Blog – Page 46 – Where is Phil now?

Ten days in New Zealand.

Thursday 17 July 2014 – Auckland, New Zealand.

After a fairly relaxing weekend away near Donnington Castle. about two hours out of London I spent the following Monday morning doing a final pack before heading off to Heathrow airport for a two week trip back home to New Zealand, and a final couple of days visiting my oldest son in Queensland, Australia. I had vaguely planned my departure to be after the one time when I would be really close to somewhere where the Tour de France was passing by, sadly I had gotten the time completely wrong and the lead riders were due to pass through Walthamstow as I was due to be heading to the airport, Doh !

I am not one to sleep on planes, I have trouble enough sleeping in bed, let alone planes, and though the flight from London to Singapore was in the evening and was reasonably comfortable I did not really doze much more than a few minutes at a time over a number of attempts – I did watch some bad movies though – and once I arrived in New Zealand found I had left my e-reader in the plane. (Yay to Singapore Airlines, they are sending my e-reader to London for me to collect !)

Changi Airport in Singapore is an interesting place, I was there for four hours so had a pretty thorough look around terminal three, If I had not been so damn full after eating at least three meals in the past twelve hours I would have been up there eating some lovely noodles like a shot.

I was less tempted by the pokie machines though. I have never seen gambling in an airport before!

The airport is pretty massive, and I walked a good ten minutes up to where my flight to Auckland was to depart from, only to find it had moved, almost the same distance away in the opposite direction. It was good to stretch out with a walk though.

But, there was a lovely sunset to make it all worthwhile.

I arrived in Auckland mid afternoon on Wednesday, what seems like two days after I left London. The primary reason for my trip this time was to see my new grandson, unnamed at the time I left and I was thrilled to see him when my son, Aiden, brought him around to my mum’s house after work on the day I arrived. We had a lovely family dinner that night and it was great to see everyone, and I got my first hold of my first grandson – Luca Ken (Ken was my late father’s name, it brought a tear to my eye when I found out) . Yes, it was pretty damn cool!

I hadn’t really planned anything beyond seeing family, apart from sorting through some of the stuff I have stored at my brother-in-laws house, disposing of the stuff to be disposed of, and maybe sneaking some vinyl into a bag and taking it back to London.

I spent the first couple of days relaxing and hanging out with my children and on Friday I took a trip down to Mt Te Aroha for a very windy bit of outdoors adventure with my friend Vicki.

With most of my friends working during the week I had a fairly full weekend of catching up with people and took a trip with old friend Chantal,out to Piha on Auckland’s west coast , which is my favourite part of Auckland and the one part of the city I miss. The weather was not the friendliest but we did get to walk along the beach for a bit between the showers, and had a pretty good lunch at Piha Cafe.

In the afternoon I had a great catch up with some friends I met many years ago via Flickr. I missed seeing them last time I was in Auckland, and I really enjoyed our brief couple of hours together – next time we must go and spend some time taking some photos. We had coffee in a couple of cafes including this lovely cafe on K Rd, It looks to be part of a closed theatre but I cannot place one there.

I also took a quick walk around to look at some of the limited range, but quite cool street art in the area.

On Monday mum and I took a trip out to Muriwai Beach, another one of my best loved Auckland locations, dad’s ashes are scattered here and we always come out for a visit when I am in Auckland.

That was pretty much it for the week, I spent two days organising my stuff, visited the kids a few times, hung out with some friends and saw my sisters my lovely new house.

On my last day I went for a walk around mums ‘hood in Henderson. The council here have done a great job over the years in building and linking up walking paths that snake around the greener areas of the suburb, taking walking and cycling off of busy – and in some cases ugly, light industrial roads. Mum walks these regularly and it was nice to get out for a couple of walks while I was staying with her – especially on such a nice morning, cool though it was.

We walked through Tui Glen which is now a park, but back in the 1970’s it was a caravan park village and we lived here, in this small home when we first arrived in New Zealand from England in the summer of 1973. We stayed here for a few weeks while my parents found jobs and a place to set down roots. I will say it was the most unhappy time for me and I suspect all of us. A lot of the flats have been knocked down, but some like this one – now called Glen Oaks have been preserved.

I had to take a photo of this mill house in Henderson it is 170 years old and an historic place. After recently walking on Roman ruins from almost a thousand years ago in London, I do find it so amusing that anything of a century old in Auckland is considered historic – though it will never get to be a thousand years old if they are not preserved now!

And that was pretty much the end of my NZ trip. I did buy myself a new camera, this time I have gone for a more traditional point and shoot style with a Canon G16. Time to replace my Lumix’s. I won’t say I will miss the GX1, I found it too frustrating to use in the end, but the GF1 served me very well all around South East Asia.

Next stop Brisbane, and my other son Dom. Yay!

My Grandson….

Friday 18 July 2014 – Auckland, New Zealand.

I am going to act like some large multi-national corporations do with UK tax law and act within the wording of the rules, but ignore the spirit of them. Just like Amazon doesn’t pay tax in the UK because it does not sell anything there – all 7 billion pounds of UK sales come out of Ireland**, I am going to put some photos of my new grandson here, which will be linked to FaceBook, though no photos will actually be on Facebook 🙂

His name is yet to be officially recorded in the book of births, but I have been assured it will not change (probably) so here is Luca Ken Platt, born on 19th June, two weeks early.

I am going to say I was not overly excited about the prospect of being a granddad at only 51, but my heart melted when I had my first cuddle and looked into his blankly staring little eyes. He is really lovely and I am very proud of my son Aiden and his partner.

These photos were taken over a few days during my ten day visit to Auckland. I am writing this at the airport as I wait for my flight to Brisbane to see my other son, Dom, before heading back to London on Monday. I miss them all already !

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Luca and my mum.

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Aiden and his sister, Mel.

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I had forgotten what it is really like to hold such a small, vulnerable life in my hands, the little wriggly strength, the squishy faces they pull and the strange rumbles as they fill their nappy. It is pretty magical, and I look forward to holding him again.

He is not really ginger – not of course there is anything wrong with that ! I have finally got sick of my Lumix Gx1, was disappointed with the quality of the shots of Luca so went out and bought a new Canon G16 yesterday and I will sell the Gx1 when I get back to London. Too late for baby photos this time!

** The numbers may or may not be fact…

To the manor born.

Saturday 21 June 2014 – Weston Park, Staffordshire.

As part of her job in the publishing world El gets invited to a few events, launches and openings throughout the year. Most of which she cannot attend – some just would not work for the magazine readership and some are just not timed right. Occasionally there is one that meets all the needs of her publication and is on a date that she is free and even more occasionally there is one where I am invited as well. This was one of those occasions – and what a lovely occasion it was too!

Weston Park is an old English manor house set in a thousand acres of lovely Staffordshire countryside in the English midlands. The park is open to the public and already has a popular cafe and restaurant. They are planning a proper English afternoon tea offering in the manor house soon, one of the reasons for the press event. A proper English tea is not just a cuppa and a biscuit; it is a real event with sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, little cakes – and of course there is loads of tea (no coffee !!)

Weston Park was gifted to Britain in 1986 and is now run by a private trust, it is not part of the large National Trust estate, though it is run on similar lines and is largely open to the public. The main manor house itself is not often open to stay in – though it is available for weddings, parties and corporate events, so it is a rare opportunity to be able to stay there the night.

Weston Park is now most famous for being the site for the massive V music festival, though in the past it has held rounds of the Northern Ireland peace talks and the G8 summit.

We left London a bit late after some faffing on the platform at Euston while a train driver was found, though we did arrive reasonably on time at Stafford station. El and I were collected with five others by a taxi-van that took us out to Weston Park, about a half an hour drive from the station. The park is surrounded by five and half miles of wall, and we seemed to drive round all of it in the journey, it just kept on going and going ! But once we got there is was pretty wow ! While I have visited a few manor houses and small castles on my travels I have never had the opportunity to stay in one over night so was quite excited about the prospect.

Construction of the main house was started in the 1670’s, under the design and guidance of the lady of the house Lady Wilbraham and built in the popular restoration style. The house has been changed significantly over the years with the front door and reception area being moved and a whole new wing added from the 1860s. The last major changes to the structure of the house.

The house was open to the public when we arrived and as we are staying the night we were allowed to cross into the roped off area and head upstairs to our room.

We stayed in the ‘Church’ room at the back of the house with a view to Weston Church next door as well as out over one of the gardens – and the roof of the Orangery.

The room was massive and the bathroom was almost the size of my flat ! It was comfortable, though the bed was a bit short for me.

After settling in we had canapés and juice by one of the gardens outside the orangery and met the other guests, mostly similar to us – a writer and their partner.

We also met the people who ran the house who soon took us on an interesting tour of the building and told us about the history of both the area and the families who lived there. This included a walk through the old stables building and on to the main public areas outside.

After a very nice afternoon tea we were allowed to wander around the house and gardens and have a general explore on our own. As this was after the public opening times all the rope barriers had been removed and we could go where we liked. It was very interesting, and quite different to be able to look and touch things that are normally out of reach.

The library – though the books were all locked in, some are incredibly old – and very interesting looking.

The drawing room. I had not noticed on visits to other houses, but the library was very masculine and the drawing room very feminine. I had not realised there was a clear definition between rooms before.

The dining room, where we had our evening meal. As part of the major refit in the late 1800s the dining room was created by removing the first floor and a load of walls to create this lovely large space. I ate my dinner sitting in front of an original Van Dyke portrait of Sir Thomas Hanmer from 1637. I have never eaten a meal in front of a masterpiece before ! It is the bottom left painting.

Dinner was preceded by bubbles outside in the sun over looking another of the gardens as well as an interesting event where we were all 360degree scanned so a 3d model can be printed, though these were not printed on site as they take a long time and we are waiting to see ours.

The meal was fabulous, five lovely courses, matched with lovely wines. Heavenly! This was followed by coffee and port in the library and then sleep.

After breakfast El and I went for a walk around the back of the house, through a small gate.

Into one of the free public areas. This used to be a working farm and I liked these derelict sheds we found,

Before walking back to the house around a small pond.

After our walk it was time to go on the official walk with the head gardener. He is the third generation of his family to have worked on the estate, so he knew it pretty well. He was a very interesting man, and has a major passion for the estate and ensuring that the vision of the original developers is maintained. The core of the estate was planned and built around a design by ‘Capabilty’ Brown in 1765. Capability Brown is a famous (I have discovered) gardener and landscaper and was involved in some of the most famous gardens in England.

We walked up to the temple to Diana – the goddess, not the late princess !

After lunch at the public restaurant it was time to catch a ride back to Stafford and jump, heavily with full bellies after thirty six hours of eating, on to the train back to London.

The following day was an Audi hosted function and as we were leaving the Audis were starting to arrive. I was hoping they were going to be a parting gift !

It was a great night away, the house and gardens are beautiful and the people who run the show are very knowledgeable and engaging. Thanks 🙂

A brief update !

Monday 30 June 2014 – London.

The last few weeks have seen a few changes for me, though much remains the same, so I it is time to put together a brief update post.

This time next week I will be winging my way to New Zealand for a two week family and friend catch-up. I will only be visiting Auckland, arriving on Wednesday 9th and leaving late the following week to go and see my oldest son, Dom, who has just moved back to Queensland in Australia.

The main thing that hasn’t changed is that I am out of work, I have been looking fairly solidly for an IT management job since El and I got back from New Zealand in February. I have been close on a number of occasions, have had a few interviews, but have yet to actually land a job. I have been thinking about looking for any old job to tide me over, so I will see what happens when I am back at the end of July, though I suspect I will be reinvigorated after a break from the job hunt. Having said that I do have an interview lined up for the end of the month, so all is not lost, and I remain positive. My travelling is being held against me to a degree – though I did expect that when I left my job all that time ago, so no real complaints (OK, to be honest, it really pissed me off !). It has been a frustrating process though – and one worthy of a blog post, but not until I am well into a job and do not need the recruiting industry.

Partly as a way to save money for both of us, partly as a test to see how it works but mainly because it seems like a good idea I am going to leave my flat in London Bridge and move in to El’s place. I spend over half the week there anyway so it just makes sense. I have been slowly moving my stuff in over the past couple of weeks and will complete the job before we go away this weekend for a trip with her sons. It is a big move that we are both looking forward too. The plan at this stage is for me to find my own place once I land a job – a place for us to both escape too when we need a break.

Big thanks to Kevin for letting me stay for so long, I have loved living in London Bridge and I will miss the flat and its stunning view !

The really big change that has happened in my world is that I have just become a grand dad, my youngest son Aiden is now the father of a beautiful baby boy – currently known as baby as a name is yet to be decided.

I had been very undecided on whether to take a trip back to New Zealand when the baby was born, but as soon as he arrived my mind was made up – he is very cute. With no employer to haggle leave days with I decided to go between weekends away with El, booked my tickets and am off next week.

I had a look at taking a side trip somewhere on the way or the way back, but flights and costs did not make any sense so, while I would love to have had a wee adventure while I am away, I will save it for another time. EL and I are going to Copenhagen a few days after I get back, so I have nothing to complain about and lots to look forward to !

E17 Art trail

The annual E17 art trail has been going since 2005 and has been growing each year with this the tenth anniversary being the biggest yet. This year it ran over three weeks from the beginning of June with over one hundred and sixty locations showing art, holding performances or learning experiences. All by local artists, fabulous !

For those who do not know what E17 is, it is the postcode for an area in north east London, around the suburb of Walthamstow, where I mostly live – and one the many good reasons to live in the area!

I was not able to, nor to be fair, interested in going to every event that was included in the program, but El and I did manage to squeeze a fair few of them in and I took a few photos as we went. June was a bit of a mad busy month for some reason – SUMMER I guess, so here is a quick summary of the things I liked best.

There was a huge range of exhibits from the large mural by Stu Lee on the side of a house down by Blackhorse Rd tube station – which was my favourite single piece from the trail, I guess with my love of street art, there are few surprises there.

To the small knitted figures from the Howard Rd garden.

Unsurprisingly my focus was primarily on looking for photographic based exhibitions and the two I enjoyed the most had photography as the key visual element, though the stories behind the photos were the more important aspect. I didn’t get photos from the first.

The Ex-Warner Project is a photographic and oral history project recording the stories and histories of the people who live in the old Warner houses near Lloyd Park. The Warner houses were built at the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century as social housing, they are quite distinctive small terraced houses, which are now mainly privately owned. I really enjoyed listening to the stories and looking at the images. An interesting project.

The second project I liked was on display at a newly opened coffee shop Bygga Bo, which just happens to be at the end of El’s road and serves great coffee and really nice cinnamon buns… This project had stories and photos of people who are of mixed-race, sharing their experiences of growing up. Again it was really interesting to read about people’s experiences in this, very multi-cultural piece, of London.

In the grave yard of St Marys Parish Church was a cool little exhibition from Whitefields school of small sculptures made from found items, I really liked it.

There was also an exhibition inside the church. I am going to visit the church properly soon as it has an interesting history!

There was a load of stuff happening in Walthamstow Village including Breaking Bard, a collection of sayings from Bill Shakespeare posted in the windows of houses in a few of the streets. It was quite amusing.

And in the streets of the newly named “Poets Corner” – so named as the surrounding streets are named after poets, were a collection of verse.

What I liked about these, and the whole art trail in general was that it gave all residents an opportunity to participate and share in the event.

There was some interesting work in the Winns Gallery from Waltham Forest College, including this interesting sculpture from student – Simona Pesce.

Even the underground station was in on the project with a couple of walls holding some quite interesting prints.

There are a few small galleries in Walthamstow and we visited a few of them, including the Pictorem Gallery way up by the Bakers Arms, which had a show by a range of artists. El even bought a small piece!

I am not sure if this was part of the trail or not, but it was on the way , and it looks like it has been left for a reason – maybe it is art ?

Separate, but sort of part of the art trail, is a new project called the free library project that now includes Walthamstow. There are a number of small library boxes around where people can exchange, take or leave books. A very cool idea – one that should be taken up everywhere ! This box has been painted by street artist Hannah Adamsezek – who I last found here, a slightly different environment !

I missed a whole load of things out due time and missed a bunch of photo ops as I didn’t always have a camera.

It was a truly awesome event, and I am looking forward to 2015 – I may even join in as well !!

Gods Own Junkyard

Saturday 31 May 2014 – God’s Own Junkyard – Walthamstow.

God’s own junkyard has been a feature of Walthamstow for many, years and amongst other things is a place to store the neon signs collected by its owner. Last year the site it was on was sold so the ever pervasive building of flats could spread there. At the time it seemed to be the end of God’s own Junkyard and there was a bit of a local hue and cry about it – it even made the national papers, so maybe it was bigger than local. Luckily a new place was found and God’s Own Junkyard can now be found inside at the small industrial estate on Shernhall St, and still in Walthamstow.

Chris Bracey who owns it has been in the neon-sign business for many many years, originally working with his father who also made neon signs. The “Junkyard” is a massive collection of signs made by and collected by Chris, his work has been seen in loads of major motion pictures and videos. It is also frequently used as a location for photos shoots and videos. Some of the work is for sale, though I suspect a lot of them are just too good to let go.

It is great place to visit, for a look around – and from this weekend (hopefully) there will be a cafe opening for coffee and food. I really enjoy visiting there. The photos will give you some idea of what the place looks like.

There is a small garden out the back, where coffee can be drunk and food eaten. It is almost as quirky as the inside and I really liked the subliminal message here…

One of the other great things about an afternoon visit to God’s own junkyard – is the factory over the way – a new East London brewery – The Wild Card Brewery. It was too early in the day to be open when I was there, but I have been for a visit and a taste before and the beer is brilliant.

For a good afternoon out, check out Shernhall St Industrial estate….

And now for something completely different – ComicCon 2014

Saturday 24 May 2014 – ComicCon, London.

I cannot believe it has been over a month since I last wrote a post, I also find it hard to believe that I have not done anything in that time that I found blog-worthy – though it must be true as there are no posts. I have been pretty busy though, there seems to always be a lot happening. I did start a project to photograph all the remaining sections of London’s Roman walls and thought I had finished until I found a blog post that showed I had missed a fair few pieces. If it stops raining in the coming week I will get out there and finish it off before I start the next project on my list.

A few weeks ago my mate Steve asked me if I wanted to go to ComicCon at the ExCel Centre and take some photos, I have never been to a comic festival before so immediately said yes, something completely different to my normal activities.

I have been suffering from some minor back pain for a while so decided I would not take the big camera as I get a sore back from lugging it around. I took the small Panasonic, which was a decision I really regretted at the end of the day. I took a lot of photos and deleted most of them as the focal point on the camera was not in the centre where I thought it was, I had knocked it out to one side. This meant that virtually all my photos were badly out of focus – gutting ! It was my fault; I have never really gotten into the habit of closely checking photos when I take them – “chimping”. I glanced at them to see if I had exposure set correctly, but without my reading glasses on everything is sort of blurry anyway. Mistake – oh well. Lessons learned – when taking photos of people in low light environments use the Canon, or learn how to take photos properly with the Panasonic first.

Steve and I had arranged to meet at the ExCel at 10:00 but I got there really early as I badly over-estimated how long it would take me to get there. The train ride in was interesting as the carriage was jammed, with half the people in weird and wonderful costumes, some I recognised – most I didn’t. It must have been a surreal experience for those on the train who did not know what was going on.

I grabbed a coffee and stood on the concourse from the station and watched the crowds go past.

Slowly and surely I was forced further and further back by the crowds as I tried to maintain a position where Steve could easily find me, until finally I was right back at the end of the concourse and just waited in the crowd. I was really surprised at the amount of people here!

Steve arrived on time and we slowly made our way into the venue, past some pretty serious security.

We finally made through the front gate into the centre itself, where we split into two groups, those with priority tickets, like us – and those without. Those without had to queue downstairs.

While we went into the exhibition centre itself – into another mass of people waiting to get their tickets checked.

Once through the ticket barrier I assumed it would be all go. No – there was the wrist band barrier to go through next.

Finally after an hour and a half of queuing we were in !!

I had no idea what to expect inside, I knew there would be stands and normal exhibition type stuff and I knew there would be people dressed as their favourite character, but I was surprised at the amount of people in costume – and I thought it was all rather cool. Most people would pose for photos if asked and there were (I am assuming) a number of professionals posing in all the well lit locations. There were a lot of photographers!

The exhibition itself was not that interesting for me, I am not a comic guy or gamer, so a lot of the references were meaningless, though of course there was still plenty of familiar things – like Cyanide and Happiness – I like how “The Joker” is buying something…

There were stands from some of the big boys in the genre, like Transformers and Dr Who.

Along with live comic drawings.

Gaming

Loads of large weapons – luckily there was no bag search !

And weird stuff for sale.

After walking round, the rather disappointing, exhibition areas for a while Steve and I hung out in the couple of locations were the light was good and took photos, which in my case were mostly rubbish, though I saved a few for the sake of documenting the event.

Yay – R2D2 !

Even evil gods like Loki need some time out to keep their social media feeds updated…

I left just after 2:00 and headed outside and was completely surprised to see hundreds of people out there. I had read on the event program about loads of meet-ups for the various fan clubs and here there were in the all their costumed glory. Perhaps we should just stayed outside !!

It was a fun day out, I was disappointed that some zombie facial close-ups I took were just terrible, along with a load of other out of focus shots. You would think I would have learned this lesson before now, but no – I haven’t!

I will definitely go again, but will just hang out outside – where the real action is.

Thanks Steve, I look forward to seeing some of your photos – no pressure 🙂

I made it home just before the rain hit!

Following the Ching.

Good Friday 18 April 2014 – River Ching, Chingford to Highams Park.

Last weekend El and I took a walk up to Highams Park, which is two train stops north of where she lives in Walthamstow. There is a lake (read large pond) in a small woodland extension of the much larger Epping Forest and as it was a nice day it was a good place to walk to, and around. Plus El got to show me where she used to live – in a house long knocked down to allow a part of the North Circular motorway to be built.

When we walked around the lake we saw a track heading off into the distance and decided that we should come back and have bit more of an explore – but armed with a bit of information as to where track was likely to go. Not that you can get too lost in this section of the forest – it is completely surrounded by suburban streets. I have been keen to explore a bit more of Epping Forest and had bought a map of the area a while back, so after a map referral we decided to catch a train to Chingford, head up to Connaught Water and follow the River Ching back down to Highams Park Lake. It was not a long walk, only a few kilometres, but in theory it should all be off road and maybe in the trees – it sounded pretty damn perfect to me.

We arrived in Chingford late morning and found Connaught Water fairly easily, it is only a km or so from the station which is on the southern edge of Epping Forest. It was a reasonably sunny day, but there was quite a cold wind blowing and out on the open areas of the forest park it was quite chilly – so we were looking forward to getting into some shelter from the trees, plus a forest walk really should have trees!

Connaught Water is called a lake but really it is just a large pond, but it has fishing and boating and at twenty five minutes from Liverpool St station on the train – it is pretty damn cool !

It also appears to be the source of the mighty River Ching, and this is the headwaters… It is hard to believe that when this flooded back in 2009 it actually caused damage!

The river flows from here down to the River Lea closer to Walthamstow, though we were only walking the forested section.

The first section of the path was well formed, though there is absolutely no signage at all at any stage and this was a bit frustrating, especially matched with a map last printed in 2010. Things had changed a bit since then.

The path is shared with walkers, runners, bikers and in some sections – horse riders, we saw a few of walkers, runners and riders on the way, though once we were out of the main section of the forest it was very quiet. The path was pretty dry, but you can see where it has been heavily cut up in winter by bikes, horses and loads of runners from the nearby Orion Harriers. Some parts look like they could be quite fun to ride on as well – unlike this open and smooth trail.

After crossing the main road north from Chingford we were off the clearly defined path and followed the river more closely.

The forest was really nice here, though we were really in a small section of parkland in the middle of suburban London it was beautifully quiet and there was an amazing amount of bird song to provide some background.

We crossed another road and the track followed the edge of a golf course for a kilometre or so, crossing the fairway at one stage, which was a bit disconcerting as it was not sign posted, we were not really paying attention and there were people were playing the hole. Fortunately they must be used to walkers as they waved us through without any aggravation.

We got a bit misplaced at the end of the golf course, but with a quick look at the phone we found the entrance to the top end of Highams Park, and a nice little area full of late spring blue bells.

Again the forest here was really nice, some lovely spring foliage on the trees and a nice windy and clean ‘river’ to follow.

At one point there was even a rope swing, though I am assuming you are not supposed to drop into the river from it !

After an hour and half of walking we popped out on to the ‘lake’ at Highams Park.

We could have continued on for another couple of kilometres of forest through to Hollow Pond** but finished the walk here and headed to the nearby supermarket (they had Picpoul de pinet wine on special) and then caught the bus home…

It was a really nice walk, and hopefully the start of a summer of Epping Forest walks.

** Hollow Ponds is the title of a new track by ex Blur and Gorrilaz vocalist Damon Albarn who was brought up in nearby Leytonstone. I like the song and it is cool that something as small and local as Hollow Pond gets name checked by a fairly big star.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwfsV50m7Dg

Bury St Edmunds.

Saturday/Sunday 5/6 April 2014 – Bury St Edmunds.

On Thursday evening El and I were sitting around home chatting and quite randomly decided that we should go somewhere and stay the night on Saturday. We had a hurried look on the interweb mainly at train timetables and maps of places within a couple of hours from home – and were then horrified at how much train fairs were at the last minute…. We looked at York for instance, return for two people 400 pounds. This is just insane – what the hell is wrong with these people! Obviously with some pre-planning it would be cheaper, but we are not always pre-planning people. Anyway, we decided on Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. It had a cathedral, a market, a nice hotel and was cheap enough to travel to, cheap enough that we decided to go first class. I have never done first class on a train before – or any other form of transport for that matter. Where is my first class appropriate collar and tie you may ask ?this is a civil society after all !

The forecast promised us a cloudy but rain free day on the Saturday and showers on Sunday, which suited us fine. We left mid morning from Liverpool St for Ipswich, where we had a connecting train, and though we left on time for some unknown reason we were late arriving so ended up with an extra thirty minutes in Ipswich station, surprisingly it was not that exciting, and the coffee was crap as well.

We arrived in Bury St Edmunds and on the walk from the station to the hotel we passed a record fair, that just had to be visited later in the afternoon… We walked though the nicer parts of the market town and with a little bit of g-mapping found our hotel easily enough.

The Georgian era hotel looks really nice from the front and Charles Dickens stayed there in the 1800’s and is mentioned in his book The Pickwick Papers, slightly less cerebrally Angelina Jolie stayed there while filming Tomb Raider. Sadly I can report that while I have seen Tomb Raider I have not read The Pickwick Papers.

Once checked in we decided to go for a walk around the old part of the market town, have some lunch and check out the record fair. The Angle Hotel is on Angel Hill and over the road from St Edmundsbury Cathedral. I gleaned the following from a Suffolk guide book “Throughout the middle ages Angel Hill served as the site for the Bury Fair, attended by traders and entertainers from all over Europe. Today it still attracts visitors from abroad and home, but mostly serves as a car park.” I just found that hilarious…. And here it is – the site of the famous Bury Fair, and the front of our hotel.

Our first stop was the cathedral over the road, though I am a little confused about what bits are from what era, the original abbey was started in 1065, though the actual cathedral part was not fully completed until 2010… I do like cathedrals, but not so much the modern ones and I was a little disappointed. It was nice, but not “wow, how did they do this x hundreds of years ago nice”. The organist was having a wee jam session while we there and it was very loud – and not my cup of tea musically.

I am a huge sucker for high vaulted roofs!

The older parts of the abbey were round the back in the gardens and we decided to get lunch first and check them out later. We walked up through the market, a mix of traditional farmers markets – prices half that of London, and the same old plastic crap that is for sale in every market on every continent. The shops were fairly bland as well, the usual suspect high street retailers and the only boutique type places catered for a different market to us. The record fair was a bit of a disappointment as well, only a couple of people selling stuff, there was an LP copy of NZ’s Straightjacket Fits ‘Hail’ album and I was tempted, but did not buy it in the end.

I can report that lunch was good, the highlight of the trip to be honest!

We had a table reserved in the hotel restaurant and reviews had been pretty good, so we had high expectations. It was however, like the rest of day and was slightly disappointing. The menu was reasonable, the food was OK, it looked good and was prepared well – it just didn’t set the taste buds on fire. At dessert they got El’s cheese board wrong and the waiter said the port he served me was the cognac I asked for, when I said it was port he almost argued with me, it was even in a port glass! They were both sorted out, but not what we expected for the price.

There was quite a cool little underground bar in the hotel, we went down for a drink and by the time we managed to get our drinks all the seats were taken so we ended up heading back to our room to watch Match of the Day on TV – I will admit that was likely anyway.

The hotel was grossly overpriced for what it was, and our room was pretty shabby compared to places we have stayed in that have been a lot cheaper, but positives I can say about the room was even though the place was pretty busy it was dead quiet, and the bed very comfortable, a mega-sleep was had.

After another bout of rubbish service and an average breakfast we were going to walk around the abbey gardens before heading home. However the rain put paid to those plans so I nipped out to take a couple of photos of the abbey – including rain drops, before grabbed a break in the showers and nipped to the station.

We were lucky to get first class tickets on the way back as the train had a stop in Cambridge on the way back and what seemed like 10,000 people got on the train. It is the weekend of the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race on the Thames in London and there were a lot of fans travelling.

I am glad we went to Bury St Edmunds, it was nice to go away, and walk and hang out together – but we won’t be rushing back, even though I would have liked to explore the abbey gardens a bit more, just in case I missed something.

A coastal walk, Leigh-on-Sea to Southend.

Friday March 28 2014 – Leigh-on-Sea to Southend-on-Sea.

When I was out walking Hampstead Heath on Monday with Steve we came up with a loose plan to head out to the coast on Friday if the weather remained agreeable; which it did. We decided to head to Leigh-on-Sea on the Essex south coast and the mouth of the River Thames. It is only forty or so minutes from London’s Fenchurch St Station, so dead easy to get to.

Leigh-on-Sea is an old fishing village that has become a wee bit gentrified, but still retains some of its working past, so thee was a bit of photographic grittiness mixed with some nice pubs to try for lunch. Who can ask for more than that.

We left London mid-morning, it had been a foggy start to the day, and by the time we arrived the local fog had cleared but the horizon stayed foggy for most of the rest of the day. The railway line cuts the town in half so we ended up staying on the seaward side of the tracks and in the end decided we would walk the 5km or so up to Southend-on-Sea and stop to take pictures on the way.

For a large part of the walk the seaward side is quite narrow, basically a walking path running next to the edge of the sea, with a few small wharves along the way. As you would expect for a fishing and shell-fishing village there was a lot of small boats along the way.

There was also a small strip of sheds selling seafood, though only one was open on the day. I wonder if the numerous closed sheds open in the summer months – as I suspect this is a very busy walking area. I certainly hope so.

There is also a bit of history around small ship building in this area as well.

At the end of the town there are a couple of quite nice looking pubs and cafes, though it was sort of lunch time we carried on walking.

There was also a couple of places selling locally caught seafood as well as ‘Thia’ fish cakes – not quite sure what they are!

Just outside of town I was really surprised to come across this nice little beach just outside of Leigh-on-Sea. It was completely not what I was expecting to see. I will admit that my ignorance of this area was pretty profound, I had heard stories of this part of the coast being a bit sad and run down, laughable as a place to holiday – but how wrong I was. OK, it is not Cornwall or Devon, but the beaches looked nice, there was some decent greenery and for a beach under an hour from central London this section of coast is really nice. I stood completely corrected!

I really liked these beach swimming pools; the tide here does go out a very long way. I liked the hard angles and the shapes and they way they contrasted to the natural surroundings. I also liked the fact that the distant shore of the other side of the Thames estuary is smothered by the fog.

The old minesweeper, HMS Wilton is now the home of the Essex Yacht Club, but is famous for being the first plastic and fibreglass warship made back in the early 1970’s. It was retired from duty in 1994 and became the yacht club in the early noughties.

The walk past Chalkwell and Westcliff to Southend took us a couple of hours as we stopped a few times to take photos, I was very fascinated by all the man-made structures poking into the sea and took quite a few pictures as we went.

I also really like this ever-so seaside British building – the pavilion, not something we have so much of in New Zealand, but everywhere along the coast of England that I have visited.

Soon we came in sight of the Southend pier, at 2.14 kms, it is the world’s longest pleasure pier. I guess if it had not been so foggy we would have spotted the pier from miles away ! The pier is that long as the tide goes out for over a mile on this section of coast. They must have been really really keen to build the pier here !

I had a fish and chip lunch in one of the small fish and chip shops open near the pier head and then we caught a small train out to the end of the pier, my knee was really starting hurt – it has been plaguing me for a while and I didn’t fancy another couple of miles of walking. I was glad we did as there was nothing open at the end of the pier, plus it was quite brisk out there, so we did not stay for long.

Once off the pier we walked up the steps to the top of the cliff for a look back over the pier and the closed fairground.

We then caught a train back to London. We were going to stop for a pint at Leigh-on-Sea but decided to head back into town and have an end of the day beer there instead.

It was another really good day out, I learned to not always trust what people say about a place as I kinda liked Southend-on-Sea and the other local towns – though I would not go there on a sunny mid-summers weekend – I suspect it would be madness ! I am keen to walk the other way from Southend out to Shrewburyness, so I will definitely visit again.

Next time I will have to try the famous Rossi ice cream as well.