Category Archives: travel

Europe, history, travel, UK

Jersey

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A little sick of sitting at home in the weekends just in case I was needed at work during the annual maintenance shutdown, I somehow decided that a weekend trip to Jersey wasn’t too far to go. Technically not a foreign country, although in some ways it felt like one, it was still sort of overseas – an easy half hour flight over the Channel from Southampton after work on Friday. Although a small island, it turns out Jersey is a maze of narrow lanes – even a Focus was feeling a bit large. The open road limit is only 40 mph, but most of the roads are restricted more than that – some down to 15 mph. Driving was interesting because most of the intersections were blind due to various walls, so there was a lot of creeping out in to the next road hoping no-one was coming along in a hurry – which, invariably, they weren’t. Navigation wasn’t exactly straight forward, even with a pre-cached map & GPS on my phone – I was told that people that have been on the island their whole life can still get lost. I did manage to find where I was staying out on the east of the island & got a very warm welcome from my airbnb hosts – I was surprised to see a bottlebrush growing in the garden, a reminder of home.

The number plates are even more simplistic than back home – although not nearly as boring

Having settled in to much larger accommodation than I’m used to for just one person, I was keen to head out & explore a little & find some dinner as the evening was brightening up. It wasn’t a long drive, nowhere is I suppose, down to the small harbour at Gorey. There’s rather an imposing castle, Mont Orgueil, right behind the esplanade and a long breakwater that shelters the fleet of small boats harboured. At the end of the pier there was the smallest customs facility I think I’ve ever seen – there are occasional ferry sailings to France (which is a whole lot closer than England).

Waking to drizzle that had well & truly set in, a day of indoor activities was dictated to me. I started off at Jersey’s most popular & well known attraction – the Jersey War Tunnels on the other side of the island. The Channel Islands were the only part of the UK that was occupied by the enemy (the islands having been left demilitarised, as there was not much strategic importance in defending them) during WWII & Hitler was apparently so keen to hold on to this little bit of the country, that it was in the process of being turned in to a fortress. This complex of tunnels was built as a large underground hospital – but it was never used as such. Now it holds a fascinating account of what life was like for the islanders under German occupation; it’s really well done, the unexpected loud sound effects of screeching bombers & explosions can be a little disconcerting – but that’s probably the point. I expected a bit more of the history of the complex itself, but I suppose there’s not much more to say than forced labour dug it out & it was turned in to a medical complex.

Without getting too lost I made it next to Hamptonne Country Life Museum. I was interested to see how life might have been for my great-great-great grandfather, who was a farmer on the island (my great-great-grandfather left in 1863 for New Zealand, he was a mariner – I assume there wasn’t enough land for all the sons to carry on farming; this is the reason at least one other of my forebears made it all the way to NZ at a similar time). There are some really well preserved & furnished farm buildings from the late seventeenth & early eighteenth centuries, I was a little surprised to pop my head around a dark corner & find a large sow suckling ten or so piglets. There was also a fascinating display on the Jersey cow, the island’s greatest export and one I’m reasonably familiar with having grown up the son of a dairy farming expert – not to mention having milked a few after leaving school.

Horse powered wheel for crushing apples to make cider

Having spent enough time out in the rain for a little while, I returned home to regroup & watch some of the Wimbledon finals before wandering down the lane a bit to Le Hougue Bie. The largest archaeological attraction here is one of the best remaining passage graves in Europe – used in the Neolithic age (six thousand years ago) as more of a church than as a grave. On top of mound covering the passage grave there is also a medieval chapel – that once had a big tower built around & on top of it in the 1800s, but that has since been pulled down. As this is one of the high points for the east side of the island, it’s a good observation point – so there is of course a bunker from WWII. This now houses a poignant display commemorating all the forced labourers that were transported to Jersey.

The entrance to the passage grave – one could stand up inside it in certain places

Being an island, seafood is of course a staple – the oysters & scallops I had for dinner that night were glorious. The aptly named local ale – Liberation – was also pretty damn good. Returning home that evening, my hosts Lesley & Peter were only to happy to hear about NZ over a bottle of wine – so I happily obliged while we pored over an atlas that was surprisingly detailed (why was Pongakawa on there?) & then gradually we drifted through the atlas sharing travel stories.

There was actually blue sky on Sunday morning, so it was back to Gorey to have a proper look around Mont Orgueil. The castle has been around since the early 1200s, but with many changes – as you would imagine – over the last eight centuries. In a great defensive position initially, once gunpowder & cannon became more useful the hill overlooking the castle to the north became rather pesky & rendered it only useful as a prison for quite sometime. Of course, the Germans found a use for it, raising the observation towers. The castle has only been reopened since 2006 & there is a really good mixture of social history, architectural/military history and more recent artworks. The morning I visited Jersey Heritage was running a program for children so there were plenty of people dressed up using olde worlde words and masses of kids running around with wooden shields & swords trying to find the Crown Jewels.

Back over Gorey

Just to show that there were actually some Jersey cows left on the island – they’re not all overseas

After packing up, lunching, more chatting over table-tennis on the lawn in the sun I had a few more hours before the flight home. A rather famous conservancy & zoo (Durrell) was not far away, so I popped in to have a look – mostly because I couldn’t really believe that there were gorillas on the island. There were, it turns out.

There were also these red river hogs from west Africa

So I pottered around in the car exploring the few areas of the island I had not visited yet before returning the car & watching more Wimbledon before the quick hop back home. Jersey was a good visit & a welcome break from home, a pity the weather wasn’t a little better – but this is the UK after all. It was a strange mix of English & French – so close to France, most of the street names were in French (I remember two that weren’t) and most of the houses are made of granite & look decidedly French; yet English is the predominant language & accent and they drive on the left. For some reason, that no one could explain to me, there is also a strong Madeiran influence – plenty come over from Madeira & work, but I don’t know why.

Asia, city, engineering, Europe, travel, vehicles

The Promised Post

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If anyone was wondering, here finally is the last of the posts of my week in Turkey. One filled with observations on the kind of things I notice – apart from all the usual things that one sees in a foreign country & around its tourist attractions.

Firstly, on one of my back-street wanders between attractions (in this case the Golden Horn & Galata Tower) through reasonably normal city shops I stumbled across dozens of little shops. Each shop seemingly devoted to an individual aspect of, all things, engineering – covering process, mechanical, manufacturing & more.

Want a fan or blower?  There’s a shop for that:

How about an electric pump? There’s a shop for that too. Actually, I was keen to investigate replacement soap initials pumps for work – but I don’t think they would have fitted in my baggage allowance & I don’t know the Turkish for flowrate, head or impellor.

Pallet trolley?

Petrol-driven pump? Compressor?

Traffic management items?

A very bizarre little shopping area to wander around. Air-tools, welders, power tools, hand tools – there were shops for each of those too & many more.

Once I was in Cappadocia, it was a much more rural area – which meant tractors. I was most pleased to see that ninety percent of the tractors used on the many fields were of one type. Classic Massey Fergusons – for some reason my father has a particular liking of these small tractors. Consequently, I’m quite fond of these little red workhorses as they remind me of Dad & my childhood growing up on the orchard in Papamoa.

Most of the Massey Fergusons I saw were 135s, – such as the one below in the main street of Goreme – which were built between 1964 and 1975. I’d always been under the impression that Massey Ferguson was an English company – probably because ours was built in England; but as it turns out Massey-Harris and Ferguson were two Canadian companies that merged in 1953.

The Massey Ferguson 35 is probably the most recognisable model, it was the largest selling tractor in the world. It was made from 1957 through to 1964 in various countries – this is the model that we had when I was still small enough that driving it was a bit of stretch. There were a few around town – this was the best looking example. I must have looked rather strange – a tourist wandering back through town after dinner out, spending an inordinate amount of time peering at all the details in the dark.

As well as old tractors, there were scores of old Renault 12s.  These were discontinued by Renault thirty-odd years ago, but there were so many still around I was bewildered.  Apparently, they still sell for six thousand lira (just under £2000) – which is astounding as my ten year old car only cost me half that.  It turns out that variations of the 12 were made in Turkey until 2000 – so not quite as strange as first thought.

city, Europe, history, travel

Last day in Istanbul – Kariye Muzesi

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One attraction of Istanbul that I hadn’t managed to see previously & was apparently worth visiting was Kariye Muzesi (Chora Museum).  In rather the opposite direction to the main attractions, I vaguely followed my nose walking west & after half an hour or so picked up the tourist signs.  Up sprung the usual shops selling the usual guff to tourists, but they as usual were of no consequence to the fantastic building next door.  With an unusual lack of symmetry, this building is supposedly one of the best-looking examples of a Byzantine church left.  Like Hagia Sophia, this church was converted to a mosque and later a museum.

However, much of the Christian art remain & is most spectacular – in the form of mosiacs & frescos.  The mosiacs really are the highlight though – such vivid colouring & fine detail.  The audioguide is well above average & did a great job of explaining so many different scenes from Mary & Christ’s lives. Once a coach-load or two had passed through, it was nice enjoying the intimacy of a building much smaller than most of the other big sights in the city.

Much of the rest of the day was spent walking randomly around town towards the Golden Horn, stopping to read when I found an appropriate shady bench or patch of grass to lie (nap) on. More excellent seafood harbourside before walking back up the hill home – did get the best & cheapest Turkish delight (baklava) I’ve ever had (7 lira/kg! – that’s less than three quid), that was a hit back in England.

So that’s my week in Turkey – what a great place, I was continually surprised and fascinated. A strange mix of first world and third world, not to mention being on two continent – those factors may or may not be related. Another five o’clock start for the flight back to London, I’m still getting over that facet of the vacation.

Asia, history, travel

Cappadocia day tours

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Emerging from my little nap in time to catch the minibus, I headed on the larger (geopgraphically) of the day tours offered by Andromeda.  First stop was a view point to get a good look at the valleys surrounding the town.

Around the area there are numerous underground cities that the locals used to hide from invaders.  We went to one of the biggest at Derinkuyu – crazy that hundreds of people lived fifty metres underground for up to six months at a time.  It was great fun walking stooped through some very small tunnels – the tunnels were small to slow down any enemies & make it easy to pick them off.  There were plenty of big disc-shaped rocks propped up near strategic doorways that could be easily rolled in to place & only opened from the defenders’ side.

With the driving inbetween, it was about one o’clock before we began what was misrepresented as a hike. There were a lot of stairs down in to Ihlara Valley, before we found yet another cave church near the river.  It was a nice hour-long walk down the tranquil path looking up at more man-made caves. For motivation, lunch was waiting for us at the end – the dining room was on a pontoon floating on the river. Very nice trout was enjoyed by many.

The highlight of the day for me was Selime Monastery.  More of the same in some respects, but much rawer as a tourist attraction. Plenty of caves, churches, tunnels, dead-ends and ladders to explore – with very few people around.  It was like being eight years old again – at least what I remember of the wonder of exploring such interesting places.

There’s a good chance after such a long day, I had yet another nap (holidays are great) before heading out for dinner – in a cave. All good fun sitting in the dark, on the floor, writing postcards eating all manner of Turkish foods with a nice local wine to wash it down.

The more local tour on Friday had a fair bit of the time looking at fairy chimneys – what the area is most famous for.  They come in three types – as I heard more than once while in town – cylindrical, cone & mushroom.  Naturally, they’re also a good place to build your house or church.

We had a brief visit to Cauvsin Old Village, which is mostly in ruins & deserted. This was interesting as we had flown right on top of it the previous day & the pilot had pointed out the features & where someone with too much money was restoring part of it to form a hotel.  We popped inside a very small mosque, that like many in the country, used to be a church before the Ottomans came along.

There was a bit of time watching master-craftmen at work at a local pottery studio – conveniently located next to the largest buffet restaurant I’ve ever seen, to cater for the bus loads of tourists.  Nonetheless, it was very impressive, intricate work & I managed to walk out with a small souvenir of my Turkish stay.

The mushroom type of fairy chimneys:

A short stop at a government facility that supports local traditional carpet makers where we got the hard sell on carpets – they unrolled dozens in front of us.  All of them very nice, big & expensive. If I had a home to furnish, I may have had a harder time not spending hundreds of pounds on a carpet.  As it was, I got a small rug – much needed in my room.

Well, I was working with luminous fish and I thought… hey – loom

This time we drove into the Valley of Imagination, instead of floating in.  So-called because it only takes a little imagination to see all sorts of things in the rock structures.

Camel

That’s me – that doesn’t take so much imagination

There was a photographer with this couple

Back to the hotel in just enough time to collect my bags & get a shuttle to Neveshir & my flight back to Istanbul. An excellent three full days in Goreme & Cappadocia – ballooning obviously the highlight & a great way to see the extraordinary scenery, but the museums & cave dwellings not to be sniffed at either.