Barry in Europe

Don’t panic – it is just for a week! Tuesday I had my bookclub – more than 30 of us showed up. This time, I’d read the book, Brady Udall's The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, so could participate properly. I’m not sure how it happened, but I was talking to this American beside me during the break, and she asks “what do you teach?” ... “aren’t you a professor?” This confused me, as I don’t think I’d shared that information with her – turns out that unlike everyone else, who thinks my beard means I’m homeless, she thought it meant I was a professor. Nice lady! Very nice, actually.

I had yet another play to go to, this time down in London so off I went on Wednesday afternoon to see Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, set in 1930’s Ireland (featuring one Andrea Corr (of the Corrs) and Niamh Cusack) and loosely based on Chekhov’s Three Sisters which, oddly enough I saw in Dublin many years ago and featured Niamh Cusack (along with her two actual sisters). The story was pretty much “its tough to be five single girls of a certain age in 1930’s Ireland, made worse when your near mad brother who is a priest but has lost his faith, become a pantheist, has just come back from Uganda” but I really enjoyed the fact that it was performed in the round – I was sitting one row back from where quite a lot of the action took place. The one odd thing was that they had a narrator, the son of one of the sisters, looking back from years later, odd because (a) he told a lot of the story that then was played out on stage anyway and (b) his younger self was part of the play, but instead of having a young boy play him, he provided the voice but was effectively off stage. But lots of fun, particularly when Gerry (father of the young boy and a charming but useless larrikan) is around. Lughnasa, by the way, is not a place, it is a pagan harvest festival.

So, again because of the night train being cheap, I had a working day in London, in the Westminster Reference Library, a nice quiet place and close enough to a particular hotel that I could use their wireless internet. Thanks. I had planned to go back to the French place I enjoyed so much last time I was in London, but was distracted by a coffee shop, from the window of which I spied a particularly busy Malaysian cafe across the road – very nice food and a constant turnaround of happy customers. That left only time for a leisurely visit to Foyles and it was time to wander off and catch my 10:00 train.

Dinner was also the highlight of my Friday – I went to this Chinese restaurant near the station. Even though its name (Red Chilli) made me think it would not be up to much, it had fantastic duck pancakes – a huge mound of duck meat, cucumber juliennes and some other unidentified vegetable; that was just my starter! I went home very replete indeed.

After spending most of Saturday at work, it was time to go.

Reading: very little, just the first chapter of Watchmen, the graphic novel put out in the 1980’s which has just been made as a film, one salon.com at least rates very highly. This is my very first graphic novel, and I find it an odd experience as it has a number of story lines, with the text from some running into the pictures from a different storyline, i.e. character a and b might be talking, we see them doing so in one box, but then in the next box, we see characters c and d doing whatever, but still get the speech bubbles from a and b. A bit freaky, but it produces interesting resonances. Making a film of it could be a challenge!

My reason for coming to Manchester was a play on, in a theatre in the basement of the library – Sir Tom Stoppard’s Rock’n’Roll. It ran from 1968 to 1989, basically taking a prominent song from each year, and then having a couple of vignettes of life in the characters in that year. For those who don’t know, the significance of these years is that it represents the period the former Czechoslovakia was under communist rule. In England, we have old Max who is still committed to the communist cause, whereas back in Czechoslovakia, we have Jan who is ostensibly a communist but really only believes in rock’n’roll and the freedom to choose your own hair length. Both see him imprisoned under the communist regime. He would far rather live in Cambridge. So, there was a fair amount of politics in the play, and a bit of satire on what the freedoms of the UK have come to, but there was also lots of fun as well, and, of course, musical references – particularly Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett, the Rolling Stones (the climax of the play is when the Rolling Stones get to play Prague) and an obscure Czech band called Plastic People of the Universe, who are invested with huge symbolic value as intensely engaged with the battle for freedom. It is the kind of play I’d like to see again, or at least read its script, because it was fairly intense.

Going home, I had the pleasure of watching a group of young men give one particular young man a good kicking, to the point he wasn’t moving. The locals in the kebab shop with me simply commented “man down” as if this is routine for Saturday night in Manchester. To add spice, there was a major altercation in the hostel – some fellow who hadn’t checked in or paid still couldn’t understand that he couldn’t come in and hang out, wanted to tell the fellow on duty his life story. Things must have got sorted out – about three he came into my room.

Sunday, I went back to MOSI and had a good mosey. I struck it lucky – they have all the machinery of a textile factory onsite,

and I was there when they had it all going and made some calico from raw cotton. At least three words we might use today were explained as coming from the lingo used in textiles: trash is the bits of fluff that come off when raw cotton is first cleaned, then shoddy is the cotton strands not long enough to be used. Cotton gets incorporated into long soft ropes which are put into cans for transfer to the looms - the person who does this, guess what, carries the can.

Apparently in a big Manchester textile factory, they’d have 50 times the machines that are in MOSI and they’d be three times as big as this one

The John Rylands Mill at Ainsworth, for example, had 600 looms. Wow! (He was the biggest employer in England at the time.)

Here is a wee clip of it working - one of the most dangerous jobs in the factory was held by the fellow who had to nip in and sweep before it completed its cycle

The main function of the museum was to show how important Manchester was to the industrial development of England and the world - the planes I posted yesterday were all built near Manchester. Something else built here was the first stored programme computer - it doesn't look much like a MacBook!

Even earlier was the differential analyser, which I can't even begin to understand; all I could understand was that the fellow who made it was inspired by the loom

As part of the museum, they have the oldest surviving railway station in the UK, although the building has mostly been turned into a container for museum displays, rather than set up as a railway station. There was a wee train

I don’t know how they did it, but they even had smells appropriate for the displays – which I first noticed when I went into the sewage and toilet area. I was amused by the story of a pretty huge scam wrought upon the good people of Manchester in around 1810; they gave a contract to some peeps to lay water pipes. The Manchester and Salford Waterworks company decided upon stone pipes knowing that when water was run through them, they wouldn't hold the pressure. No worries, because they laid the various streets in stages and then found out that they didn't actually connect with each other.

One sequence of displays I liked was showing the development of the kitchen thanks to more sophisticated electrical products
1930

1950

1970

This took much of the day, so I didn’t get to do much shopping, although I found that some of Manchester’s musical heritage is still in place – four local record shops are still going strong, and then there is this magnificent emporium run by a couple of old geezers,

Found a cool place for dinner, an underground noodle bar called either Tampopo or Tampopa, depending on what you looked at (“Manchester’s first and still by far the best” according to the quote from the Guardian plastered over the entrance) – big long shared tables, one of the best Pad Prik Gai’s I’ve had in years, with big juicy rings of chilli and Beer Lao. The staff made the place – very sociable, even if it meant they might spend five minutes yakking to a customer or each other.

Saw a French film in the evening, The Class, which took in a group of real school kids, 13 – 15. It is billed as fiction, based on a novel, but felt much like a documentary. No one involved was an actor - the teacher was played by the novelist (who had been a teacher) and then the kids were just regular school kids, although from various ethnic groups. It seemed pretty real to me – culminating in a big bust up in class, which saw one fellow expelled after he lost his temper and another student was injured. The most interesting feature for me was how teacher was always right, even though he was obviously in the wrong – starting the row by calling two of the girls skanks (or "putains" in French, which is rather less ambiguously inappropriate).

I scored a £4.50 ticket back home, but only by taking a night train so spent Monday working in Manchester – first in its public library, then in the John Rylands library, set up by his widow to remember him.

Curiously enough, I “know” John Rylands

in the sense that I have been teaching something involving him for years - he had a bit of a dispute with the neighbour about some water that escaped.

Wandeing around Manchester, I found another building that was as inconguous as the Hilton,


even more so when you know it is the Civil Justice Centre (courthouse to the rest of us) - it has the largest suspended glass wall in Europe. It is a little unfortunate; as I was walking around the end, it looked for all the world that the building was covered in scaffolding, which is not a good look.

Reading this week was Richard Powers’ The Echo Maker, which was only really alright. I’ve managed to collect several of his works on the strength of people raving about him, but this is the first book by him I have actually read. It starts with a major car crash – who or what caused it is a mystery which develops throughout. But it has an odd consequence for the driver; he wakes up with unimpaired memory, but when he sees his sister, he does not match her with his memory of her and thus thinks she’s an imposter. Maybe the slightest physical change from what he remembers does it, but he doesn’t forget all – just his sister, his dog and his house. The last two, he can accept as replacements, but not his sister – so he’s always asking “what have they done with her, where is she...”. This freaks the poor sister out no end, so that she doubts her own reality. Into this comes the celebrity shrink, he really does get involved at first just to have fodder for a new book, and has a bit of a melt down when he realises how far he has gone from the idea of heeler. Meanwhile, xxx is getting worse, thinking there is some huge conspiracy against him. As a counterpoint are the cranes which, despite having bird brains, can remember enough to navigate half way around the world every six months.

A fairly quiet week. Tuesday I went home relatively early, as my plan is to have at least one meal a week in Lichfield. This time it was in a Mediterranean restaurant called Ego, which served up the most delicious shrimps I’ve ever had. I don’t even know what inspired me to get them, as I’m not a great fan as I tend to find them pretty insipid in relation to the effort required to get them out of their shells. These were already shelled, juicy and very tasty. So was the main, a Moroccan lamb dish on couscous – unfortunately there was not a huge amount of it.

On Wednesday I had another night in yet another hotel in Wolverhampton, the former Quality Hotel, suddenly not because the Quality Hotel brand holding company went bust. Quite a pleasant spot. This time I was in town because I wanted to see kiwi singer Ladyhawke, who was playing support for Brit band of the moment The Ting Tings at the Civic. At the door I asked when things were starting, as I’d not eaten, and was told “they come on at 9:30”. Turns out she was either malicious or thought I’d said “Tings” when I asked when things were started, because when I got back, Ladyhawke was well into her set and VV Brown had come and gone. I have no idea what I missed by not seeing her, but Ladyhawke was doing a pretty standard rock show. A couple of the most catchy songs on my radio are Ting Ting songs, and they did put on a good show – a fairly quirky, energetic sound from just the two of them.

Thursday was another drinking session with my temporary colleagues and a bunch of PhD students in the campus bar, which stuffed up my eating plan completely – I had to make do with yet another ham and cheese baguette from the station. But I was able to put the plan into action on Friday. I don’t quite know what got into me – I was working on a piece that needed quite concentrated thought to get straight, so worked a bit late. I was very surprised to be sitting in Strada, this restaurant the Guardian said had fantastic pizzas and see that it was 10:30! My last train is at 11:15 and I’d not yet received my food, so I was a little worried. But all went well, and the pizza was very good, so I went home happy.

Not so happy in the morning, but. An early start on the bike to get to the station in order to be in town for an 8:00 train to Manchester. Found the hostel, which is right beside one of the canals

One of the sights that dominates Manchester (and gives a good landmark) is the Hilton, which is the tallest residential building in the UK. It makes for a pretty stark contrast with its surroundings:

A fellow at the hostel sent me off up the street for breakfast, walking up Deansgate, I was impressed by this building

It is the former rail goods shed, slightly renovated and turned into shops and a cinema, and presently for sale. The breakfast was as good as promised, made even better by the addition of a tea cake. Going up to pay, I was doubly bewildered. First, by the fact that the woman (who I had already noticed was aesthetically pleasing) gives me this long sustained smile that has my knees turn to water. To add to the confusion, she then starts talking to me, and what she says is absolute gibberish – she may as well have been saying bishneewahpoopoo for all I could extract from what she was saying. One of us had to be mad, I decided.

Turned out, she thought I was Romanian and had been speaking to me in Romanian – all because she’d noticed some Romanian currency in my wallet. Poor girl, must have been missing home to be so keen to see a presumed countryman.

It was pretty much a weekend of wandering – through the town centre with its wonderful town hall


and circular library.



There is a downside to circular libraries - this one had fantastic acoustics, so not only could one hear a pin drop but also the echoes that reverberated around the inner sanctum. The outer ring was OK, however, and I was able to work quite peacably there. The Art Gallery was pretty standard, apart from the top floor which was given over to modern designs, particularly chairs

Yes, these are both chairs! I would have liked to have tried the one on the right. The one on the left, which looks like a pair of jeans IS a pair of jeans, but there is some sort of folding contraption contained within them that let them prop you up. Crazy! Reminds me a little of Huxley's pneumatic pants.

One of these days, I must stay in a hotel like the Midlands Hotel

Later on in the afternoon, I paid a visit to the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) – a huge five building complex near the hostel. I only made it through one – aviation.

This is a replica of the first plane to fly in the UK, made by one A V Roe, who went on to form the AVRO aeroplane company. They made this, which has to be the world's smallest airliner (it had ONE passenger seat!

AVRO did get to make bigger planes, such as the Lancaster bomber (this is actually a derivative, the Shackleton surveillance plane)


I think this might be the tiniest plane I've ever seen (and don't think I would fancy taking it up to 30,000 feet (or even 30 feet))

I did like this - I wonder if I could get my brother to make me one, it looks like fun

A couple of other random images from the aviation display and I'll stop for this post:

Saw a fairly odd movie with my film group, SMS Sugar Man, set in Johannesburg. The entire action takes place over Christmas eve – if you know that “sugar” is the term used for a prostitute in this part of the world, you’ll know a lot about the movie. Basically, the sugars are a bit disillusioned with their lot and want to quit the game. The storyline gets immensely tangled, with hits being arranged, one sugar man being set against another, two of the sugars deciding they love each other... The thing that makes this movie different is that it is the first movie released that was shot entirely on mobile phones. There were only four of us from the film group there, yet we managed to cover all bases in terms of reaction. One fellow declared it to be the worst movie he’d ever seen, which caused another member to leave because she really liked it. I thought it was trying to be too many things at once – shooting a movie on cellphone would suit one with lots of action and short takes, and it had some but also tried for high art and at times seemed to have scenes that were just for the titillation of the director.

On the Wednesday, stayed in town at the newly opened Hatter’s Hostel (voted by Hostelworld to be the best chain of hostels in the UK) but this one wasn’t up to much, too new basically. Did have an interesting encounter with my two young Spaniard room mates – they insisted on us posing for a bunch of photos (and some will know how much I hate that). The reason I’d been in town was to see Emmy the Great, at the Glee Club, which had the most noxious set of rules I’ve ever heard, including making people wait for a break in performances if they needed a toilet, and threatening all sorts of dire things to people with cameras. All of the bands made a point of mocking these. The first two bands were OK, but I was very impressed by Emmy the Great. She struck me as a folk singer, but had odd intonations and pacing of her singing – turns out she’d flirted with the anti-folk movement. But what got me was the songwriting – my only complaint is that there were too many songs to take them all in, I needed to listen to each several times but instead had another song to listen to. Easily fixed – I’ll buy the CD when I see it.

Then on Thursday, I did something that might surprise, even shock some. I bought a bicycle, a mountain bike to be more accurate. It probably won’t surprise that I bought it off Ebay, so it cost a mere 26 pound (it cost more than twice that to get helmet, lock, light etc). Two reasons – the long walk to and from the train station, and the fact that I hadn’t really sorted out very much to do for the weekend. So I decided upon a weekend in Stratford, with a trip up to Warwick to see the Castle on the Sunday – a 22 mile round trip. Went down after work on Friday, back to the YHA, had a lovely dinner at the flash country hotel across the road and was set. Saturday, I was a little disturbed by the fact I started reading the Guardian at 10:00 in the morning and didn’t finish for three hours! Pretty relaxed day all round, really.

After getting back from a wander around on the bike (and retrieving the phone I left at the RSC theatre last week), another surprise: I watched a game of rugby. England and Ireland were playing in the six nations. Not a very good game – the Irish kicker missed most of his goals, the English team did a lot of faffing about. The thing that made it particularly interesting was that we had a school group from Ireland in the hostel, and about twenty of the girls were watching the match, and giving generally insane commentary. Their theory on why England was doing so badly? The stupid level of attention they were paying to not mussing their hair. Have to say, the one time an English guy made a break for it and actually scored, his hair did move quite impressively.

Sunday was the big mission – ten miles on a B road up to Warwick. I nearly gave it up when I learnt that I could get there and back by bus for 3.50, but I went for it. I don’t even know when I was last on a bike, probably when I lived in London, so it took some adjusting – the hard seat, my general ungainliness, the quite minor hills that would dramatically retard my progress. But, although I had two stops for a breather, I biked the whole way, no walking. And I have to say, the trip was worth the effort and more, starting with lunch, one of the best pub lunches I’ve ever had, lots of lamb and seven different vegetables at the Zetland Arms in Warwick.

Then there was the castle itself,

which conformed to all my imagined castles – turrets



and walls

I was a bit daunted before starting on the walk around the walls, as there was a sign saying there were something like 600 steps. I thought there might be that many just to get to the top in one go and my heart quailed, but luckily they meant for the whole deal, and half of them were going back down.

Of course, there were dungeons, including the uber-dungeon i.e. the dungeon under the dungeon under the dungeon where they put the really bad people and forgot about them. The good old Duke of Warwick had one King in the second dungeon down (and another locked up in London somewhere): he really was the power behind the throne for quite a long time. Now the main dungeon area has been populated by wax models (the castle is run by the same people who run Madame Tussaud's), showing the various stages of getting ready to fight:

Upstairs, there were naturally some grand rooms, such as the Great Hall.

They had set things up to replicate a big dinner party that had been put on in 1898,



This sort of house is obviously good for parties of people who don't really like each other very much, as they were well spread out. Being 1898, it was a bit disconcerting to see Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth

there.

The place is HUGE, so I didn't even take photos of all the rooms, but I liked the library

and the Duke's bedroom wall


which must have taken many man hours to make.

A couple of views from the castle:

Afterwards, I was curiously reluctant to get back on the bike, so wandered the town, found a Caffe Nero, read their newspapers, so that it was after 5:00 before I left. Going back, I actually had a signed cycle path to follow, all the way back to Stratford, which I knew went near the hostel. Somehow, and I still don’t know where, I came off the cycle path and was on a normal country lane which ultimately fed into an A road i.e. one grade down from a motorway. So there I was, pitch dark, with a fairly good volume of traffic and five miles the wrong side of Stratford. I just put my head down and rode the whole way non-stop.

Dinner was in an entirely empty Chinese restaurant in a wee place called Tiddington, a ten minute walk from the even smaller place containing my hostel called Alveston. Later on, back in the hostel, things got really uncomfortable. There was this guy, I’d talked to him quite a bit, he’d even offered to share his dinner with me. We were in the TV room, and there was a woman in there – he and she got talking about music and the like, all very civil. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, but I couldn’t not when he started really laying into her, being completely abusive about her profession – she went to get the manager, he left. Not the best way to finish what had been a nice peaceful weekend in the country.

Reading this week was for next week’s book club – Brady Udall’s The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint. He is this wee native American kid who gets his head run over by an mailman’s Jeep. His mum does a runner at that point and he’s left to fend for himself – he spends a fair while in a hospital, then gets caught up in a school for the detritus of native Indian society – all the kids who have nowhere else to be, regardless of tribal affiliations are thrown into this school, and its horrible. Of course Edgar survives, but lots of terrible things happen to him and his mate, mainly by the school bully destruction testing him. Then he’s rescued by Mormons and everything is sweet for a while – but there is this character, Barry Pickney, who has been in his life ever since the accident and threatens to stuff things up badly. It is my second read of the novel, and I still love it; my favourite bit being the day he starts to use the typewriter he’s been given and learns the joy of communication.

I got back from York late on the Monday night; Tuesday afternoon I was off again. This was just an overnighter, down to Stratford-upon Avon. Some may know this as being the birthplace of a fellow who wrote the occasional play, and that is indeed why I went down. There was a performance of The Tempest put on by the RSC and I thought that since I missed out so badly with my trip to London, I owed it to myself to pop down – it is just an hour or so south of Birmingham. After finding my way to the YHA

(a 40 minute walk out of town, longer when you start to doubt that you’re heading the right way) and back into town, there was no time to spare – just a quick cake and it was time for the show.

And what a show it was, one that had people behind me expressing dismay because it didn’t exactly conform to tradition. Since I don’t think I’ve ever seen The Tempest and had only the barest idea of what it explored, I had no such problem – I thought it was fabulous.

It was a co-production with the Baxter Theatre from South Africa. Instead of a storm, the play started with a puppet sea serpent, slithering its way around the stage (it made me think of those sand-monsters in Dune). Then, later on in the play, to show the men being buffeted and when their minds get disordered, this was done by having dancers carry highly colourful puppets on sticks to stand in for the elements. So, it was a performance with lots of dance, with the dancers dressed in what I imagine to be South African attire, and lots of music and quite a bit to laugh at. Much of the action took place in a tree built at the back of the stage – Ariel in particular spent a lot of time in it, and amazed with his agility. The key characters – Prospero, Caliban and Ariel were superb – and when Caliban finally ousts Prospero from the island, it had a special resonance knowing that Caliban was played by a black South African.

After the show, I got a little confused. I saw this nice looking restaurant with several people still dining so decided to go in; I had already been given a plate of prawn crackers before I realised I had wandered into a different, and very empty, Indian restaurant which served me a very average curry (nice beer, however). In the morning, wandering through town I am sure I ran into the actors who had played Caliban and Ariel, just going for a walk like ordinary people. Instead of heading straight for the train station, I thought I might as well go look for Shakespeare’s birthplace:

I liked the library and all:

Wednesday and Thursday passed without major event, unless you count going for a couple of pints with some of my temporary colleagues after work a major event. By Friday, I was ready for another adventure, and this time I had my own wheels – I rented a car for the weekend. I had been a little worried, because I haven’t quite got the way that central Birmingham fits together straight in my head, and here I was about to drive out of central Birmingham. Sure enough, I got lost, at least in terms of following the directions I had carefully written down, but I soon started to recognise landmarks and found my way out of town. First stop was as soon as I hit the motorway – there was a service area and, as with every road trip, it was important to stock up with junk food.

The drive down was a breeze – I reckon it took me about an hour and a half to get to Bath, but then it took me another hour and a half to get into Bath and find my YHA. It is a very nice one, an “Italianate Mansion” according to the website:

Bath is very posh, so I decided to go with the flow and eat somewhere nice. I soon found myself in a quandary – the 4th best Indian restaurant in the entire UK or a Michelin starred bistro? I went with the latter, and had a marvellous meal – the entree was scallops with wonderfully tasty and tender strips of leek, then sea bass. Wandering the town afterwards, I found a pub called Flan O’Brien’s – I had to go in with a name like that, even if they had spelt it wrong.

Saturday involved a fairly high degree of geekery – the whole reason for this particular trip was the Sound and Vision show on in Bristol; I went and drooled over five hotel floors worth of hi fi and home cinema equipment, which made me want badly to set up a home cinema of my own when I get home. But that was it in terms of Bristol – I had a quick look at town and didn’t think all that much of it, so got in my motor and headed west. All the way to Cardiff (it is only 44 miles, although I did have to go over the Severn River – the new bridge is more than 3 miles long!) I’d booked in there because (a) I couldn’t get into the YHA in Bristol (just as well) and (b) I was curious as to what the River House Lodge was like, as it had just won the Hostelworld award for best hostel in the UK and fourth best in the whole world. While the physical space didn’t really suggest a world beater, the staff was fantastic and the other people staying were pretty cool.

As it happened, I didn’t get to see much of Cardiff. I wandered around on Saturday night, to find some food and a place for a pint, but on Sunday had the itch to go further west. I don’t know why, but I had a particular desire to see Tenby. Although it is only 90 miles (by motorway most of the way) and I left remarkably early, it took me ALL DAY to get there! Of course, with a town called Barry just outside Cardiff, I had to go there. Now, the guide book was not very nice about Barry and said that Penarth was much nicer, so I had to see both. Penarth town seemed OK as I drove through, and down at the beach has a nice pier


and they made me a big brekfast at a cafe I found there.When I got to Barry, I didn’t like it one bit (apart from the development of the waterfront). Most of the shops on the High Street were shuttered, and it had an unpleasant vibe so I didn’t hang around. I did kind of like this building, sitting all by itself:

But then I found Cowbridge, and (a) remembered I had actually been here before, when I lived in London and (b) liked it a lot. So I wandered the streets, taking lots of photos and drinking coffee.

Funny how quite simple things look quite different when they're in black and white. Back in the car, I meandered by as many country lanes as I could to get to Tenby and it was slow going – they were very narrow, with high hedges and little prospect of seeing oncoming traffic, plus lots of little villages to gawk at. So, yeah, it was after 4:00 before I got to Tenby, and it created another dilemma for me, because it seems even nicer than Whitby (where I plan to go for a week when I finish in Birmingham). Here is one of my first views of the water:

then looking the other way from the same point:

and just back down the street:

and around the corner

looking out to sea

and down at my feet


and back where I started

Time to go

so I had a nice feed of fish and chips, found a policeman to tell me where I might find some petrol, and it was a quick tramp back up the motorway to Cardiff, then in the morning an early start let me take the scenic route home, up through Hereford, and I was back at work before I knew it.

Reading this week was a book I picked up in Whitby, by my second-favourite travel writer, Josie Dew. She cycles and writes very engagingly of her travels – I’ve read both the books she wrote for her trips around Japan and am pretty sure I read an account of some cycling she did in the UK (but not of her trip to Eastern Europe). Last I heard of her, she was coming to New Zealand so when I saw a recent book by her, I picked it up to see what happened to that trip. Turns out she met a bloke and that changed her plans: she spent a couple of years cycling around the coast of the UK (but that somehow didn’t mean she went to Northern Ireland, and did go to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Wight).