Lakes District

OK More weekend action.

Never one's to sit still (well not for longer than a few weeks) we set off for another adventure this weekend just been (19-21 Jan). For a while we've been told that the Lakes district is the best England has to offer in terms of scenery etc. By this stage in our travels i'm getting fairly confident that NZ is... well... the most beautiful country on earth... so i'm keen to see anything that could challenge that.

Friday night was a bit of a drive into the southern lakes which is about 3 1/2 hours from Nottingham... We stayed at a wee place called 'Fell End'. A 'Fell' is a brit term for big hill, but not quite mountain... so fell's end was a long way off the beaten track. It being dark we had no idea where on earth we were, but when Saturday morning rolled around it was a pleasant surprise... (you guessed it - the middle of nowhere). Accomodation choice for the weekend was camping barns which come in at only 6 pound per person per night which is pretty reasonable for a roof over your head... but with temperatures set firmly in single figures and a barn being... well a barn (Draughty, Coldish, Definately no heating) we were praising God for the four season ratings on the sleeping bags.

SO that was my view in the morning... mez still snuggly warm in bed, Hephzibah (friend from church) trying to ignore me, and rolling green hills. Oh and a few sheep dotted around the place, pretty curious fellas too - came right up and surrounded the car when we were packing it up again (I guess it was their turf after all)...

So after a solid sleep in, we headed off to Grizedale forest park... Random wee country lanes are perhaps more prone to flooding than other roads, but then this was just a bit ridiculous, (if you can't quite see, that is a small - medium sized lake completely covering the road)thankfully the car ahead of us was smaller than us, so we figured if they could make it through, so could we, and we were right, making it through that lake and continuing onwards to the forest park...

Grizedale is home to the North Face track, (and the bodacious chap on my right) Justine and Jake highly recommended it, and to be fair, it didn't disappoint. Hephzi was less confident on two wheels than on two legs, so she and Mez played on some other tracks while i disappeared for a fairly quick skirt around the North Face track. Very cool IMHO, only had to put a foot down on four occasions (so very rideable) yet challenging enough for really good riders too. We might head back for another go at some stage in the future - preferably when it's a bit warmer as we damn near froze our butts off on this one - only a few wee spats of rain thankfully, but a full on hailstorm for 5 mins or so (glad for the helmets!) so yeah, was a bit chilly! If i could load the video I would, but evidently that website that hosts them is still having issues so you'll just have to take my word for it. Shot on the right is of me at the top of the track, was a great view, photo doesn't really do it justice, but couldn't stop for long cos it was blowing an absolute gale! Following a quick bite to eat, bike cleaning and a change into dry clothes we headed for our next night's accomodation. Again by the time we reached it it was dark, though we passed through some pretty cool areas, will try and get back to stay in Ambleside in June me thinks, just before bubs comes to join us! Arrived at Saturday night's accomodation which again was quite a bit off the beaten track, equally graceful in facilities except barn number two also had the benefit of electricity which saved us head torch batteries... curry was good. so was sleep.

Hmm have not as yet introduced our motorcar to the Blog - a beaut Volvo 850 wagon. Slow off the mark - due to being armour plated for safety - but nice and comfy inside and nice to drive on the open road... not quite as nice to drive as our previous Toyota Corona i think (on general zappiness), but nicer driving position for the long trips.

Sunday was a mission to see something of Hadrian's wall... Didn't really know too much about it, other than that it was a world heritage site... So Hadrian's wall then, named after the Roman Emporer Hadrian who commissioned it's building in 122ADish. Essentially a hundred years or so after nailing a wee carpenter called Jesus to a cross (a long way away) the Romans decided they needed to start regulating their borders a bit... keep the riff raff out of their kingdom etc. So Hadrian had them build this fairly impressive wall - at least it would have been impressive when built - at 4-5m tall and stretching over 120km across the country from east to west, with regular turrets and gateways, it represented a significant barrier to barbarian invasion - especially as it was manned by up to 12,000 Roman troops, and allowed only 16 points of crossing at the borderlands. Nowadays 3/4 of it has sunk and it is only about a metre high, but you get the general idea. Don't know if i would have liked to have been a Roman soldier - they had to wear shorts and sandals, and it was bloody freezing for me in my woolly hat, down jacket and ski-pants! Evidently the Roman civilians lived a pretty decent life as we learnt over the course of our visit to 'Vindolanda' a Roman fortress south of the great wall... they had tools many of which resemble dad's, and hairpins not too dissimilar to Mez's. Pottery not too dissimilar to that we received at our wedding, and a plethora of Gods, not unlike our modern society with its multitude of exciting images and things to live for.

Vindolanda is home to the largest collection of preserved Old Roman stuff anywhere in the world, I assume with the possible exception of in Rome itself! It was there prior to the building of Hadrian's wall and was abandoned and left to ruin at some stage not too long after it's completion - evidently the next Roman Emporer after Hadrian had more conquest ideas so elected to build another wall a bit further north... why is it i can't remember his name? probably because he was crap at his job and didn't get his wall finished... or something! Anyway Vindolanda is where England's number one national heritage treasure was found (this was by vote on some BBC documentary)... some Roman writing tablets - essentially letters written on bits of wood. Which means that all dad's ramblings to himself on bits of timber may well (given a significant passage of time) be some of NZ's greatest treasures (or not). Anyway it also has replica roman temple to a God of water (see photo right), a temple to an unknown God (where have i heard of that before...) and bath houses, as well as a reconstruction of an 18th century house (apparrently crappier than the 3rd century Roman counterparts), and reconstructions of Roman shops etc. Have to say it didn't leave an indelible mark on me... though impressive that people living 2000 years ago had a better standard of living than those of only a couple of hundred years - goes to show the benefits of a strong empire... from what I gather, the ancient Egyptians were equally as lucky - I wonder what they'll say of us in another few hundred years...

The over friendly ticket man was interesting though - so so so happy to have someone to talk to... we struggled to actually get past the entrance, given the lack of foot traffic on such a frigid day... though the sun did appear from beyond the clouds, and God painted a bow in the sky for us too...

And then almost as soon as it had begun, our weekend was over - finished off with dinner in a wee pub in Durham (the Cock's Head - Charming!) Great weekend, some great times, great chats, even a snow-storm to drive through on route back to Nottingham!!! I have to say we were blessed with the weather - it was meant to rain all day Saturday and Rain and Snow on Sunday. It did rain a bit, but only when we were either inside a barn or a car. We got hailed on when biking, but that was as bad as it got, and Sunday just got a few spats of rain when out of the car, and were followed on a solid day's drive by blue skies and the sun! Despite that, the wind was bloody freezing, but nothing that was going to keep us indoors all the day (just frequently in between to get warm again!)

Hope your weekend was as fab!

Why my wife works late...

So it appears i have lost a certain creative energy in the kitchen... or one might think of me as a culinary genius living somewhere past that borderline separating genius from utter nincompoops. Exhibit A: Why my wife is not especially excited to come home in the evenings..

.I have even given this one a title and subtitle...

Ode to an inclusive society, A Chinese Crock of S#*t!!!

Contents (hence the title): Hoisin sauce (quite a bit), Soy Sauce, Sherry, Hot Chilli, Sweet Chilli, Mince, Petits pois, Carrot, Parsnip, Celery, Red Pepper, Red Lentils, Can of Chickpeas, Can of Bortolli beans, Can of Beef and Vegetable soup, Water, Ginger, Mustard, Potatoes, Sweet Potato, Onion. oh, and a pinch of salt! (pretty well every little bit of food left in the cupboards!)

Biggest surprise of the evening... It didn't taste bad!

Hope your culinary experiences are more enticing!

Happy New Year!

New Years was another mission down to London - Jonny (Boon) down at SPEC had organised a Cocktail ball (Hmm where did that idea come from?) as a fundraiser for World Youth Day... Very cool event as is standard for the NZ crew, despite the fact that Jonny and Mary-Grace were back in NZ for the couple of weeks prior to the actual event! (And they were the chief organisers...)

We made it to SPEC for chats with MG, followed by lunch with Beanie and Simon (above left) in a great wee pub in London-Colney, and then a brief kip in our room prior to picking up Bex and Melodie from the train station, then heading to mass at 7pm followed by the ball and some exceedingly good cocktails C/O Jonny. Excellent. After the ball (about 1.30am) we drove Bex and Melodie down to Heathrow and said farewell to those stoic travellers (they earn the title of stoic after yet another night spent sleeping at the airport... legends!...or just poor missionaries!!!) Then we made our way back to SPEC for the night by just after 3am. Great Bacon and Eggs for Breakfast the next morning with Jonny and we got on our way down to visit Kathy, Allan, Zoe and Emma...

New Years day we pretty much just relaxed with the Rollings family which was great, chatting, Allan cooked a great Salmon and champagne pasta for lunch and then when we were about to set off we were invited to stay the night. I'm not one to refuse such an offer so we had a glorious night's sleep in their exceedingly comfortable spare bed, before making our way off to Portsmouth for the day on the second. Portsmouth is home to a rather large Naval base and a whole host of naval museums etc. An all entry ticket is just 16 pound, a bargain, considering it lasts a year (so we can go back to see what we missed on the second...)

Highlights of the day... well more like everything we saw was interesting so i'm going to include it all... The Warrior was the first ever steel hull warship to be put into service in the british navy and was one of the first also to use coal fired steam engines... interestingly the engineers, grubby little buggers (literally) that they were, had a hard time convincing other more seasoned sailors who were masters of wind and sail... that they were sailors at all, despite the fact that this ship was something like 20-30knots faster than any of its rivals at full speed... or should i say full steam! The bulkheads were all divided from each other and it was said to be virtually unsinkeable... but then they said that about the titanic too, which was made just a couple of bays up the coast. Fairly robust wee warship though, would be happy to hide on the lower decks in a gun battle, very thick outer walls, would take a lot of gunpowder to whack a hole in it, and ,well, it's still here isn't it. Wouldn't want to be disciplined on it though - solitary confinement in an exceedingly confined space, on a rocking ship...uuugghhh! if only people could be dissuaded from defecting from other important societal institutions like marriage by such methods!

Next ship we looked around was the Victory, which was the one Lord Nelson was killed on in the early stages of the battle of Trafalgar. A really old style sailing warship with a max speed of only 13knots at full sail, but home to over 400 men at any one time. Sailors rolled up their hammocks and stowed them in special places around the edges of the ship where they acted as effective protection from musket shots, and could also be quickly tied at either end and hiffed to a man overboard to keep him afloat for half an hour or so... Unfortunately you weren't allowed to take photo's on board during the tour so the outside is all you get... So, turns out life was pretty hard on these trips, while the pleb sailors slept in hammocks packed in together like sardines, the head honchos got to sleep the night away in their coffins, which their wives decorated the interiors of with curtaining etc. In the event of their death, the gents were put in their beds, a cannon ball added, then the lid nailed on, before being turfed overboard. Nice. Though kinda macabre sleeping in a coffin, and worse still getting your wife to decorate it! Pretty dodgy food rations too - they got these dodgy biscuits, which we're told, the experienced sailors waited till after dark to eat, this was so that you couldn't see the maggots you were eating cos if you picked them out you simply got less protein intake. Very happy not to be a sailor right about now. They also had these rather cool/sick cannon balls which were basically lots of little cannon balls stuck together which effectively made the cannons into gigantic shotguns... did no damage at all to the ships, but were designed literally to rip human bodies apart. Pleasant these brits. The Brits could also fire each of their cannons every 90 seconds, it took the French up to 5 minutes to get their (cannon)balls away(mainly because they used longer fuses) - not very smart really - I guess the winning of that battle could easily be dubbed natural selection. But here's a story of tragic irony for you... Lord Nelson was the first dignitary ever to request that he not be biffed overboard, but taken home to be buried on british soil. So after he died, and the battle of Trafalgar was eventually won (by the British over the French) the doc had an interesting problem - it would take the crippled ship more than six weeks to reach an English port, by which time Lord Nelson would surely be a much less present chap to be around... so he used what he had, and pickled him... in expensive cognac no less... FRENCH cognac even. Classic. Though it worked... and Lord Nelson was finally laid to rest after a full state funeral with his body perfectly preserved. Pretty impressive ship though, loads more cool stuff I could mention, but you'll just have to visit it yourself...

Had a look at another ship after the Victory, the Mary-Rose who lay on the ocean floor for 500 years before being plucked out of the ocean... She was older than the Victory, though clearly not as clever a ship (hence her home on the bottom of the ocean for 500 years). She is now being sprayed with some high tech wax to preserve her for an eternity. Funny how we humans seek to make our creations everlasting i reckon... or perhaps wonderous how we try to refloat things that are already long since sunk? Anyway, just looks like a very wet shipwreck at the mo... might be worth a visit in 10 years to see the restored/finished product. After all, the guide did say that only about 25% of the Victory was the original ship (the rest had been replaced during the restoration process...)

Got to see an aircraft carrier too first docked in port (see pic) but then later, as we tucked into a well deserved pizza on the waterfront it went out to God knows where under escort. Looked pretty cool really. Don't know if i'd fancy landing on it though... runway's a bit short! Wandered through town to the Spinnaker tower and went up - the photo on the right is looking down through a glass floor we were standing on 105m above the ground... wee bit eerie that, i certainly wasn't as game as the four or five year old next to me that started jumping up and down too see if it would break... it didn't, but i got off pretty quick, just in case! I did want to make my 27th birthday!

Anyway no new years resolutions from me, i used to have this thing about each year being better than the one previous, but to be honest i think it would be hard to top the last 12 months for us, been to NZ, Australia, China, France, England, Ireland, Wales, Fiji and a wee transit in America, loads of holidays here there and everywhere, loads of adventures, loads of fun, helped create a new life... when I was 26... it was a very good year... Though if any year can do it, 2007 likely can - there will probably be more travel this year than last (we have pounds now, though admittedly not many, at the rate we spend them!), our new life, and member of our family will be arriving (God willing) in July, and there is much more we cannot yet see...

So here's to 2007 anyway - anything is possible, much is probable, abundance likely.

May God Bless us all.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

The inaugural hosting of Christmas day lunch by us was... well, one of very few options open to us for the celebration of Christmas, but as the day neared and plans came to fruition i think there was a sense of both apprehension and excitement lingering in the air...

Eric & Melodie (from Niverville, Winnipeg) Joined us along with Bex. Bex and Melodie flew in from Norway (where they have been on a YWAM Discipleship Training School), Eric flew in from Thailand where he has been teaching english, aka on holiday for the past few months. All flew in to Heathrow so we went for a quick scoot down the M1 to pick them up... and i do mean quick... 85-90mph the whole way, and made it to heathrow in under 2hrs! Might get up at 5am to go travelling more often!

So Christmas eve was really the first event - I cooked the ham for the next day, and 'managed' the preparation of some exquisitely crafted (if i do say so myself) gourmet pizzas... Chicken and apricot, Chicken avocado with sweet chilli, and chicken, tomato and mushroom, all with cream cheese. Delish-ey-mo!

Christmas Eve we went to a midnight service at the local anglican church, which was not too dissimilar to a catholic service really. Nice.

Pic on the left is Christmas eve dinner, Christmas lunch is on the right... The pic doesn't really do justice to the extensive amount of food, that took the five of us the next few days to get through... Ham was beaut, turkey was also, though typically the breast was a bit dry... plan for next time... butterfly roast turkey maybe... might consult the chef of the family!

then Christmas day we went wandering downtown to check out the lights and the very empty city streets...

This big building with the columns is the Nottingham City council building...

It really struck me that Bex has changed a bit due to this DTS. She is much friendlier than she used to be with complete strangers. Particularly the bronzed variety, as was Melodie. Would have been more amusing if they had attempted to pash live strangers, but i guess that's not taught on DTS...

So, by and by, we all had a grand old time, good chats, went to see Happy Feet on Boxing day, and then farewelled the travellors who disappeared off to London on Wednesday, while we both totted off back to work.

Merry Christmas to all back home. Hope yours was a brill one...