Room with a View

And so it begins. Or should that be ends? I've now moved back into Selwyn to start my final year as an undergraduate by taking up my role as an elderly fourth year - a mark of distinction highlighted by my possession of a yellow coloured pigeon hole, and hopefully not grey hairs.

Things have been pretty quiet so far, with a few people coming and going, but things really got properly started today with the Freshers arriving. Luckily my room has a fantastic vantage point from which to spy on the comings and going in College - and to gauge how big the queue for Hall is before venturing down the three flights of stairs that lead to my abode.



So far I can tell a Fresher from the fact that they follow a pattern. Usually they emerge from the arch over the Porters' Lodge either in front of, or behind of (never to the side of) their parents. One parent then takes a photo of the Chapel while the fresher looks away, then said fresher is coaxed by the same parent to pose for a photograph in front of the Chapel. True, I did exactly the same thing three years ago, but it doesn't stop it being faintly amusing, it also allows me to feel a little God like in looking down on people milling around, and it's certainly a more entertaining way to pass the time than by reading a 'Constitutional History of the United Kingdom'.

So what should this year hold? I'm down to take courses entitled; Equity, European Union Law, the Conflict of Laws (allowing me to answer questions such as: what happens when an Irishman, driving a Japanese car in France, hits a German driving a faulty Swedish car, causing an accident killing a Norwegian?), Jurisprudence, European Human Rights Law, and the Historical Foundations of the British Constitution. But if that isn't enough I've put out tentative feelers towards signing up for learning Dutch at the languages faculty. A bit late perhaps, but something that I'm oddly keen to do.

And I think that sums up my attitude to this year. So far things do feel different to the first and second years here. I don't know whether it's because I'm a year older, or wiser, but the year abroad really seems to have helped my approach and there's no feeling of apprehension about what lies ahead. I guess that my final year here is just going to be the first year on the road to something else, and I can't wait to find out what that something else will be.

A short Scilly island hop

It's commonly thought that Cornwall is the last place in Britain, hence it being home to Land's End. Anyone watching the BBC weather forecast would agree. However down in the bottom left corner, always hiding behind the weather forecaster, forever hidden from public view, are the Isles of Scilly - truly the last place in the British Isles before New Foundland, which is quite a long way away.


The Scilly Isles are a perfect example of the sort of place that so close, yet so far. You can just about see them from Land's End on a clear day, but they only merit one page in the local newspaper, and aside from the constant whir of the helicopter blades, it would be easy to forget that they were there. In fact, the largest island, St Mary's, only has a population of 1,666 and the smallest, little more than 70. Alarmingly though, despite their diminutive size, the Isles were officially at war with the Netherlands as recently as 1986!

So in keeping with my obsession with following the compass points, two weeks ago (I know, it's a shamefully late entry this one) I boarded an absurdly small plane at Land's End and took off for St. Mary's for four days of exploring.


I've been to the Scilly Isles before - once when I was a lot younger for an extended stay, and twice more recently for day trips - but I've only ever really known St. Mary's, so this time I resolved to get to know the other islands; St. Agnes, St. Martin's, Tresco and Bryher. This primarily involved getting a launch from St. Mary's each morning to a different island, and then spending the rest of the day walking that island's coastal path.

On the first day after settling in I donned my oh-so fetching shorts and set off for St. Agnes via quite a few seal colonies, and the Bishop's Rock Lighthouse, the most south-westerly outpost of the British Isles.



Leaving aside my odd obsession with lighthouses, there's something quite inspiring about Bishop's Rock and the real sense of isolation there - even from St. Agnes it's little more than a speck out to sea. In fact, it's this sense of isolation that makes the Scilly Isles such a wonderful place. When the weather's bad the islands can be cut off from the mainland for weeks at a time. I've commented before on how I've grown tired about visiting places on my own, but I never felt that way on Scilly, instead, it almost felt like the right way to experience the islands. Sitting on the top of Bryher, looking over the archipelago to Tresco, Samson, St. Mary's, St. Agnes, Gugh and Annet, and not being able to hear or see another soul apart from the boats cruising between the islands was a fantastic experience and one that I'd have happily sat for the whole day enjoying.


This isolation goes beyond setting the islands apart from the mainland, and it even contributes to each island putting forward its own unique character. It's hard to convey just how different each of the islands feels. St. Mary's is the busiest, but even there, most of the hustle is concentrated around the main town and quay with the rest of the island feeling deserted at times.



St. Agnes was the first island I visited that I hadn't been too before, and seemed to be the most celtic, and remote, of all the islands. It's connected to the island of Gugh (population: 3) via a sandbar that's only crossable at low tide, and it's separated from the rest of the islands by a deep water channel.


There was a real feel of a different world walking around the Atlantic coast, no more so than when I came upon a truly beautiful beach that had been filled by people creating structures of standing stones.


There must have been thousands, and it has hard not to marvel that people had bothered to make them in the first place, and that someone hadn't come along and knocked them down in the name of fun. But aside from the atmosphere, the scenery didn't seem that different to the ordinary Cornish coast. So onto Tresco.

Tresco has something of a bad press on the islands. It's the only private island and is rather exclusive, and that seems to lead to quite a lot of resentment among the other islands. It's a shame, because Tresco is really a stunning island with a sub-tropical garden that I'm told has even made its way into the Dutch geography curriculum! But there is an air of pretentiousness there which does detract from what could be called the most beautiful island.



Bryher had to be the island that took me most by surprise. Stuck out to the north, only one side is visible from the other islands, and it's the bit that's hidden that's the most remarkable. Constantly battered by the Atlantic waves, Bryher acts as a sea wall for the rest of the islands and has the feeling of a remote headland. The coast itself can only be described as barren and rugged, but that's what's so wonderful. Compared to the managed beauty of Tresco, Bryher's a perfect example of how beautiful nature can be when it's left to do it's own thing. The fact that the north of the island shelters the rest of the island leaves the middle of the island a little tranquil oasis, and probably leaves Bryher as my personal favourite of the islands.

On the fourth day I set off for St. Martins, little aware of what to expect, other than that the fact that it's home to the Rough Guide to Britain's Best Beach. St Martin's is quite accurately described as one big beach home to an island, and the whole coast is practically covered by white sands.


But despite their beauty, they're all almost without fail, deserted. And that's just it with the Scilly Isles. The majority of visitors to the islands come on a day trip, and then tend to stay on St. Mary's, or perhaps visit Tresco. It's unusual to spend longer, or to take a day trip to another island, so so much of what's on offer gets missed. Admittedly, the fact that the island's aren't overrun lends a great deal to their appeal, but I can't help wishing that more people took the time to really appreciate the place. In fact, in the end, some people did. The weather closed in on the final day such Land's End became fog bound and grounded my flight. Luckily I was staying with a friend, but the other's on my flight were day trippers who hadn't packed for an overnight stay, nor had banked on having to pay for accommodation. I really had to sympathise with them, but at the end of the day there's a little part of me that thinks any reason to spend a little longer on the islands has to be good.

Before this trip I had little idea of what the islands held. Ironically on leaving I noticed the following sign on the walkway over the runway:


Funny, loitering on the Scilly Isles is just what I want to do more of.

The way of the Camel

Cycling was something of a past time of mine in Holland, but it's not something that I often do back home - too many hills for one, access to a car for another. But the other day I decided to take my bike to the most Dutch part of Cornwall - the Camel trail. The Camel trail follows a disused railway line from Padstein (nee, Padstow) to Bodmin, and is therefore wonderfully flat.

That does not however mean that it wasn't hard work. It took four hours to go from Padstow to Bodmin, onto Wenford Bridge, then back to Padstow, by which time placing my leg in a fully straight position resulted in an awkward locking problem, and sudden movements resulted in uncontrollable stumbling. Clearly something has happened in the two months I've been back from Holland, but I'd dread to think what I'd have been like on the hills slightly closer to home.

But cycling, even when I'm cycling, does seem to be a slightly more consistent and reliable way of travelling than the trains do. Yesterday I was on my way back from Truro after visiting Jess when my train, one of those little sprinters, amazingly stalled after leaving St. Erth station and coasted down the track before stopping. I'd never really thought about trains stalling, but then the driver obviously turned the key before it spluttered back into life and continued spluttering all the way into Penzance. Kind of sums up First Great Western.

The Yorkshire Tales

After spending time in both Cheshire and Wales we embarked on a brief visit to York, a city I visited when I was about eight and from where my main memory is of taking a rather embarrassing horse-drawn carriage ride around the town.


York is comfortably north of my comfort zone, in fact, prior to this weekend it was the most northerly place I'd visited in the UK, but that didn't stop me loving it. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, York is yet another city that feels like Bath - probably because they're both Roman. And this similarity means that it also takes up a position on my 'would like to live there' list. A list that's now getting scarily long and wide.

It was great to find old streets that weren't filled with chain shops and department stores, even the StarBucks was so understated as to look like a little independent coffee house. It's actually a real pleasure to shop in a shop that you haven't been in elsewhere and I for one feel more likely to buy something in a place like that knowing I can't get it somewhere else, even if it does cost a little more.

But York really is beautiful, full of genuinely old buildings and a general sense that the people who live there appreciate it for what it is. Perhaps it helps that the whole city is dominated over by the impressive Minster, a constant reminder of the city's heritage, but there were plenty of signs about 'taking pride in York' which I can't remember seeing in any other comparably city. The fact that the old city walls are still largely intact is wonderful too. I'd take city walls over a ring road any day.



Beyond this though, York is just a tremendously atmospheric place, something that I can only guess comes with the age of many of the buildings and the history they know. It's a shame that there's always a tendancy to compare cities to other cities, but with the exception of Bath I can't really think of another city that comes close in terms of the intimacy of the atmosphere in York, and even Bath falls short here as in a way, it's just too big and spread out. York feels much smaller and there's a genuine sense of friendliness amongst the people there.





In fact, the steam train gave rise to one of the more bizarre conversations had in York. We discovered that the train went to Scarborough, a place we hadn't visited, and so we considered going for a ride. Until we found that it was £30pp. We then questioned why we didn't just drive to Scarborough, before asking why we even wanted to go to Scarborough in the first place. Realising that we would only be going because it was a steam train, we came to the decision that when you're on a steam train it feels much like any other train and that its best to see it from the outside - which we had when it steamed past out B&B window. So we abandoned both the steam train ride, and Scarborough. Next time perhaps.

York is just the sort of place that it's great to wander around without a purpose, so it was a little unfortunate that one evening, devoid of anything to do, we went to see a play at the theatre advertised on the basis that it starred the actress who played Sue Ellen in Dallas (an actress primarily famous for not shooting JR). This turned out to be a bad decision (the lady next to us commented that, not being able to hear anything Sue Ellen said, she thought she'd gone deaf since entering), and rather than killing time, it seemed instead to flog it, then kick it while it was already quite far down and out. York could do better.

But for a city with such heritage there wasn't any of the grandeur that can be a little overwhelming at times, as there can be in Cambridge. In fact, sometimes you'd see something that could only suggest a little mischievous on the part of the people living there that nicely stood out.


After spending two days admiring York we detoured via Castle Howard, about 30 minutes north-east of York in doing so took myself further north within the British Isles than I've ever been before. I don't usually go a bundle on these country estate type places, but Castle Howard was actually something else. For starters it's absolutely huge, I imagine it would take at least a day to walk around all the grounds open to public (it does have four lakes), but it's also quite a captivating place.



Unfortunately time constraints preventing speeding more time there, but it is a place that I would recommend a visit to should you ever be in the area. On the way back to Cheshire we decided to have a further stop over in Harrogate, a place that I knew little of other than it sounded like a nice place - primarily because I seem to remember knowing someone from there who said so - and so it proved. Almost. It's a little hard to describe, it had a certain Llandudno quality to it in the Victorian adornments abound, but it didn't have the same 'pride' that York had. York seemed to be a smart town proud to be so. Harrogate seemed to be a smart town trying not to realise, or at least, promote it. But nonetheless it was still a nice place to spend a few hours with some really outstanding gardens around.

And so came to end two weeks of travel and visitations around Cheshire, Wales and Yorkshire, and perhaps the busiest August I think I've ever had.

Bala, Bread and Baking in Bethesda

In a world where it's strictly forbidden to even think about meeting up with people you've met on the Internet, getting into a car and driving to Bethesda, a remote village in northern Wales, to do just that might seem just a little bit silly.

But that didn't stop me and a number of other intrepid people from doing just that, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we all had a fantastic time baking bread, having fun and exploring a truly beautiful area of the country at event dubbed Bethesdabakin'.



The history of the event and how it was set up is quite long, so I'll spare you all the details, but it came about through an Internet forum and was the idea of a Bethesda local, Mick. The idea gathered steam and unusually for things like this, actually took place last weekend with 17 people descending from all walks of life and all sorts of places. People came from Denmark, Switzerland, France and even Australia and America as well as places closer to home to make friends and bake bread. And that's exactly what happened. The event was organised via the forums on a baker called Dan Lepard's website, and he himself came along to join in and give some invaluable advice and encouragement.


Highlights had to be the building of a wood fired brick oven on the patio outside the rugby club kitchen where the event was held which, courtesy of its 500C plus heat managed to turn out pizzas in around four minutes, Otto, Alex and Kathy's dog who quickly became our mascot, and the innumerable trips to the local Tesco to shop for the five-thousand.




Unfortunately I wasn't up to the standard of the others and had to take a more backseat role for the weekend, although one of my contributions, a barley flour soda bread, turned out to be the one disaster of the weekend, burning on the top, not cooking in the middle and sticking to the pan on the bottom. But what can you do? I even burned my elbow taking it out raising the number of cooking related scars I currently sport to four.

But despite the bread-related theme, there was more to the weekend than dough and flour. I was quite taken aback by how ignorant I was about the whole area. Not only did I fail to appreciate how widely Welsh was spoken by everyone from the people in the Rugby Club to the teenagers working in the Londis store, but I never realised just how beautiful Snowdonia was, nor indeed that places like it even existed in this country. Welsh is quite unlike any language I've heard this year, not even that similar to the little bits of Cornish I know, and it's no wonder that the Welsh parts of the bi-lingual road signs seem unpronounceable to English speakers. But the odd thing is that this wasn't so even 50 years ago when Welsh wasn't that widely spoken, even my great-grandfather who was Welsh born-and-bred didn't speak the language, so to hear little children conversing in it with their parents was really ear-opening and really did make me feel like a stranger in my own land. But I thought it was great, so why stop at Welsh? It stands to reason that people in Scotland, Ireland and even Cornwall should be able to speak the 'local' language, especially when people note how beneficial it is for people to be able to speak a second language.

The Youth Hostel where I stayed has to be located in one of the most scenic places I've ever stayed in. Located at the top of the valley with a lake on one side it was a truly stunning location to wake up and in and retire to, so much so that I'd love to go back and explore the area properly.




It's odd that when you're in the mountains the only thing you have to judge scale to are the other mountains, so it doesn't matter if they're all 1000m or 3000m high, they all look equally impressive, so for a time it really felt like being back in the Alps, and that's something I didn't realise this country could offer. Even seeing things on TV doesn't quite bring it home, and it's made me wonder just what the Scottish Highlights are like in the flesh.

So here's saying a huge thankyou to Mick and Sue, and to everyone else who came along and made the weekend the huge success that it was. Here's looking forward to next year.

Life in the slow lane

My auntie's house in Cheshire is pretty unconventional in the transport connections it sports. In one direction there's a railway line about two metres beyond the garden boundary, and in the other there's a canal about one minute away. Unfortunately there's no way to board the former without some serious acrobatics, but fortunately the canal is punctuated by a lock, so when the weather looked good we hired Rosie for the day and set off on a long slow cruise along the Cheshire waterways.



Unfortunately the fact that it was such a lovely day resulted in me ending the day with a rather red nose and that burning feeling, but it was worth it. It's hard to describe just how tranquil canal-boating is. We did it when I was younger, but I wasn't really old enough to steer the boat, so this was the first time that I had a chance to pilot for myself, affording some good opportunities for some rather embarrassing photos of yours truly.


Apart from one scrape along the bank, one bang when attempting a three point turn, and one beaching incident when hit by another boat's wash, the day went off without a hitch (although the last one did threaten disaster and took about ten minutes of heaving and shoving to get us free).

Everyone's so friendly as well. All of the boats you pass say hello and exchange pleasantries and so do the people on the bank. In fact, often you're motoring no faster than they're walking, so on one occasion I had a conversation with a couple of walkers lasting several minutes. Unfortunately though some are so engrossed in what they're doing that they don't notice as you motor on past.


Thankfully our boat was only about 30 feet long, and I'm filled with tremendous respect for those who pilot the normal 70 feet behemoths and who manage to make them so nimble. At times it felt like I was driving a barge without brakes and with a mind of its own, and the whole 'left to go right' mentality took a great deal of getting used to, but it was tremendous fun. I didn't appreciate quite how extensive the British waterway network was and how well connected the various canals are so I'm now filled with a desire to charter a boat for longer and make a proper go of it. Anyone keen?