Northward On!

Day Three of Thirty

We woke up with very loose plans to wander around Soho for a bit before heading to the coach station to catch the 2:00pm bus to Nottingham. We had purchased the cheaper tickets on the web the night before and printed them out on Johan's printer. We left the house with the intention of just grabbing a bite and then coming back to get our stuff, but once we were out in the sunshine we realised we didn't want to be burdened by our packs, so we decided to head straight to Soho from there.

At the Kentish Town Tube station, we saw Noel Fielding, a British comedian who's part of a duo called The Mighty Boosh, (which also happened to be one of my nicknames at work). He ended up getting off at the same station, Tottenham Court Road, at the entrance to Soho. Once in Soho we searched for a nice place to grab a bite, and came upon the quaint little Shelley's Diner, where we enjoyed bacon and brie sandwiches and some good strong coffee.

We spent the next half hour or so wandering around in Soho. It's a great little area, full of all manner of shops. We stepped into a photography gallery that had scores of high priced limited edition prints of musicians, many of whom would have spent much of their time hanging around and playing gigs in Soho.

As always my time management was a bit off and I realised that we ought to get back to the house to get our stuff to head over to Victoria Station for our bus. By the time we were back on the Tube, flashes of last week's bus chasing experience entered my head and I started to worry that there may be a repeat. In Kentish Town, we quickly grabbed a bottle of wine at the Co-op as a thank you to Johan, Christine, and Caitlan for allowing us to stay at their flat. We were in and out of the house in about a minute-and-a-half (Darryl timed it), and then walking as quickly as possible for the Tube station. I only had my day pack but Darryl had his full gear. It was a bit difficult to move fast enough.

The minute hand on the watch was inching ever closer to the hour and I was really getting worried now. Darryl told me to go ahead and he would catch up. I got to the station as the bus began to move. I stopped the driver and he pondered for a second about letting me on. In the end I was told they couldn't wait, despite the fact that there were no buses behind them. Once again the heartless business kings that are National Express denied us travel. Nothing like making the same error twice.

So now we had to figure out how to get on a later bus without spending the full price on the ticket. We found a little Internet shop and bought tickets online for the 5:00pm bus. Doing it online saved us about £6 (including the £2 we paid for the access and printing) so in the end it was still cheaper than taking a train. We used this to justify my error.

The bus was full but generally comfortable. Near Luton, traffic was moving at a snail's pace because of the road widening on the M1. Imagine seeing a sign while sitting in a queue that says 'Expect delays until December 2008.' Luckily it only took about an hour. Road travel is a bit different in this country. If you look at where Luton is on a map, you'd be disgusted that it would take two whole hours to get there from Central London. Once we passed it though, we were on our way.

We got some laughs out of the talking GPS guidance system the driver was using. It was giving terrible directions and the driver, for the most part, was doing the opposite of what it vocalised to him. Once we were in Nottingham, it took a really roundabout way of getting to the station. He must have been testing the system or something.

Finally in Nottingham, we took a black cab to my house and started to settle in. I introduced all the housemates as they appeared. I made us a nice cup of tea and we watched TV for a bit before heading out for some food, and a quick nighttime tour of Sneinton and Nottingham. Things are noticeably quieter in Nottingham. Well at least until you get into the City Centre where all the bars and clubs are. We made a big loop to the castle and back and then headed home to get some sleep. All that running made us both pretty tired.

Another day in the bag. We figure we'll be here in Nottingham until very early Tuesday morning when we head for the white cliffs of Dover, the English Channel, Calais, and eventually Paris.

Cheers.

The Start

Day One and Two of Thirty.

Expecting things to not align, I was shocked that not only did my bus arrive early, but so did Darryl's flight. Things aligned quite well indeed as I stood at the gate to see Darryl enter the country at around 10:30am.

Our first duty was to find a place to sit and have a coffee to get ourselves on the same page. It was nearly 1:00pm when we boarded the train for London Victoria Station. Darryl was a bit shocked by the trains whipping by in the opposite directions but before long we were in the Big Smoke, just in time for the spitting rain.

We first hit Buckingham Palace before heading through St. James's Park toward the Houses of Parliament. Back up the road in Trafalgar Square, a large group of Liverpool football fans created a sea of red shirts and banners. Their big game with Chelsea (in which they were defeated) was later that evening. The square was also, curiously enough, covered in thousands of mugs. Nothing mixes like rowdy football fans and delicate porcelain. We found out later that the cups were part of a Channel 4 program on the British human footprint displaying the number of cups of tea consumed by the average Brit in his/her lifetime. There were some 27,000 cups. If only we knew what it was about at the time.

Darryl and I stopped to relax a bit at Canada House, and then headed back out into the now sunnier London day. After grabbing a quick bite, we headed up to Johan and Christine's flat in Kentish Town, where after brief hellos and introductions we dropped our bags and headed back out. It was nice to just stroll in London without any burden. We headed to Camden Town, which was much livelier than when I had stayed there in February, with all kinds of colourful shops spilling onto the streets.

That evening we saw Leicester Square, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Millennium Bridge and Piccadilly Circus. It was after 11:30pm when we got back to Kentish Town and nearly 1:30am by the time we got to bed. Darryl's jetlag would soon be sorted.

In the morning we hit a little local cafe for some bacon and eggs and coffee. That provided adequate fuel for a trek into a new portion of Camden Town Market that we had not seen the previous evening. Our hosts had mentioned it was worth checking out. It was indeed. Food, clothing, and all kinds of other wares to be seen.

By early afternoon we were in Primrose Hill and Regent's Park. The weather was shaping up nicely, though the humidity was making it hard to regulate our temperatures. We got to talking about art and decided to stop in at the National Gallery to see some paintings. We only spent an hour or so there, taking in the highlights. Outside, rain was starting to fall, so we headed back to Kentish Town for a rest.

In the evening we headed out again, using the wonderfully convenient (but sometimes swelteringly hot) London Underground. We headed east on the District Line to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Evening was falling and the lights were beginning to flicker on. The air was also getting much colder and the wind was picking up. From London Bridge we headed further east to Canary Wharf and Canada Square, which at that time of night is pretty inactive.

Back in Leicester Square we caught a bite and then headed back to our cozy accommodations to finish up our second day together. Tomorrow it will be off to Nottingham for a few days before really beginning the journey. From there the plans will come as they come. There is a general plan but the specifics have been purposely left unplanned so that we are free to not be tied to a schedule. Spontaneity shall be the key.

Be sure to check out Darryl's blog for YouTube videos of our first day. We will be uploading these as we go so you can watch a new episode every few days or so.

Cheers.

The Day Has Arrived

The passive holiday becomes the active holiday

The week that's been has been another full one. I've been all over the place, mostly north of Nottingham. On Wednesday I took a late day trip up to Sherwood Forest to see all of the Robin Hood sites. I had waited until Spring to get the full effect of the foliage. Much of it has yet to come but there was much greenery to be seen.

The part of Sherwood Forest that contains the famous Major Oak sits just north of the village of Edwinstowe, northeast of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. This is approximately eighteen miles north of Nottingham. Before civilisation spread throughout the countryside, the forest once extended right into the city. It's hard to imagine now.

I arrived in Edwinstowe and proceeded down the high street toward the forest entrance. The village is very quaint and, naturally, quite English. Passing by St. Mary's church I noticed a plaque that mentioned the legend of Robin Hood and Maid Marian being married there. The building itself dates to the Twelfth Century, the very age of the folklore couple and their outlaw friends. I wandered around the churchyard to see the scores of very old gravestones, whose epitaphs are now long gone.

At the edge of the forest there lies a cricket ground and a little kid's fair. A short walk up the trail is the visitor centre, a ring of small buildings that act as a sort of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest museum. Being late in the day there wasn't much time to spend there, so I headed down the trail toward the Major Oak. Along the way there were several old twisted oak trees that date back several centuries. The oak grows very slowly and produces a very hard and sturdy wood, so it's no wonder these giants have stood so long.

As you come around the bend, there is a clearing and a fenced off area where the Major Oak stands. This is the tree that it is said Robin Hood and his Merry Men would hide (inside) when the Sheriff and his men came looking for them. Whether any such figure as Robin Hood existed is a subject of much dispute, but the information at the Major Oak suggests that if Robin Hood lived in the 1100s, this tree was not even an acorn in its father's branches. It is an interesting plant nonetheless. Columns and guy wires hold up the sprawling branches, preserving their position for... who knows how long.

I made my way back around the other way to the park entrance and back into Edwinstowe to catch the bus back to Nottingham. That evening I met up with Pierfausta and we went to an open mic night at a place called Junktion Seven, where Julian, a neighbour of hers was playing a few songs. Julian was an interesting character. He kept calling out to me from the stage, knowing I play music, to see if I wanted to join in. I graciously declined. So the network gets wider. It's amazing how easy it is to meet people when you've got nothing to do.

On Friday I took a quick day trip to London; partly because I wanted to suss things out for Darryl's arrival, and partly for a day out in London. The return fare for the bus was only £14, so I was able to have a pretty frugal day. I met up with Johan and Christine for lunch, who are kind enough to let us stay with them this week. I then went over to Whitechapel, which doesn't look nearly as Victorian as I expected it to. I was in search of the London Hospital, now the Royal London Hospital, where lived Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. I knew I wouldn't get to see his bones, as they are kept in the archives, not accessible to the public, but I was hoping to see some artefacts of his. There is on display his mask with attached hat. It bears a single rectangular eyehole, as depicted in David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980). There was also one of his kit models of a church. There was a short video on him which showed some of the areas of the hospital of significance to his story. The shop across the street from the hospital is the actual place where Dr. Frederick Treves first saw Merrick on display. Whitechapel is also the area where Jack the Ripper was the top story at that same time.

I took the Tube back west toward the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gardens, and Hyde Park before heading up to the British Museum for a quick buzz through. It was late in the day so a lot of the exhibits weren't open, but I did see the Rosetta Stone, and many Egyptian and Akkadian statues and carvings. While in the Egyptian room I noticed there was a boy sitting on a bench playing a Nintendo DS. I just thought it was amazing that a kid of his age was more interested in the fad of the day than sculptures that are millennia old. I would have taken a picture of the scene if I had brought my camera.

I had mentioned I had a frugal day, but it ended up biting me in the end when, rushing to get back to the bus station I ran into one little delay after another. I got there just as the bus was pulling out. He stopped at a red light and I approached the door asking him to let me in. He wouldn't. I tried and tried but he just shook his head. The light changed and he drove off, back to Nottingham, sans Mark. Fuming, I stormed into the ticket office and said I wanted the next bus, which was an hour later at 11:30pm. Of course they had to charge me £16 for the ticket. My protests were falling on deaf ears. She's heard it all before I'm sure. So I ended up getting back to Nottingham at 3:00am.

The next day, Saturday, John and Marian picked me up for a drive up into Notts and Lincolnshire. We stopped at Southwell Minster, a very large Norman cathedral that has been appended many times through the centuries. We continued on to Newark-on-Trent, where we enjoyed a nice lunch at a butcher's overlooking the open-air market square. We also stopped in at the castle ruins briefly.

We continued up the road to Lincoln, famous for its proud-sitting, very tall, Gothic cathedral. Lincoln also has a castle near the cathedral and a very medieval charm to it. The high street between the cathedral and castle is called Steep Hill, and rightly so. It joins with the town below at an exhausting angle. We were going to pay to tour the cathedral but the view from the entrance was adequate for me. Like Gloucester Cathedral, it was an open room, but the structure was much lighter, and it was lined on both sides with slender stained glass windows. A small sign mentioned that the cathedral was used in the film The Da Vinci Code, as a stand-in for Westminster Abbey.

At the castle, John and I toured around and walked along the top of the castle wall while Marian relaxed outside with their dog Penny. The view was very far-reaching. Despite the haze in the air, two counties were visible.

John and Marian dropped me back off in Nottingham. The next couple days were filled with little outings, mostly with my new Italian friends: skating, and a birthday party. This morning I head to Gatwick Airport to meet Darryl. So the real adventure begins now. Blogging will become more frequent from here, but probably a bit more brief. You can also follow along on Darryl's blog to get the full story. We'll be putting up photos and videos as well.

See you on the other side.

Cheers.

Out and About in Nottingham

I'm finally getting to experience life in Nottingham, after living here for nearly six months

The Easter weekend was rather quiet around here. On Saturday, following the bus shelter ads I'd seen around town, I decided to take a short trek out to Wollaton Park to take in the re-opening of Wollaton Hall, the Elizabethan home of the Willoughby family. Today the hall doubles as a natural history museum,a museum showing what life was like for the Willoughbies. In the stables there is also a transportation museum. The weather was warm and people were out enjoying the day. Wollaton Park is quite expansive and is full of herds of deer that don't seem to mind all the people. Walking past the golf course I saw a rather large herd sitting in the shade, completely uneffected by the sounds of swinging clubs and flying golf balls.

Sunday was quiet. I decided I was interested in taking in an event the following day in Manchester. The Fall were playing their hometown and there was only one factor that was a bit iffy to me. I could get to Manchester for £7.50. That much I knew from my previous adventure into the Peak District that got me as far as New Mills. I also knew that I had to put a cap on how much I spend in light of the upcoming trip to the Continent, so I couldn't afford to get a room in Manchester unless it was under £10, and I certainly couldn't afford a train back that night. My option ended up being attending the show and then waiting out the hours in the train station until morning when the TransPeak bus started up again. In the end, my shaky Internet connection meant that I couldn't purchase a concert ticket before the last bus left for Manchester. I was greatly disappointed.

The next day, however, my housemate Jason had invited me to see his friends' band from Oxford. I had missed their last show in Nottingham and now that there is no work schedule to hold me back I was not going to miss this one. The band is Foals, a name that is gaining some fame here in the UK and following their visit to the South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Texas last month, North America may be buzzing about them soon enough. A few of Jason's friends had gathered at our house before the show, and eventually the band themselves showed up. Jason made them all a nice pasta dinner to compensate for their likely unhealthy eating habits that naturally comes with life on the road. Later, we all walked to the venue and enjoyed the show. We stayed until closing while the band packed up the van for the long drive to Glasgow for a show the following night.

Thursday was Tom's birthday, so I met up with his crew at the Pitcher & Piano, a pub that for centuries was a church, across the street from my former place of employment. It was nice to see some familiar faces again and catch up on the week-and-a-half that I had been out of the kitchen. In typical English fashion, we all moved from bar to bar and then eventually back to Tom's, which ,again is only two doors down from mine. People started to dwindle away and by the light of morning there were about six of us left. I decided to go home and catch some sleep. I ended up staying in bed most of the day. One of the great things about being on holiday I guess.

On Saturday, the weather got unseasonably warm and temperatures reached into the mid-20s. Late in the day I decided to take a trip out to the Attenborough Nature Centre in Chilwell. Very much like Fort Whyte Alive! (I still can't get used to that name change) in Winnipeg, Attenborough is a brownfield site, once industrial, now converted into a nature reserve. A visitor's centre sits near the entrance, with architecture similar to that of Fort Whyte. The emphasis, of course, is on green design and leaving as small a footprint as possible. The centre itself didn't offer much more than a cafe and gift shop which was a bit disappointing, but there was plenty of walking trails to explore.

A fellow walker asked me a question about the type of boat passing by, and noticing her accent I asked where she was from. She, Pierfausta, was from Italy and we introduced ourselves and continued the walk. I told her of my upcoming trip to Europe and mentioned that we hope to get to Italy. Immediately she told of some places I should visit. Eventually she invited me out with her friends that evening to a jazz pub.

I met up with the Italian crew later that evening at the Bell Inn, a pub that I have passed by many times, and stepped into once, but never visited properly. They were a bit disappointed that there was a rock band playing, and that the average age of the patrons was about ninety. They decided we should go somewhere else, and oddly enough the name that came up was the Pitcher & Piano. Having worked across the street from the Pitcher for five months, it was only two nights before that I had set foot in there for the first time. I reluctantly agreed. I had been looking forward to something other than that kind of place, but at least I was with a new group of people, and dare I say, despite the friendships I've made and the good times I've had with English people, it was nice to be hanging out with non-English folk. In fact the drinking culture of the English became a large part of our conversation.

The next day was another scorcher. This one warmer than the one before. Again, late in the day I decided to head east on foot, to Colwick Park, a little oasis on the other side of the tracks. There were hordes of people out, on bicycles, on blankets, feeding the overly tame Canada geese, fishing, walking their dogs, sketching, barbecueing, eating ice cream, etc. I had been there before but in the winter it's not as bustling. I took a different route through the park this time, coming across sights I hadn't seen on my previous visit. A few hours later, I again met up with the Italians in Old Market Square, and while we were sat talking, the others noticed that the two people in front of us were also speaking Italian. And so the Italian snowball grew. We sat for a while longer talking about things like the fine art of Italian dubbing of movies and television shows. The Italians take great pride in putting dialogue into their own language, to the point of matching the voices as closely as possible. This came as a surprise to me, as I'm used to hearing French or Spanish dubbing, where the voice sounds nothing like the original actor's, or worse yet, Russian dubbing, where the voice is expressionless and the original voice is still audible. I'm looking forward now to hearing the Italian Homer Simpson and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The clear weather remains, but the heat has subsided. I still have a list of things I want to do before Darryl arrives in eight days: day trips to London and Manchester, a trip out to Sherwood Forest, and a day out in Lincolnshire with John and Marian. I'll see what I can do.

Cheers.

86 Mark

So long schedule, so long income... hello holidays

Well Saturday 31 March was my last shift at The Living Room, where I've worked for the past four and a half months. I was scheduled for an evening shift, the very one I had started on. Of course then I was a kitchen porter (dishwasher) and I had never worked in a restaurant kitchen before. The evening seemed like a regular Saturday. There were a heaping handful of us working, and fellow chef Maddog, who had the night off, came in with his camera to get some shots of us during service. We finished up around 11:30, enjoyed several complimentary drinks and that was that; 86 as they say in the industry.

The following evening there were more festivities for another departing member of staff, having been transferred to the Edinburgh unit. I joined in that celebration as well, but not before meeting up with a fellow Winnipegger who I found on the Internet quite by accident. It also turned out that he was a long time friend of a fellow Environmental Design grad. He has travelled extensively around Europe and I was interested in hearing some pointers. We stopped in at a Wetherspoons for a couple of pints after meeting up in the new Old Market Square, recently completed after several months of redesign and reconstruction. This was the final night of concerts and activities in the Square, the bulk of which had occurred the weekend before, with fireworks shooting simultaneously from the Council House (on the square) and Nottingham Castle (several blocks away). Of course during that time I was knee-deep in service in the kitchen about a quarter mile away. We heard the fireworks from there, but couldn't stop what we were doing to see them.

So with my freedom I've decided to continue exploring the country before Darryl joins me in a few weeks time. However, with no more money coming in, I have to be rather stingey about how much I spend to get anywhere. A quick stop at the Trent Barton bus services shop revealed that for a mere £7.50 I could take a journey through the beautiful Peak District, alighting and reboarding at my leisure, and get as far as Manchester if I so desired. So on Thursday morning I did just that.

I had been through most of the places along the route before, as John and Marian had taken me on a drive on that road during my first fortnight in the country. We had visited Masson Mills at Cromford and went as far as Chatsworth. My plan this day was to stop off at Bakewell to try some authentic Bakewell pudding, famously discovered by accident in the town some centuries ago, and then on to New Mills, where there was some sort of bridge walkway pictured in the busline's brochure.

At Matlock Bath, near the Heights of Abraham, (named in the Eighteenth Century by a repatriated officer in General Wolfe's army, who had fought at the Plains of Abraham in Quebec, and likened the landscape to that of the Canadian battleground.) I started to get antsy, and feeling I was missing out on some nice scenery decided to get off the bus at neighbouring Matlock. There I discovered a town built on the hillside with a park in the valley below. Above, high on a peak in the distance, was the silhouette of a castle ruin. There were hundreds of people out and about as the weather was sunny and warm. I decided to backtrack along the bus route to Matlock Bath. It was supposedly, according to a billboard, only a couple miles back. Unfortunately I realised too late that the billboard was for opposite traffic and before long I ended up north of Matlock at Darley Dale. Just to verify that I was going the wrong way I stopped in at a garden centre coffee shop diner, where the smell of food was terribly tempting. I settled on buying a packet of crisps to hold me over until lunch. The waitress, using some term of endearment like 'love' or 'dear' kindly told me that Matlock and Matlock Bath were that way, pointing the direction I had just come from. Oh well.

Examining the bus schedule on the walk back I realised that it wouldn't be possible to stop at Bakewell and New Mills if I wanted to get to Manchester, as buses only came every hour and they were running nearly an hour behind as it was. I decided to skip out on Bakewell and go straight through to New Mills. When I got back to Matlock, the TransPeak coach was just arriving so I figured I should get on it. I rode straight through to Newtown, at the border of Derbyshire and Cheshire. New Mills was just across the street and Disley was further up. This was the area known as High Peak, a collection of towns just southeast of Greater Manchester.

I was in search of the Torrs Millennium Walkway. Having found it early on, I headed down the high street to explore a bit and search out some food. I had held out long enough and those crisps just weren't sustaining me. I found a nice little diner and had what has now become my standard order for places like that... yes, the Full English Breakfast. So what if it was 3:00pm.

As I walked back across the viaduct over the River Goyt toward the entrance to the walkway I realised I was probably just going to stay here for the remainder of the day and head directly back to Notts from here. This was verified when I descended into the valley and saw the massive viaduct I had just crossed over. It resembled the Romanesque aqueducts of this historical bath-spring district. There was another one up stream. It was like being in a Poussin painting, without the nude and scantily clad Romans about. There were human-made cascades and natural rapids along the river, all of which had once served the mill downstream.

Further on I saw the steel walkway, whose photo had drawn me here in the first place. It was an incredible site. As I crossed it, I realised that across the river was a chunk of land, upon which stood the ruins of the mill complex. The walkway stood on thin black columns, along a vertical stone wall, above which was the railline. It was a great decaying landscape, and my mind was immediately brought back to my third year Thunder Bay waterfront project. This is what that project should have been. There was a bridge across to the ruins. Being by myself, I didn't think it would be a good idea to go across. I continued on my way.

The sights in New Mills made the entire trip worthwhile. I would love to take the trip again and spend a proper day in Matlock Bath, and perhaps even Bakewell or Buxton. It didn't seem to matter to me that I didn't make it to Manchester. But at least now I know that I can get there and back for a reasonable price. Click here to see the photos from Sheffield to the Peak District.

So now I will continue to prepare myself for the big Continental trip. But there's still lots to see before then I hope.

Cheers.