effulgence

It may be getting colder, but really ... who can complain on days like these.

It's turning out to be a great weekend. And as if seeing Ani tomorrow night wasn't enough, I just realised that the fronting band is Hamell on Trial! eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :)

He's not gonna like this but .....

Honk if you think Mike suits his hair long! [artists rendition :)]

OK, Okay!

It seems our single reader is demanding more blog. Your request has been noted. In my defence - what happened to the rest of September? And the first half of October for that matter?

For your visual pleasings here are some piccys of the delightful Leeds Castle, in Kent. We decided to visit after a recommendation from Mike's Dad. I guess I always thought Leeds castle was a lot futher away - like the city ... but no!

The first picture is a nice overview of the place. No, the castle is not dwarfed by a 400 foot mountain, nor did we spend a squillion ££s for a ride in a flying thing - well not unless you consider a giant helium filled balloon a flying thing - but it doesn't so much fly as sort of float - and it was only half a squillion ££s to go up in it, what a bargain. It was worth it though, great views as you can see. A little short lived though.

Any sort of building with water lapping at it's foundations is quite cool in my book (that would explain why I like Venice so much I 'spose). I'd love to know how they damp proof these sort of things though. The castle is still very much used today - it's was lived in right up until the 1950s ish I think. And today is still used as a conference and event venue - aside from being the tourist mecca of the south-east.

Not all castles can be all dark and foreboding inside, and this is one of those that aint. In fact sometimes it didn't feel like you were in a castle at all. Can't really say I'm a big fan of the French chalet look which the wealthy American had her decorator do the place out in during the late 1920s (depression - what depression?). Still I could imagine snuggling up in the library to read a book in front of the fire on a stormy evening.

I think this castle has a split personality - there are a bunch of rooms that have been kept fairly original - the Henry VIII banqueting hall has an awesome ebony floor and windows that hang straight out over the water. And then there are Lady Baillie's rooms which, aside from the views out the windows, feel like they're part of a completely different building. Maybe this is a good thing - you can go from ye oldey worldey castle to cosy posh in no time at all.

Leeds was fun - but in my opinion it is not the most beautiful castle in England. Last week we went to Knole ... that'll be the next post (sometime!).

No Escape

No escape indeed. There are a lot of churches here. The ubiquitous church spire is a commonplace sight throughout the country. And while we don't pay much heed to religious admonition we appreciate a lot of what has been constructed by those that do.

Impossibly tall rib vaulted structures that have a sort of formidable grace. Even trying to think of a way to describe some of the religious buildings we've visited is very difficult. My mind seems to just go blank when I step into one of those cool, slightly dark, yawning places. It might just be one of those things you really have to see for yourself - i've never seen a picture that really illustrates the feeling of being in a room so tall and so long. With the dim reverberations of sound (when the choir isn't singing), and that distinctive smell of centuries old stone and churchey gubbins.

Of course one must never forget that it's not only the grand , decorative churches that are beautiful . The tiny village churches are also worth a mention. Sadly I don't have a decent photograph of one of the many we have visited. But while they are very often plain, and simple - they are also charming. I'm particularly fond of the overgrown graveyards that tend to surround them .

Possibly my favourite kind of church is the tumbledown, open to the sky, ruin of a church. Especially some of the bigger ruins - like Tintern Abbey - where grass grows in the nave and birds nest in the walls. One of the beautiful things about Tintern is the light. Most of the original structure is still standing, just minus a roof and windows. This gives you all the soaring majesty of a church combined with the beauty of the open sky and light - massive amounts of light, creating fantastic shadows through the archways and what remains of the giant windows. Splendid!

I feel the need for a little sunshine, hence the final picture. Not hard to tell that it was not taken in the UK, but rather on the island of Syros in Greece - on a nice hot day - aaahh hot days, how I miss you.

So much for summer. While it hasn't rained in a while it's getting colder already. There's steam people in the mornings! It almost rained this afternoon, but not quite. Perhaps if it had it would have put off the animal rights protesters that decided to wave their placards around outside work. This is a fairly regular occurance (I used to hear it from Cmed). They always come on a Friday, around 5pm, stand outside for about an hour and shout obscenities at the employees as they leave. Nevermind the fact that no animal testing goes on at the site. I'm not sure about the rest of the company - but we have nothing whatsoever to do with the testing of pharmaceuticals. What surprises me about these people is just how vicious they are - really, really nasty. I hope that since they feel so strongly about animal testing that they don't actually use any form of medication themselves - on principal. It is, after all, a government requirement in most countries (including this one) that all medications must be tested on at least two different species of animal before they can be tested on people. So no aspirin for the animal rights protestors! And lets hope they never get an infection, or require an anasthetic.

I waved and smiled at them as I drove by.

Murphys Law

Wouldn't you know it. It's a long weekend, three delicious days off work. The sun is shining for the first time in around three weeks. And our car breaks down. :(
Worse still we are pretty sure the head gasket has blown (a common problem in Rover K series engines we have since found out). So neither a cheap or easy problem to fix. On the slightly brighter of sides it was not accompanied by the seizing up of the engine; nor have we noticed any overheating or rapid loss of coolant - so hopefully ... hooooopefully ... this doesn't mean that our car is entirely kaput (read too expensive to fix). But we're still envisaging a bill of around £350 to pull the engine apart and replace the head gasket. Which, although painful, is not the end of the world.
Could have come at a better time though since we have just forked out a load of £££s on a new camera (which should be arriving any day now!). It's an Olympus E510. Can't say I really know much about it, apart from the fact that it'll take pretty pictures (well that's what Mike says). As anyone who knows Mike can probably imagine, he is like a small child on Christmas Eve when it comes to awaiting the arrival of some new piece of technology. :)
In case anyone is wondering why there have been no posts for the last two weeks. Well aside from the fact that I keep forgetting about it. I also have a new job (well that's my excuse and i'm sticking to it) which has been keeping me a bit preoccupied. I now work for a company called Fisher Clinical Services, which funnily enough is literally right next door to Cmed (my old place of work and Mike's current place of work). This is handy because it means we can still go to work together. What's not so handy is that both companies are out in the wops so getting there without a car is decidedly difficult. One of Mike's workmates has kindly offered to give us a lift until our car is fixed, but as he normally starts work at 9-9:30 and I start work at 8:30 he is having to get up an hour earlier in order to get me to work on time (Man do I feel BAAAD - although I bribed him with home cooking which he seems happy to accept). Anyway Fishers package and distribute clinical trial medications to sites around the world and my new role is a project coordinator in the distribution department and basically involves running around, chasing things up, making sure things are getting done on time etc etc. Basically doing everything the project managers need done but don't have time to do themselves. There's a picture of the Horsham facility here, it sort of looks like some scary secret service headquarters (and you do have to go through a security gatehouse to get into the site). I've only been there a week, it's pretty good so far, my brain doesn't know whats hit it because it's actually getting used for a change!

Mind your head

Last night was a pleasant reminder of some of the quirky little niceties that make this a fairly good place to live. Really couldn't be bothered cooking dinner so Mike suggested we go to a pub he'd been to with workmates a few weeks back. The Plough Inn in Rusper, a little village a few miles north of our place. I've seen signs to Rusper before, but never actually seen the village. A pleasantly villagey village with lots of wibbly timber framed houses surrounding the two most important structures in any self-respecting hamlet - the church and the pub. It must have been the bell ringers practise night because just as we pulled up the church bells started and kept up for a good hour or so. There's a lot worse noises than church bells on a summer evening though. The Plough doesn't look much on the outside. But quite possibly wins the award for lowest ceilings ever (I really wish i'd taken the camera - oh well, good excuse for another visit). The doorways must have been struggling to reach 5 foot, and the ceilings were only a few inches higher with regular low beams throughout so that it was a minor challenge to get to the bar as it is rather difficult to see where you are going when your head is constantly ducked to avoid braining yourself. Thankfully the proprieters have thoughtfully padded all the beams and doorways so when you do find yourself smacking into them (which will happen - especially after a pint or two) it's a lot like coming face to face with a ceiling mounted pillow. Still if you were any taller than 6 foot it would make for a rather uncomfortable evening, as it seemed a fairly popular place and most of the seats were taken and there's no way you could stand up. The fireplace was about as big as the building was wide so i'm thinking that going back in the winter time is a good plan. We sat outside in their garden with a couple of pints and some hearty pub food and listened to the church bells until it got dark. Oh and the other thing I love about these country pubs is that you can bring your dog - well if I had a dog it would be even better - but there's always someone elses curious puppy or five to keep you amused. Great village and very charming pub, certainly right up there with our usual favourite - the Sussex Oak. It would have been great if we could have had all our friends there too ... hint hint!

Kudos to the person who made the very handy website for pubs in our area. I think we might have to make an effort to work our way through the list.

I have been asked what our unusual blog title means. No, it's not just a random word I made up! It's a German word, and roughly translated means 'far sickness' - I suppose the comparable word in English (well borrowed word in English) is wanderlust. But I liked fernweh better.

Summertide

A fitting title for this post methinks. I know i'm slacking already, 5 days since I said I was going to make this post. I don't feel too bad though, since there are only two possible people who may be wondering when said post might appear.

As you may recall, we have had a rather large amount of liquid sunshine this summer. Particularly a couple of weekends ago, at the end of July. It just so happened that, in a flash of unusual spontaneity, we decided to go for a notherly ramble, and to spend Saturday night at the YHA in Coalport, a little village on the banks of the River Severn in Shropshire. I also wanted to visit Ludlow to see Ludlow Castle (not a particularly impressive or important castle - in the grand scheme of things - but it featured in a book I read recently - and being able to visit interesting places you read about in books is rather wifty). Coalport is only a mile downstream from Ironbridge Gorge which sounded like an interesting place to visit.

The sky was a little foreboding, but it wasn't raining when we set out and our drive from Horsham to Oxford was pretty routine. Our planned route was to skirt around Oxford and take the A44 through the northern part of the Cotswolds to Worcester. By the time we got to the A44 it was becoming more apparent that this part of the country had had an awful lot of water poured onto it in the previous 24 hours, we hadn't seen the news that morning so had no idea how bad it actually was. We decided that we'd stop in Evesham for something to eat, it looked like a decent sized town, bound to have somewhere selling food! However Evesham, or at least Evesham town centre, was pretty much under water. Getting out of Evesham proved to be a little difficult as the A44 north of the town runs along the River Avon for a few miles, and the river had flooded the road. This meant we had to take a little tiki-tour off into the wilds of Worcestershire, trying to head north while avoiding roads that ran near any sort of waterway. It seemed that every sort of place water flowed, or could pool, was flooded. We came across a lot of closed roads and drove across some bridges that probably should have been closed because the water was so high it was nearly washing over the roadways. We were beginning to wonder if we would actually be able to get to Ludlow or Coalport because at some point we were going to have to cross the River Severn, and judging from the state of the Avon the Severn was bound to be just as bad. It then occurred to us that it might be a good idea to phone the hostel we were heading to as it was right on the banks of the Severn, and could very well be closed because of the flooding. No problem there apparently, the River was high but the person on the other end of the phone didn't sound like they were getting ready to start filling the sandbags or anything. So we decided to try and get through, and hope that we could find a few usable roads. There are an awful lot of large rivers in this part of England which is, I guess, why the flooding was particularly bad in this area. We made it over the Severn but then got came up against more closed roads on the way to Ludlow as parts of the A443 and A456 run alongside the River Teme which, of course, was also in flood. Well at least most of Ludlow wasn't underwater. We finally got there just before 4, it had taken us 6 hours - about 3 hours more than it should have taken. Luckily the castle was open until 5 so it wasn't a total waste of a side trip.

I'm not going to say much about the castle since I already posted a link to it. But it's suitably ruinous and moody, with lots of green mossy walls. It has an unusual round chapel inside the inner bailey. Despite the state that it's in, it still has a lot of decorative features (ornately carved fireplaces clinging desparately onto walls three floors up), dank corridors and gloomy little rooms all over the place - just like a good ruin should have. The castle is on a hill right next to the River Teme, you can see some flooding in the background of the picture above. This is an image of the inner bailey, the small building on the right is the round chapel and behind it, on the right side of the keep, is where the state rooms were. In the next picture (taken from one of the castle towers) you can make out the usual path of the River Teme which gives you a really good idea of just how much the river was overflowing by.

Thankfully the rest of our trip was mostly devoid of closed roads and no-go areas. In Coalport the Severn was very high but, aside from some footpaths alongside the river, hadn't burst it's banks to the point of affecting any buildings. We had dinner at the King & Thai (lol) in Ironbridge (eating Thai food in a Tudor/Elizabethan aged building amuses me) and Mike forgot all about the trials and tribulations of the day when he scored the last, and very generously sized, piece of Baileys cheesecake. Ironbridge is a very nice little town, tucked into the gorge - the bridge itself is, well, bridgey. I suppose I should be more impressed given it's age, but it did make a good vantage point to watch the sunset (yes there was sunshine!), and watch a few large trees speeding along in the currents below.

There are a few more photos that I wanted to post, but it seems a bit lame to clutter up the blog with them. Mike says I should start a Flickr account and post them there which doesn't half seem like a bad idea.