Where He Leeds, You Follow

It has been brought to my attention by a couple of people that my blogging has been a little lax recently. In my defense, there's virtually nothing to tell. For the last month I've been sitting in my room staring at the wall. I actually stuck some pictures to the wall, to make it more interesting. Before that all I had to look at was a political map of India that one of the previous tennants left behind. I've been wistfully reading Lonely Planet guides about places that are warmer than here, which is everywhere.

My Irish flatmates moved out a few weeks ago, and the other tennant won't help, so it's been left to me to find the replacement. I've spent a fair chunk of the last 3 weekends vacuuming and scrubbing the bathroom so the place looks like less of a sty. A couple of Kiwis are moving in at the weekend, which I'm pleased about.

So given that I've done nothing interesting recently, it's a good thing that I've never reported on my trip to Leeds:


In December, someone sent me a link whereby you could book cheap hotel rooms in January. I tried to get one in Bath or Chester, but they were both booked out, so I tried Leeds and it was available. Why Leeds? Well, I had complained to my brother that the flaw in the brilliant London museums was the lack of weaponry or military history. He told me that all the good historical weaponry was at the Leeds Armoury, so I was keen to see it. It was my birthday in January, so this was my present to myself. In the end, the train ticket was so insanely overpriced as to render the whole trip expensive anyway.

I needed the trip. There was sad news from home and my job was going terribly, and to be honest I spent a lot of my time in Leeds sighing and blinking back tears. It's not all strawberries at Wimbledon, over here.

Anyway, I arrived at midday on Saturday and headed straight for Kirkstall Abbey. It's quite a long walk out of the city and it was bitterly cold. The website says 3.5 miles, but it seemed more to me. Kirkstall Abbey is an old ruined Cistercian abbey. I spent quite a while there.

Kirkstall Abbey

On the way, I detoured to try and visit the industrial museum which is at an old mill, but it was closed and would've been boring if it was open. But near there I spotted this ruined shed:

Ruined shed

In the evening, I went to the Leeds museum. The staff were friendly and it was well presented, but there just didn't seem to be any very important exhibits. It felt like a small-town collection.

A few weeks ago, one of my flatmates was telling me about an article in the local newspaper about some students in Cambridge who have to make do on a food budget of 20 pounds per week. I was a little surprised at that, as my weekly food bill is about 10 pounds. I'm living to an extreme budget over here (I don't think I've had takeaways since I left London almost 6 months ago and I've only bought meat a couple of times), so in Leeds I treated myself to a meal at a nice Italian restaurant.

The next day, I got up early and walked across town to the Armoury. Although it was freezing again, I passed 5 guys fishing in the river. The only thing these guys were catching was plurisy:

Fishermen

I was also struck by this sign. I'm not sure of the exact context, but it's almost the exact opposite of the ones I saw on the Golden Gate Bridge last year:

Leeds Armoury

This is where Leeds is spending all it's historical preservation money. It's absolutely top-notch. I forget which, but one of these suits of armour was owned by Henry the 8th.

Henry the 8th's Armour?

I'm not sure if you can make out that photo of the stairwell, but those are all weapons and suits of armour going up 5 floors. That place is worth a visit, and it even has a touch of Kiwi:

The orc Lurtz

The weather has finally started to improve now. I'm in a rush to get my touring bike finished, and then there should be some more to report. A budget store chain called Lidl's is having a sale on cycling gear this week, but there isn't one in Cambridge, so on Saturday I'm going to an exotic sounding town called Letchworth to try and stock up on supercheap bike stuff.

S'no Good

I'm well aware that this post comes heavily infused with hypocrisy. Firstly, a while back I posted a criticism of B&W photography. Today's photos are nearly all B&W. What can I say? The snow lends itself to dithering. Secondly, earlier this week I sent a message to a former colleague saying that the snow isn't that bad, and that the English just like to have something to moan about. I'd like to revise that response, please. The snow isn't deep, but after 6 days of it, damn I'm cold. It's fricken' freezing in here, Mr Bigglesworth.

Incidentally, the next person who emails me to gleefully tell me that it's 34C in Christchurch at the moment may find me on their doorstep, punching them in the nose. With a couple of brief exceptions, I've been pretty much in Winter for 10 months now. This isn't easy, people.

Anyway, in the previous post, I mentioned that I hoped to get into town at the weekend to get some photos. I did indeed spend this morning roaming Cambridge taking snaps and if these shots don't make you feel cold, even at 34C, I'll be pretty surprised. You've seen some of these scenes before, only warmer.

Old school bike and snow-covered punts

More snow-covered punts

Light reflecting off the Cam

Did you notice that this one isn't actually B&W? If you look closely, you can see a guy in a red jacket. Wow, this is like the "Schindler's List" of travel blogs.

A smoking chimney

Church of Great St Mary

A mud puddle with broken ice

Shortly after I took this shot, I slipped on the ice. Actually, it was probably the 30th time that I'd slipped on the ice, but this time I went down hard. A little tip here - if you shout "FUCK!" at the top of your lungs, it will ensure the maximum number of people turn around to see you looking like an idiot. The doctor says I may've fractured my dignity.

Two geese chilling out

A snow crocodile

The Henry the 8th Gate

Strolling on Jesus Green

Snowy houses

Jesus Ditch, frozen

There are birds here, like small Pukekos. They were running around on the ice on the ditch, so it wasn't thin.

King's College

King's College again

Magdaleine Bridge

Park bench in the snow and ice

Several shots of swans on the Cam

Hopefully, you're all feeling as cold and fed up as I am now. However, if there hasn't been quite enough pathos yet, how about a kid's kite stuck in a tree?

Leeds trip to follow some time soon. Bye.

Shivering in a Winter Wonderland

There are so many exciting locales around here: Iceland, the Arctic, the North Sea. Of course, I've never been to any of them, but I have experienced their cold weather fronts. The current one comes from Russia, and as you may've seen on the news, it's given England the heaviest snow dump in 18 years. The snow on Monday was heavier, but my camera had a flat battery. I'm hoping the snow falls again at the weekend so I can get some pictures in town.

Snowy street

I'll probably walk to work today...

When the best part of the forcast for the next 5 days is for a bit of sun mixed in with the snow on Saturday, that says it all, doesn't it?

Speaking of Iceland... The Icelandic banks were offering some great interest rates, so many English (including numerous councils) had invested with them. When the banking system began to wobble, England used anti-terrorist legislation to seize the money still in England, thus ensuring the collapse and nationalisation of the 3 Icelandic banks. This left the Icelandic people owing hundreds of thousands of dollars each. I haven't heard much discussion about this here, but I found a really interesting article that AA Gill has written about it:

http://puffineater.blogspot.com/2008/12/iceland-frozen-assets.html

Bye.

Diagonal Rain

The days are getting a bit longer now. It was gettting dark a bit before 4 in the afternoon. Now it's about 4:30. Having said that, it's still bitterly cold. I'm sitting in my room, in a contemplative mood, watching the rain create stripes down the window. The wind is blowing a bit, so some streaks angle to the left, while others veer right. While I'm sitting here being maudlin, my flatmates are running around in the mud at their hurling match. Have I mentioned that the Irish are nuts?

In a little over a week, it will be 6 months since I left home. Time flies, I guess...

Before I talk about Norwich, I'm just going to offer a coda to the Belgium trip. We caught a train into Brussels at about 5:30am on Boxing Day. I caught my Eurostar train back to London, only to find myself trapped there. In contrast to the Belgian system, King's Cross station was locked and none of the trains were running. And only some tube lines were running. I expected the trains to be an essential service that would run every day, even Xmas. In the end, I found an open Internet cafe, looked up the buses, legged it to Victoria Station, and got a bus ticket back to Cambridge. In all, it took about 12 hours to get home. It left me less than thrilled with England, and fervently wishing I was back on the continent where the train tickets were cheap and things worked.

That weekend there was a Stargate SG1 marathon on Saturday, followed by a Stargate Atlantis marathon on Sunday. It was hard work doing back-to-back marathons, but I made it through. That Ranulph Feinnes isn't so tough.

I went back to work after the weekend, but there was almost no one around. Of the possibly 100 people who work in my building, there were maybe 6 of us. And my flatmates were away. I went for the better part of a week without talking to anyone.

At the start of January, I went to Norwich for a day. In the Middle Ages, Norwich was a larger city than London. Here are a couple of pics:

Norwich Castle

The castle was quite interesting, but expensive. You had to pay quite a large sum to get in, and then there were extra charges to see the battlements and other areas. It's an old castle (1160 AD), but externally it looks quite modern because the Victorians resurfaced it.

In more recent times it was a prison.

Norwich Cathedral

The Cathedral was also an interesting visit. I really liked the fact that there were volunteers roaming around, who would explain interesting facets of the design to visitors.

Street between trees

Vine Street

This is one of the old streets. I'm going to say that it's called Vine Street, if all of you promise not to go and look up whether I'm correct or not. To me, those last two shots look very similar to the Belgian photos, although if you look at the church on ~Vine Street~, you can see that it is made of quite a dark, harsh stone: flint. Up close, you can see that it breaks very unevenly, leaving rough shapes and sharp edges. It's immediately clear why they used flint in the stone age for arrow heads, knives, etc.

And that's about it for Norwich. Not a particularly mind-blowing day, but good to get out of the house.

A slight pause...

Hi. I know I've gone quiet recently. I'm not abandoning the blog - I'm just taking a break while I get my head around a bereavement.

Back soon.