For the following I make no apologies. As with all holiday posts your going to get bored unless your me within the first paragraph or so!

Sunday 13th June 2010. The beginning of the end maybe? We were due to leave at 8pm that night and I don’t think we’ve every came close to hitting our leaving deadlines on any of our trips never mind our holidays. Before we left I had a two hour driving lesson, a birthday party to attend, clothes shopping to sort out as well as actually packing our bags. When I say we managed to get be out the door by 10pm and that we were doing really well I mean it!

Vonnie managed to get through most of the drive with no sleep and so we made it to Portsmouth just in time to park up and get a little rest before checking in and boarding the ferry. I’m still trying to work out whether the six hour ferry crossing was a wise thing. All that time trapped on a boat trying to keep the kids entertained? It would have been a breeze if it wasn’t for the fact the boat had something like six school trips on board. I’ve never seen so many kids running wild without adult supervision.

A quick ‘detour’ through Caen, and by that I mean I can’t read French road maps and so rather than get us onto the ring road and straight onto the motorway we ended up getting lost driving around the town centre, and we were on track. We arrived late afternoon which meant we had been on the go with virtually no sleep for 32 hours by this point. I think I ended up going for something like 40 hours without a single minute of sleep and felt fine.

Tuesday was our first real day here and so we spend it revisiting the supermarket after I’d almost ran screaming from it in a sleep-deprived panic after being unable to read a single product label in the dairy aisle. This time though we ended up spending stupid amounts of money on BBQ-able meat without being sure the BBQ provided for us is actually capable of staying warm long enough to cook the meat through. The afternoon was spent throwing ourselves down waters hoots at the camp sites indoor water fun pool type place. We would be burnt to shreds if this place wasn’t indoors but i get the feeling we’re going to have to get photographic proof or folk back home are going to thing the weather was just rubbish going by the lack of serious tans we’ve got going on.

Wednesday was mostly spent the same way except that myself and the boys didn’t go to the supermarket and we went to the park in the morning. This whole ‘No Swimming Shorts in the pool’ thing really got to me. It’s actually an offence that can see you thrown off the camp site so we were chancing it with the boys but I ended up having to get a set of proper speedo style swimming shorts. I have to say though that on the first day I kept stopping when I went down the slides when I was wearing my normal swimming shorts but with the speedos it was as if I was an Olympic water luge competitor or something given the speed I was getting up to! I know you don’t really need or want a picture of me wearing speedos in your head but I had to put that out there.

It was just past 10pm and everyone was asleep or in bed. I’d not long finished watching the most recent episode of Dr Who with the boys and I’d settled down for a few beers to watch episode six of Luther. My first handful of crisps seen me lose a chunk of tooth the size of a mini-D6. I wasn’t in pain or anything like that but that may be because of the tequila and lime flavoured beer I’d just drank.

Thursday was supposed to be a trip to the local beach and then a drive out to Mont St Michel but it ended up being another day with the kids running around the park and taking them to the swimming pools. They loved the two inflatable bouncy castles until Findlay decided doing a dismount from the space rocket on one of them and landing on his neck was the best idea in the world. Five minutes of tears was how long it lasted but I think it was more a fright that he got than the actual pain that caused it.

On Friday we did the dummy run through to St Malo to find out how to get to the ferry terminal and just how long it would take us. On paper I think we worked it out that it should take us something like 50 minutes as it was about 100km away and most of it was on 130km roads. I’m sure we were still driving about 2 hours later though! We clocked the aquarium on the way into town and decided to get somewhere to sit in and eat lunch. A choice of a million sea front restaurants was before us and we chose a pizza place in a small shopping mall inland. Despite the staff barely being able to speak English and our own french not being being up to scratch we managed to get some food and get a laugh from the staff. The pizzas the kids had we’re fantastic. They had been shaped into a face with the veg being the eyes, nose and mouth and the kids loved them. I on the other hand went for the calzone. Vonnie pointed out that I might have missed the fact it had egg in it but I thought nothing of it. I then cut into it to find they had basically cracked a raw egg over the insides and the cooking process melted the cheese and heated the meat up but the egg was still raw. Tasted damn good though.

Back at the aquarium we wandered around the various displays feeling a little spoiled after our trip to the one in Bologne two years ago. The place is nice and looks really good but as we came to the end of the displays we remembered something the ticket clerk mentioned in passing. There was apparently a submarine ride included in the cost of the ticket. The aquarium was inland so I couldn’t work out how that one worked but sure enough right at the end was the entrance to the Nautibus ride. I still chuckle at that name like I’m a big kid. Naughty Bus. Anyway it wasn’t so much a submarine ride as a giant walk in barrel that you climb into. It’s taken round a route in a pool that has various other tanks looking into it and with it being water on both sides it looks as if the glass isn’t really there. It was a great way to spice up what might have been only an ordinary display if you were to just walk past it in the main building.

We stopped off in Mont St Michel on the way home and like most picture postcard resorts it doesn’t live up to it’s appearance. I should have learned my lesson visiting Carcasonne all those years ago but I didn’t. Everything costs a fortune but added to that your surrounded by a smell i can only describe as centuries of poo and Dettol. And if you want to learn anything about the place you need to fork out even more money. It was nice to visit it though.

Saturday was spent packing and going around the local supermarket seeing who could buy the strangest thing to buy for themselves. The kids bought books in French that they can’t read, Vonnie bought a plant pot and I bought a light azada for the garden. That was going to be fun if customs decided to have a wee look in our car.

Early doors on Sunday we left just in time to make it to St Malo. Despite never actually finding the ferry terminal on the dummy run we got there just as the queue started. This time it was an eight hour crossing but the weather was fantastic and there was no school buses full of kids! Two hours in the car in France and eight hours in the boat and the kids were fine. Fifteen minutes on English soil and Erica was sick all over the back of the car. We still had 8 hours of driving to go at this point but we got home safely in the end.

We didn’t know it until we got there but we really needed that holiday. Not having to be anywhere or do anything by a set time was great. We never really woke up before 10am though and almost everyone except for myself was asleep for 10pm. A well earned rest is what I think you’d call it.

Tags: Caen, France, holiday, Mont St Michel, St Malo

Not much has been going on. Well thats a lie what I mean is not much I want to talk about just yet has been going on.

We got some more chickens the other day and one of them is a cockerel. This has meant several almost-heart-attacks whilst it’s flew out of the run or on to the neighbours fence or when it attacked me the morning after it arrived.

With all the time off I’ve had I’ve not really done much with it. I’ve mentioned before
how frustrated I have been getting with not being able to do very much but with a little shoving from the Occupational Health nurse and the doctor I’ve got myself back out walking again as I’d stopped that after we got back from France. On friday I managed to walk from Central Station to the SECC, then along to Kelvingrove and back again to Central Station. Admittedly it took me about 3 hours and god only knows how many rest stops but I did it. I’m still recovering from it though!

For the eagle-eyed amongst you…you might have noticed I’ve been playing with the theme for my blog today. I’m just looking about for something to use as a base and whilst theres a few I like theres no point in customising them to far if the basic things I want them to do don’t work. We’ll see how that pans out

Tags: Central Station, France

I last went on an overseas camping holiday 15 22 years ago. Nothings changed. And I do mean nothing. It’s the same tents, the same beds, the same appliances and the same people you meet. It’s the same reps you see over and over again and its the same meals you eat every night.

I really enjoyed it though

Apart from the weather, my bed and Vonnie’s health we done not to badly. We lost out by staying in the middle of nowhere with very little in the way of touristy things we could do in weather we had but what we did get up to I rather enjoyed.

We started off by running late as usual but actually ended up being several hours early for the campsite. Took me a couple of days to get my head around that one. Our plan was to leave yearly doors on Friday morning, camp overnight at Dover and get the ferry the next morning so that we arrived at the campsite around lunchtime. What ended up happening was we left here just before lunchtime, hit Dover just before midnight after realising the campsite would be shut, got on a night ferry and after a brief detour to Bologne we arrived at the campsite at about 5am local time. The kids were great on the entire journey which really surprised us.

Where we were staying was a campsite in the grounds of the Chateau de Drancourt which is about a 5 minute drive outside St-Valery-sur-Somme. Turn that into a 20 minute walk and add in that the nearest decent supermarket/shop is there and you realise just how awkward a place it is to get food. A 9″ basic pizza from the onsite pizzaria that you would pay £4 for in your local takeaway cost at least 10€! It was a lovely campsite mind you with what appeared on the surface to be lots of things to do.

Everything costs money though. Gone are the days of just getting your name on a list to get a game of tennis. Now your paying 8€ for an hours game. About the only free thing there were the pools. When you seen the blurb it stated that one of them was heated. What they actually meant was that one of them had a hose from the toilet block that ran hot water into the pool as and when they remembered to keep the tap on. That was a bit of a let down. Thoroughly enjoyed the pools though, especially the races from the top of the slide to the gates we’d do once we got the kids all dried and in their pram at the end of the day

It wasn’t just the site shops that were expensive though. You don’t get cheap restaurants in France. We spent 40€ on crepes and soft drinks for lunch one day and easily spent that on 2 omelette’s and 2 cheeseburgers with drinks as well. This meant we spent our evenings enjoying either home tent cooked pasta or BBQ’s. As you can guess I really enjoyed the BBQ’s seeing as the first one I made with only charcoal and nothing other than a couple of matches to get it going. We finally managed to get firelighters but sill it took a good 20 minutes to get the damn thing going each time! We soon got fed up of kebabs and burnt burgers though.

We did do something other than complain though

The region we were staying in has a narrow gauge railway that links up the entire bay with the national rail network. The link from St Valery to Cayeux-sur-mer is a separate line but is run by a diesel train so we went on the longer journey on steam train to Le Crotoy on the other side of the bay. It took us an hour each way and the kids loved every second of it. In fact I loved it as well. Theres something about standing on the kickplate at the end of a carriage or hanging out a window as the steam train takes you through the countryside that just makes you smile no matter how old you are.

We also went to Nausica in Bologne on our last day. Take the Sealife centres in the UK and make them about 10 times bigger and you’ve got this place. You don’t have as large a shark tank as the one on the Firth of Forth but everything else is bigger. It was also about half the price of that Sealife centre as well!

The journey home was interesting. We weren’t supposed to get the ferry until Wednesday night but after chancing our arms again we got on the 5pm ferry to Dover and drove through the night getting home at about 5am. That was some drive on Vonnie’s part with only a wee stop over at Stratford Services for a wee rest.

There are far more photos (we only just finished uploading all 800 odd of them to Flickr yesterday) but I need to dig through them and delete those that are either crap or embarrassing. Theres also a few I’d like to hit with Lightroom/Photoshop before to many folk see them as well. Those that are interested will get to see them soon though… I promise.

Tags: food, France, GBP, rail network, United Kingdom

Well we’re back. Got back early doors yesterday. I’ve got 10 days of internet and life in general to catch up with so an update will happen in the next couple of days probably. I’m sure Vonnie will get hers posted on her blog before then though so if your that desperate to know how our holiday went head over there

Tags: France

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

But I don’t care. I could watch this goal for hours on end!

It’s not every day your national team goes to France and comes back victorious nevermind keeping a clean sheet as well.

 

 

Your going to hate me getting these youtube videos working soon aren’t you?

No tag for this post.

Tags: France

Now you guys know I like my military history but this one is slightly different from the norm. This book follows the history of the breaking of the german codes during WWII and focuses mostly on the naval enigma code. For a book about codebreaking it managed to fit a surprising amount of war into it. If you’ve ever seen the film Enigma you’d maybe think that it was the folk at Bletchley Park that cracked the code single handedly but thanks to Hugh Montefiore you soon realise that folk from Poland, France and the USA all had a hand in it at some point in time although most of the plaudits do go to the UK codebreakers. You also find out just how close the Germans were to realising the code had been broken which would have been a disaster.

Like I say for a book based on codebreaking and one that has a surprising amount of maths in it its a very easy read.

Tags: Bletchley Park, Enigma, France, Hugh Montefiore, Poland, United Kingdom, United States

so…the weekend of much merryment…

Actually I’ll recap a few things from before that i missed out on. The End of the Month Club was probably the biggest thing that I’d done socially for a wee while thanks to lack of pennies. Went along with Vonnie, Dave and Steve for what would be somewhat of an eyeopener. After listening to a lot of people recommend it and Dave’s choice of music of the last 18 months or so I was a little worried I wouldnt enjoy myself. The first band had a couple of good tracks but there was just something about them that made me want to shout “Earsplitting Art Wank” at them. I dont know why. Bozilla we’re next up and despite the big english guys accent sounding a little out of place at times they were damn good. The girl has a fantastic voice and they have Wolverine with an afro wig playing bass guitar for them. The headliners were a bit different. I mean that in a sort of good way. They murdered one of my all time favourite GnR tracks but I could see how some folk might like it. I think they were called Schmoof or something along those lines…I cant be arsed checking and if I’m wrong im sure Dave or Steve can correct me. After all they did run up front to get a swatch when they came on but im not sure if it was the pvc clad female singer Steve was drooling over of the 6′ blond surfer type guy dressed the same on keyboards he was interested in

I seem to recall a night out in the cathouse on the Friday after that after an ok night at the bowling. There was drink involved if I was out so tthats no doubt why I remember very litle of the night…if it happened.

On to the Download weekend.

I’d somehow managed to get the Thursday through to Monday of on leave from work thanks to some nifty behind my back cheating from Vonnie and my mother so my plans were to get the last minute things on Thursday morning and then head off for Donington around 2pm-ish. It never worked out like that. Between having to go to Asda, struggling to find someone to catsit for the weekend and rush hour traffic we didnt make it to hamilton to pick Andy up until almost 5pm. We also had to pick up Shawsy’s ticket as he’d forgotten it and only remembered when he hit Carlisle. He made it to Andy’s before we did! We hate the Kingston Bridge. The journey down was a good laugh with Craig doing the hockey Cokey to Mary Manson in the back seat and Andy drinking the red bull substitute and talking at 90 miles an hour all the way down.

Arriving on site was a bit strange. Vonnie joking passed comment on the fact that the car was actually a disability car and it said so onthe tax disc. So chancing her arm she asked the parking attendant if we could use the disabled parking site despite not not booking a ticket for there. They were happy with it although it took a bit of blagging once we got there especially when we told them we were just parking the car there to join our mates in the proper campsite. I’d have felt bad about doing all this but the disabled parking/campsite was half empty and we werent nicking anyones space. And besides it had the cleanest toilets and was literaly 30 yards from the front gate. After walking through the entertainment area and the leaving Craig and Marie to go find their mates we headed down to the arse end of the site to set up camp in the space Semp had kept for us. After about 10 mins the tent was up and Vonnie was away to bed and most folk followed suit right after her. Except for the arseholes that had a loudhailer and insisted on using it until about 5am right next to our tent. It somehow mysteriously disappeared about 8am though and i dont have the slightest clue where it is now…

The first day was pretty quiet with there really only being two or three bands I wanted to see play. First up was the first band of the day in the Snickers tent, Flogging Molly. They were fucking fantastic and should have been put on just a little bit later when there were a few more drunk folk in the crowd. Caught Garbage on the main stage who played a not bad set despite attracting about 10% of the crowd…and the were second ont he bill! Other than that I was only looking forward to Billy Idol and the end of Feeder. Mr Idol was the highlight of the festival for me…it was like a REALLY good cover band until you realised it was actually him on stage. Highlight of his set was a cover of Van Halen’s Jump. Everyone was loving it and he played on well past when he was supposed to finish before throwing a huge party in the guest area which we couldnt get access to Because he played on longer than he was supposed to we missed most of the Feeder set. In fact as we came out we heard them on stage and managed to make it to the main stage before they got halfway through thier last song of the night. A successful start to the festival.

Saturday was the day for exploring with us finding the market which ran under the Dunlop Bridge on the race track. I honestly can’t remember who I seen that day other than a bit of Bowling for Soup who still make my head bleed but were actually quite funny and the songs went down well. Id spent most of the afternoon in the queue for the O2 tent to get the phones charged. My phone is now capute…or rather the sim card is…as I spilt cider inside it. Went on the Topspin ride with Vonnie and the both of us spwre never to go on another ride ever again! Velvet Revolver were something else entirely…They dont even pretend to be a new band…they just get up and play the GnR/STP classics and get on with putting on a damn good show whilst throwing in some new ones they wrote recently. Highlight of Saturday had to be their cover of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”. 70,000 folk singing along to it just as the sun was starting to set just described the day perfectly. Sabbath then came on and whilst I like them I’m not that huge a fan…ie I dont know the lyrics word for word and felt a little out of place amongst 90,000 folk that did. Still, I know guitars when I hear them and I’ve long been a fan of Mr Iommi and his plastic finger. Went back to the tent and had a few ciders with Andy and Vonnie until we all had to go to sleep.

Sunday morning was the main reason why I was looking forward to this festival. Henry Rollins Sunday Sermon didnt let me down. From talking about Sabbath right through to preemptive strikes on France and Canada just so we’ve got more room and a few clean rivers whislt talking about his experiences of hating Gearge Bush he had me laughing so hard at times I was crying. I’d have been happy just to leave for home there and then. But we still had Therapy? and SOAD to see later that night. Since I first bought Troublegum all those years ago ive wanted to see Therapy? play and never had the chance. I seen them on Sunday night and I wasn’t disappointed. They were a little slow for my taste on the classics but they rocked the place and I’m convinced the bass player was pissed out his skull or on some mad happy juice and he just couldnt stop smiling and jumping about. SOAD were strange. Ive not really listened to any of their newer stuff so was a bit surprised at some of the songs they did but the classics rocked. Unfortuantely nature called and I had to go try and find a usable toilet….I didnt….so I missed the end of the set

All in all a very good weekend and I’ll be going back next year I hope!

By the way…you havent experienced a gig until you’ve got 70,000 folk singing a song like wish you were here and a 747 comes in over the stage so low you can see the pilot and flys ove the crowd to land at east midlands airport which was right beside the campsite…when your half cut on cider thats surreal enough but if you were high as a kite on whatever you had then god only knows what that would have been like!

Tags: 747, Andy, Billy Idol, bowling, Canada, Carlisle, Craig, Dave, disability car, disabled parking site, drooling, Dunlop Bridge, Flogging Molly, France, GnR, Henry Rollins, Iommi, Kingston Bridge, Marie, Mary Manson, Month Club, Pink Floyd, Steve, Troublegum, Van Halen, Vonnie