Additional post for the Top Gear people... Which is most of you

As I just watched the Top Gear old people car episode I thought I would add in some photos of more wonders from Beaulieu (Byoo-lee, or Bow-lee if you are American).

Was seriously very cool to see some of these in the flesh and experience for myself the genuinely appalling quality of the workmanship. In saying that, there is a lot of adventure packed into these vehicles when you think about what they have done!

'Reliant 2'... The spare one... Estimated value £2.3 million -

                                              

The three wise cars... Estimated value, £2.3 million each

                                                   

Two of the India cars... After they mounted them on plinths then got told they couldn't leave them in India... Estimated value, £2.3 million

              

                                             

The Hindustan Ambassador from the World Taxi Shootout... Estimated value, £2.3 million

The rocket ski jump Mini, 24hr BMW and Soccer Swift... Estimated valu... You know...

                                              

                  

The obligatory audio visual presentation - "we really wish we could be at Beaulieu to deliver this narrative in person, but frankly we couldn't be bothered" 

                              

Nissank (the one that made it to France), Dampervan MkII and Herald yacht

 

                                       

                                 

S-class camper interior

Lotus Excel Submarine, Hovervan...

                   

                                               

Two surviving campers... Estimated value... Yes, £2.3 million

    

The Cop Cars

                                  

The actual zeppelin camper and old people car

                   

                                                   

Vietnam Vespa & Captain America... I want to recreate that trip one day!! Plus upside down and right way up double decker race cars...

              

                                             

Off road mobility scooters and rail Jag

                                             

The DIY limos

                                                   

And yes.... The immortal Hilux and Hammerhead Eagle iThrust!!!!

          

                                                  

Actual reasonably priced Kia and Supermarket hot hatch...

                   

And of course the Klaas Dominator once more to round it all off... Estimated value... £2.3 million

                                

A privilege to be permitted to photograph so much automotive greatness... Truly humbling

So, impressions... it must be time to list a few pros and cons

The UK... not a bad sort of place... as we regretfully near the end of my tale of yet another international sojourn, let's see what we have concluded so far...

LIKING –

- London – large, busy, lots going on, interesting, historic, plenty on offer for any mood or tastes

- People in uniform wearing funny hats

- Wildlife and nature. Except the only badgers I saw were roadkill. I was promised badgers. And the moles were hiding. Did see a fox in London though

- Cheese... any country with good dairy is my kind of place

- Cider... also "Soy-dur"... and cheap whisky and spirits for that matter

- Ales and beers, when refrigerated (sorry, I know I had the argument several times, but you are not going to convince me warm beer is a good thing… I am willing to bet ‘room temperature’ is ACTUALLY supposed to refer to drinking beer in winter when your castle is near freezing inside… people also claim red wine is supposed to be served at ‘room temperature’ which is BS, especially when it is summer and +25C)

- Pubs – plentiful and full of character, many very nicely updated, others very nicely left original

- Friendly locals - characters aplenty.

- Old stuff – plenty of. Old places. Old buildings. Old everything. Fascinating, scenic. What we call 'antiques' they call 'stuff we have lying around the place'

- Plentiful European wine. The only thing France does right.

- Aston Martin

- The weather!!!

- Fish n chips

- Food in general, pretty good. Local produce etc. Seafood. Wood pigeon!  

- Trains and tube – efficient and handy... when they are working right. And not ridiculously packed.

- The countryside and coast... rather lovely, quaint, charming, green
- Motorways - good when they are there

- Heathrow was fine, although apparently that is not always the case
- Purdey guns... as in the brand... Although they are also purdy...
- Accents... well, the UK ones. Funny and charming, although I still can't really pick one from another


NOT LIKING –

- London – full of lots of people you would rather not hang around, too spread out, expensive, busy

- Radio - rubbish. DJs on popular stations are possibly even worse and more inane than ours, if that is possible.
- Whinging Poms... they do it as home as well. Not all of them mind you, but some just love it. I listened incredulously (while taking my endless photos) as a group of half a dozen of them stood next to THE AUBURN at BEAULIEU and whinged to each other about their accommodation for about 20 minutes. I kid you not. About half of that time was complaining about the tea... also "There isn't even a chair to sit in to watch television... if you want to watch television you have to sit on the bed!"

- Drivers in general... enough said. (Although it was claimed the bad ones were “probably mostly from the EU”…)

- Unfriendly locals (most of them “probably from the EU” also apparently)
- The COFFEE!! BLEH!! SORT IT OUT!!!

- Trains and tube – flipping pricey, crazy busy at times

- Train and tube weirdos – plenty of

- Posers and the tryhard ‘fashionable’ – i.e. most of the people in certain parts of London

- And of course Hipsters. A worldwide disease which must be eradicated

- Countless tossers in German cars and black Range Rovers (Not saying only tossers drive them, just saying that in the UK, mostly tossers drive them. With notable exceptions of course)

- Cars, the ones on the road that is... generally boring. Except in certain parts of London we eventually found, where it is all Ferrari and Aston

- Food – finding cheap healthy food on the move is hard. Although nothing like as bad as the US of course.

- Fresh meat - flipping pricey. Tasty though.

- Shopping – not cheap in any way shape or form for anything you would want to bring back. Although in fairness I didn't dedicate much time to trying to shop properly.

- Good cheap accommodation also hard to find at times. (Okay actually pretty much everything was pricey really. Probably not so bad for normal day to day stuff.)

- Snobby rich w*nkers with no manners (some of whom seemed to think people should step to one side to give them right of way on the footpath, and found themselves mistaken)… although most of these allegedly foreigners also… *coughFrenchcough*
- B-roads and roundabouts. Mindnumbing. And no views due to endless hedgerows.
- It is a LONG way from some parts of the world. Maybe plan a stopover if you can get one somewhere nice. Especially if flying on a rubbish airline.


Fair to say that despite my gripes the pros well outweigh the cons though... Endlessly fascinating, certainly a place that needs more time spent... much much more time.

Rant alert... Yep, Malaysia Airlines...

Yes, you knew it was coming... It's your turn.

Now I don't claim to know a lot about much, but I do know something about quite a bit. And while I am no fatcat bigwig First Class dweller, and nor do I always ride in Business Class, my boarding pass does have 'Frequent Flyer' printed below my name, and therefore, unlike the fickle folk up the front or upstairs, who can most likely afford to fly whatever airline they feel like with no particular allegiance, I am the sort of passenger that your average airline really needs to attract, and retain. I mean that is the entire reasoning behind airpoints and frequent flyer programs to begin with... Incentives to be loyal. Return customers. Offering something to the people who will keep coming back and spending money, which keeps your airline flying. So you would THINK a company like, say, Malaysia Airlines might be taking an interest in that sort of thing about now. You would think. But, to date, the sum total of my 'incentives to come back' has been one nice ground crew lady giving me an exit row seat so I could actually sit without ridiculous discomfort for some of my twelve hours in the air (and, I will add, she was not Malaysian, nor was it in Malaysia). In fact having now taken a few flights, especially post-disasters, I have established Malaysia Air really apparently could not care less about the 'frequent flying' customer. Which is why it is also interesting sometimes to go places and use services without telling people that you also write for travel magazines in your spare time. 

On that note, Malaysia Airlines, some bullet points to consider looking at -

- Your ground staff are generally surly, disinterested, borderline rude and largely unpleasant to deal with. 

- Your cabin staff are not a lot better. Adequate at best, largely absentee, increasing less pleasant if they have to do anything outside required duties. Most of the time just not paying attention. Hosties who offer half the passengers water then run out and forget come back and give water to the rest of the aisle... Hosties, for that matter, who mostly hide in the galley and gossip with the curtains shut. Loudly. Constantly. While passengers are trying to sleep.- Your saving grace is the A380 which makes even rubbish flights less painful, but then again half the rest of your fleet probably shouldn't even be in the air. Oh look, how quirky, ashtrays in the armrests... 'Antique' is not a term you want to hear used when people are getting on a plane and looking around. And then people can't open the toilet door because the words are worn off it...

- On that note, I shouldn't have to revert to my aging smartphone for a better viewing experience than my entertainment screen. In this day and age it should not look like a Sega Mega Drive. Or even worse,  a tiny, decrepit CRT television with bad reception.

- STILL on that note... Your in flight entertainment selection is appalling. Listing the same movies under 'Comedy' and 'Drama' does not instantly double your movie selection... And last I checked, Disney cartoons did NOT qualify for 'Comedy', 'Drama' AND 'Family' categories. Nor is Finding Nemo a drama. Or Toy Story. They found Nemo. It ended up ok. I forget what happened in Toy Story but pretty sure most of them lived. And get some movies that were released less than four years ago. 

- Your music selection is worse. I like a wide variety of music, and I found only about half a dozen albums out of over 200 that I either hadn't heard or could stand to listen to. One of those was a 25 year old REM album for goodness sake.

- On the Frequent Flyer topic... Upgrade some passengers for crying out loud. It costs you next to nothing. Even just to use up the spare seats, you don't have to feed them the good stuff You already make a fortune out of the people who pay for First and Business. When people get upgraded they come back. Guarantee it. At the very least tell your flipping check in staff to try not to not to sneer at customers when they ask if there is something as basic as an exit row available... Or, failing that, an aisle seat... when they have actually gone to the trouble of checking in early but your staff just can't be bothered to try to do it for them. Repeatedly jam me in the middle of three or five seat blocks when I specifically request not to be, and I will tell you where to stick your airline.

- Try to find some food that does not make gas station cuisine look appetising. I don't care where in the world you are, if you are paying good money for food it should be something you WANT to eat, not something you just HAVE to eat. I know I can get an awesome meal off a street vendor's cart in Kuala Lumpur for pocket change, yet I give you £1300 and you, with all your squillion dollar jet airplanes, give me food that makes me want to chew on my seatbelt instead. Other airlines can manage. The food I have eaten on Malaysia Air recently is of such a standard that if you bought it at a supermarket from the frozen meal section for $5 and took it home and microwaved it, not only would you feel ripped off, you would also throw it away rather than eat it.

- And get some wine that costs more than three ringit a bottle. And tell the staff to pour a decent sized drink from your miserly spirits selection once in a while. Some people like a drink or two on a flight, an egg cup is not going to do it. Nor is it going to put people off drinking. It is going to put people off your airline. Passengers change carriers for that sort of thing. 

- How about not putting connecting flight departures on your OWN AIRLINE so shortly after the previous arrival that the only way people can make the connection is for dozens of passengers to rush madly across the terminal to get to the next flight, which has to depart late anyway because the bags take so long to transfer over?? Telling people who have just sat through a decidedly avergage 14 hour flight that they now have 20 minutes to find their way all the way across the terminal and through security again before the gates close on their next 12 hour flight is not a way to endear them to you.

I won't go on, although I could. You only have to get two or three of a whole list of things right to be a passable airline these days. Getting pretty much everything wrong is not going to help. Especially not when you are fighting for your existence. Maybe the staff have just given up, who knows. Government control looms, maybe there is just no call to maintain standards. Having the cheapest fares is a big selling point, but you have to look at who you are attracting and how sustainable it will actually be in the long run. And what reputation you want. I have not been on many major international flights on an aircraft only one third full... Not a good sign folks.

Cutting costs is well and good but if you are driving away customers then you are on a fast track to nowhere. When I am reaching into my own wallet to pay for flights I often like to keep it cheap and cheerful. I maintain the money is better spent when you get there than on the journey. And hey, flying lower priced carriers keeps me in touch with 'the people'... So when I will actually consider paying a reasonable amount more to avoid flying with an airline, then you have a problem. That puts you right up there with Royal Brunei and Chinese domestic carriers... And seeing how well Malaysia's competition are doing on similar routes, I think a lot of other people are thinking the same way.

It has been said that in order to survive, Malaysian Airlines will have to cut back on full sized airline services and start competing as a budget Asian carrier. From what I have seen recently I think they are already operating as a budget carrier, they are just trying to charge as much as a real airline.

More in old Londontown

By then it was Friday and we had much to do around the place. However we woke a little hazy for the first time after a good night out in town and everything was a little bit slow to get moving. We eventually got dressed up in some nice duds and were back on the train and tube and ended up in town. We did some wandering including taking in the Tower of London (from the outside) and Tower Bridge etc. 

         

We decided to leave the full Tower tour for another time as we didn't have time to do it justice, but mostly I wanted to get along and get some photos of the World War One commemoration they are setting up, which is really something else... to mark the centenary of the First World War an army of volunteers are filling the Tower moat with 888,246 large porcelain poppies, one for each life lost by the British in the war. Words can't do it justice, but then neither can my pictures really... 

         

                                                      

            

Each poppy made individually and assembled and planted by hand, one at a time, the installation taking several months to complete. Truly an amazing and deeply moving tribute. 

We also found our way to Knightsbridge (what great names they have for places) where we dined at some restaurant or other I think called Breakfast owned by Charlton Heston (Plant of the Apes guy? Who knew he did food?)... oh no wait it was called Dinner, and it was run by some bloke Heston Blumenthal. Apparently it's a thing.

No photos of food were taken (not really that kind of place) but it was a jolly nice feed, so much so I will make mention without getting all foodie (side note, we had a book in one of our pub rooms called 'The Iconoclast's Guide to Foodies' which was pretty funny). I liked it for the fact the meals are taken from English recipes from throughout the ages so for entrées we had one called Meat Fruit which is based on something from the 1500's and Rice and Flesh which is from 1390 (who knew food was that good 600 years ago?) and then for main I had (surprise!) Spiced Pigeon from 1780 and my companion had Chicken Cooked with Lettuces from 1670. Dessert was Tipsy Cake from 1810 (which you have to order at the start cause it takes them 45 minutes to make) and Brown Bread Ice Cream c.1830. Have a Google if you feel like it, it all looked as good as it tasted. 

We retired rather too well fed and wined, after two rather good restaurant meals in one day, having also stepped out with our hosts... We have, it's fair to say, had a lot of good food and drink on this trip, but hey even if you are not mad about flash food you do have to treat yourself now and then... Thus it was then the weekend...

The lighter side of Malaysia Airlines...

You may think I was about to make some jokes in poor taste there about certain events, but I am not. I am in fact talking about the way that Malaysia Airlines make flying fun again and are a joy to travel with. Oh no wait, that is not actually even remotely accurate. More on THAT later. But we did find humour in a couple of things on our travels from home a couple of weeks ago that I have just now remembered to write down. 

At one stage, having exhausted all the interesting options on their 1980's entertainment system in less than one flight (doesn't THAT bode well for the several other long LONG flights still to come!!?), I ended up watching several episodes of some American show call 'The 100' (is this still a thing? Was it ever? I never heard of it... But then I never heard of a lot of things). Anyway I figured five episodes at forty minutes each might take up some of the endless days I had to sit on the plane... So I found 'The 100' is about people 150 years or something like that in the future when Earth has been ravaged by nuclear war and the only people live on a space station (called The Ark... Clever!!) but The Ark is running out of air and other such things so they send 100 teen (of course!.. Oh wait, did I mention it is 'Based on a book'!!!) convicts down to see if Earth is inhabitable (Really? That's the best they can do? They live on a space station!!! In space!!!)... And, without giving too much away, of course they land in a forest, because clearly they blew the set budget on the space station, and then they have to explore and they get a bit 'Lord of the Flies' and there are mysterious bunkers and a weird killer fog (hmm, sound familiar?) and mutants and (spoiler!) survivors, and intrigue and drama on a earth and in space. Oh and lots of crap writing and bad acting. And the main characters are the privileged, good, smart, practical blonde girl who wants to help everyone and be civilised, and her opposite, the wild, sorta ethnic looking, wrong-side-of-the-tracks badboy with a chip on his shoulder who wants the group to live with no rules but who is really sensitive and complex and looks like Lou Diamond Phillips. And his sister who is the free spirited younger dark haired badgirl one who really just wants to be loved by some nice guy. And the black guy who is the banished son of the boss guy on The Ark (how did he end up a convict again??) and might almost be a love interest for blondy cause they were best friends but she hates him cause he got her father executed for trying to reveal the truth about The Ark dying. But black guy dies later anyway. Oops sorry. And then there is the Asian who is good at electronics. And the endearing geek who is really a hero. And the bad-looking guy who is second in charge to sort-of-not-really-bad-guy Lou Diamond Phillips, but SURPRISE is actually the real bad guy, which you kind of guess cause he looks bad all the time. Oh and then to complicate the various love triangles there is also the 'reckless' other sort-of-badboy who just runs around being all teenage and reckless and stuff, but looks like a forty year old Johnny Depp/Jack White wannabe. Actually he also looks kind of like Peter DeLuise which makes him a bit incestuously 21 Jump Street somehow now I think about it. Oh and then later there is another sassy smart space walking welder super-technician brown chick called.... Raven! And she also gets involved in the love hexagon. Ah yes. Way to phone that one in whatever TV network was responsibe for it. So anyway I could have written a book on the number of plot holes and flaws in the thing (why do the survivors use spears? 100 years after a global war all the bullets have run out??) but motivation to pay further attention, or even live longer, was running short by then. Thankyou for flying Malaysia Airlines. 

Eventually, while pondering what a blood clot to the brain might feel like,  I found my way into the games section and the Malaysia Airlines quiz game. Witness now some of the educational gems that lie therein.... Play along at home!!

Q. What religion is practised by 83% of the people in India.

  1) Buddhism 

  2) Hinduism 

  3) Islam

  4) Christianism

Did you think it was number 4? Or perhaps some other religion, like Mormanity or Scientologilising? Lucky those Christianismologists are so tolerant... 

Ok, let's try again... How about another one that won't possibly offend anyone

Q. What is the name of the wall where Israeli Jews come and lament over their destroyed country?

  1) The Oliver Wall

  2) The Wall of Tears

  3) The Wall of Shame

  4) The Wailing Wall

Get that one? Ah those funny Jews and their shameful love of walls. Ok next round -

Q. What is the name of the black New York area, north of Manhatten?

  1) The Bronx

  2) The Queens

  3) Harlem

  4) Brooklyn

You know, the BLACK area.. Not because of their love of emo house colours, but because it has all them BLACKS in it. Did you perhaps guess number 2), that parts of New York are in fact full of homosexual coloured people? Ah The Queens, those charming gay black folks...

Ok for the bonus round let's move on from all that fun we had offending people religiously and racially and re their lifestyle choices and go into the entertainment round. Now here's one that I had to think about -

Q. What kind of creature is 'Chewbacca' in 'Star Wars'?

  1) A mutant

  2) A robot

  3) A monkey

  4) A monster

The answer is of course E) 'What the hell are you people talking about?'. (Everyone knows Chewbacca was not any of those things right? Ok, apart from those of you going "What's a Chewbacca?")

And there ends our quiz, I hope we all had fun, and learned something too, cause learning is unportant. And in some way I hope this also helped us to understand a little bit more about people who are different from us, like all those weird different foreign types out there, like Christians and Blacks and Jews and Mutant Robot Monkey Monsters. Which, at the end of the day, are all kind of the same thing really. But maybe, just maybe, deep down, we are all a little bit Mutant Robot Monkey Monster...

From beach to barn

Bidding a sad farewell to Cornwall we once again headed north on Wendesday the 24th and made our way into deepest Somerset. Unfortunately while my copilot dozed after several hours on the road I misheard the muffled instructions from the cellphone satnav and missed our motorway off ramp. As seems to happen when travelling, things then continued to go downhill as our wrong route then got us stuck in a gaggle of traffic with large trucks filling three lanes. Already annoyed with myself about the exit mistake I decided to hang back and just go with the flow a bit, mindful not to invite any further issues since we were hoping to get to our destination in time to have a look around before the evening. Right about that time there was an almighty BOOMF as a rock about the size of a tennis ball ricocheted off our front bumper like it had been hit by a cricket bat and bounced off down the road ahead of us. At this point I swore loudly. 

On arrival at destination, after a bit of a diversion, I got out to inspect the damage and sure enough it was as bad as you would generally expect a rock hitting a plastic bumper at 70mph to be... Not only scraped but also dented and cracked. Having established when we picked up the car that part of the reason the company had cheaper rental rates was due to their extortionate 'damage' fees ("any scratch or stone chip over 1mm in paint or windscreen will be charged... Damage excess is £750 or pay £18 per day to lower the excess...") we had been treating our much disliked Astra with kid gloves and flinching every time we drove over loose gravel... Only the day before I had found a scratch on the inner edge of the drivers door that wasn't noted when we inspected the car on pickup and was already anticipating an argument over that. With only one day to go on the rental I had hoped we might get out unscathed...

So now being in a 'right grump' I probably wasn't immediately in the mood to properly appreciate where we had ended up, which was in fact the expansive Haynes Motor Museum, established by the Haynes family of Haynes Owner's Manuals fame, the largest in the UK. However before long the camera was out and I was once again marvelling at many wonderful things with wheels, many displays much more UK focused than other places I have been, which gave a nice local flavour... Although in honesty there is only so much time I can spend looking at Morris, Wolsleys and Hillmans. Astons and Ferraris on the other hand...

And Auburns and Dusenbergs...

And V16 Madame X Cadillacs

And the odd Countach and XJ220

Then add in a fair amount of Americana and some other bits, and I was happy as a pig in very expensive poop.

We were back to the museum to finish the second half the next morning, then it was on the road and London bound. We stopped long enough to throw bags off at our kind host's house and then it was off to face the music with the rental car company. After about another hour in London traffic. 

Our only hope re the rental car return was that the staff would be as inept as they were when we picked it up, and the place would be just as packed with irate customers waiting an hour or more to pick a car up or drop it off... As it turned out there were actually more staff around than customers, although the competence quotient had not increased. We stood for a while listening to yet another rant from a disgruntled customer who was engaging half the office staff and arguing, quite fairly I thought, that it was extortionate that he was being charged for a scratch he had put on a wheel that already had two large curb gouges on it, meaning that likely two previous customers had also been charged for damage to the same wheel... Effectively meaning the company would have charged three times for one repair... Which they also hadn't actually had carried out. Pretty futile though, as some young corporate rental car drone in a business shirt recited the company damage charging policy verbatim in a mindless pseudo-polite voice that made you instantly want to inflict violence to his facial region. 

Our moment of reckoning came in the form of one of the mid level vehicle ranglers who we had seen on our first visit, also a chap of mediocre competence and patchy English, not ranked high enough to rent cars out, but tasked with running around fetching and sorting vehicles and, as it turned out, handling returns. He efficiently bustled out to where I had parked the car, behind another row of vehicles facing nose-in so you didn't get a view of the front from any distance... Still brisk and efficient he ran his hands over each wheel looking for curbing, bent down and eyeballed both sides for door dings, looked inside for interior issues, scrutinised the windscreen for chips, walked around the front and bent down... He walked back, clipboard in hand, complete with the diagram of the car with all the individual scratches and stone chips noted from our pickup inspection. He looked like he was frowning a bit. But then he generally did anyway. He held out the clipboard with the diagram. I eyeballed the front of the little car in the picture, conscious that there was no noting saying "Hole in bumper" when we signed to take possession of it... He said, in some thick accent or other "All good! No damage." And with, that we signed it off...

Now you might think that would be the end of it, and technically it was, since our friend had signed the car back in as inspected and a-ok... (And for all I know he might have noted the dint in the front and ignored it, as it seemed the staff had quite a different standard as to what damage was worth reporting than the managers did...). But having seen the various dramas with other customers I knew it would be distinctly possible that they might try to ping us for the bumper even after the fact. What followed was an extremely long 15 minutes standing in the dusty yard, waiting for the courtesy van of salvation to whisk us to the train station, during which time we watched the car being driven away to be cleaned... And I knew once he had hosed the bugs off, the cleaning guy, if he was even remotely competent, would know he should probably check to see if the rather decent rock impact to the front bumper had been noted in the inspection, lest he get blamed for it... No van came... We acted casual, next noting the cleaning guy a few minutes later coming back and getting one of the business shirt wearing reps, clipboard in hand, and taking him around to the cleaning bay... Minutes passed.. Slowly... No van... Then that rep walked back to the portacabin office... Then headed back toward our car in the company of the suited manager... The same anally retentive one who had actually signed the car over to us on day 1, and 'Tsk tsked' when we did the initial inspection at the number of "chargeable" minute stone chips that had not been noted on the car's sheet... And then I knew what was coming... The arguing... The finger pointing at clipboard diagram... The attempts to get us to fess up even though all parties had signed off on the return form... But actually what came first was the van, just at that moment, and in we piled and away we went, beaming with silent gratitude at the talkative and not inconsiderably smelly (or was that the other American passenger in the front?) shuttle driver. 

So, if ever you find yourself travelling to the UK, do ask me (if I know you) what rental car company NOT to use, although I will not mention them here for fear of litigation.

Suitably buoyed by our good fortune and somewhat minorly celebratory, it was back on the train once again (feeling like a right Londoner by now!! Quite proficient at standing around pressed up against strangers these days...) and into the city for a proper session at a proper pub full of proper (?) Londoners. I am not sure they were real proper Londoners mind you because nobody got stabbed or head butted or started a soccer... Oops, 'football'... riot... Oh well, guess my cultural experience is as yet incomplete. I must endeavour to make a list of the pubs we have frequented actually, it would be quite long... One thing I like about England, there is a nice old pub or a nice old church pretty much on every corner. Anyway, a good night out was had and then back on the trains and home to bed... Also without any stabbings or other kinds of murders. Thus endeth Thursday. 

And then places southward

From then gentle children our party migrated places south... Once again enjoying the English road system for all its joys and curses. On the bright side they don't really abide by any speed limits when there are ample lanes for everyone... On the downside, if you, perhaps, for instance, come across a guy towing a full sized yacht, with full keel and all, down a two way country road, you may be looking at the back of him for quite some time. And such it was on the trip to Falmouth.

 We drove Wales to Falmouth via an outlet mall, where I was hoping to find some shoes and a couple of other bits, which didn't work out at all in the end. As always, I proved myself crap at shopping and quickly lost interest In anything I was actually supposed to be looking for. What we did find is that the Welsh have adapted to outlet malls in a similar fashion to our American friends, in that they have learned to flock there to share obesity and bad food in some sort of retail context. Nobody seems to buy anything from any of the shops, but the foodcourt does great business. We did however invest in a cheap wheelie suitcase following the demise of our previous wheelie bag, which turned into some sort of perverse science experiment in London when we suffered a wheel issue on arrival, but I persevered to drag it heavily laden across more than a few kilometers of asphalt from train to hotel to train to other places. The result was, inevitably, terminal failure -

                                        

I did in the end stop dragging it when it threatened to catch fire

From the mall we drove, and drove some more. Eventually we made it to the deep dark south of the whole place, and I have to say Falmouth is quite pretty, as a local who knows commented, it is probably closest in climate and such to home. I would have liked go have gone all the way south, time permitting, there is something I find very satisfying in reaching the furtherest extent of wherever I am... but we came pretty close. A lot of people get to the UK and then don't get that far down, but it is well worth a look. 

                        

It is, I think, a very pretty spot, with a lot of history going for it. Plus it has beaches, and, apparently, surf, sometimes, as does Wales. Not on a sunny, calm and clear couple of days like we had through. But no complaints.

                         

Indeed before long we were out for another swim and a bit of lying around on the beach, once again not the weather advertised before we turned up... Along the way we checked out the famous docks and a couple of forts here and there, all par for the course in your average English holiday spot. We also ate Cornish pasties and had cream tea, ensuring I took part in the full cultural experience. As such a couple more blissfully chilled days with nothin in particular to rant about.. But fear not, more of that to come also. Signing off on a rather relaxed note. Hope you are all enjoying sun and beaches also!

A Welshman walked into a bar and said...

Gall i gael cwrw os gwelwch yn dda...

Three nights in Wales passed far too quickly, but we managed to pack in some traditional Welsh activities such as drinking beer, walking on cliffs, and outlet mall shopping. Our time was spent mostly in and around ridiculously picture-postcard cute and idyllic Welsh villages such as Newport and Fishguard. These are obviously not the Welsh names for them though, as they are, naturally, entirely unpronounceable. I mean honestly Wales, a word with seven consonants and one vowel is not a word.

                                                         

The scenery was nothing short of beautiful in places, although you could easily imagine that the wonderful weather we had on days three and four was possibly not the way things look all year round. The coast was once home to many hardy fishermen, and I am guessing it was not the place to come for an easy living during winter months...

  

                                                         

However we were blessed with some brilliant sunshine and even made it out to the beach for a swim.... Well, ok I am the only one who swam, and not exactly tropical in the Irish Sea but I have been much colder 

  

Fun fact - in some traditional areas, Welsh fisherman still use small specially trained dogs, called Ci Hela Crancod, to seek out and catch large sea crabs, incapacitating them by tearing off their pincers in vicious struggles. Every year many small dogs are lost this way, either dragged into the deep or through losing noses or limbs to the crabs.

So overall as you have probably gathered impressions of the UK are pretty good so far. Most things remain very familiar and I can see why so many people from home come here to stay and why so many from here like it over our way. Despite the traditional stereotypes there is plenty of good food here, SOME good beer, and the people are mostly decent folk. Some issues do exist though... I mean for starters, the cars are pretty rubbish. Granted most people drive pretty decent cars here, it seems prices are cheap enough that most people have a pretty late model set of wheels. That being said, you don't see many nice ones. Ok there are BMWs and Audis by the million, but most are pretty bland lower or middle models. Thus far in the entire trip I think I have seen only one Ferrari on the road, in London, one TVR, one M3, a couple of old MGs, a single Morgan.... I mean Poms are supposed to be car lovers like the rest of us right? Ok I saw one later model MG also, it was a bright yellow four door with a ridiculous big wing on the back and big MG stickers on it... I think it was supposed to be a 'performance model'... It was hard to tell while I was overtaking it in the world's slowest most rubbish Vauxhall...

Oh yeah and about overtaking.... They apparently don't believe in it here... Seriously these people will sit in an endlessly long procession of vehicles behind a slow moving truck for days. Possibly due to refined English sensibilities it is considered 'rude', I am not sure. Granted it can be a tricky proposition when the roads are so narrow and winding... Especially in an asthmatic Astra which makes all overtaking a dice with death. After being on the road for a while I turned to my copilot and asked if they actually had passing lanes in this county. She replied "Yes, of course we do..."  I commented that I hadn't seen one since we left London and she came back with "Well we have only been driving for a couple of days..." ... My mistake then... 

So clearly passing anything on a road which may, one day, at some stage, have oncoming traffic is completely out of the question for most Brits. But then give them a two or more lane motorway and suddenly half of them want to be doing 100mph. Literally. And then we get on to proving the stereotypes we already know so well (although these OBVIOUSLY don't apply at home...*cough*) but as confirmed by Top Gear: Most late model German Car drivers - dicks. Van drivers - dicks. Drivers of Ford Focuses, small Peugots, medium Peugots, large Peugots, Citroens, Volvos, Minis - dicks. Range Rover drivers - dicks. Actually I think you can pick personalities by cars over here more so than at home, as I do know people who drive some of the above at home who are actually not complete dicks. But some of them also are. 

I do hate to cast aspersions on my host nation but I do think the driving standards here are a bit worse. Ok maybe if you don't count certain cultural demographics back in my home city. The cyclists here are even more mentally deficient and suicidal. Although when we left, London was hosting a massive event for the start of the Tour of UK cycle race or whatever it is called and I thought 'How nice, seeing them embracing diversity and alternative sexual life choices like that'... Truck drivers here seem to regard other motorists primarily as an annoyance which they can bully or ignore, I assume most of them had fairly unpleasant childhoods and suffered from pants wetting until their mid teens. Vans are frequently driven by people too poor or too mentally incapacitated to be able to get hold of a truck. Who probably stole them. I am not sure what to make of the various guys I have seen riding around on Harleys... I mean it may seem to them like the ultimate in rebellion (being stuck in the 1980s and all) but the reality is that they are so ridiculously out of place here that they look even more desperately try-hard and lame than they do in most other countries. Same goes for the handful of people I have also seen driving around in new Dodge and Jeep 4x4s and the like... I mean really? What is up with that? Trying to prove your individuality by standing out as far more stupid than all those around you? What image are you trying to convey by spending more money on a worse car?

And what the HELL is the British obsession with roundabouts?? Really?? You can drive for hours literally from one roundabout to the next. You get off a roundabout and there is a sign for the next roundabout. I am not joking. And this is not just in town, this is out in the country, on roads that you are trying to use to get from one location to another. If you have satnav, you are on a roundabout and it is going "Take the second exit on this roundabout... In 200 metres, at the next roundabout..." I think we actually found the ultimate today, in a double roundabout. Literally a figure-8 roundabout. I still haven't yet figured out how it was supposed to work, I just gritted my teeth and went for the far side...

Anyway I will stop slagging off my fellow motorists and Brit driving in general for now. I would possibly be less bitter if it wasn't for our rubbish hire car provided by our rubbish car hire company. More slagging off of them to come. Time here is ticking along quickly but we are having a good time, certainly finding many, many more things that are going on the list for next time I get here. Stay well all, more soon