England just isn't Australia

Much of the Snowdonia region sits on top of huge deposits of slate so bright and early we continued South, stopping at Blaenau Ffestiniog to take a tour of the Llechwedd Slate Mine. It has a huge underground lake which was cool and saw how they split slate into the sheets used for making everything around here, from coasters and roof tiles to blackboards and fences!

Driving through the countryside, it’s obvious it’s Spring as not only are there flowers blooming, but thousands of baby lambs are frolicking in the meadows and wagging their tails. That’s right, their tails. They are so cute, they look like little woolly cats or something. Or lambs with tails if you prefer.

We couldn’t come to Wales and not find it, so we entered the co-ordinates into the tom tom and stopped in to visit Daffyd Thomas in Llandewi Brefi. He wasn’t home unfortunately, so we were the only gays in the village. We enjoyed a quick Bacardi & Coke with Myffanwy at the pub and then headed to our next stopover in the Southern town of Cardiff.

Kylie - In My Arms


We’ve also become quite masterful at locating cafes with accessible power points. Very handy when we forget to charge the camera or laptop and being able to plug in while you have a cuppa and something to eat is just so time efficient! We’ve also become quite adapt at searching for Free Wifi while sitting in the car parked outside of cafes…

Learnings for this leg include:

· You can’t enter trains from between the carriages. Doors are best used for this
· GPS lady has laryngitis and at one stage couldn’t speak at all. Hitting her didn’t help get her voice back
· Most drivers all but ignore speed limits over here so even as we sit doing 80 mph on the motorway (120 kms ph), cars fly past us constantly, even in the rain! Crazy poms!

Cardiff itself is a fairly small seaside town which we wandered around a little the night before but didn’t get a really good look at, so after brekkie we went for a walk around town and found Millie’s Cookies, the yummiest, tastiest, ever-so-scrumptious cookies you’ve ever tasted! Of course I had to buy a box for the car before heading off for the day. Raspberry and White Chocolate was the first flavour to go.

Alphabeat - Fascination


Leaving from Cardiff, the day was cold and wet and certainly not conducive to searching the countryside so we ditched Bristol from our plans and drove straight to Bath for a look around. After some lunch and finding not a real lot there, we then went onto see something G had been hanging out for, Stonehenge. Most unfortunately, from about half an hour before we got there, right through our visit the rain and wind was relentless so although seeing the site was quite awe inspiring, we didn’t enjoy it as much as we would have otherwise. Soaking wet and shivering with cold, we returned to the car. Luckily we had a Millie’s Double Choc chip cookie to warm us up! A quick change into dry clothes in the back seat and we were on our way back into England to Bournemouth.

The rain and wind didn’t give up until we got there, and even then continued off and on so after a wander around the city and a nice dinner and bottle of wine, we returned to the B&B to watch the semi final football (soccer) game between Manchester United and Barcelona. I have found a new boyfriend, for when Gareth gets sick of me - Cristiano Renaldo who plays for Man U.

He loves me. He tells me so. May 21st is the Final and we will be watching from somewhere in Europe.

The weather as well as the quality and price of restaurants over here, are really starting to make us appreciate how good we have it at home. The weather is (usually) pretty good and we have a handful of restaurants we can go to, safe in the knowledge that we will have a great meal with some good wine and we wont pay an absolute fortune for it. Over here, we often go out in search of a nice place for dinner and are left wandering for ages - and when we do finally find somewhere, we pay seemingly huge amounts for what would cost us very little back home. Different perspectives I guess.

As English as Mustard

As G said in the last post, we were in Manchester for 3 nights which was a nice change after moving each day for the previous couple. On our first night, we met some nice boys, Craig and Matt who took us under their wings and showed us Canal Street. Right lovely boys they are! 3 nights out on the town drinking proved to be too much for G who is now very tired and needs to detox and of course I’m to blame. I’m well bad I am!

3 nights out as well as driving in the car listening to Radio 1, has given us a good understanding of the English charts at the moment. From here on out, we will be including a “D&G Trip Soundtrack” within our posts so you can see what we’re listening to as we travel around.

Sugarbabes - About you now


We left Manchester in sheets of driving rain and headed for Chester, the gateway to Wales. As we arrived, the sun came out and there was even a marching band to welcome us! Honestly. Other people will tell you that it was for the annual St George Day celebration but I’m not convinced.

We found it to be the cutest little town full of laneways and shops and still surrounded by the old city wall, to which there are 4 gates. Here you can see where the wall was breached during the siege of 1645 and the Roman garden which holds many of the stones left from a Roman settlement built almost 2000 years ago. We bought some art and relished the first real sunshine in three days.

It wasn’t to last. From a warm 17c in Chester, we then headed into Wales and within 50 mins, the rain had returned and the temperature had dropped to 10c. Conwy is another of 5 walled towns King Edward I built to defend Wales from invasion in the 13th century, most of which are still standing today. Had a bite for lunch,

a quick look at Conwy Castle and continued on our way.

As we headed to our next stop for the night we found ourselves driving through the Snowdonia mountains which reminded us a lot of the Scottish Highlands. We were running ahead of schedule so we stopped along the way and decided to climb one of the mountains that we noticed had a small trail up the side of. Gareth reclaimed his title as King of the World, or the mountain at least, and while we were up there a cloud began to creep over the top of the hill across from us. Way cool.

Arriving in the tiny mountain village of Betws-y-Coed (pronounced Bet-oos-a-code), we wandered around, taken by the natural beauty of the place and found a B&B for the night before heading out for a good English Sunday roast.

Girl's Aloud - Can't Speak French


We also think the lady on our GPS has a cold as her voice became quite ‘froggy’ and thick since yesterday afternoon, making her a little hard to understand. I think she must have been out crackbagging for the last 3 nights as well. Manchester will do that to you.
We continue to broaden our minds and are revelling in learning so much about the world.

· Beetroots don’t go “ra ra ra”
· Bears don’t respond when you growl at them in Museums

Dea, as you can see, we have been making animal friends everywhere we go.

Rain, rain go away!

What they say about the weather in England is true. It sucks. EVERY day since crossing the Scotland/England border it has rained. There have been some moments of sunshine but not too many. I (Gareth) even drove through three hail storms. They say Melbourne has four seasons in one day – well here it is literally rain, hail and shine, all in one stretch of road.

Did you know the city of Manchester does not have any laundromats in the city? The nearest one is a 10-15 minute drive east. Also they call them laundrettes; Dan’s question of, “where is the nearest laundromat?” was met with a blank stare as if his second head was showing… Dan even mentioned, as only he can articulate, “well, you would think the fact that half the word was the same she would have figured out what I wanted.” Lucky for us the other guy in the information centre understood!

We decided to skip Liverpool and spend some time in Manchester. We have three nights here and we are staying on Canal Street. Yes the very street where Queer as Folk (The original UK version) was filmed; it is just like it is on TV -a vibrant night life and clubs everywhere. It was a tough decision and we were changing our plans every few hours but decided to go to Manchester for the next few days and already we’re glad we did.

Every club is in very close proximity to each other literally on every corner, across car parks and up and down the street – it also appears to cater for all types. We were lucky enough to find accommodation I the first pub/hotel we enquired at – only to realise shortly after that it is largely a bears pub!

We have finished our washing and are just relaxing today – taking a day off. We are hanging out in a funky bar/club on Canal Street called Via. All in the one place, multi levels and bars, lots of seating in and nooks for talking, a tapas restaurant, even a line dancing hall downstairs. I wish we had something like this at home (apart from the line dancing). This pub is perfect for us to watch people and just chill, it is a miserable day outside after all (no surprise there)

Happy ANZAC Day! We haven’t forgotten, in true style I have still got a headache from the last night. I blame Daniel… Dan did drag me from place to place and give me lots of alcohol. I stopped trying to match him double vodka for double vodka so concentrated on the beer instead. In one place we even had a £1 shot each.

We have been remarkably fortunate with our timing, whether it is for securing accommodation, ordering food before a whole group of people come in, getting tables at restaurants where they say you need a booking and finishing driving through Scotland before the PETROL STRIKE! Yes…wouldn’t that have made our drive around Scotland interesting and more expensive. Already we have seen the price rises of 20p a litre overnight on the news. It is funny for all the imperial measurements they use here, ounces, pounds, miles, yards, pints etc they display and charge per litre for petrol?

We have also been fortunate in avoiding traffic jams (seriously I will have to genuinely thank Dan for that one…… (BIG dramas on the M1 yesterday – bloody GPS lady wanted us to take the M1 – we intentionally ignored her… she kept on telling us to turn around, turn around, TURN AROUND so we turned her off! Unassisted and alone (well not really) and with our keen sense of directions (Dan, which way is east again – is it the same for the Northern Hemisphere?) we made it to Manchester and saw some great countryside!

On our way to Manchester we passed through and enjoyed the sights of York and stayed there overnight; I even got in a run up and down the river at 7 am. When I got back and it poured down rain and it stayed like that for much of the day. We decided to drive through to Nottingham – of Robin Hood fame; a great spot. We walked through the gardens of Nottingham Castle and had a series of photos with Robin Hood and his merry men. Who would have thought they would create a statue of Robin Hood looking so young and with such thick legs! We even took a walk down to the caves underneath Nottingham where people lived, worked in an underground tannery and was later used as a bomb shelter from the bombings of WWII.




I am constantly amazed at the history of some of these places. Things which we learnt in history classes (with varying degrees of recall) – we are actually at these places many hundreds of years later – and to think I haven’t even been to Europe yet! I am sure I will be blown away.

Some more observations:

• Jeans worn really low so you see your undies brand and half your bum is fashion de rigueur here. We were talking to some boys last night and they even said some people won’t talk to you if you have the wrong brand showing. And we think Sydney is pretentious! The staples are Calvin Klein and Aussiebum.
• You can park on either side of the road facing in either direction. You often see cars drive along the wrong side of the road to secure that perfect park.
• The drivers are very considerate they will let you turn right in front of them by flicking their lights, even when they have the right of way.
• The rip in my jeans on my right knee is on a journey of its own, doubling in size since Scotland. Errr. Dan wants to draw faces on my knee but I just wont let him.

Farewell to Scottish soil

In the last blog we left you in Edinburgh where we’d been pissing it up and enjoying our time on the town. It didn‘t really change that much really – we continued to find the yummiest restaurants in town – recommended to us by the very cute boy, I (Dan) thought, working the reception desk – and discovering the town on our own terms.

We spent the day on Monday walking up Princes St which is the major shopping street in Edinburgh and wandered around just soaking up the atmosphere with a spot of shopping here and there before doing the dinner and jazz thing as Gareth mentioned in the previous entry.

I must say the jazz bar was very cool – a 17 piece band including 4 tubas, saxes, bass, piano, and 4 boys (one of them a hottie) blowing their horns. A nice bottle of red and a good night had by all.
Yesterday we started the day at Holyrood House –the Queen’s residence in Edinburgh.

Very interesting slice of history about Mary Queen of Scots and her lot and then continued our walk along the Royal Mile. We had lunch at a beautiful restaurant with the suited lunch crowd and then checked out Edinburgh Castle, where I bought some very tasty Honey Mead, before making our way back down the mile to the recommended Fudge shop for our afternoon serving of sugary goodness washed down with Belgian hot chocolate. Mmmm. I do like me some fudge! After making friends with a patch of daffodils (they grow wild everywhere),

we had a quiet night for a change as we wanted to get up early to walk up Arthur’s Seat, a mountainy look-outy thingo overlooking the city to take some photos of Edinburgh Castle and the city, basking in the early morning light.

Yes, well that was the intended plan anyway. 6.15am and up the mountain we went to face icy temps and buffeting winds only to find the early morning light we were seeking was hiding behind a thick blanket of cloud and broke through for only minutes at a time. After sitting it out for a while, we gave it up as a nice idea that would not come to fruition and headed back for brekkie, one more chat with the hotel cutie and then off to England we went!

The ordinary weather turned respectably foul as we left Scottish soil and ventured into Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, to sheets of driving rain and bad luck with our pub grub lunch. Just 1 min after arriving and securing our table they decided to stop taking orders as they were too busy. Really. Those of you who known how patient I am with bad service can imagine how happy I was with that turn of events. Off to Maccas, back to the car and another few hours of driving ahead of us before stopping at Durham Cathedral (only because they filmed part of Harry Potter there, what part though, we couldn’t figure out!)

and then stopping at the lovely town of York for the night. A little trouble finding accommodation but after a little bit of searching, we managed to find a place for only 73 pounds (about $180) which was quite good, compared to the other place we found that was available for 169 pounds (about $420) for the night. What else was there to do then, but head to the pub for a meal and watch the Manchester United vs Barcelona football (soccer) game whilst sucking down some schooners of beer and scratching ourselves. Actually, I drank the finest red wine they had to offer, but that isn’t as good a story. And there wasn’t any scratching. At least not by me.

We have added to the things we have learnt along the way though. Today we learnt that:

• Even in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun still goes from East to West


• When it says “No Photos allowed” that means even when you don’t have the flash turned on!


• The English like their witch’s hats. Even when they might only need a dozen or so to mark an area on a highway, they are only happy with using every single one no less than eleventy billion.


• I may actually like soccer!

Observations:

As we go further south, the mountainous landscape has given way to flat meadows and there are no more big hairy coos, much to my dismay!

What is nice though, are the huge paddocks full of heather which are really beautiful.

Och aye is that a big hairy haggis I see?

So we pick up the story here – Gareth and Dan are in Edinburgh and we have seen sunshine and blue sky but it still doesn’t take away from the cold. The city is a bit of a mess in places - they are doing a lot of road works for a tram system to begin in 2011.

I’ll come back to Edinburgh but have to cover other parts of the trip – I don’t want to peak too early!

I (Gareth) have been doing most of the driving as Dan’s foot has been hurting and we have set a cracking pace on the amount of distance covered on foot in all places we have been so far. The tom tom lady (the GPS map thing) (we don’t have a name for her yet) has been most helpful along the way – she can be a little frustrating tho – sometimes her instructions are overly repetitive and watch out if you miss a turn off – there is tone in her voice!!!

Back in Fort William (seems a life time away now) there was a cemetery across the road - with real life bunnies. It was very funny watching Daniel run through the cemetery (utterly respectful of course) yelling bunnies, bunnies and trying to catch them. Those Scottish people do have a sense of humour looking at the picture to the left - the cemetery! click on the image to see it bigger

Off to Loch Ness and Dan has covered that one already. I think Dan had found his calling – a clansman… Ahh McCheetah.

We had an overnighter at Aviemore where it was quite difficult to get accommodation. We rang around without luck ( I was getting a little frustrated) so enlisted the help of the local tourist information desk. We weren’t the only ones… there was a judo/karate competition in town and all accommodation was full. We did manage to get into a family B&B which was a pleasant surprise and close to the city centre. We went for a lovely dinner at the Boat Hotel at Boat on Garten (funny name!)

Next along we had lunch in a lovely (Really small) town called Dunkeld with a magnificent old cathedral and ruins! The Cathedral has both Gothic and Norman influence having being built in stages over a period of nearly 250 years between 1260 and 1501. The restored choir is the oldest part or the original church, having been completed in 1350. It contains some of the original red stone in its east gable – wow! Or as I like to state, ‘all this even before Australia was discovered!

Again there was a really old cemetery which we had to look through. I see a pattern forming here…

Note: Could the shot on the left be our next Christmas card picture?

On our way to Edinburgh we made a detour to Stirling to see Stirling castle.

With a setting of mountains, rocky crags and the winding river Forth, Stirling is ‘the brooch which clasps together the Highlands and the Lowlands'. With an amazing history it was said, ‘he who holds Stirling holds Scotland’ – advice that fired William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. Fortress, royal palace, military garrison – Stirling Castle is absolutely amazing, it still has markings in the front wall where cannons were fired at it way back when I reckon it was about 1746… It is here I did my Cher impersonation too!

So now in Edinburgh, and we, like Alicia Bridges, have been loving the nightlife, yep every bar in the on night. Last night we had a few hours in a really cool and groovy jazz bar and knocked back a nice bottle of red. We had come from Creelers for dinner where the food was amazing.

Some observations:

• Along the highway there is a lot of road kill
• Hot Breakfasts always consist of bacon, eggs, mushrooms, sausages, tomatoes and toast
• A flat white is a filtered coffee (think McDonald’s before McCafe), and tastes like dish water. To get a coffee resembling anything like what we’re used to, one must ask for a Latte
• The ‘@’ key is in a different spot on the key board
• The people in Edinburgh walk a lot faster than anywhere else we have been. We must be in holiday mode because people are pushing past us!