Amateur Ramblings

Madeira - a short history

Better late than never, right?. We three went to Madeira for a holiday with my mum and dad, and my brother James (his girlfriend Annabel could not make it due to her taking some exams). The back story of the trip is that my parents recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary, and wanted to take us all to the island with which they have recently become smitten. This was exceedingly generous of them, and I once again thank them for their munificent gesture.

You've heard of Madeira, right? But you're not sure exactly where it is. That was pretty much what I thought when I received the invitation. So, being an inquisitive sort, I did some research. Here's what I found out.

Madeira is part of an archipelago of five main islands (the other four being Porto Santo, Deserta Grande Island, Selvagem Grande Island, and Selvagem Pequena Island. Of these, only Porto Santo is populated) - or twenty-five islands, if islets are counted - that are located around 350 miles of the North-East coast of Africa, and approximately 530 miles from Lisbon. This second distance is relevant because Madeira and it's sister islands are one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal (the other being the Azores, which lie 500 miles to the South-East).

The existence of the archipelago was known about long before it was 're-discovered' by two Portuguese sea captains in 1419, who were blown there in their ships by a storm. The following year, an expedition set out from the mainland to populate the island.

The island of Madeira was created following a massive under-water volcanic eruption which started around five million years ago and mainly ceased 700,000. But the most recent larval splutterings took place as recently as 6,500 years ago.

Ilha da Madeira, the wooded island, first appeared on maps in 1433. This reflected the dense and rich vegetation found by the Portuguese. It took a little while to tame the island; early settlers diets were 50% fish-based, but before long wheat was being grown for export to the mainland. This crop was usurped by sugar cane, which was introduced at a time when sugar was rare in Europe, and therefore considered to be an expensive spice. Sugar production meant that up to 10% of the islands population consisted of slave labour during the 16th century. But in light of cheaper imports from other parts of the world, sugar production tailed off in the 17th century. Since then, the biggest manufactured export from the island has been Madeira Wine.

Between 1580 and 1640, King Phillip II of Spain claimed the vacant Portuguese thrown for himself, become Phillip I of Portugal. During the Napoleonic Wars, Madeira was occupied on a temporary basis by Britain to prevent the islands being captured by the French. A couple of years after the Carnation Revolution of 1974, Madeira was afforded political autonomy.

The climate is very pleasant. Both air and sea temperatures, influenced by the Gulf Stream, range from 17°C in the winter and 26°C during the summer. The climate and isolation have allowed a number of species of plants and animals to uniquely evolve here, including birds, lizards, butterflies and bats, as well as many examples in the flora category. On one of the Deserta islands can be found the largest tarantula in Europe - according to Wikipedia it can grow to the size of a 'normal man hand'.

To solve the problem of water scarcity on the south of the island, a network of levadas (mini-canals) have been constructed to bring in the plentiful fresh water from the north. The building of the lavadas started way back with the 16th century Portuguese, and the most recent was constructed in the 1940's. The 1,300 mile network of mountain-hugging aqua-highways offer level but precarious walking routes for locals and tourists alike.

Phew, that's a fair bit of writing. I'm going to look through the pictures we took now, and hopefully there are sufficient snaps to allow me to post a picture story later this week.

Barmston Beach

Phew, what a busy last few days I have had. Almost too busy actually. Last Wednesday, we babysat Scarlett and had Andrew, Michelle and Deb stop over; they went to see NOFX playing in town. We went on another short break, and I celebrated my birthday over the bank holiday weekend. It's the break I'll be typing about now.

You'll recall that we went on a Sun holiday to Blackpool recently. Well, my mum and dad also take Sun holidays, and had booked a caravan last week at Barmston Beach, a few miles south of Bridlington on the North Yorkshire (East Riding) coast. They kindly invited us over on Thursday and we stopped the night.

Their caravan was certainly more plush that the one we had; it featured central heating, a microwave, and a much more spacious bathroom and shower. The site itself was small and secluded, situated at the end of the road that runs through Barmston village. Literally, for the road crumbles over the cliff and onto the sandy beach below. Here, the unstoppable and swift erosion of the east coast is evident. Any Romans taking a Sun holiday would have found themselves two-and-a-half miles from the sea.

 

The site is a small one, and after a long walk on the deserted beach, we retired for the evening to converse. The following day we drove up to Filey (location of another of the numerous caravan parks in this part of the world, at which Gemma spent much of her childhood holiday time). We parked up and strolled, passed the chalk-white apartments and guest houses of the Royal Crescent, into town. There, we called in to a tea shop, before taking a polite look at the three streets that make up the shopping district. I actually like the size of Filey's town centre, and appreciate the fact that most of the shops and attractions are family-owned independents. There is certainly a refreshing lack of amusement arcades.

We then deemed that enough time had elapsed since tea and cake to have some fish and chips, after which we drove back to Leeds (where the weather had been overcast at best; out on the east coast seemed to be the place to be for the best weather towards the end of last week).

Blackpool - an A - Z guide

Well, we've just returned from Blackpool after a short break to the North-West's 'forth-largest settlement'. Our passage was abetted by Rupert Murdoch, who kindly offered us four nights for £7.50 each via his awful, awful Sun newspaper. This review of our holiday takes the form of a partially illustrated, fully= alphabetised list concerning twenty-six aspects of our stay.

A is for Amusements - Blackpool's omnipresent cash-cows. Amusements includes the solitary gambling machine in the fish and chip shop, the huge casino-like arcades that seem at times to be the foundation of this town's economy, and all of the small arcades in between.

We spent a little time in a couple of the larger arcades, but I quickly got bored. The clashing music emitting from every machine combined to create a confusing wall of sound, and I found that most of the games consisted of those moving platforms into which you slot a 2p or a 10p coin, and if you are lucky you can win a couple of coins of the same denomination. I think I would rather be outside.

B is for Buses - our chosen method of getting about for the week (although we came in the car, there was not room for the six of us). Buses in Blackpool are operated by the council, in stubborn defiance of the Tory deregulation of buses in 1986. To be honest I don't think that the services are any better for this. Mostly, buses ran late (even a few minutes is noticeable, especially if the service is only half-hourly or less). Information was poor; one afternoon we spent an hour hanging around a concrete toilet block the bus-station trying to catch a service for which we had return tickets, before giving up and paying again to board a local bus back to the camp-site.

 

Most annoying was the lack of buggy provision on most of the buses; mainly they were pretty elderly, and the best we learned to hope for was space for one unfolded pushchair. This was especially irksome on the number 20 service which ran from the camp-site to town.

C is for Caravan - our accommodation for the week. It was clean, comfortable, but chilly at night (the tiny electric heaters proved almost totally ineffective) and quite sparsely furnished. We paid extra for an additional bedroom, which was definitely needed given that Olive and Scarlett each needed their own room. We were situated right near to the entrance, which meant only a short walk to the bus stop every morning.

D is for Davies' - Andrew, Michelle and Scarlett, our holiday companions for the week.

 

E is for End of the Pier - there are three piers in Blackpool, imaginatively known as North, Central, and South Piers.

 

The first place Gemma and I went upon arrival in town on Monday was the Central Pier (above). We walked to the end, where there is a 'family bar', before settling on a bench near to the Ferris Wheel with a bag of fish 'n' chips. Good times.

 

The North Pier (above) cannot be accessed unless an entrance fee is paid, and in recognition of this outrage we did not board. We also did not bother to check out the South Pier (seen in the distance as viewed from the top of the tower), which is actually a little out of the way, and merely walked on by on our way to the Pleasure Beach.

 

Here are some pier facts for you:

• The North Pier was designed by Eugenius Birch and was opened in May 1863. It features a small tramway, and featured, until it was blown away in a storm in 1997, a helicopter landing pad
• The Central Pier's ferris wheel was only added in 1990, and is a half-scale version of a wheel which used to be a part of the Winter Gardens complex. It opened in May 1868 to a design by Lieutenant-Colonel John Isaac Mawson.
• The South Pier is the youngest and shortest of the three Blackpool piers, opening fully in May 1893. May was obviously a good month to open a pier. Originally known as Victoria Pier, it was designed by T P Worthington.

F is for Fleetwood - our destination on Tuesday. On paper, it seemed like a good idea; a ride in a tram from the front at Blackpool to it's faded neighbour, the once prosperous fishing town that was the first planned Victorian community.

But as we rattled north, we found ourselves eshewing the sea views in favour of a concrete housing estate, before we arrived at a depressed-looking high street. This was Fleetwood in April 2009, home to (admittedly bountiful) charity shops and small caffs, it was ugly in a different way to Blackpool. Andrew commented that it should be called Castleford-on-Sea. Even the sunshine of that very morning had been replaced by cloud and a stiff breeze. After Lunch, Andrew and I went off for an explore, but photographic opportunities were quite limited.

G is for Grease - we ate quite badly during the days, reasonably in the morning, and well in the evening (when we took turns to cook back at the caravan). It's easy to eat poorly in Blackpool, greasy, heavy, fatty foods are as readily available as drugs on the corners of The Wire's Baltimore.

H is for Holidaymakers - why was it that the faces of most of the other people who were on holiday did not seem happy? Not that there were too many of them; the penultimate week of April is classed as out of season, and the schools had gone back the previous week. We virtually had the place to ourselves.

I is for Illuminations - were we six months too late or six months too early to see one of Blackpool biggest draws? Maybe we will have to come back for the day in October to see what a million light-bulbs look like. 

J is for John Bickerstaffe - he was mayor of Blackpool when, after a visit to the Great Paris Exhibition in 1889, he decided it would be good for tourism if his town had it's own tower.

 

So sure was he that the idea would be a winner, he invested £2,000 of his own money into the project. The tower was copied designed by a pair of architects from Lancashire, James Maxwell and Charles Tuke, and was officially opened in May (of course) 1894.

We visited the Aquarium (above - is Olive always feeding?), the splendid Ballroom (below), and Jungle Jim's Towering Adventureland, which, although aimed squarely at children, we adults found we had the free run of on account of the astounding absence of anyone else being present.

 

Of course, the main attraction of Blackpool tower is going up the tower, and after lunch that's exactly what we did. At the top there is a small shop, a big view, and the Walk of Faith. This is a section of floor that has been removed and replaced by glass. Standing on this and looking down gives a direct view of the roofs of the tower buildings many metres below. I don't much care for heights so Michelle kindly took the following picture. Incidentally, Scarlett had no qualms about running repeatedly across the Walk of Faith.

 

Tower facts:

• Neither of the Tower's designers lived to see it's completion
• A time-capsule was buried beneath the foundation stone when it was laid in 1891
• The structure is designed so that if it ever fell down (and judging by the poor state of the  ironwork, this time may be not too far off), it would collapse towards the sea
• From top to toe, the Tower measures 518ft 9 inches
• During the Second World War, it was used by the RAF as a radar station
• Of the twenty-eight structures that are currently members of the World Federation Of Great Towers, Blackpool Tower ranks twenty-seven.
• The glass in the Walk of Faith is only two inches thick
• The Tower remained in the ownership of the Bickerstaffe family until 1964. Since then, it's have included Trust House Forte and EMI
• Dancing in the Ballroom used not to be allowed on Sundays
• A circus is situated immediately below the Tower, between it's four legs. The ring can be lowered into a four-foot deep pool of water (for some reason)
• From the top of the Tower can be seen North Wales, the Furness Peninsula, the Lake District, and the Isle of Man

K is for Ken Dodd - Blackpool is a haven for comedians once they become out of fashion. The buck-toothed tax-avoiding scouser is by no means the worst that is on offer. You can see the likes of Little and Large, Roger de Courcy and Nooky Bear, Roy 'Chubby' Brown, Jimmy Cricket, et al. And that's not to mention the pantomimes.

L is for Las Vegas - the model upon which the local council recently declared a wish for their town to be based. This, of course, is the day-dream of an insane committee. And why should anyone be drawn to a crime-driven, money-soaked, gambling town anyhow? The one thing it has going for it, guaranteed hot weather, is the very thing that Blackpool cannot even begin to promise.

M is for Marton Mere - the name of the Haven caravan park where we stayed. The location is ideal, just a handful of miles outside of Blackpool and right at the end of the M55 motorway. The mere (a broad, shallow lake) itself is right behind the park, and seemed to be an oasis of wildlife at the edge of this grimy town (although the area surrounding the park, especially towards Stanley Park, seemed like a pleasant neighbourhood.

On the first evening, Andrew and I went for an explore and spotted a pair of rabbits gamboling in the near-darkness. We took a few night pictures, the one above having a forty-second exposure.

Marton Mere is not to be confused with Martin Mere, a near-by wetland nature reserve that, until it was successfully drained in the 19th century, was England's largest lake. Marton Mere is on a smaller scale, and can be viewed by the workers of National Savings (the home of ERNIE), which can be seen just to the left of Andrew's head in the group shot below. Also below is the pheasant that we spied upon in one of the numerous hides dotted about this place.

 

N is for Nightlife - something that I prefer to avoid, especially in Blackpool. Gemma and I forgot to bring any of the board games we planned to take, and no-one could muster up a deck of playing cards, so evenings were spent drinking wine and chatting. Bedtime was reasonably early, as young children tend to wake when it gets light.

O is for Olive - this was her first actual holiday (I'm told that I cannot count her visit to Barcelona on account of the fact that she was still inside Gemma's womb). I cannot say that she enjoyed Blackpool any more than she would have liked a week in her own home. I guess she enabled us parents to enjoy a holiday from a new perspective.

P is for Pleasure Beach - correctly titled Pleasure Beach Blackpool (previously known as Blackpool Pleasure Beach).

This fun fare has numerous and various rides packed into a relatively small site just to the south of the town. Once again, it was amazingly devoid of other people and we were virtually able to walk straight on to any ride. I went on the Grand National (built 1934), Avalanche (1988), Steeplechase (1977, the last three-tracked racing roller-coaster in the world), The Big One (1994), Infusion (2007, previously located a few miles down the coast in Southport, and the Big Dipper (1923). Some, all, or more of these rides are pictured below.

  

 

 

 

Q is for Queues - as mentioned previously, there really were none. We got into and onto everything we wanted to, from the rides at the Pleasure Beach to the lifts in the tower, without delay.

R is for Railways - the element that really kick-started modern Blackpool. Ironically, the first line to be completed in 1846 was a branch line off the Preston - Fleetwood line, and greatly contributed to the decline of Fleetwood as a resort.

Blackpool Talbot Road was the main station in the north of the town, and once had sixteen platforms. It was re-located a little further from the town centre in 1974, and the original station site is now a branch of Wilkinson's. Fourteen-platform Blackpool Central, meanwhile, is today a car park (in fact, where we parked up and fed Olive on Monday lunchtime). It's central location was deemed too handy for the travelling public and it was closed in 1964, a year after it celebrated it's centenary. Now, the line terminates at Blackpool South, a sorry, isolated, single track station. Here, the line used to split, one set of tracks heading south to take in Lytham St Annes, the other (now disused) heading inland towards Preston. This is now a road (of course).

S is for Sugar - grease's partner in crime when it comes to food. Donuts, rock, candy floss, it's all to be found on the streets and arcades of the town. As a group, we restricted ourselves to one bag of freshly made donuts, although Gemma bought some candy floss for the journey home.

T is for Trams -

One of the things that supposedly make Blackpool special. And it's true that this is the only surviving first-generation tramway in the UK; it's eleven-mile route runs from Blackpool to Fleetwood on the tip of the Wyre Peninsula and is one of only three tramways in the world to operate double-decked vehicles. And yet...

...And yet, something didn't seem right. On the front, the tramway is currently marooned between some roadworks and the flood-defense construction work. The tramcars themselves were neither beautiful vintage models or new, easy access vehicles. They were weird, ugly, boxy affairs, garishly painted with adverts for local firms in which we had no interest. I gather from my research that some of the more aesthetically pleasing cars must not have been in use at the time of our visit, and that we were a few years too early for the introduction of brand new stock.

U is for Ugly - what the town centre Blackpool essentially is.

 

Most of the Victorian elegance and splendour has been beaten out of the town, and the fine buildings that do remain have been painted or hoarded or panelled or otherwise defaced or disguised in some kind of act of mass civic vandalism. Shame on you Blackpool. Shackpool.

V is for Voices - as you stroll along the promenade, you cannot fail to notice the disembodied voices floating all around you. These emanate from within the amusement arcades, bingo halls, and other attractions that litter the front. All invite you to enter the establishment and part with your money.

W is for Weather - high pressure ensured that the week was dry, and mostly sunny. I guess that given this was an April on the Lancashire coast, we couldn't have hoped for anything better.

X is for X-rated - the rating of some of the entertainments available in Blackpool. But Blackpool is hardly Amsterdam, and the live girl shows (better than dead girls surely) are hidden away in crumbling buildings on the peripheries of the golden mile. Luckily these places tend not to emit the floating voices described above.

Y is for Yellow - Scarlett's favourite colour. Whilst we adults went about our business back at the caravan in the morning and in the evening, Scarlett busied herself with exploring, colouring, and making friends with Olive.

Z is for ZZZ - although the location of our caravan did not prove the cause of any excessive noise, our neighbours most certainly did. Andrew and Michelle were woken up on two separate occasions by voices and music. Michelle believes the noise came from people who work on the site. Also, the camp-site's policy of changing the gas-bottles and taking the empties away on a tractor is questionable.

Altered Images

I didn't get to re-write the post I mentioned yesterday, on account of Gemma and Olive coming home. Since the minute they came through the door I have been busy marshalling visitors, boiling the kettle, loading the washing machine, and of course feeding Olive and changing her nappies when the milk comes out of the other end. I think I'll recap the highlights of the first week in a couple of days.

Anyway, what I was going to say was I really like the The Atlas of the Real World project, which I came across on the Creative Review Blog. 366 cartograms (digitally modified maps) have been published in book form by the people over at Worldmapper; they depict the world demographically, based on such categories as population, poverty, and crime. The two examples I have ctrl-alt-c'd onto this post compare have world Internet usage has changed between 1990 and 2002:

t'Getting away from it all

So, we did go to Egypt. We came back last Monday night, and have been collecting our thoughts and washing our shorts since then. Going back to work is always a drag, but processing the pictures we took has brightened my evenings. For this review, I thought I’d categorise and ignore chronology.

t’There and Back

We set out from Leeds at 5am on a dark, cold, windy and wet Monday morning. Did I mention it was windy and wet? The journey over the Pennines was horrendous, and we were buffeted about like a heavy four-seater leaf. Upon arrival at Manchester Airport we found that our bags were pretty overweight and we had to swiftly stuff our heaviest clothes into our hand luggage to reduce the excess payment. The 757 was packed full of seats, and each one was occupied. The flight was therefore cramped, but the 150mph tailwind thoughtfully reduced the flight time to something approaching reasonable.

The return journey felt like a kind of hollowed out version of the above; we were pretty tired from all our holidaying and wanted more than anything to get back and have a cup of tea. Upon our return, we fell gratefully into clean sheets and slept.

t’Hotel

We booked a package holiday via Thomas Cook, something we have not done before. We opted for ‘allocation on arrival’ for our accommodation, and we pretty much lucked out in being placed at the Sheraton, a five star hotel on a spit of land between the airport and Naama Bay, the local town. It felt new yet a little dusty, and strangely Disney in its existence on the rocky nowhere of the Sinai Peninsula. The hotel is built into a cliff, so that the lobby, ground-floor at the front, leads to restaurants at the rear with amazing seventh-floor views into the Red Sea.

We chose only to pay for bed and breakfast, and this was the correct decision to have made as the food certainly was not five star. It wasn’t terrible, it just wasn’t great, and it was pretty expensive. We mostly eat out in town. The Egyptian staff, all male, were on the whole very friendly but a little too deferential and this felt weird.

t’Getting About

I reckon it would have been possible to walk to Naama Bay from the hotel in around 20 minutes, had there been a coast path. But the only walking option available was the unattractive and dusty inland route via the Peace Road. The hotel ran an irregular and over-subscribed shuttle bus, with which we were seldom able to get involved. We mainly caught an expensive hotel taxi the couple of miles, and returned using an unlicensed but more reasonably priced taxi back.

Even during our first short sojourn onto the Egyptian roads on the transfer from the airport we were shocked by the standard of driving. I was going to make a list of all the British driving rules that are flouted, but this proved impossible. Basically there appeared to be no rules, and this was confirmed by our guide when we when to Cairo, who explained that there is no driving test in Egypt, drivers simply buy a licence. He also told us that the only rule of the road is ‘if you see a gap, get in it’. The horn is the Egyptian driver’s best friend; it is a multi-purpose tool that warns, greets, alerts, invite, or simple proclaims that ‘this car is fitted with a horn and I’m going to let the world know it’.

t’Weather

The average temperature of both the Red Sea and the south Sinai air is around 22°C in January. This was very pleasant, thank you. During the central portion of our stay, it was pretty windy and this took the edge off the temperatures. During the last few days it became increasingly cloudy, and on the day we left it began raining.

t’People

As I mentioned above, the hotel staff we friendly but a little too subservient for my liking. Yet they were a welcome relief in comparison to the shop-keepers and restaurateurs of Naama Bay, who seemed to be powered by the same instincts as mosquitoes, homing in on the naive pale-skinned tourists and putting up a sheer wall of small talk in almost any language. Actually, not at all like mosquitoes. For approximately 3 minutes it was a novelty; the next couple of days were spent working out the best tactics for avoidance, the final week was spent employing these ploys, which essentially involved politely ignoring everyone.

The main places where the tourists were from, in order of attendance, seemed to be Russia, Britain, Germany and Italy. We had quickly gleaned from our Egyptian hosts that the Russians were disliked, but we were unsure why. I regret to say that we eventually came to the conclusion that all of the Russians in Sharm el-Sheikh were rude, miserable and without style.; many of the males sported mullets.

t’Food and Drink

Not all of the hotel food was poor quality; just most of it was. The exception was the Lebanese restaurant, where we dined but once. Here we had a variety of Mezzah, and it was good. The fare available in Naama Bay was a lot more varied but only moderately better. Highlight meals were the Italian and the Indian restaurants either side of the Camel Diving Club, and the Mexican near Little Buddha, which was in fact my meal of the fortnight. We mainly drank water and cola, and occasional Stella, the local beer. Tap water was strictly off limits, and our stomachs were certainly glad of our restraint and care in this matter.

t’Entertainment

The hotel-based disco held no interest for us, nor did drinking until the small hours in Naama Bay. We like the quite life, us, and tended to stay in the hotel of an evening. Spurning the initially reassuring yet ultimately rubbish CNN, we tuned into the Showtime family of channels, as it delivered to us Bones, CSI: Miami, and Napoleon Dynamite.

Gemma’s iPod provided general music, whilst my new ZEN Stone gave me up to 3 hours worth of songs. I was especially digging the Ride best of, Midlake and the new record from The Broken Family Band, as well as a bunch of ace compilations made by my friend John. I completely read Waterlog, The Undercover Economist, and Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew, and we both read snatches of Charlie Brookers’ collected writings in Dawn of the Dumb. Small gaps were plugged by Mojo and National Geographic.

t’Celebs

One day we took a stroll further along the beach, and stumbled upon an extensive film crew set up in one of the hotel bars. Dozens of Egyptian cameramen and technicians buzzed about the place, and at the centre of this activity was a couple of Eldorado/Hollyoaks-style young actors waiting to ‘put one in the can’, as they definitely say in televisionland. Also of note in this category was the fleeting visit to Sharm el-Sheikh by President George W. Bush of the USA; he met briefly with the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. We saw neither them, nor Air Force One.

t’Shopping

The shopkeepers must have developed some kind of instinct to home in on green tourists who have not long stepped of a plane. On the first evening, we went for a wander around of the hotel. A charming gentleman got chatting to us, and upon discovering we were from England invited us into his perfume shop to ‘sign his guestbook’. He then ordered his colleague to get the tea on, and chatted a little about the state of the world. Ultimately, he managed to sell us some essence for a price so vastly inflated that I am shy to reveal it here. Suffice to say that our new friend most likely took the rest of the night off.

We learnt our lesson quickly, and although we would be once more led semi-willingly into an shop, we did not pay too much again. Shops mainly sold one or any number of the following goods: essences; fake-brand clothing; ‘traditional’ middle-eastern clothing; jewellery; souvenirs; papyrus. Walking down the street was very tiring, as we had to fend off the advances of every single proprietor. And having to haggle over the price every time we wanted or needed to buy anything quickly got boring.

t‘Sharm el-Sheikh and Naama Bay

Sharm el-Sheikh, Sharm to it's friends, is the city nearest to where we stayed. It is known as ‘The City of Peace’, even though it was bombed by terrorists in 2005. Historically a minor fishing village, it became a major naval base for Egypt during the middle of last century. It lies on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, which is a rocky, triangular land bridge between Africa and Asia. The Sinai was occupied by Israel between 1967 and 1981, who renamed Sharm el-Sheikh ‘Mifratz Shlomo’, though this never caught on. Naama Bay is a slightly scruffy, vaguely dusty Disney town, and does not represent Egypt. It is entirely tourist orientated, and is full of un-Egyptian restaurants, bars, and shops.

It is rare to find an Egyptian in Sharm who comes from the area; most are from Cairo. Those who are local are likely to be Bedouins from Arabia, Jordan and Palestine, who settled on the Peninsula because it was on the trade route to the Nile.

t’Trips

We didn’t confine ourselves to the hotel for two weeks, no sir. We opted to go on a number of trips. The shortest of these was an hour and a bit on a glass bottom boat, which scuttled around Naama Bay and afforded us pretty amazing views of some coral and some tropical fish.

I got closer to the coral on the ‘adventure safari’, which first took us into the desert to a Bedouin camp for tea and bread, and a camel ride. The crazy driver then bounced us to Dahab, a rubbish approximation of what Sharm el-Sheikh was like about ten years ago. Near here we snorkeled. Getting into the sea was painful on the feet, and Gemma in fact gave up and went to get a drink. But I stuck with it and the rewards were immense. Breathing through a fat straw took a little getting used to, but supported by the Red Sea (the saltiest living sea on the planet) I began to enjoy floating across the coral and the fish. My only regret is that we didn’t buy an underwater camera. After we got back to the hotel, I realised my mobile phone was no longer in my pocket. I can only assume that it was teased out of my pocket by the insane driving of our Bedouin host.

Also on Sinai, we took a ride up to St Catherine’s Monastery, which holds the title of the worlds oldest continuously function Christian monastery. It is also the sight of the ‘burning bush’, which is an actual bush through which the fictional character God spoke to Moses in the popular book ‘Bible’. I enjoyed deliberately confusing the burning bush with the talking tree at the West Bromwich branch of McDonalds.

We left Sinai twice, both on long and tiring trips. First, we went to Cairo. We opted to be taken there by aeroplane, as the alternative was a seven-hour coach journey. I went to Cairo when I was about thirteen as part of the Dudley Schools Cruise, which delivered hundreds of Black Country teenagers to numerous Mediterranean destinations at the end of the 1980’s. The city was just as I remembered it: big, loud, busy, dusty, chaotic. We firstly visited the Egyptian Museum, where we saw thousands of things that were thousands of years old. I am actually not at all interested in ancient history, but it was impressive to see artifacts from this advanced civilisation from 4500 years ago, and it was mad to think that they just faded away over time. The tomb and mask of Tutankhamen was pretty amazing.

After a buffet lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe (where the Egyptian staff danced uncomfortably to YMCA) we headed out to see the main event – the pyramids of Giza. The Giza bit is important, as there are hundreds of pyramids in the north-eastern corner of Africa. These though are the pyramids everyone knows. They were actually more impressive than my teenage self remembered; they suddenly loomed above the suburbs like alien spaceships.

The three pyramids here were the tallest man-made structures on the planet for 43 centuries! Inside the Pyramid of Khafre, it was small and hot and airless, but incredible. The annoying woman from Stoke on our coach told us later that she hadn’t bothered going in (entrance fee £2.50) as ‘there’s no point, there ain’t nothin’ to see’. Quite. We also squeezed in a visit to a papyrus ‘museum’ (museum is an Egyptian word for shop, I think), where we were given an interesting demonstration in the art of making papyrus, and an opportunity to buy some product.

The longest excursion was to Petra, which is in Jordan. The total journey time was around sixteen hours, yet we were only at the site of the Rose City for a little over three hours. We were very tired and a little grouchy when we got back to the Sheraton. Our trip took us by coach to the small port city of Taba, near the Israeli border. Here, we queued for around two hours at the inefficient border control, before boarding a ferry full of Russian tourists for the thirty minute crossing of the Gulf of Aqaba to the Jordanian city than gives the country sea access and its name to this particular branch of the Red Sea. We were initially worried when our passports were retained here, but we were reassured by our guide that this was normal, and would speed things along upon our return. A fresh coach took us north into the mountains, and soon(ish) we arrived at a visitor centre which featured reasonable toilets for which we didn’t have to pay baksheesh. The decent into this ancient hidden city was awesome; each step bought the red rocks narrower and higher, until we popped out in front of the treasury (made famous in that Indiana Jones film). It put me in mind of an out of control Kinver Edge.

t’Summary

We took some pictures of our holiday – they can (soon) be seen on my Flickr page. We wouldn’t go back to Sharm el-Sheikh; not because we had a bad time, we didn’t, but because we don’t normally take package holidays and we pretty much exhausted our options as far as seeing the sights went. But it was just really nice to get away for a couple of weeks and do not much.

what we did on our holidays, day eight - das restaurant ist lebend, mit dem klang der musik

we all met up the next morning in the modest dining room, to de-brief about the night before. breakfast was in the continental hotel style; breads and jams; cooked meats and cheeses; yogurts; cereals; juice, tea and coffee. i don’t think i agree with cooked meats and cheese for breakfast, but it does remind me that i am on holiday in a strange and distant land. today being neil and deb’s last day, we resolved to make an extensive exploration of the town. the rainy, overcast conditions of the last couple of days was replaced by sunshine, which only served to make salzburg appear more handsome. here are some nuggets about austria’s forth-largest city.

as previously mentioned, it is home to some 150,000 people, straddling the salzach river (the city, not the people), which is a mysterious blue-grey, due to the galial minerals it carries. it was the river that first bought wealth to the city in the form of salt. salzburg is within sight of the foothills of the bavarian alps, from whence the salt comes. i also mentioned (though i’m sure my reader already knew this anyway) that the two most famous musical connections are mozart and the sound of music. the former was born in the city and lived here until 1781 (when he moved to vienna; the latter was filmed and set in and around the city, and is based on the true story of the wartime difficulties faced by the trapp family.

   

the nearby 1972m untersberg (above) forms a border between austria and germany. it is featured in the sound of music, and we can see the von trapp family escaping across it’s lush green slopes towards ‘switzerland’; had they took this route in real life, they would have been walking into hitler’s back yard. indeed, salzburg in closer to munich than it is to vienna.

we started on getreidegasse, and the numerous passages linking it with universitatsplatz. we took in the pferdeschwemme, festspielhauser and a number of impressive churches (austria is more catholic than i realised), and watched a group of four musicians playing mozart songs on traditional russian folk instruments.

after a bite to eat, we took the funicular up to the festungs hohensalzburg, a fortress which has it’s origins in 1077. from the walls, we had a superb view of the city and beyond. after a polite look in a couple of gift-shops and round a couple of displays, we managed to locate a small marionette museum, which was just lovely.

we came down from the mountain and, after freshening up at the hotel, made a concerted effort to find one of the vegetarian restaurants of note. success – it was in a yard just off getreidegasse, and was an indian restaurant. in the words of janice off of friends, oh-my-god! everyone’s meals were devine and plentiful, and within the hour we were stuffed and contented. we waddled and burped our way to bed.

just visiting

pilton is an ordinary, unassuming village in somerset, with a population of a little over one thousand. apart from the last weekend in june, that is, when it's population swells by a factor of more than one hundred. this weekend, pilton has more inhabitants than the following twenty towns (or cities*):

pilton 177,500
norwich* 147,047
walsall 170,994
swansea* 169,880
bournemouth 167,527
southend 167,257
swindon 155,432
dundee* 154,674
huddersfield 146,234
poole 144,800
oxford 143,016
middlesbrough 142,691
blackpool 142,283
bolton 139,403
ipswich 138,718
telford 138,241
york* 137,505
west bromwich 136,940
peterborough* 136,292
stockport 136,082
slough 126,276

lost in translation

gemma mispronounces a number of midlands towns, for the purpose of 'winding me up' (as i believe the street-youths say). one of her favourites is evesham, which she calls 'ever-sham', rather than 'eve-sham', which as you all know is the correct version.

my cause was not helped this morning, when eric faulkner, of all people, popped up on the today programme to advertise his forthcoming performance at this year's glastonbury festival. the one-time bay city roller is performing traditional protest songs, including one in support of the chain-makers of cradley heath. but he pronounced the 'a' the same as in the word 'brad', rather than 'tray'. this is just designed to assist gemma in her concerted campaign to mangle my heritage.

eastenders

it was strange at first to live in a place with actual rooms; our old flat was pretty much open plan. the new house is a turn of the (last) century mid-terrace, one of many such properties in the east end park district of leeds.

east end park, ls9, starts around one mile from leeds city centre, and is comprises of the terraced housing mentioned above (including some of the countries few remaining back to backs), and the park that lends it’s name to the area. a fair proportion of the population is irish, and there are also enclaves of polish and caribbean, which gives a very slight cosmopolitan feel.

despite the tightness of the houses, the street on which i live is amazingly peaceful, and the neighbours are friendly to the point of stereotypicality.

yam yam

my job involves resolving complaints against the insurance products that we underwrite. to enable us to do this, we have the ability to listen to telephone calls, which get recorded. i was asked to listen to a call by a colleague this week, who confessed to not being able to understand a word that was being spoken by the customer. the voice on the phone was of a man from west bromwich, and coming as i do from that neck of the woods, i was called upon to provide translation.

i did have to explain the difference between birmingham and the black country.