345: 12 degrees

I'm in Golspie on the North East coast of Scotland, in the county of  Sutherland. It is 12 degrees Celsius, despite being the middle of Summer. What can I say, apart from Brrrr!
On the way here I stopped off in Yorkshire for a mini-holiday entitled "Yorkshire by Steam".  I first visited Yorkshire in 1967 and stayed there for two years at the Army Apprentices College at Penny Pot Lane, just outside Harrogate. In my formative years! Yorkshire is one of the larger English counties and is, or at least was, divided into three administrative regions called Ridings (West, North and East). I stayed in the Old Swan hotel in Harrogate. Its claim to fame, apart from now having hosted Des Buckley, was that Agatha Christie stayed (hid) there for 10 days in 1926.
The holiday included visits to York, to Whitby, and to the Bronte sisters' family home in Haworth. Here are a few photographs taken to mark the occasion.

Flowers at Harrogate railway station. A well-kept station.

Our tour guide holding forth on the history of York.
He also introduced us to the word "snickelway"

York minster. A minster is not the same thing as a cathedral, although York Minster is a cathedral as well as a minster. A minster is a church that was established during Anglo-Saxon times as a missionary teaching church, or a church attached to a monastery. A cathedral is the seat of a bishop (his seat, or throne, is called a cathedra). Maintenance and restoration of the minster is a never-ending task. It is built from a magnesian limestone and this type of stone only lasts a few hundred years before it has to be replaced. There was a static display with stone masons working on replacements. They are all hand-crafted.

A form of medieval punishment. The guilty person had their hands and head locked in position through the holes and the public was invited to throw rotting fruit and veg at them. This apparatus is called a pillory. Stocks are similar but are used for fastening the feet.

Whitby and its abbey	fishing nets or creels
I'm reminded of the pier at Sopot 2 weeks ago, although admission to this one is free!	The "raging" sea, off Whitby on Saturday

Halfway through the last century steam trains began to die out as faster, and cheaper, diesel trains came on-line (pun intended). Now however steam trains are enjoying a revival and there are many small branch lines in UK where enthusiastic volunteers have repaired/rebuilt/re-engineered steam locomotives and rolling stock. These non-British Rail lines are known as heritage railways and are hugely popular with holidaymakers - including me.

Two video clips to finish. One, a reading of the night mail train, a poem by W H Auden, and the other a song called "Young Girl" from Gary Pucket and the Union Gap. It was playing in night clubs in Harrogate in the late 60s and I remember it fondly.

344: I've been to Hel and back.

And a very enjoyable time I had there! Not quite as warm as I had been led to expect but still very pleasant.

Hel, as you will see from the pictures, is a small town at the end of a long spit of land 33 km from the Polish mainland, not too far from Gdansk. Interestingly, Kaliningrad is also on the map. Many of my readers will know that Kaliningrad is a Russian enclave and not far from Kaliningrad itself is the small town of Baltiysk, a naval base of the Russian Baltic fleet. I was there in two thousand something or other to act as an interpreter when a Royal Navy ship docked there on a friendly visit.

I'd been planning for a while to go to Gdansk and when I realised that the hotel wasn't conveniently located for public transport, and being too tight to pay for a taxi, I decided to hire a car and get more exploring done. The hotel was right on the sea front and, strangely, most of the conversation with the staff was in German. Luckily I could remember the key phrase "ein bier bitte." 

I went to Gdansk by train, on the Pendolino, the Polish equivalent of the French TGV. Very comfortable, a very smooth ride. I came back on an ordinary Inter-City train and that journey was more like you expect a train ride to be. Both journeys took roughly 3 hours. 

Gdansk, the place where opposition against the mighty Soviet Union started in the form of the Solidarity trade union, is very close to the cities of Gdynia and Sopot. These three cities are known collectively as Tricity.

On Friday evening I visited the old town in Gdansk. There was some rain but I managed to hide from it in a convenient restaurant. I ordered fish and it took forever to come – I think they had to go and catch it first.

Saturday saw an improvement in the weather. I drove to nearby Sopot and had a walk along the pier. I approached the pier by walking along the beach and then climbing onto it only later realising that I should have paid to get access to the pier. Whoops, breaking the law again!

And then the long road to Hel, via coffee and cake in Gdynia. The journey seemed to take forever, but I was determined to get there come hell or high water. On arrival it was time to sample that great Polish delicacy - pierogi. Then a wander around the town before setting off for the journey back to the hotel and "noch ein bier, bitte" using almost all my German words in one go.
Allow me to finish with, of course, Meatloaf singing Bat out of Hell.

343: More sore than Warsaw

I'm sitting at Stansted airport on my way back to Warsaw having squeezed in an extra flight over the weekend so that I could take part in the Ramsey Road Runners 10 KM on Sunday morning and attend a party to celebrate the 40th (Ruby) Wedding Anniversary of my good friends Gwen & Clive on Sunday afternoon. 
A picture of a rather exhausted Des at the end of the race. I came in 250th out of 255 but was still faster than last year. I'll know when it's time to hang up the running shoes when I come in 255th out of 255. My run number this year was 2. Perhaps 'they' expected I would come in 2nd (from the end). Only wish it hadn't been raining. Again. It was very nice to be joined by son and daughter this year for the first time ever. Pay no attention to the title of the blog - artistic license. I'm not sore at all today. 
I had also flown to Warsaw (Modlin) the previous weekend and had had some 'fun and games', and not for the first time, at Modlin railway station. A 10 minute shuttle bus journey from  Modlin airport to Modlin station and there was a train waiting so I got on it. Turns out it wasn't to be leaving for another 20 minutes or so. I got off and had a more careful look at the timetable. The train standing at the platform was for Warsaw Centralnaya and was due to leave at 16.29. At 16.36 a train was due to go to Warsaw Gdanska which suited me better. I decided to wait for the 16.36. What a mistaka to maka. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The 16.29 pulled off on time and the 16.36 didn't arrive until about 17.15 and by then it was full - standing room only. Never mind. There are 6 links in my 'travel chain' and to expect all 6 to be on time is perhaps a little unrealistic. On Friday it was the National Express coach from Stansted to Trumpington Park and Ride that gave me grief. It had been delayed going round the M25 with Friday evening traffic and was an hour and a half late getting to Stansted. Tempers were beginning to fray, not mine I hasten to add, and I thought there was going to be a punch-up between an impatient customer and a member of National Express staff. Luckily it didn't happen, or we would have been even later.
Modlin airport, some 40 miles or so outside Warsaw, is used exclusively by Ryanair. It is a bit of a one man and his dog kind of operation but in the Summer it is pleasant to sit outside the airport building at the burger van and have a cold beer and a hot dog.
Must  finish and report to the departure gate. Which may or may not be a short train ride away. Ryanair improve their turnaround times by checking everybody through the departure gate and holding them on the stairs while the plane is being cleaned/prepped from its previous journey.

342: A few notes from your man in Warsaw

3 blogs in 4 days. But rest assured, I'm rapidly running out of steam. Today's blog is in response to a request from Bob Ames, a Face Book friend, who asked if the following was real:

Off into town I went to try and discover its authenticity. I can report that the picture is, probably, of a real crossing. The crossing that looks vaguely like a piano keyboard that I managed to track down didn't have the 'island' in the middle so either the picture is a photo-shopped version or there are several of them in the city. I will keep looking but in the meantime here is the one that I found. It is on Emilii Plater street (Emilia Plater was a Polish noblewoman and revolutionary). Unfortunately I entered the street in the middle of its length with the option of turning left or right to look for this particular crossing, which I hadn't seen before. Of course I got it wrong. I turned left and walked the length of half Emilii Plater street before having to retrace my steps and start looking in the other half. Oh well, it keeps me fit. Took a few more pictures while I was in the area. Love the juxtaposition of the Hard Rock café trade mark guitar with the Palace of Culture (a present to the people of Warsaw from that 'nice' Mr Stalin). 
Just in case, I mean the monolith and not the guitar!

341: Corpus Christi day

 

Just been reading up in Wikipedia, so it must be right (?), about the meaning of  the feast of Corpus Christi (Latin for body of Christ). I see that it is observed as a public holiday in 21 different countries, including Poland. For a change I'm in the right place at the right time to take advantage of a day off. In this instance it was two days off. Corpus Christi always falls on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday (i.e. 60 days after Easter) and many Polish offices close for both Thursday and Friday, giving employees a long weekend. One of my students told me that many companies require employees to take a day from their annual leave entitlement in order to have the Friday off. So, if the offices are locked there can be no English lessons.

Lots of church services yesterday and temporary "places of worship" (?) erected on the streets. Here is a picture of one such. There were two nuns "on patrol".

I took the opportunity to see more of Warsaw. In the morning a 5KM run in the local woods and in the afternoon a wander around the largest park in Warsaw - Wazienki Park. Follow the Wikipedia link for an insight into the history of the park and a description of some of the many buildings therein. With it being a national holiday there were many thousands of Varsovians and visitors milling around the many attractive buildings and gardens. Here are a few of the pictures I took. The first picture is of a particularly mangy half-wild but used-to-the-crowds squirrel. He hopped onto my bench looking for some nuts! The second picture immediately reminded me of "don't look Ethel" from The Streak by Ray Stevens (1974 !). I've added a You Tube clip at the end of the blog in case anybody wants to listen to it again.
Finally I just wanted to illustrate that a rip-off is a rip-off wherever in the world it is perpetrated. I stopped for something to eat on the way home from the park. This was billed as Nachos and cost me about a fiver. It was just a dish of crisps. The 'cheese dip', such as it was, came in the smallest dish in the world. There was not even a whiff of chilli-con-carne or guacamole. I wouldn't have minded quite so much, well yes I would, if the crisps had all been crisp sized but underneath the top layer it looked as though they had given me the dregs from the bottom of so many packets. Never mind, worse things happen at sea. At least I know not to go there again.

340:Torun

This blog has the benefit of 2 Gin & tonics but needs to be done now as there is another one backed up behind it with pictures from my visit to Warsaw's Wasienski Park earlier today. (Today was a holiday in Poland - Corpus Christi day). More about that another time. Tomorrow?
Lots of pics today then, starting with a map of Torun (to show you how big the old town is) and a picture of a statue of Copernicus himself.
And now some pictures of the hotel I stayed in - the Black Rose. It is located in the old town and is full of character (i.e. old furniture). I recommend it (unless you need there to be a lift as there wasn't one).

Now the (old) town itself. I like it very much and will doubtless return. Perhaps next time I will forego the dubious pleasures of Polski Bus (3 hours 15) and stick to the train (2 hours 45). Not the train in the photo!