Northeast

We're in York at the moment, on the middle of a 3-night trip to the Northeast. Last night we stayed in Newcastle. It was freezing. We visited many of the attractions, including Fort Segedunum at Wallsend - the eastern end of Hadrian's Wall. We saw some city walls, Gallowgate, several bridges, etc. Dinner was a high-class affair at a chinese buffet.

We looked at the Angel of the North as we left Newcastle for Durham.

In Durham, we visited the Castle, although only briefly: visits only permitted by (too expensive for us) guided tour at a time that didn't suit. We looked around the Cathedral, and climbed the 324 steps to the top of the tower.

Ambling from Durham to York, we drove through Ampleforth, including the Abbey/College - something I'd like to visit properly one day. Chop Gate was also cute.

In York, we spent a few hours at the National Railway Museum, primarily because that's where the York Wheel (competitor to the London Eye) is. We went on a simulator ride as well, covering London to Brighton in 4.5 minutes. Then we dined at the Delhi Spice (allegedly French/Indian/Italian fusion, although no evidence of anything but regular Indian), before checking into our B&B. This was much cosier than our 2 separate self-contained apartments in Newcastle, which tried to look rather posh, but didn't turn out so well. Tonight, we're all in one 4 (plus one) bedroom. But it's fine.

Looking forward to more York experiences tomorrow.

How to buy wine in Bordeaux

Tasting wine in Bordeaux isn't quite like tasting wine in Barossa. In Australia, they know you want to taste the wine, so when you go to visit them, they give you a bunch of wines to taste. But on our visites to many chateaux in Bordeaux, the experience seems to be that you spend an hour being shown around the wine making process, and then you have an opportunity to taste one, two, or three wines. This might help convince opportunistic tourists not to go everywhere and taste everything - but then how do you learn what you like?

There is the Maison du Vin in each commune. They offer various courses, but not (in my experience) educational tastings. You can buy a whole bottle of most wines...

You can try tasting some wines with meals in restaurants. But (at the restaurants/price-brackets we chose) there wasn't a huge variety, and you can't get all the wines by the glass.

The only real option seems to be to go to a bottleshop or in the vernacular, a Cave. The salesmen will offer you a couple of things to taste, and then start pressuring you to buy. If you have a clear idea wof what you want to try, then you may have more luck. We found ourselves buying a couple of bottles just to get out of one place.

The best wine buying experience we had was at the Avant Garde cave in Margaux. Yes, it helped that the owner was an Australian - Wayne McCarthy. They had one wine open for tasting when we went in - it was nice, and we decided we'd buy that one. But Wayne suggested we should choose a dozen to send back to England. In practise, after we specified our budget (approx €15/bottle), he chose a dozen that he said were good value for money and a good variety. The postage to the UK wasn't too expensive (€29) and the wines arrived in good order in their wooden case.

Tonight we opened the first bottle, a 2004 Chateau Poujeaux from Moulis. It's fantastic - decent body, depth, & length! Apart perhaps from the Premier Cru Classe ones that were over €200/bottle, this one (at €20.50) is probably better than all the ones I tasted on the trip. Who knows what influences - the weather, the cooking, relaxing at home - might make the difference. But I'm convinced that Wayne really did help us get great wine at a bargain price.

It's a bit prohibitive to do it from Australia, but if you're in England say, and you wanted a case of delicious Bordeaux wine, I'd suggest emailing Wayne for some ideas and a quote.

For the record, the dozen that we bought were:

• Ch. Tour Haut-Caussan 2001 (Médoc)
• Ch. Penin "Les Cailloux"2005 (Bordeaux)
• Ch. Citran 2004 (Haut-Médoc)
• Ch. Haut-Bergeron 2002 (Sauternes)
• Ch. Charmail 2004 (Haut-Médoc)
• Ch. Poujeaux 2004 (Moulis) - tonight's delight
• Ch. Deyrem Valentin 2002 (Margaux)
• Ch. Des Graviers 2004 (Margaux)
• Ch. Moutte Blanc 2002 (Bordeaux)
• Clos de Bigos 2005 (Margaux)
• Ch. Potensac 2004 (Médoc)
• Ch. La Galiane 2003 (Margaux) - the one we tasted in the Cave.

Cheers!

Rocamadour

From Carcassonne we explored some cute villages in the Gorges du Tarn: mostly St Chély and Ste Enimie.

 

After crossing the Millau Bridge...

 

...we made it to Rocamadour, a village (or perhaps more accurately, 7 chapels for pilgrims) built into the side of a cliff.

 

We had a little rain during the drive, but it was all gone by the time we arrived at our cliff. Better weather than you could expect for October.

With some more judicious disputes with the SatNav, we made it back to the west of the country the following day, with enough time to take Sophie for a brief walk through St Emilion, before checking the loot in at Bordeaux airport. On this occasion, there was no quibble about the suitcase being 20.7kg - and the wine seems to have come through undamaged.

Carcassonne

After last night's arduous drive, we made it to Carcassonne. I had learnt most of what I needed to know about it from the board game, but it was good to see it in the "flesh". Television documentaries had also provided some of the motivation for coming. We read too that Carcassonne was the most visited part of France, after Paris. Still, it was worth it.

After checking in, we couldn't resist walking up into the citadel, where we hunted for (but didn't really need to gather) dinner. We enjoyed soups and salads, and the regional cassoulet specialty. Perhaps I could say that dessert was endured rather than enjoyed: I don't think we needed it, but it came as part of our €12.90 3-courses.

Today, after some vital knowledge working and laundry, we made a daylight assault on the citadel. Those of us who hadn't spent quite so much time reading the tourist books discovered that there was actually a castle inside the citadel, as well as a city. (And the real, main city of Carcassonne is too big to fit inside the walls, so it's outside, across the river.) Anyway, we paid our money to walk along the ramparts and explore the castle, and have a guided tour. The English tour wasn't until 3:30pm, so we had time to explore the new city, and also to purchase some luggage (valice) within which we could transport our wine purchases back to Angleterre, coping with the nonsensical liquid aviation prohibitions.

Dinner was purchased at approximately 1/6th the price of the previous night, at the local deli, and eaten inside our apartément, in order to slightly reduce the volume of aforesaid wine requiring international transit.

Here you can see the view from our apartément window, another from the bridge, and a third from below the outer wall. It really is much more impressive from the outside than from inside.

Bordeaux to the Mediterranean

We're on a one week holiday in the South of France. Sophie, Joanna, and I spent the last two days driving from Paulliac (Bordeaux -- almost on the Atlantique coast) to the Mediterranean. We visited some nice wineries, including Pontet-Canet pictured, and saw some nice Chateaux from the road (Mouton-Rothschild).

In Sauternes, we found out just how ugly some of those prized grapes can be, and what the botrytis cinerea "Noble Rot" looks like up close. We saw the famous Chateau d'Yquem, and visited another Premier Cru Classe winery - Haut Peraguey, where the boss tried to explain the Sauternaise subtleties to us in French. We picked up 60%, I think.

We managed to find Chateau Roquetaillade, a big castle, built by Edward I when he lived there.

We spent a night in Langon, and then drove past Carcassonne to dip toes in the Mediterranean. Owing to an initial mis-reading of the "exclusive pour practique naturelle" sign, we neglected to remove all our clothes, although others on the beach clearly had. There were several oyster/mussel/sea-snail places at Leucat-Plage, so we (ie. Sophie) tasted some.

We then travelled through some of the surrounding Languedoc wine region, and visited two of the Cathar Castles - Queribus and Peyrepetuse.

With limited and conflicting geospatial intelligence, we relied on the electronic navigator, which took us the shortest distance back to Carcassonne. It was a very narrow and winding road, much slower (but also more scenic) than other possibilities.

Energy

Every now and then, someone puts forward a sensible argument about energy - renewables, nuclear, fossil fuels, and saving it. A friend from choir (thanks David!) has just put me onto a book by David MacKay called Without the Hot Air. It goes one better by providing a comprehensive analysis for the UK. It's easy to read online (I couldn't put it down), and he's done all the maths to let you design your own energy policy.

It's remarkably spin-free: most people with sufficient interest in the topic seem to latch on to a favourite solution, and spend their time advocating that. But not here: this is just the data.

Maybe one day there will be a sequel that tries to assess the economics, social, and environmental impacts of all the different options. That couldn't possibly be done as objectively as this first one, but it seems to be a necessary second step...

I recommend you have a quick skim: http://www.withouthotair.com/

Norway - Oslo again

On our last day, before a late-night flight back to Birmingham, we walked and walked and walked around Oslo. Sculpture parks, opera houses, a ferry ride to the Viking museum, strange musical instruments, and more walking. Keep in mind that everyone in England was complaining about the lousy summer weather.

Norway - Lillehammer

On the way back south-east towards Oslo, we stopped overnight at Lillehammer. It's a beautiful town, very proud of its Olympic history. We drove up to the ski jump park, and while we were there, we witnessed the summer ski-jump rehearsal technique. A couple of plastic tracks run down each ramp, with a soaker hose to keep everything wet. The artificial and real grass on the landing area is also sprinkled. The track is frightfully steep, and those guys really do fly!

The parks were lush and very well looked after. One restaurant/hotel had a moose's head inside on the wall. The rest of the moose was outside. And the (Olympic) ice rink had some snow/ice outside which led to an inevitable snowball fight. I think the adults won, but that might not be a unanimous opinion.

Norway - Trollsteigen

The Troll Steps are a tourist highlight. We drove up a lonely (although not comletely deserted) zig-zag road to the top, only to be confronted by about 30 tourist buses and a hundred cars, with all the souvenir shops you'd expect. But the view down the long fjord-like valley was certainly impressive.

Norway - Ålesund

We had a wonderful drive/cruise along the Sognefjorden on our way from Geiranger to Ålesund.

The view from the lookout at the top of the city hill was rather spectacular.

Norway - Songdal and Geiranger

We enjoyed the mountains and fjords around Songdal and Geiranger, and managed to get fairly close to two glaciers. We didn't have time to do the full-day glacier walk, but that would be fun one day.
It seems that if you get to a tourist lookout destination in Norway, and there's no other culturally-acceptable way to tell people you've been there, then your only recourse is to build a small pile of stones. We were amused by this in many places.