Lyme Regis

I spent a lovely time with my sister last week in Lyme Regis, in spite of the troubled train journey there (explained in previous blog post). Living in Leicester, we could not be further away from the sea if we tried and so it is a delight to stand and watch the sun rising across the water. I know that the photograph on the left could be anywhere but I wanted to include it because it reminds me of early morning sea watching in Lyme.

Lyme Regis is famous for its Cobb, its fossils and, more recently, for the filming of Broadchurch in its vicinity. I saw it all while I was there and I have photographs to prove it:

The Cobb was originally built around 1313 providing a small harbour which is still used today, mainly by fishing boats. It is famous for a scene in The French Lieutenant's Woman featuring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons in a passionate clinch. Sorry! I'm afraid you'll have to make do with me instead!

Lyme Regis is on what is known as the Jurassic Coast. This is because many valuable fossils have been found in the area - and continue to be found with every landslip.

A few miles away from Lyme, in Charmouth, the cliffs are continually crumbling and fossils, especially ammonites, can be found even by the most amateur of hunters. When I last visited the area this section of cliff was sheer and there was quite a wide beach. Now the cliff has crumbled to a definite slope and is much closer to the shore line. You can see the cliffs in the background of this photograph. As for the Broadchurch link, the beach huts on the left were featured in the programme.

The fossils found at Charmouth date back about 190 million years. My mind can't conceive of that length of time. The Blue Lias Formation is responsible for preserving and for revealing these fossils. You can read more about it here but I photographed an example of a collection of ammonites in a piece of rock that was found in the area. I have to admit that I did not find it myself but I wish I had. 190 million years! Mind blowing!

Cruising the Inner Hebrides + a Tweet Meet

Perhaps cruising is a tad pretentious. We were aboard a small converted fishing boat, ten passengers and four crew members. This is our boat called the Glen Massen.

Friends and family kept texting me with news of a heat wave in the UK but this did not materialise in the Inner Hebrides. Here is the view from our boat for much of the week.

We had rain and rough seas too. On one day the sea was so choppy the crew had to tie everything down. It was certainly an adventure! The holiday was made extra special by the amazing crew. I'll never know how Chef managed to conjure up three immaculately cooked meals each day in such a tiny galley kitchen [yes three! I have put on weight!] and he took great care to cater for my many food requests/fads.

The only way to get ashore was on a tender. This was great fun and when there were just a few of us on board the Engineer drove it as if it was a motor boat. You can just see the top of my head on the far side of the tender.

The sun emerged for the last day and, what a difference it made. In the words of our Captain, "These are the kind of views we should have been seeing all week."

And then on the way home we made a small detour and visited Anne Mackle [@cassam101] and her warm Scottish welcome made up for all those chilly days on the boat. This is us in her lovely garden.

The tour was organised by The Majestic Line and I can thoroughly recommend it. We were taken such good care of and the week was good fun in spite of the weather.

Italy by Train

Buenos Dias. That's about all the Italian I know so it's a good job we had a Tour Guide with us.

Train travel is not the quickest method of getting across the Continent but it suits me better than defying the laws of gravity for hours on end and you can see the countryside as you go. This is the foothills of the French Alps taken through the window of a very fast-moving TGV.

Our main base was in Chiavari, Italy, where I drank lots of coffee sitting outside lots of cafes in the myriad of arcaded streets. 

We were part of an organised tour group, 24 of us in total, and everyone was lovely. We ate, drank, chatted, laughed and still managed to squeeze in lots of sightseeing. We visited The Cinque Terre, five small fishing villages nestling in crevices where the mountains met the Mediterranean...

We sipped Italian coffee in Portofino Harbour and pretended that we were rich and owned an enormous yacht...

On the way home the Alps were transformed by thick snow and it was even more beautiful than when we came (only not so photogenic!)

And now we're home and it's cold and dreary but I've got some lovely memories to keep me going through the winter. We've decided that we really like Italy and we're going to go back there for sure, so I'd better learn a bit more of the language. Ciao for now ;-)

Bruges, Blakeney and Holiday Snaps

Do you remember when you had to wait at least two weeks for the holiday photographs to be ready and then when you went to collect them most of them were duds? Well mine were anyway. Now I can look at a photo instantly, take a whole stream of shots until I get it right, email that perfect picture round the family at the press of a button. It’s clever stuff.

Dad used to have his snaps developed onto slides. When guests arrived he would draw the curtains, set up the screen and get the projector out. Mum always complained. She wanted printed photographs to hold in her hand. She makes the same complaint now when I get my mobile out or sit her at my computer for a photo show. Some things never change... including the post-holiday blues.

It’s always difficult when you get back from holiday, washing to be done, food to be bought and you’ve even got to cook the stuff yourself, but this time we topped all the usual problems. We arrived home to hospital messages calling Rod in for extra tests before next week’s stem-cell transplant and, something we weren’t expecting, Josh-the-dog was rushed into the vet’s to have a lump removed from his thigh. We’re hoping it’s going to be ok. We’re hoping it’s from the fox bite he had a few months ago. It never really healed properly.

But this blog is meant to be about holidays not illnesses. 

Two weeks ago we went to Blakeney in Norfolk. I enthused at length about Blakeney here so I won’t bore you with repetition but it is my all time favourite holiday resort and this time we treated ourselves. We stayed at The Blakeney Hotel.

   
I could get used to living like that. We lounged in their lounges and Josh-the-dog walked all his favourite coastal-path walks. The restaurant overlooks the creek and we watched the tide rising and falling while lovely young waiters served up three-course meals every evening, followed by coffee (or mint tea in my case) and home-made chocolates.

Talking of chocolates, last week we visited beautiful Bruges. It’s a place where the sound of bicycle bells and horses’ hooves on cobbles merge with the aroma of artisan chocolate. Bruges has managed to retain its old-world look unlike any other place I’ve ever visited but I wouldn’t have been able to say exactly why until our tour guide pointed out that there are no aerials, no satellite dishes, or electricity wires. All the 21st century services, including internet connections, are ducted beneath the cobbled pavements...

...and there are very few ‘impossible to walk over’ cobbles. They’re mostly modern ones which are easy on both the feet and the eye. Why can’t our pavements look as good at that?

Bikes seem to be the favoured method of travel for the locals. For the tourists the horses are continually ‘doing the circuit’.

Our guide was keen to impress upon us how well these horses are cared for, never working more than one day on and one day off, and having numerous rests and meal breaks.

The canals contain very little traffic as only the local tour boats are allowed to navigate them...

...along with the swans which, our guide assured us, are almost as well looked after as the horses.

And so we move on to next week and all the hospital treatments but we have these lovely memories, not to mention megabytes of photos, to remind us... and I don’t even have to warm the projector up to view them.