Homeward Bound Episode 3

I had well over an hour's wait in Portbou for a train to Barcelona and managed to buy a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a croissant. In 4 short weeks I had already forgotten the universal Spanish greeting of "Ola". I arrived in Barcelona at midday.

I was much more impressed with Spanish organization and ease of travelling by train than French! Firstly all announcements at platforms and on trains are made in English as well as Spanish and Catalonian, and secondly the Barcelona Sants station is very well laid out and easy to follow. It would make a relatively pain free trip for anyone visiting. There's also a direct line from the airport to the station costing €3.18 and taking less than 20 minutes.

There are clear electronic boards with all the trains listed. The hop on hop off buses have a stop outside the station so no need to go in search of them. All in all very impressive and what a spectacular city! There are 2 hop on hop off companies and I chose the red one (Barcelona City Tour) because it operates 2 routes, east and west.



I had worked out a route where I could get on at the station and do stops 12 to 18 on the west red route, then change to the east green route and go all the way around and then change back to the west and do the remainder of the stops, 1 to 11, ending up back at the station. As it was I ended up worrying about the time (each tour lasts for 2 hours) and jumped off the east route early at Sagrada Familia stop 11 and rushed through the streets to pick up the west route at the Cathedral, missing Hospital de Sant Pau, Park Guell and Tribado.



Actually as the trip from the station to the airport was so easy and the airport also well organized I would have had plenty of time but that is in hindsight. I loved Barcelona, especially the views from Montjuic, the harbour and the interesting buildings.



The buses all have retractable roofs in case it rains which was also an improvement on Paris. Definitely a good way to get an overview of the city if you haven't been before. The tickets last for a couple of days so you can visit the interesting places in more depth on day 2 and you are given a book of discount tickets, a guide book with a map and an English commentary.



I was also very impressed with the 2 airports, Barcelona and Madrid, modern and very well organized with clear directions and times displayed of how long it will take you to get to your gate. Madrid airport interior is all yellow and very spacious. If there is a downside it is that the departure boards are a bit few and far between. There are plenty of shops at both airports and a high speed train takes you to the boarding gates at Madrid.

Left Madrid just after midnight and arrived on time in Joburg, glad to see Peter after 5 weeks of travelling.....


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Location:Barcelona and Madrid

Homeward Bound Episode 2

Luggage free I was now set to roam the streets of Paris and set off to find a hop on hop off bus. It was quite a walk along the banks of the Seine to Notre Dame where I could pick up a bus but it didn't matter as it was still a little early. Paris seems to wake up around 10am. I was very impressed with Notre Dame - I went inside and a service was in progress with 2 youngsters singing - I could have listened all day to their voices making music.






Once on the bus it started to rain so I did 2 circuits, only getting off at the Eiffel Tower but not going up as the electronic boards advised a 45 minute delay at stage 2.













No covers on the upper deck so everybody moved downstairs and squashed in.







I never knew that one could climb to the top of the Arc du Triomphe but as we approached it along the Champs Elysses you could see people on top.





After the tour I roamed the streets for a few hours looking for bistros advertising free WiFi - of course spotted many before I started looking and then couldn't find one.






(Remained incommunicado for the rest of my trip home as I did not want to incur any roaming costs).





As I walked back towards the station, crossing the Seine again I spotted a building that appeared to be cocooned in giant bubble wrap that was undergoing renovation.





Had an exciting moment over supper when the police burst in to my cafe and then changed their minds and went next door. Don't know what was happening.

At the station I found a helpful man at the ticket office (I went to the window that had an English sticker). He exchanged my ticket from Calais to Paris which I no longer required to one from Portbou on the French border to Barcelona.

Another night spent trying to sleep unsuccessfully during a journey.




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Location:Paris

Homeward Bound Episode 1

I had booked a coach from Morecambe to Paris with one change at Victoria coach station and no worries about lugging the case up and down stairs at London tube stations. (Quite a problem at some stations). Later I changed the ticket to leave from Shipley, directly after the reunion with my school and sailing club friends. It cost £5 to change which wasn't too bad.

Leaving from Shipley meant that I could stay at my brother's house in London for the Sunday and most of Monday before catching the coach from Victoria at 21h30 on Monday night. It was interesting to compare the progress made on his house since my visit 3 weeks earlier which was before the final filming for Grand Designs had taken place. Since then the lounge and sauna had been finished and the 16 foot gold Chesterfield sofa had been delivered and installed in t otherwise white kitchen.

I walked the streets of London to have lunch on Monday with my goddaughter, Danielle - she is living in the tiniest little bedsit in Maida Vale whilst doing a Masters at Kings College in Disaster Management - world disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis etc. Very interesting. Something for us retired folk? I walked back alongside the Grand Union canal.



I also walked through Paddington Station and was impressed to see all the bicycles - London's new emphasis on sustainability.



Back at the house my brother Ian and I had a sauna in his basement next to the video dance floor and jacuzzi spa! It's a glass fronted sauna. The house still needs to be finished - notably their own bedroom and en suite in the basement. They're hoping to start earning money by allowing companies to use the house for magazine shots, advert backgrounds etc. It lends itself quite well being plain white and in that you can close doors on any mess e.g. Everything in the kitchen can be shut away behind folding or sliding doors. There is colored lighting installed everywhere which changes the white to other colours on request! Claire sent me up for a bath in the guest room, which they are using at the moment, before I embarked on the 3 day return journey.The bath is free standing and made of a double skinned white material with a texture similar to kendal mint cake. There's a button in the bath that you press and the whole bath changes colour. You can change it to blue or pink or green or put it on to cycle to change automatically.

Well London on Halloween was definitely a sight to see with many houses in their area decorated. One had a giant spider stretching over the entire front of the house and many had cobwebs draped over the railings.
We dropped Tilly and Maeve off with Claire to do some "Trick'n'Treating" and Ian gave me a lift to the coach station.


Anyway on to The Journey.......

Check in for the coach was done in the hour leading up to departure as it was going across a border. We were also given luggage labels to attach.
The coach left at 21h30 and at Dover we all had to get off and go through both English and French passport control. We boarded the ferry on the coach and then had to get off and leave the hold durn transit. We had an hour or so to visit the Duty Free shop, bars, coffee shops etc.

The coach arrived in Paris at 6h30 and it took me a while to establish exactly how to get from the coach station to Gare Austerlitz until I remembered that I'd researched it a couple of weeks earlier and made a note in my book. Not easy to find your way on the metro. No international standards on line naming and you really need to know where the line that you need terminates so that a) you travel on the correct line and b) in the correct direction.

In any event you can only get to Gare du Lyon and then it's a walk, bus or taxi across the Seine to Austerlitz. The left luggage facilities both here and at Barcelona Sants were excellent. Once you find them. You send the luggage through a security scan, then select a locker of the right size, unload as much of your luggage as possible, change your shoes, you may leave things loose in the locker that you don't want to carry and then you put coins in the slot and away you go. In Paris with a ticket and in Barcelona with a key. Price varies according to locker size, Paris was around €7 for 3 days (I only wanted one day) and Barcelona was about half that.

On to Episode 2... Paris




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Location:England

Mum's Birthday Celebration - lunch at the Clarendon

A family celebration with Mum's brother Ken joining us with his wife, Geraldine and Ian's eldest son, Cody.



Cody and Mum









Ken and Geraldine



Geoff and Danielle



Mum and Audrey




Tilly and big brother Cody



Gilean



Matt and Kelly



Jen and Ed



BIL and SIL



Ian and Claire

A good day was had by all!

Location:Morecambe

Mum's 80th Birthday

The Saturday celebration was to be at the communal lounge at Mum's flat in Clarence Court.
Here's some pictures of my family:



George, Kelly with friend Matt, Edward, Danielle and friend Geoff and George's friend Jen. Twins George and Edward had been with me in South Africa during August. They and their elder sisters Kelly and Danielle are the 4 children of my sister Jennifer and her husband Jeremy.



Jeremy and Jennifer.



Kelly



My brother Ian's children Gilean and Tilly.




Jennifer, Ian and Janice. I'm the eldest.



Matt and Kelly




Danielle and Geoff



George and Jen



Mum's friend since childhood - Audrey




Mum's neighbor Helen




Whoops, lit the candles on the cake and the smoke detector went off!



Mum



Ian and Gilean - Ian and Claire's house will be featured on Grand Designs tomorrow night.



Ed



Tilly and Claire.



The lounge at Clarence Court.

Location:Morecambe

Using the Stagecoach North West Goldrider

Mum wanted a day out in Kendal which meant a bus ride of about 12 miles. She gets a free bus pass so I decided to buy myself a pass for a week's free travel anywhere in the north west costing £24.
Kendal lies very close to the Lake District and Mum enjoys browsing through the shops.







Spot the old cobbled streets and if you look closely - Hogarth's Jeweller's.






Here's Mum outside a shop that specializes in chocolate of any description.






A view of the main street.

For my second bus trip I caught a bus to Lancaster bus station with the intention of choosing another bus to an exotic destination. The first bus that I saw was going to Keswick which is in the Lake District, about 2 hours away by bus. I grabbed a few timetables from the office and hopped on just in time as the doors were closing.

Well as I read through the timetables I realized that It was too late in the day to get to Keswick and back again and so jumped off the bus in Bolton le Sands to walk back to Morecambe.

The next day I caught a bus outside Mum's flats that took me close to Heysham Harbour about 4 miles to the south. I planned to walk back from Heysham to Bare. The weather was clear but very blustery. As I walked along the path the wind was blowing me off to one side.

Just before the village of Heysham I reached the remains of an ancient 8th century chapel.












Next to it is the present day church and a small village with twisting streets and stone cottages.












A very picturesque church with Morecambe Bay in the background.

The remainder of the walk was along the promenade back to Morecambe, luckily the wind was blowing from the south and pushing me along. There's a row of terraced houses as you reach Morecambe that are about 4 storeys high with great views across the bay to the Lake District Mountains. Some of them have not been split into flats or renovated and would make interesting projects.

On Wednesday I caught the 555 to Keswick (early in the day this time) and planned to go for a walk around Derwentwater. Once again I didn't make it! The bus was almost half an hour late arriving in Kendal, which is the half way point. The driver got out, changed the sign on the bus from Keswick to "Not in Service" and asked us all to get off. "There'll be an open top bus along just now for Ambleside" he said.

The open top bus arrived and the sign said Grasmere so we alighted, after all Grasmere was another few miles towards Keswick.





The bus arrived at Windermere railway station, it was very cold on top in the wind so we soon moved under cover. The bus then did a 20 minute detour down to the Lake front at Bowness and back to the railway station!



See the swans.



We then set off again to Grasmere via Ambleside.



By the time we arrived it was once again too late to try and get to Keswick and back.

I walked around Grasmere Village eating a Melton Mowbray pork pie and a Mars Bar for lunch (as you do) and then set off to walk the four or so miles back to Ambleside alongside Grasmere Lake and Rydal Water.













Beautiful!
Lost the path at one time and had to scramble down through some woods and climb over a fence. Had visions of slipping in my trainers (my hiking boots were at home in South Africa) coming to grief, and not being found for days as nobody knew where I was.
Isn't life exciting sometimes?

Location:North West England