Food & Drink – Page 8

September 15, 2014October 19, 2015

Trains, tubes, bikes, and a pony

Also known as ‘The Other Bits of England’ blog, in which I endeavour to catch up with special people not living in Devon and partake in the odd jolly jaunt with or, occasionally, without them. Faces and places familiar, with the occasional variation thrown in for good measure. A veritable criss-crossing of a country, conquering the bemusing cost savings to be had through split railway tickets and battling against the perennial issue of available luggage space. Virgin appear to have done something particularly mind-blowing in this regard, where overhead storage accepts nothing thicker than a laptop, resulting in a space largely devoid of content and most luggage littering any spare volume of carriage not taken up by cranky people. They do appear to serve a Rodda’s Cream Tea though, so all is forgiven.

Making these trips is a chance for my inner England to resurface (e.g. by grumbling quietly to oneself at the trains) and to get up to speed with the zeitgeist, mainly courtesy of eavesdropped conversations and leftover copies of the Metro. Scandal in the Great British Bake Off; returning X Factor judges; expensive football transfers; Scotland will they won’t they will they won’t cannae do it aye. And, more personalised, to witness changes to old haunts, to exchange news and share a drink once more with friends, to see if coffee has improved, and to tread the green, green grass of home.

London has a surprisingly decent amount of green, green grass, and I tread my fair share of it each year through the child-friendly parks which often intermingle throughout the northern suburbia around Finchley. Further in amongst the urban grime, parks and leafy squares crop up around random corners, such as Coram’s Fields just south of Kings Cross St Pancras. An undoubtedly charming green space should it be open…which it wasn’t today, due to some very worthy charity event being set up. And so, around another corner, a small bouncy castle appeared over a wall and the local community gardens family fun day was sensitively gatecrashed.

It felt a bit like something that may feature in Eastenders, though it was all much more enjoyable and pleasant, without numbskull deadbeats trying to shift some dodgy motors or a drummer waiting in the corner to signal the occurrence of a dramatic, decisive, cliff-hanging moment. It had a different feel to – say – the contented edamame-chomping family set sprawling across Friary Park in Barnet, a spot in which I recovered the next day from experiencing a decent flat white in North Finchley. They are slowly getting better in places. Slowly.

Back onto the train the next day, a Virgin train with its pitiless excuse for an overhead luggage rack, the green pockets of the capital were to be replaced with greener expanses of beautiful, classical, English landscapes. I am naturally a little biased towards Devon and Cornwall, but there are surely few places as idyllic as the Lake District in the far northwest of England. Rugged rounded ridges, sweeping glacial valleys, dry stone walls and postcard-pretty lakeside villages. The kind of place I end up every year and feel keen to stay longer some other time.

In truth, I only had a few hours in the heart of the Lake District (i.e. inside the national park). Other days were spent within a hilltop forest which possessed its own magical air. Whinfell Forest sits atop a large, sprawling hill and amongst the pines are scattered quiet avenues and quaint timber lodges. There are people wholesomely cycling around and children, lots of children, like Faeries apparating out of the heather. From nowhere a glass dome emerges, filled with restaurant chains and a complex of swimming pools and whirly flumes and tubes. This is a Center Parcs site, an undoubtedly corporatised cash-cow, which somehow retains plenty of charm and attractiveness.

The setting rules here you see, with ample space to accommodate plenty of lodges and a giant glass dome and thousands of Faeries and still have room for quiet forest tracks, gentle glades and red squirrel hang outs. The appeal for me was the setting and I enjoyed nothing more than riding my bike along the car-free tracks, the sun and breeze and smell of pine in the air. That and cherishing time with friends who are more special than most and continue to do amazing things.

Center Parcs does not feel too claustrophobic but I did wonder whether you could escape the perimeter fence. Would the road out be closed? Would a giant thunderstorm crop up to block the way? Would a security alert be concocted to stop you leaving? Was this, in fact, The Truman Show? I could not be so close to the lakes and not give it a try, so I snuck out, hopped on a bus to Penrith, waited forever for another bus and ended up trundling alongside Ullswater before getting off at Glenridding. I didn’t have much idea what was at Glenridding, but as a place name to stop at in the Lake District it sounded about right. And indeed, it possessed all necessary quaintness and opportunity for a short enough walk taking in two valleys and a small hill.

The walk, hastily discovered through some wifi in a Penrith coffee shop, took me gradually upwards for valley and lakeside views, reaching the small, reflective Lanty’s Tarn. From here it was over and down into Grisedale, where sheep dotted the lower meadows, kept in by the dry stone walls and the course of the river. The river tumbled steadily down back towards Ullswater itself, setting the course for the return to Glenridding.

Though fine and warm, it was a cloudy kind of day – what the BBC online weather forecast likes to call ‘white cloud’ as opposed to ‘grey cloud’ (it’s the worst cloud for landscape photos I find). The sun finally emerged into the afternoon only a little before my bus back was due, but this provided time enough for an ice cream and a quick scramble to see the lake for one last time in some sun. The bus came and I left thinking that one whole week here would do nicely thank you very much please.

Leaving the Lakes, the landmarks and landscapes become a little less poetic. For instance, I get to change trains at Wolverhampton. Wordsworth never wrote anything fancy about Wolverhampton. I doubt if he did for Basingstoke either, unsurprising given it never really existed back then. There could be some interesting poetry about Basingstoke (I wandered circuitously like a roundabout…) and he would generally approve of the countryside around the place. You do notice, though, how more built up the southeast is, particularly on a day spent for much of the time in nearby Surrey.

The M25 is nobody’s idea of fun, but it quickly took Dad and I to Box Hill. For those who remember such things, this is a small lump in the North Downs that Olympic cyclists managed to climb nine times (a few too many in my opinion). It remains a mecca for lycra lovers everywhere who enjoy nothing more than getting sweaty on a couple of hairpins. With MAMILs in profusion you would expect a decent coffee at the top, but that is not what you get. However, the area provides a diversity of hazy hilltop views, ancient forest, chalk downs and riverside meadows. On a circular walking route, down to the River Mole and over stepping stones, the climb back up to the top on foot makes you appreciate what the cyclists achieve.

Amongst the procession of affluent commuter towns and fancy golf courses, we also eventually found ourselves at Runnymede. This is a spot on the banks of the Thames that has international historical significance as the signing spot of the Magna Carta by King John in 1215. Being about democracy and all the yanks have attempted to infiltrate this spot with monuments and gifts to the Queen and what not (which, of course, they are free and entitled to do without prejudice or persecution). However, the green meadows and ancient oak trees are oh so English; a scene tempered only slightly by the parade of jets coming in to land at Heathrow and delivering thousands of yanks onto these shores.

Blissfully quieter but also possessing historical royal links and requisite green pleasantness was the New Forest, visited on my last full day of this trip in England. The sun came out and all was well with the world amongst the many shades of green, rescinding in places as September emerges. The cute village of Burley remains somewhere in the sepia toned 1950s, with bunting and shoppes and ice cream and ponies meandering down the streets looking all sweetness and light in an attempt to curry favour and steal your ice cream. I don’t blame them, it was good ice cream. There was also good picnic lunch in a forest and good afternoon cake in Ashurst. And if all this Englishness was getting a bit much, there was good tartiflette (French) in the evening. Finished (yes, there is more) with Pavlova (Kiwi) finished (yes, more) with the last spoonful of clotted cream (Heaven). What a way to go!

It wasn’t quite the end and ruining the culinary picture slightly was a very poor coffee (from one of those chains – yes, Caffe Nero I will name and shame you) the next morning in London. With a couple of hours to spare before flying out of the city, I returned to the south bank with my bags, a scene reminiscent of a few weeks before. And despite the burning bitterness in my mouth, the scene, sat on a bench in the warm sun, was uplifting. St Pauls to my right, while various funky new buildings rise up beyond, trying to outdo the piercing pinnacle of The Shard. The river flows along in front of me, taking the view down to Parliament and the London Eye. If I wanted an iconic British image to depart Britain on then this was perhaps the one to go with.

But there are many iconic, memorable images from a few weeks back home: herds of deer at Knebworth; the M25; Dartmoor cream teas; pasties in Cornwall and Plymouth Argyle; trampolines; sparkling Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe; tin mine relics on the North Cornwall coast; a train trundling through excessive leafiness to Looe; Kings Cross St Pancras; poetic Lakeland landscapes; magical forest bike rides; the Thames with a flight path soundtrack; New Forest ponies and cake, lots of cake. And many of these moments cherished more with family and friends who sometimes feel a little too far away. Departing from London City, out over the Thames estuary, over again where it all inauspiciously started – Safffffend – England, again, sadly disappeared from view.

September 6, 2014October 19, 2015

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The ice cream bucket list challenge

Laydeez and gentlemun, welkum to Landan Saaaaaaaaffend, where the temprator is nynedeen digreez innit and the cockles an whelks are fresh from the eshtry mud.

As gateways to Great Britain go, it is a bit different, but Essex is indeed British soil and there is comfort at seeing the red cross of St George adorning the council estates and in smelling the fish and chips on Southend seafront. Should Southend be a little too bedecked with commoners awaiting a summer carnival parade, Leigh-on-Sea is a tad more upmarket with white stiletto undertones. Home to several cosy pubs spilling out onto the mud and water, an ale and hearty burger brings me back to a Britain obsessed with pulled pork and bake offs.

Hertfordshire is the classier cousin to Essex, where inspiring place names like Potters Bar and Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City are linked by motorways and single file country lanes alike. Interspersed within this, offering views of giant pharmaceutical empires and a procession of easyjets bound for Luton, stands Knebworth House. Perhaps best known for Oasis and Robbie Williams mega-concerts it may come as a surprise to hear that Knebworth is rather refined. The archetypal crusty upper class country estate, complete with musty carpets, majestic libraries and derring-do tales of empire building. Gardens with fancy lawns and fancier sculptures, a copse littered with giant fibreglass dinosaurs serving as inspiration for damned colonial upstarts such as Clive Palmer. On an increasingly sunny summer afternoon, as deer graze the meadows and country pubs await, this is England, but not quite my England.

The next day brings the homecoming within a homecoming as I depart London for Plymouth. That’s not before saying farewell to the iconic capital with two friends who I met in Australia and who I can continue to enjoy pizza with – whether on Bondi or near Bankside – to this day. It is a happy conclusion to the English prelude and the level of unhealthy eating signifies the start of many days enduring essential foodstuffs, the real super foods that are far away from a land of quinoa and hipster-nurtured compressed kale shavings.

Gargantuan fish and chips were a starter prior to a night at Home Park, watching a rather lame game of football thankfully enlivened by Guillaume the French nephew shouting ‘come on you greens’ in an adorable accent. It worked, for we managed to scramble a deep into injury time penalty equaliser. More sedate, slightly less greasy but perhaps as equally lardy as those fish and chips was the Devon cream tea; the Devon cream tea that takes place in the same spot on Dartmoor practically every year but is a tradition which never fails to be anything other than marvellous. That first bite of scone and jam and – mostly – rich, buttery, clotted cream is like the feeling from a first sip of morning coffee multiplied ten million times. The river valley setting and surrounding tors amplify it further.

Indeed, becoming as traditional as the cream tea is the slightly guilt-driven walk up Sharpitor, which is still just a gentle and brief jaunt for hilltop views of half of Devon and Cornwall. Traipsing up with family could get a little repetitive if it wasn’t so rewarding, an annual canvas for Facebook photos and Snapchat selfies amongst the clitter and ponies of the high moor.

The Cream Tea on Dartmoor Experience is just one required escapade for the bucket list. The next one to tick off is the Cornish Pasty in Cornwall Adventure. Today this requires a rather trundling and busy train journey all the way down towards the pointy end. St. Ives is not only a reputed haven for artists, but possesses one of the more accessible by public transport shopfronts for Pengenna Pasties, where artists create masterpieces of delicious shortcrust pastry stuffed full of meat and vegetables and seasoning. Eaten on the beach, of course.

I should not neglect here to give a special commendation to Moomaids of Zennor. While their clotted cream vanilla (what else?!) was nothing remarkable, I was hoping that the Cornish sea salt caramel was never going to end. It may feature as a staple of the next Cornish Pasty in Cornwall Adventure (with Bonus Local Ice Cream Discovery).

Away from food (for a little while), it is about time I mentioned the weather. For should I not write about food nor weather, what will I have left?! Temperatures were well below average as the shorts and sandals in my luggage remained largely untouched, while clean jumpers came at a premium. But there was plenty of dry and fine weather. This meant that, on occasion, clean jumpers would need to come off and then quickly returned once the sun disappeared behind the clouds scuttling across the sky on a chilling sea breeze. It was weather not so much for sunbathing but ideal for family fun in West Hoe Park, where nieces and nephews were able to relive one’s own youth by venturing on the iconic – yes, iconic – Gus Honeybun train and bouncy castle, and create their own memories in a pirate ship mini golf water boats gold panning extravaganza.

It was all rather delightful, aided and abetted by bucket list ice cream and raspberries and clotted cream on the foreshore and then, a little later, waterfront dining on the Barbican courtesy of Cap’n Jaspers (so it’s back to the food then already…). A day to remind, as was mentioned several times, that Plymouth finds itself in a quite enviable position compared with – say – Wolverhampton or Corby or Blackburn or pretty much anywhere else not on the sea and in the midst of such coastal and pastoral splendour.

This undeniable splendour provides the context for one essential bucket list item for a perfect southwestern experience. The oft-quoted, oft-photographed, oft-walked South West Coast Path. I figure that maybe by the time I reach old age I may just have covered around 10% of this amazing trail. On a day that started with grey clouds and rain, the train trip to Truro and a tactical delaying coffee enabled the weather to perk up, and by time I reached St. Agnes on the bus, patches of blue sky were promising much. In fact, the sun very much came out when munching on the world’s best sausages rolls from St. Agnes bakery.

Up over St Agnes beacon, the north coast view stretches down to St. Ives and, heading in this direction, I found myself clocking up a new section of path leading towards Porthtowan. The main features along this typically wild and rugged stretch are the old tin workings and mine buildings of Wheal Coates. If North Cornwall can be summed up in one scene it is from here, which probably explains why it featured as the cover image for Ginster’s Pasties. And I had a sausage roll, tut tut!

There was a point into this walk that something quite unexpected happened. I was feeling a little hot. Yes, the sun was well and truly out and I was able to covert my convertible trousers to shorts, roll down my black socks a little, and bare some leggy flesh. I applied sunscreen, wore a hat, and, by time I reached Porthtowan, felt long overdue an ice cream. However, no sufficiently suitable ice cream was readily available near the beach and I settled for a cold beer instead to happily wind down the time until a bus back to Truro.

The North Cornwall Walking Wondrousness Trip pretty much meant that the Westcountry bucket list had been amply satisfied. The final day down there offered a bonus with a family day out on the train to Looe. It’s not so far from Plymouth but the journey provides a reminder of the lovely countryside of southeast Cornwall and on the branch line to Looe it could still easily be the 1950s. Looe itself offered its reliable fill of narrow lanes, fish and chip smells, bucket and spades and, for me, one final and very commendable pasty! Again, there was something approaching heat, meaning that shorts – if I had them with me – would have been more than acceptable in the afternoon.

The train ride back offered that final hurrah and farewell to Cornwall, resplendent and verdant in the late summer sunshine. For once, the same could not be said of Devon, as I departed the following day in a somewhat murky, drizzly air. I missed seeing the white fluffy clouds and whiter fluffier sheep, the glimmering Teign estuary and glass sea of Dawlish. Even so, it was again sad to leave, the murk reflecting a melancholy that drifts along to Exeter. The holiday is not over, the visits and sights await, and there are more cherished friends and family to see. But it does feel that a holiday within a holiday, a homecoming within a homecoming has drawn to a close once again. ‘Til next year.

Food & Drink Great Britain Green Bogey Photography Walking

August 16, 2014February 24, 2015

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Ou est l’ete?

Apparently, Canberra experienced quite a few nights in a row below -5 degrees, plummeting to -8 on one occasion. In my last week prior to escaping to the northern hemisphere this felt bearable, safe in the knowledge that I would be heading into summer. Another comfort came from the days, which were utterly gorgeous, clear as crystal and with a hint of spring in the still, sunny, wattle seed air. Such an embarrassment of blue sky riches seemed excessive and, pottering around Red Hill for one last time before the trip, I yearned to bottle just a little of it to take with me.

There was plenty of blue sky above the clouds, I assume, on the longest Sunday ever. Commencing at 3am Sydney time it finished around 11pm Zurich time. This equates to 28 hours, and that’s just the part for which I was, alas for the large majority, awake. Still, it is a means to an end and Zurich was warm with thunderstorms gathering and had giant pretzels readily available for an evening snack.

From Zurich the next day I enjoyed the calm seamlessness of Swiss rail to transfer to Geneva. Heavy overnight rain had given way to cloud and drizzle, with a spot of blue sky emerging to engineer hope, followed by a windy squall to dampen it all. Little was different by the time I rocked up in Annecy, much to the dismay of the French bus station man who was unable to sit down on the wet benches and so instead decided to regale me with tales of the summer holiday travels of his entire lifetime in this area oblivious to the fact that I could barely understand what on earth he was babbling on about. Which part of je ne comprends pas do you not understand?

Things lifted as the last part of my journey took place in English in the comfort of a car and with brightening skies…south to Albertville and then up into the mountain valleys of Beaufort and, finally, after a disjointed 48 hours, Areches. If ever there was an archetype for Quaint Alpine Village Design Course 101 this was it: a central church from which ramshackle chalets radiated up and down the slopes; village life decorated with flowers and fountains, vegetable gardens, and hens wandering the streets; the boulangerie tucked away on the narrow main street alongside the delicatessen; and, should all be quiet, the sound of cowbells emanating from the green meadows around.

The view from our digs could embrace this all and, bathed in sunlight the next morning, my fears that the worrying weather of the Tour de France was a settled summer pattern dispelled like the morning clouds over Le Grand Mont.

A little walk nearby through forest and alongside a tumbling stream felt like it was going to be the first of many, the dappled sunlight a joy but doing little to dry out the oft muddy track. Sunshine was maintained through to lunch time and a picnic baguette in Le Planey avec les familles. A picnic baguette that was wonderful in the main due to the Beaufort within. These cheeses always seem to taste their very best consumed in their area of origin. Like the fish and chips by the sea effect.

Le Planey possesses one of the two summer chairlifts that are sporadically open in the area. Today it was ouvert (apart from a break for lunch, understandably) and propelling people up to around 1900 metres. Views of the mountains and valleys are easily on offer from here, although the very highest, Mont Blanc of course, was now penetrating into the slowly greying sky. It’s no Red Hill, but it sure is pretty.

It was not long after descending that the rain arrived; first a few spots nothing more than a minor irritant, then a steady downpour beating out a consistent rhythm on the trees and chalet roofs. On the plus side, it is good weather to hunker down in a cosy restaurant and eat dishes that involve one or more of the following: cheese, potatoes, cheese, bacon, cheese, onions, cheese, wine, cold cuts, cheese, and a splash more wine. And thus through the magic of sharing I was able to partake in the Savoie triumvirate of Fondue, Raclette, and Tartiflette all in the one sitting. Cue inevitable X-rated cheese shot.

The remaining few days involved plenty more rain and plenty more frustration at the ever-changing cloudscape that could be comfortably viewed from the living room window. There was also, of course, plenty more cheese, the making of which could be viewed in Beaufort, upon dashing from the marketplace to the co-operative in undoubtedly the heaviest deluge of the week. Drying off in the elevator, I swear cheesy aromas had been deliberately piped into it. Either that or a pair of smelly old socks had been inadvertently lost in the escape hatch.

There were further forays into nature to be had and – indeed – further bursts of occasional sun. A trip to the beautiful Lac de Saint-Guerin was a race against time before the sunny pocket was once more filled. Briefly, just briefly, it dazzled in sheer Alpine loveliness, that is turquoise water, bright green meadows dotted with flowers, dark green coniferous forest, and rising, rising, mountain peaks. Peaks from which brooding grey clouds return to deliver their annoying life-giving wateriness once more.

The other chairlift opened on the Thursday and I took that in the dry, walking quite steeply up to a spot called Tete de Cuvy. Nearing 2000 metres here, the table d’orientation promised 360 degree views with Mont Blanc as a centrepiece. But, you guessed it, little is on view when in clouds like this. In the effort-reward ratio stakes, it was a walk that veered a little too strongly into the effort column, so moan moan, grumble grumble.

I shall quit grumbling about the weather even though this is a genetic predisposition of Britishness for which you must please understand. Because, you know what, Areches was a lovely spot with some lovely moments. Yes it was chilly and quite probably colder than Canberra on descending the chairlift, but, at a lower altitude, the sun had poked through for a little while. It was peaceful and calm and glowing and pine-fresh fragrant and all those nice things that occasionally come together into a wholesome whole. I may have been clinging on for dear life on a cold steel coat hanger swaying down a mountain, but it was indeed well worth clinging on to. Hell yeah, I may even let one hand loose to take a picture as I descend, adrenaline junkie that I am.

Safely back in the valley, I was able to calm myself down with a coffee and cake, before the family rejoined and we set off on an afternoon amble in this Alpine idyll. Relatively clement conditions accompanied a meander though the Areches ‘suburbs’, zigzagging their way up the slopes in a series of hairpins, giving way to larger plots and bigger views and farmland pastures with cows. The cows, I hasten to add, were sat down, giving further credence to their weather forecasting expertise.

Their forecast was more a medium range one, for the late afternoon and evening cleared to the clearest it had been and I even wore sunglasses back to the village for a final Tartiflette*. The skies gave hope for one final morning before departure; I could picture gargantuan panoramas under deep blue skies, the white of the Mont Blanc massive shimmering into the air, a landscape of lakes and ridges and rocks and valleys. But the cows were right. Il pleut. Someone really has stolen the French summer. All one can hope is that the 2014 vintage leads to such green pasture to provide the most spectacular fromage yet.

* though I predict Angliflette avec Reblochon de Tesco could be on the cards.

Europe Food & Drink Green Bogey Walking

January 29, 2014October 19, 2015

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Yurt

It was like wakening in a miniature circus tent, though with just the one clown stirring from an overnight slumber. Through a plastic window daylight was seeping into the octagonal space, the hard wooden floor radiating sunshine upwards into the plastic dome, like flame rising into a hot air balloon. Through the plastic glare the gentle sheen of the sea glimmered out in the distance, a view broken by dark pine forest and rounded headlands. One or two female deer lazily munched on the green grass in the foreground, as I set to joining them for breakfast.

It is hard to say if this was exactly what I was expecting when I came across an entry for this place in a guidebook many months before. Certainly what transpired captured the atmospheric appeal that came to my imagination back then. It was moving towards winter in Australia and times were spent in windowless offices and pointless meetings as I trudged slowly towards the date when I finally left my job. The sound of a place tucked away on an island in the pristine Pacific Northwest of the US where you could sleep in a yurt had instant allure. It seemed I had become what I never wanted to become and seeking clichéd escapes from ‘executive stress’.

And so, several months later, after visiting Hong Kong and Europe and New York City on my big time out, I landed in Seattle. Initial experiences were far from chilled. By time I had picked up a hire car it was rush hour on the I-5 and there I was in an unfamiliar car in an unfamiliar place on an unfamiliar side of the road. Sweeping through the heart of downtown Seattle I was able to avert my gaze from the weaving cars and merging lanes for just the briefest of moments. To my left, the Space Needle pierced the low cloud, affirming that I was heading in the right direction, north through the fading suburbs and fading light to a place where you can breathe again.

I slept that night under solid roof in one of those steady, unspectacular motels that permeate the highways and byways of the United States. They have beige carpets and brick walls and sturdy wooden sideboards with built in radio alarm clocks and light switches [1]. They have an included breakfast with a choice of three types of cereal dispensed from what were pretty revolutionary cereal dispensers back in the 60s. A choice of crushed cornflake, soggy rice puffs or the contents of the vacuum cleaner bag. Alternatively, you can have some undercooked toast with impossible to spread butter.

They have a laundry with tokens and powder available from the front desk, so that you can put your world-weary clothes through an expensive and time-consuming process in which they become sodden as Bangladesh during the monsoon and then undergo ten minute stints in a huge dryer and eventually come out with only a very incremental change in cleanliness and a lingering damp dog smell. Still, you put one of the clean-ish jumpers on and head out into the fresh air with the hope that at least this one will dry out in the next few hours.

The huge consolation is that Bellingham seems to possess its fair share of fresh, laundry-drying air. Beside the steely waters of Puget Sound, a pleasing boardwalk leads to a pleasing place for coffee with a pleasing-on-the-eye person making it. Elsewhere in town, the occasional deer grazes on someone’s perfectly coloured Y_whatcom precision cut front lawn. Other deer poke their heads out of the undergrowth in Whatcom Park – named after the dotcom boom which failed to materialise this far north. Maybe. Amazingly, this is like a national park in the middle of the town, with some pretty waterfalls disturbing the peace of the forest.

Close to the border, the vibe feels more Canadian than anywhere else in America, which is a good thing for any executive stress you may have. Actually, Bellingham reminds me more than anywhere of Cypress Creek, the fictional town in The Simpsons acting as the secret base for the fantastical megalomaniac Hank Scorpio. I admit to failing to spot Put-Your-Butt-There on third in the hammock complex in the hammock district. But other than that – mountains and pine forests, chipmunks, lakeside houses and picket fences, secret underground missiles armed and aimed at France – Bellingham ticked all the boxes [2].

Another night under a solid roof led to another included breakfast, though this time with the surprise bonus of slightly stale miniature croissants. They must have been leftover from the annual general meeting of the American-Franco Dwarf Association of Washington State that took place in the conference room the previous evening. Still, I pocketed a few for the journey on what was a sublimely sunny day, warm and clear heading down to Anacortes for a ferry ride.

I can imagine, in this weather-laden extremity of America, that the ferry ride across to Orcas Island is rarely as serene as it was on this particular day. Slicing through high definition crystal calm, the ferry’s wake rippled the reflections of the many pine topped isles scattered upon the sound. Secluded bays hosted the occasional rustic dwelling, where the kayak appeared to be vehicle of choice. Between island views the mainland drifted away, but all the while the snowy volcanic peak of Mount Baker gleamed, a blinding white cone penetrating the upper atmosphere.

Disembarkation was a low key affair on Orcas Island, which is the largest of the many San Juan Islands peppering Puget Sound. Given some land mass to play with, the island offers a patchwork of working farmland and wild forest, a contoured landscape of hills and lakes, punctuated by a handful of small but serviceable towns. There is one main road linking the ferry drop off and the towns, with a few side diversions of note. So, after tucking into a pulled pork sandwich at the biggest town, Eastsound, the car took me up and up on a detour to the island’s highest point.

Mount Constitution sounds like somewhere that belongs in the United States, like Capitol Hill and Liberty City and Freedom Fries and Gun-toting Redneck Hill. The name feels solid and a little serious, denoting something which is of grand importance albeit a little dour in the detail. I don’t think any major pieces of legislature would have been signed up here, but I did spot a few written etchings professing Randy’s love for Mary-Jane.

It turns out the peak was in fact named after the USS Constitution which I am assuming plied the waters far down below in the distant past. The waters today are becalmed, a smooth sapphire sheet dotted with emerald islands, lapping at the shores of the mainland, where mammoth mountains rise to form snowy domes suspended in the sky. I can see Canada. I can see the entire Cascade Range sweeping down Washington and even into Oregon. I can see the Olympic Peninsula and its equally lofty heights, perhaps hiding Japan over its lumpy bulk. Above, the sky is as blue as blue sky strategic thinking gets, and far more credible.

And so, from such gargantuan immensity I end up in a little yurt on the shores of Doe Bay, on the eastern side of the island. I may well be staying in some place that has the word ‘retreat’ in its name. One or two of the staff have longish hair, and I think they are serving vegetarian food in the cafe. There may be a spiritual yoga class tomorrow morning. But there is no pressure to non-conform. Simply do as you will. Meander the land and come across other yurts or cabins or swags set amongst the trees and cosy glades. Take a book and sit on a rundown bench under a fragrant pine branch, the sound of gently lapping water occasionally pierced by seals or other marine life or a guitar being strummed on some other bench over the bay. Potter about in such a complete carefree daze that you lock yourself out of your yurt and have to call out someone to help you after hours who looks very pregnant and was probably in the middle of eating their dinner but is still absolutely delighted to be of assistance.

Wake up on your birthday in the middle of a structure resembling a giant birthday cake, scattering opened envelopes on the radiant wood floor. Say good morning to the deer munching away on the green grass, shading your eyes from the morning sea glare. Hear the sound of soothing humming coming from the yoga shack. And revel in an absolutely delicious vegetarian breakfast burrito served with approachable charm and humour. The milestone of another year reached and, strangely, I feel ten years younger.

[1] There is always a switch which never seems to operate anything. (Meanwhile, across town, the lights at the ballpark flicker on and off as an unassuming tourist twiddles with knobs in a beige motel).

[2] Unfamiliar to your far too cultured brain? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Only_Move_Twice

Links

Scorpio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QEsjd1WZuY

Cypress Creek…I mean…Bellingham, WA: http://www.bellingham.org/

The San Juans: http://www.visitsanjuans.com/

Doe Bay Resort and, yes, Retreat: http://doebay.com/

Specifically, pacifically, northwest: http://neiliogb.blogspot.com.au/2011/10/specific-pacific-northwest-blogfest.html

A to Z Driving Food & Drink Photography USA & Canada Walking

January 15, 2014October 19, 2015

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Rewind pause fast forward

Well how lovely it has been to stand still and sleep in my own bed and pop around the corner to a coffee shop where they know my name. How enjoyable to see familiar faces and some new ones too, sharing an overload of barbecued food and leftover Christmas decadence that never seems to dwindle. How civilised to be able to pop to the National Gallery to see some Lichtenstein and snigger at some political cartoons at Old Parliament House before checking out the roses. How satisfying to traipse up and around pockets of bushland here, there and everywhere and watch the red sunlight fade from Canberra sights and sink over the Brindabellas.

Familiar things that became less familiar but are now familiar again. Much like losing badly in the cricket. Lest familiarity brings about too much comfort there are a few doosras thrown in to keep things interesting: new developments in Kingston creating wannabe Gold Coast glamour; minor changes to the aisle configuration of the supermarket; previously unexplored hillocks in the south of Canberra. Plus, of course, the interjection that is Christmas, which is the ultimate break from the norm…apart from the tradition that is a sausage roll, cheesy marmite, cold ham, cheese, pickled onion, cracker tasting plate.

It was actually quite a change to spend Christmas in Canberra; in recent years Sydney has hosted the festivities and provided random assortments of hot beach picnics, torrential downpours and moist grey gloom. Such was the picture again in January for a few days of further catch ups and re-acquaintance. Pleasingly, with time on my hands, I could take a detour from the familiar, yet pretty dull, Hume Motorway and revisit such delights as Fitzroy Falls – currently a thin summer sliver – Kangaroo Valley, Berry and the Illawarra. Again, time for some enjoyment of the old along with discovery of the new – a short rainforest and waterfall walk at Macquarie Pass National Park an additional find in this luscious little corner of New South Wales.

Sydney was a mixture of iconic waterside delight blended with a tinge of inner city grime and sweaty congestion. Fortunately staying with friends on both of the plush sides of the harbour I could fairly easily potter down to the water and share it with the millions of other people on holiday. Having been away from here for quite a while there was a little bit more of a tinge of excitement at seeing that bridge and that opera house and an inevitable taking of pictures that have been taken hundreds of times previously. Though wearying in the afternoon warmth, there was a thrill at boarding the Manly ferry, and a rejuvenating half hour ride watching the eastern suburbs pass by, thinking about what ice cream or treat to have back on landfall.

All this is familiar again, but there is still chance to do something new. After gorging on chocolate brownie and cappuccino I was keen to make amends by walking from Manly to Spit Bridge, an up and down tramp following the watery alcoves and rather untainted bushland fringing Middle Harbour. And it is here that you notice that despite being a large city, with concrete overload and oversized cars and millions of people, the geography of Sydney often wins out. Bushland and rainforest pockets are much like they were before boatpeople came, and small inlets offer cosy beaches unreachable by modern means. True, never far away is a luxurious home with a view, and the noise of a freeway as Spit Bridge nears, the harbour a buzzing playground for those pesky boatpeople. But it is also true that in the midst of a city, within sight of its lofty heart, it is a wonder to be able to walk in parts untainted; a wonder that pervades in patches throughout Sydney.

North shore opulence is kept in some rein by its geography of steep hills and snaking inlets. In the Eastern suburbs there is less to get in the way, although large parks and reserves are scattered besides the sea and across to the fringes of the city. This is once again familiar territory with familiar walks down to the ocean and along its beaches and cliffs. It is a place of great appeal, though I think I prefer it in winter on a pleasant sunny day with fewer people and their detritus. Still, there is much to be said for sitting beside Bronte Beach and having a coffee, before dodging ridiculously fit runners all the way to Coogee for lunch.

All this familiarity comes in pretty handy when sizing up a final breakfast before the drive back to Canberra: a tricky choice between the Haloumi Stack and the Love Eggs. It doesn’t really matter, because whatever you choose, you will be full and happy and ready for negotiating the steadily declining state of the M5. Eventually, finally, Sydney will fade and you will be back on a familiar drive which is slightly less boring because you haven’t done it for a while. And with a full belly and a cruisy drive, all that waits are the comforts (and – this week – sweltering discomforts) of a home.

Australia Driving Food & Drink Green Bogey Photography Walking

December 29, 2013October 22, 2015

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One big year…

2013 – a year of 365 days, 12 months and approximately 52 weeks. A year with four different digits for the first time since 1987. A year in which I made it to ten countries via 12 airports and stayed overnight in…wait for it…121 different locations. A year in which I drove and drove something in excess of 25,000 kilometres, enduring 3 chipped or cracked windscreens and one tyre puncture. A year in which pointless statistics are endlessly available.

But, apart from such statistics, what are the highlights and where can stupidly made-up awards be, well, awarded?

Best stay: Aroona Valley, Flinders Ranges National Park

Anywhere with a pit toilet must be pretty special in so many other ways. Camping amongst the pines and earthy creeks lined with River Red Gums, wonderful walking trails on your doorstep, sunset and sunrise views over the crinkled geography of the Flinders Ranges, all make for a magically rustic stay. Plus the pit toilets were actually reasonably pleasant.

Best walk: far west Cornwall in September

Of all the places, of all the walks, of all the splendid days this was the best. Under warm blue skies, half of the fun came from the open top bus journey to and from the coast path between Porthcurno and Sennen Cove. At Porthcurno a cream tea and splendid outcrop overlooks over sapphire bays set me off to amble along cliff tops cloaked in purple and gold. A pause at Lands End provided ice cream and final propulsion onward to the charms of Sennen Cove and its sweeping golden sands. Hard to match, hard to beat.

Best food experience: camping fry ups

Again proof that the simple things are often the best, some combination of pork sausage, bacon, mushrooms, baked beans, toast, tomatoes and hash brown capped off with HP sauce. Best appreciated following a wearisome day of walks and served somewhere beside the sea off southern Australia.

Best drink experience: the first sip in Munich

Long haul flight dehydration is probably not best solved by a beer; however, Munich makes it hard to resist. Popping to some nearby gardens for air, tucked under the shady trees sits a charming beer garden, serving delicious cooling Weissbier and ridiculously salty but irresistible pretzels. A chance to sit and bask back in summer and embrace the slow realisation that you have made it across the globe.

The NBN award for worthy endeavours that are behind schedule: gbpilgrim.com

In a shameless cross-promotional opportunity, may I refer you to the tales and travails of gbpilgrim.com. Here I set myself the task of writing an alphabetical tour-de-force around the world within the year. But as you would see should you go there I made it to U. Seriously sidetracked, nonetheless I am nearing the end with 21 pieces of beachside / fireside reading this summer / winter.

The Johnson-Haddin award for being really annoying: the Australian fly

There are many parallels between the Australian cricket team and the swarms of flies that irritate their way across this huge country. In your face, buzzing away, seeming to scarper then coming back in a marauding fashion to head up your nose and down your throat. It is as if the flies peppering the body around Arkaroola are wearing small baggy greens and sprouting dodgy facial hair and a little too much attitude. They may be swatted for a while, but it’s a futile effort and they come back bigger and badder than ever.

Word of the year: ablutions

Ablution. It rolls off the tongue like sheets of wafer-thin toilet paper spilling onto the floor of a damp concrete floor. It sounds as appealing as a thong-clad grandpa shuffling into the toilets for his morning dump. It rolls around like the huge industrial drying machines that leave clothes damp and itchy. Up and down the country, ablutions are servicing the needs of the ageing population living in their deluxe caravans, and offering at least a wry smile for those paying over the odds to camp amongst the awnings and concrete pitches of a mobile shanty town.

Destination of the year: South Island, New Zealand

Sorry Australia, but New Zealand is simply spectacular at every turn. Nowhere more so than on the south island, where there is a surprising diversity beyond mountains and glacial rivers to a world of ancient forests, grassy meadows, jagged coast and pristine golden bays. All pleasingly accessible and navigable by car, by boat and, most of all, by foot. Somewhere you could happily return to again and again and again.

Australia Driving Europe Food & Drink Great Britain Green Bogey Walking

October 10, 2013October 22, 2015

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Hola amigos!

Wary that I may just drift into the comforts of life again in Plymouth and conscious of impending Halloween-related mania, I took a couple of weeks out of this (only slightly) working holiday. The first part involved meeting up and hanging out with friends once more, following which a trip overseas provided some peace and quiet and strangely rare solo time.

A whistle-stop visit to London offered another chance to reacquaint myself with old hang outs and deep connections. Now with young ones to entertain this principally involves visits to the parks of North London, typically on a rota system. It was pleasing to add a different park to the list, within the tranquil leafiness of Highgate Wood. The extra bonus here was that once slides and nets and steps and bars had been exhausted, a little lodge served up fine food to eat al fresco in the sunshine. Similarly, while by no means a new addition, Golders Hill Park delivered gelato to cool down on an astonishingly warm and sheltered park bench the next day.

London is quite a different place when you visit and are not subjected to a long daily commute for tedious work and returning home for a late dinner mired in tiredness. Indeed, I was quite happy to take an hour long bus journey, absorbing the sites on the top deck of the number 13 bus from Golders Green: Finchley Road, Swiss Cottage, Lords Cricket Ground, Regents Park, Baker Street, Oxford Street and, my stop, Piccadilly Circus. I was equally content to mill around to Covent Garden and Embankment and cross over to the South Bank for a little, killing time until a get-together in Clapham. I know for sure now that I am officially at a different stage in life to when I was living in London: waiting for a friend in a pub reading a paper and struggling to block my ears to the awful music that was far too loud. Confirmation of this comes through reminiscing on the tube home with two friends from university who I met half of my lifetime ago. But this is nothing to despair at.

More old friendships, albeit only for about one third of my lifetime, were enjoyed during a few days in Lytham up in the good old northwest of England near Blackpool. The weather for the first couple of days was better than when I visited in August, allowing opportunity to amble the prom and still try and figure out why so many people come here for their holidays. By midweek it was more typically grey with some rain and a few fleeting rays of sun. This coincided with my birthday, which was further official confirmation that I am of an older generation. Still, in Lytham such is the populace of wrinklies that I generally still feel quite young, and can do impetuous youthful things like play GTA V and watch the end of Breaking Bad like everyone else in the world during this period in history.

It was a grey, drizzly day leaving Lytham and I am very conscious that I will be in England when the calendar turns to November (or Jungfrau). With this in mind, and another way in which I can make myself feel young, I boarded a plane to Spain. Costa Blanca, Quesada, Dona Pepa Pig and a home from home from home sadly less visited. This was an opportunity to wear shorts again, to think a bit more like I was in Australia, albeit with worse coffee and inferior beaches and not as much untainted open space. It was also rather nice to have some time to myself – the first in quite a long time really.

I probably would have gone a bit stir-crazy if it wasn’t for the company of a mouse in the house and a hire car to get around. And so, a few excursions (without the mouse) took in mountain towns and humid clouds, coastal resorts and big rocks, and lovely fragrant forests and views.

The first trip out took me to a few Spanish mountain towns, all with higgledy piggledy streets and churches and squares. At Biar, a medieval castle looks out from the highest point perched upon a lump of rock. A fee of one Euro allows you entrance to the tower where you can get the slowest ever English commentary and walk three flights of stairs to the top. Overlooking the charming little town and fields and hills of rustic terraces, it’s one of the nicer spots in this area.

Down the road from here, Bocairent did not feature prominently in any of the guide books I had to hand. Mind you, a lot of this material seems out-of-date as roads have changed names or gone missing altogether. Still, I vaguely recall reading something on an airplane in Australia about this place, so it was worth a stop out of curiosity if nothing else. I gather there are lots of little caves around and, while it took a little finding, the old town was very much in the classic Spanish hillside variety.

From here I missed my intended turn off the main road but this was one of those fortunate mistakes. The next five kilometres or so, towards Ontinyent, thread through a wonderful limestone gorge, a great road to drive on and a worthwhile stop at some pools of blue called El Pou Clar. They would have sparkled like sapphires in the sun only the sun was getting less and less frequent. In fact, the remainder of the day was blighted by low cloud and a touch of rain on the drive back to Quesada, via Alcoy and Agost.

It was a much sunnier start on the second day out, which infuriatingly darkened some 100 kilometres further north around Calpe. Calpe appears to be a typical Costa resort, with a few high rise hotels, a promenade, clusters of apartments and alright kind of beaches. What sets it apart is a huge lump of rock which juts out into the sea at its northern end. It’s called the Penon De Ifach and it turns out you can climb the thing.

The climb is actually a lot easier than you might think looking at the precipitous lump from the bottom. There’s a bit of a tunnel to go through and some fairly consistent scrambling near the top, but apart from that I have to say it made a nice change to find somewhere in this part of Spain where you could actually go for a decent walk in natural surroundings. The very top though is undoubtedly Spanish, with rocks being daubed in graffiti and feral cats pestering and lending a not-so-lovely aroma to the scene. The views of course though are what make it so worthwhile, especially when the sun makes an appearance.

Despite darkness clinging to the tops of the mountainous interior I left Calpe and headed inland along the Guadalest Valley for the afternoon. Guadalest itself, sheltered by the highest peaks of the Sierra Aitana, remained dry and warm and at times sunny. Certainly warm enough for an ice cream, the Crema Catalana being of particularly fine quality.

Beyond Guadalest the winding roads empty and there is a great deal of scenery lurking under the clouds. What I find infuriating about this though is that there is rarely a place to stop, a viewpoint, a path, a forest, a trail. A lot of the land looks untouched and empty, barren and wild. Who owns it and looks after it I do not know. It just seems to be there, an intangible expanse of rocky scrub and forest.

It was not until I was back closer to the coast near Villajoyosa that some of the scenery could be accessed, albeit a man-made manifestation at the Embalse de Amadorio. The water colour of these reservoirs is always something to behold. It seems they are of significant allure to locals too, who come here to get amorous and leave cans of energy drink, tissues and empty durex boxes scattered around the car park. Maybe I blame locals too quickly, given we’re not actually too far from Benidorm.

Pleasingly my final significant trip out managed to bring me to some rare Spanish coastal wilderness and a decent trail leading to a fine viewpoint. It’s the kind of set up you begin to take for granted in Australia or, with its amazing coast path, the southwest of England. Over the hills from the strip of concrete that is La Manga and between here and the port of Cartagena, a small pocket of rugged coastline and fragrant forest testifies to what this area once was like. This is known as Monte de las Cenizas and one of the best things about it is that the park authorities have closed the gravel road up to this lookout. This means it is little visited, little defaced and there is a good three kilometre trail with only a gentle gradient to overcome. And at the end, a reward of distant coastal views and deep blue sea.

This was the little taster of a kind of Australia that I had hoped for in Spain. This, and the ability to be wearing shorts in October. For, thanks to British TV and the Internet I know that things are a-changing. Heatwaves and bushfires are already inflicting Australia (yet this may or may not be climate change, let’s just pretend it isn’t and then it will go away). And, more immediately, winds from the north east are seeping into Britain. Having resisted thus far, I may need to buy (or beg, borrow or steal) a coat. Or perhaps just dress up as a pumpkin.

Driving Europe Food & Drink Great Britain Green Bogey Walking

September 22, 2013October 19, 2015

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Petrol

“The ball-breaking torque combined with the twin thrust turbo delivers an astonishing rear wheeled hardon that isn’t good. It’s absolutely MASSIVE!” So says Clarkson on almost every episode of Top Gear ever.

Like most of the world, I enjoy Top Gear and the overblown ridiculousness of it all. But I have never really reached the point where the noise of a car gives me an erection. It seems I am in the sensible fuel-efficient compact car school of thought, so mocked by humorous middle aged men with pube hair and jeans and blazer combos. But that’s not to say I don’t enjoy driving, now.

I had an inauspicious start to driving, passing my test in the flattest, quietest town in Britain and then becoming flummoxed with hills and traffic elsewhere. I didn’t particularly enjoy it and practically went out of my way to avoid driving anywhere. It wasn’t until Australia, and a solo work trip where driving was virtually impossible to avoid, that I got behind the wheel again. And since that point things have changed, I feel comfortable and confident [1] and, more than anything, relish the freedom that comes with wheels.

Having a car transformed my relationship with Australia, starting in my home town of Canberra. It says a lot for Canberra’s design that people couldn’t believe I didn’t have a car for a year there. Further, I could make trips down to the beautiful South Coast, or up to Sydney, or into the high country. My love for road trips reignited, and I ended up driving up to Brisbane one Christmas, traversing Tasmania over Easter, then up-scaling to New Zealand which was a mere road test for doing the biggest traverse of all, from one ocean to the other.

For all the wonderful petrol-driven experiences in Australia it’s fair to say that road trips are synonymous with the USA. Kicks on Route 66, fun on Highway 1. Turnpikes and Freeways, Roads to Nowhere. Gas stops and Twinkies, neon signs and drive thru diners. Signs imploring you to get in touch with God, others urging you to get in touch with Hooters. In this great land, Life is a Highway, and you may end up riding it all night long.

Having only driven once in the USA – a series of amazing meanders around the Pacific Northwest – my road trip experiences here are built on shared journeys, chauffeured around by some willing participant in the process. On more than one occasion this has been my Dad, and on one of these particular occasions we were heading down the length of Florida to its very tip, with my brother making up the family triumvirate. A trip powered by sweetly abrasive gas station coffee and a George Foreman grill.

Florida is the kind of place that can simultaneously be brilliantly amazing and desperately awful. Beyond the Mickey Mouse and McMansions, the summer humidity, the searing oppression of gun-infested sprawls of urban mess, and the inevitable queues for waiting rooms to move on into the afterlife, there is an outdoorsy, pioneering and almost cultural side to Florida. Spanish heritage and space exploration compete with sweeping beaches and a tangle of waterways created by what is one large swamp jutting out into the Gulf of Mexico. And if this gets a little much, there is always a KFC all-you-can-eat buffet in which to convalesce.

Starting somewhere in the outer suburbs of Jacksonville, the state capitol, it’s another gorgeous sunny morning to hit the open road. I say open road, but the freeways and interstates here seem to be continuously cluttered, with tailgating the norm and veering across lanes a requirement for anyone in an oversized SUV. The land is flat and really quite uninteresting, the roads keeping far enough from the coast to enable you to see very little of it. Wal-Mart is passed and I stay conscious. Keeping us going is that sweetened coffee and delicacies from Krispy Kreme. It seems totally in keeping; hopefully there is no illegal sugar driving limit.

A constant on the horizon are the signs for Miami, intermingling with Tampa and Orlando and Fort Lauderdale and other retirement holiday ventures along the way. Lacking the same sense of razzamatazz as signs encountered for San Francisco and Los Angeles on previous trips, there’s still a glamour associated with the concept of Miami – Miami Beach in particular. Thoughts of swanky high rises, neon signs, and art deco beachfronts crawling with souped up Cadillacs and beautiful people. And while this may (or may not) exist, the interstate, as is so typical of US cities, slices its way through a dense fringe of suburban decay, fear, and loathing.

Arriving in a large city after a lazy cruise down a highway is all part of the US road trip experience. Sometimes the cityscape may loom large and you hit its downtown rather abruptly, swept upon a snaking interstate raised above the streets and weaving through glassy skyscrapers. More often than not it’s an elongated process, regularly punctuated by a series of exits with names like Franklin Boulevard, Northwest Latrobe Drive, and George Bush Senior Expressway. Four way intersections become the norm, at each one a drive through cookie dough express and branch of Subs ‘n Shooters to pass the time while you wait for the lights to change.

There usually comes a very crucial point where you need to take an exit to make it on to the road that takes you back out of dodge. This comes with warning five miles out but after that no signs emerge until the very exit, and you have to cross eight lanes to get to it, with no gaps at all in between the SUVs loaded with automatic rocket launchers. The exit is locally known as Slit-throat Alley and you need to fill up on fuel somewhere here, plus you are busting for a pee because you had an oversized Caramel Macchiato from Starbucks. Is it just me, or are US cities incredibly daunting, often intimidating? I have never felt that secure in them with the exception being – you may be surprised – New York City [2].

Anyway, such tests are sent to test us. I seem to remember we made our crucial interchange in Miami, albeit with a distinct tension in the air, relieved as the city faded away in the rear view mirror. Now there were few roads to get lost on and the road trip transformed into a proper old-fashioned one, with single lane byways and scenic turn offs and stupid attractions like Aunt Maisie’s Coral and Humbug Umbrella Shoppe. The coastline also emerged more frequently, inevitable given we were now on the line of islands and cays making up the Florida Keys. Here we could camp and make a fat-reduced dinner with Mr George Foreman, the waterside setting of John Pennekamp State Park a long way metaphorically from Miami.

After a sojourn upon the water, the road trip continued the next day down to Key West, celebrated for being the end of the road and a corporately hippified haunt, out of reach and proudly out of touch with the rest of America. It feels the kind of place where eccentrics and misfits and millionaire investment bankers with a fresh Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt for each day end up. Every third person walking down the street sports a Hemingwayesque beard, obscuring their Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt. This is still clearly America, but with a cruisey Caribbean undercurrent.

The sun sets famously off Key West and this is the end of a one-way street, turning back is the only option [3]. Travelling on the other side of the road gives chance to see what was missed on the way down, like the Big Fuck Off Fishing and Boat Shed, the Uppitsarse Links Golf and Country Club, and Fishface Bucket O’Clams Pelican Feeding Centre. Pleasingly there remain extensive reaches of wide open water, shallow and sapphire, clusters of palm trees sprouting up from sandy bays, all within easy reach of the road and encouraging frequent stops.

A mainland of sorts returns after the last span of what is an 100 mile? elongated bridge is crossed north. Distinguishing the mainland is a challenge, since swamps, reeds, pools and channels intersect with a placid shallow sea. This is a sponge of a country, where a wrong turn or a wrong foot will swallow you whole. This is primeval and timeless, and seems to be untainted compared with much of Florida. This is the Everglades.

If Key West was the figurative end of the road, this was the high point. So close to Miami you should be able to hear the gunshots, the Everglades feels peaceful and serene, wrapped in a blanket of tall grass and smothered with mangroves. And far from being a lifeless swamp, the changing levels of water, the changing salinity, and the changing ecosystems thrive with a concentration of life as densely packed as Miami. Here, the Alligators rule the ghetto.

Road tripping really comes alive in national parks, particularly in the US which are typically generous with their access and facilities. In the most popular spots you can drive up and park and sit in your car and eat a cheese biscuit with a spray of cheese in a can on the side and look at the view. Fortunately there are plenty of trails that fewer people take, loops of an hour or two to get away from the car and discover views and animals and rocks and plants. In the Everglades, these loops offer an array of animal life, of birds and butterflies, lizards and dragonflies, and of course the perennial alligator. I was, quite frankly, amazed by it all.

And only now, reflecting, I think of the hypocrisy of marvelling at wonders of nature such as this having burned thousands of tonnes of carbon to get there. I do this all the time, without really thinking about it. To make matters worse, I burn a dollop of extra energy trying to write something about them on a coal-fired laptop.

Still, at least I don’t tend to drive to the shops just round the corner, and I do tend to put my empty plastic bottles into a green bin for someone to do something with, and I definitely don’t waste food or anything like that. Besides, now I can take my lead from the Australian Prime Minister, whose advanced thinking tells us that carbon is an invisible substance of no importance whatsoever and what’s science ever done for us anyway? It’s thinking that probably would not be out of place in southern Florida, where I can thoroughly enjoy the hoon around in a guided propeller boat trip in the swamps bordering the Everglades.

Being hooked on travel, being hooked on road trips means I am even more hooked on petrol. It is the blessing and curse of our times [4]. It enabled me to experience the diversity of Florida, relatively cheaply compared to other countries in the world. It has also propelled me around the more incredible terrain of the Western US. My experience of Australia has transformed with every guzzle from a Coles Express petrol station, and I have spent a small fortune on it. I miss it, despite the best efforts of public transport in Europe. Like Clarkson and Hammond and May, like George W, like him and her and you and that bloke over there, I am addicted.

[1] OK, so comfortable and confident in an automatic. I feel gear changing and clutch control on hills has passed me by.

[2] Why did NYC feel safe? I think several things – it’s more familiar to an outsider thanks to its screen presence, it’s easy to get around and people actually walk on the sidewalks rather than drive everywhere. Plus there are lots of people, many tourists, and there’s safety in numbers. Plus I didn’t get mugged, neither did some hoodlum come up to me and draw a pitiful excuse for a knife, depriving me of the chance to emulate Crocodile Dundee.

[3] Unless you wish to go against the flow and swim to Cuba

[4] Though possibly soon to be usurped by the possession of an Apple product which will lock you into a tortuous love-hate relationship for life.

Links

Powerrrrrrrr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpDdQaS73eM

Sweet home Alabama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8St7jj1iFw

Florida Keys tourism: http://www.fla-keys.com/

The Everglades: http://www.nps.gov/ever/index.htm

Now that’s magic: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/a-socalled-market-in-invisible-stuff-the-meaning-of-tony-abbotts-carbon-rhetoric-20130715-2q00e.html

A to Z Driving Food & Drink USA & Canada Walking

August 8, 2013October 22, 2015

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Hallo Italy!

Five hours on a train over the Bavarian Alps, across a thin but very precipitous sliver of Austria, and through the valleys and steep terraces of craggy northern Italy brought me to Bolzano. Or Bozen. Provincial capital of the Alto Adige. Or Sudtirol. You see, borders on a map may be crossed but language is shaped by the contours of the Alps – whether you are in them or out of them, what particular valley you may be in, or which side of the lake you butter your brezel in.

So just because we are in Italy does not mean that German is gone, nein nein nein. Which makes it a bit scheiser for the English-speaking, who are relegated to third in the language stakes and, if my experience is anything to go by, frequently caught out using a mix of all three. Par example (and yes, occasionally I also fall into French as default when any foreign language is involved): “Hallo, una gelato with two scoops, straciatella und caffe latte per favore. Danke.” Surprisingly though everything is understood and luscious ice cream is forthcoming.

As a result I’m not so sure whether you are going to read German or Italian place names in this blog entry. I’m tempted to try and use Italian because they are in Italy, but I am rather fond of Bozen which sounds so pleasingly like a cross between bozo and bogan. Does the name do it justice? Well, I would have said yes at first, as I trudged in searing heat through industrial areas by the river, seeking a funicular to whizz me into the hills, with busy highways and power lines and train tracks crammed into the valley. But I missed the centre at first, an old town with gracious buildings and narrow pedestrian streets, made narrower by market stalls and glass displays for expensive shoes and handbags. Veering toward the Italian, which is naturally less bogan.

Bozen has three mountain cable car and railway combos whizzing you up into the countryside, and the first I took after that uninspiring walk was up to Colle. The top was still in the tree line but (take note other self-proclaimed lookouts of this world) some smart Alec had built a large wooden tower for viewing pleasure, providing you enjoy steps. From here there were views over Bozen and other foothills leading to the more jagged teeth of the Dolomites. And at the bottom a sunny bar for a beer which was disappointingly less German than much else.

The Dolomites were my raison d’être for stopping here really, as I had been interested in visiting for a while…I think spurred on by some pictures in a travel supplement or maybe some footage of crazy climbs in the Giro d’Italia. Bozen was a good base, with its cable cars and other transport links, but the Dolomites were a little infuriating to photograph: wrong light so very glary for most of the day, then thundery clouds bubbling up in the afternoon and difficulty lingering in spots very early or very late because of transportation options. It really needs a week to get close and intimate, preferably in June. It is no wonder that the area is a popular spot for multi-day walks, hiking from refuge to pension along the ridges and plains, getting personal with the mountains.

Still, I had two full days and was very keen to make the most of them and the travel card I had bought. The first day I took another cable car from Bozen, impressively up and up over vineyard terraces and pine forests to the undulating plateau of the Renon. At the top a mountain tramway trundled through the undulating hills, past villages and chalets and through forests and fields. Plenty of walking tracks offered chance to meander and get slightly lost but find your way to another path providing balcony views of the glary Dolomites. With wild meadows and the scent of pine needles, it was nothing other than pretty and nourished enough appetite for lunch in a sunny garden sampling local cheese and bacon dumplings with salad.

It’s incredible to think of these Alpine environments being caked in metres of snow and freezing through several months of the year, and thus surprising how full of life they are. I guess it’s a shorter growing season and everything bursts forth rapidly and in generosity, a perfect manifestation of making hay while the sun shines. The steep hills of the region are decked out in rows and rows of vines, occasionally interspersed with orchards. Many look too steep to harvest by machine and I’m not quite sure how people actually make it to some of the farmsteads perched on their lofty terraces. It seems the cable car is the easiest way to view this hidden world, as I head back down into Bozen.

After a refresh of ice cream and purchasing some dinner time picnic snacks, a bus took me to somewhere in the general vicinity of the Jenesian cable car. Compared to the Renon, which was spacious and flash, this one was pure old school. Which means, by late afternoon, it is a searing glass house on a wire. It has a driver, who speaks to the top on his retro phone with a pleasing old-fashioned ringing bell, and seems happy to squash us in to see if we can all make it without passing out. The relief at the top is palpable, with shade and a beer garden obviously cashing in. In the distance the Dolomites still glare and clouds bubble up high, testament to the heat and humidity of August in Italy.

I was, as I say, keen to make the most of my travel card and, given it runs into the evening, I spent the last section of the day by taking the Renon cable car once more. This was a chance to try and get some good light for pictures and, well, stop on a bench in a forest and eat my bread rolls, cheese and salami sausages. I didn’t stay right until daylight faded, as it had been a long day and I wanted to catch the last bus to my pension, rather than walk up hill for twenty minutes. I had to conserve some energy for tomorrow.

So the second day was an opportunity to get closer to the toothy peaks of the Dolomites and indulge in some wilder, Alpine walking around the Alpe di Suisi. This, apparently, is the largest upland plateau of its type in Europe, whatever that means. I presume it means the biggest expanse of undulating meadows peppered with farmhouse chalets and wooded valleys, a sea of green lapping up to the sheer cliffs of encircling mountains. It looks and feels obviously Alpine with the characteristic and pleasing sound of cowbells a sure sign to the ears that this is genuine high country.

My travel card allowed me to take the sad bus to the town of Suisi. I say sad bus, but it was quite a happy, breezy ride up from the valley, SAD being the name of the local transportation system. This climbed about 600 metres or so from Bozen. From Suisi, a cable car ascended a further 500 metres to Compaccio, and then it was onto a good old fashioned and open to the breeze chairlift propelling me another 400 metres up. What follows from here is an easy, good-natured ramble through the meadows and down past a flower filled hostelry and rustic farmhouses to a wooded valley. Down? Down? Prices may be down, but I want to go up. Up to the Rifugio di Bolzani sitting at around 2,500 metres. Am I lost, or will I need to climb more than I hoped?

The answer was the latter and I have to say it was a bit of a struggle. Once or twice I thought about turning back, the views still wide and grand. Every step up and the view opened up further, but so did the frequency of stopping, ideally in a spot of shade from the sweltering sun. A salami sausage and snatch of pretzel gave fortitude and spurred on by the reward of eating more at the top, I made it.

It’s a bit strange to come up this far and find a fully functioning guest house and restaurant, looking out on the sawtooth ridges of the Dolomites. Washing hangs drying in the breeze and people are decked out with picnics at the outdoor tables. Inside, a team of young people busy themselves cooking and serving food. Curious as to how all this happens, I note a rather archaic looking single wire cable way that must bring up wheels of cheese and kegs of beer. Alas, it does not transport people back down.

That, for me, requires a weary descent of almost 1,500 metres as I plan to go back to Suisi to catch the sad bus. And so it’s down the entire climb that I made, happy that gravity is on my side but my feet and ankles and legs less content with the constant jarring and braking. Some respite takes place as I turn onto a path through a cool pine forest, but this at some point has to hit the river below and, when it does, it veers down in a torment of curving hairpins. The river and forest and beautiful, but after six hours or so, Suisi cannot come soon enough.

Perhaps with a week, at a cooler time of year, I could have taken things more leisurely. There are certainly many other places the SAD network can take you – on other cable cars and post buses into Switzerland for instance. There are great rides for bikes and cultural things to do too. Now being so distant in Australia I wonder why on earth I did not go away every other weekend when I lived in London. A Ryanair flight at 2am to an airport 3 hours out or Barcelona. Or the Wizz Air jet to Krakow. Or even a week in the Dolomites. Now, with time precious, I am falling into that Australian trap of trying to cover off Europe in a few days!

Still, it’s amazing that you can be out of the Dolomites and into another region within a couple of hours. En route to Milan, I stopped off in the city of Verona for six hours. Five Euros seventy for left luggage the price to pay to see another Italian city. Proper Italian, with weisbier and streusels far behind and nothing but average pizza and pasta in every piazza.

I spent most of the morning meandering the streets of Verona, centred around Piazza Baz and its arena. The arena is a bit like a poor man’s version of the Colosseum in Rome (I imagine), and far more modern. I suspect it will look quite a sight in the splendour of an evening performance of – inevitably – Romeo and Juliet, but in the day, with set construction and cranes and limited access, I found 6 Euros entry a bit of a rip-off. Nearby gelato was also expensive, but the raspberry flavour was worth every cent.

Verona is definitely a city for taking turns down random alley ways and stumbling across hidden piazzas and generally making it up as you go along. You will come across tourist trappings, such as the balcony where Juliet (who is, remember, a fictional character) was wooed by a horny young Montague. A nearby archway is bedecked in messages of love; inexplicably many of which are for One Direction. Such romantic prose as ‘Take me in any direction Harry’ or ‘I give you one erection One Direction’. How about you take long walk in one direction off very short pier?

Anyway, you will also pass statues of Dante and come across courtyards and church towers and those colourful terraces with window boxes and shutters in perfect harmony. Eventually you’ll likely come across the Adige River, whose level is possibly heightened by tears shed for someone in One Direction getting a girl (or boy) friend. I presume some of these waters also come down from those Dolomites; indeed perhaps the stream I crossed before that long climb eventually finds its way here.

After many days of mountain or city walking, legs and feet are starting to wear, but one final climb is worth it. Steps and steps lead up on the other side of the river to a castle and views over Verona, a city not without charm. An Italian city where they speak Italian, a chance to be anchored in one language and culture for just a while. For tomorrow brings a train through Switzerland, where Italian becomes German becomes French, all armed with pocket knives. Grazie, Danke, Merci.

Europe Food & Drink Green Bogey Photography Walking

August 5, 2013October 22, 2015

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Munchen and drinking

It started with a cheese covered giant pretzel at Munich International airport, reward for clocking off another mind-numbing, leg-aching, sleep-depriving trek across the globe. Then, if you discount a few anomalies involving fruit and yogurt and water, the remainder of my time in the Bavarian capital involved a BP diet…bread, beer, pretzels, pork.

Can there be anything wurst for the health than a Bavarian diet? In a way, as much as there is left that I could see and do, I am glad I am moving on after just a few days to, hopefully, something involving more vegetables and less pork. To be fair, you can obviously get other foods here, but I’ve been craving a German feast ever since I didn’t get one in the Barossa Valley. And the beer, on 30 degree days, under the shady trees of verdant parkland, is pretty much irresistible. Everyone seems to be at it, and my seven glasses over three days are but a drop in the ocean.

So, it was not like I was staggering around Munich in a drunken ramble. After arriving into the city, a first relaxed glass of weisbier was enough to make me amiably content in the splendour of a European summer in the Alter Botanischer Gardens. I always marvel in the trees when first arriving, the green, broad-leafed providers of cool shade that you don’t get in such a way down under. Such a simple thing, but such a delight.

Fuelled up I ambled into the Aldstadt – the old town – for the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening. This, of course, is the pedestrianised bit, full of shutters and window boxes, fountains and gargoyles, churches and cafes. So, for the place name aficionados, in kind of chronological order there was the suitably imposing Palace of Justice, the cool spray waters around the appropriately named Karlsplatz, the Michaelskirche, the double-domed Frauenkirche and the gothic fairytale towers around Marienplatz, with Neues Rathaus at its centre (and in that building’s centre, a courtyard restaurant and spot serving beer). Food and drink at the heart of the city indeed.

There seemed a bit of a Friday night feel around, even though it was Thursday – that could be the beer but I can think of no better complement for a city centre. Sunshine and people frolicking in the fountains, ice creams and beers, camera posers and classical buskers. Fruit stalls dotted around serving delicious ripe berries and stone fruits, a much better-sounding option for my own dinner than a McDonalds, Starbucks or, especially, a long thin sausage from somewhere called Esspunkt.

I ventured into and around Aldstadt the next morning, milling around the Viktualienmarkt which had all sorts of nice looking fruits and cheeses and meats and mushrooms and plants. Disconcertingly (I think), the outdoor beer garden was already fairly bustling at around 10:30. I opted for a fresh grapefruit juice, thinking that a beer would not help me up hundreds of steps to the belltower of St Peterskirche. And clear vision was helpful to soak up the 360 degree view across the city and afar to the Alps in the south.

Well, ain’t I just a saintly vision of wholesomeness, not drinking beer and going to church and all. In fact it took me until 12:20pm to be supping on a frothy lager in the middle of the giant Englischer Garden. It was hard earned, as the gardens are the size of a small English county and just as lovely and leafy. Water runs through the park, an obvious lure to Germans to strip off and plunge into a torrent or, in one spot, kind of surf, with boards and wetsuits too. The other thing the water provides is another luscious setting for another shady waterfront beer garden. This was possibly my favourite beer moment as it accompanied a lazy browse through a copy of The Times that I picked up on my flight. All rather civilised and ever so relaxing.

By contrast, an evening visit to the Hofbrauhaus was a different kind of affair. This is the most famous and hence most touristy beer hall, so busy that I didn’t even have one. There were wenches and an oompah loompah band and off course lashings of Weisswurst and Sauerkraut, but no empty tables. So instead, I returned to the site of my first beer in the Alter Botanischer Garden and engaged in something known as currywurst. Yes, it looks as good as it sounds. Basically a sausage with chips and curry sauce. I mean, is this not perfect beer garnish?

All this conviviality is well and good, but I was keen the next day to visit Dachau. This was one of the first concentration camps created by the Nazis. Sure, it doesn’t sound like a holiday kind of thing to do, but I was due some seriousness. It’s such a huge part of the world’s history and one that should not be forgotten, especially as we seem to be eternally selfish and greedy and seemingly superior in our position to immigrants and foreigners and boatpeople and anyone who might just want to get on with the same basic rights and welfare as us even though they were not born in our country. Oh, the horror, the (lack of) humanity! Anyway, due to engineering works and incomprehensible replacement bus services it was not accessible, so you’ll be spared anything too confronting.

I was disappointed, but happened to find myself near a site of great ostentation where rich people obviously got very rich and wanted to boast about it – Schloss Nymphemburg. Here sat a palace in the midst of a country park, with more rambling ornamental gardens, dense green woodland and meadows. It was rather lovely albeit all a bit identical to yesterday, without the added bonus of beer gardens.

A few stops away on the tram I did find a great ice cream place – my first ice cream in nearly 48 hours here. It was lush and left me wondering why it had been so long, but then I remembered…beer had taken its place and was much easier to come across.

The ice cream was in some inner suburb and it was nice just to soak up a few minutes in the square watching people go about their normal Saturday chores. Just off the square was a station for the U-Bahn subway which had the bonus of being operational at least. It was quite a funky ride, through a mix of stations that are either deliberately stylised retro or just plain damn retro. So, huge coloured industrial lights, 3D metallic squares, blocks of orange and brown, sleek steel railings and trundling blue train carriages took me to the height of slightly daggy 70s urban development – the Munich 1972 Olympic Park. At its heart a concrete tower provided an overlook of the stadium and rather compact parkland setting; a tower which also did its best to look like the Telstra Tower in Canberra.

More bling was the BMW display centre around the corner which calls itself BMW World but is really just a big fancy showroom with some gizmos. There are cars that people can look at to get a hardon, motorbikes for straddling, and video racing games to demonstrate just how much of an awesome person you are. For some inexplicable reason someone roams around the centre on a motorbike doing wheelies. Meanwhile, in the corner the Rolls Royce and Minis sparkle on rotating displays, expertly placed for teary-eyed Brits to lament the decline of our great country.

And so, time in Munich was coming to a close, but I couldn’t let it end on such a sour note for us Pommies could I? Turns out the same U-Bahn train stops quite close to those old Englischer Gardens (see, they love us really) and a certain shady waterfront beer garden. Here there is garnish too, like the sausage medley and potato salad and pretzel that I had. A late lunch before a rest and a later dinner of pork knuckle, washed down with another drink. This in a beer hall attached to a brewery with genuine old-fashioned serving wenches. One was even called Helga, I kid you not, and she was blonde (or peroxide covering grey I would think).

I’m sure Helga would say that it’s always good to go out with a bang, and Munich obliged. Sampling the Aldstadt at night, parts lit up like a fairytale, others dark and dingy like another Grimm fairytale, lightning streaked across the sky. The rumbling intensified and rain began to fall in huge droplets, more forks of lightning shattering down as if they were almost going to hit the towers of Marienplatz like it was 1955 and we had to get back to the year 1985 or something, but only with the help of a bit of rock and roll. People dodged the rain, sheltering under alcoves and colonnades, disappearing into subways, lingering in shops. Hard as nails beer-toting chain-smoking German bikers were suddenly shrieking like girlies. And through this all I embraced a bit of rain, cooling and refreshing and hopefully just cleansing a little bit of the BP from my body.

Europe Food & Drink Green Bogey

July 26, 2013October 19, 2015

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Lost

It must have been the third time I had come across the unassuming facade of a small church, white columns illuminated at night in a dim yellow glow and reaching up to a plain second level with modest belltower on top. It appeared at the junction of a darkened alley and small cobblestone road, wedged in among terraces of apartment blocks and surrounded by a few parked cars and more parked mopeds. It was an unspectacular scene in a city such as Florence, and clearly there were very few tourists who had ventured down this particular street. Yet somehow I had ended up here three times, seeking a way out of the tangle of alleys and streets to the solace of my hotel bed.

It had all started off so well, arriving in the city centre on an impressively fast train from Milan, just in time for lunch off the giant square of Piazza Signoria. Around the corner, my budget hotel room sat behind a huge wooden door and up five flights of stairs but it was amenable and comfortable, albeit with what is likely the world’s smallest shower. Freshly showered, I loved walking down those stairs and out of that door into a tiny alley that funnelled onto the grand piazza, with decadent statues and imposing arcades around the fortress-like towers of the Palazzo Vecchio. From here and down alongside the Uffizi Gallery, with its never-ending queues, I came out onto the River Arno, and to my right, the ramshackle arrangement of buildings that line the Ponte Vecchio drew me along.

Things seemed to worsen with the onset of a thunderstorm and though I hastily and successfully retraced my steps, the atmospherics had changed. Rather than cleansing and refreshing, the rain left a residue of water, channelling the hot summer dirt of a city into pools and leaving a gritty film across its cobblestones. The darkness of clouds and the howl of winds created a doomsday of Dantean proportions, where it seemed only a matter of time before arches would crash to the ground and the earth would open up and swallow the array of sculptures congregating in every square. And out of this darkness came a new hell, an army of revitalised mosquitoes, hungry and thirsty for blood.

It was into this post-apocalyptic environment that I returned after dark, only to find I may have been over-egging the scene, as the rain had passed, the lights were still on and people had returned to the streets in pursuit of a heavenly combination of food, music, art, and animated conversation. I was ready for a quieter night and content just to seek a bite to eat; any music, art or animated conversation would be a secondary outcome. A modest goal, but one with just enough vagueness to prove my undoing.

I don’t get lost very often. I mean proper lost, like I don’t know where the hell I am or where I am supposed to go. Typically I have this in-built radar that can orient my position, the direction in which to head, and the way to get there. Even a few minor diversions and detours generally become easily rectified. But on this night indecisiveness about what to eat and the setting in which to do it said hello to the labyrinthine streets and alleys of Florence to prove a frustrating concoction. My complacency to not take a map or read where to eat first or to just settle for the first option compounded this. And while there was an initial sense of excitement and discovery about losing yourself in the city, by the end I was footsore and sweaty and hungry and mosquito-bitten.

Now, I can hear you saying that surely there are many places to eat in Florence. I can hear you loud and clear. Indeed, if I was to head left or right, north or south, I would be guaranteed some pizza or a bowl of pasta or a juicy hunk of Bistecca alla Fiorentina. The issue was finding somewhere that most closely resembled the idealised image I had in my head, the concept that best met my needs: quiet but with bustle, tucked away in some quaint little alley but not far from the main tourist drags, a place that was reasonably priced and, importantly, a spot where you wouldn’t feel too much of a loser for being there on your own while others dined on spaghetti like a couple of trampy dogs in a cartoon. Significantly, the fact that I wasn’t in a pasta or pizza mood didn’t help one bit.

The night now turns into a blur, one street looking like the next, rows of mopeds cluttering the kerbs, buildings tightly clumped next to and on top of each other. Amongst them the occasional grander building decorated with neat columns and fancy cornice work would be memorable landmarks from which to navigate, but here they are ten a penny. Each of these streets seems to flush out onto a small piazza, where five others shoot off, like the legs of some grubby Italian insect. The disorientation is palpable, only occasional guidance provided by the giant glowing beacon of the Duomo, which is never in the direction in which you thought it should logically be. The river is somewhere, and eventually I come across it, and can backtrack along its banks to my hotel room. For dinner, two hours later, some takeaway tagliatelle from the tacky restaurant five doors down.

For the rest of my stay in Florence I decided to take a map in my back pocket. It turns out you can still embrace the pleasures of ambling aimlessly around the streets while having a destination in mind (and occasionally checking a map to ensure you are on course). The glimpses of Duomo on the first night cemented my desire to explore this centrepiece further. Towering over the rest of the city it should be fairly easy to find, though the constricted density of the streets mean you can approach the square in which it sits without a sighting until the very last moment. Where a laneway takes a sudden jolt to the left or right, as if it had wholly shifted five metres in an earthquake, a glimpse of the Duomo almost magically emerges in the gap of air between window shutters and washing.

Having located the huge cathedral without incident, further steps took me on a breathtaking climb to the top of its belltower. And while my heart rate slowed and breathing recovered, I was taken away by the expansive view over the city. From this godly vantage you can understand how easy it is to lose yourself in the melange of terracotta roofs and earthy brickwork. Streets appear to disappear, with only major thoroughfares visible, radiating out from the larger piazzas in perfectly straight slices. There is a strident hum of business thrust upwards from those streets and I can see the tops of heads clustering and flowing in all directions, some of which are no doubt getting lost.

From this height I can also see beyond the packed cityscape that jams its way along to the north bank of the Arno. Across the other side, hills rise and buildings begin to scatter, marking a more gentrified, palatial part of town. This is where the rich people would have gathered and set down their extravagance in showy mansions and gilded villas and trigonometric gardens. Here there is the perfect opportunity to lose yourself in a different type of Florence, a manicured Florence that is perched on the doorstep of the Tuscan countryside.

Across this side of the river the behemoth of Palazzo Pitti is eclipsed by the grandiose Boboli Gardens which spread from its back door. A route into the gardens was typically not the easiest to find, an indistinct hole in a brick wall leading me into a rambling paradise of manicured lawns and fountain embellished ponds, unkempt meadows and leafy woods. The gardens are a great place in which to lose oneself, to take a breather from the manic buzz of life to the north of the Arno. In fact, you may emerge atop a hill and forget you are in Florence altogether, casting an eye south and east over rambling olive groves and cypress pine perforated by the odd beige and sienna villa. A Tuscan landscape with the pomp of a city behind it.

The ticket to Boboli Gardens also includes entry to another, smaller breathing space nearby: Bardini Gardens. I don’t think so many people make it here which, to me, makes it even better. I am not sure why fewer visitors come here. It’s certainly less grand than Boboli and if you are pushed for time I suppose you may skip the opportunity, wary of garden fatigue. Naturally it’s not very well signposted so some people may get lost on the way and give up. I almost did the same, but retraced my steps, took a different turn which did not seem logical and then found the entrance which just looked like the front door of a posh house.

Within, the gardens are less manicured, woody and leafier and dotted with an assortment of faded terracotta pots and crumbling walls. It’s more difficult to get lost, which on this trip is starting to sound like a blessing. A main path zigzags its way back down to river level, stopping off on the way at a weatherworn terrace offering some of the best views of the city. Those infamous city streets, a crammed conglomerate of buildings whose blanket of roofs is penetrated by the spires, towers and domes of all the major sights, glowing in the afternoon sun. Those streets into which you again spill and navigate with increasing mastery. No need for a map again, happily lost.

A to Z Europe Food & Drink Walking

June 9, 2013February 19, 2015

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Icefields

Despite being composed of perishing frozen particles there seems to be an inherent allure to the presence of snow and ice. I wonder if Eskimos feel the same way.

Maybe this romantic view is nourished in temperate climes, where snow falls are but an irregular memory of childhood. Something scarce is prized, and I can sombrely recall that when winter rain sweeps in to Plymouth, turning to snow pretty much everywhere but Plymouth, it delivers a fresh pile of disappointment. In Australia, no such disappointment because there really is no such expectation, with only the tiniest, highest pockets of land periodically subject to frozen weather. Still, at least they are generally reliable.

Away from Australia (and Plymouth) I have had the fortune to brace myself for arctic conditions, ghost through flurries of snow, and marvel at sweeping icefields, like a crow from atop a very big wall. Even just across the ditch, in New Zealand, one can appreciate the aesthetic value added by the white stuff, which has carved out its valleys and shaped its lofty mountain spires; peaks on which snow and ice still perches precariously and sweeps down graciously until it feeds into crystal clear rivers of melt water. Ninety-nine percent water and one percent fish, so it is said.

Such attractions are not without peril however, particularly if you decide to sled bungee flying fox BASE jump black raft off them. And because of their allure, they are incredibly popular, the two west coast glaciers – Fox and Franz Josef – a mandatory stop for coach tours, campervans and Apex International drivers everywhere. Indeed, in high season the walk to see the crumbly, dirty dust-coated moraine of Fox Glacier is an orderly procession of ages and nations. The old and overweight defy impending heart attack. Chinese and Japanese and Korean visitors dutifully file their way along for picture stops, wrapped up against the cold. British visitors do the same, basking in shorts. Youngsters scramble without fear over rocks and creeks, and Aussies stride nonchalantly along in thongs. Somehow here the grandeur and spectacle of the landscape becomes a little diminished.

Crowds bustle about just as much on a beautifully clear summer’s morning in Chamonix, France. Here, in an ever narrowing valley at the foot of Mont Blanc, glaciers creep down towards the pine forests bordering the town. The mechanic shrills of souvenir marmots cut through the Gallic hubbub, as people wait for lifts to take them to precipitous heights. Indeed, the Téléphérique de l’Aiguille du Midi takes them up some 2,807 metres in 20 minutes. It’s an alarming rise that leaves you a little breathless, literally and then metaphorically once you are confronted with the dazzling ice world around. Up here the crowds seem less intrusive, limited as they are through access, muted by an oxygen depleted sense of drunkenness, and made minuscule by the perspective of being near four kilometres above sea level; most of the Alps seem to be on view, stretching across three countries in a series of rocky turrets and icy hollows. A rare, and staggering, European wilderness.

Anyone would think I don’t like people given my desire to experience such places without being part of an inevitable tourist procession. Well, let me say that first I quite like some people and secondly I cherish the chance to share some of these places with them. In fact, some of the more memorable moments of life are the random conversations you have with random strangers in random places. Like waiting with like-minded photo seekers for cloud to never clear from mountain tops in the Cascade Mountains, or trying to translate the feverish sighting of marmots from Italian to French to English to a Japanese visitor heading down a mountain railway in Switzerland. It turns out most people are just like you and me, the common bond of the experience overshadowing any differences at that point in time. A smile is a smile in any language.

In fact I’m not immune to being part of a bigger tour group…sometimes it is nice to let someone else take control and just go with the flow, especially when having decisions to make equals indecisiveness. Plus longer tours over days and weeks provide a fascinating ethnographic experience [1]. At the start individuals unbeknown to one another mutter polite greetings and eye one another with caution. A few break the ice with time-honoured inquisitions of where do you come from and where have you been. Barriers break on the first good walk or, more likely, the first few beers. By the end of the night you are BFFs with Darlo from Wonthaggi and within a week you cannot imagine not being with this same group of people, getting on this same bus, stopping at viewpoints, eating meals and sharing a beer or two practically every day. Yeah, cliques may form and these may or may not include the rejection of people initially embraced as BFFs, but the group dynamic remains in a fluidly socially cohesive melting pot of fluctuating hormones and alcohol.

And this, my friends, is an encapsulation of a Contiki tour, albeit a description that is unlikely to be used by their marketing department. For those not in the know, a Contiki tour is a particularly popular way to see the world for 18-35 year olds, especially Australians who have 14 days to see every country in Europe [2]. With a core populace of 18-35 year old Australians there tends to be a significant emphasis on end-of-day drinking, but not without a range of energetic activities and processional sightseeing stops in the day. The relevance of a Contiki tour, and justification for my written meandering, is that I did one once. It was in Canada, with the blue and white bus traversing an incredible stretch of road called the Icefields Parkway. Finally, back on topic.

The Icefields Parkway links the Canadian Rocky Mountain towns of Jasper and Banff. I would love to go back since I cannot recall every instant and every stop, this before the days of blogging and digital photography. And I would love to have my own wheels and take my own time this time around. I seem to remember that along this road, around every corner, there is a panoramic view which you wouldn’t find out of place in a Rocky Mountains 2002 calendar. Bulky grey mountains laced with white rise up from all angles, as glaciers stream downwards, melting into rapids and falls and filling the most incredible blue green lakes. Huge swathes of fragrant pine forest fringe the lakes and valleys, a dark cover for elk and moose and bear.

It turns out the easiest way to spot a bear is to look for the cars and caravans parked beside the side of the road and the coaches slowing to a crawl. Once closer, a telltale sign is the sight of someone with a very big lens snooping around the undergrowth, fringed by other enthusiastic amateurs decorated with silver compact zoom cameras and, I guess now, iPads and iPhones and Surfaces and Robots. No-one seems to figure that the bear might just be interested in the hands and arms and torsos holding these devices, so long as you can get a good shot to post on your wall [3]. The other approach to spotting bears is to have a really nice picnic in a wicker basket and hang about in a national park with an uptight ranger. By contrast, moose spotting is much easier given they are generally roaming loose aboot hooses.

Apart from bears, other highlights of the Icefields Parkway are fluid, from the glaciers to waterfalls and rapids and lakes. During my trip, a ride on the Athabasca Glacier on some huge wheeled contraption afforded an opportunity to walk on ice and clear the head. The wonder of glacial till (or flour) culminates at Peyto Lake, with its incredible colour and picture postcard viewpoint. More subdued but serene is Lake Louise, with a fine grand hotel and gardens at one end, and wilderness beyond, with the seemingly impenetrable Lefroy Glacier a barrier to further exploration. And dotted along the road, at turn-ins and parking stops, are any number of rivers and falls and forests for bears to lurk within.

(Picture credits here go to my brother. I think I had an old film camera and do not have any pictures in electronic format)

The end of the spectacular Icefields Parkway trip came at Banff, another well-kept resort kind of town. Here, the Contiki tour pulled out all the stops, with a three night layover in some rather charming mountain style lodges. Of course these provided a good opportunity for house parties and sleepovers, but it was nice to wander a little down the street and run into random elk crossing the road. There were also some optional extras – probably sky diving and white water slaloming but I just went on the day trip to Calgary. My abiding memory of Calgary was the raised walkways linking buildings and malls so that people can avoid the metres of snow piled up below over the long winter months. You see snow may be alluring, but I guess it would be a real pain in the arse to live with for half of the year.

The Icefields Parkway was just one part of the trip in Western Canada but probably the most spectacular. I came to realise that Canada and Canadians were rather special and this endures today in friendships, a love of maple syrup and fondness for movies starring John Candy. I wish I could remember more about it, but time hazes memories and written records are scarce. I think back to Canada and it was the first time, apart from those snows that only seem to entrance childhood, that I witnessed the astounding impression that ice can make. It’s perhaps no wonder I have been drawn back, to the Alps of France and Switzerland and peaks and lakes of Slovenia, the High Sierras of California and Cascade Mountains of Washington, the upside down Alps of New Zealand and even the rounded Snowy Mountains of Australia. I am quite happy to enjoy the pleasures of a beach and the proximity of the coast, but what invigorates me, what takes my breath away, are mountains. Mountains that are even better served with ice.

[1] Excuse my sociologically geographical anthropological research terminology that I used once when I did some stuff like about something

[2] Today: breakfast in Paris with a coffee and chocolate stop in Belgium, before reaching Amsterdam for some lunch / clogs / drugs / rooting, and then onto Berlin to buy some wall and drink oversize tankards of frothy beer with serving wenches. Optional sky dive over Denmark.

[3] I’m entirely culpable of this, though I tend to favour pictures of cakes which are typically a lot safer.

Links

NZ glacier country: http://www.glaciercountry.co.nz/

New Zealand highs: http://neiliogb.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/on-high-ground-te-anau-to-franz-josef.html

Aiguille du Midi: http://www.chamonix.net/english/sightseeing/aiguille_du_midi.htm

Le Massif Massif: http://neiliogb.blogspot.com.au/2008/08/fromage-foray.html

Life is a Highway: http://www.contiki.com/

Entrancing on ice: http://www.icefieldsparkway.ca/

Smarter than average: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPbLJnbRTF8

A to Z Driving Europe Food & Drink Photography USA & Canada Walking

February 26, 2013February 19, 2015

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Fairytales

Once upon a time there lived a curious fellow with salt and pepper hair and ten year old T-shirts that had faded in the sun but, he thought, had not quite worn enough to really justify throwing away. He was somewhat transient in nature, rarely settling in one place for too long, and got a little restless when forced to stay on one spot, like a golden retriever longing to chase a stick thrown just over the horizon. This state was not helped by a chronic inability to make long term plans or grown up decisions. Rather than seeing this as a failing however, he decided to positively embrace it by going on little trips and adventures to take in new worlds and experiences, and to document it in his own haphazard way.

It would be fair to say that he had a tendency to be cynical and sceptical about things as he went around. There was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or yellow brick road taking you there. Fairytales were the realm of fantasy, moralistic feel good stories that had been endlessly rehashed for commercial TV and cinema. Actually, he did have a certain fondness towards Beauty and the Geek, not that he would admit this of course. He liked the Beauty’s naive charm and hot legs, and perhaps envied the Geek for a short moment. Plus Shrek was okay, up to a point.

So it was with wide-eyed amazement that on one of his little escapades he found himself in some kind of fairytale world. The day hadn’t really started that way, as he lugged his bags on the number 82 bus from Finchley to Golders Green, and hopped aboard a coach to take him to an airport in Essex of all places. The coach did have free wifi and the airport a good deal on soup and a sandwich, but this was hardly up there in the land of fairytales. The plane too – sturdy, reliable, no fuss – was agreeable enough, and the flight offered views of mountainous realms and lakeside charms. And it was somewhere amongst these mountains that the plane touched down, and the new land of Slovenia awaited him.

He was welcomed with a hire car and a motorway, not quite a yellow brick road, but proficient enough to carry him hastily to this fairytale world; a world where a lake of turquoise and opal and jade blended into one glassy whole, and from which rose a tear shaped island, decorated with a single church tower; a tower whose bell echoed across the water and permeated the leafy forest shore, no doubt prompting a few tired leaves to float to the ground as each wave of sound shuddered against the branches. On the water, row boats sliced silkily through its calm, each carrying a Prince Charming and their Princess, or a gaggle of ugly sisters, towards the island. High above perched atop a rocky crag a castle brooded, keeping watch on the lake and island, and resisting the weight of mountains behind it.

Lake Bled was to be his home for a couple of nights and he lived his own fairytale in his own happy way. He filled up on breakfast beside the windowsill, overlooking the world as it came to life and humans began to entangle themselves with the landscape. He walked the perimeter of the lake on a cloudy, drizzly morning, even more captivated by the sombre cloak the elements had thrown over the land, and the solace of that bell on that church tower on that island. He had a coffee beside its shore and was pleased of the quality and friendliness with which it was provided, for very little pleased him more. Later on some local sausages and wine, plus a quest to find Bled Cake, satisfied him still further.

The fairytale landscape appeared to spread beyond the lakeside and, despite the inevitable persistence that comes with drizzle, he became captivated by a seemingly timeless and hidden gorge, carved out many eons before. The green waters of Vintgar Gorge had a mystical property, as the river sliced its way through, around, and under rock while tree roots and branches clung precariously to the narrowing and steepening sides of the valley. An ancient wooden walkway hovered above the river, as hundreds of trout waited for something, or someone, to fall in. Around the next corner there probably lurked a dragon, while hidden above the cliff a fair maiden waited, longingly hoping for a handsome man to pull on her matted locks of golden hair.

The following day it was time for him to put on another clean but old T-shirt and leave this fairytale enclave and move further across the realm. This was none the less enchanting, from snow kissed mountains to tumbling icy blue rivers, passing by the clusters of old cities and towns with their ornate facades and steeple fringed skylines. And then rather circuitously down to another lake, Bohinj, which presented a more pastoral scene of Heidi milking cows while Julie Andrews and some kids wailed from the peaks above.

Here, among the narrow streets of a village peppered with wooden chalets also lay a sense of darker, gothic folk tales embossed in the burnished beams. Like the story of a curious fellow climbing a mountain, persisting upwards through rough hunting trails and never giving up, never turning back. And for this effort, encountering just a sparse plateau inhabited by rabid dogs and crooked nose peasants, while back in the valley sat a welcoming, sunny village with flowery meadows and bales of hay. The moral of this tale: what you find around you at the bottom of the mountain can be better than that which sits at the top. And, always stick to well marked and mapped out trails.

A good fairytale is nothing without a happy ending and for this the man returned to the magical surroundings of Lake Bled, unable to resist its allure, despite his prior dislike of fairytales. After the frustrating climb of the previous day he wanted to use his efforts more productively and reach a pinnacle, a place from which he could look down on the land like a giant upon a beanstalk. It was a good job he was wearing another old T-shirt for it was a steep and sweaty climb in the late afternoon sunshine. However, upon reaching the first point at which he could cast his eye below, the sun had disappeared behind a mountain, or had possibly been put in shadow by the billionaire owner of a nuclear power plant, and the scene was dull and flat. But by time he reached the very top of Osojnica viewpoint, the sun emerged again and all was illuminated below. Persistence and patience pays off.

The church on the lake was still there, with rowboats milling about and the bell ringing out to all around. The castle looked less broody and imposing, as it sat below his vantage, and was dwarfed by the rise of mountains behind it. The lake took on deeper blue hues from where he stood, projecting a sheen like candle wax. And the sun remained for just a few more minutes as he documented the experience in his own haphazard way.

While it is still too early to tell whether he lived happily ever after, the fellow had again a deep appreciation for his circumstances and the opportunities that came his way. Thankfully he didn’t quite lose his cynicism, for that was an essential part of his character, but he did appreciate that fairytales of a sort were happening all the time. They may not be the fantasy stories of dashing princes who looked a bit gay and demure princesses who were secretly hot; or yarns about ogres and dragons and talking donkeys. But he did see that there was wondrousness all around, on this real land in places both near and far, far away. The world is our fairytale and we make our own stories in it. And he continued to make his story every day, always trying to admire and appreciate the land around him as he did so.

Links

Bled tourist information: http://www.bled.si/en/

Live in a fairytale on a budget at Pension Pletna: http://www.pletna.com/en

Vintgar Gorge: http://www.bled.si/en/default.asp?id=466

Bohinj tourist information: http://www.bohinj.si/en

Not so sleeping beauties or shrinking violets: http://au.tv.yahoo.com/beauty-and-the-geek-australia/

I’m a believer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUyu5prWjTE

A to Z Europe Food & Drink Photography Society & Culture Walking

January 5, 2013October 19, 2015

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Cream

I grew up in Devon, England. On paper it may sound idyllic for Devon surely conjures images of rolling green hills and tinkling rivers, bobbling their way down to the sea past thatched cottages and fields of sheep and cow [1]. The image is ingrained on a can of Ambrosia custard, a can which may be spotted overflowing from a pile of black bin bags in a grimy back lane of Plymouth, Devon, as I endeavour to find the shortest route home from school, avoiding the dog mess and scary people hanging around the dreary Thatcher-era jobcentre. The can is eventually collected by a wearily underpaid and grizzled local, transporting it by diesel truck to a stinking pile of garbage, where seagulls scavenge for bits of leftover pastie and people scavenge for usable second hand furniture and car boot trinkets. When it comes to custard cans, what you see is not exactly everything that you get.

That is not to say the custard can is a total fabrication, and the idyllic Devon does exist in spades, particularly once you get out of some of the more run down parts of its towns and cities. Within fifteen minutes of that cobbled back alley I can be on the edge of Dartmoor, with the rolling hills spanning ever higher until they become barren and sparse, topping out with crumbling rocks that eventually give up pushing their way out of the earth and tumble downwards over the steep hillside, like a very very slow moving volcanic eruption of granite. Here lie rocks that I once had the dubious pleasure of measuring for a geography field trip on the kind of day where misty rain sits stagnant in the air and soaks you to the bone. Still, it was so worth it to learn that there was some correlation between the size of the granite rocks and their position on the hillside [2].

By now you may be thinking this is all rather nice but what has any of this got to do with the letter C? It all seems to be a bit D like, rambling on about Devon and Dartmoor. And while there is something to be said for a double D it is not conducive to the order and logic that you have set yourself with this quite possibly pointless time-wasting task of writing something about each bloody letter of the alphabet like you are some magic floating pencil on Sesame Street. However, to you naysayers I pronounce that it is a truth universally acknowledged that when I return to Devon from wherever I have been lately I make a beeline for one thing: cream. Thick, yellow dollops of local clotted cream, with jam and scones and tea, or treacle tart, or ice cream and raspberries, or, well, just about anything. This exercise is not solely restricted to Devon, and the county of Cornwall can also be cleverly incorporated. Cornwall, custard cans, cream, coagulated coronaries. That’s clearly more like it.

Though I could lovingly list out the top ten cream tea moments or some such, I want to first draw out an expanded definition of creaminess, without degenerating into smutty innuendo too much. I think creamy can be appropriately used as an adjective to describe the landscape of Devon and Cornwall as it can nowhere else, in its cosy seaside villages, its wooded river valleys and rolling quilt of comforting green hills. In a Fifty Sheds type way [3], you can definitely have a ‘creamy’ experience, squeezing through tight country lanes to go for an invigorating stride in the countryside, butterflies and bees milling about in the dappled sunlight as tits and warblers penetrate the air. This is a rich and verdant landscape that produces, and is thus encapsulated, in that dollop of smooth, silky heart attack.

Incidentally, I love how, being at the extremes of the country, Devon and Cornwall have taken cream to the max by making it ‘clotted’ or, if you like, ‘extreme cream’. I think there is an embodiment of local spirit and independence here, the fact that some bumpkins have done something a little against the grain, taking unpasteurised cream and simmering it and skimming the very richest part off the top for themselves. They have undoubtedly created something to be targeted in future obesity campaigns and crackdowns by Brussels Bureaucrats as writers to the Daily Mail letters page would have us get in a flap about. But I don’t think they will get anywhere, for locals will resist in a barrage of fine Westcountry accents: “Arh sod it, a lil bid a cream wownt urt yer now, willett?”

If I was to pick one spot in Devon that is particularly creamy to me (though I should caution, not in a cream my pants sense) it would be the small village of Noss Mayo. It’s only a short jaunt from Plymouth but another world entirely; a cluster of cosy coloured cottages cascading down a narrow wooded valley to meet the gently bobbing boats on Noss Creek. Here lies a starting and finishing point for a fairly easy yet delightful walk that captures an archetypal, timeless Devon. There are country lanes rising past fields of sheep and hay and dotted islands of buttercups. There is the coastal headland, from where you can look far down to splintered rock fingers reaching out at the shimmering blue water. There is the estuary and river, which is fringed with copious, flourishing woodland, and then the creek itself, upon which sits a perfect pub. The only thing lacking – ironically – is a cream tea, which the pub never seems to offer, though a cider is recompense, especially since it too handily begins with a C.

For a full on Devon Cream Tea there are some fond memories past, but for a regularly reliable, convenient experience in a still quite blissful setting it would be hard to beat the endeavours of the Badgers Holt Tearooms on Dartmoor. At something of a tourist honeypot on the River Dart, here they simply make the cream the star, with scones and jam mere portals for the thick pale yellow cream piled high in a china bowl. A similar experience more off the beaten track – though I cannot vouch for its reliability having only been there once – was found at the Fingle Bridge Inn, visiting a few years back with my brother and his partner on one of our once regular cream-seeking excursions. We would go on these day trips for a good walk and some sightseeing, though secretly we all knew it was mostly about the cream tea and the other things were just diverting time-fillers!

Alas such creaminess is rarer these days. Being based in Australia will do that, where a Devonshire Tea frequently comes with squirty cream from a can (I kid you not!), and variations of ‘Australian style’ clotted cream are more milk-like than anything else [4]. The problem is the antipodean distaste for bacteria, by way of unpasteurised milk products, which I assume are considered a risk to the unique flora and fauna of this nation. So, rather than enjoying a fine cream tea and letting microbes run riot through the wild streets of Vaucluse, we destroy the country by pillaging its resources and selling them all on the cheap to China. Times have moved on. It is, after all, the Asian Century.

A redeeming feature of Australia is that they do generally make good use of cream when it comes to a Pavlova. In fact, the Christmas just past provided a perfect example, confirming that you can never have too much cream on a Pavlova because there is fresh fruit involved and that is healthy, right? Other countries too do not fare so badly. In Slovenia, there is Bled cake, which practically involves three inches of whipped cream sandwiched between two light pastry layers. In France there are any number of pastries involving some intricate creamy surprise; or think of Crème de Chantilly atop a Mont Blanc size ice cream. And in Switzerland there is La Crème de Gruyere…

Gruyere is noted of course for another dairy based product, which itself could form an entirely different and probably more entertaining entry under the letter C. And true to form I will fondly remember the fondue in the immaculate medieval town square and the odd, and thus very Swiss, self-guided tour though the cheese factory [5]. Gruyere feels a bit like a concocted Swiss fantasy, designed atop a hill to lure cheese eating tourists. Surrounding mountains are not as grand as elsewhere, but offer a teaser of what lies beyond, a more manageable scene of hills and lakes, vines and meadows, rather than the eye-goggling and neck bracing spires and hulks of the high Alps. It has its requisite fill of castles and churches, courtyards and window boxes, cafes and gift shops. It is, then, perfect coach tour day trip territory.

It was partly a result of arriving early to miss most of the hordes that my brother and I found ourselves with time to spare before it could be deemed acceptable to eat lunch and drink wine. It must have been before eleven or something. Having explored all that the town had to offer, walking from one end to the other, even down a little out of the way to a church, and climbing town walls, and still with time to kill, we headed to a cafe that looked like it was kind of open maybe; well, at least the waitress let us in though without much of a welcome. A coffee was a good call (now there is another C I could write about with very much less detriment to Australia). This was nothing special in itself, very un-Australian in fact, which makes sense given we are in Switzerland remember. But it did come with a little chocolate cup, filled with this Crème de Gruyere stuff.

At this point the mind plays a trick as it’s naively thinking, hmm, this could taste a little weird, I mean Gruyere cream, Gruyere is a cheese, right, and this is cream from it or something, like the dregs once all the lumpy bits have been squeezed out?! I doubt if this is anywhere near true, but that’s what the mind associates with Gruyere. The stupid mind needs to stop being so lazy in its word association and just think that, well, actually, it’s just another product from those very well cared for, loved and happy cows chewing those lush meadows with the flavours of 31 different grass, herb and flower species or something. It only turns a little cheesy when you buy too much to take home and it gets neglected after a few days because you have been snowed under eating far too many other treats, many of which are also dairy based. Calcium deficiency cannot be a problem here.

Anyway, it was a delightful little nugget in a delightful setting, which is often the case with the best cream based experiences. Perhaps this stems from being able to appreciate a direct link between your surroundings and the produce in front of you; in fact there may even be cows mooing in the background as you collapse with a blocked artery and the ambulance arrives. The cows keep on mooing regardless, continuing to produce a very basic ingredient that is turned by man into all sorts of delight. I think good cream is a result of good country, happy, contented animals and people with respect for traditions and tasty food. Traditions such as jam first then cream, or cream first and…or… well, who cares, just whop it on there and shove it in your mouth me lover. That’s how we do it in the Westcountry.

[1] Lately, some of these tinkling rivers have grown to large brown lakes, cutting off Devon from the rest of the world and, sadly, inundating many homes

[2] Smaller rocks had managed to flee further down the hill. I think. The mist made it hard to tell, not to mention the 25 years that have since passed.

[3] https://twitter.com/50ShedsofGrey

[4] One notable exception is from a small dairy in Tasmania, whose name I am not going to mention for fear of their products always being sold out when I look for them.

[5] Completing the clichés that day were a mountain cog train ride and chocolate factory tour. It was thus an amazing day.

Links

Oo-ar, it’s ambrosia: http://www.ambrosia.co.uk/range/ambrosia-devon-custard/

Dartmoor granite, tors and clitter: http://www.dartmoor-npa.gov.uk/learningabout/lab-printableresources/lab-factsheetshome/lab-geologylandforms

The Ship Inn, Noss Mayo: http://www.nossmayo.com/

Badgers Holt: http://www.badgersholtdartmoor.co.uk/

The Fingle Bridge Inn: http://www.finglebridgeinn.com/

La Gruyere: http://www.la-gruyere.ch/en/

Mastering the art of Jannery: http://www.chavtowns.co.uk/2005/02/plymouth-the-janner-textbook/

A to Z Europe Food & Drink

December 19, 2012October 19, 2015

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Beery

As an Anglo-Australian male in his thirties it is inevitable that beer has accompanied me on many occasions on the road and at home. At such times when one needs to know, like a doctor’s interrogation or unethically intrusive job interview, I’d declare myself one of these ‘social drinker’ types. From what I can tell, a social drinker is someone who grabs a beer or two when the mood fancies – to celebrate, relax, or navigate slightly awkward moments – or just when it’s the only thing cold in the fridge and you just can’t be arsed to scrape ice out of the freezer. Very occasionally the charming delight that you become after such social drinking turns sour (usually thanks to the beer being ‘off’ or some such), and imbalance and language difficulties can ensue.

The sage philosopher, Homer [1], remarked of beer as a “temporary solution,” in easing the challenging realities of existence. This temporary solution is also uncannily permanent around the world in which we travel, providing a readily available, relatively cheap source of comfort and joy. Though naturally something of a haze, I can look back on my life and recall a number of places and experiences that have been enhanced by beer or, broadening the spectrum a little, a good glass of wine or a tangy local cider or a holiday water style G&T. Often the drink is the icing on the cake, the encapsulation of a special moment. At other times it’s invariably been an antiseptic, painkiller or narcotic.

A proven value of beer when travelling is in how it can transform the first shy mumblings of disparate individuals on a tour group into one animated tribe. While the first day of such trips may have been spent quietly on the bus in little cliques of friendship pairs, the second day is typically dominated by shared tales of what scandal befell Jared and Janelle, and frequent hilarious stops for Lance to chunder like the man he is from down under. Meanwhile the tour guide acts like this has never happened before and this group is – based on the escapades of the previous night – simply the most awesome ever [2]. Multiply this all by several days and nights and you are left with a teary, hollow feeling that you will never be as one again when the trip is over and that Lance’s chunder is now but a trickle down some distant highway. This may sound like a young persons’ rite of passage, but I daresay the same happens on more senior and old at heart tours, just replace ‘beer’ with ‘wine’ and ‘chunder’ with ‘incontinence’.

Unless you happen to spend a large part of your time meandering in the Middle East, beer is an international language, demonstrated by the fact that almost every country has its own version. Within countries, different regions produce their own local brew and it can be a strong marker of local identity. Obviously one of the joys of travel is sampling local food and drink and I’ll always look to a local beer if I can, unless I have already discovered its similarity to the secretion of a small flying insect, or “gnat’s piss” as it is sometimes described. The trick for the traveller is to know the local beer sensitivities, so as not to order some nancy fruity lager with low carbohydrates in the North East of England or the culturally offensive XXXX from Queensland in anywhere but Queensland [3].

Moving from England to Australia in 2006 I have gradually come to learn the sensitivities of what must be two of the most rampant beer swilling nations. My biggest faux pas was when fresh off the boat and still subject to irritants like Shane Warne. Tasked with getting some beers in for Friday work drinks I grabbed a crate of stubbies from the local Bottle-O [4] only to be chided for their warmth. The stubbies felt pretty cold but that was in fact ambient air-conditioning temperature and not arctic freezer temperature, which was how the locals preferred it. And now, after six years or so, that’s how I like it, perhaps because it’s the only way to subvert the lack of taste.

Beer has been part of my cultural integration and a means to become accepted as a bona fide Australian. A barbecue with awful slimy sausages does not feel right without a beer in hand, cloaked in a tacky stubby holder. Mercifully, even those who were subject to my warm stubbies have become good friends, and I have since shared drinks with them fresh out of the chillers of a 7-11 in Hong Kong, wandering party streets with beer in hand, inevitable ending up in Maccers at night’s end. This was one of those experiences where the beer must have been ‘off’, since a malaise lingered for the rest of my stay there.

Australian beer consumption seems natural in the outdoors, huddled around a barbecue, the droning of cricket commentators in the background. It’s also a good accompaniment beside the sea, tasting even better after an active day of exploring and coasting. One such memory stands out when I was in the Margaret River region of Western Australia. Here, after a blissful drive south from Perth, the day’s end saw me at Prevelly, a low key settlement on the coast, popular for surfing or just hanging out like a surfer. The headland here is actually called Surfer’s Point, and this particular evening it was jam packed with people of a dreadlocked and slightly skanky looking nature, plus their groupies. Inexplicably, many were clambering over the rocks with what looked like ironing boards to bob up and down in the water at prime shark feeding time. Others were returning from the water, getting changed with very little discretion around their beat up vans. There wasn’t just the one full moon that night.

Positioned the other side of the headland was another cove where the Margaret River itself came to a halt against the sand. With a sandy beach, sun disappearing over the ocean, full moon rising over the river, ambient temperature and vibe and one beer lugged several kilometres in the pocket of my shorts, the scene was set. Twisting the bottle top of my beer and nirvana was within sight. Apart from the fact that the bottle top wouldn’t twist off. It was one of those fancy boutique beers requiring a bottle opener. I could have cried.

In such circumstances one finds oneself thinking what Bear Grylls would do? But given I neither had a film crew nor nearby hotel in which I was actually staying, I was forced to reassess and consider what would MacGyver do? The answer lay in the use of keys, a wooden stick from an ice lolly, a bit of rock and willpower. After ten minutes it finally opened, the first gassy hiss like the sound of 80,000 fans at the MCG cheering. It was now slightly warm but I obviously didn’t mind and the beer went down like the sun and the mood climbed like the moon.

While offering spectacular outdoor beer moments like this, Australia has generally disappointed in its indoor drinking environment. Pubs are often bland behemoths with tacky decor and goddam awful pokies, an attached bistro offering an array of equally dull and not as cheap as it should be food. As a result, I love returning to the UK to duck into any one of its dark and dingy drinking holes and remember an archetypal rainy day in London a few years back where, killing time before meeting friends, the only answer was to pop into a random hostelry, drink a couple of warming ales and write postcards. Perversely, pubs in the UK tend to have better beer gardens too, perhaps a result of the local obsession with hanging baskets and, well, opportunities to drink away the misery on every street corner.

An English speciality is the country pub, often offering a roaring fireside, wooden tables and outdoor hanging baskets. Beers range from generic chemical concoctions to the occasional guest ale brewed in the local cowshed. It’ll be called something like Olde Spotted Dick or Malted Slipperypipe. To soak it up you can sample a menu ranging from cheesy garlic bread to cheesy lasagne to cheesy chips and perhaps even cheesy peas [5]. There will be an aroma of stale beer mixed with cow dung. And you’ll generally be made to feel welcome because everyone in there has been inebriated since 1972 and cannot be bothered anymore.

One very lovely country pub moment that I remember was in the equally lovely Lake District in northwest England. For a country as small and crammed as England it is remarkable how much of it has an alluring pastoral air and sense of light and space. In this regard, the Lake District is an absolute gem. On a surprisingly sunny and warm late summer’s day, with the farmers making hay and the sheep bleating contentedly, a small pub along the country lanes of Langdale offered up not a beer but a beautifully of-the-moment cider. Despite repeated attempts, that first cider on that first night could not be beaten. It was the official start of the holiday, the ‘we have arrived’ moment and perfectly set up a week of discovery and delight.

Would such moments have been the same without alcohol? One would like to think so, purely to reassure oneself that they are not dependent on booze. But in reality I don’t think a glass of lemonade would have cut it. Good beers (and ciders) emerge at the end of good days; they are both rewards and tonics. They can lift a moment from average to good, good to exceptional. And they trigger associated memories of time and place. They are the beer goggles that help us to look back on moments with a rose-tinted air. Sure, let us not overdo it, but let us also not dismiss beer as just another vice. Remember kids, drink responsibly, and if you can’t, best to head off on a Contiki tour with Lance.

[1] J Simpson, not the ancient Greek dude

[2] To argue against this point, see https://gbpilgrim.com/2012/12/15/a/

[3] With the wonders of marketing however it is very acceptable to have the ‘Australian’ Fosters in England, but do not drink it (if you even find it) in Australia!

[4] Translated, for those of you who speak English, as ‘I purchased a 24 pack of beer bottles from the beer shop / off licence / liquor store’

[5] See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv60cnNSW7Q

Links

A very good beer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA7p5VwAXk0

Beers around the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_and_breweries_by_region

Rate beer: http://www.ratebeer.com

Road trip to Margaret River: http://neiliogb.blogspot.com.au/2009/03/margaret.html

Bootleg Brewery: http://www.bootlegbrewery.com.au/default.aspx

Destination Margaret River: http://www.westernaustralia.com/au/Destination/Margaret_River/9009633

Lake District National Park: http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/

Lake District Tourism: http://www.golakes.co.uk/

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Wanderings in the world. Meanderings from the mind.

Category: Food & Drink

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