Category Archives: UK

2017-01-09 UK

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Ryanair fly from the airport in Västerås, so we took advantage of their flights to Stanstead-London (return flight for including 20kg luggage was under AU$200 for the two of us!). We had been shown the “50p flights” video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoJEyW8hqrg) but in reality it all worked smoothly and with no surprises.

From Stanstead we headed North and spent a couple of days with my cousin Duncan near Leicester.  We enjoyed some of the local attractions including the Space Centre, which has some fine displays of space travel artifacts and historical details. Moon landings don’t seem so long ago, but the first was nearly 50 years ago.

We also went on some walks including to Foxton Locks. These are a marvel of engineering, built in the early 1800s to answer the challenge of a 23 metre height difference between two canal systems. There are 2 banks of 5 lock gates, and it takes canal boats a little over 1 h to pass through.

Around 1900 they built an inclined plane system which lifted/descended pairs of barges using steam power in about 10 minutes, considerably speeding transport of goods along the canals. Today the inclined plane is in ruins, though the locks are still working and carrying many (recreational) boats each day.

From Leicester we headed south through sometimes heavy rain to visit Jill’s cousin Robert and Sally near Southampton. It was good to share some time with them, and to explore the local sights. We spend one day in the Purbeck area.Corfe Castle sits on a small hill, beside a small town of the same name. It was built by William the Conqueror and expanded in the 12th and 13th centuries.It went through several owners over the years and around 1645 the castle was blown up using gunpowder by an order of parilament. It seems the owner of the time was on the wrong side of the civil war.

After exploring the castle and taking a walk along the local hills in a howling, icy gale, we drove down to Kimmeridge where we wandered along the beach admiring the fossils in the strata there. The fossils are there  in plenty, though ones like in the mage here are a little difficult to recover and a little too heavy to take back to Australia in our bags.

We also visited the local Bird of Prey and Reptile sanctuary. This was clearly the low-season. Jill and I were among only about a dozen visitors. We had a lot of fun getting up-close with lots of very stylish birds. The sanctuary was established when the existing, council centre for rescue of injured owls was set to close. Sadly, legal costs associated with taking over the sanctuary ate up all their financial reserves, so they are struggling to make ends meet, let alone make the needed improvements they had expected to do.

 

We next headed to West Yorkshire to visit another of Jill’s relatives. The minute we arrived we were whisked to a pub in Haworth for the prize-giving for the 11 km fell-run that Jo had just competed in (and was in line for one of the prizes).  The pub was crowded with a convivial group – it seemed that the running club is rather large and it felt like we were among a large, friendly family. Videos of the runners were playing on a large screen. We were treated to sights of hundreds of runners splashing along muddy paths and through rivers, and jumping, hopping, running, walking or (most often) slipping and sliding down steep muddy slopes. The runners in the pub were appropriately daubed with mud. The prize giving proceeded with announcement of names for each section and loading up the winners with more things than they could carry. At the end any left over chocolates etc were thrown in profusion into the audience, where they were pounced on with great delight.

Afterwards, we were treated to a tour of Haworth, home of the Bronte sisters, and an interesting country town with a very steep main street. Alas, the Parsonage Museum was closed… something to do when we are next in the neighborhood.

Over the next couple of days we  explored the local sights, including visiting Salt’s Mill. Salt’s Mill, buit by Titus Salt in 1853 was the largest industrial building of it’s day with over one million square feet of workspace, and facitites for every stage from raw wool to finished woven textiles. Titus Salt had a strong humanitarian streak, and build a suburb, Saltaire, to house the workers in, for the time, extremely good living conditions, with good sanitation and water, recreational facilities, places of worship, hospital etc. The site is well preserved and has World Heritage listing. The mill itself now houses galleries, shops, restaurants and a small museum.

We also explored Hebden Bridge and had a lovely walk through the woods to Gibson’s Mill, now housing a cafe and small museum, though we only found out about the museum after we got back (so we have another new thing we can do when we pass by in the future).

Then it was time to head south, via Leicester, and visiting another of Jill’s relatives in Cambridge en route to Stanstead, ready for our return flight.

A larger gallery of images is at https://goo.gl/photos/6C2ANvmLhibbgg618.

2018-07-20 UK & Leicester

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We had a week in Leicestershire visiting my cousin and uncle. Rather than buzzing around like busy bees, we stayed close to home and enjoyed the quiet peacefulness of the local countryside, museums, canals, meadows and woodlands. We took lots of photos of butterflies, flowers and animals, some scenery and some museum displays. Given the ongoing 30 degree plus temperatures, the locals were wilting, and the plants were mostly water stressed. It’s lucky that they don’t get the summer temperatures that we get in Melbourne (though maybe they would have air conditioning in their buildings if that were so).

I’m having technical issues with the blog website due to a change by the hosting service, that I will have to work out when I return to Melbourne – it makes adding images to a blog page challenging. So, rather than making an illustrated blog page I have annotated a gallery on google so check out the album and narrative at https://photos.app.goo.gl/yzPQ4ZyRM7HcAmU67

2019-08-13 Sweden, UK, Crete, Santorini, Athens, SriLanka

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This trip takes us to Sweden where we will visit family and enjoy the Scandinavian environs. Then we head on to the UK to visit my cousin in Leicester. From there we fly to Crete, ferry to Santorini, fly to Athens. Then we fly to Sri Lanka for a couple of weeks of touring and safaris before we return home.

The first leg, Melbourne to Sweden was tiring. The flight went via Bangkok and the plane was full. The current pro-democracy unrest in Hong Kong led to a shutdown of the airport so lots of people ended up taking flights with alternate airlines that did not go via HK, filling up any available seats.

In Bangkok we had a 3.5 h wait for our next flight. Fortunately it is a massive building so we got a little exercise on our walk to the next departure gate, and luckily we found a stretch of seats where some form of horizontality was possible.

Alas, the queue at immigration in Stockholm airport was very, very slow and by the time we had got out, the direct bus to Vasteras had gone. The next departure went via Stockholm through building morning peak hour traffic, adding an hour to the travel time. Not what we wanted. We’d assumed there were regular direct buses, but the system has changed since our last visit, and there are now fewer buses and some, as we found, take the circuitous route via the city centre.

We were very glad to get to Västerås and relax.

 

2019-08-27 UK

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After an uneventful flight we arrived in the UK, picked up a rental car, and headed south-west towards the New Forest, to visit relatives. Despite GPS we managed to miss the odd turn, and eventually arrived at School road. Alas, the wrong school road (Google maps fail!). Remarkably, for an area that is relatively well populated, there was no mobile phone coverage. Thankfully we had Open Street Maps (via the OsmAnd app on the phone — no internet needed) which had the correct school road, and we got to our intended destination soon after.

Being bank holiday Monday, there was a fair at the end of the street, so we all went there after lunch for a quick look. The cheese rolling competition demonstrated a distinct lack of skills among the populace.

And being a sweltering day (by local standards – about 30°C there was an array of gratuitously exposed flesh on display.

From the New Forest, we headed North to Leicester to stay with my cousin. Leicester is a bit off the usual tourist beat, but it is a lovely place to visit. From my couin’s place in Blaby (about 8 km south of Leicester CBD) a 5 minutes walk takes one into the countryside, with a web of footpaths and rights of way through the idyllic scenery.

Green everywhere; hedgerows; blackberries a-plenty to forage from, crops, wildflower meadows. The canals that were the major heavy transport routes that made fortunes for the investors, now provide pleasant walkways and support a busy narrow-boat population that putters around the nation at about walking pace. The railways that superseded the canals are often out of service and have become walk/cycle tracks. The local meadows and ponds have lots of dragonflies and damselflies, so you’ll see lots of photos of those in the gallery.

So here is the gallery link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/xTM1yCDwWCLKdSet8

2020-03-03 Sweden & UK

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Our original plan included a trip to northern Italy. Thanks to COVID19 spreading widely there Ryanair have cancelled our flights, so we will instead have a longer stay in the UK, which is OK as there are always lots of things to do there. (And since I first wrote this, our plan for Ireland was dashed also, by the covid pandemic, so we have had a very truncated trip)

Our initial flight took us via Doha (14 h flying) arriving at 5:20 AM with our onward flight to Stockholm scheduled for 3:40 PM, so we took the opportunity of the long transit time to visit the city. We had a very interesting 6 hours exploring a small part.

We took the brand new Metro into the city, then walked around waving our cameras at the scenery (see map below to see the small area we explored) and enjoying the ambience. Across the bay from where we wandered is a large area of exotic high-rise buildings in an area called the Corniche, which reflects the high income in this tiny state, backed by the world’s third largest oil and gas reserves.

Further round the coast there are some huge developments on reclaimed land (similar to the ones in Dubai from what I could see from the plane as we flew out to Sweden.

I’ve put photos and some text into a gallery at https://photos.app.goo.gl/xJtWTEcjjHRyptzs5. Enjoy.

Sweden, in March, is still winterish, so we have had some grey, overcast and sometimes rainy days. However we are enjoying the change from a summer of heat and bushfires.

Here are some photos from around Vasteras https://photos.app.goo.gl/KS8HifxEcwLRWtqx9.

Here are some from Öland https://photos.app.goo.gl/sZa1cMgo6HNKYDzv7.

After Oland we have a week with family before (Ryanair and COVID willing) we fly to the UK. We had a pleasant afternoon with Jill’s brother and family in Stockholm. I headed to the supermarket with Tomas who needed some things… like in Australia, there has been panic buying: https://photos.app.goo.gl/xvS1wkdEw7dPYzQD8

The self-serve checkout systems in some supermarkets in Sweden are amazing so I took some photos of the system in the local shopping centre ICA supermarket in Vasteras: https://photos.app.goo.gl/vioEZbhAUcpsVW678

We have had a few pleasant days with regular visits to see Jill’s mum, and just pottering around. Here is an annotated gallery from our final week in Sweden. https://photos.app.goo.gl/va7zhSL6W7MXdJrf9

We had an uneventful flight (thankfully) with only 19 passengers in the whole plane, and sped through an almost empty Stansted airport. The whole plane’s baggage was there within a minute of us reaching the baggage carousel.

Stansted airport, midday – empty baggage area.

We collected our rental car and headed to Leicester to visit my cousin.  Due to coronavirus, there were extreme measures in place, so we have not done quite what we had planned. Museums etc are all closed. People have to stay at home (allowed one excursion from the house for exercise a day, but must maintain a minimum separation of 2 metres between people. Shopping is limited. Only food stores and pharmacies etc are allowed to open, and the checkouts have 2 metre measures on the floor to ensure people keep their spacing. We’ve been enjoying brief “exercise” walks with camera (need to keep exercising the shutter finger) round the local paths and fields, enjoying the gorgeous blue-sky sunny weather. Spring is sprung with buds and flowers everywhere.

More photos can be viewed at https://photos.app.goo.gl/qHrvSSn6NxAPniyU6

With the air transport catastrophe caused by the pandemic, we had a few traumas with multiple flight changes and challenges getting through to the airline, but we managed eventually to get a booking on a flight back from London to Melbourne. By good fortune, the flight got in to Melbourne 6 hours before the state government’s mandatory hotel quarantine started, so we were able to go home and quarantine in the comforts of home, which wasn’t such a trauma. We managed to get groceries delivered via online ordering, and we had good internet and lots of books to entertain us, so it wasn’t too bad.

Whilst the lock-downs here seemed to raise the hackles of some, most people accepted the limits, wore masks outside their homes and generally played by the rules. As a result, Australia has virtually eliminated the virus (as I write in December 2020), allowing us to live a relatively normal life (without international travel). We look at the situations in the USA, UK, Europe etc and count our lucky stars!