Hello Crabbies
Is that the correct name for more than one or am I trying out for a headline writing job at News International?
C’mon I can take the lot of you
We saw these wee critters just over the sea wall at Playa Blanca in Lanzarote.
Sex rears its ugly head
They want to be careful, they are but yards away from the very tasty seafood restaurant Bodegon Las Tapas
Photos copyright QueenMab/Shipscook Photographic. contact simon.ball3@btopenworld.com for commercial reuse
‘Here we are now at your hotel in Corra-lechhhho’ the rep’s voice boomed around the coach as we arrived at the Riu Oliva Beach Hotel on the island of Fuerteventura. Very nice it was too set in the middle of the Correlego National Park, miles away from the resort town. We had fallen on our feet once again despite booking a room we got an apartment with a separate bedroom too. No kitchen though as the Riu was all-inclusive and we were just in time to catch the last servings of dinner, before crashing out for the night.
The following morning we took off down the beach. There’s an awful lot of it.
Beach Taxi
It shelves out for a long way into the Atlantic and beyond a certain point no swimming costumes are required.
The island of Los Lobos and beyond that Lanzarote
Back at the hotel the pool areas were teaming with families in Deutchland/Engerland (delete as appropriate) shirts. As a rule the Deutchland shirts had snaffled all the best sun loungers at some unearthly hour, only for the hotel’s cats to enjoy shedding fleas on their nice comfy towels while the ‘Chermans’ were at breakfast or back in bed. Our own countrymen tended to sit around the bar area drinking all-inc lager from opening time, so they were nice and pissed up by the time the footy started. I’d also fondly imagined that there would be no rugrats there as the school holidays hadn’t started, but there were loads of them getting under your feet when carrying boiling hot water in the restaurants and generally grizzling all the time. Since the beach was such a pleasant refuge we didn’t hang about the hotel too much.
Hoopoe
We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food and drink at the Riu, after our Riu experience in the Cape Verde Islands I was prepared for dreadful wine and staff who couldn’t mix a Bloody Mary without adding Soy sauce, but the Oliva Beach was great. The on tap wine wasn’t exactly premier cru, but it was perfectly drinkable and the spirits didn’t rip out your stomach lining. All the staff were very pleasant and helpful and the Canarian restaurant in particular was excellent, especially the pimento de Padron!
We took a trip to Bristol last week and London Underground got us to Paddington with time not only for breakfast, but a brief walk along the Regents Canal before our train left.
The smog full of dust from North Africa imposed a hazy kind of light, but I was delighted to find a couple of red headed pochard dabbling in the murky depths.
They are pretty little ducks and not that common. Even their eyes are red.
It had been a long time since I was here last and the area has had a bit of a makeover with some nice looking bars and restaurants, not to mention the odd sculpture.
This one is called Standing Man by Sean Henry.
However we couldn’t hang about, a really tasty breakfast at the Sloe Bar in Paddington Station beckoned, £8.75 for full English with black pudding and a cafe late included, knocks spots of airport rip off joints.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Not a Raven after all
OK it wasn’t the Raven, but a pheasant sitting on our window sill at the Alton Towers Hotel last weekend.
‘I’ve never been so close to a pheasant before’ quoth the Powder Monkey
‘you were when we ate one’ I replied.
I made sure the window was well fastened I didn’t want to come back and discover he’d invited his mates round to scoff the complimentary biscuits.
Party room 105 everyone’s invited.
As usual our Edinburgh Fringe weekend started with breakfast at London Kings Cross Station. We’d heard about a new fast food joint in the refurbished station called Kiosk and the idea of a breakfast roll made with Gloucester Old Spots bacon, Portobello mushroom, Cumberland sausage and black pudding (£5.75) to kick off a weekend of comedy, beer and decadent grub in our favourite European city sounded too good to miss. As it happens it was pretty good, but next time I have one I will ask for it without the grilled tomato, since it makes the bread soggy and eventually fall apart.
It didn’t come as any surprise to discover that our train was delayed arriving because of ongoing engineering works over the weekend, but to give East Coast trains credit, they suspended the normal irrelevant ticket checks and just opened the automatic barriers so when it arrived at 10.20 the passengers were disembarked and we were in our reserved seats and off by 10.29. I suspect that in the twisted world of lies and privatised railway statistics this meant that our departure fell inside the window of being close enough to the advertised schedule to count as not being late.
Aside from an obnoxious stag party who boarded the train at Doncaster and got off at Newcastle it was a fairly unremarkable journey. People often remark about how as you get older time seems to fly past ever quicker, but the hour and half we spent in the company of those idiots ably demonstrated to me how to drag time out to the extent that immortality could come within humanity’s grasp.
Somehow East Coast managed to make up the time lost on the journey and we got into Edinburgh early. Amazingly when we got to Dr Caligari’s Travelprison
they let us book in early and we didn’t have to ask for towels, mugs or toilet paper, although judging from the massive great crack in wall by the bed the previous guest had been Wolverine.
So on to the shows. we kicked off with Ed Byrne’s Roaring Forties. As the title suggests Byrne turned forty this year, but the show also includes some wry observations on politics. I particularly liked the notion of how following Scottish independence Ireland, Portugal and Greece would have to club together to buy an embassy in Edinburgh and then let it out to Jason Manford for the festival. Here’s the bit about Ski holidays.
The following Sunday we woke up to find Edinburgh swathed in mist, a bit like a Hammer Horror movie. After a good breakfast at the Circus bistro in Mary Street,
Circus Bistro
we took the free gallery bus from outside the Scottish National Gallery in Princes street to the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art which is on the west side of the city in Belford Road. It was the first time we had been to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and we had been drawn in by the Witches and Wicked Bodies exhibition (£7.00) that was running there. Sadly no photos were allowed inside the exhibition but some interesting material by artists ranging from Durer and Goya to William Blake, Frederick Sandys and Paula Rego.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
We’d only found out about the exhibition because of an article in the Fortean Times that one of us was reading on the train on the way up and now we have discovered that free bus I think we will pay another visit to the Gallery to see some of the regular exhibits over the two buildings on either side of Belford Road. I did get a sneaky peak at the reconstruction of Eduardo Paolozzi’s Sci Fi collection on the ground floor before we left, it’s always good to discover that someone famous is a bigger nerd than you are!
Earth and water ground sculpture, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Edinburgh
Back in town we had lunch at the Auld Hoose in St Leonard’s Street, This is a great little boozer if you like punk, metal or goth (there were some confused looking tourists amongst the regulars), it has real ales, Czech lager and a great value menu.
Monster Chicken Burrito at the Auld Hoose
My chicken burrito (£7.50) was massive and packed with good-sized chunks of chicken while the tower of onion rings (£5.00, including dips) was huge,
The towering Onion Rings of the Auld Hoose
so it’s just as well we had a brisk walk across town before taking in some more comedy.
First off was Stewart Lee at the Stand Comedy Club. Unlike Ed Byrne’s stadium gig at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre the Stand was a sweaty little room below a hotel, ideal for Lee’s observations on the Torys and UKIP. sure they were easy targets, but still very funny.
following Lee’s gig we traipsed back out into the street to queue in the sunshine for Alexie Sayle in the precise same sweaty little room. Sayle was brilliant, the 17 years between this and his last stand up gigs have not mellowed his material, brutally funny stuff about Alastair Campbell, the Millibands, Ben Elton and a wicked parody of Michael MacIntyre. I couldn’t find a recent clip of Alexie’s stand-up so here’s the pet Bishop sketch from his TV show
Leaving the show the daughter says to me ‘he’s just like you’
As an old sweary fat bloke with a beard I took that as a compliment!
Final gig was Omid Djalili at the Assembly Rooms.
Another very funny show from the British-Iranian comic with plenty of gags about cross-cultural misunderstanding which rounded the weekend off perfectly.
Last Saturday took us into London’s west end for a bit of shopping and more importantly a slap up feast at Wong Kei in China Town, but first we took a diversion to the old Simpsons of Piccadilly (203-205 Piccadilly) for cocktails on the 5thView cocktail lounge.
View from the Cocktail Lounge at the Waterstones bookshop
The old Simpsons is now a monster huge Waterstone’s Bookshop with the 5th floor converted to a cocktail lounge. the photo above was taken back in 20011, the present view is blighted by a bunch of cranes. To be honest the cocktail lounge seems a bit blighted too, the decor is looking decidedly shabby, despite the website’s claims of refurbishment and the service is slow and unknowledgable. As to the cocktails they are I suppose average priced for London at between £7 and £11, but the snacks (£3 for a tiny bowl of nuts) are a bit of a rip. I had a gin sour, it was nothing special, but the £40 bill for the four of us left me feeling a bit sour too.
Wong Kei (41-43 Wardour Street) is a bit of a Soho legend. It’s one of the largest Chinese restaurants in the UK with seating for 500 guests and a reputation for having some of the rudest waiting staff in the UK. Oddly enough this is one of the things that drags people in and although service is shall we say a little brusque it is quick and efficient as diners are processed as quickly as possible to make way for more customers. Personally I found that most welcome, as there is nothing I hate more than having to hang around for the bill and my change. If you are dining as a couple or a small group, be warned that you may end up sharing a table with other diners, a bit like Chartier in Paris.
Wong Kei
There are some odd things on the menu including deep-fried intestines and chicken with jellyfish, but I went for the vegetarian pancake rolls to start followed by the Sweet and sour chicken with rice. The pancake rolls were delicious, especially with the lethally hot chili and black bean sauce and the chicken was pretty good too. What with a bottle of Pinot Grigio I liked the bill too, when it only came to £58 for the four of us (Cash only no cards).
The building Wong Kei is situated in has an interesting history as it used to belong to theatrical wig maker and costumier Willy Clarkson (1861-1934). You can if you look up to the clock see the words costumier and perruquier on its face. Designed by the architect H M Wakeley, plaques by the restaurant’s door attest to the foundation stone being laid by Sarah Bernhardt in 1904 and the coping stone by sir Henry Irving the following year. Clarkson occupied the premises until 1940.
Our Crete adventure began with one of those dreadful early evening flights. The kind that because of the time difference between the UK and Greece arrive really late at night. Fortunately passport control at Heraklion Airport is pretty lax so we sailed through to the chaos at the baggage carousels pretty quickly. Typically three flights were crammed on to the only working carousel, so we had to fight through crowds of Polish body builders and Russian bodyguards to retrieve our bags, once of course baggage handling had finished whatever break they were on.
No trip to Greece is complete without pictures of cute kitty cats
Having collected the bags it was out past the disinterested customs officials into the mad chaotic fury of the coach park, where eventually we found the bus to our hotel in Rethymno and then about an hour to the drop off from there.
Is it bedtime yet?
Since we were the last drop off the sight of the hotel porter waiting with his trolley was more than welcome, but then as the coach pulled away into the darkness our hearts sank as he uttered the words: ‘There is a problem, the hotel is overbooked’
I want my mum
Fortunately it turned out that we did have rooms, so after he’d scraped us off the floor he explained that a party of Russians had turned up and they didn’t have rooms for them so things had then got a bit moody in reception which was why he was lurking outside ready to sneak us in up the fire escape and bypass the argybargy.
Think I might just lie down here for a moment
As it happened this was a bit of a blessing in disguise as it saved us from all the form filling and bureaucratic nonsense that normally accompanies a Greek hotel check in and we were soon ushered into our rooms. The local time was by then 2am and we had been on the road since 2pm London time. My brain does not do figures so I have no idea how long we had been travelling, but I was delighted to sink between the sheets for a well-earned kip.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Ready to play in the sand when the Sun came up.
It’s down here somewhere
Photos copyright QueenMab/Shipscook Photographic. contact simon.ball3@btopenworld.com for commercial reuse
Okay so this is old news but on Midsummer’s Day we paid a visit to Richmond Park to see how the deer were getting on.
Red Deer Richmond Park
It wasn’t long before we found a herd of red deer. The deer are quite chilled at the moment because the mating season does not kick in until later in the year when things start to get a little more unpredictable and potentially dangerous as we found out back in October 2011
Spot the stag
If you click to enlarge the photo above you can see that the deer with his head turned to the left has the beginning of a pair of antlers growing from his skull. By October these will be bloody enormous and he will be using them to fight with other stags for possession of these lovely ladies.
Red deer – stag to the left
Here he is again on the left.
We also got to see some of the park’s shyer fallow deer. They made a dash through the red deer herd,
Red and fallow deer
and over the road to hide in the undergrowth.
Fallow deer
As you can see the stags have the beginnings of antlers, although they seem a touch more developed than those of the red deer.
Photos copyright QueenMab/Shipscook Photographic. contact simon.ball3@btopenworld.com for commercial reuse
Back in 1994 London Transport closed down the Ongar extension of the Central Line from Epping station, so it wasn’t without a little sense of irony that we found that the Epping and Ongar Railway, who now operate a heritage railway on the track, had got together with the London Transport Museum to run some very special trains to celebrate the 150th anniversary of London Underground.
Metropolitan No.1 built in 1898
We’d visited the Epping and Ongar Railway before (read about it here) but the opportunity to ride in a real piece of London’s history was too good to miss. Lots of people had had the same idea and the railway’s fleet of historic buses were all busy moving people from Epping Underground Station to the railway’s start point at North Weald Station.
Classic London Transport RT buses at North Weald Station
Ready and waiting on the platform wee a variety of historic Metropolitan Line carriages that used to run on the tracks between central London and stations out in Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
Vintage Metropolitan Line carriages
The star of the show was carriage No.353 which was built in 1892 and ran on the line up to 1906 when it was sold to the Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Railway.
Carriage 353
It eventually ended up as a a military tailors workshop before being lovingly restored by the London Transport Museum. We paid a £5 supplement on the day ticket price of £20 to ride in the plush velvet First Class luxury of what we were told was the Queen’s carriage of No. 353.
Plush velvet interior of Carriage 353
Taking us to Ongar was an old British Railways locomotive,
British Railways steam locomotive
but waiting for us at the other end was Metropolitan No.1, which was going to pull us back to North Weald.
Metropolitan No.1 steams back to link up with our train
Metropolitan No. 1 was built in 1898 and it is the oldest surviving locomotive from the age of steam on London Underground’s Metropolitan Line. We had to change carriages as our special red ticket upgrade was only valid one way and our carriage for the return leg had an interior restored back to World War II complete with air raid instructions.
Air raid instructions
and a pre Harry Beck (the guy who designed the classic tube map) map of the Metropolitan Railway.
Metropolitan Line Map
Arriving back at North Weald we also got to see the other London Transport steam locomotive L.150 as it got up steam to take the train back up the line, before heading off to Theydon Bois for a few drinks at The Queen Victoria and a curry at the Theydon Bois Balti House.
London Transport L.150 getting up steam
It was a fabulous day out so a big thank you to the volunteers at the Epping and Ongar Railway and the people from the London Transport Museum who made this trip back into history possible.
Photos copyright QueenMab/Shipscook Photographic. contact simon.ball3@btopenworld.com for commercial reuse
Last weekend’s jaunt to Edinburgh started as usual from the rather splendidly refurbished Kings Cross station.
The refurbished part of Kings Cross Station
Typically when our platform was advertised we discovered that the automatic ticket barriers didn’t work, so with a typically British attitude to bureaucracy instead of just opening the gates and letting people through (after all the only trains in that part of the station were for Scotland and the north so tickets would be checked on board anyway) three station jobsworths were busy checking every single ticket before we were allowed through to board the train.
Once underway another ticket check was started. Now we book our tickets way in advance to get the best deal (usually about £36) and being seasoned travellers on this route we always make sure that we get on the right train. Not so the poor Spanish lady sitting close to us. She had paid £60 for her ticket at the ticket office, and to make matters worse she had missed the 9.30 service only to be told by one of the station staff that she should get on the 10.00 and that she might have to pay a little bit extra.
So when the ticket inspector got to her she explained her situation only to be told that she would have to buy another ticket and it would cost £125.70, despite having already paid out £60 for her missed train. We thought that was a bit harsh on someone who had made a genuine mistake, especially when that person only spoke English as a second language and despite the fact that the train wasn’t even full, there were plenty of empty seats. Despite tears from the Spaniard and protests from other travellers (to whom he was actually quite dismissive) the callous hardman of a ticket inspector insisted on taking the money from her, after all rules are rules! What a great impression of the United Kingdom that poor woman will take back to Spain and what a fantastic impression of East Coast’s corporate culture to the travelling public.
That will be £125.70
Given that rail fares in the UK are really complicated I’m sure this happens all the time, surely there must be some discretion that the ticket collectors can use in cases of genuine error like this, after all it wasn’t as if she was trying to dodge the fare, East Coast had already pocketed £60 for her seat on the previous train before extorting the further £125.70 out of her.Not to mention the railway companies can change the conditions of tickets to suit themselves when they cancel trains and dump passengers onto other services or replacement buses.
Passengers enjoying the comfort of a £125.70 fare to Edinburgh
It’s reckoned that in the UK we have some of the most expensive railways in the world, certainly the fare structure is quite bizarre with some people paying £36 for a guaranteed seat from London to Edinburgh while others pay £125.70 and can end up standing all the way. Having just checked the cost of Easyjet London to Edinburgh flights for this Saturday they are all £20 cheaper than the standard rail fare. I actually paid less to fly to Cyprus last year than the standard London to Edinburgh rail fare which clearly is quite bonkersl!
shipscooksstuff 