We buy a Ute

We just bought ourselves a ute. The ute is the archetypal Australian vehicle if ever there was one. Real Aussies drive utes. While it is true that you can buy a flat-bed pickup in other countries, I doubt that anywhere outside of Australia can you equip your farm vehicle with alloy racing wheels, metallic fliptone paint jobs, lowered suspension, superchargers and turbos, or fully race-spec V8 engines. Holden (GM) and Ford even sell them fully tricked up from new, and ute racing is an enormous part of the racing calendar.

Holden Maloo
Holden Maloo

Some people like to add lots of lights, aerials and unfeasibly large bullbars (known here as roo-bars).

Ford ute with 'tray back' and, er, country bits
Ford ute with ‘tray back’ and, er, country bits

Ours doesn’t look like that, though. Ours is a twenty year old Toyota that has spent its entire life chugging around on a rural property, carrying water from the dam to the farmhouse. In this way, it has somehow clocked up an astonishing half a million kilometres, and accumulated an interesting selection of minor dents, some of which have been repaired with household gloss paint.

Toyota Hilux Twin-Cab
Toyota Hilux Twin-Cab

The windows were described by the vendor as ‘manual’, in that to open and close them you put your hand against the glass and push. The radio doesn/t work very well, but it really doesn’t matter because you’d be most unlikely to hear it over the transmission whine anyway. Still, its just what we need to ferry heavy bits and pieces to and from the boat. So why mention it here? Well, I just wanted to say that it is such a pleasure to have a car that you actually have to drive, rather than allowing a bunch of electronics do it all for you. You point the bonnet in the direction that you want it to go, put it into gear, and press the accelerator. If you want to drive with the lights on, then you switch them on. When it rains, you can decide when your windscreen wipers come on, and how fast they move. If you come to a hill, you can change down, or not, depending on your mood. When you need to stop, then it is up to you to decide how hard to push the brake pedal in order to stop without locking the wheels up. If you want to turn a tight corner, then you have to use upper body strength to move the steering wheel around.

It is absolutely brilliant. Bronwyn and I fight over whose turn it is to drive.

House-hunting in Montevideo

We have decided to buy some property in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo. For weeks we have been scouring the internet for likely-looking properties, and by the time we boarded a plane, we had already booked a full agenda of houses to look at. For the first week of our trip, we stayed in and around the old town, mainly the barrios Ciudad Vieja, Centro and Barrio Sur, while taking a little time out every morning to study Spanish at the excellent a Academia Uruguay.

Montevideo traffic

There is a fascinating array of vehicles in town, a little reminiscent of Cuba. There are tax complications with importing foreign vehicles, so there aren’t that many of them around and those that are, tend to be kept running long after you would think that they should have fallen apart. There are rusty old fifties Chevrolets held together with string, rubbing shoulders with seventies Fords that are mainly patchwork and spray-on undercoat.

Wreck or runabout?
Wreck or runabout?
Chevrolet
Chevrolet

Large cars are rare. Taxis are usually very very small indeed; picture a Fiat Uno taxi, or a VW Polo. They are made even more cramped inside by the installation of an enormous safety barrier behind the front seats, so that there is barely room for passengers to squeeze inside, particularly for Bronwyn and I who seem to be a head taller than anybody else.

Stretch limo
Stretch limo

Mixing in with the cars, buses and motorcycles are a lot of horse-drawn carts. These are all owned by a group of gypsies encamped on the outskirts of town, who have the council contract to clear all the rubbish. Each family seems to specialise in a certain product, so you’ll find a cart parked up next to a skip while the gypsies rummage around for prize pieces. Cardboard and plastic seem particularly popular. When we asked the locals about this, they all shrugged and said “it’s a tradition, and the council can’t change it”.

Any old bags?
Any old bags?

Everybody describes parking as a big problem, but with few vehicles on the roads and what seemed to be a plethora of pay parking sites, it was hard to see what the fuss was about. A parking space underneath your building can often be purchased outright for a few hundred dollars. We would be much more inclined to buy a motorcycle in any case. In marked contrast to the ratty and unpredictable cars, all the motorcycles are new, clean and shiny, and we soon realised that this was because they are locally made; Yumba and Winner seem to be the two most common marques.

Bronwyn shops for motorcycles
Bronwyn shops for motorcycles

Ciudad Vieja

The old town has been in decline dating back to the political problems in the eighties and compounded by the fallout from the collapse of the Argentinian peso. Apart from those buildings occupied by a few prestigious banks and lawyers, most of the fine old colonial buildings are falling into disrepair. The locals describe the streets there at night as ‘dangerous’, although we didn’t think that there was anything particularly alarming about them, certainly no more than in any other civilised city centre.

Montevideo police on patrol
Friendly Montevideo police on patrol

The one part of Ciudad Vieja that is still alive and well is the Mercado del Puerto (Port Market), an entire building given over to the cooking and eating of enormous pieces of meat. They are crazy about meat here. Seared on the outside, soft and tender in the middle, and cooked over a wood fire. You can tell when it’s dinner time, because the town is filled with the sweet scent of wood smoke as all the parrillas light up. To go with it, the Uruguayans have come up with their own wine varietal, known as Tannat, which is somewhat related to a good black Tuscan Chianti. I have decided that this is probably my favourite red wine in the whole world.

Parilla at the Mercado del Puerto
Parilla at the Mercado del Puerto
Parilla Chef
Parilla Chef

Over the last few years, speculators and architects have been slowly moving in to the old town, and one or two of the more spectacular buildings, such as the landmark Palacio Salvo, have been renovated.

Palacio Salvo
Palacio Salvo

Much of the rest of these barrios are still derelict.

Neglected buildings near the docks
Neglected buildings near the docks

Although there didn’t seem to be anything actually for sale in Ciudad Vieja itself, we did look looked at a number of quite stunning buildings in neighbouring barrios, structurally sound and packed with beautiful woodwork, mouldings, stained glass, enormous ceilings, fine wood tiled floors and marbled staircases, all overlain by a fairly thick veneer of dirt and neglect.

Skylight
Skylight

Priced at $60-70,000 (US), any of them would make a great restoration project and a fine residence. If your plan was to re-sell for a profit, though, you would probably need to sit on it for another five or ten or twenty years until the neighbourhood recovers. This is not our plan, as we’re looking for somewhere which ultimately would be our home. The Ciudad Vieja neighbourhood itself contains very little in the way of shops and cafes, but if we did end up living there, then it is an easy walk to neighbouring Centro for supplies.

Centro and Barrio Sur

While Ciudad Vieja has been effectively abandoned, the almost equally old barrio known as Centro is thriving. Here you find the hotels and the shoe shops and the restaurants that you would expect to find in a capital city. The neighbouring Barrio Sur is similar but more residential.

One of Montevideo's few genuinely ugly buildings, which borders the central square. Artegas on his horse quite sensibly looks the other way.
One of Montevideo’s few genuinely ugly buildings, which borders the central square. Artegas on his horse quite sensibly looks the other way.

Where they are being used for commercial purposes, many of the old colonial buildings are in good repair, although the residential buildings are more patchy. In fact, in recent years the architects have been moving in in force, and quite a few of the streets are largely colonial facade, with new building work going on behind.

We visited a couple of similar sites close by in Parque Rodo, and were very impressed by the attention to detail. Behind the preserved facade, the builders had carefully stripped out all the nice pieces of stone, tile, glass and woodwork from the condemned buildings, for incorporation into the new structure. No tower cranes or power tools here; these craftsmen build everything by hand. Certainly the architects are proud of their work and, when they are finished, usually mount a signature plaque or carving on the outside wall by the entrance.

Men at work
Men at work

Here as in Ciudad Vieja there are a fair few homeless people and street urchins. Some earn tips by signalling drivers in and out of tight parking spaces, and occasionally one might come up to you and beg if you hang around in one place for long, but even so they are as friendly and polite as everybody else in Montevideo. It is rare to see beggars pestering customers of terrace cafes, for instance, and the locals seem to view them with kindness. More than once we noticed that somebody might hand out a few coins to a beggar “because he has a nice smile”.

We did hear the occasional hearsay tale of robbers on crack cocaine, but we never saw any evidence of it ourselves. The only drugs on the street seem to be cigarettes, mainly smoked by women, and of course the ubiquitous mate.

Eating and Drinking

An inseparable part of Montevideo urban life, mate is a kind of tea made from an infusion of green herbs. It is drunk from a special cup with a special metal straw, and about half of the Montevideans that we have seen, from the oldest businessman on his way to work, to the sweetheart couple strolling La Rambla, to the fisherman on the pier, to the young girl sitting on the street doorstep, all carry a cup of mate and a thermos flask of hot water to top it up with. Mate is a social experience, meant to be shared around the group.

We’ve been staying at a few hotels in a few different areas, just to get a feel for the different areas, but by far our favourite is the London Palace. One of its trademarks is its breakfast buffet, a fantastic array of small nibbles, mainly constructed from the same basic ingredients of sweet pastry, ham, and cheese, but all different in taste and texture. In addition there are breads and fruits, baked apple, rice pudding, and of course the national indulgence dulce de leche, which is a thick brown cream made by partially burning sugar with milk. It is indeed a glorious confection, and is taken in cakes, ice creams, biscuits, on toast, or just out of a bowl with a spoon.

Breakfast at the London Palace Hotel
Breakfast at the London Palace Hotel
The dark brown stuff is dulce de leche
The dark brown stuff is dulce de leche

In between looking at properties, we did of course take time out to walk La Rambla, the walkway that runs all the way along the Montevideo seafront.

La Rambla
La Rambla

We also dined out in a number of fine parilladas and other restaurants, and snacked in fast-food joints which all sell enormous bottles of local beer and the delicacy known as chevito. This is a huge stack of chips, vegetables, fried eggs, bacon, olives and anything else that the chef can think of, stacked on, under and around a large steak. Fantastic!

Chivito
Chevito

And in between bouts of gluttony, we continued to look for houses.

We bought a forest

Relaxing here in a clearing, sipping world-class local wine as the sun sets over the blue sea below, I find it hard to believe our luck. We have just bought the forest that stretches for acres all around, but if we need some milk in the morning, we can drive down to the local town in fifteen minutes or, if the mood takes us, we can be at the international airport within the hour.

Indulging in a little light gardening
Indulging in a little light gardening

Our little piece of paradise is in Tasmania, a state that remains largely neglected by tourists and by mainland Australians alike, and yet the lush 68,000 square kilometre island contains some of the most productive land in the southern hemisphere. While the rest of Australia suffers under fifty years of drought, Tasmania not only supplies much of the country’s soft fruit, but also supports a burgeoning and very successful boutique wine industry.

The state largely escaped the Australian property boom and subsequent crash of 2002, and, compared to the rest of the country, land in Tasmania remains cheap and undeveloped. It is true that in recent years, the part of the island closest to the cosmopolitan buzz of mainland Melbourne has undergone something of a metamorphosis, with affluent mainlanders buying up waterside frontage, or giving up their office jobs to start boutique vineyard farm-stays. Later entrepreneurs have since spread out along the coast, with locals scrambling to subdivide and to sell them their previously worthless land.

It is away from these northern areas that today’s bargains are to be found. A year ago, there was still land available on the hills above the capital city of Hobart. Today you should point your car southward, and in only half an hour you will find yourself in the Huon Valley wine region, currently densely thicketed with ‘For Sale’ signs. The larger tracts have been given over to viticulture, but what remains are little pockets of bush, perhaps hard-won fifty years ago, but now often willed to disinterested children who really just want to sell up, split the money, and get back to the city.

Logging is a part of life here, and apart from some rather spectacular National Reserves, there is little standing timber over fifty years old. A typical ‘bush lot’ comprises up to twenty acres of  young gum trees for up to $100,000, a price that could also get you a mere handful of acres of cleared building land with water views. Having done most of our research on Tasmanian Private Realty‘s excellent website, we only needed a single weekend to view our shortlist before settling on fourteen acres sloping gently down towards the sea.

Cygnet is the closest town. It is typical of the area in that it comprises a simple line of a few homes, some local businesses, and three pubs. When we spoke to the new owners of the Top Pub where we were staying, we found that they were renovating the upstairs into a boutique hotel. The nearby Red Velvet Lounge restaurant offered a gourmet menu featuring locally farmed salmon and organic produce, and there was talk of a new deep-water marina close by. These are not the hallmarks of your average bush town, and so it seemed to us that now was the time to buy.

We intend to build a small home in a clearing, but could equally well put up a series of guest lodges. That’s all in the future, though. For the moment, we are content to sit and sip our wine and enjoy the views.

The jetty to our mooring
The jetty to our mooring

Night Watch

We watched the weather carefully, and the very next northerly that came through saw us skipping work and taking the train up to Port Stephens. The conditions were predicted to hold from Friday evening until Saturday lunchtime, so we thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to make our first ever night-time passage. Our newly refurbished sails set us zipping along into the evening at almost seven knots. As we cleared the heads and got into the open sea, a humpback whale breached in front of us, which had to be a good omen.

Several tonnes of frisky whale
Several tonnes of frisky whale

Since there were only two of us aboard, we had to maintain a night watch, manning the helm in shifts. After some discussion, we had chosen an evening of two-hour shifts, followed by a night of three-hour shifts.

We had very different expectations of the night ahead. I was a night shift worker for many years, and was used to having a zonked body clock and coping with the circadian plunge at 3:00am. I had hiked, climbed, and camped extensively at night, and was familiar with the trick of seeing by starlight. Bronwyn, on the other hand, was a bit of a city kid and found the darkness unsettling.

We were both awake for the first couple of watches, during which we checked the boat over and made and ate dinner. As darkness fell, we realised that there was no light in the compass binnacle, but we had a torch to check it with and in any case we could read the heading off the GPS repeater.

At 22:00 I went to sleep in the forepeak while Bronwyn took the first three-hour watch. It was a fine, clear night and the wind was warm and steady and coming from behind us; perfect cruising conditions. Bronwyn started to relax, and when it came to 01:00 she decided to let me sleep for an extra hour. At about this point we were passing the queue of bulk carriers waiting to load coal at Newcastle. There were about forty of them strung out along the 50 metre line, all showing bright white lights.

More tired that she realised, Bronwyn started to get confused about which lights were houses on the shore, and which were large ships. I was woken by the sound of sails flapping, and came up on deck to see Bronwyn peering into the dark compass rose and muttering about the wind changing. In fact she had got disoriented by the ship lights and had got us turned around 180 degrees. There was no harm done, and I took the helm as she went gratefully to bed. It all showed just how easy it is to make mistakes when you are tired.

It was 02:00. We got past the big ships, and the sea became quiet and dark. I fitted a boom preventer and sat and waited for the evil 03:00, the time when the bodys circadian rhythm hits absolute bottom. It was at about this time that I realised that our new stainless frame was causing a problem. One of the supporting struts had been mounted aft and outboard of the stern light, and was casting a reflection of it back into the cockpit. The actual amount of light coming off the one-inch steel tube must have been tiny, but in the deep darkness of the night it was more than enough to completely ruin my night vision. I tried wrapping a rope around the tube, but even the light reflected from the dull matt fibres was too bright. In the end, I found that the only tenable position from which to steer was over to the starboard side with my back to the stern light, which wasn’t hugely comfortable. The stern light would have to be moved.

Distant lighthouses came and went on the shore as we ploughed our lonely furrow. The moon came up behind us in a beautiful red glow, and the first fingerings of dawn touched the eastern skies. I made an entry in the log, woke a restored and cheerful Bronwyn for her shift, and lay down on one of the sea berths. This was also a first, as until now I had only ever slept in the fore or aft cabins, but I found that from the berth I could see out to the helm, and Bronwyn could see in, which was comforting for both of us. I closed my eyes and in moments was fast asleep.

At 08:00 I got up to a day of glorious sunshine. Bronwyn had taken us almost to Broken Bay, and as we made the final course adjustment to take us through the heads and into Pittwater, a pod of dolphins played briefly in our bow wave. We grinned and waved at them. We were home.

Steeling Up

It was time to spend some big bucks, and to get a stainless steel frame made for the stern. This would carry a sunshade for the helmsman, provide extra security around the cockpit, and serve as a mounting place for our solar and wind generators.

After getting a number of quotes, it was quite clear that getting work done in Sydney was far more expensive that getting it done further up the coast, so we decided to shift our base of operations up to Port Stephens, about seventy miles to the north east.

Chris and Nicky were keen to do some offshore sailing, so we invited them along for the trip.

A quiet night in
A quiet night in

After a quiet night on the mooring, we got up sometime before dawn, waved goodbye to Gibson Marina for the last time, and motored out to the heads. We had only been going for about half an hour when the engine overheat alarm went off. I quickly shut down and we drifted under the stars while I searched inside the engine bay for any sign of a problem. However, everything looked just fine, and the engine restarted with no problems at all, so I could only surmise that a plastic bag had temporarily wrapped itself around the cooling intake.

Where the jumblies live
Where the jumblies live

Dawn came as we cleared the headlands, bringing with it a light wind that spun gently around the compass for a couple of hours, before firming up into the promised 10 knot easterly, punctuated by 25 knot squalls that each merited a reef in the mainsail. We tried to reef the foresail, too, but it wasn’t terribly effective when partially furled so we just left it flying. Apart from the odd drop of rain and some mal-de-mer, it was a beautiful trip, very different from our previous attempt. We headed out on a broad reach until we reached a depth of 40 metres, passing lines of empty coal carriers queuing up to enter Newcastle.

Bulk carriers and a reef
Bulk carriers and a reef

In sight of Moon Islet we dropped the sails and motored across the bar. Last time we’d hit bottom, but on this occasion we followed the lead lights religiously and got through with 0.6m under the keel. Rather than go through the bridge and up into Lake Macquarie, we just hooked up to a courtesy buoy, as we were planning to leave early the next day. The engine hadn’t caused us any further grief. I had intended to dive down and have a look at the intakes, but there was a strong tidal rip and I didn’t want to risk it in the gathering dusk. We judged that the same currents were also too strong for our rapidly deteriorating Zodiac, so instead of rowing over to a nearby pub, Bronwyn knocked up a meal from things that she found in the lockers. As usual, it was excellent.

During the night there was a heavy squall, and the boat got caught up in the battle between the tide and the wind. I got up several times to try to prevent the courtesy buoy from banging on the hull, and on one occasion I noticed rainwater pouring in through the ceiling of our forecabin, running down the bulkhead and disappearing into the bilges. Finally, then, I had tracked down the source of all that mysterious fresh water that kept accumulating in the bow.

The tide finally turned at 01:00, and I dropped off into blissful sleep as the boat quietly settled down. Of course, I was up again at 04:00, motoring back down the channel in the dark. We cleared the bar, only to find that the horizon was lit end to end with the lights of dozens of bulk carriers, all anchored along the 50 metre line. It looked like an entire city out there. As we headed towards them, the sun came up to reveal patchy blue skies with flocks of little white cumulus marching out the south east, and small squalls mooching about beneath.

Uh oh. Whats going on up there?
Uh oh. Whats going on up there?

Our plan was to head out past the anchored ships to the 100 metre line and then aim straight across the enormous width of Stockton Bight toward Port Stephens, because the inshore waters had a bad reputation and in any case have never been adequately charted. However, just as we reached a depth of 40 metres, one of the squalls came our way, so we turned to run before it, and once it had passed we were right in amongst the ships.

 Hah! Call this rain? We English laugh at this light drizzle
Hah! Call this rain? We English laugh at this light drizzle

This turned out to be an interesting detour. Most of the ships seemed to be, as far as we could tell, either Japanese or Korean, although most were registered in Panama. There was a lot of foreign language chatter on Channel 16, and many of them seemed to be undergoing repairs; at least, there was a lot of angle-grinding going on.

We picked up a passenger
We picked up a passenger

The wind came and went as we zigzagged between the enormous walls of rusty steel. The bottom readings were very strange; at one point the depth jumped from 48 metres to 4.1 in less than a second. I put the helm over hard, and we didn’t hit anything. Because of the flaky nature of the charting, we couldn’t tell if we’d encountered the mother of all sea mounts or an inquisitive great white shark, but Bronwyn quickly plotted us a direct-line course to Port Stephens, which was still over the horizon, and we got the hell out.

A life on the ocean wave
A life on the ocean wave

The weather turned beautiful, and we got up to our maximum speed of five knots. A pod of dolphins showed up to play in our bow wave, and surface-skimming petrels, groups of yellow-headed gannets, and long-necked divers congregated all around. Our charting proved to be on the nail when land appeared on the horizon, and we dropped sails to motor across the entrance of the bay, which turned out to be shallow but with no real bar. Willing hands took our mooring lines as we backed into an easy berth at The Anchorage, where we headed for the excellent Merretts restaurant for a well-earned restorative. We had arrived.

Antifouling

Our next task was to get her out of the water for her annual antifouling. Last year, we hauled her out with a cradle, which meant that there was quite a large area that remained unpainted because it was under the sling and we couldn’t get at it. This year, we went to the excellent Noakes Boatyard in Nelson Bay, who took her out with a crane and plunked her down on four little pads, so that we could get at almost the whole hull.

Motoring up to the cradle
Motoring up to the cradle

Up she goes!
Up she goes!

One thing that was patently obvious was that although last years expensive hull paint had done a fine job, the cheap stuff that wed used on the sail drive and propeller had definitely been a false economy. This time, we would use better stuff. We also needed to add an extra couple of inches to the waterline to account for all the extra stores she now carried aboard.

Portable coral reef
Portable coral reef

All manner of growth
All manner of growth

Before
Before

After
After

Looks much better now, eh?
Looks much better now, eh?

Chuffed!
Chuffed!

The nice guys at Noakes also gave her a thorough polishing and fixed some gashes in the fibre glass that were the legacy of a lee wind on an old wooden pontoon at Lake Macquarie, and, after some detective work with a high-pressure hose, we located and taped up the defect in the deck that was the source of our freshwater leak.

Sail Maintenance

We invited John Herrick, a local sailmaker, to come and check our sails. He professed them baggy but repairable, and also agreed to add a third reefing point, as well as to make us a new small, strong cruising genoa and a storm trysail. Later on, as we let down the mainsail, we discovered (courtesy of a bloody finger for Bronwyn) that all the battens were fractured, as well as a few of the sliders; maintenance was well overdue.

Ouch!
Ouch!

I loaded both sails onto the back of the motorbike, and then contrived a tube so that I could also take the 3 metre battens, stayed with guy wires to stop them whipping around too badly. It was an interesting ride into town, avoiding overhanging trees, and, in downtown Nelson Bay, a 3 metre clearance footbridge which meant that I had to slalom the bike to get safely through. However, I got to Johns workshop without any problems, and left them with him while we rode back to Sydney.

Wrestling with the main
Wrestling with the main

How to fit a complete suit of sails onto a motorcycle
A complete set of sails on a motorcycle

Interlude

Then came the cyclone, which destroyed a whole marina in Lake Macquarie, damaged yachts up and down the seaboard, and even tore up one of the bulk carriers and drove her onto the beach at Newcastle. The roads were closed to traffic due to flooding, so we couldn’t even get up there to check if Pindimara was OK, and it was several nervous weeks later before we saw her again.

Bouncing around on her mooring, she had scraped some of the antifouling off near the bow, but apart from that she had sustained no damage at all, and as a bonus there wasn’t a drop of water in the forward bilge.

The poor old Zodiac, however, which was our sole method of access to our boat, was getting more and more battered with every use. The supposedly indestructible, lifetime guarantee rowlocks broke again, so I threw them away and poked the oars through the carry straps instead. This made everything a bit slower and less efficient, but at least I didn’t keep falling backwards when the rowlocks snapped or jumped out. Then the spring lock broke on one of the paddle blades. I taped it back on, but then the floor came away so that I had to row with gallons of water aboard. The whole thing was by now in such a bad state that I was just leaving it rolled up behind the bins, trusting that nobody would bother to steal it.

It was definitely time to buy a new tender, but we couldn’t really afford it, and even if we’d bought one, there was nowhere at The Anchorage to store it. We decided to move to a marina that provided a free taxi service. Soldiers Point Marina had a spare mooring, and a little metal speedboat that they used as a tender. They were also the home base of Bluewater Stainless, who we had chosen to do our steelwork. It seemed like an ideal choice, so we said goodbye to the fine people (and fine dining!) at The Anchorage, and set off around the bay.

On the way, we picked up our refurbished sails. What an incredible difference! As well as repairing and strengthening the seams and replacing the battens, John had taken out all the bagginess in the sails, restoring the balance of the boat to as new. We had been fighting the weather helm for so long that we’d forgotten that it used to be any different; now we could sail close-hauled with but a single finger on the wheel. Pindimara was reborn.

Fantastic!
Fantastic!

Soldiers Point

Once installed on a swing mooring at Soldiers Point Marina, we had to wait for the guys at Bluewater Stainless to fit us in to their schedule. The weather was conspiring against any marina work, so they were concentrating on other projects. The months wore on. One weekend, I rode up from Sydney to check that she was OK and to do some minor maintenance. I hopped into the marina’s tender for the quick trip over to the boat, and sat back and chatted about the weather as we motored out to the swing moorings. The tender lacked fenders, being a simple aluminium dinghy with a steel scaffold pole welded around the bow, but this didn’t matter much because Pindimara’s sugar scoop stern entry is protected by a full-width rubber bumper. There was a bit of chop, so the helmsman announced that he was going to tuck under the side rather than head straight for the stern. I often do this myself. When the yacht is streaming off a buoy, it can be worthwhile to come up in the lee of our big fat beam and hand-over-hand around the corner to the stern entry, rather than try to crab sideways into the wind and current for a direct approach.

We were powering up to the port side, and as I waited for the turn alongside so that I could catch hold, I admired the fantastic job that Noakes had done with buffing and polishing the fibre glass. Pindimara looked like a million dollars. At the last second, the helm said something like “Can you fend off?” and then t-boned her amidships. I had reflexively jumped onto the bow and did get one hand to the toe rail, but I was pushing against the thrust of the outboard motor and all that I really achieved was to get a grandstand view as the scaffold pipe punched a hole straight through the fibre glass with an awful crunch. We bounced and hit twice more until the helm finally got the outboard into neutral, leaving me staring in disbelief at the palm-sized hole and long black streaks down our pristine hull.

I was not best pleased. The pole had gone in across the junction of our blue and white gel coats, meaning that two separate repairs were required on the same hole, one for each colour. Incredibly, the marina were very slow to admit responsibility, and it took a lot of arguing before they finally agreed to get it repaired. Then they said that for insurance reasons they would have to withdraw the tender service to our boat, which left me with a bad taste and us stranded without transport again. Nevertheless, we didn’t want to leave for another marina until the fibre glass had been repaired, and in any case we didn’t want to miss out if Bluewater suddenly got a chance to do our steelwork.

I unrolled the Zodiac again from its resting place on the hatch cover. Although the main structure was failing fast, at least my puncture repairs had held up for all this time. I reckoned that it could survive a few more trips, and, once back on shore, I tucked it rolled up under a pile of scrap in the shipyard. Hopefully we would be gone in a couple of weeks.

Another month passed without any action. Then, finally, our yacht was moved into the work berth, and Bluewater made a start. They disassembled our safety lines and stern rails, and made some progress making up frames in their workshop. However, the weather was not cooperating with actually fitting the steelwork to the hull. Because of the configuration of their berth, they had to ensure that they were not welding in a westerly, because that would blow the sparks onto craft in the surrounding marina. Naturally enough, we had weeks and weeks of alternating westerlies, storms, and rain. More weeks passed, with no progress that we could see apart from some holes in the stern that precluded any sailing, and the four-hour commute at weekends to sit on a stationary, half-disassembled boat started to get a bit tiring. At last, some six months after we first arrived, the weather started to cooperate and it all came together. The hull was patched up, and our new stainless went on.

Rather than just build and fit our targa top, the guys at Bluewater had pulled out all the stops and provided us with complete solid side rails all the way along the cockpit, and even some gates on either side. It looked absolutely spectacular.

All it needs is a bit of canvas
All it needs is a bit of canvas

It was at about this time that we began to get suspicious about the amounts that the marina were debiting from our credit card for our mooring. The numbers didn’t match up with what we had originally been quoted, and, after an uphill struggle to obtain a copy of the invoices, we found they had also charged both us and Bluewater for the time that we’d spent on the work berth. It was pretty clear to us that this was their way of raking back the costs of our hull repairs. We had intended to use a third local company to make the canvas for our targa, but when we found that they wouldn’t be able to start work for another six weeks, we decided that it was time to leave for friendlier waters.

Going Coastal

New Year: Pittwater to Swansea Bridge

Apart from the occasional fair-weather foray outside of the heads, we had still yet to sail upon the open sea. The main reason for this was that we had decided not to go until we had an absolute minimum of quite expensive cruising safety equipment. I had made up a couple of wall-posters with lists of equipment and prices, and, crayon in hand, juggled them almost daily, rethinking and prioritising them within our monthly budget.

Lists, lists, lists
Lists, lists, lists

Life ring and amazing floating torch
Life ring and amazing floating torch

EPIRB
Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB)

Our model is demonstrating the latest in self-inflating life jackets
Our model is demonstrating the latest in self-inflating life jackets

The last essential item on our list was a pair of jack stays. This became a real sticking-point. Jack stays are safety lines that run all the way along the deck from bow to stern. The idea is that whenever you leave the cockpit, you clip your safety harness to the stay and you then get freedom of movement while remaining attached to the boat. The jack stay obviously needs to be strong and well-made, since it is supposed to save your life if you get washed overboard. They’re not an off-the-shelf product, though; they need to be tailored to each individual boat.

Australia is, unfortunately and in line with many other western countries, becoming increasingly litigious, and we found it very hard to find any company that would make them up for us for fear of legal action if the stay should fail. The general consensus was a shaking of heads and tutting, and “we used to make them all the time, but….”

Eventually, however, we met up with a rigger who was prepared to take the risk. He made us a beautiful set which fitted perfectly, and we finally felt that we were ready to go cruising.

Personal harness (black) clipped onto a jackstay (blue). Note also how filthy the boat is!
Personal harness (black) clipped onto a jack stay (blue). Note also how filthy the boat is!

We had about a week encompassing Christmas and New Year. Theoretically, we could in this time sail all the way up the Australian coast from our home mooring in Pittwater, New South Wales, up to the next state, Queensland. However, we fully expected the weather to throw in a few spanners, and in any case we wanted to enjoy the scenery and see what there was to see, so we decided to head for the next available deep-water anchorage, Lake Macquarie, and take it from there.

One small step
One small step

The week started with rough weather, so we pottered around for a few days inside Pittwater, trying out some new anchorages and practicing single-handed sailing.

Route planning
Route planning

When the weather finally improved, and the forecast swells dropped below two metres, it caught us by surprise with only half a tank of fuel. We had intended to leave at dawn, but even though we anchored overnight outside the fuel station, we still had to wait for it to open in the morning, and so we didn’t actually clear the heads until ten. However, it was blowing around twenty knots and we figured that we should be able to make good speed. How refreshingly naiive we were! We had not factored in the fact that we were heading north-east into a nor’easterly wind, across a south-easterly swell.

A yacht cannot sail directly into wind; to travel upwind, it has to tack (zig-zag) from side to side. This substantially increases the distance that you need to travel in order to get from A to B. The swell was also a real pain. Usually swell follows the wind, so that you are travelling in more or less the same direction as the waves. On this particular day, the swell was crossing the path of the wind, making the waves steep and confused, so we spent a lot of our time climbing up waves and then falling off the top to crash into the trough, before the climb up out to the next one.

A cruising yacht accelerates only slowly; when your speed is continually being scrubbed off in every trough, its hard to build up any momentum, and as the boat wiggles over the waves it is hard to keep the sails at anything like the correct angle to the wind to provide motive power.

And finally, we were sailing close-hauled. A note here for the uninitiated about points of sail. If you are standing at the helm and the wind is coming from behind your shoulder (known as broad reach or running, depending on exactly where it is coming from), the hull sits flat on the water and the sails need little attention. It is possible to leave the wheel unattended for short periods and nothing bad will probably happen; more sensibly, you could turn on the autopilot and sit down and relax. Sailing with the wind coming from the front (close reach, close hauled) is more exciting; essentially you are flying a small aircraft sideways across the water, always threatening either to stall or to dive. The sails need constant trimming, the deck is heeled over at up to 30 degrees, and you are quite likely to get wet from spray and even broaching waves. In these conditions, the autopilot simply doesn’t respond fast enough and human control is essential.

All points of sail are equally valid and will get you to where you want to go. Some are just faster or more efficient than others. In a pottering-about or racing situation you just take whatever wind there is and deal with it. Cruising books, on the other hand, always talk about how important it is to make sure that the wind is behind you. Now we really understood why. When you’re just messing about in sheltered waters, you can always change direction and go somewhere else when it gets uncomfortable; in a racing situation, you only have to hold on until the next buoy. However, out to sea, you are travelling in the same direction for hours, days, weeks; the choice between fighting the wind and waves every minute of the time, and just relaxing and letting the autopilot sort it out, quickly becomes a no-brainer.

Nevertheless, we soldiered on. Our instruments were showing speed through the water of three knots. We were pretty sure that the instrument needed calibrating and was reading about a knot too low, but that still wasn’t fast enough to get to port before dark, so we turned on the engine for a little extra power. Purists will probably stare aghast, but it gave us an extra couple of knots and, in our book, safety is better than style.

Going out of our Heads
Going out of our Heads

We had logged on with the coastguard when we left, and they were passing our paperwork up the coast from station to station. Periodically we called each station on the radio, and reported our best guess of what time we would reach the next one. Our guesses, based still on our original estimates, were pretty much on the nose, so we felt that we were doing something right. Of course, one of the important things about checking in with the coastal patrol is that you actually know where you are when you speak to them, so I had to periodically go below and see how the coastline (now several miles away) matched up with the chart. In this we were considerably helped by a book of photographs and charts published by Alan Lucas, a local sailor who has extensively surveyed this part of the coast. This made the task much easier than doing it from the official chart alone, but I still had to hang on to my seat while the boat pitched and crashed, trying to concentrate on little symbols on a big piece of paper that kept threatening to roll up.

Inevitably, I got seasick, but the jack stay allowed me to hang over the side with impunity, and the breaking seas quickly washed the transom clean.

Time passed. The seas got bigger and more confused. We passed one landmark after another, until at last we came in sight of Moon Island, which guards the entrance to Lake Macquarie.

The entrance to the river crosses a shallow sandy bar. As Australian bars go, it isn’t too bad, but it was still going to be touch and go with our two-metre draught. For the time of the tide, though, the charts showed that the bar should be open to us. The key was to line up with a row of port marker buoys which pointed the way to the dredged channel. However, on rounding the island, we found that the seas were so crossed-up and confused that we couldn’t see any buoys at all, just violent whitecaps.

Eventually, however, after bringing the sails down and slopping back and forth under power, we found the first of them, which led to the second, and to a clear shot at the bar. Lucas suggested hugging the port markers as we came through the breakwater, so that’s what I did, watching in bemusement as the depth-sounder dropped to only a metre of clear water under the keel. I waited for a break in the surf, and then gunned it through; the depth-sounder read 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, 0.2… and we gently tapped the bottom, once, twice. The numbers started to climb again: 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 metres. Clearly our depth gauge needed recalibrating to account for a 20cm error.

As we crossed between the breakwaters, dusk fell, and some previously unnoticed, bright blue lead markers lit up in front of us. They were not on our Admiralty chart and off to one side of our position; presumably the channel had been moved since Lucas had done his survey. We made a note to keep an eye on them on the way out. Meanwhile, we were through and in the channel.

It was still shallow and narrow, and it was hard to see the coloured channel markers because of all the christmas decorations on the shore, but we got round safely and picked up a visitor’s mooring in a few metres of water. Swansea Bridge was closed for the night, and wouldn’t be opening until the morning.

Safe haven
Safe haven

In the morning, the bridge opened, and we motored through.

Swansea Bridge
Swansea Bridge

On the way through
On the way through

Looking back at Swansea Bridge
Looking back at Swansea Bridge

Lake Macquarie

We weren’t in the lake yet, by any means; there is a long and winding channel over shifting sandbars from Swansea Bridge into Lake Macquarie proper which, combined with a fast-running tide, made for an interesting trip. Once through the channel, we found a pleasant, large, and above all shallow lake, well populated with services.

Lake Macquarie
Lake Macquarie

Over the next few days we tried out a few anchorages, watched the New Year’s fireworks, visited a few marinas, and generally relaxed. Our favourite place turned out to be the Lake Macquarie Yacht Club at Belmont, where we secured a berth for a week so that we could take the train home and go back to work.

The Lake Macquarie Yacht Club, Belmont
The Lake Macquarie Yacht Club, Belmont

Running Home

The following week, with the forecast showing nor’easters and very little in the way of swell, we rejoined Pindimara for the trip home.

A gentle run before breakfast
A gentle run before breakfast

In a light pre-dawn mist, with the rising sun shining directly into my eyes, I failed to see one of the channel markers. Since the channel zig-zags about to follow the shifting sands, the result was an impromptu off-road shortcut which saw the bulb keel firmly embedded in the bottom. With a strong current running, it all got a little exciting until I managed to turn her around and power back the way we’d come. Bronwyn has been below when we’d hit, and had taken a bit of a tumble, so I was relegated to coffee duty while she took over the helm. While still wagging her finger at me, Bronwyn then ran aground herself; this time we were exactly between the channel markers in precisely the right place. The tide was high: it was just too darn shallow, whatever it said on the chart.

After an interesting time trying to refuel (most of the fuel docks in Lake Macquarie are too shallow for us, and the one that is deep enough, runs with a 6-knot current), we anchored up close to the channel entrance and waited for morning.

The bridge opened for us, we followed the leads out across the bar, and we were back in the open sea.

What a difference it made going in the other direction! The deck was flat and the sails well-behaved, and we easily got up to four or five knots.

Just cruisin'
Just cruisin’

After some hours of breezing along, Bronwyn went below to sleep, and I tied off the boom and switched over to George the autopilot, who could easily cope with these conditions.

This was clearly the way to do it. We made a note never to beat into wind again.

Through a dodger, murkily
Through a dodger, murkily

Balloon over Canberra

It was just before dawn, and a crisp cold breeze seeped in through the glass doors of the hotel foyer. A half dozen voyagers had assembled, bleary-eyed, at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra, to meet the crew of Balloon Aloft. Outside, an elderly four-wheel drive manoeuvred into position, trailing behind it a mysterious, gloom-shrouded package. We hurried aboard and were driven to the top of a nearby hill where our pilot, Alan, let off a couple of small black helium balloons and carefully watched as they zigzagged back and forth through the air streams. After a brief discussion, Alan and his ground crew, Rod, agreed on this mornings launch site, and we all piled back in for the journey back down the mountain.

The site that they had chosen was a piece of waste ground on the edge of the city, and it was already filling up with balloonists both private and commercial; obviously everybody had come to similar decisions about their launch site. We found a space in the middle and all mucked in to help unpack our craft. First came the basket, sturdily constructed from wicker, and divided internally into three compartments, one for the pilot and gas tanks, and the others for passengers. Then came an enormous bag, from which we unrolled the nylon canopy onto the frost-coated grass, a long worm trailing from the basket and out across the field.

Can you tell what it is yet?
Can you tell what it is yet?

Finally we unlimbered a small petrol generator and a large electric fan. While I held open the canopy, the fan pumped cold air inside, so that the whole thing started to billow and to slowly unfurl into a bit squashy sausage.

Filling the canopy with cold air
Filling the canopy with cold air

The rushing air was very cold, and I was glad of my gloves, but while I was standing there the pilot was rigging the gas bottles to the burners on top of the basket. Since the basket was lying on its side, the burners were aimed straight past me into the hole in the canopy. After a brief warning, the pilot lit the gas and a huge roiling flame roared past me and into the balloon. Suddenly I wasn’t cold at all.

Filling the canopy with hot air
Filling the canopy with hot air

Slowly the balloon began to take shape.

Checking the vent at the crown
Checking the vent at the crown

Shadows
Shadows

200707Canberra35

Those magnificent men in their flying machines
Those magnificent men in their flying machines

The crew poked around pulling out folds and making sure that the control lines were not tangled, until the whole canopy lifted up and rolled the basket upright. We all jumped on to it to keep it on the ground and then clambered in. The basket was untethered from the 4WD, the pilot let off a stream of flame into the canopy, and we were airborne.

Flame on
Flame on

We're flying!
We’re flying!

At about a thousand feet, Alan switched off the flame and everything went quiet and still. The patchwork quilt of the land below drifted silently by, and the sun warmed our frosted fingers. Since we were drifting with the wind, there was no breeze in the balloon. Those few sounds that we could hear from the ground came with startling crystal clarity.

Lake Burley Griffin
Lake Burley Griffin

Suburbia
Suburbia

Reflections in the lake
Reflections in the lake

 

A fine way to travel
A fine way to travel

200707Canberra12a

Alan did a courtesy radio check with the local airports tower, and then took us up to three thousand feet, where an air stream pushed us in the direction he wanted, right across the centre of Canberra. From that initial hilltop exercise with the helium balloon, he had formed a mental picture of all the criss-crossing air streams above, and could steer us in any of a number of different directions simply by changing altitude. Far from being at the mercy of the elements, balloons can be flown with pinpoint accuracy. Alan explained that when they aren’t taking paying passengers, he and his fellow balloonists often compete in balloon trials, flying from way point to way point and fulfilling tasks such as tossing a bean-bag onto a target on the ground, or picking up a handkerchief from the grass. Others practice bouncing off the water of the lake.

We were not competing, of course, we were just along for the ride. Ballooning is a beautiful way to travel. Even sufferers of vertigo have nothing to worry about. The basket feels rock solid underfoot, and does not swing or flex. The ground drifts by below, looking more like a map than the territory, and there is no real impression of height, just of peace and calm. Our views to the Brindabella hills were breathtaking.

Bronwyn and the Brindabellas
Bronwyn and the Brindabellas

As we drifted in over the suburbs, we began to hear dogs barking. This seems to be a peculiarity of dogs; they bark when a balloon passes over their house, even if they are inside and the gas burner is quiet. Nobody knows how they detect the balloon floating silently far above the rooftops, but they do.

Eventually, however, the trip had to end. Once the sun gets too high in the sky, the thermoclines start up and ballooning becomes less predictable. Alan took careful note of the wind direction and called Rod, who had been patiently dogging us in the car below, parking up at intervals and waiting on various roadside verges for us to sail overhead. We were going to land on a rugby field that they happened to know had a broken lock on the gate which meant that they could get the car onto the pitch. The two of them have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the accessible green areas of Canberra, but even so, Alan said that sometimes they had to put down somewhere inconvenient which meant carrying the balloon out and/or bribing the landowner with champagne to open the gate for them.

There are control lines that lead to a vent in the canopy that can be used to spin the balloon around or, as now, to let hot air out of the top in order to lose height. We dropped gently down, just clearing the rugby goal posts, and threw a line to Rod, who guided us down the last few tens of metres.

I've caught a big one!
I’ve caught a big one!

Just in case the basket tipped over onto its side or got dragged along on the ground, we all adopted the landing position, which involved crouching down in the basket, hanging on, and waiting for everything to stop moving. The actual landing was very gentle, and it looked for a moment as if the basket was going to stay upright, but it gently rolled over onto its side, still buoyed by the remaining hot air in the canopy.

Rod fought a little with the huge bag, but finally managed to wrestle it to the ground, and one by one we hopped out to help. Repacking the balloon is quite easy with half a dozen willing volunteers, but must be hard work with only two people. First it is squashed up into a long sausage, and then it is carried and crammed, armful by armful, into the bag from which it came. Naturally it still contains a lot air, so we ended up with a laughing pile of people all rolling about on top, trying to get the last few metres under control. Finally we hoisted bag and basket onto the trailer, and piled happily back into the truck.

It was just about time for normal people to be getting up out of bed, and we knew that back at the Hyatt there was champagne waiting to help us to start our day.

Looking for a forest

We’d been scouring the internet for forests for sale, applying our standard criteria for new purchases:

  1. Priced under $100,000
  2. Situated 1 hour from an international airport
  3. Situated 1 hour from an international port
  4. Depressed economy with a likelihood of recovery within a decade

We had found two areas of the world that seemed to comply, eastern Canada and southern Tasmania. There were some nice sea- and lake-front properties up near Halifax, where we reasoned that the economy, which has been in a bad way since the crash in fish stocks some decades ago, might recover if global warming caused the North West Passage to open up and container ships started coming ‘over the top’.

On the other hand, we don’t like Canada’s tax laws, but are already subject to Australia’s, so we had a closer look at Tasmania.

Down in the far south of the island state, much of the land facing the d’Entrecasteaux Channel has been (at least theoretically) subdivided into rural plots. Over the last hundred years there have been several attempts to build new bush towns down there, and the councils hold maps with named roads and numbered plots, but development never kicked off and there is no sign of this on the ground. Mainly it’s all unmarked post-logging new-growth forest. However, the plots exist as legal entities and are all owned by somebody, typically by a local resident who bought them up as an investment. Now those residents (or their descendants) are passing away and willing their land to their children. However, Tasmania has moved on and those children don’t want to live on the land, they want to make their fortunes in the big cities on the mainland. Many of these plots are now up for sale, as those children try to cash up and move on.

The d'Entrecasteaux Channel near Hastings
The d’Entrecasteaux Channel near Hastings

Having drawn up a short-list of some half-dozen candidates, we flew to Hobart, hired a car, and spent an enjoyable rainy weekend stomping around in the bush with an obliging agent from Tasmanian Private Realty.

This forest in Cradoc also had pastureland, but needed an access road over swamp land
This forest in Cradoc also had pasture land, but we’d need to build a long access road over swamp land
Nice view from a forest above Franklin, but a little too close to our neighbours, and the trees were a bit scrubby
Nice view from a forest above Franklin, but a little too close to our neighbours, and the trees were a bit scrubby
This property near Hastings was mainly cleared with a half-finished building in it
This property near Hastings was mainly cleared with a half-finished building in it
This property in Surges Bay had been logged too recently and hadn't recovered yet
This property in Surges Bay had been logged too recently and hadn’t recovered yet

At the end of a long but very interesting day, we arrived in Lymington where there were three connected plots for sale. It was almost dark as we clambered around in the damp undergrowth, but we liked what we saw and decided to return again next morning.

We were up bright and early and, after breakfast in the pleasant local town of Cygnet, drove out to Lymington. There was an old logging track that led past Lots 1 and 2, which then petered out before reaching Lot 3. All were for sale. Lot 1 was on the flat with some pasture, Lot 2 sat at the bottom of the hill, and Lot 3 ran up the hill to the top. As was usual with these kinds of plot, there were no fences or border markings of any kind.

From the logging road, Lot 2 is on the left and Lot 3 can be seen in the distance ahead
From the logging road, Lot 2 is on the left and Lot 3 can be seen in the distance ahead

We were drawn to Lot 3. It has the advantage of sitting at the top of the hill at the end of a blind road, so it would be very private. The border with Lot 2 is marked by a winter creek. The other three sides of the square border forestry land, and when I rang the council to see if they had any plans for it, they told me that there it was such a thin inaccessible band that it would never be worth anybody’s while to log there again.

Looks like it was logged about 30 years ago
It looks like this property was logged about 30 years ago
Having a good look around in the undergrowth
Bronwyn has a good look around in the undergrowth

There is a good covering of different trees of different sizes, and the undergrowth is thin enough to allow access to the whole property. The rural zoning means that we can build a house or not, as we feel fit. As a bonus, Copper Alley Bay at the bottom of the hill has moorings for deep-keel yachts, and – as residents – we would be able to put in our own mooring for a minimal fee. The nearest town, Cygnet, has shops and pubs and a hardware store, as well as some nice little restaurants.

We think we’ve found our new home.

Moorings in Copper Alley Bay
Moorings in Copper Alley Bay

First Maintenance

We sailed, and sailed. We sailed in heavy winds, and practiced reefing, both together and single-handed. We sailed in light winds, and tried our light genoa. We went out into swell, and practiced hoisting and lowering sails on a heaving deck. We stayed out overnight and practiced anchoring.

Off we go again!
Off we go again!

We booked marina berths, and practiced entering them both forwards and backwards, in wind and in current. We stayed overnight in berths, and practiced setting mooring lines and springers. We practiced picking up a mooring under sail, heaving to, and crash-stops. We practiced using the autopilot, and steering to the wind, and steering to a pre-set course. We even tried steering with the emergency tiller, which really wasn’t a lot of fun.

A Touch of Wind

One morning, after a pleasant night at anchor, a big storm started to brew. It took us a few hours to sail out of the secluded creek where wed been staying and into the main body of the river, by which time it was gusting an exciting thirty knots or so. We put in a couple of reefs and headed down the Hawkesbury river for home. The wind got steadily stronger, until we reached the point where we thought that it would be prudent to bring the sails down altogether, and motor. The main dropped down just fine, but the foresail roller furler jammed with about a metre of sail still sticking out. It didn’t look much, but boy! did it have an effect as the winds got up to 35 knots. We were heading into wind, and the steering was all over the place as intermittent gusts grabbed the sail one way or the other, but there was no way that I was going forward as it was flogging dangerously and we had no tethers. The fight was hard, and we soon got tired. We were still a couple of hours from home, so we nipped into aptly named Refuge Bay to pick up a mooring and see if we could sort it out.

The first mooring that we picked – which was, necessarily due to our lack of precision steering, in the open far from shore – was a disaster. We got attached alright, but that little square metre of sail just kept on powering us forward, dipping the bow under the water first to the left, and then to the right. I tied myself on to the thrashing deck, and by dint of some interesting ropework, gradually got the free end under control without being hit on the head very much at all, and built a sort of rope cage around it to stop it from thrashing so much. By this time, the waves around us had breaking white tops and we were being pelted with spray, so we decided to move to a more sheltered mooring before figuring out what was wrong with the furler.

Across the bay, close in to the shore, was a mooring that looked OK. Since we now had proper steering, we tucked in behind a sheltering rocky peninsula and celebrated with a bite of lunch while we watched the white-tops rage past. We now had time to peer up at the foresail and pull and poke at it, and we came to the conclusion that in the excitement of high-wind furling, the first few metres had probably folded over and furled backwards. This would mean that as the rest of the sail furled correctly over the top of it, the twisted portion would be pulled ever tighter until no amount of grinding on the winches would get the last part in.

The only way out was to deploy the headsail, and furl it back up again. The problem, of course, was that we had to do this downwind (you can”t realistically furl on a mooring, or upwind), and so in the interim we would be sailing shoreward with a fully powered headsail in 35 knots, with only one chance of getting it right, and banking on the hope that our analysis was correct and there wasnt something else fatally wrong with the furler…

We waited for a lull, then motored out into the breaking swell. I ran down to the bow, removed my jury-rigged fix, and ran back to the stern. The foresail deployed with an evil crack and then it was winch, winch, winch, all the while keeping an eagle-eye out for backwards folds, until the last blessed metre rolled safely around the stay. Superb. Better turn now, before we hit the rocks.

Out in the channel, the wind increased to 40 knots, and since we were approaching the headland leading to the open sea, the swell was increasing to suit. However, Pindimara felt safe and happy, and the motor had plenty of power in hand, so we ploughed on.

Bronwyn in 40 knots. Shortly after, it was 50 knots.
Bronwyn in 40 knots. Shortly after, it was 50 knots.

At the mouth of the Hawkesbury is an area of confused waters where the river meets not only the sea, but also the mouth of our home Pittwater arm, and the waters around Lion Island, which is a big slab of rock that reflects any swell back at a 45 degree angle. Its a bit of a maelstrom at the best of times, and there are some broaching rocks on the lee shore leading to Pittwater. However, we are familiar with the area and it holds no fear for us, so despite staying a safe distance from the shore, we were not too perturbed and could concentrate on rolling over the swell without getting the decks too wet.

We were quite surprised to find a small open metal boat motoring along in the trough of the swell, but you get fishermen everywhere and we turned away to give them some space. Suddenly they started waving and shouting; their engine had chosen that moment to give out and they were drifting onto the rocks. There were four people aboard, none with life jackets and, apparently, they had no oars.

The gusts were now hitting 50 knots. We circled around, wary of the rocky shore, and tried to throw them a line. It was incredibly difficult to stand on the heaving deck and throw a heavy, wet rope with any kind of accuracy, and I suddenly gained an immense appreciation for the people who do this for a living. A couple of attempts fell well within reach of their boat, but now it seemed that they didn’t have a boat-hook either; evidently I had to actually drop the rope inside their tiny little vessel.

All the while Bronwyn was fighting to avoid the rocky lee shore, and trying not to crush their little egshell with our five-tonne hull, which meant keeping at least one trough away from them. Over the radio, we could hear the coastguard rejecting calls from any boats in inland waters; all their efforts were concentrated on a series of dismasted yachts and men-overboard along the coastline. We weren’t going to get any help from them.

At one point I did manage to get the end of a double-length rope into their boat, but somehow while they were making fast a knot came adrift and they ended up with both ends of one of our mooring lines, while I was left standing with a loose end of a second one secured to our boat. We were just going round for another try when we spotted another small motor launch heading our way. We intercepted it and asked if they could help. They were much closer in size and weight to the stricken tinny and I thought that they should be able to get in close without danger, and that is what they did.

We hung around and escorted the pair as the new boat towed the old one out of danger, and then watched in stunned amazement as a fuel can was passed over and their engine sprang into life. The idiots had run out of fuel! Even worse, without any acknowledgement or backward glance, they then motored off towards shore, taking our mooring rope with them, and we never saw them again.

Ah well. At least it gave me something interesting to write in the ships log.

Updating the Captains Log at the end of the day
Updating the Captains Log at the end of the day

Many feet make heavy work

We had also been taking on board a lot of guests. We soon decided that although it is technically possible to sleep six on board (and day-sail with eight), a total of two couples aboard is really the maximum if you want to have a good time. As captain, we are responsible for all crew, however inexperienced, and we felt that responsibility keenly. After a weekend of entertaining, however enjoyable, we often felt as if we needed another weekend off in order to recover. And then we had the guests who insisted on “helping”, and others who just broke everything they touched… Thankfully, these were in the minority, and of course on most weekends we had a real ball even if we were completely knackered.

Chris pretends to be happy about far too much wind
Chris pretends to be happy about far too much wind

Parties at anchor were one thing; it wasnt until we started giving interested friends basic helming instruction and found ourselves quietly compensating for their mistakes that we realised just how far we had come since our first forays onto Lake Burley Griffin. It was also always a lovely moment to see somebody suddenly “get it” and become a completely natural helmsman.

A season of sailing, and a season of guests, all took their toll on our nice shiny boat. Inside and out she started to get a bit ragged around the edges, and we began to notice obvious scratches and stains in the fittings, and wear and tear in the equipment. It was time to call a halt to the festivities, and do some maintenance.

Up the mast

One of the items that had been broken right from the start was the close-hauled indicator, an instrument that tells you where the wind is coming from. In actual fact, that didn’t bother us greatly because it isn’t particularly useful in ordinary sailing. You can get the same information from the wind arrow on top of the mast, the telltales (our wedding ribbons!) flying from the stays, the state of the water, the wind on your face, and so on. The real purpose of the close-hauled indicator is to feed wind direction information to the autopilot. Our autopilot has two modes; one where you simply give it a compass heading and it chugs along in that direction (useful under motor), and the other which is supposed to emulate a self-steering windvane (a kind of extra sail and rudder which you find on proper cruising yachts). The idea is that you can set the sails, and then tell the autopilot to always maintain the same angle to the wind, thus giving you a break from steering.

The wind sensors at the top of the mast
The wind sensors at the top of the mast

This still isn’t critical for anything, but its an expensive piece of broken equipment to carry around, and in any case, since the sensor is at the masthead, it gave me the perfect excuse to climb up the mast. There are a number of authentically nautical ways of going aloft, but I already owned a perfectly good climbing harness which I trusted to keep me safe while abseiling down waterfalls in the Blue Mountains If I was going to climb a fourteen-metre mast, then I wasnt going to mess about with unfamiliar techniques.

In actual fact, climbing is a bit of a misnomer. You wouldn’t want to put your dirty great feet on the expensive aluminium spreaders, and the mast itself is shiny and smooth without much in the way of finger-holds. No, what you do is assign a likely-looking crew member to the winches, attach the main halyard (and the topping lift as backup) to your harness, and lie back in luxury while she winches you to the top.

Helloooo from the top of the mast
Helloooo from the top of the mast

This is what Pindimara looks like from up there:

Seagulls eye view of Pindimara
Seagulls eye view of Pindimara

Buffing and Polishing

Our yacht is made of fibreglass. We had naiively assumed that this was a fairly indestructable material that would look good with nothing more than the odd hose-down now and again. However, in the marine environment, the gel coat discolours and even oxidises. Add to that the roughening impact of endless guests and their bags, and the deck and the inside of our cockpit began to look decidedly shabby.

Scratches on the deck
Scratches on the deck

I tried to buff the deck myself with a 12 volt sander and a sheep’s wool pad, but it was impossible to get a good finish. We engaged the services of our friendly local shipwright, and the weekend after a phone call telling us that she was as good as new, we popped out to the mooring expecting great things. Sadly, it was not to be. The yacht, which we had recently cleaned inside and out, was absolutely filthy and the cabins were full of dust. The deck was, if it were possible, even more matt than before, and the various old oil stains and bird droppings had apparently been ground into the deck with a power sander. The cockpit itself, which had been our main concern and the reason for getting the job done in the first place, had not been touched apart from to fill it with a layer of dried paste and some old rags. We were not amused. After some quite energetic discussions, the shipwright agreed to waive the bill, and we looked around for somebody else to do the job.

The general consensus among local people was a company called Reflections, who agreed to come aboard during the week and sort it out. After their phone call, I rode straight from work to the marina, got in the Zodiac, and rowed out to have a look, preparing myself for the worst. When I got to the boat, I almost didn’t dare set foot aboard. Somebody had apparently taken our yacht away and replaced it with a new one; it was an incredible transformation. In addition to spotless, shining decks, our teak flooring, which had always been a sort of beech grey, was suddenly a rich golden colour. I rowed straight back to shore, headed for their office, and willingly gave them a pile of cash. What an incredible job!

Compare and contrast with the previous photo
Compare and contrast with the previous photo

Sucking oil

Pindimara’s motor is a three-cylinder 29-horsepower Volvo Penta diesel engine. The service intervals are 100 hours, or once a year, whichever is soonest. We had now owned her for a year, and I had long been suspicious that precious little maintenance had been done thus far; not unless the previous mechanic had carefully repainted all the new filters in the original Volvo green colour.

Volvo Penta MD2030 lives under the stairs
Volvo Penta MD2030 lives under the stairs

In addition, I am always uncomfortable running an engine that I haven’t seen the inside of, so it was time to roll up my sleeves and get oily. Being more used to land-based engines, I had to learn some new tricks. Even changing the oil was interesting. Since the bottom of the block rests directly in the bilge, there is no room to get a tray underneath it. In fact, you cant even get a spanner to the drain plug. What you have to do is to buy a special pump and suck all the oil out from the top. I read various manuals and descriptions of how this process was supposed to work, and all clearly stated that the oil was sucked out of the dipstick tube. I managed to buy an oil pump (a nice shiny piece of engineering, made of brass) without any problems, but just could not fathom how I was supposed to push the sharp end down a tube that was almost completely inaccessible and shaped like yesterday’s share index. After much cursing, and to-ing and fro-ing with bits of brass and plastic tubing, I finally banged my hands painfully on a hitherto invisible pipe projecting from near the base of the block. Aha! A special, purpose-made oil pump tube. How convenient. From then on, it was just a case of pumping. And pumping. And pumping…

It works!
It works!

The Penta is water-cooled, by means of a seawater heat exchanger. All the various filters are easy enough to check and to clean, but the screws that held in the pump impeller had clearly never been moved, and one of them snapped right off, so that I was obliged to call in the local shipwrights for a bit of work with a drill and thread-cutter. The impeller is downright weird; it’s made of rubber and is designed to be far too big for the hole it turns in. The crankshaft obviously provides enough power to turn it, but it looks like a piece of old chewing gum when you finally cram it into place. As for the fuel filters… I broke two strap wrenches trying to get them off, and postponed it for another day.

Scrubbing the Bottom

It was by now some eight months or so since we had treated the underside with antifouling paint. During the process we had been forced to miss out on treating a transverse strip that had been occluded by the load-bearing strap at the yard, and I’d been keen to drop under and see how that patch was doing. For some weeks I had also been noticing a distinct sluggishness in the engine response, so one day at anchor in a small bay, I donned a wetsuit and went down to have a look. The strip of untreated hull was thickly overgrown, but I had expected this and had brought a stiff brush to scrub it off. However, there were other surprises in store.

Growth on the sail drive, and on the band of untreated hull
Growth on the sail drive, and on the band of untreated hull

First of all, I found a length of fishing line wrapped around the prop. This had been intercepted by our line-cutter which had almost cut it all away, so it wasn’t hard to pull out the melted remainder. The real surprise was the amount of marine growth over the propeller and the sail drive itself. You may recall that while we used expensive semi-professional paint for the major fibreglass portion of the hull, we had borrowed some cheap copper-free paint from a neighbour to do the few metal parts; the sail drive and the through-hull fittings. This was, it now turned out, a mistake. While the main bulk of the underside was perfectly fine and untouched by marine life of any kind, all the metal fittings, including the crucial seawater intake vents, were festooned with coral. An hour or two with a snorkel and brush soon sorted that out, and then it was time to quit working, and go sailing.

Dog Sledding in British Columbia

Glenn and I decided to try our hand at dog sledding. An old school bus drove us up Cougar Mountain to a dirt track, where an even older bus with snow chains was waiting to take us up the final ascent. It wasn’t an easy journey, with the bus crashing into enormous potholes and fishtailing up through the snow, but eventually we arrived at our destination, a hut in the side of a bulldozed snow-bank, where we were greeted by some cute puppies.

Glenn and a puppy
Glenn and a puppy

Down here in the relative warmth of BC, pure huskies are too furry to use, because they overheat if they try to run in anything over -20C. Here huskies had been crossed with greyhounds and other small dogs to make a small, short-coated animal more suited to the local climate. We were introduced to the sled teams, all lying around tied to chains in the snow, looking disconsolate and bored.

Our safety briefing could really be condensed into one rule: never get out of the right side of the sled, because that’s where the brake is, and the brake is simply an enormous steel claw embedded in the snow which might possibly pop out and gore you when you weren’t looking.

Glenn and I attached harnesses to a couple of the dogs, who took it meekly and without much interest. Then I climbed onto the sled to act as ballast while Glenn stretched the trace out taughtly in front, ready for the mushers to clip on the dog harnesses.

All hell broke loose! Suddenly the dogs realised that they were going out to run, and went absolutely crazy with joy. Still attached to their chains, they barked wildly and jumped up and down on the spot or ran around in tight circles. The few dogs that had been released fom their chains dragged their hapless handlers this way and that, until they were picked up bodily and carried to the traces. The world was a kaleidoscope of whirling snow, frothing teeth, and excited barking. It was impossible not to get caught up in the sheer abandoned joy of it, and all of us were grinning madly and laughing, even while frantically trying to retain control of ecstatic dogs and preventing them from tangling everything up in their leads.

The dogs start to get excited
The dogs start to get excited

Finally, somehow, six dogs were attached to each trace, and the four sled teams were ready to move out. Glenn clambered in to the sled in front of me, our handler climbed up behind, and with a cry of “Go dogs, go!” we were off.

Go dogs, go!

It was tremendous fun. The sled was a fabric tube slung inside a fibreglass frame, and, seated at ground level with only our heads sticking up in the open, we could feel the ground bumping along beneath our backsides. The dogs kicked up quite a spray as they went, scampering excitedly with the sled bumping along behind, and then one would suddenly stop to have a pee and they would all tumble to a halt in a big pile of kicking legs and tangled traces before sorting themselves out to carry on.

The dogs ran along a prepared trail up the mountain, sometimes silently but occasionally snapping and barking. On one occasion, the sled in front ran into difficulties; it seemed that none of their dogs wanted to lead. The mushers decided to take one dog out of our team and swap it for one of theirs. This entailed stopping both sleds and then ensuring that our own did not run away while the other one was being sorted out. I spent an entertaining ten minutes hanging on the back of the sled with one foot on the claw brake and the other on the snow hook, a small anchor, trying to stop them both from being tugged out of the ground by the wrestling and tangled dogs in front.

When we moved off again, I stayed on the back of the sled with the musher. I was shown how to stand penguin-footed, with my forward foot along the axis (narrowly missing the downward-pointing teeth of the brake) and the other slanted across one of the runners. It was a comfortable and solid stance. Whenever we got to a hill, the lead dog looked back expectantly and we got off and pushed, running alongside in the deep snow.

The team head for the hills
The team head for the hills

The trail wound up through snow-capped forest, past ice-powdered lakes and alongside frozen streams, the trees parting occasionally to give glimpses of white, sun-dazzled mountains. With the dogs pulling hard, the only sound was the hiss of the rails on the hard-packed snow. The crisp clean air smelled of fresh mountain pine, overlain occasionally by the strong whiff of dog.

Go dogs, go!
Go dogs, go!

We pose by the sled
We pose by the sled

On the way back down the mountain and close to home, the sled in front started slowing down, and we pulled out to overtake. Everything went well until we were running side by side, at which point the dogs could no longer contain their excitement and crossed over to the other team to say hello. It all got a bit complicated and we had to hit the brakes before everything got too tangled. Perhaps were not ready to compete in the Iditarod sled race just yet.

Who? Us?
Who? Us?

Snow Shoes in Whistler

Our friend Glenn had taken over as head chef at the Brewhouse in Whistler, and so – given that it was also the middle of the skiing season – it seemed like an excellent excuse to go and visit.

Glenn was working when we arrived, but introduced us to Dave the brewmaster, who took some time out to give us the tour of the brewery. However, when he realised that we enjoy quality beer as much as he does, he sat down with us as we sampled his creations, including a sneak preview of his upcoming and excellent 10% barley wine, until finally he had to call it a night and go to bed.

We stayed on, though; both Bronwyn and myself had fallen in love with his excellent premium lager, Lifty, and besides, we had worked up an appetite. We were shown to a table on the mezzanine level, with views down into the kitchen where we could see Glenn and his staff hard at work.

Its a big restaurant, and very busy, but the action in the kitchen was a dream of smoothly choreographed cooperation. It was a real pleasure to see the maestro at work, and especially interesting to watch our plates make their orderly way along the line – first an enormous stack of chicken breasts, then a pile of beef ribs, some vegetables – until Glenn added a few last artistic touches and sent it on its way up to our table.

We attacked it with gusto, washed down with the last of our Lifty and then some fine wine, before staggering satiated and happy out of the door. Thanks, Glenn.

Snow Shoes
I had never been snow-shoeing before, so Bronwyn and I hired a couple of pairs to hike the trails around Lost Lake. I was very interested to see how they worked, and in the event they were deceptively simple. The lightweight aluminium frame clamped easily to my ordinary walking boot, providing me not only with a large surface area to walk on, but also four sets of crampon teeth. It took me a moment or two to get used to the rolling gait engendered by my newly acquired extra-wide feet, but after that I discovered that I was invincible; I could walk over anything!

Have snow shoes, will travel
Have snow shoes, will travel

Although the trail itself had been groomed by the tracks of snowmobiles and the snow shoes and skis of previous users, the surrounding forest was waist-deep in soft powder, and I took every opportunity to head off the path and bound about on top of the drifts. It was like four-wheel drive for feet.

I'm coming!
I’m coming!

We had started our trip in a gentle drizzle, but as we climbed higher up the mountain, the rain turned to snow. Before long we were gliding completely alone through a winter wonderland of fresh powder and frosted trees. The only sound was the soft crunch as our snow shoes dug in.

The white stuff
The white stuff

We had left the main ski trail and were hiking on a narrow winding path amongst the pine, cypress and birch. On the occasional down-slope, we sat down and slid on our backsides, laughing like kids. We were twelve again, and the whole mountain was our playground.

Seven league boots
Seven league boots

Give way to bears
Give way to bears

Eventually we came out on the frozen shores of Lost Lake, where a log cabin welcomed us with a merry gas fire as we stripped off our ski gear and unpacked our bread and cheese onto a convenient wooden table. Since it was Valentines Day, we opened a half-bottle of wine, and sat and marvelled about how perfectly wonderful it all was. Apart from one passing ranger, there was still nobody there but us and the lake and the silent forest.

Note to self. Must go snow-shoeing again.

Manhattan

It was snowing in North America, and we had heard that US airports were closing all down the Eastern seaboard. Standing in the terminal at Ottawa airport, I watched with interest as a small jet spooled up and began to taxi through deep snow, closely followed by a pair of snowploughs which were in turn being trailed by a private light plane, all on their way to the runway. Clearly, the Canadians weren’t bothered by the conditions.

On our way to the departure gate, I was amused to see that the Canadian bookshops had wheeled out prominent trolleys of US-critical books; the works of Noam Chomsky, various titles incorporating the word “Empire”, and one memorably entitled “100 Ways America is Screwing Up the World”. I don’t know if the stallholders were making a point, or if those titles aren’t readily available in the US, but for whatever reason, they were doing brisk business with passing travellers.

Once in New York, we couldn’t be bothered to worry about taxis and public transport, so we did the obvious thing and hired a limo to take us through to our hotel, which was in Manhattan, just off Times Square. As a first-time visitor, I found the journey strange, like driving through a movie set: The straight canyon-like roads, the big blocky department stores, and the exotically corniced apartment buildings. I kept expecting to see gun-waving movie stars tumbling off the fire escapes.

The standard of driving was awful. Cars criss-crossing all over the place, pedestrians dodging between the hurtling vehicles. Our own driver slalomed around a man tottering through three lanes of traffic on a walking frame and then, having successfully negotiated that hazard, slammed on the brakes as he was cut up by a taxi with JESUS SAVES in the window. “Won’t save him,” chuckled our driver, as he pushed the pedal back to the metal and gave chase. We arrived alive and in good time, checked in to our hotel, and went for a walk to see what all the fuss was about.

My first impression of Times Square was that it was very tall. My second was that, thanks to the festoons of hi-tech advertisements, it was very bright; certainly brighter than Picadilly Circus in London, and in downright gaudiness it outshone even the Bund in Shanghai. Down at street level, though, I was surprised by how calm everybody was. In London, people would be scurrying along, head down, shouldering aside any fool foreigner with the temerity to hesitate or to pause. Here, groups of people stood around chatting on street corners despite the cold winter wind that cut through the spaces between the buildings. There was plenty of time to take in the views, to stop and to backtrack, even to pause and to take photographs: just so long as you stayed on the pavement (“sidewalk”) and didn’t step into the road (“pavement”). The traffic was still crazy.

In counterpoint to the calm of the civilian New Yorkers, the high-profile security was grim. Quite apart from the officers directing traffic, there were police and police cars stationed at almost every intersection, and immense armoured buses labelled “Command Center” hogged the sidewalks. At one point, a column of (I kid you not) twenty police cars wailed and flashed their way nose-to tail down the centre of the street for no obvious reason. I could only wonder at what possible crisis could have engendered that kind of fire power. Had aliens landed in Central Park? Or had some fool Englishman been spotted jay-walking?

I did notice, though, that although we tourists gawped at the police cars, the locals ignored them completely. Likewise, nobody else seemed to be aware that every shop had its own retinue of uniformed thugs on the door, and in one small shoe shop I counted five security guards. In a shoe shop! I found all this security to be very uncomfortable, and thus had the perfect excuse to loiter on a bench in the street while the girls did their shopping.

Billed as the largest department store in the world, Macy’s attracted Bronwyn and Michelle like moths to a flame. It was indeed very, very big. We made our way to the shoe section, and as I stepped off the escalator, I reeled in shock as shoe racks dwindled to infinity before me. Bronwyn and Michelle dived into the fray, and I sighed and pulled out a magazine and found an armchair. This was going to be a long one.

Some hours later, Michelle approached a Nigerian lady who was on her knees stacking shoe boxes. “May I look at those?” she asked. “No, those are mine!” said the lady, who then proceeded to load some thirty different pairs onto the checkout desk for purchase.

I was surprised at the rudeness of the staff, who seemed much more interested in chatting to each other than actually serving anyone. I overheard one customer ask an assistant about trainers. The worker plucked a boot from a nearby shelf and brandished it. “I do boots. Not snow boots, not trainers, but boots. B, O, O, T, S. Boots!” The customer backed away and, I hope, tried another shop.

When travelling alone by plane or by bus, anywhere in the world, it often seems to be my lot to end up sat next to a lady of a certain age from New York. Seconds into the journey, she will inevitably attempt to grill me in a very loud voice on all aspects of my private life. Undeterred by my monosyllabic responses, she will then launch into a long and tedious explanation of the shortcomings of her current or previous partners, followed by a detailed explanation of her own medical problems, and topped by an excruciatingly detailed critique of the shortcomings of everything and everybody around her. The dullness of the narrative will only be exceeded by the volume at which the monologue is conducted.

I had hitherto assumed that this was a peculiarity of The New Yorker Abroad, and that in their home territory they would be as urbane as sophisticated as the next person. I was fascinated, then, to find myself seated in the coffee lounge (actually a Starbucks) in Macy’s, completely surrounded by tables packed with exactly the same ladies all jabbering away at full bore. In moments I had inadvertently learned more about the medical, social, and sexual habits of the nearest half-dozen people than I would have believed possible.

Some minor spillage had occurred on the floor behind me. A couple of male janitors turned up to deal with it, and then, instead of moving on, they rested on their mops and began to congratulate each other in stentorian tones on their delight and happiness with having secured employment at the biggest department store in the world. It was time to move on.

It was time, in fact, to experience the Perfect Martini at a bar in Times Square, where Debra our barmaid let on that she was only doing bar work until she got her big chance on Broadway. We wondered how many of the beautiful people that served us in bars and cafes were waiting for the same thing. On Broadway itself, we booked dinner at Sardis, a restaurant which has been awarded a Tony in recognition of its services to the arts. After a fine meal, we ambled next door to see A Chorus Line, a very entertaining show during which the actors kept us on our toes with their seventeen intertwining musical plots.

Later that night, our taxi was stopped by a police line close to the hotel, and had to make a detour. Further around the block we could see a flurry of police cars and lots of shouting people, some of whom were apparently being removed from a club and efficiently bundled into official vehicles. We gathered from the driver’s attitude that this was a normal evening’s work. Later that night, back in the hotel room, I was awoken by more sirens, and more shouting in the street outside. I ignored it and went back to sleep.

You must remember that, until now, my entire experience of Manhattan had come from Hollywood films. I therefore pictured Central Park as a perpetually darkened forest populated with bloodthirsty aliens, predatory junkies, and roving gangs of youths with baseball bats. I was somewhat surprised, then, to find myself strolling through a pleasant and airy park with quaint little bridges and areas of freshly reseeded lawn.

It was winter, so the trees were bare, and where here and there bedrock projected from the soil, we could climb up and admire the New York skyline all around. A homeless guy came up and sold us a map, and following its directions we made our way past the Trump outdoor icerink, and on to The Tavern On The Green. The Tavern is an amazing confection of ornate windows, pastel-painted plaster, coloured glass and chandeliers, where we breakfasted extravagantly on Veuve Clicquot, lobster bisque, and seared sea-bass. The staff were polite and professional, and there was not a bouncer in sight. Wonderful.

Outside the restaurant, we came across some horse-drawn carriages, so we took a $40 trip around the corner. It was still freezing cold, but they gave us a nice warm blanket to snuggle under.

Fifth Avenue, where we disembarked, was spectacular, lots of Gotham-style fifties architecture and a wide street down which the winter sun shone with silvery splendour. Even here, people didn’t seem to mind when I stopped to take photos, and we had a very pleasant stroll up to the Rockefeller Center, where we were hoping to get onto the ice rink.

The rink was, however, temporarily closed for resurfacing, so while the Zamboni did its work, we decided to climb up to the roof to take in the view. It wasn’t quite as simple as that; first we had to be X-rayed and examined by yet more security guards, but finally we were allowed to enter the express elevator to the top. The views were fantastic. We were protected from the wind by high glass walls, and could see most of the city stretched out beneath us. Some of the older buildings had the most fascinating wedding-cake architecture. Now dwarfed by the Rockefeller Center, they were once the tallest buildings in Manhattan, and I was impressed by the detail and tile work on their crowns, which can at the time only have been seen by the builders themselves, and perhaps by the pilots of low-flying aircraft.

Back at ground level, we did get to skate around the rink amongst the laughing locals and tourists, all slipping and sliding about on the roughly chopped surface. We wouldn’t have won any medals for style, but it was certainly a lot of fun.

The best way to see the Statue of Liberty is to take the free ferry across to Staten Island and back, and the best way to get to the ferry is to take the subway. We therefore found ourselves rattling along in a shiny aluminium train car (no graffiti, no marauding aliens, no gunfights) to emerge in the vast circular waiting room of the ferry terminal. A flustered kiosk girl eventually managed to serve coffee to an ever-lengthening queue of patrons, and then we all filed aboard.

Here, as everywhere else in Manhattan, security guards loomed and checked everything that moved, and on reading the ferry’s safety instructions, I found that there were standing orders that in the case of enemy attack, the crew should rinse the decks with fire hoses to remove any radioactive contamination. Nobody seemed to be attacking at the moment, though, so we concentrated on the scenery, which was very fine indeed on this crisp sunny day.

I have heard people say that they are disappointed when they first see the Statue of Liberty, but I really can’t think why. She is very impressive indeed, even more so when you see her standing in front of all the towers and glass of the Manhattan shoreline, like the last bastion of gentility holding her torch in front the glitzy new crowd, and saying “Hey! Remember how things used to be?”

Skate the Rideau

Every winter, the city of Ottawa empties the Rideau Canal, floods it with a few metres of water, and then waits for it to freeze over. The resulting ice sheet is, at just under eight kilometres, billed as the longest ice rink in the world. I just had to see it, and to skate the entire length.

First, however, I had to learn to skate. That was easier to arrange than I had expected; despite an outside temperature in the mid thirties, ice rinks are relatively common in my current home country Australia, and so I enrolled on a beginners’ course.

Aus Skate lessons

It soon became clear that Australians tackle skating just as they tackle any other sport; they become experts from about age 5. Thus it was that my beginners group consisted of a scattering of (presumably) slow kids, and a selection of adults from tropical countries who had never even seen ice before, let alone considered skating on it.

Our teacher, Slav, who just happened (like most of the other instructors) to be a world class figure skater, had us in stitches as we tried to “walk like penguin”, “balance cocktail on head”, “drive in little car” until, suddenly and miraculously, I found that I was skating.

Skate the World: London

There’s no point in rushing these things, and we were carrying our skates anyway, so we decided to make a couple of practice stops on the way to Ottawa. Every winter, London hosts a number of artificial rinks, including one under the Tower of London, and another in the grounds of Somerset House. The Tower was closed when we arrived, but we got tickets for a session at Somerset House. The rink was beautifully situated at the bottom of the grand staircase, and ringed with flaming torches. It was a little crowded at times, and I was glad of my lessons. Amongst the stumbling Londoners, I actually felt quite graceful, for the first and probably the last time in my life.

Skate the World: New York

Scene of a hundred Hollywood love stories, the rink beneath the Rockefeller Center was a must-do. We hopped over the Atlantic, and strapped on our ice skates. The rink is a tiny, crowded space, and the ice was wet and rutted, but heck it was fun!

Skate the World: Ottawa

On our arrival in Ottawa, the weather was unseasonably warm and the Rideau Canal had still not frozen. The opening of the rink is central to the annual Winterlude festival, which takes place largely on the ice, and there was muttering talk of relocating it to indoor parts of the city. Every morning, council workers went out onto the ice, and declared that it wasn’t yet thick enough to open.

We just had to wait it out, but it didn’t mean that we couldn’t go skating; we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to go to a childrens’ birthday skating party. It quickly became painfully obvious to me that Canadians are born on ice skates. The kids ran rings around the adults, and quite a few of the parents took the odd moment out to gently relive their glory days, pausing now and then for an effortless reverse or salchow before continuing to tend their offspring. In contrast, I lumbered around like a drunken ox, and in my attempts to look even slightly stylish I completely messed up a hockey stop and smacked my head on the ice.

Finally: The Rideau Canal

A week later, Winterlude opened! The last time we had been to Dowes Lake, we had pedalled around the leafy calm waters on a tandem bicycle. This time we were presented with a hard white expanse, scattered with benches and tents and hot dog stalls. We donned our skates in one of the marquees, and set off.

Dowes Lake itself was beautifully smooth, but once we entered the canal proper, the surface began to differ substantially from that of a man-made rink. Although the ice was patrolled regularly by snowploughs, and any holes repaired each night, the surface had definitely been formed by the hands of nature rather than by any artificial agency. Small pressure ridges and cracks focussed the mind, and the solid and concentrated stance of the locals contrasted with the eyes-high dance steps that I had been taught in my lessons.

There was, however, plenty of space to go around rough patches and the odd drift of windblown snow, and plenty of time to marvel at the local residents pushing their babies, carrying their shopping, or simply commuting to work, along this ephemeral highway that had appeared in the middle of their city.

We passed the three-kilometre mark. I was quite pleased with myself. The different surface was not the only thing that I had to get used to; up until now I had only ever skated for perhaps ten strides in a straight line before pausing for the turn at the end of the rink. Here, there was no reason to turn, just the occasional gentle arc to avoid other happy couples, and families towing or pushing their children in sleighs. My thigh muscles began to protest the continual, unfamiliar activity, but I thought that I had it under control.

Kilometre four came, and I paused, panting, under a bridge to take some photos. I was wearing far too many warm layers, even though it was well below zero and we were now entering the notorious wind tunnel, a deep cutting with a perpetual headwind.

At five kilometres, I got distracted while skirting an orange-painted borehole, and tripped over my own feet. Hitting the ice is a bit like being rear-ended in a car accident; it hurts a bit, but you know that its going to be so much worse in the morning. As I sat on a handy bench to recover, a passing lady stopped for a chat as she put on her skates. This was her first time back on the ice since breaking her leg at the previous Winterlude.

The final straight came into view, one or two more bridges and then the welcoming facades of the tents and huts marking the end of the rink. Bronwyn glided effortlessly ahead to buy cups of hot chocolate and beavertail waffles. I, on the other hand, concentrated on forcing my leaden feet into every stroke; left, right, left, right. It was getting harder to find the energy to lift the skate clear, and three times in quick succession I caught the toe-pick and tumbled down. Tomorrow was really going to hurt. And then, miraculously, I stumbled onto a handy bench; I had reached the end of the Rideau Canal.

Bronwyn drifted up with fried dough and chocolate and marshmallows, and I had done it! I had skated the longest ice rink in the world.

The Floating Gourmets

There is a whole gourmet philosophy, eloquently espoused by Mireile Giuliano in her landmark book French Women Don’t Get Fat, that says that food should not just be treated as fuel, but should be enjoyed. In contrast to TV dinners and fast takeaway food, she suggests that we should return to the old-fashioned notion that mealtimes are an occasion. The table should be cleared and set, the TV and computer should be turned off, and everybody should sit down and concentrate on the business at hand, which is to eat, drink and be merry.

We couldn’t agree more, and, on land, have found that little touches such as clearing the mail off the table and lighting a candle before dinner have a wonderful focussing effect on the palate. We also buy only fresh, in-season produce, and don’t have or need a freezer or a microwave, much preferring the taste and flexibility that comes from freshly prepared ingredients.

Rather than hastily cramming pizza over a magazine, we like to dine in style on artistically presented fresh food, perhaps accompanied by a glass of wine or two. Rather than gulping down the food in haste before returning to some interrupted project, we find ourselves relaxing, taking our time, chatting and laughing, often finding that our evening meal stretches out through another leisurely bottle of wine until it is time for bed.

This is, of course, our land-based philosophy. Reading the cruising tales of other couples, we couldn’t help but notice that many of them adopt a calory-counting, expeditionary, “Its Thursday so it must be tinned spaghetti” style of provisioning. On the face of it, that makes a sort of practical sense. Lots of similar objects (cans, packets) are easier to pack together than lots of dissimilar ones (leeks, eggs), and its pretty easy to deal with inventory when you can just count how many tins are left in the locker.

Living out of a Box

We were still a couple of years away from setting off into the Pacific, so we had plenty of time to experiment. We decided to try to develop a processed-food menu that could fit into a standard sized plastic box. Our reasoning was that we could pack one box per week full of useful ingredients, and combine them in different ways to give some variation, while maintaining a standard inventory.

We had a lot of fun hunting through unfamiliar aisles at the supermarket, perusing use-by dates, discarding packaging, and finding out the most efficient way of cramming all the stuff into one big 3-D jigsaw puzzle and still get the lid on. Finally, after several nights and a lot of rethinking, we succeeded.

The box was pushed into the corner of the kitchen, waiting for a suitable date to start the next phase of the experiment: living out of the box for a week. Days passed, and it never seemed to be quite the right time to start. First, strawberries came into season, and then some friends came over for dinner, and then we were going away to a wine fair. The box sat, colourful labels frowning at us through the transparent plastic. Still, we reasoned, at least we were testing the longevity of the products.

Weeks later, we decided that wed had quite enough procrastination, and started in on our menu. Now, Bronwyn is a quite remarkable chef, and can turn almost anything into a delicious feast, but we were suddenly faced with entire meals consisting of nothing but dried and processed foods. There was nothing wrong with each individual dish, but we very quickly found that there was a terrible sameness about everything, and all the joy went out of our mealtimes.

Rotting Food

On day three, we gave up. It was time to re-think the whole thing. We began to buy fresh and preserved foods simply to leave them lying around in the house. Our flat became a treasure trove of vegetables and bags and packets, stuffed away into odd corners and under the sink, to see how long they would last before going putrid.

We also moved some of the more likely candidates to the boat, and left them at the back of lockers and in the bilges to see what would happen to them. On the whole, we were favourably impressed. With the exception of supermarket vegetables (refrigerated in transit, which ruins them) most things were pretty resilient. Vegetables from the greengrocer were just fine, lasting weeks or, in the case of some root vegetables (one particular sweet potato springs to mind), months.

None of this struck us as being too surprising. People have been keeping vegetables on shelves and in larders for thousands of years, but it is curious how we have been infected with the insidious viruses of “due dates” and “refrigeration”. Once you get used to ignoring them, provisioning gets a lot simpler.

We made some interesting discoveries. For instance, in the Arab world, butter can be bought in tins. When we got hold of a tin and discovered that it is made in New Zealand, we thought that we had it made, but it turns out that the only way to buy it in Australia is to order it to be shipped at great expense from America. While doing some research into other possible sources, Bronwyn discovered a whole host of American survivalist websites that, as well as teaching you how to skin a cougar or defend your house from marauding aliens, had many useful things to say about the preservation of food. Butter can be boiled and then stored almost indefinitely in sealed jars; we tried it, and it works just fine. Some of the most interesting and innovative recipes of all come from The Hillbilly Housewife.

Bread Yeast Cultures

Many cruising books mention how great it is to have a sourdough yeast culture aboard, so that you can bake fresh bread. Some of those books make a big deal out of how hard it is to keep the culture alive, discussing the perfect container and position, and laying out complicated routines for feeding (even to the extent of cutting short shore leave to rush back and feed the yeast). This seemed a bit excessive, so we performed some experiments.

We started various yeast cultures from commercial dried yeast, from the sediment in the bottom of a beer bottle, and from the scrapings of root vegetables. They all worked just fine, although the commercial strains were more active. We fed them on different kinds of flour, and discovered that they liked strong bread flour the best. We tried a few different containers, but in the end settled on a simple plastic tub.

Then we got nasty. We let the culture dry out and die, and then a week later added a bit of water and flour, and it sprang back into life. We put a sample in the freezer for a fortnight, and then woke it up the same way. We left the lid off the tub and let the whole thing go green and furry; when we scraped the mould off and added flour and water, back it came. These cultures are unkillable!

Once a day we just throw most of it away, and add some water and a handful of strong flour. That’s it. There is no drama if we miss a day or two. Sometimes if we’ve been particularly mean the mixture starts to smell evilly, but after a day or so it always seems to come right… and if we really need to bake something and the culture is having a bad day, we can always start a new one with commercial dried yeast. Oh, and it makes wonderful bread.

Yoghurt Cultures

We also acquired a yoghurt maker, which is simply a double-walled thermos flask. You mix some milk with natural yoghurt (or with commercial yoghurt mix) and put it in the flask with a dose of boiling water in the separate compartment. Once the lid is closed, the water keeps the inside of the flask nice and warm and, overnight, you have as much fresh yoghurt as you like.

We weren’t planning on taking any cows with us on the boat, so we tried it both with UHT milk and with reconstituted powdered milk. Both worked just fine.

The Tale of the Zodiac

In a recent incident involving a broken propeller, I had deliberately sacrificed our poor inflatable tender to protect the hull of our yacht from impacting an oyster-covered pier.

The tender wasn’t doing us any good at the marina, so it came home to live on the balcony of our flat. Every day I would pump up the poor flaccid thing, add soapy water, draw circles around the biggest bubbles, and then patch them. As the days (and expensive patching kits) passed, it soon became clear that this wasn’t really sticking-plaster territory. The gashes were so big that I was having to patch my patches just to cover them. A more drastic solution was needed.

Taking it to Zodiac for repairs would cost almost as much as a new tender. However, we had been noticing adverts for something called “Tuff-Coat“, which was a repair paint alleged to bond to hypalon and repair pinhole leaks.

Well, we certainly had pinhole leaks; dozens or perhaps hundreds of them. We resolved to give it a go, but also to cease operations when our material costs exceeded $500; after all, a brand new Zodiac only costs a couple of thousand, and ours had already enjoyed a number of owners before we laid our hands on it.

My daily routine changed. Every day I would pump the boat up, add soapy water, draw circles around the largest bubbles, and then dry it off and add another layer of Tuff-Coat.

The stuff certainly seemed to do the job, but for every hole that was repaired, a bunch more would be revealed. It became a bit of a joke, checking to see how soft it had got while we were away at work, but one day we returned from a whole weekend away to find our tender standing as full and proud as the day we’d left it.

The aged rowlocks had broken long ago, and since then we had been paddling canoe-style. This was fine for two people, but tricky with only one. I celebrated the end of my nightly balcony visits by fitting shiny new rowlocks with lockable paddles, and painting all the woodwork a nice bright gloss blue.

It was a proud moment for Mr Stubborn.

Problems with the Propeller

Pindimara came equipped with a neat three-blade folding propeller, designed to collapse in on itself when under sail in order to reduce drag. It was supposed to be nice shiny brass, but in fact bore a closer resemblance to an old hub cap that had been languishing in a coral reef.

We were up on the hard for our first antifoul, so I had a brief window to work on dry land. Wielding a wire brush on an angle-grinder, I made short work of all the white stuff, and then took the whole thing apart and greased it and reassembled it with a liberal coating of lanolin, which looked great but made me smell like an old sheep. Then I painted the sail drive itself with several coats of special aluminium-friendly light blue paint, and stood back to admire my handywork.

Lovely, it was. A work of art.

On the Monday morning after our weekend of anti-fouling, we were up bright and early to supervise Pindimara’s return the water. It was raining heavily when we arrived, and we couldn’t find any of the slipway staff; presumably they were all hiding somewhere dry and wouldn’t answer their radios, so we had to go to work and hope that they’d reappear and put her back in the water later that day.

In the evening, we turned up once again and there she was waiting for us, tied up to the fuel dock. While Bronwyn drove the car around the bay to our home marina, I motored off into Pittwater to meet her. Once in the open water, I couldn’t resist opening the throttle to see what would happen.

Before we started this work, she would barely make one knot under power. Four knots… five knots… six knots… seven knots. Incredible, and very, very smooth. Pretty happy, I steered through the moored boats in the falling dusk to the marina dock, where I could vaguely see Bronwyn standing on the deck, and the low shape of the Zodiac in the water beside her.

The tide was low, and the flow was opposed to the rain and wind. I had to be careful in my approach, and so nosed up ever so carefully, squinting in the dying light. Then, suddenly, the engine hammered loudly under my feet, and I couldn’t get any control.

I managed to swing away from the shore, and came back around for another try. Had I hit the bottom? Was I tangled in fishing line? Bronwyn waited, puzzled, on the dock as the boat ran around in circles. I really couldn’t make any sense of what was happening; steering and power seemed to come and go at random. Finally I got the nose up to Bronwyn, who hopped aboard, trailing the tender behind her.

Immediately I put on the power to prevent the current from ramming us into the dock, and although the bow peeled away, it still all felt very wrong. We were almost around and clear when the engine started banging again and the yacht started to crab mysteriously sideways toward an oyster-encrusted piling. I glanced back; if I let off the power, the stern would connect with the dock; if I did nothing, we would hit the piling.

Bronwyn stood on the pulpit, shouting something, and I realised that she still had the tender’s painter in her hand. I could only see one solution; I hit the power, the engine slammed up against the soles of my feet, and the yacht ploughed into the Zodiac inflatable and crushed it against the razor-sharp oyster shells. Seconds later, we bounced free. I killed the power, and watched as the crushed remains of our tender bobbed sadly to the surface, remarkably still afloat despite the slashes down its side.

Getting to the mooring was hard work with little in the way of power or steering, and eventually we realised that we would have to stay the night and sort it out in the morning, because there was no way that we were rowing back to shore in half a tender.

Morning came. The tender looked bad in the light of day, but thankfully the yacht had sustained no hull damage at all. With a slack tide and no wind, we motored around a bit trying to figure out what was wrong, but in the end crabbed our way to the water dock and asked a local firm of engineers to take a look.

Later that day, I got a phone call. They’d sent a diver down, and apparently one of the blades of our shiny beautiful folding propeller was twisted backwards, giving us two thirds forward motion and one third backward. No wonder the engine was banging! The poor thing was trying to jump up through the hull with the forces that were being applied to it. I asked the engineers to take her back up onto the slip and fit our emergency backup prop so that we could take a look at the old one. Deeply embarrassed, I could only think that I’d somehow fitted one of the blades backward, and I couldn’t understand how that was possible.

Once we got hold of the failed prop, it became clear that I hadn’t been immediately to blame. The brass teeth that work the folding mechanism were old and worn, and in the final analysis, the layer of coral that I had so diligently removed was all that had been holding the thing together. The prop would have failed eventually, but cleaning it up had hastened the day.

Our first Antifoul

Yachts share the sea with all manner of interesting organisms, many of which consider a shiny hull to be a particularly salubrious place to set up home. First to arrive is an algae scum, which coats the surface. Next come coral spores, which settle in the algae and hatch into proper corals. Once these are established, they provide food and shelter and – most importantly – anchor points for molluscs and barnacles and other animals. These latter are quite capable, once they establish a good hold, of drilling through solid rock; fibreglass is no problem to them at all.

The trick is not to let them get a foothold. One option is to swim under the hull every weekend and clean them off; this technique is used by particularly diligent racers. Most people choose to apply ablative antifouling. This is a copper-based (ie hopefully unpalatable) paint that is designed to slough off when rubbed. Any organisms that are not deterred by the poisons in the paint, are dislodged next time the boat moves, because the outer paint layer as well as anything rooted in it gets rubbed off by the action of the water passing the hull. Obviously, as time goes on, the paint all wears away. About once a year you have to put new stuff on. The only way that you can do this is to haul your boat out onto the land.

Dry-dock space at the shipyard is expensive. Since we knew that the first thing that we would have to do on land was to scrub all the life-forms from the hull, and since there were such a lot of them, it made sense for us to do as much as possible in the water first, while it was all still soft. I donned some scuba gear and spent an enjoyable and fruitful day wiping off algae and chipping at coral with a range of household implements. The best tool turned out to be an aluminium-handled window-wiper. I used a suction cup to keep me in place while I did some of the flatter sections, but generally I just swam up and down attacking each part in turn.

I’d never worked underwater before, but I soon got used to it; the trick seemed to be to consider whatever surface I was working on to be a vertical wall, regardless of which way up I was in the water.

Since I was weightless (well, neutrally buoyant anyway, thanks to the scuba gear), it made no practical difference whether my feet were pointing up or down, so long as I could reach the work area.

Fish soon realised that food was raining down from above, and for the latter part of my work, I was accompanied by a variety of sea life. Some larger fish even helped by nibbling loosened bits of coral directly from the hull. A couple of air tanks later, the job was completed. Hard work, but satisfying.

We had been told that it is usual to spend a complete weekend doing antifouling, so that is what we booked. However, the weather had been bad recently and so there was a backlog of boats standing (expensively) on the slip waiting to be worked on, and a rapidly building queue of people demanding their turn at the spaces. After a few weeks, though, we did get a spot, and out she came, back onto the same slip on which she had been surveyed.

First step was to borrow a water-jet lance and clean all the accumulated gunk off the underside. Right away, my scuba work paid off dividends; it would have taken us a day just to clean the accumulated coral off the bottom. As it was, even though we only had a couple of weeks of algae accumulation to remove, the shipyard staff were hanging around trying to take away the water jet before we had really finished.

The next step was to rub down the old paint layer with wet-and-dry to get a good key for our new coat. This was quite a laborious process, especially as the previous layer hadnt been applied particularly well, and streaks and drips abounded. Working at full stretch above our heads, we were soon turned bright blue from head to toe.

Eventually we were satisfied. Protecting all the edges with masking paper, we started to roll on the undercoat.

The antifouling paint itself was blue, and the undercoat, grey. The idea is that if we see any grey in future, we’ll know that this years antifouling has worn away and it is time to do it again. Our blue paint was some very expensive semi-professional antifouling that we were assured was the best thing to use. We had been a little dubious about the cost, but now we realised the value of that advice. Other workers were having real problems with drips and runs, while ours went on smooth as silk and drew envious glances.

Back at the time of the survey, we had noted that the moulding around the cast iron keel was cracked and was peeling away in several places. Six months later, the problem was much worse. Nick, an engineer loosely attached to David Bray Yachts who dropped by to make sure that we were OK, attacked it with a borrowed angle-grinder and repaired the damage. He wasn’t at all surprised, and said that we could expect similar damage every time we did our annual slipping.

Once the new moulding was dry, we could finish up the antifouling. We continued painting until we’d run out of paint, putting on three layers overall, and four layers in high-abrasion areas such as the bow, waterline, and leading edges of the keel.

The only area that we couldn’t paint was directly underneath the sling that was supporting the yacht, resulting in an untreated band about a hands-width across running from waterline to waterline just aft of the propeller. The guy next to us, a seasoned antifouler with whom we had been sharing tools and advice, propped up his hull with scaffold poles, undid the sling, and painted underneath. We simply couldn’t bear to try it; that sling was holding up hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of yacht, and no way were we going to mess about poking poles into the hull. We resolved to dive underneath occasionally to keep an eye on the strip,and left it at that.

Fitting Out

We Venture Forth

The first time we took our new yacht out, we just motored around Pittwater, huge grins splitting our faces from ear to ear. We own a yacht! We own a yacht! After a while, once we’d done a few doughnuts and got the feel of her, we unfurled the foresail and pottered along with the motor off. We’re sailing! We’re sailing! It was exhilarating, wonderful, a dream come true. And, it must be said, somewhat scary; not the act of sailing particularly, but the fact that we were floating around on our life savings.

Then, rounding a headland into the jaws of the open sea, we crossed into several metres of swell and everything suddenly went topsy turvy We were only pottering along under the headsail and didn’t have the headway to handle the gusty conditions. We concentrated very, very hard to beat our way back around the headland, and came through unscathed, only a little shaken, and if truth be told, very pleased with ourselves.

We go shopping

So… we bought a second-hand Zodiac inflatable tender from eBay; unbreakable crockery, cutlery, cookware, breakable glasses (never drink wine from plastic!) and bedding from the local shops. We bought a fire-blanket, a man-overboard ring, a floating Dolphin torch. We bought buckets and brushes and polyrope and string, batteries and tools. We bought life-jackets, cleaning equipment, boat-soap, a chart.

Liveaboard life

We were living in Canberra at the time, a landlocked city in a landlocked state, and since we found it quite inconvenient to have the boat moored some four and a half hours away, we moved to Sydney. We were starting new jobs and were still househunting, so the obvious thing to do was to live aboard.

This we did for quite some time, and thoroughly enjoyed it, although it did become clear after a while that the yachty lifestyle and the office lifestyle don’t really coincide. Each morning we got up, climbed into the tender, and rowed ashore with all our office and motorcycle gear in waterproof bags. Then we showered and changed at the marina and rode to work; reverse in the evening.

This was all fine and lovely on a peaceful warm day (although rowing home on a sultry evening wearing motorcycle armour over business attire is a sweaty exercise), but got to be tricky when there was a storm blowing. On one occasion, a hailstorm hit half way out, and we had to take shelter on the closest moored yacht as chunks the size of golf balls rained on our heads and metre-high waves filled the Zodiac.

One of the lessons that we had absorbed from extensive reading was that when accidents happen to yachts, it is almost always because they have a personal reason to be at point A when the environmental conditions require that they remain at point B. Examples we had heard of included trying to get to a particular country to meet relatives at an airport, and, of course, racing. Getting to work in the morning, and getting back to the boat for dinner, seemed to us to fall very much into this category, and applied just as much to our little Zodiac as to Pindimara herself, who was of course perfectly safe on her mooring in all weathers.

One final problem was the wear and tear. Full-time liveaboard inevitably results in some knocks and dents to the interior woodwork, and messy accidents do happen in any home. We were trying to keep the cabins as pristine as possible with an eye on future resale value, and we soon noticed that the interior was looking a bit shabby and we had no time or opportunity to do anything about it. We also started to notice problems with damp from condensation, and salt in all the fabrics.

Somewhat regretfully, we rented a flat nearby. This did not, of course, mean that we stopped sleeping over on board, and it certainly did not stop Bronwyn from creating ever more sumptious and creative banquets in the galley. The wine cellar aboard began to rival, and then to exceed, the one that we kept at home.

Unwanted Guests

One evening, we were sitting in the main cabin, variously reading cook books and sewing new sail ties (an early lesson learned: on a yacht, you can always find some little task to fill any spare time, if you are so inclined) when something moved on the floor. Always alert to any changes in the boat, I had a look, and found a large cockroach. Not thinking too much of it (all the ports were open, and it was a warm summers day), I lobbed it into the sea. A few days later, we saw another one. Then another.

A little investigation in back corners revealed little piles of droppings, so we cleaned them up and sprayed Morteine around the place. However, it soon became clear that we had a bit of a problem. It all came to a head one night when I was woken by a two-inch roach running along my arm and across my hand. I overarmed it out of the hatch, and later that day we rowed our budgie ashore (it was living in a cage on deck) and set off three roach bombs, enough to clear a small house.

For weeks afterward, dead and dying insects appeared all over the boat, but we didn’t see any more fast-moving ones. Of course, we had been reading up on the issue, and it seemed that we had only ourselves to blame. Our lockers are spacious, and things tend to move about in them, so we had compartmentalised them with cardboard boxes from the supermarket. Apparently, roaches love to lay their eggs on the cardboard that they find in warehouses, where they remain until they find themselves in a warm, damp environment into which they can hatch.

The common answer is to ban all cardboard from the boat. This made a mess of our packing arrangements, and we did the best we could with fabric and bubble-wrap. Some cruisers go further, and ban all paper products, including the labels on tin cans, but that seemed somewhat excessive, and in any case, who could live without books? We sterilised all our remaining paper on deck in the burning summer sun.

As weekends of sailing went by, we started to think about maintenance. We bought deck oil and gelcoat restorer, metal polish, a small passive dehumidifier. There seemed to be no end to the things that we needed to, or could, or felt like buying. A trip to the local chandlery to buy a split-pin would likely as not result in a triumphant exit with armfuls of shiny new equipment.

We had been told to expect to spend 10% of the purchase price per year on maintenance and upkeep; surely this could not be true? We started to keep records.

Although we had promised ourselves that we would go sailing at least once a fortnight (or demand a damn good reason why not), there was a period of some six weeks through the hottest part of the Australian summer when we were on holiday in other parts of the country. During this time, Pindimara just sat and bobbed in the warm sea. On our return, we dropped the mooring and motored off, happy to be afloat again, but as soon as we cleared the marina, we knew that something was very wrong. The motor felt very strange, and even on full bore we weren’t getting anywhere near the rpm that we should have, and were making barely a knot through the water.

We returned to the mooring. I cleaned all the engine filters and checked the oil. We ran the engine in neutral, and it seemed just fine, so it was on with the mask and snorkel and over the side to have a look at the propeller. The problem was easy to see. While we’d been away, an entire coral reef seemed to have grown on the hull, complete with large fish peering disdainfully at me through the fronds. In fact, there was so much growth over the sail drive unit that I couldn’t see the propeller at all.

It was, quite clearly, time for our first antifouling treatment.

Crocodiles at Yellow Water

We awoke in our comfortable glamping tent in Kakadu National Park, and headed off to a temporary dock on Yellow Water Billabong to board a small tourist boat.

We had (inadvertently, of course) timed our arrival to perfection. With the Wet just starting, the billabong was just starting to flood its banks, and where the water had swept over the surrounding floodplains, life was erupting with exuberance.

Spectacular white egrets, flashing azure kingfishers, red-winged parrots, and all manner of wildfowl filled the lush floodplains or hid in crevices amongst the mangroves.

In the topmost branches of the trees, sea-eagles and storks had already kicked their fledglings out of their nests. In only a very short time, not only the river banks and the undergrowth, but even the treetops themselves would be under water. Within days, the boat dock that we had used to embark would be completely inundated and the operator would have to move to another site.

The boat itself was basically a metal raft built on two flat pontoons, each with an enormous outboard engine hanging off the back. Our guide chugged us around into the reeds and under overhanging trees, pointing out different birds and plants, all the while exhorting us not to hang any limbs over the water, just in case.

She explained that in the Dry, which is the colder season, crocs tend to sun themselves on the banks, but here in the Wet they are happier to stay cool in the water, and are more than capable of jumping aboard if they think that they can get an arm.

While we all marvelled at the wonders of nature about us (and pondered the possible fate of two men out fishing in a little tin boat) we were of course hoping for our first glimpse of the real king of the waterways.

Then suddenly a small voice cried “Crocodile!” and everybody ran to what happened to be Bronwyns side of the boat, which tipped alarmingly and left her staring at close range at eight feet of heavily armoured reptile.

From then on, we saw crocodiles everywhere. Rooting around in the mangrove palms, rising mysteriously to the surface around us and then cruising effortlessly out of our way, only sinking out of sight when our wake got too annoying.

Eventually, even the youngest and most vociferous of us had seen enough, and we returned to the dock, to our bus, and finally to our shack in Darwin.

It was by now raining heavily, so we caught a taxi for the short ride into town. After a refreshing beer or two, there was only one public building left that we hadn’t visited, so we ducked into the air conditioned cinema to cool down.

Kakadu’s Wet begins

Although most of the Kakadu National Park is nominally floodplain, for eight months of the year it consists of dry mud and burning bush. The area has only two seasons, the Dry and the Wet. We had arrived just at the end of the Dry, when the rivers were beginning to fill and the plants were starting to appear lush and green, growing frantically prior to the complete inundation of the Wet.

Kakadu National Park

Our driver, Andy, had driven us in a bus from Darwin. He led us as we climbed to the top of a red mesa-like outcrop that gave stunning views of the flood-lands below.

Until relatively recently, these plains were home to herds of water buffalo descended from draught animals freed after Darwin was built. Extensive culling has now reduced them to somewhat less than their plague proportions, and now the environment has recovered, although the lush green grass is, inevitably, another introduced species planted by early cattle-ranchers.

Nevertheless, it is an extraordinarily impressive sight, the vivid green contrasting with the bright red rock, all under the merciless glare of the Northern Territories sun.

Aboriginal Rock Paintings

The Park is managed by a committee of ten aboriginal elders and four local rangers, and much of it is off-limits to tourists because it is used for traditional living. The information provided in various centres scattered around the Park give an interesting mix of aboriginal and European facts, stories, and artefacts, and in fact this rock on which we were climbing is one of the areas aboriginal rock painting sites.

I’d never understood rock painting before, but our driver, Andy, managed to bring the paintings and the culture to life for us. Aboriginal culture is multi-layered, such that as you get older you are taught deeper insights into the topics that you already know, until you are an elder and know all the layers; however, you will still only know the layers of the stories in your particular area or clan.

The information that you learn, handed down in stories about spirits, is all to do with survival in the bush and your behaviour in society. The volume of this information is staggering, but as Andy said, they have 50,000 years of culture to draw upon.

In Kakadu, each picture represents an event or happening, typically a particularly large prey animal. Stories are linked to the painting, which is often laid over older paintings. In this area, animals in particular are pictured transparent in order to display the best way to cut them, and to emphasise those parts which make good eating.

Deluge

As the day wore on, clouds began to gather on the horizon. Andy started to look worried, and began collecting us from the far corners of the mesa and shepherding us down to ground level.

What was wrong? It was only a rain cloud.

What we hadn’t taken into account was the sheer volume of precipitation that can fall in these parts. We had heard stories of people being cut off by the start of the Wet, but it didn’t seem real up here on this enormous rock in the sunshine.

Andy had told us about one particular guy who had been camping down in the woods one year, and when the rain started to fall he had been flooded out of his tent so he carried his stuff up to the nearby toilet block. After a while, the building flooded, so he climbed onto the roof. The water continued to rise until it reached him there, too, so he started to climb up the corrugated iron water tower on the roof. When the rescue helicopter finally winched him off, he had cut a hole in the water tank and was sitting inside, watching the level come still higher.

Andy wasn’t kidding us around; he was seriously worried that one or more of the rivers that we had forded on the way in might now be too deep for the bus to get out, and he practically force-marched us back to the vehicle and set off at full speed.

The rivers that we had crossed on the way there had just been trickles across the road, but now after just a few hours, and before the rain had really started, we had over a foot of water across the road.

“Are there crocodiles?” asked the little boy who was obsessed with them, as the bus eased slowly across.
“I’m not wading,” said Andy.

Camping Deluxe

We were going to stay overnight at a camp site inside Kakadu National Park. This is a permanent fixture, an attempt to keep everybody in one place and prevent the sort of problems that had befallen the chap in the water tank.

Our large, permanently-pitched tent was certainly a lot more comfortable than our shack in Darwin. It came equipped with camp beds, mosquito netting, a cooking tent, a swimming pool, and a bar, so we weren’t complaining.

We had a very comfortable stay, and the bird noises during the night were wondrous.

Darwin, and the road to Kakadu

The Green Gecko

One of our standard ploys when planning a trip to a new city, is to book accommodation that is outside of the central business district. The night life is likely to be more relaxed, the prices cheaper, and we are more likely to encounter real people in real situations than if we were to follow the standard tourist route.

For our trip to Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory of Australia, we followed our usual formula, and had booked a room in backpackers’ accommodation out in what seemed, from the map, to be the far suburbs.

The airport shuttle dropped us outside a rather ramshackle building populated entirely by dope heads. Struggling a little with the humid forty-degree heat, we managed to extract a key from somebody, and located our room, which was in a sort of shack out the back. Inside it was your standard Australian backpacker’s, with a simple bed and a sink, a broken air conditioner, and some six-inch cockroaches. No real surprises, apart from ducking to avoid the roaches as they flew around like pterodactyls, so we ditched our gear and tried to locate a bus or taxi into town.

We couldn’t find anybody at the hostel who could talk to us without drooling, so we set off on foot in what seemed to be the correct direction. Almost instantly, the heavens opened and we were caught in a stunning deluge. We couldn’t avoid getting wet, but a bus shelter prevented the enormous rain drops from bruising us too much.

Darwin

As quickly as it had started, it was over, and we continued our journey, drying almost instantly in the heat, and idly wondering how far we would have to travel before we found either a taxi or a bus to take us into the CBD. We passed a bar (I lie. We stopped in for a beer), then another bar, and then, mysteriously, our journey was interrupted by the sea. We had just walked clear across Darwin.

It really is a very small city indeed. After we’d had beers in the few bars, watched some locals fighting each other, ascertained that all the shopkeepers were quite excited because “a cruise ship is coming in tonight”, and checked out the seafront (Do Not Swim Here. Salty Crocs), we had pretty much exhausted the possibilities of the town, and all before four o’clock in the afternoon.

A brief perusal of the literature in the tourist office revealed that most of the attractions on offer were not in Darwin at all, but several hours plane-ride away in Cairns, a completely different city in a completely different state.

Next morning, then, having unapologetically “done Darwin”, we boarded a small bus and headed out toward the wilderness of Kakadu National Park.

Termites on the road to Kakadu

The bus seated 22, but thankfully there were only seven of us aboard to share the welcome air-conditioning. One was a kid who was desperately keen to see crocodiles. Whenever we passed a body of water of any size, he would hop up and down and ask, “Are there crocodiles?”

Andy, our Swiss driver, would inevitably reply, “There are crocodiles everywhere”, but although we stopped a few times to check, they were being quite elusive.

Andy took us to a few pit-stops along the way, including a country pub with two penned crocodiles in the car park, a fresh and a salty, but the boy wasn’t impressed with tame ones.

Along the road, we started to see enormous termite cathedrals. Stopping to examine them, we could be forgiven for thinking that they were completely lifeless under the baking sun, but Andy showed us how to tell the old, uninhabited mounds from the live ones. The signs are small, but here and there you can find small rough patches where a dead mound has been damaged. Poking a small hole in the smooth integument of a living mound, however, and within seconds the insects within are rushing around repairing it. The speed of the response, and the speed of the repair, was fascinating.

Margaret River

A pleasant night at a vineyard B&B, and an equally pleasant morning chatting with the owner, a retired butcher, who cooked us some excellent sausages and answered all my presumably dumb questions about the rammed earth from which buildings hereabouts are constructed.

Heartbreak Trail

Looking around for another challenge after descending the Bicentennial Tree, I saw a roadsign that said something like “Heartbreak Trail blah blah prohibited blah blah dangerous”. This was obviously the direction that we needed to go.

Much of the soil in this area consists of marble-sized clay balls. The local construction method of ‘rammed earth’ involves mixing these balls with a little cement and pouring it into a form to build, well, just about anything. The thickness and air-gaps make for a good insulating layer, and the striking red colour blends into the equally ruddy landscape.

I was interested to know how these little red marbles felt under the wheels, so off we rode into the bush.

The GS performed admirably, and the riding position, which had been pretty uncomfortable on the road, started to make sense on the dirt. The marbles weren’t anywhere near as awkward as, say, dry sand, and we had a very pretty tour of some deep forest with pristine waterfalls. It was here that we discovered that the wind that blows off the Southern Ocean is so laden with salt that the rivers in this region are slightly saline. Possibly this is the reason that this is the area for catching marrons, billed as the third largest crayfish in the world.

Eventually the dirt petered out into tarmac, and we trundled along at a steady 140 through endless forests until, with some shock, we came out amongst crowds of tourists in the town of Margaret River.

Margaret River

There seemed to be more people in this tiny little one-horse town than we had seen in our entire time in Western Australia. Margaret River is not unlike many such attractions, in that there is no real reason to go there apart from the fact that everybody does. Most such towns have had to build something as an excuse, such as the Worlds Largest Prawn / Trout / Merino Sheep / Playable Guitar, but we looked in vain for anything resembling a Worlds Largest Drinkable Bottle of Wine. Instead, we picked up a few supplies, and headed to the Island Brook Estate Vineyard, where we had booked accommodation for the night.

The chalets at the vineyard were superb, set in complete privacy deep in old-growth forest, and surrounded by mature black boys* (*for non-Australians, a black boy is a kind of grassy palm (Xanthorrhoea) that is designed to be burned by bush fires at regular intervals)

After a very pleasant wine-tasting, we enjoyed drinking our purchases with barbecued steaks, on the deck under the stars.

A beautiful blue morning was heralded by the fluting of bush birds. The calls of these western lorikeets and cockatoos seemed much less raucous and more pleasant than those of their eastern counterparts (or maybe it was the wine). Under foot, the bush was alive with tiny flitting insectivores. It was perfect for a long walk before breakfast.

Mammoth Cave

Cave Road runs the entire length of the Margaret River peninsula, just a few vineyards away from the sea. It is named for the enormous caves at the southern end; Jewel Cave, Lake Cave, and Mammoth Cave. It can be hard to get a ticket to get in, but we managed a tour of Mammoth, so called because of its awesome size. Its a heavy tourist site, along prepared walkways with recorded guides on headphones, but well worth the visit.

These caves were not formed by the usual erosion of limestone, but instead by water trickling through sand dunes, forming a crusty cap over the underlying water table. The ceiling regularly collapses, which means that the floor is liberally scattered with the remains of overhead stalactites. All very impressive.

Canal Rocks

Further up Cave Road, a promontory of colourful gneiss has been eroded into a series of channels by the sea. These channels form a maze of rock walls, resulting in an impressive swirl of water as every incoming wave tries to force its way along the narrow canals. It is very unusual and quite beautiful.

Busselton Pier

After a hot but very interesting walk around Naturaliste Point, our tour of the peninsula ended at Busselton, which boasts The Longest Pier in The Southern Hemisphere. At almost 2km, the pier is the result of an arms-race between the need to service ore carriers, and the silting caused by the pier itself. The longer the pier got, the more it trapped sand and silted up, until finally the whole thing was destroyed by a cyclone.

Most of it has since been rebuilt, but parts of the old pier are still visible, particularly at the far end, where they have built a sort of reverse aquarium where you can climb down into a large tank and watch the fish go by. We gave that a miss, as we have scuba dived under many piers and the aquarium was pretty crowded, but the pier itself made a very pleasant walk.

For much of its length, the pier was lined with fishermen, some of whom were bringing up large cuttlefish which made an incredible inky mess. One nice touch was a line of memorial plaques to past residents who had, apparently, spent their lives fishing here.

We spent some time watching a large Chinese family who were reeling in lines and crab pots with such dedication that it looked as if they were provisioning their restaurant for the evening; perhaps they were, because there certainly seemed to be no shortage of fish.

The pier had a very pleasant feel to it. Apparently there used to be a train that ran for much of its length, but it seemed that it had broken down one time too many, and the warped and twisted tracks now just gave one more reason to keep careful watch of your step when the pier narrowed, as it occasionally did, to just a couple of metres wide.

Journey’s End

It was time to return our rented GS to Bike Round Oz, so we rode back to the Darling Range, thanked Mark effusively, and boarded a commuter train into Perth.

We’d thoroughly enjoyed all the wines that Margaret River had had to offer, but it was time for a change of beverage, so after dumping our gear into a convenient backpacker’s, we repaired to the Brass Monkey, where we addressed ourselves to the Matilda Bay ales from the comfort of deep leather armchairs. Tomorrow we would explore Perth, but tomorrow was another day.

Climbing the Karri Trees of WA

We flew into Perth airport, intending to spend some time touring around the south-western corner of Western Australia. We had arranged to hire a motorcyce from Bike Round Oz, whose owner, Mark, picked us up and took us to his house in the Darling Range, where he installed us in a beautiful little converted railway carriage.

Fitted out in dark wood, with a plush red bed at one end, views across the range and a serene farm dam, it was a great place to relax after our flight. Add into the equation a friendly bunch of alpacas, black cockatoos wheeling overhead, and a bottle of gratis champagne, and we felt right at home.

The next morning, after a basket breakfast, we had a look at our ride, a yellow BMW GS1200, a little elderly but with impeccable credentials – it had already been around the world once. “She lost those cooling fins in Argentina…”

After packing a handful of stuff into the very small panniers, we set off southward down the Darling Range. The GS felt like a bit of a pig at first, but was very stable at speed, apart from an inclination to pull hard to the right, and fierce wind noise from the windshield.

The Gloucester Karri

Mining equipment dominated the scenery. Coming into Waroona, a parking lot for mining machinery was quite a shock; absolutely immense vehicles standing shoulder to shoulder in the red dirt, surrounded by cast-off caterpillar tracks. Lining the road near Capel were scrapyards containing enormous pieces of old machinery.

Every signpost along the way indicated a mine or a quarry, and the road was chock full of ore trucks which politely shuffled over to let us past. OK, we got the picture, this was mining country.

As we headed south, the machinery gave way to dairies, and then the cows gave way to trees. Regular trees gave way to big trees, and finally to the enormous timber that characterises the logging town of Pemberton.

Back in the early days of Pemberton’s history, the timber of choice was the Karri tree, a truly enormous species scattered around the local forests. Some of the tallest were spared to serve as lookouts for the ever-present danger of fire, and only these now remain.

The famous Gloucester Karri is sixty-one metres high. Embedded in the trunk are hundreds of steel spikes, and if you are particularly keen, you can use them to climb to the top.

Theres nothing to stop you slipping between the spikes if they are wet or you are careless, so the climb is quite exciting, but the views from the watch platform at the top are worth it, and it was easy to see how useful these trees were in spotting incoming bush fires.

We spent a pleasant night at a vineyard B&B, and an equally pleasant morning chatting with the owner, a retired butcher, who cooked us some excellent sausages and answered all my presumably dumb questions about the rammed earth from which buildings hereabouts are constructed.

Much of the soil consists of marble-sized clay balls, and these are mixed with a little cement and poured into a form to build just about anything. The thickness and air-gaps make for a good insulating layer as well as a striking red colour that blends into the equally ruddy landscape.

The Bicentennial Tree

On the road again, it was time to check out another one of those Karri trees, this one even taller and much, much scarier to climb. The spikes were farther apart, and the trunk was devoid of branches to give even the illusion of safety.

There was a midway-platform with a sign that pointed out “That was the easy bit. Reassess your situation now.” Luckily we had the place to ourselves; I wouldn’t have liked to meet anybody halfway up.

Going for Survey

When you buy a yacht, you need to get a survey, for all the same reasons that you need one when you buy a house (after all, you’re spending similar sums of money). In order for this to happen, the vessel has to come out of the water. This is not a cheap process, and the vendor pays. You can then choose to have a poke around yourself, or pay someone to have a look for you. We asked a few people for recommendations, and in the end settled on Alan, a local diesel engineer who also happened to have experience putting new Bavarias together for the Australian importer. He had a reputation for being picky and pedantic, which sounded just what we needed.

I asked if I could tag along, hoping that I might learn something about the large and complex item that I was (probably) about to purchase. He was more than happy, and in fact it turned out to be the most valuable day off work that I have ever had. Alan was a fount of knowledge on all things Bavaria, particularly which bits to look out for and which bits would need taking care of in the future.

Inside, although we looked at every nut and bolt and panel, almost everything was perfect. The worst things that Alan could find were some rusty worm clips, and a misaligned drain vent to the gas storage locker. The engine looked fine, and the bilges were clean and dry. Towards the bow, there was some fresh water behind two of the bilge bulkheads; this seemed to have trickled down from above. In fact, this jogged Alan’s memory and he remembered having surveyed this boat before; apparently it had been involved in a low-speed collision in a marina and had had all the toe rails replaced on deck. He surmised that what we were looking at was seepage of rainwater through insufficiently sealed toe rail bolts. In fact, up on deck we could still see minor damage in the shape of a slightly crazed gel coat, an unsettled fairlead, and a slightly twisted pulpit; all, he said, nothing to worry about.

The base of the electric winch had been sitting in salt water (hardly surprising since it is mounted in a rubber tray in the bow anchor locker) and the alloy had rotted in an impressive blob of white deliquescence. This, said Alan, looked awful but was normal; in fact, some months later when I got around to scraping it off, I noticed that the task is specified in the annual maintenance procedure of the winch.

Below the waterline, the antifouling was thin but serviceable; it would need replacing in a few months. There was a snazzy folding prop which seemed to be in reasonable condition; we replaced the sail drive sacrificial anodes while we were there. There was one minor problem with the keel. In a few places, the epoxy had cracked, exposing the cast iron hull to the water, resulting in large rust patches. Alan explained that this is normal, but would have to be repaired during the next antifouling.

All in all, that was about it. A list to starboard (revealed by mismatched watermarks along either side of the hull) turned out to be caused by an empty water tank. There was a crack in the autopilot housing which would need to be replaced, and a leak in the aft cabin which seemed to come from rain dripping down the autopilot unit itself. Keeping the pedestal cover on when moored in wet weather would see to that. In fact, there did not seem to be any reason why we shouldn’t buy her, so we did.

Hunting for a Yacht

Interlude

Could we actually live with each other in close quarters for an extended period? We thought that we probably could, but it would be nice to know before we splashed out all that cash on a shiny yacht. Thus, to New Zealand: not to circumnavigate in one of the cruising yachts for which that country is justifiably famous, but instead to trundle around the roads in a tiny camper van. The theory went that if we could cope with that, then we could cope with living aboard a yacht.

It was a tiny cramped space and we did our best, catering for ourselves using the gas stove provided, dropping anchor in a different town each day, even going so far as breaking down deep in an uninhabited national park miles from any help.

We passed all our trials with flying colours, had a great holiday, and emerged with some very firm ideas about interior yacht design. The chief of these was that nothing aboard our boat was going to be dual purpose; we were heartily sick of turning beds into tables, tables into beds, and then finding that whatever it was we needed next was now inaccessible beneath a mattress.

Incidentally, while we were in Auckland, we took a turn at sailing the Americas Cup yacht NZ40, which went rather well.

Lists. Lots of lists.

One thing that we were agreed upon right at the start was that we weren’t going to skimp in the bed department. This may on the face of it seem like a strange first criterion, but we had both been on boats where the quarters were cramped and uncomfortable and it really puts a damper on your day. In addition, we spend a fortune on orthopaedic beds and mattresses at home, and the logic that engendered those choices is just as compelling at sea. David thought that we were nuts, but suggested that we look into centre-cockpit designs, because these tend to have a decent-sized aft or masters cabin.

Given that I was likely to be responsible for running repairs, I wanted a hull material that I understood. Wood and I do not get along, and fibreglass struck me as too flimsy for the open sea. I wanted to come off at least afloat if we hit a sunfish or a shipping container, and so steel was the way to go. Since we were looking at sailing shorthanded, ease of sail handling would be a bonus, so in order to get a smaller sail area it made sense to have two masts with small sails rather than one mast with a big one; hence, we arrived at the concept of a steel centre-cockpit cutter ketch.

We started to make some lists.

Things that we need

  • Large bed (aft?)
  • At least one good-sized locker
  • Ventilation in the main cabin
  • Access to water from the stern
  • Sleep four comfortably
  • Two-burner gimballed stove
  • Ice box / fridge
  • Full-size nav station
  • Shower in head
  • Hot and cold water
  • Traveller not in cockpit
  • Production boat less than 12 years old
  • Depth sounder
  • Sails in good condition
  • Anchor

Things that we would like

  • Full-sized galley
  • Double sinks
  • Four-seater dining table
  • Sea berths
  • Single-handed sailing
  • Stern shower
  • Bimini/Dodger
  • Radar
  • Windvane

Looking at virtual boats

Looking around at the cruising boats available on the market, we found the world awash with proven circumnavigators that exactly fitted our criteria for the money that we had available. The internet is a fine resource, and we spent many a happy evening examining photos of the interiors of second-hand cruising boats from all over the world. Eventually, however, it started to dawn on us that many of these vessels had been on the market for years, and several became old friends as we followed their stories, eagerly logging on each evening to see if this owner or that had added any new gear or reduced the price again as they got more desperate.

We marvelled at all those unfortunate souls, usually Americans, who were apparently stranded in this or that tropical paradise and needed to sell their yacht in order to go home; usually, it seems, because their wives had refused to sail any further and had already flown back home to the US.

After a few months of following the fates of all these forty-foot Adams, Roberts and Van de Stadt ketches, we decided to change tack and look at newer, smaller boats, with a view to trading up later once wed got our sea legs. Not only would this make the learning experience easier, but if we chose carefully, we could hopefully get a more modern re-saleable model which would give us the option of ducking out if we decided that, for some reason, the cruising life was not for us.

Looking at real boats

Then came the Sydney Boat Show. We’d expected to be awed by the yachts, and even more awed by the prices, but in actual fact what we saw pretty much fitted our preconceptions, and the prices were not too shocking. Out of our range, but not shocking. We tried every berth in the sailing marina, and found that almost every designer apparently only catered for midgets. I’m just over six foot, and Bronwyn is a little under, so we’re not mutants, but we simply couldn’t fit into many of the berths provided.

The only design that really blew us away was the Hunter, an American company that was trying to break into the Australian market. Everything was beautifully made, well thought out, and best of all, made for full-size people. The icing on the cake was that, due to the collapse of the US economy, in Australian terms they were remarkably cheap.

We immediately vowed to buy one. The problem, of course, was that since Hunters were new to Australia, there weren’t any second-hand models available. We contacted a few dealers in the US, who pointed out that because of the weakness of the US dollar, they could crate one up, new or old, and freight it to us for less than the price of an Australian model. Although tempting, we couldn’t bring ourselves to buy a boat that we had never seen, and in any case, there seemed something bizarrely wrong about buying a yacht by mail order.

In time, a second-hand Hunter showed up in nearby Pittwater. We hopped in the car for the four-hour trek, but were sadly disappointed to discover that the actual vessel fell far short of the published specifications. It was old and tired, the berths were built for children, quite substantial parts just came away in my hand, and the bilges were full of dirty water.

A little disillusioned, and facing a four-hour drive back home, we got talking to the salesmen and explained what we were looking for. We produced our two lists of wants and nice to haves, and explained our interest in long beds and reasonable resale value.

What you need, they said, is a Bavaria. Now, we had dismissed both Bavarias and Beneteaus early in the game. All of our charter experience had been on these boats, and they were always uncomfortably cramped and badly thought out. In addition, the models that we had visited at the boat show had been shoddily constructed. However, it just so happened that the agent who we were talking to was the sole trade-in dealer for the Australian Bavaria importers, and they also just so happened to have an as-new five-year old two-cabin Bavaria 34 on their books.

OK, OK, we’ll go and see her.

She was gorgeous. She had everything on our wants list, and almost everything on our nice to have list (missing only radar and wind vane). The master’s cabin contained a six foot eight of queen-sized bed. The head was conveniently placed by the companionway. The galley was fully equipped and gimballed for cooking at sea. She had full navigation and autopilot, a furling headsail, single-handed reefing, a spotless teak interior, electric anchor winch… the list went on. She was also only five years old, with an almost guaranteed resale value in the two-to-three year bracket.

  Main saloon, looking aft

The price? A snip at exactly twice our available funds. This was not a problem for our enterprising agent (for the record, David Bray Yachts, we recommend him), who put us in touch with a loan company (DB Finance; we recommend them too) who were happy to arrange an almost profit-free thirteen-month loan for the remainder. We’d heard that finding a mooring was a problem in the Sydney area; David waved that away, he could get us a mooring nearby. There was nothing for it but to go for survey.

Princely Problems in Tonga

After a week of relaxing on Mala Island, we eventually had to rejoin the real world. Early one morning we boarded the little boat and chugged across to meet Dave the driver in his taxi, who took us back through the dawn light to the airport on Niufea.

We presented our pre-booked, pre-confirmed tickets to check-in, where they told us that we could not fly because we were not on the manifest. This was our first introduction to Tongan politics. The King, a generally benevolent and much-loved character, actually spends a lot of his time in hospital in the US, leaving the control of his realm to the Crown Prince, who we heard was a bit of a playboy.

The story goes that whenever a Tongan business is successful, the Crown Prince appropriates it, and it seemed that this is what had happened to our airline. Apparently he needed our seats for some friends of his, and that was just the way it was. We weren’t flying anywhere.

Niufea

Niufea is hardly a metropolis, but we found a nice cafe, and while Bronwyn tried to get onto the internet (four PCs sharing a single dial-up modem), I went in search of the post office. The building, when I found it, was reminiscent of a prison in a spaghetti western. The public was separated from the staff by floor-to-ceiling iron bars, threaded amongst which were dozens of letters which had been addressed “post restante”.

Downtown Niufea

I bought some postcards and stamps to while away the time. Since the post office didn’t have any coins, they gave me my change in still more stamps, and I took the resultant pile of paperwork back to the cafe, where I managed to get hold of a bottle of the elusive Royal Tongan Ikale beer. It’s elusive because most quality establishments refuse to stock it, gleefully quoting stories of all sorts of foreign objects found in bottles since the takeover of the brewery by the Crown Prince. Certainly, I must have got an old, pre-Prince bottle, because it was tasty and refreshing.

Tongatapu

The next day we were first in line at the check-in, and actually got a seat on the plane for an uneventful ride to the capital, Tongatapu. On arrival, we stopped at a cafe for another (perfectly fine) bottle of Ikale, and then headed in the increasingly oppressive heat for the Dateline Hotel, supposedly the quality hotel of the islands, and advertising itself as “The First Bar That Opens in the World, Every Day”. We figured that they might have air conditioning, and since we’d only recently drunk in “The Last Bar to be Open in the World, Every Day” across the dateline in Samoa, it seemed like the reasonable thing to do.

We were greeted by a uniformed bellhop and escorted to a table, which was promising, but noticed that the place looked a little run down. It was with little surprise, then, that we discovered that this establishment, too, was now owned by the Crown Prince. We ordered Ikale, and it must have come straight from the new-style brewery, because it was completely undrinkable. I took a couple of sips, and then felt a compelling urge to go to the toilet. I scuttled in the indicated direction, and entered a marble-tiled, gold-tapped facility that hadn’t been cleaned for months. The first cubicle that I opened (and by this time I would have accepted pretty much anything) was… well… you’ve seen ‘Trainspotting’, right? But I used it anyway.

Back in the bar, Bronwyn had opted for the more sensible water option. Even then, the proffered glass bore enough grease to fry an English breakfast, so we gave up headed back out into the heat.

This was not the last surprise that the Crown Prince had in store for us. Bronwyn had used my mobile to leave a five-second message on her sister’s Canadian answering machine. A month later, when I received my mobile bill, I found that those few words had cost us just under sixty Australian dollars. The mind boggles at what the charge might have been if Michelle hadn’t been away from home that day.

Our final Tongan legacy cannot, however, be laid at the feet of the Royal Family. Somehow or other I had scratched my elbow, perhaps on coral while diving, and the resultant sore was very slow to heal. As we subsequently travelled from country to country it didn’t seem to be getting any better; in fact, if anything, the wound seemed to be getting deeper and wider. After a week or so of this, a doctor in Brussels had a poke around and pronounced that I had a staph infection. “Is that bad?” I asked. “Well,” she said, “if these antibiotics don’t work, then you will lose your arm…”

Mala Island, Tonga

It is relatively easy to fly into the International Airport at Nuku’alofa on the southern Tongan island of Tongatapu. However, since the country of Tonga comprises some 171 islands spread out over 700,000 square kilometres of the Pacific, the chances are that when you arrive, your onward journey will probably be a bit more than a short taxi ride. In our case, we wanted to get to one of the northern islands, Vava’u, and I had been delighted to discover that Royal Tongan Airlines flies an old DC3 Dakota on that route. For reasons that remain obscure, but which are possibly the result of too many childhood Biggles books, I have always wanted to fly in one of these, so we’d arranged tickets.

The DC3 was in fact standing at the airport, but we were led over to another bakelite-era twin-prop of uncertain vintage. The pilot told me that, of the three duplicate flight systems aboard the DC3, usually only the backup and emergency were working, and since the backup had now given up the ghost, he was refusing to fly her.

We were picked up by Dave the taxi driver, a smiling Tongan with interesting teeth, who decanted us into a small boat which putt-putted us across to Mala Island, our home for the next few days.

The boat was piloted by the smiling and eminently capable figure of Henry, who turned out to be General Manager, bartender extraordinaire, and Mr Fixit for the somewhat curious world that we were about to enter. The owner, also called Dave, a rather manic expat Californian, had recently refurbished the small island with the intention of making it a haven and recording studio for visiting rock stars. Be that as it may, he had an enormous stock of name-dropping stories and, apparently, a record label. He was also proud of the consternation that he had caused in the local area by employing a Tongan manager, and paying both him and the rest of the staff “a fair wage”.

Dave gave the impression of being something of a one-man tornado in local Vava’u politics, making himself popular by inviting Tongans to enjoy the facilities, but on the other hand, the Tongans he mentioned tended to be well placed in the royal family and in the police force.

As we were to discover, scratching backs is a way of life here. The deal on Mala Island is that you pay 45 Tongan dollars a day, and then eat whatever you want. On the one hand, this limits you to whatever happens to be in the kitchen; on the other, the food is prepared by Todd, an excellent chef who Dave apparently pinched from some US restaurant.

On arrival, though, we were too exhausted to think, let alone deal with crazy Americans, so we stumbled up the jungle path to our little cabin and into bed, scarcely even noticing then that it was beautifully decorated with traditional Tongan woven leaves and hand-painted papyrus.

When we awoke, we had coffee, we had lunch, and then dozed off again.

Eventually I got up and strolled around the perimeter of the island, an exercise that took less than an hour and involved stepping over a lot of coconuts.

That evening in the central bar area, the beers began to flow, poured by the incomparable Henry. He told us the story about how at age 12 he had left school because he wanted to be a taxi driver. He cleaned and washed and gardened at his uncle’s house until his uncle taught him to drive. That same uncle then spoke to the chief of police and got special permission for Henry to have a taxi licence, even though he was far too young. Many years later, having learnt English and how to deal with tourists, he picked up Dave from the airport, ran a few errands for him, and then got offered the job of General Manager. That, we gathered, was Tonga in a nutshell.

Island time began to kick in.

We dived on some wrecks.

We snorkelled on the reef, and in some underwater caves.

After a while we just had a load of spare scuba tanks delivered to the island, and went diving from our room. All around the island were coral-heads several metres across, each a blaze of colourful life, and each apparently the nursery for one or another species of coral fish.

Divers tend make a lot of fuss about the visibility, or “viz”, the distance that you can see underwater on a particular day or at a particular location. This has never made much sense to me, because you spend most of the time looking at things that are right in front of your nose, so I ignored it when they started to go on about sixty metres of vis. Who wants to see things that are sixty metres away?

I changed my mind on a Tongan night dive. Usually at night you only go down a few metres, and stay within hand contact with your buddy, because it is very, very easy to get disoriented and lost. Not so in Vava’u. The moon shone down to twenty metres almost like daylight, and Bronwyn and I could not only see each other five metres apart, but could even recognise one another amongst the other divers.

And, of course, we met lots of colourful characters while drinking cocktails in the bar.

Savai’i, Samoa

Although we were due to celebrate Bronwyn’s birthday at a restaurant in Apia, Samoa, I needed to pop out to the tourist office to collect our tickets for our flight to Savai’i the following day. The guy in the shop handed me our tickets, but kept a grasp on them while he leaned forward and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Can you take something to Savai’i for me?” I looked at him with what I hoped was a deadpan look, but which was likely horrified dismay, and said, “What is it?” He burst out into laughter. “Something very important!” and handed me the pay cheque for the bus operator.

Waking after a great night at Sails restaurant, we were up before dawn and into the waitress’ boyfriend’s taxi to the airport, where we were hoping to catch a flight to Samoa’s second island, Savai’i. Everybody said that we should allow an hour for the thirty-minute drive, but we didn’t run into any problems. Even before first light, though, the roads were lined with Samoans dozing in their little roadside fale, waiting for a bus to come along; this seemed to be a national pastime.

At the tiny airport, we watched as some international travellers checked in, each clambering solemnly onto the luggage conveyor so that their total weight – customer plus baggage – could be noted down. Going through our own check-in, we seemed to be the only domestic customers, but we weren’t too surprised as it is only a short hop between islands on a light plane. However, we still had to go through an X-ray, which revealed the penknife that lives permanently in my day-pack. The customs officers portentously decided that it was far too dangerous to allow it on the plane, so I excused myself for a moment and wandered back across the tin shed to the check-in, where I asked if they could hand my knife to the pilot. They looked a bit bewildered, but agreed to do it. I shrugged and headed back to the departure gate; either I’d see it again, or I wouldn’t.

Out on the tarmac stood a little eight-seater twin-prop. We squeezed in with a handful of missionaries, and then the Kiwi pilot clambered in alongside us. With a wide grin, he introduced himself and proclaimed, “Safety Announcement! The Emergency Exit is the same door that you came in. Please fasten your seatbelt. Thank you” and then we were rolling.

After landing a quarter of an hour later, the pilot handed me my penknife, securely wrapped in rolls of paper and tape. “I have no idea why they did that”, he said.

Our bus driver was waiting for us. I gave him his pay cheque, which he in turn gave to a lady in the petrol station, who would give him cash on the way back. There was nobody else on the bus, and Savai’i has only one road, so we had a rather exclusive guided tour around the lush, green, and noticeably cooler southern part of the country.

The island has suffered two major volcanic eruptions, one in 1796 and the next in 1905. This latter eruption lasted for six years, so it is not surprising that much of the geology consists of lava. The black stuff remains surprisingly wet even in direct tropical sunlight, so it is also not surprising that it is popular for crops, and is often seen stacked up in cones around the base of young trees.

The bus ambled around the island. We fed pieces of papaya (and some of my finger) to green turtles in a freshwater lagoon. We climbed down a lava tube, and up into a suspended treetop walk.

Each of these attractions is the collectively owned property of one village, and use of them attracts a very small fee per person, which is used for the upkeep of the schools and so on. This fee is not a tourist tax, it is a long tradition and payable by any outsider whether Samoan or not if they want to use that particular facility. The story of the treetop walk is particularly interesting. It was built by a Canadian who married a village girl, and wanted to find a way to make money for the village without cutting down the surrounding rainforest. The walk was a hugely successful venture, and the Canadian is now Matea (chief) of the village.

We had now almost circumnavigated the island; the last stop was the waterspout at Alofaaga. Another five tale to get in, then a further couple of tale to buy a bag of old coconut husks. A little puzzled, we followed our guide across a cracked and fissured lava flow, with waves hammering in from the sea and exploding high into the air. The ground felt hollow, and thrummed as we walked over it, wheezing and bubbling as each set of waves forced compressed air into the porous rock.

Over to one side, closer to the water, were a number of vertical sink-holes. Here we discovered the purpose of the old coconuts; they are tossed into the hole, and when the next big wave comes along, it blows them out from below at the top of a huge waterspout. Our coconuts were projected fifty metres or more, a stunningly impressive sight, although our guide told us that the waves weren’t especially powerful that day.

Our driver had tried to fit a lot into our day, and it was a bit of a desperate run for the ferry back to the north island. The flat roll-on roll-off barge was just about to depart when we arrived, so we quickly bought tickets and sidled aboard between rows of enormous 4×4 trucks carrying produce, to a seating area on the deck at the back. Here we found that the seats were all packed with locals indulging in their favourite pastime of sleeping.

We stood by the rail, and ate another of the rather bitter, nameless fruit that we had picked up at a market that morning, tossing the husks to the numerous zebra-striped fish in the sea below. It had been a long day, and soothed by the big smooth swells and the warmth of the funnel next to me, I too fell asleep.

Sea Kayaks to Nu’utele

We’d been waiting in Apia, Samoa, for a guy who we’d arranged to take us kayaking. After some considerable waiting (most of it our fault and anyway very enjoyable), he materialised in the form of a Swede, Matz, who loaded us into his elderly jeep and took us to a beach on the eastern end of the island.

Here, amongst hundreds of smiling holidaymakers, we launched the sea kayaks and paddled out into the lagoon.

We soon left the crowd behind. To our left, traditional fale appeared along the shore, against a backdrop of palm trees climbing the flanks of the mountain at the centre of the island. To our right, the sea smashed violently into the invisible reef, breaking into furious surf which petered out suddenly without disturbing the glassy smoothness of the lagoon.

One hour turned to two as we paddled into a mild headwind, and the small island that was our destination grew imperceptibly closer. We were beginning to feel tired when a green turtle popped its head out of the water. Suddenly we realised that they were everywhere, several feet across, heads nervously popping up, spotting us, and then diving quickly away.

We beached the kayaks on the small island of Nu’utele which boasted a handful of waterside fale, owned and maintained by a village on the mainland. Each fale was an open-sided wooden platform with woven palm-leaf blinds around the sides. The idea is that you roll the blinds up or down to create a through-draught depending on the prevailing winds. However, the villagers were expecting bad weather, so they had tied a tarpaulin to the windward side for additional protection. As it happened, this turned out to be a bad idea as the night was hot and still; in the early hours of the following morning I heard Matz untying his tarpaulin to get some air, but I couldn’t summon the energy to do ours.

The traditional Sunday meal is a roast made over a fire in a cooking hole, and dinner comprised the remnants of the villagers’ own repast along with servings of parrot fish. We’d never seen parrot fish on the menu before; they are skinny blue things only about ten inches long and don’t exactly have a lot of meat on them, so we were curious to see how they were going to be prepared. We were a little surprised to discover that each fish had been braised whole, and then simply chopped in half, giving you the choice of either head end or tail end.

Shortly before sunset, the quiet, self-effacing villagers climbed into their boat and putt-putted to the mainland. A few minutes later, we heard a long honking noise from the far shore, the way I would imagine a conch-trumpet to sound, and a little later the Sunday evening service started. The congregation must have been on the beach opposite us, because the amplified voice of the priest echoed across the water, interspersed with Hallelujah!s and applause and singing. We couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he was obviously a skilled orator, switching from what seemed to be fire and brimstone haranguing to poetry and song and back again with consummate ease.  Meanwhile, on Nu’utele, the bugs had started biting, so we retired with a paraffin lamp to our mosquito-netted fale, and listened to the wash of the waves on the beach only a few metres away, the thunderous boom of surf on the reef farther out, and the hypnotic sounds of the amplified priest across the water.

In the morning we were awoken by the sound of the returned villagers sweeping the beach of fallen banana leaves and accumulated debris. Their life is in no way primitive; it is simply traditional, an important distinction. For instance, although our fale was constructed mainly from coconut-trunk spars and woven palm leaves, the cross-spars in the roof were made from pieces of shipping pallet, and the banana leaves were sewn together with string and what appeared to be magnetic cassette tape. As well as the tarpaulin used in bad weather, each fale also boasted a small corrugated iron cap. This motif was repeated wherever we went; the traditional methods were preferred, but if some modern invention could do the traditional job better, then it was used instead.

We paddled out along the reef break to the next island, crossing a rather turbid channel with quite a noticeable rip, and ran the kayaks up onto a coral beach. Steps led up to an automatic lighthouse, from which we watched boobies and frigate birds gracefully riding the breeze. After a brisk swim in the surf, eerie with the never-ending pounding of the reef break just a few hundred metres away, we returned to the fale for lunch.

On the journey home, Matz and I decided to go out through the break into the open sea. This was an awesome experience, for the channel was only about ten metres wide, and on either side the rolling surf built up to an enormous height before crashing thunderously on the reef below. It was a strange feeling indeed to watch the tubes form and the waves rear high above on either side, while we bobbed reasonably placidly on a piece of lightly choppy ocean between them.

We were just about to turn around and go back in, when a large leathery green turtle surfaced right in front of me. Looking out to sea, it had no idea that I was right behind it, and I held my breath as it paddled slowly along with its enormously elongated front flippers. Unlike its smaller brethren, when it finally did see me, it didn’t swim like hell, it just floated gracefully down to a metre or so under my boat, a stunning view through the crystal clear water.

Back on shore, we had an interesting ride home in which we ran first out of diesel and then out of coolant, necessitating some roadside bartering to keep us on the road. Matz finally dropped us at the Millennium, where a porter whisked away our ragbag sacks and bundles and installed them in our room, where we leapt into the shower.

It was Bronwyn’s birthday, and a taxi was waiting to take us to Apia’s top restaurant, Sails, nestled amongst the churches on the waterfront. On the way out of the hotel, Bronwyn got waylaid by a receptionist who wanted copies of our passports or something, but I carried on outside to make sure that the taxi was still waiting. Sure enough, there he was, so I got into the back and explained that we needed to wait for my wife. He smiled and nodded his head vigorously; “Wife,” he said, and started the engine and drove off. Suddenly realising that he hadn’t understood a word that I’d said, I opened the door and bailed out.

The car stopped, and there was a pause. The driver slowly unfolded himself from the driver’s seat and stared across the car roof at me, until a delighted smile broke out across his face and he erupted into peals of laughter. “Your wife! Your wife!”

Once we were both safely installed, he drove us the kilometre or so back into town and decanted us outside the restaurant. Sails bills itself as The Last Restaurant in the World to Close, Every Night, a commentary on Samoa’s proximity to the dateline that had already caused us so much confusion (A couple of days later, we found ourselves in the bar of the International Dateline Hotel in Tonga, which bills itself as The First Bar that opens in the World).

Our table at Sails turned out to be the best in the house, out on the veranda overlooking the harbour sunset. The margaritas were excellent, and the food was astonishing; to taste their Commodore Sashimi alone, it is worth travelling halfway around the world.

Apia, Samoa

As we crowded up the air bridge into Apia airport terminal, Bronwyn ended up slightly ahead of me, side by side with a young local man. He was close to seven feet high, and easily twice as broad as Bronwyn; she looked like a child next to him. Out in the airport proper, we realised that this was standard physique for a Samoan. It appeared through our foreign eyes as if we had inadvertently stumbled on a rugby players convention, if you can imagine rugby players walking around wearing skirts stuffed with large bunches of grass to keep out the cool 30-degree Celsius evening breeze.

Friendly taxi-drivers directed us to their competitor, the airport shuttle. Although we were the only two paying tourists, the bus soon filled up and we found ourselves in the midst of a crowd of chattering locals who were taking advantage of the free lift. They were all happy to talk about themselves, and seemed to consider themselves less the citizens of a particular country and more inhabitants of the Pacific islands as a whole. For instance, one young guy, who described himself as Fijian Indian, had been raised in Tonga, and was now living in Samoa because his sister was at university here. We gathered that, if his sister got her degree, then both of them would be trying to move to New Zealand.

The bus detoured off the tarmac and up a muddy track. Apparently all the local guys were going to the same place, and suddenly there it was, a beautiful white mansion in the rain forest. We said our goodbyes, and the bus plunged back into the darkness. We’d been up since 5 am, and it was now 2 am the following morning. The bus rattled through the night, tooting merrily to every other vehicle, almost all of which were taxis, and occasionally at packs of wild dogs hanging around in the road. It was wet and hard to see outside; we had vague impressions of palm trees, but suddenly we came across three beautiful brightly lit churches, one after the other; then it was dark again. Eventually the trees parted, and we were decanted into downtown Apia. We had a vague impression of the sea, and of a small wood-framed building which was our hotel. A smiling woman, who had clearly been waiting up for us, assured us that she had not, and showed us to our sparsely appointed but pleasant room. The night was hot and humid, but bearable under the ceiling fan, and we clambered into the somewhat rickety bed and fell instantly into a deep and undisturbed sleep.

On the following morning we had arranged to be picked up to go on a kayaking trip. The guy was supposed to pick us up at 08:30, but he didn’t show and we dozed until breakfast, which turned out to consist of white sliced toast and a chunk of pleasant, almost savoury, mango. The coffee was thin and weak, but we had been forewarned and had come prepared with our own ground beans. As we finished our breakfast, an American at the next table begged us for the used coffee grounds from the bottom of our plunger. He said that he’d been in Apia for a while and was dying for a cup with some flavour in it.

Still frazzled from our long trip, we gave the kayak guy until 10:30 and then wandered out into town. Apia is, of course, the capital city of Samoa. On the ground, it is a large-ish village hugging a natural harbour, comprising a couple of shops, the Australian/Canadian combined High Commission, a bank, some insurance companies, and an inordinate number of churches.

A handful of visiting yachts swung serenely in the bay, along with two small container ships of the Samoa Shipping Company, and what was apparently a small tramp steamer. In the shallows close by, a fisherman was casting his net.

We dropped in to the Green Turtle, a backpackers tour operation, and found that the reason that the kayak guy hadn’t shown, was that we had crossed the International Date Line and it wasn’t even Sunday yet; we were reliving Saturday morning. This meant something of a rethink of our plans, which was quite hard as we were very tired and suffering from the heat, so instead we ambled up and down the only two streets in the city until 13:00 when the shops started closing, at which point we checked back in to this morning’s hotel.

After some discussion with the receptionist, we ordered a taxi to take us across the island to a famous freshwater swimming hole which, we were told, was situated at the Centre for Theological Studies. Samoa has a long history of missionaries from just about every Christian group imaginable, even some of the odder American sects, and many of them have stuck. Each church maintains a very strict hold over its congregation in terms of tithes, and enormous beautifully appointed churches tower everywhere over the often far less salubrious dwellings of the locals. Schooling is highly regarded on Samoa, and the Centre was typically well-kempt and spacious. The taxi driver was content to go to sleep until we’d finished, so we left him to it and went to see what we could find.

All the students were deeply involved in the national pastime of Krikiti. This seems to be played wherever a group of young men get together and is vaguely like cricket but played with a rubber ball, a huge three-cornered bat, and a lot of laughter.

One of the players spotted us and ambled over. We handed him a few dollars which entitled us to descend some steps by a derelict church to a stony beach, where a limpid freshwater stream emerged slowly from a rock cave before trickling between some rocks down into the sea. About half a dozen Samoans lounged about on the edge of the pool. We were extremely hot and sticky, and so quickly got changed and entered the beautiful cool crystal water. Small fish nibbled at our toenails as we swam into the cave, revelling in the unexpected cold, jet lag and apathy falling away in swathes.

After some splashing about, chasing after jewelled crabs, and diving for pieces of loose coral, we emerged once more into the sunshine, two very different and much happier people. As we clambered back up the steps, I noticed a rubber ball lying in the grass. Off to one side, Krikiti players were combing the bushes, so I picked it up and lobbed it back. Smiling their thanks, they restarted their game.

Suitably refreshed, cool, and with our jet lag at bay, we were able to pay attention for the first time to the countryside around us. On the taxi ride back to Apia, we passed through a number of villages, the houses ranging in style from simple fale (raised wooden platforms with a thatched roof and no walls) to fully-fledged stone houses. Dominant features were the open-plan meeting places, the ornately decorated family graves in each front garden, numerous wild dogs, and the roadside platforms designed to protect the garbage from them until the refuse truck came by. Any structure that boasted walls was lovingly decorated with paint and fabric in bold colours. The graves were painted brilliant white, and decorated with black volcanic stones.

For lunch we’d already had “Samoan Pizza”, which was topped with ham and egg and was evidently a local joke; now we could see the point, because everywhere were pigs and chickens.

In one village, hundreds of Samoans lounged in and around one of the large meeting fale; apparently, a conference was in progress. In another, what seemed to be the entire population was playing ping-pong. Whenever we saw anyone, their faces were uniformly serious until we smiled or waved, and then huge smiles would break out everywhere in rashes of grins and waves. Everybody seemed so happy and friendly, and indeed, they seemed to have bountiful land and food and everything that they could need. We understood that each village was autonomous, and controlled a particular crop or natural feature, for which a small charge was made to any visitors who wanted to use it. The richest villages tended to control things like water, and indeed we had already encountered a small inkling of this when we handed over our few dollars to swim in the cave.

Back in Apia, the middle of the harbour frontage is dominated by a large colonial-style hotel, the famous a Aggie Grays, relic of the colonial era and occasional home to rich and famous of that age. We had actually tried to book in, but it always seemed to be full, so we decided to go and see what all the fuss was about.

It is indeed a charming place, permanently stuck between the world wars, decorated with fading pictures of the natives taken by some long-ago German photographer. When we arrived, the bar was pretty much empty, so we tried the local Valima beer (a nice brew, clean and somehow Canadian) before embarking on a trawl through the cocktail menu. While I started on the Brandy Aggie, essentially a Brandy Alexander made with coconut milk, Bronwyn went straight for the Aggie Special, a mystery drink that came in an enormous glass the size of a goldfish bowl. This turned out to be a pleasant but potent fruit punch, and the white-gloved bar staff broke out into enormous smiles when Bronwyn polished it off and picked up the cocktail menu for another round.

Somewhat later, we lurched back to our hotel where we dined on marlin steaks and white wine, before brushing our teeth alongside the enormous spider under the sink, and falling into a welcome sleep.

Sitting on the patio next morning, a Sunday, drinking our own coffee and munching fresh mango, we watched as white-clad locals streamed toward the many churches that line the street. Samoan church music played on the hotel stereo. As we waited for the kayak guy to show (again), I nibbled at a beautifully crafted “Chinese biscuit” that I’d bought the day before, which looked temptingly like a light pastry flower, but turned out to taste largely of onions.

At ten o’clock, we gave up on the guy again, checked out, and wandered back to the Green Turtle, because we knew that they had his phone number. It turned out that he’d completely forgotten about us, and promised to come and meet us in a couple of hours. Meanwhile, a little strapped for cash after our night of colonial cocktails, we ambled the few hundred metres into town.

All the churches were packed. Not only were the large cathedrals full, but the little buildings between them, which I had vaguely supposed to be community centres or offices, were apparently all churches too. In addition, a huge beach fale on the seafront boomed a heavily amplified bass line, and as we got closer, we realised that this, too, was full of people singing. Almost the whole town population was in church. The only people to be seen, scattered lightly under trees and reading on park benches, were Apia’s presumably transient Caucasian population.

The heat beat down. I had chosen to wear a lavalava, the ubiquitous sarong, which proved to be very cool and practical, and a rasher shirt as a defence against sunburn. It was an odd look, but the weather was devilishly hot. Eventually we swallowed our pride and returned to the swishing fans of Aggie Grays, where we ate quiche, and sandwiches with the crusts cut off, with cups of coffee and tea, to the sound of gentle jazz music.

Island time was kicking in. The kayak guy arrived.

Pumpkin Festival

The town of Collector, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, is home to some 150 souls. The closest landmark of interest is Lake George. Although the lake covers some sixty square miles, and was once mistaken by an early explorer for the Pacific Ocean, it is more often than not completely devoid of water. Due to a little-understood geological process, it is in the habit of suddenly filling and draining without warning. For much of the time, then, the lake bottom is used as grazing land for cattle.

The towns only story of historical significance relates the tale of a long-running feud between two families of settlers, a litany of drunken brawls, stolen sheep, and overnight stays in jail. So when the good burghers of Collector decided to try to raise the profile of their town, they had precious little to go on. However, one resident, recently returned from a holiday in Europe, had attended a pumpkin festival there, and he had enjoyed himself so much that he suggested at a Collector council meeting that they should follow suit. Disregarding the inconvenient facts that not only had Collector never grown pumpkins before, but also that the area was in a permanent state of semi-drought, the council concurred, and the first Collector Pumpkin Festival was born. Through luck and hard work, and probably because all such efforts appeal to the Australian psyche (this is a country where boat races are held in dry gorges, and people will drive hundreds of kilometres to see a large concrete sheep, or a monument to a dog that crapped in its owners lunch box), it proved to be a great success, and has been held annually ever since.

At the festival, all the food is yellow. There is pumpkin soup, and hot dogs in pumpkin bread rolls, steak sandwiches ditto. Local restaurants set up tents and vie to sell the most exotic pumpkin recipe; I particularly remember being served a complete braised ox tail with a pumpkin and chilli sauce. Hundreds of people mill around the tents, sampling the foods and sipping beers, admiring the produce on display, and listening to the local band which is playing in the background, occasionally breaking off to heckle particular members of the audience, Alongside the stage, a man tends an enormous wooden still, from which he is dispensing, of all things, small bottles of lavender water. Nearby, Queensland pumpkin sellers, who must have travelled for days to get here, hawk the blue pumpkins for which they are famous.

On either side of the roadway, lines of pumpkins are mounted on crossed stakes; there is a prize for best-dressed pumpkin, and anybody can just pick a pumpkin and enter, using either the box of random fabric scraps or anything that they might have brought along.

Finally, a nearby barn is reserved for the serious business of judging. Clearly, villagers and nearby farmers been scrupulously tending to their pumpkins for quite some time, because there are all manner of squashes on display, ranging from the downright enormous to the very small, through a whole gamut of other categories such as best carved and strangest shaped. While some judge, others admire or (if they happen to be children), climb all over the exhibits.

Kosciuzco Dawn

At just after two in the morning, the hotel lobby started to fill with bleary-eyed people. A dozen or so wanderers had signed up with a guide who was to take us to the top of Mt Kosciuzco (or Kosciusco, both spellings are historically valid), Australia’s highest mountain, in time to watch the dawn.

The continent of Australia is geologically old, and thus its tallest mountain is correspondingly weathered and not particularly high; only 2200 metres above sea level, and since it rises from an already elevated plateau, and since the hotel is itself high enough to service the ski fields in the winter, you can see that this impressive-sounding feat in reality only comprises a few hours of upward clamber. Nevertheless, climbing a continent’s highest mountain looks good on any traveller’s CV, so we were keen to add it to ours.

There was a little initial confusion as the guide loaded us all down with enough gear to equip a small army, and then we all packed into an elderly land cruiser bus which made its bumpy way up to the level of the snow fields via a mud track underneath the main chairlift. We were wedged like sardines and the windows instantly fogged with perspiration, so we couldn’t really see anything apart from the swaying bob of headlights in the tree tops until we came to a halt on relatively level ground, and the driver flung open the doors. The temperature instantly dropped as a biting knife-edge wind howled into the bus, and we scuttled into the shelter of a nearby wooden barn. There was no actual snow on the ground, but it felt like there should have been.

Wrapped now in scarves, and suited against the persistent wind, we emerged onto the path to the summit, headlamps pointing the way along the suspended steel pathway which protects the fragile soil and its botanically interesting ecology from the tramping feet of tourists.

The path has been in existence for many years, and has been religiously repaired when necessary, but although it is a tremendous boon for the plant life in the area, it does pose something of a problem for trekkers. It is cunningly designed from rectangular grids, welded together on steel supports, so that at any time you are walking somewhere between a few centimetres and as much as a metre above the ground. Plants grow freely beneath it, and water falls through it. You are close enough to examine the plant life, but not close enough to damage it, and even though steel is pretty slippery in the wet, the designers added a small serrated edge to each cross piece for traction; all in all it was a tremendous idea.

Sadly, however, the people who installed it managed to weld every grid sideways to its intended orientation. This means that the path is viciously slippery in the direction of travel, and when you inevitably fall, the serrated edges (which now run parallel to your course) neatly dice your hands and knees. On a cold winters night before dawn, the grid is a little slippery. Suitably forewarned by our guide, we walked carefully.

The guide himself was a chatty soul, but he had this obsession with rest stops. Frankly the icy wind was cutting through our clothing, and all we really wanted to do was keep moving, but we kept finding ourselves sitting off to one side of the path on a patch of boulders, nibbling chocolate bars and watching the clouds scudding in front of the moon. Would the sky clear for the sunrise?

About an hour and a half later, we were setting a good pace along the slippery path, and the guide made us all slow down. There was plenty of time, he said, and at the moment we were somewhat protected by the sides of the valley. We wouldn’t want to wait too long on the cold summit.

Half an hour later we got to the end of the valley and indeed of the metal path, emerging into the open. The final peak of Mt Kosciuzco rose to our left, a bare rock path spiralling up around it. The guide called another break. Two of the party ignored him and continued up the hill. I wondered vaguely where they were off to. A bit sick of snack bars by now, the rest of us milled around and waited for the guide under the lightening sky… lightening sky! Dawn had come already, and we hadn’t got to the top yet.

Cursing the incessant snack breaks, a few of us started running. The spiral path took us around the western side of the mountain, occluding the eastern sky, so for half of the circuit we had no idea whether we would get to the top in time. Then suddenly we emerged on the summit; we’d missed the first few lights of dawn, but thankfully the clouds were still changing second by second, and we huddled under a rock to watch; in that respect the guide had been spot on, the freezing wind was howling over the exposed mountain top.

The display was well worth it. We huddled together for warmth and sipped Baileys-enlivened hot drinks while admiring the constantly changing cloud colours.

Gradually the sun hauled itself up over the horizon, the sky turned from black to blue, the mist boiling off the plains far below. Behind us, over the back of the mountain, another beautiful vista unfolded. Not to be outdone, the moon shone over the blue-shaded mountains of the Kosciuzco range.

Climbing the Franz Josef Glacier

Blackwater Rafting

We just happened to be on New Zealand North Island, where we had been Blackwater Rafting. This is a variation on Whitewater Rafting, and entails poking your bottom through an inflatable rubber ring, chucking yourself into a nearby river, and allowing it to swirl you underground down a dark hole.

Apart from being entertaining in itself, the main point is to see the glow-worms which make their home in the cavern roofs. The worms, encased in silken cocoons, emit a ghostly green light as they try to attract food in the form of newly hatched insects flying up from the water below. As you drift along in complete darkness, rubber ring bouncing harmlessly off the occasional rock, a stunningly beautiful constellation of green stars passes by overhead. It is weird, it is wonderful, and it is thoroughly to be recommended.

North Island to South Island by train

Once back out into the outside world, we towelled off and decided to climb the Franz Josef glacier. Not only was this on the other side of the country, it was on the other island and several days travel away. Nevertheless, from Auckland at the northern end of North Island it is possible to catch a train to Wellington on the southern tip.

From Wellington you can catch a ferry to Picton at the northern tip of South Island.

From Picton you can take another train to Christchurch on the east coast, followed by yet another train (the Tranzalpine) clear across the country to Greymouth in the west, and finally a bus to Franz Josef. Since these trains between them comprise some of the most beautiful scenic railways in the southern hemisphere, we weren’t too upset about it.

Franz Josef

At lunch time, we stopped at a roadside cafe that sold Possum Pie (In Australia, possums are cute furry animals; in NZ, they are introduced vermin and have a nice rich flavour), we arrived in the little backpacker town of Franz Josef. With something of the air of a cheap ski town, it is a place to party, but not a place to dwell on the millions of tonnes of ice set to roll over the town if the climate changes.

After a celebratory beer or two, we dropped off to sleep in our slightly dodgy hotel, unsure of what the morrow might bring. In fact, the dawn light saw us trudging through light drizzle up the terminal moraine of the eponymous glacier. As we walked, our guides split the group of fifty into more manageable segments of ten; our own guide was a chatty little Kiwi called Imogen.

We crunched up the classic U-shaped valley, the footing strewn with the ground-up pebbles of millennia of ice erosion. Slowly we approached the enormous tongue of glacier towered above us, filling the valley from side to side, and high above we could see tiny ant figures perched on the face, chopping away with large axes.

These people, we were told, had already been chipping for hours in the steady rain, making our path up to the surface. Every morning they make a stairway, and every night the glacier fills it in again. If you look very carefully at the picture of the face of the glacier (say about an inch from the bottom and an inch from the right), you can just about see one of these workers wearing a red jacket. Our group paused to put on our Ice Talonz, a kind of tourist crampon with a hinged centre that allows the leather boot of the wearer to flex more comfortably than with the professional climbing kind. Unfortunately, not just any leather boot will do; we had each been provided with a somewhat derelict pair of paratrooper boots, with gaping holes and ungainly repairs sewn up with string.

As somebody who had previous ice experience, I volunteered to be tail-end-Charlie for our group, and we set off up the icy stairway. We soon realised that the state of the boots was irrelevent; the Talonz were great. Halfway up, we were introduced to our ice axes, and then, as the rain stopped and the sun came out, we set off to explore our ice wonderland.

The going wasn’t especially hard for us, but the guides were certainly working up a sweat.They carried large double-ended picks with which they were continually swinging and chipping, grooming each ice-cut step to a standard that would – just – allow ten sets of Talonz to pass before it was completely destroyed. Behind me, bringing up the rear, the leader of the next group began the same laborious process for the ten people behind him. In this manner, all the groups slowly worked their way up the face of the glacier.

Once at the top of the initial ice cliff, the groups split up, each guide picking (and chipping) a different path onto the glacier proper. There certainly were a lot of routes to choose from. The surface of the glacier was crisscrossed with crevasses, sculpted ice peaks, ice walls, and ice caverns, with here and there a plank bridge to provide access to the next segment.

It would have been very, very easy to get lost, because at eye level you could only see a few metres before the next turn or junction; certainly the other groups quickly disappeared from view as we set off down our chosen cleft. The only sign of them was the distant chip-chip-chip of the ice axes, and the occasional flurry of static from the guides hand-held radios, as they checked in with each other and tried to ensure that groups did not meet in any narrow gully or halfway along some steep ice shelf.

At around lunchtime, we finished climbing to what seemed to be the summit, only to find ourselves on a pile of median moraine with views of the next few miles of glacier, an even more complex and tumbled labyrinth, dotted here and there with the occasional glimpse of one of the other parties as they wound their way in and out of the sculpted tunnels.

After lunch there was time for a quick foray into the tumbled masses above us, then we got stuck in to the long trek back down. And a long trek it was! As the five day groups and the several half-day groups converged on the only ice stair at the tongue, the narrow crevasses got very congested. The guides continually radioed back and forth, and even though most of the time we couldn’t see further than a few metres, it was clear that all the other groups were very close by. Occasionally two groups would meet, and would have to work out some kind of precedence.

Even though the stair-dressers had clearly been chipping all day, once we got there the ice was melting with a vengeance under the combined onslaught of a day’s sunshine and a glacier-full of tourists. The stairway was a cascading waterfall. Standing in running ice-water and waiting for Imogen to chop away yet another piece of rotten ice, cold seeping through our soaking woollen socks, we began to wish that the guides weren’t taking quite such good care of us and would let us take our chances; anything to take a few warming steps.

Of course, they were doing the right thing, especially once we started to see some of the frail and unfit people who had just come up for an evening stroll; some couldn’t manage to step from one rock to another (we wondered how they would ever cope over the snow bridges), and one guy was clumping across the fractured ice in Talonz with a video camera glued to his eye; absolutely crazy, as we were all clinging with both hands and full concentration to any available handhold.

Safe and sound at the bottom, we removed our Talonz and headed for warmth and beer. Of all the adventure trips that we have done in New Zealand, this is the one that really deserves the name. We were climbing in quite dangerous terrain, and the guides had to be – and were – very, very professional; no larking about here. Imogen told us that to have Franz Josef on her adventure-guiding CV was the most respected experience that she could have. We were not at all surprised.

Rotorua

The town of Rotorua straddles the geologically active fault-line that runs down through North Island New Zealand. Driving in, the first thing that we noticed was the heavy pall of steam that hung over it. The next thing that we noticed was the pungent sulphurous smell.

Our first stop was the Buried Village, inundated by mud in 1886 when the local volcano blew its top in a spectacular display of fire and storm. Up until then, the town had been a fashionable Victorian tourist spot because of the nearby pink and white terraces, now destroyed, and so the event was well recorded both by the local press and by the diaries of visiting Englishmen. Certainly there was enough fascinating detail to make an interesting museum, culminating in a walk among the now excavated buildings.

Possibly the highlight of the sunken village was its 40 metre hot waterfall, probably more spectacular than usual on our visit due to the continuous heavy rain.

The path to the fall was curious in that it was guarded by fierce signs warning of heart attacks and falling children, when in fact even with water cascading down the steps, it was just a gentle stroll which Bronwyn negotiated in flip-flops.

By the time we got back to the start, we were soaked through and quite cold, so it was just as well that we had booked ourselves into a hot mud bath and spa.

Hell’s Gate Thermal Valley

Hell’s Gate, in another part of Rotorua, is an area of volcanic mud pools. After a slightly dubious lunch in the tourist cafeteria, we ventured out into the continuing rain to explore the sights.

The different pools and features are packed side-by-side in a large field of mud and rock, with footpaths winding between them. Each has its own temperature, colour, and character, and many have stories associated with them. For instance, Hurutini was named after a Maori princess, victim of an abusive husband, who killed herself by jumping into it. Hell’s Gate itself is the largest boiling whirlpool in the country, of unknown depth and a constant 98C. The Inferno owes both its gunmetal colour and its superheated temperature to a suspension of graphite particles, and the Cooking Pool was once used by the local Maori as a kind of bain-marie.

We had already got used to the sulphurous smell that had assaulted us the day before, and as the wind and the rain picked up, we welcomed the occasional hot breeze that blew off one bubbling pool or the other.

The Mud Volcano had built a man-high cone around a fizzing crater.

The Steam Cliff boiled and, it is said, occasionally spits gouts of water several metres into the air (although it wasn’t doing that while we passed by). The twin pools Sodom and Gomorrah grumbled ominously to each other as we struggled past, cheap umbrella bending and blowing in the wind, often becoming more of a liability than an asset.

Hell’s Gate Spa and Mud Bath

We packed all our clothes into plastic boxes, and were shown by the cheery Maori attendant to our personal mud bath, screened off by rush matting walls. A rectangular hole in the ground contained hot water piped from the mud fields, and a thin layer of the mud itself. The attendant hosed in a bit of cold to bring the temperature down to a bearable level, and then we lazed around in the water and smothered each other in the silky mud.

It was very relaxing but also quite hot, so when our allotted twenty minutes was up, we willingly sluiced down with ice cold water from the hose.

From the bath, we went straight into the warm spa, which featured an almost scalding hot waterfall that was wonderful to lie under as we straightened the travel kinks out of our bodies.

This was a more public pool, and other people came and went until finally, reluctantly, we climbed out for a final shower, feeling all floppy and relaxed.

Before going into the spa, we had been warned to remove all silver jewellery, in case it got tarnished by the sulphur. That night, safely showered (and after removing an amazing amount of crystallised mineral from our hair), we put our rings back on. In the morning, we woke to the vivid stench of old pond water, and noticed that all the silver had gone completely black from the remaining residues in our skin.

Lady Knox Geyser

By means of some manipulation with old rags and soap, the Lady Knox Geyser is persuaded to erupt each morning at 10:15am. We actually got there at 10:45, in time to encounter streams of buses, cars and camper-vans coming in the opposite direction. However, when we got to the site itself, the geyser was still quite impressively erupting, with the added bonus that the surrounding wooden amphitheatre, built to hold hundreds of spectators, was almost empty.

Waimangu Volcanic Valley

In the spring of 1886, the area around Mount Tarawera was a popular tourist destination, due in the main to two spectacular geological features known respectively as the White and Yellow Terraces, a set of brightly coloured cliffs with steaming hot water pools and falls. There are many pictures of parasol-bearing ladies in crinoline dresses perambulating around on the rocks.
Then in June of that year, the mountain blew its top and ripped a fault line 16 kilometres long that destroyed the existing lake system, along with seven small villages and both terraces. When the magma hit the hydrothermal springs, the resultant explosion hurled rock, dust and and sand some 11 kilometres into the air, raining down in a boiling flood on the surrounding countryside. All life, both animal and vegetable, was destroyed in the cataclysm, so the riot of greenery seen today is all new growth.

Close to Frying Pan Lake, so called because of the crackling and bubbling sounds that it makes, the cataclysm briefly created the worlds biggest geyser, which played from 1900 to 1904, although nothing remains of it today.

Inferno Crater Lake is the largest geyser-like feature in the world, although the geyser itself cannot be seen because it plays at the bottom of the lake. However, its results are seen in the curious cyclical water level which follows a regular pattern over a period of about six weeks. The water is highly acidic, sometimes around pH 2.1, and at up to 30 metres deep and 80 centigrade, at which temperature it overflows to feed the hot water features further downstream.

One of these features is Warbrick Terrace. The colourful shallows are caused not only by crystallising minerals, but also by various red and green algae that colonise the pools.

At the far end of the walk, a boat was waiting to take us out onto Lake Rotomohana. After the 1886 eruption, the resultant crater slowly filled with rainwater until it covered an area twenty times that of the original lakes, with a water level 40 metres higher.

On the one hand, this enormous mass of water has covered over almost all of the interesting scars, so that much of the tour comprises we are now floating over the site of…. On the other hand, the captain gave us a fascinating history of the explosion and of the subsequent recovery of the flora and fauna.

Wai-O-Tapu

The Wai-O-Tapu thermal area covers some 18 square kilometres and is covered with collapsed craters, cold and boiling pools of mud and water, and steaming fumaroles. Its a pretty spectacular place, with all sorts of colours and formations, and over an hours worth of walking tracks between them.

Boiling Mud Pool

Finally, just before we left the region, we stopped at a mud pool by the side of the road. We sat on the fence and listened as it made satisfying cooking noises and burped large gouts of mud several feet into the air, all accompanied by the distinct smell of hot dog sausages.

A very curious part of the world indeed.

Lake Wakatipu

The TSS Earnslaw

Queenstown, New Zealand, sits at one end of the beautiful Lake Wakatipu. If you’ve ever seen a postcard of snow-capped mountains reflected in limpid New Zealand waters, then this is where it was probably taken. From our lakeside hotel room we could see the twin funnels of a steam ship, and after a few days of skiing, bungy jumping, rafting and lugeing (Queenstown has got to be the adventure sports capital of the world), we felt that we could do with a change of pace, so  we clambered up the gangplank to see what was going on.

As soon as we got inside we were greeted by the gorgeous smell of hot steam and hot oil, and we realised that we had entered another world. The enclosed decks consist of galleries around a light well that drops down through the centre of the ship, giving an unobstructed view of the two enormous steam engines, the furnaces, and the busy crew of engineers tending to the vessels every need.
In its heyday the Earnslaw ferried some eight hundred passengers at a time, but there seemed to be only a few dozen people aboard, so we had plenty of room to watch. The crew scurried around the engines, checking gauges and lubricating everything in sight with long-nosed oil cans, while stokers piled coal into the twin furnaces. Finally the oil cans were put away, the enormous brass indicator rang ‘Ahead’, and in a cloud of steam the two screw shafts began to move.

I was spellbound.As the Earnslaw accelerated up to thirteen knots, the ship was filled with the mighty rolling thump of the engines and the comforting deep rumble of the prop shafts. The stokers stepped up the pace; the Earnslaw burns a ton of coal every hour.

Up on deck, the scenery was just as beautiful, and in between mesmerised trips down to the steam room, we sat and watched the shore and snow-capped mountains slide by.

Walter Peak Country Farm

An hour or so into the cruise we paused at the Walter Peak High Country Farm, an old but still operating sheep station which also boasts a rather splendid colonial restaurant serviced each evening by the TSS Earnslaw herself. A few of us got off to be greeted by our guide, a shepherd, who took us on a tour and explained what life was like living on the station.

We were treated to a sheep dog demonstration by some of the older, now retired dogs, who were still fleet enough to give a very impressive display of crowd control in a small group of bewildered sheep.

We were then introduced to a few of the stations sidelines, in the form of deer and Scottish highland cattle, before retiring to the main house for cream tea.

The highlight of the farm tour was the shearing demonstration. After we had eaten we were taken to a large barn, to be greeted by the most appalling squealing sound, which turned out to be a couple of young orphan lambs. Don’t ever be misled that lambs bleat, they don’t, they shriek; but we found that they soon quieted down if you picked them up, and Brownyn had a fine time bottle feeding one of them as we settled down to watch the demo.

A couple of adult sheep were milling around at the back of the barn. The shepherd manhandled one of them towards us, and then flipped it onto its back, whereupon it instantly went limp, and from then on it didn’t seem to care one whit either for us or for anything that happened to it. Out came some electric clippers, and the animal was firmly but gently shaved. I had expected it to wriggle and fight, but it just lay there uncomplaining on its back as it was moved this way and that, and before long it stood naked before us.

The pelt was surprisingly greasy to the touch, and heavy with protective lanolin.

The shepherd had all sorts of tales to tell, particularly about the annual gathering where everybody in the homestead combs the hills with horses and dogs in order to flush all the sheep, which live wild all year round, back to the farm for shearing. In fact, the papers only recently had carried stories of a sheep dubbed ‘Shrek’ which had escaped detection for six years and whose coat, when finally sheared, weighed 26 kilos, enough to make twenty suits.

After the demonstration we wandered out of the barn, looking up at the forbidding steep hills and pondered on the hardiness of the shepherds who lived in this beautiful but lonely place.
Then a steam whistle blew from the lake. It was the Earnslaw, come to take us back to the modern world.

The Awesome Foursome

The phone rang while we were enjoying a well-earned post-ski beer at the Dux Deluxe brewpub in Queenstown, New Zealand. It was the guys from AJ Hackett, confirming our 134-metre bungy jump, highest jump in New Zealand and probably the world, and first of a series of adventure pursuits known locally as the Awesome Foursome.

Nevis High Wire Bungy

Early the following morning, we found ourselves bouncing around in a bus climbing up a rickety private track, past a number of unusual little beachcomber-style houses. Part of my stomach was complaining that a glass of water and some paracetamol do not make for a full and satisfying breakfast, while the rest was clenched in a knot of trepidation. It was even worse for Bronwyn, who doesn’t like heights at the best of times, resolutely trying not to look out of the window as the four wheel drive scrabbled along the cliff edge up into Shotover Gorge.
On our arrival at the top, we were confronted by a stationary cable car gondola slung out over the centre of the gorge. To get there, we stood on a little open tray and winched ourselves across. The guide had previously scrawled all our body weights on the back of our hands with permanent marker; at this point he explained that whoever had the biggest number, jumped first, with no exceptions.

Bronwyn glanced around at the handful of midgets and stick-men in the tray, and it didn’t really need a hurried variation on stone-paper-scissors to realise that, yes, she was going first.

In contrast to the young and joking staff that we had seen thus far, the man who greeted us at the gondola door was calm and precise and exuded confident experience, which is exactly what you need when he is about to cuff your ankles to a piece of elastic and throw you out of the window.

The first hurdle is to shuffle to the open door of the gondola and sit in a dentists chair with your feet up. Down to your side, the tiny ribbon of the Shotover River winds along 134 metres below. Each piece of equipment is carefully explained as it is strapped on, particularly the quick-release that allows you to sit up at the end of the jump, so that you are winched back up to the gondola by your waist rather than hanging by your ankles, which would probably be slightly disturbing.

A quick wave to the ever-watching cameras, and then, with your feet strapped firmly together, you shuffle out onto a metal plank stuck out over the ravine. This is by far the hardest part.
This is swiftly followed by the scariest part, which is when the guide throws a big soggy rope bag over the edge. As it drops, it gives your ankles a good sharp tug in the direction that you really, right now, don’t want to go.

Then everybody counts down, and…. you jump.

Once you jump, its such a long way down that initially there’s really no sensation of falling, just a feeling that there is a heck of a lot of wind. Its a lot like sky-diving in that respect. However, there comes a point when you realise that the ground is approaching very fast indeed and you don’t have a parachute, but then suddenly you’ve reached the end of the elastic and you’re shooting skyward, the cable car looms close, and then you’re heading back earthward again. Laughing.

At the top of the second bounce, you pull the rather neat trick ripcord, your ankles swing free, and you find yourself in a sitting position with views up and down the gorge as you are slowly winched back up to the gondola.

On the bus back down, Bronwyn gazed happily out of the windows at the view. Vertigo? What vertigo?

Shotover Jet Boat

Next up was the famous Jet Boat, which plies the rapids on another stretch of the Shotover river. First you climb into wet-weather gear, then you clamber aboard and hang on to the wonderfully heated safety rail as the pilot does his stuff.

Two huge Buick engines power a sixteen-seater speedboat with zero draught and a lunatic for a pilot, who takes great delight in ducking the nose of the craft just past sunken rocks and floating trees, sweeping the passengers merely inches away from overhanging rocks, and executing trademark 360 degree turns, while burning up and down the canyon above Queenstown.
It is extraordinarily exhilarating. The pilots train every day for three months before they’re allowed to take paying passengers, and its easy to see why as you duck under the next rock as the side of the canyon passes inches from your face in a spray-filled blur.

Helicopter up the Canyon

Removing our wet-weather gear, we climbed into wetsuits and boarded a bus out of town. Halfway up the hill, our helicopter was waiting, with white-water rafts rolled up and strapped to its skids. Donning ear-defenders, we clambered aboard.

The pilot didn’t hang about. He wasn’t simply flying us up the valley, he was going to have some fun on the way, so we skimmed along side-canyons and shot vertically out of gorges, swung around huge rock formations and slipped from side to side as we wound our way upstream.
We were all wearing headphones so that we could communicate with the pilot, and the hardest part was not screaming Whoooooooo!!! into the microphone whenever an unlikely stretch of horizon or river appeared in the windscreen.

All too soon, we reached our destination, a spit of gravel in the middle of the Shotover River. The equipment was quickly unloaded, and the chopper returned for another load. When it returned, it raised an enormous and painful cloud of sand and mica, and over the next hour as it ferried people and supplies onto the spit, we got used to hunkering down and closing our eyes as soon as we heard it hot-dogging down the mountainside.

White-water rafting down the Canyon

A petrol generator appeared miraculously from behind a rock, connected to a couple of leaf-blowers which were used to inflate the boats. Once all half-dozen rafts were judged to be firm enough, we were allocated first to a boat and then to a guide, who gave us a little tuition into the meaning of all the various commands that were about to be screamed at us.
Basically these could be reduced to “Paddle like hell!”, “Paddle like hell backwards!” and “Duck!!”. Then we all pushed off into the water to practice. Everybody in the boat of all ages and from all walks of life had to learn very quickly to work together, four to a side with the guide at the back, and then we were off down the first rapid, followed by a very large fit Maori in a surf kayak as support.

At first it was easy enough, and we skimmed down the canyon according to the screams of the guide, Left forward! Right backward! All forward! All stop! The rubber boat was very flexible, and the hardest thing was keeping your seat on the outer edge and your feet wedged under the rails in the middle as it twisted and spun downstream.

Before very long it became clear that some people really weren’t going to pull their weight, and on a particularly awkward corner surrounded by vertical cliffs of wet rock, one of the guys at the front (who was supposed to set the pace for the rest of us) lost the plot completely. The guy behind him stopped paddling, and we smacked bow-first into the wall.

There was a period of wet and dark as the boat folded like a clamshell, bow to stern, and when it opened up again I was the only person remaining on the right hand side. The guide’s paddle floated to the surface and I flung it back to her as she climbed back into the boat, and then it was All forward!! with four people paddling on the left side and only me balancing them on the right, as we went over the next cascade.

Somehow or other it all worked out and we reached the next area of relative calm without going over again. I credit this in some part to my long experience of white-water kayaking, but I was paddling like a maniac and was pretty tired out by the time we reached the safety of the next eddy and picked up two of the missing people.

Bronwyn, however, had completely disappeared. It transpired that she had been sucked under for quite some time before popping up near to the guy in the rescue kayak, who had directed her to some rocks from where she hitched a lift on another raft. It was a bit of a relief to see her clinging to the middle of the next boat as it spat out of the cascade and t-boned us.

The final stretch was relatively easy, but certainly entertaining. The river entered a horizontal bore which was part of an old mineshaft, and we all tucked our heads down as we drifted in the dark to the tiny circle of light below. Then suddenly we erupted into the sunlight and over a final cascade, paddling like furies, before lying back and enjoying the last gentle drift home.

Awesome, just as advertised.

In the Beginning

The Germ of an Idea

Way back before we were married, before we were even an item, Bronwyn and I were sitting in a bar somewhere idly discussing what it was that we wanted to do with our lives. We were both in good jobs and had, individually, achieved our childhood ambitions, including travelling around the world. We’d both left our native countries in the northern hemisphere, and were, at least temporarily, living in Australia. We had well-paid and flexible jobs that meant that we could go round the world as often as we liked, but it was somehow all too easy. Life consisted of hard work and fine dining, extreme sports and luxurious living. All perfect, but it was beginning to feel a bit hollow, so what next?

Somehow or other, out of the blue, one or the other of us came up with the idea of sailing around the world. This was almost completely ridiculous, as neither of us knew how to sail. But if it was something new and difficult that we were after, then this would certainly be a challenge. After a while, the conversation bogged down in our complete lack of knowledge or experience of things nautical, and we ordered some more beer and turned our attention to other topics.

The next day, unbeknownst to Bronwyn, I contacted my old mate David, who had been sailing small boats since we were boys, and asked his opinion on the practicality of buying a yacht and sailing around the world. Bear in mind that I hadn’t the faintest idea of what a yacht cost or how long it took to cross an ocean, nothing at all.

David was stunned. As a small boy, I once crewed on his racing dinghy in the Thames, showing no aptitude whatsoever.

To his credit, and after only a few stunned expostulations, David settled down and answered the questions. It turned out that I had hit pay dirt; he had once intended to go voyaging with his entire family, and still had the file containing all his research, in which he evaluated types of vessel, running costs, equipment and all the multitudinous host of other things that I had, until then, no idea that I had to consider. I added up some numbers on the back of an envelope, and emailed Bronwyn at her work, pointing out that it was, at least financially, feasible.

Things moved on. Bronwyn thought about my crazy plan, and suggested that, in actual fact, she would consider sailing around the world with me. One thought evidently led to another, and, some time later but back in that same bar where the crazy idea had started (for the record: The Phoenix, Canberra), she got down on her knees in the spilled beer and cigarette butts and proposed marriage.

Distinguishing the pointy end from the flat end

While planning the wedding, we looked into the little matter of learning to sail. Canberra, where we were living, is capital of a landlocked desert state several hours from the nearest coastline. The only water is in the artificial lake in the centre of the city. This happens to be the home of the Canberra Yacht Club, where for a small fee you can hire a dinghy or even enter your own (necessarily small – the lake is not very deep!) trailer yacht in the weekly twilight race. There is also a sailing school, which teaches you how to handle a dinghy. It turned out that, in a previous life, Bronwyn had done a little dinghy-racing in Lasers, and had in fact the previous year taken a refresher dinghy-sailing course at the Canberra Yacht Club. She had a word with Matt, who runs the course, and suddenly I was enrolled.

The course took me from “this is a mast, this is a sail” through to rigging a dinghy, and then off we went onto the water. Over the weeks of the course there was in fact very little wind, so we spent quite a lot of time circling the Captain Cook Memorial Fountain, which is an enormous man-made geyser and tourist attraction that fires up at regular intervals, launching an enormous spout high in the air above the city. As the water flies up and down, it generates an outward-blowing wind, such that it is possible to sail round and round it, and tack and gybe, and generally practice unless you get too far away, in which case you need to be towed back into the centre again.

The closer you get to the actual fountain, the stronger the wind, and when it was my turn to helm I kept on pushing the limit until I got so close that the water was pouring into the cockpit and onto my unfortunate crew. On one occasion, I got so close that I got caught in the suction of the underwater feeder pipes, and thus became the first person in history to actually crash into Australia’s premier national monument.

Curiously, that particular crew never sailed with me again. However, I did in fact receive my certificate of competency, and, when Bronwyn and I tentatively entered some twilight races, we recorded first a dismal last (which in our defence was down to a misunderstanding of the rules; in our class, we only needed to complete two circuits instead of the three that we actually did), and then, incredibly, a first in our class. Much of the credit for this goes to the realisation that the boat went much faster when Bronwyn was at the helm and I was the crew, and also perhaps to our habit of carefully discussing each manoeuvre before attempting it, so that we both knew exactly what was going to happen and why. (To get ahead of myself, this is something that we still do, and it seems to me that there would be a lot more happy sailing couples out there if there was less shouting and more discussion.)

Distinguishing the red and green rope from the green and red rope

A qualification in dinghy sailing wasn’t going to get us around the world. In Australia, the first step in big boat qualifications is the Competent Crew, so we enrolled on a course in Pittwater, which is a large estuarine sailing area north of Sydney. There were five students on board a Bavaria 38 with Tony, our pommie instructor, and over a weekend he drilled us in all the skills that would enable us to be crew rather than passengers on a large sailing vessel.

To Bronwyn, used to single-handed and two-man dinghies, the Bavaria was daunting, with its arrays of multicoloured ropes and pulleys and winches. To me, it was a lot more familiar. Even though I had not technically, sailed one, I had been on holidays on 45 and 50 foot Beneteaus, had hung out on a number of friends yachts, and had piloted narrowboats around the canals of England and Holland. At least I knew what most of the things were for, even though I had no idea how to use them. Bronwyn, on the other hand, was quite capable of sailing her, but had no idea which ropes to pull to make it happen.

Slowly, patiently, Tony – recently returned from a record-breaking attempt of circumnavigation of the south polar seas – instructed us in the art of making a large expensive piece of fibreglass move through the water without hitting anything, all the while regaling us with tales of subzero storms and weeks without hot food. Slowly we got the hang of it, although one girl was completely hung up on the rules of the road; “Who’s got right of way?” she would scream, freezing at the helm, whenever a sail appeared on the horizon. With turn and turn about, however, the rest of us got comfortable with helming and crewing, and managed some halfway competent man-overboard exercises. Suddenly we weren’t complete passengers, suddenly we felt that, if we were on a yacht and the skipper suddenly fainted, we could at least manoeuvre the vessel without sinking it.

At the end of the course, Bronwyn and I got an impromptu tour of the Arctos, the vessel that Tony had so recently crewed. The Bavaria is, even in the charter version that we were using, a luxury yacht with no expense spared to make it look like the inside of a Hollywood Captains cabin. The purpose-built Arctos certainly gave us a taste of the other end of the spectrum. With its plain white-painted interior, single potty toilet and cramped webbing bunks, the interior cried sweat and adrenalin and testosterone, and on the outside, every fitting was twice or three times the normal size, speaking volumes of the sheer destructive power of the seas that it had had to navigate.

Impressed, but shuddering, we struck the Antarctic off our list of sailing destinations.

All dressed up with no place to go

At the end of the weekend, proudly brandishing our certificates, we pondered the reality of our situation. We were now, at least on paper, competent crewmen. However, we knew that in fact we were far from competent, but the only way that we were going to improve was to gain some experience, and we couldn’t get experience without chartering a yacht, and nobody would let us take their boat out with only a Competent Crew certificate. It was time to move up to Inshore Skipper.

Singapore

Singapore airport at ten oclock at night. Thirty degrees, and no internet connection so we couldn’t book a hotel. A cluster of people surrounded the airport’s hotel reservation desk and rooms were going fast, but we managed to get one of the last few at the Carlton on the waterfront.

Next step: a taxi. There was the most incredible queue. I counted 1000 people standing in the long snaking line, but a seasoned Singapore traveller behind us recommended sticking with it, and in fact the huge crowd of people was being swiftly decanted into a continually rolling line of taxis by an efficient group of uniformed controllers. We reached the front of the queue, a car was pulled from a fast-moving line and we were ushered firmly into it.

Then commenced a wild ride into the city. As far as I could make out, the rear axle had come adrift from the body shell and the car wavered all over the road, weaving across several lanes on every right-hander. The driver didn’t seem bothered, he just kept the pedal to the floor all the way to the hotel. We stumbled slightly queasily from the irregularly rocking vehicle and made straight for the bar, where we listened to a cover band and drank beer until they closed, whereupon the barman directed us across the street to Chijmes, a courtyard surrounded by bars, where we happily partied with a varied crowd until about five in the morning.

A lie-in on the 25th floor with a view across the skyscrapers and building lots of the city, followed by a pleasant lunch in the hotel lobby, including Bronwyn’s long-awaited first Singaporean laksa.

Finally we wandered out into the humid heat for an amble around town. Having just arrived from China where we had been the centre of attention wherever we went, it was pleasant to blend anonymously into the multicultural blend of people walking the tidy streets.

Sitting on a dock sipping welcome water from a bottle, we were approached by a guy asking us if we were waiting for a boat trip. Unusually, we had done no research prior to our arrival, so we thought that maybe we’d learn something about the history of the country, so we shelled out a few dollars and climbed aboard. It was a traditional “bum boat”, black hull with a wooden awning and eyes painted on the front, one of hundreds that spend their lives chugging up and down the river.

There was indeed a guide, in the form of a tape loop over the loudspeakers, and he spent the next hour or so enthusing about the long and exciting history of Singapore without actually imparting a single solitary fact about it.

On the other hand, we got to see the Singapore lion fish and a lot of pretty architecture.

Eventually, after an enjoyable afternoon giggling at the guide tape, we disembarked at the Old Quay, a riverside restaurant quarter where we stepped over crabs on leashes and were pestered incessantly by waiters touting for business.

Choosing the only restaurant that allowed us to view the menu without harassment, we sat down by the river and began to order. Bronwyn fancied a rogan josh, and asked the waiter if it was likely to be hot.
“Hot?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Bronwyn, “Will it be hot?”
“Hot hot!” he exclaimed, smiling, and disappeared into the bowels of the restaurant, returning with a beautiful repast, including the hottest rogan josh we’ve ever encountered.

We washed it all down with Tiger beer. We needed all the courage we could get before risking the taxi back to the airport.

Shanghai

“Taxi? Meter taxi? Let me take your bag….”
Running the gauntlet of freelance taxi drivers emerging from ever-so-dodgy cars outside Pudong Airport, we fought our way through to the official taxi rank, presided over by a smartly uniformed man with an anti-SARS facemask and a clipboard. He was able to translate our hotel address for the first driver in the queue of identical VW Santanas, and we climbed aboard. The driver, sitting in his perspex protective bubble, crunched into gear and launched into the video game that is Shanghai traffic.

Cars and buses swerved in and out, punctuated by sudden pedestrians, bicycles, rickshaws, and randomly strewn warning signs. We had no idea where we were going or what to expect, so we simply sat and watched the world race by until we emerged from the city and crossed the Huangpu River into the business district. There, on the waterfront overlooking the Bund, looking like it had just landed from space, was the Oriental Riverside Hotel.

We’d had a long flight that morning, so Bronwyn had a rest while I wandered out for a stroll along the river. I certainly wasn’t going to get too lonely, because every couple of hundred yards I was stopped by Chinese tourists, apparently visiting the big city from the country, who liked nothing better than to take photographs of their wives and girlfriends with the strange pony-tailed giant who had appeared in their midst. Indeed, westerners were extremely scarce on this side of town, so it was even more surprising that I suddenly happened on a Bavarian bar by the waterside, serving pretzels, bauernfrühstuck, and locally brewed Paulaner beer, including my favourite Dunklerweißer. On a later visit, we found ourselves serenaded in English by what seemed to be a Korean Mariachi band.

It was an excellent opportunity to stop and watch the boats plying the river. Like much else in Shanghai, it was a shock of contrasts, oil tankers and container ships rumbling their way past a backdrop of the Bund and the office buildings of the city centre, sounding their horns as they manoeuvred their way to or from the enormous dockyards downstream.

The Yangtze River

Fascinated by the maritime component of this great city, we booked aboard a tourist ferry which would take us up the river, through the dockyards, and out as far as the confluence of the Huangpu and the Yangtze. Discovering that there was no food available on the ferry, we grabbed a bite to eat in a dockworkers cafe hidden under the pylons of the dock (we just pointed randomly at the menu and got served a very nice meal with a bottle of Tsing Tao beer), and then climbed aboard.

The towers and skyscrapers of the city soon faded into the heat haze, as we entered one of the busiest sea docks in the world. Everywhere there were container ships and tankers being built from new, or refurbished from the deckline up, tiny figures hanging like spiders over the sides as they worked away at the rust with handheld power tools. And everywhere, darting between the huge hulks and running backward and forward between the docks, little liveaboard boats, each as far as we could see permanently occupied by a family, as indicated by the pots of food plants and the washing hanging out to dry.

Plying the centre-line of the river, we passed perhaps a dozen little dredger boats. They seemed to be very busy sucking up the bottom mud and raking something out of it, but whether it was edible shellfish or something else, we were never able to discover.

Finally, the ferry reached what appeared to be the open sea, but which was in fact the famous Yangtze, Changjiang or Yellow River, just getting wide and lazy after its long journey all the way across the country en route to the East China Sea.

Interesting Food

Back in town, we searched in vain for a Chinese restaurant. Every eatery boasted its French-trained chef and its European menu, and in the end, surrounded by thousands of years of Chinese culinary expertise, we had to settle on French cuisine and New Zealand wine. However, they weren’t going to get away with this every night, so we hunted down a five-star Chinese restaurant which, conveniently enough, was located in our hotel, inside the huge glass sphere that you see on every Shanghai postcard.

It still wasn’t easy, though. As we approached the door, we were firmly rebuffed by staff in beautiful silk dresses, “No no sir, here Chinese food, restaurant is downstair.”

Nevertheless, we battled our way in, to be confronted by an enormous circular room with stunning views over the Bund, acres of plushly set tables, and not a single other diner.

The menu was fascinating. Every dish that I’d always wanted to try, but had been afraid to in fear of being passed off with a substitute. The prices were suitably exorbitant, so it looked like this was going to be the real deal. As the waiting staff peered over each others’ shoulders in amazement, I ordered Birds Nest Soup, and Sea Cucumber in Abalone Sauce.

I was not disappointed. The soup, which should be made from the spit-glued nests of cave swallows harvested by men hanging from hazardous bamboo ladders, had precisely the texture you would expect from boiled saliva. Similarly, the braised sea cucumber came whole and ungarnished, and looked and tasted exactly like the boiled slug that it was. The abalone sauce was excellent. Signing off the equivalent price of a room in this five star hotel, I declared myself satisfied.

The Tourist Tunnel

In the morning, after picking over a sadly westernised breakfast and trying to shake off our jetlag, we headed for the city centre. Apart from the road bridge, there are two ways of crossing the river; the metro, which is fast and efficient and costs 2 Yuan for as far as you want to go, and the Tourist Tunnel, which is much slower, costs 40 Yuan just to get you under the river, and is… weird.

After buying our Tourist Tunnel tickets from the smiling attendant, we made our way down an escalator onto an underground station platform adorned with quite lifelike virtual fish tanks. After a few moments, a fully automated carriage arrived out of the tunnel, and we were escorted with a flourish into the glass cabin, perhaps the size of a large van. The car started to move, accompanied by electronic music from hidden speakers. Suddenly, a male voice intoned something like “volcanic rocks” in English, and all hell broke loose outside. Strobe lights flashed up and down the tunnel, glowing images appeared on the walls, and the train moved through an ever-changing kaleidoscope of neon colour, each accompanied by a geological phrase and loud music. A few moments later, we emerged on the other side, amused but very definitely baffled.

The Bund, Jade Buddha, Fangbang Road

Shanghai is a city in transition, with rickshaws mixing it with cars in front of the tin shack sweatshops in the shadow of huge international skyscrapers. This can be a little frustrating when you are a tourist, as we found that sites of interest on the map were as often as not represented on the ground with a small sign saying “Former site of…” or “Here once stood….” Mind you, you cannot fail to be impressed by the people who thought it necessary to erect a plaque dedicated to “The former site of the former provisional government of Korea.”

The famous Bund, on the northern side of the Huangpu River and directly opposite our hotel, bears a strong resemblance to the Thames Embankment, if you could imagine London sweltering in sultry heat and packed with postcard vendors and street photographers. Shanghai Old Street, situated on Fangbang Road, is particularly interesting. In its 825 metres, the architectural style of the buildings ranges through time from the Ming and Qing dynasties at one end, to the western-influenced Chinese Republic at the other. You cant help noticing the wealthy glory of the former, and the somewhat seedy squalor of the latter.

One thing that we were keen to see, and that we were pretty sure was still standing, was the Temple of the Jade Buddha. It was quite a walk through the bustling streets, assaulted on every side by the blare of horns and the tinkle of bicycle bells, directed this way and that by grey-uniformed traffic assistants who constantly harangued pedestrians, car drivers and rickshaw riders alike in an attempt to get them to observe the traffic signals.

The shops selling carved jade and silk clothing, which characterised Fangbang Road, gave way to tiny sheds devoted to the sale of buttons or strips of ribbon, until finally we stood outside the monastery that was our destination.

There was a small fee to get in, and then another fee to see the buddha, and yet more money-making ventures in the form of stalls selling small carvings and jewellery, but apart from all that it was quite a relaxing place.

It had quite a number of shrines, each with its impressively carved stone or wood androgynous buddha. The centre-pieces, the eponymous Jade Buddha and the jade Reclining Buddha, were well worth the visit all by themselves, but if you want to see them, you’ll have to go yourself because photography is forbidden. In some ways, this is a pity, because I would have loved to get a picture of the monk in attendance to the Jade Buddha, concentratedly texting on a mobile phone, pooh-bear slippers peeking from beneath his saffron robe.

Maglev

All too soon it was time to leave Shanghai, so we paid our enormous hotel restaurant bill and caught the cheap and incredibly high-tech underground metro just as far as the train station, because we couldn’t resist catching the fastest train in the world. It really is an amazing piece of technology. Our original taxi ride from the airport was 45 minutes; the 420km/h maglev did roughly the same journey in 6 minutes, running alongside the motorway and passing the hurrying cars as if they were standing still.

Once at the airport, Shanghai had one more surprise for us. While we were queuing to pay the 90 Yuan departure tax, an official gave us a certificate to confirm that our body temperatures were below 37 centigrade. A little investigation revealed a man with an infra red camera who was reading off peoples core temperatures from a distance. “You don’t have SARS. You are free to go.”

Dublin

My first impression of Dublin was of the strange smell, something of a cross between old food and stale cigar smoke. As we ambled about in our first hour in the fair city, we noticed the additional bouquet of foetid seawater and burnt rubber, which didn’t help my first impression of the centre as being surprisingly dull and a little squalid. However, matters improved somewhat as we wandered into Temple Bar and popped into The Quay for cabbage and mash and a big slab of bacon, washed down with my first ever pint of real (ie Dublin) Guinness. Mmmmm… the hype is all true. Guinness tastes much, much better in its home town than anywhere else, much lighter in texture and with a more delicate flavour with a hint of cream. Very nice.

On, then, to Madigans, a beautiful gin palace, for copious Guinness and amusing conversation, before staggering over the street to the hotel, in which we were woken early in the morning by the merry sounds of a couple of drunks duetting in Gaelic as they stumbled down the road.

Later that morning we took the tourist bus tour. Bronwyn and I have, independently over the years, formed an attachment to tourist bus tours, especially of the ride-all-day-around-the-city open-top running-commentary variety. There’s something strangely satisfying about sitting in the freezing wet, huddled over a squawking loudspeaker, and trying to figure out which of the million visible objects the (probably synthetic) guide is talking about.

     

This particular bus took us on an interesting circuit of the Georgian and Mediaeval districts on a suitably cloudy day. The history presented by the scratchy voice was a jumble of revolutions and battles, not particularly pro- or anti-English but just a continuous roil of revolution and counter-revolution.

For me, at least, this higgledy piggledy history was brought into sharp relief by the hundreds of placards bearing the face – but not the name – of Gerry Adams, currently it seems a respectable politician, but years ago when I was growing up in London he was the face of terrorism, appearing smirking on the news every time an IRA bomb killed yet another crowd of innocent Londoners.

It was explained to me in a bar that, in the current election campaign, each party was only allowed to advertise with so many placards for their candidate, but that the Sinn Fein had so much money that they’d decided to put up hundreds of apolitical posters instead, bearing only an instantly recognisable face but no overt election statement.

We left the bus to buy some postcards and some stamps. Outside the Dublin Post Office is a monument to the millennium, an incredible metal needle soaring heavenward, impossible to capture on film, one of those objects that has to be experienced in the flesh. Most Dubliners seem to hate it, and take great pleasure in pointing out that their millennium statue wasn’t finished until 2003.

However, it is the Georgian facade of the General Post Office itself that really grabs your attention. The Dublin GPO became a symbol of the 1916 Easter Rising when members of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army seized the building on Easter Monday, and Patrick Pearse read out the Proclamation of the Irish republic from its steps. The rebels remained inside for almost a week, but shelling from the British eventually forced them out. Inside the post office is a set of stunning oil paintings depicting the event.

From one piece of history to another: The next tourist bus dropped us outside the somewhat forbidding walls of the Guinness Brewery.

Inside, it has been converted to a bit of a tourist shrine to advertising, although with enough tongue in cheek and enough real historical content that we didn’t mind too much. Our entry ticket was a drop of Guinness forever sealed in a perspex paperweight… you get the idea. And then, perched on high up a tower over the brewery, you can sup a pint of (sadly, overly chilled) Guinness straight from the source while enjoying an unrivalled view of the stainless steel industrial stout towers and, er, the rest of Dublin.

Tasmania: A tale of three corners

I had always wanted to go to Tasmania. As a child, I would take my globe, put my finger on my home town of London, and then spin it around until I found the farthest possible spot away. Strictly speaking, this would put me in New Zealand, but I also had a collection of old maps and atlases which filled that area with sea monsters and “here be dragons”, a notional outline of the Australian coast, and a peculiar little dot right at the bottom labelled “Van Diemens Land”, sometimes marked by a small devil with a pitchfork. Tasmania was, to me then and for much of my life, the far ends of the earth.

Of course, from my new home Australia, it is just one of the States that make up this nation, and but a small hop by aeroplane from my current house in Canberra, so when Patrick and Helga turned up from Holland one month, I mentioned my Tasmania story to Bronwyn, and she said, “I’ve always wanted to go there too. Lets surprise them.”

Launceston

That morning, we whisked the bemused couple down to Canberra airport with the vague promise that we were taking them to “somewhere interesting”. The first flight was to Melbourne, and we kept tight hold of the onward tickets, but as it happened when we arrived at the transfer gate, all the sign said was “Launceston”. Patrick and Helga were still saying “Where the hell is Launceston?” when the plane left the tarmac and they suddenly realised that there was probably a map in the in-flight magazine…

From the air, Launceston looked a lot like the green fields of England, a somewhat welcome sight after our home town of Canberra’s worst-drought-for-fifty-years look. Once on the ground at the tiny airport, I waited in line at the rental car counter as the smiling clerk explained to the couple in front that the clause you must not drive on unsurfaced roads simply meant “…and when you do, don’t tell us about it.” When he took me to see my own vehicle, he explained away the scratches on the door as “the usual marks you make when trying to put the key in when you’re drunk,” and advised me not to worry too much about damage “because its only a rental car”.

After this interesting introduction to the Tasmanian psyche, we drove to our nearby hotel, and enquired about food. The receptionist looked aghast. “At ten at night? This is Tasmania, you know…”

However, we did end up grabbing some fast food, and headed over to The Lounge Bar, the only pub that everybody seemed to recommend. After a door-check for steel toecaps we were allowed into a cavernous old hotel ballroom with comfy sofas where we could sit with endless four-pint jugs of Carlton and observe as the girls danced to the rather decent cover band, and the blokes stood and watched, or – more often than not – stared glassily at the cricket on the TV over the bar.

One of the defining geological features of Launceston is its gorge, and after breakfast net morning we took a beautiful walk via a winding path and some suspension bridges to an old hydro power station, stopping on the way to watch spiny echidnas and cicadas doing their thing. The water was pretty darn cold, but Patrick went for a dip anyway.

Rosevears Estate

Hungry, now, we headed up into the hills above Launceston, knowing that the area was packed with vineyards and hoping to get some food. According to our guide book, only one – Rosevears – did lunches, so we were a little disappointed to roll up and be told that sorry, lunch was over. We must have looked a bit forlorn, because they offered to bring out some “nibbles”, which turned out to be a couple of enormous platters of excellent seafood, salads, meats, fruits and cheeses, washed down by ample tastings of their excellent wines. In fact, the wine-tasting was going so well that we thought it would be a good idea to ask if the small row of cabins that overlooked the valley were available for rent.

The waitress, somewhat flustered, said that they had only just been built and weren’t really supposed to be available yet, but we were welcome to rent them if we wanted. Heartened, we returned to the food and wine. It was a minute or so before we realised that the waitress was still standing somewhat awkwardly by the table. Nervously she blurted, “but you haven’t asked me how much they cost!”
“Don’t worry”, we assured her, “everything will be fine, and can we have another bottle of this excellent wine?”

Some time later, we ambled up to our cabins, to discover that each was a beautifully crafted cube of beech and glass, decorated inside in semi-Japanese style, and featuring a fully stocked wine cabinet and an enormous bath with views over the vineyard and the lake. Stupendous, sumptuous and beautiful.

After a nap and bottle of Pinot Noir on the verandah, we ambled gently back down to the restaurant for dinner, where our waiter Ken kept us entertained and supplied with excellent food and wine, after which we repaired to the starlit balcony for a Pinot Noir nightcap.

Breakfast arrived, red-riding-hood style, in a covered basket on the doorstep. Sitting in the bath, feeding each other grapes as the sun rose over the vines, we never wanted to leave. However, eventually we all climbed back into the car and set off to Strahan.

ABT Wilderness Railway

Tasmania being vaguely triangular, and – at least on the map – not very big, we had thought that we’d spend a few days in each corner. There’s a steam train that runs from Strahan to Queenstown that we were intending to catch, so we picked what seemed to be the most direct route and set off, Patrick at the wheel because it was Bronwyn and my turn in the back. However, the road soon revealed itself to be an endless stream of mountain switchbacks, and the over-soft suspension of the big Mazda SUV soon had us feeling pretty sick. Thankfully a local store hove into view, and Bronwyn stumbled in to buy us some motion sickness tablets. They didn’t have any, but the owner took one look at Bronwyn’s face and gave her a handful from her own handbag. We were looking so green that Patrick and Helga volunteered to sit in the back, so I settled down to drive.

As corner followed corner it became clear that we would never reach Strahan in time, and that instead we would have to try to catch the train in Queenstown. I stepped up the pace a bit, and the tyres began to squeal as we tore over the final pass and headed back down the endless switchback down into town. Suddenly the mobile reception, which had been dead all over the bush-filled centre plateau, sprang into life, and Patrick was shouting over the sound of screaming rubber as he tried to get them to hold the train for just another few minutes, and yes of course we wanted first class tickets, as I floored it and drifted sideways down the tiny mountain road, finally pulling up beside the train in a triumphant cloud of burning rubber.

Then suddenly we entered another age, a lovingly restored Premier Class train carriage with a wooden viewing balcony and Julie, our laughing conductress, welcoming us aboard with a glass of champagne. We settled back into the seats as the old locomotive whistled and chuffed gently out of the station.

The train used to haul copper ore from the mountains down to the town for processing, and the track was hacked through the rainforest, occasionally criss-crossing the heavily poisoned vividly yellow river over high wooden viaducts. Now the train carries tourists on a beautiful journey through the enormous ferns and palms, the river no less vividly yellow, but forming a beautiful counterpoint to the lush green of the recovering bush. I’m not sure how the they fared in Tourist Class, but for us the trip was lubricated with as much wine as we could drink, and an endless supply of snacks and fruit and cheeses, dotted all the while with Julie’s tales and jokes.

Eventually, however, it had to come to an end. The steam locomotive was pushed around on a turntable and coupled to another set of carriages travelling in the opposite direction, and a less exotic engine took us down to the bus back to Queenstown.

Everybody we’d spoken to had said that if we were staying in Queenstown, then we should stay at the Imperial, which turned out to be a wonderful colonial structure of carved dark wood, stained glass and sweeping staircases, and of course a bar.

Bonarong Wildlife Sanctuary

The next morning, the plan was to drive to Hobart, third apex of the Tasmanian triangle and southernmost point of Australia. It was Patrick’s turn to drive, so off we set up that same vertiginous switchback that I had so precipitously descended. The tyres started to scream again… and unfortunately we overcooked it on a bend and slammed sideways into the rock wall. Ouch. Luckily one of the wheels took most of the damage, so we changed that and kept going, and although the transmission was crunching quite alarmingly, we reckoned we would probably get there in one piece.

Finally we rolled into Hobart, once more surprised by how long it took to drive anywhere. Just outside the city is Bonarong Wildlife Sanctuary, a zoo that specialises in Tasmanian Devils. They have loads of them, and despite their fearsome reputation, they look really, really cute. In common with most Australian zoos, you are encouraged to feed the animals (although not the Devils, which despite their innocuous looks would be unlikely to give your hand back), and we had a fine time feeding the roos and emus.

Climbing in Launceston Gorge

We had hoped to do some climbing in Hobart, but they weren’t able to take us on short notice, so we booked a session back in Launceston, climbed back into the car and headed northwards, back to the gorge where it all started. There we met Bob from Tasmanian Adventures, who took us for a very enjoyable clamber in the sunshine.

Finally, tired and happy, we returned to that first Launceston hotel for a last night of excellent Tasmanian beer, tall tales, and dreadful games of pool.

Climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge

On an otherwise normal day at the office, Bronwyn filled in a company profile questionnaire for the in-house magazine. Among the usual questions was “What would be your perfect first date?”. Her answer was, to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

This triggered off some intra-office discussion on how she could find anybody crazy enough to do this with her, and of course as soon as I heard about it, I booked it.
It was a three hour drive to Sydney after work on a Friday, so we found ourselves a nice hotel and had a gentle night on The Rocks, a particularly happening area on the Sydney Harbour waterfront. Then, after a decent late morning breakfast, we headed for the Bridge itself.

The worlds largest and widest steel arch bridge, it still dominates the Sydney skyline seventy years after it was built. Its 49-metre deck is wide enough for eight vehicle lanes, two train lines, a cycle path and a pedestrian walkway, and the top span, at 134 metres above sea level, was our destination that sunny morning.

Our hosts, the Bridge Climb Company, turned out to be a very slick operation indeed. In their warehouse-sized office inside one of the minor approach support towers, we climbed into our bridge-grey jumpsuits and fitted our safety harnesses, which were cleverly designed to run along a continuous safety rail on the bridge.

Add some sun protection, radio headsets (bone-conduction: a weird feeling), some safety instruction, a final set of metal detectors to ensure we weren’t about to drop coins or cameras on the traffic below, and we were out onto the approach span.


Out onto the body of the bridge itself, we were walking up and along the outer spans above the water. The views were tremendous, from the Blue Mountains on one side to the ocean on the other, and down onto the rooves of downtown Sydney and of the Opera House itself.


The whole tour, led by a knowledgeable guide and punctuated by the occasional historical titbit, bad joke, and photo shoot took over three hours, walking all the way up the seaward span to the very top of the bridge, across beneath the flags and aircraft warning lights, and then down the other side back to base.

Surprisingly tired, we divested ourselves of our gear, bought the photographs that you see here, and stumbled out into the late afternoon in search of coffee, before driving to the coast to go scuba diving.

Narooma

Overland to Narooma

Teun and Loes had managed to get hold of a holiday home for the weekend, down on the eastern coast of Australia near to Eden.

It was possible to get there from our home in Canberra by road, but it was also possible to draw a straight line diagonally across the map and travel through the bush, so of course this is what we did. Loes’ sister Nienke happened to be in Australia at the time, and at the last minute she decided that rather than travel in the back of the characterful but somewhat uncomfortable Wahoo, she would hitch a ride in our slightly more comfortable Nissan.

It is a good many hours of off-road driving from here to there, and we convinced Nienke that it would be a great idea to learn to drive the truck, since in Holland all the cars are tiny. She ended up having a lot of fun, and although on a couple of mountain passes Bronwyn and I were wondering whether the nearside wheels were actually hanging over the edge, we thought it best not to mention it until later that evening.

Eventually after a long day in the bush, we arrived in Narooma, finding the house to be an enormous property with a verandah looking out over the sea. We soon got down to some beer and food and some serious partying, some time next day on the beach, local seafood – including the famous Moreton Bay Bugs which taste fabulous but which look like nothing on this planet.

Whale Safari

Next morning it was time to head down to the beach to board the Whale Safari. When we arrived, though, the operators were looking pretty glum. The early voyage had come back empty-handed, and the signs were that the whales had moved on. We’d still see seals, they said, but they were more than happy to refund our money if we wanted to cancel, because they reckoned we only had about a 10-15% chance of seeing anything bigger.

Never mind, we boarded anyway. The boat was going to take us to Montague Island, a local tourist attraction, and look for whales on the way, so we thought we’d go along for the ride.

Once out of the fierce harbour exit, it was a pleasant summer’s day cruise, although Nienke was looking a little green from the motion. Then, suddenly, a humpback whale surfaced, and within moments we realised that we were right in the middle of an entire pod, all apparently delighted to see the boat. We were then treated to nearly an hour of the whole gamut of whale behaviour: showing heads, showing tails, breaching, tail diving, swimming upside down, diving under the boat, and generally having a pretty wild time. The boat operators were ecstatic, they said they’d never seen a display like it. Then a second pod turned up to join in the fun.

I did take quite a few pictures, some of which grace this page, but really I spent most of the time staring at them in wonder. I’ve been on whale safaris before, seeing Sperm and Minke Whales in Norway, and Blue and Beluga Whales in Canada, but I’d never before seen them playing around and having such a great time, just like enormous dolphins.

Seals at Montague Island

Eventually it was time to move on, to nearby Montague Island, home to generations of lighthouse keepers and also to a thriving seal colony. They lay like huge sacks of lard over the sun-baked rocks, bulls guarding their harems and staring haughtily as our boat chugged by, pups off to the side on their own rocks, looking incredibly cute but stinking of stale urine, wet fur, and rancid fish.

To finish off the evening, we sat and watched as the islands colony of little penguins waddled up the beach, a much smaller and more intimate display than the huge tourist attraction at Phillip Island. I can’t show you any photos here, because they are startled by camera flashes, but suffice it to say that watching them climb out of the surf and amble up to their nests is always an edifying and somewhat comical experience.

Home through Kosciuzco

All too soon it was time for the long drive home, but our wildlife experience wasn’t yet over. Partway up a bush track we came across a goanna, a huge lizard, rooting about in an old log.

Somehow or other we got separated from the Wahoo, which wasn’t carrying a radio, so we decided to drop down to Cooma for a bite to eat before getting thoroughly lost in the dark while attempting a short cut through the Kosciusko National Park, finishing off the holiday in unseasonal rain with an entertaining slide around through muddy dark outback farms, avoiding randomly scattered white goods which looked suspiciously as though they contained the body parts of the last visitor, while trying to simultaneously get off private land defended by Keep Out Or Else signs, dark and sinister deserted buildings, and once the suspended body of a dead kangaroo, in an attempt to find the national capital.

My attempts at entertaining the girls with a selection of late-night horror stories didn’t seem to go down enormously well, and Bronwyn and I got very wet climbing in and out of the car opening and closing gates as we worked our way across the bush. All in all, I doubt that Nienke will forget this trip for quite some time.

Mungo Desert

Five in the morning, pitch black, nothing stirring in Canberra apart from a mismatched pair of four-wheel drive vehicles heading purposefully westwards into the Australian outback. Although we’d travelled quite widely in New South Wales, the south-eastern corner of the island continent, it is all comparatively lush, and we were keen on seeing some of this famous outback desert that wed been hearing about. However, the nearest example was about a thousand kilometres to the west, and although my modern air-conditioned Nissan could do it in comfort, Teun and Loes were in their twenty-year old Land Cruiser, the Wahoo, so we had to take it gently.

After climbing out of the vaguely hilly bowl that forms the Australian Capital Territory, we rolled down to the flatlands of the Murrumbidgee River and the town of Narandera. Every small town in Australia struggles to be the home of some unique feature, whether it be the biggest merino sheep in the world (made of concrete, in Goulburn), or the biggest trout in the world (made of fibreglass, in Adaminiby), or the oldest continually licenced premises in Australia (one of at least three similar claims that we have found, this one in Berrima). Narandera is no different. As we turned onto the arrow-straight Sturt Highway, road signs sternly admonished us that we had missed the opportunity to see The Largest Playable Guitar In The World.

We were the only vehicles on the highway. Ahead of me, all I could see were the dull red tail-lights of the Wahoo, and a bright blue backlight on Teun’s dashboard, which appeared somewhat bizarrely to be a GPS navigation system. I made a note to ask him about it later.

Dawn rose in the rear view mirror. The night slowly faded to grey and then fled into the usual gorgeous blue of another perfect Australian day. The occasional trees on the horizon became shorter and stubbier, the earth by the side of the road became noticeably redder, starkly contrasting with the green of the grass being grazed by the thin and hardy Australian sheep.

The road continued on, and on, ever westward, past another sign proudly proclaiming that we were driving through The Best Wheat-Growing Country in Australia. Back in lofty Canberra, the days had been getting mild, even a bit chilly, but out here on the plains we started slathering on the lotion as the morning sun scorched through the open sunroof.

Six hours in, I needed a coffee, so we pulled over in Hay, pretty much the only town on this part of the Sturt, and stoked up on the things that we thought we needed; several pints of caffeine, some baling wire, a roll of gaffer tape, and a spade. Remembering the glow of the Wahoo’s navigation computer, I asked Teun for a demonstration. He looked somewhat sheepish as he showed me the screen. He’d forgotten to load in the map for this part of Australia, so the screen showed a huge featureless field of blue with a small “you are here” cursor flashing in the centre, and far far off at the bottom of the screen, a little dot that said “Melbourne”.

Actually, back on the Sturt, driving across the endless red terrain, that felt about right. Emus wobbled humorously by the side of the road. Hours passed. Finally we arrived in Balranald, the last fuel station before the Mungo and the point at which we finally left the Sturt and headed north.

Exactly 53km up the road toward Ivanhoe, according to the directions we’d found on the web, we turned left onto a sandy track. Loes compared it to Africa; beaten sand, low scrub, and emus running here and there in the bush. I gave the Nissan its head, hammering down the trail at 140kph, blowing away the cobwebs of the miles and miles of tarmac, finally arriving by the public lodges in the Mungo National Park. According to a sign on the door, in order to get the key we had to telephone the Parks office. When I called them, I got an answering machine; the office was closed.

On, then, to the camp site, which had an honesty box system for the pitch, and another one for firewood. We had no tents as such, but we’d come prepared to sleep in the vehicles if necessary. While Loes unloaded the Wahoo’s excellent cooking range and rustled up a meal, the rest of us cracked some welcome beers and got on with some vehicle maintenance. One of my tyres was running a bit bald and needed replacing, and Teun needed to pump diesel out of his second fuel tank because it didn’t seem to be properly connected.

A superb dinner, then a fire, more beer, wine, laughs. It was the first time I’d burned Eucalyptus gum, and I was impressed. The bark makes excellent tinder, and the wood itself is incredibly dense, lights easily, burns hot but slow with no smoke or spitting, and then settles down to perfect red embers.

A comfortable night in the cars, then up with the birds – particularly the cheeky Apostle birds which had their noisy beaks in everything – and onto the circular track around the Mungo National Park.

First stop, the amazing Walls Of China, an enormous lunette dune stretching from horizon to horizon and moving slowly across the outback at several metres per year. At its leading edge, it slowly smothers the scrubby bushland. At the other end, thousands of years later, it spits out all the things it has consumed; kangaroo bones, the remains of aboriginal fires, the odd artefact. As it moves, it carries with it a population of contorted Bluebush whose roots hold it together as the wind sculpts and ripples its upper surface.

A wedge-tailed eagle soared above as we took the cars up a small track over one end of the dune, stopping to wander through the extensive complex of beautifully carved gullies formed by the heavy water erosion of the hard-packed sand.

Beyond the dune is the Mallee, an area of unusual multi-stemmed eucalypts indicative of the most dry and barren conditions. There was, however, still plenty of life to see, from the beautiful emerald green Mallee Ringneck parrot to the myriad red and grey kangaroos hopping over the red red earth under the startingly clear blue sky, pausing now and again to stare at the metal interlopers into their domain.

The mallee part of the national park is just as interesting as the lunette, home to specially adapted birds, lizards and plants, particularly the rather astounding Porcupine Grass, probably the sharpest and most uncomfortable ground cover in the world. It is dotted with huts and tanks left over from various attempts at grazing the arid land, including the interesting Round Tank, which had been completely fenced in with a small access ramp leading to a steep drop down to the water; in fact it was a trap for wild goats, a pest in this area, which could jump down to the water but which could not then get out again. A scattering of skulls were testimony to the efficacy of the system.

Finally, as the end of the weekend drew near, it was time to head back to Canberra. Before we left, we climbed up to the Mungo Lookout, where the full extent of the bluebush scrub was visible from horizon to horizon, all the more astounding because when the settlers, who were the source of all the abandoned buildings and sheep stations that we had seen, were trying to make a living here, all this was just a huge lake.

Benighted at Kalang Falls

Having recently become addicted to the peculiarly Australian sport of “canyoning”, I jumped at the chance of a midwinter abseil down the Kalang Falls. Situated in the Kanangra-Boyd National Park in the Blue Mountains near to Sydney, the falls drop for a vertical distance of about half a kilometre into a deep canyon, after which you have little choice but to clamber the same distance back up along the aptly named Murdering Gully.

Thus it was that early one Saturday morning, a group of Kanangras black cattle, waiting patiently for the first dawn rays of the sun to evaporate the frost from their backs, were surprised to see nine enterprising adventurers heading out into the still darkened wilderness. Led by the highly experienced duo of Andy and Andrew, we planned to tackle the eleven abseils of up to sixty metres each, and then begin the three-hour scramble up Murdering Gully in the fading afternoon light, finishing up back at the top by mid-evening, hopefully still in posession of an eclectic selection of silly hats.

The sun lifted gorgeously above the canyon as we clambered to the head of the falls and began our first descent.

The falls drop in a series of steps, with enough room on one side or the other to abseil without actually getting wet; a so-called dry canyon, handy for tackling in the middle of the winter without the need for wetsuits and swimming. No problems with the cold here, however; soon we were stripping off the early-morning layers, chattering happily and basking in the sunshine during the inevitable waits for the ropes to become free.

On the third drop, we couldn’t find the anchor point. It soon became clear that an earlier landslide had changed the shape of the canyon, and it took an impromptu food break, some precarious hopping from rock to rock, and a good deal of sliding through uncertainly shifting underbrush before, about an hour later, we eventually found it and could continue down to the visitor’s book which was bolted to the cliff. The previous entry was about one month before.

The day progressed down a series of drops, giving fabulous views across the Kanangra-Boyd to the matching cliffs on the other side, and down to the sunny green treetops far, far below. Presumably in order to keep us entertained, Steve, who seems to have a remarkeable affinity to water, took the occasional impromptu bath.

As the day wore on, and we sometimes found it necessary to descend on only one rope instead of two at a time, it became clear that what with the landslip and everything we were going slower than expected and would have to do Murdering Gully in the dark.

Not to worry, though, we had come well equipped with torches and extra snacks, and we still had our cool-weather gear from the frosty morning, so we expected to emerge at perhaps nine oclock in the evening. Then one of the ropes got snarled, and by the time we’d untangled it, we had three more abseils to do and dusk was already falling.

Out came the head-torches, ranging from the positively ancient to futuristic hi-tec, except for Cath who had to borrow a hand-held maglite. Never mind, Cath, I said as I duct-taped it to her wrist. For the rest of the descent, she loomed periodically out of the darkness like a cyborg.

The head torches introduced another problem; what to do with Andys hat. This enormous wicker lampshade affair, all the way from Thailand, had bounced and scraped its way this far down, had been periodically retrieved and repaired, and now we had to find some way to carry it. Maria saved the day, volunteering to have it strapped to her pack, which gave her an interesting ninja turtle profile. The show went on.

The penultimate drop is, at sixty metres, the longest possible single abseil in the Blue Mountains. Well prepared, of course, we were actually carrying a sixty-metre rope rather than the usual fifty, which made it a bit easier, but we were also doing it in pitch darkness, which made it… interesting. I can absolutely recommend abseiling by starlight down the side of a waterfall. Suspended in space, I kicked out to bounce off a rockface invisible but for the small circle of light from my headtorch. Pausing halfway, and looking up toward the sky-spanning crystal arm of the Milky Way, I could see a pinprick of light that was Andrew far above, and turning my head, another pinprick of light far below that was Andy. All else was pitch darkness, apart from off to one side, the eery white thundering glow of the waterfall. Marvellous, just marvellous.

To commemorate the moment, as each climber reached the bottom, Andy solemnly handed them a lighted sparkler.

Finding the last pitch in the dark was nigh-on impossible. For a long time, most of us huddled on a rock ledge in the trees while search parties ranged through the forest below, little flickers of light appearing and disappearing between the steeply sloping trees. Time passed. We weren’t going to get out of Murder Gully until midnight. We thought about Lyn, waiting patiently at the top with the cars, and expecting us out by nine at the latest. There’s no mobile coverage out in the bush, but she had a car and sleeping gear, so we knew she was OK and hoped she wouldnt worry. Then finally, a triumphant call; the route had been found, but there had been another landslide, requiring the construction of a rope safety rail to clip onto as we crossed the rubble-strewn and uncertain slope, mere feet from the edge of the steep drop into the falls, before shimmying down a knotted rope and back onto the trail.

The last drop is entertaining. If you just abseil straight down, you end up floating in the deep plunge pool at the bottom of the falls; not ideal. What you have to do is get nearly to the bottom and then, shrouded in the thundering spray as the Kalang falls finally touch bottom, you have to swing and hop yourself round a big slippery outcrop, fighting against the weight of fifty metres of wet rope above you, onto a mossy little ledge. By torchlight. And, in Allans case, with a twisted ankle. But we all managed to stay dry; apart from Steve, of course, but he was getting used to that by now. Now for the strenuous but simple clamber out of the gully, and home to the waiting caravans.

It was not to be. It was, as I may have mentioned, seriously dark. We were at the bottom of a half-kilometre deep canyon, thickly surrounded by gum trees. Bush paths are always precarious things, it is hard to tell which are made by humans, and which by roos and wombats, but we figured we were heading in roughly the right direction – ie, upward – and so started to climb.

The going was tough, sloping at about forty-five degrees, and deeply littered with fallen leaves and branches. I was scouting ahead, following whichever of the many crisscrossing trails seemed to be heading most upward, and was beginning to get a little disillusioned when I found some taped markers on some trees. Hoorah! We were saved!

We climbed onward. Murdering Gully is supposed to take only a few hours at worst, so we should have been about to reach the main trail soon. Hours passed. We climbed. Midnight ticked by. The slope steepened. We climbed.

At one o’clock in the morning, we gave up. Clearly, markers notwithstanding, we were on the wrong ridge, but how to tell which was the correct one? We’d have to wait until morning. Australians have a word for this: we were benighted.

Tired but cheerful, we squatted on the 45 degree slope, passed around muesli bars and considered our situation. We were in dense bush without camping gear, but we had plenty of food and water, and enough spare clothes to go round for those who needed them. Despite the fact that it was midwinter, we didn’t expect the temperatures to drop much below zero. Our main concern was not for ourselves, but for the people waiting for us back in civilisation; Lyn in the car at the top, and Andrews wife in Sydney, who was expecting a were back call. An expedition into the bush is not to be treated lightly, and we had followed usual practice in leaving our itinery and instructions to alert the emergency services if we didnt make it back. One or both of the girls would certainly call the rangers if we didn’t show up by morning, and we didn’t want to cause an unnecessary furore. Still, there was nothing we could do about it, so we wedged a few fallen trees across some stumps to stop us sliding downward, and variously huddled together in a pile, or strapped ourselves to comfortable-looking trees, and dropped off to sleep.

Before very long, the sun came up, and we lit a small fire and took stock of where we were. Or rather, we tried to; even in daylight it wasn’t really clear where we’d gone wrong the night before, and as we munched our way through breakfast we contemplated the unsavoury idea of climbing all the way back down to the valley floor, and starting up again.

At this point we started hearing cooo-eees of rangers on the cliffs high above; clearly one of the girls had sounded the alarm, and our fire had been spotted. Before very long, two SES Rangers turned up to see if we were OK.

They seemed a little put out to find a cheerful, well-equipped group eating breakfast; we suspected that they’d been looking forward to an exciting spot of rescuing, but they bustled about anyway strapping up Allan’s ankle and handing out chocolate bars. They made an amusing pair, Matt a big cheerful guy who knew everything about the Kanangra-Boyd and imparted that knowledge accompanied by heavy swearing, and Ewan, younger and wiry, who seemed to have a personal ambition to carry the heaviest load out of Murdering Gully; he stuffed his pack with our spare ropes and fleeces, and would have been delighted to carry all our packs if we’d let him. Apparently he was locally famous for once lugging a car tyre all the way up to the top.

Most importantly, they knew the short cut out, which involved a bit of a traverse through the bush, but thankfully no downhill backtracking. As we walked, the pair regaled us somewhat wistfully with stories of the idiots they had rescued and the bodies they had carried out, admitting now that they would much rather that we’d been trapped halfway down the falls so that they could have done a bit of abseiling themselves.

Murdering Gully was a steep climb even in the winter sun, and we really appreciated a pause at a cave with a freshwater spring (we’d used most of our drinking water that morning to make sure that our fire was really extinguished; one thing the bush really does not need is more fires), and then, finally, we all climbed back up to the outside world.

It wasn’t quite what we’d expected…

A second truckload of rangers had set up an urn with tea and biscuits, and Lyn had brought a load of meat pies and sausage rolls, which was nice. However, we were also greeted by a brace of ambulances, a policeman, and a TV crew. Disregarding our somewhat amused protestations that we were all fine and had merely been caught out by nightfall, the TV crew homed in on Allan, now decked out with a nice big photogenic ankle bandage, and I guess it was a slow day because he ended up on the Sydney news.

Thanks to Andy and Andrew for guiding us, to the ladies who worried at the top, and to the whole crew for being so buoyantly cheerful in what were occasionally adverse conditions. In addition, its nice to know that if we had really been in trouble, then there are all these dedicated, professional and above all cheerful people willing to give up their time to help. Thanks, then, to Matt, Ewan and the other SES rangers and emergency services at Kanangra-Boyd.

Parachute into Canberra

It started, as these things so often do, with a chance meeting in a bar. Mike, who was sitting next to me, happened to mention that he was part of the Australian free fall team, one thing led to another and without too much more ado I found myself clambering into a jumpsuit at Canberra airport. Next to me was Lyn, who to everybody’s surprise – particularly her own – had decided to jump too; an interesting decision for somebody who has trouble looking down over the edge of a kerb.

First came a couple of exercises, demonstrating the positions that we should adopt while plummeting from the heavens.

Low level practice session

Then six of us – Lyn and myself, our two tandem instructors, the pilot and Bruce the cameraman – piled into the tiny aeroplane and headed for the wide blue yonder.

This plane has no door!
This plane has no door!

The single-prop plane clawed slowly for altitude. Canberra drifted away into the distance, revealing the harsh bush land beyond. Little green tempered the raw rock and earth, and from our vantage point the sun reflected off the only water; the glittering snake of the Murrumbidgee River, and the tiny rainwater dams hacked from the land by generations of sheep-farmers. From ground level, the bush seems lush. From the air, you see it as it really is, hard-baked and dry.

It was loud in the little plane, and we were packed in like sardines, shifting occasionally to ease sleeping limbs, but it was a beautiful day and we were gently lulled by the land dropping slowly away. Suddenly Graham, my instructor, poked his altimeter over my shoulder so that I could see it. “Four and a half thousand feet,” he said. “This is where the parachute opens. Everything above this is free fall.” I nodded, and looked down through the clear piece of perspex that constituted the door. It didn’t seem so very far down.

The plane clambered higher. Some time later, we turned round and headed back to Canberra, still climbing. We had clearance to jump from ten thousand feet, and we were due to land on the cricket oval by the Australian Mint. The earth continued to drop away. And then, suddenly, we were there.

Canberra from 10,000 feet
Canberra from 10,000 feet

Lyn was due to go first, and had been psyching herself up, doing breathing exercises, preparing for the moment when she had to confront her worst nightmare; voluntarily jumping from an enormous height. She was calm, calm, calm, and ready for anything… until they slid open the perspex door, and an icy wind howled through the tiny cockpit. Lyn screamed and screamed. We managed to get her wedged into the doorway, and then while her instructor shuffled his legs underneath to get a purchase, we peeled her fingers off the airframe, and she was off. The scream trailed away…

Can you hear her yet?
Can you hear her yet?

Bruce the cameraman was already clinging to the fuselage. I was next. Laughing like a madman, I was launched out into the clear blue sky.

Jump1
Jump2
Jump3
Jump4
Jump5
Falling
Falling

The feeling of speed was astounding. Somehow I had not really thought about just how windy dropping at terminal velocity was going to be. Even so, above the howl of the wind, I could faintly hear Lyn screaming as she plummeted away below me. Bruce, with helmet cam attached, arrived in front of us, filming. I tried to explain how fantastic it all was, but it was impossible to talk against the blast of the air and anyway I couldn’t stop laughing.

Freefall1
Freefall2
Freefall3
Still falling
Still falling

Some thirty seconds and around five thousand feet after leaving the aircraft, Grahame pulled the ripcord. I had expected a violent tug when the parachute opened, but in actual fact the only real sign that something had happened was that Bruce and the camera abruptly vanished. And then… from manic howling madness to gentle floating peace, drifting like thistledown above the bush city and Lake Burley Griffin. Gently we twisted and turned, coasting slowly lower, until eventually we could make out the green cricket ovals, and finally the watchers waiting beneath.

The landing was quiet and serene; we simply lifted our legs up and slid along on our backsides, and the ride was over.

Again! Again!
Again! Again!

And Lyn? She had screamed for the whole free fall, and was hoarse for days afterward. Would she do it again? Absolutely.

Phillip Island

Phillip Island, situated in the Bass Strait between Melbourne and Tasmania, was clearly settled by people from the Isle of Wight in England. Approximately the same shape, it boasts the Wight towns Cowes, Rhyll and Ventnor, and even tails off into a crescent of rocks where The Needles would be, only because these are rather more stumpy, they are here known as The Nobbies. It is also something of a retirement and tourist resort; in short, it’s pretty much a perfect match.

None of these facts figured among the reasons why we chose to go there on Easter weekend. Newly arrived in Australia, we wanted to see these famous Australian animals that every schoolchild learns about, and Phillip Island is not only home to a number of native Australian animal sanctuaries, but also has an unrivalled position as a fertile piece of coastline poking out into what is effectively the Southern Ocean, thus attracting a number of creatures that you would perhaps be more likely to expect to find in the Antarctic. Its also a convenient days drive away from Canberra, and, if you ignore the highway, you can take an entertaining 4WD route through Kosciuszko National Park.

After an exhilarating nine-hour drive into Melbourne, we stopped at a convenient hotel and went out to check the local night life. A bar with a pool table caught our attention, and before long we’d met any number of local people, staggering eventually back to our beds in the small hours of the morning.

A few hours later, fortified by immensely strong coffee, a pile of fried food, and hiding behind dark glasses, we set off once more for the southern coast.

There is a stretch of toll road that takes you through Melbourne, but there are no toll booths. Officious signs warn you regularly that Your Car Has Been Photographed, and If You Have Not Paid Then You Will Be Fined, but there was no way of actually purchasing a toll ticket.

Eventually we saw a sign that said Ring This Number For Queries, so I called it on my mobile. I explained to the nice young man that I was a stupid tourist from Canberra and that I was driving on his motorway without a permit, and he told me that I could pay by credit card. There followed a selection of voice-activated automated instructions, number of credit card, registration number etc – how the hell are you supposed to do this while simultaneously driving on the motorway – after which I was dumped into Please Wait For Operator Assistance. The same man came back on, and said laconically, Oh yeah, the automated system doesn’t recognise out-of-state number plates. And this in one of Victoria’s premier tourist regions…

Our hotel turned out to be a typical leisure complex fronting onto the beach, with buckets and spades, frisbees and sandcastles. After a restorative bite to eat, we headed off to the koala sanctuary.

Koala

Now, everybody knows what a koala is supposed to look like, a kind of sleepy cuddly teddy bear, right? So, obviously, the real thing must be completely different. Er, no. A koala genuinely is a sleepy cuddly teddy bear.

Their chosen foodstuff, the eucalyptus leaf, is so indigestible that they spend several hours stuffing themselves, and then a load more hours just sitting there asleep, waiting for their stomachs to get enough energy out to enable them to wake up and stuff themselves some more. Its a pretty sedentary life, which means that each morning the sanctuary staff can go out into the forest, and underneath each koala high up in its tree, place a sign that says “Here’s One!”, secure in the knowledge that its unlikely to move very far in the coming day.

We also saw a load more classic Australian animals…

Penguin

In the evening, it was time for the Penguin Parade. Every night at dusk, a colony of Little Penguins, who have been out all day chasing fish in the Southern Ocean, swim back to their rookery on Phillip Island.

In order to get from the safety of the water to the safety of their dune burrows, however, they have to cross an open expanse of beach, and this is where a stepped auditorium has been constructed so that the public can sit quietly and watch.

It really is an amazing and extremely amusing sight. The birds swim lithely into the shallows, and then attempt to struggle to their feet. Bearing in mind that they can’t use their short flippers to aid them, this is something of an effort, and since they don’t dare go out onto the sand – where a predator may be waiting – they do it in the waves, using the momentum for one wave to stand them up, only for the next one to knock them down again. More and more penguins gather in little clumps, appearing in flashes of white and then tumbling like dominoes, making occasional forays onto the shore but always chickening out and running back into the waves, until suddenly a group will seem to get a quorum and all head up the beach together in a purposeful waddle. Although it really is comical, their persistence is awe inspiring.

The influx lasts for hours, and if you follow the birds up into the dunes, you can see them determinedly heading up through the dunes, pedalling their little bodies through the undergrowth, and issuing plaintive little brrrrp? noises and then listening for a reply in an attempt to find their mates and their nests. To think that they go through this every night!

Seal Rocks

The following day, we caught a boat out beyond The Nobbies to Seal Rocks. It was a pleasant ride, with the crew telling tales of the local people, and rich kids on sea-doos buzzing in our wake. In the distance we could see the Rocks sticking out of the sea. “You can’t see them,” said the nearest crew member, “but I can see about ten thousand seals right now.”

He wasn’t kidding. When we got closer, we realised that what we’d thought was rock was practically all occupied by seal, and all around were more seals playing in the waves, swimming out and then surfing in on their bellies, leaping out of the waves in gay abandon. The boat was an instant hit, too. Around us, the sea boiled with eager brown faces, a veritable seal soup. I’ve seen seals before, but never like this.

French Island

There was an agricultural show on neighbouring French Island, so we spent some time admiring the working horses there.

Back on Phillip, we took a stroll down to The Nobbies to see the sunset.

Overland to Eden

Having just bought a shiny new 4WD, it seemed rude not to take it out somewhere. Up until now, we had been using hire cars which restricted us to the state of Australian Capital Territory. Since the ACT is only about 50km across, we had found this somewhat limiting; now, with our very own vehicle, we could venture into neighbouring New South Wales. Hurrah!

The plan was to set out after work from Canberra in an easterly direction until we hit the sea, then to follow the coast southward for an unspecified distance before turning back inland and then finally north back up to Canberra, a long weekend’s rectangular journey in the south-eastern corner of New South Wales (and indeed of Australia).

Once out onto the Kings Highway, just across the state border, we encountered our first examples of Australian Sign Humour: enormous billboards for a Bungedore turf grower stating such gems as “Our Grass is Legal”, and “The Secret of a Good Root is in the Bedding”. Onward, though, to the coast.

Batemans Bay

Batemans Bay is, frankly, a tourist and retirement resort. It does, however, occupy a lovely stretch of coastline, and is home not only to a huge fleet of pelicans, but also to a particularly good fish and chip shop. Positioned on stilts in the waters of the bay itself, the shop has mooring for its own fishing trawler at one end, a central curtained area where the fish are gutted and prepared, and a scattering of tables and a door to dry land and passing customers at the other. It is difficult to see how you can buy fish that are any fresher. The blackboard tells you what they caught that morning, and whatever it is, it can get battered and fried. As poms accustomed to cod and chips, we were a little surprised to find battered yellow-fin tuna on the menu; and very succulent it was indeed.

However, night was falling, and we needed somewhere to stay. A little way down the coast was the town of Moruya, and after checking into a convenient motel, we ventured out to see what it had to offer. The answer, it appeared, was very little. It was only early evening, but everything was closed, apart from a couple of pubs and a Chinese restaurant. Undaunted, we popped in for a nice meal washed down with decent Australian wine, and headed back to the motel.

The whole of that eastern seaboard is littered with National Parks. Not only do the enormous Morton, Budawang, Dua and Wadbilliga parks form a thick green belt some thirty kilometres inland, but also the actual coastline itself is almost all protected environment. Once heavily logged, the government has tried very hard to maintain these fertile forests, criss-crossed by numerous dirt tracks leading apparently to nowhere but suddenly emerging onto spectacular headlands or winding their way between the enormous trees themselves.

We spent the day bouncing randomly along these tracks, never knowing where we were going but always sure that the next view would be as wondrous as the last, passing names steeped in probably forgotten history: Potato Point, Mystery Bay, Disaster Bay; until finally we fetched up in Bega.

Bega

We’d figured that since Bega was quite a large town with some local industry, there might be a little more in the way of nightlife. However, after hopefully walking up and down the main drag a few times, we came to realise that there were only a couple of pubs and no restaurant at all. One of the pubs, however, advertised food, so we wandered in and found that along with our pints we could order some pretty decent Chinese cooking, so we sat down and tucked in.

The meal was very nice, but after a while we realised that the eatery was already closing, and we had now exhausted the cultural delights of Bega. Another beer, and out into the outside world.

An enormous electric storm blew up. Great sheets of lightning hurled themselves across the darkened skies. Forks set out in three directions at once from a single locus, pounding into cloud-heads and into the ground. We stood in the motel car park, awestruck. You really don’t get storms like this in Europe, especially without any rain.

Eden and the Whaling Museum

In the morning, with dark clouds still louring overhead, we headed on down the coast until, topping a rise, we were confronted by golden columns of sunlight pouring through a ragged tear in the cloud layer, illuminating the little town of Eden. Immediately we could see how it got its name. We were in the middle of one of Australia’s worst droughts, but here all was a promised land of lush and green. Apart from the heat, we could have been in the original South Wales rather than its eponymous antipodean counterpart – although, to be sure, there is some historical doubt whether Cook, who named the area, had ever actually visited Wales. I like to think, though, that there was a Welshman in his crew who looked out and saw a vision of home.

Eden was once considered as a suitable site for Australia’s capital city, in a move to restart its then moribund economy. For some fifty years it had enjoyed the status of Australia’s premier whaling centre, almost the country’s sole source of whale meat and products until the coming of offshore factory ships and a decrease in the need for whale products.

The families that ran the whaling operations were greatly dependent on a pack of local killer whales. These orcas would round up other whales and herd them into the bay. Then their leader, Old Tom, would leap up and down in the water outside the whalers lookout, until the men noticed and got their boats out and rowed with their harpoons to the luckless prey. Occasionally in his excitement, Old Tom would despair of the whalers’ slow rowing speed, and would grab hold of the painter and tow them out.

Then, once the target had been harpooned and killed, the whalers would buoy it and leave it overnight. Old Tom and his pod would just take the lips and tongue, and leave everything else for the men in the morning.

Eventually Old Tom died, and a local landowner built a museum to house his skeleton. This museum has grown somewhat organically into a fascinating exhibition accommodating everything from whaling to local tree-felling to stories of the sea, but the central piece is still Old Tom himself. If you look at his teeth, you can clearly see where they have been worn away by pulling on the harpooners’ tow ropes.

Australia's Strangest Shipwreck Saga
A story from the Eden archives, confirmed by Lloyds of London.

On the 16th October 1829, the schooner Mermaid left Sydney bound for Western Australia. Four days later, while lying becalmed in the Torres Straits, an unexpected gale blew her onto reefs bursting her hull. The twenty-two people aboard were marooned on some rocks for three days until rescued by the barque Swiftsure.

Five days later, the Swiftsure was caught in a strong current off New Guinea and was wrecked on rocks. All hands, including those rescued from the Mermaid, made it to land. Eight hours later they were all rescued by the schooner Governor Ready, which was already carrying 32 people but which managed to cram the other two crews aboard.

Within three hours, the timber cargo caught fire and the combined crews took to the lifeboats. The cutter Comet picked them all up without loss of life.

A week later, the Comet ran into a squall that snapped her mast. Her crew took the only serviceable boat, leaving the formerly rescued crews, who they regarded as being jinxed, to their fate. For eighteen hours the survivors fought off sharks as they clung to the wrecked ship, but they all survived to be rescued by the packet Jupiter.

By a strange coincidence, a passenger on this last ship was an elderly lady from Yorkshire who was on her way to Australia to seek her son who'd been missing for fifteen years. She found him amongst the survivors - he was a crewman from the Mermaid, the first of the vessels wrecked.

Cooma

Westwards, then, into the setting sun, along a dirt track connecting to the Monaro Highway, and then northward to Cooma, a mere hop skip and a jump from the southernmost borders of ACT. A little sensitive to the fact that most of the towns we were passing could justly be described as one-horse, and a little tired of Chinese food, we’d set on Cooma as our destination because it is a major tourist area in the ski season. Surely here there would be some night-life. There was, in fact, a tourist centre, and we went in and explained our plight.

The woman scratched her head. A restaurant? She took us outside, and pointed at the building next door, indisputably a restaurant, but just as indisputably closed. She shrugged.

Perhaps one of the motels did food? We took directions to the largest, parked in relief under the huge RESTAURANT OPEN sign, and checked in. When could we eat? we asked. The young Canadian girl (“I married an Australian so I could move to Sydney, and we ended up in this godforsaken place”) shook her head. Their restaurant was closed. She rang around some of the other motels, but no, their restaurants were all closed too. Then she brightened. “If you cross the road, over by the ski shop, in a few moments the Chinese will be open. Best restaurant in town.”

Canberra

Arrival in Canberra

Many moons ago, the Australians decided that their newly formed Federation of States needed a proper capital. The individual state capitals – Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart – fought long and hard for the privilege, until everybody got fed up with the bickering and decided to put the capital somewhere else.

A few sites were considered, but in the end the Australians took a patch of unremarkable sheep-farming land spanning the borders of New South Wales and Victoria, and made a new state, Australian Capital Territory, in which to build their new city. After some more in-fighting, during which committee-generated names such as SydMelAdPerBrisHo were suggested, the city was named Canberra.

The architect, something of a visionary called Burley-Griffin (or possibly his wife, but that’s another story), knew from the start that this city was going to be different. Rather than clear-fell and sterilise the area before putting up the buildings, he decided to insert the city into the bush itself. A lake was required as a focal point in this waterless wilderness, so he created not one but two by the judicious use of dams. Seven separate centres were built scattered about the new lakes, each with their own shopping malls, business zones and housing. Building plots were sold with the understanding that, once you’d built your property, the government would stock the garden with mature local trees and shrubs, and much of the land between the centres was designated as national parkland, forming huge stretches of green-belt wilderness criss-crossed only by cycle paths.

On our arrival some fifty years later, it was clear that the vision was still working. One of the first things any visitor should do is drive to the top of nearby Mount Ainslie, and look down over central Canberra. In front of you, you see the lake, the two parliament buildings – the old and the new – with the famous flagpole standing above them, and off to one side, a small cluster of office buildings that constitutes the centre of Civic. Everything else is bush and trees. But wait, just stand and concentrate… amongst the trees you see a house. And then another one. And another. Until you realise that what at first glance seems to be forest horizon to horizon, is actually all the living, breathing city of Canberra.

We arrived by train from Sydney, on the basis that after twenty two hours (with only a one-hour break in Kuala Lumpur) on a plane from Holland, we couldn’t face even the local internal hop or another moment in an airport. It turned out to be an excellent decision, as well as an introduction to Australia in microcosm. Sitting in our air-conditioned first class seats, sipping local Chardonnay and dining on roast chicken, we soon found ourselves involved in numerous of conversations with passers by, interested to know who we were and what we were doing; imagine this happening on an intercity train in any European country.

Half way to Canberra, the train stopped unexpectedly. After about five minutes, the attendant (who up until now had mainly been saying things like “Next station is Wogga, population 12, the platform is very small and we are only stopping for two minutes, so please do not go wandering”) came on the tannoy to announce “We apologise for the fact that the train has stopped. The driver is now trying to restart the engine. When he succeeds we will be on our way…”

In the distance we could faintly hear the grind of an enormous diesel turning over; we could almost picture the driver standing on the track, winding a huge starting handle. Meanwhile, nobody so much as glanced at their watch or frowned. Conversations continued without interruption, and when the engine eventually shuddered into life and the train restarted its journey, nobody thought it worthy of comment.

Our arrival in the capital city was surreal. It was built to house a million souls, and so far only about 350,000 have moved in, so there is practically no traffic on the huge 3-lane highways, no public transport to speak of, and only one taxi company. Canberra International Airport is an airstrip borrowed from the air force, and when we arrived at the train station, it was like something out of a Western; a simple platform, baking heat, and nothing at all moving. All it needed was eerie harmonica music and a bouncing tumbleweed.

What traffic there is in Canberra, is mainly utes, what other cultures would call a flatbed or a pick-up. However, no bashed about working vehicles these. It is the dream of every young lad to own a ute, with darkened windows, pearlescent paint job, wide alloy wheels and a thundering exhaust. In fact, Ford and Holden (the local name for Vauxhall/Opel/GM) make hot utes just for this market, great for cruising in the evenings but not enormously useful for actually carrying stuff to market. For a moment I toyed with the idea of owning one myself, cruising across the red desert with arm on window ledge, stereo blaring… but then I realised that the other main vehicle here is the four wheel drive, somewhat more practical for the intense touring that we intend to do, and so off we went looking for a twin-cab Toyota Land Cruiser.

However, in a dusty corner of the Toyota dealership they had a part-exchanged Nissan Pathfinder, with electric everything, CD player, aircon, and for two thirds the price… after a test drive, I fell in love with it.

After the bush fires

Once you’ve got yourself a set of wheels, it is only an hour or so from Canberra up into the Snowy Mountains, which (like much of the ACT) is mainly national parkland. Much of it is natural bush, but great swathes of it were until recently experimental plantations of imported pine. These famously exploded into a firestorm shortly before our arrival, wiping out around four hundred houses in one of the outlying suburbs, and forests as far as the eye can see.

The pine plantations are all dead, mile upon mile of burnt sticks projecting from crumbly scorched earth, eerily silent apart from the buzz of flies around the occasional charcoaled animal corpse.

The local flora, on the other hand, is well adjusted to regular burning. Without an oily carpet of pine needles to keep the heat in, the earth below the native forest is unscarred, still healthy and brown, and heat-triggered seeds, dormant for years, spring into life to take advantage of the cleared growing conditions.

Native grasses burn back to a central nub, but soon sprout a short green felting of fresh tips. Up in the highlands, a ranger shows us a banksia, which has stubbornly refused to flower for the last fifteen years, covered in new buds triggered by the heat of the fire that has turned the surrounding limestone ash-white.

The ubiquitous eucalypt’s flaky bark burns but then peels off, revealing fresh wood beneath, and hidden buds push their way through the charcoal, sprouting fresh and green against the black, all silhouetted against the stunning blue of the sky. So striking is this landscape – the 2003 firestorm notwithstanding, bush fires are a fact of life here – that I reckon that the Australian national colours should be black, green and blue.

Pine burns and is forever charcoal. In contrast, local plants such as this eucalypt pause for a week or so and then burst forth with new life.

Somewhere to live

After a few weeks in a hotel, we managed to find a house. The rental industry here is certainly interesting; each property is made available for viewing for a single hour. In that time, as many hopeful renters pack in as possible; afterward, you all fill in your application forms. These forms are then shortlisted according to how much the agent liked you (chatting them up works wonders here), and then – get this – the short list is sent to the actual owners, who get the last word. If they don’t like foreigners, or people with odd names, or whatever, then out you go. Whether you’re the best tenant in terms of past history or income level is at this point completely irrelevant. Very strange.

After going through the mill a couple of times, we rented privately, which made a lot more sense, and we ended up with this vast (by European standards) 4-bedroom house practically on the shores of Lake Gininderra, and a short cycle ride to work.

And what a cycle ride! To commute to my office, I cycle down a mud track to the lake, and then pedal around the shore, past the pelicans and cormorants, with parrots and cockatoos flying overhead, swerving to avoid bright blue swamp-hens, until I arrive at the office. How cool is that?

On the way home from work, I often meet Lyn by the lake-shore and we feed the pelicans, swans and ducks. You get a few scratches – they’re big creatures, and wild and excitable – but smart, the way most Australian bird life seems to be smart, and easily taught which bits are food and which bits need gentler treatment.

Back at the house, I built a bird feeding station, in an attempt to attract some wildlife, with extraordinary results; we regularly see twenty parrots, a dozen cockatoos, as many bronze-wings (sort of pigeon-like with dinosaur crests), magpies (big smart piebald birds), sundry smaller critters, and even a goshawk that catches prey and then nonchalantly plucks it on our lawn.

Australians often tell you that Canberra is boring. They are wrong.

No worries. No worries at all.

Malta

The Maltese speciality food is rabbit, which you can buy roasted, stewed, or made up into a spaghetti sauce. After a few days on the island, you realise that this is because the terrain does not lend itself to the existence of any larger animals, or indeed to any kind of farming at all.

The landscape is uniformly scattered with white head-sized boulders, offering little cover to anything apart from rabbits and small birds. The former are, evidently, eaten. The latter are the subject of the national sport of shooting at them, the smaller the better. Every fifty metres or so of the rubble-strewn landscape is equipped with dry-stone hides providing protection from the sun and a good view of a selection of artificial wire and wood perches designed to tempt the little finches and tits above ground level.

Any doubts of the ubiquity of the lunar landscape are easily dispelled. Climb to the top of the nearest convenient hillock and you see the whole island spread before you, a flat dish centred on the enormous dome of Mosta cathedral. Any visitor quickly realises that most of the Maltese maps and signposts are incorrect, wishful or just plain imaginary, and we soon discovered that the easiest way to navigate was to drive to the top of the nearest rise, spot the Mosta Dome, and take it from there.

In fact, driving anywhere on Malta is an interesting experience. Although the roads are technically tarmac, much time and a lot of traffic has passed since they was originally laid, and in the intervening years they have simply been patched over and over again, until now there are very few places where the original road surface can still be seen. There are holes and craters everywhere; while we were there, a crack opened up in the middle of the main road outside our hotel which was fully a metre long, half a metre wide, and of cavernous depth. It yawned, unheralded, for most of our stay, after which a half-hearted attempt was made to fill it up with tarmac, reducing its depth to a mere foot or so below the road level.

Mix all this with Italian-style foot-to-the-floor style of driving, a propensity for fast cars, and a complete disregard for other vehicles’ bodywork, and driving becomes an exhilarating experience. This is not to say that the Maltese are bad drivers; on the whole they seem to be highly skilled (possibly there is some Darwinism at work here) and they are polite and courteous on the road… until you show signs of hesitation or weakness, at which point they move in for the kill. It was for this reason that we were not overly distressed when our original hire car, an elderly Escort, was stolen on the first night, because the replacement Hyundai had much more power and responsive handling and allowed us to level the playing field a little.

Two strong themes persisted during our stay, and coloured everything that we saw. The first is a very long and strong sense of history. Malta is home to the oldest structures in the world, pre-dating the pyramids and Stonehenge.

Millennia later, much of its modern history was dominated by the Knights Templar, who pretty much owned the place for hundreds of years, and who built forts and castles against what they saw as heathen Moorish pirates.

However, the Moorish influence is clear in the Maltese language, which is clearly of Arabic origin although – uniquely – written using the Latin alphabet. More recent history includes Malta’s legendary stand in the last World War, and its current status as a freeport and financial centre.

The second striking thing about Malta is the intense pride that the locals have in, well, everything. This is particularly evident in Valetta’s small but excellent War Museum, where tales and pictures of the good natured stoicism of the civilian population under siege invite comparison with blitzkrieg London. Drawing such a comparison is probably not all that surprising, as Malta is intensely British. Although it gained independence in 1976, the whole population is bilingual in Maltese and English, and (apart from the Arabic street names) a glance up any shopping street could easily fool you that you were in some English town.

A fleet of ancient but lovingly restored English motor coaches, long retired from active service elsewhere in the world, form the local bus service. Each resplendent in yellow and orange livery, with the exact make and model proudly displayed in sprawling calligraphy where in earlier times you might expect to see a destination plate, these owner-operated dinosaurs provide a noisy, uncomfortable and unreliable service over the potholed roads. Apparently immune from even the few observed road laws, they appear to have a special dispensation to operate without lights, which can be somewhat alarming late at night.

While driving, walking, or simply standing still on any convenient hillock, you cannot help but notice that there seem to be rather a lot of churches. Maltese churches tend to excess. Every small town raises money to support its own church by local subscription, resulting in a certain amount of one-upmanship between neighbouring communities. Many local churches thus more closely resemble mainland cathedrals than places of daily worship, the whole process culminating in the enormous structure on the neighbouring island of Gozo, apparently built in direct competition to the Mosta dome.

It can be surprisingly difficult to get into these churches, as they keep short and irregular opening hours, but it is often worthwhile. In many of them, the walls are covered from floor to ceiling with red tapestry, and the floors are made entirely from colourful marble tombstones.

This small country is a gem. We spent days wandering the byways of the ancient towns, discovering tiny restaurants that turned out to be amazing gourmet experiences. There are fascinating corners such as the little museum of ancient working life in Gharb, and the bone-filled catacombs of Rabat. And don’t get me started on the excellent local wines…

Mallorca

Since Adam had secured himself a contract in Mallorca, it seemed rude not to visit him, so one weekend I packed a toothbrush and set off for Palma. After an initial foray around the bars of the city and a few hours of kip, we ate some painkillers, bought some sunglasses, and headed off to explore the island.

Despite the hordes of English and German tourists that line its shores, Mallorca is still very much a Spanish (or, in view of its somewhat partisan nature, I should say Catalan) island. Tourism is highly concentrated in a few definite areas, leaving the rest of the island relatively unspoilt. Only relatively few visitors bother to hire a car and explore the interior, which is a pity. Or not, depending on your point of view.

The island itself consists mainly of a flat plain, edged along the western seaboard by a small mountain range. Scattered here and there across the flat portion are little isolated outcrops of rock, each standing high and proud above the terrain, and each equipped with a lonely castle, hermitage, chapel or convent. Many of these buildings are exquisitely decorated, and a privilege to visit.

Palma itself, the capital of Mallorca, retains a strong local flavour. The old town, although replete with restaurants and the inevitable Irish bars, has a genuinely busy Catalan night life that remains largely unaffected by the huge parties and clubs in the nearby resort of Magaluff, although you’re as likely to meet a resident ex-pat as a true local. They go all night, too. At five in the morning, street life resembles mid-evening in any northern European city, apart of course from the comfortable temperature and the universally happy faces.

In the daytime, the castle-like cathedral dominates the Palma skyline. The inside, however, somehow disappoints, even though all the right ingredients are there. Intensely coloured windows high up in the walls refract coloured light onto the ceiling, but it only seems to plunge the many monuments and chapels into gloomy darkness. Having said that, the altar major is exceedingly impressive, a Woodroffe-esque flight of oil lamps circling above the altar amid a sculpture of sails and reeds.

We pretty much circumnavigated the island over the weekend, and were presented with a continuous barrage of breathtaking views. Here are couple from the northern coast.

Hidden away in one corner of the western mountain range is a spectacular road. Aptly named Sa Calobra (The Cobra), it plummets via a knot-work of switchback hairpins from the heights down to the sea. There isn’t much to see at the bottom, but that isn’t important, it is the road itself that is the whole point of the journey. This area is made from a brittle white limestone that is scarred by rainfall and sculpted into the most amazing shapes. Sadly for this record, we descended in the gathering dusk and so I don’t have too many pictures, but if you’re ever on Mallorca with access to any vehicle at all, my advice is simple: drive it down The Cobra. You won’t regret it.

The Jaufenpass

We’d been having a lot of fun in Tuscany, but it was time for Patrick and Helga to return to work. I was resting between contracts and fancy-free, and had intended to carry on to the south of Italy. However, the weather was getting uncomfortably hot and I was hankering for some cool mountain breezes, so we formed the familiar delta formation and headed northward together.

In Modena, the others peeled off for Switzerland, and I headed in the direction of the Brenner Pass and Austria. The day continued hot hot hot, so I just hung in there at a steady 160 kph and waited for some altitude. It certainly got higher, the temperature dropped barely at all.

It was a Sunday, and the only way that I could get fuel was to feed my few remaining 10,000 lire notes into automated petrol pumps, so by the time I reached Varna I was not only low on fuel but hungry and broke as well. I pulled into a hotel/campsite/restaurant where a nice young girl took half my remaining cash in exchange for a place to pitch my tent, and told me that there was a bank machine just up the road. She was right, but it was broken.

Still, I had enough cash for a few beers, so after pitching my tent I wandered over to the bar, where a rather lovely Goth girl not only served me a well-deserved Weissbier, but also told me that if I hung around for another hour then the kitchen would open, and – joy of joys! – after that I could put my entire bill onto Visa. Several hours, a number of beers and a splendid meal later, I was joined by a German couple, and we laughed and told stories until it was time to stumble to bed.

In the morning, my new friends stopped by my tent on their 600 trailie and mentioned that instead of taking the Brenner Pass, they’d found a guide book that recommended the smaller and little-known Jaufenpass towards Otzal. Somewhat later, after leisurely breakfast, I followed, and soon found myself tearing around a tiny, crumbling and deserted switchback road, heart swelling with that sheer unadulterated joy that only comes from riding a bike fast in the mountains. As awe-inspiring view replaced stunning vista, I was both figuratively and literally on top of the world.

The pass dropped into a deep bowl, containing the attractive little town of St Leonhard, awash now with the lunchtime thunder of motorcycle exhausts. I considered staying to look around, but I was hungry for more and was soon climbing up some crazy mule-track of a road, emerging on a high ridge looking out onto a wall of alps stretching from side to side across the world. Here I caught up with the Germans again, who were having a great time, but who had blown a
headlamp bulb and were thus having some nervous moments in the tunnels. I rode point for them down to the Austrian border, and then at the toll booth found that once again I didn’t have enough cash for the crossing. Luckily, however, I found a forgotten envelope of German Marks deep in my luggage, so they let me through.

We continued in tandem down the other side until we got caught up in a snarl of bikes doing no more than 80 kph on beautiful winding roads. Not only was it a crying shame, but the sun was beating down on my leathers and I was getting uncomfortably hot, so I waved goodbye to my friends and got the hell out of there. Once up to cruising speed, I thought that I may as well stay there – and in any case the toll booth had stripped me of all my remaining cash – so I settled in until I dropped out of the mountains and onto the autobahn.

Munich (Germany)

I was going to meet up with Moz in Munich, but he was still at work when I arrived, so I scouted the local bars and settled, as usual, for the one with the most attractive barmaids. When Moz finally turned up, the shift changed, and we began to be served by Carole, who seemed to run the place. She turned out to be such fun and we had such a good time that we simply stayed there for the rest of the evening.

I had no real plans for my next destination, and sitting there under the stars in the middle of the night, chatting over yet another bottle of the bars best wine, I thought to myself, why move on? I could cheerfully come back to this bar every night.

So I stayed.

From Cortina to Venice to Siena

Cortina

Dropping out of the Grossglockner Pass down to Cortina, we successfully located a bank machine, and began looking for a hotel. Since I’d just made myself a millionaire – last chance before the coming of the Euro! – it seemed only sensible to stay at the best place in town. A Hotel de Poste valet fought for the privilege of being driven by Helga to the parking lot, while the manager ushered the bikes into the vaults beneath the hotel. The rooms’ jacuzzis eased away the aches of the day, and, through the window, the jagged peaks of the Dolomites rocked to the lights of an electric storm. All it needed was some Barolo and Chianti to end a perfect day.

Helga had become adept at picking superb biking roads from the map, and the next day she excelled herself. Patrick and I thrashed our bikes unmercifully, and soon, having regularly redlined in every gear, I began at last to regard the XJR as being fully run-in. After a mind-bending run down to Belluno, we got onto the autovia to Venice, riding in delta formation behind the Alfa, and making occasional forays into the distance whenever we felt the urge.

We weren’t actually heading for Venice itself, but for the Lido de Jesolo, a long thin peninsula that curves around to a point just short of the canal city. The promontary is one long beach packed with campsites, equipped with a regular ferry service into Venice itself, and we soon found ourselves a suitable berth in amongst a load of caravans.

Venice

The following morning saw us all crammed into the Spider for the short hop to the ferry, and we spent a pleasant morning ambling around the Venetian side-streets and back-alleys. The stripy-shirted gondola touts were out in force, and when we happened on a small fleet of particularly fine gondolas under the Rialto Bridge, we stopped and asked how long we got for our no doubt exorbitant fee. “Ah, said the gondoleer, we prefer-a not to think in-a terms of time. We think in-a terms of experience. You want-a the short trip, the medium trip, or the long trip?”

For 300,000 lire (about GBP 100), we took the long trip. Patrick and Helga were ensconced in some style on a padded throne, while JP and myself sprawled out at the sharp end. The man had promised to take us to corners where nobody else went, and we were somewhat surprised to find him true to his word. From the crowded main thoroughfares, where fleets of overladen gondolas jammed end-to-end with coachloads of tourists jostled for space with bargeloads of vegetables, we slipped smoothly into a maze of cathedral-silent canals backing onto old Venetian palaces, cruising the vivid green water and quietly wondering at things in hushed tones so as not to disturb the peace. It was quite a magical experience, and in the end the gondolier was right, we had no idea how long wed spent on the water, but all of it had been thoroughly enjoyable.

Back on land, the day was hotting up and the crowds were thickening. An hour-long queue snaked around the heat-bowl of San Marco on the way into the Doges Palace, so we jumped on a ferry bound for the Lido to see what was there. The answer appeared to be not much, but we had a fine time sitting at a streetside bar and watching the girls go by, until finally wending our way back to the ferry and to our sandy home.

On the beach was a bar restaurant which boasted an internet cafe, and since I was not only in the process of arranging an email mortgage but was also hoping for a job offer in the sun, I thought Id give it a go. Sitting only metres from the sand, I fired up the PC as the beautiful barmaid brought me the first beer of the night. This, I thought, is the life. But sadly, it was not to be. I couldn’t get a connection, whatever I tried. The barmaid poked heroically at it for a while, and then declared with pretty gestures that she’d have to call the expert. This worthy duly emerged, drying his hands, from the kitchen where he’d been washing dishes. He clicked on a few icons and then stood back, shaking his head. “Is-a the internet,” he explained, “sometimes it-a work, sometimes it-a not work. Try tomorrow?”

Tuscany

The following day saw us hammering down the autostrada towards Firenze. The truckers all loved the chick in the red sports car, and pumped their horns manfully, although they couldn’t quite work out what to make of the two powerful motorcycles hovering protectively by her back bumper. The sun was very bright and we were all wearing sunglasses, which became problematical in the frequent dimly lit tunnels, where all we could see were the faint disembodied glow-worms of tail-lights floating in the air before us. Still, we made it through alive, and at last Patrick guided us off into the wilderness toward Imprunetta, where he knew of an agrituristico where maybe we could get a room.

Theoretically, this is a kind of working farm where you can stay, but the Agriturismo Vecchio Borgo di Inalbi is a far cry from a farmhouse B&B. Exquisite little terracotta-tiled apartments are scattered amongst olive groves, the whole set in a chianti vinyard and supplied with a restaurant and swimming pools. Over dinner, we soon discovered that although the food and service, although passable, weren’t exactly cordon bleu, the wine was out of this world. Discarding the suggested carafes, we insisted on their best, a rich thick dark 1998 Chianti, which (to their evident delight) we proceeded to drink by the crate for the duration of our stay.

Tuscany is made for motorbikes. Stripped down to the barest minimum of protective clothing – the temperature was in the forties – Patrick and I howled around the local roads, grinning like maniacs, while Helga and JP lounged by the pool. Occasionally we’d stop in some tiny bar for a cooling ice tea or perfect Italian coffee, being politely ignored by unsmiling men nursing a plate of sausage and something in a small glass. In the towns and villages, children would point at the bikes. Strangely, they would dismiss the exotic but Italian-made Ducati, and would stare in awe at the XJR until they could make out the badge, upon which they would stare wonderingly at each other and breathlessly exclaim, “Yamaha!”

Siena

One evening we all visited nearby Siena, a marvellous maze of steeply sloping alleyways clustered about a vivid green-and-white striped cathedral and of course the huge bowl-shaped Piazza del Campo, the finish line for the bi-annual Palio, the famous bare-backed horse race through the town.

We arrived at the Piazza in twilight, just as the pavement cafes were lighting the candles, and we sat and watched the people taking an evening stroll or simply sitting and absorbing the atmosphere.

The chef of the back street restaurant that we chose had won the Palio in 1967, and such is the respect that this engenders that, when we asked, the waiters discuss it in hushed tones, beneath walls filled with pictures of his triumph.

They take the Palio seriously in Siena.

The Grossglockner Pass

Munich (Germany)

It all started in Munich. Helga, her young son Jean-Paul and I all drove to Patrick’s place in preparation for our week or so in Italy. Considering that we’d just spent six hours on the road, and were planning to spend much of the foreseeable future driving, Helga and JP did the sensible thing and went to bed. Come midnight, of course, Patrick and I were sitting under the Maximillian statue in downtown Munich, hoping that a friend would eventually turn up and show us where the party was at. Sure enough, at one in the morning he eventually decanted from a taxi and took us to a wonderful rave in what appeared to be an old school, where we danced and watched the girls until the sun came up.

Only then did we set off, a somewhat bizarre convoy of Patricks Ducati 748, my fully laden XJR 1200, and Helga and JP in Patrick’s recently restored Alfa Spider.

We were supposed to be doing the long haul to Venice, but what with all the fun we had burning around the mountains in the sun, and time out for an impromptu dip in the lake at Achsen, we decided to make for our familiar ski-resort of Zell am See instead.

Zell am See (Austria)

Patrick and I were having a fantastic ride, ranging ahead of the car and racing each other and everybody else up and down the mountains, pausing every now and then to catch our breath and wait for Helga to catch up. It was wonderful, and we arrived content but thirsty at a campsite close to Zell, where we were delighted to find that the bar was open.

Several beers later we got around to having some food, and then, just as we were getting stuck in to the post-prandial refreshment, we realised that (a) we didn’t have any Austrian cash, and (b) they didn’t accept Visa. No matter. Leaving the others at the table, Helga and I nipped into town in the Spider, where my cash card put the machine into such a flurry that it had to reboot. Warily we tried a second machine with Patrick’s card, which Helga happened to have with her, and luckily it behaved long enough to give us some Schillings. Hurrah! We set off for the campsite… only to realise that we were now thoroughly lost.

After about an hour of driving around in the dark, visiting several campsites on the way, we began to laugh at the thought of poor Patrick, sitting in the bar with JP, while I was cruising around in his sports car with his girl and his credit card. To put his mind at rest, we called his mobile… which began to ring quietly in his jacket in the boot of the car. We turned into yet another darkened campsite. The fuel began to run out. Fortunately, after some furious backtracking, we made it back to the correct site, to find JP entertaining the (now off-duty) waiter with his comic book while Patrick desperately searched the tents for spare change. All in all we were too exhausted to stay for the live band, and crept, embarrassed, to bed.

The next day we decided to take the famous Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse into Italy, but before we got anywhere near it, we found ourselves inexplicably drawn to the ski rental store on the Kaprun glacier. It was blazing hot in the middle of summer, and the surface of the glacier was awash with slush, but it was simply such a ridiculous idea that we just had to go skiing.

By lunchtime, though, the glacier was so wet that it was like skiing a blancmange, so we handed back our ski equipment and set off once again for the Grossglockner.

Weirdly, although the toll booths accepted just about any form of cash, they didn’t take credit cards, so we had to part with almost all of our notes and coins in a medley of different currencies just to get onto the pass. However, it was well worth it; the road was great fun and the views excellent. We stopped for nothing, not even photographs, and coming down the other side, Patrick and I just let go and rode completely balls-out.

About half way down the switchback mountain road, I became aware of the smell of burning rubber. As I overtook the next half-dozen cars and slammed into yet another hairpin, I noticed that the smell was getting stronger and I began to wonder just how hot my brakes were getting. A couple more cars dropped by, and suddenly I could see smoke, and then began to grin because now I could see the flames, too. Id tucked in behind a large German family packed into an elderly Opel, and I crept forward to knock on the window. What? shouted the children in the back as neck and neck we negotiated the next curve. Your wheel’s on fire! I yelled, in German. And it was, too.

Much later, the mountains spat us out onto a beautiful section of freshly made road, running through forested foothills and valleys, rolling us eventually into the pretty Italian town of Cortina.

Following the St Lawrence River

Canada is big; really big. We had been under the impression that we were going to Canada for our holidays, but on our return from three weeks of travelling, we’ve realised that at no time did we leave the geographical environs of just one particular river. Admittedly, the St Lawrence does cover a lot of ground, passing through the Great Lakes, including Niagara Falls and Lake Ontario, running up through Quebec and eventually emerging into the northern Atlantic, a distance of some 4000 kilometres, but one waterway does not a country make. On the other hand, we didn’t exactly spend our time sitting on the beach.

Toronto

We spent a week in the Toronto area with our friends Phil and Penny, who live in what can only be described as the posh end of Toronto, the Beaches, with its own lake shore board-walk and an excellent bar called Captain Jack’s, where the wonderful Tanya learnt how to mix increasingly fierce Manhattans for the curious pair of Englishmen, one hairy and the other shaven-headed, who had blundered into her bar in the middle of the night.

We spent our days checking out the extensive selection of locally brewed beers and a number of tourist attractions, some more obvious than others. The CN Tower, a major feature of the famous Toronto skyline and the tallest building in the world, was, well, very tall indeed.

The Badlands, a curious geological feature formed from pink clay, was very weird, and Black Creek, a recreated 1860s pioneer village, was fascinating.

All the guide books warned that we would be disappointed by Niagara (most reprinting the old adage that it is the “new bride’s second great disappointment”), but in actual fact the Falls are awesome, especially when viewed from one of the Maid of the Mist fleet of pleasure boats that take you right inside the curve of the Horseshoe Falls. Looking around me on the deck, I couldn’t see a single face, young or old, that wasn’t fixed in a crazy grin amidst the thunder and the spray.

After the spectacle, we weren’t too keen to return to the bright lights and amusement arcades in town, and the Lonely Planet Guide – which quickly became our infallible bible for the trip – recommended a walk up the gorge, so we took the shuttle bus to the far end of the resort (for resort it most definitely is) and clambered down to river level for the long walk back up the valley. The gorge was indeed spectacular, bounded by sheer cliff faces and packed with enough trees and undergrowth to make the going rough enough to be amusing.

I had spoken to a park ranger at the top, who pointed out that we we were going to get wet. “Rain doesn’t bother us,” I responded… but boy, when the heavens opened, things got a bit messy down there. Those vertical cliffs became impromptu muddy waterfalls, and we were drenched in minutes. The unmarked trail that we were following became a series of cascading rapids, and when we finally got to the famous Whirlpool, we were hard pressed to tell where it ended and the land began. Once we finally dragged ourselves out of the gorge, we found that the buses had stopped running – we’d spent too long sheltering under a rock – but we hitched into town and were very grateful to pour ourselves into a convenient Planet Hollywood, where the staff were equally diligent at pouring cocktails into our rapidly drying bodies.

Kingston

The following week saw us staying with our friend Mark in Kingston, some two hours’ drive downriver. Phil had lent us a spare convertible, an elderly Chrysler le Baron with some interesting eccentricities, the most endearing of which was probably the failure in the starter motor relay system. My first fix involved booster cables snaking out from under the engine, but after Maria pointed out that I’d have to crawl underneath the car to start it every morning, a few moments thought and a couple of minutes with some pliers fabricated the necessary hot-wiring. In order to start the engine, I had to turn the ignition, get out, open the bonnet (sorry, hood), and jam a screwdriver between the posts of my converted solenoid. It worked a treat.

It was Mark’s birthday, and since his parents (thanks Gill and Derek for putting up with us!) have a pool, we had a pool party, which swiftly and appropriately degenerated into a violent free-for-all involving increasingly disintegrating pool noodles.

Kingston has a number of interesting attractions, including a candle-lit evening ghost walk, and the fascinating prison museum, containing all sorts of ingenious weaponry confiscated from the inmates. The town is, however, most famous for being the gateway to the Thousand Islands, and the cruise amongst the islands was really quite something. Almost every island is owned by some millionaire and/or recluse, and each contains a home commensurate with its size, ranging from entire towns to huge castles to tiny shacks perched on a single rock. To add to the confusion, exactly half are technically US soil, the other half Canadian, but the different nationalities are all jumbled in one with another. A real millionaire’s playground, a wonderful place.

Quebec

Moving on, we pointed the Le Baron northward up the St Lawrence river into Quebec, stopping for the night in Trois Rivieres, where we stumbled on the most amazing Bed & Breakfast belonging to a family of chiropractors who also happened to collect mid-19th Century antique furniture. The place had been lovingly restored, and each room reflected a different period or style. Incredible.

Downriver, Quebec City was dominated by the amazing Chateau Frontenac, a Victorian railway hotel of prodigious size which we just had to stay in. Our room on the 17th floor gave tremendous views over the city, but the room itself was something of a disappointment after the previous night’s Manoir DuBlois, looking much like any other business hotel.

Quebec City itself was similar; from a distance it showed great promise, but when you actually got in close you found that almost every building was a souvenir shop. We did find a fascinating purveyor of hand-made mediaeval (sorry, medieval) clothing, and a fine bar with an excellent selection of beers from the province and from around the world, as well as a restaurant specialising in ancient Canadian food, an interesting and on the whole successful attempt to cross pioneer trapper dishes with haute cuisine.

Even further north, in the pouring rain in the middle of nowhere, we came across a trio of young German hitchhikers who were quite bewildered to be packed into the back of a convertible and whisked onto the ferry to Tadoussac, where they squelched into the youth hostel and we checked into the faded grandeur of the Hotel Tadoussac, a forties confection in red and white-painted wood, with rooms looking out over the St Lawrence river.

We stepped out into the deluge to see if we could find a restaurant, but everything was shut so we crawled back to base to eat in the rather fine dining room, painted on all sides with a mural depicting English troops trouncing the City of Quebec.

Whales

The morning found us bouncing around in a Zodiac-style rubber-sided powerboat, hunting for whales. It was still raining, and visibility was very poor, but as we hit the chop at the edge of the estuary it all cleared, and as far as the eye could see there were whales, seals, dolphins, and various sizes of whale-watching boat.

Many who know me well will long have been aware of the existence of The List, an unpublished and constantly changing agenda of Things To Do Before I Die. There is a dark and shady corner of The List that contains things that I really want to do but which, realistically, I doubt will ever happen. One of these is to go into space; another is to see a blue whale. Incredibly, a huge one simply popped out of the sea nearby, and was content to swim along with us while all the other whale boats chased off after other prey.

The huge beast didn’t breach or tail dive, it just shimmered along just below the waterline, giving us tantalising glimpses of its enormous bulk.

Many whales later, I was extremely content, and it was pure icing on the cake when, speeding back to base, the pilot suddenly jinked hard to the left with the cry “La balene blanche!”. There they were, a whole pod of white belugas, swimming around underneath the boat. Marvellous.

Logging

Back on land, it was time for us to head back south, but first we wanted to jink inland so that we could make our way back through a series of national parks. One of the other things on The List was to stay in a roadside motel, as in all the best Hollywood thrillers (you’ve got to remember that this was my first time in North America), and in fact the Lonely Planet recommended a particular one in Chicoutimi, so I was delighted to pull up and check in.

Yep, it looked exactly like they do in the films; a bed, a lamp, and a small bathroom. It was hardly a dive, but I was pleased to note that some of the tiles were cracked and one of the ceiling tiles was leaking insulation; I could pretend that it was vaguely sleazy and, if I squinted a bit, ignore the beautiful views downriver toward the St Lawrence.

In the morning we had intended to visit a pulp mill in Jonquiere, but the tourist office had been shut down, and after a while we gave up and headed off on a road that – on the map – passed through a huge featureless white area that spread northwards as far as the Arctic. I had assumed that this was logging country, and I was not mistaken. The sun, which had remained stubbornly hidden for the last few days, finally reappeared, picking out the many shades of green in the ranks of trees as they marched endlessly over the hills, faithfully reflected in the limpid blue lakes below.

The wide sweeping roads were empty of all traffic apart from the occasional logging truck, and my heart was singing with the wide-open beauty of it all. I really wanted to park the car and just get on out there into the quiet and solitude.

Conveniently enough, we zipped by the office of the St Mauritie Nature Reserve, and a quick U-turn got me inside, where I explained what I wanted. There was a surprising amount of red tape, but I paid eight dollars to register my name, address and vehicle details, and then another twelve dollars to get over the toll bridge into the reserve itself. Only then could we motor the 18 km down unmade logging roads to reach our assigned footpath, a circular walk around a small waterfall called Dunbar Chute.

The footpath was pretty notional, the undergrowth thick and the mosquitoes vicious: it was wonderful! And so very very quiet, just the sounds of the birds and the water and no background noises at all. To a townie’s ears it sounded as though there was a hole in the world, something missing as we paused to admire yet another stunning lakeside vista.

Sadly, however, it had to end eventually, so we de-registered at the control booth and headed for Montreal.

Montreal

The idea was to find a hotel in town, and indeed our guide told us that there were plenty of B&Bs both down town and in the old quarter, so we decided to try both. Down town Montreal appeared to be evenly split between office blocks and lively bars with cool dudes cruising loudly up and down outside. We couldn’t see any hotels, so we tried the old quarter, which was snarled up with picturesque flower-bedecked horse-drawn taxis, but nary a sign of a B&B.

Getting a bit desperate, we cast our net wider, and finally found a whole street full of what appeared to be hotels. At first we ignored the groups of young men lounging around in the lobbies, but as receptionist after receptionist first admitted that they were a hotel but apologised that they were full, I began to notice that every time we stopped, swarthy figures would appear in the windows staring at the convertible and apparently counting the wheels.

By nine o’clock we thought, to hell with it! and attempted to find a highway out of town. By half past ten we were completely lost… but there on the other carriageway was a 24-hour motel. This one was really sleazy. As the proprietor showed us to our room (I’d better help you with the door, the lock sticks since somebody stole the keys), three girls ran giggling from the one next door to a waiting car (I’d wondered why he’d asked how many people I was planning to put in the double bed), and through the (nailed shut) window we had a fine view of a purple neon sign declaring ’11 til 3 video poker’, whatever that is.

I’d asked if there was anywhere to eat at that time of night, and he pointed us in the direction of an all-night diner, but he seemed a bit hesitant so we approached it with some trepidation. However, the place turned out to be an award-winner for its fries and smoked-meat sandwiches, the walls papered with plaudits from food critics, and sure enough the food was excellent.

We sat, well-earned red beer to hand, and listened to Muddy Waters as the chef’s seemingly endless stream of old friends dropped in for a chat and a take-out. Back at the motel, we tried to clear the smell of stale cigarette smoke, attempted to close the blinds against the searchlight mounted outside, brushed the pubic hairs from the nylon sheets and composed ourselves for sleep.

Maria drifted right off, but unfortunately I was reacting badly to some of the day’s mosquito bites, and so watched miserably as one finger swelled up into a big red balloon while the rest of the hand itched maddeningly in sympathy.

Ottawa

An early start saw us on the road to Ottawa, and it was a relief to leave Montreal’s cracked and potholed roads behind and get onto some smooth tarmac. It was simplicity itself to park in the centre of town, and shortly we were standing in the sun on Parliament Hill, gazing at the Houses of Parliament that looked suspiciously similar to the buildings of the same name in London.

With so much to see, we settled on an open-top tour bus which was well worthwhile, giving us a geographical and historical overview of this attractive green city.

Finally, it was back to Toronto to return the car to Phil and Penny, to wander around the pleasant park and beaches that form the Toronto Islands, and of course to revisit the bar Captain Jack’s**, where Tanya was delighted to see us again.

Phil carried me home in a shopping trolley. Need I say more?


**Historical Note. At about this time, although we at this point had never met, Bronwyn was in fact a regular at Captain Jack’s. Possibly she was there in the bar that night. Possibly she was even one of the locals that thrashed us at table football. The world is indeed a very, very small place.

Berlin

There’s a wonderful system in Holland where if you buy a weekend train ticket to a major European city, they throw in a hotel more or less for free. Thus it was that, seeing a slow weekend coming up, Maria and I more or less randomly decided to go to Berlin. It meant getting to Amsterdam station ridiculously early on Friday morning, but that was no great hardship because it was the start of Sail 2000, and all the tall ships were in. As we strolled past amongst the other early onlookers, the flower-covered tugs were being warmed up, and dozens of ferries and tour boats were loading up with passengers. The tall ships themselves sat serenely aloof; these were creatures of the high seas, and looked uncomfortable crammed together in Amsterdam harbour amongst the hoi poloi.

Some hours later we poked our noses into our Berlin hotel just long enough to dump our bags, and then headed straight out for the Kurfurstendam. As it happened, there was a big street festival in progress, with hundreds of stalls selling food, beer, jewellery, beer, that sort of thing. At regular intervals along the street were positioned local DJs, including one rather bizarre area where both performers and audience danced in synchronisation on exercise bikes.

Another stall had the traditional fairground test your strength sledgehammer-and-bell apparatus, and we watched as two youths battled it out to get the maximum prize. Vying with one another, they shelled out piles of Deutschmarks, winning armfuls of small toys but always not quite succeeding with the big one, until finally amid much banter and in front of a huge crowd of cheering onlookers, they finally won the big blue teddy bear. Honour satisfied, they randomly picked a pretty girl from the crowd and loaded her up with toys before continuing on their way.

The hotel brochure claimed that they had twenty metres of food at their breakfast bar, and I must say I found no reason to disagree. The breakfast was incredible, and it set us up for the long walk through the Tiergarten (the central park), passing through the Brandenburger Tor into East Berlin and along Unter den Linden. I knew that the Wall used to come through here, but there was absolutely no sign of it; it had been completely erased. The most astounding thing about the Tor these days is the incredible number of tourist buses, parked nose-to-tail for at least a kilometre behind the Gate.

Once in the East, we headed for the Gendarmemarkt, billed as the most beautiful square in Europe, but although the Academy of Music is a good solid piece of architecture, I’m not sure that it is even in the running. Nevertheless, it is a fine place to sit in the sun with a heverweiss beer.

A short step from the Gendarmemarkt is the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, monument to the Wall years, which is truly engrossing. There is an incredibly harrowing display of escape methods, stories and documentation, vividly highlighting the sheer ingenuity of the human mind. There are beautifully engineered hiding places under cars, in petrol tanks, inside the passenger seat of a mini, inside welding gear. There are also home-made microlights, submarines, and an inflatable canoe powered by a sail constructed from a bed sheet and a couple of hockey sticks. And then there were the tunnellers, aided by helpers, mainly students from the west who were often themselves imprisoned, or shot and killed. The latter reaches of the museum are given over to other struggles around the world, but they don’t begin to approach the sheer desperation and dare-devilry that characterised the years of the Wall.

Outside the museum, we found that much of what used to be East Berlin was closed for repairs, as the authorities make up for years of neglect. Even the Fernsehturm (TV tower), which I was sure would be able to provide us with a panoramic restaurant meal, was being refurbished, and we were getting quite hungry before we discovered a little bierkeller in the twin shadows of the Nikolaskirk towers.

Inside the church itself, there happened to be an exhibition of Russian gold- and silver-work, which I just couldn’t resist. There were some beautiful engravings, and some truly fantastic pieces (described as “biscuit plates”) that gave the impression of gold baskets with silver napkins carelessly draped across them: but all crafted in stunningly lifelike detail from precious metals. The star of the show, though, was the jewellery. I’m not generally a huge fan of glittering rocks, but these delicate traceries of gold and silver, studded with diamonds, emeralds and amethyst, which could so easily have been gaudy, were so beautifully crafted and so finely worked that they were utterly breathtaking.

Outside again, much of the rest of East Berlin was less attractive. Much of it is taken up with ugly post-war tower blocks, the occasional architectural antiquity looking less like a scattered gem than a lost relic hunkering down under the lowering tonnes of concrete. Even the River Spree conspires against picturesqueness, hemmed in as it is on each side by stark concrete banks, with the occasional reconstruction of a mediaeval wooden bridge only serving to accentuate the problem. Mind you, until recently the Spree was armoured, spiked and alarmed, so it has a lot of past to live down.

The Charlottenschloss, a bijou pad of a hundred rooms or so knocked up for one of the queens, sits in spacious grounds scattered with the odd folly and lake, and sitting in a semi-forgotten corner is a tiny little mausoleum to the long-dead knight and his lady. Each tomb is topped by a figure of the occupant, and although the kings is pretty ordinary, the sculpting on the queen is breathtaking. The way she is lying, draped by a thin silken sheet, you could be forgiven for thinking that she is but resting and in a moment will open her white marble eyes and get on with pruning the roses.

The Berliner Dom (cathedral) is dominated by its enormous dome, squatting centrally over the cross-shaped building. Inside, the whole thing is one vast open space, and everything that isn’t heavily gilded and painted is carved in relief. There was an organist showing off on the huge organ; particularly impressive was the thunderous James Bond villain piece which brought applause from the slightly stunned crowd. In fact, the whole atmosphere was very touristy, with guides strolling around carrying placards, cameras flashing and people talking.

Much of the cathedral was being restored, repaired or rearranged, so we had a little trouble working out how to get from one end of the building to the other, but eventually we discovered the stairway up to the cupola. It was lined with numerous photographs of the building in various stages of disrepair; the dome has burnt down and been rebuilt at least three times since the 1880s. On the way up there are all sorts of nooks and doorways to explore, and in one place it is possible to emerge onto a narrow ledge clinging to the inside of the dome. Hidden as it is from below, the top of the ledge is scattered with spotlights, microphones and loose knee cushions. I’m not normally bothered by heights, but even I would have had real problems making my way along that tiny strip of stone to change a light bulb, not because of the fearsome drop down to the pews, but because of the curious but overwhelming feeling of vertigo induced by the roof closing in overhead.

A few more tunnels and stairways led us onto the outside of the dome, where the whole of Berlin was spread out before us. The lights twinkled all over the city as the sun edged slowly toward the horizon, the calm of the evening disturbed only by thousands of swooping starlings, and the distant wail of sirens around a small apartment fire in the distance.

A Lesson in Dutch Bureaucracy

It all started so innocently when, after several years of living and working in the Netherlands, I finally tired of relying on the Dutch public transport system. Although the network of trams, buses and trains is undeniably good value and very efficient, I prefer not to be tied to somebody else’s timetable, and wanted to find some more flexible way of getting to work. To this end, I resolved to buy a motorcycle.

There are fundamental differences between the most similar of cultures. Even when you’ve lived abroad for years and really think that you’re coming to terms with your new home, basic assumptions built-in from your mother culture can still rear up and bite you in reminder of the fact that you are, after all, an alien. Although it is probably true that, deep down, people are all the same, the way that they run their countries most certainly is not. The laws and people of the Netherlands are among the most easy-going and permissive in the world. You can do pretty much anything you like, anywhere you like, and unless you are actually causing pain then it is unlikely that anybody else will try to interfere. The police tend to joviality, the general public are friendly, and the working conditions are second to none. However, in all this clear-sightedness, there is one enormous blind spot: As a nation, the Dutch are utterly addicted to bureaucracy. Filling in forms and dealing with officialdom are national sports. It was, then, with some trepidation that I began my quest.

Locating a bike

In England, of course, it is all rather simple. You decide on your preferred bike, find somebody who is selling one, and then buy it. I had however already decided against importing my English motorcycle because of colleagues’ horror stories of impounded vehicles and endless import fees, so I was determined to buy a local machine.

Having made my decision to buy a bike, I had already planned its first a trip to the UK some four weeks hence, and after a week of diligent searching I eventually located a two-year old but unused XJR1200 in an out-of-town showroom for a reasonable 18,500 guilders. I grabbed a passing sales assistant. Could they supply that motorcycle there by the end of the week? No, they couldn’t. But surely it was second-hand, and therefore had a licence plate and all the necessary paperwork? Certainly it did, but it was a rule that all re-sold motorcycles had to have the new Euro plates, identical to the old plates but with a blue ‘NL’ in the corner. This would take three weeks to arrange.

The paperwork…

The timescale did not greatly surprise me. The smallest unit of time for any piece of work in Holland is always one week. Shoe repairs, puncture repairs, anything, it all takes at least a week, and if there is any paperwork involved, additional weeks are inevitably required. However, I had a ferry to catch in exactly three weeks, so I was a little concerned that everything should be arranged up front.

What, I demanded, does an Englishman need in order to buy a Dutch motorcycle? Just pay us the money and it’s yours, came the answer. However, I’ve lived in the Netherlands for too long to accept such an unlikely statement at face value. I tried rephrasing the question. What, as an Englishman, do I need in order for you to allow me to ride my new motorcycle out of the showroom?

Aaah, now then. A Dutchman would need to show his driving licence. However, a foreign licence doesn’t count. I began to protest that all EC licences are the same, but that wasn’t the point. Whether you actually had a licence to ride a motorcycle was irrelevant. The point was that in order to fill in the registration form, the shop had to tick the box that said they had seen your Dutch driving licence. That was the rule. No tick, no registration.

After a number of phone calls and a bit of hand-waving it emerged that there was a special rule for foreigners, and that I could get by with a letter from the local council saying that I lived at my registered address, and a copy of my passport. Glad that I d asked so early, I hiked thoughtfully back from the shop to Amsterdam. My problem, you see, was that I didn’t have a registered address. If you live in Holland, you are expected to register your home address with the local council. However, you are not allowed to register hotels or no fixed abode, so if you’re flitting about doing contract work then often it is not possible. You are technically allowed to register at a friends house, but in doing so you have to be careful that you don’t infringe on their rights. A large proportion of the Dutch population live in what we in England would call Council Houses (though the system is different and the properties are, on the whole, well-kept and desirable places to live, rather than the rather run-down unfashionable areas that are increasingly common in the UK). The style of house that you can live in, and the price that you pay for it, are determined by, among other things, your salary, your age, and the size of your household. Registering at a friend’s place would increase the size of their household, and might therefore change their eligibility for that property at that price.

I really needed to register somewhere if I was to get this motorcycle. I asked a few home-owning friends, but surprisingly in such a red-taped country most people frown on anything that might be construed as bending the rules, and I found people to be generally reluctant. Luckily I did eventually find a volunteer to write the official letter granting me permission to live in their home, and sent off my application. A phone call to the council revealed that they would be sending me a registration letter in a week or so, but if I wanted one more urgently then I had to go into the office in Amsterdam personally. However, since the office was only open on weekday mornings, I thought I’d wait and, incredibly, with one week still to go, the official letter turned up on my friend’s doormat. Hurrah!

Unbelievably, I seemed to have all the paperwork to hand. It was Thursday, and I needed to pick the bike up on the following Thursday evening if I was to meet my ferry to England. Since all I needed now was the money already sitting in my current account, I could justifiably have rested on my laurels, but drawing on past experience, I decided to not only deliver the papers but to pay the shop in advance that very afternoon.

The pain of payment

This was a decision born of experience. For a country that is in so many ways more enlightened and advanced than England, personal finance is still way back in the dark ages. For instance, cash paid into a bank can take three working days to clear (that’s right: cash), and an electronic fund transfer to somewhere like the US can take as long as three weeks. Add to this the fact that credit cards are virtually unknown, cheques don’t seem to exist, and large denomination notes are regarded with suspicion if they are accepted at all, and you soon find that making a major purchase is a considerable problem.

Two local electronic payment systems do exist. ‘Pin’ is analogous to a debit card, and ‘Chip’ is a smart-card electronic cash system. Both are widely accepted in Holland, but the Chip is only for small purchases, and you cant Pin more than 5000 guilders, regardless of the size of your bank balance.

I checked with the bike shop. No, it was against the rules to Pin several times for the same purchase. I could pay by credit card (wow!) or by bank transfer, but it would take three whole weeks for the funds to clear. The only payment method that was feasible in my timescale was cash.

Did they have to wait for cash to clear? They didn’t (one up on my bank, then). Did they accept large-denomination notes? They did. Even thousand-guilder notes? Yes. I checked around with Dutch friends, who all said that I could merely present my Pin card at my bank (Any branch? Yes. Really? Yes) and withdraw as much cash as I liked without any further messing about.

Where’s the cash?

To tell the truth, I didn’t really believe them. There’s a branch of my bank right by Amsterdam Central Station. It’s a dodgy area, and it was difficult not to feel furtive as I sneaked up to the teller, checked nobody was in earshot, slid my card under the partition and quietly asked for 19,000 guilders in cash. I’m sorry, he said, but we don’t have that much money. I looked around, slightly desperately, to see if I had inadvertently walked into a greengrocers instead of a bank. No, it all looked reassuringly like a financial institution. Perhaps I had phrased the question incorrectly. Errrm. Look. I would like to withdraw 19,000 guilders from my account please. The teller continued to look dubious. We don’t have that many large notes… apparently he saw some mad desperate glint appearing in my eye …but maybe we have it in small change?

I nodded eagerly, not trusting myself to speak. There will be rather a lot of it? he quavered, before scuttling nervously off. After a short wait he was back, now secure in the certainty of his knowledge. No, we don’t have it.

In a daze, I wandered out onto the streets of Amsterdam. Surely this was no great sum of money for one of the major financial centres of Europe, especially in a country where everybody is forced, through lack of other options, to use cash? I decided to try another bank, and went right into the central Dam Square and the biggest bank that I could find. Here, finally, a smiling cashier handed over a small pile of large-denomination notes. Thankyou very, very much. I said, and legged it for the bike shop before she could change her mind.

Triumphant?

The showroom is a train ride and then an expensive taxi trip from Amsterdam, but I was determined that nothing should go wrong. Armed with a copy of my passport, the letter from the council, a wad of cash and my driving licence (just in case), I arrived and triumphantly presented them with my stash. They gravely accepted the money, even the thousand-guilder notes, but they shook their heads over the rest of it.

They suddenly discovered that they needed my real passport, not just a copy. And the letter from the council was the wrong kind of letter. On Friday morning I took a long detour on the way to work, and after a little trouble found the Registration office. It opened at 08:30 to a tide of people all clamouring for the same kind of letter; a few minutes wait and a small payment and it was mine.

Hurriedly, I returned to work. I was out of town for the weekend, but on Monday morning I once again set off for the bike shop, now with (hopefully) the correct letter and my real passport tucked firmly into my pocket. The taxi driver was a crazy German who thought that sliding broadside around the front end of a fast-moving truck was an acceptable means of turning across a dual carriageway, and when we got to the showroom I was in two minds to pay him off and walk the hour back, but I really couldn’t afford the time, so I asked him to wait and ran up to the door. In common with many other Dutch businesses, it was closed all day Monday.

The Courier

Cursing, I went back to work. The taxi driver didn’t have any change and so got an inadvertent tip. The next morning I was up early again and queuing in the rain outside the post office. Rather than spend what remained of the week running back and forth, I’d decided to courier the documents instead. The helpful lady behind the desk told me that express mail would get my envelope to the bike shop by 10:30 tomorrow, Wednesday morning. I knew that the bike shop did their daily run to the vehicle licensing office at around 09:00, so there would just be time for them to arrange the licence on Thursday before I picked the bike up that evening.

Relieved, I handed her my package. She refused to take it. But that’s twenty-five guilders, she wailed. This is a common problem in the Netherlands. The typical Dutch person is proud of the care that they take over their money. They will laugh and joke about it with foreigners, but will still travel from one end of the city to the other in order to save a couple of guilders. It is a national trait, but since it is coupled with warm-hearted generosity, it never degenerates into meanness. However, it does mean that shopping can be an unusual experience. The concept of selling up is completely alien. If there are two thingamajigs and you pick the more expensive one, the sales assistant will persuasively argue you into buying the cheaper one unless you firmly stand your ground. It is almost worth picking up a really expensive item just to hear the hiss of indrawn breath and to see the forlorn shaking of heads.

And so it was with my package. Any normal person would pay one guilder for regular post and hope that the package arrived in time. To squander a whole twenty-five guilders for a mere guarantee of delivery was to invite divine retribution. We argued back and forth, each becoming increasingly desperate, until finally she hit upon a happy compromise. If she arranged for a third-party carrier, a company unrelated to the post office, to take it rather than their own driver, then it would only cost twenty-two guilders. She smiled triumphantly and I meekly paid up.

Wednesday morning, eleven o’clock. I called the showroom to see if my package had arrived. It hadn’t. I called the courier, who phoned their driver. Apparently he had delivered it to somebody who signed himself as Ron. I called the bike shop. They didn’t employ anybody called Ron. Did they have anybody whose name might look like Ron if it was scribbled in a hurry? Had anybody seen a big orange delivery van that morning? They would check and get back to me.

I hung up and sat and stared at the phone, playing back every second of the last two weeks, wondering if I could have done anything differently. The phone rang. They had found Ron, who was an under-mechanic in the workshop. Rather than handing the package in to the shiny manned reception desk in the entrance hall, the courier had seen fit to pass it to a pair of legs stuck out from under a bench in the workshop. Understandably, Ron had quickly smeared his name on the clipboard and lobbed my precious documents as far away from his oily rebuild as possible, promptly forgetting about them.

But was it the correct kind of letter? A rustle at the end of the phone indicated opening noises, and then the welcome words “This is perfect. You can come and pick up your bike tomorrow.”

The Police Station Toilet

I had some official forms to fill in, so I popped in to the central police station. From the outside, the large purpose-built edifice in the centre of Utrecht is certainly impressive in a public building sort of way, but inside it is quite a surprise. Once through the huge automated revolving door – complete with encased items of clothing advertising local shops – I found myself in a large airy glass atrium with scattered wooden benches and display stands, a bit like the entrance to a modern museum, an impression heightened by the exhibition of photographs on a police theme by a local photographer. The police themselves moved through this space in pairs, courteous and jovial, looking relaxed and content. The tiny policewoman behind the desk, dwarfed by a belt full of regulation handcuffs, folding knife, gun and other accoutrements, is pleasant and helpful. There is even a visitors toilet, which after a while I decided to visit.

As I entered the large unisex cubicle, the door swung shut behind me and I automatically reached for the light pull, hanging dimly-seen by my side. As I pull it, everything goes pitch black, and I realise that the lights had actually already been on. Another tug reveals a room in almost complete darkness, with a select few objects glowing a fluorescent yellowish non-colour. I’ve seen UV in public toilets before, fitted because heroin addicts can’t find their veins under it, but who the heck shoots up in a police station? This was also the dimmest light that I have ever encountered. Hanging close to my hand is the mildly glowing plastic knob of the light cord. Over to one side, the end of a tissue projects brightly from its otherwise invisible hand-towel dispenser. In front of me, two ghostly toilet rolls hang unsupported in space, and there to the side of them, glowing very faintly and identified only by a fluorescent sticker on the flush handle, is the incorporeal image of a lavatory bowl.

Strangely, my urine turns out to be fluorescent.

A Drinking Tour of Holland

Utrecht

One sunny weekend, Adam and I decided to take advantage of the excellent Dutch railway system, and expand on our usual bar crawl around Utrecht by going on a bar crawl around Holland.

The usual suspects

Equipped only with a couple of pocketfuls of cash and the clothes we stood in, we had one for the road in the Firkin in Utrecht, and then headed out by train and bus to the beach at Scheveningen.

Scheveningen

Famous for at least two things, one of which is that its name used to be used in the war to spot German spies (if they couldn’t satisfactorily pronounce the difficult “Sch”, then they were obviously not Dutch and were shot), Scheveningen has a fine beach and is the site of many events and exhibitions, such as the fabulous annual kite festival. When we arrived, we hit the tail end of a sand-sculpting exhibition, with some pretty impressive stuff from artists who had flown in from around the world to take part.

One of the advantages that Scheveningen beach has over many others is that the strand is lined with pleasant bars, so after checking out the sandcastles we had a beer or two before tackling the pier, a recently rescued structure that appears to be cobbled together from old oil platforms, although the renovations should be impressive when they’re finished.

Rotterdam

As the sun set in the English Channel, we headed out to Rotterdam. Most of this city was flattened in the war, but what little is left of the old town is gathered around the old harbour, a backwater of the main shipping port which is home to a fleet of beautifully kept Dutch barge houseboat conversions. On one side is the new suspension bridge, and on the other, the weird cube houses.

We paused for a beer on the quayside, enjoying the enormous Laetitia Casta peering down at us from the side of a nearby office block (not content with building some of the most imaginative office buildings in Europe, the Dutch go to great lengths to decorate them as well), and then we moved to a convenient Belgian bar.

Looking around, we noticed two spare tables, one rickety one squashed into a corner by a bevy of young ladies on a hen night, and the other up against the window. Deeming it too obviously lecherous to squeeze in with the girls, we chose the window seat. However, not long into our first beer, another girl came over who wanted to use our table, and she bribed us with free beer if we would only move to that little table in the corner…

Adam trying very hard to look at the camera instead of the girls behind me

Eventually we left and went for a walk around the harbour, on a vague quest to find an all-night bar that somebody had told us about. The waterfront at Rotterdam is very pretty at night, all the bridges are brightly lit and reflected in the inky black water. However, the bar, when we finally found it, was firmly closed.

Heading back into town, we found a club called the Blue Fish that was still letting people in. It was long and thin with a long thin dance floor partway along, populated by an interesting selection of people. We were far too tired and hungry to pay much attention, but luckily they served the best cheese and ham tostis we had ever seen, as well as a small selection of bottled Belgian beers. Eventually dawn came up outside, and we tottered to the railway station to see if there were any trains going to Maastricht.

After a couple of hours well-earned kip on the train, we awoke to find ourselves somewhere completely different; Roermund, I think.

Pauze
Pauze

We stumbled around a bit looking surprised, narrowly avoided being thrown out of the station as vagrants, and got on a train to Valkenburg, home to Holland’s only hill.

Valkenburg

Valkenburg town centre

It was substantially hollowed out by the Romans, who built 70km of tunnels as they excavated building stone. Since then, its been turned into a sort of museum-cum-art-gallery, where any event in the towns history has been commemorated by either a charcoal drawing or a sculpture somewhere in the depths. It was also at one point turned into the towns nuclear fall-out shelter, although for all the impressiveness of the enormous steel doors, the sheltering townspeople still seemed to be dependent on air shafts and water from the (presumably contaminated) outside world.

A carved dinosaur under Valkenburg mountain

Out from the bowels of the earth, we decided to climb the mountain, spurred on by the signs to a Roman spa at the top. Sadly, the spa turned out to be a hotel, but luckily there was a ruined castle so we poked around in that instead. Conveniently it had a bar, and we were able to have a restorative beer before heading back down to the town and the train to Maastricht, where we intended to book a hotel room – if only to have a shower.

Maastricht

On top of the world

Maastricht itself seemed quite fun, although the ugly modern bridges over the river were a disappointment… as was the fact that, due to some festival or other, all the hotels were completely full. So, after a short wander about and the purchase of some clean clothing, we headed back to the station, where a particularly lovely girl was selling coffee and waffles. Neither of us really like the really sweet Dutch waffles, but we bought some anyway, and I was delighted to be told that my Dutch accent was very aristocratic. And now, fuelled by coffee, we boarded the train to Venlo.

Venlo

Thanks goodness there was a hotel by the station. We spent some time relaxing in our rooms and standing under the shower, before putting on our new clothes and heading into town.

Venlo is a curious place that caters almost entirely for German shoppers. Bar staff and shop assistants assume without thinking that you are German, and address you in that language, something I didn’t really notice until I caught Adams baffled expression and realised that I wasn’t speaking Dutch any more.

A motorised bar passes through

In the market square we found a convenient bar with the unlikely name of The Thirsty Chicken, and sat and watched the world (or to be more accurate, the girls) go by. A huge storm brew up, but although we were outside, we were sitting under a canopy and had a grandstand view of the lightning as the clouds swooped and boiled around us. Marvelous.

Later that night we headed for The Splinter, a rather off-the-wall neo-punk club near to the hotel, where I met up with Helga and Naardje for a night’s dancing and drinking, while Adam wandered back into town for a quieter session. Actually, I think he just fancied the barmaids more.

After a few hours of welcome sleep, we emerged blinking into Sunday morning. The last time wed done something like this, in Groningen in the north of Holland, we’d inadvertently continued drinking all night again and had been forced to return home on the Monday morning, amongst all the suited commuters. This time we determined to hit only one more city before putting our tails between our legs, so we plumped for Nijmegen.

Nijmegen

It was a good choice. The sun was blazing and the town picturesquely mediaeval. In the park we messed about climbing on rooves and taking pictures of the castle.

At a bar outside the town hall we discussed the architecture and watched a roadside five-a-side football match, while on the riverside we quaffed ale and watched and discussed the barmaids.

Eventually, however, we had to drag ourselves away, and after a walk along the riverfront we made our way, tired and happy, back to the station.

Total Eclipse 1999

It was late at night, and I was sitting in Utrecht in the Netherlands, poring over the internet’s meteorological sites trying to determine the best place to see the upcoming total eclipse of the sun. It didn’t look good, with a band of rain sweeping over Germany, closely followed by another rolling in from the Atlantic over the UK and France. I needed to get between the two weather systems, in the hope that the intervening skies would be clear. According to my calculations this meant any town between Reims and Luxembourg. On the basis that Luxembourg is my favourite European city, and that it had onward train connections to England and to a festival that I wanted to go to, the choice was not difficult.

The 03:00 train from Utrecht to Rotterdam contained the usual dribble of partygoers and the first wave of people going home from the bars. In Rotterdam at 05:00, an appreciable number of eclipse-chasers were on the platform, and I was lucky to get a seat. Well, it wasn’t luck really. While everybody clustered around the passenger doors I got in through the goods van and beat them to the seats; product of a mis-spent youth on Interrail.

The 07:30 train from Brussels was always going to a problem. I had tried to reserve a seat on it but had been told that the train had been removed from the reservations system. The clerk seemed puzzled but I had a good idea what that meant. Sure enough, the train was packed to overflowing with eclipse-watchers. I only just managed to wedge myself in through one of the doors, and a fat guy behind me had to give up. There was no room for him at all, and the train set off without him.

I was crammed in with a load of other people in the tiny corridor outside the toilet. Two large jolly ladies decided that they were going to co-opt the toilet, which made more room for the rest of us, and we were able to arrange it so that nearly everybody could sit cross-legged if nobody moved. Occasionally some outsider would fight through the morass of bodies to the lavatory, and we and the two ladies then had to perform an intricate dance to let them in. It was all quite amusing, and served to take our minds off the three-hour journey and the fact that the sky was still grey and overcast.

Just as we came into Luxembourg city, patches of blue appeared and a couple of times we actually saw the sun’s disk murkily through the fug. On one occasion, it even cast a small shadow, and we all cheered. Once in town, an hour late presumably because of the huge weight the train was carrying, we thankfully clambered off, cracking stiffened muscles and stretching our aching bodies. I expect that the few innocent passengers continuing on their way to Milan were quite relieved too.

I tried to buy a slice of pizza for breakfast, but they wouldn’t take Dutch Guilders, only Deutschmarks. I couldn’t remember the exchange rate for Luxembourg Francs, so at the cash machine I just pressed the lowest number displayed, working on he principle that in most countries this is the cost of a few beers, or around ten English Pounds. When I got my change back from the pizza lady, I realised that the machine had given me about seven times that amount.

All the major bridges were already lined with people, optimistically having their photos taken wearing their Eclipse glasses, and streams of bodies were for some reason heading for higher ground. Looking down from one bridge, I spotted an unoccupied bench far down in the valley, perfectly positioned on one of the tiny paths that wind up and down the valley walls. I happened to know that the route to this particular bench was intricate and not at all obvious, so I set off against the crowd, fairly secure in the knowledge that nobody was going to stumble on it by accident. Sure enough, when I got there the only competition was a local lad setting up a camera tripod a little distance away; perfect peace.

The only problem was that the weather was closing in. It looked like I’d judged it wrong after all, as you couldn’t even tell the general direction of the sun above the thick grey cloud layer. As the minutes ticked away to totality, the photographer suddenly picked up his carefully positioned tripod and began snapping the eclipse-watchers on the bridge above. There was no way that we were going to see the sun again today.

Nevertheless, the moment of eclipse was still impressive. With no cues to warn us, twilight suddenly fell as if someone had turned down a huge rheostat. A few automatic lights came on, the birds went silent, and some crickets began to chirp hesitantly in the trees behind me. A ragged cheer went up from the bridge, echoed by another from across the valley. We had a few moments to experience the almost-darkness, and then the invisible hand once more switched the lights back on.

It was all over, but what had we actually experienced? A momentary darkness at midday. Worth travelling all this way for? I think so. I had undertaken a long and difficult journey in the company of a disparate and international crowd, all fully aware that we had only a limited chance of seeing what we had come all this way to see. When it came to the moment of totality, the awe was inherent not in the sights and sounds, but in the huge implacability of the event, in the inevitability of the enormous forces at work. Definitely a moment to remember.

Martinique

The Jumbo 747 lifted off from Paris en route for the Caribbean, and we were on our way on my first trip across the Atlantic. I knew that, whatever happened, the forthcoming week on the island of Martinique would throw up the unexpected.

It didn’t take long for the first surprise. I had been watching the ocean roll past below, marvelling at the sheer size of it and appreciating personally for the first time the well-worn fact that the planet is two thirds under water. After nearly four hours of flying, a tiny island passed below, the Azores and the first sighting of land since France. It was then, noticing a small fishing boat nosing in under the volcano, that I realised that this was the first boat that I had seen. I’m used to the English Channel, and I had always taken with a pinch of salt the tale that it is the busiest shipping lane in the world, but now it all sunk in. Oceans are big.

Another three hours passed before any new obstruction broke the endless wrinkled surface of the sea. Dusk was falling as the plane descended, and the lights of fishing villages twinkled around the edges of the island below. This tiny lump of volcanic rock, forty miles by ten, was to be our playground for the next seven days.

There were no customs formalities, as despite its Caribbean location, Martinique is officially part of France. It took only a moment to get some money and hire a car, and then it was off into the night to find our apartment, ten miles and half an hour away, on the south coast in the town of Diamant.

The hire car’s water pump seemed to be squeaking loudly, and it was only after some discussion about whether we should return the car to the hire centre that we realised that the noise was actually the cicadas singing in the trees. This sound was to become part of our life during every unlit hour, and would often be deafeningly loud, although curiously restful at night.

Diamant was easy to find. It is dominated by a huge rock sticking out of the sea, locally know as La Diamant but regularly saluted by the British Navy as HMS Diamant Rock, in remembrance of earlier times when it was garrisoned against the French.

The next morning set the pattern for the days ahead. Hummingbirds joined us for breakfast on the bushes by the patio, startling the jewelled lizards which scurried away amongst the blossoms. Small flocks of merle, ubiquitous birds the size of blackbirds with the manners of a sparrow, squawked and shrilled in a continual bid for table scraps. The palm trees waved in the breeze, and a few early risers splashed in the pool. This really was the life.

Rain Forest

The island of Martinique is part of the volcanic chain that is the Windward Isles. The northern half of the island is dominated by the active volcano Mt Pelee, almost permanently shrouded by the cloud-cap that nourishes the luxuriant rainforest around its flanks. From the resort village of Diamant in the south, it takes three hours to drive the tortuous forty miles through the forests and plantations, but we did it again and again. This is the spine and lungs of Martinique; all else is froth cast up from the sea.

The rain forest is a magical place. The trees, already immensely tall, are given extra stature by the sixty-degree slope of the volcano. The canopy is far, far above, and it is clear that this is where the action is, not down here in the darkness with the dead things and the scavengers. Not even rain makes it unimpeded through the canopy. First it is caught by innumerable funnels and gutters, channelled into reservoirs and into the waiting roots high above. Only the surplus falls to the ground in grudging little splatters, just part of the continual rain of falling debris – dead leaves, twigs, corpses of small animals, seeds and fruit.

There is no middle ground. High above, the tree canopy. Down on the ground, poking optimistically through a century’s leaf litter, are all the low-growing plants, a mere ten or so metres high, their flowers serviced by hummingbirds and their branches scurrying with lizards. Jewelled is an overworked term, but it is the only word that covers the iridescent green of the hummingbirds, the fantastic blue of the Morpho butterflies, and the vibrant lime of the lizards. Jewelled, every one.

Between the upper canopy and the lower scrub were only the lianas, vine-like roots heading optimistically for the forest floor. These were incredibly flexible, although clearly made of wood, and easily strong enough to support a grown man swinging through the under-brush. I really hadn’t believed that the old Hollywood staple had a basis in fact.

And then, of course, there were the crabs. These amazing crustaceans had filled almost every ecological niche. Far inland, miles from any water, we came across the ubiquitous land crabs, especially the hermit crab known locally as Bernard l’Hermite. Some lived in old land-snail shells, but the big ones had somehow got hold of big whelk shells which they must have dragged all the way up from the sea. Everywhere we went, the ground was riddled with the burrows of several different species of land crab, all brightly coloured in red and yellow and green, some tiny, others bigger than your hand, all moving extremely quickly when disturbed. Seemingly without natural predators, these were the true owners of Martinique.

The humidity was incredible. The only advice given to mad foreigners insistent on wandering was to take plenty of water. We’d packed several litres of water and another of fruit juice, but it was not really enough. Sweat poured continually from our bodies as we climbed up and down the lush verdant valleys, keeping the sea on one side and the brooding heights of the volcano on the other.

It was alleged to be six hours to Precheur, the next village. We came across one traveller coming the other way who said that we could hire a boat that could return us to our car, but he was staring-eyed with heat exhaustion and was wandering in circles when we found him. Without our directions, carefully repeated like a mantra, I doubt that he would have got out before nightfall.

Up the Volcano

The volcano had other attractions apart from just the rain forest. On one occasion we toiled up the endless lava flows to the crater, only to discover that even if the path into the caldera hadn’t collapsed, then the view at the top from inside the dense wet cloud was less than exciting.

A more exhilarating route was up a series of gorges. Guides took us in swimming costumes up the waterfalls, guided by ropes up the worst bits. They supplied waterproof buckets to keep our cameras in, and it was pretty touristy but quite jolly for all that. The journey terminated in a cave full of guano and dead bats behind a huge waterfall that we took it in turns to stand under – for the few seconds before it smashed you to your knees.

There is a third route up the volcano that allegedly ends in a complex of hot springs and waterfalls, but we were thwarted on both our attempts to find it. On one night a huge and extremely angry bull had no intention of letting us past his cows, and on our second attempt the river-bed that formed the only path became distinctly hazardous after a mountaintop storm threatened a flash-flood. Maybe next time.

St Pierre

Nestling under the volcano is the sleepy fishing village of St Pierre, scattered with the levelled ruins of its past glory. There was supposed to be a good museum of vulcanology, but we never did manage to find it. It would have been interesting, because until 1902 St Pierre was the capital of Martinique, but then Mt Pelee erupted and destroyed the entire town and all 30,000 inhabitants. Popular legend has it that only one man survived, a drunk who had been thrown into a small cell for the night, one of the few buildings left standing.

At any rate, P.T. Barnum snapped him up for his circus, though I’m not sure what the poor man made of his life in a freak show.

Rum

When Martinique was a slave colony, much of the island was given over to sugar cane. These days there is more profit in bananas and pineapples, but many of the old colonial cane houses and rum distilleries still stand. In fact, there are an incredible number of family-run rum companies in such a small space. Many are open to the public, and often the machinery is more or less original – steam power is common.

Rum manufacture is a much simpler affair than the complex procedures for whisky or brandy. Mash up the sugar cane, chuck in some yeast, distil it and then, if you want dark vieux rum, keep it in a wooden barrel for a few years. The results are wonderful, completely unlike the stuff we see in Europe. Understandably, the locals sneer at the big commercial outfits, who make their product from the waste from sugar factories.

Rum is drunk everywhere, at all times of day, but never to excess. Traditionally it is served mixed with a little cane syrup as Tipunch, but it also mixes with any of the bewildering array of fruit juices commonly available. Rum and fruit are also main constituents of the ubiquitous creole cuisine, adding flavour to an enormous variety of fish.

Seafood

The seafood is incredible. The langouste are the size of lobsters, and often as long as a man if you include the antennae, and a fish is not big enough to be worth serving unless its head and tail overlap the side of the plate. To counterpoint the fish dishes, most places offer colombo, a sort of curry or stew, and everything is served with bananes jaune, savoury bananas that are out of this world. In fact, all of the fruit has a depth of taste that is completely missing from European imports, with the added cachet that although you can buy it at the market for a few francs, it is almost as easy to pick it up for free from the roadside. There are fallen coconuts and fruit everywhere, just lying around for the taking. As far as I can see, there is no reason to ever starve on Martinique.

Playing Tourist

Most of the island is dedicated to fishing and farming, but in St Anne big business has arrived in the form of a Club Med complex. We went over there one day because the watersports are heavily advertised, hoping to hire a boat or some jet-skis, but we were thoroughly put off by the Mediterranean-level prices and, incredibly, a charge just to get onto the beach. We had a look about but escaped to the sanity of the island as quickly as we could.

In nearby St Lucia, for the price of an hour’s Jet-ski hire, we arranged a whole afternoons scuba-diving on the reef. That was a great experience. The corals were beautifully healthy, and teeming with shoals of multicoloured fish. Great fans of Gorgon coral splayed up from the seabed, sheltering six-inch sea urchins and supporting the bizarre Flamingos Tongue sea snails. Everywhere there were doctorfish, pipefish, trunkfish, and immense mixed shoals, all completely unafraid and often curious enough to try nibbling your fingers. All too soon the dive was over, but we knew where the reef was now, and much of it was in easy snorkelling distance.
On subsequent explorations I encountered – and avoided – barracuda lurking just beneath the surface, and some kind of sea-snake wriggling along on the sandy bottom. Above our sunburned backs soared the huge fork-tailed Frigate birds, the only sea-birds that we saw the whole week, though Diamant Rock is supposed to be a famous sea-bird sanctuary.

Sunset

On the last hour of our last day, we sat on a wall high above the sea, drinking local Lorraine beer and watching the sun set over the fishermen positioning their nets over the coral reef.

The youngsters eased the brightly-coloured wooden boats forward and back on the shouted instructions of their father, duck-diving down to the reef to check that all was going to plan. Some things on this island have never changed, and I hope that they never will.

Six Blokes in Barcelona

The taxi arrived at five in the morning, but most of us had been partying all night so we were already awake. Showing few signs of life, and in some cases far from sober, six smelly blokes were decanted onto the Boeing 767 to Barcelona, and three hours later were shambling down La Rambla, Barcelona’s main drag, in search of beer.

After a fairly extensive bar crawl into the late afternoon, we grabbed a couple of hours kip and then headed out for the evening’s entertainment. It was, we discovered, fiesta time in Barcelona. La Rambla was packed, not only with tourists and locals but also with musicians, buskers and street performers. Most impressive were the various sets of stilt dancers, performing complex rhythmic manoeuvres while dressed in outrageously coloured costumes. Followed by cunningly contrived mobile music machines (imagine a cross between a stage sound system and a bicycle), they swept through the crowd, terrorising passers-by with their demonic appearance and scattering firecrackers and confetti with gay abandon.

At the seaward end of La Rambla is a pontoon that leads out to an artificial island in the harbour, a colourful line of bars and clubs known as La Moll d’Espanya. Entry is free, the atmosphere is friendly, and you are practically encouraged to wander from club to club, in an extension of the traditional evening perambulation. However, I wasn’t in the mood for dance music, so I left the others to it and headed off down to the quayside, where live bands were gearing up for the evening. After a little wandering, I settled on one band that interspersed creditable renditions of rock classics with traditional Spanish flamenco songs. An unusual mixture, but it really got us dancing.

Much later, I grabbed a few hours of sleep at the hotel, and then was awoken by the others returning from their raving at around 6:30am. I took the opportunity to get up, grab a coffee , and head out on foot to the Sagrada Familia.

For those who have never been there, this is Gaudi’s crowning masterpiece. They have been building this weirdly organic cathedral to his original plans for around a century, and it is the most truly impressive piece of modern construction that I have ever seen. Each individually shaped stone is hand-moulded on site from concrete, and then winched into place. The first seven towers already grace the skyline like the arms of a stone octopus, and millions of tourists regularly clamber up the labyrinthine stone staircases, emerging onto trick balconies and buttress bridges high above the city.

It had been five years since my last visit, and a fair amount had been achieved. The central space in what had previously been a bare shell now contained many floors of construction, an extra crane, and more scaffolding than I have ever seen in my life. At two points they had built high enough to incorporate what looked like the first supports for the central dome. For the first time, I began to believe that the cathedral may be finished in my lifetime.

From the central Cyprus Tower my eyes once more followed the tree-lined Avenue Gaudi to the impressive building standing at the end. Usually it has been mid-summer and I’ve been wearing bike leathers, and so I’ve never actually walked up the avenue to see what it was, but this time it was below 30C and I was equipped with T-shirt and shorts, so once back at ground level I set off to find out. It was well worth it. The Hospital de Sant Pau is a genuine working example of Catalan architecture, beautifully embellished with multicoloured mosaics. There was something immensely pleasing about the juxtaposition of gothic architecture and modern ambulance equipment.

I was now in a mood for walking. Clear across town is Gaudi’s last civil project, the apartment block called La Perdera. I had never been inside, so I spent a happy couple of hours exploring the apartments and clambering round on the roof before repairing to the building’s coffee lounge for a restorative sandwich. As I paid my bill, I heard firecrackers outside, a sure sign of a fiesta parade. Hurrying outside, I came across a huge construction like a hamster-wheel with a brightly dressed gnome inside. Various parts of the structure were wired to a drum machine, which he played by jumping around and hitting them. Two more gnomes high up on one of the Perdera balconies acted out a play about Father Time, and a band of black-clad men pushed oil drums in wheelbarrows while their partners beat enthusiastic percussion with hammers. They were the vanguard for another gnome standing in an enormous head constructed of white polypropylene bottles, pushed along at the top of a small crane by a group of struggling men. As if this wasn’t enough, a silver-clad girl floated by suspended from a big white helium balloon. When they do a parade in Spain, they do it in style.

Having crossed half the city, I decided to finish the job and go to the park which sits on a hill overlooking the south-western suburbs. I had heard that there was another Gaudi church there, and this was as good as an excuse as any. When I arrived in the Place d’Espanya, it was clear that something was going to happen. All the way up the long series of steps leading to the palatial National Catalan Art Museum, engineers were scurrying around preparing thousands of fireworks. Halfway up the avenue, the concert speakers hanging from every lamppost emitted an ear-shattering crash and then launched into mind-numbing rock music. This was a sound-check as sound-checks are meant to be. There were a couple of dozen passers-by strolling along the enormous avenue, and none of us could resist a bit of a dance as the music swept irresistibly through our small frail bodies. After establishing that they were laying the groundwork for a son et lumiere spectacular the following evening, I continued my search for La Poblo Espanya, which turned out to be an artificial mountain village.

For the 1929 Expo, copies of buildings from all the different regions of Spain had been crammed together into one place. Each region had shops selling crafts local to its area, and although it was all a bit Disney it wasn’t a bad rendition of a genuine Spanish village. The Gaudi church was nice too.

From La Poblo Espanya there is a path that runs along the hillside to a cable car down to the seafront, but as I was ambling along I bumped into a couple of lost American ladies who gave me the return half of their ticket on the funicular, an alternative route down which I took with an Australian couple who were on month three of a two-year round-the-world trip.

Once back on La Rambla, I was suddenly at a bit of a loss. I sat in a pavement bar for a while, waiting for something interesting to happen, but eventually decided that what I really needed was a good meal. After some searching I found a decent restaurant in a large square, and ordered myself a good feast washed down by some Faustino 1.

Another lone guy sat down at the next table. He turned out to be a German called Ralf, an oil-worker in Aberdeen on his way back from an off-road motorcycle tour of Andorra. We got on pretty well, so after dinner we set off together to check out the quayside bands and bars, finally ending up outside one of the bars on the Moll d’Espanya drinking half-pints of whiskey and watching the girls go by.

Unfortunately, at 2am I realised that my bag had disappeared from beneath our feet, containing my camera, phone and, worst of all, the last two rolls of exposed film. A trip to the police station revealed that the English-speakers didn’t work nights, so I headed back to the hotel for a few hours of bed. The others rolled in again at 6am, so I got up and after a much-needed coffee returned to the police station to give my statement. The waiting room was full of people who’d had their bags and cameras stolen at the same time and the same place; so there must have been a gang of streamers operating on the parade that night.

Back at the hotel, the others were just getting up, and since they’d spent the previous day shopping rather than sightseeing I took them on the metro to the Sagrada Familia, borrowing a camera to re-take some of the shots that I’d lost. We then moved on to the Park Guell and spent a pleasant sunny afternoon ambling around Gaudi’s structures before heading back to the hotel for a change of clothing.

It was now that we discovered that the lock had jammed on our room’s safe. Sealed inside were our passports and plane tickets, and since it was now Sunday night and we were due to check out at 8am Monday morning, we were understandably perturbed. However, with a little effort I managed to get reception to arrange for a locksmith to turn up at 7am, hopefully giving us enough time to catch our plane, and we set off for the Place d’Espanya and the promised firework display.

The square and the avenue were packed with people. The music began, and the large fountain complex in front of the museum, bottom-lit by coloured lights, began to dance. Music of many different styles was mixed together higgledy-piggledy, perfectly traced by the finely controlled fountains. This was all rather impressive, but it was only a taster for the main event. After a long pause to sort out some technical problems, the music began once again. Starting with early classical tunes, the show moved through the years with medleys of musical styles from each period, concentrating on a Catalan theme, while the fountains danced and above them the fireworks flamed and exploded in time to the music. It was a huge spectacle, with all sorts of unusual fireworks, and enough different styles of music to keep everybody happy.

Marshalls had been moving through the crowd giving out sparklers to all and sundry, and round about the nineteen-sixties a Catalan anthem began, and everybody lit up. Unfortunately, my sparkler turned out to be defective, and exploded into an eighteen-inch fireball. No sooner had it started then it was over, leaving me with two naked sticks and a hand that looked like a barbecued trout. I made a beeline for the ambulance. The packed crowds magically parted before me; clearly the expression on my face brooked no argument. It felt like the charring had gone deep, but there was no pain as yet and I wanted to get treatment before it started.

The paramedics smothered everything in cream and bandages as the fireworks climaxed and the next victims began to arrive. Clearly there was a bad batch of sparklers out there. I was sent off to find the hospital, trailing the rest of our group behind me; walking fast to take my mind off the pain.

The surgeon poked about, removed the worst bits of charred flesh, and after pronouncing that I would live, I was back on the street with an enormous bandage.

Two fingers were badly blistered, the end of my thumb was charred, and my middle finger had a big hole stretching for a couple of joints but on the whole I was in one piece. I had got off more lightly than one other guy, whose entire hand looked like a piece of flame-grilled chicken. I desperately wanted a beer, and would have been happy with the nearest bar (it was after all 2am) but the other guys had been sitting in a hospital waiting room for an hour and a half and wanted to head back down to La Rambla. Suddenly tired, I took some cans to my room and drank them in bed, noting with relief that the locksmith had already been, and that our passports were all intact. Eventually I dozed off until the guys came back, and then within hours we were back on a plane, heading for the office and a bright new day.

Loire Valley

A mid-morning start on a beautiful day. We were embarking on what would turn out to be an eleven hour motorcycle ride from Utrecht in Holland to Angers in France, to meet up with the rest of that loose group of bikers, the Lemmings, for a weekend touring the Loire Valley.

Breakfast in Mons

To break up the journey, we stopped in the Belgian town of Mons for lunch in the picturesque central square, where they were setting up a music festival. The sun was shining and the populace were gearing up for a party, and it was tempting to stay, but we forced ourselves to finish our meal and continue on our way.

French Traffic

By the time we hit Paris it was the rush-hour, and the Periphique was a marvel to behold. Above and beyond the normal scalectrix free-for-all, hundreds of motorbikes were hammering conga-fashion between every lane of cars. Loaded with a full pannier system, we were a little bit wider than average, so I kept pulling over into the main traffic streams to let the slimmer bikes behind me past; about half a dozen at a time, and on on occasion at least six police motorcycles. At one time I snuck in behind an ambulance that was doing its own filter between the lanes, sirens blazing, and I was quite stunned when it pulled over into traffic to let me past…

We finally met up with the others at their Angers hotel at 9pm. There was little time to do anything but drink lots of beer and fall asleep.

Sneezing in Angers

On the next morning we rode into Angers itself to have a look around the town. It is situated at one end of a mediaeval stone bridge over the Loire, and mostly sits inside a fortress, packed with tiny cobbled streets arranged around a central castle. Those buildings that were not timber-framed were constructed from tufa, a light-coloured stone that is popular with stone-carvers, and which also accounts for the warm honey-colour of the bridges and chateaux in this region. The castle had a functioning drawbridge over the moat with an Audi parked on it, draped with a wedding couple and orbited by a photographer who was trying to fit pictures in between the tourists streaming through the gateway.

I couldn’t even get close to the castle – or more particularly to its gardens – because there was something in the air that day and my nose was streaming. I couldn’t even approach the entrance portcullis without collapsing into paroxysms of sneezing, so we gave it a miss and headed upriver to nearby Saumur.

Mushrooms in Saumur

Saumur is dominated by a chateau that looks down on the town and its bridge, but we were headed for the outskirts and a mushroom museum. This was part of an underground mushroom farm situated in a tufa-rock mine, and was not only fascinating but also blessedly cool. For the benefit of tourists, they were growing mushrooms in the traditional heaps as well as the more modern beds and bags, and the workers delayed picking until the evening so that the maximum number of fruiting bodies were showing during the day.

The whole thing was fascinating, and topped off by a beautifully presented museum that must have contained samples of every mushroom in Europe, each preserved in a perspex block and mounted in a niche hollowed from the tufa wall.

On to Orleans

It was well past lunchtime and we had a hundred miles to go to the next hotel, so we made a start by cruising up the river toward Tours. The road was superb, built on top of a levee with broad sweeping bends that followed the sinuous path of the beautiful green-shrouded Loire, offering views across the rivers many islands and out across the surrounding vineyards. By the time we got to Tours it was well past five, so we hammered down to motorway to our destination just south of Orleans and a well-earned meal.

Another sunny day dawned. As well as wine, this region is also famed as the home of the French perfume industry, so our first call was a perfume museum on the outskirts of Orleans. This was set in the Chateau Chamerolles, and arranged sequentially through a series of rooms each decorated in the style of a particular century, with the history of perfume interwoven with the history of France. It was very well done, and terminated in a darkened room containing examples of many kinds of glass perfume bottle, each set upon a tiny black uplighter so that it appeared to hang suspended and glowing from within in the darkness.

In Orleans itself, the centre of town had been cordoned off and laid out as a karting track. Other stalls had been set up in the locality, and I got hoisted up at the end of a crane to look down on the cathedral and the city, before wandering through the old quarter and down to paddle our feet in the river by the inevitable mediaeval bridge. The river was immensely wide here, but still flowed very fiercely indeed.

The old quarter came alive at night, and all the restaurants and bars spilled out onto the pavement. The food came and the alcohol flowed, and then before we knew it, it was morning and we were back on the bike for the eleven hours of riding back to Utrecht.

Luckily the beautiful weather held, and we stopped here and there to eat, drink and rest. Just over the Belgian border we happened to turn off into the town of Dour, which managed to live up perfectly to its name, completely failed to provide us with any food, and whose main attraction, as far as we could see, was the immense queue of people waiting for the bus out of town. However, we knew that Mons was nearby, so we decided to try our luck there again.

Back to Mons

The music festival appeared to be over, but the townspeople of Mons were having yet another party, this one related to dragons. The main square was packed with impromptu bars where they sold wicked-looking Belgian beer in huge flagons, and we ended up back at the same restaurant, as it was the only place that hadn’t foregone food preparation in preference to the sale of rivers of alcohol.

Still, we were looking forward to sitting in the square watching the world bustle by, chased by friendly street-sellers with fistfuls of hats, balloons and dragons. Everyone was having a great time, but we had some more mileage to cover, so regretfully we passed up on the local beer, bought a passing dragon-on-a-stick and pointed the bike toward Holland and home.

Luxembourg

I got on my motorbike one sunny Thursday and headed for Oostende, a couple of hours’ ride from den Haag in Holland. The theory was that I’d meet up with Lisa who was bringing her bike over from England on the SeaCat, and we’d camp up in nearby Brugge and meet a dozen or so other bikers on Friday morning. We would all then head off for the annual MAG Eurodemo, which this year was to be held in Bonn.

Cat-astrophe

I arrived in Oostende (severely sore: the road from Antwerp to Brugge is probably the worst piece of tarmac in Christendom) and parked up outside the ferry terminal, noting the serendipitous proximity of an al fresco alehouse complete with electric heaters to take the chill off the evening. Settled into a comfortable chair, glass in hand, I switched on my phone and received no less than four urgent messages from Lisa. Apparently the SeaCat had broken down (again; it does this with monotonous regularity) and the best that P&O could do was to put Lisa and all the other motorbikes onto a hovercraft which was bound for Calais, in another country and about an hour’s ride away.

By the time Lisa arrived in Oostende, the night was well advanced, but we managed to blag the last food from the kitchen, and discovered that the bar (the oldest in Oostende, so it claimed), had rooms to rent, so we settled in with a vengeance, deliberately ordering glasses of Kriek and Kwak because it sounded good when the waitress shouted it across the bar.

A Nut Loose in Bitburg

The next morning we completed a leisurely breakfast and then discovered that the SeaCat was still broken, so we abandoned the wait for our friends and set off for the Eurodemo campsite. This was only three hours away so we took it easy, but after looking around the town of Bitburg (which I wanted to visit simply because it made the beer that is named after it), I found that the front sprocket nut had vanished from my bike and the actual sprocket had fallen off, instantly turning the whole machine from a useful means of transportation into just so many motionless parts. It was getting on for closing time so I left Lisa to look after the pile of bits and rode her bike in search of repairs, on the basis that I speak German and she doesn’t.

A Mercedes garage pointed me in the direction of a Toyota garage (on the basis that they were as Japanese as the Yamaha and therefore probably had non-metric nuts), but on the way I stopped at a Suzuki Jeep garage where a bemused lady receptionist – the only person there – let me in to the workshops to see if I could find anything that looked useful, but sadly to no avail.

At the Toyota garage I met their mechanic, who was just going home, but after discovering that he didn’t have anything remotely like the sprocket nut that I was looking for he borrowed a car from the showroom and took me to a nearby Honda dealer. Sadly, no dice (Hondas don’t have sprocket nuts), but the Honda people reckoned that there was a motorcycle shop in a nearby town that might have one.

A phone call revealed that (a) they had one but (b) they were going home, but if I could be there in fifteen minutes then it was mine. Swiftly we returned to the Toyota garage, where I put Lisa’s bike back together (I’d taken it apart to show the mechanic what I needed) and headed out. It was about 20 miles and I had good directions, but sadly they did not include the roadworks diversion, so I didn’t get there in time. However, stuck to the door was a post-it directing me to the owner’s house, but he’d been looking out for me and showed up waving happily, and soon I was back on the road, complete with a new set of directions and a nice shiny new sprocket nut in my pocket.

Back at my own bike there was no sign of Lisa, but I got on with fitting the new nut, only to find that the spindle thread was too knackered to tighten the nut by hand. At about this time, Lisa emerged from a nearby pub with a large number of Germans who had discovered her asleep by the bike and, discovering our predicament, were ringing around their friends trying to find us a suitable nut. Finding that I now had a nut but no 32mm spanner (after all, who does?) they then phoned all their friends again and amazingly produced one with the requisite tool.

Sadly, however, the thread was too knackered even with the correct instrument, so Lisa went back to her beers and I scratched my head. At some point in the foregoing, Lisa had managed to get into telephone contact with our friends who had now arrived in Germany and were strangely enough just entering Bitburg themselves. Soon they all turned up too and scratched their collective head in the time-honoured manner until I gave up and did what I always do, to whit, cobbled something together out of a beer can and bits scavenged from the nearest bin. I figured that it would get me to the camp site, and I’d worry about sorting the thread out in the morning.

Off we set, following our friends who knew exactly where they were going. The Road to… Bonn? Time passed, and the roads became curiously mountainous with interesting hairpins. The altitude increased and we passed a road sign that looked suspiciously like a border sign for Luxembourg, and the guy we were following finally stopped and admitted that he’d been reading the map upside down and we were 180 degrees out of phase with our intended route…

My sorely abused chain had been getting slightly irritable on all these mountain curves, so I enquired of a passing local (who was attempting to pass rather quickly; it was after dark in a small village and there were lots of large rumbling motorcycles with large foreigners rumbling angrily to each other…) and discovered that there were no less than three camp sites within 500 metres, and two garages. Leaving the others to make their own way to Paris, Lisa and I stopped for the night and were so exhausted that we slept ’til midday.

Emerging to greet the day, we discovered that it was half-day closing and all the garages were shut. Enquiries pinned down a couple of open garages, especially a Hyundai garage in the next town. Again I caught the mechanic just as he was intending to go home, but he was happy to tighten up my new nut for me. Ten minutes later, after ever so carefully easing it on with the absolute minimum of force, we sat looking at yet another ruined nut. The thread on the spindle was just too knackered. The mechanic thought for a bit, then said that he was hungry and needed some lunch, but after that he would nip round his friend’s house and borrow a thread-cutter and meet me back at the garage (which had now closed for the weekend).

An hour later he returned, sans thread-cutter but with a hardened steel file, with which he proceeded to laboriously cut a new thread for me, by hand, using the in-gear, running, hoisted-up back wheel as a lathe. Well, I was impressed. Another hour, and I was back on the road again, leaving behind a considerable amount of gratitude and a fistful of beer money.

Vianden, Luxembourg

That night we discovered that the village that we were in was actually the outlying part of a town called Vianden, right in the heart of the Deutsch-Luxembergischer Naturpark and surely the most beautiful town in Luxembourg, set in a dammed gorge and overlooked by an impressive castle on an outcrop projecting from the tree line.

A pleasant walk up and down the main cobbled street soon revealed a plethora of flower-bedecked restaurants. Eventually we chose one of them (no mean feat!) and had an excellent meal, eventually weaving our somewhat inebriated way back over the river to the camp site. We stayed for another day too, taking the chairlift up the sides of the valley to look down on the castle, and going for madcap burns around the mountain roads, most of which seemed to be named after Victor Hugo, to whom memorials are ubiquitous, and one of which lead mysteriously through a large field of cannabis plants.

The following day, having fond memories of our last visit to the capital, we set off for Luxembourg city, which was every bit as beautiful as we remembered it. We spent an extremely pleasant day wandering around the warrens of switchback paths and tunnels that climb up and down the sides of the lush green gorge that splits the city. Definitely my favourite European city.

Almost a Full Meal in Hellenthal

After the success of our stay in one national park, we headed for another, the Deutsch-Belgischer. However, even though this too was quite beautiful, it did have a serious lack of camp sites. The only ones that we could find were rather dire caravan parks on the outskirts of unattractive modern towns, and we were looking for another Vianden. Later and later into the night we rode, until eventually, after a couple more caravan parks (all of whom had closed their gates at dusk) we encountered a tiny camp site on the outskirts of Hellenthal which was mysteriously deserted of staff and customers, but which sported a small green field and a clean and functioning toilet block.

We had spotted glimpses of a beautiful mediaeval village high above us as we descended into the valley, so after pitching the tent we climbed wearily back onto our bikes and set off again, desperate for something to eat. Luckily for us there was a small restaurant at the base of the town, so we climbed out of our waterproofs and stumbled in, to be greeted by an extremely friendly staff who gave the impression that they’d been sitting waiting all evening just for the pleasure of serving us.

About half way through the second course, when we had taken the edge off the worst of our hunger and were beginning to think in terms of making a night of it, it began to percolate through to our awareness that we hadn’t seen a single Visa symbol anywhere in the restaurant. Discreet enquiries revealed that they didn’t accept plastic of any sort, and although we had Belgian francs aplenty we were pretty low on Deutschmarks; we hadn’t intended to camp on this side of the border but had accidentally wandered across while searching for somewhere to stay. Luckily we had exactly enough German cash to pay for what we had already eaten plus a small tip, so we halted our meal, handed over everything we had, and departed rather abruptly into the night.

The next morning, after a pleasant night’s sleep, we still couldn’t find anybody to pay so we packed up and headed back up to the village, whose name I have forgotten but which began with an R.

All The Best Things Start With R

It turned out to be an ancient fortified town from the 1700s, virtually untouched since mediaeval times and extremely well kempt. All the houses were spotlessly white, all the graves in the graveyard were beautifully tended with burning candles, the church bells rang out merrily across the valley, and a hushed aura of history pervaded the air. We stayed for a long time, poking around behind houses and in the dungeons of the ruined castle, which curiously enough was being rebuilt by two cheerful men on a scaffold tower. They had built up to around thirty feet from the original foundations and showed no signs of stopping, and why would they? Perched on top of the world in the sunshine, the whole of Germany laid out in a patchwork below, they carefully laid stone upon ancient stone and rebuilt the past.

Springtime in Finland

We fairly randomly rang our travel agent for destinations available on short notice, and were presented with a list of all the usual (warm island in the Mediterranean) suspects, and one odd one out, 100km north of the Arctic Circle in Finland.

A Finnair Welcome

Very shortly after that we were on board a Finnair flight for Helsinki, where we were to transfer to an inland plane for the last 1000 miles or so to Kittila.

Flying with Finnair was a pleasant experience, albeit a blurred one. We were greeted by the normal complementary drink, but this was swiftly followed by the meal which included a bottle of wine. Barely had we coped with this when the stewardesses were back asking if we wanted coffee with our after-dinner brandy.

The landing took place in a haze and then we were on the connecting flight, and would sir like a drink from the bar?

The first part of the flight took us over the Finnish Lake District, which looked more like an inland sea overlain with a thin doily of land than genuine solid ground. By degrees this gave way to the northern tundra, and the first suspicions of snow in the low hollows that are really this landscape’s only feature, and finally taiga with its thick stands of stunted trees rooted forever in permafrost.

Kittila Airport

I’ve been to some small airports, but Kittila was the first one I’ve seen constructed entirely from wood, including the control tower.

Wood seemed to define the Finnish experience. There is nothing that cannot be constructed from it, given ample supplies and a bucketful of ingenuity. Not only the churches but the gravestones, not only the factories but the pipelines between them, not only railway sleepers but entire kilometres-long embankments are made from this amazing stuff. It can also be burned for warmth and fermented into fuel, and given the tiny number of Finns that live in the huge area north of Helsinki, there is an almost infinite supply.

The airport was deserted, and as the locals faded quickly away we realised that the single visible employee was from Avis and his single task for the day was to hand us the keys to our car. That done, he too disappeared, leaving us standing in the sunshine in a deserted airport, with only a single car waiting patiently for us in the car park.

A Lodge in Akaslompolo

It was a fair way to our rented lodge, but there was only one road and we amused ourselves by trying to spot fleeting glimpses of reindeer amongst the trees. Look, there’s one! No, that’s a tree stump No, it moved!

Of course, several days later we had acclimatised, and realised that the trouble with reindeer is to avoid running them over, as they seem to proliferate like rabbits, presumably an evolutionary compensation for their habit of standing still in the middle of the road.

The lodge, when we found it, was a log cabin set in woodland, furnished with modern conveniences and our very own sauna. It only took a moment to unpack, and then we set off to see what there was in Akoslompolo. There were a number of restaurants, a supermarket and an activity hire shop centred around a frozen lake. Pretty well perfect, except that nearly everything was firmly shut. The only thing that was open was one of the restaurants, and over an excellent meal of reindeer steak and wild berries we discovered that we had arrived in the off-season, a period of three weeks when the snow is no longer deep enough for skis and snowmobiles, but the ground is still too wet for walking or for wheeled traffic.

In fact, in those three short weeks a country of frozen ice is reborn violently as a country of lakes and woodland. Its all such an upheaval that the Finns, whose main income is tourism (in the skiing season) and tourism (in the walking season), all choose this time to seal up their houses and go on holiday.

It was certainly a time of changes. Every morning the scenery outside the lodge had altered, and each day driving along the same road was like exploring new territory. A snow covered woodland that we stamped about in throwing snowballs on one day, was a boiling torrent on the next, and a placid lake a couple of days later.

A Trip to the Arctic Ice Pack

All this put an idea into my head. I wondered if the Barents Sea was still frozen, and if the sea-ice was also breaking up. When asked, various Finns scratched their heads and deliberated, and some were of the opinion that it had already melted, while others thought that you could probably still see the ice pack from the northern Norwegian shore. The only real way of finding out was to go and look, which in any case was inevitable as I’d always wanted to go to Kirkenes on the Norwegian / Russian border, ever since discovering that it was the last stopping point of the famous Norwegian Hurtigrute postal steamer.

The fact that we were going to be driving for twelve hours didn’t put us off, because of course this was the land of the midnight sun, and we had already adjusted to the pattern of sleeping when tired and emerging when awake regardless of the hour of the day.

Five hours of driving took us to the Norwegian border, where we realised that we hadn’t brought our passports, but of course nobody was there to check them. We were now seriously far north, where the coast of Norway curves around the tip of Finland to gently poke against the vastness of Russia.

For some time, we had been following a large frozen river, scattered with tree trunks and the debris of winter. Occasionally it expanded into a huge lake, criss-crossed by a season’s worth of fossilised snowmobile tracks. Apart from these tracks and the road itself, we had seen few signs of human habitation for hundreds of kilometres, and then suddenly there was a lay-by with half a dozen cars and a scattering of warmly clad families.

Intrigued, we pulled over to see what the fuss was about. The river was melting. The lay-by overlooked a gorge that channelled a fierce torrent of icy melt water. While the families peered timorously over the edge, we clambered down to what could loosely be called the waterline to get a closer look. The river roared with the speed of a train through a cut several hundred meters across. The water was laden with blocks of ice the size of snooker tables all moving at the same breakneck speed, rolling over and smashing into each other as they went. Where rocks obstructed their progress, massive chunks of ice reared inexorably out of the water, quivering with the warring forces, until the next one smashed them free or rode up over the top of them to form a huge unstable pile the size of several cars. We took some photos which we knew would never do justice to the scale or to the power, but we also realised that we were most unlikely ever to forget it.

Back on the road, we had run out of trees, and were driving through kilometres of scoured rock, tortured by volcanic stresses into brightly coloured reds and greens squeezed as if from a careless artist’s tube, and then flattened and shattered by the onslaught of water and ice. Sparsely scattered homesteads clung to the rock or projected out into lake and fjord on wooden stilts. This must be a truly harsh place to live.

Finally we rounded Hardanger Fjord, and the cold grey Barings Sea stretched out before us. Although it was free of ice, it had fulfilled its purpose; the excuse for a journey that otherwise we may never have made. We sat and watched it for a while, and then turned back to the south.

We re-entered Finland by a different route, and before we reached the tree line we puzzled over the strangeness of the landscape. It was hard to put your finger on it, but there was something offbeat about the scattered rocks, and then suddenly it clicked into place. The predominant weathering here was repeated freezing and thawing. More normal weathering, such as rain, wind and sun, was completely eclipsed here in the farthest reaches of Europe. The flat ice-scoured terrain bore strange collections of carefully graded rocks and pebbles, arranged into neat geometric patterns, usually circles a few feet across. The shores of the frozen lakes appeared manicured, so precise was the arrangement of the stones on the beach, sorted by size as if by some autistic child of the gods.

This was the effect of the permafrost layer, repeatedly pushing to the surface and then retreating, slowly but surely reorganising the rocks in the soil. Back in the tree line we found that things had changed again in the day we’d been away. The snow was melting with a vengeance, and many of the trees which had previously in deep snow were now standing up to their knees in melt water. Also emerging from the drift was a lakeside hut, built from split logs in the shape of a tepee and kitted out with a fire pit and pans.

Walking on Water

A few days later we returned to the tepee with firewood and food and Finnish beer for a lakeside meal. In the middle of the lake was a volcanic island, and to enable tourists to view the lava, a raised plank-way had been built over the boggy bits. However, this was intended for summer use, and just now the lake covered everything, boggy bits and all, with icy melt water. The planks had worked their way loose from their trestles over the winter, and were now floating in a surreal curve on the surface of the water, bobbing for a couple of hundred metres and only attached at each end to the shore and to the island.

It was impossible to resist. We built a big fire in the hut to dry us out on our return, and then set off walking on water, shuffling along with one foot on each of the thin planks. Amazingly, we made it to the island relatively unscathed, but the planks were only joined end-to-end by luck and inertia, so when we turned round to look the way we had come it was to see several of the planks floating off into the distance.

Still, for most of the path there was still at least one plank still in place, and its amazing how the thought of glacial water improves your balance so we made it back only wet to the calves, apart from one of Lisa’s knees that got wet when the two planks she was standing on started floating in different directions…

This wasn’t the only day we spent with cold feet. On one occasion we were many kilometres up a flooded and frozen road that was technically still closed for winter, and stopped the car at the lip of a valley full of snow. We spent some time stomping around in it trying to work out if a front-wheel drive estate car would get through (we decided it wouldn’t). Another time was on our mountain bike excursion up, well, a mountain, during which I attempted to jump my bike over a snow-topped drainage ditch, with predictable results.

The Bear Hunt

One area of woodland was noted for its visiting bears, and in fact there was a path called The Bear Trail that wound around through six kilometres of pleasant birch forest. At least, it did in the summer season. When we tried it, the snow varied from ankle to waist deep and was undercut by varying depths of freezing melt water. It was only because the trail was marked by head-high paint marks on the trees that we could find it at all, and it took us most of the day, building bridges over the bad bits with fallen trees, jumping from rock to hidden rock, and of course keeping a wary eye out for bears.

We never saw any, which was probably best all round, but we did see lots of bear tracks, some of them made by a bear apparently dragging something, and we found ample evidence to finally resolve the age old question; yes, bears really do, there in the woods. I guess that makes the Pope a Catholic.

Riding to Utrecht

The time had come for me to leave my home country of England, and seek my fortune overseas. I secured a work contract in the mediaeval Dutch city of Utrecht, and – having no further ties – swung my leg over my motorcycle and headed for the Channel Tunnel at Folkestone.

The Channel Tunnel

The Chunnel train looked very French, big corrugated metal slab-sided carriages with tiny windows. I am the only biker in a queue of cars, and an official in a bright yellow jacket waved me to one side and continued to guide each car into one of two doors set into the side of the train, one leading to an upper deck and one to a lower. Every now and then he made twisting motions with both hands to indicate that a motorist should turn their lights off, but I can’t see why.

Evidently I will be the last vehicle to board. The official grins sympathetically as I put my feet up on the handlebars and lie back, watching the rain dripping off my visor. At the last moment another bike appears, a two-up British Kwak Harley-a-like, all chrome and leather. The official drags an orange trolley out of hiding and places it on the floor of the last carriage. It has widely spread arms that lie flat on either side to stop it from falling over, and two swivel-mounted cups that are meant to hold the tyre. The cruiser noses its front wheel into the first cup, and the official guides the other into place, neatly holding the entire bike upright. Within moments my own bike is similarly secured, and I look at it curiously, wondering how they are going to get it out again.

A pretty French blonde appears, similarly encased in bright yellow, and checks that we have left the bikes in gear. I wander off to find a toilet – the doors between the carriages have electronic locks controlled by illuminated orange buttons which take several seconds to unlock the manually-pushed doors – and before I know it we are moving. A number of public announcements are made in French and English, repeated in both languages on overhead illuminated scrolling signs. I strike up a conversation with the other bikers, who are travelling to Antwerp and thus in my direction. He was originally Flemish but now lives in England; his partner, a tiny dark girl with a big smile and curious marks on each cheek, was originally from South America. They warn me that there is no petrol for 60 miles after you get off the train, but I have ample in the tank. They plan to stop and eat at their usual place just outside Brugge, and I think that it might be worth staying with them for the company on the road.

Now in France, all the connecting doors between the carriages are opened and the vehicles roll out along the body of the train and out the front (where did the engine go?) into the drizzle. Unloading the bikes is very straightforward, as the trolleys just spit us out when they are rolled away. Nice design, top marks.

Riding through Belgium in the rain

Up the familiar coast road, following the Kwak, which puts on a good 130kph pace, about what I would have chosen myself, though it can’t have been much fun for them with their open-face helmets. At the border with Belgium, the rain began in earnest, and I was glad to have plastic gloves on underneath my leather ones. An hour later and my boots started to fill up with water, absorbed through the leather and goretex by the onslaught of the weather.The Brugge services eventually appear, and just as we are about to cut across the four lanes leading to the exit, there is a huge bang from the Kwak and orange flames shoot toward me from their exhaust. They have run out of petrol, and I slow quickly to push if need be, but by weaving from side to side they find some vapour in the pipes and make it into a service station.

We sit and chew steak and talk about this and that, and I muse that it doesn’t really matter which country I’m in, I dont even have to know or care because everybody takes Visa. But then I want to go to the toilet, and sheepishly have to borrow BFr10 because I havent got any change to placate the large dragon lady guarding the entrance.

Outside the windows of the cafe, the rain gets heavier. We fill up with fuel and say our goodbyes, because even though I’ll be following them for another hour to Antwerp, they will be turning off at their journeys end and I’ll still have another hour to go to get to Utrecht.

Riding through Holland in the rain

As I leave Belgium and pass the signs for the Netherlands, the rain eases off a little. I smile to myself, although my shoulders are now stiff and the rain has made its way through my silk scarf and it is chafing my neck. Just out of Utrecht I stop, ostensibly for petrol but in actual fact to consult the map, because I really haven’t a clue where I’m going. Once stopped, though, I realise that I’m really cold, and sit for several minutes just staring at the petrol pumps revelling in the lack of motion and the protection afforded by the canopy overhead. Presumably I am on camera somewhere because a puzzled-looking blond beard appears at the window of the kiosk, but a look of understanding crosses his face when I wave vaguely in a gesture indicating the heavens, the bike, and the general condition of the world in general.

Inside, I forced my crabbed fingers to forge some resemblance to my Visa signature, and the bearded angel asked, “Would you like a coffee?” Would I! A nice steaming freshly brewed black coffee to wrap my hands around while I consult the map. I didn’t have a street map of Utrecht, just a fuzzy aerial view downloaded from the Web and a Michelin map of the local area purchased on the way over. My only clue for orientation is a distinctively shaped spaghetti junction which I hope I can recognise from the ground, in the rain, in the dark.

As usual I find that trusting to luck and not getting worried about the fact that I don’t even have the phone number of the hotel pays off, and before long I’m chugging up Donderstraat to the converted apartment building that is the Hotel Ouwi.

First night in Utrecht

I stand for a while in a scalding shower and then wander into town at 8pm, marvelling at all the canals. The streets are full of young couples, and despite the somewhat labyrinthine nature of the dark alleyways that criss-cross the centre, I feel perfectly safe. The only place that makes me a little uneasy is a big shopping centre called Hoog Catherijne next to the train station, where there seem to be some unsavoury characters hanging out, although nobody bothers me. Eventually I find a cash machine and get some Guilders. On the way back to the hotel I look in through the windows of lots of bars and restaurants, and everybody seems to be having a good time, though I’m starting to feel lonely and don’t feel much like sitting on my own. However, the last one that I pass is a Firkin pub, complete with English-style beer pumps, and I can’t resist it and go in.The staff are friendly and I stay for a couple of pints, just watching people and listening to music (apparently the bitter is brewed in den Haag), until I get up for a final pee.

In the gents I meet a New Zealander called Brett, and one thing leads to another and I find myself wandering from bar to bar with him and his four Dutch friends, finally rolling into bed at about half past one. Breakfast comes with the room and is a nice mixture of continental breads, ham, cheese, a boiled egg and a yoghurt. The toast is curious because it has Good Morning branded into it, presumably by the toaster. After several hours of walking I discover the whereabouts of my new office, a mere 15 minutes walk away along tow-paths and through a little nature reserve. Everybody else is either cycling or jogging; from the looks that I get from passersby and car passengers, walking is a suspicious activity and people who indulge in it are probably up to no good. Note to self: must buy a bicycle.

Lemmings Afloat in Greece

A printing error in a sailing brochure price list, some fast footwork on the phone, and suddenly nine members of that loose collection of bikers sometimes known as The Lemmings were flying out to Greece to pick up our 50-foot yacht for a holiday in the sun.

After some initial confusion at Kalamaki harbour, the gear was soon installed on our boat, and after an evening’s jollity and some kip we were out on the ocean wave.

Kea

Today would be the longest haul, all day heading southward around the mainland, with lots of nice open space in which to get used to our new craft, and some time to waste drifting gently in the sun and swimming in the clear blue sea.

Remembering an earlier escapade, however, this time we left somebody on board when we went swimming, and thus avoided a repeat of the sight of our yacht, sails set but helmless, heading off into the sunset. But that is another story, and finally, tired and hungry, we arrived at the little island of Kea.

We were the only boat at the harbour, and the taverna was waiting for the fishing boat to get in, so we mooched about until it arrived. I knew that the Greek sea had been grievously over-fished, and I’d already been surprised by the desert-like nature of the sea bottom on my snorkel excursions, but I was still stunned at the tiny catch that the three-man crew carried ashore when they finally docked; two large fish and some scallops. Sure enough, once in the taverna, we discovered that the piscine menu was limited to “leetle feesh” or “beeg feesh”.

It was all remarkably cheap too, but next day when we came ashore for breakfast the owner was in a terrible state, because he had forgotten to charge us the £20 for the “beeg feesh”. The meal had been excellent and of course we were happy to oblige, and he was so grateful that breakfast was on the house. What a knife-edge some of these tavernas must live on.

After breakfast we pottered about getting supplies, and then I happened to notice one of those ubiquitous moped-hire stalls at one end of the sea-front. A few drachma later, we were heading out into the hills.

It was a glorious day, and we were just riding for the hell of it, bouncing down little goat tracks to admire the beaches, caroming off the inside of immense potholes and generally having a great time. The terraces were lush and green, the flowers were bright and cheerful, and the villages shone whitely in the noonday sun. We managed not to fall off, too.

That night we walked round the coast to a taverna in the next village, on the way climbing up to a tiny little chapel in the dark and admiring the huge millipedes that swarmed all over it. Much later, after another enjoyable meal, we staggered back again.

A Hike Across Kithnos

The next day, as we were setting out to sea, dark clouds built up and it started to rain, but we did well under sail and by the time we hit the island of Kithnos for lunch the weather was clearing up, and rather than messing about with the dinghy we just anchored up in a convenient bay and swam to the nearest taverna.

Engine, who had carefully been watching Cap’n Steve’s every move, and who was himself studying for the necessary qualifications, wanted to have a go at skippering the boat, so leaving him a skeleton crew the rest of us set off on foot across the island, intending to meet up with them that evening on the other side.

The town, Loutra, is built over a hot spring, and steaming russet-coloured water runs everywhere in channels down to the sea. There was a derelict roman-style bath at one end of the town, but a major health spa was under construction so I doubt the town is so sleepy any more.

The walk across the island was beautiful, and although we only had a fag-packet map copied from the pilot’s almanac we were confident that we wouldn’t have too much trouble finding our way. We didn’t in fact get lost as such (although sometimes we thought that we were), but the island slanted higher and higher toward the western end, until we stood on a high cliff staring down into the harbour far, far below.

Was that tiny blob our boat? Or was it another, similar looking one? If it was ours, then why were the sails lying on the deck? Eventually, with some difficulty we scrambled down the cliff and managed to attract their attention.

After some messing about with the dinghy we were re-united, to discover that the crew weren’t exactly unstressed, having managed to soak the genoa half way round, but apart from that the experiment had been a success. Since there was plenty of firewood lying around, a beach picnic followed, with copious quantities of alcohol and a lot of rowing back and forth with food and, later, drunken people.

Back to Kea

The next day we set off back toward Kea Island, and on the way it blew up a force 7 which soon had most of us feeling distinctly green. We lived, however, to reach the port town of Kavia, where we anchored up in the accredited visitor’s mooring and then watched from the shore in some trepidation as an immense passenger ferry squeezed past us to its own quay, luckily without incident.

A Cultural Interlude

On the following day we found ourselves heading back up the mainland coast toward Kalamaki and home. On our way south, we had noticed a classical temple standing on a bluff at Sounion, so this time we dropped in to have a look. It was pleasantly, well, classical, but it was somewhat of a surprise to climb up the cliff from the deserted bay and to suddenly encounter a tarmac road packed with tourist buses. We ignored them, and they ignored us, and after a look around we went back to our boat, upped anchor, and left.

Bareboat Flotilla Antics at Fokaia

At Fokaia we anchored up once more, but just as we were preparing to row to the shore we noticed the sails of a flotilla rounding the head. Seasoned veterans that we were, we soon noticed that these were enthusiastic amateurs, and that a dozen or so forty-five footers were racing dangerously quickly into the bay, spinnakers flying.

Swiftly we upped anchor from our exposed central position, and motored gently in toward the beach. From my regular snorkel surveys of the anchor chain and the bottom of the boat I knew that we had big flat wings on the end of our keel, so we chugged ever so slowly up the sloping sandbar until the wings kissed the bottom, and then re-anchored, hopefully safely out of ramming distance from the incoming hordes.

The lead boat came in fast, making a botch of getting the spinnaker down, but they were pointing at us and shouting to each other and too late we realised they must have been saying, “Look, there’s a fifty-footer safely anchored inshore so there must be plenty of depth, whatever the pilot’s manual saysÂ…”.

Then there was an interesting crunch and everybody on board fell over. The rest of the flotilla came in very very fast and tried to raft up with the first boat, and for a while it all got quite amusing.

Salty sea dogs of several days’ experience, we smiled quietly and climbed into the dinghy and rowed ashore to the taverna, although we could probably have waded.

Back to Athens

On the last day, with the wind behind us and the ugly outskirts of Athens appearing on the horizon, we encountered a school of dolphins which played around in our wake for a while before heading out to sea. We did try to get pictures, but they moved very fast so the few that I got were just bits of tail and flipper, and we will never know whether Mark got any good pictures because shortly after that he dropped his camera overboard. It didn’t float very well.

Oberstaufen

After a pleasant few days motorcycling around the Black Forest, we headed down to the German/Austrian border for a week in a hotel in Oberstaufen. Heading into Singen we took the coast road around the Bodensee, which was beautiful but plagued by terrible traffic. The local road planners didn’t seem to have understood the concept of linked traffic lights, as they were scattered around on apparently random timing patterns. People spend so much time there waiting at red lights that there are signs asking you to switch your engine off to prevent pollution. However, eventually we made it through and got back onto the minor roads all the way to the hotel that was to be our home for the following week.

Oberstdorf

From Oberstaufen it is a short step to Oberstdorf, where we climbed up the highest ski-jump in the world with a view to bungee-jumping off the top, but the jump was far too expensive, although the climb was worth it because the views from the top were incredible.

Neuschwanstein

Another day we rode through dreadful traffic to the fairy tale castle Neuschwanstein (as seen in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), and thought that a romantic-sounding horse-drawn carriage up from Schwangau would be a nice idea. The reality was far from romantic, as after a lot of loud wrangling with rude German tourists about who had and who hadn’t pushed in to the queue, about fifteen of us crammed into a very small buggy and were pulled very slowly up the mountain by a very smelly horse.

Once at the castle, we spent an hour queing for a ticket (the ticket clerks thought that it would be a good idea to go for lunch at the busiest period), and then we had to wait for another half hour for our guide. I think that if I hadn’t been there before I would have given up before we got in, but I knew that it would all be worthwhile in the end, and it was just as crazy as I remembered it, commissioned by Mad King Ludwig whose personal style could best be described as Big, Colourful, and Gothic.

Rather than face the crowds again on the way down, we hiked across country, following a stream bed that cut down the wooded mountain side back to Schwangau. We did look up at the twin castle of Hohenschwangau, and thought about visiting, but we’d really had enough of queuing for one day, and left it for another time.

Cheese and farming

Another morning we spent an agreeable if rather smelly time at a traditional cheese-makers, where huge rounds of cheese were hand-crafted by jolly German craftsmen.

One afternoon we spent a long time trying to find a local museum of traditional farmhouses at a place called Illerbeule. We nearly failed, but by considerable luck we managed to find it, although since we arrived at 16:00, which is closing time for most places in the area, we thought it had all been to no avail, but for some reason this one place still had another couple of hours of opening time.

It really was a fascinating place, consisting of a complete farm built from cottages and barns from different eras and from different parts of Germany. The thing that struck me most compared with similar structures in the UK, was the amazing amount of living space that these farmers seemed to have. In Britain, in most historical ages, everybody hunkered down in a tiny room with all the animals. Here, if a farmer decided to go in for instance for cheesemaking, then he just built a whole new cheesemaking room on the end of his farmhouse. The barns were enormous too, and beautifully finished in boldly painted designs.

Hochgrat

On yet another beautiful day of blazing sunshine, we caught a cable car to the top of the 1833m Hochgrat ridge which marks the border between Germany and Austria, and set off westward along the top. Some 5km and several hard hours later we decided to leave the crumbly conglomerate of the main path and continue along the spine of the ridge, but somehow we went a little astray, and after an interesting 1500m descent through an almost vertical forest we arrived at somebody’s farm.

The amused farmer explained to us that the reason that we couldn’t work out where we were on our map was that we’d walked right off the edge and were now in Austria, so there was nothing for it but to climb all the way back to the top and then back down into Germany.

Once more at sea level, and thoroughly footsore, we were extremely grateful to discover a small bus waiting to take us to civilisation, Jacuzzi, and beer.

Breitachklamm and Sturmanns Höhle

We also spent a day visiting a couple of local geological features. The first was Sturmanns Höhle, a 300 metre meltwater shaft and tunnel bored over 600,000 years ago through a mountain near Obermaiselstein. There is quite a climb up to the entrance, and then, once inside, a long long descent into the heart of the mountain, at first along a crack or crevice, but then down the actual vertical shaft itself by means of a series of metal steps. It’s dark and drippy, but fun to be that far underground without benefit of ropes or a mineshaft.

From the Höhle we headed for the Breitachklamm, rightfully hailed as Germanys most beautiful gorge. It is really impressive, a deep fissure scoured by a fast-flowing river, with sides so high that they appeared to close in at the top and blot out the daylight. Judging by the mangled and twisted steel handrails along the way, the river must get pretty tempestuous at times, and there were also entire pine trees jammed crosswise across the valley some twenty or thirty feet above the current water level. It must be an incredible place in a storm.

White-water rafting in Switzerland

Finally, we nipped over into Switzerland to go white-water rafting with a German fire brigade, which wasn’t as scary as I expected but was still great fun.

And then it was time to get back on the bikes and go home, visiting a few more campsites along the way. On the border between Switzerland and France we passed a long queue of steam-powered cars, which was strange, and in the tiny French village of Freland we ate at a museum that doubled as a restaurant in the evenings, but on the whole we just rode, tired and happy, home to England and to bed.

Schwarzwald and Titisee

Motorcycling through Germany, we were headed for the Schwarzwald, or Black Forest. Rain threatened and we put on our waterproofs, but the promised precipitation never came, although the hills of the Schwarzwald faded into cloud ahead. On a small side-road near Baden-Baden we branched off into the woods and set up camp in a small glade. Since the midges were active, we set up a spare flysheet as an insect-proof porch and picnicked on pickled herrings and bratwurst, washed down with olives, gherkins, Mosel wine, and beer. It was a very comfortable night, despite the rather lumpy ground. There’s a lot to be said for camping by a babbling brook.

Baden-Baden appeared to have turned itself into a tourist trap. There was a bewildering array of signs pointing to hotels and car parks, but none pointing to useful things such as the Roman baths after which the town is named, so we escaped along a tourist road invitingly called the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse – the Black Forest High Road.

It got colder as we gained altitude, and the forest got very thick and dark (surprise surprise!). We took a short walk in the gloom to a nice little waterfall and back, and then after a series of winding roads with vistas over blue-shrouded hills, stopped for lunch at a crowded little cafe on the outskirts of Freudenstadt. Bypassing Freudenstadt we took another minor road into Triberg, full of tourists and cuckoo clocks. We couldn’t resist experiencing the immense roadside shop ‘The House of 1000 Clocks’, which as well as an incredible number of over-carved tourist timepieces also sold what looked like quality Vienna clocks at what seemed to be reasonable prices. It must be all the competition.

We had some trouble finding a campsite, but eventually struck lucky in the tourist resort of Titisee. While contemplating the enormous list of rules and regulations (“From your selected pitch you should be able to see only the number of your own pitch; Motor vehicles must be parked at right angles to the slope; We would not hesitate to remove lines attached to trees; Vehicular movement is prohibited between 13:00 and 14:30”), we met up with a group of four other bikers, and after a shower and some friendly beers we all set off into town for an evening’s entertainment.

After the restaurants had closed, we found our way into a nearby bierkeller, where I started on Diebel Altbier (Devil dark beer, which is supposed to be drunk in moderation) and the other guys got into the pils with schnapps chasers. The ladies were a little more circumspect, but it turned into a riot of an evening, and next morning I suffered for every drop of alcohol that I’d consumed.

We spent a slow morning rehydrating in Titisee, and then took a nice leisurely pedalo out across the lake followed by a medicinal Black Forest gateau.

That afternoon we headed up the Feldburg for some dramatic views across the brightly lit but incredibly dark forest, but the traffic was getting heavy again so we consulted our National Geographic tourist map and found that it recommended a minor road through Schonau toward Mullheim. This was excellent advice, as we were the only things moving on it, and it was a fantastic scratching road through often breathtaking scenery.

Eventually we looped back around through Freiburg (where we didn’t stop, although the latticework cathedral steeple looked interesting) and back to Titisee, planning to head south to the lake at Schluchsee, since we had noticed that where there’s a lake, there’s a campsite.

Indeed there was, but the tent part was packed so we kept on going until we found a hillside site with no lake but lots of space. As a sort of money-saving exercise (more from guilt than because we were actually short), and because we couldn’t cope with any more rich restaurant food, we fried up some sausages, apples, onions, gherkins, and spatzle (a local pasta). No beer for me, as my head was still hurting.

The back roads to Bonndorf and Singen were fantastic for biking, with loads of sweeping forest curves and hairpins, beautiful weather, and a lot of motorbikes. It must be pretty popular around here, as some villages had signs up banning motorcycles between 22:00 and 06:00.

Mosel and Rhine

A Breakdown in Belgium

We rolled off the boat at Calais into a beautiful sunny morning, and instantly turned northward intending a late breakfast in Brugge. However, the 130kph E40 soon got boring, so we turned off to take the parallel the coast road through De Panne and Nieuwpoort. At first it seemed like a good idea, and a much better way of starting a tour than hammering up the motorway. Even though the Belgian polders were as flat as ever, at least there were interesting dykes and canals to look at, and I was just congratulating myself on another successful long cut when we suddenly ran into Grockleville B.V., packed wall to wall with cars carrying tourists to enjoy a day sandwiched on the beach.

Rather than struggle up the beach zone, we turned back toward the E40, but almost immediately Lisa’s CBR dwindled in my rear-view mirrors and rolled to a stop by the roadside. Only one of the four cylinders was firing, which didn’t provide enough power to ride, so after checking for the usual faults I left Lisa with her bike and went off to find help. First I met a policeman, who directed me to an Audi garage, who directed me to a bicycle shop in Nieuwpoort, who directed me to a Honda dealer in Veurne. Miraculously, this shop was still open on a Saturday afternoon, but their tow-truck was ‘en panne’.

They were talking about ringing around some friends to see if they could find anybody with a trailer, but instead I borrowed a tow-rope and went back to the CBR, where Lisa was getting happily sunburnt by the roadside. My TDM towed her CBR without any problems, and the hard shoulder was wide and clear so we didn’t have to worry about traffic.

A few miles up the road, a police van did a U-turn to check us out, but they couldn’t work out whether what we were doing was illegal or not so, realising that we probably knew more about what we were doing than they did, they left us to it.

Fifteen minutes later we were installed in the bike shop in Veurne, where the nice man soon spotted that the fuel pump had failed. He didn’t have any new ones in stock, but he did have a lot of customers bikes in for repair, and we spent a merry time poking around in a load of crash-damaged frames looking for something that would fit. None of the CBRs had the right pump, and one off a Revere was the right design but had far smaller bores which suggested that we wouldn’t get a high enough flow rate for the CBR. Not to be defeated, the salesman opened up the showroom and pulled the pump out of a brand new Transalp that was standing in the window. A few minutes later, we were off.

Finally we rolled into the Brugge campsite, had a much-needed beer, and then set out on foot to have a look at the city. It is an attractive town, packed with narrow streets lined with gable-ended houses, and dominated by the clop-clop of horse-driven taxis and by the huge cathedral in the centre. The cathedral did not seem to be open to the public, but from the outside it had a vast presence, sprawling over a surprisingly wide area, an imposing brick-built edifice reminiscent of the monastery in ‘The Name of the Rose’. We sat in its shadow in a terrace cafe and ate an expensive but excellent dinner of ‘kroketten’, ‘moules’, and a local dish made from a mixture of fish in a creamy spinach sauce. All, of course, washed down with lashings of Belgian beer.

Crop Circles

The following day, after a leisurely start, we whipped around the Brussels ring-road and then, rather than stay on the boring motorway, took the quieter N4 toward Luxembourg. It was another beautiful day, and at a petrol stop we spent our few remaining francs on chocolate milkshakes and sat at the side of a cornfield to drink them. The corn had been recently cut, and the hay was lying in golden rows under the blazing sun. We sat and admired the scene, and then something strange started happening in the air in front of us. and swiftly a little dust-devil built itself up into a straw-filled whirlwind some twenty feet high. It had a footprint about four feet in diameter and acted like a big hoover, sucking up circles of hay and then moving on with the stalks whirling around inside the cone. It bumbled around the field at walking pace for a while, pausing now and again to leave mysterious crop circles in its wake, before heading up the bank onto the main road. A car passed through it without any noticeable effect, and then it was across the road and into some shrubbery, where it dropped its load of hay but we could still make out its progress by the swaying of the bushes on this otherwise still day.

Bemused, we got back onto the road, and for a while enjoyed a leisurely ride past the little high-gabled houses that formed the occasional village, punctuating the long flat plains of cabbages and potatoes that stretched to the flat horizon. Soon, however, the road degenerated into just another motorway, and I was glad when we were overtaken by a dozen Belgian bikers out on a run. They were really tanking it, but I snuck in behind the rear machine and we stayed with them all the way to Luxembourg.

Luxembourg

As soon as we crossed the border, the nature of the countryside altered dramatically from flat crop land to tree-lined hillsides. About 25 miles from the city we turned off down a random side road, sat on a bridge for a while watching damselflies, and then drove along the small hilly lanes until we found a small camp site.

It was a tree-lined field with no visible signs of authority, but some French campers told us to pitch up and then go to a certain house in the village at 18:30 to book in. A kindly elderly lady in a small house stuffed with antiques accepted a small amount of French francs in lieu of the Belgian ones that we didn’t have, and told us that although there weren’t any restaurants locally, tonight was the night of the local village fete and we might be able to pick up something to eat there. We were starving, so we made our way up to the tented area where everybody seemed to be having a fun time, although we felt very much like outsiders intruding on somebody’s private party. Nevertheless, we stood and drooled by a family-run hot-dog stand while they animatedly discussed exactly how much ten French francs was in Belgian currency, which was all pretty academic as all we had were ten-franc pieces and we’d have happily given away everything we had for a chance at those succulent sausages.

Finally everybody was happy, and we were ceremoniously presented with our food, which we wolfed hurriedly while debating going through the whole thing again at the beer stand. Cowardice prevailed, and we returned to our bikes to see if we could find a restaurant that accepted Visa. A few miles up the road was ‘Le Martin Pecheur’, dominated by an impressive stained-glass window of its namesake, where we washed down an excellent meal with a terrific Mosel wine, very tasty and a far cry indeed from the sugar water sold to teenage girls in England.

Feeling that our wine trip had now truly begun, we finished off with an interesting variation on Liqueur Coffee, with the coffee sandwiched between a layer of cream above and a clear layer of spirit below, served in a tall glass and drunk through a straw. Very potent.

Luxembourg City

Another late start, a leisurely coffee, another beautiful morning. A gorgeous run through rolling forested hills dotted with small sculpted villages and friendly people, ending in the fantastic city of Luxembourg itself.

Based around an AD 693 fortress almost surrounded by a deep hairpin chasm, the city is intermingled with rich parkland and vertical cliffs. Many of the buildings are impressively spired, most are intricately moulded. Walking along the old fortress wall, we discovered the Bock Casements, the remnants of the original castle which was voluntarily destroyed by the city itself in an attempt to establish their neutrality. They had comprehensively razed the castle itself, but there wasn’t much they could do about the subterranean tunnels, so they just blocked them off. Now they were open to the public, and stuffed full of history.

During the last war, 35,000 people sheltered during air-raids, and prior to that many of the caverns had been used for imprisoning this or that Duke, or provided a home for this or that exiled monarch. Most of the main tunnels were sign-posted, but many were not only unsigned but also unlit, and with a torch you could meander deep underground. In fact, the whole underside of the city is riddled with tunnels, and it is easy to see how it gets its name of The Gibraltar of the North. We completed our circuit of the city wall, grabbed some supplies from a handy supermarket, and headed for Germany, the Mosel Valley, and the start of our holiday proper.

The Mosel Valley

Suddenly we had arrived, and were confronted with more grape vines than I had ever seen in my life. My first impression was of the sheer mono-crop dedication that characterises Spanish olive groves. My second was that all the camp sites were heavily commercial and packed with caravans. Camping areas must be at a premium where every other square inch of land, even down to the roadside verges, is cultivated with grape vines. However, along a quieter stretch of road and a little away from the river itself we came across a little camp site that consisted of a small field ringed with permanent caravans. No sooner had we set up the tent when strings of people wandered up and introduced themselves, tut-tutting at our equipment and lending us tables and chairs, until very shortly we got involved in a Mosel wine-drinking session from the camp site’s own cellars. The world seemed to be entirely populated with friendly fat retired Germans slowly drinking the summer nights away, and as the sun set into the haze over the vineyards, I reflected that there was very little wrong with that.

The next morning we returned all the furniture, said our goodbyes, and headed off once more into the sunshine. The villages and towns along the Mosel valley were a riot of colour, skilfully painted and gilded and carved and hung about with flower boxes stuffed with colourful blooms. In Traban Trarbach a storm blew up out of nowhere and we sheltered under a bridge until the worst of it had passed. The rest of the afternoon was duller weather-wise, but geographically beautiful. The storm appeared to be trapped in the valley, but the villages continued to be picturesque, linear populations facing each other across the broad expanse of the river, dotted with far more thin-steepled and onion-towered churches than can possibly be required, and backed by a quilted patchwork of vineyards studded with religious shrines, huge rock sundials, and hundreds of tiny figures lovingly tending the vines.

Eventually we entered Koblenz, and headed into the city intent on finding the confluence of the Mosel and the Rhine. We found it at a place called Deutsches Ecke, parked up and caught the sightseeing boat. The trip took an hour and travelled up each of the three arms of the t-shape where the rivers meet, surprisingly placidly, at a monument to the Kaiser. I say surprisingly, because the Rhine was flowing very fast indeed. The bow waves of the ubiquitous hundreds-of-feet-long Rhine barges threatened continually to swamp them as they forged their way upstream, and those coming downstream were greased lightning. These barges were immense, carrying all sorts of cargoes including coal, scrap metal and petroleum products, and sported mobile-home sized living accommodation fore and aft, with enough parking on board for a couple of cars too.

The Mosel had been occasionally punctuated by immense river locks for these craft, and often while one was coming through there would be another holding perfect station against the current below, waiting patiently for its turn, surrounded by a myriad tiny pleasure cruisers struggling against the fierce current, trying to stay close enough to nip in after the colossus when the locks opened.

The Rhine Valley

Once more on dry land, we were presented with a choice of two B-roads, one on either side, that headed south with the river. The B42 on the eastern bank ran through national parkland, so on the grounds that it might be less busy we took the western B9. The heavy traffic had become a bit of an issue for us, as even in the countryside it felt like we were driving through town, and as a side-effect it meant that the camp sites were literally packed tent-to-tent and caravan-to-caravan, not to mention satellite-dish-to-satellite-dish. So far, by judicious choice, we had been lucky with camp sites, and we wanted to keep it that way. The Rhine valley south of Koblenz sprouted more castles than we could shake a stick at, most of them apparently occupied, and although many of them were splendidly photogenic the roads were too narrow and busy to stop.

We only rode a short distance, just far enough to get fully clear of Koblenz, and then started looking for camp site signs that pointed away from, rather than toward the popular riverside locations, on the basis that these would probably be smaller and quieter. We ended up on a tiny strip of grass hacked out of a forested gully, with a little restaurant bar at one end. After a good meal, some beer, a walk in the woods and some more of yesterdays Mosel wine, we went to bed.

After a preprandial coffee at the camp site, we had a light breakfast in the picturesque town of St Goar, before continuing up the Rhine valley as far as Bingen. Here you enter the huge industrial complex of Mainz, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Ludwigshafen and Mannheim, so we cheated and took the motorway to Heidelberg. Although it strictly isn’t in the Rhine valley at all, I had always wanted to go there and this seemed like a good excuse.

The old town was pretty enough, and after lunch we set off up the hill to see the castle. This proved to be particularly impressive, all pink stone, heraldic emblems and gilding, and had obviously been extensively restored, with work continuing apace. In the Great Hall beneath the castle were two enormous wine barrels, called Klein and Gross Fass; the latter at 220,000 litres is allegedly the biggest in the world. Certainly it is the only barrel that I have ever seen with steps leading up to a balcony on top, on which you could hold a fair-sized dinner party. We supped a commemorative glass of Heidelberg wine, and then hit the road for the Black Forest.

Coast to coast, by motorcycle, in the snow

The hail storm eased off, leaving a thick white layer of marbles that crunched into powder between the fat tyres and the cobblestones. It was early on Boxing day morning, and as I carefully eased my motorcycle over the slippery surface, cosy lights glimmered from the snug breakfast warmth of the Yorkshire cottages.

My pillion, Iain, and I were heading for the North Yorkshire moors. Once we got there, we intended to spend the few days between Christmas and the New Year crossing England from east to west in time for our annual New Years booze-up in the Lake District. We were, of course, fully aware that the Pennine passes are usually closed at that time of year, but if you’re trying to find adventure in your own country you may as well make it interesting.

Sutton Bank

The temperature dropped steadily as we approached the loom of Sutton Bank, westernmost outpost of the Hambletons, a range of hills between us and our chosen starting point of Whitby. A sudden squall of snow obliterated my vision, forming a thick veneer of ice on my helmet. Unable to open my visor for fear of getting snow on my glasses, I had to be content with riding one-handed while continuously scrubbing with my left hand. It was already cold enough for the snow to settle even on the wet road, and a succession of sharp bends between high hedgerows began to make life slightly interesting.

We made it as far as the base of Sutton Bank before I decided that not all of the frantically flashing and hooting oncoming car drivers could be delinquent hooligans, so I pulled over into a convenient snowdrift to take stock.

It was clearly snowing up on the Bank, but the clouds parted occasionally to reveal that something else was also going on up there. Short jigsaw visions of frantically flashing brake and hazard lights added up to the realisation that cars were getting about halfway up the Bank and then slowly sliding down backwards until they could get enough purchase to turn round and come back down.

We consulted the map, and pointed the Honda Revere back at the village. The new heading was a wide sweep around the southern flank of the Hambletons, and above us the weak midday sun picked metallic highlights from the dark cloud that had now settled permanently over Sutton Bank and its luckless motorists.

Wass Bank

We turned east under Wass Bank, and considered our options. We could either continue our sensible lowland detour, which would not take us far out of our way and which would avoid the Hambletons altogether, or we could chance the louring bulk of Wass Bank.

The gradient was fairly fierce, but clear of snow until the final thirty feet, where it became a steep ramp coated with a couple of inches of fresh powder. We rolled to a halt just below the snowline and squinted into the glare. Traffic signs indicated that there was a crossroads on the brow, but the thick woods on either side obscured our view of oncoming traffic.

I left Iain by the roadside and took a run-up, only at the last second deciding to stop at the top instead of barrelling blindly across the crossroads. Fighting to keep the steeply inclined machine level with the Give Way sign, my heart skipped as two Volvos scrunched past. Had I been alone I would have had to stay there until the snow melted. Fortunately, Iain was wearing hiking boots, and so once he had struggled up the slope himself, he was able to get enough traction to give me some sort of a push. Half way across the junction, the back wheel attempted to overtake the front, and I put my own foot down to steady the bike. Unfortunately, I was wearing flat-soled motorcycle boots, and on that slippery surface I may as well not have bothered.

With a nasty crunching sound, the Revere toppled over in the snow. Cursing the vagaries of the manufacturers of motorcycle clothing, we righted the now slightly battered bike and surveyed the damage. The hard plastic of the right hand pannier had cracked like an eggshell and a piece about four inches long was missing, but the box had maintained its integrity and nothing seemed to have fallen out. Iain went back to try and locate a white piece of plastic in the white snow, while I stood by the equally white bike trying to pretend to motorists that it was bright red and bore absolutely no resemblance to the snowbank against which it stood.

A couple of miles down the road was the town of Helmsley, so we stopped to buy some food cans, a can opener (my fifteenth, I think. Where do they all go?) and a black plastic bin liner to wrap around the pannier and stop our luggage from getting too wet, just in case it started to snow again.

And snow it did. As we rode down out of the hills and headed northward across the flat exposed moorland toward Whitby, a storm came up out of the west and threw everything it had. I had to lean the bike right over into the gale, virtually scraping the footpegs just to travel the dead straight road over Goathland Moor. The snow drove horizontally across the darkening landscape, my hands were going numb even protected by two pairs of gloves, and I was back to continually wiping my visor in order to snatch brief glimpses of the road. One day, I swore, I would buy a set of heated handlebar grips.

Strange Happenings in Whitby

Then as dusk finally fell, we entered Whitby, and the snow stopped. The town was, not surprisingly, deserted. We parked up in the shelter of some public toilets by a children’s paddling pool, and considered our next move. This was obviously just a lull in a storm that looked set to blow all night, so for the first time that day we used the logic that raises us above the apes. To shelter from a westerly storm, we reasoned, camp in the lee of an east-facing cliff.

Whitby sits on the east coast, separated from the sea by a vertical drop of some hundred feet or so, with a small tarmac footpath winding in a series of hairpins down to the beach. The path is exactly the same width as a fully laden Revere. We parked about a third of the way down, and erected the tent a few yards away vertically upwards on a convenient flat grassy shelf.
Soon, some hot food and cold beer later, we drifted off to sleep.

Nobody knew where we were, apart from a vague “on the bike north of Coventry”, and we certainly hadn’t planned to camp above the beach at Whitby; it had just turned out that way. So for me to be woken up a few hours later by someone standing outside my tent calling my name was utterly ridiculous. In bewilderment I poked my head out, to meet the eyes of an embarrassed policeman looking most uncomfortable balanced on the edge of a cliff in a thunderstorm.

Mr.Reading?, he said. I tried my best to act cool. “Is there a problem, officer? No sir. Or at least, there wasn’t, but I think we’ve caused you one…”

Apparently, someone out for a midnight stroll down the beach in the rain had seen the white Honda perched on the path, and had reported it to the police. A constable was sent down, took the registration, failed to notice my camouflaged tent in the darkness, and rang Fenella in the small wee hours. “We don’t want to bother you, they’d said, but w’eve just found your boyfriend’s bike halfway down a cliff…”

After the hysterics had passed, they admitted that it was in fact parked and locked rather than crumpled and smouldering, and, with her teeth firmly clenched around a brandy bottle, she ordered them back to look for the tent, and then ring her back, or else.

The rest of the night was uneventful, and next morning we got up with the dawn (not as early as it sounds in late December), road into town and wandered up to the Abbey. The cold soon drove us back down, and a different policeman directed us toward a cafe and a fried breakfast, and after a suitable amount of huddling against a radiator we set off westwards over the North Yorkshire Moors.

Across the Moors

We had decided to take the plethora of minor roads that accompany the railway on its journey toward Middlesborough, and had chosen two potential routes, one that wandered out over the high moors, and another that stayed safely in the valley with the trains. We planned to go high in good weather, and stay low in bad, and there was plenty of scope for switching between the two as circumstances altered.

The morning was glorious, the roads dry and the bends evil: in short, perfect riding conditions. We admired the scenery around Egton, and paused at Glaisdale where road, rail and water routes cross in a picturesque crosshatching of bridges. We were just about to take our high road when the rain started up, so amazingly we took the sensible option and made our way down through the mass of roads around Castleton, pausing briefly at a vandalised sign before continuing westwards.

Almost immediately I was presented with a torrential ford crossing. Iain got off, and I tentatively selected low gear and eased gently out into the torrent. The water came over the hubs but I was delighted to find that the bike showed no tendency to float like a car, but just ploughed along the bottom and up the other side. Rather than stop on the immensely steep valley side I ran up to the top and waited for Iain, who had crossed over the footbridge.

The hill should have made me think, but I was extremely chuffed about the ford and the weather was clearing again. Five minutes later we were riding blind through a cloud under a deluge of icy water. Visibility was down to a few yards and the road was littered with soggy sheep. We werent as miserable as the sheep, for we knew from our map that we had only to cross this small ridge of high ground before the descent into Kildale. But the ridge went on, and on, and on, until we fetched up against a road junction that just had no right to be there.

There was a road sign, but it was unlit and we had to get off and trace the letters with our frozen fingers, and then huddle over the dull yellow glow of a headlamp that I was sure used to be a fiercely burning halogen. There was nothing wrong with the electrics, just a thick coating of ice particles that no amount of rubbing would shift. That page in my Ordnance Survey atlas is now warped beyond recognition, but we found out where we were, neatly sandwiched between two symbols that mean ‘viewpoint’, balanced right on the highest point of the moor.

It was time, once more, to turn around. I successfully negotiated the sodden sheep and then, out of the cloud and full of new-found confidence, burned down the hill toward the ford, braking at the last minute and contemptuously hitting it at about 20mph. At the other side I stopped and thoughtfully emptied the water out of my boots.

Once off the moors we stopped at a village called Stokesley for a pub lunch and to dry my socks. They had good beer, good food, and lots of drinkers who watched in polite amazement as we peeled off layers of damp clothing and stacked them in front of the fire. Inevitably, there was the man who used to ride a Vincent, and he reckoned that the A66 through the Pennines was now open. We lingered as long as we could, but we wanted to camp somewhere closer to the pass to give us time to get over as early as possible the next morning. We donned our gear and went back out into the rain.

Richmond

Richmond, situated in the lowlands to the east of the Pennine passes, fitted the bill perfectly. All that remained was to find a place to sleep, and a few minutes drive soon revealed a wide grassy verge next to a quiet lay-by.

The next morning was unbelievably cold. The alloy of the tent-pegs was cold enough to burn, but we couldn’t grasp them through our gloves, so we ended up leaving the bike engine idling, pulling the pegs out barehanded, and returning to the bike every few minutes to jam our frozen fingers up the exhaust pipe. The stuff all fitted back in, but as I was locking the last pannier the key snapped off in the lock. It was that cold.

A welcome hot breakfast in Richmond, and some more radiator-huddling, saw us setting off on foot to explore the town. There was a lot to see, but we spent most time at the castle around which Richmond is built. The restored tower commands tremendous views, and the lady who sold us our tickets used to be a biker herself, and allowed us to bring the bike up from its two-hour parking zone and leave it in the castle grounds. Below the ruin is a wide brown river that tumbles over a small cataract of falls. I commented on its suitability for kayaking, and the local standing next to me responded, “Oh yes, its very popular. We lose one or two canoeists a year!”

Through the Pennine pass

And then we were off once more on a swift blast toward the Pennines and the infamous A66. The pass was, in fact, open, but the dales were deeply buried in snow and the traffic slowly moved nose to tail in one another’s tyre tracks. We passed the hotel where, until very recently, a group of guests and motorists had been trapped for a week without food, and then thankfully dropped down the other side to the tea shops of Appleby, and the fast winding run through Windermere and Ambleside to the warm welcome and hot showers of our hotel under the Langdale Pikes. The guest ales were settling in their barrels and the first arrivals were trickling in for the annual celebration of the end of the old year’s tales, and the beginning of the new.

Scandinavia by Train: 5 – The long haul to the Arctic Circle

We needed to stock up with supplies in Bergen, for the long two-day haul up the coast of Norway to Trondheim and then past the Arctic Circle to Bodø and beyond. We found a small shop called Makka that billed itself as the “cheapest supermarket in town”, containing a wild jumble of all kinds of useful items. We stocked up with enough food for several days, as we would be on the train for a long time without access to shops.

We have been pooling our food and cooking together, which is nice, but the others eat like birds and I found myself permanently hungry on my share, so I also stocked up a separate bag of my own supplies.

We had run out of fuel for our Trangia stoves, which run on purple-stained methylated spirit. It took us til the shop was almost closed before Julia discovered that the Scandinavian equivalent rødsprit is stained red instead instead of purple.

Oslo to Trondheim

One feature of Scandinavian trains is that it is really difficult to avoid seat reservations if you want to travel any distance at all. Before boarding the Trondheim train in Oslo, I attempted to buy reservations for Julia and myself, but the office was closed. We could still use our tickets, but the problem is that there is no way of telling, once on the train, which seats are reserved and which not.

In the event, Dave and Sammy got lucky and happened to choose seats that remained un-reserved for the entire journey, but the rest of us kept getting bumped by the conductor, as passengers with reservations boarded throughout the day. Eventually, as night fell and the train rumbled on, we gave up on seats altogether and lay down in the corridor by the toilets.

Just as we drifted off into sleep, there was a loud clunking noise as some extra carriages were added to the front of the train. No sooner had we drifted off again, snug in our sleeping bags, when the conductor woke us up and took us to some unoccupied seats in the new section. I’m sure that he thought he was doing us a favour, but these weren’t comfortable long-distance compartment seats, they were very hard and fixed and intended for commuting. The upholstery was thick with dust, and smelled strongly of cigarette smoke.

Things were made worse by the sunlight streaming in through the windows most of the night, because we were closing in now on the Arctic Circle. I wrapped a headband around my eyes, and tried to settle.

When I awoke and removed the headband, Julia and Conway had disappeared. We were approaching Trondheim, so I collected our things, and looked around for Julia’s boots, which she had left next to mine under a seat. They weren’t there. I got up and searched, eventually finding them on a floor-level rack next to some luggage. I bent to pick them up, and was very surprised when the luggage sat up and wished me a good morning. Julia had found a cosy dark burrow to sleep in.

Conway was on the next rack down, his only complaint being that a lady kept trying to wake him up in order to put her luggage away.

Trondheim emerged in a light drizzle of rain, and we disembarked and took shelter in the station cafe, drinking coffee and tea out of tiny cups while we waited for our connection. From what we had seen from the train, the town appeared to be largely a trading gateway for rail, road and sea. Certainly the people that we saw hurrying back and forth along the platforms seemed determined to get somewhere else.

Across the Arctic Circle

As I climbed aboard the train from Trondheim to Bodø, I became aware of an unmistakeable aroma, so my first step was to hole up in one of the toilet cubicles and have a wash and a shave. Opening my wash-bag, I mused that I would henceforth be in no danger from sepsis if I cut myself shaving, brushing my teeth, or even wiping my bottom, because all of my bathroom supplies were liberally coated with antiseptic ointment which had exploded from its tube.

Once more seated, smelling considerably more fragrant and without a hint of bacterial activity, I broke my fast on sausage-and-cheese sandwiches washed down with full-cream milk. This latter caused some amusement among us, because as we compared cartons it became clear that the symbol for “full cream milk” was a stylised strawberry (or, Dave insisted, a red clover), whereas the symbol for “skimmed milk” appeared to be a purple buttercup (which Dave averred to be a pink, or possibly a carnation).

And so we passed the time, because the journey was long, and even when we emerged from the rain, there wasn’t much to look at beyond pastures and lakes, a few trees, and – occasionally in the distance – the glimpse of some mountains. On the other hand, I couldn’t help reflecting that although this long-haul was a little dull, it was nothing compared with my recent experience of another long-haul, the infamous Belgrade-Athens Express. Today we had nothing to complain about; ample provisions, functioning toilets, and nobody was vomiting in the corridors. A very civilised country, is Norway.

Musing happily, I drifted off to sleep for a few hours, and when I awoke I found that the landscape had changed dramatically. The trees – both deciduous and coniferous – had shrunk markedly, and were spaced out, separated by expanses of exposed bed-rock. On the horizon, treeless mountain-tops loomed. We got into a discussion about whether the strongly demarcated tree-line that we could see was caused more by the latitude or by the altitude. It passed the time.

The tracks detoured inland around a fjord at Mo i Rana, but then continued North until a line of pyramidal cairns came into view, marching across the countryside, each topped by a spheroidal metal frame. At 17:38 on July 9th, we crossed the Arctic Circle for the first time.

Bodø

Detraining in Bodø on a Sunday afternoon when all the shops and cafes were closed, we wasted little time in hoisting our back-packs and hiking out of town, looking for somewhere to sleep. We pitched our tents in the first available spot, a little square of marshland that – it soon became clear – was directly under the flight path for Bodø airport.

We dined on bolognese and rice pudding, and woke to a beautiful morning disturbed only by the thunder of aero engines.

Close to our campsite was a little wooden church with an onion tower, which we explored before striking camp. From the outside, Bodin Church is a simple brick and wood construction with a leaded spire. Most of the interior is starkly plain, painted white with a pine planking barrel vault ceiling, but there were also a highly decorated pulpit covered with oil paintings, an incredible carved and gilded wooden altar, and enormous brass candelabras.

At the time, we couldn’t work out if it had been designed that way or if it had been formed from the relics of older buildings, but I later discovered that the interior genuinely derives from the 17th and 18th centuries. It was a beautiful find to begin our day.

Scandinavia by Train: 4 – The Rallar Road

The Rallarvegen, the Rallar Road or Navvy Road, was constructed in 1904 to provide access for materials and workers arriving by sea, to the mountain-top site of the Oslo to Bergen railway. There are a number of different stretches, but the most famous extends more or less vertically down from Myrdal at the top of the mountain, to Flåm at the bottom.

Myrdal to Flåm

Conway, who had been feeling poorly for most of the trip, was thankfully starting to feel a bit better, so we all disembarked the Oslo-Bergen train at Myrdal, shouldered our back-packs, and began the hike down to sea level.

The first part of the switchback descent is very steep, and it immediately became obvious that – whatever else was going to happen – we were not going to run short of water, for there was a new waterfall at every turn.

We quickly descended below the snow-line, and found ourselves surrounded by a wonderful variety of wild flowers; monks-hood, fritillary, orchid, white campion, forget-me-not, and several that we could not identify.

The scenery is simply stunning. There are no words to describe the sheer size of the landscape; terms such as ‘enormous’, ‘huge’, ‘vast’, are just too everyday to describe the incredible feeling of immense craggy age and power of the peaks around us.

The fact that trees have found a toe-hold in every nook and cranny adds to the appalling sense of scale. An unadorned rock may be impressive, but it is difficult to appreciate how big it is. Here, you look up, and up, and up, and in the vertical distance you can just make out the tiny little matchsticks of full-sized ash trees perched on the ridge-top.

Every time I looked up, I could feel my heart swell with the magnificence of the view. I noted in my diary that the Romantic artist John Martin must surely have come here for inspiration.

As we descended the Rallar Road, the path became less precipitous, and the waterfalls that had hitherto launched in great rainbow arcs from the sky, became cascading rapids that raged alongside us.

It was by now getting late and a little cold, and the midges were starting to bite, so we put up our tents on a convenient flat spot.

We woke to a world that was dull, cold and grey. It was well into the morning, but the steep sides of the valley kept us in the shadow. Then, suddenly, the sun crested the mountains and the heat hit the tents like a bombshell; we all tumbled out as it was far too hot to stay inside.

I froze my scalp and fingers washing in the nearby meltwater stream, but dried off instantly in the sunshine. We breakfasted on locally sourced “hot fruit soup”, and lazed around while leisurely striking camp. There was no hurry, it was a beautiful place to be.

Later in the day, now largely on the level and approaching the town of Old Flam, we had become spread out along the trail as we looked at the scenery and investigated caves behind the waterfalls. Even though the path was reasonably flat, the surrounding landscape was still vertical, but wherever humanly possible, grass had been cut and hung out to dry for winter fodder.

Dave, Conway and Sam found some firewood and lit a fire to cook lunch. Julia encountered a goat, and got involved in a head-butting competition with its kid.

I became fascinated by the water pipeline that now ran along the trail beside us, which was constructed from wood, with about the same diameter as a wine barrel. It leaked dramatically, but I suppose there’s never any chance of running out of water here, and repairs simply involved nailing a plank across the larger holes.

At last, footsore and weary, we arrived in the village of Old Flåm. The town looked exactly as if wandering explorers had hiked up from the fjord, dropped their packs, and erected a church and widely separated houses wherever they fancied the view. It was quite lovely.

We had intended to walk all the way down to FlÃ¥m harbour on the fjord, but we were hot and tired, and couldn’t resist resting on the wooden platform by the train tracks at Lunden, a stop for the famous FlÃ¥msbana, the steepest standard-gauge railway in the world. One came past heading in our direction, so we flagged it down and rode it to the FlÃ¥m station terminus.

Flåm to Voss

After stocking up on chocolate bars, we rode the FlÃ¥msbana back up to Myrdal. The train doesn’t follow the path of the Rallar Road, instead carving its own route through a series of very impressive tunnels, but it was fascinating to catch the occasional glimpse of the path that we’d taken.

There’s a crowd-pleasing stop near the top, where you can clamber out onto a very wet platform and gape at a waterfall as it thunders underneath the train, and then we were back where we’d started, waiting at Myrdal for the train to Voss.

At Voss, we needed somewhere to stay. There was an official camp site, but for budgetary reasons we needed to free camp, and it quickly became clear that although the town of Voss was nominally small, it is spread out with houses as far as the eye can see; we weren’t going to able to hike out to the edge in any reasonable time frame.

By dint of some judicious clambering through building sites and over fences, we managed to get to a piece of greenery around the back of the official camp site, where we quietly set up camp, planning to leave early next morning in the hope that nobody would notice us.

Scandinavia by Train: 3 – Oslo to Myrdal

The Oslo to Bergen railway is widely billed as one of the best train trips in the world. It climbs up from sea level, and runs along the mountain tops before dropping back down to the fjords of Bergen. It is made doubly special by the station half-way along at Myrdal, where you can hike from the top of the mountains down to sea level at Flåm, and then catch the cog train back up to rejoin the main railway.

Julia and I paid for reserved seats so that we could get an unrestricted view from an opening window, while the others opted to search for unreserved seats wherever they could find them. Having reserved seats also meant that we could nip into the toilet cubicle and wash some clothes, without losing our place.

Words fail me to describe the first part of the trip up to Myrdal. There are only so many ways of describing huge vistas of wild conifers, deep blue glacial lakes, and looming craggy mountains. The trees are immense, and I have never seen so many different shades of green in the riotous growth of uncultivated softwood forest.

Just when I thought that I’d seen everything, the train climbed above the tree-line, and the character of the land changed abruptly. It was 35 degrees in the shade, and the sun beat down on pristine white snowfields, relieved only by the smashed remains of last year’s snow-fences, and the early construction of next year’s.

Occasionally a lonely cluster of wooden shingle-rooted homes would spring into view, nestling against a river or lake.

When not trundling along knife-edge cliff edges, the train was diving in and out of tunnels carved through the rock. At each end of the tunnel, the train passed through a snow-barrier in the form of a long wooden house, to protect it from avalanches. As we climbed higher, these wooden tunnels became more prevalent, and sometimes entirely free-standing.

Eventually it had to end, and the train dropped down to the sleepy hamlet of Myrdal, protected by massive snow-fences and completely ringed by the high rock walls of the valley.

It was time to disembark, because we wanted to hike the famous Rallar Road down to Flåm, but we would return later to enjoy the final part of the trip to Bergen.

Scandinavia by Train: 2 – Vigeland Park, Oslo

We disembarked the ferry from Denmark, grabbed a coffee and a croissant, and caught the local train into Oslo. Dave had visited before, and remembered an interesting sculpture garden in the centre which was our ultimate destination, but we stopped on the way to visit the grounds of the Royal Palace. Conway had had a rough night trying to sleep on the ferry and was feeling unwell, so we all relaxed in the pleasant grounds of the Palace and watched the birds so that he could have a snooze. Later it became clear that he wasn’t up to moving any further that morning, so we left him sleeping in the sunshine, and made our way into the city.

Vigeland Park, Oslo (Norway)

Frogner Park in central Oslo is dedicated to the works of the sculptor Gustav Vigeland. There are hundreds of life-like human figures, in bronze and in stone, engaged in all kinds of activities, both mundane and bizarre; juggling babies and fighting dragons as well as some beautiful thoughtful pieces.

The centrepiece of the park is a huge tower, carved (by seven sculptors over 11 years) from a single stone, and consisting entirely of human bodies; the bottom layers crushed and dead, getting younger as you move up the pile, to babies dancing on the top. This amazing piece is surrounded by twenty-odd additional sculptures of pairs of humans engaged in various acts depicting the path from birth to death.

Words cannot really describe this magical place.

On the way back to the Palace to check on Conway, we wandered through the streets of Oslo itself, and found that here, too, there were sculptures on every corner. I described the architecture in my diary as “quiet baroque interspersed with brutal concrete”, and noted that most of the young ladies had tinted their hair away from the ubiquitous Scandinavian blonde.

Eidsvoll (Norway)

The temperature was now up in the low thirties, and Conway was very sick. We picked him up from the Palace and headed out on a local train to find somewhere to sleep, stopping on the way at a roadside shack for fish-burgers and ice-cream, where the kindly proprietor filled up a gallon water jug so that Conway could stay hydrated.

Later that evening, we tumbled out of the train on the shores of a likely looking lake, clambered over the rails, and found ourselves in some abandoned station buildings, the former Eidsvoll Station. We settled down nearby in a clearing in the trees, sending Conway to bed with a large tea and a dry crust, then set about preparing a meal. We had some packaged chow-mein that had been donated to us by some Chinese girls at the Copenhagen Interrail Centre, and a Vesta curry, and some macaroni soup. Not exactly gourmet stuff, but it was filling and washed down well with lots of tea.

We had intended an early start in the morning, to take the famous Oslo-Bergen line (widely acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world), but I’d forgotten to set my alarm, and we were all awoken at the last minute by Dave bashing a billy with a spoon. We quickly struck camp and then, with only eleven minutes to catch our connection, took the fastest route to the station which was to run along the rails to the platform. Boarding with two minutes to spare, we spent the short trip to Oslo washing up in the toilets.

We only really had time to breakfast in the Oslo station cafe. Conway was feeling a bit better, but was only able to force down some cornflakes. The rest of us examined the eye-watering prices for filled rolls, before realising to our delight that the cheapest option was to order tea with cream cakes, so that’s what we did.

Scandinavia by Train: 1 – Calais to Copenhagen

The Interrail journeys previously enumerated in the blogs “Three Men on a Train” were a resounding success, but I was keenly aware that – due to time constraints – we’d missed out the whole of the Scandinavian peninsula. A few years later, with only slightly better funding, I arranged a second month-long Interrail trip to remedy the situation, accompanied by a different group of friends.


And so it was, that in the Summer of 1989, Dave, Conway and I disembarked the MV “Pride of Dover” in Calais, and met up with Julia and Sammy who had been travelling in Morocco.

The girls looked tanned and healthy, but were short of cash. The boys were pasty and unhealthy, but hadn’t yet spent any of our holiday funds. After swapping tales over a coffee, we boarded the next train out of Calais, which happened to go to Paris. Our first requirement was to get some sleep, and since the Interrail system allowed us to take any train to any destination, we chose the next long-distance train, which happened to go to Amsterdam, and hunkered down in the corridor to sleep.

When the train pulled into Amsterdam Central, we found ourselves with only 35 minutes to explore before our connection to Hamburg. Our main concern was provisions; once we left Amsterdam we would be spending at least the rest of the day traversing Germany, and we had no Deutschmarks. The girls had some Camembert cheese and some horse-meat sausage in their packs, and Conway found a 25-guilder note in his pocket. We sprinted out into the city, got a swift impression of bars and coffee shops, scored coffee and baguettes, and legged it back to the station.

Although our Interrail card was valid for travel the length and breadth of the continent, many of the trains in Northern Europe at that time had extra supplements for this and that; extra for a sleeping compartment, extra for an intercity express, and so on. In order to conserve funds, it was necessary for us to carefully pick our route so as to board only the supplement-free trains.

We got a local connection from the Netherlands into Germany, and then switched to a local train to Hamburg. Once it pulled out of the station, we found that the service had been upgraded to an “Intercity” service, and so we had to find a supplemental fare or be put off the train. Since we didn’t have any Deutschmarks, this presented a problem until we offered the conductor a ten-pound note, and he went away happy. From Hamburg it was but a short step to Fredericia, and our first Scandinavian country of Denmark. We had arrived!

Struer (Denmark)

There is a convenient law which applies throughout Scandinavia, which states that you are allowed to camp anywhere you like for up to two nights, anywhere at all, as long as the site is not overlooked by somebody’s window. This is extremely handy for the budget traveller, and because of this we were well equipped with camping gear, in contrast with my previous Interrail trip, where we had tried as much as we could to sleep aboard the trains.

After a close look at a local map, we took a local train to the town of Struer, on the banks of the Veno Bugt fjord to the North West of Denmark. Strolling out of town, we found ourselves a roadside picnic spot with views across the fjord, and even a small toilet block with water, dryers, and a shaver point.

After a long luxurious night’s sleep, we awoke to find a family of cygnets poking around outside the tents, and a horde of picnicking tourists who completely ignored a bunch of hippies emerging blinking into the daylight.

We lounged around drinking coffee and waiting for the dew to dry off the tents, before packing up and heading to the station.

In the local hub of Fredericia on a Monday morning, we discovered that the connection to Copenhagen only runs on Sundays and Thursdays. There were some other, more roundabout routes available; we deliberately skipped the next one in order to save the “Intercity supplement”, then finally boarded the slow train, where the conductor hit us with a “Seat Reservation supplement”.

We were still glad we’d caught it, though, for the experience as the entire train drove onto the ferry at Nyborg, and we were taken across the fjord to Korsør without ever leaving our seats.

Copenhagen (Denmark)

One of my teeth was becoming increasingly painful. Julia had a poke around and found a large cavity in the side of a molar, which was full of foreign matter which she managed to clean out with a needle and thread, but which clearly needed medical attention.

In Copenhagen there’s a legendary facility, the Interrailer’s Centre, which provides an information desk, showers and kitchen facilities to anybody with a valid Interrail ticket. The receptionist was incredibly helpful in finding me a list of emergency dentists, and after a fair bit of legwork I found one who would treat me the following evening. I suggested that the others move on to Oslo while I got fixed up, but they were content to wait for me, so after cooking and eating at the Centre, we caught a local train to the nearby town of Næstved. This “local” turned out to be the lovely Ostsee Express to Moscow, every carriage embellished with Russian crests. We only went a couple of stops, though, and set up camp in a clearing in a local park, surrounded by beeches, mountain ash, and wild raspberries. Beautiful.

In Copenhagen the following day, I wasn’t really able to focus on much beyond my toothache, but did manage some minor forays into the city. Perhaps it was the pain, but I found it all a bit dull, despite some interesting architecture and sculptures.

I did note a few things in my diary, such as the handy gutter up the side of all staircases for the wheeling of bicycles, and the fact that cars will always stop for pedestrians or cyclists wherever they may be, and that bicycles stop for nothing and seem to rule the road as long as they remain in their bespoke cycle lane.

That evening, the dentist was superb. She found a piece of steak lodged inside a small cavity, which led to a very large cavity filling most of the tooth almost down to the nerve. After scraping me off the ceiling a few times, she managed a temporary fix by pumping in about a kilo of heavy metals. The tooth is now a thin shell of enamel wrapped around a lump of amalgam, which means I should avoid chewing on that side, and she made me promise to get it fixed as soon as I got home. [Of course I didn’t, and this amazing temporary repair remained in place for over a decade before I split it on a stray olive pit]

There was just time to grab a Danish Pastry before heading to the station. My mouth was completely numb but we couldn’t waste the opportunity. We bought two, each almost a foot long and packed with fruit, surmounted by chocolate.

The train decanted us onto a ferry, where we found some unoccupied reclining seats and settled down to sleep. Tomorrow, we would dock in Norway!

Three Men on a Train: 13 – Paris and Versailles

Paris (France)

We had chosen to spend the last few days of our month-long European tour in Paris. On the first morning, we disembarked the express train from Switzerland and climbed up the steps of the Sacre Couer for an early breakfast.

Unfortunately, as soon as we sat down, we were plagued by endless streams of apparently healthy and well-dressed tramps, who assured us in English that they were “starving”. Going through our back-packs, we palmed them off with ageing bread and sausage from goodness only knows where, and then settled down round the corner to enjoy our soft cheese sandwiches in peace and quiet.

We had a very pleasant day of more-or-less aimless wandering, popping up underneath the Arc de Triomphe for views down the Champs Elysee (obscured by mist!), and then on down to the Place de la Concorde, where we ran into a great number of rifle-carrying gendarmes, apparently waiting for something. We hung around to see what was happening, but they all packed themselves into armoured vans and went away.

We did have a particularly fine time in the Louvre, where we had to cherry-pick of course, but packed in a good number of famous and fantastic pieces of art. It was great to see some of the standards in the flesh, memorably the Mona Lisa (small!) and the Venus de Milo (beautiful).

After an afternoon of classic art, we hung out at the chemical-factory weirdness of the Pompidou Centre, which famously has all its physical infrastructure, pipes and so on, mounted outside the walls. Outside are some quite weird moving fountains, Heath-Robinson-like contraptions constructed apparently from fire hoses and topped by psychedelic art, and on the Inside were some really interesting photographic exhibitions, with the additional advantage of being completely free.

There was also a great view of sunset over the Eiffel Tower from the roof, but then it was time to move on, because naturally we couldn’t afford to stay in the city. After poring over the timetable, we worked out that we could board the train to Angers, sleep for half the night, disembark, and sleep the other half of the night on the train back.

Overnight to Angers and back

Unfortunately we only had forty minutes to run from the Pompidou Centre to Gare du Nord, get our packs out of storage, negotiate the Metro clear across Paris to Montparnasse, and board our chosen train. We set off at a pedestrian-scattering pace, rucksacks bouncing, heroically sprinting across multi-lane roads, and generally bathing ourselves in sweat, to arrive at the correct platform which was disconcertingly bare of any kind of train. There was a similar-looking train on a neighbouring platform, so we rushed aboard, discovering that all the compartments were packed solid.

There was a bit of space in the corridor, so we hunkered down and dined on baguettes and cheese before lying down to sleep on the floor.

The corridor was nice and warm, and it was a bit of a shock to stumble out in the small wee hours onto the cold of the Angers platform. Our connection back to Paris wasn’t due for several hours, but we were hungry and thirsty and searched for something to eat. We found a chocolate vending machine, which was useful but which made us more thirsty, but there didn’t seem to be any potable water. Eventually, David discovered a workmen’s drinks vending machine on a construction site, but it required coins and we’d used all of ours up in the chocolate machine. Andrew went out on the streets and found a taxi driver who changed a bank note, and then we drank the machine dry.

Back on the Paris train, we scored an empty compartment and stretched out on the seats for a comfortable and warm sleep back to our starting point.

Versailles (France)

Andrew and I wanted to visit Versailles, and the Paris-Angers train stops there, so by now we had already passed through the town a couple of times when it was closed for the night. On our arrival in Paris, Andrew and I checked the timetable and boarded the Versailles train once again, while David went off to hang out at the Pompidou Centre.

When the conductor came to check our tickets, it emerged that the train – even though we had boarded it at a regular platform – was technically a Metro and thus our Interrail tickets were not valid, but he just waved us on. I guess it must happen all the time.

One disadvantage of it being a Metro was that it had no toilets, so first order of the day in Versailles was to locate a loo, which we found in a nearby cafeteria. We also figured that since it was a Sunday, we should track down something to eat, so grabbed some baguette and Camembert from a local shop. The food in France is so cheap!

Andrew and I couldn’t afford the ticket to get into the Palace itself, but for ten francs we had a lovely relaxing morning wandering through the parks and gardens. They are beautifully planted with well-spaced trees and decorative flower-beds, interspersed with a great many lakes and ponds, each sporting their own sculptures and fountains.

Paris (France)

We repeated the overnight sleepover on the train to Angers and back, and arrived back in Paris suitably refreshed for the final day of our trip. Dropping our rucksacks at Left Luggage, we breakfasted on tinned rice and then made our way to the Eiffel Tower. Impressive from afar (especially at sunset!), it was a disappointingly rusted mess close-up, which is probably why the lower levels were shrouded in scaffolding.

Moving on to the cathedral of Notre Dame, we found ourselves in a stunning and heavily gothic interior, whose powerful atmosphere was not even slightly dented by the big yellow fork-lift truck that was rooting around inside.

I was particularly impressed by the carvings and frescoes, which tended to emphasise the macabre and gory parts of Catholic history.

We had a little time to spare before our final train journey, and we needed to confirm the trip because our printed Thomas Cook timetable had just expired. It was just as well that we did, because the direct train to the port of Calais wasn’t running any more, but we discovered a great overnight route to Strasbourg and back which would enable us to get a good night’s sleep before disembarking in Calais in time for the crossing.

For our final hours in Paris, we watched a busker by the Pompidou centre, an American raising the money for his air-fare home. He was an exceptional guitarist, and played mainly acoustic favourites until the gendarmes arrived to move him on. He obviously recognised them, because he asked if he could play just one more; they nodded, and he launched into a beautiful rendition of ‘Stairway to Heaven’.

The song over, he swiftly packed up his equipment and disappeared into the surrounding crowds. Taking his cue, we hefted our backpacks for the last time, and made our way to the waiting train.

Three Men on a Train 12 – The Grindelwald Glacier

Our journey thus far has mainly taken us around the warmer parts of Europe. During our initial planning, we had realised that none of us had ever seen a glacier, a deficiency that we were keen to remedy. Research showed that there was one accessible from the Swiss town of Grindelwald that was itself reachable by rail, so we boarded a train in the sunny Italian coastal town of Genoa, and rattled up into the snow-capped Alps.

The heating in the train climbed higher in step with our increasing altitude, and by the time we reached Lucerne, our compartment felt like a furnace. I took advantage of the situation to wash all my underwear in the lavatory basin. It was wasteful of washing powder because there was no plug in the sink, but I’d bought a whole packet in Hungary for only 15 pence so I wasn’t complaining. I even managed to (shock horror) wash my feet.

We changed to the local service to Interlaken, and I was contentedly contemplating the view out of the window, and musing quietly on how each Swiss village seemed to be comprised of a mixture of affluent houses interspersed with poor shacks, when a group of American ladies joined the compartment. As we had discovered was usual for tourists from that country, they immediately started talking very loudly and all at once. It was difficult to avoid hearing that they had only just been talking to some random people on the platform, and that it was for some reason very important to discuss interminably and at full volume where each of those strangers had come from, where they had been going, and who was related to whom. When we escaped them at Interlaken, they were still going at it hammer and tongs.

Grindelwald (Switzerland)

The route up to Grindelwald from Interlaken begins with a trip on one of the famous Swiss cog trains, which have a third toothed rail that is engaged by a driving cog underneath the engine. This enables the train to climb steep gradients even if the rails are slippery with ice. Cog trains are run by private companies and they do not form part of the network covered by our Interrail pass. Andrew and I forked out the four quid for the return journey, but David chose instead to save the money, and to seek out a restaurant that sold fondue.

At Grindelwald station, we stored our rucksacks in lockers, and then sat outside a supermarket until it opened for the afternoon. We needed to stock up on food and supplies for our upcoming trek.

For another two pounds, Andrew and I took the cable-car one-way up to Pfingstegg, and then set off to walk the mountain trail to Stieregg.

There were a fair few hikers on the trail, but they were swiftly forgotten when we realised that the valley below contained our first glacier. It was an impressive beast, rugged ice covered with gravel and large boulders, split haphazardly by crevasses and underlain by the roar of the sub-glacial river. As we hiked closer, we could see the cirque at the top, giving birth to a huge tongue of glacier spilling out to fall in frozen time vertically down the mountain. We continued on in awed silence, the jingle of sheep bells only broken by the occasional crack of ice, or a roar as an icy avalanche cascaded down the face of the cirque above.

At the end of the trail is a little oasis of green, the Bergrestaurant Stierreg, where we sat with a restorative hot chocolate and watched the ice fall down the mountain.
Editor’s note – don’t go looking for the restaurant now, it was destroyed in 2005 when hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of the permafrost moraine on which was built, melted and fell into the valley.

We set off back down the glacier, and then branched off onto the trail that would take us back down to Grindelwald. The path was long and tortuous and led over many small bridges, large gorges, and steep tracks. It descended below the tree-line, giving us fantastic glimpses of the Eiger and other Alpine peaks, and became so steep that at times it was more comfortable to run than to walk.

We had a fantastic walk, and finished up with a gentle stroll through the spacious town of Grindelwald to the lower Grund station, where we sat on a bench and dined on canned ravioli.

Just as our train came in, we suddenly remembered that we’d left our backpacks at the main station on the other side of town, so we trotted off uphill again as the sunset turned the snow-caps pink above us, the Wetterhorn to the East glowing quietly orange over the steeply sloping eaves.

Interlaken (Switzerland)

Reunited with our packs, we caught the next cog train down to Interlaken and met up with David, who had found several purveyors of fondue, but none at a price that he could afford.

It was getting late in the day, Switzerland is the most expensive country in Europe, we had already spent our entire budget for the day, and we needed somewhere to sleep. During his perambulations around the town, David had been keeping an eye open for opportunities, and had discovered an empty goods wagon shunted onto a siding at the rear of the station.

We quietly sneaked aboard and settled down for the night. In retrospect, we might have thought more carefully about the effect of an icy alpine wind blowing beneath the unsealed rough wooden floor of the goods wagon. At first I was comfortable enough rolled up in the outside of my survival bag, but I was awoken at 2 am when something triggered the security lights in the goods yard. I was pretty cold so I climbed inside. Since the survival bag is plastic, I would usually have set up one corner as a condensation trap, but it was dark and manipulating the bag is very noisy, so rather than wake the others, I just climbed inside.

I should have risked the noise, because a few hours later I woke up frozen and wet, stumbling around in the pitch dark, fumbling for my waterproofs, hat, and any other clothing that I could find, because I had lost my only warm jumper while running for a train back in Germany. Rolled up once more in the dry exterior of the bag, I managed a fitful sleep until dawn, when we caught the heavenly warm train to Lucerne.

Vaduz (Liechtenstein)

After a morning of messing about on Swiss trains, and some very close connections (lots of running!), we arrived in Buchs, which is as close as you can get by rail to the little independent principality of Liechtenstein. There was a wash-room at the station, and a cold wash and shave and a change of clothes made me feel much better after the uncomfortable night and stressful morning.

From Buchs, we took a brisk stroll from Switzerland through Schaan to Vaduz, capital of Liechtenstein. We could not locate a physical border between the two countries, but decided in the end that the change in the colour of the striped road sign poles from black-and-white to black-and-yellow marked the boundary.

The walk in the countryside was quite beautiful, with swallows above and hawks skimming the hedges. The other walkers were friendly, the weather was sunny and warm.

Vaduz itself did not announce itself with any signage, and in fact we only figured out that we had arrived by means of the names of some of the stores along the street. It seemed a pleasant town, and although almost all the shops were stamp dealers, we did locate a supermarket at which we stocked up on supplies.

After an eclectic yet filling lunch of tinned pie-filling accompanied by Italian grapes and Swiss bread and chocolate, washed down with German apple juice, we strolled back to Buchs and caught the next train out. We struck lucky with a DB fully convertible carriage with comfortable furry seats, which we rode all the way to Zurich.

Three Men on a Train: 11 – Florence and Pisa

What next after Rome? The three of us had been travelling together for several weeks, and had different ideas about what we wanted to do next: Andrew fancied a bit of sunbathing, David wanted to catch up with a girl friend, and I wanted to see Florence and Pisa. We decided to go our separate ways for the day, and to meet up in Genoa that evening.

I boarded the night train from Rome to Florence, but planned to deliberately overshot and remain on board until Milan, so that I could get some sleep before back-tracking from Milan to Florence to arrive at a reasonable hour.

One of the decisions I’d made after our shake-down trip to Loch Ness was to ditch my heavy quilted sleeping bag and instead to carry a lightweight plastic orange survival bag. This was big enough that I could climb inside fully clothed along with my rucksack. It was warm and weather-proof, and the only downside had been that it crinkled loudly in the night when I moved, and I had to be careful to leave a low-point at one of the corners to allow for condensation inside the bag.

This was all very well outside in the weather, but aboard the train it was easiest to lay it flat and then roll up like a sausage on the seat. This had the triple benefit of easy ingress and egress, quieter sleeping, and I could leave my boots on while simultaneously avoiding the wrath of the ticket inspector who was always checking that any seats used as foot-rests were suitably protected by plastic.

The upshot was that I had a comfortable and undisturbed sleep on the train to the satellite station Milano Lambrate where I disembarked in the early hours of the morning, with the intention of boarding the next train back to Bologna. Strangely, none of the timetabled trains turned up, so I breakfasted on a tin of ravioli from my backpack, and hopped on a local to try my luck at Milan’s Central Station.

I had a few hours to kill at Centrale, but that was no great shame because the building is an imposing stone edifice adorned with statues and fountains, backed by a Victorian-style glass-and-ironwork platform complex. I had a good look around, and then, with about an hour to spare, I lay down and closed my eyes for a few seconds… to be woken by the train arriving at the platform.

Hurrying aboard, I found myself sharing my compartment with a silent nun, and with a friendly Italian gentleman. Notwithstanding the limited overlap between his English and my Italian (precisely none), we contrived to have a very enjoyable conversation that saw us to Bologna, where he disembarked.

Florence / Firenze (Italy)

Arriving in Florence a couple of hours later than I had intended, I hurried straight to the Duomo, where I was blown away by this splendid multicoloured pink-white-green confection of a cathedral.

My only problem was that I had great difficulty fitting any but the smallest fragments of it into my camera’s viewfinder. I noted in my diary that this was a general problem in the narrow and winding streets of Florence, a problem which went away when the battery in my camera died.

I found a camera shop, and I suppose the proprietor knew he could charge whatever he wanted, because the price was double what I had expected. There’s nothing worse than being a photographer without a working camera! The transaction cleaned me out of today’s budget and half of tomorrow’s, leaving me with only 1500 lire (68p) for food. I began to wonder whether I would ever make it to Paris before my cash ran out.

Still, here I was in Florence, it was a beautiful day, and I could surely subsist on water from the drinking fountains that we had discovered to be plentiful in Italy. The temperature rose, and as I ambled southward, I discovered that Florence didn’t have any water fountains. I got thirstier and hotter, resolved to buy a refreshing drink with my remaining money, and found that all the shops had closed for the daily siesta.

“South” mumbled my dehydrated brain, as I stumbled along the streets of shuttered shops, until I reached the river. “North” said my subconscious, and I swayed approximately in that direction, keeping the merciless sun at my back, passing the Duomo once again before almost literally crashing into a cold drinks stall. A half-litre can of cola set me back exactly 1500 lire…

After drinking the cola and eating half of a stale loaf of bread and some frankfurters from my backpack, I slowly returned to sanity, sitting in the town square with pigeons pecking around my boots.

Then I sat in bemused wonder as a high-speed police chase began in the square around me. Shoppers dived into doorways and civilian cars bounced onto walkways, as two police Alfa Giulietas roared around the square, four-wheel-drifting on the corners, and disappeared up a side-street. The civilian cars slowly backed out of shop doorways and down from the kerb, and then scattered again in panic as the police cars came screaming back out, this time in high-speed reverse. I stared, mouth agape, as a police van and a third Giulieta entered the fray, people running for cover. The vehicles screeched off in separate directions, leaving the square in utter chaos, including a gesticulating general in a staff car. The sirens faded, but as pedestrians and drivers began to untangle themselves, there was another screech of tyres and one of the Giuliettas came back, re-entering the square at high speed.

A hitherto unnoticed uniformed traffic policeman had clearly had enough. He stepped out in front of the speeding car, brandishing a red stick. The police car locked up, shedding rubber, and came to rest in a cloud of smoke with the front bumper actually touching the unshaken policeman’s legs.

Not completely certain that I was not hallucinating, I quietly got up and left.

Pisa (Italy)

What with my late arrival in Florence and recovering from heat stress, I didn’t board the train to Pisa until 17:00. The train promptly broke down. By the time I arrived in Pisa, I was running short on time if I was to meet up with the others today, so I rushed out of the station and followed tourist signs until – somewhat winded – I reached the famous leaning tower, clear across on the far side of town.

I did enjoy my brief look around, but soon I had to hustle back. I attempted a sprint, but with the weight of my rucksack it was more a sort of a lope, and I made it to the station platform three minutes late.

Soaked in sweat, I made my way to the gabinetto to get changed (gabinetti are squat toilets, cheaper than a sit-upon toilette) but then realised that I had left my other pair of trousers in Rome and that all the t-shirts in my backpack were dirty. Pulling on the least blackened shirt and a pair of shorts, I headed back out onto the platform and onto the rear of a waiting train. To my dismay, it seemed to be comprised entirely of sleeper cars, for which my Interrail ticket was not valid. I squeezed my way from car to car down endless corridors until, just as the brakes were released, I jumped across the gap to a second-class smoking carriage to Genoa.

We all met up more or less as planned, for a discussion about budgets over a tin of chicken and rice. We were concerned about the financial viability of continuing our trip all the way to the ticket’s validity at the end of the month. Realising that we were geographically several days ahead of our plan, we decided to finish a few days early while maintaining our itinerary, thus in one master-stroke increasing our daily spend to an astounding seven pounds each per day. The show would go on!

Three Men on a Train: 10 – Vatican

The Vatican, the very small independent state that houses the Pope and the machinery of the Catholic church, is visible down just about every sight-line of central Rome.

In honour of our impending visit, we first had a (cold) shave in the Rome station bathroom, and then visited a launderette and put on some clean clothes. The launderette conveniently had left-luggage lockers for our back-packs, because we knew that these would be frowned upon in the Vatican.

Tickets were relatively expensive, and we needed to cash some traveller’s cheques. This was always a bit of a trial, and on this occasion we found ourselves having to navigate an airlock-style door to the bank. It would only admit one person at a time, then both doors would lock while you were scanned, before the interior door allowed you into the bank proper. On the way out, the process was repeated, although the exit door could accommodate two whole people at a time. At busy times, this made the simple task of entering and exiting the bank a very long drawn-out process. Presumably in order to pay for this marvel of technology, this bank’s surcharges were horrendous.

The Vatican has an interesting tourist layout; you pick the amount of time that you intend to spend, and then follow the associated coloured arrow. We chose 3.5 hours, the second-longest, and set off to explore.

The interior of the Vatican is truly amazing. I had never before been in a building so thoroughly painted, and to my mind it rivalled the nearby Basilica Di San Giovanni, even if the ceilings were slightly less ornate.

We were blown away by Michaelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel, although I did note in my diary that it was looking a bit faded. This was a few years before the ceiling was restored in the late eighties.

The Map Rooms are simply wonderful, with ancient hangings depicting the known world as seen from Rome. The Raphael rooms consist of wall after wall of enormous biblical scenes, but his preoccupation with death got me down after a while, not to mention the three huge tapestries dedicated to the Massacre of the Innocents.

As an impressionable teenager, I was fascinated by the considerable collection of parts of old saints; fingers still wearing rings, gilded splinters of bone, and even entire bodies on display. It seems that, once you have been declared a martyr, nothing is sacred.

In the end, it was the incredible riches to be found in the Vatican Museums that formed my most lasting memory. Walking through room after room of impossibly gilded and bejewelled artefacts, the gifts from rulers and pontiffs down through the centuries, where even the intervening stone pillars are painted with gold, I found it impossible to reconcile the obvious and flaunted wealth of the home of the Catholic church with the air of humility that they try to project. As I write this over thirty years later, I look back and see that this one visit forever coloured my view of the religious world.

Three Men on a Train: 9 – Rome

Back on the train, we settled down happily in an empty compartment and indulged in our usual territorial tactics; boots off, wave a bottle of alcohol around, sprawl out apparently unconscious on sheets and sleeping bags. Sadly it emerged that all the seats in ‘our’ compartment were fully reserved, so we changed carriages and crashed in with a couple of Italian lads who were trying the same trick. In the end, David moved out to sleep in the corridor, leaving the four remaining backpackers with a very comfortable night on the four convertible seats.

Our system of yo-yo-ing between cities worked particularly well because the toilet facilities at Rome Station were free, albeit only with cold water which made shaving a bit of a chore. They also provided toilet paper with each sheet imprinted “ferrovie dello stato”, of which I still have an example.

Rome

We thoroughly enjoyed our exploration of the sights of the city, and were very impressed by the Basilica St Giovanni. The ceiling is deeply wrought and gilded, everything standing out in high relief. The walls are either painted on gold leaf or occupied by enormous marble statues. The altar, even tough flanked by full-sized architectural pillars, is dwarfed by the size of the cathedral. An unbelievable experience, vying with the Basilica in Venice for its awesome beauty.

The Coliseum was interesting, but not exactly what we’d expected. The floor of the arena had eroded away, but this exposed an extensive network of tunnels, access and quarters for the fighting slaves and animals. We were curious to get up above ground level and have a look, but there was an extra fee which we chose not to afford, and anyway the historical power of the underground section was quite absorbing.

We agreed that the Pantheon would have been more impressive if not crowded in by modern buildings, and the Bridge of Angels more so if it had not been covered in scaffolding.

We were however very impressed by the enormous palace on the Piazza Venezia, which turned out to be not a palace at all, but an extravagant tomb to an unknown soldier.

For lunch, we stopped at an outdoor restaurant just as a large group were leaving. David convinced the amused waiter that it would be much easier for him to simply move all their left-overs to our table rather than to clear them away, where they went very well with our one small plain pizza to share.

On our way back to the station for our nightly commute to Venice, we started looking for a loo, and eventually discovered a pavement urinal, held up by (rather than obscured by) a skeletal frame of bricks.

Suitably refreshed, we took in the Fountains of Trevi, which are actually a series of short waterfalls running over a sculptured landscape carved from the stone walls of the neighbouring building. A lovely place to sit on a Summer’s evening.

Back at the station, I thought to avail myself of the Bureau de Change, which had separate windows for traveller’s cheques and cash. I got out my passport and cheques and stood in line, but after a while I noticed that while my queue was not moving at all, the queue for cash exchange was moving swiftly. Eventually I searched my pockets, found some left-over French francs, and switched queues. I quickly reached the counter and swapped my francs for lire. While the lady was counting my change, I asked her why the other queue was moving so slowly. She explained that whereas cash sales were instant, cheques took fifteen minutes to process. When I pointed out that in other offices the tellers had simply written down the cheque numbers in a ledger and that the process only took a minute, she agreed but shrugged and said, “Perhaps in the other offices they write faster”.

We had some hours to kill before the train left for Venice. It occurred to us that the sights that we had already seen, the Coliseum, the Vatican and the Trevi Fountains, might look quite picturesque when illuminated at night, so we set off for an evening wander around the city.

We caught the Forum in the last rays of sunlight. This is one of the more extensive set of ruins from the days of Empire, although we could not afford to go in but had to content ourselves with looking down from the streets above.

Once darkness fell, however, the historical sites were all disappointingly dark. Never mind, we stopped for another small pizza, and finished the day on time and, importantly, on budget.

Three Men on a Train: 8 – Venice

In an effort to conserve money on accommodation, we had spent most of our nights thus far under canvas. Venice and Rome were next on our itinerary, and were unlikely to offer either camp sites or inexpensive hotels. Examining our Thomas Cook timetables, we noticed that the two cities were separated by an overnight train, so we hatched a plan to spend a total of two days in each city, but alternating each night in order to get a free sleep on the train as we travelled back and forth.

We were going to begin right away by taking a day train from Naples to Rome, and then immediately boarding the night train to Venice. That meant that we needed to stock up on provisions, so we popped into a local supermarket to get some bread and meat.

Much of our short experience of Italian life had been bewildering, and the meat counter was no less so. All the prices were marked in lire per pound of meat. We asked for a quarter of a pound, but were given quarter of a kilo, which was substantially larger and thus more expensive. Luckily David spoke enough Italian to sort that one out, but apparently it was no mistake, that was simply the way things were done. Meat is priced by the pound, but sold by the kilo.

Once in Rome, we hung around on the platform waiting for the overnight to Venice. To our surprise, we bumped into Keith and Lee, friends from our school days, who were also heading to Venice but they were travelling in style and had stumped up for a couchette on a sleeper train.

We waited for our own regular train, but it never showed up. Seeing that the sleeper train hadn’t departed, we ambled over for a chat with Keith and Lee, who kindly offered to share their reserved compartment with us. The train was cramped and crowded, and sleep came with difficulty, but we were on the way to Venice.

Venice

We could not fail to be impressed by Venice. The back streets and back waters were fantastically peaceful and quiet, with not a car engine to be heard. Highly polished wooden taxi-boats skimmed beneath the stone-arched bridges, or dodged around gleaming black gondolas.

The winding cobbled ‘roads’, only ten feet across, were lined with colourful shops selling the fine local glassware and beautiful pastries. We were surprised to find that the prices were the cheapest that we had encountered in Italy, and we lounged on the banks of the Grand Canal eating luxuriously soft crusty rolls, cheese and salami, watching the life of the city pass by on the water.

The city had a strangely magical air. Squinting my eyes and looking carefully at each building in isolation, I could clearly see that they were rotting and crumbling away, but as soon as I stepped back and viewed them in the context of the wider city, they were magically transformed into beautiful avenues.

We queued briefly to get in to the Basilica on St Marks Square, which was very impressive indeed. Every inch of its structure seemed to be painted with gold leaf. The nearby Doge’s Palace was also marvellous, I joked that it was a bit like the Basilica converted to living quarters.

The Palace was not all about the gilded ceilings; the dungeons were particularly atmospheric, with a feeling of hopelessness and despair that could not even be dispelled by noisy American tourists.

During our travels, we had become slowly accustomed to the strange European practice of paying to go to the toilet. In Venice, though, they had taken the concept to a whole new level. At the station, instead of a cleaner sitting by a saucer of coins, I encountered a man with a cash register. There was a menu of price options according to the intended nature of the visit, and after paying I received a paper receipt. Once inside, my receipt was taken by a girl who led me to a freshly cleaned cubicle. When I had done my business, she led me to an exit door which opened out onto a softly furnished waiting area, complete with daily newspapers, where my friends were waiting.

With several days to explore, we tended to split up and go wandering. Venice is made for that kind of exploratory ambling, and there was a kind of natural gravitation to the steps of the main station, where those travellers who cannot afford to do the tourist thing in St Marks Square sit and smoke or picnic.

Three Men on a Train: 7 – Pompeii and Vesuvius

Slightly tanned and completely relaxed from our idyllic week on the Greek island of Zakynthos, we caught the leisurely ferry across to Italy. The boat decanted us onto the dock, from which it was a straightforward walk up the main street to the train station. Unfortunately, this is the only possible route and the locals are fully aware of it; the road was a frantic, seething and expensive tourist trap. We paid the exorbitant price for bottled water, because we were hot and needed the fluid, but reckoned that we had enough left-over solid food in our backpacks to see us through to a less money-grabbing town.

It was much quieter inside the station, where we sat on a deserted platform and put together a meal of sorts from the remnants that we had left over from our ferry trip.  We were sitting quietly, sipping our luxury water, when a train pulled in.

Everything went crazy. From nowhere, the platform suddenly filled with Italians, all running around shouting at each other, at staff, at passengers, and at random passers-by. Nobody got on or off the train apart from a handful of bewildered Interrailers who fought their way through the crowds to the exit. The train departed, everybody vanished, and suddenly it was all quiet again. The platform was deserted, apart from three baffled young Englishmen, chewing slowly on two-day old bread rolls.

Our own train wasn’t due for some hours, so I took a deep breath and popped out to see what the town was like at night. I stepped out into a street packed with yelling, screaming, snogging locals, their bodies packed across the entire width of the road, driving their motorcycles down the pavement and generally having a wild time. I’d just spent several days bimbling around in the wilderness and swimming in deserted seas, so it was all rather a shock. I forced myself to conform to the snails-pace push-and-shove just long enough to buy an extortionate can of lemonade and some chocolate, and then meekly retraced my steps to the station.

On my return, I found Andrew and David chatting to Mike and Jez, a couple of Interrailers heading in the same direction, who had found that beer from a supermarket was far cheaper than my soft drink, and indeed any soft drink, including water.

 

Five men in Pompeii

After a good sleep on the overnighter to Naples, we caught the local underground train to the ruins of Pompeii, only to find that we had arrived several hours too early. Mike and Jez were still with us, so we hung about and drank beer in the sun until the site finally opened.

After baulking a little at the entrance price, we all found ourselves delighted. Even though much of the area originally excavated in the 1960s is now closed to the public for conservation reasons, the remaining area to explore is still enormous.

Despite (or because of) having been inundated by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79, the town is marvellously well-preserved. We stared in wonder at the original paintings, frescoes and shop signs, as well as the occasional shadow of a body, preserved by injecting plaster into the person-shaped hole left in the volcanic ash after the original had rotted away (although most of these had been spirited away to other museums).

There was plenty of room to wander. Most of the buildings had been truncated at just over head-height, giving the feeling of a Romanesque tiled maze, punctuated by ponds, fountains, baths and weirs. Every now and then I would turn a corner and find myself walking down an avenue of stone columns dotted with vibrant palm trees.

I completely fell in love with the civil engineering. The stone roadways are rutted by the passage of cart wheels, and at the end of each street there are holes drilled through the kerb stones where you can hitch your animals. It had never occurred to me before how messy a horse-based economy must be, but the roads run 18″ below the pavement to give space for the ordure. Pedestrian crossings are achieved by the placement of large stepping stones to keep feet out of the mire, with the stones separated by gaps to allow the passage of cart wheels. I am sure that on warm days, you could cut the air with a knife.

The sun was getting pretty fierce, and the site began to quiet down for siesta time. We decided that we needed to go and see the volcano that had caused the whole disaster, so we climbed back down into the cool dark of the underground train system.

Three men up a Volcano

The train dropped us deep in the slums of Naples, with no obvious sign posts or even street markings. We didn’t need directions, though, because the volcano rose impressively out of the smog in front of us, and so we hid our cameras and money-belts and set off confidently toward it.

The city seemed to consist entirely of decaying buildings and rotting garbage. In the violent midday heat, we clambered up through layers of foetid odours, trying our best to avoid the indescribable streams that ran down the cobbled streets. I had pondered earlier on the possible smells of Pompeii in its heyday, and I suspect that these modern streets came close.

Finally we emerged from the indescribably foul city and onto the flanks of the volcano itself. Sweat pouring off our bodies in streams, we managed to hitch a ride up to the base of the chairlift.

The chair was very expensive, even more so than entry to Pompeii, but we were so hot and sweaty that we couldn’t face humping our backpacks any further.

The chairlift was magical. Apart from the slight hum of the tower wheels and the distant click of cameras, the journey to the summit was silent and very peaceful, revealing a breathtaking panorama. As we rose higher, the whole of Naples came into view, the squalor masked by distance, against a back-drop of mountain-tops poking up ethereally through the cloud.

At the top, we were met by a guide who apparently came with our chairlift ticket. His English was almost incomprehensibly accented, but he did rather amusingly demonstrate the echo across the crater. We were able to wander around the caldera a bit, but there had been some recent rumbles and a lot of the path was fragmented and inaccessible. That said, to our eighteen-year old eyes there was disappointingly little overt activity, just a few small fumaroles, but the size of the volcano was impressive and the views more than compensated.

We were enjoying ourselves so much that we rather lost track of the time. Suddenly we realised that we only had three and a half hours to make the four-hour journey back to Naples Central station, so we set off down the volcano at a run. The road had recently been distorted by  recent volcanic activity, and now the first part of the journey down was actually uphill. Eventually we crested the rise and began swiftly to descend.

Following the success of our previous hitch up to the base of the chairlift, we decided to see if we could get a lift from one of the occasional passing cars. We didn’t having too much joy, because after all, who has room for three large men with backpacks?

A bus rumbled past. David optimistically stuck his thumb out. “Don’t be stupid,” I said, “you can’t hitch a ride on a bus”. There was a whistle of air-brakes and it came to a stop, the doors opening invitingly. David shouted something in Italian, and we climbed aboard.

It was quite a swanky bus, but all the seats were full so we stood in the central aisle, reeking of sweat and banging people with our backpacks. At least some of the paying passengers appeared to share my opinion about the logic of hitching on buses, and a voluble argument broke out. The driver shrugged, closed the doors, and took off like a bat out of hell.

We were assailed from all sides by the stony glares of the tourists, but soon all we cared about was hanging on to the ceiling straps as we tore down the small, winding road only inches from the precipitous drop. Perhaps in direct response to his passengers’ complaints, the driver took an unscheduled detour to drop us at the only train station for which we had valid tickets.

David still reckons that we owe him for that one.

Three Men on a Train: 6 – Zakynthos

Welcome to Zakynthos

The island of Zakynthos loomed out of the sea mist ahead, surrounded on all sides by seas of the most incredible shade of blue. As our ferry drew closer, we could make out the harbour of Zakynthos town, crouching down against the water front, nestled under the vertical craggy inland terrain.

We had no idea what to expect. As this was the half-way point of our Grand Tour, we had decided to rest for a week on one of the half-dozen Ionian islands, and had more or less randomly picked this one according to the timetables of the trains and ferries available to us.

We knew that the island was about ten miles across, and we had a vague plan of hiking over the centre to the other side, to see what adventures awaited us. We were footloose and fancy-free, and the world was our oyster.

Within seconds of disembarking, we were approached by a man who wanted to rent us a moped. A few yards later, somebody else asked us the same question. Behind him, several more salesmen were queueing up. Shaking our heads – we had barely set off on our hike, and none of us had ever ridden a motorcycle anyway – we made our way past the clamouring touts, our backpacks weighing heavily as the sun beat down on our heads. About a hundred yards further on, we gave in and rented three mopeds for the rest of the week.

 

The search for the perfect beach

The concept of twist-and-go was simple enough, but the little 50cc machines weren’t really designed to handle a strapping teenager with an enormous backpack. We’d only travelled a short distance up the road before I discovered that pushing mine to 28mph resulted in a loud “bang” and the ejection of a fair bit of oil. I stopped to have a look but couldn’t see any obvious damage and anyway it was still running, so I decided to ignore it. However, while we paused to examine it, Andrew’s moped stalled and wouldn’t start again.

A friendly man came out of his house and pointed knowledgeably at Andrew’s carburettor, then went indoors to phone our hire shop. While we sat on the road and waited to be rescued, the his whole family emerged and sat down with us. We couldn’t understand a word they said, and vice-versa, but they all seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely.

After a while, the rental man showed up with a replacement machine, and we said goodbye to our new friends and putt-putted away to find a beach to sleep on. The first one wasn’t really what we were looking for, and then we got lost in the enjoyment of buzzing along deserted, winding country lanes, learning how to ride the little machines and occasionally “racing” the locals.

By now it was fully dark, and we found that the pitiful light from the tiny glow-worm lamps completely failed to allow us to distinguish between the sandy road surface and the sandy verges. While we paused to sort out a minor crash where Andrew had thought that the road went one way, and I had thought that it went another, an English couple showed up and gave us directions to a good camping beach. Straightening out our handlebars, we set off along a tortuously winding road resembling a quarry track bent into the shape of a stack of paper-clips.

Higher and higher we climbed, wondering why we were going up when surely a beach should be down, until the road degenerated into a pile of rocks on a hill crest. It seemed that it was indeed a quarry after all.

We turned around, and tried a different direction. The evening wore on, and we were getting saddle-sore and tired. Eventually, in a village called Orthonies, Andrew met some children who said that we could camp in the grounds of their school. Since it was all concrete, we couldn’t pitch a tent, so we simply lay down on the ground.

In the interests of saving weight, we had all three of us made some personal compromises when we packed for the trip. David, for instance, had left his boots at home and wore only trainers, something that he had regretted when tramping around Vienna. My concession had been to leave my big heavy sleeping bag at home, instead opting for an orange plastic survival bag. This was all very well on the floor of a train, but desperately cold on plain concrete, and I woke next morning frozen and soaked with condensation.

I lay in quiet dampness, thinking about nice warming Hungarian Cherry Brandy, until the local church started broadcasting its service over a loudspeaker, which woke the others and we had a second try at finding the perfect beach. To cut a long story short, we did eventually discover a perfect little cove near Askos, and went for a welcome cleansing swim in the crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean.

The kindness of strangers

The scenery on the island was beautiful and varied, ranging from terrace-farmed olives groves clambering up the sides of the blue-tinted mountains, to wide flat vineyards, ever-changing vistas against the backdrop of an azure sea.

But it wasn’t the physical beauty that impressed us most. Everywhere we went on this fabulous island, we were welcomed with friendliness, humour, and unthinking generosity. At one small shop, we put our meagre drachmas together and bought mackerel, biscuits, and fizzy drinks. An elderly customer came into the shop, saw our haul, and handed each of us a thick crust of sweet bread. Thanking her, and not wanting it to go stale, we decided to sit down outside the shop and eat our lunch there and then. We settled down in the road and realised that we needed some fruit, so popped back into the shop to get some grapes. The shopkeeper quietly and without fuss popped an extra loaf of bread into my bag.

We returned a few days later to get the deposit on our fizzy drink bottles and to stock up on biscuits, chocolates, and more drinks. The kindly shopkeeper once again donated a fresh loaf of bread to the cause, refusing any payment.

On another occasion, David had run out of fuel, so I headed off to Askos to get some. There was no fuel station in the usual sense, but by pointing at things I was directed to a private house where they gravely mixed oil and petrol in my empty orange-juice container and then waved their hands around excitedly when I tried to pay.

I returned to the others, we redistributed the available fuel, and then once all the bikes were running, we went back to the same house to fill our tanks. David – who speaks Italian – heard somebody conversing in that language and asked if there was somewhere that we could change English money into drachmas. It turned out that we’d have to go back to Zakynthos Town for that kind of service, but we were invited in for a coke and our Italian-speaking friend sketched out a deal where he gave us the bank exchange rate for our tenner, less a pound for his expenses, which made everybody happy.

And then there was the roadside restaurant where we stopped for a kebab, and somehow ended up with pork, salad, chips and wine. When we had paid our bill, and got our map out to plan our nightly search for a beach to sleep on, the kindly owner insisted that we camp for the night inside the restaurant.

Fire on the mountain

After an enjoyable day hacking around in the mountains and swimming in the sea, we found ourselves running low on petrol high up on a pass. Partly to conserve fuel, and partly just for the fun of it, we freewheeled down the mountain with the engines off for about six miles. Half way down, we noticed that a bush fire had started and was blazing fiercely along the hillside, so we made a note to report it if we ever saw anyone, because this was in the deserted southern end of the island and we hadn’t seen another soul all day.  We rolled to a stop outside a small dark cafe, and I went inside to see if I could sound the alert. There were a number of men drinking in the dark cave of the interior, and none of them understood what I was trying to tell them. Eventually I dragged the owner outside and pointed up at the thickening pall of smoke and the flicker of red flame that was advancing closer with every passing minute.

Now he got excited and rapped on the open door of the cafe, shouting at his customers, who came tumbling out blinking in the evening sun. After a swift discussion they tumbled back in, and then emerged once more carrying tables, chairs, table cloths, glasses, and finally a large carafe of retsina, and we all sat and drank and watched as the sun set behind the flames.

It was here that I drank my very first ouzo. I instantly became a fan, which the proprietors found entertaining. One thing led to another, and it seemed but an eye-blink before it was full dark and we started preparing to set up our tent on the nearby village green. Our new friends the cafe owners pointed out that they already had a tent pitched permanently there, and offered to lend it to us for the night. Thanking them profusely, we moved in and found that it was a trailer with double beds; complete luxury!

David’s nemesis

David has a thing about insects, and a particular hatred of wasps, against which no reasoned logic will prevail. While exploring the southern end of the island, we stopped at a waterfront cafe in Ormos Korioy where, sitting at an outside table, we ordered three large pork chops with trimmings.

It wasn’t long before a curious wasp appeared. It buzzed in a desultory fashion around our plates and was about to continue on its way to look for more waspy fare, when David started shouting and swatting at it. This made it more curious about what he was defending, and it became more insistent. By the time Andrew and I had finished our meals in unmolested comfort – apart from choking with laughter – David’s plate was surrounded by fifteen excited insects, with the man himself cursing loudly and bashing away at them with napkins and cutlery. In the end, he had to abandon his lunch to a sea of yellow bodies.

When it became time to pay, Andrew suddenly realised that he had left his money belt at our last swimming beach, so he and I rode off to retrieve it while David held the fort at the restaurant. Luckily the belt was still jammed into a rock crevice where he had left it. Andrew decided to celebrate with another swim, so I returned to a rather hungry David, who had calmed down somewhat now that his crawling plate had been cleared away by the bemused staff.

We ordered fizzy pop to pass the time until Andrew returned. As soon as David opened his bottle, a wasp arrived at full speed and with incredible precision dived straight down the neck. Giggling as David cursed, I managed to extricate it from the bottle with a straw. It walked around looking stunned, then shook off the sugary nectar and launched itself straight at David, who took off at a run. When Andrew arrived, I was speechless with laughter and David and his pursuer were starting their third circumnavigation of the restaurant.

Lumps, bumps, and pointy things

All of the bikes were by now looking a bit worse for wear. Mine had a soggy chain-tensioner and a tendency to rattle and spit oil. Andrew’s was difficult to start and so he tended to leave it running all day. David’s sucked fuel at an alarming rate, so that on three separate occasions he ran out and one of us had to go in search of supplies. Each of the machines also showed signs of being dropped, from bent controls to scratches to a smashed headlamp.

The damage was not just restricted to the machines. We were all new to motorcycling, and we were wearing oversized backpacks and riding underpowered mopeds in shorts and T-shirts on gravel roads. It’s not surprising that we endured a number of minor bumps and scrapes, and between us we sported a good selection of minor gravel rash on hands, arms and legs.

Having thoroughly explored the northern and southern corners of this triangular island, we proceeded eastward to the more populated areas near to Zakynthos Town. It was on a blind hairpin near Port Zorro that Andrew performed his most spectacular dismount, propelled face-first through the gravel by the full weight of his backpack.

Some friendly locals brought a bowl of water so that we could clean up his rather ugly gravel rash, but Andrew was not seriously injured and it was all a bit of a joke and a lucky escape until we found that he had forgotten to get inoculated for tetanus. We got directions to the nearest hospital, but when we got there we were told that we should have brought the serum with us, as they didn’t keep stocks on site. We could buy them at a chemist, but of course the chemists were now closed, so we headed up the mountain for the night.

In the morning we returned to Zakynthos Town, and Andrew popped into a chemist for some antibiotics and his tetanus jab. He came out carrying a small package and looking a bit perturbed, and it transpired that the assistant had given him a loaded syringe and mimed that he had to find somewhere quiet and stick it in his backside. Perhaps wisely declining all offers of help, Andrew disappeared behind some bushes and emerged a little later, slightly pale and shaky but with the job done.

A bit of spit and polish

It was just as well that we had returned to Zakynthos Town for Andrew’s medication, because my bike was now running very rough indeed and wouldn’t go faster than 12mph, and I reckoned there was very little life left in it. We parked as quietly as possible around the corner from the hire place, and strolled innocently past to sneak a look at the gleaming machines lined up outside the shop. Then we returned to our battered, dust-coated wrecks, with their fractured headlamps and bent pedals, leaking oil and petrol, and gave up wondering if anybody would notice the difference.

Andrew and David started hammering out some of their bent metal with rocks, while I went round wiping off the encrusted dirt and fluids with a pack of paper hankies that David had found in his backpack. Once we’d got the poor things looking as clean and straight as possible, Andrew – whose machine had fared the worst – gave his an extra shine with sun-tan oil, and we putt-putted gently around the corner to the rental shop.

The guy barely batted and eyelid, merely charging Andrew an extra fiver for his busted headlamp and bent pedal. We counted this as a favourable result, and went off to celebrate in town before the ferry office opened.

Three Men on a Train: 5 – Athens

Ancient Athens

After somehow escaping the worst horrors of the infamous Belgrade Express, we finally emerged onto Greek soil and stood blinking in the hot sun of Athens.

As had become customary on this trip, Andrew and David wanted to buy souvenirs, so we took a subway to the Flea Market, where I hung around on a street corner with our packs while the others went shopping. The market was a deafening mixture of large motorcycles and shouting men selling just about any possible item that you could imagine. The hot sun was wonderful, although by the time others came back, the sweat was pouring out from beneath my hat and down my back.

Shopping duties done, we visited the Acropolis, the ancient citadel high above the city. Perhaps the most famous building there is the Parthenon, an ancient temple which was being rebuilt when we arrived (I noted in my diary that it would be impressive when the work was complete, but when I returned 15 years later, the scaffolding was still up).

From the Acropolis is was a hot hike in the midday sun to the Agora, once the civic centre of ancient Athens. Now it is a wide area of ruins with an interesting museum of salvaged statues and columns at one end, and the almost complete Temple of Hephaestus at the other. We caught the temple just as the sun was setting, and prevailed upon a friendly tourist to take a picture of us.

Patras, Kyllini and beyond

We realised that we had given ourselves far too little time to explore Athens, but it was getting late and we needed somewhere cheap – or preferably, free – to sleep, so we caught a train to Patras. We arrived after midnight, and the whole platform was lined with the sleeping forms of other interrailers, all waiting for the morning train. We set up our sleeping bags and set about preparing our dinner. Although Greece wasn’t as expensive as northern Europe, it was still much more expensive than the Eastern bloc, so rather than try to dine locally we laid out the last of our Hungarian provisions. Our knowledge of written Hungarian was shaky at best, so we weren’t entirely sure what was in the cans that we had brought from Budapest. In the event, we feasted on sardine sandwiches and chicken-flavoured baby food. Well, it could have been worse.

We had a pleasant sleep on the platform and then I was grateful for a wash in the station bathroom. From my diary, I see that this was also my first encounter with squat toilets, which I found simple enough to deal with, especially when wearing a backpack because I could rest it against the wall behind me to take the weight off my calves.

Although we were up and about at first light, some of the other interrailers were still asleep when the station opened. These unfortunates were unceremoniously and vigorously woken by the station master, who was clearly used to finding comatose bodies when he came to work, but who didn’t want his station to look like a doss-house when the first train arrived.

While waiting for our train to Kyllini where we intended to catch a ferry to Zakynthos, we were accosted by one of those travelling Americans that you bump into from time to time. His story was that he had retired at 40 and made his living buying and selling yachts, and had spent most of his time since travelling from country to country and (if he was to be believed) picking up girls. Before he left, he introduced us to a group of three girls travelling together, which caused much embarrassed eye-rolling among the six of us.

The Kyllini train was wonderful. The tracks ran straight down to the sea and just sort of petered out into the sand, at which point we climbed down directly onto the beach. The sun was high in a perfect blue sky over golden sand, and we felt that we had truly arrived in the Greece of picture postcards.

It was lunch time, we had skipped breakfast, and there was a restaurant close at hand. Of course we spoke no Greek, but Andrew and David hatched a plan to use some of the phonetic translations in the Interrail Bible. They proudly pronounced their syllables, and were escorted into the kitchen where they were invited to select the raw ingredients for our meal. When they returned to our table, they still had no idea what they had ordered, but when it arrived it was a very tasty dish of grilled purple squid with a tomato salad. Unfortunately it was also extremely expensive, blowing our budget for the day.

Later that afternoon, we secured tickets on the MV Martha (costing a mere third of the price of our lunch), and climbed onto the rooftop deck as she set sail for the Ionian island of Zakynthos.

Three Men on a Train: 4 – Yugoslavia

Our Hungarian visas were expiring, and we were not keen to have another encounter with Alien Control officials, so we hoisted our backpacks and boarded the train for Athens. The route passed through communist Yugoslavia, which in 1983 was in crisis after president-for-life Tito’s death and well on its way to civil war, and it was not permitted to disembark although foreigners were allowed to travel straight through. On the other hand, we already knew that this particular train was  going to terminate early in the Yugoslavian capital of Belgrade, where we hoped that we could get a connection through to Athens without officially crossing the border into Yugoslavia, but the immediate problem was to get out of Budapest. Concerning our route further South, all we knew for sure was that the Belgrade-Athens run was infamous for being the worst train journey in Europe.

 From Hungary to Yugoslavia on the Pushkin-Athens “Express”

The Belgrade train pulled out of Budapest, and we dropped into a deep sleep, only to be awoken by the ticket inspector wanting to see our reservations. In the early hours of the morning,  it was the turn of a suspicious Hungarian Passport Control officer who compared and re-compared our faces with our photographs, before grudgingly returning our passports and leaving, but not before a final check under our seats for stowaways.

Shortly after that we were awoken once again, this time by a Yugoslav ticket collector, who merely glanced at our tickets and said “ock”, which we inferred to be a phonetic rendering of “OK”, and thus marked our passing from one communist country to the next.

Our next visitor, a laconic uniformed official of some kind, woke us up for no readily apparent reason and then moved on to the next compartment. We were just drifting back into dreamland when the Yugoslav Passport Control officer arrived. For reasons known only to himself, he stamped my currency control page and David’s US visa before continuing on his way.

We were jolted out of our slumber once again when the train made an apparently unscheduled stop to let what sounded like four hundred excited locals aboard. Fortunately the tide of humanity flowed past our little compartment to another part of the train, leaving only a thick fug of cigarette smoke.

When we finally awoke naturally, it was cold and foggy outside and we had no idea where we were, except that the train was clearly running several hours late. The carriage was bucking violently from side to side, and we inferred that at least some of the delay was down to badly laid tracks. Be that as it may, we did eventually rumble haltingly into Belgrade Central Station.

From Yugoslavia to Greece on the Belgrade-Athens “Express”

The Athens Express should have left an hour before we arrived, but it was still standing at the platform so we jumped aboard. It was comprised of two parts, the forward carriages going all the way to Athens and the rear carriages stopping short in Thessaloniki. The Athens end was crowded and the Thessaloniki end was not, so bearing in mind that we would be on this train for the next 24 hours and didn’t fancy sitting in the already packed Athens-bound corridor, we joined some other Interrailers in a relatively empty compartment to the rear.

The scenery passing our window was picturesque and somewhat bucolic. The train was passing through small farms, apparently worked by couples, who got around in WWII trucks, bicycles, horse-traps and ox-carts. I tried to take some pictures but the light was bad and the train was shaking around a lot.

Yugoslavian soldiers were patrolling the corridors, and one saw my camera and came into the compartment and indicated that taking photos was forbidden. He then stood on guard to make sure that I didn’t do it again. Presumably these were secret cabbages, unsuitable for decadent capitalist eyes.

At lunch, we discovered that the litre bottle of apple juice that we had bought in Budapest was in fact apple wine. Since it had a crown top, once it was opened we had to drink the whole thing there and then, which took our mind off our silent guard who was still carefully watching our every move.

The day wore on. The scenery became more hilly and scrubby. So far, despite a certain amount of tedium, and the fact that all the toilets were blocked and there was no tap water, the train  thankfully seemed not to be living up to its bad reputation, and our journey was reasonably pleasant. Perhaps the ticket inspectors hadn’t bothered us because our travelling companions were genuinely stopping in Thessaloniki, but at any rate they did not ask us to move from the compartment. We did take it in turns to wander down toward the Athens end, just to see what was going on, but it was difficult to get into even the first carriage as it was stuffy and crowded.

At some time in the late evening we crossed the border into Greece, and the Yugoslavian soldiers were replaced by Greek Customs officials, who gave us some forms and stamped us in. Just before midnight, Andrew found three seats available in one of the Athens carriages, so we hurried down there and installed ourselves before anybody else discovered them. It was a relief to know that we were now at the right end of the train, and, blocked toilets notwithstanding, conditions didn’t seem as bad as we had expected.

A few minutes later we stopped at a station. The ticket inspector shook his head and ejected us onto the platform, because this part of the train wasn’t going to Athens after all. We had a few moments before the train left the station, so we ran up and down until we located a genuine Athens carriage, and climbed aboard.

It was at this point that we realised just how lucky we had been. The floors and seats of the compartments were completely packed with travellers and their luggage, and we only just managed to squeeze our way into the corridor, where every inch of floor space was already taken up by bodies and sleeping bags. The toilets here were not just blocked, they had backed up and effluent was slopping out of the doorway and down the corridor. The odour competed with the thick fug of Russian tobacco, and at least one person was quietly throwing up.

We wrapped towels around our heads and curled up into the tiny space left to us, and thanked our lucky stars that we hadn’t been stuck on this carriage for the whole of the previous day.

We had dropped off into an uneasy sleep, when at some time in the small wee hours, the train jolted and stopped. There were some muffled bangs – presumably the disconnecting Thessaloniki carriages – and the train started to move again. We started to drift off again, but were disturbed by some guards who came trampling through our prone bodies, demanding that we all stand up and follow them. We did, and like rats following the pied piper, trooped through the rattling carriages, collecting ever more suffering souls along the way.

At the end of the train, as if by magic, there was a fresh new empty coach with working toilets. We all piled in, got comfortable, and finally fell into a proper sleep. The train was by now running two hours late, but nobody cared.

Three Men on a Train: 3 – Budapest

We were in the Hungarian capital of Budapest with a place to stay and with permits to move about (in a limited fashion). We had cash in our pockets, and food in our bellies. A tram ticket to anywhere cost only pennies. We were wide-eyed nineteen-year-olds in an Eastern bloc communist country and it was time to go out and see what the city had to offer.

Actually no. Andrew and David were keen to buy souvenirs, so we spent a goodly amount of the day wandering around the tourist shops until their lust for t-shirts and whips had been sated. I amused myself by looking at the architecture, which had been described as “the most picturesque of the eastern cities”, but which thus far had been largely brutalist and monolithic, immense sooty-walled five-story blocks sat upon street-level shops. I hoped that things would improve when we left the shopping district.

Citadella on Gellért Hill, Budapest

As usual, I wanted to climb to the highest point in the city, which in the case of Budapest is Gellért Hill on the Western banks of the Danube. We set off across the dirty waters of the river by means of a somewhat rickety suspension bridge. We marvelled at the way it bounced with the passage of each successive vehicle, and turned to watch the effect of a passing truck. As it passed us, one of the steel sheets that it was carrying fell off and skittered past, narrowly missing us on the pavement. We hurried on, and then began the long climb up the extensive and picturesque stairway to the Citadella.

This fortress was built by the Hapsburgs when they gained control of the country, and was supposed to be destroyed when there was later reconciliation with Austria, but somehow that  never happened and it is now a tourist attraction on the basis of its views over Budapest, and the sculptures and monuments that have since been placed there.

The fortress was reasonably interesting and the views were nice enough, improving greatly once night fell. We had a beautiful purple sunset, and then the buildings in the old town came alive with light, especially the castle and parliament building which stare at each other across the water, so we headed down towards the old town to have a look.

On our way, we got distracted by the sound of dance music and, by following our ears, ended up at a bar with a large open-air dance floor. The dances were complex in their footwork but were performed by linking arms to form a scattered ring formation. We watched from a terrace, and Andrew and David practised the foot movements on the table before going down to join the fray. I elected to look after our cameras and bags, and anyway I was quite happy to sit quietly with my beer.

From my elevated position, I could just make out the fact that two of the bodies were moving contrary to the general flow, although occasionally I must admit that they did seem to be doing the right thing at the right time.

After leaving the dance venue, we scoured the streets for a restaurant, and eventually caught one that was just opening. There were white table cloths, chandeliers, a live band, and a dance floor, and we felt a little out of place in our t-shirts, shorts and hiking boots. However, the waiter welcomed us in and suggested the three-course speciality with wine. Since it was easily within our budget, we gratefully tucked in to stacks of meat and vegetables, washed down with Bulls Blood wine.

After a really enjoyable meal, we found a tram heading in the right direction and climbed aboard. We already had tickets, which was necessary because you couldn’t buy them from the driver, you had to get wads of them in advance from old men who lurked in the subways under the streets. On the tram, we stamped our ticket with the hole-punch provided, which allowed us to stay aboard for as long as we liked.

We were heading for the tram interchange at Keleti Station, and in that we were successful. However, the last connecting tram home to Rákospatak Park had long since gone, so we hailed a taxi. We were low on local currency, but the driver cheerfully accepted Sterling, so we were treated to an exhilarating high-speed ride in a little Russian car over twenty minutes of cobblestones and tram lines; it should have been quicker, but he got lost.

Dining on the Danube

We slept in fairly late, and then I went in search of a cafe that sold Hungarian Goulash (gulyás). It was more watery than I was expecting, but with a pleasant slightly spicy taste. A passing wasp touched my plate momentarily, and instantly died. Shortly after leaving the cafe, my stomach started to rumble alarmingly and I had to find a discreet place to squat.

During a day of wandering, I realised that the beauty of the city lies not in its architecture (although Buda has its nice touches), but in the atmosphere. We were already beginning to feel right at home, and the fact that the exchange rate made us relatively wealthy did not harm our view at all. Local goods were all marvellously cheap, although imported items were likely to command vastly inflated prices. All in all we did not see many overt signs of the police state, and found young Hungarians to be helpful and friendly, older people wary at first but thawing quickly, although curiously all seemed to regard England as the epitome of freedom.

In the late afternoon, we purchased tickets for a dinner cruise along the Danube. We got aboard and ordered the first course, and then stopped to consider the scene: Three penniless students on a bread-line European tour, cruising down the Danube over the beginning of a three-course meal, washed down with creamy mocha coffee and fiercely rough Bulls Blood wine. It was so silly that we got somebody to take a photograph.

Having ordered our hors d’oeuvre (a Hungarian omelette in a spicy sauce), we ordered an inter-course second coffee, only to find that we had taken too long to order the second course because the kitchen was closing. Not to be dismayed, we decided to board the next cruise and finish the meal, if only to see the reaction of the rather pretty but confused Hungarian waitress.

Unfortunately the next sailing was already fully booked, so we decided to continue our meal in a restaurant ashore. We found one complete with a local band and wandering violin soloist, and did our best to continue our interrupted meal. Shortly after beginning my main course, the waiter smashed a glass next to my plate, covering both myself and my food in glass splinters. By the time I had removed all the shards from my bleeding knuckles, he had escaped and seemed unlikely to return to replace my meal, so I strode through the now quite crowded restaurant with my plate and buttonholed him at another table.

He eventually snatched it out of my hands and scuttled away, returning with a replacement and a nasty sneer. Thenceforth his behaviour degenerated to the downright rude, culminating in an overcharged bill, so we left with a somewhat sour taste in our mouths.

Three Men in a Sauna

It was our last day in Budapest, so we said goodbye to our landlord and shouldered our packs for the first time in three days. We were intending to leave from the impressive Nyugati station, and we’d heard that there was a sauna nearby. None of us had ever been to a sauna, and the thought of a relaxing bath was very attractive after a week on the road, so we bought some food for the evening and went to rent a station left-luggage locker.

Unfortunately all the lockers were in use, so we re-shouldered both the packs and the shopping, and headed for the sauna. The sauna was closed.

According to our Interrail Bible, there was another one at the Hotel Gellért, back up the highest hill again. Our route took us through the Budapest Forest, a fairly attractive space in the middle of town, but to our mind nowhere near as nice as the well-planted Margit (Margaret) Island which is reached by means of a pair of curious T-shaped bridges.

By the time we got to the hotel, it was already half past three, but we bought tickets anyway for a sauna and massage. We were handed three small squares of cloth and were directed to the luggage store and changing rooms.

Once stripped down, we carefully examined the handkerchief-sized cloths, each of which had long tapes at two of the corners. After some puzzled discussion, we eventually decided that the best use was to tie it around the waist so that the tiny square hung down in front. Thus equipped, we boldly entered the sauna.

Once through the showers, a doorway led through a foot bath and into a large vault supported by stone columns and containing a shallow pool, a little over a metre deep, which was signposted as 36℃ at one end, and 38℃ at the other. A hurried glance at a couple of lounging gentlemen revealed that our handkerchiefs were being correctly worn, so after a brief swim we moved on through to the sauna proper.

The first room said 35-50℃ and held four wooden chairs. The second room said 50-60℃ and the smell of ammonia was more noticeable than the heat. I walked into the third and last room (60-70℃) and plonked myself down on a seat. It was only a little later that I noticed that other guests were tiptoeing around as if the tiles were hot coals, scrabbling for rubber foot mats, and perching gingerly on the arms and backs of the chairs. Actually it was pleasantly comfortable, and I sat back and relaxed. After a while I realised that there were two gentlemen seated at the back of the room, apparently reading newspapers. Closer investigation revealed that all the newsprint had run illegibly down the page, but I gave them ten out of ten for style.

We had been given numbered tickets for our massage, and every fifteen minutes or so the burly bald gentleman by the slab in the corner shouted out a number, and a customer made their way over. The only problem was that we didn’t  understand Hungarian, so every time he called out, we had to check to see if anybody else was moving. Eventually there was a lull where he repeated a number several times, so figuring that it was probably our turn, we made our way over.

After a gentle, relaxing, soapy massage which took all the ache out of back-pack weary shoulders, we discovered the cold pool and the steam room. The cold pool was more of a circular well, and I dove straight in before realising just how cold it was. Frozen in shock, I forgot all about coming out of the dive until I hit the bottom hard enough to graze my knuckles. Lying on the bottom of the pool, I turned slowly onto my back and peered up at the faraway circle of light, before eventually getting enough sense together to start stroking for the surface.

After that, it was a case of alternating the steam room and sauna with the cold well and bath-temperature pool until we sadly had to drag ourselves away. It was a wonderful, unforgettable experience, and I have been a confirmed lover of sauna ever since.

Back on the Rails

We’d run out of tram tickets, so we had to run for the station, where we discovered that the train timetabled for Greece was only going as far as Jugoslavia, a communist country that we knew to be completely closed to us. Never mind, we clambered aboard, and by using our usual tactics managed to commandeer a compartment to ourselves. To mark our departure from slightly wealthy to more normal Interrail living, we dined on bread and sausage, albeit washed down with a little locally-brewed cherry brandy.

We had heard rumours about the trip ahead of us, and needed to be prepared.

Three Men on a Train: 2 – Vienna and the Orient Express

There was only one carriage on the train that was going to Vienna, and it was jam-packed with people. We rushed on early and all three of us managed to squeeze into a compartment but there wasn’t  room for all our rucksacks, so I padlocked mine to the window outside in the corridor, between the less lucky latecomers who were squashed together out there on the floor.

We spent a fairly wretched night sat bolt upright in our cramped and stuffy compartment, although at Salzburg the corridor emptied enough to become navigable and I spent some time sitting on my rucksack in the breeze from the window. Then as we entered the final three hours of the journey, the passenger on the seat opposite to mine left the compartment , and I wasted no time reclaiming my seat and putting my feet up on his, dropping instantly into a deep and comfortable slumber.

 Vienna (Austria)

All too soon, we found ourselves decamping somewhat dishevelled and bleary-eyed onto the platform in Vienna. An attempt to spruce ourselves up found us scalped in the station toilets and in the cafeteria; we hadn’t realised just how expensive Austria could be. We spent even more attempting to use the telephone to find a hotel, and then once again when we checked our backpacks into the left-luggage office. We hadn’t even left the station, and we had already blown a fifth of our daily budget.

We did however now have a destination in mind, a “student annexe” to a proper hotel in the centre of the city. Glad to have left our backpacks behind us, we sprinted across five-lane intersections without any understanding of how the traffic worked, found the hotel, and reserved our rooms with a handful of notes. It was so early in the morning that no rooms were yet available, but the concierge amiably agreed to let us use some showers around the corner.

Suitably refreshed, Andrew volunteered to guide us on a whistle-stop tour of the attractions of Vienna. He did a great job and we enjoyed a whirlwind of largely Gothic splendour, a pot-pourri of cathedrals, palaces and government buildings.

The city was photogenically beautiful, and everything was conveniently situated close to the central Cathedral. The prices, however, wore us down. A combination of entrance fees and our lunch in a tourist cafe wiped us out, and we began to consider our escape to less expensive climes. The Thomas Cook International Rail Timetable, arguably one of the most amazing books ever published, showed that if we ran we could still catch a train to Hungary, which was importantly and famously inexpensive.

We made a hasty (and expensive) phone call to the hotel to cancel our reservation and, thankful that we had left our packs at the station and not at the hotel, ran for the train.

The Orient Express

Almost everybody has heard of the famous Orient Express, with its art-deco rolling stock and white-tablecloth service, subject of books and films throughout the twentieth century. However, none of those trains (for there have been a number of them) were in fact “The Orient Express”, although they did use those words as part of their name. The “true” Orient Express was from 1883 to 2009 the more prosaic everyday train that ran between Paris and Vienna, with sections going on to Budapest and Bucharest. The version that we caught in 1983 lacked in every way the glamour and history of the drama phenomenon.

We managed to secure a compartment to ourselves by the now standard practice of hanging up our washing and dirty socks to make it seem less palatable to other travellers, and stretched out to enjoy the ride.

As the designated accountant for the trip, I spent some of the time totting up our IOUs and calculated that we had spent an average of £5 per person per day which, Vienna notwithstanding, meant that we were still £1 per day under budget, and we were now heading for some cheaper nations.

At the time of our visit, Hungary was still solidly behind the iron curtain. This meant that we had five separate visits from green-uniformed officials who checked for stowaways under our seats, guarded the exits at every station, and re-counted the passengers after every stop.

Budapest (Hungary)

As soon as we disembarked at Budapest Central, we were accosted on the platform by a man in a suit and umbrella who offered us all a room to sleep in for £9 per night. Andrew bartered him down to £6, slightly below the suggested rate in Katie Woods’ wonderful Europe By Train, which we had been using as our bible.

Our new friend Leslie led us to a money exchange where we got hold of some florints, waited while we scoffed down a welcome schnitzel and chips at the station cafe, and then took us home on the tram.

We crowded into the tiny lift of his apartment block, arrived creakily at the seventh floor, and were led into the living room of his flat. The room was packed with furniture and mats, the walls a mosaic of insulating carpet tiles, and dominating it all were a 26″ television (tuned to a single channel) and an old bakelite radiogram. Leslie gave us a soft drink, some milk, and a bowl of slightly battered pears, and we settled down to sleep wherever we could find some space.

We woke up after a good night’s sleep, and asked for some hot water to make coffee. Apparently coffee is a scarce resource here, because Leslie was very shocked when we offered to make him one, and even more shocked when Andrew left some dregs in the bottom of his cup.

Suitably refreshed, we tackled the first order of the day, which was to register our new address with the Alien Control Centre. We got back on the tram, which cost only pennies per ride, and gawked out of the windows as we traversed the ugly concrete streets, alongside tiny scurrying Lada and Skoda cars, to get to the central police station.

Leslie handled the registration process, which involved a lot of arm-waving and discussion, while the three of us perspired freely while hemmed in and hustled about by machine-gun toting henchmen. It seemed to end well, though, because we left with papers that entitled us to stay for three days as long as we did not leave the capital city.

Three Men on a Train: 1 – England to Germany

The Grand Tour

There used to be a tradition among a certain class of English gentlemen that when the firstborn son came of age, he set off on a “Grand Tour” around the cities of Europe. Ostensibly this was to educate him in the classics of art and architecture, but it was also his first and only chance to spread his wings and do some growing up on his own. On his return, he was expected to rejoin Society as a fully formed and well-adjusted individual who had had his fun (and, possibly, sown some wild oats) far from the critical eyes of Polite Society, before taking up the serious business of marriage, children and the family estate.

That era is of course long gone, and I certainly didn’t belong to the titled or monied class, but as an eighteen-year old who had just left home to start out at university, the idea had a rather splendid appeal. I got together with David and Andrew, my closest friends from school, and bought an ‘Interrail’ ticket, available to anyone under the age of 26 and valid for 30 days on any train in the whole of Europe.

It was our first taste of independent travel, and for me it was the trigger for a lifetime of flitting from place to place, never quite settled, always moving on. This is the tale of that first trip, when, wide-eyed and naive and wet behind the ears, we set out with empty wallets, ridiculously heavy backpacks, and a wide-eyed wonder at the world beyond our borders.

Free train to Loch Ness (Scotland)

Interrail were doing a deal whereby if we purchased the ticket early enough, we received a ‘free ticket to anywhere’. Having never travelled together before, or indeed done any long distance train travel, we decided to do a trial run on the longest train journey available to us over the Easter weekend. After careful perusal of the timetables, we figured out that we just had time to take the train from London in South East England to Inverness in North East Scotland, hike to the famous Loch Ness, camp overnight on its shores, and then turn back around and go home again.

We had a fine old time, and took the opportunity to shake down our hiking and camping gear, and work out what we would take with us when we left for Europe a few months later.

London to Dover (England)

September soon arrived. Since our Interrail ticket was not valid in the country of purchase, David and I chose the cheap option of a bus to Dover to catch our ferry to France, where we could start our rail journey with an overnight train to Paris. For reasons that remain obscure, Andrew chose not to travel with us, but instead took a train. David and I arrived at the port without any problems, but the ferry to Calais began to board with no sign of Andrew. We already had tickets so we got on the boat anyway. After a look around the decks, we tried to page him on the intercom, but with no result so we had to assume that he was not on board.

Calais (France)

Arriving in Calais with an hour to kill before the next ferry arrived – hopefully with Andrew aboard – we went for a wander. We established that there seemed to be two “cathedrals”, but one was derelict and the other was the town hall, which I later described in my diary as “a technicolor version of Big Ben”

We were particularly enamoured by the local treatment of railway crossings. If the barriers were down across the road, it simply meant that the drivers needed to slalom around them without slowing. Pedestrians just ambled across whether the barriers were up or down. On one occasion, there was actually a train parked across the road, presumably waiting for a signal, but the first pedestrian to reach it simply opened a door, stepped into the carriage and out of the door on the other side, the rest of us trooping after.

Andrew wasn’t on the second ferry either.

Remember that this was 1983, well before the invention of mobile phones. We had previously arranged for a relative to act as a message depot if we ever got separated while travelling, so after spending some time trying to understand the labyrinthine French public telephone system, we finally received a message that Andrew was going to be on the second ferry after ours. Apparently he had got on a London bus to the railway station, but the bus had crashed, resulting in him catching the wrong train which went to the wrong side of Dover. When he finally arrived at the ferry port, out of breath from running across the town, they told him that his ticket wasn’t valid until the third ferry.

The problem with this was that he would arrive after the last train had left Calais for the night. We had booked no accommodation because we had intended to sleep on the train to Paris, but the next departure after the ferry was due to arrive didn’t leave until 05:30 the following morning. In fact, once his ferry docked at 20:00 there weren’t any trains leaving for anywhere.

We suddenly recognised Andrew standing at the ferry port. His boat had come in early, and so we all sprinted with our 35lb backpacks to the station and boarded the only remaining train. Apparently it was going to Italy via Switzerland.

Basel (Switzerland)

Andrew and David curled up on their seats, and I chose to stretch out on the floor, which was comfortable enough albeit a little bone-shaking over the points. We had come up with a new itinerary, intending to sleep until our early morning arrival in Basel, and then change for Munich, ultimately bound for the fabled fairy-tale castles of Fűssen. David and I were up and ready and hopped off when the train stopped, but Andrew had found a hot-water basin in a carriage further up and decided that he just had time to have a quick shave.

There were no open borders back in 1983. David and I headed for Customs, where our shiny blue-and-silver passports got us waved through without any attention. From behind the barrier, we noticed that Andrew’s carriage had been disconnected and was being shunted out of the station. Some distance from the platform, he suddenly appeared at a doorway, leaped out and headed back for the station, waving his passport in the air as he ran.

We repaired to the station buffet and broke our fast with coffee and a sausage roll, congratulating ourselves on having finally arrived somewhere more or less as planned and more or less together. As we lingered over coffee and made smug notes in our diaries, our Munich train rolled out of the station.

According to the timetable, it was theoretically possible to catch another Munich train from Basel’s other station, a tram ride away. “Streetcar Number 2” said a helpful uniformed gentleman, but that tram left without us while we were still trying to understand the ticket machine. Eventually Andrew managed to organise the correct change, and we purchased 60 minutes of travel time. A Number 6 passed, then another Number 6, but no Number 2. Suddenly we realised that the Number 6 also went to Badischer Bahnhof, climbed aboard the third one, leaped out at the station and sprinted across a busy street and onto the deserted platform. We’d missed the Munich train by three minutes.

It was still before 09:00 on our first day in Europe. A close perusal of the timetable revealed that, with a couple of changes, we could get to Munich by 17:00. The first train didn’t leave for a while, so we headed to the station bathroom for a wash and, for Andrew, for the second half of his shave.

After a snack of chocolate bars and iced tea, we climbed aboard the 08:36 to Singen. We’d already noticed that some trains were made up of a mixture of rolling stock from different countries, and this was our first Deutsche Bahn carriage, with compartments which boasted seats that converted into couchettes. We resolved to look out for more of these carriages in future.

Lindau (Germany)

We arrived in Singen with 6 minutes to transfer to the Lindau train, and made it with time to spare. We even managed to score another DB carriage, although when David pulled the seat out to form a couchette, the whole thing fell off the wall. As we were trying to quietly put it back together again, we congratulated one another on having, nevertheless, executed a flawless train connection for the first time. Then the ticket inspector arrived and told us that we were in the wrong carriage, and that the train was being split in two and we were at the wrong end of it. We sprinted up the corridor and just managed to jump the gap before our carriage moved off.

Finally, for the first time on this trip, we had a chance to sit quietly and look at the scenery. The train was zig-zagging back and forth between Germany and Switzerland, allowing us to admire the picturesque Swiss villages, partially obscured by low-lying clouds.

In Lindau, we wound our way between groups of souvenir-buying tourists and found a cafe with views across Bodensee (Lake Constance). The lake was very attractive, and although it was warm and sunny, there were thunderous cloud formations rising above the Swiss Alps.

The cafe prices were rather high for our shallow pockets, but as we sipped our coffee we discovered that they were happy to sell us individual slices of bread, which we could then load up with sliced German sausage that we had purchased earlier from a butcher.

Having bought some more supplies, we boarded the correct train at the correct time, and even got a DB carriage. There was nobody else in our six-seater compartment, so we converted all the seats to give ourselves a big flat space to lounge around in, and then – for the first time since leaving England – we dared to take off our boots.

Fűssen / Neuschwanstein (Germany)

Several changes later, including one missed connection and the wrong end of another splitting train, we arrived in the town of Fűssen. I ruefully tallied our record of correctly executed train connections in my diary: a grand total of One. Obviously there was more to this Interrail business than met the eye, but at least we could only improve.

We’d bumped into another pair of Interrailers on the train who already knew the lie of the land, so they took us on a night-time hike to a viewpoint where we could catch a glimpse of the famous castles. There are two of them, one white and one yellow, and we stared up at them spotlit against the pitch-black mountainsides, hanging up there in the stars. This was new, this was different, this was the sort of thing that we wanted to experience. We resolved to climb up to at least one of them in the morning.

While our guides returned to their hostel, we found a flat piece of grass and pitched our tent in pitch darkness, cooking tinned chicken and rice before falling into a deep and satisfied sleep.

We woke and struck camp early; necessarily so, because we had pitched our tent in the grounds of a local hotel, within view of the breakfast room, and we thought it politic to be gone before anybody noticed. We washed up and performed our ablutions down the road in the surprisingly warm waters of the Alpensee, which stands at the very foot of the Alps in a glaciated basin, and began the long climb up to the fairy-tale white castle above.

The path lead through dark and dripping pine forests, hewn out of the mud and edged with railway sleepers, with each step an awkward one-and-a-half strides. Humping metal-framed 16kg rucksacks was a bit of a chore, but finally we reached the top.

Schloss Neuschwanstein (then called Neu Hohenschwangau) was built and inhabited by “Mad King Ludwig” in the late 19th Century. He had spent the happiest days of his youth in his father’s refurbished castle, the gothic yellow Hohenschwangau that we had seen at a distance the night before. Although still rich and powerful, Ludwig’s sovereignty of the kingdom of Bavaria had been removed during a deal with Prussia, so he had it in his mind to create a small private “kingdom” which was more true to his vision of romantic Bavarian tradition. As his power dwindled, he began tinkering with the plans, focussing on the legends of the Knights Templar of the Holy Grail as his model.

The result is a candied confection of Gothic splendour mixed with the very latest in 1860s convenience and technology. The walls are painted with spectacular friezes from German legends, separated by buttresses painted in a crazy clash of red, blue, green and yellow. The Gothic carvings in the master bedroom are superb (apparently taking 14 master carvers 4 years to complete), and the chandeliers throughout are modelled on Byzantine crowns in gilt brass with coloured glass gems. The kitchens are massive, and filled with labour-saving devices such as rotisseries driven by smoke turbines.

The difficult but picturesque building site was originally chosen because it could be viewed dramatically from a suspended foot-bridge, the Marienbrűcke, that Ludwig’s father Maximillian had had built as a birthday present for his mountain-climbing consort, Marie. It was a hard climb up to the bridge, but worth it for the views.

Rain had begun to fall as we began our descent, this time running with our backpacks crashing around us at that wretched step-and-a-half, step-and-a-half cadence, but regardless of our efforts, we were soaked to the skin by the time we reached Fűssen. We were out of cash, but one of us had a credit card, so we treated ourselves to a decent Bavarian meal in the touristy Restaurant am Park.

Munich (Germany)

On the way to Munich, we met a girl from Chicago who recommended the Hofbrauhaus am Platzl for its “ethnic atmosphere”, so we dropped in to see if we could get a spot of dinner.

The enormous underground cavern was awash with music and song, packed with beer-mug thumping locals in lederhosen and Tyrolean hats. We fought our way through to an opening on a long trestle table, and tried to attract the eye of one of the impatient serving girls. Even though I spoke reasonable schoolboy German and was theoretically able to communicate effectively, everything had to be shouted over the deafening music and laughter, and the serving system proved incomprehensible. The waitresses, bulging enticingly in our teenage eyes from their traditional dirndls, seemed overwhelmed and somewhat grumpy. Some girls seemed to serve only food, and others only litres of beer, but it was never clear which we were going to get. We did, however, end up with three steins of amber nectar and a single meal of sausage and sauerkraut and sweet pastries, which we shared. Then a nearby party moved away, leaving unfinished beers, so we commandeered them, at which point the waitresses got the idea and kept bringing steins to us, whether we had specifically ordered them or not.

When we eventually staggered out into a riotous evening of street entertainers performing in the Gothic shadows of central Munich, we were perhaps a little tipsy, and somehow managed to lose Andrew on the way back to the station. Luckily we had arranged a meeting point at Platform 15, where we decanted ourselves aboard the night train to Vienna.