Early autumn holiday, 19 September 2023

Montagu, near Laon

We didn't hurry this morning; the Swan Whisperer went to get croissants and a lovely fresh baguette for breakfast, and after it he emptied the loo and the grey, although he didn't bother taking on any more water as we already had plenty. 

We decided to drive most of the way on the motorway, as it would have been much slower on non--toll roads. However, first we went to the Auchan on the outskirts of Calais and I did a shop and the SW tried to buy gas, but neither he nor the cashier could make the cage open, so he gave up and had coffee instead. 

After that, it was a matter of driving along a rather dull motorway. We stopped for lunch in a service area, and then didn't stop again until we came off the motorway when the SW made another attempt to get gas, this time successfully.

It was not long after that that we arrived at this France Passion farm, where we were warmly welcomed. The shop won't be open until tomorrow morning, but we hope to buy some charcuterie there. And maybe some eggs and some farm honey, we'll see what they have. 

Madame warned us that she closed the main gate at night, but didn't say what time, so the SW was reluctant to go for a walk in case he got locked out. We plan to have a walk tomorrow morning before we head on. He lay on his bed and read, and I did a tai chi practice, read and knitted, and then got supper, which was pre-prepared kidneys in madeira sauce, new potatoes and carrots, followed by the most delicious chocolate mousse with raspberries on the bottom. And I treated us to patisseries for lunch as it was the first full day of the holidays!

Early autumn holiday, 18 September 2023

Calais, Rue d'Asfeld motor home park

One reason why I was a little stressed when the trains went wrong yesterday was because I knew there wouldn't be much time to unpack and repack before heading off again this morning. 

I had done as much packing as I could before I went to Bradford, but still had to sort out my overnight bag, and decide what knitting, etc, I wanted to take with me. And pack the second crate with stuff we needed until the last minute - tea bags, coffee (which I nearly forgot)), Marmalade, etc. And even then there seemed to be an awful lot of things to pack into various nooks and crannies. And I regretted not having packed the tomato chutney when we had our belated dinner! 

We finally set off at about 10:45 and half an hour later - not that we had gone that far as the traffic was terrible due to a road closure and the new LTNs - had to turn sadly back as the Swan Whisperer had left his phone behind. However, we arrived in Sussex at about 12:45, just in time for lunch. After which I went to sleep, but the SW was very energetic getting the motor home, transferring stuff from the car, unpacking that which needed to be unpacked, etc. 

We left Sussex at about 16:40 and had an uneventful journey to Folkestone, arriving at the terminal in time to be offered a crossing an hour earlier than the one we had booked on. So we said yes please, and went straight through passport control, etc, and only had to wait a very few minutes in the holding pens. An uneventful crossing, during which we finished unpacking, and then we drove to this aire in Calais, which is pretty busy, and the Swan Whisperer got supper, which we have now eaten and are about to have a cup of tea before going to bed! 

I haven't taken any photos today, so here is one of the cream tea I had on Saturday. 

Saltaire and Haworth

This weekend I'm in Bradford for the New Chalet Club Annual General Meeting. As they try to do every other year, but for obvious reasons haven't been able to do since 2019, it is a residential weekend.

I came up by train from London yesterday, changing at Leeds, although I had to use Plan B and go to Bradford Interchange rather than Plan A to Bradford Forster Square (which is next door to the hotel) due to a signal failure. However, it is only a short walk from Bradford Interchange.

Always lovely to meet old friends and make new ones on the Friday evening, and today was the planned excursions. 

In the morning we went to Saltaire, the model village created by Titus Salt, and specifically the New Mill,

as they call it, now a Venue with an art gallery, café, and various shops - antique, jewellery, expensive outdoor wear, books and stationery, that sort of thing. I had a cup of coffee and then went up to the top floor where there was a history of the place, and also a film about Sir Titus, as he became, and how he really did try to make his workers' lives better! Mind you, he was very against drunkenness, and did not allow a pub in the village (the one on the main drag is called "Don't tell Titus"!), but did build an Institute where people could go in the evenings for classes or to socialise and play games, etc. 

All very interesting, but I wanted to go to a craft shop that was just near where we were to get the coach, and time was getting on, so I came away and went to the craft shop, where I got what I wanted. The woman running the shop was lovely, but very slow, and I was nearly late back!

We ate our packed lunches on the bus, like a pack of schoolgirls rather than the pensioners that a majority of us are, and soon arrived in Haworth. It was a long, hard pull up to the village from the coach park, but I managed far better than I expected! 

First port of call was the church, which was lovely, and there was a memorial poster about Patrick Brontë, the father, who seems to have been a lovely person! You get the impression that he was a strict, joyless type, but not at all - he campaigned for better conditions for those in the workhouses, etc, and preached a God of love, not fear.

But the church was lovely anyway! I loved the Communion table and the mosaic thing of the Madonna and child near the font (apparently made out of toast!). 

Then it was time to visit the Old Parsonage Museum, which was pretty much as you might expect it to be, but still interesting. And then I walked down to look at the rather twee shops and found some of our party having a cream tea in a café, so treated myself to one, too,

and then, as we were all tired, went back to the coach to await the rest of the party.

Back to Bradford, and I nipped into the mall across the street from the hotel as I needed to go to Superdrug - gf course went in the wrong entrance for it and had to walk all round before I found it. Now back at the hotel and resting before changing for our formal dinner. Tomorrow is the AGM and Book Sale, and then back to London before heading off again on Monday morning! 

Out and About

The best day of the summer so far - and according to the weather forecasters, it will be the only one - so we thought we had better make the most of it!

The Swan Whisperer wanted to visit the new Battersea Power Station, so we caught a P5 up there; to be honest, I didn't think much of it - it's just an expensive shopping mall with extortionate restaurants! 

(Not my photo, by the way!) We had a look round, but then came away and had lunch in Wagamama.  I had suggested having lunch there the other day, but the Boy said it wasn't nearly as nice as it used to be - and he's quite right, it isn't!  And about twice the price it used to be, too - but they still do free green tea, which I do like.  

After which, we went to catch a bus to Clapham Junction as the Swan Whisperer needed new sandals and trainers and that is now our nearest branch of Clark's.  Of course, the nearest bus stop was closed, so we had to walk to the next one, but that didn't matter.  

Shoe-shopping successfully accomplished - I saw a pair of good winter shoes I rather coveted, so I might go back tomorrow, especially as I have a £10 Asda voucher to spend, although I couldn't be bothered to go to Asda today - we walked down to the ice-cream shop and I treated us to a cone each.  And then a bus home!  Not a massively exciting day, but at least different!

Young V&A and 10 Ages of London

The Museum of Childhood at Bethnal Green is an old friend - we've taken the Boys at least twice.  But it has now reopened after having been closed for two years, now calling itself  Young V&A and I, for one, wanted to see what they had done to it.  The Boys are probably a bit old for it now - they are 13 and almost 10, but I thought, well, we can always snark....

We had originally been going to meet them at Liverpool Street Station at 11:20, but their mother said she'd gathered you really needed to be there before 11 if you weren't going to have to queue for hours, so we met them at 10:20 (the time their train comes in on the Overground) instead, and went straight to the Central Line for the one stop to Bethnal Green.  There was no queue to get in, but we were very glad we had gone so early, as on our way out, at nearly noon, the queue snaked about round the block!

The Swan Whisperer was desperate for coffee, so we went to the museum café first of all, and he and the Boys all had coffee while I, adequately caffeinated for one day, had fizzy water.  Then we set off to explore - the first gallery we went to was aimed at children learning their letters and colours.  Round the other side of that floor, there were a lot of familiar exhibits, mostly with rather dumbed-down captions, inviting visitors to imagine they were doing thus and so.   The Rachel Whiteread dolls houses are still there, in a section called "Small Worlds", and I think the original ones - the ones that used to be in the V&A until the 1970s - were still there, but I didn't see them.  There were also Sindys and Barbys, and lots of other dolls and miniature things.

Then we went up to the second floor where they had the Design Galleries, aimed slightly more at people the Boys' age; this had a lot of seemingly random things, but grouped by type - shedloads of scooters, including a Microscooter that had a built-in suitcase!  Then all kinds of other design objects, from clothes to toothbrushes!  The Boys were beginning to flag by then and needing what they will insist on calling "the bathroom" - I enquired whether they planned to have a bath!  We eventually all used the facilities and came away, very glad that we had gone so relatively early.  

It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, and certainly looks fresh and new, with a more airy feel to it.  I think I should like to go back on my own one day in term time so that I can take as long as I want to look at things.

The Boy had asked if we could have lunch in Spitalfields Market, so we got a bus there, and spent awhile wandering around the market and deciding what to eat.  Finally we settled on the pasta restaurant that Boy Two said he'd been to before and really liked, and after filling up on pasta, we went to find the place where they were doing rolled ice-cream, which the Boy badly wanted to try (so did I!); I did a video of one being made which I'll post on Facebook.  It was fun to watch the ice cream being made, but really, when push came to shove, it was just rather good ice-cream, really!

We then had to decide how to spend the afternoon.  I had read about a walk called the 10 ages of London and we decided to do that.  A quick bus down to London Bridge started the walk in prehistory - only the Thames is left from then, and it was very different.  Then the Romans - we enjoyed seeing where the Roman bridge was, and a model of the mediaeval bridge in the church of St Magnus the Martyr - there was also a piece of wood that they think was part of the original bridge and whose tree would have been alive in Jesus' day!  We walked past the office building that contains the Roman baths - not available to visit today - and up to All-Hallows-by-the-Tower  where we admired the Saxon arch. 

On past St Olave's with its three skulls above the gateway (mediaeval),

and then to St Andrew Undershaft for the Tudors.  

A brisk walk then, past Fenchurch Street station (none of us had been there before, and I was gutted that my photo of it didn't come out) and across Eastcheap to Pudding Lane (both the Boy and I wanted to call it Pudding Mill Lane, but that is somewhere different!) where the Great Fire of London infamously broke out, and out the other end to Monument.  This, of course, was the Stuart era.  

The guided walk suggested going on down to find the only pub that is said to have survived the Great Fire (and, of course, the Blitz), but both Boy Too and I had Had Enough by then, so we decided Monument would have to Do for the Stuarts, and we ended up walking up King William Street to the Bank junction, where we could see the Mansion House (Georgian) and the Royal Exchange (Victorian), and we decided that we had seen more than enough 20th- and 21st-century buildings to count!  So we got on a bus back to Liverpool Street Station, where we got some refreshments and then met the Daughter for a quick cup of tea before she took the Boys home, and we wearily clambered on to the next homebound 35.  Both of us fell asleep on the bus, and how the Swan Whisperer thinks he'll have the energy to go to dance club, I do not know!

Meanwhile, I have never put quite so many links in one blog post before!  There will be more photos on Facebook.

70th birthday trip, Tuesday 27 June; travel day 14/15

So, it's over! We are home. I think I'm glad to be home, but I'm tired tonight. I've done the bare minimum of unpacking - everything else can wait till the morning!

We enjoyed our breakfast in the hotel this morning - pretty standard, really. Why do they all (except the one in Budapest) have identical coffee machines? Anyway, our train was at 10:36, but because it had taken half an hour to get from the station the previous day, we ordered a taxi for 09:45, and, of course, it only took ten minutes to get back to the station! Ah well!

The train, miraculously, was on time and we arrived in Köln at noon. We put our luggage in the consigne and headed out to the Cathedral which looms over the station. When we had looked round there, we wandered down to the river

and then through part of the old town, stopping to have lunch (Currywurst for the SW, plain Bratwurst for me) in a random café. As we weren't too sure how long it would take to retrieve our luggage, we headed back a little before we need have done.

The left-luggage system is very clever - you go to a locker, tell it how long you want it for: up to 2 hours, up to 24 hours, longer... and it tells you how much to pay, which you can do by cash or card, then the locker door opens and you put your stuff inside, and it issues you a ticket and a receipt. But the clever part is that the whole locker then moves down to a storage area, so when you come to retrieve it, you can go to any locker door, insert your ticket, and it brings your stuff up just as you put it in! Takes a minute or two, but that's all.  You don't have to remember your locker number or passcode like you had to in Copenhagen, which was the only other place we availed ourselves of such facilities (in Budapest, we just put our cases in the hotel luggage room, and they didn't even charge us!). 

Anyway, eventually we got on the Brussels train, and then there was more time to hang about until it was time for the Eurostar. I do wish one could rely on German trains to be on time, as we could have had much shorter connections, although perhaps not in Köln, as we like it there. 

They feed you on the Eurostar if you're in Standard Premier. The choice was between chicken salad, which the SW chose, and a falafel, hummus and quinoa salad, which I chose, which was very nice, although the falafel were a bit dry. This was followed by a very nice lemon tart. The SW had wine, and I had lemonade, which was Fever Tree and very nice, for a change. Not too sweet. 

And then a horribly hot Victoria Line  and a bus, and home. 

70th birthday trip, Monday 26 June; travel day 13/15

Today was the last full day of our holiday. We were certainly not going to have breakfast in the hotel - CHF 27 per person!! But last night we had noticed a little bakery-cum-café across the road which looked as though it would do breakfasts, so went to explore this morning, and not only got some extremely good muesli and coffee, but also salads for lunch. The muesli came with a roll and butter, and we saved those for lunch, too.

There was a church clock which chimed every 15 minutes, but not between 22:00 and 07:00. However, at 07:00 it made up for the night's silence by ringing a peal of bells! Nice to wake up to! So after breakfast we wandered down to the church to have a look. I couldn't, however, take any photos of the interior as it was being used for a rehearsal - I assume by a local school, but with an orchestra of older people. We watched for a few minutes, and it looked good, with actors, dancers and gymnasts all aged about 10 or so.

Then it was time to check out of the hotel and head to the station for our train to Mannheim. Which was actually going to Hamburg via Köln - we could have gone straight to Köln and spent the night there. But we didn't. 

We had lovely seats on the train, in the panorama carriage, opposite one another. The only thing is they didn't recline and there was no footrest, bit still reasonably comfortable. And great views. 

We took a taxi to the hotel as it was further from public transport than I'd thought. It's not the nicest hotel - they only give you one duvet between two people, which I suppose is all right in the summer, but how on earth do people manage in the winter? It's literally the only place in this entire trip that hasn't had two duvets! Also only one pillow each, but a lovely and thick one so I haven't bothered to ask for another. And no, there were none in the wardrobe - we looked! Also no kettle or fridge, but not all hotels supply these.

The hotel recommended an Italian restaurant next door, which gave 10% off your main course if you flashed your room key. The SW had pizza, and I had a rather spicy pasta with crayfish, followed by ice cream which wasn't nearly as nice as the stuff we had at the Achensee.

One really nice thing about this hotel is that it faces on to the Rhein, so we have a lovely view from our room.