Places – Page 15 – gbpilgrim

March 2, 2015

March

March strikes me as a celebratory month. Events include the wedding anniversary of my mum and stepdad, for instance, which tends to slip my mind without fail every year. Likewise, Mother’s Day, which may or may not happen at some point in certain countries. With similar vagueness, Easter might eventuate in March, but this is contingent on some advanced algebraic calculation based on a factor of the day when Jesus rose up to make pancakes on the moon or something. Elsewhere, at the start of the month in Wales, people get all excited about leeks on cheese on toast, drink Brains, and break out in hearty song about Saint Dafydd. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the rest of Australia (and thus of course the world), the natives of its capital gather to commemorate the city’s founding by promptly and unapologetically fleeing to the coast. There is clearly much to celebrate.

The biggest cause for chirpiness however – specifically in the northern hemisphere – is the symbolic termination of winter. Sure, it may still rain curtains of icy drizzle from time to time, but it can do so safe in the knowledge that the worse is behind us. Evenings suddenly seem to stretch for longer; the sun, when it can be persuaded to appear, resonates a faint whiff of warmth; daffodils – that most blessed portent of a new season – glow as proudly as a Welshman once did at Cardiff Arms Park. Promise pervades the air.

There is a particular day in March – let’s say the 19^th – in which seasonality gets a little carried away with itself. The temperature might reach something freakish like 18°C. The wind temporarily vanishes, leaving the rays of the sun untempered to shower upon beaming faces. A national mood change is palpable as families picnic in parks, people spill out of London pubs short-sleeved, and the first whimpers of charcoal smoke rise from over the neighbour’s fence, ruining the washing on the line that can finally dry properly for the first time since September.

There is ,of course, a wickedness to this day. It is as though a dose of paradise has been granted that will not appear again until at least May, if not July. The irresistible inclemency of an Atlantic front is never too far away and the return to what passes for normalcy leaves you wondering whether yesterday was a dream. Instead, the season builds more subtly, like a light’s dimmer switch being incrementally dialled up as opposed to the classical on and off again manner. But at least March represents a time when someone’s hand is on that dimmer switch, and anticipation about whether the bulb will eventually glow at sixty or a hundred watts is almost as overwhelming as a confused metaphor about electrical illumination.

I would struggle without seasonality. I may be in a minority, given the population growth of the Gold Coast and the increase in beachside Pilates taking place during southern Spanish winters. Here, a quite remarkable assortment of fossils can be spotted, bedecked in sun visors, creaking and contorting in slow motion like a troupe of jaded CP3Os, as if worn down from another hackneyed yet money-spinning outing. Leathery limbs reach tentatively to the skies, embracing the sun that seems forever warm and almost always present. The people here may never wear trousers, or coats, or enclosed shoes ever again. And while it may seem like some fanciful paradise to wake up to blue skies every day, to never feel cold, would it not also eventually feel remorsefully dull, remarkably uneventful, entirely, tediously predictable?

This, I believe, is one of the more common complaints from UK migrants to certain parts of Australia. I’ve seen it on those daytime TV shows – Get a Life Down Under, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, Escape to the Country (Just Don’t Come by Boat or You Will End Up in a Concentration Camp on an Impoverished, Mosquito-Infested Island), etc, etc. To some of the locals, such comments just seem to reinforce a lovingly-embraced stereotype related to whinging. But I get it, even though I would try to make the most of endless days of fair weather myself. There is glumness in Britishness – fostered over millennia, permeated by the weather, resolute in the character – that cannot easily be discarded. It is not a bad thing, predominantly because we are skilled at making light of it (indeed, this is something to be celebrated). And, I think, it nurtures appreciation and satisfaction in the simplest of things, such as the emergence of a snowdrop from the earth in early spring [i].

I guess what I am saying, what I am typing, is that March can be so exhilarating in Britain because of what you have been through to get there. Yes, much like the proverbial rollercoaster or, more aptly, the Northern Line, dawdling through what seems an endless toxic darkness to finally emerge into the light and airy park-side setting of East Finchley. Spring and summer, or Woodside Park and High Barnet, lay ahead. And while these will often end up being more disappointing than hoped-for, in March the anticipation is still there, yet to be dashed by John Ketley.

Australia is in many ways a different proposition. The sheer size and variability in the weather means that March could herald heatwaves, cyclones, snowfalls, floods, dust storms, mist patches, and cascades of quokkas and numbats. In small pockets – such as the south east corner with which I am most familiar – there is a parallel cooling and drawing in of nights, and the first vestiges of a prolonged autumn appear. Though there may be some sombreness that summer is on the wane, there is little of the dread associated with a forthcoming northern winter. Partly that’s a result of days that can still exceed thirty degrees but mostly milder, more amiable conditions as a whole. This is the start of a golden period, when pleasant, blue-sky days and refreshing nights stack up one after the other and seem to stretch on into May.

Of course, I write this safe in the knowledge (or 97% confident) that climate change could totally wreck everything I am going on about. Stormy Marches and hot Marches and cyclonic Marches or even snowy Marches could become the new norm. Do I have evidence for this? Well, no, but that doesn’t stop climate sceptics receiving a sycophantic front page diatribe in certain national media, so no harm in including a few words on an obscure blog. While we may (only part) jokingly embrace climate change if it means we can wear union jack shorts in Southend in March, it would be a shame to lose that which is special about the seasonality it offers. Otherwise we’ll just be as bad as the Gold Coast.

I can accept hot days in early March, but it was nearing month’s end in 2013 when myself and a friend decided to persevere with the preparation of bangers and mash during a 38 degree northerly on the southern extremity of the Australian mainland. It is probably one of the biggest collective regrets we have from a three month trip across Australia. Just what were we thinking?! I guess in the joy of food planning and supermarket shopping a few days in advance we didn’t anticipate such furnace-like conditions. Plus we had packed a potato masher as something of a luxury item, so were eager to use it on any possible occasion.

The setting was Tidal River, a sprawling campground complex within Wilsons Promontory National Park. It’s popular with Melburnians and wombats, both of whom were in profusion. The wombats were engaged in a faux cultural conversation about the ethics of rainforest regurgitated coffee beans, while the Melburnians contentedly chomped away on the grass and shitted square bricks. The day had passed with the sight and smell of smoke from the lower Strzelecki Ranges, and a coming-close-to-mild-dehydration tramp up to Vereker Outlook. Relief of a kind came from the beautiful white bays and clear waters of the coastline, though even here the brilliance of the sand glared with a resonant heat. General fatigue was high, and the struggle to boil potatoes on a portable gas stove in a strong northerly beside the sea was only made more pleasurable by the numerous flies clearly determined to explore the nasal cavity. This was not quite the idyllic March that I had come to know and love.

Needless to say, a week later I was freezing my butt off in another Victorian national park, desperately lighting a pile of twigs to ward off the chance of hypothermia. In the golden goldfields around Castlemaine and Bendigo, Creswick and Ballarat, the effect of March was bearing fruit. Planted to gentrify the antiquated avenues and make Englanders feel partly at home, the oaks and elms, beech and poplars, were busy transitioning into autumn shades. The spa town of Daylesford was made for this time of year, its lake happily reflective and the Victorian Victorian streets lined with large-leaved trees that seem to be excited by the end of summer. A refuge for Masterchef cast-offs, there was no doubting that the pork roasted to succulence in a charming old pub was several hundred times better, and a thousand more fitting, than the bangers and mash of past.

Thus, climate change pending, there is much to celebrate about March whether north or south. I am pleased to say that as I write this in Canberra, the sun is shining, it is a predictable 25 degrees and the forecast is set fair. Spring may be yet to truly spring in the UK, but there is an inevitability that it will come. Soon. Two weeks and there may be a freak warm day coming up, so stock up on charcoal before the supermarkets sell out, and beware of white van man with his top inexplicably off. Above all, cherish this most pivotal of months which signifies the start of something new. Love the seasons, and all the incremental change that they deliver. Otherwise, head to the Gold Coast or Lanzarote and dwell in temperate predictability, never to wear long pants ever, ever again.

[i] In making a sweeping generalisation about national character I should caveat: there will still inevitably be a handful of tiresome, grouchy narks who hate the sound of children’s laughter and lament the daffodils emerging on the median strip because they might provide a place for immigrant burglars to hide and spread Ebola. The good thing is everyone else will take the piss out of them. Apart from desperate politicians who seem to focus endlessly on wooing their vote.

12 Months Australia Europe

February 8, 2015October 19, 2015

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A mountain to climb

In another week in which the Australian political landscape imploded in much self-generated excitement, it is hard not to be drawn into contributing more electronic graffiti about levels of douchebagness and the chaos and disorder that is certainly not happening again like it did with that other bunch. Nothing to see here, move along now. However, while the world really doesn’t wait with baited breath to figure which “adult” is in charge of the Knightly Order of Her Majesty’s Commonwealth of Australia, the kos12 natural landscape is in much less turmoil (unless you listen to those wacky “scientists” with their corroborated, peer-reviewed “research” and years of undisputed empirical “data”). There are, clearly, mountains to climb and some are easier than others.

The Snowy Mountains are very old – older indeed than a snoozing Senator – and have been worn down over millions of years. If they were several millions of years younger they would be more akin to the New Zealand Alps or the Himalayas, but because of their age they have mellowed; they are more rounded, worn down and weather-beaten, skin baked by summer sun and scoured by winter ice. They are, perhaps, the Brecon Beacons down under, with classic U-shaped valleys, remnant moraine and small, glacial tarns.

Having digested various parts of the mountains over the years – embedded deep within Kosciuszko National Park – a one-day walk finally appeared to stitch together the different threads of footsteps past. In particular, the Main Range circuit, nudging 22km in length and looping around the highest country. This included a stretch of six kilometres or so that I had not been on before and which, undoubtedly, was the most spectacular.

So, in pursuit of clear air and with the captain’s picks of two friends for company, let me guide you around the trail in a mostly factual, pictorial and certainly not chaotic or disorderly fashion…

Starting off from Charlotte Pass (1,837m), the track drops substantially to ford the Snowy River (1,717m). The river rises somewhere amongst the boggy marshes 5km upstream, and has gathered enough water by this point to make a crossing on stepping stones sometimes hazardous. Today – still reasonably early on a crystal clear February morning – all was rather placid and safely negotiated without wet feet or soggy sandwiches.

From the river crossing it is unsurprisingly onwards and upwards; in fact the climb, while never too steep, is quite incessant and longer than I remember! However, with altitude the views start to open up, including the sight of Hedley’s Tarn and the ridgelines of the Main Range’s highest peaks.

After some 300 metres of ascent and four kilometres from the start a view of Blue Lake is attained. Today it is lacking much of a blue colour and the glaring morning sun and a wind whipping across the surface are photogenically challenging! From here though it is not too much further to reach a saddle with the first views of more spectacular jagged mountains and the ranges of blue spreading west. A perfect opportunity for a morning food stop taking in a homemade sausage roll and spot of middle-class hiker’s quiche.

From this point, the trail is all new ground for me and the morning sustenance is useful for the slow climb up to Carruthers Peak (2,139m). The spectacular views continue, and the summit itself affords the first look at Club Lake, as well as the trail following the ridgeline to the rather bland summit of Mount Kosciuszko.

The ridgeline is a joy to follow, with remnant wildflowers, the prominence of Mount Townsend to the right and deep ravines carved by Lady Northcote’s Creek, the mountains seeming to tumble sharply west. I have no idea who Lady Northcote was but if her character was anything like that of the landscape in which she was named, she was probably a bit of a looker, though occasionally bleak and somewhat cutting.

kos10 Before too long Albina Lake emerges, tucked in a sheltered valley seemingly conducive to an array of wildflowers and other alpine plants. The lake looks quite inviting in the warmth and would prove a nice spot for a picnic. It’s about nine kilometres into the walk now, and with the summit of Mount Kosciusko just a few thousand metres distant, we resolve to head on and join the masses carrying their lunch to the top of Australia. On reflection, the best part of the walk is over…though this may be in part because familiar paths will soon be rejoined.

kos11 Unfortunately we seem to have gradually descended a little, and the hoick up to the main summit thoroughfare is probably the steepest of the day. We’re not talking rock climbing here, but frequent steps and, by now, quite a penetrating sun. The junction with the main summit trail is like emerging from a country lane onto the M1. Mostly originating from Thredbo, families, fitness freaks and old fogies join us in a steady stream coiling up to the top (2,228m). A medley of Aussie flags and fluoro leggings congregates around the summit marker, and lunching is de rigueur. With homemade hummus and more quiche ours is perhaps one of the more pretentious of picnics!

Apart from a little blip it is all downhill from here, some eight and a half kilometres back to Charlotte Pass. From Rawson Pass (2,119m) – which is something akin to the base camp for the kos14 summit climb and apparently includes Australia’s highest public toilet – a sedate, well-graded trail makes it all the way back. This is the old summit road and I read that a shuttle bus used to ply along here, part of me wishing it was still running. The open scenery is not unpleasant, but in comparison to other parts of the track and given the gathering weariness this part is a bit of a drag. Markers every kilometre break it up, as does Seaman’s Hut (2,020m) and a more comfortable bridging of the Snowy River with four kilometres remaining.

Approaching Charlotte Pass, signs of civilisation re-appear – a chairlift and the occasional dark grey metallic huts populated by visitors in winter. The Snowy courses to the left and from across the valley the earlier, kos16 upwards trail to Blue Lake looks like an impressive climb! Snow Gums also cluster here, stunted and bending with their striped, smooth bark of chocolate and sand, of black and white. Afternoon clouds are building and the risk of storms hypothesised look as though they will be realised. But, after six and a half hours and 21.9 kilometres, we reach the (relative) safety of a Subaru Outback. Accomplished and relieved, invigorated and weary; trundling another 220km back to Canberra (577m), via Jindabyne caffeine and Cooma steak. From the real Australia and back to the bizarre.

Australia Green Bogey Walking

February 4, 2015June 1, 2015

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February

The chill embrace of water was invasive. A pond stretching out in smooth monotone reflected only the dead black trees, clutching and distorting like lost souls grasping for salvation. In places a mist danced, swirls of vapour disappearing and re-emerging within the blink of an eye; drifting towards the pond’s banks and adding burden to the dense brambles and thickets of weed. Here, a lonely black crow occasionally paced, agitating water from the undergrowth and sending it downwards to disturb the silvery veneer. The grass sweeping up to where he stood was sopping, congested with dewdrops longing to be transformed into jewels by an absent sun. And into this reservoir one more droplet formed, trickling down his scarred cheek and stolen by the air.

The mist on that day one year ago was somehow more startling. It hovered fleetingly down in the small gully at the back of his plot, barely distinguishable in the first light, twisting through the remaining tree ferns like some ghostly serpent of the dreamtime. He was always up at this hour, surveying the daybreak from the back of his veranda, but not once could he recall mist down there at this time of year. He found the pre-dawn a beautiful, peaceful period, becalmed before the summer sun gathered in ferocity and the winds became energised. It was his time, a secret hour of solace before the industry of human activity discovered the world again and disrupted its placidity.

The first sounds, apart from those of the creaking deck upon which he paced, came from the birds. Usually a lone wattlebird set everything off, calling to its mate and waiting – sometimes forlornly – for a distant reply. Without a response its cry would intensify towards panic, only subdued when an echo rebounded from somewhere amongst the trees lining the road. As the black of night faded indigo and navy blue, the kookaburras stirred; first a guttural warm-up from the lead voice, like that of a car’s ignition struggling to get going on the first attempt. Upon finally starting this lone cackle would act as an alarm call for the others to burst into a cacophony. This seemed to peeve the sulphur-crested cockatoos, shrieking in retort to being rudely awaken. The shrill flits of galahs and rosellas followed, while the currawongs and magpies struggled to be heard in the melee. By time the first red rays of sun glowed upon the upper reaches of the big cabbage gum to his right, an uninterrupted wall of sound flowed through the air and the world was awake again.

A wall of sound greeted him now, walking up Highgate Hill, though little of it emanated from anything other than what man had done. Red double deckers played tag, rumbling up the hill from Archway and swapping places at alternate stops. Occasionally a black cab spirited its way towards the city and fluoro cyclists diced with death on a mad downhill descent. But mostly there were Range Rovers and Landcruisers and a variety of precision-made German-engineered supersized cars perfectly suitable for the rough terrain of north London. Inside, almost unequivocally, a well-groomed mother was returning from the school run, bedecked in a smart-fitting pastel blazer and adorned with large sunglasses.

Overhead, a few pigeons scattered in the skies, continually eclipsed by the roar of jets ascending from Heathrow, veering left as they rose on a repetitive north-easterly track. Many destined to escape the chill. It was perhaps only around four degrees – already incrementally warmer than overnight – but the cold was bitter enough to cause him to be jolted by the heat encased within Sam’s Cafe as he opened the door.

It was only ten in the morning when he had been hit like this last year. Protected by the settler’s schizophrenic garden of apple tree and acacia, fuchsia and grevillea, his blue weatherboard home escaped the worst excesses of summer. Unlatching the back door and opening out its fly screen onto the veranda, he was immediately confronted by a burst of heat; like that of an airplane door closed at Aberdeen and opened again at Alicante. Over the creek he could see his neighbour’s Friesians clustered under the shade of a eucalypt. Their complaining bellows had replaced the melodies of dawn long since passed, with only the intermittent clucking of his chooks competing for attention. As he made his way across to their pen to collect the morning’s yield, a waft of wind stirred in the cabbage gum. This was replicated a minute later by the trees upon the ridge, whipped up in greater fury for ten seconds before dying completely. Gathering up just two eggs – fewer than normal – his throat had dried and any relief from his own saliva was fleeting.

On days like this there was little he could do. Tending to the chooks, clearing the yard of clutter, and undertaking perfunctory checks on the water tank, roof and gutters was about the sum of it. There was nothing for it other than to close all the blinds, reach for the fridge, crack open a beer, and wait for the day to pass. The beer was the medicinal part. The contours of the glass, coated in icy beads of water, were balsam to his ruddy hands. In one fluid gesture he passed the bottle across his forehead, twisted off the cap to release a short, sweet spurt of gas, and brought the rim up to his lips for an indulgent gulp.

Soothed and mellowed, he reached up to the shelf and flicked on the radio, before settling down in a wooden chair that had seen better days. Set to the ABC – as it had been for umpteen years – a young bloke was talking about his experimentations in crop diversification. Several varieties of something called keynwah, he thought they had said. Apparently, he got some of this keynwah sent over from South America and one of its party was delivering promise here in Gippsland. There was good money in it, apparently, and as the talk meandered into yield per hectare, cost inputs and market pricing, he found his eyelids dropping and head becoming heavy, dragged down by a tonne of exotic wholegrain…

…a young Peter Hollingsworth was walking alongside the Thames once again. The brown river was languid, a juxtaposition to the barges and cruisers bustling up and downstream with purpose. It was sunny, though crisp, with a gusty easterly wind whipping under the railway bridges and backstreet arches of Bankside. Next he saw a pint of chocolaty brown ale in front of him, topped off with creamy white foam. It was called something like Black Boar, and was a fine sight to behold. But more striking, more achingly beautiful, more lustfully alluring was the vision of Emily Coniston, animated across the table in delivering a rebuttal to some dandy twerp who dared to suggest she should stick to becoming a housewife and mother. Making out her argument was tough – the crackle of the open fire incessant – but you could tell she was having the better of things, and looked all the finer for it.

The crackling intensified, and slowly the image blurred and vanished. The talk of keynwah had ceased and the radio had lost signal altogether. Slowly rising, Peter switched it off, and went back out to the veranda to check up on what the world was doing. By now, the midday sun was searing and he lingered sparingly in it. Everything was eerily still and quiet. The cows had gone, probably offered refuge in one of the big tin sheds up on the hill. Even the cicadas were subdued, no doubt wallowing amongst the more succulent clumps of grass and weed next to the boundary fence. The chooks were silent too, but faring okay as he ambled down to their pen with extra water. Inside the small shed attached to their run, he noticed four hens snoozing away in the shade, as if the heat was today’s excuse for a typically elongated siesta.

Turning back to the house was when he first noticed a narrow plume of smoke, rising vertically many kilometres distant, up somewhere in the ranges west of Buchan. This was nothing new, the whole country up there so rugged and devoid of human habitation that fires could burn away for months on end. Twelve years previously he remembered it coming down from the mountains and torching a few sheds and accounting for six cattle and a cat in one of the scattered settlements in the valley. The fire had ravaged an area the size of Belgium, but its damage was mostly temporary, the bush regenerating, as it does, to take on its latest iteration. Even the old couple who lost their cat easily got a new one from the dozens offered by well-meaning do-gooders.

Heading to the back door he looked once more at the smoke, but did not see that of a bushfire simultaneously destroying and rejuvenating a tangled patch of far off high country; instead it was that rising from Battersea Power Station to his west, adding another smoky texture to the otherwise blanket grey sky. Emily was gliding on the ice, reaching out for his hand and guiding him with both a tenderness and passion that was as much about a journey into his heart as it was a helping hand to an Australian unaccustomed to such wintry escapades. His tentativeness and clumsiness eased, so much so that he could finally avert his gaze up from his feet and dwell longer in that carefree smile and the large, brown eyes brimming with life. Only when those eyes reached into his did he stutter once more, crashing to the ground accompanied by the sounds of unbridled, joyous laughter.

A small gust of wind rattled through the cabbage gum, and briefly diverted his attention back to the present. But his mind was now deeply focused on the past. It may have been nearing forty degrees in a rural homestead in the middle of not much at all, but Peter was now transfixed on one magical winter many years ago in a huge, sprawling city on the other side of the world. Retreating inside, he sought out one of those shoeboxes that contain life’s memories. It was buried in a bigger box under souvenir stubby holders and a dream catcher and several bits of key chain and magazines about photography and newspaper pullouts about walking trails and places in South America and recipes for Malaysian curries. Inside, the smell was of an old bookshop in Melbourne, as letters and postcards, photos and train tickets, spilled out onto the kitchen table.

The afternoon passed in a blur of words and images. Three cherished letters, two photo booth pictures, a program from the Old Vic, and a return train ticket from Waterloo to Winchester were the only physical representations Peter retained of his time with Emily Coniston. He read and re-read every sentence in the letters; the first was full of sparkle and suggestion, of hopes and dreams of a life to come. The second, composed a few years later, was more formal, though he detected an occasional playfulness in between lines of her impending marriage to Will Barlow. The third was more recent – sent upon the turn of the millennium – in which fondness for their collective past was painted in such a vividly romantic hue that it was impossible not to rue what might have been.

The train tickets did little justice in capturing the memories of that day. It was a sunny Sunday in early February. The train carriage had been stationed at Waterloo overnight and so, first thing, it was like entering a cold store full of legs of ham hanging from the ceiling. Things warmed a touch as the sun penetrated the carriage, and the white frost-capped roofs of the suburbs slowly began to drip as they passed by. In Winchester, the lawns in front of the cathedral were pocketed white and dewy green, the harsh frostiness lingering where the spire had shadowed the sun. Walking together alongside the old stone walls of the college, they joined arms, offering internal warmth more than sufficient to counter that of the ice layered across the waterway to their right. Warmer still, the hot chocolate shared in a cafe beside the bridge, and the contentedness of being in that place at that time with that person.

A sudden and strong gust rattled the house, causing the shoebox to drop to the floor much in the same way as past memories rapidly evaporated back to the present. For the first time that day, Peter felt a shiver, as if he had been briefly relocated through space and time into that railway carriage on the platform of Waterloo station. The wind whistled again, becoming more persistent and sustained. He could hear the leaves in the gum tree in perpetual motion, the sound as if it were that of a waterfall plunging over the rim of a sandstone cliff. The noises were troublesome, the shrieks and hollers of spirits risen up from the earth, come down from the mountains, and returning from the past.

Outside the situation transformed rapidly, but somehow – and it is hard for him to describe – the next hour passed to Peter in slow motion, in discrete and deliberative moments of time, stitched together like acts from Richard III; a past winter of content soothing what was now becoming a summer of alarm. Before too long, embers began appearing from the west, blazing leaves of eucalyptus oil floating on the sky and whirling downwards to rain on the front porch. Like the snowflakes floating onto their faces atop Parliament Hill. Each one extinguished before it took hold, as if coming into contact with a rosy cheek reddened all the more with wine. Peter glided calm and assured, as if he had finally perfected the art of ice skating, only on the grass and thistle and weed of the Australian bush. His skates from R.M. Williams and his support, his companionship coming this time from the hosepipe gripped in his hands.

A couple of kilometres out, a wall of flame was now visible upon a ridgeline. Trees in the near distance were touched by the smallest ember and immediately ignited into a fiery vaporous mass. Cockatoos shrieked and fled, their usual brilliance dulled by the smoky air. A kangaroo, eyes panicked and bewildered, clattered into the fence by the road at full force. The cows up in the shed wailed in a desperate high-pitched tone that was marginally more terrifying than that of the wind, or the shriek of the Bakerloo line train coming into the curved platform at Paddington. In an inevitability that was only a matter of time, the cabbage gum caught and Peter found that he was being overwhelmed.

Emily was with him again, grasping the hand that had dropped the hose in panic, and leading him away. Cloaking him in the February of London, guiding him down to the ponds on the Heath. Pausing only to unlatch the chook’s pen, and hearing the birds follow in terror as they fled down the hill. Stripping off in a fit of bravado and alcohol-induced daring to plunge into the icy cold waters of the pond. Laying there in the shallow waters of the creek and being kissed once more, treasuring the feel of her cold, smooth skin upon his. Together in the freezing water as the flames licked overhead, as if in the dead heart of the fire in the pub. Passing through the inferno of hell in the recollection of a heaven. And shedding a tear of happiness into the creek that would eventually run into the sea and cross oceans and find its way back to that pond one year later.

12 Months Australia Great Britain

January 28, 2015October 19, 2015

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Greenish and golden

There comes a point in January when people pause to consider what it means to be Australian. This usually occurs on or around the anniversary of a few hundred boatpeople from Great Britain arriving to “nothing but bush” (to quote the minister for Indigenous Australians and His Lordship Prime Minister of the Monarchical Colony of Australian Subjects). Considered writings of pride, of angst, of hope, of uncertainty litter the newspapers and infiltrate the electronic graffiti of the twittersphere. For the common man – let’s call him Shane – the Australian essence is commemorated through the bite of a lamb chop from a gas barbecue the size of a truck, a youthful discussion of rising intonation about the best 100 songs involving people with beards lamenting at life, or a day in front of the TV watching tennicrickcycletfooty with a so-cold-it-hurts beer.

While I could brave a venture into the question ‘What does it mean to be Australian?’ I neither have the will nor the current brainpower to go down this path. It may be I am suffering from that particularly laconic strand of Australianism that arises specifically at this time of year – the can’t really be arsed is it still the holidays period. I’m also in the dubious position of not really being a proper Australian, not really, even though the flag of my country of birth is still emblazed like some badge of imperial approval upon yours. All I can say is that I feel lucky, immensely lucky, to be a part of you, attached to your deep blue skies, your sandy shores, your withering white gum trees, and your mostly generous and progressive people.

I feel lucky, on most days, to be in Canberra. Yes really! A capital you have built in little over one hundred years from sun and frost-baked plains and bush-tangled hills. You really ought to be a little prouder of this achievement, especially because you have left some of those bush-tangled hills alone. The sweeping roundabouts and nationalist edifices now scattered across the plains are looking particularly fine as well, what with the regular stormy soakings keeping the grass nice and green. A summer of such generous rainfall that it could almost be British. How soothing.

Despite such impertinence, the sun still shines most days here, and for that I am grateful. The slight irony is that I write this looking out of my window on grey accompanied by a cool 17 degrees only. But this is surely a blip, for other days have offered ample warm sunshine before the storms. Conditions in which I can enjoy your verdant lawns and embrace your rising humidity. To climb bushland hills and swing golf clubs very amateurishly. To cycle alongside the water and sip coffee with the hipsters. To be that most Australian of creatures and watch sport; and not just any sport, but cricket, and cricket in an atmosphere of cleverly articulated critique of the opposing English team. Pommie-bashing I think you call it, and too bloody right.

Despite being curiously enamoured here, I feel lucky that Australia is a very big country beyond its capital. Just up the road, a mere three hours, is where – if you conveniently ignore 50,000 years of human occupation and quite ingenious cultivation and care of the land – it all started. 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney, Australia. Ah Sydney, that icon of iconic sights on iconic marketing campaigns that seek to invoke envy. As much as I try to find holes in it, to unstitch its veneer of perfection, to cut down such a tall poppy, I stumble upon its harbour shores and return to a state of complicit adoration.

It’s been a little while since I have seen you Sydney, and I enjoyed your company. I enjoyed seeing friends and playing in parks and being temporarily transformed into a mermaid at Greenwich baths. I enjoyed nine more amateurish holes of golf and the cold beer that followed. I enjoyed Bondi lunch and Coogee brunch and Crow’s Nest salted caramel gelato (on two occasions). I enjoyed getting on a boat at Bronte, but, alas, not making it out onto the open sea. And I really, really enjoyed catching the ferry across the harbour on a warm Saturday night and having a few drinks as the sun set behind the old coat hanger and reddened the discarded prawn shells atop its giant typewriter.

From excess the next morning was consequently less enjoyable, as was the traffic on Military Road, and the frequent T-shirt changing humidity, and just the general busyness of beachside suburbs on warm and sunny January weekends. Such congestion in a continent with vast emptiness is a stark juxtaposition. There is no doubt comfort in this metropolitan hubbub – a civilisation, a taming, a sense of being and belonging to others. Perhaps it is a feeling of security and protection from the wild endless uncertainty of what lies inland that keeps you – that keeps us – mostly clinging onto the coastal extremities.

As a more recent entrant upon this giant landmass I feel blessed that I can maintain a comfortable, civilised, and invariably cultured urban existence while still being easily belittled by nature. I can live in a clean, safe, prosperous city scattered with sweeping roundabouts and take one of the exits towards nothingness. Though for nothingness read abundance. An abundance of gum trees and hills and high plains in Namadgi, from which rocky outcrops pierce an abundant blue sky. A plethora of grasses and wildflowers emerging in swampy hollows, the weeds also thriving in a show of acceptance and egalitarianism. A setting for black cockatoos and butterflies to float in the air, riding the breeze upon which small white clouds cluster and vanish.

Clouds which may reappear again to water the lawns around the National Gallery, or dispense rain into falls and gorges around Bungonia. Landscapes that were once seas and took 450 million years to come to this. Wildness and natural drama that is but 30 minutes from a coffee and a peppermint slice and an inexplicable giant concrete sheep. The developed and the untamed, living side by side in something hopefully approaching harmony. This is the fortune I feel at being in this place at this time, around Australia Day.

Australia Green Bogey Society & Culture Walking

January 12, 2015February 19, 2015

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The twelve themes of Christmas

On twelve days after Christmas, my true love gave to me, another serve of leftover Christmas pudding with valiant Tasmanian attempts at clotted cream. By then it was 2015, and I was thinking that this indulgence really needed to come to an end. But the Australian Christmas seems a more elongated affair, blending as it does with summer holidays which creep all the way to Australia Day at the end of January. I say this every year, but Christmas in Australia is still somewhat bizarre and while I adore the lazy holiday feel and the addition of fine seafood to the agenda, a large part of me craves a good windy winter storm and a good windy dose of roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts.

While there are obvious differences between the Australian and European Christmas experiences, both are obsessed with a crazy excess of food. And so a day or so prior to Christmas I had acquired an esky full of crisps and nuts, chocolates and puddings. A fridge full to capacity with ham and sausage rolls and cream and cheese and (just for a touch of balance) fruit and salad. Longevity was the name of the game for the ham, and the hidden orange Christmas pudding (serves 10), took me alone a whole week to devour. In some way I was glad to see them go, but also a little wistful that they were no longer a part of my life.

Christmas Day itself was a suitably multifarious affair, bringing together the Australian, the Anglo, and the Italian. The day commenced with what any good day should – a walk up Red Hill in preparation for calorific overload – before a relaxing hour of reading and an early shandy with nibbles at home. jan01 From then on the eating proceeded with a mostly seafood lunch involving the largest prawns ever created, sweets, desserts, nibbles, barbecue, sweets, snacks, more nibbles, etc. Presents were unwrapped, outdoor chairs were reclined, family discussions were robust. And to cap the day, I came home for a touch more nourishment and a little drink to lubricate the Skype calls to Europe.

By New Year’s Eve, some food stocks were depleting and I needed to buy more provisions from the supermarket to prepare salads and desserts for an excellent few hours of outdoor pool soaking, meaty barbecuing, and, well, dessert-eating. It was here that the tiramisu I made delivered everything I wanted and more; better than the Italians’ creation (soaking time was important after all) and more satisfying than watching the Sydney fireworks on the TV. Is it me, or was someone just shuffling through their iTunes playlist and skipping tracks they didn’t like that much while some crackers went off to fill the night sky with smoke? There was some discussion on the news the next day (post 11am) that London may be giving Sydney a run for its money in the New Year firework stakes. Again, the natural advantage that is that beautiful harbour may well be a cause of complacency.

jan02 There have been some natural and arguably more spectacular fireworks anyway. The hot dry summer which occurred in November has now been usurped by a north Queensland period of sunny, sultry mornings building to climatic storms and downpours later in the day. The pattern has been so recurrent that the days are becoming almost entirely tediously predictable, and so activities (unless they involve storm-chasing) are almost best undertaken in the mornings.

Fortunately, for the prospect of my cholesterol and obesity levels, I have been able to engage in decent amounts of exercise over the holiday period. In part, this is merely an extension of my normal life and having lots of time to do things in, rather than some hyped-up resolve to get fit. Local walks are a normative feature of the days. Most frequently of course this has involved trips to Red Hill reserve, where all is well with just about everything and everyone. But such has been the excess of free time that I have even sought out walks elsewhere!

One such place was Cooleman Ridge, which obviously is not as good as Red Hill but – being on the western edge of Canberra – has a more pastoral aspect. Hobby horses and scattered cows dot the fields, still relatively golden despite the stormy interludes. Somewhere yonder the brown waters of the Murrumbidgee laze, splitting the tamed grassland with the bush-tangled upward thrust of the Bullen Range. Further west and the larger mountains of the Brindabellas hit the sky, ever-present and ever-enticing.

It was up into these hills that a more substantial adventure transpired in between serves of Christmas pudding and tiramisu. A mountain walk along the high borders of the ACT and NSW, taking in the summit of Mount Ginge jan07 ra (1,855m), offered the perfect antidote to Christmas torpor. And it wasn’t even too difficult – the first six kilometres along a fire trail with interruptions for forest views, bird sightings, flower-filled glades, blue-tongued lizards and lunch beside a rickety mountain hut.

The remaining kilometre to the rocky outcrop capping the mountain was a more steadfastly uphill affair, the trees giving way to grasses and sphagnum moss and more flowery glades and the odd snow gum. The views increasingly opened out to reveal vast wilderness stretching west and south, and even east, at least until you could see the tack-like tower atop Black Mountain, looking diminutive in comparison to the ridges of bushland lain out before it.

Being in the interlude between Christmas and New Year, the feats of energy required to climb a mountain were intrinsically counterbalanced with a delightful stop on the journey home. Emerging from the car fridge three cool beers, trophies of conquest to accompany crackers, cheese, ham, nuts, dips, vegetables and pickles. Extra weight to provide extra grip as the car wound back down the gravel of Brindabella Road.

Beyond the walks, the bike continues to receive attention and while the category 4 climbs have been a bit absent of late (attempted once in the midst of the Christmas pudding / tiramisu period with less than impressive results), it has been nice to venture lakeside and use a bicycle as a functional means of attaining coffee and shopping. A day spent re-visiting some of the national attractions was ideal by bike, and trips to town are scenic and satisfying, despite the fact that this means entering stores glistening and red-faced.

And if all that wasn’t sporty enough, golf has become a feature on the agenda of late, aided by the light evenings and cheaper twilight rates. Surprisingly, my game has been passable and there have even been a few shots to remember. Alas, such is golf that it seems the more you play, the more the bad habits return, and the memory of why this is such an utterly infuriating but addictive endeavour becomes real again.

So it seems that the holidays have been reasonably active, but for every climb up Red Hill there is an afternoon nap. For every pedal along the lake, a stretch out on the settee, reading and infrequently observing cricket in the background. I enjoy this time but also feel sometimes like I should be using it more productively. This is when writing may kick in, whether something inarticulate about my boring life over the Christmas holidays, recollections of trips of the past, or deliberations on the month of January. I’ve found some of the writing to be particularly pleasurable in an old-fashioned pencil and notepad kind of way, from a blanket in the Botanic Gardens to a bench down by the Cotter River. However, the scale of my endeavours has been, at best, average. Prolificacy bears no correlation to time availability.

Part of the problem has been other distractions. Distractions that are entirely self-created and – if you were to analyse it – may symbolise a deliberate intent to enhance procrastination and delay doing something that sounds like it could entail hard work. Morning coffee is a distraction, particularly when it has involved trying to find an alternative venue while your regular favourites are closed over the holidays. Visits to the Westfield shopping mall are a distraction, though I feel only I am partly to blame here, having been kindly provided with vouchers to spend. And technology, always a distraction. More so when you spill a whole cup of tea over your iphone and unfortunately have to upgrade, and then spend several days visiting the Westfield shopping mall to get a protective, tea-resistant cover (picking up a takeaway coffee whilst there).

Alas, the interference from technology and its associated expense may mean that time availability will have to decrease at some point reasonably soon. Living off my pre-Christmas earnings will not last forever, as much as I want it to. This is not helped too with the purchase of a new body (for my camera) and an almost slavish desperation to travel to some places sometime in 2015. But still, I have a day at the cricket, a trip to Sydney, and it is Australia Day weekend soon enough. No need to do anything too drastic just yet, the year is still but a baby.

Australia Food & Drink Green Bogey Photography Walking

January 1, 2015June 1, 2015

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January

Ingrained in the deepest reaches of my mind sits recollection of a January. Far beyond yesterday’s shopping list is a picture of a crisp clear day on high moorland. Icy cracks and crevices, like fissures of diamond, bond the huge granite boulders thrust up from the core of the Earth. Shallow pools of water are sealed with glass, only splintered with a daring footstep as satisfying as a spoon piercing a Crème Brûlée. Encased in a padding of jumpers and scarves and jackets and gloves, the wind nonetheless manages to lash the face and penetrate the body. Feet lose feeling, yet the rest of the body is invigorated. And as rosiness returns in front of an open fire, like the cold the memories fade, lost again, floating around somewhere amongst the numerous pithy sentences that would undoubtedly make a great book if somehow I could wed them to a narrative.

On the other side of the world, below the equator and quite a bit east, the tilt of the Earth has conspired to produce utopian conditions for flies, ants and mosquitoes. All seem rather attracted to me. As a quest to receive more invites to fancy barbecues and opulent garden parties I may well advertise as a portable insect attractor. Like one of those electric zappers, but with the added bonus of being able to serve drinks, cook meats and deliver witty anecdotes and sarcastic put-downs disguised as sarcasm but quite possibly not. I may well call this emerging enterprise that has literally emerged in the last few minutes, Aussie Mozzie Boy. He takes the angst out of ants.

Here in January a heat hovers and the thought of wearing anything other than shorts ever again seems quite ludicrous. It actually becomes too hot, and the parade of once-sturdy Agapanthus begins to wither, much like a Scotsman on a Melbourne tennis court awarded a succession of daytime matches in the hope of providing another sporting spectacle; that of reddening skin and dehydrated muttering, and a pile of towels so soaked in sweat they could water the vines in the Yarra Valley for the remainder of the year.

The concept of being too hot seems alien, even though it is a frequent ill-informed complaint of an Englishman in an English summer. I once heard a particularly toasty day – the kind accompanied by a generous north-westerly transporting dust and ash and smoke and flies – described in charming vernacular as a “stinker”. And too bloody right mate. But this idea, that a hot sunny day can really suck, is perverse to an English soul. Now, if it was gloomy and dank and dreary and accompanied by drizzle at around three degrees Celsius, then I would expect that to qualify as a stinker, and I would have probably revelled in as much. Once. But now I am a soft-skinned insect allurer who may start to feel a little chilly in the legs at a garden party once the sun has set and the blood extraction procedure ramps up.

And so we note the theme of contrasts, which is not in the least bit surprising and not at all likely to be recurrent in the context of Australia and England. You say tamaaarhda, I say towmartoe, innit. Seasonality has produced an affectation of difference in January north and south, but what of that which ties us together? A new calendar, a new year; a clean slate, a fresh page; a resolve to set goals and stride into the year with purpose; and an inevitability that most of us will – at best – be only partially successful. Rated emerging or promising, but never strongly supported.

January is the month of resolutions, from revolutions to evolutions and aspirations about dedications to somehow become superlative. As if you weren’t pretty damn fine in the first place, you endeavour to eat less cake, drink less beer, replace a cigarette with some Lycra and set some vague but worthy ‘life goals’. Inspired but daunted you cope with such change by eating more chocolate, drinking more wine, slowly jogging past the dodgy youth to inhale some suspicious-smelling haze hovering overhead, and revel in the ambiguity of those vague aims for life which can be almost unendingly put off for another time. I say you, but I could easily mean I.

I have nothing against New Year’s resolutions and annual goals, despite being someone who displays a comfortable inadequacy over such gestures. I make them, but in a very hazy manner. Yeah, I intend this year to you know just go with the flow and take opportunities as they come and, yeah, maybe go on a trip somewhere, depending on what the work situation is like, and hinging on some other stuff and things that pan out.

My goals are, in business parlance, far from SMART. But how many of us, unless in the industry of setting crude financial objectives which involve fleecing $200 million out of customers’ superannuation funds by October 2015, are able to set genuine SMART goals? I always struggled with this goal-setting process in the corporate world. I think my main problem was that if I was to be honest and list my genuine goals for work it would be somewhat out of sync with that expected: This year, I would like to make enough money to live comfortably for doing as little work as possible and avoid any responsibility or decision-making unless it enhances my long-term objective of sitting by a pool being fanned with palm fronds by statuesque goddesses immodestly attired. What should of course be spouting out of my mouth in such situations is something about client-centric fulfilment, strategic interactive opportunities for streamlined co-delivery, and some gigantic revenue target to make the overseas shareholders one hundred times richer than they already are. This last one would be implicit across everything if not always overtly stated as such.

Anyway, this has little to do with January as most work goal-setting episodes tend to take place one month before you have to achieve them…so something like November. But we do have our personal resolutions to uphold, made in an alcohol-induced glow in the wee hours of the first day of the year and foolishly blurted out to bystanders in an attempt to make it look like you do have some appetite for self-improvement. Unfortunately, we also choose to do this in January.

In cooling, northern hemispheres, this is akin to climbing a very steep mountain in a blizzard while wearing flip flops and nursing a humungous hangover. Picture the eighth of January for example. The coloured lights of Christmas are but a distant blur and all that remains from the festivities are the dregs of Aunt Agatha’s sherry and a box of those Danish butter biscuits, destined to be re-gifted. You left for work and came home in the dark. In between, the darkness cheerily lifted to a dense drizzly grey. Despite looking innocuous this soaked your new jacket as you popped out from staring at spreadsheets to get a forlorn-looking cheese and onion sandwich from Tesco. Still damp in the evening, it takes you two hours to get home on a congested train because even the points don’t see the point anymore. And for dinner: half a lettuce and a rice cake, followed by a run in the graveyard. All because you made those resolutions.

So unless your aim is to get as depressed as quickly as possible and accumulate a colony of a new species of mould on your clothes, there is a high likelihood that, come February, you’ll be back chuffing away on 40 a day and eating KFC for breakfast. Because how else are you going to make it though this? In Australia, by contrast, again, there is at least some logic to attempting self-improvement in January. The weather is good, fresh fruit and salads are de rigueur, and practically everyone else you see is glowing in an unbelievably self-contented halo of white teeth and good skin. But here, the slippage into obesity and alcoholism that commenced with Christmas lingers through January and into the next month as a constant companion. It is a protracted holiday season, a period in which it is too hot to exercise with any conviction and the beer is too cold to avoid. Resolutions are easily swayed and as enthusiastically broken as the heads of the succulent tiger prawns drawn en masse from The Pacific.

So, in semi-conclusion, is January really the best time to start afresh, a clean slate for setting aspirations and committing to arduous goals? I’d say no, but you would be justified in hypothesising that I would say this for any month of any year. You’d also be justified in accusing me of downright hypocrisy if you take into account the context in which all the above words have been written. I’d call it poetic licence, but lacking much in the way of anything poetic.

So, in an attempt to address this deficiency let me transport you to the Australian high country. January is still in its infancy and here the skies are a deeper blue, the air more comfortable in which to linger. The clear waters of the Snowy River meander in shallow pools and trickling cascades, bridged by a chain of irregular stepping stones. The walk to Australia’s highest point is well-frequented, but the expanse of open moorland and unending skies projects an excess of space. Leftover Christmas food can still be embraced overlooking a small, still tarn. Winding up to the summit, like the coiling of a Swiss railway conquering a pass, countless ridges and folds of land concertina their way toward the horizon. At 2,288 metres, you reach the top of Australia, Mount Kosciuszko. A new year, commenced on a high.

The cynics amongst you (me included) might then say, “Well, it’s all downhill from here!” But to me, there is something innately appealing about climbing a mountain at the start of the year. The concept of the fresh start is realised through the open vistas, the pure air, and the blank canvas of the fairly indistinguishable landscape of the Australian high country. There is a goal, real and tangible, I daresay even SMART. And then there is the achievement of reaching that goal, and being rewarded for it solely by the beauty and solace of nature. In my eyes, a reward that beats that excuse for a performance related bonus you received at work last year.

So in January, forget cutting back on the cream cakes and fretting about what you are supposed to achieve in the forthcoming year. Just go climb a sun-kissed mountain or tackle an ice-racked tor. The rest of the year will then be a doddle.

For more mountainous inspiration in January or beyond, check out my gallery of various high points near and far

12 Months Australia Society & Culture Walking

December 19, 2014October 22, 2015

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Shorts non-personality of the year

Yikes it’s nearly Christmas. It doesn’t feel like Christmas, but there is the smell of smoke in the air so it must be. And 2015 is just around the corner, up the hill and across to the right a bit. One year closer to impending doom from Islamist wind farms and Europhile selfie-taking teens throwing ice cream buckets over old ladies in the concrete parking lots of the Tarkine wilderness. Or something. I get confused from what Rupert tells me I should think.

One thing I can be sure about is that 2014 is coming to an end. If 2013 was the year of unbridled travel, 2014 was almost as static as a static caravan stuck in the mud in Stuckhampton, wearing a fuzzy jumper while watching a crackly TV transmitting a documentary about the Van de Graaff generator and appropriating humour from Blackadder the Third. I daresay 2014 was almost a year of work; there was incontinence to deal with and tax and depression and parents doing things with their kids and interesting accountants and books for sale and other things I probably should not go into too much detail about mainly because I don’t really remember.

But I did travel and I did escape, it was just no 2013. Who knows, maybe odd-numbered years are for being slack and the evens for work? Only time will tell. But as for 2014, what were the highlights, lowlights and fairly average lights in between…

Best stay: Center Parcs, The Lake District

Log cabins in a pine forest, sun dappling through the trees, a red squirrel darting across the branches. Even the shrills of wild children and hypersensitive smoke alarms cannot dampen the environment and your temporary spot within it. Plus a bedroom to myself with a real bed…a relative luxury on trips to the motherland.

Best warm fuzzy moment with vague memories of childhood thrown in: Plymouth Hoe

Sun out, jumper off, cool breeze from the Sound, jumper on. The Gus Honeybun train clacking along with the occasional clang of a bell. Crazy golf, children running around like long-lost maniacs, ice cream with raspberries and clotted cream. So much of my own childhood now being lived out by the next generation of treasured little pirates. Sausage and chips in the gutter with seagulls to fend off. Janners and Frogs blending over Jasperizers. Real street food. Priceless.

The Remind Me Why I’m in Australia Again Award for Self-Satisfied Contentment: Mollymook Beach

May was a month when winter patiently waited and the outstretched hand of summer never quite let go. Dragging myself away from the glorious technicolour of suburban circles under a bold blue sky, the waters of the Pacific caught me unawares with their warmth and placid demeanour. Mollymook Beach is good at the worst of times. On a calm day in the mid-twenties, with winter around the corner, it is hard to not pinch yourself at the good fortune of being, feet planted in antipodean gold as crystal waters roll caressingly in.

Best meal: Trois Fromages d’Areches

I love fondue. I love Raclette. J’adore Tartiflette. Ménage a trios, anyone? On a rainy summer’s eve in the heart of Alpine cheese country, what better than to be warmed by concentrated lactose blocks and fermented grape juice. A backdrop of French hubbub and je ne sais quoi charm. Cheese to the left of me, fromage to the right, and here I am, stuck in the middle with you and positively wallowing in it like a hunk of stale bread relinquished to the fondue pot.

The Bethany White Commendation for Services to Selfies: Titlis Suspension Bridge

Selfies, selfies everywhere and not a shot to think. Being the only person not from China and not owning a telescopic selfie propulsion system I nonetheless grappled with iphone controls and pouty expressions all the while swaying slightly above a five hundred foot ravine in the snow, ice, and thin air of a Swiss Peak. It sounds like an endeavour worthy of Scott and Mallory, of Fiennes and Kardashian, a feat of suitably slavish worship to the filter in the sky.

The Lance Armstrong Medal for Performing-Enhancing Ingestion of Substances Related to Cycling: Kingston coffees and cakes

Inspired by two wheels in the Lakes, I bought a bike and discovered that exercise is nothing if not a cake enabler. Reluctant to become a middle-aged cliché on two wheels, Lycra still escapes me. But a post lake loop topped with a Kingston coffee and some combination of caramel slice, cronut or wagon wheel is the new norm. Every bite eating into the calories my phone tells me were lost; every sip making me more charmed with those who provide it.

The Pengenna Prize for Cornish Wondrousness: St Agnes Bakery

Sausage rolls are the new pasties. Well, almost. All I can say is that if ever you find yourself within a 5o mile radius of St Agnes in Cornwall, do yourself a favour and pop into the tiniest bakery in the tiniest high street and pick up a sausage roll, plain or flavoured with herbs or onion or garlic or chilli or, well, whatever satisfying variation has been baked that day. Even better, pick up two for the extra energy required to hike over the Beacon and along the tin-scarred, Atlantic-carved, enduringly timeless coastline of this magical corner of the world. And don’t ever go back to Greggs and expect to be happy again.

Destination of the Year: Canberra

Well, would you Adam and Eve it? The world’s most boring, berated, slated and abhorred capital amongst those who have never been there also happens to be one of the best places in the world to live. Yes, as a tourist destination it is perplexing at best; yes, it could do with a little more caution in its drive to transform everyone and everything into an identikit apartment-owning, pulled pork eating, coffee-sipping post-hipster pop-up; and yes, I probably wouldn’t have chosen this if I had been to – say – Torres del Paine or the Maldives or if it hadn’t rained in Switzerland for the whole of 2014. But I came back to Canberra and je ne regrette rien. Yes, it has a natural sense of space and air and light and changing seasonality that lends a continual beauty to its setting; yes it still fulfils me when one of its resident rosellas darts past or its roos bound into the sunset; and yes, it provides good coffee and pulled pork post-hipster pop-up environments in which you can at least temporarily pretend that you can afford to own one of the identikit apartments rising up from the ground.

Australia Europe Food & Drink Great Britain Green Bogey

November 15, 2014October 19, 2015

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Gee, 37

It has been a while! As Mum reminded me on the phone recently. It feels just a little like a scolding but one understands that not much has happened; or has it? The sedate cosy green of spring has been baked off, culminating in a top of 37 degrees on the day that a pasty, sweaty-faced David Cameron came to town. Haha. I am not sure if this is just some false summer heat build up that then disappears and transitions to cool dreariness, or yet another sign that we are set to break numerous temperature records, burn to cinders and face encroaching desert sand for our gormless self-serving leaders to bury their heads in.

Meanwhile, in other news, it is a pleasure to write about things that come from my head without having to back them up with a reference (Stafford, 2014). Hay has been in the making while the sun has been shining and escapades too far out of Canberra have been put on hold. My yearning for a trip is gathering like the heat, building until it suddenly relents with one welcome bounty of thunder and lightning. I think both will come very soon.

Red Hill has been poetically inspirational, offering as it does an escape to the country within five minutes. At certain points the suburbs disappear, the ugly tall building in Woden hides behind a tree, and a background composition of the Brindabella Hills frames the golden waves of grass littered with rosellas and galahs and the head of a kangaroo poking above like a marsupial periscope. Here, the green of October is now a yellow brown of November, and the westerly sun of an evening is warmly alluring with undertones of menace.

Elsewhere, my urgings for a road trip take on gentler forms, with small forays out into the fringes of Canberra. One Sunday evening took me out and up to Mount Stromlo; the observatory here a brilliant white egg shell, sitting under the kind of blue sky that extends forever past the moon and into deep space. More down to earth, the landscape of the Murrumbidgee corridor has a touch of African savannah to it, as rolling flaxen grasslands and clusters of trees congregate between looming hills and ridges.

And a trip to space and Africa would not be complete without a sunset beside a big, tepid lake, teeming with beasties and smells and otherworldly things that probably shouldn’t belong to this earth and which you would rather didn’t chew on your legs.

Further outings have been on two wheels, four wheels or four wheels plus two wheels with the added option of two legs for little side trips. Inspired by getting in the saddle in the Lake District and approaching that period when you become middle-aged and suddenly decide that you look good in Lycra, I made the decision to purchase a half decent bike. A bike certainly better than my previous bike, because the lumps and bumps of this town seem a lot easier to navigate, albeit at times still requiring a begrudging grimace. I did not buy any Lycra with the bike and am so far resisting, for middle-age can wait just a while yet please.

The bike offers a different means to pop out a get a coffee, to buy some provisions from the supermarket, to become engrossed in maps and altitude profiles and speed statistics. It is a tool that has empowered a re-appreciation of Lake Burley Griffin, with its blessed 28 kilometre cycle path and assortment of inlets and monuments and riverside meadows. It is a magnet for magpies, but they have calmed down somewhat now.

It has taken me around Tidbinbilla, which is a 17 kilometre ribbon of despair and then delight. The despair coming from a succession of what would seem gentle jaunts uphill in a car but feel like the Pyrenees to my pair of knees; the delight the remainder of the loop, through beautiful bushland rarely disturbed by cars. Just the birds, roos and views for companionship before plunging downhill in a mixture of exhilaration and dread. And still no Lycra.

This very morning it was a bike that made it to the top of what I consider my first genuine hill climb. I was wheezing (Lance, hand me some EPO in a coke can, quick!!) but the bike was just fine ambling in the lowest possible gear. Up to the top of Dairy Farmers Hill in the National Arboretum. I climbed it and, after recovering one hour later, could see what I had never seen before: the appeal of going up a hill in a bike. But still no Lycra.

Tracking my rides and speeds and climbs and – supposed – calories burnt, the bike has undoubtedly become a cake and / or ice cream enabler. So, even if you can’t appreciate cycling or would never consider climbing a little hill on two wheels, appreciate it for that. Any positive savings I may have made are generously counteracted with a treat. Sometimes handmade, others times bought.

So, you see, not a lot has happened over the last month really. Just pictures of trees and kangaroos and sunsets and – why of course – cake to blog about again. And all that is just perfectly fine thank you.

Australia Driving Food & Drink Green Bogey Photography Walking

October 7, 2014October 19, 2015

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Strategic blue sky comeback

Sometime around May I usually ramble on about the beautiful autumn days, with their deep blue skies and cooling nights, blazing leaves and subtle sunsets. It is tremendous and I am convinced that it is the best season in the national capital. But then, after a hiatus for different seasons in different hemispheres, spring appears and it is hard to argue against it. For what spring has that autumn lacks is the encroachment of warmth, the re-emergence of life, the dawning of hope sailing on an upward curve. Encapsulating this, the daffodils that were just sprouts when I went overseas are transformed, nature performing its perennial magic trick from seed to understated wonder.

Coming back to Australia, to Canberra, at such an opportune time provides an extension of the holiday feeling, coupled with some comforts of homecoming and familiarity. It helped that I overcame jetlag very quickly and had little work for a week or so. Blue skies and comfortable warmth – tempered by a few cold nights to guard against complacency – offered better conditions than, say, Switzerland. And everywhere, things coming to life, waking up, bursting into extravagance. Settings made the more amiable with a good coffee in hand.

Nowhere is nature’s spring display more evident than at the Australian National Botanic Gardens. Well, maybe Floriade, with its millions of tulips and thousands of daffodils, is a contender. But the botanic gardens – as contrived a creation as they are – feel much more natural, an exhibition of Australia’s wacky fauna in an authentic bush setting.

Here, plants were flowering everywhere, colours and fragrance and the buzz of industrious insects pervading the air. One microscopic bug managed to somehow find itself somewhere within my camera lenses, occasionally crawling into the frame. It was whilst sat down in a quiet spot trying to rectify this situation that the king parrots decided to join me, and to show that it’s not just the flowers that have a monopoly on springtime colour.

Should sleepy and sedate little Canberra become a touch crammed with life, the vast wilderness is of course just around the corner. This, like better quality coffee, is one of those very obvious differences that become so sharply contrasted following a trip to Europe. It doesn’t take long to be climbing on a dirt road into the bush, helping to test drive some friend’s new car, pleased that a four wheel drive is actually being used properly and not just for picking up the kids from school. Up on the Mount Franklin Road, very little other than the wild fills the views, and other roads and tracks tempt for another time.

Indeed, I felt the urge myself to get in my own car and make a road trip, since it has been quite a while. In the other direction, the south coast awaits and what better way to see in my birthday than to drink and eat by the water? I decided, fairly last minute, to head down towards Merimbula, stop overnight and, well, drink and eat by the water. It was a route I had not done for some time and, after the very barren plains of the Monaro, the reward of the South East Forests and Bega Valley is welcome. More welcome, perhaps, is the Nimmitabel bakery chicken salad roll on the beach at Tathra, where the south coast is just doing its usual thing of being stunning under a blue sky.

The rest of the day encompassed some old favourites, favourites that were last visited on the very early stages of some much bigger trip I embarked on in 2013. Back then, after camping next to Ray Mears in Bournda National Park, Merimbula was grey and cool and – later in the day – rain would pummel Ben Boyd National Park to the extent that the roads became slush. Today, well, it was good for shorts and the bellbirds were much happier down on the delightful Pambula River, at the northern edge of the national park.

Dinner was fish and chips, obviously. Not as gargantuan as the last time I had fish and chips and not as English – in this case, unfortunately. However, should one pine for English food for too long, there is always a chance to savour the saviour that is a flat white. A flat white the following morning after a gentle walk along Merimbula’s main beach and into its inlet. A flat white served from a beach hut by charmingly hipster-leaning youngsters…the type that usually make the best coffee. A spot in the sun with a flat white overlooking the paddle boarders and swimmers and boat people cutting a course through the opaque sapphire water. A drink to stimulate taste buds and senses for brunch elsewhere beside the water. Happy birthday to me, and welcome back.

Australia Driving Food & Drink Green Bogey Photography

September 21, 2014February 24, 2015

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Show and Tell

What started in the Alps finished in the Alps, with the cloud from four weeks back seemingly, stubbornly, static. It would wait until the day after I would leave to clear and then reveal deep blue skies under which spectacular chains of icily jagged mountaintops glow. I know this for I have been blessed many times in the Alps with such weather and its associated gargantuan views (plus I checked the webcams once I left just to be really irritated). Alas, this year it was not meant to be and I had realistic expectations of a few days in Switzerland; whatever the weather I would do my best to make full use of my Tell Pass – a golden ticket allowing access to many mountain trains, cable cars, chairlifts and the stock standard complex of railways conquering central Switzerland. I think I got my money’s worth…

Trip 1: Zurich Airport-Lucerne-Engelberg

‘Engelberg Humdinger’ would likely have been the hilarious title of this blog post given perfect weather. In planning a few days to end my trip (seeing I was flying out of Zurich), I was seeking a reasonably accessible spot in a mountain valley with various lifts up into the high country and opportunity for blissful Alpine walks. Somehow I came across Engelberg which appeared to fit the criteria, tucked into a valley south of Lucerne and encircled by mountains reaching up in the sky to 3,000 metres or so.

Arriving into Zurich, the weather was warm and bright enough and the train zipped through comfortable commuter towns and villages chock full – I assume – of affluent bankers and cuckoo-clock makers. In an hour, Lucerne emerged as pretty as a picture, the train looping alongside the river and parking itself close to the shores of its beautiful, far-reaching blue-green lake. No time for sightseeing but enough time to grab a salami pretzel sandwich from my old friends at Brezelkonig and hop aboard the Engelberg express.

Fringing the lake at first and then meandering into a valley, mountains began to increase in stature and presence and nomenclature…somewhere up there is the Stanserhorn, accessible via a cable car and deserving of pronunciation in a zany butch German accent. Finally, through a long, dark tunnel, up and up the train goes until it emerges into Engelberg. The sun now down for the day, the last glow of purple sky illuminates jagged mountain apexes, while a valley cluttered with wooden chalets curves along to their base. This fits the bill.

Trip 2: Engelberg-Trubsee-Titlis

The next morning dawned clear and calm and I was incredibly excited about that. Thirty minutes later, eating a steadfast breakfast involving bread and cheese and cold cuts, much of the blue sky had filled in. However, there was enough hope – and predictions that this might be the best weather day – to attempt the trip up to Mount Titlis, summiting at 3,239 metres.

Now, this may sound like the start of some intrepid adventure: hiking through wild meadows, scrambling across rocks, crawling under ice caves, and braving perishing blizzards. However, this is Switzerland and I had my Tell Pass, which comfortably took me almost to the top. First, a gentle cable car up to Trubsee (1,796m); here, the valley was still visible and pockets of sun endured. Next, a larger cable car swung its way up into the clouds at Stand (2,428m), each sway accompanied by a huge oooooooh-aaagghhhh from the hundreds of Asian tourists packed in. Finally, the last stretch takes place in – get this – a cable car that rotates 360 degrees. It’s kind of fun, weird, and in no way whatsoever disconcerting.

The top – or the top of the cable car (3,028m) – was a little James Bond like, though not quite as James Bond like as the Schilthorn. Despite being up here fairly early in the day I was not alone; indeed, those hundreds of Asian tourists were now happily engaged in various conformist and non-conformist photo poses. Many selfies transpired, several of which were taken with the aid of some extendable stick-like gadget which holds the camera phone out at a distance without the need for arms. It’s fair to say that whoever invented this contraption is, like the loom band man, now extraordinarily minted.

The altitude made walking a little difficult at first but I ventured out onto the slushy snowy ice-like material covering the ground, avoiding people posing for selfies and looking for a view. There was a view. Then there wasn’t. Then there was again. Then a little hole appeared over there, then it filled in again, but another hole formed elsewhere. A few times I stood above the weather, above the clouds where nothing could be seen below. Then, more extensive holes in the cloud would appear and snatches of a mountain range, glimpses of a valley, and snippets of a glacier would emerge. Given I was not expecting to see beyond my nose, it was exhilaratingly breathtaking.

Beyond the hordes of seemingly photogenic tourists, a groomed track led to some other overlook that was rarely visited. Only a kilometre round trip, but it was hard walking. Any downhill dips involved a gentle slide into some slush, hoping that the snow was not particularly deep or covering some unknown crevasse. Slight inclines uphill were arduous and oxygen-sapping. A couple of Aussies coming back advised me to stick to the path which I was planning on doing anyway thank you very much. They had gone ‘off-piste’ and sunk up to their waste. They were probably in thongs too. Not following their footsteps, I ended safely at an overlook, looking over nothing much other than cloud below. However, around and above, a large patch of blue sky had appeared and, for a few minutes, I found myself in a pleasantly warm, quiet and calm, summer winter wonderland.

By the time I made it back to the safety of the cable car complex, cloud had started to fill in more extensively and any gaps were infrequent. Completing every other distraction (including a stroll through an ice cave, a chairlift over some crevasses, and a walk across a suspension bridge spanning a poop-inducing long drop), I headed back down. Now mid-morning, many people were still coming up and I was not sure what, if anything, they would now see.

Trip 3: Engelberg-Lucerne-Vitznau-Rigi-Goldau-Lucerne-Engelberg

I was hoping the weather would hold so that I could engage in one of those lovely Alpine walks involving meadows and flowers and lakes and cows and probably strong hard cheese and salami for lunch; I had spied a couple of small lakes, joined by a fairly even trail and a cable car for the uphill bit which seemed ideal for the job. It would have started from Trubsee, where I waited for 15 minutes to see if the heavy rain now falling would abate. It did not, and all the bad weather was coming over the mountain and falling here. Distant, somewhere I think towards Lucerne, was a large patch of blue sky, but it had no intention of coming this way. So I sought it out instead.

Not for the first time I found myself in Lucerne and this time taking a boat (included in the pass of course) to Vitznau. I had made this trip before, in the glorious, warm, late September sunshine of 2012, and it was stunningly beautiful. Today it was just fairly beautiful, a tad cooler and covered by white cloud with the occasional brighter spot as the sun threatened to emerge.

Previously I had 50 minutes to spare in Vitznau before the return boat trip; today, I could go further, taking the mountain cogwheel railway up to Rigi Kulm. This is proclaimed as the first such railway in Europe and it retains a classically elegant air. Trundling up, any views of Lake Lucerne fade away into haze, and small hamlets, forests, meadows and waterfalls compete for attention. Occasionally, schoolkids on their way home hop off at random points. This sure beats the school bus.

Rigi Kulm stands at a modest 1,798 metres above sea level, but the information leaflet proclaims that you can see thirteen lakes from here and points as far as Germany and France. While of course this was not so much the case today, there was a gap in the sky and some overhead sunshine that reminded of the warmth brought by summer. It was sufficiently balmy for an ice cream and I even managed a brief Alpine walk with the cows, down to a lower cogwheel station where I caught the train down the other side of the mountain, to Goldau. All the while, mountain tops flitted through the haze as Lake Lucerne disappeared under the weight of clouds, occasionally billowing up and over one side of the mountain like steam from a kettle.

Goldau took me back to Lucerne which again took me back to Engelberg, where the roads were still fairly wet and everything was a tad sodden. All in all, I had done well today. Very well indeed.

Trip 4: Engelberg-Brunni

After yesterday’s extensive escapades I was actually keen to minimise my travel today and stick within the valley and perhaps hop on a chairlift to undertake one of those Alpine walks I may have mentioned already. It looks so obvious on the fold out map of Engelberg: walk up the valley, jump on a cable car here, do a circular walk on this plateau, come back down, have some lunch, go back up somewhere else and have another walk back down into the valley to round off the day.

Breakfast time and Engelberg had disappeared. There was nothing to see from the window apart from a vision of grey-white. Drizzle floated haphazardly in the air. The one other couple chomping breakfast at the same time as me also stared out of the window with a sullen look of inevitable despair. Helpfully, in the corner, there was the Engelberg TV channel showing various webcams atop mountains and cable car stations. Turns out the cloud reached 2,000 and 3,000 metres as well. Still, we can be nothing but hopelessly optimistic having spent a small fortune to stay in Switzerland; carry on regardless, looking for small trinkets of hope – a brief whitening of the greyness of the cloud, a murky dark fleeting vision of some trees over the other side of the valley – that may herald a turnaround in the weather.

Indeed, things had cleared a little by time I had got myself ready to stroll up the valley. That is to say, stuff was at least visible, including the steadily tumbling river, the dark foreboding forest, and the occasional cosy glade. A golf course, treacherously criss-crossing the river at cunningly placed intervals, held some appeal, particularly as the drizzle had briefly ceased. A man was out blowing leaves around his chalet in Wasserfall, a sure sign that things were to clear, right? But at Wasserfall, water fell, and the Furenalp cable car I had hoped would propel me to a sunny walk seemed a pointless endeavour.

Instead I walked a different way back to Engelberg and in the hour or so taken, the sun had peeked through and delivered instant warmth. Furenalp was now probably bathed in sun but I was no longer anywhere close. An alternative route up into the hills presented itself closer into town, via the Brunni cable car. And while the initial rise presented some hopeful sun-glazed valley views, the top was shrouded in murk. I could wait it out in the cold, or go back down and eat lunch. I was hungry and pork schnitzel, chips and salad in the Co-op restaurant sated me greater.

Trip 5: Engelberg-Furenalp

Retiring for an hour or so back at my hotel, I watched the loop of Engelberg information on the TV channel. Sunny pictures with happy families frolicking in rivers; beautiful people getting expensive spa treatments to a backdrop of dazzling snow-capped peaks; webcams showing nothing much at all. Except, hang on, Furenalp. There was a shadow, as if it was above the clouds.

Chasing the sun once more – or at least the potential for something clear – I hopped on one of the hourly shuttle buses and then the cable car. This was a less extravagant operation than Titlis. One small cabin travelling up every half hour or so, or, to be honest, just on request from the dear lady sat in the kiosk. I was the only soul, the wire shooting up towards a large rock face and into the clouds. Only, thanks to the webcam viewed now quite some time ago, there was a chance I would make it above them. The ride was something quite spectacular, rising steeply in line with the rocks, grazing pine forest and revealing hidden crevices where pools from weeping cascades formed. At some point the world disappeared and, out of nowhere, the top station emerged.

It was wet, windy, cold and cloudy. There was nothing to see, apart from a closed restaurant that would be amazing on a sunny day. Determined to make something of it I walked a little. The rain had stopped and, occasionally, visibility would increase to something like 50 metres. The trails were not that well marked though, and, as the clouds billowed in and obscured any landmarks I made the decision that I did not want to be that stupid English tourist who goes missing and requires an intensive search and rescue effort. Sometimes, we must come down to be able to go up.

Trip 6: Engelberg-Brunni again

Breakfast time again. Engelberg had disappeared again. I had some of that pretzel like bread with salami, egg and cheese again. I was leaving today, eventually for Australia. But I had lots of time before my evening flight, and wondered what I could exactly do with it.

Appropriately dawdling in my room, Engelberg TV in the background, it was as I was squishing dirty pants into my luggage that the loop of webcams came on. Titlis, no. Stand and Trubsee, no. Furenalp, no. Brunni lower station, no. Brunni top station, er, maybe I guess. After the next round of adverts with blue skies and happy people, the webcams again, and more hope. A small lake. Some shadows. Enough to take a chance…if nothing else to kill some time.

And so, for about thirty minutes I had a dose of Switzerland that I had yearned for all along. The final chair lift ride up to the top station of Brunni was a delight, the warming sun coming from my right. Long shadows of cows formed on the succulent pasture below, their occasional moos and tinkling bells the only sound. Views of peaks and, just now and again, glimpses of the top of Titlis across the other side of the still shrouded valley. I wish I could have lingered longer, but travel requirements meant I needed to leave. And the chair lift down was infinitely less delightful now, as the cold, grey cloud enveloped everything around once more.

Trip 7: Engelberg-Lucerne-Alpnachstad-Pilatus-Alpnachstad-Lucerne

So, farewell Engelberg, I am sure you are fantastic in a proper summer and provide an excellent base for so much that is around. I had one other target on my Tell Pass list and, filled with hope that the Brunni blue skies could extend as the day progressed, I returned to Lucerne. From here, it was once more onto a boat and out onto the lake, this time heading in a different direction to Alpnachstad. At Alpnachstad, the base of the steepest cogwheel train in the world, conquering gradients of up to 48% to Mount Pilatus (2,128m) – Lucerne’s mountain.

Now this experience is as much, if not more, about the journey as it is the destination; particularly today when the summit was, yawningly predictably, cloaked in the clouds. Each single carriage train is built for the job, separate compartments rising with the slope in a staggered series of steps. Looking up through the driver’s window the track rises stupendously steeply; looking down out the back and you are left wondering quite exactly how this gravity defiance all works. I assume something to do with the cogs, steadily clicking out a rhythm at a gentle, sleep-lulling pace.

At the summit complex I found myself – not for the first time – looking at the postcards with all the stupendous views. But I wasn’t upset or dejected or even that frustrated that no such scene presented to me today. It was a shame, I would say to myself, but nonetheless I had a really enjoyable time. I mean, there’s much to like about a walk out to a viewpoint to admire the shifting fog of clouds, plenty to ponder while navigating the slippy rocks with a (thankfully fenced off) drop on either side, and ample satisfaction from a cup of coffee and chocolate brownie back in the warmth. Plus, there is still the sheer wonderment of the trip back down to come.

Trip 8: Lucerne-Zurich Airport

The remaining few hours of this trip in Europe were whiled away in perhaps one of its most elegant, picturesque, and sumptuous small cities: Lucerne. It had been a conduit, hub, and pretzel provider for the past few days but now, as the sun gently began to filter through the late afternoon cloud, it offered a healthy last dose of European je ne sais quoi. Thus the time skipped by alongside waterways and through cobbled streets, admiring window boxes brim with flowers, crossing old bridges, dodging cyclists, and fleeing from specific corners where the thousands of smokers seem to gather.

I had been in Lucerne before – in 2012, in hot sunshine – but it was just as charming, and even more comfortable to explore on this much cooler, cloudier day. Like last time, I made it up to remains of the old town wall and castle, where snatches of Lake Lucerne and distant mountains appear through the gaps in the ramparts, yonder the old rooftops and leafy trees scattering down towards the water. The top of Pilatus was still shrouded in a haze, but certainly much of the murk had lifted. Probably upon boarding the train to Zurich, the top would emerge, a final tease of a farewell to what could have been.

Somewhat lethargic and bored of weather angst, part of me was ready for it to be over. But – with an impending trip cooped up in an airplane to cover half the globe – I was also reluctant to leave. Tomorrow it may be brighter and, if not, I could always easily return to the UK where the Indians were having a summer or something, though Britain First were probably getting a bit upset that the Indians had stolen the summer and posting something with grammatically flawed menace on Facebook for people to like. A shamelessly opportunistic emigrant and immigrant, my own tomorrow was a long way off, but I knew that when it came, it would emerge with blue skies and a nice flat white. A scene from which I could happily savour the numerous journeys I had just had the fortune, the pleasure, the freedom of travel, to experience.

Europe Green Bogey Photography Walking

September 15, 2014October 19, 2015

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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.

Food & Drink Great Britain Green Bogey Photography Walking

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

July 20, 2014February 24, 2015

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Icing sugar sprinkles

In three weeks time my inevitable annual trip to the northern hemisphere will have commenced. That is, barring the outbreak of world war three or whatever else the supposedly evolutionary pinnacle that is humankind has cocked up. I am, of course, looking forward to it; not only for cheese and family and summery walks and clotted cream and friends and pork pies and a few spots of gorgeousness, but also to have some interesting blog content and potential calendar pictures gathered!

Fortunately just the odd foray in this massive place called Australia keeps things ticking over on here. But, more so, the changing seasons become a theme, a response to (relatively) being in situ and watching the world around me change. And the seasons are a-changeable, something which may, or may not, support the wild ramblings of those crazed climate warriors, aka pretty much everyone in the profession of science. Scientists, with their fact and reason and logic, what have they ever done for us anyway!

Winter in Canberra is a curious beast. Blissful sunny days can be as pleasant as any a spring day in southern England, and you can still rightfully take a somewhat bemused perspective on the common discourse of winter, taking place in snug coffee shops amongst people with double quilted scarves and rapidly disappearing Ushankas. Call that a knife, er, I mean call that cold? You know nothing Bruce. But then when that sun goes, down for the night, or behind steel grey clouds blown from the west, winter reminds us of its chill.

I may not know through typical absence, but winter here this year seems to be a little less sunny and with a touch more in the way of squally bitter winds coming off the mountains and hills. Indeed, the Brindabella Ranges have more than once now had a nice dusting of snow, all accessible in about 40 minutes or so, depending on the high likelihood of traffic.

I wish the snow came down further to coat the city streets and make new Senators even more querulous about their decision to become a Senator, compelled to sit in Canberra in midwinter. I mean, if we are going to have a winter to endure, at least make it a fairytale one with snowy streets and people frolicking with their sleds and drinking mulled wine and perhaps even indulging in warming things like cheese fondue around a log fire. At least that was the sentiment I was trying to convey when the ABC News reporter accosted me amongst the beautiful white world of Corin Forest and understandably left me on the cutting-room floor.

One of the many good things about snow is that it is one of only two words in the English language that is associated with being dumped. We have had several good dumps recently, up in the hills, and I returned once more over the weekend to see what had been dumped. Unlike the first foray there was no ABC News crew around but, more importantly, the sun was out in one of those sublimely blue sky days that only come in winter. The snow had melted somewhat – the dump was on Thursday I think, but then, who keeps track of their dumps? – though pockets remained to enliven the forest.

Frozen paths gradually thawed into that horrid mud slime as I made my way to the outlook at Square Rock. It can be a drag, that walk, but the snow made it clearly more distinctive than usual, offering up plenty of natural rest breaks to stop and take stock, to hear the birds, to spy the wattle, and to breathe in the eucalypt air. And then there is a reward at the top, where that blue sky meets the icing sugar dusted mountains, endless gum trees filling the void below. It is a fine stop for a couple of digestives and a Freddo Frog basking on a squarish rock.

And so, that is winter, perhaps the winter blog post. I think I made it fairly wintry, given the constraints of wintriness that exist in Australia. Next for me will be summer, though including likely rainstorms and snow lying around higher alpine climes, followed by spring and then summer again. I told you the climate was topsy-turvy, and I’m not even a scientist!

Australia Green Bogey Photography Walking

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

gbpilgrim

Wanderings in the world. Meanderings from the mind.

Category: Places

March

A mountain to climb

February

Greenish and golden

The twelve themes of Christmas

January

Shorts non-personality of the year

Gee, 37

Strategic blue sky comeback

Show and Tell

Trains, tubes, bikes, and a pony

The ice cream bucket list challenge

Ou est l’ete?

Icing sugar sprinkles

Totally (un)tropical taste

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