Category: Travel

Sleeping in my van

Exploring Barra and finding a great spot to sleep in my van.

Castlebay
Sailing into Castlebay

I’ve camped in my van for the last three nights and I’m loving the freedom of it. I left home much later than planned on Thursday and arrived in Oban just after midnight. I found a free car park, rolled out my bed in the back and went to sleep. I had a really good night’s sleep and felt comfortable and safe. It would have been much more difficult to find somewhere to pitch my tent. It was dark when I was driving so I couldn’t spot any good camping spots from the road.

Barra and Vatersay

On Friday I caught the ferry over to Castlebay on the island of Barra at the bottom of the Outer Hebrides. It’s a five hour sail and was calm, clear and sunny all the way. We arrived in the early evening to more sunshine. Knowing the good weather wouldn’t last and wanting to explore I drove a full circuit round the island’s ring road stopping to take photos of the white sandy beaches and looking for a camping spot for the evening.

Barra and Vatersay

I drove over the causeway to Vatersay and followed the road finding more white beaches and a lone seal. I also discovered the remains of a second world war plane crash. This reminded me of walks I’ve done in the Peak District to see similar remains (a more macabre version of being a plane spotter).

plane wreck

Although I saw lots of nice places I would have had to park a little bit back from the sea and not have had the best view. With this is mind I drove back to one of the laybys I’d passed earlier on the west side of Barra and stopped there. Although it was on the main road there were very few vehicles passing. I had the beach and sand dunes in front of me and a rocky grassed over hill rising up behind me on the opposite side of the road.

Barra and Vatersay

I wouldn’t have been able to pitch my tent here as the layby itself was covered with loose stones, the hill behind was too steep (and I probably wouldn’t have got my pegs into the rock anyway), and the sand on the beach was too soft and the tide was coming in. So having my van meant I was able to camp in an amazing spot and have it all to myself. I kept the door open until quite late and opened it early the next morning, sitting in the doorway to eat my breakfast. Last night I camped here again. Another campervan was parked at the far end of the layby, but it was far enough away for us both to have privacy.

Barra and Vatersay

I’ve put a roll-up bed that I’ve had for years in the back of the van. It’s actually meant for a child and is made up of three foam cushions attached together – two larger ones and one smaller one. When it’s folded up it makes a chair, the smaller cushion being the back of the chair; when it’s unrolled it makes a bed with the smaller cushion being slightly raised at the head. It fits really well in the van and is where I’m planning to build my bed when I convert the van. Down the other side from my bed I have everything stored and although it looks very packed, it’s much more organised than I was in my car.

Barra and Vatersay

The more I use my van, the more I’m getting the feel for how I want to convert it. I’m glad I didn’t rush into anything. Although most of my original ideas still hold, there are a few things I will do differently and other modifications I’ve realised would be nice to have.

Barra and Vatersay

This doesn’t mean I’m giving up on my tents though. When I want to get off the beaten track to places I can’t access with a car and when I’m walking and carrying all my gear, a tent will be needed. Also, when I’m staying in one place for a while it’s better to have everything set up in one place so I don’t have to pack things away in the daytime. I’d also have more room in the back of the van during the day.

seagulls

Trying to get to Mingulay

Abandoned, isolated islands are quite difficult to get to. That’s part of my fascination with them.

Mingulay has a similar depopulation story to that of St Kilda, but it is less well-known and less documented. I didn’t know anything about it before arriving in the Outer Hebrides (probably because I’d had no time to research my trip). Continue reading “Trying to get to Mingulay”

Conwy

A castle on a rock and a tiny house.

I didn’t know much about Conwy. Make that, I didn’t know anything about Conwy, but I wanted to stop off somewhere on my way home from Snowdonia and so was on the lookout for somewhere interesting where I could spend a few hours. As I drove past Conwy it winked enticingly at me from down below the road. I turned off and followed signs for the harbour. This, I realised once there, was completely separate from the main town. I parked up (free) and went for a wander. It was quite pleasant with lots of yachts gently bobbing and a restaurant, but not a lot else. 

After a quick wander round the harbour I got back in my van and found the old town fairly easily. I parked in a pay and display car park at the base of the old walls and went for a walk along the top of the walls and a look round the old castle. 

The castle, a World Heritage site, dates from 1283 and was commissioned by Edward I. It’s built on a rock and has eight huge round towers protruding from it’s curtain walls. It gained its strength from its position atop the rock and so lacks concentric walls (an inner layer of walls) as they were not considered necessary.  

The inner parts of the castle lie in ruins, but enough can be seen to imagine how it would have looked in days gone by. From the battlements I got good views over the town of Conwy lying inside the old town walls, the suspension bridge designed by Thomas Telford and opened in 1826, and of the course the inside of the castle. The Great Hall is 125ft long and fills the main space inside the castle. Apart from this there is a chapel, cellars, dungeons, kitchens and so on. 

Leaving the castle, I walked a bit further along the walls before dropping into the town. The town walls are over 34 mile long and have 22 towers scattered along their length. It’s possible to walk the full way along the walls but I cut it short as I wanted to have time to look at the town as well.  

I had a quick look at the smallest house in Britain which is on the shore front. It measures 1.8m wide and stands 3.05m high. I didn’t go in as there were already a few people inside and so I would have had to wait – its size obviously limits the amount of people who can go in at any one time. I could see pretty much everything there was to see from the doorway anyway.

 
I popped into Plas Mawr which is an Elizabethan town house known for its fine decorative plasterwork and also visited Aberconwy House which is a 14th century merchant’s house. The houses are in the care of Cadw and the National Trust respectively and so I didn’t need to pay to get in. I would have liked to have spent longer in both places but was aware of the time ticking away on my parking ticket; indeed when I mentioned to the lady behind the desk in Aberconwy House that I would have liked to have spent longer there but couldn’t because my parking ticket was running out, she advised me to hurry as the parking attendants can be very keen. 

 

At least I got to see what Conwy has to offer; enough to know I’d like to go back and spend a bit more time there, and I had a very pleasant afternoon exploring a new place and breaking my journey home.

Clovelly

A village so perfect they have cats strategically placed for stroking. They even seem to control the weather.

Friday 8th June, 2012

The weather was horrendous today. I heard on the radio that because of the gales and torrential rain, campers all over Devon had packed up and gone home. I had my campsite to myself. My tent has survived far worse storms than this in Shetland and Iceland and I was nice and snug inside it. So snug, I didn’t emerge until the afternoon. I had a lazy, relaxing morning reading, writing and playing with my new Kindle.

By mid-afternoon the weather was clearing up a bit and I thought I really should do something. As it was too late to start a walk (and still not the weather for a coastal, cliff-edge walk) I thought I’d drive out and recce some of the places I want to walk next year on my next bit of the coastal path. The man I’d met in the bus shelter in Westward Ho! had said he was staying in Clovelly and that it was nice, so I thought I’d head there, see what it was like, and then decide what to do next.

Turning off the main road towards Clovelly I drove past some chocolate box style thatched cottages and down a narrow lane to a large car park. There were signs up informing me that I couldn’t drive into the village and had to go into this car park. A large visitor centre was situated at the back of the car park. I parked up, looked around to see if I had to pay, but it seemed to be a free car park. I made use of the toilets and then wandered into the visitor centre. I had no idea what to expect and was quite surprised when I got inside. There seemed to be a cafe and shop, but to get to them I had to pass by a cashier and stump up £6.50. From what I could make out this £6.50 then entitled me to walk round the village.

I wasn’t very impressed with this and wondered if it was like Land’s End where if you turn up with a car you pay, but if you’re walking it’s free. It is on the coastal path after all. As is Clovelly. I was thinking of walking back to the lane and seeing where it took me, when an irate Irish family came towards me through the cashier point. The man said his family had just got their money back as they felt ripped off paying to walk round what turned out to be a village that you could walk round like any other if you didn’t enter via the visitor centre. He advised me to just walk along the road. So I did.

The lane emerged at the top of the village and it was only then that I realised how high up I was. The village clings to the cliff side and narrow lanes wind their way down to the bottom. The buildings are very quaint and at some points are joined over the path to make short tunnels. There are numerous holiday cottages, cafes and little shops. One cottage was open to show what it would have been like many years ago when Clovelly was a fishing village rather than a tourist attraction. There are also a couple of tiny one-room chapels that it’s possible to go inside.

Clovelly was a childhood home of Charles Kinglsey and he is credited with bringing it to the attention of the outside world. He got the inspiration to write ‘The Water Babies’ here and later wrote his novel ‘Westward Ho!’ in which the village is featured. A mock-up of his study can be seen in the small museum.

The whole village seemed so perfect it didn’t seem quite real. Flowers were blooming, scents were heady, numerous very strokable cats were strategically placed, paintwork were fresh, windows were crystal clear. Even the weather was beautiful. How do they do that? Everywhere else in Devon is a complete washout, but in Clovelly it’s lovely, warm and sunny!
 

At the bottom of the village is a small harbour, a pub and a pebbly beach with a waterfall. I slowly wound my way down to the bottom, stopping to take lots of photos. Then I slowly wound my way back to the top again, taking even more photos. From what I could see the coast path passes through the top of village and so when I walk here I won’t get to see the village unless I made a detour. Because I’ve seen it now, I won’t feel that I’m missing out if I don’t get time. Also, I know that there’s a car park and a bus service that I could use. I didn’t have time to do anything else on my recce, but still felt it had been very worthwhile and I’d enjoyed my few hours in the sun.

The lane to the village
First glimpse of the sea

 

Nice gardens and cottages

 

I want a mobile like this
Narrow streets
A cottage as it would have been
Charles Kinglsey in his study
A glimpse of the sea
One of many cats
A long way down, still a long way to go
Boats
Sheltered harbour
There’s even a waterfall
A pretty front door
Sleepy cat
Here’s a link to Clovelly’s website.

Mobile phones and not going to Lundy

So I didn’t get to Lundy this year after all. Here’s why …

Lundy Island is about three and a half miles long and half a mile wide. It lies off the coast of North Devon towards the end of the Bristol Channel and is reached by ferry from either Bideford or Ilfracombe. It’s owned by the National Trust and although it has a shop and accommodation is a bit of a wilderness. Going there has been at the back of my mind for a long time, but it was last year when I was walking the Exmoor part of the South West Coast Path and came across ferry timetables that I decided I would definitely visit this year.

I decided to go on the Thursday as the ferry times on this day would give me the maximum amount of time on the island. I hoped to walk right the way round and so wanted as much time as possible so that I could achieve this without feeling rushed and whilst still having plenty of time to sit and absorb the views and watch any wildlife.

I emailed the ferry company to see about booking. They emailed me back advising me to book in advance and informing me that I would have to do this over the phone rather than online or by email. Easier said than done as I get in too late to ring during the week. I tried phoning on Saturday morning before I left but each time I rang I got a voicemail message telling me the booking office was closed and informing me of the opening hours. As I was ringing at a time the message was saying the office should be open, this was a bit strange. Stranger still was the second part of the message advising me to ring the number I was actually already ringing. I tried one last time right before I left and this time, hallelujah, got through. I booked my ticket and arranged to pick it up from the booking office on Thursday morning. I even got a discount because I’m a member of the National Trust. The woman told me to be at the office for 7.45am and gave me directions for where to park and how to get to the office and the ferry. She also told me to phone the office after 8pm on Wednesday evening to check that the sailing was going ahead. I left home relieved I’d got it sorted out and knowing I’d be able to indulge my island habit whilst I was away.

All was well until Wednesday. I listened to the weather forecast: gales, storms, thunder, rain, gusts of wind up to 70 miles per hour. Maybe I wouldn’t be going to Lundy after all. I listened to the forecast a couple more times in case they changed their minds but they didn’t. Unless I was told otherwise by Lundy officials though, I still needed to turn up for the ferry the following morning. So it was important I made that after 8pm phone call. This is where I hit my next problem.

I rarely use a mobile phone. In fact I’ve never actually bought one, I just use other people’s cast-offs. I’ve been using my current phone for a couple of years and it’s an old one of my brother’s. As he lives in Germany this is a German phone and so the charger doesn’t fit English plug sockets. Not a problem because German plugs fit the shaver socket in my bathroom and so I can charge it in there. I can also charge it in the car and when I’m travelling in mainland Europe the charger fits the sockets fine and is much smaller and lighter to carry than an English size charger and adaptor. So I’m very happy with my German phone.

Now however, my phone decided to die. Each time I tried to switch it on it said auf wiedersehen and switched itself back off. And yes, it was fully charged. I took the battery out and wiped it and put it back in. I shook it. I held it in different positions. All to no avail. If I was going to make this phone call I was going to have to get a new phone. A trip to Tesco was called for.

I found a phone for £11 that seemed perfect. They did have one for £9 but I needed to buy a car charger to go with it and there wasn’t one to fit the £9 phone. Buying a phone is far more complicated than I ever realised.  I had to charge it, then ring a number to register it, then put credit on it, then learn how to use it so I could actually make my phone call. I sat in my car in the car park with the phone plugged into the cigarette lighter trying to go through everything in the right order. Finally I was able to make my phone call. Only problem now was that I couldn’t hear anything. I played with the volume but still couldn’t hear anything. The only way I could hear was to have the phone on loud speaker. I assumed I was doing something wrong and resolved to play with it a bit more when I got back to the campsite.

As for my phone call? Well, I felt like I’d completely wasted my time because all I got was a voicemail message saying that because of the weather forecast the ferry may or may not go and they’d decide in the morning so passengers should still turn up at 7.45am. What was the point in having to ring to be told that? After my experiences with their voicemail messages on Saturday I really think they need to think a bit more about how to word their messages so they actually tell callers something useful and meaningful.

So next morning I had the alarm set before 6am to make sure I had enough time to get to Bideford and find the parking and the ticket office and the ferry. I tried calling again before I left but it was still the same message as the previous evening. I drove the half hour to Bideford, put my car in the car park and bought an all day ticket (luckily it was only £3) all with the knowledge that I was probably doing all of this for nothing and could have had a nice lie-in.

I walked along the quay to the ticket office. The ferry was docked alongside looking inviting. A queue of people were snaking outside the booking office door and along the quay next to the sign saying ‘cancelled’. I had to join the queue to fill in a form to claim a refund. I wasn’t the only person pointing out the inadequacy of the voicemail messages. The woman in the office said they’d only just made the decision to cancel. I really don’t understand the point of having to ring the night before (ok, phoning the night before probably wasn’t as much palaver for other people as it was for me, but even so …) if they don’t make decisions until just before the sailing is due even when there are such severe weather warnings. I was rather miffed at having got up early, wasted an hour’s worth of diesel (return trip) and the parking fee all for nothing, as well as being disappointed at not getting to Lundy. The next sailing was not until Saturday and that would be too late for me.

At least it was still early and I still had the whole day ahead of me. So I went for a walk. But that’s another story.

Thinking about communism

How quickly time passes. Not only do the young children of Prague have no experience of communism, their parents won’t remember it either.

As I was sat on the bus coming back to Prague from Terezin, I was thinking about how different life is now to how it was just over twenty years ago. It’s 23 years since the Velvet Revolution ended communism and this seems like no time at all to me.

I’m glad I went to Russia back in the ’80s as I feel this enables me to appreciate the extent to which people’s lives have changed. Of course two holidays of carefully orchestrated experiences won’t have given me a real idea of what life was like under communism, but I’ve got a much better idea than someone who hasn’t experienced it at all. When I was in Russia, it wasn’t the major things that surprised me. I expected the food to be different for example, but it was the unexpected things, the things I took so much for granted I couldn’t ever imagine them possibly being different. I suppose it was the whole feel of the place, the vibe. The honesty, the civil obedience.

So in my few days here I keep looking at people my age and older and thinking how different their world is now to the one they grew up in. For the older people, they will also remember life under the Nazi occupation as well as communism – even more change for them. When I see people in their 20s walking around and looking like normal young people who could be from the majority of the world – their dress, their hairstyles, the music on their t-shirts, their casual deportment and mannerisms – I wonder how their parents can recognise their lives at all.

Every generation’s children is different to their parents and parents may fret about how their offspring or the general ‘youth of today’ are behaving, what they’re wearing, what they’re listening too, what their attitudes are. But this example must surely be the most extreme. The young people of today will either have been born after the fall of communism or be too young to have any real memory of it. A bit like my memories of the power cuts of the ’70s – a bit exciting, but no sense of hardship or the bigger picture. What changes their parents have had to cope with to get to where they are today.

What is even more sobering and makes me feel really old is that some of these young people will have children of their own – that’s already a second generation of children with no experience of communism. A generation that not only doesn’t know communism itself, but one whose parents also don’t remember it.

Prague

I’m going to Prague.

At Easter I usually go to Germany for a week to visit my brother and nieces. Then I head off somewhere by train for the second week. Alternate years I go to Amsterdam to visit friends and the other years I try to go somewhere new and different.

I’ve just spent several hours on the internet trying to find cheap flights and cheap hostels and cheap trains and generally put my holiday together. After looking at a whole lot of random places I’ve decided on Prague. I’ve never been here before, not even in my inter-railing days when I had brief stops in cities all over Europe. I don’t know much about it apart from that people seem to like it and it’s pretty popular, so now I need an Amazon browsing session to order a guide book and a few more hours to do google research.

Stonehenge and Greenland

Thinking about archaeological and Arctic Circle walks.

Womad falls at the wrong part of summer. I’d much rather it was at the beginning of the summer holidays and then I could head south for the festival and then go up to Scotland for the rest of the summer. As it is I’m going to have nine days of holiday time before the festival. I’d spend the first few days at home anyway as I always have lots to do and sort out before I can go away. But nine days! I’ll feel like I’m wasting my precious time off. So I’m going to head down to the Wiltshire / Somerset area and have a few days wandering around before Womad starts.

I’d been wondering what to do for these few days, but not doing any actual research as I’ve got other trips to plans first. I’ve just watched a documentary on iplayer about some new archaeological excavations on Orkney and the programme was linking what was being found there with the later stone age ‘buildings’ of Stonehenge and Avebury and so on. I like this kind of stuff so I started thinking about doing some kind of walk linking the various neolithic remains together. Then just as I was flicking through my ‘Walk’ magazine (it’s the magazine issued by the Ramblers) I came across an article about a proposed Great Stones Way which does exactly that. It links Avebury to Old Sarum via Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, Salisbury Plain, the Kennet and Avon Canal, Woodhenge and Durrington Walls. It all seems quite easy to do on existing paths except for the slight problem of the MOD firing range on Salisbury Plain. The route is about 38 miles and so three easy days would do it, though it should also be possible to walk it in two if need be.

Feeling happy as I always do when a plan starts to formulate in my mind, I turned the page. An article on Greenland. More specifically an article on walking the Arctic Circle Trail which seems to be a cheap way to see Greenland. I’ve been looking at ways of getting to Greenland for a few years and haven’t yet managed to come up with a cheap way of doing it. I’d have to fly from Copenhagen and all in all flights would be about £1000. But once there the walking is free, I can wild camp or stay in free huts and even the canoe I would need to paddle across one of the lakes is free. I’d take my own lightweight dried food and so would only need to buy fuel for my stove. The trail is 165km long and to divide it into a hut-to-hut traverse would mean taking nine days. With a few days spent at either end that would give me about a fortnight in Greenland. I could then spend the rest of the summer cycling and camping in Denmark. I’m already feeling quite excited about this. I won’t be able to do it this summer, but I don’t have anything on my calendar for next year yet!

Sex and the City 2

The New Yorkers visit the UAE and get into scrapes because of their ignorance and lack of cultural sensitivity.

I’ve never got into watching Sex and the City – I don’t think I’ve actually seen any of the TV episodes. I did watch the first movie a few years ago, but wasn’t impressed. When the second movie came out and was supposedly set in Abu Dhabi I wanted to watch it just to see how the Arab/Muslim/Middle East themes had been dealt with. But as I didn’t expect to enjoy it I certainly didn’t want to pay full price for it.

A couple of weeks ago I found the DVD in a supermarket for £2.99 and so bought it. I was right not to pay full price and right that I wasn’t likely to enjoy it. In fact it actually feels like I’ve wasted over two hours of my life watching it, but I have to remind myself that the reason I wanted to see it wasn’t to spend a relaxing evening watching an enjoyable film but instead was to have my academic head on and critique it. So I suppose I’m glad I’ve seen it.   

The movie was actually filmed in Morocco as the producers couldn’t get permission to film in Abu Dhabi or anywhere else in the UAE. No wonder. All the stereotypes are there: opulent hotels, sand dunes and camels, mysogynistic men and beautiful houseboys, women in abayas and niqabs with designer clothes underneath, religious fervour regarding sexuality and the showing of female flesh, and so on and so on. The storyline is very weak (I’m not sure there really is one) and the bits of ‘story’ seem to be there just to provide a link between the stereotypes.

But maybe I’m being too harsh and this blatant demonstration of stereotypes is actual a good thing, as a lot of the Middle East including the Gulf is like this and so the film is showing that a holiday here is not the same as a holiday in the Med or the Caribbean and therefore you shouldn’t expect to act in the way you would in either of these locations or at home. It’s also more of a reflection on Americans than on Arabs or Muslims as it pictures the New Yorkers arriving having done no research and having no idea as to how to behave or dress in an acceptable manner and assuming that it would be fine to blunder on in their usual manner. Well, ok, one of the women had done some research and she tried to educate the others, but these snippets seemed mainly to be for the purpose of setting the scene for what would later go wrong and for keeping the viewer up to speed as to why things were a problem for the girls. This is an assumption that viewers are uneducated in such matters and need them pointing out, which I suppose is justified on the whole.

So maybe I shouldn’t be so critical of the film, after all they haven’t actually depicted anthing ‘wrong’ and if it encourages future visitors to think a bit more about cultural sensitivity before choosing to go there then that can’t be a bad thing. I do wish they’d shown more of the positives to balance it out a bit though.