wheresphil

One week till I start walking the South West Coast Path

Tuesday 28 July 2015 – Walthamstow.

It is hard to believe that in a week’s time I am heading off on a bit of an adventure. Staying in England, and heading back to the South West Coast Path, though this time with a pack and a tent. I have been mildly obsessed with the path ever since I was a support driver for Malcolm Law and Tom Bland when they ran the path for charity back in 2012. I cannot get enough of it, mind you it is pretty long, so there is plenty to go around.

Unlike those two, I am not mad enough to consider trying to run the entire 630 miles, so I am planning on walking it instead, doing so over a couple of years rather than one long session. This summer I am lucky to have a month off work, and will do three weeks of walking – if I can.

When I first decided to do this a few weeks back I had in mind a three week power walk, carrying all my gear, free camping as much as possible, cooking and being self sufficient. The reality of the distance and the terrain has now fully set in, and mixed with the reality of my fitness and experience (or lack thereof) of multi day hikes I have settled for doing the best I can and just enjoying myself. If I do three days walking and three weeks of lying in the sun reading a book, then so be it. At least I left home. I suspect I will achieve something in between.

One of the many things I enjoy about doing different things is all the research that goes into these activities. I realise I am not going to Antarctica or the Amazon jungle, so research is sort of overkill, but it is part of my routine and I get great pleasure out of it – mixed with a bunch of self doubt and fear thrown in for good measure, once the reality of hiking sunk in.

For this trip I needed to pretty much buy everything, I have a good travelling pack, but it would be hopeless for hiking, I have a sleeping bag, and that is pretty much it. I needed a tent, a stove, sleeping mat, walking poles and a raft of other bits and pieces thrown in. I spent a lot of times in shops, reading, internet searching and generally enjoying myself researching things I knew very little about. Last weekend I went out and bought it all. I spent a lot of money as I prefer to buy quality over cheap. But I am happy with my purchases.

At the weekend I had a test day of putting up the tent, checking the stove, and a first load of the pack with most of the crap I have accumulated for the trip, some which will be dumped before I go I am sure…

The tent went up pretty easily and is as small as I expected a light weight two person tent to be, I reckon it will fit me and my pack comfortably, but I would not be wanting to share it with anyone else.

The surprising thing was when I took it down and put it all back in its bag, it actually fitted with room to spare. This was actually a shock, a pleasant one mind.

After a bit more research this week and a second packing session – I have tossed out some stuff already, I have found that the modern thing to do is put the tent at the top of the pack not the base.

The pack is very shiny !! I remember when the Macpac pack I took on my travels was this shiny. It isn’t any more 🙂

I have decided that for this trip I am not going to take a laptop, I was planning on taking my little travelling laptop and doing some writing and photo editing on the way, but even the small laptop weighs too much, and I am going to have to be very weight conscious (pack weight, not me weight. I plan on eating like a pig). I will take a pen and notebook and more flash memory for the camera instead. So there will unlikely be any posts along the way.

Not taking a laptop worries me somewhat as I will have to decide now what music I want to listen to for three weeks. What if I change my mind ?

It is a hard walk, the more I read the tougher it sounds, while there are no mountains to traverse the path is a constant stream of small ascents and descents, and a lot of them steep. I admit to being a little pensive about the whole thing. I guess it all adds to the excitement, in a way.

This Friday is my last day at work for 4 weeks, Yay !! As a great start to my holiday, El and I are off to the lovely lovely city of Bruges for the weekend. We are very excited about this. El has not been there and I have not been since 1987. It was the first European town I stopped at on my incomplete Europe tour and I shot a whole role of film there, which was utterly extravagant at the time. I was stunned at how beautiful the old town was, I suspect not much has changed since then. I also suspect I will take more photos this time!

Wahoo !! Looking forward to an awesome August !!

A quick family catch up in New Zealand.

Sunday 21 June 2015 – London.

I have been back in London from my quick trip back to New Zealand for over four weeks now and this is my first attempt at writing about the visit. I have been busy again with work, and we have had some lovely English summer evenings that have been perfect for an after dinner walk – but really it has just been a hard post to write. It is not getting easier with time either, my feelings towards the country in which I was brought up are very mixed now. I loved seeing my family and friends, but I hated the central part of Auckland, was ambivalent about the rest and felt very disconnected from the place. It was as if I did not belong in the city anymore.

Maybe it was the fact it was a short trip, that I was jet lagged and tired for most of the time I was there, who knows. I knew it was not going to be a ‘fun’ trip before I left, but I found it far more draining than I expected.

I arrived on Friday 12^th at 5:00 am, after three mostly reasonable flights via Dubai and Melbourne. I would not normally elect to fly with an airline that makes two stop offs, but I had old air points with Qantas which were slowly disappearing with age so thought I would use them to get an upgrade to premium economy on the trip to NZ. It made a huge difference and I really liked the leg to Dubai, great flight. I witnessed a sad experience at Melbourne airport security as one of the officials was screaming at (I think) an Indonesian couple who obviously had limited English as they tried to take a stroller through the security gate. He was a miserable prick, and a classic example of what I hate about Australia.

It was great to see my mum as I walked out into the arrival hall, I was very appreciative of her coming out so early on a Friday to collect me! I spent the morning with mum and after a brief rest went in to Auckland city to do my shopping and visit my daughter at work. I was staying at a mates place near the centre of the city and was lucky to have a car again for the entire time I was there. You have to have a car in Auckland, much as I want to use public transport, it is a bit shit – especially compared to London.

It is early winter in NZ in June, though the weather for the trip, in the main was pretty good, though Friday was miserable, windy and wet, and I was miserable with it. I really hated the city centre again, no soul, no spirit and not the place I enjoyed. The shops I frequented over many years, like Whitcoulls on Queen St and (tears) Real Groovy Records are closing, Real Groovy so another hideous, unnecessary and stupid tower can be built, though fortunately it just moving. I did get some great second hand records though!

Though not all was changing, I was after a couple of books and managed to get both of them at my favourite Auckland book shop Unity Books, and I was so pleased it was still there on High St.

My daughter works in a lovely new organic cafe on Victoria St, and I was very excited to be able to go and see her for lunch on my first day, wonderful to see her smiley face.

I walked up to the top of town to visit a new record shop Flying Out records, I was after some new NZ music, but ended up with two English albums Smile Loved the store though.

And back down again through Myers Park, one of the few highlights of the city centre.

It was way too early to turn up at my friends place for dinner, so I stopped at Mission Bay on Auckland’s beautiful, glorious, wonderful waterfront for a glass of pinot and to catch a traditional photo of Rangitoto Island.

I stayed the night at my friends place with the plan of going for a mountain bike ride on the Saturday morning. I awoke with a mild hangover and to some lousy windy and rainy weather. Mountain biking was off, not sure if I was happy or sad with that.

Once the weather had settled I decided to head out to Piha just to get sand between my toes and to enjoy a brunch at the Piha Cafe. The cafe was full when I arrived so I settled for some lovely cold sand between my toes. Living in London I don’t get to visit the beach that much, and I do miss the easy access to these lovely wild beaches I had when I lived here.

My little red car.

I stayed at my sister’s house over the weekend, she moved here last year and has a really nice small growth of young kauri trees out the back. Lovely!

I also managed to spend lots of time with my family, including my grandson Mason. I see him on Skype fairly regularly,

I spent the rest of the trip staying with my mum and seeing my family as much as possible. Apart from a day out walking on Monday, which I posted about previously the rest of the trip was busy with jobs and organising things.

I have finally committed to moving the last of my stuff from New Zealand to London, there was not a whole lot of stuff left, and the cost of shipping all of it versus shipping most of it was negligible so I organised for a shipping company to come round and pick up the lot. I will finally have my records and my turntable in the same country as me.

On Thursday night I went out for dinner with some friends and my daughter and NZ based son, the kids and I then went to Whammy Bar and the Wine Cellar to see my nephew the drummer in the band ‘Heroes for Sale’. I have never seen them play so it was awesome to get to go to a gig while I was here, they were pretty damn cool.

Friday the 19^th was the reason I came to NZ, it is Mason’s first birthday, and my oldest son is coming over from Australia for the weekend. I didn’t do too much during the day, final organisation and a last bit of shopping before going to pick up son from the airport to take him to my daughters house and for the first time in a couple of years I got to see all my children together in the same place.

Saturday we had a family party for Mason, firstly at my daughters and then at my mums. I think he had a good time! I am not sure about those dodgy moustaches though !

And then Sunday, it was brunch with the family, before taking my son to the airport and then heading their myself. 8 days and my trip was over.

My journey home was the reverse of the trip out, with stop offs in Melbourne and Dubai. I had another mini-drama in Melbourne when I left my glasses on the plane after they fell out of my pocket. I was in a mild panic in the airport as I had visions (blurry) of 20 hours of flights to London not being able to read or watch movies, but fortunately Qantas managed to reunite my glasses with me before we left. Well done Qantas !

I loved Dubai airport.

It was good trip to New Zealand, really busy, so no proper holiday – I look forward to that at the end July.

It was great to see my family, especially to have all the kids and my grandson together in the same place at the same time. I was disappointed in NZ, I don’t like the politics there and I was disappointed in what I read in the papers and saw on TV news about the state of the country and the attitudes of some of the people. Auckland seems lifeless and desolate and will only get worse as they build more flats and apartments for overseas buyers who leave them empty, driving more people out of the centre of the city. Thank God for the west coast beaches, the Waitakere Ranges, the bush and my friends and family.

A stroll in the bush

Monday 15 June 2015 – Auckland, New Zealand.

I have been in New Zealand for three days and have pretty much had no sleep since arriving. A combination of strange beds – three nights and three different beds, and trying to sleep when I should be getting up for work has not been helped by my failure to sleep easily. So I am tired.

I have had a good couple of days so far, I have completed all the shopping I need to do, cuddled my grandson and seen all of my Auckland based family and some of my friends. It feels like I haven’t stopped, but in reality it has all been a fairly static trip so far. I was going to go for mountain bike ride on Saturday morning but the weather conspired against us, today was going to be a trail run but Vicki, who I was to run with, had a monster race over the weekend so we decided to make it a walk instead. It suited me, as I said before I was tired.

The original idea was to run up Mt Pirongia in the Waikato, a spectacular run/walk that I have not done, but seeing as we were not going run it seemed a bit silly to get up before dawn to drive for a couple of hours just to walk. We decided to head to an old favourite, Piha – where there is good coffee as well as good trails.

Piha is not my favourite beach on Auckland’s west coast, it is a close second to Karekare. However, Piha was one of my favourite places to trail run. Wonderful trails with awesome views and the bonus of a great cafe where turning up looking for coffee covered in mud and smelling a bit was not overly frowned upon.

Disappointing as it was, with hindsight, walking rather than running was a good idea. I have hardly run in weeks and Vicki has been knocking out fast paced ultra-marathons like they are going out of business. There was no way I would have survived a run like Pirongia. Walking meant we could natter for longer – including up the many climbs, and nattering is something we do best on our runs.

We had decided on a nice loop from the end of Glen Esk Rd, that captures all the good things about this section of the Waitakeres – a nice stream, kauri trees, some views and some glorious twisty, rooty single track.

Kauri die-back is a serious issue for the Waitakere Ranges – as well as other areas of native forest in the north of New Zealand. Kauri Dieback is caused by a fungus like disease that is killing kauri trees, it was only discovered in 2008. It is a spore that that gets into the roots of the tree, spreading up and eventually killing the tree, trees of all ages are affected and it is thought to be spread by animals, birds and humans. There are numerous spray stations around the park.

Like a lot of the waterways in the park in the early 19^th century the Piha stream was dammed and then used to float kauri logs down to logging mills on the coast. The remains of some of the dams can still be found in various locations.

We headed up Centennial track from Piha Valley track.

There are still a couple of fun sections on the trail, yet to be made day tripper friendly…

With a rewarding view down the valley.

Vicki had been telling me about the work the council had been doing on ‘maintaining’ some of the tracks, especially those on the Hillary Trail, the 85km long section of trails made famous by Sir Ed Hillary. This basically means widening the trail, removing anything remotely challenging and then covering the track in gravel, – thus removing half the fun of bush walking, but making the trails easier for those who don’t want to get dirty I guess. On the Forbes Trail it was pleasing to see they had not been every where !

Our final trail was the Maungaroa Ridge track, one of my favourite trails.

It is a great running trail, especially going anti-clockwise as there is more downhill, there are also some really nice kauri sections and it was lovely to see they are all still standing.

There is a look out just off to the side of the trail before it drops back down to Glen Esk Rd and back where we started.

And back over where we had just walked.

The Piha Cafe was closed due to a power outage, which was a real bummer, so Vicki and I headed back into Titirangi for a late lunch in one of the many cafes there.

It was a really nice day out, great to catch up with Vicki and share each others news and solve all of life’s issues.

Flying away.

Friday 12 June 2015 – Auckland, New Zealand.

In life time I was only travelling for 28 hours, but I left London on Wednesday and arrived in Auckland on Friday – at stupid o’clock, 5 AM. The vagaries of travelling east meant I lost half a day – so I am still wondering what happened to Thursday. Though wondering what happened to a Thursday is not an unusual occurrence. Not because I do anything on a Wednesday night, it is just one of those unexciting, meaningless days in a normal week that makes Saturday seem further away that it should be.

I have been looking forward to this trip back to New Zealand for a while, though I am not really having a ‘holiday’ holiday, this trip will mainly be about sorting things out. I was originally planning on a trip in May (previously it was January, and then Easter), but my work project conspired against me each time. Missing May meant I missed my mum and two of my children’s birthdays, but this trip allows me time to celebrate my grandson’s first birthday, a fairly momentous occasion and worth heading ‘home’ for. What I was mainly looking forward to was handing over my work to my newly hired contract helper and walking out the office door last night ! Freedom !!!

I did start the day with a few remaining work tasks before heading off to the airport at 10:00 for a civilised flight time of 1:30 pm. Over a few years I have accumulated a few air miles on my credit card so decided I would use them and upgrade myself to premium economy on the leg to New Zealand, which means I fly Qantas via Dubai and Melbourne. I am not a big fan of multiple stopovers but the upgrade and the timing of the flights made this the best option. Sitting here typing in my wide premium economy seat with extra leg room and a glass of pretty decent red wine I am not going to complain about the extra stop. I will see how it all feels once I arrive in Auckland! There was a slightly late departure, though a glass of bubbles eased the pain somewhat.

It is a long way to Auckland from London, with this set of three flights taking just over 28 hours to get me there with over 24 hours of that being flying time. I watched five movies, mostly terrible, read one magazine and half a book, ate four meals, drank red wine, coffee and whisky and what felt like gallons of water and slept not at all.

Did I enjoy it – No.

Was it tolerable – Yes.

Am I glad I came over – I will just have to see.

St Mary’s Church, Walthamstow.

Sunday 07 June 2015 – Walthamstow.

Like the Parkland Walk from yesterday, an exploration of Walthamstow’s St Mary’s Church has been on my to-do list for over a year, and since becoming a worker I have just not had the time or the inclination to explore it, even though it is only a ten minute walk from home…

St Mary’s has had a longer history than I first thought with the first church being built on the site in the 12 century, though not much of the original building remains perhaps just the footers at the end of the internal columns right at the front of the church. Reconstruction, modification and expansion of the church regularly took place over the next 400 hundred years with further work in the 19^th century.

This was slightly wasted as the church was extensively damaged during the second world war and all the railings around the church yard were removed for the war effort – to be replaced in the 1950s.

It was a fairly last minute decision to walk up and take some photos, we had been having some quite nice weather and the grass around the gravestones was long and moody and I knew that if I left it until my trip to New Zealand this week, it would all be mowed flat when I returned.

I have not used my big old DSLR for ages, but once I started using it again I realised how much of a mistake that was. I love that camera.

A walk in the Park(land)

Saturday 06 June 2015 – Parkland Walk, London.

The Parkland Walk has been on my list of things to do for ages and ages, I cannot remember how it got on the to-do list or where I discovered it, but it looked like it was worth doing – mainly just because it was there to be done.

The walk follows the path of an abandoned railway line that was ripped up in the 1970s and turned into a park in 1984, it goes from Finsbury Park up to Highgate, it is not particularly long, particularly interesting or particularly scenic. But it is a really lovely short walk, taking under an hour from start to finish. It is also incredibly popular, I have never seen so many runners in London on a Saturday morning. It was a nice sunny day, though cool and very windy. A good running or walking day.

I am sitting at my mum’s dining table in New Zealand as I write this, I am tired after three days with almost no sleep, and jet-lagged from my flight over from London, so not feeling the most effusive today.

The path is surrounded by a narrow band of scrub and trees which mostly the hide the houses that run close to the path.

As the path is based on an old railway line there are numerous bridges along the way as the path passes under the roads. These are the heavily graffitied and a reminder that we are in the middle of a city.

There was also a really cool little playground under the trees.

Just past the remains of Crouch Hill station I spotted this sculpture lurking in one of the arches, quite frightening ! It is the Spriggan and is by Marilyn Collins, it was installed in 1993. According to urban legend, a ghostly ‘goat-man’ haunted the walk in the 1970s and 1980s and children dared each other to walk the walk between Crouch End Hill bridge to the Crouch Hill bridge in the darkness. The sculpture, and Parkland Walk generally, provided the inspiration for Stephen King’s short story “Crouch End” I can see why!

This section off the path ends just before Highgate Station when the lines go into old tunnels that have now been blocked off as they are now the home to bats.

We walked up past the station and across into Highgate Wood.

After seeing a sign pointing to a cafe we decided to take a break and sit down for coffee and cake, before backtracking a bit and heading up/down to Highgate.

We walked down through Waterlow Park in Highgate and on to Gospel Oak station to catch the train back to Walthamstow. El did. I took a detour through Shoreditch and grabbed a couple of new release records on the way. I wanted something new to listen to on the plane, but neither came with download codes which was a wee bit annoying.

It was a lovely walk, somewhere new to explore and something I would recommend on a sunny day. London never fails to amaze me with the amount of outdoorness there is.

Strawberry Hill Pond

Saturday 23 May 2015 – Epping Forest.

Now that I am a working man I can fully appreciate the fact that May has two bank holiday weekends, or long weekends as we would call them in New Zealand. This weekend is the second of them. Sadly it is also the last long weekend for quite a long time, but at least summer holidays are looming in this, the northern half of the world, so there is something to look forward to.

On the subject of holidays, I have two planned so far for the coming summer; a quick ten day visit to New Zealand in June for my grandson’s first birthday and then I am taking the whole of August as a break. I have a plan for the month off; it involves lots of walking, a tent and parts of the southwest coast path – I am very drawn to that (not so) small, but beautiful part of England’s coast. I blame Malcolm Law!

One of the things I really enjoy about any trip or activity I do is the pre-planning and research, so with both NZ and a proper backpacking holiday approaching I have been spending an awful lot of time in front of the laptop surfing the internet to book flights, plan accommodation and research the best pack and tent for multi-day solo walking trips. This usually ends up with me getting distracted, looking for some obscure noisy band and then buying their records, like the new album by 93Millionmilesfromthesun which I bought last week.

The weather forecast for this weekend is looking reasonable – i.e. it is not supposed to rain, so El and I decided this morning to make the most of the day and get out for a walk. I had wanted to find Strawberry Hill Pond in Epping Forest since I rode past it a few weeks back on a group mountain bike ride, as the sun was out we decided it would be a good thing to do with the day.

We caught a bus up to Loughton as it is on the edge of the forest and not far from where the map said the pond was likely to be. As we walked up the road from Loughton into and through the forest it started to drizzle with rain so we instead of heading immediately into the forest we chose to walk up the road a bit further and stop at the Robin Hood pub for a coffee and a bit of shelter.

We were the only ones in there at 11:30am. I supposed that is a good thing.

We hung around for a while after the coffee as we waited for the rain to stop, but eventually gave up and headed out into a light drizzle, the pub is in the middle of the forest and we only had to walk a short distance to get onto a section of single track used by the mountain bikers – and into the shelter of the trees, as we headed back to the car park where the path off to the ponds started.

As we approached the car park I suggested taking a short detour in the complete opposite direction to look for Loughton Camp, the site of an Iron Age fort. I always imagine ancient fort sites as having ruined walls and slightly leaning old towers, but these very old forts were made of wood and are long gone. All that is left is the earth works. As this was not part of the plan before we left home I only had a vague idea of its location and after 15 minutes of walking up some short, but surprisingly steep inclines we turned around and headed back to where we should have been going in the first place. I will try and find the fort on a bike ride one day soon.

Strawberry Hill Pond, like all the other ponds in this stretch of the wood was formed when Epping New Road was built in the 1830s and gravel was dug from the ground for its construction. Sadly the early burst of clean sun we saw before leaving home did not make a repeat appearance after the rain and the light was terrible for taking photos. Flat and dull. None of the photos I took around the ponds are particularly good, they do show what a lovely spot it would be on a nice day though.

We walked around the outside of the small pond, and I spotted three herons sitting in the top of a tree on one of the islands in the pond. The pond is not fed from any stream so the water is all supplied by rain, it is brown due to the soil rather than it being dirty. It really is a pretty area and it was a shame that the sun was not shining on it to really make the colour in the trees shine.

The herons flew away soon after we saw them. One of them landed on the shore on the far side of the pond so we headed in that direction, just as I went to take a photo from a spot quite close to the bird, a couple coming the other way disturbed the heron before I could press the shutter.

For some reason I was really surprised to see the herons today, I never really saw them as a bird that lived in such proximity to a big city, sometimes it is really good to have perceptions changed.

I thought I knew the way to Chingford station from the pond, and while we did not get lost on the way back and I am fairly sure we took the correct paths, it did take a lot longer to get there than I expected it would. Though there are not too many other places I would rather be unsure of my location in. We soon popped out of the forest onto the bottom of the final hill before lunch.

We chose to stop for lunch at Butler’s Retreat, a Victorian era building, originally designed as a food store, though it has been a cafe for quite a long time now. Neither of us had been there for lunch, plus it was the first place we came to!

We both had bacon sandwiches and they were excellent, as were the coffees and cakes we decided to have for dessert, after all that walking we felt we had deserved cake! The food was very expensive, more than it should be, but at least it was good. I would stop there again I think.

With full bellies we waddled the last kilometre to Chingford Station to catch the train back to Walthamstow and home.

I was disappointed with the weather – especially the unexpected rain shower, but it was a really nice walk and lovely to be back outside. It is a real blessing to have Epping Forest so near by.

Bluebells in Wanstead Park

Monday 05 May 2015 – Wanstead Park, London(ish).

Monday was a public holiday, YAY, a much needed day off of work. Though I did work Saturday, so really it was like a normal weekend, with the added promise of a short week ahead.

The forecast had been a bit dubious leading up to the weekend and it was still pretty unclear most mornings what the day was actually going to hold. Sunday was spent doing not much, a bit of work here and there, the reorganising of my stuff, putting away winter clothes – and finding a bunch of old band t-shirts that had been squirreled away.

We didn’t really have a plan for today, we started off with seeing what the weather would actually do, and as it did not look to bad out there I decided I wanted to see bluebells in Epping Forest rather than head into London and visit the Tate, which was the rainy day plan A. A quick internet search suggested the best blue bells were in Wanstead Park, an edge extension of Epping. As I have not been there before we decided it was worth a visit.

We caught the overground to Wanstead Park station which naturally is next to Wanstead Flats, not Wanstead Park – the flats are a park, but not THE park. Confused ? We walked across the flats, up a side street and were soon into the park proper. I like the fact that Fishing is in capital letters and swimming and bathing are not. Does that mean that Fishing is a more serious offence ?

I had read that the bluebells would be found in Chapel Wood, however none of the signs were giving away the location of Chapel Wood, so we decided to do the decent thing and head to the tea hut for a cup of tea/coffee first, and do the umanly/unBritish thing of asking directions.

On the way to the hut we passed by the tree lined walk to the “Temple”. I had no idea what this was until I looked it up when I got home. The temple was built around 1760, in a section of a much larger estate. The estate was run down by its financially lax owner in the 1800’s and part of it was sold off to the Corporation of London to form what is now Wanstead Park.

The tea hut is the old grotto left that was also part of the original estate and they made a pretty good flat white too…

We were given directions to the blue bells, which ended up being pretty much back the way we came, though closer to the Temple.

This seasonal spring blue bell patch is supposed to the best in all of Epping Forest, which must make it one of the best in London. It was truly lovely – and this comes from someone who does not go all goo over a flower bed. I guess I liked it because it was wild. I took a lot of photos, as did many other people !

I liked that there were paths running through the patch so people could get closer without trampling them. I also liked it that most people stayed on the edges so every one got to take photos without having the frame filled with strangers.

I even asked someone to take a photo of El and I together as well.

Before we left home in the morning we had sort of planned on walking back, so after a brief start in the wrong direction before consulting a map, we headed homeward. Most of the way was under the trees and off the road, which was very nice and I loved the oak trees that lined the way.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock was born in nearby Leytonstone, and had no previous relationship with this hotel, which is named after him. It did not stop us going in for a half though…

It was a lovely afternoon walk, we probably did 6 or 7 miles as well, so good exercise in the sun !

Colchester – far more interesting than expected!

Saturday 25 April 2015 – Colchester.

My last post was all about a training walk on Box Hill for the Oxfam Trailwalker 100km walk I WAS going to be doing in July. As the ‘was’ suggests I am no longer doing the walk. After lots of serious thought I knew I was not going to be able to do this walk justice, I have done virtually no training since the start of the year and having done a 55km run I know what a 100km walk is going to feel like without training. I also know how my body feels now and punishing it further is not going to help. So, partly because it was unfair on my team mates who seem to have more time than me, partly as it would be unfair on El if I work half the weekend and then walk the rest, but mainly because I just don’t think I can do it I have pulled out. Luckily it was early enough for my spot in the team to be easily filled.

As always seems to be the case at the moment, the main reason for my life being so busy is work. I had a bit of a slump week this week so decided last night that I was going to take a day out. I have not had a whole day to myself since I went to Dartmouth before Christmas and I just needed some time when the only interactions I had with other humans was to order food and drink.

Not wanting to spend too much money, but still wanting to do something that got me out of London, I decided to go to Colchester in Essex. It wasn’t ideal, there was no beach for instance, but it was close enough, cheap enough and it had a castle and a river.

The other reason for visiting Colchester was there are frequent, direct trains from Liverpool St Station, Walthamstow also has a line to Liverpool St; home to Colchester was therefore not much more than an hour and no hassle at all. In my book that it always an incentive, inner-city travelling at the weekend is too reminiscent of commuting!

From my limited experience it seems to be the tradition for old towns that are local centres to be surrounded by wide, busy pedestrian unfriendly roads that need to be navigated round and over if you are walking from the station. Colchester was no exception. I had no map, and had only vaguely consulted Google Maps on the train, but when I got to the River Colne and a path that led in the direction of a park I decided to leave the road behind and see where I ended up. Good (not) to see the river is (not) in good health.

My decision to leave the road was a good one as I found myself at the end of Castle Park, which was going to be my first stop.

Colchester’s main claims to historical fame, is it is Britain’s oldest recorded town (from AD 79) and also has the oldest Roman era city walls in the country. The Romans built their first British fortress in Colchester soon after the invasion in AD43, this became the centre of a colony which was then sacked by Boudica’s army in AD61. Soon after this event London became the capital of Roman Britain, who knows what would have happened if the sacking never took place ? The famous walls were built when the city was rebuilt from AD65-80 and are almost 4 miles long.

All that remains of Colchester Castle is the keep, the largest remaining keep in Europe. Construction was completed in 1100 and it was built on top of the old Roman temple. Like all such buildings it has a chequered history and while it was serving as a prison in the 1640s it was the home of the Witchfinder General, Mathew Hopkins. I imagine it was not pleasant to be under investigation.

Like a lot of these old buildings it was built over a few decades using the various materials that were around, including stone and bricks salvaged from the old Roman buildings. I love the randomness of the window openings.

The castle has an excellent local museum inside, it was 7 pounds to enter, which I thought was good value for what was there. It was interesting and very child friendly with loads of (un-museum like) ‘Please touch’ signs on various activities. It was also pleasing to see that it was quite popular with the Colchester community with a few families looking around.

I really liked this chariot race game, these two couples were really enjoying themselves Smile Though I will say they dig hog it and I didn’t get a go. Though I am sure that if I had asked…

There were quite a few things of interest to see inside, I liked this tombstone of Marcus Favonius Facilis, who dies in Colchester soon after arriving in Britain in AD43. This is one of the earliest complete tombstones in Britain.

And another sculpture from the same period, the Colchester Sphinx.

I left the museum in search of the next piece of history on my list, St Botolph’s Abbey. Not having a map meant I got a bit misplaced. But I did find this really cool section of the city walls – I love the weeds growing out of this almost 2000 year old piece of history.

I passed by St Mary’s Church which I had read about in the museum. During the civil war in 1648, Colchester was besieged for many months by the Parliamentarians, the Royalists inside the town placed a small canon on the top of the church tower to fire over the walls, eventually it was hit by return fire and destroyed. When the church was later rebuilt the top of the tower was repaired in brick rather than the original Roman stone.

After a bit of faffing, some road side Google Mapping and eventually some random good fortune I found the ruins of St Botolph’s Priory. Unfortunately so had some people doing a model shoot who were hogging the place so, much as I like to take photos sans people, in this case I couldn’t and I ended up leaving in a minor huff.

The priory was the first Augustinian priory in Britain and like the nearby castle was completed around 1100. A long with many of the other leading Catholic orders, such as St Marys in York, it was dissolved by the order King Henry VIII in 1536 and a number of the buildings were torn down. The church as was allowed to remain to serve the local people but it was destroyed during the civil war. it is quite pretty and peaceful.

It was now past lunch time and my tummy was rumbling. When I was planning the trip last night, I had decided that I would find a nice pub to lunch in, drink a pint of decent ale, read my book, write some stuff, get myself organised with a few lists – I do love a list. Basically relax and unwind. But i couldn’t find a nice pub to lunch in. I did find the new art gallery though.

What a cool building, such a great contrast to the small old tower nearby. The gallery is very nice inside, big, airy and light. The exhibitions were not really to my liking, but the coffee and cake were fab.

The last thing on my list of things to do was to find Bourne Mill. Resorting to Google Maps again I found my way quite easily to this old building on its man made lake on what used to be the edge of town.

The building is managed by National Trust, so I finally got to use my membership card for the first time since I signed up two years ago. The mill was originally built in 1591 from stone left behind during the dissolution of the abbeys in 1536 and was built as a fishing lodge on a series of ponds made by the abbeys along a small stream that fed into the River Colne. It was converted into a fulling mill in 1640 and then into a corn mill in 1840 when the gables were added.

I followed path down the side of the very overgrown stream as far as I could towards the River Colne with the intent of following that back to where I started at the foot of Castle Park. The start of the stream walk was quite nice, at least it was quiet, but it soon popped out on to some busy edge of town roads.

There was sort of a path following the river, though on this side of town it was not the charming river side walk I was hoping for…

There is a ton of building going on around here, flats going up everywhere, I am guessing just to fuel the ever increasing fire for cheaper housing to meet the demands of those forced to leave London as it is now too expensive to live in.

Crossing back into the centre of town, it is clear to see the line between the water haves and have nots, there is a weir at the edge of town that keeps the river running through the parks nice and high and full and far more attractive. Though I am assuming that is due to the river being tidal more than anything more subversive. Still it was nice to be walking through the park again once I passed through its gates.

I headed back up into the centre of town to try and find one of the council website advertised friendly village pubs, but all there seemed to be were large bars with tattooed punters drinking lager outside. Not my thing at all. I wandered around for a bit before giving up and heading back towards the station. My dream of an afternoon relaxing over an ale or two dashed, though I did stop for one in a not too bad pub, but there were no longer serving lunch so I didn’t stay. The one place that looked like it could have been a decent pub in the old Dutch quarter was closed.

It had been a good day out, I enjoyed the old bits and the new gallery, it was nice to walk by a river, though it wasn’t a nice bit of river to walk by. It was nice to not have to talk or listen to anyone, and I could refocus myself a bit away from the madness and pressure of work.

I shall do it again.

The BEST thing that has happened in the last week is I have finally booked my many times postponed trip to New Zealand to see my family. As it now pretty much winter in NZ I have made it a quick visit with no ‘holiday’ time, just 10 days there and a lot to do. It is my grandson’s 1^st birthday so I am really pleased to be able to be there for that, plus my oldest son is coming over from Australia as well. Double awesome, I get to see all three kids together!

A Box Hill hike

Friday 03 April 2015 – Box Hill, Surrey.

Easter Friday, a long weekend, Yay – and made even longer by having a much needed day off from work yesterday. Sounds pretty damn good to me !

I am part of a four person team that has signed up to do the Oxfam 100km walk on the South Downs in late July. With work being so busy and the weather not always being in my favour I, and the rest of the team, have not done a whole lot of training, and apart from one meet up in hotel bar to do some planning we have not actually done any walking together.

With this in mind we took the opportunity of a long weekend to get outside and do some walking in the hills just out of London, and Box Hill in Surrey ticked all those boxes. For some unfathomable reason the crazy people I am teamed up with decided that we would meet at Box Hill Station at 10:00 am, though it is not too far away it still meant an early rise on a day off work.

With public transport running reduced services and maintenance work going on all over the network I decided – wisely, to leave early and catch a tube to Vauxhall and get the train from the there to Box Hill, it was a slow journey but surprisingly reliable. I arrived at Box Hill to find one of my team mates already there at the station/cafe/bike shop. I availed myself of coffee, much needed coffee and a bit of cake while we waited. I really liked the station, yet for some reason I have no photo of it, I particularly liked fact it had a bike shop in it, and coffee was served surrounded by bikes

We were on the way soon after the others arrived, and immediately took the wrong turn out of the station. We were going to do the Box Hill Hike, there was a map on the internet with directions and everything nicely laid out, but all from the car park at Box Hill, no mention of the station at all, and no signs from the station either. I though this was rather poor. We realised fairly quickly we had gone the wrong way and were soon heading off roughly in the right direction.

It is a reasonable walk from the station to the official start of the Box Hill hike at the centre car park. It is a nice walk though. It is really nice to be out in the country!

The walk starts at the bottom of one of the many climbs up and around the hill, though we were soon heading up, and I surprised myself and had no issues with the climb at all. Ok, we are not talking Everest here, but it does go up a couple of hundred metres and when the escalator out of Holborn Station is your biggest regular climb, then even half that ascent that can be a challenge. I do not take prisoners on a climb either, so I did have a wait at the top…

There was not much of a view though.

We soon found the car park and the official start of the walk, and once under way the clouds started to lift and the day became quite reasonable. There was a point as we were walking to the start when I was wondering whether we were going to be able to remove woolly hats and rain coats at all, but the cloud eventually lifted and it turned out to be not too bad a day – and it even warmed up a bit.

Before we left I had done a bit of research into the park and definitely wanted to see Broadwood’s Folly, built in 1815 on the hill above the Broadwood family home. The Holm Oak growing through the middle is not native to the area and the seed may have been dropped by a passing bird. I thought it was quite cool…

There was a lot of up and down on the walk, as you would expect from a walk with Hill in the name! I liked it, I am not really a fan of all the flat stuff, and it was really nice to not be walking on roads or surrounded by cars either. This would be a great run, and we did see a few runners out as well as a lots of other walkers.

The church at Mickleham Village.

Back up on the tops again there was some quite nice forested areas, nice and mossy after the winter.

There was also this long stretch called the Mickleham Gallops, where horses were trained for races at the nearby Epsom track.

And at the bottom of the hill, and the start of the next climb – a rather nice cottage, the sort of place I used to fantasize about living in until the realities of living in an old house in the country sank in. Though this one I think would make a good location for a haunted house story.

And then it was back up the hill again….

Once over the top of this climb we were almost back to the start, and a slow wind down back to the station. We arrived just before the train so ran up and over the bridge and for some reason the train didn’t stop like it was supposed to. It was then back over the bridge and into the cafe for coffee and cake while we waited for the next train. The walk took just under four hours, including a stop for some lunch, and the odd break at the top of the many short climbs.

It was a really good day out. I took my Garmin watch and recorded that we did 68kms and we walked back to London. I must have forgotten to turn it off…

My quads ached the next day !!