Unfortunately the last post in the Crème Anglaise series has to deal with how bad and unpleasant an experience it was to move away from England, thanks to the removal company we choose. This is my personal and private testimonial, Hoults Removals and Storage is in no way affiliated to this site nor does endorse the content (I suppose).

» Read the long story short

Don't. There must be a another, decent company around.
 

» Read the long story long

         
Thanks for nothing, Hoults.

Saturday saw the definite end to the fellwalking series. Two weeks from now I shall sit in a plane headed for Vienna.

We opted for Scafell Pike this time. Scafell Pike being the highest mountain in England, it somehow irresistably lured us up there, despite the fact that the great Lake-Man Wainwright says it's one of the most boring ones. I say: it is not, at least not in snow.

Getting there was a bit troublesome: first the road was closed due to black ice, which cost us one hour, then we did not listen to the Navigator but trusted Sat-Nav instead, which cost us the second hour. When we got there Michael was already nackered from the 5 hour drive and it was noon before we took our first step towards the summit from Wasdale Head.

The route went straight up covering almost 1000 m of altitude on a distance of only 5 km, and it was well worth it as you can see for yourselves if you care to proceed to the exhibition.
In addition to the view, it is also a very satisfying feeling to stand on something which is the highest something of another something.

The honour of polishing the day went to Henry, who, in the form of a lamb in mint sauce is regularly being served at the Boot & Shoe in Tarzan's native town Greystooke and always justifying a detour if you happen to be in the area.

The only thing that ruined a good part of an otherwise immaculate day for me was that I didn't remember having switched off the gas oven. A and Michael tried to convince me that nothing could possibly happen because the only hub that could have been left on was the one with my espresso maker on top, which entirely is made from metal. Still, every now and again images of a smoking stret of terraced houses burnt to a smoking cinder, fire engines, body bags, weeping families, and police helicopters on the lookout for the hun with the hub kept flashing through my head until I came home to see the stove turned off.

When you know your days at a certain place are counted, you and everybody around you seems to get into a completely different mindset. All of a sudden the things you always wanted to do but never managed to fit in because the old sofa insisted you shouldn't happen. So only now that I am already on the last bottle of most drinks the Brasserie has to offer, I get busy.

Monday the Brasserie remained closed once again due to fell walking with Michael. We had planned to go up Scafell Pike (highest mountain in England) but with ugly weather forecasts and half the Lake District flooded, we postponed this prestigious one to Friday and decided to pay our respects to the Old Man of Coniston. We started in Coniston, went straight up the Old Man via Church Beck and the old mines and continued in a circular route along the ridge and down via Lever's Water (which indeed is the most lovely spot for a nice cup o' tea).

Although all walks in Britain were very rewarding and interesting in one way or the other, the stunning views and the rocky terrain make the Old Man my favourite one so far (closely followed by Skiddaw, Schiehallion and the scramble up Sharp Edge).

* * *

Tuesday I locked the doors again as Michael was kind enough to get his hands on free tickets for the match Newcastle United v West Brom. I've never been a big fan of football nor of watching any sports, but I really wanted to hear 50.000 Geordies chant »Blaydon Races« from inside St James' before I left the toon. St. James' holds 52,387 people. Usually 50.000 seats are occupied by the »toon army«, approx. 2000 seats by away fans and 387 seats are occupied by eight to twelve police in between the Geordies and the away fans. The latter are literally tucked away in the most remote corner and subject to chants like »your support is fucking shit«, which, at a ratio of 1:25, is neither false nor surprising.

It was a great experience and – as I can now say by (if only for 120 minutes) having been a proper season ticket holder – we even won the game.

Proud holder of a season ticket (Howay, man!)

I become more and more indebted to Michael who has been a great tour guide, chauffeur, and interpreter through the North-East and the Lakes. I hope I can repay some of it through numerous hikes in the Alpes!

watchable here

Today in »Notable Traditions of the World«: Early British Capitalism

After a brief stopover in Newcastle A. and I boarded our hired Fiesta and I put the pedal to the metal steering the noisy little thing northwards. The tour through Scotland and the Scottish/English border amounted to 606.7 imperial miles. Coming home I noticed I brought roughly one picture per mile...

Saturday we had a look at Loch Leven. Fontane describes this little gem in »Jenseits des Tweed« and A. wanted to check the accuracy of his account (he wasn't very accurate), so we took a little boat to the island where Mary Queen of Scots was held prisoner back in the days. The whole area is very nice, the paths around the loch are well maintained and we didn't see a single cannibalised pickup truck (they are quite common in the villages of North Northumberland). The only thing disturbing the peace is the M90.

From Kinross we headed to Perth where we spent the night at Northlees Farm B&B. It was the cheapest we could get, although £ 18 per night per person is not exactly cheap. It's probably not the right place to set up your holiday base due to smallness of the room and thinness of the walls, but it is just the right thing to stop by on your way to wherever. The folks were very friendly and we even received a private shepherd's dog skills display on Sunday morning. After the show we decided to climb Schiehallion, which is – if I am not mistaken – the 3rd highest mountain in the UK, one of the few free standing mountains in Scotland, and apparently it somehow can be seen as the center of Scotland. It's a nice climb, first through heather on a path and then through rock and scree up to the summit from where one has a fantastic view all around. After the descent we headed home with half open eyes, reasoning that a night in the own bed was more comfortable and would save us a considerable amount of cash. We stopped at a garage in Earlston where to female Scottish heavy weights started flirting heavily with me while I was waiting for A.

Monday morning brought us to Jedburgh, Rhymer's Stone, and Melrose where we visited the abbey. Via Smailholm Tower and Scott's View we went back to Earlston, where Thomas Rhymer (who told his wife he had been abducted by fairies when he didn't come home for seven years) had his tower. Now, the tower is right next to the petrol station and situated in somebody's backyard, neatly decorated and all. The petrol station being the very same we had pulled into the night before. So now it dawned on us that the two ladies were in fact fairies who didn't realise that the idea of beauty had changed tremendously in the last centuries and the muffin look was no longer en vogue.

Completely nackered we returned the Fiesta in the morning, hoping to get back north soon, only maybe in a different kind of automobile.

My plane had barely touched Newcastle soil last Thursday, when Michael rang the door bell on Friday morning to take me on the fourth walk in our series. We went to the Yorkshire dales and hadn't really planned anything. So while Michael was getting petrol on the way there, I spreaded the map, closed my eyes, performed a little ritual dance, threw my walking stick in the air and looked where it landed: the magic pole clearly pointed at »Calf« and »Crook«.

When up there, the weather was so clear that we could even see Blackpool Tower.

Unfortunately the Calf and Crook tour closed the »onwards and upwards weeks« at the Brasserie. Scafell Pike (the highest mountain in England) was scheduled for coming Thursday, but work got in the way, so we had to postpone it.

Pictures are up and hanging.

Today was the third in the series of walks that made me willingly abandon my duties behind the bar and switch the apron for the boots. Down the corridor and the first on the left for the pictures.

We started out the same as we did on the walk up the Cheviot – only we parked a lot closer than last time and although the pictures appear quite white again, this time it's due to the fog and not due to the fairies nicking my camera once more (they tried, but I had attached the case to the rucksack, so they only gave it a bit of a dangle this time). When we hit the fence after coming via Langleeford through Harthorpe Valley, we headed left instead of right and up Hedgehope Hill.

The way up Hedgehope had the nastiest type of bog and peat I ever walked, and the pouring rain added on quite a bit to this experience.
Still, you always know you had a great day out when you finish by wading through a river.
 

Yesterday the Brasserie was closed once more due to fell walking. I've been in the Lakes and up Blencathra with Michael and A. And my new camera. A friend of mine had her old one stolen, bought a new one, didn't like the new one and found the old model for £ 35 again, so I got her new old one for the same price. It's a Fuji Finepix Z 100fd and I am quite happy so far. The macro isn't as good and I had to get used to the menu but overall there is quite a bit of improvement: it reacts faster when you press the button, it has a thread to attach a tripod, its ISO ranges down to 64, it shoots with 8 mega pixels, and it apparently doesn't appeal to the fairies as much as the Samsung did, so I even brought it home again (see the images).

The walk brought us from Mungrisdale along the river Glendermackin up to Scales tarn. Here we separated and while Michael and A., who both suffer from a light vertigo, choose the steeper but less exposed way up, while I opted for the scramble up sharp edge – where I, once more, was reassured of the truth of Einstein's dictum, there only being two infinite things: space and human stupidity. First I met a couple moving down the rocks on their asses telling me through clenched teeth how much they enjoyed this. Then I had to act as mountain rescue for two idiots in sneakers who clearly weren't prepared for what they were doing. Sharp edge is nowhere near dangerous on a dry and not too windy day when you trust your feet, but these two where just a pain to watch. I never know if I should yell at people like that, preach to them about how irresponsible they act, leave them alone, or help them.

On Hallsfell Top (the highest spot on Blencathra) I had the opportunity to learn a very valuable lesson in the high art of small talk, when we were greeted by a fellow hiker with words that are guaranteed not to trigger any disagreement whatsoever:

It's always nice when it's nice, isn't it?

From there we continued to walk towards Knowe Crags and then went back down via Bannerdale Crags and Pile of Stones through Bannerdale, finishing off at the Boot & Shoe in Greystoke (apparently the village where Tarzan is from), that serves the best pub food I ever had (especially Lamb »Henry« was plain awesome).

The drive to the lakes was only something like an hour and fourty minutes from Newcastle, so when you have a car it's quite easy to get to this stunning scenery in the morning, fit in an extensive hike and dinner and head back home in the evening. Unfortunately we don't have a car, and by public transport you're looking at 3 hours train and bus and two nights at a B&B which will leave you with costs around £ 70 per person – which is probably why it's been almost two years since we climbed Skiddaw.

I closed the Brasserie for the day and joined in for some hill walking with Michael, who is preparing for a mountain leader course, which he needs to complete in order to be able to take his students to places other than the beach or the playground. We started with a nice cooked breakfast, bought a map and then headed into the Cheviots to climb The Cheviot (with 815 m the highest thing around).

The walk was beautiful and involved following (and quite often crossing) a little stream up to its source. The water looked almost like ale.

Then up The Cheviot, down the steep side and back to the car. The weather was brilliant, the countryside lovely and it could have been a perfect day out.

Well, I said it could have been perfect. It was very, very lovely alltogether, but there were mainly three shortcomings:

1. We bought the wrong map. It said »The Cheviots«, so we assumed it would have »The Cheviot« on it. Wrong. Silly us.
   We got us the »OS Landranger 80«, but according to the Wikipedia article on The Cheviot you want  74: Kelso & Coldstream and 75: Berwick-upon-Tweed (mind that even the Ordnance Survey's own website spits out sheet 80 if you search for »The Cheviot«). So that left us with
   a) a map that didn't show the area we were in
   b) a map that did show the area we were in but was printed from the internet and thus of rather inferior quality and
   c) a description of the hike advising us to wa k a ong an ondu ating path since it got stripped of all lower case L's in the process of printing.
2. We didn't trust the satnav, which is why we had to walk a dreadful amount of asphalt to get to the start of the walk and again after the end of the walk to get back to the car, were then late for a class Michael had to teach in Morpeth 30 miles away, so when we finally got to Morpeth we parked in a residents only zone, which then found me trying to explain to a resident why I had a key to a car which I said wasn't mine and which I wasn't insured to move, but no resident's parking permit and that I didn't exactly know where the friend who owned the car went. Oh was I tired by that time.
3. I lost my camera on the way up. So all the nice pictures I took are now rotting away in some peat hole (hence the white frames above). I went back to find it, but only managed to secure two bird sceletons.
   So bye bye Samsung Digimax. You had your glitches, but at least you worked most of the time. May the dead birds, the B-17 (that apparently crashed here in the winter of '44) and the bunch of notoriously nervous sheep keep you good company.

In order to honour my first digital camera which I bought from the earnings of my first publication some years back, I'll share the last pictures I took with it:

r · i · p

Been to the beach lately. Not been alone in the fog. Two members of the local cuckoo club were there, too. The club is actually quite large. Whenever one gets down to the seafront one can spot two or three of their members walking very, very, very slowly up and down (and up and down and up and down and up and down, if you know what I'm saying) the sand with their metal detectors.

Detecting what?

Even if there ever was a metal object on that beach, surely one of their fellow bonkers club members would have detected that Dr Pepper can and the empty tin of mushy peas by 1959.

I briefly thought I should make a metal detector from a broom stick, the broken vacuum's wire and an old steering wheel. Then hide a proper treasure chest and wait for one of the Loon family to turn up, patrol the beach ten meters in front of him, start digging, watch him sweat, finding the chest and watch him cry. But it would be nasty and too time consuming.