Okehampton Castle Ruins, Castle Drogo and sights on the way home

Yes, we know we've been extremely slack in updating our blog... and just to confirm that here's what we did for the rest of the weekend after we came out very wet from the moors (almost 2 months ago now.)

As Murphies law would have it as soon as we'd paid for our hostel, had our showers and hot chocolates the rain stopped and the sun came out in Okehampton. But we were still pretty grateful to be warm and dry and out of the moors.

We quickly forgot that only an hour earlier we were feeling a little sorry for ourselves and we continued exploring Okehampton. Our New Zealand charm gained us access to Okehampton Castle Ruins just as the attendant was locking up (well it was actually the attendant's confidence that being from New Zealand that we should know how to jump fences that got us in - and out).

Okehampton Castle was of French (Norman) motte and bailey design: a Castle Keep (or place where the owner lived) on top of the hill (the motte) which over looks the rest of the castle (the bailey).

Unfortunately there's no grand story about these ruins or anything romantic - the castle was simply deserted and left to rot.

Okehampton Castle keep and motte

View towards the bailey and Okehampton from the top of the motte

Our last planned trip of the weekend was visiting Castle Drogo, the last Castle built in England in 1910-1920 by an English businessman. The gardens were beautiful and Richard was very excited to see them.

Formal entrance into Castle Drogo

An excited Richard

On the way home to London it started raining again and we popped into Salisbury cathedral (which was being restored - so the photo doesn't do it much justice) and drove past Stonehenge.

Salisbury Cathedral

Salisbury original city wall and entrance

Drive by picture of Stonehenge
please excuse the fence

Dartmoor, UK

Over a long weekend in May (24-26) we headed to Dartmoor, Devon for some walking with Rebecca and Robert Gray. Assured that we'd be ok with sneakers and shorts we set off on Friday morning into the Moor.

Day 1: Up to Yes Tor along peaks and rocky outcrops.

Heading towards the Moors - view back to Okehampton, Devon

We found the path!
and some pretty gorse

The National Trust pays farmers to continue farming the moors like they did back in the day

Richard checking the map

Sheltering from the wind in a small mound along the track

Top of Yes Tor (2nd highest point in devon at 619m)
it was so windy we crawled up the rocky steps to get up here and were hanging on to this post

View from Yes Tor to the next peak (or hilltop)

Follow the yellow brick road...

The point at which we were regretting having only sneakers
not only were we being blown along with the wind, but water was seaping into our sneakers with every step from the wet spongy ground. I miss my Mendels.

Rocky outcrop
a.k.a shelter from the wind

Camp!
The only campsite we found after 6 hour walk. We could just fit in both tents (note the cattle in the background)

Cooking dinner

Richard chasing sheep

Day 2: we were planning to head down further into the moors and then back out and up on day three. When we set out on Friday we knew there was a rain forecast for Saturday/Sunday. On Friday night it started raining. We thought it would stop by the morning.... but oh how wrong we were...

Breakfast in tent in the morning and windburnt from the day before
Thank goodness for our NZ Macpac tent. We were snug and dry in the morning and could leave our tent fly up as a shelter while packing up our belongings and tent inner. We don't think our tent has ever had a better wind and rain test (even in Fiordland).

After packing up site we changed our plan to walk out that morning - along a tarsealed military road - to the nearest town and pub. About an hour in we changed our minds and decided to take the scenic route to the pub and head off the road along the peaks again... in our defence it did look like a short cut on the map!

The scenic route to the pub
Even though our legs and feet were soaked the rest of us was quite dry and we were still enjoying ourselves! (from back to front - Alice, Richard and Rebecca)

A peak and rocky outcrop along the way

Finally reaching the town
But alas it was Sunday and the pub was shut for another 2 hours. So we gave up on the idea of waiting around for a pint fairly quickly and hiked back to Okehampton - hoping that the YHA had 4 spare beds for the night and a hot shower!

All in all walking in Dartmoor was an enjoyable experience and we now understand why everyone thought we were mental wearing shorts and wanting to camp out in the Moor - however our tent is AWESOME and if we had our boots we would have stayed dry during the day as well as the night! We did make the most of what we left of our long weekend in Devon - but I'll put that in another post.

London, UK

Well after 6 weeks in London we can finally report some progress on the job and flat front!

Richard is relief teaching at primary and secondary schools in London and is getting plenty of work (and gets paid more than Alice). Alice has just got a job with Arla Foods, at a factory where they produce drinking milk and potted cream for supermarkets.

We managed to find a flat really quickly and after 5 weeks of dossing have finally got our own room in Golders Green, London. It's a really nice area. Very green with a huge park, nearby which is fantastic.

Here are some London pic's:

LONDON!

Blokes (?): Tim & Richard
Two days after we arrived we meet up with Tim just before he flew back to NZ and he gave us a short tour of London (mainly the pubs)

Houses of Parliment

British Museum

Richard and Socrates

Rosetta Stone
what they used to decipher hieroglyphics

Captain Cook's Tiki

Buckingham Palace

Palace Guard
poor guy

Spring BBQ
and it only took Gregg and Richard about 2 hours to get it going!

London
Believe it or not this is a view of Central London from St James's Park

Danger Mouse's house

Churchill's 10 Downing Street door

Imperial War Museum - these are real guns

Let's hope dogs can read and kids don't use this as a sandpit

Portabello Markets

Portabello Markets

Breendonk Concentration Camp, Belgium

Alice's cousin took us on a day trip to Breendonk with her son Daan.

Breendonk is one of the most complete WWII concentration camps. Soon after WWII finished Breendonk was turned into a museum, so it is well preserved. Prisoners dug out the entire camp, which was originally a fort built into a hill.

STOP: You will get shot dead if you go further

Cattle car used to transport prisoners

Breendonk - before the fort was dug out, only the door was showing.

Richard keeping Daan (2) entertained during the tour

SS emblem in the officer's mess

Execution posts

Richard's Holland

The Dutch. What a paradox. Mention Amsterdam to someone in the pub and your response will invariably be related to coffee shops and sex shops. It is a place associated with hedonistic liberty in its most explicit forms. This is the Holland young British and American men go for. But then there is the other Holland, the one for late middle aged tourists, the Holland of windmills and tulips, of quaint towns of cobbles, gables and canals. This contradiction is even in the nation’s famous art – van Gogh vs Vermeer.

No where is this conflict more apparent than in the infamous red light district. This is nothing like K Road or Vivian Street. It is actually a very old, very beautiful part of Amsterdam. Unsuspecting tourists can be strolling down a pretty street, watching the canal boats chug past, looking up at the tall and narrow buildings which lean out over the street and risking generally being a hazard for cyclists, when the find themselves in a street with full-length windows. Women stand in doorways in various states of undress. Don’t take a picture though, unless you are game to deal with some severe verbal or physical abuse – it’s an unwritten rule, and these are very scary women. Right in the middle of the area is the Oude Kerk – the Old Church, the oldest in Amsterdam. It’s not as old as the district itself, which has been relieving sailors of their pay for hundreds of years. The Church was built so guilt ridden sailors could stumble out of bars, out of brothels, and straight into redemption at the church. Everyone makes money (including the Church) and everyone (including the sailor) is happy.

I loved Holland. It is so pretty. Everything is clean, tidy, orderly. This hints at the resolution of the conflict inherent in the national character – it is the trait which is more essential to what it is to be Dutch than conservatism or permissiveness. It is pragmatism. The Dutch are, first and foremost, an exceedingly pragmatic people. This is the reason marijuana is decrminalised and prostitution so accepted. It’s just the easiest, most efficient way. There is another reason – and this indicates another facet of the Dutch character – money. Why spend millions trying to suppress marijuana and magic mushrooms? it’s co much easier, and more profitable, to control it.

And yes, Holland is very, very flat.

Amsterdam

We did promise that Richard would write about his educational experiences in Amsterdam, but unfortunately he's been so busy teaching horrible teenagers that he just hasn't had time to write a literary masterpiece for you.

Doubly unlucky for you is that we didn't really get many good pictures and we only were there for about 12 hours all up over two days. But there is an upside - we will probably be passing through Amsterdam often during our stay in Europe so we will be able to enlighten you as explore different areas each time.

So Part I:

Here is a collage of coffee shop signs we passed during the last bit of our city tour (a.k.a the point where Alice's attention span ran out), my favourite is the coffeeshop and juice bar sign:

Amsterdam's famous coffee shops

Due to the irresponsible use of Marijuana (by tourists) there will be no more coffeeshop licenses issued in Amsterdam and breaking the coffeeshop rules results in the coffeeshop being shutdown on the spot.... forever! So if you're keen on trying pot in Amsterdam legally you'd better get a hurry on because there are only about 200 of these establishments left. We did hear that Rotovegas's stuff is better though - and cheaper.

Richard's highlight of our short time in Amsterdam are the men's public urinals. Here's a rather fuzzy picture, we'll try and get a better one next time:

Men's public open air urinal in Amsterdam

There are plenty of contraptions to stop men peeing on buildings in Amsterdam. But my personal favourite is this:

Electrified pee deflector and railings

I feel quite dirty now. I knew I should have nagged Richard to write this blog.

We didn't have time to go to the red light district - but see a lot of canals a old buildings:

This bridge is the highest street in Amsterdam

Typical dutch bike parked on bridge over a canal

Last remaining wooden house in Amsterdam after the rest of the city of burnt to the ground

So that's it really we learnt a lot of interesting facts on our city tour and have a long list of museums, districts, shops and landmarks that we want to visit on our next trip.