Arundel to Amberley - South Downs Walk

Finally the leaves are arriving

We were back in Arundel one of these weekends past.  On a day when it finally felt like spring was on the way.  We are in training for our walk in the Alps later this year, so we picked one of the hardest walks in our book.  We had already been to Arundel last year, we were going to attempt this walk then, but ended up leaving London too late, and just spent the day checking out the castle and the village.

This time we actually made it out of the village, which was definitely the right move.  The South Downs are really wonderful.  It was English countryside at it's best, or at least some of it's best that I have seen.  There were wonderful, rolling green hills, cows, rabbits, birds.  And a great lunch at a really walkers friendly pub.

Hiorne Tower with the rolling hills

Looking back to the tower, with a lake in between us

This time it was straight past the castle, straight past the freaky half churches, and disappointing churches into the Arundel forest park.  England every now and again surprises you with some fairly extensive 'wilderness'.  It's still not that wild, given the numbers of sheep grazing around the place.

Looking down at Amerberly from the South Downs - piles of chalk in the ground

A lone horseman

This walk was rated a 7 out of 10 for toughness, I guess because it was almost 20kms long with a fair bit of up and down.  You are walking over the South Downs after all.  We had to really power the first part of the walk, there were 6 miles between the start and the lunch spot, and only 2 hours to do it in.  The lunch spot was a very popular pub in those parts, so we had made a booking, but they only did a sitting at 12:30.  We made it in time no worries, and they didn't even care about our excessive amount of mud we were carrying on our trousers, we did leave our boots at the door out of respect though.  If you are ever in the neighbourhood of Burpham (great name) I would recommend the George and Dragon Inn, good food, and great staff.

Church in St Leonards - 11th century

How English is this scene!

The first part of the walk is through the Arundel Park, where you can imagine the Lord of the day would go hunting and persecuting peasants.  There was a random tower in the middle of the park, Hiorne Tower. This tower was actually used in the filming of some really old versions of Dr Who, in 1988.  It is quite a pretty tower, with a good stone pattern, and of course it is haunted, as all good towers should be.

From this point it was pretty much up and down all day.  We poked our head into the churchyard of St Leonard's church, which is from the 11th century.  It is still lit by candles, but given the tight lunch deadline, we didn't have time to investigate further.  Unfortunately it's last rector left in 1928, so ever since then it's been under the care of the Vicar of Arundel.  I guess given that the town it's sitting in has a population of 57, there perhaps isn't such a need for it's own Rector.

The cannon thing would fire off every now and again - we think it was a modern scarecrow

As we were walking through the many fields, we would often hear what sounded like a cannon or a gunshot, you aren't worried that you are about to be shot, given the incredible rights of way you get in this country.  But it was kind of odd.  Eventually we narrowed it down to the object in the above photo, it's some kind of air cannon, and it must have some sort of sensor attached, since anytime a bird came close it would fire off.  It did seem to keep the birds away, though given the lack of crops I'm not sure what they were protecting.

Incredibly muddy field

Towards the end of the walk we had to come down a steep hill, and then back up the other side, damn you South Downs.  But it seemed like the farmer on the other side didn't really like walkers.  The field in which you had a right of way in was just an absolute mud bath, you can see in the photo what I'm talking about.  But this was only a small section of the field, the entirety of it was like this, it was incredible.  There wasn't even any grass for the cows to eat, the farmer had to give them hay.  It's not as if this was the only field the farmer had, he could have moved them into a field which actually contained grass.  I don't know, maybe he wasn't a very good farmer.  It was pretty tough having to fight your way through this at the end of a long day, and going up hill.  Then all the cows were clustered near the exit.  I couldn't blame them, I wanted to get out of that field as fast as possible too.  It was just a bit scary having to sort of use the gate to push them out of the way.

Looking down to Amberly - and the weird marshes

We actually ended up skipping a bit of the walk at the end.  Which since our train was delayed we could have done anyway.  It was through the marshes around Amberly.  But it had been a long day and I was looking forward to a nice sit down on the train.

Arrest of Ai WeiWei - Hampstead Theatre

We checked out another play at our local theatre, Arrest of Ai WeiWei.  The last play we saw here was Judas Kiss, which was awesome, so my hopes were high.  You can get all the info you need for the play from wikipedia, but basically Ai WeiWei is a famous Chinese artist, he helped design the birds nest stadium for the Olympics, did the sunflower seeds exhibit at the Tate Modern, that sort of thing.  It seems as if there has been a bit of a falling out between Ai WeiWei and the Chinese government since then, probably because he started investigations into the Sichuan earthquakes that killed all those kids.  So the government had him arrested and locked up for 81 days when he was trying to fly to Hong Kong.  The script is based on a book, which was written from conversations a journalist had with him after his release.  It feels like it is being pretty truthful, though at some points you feel like he's obviously putting himself in the best light.

If it is actually truthful, it must have been a completely surreal experience.  He is eventually charged , and convicted, of tax evasion.  But they begin by having him interviewed by homicide detectives who have no idea who he is, before he;s transferred to an army base, where two soldiers are apparently in his cell at all times, monitoring him constantly, even when he goes to the toilet.  And throughout it all, he convinced he's going to be beaten, or 'disappeared'.  Before suddenly they charge him with the tax offences, and he's let loose.

The actor playing him does a good job, but it always feels like it's trying really hard to be not just a play, but an art installation piece.  Most of the action takes place in a shipping container in the middle of the stage.  But the entire cast is on stage at all times (even when they aren't part of the scene), and most of them have no role to play at all.  They just sit there, with really good hair, occasionally helping to change the set, filming things on their phones, or taking pictures.  And those people were all white.  So you're thinking, what are they trying to say here, is it the fact that the Western world all wants a piece of him now that he;s famous, and yet we view his suffering as entertainment?  Or was it just a big theatre company putting on the show, and everyone wanted to put this play on their CV.  Then at the end it finishes with a big monologue about what is art.  And then you have to applaud all the people with good hair, who did nothing all evening.

Singapore

Singapore skyscrapers plus the fountain that everyone must see upon visiting

We were back in Australia for a week recently and rather than the killer 24 hour flight we decided to break up the trip with a bit of a stop off in Singapore on the way through.  Definitely a good idea and I think we'll be doing that every time now.  It's so nice getting off the flight after 12 hours and knowing that you don't have to wait around for an hour before sitting through another 9 hour flight.  Aaaah bliss.

The casino/hotel/boat on the other side of the marina.

More of the city with the fountain in prime position

We were a little disorganised on this trip, which lead to some interesting times.  We hadn't got any Singaporean dollars out, and we go to use our UK bank cards only to find Dave's card was being declined.  I try mine, thinking perhaps he was trying too high an amount, and manage to get out $100.  So we are like, great, let's get some more out.  Uh oh, obviously that triggered some fraud warning in HSBC and then we had no UK cards.  We were then thinking, hmm that's a bit annoying, but that's cool, we'll just use our Aussie bank cards.  Only to find we had forgotten to bring them.  Damn.

The city + more futuristic flower buildings

It's cool that HSBC is looking out for their customers, but I think they ping the fraud warning way too early.  Obviously it's to save them money, since they won't have to pay out in cases where there is genuine fraud.  But it is still my money and I would like to be able to access it in one of the largest transit centres in the world.

We then had to have an incredibly painful skype conversation with their call centre.  Where they kept asking me my security details over and over again, all done at a snail's pace.  I had to keep telling them it was an international phone call, and that I hadn't done anything wrong, and could I please access my money now.

A playing field build on the water - taking from the futuristic double helix bridge

They have this wonderfully customer-friendly procedure where each person can only do one specific task, so if there are a few tasks to be completed you keep getting transferred around.  And each time they transfer you, you have to go through exactly the same security questions.  Freaking sort your service out HSBC!!

Unfortunately I think HSBC isn't even the worst of the UK banks in terms of customer service.  And don't even get me started on their joke of an internet banking system.  So I'm off on a tangent here, but seriously if I have a savings account and a credit card with the same bank a blind monkey should be able to figure out how to use internet banking to pay off the credit card.  But no, you have to actually use your credit card number as the customer reference when you pay from your savings account.  How is that a logical and fail safe system?

Please could someone from your supposed internet banking department go to Australia and open up an account there, so you can see what internet banking should really be like.

Panda chowing down

But anyway after the long, and slightly terse skype conversation, we were back in business, and it was time for food!  Singapore seems to be all about food, shopping malls, heat and the zoo.  And we did eat a bit, lovely, spicy, fresh asian food.  Oh how I have missed you!  We had Singapore chilli crab, which was really good, much hotter than I thought it would be.  Halfway through I was kind of wishing that the restaurant had given us plastic gloves to eat it with.  They don't have the same crab utensils that you might get in Europe, you know, the modified nut crackers.  So it was all a tooth and hand affair, we really got in touch with our animalistic side.  But with only one tiny wet wipe to clean up with, I was wishing for a bib.

We also got to experience their hawker centres whilst we were there.  At first I already thought we had been going to hawker centres, but then we went to a real one.  It was at that point I realised that perhaps it's true that no-one really eats at home in Singapore.  Everyone was out.  Imagine a massive shopping centre food court, except it's outside, and there are no brands, and the food is all really good, and $2 and there aren't any shops, just food.  It's definitely an experience.

The other thing which really struck me about Singapore is how it was really going for a futuristic feel.  There was a hotel with a boat on the top, a bridge shaped like a double helix, a sports field built out over the harbour.  Everywhere you looked there was another bizarro, futuristic structure.  It must be great to be an architect in this city.

The first day we were there we were caught in an almighty downpour.  I had forgotten how ferocious tropical rain could be.  Everyone was sheltering under this bridge, and you couldn't even talk the rain was thundering down so heavily.  If you had walked out in it you would have been saturated immediately.  Oh, but it was still so warm.  I love the tropics, like a big, warm hug.  Though forget about running.  We went for one run whilst we were there, setting off before dawn, and I've never been so hot exercising.  That kind of destroyed us for the day, we spent a lot of time in their air-conditioning that day.

Red panda going crazy - most of my shots it was just a blur

They also do a good zoo, in fact more than just a zoo, in this complex there is a zoo, a bird park, a night safari and they are currently building a river cruise/animal exhibit thing.  It's pretty crazy.  But it seemed like a good zoo.  Though their feeding sessions and animal shows weren't as good as others I've seen.  Nothing can compare to Taronga's bird show.  The slight detraction to the feeding shows was the blazing sun.  We had no sunscreen and by the afternoon I was starting to fear for my skin.

They did have newly arrived pandas though, and they got their own, special, air conditioned enclosure.  Too bad you could only spend 15 minutes in there.  They had red pandas in there as well, they seemed slightly insane, but maybe that's just red pandas.  The normal pandas were pretty cool, just lying on their backs chowing down on bamboo the whole time we were there.

Freaky bird in the zoo - cool hairdo

They also do some good gardens.  There are some big ones on the other side of the boat hotel, which is a bit of an experience just getting too.  First you walk through one of their shopping malls, which was so big they had a canal down the middle.  And you could hire a boat and row up and down past all the shops.  Like I said, complete bizarro world.  You then cross this massive 12-lane road before ending up in these gardens.  They weren't even the botanic gardens, just some extra ones.

They had this flower dome built, again futuristic, kind of like a bio-dome, but only flowers.  There was also a cloud mountain dome.  That was really strange.  Remember everything here has been artificially constructed, obviously the plants are real, but their entire environment is built, and constantly monitored.

Cloud mountains are apparently these really moist, high altitude, rainforest type environments.  So in the middle of the dome they had this 7 storey high waterfall, which you would catch a lift up the middle to appear at the top (like I say, totally artificial), and then you would walk your way back down.  Every now and then the mist guns would go off.  There were more sections of the gardens, but there was still slightly too much paving for what should be natural surrounds.

Rhino posing

Would I spend more time in Singapore?  Definitely, I think next time I will check out Sentosa, that's meant to be even more fake.  I just need to do a bit more research on the good restaurants there though.  At the end of the stay I was wanting a bit of a change from eating on plastic chairs, basically in the street, in the stinking hot.  And was hoping for a bit of that mall-type air conditioning they seem to love everywhere else.  But no luck, it was all hawker centres, or restaurants in the street.  So definitely a bit of research needed for next time.

The English Oboe : Rediscovered

Dave has been getting into the Oboe lately, so we thought we would go along to an Oboe recital we found.  It was actually to celebrate the launch of a CD (of the same name).  It was held in the Royal Overseas House, which is an organisation working on international friendship through the arts.  Kind of strange, though their patron is the Queen, so I guess it is fairly establishment.  It's in a great location, backing on to Green Park.

The actual recital was in the Princess Alexandra Hall, though calling this lady a Princess is a bit of a stretch, she is 42nd in line to the throne and is the Queen's cousin.  If Kate is only the Duchess of Cambridge, I'm not sure how this person is a Princess.

But anyway, it was a bit of a stretch calling the room a Hall, it was a room, at best.  But the recital was interesting, I didn't know any of the pieces, all British composers.  Some of them were better than others, I find the really modern stuff is probably more interesting to play than to listen to.  But the oboist was obviously quite good, and even better was before each piece he would give a little background, on who the composer was, who it was written for, what it's about, that sort of thing, which really added to the enjoyment.

Would I recommend the CD, hmmm, if you really, really like oboe and already own all the other, more melodic, oboe pieces, or if you just like a challenge, then go right ahead.

Ham House

The front of Ham House

We have annual passes to the National Trust and so we decided to put them to good use with a trip up the Thames to Ham House.  This was our first visit to the village of Richmond, though really it is still inside London, but still it feels like you are somewhere completely different.  It feels quite similar to Greenwich really, but fewer tourists, which is pleasant, and a less impressive food market.

The Thames, it looks very wide here

The formal gardens

It's then a very pleasant walk along the Thames to the house, which according to the NT is important due to it's display of 17th century power and fashion.  It was built in 1610 and ended up in the hands of William Murray, who was interesting because he was Charles I's whipping boy, a young boy who grows up with the prince and is punished in lieu of the prince.  A form of psychological torture on the young prince who has to see his friend punished for something he had done wrong.  It basically remained in his families hands, even surviving the Civil War, before it was donated to the National Trust in 1949.

We probably should have looked closer at the opening times on the website, since when we turned up we were told the only way to get inside was on a guided tour, and the next one wasn't for another hour or so.  We took a turn about the gardens, but then my feet started to get reeeeally cold and it was still a while for our tour, at which we had already been informed would be cold inside, so we returned our tour tokens and walked back along the Thames.

The rear of Ham House

It seems that the National Trust is very much a summer organisation, I guess that's due to the hundreds of properties they have, which seem to be staffed entirely by volunteers.  And on a cold winters day I wouldn't have been so keen to volunteer to sit around a freezing house making sure the few visitors don't steal anything or smash stuff.

The gardens were quite nice, even in winter, and they had this weird "wilderness" out the back, which was just patches of trees planted at a slightly higher density than normal.  With very well-kept walkways between them.  They did also have an ice-house, which was pretty interesting.  It was like a stone igloo, but dug into the ground as well. It was pretty big, you could have fit a serious amount of ice in there.

Matilda the Musical

I've been to a few shows whilst being here, it being the home of West End and all, but I was really keen to go see Matilda once it opened.  The music and lyrics were written by Tim Minchin after all, and you gotta support your fellow Aussies.  But even without the Aussie factor, it was awesome.

I was a little dubious about it being carried by children actors, but there were no worries about that, they were all sooo good.  This is what musicals should be, before this one I had always held Wicked up to be my most favourite musical, but Matilda surpasses even that.

If it opens in your city - go see it!

Walking in the Chilterns

A proper snowflake!

The Chilterns are an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty just north of London.  In fact the Metropolitan underground line (one of my favourite lines) goes all the way north to them.  They have been in the news a bit lately because of the proposed HS2, which is a high-speed railway between London and Birmingham that the government is thinking of building.  The proposal goes right through the Chilterns, in fact right between the two towns we walked from, Great Missenden and Amersham.

Now that's what I call outstanding natural beauty

I'm kind of all for high speed rail, since having spent a year living in France I have been massively spoilt by their TGV system.  And now having been out to the Chilterns I'm not convinced that it really is an area of outstanding natural beauty, since there is already this massive, high voltage power line running through it.  We ended up crossing under this power line 3 or 4 times, it really was a bit of a feature of the walk.  I wonder if they couldn't just set up the train line under this power line, since that part of the Chilterns is kind of already destroyed, and if they just stick in some transformers every now and again then the train already has all the power it needs.

One of the main reasons for doing this walk was that it was still winter and this was meant to be an easier one in winter.  At this point in the year we were sure all the snow was over, it being February, and yet as the train pulled into the station for the start of the walk, it started to snow.  And actually since it was still snowing a week ago, in early April, apparently snow in February isn't that unexpected.

Since it was either snowing or raining on and off the whole day it added an extra degree of freakiness to crossing under these massive power lines.  As you got closer you could swear there was a river or a waterfall nearby, and it wasn't until you were standing under them that you realised that sound was from the power lines.  You don't really expect electricity to make noise.  The other really weird thing was that under the power lines the snow was turned to rain.  I'm not sure what happens to birds if they land on these wires, if they have that effect on snow.  But it kind of puts paid this idea of great natural beauty.  There were moments were I could swear we had wandered into the apocalypse, or had somehow woken up in Fallout, which is a video game set in a post nuclear war wasteland.

St Peter and St Paul's church

Perhaps the people in living in the Chilterns need to get out to Scotland and Wales to see some true areas of outstanding natural beauty, or even the peaks district, if they hate foreigners.  And you know if we had HS2, it would make getting out to the peaks district so much easier.  But then perhaps we were in the wrong areas and maybe there are some truly nice spots in the Chilterns.

This walk was a bit of a church walk, the first church we came across was built mainly in the 14th century and is the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul.  It is located on a hill outside the town of Great Missenden.  When it was built there was no town, just farms, and so having it on the top of a hill made it a good focal point.  I don't know what the mounds of dirt are on the lawn, but I hope they are mole holes.

Further on was the St John the Baptist church in Little Missenden.  This was an awesome church, and one of the most welcoming ones I've ever seen.  I don't know what the etiquette of churches are, are you just allowed to walk inside them at any time, or do they have set opening hours, or is it trespassing if you aren't of that parish.  So I'm always a bit wary or just walking right into a church.  But this one actually had a sign on the door welcoming people, and asking them to just switch off the lights when they were done.  I thought that was how it should be done really.

St Christopher in Little Missenden

This church was super old, part of it was built in the 10th century and inside there is this massive 13th century mural of St Christopher carrying the Christ child across the waters.  This is a great church, if you are in the area, pop in for a visit.  You can still see red Roman bricks that were used by the Anglo-Saxons in the initial construction.  And the mural is pretty cool.  There is also a mural of the parish, when all the fields were actually given names.  Man, the history in this country!

Snowdrops - not realising there is another 2 months of winter to come

A very attractive graveyard

This church was also pretty because it was surrounded by snowdrops.  They didn't seem to realise that spring was still at least 2 months away, because they were flowering like crazy around here.  It was one of the more attractive graveyards I have seen.

One thing I won't forget about this walk was the incredible amount of mud.  It has been a rather wet winter, and this region seems to have quite clay-ey soils.  At some points I thought I should have brought my micro-spikes along.  You would end up with maybe a kilo of extra weight on each foot just from the mud.  And as you were crossing these post-apocalyptic wastelands at the time there were no trees to bang your boots against.  So you would have to skate across these expanses, as your boots got heavier and heavier until you reached a fence post.