Zubiri

Spending the night in Zupiri after a much slower (and more painful!) day tomorrow. I´m hoping tomorrow my body will be more accostomed to the walking and that as i continue to organise my pack better and throw out useless things it will get easier. Tomorrow I plan to make it to atleast Pamplona!

Again internet time is limited! only two minutes left and also still no ability to upload photos, but I got some very nice ones before sunrise ()yes i was up when it was still dark to all the disbelievers!) of the chapel in roncosvalles.

In roncesvalles

Well I made it! Despite having to wait till 9am for the post office to made it, I crossed the border at great pace, walking all 27km in about 6 hours. I didn´t really mean to walk so fast. It was only when I saw the 3.6km to go sign that I realise i´d stopped catching up and was now just walking fast!

My pack is now a lot lighter with most of my possesions on route to santiago with me slowly chasing them.

I have lots of photos of fog which I would upload if i could, but well I can´t, so I´m not. Its quite amazing that this place has internet. On the outside it´s just an old stone barn. Inside its an oldstone barn with hundreds of bunks in it. However underground and it´s an amazing tiled modern internet and bathroom facility.

The counter is counting down on my 1€ for 16min internet so I should sign off before I lose it all.

Viertel Festival

I'd like to claim I planned it, but that would be a lie. But I managed to attend what I assume is one of the best festivals in Bremen - the Viertel festival taking place in the Viertel quarter. They block off an entire street and many of the streets that come off it, fill it up with stalls and trailers selling becks. Put up four stages and then project crazy stuff onto all the houses in the street. There was also a garden in the middle of the road and sounds coming from all the storm water drains.

One of the house projections was part of what I would assume was the world's largest pinball computer game. Hopefully the photo shows what's going on, but it was all lined up so that the features of the house were included as part of the game.

Other less interactive projections featured people climbing out of the windows on the ground floor, climbing up the building and then going in other windows, it was quite mesmorising and exceptionally well done.


One of the things that strikes me as odd, is how easy it is to buy alcohol and cigarettes - there are vending machines for cigarettes everywhere and beer seems to be able to be sold on the street, certainly every place I've seen that sells food even a dodgy hot dog stand will sell becks. And while almost everyone smokes, it doesn't seem like public drunkeness is more or less of an issue than anywhere else I've been.

I'd also like to whinge about the fact that blogger doesn't auto rotate uploaded photos!

Beyond Bremen

I always find it a relief to have my next major onwards journey booked. Its very stressful when there are too many options. And trying to work out how to get from Bremen to where I'll start the Camino was certainly no fun with the multitude of train/flight/coach combinations. But I just booked a flight from Hamburg to Toulouse, so that settles that for the most part. It probably would have been cheaper to not split up Germany into two separate parts of my trip, but i think when i was ready to leave the UK it was too early to start the camino, and its certainly been a nice relaxing time here staying with Edith (a former flatmate from Melbourne). The other option of course would have been to keep touring round Germany and then do the camino later, but I have to say I'm itching to start walking. This way as well, I have the option of taking the camino slow and enjoying it more or rushing through (though is there such a thing as rushing when you're walking?) and having more time for Germany, France and maybe even time to squeeze in another country.

With remaining time diminishing (not that I'm even at the half way point yet?) its time to start being more organised, and in this vein i have filled in my calendar a little more
So it looks like i'm on track to start the camino on Thursday, hopefully keeping me just ahead of the weekend buldge. I still have some things to drop off, and some things i need to buy before I can start, but i'm informed on a globetrotter megastore in hamburg, so I assume they can equip me with my final needs / mostly a pair of pants as the only pair i bought had had a hard journey being worn solidly.

Bremen

Well as much as I enjoyed the UK, its a relief to be out of it. Atleast there is sun here in Germany! It's a much bigger cultural difference aswell. I'm not used to traffic on the right hand side. It seems much stranger here than my brief trip to the US too. I have immediate recations to things such as thinking buses are driverless and or going backwards before remembering. I've also been kindly provided with a bicycle by Edith (My former flatmate who I'm staying with) and have thus far managed to stay alive, but its possibly more by luck than anything else. Though the biking trails are good here, it seems like cars actually look for bikes before turning and respect the right of way. So much so that I've had cars try to give way to me as i was stopped on the sidewalk looking around being lost.

The language barrier is also interesting. It's my first time in a non english speaking country. I had plans to learn the basis from the lonely planet european phrase book that i've been carrying round with me since i left. However several weeks ago when I went to find the german section, I discovered it had been replaced with a gap in the book binding - I did just find the book in my old sharehouse so I guess I can't complain too much. So this has left me with knowing next to no german. I realise almost everyone speaks english, but I don't feel right just launching into english, so it was a bit awkward the first day. Now however I bought the Lonely planet Germany book, which features a small phrase section which ought to be enough to get me by.

Out of order, but thats ok

After my reflective, wheres the last month gone post, I just realised I haven't blogged for quite a while not really since Manchester.

From Manchester we drove south to Cardiff, getting in quite late after getting stuck on the motorway in amongst traffic going to the V festival. It took us the better part of 2 hours to go 10miles at one stage. The bridge into wales was quite a site, and well worth the £5 toll (going the other way is free!?).

After arriving rather late, we pretty much headed off to bed after a few games of pool at the hostel. The next morning we decided we wanted to do a tour of the millennium stadium - however the fact it was match day said otherwise, so instead we went to the match and saw Wales just manage to beat Argentina in a very close game. Despite being from NZ this was actually my first rugby game (as long as you don't the rugby 7s at the commonwealth games). It was a massive roofed stadium much like the telstra dome, everywhere in sight was advertising for 'brains' the welsh beer. The crowd was friendly and a good time was had by all - except maybe the number 14 Argentinian who was sin binned for a dangerous midair tackle.

After that we drove onto bath, stayed the night there, There were two walking tours offered, one was free and left almost as soon as we got there covering the history of bath, the other was £5 and gave us time to eat first and covered nothing of importance. Obviously we went with the bizzare bath tour and saw nothing of important but had a good time doing so. Most of the tour centred around strange buildings that had their doorways bricked up with an ongoing gag that it was done by a fameous archietect. The tour was fun, and despite containing no actual history walked us past most of the scenic parts of bath.

It's hard to know what to think of bath, we ran out of time to see anything other than the tour and had to make do with a quick walk into the foyer of the baths. It wasn't worth paying £11 to go further since we really only had less than an hour to spare. The nightlive seemed to consist of stag and hen parties from london that couldn't be bothered finding an eastern european nation to invade. Maybe saturday night wasn't the best night to be in bath...

Next we saw the Stone Henge the next morning en route back to Cambridge to meet up with Sam and Zoe and sell the goat. I was worried that it would just be getting charged a small fortune to stare at rocks from afar. But we went on a free guided tour (Well entry was £5) presented by a very enthusiastic arceology student who made it all very worthwhile with her knowledge and enthusiasm.

Back where I started.

Give or take 20,000km. I'm back at Hammersmith at least - by chance the same room and bed as i spent my first night in the UK, sitting here now in the same Internet cafe as i posted my first in the UK post.

I feel like the last week has been all retracing steps as we came back down the UK via various places we'd already been and staying a couple of nights more in Cambridge.

I managed to get a little more sightseeing in today - I finally got to the Imperial War museum the last thing I really wanted to tick off London. It was nice to cover the first world war in more detail as nothing else had really

Of course despite being back in the same place, everything is different, for a start everything I see here is surreal, I know I've been here before, but its all been so fast it's kind of turned into a blur and its more a sense of deja vu than an actual remembering. The number of parks, boats, museums, art, tanks, planes and pubs I've seen in the last month and a half has been immense, the amount of sleep i've gotten less than immense. I have to concentrate to remember the actual location and happening, and all the touring i find it easy to skip a city when reciting them.

The other difference is explained below.

I haven't shaved since the wedding, I haven't decided how long to keep it up, but at this point shaving seems like a lot of effort.

In other news, Craig imforms me that he's managed to sell the goat - less than a day after we put it up and only £30 less than we paid for it. The goat certainly served us well, without offering any major dramas. The only main expense was the insurance for it - at £130 for a month (and this policy didn't actually cover me, hence why i didn't do much driving).

And talking about retracing steps, now i'll have to go half way back to cambridge and pay twice as much to do so to get to Stansted.

To Germany

Well after much delaying, I've booked a ryanair flight to germany on Wednesday, so that will put an end to the UK for this trip. I've seen a lot having driven round almost all of the UK, but of course there is more i would have liked to have seen. I'll be back sometime, hopefully with less travelling and more staying.

The journey south begins

Taynuilt - It was relaxing and fun and even unexpectedly had more lord nelson knowledge - according to local legend his cannon balls came from iron made in the taynuilt cast. I can't say there was a huge mention of this at the actual site, and there may well have been an element of the locals talking it up somewhat. We also did a short bush walk in Glen Nant, which is where much of the charcoal for the iron cast came from.

From Taynuilt we drove south (Inverness and Loch Ness would have been fun, but at 3 hours drive away and running out of nights they were unobtainable) and slept in Glasgow at a university dorm room being rented out over the summer. The college was massive and i think we counted about 15 turns in the hall way and several flights of stairs to get from the main door to our rooms - it's a good thing we had a quiet night in Glasgow or this maze could have been interesting. Our dinner venue was set as soon as we walked past a gastro pub called "the goat".

The next morning we were able to do a quick lap of the museum and find a pub for lunch. It was during this lunch that I got into an altercation with a wasp who had decided to steal my chair while i was at the bar ordering. The wasp certainly had the upper hand at first, and did a fine job stinging me on the ass as i sat down unknowingly in the dimly lit pub. However he was beat when my friends joined the good fight on my behalf while i limped back to the car to find the wasp spray Craig had bought when he'd had a similar misunderstanding with a wasp in Cambridge. I can't say the four hour drive from Glasgow to York was the most comfortable journey I've had, but it was mostly OK by the end of it.

The plan was to arrive at york mid afternoon and have a long leisurely pub tour evening. We had a pub tour guide sheet that went through 9 historic pubs and picked up landmarks along the way. Unfortunately we didn't get there till 7 so it became a game of pub hopping only allowing for a quick half pint while we asked the bar staff why their pub was in fact "the oldest and most haunted pub in York" (a claim made by no less than 4 of the pubs we visited). The route between pubs was meant to include a section of the history city wall, however we were quickly herded in the opposite direction by the keeper of the Wall as it was closing time. He agreed however, that if we kept in front of him walking in the opposite direction he would give us a personal guided tour of the wall. As the keeper of the Wall he certainly had a lot to tell us about who'd sieged and occupied the walls and city over the years, it may have been the wrong direction, but it was well worth doing.

Now we're in Manchester, heading south at a rapid pace. I expect that within a week I'll have said goodbye to Craig, Brendon, and the goat and set off for Germany, but of course I still haven't planned anything.

Taynuit

We're never one to pass up the option of some one's couch to sleep on - it got us through another night in Edinburgh allowing us to see both the castle and some more fringe festival stuff. The couch quest has now bought us to Taynuit. After a late arising and a stop off to visit Stirling castle, we arrived nearing night time so haven't had a look around yet, but the I did the driving up (my first UK driving - Craig counted 5 times where the windscreen wiper came on rather than the indicator, and that's only counting the left turns!). The views were spectacular with extremely hilly terrain and quiet lochs bordering the road.

My other Scotland post was rather brief so here's an expanded, it's 1am and I can't sleep version.

The Scotland experience started far too early in Dublin, I forget the exact time but probably around 5am - the cheapest Ryanair flights are at stupid'o'clock of course. As no buses started till 7am we had to catch a taxi. We'd ordered it the previous day for 6:20 am and it showed up early despite having gone to the wrong address after a slight misunderstanding. All was seemingly good till the driver clipped the curb at an interesting angle at an interesting speed. This lead to the first blown tyre of the trip, and certainly not the last, but that comes later. The earlyness paid off as we made it to our flight, which was late anyway. It's the first time I was happy to have a delayed flight - The flight to Dublin was on time and this was announced with an incredibly obnoxious trumpet noise, no such rudeness after we got into Liverpool 20mins late.

The goat was left grazing at long term parking and other than a little bird presents on the roof was none the worse for its 4 days of abandonment. We were all pretty happy to get out of Liverpool and the Lakes district was certainly nicer scenery. I was a little disappointed that they didn't hire out sailing boats at the boat hire on Lake Ullswater, but the wind wouldn't have allowed for more than a calm drift anyway - The photo of the boats shows how glassy it was. After this it was on to explore Roman ruins at Housestead. This took us of the M9 and brought us more to the East.

We were pondering making a run for Edinburgh, but settled for staying just out of it in Melrose. The England Scotland border was my first challenging piece of rock climbing on the trip. On the A68 the border is marked by a large boulder, and it simply had to be climbed. I still haven't acquired a pair of climbing shoes yet, but managed to get up bare foot.

Melrose turned out to be a fine decision as the friendly people there were able to book us a night in Edinburgh central after 4 phonecalls back and forwards. The hostel was also right next to a pub and the abbey ruins - what more could you ask for?

Despite only being a 45minute drive from Melrose to Edinburgh, it was an all day trip via Melrose Abbey, Dryburgh Abbey, a William Wallace Statue, Crichton Castle and finally Craigmillar castle. We certainly made good use of our 'Historic Scotland' Explorer Pass.

That night Craig and I went and saw James at the Corn exchange. The concert was fantastic, one of the best large concerts I've been to, we managed to get onto the barrier up the front by half way through and stayed there till the end. After the concert we queued in polite British style for the bus. Despite what looked like an unmanageable queue, everyone managed to pile onto the first double decker bus to amble its way up the street. All was good the the concert awed crowd enjoying the ride back. Eventually a strange sound started coming from the rear of the bus, it sounded just like a dodgy rear windscreen wiper and we thought nothing of it. Turns out double decker buses don't have rear windscreens and hence have little need for wipers on them. This was the second blown tyre. Somehow we managed to score a ride on a couple's taxi that was going the same way we wanted to (I guess it's not that coincidental since that's the route the bus was going...)

The next day was filled with Edinburgh castle, followed by street performers, then free comedy.

The first comedian was really good, and was nothing like the stereotypical "I'm a drunk Irishman with an accent" style of comedy that some comedians seem to get away with. The second however was an Australian woman, and to steal the English phrase, she was rubbish. Still that's surely the fringe experience, and we weren't forced to pay a cent for it!

The drive up was mostly uneventful, we paid our £1 to go over the rather scenic forth road bridge and went to Stirling castle. I defiantly prefer the semi ruined castles to the intact ones. The intact ones seem to be more tourist trappy and seem less authentic what with their illuminated exit signs and clearly modern alterations and repairs. Crichton has been the most enjoyable thus far, and the guy who managed it was able to tell us a lot about the history of the castle, including all the research he'd done on the Internet about the Italian origin of a diamond pattern on one of the walls. To be honest he seemed a little lonely, which was unsurprising since we were almost the only ones there for the two hours.

After Stirling I took over the wheel. I can report our goat drives just fine, other than being a little light on the acceleration and having a maze for a gear box. The only en route disaster was arriving at the petrol station at Doune with the sign 'The last station for 22 miles' to find that we couldn't fill our near empty tank with the unleaded tipple our goat demands as they had run out till Monday. This lead to going back up the road and off to the East a bit to Dunblane. It was also an interesting challenge finding our final destination without a town map, and the fact that addresses here are house names rather than numbers, oh yes, and there are no street signs either.

So I'm not yet sure what plan for tomorrow is, but there are options a plenty with the sea, lochs, mountains, towns and castles all around

A stroke of luck

So, despite my pessimism, without any prior arranging, we have managed to acquire:

• Tickets to a sold out gig
• 3 Hostel beds for a Friday night in the centre, in the same room even
  
• A car park in central Edinburgh, just outside the hostel, that cost us 50p for the entire weekend
• Hopefully more to come.

We spent last night in Melrose, just inside the Scotland border - giving me for the 2nd time so far 3 countries in a day (Scotland, Ireland and England). The Melrose Abbey was fantastic and there was just enough of it standing to be mighty impressive and just enough fallen down that you could believe it was at least 600 years old.

Deer Stalking in Dublin

Warning, Deer!

Deer Spotted!

Ok, after 2 hours walk, the best we could do were stuffed ones in the visitor centre.

From the papal cross, with its elvation and papal awsomeness, deer are located!

Close up view.

Yesterday we went deer stalking in Phoenix park. It was a little slow at first with deer slow to materialise, but upon the recommendation of using the papal viewing area as an elevated platform for optimum deer viewing potential we eventually spotted a small herd in the distance. The trophy shots will follow later once I'm reunited with the rest of my luggage including my card reader (RyanAir charge extra for checked in luggage so we're traveling light in Dublin).




After making good use of the fine weather (it only rained once!) and meandering about the park for the better part of 4 hours we made course for the Guinness brewery. It was a much better time than the Jameson tour - this one was self guided rather than led by a dutch guy (not that I have anything against the dutch, and am all for equal opportunities - but really a dutch guy leading a Guinness tour?). The ground floor covered the ingredients including an impressive waterfall (again photos to follow). The second the process including tastings of roasted barley, and another 5 floors detailed the history as you ascended up around and through a giant 7 story pint glass. The top floor was where the free unit of Guinness was dispensed and offered a near 360 degree view of the city (nothing else is taller than 7 stories except the odd smoke stack, the giant needle and another viewing tower).


Today we took the DART train system around the bay of Dublin seeing the south and the north. The north was a nice small little seaside village with a lighthouse and a marina. Along a different north bound route was a castle dating back to the 16th century, though heavily modified. The tour was fairly mediocre and consisted of being rushed through various rooms behind roped off parts while a taped audio spitted out dates of the furniture from a speaker. Most disappointingly there was no way to get to the parapets up the top - without parapets it may as well have been an old house!


Tomorrow its an early start (5am or similar) to catch the flight back to Liverpool to pick up our goat and drive it onwards to somewhere northwards. The plan is to hit Edinburgh by Friday night. However we have nowhere booked to stay, and it's the festival so our chances aren't good, it may be a cramped night or two in the goat.

Liverpool

From Nottingham we needed an early start as we could only get on-street parking in a ticketed zone for our beloved goat. We made tracks north to Sherwood forest where the Robbin Hood festival was on. Somehow I ended up as the volunteer in street theater for a 'fool', i was tempted to juggle his fire sticks, but decided it was poor form to show up the performer, even if he was playing a fool.


After watching Robbin Hood defeat the sheriff. We went to Liverpool via Manchester and the scenic snake pass through the peaks district.

Finding accommodation in Liverpool proved challenging - after finally getting the nottingham hostel computer at 1am I started the search and found everything initially booked out as expected. After checking a few more sites i found the "Beatles Brain Epstein Guest House" had room and was cheap.

It had a tenuous connection to the Beatles - the house was once owned by the grandparents of Brian Epstein manager of the Beatles, but that didn't stop them going to town on it, with photos all over the place of the Beatles and the name of the place itself. The reason it was so cheap and empty was that it was still being renovated - but other than a jet of water coming from the ceiling in the bathroom at one stage, this didn't really affect us and the people that ran it were very helpful (They were kiwi's of course).

The only other downside to the place was its location - right across the road from Anfield, soon to be old Anfield. All the houses surrounding it were burnt and vandalized after being abondoned to make way for the new stadium. Trying to find a pub that served anything more than larger and football also proved challenging.

During the next day we made it to the Beatles museum, the Tate Liverpool and had a good wonder round the city. Maybe we just saw the wrong side of the city, but it didn't seem that appealing.

Following that we had another early start to catch our Ryanair flight to Dublin. Nothing overly eventful happened, but that didn't stop ryanair playing an ear pitchingly loud trumpet sound on their arrival to gloat that they in fact had not delivered us to Dublin late.

Dublin seems pretty good so far other than their weird sports like hurling and constant drizzle. Tomorrow we're off to Belfast to catch some of the north. There is also the constant search for somewhere to stay in Edinburgh - it turns out the hostels fill up during the festival and doubly so on weekends.

The goat gets us to Nottingham

Nicknames tend to stick, and the first one for our car was the goat, and its slowly sticking. It's showing no signs of giving up, and instead is showing us a whole new set of features. When I was unlocking it yesterday, I discovered that we have a car alarm.



So now we're in nottingham (via the cadbury factory tour). Coincidentally we seem to have arrived at during the robbin hood festival. So that will be the order of the day, followed by going to liverpool, and then flying to Dublin on Sunday.

A car!

Well we bought the first car we came across, for a whole 320 pounds.
So far it has taken us a hundred odd miles up the road to Birmingham.
We were a little late checking out of out house as we couldn't pick up the car till 6pm - checkout time being 10am. However luckily no one showed up to actually notice.

On the drive up I tested the 'active' mode of my VR lens seeing if it really could cope with a moving vehicle. It seemed to do pretty well, the majority of the bluryness of the photos was actually the fact that things moved, rather than lens shake.

So we'll hang in Birmingham for a few days before heading further north.