Castles in the sky.

The river trip is at an end and we are now in Brussels, Belgium and have until Wednesday to make our way down to Paris and then home. It has been three months and unlike our trip last year we did not have the benefit of Murray and Jill to inject a couple of familiar faces. This is not to say that we have not had great company, we have and people have been very kind to us, but three months is a long time to be living out of a suitcase.

Castles in the sky along the Rhine

They were many and varied.

 The past two weeks have been great, unpack once and that's that until you leave. Food has continued to be a bit of a problem, the quality has been excellent but the quantity,   it just keeps on being there from 7.30 in the morning till 9.0 to0 at night. Last evening we had the captain's farewell cocktail party followed by captains diner. The party was the usual drinkies and nibbles and this was followed by a six course diner.....New Zealand rack of Lamb making out star billing at least our Indonesian head chef assures us that it is New Zealand lamb cooked to perfection and really tender and yummy.

Pudding at Captain's Diner 

Lee and I with Roger and Barbara 

Andrew, the Farmer,  I always had a feeling that I was talking to Prince Charles

And these people completed our social circle aboard the Lord Byron

Living with people for two weeks in confined spaces soon drafts people into groups of like minded folks and so it was that the same ones seem to hang out together from the beginning to end. We being of antipodean origins seemed to attract all sorts and we would often be accosted with "Oh you are the New Zealanders, really wanted to go there" or some such other opening gambit, and that would be another half hour or so gone. By and large we have been treated very well, even winning at ruggers has not dented the enthusiasim, buying a found of drinks to celebrate the All Blacks win will not have done our popularity any harm.

We, neither Mrs Currin nor myself, have fallen in love with Brussels, it may be that we have not seen her at her best as I am told that she can be quite ravashing given the right mood. It may be that getting lost, not I , the bus driver I mean, the one taking us to the railway station, the Gare du Midi, where some of the party were to take the Eurostar back to St Pancras and then to their homes. This was not to be for Mrs Currin and I you will understand, no we had Brussels to see and other places as well, but we did not fall for Brusssels, she just wasn't our sort. We had booked a car here but found out a couple of days ago that we would not be able to collect it after 14h00 and we wouldn't be there in time no matter what, even had the bus driver not become lost. We had thought this one through and changed our booking for the airport at Brussels, they were open til 22h30...now how do you like that Brussels. The train as promised delivered us at the airport and before long we were comfortabley in a brand new Volvo automatic and on a one way hire down to Paris, not bad for having booked a Ford Focus manual, some people deserve it.

We had not stayed at a Camponile since last year in Spain and so it was pleasing that nothing  had changed, small and  not particularly up market, but adequate for for our needs, it  didn't matter that the water was cold in the morning as we had showered the evening before and the offer of wiping the previous evenings drinks Bill in compensation only added to the buoyant mood that accompanied us as we set off for Ghent the following morning. Ghent is a quite lovely wee place and has many historic buildlings. We took a short canal boat ride to see it at close hand and wern't at all disappointed for having done so.

Ghent (Various spellings depending on language)

 A short drive and we were soon in Brugges, this is truely magnificent and we could have spent much longer soaking up it's delights. This is Christmas, or at least it is approaching, and Belgium excels in Christmas temptations.

Shops full of Chocolate, to tempt the vulnerable young (and old)

 Time was starting to run low and we still had much to do and so reluctantly pushed on to Ypres where we had booked a B&B for the night. Arived Ypres and despite ringing and knocking it would appear that the owners of our B&B were not at home. I phoned them and found they were, indeed, not at home, out in the country for the day, they would be home by 18h30, would we mind waiting, we could have their superior room for no extra cost. We could have an early tea I suggested to Mrs Currin. We felt like a Chinese meal that evening so off to the information centre to check out on the array of Asian restaurants in town, there was but one Chinese and very good it was indeed, a great meal. The B&B was fabulous as were our host and hostest. This year, as I am sure will be known by all, is the centenary of the start of the WW1 and it is very relavent to this part of the world and so it seemed only appropriate that we should go down to the Menin gate for the Last Post. We were blissfully unaware of the readings and choirs that would also be part of the celebrations that night but a dashed good showing all round, many hundreds had turned out. Next morning we went to one of the war graves (Polygon Woods) where New Zealanders from Pashendale are buried to pay our respects, and on to Messin that town with a particularly New Zealand flavour, a statue of the New Zealand soldier and streets names in their honour. 

The New Zealand soldier, Messin

I had one more duty in this neck of the woods and that was a visit to my great uncle, my grandma's favourite brother and so it was to Gezaincourt in the Somme, a town which had no reason. to be fought over, especially by young men from the other side of the world, men who had not seen much more than their own back yards, and neither would they had not this war to end all wars happen into their lives. It was cruel, these young men had no right to take their innocence all the way to France with them, then leave it there, nor should their country have expected them to protect it's mother's dignity against those upstart Germans. No these were ordinary young Kiwis like my uncle James, a railway porter then a private, then a sergeant and then company sergeant major and then he was dead, all in less than a year. They say many went for the adventure, I hope they found some before it was all to late. The place where James now lies is well maintained by the Commonwealth War cemeteries commission, but not so the road to it. 

The cemetery was well kept.

As was Uncle James' grave

It is indeed a shame that the most significant thing that my uncle was to achieve in his shot life should be ignored by the powers that be. He achieved promotion at a. staggering rate reaching Company Major

It is a rude affair, two muddy tracks, we worried that the Volvo may become bogged but it was nothing to what these dead young men had had to endure, they had to dig trenches in it, fight in it, eat in it, sleep in it and finally die in it....all we did was to drive along it and dirty our car.

I may sound a little bitter in my opinions of ww1, but  find it very difficult to reconcile the killing of so many young men by  both sides when it is so hard to find the reason for their hatred of one another. Both enjoyed ideas of imperial grandeur and both denied the right of the other to have such ideas. This conflict could so easily been avoided with just a little diplomacy and a little more goodwill than waa available at that time, so let's just kill each other instead.

On that note I shall take my leave and wish you all the best, we arrive home this 

coming Friday and look forward to having a big catchup.

All the best and take care.

David

Goodbye Austria

It is true that there are no Kangaroos in Austria, so says the sign in the souvenir shop. Austria though, I think it would be fair to say, would probably outdo the Australians ten to one when it comes to culture. For our final night in Vienna  it seemed appropriate that some of this culture should be passed on to us and it was in the shape of a string quartet and I must say, that for someone such as I who is not known for his embracing the arts, it was very enjoyable, a most polished performance.
We moved on from Vienna in the afternoon and arrived in Melk late last evening during the drawing of the ship's raffle. The Dutch compere managed to make this into a very humorous affair which made up for our failure to win any of the tack that was on offer. On arrival in our cabin we found a letter on the bed inviting us to drinks with the captain Thursday evening in recognition of my birthday last weekend. I am hoping to be one of many as that the small talk can be spread a little wider. Anyway it is nice that the effort is made.

Passing under a low bridge. The ships bridge is lowered as are any masts etc. The bridges over the Main were to be even lower still and the sundeck became "Out of bounds" and the ship piloted with the Captain's head protruding from a hatch, bridge being lowered so as to be at deck level.

hatch

Main foyer and reception area

Looking aft along the passageway to passenger cabins.

So here we are in Melk, a small north Austrian town with a big Abbey and lots of tourists to see it. The Abbey stands atop the hill behind the town and so we were bused up to it but took the walking option on the way back down. This is a Benidictine Monastery which now incorporates a school taking both boys and girls.

A basic chart of where we are at and where we are going

Treasures in Melk Abbey

Use your imagination to turn through 90 degrees and you have another treasure from Melk Abbey

As can be seen from above we are now on the Main canal and currently in Wurzburg a pretty medieval town in the Frankia region of Bavaria. We had thought that Britain had lots of churches and cathedrals but Germany can outnumber them about five to one. In some towns several may adjoin each other. Some of these churches are so ornate that they become almost garish in appearance, but that is the way of it and the poor peasants who paid for this extravagance have long since departed from this world. One can only hope that they have found the peace and happiness due to them.

Unfortunatley the internet connection aboard the good ship Lord Byron is so bad currently that it has become almost impossible to upload photographs into this blog so I shall plod on without them.

Life aboard becomes a routine after just a few days, only the menu and our location changes. Last evening was the Chef's diner and was a sumptuous affair with some six courses to wade our way through, very very good quality. Tonight it is Indonesian night in the Lido Bar restaurant and we are joining eight others at a table. I think that this will fill this small alternative restaurant so should be good fun.

On the entire trip we will pass through some 66 locks and cruise on three different rivers which have been cunningly connected  by canal. It was a novelty for the passengers to watch the transit through the locks to begin with but now is scarcely noticed.

You may remember my mentioning one passenger who unwittingly or other bore more than a passing resemblance to Mr Hitler, not a good choice for a secret personna for one travelling through Germany I would have thought. I still have no idea why Mark (His deal name) has chosen this course but he was in his element in Nurnberg, striding onto the stage at Zeppilin Field and bursting into mock oration. It seems he suffered some sort of accident some years ago which resulted in a change of personality. Whatever the reason his wife has no sympathy and ribs him when he goes off the rails in this way. When one speaks with him, instead of the clipped voice one is expecting, he has rather a soft voice and is known to be a very humorous companion.

Mrs Currin has this afternoon gone for a walk ashore and has left me to continue with this blog, but without the help of pictures it is not so easy. I do hope she gets back in plenty of time for us to set sail, I am not sure that she has taken her shore pass with her. No, I see her approaching as I speak, do that is ok then. The passengers have by and large formed into groups for meals and other activities. We have in our circle an ex Brewery exec., a GP, an architect and a farmer... all decent sorts and very English. Their seems to be a large number of ex rugby players on aboard and so the interest in last Saturdays game was quite widespread.

A prize if you know the make and year of above car.

Bamburg.

I guess it was inevitable that a use would be found for these machines.

Internet is now becoming really bad and my battery is going out in sympathy so I must wish you auf wiedersehen and wish you all the best.

David

Goodbye Greece, Hello Britain (Again)

Where was I?  I think we were cruising around some of Greece's finest and there certainly is some terrific places to visit here, but we have decided that the big cruise ships are not for us, too many queues and too much food and drinks, not good for my waist line. I no longer have a waist line so what am I worrying about?.
Next in line to be visited was Crete and the highlight here was a visit to a vineyard and a bit of a knees up for those that like knees ups, not I , no I never have, so I am afraid that Crete was a bit of a disappointment for me. Well not really, they actually put on quite a good show and no pressure on me to make a fool of myself.

My worst nightmare.

The good ship Louis Olympia.

The ever ready lifeboat number 13, not a good sign for the superstitious amongst us.

Now as can be seen we ended up assigned to lifeboat number 13 which if you are superstitious could be just a little unnerving , but this was good, ours was the only lifeboat with two engines and it was fully enclosed so no cold nights on the high seas for us, no sir, it was almost worth having to take to the boats so one could be  a little smug. No, this was the lifeboat that the captain and navigator were sure to be in.

The cruise we were on was perhaps a little bit of a pressurised affair with only three to four days to fit it all in. This meant we had to "Do" Crete in the morning and Santorini in the late afternoon, the ship cruising whilst we ate once more. Around three in the afternoon the P.A. announced that we should all assemble on the upper deck to witness the approach to Santorini and thence to the tenders to be taken ashore. Buses had been laid on to take us up the cliff, these were to be sadly lacking when the cliff needed descending later that evening.The highlight of the excursion was to Oia, a small town on the rim of the volcano, and a worthy highlight it is.

Oia, Santorini.

This is a place that needs a good walking around and in the couple of hours that we had available to us I think that we did it justice. Back on the bus and we were then deposited in Megalochori, the town above the old harbour and given cable car tickets with which to make our descent and then catch the tender back to the ship. Neither Mrs Currin nor I are great cable car enthusiasts but managed to keep it together and not showing ourselves up in front of our fellow cruisers. Actually it was rather gentle in the cable car scheme of things.

Your car awaits sir.

This was our last shore excursion and all that remained was to return on board and eat once more and sleep some more and eat some more and then we are back in Athens and another flight back to England.

We had booked a cottage in a small village near Marlborough in Wiltshire called Ogbourne St. George, not to be confused with its neighbour Ogbourne St. Andrew nor another neighbour Ogbourne Maizey. This is a little like being in Midsumer Murder country and I am sure it is only done to confuse the Postman. Mmmm just had some fresh raspberries and meringue, YUM. Marlborough is the nearest large town and has provided worthy of two evening meals since our arrival, not that we eat out o. a regular basis, no it's just we were late home and, well you know how it is.

This cottage is up there on our three best cottage list, very nice with a bathroom you can swing several cats in, the most delightful sunroom and even a smart T V. induction looking hob and all the bells and whistles.

Since being here no grass has been allowed to grow beneath our feet and we have clocked up an impressive amount of miles in our wee Peugeot 2008, visiting Winchester, Fareham, Chichester, Castle Combe, Lacock, Avebury and others that have temporarily slipped my mind. These have all been first rate places to visit and very informative.

As you will be aware it is coming up to All Hallows eve and it seems it is very big business here in Britain, also it is half term break and so everywhere you go there are a host of children. The British seem very good at this sort of thing and where ever you go there are activities arranged for the kids, usually with a halloween flavour. I went to a museum of heavy guns at Fort Nelson on the Portsdown hills above Portsmouth and true to from lots of kids were there. There was a room, actually several as this was the guardhouse cells from yesteryear, where said children could make Halloween costumes and decorate themselves before being taken down into the old tunnels which form a  honeycomb under the fort.  The children were delighted and I must admit to a little buzz myself as they came along towards me.

Some children in the tunnels beneath Fort Nelson.

This monster weighs in at 200 tons and can throw a 1 ton shell some 20 miles.

(needs a railway track to move along so is a little limited)

We went to Avebury today and it was great to see so many families out amongst the stones and sheep even though the day was not the best.

Great to see the kids out and about.

In the Manor house everything can be touched, sat on, worn or whatever else you do with it and everyone was having a great old time of it.

Earlier we had been to Lacock, which is again a National Trust property and together with one of the best kept and pretty villages in Britain is not to be missed. Here we noticed several of the villagers had left vegitables, plants , produce and baking out with the simple instruction "Put money in letter box". I  couldn't but wonder what would happen to said money at home.

Honesty box sales.

The jar on the left of the produce in the top picture is for you to leave your money in and had several pounds in it when we made our purchase.

One of Britain's best villages.

The Abbey in Lacock was for five hundred years the home of the Talbot family and their most famous son, one Henry Talbot was the one most responsible for modern photography when in the 1830s he developed ( excuse the pun )  the process involving negative imagery in the photographic process thus enabling many many copies to be made of the original.

Talbot's study.

"The idea occured to me" he wrote "  how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper. And why should it not be possible I asked myself ."

And so it was possible as Talbot had believed and we have millions upon millions of photographs to prove it so.

Talbot seems to be my sort of guy and was surrounded by many scientists of the day, Babbage, Whetstone and Herschell amongst them, they would enjoy great diners as they discussed matters of science and physical discovery current in the day.

Another visit of great interest was to Winchester one of the great cities along with the likes of Salisbury which are so prominent in Britain's past . It is full of historic and interesting buildings along with the "Odd" interesting fellow. We were privileged to have one of these eccentrics introduce himself to us. In the ensuing 10 to 15 minutes we had heard his opinions on most everything and put the world well and truly to rights.

Mr Eccentric, Winchester 2014.

Debtors prison Winchester

Looking Down on Mrs Currin from the roof of Debtors Prison.

Winchester College, the oldest continuously running school in England.

Possibly the part that Murray would have been most familiar with had he attended Winchester College.

Jane Austen's Home at the time of her death.

Castle Combe above and how it appeared in the film "War Horses" lower.

Well that about gets me back up to date and just as well as tiredness is approaching, so better get off to bed .

All the best and be careful in whatever it is that you do.

David.

A Land of lost dreams

Having left the Adriaric and returned to Britain it seemed only logical that we should now return to Greece, that place where European civilisation is said to have started, well Crete I think, but that is part of Greece anyway. So it was, then, that on the morning of last Saturday we again look to that clouds, this time with Aegean Airlines and landed in Athens in time for an evening drive into the city. Now Mrs Currin does not like fast driving but it seems our driver did so, and in what seemed no time we were at the hotel and after a nice meal on the rooftop took to our beds to recover our composure and prepare for the next week or two.
Sunday morning and we were picked up for a tour of Athens, this centred naturally enough on the acropolis  but included other sites such as the temple of Zeus. One can but wonder at the amazing engineering involved in building these ancient buildings without the machinery and tools of today. The Parthenon alone must have stretched their knowledge to almost breaking point. We are so used to seeing these ancient monuments a we see them to today that it is almost impossible to think of them in their brightly painted colours that they enjoyed in antiquity. The whole is explained and shown in great detail in the museum of The Acropolis nearby.

The theatre atop the Acropolis.

The Temple of Zeus

Modern Olympic Stadium (1896)

Statuary in the Acropolis Mueseum

Some of it can look quite realistic

A note here about Olympic stadiums, there being four of real note in Greece, the original from the modern Olympics of 1896 in Athens, the original ancient stadium in Olympia, the ancient stadium in Delphi and the one from the Athens games more recently. I can now say that I have visited all of the above and been duly impressed by them all.
If I may digress here just a little I had thought that I had a fair grasp of the Greek alphabet but when trying to actually make some sense of signs etc. in Greece they take on a while new life of their own. By the time we left the mainland for our cruise it was starting to come together a little. Must try harder.

There are many ancient theatre.

Some allow little girls to fulfill their dreams.

Being a Sunday, Greece does not function at its fullest with only food and suchlike shops being open, never mind an early night won't do anything harm.
Monday and the real fun begins, we are loaded into a tourist coach, along with God knows how many millions of others, and first stop is at that triumph of engineering, the Corinth Canal, first mooted in something like 1800 B.C. but not completed till 1800 something or other A.D., it contects the Gulf of Corinth with the Aegean thus joining the Ionian  sea with the Aegean and  cutting some 450 km off the trip. The resulting canal whilst still functioning is a little on the tight side for modern shipping and none to deep either.

The Corinth canal.

Now, the gulf of Corinth has two openings, one at either end since the completion of the canal. It is the end that opens into the Ionian that posed a problem, but the French once more had the answer. You see the Ionian sea end is quite wide , allowing shipping to transit freely, but not so road traffic, hence a 2.5 km bridge in the style of the famous Milau bridge. It is now the pride and joy of the area and is the only one of the great bridges where I have been able to climb on top of the toll bridge for photos.

Gulf of Corinth Bridge 

And, yes, I did scale the toll bridge.

The title of todays blog might seem just a tad obscure but springs from the observation that there seems to be an inordinate number of incomplete and abandoned buildings and I am not talking of the ancient ones. Also the rubbish is obviously more easily left to rot on the roadside than to have it collected . We were given an explanation for the rubbish which included something to do with the amalgamation of local bodies without defining just who was responsible for what . Ah well I guess it could be that.

Rubbish seems to just pile up.

The tour from here on is like a whose who of Greece, Athens , Corinth , Midea, Olympia , Delphi, Sparta, Meteora, and Thebes to mention the most obvious. I would have to say Meteora with it's monasteries perched precariously atop thousand feet high rocks takes some beating, the paintings which adorn the interior of the chapels were all done by one man over a period of years and are of impressive quality.

An assortment of Monastories and the lower one, a Nunnery.

(note the stairs cut into the rock second one up. Access can be a bit of a challenge)

It was at a lunch stop at the nearby town of Kalambaka that I suddenly realized that I no longer had my camera. It had been playing up a little and I had been out in Athens and purchased a small can of CRC and given it a squirt....... only to make it worse. We had decided that maybe a new camera was on the cards once we got back to Britain, but to my joy, the next morning the camera was working the best it had for some time so all was well. Now the camera was lost.  The bus was stopped for me to retrace my steps but to no avail. Our companions aboard the bus offered to give me copies of their snaps and an hour or so spent working out whether we had the correct cables etc to make these copies on my tablet. It was then that one of the young Asian ladies ( one that I had thought was a boy) tapped me on my shoulder and proffered the lost camera. It seems that it had somehow ended up on the floor beneath my seat on the bus and had gone unnoticed till now. Mrs Currin claims my face went red but I deny that. Needless to say the Aussies aboard thought this great sport. Now a pair of these said Aussies befriended us and proved to be amongst the most mean people we had ever met. We called them the Maussies which seemed quite fitting as they were actually quite annoying.
Anyway I had been reunited with my camera and felt quite pleased with myself. We have made many friends on previous tours and on the recent Adriaric one had become very good friends with a couple from Berkshire , he an architect and she a magistrate, with whom we enjoyed several happy evenings, but we are not good at maintaining these friendships much beyond the end of the tour. Must try harder again.

Back to Greece. The tour proceeded and each stop produced more spectacular archeological sites than the previous and I would be hard pressed to pick a winner.
We returned to Athens on Friday after covering around 1500 km and quite tired from it all, but wait there is more.... and so on Saturday it was an early start being picked  and deposited at the cruise ship warf ready for the next highlight, a short cruise around the Aegean, calling at Mykonos, Ephesus, Patmos, Crete and Santorini. This will get us back to Athens on Monday and a flight back once more to Britain. Now Mrs Currin is not the best of sailors and was never too keen on making her home on the sea however briefly this may be for. Well there has been this hurricane crossing the Mediterranean and the remnants are currently slap bang over the Aegean sea, just where we happen to be taking this wee cruisey thing. Bit of a slop, big ship but still rolling around a bit and Mrs Currin is not a happy camper. Nothing to worry about says I . Too rough to stop at Mykonos says the ship. Told you so says Mrs Currin.

Mrs Currin's worst nightmare.

First stop now Kusadasi for Ephesus.

Ephesus remains one of the world's great Greek...Roman archeological sites and although far behind Pompeii for completeness it is still just as interesting . We included a tour of the Terrace Houses in our overall tour and this was magnificent.

Public library, ancient Ephesus.

I think that I will have to leave things about now , we are at the airport in Athens awaiting our flight to Heathrow.

I mentioned earlier the people on the bus, the "Maussies" well on the some bus was an Islamic fellow , Hooshdil from *******astan, and I would greet him Each morning with "Salom Hooshdil" and he would respond with "Kia Ora David".  He approached me one day for a bit of a serious chat about why us kiwis and Aussies were always having ,what he thought, were arguments. It took quite some time to convince him that we were really friends and it was all harmless banter, it's just what Aussies and Kiwis do.

I had diner the other night with an american Indian Chief... had a picture of himself in full regalia on a visit to Washington. Last night though took the cake, another Islamic fellow and wife, food spread all over the table, encroaching on our half. I can understand them not eating pork , it would be cannibalism..

On that thought I shall leave you.

All the best and stay careful

David