Olympics - 2012

The crowds on Fulham Road

So you may or may not be aware, but there's a little sporting contest on in London at the moment, the OLYMPICS!!!

It's had a massive build up here, for maybe 2 months leading up to the games the public transport network have been sending out constant messages telling everyone that it's going to be a total nightmare to catch the tube during the games, and that everyone should basically not go into work.  If they really must go in they should leave twice as long for their journey, or walk to work, or roller-skate, anything but public transport.  And now come the games and there's literally no one on the tube.  It's wonderful, I wish the Olympics were on all the time.

I gotta say though, the BBC has nailed the coverage, we don't have a TV but we splashed out on a TV license, as you are meant to have a license if you stream live TV.  And it has so been worth it, all the sports are covered on the internet, so if the main channel is showing some montage, or replaying one of GB's few medal wins you can always just take your pick of what else is on.  It's pretty awesome, channel 9 in Australia has an awfully long way to go.

It has been funny listening to the British commentators, in Australia they are always really disappointed if a swimmer doesn't get a medal, whereas here they are overjoyed if they just make it to the final.  Though it is good to see that commentators the world over are incredibly nationalistic, a GB swimmer could be coming 6th in their race, and yet it is as if there is no one else in the pool.  The winner is mentioned as a bit of an afterthought once it is all over.

We didn't get tickets to anything, though following the furore of the blocks of empty seats there might be some more up for grabs, but we have been along to the free events.  So far just the men's road cycling race, and this weekend we have the women's triathlon and marathon.  The road race was pretty cool.  We could get live updates from the BBC website, so we knew that Cancellara had crashed, and then suddenly two riders came whizzing past, so close that if you were leaning over the barrier they would have hit you.  Then the rest came charging by, and we at this point we thought it was all over and started heading off, when Cancellara slowly pedalled past.  He's a lot smaller than what you might think, he always looks so big compared to the rest of the cyclists, but that really doesn't say much.

Woman in Black

I have to say I must be a massive fan of this story, since I think I've now seen it 4 times (including the latest movie).  We were sitting up in the rafters again, it wasn't a great theatre this one, the Fortune Theatre, I think the trick with this one is definitely to sit in the stalls, not the circles.  It's such a tiny theatre and the seats just go straight up, that if you are sitting in the circles you can't see the front third of the stage.  Luckily actors know not to use the front part of the stage too much.  But definitely a tip to remember.

I'm not sure if this was my favourite production, it's a funny play this one, perhaps your first viewing of it is always your favourite.  The first time I saw it, it was just some local production in Canberra, so not anything big, and yet that one is still my favourite.  It felt like in this one everything was explained as if you were an idiot, where I think in the best productions, everything is just hinted at.  But then that could just be because I've seen it 4 times now, so there are no surprises in the story.

Peaks Not a Total Bust

Dave with the Agden Reservoir

Even though I was banged up and sore and sorry for myself, I was determined that we do at least one walk whilst we were in the Peaks District.  I mean it's not like we are up there every weekend and I had brought all my gear with me.  And I still had my camera phone with me, at least that hadn't fallen into the stream.  So I could even document the walk.

We decided on a short walk in the Bradfield Dale (I think Dale means valley in the UK),

The massive earthworks of the Norman fort

only 5 kms, but it took us past an early Norman fort, how could we resist!  This is on the Sheffield side of the Peaks, seriously this place is surrounded by some seriously industrial towns!  We started off low, near the Agden reservoir, which supplies Sheffield, before climbing Bailey Hill.  And surprise, surprise, on the top of Bailey Hill is the old Norman castle.

I love how the history here is still reflected in the names of things.  Not much remains, it was one of the real old-style motte-and-bailey castles. These were brought to England after 1066, obviously.  It's

St Nicholas in High Bradfield - lovely views

basically a massive mound of dirt, where the keep was built, and then a second, lower, mound where the fortified enclosure (bailey) was.  Whilst all that remains are the massive earth works, they were still pretty impressive to see, and it's hard to capture the scale, these things were massive.

From this old fort you come to the tiny village of High Bradfield (it's further up the hill from Low Bradfield), and for such a tiny village, we are talking 2 streets, it had a particularly impressive church. Apparently it is built in the Gothic Perpendicular style in the 1480's, awesome style that one.  You can't see it in the photo, but a watch house was built in the grounds in 1745 for a guard, employed to deter body-snatchers.

All in all it was a very pleasant walk, with the added bonus of a bit of history.

How English is the scene!

Peaks District and Bingham Cup

Looking back down the valley

I am so behind in my posting, I still haven't told you all how I destroyed my last camera.  This particular post is going to be fairly light on with the photos, as this was the last expedition of my camera.  Over the Jubilee long weekend (man how long ago was that!), we headed up to Manchester and the Peaks District.

We spent two days in Manchester, we were watching the Bingham Cup, for Rugby Union, where we had a friend playing.

Following the stream uphill

That was pretty cool, I've never spent a weekend watching amateur Union, or a weekend watching any sport.  Because it was so small you could get to know the teams a bit, some of them had some real
stars, this one team had who I like to call Captain America.  He was the captain, kicker, try-scorer and all-round best player.  Though that team didn't make the finals, I guess you can't build a team around just one player.

We didn't see heaps of Manchester, it felt pretty industrial, a lot of red brick.  I'm not sure as to what the tourist sights really are there, apparently there is a National Football Museum.  Is that enough to re-visit, hmm probably not.

The advantage with Manchester is that it is only 25kms to the Peaks District.  I couldn't get over that, from the centre of this incredibly industrial town it's about a 20 minute drive and you are surrounded

Pretty easy going really

by peaks (or hills really).  I think Manchester may be our new kick off point for the Peaks visits, seeing as how it's only 2 hours on a train.  I guess it's quite like Sydney and the Blue Mountains, it goes to show that people really like their green spaces.

Fauna on the way

The rugby had been pretty wet and miserable, I felt sorry for the people having to play, especially the Aussies, I think summer in Manchester is a lot worse than winter in Oz.  Once we got up to the peaks though it was a beautiful day.  We had an awesome route planned, only 13kms long, but with a height gain of 500m.  It was this great loop from Edale, circling the high peaks.  We started off, but we'd only got maybe 1.5km when disaster struck.

Crossing this little stream I somehow managed to fall in, completely smashing my arm and hand and submerging my camera, no more photos for me.  I was pretty lucky it wasn't worse, I still don't know how it happened, sitting by it, recovering, scores of  little kids were managing to cross with no worries.  Being sopping wet and covered in bruises, that was the end of the walk for me.  Which was definitely disappointing, but we know definitely know where to head for more walking, Edale is the start of the Pennine Way after all.

Bruise - day 1, it got a lot more colourful!

The only good thing out of my tumble is that I could get a new camera, I didn't really upgrade, but I did get a lovely new lens, 18-130mm, no need to carry a separate telephoto for me anymore.

The Lion King - Lyceum Theatre

This was a pretty spectacular show, out of all the shows I've seen this wins hands down in terms of large scale productions. The number of cast members must have been enormous, and the puppets were awesome.  Seriously the opening number with an elephant on stage, that's pretty cool.  The story is basically the same as the movie, so no surprises there, you do have to put up with child actors for the first half, but thankfully they don't reappear in the second.

Obviously it is a fairly child dominated audience, especially if you go to a weekend matinee like we did.  That's fine, you can handle the extra noise, since it is the Lion King afterall.  What is strange are the mother's though.  Whilst we were watching one mother behind us thought it was fine to let her child chat the whole way through, and spent the entire show discussing the plot with it.  That was kind of annoying, but what really detracted from the whole Lion King atmosphere, was the other mother sitting in front of her, who wanted to tear her face off because she wouldn't be quiet.

If you go, go to a late showing, preferably during the week, and be prepared for mothers.

Canterbury Cathedral via Chilham

Canterbury viewed from the University - the cathedral dominating all

Dave with a field of unidentifiable green stuff

I've been going a bit crazy with the walking lately (or rather rambling) and have bought another walking book.  This one is for day walks close to London, highly recommended, it's done by Time Out.  The only thing which is slightly disturbing is that there aren't actually any maps in the book.  All the walks just have detailed walking notes.  But it's still pretty scary, as someone who has always taken maps, to not have anything.  The fear is if you miss a turn then you have no way of recovering (short of back-tracking an unknown distance).  In this case though I think that fear is (probably) unfounded, in that the walking notes are incredibly detailed.  But anyway, it's still something I have to get used to.

Crossing the Great Stour River at Chartham

There's a fast train direct to Canterbury these days, but we chose to change trains and then get off about a stop before Canterbury.  It was pretty good actually, walking through the fields.  And then you arrive at Canterbury from an unusual direction, through the University, which is on a hill.  It means you perhaps get the best view of the cathedral possible.  Since the thing is so freaking big, and completely engulfed by the town.  Once you get up close it's actually really hard to fit the whole thing in one shot.  The other advantage is that you end up arriving a little later, meaning the vast flow of people actually seem to be heading out of the town, leaving the cathedral almost entirely deserted.

Dave in a field of buttercups

The walk itself was pretty good, it was from Chilham to Canterbury, for those who know their English villages.  So about 8km as the crow flies from Canterbury, but the walk takes you through a variety of fields and woods along the way.  We even managed to get sun burnt!

That's the danger with living here, normally if I was planning an all-day walk in Australia, I would be slathered in sunscreen and carrying litres of water.  But here you just get complacent, I don't think I even own sunscreen anymore.  Not because there isn't any sun (though lately that has certainly been the case) but because it feels so weak.  There's no burning sensation when you are out on a clear, summer's day.  I wonder how much the hole in the ozone layer contributes to the terrible burn factor in Australia.  But it is definitely something I think we need to remain aware of, just because it's not as bad here, if you are out in the sun for 6 hours, you will still get burnt!

Canola field (called rapeseed here), so yellow!

Apple orchards

We start off walking through all these different fields for the first part.  You really don't appreciate how agrarian England still is. In Australia of course we grow our own food, but it seems to be on a much bigger scale, the fields are massive and fairly mono-culture.  But here we walked through canola fields, hop fields, apple and pear orchards, and some other unidentified green stuff.  Not sure what the other type of crop was, it was fairly popular though.

And all of this was within an hours train ride of London.  And they all seemed to be on a fairly small scale, in that individual farmers still owned different plots, and lived on their farms.  Rather than the hectares and hectares owned by single farmers in Australia.  It was certainly a different feeling.  Maybe because everything was so green too.  And I just love the right of ways here, most of the time you would skirt the fields, but every now and again the right of way would go right through the farmers crop.

Hops fields, these were massive fields

Chartham Church - impressively large

We walked through Chartham just before lunch, this is the next village on from Chilham, and was a bit bigger (in that it had more than 5 streets).  It had this impressive church, which looked more like a castle to be honest.  Apparently it was built in 1294 and contains the oldest peal of bells in Kent, though I'm not sure what the competition is like for that title.  It was just so wonderfully English though, these tiny little villages, with a massive church, set around a village green (which you wonder if the farmers are still allowed to graze sheep on).  It all feels just so relaxing.  From there it was on, through a bluebell wood and deer hiding in forests to our lunch spot.  We were a little early for lunch, it being well before noon.

We are poking around this pub trying to find the owner, thinking maybe it's closed.  No one else is around, then another couple of walkers turn up, so we know we are at the right spot for lunch.  Eventually we find the owner, and a suet pudding is served, my first taste of suet.  It was definitely a walkers pub, as by the time we were leaving it was full of other walkers.  I'm not sure if anyone had driven there at all.  We had a good round of bird watching too, sitting in the garden, I managed to see a goldfinch which I was pretty happy about.

Bluebell woods in Blean Woodland - note the spindly trees

The English love their dogs - this is a dog gate next to a style

After lunch it was more fields, but a greater proportion of woods too, we went through the Blean Woods nature reserve.  Which is this incredibly ancient woodland.  Before you think of gnarled old trees and thick undergrowth, remember this is England, and in a part which has been continuously occupied for thousands of years.  So whilst it is classified as an ancient woodland, the caveat is that it has also been continually wooded for thousands of years (meaning people have been chopping down trees in it for ever).

More of Blean - incredibly diverse supposedly

In fact  the definition for an ancient woodland is one that has been continuously chopped down since 1600.  Apparently that makes it something special in the UK.  I mean I get that it's old, but it doesn't mean that each individual tree is all that old.  They have some funny definitions for their nature reserves here.  I guess this island has been so densely populated for so long, that it's really hard to find somewhere that is untouched.  It does make me wonder what they would do if they ever came across an area that hadn't had centuries of human interference.  Probably clear it in disgust, I would imagine.

The final test - a field of massive cows!  I've never seen such big animals, not sure what type they are

Westgate - largest surviving city gate in England

After that it was just a few more fields, before we popped out, unexpectedly, at the University of Canterbury. That was a bit strange, emerging from this thick wood, to be standing next to the Engineering building.  But it really did give you this fantastic view of the cathedral, towering over the rest of the town.  And it was a bit easier, the last bit of the walk, downhill, and you could finally see your destination for the first time that day.

Canterbury is a pretty cool town, it was abandoned after the Romans left.  Then in 597AD St Augustine and his followers arrived and repaired the walls. And it was soon chosen to be the seat of the first Archbishop. Ever since then the town has been important.  One of the more famous aspects is that it was where Thomas Becket was murdered by Henry II's knights in 1170.  And after that incident it became a place of pilgrimage for Christians from all over Europe.  Henry VIII tried to put a stop to that, what with destroying the shrine and removing all mention of Thomas Becket throughout the kingdom.

The Cathedral is so big it was hard to fit it in one shot

The entrance gate to the Cathedral

As you would expect from such an ancient Cathedral, it was pretty cool inside, there were tombs to old princes and king's of England.  And it was all pretty ornate.  Definitely worth the day trip out there.  The town itself is pretty nice as well, which I didn't appreciate.  Obviously with such an old Cathedral, the town has to be pretty old too.  So there are some really cool old buildings along the main street, converted into cafes mainly.  There is also a canal running through the town, again something I didn't appreciate, and you could go on punt rides if you so desired.

Inside the church grounds it's like another city in itself, it's definitely not just the cathedral, there's a massive boarding school, cloisters, huge gardens, ruins.  It's all there.  We saw some of the students heading back to their dorms whilst we were there, that must be something else, going to a school on the Canterbury Cathedral grounds.  I can't imagine how that changes your outlook on things.

This has already been a really long post, so I'll just leave you with some photos from inside the Cathedral.

Shields on the ceiling - I think they represent the contributors to the rebuilding

Ornate alter

Loving the ceilings at this place

The tomb of Henry IV and Joan of Navarre

What's a church without stained glass windows

The new shrine to Thomas Becket

Another great ceiling in the Chapter House

The cloisters of the Cathedral

Great doors near the train station

Greenwich

Enjoying the weather in front of the Maritime University

Another beautiful day in London, meant that we headed out to Greenwich.  This is a really nice part of London, definitely worth a visit if you are here.  Especially if the weather is nice, just don't expect the place to yourself.  The market between the train station and the park was absolutely heaving with people, but we managed to score ourselves some paella (strangely popular here) and headed to the greenery.

View from the observatory, back across the Olympics dressage stadium being set up

View across to canary wharf

The main exhibit on at the time was on the pomp and ceremony surrounding the Thames throughout the centuries.  Pretty topical, given the Jubilee we've just had, where the Queen floated down the river in her barge surrounding by hundreds of other boats.  The Thames used to be a pretty big life force of the town, perhaps less so now, what with the docks all being converted into flash offices.  I very naughtily took photos in this exhibit, though in my defence it was because the ticket collector was standing right in front of the big sign which said not to take photos.  Luckily I never use flash for my photos, but no wonder I was getting a few funny looks.  But it does mean I can show people, for once, some of what is going on inside these exhibits.

Ostrich chowing down

The Lord Mayors show used to be a much more flamboyant affair, with all the guilds sending a barge down the river, nowadays the barges seem to be reserved for Jubilees and that's about it.  One of the guilds was the ironmongers guild, and their mascot was an ostrich with a horseshoe in it's mouth, as it was thought at the time that ostriches could eat iron.

Another thing I learned was that the Queen actually owns all unmarked, mute swans in open water.  What they mean by unmarked is whether or not the beaks have notches in them.  But it's not as if you are allowed to just go around notching up swan's beaks, only members of two guilds are allowed to notch up swans for themselves, the dyers and vintners.  Not sure how those random guilds got that particular privilege.  You will be happy to hear that the beaks are no longer notched, instead rings are used.  Much more humane, especially as some of the old markings looked incredibly complex for the poor birds.

An unmarked swan

Queen Victoria's sailor boy outfit

There was also a little sailors outfit, it was actually the outfit that Queen Victoria dressed her eldest son in.  And it is this outfit which apparently spawned the craze of dressing children in sailor outfits.

One of the royal barges

We also went to the Royal Observatory, which is up the hill. There was a house there set up as it was for the first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, in 1675.  Apparently he didn't get paid much by the king and so was forced to take on students, which he resented as it took time away from his research.  It's good to see that the plight of the researcher really hasn't changed much in 300 years.

There was also an exhibit on the Longitudinal problem, when sailors started to make longer and longer journeys they could tell their latitude fairly easily, the distance from the equator, but they had no way of working out their longitude, the distance east or west from where they had started. 

Queen Mary and King William Courts

Painted roof inside King William Court, with a choir rehearsing and all

An Olympic class sailing boat, weighing 127kg

In 1714 the British Parliament enacted the Longitude prize for anyone who was able to measure the longitude to an accurate degree.  The money on offer was quite large, up to 20,000 pounds for first prize.  Of course the academics at the observatory wanted to prove their stuff, so they decided to start making detailed measurements of the moon and stars, thinking that if people knew where certain stars were, and had incredibly detailed knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, they would be able to work out their longitude.  It took a self-educated carpenter to solve the problem first, he built a clock which would work on a ship.  The idea being that for every hour time difference between your home port and where you were now you had travelled about 15 degrees longitude.

The idea of the academics was that the moon moves quite quickly through the sky, in an hour it will move about half a degree, which is about it's diameter.  This means that if sailors could measure the moon's location with respect to other stars, correct for errors and compare this with a lunar table they could work out their longitude that way as well.

Dave outside the Cutty Sark

At the Observatory they also have a meridian line set up, and everyone has to queue if they want to get their photo taken with it.  Pretty weird, since it is a completely arbitrary line, and if you walk outside the observatory you are still able to cross from one side to the other.

Cymbeline

There's some sort of London festival on at the moment, I think it's a bit of a combination of the Queen's 60th Jubilee and the Olympics, but they are trying for a variety of different arts events at the moment.  One of which seems to also be a Shakespeare festival, a festival within a festival, London does do some crazy things.  We went along to one of the performances, it was of Cymbeline, which is one of his very early plays, had some classic Shakespeare themes, star-crossed lovers, women dressing as men, that sort of thing.  But the reason perhaps that this performance made it into the festival roster was that it was performed by a Japanese troupe.  When I booked I thought it was a dance company, and that the play would be intermingled with Japanese dancing.  Turned out they weren't going to do any dancing that night, it was just straight up Shakespeare, just all in Japanese.  So you just ended up reading a play really.

The thing I find with Shakespeare is that it needs judicious editing, especially around the ending.  Perhaps it was because it was one of his first plays, but they sometimes seem to drag on a bit.  I think modern audiences kind of get the old actor-in-disguise thing and it doesn't need to be padded out so much.  Just get them to confess all at once and be done with it, rather than an interminable round of people saying "ah ha, you thought I was a man, when in fact I am your sister".