winter sailing

Paul has several friends that he made at university in South Africa who are now living in England, most of them up north. We try to see them every few months. When Kirsten, the wife of one of them, Budge, called to invite us to celebrate Budge’s birthday by sailing from Southampton to the Isle of Wight with a group of her friends, we jumped at it. One of them is a skipper. They hired out two 50-foot sailing yachts and another skipper, who is also South African. The others spent Friday night on the yachts, but Paul and I drove down Saturday morning for the trip across the Solent and a night in Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Budge, Kirsten, and me on the way to the Isle of Wight What a weekend. As some of you know, Paul is a bit of gear head, and I’ve managed to collect a nice assortment of cold and wet weather gear myself. We can both just about go from head to toe in Gortex. Another thing some of you know about us is that we’ve become quite proud of how lightly we pack. Can you see where this is going? Being mountain and not sea people, we sided with packing light rather than the gear and left most of the waterproof stuff at home. The fatal flaw was bringing only one pair of pants, jeans. It was November, and it’s England. Of course it rained. And rained. And rained. Paul steered the boat for a while and took on at least a pound of water in his jeans. Paul at the helm I got wet just from spray and sitting on a boat. Saturday wasn’t too cold or rough, so we weren’t miserable. It was actually a lot of fun. We sailed around, chasing the wind because Budge wanted speed. I’ve never been in a sailboat that big. It was like being on a roller coaster, switching between terrifying and calm as the waves and wind changed. Chasing the wind We docked at about 16:00, and several people took a nap, including me. We had an en suite cabin to ourselves. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was nice. At about six, everyone crowded onto one boat, and the party began. The beginning of the pre-pub party We moved to a pub for dinner and dancing. The dance floor had a lot of people on it, but they were all just standing and staring at the band. When all 18 of us started dancing, the band got a bit more animated. Then the stage diving started. At the end of the show, they said they had never had anyone stage dive and they were going to book places with taller stages in the future. No, I didn’t jump. We continued the party on one of the yachts until 3:30. The rain started not long after that and didn’t stop until Monday morning. Our trip back was cold and wet. The sea was too rough to be below deck, so we huddled under what little shelter there was with all but the skipper and a couple of highly geared girls, and we still got soaked. This was no pleasure cruise but a beeline trip to our destination. My only consolation was that unlike everyone else, I didn’t have a hangover. If Paul had any tendency to seasickness, this would have brought it out.

normandy

Mom and Dad came over for my autumn break, and we drove to Normandy for three nights. The first part of the adventure was taking the car on the train through the tunnel under The Channel.

Our car on the train in the tunnel under The Channel

We left on Friday after Paul and I finished work, and it took us 2 hours to drive only 70 miles. The traffic never came to a compete halt, but at times we were creeping along at less than 10 miles per hour. This was on a divided 6 lane motorway. There was no evidence of an accident, just people. This was the start of autumn break for all UK schools. Also, England had miraculously made it into the Rugby World Cup final to be played in France the next day, which must have added to the traffic. Their opponent and the ultimate victor, of course, was South Africa. Paul put a small South African flag sticker on our bumper, and we were heckled by one car on the way to the train. We made it almost exactly the required half-hour before boarding. Checking in, going through immigration, and boarding are all done without leaving the car. It’s painless, security search and liquids check-free. Thus far, we’d experienced some of the best and worst that Britain has to offer: orderly and efficient queuing and endless traffic congestion. The trains have double-decker carriages and hold five or six cars per level. We got out of the car and used the loo on the 30 minute ride, but spent most of the time sitting in the car reading the advertisements on the walls.

It was late when we arrived in France; they are an hour ahead of us, so we went straight (after taking the motorway in the wrong direction and turning around at the next junction) to our fully automated hotel. Paul got the parking lot gate opened, front door lock code, our room assignments, and room key cards all at an ATM-like machine outside the front door of the hotel. We didn’t see a live person working there until we went down for breakfast the next morning.

Our drive from Calais to Honfleur, our first stop in Normandy, took about three hours through large farm lands and into rolling hills. The road was a divided four-lane highway with almost no traffic. It was a driving paradise after England’s congestion. We never, and that’s no exaggeration, drive on an English motorway without lots of traffic. It doesn’t always slow us down, but it’s always there. France is like driving across South Africa or most of America – wide open spaces. We stayed on the motorway, so we didn’t get to see much as it doesn’t go near the villages that dot the countryside.


Honfleur

I think that all four of us decided at the end of our trip that our favorite place was Honfleur. It is a fishing village without the smell of fish and just the right amount of narrow cobbled streets, pastel colored buildings, street cafes, and open air markets. Nothing makes me feel like I’m in France more than the smells of rotisserie chicken cooking combined with the sight of rows of gleaming fresh produce and selections of unknown cheeses, cuts of meats, and vegetables.


Beautiful Garlic

Mom looked at every vegetable in the market and would have gone around again if we hadn’t all been ready to eat some lunch. We saw our first examples of Norman architecture, a pleasing mix of Tudor exposed timber, peaked roofs, and gingerbread trim.

It was a bit too cold to enjoy the café culture, but we found a restaurant with a cozy atmosphere and a table in the window so we could watch the locals brave enough to sit outside and the tourists walking past and eyeing their meals. This is something I do to help me decide what and where I want to eat. We all had a different seafood dish, and no one was disappointed.

From Honfleur, we drove to Bayeux to view the Bayeux tapestry. The tapestry museum is well done with a room full of posters describing what life was like for people around 1066. They have a movie that Paul and I skipped. The entire tapestry is displayed under a glass wall that runs around the perimeter of the inside of the building. It’s 230 feet long. The colors are rich and the images cunningly stitched. An audio guide comes with the viewing, which does a great job of describing the scenes. I have two favorite ‘panels.’ One is of the boats leaving France for England, and the other is a row of soldiers on horseback. For 150 euros, I could have bought a kit and stitched replicas.


Notre Dame

After the museum, we walked through the local Notre Dame cathedral, and then made the last drive of the day to our tiny village of St. Mere Eglise, the first French village to be liberated by the allies. The Longest Day is set here, and a mannequin hangs from his parachute from the church steeple.


Church at St. Mere Eglise

Being Saturday, we were able to find an open restaurant. Our hotel owner told us that everything would be closed on Sunday and Monday. We listened to him and believed him, but were still surprised on Sunday when this proved to be true of even larger towns. Our meal that evening was wonderful, but I’m biased because I love French cuisine and the French style of eating, slowly. Odd since I am always the first person finished. Paul had to leave as soon as he finished his main course so that he could watch the beginning of the rugby match. I missed the first half thinking about desert that I didn’t have and then waiting for the bill. By the time I got to the hotel, Paul had paced a track in the floor of our room. It was a great win even if it wasn’t the most exciting game of the match. No, the English did not score a try.

We spent all of Sunday on a D-Day tour. We left before breakfast was served and didn’t have enough time to grab something from the bakery as we’d planned. Not only was I hungry, but I missed out on a quiche, French slice of pizza, or similar treat from bakeries that simply do not exist anywhere else I’ve been. There were three other couples on our tour and our guide, Philippe. Our first stop was a cold, cold visit to bunkers that housed the guns that fired out to sea and were targeted for capture by the landing soldiers.

Gun Bunker

I got a bit lost looking out to sea in relation to the sun, expecting the sea to be west and the sun east. The beaches are on a peninsula and mostly face north north-east, but you probably knew that. Our next visit was the American cemetery. I’ve been to several cemeteries in France over the years, but the rows of simple tombstones move me just like they did the first time.


American Cemetary

France has 11 large cemeteries for American soldiers alone, and I’ve been to British and Canadian cemeteries there as well. Even though, it’s a big country by European standards, the number of cemeteries and the number of those buried there, leave an indelible impression. We don’t have this kind of thing on American soil never having a world war on our territory and having so much land that military cemeteries seem few and far between, and I wonder if it doesn’t allow us to hide from the realities of war to a certain extent.

After the cemetery, we went to Omaha beach and got a lecture on the landing and why it was such a struggle. Then we went to Utah beach and heard why it was relatively easy. Burns “best laid plans” kept running through my head. Between the beach visits, we stopped at Pointe du Hoc. It’s slowly sinking into the sea. Mother Nature is not a romantic. Somewhere in all of that we stopped for lunch. If you didn’t notice earlier, rural France shuts down on Sunday and Monday. Our guide tried three or four restaurants, but all of them were closed or had just stopped serving. We ended up with ham and cheese baguettes from a brasserie, which we ate while sitting on concrete planters in what seemed the town center. Toilets were typically unavailable. Most of the shops in Europe don’t allow people to use their toilets unless they are patrons, especially groups of people. A public toilet was finally located in what Mom described as a concrete box. I’d introduced her to the Turkish toilet at a gas station on the road that offered both, so she recognized it for what it was, but I don’t think that made using it any less traumatizing. We had a wonderful meal in Bayeux after the tour that included aperitifs, cleansing sorbets, and a cheese platter before dessert. The restaurant seemed to be in an old home and the deep stone fireplace had been converted into a wine cellar.

We enjoyed a continental breakfast the next morning at our small B&B before heading south to Mont St. Michel.

Mont St. Michel

The sky was overcast for the first time and stayed that way. As the abbey has a creepy, almost sinister look about it because it sits so isolated off the coast, the weather seemed appropriate. Paul made a dash out to the parking lot when the sun came out to get some photos. While walking through the abbey and reading the guide sheet, I came across one of my eighth grade students and his parents. We exchanged pleasantries and went our separate ways. It brought to mind a similar incident that Jenny, Paul’s mom, related to me about a holiday she was on when she met one of her students with his/her family. The parents actually had the nerve to ask if she would mind sitting with their child! One more item to add to my list of why I never was tempted to teach younger kids. The tide was out for our visit and we could see footprints in the sand of people and dogs out for their daily walk. The place looks like something from Tolkien. Getting to the abbey at the top means walking through the gauntlet of souvenir shops, but we arrived before the tour buses, and it was painless.

Our last day in France was spent making our way back to Calais and the train. We stopped in Arromanches to see the remains of the mulberry harbors, massive metal constructions sitting on the ocean floor. Some were as near as 100 meters, but it was high tide, so we couldn’t get close to them.

Mulberry Harbors

My mental images of the landing have always been about humans, masses of flesh and bones both living and dead. Seeing these hulking rectangles and all the other metal from the tour such as Belgian Gates, tanks, and temporary bridges has enhanced my metal images of the day to something that must be closer to accurate. When I put myself in the position of the landing soldier, I feel the fear of freezing water and crushing metal. And this is before I’ve reached the battle.

We got back to Calias with a little over an hour to spend in the huge Cite Europe Mall. Prices in France are more reasonable than in London. Paul found a jacket he’s been looking for since our ski trip last winter, and we stocked up on wonderful French wine. Mostly, we just walked around and got an idea of what was there. English people were filling their carts with laundry detergent, toilet paper, and other staple items, but what caught our eye were the diapers and other baby supplies in stock. We decided then to make a trip over in December to buy for the baby. I don’t know why England is so expensive. Dad suggested that the market gets what people are willing to pay, and I guess that’s it. London, especially, is an expensive town. When we travel now and the guide books warn that the city we’re seeing is expensive, we know that this isn’t often in comparison with London. Only Reykjavik has proven more expensive. Copenhagen is close, but we were able to find similar prices if we did some looking. Thankfully, I’m paid in pounds.

copenhagen

Of the northern places that we’ve recently visited, Iceland, Norway, and Denmark, Copenhagen is my favorite. Not much bigger than Oslo, it’s vibrant and full of activity. Part of this may be the close and easy travel connection to Sweden where taxes are higher resulting in Swedes doing a lot of shopping in Copenhagen, and part of it may be the people themselves. I’d have to spend more time there to be sure. The prices were not as high as we’d expected, so we were able to enjoy the wonderful food. Everything was fresh and the amounts and varieties of fish were endless. I didn’t eat much of it because I’m supposed to avoid smoked things while I’m pregnant, but everything that Paul ordered looked and smelled fantastic. The sauces are the real treat combining spices that are familiar but in exotic ways. I enjoyed their danishes immensely; the pastry is like flaked butter.
a canal street in the nyhaven neighborhood

We took the advice of our friends Gabe and Mark and rented bicycles on our second day, which allowed us to cover a large portion of the city centre in detail. We even re-visited places like the statue of the little mermaid, trying to catch the light just right. The city has bikes available for free use. They are locked up like grocery carts. You put in 20 kroner and the lock opens. There are racks all over to replace them and retrieve your 20 kroner. The downside is that the bikes are pretty primitive and must stay within the city centre. We originally planned to take them up the coast about 12 km, so we rented two from our hotel for only 10 pounds each. These bikes were still fairly basic, but by the end of the day we really appreciated the small benefits such as three speeds and rubber hand grips. Other than Amsterdam, I’ve never seen a city so bike friendly. Most of the roads have wide bike lanes and the busier intersections have lights especially for the bikes.
the little mermaid

On our first day, we walked into Christiania, a hippy community where no one owns any of the flats and no one pays rent. It’s a controversial area as it’s in the center of Copenhagen on prime real estate, and the rest of the Danes pay exorbitant taxes and rent. We returned the next day on the bikes and cycled all over it. The homes range from nice waterside holiday cottages to boxcars and tin sheds.
christiania

On our last day, we took a train out of the city to the Louisiana Modern Art Museum. It sits on the coast, and there are sculptures scattered all over the lush garden. Once outside the city, trees and large homes dominate the flat countryside.
louisiana art museum

I’ve started back to work, and time is moving swiftly again. I have a class of eighth graders this year, a new experience for me. I have to shift my timelines with them drastically. What I can teach to ninth graders in a lesson, I must plan for three lessons for them. They aren’t dumb; they are just used to having every step mapped out for them. I’ll be holding a lot of hands this semester. Good practice!

I can feel the baby move on the inside every night now and sometimes during the day. We go in for a scan on Monday, and if the baby is facing the right way, we’ll learn the gender. Then begins the discussion of names, which we’ve hardly addressed. I continue to feel great with only a little issue with my food allergies. I so hope the baby doesn’t inherit this. Paul is the perfect father-to-be. He takes good care of me without being smothering or condescending. My happiness continues to grow as does my belly.

a beach and a castle

Taking advantage of the sunny weather, we drove south to Birling Gap on the fourth and stopped at Hever Castle on the way home. It seems the rain has finally stopped.

Walking the beach in England isn’t like walking the beach in other places – no sand. It’s nice not to have the grit in my shoes but the stones don’t create a tranquil atmosphere. The stones are the size of a child’s fist and smooth like the kind that people use for boarders in their gardens. The tide was low and children were finding all kinds of treasures in the pools.

We didn’t stay on the beach long but drove a little up the coast, waked to the edge of the white cliffs just like in Dover, viewed a picturesque lighthouse at Beachy Head, then walked inland a short distance to a great pub where we enjoyed lunch with a view of the sea.


Hever Castle is the ancestral home of Anne Boleyn. It has a section built in the 1200’s that looks like a castle with a moat and portcullis, and a newer section built in the Tudor style around the 1500’s. It was purchased by the Astor family in the 19th century and furbished luxuriantly.



The grounds are particularly nice with hedge and water mazes, an Italian garden, and a lake. It’s located close to Gatwick airport and about an hour from home.

colorado

I’m back in London after a three week luxury holiday at my parents’ place with just a little over a week to go before work starts again. Paul came over for the first two weeks, and I stayed for an extra week of pampering and indulgence. Staying at Mom and Dad’s is better than a five star resort because it comes with a choice of cars, a stocked fridge, a beautiful garden, and cocktail hour with people with whom we don’t have to engage in small talk but can have lively conversation instead. This was Paul’s first trip to Colorado in the summer, and the heat wave gave him a good taste of high plains desert living.

Just one of our automobile choices. This is Dad's latest toy.

First on the list was flying lessons for Paul. He did an hour in a Cessna and then an hour in Dad’s Bonanza. It was gratifying to see him return from his flights with his shirt soaked in sweat because this is how I return from every flight lesson. It’s exciting and wonderful, but intense. I opted out of lessons for this trip as my pregnancy has me feeling a strong aversion to stress, even if it’s good.


On 2 July, Paul and I ran some errands around Fort Collins, including a stop at the municipal building to get married. The clerk was friendly and the whole process blissfully easy. Within an hour, we were married and had the license to prove it. We looked into getting married in the UK but found too many obstacles. The wedding will be in four or five years, in Cape Town, so start planning now. We’ll let you know well in advance.


Dad flew the four of us to Yellowstone for two nights. When I was there two summers ago in July, I woke every morning to frost on the ground. Not this time. The heat was surprising, especially bad when added to the steam around the thermal stuff. That just gave us an excuse to indulge in ice cream. We watched a small black bear stroll out of the woods, across the parking lot, and to some berry bushes near Tower Falls. It wasn’t interested in the people at all.

The park is majestic and glorious. We visited most of the highlights in our short stay, and I look forward to going back for more.



Our next stop was the Eagle’s Roost, my parents’ cabin in the Colorado Rockies. Finally, I was home, and I did all the things that I love: fishing, napping, sitting on the porch, fishing, driving around the association looking for wild life in the ‘Thang,’ walking, sitting on the porch… Of all the places I’ve traveled, this is the one place I want to re-visit again and again. We were able to escape from the extreme heat. Mom and Dad still spend most of their time up there working, and it shows. The flowers are artfully arranged on the hillside, the grass is kept cut for easier walking, and the trail along the creek is well covered in wood chips and free of overhanging limbs. We stayed four nights, and then went up for one more night after Paul returned to the UK.




Dad surprised us with a train ride through the Royal Gorge. We flew down to Canyon City, rode the train up and back down the Gorge, and were back in Fort Collins by 15:00. What a life!

the cotswold's

I’m looking down the calendar at the end of the school year and our holiday in Colorado, and Paul’s scheduled all kinds of weekend outings to help make the time pass even more quickly. We spent last Saturday night in the Cotswold’s soaking up the slow and relaxing English countryside. Just two and a half hours from London, and we were sleeping in a farmhouse B&B surrounded by fields of rye, hillside meadows with sheep, and geese cackling in the yard next door.
We spent Saturday in Broadway surrounded by honey-colored stone buildings and Sunday walking on a public footpath through fields of emerald green grass. On our walk, we passed through a storybook hamlet called Laverton, the archetypal English village. I expected to see Winnie the Pooh or Peter Rabbit around every bend even though they are from different counties altogether. The profusion of roses both domestic and wild are astonishing this time of year, and the air was heavy with their heady scent.

reykjavik

Our plane left the runway in London at 9:30, dark enough for the city to be a crown of lights with twilight quickly turning to night. Within in minutes, we were above the clouds and back into full sun. Our flight was three hours, and we landed with the sky turning the clouds red with the sunset. It was light enough at 12:30 when we went to bed that we had to make sure the curtains were pulled tight, all the seams closed. I have no idea how early the sun came up, but it was high in the sky by the time I was awake. Being able to make use of so much daylight after work is appealing, but I found it confusing when the light at 23:30 was what I’m used to seeing about the time I eat dinner. In a month or so, they will have weeks with no night.

Reykjavik is even smaller and less populated than Oslo, and we again experienced the feeling of being in a ghost town. It was relaxing to be away from the rush of cars and crush of people.

We spent our first day walking around the city, visiting the church that dominates the skyline, the geothermal storage towers with a viewing platform and revolving restaurant on top, and eating a highly recommended hot dog from a stand in the city center next to a flea market with an impressive fish market selling puffin eggs that are so colorful there is no need to decorate them at Easter.


We knew Iceland was expensive, so we made good use of the breakfast included with our room, then bought dinner at the supermarket. We had a cup of noodles each and improvised spoons from crackers until they disintegrated and then used stir sticks from the coffee service in the room.


On our second day, we joined a bus tour of the countryside where we viewed a geothermal plant from a distance, walked through the mid-Atlantic rift where North America and Europe are slowly being pulled apart, meandered around the area where the first and longest standing democratic assembly was formed, stood between the drops of a two-tiered waterfall, watched a geyser erupt every eight minutes or so, and gazed into the blue waters in the bottom of a volcanic crater.

The land on the entire drive was a vast plain of ancient lava covered in springy moss and hills mottled in golds, oranges, and reds from the heat under the ground. It was stunning scenery. When Iceland was first discovered, it was heavily forested and there is a reforestation program in progress, but it’s slow going.


We spent a few hours at the Blue Lagoon thermal pool before going to the airport on our last day. The blue-green milky water stood in stark contrast to the black surrounding lava, just as the warmth of the water contrasted with the chilly weather. Upon entering, the water is the temperature of a warm bath, but as we moved around the pool, a couple of acres in size, we discovered areas that felt like a hot bath to temperatures too warm for me to tolerate. We smeared silicon on our face and joined the other people for ten minutes of mud until it dried and we wiped it off. There seemed to be an even mix of foreign tourists and local Icelanders in the pool. Paul and I laughed when a loud woman with an distinct accent yelled at her husband to not put his glasses there or he’d lose them and another tourist paddling past us said, “I’m guessing she’s from New York.”

What we saw of Iceland was remarkable, and I recommend making a stop there on your next trip to or from Europe to the States.

dover

Along with seeing as much of Europe as we can while we have the handy hub of Heathrow nearby, we’re also trying to take in some of England. A few weeks ago, we spent a day in Kent with stops at Dover, Sandwich, and Canterbury. As our Lonely Planet says, the city of Dover isn’t worth the trip, but the walk along the cliffs was a perfect way to spend one of the first really warm weekends of the year.

We didn’t visit the castle, but we drove around it and viewed it from the cliffs. It’s an impressive structure, set just a little way off of the white cliffs and surrounded by green countryside. Some kind of crop was in bloom, Paul thinks rapeseed, making the scene even more stunning. Our walk along the cliff tops took us past a large field of the flowers, which smell like honey. We met many friendly walkers on our two mile stroll to a lighthouse and back.

From Dover, we drove north to Sandwich for a lunch of …fish and chips. This village has a nice old center of meandering narrow cobble stone streets that we walked before getting in the car and taking the scenic country route to Canterbury. I was impressed with how rural England can be. We walked around the walled medieval city and had a cup of coffee before heading home. It was a great day trip, and I hope to do more of these over the summer.