Up early so to get the train to Birmingham at 8.45am. I cycled down to the station as I was ready by 8, but the family were rushing round trying to get ready for the 8.10 bus, and I decided not to engage with the stress, and got to the station at 8.15. There was another reason too... Laura had left her jar of dried bananas with me when we parted last night, so I told her (via facebook last night) that I'd leave it in my pannier in the cycle racks near Platform 1, if she was going into the station today.
As I arrived back at the front of the station after securing my bike, the family walked in... they'd got an East Yorkshire bus and it had gone a faster route to the station and got in at 20 past.
Our train was a bit late but we had comics and sandwiches and I took my laptop, to do 'inbox' and 'sent items' deletion, and deal with any un-dealt-with emails...
A very slow journey, but peaceful. Both boys played with their Nintendo DS games. We got into Birmingham 25 minutes late because of a broken down train in the way near Newcastle, and cable theft near Leeds.
Our friends Ulrich and Katharina were waiting, with their two sons who are the same age as ours, and their new baby daughter who is 10 months and very cute!
We went to a restaurant called Cafe Rouge which was quite expensive for the size of portions but was a nice place to eat, and we spent quite a bit of time there. Then we split up, with Gill and Katrina and the baby going for a wander round, and the male contingent going to the IMAX cinema which was about 25 minutes walk at Millennium Point, in the sleet which wasn't very pleasant. I was impressed with the escalators in this building, some of which sense where the crowds are, whether they are going up or down, and switch directions to accommodate this. Ulrich had booked tickets so we were in the queue quite soon, and got a good seat in the cinema.
My sons and I have seen Avatar in 3D before, at City Screen in York, but the chance to see it again, and at the IMAX huge 'engulfing' screen was well worth it. Ulrich and his boys hadn't seen it before and were impressed. I like seeing a film twice... I often spot things the second time that I miss the first, and today was not a disappointment.
Afterwards we had an interesting talk about Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis, as for me, this film gives a nod to that with the Goddess Interconnected Life Force 'Eywa' being not unlike the word Gaia.... but maybe this is in my mind only.
Then we walked back into the centre and met Gill and Katharina in Waterstones and we first all went to a Tesco for some sandwiches and bread/spreadables, and then headed for the nearby shopping mall which sits on top of the New Street Station, where we had a coffee in Starbucks and the Tesco teatime stuff. Katharina and Ulrich left their eldest with us and he came with us on the 7.30 train back to York. He'll go back home on Friday.
I used the journey to compose some lengthy and difficult emails and delete another 186 from my inbox and sent items. Good stuff!
I was pleased to see that Laura had taken the jar of bananas, and I raced home, only taking 5 minutes longer than the taxi that the others took.
Spent ages watching the Winter Olympics and emailing, washing up between times until the wee early hours. Brilliant day!
Showing posts with label Katharina and Ulrich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Katharina and Ulrich. Show all posts
Well, the train journey yesterday went very smoothly... I cycled down to the station with everything I needed, and bought tickets for my son and me from Birmingham to Leamington Spa. Gill came down on the 4pm bus with the boys and got to the station just in time, with only just over a minute to spare... I quickly loaded my bike on and we waved goodbye and the doors closed!
The journey was very easy, and made more enjoyable by meeting a pair of American tourists, one, Colleen, was a keen photographer (and works as a portrait photographer) and I was able to warn her about the spire at Chesterfield which she got some pictures of, from the moving train. The change at Birmingham New Street was easy too, and we arrived in Leamington at 8pm, and were met by Ulrich and his two sons. We cycled back to their place; I gave my lad a lift on the crossbar which he tolerated. When we got back, there was Katarina with their new baby to greet us, and they'd done some tea for us, an interesting German meal of thinly sliced potato baked with a white sauce followed by blueberries and ice cream.
My son was very very pleased to see his friend whom he met in York before the family moved to be nearer Ulrich's workplace, Ryton Organic Gardens just a few miles North of Leamington.
A fairly non-eventful evening... I used Ulrich's tiny and ancient laptop to do my emails on Tiscali Webmail, and Facebook, but the machine wouldn't let me onto my blog.
SO, TUESDAY... Ulrich cycled off to Ryton at 8.30 and I had breakfast and got myself ready to cycle after him. I had contacted my friend Pippa and had arranged to meet her there at 11am, and Ulrich would have his mid-morning break then too, and give us a guided tour!
So I set off at about 10am up the A445 and was soon at Ryton Organic Gardens, and I showed my membership and therefore got in free, and had time to look round The Vegetable Kingdom which is an excellent exhibition with really huge models of vegetables and some good interactive stuff too, lots of good info.
11am came, Pippa arrived and Ulrich met us and introduced us to his colleague Francis, who is a researcher on soil fertility. After a cuppa, a guided tour with Ulrich and Frances, including a look into a couple of polytunnels where there were trials of rock-dust on tomatoes, to see if it increased production or improved taste. I was impressed with the size of the courgette plants too, they were enormous! We saw the trials field, and Francis' dustbin-sized anaerobic digester experiment, and the reedbeds which clean up the toilet water...
But then the two hosts had to get back to work, and after Pippa bought a birthday card for my sons (she never forgets!) she had to get off too. I decided to have lunch at Garden Organic as it was already past 1pm and I imagined that I wouldn't be in Leicester for at least a couple of hours, looking at the distance on the map. So I had a veg lasagne and a baguette.
After lunch which I finished at 2.30, I cycled off up the Fosse Way to Leicester, going through Bretford, over the Oxford Canal and under the West Coast Main Line and then over the M6 motorway. I was impressed by the number and size of mushrooms I saw on the verges. Some were the size of dinner plates, all ordinary field mushrooms, but all mature and therefore full of insect larvae. At the A5 I turned more Eastwards through Claybrooke Magna, Broughton Astley and Countesthorpe, Wigston and Oadby, which is near where I used to live. I cycled along roads I used to walk to school to, and up Knighton Church Road which is where I lived from 1975 to 1984. I visited my old best friend's mum, Yvonne, and another friend's parents, Irene and Don. I called at the house I used to live in, but there was no-one in... a pity as I'd have loved to see the garden. The trees in the front garden my parents planted are doing well, a Rowan and a Ginkgo. Amazingly, the bell-push on the front door still has our family name in the little plastic box under it! My folks left here a long time ago, and I would have thought that the new owners would want their name in this box! I cycled away, through Leicester and a rainstorm, past the first house we lived in there, and via a circuitous route to Scraptoft Lane where we had our second house, and from Scraptoft I went via Beeby, South Croxton, Barsby, Great Dalby and on to Melton Mowbray, arriving at 8pm. I asked a local chap if there was anywhere in Melton where I could get Bed and Breakfast, and he suggested the Noel's Arms.
I had a quick look at the room and it seemed OK to me, so I paid Jackie the Publican and dumped my stuff which I took off my bike and went to find somewhere nice to eat. I was recommended to go to Mamma Mia's and I had a delicious 3 course meal for £20, including the best Tiramasu I've ever had! Nice chats to the staff too.
I had a pint back at the pub, and went upstairs to plan my route for the following day. However I saw the weather forecast and as it was due to rain heavily and be squally and windy, I decided to get the train from Grantham up to York.
So I went to sleep in Noel's Arms, my first and probably only time.... !
The journey was very easy, and made more enjoyable by meeting a pair of American tourists, one, Colleen, was a keen photographer (and works as a portrait photographer) and I was able to warn her about the spire at Chesterfield which she got some pictures of, from the moving train. The change at Birmingham New Street was easy too, and we arrived in Leamington at 8pm, and were met by Ulrich and his two sons. We cycled back to their place; I gave my lad a lift on the crossbar which he tolerated. When we got back, there was Katarina with their new baby to greet us, and they'd done some tea for us, an interesting German meal of thinly sliced potato baked with a white sauce followed by blueberries and ice cream.
My son was very very pleased to see his friend whom he met in York before the family moved to be nearer Ulrich's workplace, Ryton Organic Gardens just a few miles North of Leamington.
A fairly non-eventful evening... I used Ulrich's tiny and ancient laptop to do my emails on Tiscali Webmail, and Facebook, but the machine wouldn't let me onto my blog.
SO, TUESDAY... Ulrich cycled off to Ryton at 8.30 and I had breakfast and got myself ready to cycle after him. I had contacted my friend Pippa and had arranged to meet her there at 11am, and Ulrich would have his mid-morning break then too, and give us a guided tour!
So I set off at about 10am up the A445 and was soon at Ryton Organic Gardens, and I showed my membership and therefore got in free, and had time to look round The Vegetable Kingdom which is an excellent exhibition with really huge models of vegetables and some good interactive stuff too, lots of good info.
11am came, Pippa arrived and Ulrich met us and introduced us to his colleague Francis, who is a researcher on soil fertility. After a cuppa, a guided tour with Ulrich and Frances, including a look into a couple of polytunnels where there were trials of rock-dust on tomatoes, to see if it increased production or improved taste. I was impressed with the size of the courgette plants too, they were enormous! We saw the trials field, and Francis' dustbin-sized anaerobic digester experiment, and the reedbeds which clean up the toilet water...
But then the two hosts had to get back to work, and after Pippa bought a birthday card for my sons (she never forgets!) she had to get off too. I decided to have lunch at Garden Organic as it was already past 1pm and I imagined that I wouldn't be in Leicester for at least a couple of hours, looking at the distance on the map. So I had a veg lasagne and a baguette.
After lunch which I finished at 2.30, I cycled off up the Fosse Way to Leicester, going through Bretford, over the Oxford Canal and under the West Coast Main Line and then over the M6 motorway. I was impressed by the number and size of mushrooms I saw on the verges. Some were the size of dinner plates, all ordinary field mushrooms, but all mature and therefore full of insect larvae. At the A5 I turned more Eastwards through Claybrooke Magna, Broughton Astley and Countesthorpe, Wigston and Oadby, which is near where I used to live. I cycled along roads I used to walk to school to, and up Knighton Church Road which is where I lived from 1975 to 1984. I visited my old best friend's mum, Yvonne, and another friend's parents, Irene and Don. I called at the house I used to live in, but there was no-one in... a pity as I'd have loved to see the garden. The trees in the front garden my parents planted are doing well, a Rowan and a Ginkgo. Amazingly, the bell-push on the front door still has our family name in the little plastic box under it! My folks left here a long time ago, and I would have thought that the new owners would want their name in this box! I cycled away, through Leicester and a rainstorm, past the first house we lived in there, and via a circuitous route to Scraptoft Lane where we had our second house, and from Scraptoft I went via Beeby, South Croxton, Barsby, Great Dalby and on to Melton Mowbray, arriving at 8pm. I asked a local chap if there was anywhere in Melton where I could get Bed and Breakfast, and he suggested the Noel's Arms.
I had a quick look at the room and it seemed OK to me, so I paid Jackie the Publican and dumped my stuff which I took off my bike and went to find somewhere nice to eat. I was recommended to go to Mamma Mia's and I had a delicious 3 course meal for £20, including the best Tiramasu I've ever had! Nice chats to the staff too.
I had a pint back at the pub, and went upstairs to plan my route for the following day. However I saw the weather forecast and as it was due to rain heavily and be squally and windy, I decided to get the train from Grantham up to York.
So I went to sleep in Noel's Arms, my first and probably only time.... !
An early start but the taxi arrived at 9 and we were ready...just! We got the 9.44 train to Leamington Spa... the Bournemouth train, and it was quite busy. We were in the quiet carriage but it was far from quiet... a chap near us was talking very loudly to the ticket person (are they still called conductors?) and we could hear that he wanted to go to Sheffield, but our train was going via Leeds, Wakefield and then Chesterfield, by-passing Sheffield. The chap seemed agitated, and before Leeds loudly announced that he was completely deaf and wanted to go to Sheffield. Everyone else had heard that to go to Sheffield, people should change at Leeds. So Gill found a sheet of A4 paper and a felt-tip pen (we carry these to give the boys something to do if they announce 'I'm bored') and wrote on it "You need to change at Leeds" and I took it to the chap who then shouted 'B****r Off' at me! So I sat down, and another chap got up and approached him and signed something... and he got similar treatment. There was quite a bit of a stir in the carriage because of this! The chap didn't get off at Leeds but we think disappeared at Chesterfield and presumably travelled back North again to Sheffers.
At Chesterfield though, a group of perhaps 6 young women got on and it was obvious that they'd been out the night before 'on the lash' and were either hung-over or still drunk and very loud and girly, and off to a festival or some type of camping trip. It took til Derby for them to notice that it was the quiet carriage..by this time my rather intolerant child was getting ready to say something to them. I was reminded of my festivaling days, and was a bit distracted by their short skirts and long legs. Fortunately I didn't spot something that Gill told me about afterwards, that one of them was flashing her see-through knickers! That would have made it an even more interesting journey! They got off at Birmingham New Street and a quiet chap got on near us... I had a chat with him; he was just finishing his degree on Sustainable Architecture, his dissertation was on sustainable interior design. We had a good conversation and a bit of a laugh about various things.
Then we were in Leamington and Katharina and her two boys met us at the barriers and we walked to her house through the town, passing through a lovely park with a bandstand which I remember from years ago when I performed at the Leamington Peace Festival. There was a Farmers' Market and I bought 4 little bottles of perry, locally produced. Katharina's house was another 15 minutes walk through the town, on the Kenilworth Road in a very large house, now split into several smaller residences.
My boys were very happy to see their old friends, and Katharina was pleased to show us her new house which they've had re-vamped, with new flooring (following removal of dry-rotted wood) and a wonderful new woodstove, apparently partly inspired by seeing ours. Katharina and Ulrich have liked the idea of a woodburner for a long time, as in Germany they are more common, but they've lived in rented property since living over here. So they have bought a HWAM 'Beethoven' with Soapstone surrounds, which slowly heat up and keep the heat really well! It is a very stylish, having a curved glass door and it's a lovely grey colour. It's a smoke-free model.... Ulrich had been wanting the version which heats water, but it's not legal to have it in a smoke control zone.
I felt very tired and very relaxed, and as the boys all sat on one of the futons playing with a computer game, I went to sleep on the other! Just for a few minutes though, nothing too antisocial. I heard Ulrich come home and soon roused myself and was more sociable. However it is lovely being 'on holiday' and with people whom I feel very relaxed with.
We had a simple tea, pretty late, and a game of Scrabble with everybody else doubling up in teams, and me by myself... but their partnerships obviously hampered them and I won! Gill and I slept on a futon in front of the stove, which was wonderful!
At Chesterfield though, a group of perhaps 6 young women got on and it was obvious that they'd been out the night before 'on the lash' and were either hung-over or still drunk and very loud and girly, and off to a festival or some type of camping trip. It took til Derby for them to notice that it was the quiet carriage..by this time my rather intolerant child was getting ready to say something to them. I was reminded of my festivaling days, and was a bit distracted by their short skirts and long legs. Fortunately I didn't spot something that Gill told me about afterwards, that one of them was flashing her see-through knickers! That would have made it an even more interesting journey! They got off at Birmingham New Street and a quiet chap got on near us... I had a chat with him; he was just finishing his degree on Sustainable Architecture, his dissertation was on sustainable interior design. We had a good conversation and a bit of a laugh about various things.
Then we were in Leamington and Katharina and her two boys met us at the barriers and we walked to her house through the town, passing through a lovely park with a bandstand which I remember from years ago when I performed at the Leamington Peace Festival. There was a Farmers' Market and I bought 4 little bottles of perry, locally produced. Katharina's house was another 15 minutes walk through the town, on the Kenilworth Road in a very large house, now split into several smaller residences.
My boys were very happy to see their old friends, and Katharina was pleased to show us her new house which they've had re-vamped, with new flooring (following removal of dry-rotted wood) and a wonderful new woodstove, apparently partly inspired by seeing ours. Katharina and Ulrich have liked the idea of a woodburner for a long time, as in Germany they are more common, but they've lived in rented property since living over here. So they have bought a HWAM 'Beethoven' with Soapstone surrounds, which slowly heat up and keep the heat really well! It is a very stylish, having a curved glass door and it's a lovely grey colour. It's a smoke-free model.... Ulrich had been wanting the version which heats water, but it's not legal to have it in a smoke control zone.
I felt very tired and very relaxed, and as the boys all sat on one of the futons playing with a computer game, I went to sleep on the other! Just for a few minutes though, nothing too antisocial. I heard Ulrich come home and soon roused myself and was more sociable. However it is lovely being 'on holiday' and with people whom I feel very relaxed with.
We had a simple tea, pretty late, and a game of Scrabble with everybody else doubling up in teams, and me by myself... but their partnerships obviously hampered them and I won! Gill and I slept on a futon in front of the stove, which was wonderful!
