Critical Hippo

I’m in Estonia for a work handover thing. Tallinn has a beautiful old town, surrounded by ugly concrete. So quite like Swindon, apart from the ‘beautiful old town’ bit. The food here is mostly meat, which is quite good news. I’ve been promised a trip to a proper Estonian bar tomorrow night, where I’ll be eating battered pigs’ ears, I’m assured. As long as they’re washed down with plenty of Saku (a nice Estonian lager), I’ll be more than happy to try it. I’ve put some pictures of the place up here, but it’s a bit difficult to get time to do the proper tourist thing. Maybe worth a re-visit taking in some other places along the way.

We went for a winter stroll around the Valley Gardens a couple of weekends ago. It was sunny, but bitterly cold!

We fancied some winter sun, and a week-long trip to Tenerife was our solution. It was my 30th birthday too, so getting away from it all was very much the order of the day. We stayed in an apartment at the Barcelo Varadero in Playa De La Arena, away from the madding crowd. There were quite a few old German tourists, but we’ve become accustomed to them from our visits to Madeira - they certainly know how to pick the good spots!

It was a great, relaxing holiday, on which we spent quite a long time chilling out on the beach, only going on a couple of real trips (dolphin watching and to the Exotic Park). The flipper trip was excellent… the dolphins showed up on cue, and the boat journey onwards to the cliffs at Los Gigantes and Masca was also very enjoyable. It was a bit tricky trying to photograph the dolphins, as you can never anticipate when they’ll leap out of the water. Nevertheless, my strategy of holding the shutter button down for ages and then mass-culling lots of photos of the plain sea managed to snag a few usable shots.

The Exotic Park was a lot better than I’d expected. Its unique selling point was that you could just walk amongst all the animals in the park, so we found ourselves edging past reptiles and pigs, and hoping the squirrel monkeys would get less shy. The place was almost empty, yet one of the highlights was the surreal sight of one of the only other visitors to the park pulling his suitcase behind him whilst being chased by an ostrich. I think the bird had designs on it… I imagine the case looked slightly ostrich-like from the right angle (or it’d been drinking something fermented).

Anyway, in summary: the apartment was clean and spacious, the place was relaxed, and we’d definitely go back again to escape part of England’s gloomy January weather in the future.

There are many walks around the Bolton Abbey area. It’s well worth choosing one that goes past the Strid if you get the chance - it’s a gorge with water really smashing through it. If you park in one of the three car parks around, it’ll cost you £5 a day, but you can move between them at will. Since you’re there for a walk that seems a bit pointless, but there you go. The weather was pretty good, the Strid was really gushing, what more do you want? There’s a lot of woodland to go through too, so an excellent autumn walk is guaranteed.

A place that seems to be on the up a bit. It looks like there has been quite an investment in making Bridlington less shabby than it used to be, with some degree of success.

The North Beach area is full of the usual tat, but the South Beach is relatively unscathed, and the beach itself is very clean and inviting. The water didn’t look appealing enough to swim in, but a few people were having a go anyway. Considering that it’s so late in the English holiday season, that was quite brave of them, especially given that the lifeguards only work up until the end of the first week of September.

There was a robin’s nest in the bird table, with the chicks chirping constantly for food. The parents kept feeding them, and didn’t seem bothered by us sitting nearby at all.

Other features are: a bathing blackbird and its buddy, funky frogs, and a dozing dog (as ever).

Piccies here.

We went up to the real North East of England for a long weekend.

We stayed in Berwick, visiting Lindisfarne (Holy Island), Manderston country house and estate, Bamburgh (nice place with impressive castle), Seahouses (too choppy to sail though), then Alnwick (castle from Harry Potter).

Click the place names above for photos from the visits.

We went to the Lakes last weekend for a friend’s birthday. The weather was shocking, but the landscape was still beautiful.

I went down to Cainscross to see my Mum and Dad for Easter. Cler and Ant were around on Saturday and Sunday, and our old friends John and Maggie were visiting too, which was great.

Piccies here.

Just back from a week in Morocco. It was absolutely brilliant.

Read all about it here.

We went on a walk last Sunday from Ebley to Stonehouse along the canal. The weather was cold, but quite sunny, and Guy enjoyed sniffing around the banks. A good time was had by all!

Photos here.

Thorp Perrow Arboretum was a great day out. There were (of course) loads of trees, and other plants, but what I enjoyed the most was the falconry demonstration. They had a good range of birds, and the demonstrators were engaging.

We just missed a woodland walk looking for mushrooms, which was a bit of a shame, but at least we got to see all the different fungi the participants had collected after their efforts earlier in the day.

A comment from a user on the BBC’s news website following Hurricane Katrina (from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4193244.stm):

In vain I have searched internet sites for signs of an international effort to help the 2.9 million people without power, water, or food in the hurricane devastated area of the USA. Apparently when our country suffers it’s left to fend for itself. That tells me what to do next time a tsunami hits a third world country!
Susan, Lansing USA

What? No really, what?

I’ve just signed up for a free 21-day trial of screenselect, an online DVD rental website. It looks interesting enough, but I’ll probably cancel in a couple of weeks’ time unless it really bowls me over. I signed up with them because I’m participating in one of those viral marketing things to get a free ipod. The gist of it is that if I can get five other people to sign up for the free trial offer, the company that’s doing the promotion for screenselect will ship me an ipod.

You do need to enter a credit card number, but it won’t be charged if you cancel within the 21 days. So basically, it costs you nothing, you get to trial a pretty good DVD rental service for free, and I get a shiny new gadget out of it. What are you waiting for? Please use the link below to help me out in this little experiment:

Be nice to Alister

Please click “Be nice to Alister” above!

A really close one this year. I managed not to come badly last this time, despite severe difficulties with the uphill crab.

Congratulations to Stephane, who won after two sterling performances.

Photos here, or click the picture as normal.

Saturday, July 9th.

We ended up in Nice late on Friday evening, taking a taxi from the station to the hotel Vendome.

Nice was much more interesting than I’d expected - there was far more than we had time to look at, and we’re planning to go back soon to check out some of the galleries we missed, and spend some more time in the beautiful clear sea!

Photos are here.

Friday, July 8th

We ended up having a lovely Tunisian meal last night near to the harbour in Marseille. This morning we checked out of the hotel and dumped our luggage at the train station. We then headed to Aix-En-Provence, which is a very pretty town that appears largely unspoilt by tourism. We’ll be heading back to Marseille later to collect our luggage, then it’s onwards to Nice this evening on the last train journey of our holiday.

Photos are here.

I’m writing this sat on a bench on the main street, which is lined with plane trees and excellent cafés. One of the benefits of V’s shopping addiction is that it gives me time to write down these rambling paragraphs.

We saw the papers at Marseille station this morning (Friday). They were full of the news of the terrorist attacks on London that happened on Thursday morning. I sent frantic text messages to check that my friends in London were safe and sound, which thankfully they are. Will was on the train immediately following the one that expoded at Edgeware road, so he was understandably very rattled.

The comment made some time ago about terrorists only needing to be lucky once, but the security services needing to be lucky all the time is very true - this was bound to happen sooner or later. This attack has clearly affected the people of London immensely, but it won’t break them… the IRA never managed it, and I don’t think anyone else is about to achieve that either. A very sad day.

Thursday, July 7th.

A funny old place, Marseille. We’re sat in a bar near the old port area, having just finished listening to a couple of posh English blokes whose ancestors obviously sold their brain cells for cash some time ago. It’s still baking hot, but the city’s not nearly as polluted as I’d thought it would be. God bless whoever it was that left their AP open around Kookai - transmission of the last set of blog entries had been seriously delayed. Turns out that this blogging software barfs on attachments, which was disappointing as I have loads of piccies to share. I’ve got an ftp client, but it’s a bit of a caddle to use when I’m out and about. mo:blog only gets a C+ due to that… it could be improved a lot still.

The hotel Athenes is right by the station, down the massive flight of stairs that takes you to the main street level. It’s not the finest hotel ever, but with its location and price (48 euro) it would be churlish to complain too much.

We’re going to try to find a nice fishy kind of restaurant tonight in order to sample some regional specialities.

Marseille photos now here.

Wednesday, 6th July.

So now we’re at the train station in Girona at 10:20 on Wednesday morning. The pygmies were excellent last night - definitely not short on talent. We had more food from the international stalls outside the cathedral, and a few beers to wash it down with.

Our destination for the day is the Dali museum at Figueras. We’re going to dump our luggage at the bus station there, have a good look around the weird stuff, then head on to Cerbere, where we’ll be staying for the night.

After that, who knows, except that we need to make it to Nice by Saturday, where we’ll be meeting up with Cler and Ant.

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The tickets were cheap (2.5 euro), but the train is nice and clean. Can you hear me, PrivatisedBritishTrainCompanies?

I’ve still got The Clash’s “Spanish Bombs” going through my head, which is probably a bad thing.

I got a positive reponse when I had a bash at speaking Catalan yesterday lunchtime, so I’d certainly make more of an effort with that the next time we visit. Catalonia is a region that’s very proud to be different. The language is far more like French than I’d imagined, which has been quite a relief.

I think we’re nearly there now, so I’ll put this gadget away and prepare to lug my heavy rucksack to the left luggage office.

Fins després.

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The Dali museum was brilliant - well worth the stop. It’s great to be leaving Figueras now, though, as it’s a hole. It really is a one-trick pony of a town - I’m sure Dali would be appalled at the lack of imagination shown in its current architecture and general feel.

Photos are now here.