Cornwall 2011 day 1

day 1


The day dawned sunny and clear which I am sure was a mistake as Em and I were embarking on Bimble 2 Son of bimble! We loaded the car up, said goodbye to the cat and started to drive due south. Once we'd apologised to the neighbours for ploughing up their flower bed with the car we decided to use the roads instead. We scudded through the sunny Welsh countryside with the temperature creeping up as the mileometer ticked over. Soon we were crossing the border into Eng-ger-land, that dark and fabled place full of mythical beasts and other pop factor idol rejects.

We turned south and met with my Uncle peter for lunch in his place in Bristol. Full of homemade bread and delicious pork pies we headed back out just in time for the weather to turn dark and wet but against all prior experience and the laws of God and man it stayed at what I can only describe as oven-interior levels.

We headed through Devon and then onto Cornwall where our first nights stay was located which is a 13th century inn that had previously been a chapel and many other things. I could be wrong but I think they might have decorated it since then. The upstairs bedrooms are light and airy and feel a couple of years old at most. However the downstairs two rooms are slate floored with nooks and alcoves for drinkers a distinct lack of jukeboxes and alcopops. Beer snob heaven in fact.

We took a walk out to the coastal path that loops around Cornwall and heads down along most of the south coast. I'm thinking about trying to walk the whole distance someday but I think that might be a daydream like walking up Everest or watersking behind two tame killer whales. i.e. fun to think about but the logistics would be a nightmare.

The road past the pub heads to a vicarage and teamrooms and stops dead. That's it. There's no through road, it ends appropriately enough just before the rolling countryside plunges about two hundred foot directly into the sea. The cliffs and sand are satanic,... sorry volcanic, black but apparently only few miles further towards the tip they turn a lovely golden yellow and are therefore more popular.

I found them very striking and incredibly visually arresting. I obviously wasn't the only one as this was where Hawkers hut was located. It's the smallest property in national trust hands and is essential a series of small steps down what would be a nigh-on sheer cliff. when you've dropped a handful of feet the steps level out into a small area and there's a small hut made of a driftwood that you can sit in in all weather and gaze out to see. The original priestly resident of the vicarage I mentioned was a poet and a friend of Coleridges and every day after attending to his vicarly duties he'd walk from the church to the edge of the cliff and sit in the hut he'd made and write poetry. Oh and smoke opium. I'm pretty sure the smoking of opium was important in the whole writing poetry side of things.

By now the pangs of hunger for Em and the my thirst demon had kicked in so we wandered over the gorgeous meadows and little country lane back to our pub. The guidebook states that with no jukebox conversation is the main form of entertainment in the pub and damn were they right! We chatted to one guy about his dog and how the cafe on top of Snowdon had been tastefully changed from the portocabin he remembered another guy at the bar chimed in about how Bugle is the armpit of Cornwall and should be avoided at all cost, and then we chatted for a couple of hours to a mother from Sheffield who was on holiday with her university student daughter about all the stuff they've seen while they've been down here.

A simple meal of bread and olives, fish/scampi and chips and cheese platter/brownie followed washed down with a few pints of excellent St Austell Ale, their 'Tribute' being my personal favourite. after a few more hours and random conversations we descended into the arms of Morpheus to see what spectacular sights he would bid us hold. (I think there might have been some residual opium left in that hut!

The 2010 Bimble : Saturday

Miles :246
Start: Rhyl
End: Gravesend

The night before we set out on our bimble (Dictionary definition : A long meandering journey with no fixed point of destination,) was my leaving do from the council. Probably not the most ideal preparation for a long journey. I don't imagine Scott of the Antarctic decided to nip out the night before traveling south for twelve pints and a curry. Nevertheless it was important to me to say goodbye to a placed and people I've very much enjoyed working for and with.

They very sweetly bought me two tasting glasses and a lovely bottle of my favourite type of whiskey (Anything from the Isle of Islay, this one was a Caol Ila out of interest.) So we went out for a couple of pints which was good fun. I flatter myself that they'll miss me just as much as I'll miss them but I don't think so!

I remember vividly leaving a previous job with Denbighshire and as I left the pub my assembled ex-work colleagues gave me a resounding round of applause much to the amusement of the other patrons! That was a great moment for me.

Anyways leaving the council this time I've already written about in a lot of detail so I'll move on.

We picked up a few things in town before leaving. Rhyl on a Saturday morning has a special funk of its own. Everyone seems to be hurrying about as if they have somewhere vital to be. Mainly, I think, anywhere that isn't Rhyl. Even the buskers are of a lower quality than you've come to expect in other large towns. One of them mumbles over every word as if hes embarrassed to be caught singing in public. Which is strange as he's there everyday, you'd think he'd have learnt the words by now. The other has a better voice but was singing, in all seriousness, Achy Breaky Heart.

Generally I have a positive outlook an life and I think mankind is evolving in the right direction but I only have to hear that song to lose all hope and feel nothing but pity and dispair for mankind. When there's soooooooo much good music, important music, soulful meaningful music out there to sing and you choose a shit novelty song from the early nineties, you've got to question your entire value system.

I am very much anti-death penalty but I am in favour of planned music re-education camps. Where you go in loving JLS and Cheryl Cole and re-emerge as a productive member of society appreciating Led Zepplin and Joni Mitchell.

Oh, a caveat to that earlier statement. If you don't enjoy the music of Al Green you have no soul and should be shot like a rabid dog.

So with our provisions laid in we pointed La Poderosa(My car) south and set out.

This Bimble has been a delibrate attempt on my part to relax more on holiday. We've got a dinner appointment in Brighton on Monday evening and the next thing I have to do is on the following Saturday. Normally I have a schedule and a good idea of what we have to do and where we have to go but this time I'm leaving that all up to fate. We're just going to see where we wake up meander around for the day, find a BnB with a pub nearby and stay there.

It might backfire spectacularly but if worst comes to worst we can get home from anywhere on the south coast in about eight hours. And its not lke we don't have family around here.

Its that special time of year when the rape seed has blossomed and the fields on the way down were that special yellow of the rape oil plant which makes that pasture look like it has captured raw sunlight and is now emitting it out. It's a beautiful colour giving the rolling hills a depth and texture that they don't usually possess with their ordinary crops. The contrast between the deep green of a fallow field and that raw golden sunlight is most pleasing to my horticulturally blind eye.

I think I associate that view with the start of summer proper so when I see those fields of gold (Thanks Sting) I know that summers here. Woot!

Also due to my impassioned indifference to Football/Soccer/Nancyball, call it what you will, travelling on FA Cup final day is no biggie so the roads were virtually empty which made for a very pleasant journey.

We made excellent time and were welcomed to Kent by Jane and Wez who have very kindly put us up for the weekend. The rest of the evening was spent variously watching TV, eating and talking and laughing throughout all of the above.

Boston Park.

There's a park in the middle of Harvard University which is surrounded on all sides by coffee shops and book sellers. The park itself has benches and a layer of cigarette butts so deep in places walking through the fag ends and discarded filters is like wading through tar soaked snow. I don't think they've been collected since the time John Adams was there. I swear I saw a little clay pipe at the bottom of one pile.

We stopped for a coffee and a sit down having walked through most of upper Boston on our way here.

In the park under a tree was a guy who couldn't have been more than twenty, on his own, singing and playing guitar. Normally buskers will play something instantly recognisable and catchy to get peoples attention. I think that's why they're so reviled, they only play what they think you'd like to hear so they play the most inoffensive dreck and by not offending anyone they usually alienate everyone.

I didn't identify this tune at first but it wasn't unpleasant, so I sat, sipping my coffee, listening to his strumming. It was only after I got past his strong Bostonian accent that I realised what he was singing this beautiful song that he had written about how painful his breakup with a particular girl was. He was singing a personal song about how he himself felt. I could see him pause occasionally and take a small stub of pencil and mark up a legal pad he had next to him.

I don't think it would have mattered if there had been ten people in that park or a thousand. He wasn't there to entertain others. He would still have been singing that song on his own in an attic if he had to. Because he HAD to sing it. Because it was the only way he could process the emotions he was dealing with. And that what I love about good art. Good artists will do what they do not for the pleasure of others or for praise, adoration and cash but because if they had no fans, no crowds, no public, they'd still be doing it anyway.

Somehow I don't think Damien Hirst or Tracy Emin would still be artists if they'd had no success. They'd be turning out copies of quaint Landscapes so fast it would make your head spin.

Real art is passion. Real art is a gnawing desperate need to vent these feelings by singing, writing, painting, or whatever before those very emotions burn you out from the inside.

honeymoon,

The pictures from the honeymoon are now on my flickr account, top left.

 

And yes they are all clean, I think.

EDIT: Now also all the right way up and with captions!

Still clean though.

It was an appointment.

So, Its 5:30 in the morning in 1976 you're in Paris and bored. What do you do?

Well you attach a gyroscopic camera to the bumper of your Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 and drive like a madman through the streets of paris .

wikipediaHas an excellent page on its inspiration and creation. its quite an astounding bit of motoring.

My careering career

Morning!

Got a new job today and I'm all excited! Been waiting for the phonecall for a couple of days and been so nervous I couldn't actually write properly. I won't subject you to the graveyard of abandoned post. Needless to say grammar and form weren't really included in a post that simply would have read;

"Geeeeeeeeennnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyrrrrrrrrrr,!".

So, allowing for a physical, I'll be working for Conwy county council on their payroll. For those unfamilar with Conwy itself, its a walled town with a castle that was never meant to accomodate traffic. Hence my new commute will follow the road through the walled town and out the other side.

It looks a little like this and is astoundingly pretty.

Anyway still really happy.

sunset tranquillity

There's a road in Texas in between Amarillo and Albuquerque just before you hit the New Mexico border. Its not especially pretty, its not spectacularly stunning and its arrow straight as the roads over there tend to be.

It was getting to dusk when I was driving through it and the windmills that were the only presence at the side of the empty road were black sentinels standing out against the pink setting sun.

When I'm especially stressed or feel I've got too much coming at me, I switch off and pretend I'm driving that road again. The empty blacktop stretching off ahead and the sound of the tyres on the tarmac a mantra beneath me.

One day, before I'm forty, I'm going to drive that road again.

Travelblog:McDs

They've finally refitted the McDonalds in town. After twenty something years the crap faux nautical theme has been replaced by a dark green/midgreen/deep orange combo. Its achingly hip for those whose ideas of hip is a retro seventies design and sixties style chairs. In fact i was surprised not to see beanbags in the corner.

What's always struck me about places like this is they look great, but only without people in them.

As soon as actual humans, with their clashing colours and irregular curves enter into this pristine space the effect is ruined. These designs are there to be photographed and admired, not lived in.

The food is, of course, staggeringly mediocre. Like an impersonation of tasty without actually being so.

I wouldn't actually be here if i didn't need to be in town and nowhere else was open. But I seem to use that excuse a little too regularly!

travelblog: moment of zen in Bodfari

Theres nothing like driving a great empty road in the blazing sun and then the perfect song comes on the radio. My heart just soars.

(Song: 7/4 shoreline by broken social scene, road: Mold to Denbigh around Bodfari where the road starts to rise into the hills.)

Travelblog:Last night.

Last night was our last night and we celebrated in style.

First we found an Irish bar with an actual Irishman in it and persuaded him that the two spaniards and a dog in the bar weren't interested in the Wigan v Tottenham match and could he please put the Rugby cup final on.

Five pints and one fantastically close game later we got some food bought some takeout beer and headed to the park.

Theres a huge monument in park de retiro which looks over the lake and we were told to 'be there when the sun goes down'.

Following these rather cryptic instruction we entered throu the enormous park gate and heard a hellish, frenzied drumming the like of which I can only describe as being akin to those last heard in Helms Deep.

There were 40-50 drummers and at least 200 people drinking and dancing. We were the only tourists there and we soon mingled in.

It was one hell of a way to say goodbye to a city that loves me right back.

Time to catch a flight.

travelblog:irish bars

Irish bars are the new fungus. They are everywere and you know what you're going to get.

the craic is normally supplied by the beer and the company and with the number of irish expats its always availible.

watching rugby in an irish bar always separates the fans from the wannabes. Its such a complex game even the players get confused. So when someone you dont know correctly calls for a knock on, you know you're in good company.

The barmen inevetiably know the right places to go onto after and if you're really lucky their shift finishes in ten minutes and they were planning on going there themselves after!

My last night in Madrid, and it may be my most memorable and the one I remeber the least about.

Travelblog:El Rastro

El Rastro is a great Madrid Sunday morning tradition. After the late night excesses of saturday the people of this city love nothing better than to browse the stalls of El Rastro market.

Half of it is your standard sloganed tshirt and tat stalls. The other half is weird antiques and strange fashions that u cant imagine anyone buying.

Its so popular with locals and tourists alike that its developed its own style of walking. The Rastro strut is one where you slowly stroll with both hands jammed in your front pockets protecting your valuables from the numerous pickpockets.

drunk travellog: random snipets

Ankle length black leather skirt on a boy as pale as snow.

"Bobble bobble."

"Hi mum, meet Cindy!"

"thats every mans fantasy, park and ride!"

a busy bar with four people in it.

Rob chocolate.

animated toilet.

"taxi? My arse!"

a well dressed middle aged man, drunk, shouting "Lost!" at the top of his lungs at the pretty girls of the madrid midnight metro.

two lovers meeting on the steps of the square and being so taken with each other, for them, no-one else exsists.

Drunk travellog : mojitos in Chueca

Note to self. Don't order cocktails on the patio of a poncy Cafe when slightly inebriated without first checking the price.

At least not if you feel like putting your kids through college.

subways is subways

Subways are subways the world over. They are the great levelers in citys where the gap between rich and poor is greatest. The perfumed and the Prada-ed have to rub shoulders with those of us unfourtunate enough to reek of sick and special brew. Which is not me I hasten to add! Unless its a particularly good thursday.

Went on the metro/subway to see the home of Real Madrid. All i can say is they must get through some brasso with all their trophies. The pitch, stadium even their dressing room is impressive espically the three storey shop.

You can buy almost anything there from replica strips throu Real Madrid teddys on to models of the actual players. Almost anything, as you cant actually buy match tickets at the ground.

So they build you up about what a great side and how fantastic they are and then, "Tickets?" in the same manner you might say "Faeces?".

travel blog: an adendum and an admission

These entries arent well constructed, arent very interesting and probably arent fun to read. Lets not even mention spelling or grammar!

I make wild claims, dont finish arguments properly and never ever supply evidence.

I also tend to cover old ground talking about the same things but i dont care.

These entries are meant to be gonzo in the real sense of the word. They are meant to be read as written with no corrections, no editing and no apologies.

I'm sitting in a portogese bar in the middle of madrid with hams the size of tree trunks swinging in the breeze in front of me. Everyone else is seista-ing back at the hotel.

I used to hate being on my own but I have learnt to relish it, espically in a strange country where the language is a gorgeous mystery. You are forced to rely on strangers to help you out with buying stuff which can be embarassing but the sense of freedom that comes with the knowledge you can cope is priceless!

travel blog: timings

Normally it'll be the jet lag that gets to you making you feel totally on adifferent wavelength from those around you. In madrid its meal lag.

After days of good tapas we decided to have a good full meal. Not a problem madrid is full of good resturants. However we made the mistake of going for dinner at dinner time, about half six.

We may as well have been asking the waiters for deep fried elephant foreskin.

"we dont start serving dinner till 8," was the universal reply," would you like some tapas instead?"

Hemmingway said Madrillenos dont go to bed until they have 'killed the night'. I was surprised to find it was true. Not only for food but also they wouldnt dream of going to bed before dawn.

We dont expect such a similar culture to ours to have such different customs when it comes to timings to eat and sleep.

Travel blog: Tapas is the way of the future.

The theory of Tapas is simple, little and often. You have a drink and some cheese or bread with olive oil then move to the next bar and have some good ham with a beer. Then next bar a fino sherry with some olives. Ad infinitum, ad non infinitum.

The maderillos would never think of sitting in one place downing ten pints and then having a kebab. The restless latin spirit keeps them moving and suits the bar hopping lifestyle perfectly.

Its great for us tourists as well as it gives us a chance to sample loads of bars without getting slautered. Having the tapas with every drink means you never get really sloshed. The happy phase of drinking continues for hours!

Took a long walk today down La Gran Via and sampled some of the delights Madrid has to offer. Its fairly traffic heavy. Strike that. Its VERY traffic heavy with every avenue and alleyway crammed with cars vans and mopeds. All of the vehicles show the bumps and scrapes of what its like to live here.

It reminds me a lot of new york but with an actual soul. It has the spirit of Paris without the endless tourist traps and the friendlyness i felt in Berlin.

I feel welcome here, which is not something im used to feeling as a tourista!

airpueto

Madrid airport is a modern art sculpture put to industrial use. The huge space, with wooden rafters and angled skylights puts you in mind of a contempory cathedral. This temple to travel hosts more worshipers per day than madrids innumerable churches will host in a week. Verfent prayers to the God of lost bagage and Saint Christopher are audible from dawn till dusk.

They were still building the metro station that we were meant to take so a quick taxi ride throu rush hour gave us a glance at madrid from the asphalt.

It reminds me a lot of Paris but without the glaring tourist honey traps. The tapas are lovely and possibly the best invention since sliced bread. In fact they were orignally meant to be slices of bread to put over your drink to keep the flies off. Now its a stunning varity of hot and cold dishes all served to share.
Hotel is clean and ok, no AC thou but its fairly mild so not a problem so far.
There are hundreds of bars and resturants within walking distance and we managed 3 last night. More tonight no doubt!

Traveling isnt the bad part i actually enjoy seeing different cultures, trying new languages and enjoying strange terrifying foods. Its the waiting to travel that hurts. Every airport looks the same. Once you've sampled one awfull coffee you've had to remorgage the house for, you've tried them all.
My dream is to start a brand new airline. SOMNA-AIR. Upon check in our trained medical staff gently and competantly knock you the fuck out. On arrival you are carefully revived and fully refreshed you can start your day.

It cuts out all the pointless waiting around and endless visits to tie rack.

Yes i am still waiting for the frelling plane.