Category Archives: UK

around home, shoulder, UK

Another shoulder update

Leave a comment

It’s now five months since the anthroscopic (keyhole) anterior stabilisation of my right shoulder – brought on by four dislocations over the previous couple of years.  Since my last update, I’ve continued with a variety of progressing exercises & stretches set by the physio.  Progress along the way has been mostly gradual with not too many obvious signs, but every so often I’d push my shoulder in some direction just a little bit further than I was used to & suddenly realise that there is more movement there than I thought.

I had one such moment a couple of days ago when it struck me that I could now lift my arm out away from my body (but in the same plane), with my palm facing down (much more difficult than palm up) & it would go all the way up & touch my ear.  Bloody brilliant, as that was the most restrictive movement.  When the physio saw that today, she was well pleased – she sent me out the door with a theraband with a bit more resistance & told me she didn’t want to see me again.  Fantastic – so after five months I have a much more stable shoulder & I can now start taking small steps (pedal strokes) in getting back to mountain-biking.  Hoorah!

The first six weeks post-surgery was of course the worse, being in a sling & not being able to drive.  The biggest hassle I found was not being able to cook as it meant I had to have ready-meals & they aren’t the best for the palate or the body.  Also, not being able to exercise harder than a brisk walk meant I wasn’t burning enough energy & therefore, not sleeping so well.  But once that sling was off, things got much better & I haven’t really missed the mountain-biking as much as I thought I would (mostly due to the poor weather this summer) and have managed four trips overseas, plenty of other weekends away in Britain and got to a better level of fitness at the gym & running in the New Forest (even if that has been pretty boring).

So definitely no regrets so far in taking the surgery route to fixing my shoulder.

bikes, event, friends, MTB, UK

Olympic Mountain-Biking!

Leave a comment

Once I worked out that I wasn’t going to be in Prague during the event, I was well pleased to snaffle the spare ticket that John & Anna had for the women’s XC mountain-biking at the London 2012 Olympics. The last two weeks have been fantastic to be in the country & be both British & Kiwi, as both countries have done well. Much to most of the country’s amazement, the games have been spectacular and very well embraced – it sure has been a great change from the usual moaning, cynicism and football (soccer) coverage.

I set off from Trish’s bright & early to meet Anna, John & Richard at Fenchurch St station – it had dawned a lovely day & the stroll across the Thames showed Tower Bridge sporting its recent addition.

The station & train was not nearly as busy as expected & about an hour later we were walking the forty minutes from Leigh-on-Sea towards Hadleigh Farm (there was a free shuttle bus, but we preferred & had the time to walk). The enthusiasm & outgoing-ness of all the volunteers has been noted by many people – & all the volunteers we encountered lived up to this reputation, they were great. Before long we were in a sizeable, but fast-moving queue as we quickly made our way through security.

We got our first glimpse of the course. It was surprisingly open & easy to spy a few of the features – particularly the rock garden to the south (left in the picture below).

The Start/Finish area (bottom right below) was well groomed sitting below all the flags of the participants’ respective countries.  I imagine that first climb was brutal enough after a few fast-paced laps to warrant using the switchbacks on the left.

With plenty of time until the 12.30 start, we leisurely checked out various features of the course.  A few of the trickier parts had chicken runs (the easier route on the right below), but I was impressed that I never saw any of the racers take that option – although I wasn’t everywhere, so may have missed such happenings elsewhere.

This was the bottom of the appropriately named Snake Hill (all the features were named by local school children apparently) – a series of switchbacks up a hill that was quite steep to walk straight up.  We ended up spending quite a few laps near the top of this climb as it provided a variety of good viewing options – Anna even managed to get a camp seat to sit on from some kind lady.

The view below looks back over a lot of the course to the Start/Finish area from the Rock Garden.  So we could still follow the race progress from afar – with the help of the PA of course.

Parts of the course were quite skinny & weren’t ever going to be any good for passing – but there were plenty of other places for passing.

The bottom of the Rock Garden was our first spot, we lunched & patiently waited to hear the race start off in the distance.  Eventually it was all on, & the British representative, Annie Last, quickly got to the front of the field – much to the delight of the crowd.  The lead motorbike came on down the Rock Garden & we got our first glimpse close-up at some fast riders.

Annie Last leading the race down

Sabine Spitz – who I saw racing at the 2006 Worlds in Rotorua

After a couple of laps watching at the Rock Garden, we moseyed off back to our favourite spot at the top of Snake Hill with a view across to see the riders coming down Deane’s Drop.

Below is Julie Bresset (FRA) leading Spitz (GER) & Georgia Gould (USA) to the top of the switchbacks

When Spitz crashed coming down Deane’s Drop, slowing both herself & Gould down, the race as a competition was effectively over as Bresset kept extending her lead.  The only Kiwi in the field, Karen Hanlen, slipped further down the field to eventually finish nineteenth after a crash & a puncture – nonetheless, she got a cheer each time she rode past.

Naturally, we stayed for the medal ceremony, the flags being raised & stood for the French national anthem.

In a ploy to try & stop everyone leaving at once, there were more of the standard trials shows that seem to crop up at every big mountain bike event.  The RAF Falcons (parachute display team) also dropped in – just not in the biking sense.

So a great day out in the sun, on perhaps what is the only hill in Essex, watching a world class & well-run event.  I was well pleased to get to an Olympic event, & even more pleased that it was mountain-biking.

We wandered back to the train station & didn’t really have to wait all that long considering there had been twenty thousand people at the event & then we were back in London for a bit of time on Southbank & a much needed meal.

Sunday provided a necessary sleep-in (I think I was still tired from Prague – it’s a tough life) & then the last day of Olympic competition.  The marathon was great, but naturally I was intrigued to see the men’s mountain-biking.  It was good to see the whole course as the race unfolded, listen to the informative (if you didn’t know anything about MTBs) BBC commentary and watch a thrilling tight race that came down to a sprint finish.

That afternoon was a particularly early birthday dinner for me with a fair few of my second cousins, first-cousins-once-removed (in both generational directions) at a Mexican restaurant.  Good food, fantastic to get quite a bit of the family together – thanks Trish for the effort in organising it.  With almost two weeks to go until my birthday, the timing was a bit off (I was supposed to be in London next weekend, but then the Olympics came up) & it’s so long since I’ve had to blow candles out, I was a little confused as to what to do.

family, food, UK

London weekend

1 Comment

The chance to see Rhys Darby (a NZ comedian best known as Murray, present, from Flight of the Conchords) near the end of his UK tour had me in London for weekend last. Saturday either side of noon was spent doing an unhealthy amount of clothes shopping (which in my book is setting foot in a clothes store), with the redeeming factors being tapas for lunch and Trish’s eye & advice.

I met a few other Kiwis in SheBu for a drink & meal before the show – I think that’s the first time I’ve been in a Walkabout pub, not bad for all this time in the UK. I only knew high school friend Jeff, but as it turned out one of his other friends couldn’t make it so I got a significant upgrade in my seat. The show was fantastic, not quite as side splittingly funny as I perhaps expected – but hilarious all the way through & a couple of tears of laughter shed.

Second-cousin Catherine & Chris have recently finally found a house to buy in NE London, so I was keen to visit & catch-up, almost a year since I saw them shortly after returning from Canada. Summer finally arrived with vengeance on Sunday, so Trish & I set off to lunch. Olympic preparations were obvious & our drive took us past the impressive stadia – the journey was a bit slower than it otherwise might have been, but not any slower than taking the trains & walking at each end. I’m just glad that I’m well away from the Olympics & won’t have to deal with all the congestion as I choose from thirty-odd BBC channels to watch whatever might be going on.

Duly impressed by the new house & all the work that has obviously been done quite recently, we settled down for a great lunch on the patio overlooking playing fields & woodland. Silly me, didn’t even consider that it might be worth putting in a hat when I packed Friday night – but after the last two months, I think it’s understandable. Chris apparently has been wanting to used their not-insubstantial charcoal barbie for some time, so it was put to good use.

I do like that people choose to cook lamb when I’m over, I’m pretty sure I’ve had more lamb since leaving NZ than I did living in the country – it’s fantastic. The large piece of lamb served up didn’t disappoint & we were all well fed. Even though there were six of us, I imagine that there is still lamb in the fridge at Chris & Catherine’s. With all the new potatoes, asparagus & various salads – it turned into quite the feast that I wasn’t expecting, I’m hardly going to complain about that.

A not very well timed photo – that’s a large piece of lamb, & Chris too

So a most pleasant afternoon catching up with Catherine, Chris, Carol (Mum’s cousin & Catherine’s mum), Barry (Catherine’s dad) & Trish (also Mum’s cousin, but you probably should know that by now) and being well fed while sweltering in the sun.

Europe, history, travel, UK

Jersey

2 Comments

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.