Hampstead in Winter

The street up to the heath

We had a bit of snow in London this winter, it's hard to decide if there is more than last year, it seemed to melt faster than last year, but perhaps it was deeper.  It's always nice to have a snow weekend, it was just the perfect amount, not too much to cause complete shutdown in London, but enough that you could build snowmen and throw snowballs.

The day after it had snowed all night we headed up to the Heath.  I was excited because it meant we could try out our microspikes for the first time since I'd bought them at Christmas.  They are like mini-crampons that you put over your boots, very easy to get on and off, it's basically just a rubber band you stretch over the boots.

They were really good, I'm so glad I got them, we were walking all over the place, and it was as if there wasn't even any snow, like you were just walking on dry dirt.

A red-robin, posing for me

In fact they were so good that I had to take them off to check that the snow was in fact slippery, because it was impossible to tell with the spikes on.  They did get a bit clogged every now and again, which was a funny feeling as you were then walking on basically a big ice ball, so that reduced the stability, but a quick bang and you were right to go again.  I was impressed at the runners I saw out, since they didn't seem to be wearing any spikes, they were obviously a lot more sure footed then me.

Don't worry, this tree had already fallen over before the snow

A winter wonderland

One thing I really like about the British is that they are great hobbyists, and nobody looks twice at you for practising your hobby, so we were out with our spikes, other people were out skiing, some had their nordic walking poles out, and there was no agro to be seen.  Everyone was just enjoying the snow in their own way.

Even the ponds were frozen in the heath, and the birds were enjoying standing on the water.  I'm not sure how they manage it, as they would stand right on the edge with the water, and I really don't know how the ice was thick enough to support them.

I was hoping to see a few dogs swimming, but for once it was even too cold for them.

It was total chaos up on Parliament Hill, this is obviously the place to toboggan in London, it is a pretty perfect place for it.  So it seemed that the kids had come from far and wide to partake.

The snowy expanses of the heath

Living here I have wondered why it feels warmer when it snows, you would think it only snows when it's really cold.  But I have since learnt that warm air can hold more moisture than cold air, so when warm, moist air hits cold, dry air, the excess moisture has to be released, which it does through snowing.  So the snow doesn't cause the warm air, the warm air causes the snow.  I'm sure this is something school kids learn here in primary school, but growing up in the tropics, I never really needed to learn about what caused snow.

Pandemonium on Parliament Hill

In Bruges

The canals were so pretty

We took the Eurostar to Brussels one weekend, a bit different from the standard Parisian trip on the 'star, but no further time-wise.  I'd never been that excited to go to Belgium, in fact this was the first time I ever visited.  I'm not sure why, maybe it was the European parliament or the inability for the country to form government, it just never seemed that exciting.  And whilst the excitement levels were low on this trip, the beauty stakes were pretty high.  As were the friendli-ness stakes.  We spent a day in Bruges, I love how the Flemish (or Dutch or whatever it is) say Bruges, they call it Brug-GAH, with a really hard g, so different to the French pronunciation.  They are always going to have trouble forming stable government if they can't even decide on the proper pronunciation of their own cities.

Everywhere you looked you had to take another shot

There are going to be a lot of canal shots

But anyway, the only things you need to know about Bruges are the chocolate and the lace, both of which are sold in every second shop.  It must be some city-planning law, you cannot walk 50m without either a chocolate shop or a lace shop.  Sometimes even both.  Luckily the chocolate was delicious, if there's one thing I take with me from Belgium, it's the slightly sick feeling of too much sugar.  Within 10 minutes of getting of the train, we were already scoffing our first bag of handmade, Belgian chocolates, and we didn't let up much for the rest of the day.

I would put Bruges up there with Venice or Amsterdam, not as spectacular as Venice, but definitely as pretty as Amsterdam, and more compact too, with possibly fewer tourists.  And the people were so incredibly friendly, I couldn't get over that, they were like big friendly Vikings or something.  In that their exterior was a little bit intimidating, but then they opened their mouths.  Perhaps it's all the beer and chocolate that keeps everyone so happy.  Normally in such a tourist town you would expect almost universally surly service.  Everyone knows they don't rely on repeat customers, so why bother keeping anyone happy.  And yet not once did it feel like that, perhaps they were still screwing us over, but the important thing is that it didn't feel like they were.

The canals with the dozens of tour boats

The brick spire of the Church of Our Lady

There aren't a heap of museums or anything to see in the town, it is pretty, and almost around every corner is another photo opportunity.  But there isn't much in the way of historical or art museums.  Perhaps it's a factor of them always having been mainly a merchant city.  But so long as they keep serving their delicious moules-frites I don't care that they don't have any museums.  That's the other thing you've got to have if you go to Belgium, the fries, holy cow, I don't know what they do, but if there is a national dish (besides chocolate) it has to be the fry.  Unbelievable.  You would think there can't be that much difference in fries, but lets just say I don't think McDonald's is ever going to get a strong hold in Belgium.  There is a galaxy of difference between the standard Belgian fry and a Maccas one.  And the mussels, oh man, so juicy and tender, and I don't even normally like mussels, but after that weekend I am a total convert.

Canals from a boat

So really what the day was all about was walking around amazed at the beauty, stopping every now and again to eat some more or drink a beer (again awesome) whilst taking a few photos.  We did try for a few museums.  There was a chocolate one, which seems a bit of a given in Belgium.  That was slightly strange.  It went through the life-cycle of cocoa and had these weird paper-mache exhibits.  And then at the end they give you some chocolate.

The Madonna of Bruges

In one of the churches they have a statue by Michelangelo, the Madonna of Bruges, it is thought to be the only sculpture that left Italy during his lifetime.  Unfortunately ever since that crazy Hungarian-Australian geologist attacked the Pieta in St Peters all these Madonna sculptures are now behind bullet-proof glass and you have to stand 10 metres away.  Which is disappointing.  It is so obviously a class above all the other sculptures in Bruges, noticeably so. I guess you can't blame them for wanting to protect their star.

Other than the Michelangelo sculpture, there's not a lot else.  They have the second tallest brick tower in the world, at 122m it's a lot of brick.  They have the chocolate museum, a fries museum, a diamond museum, a lace museum, a museum on the history of artificial lighting and an archers museum.  But not a lot on the history of the town, or much in the way of art.  You kind of feel that the lighting museum is clutching at straws.

The main square

A boat cruise on the canals is quite good and about the only real tourist thing to do.  It would have been nice if the tour was a bit longer, and that you went a bit further afield, but you very much stay in the centre of the town, even though Bruges is actually on the coast, you wouldn't know it from the tour.

What can I say, go, but don't take too full a stomach with you, as you will be feasting all day.

New Forest

One of the many ponies - all fluffy in the cold weather

It wasn't just Stonehenge that we saw whilst we were visiting Salisbury.  We hired a car and drove through New Forest to the coast.  Salisbury is actually really close to the coast.  And this area is definitely worth a day in itself.  I didn't appreciate this before I visited but in the New Forest it seems all manner of normally domesticated animals roam free.  Mainly ponies, but there were also pigs, deer and donkeys as well.

This one really wanted food, all it got from me was a pat

And when I say mainly ponies there would be thousands of them.  Everywhere you go there are more ponies.  You aren't meant to feed them, but you can certainly tell that in the more popular spots in the forest they are used to serious amounts of human attention.  I wonder if they ever do some sort of pony round up, just to stop them completely decimating the vegetation, or invading the nearby villages and eating all the flowers.

A pony being shy

Even though it is called New Forest, it was created as a royal forest by William the Conqueror all the way back in 1079.  It was new at the time I suppose, because at that point the local peasants were allowed to hunt in it.  Once it became a royal forest, no more hunting allowed.  Like all national parks in England it has seen human intervention for hundreds of years, so isn't really as wild as you may imagine something with forest in it's title should be.  But I suppose for it's location, in that incredibly dense area of south-east England, it's doing pretty well.  It would be cool to head back here in summer sometime and try and head further into the forest, away from the roads, just to see how wild it really gets.  Apparently you are allowed to walk anywhere you want, sometimes there may be signs up asking you not to disturb rare birds, but that's about it.  It's also meant to be the largest area of unenclosed pasture in the country, but I'm not really sure what that means, since I definitely saw a number of fences on my day through there.

We even got a proper sunset for once

There is also a deer feeding area, that looked like the main tourist area, apparently the rangers feed the deer everyday there during summer.  Not so much in winter though, so there were very few deer to be seen.  I managed to get one blurry shot on massive telephoto zoom, but it wasn't up to this blog's standard so you don't get to see it :).  One other slightly morbid tourist site is that Alice Liddell, the Alice from Alice in Wonderland, is buried in the graveyard in Lyndhurst, the main gateway to the forest.  We didn't know this when we visited though, so were more taken by the tarot card reading going on in the carpark.

The sun setting over the sea - not something I see that often

Salisbury Cathedral - with added Magna Carta

Once we had our fill of big trees and ponies we left the forest for the sea.  We popped out near Lymington, which is actually incredibly close to the Isle of Wight.  I don't think I appreciated how close that island is to the mainland, but really it's just a good freeze away from still being connected.  So we got to sit there looking out over the Solent and for once the sun set over sea.  And since it was only about 4pm when it set, we could get back to Salisbury in plenty of time for our awesome meal of scallops and pork belly.

After our trip to the Stones the next day we had a little more time to check out the town before having to head back to London.  The most famous thing about Salisbury (apart from Stonehenge obviously) is the cathedral and the copy of the Magna Carta it contains.  This version is one of the four remaining ones written in 1215, and is the best preserved.  And it really is very well preserved, it looks like it was written yesterday, there's not even much of that tea staining effect you get in old documents.

I love me some cloisters

The cathedral is 750 years old and has the tallest spire in Britain, which is a little mind-blowing (the 750 years old thing).  On the tour to Stonehenge the guide gave us a bit of info when we drove back to town, pointing out Sting's house and where Madonna bought a house and then incited the wrath of the British rambler by trying to get a right-of-way moved.  Let's just say you don't want to take on the might of the British rambler, even if you are Madonna.

He also pointed out where the local "eccentric" lives.  She is a Dame or something and keeps camels.  In the nativity play one year, she decided she wanted to have her camel walk down the aisle as well, and since she is the local aristocracy she gets to do what she wants.  In the end the camel got to the font in the middle of the church and decided it was a bit thirsty.  It hasn't been invited back since.