Category Archives: family

around home, family, UK

Cambridge

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Getting up & watching Rugby World Cup matches in a cold lounge wasn’t the best step for my health – but thankfully it’s only a two or three day cold. So when I found Mum’s day-trip (put on for the Study Abroad students) to Cambridge was on Sunday, a plan to go up & see her & the town was hatched rather hastily. As it turned out, Trish was keen to go up as well so we ended up driving. Cambridge is another one of those places I’d been meaning to visit for a while & hadn’t quite had the opportunity or sufficient motivation to do so.

It’s a much more compact town than I remember Oxford being, mostly devoid of parking – so the Park & Ride just off the M11 was most handy. We met Mum just as she was finishing up her lunch & heading off on a walking tour. With a week of settling into uni & organising all sorts of things, she is doing well if a little tired – I imagine it will be nice to have had classes finally start today. Trish & I wandered around a bit down twisting cobbled streets & through courtyards – getting a good look at Christ’s College Chapel, crossing the Cam a few times & stopping to watch the novice punters doing their utmost not to fall in the river or knock themselves out on low bridges.

Meeting Mum again there was more wandering around spotting various famous colleges – a few I must admit I only had heard of from watching University Challenge a year or two back. There were people everywhere, being a weekend in very much a tourist town – I’m glad my university was overcome by sightseers, although Massey doesn’t exactly have much on Cambridge otherwise. It was pleasing to see bikes almost everywhere – although it did seem that their primary purpose was to clutter railings, we saw proportionally few being ridden.

Mum rejoined a very large group of foreign students to make sure they didn’t miss the coach back to Colchester & we continued back down the motorway to visit Trish’s (& Mum’s for that matter) cousin Carol & Barry for a huge roast meal, a catch-up & much family history. Another pleasant little outing, even if it wasn’t the best recuperation plan.

family, UK

Somerset & Bath

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It was great to pick Mum up from Heathrow much too early on a Saturday morning a week and a half ago. Even if that did mean driving through London well too early on a weekend – not that days of the week have too much meaning to me at the moment. We continued west towards Somerset, ducking off when the M4 was closed & wandering around a pleasant little Wiltshire village, lunching & then trying our luck again on the roads. The direct route west through Bath was too snarled up, so it was north back to the motorways. Eventually we were at Mum’s cousins’ (Gary & Joan) place, where I promptly left her to get over the jetlag (which apparently never eventuated) to go down & visit John & Anna (who I met years ago biking in Rotorua) & their young twin daughters. Esther & Lydia sure have grown since I was in Canada. My shoulder dictated that this was my first visit to Taunton without a bike; even so I enjoyed just hanging out as we watched the girls, shared travels stories and looked over my photos from North America.

Back up at Burnham-on-Sea Mum & I spent a relaxing few days trying to avoid getting painted when we walked through the hallway, moseying around various quaint villages (I didn’t get any cheese in Cheddar – “Not much call for it? It’s the single most popular cheese in the world!“, visiting various family & friends, frequenting charming centuries old pubs. I even managed an interview in Bristol on the Tuesday for a job I wasn’t particularly keen on – it was a mercifully short interview. I was delighted to have the new Jack Reacher novel arrive on my Kindle mid-week – a good look as to how Reacher came to be drifting around the States “solving” various problems with usually staggering amounts of violence.

Highlight of the week was getting to Bath finally – a place that I’ve skirted around on the motorway numerous times & never quite had the time to pop in & visit. Unfortunately it ended up being a rather rushed visit, but I got to see the main things I wanted to. That Wednesday was the start of a purple patch of weather – five sunny calm days in a row with the mercury getting up in the high-20s each day. A very pleasant surprise as the days get shorter heading in to October. Consequently, there were plenty of people out & about in Bath (I imagine there usually are – except on the bleakest of days) & we briefly wandered through town towards the Abbey & the Roman Baths.

The Celts first had a temple here around the geothermally heated spring & the Romans built up a temple & the baths here in the first century AD. Those first baths were eventually lost after the Romans left Britain, but much of their complex has been revealed & is part of the facility today. Most of the current buildings & statues date from the 1800s. The audio-tour is very informative & it’s always nice wandering around old architecture & engineering. The various artefact displays & reconstruction of some of the Roman temple were very well done too.

The main drain – nice algae too

There was just enough time to enjoy the late afternoon sun & walk up to see some of Bath’s famous Georgian architecture. The Royal Crescent is particularly impressive – as you would expect a Grade I listed building to be.  With a huge green lawn in front of the crescent, it’s a wonderful setting for the arc of facade that was finished in the 1770s.  I found it interesting that the architect (John Wood the Younger) designed & built the facade only.  This meant that people bought their own section of the front & then had their own architect design the house behind.  At the front this shows up with many different styles of windows & doors, while at the back there is a real hodge-podge of building styles & sizes.

The week rounded out with Mum & I driving down to Dorset to see another cousin (Pamela – Gary’s sister – who I’d last seen when I was four, apparently I’ve grown a bit). All the driving on A-roads was just tedious – so busy & small. After a week of driving through various parts of England on tiny roads in an under-powered rental, I was really missing driving my Outback around the big empty wide roads of North America. There was a much longer & better job interview on Friday near Southampton before we got back to London. The weekend of great weather was mostly spent with Mum organising herself for university, more meals with family & eventually taking Mum up to Colchester & moving all her belongings in to her flat on campus. It’s a little odd taking your mother to university.

around home, family, London, UK

Shooters Hill & Dulwich Picture Gallery

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Eager to get out of the house while it was sunny, albeit still windy, on Sunday Trish & I went & picked up Nora (my great-aunt & Trish’s mother) for a small outing. We didn’t really intend to, but somehow we ended up at Shooters Hill. One of the highest points in London (not really saying much) there are good views south across the field. We spent a bit of time wandering through the 8000 year old wood dodging the acorns being blown from the trees above us. Nora did surprisingly well with the (very modest) amount of walking & I was glad to go somewhere I hadn’t been yet.

Having an arm in a sling is as tedious as usual, but with Trish repaying all I did when she was recovering from her broken ankle I shall be able to keep my arm immobilised longer than usual this time. With Saturday’s trauma I’ve been pretty tired & have spent well too much time watching my favourite Canadian cop drama – Rookie Blue. That title is only bestowed on it due to the small sample-size; Corner Gas being the only other Canadian show I ever watched regularly. But now I’m all caught up to the end of the second series & struggling to fill the time – maybe I just wanted to hear the accent again, even though Canadian seems normal & unaccented to me, for now. Well, I’m still looking for work but that just consists of more time on the internet & looking at vacancies that I’m not quite qualified for or that just sound boring. I should go & see the Vocation Guidance Counsellor – but I don’t even have the right hat for that. We’re slowly starting the redecoration of the middle room, but chipping paint off an old fireplace is slow at best using my left hand.

Yesterday was Trish’s birthday so we took a little outing to the Dulwich Picture Gallery – another place I didn’t get to last time I was here. Famous for being one of Sir John Soane’s designs & the first purpose-built art gallery open to the public in England, the collection is small compared to some of the larger galleries around but very impressive in its content. There are numerous Gainsboroughs, Rembrants, Rubens, van Dycks, Reynolds & a couple each from Canaletto & Hogarth – and many more besides. I think my favourites were those by Gainsborough. With the skylights there is plenty of light streaming in – I recommend visiting on an overcast day. The glare on the higher positioned paintings was too much & had me wandering around in random directions just to try & get a decent view of many pieces.

We had a short stroll around Dulwich Park, which has recently been returned to its original Victorian layout. It is very nice with big open spaces bordered by big old trees – we didn’t even get attacked by any geese or swans. Avoiding the random toll-gate in the middle of suburbia, we tiki-toured home; I suppose if your school is almost four-hundred years old you’re quite welcome to put a toll on these new-fangled automobiles. Over a very pleasant & large dinner out I was regaled with very interesting stories of Trish’s seven years travelling & working in Australia.

bikes, Canada, city, family, friends, hiking, MTB, national park, roadtrip, travel, USA, vehicles

Back to Canmore – Roadtrip Complete

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To finish off the three months of driving I decided to drive all the way back from Vancouver to Canmore in the middle of the long weekend. The logic there being that Jasper would be a zoo on a sunny holiday weekend & I’d be better off checking it out a little later when there were less people around.

So Saturday morning I set off on a wonderfully sunny drive east across BC. The traffic was pretty good & BC was beautifully forested – it really is a large province when you drive across the bottom in one day. After Kamloops I was back on roads I’d driven before & there was a half-hour wait near Shuswap – but I had the Kindle out so I wasn’t too fussed. Over Rogers Pass & coming into Golden there was an ominous big cloud of black smoke billowing into the sky. I was near the front of a queue for almost an hour as some poor family watched their RV incinerate. The rest of the drive was uneventful & I was soon driving below familiar peaks – just they had a lot less snow (almost none) on them than I remember. It was a little odd getting closer to Canmore – being away for three months & doing so many other things must have lessened the blow of leaving such a great place as I wasn’t too concerned that I’ll be gone in three weeks.

So that was it really, just under 22000 km, 87 days, 13 states, two provinces, 45 MTB rides totalling a thousand kilometres, at least 15 National Parks & 5 National Monuments, only 2600 photos & 435 gallons of gas. What a great trip! We were blessed by the weather – notably it never got really hot, as it did the last time I visited Utah, Nevada, Arizona & California in 2009.  Highlights are hard to list as there were so many. But I’ll try anyway:

A separate list for the riding highlights, which is even harder as I rode so much quality singletrack.

That’s that – thanks again Valerie for coming along for the ride & sharing the experience (& financing a lot of it too!).  I’m in Canmore until mid-August before flying back to London to catch the last of the English summer.  Mum’s coming across to England for the last few months of the year, so it’ll be great to see her & plenty of other friends & family in the UK.  From then on, I only have vague ideas as to what I’m going to do with myself… But riding better figure in there somehow.