Exeter, Bournemouth and Beyond

Somewhere between Salisbury and Bath I realised my brain was broken. I had looked at the emergency door on the right hand side of the bus and decided it was very poorly designed. I detected a (possibly literally) fatal error - the door opens outwards. Christ, I thought, what if we were to crash and the vehicle tipped onto the emergency door side? We couldn't open it! Someone in authority should be told at once.

Exeter and Salisbury were lovely historical towns - Tudor buildings, impressive cathedrals and pubs older than the New World. Bournemouth, where we stayed between those two towns, was nice in its own way. This seaside town is stuck in a 1970s time warp. No one had bothered to update any of the hotels for at least 30 years. I assumed this was because A) they could fill them in summer regardless of their condition and/or B) it's now just as cheap to go to (say) Spain from London as to Bournemouth (so why bother investing in your hotel?). But I wouldn't have liked it any other way. The buildings look incredible - pastel art deco facades and places called the Dolphins and the Kiwi. Who cares if the sink is permaclogged and there's no hot water for two days? When we checked into the first place, I signed my name as simply "Huet" and then deposited a suitcase full of bricks behind front desk for safe keeping. The eager-to-please, if not quite competant, attendant from Barcelona then took my bags up to my room for me.

While we were in Salisbury we did the obligatory trip to Stonehenge - conveniently located next to two very busy roads. We paid the £6 each to stand 10 metres closer to the stones than the people who stood outside the main fence and walked around for 20 mins before catching the next bus home. It was pretty cool.

The trip from Salisbury to Bath is great. Although it takes two hours to get between the towns you get to travel in a normal city bus (as opposed to a coach). It was as though I'd caught the 34 from Civic to Woden (two places in Canberra) and was magicly transported out into the Wiltshire countryside. We even passed one of the famous art works carved out of the grassy hills (there is chalk right under the top layer of turf). I'm pretty sure it was Aussie army insignia from WWI (I'm sure Damo would know).

Bath is something else. We're probably going to stay here for the rest of my visa time. I'll tell you about Bath next email.

Pirates & Pilgrims

After Newquay we headed to Penzance, way down in the south west corner of England – our next stop on our tour of Englands’ Wetherspoon’s pubs. I was both pleased and disappointed that the town had downplayed its association with swashbuckling brigands. Pleased there wasn't a Captain Purplebeard's Pirate Adventure theme park. Disappointed there wasn't at least a pirate museum or a celebrated ancient pub once frequented by some womanising fiendish rogue of the seas. Rather than a skull & bones tourist trap, Penzance turned out to be a nice little town

Upon arrival, we dragged our luggage around town before finding a cheap B&B run by a very friendly local who I think was named Larry. Our luggage is a bit of a problem because A) having moved out of home we're carrying everything we own and B) Marianne insisted on buying a violin a week before we left - "But I want a violin". You'll be pleased to know I don't offer to carry either her guitar or violin because, as far as I'm concerned, if you want to travel around the UK and Europe with a guitar and violin, you can carry your guitar and violin yourself. So there.

Once settled in, we ventured into town and discovered that, in Penzance, friendliness isn't a trait peculiar to Larry. Cornish folk on the street say hello as they pass and the elderly regulars of the First & Last all bid you fair well after you’ve had your fill of pints. I love the Cornish accent - very warm and comforting. Apparently Cornwell is where the Celts ended up when the Saxons were thrashing about England. People spoke Cornish until a couple of hundred years ago and they've been trying to bring the language back recently with bars, trains and other public places often displaying bilingual signs. The language looks a bit like Welsh to me and that might have something to do with the fact the Cornish prefer rugby to football. I'm happy to report that the local team is called the Pirates. I hear they’re a harrrrrrrrrrd team to beat.

The old buildings of Penzance are noteworthy as well - Chapel St is particularly impressive. It was refreshing to get a dose of history after the hastily constructed tourist town of Newquay. The art deco sea pool, or 'lido', is especially worth seeing - pity it was closed for the season.

From Penzance we headed to Plymouth - where the Mayflower pilgrims set sail and where Francis Drake as well as Captain James Cook (yeah!) lived. Unfortunately, Plymouth had the stuffing bombed out of it by the luftwaffe so there is very little of historical significance left. Having said that, the little bit remaining, known as the Barbican, is pretty cool. After an hour or two exploring there is nothing left to see in Plymouth except the thriving shopping district that looks like it was designed by the people who brought you the Woden Library and Benjamin Offices (for those of you not from Canberra just think of the ugliest concrete buildings you've ever come across). We stayed in a reasonably priced backpackers that was a little lifeless for my liking. I chatted to a friendly Hare Krishna-looking Dane for a while but lost him when he mentioned to another resident that he couldn't understand why people drank to get drunk. I should have explained that people get drunk so as to make the company of hippies a little more bearable.

On The Road Again

It's good to don the backpack once again after twelve months spent, more or less, in the one spot. I liked a lot about Edinburgh , not least the friends I made, the people we worked for (Moureen and Barman) and the beautiful Old & New Towns. What I didn't like, however, were the neds - the police acronym for 'non-educated delinquents' (maybe one day I'll point out to a Scots cop that they should be 'uds'). Anyway, more on neds another time.

Our first point of call was Cambridge , home of the university and the most ludicrously over-priced hostel in the world. £22.50 a night (about $46Aus!) they wanted for each dorm bed! Bloody Hostels International. They offer the blandest, most sterile and most family friendly (yes, in a bad way) backpacker lodgings in Europe - then they charge out the yang for it. We walked half a block up the road to a B&B where for a few pounds more we got our own room, TV and a cooked breakfact (albeit a cooked breakfast in a room where the owners' family watched Al Jazeera on a big screen TV with the volume turned up so as to drown out diners' chatter).

Cambridge is nice enough but there isn't much to it other than the University. Which I guess is a bit like saying that Vatican City is nice enough but there isn't much more to it than the Church stuff. Anyway, we had a great first afternoon punting on the Cam in beautiful weather - clear and about 20 degrees (not bad for late September in the UK ). Punting is tiring when you're learning. I wore myself out after not managing to 'let the pole do the work', as instructed. We cruised past Trinity and John's - both very attractive colleges - then drifted by the inevitable Ugly Buildings (which, in the 1950s/60s, popped up next to, or simply replaced, anything of architectural significance in the UK ). The centre of town is quite nice, we wandered around a bit and had a beer in one of those ubiquitous Wetherspoon's pub. Not much else to report, unfortunately. I wanted to see Trinity Library but we missed opening hours.

Next stop was Cornwall where we went to visit our Canadian friend Marie, who was a lovely host - she let us share her room above the Barracuda (the South African themed pub where she worked) and showed us around town. Newquay is described in the Lonely Planet as "a tacky tourist town", which, to be fair, it is. What the Lonely Planet doesn't say is that tacky can be a lot of fun. We spent a few days drinking, laughing at stag parties and wasting money in the innumerable "amusement" centres. The stag parties were so sad. Groups of guys wander through town dressed as the Jackson 5 (or the Jackson 16 as the case may be) or as gangsters or simply wearing matching "Dave's Stag Party, Newquay 2006" t-shirts. Anyway, the saddest thing is that, because of the sheer number of bucks' nights, there are about 10 men for every woman. And so it is that at 2am on a Sunday morning you can witness a group of 16 bored looking blokes in afro wigs standing around a pool table waiting patiently for the evening to end - hopes of hooking up with a Supremes-themed hens' night long having faded.

There was more to Newquay than booze, stags and fruit machines though. The beaches and scenery are pretty impressive. Did you know it is possible to surf in the UK ? Well it is and people do. There is even white sand, which I was under the impression did not exist in England . Then again, I'd also presumed it impossible to get sunburnt in Scotland - another myth busted. Marianne and I even went swimming one day. Once everything had reached maximum shrinking point, it was quite nice in.