Category: Green Bogey

The Green Bogey was first established as a paper-based, loosely Plymouth Argyle-centred fanzine produced in adolescence and sent to my brother while he was at university in something like 1993. In 2006, it gathered an online life as I moved to Australia, and offered a means of portraying pictures of kangaroos and footsteps in sand, along with garbled confusion about life down under.

Historical entries from The Green Bogey Down Under are available at neiliogb.blogspot.com with more recent posts provided below.

June 18, 2014February 24, 2015

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Totally (un)tropical taste

Turns out Sean Bean was right before he had his head chopped off all that time ago (very old spoiler alert!). Winter was definitely coming. Genius prediction, much like Mystic Meg predicting someone with the letter A in their name will win some unspecified amount of money on the lottery. Of the same level of insight as the Australian Prime Minister telling us that conflict is not just about goodies v baddies but sometimes baddies v baddies, bang bang you’re dead nah nah nah nah nah.

Yes, winter has come, though still a temperate south of the wall kind of winter. Chill morning fog and darkness before five. A fortnight long cold which cycles between varying levels of mucus and ear blockage and throat irritation and is happy to never quite go away. Slow cooked beef and tom yum soups and the occasional hot chocolate to soothe things down. A time when images beamed at crazy hours of the night from northern – or indeed equatorial – climes are a somehow compelling, comforting companion.

As Brazil shakes its booty, the tropics are never sexier. So it was with a tinge of disappointment that I rocked up in Townsville, north of the Tropic of Capricorn, to find a fine imitation of a wet weekend in Morecambe. Even the locals were aghast and – predictably given a ‘chill’ 19 degrees or so – wrapped up in cardigans and these strange and rare things known as trousers. Crazy weather they said. Climate change they uttered. Wahhhh you’re from Canberra you’re mad I could never cope with that I like the warmth and being near the sea and lolling around too much they exclaimed incredulously.

So what to do on a wet weekend in Townsville? Trudge along the ever fine esplanade in your waterproof and realise that maybe you should buy some new shoes that don’t absorb quite so much water. Marvel at the views of Magnetic Island which emerge in between cloudbursts and drizzle fronts. Attempt to have an alfresco coffee as wind sweeps in sideways rain. Soak up the Great Barrier Reef, presented in aquarium form, and battle with thousands of kids to look at a faaaaaaahkin shaaaaaaak.

By Tuesday (when I had work to do) the rain had stopped, and then Wednesday (the day I left) it was back to sunny skies. This meant that – while an excursion across to Maggie was now off the cards – I could at least get out a little, and savour just a smidgeon of that tropical taste. I climbed Castle Hill, invariably described as a pink granite monolith and plonked right in the middle of the city. Just like Rio, I thought, as I clambered up the many, many steep and arduous steps to the top. No giant Jesus at the summit, but some fat guy in shorts was there. He had driven up on the road, to marvel at the views still submerged under a mackerel sky.

I was pleased to exercise, just so I could eat guilt free on the waterfront; indeed, I think the eating side of things was the most satisfactory part of this tropical foray. The sun managed to accompany a delicious lunchtime salt & pepper calamari salad on Tuesday and a sweet corn pancake and bacon brunch was the perfect gap filler until my flight home on Wednesday. I squeezed in a coffee or too, some soggy fish n chips, and, right near the end, a beachside gelato. The tropics had returned, the sexiness was back.

And with just an hour or two to spare I could take those idyllic palm tree beach shots, and capture the fragrant green tinge of a city lumped around hills. I could walk in shorts (yes shorts!) along the very excellent Strand – a perfect seaside promenade punctuated with eating and drinking stops in between sandy bays. I could pretend, should I wish, to have had a sublime tropical getaway and delete all the pictures of rain on my iphone. I could happily linger until September.

But then, returning towards my hotel and a taxi to the airport, a snake came up to me and said something like, “Neil, you don’t want to stay here. The air force planes are too noisy. The coffee could be better. There are sharks. And mosquitoes just waiting to eat your succulent English blood. Backpackers will overwhelm us, plus there are people obsessed about some stupid annual rugby league match. Oh, there are some snakes too. They might not be as nice as me.” Sage advice, insightful predictions. And so I scampered off to the airport and wee wee wee wee all the way home, all the way home to winter.

Australia Green Bogey

May 18, 2014October 19, 2015

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Escapes

If I, unlike the Treasurer, have my calculations correct, this time last year I was finally departing the brilliant bays of Esperance and cruising onto the wonderfully tucked away Fitzgerald River National Park, on the south coast of Western Australia. In the time between now and my last blog post this year I would have been craning my neck for koalas on Kangaroo Island, eating the best kebab in Glenelg, camping on the Murray, watching huge full moons rise over the dunes of Mungo National Park, bumping along a rutted sandy road to Broken Hill, navigating a sodden Alligator Gorge, walking miles of ancient sea bed in the Flinders Ranges, coffin-dodging in Coffin Bay, using foul language in Fowler’s Bay and doing nothing much at all along the Nullarbor; apart from crossing it.

2014 is quieter and, depending on your point of view, more productive. It was bound to be. The escapes are a little less adventurous and thus I come to the once more excusable void of blog-worthy happenings. Escapes are twenty minute walks for a coffee and hour long end of day circuits of suburban foothills and Redhillian summits. They are welcome escapes from working at home and doing my homework. They are, for the most part, absolutely irresistible, given the quite immaculate daytime weather, the saturated streets and, well, the fact that they are breaks from work. My self-discipline is constantly tested!

Along the same lines I have found myself quick to spot something that is desperately needed from the supermarket and this too has offered the chance to take a break and do one of my other favourite things: look at, buy, cook and eat food. The weather has been amenable here as well, the bonus from cooler nights coming from one pot wonders, roast dinners and, when I can’t be bothered so much, bangers and mash and onion gravy. Ultimate comfort and gratuitously sleazy food shots.

As snugly as all this sounds there comes a point when the same old same old gets a little bit too same old. And this triggers a very impromptu escape, one a little longer than an autumnal stroll and not leading to something with gravy at the end. Instead, a drive on the open road and fish and chips by the sea. And, most miraculously of all, a beautiful 24 degrees in which to throw off your trousers and praise the lord!

Fortunately for just about everyone I brought some shorts to change into for an amble along Tabourie Beach, the obligatory exercise out of the way before gorging on deep fried batter at Burrill Lake. Driving through Ulladulla I decided to pick Mollymook as my laying down and trying to recover from overeating site. But it was just so nice that I didn’t just lie down and groan, all the while clutching at my swollen paunch; the sweeping sand cried out for many footsteps, some of which veered into the sea.

The sea was, quite miraculously, the warmest I think I have ever known it to be down on the south coast. It may have something to do with currents or Great Barrier Reef dredging or climate change, whatever that is. It was warmer than Esperance, warmer than Fitzgerald River this time last year. And while those spots are something special, they are a trifle inconvenient at 3,200 kilometres distant. Google Maps tells me Esperance would take 34 hours to reach, and that’s without traffic (and, I assume, sleep)! This took a little over two. It is not as great a length, but provides almost as great a feeling. Indeed, it is another great escape (…now cue the music).

April 18, 2014February 24, 2015

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The rains of Canberra

Today I set out to prove that a picture does not always tell a thousand words. That’s because every picture here will show a pleasingly sunny state of affairs whilst in this guff of words and nonsense I will harp on about the rain. The last month or so has been pretty wet, or, as I fondly remember overheard last year in New Zealand, a but wit. This may, or may not, account for a lack of activity writing about things and taking pretty pictures; this, and an uncharacteristic propensity for hard labour.

One week was pretty much written off with insipid dullness, peppered with blanket drizzle and occasional cloudy breaks. Another – spent working in Sydney – was invariably grey with a spot of rain and the odd fleeting sighting of white cloud. I suppose it is good working weather, and good whinging weather. Everyone says I should be use to it (whinging or the weather?), being from England, ho ho ho. But as I respond with varying degrees of snarkiness, I didn’t come to Australia for this! Mind you, there is something to be said for re-experiencing a very British style perseverance through the gloom to genuinely revel in the brighter interludes.

It all began sometime in March, when it was still fairly sultry with generous thunderstorms. Soaked and saturated, an early Saturday morning heralded the first fogs of the season, parting and re-forming as the sun battled to force its way through. It offered a beautiful accompaniment all the way down into Namadgi National Park and the Orroral Valley. From here, I astounded myself by walking 18 kilometres and being back in time for lunch; a circular walk up the valley and back down along a ridge. And I stayed dry throughout, with some liberal provision of sunshine to still redden my face.

Towards the end of March, a week came and went in which the sun barely materialised at all. It was a frustrating week, with only opportunity for short, raincoat-clad ambles around the withering suburban streets in between the fronts of drizzle that were passing through. It was a week in which to read, to binge watch DVDs, to escape to coffee shops and come home with the smell of beef stew in the oven. There are always some plus sides to be had.

For two or three hours at the end of that week, the clouds said goodbye for a while and blue sky reminded us of what a wonderful thing it is. I made off to the Botanic Gardens, a place in which it is hard to tire, especially when beaming in such wholesome sunshine. Ironically, the sprinklers decided the rainforest needed a little more rain to mist the place up. The desert garden was feeling a little out of place, but the plants were as happy as could be. And, sat in the sun for a while before it once more passed, so was I.

Canberra does not have a monopoly on rain and Sydney too was on good terms with cloud and precipitation. There was something nice about being there though, and milling about purposefully in the city like some suited up hotshot. One dry evening allowed a stroll down to Circular Quay, where even cloud cannot diminish the twinkling lights of the city, the bridge and the opera house upon the harbour. And though coffee choices that I made were a little below par, there was some good glamorous Westfield food court eating (for once, not being sarcastic here: Pitt St Mall provided a delicious roast pork dinner with, for once, ample crackling, plus there was a rather fine burger with the best chips ever and also a visit to the David Jones food hall for agreeable takeaway cake eating options).

It was a long old week and I was looking forward to returning home to Canberra, despite a weekend forecast for rain at times, clearing. Majestically, the clearing happened sooner rather than later and that was a week ago. Since then it has been how autumn should be. Imperious, a blue sky clarity sharpened by the fluffy white of small passing clouds. Pleasant temperatures, dipping in the evening just for the enjoyment of heartening dinners and snug sleeps. Green, so green, incredibly brought home by the flight back over this wide green land. And blushing at the seams as the colours of autumn magically weave their way into the streets and leave me staring up at trees being ransacked by birds. It takes the rains to make this happen, for we must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.

Australia Green Bogey Photography Walking

March 12, 2014October 19, 2015

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Capital works

I reckon every city and town and village and hamlet should have its own special ‘day’. It should be a time for locals to come together to take stock over what they have collectively achieved and to dream of what can yet be achieved. An opportunity to dress up for those from outside looking in, welcoming others into a collective ample bosom designed to make them say things like “Yeah, you know this really is quite a nice spot.” A symbiotic way for the place to provide something back to its inhabitants, made only possible by its inhabitants putting something into the place.

If Canberra Day is anything to go by, such extravagance is elongated over several weeks sometime around March. With the seasons commencing a transition, it is one final agreeable hurrah, a lingering celebration of another summer before thoughts of hibernation and exile set in. It is still warm but the days are shortening, making it an ideal time for pre-dawn balloon ensembles and post-dusk illuminations. You don’t have to get up too early or stay out too late, and you don’t yet have to risk strangulation in a melee of scarves and hats and fleece blankets because it has dropped to something arctic like ten degrees.

One recent Friday in March offered a sumptuous day of deep blue skies where it was nudging a far from arctic 30 degrees; warmth that seeped into the night and made a very slow amble around the Parliamentary Triangle all the more comfortable. At scattered intervals the huge geometric edifices of the national institutions thrust up as multicoloured beacons, drawing moth-like the throngs of humans revelling in an evening of enlightenment. A beautiful day shifts into a beautiful night.

Cooler and with showers threatening, a Sunday morning is cloaked in a pre-dawn gloom. It’s fairly early and the streets are even quieter than usual. It’s that peaceful time of day, a serenity that becomes confronted by parking battles and swarms of people as dawn breaks once more in the Parliamentary Triangle. As quick as the light emerges, balloons rise up from the ground; once flattened tarps smeared across the lawns inflate into rounded bulbs of colour and misshapen eccentricity. The sun sneaks up from the eastern horizon as people wave gleefully from wicker baskets shooting up into the sky. They shouldn’t look so bloody cheerful…they seem to be heading somewhere over the rainbow and into that storm. Oh well, good luck to them, I’m off to grab a coffee.

Monday, and it’s a public holiday, all to celebrate the 101^st birthday of a city. Ironically many use it (with the attaching weekend) to flee the place. It’s as if the Prime Minister has just let off the stinkiest fart known to humankind from the flagpole of Parliament House, causing people to rush out onto the Kings or Federal or Monaro Highways in some sense of manic delirium. They head back later on the Monday, once the air is clear.

Being a flexible fellow, and paying attention to the weather forecast, I stayed put until Monday. The day was sunny and I decided – with a spontaneity that still involved making a couple of lists – to head up into the hills for a spot of the old driving-walking-camping experience. It was an enjoyable drive and involved some new road, taking in the Snowy Mountains Highway to Kiandra and then heading over a lumpy and curvy Alpine Way down to Khancoban. There was even – and this clearly denotes a successful road trip – a big thing at Adaminaby. Little over a hundred kilometres from Canberra and it is shameful that this was my first Big Trout sighting.

The barren, frost-scarred plains of this eastern side of Kosciuszko National Park gradually transition as you head west, down through a verdant paradise of tall gums and ferns on the wetter, western side. From here, views of the Main Range are a tad more dramatic, captured at the captivating Olsens Lookout. The plunging of streams can be heard rising from the deeply cut valleys, all making their way, eventually, into the Murray River. Before that, at Geehi Flats, waters trundle along the broad Swampy Plains River, offering a genial spot for camping and, quite probably, Big Trout. Until the storm rolls in…

So much for the weather forecast but I guess these are technically mountains and mountains are known to find weather a fickle companion. With rumbles of thunder close, the rain started pretty soon after parking up, before any swag had been resurrected. With no obvious sign of letting up, and with some distance to travel on slippery surfaces to a town that may or may not have a dodgy motel, I decided to complete my intense road test of a Subaru Outback. Just how well do the seats fold down to form a spacious sleeping area? The answer: well, not too bad…ten extra centimetres of legroom would have been handy but I slept…well…no worse than I would have done in the swag.

Still, it was nice to stretch the legs the next morning which predictably dawned all damp and misty, but dry and with the sun only very reluctantly breaking through clouds. A drive up over the range and heading back east demonstrated the transformation of plant life once again. Near the road’s highest point at Dead Horse Gap things were more barren once more. Perhaps a surprising spot to take a walk but I was pleased, following the course of the Thredbo River into the Pilot Wilderness, to find myself in somewhere just slightly akin to a Dartmoor valley or a Welsh llanfygwryff-y-pobbblygwrwrochcwm.

I was heading along the Cascades trail which leads to a hut called – you guessed it – the Cascades Hut. I couldn’t be bothered to go all the way to the hut (18kms return), but made it to Bob’s Ridge and back (shall we say, with a bit of meandering, 10kms). Being a ridge there were some views, west and south into Victoria, though frequently obscured by stunted and bare gum trees.

Anyway, it was nice to partially recreate the feel of a bit of upland Britain. Being in the Australian Alps I was also happy to try and recreate an Alpine mountain sandwich, consisting of bread, cheese and cured meat. Again, it was no fancy ooh la la baguette avec fromage et saucisson, but filled a hole at the very pleasant riverside setting near the end of the walk.

Of course, on a birthday weekend such as this I need to top off this eating with some birthday cake. I dutifully obliged with a bakery treat in Jindabyne on the way back to Canberra. With a coffee. Borderline country coffee. Which made it undoubted road trip cuisine. Which made a return to Canberra, with its guarantee of good coffee, all the more inviting. And for that, I’m very pleased to wish it a happy birthday indeed.

Australia Driving Green Bogey Photography Walking

February 18, 2014October 19, 2015

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Horsing around

As the Chinese year of the horse arrives it has brought with it a combination of solidly earnest work, galloping around, and figuring out which stable to call home. January holidays lingered and lingered and lingered much like the hot air that became trapped over Canberra; there was only a gradual easing of chilled out pottering about barbecue infested pavlova stoked swimming pool days. To be honest, after several days of not doing that much at all, things were crying out for a cool change – a change of scenery, and a re-acquaintance with the Kings Highway to the coast.

It was but a day trip, but the cloudy coastal skies parted just briefly at Depot Beach and the temperature was just about pleasantly perfect for that shoreline walk around to the sands of Pebbly Beach and back. They are no WA sands, but for being just a couple of hours away, they are a reminder of the good fortune of a capital location.

In the capital, February arrived and as predictably as floods in a flood plain people returned back to work and wanted some things doing. This is good, for the downward trend in my current account was keen for some reversal. It was a trend heightened by the cost of moving house, of finding a little flat to rent and paying a deposit and needing to populate it with some furnishings and trinkets and things to eat off, and using up petrol for trips to the shopping mall to buy these things, along with the odd frozen yogurt with lots of cookie dough bits. But I am now mostly there, with just a few further acquisitions to make it feel like home.

While it is pool-less and a hefty stroll to decent coffee, the blessing of this place is that it isn’t very far from where I have lived for all of my Canberra life. Nestled amongst the oaks and gums of the suburb of Red Hill, it is a place anticipating awesome autumn wondrousness, a spot from which to navigate a higgle-piggle of crescents and spill out into the foot of the hill itself. The hill that has been there for me for quite some time and continues to offer a concentrated release of nature.

And of course, the best thing to do when moving house is to coincide furniture-moving and setting up in 38 degrees with a few work meetings and presentations. Being busy is something I need to re-learn, and while I feel comfortable with the way things are heading, the alarming proposition of ironing a shirt (with the new iron from Kmart) for the first time in eight months can be a little much to bear.

So I’m still really just settling in, in many ways. Over the past week I have only spent one night in my flat – in between a work trip to Sydney and another, longer visit to that South Coast. It was a coast that offered little in the way of sun, but the temperature was ambient and the company was fine and there was plenty of opportunity to indulge in food and marginally walk it off on the sands of Malua Bay. And if these lazy days all became a bit too much, you could always pop into Batemans Bay to potter around Kmart again and grab a coffee.

Of course, as is tradition, the sun returned the day of leaving the coast. Luckily I was able to linger just slightly, and return once more to Broulee in the morning. The first place I ended up when coming down this way in September 2006, a place name plucked out of the air and a glance at the map. A spot in which you are always thanking your good fortune to be in. And wondering, um, should I have rented somewhere here instead?

Yet, not for the first time in my life, I ended up back in Canberra and returned to my new home and did some washing and started writing these words with a cup of tea and twirl and put on the radio and felt quite content. I think I will be quite happy here.

Australia Green Bogey Photography 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

December 17, 2013October 21, 2015

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E by gum

The Nullarbor is said to be so named because of an absence of trees, i.e. null arbor. The thing is, like other misconceptions that may feature on a jovial edition of QI and set off a high pitched wail, it’s really not so true. Sure, there are a few bits that are made up mostly of low scrub and saltbush, and some of it is very, very flat. But there are plenty of trees clustered and scattered across the thousand kilometres or so of its reach. Plus there is my own festive Christmas tree dangling in the front of the car, attempting to bring some light and joy to this escapade in monotony.

One of the little treats of heading east is that you gradually get to move your clock forward until eventually you get a reasonable sunrise and pleasant light evenings. Not so at Fraser Range, undoubtedly the nicest stop along the road but still subject to the same peculiar hours as Perth. Hello 4am sunshine, before vanishing into a strangely cool, cloudy day to plough through the rest of Western Australia.

At Eucla, close to the WA / SA border there is the concession of 45 minutes but you have come so far east that it makes little difference. And then, ten minutes down the road you suddenly jump forward 1 hour 45 minutes and should you wish to straddle the border it is quite possible to indulge in your own creation of Back to the Future.

Jumping into South Australia there is a sense that civilisation is returning, but it is still 500kms or so to Ceduna, which is itself a subjective interpretation of civilisation. I’m glad to push on another hour and make it instead to Streaky Bay, for a cooling motel room, a chance to endure cricket on TV and nice, long, light evenings to take in the jetty and glassy calm bay of this glassy calm town.

It seems the journey is one of milestones – crossing the border, finishing the Nullarbor, reaching the crossroads of Port Augusta and again seeing a kangaroo for the first time in ages. Bushland and hills return and the environment becomes a more familiar, comforting scene of generic southeast Australian. Stopping and appreciating this at Mambray Creek, in Mount Remarkable National Park, is a delight, even if it means being awoken by huge flocks of galahs clattering around the majestic River Red Gums in the morning.

Adelaide is another milestone and just a few hundred kilometres down the road. I reached the city by way of a small diversion into the northern Yorke Peninsula and a triumvirate of towns – Wallaroo, Moonta and Kadina – at the heart of the Copper Coast. Or ‘Little Cornwall’, a moniker derived from the miners who settled here many moons ago. You would think I would have learnt by now not to get my hopes up with such names, to avoid such disappointments as a ‘Devonshire’ Tea and a ‘Pork’ Pie. But I live in hope that certain culinary heritage items are preserved amongst this flat, agricultural landscape which – apart from the presence of a bit of sea – is nothing like Cornwall.

So it is really not that much of a surprise that despite the slightly cutesy high streets crying out for a charming tea room there is no sign of a cream tea in sight. The closest thing to a scone and jam and clotted cream is a shiny bun with a blob of jam and squirty cream in the middle. Salvation may lie in a traditional pasty, but this is about as traditional as sticking a possum on top of a Christmas tree and singing we wish you a merry Easter. For a start, a pasty tends to have much more meat in and a lot less finely diced carrot please.

Anyway, meanwhile, back in Australia, I reached Adelaide and was glad but slightly daunted by being in a big smoke again. Not that Adelaide is that big or smoky. Indeed, it is rather graceful and refined at its heart. There is decent coffee to have and the fabulous central markets to salivate in and the tram to Glenelg to catch and a short drive to be had to the hills, peppered with wineries and koalas and dinner and conversation waiting. Leaving is a bit sad but there is one final little hill stop in Hahndorf, making amends for a missed German style meat fest opportunity last time around, and a brief reminder of hot summer days in Munich.

After such a lunch it would be a decent idea to nap, but I had new milestones to reach and crossing into Victoria was on the agenda. Three more nights of swagging it, following an inland course close to the Murray River and over the highest hills in the country and down to Canberra. Still 1200km to go but feeling close to the end.

The first stop was among the gums and lakes of Hattah-Kulkyne National Park, a little to the south of Mildura. Here mighty trees rise from the waters, attracting a dense concentration of screeching cockatoos who mercifully quieten down after dusk. They perk up again in the morning, but by now mornings start at a much more reasonable hour.

The trees, water and birds combination continues along the length of the Murray, interspersed more frequently with pleasant towns. A reminder that in Victoria country life seems quite amiably civilised. Swan Hill even offered a giant Murray Cod, whilst Echuca evoked steamboat and latticework charm. The thing to do in Echuca is to hop on one of these and cruise upon the river. It made for a pleasant enough hour albeit a little dull.

The Murray rises in the Snowy Mountains and by time I reached Wangaratta I was on very much more familiar ground, stocking up on coffee and cake and heading for the hills. It’s a beautiful approach from Wodonga, following the shores of the Hume Dam with golden hills rising and small valleys drifting into New South Wales. The valleys tighten and become more heavily and lushly forested as they shelter beneath the higher ridges of the Main Range of Kosciusko National Park.

From this western approach it’s quite a twisty ascent over appealing sounding places like Siberia and Dead Horse Gap to a much starker and moodier side. Here a landscape of high moors and glacial hollows is scattered with ghostly snow gums and boggy pools. A world in which leftover snow still stubbornly sticks; a world a long way from Perth where I commenced this journey.

It was rather nice to get out of the car for a late afternoon walk immersed in this landscape, setting off from Charlotte Pass along the Main Range track, dipping down for a Snowy River crossing and up again to overlook Hedley Tarn and Blue Lake. From here it is really not that far as the crow flies to Canberra. Indeed, continuing along the track just a little further, crossing a couple more slushy white patches, you can look out over the ridges and folds of the ranges to the north and east. It is a vast view and I suspect if you had super Legolas vision you might just be able to make out Black Mountain Tower. So, so close.

In a somewhat romantic poetic notion it seems fitting that having traversed and explored huge tracts of this huge country over the past year that I finish it, well, not quite at the top but close enough. It feels like Australia is laid out before me and I can survey what I have crossed…from its white beaches to its desert plains, its golden hills to ragged red gorges, its shimmering cities to one pub towns. And yeah, It may well have the most annoying cricket team ever, and make poor attempts at Westcountry produce, and have strange time variations and a few super long dull roads but, other than that, it seems pretty good to me.

Australia Driving Green Bogey Photography

December 5, 2013October 21, 2015

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The gift that keeps on giving

God I love Esperance. So I muttered to myself on several occasions: driving along the spectacular coastal road; lounging on the white sands with a book; strolling with the sound of the Southern Ocean and lowering sun projecting against archipelago islands. God I love Esperance. Grabbing a good coffee by the foreshore; picking up a cake from the bakery; ambling in sandals and passing children on scooters waving to me like I am a long lost uncle.

Surrounded by such natural beauty the town itself is no pristine haven, but I like it like that. There is no false shiny veneer, little pretentious opulence, few signs of excess Noosafication or Byronessence. There is industry and shipping and an inevitable strip of furniture stores and warehouses and garages lining the entryways to town. Most of the houses look a little jaded, a touch, well, daggy. But I like it like that.

It’s a long way from anywhere else, a complete and fully-functioning oasis at the far end of the habitable coast, an embarrassment of riches before the Nullarbor. Such is the distance I had a stopover from Perth on the way. It was a place called Wave Rock, where there is a rather large rock springing up from baked wheat fields and dry lakes. Part of the rock has eroded into the shape of a wave. I rather liked it.

Here it was a return to my home…a return to my swag. I slept pretty dreadfully, but then a non-daylight saving sunrise of 4:30am doesn’t help. Stupid WA! Still, it was nice to be among gum trees and galahs again, to wander around and on top of this big rock, to view the endless horizons and big blue skies.

There was a familiarity at rejoining past roads travelled at Ravensthorpe, and a reminder of the bitterness that is country coffee. Still, the road was slightly different this time, now lined increasingly with bright orange bursts of colour known as WA Christmas Trees. Tis the season I suppose.

Should one be dreaming of a white Christmas then Esperance is not such a bad place to come. Indeed, one set of officials who measure such things have declared Lucky Bay in Cape Le Grand National Park to have the whitest sand in Australia (and yes, another set must have proclaimed Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay the same). I was content, on a few occasions, with some time at Twilight Beach, which appeared perfectly white enough to me.

However, arguably the most God I love Esperance moments came further along the coast at Observatory Beach, a more rugged and sweeping bay which on two evenings I had just to myself. I would say this is probably the best evening walk beach in the country, with fairly white sand (but no world record). I love the waves and dunes, the rocks and islands, and the sun filtering in and out of clouds as it sinks to the west.

Now, one of the considerations for making an assessment over the liveability of various places in Australia is the availability of good coffee. Esperance easily passes the test, whether from the mobile Coffee Cat or the scattering of small, chilled out cafes in the small, chilled out town centre. There are, in addition, decent cake options, some of which I have not tested so it may mean I need to come back. But Esperance is such a long way from anywhere just to visit like that. It makes it hard to leave.

With this in mind, I did see a sign advertised in the petrol station for someone to do four night shifts per week, between 10pm – 6am. How hard could that be? The sign was stuck in the counter window next to the hot sausage rolls. I was seriously tempted.

But I am heading on and the next decent coffee will probably arrive thousands of kilometres away in Adelaide. There is still a huge chunk of Western Australia to re-traverse, but, for me, Western Australia essentially ends here. It has been wonderful, surprising, insightful and colossal. And finishing it here in Esperance, with a final coffee beside the white sands and topaz seas, and the sound of an Australian wicket falling, it is a fairytale ending.

Australia Green Bogey Photography Walking

December 1, 2013October 22, 2015

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Plymouth – Bristol – Geneva – Perth – and so on…

For once, Devon did not farewell me with blue skies and fluffy white clouds and fluffier white sheep scattered on a carpet of rolling green. Darkness and wind and menacing cloudbursts accompanied the passage of dawn along the A38 and onto the M5. My final footsteps on English soil, for now, were along the sodden tarmac of Bristol airport, urging the cattle onto the plane and out of the rain and towards Geneva. In the tumult I dropped my passport – no, even scarier, passports – without knowing about it. Somewhere between aisle 2 and 3 I reckon, recovered by the air stewards and pronounced out loud. Call button pressed, gratitude expressed.

Geneva and its French environs were more bronze in grey lake cloud, a backdrop to stock up on cheese and cake and final family time. A bright and brisk Saturday morning was fine for some neutral ambling in the stylishly rustic Swiss countryside, dodging blade runners and cross country concrete skiers and tractors and little boys fleeing on scooters. Dinner was tartiflette, but then dinner usually is tartiflette!

The Sunday was a lazy Sunday French style, involving hours of food grazing and gorging on cheese in various states, matching with wines from different parts of the country and conversation from different parts of the planet. From very young cousins to the more senior-oriented, a splendid afternoon and a fine way to say goodbye, even if such times make that even harder.

Not quite the end for me and my exploring however as my very last day in Europe involved spending a lot of time on a bus which should have been a train to propel me to the visual feasts of Annecy. Wandering the lanes and streets as a grey cold gradually lifted, soaking up a very different ambience, a very different backdrop to where I would soon be heading. From Rue des Chateaus to Quiche aux lardons et fromage, past outdoor stalls selling musty old sausages and caravans of unpasteurised cheese, alongside riverside paths lined with shuttered houses and glowing red leaves, this was the time to soak it all up.

It was also the time to marvel in the landscape of this part of the world which is unlike any I would soon encounter. Escaping the town proved something of an uphill challenge but soon enough I entered the absolute golden delight of the Foret du Cret du Maure. Now sunny and warming up, strenuous work ensued in an effort to find an overview of Lac d’Annecy and not get lost. Thanks to my phone and maps I didn’t get lost, but apart from a few snatches through the trees, a lake view escaped me. Still, having really enjoyed the subtle, colourful transition from summer to winter over the past few months it was quite wonderful to end it in such a dense explosion of green and yellow and red and brown.

Back down at lake level the water was much more visible and, now in the latter part of these shortening days, glowing in the clear afternoon air. This is not a landscape I will see for a while, the lake as clear as a coral sea, the mountains snow-capped white as a pristine beach. An aspect warmly regarded with coats and scarves and hats strolling along a genteel, contented promenade…

…the local time is 5:30pm and the temperature is 35 degrees. So said someone several many hours later in a different hemisphere and season. Welcome to Perth, where the international terminal currently leaves much to be desired. Still, it is Australia and I can be welcomed in with my Australian passport that so nearly went astray. There is a new government but, apart from being significantly warmer, much appears the same as I left it. Taxi drivers still wittle on aimlessly about the toll road or monarchy or carbon tax, everything is still ridiculously expensive, and Perth is still some urban lifestyle paradise masquerading as a city.

And so to the beach, or to several beaches, or stretches of one long beach over the course of the next two weeks. With a coffee or book or a huge plate of calamari, accompanying a stroll along the waterline, never far from the mind and just fifteen minutes from the body in a car. Goodness me, these Perthites are blessed with their ocean frontage. What is great about it mind is that it is rarely built up; no graffitied Gold Coast hotels casting morning shadows, no regimented wooden loungers and parasols for hire and cheap fake watches for sale, and plenty of space for dunes and parkland between the sea and the expensive show off homes.

With baking days and arid winds it seems I have missed Spring completely. There is little sign of the much heralded wildflowers of WA on sight around the city’s parks and reserves; even Kings Park, which remains a delight whatever time of day and year, seems fairly subdued as it accepts its fate of another hot, dry summer. However, there are remnants of suburban Jacaranda lining the streets; having spent springs past in Canberra I had totally forgotten about Jacaranda, and how its elegant green leaves burst into purple flower, transforming quiet streets into a flurry of colour and giving them the smell of a new age essential oils and pointless candles shop.

Not every day has involved lolloping on the beach or sniffing trees, as I gradually reorient myself with the more mundane Australia – from work interludes to soulless shopping malls, from slower internet speeds to expensive, but lush, mangoes. A sign that I have been away a long time is in currency, where I say to myself…oh gosh…that Heston Blumenthal Christmas Pudding is twenty-five quid…blimey…oh wait twenty five dollars, that makes it, well, still quite expensive, but, you know, when shopping for essentials for a trip back across Australia you need a Heston Blumenthal Christmas Pudding with you, along with Marmite, Hellman’s Mayonnaise and Heinz English Recipe Baked Beans. Adjusted much?

And yes indeed part of my time has involved planning the next steps of this journey through life, at least the next few weeks or so. There is an excitement about returning east, tinged with melancholy of letting go of this isolated idyll of the west. Perth and I have become good friends this year and I feel like we will see each other again sometime in due course. And here I leave even better friends who introduced me to my good mate and nurtured and shared and entertained and sledged and made the whole Perth experience easy to fall in love with. So I prefer to think it’s not farewell old chap nor au revoir, but a very Australian see ya later.

Australia Europe Green Bogey Photography Walking

November 8, 2013October 22, 2015

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Where the grass is always greener

Rain. We give it a bad rap. Wet and splodgy, irritating with its inescapable shroud of damp. An unwanted present from a dreary sky, sent to make boots muddy and ruin plans best laid. A shocking contrast from the sun in Spain that was 20 degrees warmer. But then surely rain is what puts the Great in Britain, our reassuring companion, along with tea and cake.

It is fair to assume that Basingstoke and rain are hardly the most riveting bedfellows, but shops are shops and people are still wearing shorts to go to Tesco. It is hard to let go of the summer and, just for a moment, it returns on a Sunday afternoon at The Vyne. Here, amongst the moist muddy tracks are the autumnal fruits of summer – fungi cascading down mossy brown trunks, spiky green pods spilling out with chestnuts, leaves wafting down onto the ground, coating the forest floor in a layer of browns and yellows. All helped by that cursed rain.

Rain is no stranger to the southwest of England, as Atlantic fronts begin to form; waiting in the wings to blow in on winds, some strong enough to bring down trees. This is the season where a night can be dramatic, and the next day as placid as a hippy doing yoga on a fluffy white marshmallow. Air blows in clean and fresh and the lowering sun in the southern sky illuminates the greens-turning-brown on magical days.

Magical days are easy to come by in St Agnes, sitting tucked in on the north coast of Cornwall; a prized position to make most of the sun, and the rain, and that wind when it blows on in. Like so many Cornish towns it totters down through a maze of narrow streets to a beach; there are a few pokey shops and – it turns out – a blessed bakery serving the type of sausage rolls I have craved in my mind since seeing one snatched away for someone else’s consumption last year in Hobart. Proper good sausage rolls that are hard to come by in Greggs and Warrens and anywhere in Australia other than one place in Hobart. Possibly.

Unlike more genteel parts of Cornwall, the landscape here has a raggedy rugged edge to it, peppered with tin mining relics, tinged with a faded glory scoured by eternal weather. The coast path is solid and spectacular, as it always is, heading along to St Agnes Head with views north to Trevose and south along a wave pounded coast towards St Ives. Higher up – atop St Agnes Beacon – an even mightier panorama unfolds, with most of West Cornwall on view, and St Agnes nestled down below, reached by muddy field to complete a memorable circular.

Magical days are harder to come by holed up in Plymouth library trying to make something up that is of a work-related nature and popping out for mediocre coffee in the hope that just for once it may not be mediocre. Even mediocre coffee can be a welcome distraction though, so when the cloud clears and a sunny afternoon pops up out of the blue the allure to escape is palpable. Luckily there is a very quick escape from the varied charms of Plymouth, by taking a bobbling boat across the Tamar to Mount Edgcumbe.

Here, the meander of autumnal woodlands and fading gardens give way to exposed hilltops, looming high over the Tamar with views spreading out to encompass a Cornish and Devonian sea. Inland the wide river flows into a border landscape of patchwork fields and secret inlets, punctuated by towns and villages and giving out to rising moorland hills. Herds of deer scarper into nearby woods, aware of your presence and no doubt cognisant of the fact that you would quite like to see some good old fashioned autumnal rutting. Instead, the view will suffice.

Plonked amongst this idyll is the city of Plymouth, with rows of houses running like dominoes over the lumpy contours of the suburbs, meeting cranes and boats toppling into the river. Its waterfront welcome mat is striking with the Where’s Wally striped beacon of Smeaton’s Tower and a wheel that looks even bigger from afar. Illuminated is a background of moorland, sweeping over the horizon. It is here that you can appreciate the quite blessed setting in which Plymouth sits. Yeah, the city might be a bit crummy and tatty in places, but a turnip growing in a field of flowers is better than a turnip growing in a pile of shit, right?

Another philosophical conclusion I have come to over the last few weeks is, when situated in this part of the world, even when the day is crap, you are having a stinker, work sucks, and other such things, there is the consolation of easy access to clotted cream, jam, scones and tea. This can make a bad day amazing. At Mount Edgcumbe it made a good afternoon sublime.

The hills behind Plymouth spread afar into Dartmoor National Park and this represented what was to become my final outing into the virtual field of flowers surrounding the city. A circular walk from Yelverton offered a perfectly balanced English country composition of riverside woodlands, sheep and cow fields, tumbledown cottages and exposed tors. This amble on the fringe of Plymouth was a pretty decent way to bid it all farewell.

Spending time here, intermittently from August to November, has obviously allowed me to observe the changing seasons take effect. What once was an uninterrupted blanket of flourishing green is now softening, holes are appearing, and things are shrivelling. A golden brown is slowly but inevitably creeping into the landscape and soon even this will become more spartan and altogether less comforting.

And as the leaves disappear from the trees my southward migration kicks in. It has become a customary route over the last seven years, this time a little later after a little longer than normal. It leaves me with mixed feelings; sad to be leaving one place and excited to be heading to the other. It’s a feeling that comes to life when marvelling in the grand autumnal splendour of Mount Edgcumbe only to come across a couple of Eucalyptus trees shooting up into clear blue sky, aliens in a foreign land. For a moment I am transported, wrapped up against a southwest autumn and looking up at the promise of Australia. The best of both worlds, where leaves do not fall and a cream tea is just around the corner.

Green Bogey Photography 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 25, 2013October 22, 2015

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Southwest bits blitz (2)

The inevitable happened. It rained. And became a bit cold. On the plus side I think I found a good coffee but cannot be sure because it was a mocha. It helped comfort against the cold, which actually hasn’t been bad at all. Indeed, it is far from doom and gloom (yet), with still warm early autumn days and sunshine enough to counter the occasional days of murk. And such seasonal randomness swings my mood and affection, from absolutely, undoubtedly in love with where I am for a moment, and then still in love with it but begrudgingly so the next.

In the immediate confines of Plymouth I have taken to short forays to catch the views from the top of the hill nearby, over the Tamar and into Cornwall. In the other direction, enjoyable visits to Devonport Park, starting to brown just a little but doing so in an elegant manner. Mostly these forays are a good escape from soaps on TV, while the weather is still light enough to escape. Family add a welcome, warm distraction, when they are not glued to the soaps.

Escapes further afield have been possible, in a large part made easier by proximity to Devonport railway station. For instance, this at least makes the trip to Padstow slightly easier, connecting from the train onto a bus at Bodmin Parkway. I say connecting, but their timings don’t really connect amazingly well, so you just have to go into the cute cafe on the platform and eat homemade coffee and walnut cake. You just have to.

Not that you need sustenance to keep you going because Padstow is synonymous with Rick Stein and, apart from being able to eat the man himself, you can pretty much take your pick from his products: fancy seafood, good old fashioned fish ‘n chips, pasties, pies, breads, meringues, tarts, shellfish, ice cream. Beyond the world of the Steins there are numerous cafes, bakeries, pubs and ice cream vendors in the town. With money, you will never go hungry.

For all the cashing-in it is undoubtedly good for Padstow and the surrounding area. And I’m sure if you asked Rick Stein where his favourite place in the world is, of all the places he has been, from France to Asia to Mollymook, he will say Padstow. And why not, why not at all?

The Devonport – Bodmin Parkway rail route offers up another lovely option, without a bus connection. This means that it’s hard to justify coffee and walnut cake but you can take solace with a National Trust cafe instead. A walk of a couple of miles, tracing the River Fowey through verdant woodland and leading along a broad tree-lined drive takes you to Lanhydrock House.

At Lanhydrock there are gardens doing their utmost to remain in summer and a sneaky side gate or too in which you can enter without paying. Well, it’s not like I was deliberately avoiding having to pay for 10 minutes wander around a garden, and I did spend money on a caramel slice and coffee afterwards. So just keep calm and carry on, as they all say in these places I think.

In these places I have been a while now, which means a clear routine has set in, particularly in the mornings. A folding up of bed and shifting of table is then followed by a cup of tea and a watch of BBC Breakfast News. The weather forecast maintains interest and days and weeks are planned around what the smiley weatherwoman decides is happening. A cool, blustery day means trips to town and hanging out in the library to do some writing of some kind. A sunny day is greeted with the enthusiasm that comes with the expectation of this being the last of the year.

On what I thought would be the last sunny day of the year I shifted to bus travel and a bumbling ride to Noss Mayo in Devon. This is now just one of those established jaunts that tends to fit into the annual southwest pilgrimage. Not so many miles from Plymouth it nonetheless takes a while to reach, as the bus frequently stops and reverses for other vehicles to squeeze between it and the ten foot high hedgerows. Practically scraping the walls of pastel cottages, the bus arrives beside Noss Creek and a pleasantly varied walk of an hour or so: coast, farms, woods, creek, boats, pub, beer. And then back on the bus through the rabbit warren of the South Hams to Plymouth. Such is the blessing of living in this part of the world.

The sun failed to shine on the far west of Cornwall despite it being a day which I thought might be the last sunny one of the year. Quite possibly the lamest high pressure system in the history of the world covered the British Isles and daubed it in low cloud and mist. And so, unlike my last trip down to this pointy end, St Ives was blanketed in a grey melancholy, with a cold wind picking up off the bay, the only comfort coming from a Pengenna pasty and that good mocha I mentioned before.

Things were no better on the southern coastline around Mounts Bay, that is until the train pulled out of Penzance Station at four o’clock and the cloud parted over Marazion and continued on to Truro and such brilliant blue skies as befitting the last sunny day of the year continued all the way into Plymouth. You could say it was frustrating and you would be right, but the train ride back was two hours of blissful enjoyment and appreciation of Cornwall.

The next day dawned, well, sunny. Very sunny indeed, and warm despite the end of September creeping ever closer. While the cloud filled in a little the warmth endured and offered up a couple of hours of unbelievable shorts wearing. This was in Calstock, on another train trundling up the Tamar Valley. The main attraction, apart from the snaking tidal river, impressive viaduct and waterside cottages, is Cotehele House and its wooded estate sloping down to the water. It’s a peaceful, sedate corner of the world, again just a stone’s throw – or train ride – from Devonport.

And so you see, while it did rain and it has been cold, this has generally been the exception rather than the rule. My last day here, before I disappear elsewhere for a while, involved shorts-wearing for goodness sake! And when shorts can be worn there is no rush to cross continents, not just yet. Not until we have that last sunny day of the year at least.

Great Britain Green Bogey

September 12, 2013October 22, 2015

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Southwest bits blitz (1)

It may be a product of sustained transience but the chance to drop anchor for an undefined period in a familiar place has been of great appeal. And so here I still am – Plymouth, Devon – and only twice so far have I pined for the other side of the world. Once I was in Starbucks and had a drink that had the front to be called coffee. The other time, some dreadful nincompoop and his bumbling mates were taking over Australia, and while I was not missing the crowing and hollering, my inner nerd was bereaved of two party preferred counts, the swings, the coloured maps and the abject head-shaking of democracy where a mandate is claimed when less than half of the population vote for you and, even those who do, probably do not agree with 100% of your policies.

Still, I do intend to return to the country despite a change in the people who nominally run it but don’t really do much at all. You see, at some point here the weather will get continually miserable and the people will get more miserable and I will get miserable with the miserable weather and the miserable people. And then I can return to the land down under which is so fortunate it forgets how fortunate it is. But the people there won’t be miserable because they got what they wanted.

Plymouth can be incredibly miserable but at the moment there is a prolonged ray of sunshine that transforms even the dodgy concrete alleys filled with rubbish bags into an artistic postmodern composition of urban life. The crazy drunks walking the streets become salt of the earth characters and chavved up pram pushers on the bus make for a colourful melee of handbags and hairdos. I’ve heard it said that Australia is just like Britain would be with good weather; not exactly, but the weather can do wonders for a place.

The familiar abounds but every time I return there are incremental changes to the city. Royal William Yard is an obvious one and I have been impressed by the conversion from disused naval quarters to swanky flats and waterside cafes. Devil’s Point provides the picturesque walk to burn off jam and cream filled shortbread from the bakery, and something approaching an alright cappuccino is available on occasion. On my first visit, in warm Sunday sunshine, I had the momentary feeling that I was back in Australia such was the sparkle, the relaxed buzz, and general air of wellbeing. I even had a flat white, but this was very English.

Part of the familiarity re-familiarisation process is engaging in the foodstuffs of this part of the world. The issue is, the longer I linger, the less I can justify filling my face. On day 1, cream tea on Dartmoor was ticked off and clotted cream has re-appeared on a number of other opportunities (like when I made treacle tart, yum yum!). But I have also been back to Dartmoor and not eaten cream – something that sounds like progress. Meanwhile Dartmoor continues to captivate through its moods and sweeping vistas.

The Cornish pasties have bubbled to the surface like oozing hot steak juice through a pastry crust, though only infrequently. Almost every single one I have is a disappointment unless it is from Pengenna Pasties. On which note, I am pleased to have paid a visit to Bude where the queues out of the door and mass munching in the town square are a sure sign of Pengennirvana. This was the undoubted highlight of a bank holiday Monday, which was a reminder of what a bank holiday Monday is all about. Traffic queues, parking hassles, gritty sand packed with feral children and people from Wolverhampton going red in the twenty degree heat. I didn’t really enjoy Bude apart from that pasty.

By contrast another day trip in Cornwall ranks as one of the best I have had this year; a year which, I remind you, has encompassed a tour of New Zealand and a scenic meandering across Australia. A piddly train to Penzance doesn’t rank up there with the journeys but then an open top double-decker through the narrow lanes and warm sunshine of West Penwith brought a sense of adventure to the trip. And this delivered me to Porthcurno and a scene to celebrate, a landscape bejewelled in sand and seas bedecked in a stunning clarity and rare calm.

This is the pointy end of Cornwall, the pointy end of Britain, and if anyone thinks Britain is a drab, miserable place, well…stick ‘em with the pointy end. This is country best explored on foot, on that magnificent coastal path, a path I followed for seven miles or so around Land’s End and on to Sennen Cove. It is stunning country and every minute was marvellous. Of course, you have to put a little asterisk here and acknowledge that the sun shining makes a world of difference. But even on dank, foggy days or, better still, stormy windswept occasions, it is a natural wonder.

The coast path along here turned out to be pretty good walking too, only dipping down to a cove and climbing arduously up again about four times, which isn’t that bad for Cornwall. A lot of the time you can just follow the cliff line, strolling upon high overlooking clusters of volcanic rock tumbling into clear blue seas, where the occasional trio of seals bob along and seabirds glide on warm air. Around, the exposed heath is a colour of gorse and heather, a purple and gold that could quite justifiably replace the black and white of the Cornish flag.

A blip of sorts pops up at Land’s End. While the coastline is appropriately craggy and exposed, the necessary touristification due to popularity takes away a bit from the surrounds. So there are eroded paths down to see grumpy farmyard animals, shops selling fudge made in Wales and tea towels made in China, arcade machines to play and One Direction posters for sale. There are doughnuts and beer and ice cream to buy. Stop. Ice cream. I’ve been walking five and a half miles. Ice cream. It’s mid afternoon. Ice cream. I deserve ice cream.

Expecting lame, rip-off ice cream I remember it quite fondly as not being particularly lame or too much of a rip off. A popular Cornish brand it had enough creaminess to see me over the last substantial hummock of the path before dropping down to Sennen Cove. I remember coming here about ten years ago, on a mild but foggy old day, the cove sheltering a fine sweep of sand intermingled with cottages and boats. It was deathly quiet then, a sure contrast to today.

Today Sennen was St. Tropez, but thankfully the beach stretches beyond the comfortable confines of the car park. Once over towels and tents and through ball games, the beach widens and empties. The sand is genuinely sandy and the water a clear shade of blue. Surfers attempt to do something in the lumps and bumps of wave that exist on this breathless day while lifesavers watch on. Yes, it is, almost, Australian.

It’s kind of funny how I look out for a touch of the Australian in Britain and when in Australia the opposite happens. I presume it’s the whole have your cake and eat it syndrome. When both do come together – like in the creamy green hills around Kangaroo Valley or the sunny, civilised sands of Cornwall – it’s something of a marvel. And while misery quotients and government philosophies reach common ground there is little to distinguish one over the other. For now.

Great Britain Green Bogey Photography Walking

August 28, 2013October 22, 2015

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Wales tales

Church Stretton. So says a sign on a railway platform midway between somewhere in the Midlands and somewhere in Wales. It has very little relevance to my whole trip apart from the fact that this railway line I have never before taken has stopped briefly in a town that looks so cosily cosseted in the Shropshire Hills that I want to remember it. And perhaps come back and stop and walk atop its hills and meander back through its vales to refresh with a pint of cider in a beer garden of an old stone pub with whitewashed walls and hanging baskets and the noise of contented sheep bleating nearby.

Cwmbran is the station sign at which I disembark, situated in the South Wales valleys and a landscape not without its own hilly charm and abundance of bleating sheep. It can also lay claim to having a supermarket on every roundabout, one of which – Morrisons – is swiftly visited for a few day’s provisions vital for picnic lunches and delicious home-cooked dinners. With me, Dad and Aunty Val, taxi driver and cook, pivotal cogs as ever in creating a fine few days.

Where there are valleys there are hills and it didn’t take long to get amongst them. A drive through a warren of lanes led Dad and I to a spot below a big hill with a Welsh name. This is where I refer to Dad’s Facebook pictures and check what on earth it was called. Twm Balwm, which means top of hill to catapult sheep at English. A short but steep walk confirmed its prominent position for attacking folk, with hazy views over the South Wales coastline, across the Bristol Channel to Somerset and Devon, and north and east back in the direction from which I had come.

Amongst this landscape much water runs and – in places – runs to dramatic effect. The next day, in a corner of the fabulous Brecon Beacons National Park, we followed the course of the Afon Mellte as it made its way from underground to plunge over several rock ledges, each as unpronounceable as the next. Anything billed as the Four Waterfalls Walk is bound to be of appeal, and the falls of (wait for it…) Sgwd Clun-gwyn, Sgwd Isaf Clun-gwyn, Sgwd y Pannwr, and Sgwd yr Eira provided a showcase of white water spectacle.

From our approach at Glyn Porth the cascades increased in drama, culminating in Sgwd yr Eira, a curtain of water that has carved an overhang through which walkers can walk behind water. Sure Jesus, it’s not quite walking on water but it’s the next best thing. The sound of roaring water over your head, spray peppering clothes and camera lenses, slightly dubious slippy-looking rocks, and small dogs reluctantly getting in the way all add that exciting touch of adventure. And hopefully this adrenaline can just about get you back up the hill for a tasty sandwich and the onward march back to the car.

Considerably less exciting is a stop in a fishing shop in Pontypridd, but it wasn’t too long and Dad got a few birthday goodies so all was still well with the world! Nearby though there was more drama of the Winterfell kind, courtesy of a couple of hours in Caerphilly and its castle. This had everything a good castle should with moats and ramparts and crenulations and spiral staircases up lofty towers and banquet halls and dungeons and catapults. Parts had been restored and renovated, others remained ramshackle, which meant you could really get a sense of what it was like back when Welsh people were catapulting sheep at the English and devious plots of intermarriage and murder were being concocted over a feast of wild boar and spicy cheese on toast.

No such scheming over dinner, though the roast pork was a welcome substitute for wild boar. Extra potatoes could be justified by the walking earlier in the day, but I think so much was eaten that another walk was to be encouraged the following day. Especially after a tasty slice of cake and a passable coffee in Abergavenny in the morning, prior to a different kind of sugar high.

A walk up to the Sugar Loaf involved some notable uphill drags, cutting across unruly bracken and withering woods, and striking out for the top. Up here, the slight sunniness of the valley in which we started was no more, with a windy, cool bleakness emerging with every step. The clouds were scraping the tops of the Brecon Beacons to the north, and only occasional hollows of pasture glowed with the rays of the sun. But this is high summer, and several other people were still in shorts atop the loaf.

Of course, the views were far-reaching and rewarding, but it was quite nice to have gravity on your side for a while as others battled up. Down steeply at first but then a gentle descent along a ridge and through an ancient wood, emerging out into some kind of civilisation with farmhouses and tractors and manure. Unfortunately on this circular walk the car was still a fair way around the corner and it suffered (as did we) from that final, unrelenting drag.

Still, it was something of an accomplishment with which to finish this short sojourn in South Wales. Well, not quite finish, for there was a rather large trifle to try and finish back at Aunty Val’s that evening. Already it seemed that much had been achieved off my bucket list – roast, trifle, upland walking, history, trips to Morrisons – in just a couple of days. Indeed, Wales offered a well concocted taste and teaser for the crème de la crème, the emergence into a blue sky Devon. I’m sure the main will be just as good as the starter.

Great Britain Green Bogey Photography Walking

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