Krakow

The market square with huge church on right

We have just got back from an 18 day adventure through central Europe. I would have said Eastern Europe, but when we were there all the locals were very clear we were in central, not eastern, Europe. I don't know if it's an Australian thing, but I never really knew there was a centre in Europe, it was either east or west. I think they don't like to say they are eastern, because that was the countries behind the iron curtain. And I guess those countries now bare little resemblance to what they were like back then. Perhaps it's also because those countries want to be closer to western Europe, and central is closer than eastern.

Anyway it's things like this that made the whole 18 days a massive learning experience. Everyday it was another new thing. I thought I had kind of a handle on history, but then I visited central Europe. There have been a loooot of wars through this region, it feels like almost constantly, so that has really added to the history.

Awesome old street - with great facades

We were in Krakow over Easter, which turned out to be super cold. And also everyone seemed surprisingly religious. I don't think many places would be shut in London just because it was Easter. We are a much less religious society I think. On good Friday, which I would have thought was the more holy day, everything seemed to still be open. But then Saturday, Sunday and Monday most things were closed. On Saturday everyone was walking around with little baskets full of food. It seemed they went to church to get their food blessed and then they ate the food on Sunday. I'd never heard of that Easter tradition. There didn't seem to be as many chocolate easter eggs around either. I don't think you could avoid them in London, but I hardly saw any in Krakow.

I'm not sure if people are actually more religious in Krakow, or if it was because it was Easter, but all the churches were full. No matter what time we visited. Not only that, if Polish people entered they would always kneel down and cross themselves. I never knew what genuflecting was before I saw it in action. I've never seen that in any English church, granted they are always completely empty when I visit, so maybe some people here still genuflect. And it's not as if it was only old people in the churches, it was young people too. English priests would kill to get those demographics.

Another church in Krakow

There were also a lot of churches, it's as if every tourist site was a church. I've never seen so many. It was like if you replaced all the pubs in London with churches that would be Krakow. And there were very few pubs in Krakow. It's almost as if the English worship a different type of God. There would be churches right next door to each other, and they all seemed to be the same faith. It wasn't as if there was a Catholic church next to an Orthodox church, they are pretty much all Catholic. It's hard to describe just how many churches they have.

As a tourist Krakow is a pretty cool city to visit. It has a really big old town, with wonderful facades and cobblestoned streets (and a lot of churches), there is also a castle on a hill. They have done a great job with maintaining the town, and I guess joining the EU has really helped them. Outside the old town is a bit different again, more gritty, but they still have an old Jewish quarter as well as the Jewish ghetto. Polish Jews didn't do so well during the war. It feels a bit like Berlin, if Berlin ever gets too expensive for the artists I feel like Krakow would be a good fit. I'm not too sure about the current government though, maybe they would have to be a bit less right-wing.

Last gate remaining from old walls

Circling the old town is a strip of park, called the Planty, great name! And it does a good job of separating the old town from traffic, you do feel isolated from the modern world once you are passed the Planty.

The market square is really something to see, it is massive, with 3 churches, of course. It dates back to the 1200's and there is this super old church kind of in the middle. This church is 1000 years old, and you actually have to go down steps to get inside, since the ground around it has risen from when it was built. It's a tiny little church inside, though from the outside it looks much bigger. The churches here all seem to have massively thick walls.

The main church is St Mary's, every hour a trumpeter plays from all four corners of the main tower. Each time they play the tune is cut off mid note. This is to commemorate a 13th century trumpeter who was shot in the throat whilst warning of the Mongol invasion. I never knew Mongols made it this far East, crazy!

Monument to the battle against Teutonic knights

There also used to be a commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania, again I never knew this. And the combined army took on and defeated the Teutonic knights in one of the largest battles in medieval Europe. Again I knew nothing about this.  The history you get living in London is so skewed to western Europe (meaning England and France) that you wouldn't think there were any other nations of note, and certainly nothing important happening anywhere else in Europe. This trip really opened my eyes to how western Europe centred my focus has been. The Teutonic knights had the largest castle in the world, which still exists in Malbork in Poland. This sort of stuff was why the trip was kind of overwhelming. Every day you are learning this mind-blowing stuff, you can never "do" Europe, the depth of history and stuff here is just crazy.

Oxted Circular - Country Run

We have been getting into the country walks around London lately. They are generally on pretty 

Dave outside St Peters church

good paths, so we thought we would try one as a run. This was in the middle of winter so we needed to make sure it was a good day, and luckily we found a cracker. Oxted is almost due south of us, and I always find it impressive that the Saturday Walkers club manages to squeeze such good walks in between the fairly high density of villages in England. I have recently bought a month subscription to the Ordnance Survey, this is the company that owns all the map data of Britain. I am keen to see how these maps work on my mobile. Supposedly they work without data, and it's really easy to plan a route on the computer, that you can then follow on your phone. I'll have to see how the phone battery lasts when I give it a go. For this run/walk it was down to the walk directions only though. These are always a bit weird, especially if you don't bother with the map. Since it's stuff like follow the path 150m, after the third wooden bench, veer right. You really have to put your faith in whoever wrote the directions. They haven't led me wrong yet, but I feel a lot more comfortable having the OS maps on my phone.

I'm not sure why this was in the middle of the wood

On the way out of Oxted there was this great old church, I think the tower was built in 1180, there was someone practising the organ when we visited. I guess that's a hard instrument to learn, since you can't really practise at home. Once we were out of Oxted it was then through woodlands for the rest of the day. It was winter so there weren't a lot of leaves on the trees, a lot on the ground though, which made for pleasant running. There was also an old Roman road we crossed over, that was pretty cool, it was in the middle of a wood, and I think people had tried to keep using it through the ages as there seemed to be cobblestones or rocks laid out in some parts.

Great running surface

We were pretty good with the directions in general, only making a wrong turn once or twice. It was a pretty good choice for a run, minimal mud, and fairly flat. We could cover the 19kms in just a few hours, then time for a massive Subway and back home to warm up and recover. I think we can definitely fit a few more of these into the routine.

Guernsey

A lovely day on Guernsey

We had a long weekend in Guernsey, this is the British channel island, next to Jersey. We were there in late winter, high season is very much summer, so we had the place to ourselves. The way we chose the location was a bit funny, it was more of where can we fly from city airport that we haven't been before, which isn't someplace like Frankfurt. And Guernsey came up. It's a cool place for a weekend break, we didn't explore that much, just stuck around St Peter Port, even there it was a cute little town to stroll around.

I think if we were to go back I would make more of an effort to cycle around the island. It seems that's the way to get around the island for tourists. Guernsey is pretty small, and the roads are supposedly speed limited at 30mph, though the taxi to the airport definitely didn't feel like that. I would also try and get out to the other islands, Sark and Herm and maybe Aldernay. I think there are also some nice beaches around, the water did look nice when the sun was shining, though I think I would need to be wearing a wetsuit to really enjoy a swim. It is still the English Channel after all.

The lighthouse at the end of the breakwater

Visiting Guernsey had a little of the same feel as Belfast did, in that they seem to be trying very hard to convince everyone of their Britishness and yet nearly all the roads/place names start with either Le or Les. The food is an interesting mix of British and French, with awesome seafood. These islands are pretty weird, they are British crown dependencies, and yet aren't part of the UK, they are independently governed. They are actually the last bit of the Duchy of Normandy that the English crown used to hold. And yet they are something like 20km from France.

Since we were there in off-season I think the ratio of tourist to business traveller was very much the opposite way from the high season, which probably made it feel weirder. We were surrounded by lawyers and what felt like tax evaders. I'm watching the Night Manager at the moment, and some of the other people in the hotel felt very like the Richard Roper character. I'm not saying that they were international arms dealers, more that they travelled in entourages, and were supremely rich. I don't normally stay in the same hotels as those people, their price range being far above mine, but it was off-season, and I guess the hotels have to fill the rooms somehow.

The most famous occupant of Guernsey must be Victor Hugo, he lived there when he was exiled from France. He wanted to leave France, but be somewhere that still spoke French, so Guernsey it was. He tried Jersey first, but wrote articles in the local newspaper that weren't very favourable to Queen Victoria, and they kicked him off. He actually wrote Les Miserable whilst he was on Guernsey, they will tell you this fact many times while you are there. You can visit his house, though it's only open in the high season.

Castle Cornet with the breakwater

Steep stairs on Guernsey

They also have a pretty cool castle, Castle Cornet. This was built on a little rock island completely separated from Guernsey, when it was first built it was a mile off the shoreline. In the past you had to sail across with supplies, and there was only a small beach and door through which you could come, this was only accessible at low-tide. Now there is a breakwater connecting it to the island so you can walk out to it. The first castle was built in 1204 when King John lost the last bit of Normandy to the French king, but the islands remained with the English. He built a castle here to stop French invasion. During the civil war Guernsey declared for Cromwell, but the castle remained royalist. The island laid siege to the castle, which was the last royalist stronghold to surrender. It was a pretty interesting place to visit, and went over a lot of the history of the islands.

The breakwater was pretty cool too, the weather was pretty bad when we were there, with a real gale blowing. There is only a fence on one side of the breakwater, and with the gale blowing it really felt like you could be dumped into the water.

Queen's House - Greenwich

The Queen's House has only recently opened after a long refurbishment. It's a really cool building in Greenwich Park and we were walking past one evening and noticed it was open, and free, so thought why not. I probably should have taken a photo from the outside, but I go past it nearly every day, and didn't even think about it. It was the first Classical building in Britain, and was built between 1616 and 1632. It's a weird building, in that a road used to go through it, so it's a bit strange to get from one side of the house to the other.

Sunset from the Queen's House

It looks really great now, since there are these colonnades and extra wings that were built later. But when it was first built there was an old red brick Tudor Palace next to it, so it must have looked really weird.

View towards Canary Wharf from the Queen's House

I'll have to plan a return visit, the ceiling of the main hall is painted with this sparkling gold, and is worth another look. There are a lot of paintings in there as well, a lot of them related to sailing, there are some interesting ones on new countries the British were visiting, like Australia and New Zealand.

When we visited it was really a lovely evening, so all my photos are of the grounds of the park, I really have to go back, if only to get some photos of the kangaroos and kiwis.

Buxton

Buxton actually has an Opera House

We were staying in Buxton when visiting the Peak District, it's only 45kms from Manchester, we went out via Stockport, which perhaps wasn't the best way to go. It's kind of depressing driving through there. It's just closed down businesses and eternal traffic lights. We were glad when we were out of the town and into the countryside.

Buxton is a pretty town, probably because of the geothermal spring which has made it a popular spa getaway since the 1700s. We didn't actually try the water from the spring, or go to a spa, since we were mainly here for walking.

We did manage to stop in at Lyme park on the way back to Manchester. Definitely recommend a visit here. It was the exterior for Pemberley in the classic BBC Pride and Prejudice series. And the location of the famous pond scene with Colin Firth. There was a little blurb about this scene on the information boards. And Colin Firth never dived into the lake. They had to use a stuntman. They were too worried that he would catch some disease from the algae or rats. Kind of changes the feeling around that scene.

The famous pond and Pemberley.

We didn't have a heap of time to look around, plus it was raining pretty hard, which was a shame. But you could easily spend a day at this place, the grounds are huge!

Seven Sisters

First view of the cliffs

One of the more popular day walks from London is the Seven Sisters, in Sussex, starting in Seaford and ending in Eastbourne. It's a longish day, about 20km with some up and down as you go over the sisters. It's a great view of the white cliffs, probably better than from Dover. If the weather is nice, this is a really great day out, though there aren't many opportunities to go for a swim. To be honest the cliffs are much nicer than the beaches. The beaches all seem to be covered in pebbles and moss, not what I look for in a beach. Eastbourne, where you finish, has a massive beach, still covered in pebbles. But it's nice sitting on the beach having a well-earned drink at the end.  The seven sisters are the seven cliff peaks from Cuckmere River to Birling Gap. And when you see shots of the cliffs of Dover in TV and films you are generally seeing these cliffs instead.

The beautiful English beach

Looking back along the cliffs and the National Trust lunch spot.

There is a bit of a slog out of Seaford, and before you get to the actual cliffs you have to ford a river. The council must have changed this part of the route, because in the past I think it was a couple of kilometres detour to walk up the river to a bridge. The river was definitely passable for us though, I'm not sure if that was because the tide was low. It was soooo cold, definitely halted any thoughts of a swim.

Lighthouse view 

I would definitely recommend this walk, I can see why it's so popular, it's a bit of a trip from London though, being 90 minutes on a train. The line is also Southern, which is a total pain, since there are just constant cancellations, strikes and delays on that train line at the moment.

Anyway, the Seven Sisters is a classic English walk, good views, gentle, rolling hills and not too strenuous. With ample chances for tea and scones.

Dolomites

Our awesome home for the week

We spent almost a week in the Dolomites over summer. I had never thought to really go to the Dolomites, but I'm so glad I did. They were so great, warm everyday, great walks and fantastic views. It was quieter than I would expect for somewhere with such great views, and weather. For some reason I would have thought the walking trails would have been a lot busier, but we kind of had them to ourselves.

We hired a house just outside Cortina D'Ampezzo, which had the most stunning view. Looking out across a meadow and Cortina proper to massive mountain peaks. It turns out that Cortina is actually where all the ultra-fashionable Italians go. So it was a bit funny for us to pop into the supermarket in town in our normal clothes only to see everyone super polished walking up and down the mall. I had to buy a whole new set of clothes there so I could go out to dinner. I had only packed hiking gear, which wasn't going to make the grade in Cortina.

The view from our balcony

There was a really good mix of forest and mountain walking here. Plus there are cable cars running, so no need to slog up and down the steep hills. We were thinking it would be a bit chilly, given Cortina is at 1200m elevation, but nope, lovely and warm the whole time. The Dolomites are super close to the Austrian border, in fact I think Austria used to control this area, so there is quite a German influence in the house design. And yet still Italian in other ways, you could always get a pizza and nice cheeses.

So many mountains

Village of Cortina - surrounded by mountains

We did some nice easy walks too, almost directly from the house. There was a good forest walk through a mountain meadow and then an isolated farmhouse for lunch. With a good selection of animals to play with.

There were some walks from the top of cable cars, with fantastic views out to the mountain ranges around us. It was up there that you could see how far the mountains went for. There was some good history around too, because this region was part of Austria until after World War I. So there was some fighting in the mountains surrounded Cortina. That would have been hard-core, fighting battles in those mountains.

View from the cable car stop above Cortina

It was a really relaxing holiday, because we were staying just out of Cortina it was nice and quiet. But only a 5 minute drive into the village. And with great views and perfect weather. Italy really does deliver on the weather front. I think if I was to go back to Cortina I would fly into the cheap Venice airport, and then it's almost directly north from there. So actually pretty easy to get to from London.

Fancy lunch venue - who's view we ruined by eating lunch on the other side