Moose on the Move!

In the lead up to Australia Day we had both started to feel quite patriotic...
We stayed up late on Wednesday night baking lamingtons and ANZAC biscuits, we logged into Triple J via the internet to listen to the start on the Hottest 100. Chris went over to the local corner shop and bought a few can of Fosters. Neither of us drink Fosters usually but what the hey! Just for fun we sent the photo to Triple J and have just discovered that we are on the Hottest 100 Parties list. Ha! Just the two of us standing infront of our brand new Aussie flag, each with an un-opened can of Fosters in hand. Here's the link if you want to see it - we are number 54 of 59 but you can look at them backwards.

We both had to go to work on Australia Day - but we each went armed with plates of goodies. I took a big plate of each lamingtons and ANZAC biccies to share with the kids and staff at my school and Chris took some to work too. Actually I took as much Australiana as I could find, a flag, our little Koala Bill, an Aussie cook book (thanks John) and a little bottle of Eucalyptus oil that I passed around the class for anyone to put a little on if they wanted... We all had very clear heads for the rest of the day!
I must have mentioned at school that Australia Day was coming up because one of my lovely Yr 6s brought me in a lamington that she and her mum had made for me. How sweet. It only had the chocolate and coconut on the top but it really a lovely gesture...

I shared the treats around the class at morning break time and had many of the kids ask for the receipes. Several staff memebers took some bits home to share with their family... (the following day one of the teachers told me she had taken home a lamington to give to her boyfriend and had told him it was a 'Lamingtons Bar'. "Lamington Spa?" he said, "I've been there!"). Lamington Spa is actually a place here in England.


That night we had a traditional Australian dinner (Chinese noodles with teriyaki beef) and then got wrapped up nice and warm and went to the local Australian Bar - the Walkabout. Nice for us because it is almost across the road from where we live.
We didn't hear too many Aussie accents that night but loads of people were wearing Fosters hats, carrying inflatable Fosters surfboards and other paraphernalia. If you bought two pints of the stuff you got a freebie. It seemed like a cruel irony that we left with two beach towels when it was forcast minus two that night.

Apparently the Scottish celebrate Burns' Night on the 25th January. What is Burns' Night? Well that's what we asked too - he was Scotlands favorite poet who died at the age of 36 in the 1700s. He had an increadibly prolific career and wrote many now famous poems and songs including the line about mice and men having well laid plans and that song we all sing (or try to) every NYE - Old Lang's Eye - you know the one.

Well our local Scottish friend Kate invited us over for dinner on Sunday to help celebate Burns by eating haggis and listening to her recite incomprehensibe Scottish poetry. I decided not to tell Chris what was on the menu, knowing full well that he would think of a solid reason not to attend if he knew it was haggis. As luck would have it he bumped into Kate in the street on Saturday and she let slip. Opps. He was only a little amused when I told him that I had know what was in store for us... I tried to explain that I was helping to broaden his horizons with new experiences, but that didn't cut much sway.

So Sunday evening we went along to Kate's house and found he in the kitchen boiling enough haggis and 'nips and tatties' (parsnips and potato) to feed a small army. They looked very odd in the pots, like large super stuffed sausages, but very dark.

There is a whole protocol for serving haggis on Burns' Night - the haggis is accompanied in by a bagpiper and all night people talk about what a great man he was and the wonderful insights that he had into humanity and society. Truth is he did write some fabulous stuff and I'm a little embarressed that I don't know more of it. We had a mini version of all that - Kate recited the appropriate poem and brandished a large knife around the kitchen a bit before stabbing the unsuspecting haggis and pulling it apart!
And as it turns out we both like haggis - perhaps not every day - but on special occasions like Burns' Night. So thanks to Kate for enriching our lives with a little (but important) bit of Scottish culture.

One last thing before I finish, a few months ago Chris picked up a book in the local postoffice that was wearing a post-it note saying "I'm free, look inside my cover". As it turns out this book was our introduction to the world of book crossings.

Not sure if you've heard of this before but there is a website where you can log on and register a book to then release intot he 'wild'. The idea is that each book registered is issued with a unique number and then you can log on and see where the book has been. You can pass a book to a friend or drop it in a public place to be found by a stranger. Some books travel all over the world and are read by many people. Others are dropped and never heard from again. Well, anyway, Chris and I logged on and registered our first four books this weekend! All ones that we had read and no longer wanted to keep. We dropped one of them right outside our flat and it didn't take more than two minutes for someone to walk past and pick it up! It was really quite exciting, silly, but exciting.

We've been in England for most of a year, and in Exeter for more than six months but until last weekend we'd never made it to Cornwall - the neighbouring county to the west.

Last Saturday we packed an overnight bag and went west. We took the scenic route southwest through Dartmoor to have another look at the countryside and try to do a little pony spotting.

There are areas in the park where the ponies and sheep are allowed to 'run free' across the hills and dales... and roads. Some of the sheep do not have a great deal of road sense - we saw several attempt to cross the road just as a car was incoming. Luckily for motorists there are not many trees in the area and so it is fairly easy to see said sheep.

We also found some ponies standing quite close to the road so we pulled over and I slipped quietly out of the car to try and get a few shots before they got scared and ran away. We needn't have worried! Not only did they not run away but one of them proved to have a bit of a taste for car and after shoving it's head in through the window of another stopped car it began licking the dirt of the back of our Rosie! In the end it was us who ran away, scared that the little guy might want more than just a lick.

Our neighbour, Ben, told us about a beautiful spot on the north Cornwall coast called Tintagel (tin-taj-el) so it was there that we aimed for. Unfortunatly many of the roads that we were traveling on were quite small and we ended up inevitably making a few wrong turns and seeing more of the countryside on the way there than we had intended.

Reading through our English Heritage handbook on the way there we discovered that Tintagel and the castle there is alledgedly the birthplace of King Arthur and the location of the infamous round table. The short video presentation that we saw on arrival explained that this may or may not be true (it depends partly on if you believe in 'ole Arthur) but the local businesses are certainly milking it for all it's worth!

We paid for parking in King Arthur's Parking Lot (I bet he didn't even know he had one!!) and walked down the hill past Merlin's Gift Shop (we peeked in through the window but it must have been Merlin's day off...) towards the castle, or more precisely, what is left of it.

It is an amazing place to build a castle! On a rocky 'island' just off the mainland there are the ruins of many buildings including the main castle yard. It is quite a dramatic location, but unfortunately it was a bit too hazy to get any really specatular shots of the coastline. The ruins are gradually getting fewer as the coast erodes and bits of it fall into the sea below.

We weren't sure where to stay that night but we had heard of local town Boscastle so 'twas there we headed. We went for a little wander around the village when we arrived and noticed that there seemed to be a lot of construction going on. Then we realised why the name was familiar... the whole village was severly flooded in August of 2004. It is located in a narrow valley and when they received more than the average rainfall in a very short space of time the results were devastating.

Our SouthWest England book said nice things about a little place called Port Issac so we headed there next. Somehow we got completely turned around on leaving Boscastle and took off in a northerly direction instead of going south, which is where Port Issac is. Thank goodness for our dash-mounted compass.

Port Issac - a delightful little place where the village centre streets are scarily narrow and the main car park opening times depend on the tide. Yes TIDE, not TIME. After a few scary little turns and avoiding the waves in the carpark, we found a lovely little Bed and Breakfast right in the heart of the village. We had a nice dinner in a 'fancy' restaurant and then spent a couple of hours reading in bed. Fabulous!

The next morning we explored the village a little further and were delighted by the twists and turns and narrow passageways. It is a centuries old village. Over breakfast we discovered that the village has received a boost in tourism recently because a local television series has been filmed here. They weren't there this day though and in fact it was very quiet.

On our way home we decided to check out another moor and drove through the town of Bodmin and Bodmin Moor. Neither was all that exciting, but to be fair we didn't really get a good look at the Moor.

So now we've had our first taste of Cornwall we're keen to get back and see some more.

Note:Hi All! There are a couple of changes in this entry. One is that the links to the photo's now take you to a specific set of our photos for the blog. Click on the photos to see a larger size, add comments etc. Once at the larger size, you can click on "All Sizes" above the photo to view the original size. The other thing is that we have added a couple of links to some small videos we took of us skiing and of New Years Eve in London. Enjoy!

Apparently "SKI" is actually a Norwegian word.


The planning for our Christams trip to Norway began a long time ago and it took a lot of effort to organise the flights, acommodation, transportation, gear hire, skipass and so on.

Luckily for us someone else did all the organising! Thanks a million, Sharon! In fact, Sharon organised the whole thing for eight of us; Sharon, Mark, Ben and Kelly (all friends from Uni in Perth who are living in London at the moment), Hara and Janine (workmates of Mark and Sharon) and Chris and I.

Thursday the 22nd December, Chris and I caught the train from Exeter to London and were met by Ben and Kelly. We stayed at their place that night though none of us slept. The plane was an early one leaving from Stansted at 6:30 on Friday morning. That meant we had to be at the airport at 4:30 and that meant catching a taxi at 3:00. Oh my goodness!

We flew into Oslo Torp (which is actually quite a way from Oslo) and from there caught two buses to get to Oslo Gardemoen. There we were met by the tour operator Norwegian Wood and embarked on the final leg of our journey - a 2 hour bus ride - to get to our hotel in Oyer. It is a tiny place about half an hour north of Lillehammer but the hotel was only about a 600m walk to the base of the moutain.

Despite his intense enthusiasim, the travel time meant that Chris was unable to get 'out on the slopes' on the day that we arrived. He'd have to wait until the following day. We all settled into our rooms and then met in the dining room at the set time for dinner.

Our acommodation was half board which meant that breakfast and dinner were included each day. The hotel was run by a husband and wife team and their faithful entourage of helpers. The manager/owner insited on shaking everyone's hand as they entered the dining room and welcoming us each individually. Then, before dinner was served, all the guests were officially introduced to each of the members of staff, including the manager's "beautiful wife". We noticed over the course of the week that he almost always refered to her as "my beautiful wife".

The next morning (Christmas Eve) we all got up early and went to the base of the mountain to get kitted out. Because Chris and I have done a little bit of skiing before we didn't worry about taking lessons this time but the others each had five lessons booked and they had to meet their classes.

Chris and I headed straight to the smallest green slope on the hill which was just a short button lift ride up the hill. Unfortunately neither of us had ridden a button lift before and didn't realise that we were meant to sit on it. Both of us were worn out from desperately holding on to it with our hands by the time we got to the top and I was thinking there was no way I'd be able to do a whole day of this, let alone a week! On our second run though we worked out (by watching the little kids) how to use it and it turns out to be quite a fun way to get up the hill. It is essentially a rubber disk on a pole that you slip between your legs, you don't sit down but just let it pull you up the hill.

It felt odd to be on skis again and we were both a bit surprised by how uncoordinated we were. We gave the 'baby run' a few goes and then went to the top of the mountain with one of the guys from the tour company. The view from the top was brilliant, I was only going to be up there once though. After a pretty good run down I lost my balance near the bottom and caught myself badly on my right knee. I skied for the rest of the day but by that evening my knee had swollen up quite badly - it looked a little like I had an extra three kneecaps under the skin - and it was quite stiff. Me and skiing, huh?!

In Norway the locals celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. We were given tradional Norwegian food for dinner and the owner told us that most home in Norway would be enjoying the same foods that evening. After dinner the beautiful wife read us a chapter from the bible in English and Norwegian. Then one of the waitresses read us the same chapter in Russian. Cool.

But the fun wasn't over. We were invited to follow the owner and staff into the other room for more tradition. Everyone was invited, kajoled or forced into holding hands and dancing around the Christmas Tree while singing Christmas carols. It was quite delightful but obviously not to everyone's taste. Once everyone was released from this activity (unusual for the English) I heard one woman from Birmingham say to her companion, "Now you know why English families keep their Christmas Tree in the corner of the room!" I'm sure I saw her smiling and laughing while she danced though!

Santa made a visit then, and he was the ugliest Santa any of us had ever seen. He had been borrowed from Paradox (the three piece band that had been playing during the dancing). He was wearing a super cheap Santa suit straight from the packet - you could still see the neat fold marks, and for some reason he was wearing a really scary looking mask. We swapped our own presents in the 'den' a little later and enjoyed the evening together with the rest of our group.

I took the next two days off to rest my knee and took the opportunity to take a few photos of the others on the slopes. They were getting a lot better and there was a lot less time spent on bottoms. Chris went up to the top of the mountain several times and tried a few different runs. Because we were so far north (on a par with Alaska) the sun only managed to get over the horizon for a few hours each day. The ski lifts opened at 9:30 each morning but the sun didn't look in on us until closer to eleven and left again at around three in the afternoon. It was very strange right in the middle of the day to have long shadows all across the snow. It also made telling which way was north a bit tricky.

The weather got colder and we had one day of minus 17 degrees celcius. It's a very odd sensation when your nose hairs freeze and crinkle every time you breath. Your breath collects on your eyelashes and freezes them together, your water bottle is almost solid when you get down from the slope and you have to bash it on the table to get a little drink. And it hurts. You don't notice when you're skiing because you're too busy concentrating but, when you ride the lift and just sit still, any exposed skin burns. Very strange. It's hard to imagine how people lived in this environment before all the modern comforts (like heating) that we have now.

It was amusing over the next few days to watch people coming and going from the dining room in the hotel. As the week progressed various people developed different limps and hobbles - members of our group were among them! Often in the evenings we would sit around talking or playing games and pass around the icepack from knee, to knee, to bottom. Luckily there was an abundance of ice and snow available for icing sore bits.

I was able to get back out on my skis a couple of days after Christmas and managed not to do myself any more damage. It was fabulous. We also took an afternoon off to catch the bus into Lillehammer. If you're interested in buying a reindeer skin for 500 Kroner (about 50 Pounds or 125 Australian dollars) we can tell you where to go. We settled for a key ring with an image of a Moose on it.

The last day and a half of our trip it snowed! Lots and lots of that lovely, big, clumpy, soft, slow-falling, white stuff. It was brilliant. Although a little distracting when it hits you in the face on your way down the hill! But, we loved it!! We made snow angels (some of us more delicately than others), had snowball fights, caught flakes in our mouths and generally behaved like delighted children. Snow really is magical. We've made a short video of our exploits in the snow and the link for it is here. It might take a few minutes for it to download to your computer.

Norway is not far from Denmark and there are a lot of similarities between the two languages. Most Norwegians and Danes can understand each other when each speaks his/her own language. I tried my best to do this and translate various things for the others in the group, unfortunately a lot of it came out sounding like I was just making things up! Also I had some problems with money. Three times I tried to give people behind the counter completely the wrong amount. Chris laughed and said that my bargaining skills are not very good - the woman in the bar didn't look espescially impressed when I tried to give her 109 Kroner instead of the required 190! Oops.


Our final day was the 30th December and after one final walk in the snow that morning we were all loaded back onto the bus to do, in reverse, the long trip we had made on the way there. At least in our favour this time was the decent departure time. We left the hotel at 2pm and had some great connections to get back to Oslo Torp. Here it fell apart a little. Because of the snow, our plane was late arriving, which meant that it was late leaving.

Ours was not the only disrupted flight arriving at Stansted that night, which meant that the baggage collection hall was full with passengers from about 17 flights, all waiting, waiting, waiting. Apparently not everyone was coping too well with the disruption, at one point a somewhat drunk man stumbled through passport control and began bellowing for Duncan and Dorian (whoever they are), he repeated it so many time that it turned into a song, "Duuuncaan! Doriiiaaan! Wheerree aaarre yooooou?". Even from the other side of the hall, where we moved to for a bit more space, we could hear him calling out, "Duuuncaaan! Doriiiaaan! I loooove yoooou!".

After the eventual arrival of our bags and the rigamoral of meeting up with the taxi driver we had organised before we left (the poor guy had been waiting for us for an hour and a half), we finally made it back to Ben and Kelly's place at about 3am. Blah. We could almost have travelled back to Australia in that time!

The last day of the year was a relaxed one. We slept in, enjoyed an amazing breakfast courtesy of Ben, caught the bus to Greenwich where we looked at the markets and had a coffee. That evening we caught up with Sharon and Mark again, and our friends Jess and Jeff and a friend of theirs, Beth. We had dinner in Soho and then fought our way down to the river's edge, via Trafalgar Square. There were so many people out - it was amazing. And a little overwhelming. Spirits were high though and people were generally well behaved and considerate. The fireworks were fabulous and Big Ben tolled through the first few minutes of it. Afterwards the crush was huge. They had closed the closest tube stations so we had to walk a bit further, to a station on the other side of the river. At one point, when the crowd got really thick, I just shuffled along behind Chris, head down, holding onto his hand. Still, people were being pretty good about the whole situation. Here is a link to a short movie of NYE 2005. Again, it might take a few minutes to download.

January 1st, we said good bye to Ben and Kelly and caught the train back to Exeter.
Chris is already planning our next skiing trip. He wants to go again in February!

OK, an admission, this trip was made so that after our trip to Norway at Christmas we would be able to say that we had been to 10 different countries this year. How selfish is that?! But anyway.

With christmas coming (and the enforced time off that comes with it) Chris didn't want to take any more time off than neccessary. We were lucky enough to find flights leaving from Bristol (only about an hour's drive north of here) at a reasonable 5pm. We arrived in Amsterdam and made our way via train and foot to our delightful little hotel in the southern canal belt, The Seven Bridges. Our lonely planet guide said it was one of the best hotels in Amsterdam and we felf lucky to get a room there as we'd only called that morning.

We checked in and were given directions to our room: along the hall, down the stairs, around the corner and it's the first door on the right. The door was ajar.

We have seen some interesting rooms in our travels, but never one that was covered, on three walls, from waist height up, with mirrors. Was the idea to make the room feel bigger (like they do in small elevators and airplane toilets)? Who knows. It was a bit strange. At least they had stopped before coating the ceiling too and we were able to sleep without looking at our reflections.

The hotel was located not far from Rembrantsplein so that was where we wandered to for a bit of late dinner and a little look around. It was a cold night and we didn't stay out very long. Amsterdam has an interesting way of addressing the issue of people (men) peeing in the streets after a night out; they have a series of porta-urinals. They are large moulded-plastic thingys that up to four guys at a time can step up to. Chris was kind enough to model the use of this invention. Back at the hotel, neither of us had a particularly good sleep that night in the room with all the mirrors.

The following morning (Saturday) breakfast was delivered to our room and we ate and showered before heading out into the city. It was a cold day and we were pelted with tiny hailstones before we got more than a couple of blocks.

The previous night we had walked past Dam Square, the sight where the River Amstel was originally dammed several hundred years ago, and we headed back there to have a look at the Christmas Markets set up there. All kinds of goods were for sale but I have to say that I as a little disappionted by them. There wasn't the array or quality of things that I was expecting. There was gluhwein though - mulled wine - and an iceskating rink. We spent several minutes watching people of all ages struggle to stay on their feet.

For the rest of the day we enjoyed wandering around the canals, just enjoying being in Amsteram. We stopped for a hot choc and a coffee and considered the map - what to do tomorrow? Once our plans were laid we headed back to the southern canal belt in search of an Indonesian restaurant that our Lonely Planet guide recommended - it was good!

Sunday, as we were not flying out until later inthe afternoon we left our bags at the hotel and went off to see a few more sights. First stop was the Rijksmuseum - the museum which houses a great many Dutch historical items. Unfortuntely most of the museum is closed until sometime next year for renovation (we don't seem to have much luck with museums sometimes) but they did have one small wing open displaying some of the finer pieces inthe museum's collection. It was actually kind of nice, we didn't have to stay too long or walk to far to see all kinds of fabulous stuff.

From th Rijksmuseum we walked up through the city towards the main train station and got on a boat for a tour of the canals. It lasted for about an hour and was a really nice way to see the city. Just for us the sun came out and we enjoyed it's imagined warmth. We saw a multi-story bike park; there are bikes all over this city (they pull a huge number of bikes out of the canals in Amsterdam every year) they even have some for peddaling onthe canals. We saw some of the narrowest buildings in the city - one of them was only about 1.5 metres wide! It's hard to imagine what it looks like inside. We saw various church spires and important buildings - including one called Nemo (it isn't orange with white stripes).

Want a quick bite for lunch? - just duck into a Febo. Here you can select your hamburger or sausage from behind a little window, once you have made your selection you put your money in the slot and open your little window. Weird. We decided to go for the more traditional hot chips with tomato sauce and (ooh exciting) mayonaise. it filled a hole.

Amsterdam is the city where Anne Frank and her family hid during World War 2. Neither Chris nor I have read Anne Frank's diary but it was a moving experience never-the-less. The musuem is in the building alongside the house where the Frank family and four others hid, but from there you are guided through the various rooms of the house and the secret annex. One of the most amazing things about this story is that the entire time they were in hiding, there was a business still in operation in the main part of the house. This meant that during business hours they had to be absolutley quiet. Tip-toeing and whispering only. No going to the toilet. No sneezing. Incredible. We both left knowing a little more about it all and feeling a lot more about it.

One of the major tourist attractions in Amsteredam is, of course, the red light district. We went for a brief walk around the area (don't tell Chris' mum!) and it was an interesting experience. The women inthe windows are so obviously on sale that it can make you feel quite uncomfortable if you're not expecting it. Neither of us was sure if we should look at the women and smile and say 'hi', or just avoid making eye-contact. Would they prefere it if we acknowledge them or ignore them? Probably they don't mind too much either way. We had been warned not to take photos of them though - so no-one poses in front of them like they do with the guards in London! Can you imagine?

Once we had finished in the redlight district we wandered back down to the hotel to collect our luggage and make the trek back up through the city to the train to the airport to fly home to Bristol in the UK to drive home to Exeter and into bed by a reasonable time. It always seems so odd to be in a completly different country by dinner time.

Amsterdam was great - we'd really like to go back in the summer time and see the country side, with the windmills and the tulips and the young people wearing clogs and singing "Tiptoe through the tulips". Maybe next year.