One day like this: Merry English times.

So we landed back in London at the start of the month for our final month of travelling – yes, that is a scary prospect after spending 9 months on the road already. June and July had been pretty good to us; living with Italian families had certainly been a far stretch away from dorm life in hostels (at times it couldn’t have been farther from). It was back to the land of pubs, though, so goodbye to that amazing, amazing Italian food (seriously, Redondesco, you even managed to outdo yourself – several times).

So it was back to London for the day, arriving after midnight and staying in a shoebox room with seriously noisy roommates, which would serve as a reminder of what we’d been doing previous to Italian splendour. Nothing much eventuated from London this time around and a day later we were off to Oxford to stay with Kate and Waz. We’d spent about a day in Oxford last time we were there, but didn’t really see much at all. This time around we explored a great deal more and discovered what a beautiful little city it is. We’d thought we might go for a daytrip or two outta there, but upon discovering that hiring a car for one day is actually cheaper than two people catching the bus somewhere, we put the tripping on hold til the Monday.


T and Banksy in Camden


Trex with Trex at the Natural History Museum in Oxford

As nice as Oxford is, there’s no chance I’d ever want to go and study there... There’s the horror of getting in to begin with that I’d never want to deal with – All Soul’s College have it the worst, I think: They have a seriously outdated (it may have been taken away or it may be taken away soon) entrance examination, where pupils are given one random word (everyone has the same word) and they have to write about it coherently for 3 hours... And it’s not just the tests either; there’s the lack of drinking club entrance. You have to be amongst the extremely wealthy and elite to join any of the drinking clubs. Because that makes perfect sense.

Out of Oxford we grabbed a car and set off on the very long way round into Wales. About 15 minutes out of Oxy, we crossed a poor excuse for a bridge that had a 5p toll! 5p! Hilarious! Turning the motorways off on Judy (Judy is our GPS for those who don’t know, named after Judy Garland because she tells us to follow the road) was not a good idea, though, because the bridge (a real bridge) to Wales, obviously, a motorway. Four or five hours later we managed to make our way around to Cardiff.

Cardiff was nice in a really strange sort of a way. The map we were given had landmarks in 3D and the department store pretty much took up half of the city centre. Hard to believe until you actually see the centre of Cardiff, where sure enough the place is dominated by three enormous shopping centres!

We were at the pub in the late afternoon and everyone in the whole drag got sent inside in case of an oncoming riot. Luckily, the Welsh aren’t as stupid as that. There were quite a few shady characters about, though, and the city didn’t exactly seem inviting after about 8 pm...


Cardiff... Need I say more

Our second day in Wales was spent driving around the south trying to find nice places. The day was hit and miss. First was the obvious choice: Caerphilly Castle. This place was pretty cool, but I was happy enough for it to be my final castle to pay my in to (over-castled). We did our best to not make too many puns. We also considered taking the giant, operational ballista on the grounds and mounting it on our car in case we experienced any riots – like if long boats of Bristol bogans made their way across the channel.


Be Caerphil not to make any puns about the place

Next we went to Cowsbridge, which was a bit of a non-event, but a pretty nice market town nonetheless. Nash Point followed as we drove down to the coast, and this was a little cooler for two reasons – the wind and the cliffs (and a third – watching the stupid people who’d set up tents in the wind on the cliffs). Serious wind = awesome. We then drove a little more and ended the day at Barry Island – a depressing hole of a place if ever there was one. To be fair, it was pleasant enough to look at the coast; just the sorts hanging about and the fact its central point was a permanent carnival didn’t really help its appeal.


Walking up to Nash Point


Nash Point


The Wind

From Wales we drove over the bridge back into England (there’s no toll going eastward!) on our way to the expensive-parking capital of the world: Bath. Parking aside, Bath is a wonderful city that is very unlike the rest of England. It has a real European feel to it, which was nice following the “blergh” side of Cardiff we’d just been staying near. Out of Bath the next day we went for a hefty day of driving through the Cotswolds – to Tetbury, Cirencester, Bibury, Bourton on the Water and finishing in Stratford Upon Avon. Stratford is Shakespeare crazy, and we were really lucky because we arrived after 6, which meant (a) free parking and (b) no busloads of tourists! Turns out, amongst Shakespeare’s list of achievements, he actually wrote the entire Goosebumps series as well as – in my opinion his finest moment – the screenplay to Dumb and Dumber. Who’d have known...


Bath!


Think harder, dude. Think harder!

Following Stratford, we ventured to a tiny village called Haselor to find a house that T’s aunt and uncle used to live in. I think when the guy in the window saw us taking photos of his house he was more than a little confused, especially considering the tiny road down there was only to get to the three houses.


Phone box in Haselor


Colin in front of the house we found in Haselor... But was it the right one...?


When the sun goes down in Haselor

Out from Bath, we drove a bit to check out Stonehenge – cause why not, right? Unlike the masses, we decided 8 pounds was a bit much for a bunch of rocks, so we just walked along the fence and guess what; it makes pretty much no difference. Still can see it perfectly, still can get nice photos.


Stonehenge... From OUTSIDE the fence

From there it was a hefty drive west into Cornwall to end up in Bude – a place we’d picked for its central location that actually turned out to be really lovely (and would provide a smorgasbord of puns for T). The place was full of crazy people. Crazy because in the freezing sea they were all surfing! There was a concrete swimming pool that had been built against the coastline there, and the rough-as-guts sea was belting the hell out of it. That wasn’t stopping four guys, who seemed to be jumping into the sea from the platform, then bodysurfing back onto the concrete slabs... Stitches waiting to happen right there.

Out of Bude we drove around Cornwall, which is certainly a nice part of the world. We visited: Welcombe, which had some really incredible branches of rock stretching out into the sea from the coast; Hartland Quay, with magnificent cliffs to wander the edges of; Tintagel – the home to Arthur’s castle, which is supposedly the best ruined castle in England, as well as Merlin’s cave which we could wander through because the tide was out; Padstow, which was supposed to be nice but actually turned out quite annoying because of the hordes of people and dogs (seriously, this place put a truth to the saying “every man and his dog”) – serious overcrowding is not cool; and finally Boscastle – an amazing tiny town in a valley, surrounded by slate cliffs you can walk to the tips of! Boscastle was probably our highlight of the English drive.


They point to the sea - rocks at Welcombe


The old outhouse (maybe) at Hartland Quay


Hartland Quay


One cool thing about Padstow: Wellie Dog!


Messin' about in Boscastle


Sittin' on the edge in Boscastle

From Bude we went to Plymouth down south – across the bridge into what is technically Devon. Plymouth isn’t exactly the first place I’d recommend given where we’d just been – the sorts that hang about there seem to be some of England’s less desirables (so to actually go somewhere the English have a reputation for being bad would be pretty awful). We lucked out on our visit, though, because the British Firework Championships were to be held the very night we were staying! So we got ourselves some fish and chips and mushie peas (from this awesome chippie where the guy took about 12-14 orders walking down the line and remembered them all) and sat by the sea to watch about an hour of championship worthy fireworks. We didn’t even realise until it had finished how many people were actually there – thousands!!! The line for the Park & Ride was plain ridiculous!


British Firework Championship in Plymouth


Wheel by night in Plymouth

From Plymouth we drove north again into Dartmoor National Park, spending the morning in lovely Tavistock and filling up on pasties before heading across to Mortonhamstead to find our very strange hostel. Mortonhamstead is tiny and didn’t really offer much more than a great tearoom (may have gotten a little addicted to the cream teas... whoops), but Dartmoor certainly offered plenty for the eyes. Buckfastleigh was a cool town with its old steam rail and abbey; and Two Bridges certainly had a classy oldschool hotel (that was the entire “town”); but the reason you come to Dartmoor is to explore the plains, hills, rocks and forests.


They stole it! A eucalypt in Tavistock!


Those are some smokin' wellies, Trex!


A lavender garden in Buckfastleigh... Clearly too many types to give every one a serious name


The old rail in Buckfastleigh


Found a letterbox... Now what to write in it... (Dartmoor)



Hangin' about on the rocks


Colin in the park


Evening light in the park

Driving in the park is a bit of a nightmare. There are two main roads that cross over the park and meet at Two Bridges in the middle. These roads are great because they are open so all the animals just roam about on the roads and come up to cars to say hello. But if you want to get anywhere else, you have to go on these horribly narrow roads that are mostly walled or lined with trees so pretty much every corner is blind. The locals don’t give a crap, and even if there’s nowhere to pull to the side, they just drive at you. Can’t say we’ll miss driving on ‘em.

We spent a bit of time hiking about the place – wandering up hills to explore what they call Tors: collections of big rocks that are weathered to look like stacks from a distance. These were pretty darn impressive, and climbing about them offered some pretty spectacular views of the park. Hidden amongst some of the Tors were “letterboxes”. This is part of a popular scavenger hunt in the area, which started in the 18th century or something ridiculous like that. You basically get clues to find the things, hike out and stamp the book. If you collect 100 letterboxes, you can join some exclusive club. Well, we’re two down by fluke. To be honest they’re not very well hidden...

Finally – Hairy coos. Or, more accurately, a hairy coo blockade. Final drive in Dartmoor couldn’t have been better.



So post National Park it was back to London for Tess’ surprise belated birthday. And we went to the zoo! Was pretty stoked about that. Now we’re just enjoying London for a few more days before... READING FESTIVAL! Yeeeah!

The Zoo:





Catch everyone sooooon!

Like one of those horror movies where the kids have glowing eyes

What on earth is wrong with children!? This is probably the best thing to discuss for my first camp entry on the tube. I raise the question in relation to one point (because, let’s face it, there are many): violence.

So I introduced a game to my group of 10 – 12 year olds. The game involves one group silently acting out a scenario and being told to freeze, then the “audience” children are asked, “What is going to happen next?”

My first scene involved three boys and a bank robbery. The teller is giving money to a customer when in runs a thief with a gun. The boys are told to freeze when the gun is being pointed at the teller’s head. “What’s going to happen?” I asked. Half of my children responded, “He’s going to take the money and run.” Fair enough. The other half answer, “He’s going to kill him.” I asked if that was really a reasonable response and would he take the money anyway... Nope, they thought he’d just plain kill him. I turn to the gunman; “So, what will you do?”

“I’m going to take the money.” A sensible answer. A pause...

“And then I’m going to kill him.”

So off ran the boy, leaving a dead teller and a shocked customer – who of course called the police.

“And what is going to happen to the thief now? Will he go to jail?”

“No, he’s going to buy a Ferrari.”

...!

Now, this scene had a gun involved so the chances of it leading to first degree murder when a ten year old is involved are pretty high (right?) It’s the next four that had me wondering if I was perhaps doing something wrong...

1. A girlfriend overhears her boyfriend speaking to another girl on the phone. She slaps him and then, just as the audience predicts, she kills him. Not exactly sure how but he’s dead by the end of the scene.

2. A talent contest is being held and the first girl is utter rubbish. She’s told to leave and heads off crying. The second girl comes in and is very successful – the judge loves her. All of a sudden, the first girl is back in the scene with a chair, beating the second girl and the judge to death. What!?

3. A football match is taking place and one player kicks a goal. An angry fan runs onto the field and starts a fight with the player. (Italian football – I can see this actually happening, sure.) “Will the goalie help, or join in?” I asked this question, to which answers were divided. I asked the goalie and he said he would help, of course. The scene resumed and =BAM=, all of a sudden there was a dramatised knife fight going down – two out of three killed.

4. At the swimming pool, a diver misjudges a dive and needs rescuing before he drowns. He doesn’t drown because the lifeguard saves him (finally no death, right? Wrong!) The diver’s competition emerges to kill both the lifeguard and the diver. Trying to emphasise that killing isn’t actually as cool as it looks, I ask the question: “So what will happen to [the other diver] now?” The audience responds: “He will now be the winner. The better diver is dead.” (If only I knew how to spell the sound effect of when the palm of my hand hits my head.)

...

I must say I am a little frightened of these kids.

Heineken Jammin Festival, Venice, Italy

Time to experience a festival... Italian style. Heineken Jammin Festival is Italy’s biggest rock festival; held in Venice every year. Last year’s line up was internationally huge, with the likes of Cranberries, Aerosmith, Green Day, Pearl Jam and Massive Attack all on one bill! This year, the Italian heavyweights (Vasco and Negramaro) had their turn, except for the first of three days, on which English boys Coldplay took the reins. Here’s my rundown of the musical action (and not a rundown of how unorganised Italians are when it comes to letting people into a festival).

Echo and the Bunnymen were the first of five main stage bands and went straight into things without a hint of faffing about; but that’s the way they’ve always done things. An arvo timeslot did mean a lack of visuals of stage, which, when mixed with the band’s lack of motion, made for a not so eye-catching set. Still, they sounded excellent all the way through, from ‘Lips Like Sugar’ to the self proclaimed “best song every written”: ‘The Killing Moon’. No one ever said the man was modest. The set also ended with first a threat, then a sample of rain – obviously brought all the way from Liverpool (which Echo and the Bunnymen claim is the prettiest city in the world. Venice comes in second). Luckily, the rainy gloom passed us by.



We Are Scientists looked the happier part in front of their bright red banner, opening with ‘Nice Guys’ and immediately proving they were an active trio and indeed nice guys themselves with plenty of friendly small talk. “We’re from Venice... As of yesterday; so this is a nice homecoming for us.” The not-so-hometown show included standouts in old tracks ‘Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt’ and ‘It’s a Hit’, in the set closer, ‘After Hours’, and as always in one dirty mo. They’re happy, they’re funny and they sing catchy songs – what’s not to like?



If there was pretentiousness in jest with the first English band of the day, there was such for real with the appearance of Beady Eye third on the bill. “Oasis 2.0” (as they were labelled in the programme) may have seen higher places, but were more than willing to show their usual swagger – and they sounded pretty darn good. Even without the hint of an Oasis classic, Liam Gallagher’s voice is enough to get people excited, and on tracks like ‘The Roller’ that is indeed what happened – clearly this one is getting some air time here. Yet whilst the material (all off their debut) sounded good, the Gallagher grime is just ridiculous. For half the set he picked a fight with someone down the front, with threats he never carried out, and for the entire set he continued to roll a towel around his fist as though getting ready for such a punch up. It’s an image he’s trying to keep, but it’s pretty worn. And of course, bagging out the key sponsor was a choice moment: “Have ya had lots of Heineken? That’s a shit beer man.”



Smarmy could describe Gallagher, but it’s the perfect antonym for Simone Cecchetti, and his band – the only Italian act of the day – Cesare Cremonini. These guys, obviously with a home advantage, had the crowd in the palm of their hands very early and seemed to love every second of it. Cecchetti literally dripped energy all over the stage as he got the crowd singing to tracks that were either ballsy or cheesy, or both. Spending time either running, striking a pose, or hunched over his piano, this was certainly setting a high enough bar for Chris Martin...



...And with an hour of set up, that bar was suitably hopped.

Say what you will about Coldplay (all you “I like their old stuff better than their new stuff” people) – this is a band that knows how to put together a live show – with new and old both surpassing expectations. Visually, this set was bound to be spectacular from the very beginning; the theme for the band’s current tour is certainly “neon”, so this kept everything remarkably bright, with numerous screens, fireworks, confetti jets, giant balloons and (my personal favourite) a wicked laser show!



As far as the set list went, it was almost a three way split between A Rush of Blood to the Head, Viva La Vida and new songs. ‘Yellow’ made its contractual appearance very early, and ‘Fix You’ was played in the encore, but those two were the only deviations from that division. ‘Viva La Vida’ itself was the set’s standout, if for nothing else than the sheer volume of the crowd chanting the “whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa” parts. A reworked and enormous sounding ‘God Put a Smile Upon Your Face’ was also terrific. The new songs were well received by the masses, though Martin’s introduction to ‘Up Against the World’ – “if you don’t like it, f* it” – seemed to show the band were just out for some fun testing them. That one was the ballad in an otherwise very stadium/festival worthy bunch of new tracks.

An encore that included ‘Clocks’ got another huge reaction from the crowd, and interestingly this was equalled when the band finished with their new single, ‘Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall’. You can tell for yourself how that one went down:

It's me, Colin, in France

So I’ve been in France with these two bozos, right. I could pretty much sum up the last couple of weeks with this photo:



... But that would take the fun out of my goaty gloat (oh yes, I just said that). My name is Colin, and these are my French exploits (in photo format because I am so tech savvy).

We began in Beziers, a smallish town that we visited so I could say hi to my buddy, Watto (no, that’s not Tess, it’s Watto as is Mr Water Rat):



We then learnt all about the canal system together, and spent quite a deal of time sitting to watch water flow from between gates. Here’s Trex looking pretty chipper about it all:



However, the discovering the canals in all their glory was our own work. When we arrived at our hotel, the dude running the place could offer us very little advice on what to do about town; because let’s face it, Beziers is a hole – a very pretty hole, where everyone goes to bed at 6.30 pm. He did offer us one tip, and that was to bug the grumpy old dude in the cathedral to let us climb the tower. Some churches demand that God wants pennies for you to climb their tower, but in Beziers, for as little as no dollars, you get this:



Because of the offence the following sign caused Tess Watson, I will refuse to speak about Toulouse, which was our next stop:



I move on to Nimes, “the city with an accent”. Yes, it is in fact Nîmes. It may be a play on words, or it may be the case that Nimes is so chuffed about being the only French town name that uses an accent that it plugs that fact as its catchphrase. Nimes is very Spanish influenced; in their arena bull fighting is quite the popular spectacle. I was invited to partake in one such bullfight during my time here, to which I happily obliged. Decked out in all my finest bullfighting attire, I rocked up to the arena only to learn that they in fact wanted me to act as the bull – the bullfighter was too much of a wuss to fight a bull and they wanted to challenge me.. ME! I was so angry I turned him to stone. Don’t believe me? Well why don’t you head to Nimes yourself to check out the evidence:



And then I had free reign over the entire arena. This was kinda lame because without a fight the crowd didn’t want to stick around:



Then we visited this old thing, the Tour Magne. So get this, this is how stupid humans are. In the 12th Century, Nostradamus had this prophecy: “gleaming metals of the Sun and Moon beneath ancient vestal buildings”. So naturally, the people got to work at destroying old stuff to find shiny stuff. This guy, Francois Traucat, was convinced that the Tour Magne was covering said treasure, so he got permission to do as he liked so long as two thirds of any treasure found went to the king. Guess what he found... Nothing. Stupid humans. So here’s what it looks like in its non-treasure-looted state:



And to prove how stupid humans are in France, check out this sign:



And to further prove my point, why are all the emergency exit hammers of this bus at the front, next to the usual exit:



To their credit, however, the French did come up with this, one of the greatest inventions of all time:



Ok, so the silly photographer focused on the pole, but that hazy dude in the background is riding around of a motorbike with a giant vacuum cleaner on the back to suck up doggie doos! Genius! I left him a nice on just to set up this photo.

Also while we were in Nimes, we made our way out to visit to Pont du Gard, a giant Roman aqueduct that is mighty impressive:



And the only way to make that more impressive to have a photo of only me in front of it:



From Nimes we headed to Cannes, which is the kinda place you can just smell the money in the air. The film festival was a couple of weeks out of the way for the year, which meant the celebrity spotting wasn’t going to be as fun, but the beaches were in top form still. The walk of fame in Cannes was a little random for us, as we knew very little of the so-called “stars” on show. There’s always a priceless one waiting though:




Cannes also seemed to be the home of the biggest killer fulmars I have ever seen. Fulmars are ginormous seagulls that make it their business to kill pigeons (we saw this happen in Spain) and drag as much rubbish out of bins as possible. I’m honestly surprised the Cannes council haven’t issued guns to citizens to wipe the things out. They’re huge and they eat EVERYTHING! Forget vampires, the next horror series is gonna feature giant gulls. You heard it hear first.



Here’s a miniature rant: What’s with all the white clothes stores in the Cote d’Azur!? Seriously, the price tags are super high and the clothes are super bright, but I don’t understand how wearing white makes you any classier than anyone else. Maybe it is just “beachy” stuff, maybe it’s poncy, but it’s sure as heck funny when the white clad families (yes, entire matching families) get caught in an unexpected torrential downpour in Nice!

Here’s where you’ll be shopping:



After Cannes we headed to Nice for out final week of Frenchiness. Nice seemed to be all about the rain, so we hopped out on a few trips to Eze, Antibes and Monaco. Antibes was quite a pretty place, but they really need to catch up with Eze and name something posh after me like they have:



Monaco on the other hand is where I like to head for a few hands of poker (Bond style – yes, I’m a super hero/secret agent on the side, shh don’t tell) and a cruise around the Riviera in my boat:




^^Yes, that one is mine. And if that don’t impress you much (like that mole Shania sang to me that time), how’s about me owning the yellow submarine:



I purchased it from the offices of iTunes for a steal. Or I may have stolen it. Either way Paul loses out this time!

So then I headed to Monte Carlo for a few spins of the wheel:



And then had a lounge because the casino is exhausting:



And then headed back to Nice to sucker-punch Liam to the ground so I could have entire free reign over his blog. Actually, to be honest, I’m quite small – Liam was KO’ed at the thought of having to visit another Euro art gallery and just fell down in defeat:



So, having told you all that now, and with total control over this here post, I present the following run down of the kinds of things I ate in France. If you are not a fan of jealousy, I recommend you stop reading. If you are a fan of jealousy... Uh, you’re weird.

Let me being with this photo, one of the best Boulangeries we found (it’s in Antibes). Baguette hot from the oven and an amazing almond croissant to boot at low prices – yes please!



But the buildings in which you buy this kinda food have nothing on the food itself... I present to you my standard meal in France.

Entree – olives from the market (ridiculously cheap and tasty):



Entree two – chestnut crepe (who says you can’t eat dessert before dinner?):



First main – quiche (with self prepared salad including more olives!):



Second main – citron meringue pie (who says you can’t include dessert as part of your dinner?):



Third main – galette with mushrooms, egg, ham and Provencal tomato – the greatest tomato topping I have ever tasted:



First dessert – homemade caramel crepe (is your mind exploding yet?):



Second dessert – CAKE! Chock full of berries:



And to top all of that off, I present the pinnacle of French pastries: The almond croissant:



And if you think all of this has made me one giant fatty, I will neither confirm nor deny that thought. I will only say that there have been no photos of me since having this meal and there may not be any more for some time to come... I think I need to go for a jog... Oh wait, I’m in Italy, I’ll just go and get a pizza instead!

Hope everyone’s enjoying life as much as I am (bahaha)!
Catch you all very soon no doubt :)
~~Colin