Where-ever I lay my hat

Work in Birmingham for the last 3 days was fairly busy but fine. I had stayed on the extra 3 days to help the transition with 2 people leaving and 2 new starting so I had my own work to do as well as helping settle them a bit. I always find it difficult to hand over my patients to a new therapist and this time was no exception and it was fairly sad saying goodbye. I’ve also really enjoyed some of the staff I’ve been working with and hopefully there will be a few people that I’ll manage to really keep in touch with. Its been a really interesting experience working here. I’ve learnt heaps, particularly from working with Lynine – she really is a very amazing therapist and her skills underutilised and not adequately valued there. However for a regional brain injury unit I think they still have plenty of room to improve.
Its very exciting to be moving on to the next chapter of our lives, and it really feels like this is the beginning of the rest of my life. We are now on a mission, with nothing in the way of the step by step plan to setting up our own place. This last bit has been about funding the next stage and I’m very excited and slightly anxious about whether I will love it as much as I want to.
On Wednesday 9th April, our last evening in Birmingham, we had a take out curry with Lynnie, Steve and Barney and Ali. We also had some lovely sweets and Ali gave me a recipe for one of them, which was a swirled orange sticky deep fried thing. The next morning we got packed up and left Birmingham with great delight. Although we had both been sad to leave some of the people we’d worked with, it was good not to be living in the city any more. Birmingham is a really interesting place. Its road and transport networks are really good but the drivers are lousy. People will just pull out in front of you without any warning, stop in front of you to chat with someone, overtake in the worst places, almost never let you out into traffic and get really grumpy with you if you are considerate to another driver, who invariably doesn’t thank you anyway. The pedestrians are just as bad – one day we followed two men, a child and a baby in a buggy down the road for about 50m because we couldn’t get past them for traffic coming in the other direction. They were walking along the road when there was a clear footpath immediately beside them! Lynnies and my drive to work each day can best be described as hazardous.

We went to Welford overnight and got all our bits and pieces organised and the car properly packed for France. We had a quiet evening in with pizza, chips and garlic bread for our dinner and an early night. We had been planning to go badger watching again but it was a miserable night and I decided to do as I believed any sensible badger would do and stay indoors. On Friday morning we got the car all packed, helped Pauline dig her vege patch over and then got on the road. The journey was mostly ok apart from slow road works on the M1 and awful rain and thunderstorms on the M25. We drove down past Brighton and stopped for a look around in Lewes, which has a pretty castle and some good bookshops including a really quaint 15th century one with nice but overpriced books. We also found a nice cook shop and started exactly as we had not intended by buying cookie cutters! This time it was a nice moon and a wee cupid and heart with an arrow through it. After a bit of grocery shopping in Lewes we carried on down to Newhaven, checked into the premier inn and headed out sightseeing. Our first stop was the Long Man of Wilmington, which is a chalk figure on the hillside. We had a stroll up to his feet and he is pretty huge. We drove a wee scenic loop up there and then out to the coast at Birling Gap. We nearly didn’t stop but thought we could walk the 10 yards to the coast and were stunned. We then climbed down the stair column to the beach and strolled along looking at truly stunning views of huge white cliffs and chalk boulders on the sea edge. It was really beautiful and pretty wild with the wind howling but the white of the cliffs again the blue sky was gorgeous. Further along the coast we stopped at another viewpoint 10yards from the cliff edge and when we walked 5 meters from the car a stunning view of Beachy Head lighthouse appeared that was incredibly easy to miss despite being within a few feet of it. The lighthouse was one of those classic red and white ones and with the white cliffs, green grass and blue sea and sky it was just amazing. It really was a very scenic drive and lots of the little villages we drove through were really pretty with gorgeous flint barns and houses. It was a very worthwhile and relaxing afternoon out for our last trip in England for a while. We had a quiet evening and a fairly early night before an early start.

On Saturday 15th March we left Birmingham with most of our stuff and headed west. We had finally eaten our pheasant on Friday night and it was delicious so quickly made a rabbit casserole to the same recipe to take away with us, and got the car packed up and got away by 10am. We were due at Richard and Lyn’s at 5pm about an hour and a half’s drive away so we spent the day pottering in the countryside. We went to find Eastnor castle, which was closed but the village was really cute and we looked at a very weird pottery. Next stop was Ledbury, which is a really gorgeous town and we spent a while strolling around it. It has a butchers row similar to the famous one in York only nowhere near as crowded and with much more original charm. The church is really interesting and huge for the size of the village. It has a completely separate belltower although it looks like it ought to be joined. There is also an extra wing which from the inside looks really modern with huge and very open stained glass windows but from the outside looks the oldest part of the church. They had lots of nice little touches like a bowl of water for the dogs at the door and a children’s play area, and I think its probably one of the nicest churches I’ve been to. Then we got pies for our lunch from the gourmet butchers – I had an Elizabeth pasty which is apparently a traditional Herefordshire thing and it was delicious. The buildings were really cute, lots of black and white houses and an old woolmarket building in the centre. Then we headed back out around the Herefordshire countryside, which is really pretty and we drove towards Ross looking for a nice cidery. Most of them were closed but we went to the cider museum and tasted a couple of other cider products and chatted with the lady there about NZ. We didn’t actually tour the museum but carried on and found two cideries open, both of which we had been to before with Richard. The first one we didn’t like particularly and had to stand outdoors in the rain to taste, which didn’t exactly encourage us. The second was great and we spent quite a while there chatting and tasting lots of different things and bought some apple juice, cider and perry. He also gave us a big bunch of mistletoe which made me very happy although he would rather we had taken all of it from his whole orchard. We also stopped at a cheese factory at Monklands and got some nice cheese – they had a lovely nettle cheese. We wandered round a couple of the black and white villages but then lost the trail so gave up and went back to Richard and Lyn’s. We had a lovely evening with them just chatting and eating and drinking. They are also interested in organic farming and we discussed lots of different ideas and the discussion carried on over breakfast until we got going again about 11am on Sunday morning.
We had another day to fill in but it went rather quickly. We drove down to Abergavenny and got some tourist information and looked around the town and the castle. The castle was really pleasant and we thought it would be a good option for the picnic if the weather was not so good or if there was anything wrong with the plan for White castle as it has nice ruins and is fairly sheltered. Then we stopped at the supermarket for provisions and headed to White castle, which we found after several attempts, partly because the sign had been turned around so was invisible. We had a stroll around and took some photos and considered options for where to have the ceremony and where to have the picnic. Lynnie called and was already at the cottage so we went there to meet her and got quickly settled in. The cottage is advertised as recently refurbished but we think that is in the grand scheme of time because it can’t have been done since the 1970’s however it is homely and perfectly adequate. In some ways it’s a shame they did refurbish it because it can’t have been far off medieval before that and would be great for our medieval banquet. We went for a quick jaunt before dark to Skenfrith castle and Grosmont castle and I was very pleased we did because it really confirmed that White castle was the right decision for the picnic. Both of the others were nice but fairly simple and also both were a lot more public than White. When we got back to the cottage Lynnie made a roast dinner complete with homemade Yorkshire pudding and roast tatties and we had a lovely evening.
At 3am on 17 March, for no apparent reason at all, I suddenly remembered my accident. Even though it was 10 and 3/4 years ago, I hadn’t ever been able to remember the details of it before but suddenly it all came rushing back to me. So poor Steve had to hear the whole story over again even though he knew it well because it was all new to me. I kept telling the story all day because it was a part of my life that was completely new to me. It didn’t feel bad or scary at all but oddly freeing. In the morning, thinking of everyone else going off to work, we went for a walk up Skerrit, which is the nearest mountain (actually a fairly small hill but it makes me feel better if I climbed a mountain). The walk starts off through woodland which was really pretty with lots of moss covered trees and stone walls. Then it starts to open out a bit and there’s a nice wee dell with plenty of fairies around and then a small climb to the ridge. Once we got onto the ridge it was a bit cooler but a very pleasant stroll along to the top from which there were fantastic views all around the black mountains and the Brecon Beacons. As we were walking back down we looked down onto the top of an airplane, which was quite disturbing. We collected stones for making the circle for the ceremony and fresh hawthorn leaves for in the salad. The walk didn’t take as long as we expected so we had time to go into Abergavenny for a coffee before leaving to pick Jay up from Newport. We got Jay back to the cottage then met Lynnie again at the craft shop down the road where we found her sat by the fire with a coffee and chatting to a dog. The craft shop had some really nice stuff and some good ideas including a gorgeous cast iron gate with a tree as the body of the gate and a squirrel on the top bar, that cost thousands of pounds, and a cute mobile made of leaves that had been laminated and hung on a string with some beads and was apparently worth £18 – I guess welsh leaves must be pretty important. We headed up the valley to visit a couple of churches Richard had recommended including Llanthony Priory where Lynnie and I had hoped to go horse-riding but they were not yet open for the season, and we had also hoped for drink in the pub in the priory but it was also closed, never-the-less the Priory was very pretty and slightly odd in that there was a farmhouse and outbuildings built onto the inside of its ruined walls – obviously the current building regulations and ancient monument regulations did not exist when the house was built. We also visited Patricio church, which also had a sacred well and a hermit cell. It was a gorgeous church with very prolific daffodils in the yard. I wonder why daffodils in churchyards always seem brighter and more prolific than other places. We chilled out back at the cottage for a while then went off to find a cute pub for dinner. Our first attempt failed, despite saying open on the door and the hours on the board suggesting they should be open, there was no sign of life at all, so we headed to the oldest pub in Wales, which was a good decision. We got a table by the fire and had tasty dinners and an amazing sticky toffee pudding for dessert and the atmosphere was lovely. It had lots of great features, like it used be where the local hangings took place and the beam they hung people from is still there complete with worn rope grooves. The door is the original one from when the pub opened in 1100, with the court upstairs.
Tuesday 18 March was a year and a day after our Celtic wedding so our vows had to be renewed. Fortunately the weather was good and we were all well organised. We had a relaxed morning with everyone pitching in getting things ready and packing the car up. We went up to White Castle just after 1200 and got the stones laid out in a circle and flowers scattered around the circle. Lisa arrived after getting a little lost and we had the ceremony in a wee dell just outside the castle walls but with a lovely view over the moat to the castle in one direction and through trees and over the countryside in the other direction. The ceremony was short (a very abridged version of last years) and Jay and Lynnie led it. Afterwards we adjourned into the castle interior for a medieval picnic lunch, which was great but got rather chilly – especially as us girls had only light dresses on. We had some sort of shawl each and we all had thermals on our legs so if you got a flash of leg it looked rather silly. Fortunately the ground had dried out quite a bit since Sunday and we didn’t have to hitch our dresses up from the mud whenever we were walking. We took a few photos and decided to call it a day when Jay’s lips started going blue. We all went back to the cottage to defrost with warm drinks and sat and chatted for the afternoon. After Lisa had to head away the rest of us went for a wee walk down the lane and through the fields. We heard foxes in the valley although we still never saw any but there were plenty of playful lambs. We were supposed to have a medieval banquet in the evening but the setting didn’t seem right somehow so we ate our medieval food while watching a DVD! Then we all got an early night.
Lynnie had to leave in the morning to go back to work but Jay stayed with us and we went sightseeing around the Brecon Beacons for the day. Our first stop was the Welsh Crannog centre – the site of the only known crannog outside Scotland and which was inaccessible due to very high lake level. We had been hoping to walk up a hill but the wind was really icy cold so after a brief stop at the particularly useless information centre in Brecon we headed to the Mountain centre. It was less windy there and we had a short walk in search of a remnant of Roman road, which we never found, but the walk was lovely and the views of the Beacons were gorgeous. We had a picnic lunch in the sunshine at the mountain centre then wandered back to the cottage. Even though it was not warm the sun was shining and we put on all our thermals and sat outside for a nice warm drink and to enjoy the sunshine and watch the lambs in our garden playing.
We had a quiet evening and an early night and then got all packed up in the morning and headed east.
We had a really good run on the roads and got to Welford in just over 2 hours. We reorganised our packing and visited with Pauline then headed to St Neots to drop Jay at her parents place. After a cup of tea we carried on for our jaunt around Norfolk. The further we went the worse the rain got and since we were planning to stroll around Ely we made a rapid change of plan and just carried on driving over to Ipswich and got the longest part o f the drive over with. It took a while to find somewhere to stay but we discovered the Oxfam network of B&B’s, which are a bit cheaper and donate part of their fee to Oxfam. Apparently they don’t serve a cooked breakfast but this lady likes to anyway. They were a lovely couple running it and we chatted with them for a while and then just had a quiet evening in nibbling on leftovers for our dinner. It was in a town called Eyke, which is apparently the old word for oak – presumably in Anglo-Saxon rather than British.
On Good Friday morning we had a leisurely start, a good breakfast, and headed to Orford. Its quite a pretty wee town that is nearly on the seaside except for a shingle spit which has been growing since the 15th century and ruined the previously good port the town had. It has a pretty 11th century castle, which is on the only hill for miles (about 4 metre above the rest of the area) and certainly catches the wind, which there was plenty of today. We also followed our noses to a nice wee smokehouse but resisted buying anything. Next stop was Snape where we briefly visited the maltings, which is a collection of shops and one of the best concert halls in England as Benjamin Britain is from here and set it up. The rest of our morning we spent at Sutton Hoo, which was a real cultural eye opener. It is a recreation of a 7th century boat burial and the original mounds where the burials were found. The really amazing thing was the perspective of who was ‘us’ and who was the ‘invaders’. All the history we have been used to has the British as ‘us’ and the angles, Saxons, jutes and Vikings as ‘invaders’. But here they appear to forget they have any British heritage at all because the Anglo-Saxons are ‘us’. I can understand that somewhat because the Anglo-Saxons essentially wiped out the British culture from that area but it puzzles me when we get to the Vikings, who were considered invaders, where actually they also integrated into the local culture. It was really interesting to see things from the point of view of who I have always considered the invaders. Interesting historical facts are simply missed out depending on who is telling the story. I think the modern people here also reflect this difference in culture and are a bit different to the rest of the British people in the same way the Cornish are different. This is probably helped by the fact they are virtually cut off by water on all 4 sides – sea on three and broads and fens on the other. The other interesting thing was the complexity of some of the jewellery and art. They had amazingly fine chain, enamelled metalwork, and fine silver and gold filigree. It was all made to a skill that was clearly lost at some point during the dark ages, as what you see from medieval times was not as skilled. Much of the jewellery would not be out of place in a modern jewellery store. Although the dark ages were named for the lack of written history they were not dark in term of skills, artistry or clothing, however by the time we emerge into the medieval much of this had been lost. The burial mounds themselves were largely uninteresting to people who had several in their ‘back garden’ in Orkney and it was cold and started to sleet and snow on us so we beat a hasty retreat.
Our next stop was Southwold, to visit an amber museum, which was small, moderately interesting and fortunately free. We started looking for somewhere to have lunch and ended up having dinner in Hoveton. We thought we’d go to Beccles but found not much there and carried on aiming for Reedham in the Broads. There was a really little 2-car chain ferry to cross the river to Reedham, which was a pretty town on the waterside but we didn’t find lunch or accommodation. We wandered around lots of increasingly cute broads villages and were completely wowed by Woodbastwick and Horning but eventually found accommodation and food in one building in Hoveton. We stayed in the Kings head pub and had a drink and dinner in the pub, which was excellent. I’m not sure if I was just really hungry or if I had some of the best tasting chips, peas and gravy I’ve had never mind the suet steak and kidney pudding. Steve also thought his Cumberland bangers and mash in Yorkshire pudding was great and their sticky toffee pudding didn’t disappoint us either. They also had free wireless Internet access so I finally got to skype chat with a couple of people back in NZ, and update some things on my computer.
Saturday morning we debated whether to hire a boat for a couple of hours on the broads and eventually decided it was a good idea despite the threat of snow and the wind still howling. All the day trips had been cancelled due to the weather and no other day boats were going out but we had a voucher that made it quite affordable and we only had one chance. It turned out to be a great idea as the boats were mostly covered and we could sit inside and drive, and with 15 layers of clothing on we didn’t get cold despite bursts of hail and snow. There were also glorious spells of sunshine and it was lovely to sit out in the sunshine watching the birdlife and scenery going by. The Broads are a huge area of permanently flooded river plains and the wildlife viewing is great and the wee villages are built right on the water with thatched cottages, thatched mansions, thatched boathouses and boat moorings instead of driveways or garages. There was actually quite a bit of boat traffic on the Broads and a few other day boats were heading out as we got back in. We headed off into Norwich, which is a really pretty city with a bad traffic problem. The cathedral and area around it are gorgeous and we spent a while wandering round the cathedral. They have a labyrinth in the middle of the cloisters, which we walked, and we also found a lovely green man bose in the cloisters. We went up to the castle but didn’t pay the huge entrance fee so just admired its very impressive huge Norman keep from the outside, while getting snowed on again.
Then we headed off around the coast from Cromer and visited some very cut villages. The architecture here is quite different and everything is built with whitish sea stones and trimmed with red brick. Its quite a striking effect and rather quaint. Sherringham, Cley next the sea, Wells next the sea and Burnham Deepdale were all very cute and had some great wee shops selling local produce including a wee crab restaurant at Salthouse. The coast is quite interesting as it’s a long way out from solid land and the marshes in between are a haven for birds. There are good tracks through and lots of bird hides and consequently all the villages were bursting with twitchers and walkers. We didn’t venture far from the car as the wind was really really cold despite our 15 layers of clothing. We eventually found somewhere to stay at Hunstanton and when we first arrived wondered what we had done. At first glimpse it looked like a mini Blackpool and the B&B was in a row of terraced B&Bs with tacky décor and we got given the honeymoon suite. It was a tiny little room with too much furniture and a 4-poster bed with pink and white lace everywhere – just our style!!! We settle d in and went for a stroll in town and actually really enjoyed it. The weather was still atrocious with howling wind and snow showers but it certainly made the sea wild and the waves were really crashing into the sea wall. We got some fish and chips and sat on the sea wall watching the waves crashing then walked further along the promenade. I think out of season it’s probably much nicer than in season (like most places) but the amusement arcades were not overbearing and lots of things were closed so it was a pleasant and quiet stroll – aside from the booming of the ocean. We had a quiet evening back in our room nibbling on goodies we had bought during the day and had an early night.
Our breakfast was fairly average and all microwaved but it filled us up well. It was snowing when we woke up and settling and by the time we got to the car there was two inches of snow on it. We had planned to have a walk along the coast and went to the beach at Old Hunstanton, which was also covered in snow right down to the high tide line. It was amazing to see the sand dunes and changing huts and tussock grasses all covered in snow and it was really beautiful. We walked along the base of the cliffs, which are Palaeolithic, looking for fossils and just enjoying the calm weather and snow. We also saw a shipwreck buried in the sand and there were lots of spoot shells on the beach and fulmars nesting on the cliffs so it felt a bit like Orkney. Poor fulmars probably didn’t expect to have their nests snowed on! We chatted for a while with and woman and her son who was sledging in the sand dunes, which looked rather fun, then headed on south. We stopped at the lavender farm which had a few interesting ideas for using lavender and I got a cookbook but it was very commercial with not much of their own stuff. I’m sure it would be more interesting in summer as they have the national lavender collection and it would be interesting to see all the different types. We carried on to Sandringham, hoping to get a peek of the house in the snow and visit their farm shop but it was all a bit of a disappointment as we couldn’t see the house even in the distance without paying £9. The farm shop was just a few of their products in the main souvenir shop and although they had rare breed sausages they didn’t say which rare breed, which I thought was poor form. There was supposed to be a farmers market on also but there were only 3 stalls due to the ‘terrible weather’. It didn’t seem like all the people come out to play and walk their dogs in the woods and the green thought the weather was terrible and like us they all appeared to be having a lovely time walking and playing in the snow. The dogs all loved it and there were snowmen all over the place, and snowballs flying either at someone or with a dog in hot pursuit. We walked along a nice open green through the woods and then carried on to Castle Rising Castle. It was a spectacular earthwork around the partly ruined medieval castle and clearly had been being used for sledging for most of the morning, however it was now open and the very officious man on the booth took his role rather too seriously and was so busy shoo’ing kids off from sledging on the rapidly melting snow on the earthwork, that he was very slow at issuing tickets. We didn’t go in as it was fairly expensive and looked like the earthwork would be the most interesting part to us, and we could clearly see that from outside, and got a good view of the castle from the top of the earthwork while the man was busy shoo’ing someone else and issuing tickets.
Next stop was the UK’s biggest beer shop where the electricity was off so Steve had a fantastic time exploring the shelves as if he were in a beer cave. Their selection was pretty impressive and I had an interesting chat with the owner about alternative electricity and unusual alcohols like acorn liqueur and chestnut beer. Then we drove through Downham Market which we thought was fairly uninteresting and visited a windmill at Denver briefly before finding a great pub by the river for lunch. It was snowing a bit when we walked in and we sat and had game pie with a view out to the snow and by the roaring fire inside. It was exactly what was required before carrying on to Ely. Ely is a very pretty city with a spectacular cathedral. There was a service just starting so we could only look around briefly but did get to listen to the acoustics when the choir started singing, which was lovely. It also has a labyrinth, which we walked, although interestingly it’s right in the main doorway so not easy to walk or spot. The length of the labyrinth is the same as the height of the tower but the design is unique and not even similar to other church labyrinths we’ve seen. We had a stroll around the town in the sunshine and down to the riverside, which was also very pretty. We got heavily snowed on on the way back again although this time it didn’t settle and all that remained of the mornings snow was big piles of melting snowmen. We found a nice B&B in Witchford, just outside Ely and settled in for a quiet evening and cheese and oatcakes for dinner.
On Easter Monday, after another good breakfast we drove north to Peterborough to the Flag Fen Bronze Age Archaeology centre, where we spent three hours looking round and reading everything available followed by a tour from one of the archaeologists. It was particularly interesting because they had reconstruction round houses from the bronze and iron ages and we are planning to build one on our land so we were paying a lot of attention to the detail of construction. The Iron Age house had a reed roof pitched at 45 degrees, which is just right to keep the rain running off, and stop the reeds rotting. The bronze age house had the roof pitched at 35 degrees so had to have turf to protect the reeds and when wet the turf roof can weigh up to 8 tonnes, therefore it also needed extra support poles indoors. So its clear that technology improved from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Flag Fen is the site of a wooden causeway across the fens built in the Bronze Age that was about the width of a modern road and built with wooden poles in the ground and a wooden platform. There was also a hectare big wooden platform in the middle that they think was used for ritual purposes. After Flag Fen we headed to Rutland and found another nice pub and it snowed again as we went in although there was no longer any sign of snow on the ground. After a wee drive around Rutland water, which is pretty but not stunning, we went to the turf maze at Wing, which I had been to before and wanted to show Steve. It was lovely and walking it really made the decision of how to build our labyrinth quite easy. It was lovely to walk the turf and the setting was lovely and the labyrinth design was lovely. We stopped at Welford for a while on the way back and then headed back into Birmingham for another 2 1/2 weeks.
I finally managed to get a farm sorted out for us to go to in France on Wednesday so that made us both happy. The week was otherwise uneventful with just lots of sorting out to be done and, of course, work.
The weekend was quiet and pleasant. We went over to Welford on Saturday morning via Rugby to look at cameras. Some guys from a scrap yard came and picked up the old car and we got £80 for it, which was quite good. Then we went up to Leicester to look at cameras some more and decided to get what we’d seen in Rugby. Back at Welford we went out Badger watching for the evening. It was cold and wet and windy and all sensible badgers were staying indoors but we did see a fox, which we had also never seen in the wild (alive) before. The next morning we went for a wee forest walk, which was lovely and specifically to look for muntjac deer. They are tiny British deer and we were very lucky to see six of them so we were quite excited by our weekend’s wildlife viewing. We bought our new camera on the way back through Rugby and got back to Birmingham and got its battery charged and went out to Kenilworth castle to practice with it. We are both very happy with it and it should be great for the rest of our trip.
The week was busy finishing up things at work and booking final bits of our trip. We got our second farm booked and all the flights back to NZ. On Thursday night I went out with work, to celebrate me and 2 other girls leaving, to a Thai restaurant. By the end of the week, with only 3 working days to go we were relatively well under control – mostly packed and all of our trip home booked. I finally really feel like a kiwi girl and am clear where my home is, and I’m very much looking forward to getting back. However this trip was a very good idea and I’m glad we are here doing what we’re doing (except of course the bit about living in Birmingham). Even if it achieves nothing else it has given me a sense of belonging.
The weather was beautiful all week and on Saturday morning, when we set off to drive to near Leighton Buzzard to visit Stu, it turned lousy and it just rained almost all day. That was actually OK because we just had a lovely afternoon indoors catching up and the boys watch American sport on tele and I did some internet searching for eco-building ideas. Then we had a bottle of champagne and a soak in Stu’s Jacuzzi before dinner. The next morning we had a leisurely start and it had snowed overnight so I did some experimenting with the new camera in Stu’s garden. We went for lunch at a local pub and then we headed back towards Birmingham. We went via the Cotswolds in hopes of getting some pictures of the Cotswolds in the snow but most of it had melted long before we even left lunch. Fortunately there was a small pocket of snow left fairly isolated to the valley where Great Tew is so we took a fair few pictures there. In the space of 20 minutes we got rained on, snowed on and enjoyed lovely sunshine. It was really pretty and the last we saw of any snow. It was a bit weird to think its april and we were originally planning to be camping by now and we are sitting watching the snow out the window, even though its not settling. We had the last of our pheasant for dinner as a pie with the leftovers from a gypsy stew I’d made on Friday night. It was not too bad being back in Birmingham at all knowing there is only 3 days left.

I guess at the point that you start having visitors and showing them round a place you live then it means you are fairly established. ‘Settled’ is not a term I think I would ever use to describe myself in Birmingham. Its not that there’s anything wrong with the city – in fact as cities go it’s rather nice but it’s just very big. Apparently it has nearly 4 million people – that’s the same as the whole of NZ!! It has become very clear that I’m not a city person and I feel a bit trapped here and am perpetually stressed. I’m pleased it’s not for very many more weeks. However in the meantime we plan to enjoy it as much as possible.
On Saturday morning (9th Feb) we got a bus out to the airport to meet Jay. The bus service here is really good – you buy a day pass for £3 and use the busses as much as you like, which includes out to the airport and I think also as far as Coventry. The network is also very good and the busses frequent. Just the same as anywhere else they nearly always come in threes though. Anyway we came home with Jay and got ourselves organised then went into town for the day. We started at Selfridge’s food hall and were disappointed that they weren’t tasting anything but we bought a huge ice-cream sundae to share between the three of us. We’d been looking at them for a while and thinking they were too big for just two of us and then of course Jay was absolutely insistent that she needed to have one!!! We chose a berry pavlova parfait and it was very yummy but huge and even three of us struggled to finish it. Then we strolled around town and up past the cathedral. We went for a look in the cathedral and its not one of the most magnificent but it’s a very open and light design and rather nice feeling with some impressive stained glass windows. We went along the canal again and eventually stopped at the sushi buffet for lunch. Jay hadn’t eaten sushi before and it was a sushi train which is always fun and she loved it. Apparently it’s the best sushi restaurant in Birmingham but I wasn’t very impressed – mostly because I was annoyed that they frequently had already put wasabi in the sushi rather than letting you add it yourself. There wasn’t a huge variety but it was perfectly decent food and we did all enjoy it. We came back to the markets through Chinatown which was all decorated for Chinese New Year celebrations and very pretty. After wandering the markets and fabric stalls (the fabric here is amazing and I’d love to go mad and buy lots if we weren’t so tight with money at the moment) we got the bus home again and had snacks for dinner. We also got some Indian sweets to try from a bakery along the street, which were very interesting. A few were very nice and some were really just weird.
Sunday morning we spent organising bits and pieces for our Celtic wedding anniversary party in Wales (although it looks like there may only be the three of use there!!) and then dropped Jay back at the airport. We had Lynnie's car so Steve and I went for a drive in search of some countryside to stop me going quite so stir-crazy. We went out to Kenilworth castle and had a walk around the exterior grounds and stopped for a baked tattie for lunch in a pub in town. Then our walk carried on out into real countryside where it was quiet and peaceful and you could hear yourself think. It was lovely. Our boots got really muddy and I felt a whole lot better. We drove through some pretty towns in a very circuitous route back. Kenilworth itself is rather pretty and Henley in Arden is also pretty and both are very close to Birmingham. We had a quiet evening at home until we went to the airport again to pick Lynnie up. She had had a lovely time and was looking very tanned from great skiing weather.
Then it was just another week at work. We went out to the jazz on Friday night again and it was excellent again. Steve enjoyed this weeks more but I had enjoyed last weeks better so it’s a good balance. I had arrived half an hour before it started to try and get seat this time and there were still none. I eventually found some upstairs where the view was great but the sound a bit less great.
Saturday’s goal was to look for cars. We had no luck at all and didn’t even end up looking at anything and I had another cold so I stayed home and felt sorry for myself for the whole weekend. The most I did was walk to the park and around the duckpond which was mostly frozen over so the ducks were having a hard old time.
After another uneventful week at work the three of us drove down to Chatham in Kent on Saturday 23rd for Celias 60th birthday party. She lives on her boat and the party was an open boat for the afternoon and dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. It was a really lovely day and so nice to see Celia again. It was also really good for me just to be out of the city for a while and I felt human again for a couple of days. Celias boat is lovely – it has a large bedroom with ensuite, a galley with dining area that can become another sleeping area and a good size lounge in between. The deck has a couple of comfy benches and it seems a very pleasant place to live although probably easier for one person than two. You’d have to get used to keeping out of each others way. We stayed overnight at a hotel and went back to the boat for breakfast in the morning before driving back. Steve and I caught the train from Rugby to Birmingham and were supposed to stop and look at another car but that also fell through. By this time I was getting pretty down about the whole car thing and being very trapped in the city. Coming back into the city was like a big cloud coming down over life.

The week was uneventful other than looking at cars. We found one nice car but heard a funny noise at very low speed in traffic – the sales guy tried to tell us it was just the engine reving and all automatics did that but we had our doubts. We rang the Mitsubishi garage and they said it was not normal and probably the beginning of the end so that was that one. By Friday another 2 likely cars had fallen through and it was all too much for me. The prospect of another weekend stuck in the city just made me miserable and I spent Friday evening lying on the couch crying. Steve had managed to organise another 2 cars to look at in Sutton Coldfield on Saturday morning so we got a bus out there, which took over an hour. The first car had been sold when we got there, but the second one was good and we took it for a drive and bought it. It is a Vauxhall Cavalier (just like Brwian was but green) and pretty old but in very nice condition, always owned by one elderly gentleman and only done 50000 miles. It still needed to go in to get its MOT and a couple of little things done but the dealer let us take it (having paid for it of course) for the weekend. So we could escape the city – hooray!!!
We drove down into the Cotswolds and had a stroll around in Stow-on-the-wold which is pretty and has plenty of cute little shops around the central square of the old wool market. Next was Bourton-on-the-Water, which we had been to before and really not liked, but that was in the summer and this time it was gorgeous. We found a nice wee B&B owned by the lady who runs the mad hatter tea shop, which is where we had our breakfast the next morning. We still had some of Saturday afternoon left so walked across the fields to Lower Slaughter and on to Upper Slaughter. You get a totally different feel for them walking into them than you do from driving and they really were gorgeous towns. Lower Slaughter was a bit like Bourton-on-the-Water in miniature with the river running through the middle and the houses and an old mill scattered along the river. Upper Slaughter was on a hill and the river was more natural rather than contained in its neat banks like the other two. It was still really beautiful and I’d live there in preference because it’s a bit more rustic and less manicured. When we got back we looked around the pub menus and decided on the Old Manse hotel and we had a magnificent dinner. It started with goats cheese fritters with pineapple and black pepper chutney, then Steve had braised pigs cheeks with cheddar and mustard sauce and I had a butternut squash, goats cheese and sage lasagne. The food was some of the best we’ve eaten and the service was also excellent.
The next morning after a stroll around again and a good English breakfast we carried on to Burford, which was also gorgeous and the buildings meandered up a steep hill from the river. It also had a very pretty church and an old almshouse which was still functioning. We drove through the Wychwoods which weren’t as pretty as we’d hoped and on to the Rollright Stones – a stone circle with a long barrow and a couple of other remote stones. We’d been before but it was nice to go back again. Then we made it to the Falkland Arms pub in Great Tew in time to join the queue outside it at 12.00. The tables filled up inside 5 minutes and people put in their lunch orders as they walked in the door. Most of the pub had been served by quarter or twenty past twelve!! The pub was very old and quaint with low beamed ceilings with mugs hanging everywhere and was the sort of place that people go wearing their wellies and taking their dogs. We had a light lunch since we had a huge breakfast and strolled around Great Tew, which is a gorgeous thatched village in very pleasant countryside – real chocolate box stuff. We drove back through more pretty countryside to Birmingham with a stop in Stratford-upon-Avon which, although pretty, was a bit of a disappointment after the rest of what we’d seen all weekend and was also pretty busy. Steve dropped the car back and collected again on Tuesday so it was all ours.

The week was fairly quiet again and on Friday night we drove up to Newcastle area to visit various friends for the weekend. We started off near Sedgefield to see Jane and Garry and spent most of our time with them. On Saturday we went to some nice farm shops and drove around looking at properties they might like to buy. We also visited Jenny and Peter for afternoon tea and then went up onto the Yorkshire Moors to the Lion on Blakeys Ridge. It’s a great pub right out in the middle of nowhere and the food is good, the atmosphere lovely and it has really good ales on tap. On Sunday morning we went into Newcastle and had brunch with Kirsty and Anthony. It was lovely to see them before they move to NZ on Tuesday and the brunch was really good from a wee café in Heaton called Belle and Herbs. It’s the first place in the UK we’ve found that actually knows what brunch is about and does a good one. I had a ‘French Canadian’ which was eggy bread with maple syrup and bacon, and Steve had a breakfast panini with sausage bacon and egg inside it. We drove back down via Denby and bought some more of our dinner set to ship back to NZ and then got home and started cooking. It was Lynnies 40th birthday and we cooked dinner for her on Monday night after work. We had a lovely evening drinking champagne and eating nice food.
Her birthday continued on Tuesday with a surprise lunch at work (hence me having to cook on Sunday night so she didn’t see it) and then going out for a curry with folk from work in the evening. We went to a restaurant called the Masala Merchant and had a really fun evening. The food was also fantastic – I often order a pasanda but this one tasted like nothing I’d ever tasted before – yum!
The later part of the week was busy organising for our trip to Wales and the wedding party. We’d organised a trip to Abergavenny to stay in a cottage for the week and have a medieval picnic at White castle to celebrate our Celtic wedding anniversary. However, we have ended up with only four of us going to the cottage but I’m sure we’ll still have a great time. That is a topic for a new chapter I think.

We set off from Bristol again early on Tuesday morning which was a good thing because we got only just onto the M5 and got stuck in a traffic jam when the cars oil light came on again. We called the garage and drove in traffic for another hour to get to them. After much deliberating we all decided to just carry on driving as the oil pressure was good and it was only at very low speeds the light came on. So we set off again on the M5 in order to make sure we kept our revs up enough and got most of the way to Birmingham before we had to stop again because the battery light started coming on. Another phone call to the garage and we carried on again but trying to avoid stopping or anything that drained the battery. That was a bit difficult since it was raining so we needed wipers, lights and indicators. They suspect it might be our alternator dying too so the car is falling apart in front of us and now likely to take £600 to repair so will probably go to a scrapyard instead. I guess we were ripped off – oh well, you live and learn. However we did make it to Welford at 3.30pm (having set off on a 2 1/2 hour journey at 8am) and even with a stop in Rugby for some groceries. The car may make it on a few more trips yet with any luck. Then we just chilled out, having both been very stressed for a couple of days. At least we made it here and can now regroup and re-evaluate.

I started work on Wednesday 16 January at the inpatient rehab unit (INRU) at Moseley Hall Hospital. It is a really fun job and working with Lynnie is amazing as well as the rest of the team being really nice and some great patients. However I have remembered why I ended up specialising in stroke – seeing the young head injuries and what it does to their and their families lives is heartbreaking. Lynnie says it’s a high burnout job, which I can certainly see. Steve also found a job and started on Thursday in Crick (which is just outside Rugby) working for a transport company doing fairly mundane office work, which was not as interesting as they had sold it to him but the pay is also reasonable. So despite travelling long distances each day things got off to a fairly good start.
On Saturday we went in to Birmingham to look at a flat and decided to take it till mid March. Its in a nice Pakistani neighbourhood which we find really comfortable because its an area that everyone knows everyone but we’re not sure if we’re missing something about the Birmingham culture because everyone ‘warned’ us that it was a Pakistani neighbourhood, even the people we are renting off! It’s a four bedroom house but two of the rooms are closed and not for us to use, as is the main lounge but we have a nice wee lounge with a tele and a dining room, kitchen and two bedrooms (Lynnie will stay here during the week too to save her the commute). After looking at the flat we decided to drive up to Denby (of pottery fame) and as luck would have it they had a two for one sale in the factory shop so we managed to get all the missing bits of our dinner set other than what is out of production now. It cost us rather a lot but in the long term will save a lot as we’d never find it anywhere near that price in NZ.
Sunday was a very quiet day as neither of us felt very great – Steve had drunk too much with the family down at the farm and I hadn’t slept very much. So we watched a movie and ate crisps and I had a sleep for a few hours in the afternoon. I had mentioned that if anyone happened to shoot some pheasants that I’d love a couple and in the afternoon Glynn turned up, looking very dapper and right the country gentleman in his hunting gear with Midge, the cocker spaniel and two beautiful pheasants. We left them to hang for the week in the back room where it was nice and cool.
Monday was back to work and then Tuesday after work we moved to the flat. I got there about 5.30 and waited for Steve as he was picking up some groceries in Rugby on the way. Now its him that has a long commute but its only a temp job and he will try to find something in Birmingham next week. We got unpacked a little and settled in and had a comfy nights sleep.
On Steve’s way to work on Friday, after he’d stopped to get the things for our Burns Supper, the car finally broke down again and had to be towed back to Welford, never to go again. So Steve was late for work and very stressed about having no way of getting to and from work. He had nearly gone to look at a Volvo the garage had for sale but didn’t want to make a decision without consulting me so thought we’d look at it Saturday – by then it was sold so that was a bit disappointing. I had a bit of a look around the shops in the centre of town until steve got in on the train from Rugby and we went home for a much deserved Burns Supper of haggis and clapshot with cranachan for dessert and accompanied by plenty of whisky and Scottish music. We missed the BBC Scotland because they usually show something nice for Burns nite and most people in England don’t even seem to know it exists – folk at work were astonished that we were having a burns supper and particularly that we would consider eating haggis!
On Saturday (26 Jan) we just spent the day in Birmingham, and got the bus to town and walked around the shops and the markets and then did a nice canal walk. There really are some lovely spots here and having an apartment overlooking the canal near the centre of town would be rather pleasant. The prices are actually quite reasonable too and we could get a nice canal-side apartment for the same price we had our apartment in Reading. The problem would be that you are so close to lots of great dining out places that that would take most of the rest of your money. I could just sit for hours and watch the boats going up and down the canal in the comfort of my own couch and never get anything done. The markets in the centre of town are really good and we found lots of interesting food including plantain, so we got some fish to make seray (a Belizean kriol dish we had in Gales Point). We also spent quite a long time looking, unsuccessfully, for free wireless internet access so I could post my blog (I don’t remember my username and password to log in but they are stored on my computer so I need to connect my own computer to find them out – I’m starting to get complaining emails from people that I haven’t updated the blog but I have been trying. Next plan is to try at the airport next weekend). Our seray for dinner was delicious but the fish had too many bones and I need to learn a little more about cooking plantain. A plantain is a vegetable that looks like a green banana but is actually a totally different beast and you wouldn’t want to mix it up. It has a texture like a coarse sweet-potato (or a taro if you’re familiar with pacific island vegetables) and a flavour a bit like bread. Its actually very tasty and adds a great flavour to the coconut milk for the seray.
I was feeling poorly on Sunday and didn’t want to get another cold so had a pathetic day and stayed in bed for most of it. We went for a short walk to the local supermarket to check it out and to the park which is just down the hill from our flat. The flat is actually a terrace house and its one in an unbroken line of 80 terraces. The opposite side of the street is another 80 unbroken terraces. It’s a bit difficult to work out which is our house! I never thought I’d be living in a long terrace in the middle of the second largest city in the UK. I do find it rather claustrophobic and have really concluded that I’m just not a city person. I’m actually frightened every time I leave the security of the house or the hospital so on the days when I’m not going in the car with Lynnie I find it pretty stressful. However the job is great and its only for seven more weeks and I’m learning so much at work that its all worth it (not to mention earning good money to set us up for travelling in Europe. Sunday night we had more haggis for dinner and then I dressed the pheasants that Glynn had shot for me. Their feathers are beautiful and the underlayer of down was so soft and warm I nearly wanted to keep it and make a pillow. On Monday after work I butchered them and got three breasts (the other breast had been turned to mince by the shot!) and the four drums as well as some nice liver, which I made pate with. The carcasses got turned to stock on Tuesday night and no evidence remained of the birds except and well stocked freezer and a stack of recipes!
During the week Steve spent all his time job hunting without success and I spent a bit of time arguing with payroll about not paying me because some useless person was on holiday and hadn’t bothered to send in my forms before she went. They couldn’t do anything till she got back from holiday.
Friday was a beautiful clear sunny day and steve met me from work and we walked home together. About halfway home Steve looked up and commented that there was a snowcloud just behind us. It was moving rather quickly and within ten minutes we were in the middle of a howling snowstorm. Everything turned white very quickly and then, being the middle of the city, melted again very quickly, with the exception of some grassy areas that were still dusted the next morning. Apparently we got off rather lightly because a major storm hit the rest of the country and lots of boats were washed aground or overturned and people stuck on roads for hours on end. Jay had been coming down from Orkney to visit but fortunately the ferry was cancelled (it would have been a pretty awful journey otherwise).
Saturday dawned lovely and sunny again, although a bit cool, and we went strolling round the town again. This time we started in the Jewellery quarter and went to the museum, which is free and very interesting. It shows all different materials that are used for adornment of the body (jewellery) around the world and through the ages. There were things made from all sorts of interesting things, like butterfly wings, all sorts of stone, wood, grasses and gemstones. It was particularly interesting from the point of view that all jewellery is basically just body adornment and if I’m being completely objective there is nothing that makes a diamond better than anything else. In fact diamonds, and even gemstones in general, were not the most beautiful things there at all. If its sparkly then the glass was probably the prettiest and is more environmentally friendly, and costs less. And realistically if you have ask to find out if its glass or diamond (or what ever) then surely it makes no difference to wear. (I think I just talked myself out of nice gifts of expensive jewellery though!). Some of the loveliest things were wood and grass – although obviously not sparkly. I can accept the value of gold over other metals because it doesn’t make my skin itch but I see no need to have more than gold plate thick enough to not wear off. Wandering around the gold and diamond shops after that somehow had less appeal and it didn’t take us long. We wandered back to town past the Cathedral, which is really small by any cathedral standards but especially for the second biggest city in the UK. We strolled along the canal and to the symphony hall where we found a free lunchtime jazz concert so sat and listened to that for a while. It was a great group who for their last session were inviting up and coming local jazz musicians to join them. There was some amazing talent to be seen including a seven year old boy on the sax, who was amazing. It looks like the jazz scene in Birmingham is pretty well established and very strong. Then we had a look around the library, joined up and got some books to read and strolled back through the markets to the bus home. The markets are really interesting and at the end of the day are selling off lots of stuff for bargain prices.
We had another quiet day on Sunday other than a trip to the supermarket and to drop Lynnie at the airport for her ski holiday in Andorra. That meant we had her car for the week, which made it quicker for me to get to work. The first day on the way home I turned a corner and suddenly ended up virtually surrounded by people and police cars and flashing lights. I sat in the traffic for a while and they eventually dragged a guy out of a shop in handcuffs and stuffed him in the police van. The traffic was awful and people were honking their horns as if they thought we could move anywhere but the road was blocked. Even when the police car tried to leave with flashing lights on the traffic wouldn’t let him through! They are very unpleasant drivers here.
All of a sudden it was part way into February and on the Friday night (8th) we went in to the free jazz concert at the symphony hall again. It was really brilliant. It was a woman called Esther Miller, who had an amazing voice, and Steve Waterman playing trumpet and stuff. It was a really nice evening. We had a coffee in the café there which had free wireless internet access and finally got sorted to get access to my blog other than from my own computer.

The flight was unremarkable and the man from the B&B picked us up at 12.45am and we got to bed just after 1am. It was a big change from Budapest where it had never got above –2°C to be 5°C at midnight! It felt positively balmy.
The B&B is pretty grotty and overpriced because its near the airport. We are just in a room in the family house and were asked to be quiet because their daughter is sleeping in the room next door. Our room seems to be the storage room for all the excess old furniture and is rather cluttered and small. The bathroom is the family bathroom with their towels and junk all over the place and the smallest shower cubicle I’ve ever seen. It is out in the countryside and it was nice to look out the window in the morning and see a pheasant in the field next door. The breakfast was also pretty decent and they dropped us back at the airport to catch the airport bus into Bristol. On the way in on the bus we decided to try and stay in Bristol for a few days and see if we could find work.
We started wandering round asking at hotels if they needed any workers in return for accommodation and trying to find a reasonable priced room. We also stopped at the job centre and printed out information about a few jobs and then at a recruitment agency. The girl in there said she had work starting the next day and although it was very boring the pay was ok because it was short notice and over the holidays. We decided Steve would take it and so would I if I couldn’t get anything better either at the hospital or in a shop. So we settled on the cheapest accommodation we had found which was the premier inn and dropped our bags then I went off to the hospital to find they had nothing for me and asked in lots of shops then joined Steve back at the agency to sign up for work. We had bad all-you can eat pizza and pasta for our dinner then chilled out in our new home in the hotel, set up our UK phones and got in touch with lots of people.
Friday was a training day for work and was the worst training either of us has ever done – what’s more there’s another whole day of it on Monday. The work will be very dull but its work. Its an outbound call centre making calls to shareholders of a company about an upcoming vote so it could also have been a lot worse – its not tele-sales at least. We will be working 11am to 7.45pm so not very social but at least that will give us regular working hours to find out about other jobs. We think we will plan to move on somewhere else after this 2-week job though. We had bread and cheese in our room for dinner feeling rather broke because the hotel is costing us so much and although we have work there isn’t actually any money coming in yet. We have looked and looked for cheaper accommodation and although a couple of hostels are cheaper it’s not by much and they are fully booked and also grotty. We also draw the line at staying in dorm rooms when we have all our stuff with us including the computer and some other valuable stuff. So we are stuck in the hotel until Tuesday when Lisa and Rob come back and we’ll go and stay with them.
On Saturday we paid a lot of money for Internet access and did lots of Internet chores then met up with Liz and Dave – our neighbours from Christchurch, who now live back in Bristol – for coffee. We collected our box from them that had been shipped with their stuff and it was nice to be able to go through our stuff and get a few different clothes. Lynnie drove over from Northampton in the afternoon to visit and stayed overnight then took the box with her once it was repacked. We had a lovely afternoon and evening with her, just gossiping and then went for a walk and found a nice Italian place for dinner.
Sunday morning was a little cooler again and we went on an outing to Glastonbury for the day with Lynnie. It was a lovely day out and we strolled around looking in all the weird shops in Glastonbury, then up the Tor and had pasties and muffins at the top for our lunch. We also looked at a car that I had seen advertised on the Internet and it looked pretty good and will be either a real bargain or a huge have. But the thought of having a car is lovely – it gives us so much freedom. Then we drove on to Wells and strolled around the bishop’s palace and the cathedral. It is an extremely pretty little town with some real chocolate box scenes. After Lynnie left us we relaxed for the evening again and got a few chores done with bread and cheese for dinner again.
Monday was New Years Eve and we were at work for the day – still training and it was dire, as they couldn’t get the system to work so we spent a lot of the day just sitting round chatting. It was pretty weird being at work on what felt like a regular day and suddenly seeing the New Year celebrations in Sydney and Auckland on the tele in the middle of our day. Our new years eve was really quiet and we went out for cheap pizza then sat in for the evening watching tele. New years eve tele in Scotland had always been really good but there was a lot of rubbish on until it came time for fireworks. We could see the fireworks in London and Edinburgh on the tele and all over Bristol out the window. Being on the 17th floor was cool because we could see for miles and there were lots and lots of fireworks.
We had a slow start to 2008 but it turned into a big rush when Lisa phoned to say Rob would collect us in 20 minutes. Packing was a stuff and push affair but miraculously everything fit in our bags. We spent the day settling in to their place and catching up on gossip, which was really nice. We went on an outing to the seaside at Clevedon in the afternoon and it seems everyone else had the same idea because they’d never seen it so busy even in summer! It’s a pretty, and very English, walk along the sea wall and there is a nice pier and a few nice parks along the waterfront but not a grain of sand to be seen.
Wednesday was into work properly although they still didn’t have the system working for the first hour. Getting bus connections to get into town and back out to Nailsea, in the late evening was a bit tricky but all worked out ok. It suddenly turned cold on Wednesday afternoon and they were forecasting snow on Thursday but when we woke in the morning there was none to be seen. Another couple of days of work with a bit of overtime in the mornings were just long and fairly dull. However on Thursday evening we were to get our car so that was pretty exciting and we are now the very proud owners of Lola the Daewoo Nubira. We seem to have a real bargain with the car and it will either be fantastic or a big mistake – time will tell. The guy selling it to us was given it by his brother but doesn’t have room to keep it and it’s too expensive for him to insure so he’s selling it really cheap. He’s a bit of a hippie from Glastonbury and into doing good turns and since he was done a good turn – at least so we hope. We made it home much earlier being able to drive and remarkably we found our way without issue. So we actually had a nice relaxing evening with Lisa and Rob.
Friday and Saturday morning was just work and Saturday afternoon we went out to Stanton Drew stone circles. There are three circles, two small ones and the second largest diameter circle in the UK. Even though it tipped down with rain for some of the time we had a really nice visit. We had a bit of an explore with Lisa and drove around in the Mendip hills for a while. It’s a really beautiful area with lots of very cute towns and nice views and lakes and pretty countryside. We stopped for a drink at a pub that Lisa remembered which had no sign out the front and looked like someone’s house but inside was a really cute two-room 12th century pub with a lovely open fire. Then we had take out Indian for dinner with was really nice.
Sunday started off really fine and we had a nice walk and explore of Cadbury hill, which is one of numerous Cadbury’s that claim to be the site of Camelot. We did fort defence re-enactment with James with mock bows and arrows and using the defence mounds of the fort. There was some interesting archaeology on the hill fort but I’m not sure of the history of occupation. Common agreement suggests this is not the Cadbury that is Camelot but it might be a reasonable contender as there is a significant stone circle nearby – Stanton Drew. We went back to the house for a Sunday roast, which is a fantastic tradition, and then went out for another stroll around Blagdon Lake. This time we went to another pub called the plume of feathers with Rob. It was really pretty form the outside and in a very cute town and although not as cute inside as the Crown it had a nice fire and free leftover roast potatoes on the bar. So I was a happy creature with a nice Somerset cider, a warm fire and a bowl of roast tatties. Dinner was a kind of ploughman’s lunch as we’d managed to collect a bunch of cheeses we wanted to try and there was leftover roast beef from lunch, which was all delicious.
Monday morning I had got the cold Steve had been fighting all weekend and went to work but abandoned it and went back to a house full of noisy children in preference. I stayed off Tuesday as well and had a slightly quieter day. It was lovely to be able to sit and look out at an English winter garden, with robins foraging along the hedge and crows and doves vying for position in the big bare tree which was desperately clinging to its few remaining leaves. The Christmas tree is now blown over in the garden too and you can see the pretty square church tower behind the trees – it’s very clear we’re in England!
Wednesday I went back to work but really started feeling that what we are doing is morally not very sound especially because most of the people I’m calling are very elderly and I’m becoming more and more aware of how vulnerable they are. Many are quite happy to do whatever I suggest to them even though I keep saying I’m employed to tell you that. Its really interesting because in a way I’ve spent my career trying to protect vulnerable people and set them up to be safe at home and this is quite disturbing about how vulnerable they still are. I managed Wednesday and Thursday for a short time until another elderly lady said she’d just do what I suggested because I sounded nice and at that point I quit. So I had the rest of Thursday and Friday working on one of my books and articles and entertaining the children. Steve carried on with work and said it did become better as the time frame got shorter till they could vote because only people with Internet access could vote and that eliminated most of the vulnerable elderly.
On Saturday we went on an outing to Exmoor. We stopped at a cider farm and tasted the worst cider we’ve ever had and bought some really interesting sounding dessert sauces, like roast pineapple with lime and bay leaf, and white chocolate with lemongrass and ginger. I felt these had to be copied and therefore tasted first. We tried to visit Cleeve Abbey but it was closed, which was a shame because it looked rather good from the road and the pictures on the sign. We paused in Dunster, which is a really pretty medieval market town, to take a picture of Lola since we had a picture of Sir Hubert there years ago. Then we turned inland and more into the Moor although it took a while to get out of the farmland and up onto the Moor. It’s a great wide open space, quite like many parts of the Scottish highlands but scattered with more farms. We managed to see a wee herd of free running Exmoor ponies, which was pretty cool. I think wild would not be the right term for then given how comfortable they were with us really near but they had the run of the whole moor and weren’t contained. Then we went on a wee detour to find the Tarr Steps, which were marked on the map as ‘other site of interest’ and turned out to be a medieval footbridge spanning 50m across a river and all built with stones. It was an impressive feat of dry-stone engineering and also very pretty. Unfortunately, despite surviving since medieval times part of it had been washed out in recent floods so we couldn’t go across it. We did watch some kayakers taking advantage of the hole and interesting rocks scattered in the water near it though. Then it was time for some lunch and after thinking for a while all the pubs had vanished we finally stumbled in to Bickleigh, which is a gorgeous thatched town on the riverside with two thatched pubs and one other very cute pub also. We had lunch in the Trout Inn and it was very nice food. Steve had a steak and kidney pie and I had bangers and mash then we couldn’t resist dessert. They had the best looking selection of cakes, tarts and roulades we had seen in recent memory – and that includes the cake shops in Austria! We shared a great piece of chocolate fudge cake, which came with a big dollop of Devon clotted cream and drizzled in toffee sauce – it was great. We had been planning to have a Devonshire cream tea but couldn’t resist and at least we’d had the clotted cream bit. We kept our eyes open for a teashop on the rest of the trip but, with the exception of flying past a very cute thatched one with no parking very soon after lunch, we didn’t find one so had to be satisfied with our dollop of clotted cream. We carried on wandering in the countryside, past another Cadbury hillfort, then through Exeter and over to S then Honiton and back up the M5 to Nailsea.
Sunday fortunately was a slow start and we got packed up and had a very nice Sunday lunch with Lisa and Rob and Rob’s parents. We got on the road about 3pm and got 40miles up the road before the car broke down. We pulled into a services and there happened to be an RAC van there who told us the car was unsafe to drive and towed us back to Lisa and Robs. They were a little surprised to see us again but we arrived just in time for dinner and the next day had to get the car to a garage and find out what was wrong. The one thing the RAC man told was that it was something new and not something that the guy who sold it to us could have hidden especially given we have done 500 miles in it. I worked out with Lisa that by the time we had paid buss fares for both of us to work the car has saved us £300 and it only cost us £400 so we’re not too much out of pocket even if it is dead. But it is unlikely to be cheap or quick to fix. We emptied the car out in the morning and the RAC came and towed it to the garage then Steve had a wander round in town while waiting to hear about it and I did some more sorting about how else to get to Birmingham. My job got postponed another day (not by me) so we had a bit more leeway. They decided the car was OK without having had very much done to it so we spent another night with Lisa and Rob. I had a scone with strawberry jam and clotted cream for my dessert, which was yum, and meant I had finally had my cream tea even though it was a Somerset cream tea rather than a Devonshire cream tea.