see his friends elsewhere, then drive to Bath to spend a couple of days.

Although we’ve had a wonderful few days with family, we’ve missed our family at home, too. It’s good to get back in internet contact to hear that everyone seems to have had a wonderful Christmas.

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25 December, 2011 · 2:46 am

Plymouth

We spent Christmas Eve navigating the shops at Drake Circus in Plymouth to find a couple of last minute gifts (and a UK-AU adaptor plug – why did I think that my AU-Europe one would work in the UK??) Lush is just as fabulous here as it is at home (although filled with about 40 people. Way too many for that small shop!) I had my first encounter with the fabulous Marks & Spencer, finding some socks for R. We didn’t have much time, so I didn’t get a chance to plunder the ladieswear, but the brief glance as I ran past looked intriguing!

We battled the traffic to race home to have an amazingly huge Christmas lunch with Aunty Judy’s friend and next-door-neighbour, Di and her friend Else, who cooked up a traditional Xmas dinner with all the trimmings -starting with smoked salmon hors d’ouevres, turkey with TWO stuffingses, vegies, gravy, bread sauce (??), bacon rolls and sausages, followed by Christmas pud (flambee’d of course) and then some local cheeses and fruit. Woaahh. We took the Westie terriers out for an evening walk as the sun set (at 4.30pm!) and then all passed out on the couches.

Tomorrow we’ll be having our third installment of Christmas lunch with some cousins I’ve not met yet!

Have a merry Christmas, or a happy Hanukkah, or season’s greetings to you. Have a lovely day, and I hope you have your family and/or friends around you.

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24 December, 2011 · 7:05 pm

Goodbye Morocco, Good morning Britain!

We left Riad LaCroix Berbere reluctantly, especially as they had made R French Toast for breakfast this morning! But our driver arrived to take us to the airport, and off we went.

The traffic was incredibly quiet as we were driving. Obviously 9.30am is still the middle of the night for Marrakech!

The airport was quiet, too, and we had to wait 10 mins for our checkin to open. Since we’d paid for Speedy Boarding on EasyJet, we had only one person ahead of us in the queue. Our bags were perfectly weighted – 20.1kg for me and 18.9 for R, so we did the perfect amount of shopping! (or “souking”, as the girl behind the counter told us).

The Marrakech airport is quite small, with 8 departure gates, and none of them have skybridges: it’s a walk out to climb the stairs to board!

Again, our small investment in Speedy Boarding paid off – we were the second in the queue to board, and snagged the front row on the right hand side, with noone sitting in the third seat. R was able to stretch out in the middle seat, and we hah easy access to our hand luggage and the loo.

I’ve heard some horror stories about EasyJet, but they were great on this trip. We left and arrived almost exactly on time, our luggage arrived in a timely manner, the staff were pleasant and they had enough food (granted, we only asked for a packet of chips and some water). Although there were gusty winds enough to make for a bumpy approach to Gatwick, the landing itself was really smooth.

The airport itself was pretty painless. A long walk, then a short queue for the non-EU/UK residents (although it moved a lot more slowly than the residents’ queue!) and a 20 questions game from the passport control lady (Why wasn’t I staying with family if I say I have family here? I have family here but it’s only my first trip to the UK? Hmm…) Locating the car rental place was a bit more challenging, and of course it started to rain while we were waiting, so we got very wet trying to find our car in the incredibly early darkness. 4.30pm and it was pitch black!

We met my cousin Robbie there as he’s travelling with us for Christmas. He’s been doing a course in Germany and is wandering around visiting friends now, so we met up for the Christmas weekend!

The car is a medium-sized VW, brand new and full of magical devices such as the windscreen wipers coming on automatically when it showered, and lights that turned on and off with a sensor. Wow.

The drive was thankfully pretty uneventful, after I worked out some of the incomprehensible road signs. The GPS is making life much easier. The big even was hitting Sainsbury’s once we reached Plymouth, and finding a Mecca of gluten free goodies – Christmas cake, English muffins, even bagels! I’ll have one of each, please!

We reached Aunty Judy’s place around 10.30pm, and were greeted at the gate by the security men with “So you’re the Australians then! Go on through.”

It was lovely to see Aunty Judy again – it’s been about a year and a half since she was last in Australia I think, and she’s such a wonderful lady! (If you’re reading this, I hope you’re blushing!

Christmas is well and truly a shock over here! Every radio channel is playing Christmas carols, and every shop we drove past has decorations. After Morocco where it was a non-event, things are very different!

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