Travel

Over the last week I have been giving some thought to my future. Things need to change and very soon. I haved ploughed a rut that needs to be filled and left.

So I have to do a few things this week and speak to a few people to see if my thoughts can be acted on. If they can then life will take a more exciting and, hopefully, rewarding turn for the better.

In other news…..

Our trip to Edinburgh has had to be postponed due to unforeseen circumstance. We received a card inviting us to a wedding (not the district in Berlin, worse luck) in Dunstable. DUNSTABLE??? Who would choose to get married in Dunstable??? (If the person reads this, then obviously someone with taste and intelligence!!)

It also means that we won’t get to see Wales v Australia, which is on the same day (Boo!!!!)

However the person will be moving to……

EDINBURGH

Kerensa,

Do you really think that we could refuse an invitation ultimatum to meet JTL and HD? I’m still convinced that we’ll discover that he is a cardboard cut-out, much like the Dr Who in our hall

I’ve always wanted to see Glasgow and to do both in one weekend would be great. I think that a little more than an hour in our company would be a punishment for them though, just ask people in Swansea!!!

Following the comments on my previous post I have a dilemma. Do I find time to go to the city of the deep fried Mars bar?

Plus : Deep Fried Mars Bar -do they actually exist?
May bump into guy from Hue & Cry
Possible Glasgow Derby
Meeting weird wibsiter and her imaginery HD
Rab C Nesbit & drinking cans of Special Brew outdoors
Seeing the Clyde
Billy Connelly

Cons: Incomprehensible Accent
Jimmy Sommerville
Sink Estates
Not Wales

Mmmmmm…..

One of the things I like about holidays is the planning. Sometimes I prefer this to actually going. One of the problems I have is that there is always to much to fit in. As I have found with our forthcoming holiday I keep finding things that I’d like to do/see.

I think that France could become like Germany, somewhere I will need to visit over and over again. For someone who enjoys history I find so much that I want see. From Klaus Barbie’s headquarters in Lyon to Vichy to Agincourt to the Somme etc etc. So much so that I’m already thinking of what to see next time.

We have already decided that next year will be a further to Berlin with Stroppy Boy and we anticipate travelling there by train – well you don’t need a car when you get there and it is more fun than by plane.

FW and I are currently planning our forthcoming invasion of France. We will be entering using the traditional route – via Flanders and the Somme region. We will then proceed west to Normandy, to visit Bayeux, the D Day beaches and Mont St Michel, before manouevring south to reclaim the other Welsh lands lost by the English after the Hundred Years War. After all King Arthur did fight the invading Saxons in Brittany and Richard the Lionheart – that well known Welshman (he was born in the Rhondda vallies really) – owned most of the lands down to Bordeaux, and beyond.

Our plan is to lay claim to our ancestral lands in the Limousin region. We aim to visit Bergerac to see where Jersey’s Greatest Detective  came from, in honour of Auntie Doris. We will then undertake a reconnaitre towards Clermont Ferrand and then on to visit a wiblogger in exile in Lyons. She is currently lulling the French into a sense of insecurity in preparation for the invasion.

We all know that any invasion of France will be successful because they are a bunch of garlic smelling, frog and snail eating ,surrender monkies – or so our national prejudice and the historical narrative of the Franco-Prussian, First and Second World Wars confirm to us.

Carla Bruni, Catherine Deneuve, Audrey Tautou and other luminaries of French beauty will of course be spared. President Dwarf will be the first to be imprisoned in the newly built Bastille and will then marry “Madame la Guillotine” shortly afterwards.

We will be leaving via the traditional port d’embarquement of Dunkirk, though hopefully not chased by Germany’s mighty Panzer regiments or under the aerial threat of the Luftwaffe.

D-Day is D minus 9 days and counting. We look forward to reporting on the success of our mission in due course.    

En avant a la victoire

may not necessarily come down in the same ondition.

Do you remember the British Airways 777  that landed 1000ft short of the main runway at Heathrow in January 2008? What about the Delta Airline flight that had similar fault occur 32000ft over Atlanta the following November?

You may have read last week’s press coverage of the 2 reports released – one by the Americans and one by the British. What you may have also heard was the difference in tone between the 2 reports. The US report said that another incident could happen at any time. The Brits just said that Rolls Royce had to solve the problems as soon as possible.

The 777 is a replacement for the 747 in terms of range but only requires 2 engines. Therefore it’s routing means that it has to be within 90 minutes of an airport for its entire flight. Many of these aircraft are routed over the Artic – the cold, white bit at the top, inhabited by Polar Bears, Killer Whales, Seals, idiots (sorry Inuits) and idiots on treks to the North Pole in their Y fronts or by party balloons. 

It may not have escaped your attention that the Artic is very, very cold – even with global warming – during the winter. So the fault in the Heat Exchange must be a worrying problem for someone. Not for our British Air Accident Board though. They don’t like to make a drama out of a crisis.

The airlines refuse to ground the aircraft until the fault is resolved – at current estimates in 12-18 months time. This would cost them to much money in lost revenue. However what this means is that should another 777 have an “incident” then they leave themselves open to massive compensation claims.

BA have announced that they will not tell passsengers whether or not the 777 they fly will have (un)safe Rolls Royce Trent engines or the uneffected GE90 engines. According to BA this is not possible for them to do – even though which aircraft are and aren’t absolutely safe.

Personally I would play safe and  book with another airline not operating 777′s on that route or can guarantee using only GE90 engines. Is it worth spending another hundred or so knowing that you will have a much better chance of arriving   landing safely.

If you don’t believe that Trents are a problem then let me just say that Rolls have issued at least 3 notices for part changes in the past few months – these are circulated to the airlines and made known in the trade press. As I much as I believe in supporting British industry, for something this serious I would sooner buy foreign.

History What Did ‘appen:

1190: People in York celebrate a special event – St. Pogrom’s Day – by massacring 150 Jews.

1660: The Long Parliament dissolves itself.

1802: The military academy at West Point, New York is founded.

1872: The first FA Cup Final is played between Wanderers and Royal Engineers at the Kennington Oval. Wanderers are the winners.

1926: Robert H. Goddard successfully launches the world’s first liquid fuelled rocket at Auburn, Massachusetts. This helped to give reality to man’s dreams of reaching the stars – though Charlie Chaplin did complain at this intrusion on his privvy.

1953: Marshal Tito, of Yugoslavia, becomes the first Communist head of state to visit Britain.

1968: US troops slaughter between 200 & 500 unarmed villages at My Lai in South Vietnam.

1976: Harold Wilson unexpectedly resigns as Prime Minister. It may have been to do with Alzheimers  - or because of his holidays on the Sciliy Isles every year.

1978: Aldo Moro, a former Italian Prime Minister, is kidnapped by the Red Brigade in Rome. He is later murdered.

1988: Sadaam Hussein’s forces mount a chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja, killing about 5000 people.

Thanks to Auntie Doris, Jack & Ian – I’ve now reached 1000 comments. We’ll hold a party soon – BYO wieners.

Ian,

To answer your query… Cornwall is the most beautifulk place in the UK after Wales and the highlands of Scotland. It is great tourist destination and has the best of the weather and temperature most of the year. In addition, if you go by train, you get to run along the seawall at Dawlish, one of the most iconic and beautiful parts of the British Rail network.

  This is what you get, the red cliffs and the seawall. It always brings back memories of summer holidays in the mid to late 70′s. It was also the best part of collecting Kat the Cougar from Torquay.

In addition you have many small, attractive seaside towns and villages, the moor around Bodmin and it is the best place in the UK for surf. I don’t surf but I love swimming in the Atlantic rollers around St Ives.

This is St Ives, one of Cornwall’s most beautiful towns. You have the harbour and three superb beaches.

You also have places like Padstow, The Lizard (famous for its Serpentine rocks), Land’s End, Fowey etc etc.

When you come back you really need to go there.

I know because we have decided on holidays. I usually do this in January and then find that it’s December and I’ve not gone anywhere. This year we have decided that we are absolutely, positively, definitely going away this year. After all we think we deserve it.

So we are looking forward to a week or so in France in May and, hopefully, a week in North Cornwall in September.

All we need to do now is make sure that it actually happens.

1. Visited places I’ve never before
2. Slept with a friend’s boyfriend
3. Slept with her mother
4. Driven 1000Km from mid-France to the UK
5. Managed to survive in France without being able to string a sentence together – many thanks to Mini’s mum and boyfriend for the help with this
6. Found my way from Lyon to Montbrison without help and by talking to French people who didn’t speak much/any English
7. The Auvergne volcanoes – from not far away
8. Driven passed a few little known places – Vimy, Vichy, Arras, Compeigne
9. Driven around the Paris Periferique – if you haven’t then you won’t understand the sheer pleasure/nightmare it is
10. Avoided any real traffic delays – until we reached the M25 & M4 today
11. Met many nice French people – a contradiction in terms I know

To show how small the world is….

I have a friend who drives for a living; he makes his living driving his van around Europe. Yesterday I rang him to discuss my route from Montbrison to Calais. He had driven to Southern France on Tuesday and had been looking for a return load on Wednesday afternoon.

He knew I was in Lyon and I knew that he had been down to Clermont Ferrand to deliver. He asked where I was coming from, so I said Saint Etienne way. He’d been there on Wednesday for his return load. So I said, “Well I’m in a little town a few miles away.” We talked a few minutes more and then I said I was on Montbrison – “That’s where I collected my load on Wednesday.”

Now Montbrison isn’t a large place and most people would never know it existed.

As you can see I speak perfect French. Therefore I’ll be able to blend in as a native and will not stand out as a Rosbeuf in anyway. I have been practising everyday this week to ensure that my rusty French is improved.

I now have a grand total of 15 words in my vocabulary. I’m not sure I’ll remember them all and use them in the right setting. I’m ok for the pub/bar though.