One especially for the family

Last weekend we managed to get together with Rachael’s cousin Tim who is on a round the world tour and stayed in London for a week. Unfortunately we only caught up for tea and a chat because we were in Wales for most of his visit, none the less we had a lovely Italian meal down at Canary Wharf, which is the new ‘done up’ area of London, kind of like Darling Harbour. He seems to be going well and having a great time. He went to Bath and Stonehenge on the Sunday and left Monday afternoon for Thailand. So that’s the family update.

BEN, TIM AND RACH


As an aside, many of you may know some of the following people who are headed over this way during our stay in London. Is it Europe that they are coming for or can they just not bear to be another minute without us? You decide. Anyway my Uncle and Aunty (Wayne and Denise) are coming in April, and staying for a couple of months. We are hoping to do some travelling together! Rachael’s Dad is coming towards the end of May and so are Jodi Macca (our very good friend from church) and Dani Hauer (One of Rachael’s work friends, but I love her too). We are doing a 15 day Contiki tour with Jodi and Dani late May and early June and Rachael is finishing work up before me so she can travel with Jodi before the tour, and afterwards we both are going to travel a bit of the UK with Dani. That’s all of the people we know of coming, but if you’re headed this way, let us know!

Some cool personal stuff happening lately. It has been snowing, really snowing where it stays on the ground overnight here. Here is the evidence.
RACHAEL AND SNOW OUT THE FRONT OF OUR HOUSE

A VIEW FROM RACHAELS CLASSROOM WINDOW

ME AND SNOW


Two other cool things. Here we are paid a casual rate (eg: No holiday or sick pay) but Rachael’s school love her so much that the head decided to pay her for the one weeks holiday we just had. They have also been copying her programs and schemes of work that she has written for here because they like them so much. I haven’t even met the head of my school! Do you think maybe Rachael is better at this teaching thing than me?? Second cool thing (and don’t freak out mum) today on the underground two guys tried to beat up another guy with some metal crutches (which was weird because all I could think was that somewhere there was a guy who couldn’t walk properly minus his crutches) and then that guy pulled out a meat cleaver and started swinging it around. Everyone jumped off the carriage except me. I’m no hero, I just tend to watch these type of events with detached interest and don’t really react at all. I’m hopeless at action but very calm in a crisis. Anyone else like that? That’s the short version of my very long trip home. It was fairly surreal and kind of funny because they were only young guys and were doing more dancing around than anything, the whole thing was over in five minutes but I was so busy watching that I forgot to take my headphones out so the whole thing came with background music by INXS, just like in the movies. The boring part was waiting for the next train, which took ages. Anyway, I hope that story doesn’t scare off any of our fellow travellers.

We love and miss you all. We also miss the sane environment of the Hawkesbury, where people don’t generally carry around meat cleavers?? Could be worse of course, the American version would have involved a gun.

Ben and Rach.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX

EGGS, CANAL, ROCKS, and SNOW.

OK. So this is our Wales trip - Part 2. If you haven’t read part one that’s OK, we have written them to be enjoyed singularly or together. Kind of like ‘Star Wars’, you can enjoy the first three without any of the prequel stuff. I just hope that you don’t get the feeling reading this (as you do with the new ‘Star Wars’ movies) that the newer stuff is overrated, lacks any real substance, and is more to do with cashing in on the success of the previous movies than contributing something of value to the fans. Is that too harsh even for me? Maybe. Anyway, let us begin with a story about:

EGGS.
I know that it’s a strange one (eggs??) but we thought that we would include this little story just to show you that its not all fun times, sometimes being a tourist can be a tough business. Its hard work! There are people at every turn just waiting to take your money. Let me paint you the picture. We go to most of the places we have seen based on recommendation and any touristy type pamphlets we find along the way. So it was that we happened upon the pamphlet for the ‘Trefriw-Wells Roman Spa and caves’ that was conveniently located along our travelling route. In hindsight, the sheer look of horror on the ladies face (at the sight of customers) behind the desk as we approached and her apologetic “You do know that it’s only a small, unguided, tour”, should have be warning enough but the mention of Romans had me interested. As it turns out the Romans may, or may not, have discovered a tiny cave that can accommodate up to two people at a time (if you squish) which is filled with stinky egg water that they may/or may not have drunk. The Victorians also built a lean-to of sorts here so they could enjoy the stink water. And now, it appears, history may continue like this…”people from the 21st Century were often sucked into viewing these two insignificant sites, and coughing up 2 pounds each for the privilege, in the name of tourism.” Having said that, I drank some water because it’s supposed to be good for you and I paid for the honour. Lets just say that its 12 minutes we will never get back.

RACHAEL OUT THE FRONT OF THE AFORMENTIONED STINKY EGG TOURIST SPOT.

BEN – GETTING HIS MONEY WORTH WITH PLASTIC SPOON GIVEN “FREE OF CHARGE.”


CANAL
It’s not Venice but its cool all the same. The old canal system in England. They used to take cargo around on boats pulled by horses. The Canal system stretches (in the parts we went to) from England all the way through North Wales to ‘Holyhead’ (which is the nearest point to Ireland in Wales, think top NW Wales). The canal is still there and diesel boats now travel around the canals taking tourists, mostly in summer, on holidays. The canals are man made. We went to see Thomas Telford’s aqueduct, which is basically a bridge with water in it, for the boats to go across, about 130 feet from the bottom of the valley, straight up. It was built in the 19th Century and is very surreal. It’s funny how boats just naturally feel like they should go under bridges not across them! Anyway, very impressive, if somewhat scary, to walk across.

BOATS IN THE CANAL BOAT PARKING AREA.

VIEW FROM ON TOP OF THE AQUEDUCT

BEN SHOWING YOU WHERE THE BOATS GO

RACHAEL WITH SOME SLEET UNDER THE AQUEDUCT (She says it was snow?? You decide!)


SNOW.
A trip through North Wales wouldn’t be complete without mentioning snow. We tried to drive through the Snowdonia national park only to have to turn around because of the heavy snow. You think that they would warn you about the possibility of snow but apparently you are supposed to work it out from the name. We boldly powered on through the snow (knowing that the hire car insurance would forgive all sins) until we couldn’t see the edge of the road anymore and everyone else that had been in front of us had turned around. If none of the other clans were going to risk it neither were we. Interestingly, we are going through a cold snap here in London and it snowed for about an hour today at my school and a little less at Rachael’s. The whole playground was white.

RACHAEL FIGHTS THE COLD BEFORE WE LEAVE ON OUR ILL FATED SNOWDONIA TRIP.


THE SNOW BEGINS. IN THE BACKGROUND YOU CAN SEE A ROMAN BRIDGE THAT HAS BEEN INCORPORATED AS PART OF THE ROAD. BUSY PEOPLE THOSE ROMANS. PROBEBLY ALL THE STINKY EGG WATER THEY DRANK.


WE TURNED AROUND NOT LONG AFTER THIS. THE EDGE OF THE ROAD IS THERE SOMEWHERE.


We have decided to keep the ROCKS issue over for part three. Trilogies are so much more interesting and there are heaps of photos for that Blog. Everything is good here but we still don’t have the Internet at home…not sure when, so all our emailing gets done at school. Again forgive us if we can’t get back to you straight away. Overall, let me say that North Wales is much nicer than South Wales but neither holds a candle to New South Wales. See-Ya Aussies.

Love Ben and Rachael
XXX

HILLS, STEAM, BOOKS, NAMES

Greetings friends,
We are back again. Sorry for our extended absence from the virtual world, we still have not been able to fix up our Internet at home so all of this is being done at school and Internet cafés, a tricky business. At any rate, while our virtual existence has been non-existent our real lives have powered on with a fantastic seven-day road trip to Wales. We have written the blog in two parts for technical reasons more than anything. Originally we had started writing it in chronological order but then we realised that you probably don’t care what order things occurred in…. so, in no particular order. This is the STEAM, BOOKS, HILLS and NAMES blog – Wales part 1.

STEAM
Steam. The thing that powered our narrow gauge train through the Wales countryside. We caught a steam train from ‘Porthmadog’ on the west coast of north Wales into the centre ‘Blaenau Ffestiniog’ (You have got to love that name.)
Northern Wales is beautiful and in particular the Snowdonia area where the train went. It was a 90-minute journey each way through the Wales countryside. The track is delicately placed on the edge of the mountains with the valley views sweeping down.
BLOWING OFF SOME STEAM


THE VALLEY VIEWS


RACHAEL AND THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE


Blaenau Ffestiniog is an interesting place. The main reason for the train originally was to haul slate (which was and still is used for roofing here), from the mountains to the sea where it could be shipped. The use of slate has died right back because for every 1 tonne of slate cut successfully 9 tonnes goes to waste. Nothing grows on the old slate so entire hillsides around this little town are completely bare. It’s very eerie, like the end of the world, or an Italian’s backyard (concrete everywhere).

THE STATION

BARREN HILLSIDES



BOOKS
For those of you who travel (or have been to our little flat and seen our bookshelves filled to the brim) you know that the last thing required is to go off buying books that are too bulky and heavy for travel. We have managed to get for ourselves a semi filled bookshelf here already because we made the terrible mistake of going to Hay-on-Wye (which for book lovers is heaven). There really isn’t much there except books. It’s a little England-Wales border town, population 1500, books approx 500,000. There are 45 second-hand bookstores and although we didn’t get to each one we did manage to get to a few. My favourite one is below. Honesty bookshop, open 24 hours, all paperbacks 30 pence (75 cents) We did manage to find two good books here despite what you might think of the quality of an honesty bookshop. It was located in the castle.
HONESTY – THE BEST POLICY!


NAMES
What is in a name? Well for this town on the Isle of Anglesey, it’s their only tourist attraction. We went there for no other reason than the name. We have no idea how to pronounce it but apparently it means…”St Mary’s church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio of the red cave.” We do have a Welsh pronunciation hint though. Apparently two L’s in a row makes a “KL” sound. We found that vowels seem to be optional in most words as well. Interestingly, all through Wales every sign is written in both English and Welsh (The Welsh is always on top) so we know for instance that “Araf” means “Slow” because of all the road signs.

THE REALLY LONG NAME RAILWAY STATION


BEN IS CRUSHED UNDER THE WEIGHT OF PRONUNCIATION


AN ENGLISH/WELSH PUB SIGN


HILLS
Neolithic. I’m guessing Neo means New? New Lithic, where Lithic is really really old?? Anyhow we went to a Late Neolithic burial site – 2000BC. It was stuck in the middle of a paddock in the middle of nowhere. Apparently the capstone on this thing weighs over 10 tonnes. “Bryn Celli Ddu” is what they call it (don’t ask me what sound two D’s in a row make??) They had a gate on it so you couldn’t go inside, but someone had broken the lock so I went in. In hindsight it may not have been wise to trust a 4000-year old building carrying that much weight built by the New Lithics who were always late but anyway…here is the photo’s.
CLEVERLY DISGUISED AS A HILL – THE BURIAL SITE.


I WONDER IF THE RETAINING WALL I PUT UP AT MY HOUSE WILL LAST THIS LONG? (No comments Dad!)


Anyway, that’s all of part one. Part two will be coming very shortly (in the next three days), its entitled EGGS, CANAL, ROCKS, and SNOW. If you have sent us an email recently we will try to get back to you ASAP, sorry for the delay. For the family; we managed to catch up with Rachael’s cousin Tim on the weekend and had some dinner. He is going great and we will post a couple of photos of us together in the next couple of days as well. We love and miss you all. It’s back to work tomorrow, so no more road trip for at least another 5 weeks but we will do something interesting on the weekend and Blog it. Send us an email or leave a comment soon so we know that you’re all OK.

Love
Ben and Rach

On the Road

Hi Everyone,

We are on the road and this is being sent from the lovely town of Hay-on-Wye (a Wales - England border town). We were not able to work out our home internet before we left last Saturday so this is just a quick update to let you know that we hired a car and have been driving through North Wales and down through Mid-wales. Today we are moving on to South wales near cardiff to see some more castles and Roman ruins etc... We get back home on Saturday and will update with heaps of pictures of: Medieval castles, steam trains through the mountains, snow blocked roads, babbling brookes, beaches, cliff tops, neolithic sites, pubs and small welsh towns. Hope your all well. Check back here on Sunday or early in the week and we promise to have heaps of pictures.

Love Ben and Rach

PS - Happy birthday Bianca (Rach's sister), a pressie is on its way!

Modern Vs Medieval (The final showdown)

There is something that is fantastically impressive about Canterbury cathedral. In the same vein as last weeks question I ask us all to consider why? Why is it that this type of building is so impressive? What makes it so special? In a rather incongruent weekend I spent Saturday with Rachael (who has unfortunately contracted my flu, but do not fear for me as if she does not get better soon I shall cast her outside the city gates for fear of recontagion) at Canterbury, but Sunday I left Rachael at home (to her great delight) while I went off to see the Tate Modern gallery. So I ask the question, which is better, Medieval or Modern?

(This is to be continued as we are having problems with our internet at home. Sorry if we haven't responded to any emails. We should be back online in the next couple of days. Thanks guys.)



US IN THE WAY OF A VERY NICE BUILDING


CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL

THE CATHEDRALS BACKYARD

GREAT ANGLES

RACHAEL AND THE MEDIEVAL VERANDAH

THE OLD MEDIEVAL WESTGATE GETTING IN THE WAY OF TRAFFIC

ST MARTIN'S CHURCH (THE OLDEST CHURCH IN ENGLAND. ALTHOUGH ITS BEEN REBUILT YOU CAN STILL SEE SOME OF THE ORIGINAL WALL FROM 700AD)

MILLENIUM BRIDGE AND THE TATE MODERN GALLERY (ITS A CONVERTED POWER STATION)

THE TURBINE HALL (IMPRESSIVE FOYER OF THE GALLERY. IT HOUSED A SOUND INSTALLATION THAT MADE THE ROOM SOUND LIKLE IT STILL HAD MACHINERY IN IT! mmmmmmmmmm)