RosieBell

Sofia Previsited

James Lee-Milne on Sofia (1979)

Extremely clean cobbled streets which are hosed at night and even during the day by stalwart women wielding heavy hose-pipes. First thing one sees in early morning is these women sweeping up ends. Heavy fines for throwing litter. The buildings are colour-washed, tawny yellows and orange. We watched the jeunesse doree strolling arm-in-arm in front of the hotel, facing the statue of Alexander II which had been allowed to survive. Bulgarians just as well-dressed as the English plebeian young. City full of parks and gardens, densely tree’d and freshly green. Archaic Roman fragments in the under passes, Roman bas-reliefs. Imagine how they would be vandalised in London.

From Deep Romantic Chasm

I got exactly the same impression – the women sweeping the streets clean, the youth out in the parks and the Roman remains unmolested in the underpasses – to my astonishment and chagrin. I don't know if the police are as heavy as they were during the Communist regime, or whether this is a culture more respectful of its public space than we are.

 

 

Kavala

You know the walk across hot tarmac, the wave of heat that hits you that shows the Brits they are on holiday? I had that at Glasgow airport in our astonishing summer. When I arrived in Thessaloniki it was pelting with rain. It was after 10 at night and I had pre-ordered a taxi for my late arrival. The bloke who picked me up was a guide, who wanted to point out the beauties of Thessaloniki in the rain and darkness. Then he pulled up a screen on the dashboard and showed me pictures instead, taking both hands off the wheel to gesture his points. He was an agreeable fellow – most Greeks are – so I concealed my fear and asked interested questions.

It rained all night – too wet to walk around the streets near the hotel and find dinner – taxi to the bus station the next morning and bus to Kavala, a couple of hours away through a pleasant landscape of small holdings, olives and coast.

I was meeting my travel companion, TC, who was attending a tourism conference (she’s an academic). We had a little apartment for a few nights, up a steep hill. In the evening she went to the opening reception for the conference, and I to the waterfront for a meal. Thunder, lightning, the waiters running about drying to find dry seats and pulling the restaurant umbrellas around to give us shelter. It was so wet I took a taxi back to the apartment.

TC had meanwhile been addressed at the conference by the mayor, a woman who had made a very good speech – the municipality wants to encourage tourism in Kavala. Then they had an hour’s guided walk. In what would have been a ridiculed plot point in a comedy, the guided tour was pelted on with rain, everyone poking each other with umbrellas and the noise of the water from the sky and rushing in rivers down the streets so loud you couldn’t hear the guide.

I can see why the mayor sees It has possibilities. It has a population of around 50,000, is nicely situated on hills and by the sea, and has an interesting Ottoman old town including an eighteenth century merchant's house you can visit, with a beautiful panelled interior, and the sense of a life lived turned towards inside – women’s quarters set up so they never see the men. It was the house of Mehmet Ali, the founder of a dynasty that ruled Egypt up to Farouk.

 

 

Byzantine Castle

Imaret

 

 

View from castle

There are only a few souvenir shops, some selling attractive ceramics and olive wood spoons and bowls. We bought some sponges and the woman we bought them from pre-haggled – i.e. offered us bargains before she needed to. I assumed she had been on a haggling course and was keen to practice.

Ottoman houses

Kavala Museum suited me. It’s air-conditioned, on one floor, small, choice collection including some coloured busts of women, a style of artefact which I’ve never seen before. Only two visitors when I was there.

The finest structure is an aqueduct built under Suleyman the Magnificent. It is very grand.

You can have an outing to Thassos, an island nearby, with a history of pirates kidnapping the citizens and a monastery beautifully tended by grumpy nuns. 

Archangel Michael Monastery

The most felt history is a memory of a 400 year occupation by the Turks.

Of course we were congratulating ourselves for staying somewhere not full of tourists, or at least not foreign ones, as the cafes were full of holidaying Greeks watching a noisy air show, and like all tourists we hoped that the place would not become too touristy. Greeks need the money though and if their resource is history, buildings, cheap drink and their people's agreeable manner, so be it.

Main square, Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki, where we stayed one night before heading to Bulgaria, was jam-packed and very hot. It has a brilliant Byzantine museum and a waterfront lined with busy cafes. Quite expensive compared to Kavala.

Plovdiv Pedestrianised - Bulgaria

Underpasses – yes I groan how a busy road bisects the old town. The cars get the right of way. And we the pedestrians are forced in the underpass. An underpass conjures up urban menace of urine stench and graffiti and dodgy characters.

Busy road through Old Town

The underpass under the road that cuts up the old town at Plovdiv is beautiful.

 

Attractive façade, ramps so you can push a cycle or buggy or wheelchair, and then shops, Roman paving of large slabs that they discovered when digging the subway, and a fine little museum of Roman mosaics and glass.

Roman slabs in underpass

Then onto the longest pedestrianized area in Europe, longer than Copenhagen. A busy, lively place, where you can stroll and shop and eat at cafes. Also nicely designed with ramps as well as steps.

A Roman stadium was dug up from an earlier level of the city.  It is in excellent nick, being covered so long and pleasantly incorporated into the street, with a cafe on a mezzanine level and views from above.

Plovdiv is Europe’s City of Culture in 2019. It’s a lovely little city, with a mixture of architectural styles, highly walkable and a lively creative quarter. Keep the cars out, make the city live.

The National Revival style of architecture is very attractive.  It was a bourgeois style of national self-assertion against the dominant Ottoman empire (400 years of Turkish occupation).

I'd never heard of Plovdiv until going for a few days to Bulgaria, chosen because the border is close to Thessaloniki. The delightful family hotel we stayed in showed two deeds of ownership - one from 1878 in Turkish script, the other a few years later in Cyrillic, after the liberation.  The Turkish occupation weighs here, like Britain in Ireland. 

 

Scandi - Kalmar Castle

I've been away for a couple of weeks in Scandinavia.  Considering Denmark, Sweden and Norway are close neighbours, as well as being similar to us in many ways, how ignorant I found myself of them.  I knew of them as Vikings, then a long gap until they turn up in twentieth century history as neutrals or the resistance.  
    Since Brits mainly holiday in warmer and cheaper places than their own they tend to know more about France or Italy than the other Germanic language speakers.
    Impressions - very clean, very efficient, and museums with good and imaginative displays. Everyone speaking English, and friendly and helpful if you asked for directions. Drinking expensive.  Norway very expensive (though you can get great deals on trains if you book well ahead), Sweden and Denmark less so. 
    Kalmar Castle, on the eastern side of Sweden, is splendid.  Beautifully placed on its promontory, historically important, and with some beautiful rooms. 

 

 

Long Distance

Leaving Heathrow at 10:30pm.  You would think I would be able to sleep.  No, of course I stay awake for the next 12 hours.  There is a pleasant young woman sitting next to me, and we chat a little, and then she falls asleep.  I read for a while, and wish for teletransportation or a stasis pod.  I watch the films on the little screen in front of me.  Southern China airlines were the cheapest I could get and they are absolutely fine – food, being Chinese, superior to average – but they have fallen down when it comes to films.  I could start learning about Chinese opera but I’m only fit for films. 

I watch a Russian film called Heat, about 4 young dudes who meet up again having started on their paths of life – one a sailor, one an artist and so on. It’s a bad sentimental film, but because they are Russians has a touch of the exotics.  A Russian rapper pretending to be an Afro-American is more interesting than a British one, and the same goes for the Russian skinhead fash who pursue him.

I then watch Hemingway & Gellhorn. Hemingway, who looks like Saddam Hussein, is a total jerk and buffoon.  Gellhorn, played by Nicole Kidman, has a nice arse in those loose 30s slacks.  She is a foreign correspondent, so there are many scenes of the Spanish Civil War where the two lovers are blended into the footage, in a way which insults the actual participants.  It’s disaster tourism.  Whoever wrote this should be shot, or taught something about crass vulgariy.  I stop it as I can’t bear it any longer and close my eyes.  But I can’t sleep.

I open the blind and look down on what I first think are clouds but then see a snowy landscape with irregular dark lines for rivers and straight dark lines for roads.  We are flying to Guangzhou (formerly Canton) and it looks as though we are over Siberia.  The sun is coming up.  However the steward tells me to shut out the light.


We are heading East and after a short day the sun is going down again when we arrive in Guangzhou at 6:30pm.  We have a six hour wait.  For some reason we’re put in the VIP lounge, so instead of a hard row of plastic chairs we lounge in comfortable arm chairs and instead of trying to buy local snacks with a credit card there is a buffet table of good East and bad West - spicy beef and noodles and seaweed crackers and cheese sandwiches on white sliced bread.  It’s a nicely designed place and I take a few photos inside as well as of the view of the airport, betting myself that someone is going to tell me to stop – as they do (there’s no way this could be a security risk so it’s automatic authoritarianism).

My seat neighbor and I go for a walk around the airport.  She’s looking for a Chinese conical hat, as worn in paddy fields, I’m looking for trinkets, probably of bamboo.  The shops sell jade, ivory (with assurances that it’s made out of mastodons they have dug up), panda key rings and tea, but none of it is attractive, most of it is expensive and I’ve seen similar in stalls in the West.  So though I’m willing to spend money with the neo-capitalists, they have not aroused my consumer desires.  Their Burberry and Mulberry shops were beyond me.  Except for dodging the passenger vehicles which are driven at full speed, there is not much excitement in the airport.

Back on the plane for another 11 hours, and catch up with the rest of Gemingway & Hellhorn.  It is gets no better, the shots of an upset Kidman fleeing the sights of Dachau being particularly repulsive.  Drink as much red wine that the highly camp steward will give me to put me to sleep.  I drop off for 20 minutes.  I’ve lost the nice young woman as a companion and have a rather dozy bloke instead (had waited 12 hours in Heathrow as he hadn’t understood the time difference).  

Next film, The Lucky One, about an Iraq war veteran with no personality at all whose life is somehow saved by the photograph of an attractive young woman.  He seeks her out - she has a kennels, a sassy grandmother, a cute kid, a hostile ex-husband.  Utterly shameless but watchable because it’s set in Louisiana among pretty leafy scenery and the attractive young woman is well played by Taylor Schilling.

Watch The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Pure fantasy of the rape victim’s revenge and a dull detective story – the Girl uses Google and leafs through archives and may as well be a research assistant in a university.  Violence extremely nasty.  The Girl though is a kind of Aerial spirit who can conjure knowledge out of the air – rather like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs is a minor god that the hero must travel to in order to get the magic words.

Still no sleep, the light outside so bright and brilliant off the clouds that I open the blind a crack and shut it again.  I have finished the movies and turn to the CSIs.  One and a half of these, and then I realize that it’s nearly time to land at 5pm.  Auckland airport traffic is moving quickly, the duty free people are overly attentive, untypical of New Zealanders who are not hard sellers.  Then into arrivals, my sister is there and we head into Auckland, under a cloudy sky, so I am not hit by the usual bright hard light.  My family knows jet lag – they’re all great travellers – and they don’t expect much sense out of me. 

I walk around the beautiful garden just so as to touch some plants after being in a totally artificial environment, and then I hit the bed at 9pm, wake at 12.30am for tea and sandwiches, sleep again at 4:30am, wake again for breakfast, then am taken to catch a bus to Turangi – about six hours away, which seems nothing after being incarcerated in the cross-continental capsule for the last two days.

Punctured in Swaledale

I had done the wettest cycle of my life in order to get to Keld in Swaledale.  My friend H., who is from Yorkshire and knows the Dales well, had recommended the village as quiet and with good pubs further down the Dale.  I was staying in Keld Bunkhouse, part of a campsite that includes a Mongolian yurt.  The Bunkhouse is a well-run hostel about a half mile from the village, with a pleasant vibe and a fantastic location.  Right by the front door  behind a low mossy wall one of the Swale waterfalls roars - and of course after the day of rain I had come through it was in full spate.  Also, after the rain, it was a startlingly sunny, breezy day. 

I had the bunkhouse to myself after the coast to coast walkers had left. I was staying another night in Keld and I strolled to the village, which is a few houses, holiday cottages, a church and a Countryside and Heritage Centre  giving some facts about the place (lead mining, sheep farming and tourism) and a quote from Auden, who loved Swaledale:- 

Lately, in that dale of all Yorkshire’s the loveliest,
Where, off its fell-side helter-skelter, Kisdon Beck
Jumps into Swale with a boyish shouting,
Sprawled out on grass, I dozed for a second.

Keld


Wall, Keld

As no doubt there was once a pub for lead miners, a church for sheep farmers there was now a leaflet for me the tourist, showing a walk to the waterfalls.  The paths were muddy but I picked my way round to see one, along the Swale that was pushing hard beneath its cliffs and then walked back to the Bunkhouse to sit by the one that roared by the door.  Waterfalls are hypnotic like open fires - there was  brown water like long fronds of kelp diving over and over, and I sat in the sun in a wonderfully contented state of physical tiredness.  Guys turned up in kayaks, paddled along the river, got out to inspect the fall and then gave up. That would not be white-water but death water falling with a Niagara force, though only a few feet high.




Waterfall, Keld

I  went to get my cycle for a short run to Tanhill.  I felt the tyres, and the front one was a little soft.  I pumped it up, but gave up the idea of cycling very far - I was tired anyway - and took the cycle along the road near the river to see the waterfalls - small but violent- the bits of tunnel left over from lead-mining, the cliffs and to feel the general quietness of the place.  An occasional coach passed by, very stupidly down the narrow steep hill, and the other tourists were kayakers and waterfall-watchers.

Tunnel

Every time I returned from viewing something to my cycle I would give the front tyre another feel.  What should have been serene enjoyment under rare sunshine was marred by a slight anxiety  (according to evolutionary biology a natural state for humans who once lived in fear of predators or starvation).  I had to face it - I would have to mend a puncture and I am very bad at mending punctures. 

I got back to the big shed place where my bicycle was housed and took off the front tyre.  I found a bucket, filled it and ran the tube through it - no bubbles to show holes.  I had a spare tube, and with the usual cack-handed tussling, got that on to the wheel.  I rammed the pump over the valve to pump it up, and then when I removed the pump, the end of the valve, the little piece that screws into a Presta , fell off.  So the tube was unusable. 

I had another spare tube and wrestled that on to the wheel.  As so often, when I do this, a last piece of the tube was not tucked under the beading but bulging out.  I tried a few times, got it properly in position, pumped it up, and then another end of a valve was rolling on the floor.

At this point I gave up and went to make some dinner.  Afterwards I put the tube with the slow-puncture leak back on, thinking I could keep pumping it until I found a bike shop.  I asked the owner of the site where the nearest one was, and he said there was one in Reeth, about 10 miles away, at the other end of Swaledale.  This sounded like an easy run, so I left the cycle and went to the pub with filthy blackened hands.

The bunkhouse was now full of all-women walking groups from the north of England who were fairly muddy.  It had been a fine day but of course the ground had been soaked from the day before.  As for the waterfall, even a day's fine weather had lessened its power

The next morning it was raining slightly.   I set out on my bike, and after going half a mile or so, the tyre had got too soft, so stopped and pumped it up. The road was a switchback, and I continued, stopping every quarter mile or so to pump again.  I pushed on a few yards then realised I could hear a distinct hissing from the tyre, and then suddenly felt that the laces on my right boot had wound round one pedal. After a scary second I stopped, and tried to unwind the lace.  But it wouldn't unwind, and I had to pull out my foot in its fresh clean sock from a nearly dried-out boot on to the wet road and unwind it.  I pumped again, started cycling and realised that this was not going to work, so a few hundred yards from the village of Thwaite got off and pushed the bike to a coffee shop attached to a hotel, where I asked if there was a taxi.  They gave me a number and in twenty minutes a young bloke turned up in a people carrier.  He was a nice chap with red hair, who had been born locally.  Said how pretty Swaledale was in the winter.  Said his usual gig was to drive people out who wanted a drink or to take children to school as the place is depopulating and the schools closing.  One little girl he picked up at 7:15 and brought home at 5pm  -a long day for a child.  I told him my destination was Leyburn and he said, You're going to find Fremington Edge a hard cycle.

As we went through Muker, Gunnerside and the rest on a gently rolling road beside the River Swale I thought what an agreeable cycle this would have been, even under patchy rain.

We got to Reeth, and at the other side of the village, in Fremington, was not just a bike shop but a cycle centre, with a cafe, accommodation, a place to wash your bike - a whole complex devoted to cycling hobbyists and mountain bikers. I despise  mountain biking - thrill seeking, skiers on wheels - but its popularity has really improved cycling infrastructure. Reeth is just a large village (pop 750)  and here was a bike centre with three mechanics.  One,  a woman (I'm always glad to see a woman mechanic so I can think my own ineptness is not sex-linked) changed the rubber lining of my wheel, pumped up my tube and then squeezed it against my face so I could feel the air from the hole, indicating that I must have been blind and/or stupid to miss it, fitted a new tube, saying that I should be using a Schrader tube, not a Presta, and pumped up the back tyre as well. 

Feeling  much happier with a functioning cycle that had had some expert attention I cycled back into Reeth, up its steep streets.  There was a big agricultural show on which I would have quite liked to go to but it cost £6, and I did want to go on my way so went to buy some bread.  On the village green a group of elderly guys were singing and playing guitars and double bass, while being filmed and microphoned by a couple of young media types.  (Note - age discrimination - the young do the filming, while the old are filmed).

They did a song about calling the musters for the Loyal Dales Volunteers, one of those bands of militia put together in case of a Napoleonic invasion.  Because there would be half a dozen guys called Thomas Alderson and a few more John Hirds they used to call the roll by nick-names.  They fitted the following names to a song:-
Grain Tom, Glouremour Tom, Screamer Tom, Poddish Tom, Tarry Tom, Tish Tom, Tripy Tom, Trooper Tom (all Thomas Alderson by name);
Assy Will Bill, Ayny Jack, Aygill Tom Bill, Becka Jack, Brag Tom, Bullet, Bullock, Jammie, Buck Reuben, Butter Geordie, Bowlaway, Brownsa, Jossy, Cis Will, Cotty Joe, Codgy, Cwoaty Jack, Curly, Dickey Tom Johnny, Docken Jammie, Daut, Freestane Jack, Gudgeon Tom, Hed Jack. Awd John, Young John, Jams Jack, Mary Jack, King Jack (all John Hird by name);
Katy Tom Alick, Kit Puke Jock, Kanah Bill, Knocky Gwordie, Lollock Ann Will, Matty Jwoan Ned, Mark Jammie Joss, Moor Close Gwordie, Nettlebed Anty, Peter Tom Willie, Peed Jack, Piper Ralph, Pullan Will, Roberty Will Peg Sam, Rive Rags, Skeb Symy, Slipe, Slodder, Swinny, Spletmeat, Strudgeon Will, Tash, Tazzy Will.

(Looking them up on the internet I'd say the singing group were the Fourum Folk). 

I listened to them for a bit, then went and bought cheese and fruit cake and set off to Leyburn via Fremlington Edge, a notorious hill, or semi-cliff.  I had to push the cycle mostly under a cloudy sky and intermittent spits of rain then as I cruised down the other side through moorland, I heard gunshots. I was cycling alongside a huge military shooting range.  I did the few easy miles to the edge of Leyburn and was looking for signs when someone called, "Rosie - are you Rosie?" and a woman was leaning out of a car window.  It was the owners of the B&B which I had booked.  They had told me they would be out till 5pm as they were going to the agricultural show in Reeth, but having spotted me, said they'd lead me to their place.  I followed them to their farmhouse a little out of Leyburn and was glad to dump my gear and make some tea, eat the bread, Swaledale cheese and local fruit cake I'd picked up in Reeth  while sitting on a bed watching the lunch-time news.

I then cycled a steep down and up to Middleham to see Middleham Castle, the home of Warwick the Kingmaker.  Richard III had lived there and married Warwick's daughter Anne.  I have a vague interest in Richard III - I have read Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time which Christopher Hitchens called "a minor masterpiece".  It has dated - the comic Cockney chairwoman is especially wince-inducing - but I think what Hitchens meant that it is a beginner's guide to examining received opinion and drilling down to sources - an important skill for both academics and bloggers. 

The book opens with Alan Grant, a Scotland Yard detective, in hospital.  He has time on his hands so on seeing a photograph of Richard III he thinks that he doesn't look like a monster and murderer as portrayed by Shakespeare and children's history books.  He co-opts an American research student to look out the original evidence for the case against Richard, and he finds the source is Thomas More's Tudor propaganda derived from Cardinal Morton's (Richard III's enemy) account 

Hitchens says of this:-

Scouring the increasingly meticulous and assertive and well-sourced revisionist literature, I felt a sensation I had experienced only once before, while reading Josephine Tey's minor masterpiece, The Daughter of Time. As fellow addicts of this book will know, it begins with an acceptance of the standard view of Richard III—"Crookback Dick," the usurper, and the murderer of the Little Princes. Then, by slow forensic degrees, it demonstrates that every aspect of this story is an accumulation of lies and later courtier propaganda. The chronicle of Holinshed, the memoir of Sir Thomas More, the drama of Shakespeare himself—all are pitilessly uncovered as the merest conjury and fraud. Even for a reader who has no stake in Tudor spin-doctoring, the effect is a vertiginous one, with all the cargo in the hold slowly turning over. Is one to be left with no illusions? Is the whole pageant a cruel put-up job?

(They have found a body in a Leicester car park which is supposedly Richard's.  Now neo-Yorkists and Royalists are squabbling over where it should be given its final burial.)

Middleham Castle is a colossal ruin with walls high enough and thick enough to give you some sense of what it must have been like to have lived in such a huge fortress.   There's a sculpture of Richard III in white marble.  - rather arresting, with a monstrous form attached to his back. 

Richard III, Middleham Castle

The weather had now turned to short but violent showers.  I walked around Middleham which I had never heard of before. It is a very bright, painted expensive-looking village, famous for its race-horses and the signs on pubs and shops were either of Richard's white boar or horses' heads.  I went to look at the church and hard by it was a glossy, South Forks looking place, which was a big stable complex.  You could see the horses heads poking from their stalls and the stable boys.  I would have expected the fields to be full of galloping horses, but they are of course kept inside and taken out to be exercised.  Well, it explained the prices at the gourmet pub.

I returned to Leyburn and stopped off at the tourist info. The violent showers had passed, the sun had come out and there were a few hours of evening light remaining.  I asked the chap in the tourist info what I should do for an hour or two before dinner and  he recommended a walk along The Shawl to admire the view.  The Shawl is a a series of fields on the edge of one of those Dale drops, with the grand views of the kind that appear on the calendars of a Dales landscape of hills like oceanic waves, and rivers.  People were walking their dogs and children there.  So that until a pub, The Black Swan (very friendly), for dinner and then back to the B&B for telly and bed.

England partying

I have been on holiday in south-east England - London, Suffolk, Essex - for the last ten days.  They were having a party, and hung the place with bunting, and decorated it  in combinations of red, white and blue, some ingenious.  The Union Flag appeared everywhere. 

Wimbledon

Fabric shop, Colchester

Hi fi shop, Saffron Walden

Fashion shop, Saffron Walden

China shop, Saffron Walden

Butcher's, Saffron Walden

The prize went to a chap who had union flag covers on his wing mirrors.  No doubt it rose and sank on condoms.  The impression to a foreigner was of a country in cheerful, celebratory mood - not over-weeningly nationalistic but happily patriotic and pleased to join in with what fun was going.  Every pub was promising live music.

On the day of the flotilla I was in Saffron Walden, and it was chucking with rain.  We went to a pub to watch the Thames procession on the television.  The sound was muted, so I couldn't be outraged by the shallowness of the BBC coverage, which people are complaining about.  The patrons at the pub were fairly disrespectful about Phil the Greek, but I bet there wasn't a republican among them.  "Abolish the House of Lords, but keep the monarchy," said one.

I enjoyed drinking a good pint and eating Stilton and grape flavoured crisps under the exposed beams of a comfortable English pub. 

The Caucasus

The Caucasus  - how romantic.  High mountains and glaciers at the edge of the old Russian empire.  It sounded remote and mysterious.  In fact its most accessible part, Kazbegi, is about two hours north of Tbilisi.   A taxi took us to the mini-bus station, which was really just a huge parking space for hundreds of mini-buses, with no ticket booths or platforms.  There must have been some organisation somewhere as our hotel had rung up and given us a time of departure but it certainly wasn't apparent.  The mini-buses sat there and you went and found yours - difficult when the notices of their destination were in the Georgian alphabet.   However, our taxi driver inquired of people who told him where to take us, and then when he tried to rip us off, people shouted him down - he reduced his proposed fare by 300% or so.  We paid about £5 for the bus ticket.

The mini-bus was full and had a strip of low, narrow windows, which meant to see anything you had to crane your neck sideways.  We set out on the main highway north, the E117, which is the main route to Russia.  It was busy, with plenty of lorries, and reasonably wide, but there were patches when its surface was in very poor condition. 

We drove past huge reservoirs and up into the mountains, stopping by a spring falling from a steep slope and forming a pool which was edged with concrete.  At stalls women were selling felt hats and a kind of sweet, which is long fingers of a tasteless gelatinous coating around walnuts..  There were toilets there, which C. said were unspeakable.  I had a cold and I was feeling travel sick.  

 C.  does not like heights and was made nervous by the long steep drops at the edge of the road.  We continued past avalanche tunnels which are used in the winter and a ski-resort, with the dishevelled, sad appearance of out of season holiday spots.  Occasionally the driver (thankfully sober-looking and middle-aged) would slow down and swerve past groups of cows which wandered along the road, as sheep do in the Scottish Highlands.   They were healthy, well-fed cows and placid, and didn't seem to care about the container lorries that were passing them. 

Nearing Kazbegi the driver stopped to pick up locals from the roadside who didn't seem to pay for their trip of a couple of miles.  

In the town square the owner of our guest house met us and took us the few yards to where we were staying - a  basic room painted blue with mould creeping along the walls, a squat toilet (clean) and shower (non functioning).  The owner was a friendly fellow and his daughter spent her time cooking some kind of cabbage soup in the kitchen.   They like the village and area looked poor and we were glad to punt some money their way.

 

House in Kazbegi

Frieze, Kazbegi

We walked around Kazbegi, a large village of scattered houses and not attractive, except for the setting.  We looked east and our eyes were filled with mountainside, steep and gullied and scree-sloped. The mountain range is young and reminded me of the Remarkables in New Zealand, only higher - about 5000 metres.  Looked south, down a beautiful river valley.  Looked north along the highway to Russia and Chechenya very close.  Looked west, and on the top of a steep hill was the Holy Trinity Church, famed in pictures of Georgia, and as fine a sight as I've ever seen. 

Church of Holy Trinity, most wonderfully placed

There are a couple of hotels in Kazbegi, some cafes, and shops that are just long rooms.  It's a tourist town - not just for mountaineers and trekkers who can hire climbing gear here but for sight-seers and religious pilgrims.  People make money from driving taxis, hiring out horses and selling access to the internet.  The surrounding agriculture was evidently cattle grazing, whether for milk or meat, and I would guess it's subsistence.

I spent the rest of the day and night sleeping off my cold and travel-sickness and woke at dawn.  I went outside.  It was cold.  The rising sun was lighting up the snowy peaks so they turned gold.   The landlord pointed to these and then crossed himself twice as the Holy Trinity Church appeared out of the mist.

After breakfast I set out to walk to the Church, up to the next village of Gergeti and then further up past men pitchforking hay into small stacks in the fields.  There were other people walking - mostly young Georgians (students I guessed).  Some were camping by the roadside.   Coming downhill was a priest in the full black tunic and hat, and with a long beautiful silky black beard.   He was a handsome sight, the only modern touch being his camouflage coloured daypack.  I continued up through the pinewoods.  The sun was out but it was not hot being so high up - about 2000 metres - and each time you turned there was a view of cloud and mountain or the church,.  So I climbed until I heard the sound of voices and there were people picnicking on the big grassy area before the final little hillock where the church stands.  Past the taxi drivers smoking,  some steep last few yards, and there was the Church of the Holy Trinity.  I can't judge Georgian architecture so can only say the Church is simple, pleasing - in fact that particular church shape, a square cross with its dome, is always attractive.  It dates from the fourteenth century.

Haystacks

 

View of Kazbegi, at the foot of the mountains

The road through the pinewoods

Dramatic setting for a church

Dinosaur like reliefs

Coloured stone and lichen

Decoration - don't know what those hand grenade things are

 

View from the church

I put on a scarf, there was a skirt to borrow and I went inside but these dark spaces and icons, candles and a priest selling religious bric-a-brac are a language I can't read.  So feeling an intruder I left the place to a few of the pious pilgrims. 

 I took photos of the lichened walls and the view, then walked back down to the grassy slope.  It was delicious to stand there and look up to the higher slopes and peaks where there are glaciers.  I would have loved to continue further but I'm not fit enough and didn't have a map so could only go downwards, avoiding the taxis and smiling at the occasional family ascending with children.    I went down past an old woman foraging for branches in the forest, the horses in the fields, the men piling up hay. Altogether a grand walk. 

Walking back

Gergeti Village

Funicular - the Soviets built it to take people to the Holy Trinity Church, but after the break up of the empire the Georgians tore it down, thinking pilgrims should walk there.  You can take a taxi though.

When I got back the clouds that had wreathed the mountains descended and coalesced and the village was chilly and grey.   C and I pottered around the rest of day and had dinner - fried  potato and sausage - in a cafe, where the waiter (called George) chatted good English to us - he had learned it off the internet he said - and to his mates, male and female who hung out there.  

The next morning we went to the square to catch the bus back to Tbilisi.  Other tourists were there - a young Latvian woman in the back-packers' hip trousers which are vaguely Turkish in shape, very baggy and with a crotch hanging to the ankles.  She had the Baltic look of fair hair and light eyes, and she said this journey was the first time she had spoken the Russian she had learned at school. 

We crammed into another uncomfortable mini-bus.  I was sitting behind a middle-aged Polish woman, who in bossy tones asked about our journey.  Did we speak Russian?  No, but we got by in English.   How can you travel here without Russian? she said accusingly.  I repeated my mantra that we want to buy things from people who want to sell us things, and we can usually work it out between us.  Besides, many of the young people speak English.  She went on about the food, saying how bad it was, which I thought rude since most of the people sardined in this bus were Georgian and some would understand English.  I said the bread was excellent and the produce very good.  She had been to the seaside resorts on the Black Sea and said they were terrible.  I make her sound nasty - in fact she was quite interesting about their travels. Her aggressive manner may have been how English comes out of a Polish mouth (though Poles I've spoken to in Edinburgh don't talk that way, come to think of it - nah, she was a belligerent cow). 

We stopped again at the line of stalls beside the spring, but lying on the road was a dog,  freshly dead and very large and bloody and most stomach-turning to look at, so I kept my eyes averted as far as I could.  C. said the toilets were better than last time though still disgusting.  A stream running down the hillside was full of rubbish.  We thought they should get their act together - at least they could get rid of the dog as a feature unlikely to attract prospective customers.

We returned to Tbilisi and though I found a few possible outings in the guide book the thought of squeezing into another mini-bus designed for Georgian sized people put us off, and in fact there was enough for us to do in Tbilisi for the next few days.

But I would be very happy to return to those pointed sharp mountains in the Caucasus, as beautiful as their name.

Have you ever been to Georgia? (ex USSR)

You haven't seen my holiday snaps yet, have you?

I took my holiday back in August.  For work reasons my sister C. had to go to the Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia) and Zadar in Croatia and asked me to join her.  She wanted us to travel overland between Georgia and Croatia, preferably via Russia.   I had a look at the map and saw that if we went north of the Black Sea we would end up in Ossetia - and hadn't there been a war there recently? If we went south, it would mean going across Turkey.  I love Turkey but have been there several times, and we both wanted to see something of Eastern Europe.  I did research via the Lonely Planet, and it said that going north of Georgia was a no-no as it was occupied by Russian forces. If we went to the western side of Georgia on the Black Sea there were infrequent and unscheduled ferries that ran to Odessa and it would take 48 hours.   An hour in a boat is enough for me, so I chucked that idea, but figured we could fly to Odessa,  take a train to Kiev and then carry on westwards.   C. agreed to this and I got out the Lonely Planet guide for the Ukraine, which stressed that to do anything at all there you had better speak fluent Russian. 

C. then emailed the Ukrainian embassy in Australia about visas, and got back a snotty reply, saying that as Australia and New Zealand didn't hand out visas to Ukrainians why should they reciprocate?  It would cost her $500NZ, so she told me to spike the Ukraine and find another route.  More maps, and  Lonely Planet, and Romania looked like the best option - neither of us has been there.  So I then spent my time working out with the help of the Seat61 site how to get trains from Bucharest to Croatia via Hungary - God! the end of the Cold War.  Thirty years ago this would have been a mission for a John Le Carre character. 

The cheapest flight I could get had me leaving my Edinburgh flat at 5:30 am, a wait in Gatwick, a wait in Kiev and arriving at Tbilisi at about midnight.  I was very much taken with the city which appeared as brightly lit domes and bridges in the darkness, and then the taxi went through narrow, ramshackle, slightly worrying streets and stopped at a boutique hotel (the Villa Mtiebi).

C had booked it for a couple of nights (paid for by her work). It was elegant with an art deco interior and an air of declassing -  on the sofas the upholstery was torn and there were not many guests, so we would be the only ones in the dining room to be offered a huge spread at breakfast. 

All around the hotel were houses with cracked walls and distorted roofs.   Some were deserted and covered with creepers.  There had been an earthquake in Tbilisi a few years ago, and this part of their Old Town had been badly damaged.  Georgia is not a rich country and houses had been slow to be repaired.  Some of them had been rebuilt, but others were broken and crumbling, and people would come out of twisted doorways and sit on slanting balconies.  Our reaction was to find it highly photogenic.  We walked around for hours, our lenses poised.

 

Some places had been rebuilt, so you would get a battered facade next to a smart facade:-

 

Tbilisi is a charming, quirky city. Much was decorated - new things like water fountains and park benches as well the older buildings. 

This seat can be dated from the post-internet period

There were French-looking streets with elegant balconies and a grand boulevard of arched and facaded public architecture, but the old town is Ottoman, with wooden verandahs and lacework. To us they looked like the villas in the old parts of New Zealand cities - Kelburn in Wellington, Ponsonby and Mount Eden in Auckland.  The area which had been flashed up and chicified was like Auckland's Parnell.   A city with flair.

 

The Georgian Parnell

 

 

Decorated lamp-post

The main boulevard is Rustaveli Avenue, which has a set of handsome public buildings - Opera House, Parliament, National Museum and so on.  It is very wide, with heavy, fast traffic, which converges across Freedom Square - not much freedom for pedestrians as you have to descend into subways to cross the roads.  Some of the subways are lined with little stalls and were lively places where I bought tacky earrings but others were dark and stank of urine.

Freedom Square
I had the impression of official patriotism.  Topping the plinth in Freedom Square was a gold statue of St George that had replaced one of Lenin.   Georgian flags were used to curtain off a building site. 

The guide book pointed out where demonstrators had gathered for the gaining of Georgian independence, and for the Rose Revolution.  I took a photo of a plaque, assuming it commemorated events in the 1989 - 1991 period when the tanks rolled in and protesters were killed.   I have only noticed the date and wording now.

"This monument commemorates the participants of a peaceful demonstration rally gunned down by the Soviet regime on March 9 1956."

The peaceful demonstration rally was a protest against deStalinisation.  Google finds:-

Khrushchev’s policy of de-Stalinization was a blow to Georgian pride if only because he cast aspersions on the Georgians themselves. Georgian youth, bred on the panegyrics and permanent praise of the “genius” of Stalin, was proud to consider him being a Georgian that ruled over great Russia, and, as believed widely, dominated the world. Now sudden shock of denigration of Stalin was considered as a révanche taken by Khrushchev over the dead giant of history, and as national humiliation.

Several days in advance of the third anniversary of Stalin’s death, groups of students participated in spontaneous demonstrations and meetings by the huge monument of the ‘Great Leader’ near the Kura embankment. The demonstrations in the capital triggered similar protests in other parts of the republic. The situation had become uncontrollable by March 5, when thousands of protesters accompanied by the cacophony of car sirens were chanting the slogan “Long Live Great Stalin, Long Live the Party of Lenin and Stalin, Long Live Soviet Georgia” near the Government House on Rustaveli Avenue. By 8 March, the protest had become apparently anti-Soviet. The most radical group of students demanded restoration of Georgia’s independence from the Soviet Union. Finally the officials allowed the celebration of the anniversary to be held, but when crowds of students moved through the streets towards the monuments, frightened Vasil Mzhavanadze, the local communist leader, lost control and passed on the responsibility to the army. Suddenly the shooting started from several buildings, and the army soldiers and tanks pursued the escaping students. Although no precise numbers of casualties is known, at least 80 (and maybe over 150) young people were killed and several hundreds wounded and arrested.

The plaque is in Georgian and English, and that, and its references to the massacre by the Soviet regime, suggest it must have been placed post independence.   But presumably the army that did the shooting was Georgian, and this has been glossed as "Soviet."  Nor are the pro-Stalin reasons for the demonstrations mentioned.  The plaque gave information without context or meaning, to a foreigner anyway.

I don't know how patriotic Georgians are but they are certainly religious.  On passing their churches many people would cross themselves twice.  In the churches I went into there were young women in short skirts and scarves kissing icons and young hip looking blokes in jeans lighting candles.  Religion is part of every day life, as it must have been in most of Europe until very recently.  The street near our hotel had several shops selling religious bric-a-brac such as Maltese crosses  (the policewoman in immigration had been wearing an enamelled one and I thought it very pretty and wanted to buy one but never saw another nice one for sale). Popular were pictures which I would call "Byzantine" i.e. the faces of the saints and Virgin Mary were surrounded by gold plate. 

Shopping was very local.  In residential streets there would be  grocer's shops in basements every fifty yards or so.  People sold produce in the streets as well - an old woman might have a few watermelon for sale.   We bought very large, very red tomatoes and peaches that would not have been allowed by their looks into Tesco's, and they were delicious.  I could have gorged on those golden juicy peaches but it's a sad fact of tourism that you have to ration yourself to one item of fantastic ambrosial fruit per day for the health and safety of your stomach.

The bread was delicious - like nan bread, only a little thicker. 

At restaurants they try to make you eat enormous amounts of heavy, filling dumplings, or several large courses when one would be enough.  At one restaurant the woman who ran it was so keen for me to sample something that I hadn't ordered - some kind of dahl - that she was trying to spoon it in to my mouth.   At another, rather flash place, I requested "accompanying greens" - and got a great heap of raw vegetables and some bunches of herbs which I think the waitress found amusing to serve me.  The best meal I had was beans in a crock, which were kidney beans cooked in rich stock and lightly spiced. 

People were friendly, and the younger ones spoke some English.  We were stared at a bit - obvious foreigners and a head taller than the women there  Quite a few of the young women were very good-looking and went in for stilettos and short skirts.   The receptionist at our smart little hotel looked like Katie Melua, with a Georgian style of beauty - blue black wavy hair, long, oval eyes, slender nose, olive skin, and a pretty slim shape.  We went to a doll's museum and the dolls in in folk costume had the same kind of looks - one of the original doll makers had set out to make Georgian looking dolls.

A generic Georgian woman for looks if not clothes

There was no tourist information centre.  The spot where the map said it stood was under construction.   I had a map in my guide book but as the street signs were in the Georgian alphabet which is totally strange, I took a while to get my bearings.   Also, the recommended route through the Old Town was blocked by a building site. However we oriented ourselves by the shiny gold St George in Freedom Square and the river and otherwise got about by taxi.  There was one obvious tourist area of cafes and pricey coffee, with a few hostels.  

Up-market cafe, post Soviet irony. At the flea market you could buy Soviet knick-knacks, badges and posters.

We stayed two nights in the Villa Mbieti, then went off to the Kazbegi in the mountains.  On our return we stayed at a hostel called the Nest for which we had found a leaflet in the national museum.  I climbed the stairs to find a converted town-house with balconies around a courtyard - all charmingly ramshackle - and a beautiful half dressed young man called George (a common name) who was exactly like the chaps I used to pine for in the 1970s - tanned, bearded and green-eyed.  He just needed to be listening to Pink Floyd.  They had no twin room but he offered to empty a bunk room.  Well, they had a washing machine which we needed but otherwise a bunk room to yourselves is pretty miserable - preferable to one shared with strangers, but that's all.  There are no reading lights.  If you're in a top bunk you have to clamber down to go to the bathroom, if you're in the bottom bunk it's too dark to read. The room was huge and bleak.  Through the walls we could hear the young back-packers partying.  We were basically too old for this sort of caper so the next morning I went to the hang-out part of the hostel to tell George we were leaving.  He pushed aside the young woman lying next to him, got up and said that was fine and we said goodbye.  However if you are a young cool backpacker I could recommend the Nest as lively, well situated and with a gorgeous bloke in charge who speaks excellent English.

We moved into an apartment we had seen advertised in a cafe and had a room each. It was just off Freedom Square, on the ground floor of a tenement and very much shaded by trees, and we could sit and watch the woman in the balcony across the street water her plants. We picked up a map there which showed the location of museums in Tbilisi so one day we used it to visit a puppet museum which looked like it was round the corner, then a few streets along.  I am the map-reader when we holiday so I took us a fair distance until the map and streets diverged.  C. is the direction-asker.  I am shy and inhibited about asking foreign strangers how to find the way, she has no compunction at all.  So at the Metro, I fumble with the map, read the timetables, stare at the signs, try to work out how to pronounce our destination, she approaches a young man, says, "Excuse me Sir," and of course he speaks excellent English and tells us where we're going is within walking distance, and we part with warm hand shakes.   So here she pounced on someone, who said a few things and "ecclesia" which I took to mean "church" and we carried on, still unable to find the museum.  She dived into an upmarket hotel to find an English speaker - I fidgetted outside for a while, and then eventually slunk in self-consciously, and she and the receptionist were in front of a computer, looking at a picture of the receptionist's uncle who is a referee in the rugby world cup, due to be played in New Zealand.  Her holiday anecdotes are far more full of people and encounters than mine, and she leaves more good will behind her.  But no puppet museum, so we walked back towards our apartment.

When we get back to our street, we saw a notice saying "Museum" and entered.  It was semi-dark, but the attendants, who seemed surprised at seeing visitors, switched on the lights, and the guide, a young woman, took us around, pointing out the portrait of Stalin in the foyer.   It was an excellent folk art musuem, with little dioramas of the crafts, so a display of pottery would have a diorama next to it of tiny figures using potter's wheels and the wooden objects would have scenes from carpentry.  The guide was a nice, serious young woman with careful English, and showed us ceramics from Gori, pretty filagree and costumes, and it was a highly enjoyable visit.  When we left we looked at the sign which was visible from one direction only and highly discreet.  I'm fond of serendipity however I really think the Museum of Folk and Applied Art should be seen, and the pleasant guide listened to, by a reasonable amount of people, so could the tourist board and the city authorities publicise it a little e.g. by settiing up a larger sign, viewable on two or even three sides.

We saw this request four or five times.  I've never seen such polite graffiti.

At our apartment building the concierge locked the heavy ornamental main door late at night and opened it at 7am.  We had to catch an early flight and the landlord told us to call a number and say, "Open the door".  Natasha, he said, would understand those words but no others as she didn't speak English.  That of course made us nervous, and so that bad night's sleep you have before catching an early flight was even more fitful.  But Natasha and her friend banged on our window at 5:30 am and let us out into a wet morning - it's a humid city and when it rains, it rains hard - and we drove through the rundown looking outskirts of Tbilisi to the airport for the flight to Kiev and then Bucharest.  

Prevailing Winds

It’s been quiet here as I’ve been on a cycling holiday, staying a few days in Saffron Walden in North Essex with a friend, then heading north through Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, ending up at Hull.  I had thought that by going south to north I would be helped by the prevailing south west wind, but the wind turned north east, which meant going head to head with it through the flat, treeless, unhedged farms of Lincolnshire, or being side-swiped along embankments above wide deep drains.  I’m used to a hilly landscape so this was novel - very fertile, and also very dry.  The skies were astonishingly blue and cloudless and sunny and the local news was full of the drought and fire warnings and the disaster this dry spring has been for crops.

I’m not going to do a travelogue, so here are some highlights:-

Pretty rolling countryside around Saffron Walden.  There’s a fine-meshed network of little roads and lanes in this area near Stansted Airport, and agreeable villages with English names like Starling Green, Little Green, Cutlers Green or Ugley Green.  The cow parsley,  hawthorn and horse chestnut and bluebells were blooming, and houses were hung with bunting and Union Jacks marking the Royal Wedding in cheerful patriotism (as compared to BNP style resentful nationalism).   Not many tourists - my friend who lives here says they land at Stansted Airport and head to London, so it’s nothing like as busy as the Cotswolds. 

On May Day we went to a village which was celebrating with  children dancing round a maypole, hula hooping, line dancing, belly dancing and a dogs’ obstacle course, which the dogs, ranging in size from King Charles spaniel to mastiff, couldn’t see the point of at all.  They barged through the hurdles or left the track altogether, and wouldn’t go through a nylon tunnel unless pushed in at one side and hauled at the other by their owners.  We sat in the sun drinking beer and eating burgers or home made cake and enjoyed the do, which was evidently organised by the lively village pub.  The barman played the concertina for the maypole dancing. 

 

The women’s toilet had a suffragette theme. 

Heading north of Cambridge I got on to Lode’s Way.  This is a brand new route - opened September 2010 - that takes you through the fens and round and over the great drains.  Very dramatic and wide-skied and watery. 

A long route - 70 miles - from Ely to Boston.  The National Cycle Network 1, in order to avoid the busy A roads, goes back and forth through this endless flat country.  A line of hedges in the distance seems like an oasis, a clump of trees - poplars mostly - like civilisation. I found it an exhausting push in the blasting north east wind, taking ages, fearing as my shadow got bigger and wobblier that I’d still be cycling in the dark.  But I got to Boston just before twilight and stayed there the next day to recover - no hardship as Boston is an interesting market town with a good church and heritage centre.

Boston to Lincoln - the genteelest thirty three odd miles of cycling path you ever saw, called the Water Rail, part old railway route and part road beside the River Witham.  It’s quite new, and is full of boards telling  you the local history of the river folk who once depended on ferries and barges.  There is also outdoor sculpture, which on cycle routes in my experience is usually big abstract things or huge pieces of disused industrial machinery.   Here they went in for representative so you get sheep and cows made out of old metal or a big wooden pike or pigs, which were attractive and fun. 

Also, by then the wind had turned south so I was blown along northwards under cloudy skies.

North of Lincoln it starts getting hilly again.  I went over the grand Humber Bridge and ended up at Hull, where I did a bit of the Philip Larkin trail.  He lived by Pearson Park for most of his time there, a Victorian park, with statues of worthies, strolling areas by flower beds and big playing fields.  Hull has plenty of cycle stands and is flat - Larkin himself used to cycle a lot there.  I’ve been reading his Letters to Monica and though no-one made mountains out of molehills more than he- the thought of looking for somewhere to live would hang over him like a trial for murder, and he announced his efforts at cooking like he had discovered DNA - he never made a fuss about getting a puncture or breaking down.   Perhaps he was lucky?  However, the sense I had of the city is that the centre is very hemmed in by ring roads and busy arterial roads.  I constantly found myself among fast moving traffic.  

Modern times

I went out one day to Holderness, the peninsula east of Hull along the Humber estuary, to Spurn where the houses are disappearing into the sea.  The roads out there are fairly quiet so I returned on the A1033. Approaching Hull, the A1033 turns into a motorway but there is a good cycle and walkway beside it.  I had just got on to that after cycling 68 miles and was looking forward to getting back to the city and eating fish and chips, when I let out a yell as I was suddenly thrown sideways, landing in a hedge.  I got to my feet and examined the cycle.  The seat post had sheared straight off, leaving a raw sharp stump of metal.  I was not seriously hurt, only mightily bruised on the leg that took the impact, but the bike was unridable, at least not by me since I can‘t ride standing up. 

However I was, as they say, lucky - I hadn’t been going fast downhill in traffic, hadn’t had an artery cut by the post or been impaled on it and only had a five mile walk beside a dual carriageway to get back to Hull.  So I started pushing the bike on this unprepossessing journey, past flyovers and endless terminals and docks with occasional sights of the origami tower - well I called it “Hull Cathedral” but it seems it’s “Holy Trinity Church”.  I got to the Hull railway station where a taxi took me and the cycle back to where I was staying.  I was near the end of my holiday, saddle sore and sick of cycling and although I could have got the bike repaired and carried on further north, I caught a train the next morning back to Edinburgh.  How many of my trips have ended with me pushing my damaged cycle out of Waverley Station to the cycle shop to get fixed and a new collection of bruises.

The following day I took the cycle to be repaired.  This kind of accident does happen, I was told, but with this new improved seat post with its better fitting to the seat (highly padded) it shouldn’t happen again.  Really, England is a fine place for cycling - you’re never too far from a pub, a guest house and a railway station.