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.