May 11: Departing Lulworth and travelling 500km...

After a moderately hearty breakfast, it was time to leave. Yan, the champ that he is, dropped me and Bink at Wool. Upon reaching London Bink and I parted for the second time (the first time being when we arrived in Hong Kong separately), she on her way too Berlin and me to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Incidentally, Bink missed her flight due to complications following the previous night’s festivities when she got stuck with caretaker duty.
Newcastle was a six and a half hour train ride north. The day was one of those perfectly blue sky days that you wouldn't expect to see, but there you have it. The countryside was dominated by rolling plains broken with small clumps of trees. It was a really delightful trip north. The first impression of Newcastle is of a singularly dreary place, no surprise given that it is one of the northernmost cities in England. An impression reinforced by the dullness of the buildings. see for yourself.

In the south it had been a very balmy 24 degrees and thus I was in shorts and a t-shirt. Unfortunately, stepping out onto the platform a few hundred kilometers north of the south coast, the weather differed markedly, by about 10 degrees. It was damned cold and I was shivering by the time I reached my accommodation, a nice little hostel called the Albatross that had been voted the best in England last year. As it was a week day I got lucky and had a 6 person room all to myself. So I promptly started spreading my stuff all over the place. And bonus of bonuses, right across from my room was the laundry! So my gear got a good clean, or at least as good a clean as I was going to get without washing powder.

Having hauled my carcass into some decidedly warmer gear, I took a bit of a stroll around the place. Newcastle is a fairly small city of around a quarter of a million people. The first thing that struck me was that it looked old. There were a lot of the old style buildings, but there were a disproportionate number of bars, pubs and clubs. Also the people were fairly rough, not in the sense that they were getting into fights and what not, but there was a very raw quality to the people. The people mostly speak a dialect called Geordie, which is Scottish sounding English with a few words changed. They made the place feel like a frontier town. It was a far cry from the polished politeness of London. The whole place felt like a cross between Gosford, Newcastle (at home) and Old Sydney Town. This is the rather uninspiring monument quite simply known as Monument, below which is... you guessed it...Monument Metro Station.

No matter where I go in the world, I come across odd sights and not many got odder than this. The Sydney Deli. Offering an Australian style self service sandwich bar. Since when was there such a thing? It looked more like a Subway...

Despite such oddities, there are some nice looking buildings in Newcastle, such as this one.

However, as nice as it might be to keep strolling around, the sun was setting and I began to have doubts that it would be all that safe to move around town when there were so many pubs, bars and clubs around. I've never seen so many people standing around drinking in a city before.

I found this city to be distinctly disappointing and so rather than brave the streets alone at night I returned to the hostel and settled down for some tea and a long bout of blogging.

May 10: The Big wedding day

The big day had arrived! However to power myself for such a major day I obviously had to have a hearty breakfast. I noticed on the menu that there were kippers on offer. Now as most of you know, I’m game to try to eat most things at least once in my life. Being in England where one of their traditional breakfast foods is kippers I absolutely had to have one. The lady asked me if I wanted toast and coffee/tea first, so I happily had the coffee despite it being the crappy American sort. Ever since I went to the US and tried first hand the complete and utterly useless liquid that looks like rainwater left in the gutters for too long and tastes, and I use the word “taste” very generously, like it too, I have hoped that it could be renamed to something more suitable like “swamp water” or “puddle water” so as to differentiate it from real coffee. Anyway back to breakfast and luckily I had a fried egg as well because the kipper, note the singular form, would have been a rather lonely specimen in that enormous of expanse of white that was the plate. Fortunately, there were members of my family who were not big eaters and I managed to make up a reasonable meal from theirs.

Before the wedding, there was a bit of time to explore the surrounding area. So we all took off like fledglings leaving the nest. I took a gentle stroll along the cliff side with Bink. Although I had made light of this place before I got there, I had to admit that it was a beautiful place.
It's the kind of serene country side village that you might associate with the English country side, as you can see here.

After a while it turned out that a lot of people agreed with me as the car park across from the inn filled rapidly with hikers. Lulworth was also well known for being a fossil ground and that attracted the kids who had interests in that direction.

There's a moderate sized hill that was a short walk from the inn and many of the visitors delighted in walking around, over it, across it or however they wanted to get to the other side. I have it on the best authority that there wasn't much to see. The hill also had the rather ridiculous name of Doodle Dor

This bit of the coast is pretty interesting to look at, if you had an interest in geology. You can tell that there had been some pretty serious movement of the rock by looking at the rock lines to the left. The whole lot looked like it had sagged.

Tucked down in a little corner is this lagoon. There were some people paddling around in canoes and a small group of scuba divers here.
It looks pretty overcast, but that turned out alright since it didn't get too hot so all the poor people dashing around in suits didn't sweat too much.

The lucky lady was busy getting herself sorted out for the big day as were the rest of the other important people who left earlier to ensure all was in readiness. Not to belabor the point, all the other people who were not driving piled into a coach, in all their finery, which had been thoughtfully provided by Pat and Brian. To add a bit of humour to the afternoon, the driver took the wrong turn towards another wedding that was going on the same day. *cough cough*
After a brief trip we arrived at Lulworth Castle, which isn’t really a castle but more of a fort, but let’s not quibble over technicalities. The castle was not terrible impressive as it had been severely damaged in a fire some years back and the upper floors had collapsed. However this did have the positive impact of making the hall higher and more airy than it otherwise would have been.

A string quartet was on hand to provide the necessary waiting music while the small crowd awaited the arrival of the bride. The plucked and sawed their way through some classical pieces like Pachelbel's Canon to keep everyone entertained until the big moment. This ended being later than expected, but then again isn't the bride allowed to be fashionably late?

After a few hiccups the bridal party arrived and the wedding finally got under way.Uncle Patrick giving his daughter away. I must admit to a feeling of oddness seeing Uncle Patrick in a suit. Pat's dress was stunning though, as it should be.

Joel delivering his reading. There was a bit of confusion earlier in the day when he asked Brian about his reading because Brian's sister, who was also doing a reading had the same one as Joel's! That would have been a bit of a disaster. It turned out that Brian had managed to email the wrong one to his sister.

As it wasn’t a Christian wedding, the ceremony was sorted out in a fairly short time and Pat was duly married to Brian, and we gained a new family member

And here we have Mr and Mrs Beaumont, at last.

With the wedding out the way we got into the obligatory post-ceremony pictures. Being part of the family, that meant they took forever and a day to get through. There were large numbers of pics taken, but I think this one pretty much summed it all up.

After pics it was on to the drinks accompanied by large amounts of the canapés and the like. Joel had a hard time nailing down any sort of food since he started chasing the serving ladies who would run out of food by the time he caught up and finally decided to camp near the exit where the food was brought through with the pretense of chatting with the other groomsmen.

After what seemed like an interminable wait we all sat down in the hall for the reception dinner. The speeches ensued. The speeches were quite moving especially the best man’s speech about Brian’s acts of selflessness while they were sailing round the world together; Brian certainly was moved by it judging by the snuffling that was going on.

Brian's speech was nice and straightforward. Pat's one was so emotional she could barely get through it, mainly because she had to thank her bridesmaid so profusely. Of course that started a vast quantity of tears.

And thus started the food, which was excellent timing because I was beginning to starve. The food was pretty good. The dessert was delicious, Joel had a second helping and judging by his face, that was a very welcome sight...

Then of course was the cake cutting.

Then came the obligatory dance, but Pat decided to surprise Brian by belting out her rendition of Shania Twain’s From This Moment. Pat’s got a reasonable voice for someone who hasn’t been professionally trained, but did she have to sing that song? Not to criticize Pat or anything but that song is on my top-ten list of most annoying songs of all time. After her song came the first dance, which was quite nice but the other people jumped in on their moment too damned soon. After a bit, even I had a bit of a spastic attack on the dance floor. Erica, Bink and Yan decided that it was a brilliant idea to chug down vast amounts of wine. That sort of fit the location, especially when Erica got wasted.

The beginning...

Oh dear...

stop shaking the world please...

Game over

May 9: Tower of London and Lulworth

Today was the final day in London before we head down to Lulworth for the festivities. For the morning and part of the afternoon we visited the infamous London tower. There we saw the Tower Ravens, birds that if they were to leave legend says that the tower will fall down. They even have a Ravenmaster to keep them happy, damn big buggers they were too, the birds not the Ravenmaster. The tower has a rather large collection of antique weaponry some of which date back to Henry VIII’s era. Rather than doing a boring blow by blow account of what went on, I’ll post a few pics with a description and upload the rest for you all to appreciate.


This here is the White Tower, i actually used to get whitened, hence the name.








I guess keeping the Raven's caged would definitely prevent them from leaving and the tower from falling down. Isn't it odd that the old song goes

London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down....













One of the stunning arrays of weapons from the days of the musket. This is the sort of weapons display this section of the Tower of London used to have when it was used as a weapons store.











Another weapons display.














These two swords are ceremonial swords. They're longer than I am tall. I estimate their length to be about 2.2 metres from pommel to TIP.















As this part of the Tower used to be a weapons store, there are endless displays of weapons and armour from the 15th through to the 19th centuries. If you really want to look through all the pics I took, click on the link to the album.





We also visited the museum dedicated to the members of the Fusiliers of HM army. Many a moving tale of heroism and all that, but that was to be expected. I doubt there is any unit in any army that hasn’t got its own share of tales of heroism and tragedy.



This here is a bottle of 1914 Moet & Chandon champagne. This is of particular note as it was presented to the Fusiliers by the owners of taht famous vineyard. Bottles of this vintage commemorate the death of large numbers of workers at the vineyard, mostly children. This vintage is only opened on anniversaries

(This one's for Fred, if you ever read this)

One of a number of Imperial Eagles captured from Napoleon. This one was captured by the Fusiliers.


















We finally had the ubiquitous English creation, fish and chips. We got some from a little take away stand outside the tower and there was quite a huge crowd of people lining up for them too. I must say that it wasn’t too bad either, for 5 quid, although it was a bit on the oily side.

On the whole London had been a thoroughly enjoyable stay. Admittedly, we had been fortunate with the weather which had been a lot like Sydney in summer time. I’m sure winter will be a lot less clement. There’s a certain dignity to London, a quiet understated dignity. Sydney has a certain feel of raucous youth, Hong Kong smacks of insanity, Beijing has the feel of centuries of history drawn into the present, a sense of agelessness despite the rapid progress of the nation, and Tokyo has a sense of the clinical precision, but London exudes a strange sense of dignity and grace. I find I leave it with some regret.










The train down to Lulworth took about 3 hours time well spent dozing and listening to music. The English countryside in spring time is incredibly green and peaceful looking. Fields of golden flowers (probably canola) swaying in the breeze, rolling hillsides swept by spring grass. It’s a thoroughly romantic looking countryside. Forgive the rather blurred images, I hadn't fully figured out how to use get decent images while travelling at over 100kph.











The first impression of Wool, our stop, was distinctly of sleepy town with very few people. An impression reinforced by the presence of only 2 taxis at the station. Said taxis were quickly snapped up forcing us to wait almost half an hour before another showed up, when I was right on the verge of calling the local cab company to summon one. Our garrulous drive-cum-guide took us on a 15min journey to the even sleepier seaside village of Lulworth. Sleepy though it was, it was one of the most peaceful places I’d been to, a truly relaxing place. There had been some confusion with the accommodation with Auntie Gloria getting Lulworth Cove Inn, where we were staying, with Cromwell House, where we weren’t. So naturally there was no booking there for us and ended up with her going to another place for accommodation and then of course we worked it out

*chuckles*

The room was definitely a good one. The bathroom was huge! I could have slept on the floor fully stretched out and people would still have enough room to step around me without stepping ON me. The view of the sea, from the bedroom, was blocked by some cliffs. Shortly after settling in, it was dinner time where we got to meet the newest member of our family and also a reunion with our elder cousin, Philip, his wife Jayne (who I hadn’t met before) and his mother, our aunt. There was much rejoicing as I really do like Philip, he’s one of those rare fellows who you can’t help but like. I took to his wife as well, who I believe he is lucky to have. His mother though, well that’s another story and I’d rather not go into any details. Those who know her will know what I mean.





So here we have Jayne, Philip, Joel, Erica and Pat











And me and Philip (look at me I'm enormous!)




















You know, I'm not quite sure what was going on here...









Our newest family member, Brian Beaumont, is a rare fellow; thoroughly likable, easy going, nice, caring and generous. I thought Pat was quite fortunate to find someone like him.

After some pleasantries where I got to meet the bridesmaid Erica, who in an odd twist was already married, as well as another of Pat’s friends, Yan. Both of them were delightful people too. Dinner passed by pleasantly, although Bink may have reason to complain since I ate the roast veges that she had ordered. I had thought it was quite strange when the lady came out told me that the roast veges were to go with the apple faggot roast pork, which had exactly the same veges.

Yep, that’s right

Apple

Faggot

Roast pork

Lots of jokes that night about the faggots, which looked like a pair of balls, as you can see

Anyway, moving along… One thing that the brits do which I heartily disapprove of is the way they serve beer. Beer should be kept so chilled that the serving tap is covered with a layer of frost and then served in an ice cold schooner. The Brits keep it at quite a few of degrees above zero and then serve it in a room temperature pint glass. Of course the beer goes flat and warm in a real hurry, yech. If I end up staying in the UK for any extended period of time, I’m going to have to lay in a stock of beer stored and served in the correct fashion to keep from going mad.

And thus the night ended. All in all it had been one of the nicer days of this trip.

Damn you Bev

The rules are:
1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves
3. At the end of the post the player than tags 5 people and posts their names, than goes to their blogs and leaves a comment, letting them know they done got tagged and to ask them to play and read your blog.

What was I doing 10 years ago (1998)?
1. I was in second year uni
2. I had no idea if i still wanted this degree
3. I was doing 25 hours of uni a week
4. I was commuting a minimum of 1 hour in the morning, each morning and at least the same in the evenings unless i had night lectures
5. headed to HK that year with whole family.

5 Things on my to-do list today:
1. Should probably sleep as its after 3:30 am
2. Help my friend pack stuff for his move back to Sydney
3. Eat my Marks & Spencer 4 min meal
4. Find a job
5.


5 Snacks I enjoy
1. Macadamias, cashews
2. chips and gravy
3. Sushi
4. Ramen
5.

5 Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
1. Buy a small house
2. Learn to invest
3. Fly first class
4. Travel more
5.

5 of my bad habits :
1. Being lazy occasionally
2. Procrastinating
3. Mixing work and play
4. Saying things at the wrong time
5.

5 Places I have lived:
1. Sydney
2. Hong Kong
3. London
4.
5.

5 Jobs I've had:
1. Tutor
2. Research Assistant
3. Engineer
4. Lab demonstrator
5.

I tag
1. Anyone who bothers to read my blog
2.
3.
4.
5.

Damn me I'm behind

Yes yes yes I know I'm way behind on blogging about well anything. I just haven't had reliable service here in Marseille. The hotel wifi shows up but it refuses to connect. If you've noticed, I'm closer to being current with the pics than I am with the blogs. There's going to be a massive blog session when I can sit down for a decent length of time.

Just so you know, I've been keeping notes and what not so I can copy and paste. I would have done it here in this netcafe in Marseille, but the stupid PC won't let me connect up my USB drive, bastards. Not to mention the fact that it costs E3.80 an hour so I 'm not goign to do it all here. Bah!

Random musing about food

I must say that London is pretty good. Today I'm staying at a friend's place in a little suburb called Teddington. Food here can be surprisingly cheap if you know here to go. Last nights dinner was a couple of roast beef dinners, for £2.50, and 2 salmon salads for about £6 from Marks and Spencer. The variety there is amazing! 

Pub food isn't too bad for the most part. There's going to be the odd crap place, but with the sheer number of pubs over here, it shouldn't be too hard to find a good one. There is literally a pub every 2 blocks, especially in London central

Admittedly you have to get used to thinking in pounds. 

Speaking of food I need food soon...

May 8: Dover Castle

An amazing trip today. We visited the mighty Dover Castle, a citadel that has seen service with the United Kingdom for over 900 years. This fortress stands overlooking the famous White Cliffs of Dover.

A brief history (if you can anything I lecture about brief)
The original structure on this site was a an Iron Age fort. The only evidence of this fort was the earth embankment that surrounds the site and is now part of the defenses. The fort was long gone by the time the Romans arrived and built a watchtower on it, which still stands inside the castle grounds. There was a matching watchtower on the other cliff on the opposite side of Dover, but that one is gone. Later the Saxons built a church, St Mary de Castro, next to the Roman watchtower, which by now had lost the top 4 floors of its structure. In the 12th century, the keep and the internal curtain walls were built under orders of Henry II, using the original earth embankment to form part of the moat. After a French siege in the early 13th century, modifications were made to improve the defenses with towers added and gates modified. During the late 18th to early 19th century, massive modifications were made to the castle and the surrounding area because of fear of invasion by Napoleon. These modifications were made of changes to the walls to accommodate artillery and musketeers as well large numbers of fighting positions also accommodating cannon as well as a new fortified position where the other Roman watchtower stood, called the Western Heights.
The castle again saw service during WW2 where it was the headquarters for the evacuation of British troops after the Nazi army invaded France then it was used as the command centre coordinating the navy for the D-Day landings. In the 1960s it was the regional seat of government in case London was obliterated in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

Obviously I've skipped over a large amount there, but this gives an idea on how much this place has seen.

This place is so large it's hard to do it justice with pictures.

They didn't let us take pics of the secret wartime tunnels though.



This the view of Dover city from the top of the keep. In the distance you can see the hill where Western Heights was built. If you know what you're looking for you can still see the earth embankments that were used as the defensive wall of the fort. Now it is mostly overgrown bush.





This is the south east view of the castle. On the horizon is France. On the far left of the image in the background is the old Saxon church and on the right of the church is the Roman watchtower.

I won't belabor this too much cos there are links to my photos on the main page. But this gives you a bit of an idea on how important this place was.

There were some underground tunnels leading to one of the moat defences and I went own there and it completely spooked me out even though it was broad daylight. No idea why. It was one of those cramped tunnels that the brits were so fond of back then. Lights had been installed but one of them was flickering and then a pigeon flew out. It was the setting for any shock flick. *shudder*.

That said, Dover itself kinda reminds me of Gosford. Lots of single parents roaming around. It's also the gateway by sea to France as the Calais to Dover Ferry puts in here, so there were a fair number of French roaming around. On the whole it's not a bad place, fairly quiet.

One particularly funny thing I saw was a sign leading out of a driveway. It said "To avoid damage, drive dead slow". This was from a drive way leading out into an alleyway. I can only imagine at the carnage that coming out into a little used alley must  have caused such that a "drive dead slow" warning had to be issued....