UK Summer adventures

Lake District

The English countryside was not something we had experienced much so we planned a getaway with some fellow antipodieans Spencer and Amber to the picturesque Lake District. Home to Beatrix Potter, Kendals mint cake and the infamous scene of James Weller getting lost about 20 years ago.

We treated ourselves to first class on the 4 hour train journey north and were impressed with what was on offer. We ate and drank and chatted and before we knew it we were in Windermere, and walking to our little cottage that we had rented for the long weekend.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning and we were up for a tramp. Hamish had hired a car so after a relatively slow start we bought some supplies and headed out for a 12km walk from Ambelside. It was beautiful scenery, a lot like Queenstown with slate fences and houses. You can walk all over farmland here, so we got to see a lot of the farms, weirdest thing was that they don't dock lambs tails here!

We had managed to coincide our trip with the Great North swim which was basically a lake swim which made the traffic interesting. It was similar to Taupo in that there was only one road around the lake.

Our walk finished with a big climb to a viewpoint with views right over Lake Windermere which was awesome.

We capped off the day with a brilliant pub meal in the middle of nowhere, the food was some of the best we have had in the UK! 

The weather wasn't great on Sunday so we decided to spend the day wandering round the shops and driving round the rest of the District. We even visited the Beatrix Potter museum which was great, you could really see where she got her inspiration from when she was illustrating her many books.

Spencer and Amber had to get the late train back so we cooked ourselves a meal and had an early night.

We were keen to do more tramps on Monday so we headed out nice and early an did a loop around Keswick lake which was cool, we also saw a fighter jet going out for a test run which was awesome. We also saw an awesome waterfall and noticed this weird tradition of hammering coins into logs?!

A great long weekend!

Highlight: The countryside, it looked and smelled like NZ
Lowlight: The traffic
Interesting Fact: Tourism first began in the Lake District as far back as the late 1600´s when visitors travelled to the Lakes to escape the city smog and to breathe fresh country air.
One of the Lake District´s most celebrated former residents was poet and author, William Wordsworth, who published his ´Guide to the Lakes´ in 1810, which attracted more visitors to the region. By 1835, the book had reached its fifth edition.

Goodwood Festival of speed and Portsmouth

As a compromise between attending the Formula 1 again this year and not attending the Formula 1 this year, we settled on going to the Goodwood Festival of Speed and tagging on a day trip to Portsmouth as well.

Up early on the Saturday to go pick up our rental car which turned out to be the lamest car ever to turn up to a car festival in….a Fiat Panada. A beige one at that. But the main thing is that we were on our way. The festival itself is held on Goodwood estate which is in the South West of England, and is surrounded by really lovely countryside. We parked up with the 150,000 other punters and spent the day wandering around the race track and thousands of cars, bikes and planes.

Highlights of the day were the Red arrows aero display which was just wicked, the weather (which was meant to be rain and thunderstorms and turned out to be hot and sunny), and all the cars. We also saw a few famous people like Jenson Button. It was also a lesson in how the other half live with loads of corporate hospitality tents and people being flown in by helicopter, and Veurve Cliquot pop up bars everywhere where you could only buy a bottle for £70 a pop!

After a long day we hopped back in our Panda and drove south to our B&B in the happening village of Lee-on-the-solent. We had a nice pub meal and then hit the hay.

Highlight: Seeing all the different types of cars and motorbikes, although Hamish got a bit down when he realised he couldn't afford anything.

Lowlight: The traffic getting there, and our rude rental car.

Interesting Fact: The Goodwood Festival of Speed was founded in 1993 by Lord March in order to bring motor racing back to the Goodwood estate. Shortly after taking over the estate in the early 1990s, Lord March wanted to bring back motor racing to Goodwood Circuit, but did not have the necessary permit to host a race there. Therefore, he instead hosted it on his own grounds.

Sunday was another gorgeous day and we tucked into our freshly prepared full English and drove to Portsmouth. As a significant naval port for centuries, Portsmouth is home to the world's oldest dry dock still in use and also home to some famous ships, including HMS Warrior, the Tudor carrack Mary Rose and Lord Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory. There is also the base for the Royal Navy and Royal Marine Commandos.

First stop was up the Spinnaker Tower which was built to celebrate the millennium and was budgeted for about £6million, and ended up being finished in 2005 and costing £30million. The views were amazing, right over to the Isle of Wight.

Next we went on board the HMS Warrior which was awesome; they had done it up really well and gave you a really good sense of what it would be like to live on board. Interestingly the boat never fired shot in anger. Next was a harbour cruise which was a little boring as it just went round all the boats. We had a picnic lunch in the sun before checking out the HMS Victory which was pretty much the same as the Warrior.

Then Hamish dragged us to the Alliance submarine which spent a lot of its life cruising the waters during the Cold War. It was teeny tiny and very claustrophobic.

We capped off the day with a visit to the Mary Rose museum. Basically in the 80's they lifted the wreck of Henry the 8^th's pride and joy from the sea bed, and then spent 20 years spraying wax on it to preserve it and then last year they started blow drying it and that will carry on for another 5 years! Mental amount of money to spend on a wreck. They did find some interesting relics though, like the full skeleton of the ship's dog.

It was time to head home, big weekend but enjoyable all the same.

Highlight: All the ships and museums we visited were in really good shape and really well done.

Lowlight: Ships began to look all the same after a while..

Interesting fact: They used to keep sheep in pens on top of the Victory!

Le Tour - Yorkshire

Lou's jobs doesn't have that many perks but when they do come around they are pretty good. One of these was tickets to the hospitality village in Yorkshire to celebrate the Tour de France making its way through England.

It was a Sunday so we got up early and got the train to Sheffield, it was a reasonably sunny day and it was nice to chill out on the train for a bit. When we arrived I don't think we realised how big a deal this was for the Yorkshire region, it was massive!

We hung out in the VIP area, taking advantage of nice food and drink and then got our seats to see the weird promotional cars go by, it just seemed to be the sponsors driving past with music blaring and throwing crappy promo stuff out.

And then the cyclists came passed, and then it was over! One of those things where you are glad you saw it but it wasn't that exciting at the time.

So after waiting in a queue for ages at the train station, we hopped on the train and headed back to London.

Highlight: Everyone loves a perk!
Lowlight: Long day for a Sunday 
Interesting Fact: Everyone knows that the leader wears a yellow jersey but there is also the red polka dot jersey which is the King of the Mountain - this is because the original sponsor of the jersy, Chocolat Poulain, sold chocolate with polka dot wrapping.

Glasgow and the Commonwealth Games

Hamish was very organised and entered us into the ballot for Commonwealth Games tickets and to our surprise we got lucky with tickets to the Sevens and so we took a long weekend with the idea of exploring wider Scotland a bit more, and we headed up to Glasgow on the early morning flight on Saturday.

We picked up our rental car and drove into the city, there were loads of references to the Games with volunteers everywhere and we saw quite a few teams of athletes as well, but no one we recognised.

We parked up and wandered down to the Clyde River where the main hub of activity was happening, it was a pretty warm and sunny day for Scotland and you could tell the locals were loving it. We met Clyde the official mascot (a big thistle for the record), and had some lunch (haggis, neeps and tatties) at the BBC viewing hub. We then headed back up into the city centre, and saw a bit more of Glasgow's historic buildings which were lovely.

We found the main Games sculpture and the main souvenir shop, when we popped inside there were a few of the Scottish team that had won medals so that was pretty cool. We were pretty tired by then from our 4.30am wakeup call so we headed back to the car to drive to our B&B which ended up being about 45 mins away. It was a really nice house in the country and we had a massive room so we were pleased with that.

We got changed and chilled out for a bit before driving back into Glasgow for dinner. Lou had booked a fantastic restaurant that was in the basement of the Central station, so it was a great atmosphere. We had really good scallops and steak and a lovely cocktail to top it all off. We had an early night and slept like logs.

Breakfast at the B&B was AMAZING. Like the best ever. We ate quite a bit to fortify ourselves for the day, and then drove to the city to get onto the shuttle to the Sevens venue. This stadium was in the middle of suburbia but it was in pretty good nick. There was loads of security but we managed to get through just before the first game. It was a good crowd, with people actually watching the rugby as opposed to other Sevens tournaments we have been to where it's just about the drinking. We saw the Kiwis beat Kenya although it was weird to be in a crowd where they were booing the All Blacks! 

We finished up there around 2pm, and walked back to the city in the rain. We had a quick lunch but to be honest there isn't much to do in Glasgow so we hopped back in the car and drove to Linlithgow which is the nearest village to our B&B. The main historic attraction of Linlithgow is the remains of Linlithgow Palace, the birthplace of James V and Mary, Queen of Scots. It was pretty impressive even though it's completely run down, and the loch was lovely. We had a wander round there and then as we were deciding what to do for dinner; Lou spotted the first reference to the Bennies that we had seen in Scotland! Hamish did a quick google search and it turns out that these Bennies were the local undertakers….

We had a lovely pub meal at a place called the Four Marys, named for the four ladies in waiting called Mary that accompanied Mary Queen of Scots when she went to court in France.

Monday was a beautiful sunny day so we had another fantastic breakfast and drove out to Stirling. This is a strategically important city as the "Gateway to the Highlands", with its position near the Highland Boundary Fault between the Scottish Lowlands and Highlands.

We explored the outside of the castle and the accompanying church and graveyard, and saw some amazing sights. Especially out to the Wallace monument, which is a tower that stands on the Abbey Craig, from which Wallace was said to have watched the gathering of the army of King Edward I of England, just before the Battle of Stirling Bridge. 

Next we drove the very scenic drive to Oban, which was a real find. A gorgeous seaside fishing village right on the West coast of Scotland, where a lot of the whisky is distilled too! It was such a hot day and we were a little peckish by this point. So we walked to the end of the pier and found a shack that was selling fresh seafood pretty much straight off the boat! It was epic, we had scallops and langoustines in garlic butter and some of their hot smoked salmon which was incredible. Such a nice change from the normal rubbish shellfish we get in London.

Very satisfied we walked up the hillside to McCaig's Tower which is a prominent tower on the hillside. It’s a bit random as it looks Roman, but it's just a round tower with nothing in the middle, but it turns out McCaig was an admirer of Roman and Greek architecture, and had planned for an elaborate structure, based on the Colosseum in Rome. His plans allowed for a museum and art gallery with a central tower to be incorporated. Inside the central tower he planned to commission statues of himself, his siblings and his parents. His death brought an end to construction with only the outer walls completed.

We then chanced upon the Oban distillery where we bought some whiskey samples (just to check that it was ok…)

Then back to the car and a scenic drive back to Glasgow through other cute little towns like Invernay.

We got back to the airport and dropped the car off and then noticed that our flight had been delayed by 3 hours!!! Epic fail. Apparently bad weather in London meant they didn’t have a plane in Glasgow. So we had dinner, and then we saw the plane had been delayed another hour….grumpiness set in. We ended up waiting about 5 hours for our flight, it turns out they couldn't cancel it because all the hotels in Glasgow were full (due to Commonwealth games) so they had to fly us back! Long story short we got home at 3am…..and got up for work a few hours later…To rub salt into the wound the South African rugby team were at the airport at the same time and the crowd were cheering them :(

Highlight: Attending a world class sporting event and the countryside of Scotland is just beautiful
Lowlight: The flight home…and losing the gold medal!
Interesting Fact: The phrase ‘Glasgow kiss’ is given in the Oxford Dictionary to mean a head-butt, first seen in 1982.