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| Thursday evening having finally arrived at Matthew’s home |
Monday was a 4.00am start
as we wanted to get down south before the rush hour that always seems to end up
with the M6 around Crewe closed due to accidents. We had left the boat at the boatyard on
Sunday where it will be worked on and, hopefully looked after, whilst we are
away. Goodness knows what state the plants
will be in by the time we get back ☹
It felt rather strange
knowing that we were going to be away for such a long time and especially when
we suddenly realised that when we return we will be needing the stove on as it’ll
be November!
We spent a couple of days in
Wendover, staying with Karen’s mum and doing odd jobs for her around the house;
she is recovering well after her recent falls when she broke her wrist and
received two black eyes 😊 On
the way down, we called in at our storage unit in Solihull to pick up a few
things including the sewing machine that Sophie wanted to borrow as she is
starting a sewing course. After staying
with Ann, we went to Reading on Wednesday for an overnight stay at Lauren &
Lewis’s.
We had forgotten it was
Reading festival and hordes of youngsters (and I mean youngsters) were already
arriving in town. Free water taxis were
on hand to take them from parental drop off points to the festival site further
upriver. It seemed that most were going
for the first time as many tent bags and sleeping bag covers still had their labels
on. It was either that or they just
planned on leaving them behind and buying new for the next event as seems to be
the wont these days. Homeless charities
should get on the bandwagon and arrange to take these unwanted items before
they get trampled when the festivals are over.
As we were off to stay
with Matthew (Karen’s eldest) in Norway’s Vega islands for a few days, we
dropped Buddy off at his ‘hotel’. Sophie
& Yanos had offered to look after him while we were away and their
housemate, Carl, was especially excited as he was brought up with seven dogs at
home Ireland.
After dropping Buddy off and spending abit of time with Sophie, we caught a train to London. We planned
a walk around the City before meeting up with Catherine in Holborn for a drink
and a meal after she finished work. As
you can begin to see we were making sure we were getting to see the children
before setting off on our French & Italian trip – Polly and Steve had already
been up to stay on the boat in the last week or so.
There was an ulterior
motive in walking around the City - there
are lots of pillar boxes there, a hangover from the end of the 19th
century when all correspondence was by mail.
We found 13 Victorian boxes including one incongruous one. Its door had
been replaced with one that bore Edward VII’s cypher, so it had both VR and EviiR
inscriptions on it.
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| The unusual box at the Holborn end of Gray’s Inn Road |
Talking about VR boxes, Chris
Hutchins sent me a couple of pictures of a box he and Sue had found when they were moored in Windsor. It is actually a replica of one of the first
boxes manufactured in Victorian times.
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| The replica Penfold box painted in the original green colour of boxes until the 1870s |
We went to a restaurant
called Café Rouge in Holborn and had an awful experience so doubt we will visit
the chain again; we had been once before, in Leamington, and had quite enjoyed
it. The place wasn’t busy, but the service
was slow, the food seemed greatly overpriced for what we got and to cap it all,
the fire alarm was intermittently going off.
Unusually for me, I complained but did get a discount, although we had
rather hoped a discount would have been offered without actually asking.
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| Before the disastrous meal – the main thing was to see Cat so the poor service etc. didn’t really matter |
Thursday was yet another
4.00am start as we were catching the RailAir coach to Heathrow on the first leg
of our journey to stay with Matthew in Vega for a few days. We weren’t sure whether we were getting two
or three flights as we had received conflicting information about our booking. The first flight was with BA to Oslo and, as
the rest of the journey was with local airlines it wasn’t possible to check in
all the way through. When we arrived in
Oslo we went to the transit area but were told we had to go landside and
re-enter the airport to continue our journey. It turned out we only had one further plane to
catch and landed at Brønnøysund
with two hours to spare before catching the ferry to Matthew’s
island.
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| Karen with her baby walking into town from the airport |
We popped into a coffee
shop to wait for the ferry to arrive and were surprised to find that most of
our Norwegian notes were no longer legal tender. We were surprised as we had saved them from our
last trip here which was only a year ago.
When we get back to the mainland we will have to find a bank where we will
be able to change them.
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| Our ferry in front of a small Norwegian cruise ship |
Vega is the main island in
an archipelago of around 6,500 islands and is well known for its relationship
with eider ducks that have been ‘farmed’ for their down for many centuries. The farming consists of locals building
wooden shelters for the ducks to make their nests in. The ducks collect dried seaweed to make their
nests. The shelters keep predators such as sea eagles away and the farmers take
the down once the young have left their nests.
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| View north from Matthew’s house… |
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| …and looking east towards another island |
As we are so far north the
sun sets a lot later at night, so we went for a pleasant walk after dinner to
see the sun setting over neighbouring islands:
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Not sure how often I’ll be
blogging as internet access won’t be easy when we are travelling around France,
but I’ll write when I can even if only as an aide memoire.
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