[Flerdle] Thanks for the offer. My nearest alternative is only 20 miles away, so I'm afraid your offer of hot water comes some way down the list at present. Who's to say wherther or not things will change? [CdM] When my mum and I 'did' Venice, we stayed in Treviso - a pleasant enough town a couple of stops up the railway line, and travelled in to Venice by train (it's a spectacular approach across the water - and stepping out of the 1940s railway station into 16th century venice took our breath away). This gave us the advantage of not having to pay Venice prices for hotels, nor for dinner (if we chose not to). I'd echo Flerdle's advice - read the 'traveller reviews' on TripAdvisor or Expedia.
So much has changed since last friday, not least of which is the weather in the UK, accompanied by about 3 inches of grass growth in my back garden. Also, it looks likely that I shall be taking on the rental of a house "down south" (roughly here) in about 2 weeks. Subject to rustling up a load of money ...
[Phil] It's bloody lovely round there. I worked near Ramsbury for a while, and at Hopgrass Farm on the A4 just outside Hungerford for a bit too. (Used to be owned by Johnny Morris, apparently, and I didn't know at the time, but my dad was friends with his son at Art School in the late 50s-early 60s and stayed with the Morrises at Lambourn. JM also used to own The Pelican, the pub at Froxfield on the A4 (my favourite road ever). The windy miller & I stayed there a couple of years ago. They didn't seem too bothered by the rain coming through the roof.) Anyway - good luck with the move. I hope you like it down there as much as I did.
It is amazing how the word "Hungerford" is etched into our minds. We found it hard to consider any houses that were up for rent there, simply because it would remind us of that every single day. turns out that the house we're going for is technically in Little Hungerford, but that was subsumed into Hermitage as house-building filled in the gaps between villages.
Port Arthur was creepy enough already, and then...
How horrible. I had not heard of that, probably because ten days earlier was Hoddle Street, which is just a short drive from here. He wiles away his time in prison working out ways to continue his career as a vexatious litigant, thereby popping up in the vews often enough to keep the wound from fully healing. Parole in 2014? Somehow I think not.
I cycled 100 miles yesterday. Wall-clock time 8h32, time in motion (what my bike computer records) 6h58m54. Free beer at the end, then collapsed in a heap.
[Raak] The merest mention of N Norfolk always makes me think of Hunstanton and twitch inwardly - the most confusing and disturbing place I've ever been to.
[Boolbar] I tend to know more or less which direction I am facing, which my family discovered recently when I stopped in mid-conversation, looked around the room and said "Sorry, I just couldn't work out which way was south for a moment". Hunstanton threw me, as I wasn't concentrating, but knew I was in Norfolk for two days. Therefore I got a bit startle by seeing the sun setting over the sea as I looked out from the shore. It took me a while to get my head round it, but it continued to freak me out for the rest of the day. And still does, to be honest.
Just received an email from the hosting people. My interpretation of their breathless gobbledygook is that you may discern slightly slower page loading than normal. Can't say I've noticed.
I saw a Google Car today, with the giant golfball of cameras pointing in all directions mounted on top. It drove right into the private parking area behind my house, and out again. So I might at some point see myself on Google Street View. I wonder how slickly automated their process is. Is the Car continuously uploading everything, which is then processed into Street View images in seconds?
Just had a look on Google Maps, and their current picture of the scene is from 2008. So, four years to revisit a tiny private entrance in a suburb of a small town. There must be some interesting estimate to be made from that of how many miles of road there are in the world, or how many Google Cars there are.
[UK] that really did it, didn't it? More than a week with nowt to say. For the record, I really like Mablethorpe. Sunny here in Rotterdam today, but cool. Or cold.
[pen] I know! What happened there?! Never been to Mablethorpe myself. If we're tipping the nod to UK holiday resorts, I'm going to endorse Barmouth, and see how long this kills the conversation for!
Yesterday, Sunday, my wife and I involved ourselves in a clean up of our garage and workshop. This sudden activity was a result of the local council announcing a 'collection' day, which involves the collection of all and any junk which won't fit into the normal bin - at no charge. It also brings out the scavengers among our population (the first five or six articles we took up to the road were gone within five minutes.) That's the background. One of the later jobs was to move a dilapidated old cupboard/drawer combination from the workshop. My wife did the initial moving of the thing - it was surprisingly heavy for its size - from its position against the brick wall against which it stood. Me, being the lazy sod that I am, was 'having a rest' and a restorative dose of wine. She popped up into my quiet place and informed me that behind the cupboard was living a gecko. Naturally I did the reverse pop and ambled down the stairs to have a dekko. She was right but at the same time wrong. There were three leaf-tailed geckos clinging grimly to the brickwork. Supposedly these wee attractive reptiles are common in this neck of the woods but because of their superb camouflage are rarely noticed. The interesting part of this rather long post is that they were of three different colours. One was grey, one was a mid to dark green and the last a very dark chocolate colour. The latter could have been a very dark green; I'm sure that I'm a bit colour blind in the green/brown range when it comes to the darker shades, particularly in poor light. I have done a bit of a search on the 'Net but cannot find anything that might indicate that geckos are like chameleons - in the sense of adapting their colouring to the background. Is there a herpetologist in the house?
Here's the thing. Mlle nights and I were watching television a few nights ago, when she turned to me and said "You know, it's the oddest thing. When I was in Paris last week, there were a load of British people on the métro."
"Of course there were, dear, there's British people everywhere."
"Yes, but it was at Château d'Eau, they all seemed quite over excited, and there's nothing remotely interesting there. Do you think it had anything to do with that silly game you play with the Tube?"
[nights] Good to see you! I am led to wonder: has anyone really gone on a Château d'Eau Pilg? And what do everyone else's significant others think/know of MCing?
I'll admit to getting off the rame at Château d'Eau and then getting on the next one, just in order to say I'd been there. Mrs INJ just seems to go along with MCing with a 'well, it means he doesn't go out drinking or womanising'* resignation. However, when driving in France we do mark the water towers on a 0-4 stars scale. *This is almost always true