Of falsehoods and fishermen
It may be a case of false promotion but if you were to believe their postcards the Belgian coast would be full of bronzed, bare-breasted beauties, the swimming suit of yesteryear relinquished in favour of the birthday suit of the current day. We went looking but the only points of interest to be found were a few fishermen and the hardy, fully clothed against grey skies and coolish summer weather.
Oostduinkerke may not be the best known of European holiday spots but it is here the grandparents of Fleurs’s friend Thomas have an apartment which looks out from its fourth floor vantage point across the sand dunes onto a beach which stretches to the Netherlands in the North and France in the South. To the West across the Channel, although not to be seen, is England. Dotted among the dunes at our end of town are a few holiday homes, most of them still shuttered-up since winter, and a huge, stark building which belongs to the socialists and used until recently as a children’s camp, now destined we understand to be home to a Belgian reality television show. Bleak Brother or something appealing like that no doubt. In town, a wide promenade is bordered on one side by tall apartment blocks and, at ground level, restaurants, shops with plastic buckets and spades, toys, kites and souvenirs, and places hiring out novelty pedal-powered devices. On the seaside is a row of stark, uniform white huts which can be hired throughout the summer to store beach gear. For the first month of summer the place seems very quiet but it comes alive, we are told, in July and August. Perhaps it is then the restaurants will stay open after 7 at night.
But if bare-breasted beauties were not to be found, the other subjects of local postcards were about; the fishermen in yellow parkas and leggings who trawl the shore each day using Clydesdale-like horses to pull nets though the chest-high surf. At the end of each trawl, the nets are emptied on the beach and useable fish, in this case shrimps, stored in cane baskets strapped to the sides of the horses. Left behind to the marauding seagulls or to be washed back into the sea are the small crabs, baby flounder and hundreds of jellyfish, the latter of which seemed to have the texture and look of discarded silicone breast implants. It was all very photogenic, aside perhaps from the fact that the catches seem meager, the fishermen playing to an audience of skinny legged, pasty schoolchildren and a local journalist and photographer.
In the distance from the balcony of the apartment we could see Dunkirk, or Duinkerke as the Belgians spell it, the scene of the great landing during World War II, and in the other direction Nieuwpoort. Although much bigger than Oostduinkerke, Nieuwpoort has the same look and feel with its tall apartment blocks, wide promenade and pedal-powered contraptions for hire. We know this because we walked there, for what seemed like miles, along the beach, stopping at a pier from which local children were trying their hand with crab nets and others were fishing with rods without any visible sign of success.
It was in Nieuwpoort too that we came across the geriatric equivalent of a biker-gang run. Elderly in wheel chairs everywhere, ten abreast and at times blocking the entire promenade. This was intimidating stuff and maybe why the single helicopter of the Belgian armed forces hovered overhead. Keeping order, or maybe ensuring that this gang of oldies was not going to disrobe and bring the postcards to life.

The tubes strike back
Something unusual happened the other evening. In Geneva, on our way back by bus to the hotel in Ferney-Voltaire, the driver stopped outside the United Nations headquarters to let on a group of passengers. The drill is that you are supposed to buy tickets from a vending machine before boarding, but these people hadn’t done that thinking you could purchase them on board. The driver ushered them back to the vending machine but it was apparent from their confused actions that the instructions were not to their language. And this is where it was unusual. The driver got off the bus and took each one through the process, determining how many sections they were travelling, feeding in the coins and getting the ticket. Had that been Abu Dhabi they would have been shouted at, unceremoniously kicked off and told to wait for the next bus, in this case one hour.
But if that was unusual, what happened on our return Easyjet flight from Geneva was extraordinary. Or rather, it was what happened before we even left the ground. Everyone was on board and the flight attendants were proceeding along the passageway ensuring that we were all buckled in, seats back and luggage in the overhead lockers or under the seat in front, you know the drill, when one of the attendants noticed a passenger, an older woman, across the aisle wearing a plaster cast on her arm. Next thing there is a gaggle of crew around telling this woman that, unless she can produce a medical certificate clearing her to fly, she cannot stay aboard. Of course, a medical clearance is not one of the items unsuspecting passengers can usually produce at a moment’s notice and a long discussion ensued with the pilot giving progress reports. Something like, “Sorry about the delay folks, we are having trouble with one of our passengers, she won’t get off the plane, but we’ll be shot of her soon.” And so there they were, this poor woman and her friend had to get off and the plane held up further while they located and unloaded her luggage. How humiliating. Or how upsetting if you were her.
One would have thought these things could have been noticed and sorted before she boarded, but that may be a consequence of budget travel where you print your own tickets, check yourself in and put your own labels on luggage. In this pressure-cooker travel Easyjet does not even allocate seats, rather it is first on, first served, and so experienced passengers employ tactics to board early which makes a rugby maul look tame. As one plane arrives, boarding passengers are already lined up at the airbridge waiting for the last of the incoming passengers to disembark, a bit like getting on the tub in rush hour. Etiquette and courtesy are out the window and we have learned to jostle with the best of them.
Unlike the poor woman in Geneva we did get home, eventually. Our flight from Geneva to London’s Luton airport took a little over one hour but, as (bad) luck would have it, it was a further three hours from Luton to Ealing. For the second time in almost as many weeks the tube drivers were on strike, creating bedlam on London transport. We should have cursed them but a cross though never crossed our minds as we lugged leaden suitcases and bags through the London rush hour.

Looking for Roger
We have been among important people. You can tell they are important by the way they carry themselves. These people, mainly men, can fill a room merely by being there, and how we know they are important is that they exude importance. In a contrived way they appear oblivious to everyone else in the world and make it an art form. Their birthright is superiority; the right to have people defer to them, chauffeurs to open car doors, officials to grace their every wish, expense accounts and endless domestic help. These are the sods that walk side by side with other important people down narrow footpaths forcing oncoming pedestrians like us to take evasive action as though invisible. They swan to the front of queues in the United Nations cafeterias as though no one else is there, and make demands of the staff while still talking loudly on mobile phones, fingers idling on lanyards displaying their significant credentials. They can do this because the world depends on them.
Indeed, we have been inside the UN headquarters in Geneva not quite saving the world, but hanging on the coattails of the New Zealand delegation to the International Labour Organisation’s annual shindig Our friends, Nanette Cormack and Helen Kelly make up the union contingent of the delegation and are staying on the French side of the border in a small town called Ferney-Voltaire. But really we are there so that Kaelene can stalk Roger Federer, apparently home in Switzerland following his historic win in the French Open tennis. Despite his recent marriage and impending fatherhood she still sees a place for him as a potential son-in-law.
But Roger is elusive, and our search takes us through old Geneva past a lineup of legendary Swiss banks, Rolex dealers, a floral clock, and shops selling diamond encrusted mobile phones. On further are the bars where City bankers drink. We lunched with Helen at the splendid Restaurant Le Petit Lac on the southern shores of Lake Geneva, but Roger was not there, nor was he at Restaurant Le Palais de Saigon back in Ferney that evening.
Switzerland is exactly as we imagined. Green countryside dotted with little alpine villages and towns, and tennis courts. One town we visited, Nyon, has its origins back more than 2,000 years, its Roman columns making a perfect frame against the backdrop of lake and deep blue sky. At the town’s centre is an impressive chateau, around five stories high, the top floor and turrets of which until the 1980’s were used to accommodate prisoners. These days the chateau is used as a museum although curiously it contains little history of the building itself and houses mainly porcelain. One thing for sure was that Roger wasn’t there.
Further south, perhaps halfway between Lausanne and Montreaux, is a small village called Grandvaux, reached by way of narrow winding lanes bordered on each side by stone walls and beyond them, acres and acres of grape vines. Perfection itself. Grandvaux is home to what Helen describes as the best restaurant in the world, Le Restaurant de l’Hotel du Monde which looks out over the lake from a height of several hundred feet towards Montreaux in the west and Geneva in the east. Roger wasn’t there, so we made do with a small vat of bubbling cheese fondue which, legend has it, is the only palatable way to eat stale cheese and bread when trapped indoors during the Swiss winter. Our only concern after eating that quantity of cheese was getting back home across the Swiss-French border. Apparently cheese smuggling is policed vigorously and, had we been stopped, sniffer dogs would have marked us for cavity searches - crack cheese being to Switzerland what crack cocaine is to the remainder of the world.
Sadly, as our four days in the land of St Bermard dogs, cow herds and cuckoo clocks came to an end the closest Kaelene came to Roger was the newspaper billboards: Federer: le coup de pouce du destin in La Liberte and Le 7 Juin devrait devenir la St-Federer in Le Matin Bleu. Saint Roger indeed.

A slightly discovered AONB
We started to discover some of the undiscovered part of the West Cotswold’s the other day, a whirlwind trip down country lanes and into little towns so rustic they seemed painted on to the landscape, or as sets for chocolate box lids. Leaving behind the Sunday morning electrical storms of London we weren’t sure what to expect as we headed down the M4 towards Stroud in Gloucester, the home of Alan Moorhouse, one of Kaelene’s genealogy friends, who has become a regular correspondent.
Stroud has never been one of those places on the must-see list, an old mill town at the confluence of five valleys, one of those areas whose history is steeped in the industrial revolution but more recently hit hard by the decline of local textile manufacturing. Fortunately, however, much of the town is being preserved and gentrified under the careful gaze of local activists and a Green-dominated council. Across from Alan’s house, for example, an old canal which looks to have been unused for decades is soon to be returned to its former working order as part of the Cotswold’s Canals Project. These canals were originally built to link the Thames and the Severn rivers and in the future will be used mainly for recreation. Similarly, many of the old mills and historic buildings have been saved from the wrecking ball and given new leases of life as housing or offices.
From Alan’s house we survived the protective challenge of a swan with its seven signets at a nearby mill pond, and peered through the windows at Lodgemore Mill which still produces the red textile for Royal Guards’ uniforms, the green baize for snooker and billiard tables and the outer covering or weave for tennis balls. Further up the hill, Rodborough Fort (described as a Victorian Folly) overlooks the town and nearby valleys but unfortunately it is behind stone walls and closed to the public.
But it was after a nice pub lunch of roast beef and pork that Alan took us to what he described as the part of the Cotswolds that is picture perfect but away from much of the usual traffic of tourists and holidaymakers. And not to disappoint we didn’t escape those unusual names; Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter, Naunton and Guiting Power. Down the road there is, confusingly, Wyck Rissington and Wick Rissington quintupled with Little Rissington, Upper Rissington and Great Rissington.
These little towns are all just beautiful, manor house and cottages built of Cotswold stone, many with stone tile roofs and stone walls, quant little churches, streams and buildings with dovecotes built into their lofts. There are waterwheels and little fords, it just goes on. Here’s the local tourism guide’s description of Guiting Power: This delightful village is a fascinating example of the unconscious harmony created by Cotswold masons over the centuries. The cottages, shops and inns are all beautifully cared for. The Farmers Arms in the village and the Hollow Bottom Inn on the road leading to Winchcombe form welcome breaks on a number of glorious walks that can be taken in this area - north-westwards to Guiting Woods, south-eastwards down the Windrush Valley to Naunton, or south-westwards to Hawling. Quite so.
Apparently it costs quite a lot to buy property in these little towns and it is easy to see why, although there is a question over paying a fortune for a property to have it become a gawking-stop for people like us. The cheapest we saw listed was Rose Cottage in Naunton. With two bedrooms, this Grade II listed stone cottage is described as in need of improvement, but a bargain at 210,000 pounds ($NZ545,000). Most places seem to be upwards of 500,000 pounds.
The Cotswolds has been designated as England’ largest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, “a precious landscape whose distinctive character and natural beauty are so outstanding that it is in the nation's interest to safeguard them.” It is little wonder that Alan wanted to show as much as he possible could in an afternoon, but time allowed us only a cursory scratching of the surface. It is, of course, a good reason to return.

A deer in the hand
It may be that our Australian friend Ken has stopped talking to us as twice on Friday we ignored his instructions. Coming home from Richmond he tried to make us turn right after the Kew Bridge across the Thames and then onto the congested Northern Circular. Instead, we turned left, then turned right at the Waterman Centre, passed the Brentford Football ground and proceeded through South Ealing to home. After ignoring Ken’s strident commands to do an immediate U turn and go back the way we came, he stopped talking which just goes to show that SatNav’s digital voices have feelings too. We may have heard him muttering that a little local knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Living the dreams of past glory, we had returned to the scene of a previous crime, the former Richmond Hill home of Rolling Stone Mick Jagger. We had gone there at about 3.00am one morning years ago to be photographed on Mick’s doorstep, very much the worse for wear and dressed in silly outfits after a murder mystery party. Trouble was we got the neighbour’s place that night such was our state of befuddlement. We can report nevertheless that the Jagger house is still there, although now just occupied by Jerry Hall after kicking Mick out, and the neighbour’s big black door is still there too.
As would be expected of an area that is home to stars and models, Richmond, Surrey, is a very good address, albeit in that old-fashioned London way. Along the Thames towpath nice restaurants and pubs are intermingled with traditional artisans, a boat builder for instance hand making skiffs, and then there are rowboats for hire and a little art place selling “orgasmic” ice-cream (that’s sorbet). Kaelene would say that the shops are to die for.
Further up the hill is the 2,500 acre Richmond Park, the largest Royal Park in London within which around 650 red and fallow deer roam freely. Apparently royal parks were created by monarchs at various times to satisfy or indulge their predisposition for hunting without having to travel too far. Probably a little like the hunting lodges currently in New Zealand where pampered tourists can shoot hand-reared deer from the comfort of their own five star huts. These days the Richmond Park deer are protected from predatory royals and for a mere 50 pounds a year or 500 pounds for life, ordinary folk can adopt one. This amount will cover winter food supplements, vets bills and “tree cradles”, whatever they may be. If a deer is not to your liking, then also for adoption are stag beetles at 15 pound a year and green woodpeckers at 25 pound.
Our drive through the park did pose one interesting question about the difference between fern and bracken. Each of us suggested the extensive ground cover throughout was one or the other and a quick referral to the ultimate arbiter, Google, provided the answer. Bracken is a large, coarse fern commonly found on moorlands.
Later, the song Jerusalem sprang to mind as Aussie Ken guided us to the new Westfield shopping mall in White City, right across from the BBC film studios. The mall is huge and modern, has all the brand-name shops, and is a blot on the landscape. These malls, if the New Zealand example is anything to go by, are destined to rip the soul from the shopping villages which are such a feature of London, and trade along the suburban high streets will go into decline as shoppers opt for the free parking, air conditioned environment and the food halls of these ghastly places. And of course, given it was wet on Friday, we contributed to this deterioration by abandoning an intended visit to the Portobello Market in Nottinghill opting instead for the shelter of the mall. Such are the contradiction of life.
Back at home in Ealing, the four bird feeders hanging from trees in the backyard have proved to be a hit, each morning we watch little red breasted robins gorge themselves, at times sharing the feeders with big fat pigeons that fly in from the nature reserve. That is if they can get in ahead of the squirrel which hangs upside down from the tree and steals what it can.

Whiteout
As temperatures at home in Christchurch plummet to overnight minuses, we are basking in the spring heat of London. The mercury tipped the gauge at 26 degrees the other day with unusual results. In parks and on the streets everywhere, luminous white bodies are being exposed to the sun, in our view putting low flying aircraft in danger of reflected sun strike. It is a phenomenon rarely seen in New Zealand, men walking down city streets with their tops off, others with shirts unbuttoned, bellies protruding shamelessly over belts. Public areas are given over to sunbathing, including at Hyde Park where people lounge about in the ubiquitous green and white striped deckchairs. We put this curious phenomenon down to the predominance of terraced housing which forces inhabitants to do things in public that really should be restricted their own backyards or, at worst, the beach.
We have another new friend here, an Australian called Ken who safely navigated us yesterday through the long and winding roads of Wiltshire and then onto Cardiff in the great silver Mercedes. Ken is our chosen voice on SatNav and we appreciate him very much, although Anousheh may live to regret loaning him to us. Ken is quite patient, giving instructions on which roads to take and where to go, never scolding us when we get it wrong, simply recalculating and offering fresh advice. Not once has he got cross, although Kaelene quite rightly pointed out that he could be programmed to give positive reinforcement when we get it right. Following an instruction like, “At the roundabout, proceed ahead and take the second exit left”, on the successful completion of the manouevre he could say, “Well done cobbers, mission accomplished”, or something supportive like that. At times we thought we could hear him saying “Speed up, speed up, you usually don’t drive so slowly.” Clearly he thought he was still with Anousheh.
We were in good hands with Ken and found ourselves, as planned, abandoning the motorway and weaving along beautiful country roads, passing though lovely little towns, although, to our ears, with rather unusual names: Ogbourne St George and Ogbourne St Andrew, Winterbourne Monkton and Winterbourne Bassett, Manningford Bohune Common, Manningford Abbots, Mannngford Bruce, and just plain old Manningford (are they related?) to name a few. But the purpose of this spur-of-the-moment deviation through these quaint little towns of thatched cottages and lush spring countryside was to visit Stonehenge for no other reason than it is there. And splendid it is. For the entry fee of around 6 pound (or free if you join the National Heritage outfit) visitors are able to wander around the perimeter of this World Heritage site to the accompaniment of a digital voice guide explaining its history and origin. The only downside was the swarming grass grub beetles which appeared to frighten visiting children, but no so us former hardy rural folk.
The British do countryside much better than we in New Zealand; the farmland is much more picturesque with woodlands and trees everywhere, the roads and lanes are often framed by hedgerows and villages are ribboned on either side with brick houses and quaint pubs. It is delightful.
We stopped at Westbury, a town which bears the same surname as Kaelene’s cousin and is famous for having a white horse measuring 180 foot wide from nostril to tail carved into a nearby hillside. This was done around 1800 to commemorate Alfred the Great’s victory over the Danes, 1,000 years earlier; better late than never we surmised. Until recently the horse shape was cut directly into the chalk of the hill, but maintenance proved too much like hard work and it was concreted over and painted white. Unfortunately the special paint used for the purpose isn’t as successful as planned as the horse turns concrete-grey from time to time and has to be repainted. Perhaps they should rewrite history and say the town is famous for its grey horse.
Unfortunately it was Wednesday when we called and the Westbury Visitor’s Centre is closed on a Wednesday, so we had to make do with buying postcards at the local knick-knack store. “We did have a fridge magnet once,” the proprietor responded to Kaelene’s request for souvenirs. It was probably sold after the war judging by the remainder of the stock.
If we had one complaint it would be that Ken is not equipped to deal with traffic congestion and it took us an hour to move two miles from the M25 entry onto the M4 after stopping for an early dinner at the Cardiff Hard Rock Café. Similarly, back in London, instead of taking an early off ramp, we were directed to leave the motorway at the point it meets the northern circular, a by-pass which runs close by our house. Unfortunately it took another hour to travel a few miles and, while that may just be a consequence of driving in London, Aussie Ken will have to find better routes than that if he is to retain our confidence.

Enhancing the experience
If travel awards were to be handed out for sheer and utter opportunism, London’s Luton airport would take the cake. For “just” 3 pounds, or around $NZ7.50, passengers on departing airlines can "buy priority through security". This is billed as a “fast and efficient option for those passengers looking to take the quickest possible route through security”. More so, “the Priority Lane has been designed to give an ‘executive lounge’ feel and enhance the ‘flying experience’”. Welcome to corporate-speak at its most startlingly cynical, the airport bosses turning their own inefficient but compulsory security processes into an opportunity to generate additional revenue. We guess they must be admired for their entrepreneurial cheek.
And while on the subject of cheek, a while ago we watched on television the chief executive of Ryanair, one of the United Kingdom’s leading discount airlines, talk about the possibility of his airline charging passengers for using onboard toilets. It was just a theoretical discussion, but he saw no reason why passengers who didn’t use the toilets should pay the same travel costs as those who did. User pays, his mantra.
Ever the budget conscious travelers, we have been eager to exploit the recession and take advantage of special offers and travel discounts for a few side trips out of London, and they are being advertised everywhere. Aer Lingus has free seats available from London to Dublin, while Ryanair has a selection from as low as one pound each way. Easyjet had single trip fares to exotic destinations in Portugal and Spain on sale for as low as 16 pounds and on that basis we should be clocking up carbon miles by the reckless thousands. But it is never that simple. Behind the advertised fares are add-ons and they are extraordinary. For example, free return seats on Aer Lingus from London to Dublin requires the additional payment of 59.98 pounds in taxes, 10 in handling fees and a further 20 for a single checked-in bag. So, the cost of these so-called free fare return flights is 89.98 quid (or $NZ227) per person, with another 7.50 pound for optional insurance and, for the sporty, 50 each way for equipment such as skis or golf clubs.
Ryanair has a more extensive range of add-ons. On-line check in generally costs 5 pounds per pop, optional flight confirmation by text message 1 pound, and, to be one of the first to board the plane another 6. Our return trip to Dublin saw the 32 pounds in fares and taxes inflate to a total of 72 pounds.
We have booked a trip to Geneva on Easyjet in June and for a further 26 pounds on top of the other charges we can apparently be among the first through the gate to get the widest choice of seats, whatever that means, plus have access to a dedicated check-in desk.
Meanwhile, in London we have a new acquaintance, his name is David. Not that we have seen him or even know his surname, but our friend from New Zealand, Nanette, took us out in his car on Friday for a rare above-ground exploration of London and beyond. As a consequence of his generosity David may now have some serious traffic infringement issues to take care of, a result of the London authorities obsession with CCTV cameras. No misdemeanor goes undetected, however minor.
Aside from our sneaking out of a hotel carpark without paying, which was simply an act of sheer criminality, we blame SatNav, the in-car global positioning system, for the wrong turns, occupation of bus lanes, parking on double yellow lines, and failing to stop at red traffic lights which marred our day. Such were SatNav’s contradictory instructions, we spent the first three hours trying to get away from an area called The Angel Islington to which, for some reason, we kept returning to, like neurotic homing pigeons. Nevertheless, we did get to see both sides of the river, several times, the Smithfield Meat Markets, the Leadenhall Market, places of interest around the Monument and Pudding Lane, and the tenements of the East End before veering out towards the M25, and over the Queen Elizabeth Bridge which crosses the Thames on the Essex, Kent border. The bridge is one-way, the return journey is through a tunnel which is not quite as scenic. For us it was a good day out, but for David it may have been an expensive one. Still, by the time the traffic tickets roll in, Nanette will be back in New Zealand and we’ll be in hiding.