Leeding the way

The last student outing for this summer school - a bus trip to Leeds. I had no idea what is at Leeds. It was less than an hour's trip.

The bus dropped us off, and as usual we were given a photocopied map to make sure we found our way back. Unfortunately, the drop-off point wasn't even on the map. So we walked until we came across some of the streets that were on the map.

Someone had said something about one of the biggest shopping malls being in Leeds. I'm beginning to think the Brits just don't know about shopping malls. Anyway this was just one of those arcades that you walk through and "ooh!" and "aah!" but no one would think of buying anything here.



Then we came across the market. Nice old building. Inside - well, it's a market full of stalls of cheap junk. One of the good things about living out of a suitcase is that you don't feel in the slightest tempted by this stuff.



Someone said the Royal Armouries was the place to see. So we trudged through town and across a bridge following the occasional little sign. That's the RA on the left beside this quiet little canal cul-de-sac.



The whole area was remarkably deserted. We saw very few people other than our students who were off the bus we came on.
But here there were a number of barges moored - very clean, and pretty-looking as they appeared to be inhabited.




This lady was showing off her barge-towing horse and giving quite a (long-winded but) interesting talk on the ways and traditions of barges and tow horses.




Inside the Royal Armories museum there was this huge tower displaying arms. Lots of swords and spears, helmets, shields and other bits and pieces artistically arrayed.



There were several floors on themes such as "Tournament" and "War". This apparently friendly fellow was in the tournament room.



This armoured helmet obviously belonged to a very sofisticated bloke.



But I can't help wondering if this chap was a bit of a comedian and wanted his opponents to die laughing.



There were stuffed horses and riders, and tents set up for a jousting tournament. There was going to be some sort of theatrical display, but we didn't want to hang around that long.



We did however chance upon a monologue by a chappy in the "War" room, dramatically telling about the Christmas Day during the First World War when the opposing sides briefly ceased hostilities for a game of football in No Man's Land.



We wandered back through the city. By now it was Saturday afternoon, and the place was packed - almost as crowded as Istanbul on a quiet day. There is a large section of town which is walking streets - shopping mall - only. Maybe that's the big shopping centre they were talking about.

Again, the place is full of old majestic buildings, mostly in pristine condition, but in stark contrast to things like this massive TV screen.




We heard music and followed our ears - Morris Dancing! Now there's a sight you don't see every day!

Time To Move On

One more week of teaching here and then we are moving on, leaving Sheffield and Yorkshire. It's been nice. Certainly Sheffield is much more "green leafy" than we expected. Not that keen on Leeds, but it's ok.

Bakewell and beyond

Everyone has heard of Bakewell pies - in Australia it's a brand of meat pies. In England there are Bakewell tarts - my mother used to cook them and serve them with hot custard, a family favourite. Here we can buy Bakewell tarts with thick white icing and a cherry on top - so sweet they sting your throat and you really can't taste the essential almond flavour.

Bakewell Village

In Derbyshire we found the village where all these tasty treats originate from. A delightful village, full of tourists on the day we chose to visit. Apparently we were lucky to have arrived on one of their special days. There were eight gardens open to the public, and for a mere $4 for each garden (donated to Oxfam) we could explore them - there was even a free shuttle bus to take us from one to another.




However, we chose just to wander around the village instead. The ducks and geese were having a lovely time in the river, and there were some beautiful big (really big) trout swimming around that we fancied catching and couldn't understand why no one else was trying to.



There were, of course, several bakeries taking advantage of the presence of so many tourists to sell what they claimed were the original and the best Bakewell puddings ...

They said, there are no "tarts" in Bakewell. Only puddings.

I remember Bakewell tarts with pastry at the bottom, and a little jam, and filled with almond cake. Crosby and Susanne tried one of the "original" puddings, which was filled with almond flavoured custard.

Beyond Bakewell

We noticed on the map a place called "Arbor Low Henge" and another called "Nine Ladies Stone Circle". We had heard nothing about either of them, but decided to go and look for the nine ladies. There were no signposts, we just drove to the hamlet that was marked close to it on the map, and then we had to ask some people we passed. Finally we parked the car in a shady lane, and set off along a public footpath, over a couple of stiles, and through a field of cows.



We weren't the only ones. There were others on the path, and people camping in tents by the circle of dancing ladies. Susanne and I tried to get into the swing of things.

There really wasn't much to see - we found out that the Arbor Low Henge would have been much more spectacular - but the weather was bright and sunny, and the air was clear and cool, and we had a splendid little English adventure.

Just like the famous five ...

Both Susanne and I were avid readers of Enid Blyton's "Famous Five" books when we were children, and so many things we have experienced in the English countryside seem tied to stories we have read.

We have driven along admiring the purple heather on the hills - along with bracken it apparently makes a lovely springy mattress for outdoors sleeping. Finally we found some that was close to the road, and so we had to stop and test it out.



Yep. Definitely springy!

Out and about on August Bank Holiday

It was great to have friends (from Oz) Crosby and Susanne come up from Cambridge to spend the long weekend - not least of all because they have wheels and so we could traipse around and look at some of the sights without wearing our little legs right off (... if you know what I mean).



Eyam - Plague Village

We went to visit the village of Eyam - that's "ee-'m" - which is famous for the villagers' valiant attempts to prevent the spread of the plague in 1666 by isolating the village and not allowing anyone to enter or leave when they realised the plague was present in their village.



This little graveyard is where one woman buried seven members of her family at that time.



All through the olde worlde English village there are plaques on the houses telling how many died in that family. There is a lovely little museum, too, telling the whole story, but we got there just after 4pm when they stop selling tickets. We pleaded with the lady, telling her we had come all the way from Australia, and she relented and let us in. "They're from Australia so I had to let them in ... " she explained to the people who came just behind us and wanted to know why they couldn't come in.

Well Dressing

We also arrived just in time for the annual "well dressing" ceremony. This involves a Christian type service in which they thank God for the annual provision of water to their village. The three old wells in the village are lavishly decorated - this design is made with petals and leaves.



The ceremony also involves crowning of the new festival queen, princesses and even a "Rosebud" from among the young girls in the village.



There was a parade through the village from one well to another, and a brass band playing, and maypole dancing. We were there on the first day of what would apparently be a week-long celebration.



Peter was particularly pleased with this photo he took of the brass band because when you look closely at the tuba you can see everyone reflected in it. You can even see Peter with his dark red shirt and with his camera right next to the reflection of the tuba player.



A long day

At the end of a long day it's always good to have the boys in blue to rely on. Crosby and Susanne had gotten up early in the morning to begin their long drive up to come and see us. We are living in one room here, and we have nowhere to put anyone up, so they had booked into a Sheffield hotel - a nice cheap one, naturally. As it got to be evening and we had talked our way through the day and enjoyed dinner together, it was time for them to go to their hotel.

Crosby had a piece of paper with all the necessary information ... but had accidentally come away with the wrong paper when they left in the morning. The hotel had a funny name, which he couldn't quite remember. We looked through the yellow pages, and we tried to find it again on the Internet, but it didn't seem to be there.

In frustration Crosby went next door to the police station, which is joined onto our flats, so see if they would have any ideas. They did all the same things we did, coming up blank.

Finally by using various unusual Google searches we came across it. The police had nothing much else to do, apparently, so they insisted on giving Crosby and Susanne a police escort to their hotel, which was on the seemier side of town. (I noticed they slipped into their bullet-proof vests before they did so!)

Rosy Red Cheeks

Why do English children always have such rosy red cheeks? Or do they?

In China we saw kids with bright red cheeks - they were the beggars, living it rough on the cold streets.

We have seen some kids here with those round appley cheeks, but not many.

Red cheeks are pretty much a winter thing, I would think, and this is summer. That's why the daytime temperature has been soaring to 14 degrees some days. And after our first week here of blue skies and sunshine - and the occasional threatening cloud, the clouds have finally made good their threats and we've had misty rain on and off all week.

Yep. We are definitely in England. Not that it has been unpleasant. It was 'orrible 'ot in Istanbul, and this is quite pleasant. We bought ourselves a couple of cheap little black brolleys - 2 pound each - and mine lasted a few minutes until a gust of wind turned it inside out and broke one of its little wires.

Beautiful Sheffield

Many people (like me) have (or had) an image of Sheffield as an ugly industrial city - an idea reinforced by the popular movie "The Full Monty".

Well, it ain't, not any more.



These are a couple of rather unusual flower displays in the city centre - the people are made of succulent type plants. All over town there are hanging pots, and stands of extravagant flower displays. It really is quite delightful.



And there are fountains - this one is rather fun, with the water coming up out of the ground and returning quickly into drains. We saw one like this in Zhengzhou, but with water shortages it was rarely working. Of course, as it's summer, there were little kids playing in the fountain - and it was so cold!



Where we live, a ways out of the city centre, there are the Botanical Gardens close by our place - great for an evening amble while we wait for our clothes to finish their cycle in the University Residences Laundry.




One of the fun things about wandering out and about in the evening is the squirrels chasing each other hither and thither and scrabbling around for - nuts ...? They are really fast, twitchy little critters ... but I did manage to pull my phone out quickly and catch this one.



So now it's the weekend, and we've no TV. There's nothing to do except sit here at the computer or get out there and chase squirrels. There's parts of Sheffield we haven't been near yet - I see a "boating lake" and all sorts of interesting stuff on the top left of my map. Time to fire up "Shanks's Pony" and go see ... when Peter wakes up.

No smoke without fire - ?

We have been here 11 days, and today we had our fourth smoke alarm.

The fire trucks came roaring out for the first two, but they didn't show for the third.

This evening we were just saying its about fire alarm time ... I went into the kitchen on my way to the bathroom, and smelt smoke. Looking for the source, I opened the microwave and acrid smoke poured out.

I turned on the extractor fan, went and got Peter, and went upstairs to ask our young Taiwanese friend if he left had some food on.

We started opening doors - the window only opens a crack at best - and then the smoke detector awoke from its slumber and that noise started.

The trucks were here again within a few minutes. They grabbed a huge fan and blew air through the front door, clearing most of the smoke.

It still stinks. And the interior of the microwave is a funny yellow colour.

The Grand Old Duke of York

The all-day-Saturday trip to York proved even more popular than the trip to the Peak District. Our multi-cultural group filled six large coaches.



Soon we were zooming along on the M1 - yeah, driving on the left! - to "the NORTH".



York is a beautiful old town, full of old buildings - and full of tourists. The city centre was almost as crowded as Istanbul. The circus was in town, and this little boy desperately wanted mum to come see the float that was passing through town.




After our first week of work in a new job, a cruise up the River Ouse was about as energetic as we felt.



On this lovely summer afternoon there were lots of people messing about in boats ... and cars!



There were quite a few teams practicing their sculling skills - apparently there are frequent boat races of all kinds on the River Ouse.



York has a big ferris wheel like the "London Eye" - you only go round once, it takes quite a long time, it moves continuously and people step on and off as it slowly passes at the bottom.



We took an hour to putter down through the town and back again, under a series of well-maintained bridges bearing various old crests, and we heard stories of Vikings and battles long ago on the river and in and around old York.



Then, of course, we had to wander through town and take a look at York Minster.



It's magnificent ( - but we had to admit that seeing the cathedral in Prague had taken the shine off this one considerably).

The place was full of strange and interesting people. Some of them were us, and other tourists, some of them were doing a pub crawl 'for charity' - like these ladies.



Tired and leg-weary we headed back to meet our bus. We saw a group of foreign students also taking a rest, and stopped to chat.



But it turned out they weren't among our 300, they were some of the 50 that had come into York from Newcastle for the day.

Sunday tomorrow - so glad we are in England and not Istanbul! Sunday was always our hardest day, here it is a time for rest and even church.

The Peak District

When they first announced this excursion, I thought they said we were going to see the "Pig District" and I screwed up my nose.

Then they explained about the very popular Peak District National Park. So on a Wednesday afternoon we piled aboard the coach with our students - "you don't have to go, you know", we were told - delighted at the opportunity.



Within seconds we were out of the city and driving past the purple heather on the moors. In places the countryside was really rugged.



And then there were farms and fields, and black-faced sheep with long tails.



We were going to the little town of Castleton - very popular because of several caves or caverns that can be accessed here (for a price).



On this beautiful summer afternoon, our large group of foreign students made up a small fraction of the hoard of tourists packing the town. But the local people were, as ever, gracious and friendly.



Up between those hills is the entrance to Speedwell Cavern, where you descend and travel in a boat on an underground river. By the time we made our way up this hill (which is a lot steeper than it looks) there were more than sixty people waiting in line to go into Speedwell.



We joined the queue and waited. After a good twenty minutes - during which time the line had shuffled forward minimally only once - Peter went down the hill and around the corner to the head of the queue and discovered that they take about twenty passengers every twenty minutes ... we would miss our bus back to the Uni if we stayed. So we gave up and decided to maybe come again another day.



Back at the carpark I had time to bond with some of my students. And we puzzled over this sign:



We've heard of "Cow Tipping", and we have seen a Far Side cartoon about "Boy Tipping" (a revenge thing) ... but Fly Tipping - ?

[So we did look it up on the 'Net, and it has something to do with dumping rubbish. I still prefer the image of trying to get those tiny flies to fall over.]