20 days in the Baltic

I really didn’t get a whole lot of time to explore the Baltic as I was doing a lot of training and getting ready to take over the ms Noordam 20 days later.

What I did see of the Baltic was amazing, the weather was really good and the views were amazing. Work was good and I have a strong feeling that I will be back in the Baltic in the future.

One thing that was really annoying was the fact that I didn’t have a Russian visa or seaman’s book so i couldn’t get off the ship in Russia. next time.

Ambleside is a really nice town, it is not as tourist like as the other towns nearby and is within hiking and walking distance to the lakes and hills. We did a bit of a walk around on our first day there just to check the place out, had a few drinks to.

The Creek through Ambleside

We were super luck that on the Saturday the weather was amazing and we set out to hike. We started at the information center but decided that we didn’t need a map. I don’t count this as a mistake but a map probably would have resolved some hardship later on in the hike. Anyway we set off towards the fell (it is between a mountain and a hill) that we could see from our room the night before.

“The Target”

So we made a few wrong turns getting out of town but ended up going across a soccer field and along a river. We ran into some people who said the only bridge was on private property so we took off the shoes and crossed the river, it was only shallow and we dominated it.

down the river

We then got out of the river and started up the fell, this is where we learnt our first lesson on “Hiking in the English Hills”, If you see a large clump of trees, don’t head into it. As we found out the reason there is a large clump of trees and everywhere around it is farm land and developed by farmers is because below the trees there is not very faviourable terrain. We quickly hit 90% inclines and found ourselves climbing instead of hiking. This was silly, but we continued up the fell. The ground was loose as well which made it interesting to say the least. We both made it to the top but don’t think we will be going rock climbing anytime soon.

This picture does not do the slope justice, Ryan has some on his camera so i will upload those.

Once we made it to the top it was amazing, the view was great largely due to the weather. I will let the pictures do the talking on this one.

at the top

The view from the top

Ambleside

After sitting down and having an apple we headed towards the lake as it was swim time. Where we came out at the river it was to deep and we needed to cross, so some people passing by in a canoe gave us a lift across the river, it was nice of them.

yay we made it

We then went to the water, Ryan went for a swim but I decided to skip it. We decided at this point that we would go to one of the local pubs for some Ales. The next morning it was harder to get out of bed.

]]> http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/location/ambleside/awsome-hike-in-ambleside-lake-district/feed/ 1 http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/onwards-and-upwards-to-preston/ http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/onwards-and-upwards-to-preston/#comments Fri, 30 May 2008 21:50:21 +0000 Brodie McCulloch http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/?p=159 Preston is what I lake to describe as the Heart of the UK, It is a lot different to the south of the England…..Really different.
Bath to Preston at EveryTrailMap created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging

We said good bye to Stacy and got on the bus to Preston, we had a quick stop in Birmingham (it smelt like stolen stuff) and then continued on to Preston, It took the whole day to travel the distance (as you can see from the map). Once in Preston Laure picked us up from the bus station and we went to our Hotel. We staid in the Travelodge in the center of Preston as Ryan needed some quite time away from the party atmosphere of the hostels to study.

Oh Preston

Where we were staying was interesting, the travel lodge looked like it was converted from some sort of institution, the doors were two narrow to be a hospital but it smelt of detol and smoke. The outside area looked a bit rough, as we were driving into Preston everything was closed, this would have been fine except it was 4.30 in the afternoon.

bro and the stro

Anyway after checking in and dropping our stuff we went out to dinner with laura and exchanged tales from home and abroard. We opted for a quiet night as the party town that is bath had taken it out of us, also the next day we deicded to go to the Lake District which is meant to be the most beautiful part of England.

my money is on the swan

The alarm on my pda is a piece of shit, so Laura work us up with a phone call and we got ready for the day. The drive out to the Lake district was about 1.5 – 2 hours, it is nice country side and is the greenest I have seen England. The Lake District is very nice, the towns around it are a bit touristy but it is not to bad. It looks as though the hiking there would be amazing so we decided to stay there on the weekend after our stay in Preston for another night or two.

laura and ryan

The main thing we did at the lake district was go for a walk and look into the hostels in the area, also work out transport back there as Laura had to work.

Art House photo

On the drive back to Preston we saw a brewery that had a bear called “Brodie’s Prime” probably the best part of the trip so far…..not really but anyway it was good to see me represented in a beer.

its brodie’s prime…..yeeaaaassssss

We then drove back to Preston and went to dinner.

It was another quiet night as Laura had work in the morn and Ryan had dedicated the next day to study, my plan was to sleep in, which is exactly what I did.

So this weekend we are heading back to the Lake District to stay, then on monday we have another marithon day of travel from the Lake District to London, It will take about 8 or 9 hours……awsome.

It was raining when we woke up….we were not prepared

It was a good (and cheap) night all in all but on the Sunday we had to get up and go to the megabus for a 2.5 hour ride to bristol. I love megabus, it was 6 pound and gets you along way, anyway we then were walking along the street to catch a bus to bath were we were going to watch the cricket, and staying 2 nights. I was yelled at by someone on a stopped bus, she sounded like she had been smoking and drinking all her life, which is exactly what she has been doing.

London to Bath at EveryTrailMap created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging

It was Stacy beare. I new I would see her in bath but was not prepaired to see her again so soon after the alaska fam trip. So we got on the bus with her and continued to bath, checked in at the hostel and went to see the sights (pubs). There are a lot of pubs in bath, and england but many in bath. We did a pub crawl to see the city then went on a guided city walk that was a comedian showing us all over the place, it was hella funny.

The Gang

We went out and had a few more drinks that night but realising we had the cricket the next day we had a sleep.

a bridge in bath that has shops and a pub on it

On waking up it was raining…..heavy and it didn’t look like it was going to stop. We walked to the bath cricket ground and were told that it had been canceled, ryan cried. So we went and sat in one of the many pubs.

Kylie took many more photos both days so you can see them on her facebook. All the photos I have to date I have taken and uploaded to flickr, I will probably work on putting up Ryan’s soon as he has some good ones.

]]> http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/location/bath/party-time-in-london-and-bath-scary-women-from-the-ship/feed/ 0 http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/the-healing-of-the-armnot-so-much/ http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/the-healing-of-the-armnot-so-much/#comments Fri, 23 May 2008 17:32:44 +0000 Brodie McCulloch http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/?p=157 I took someones advice (sam and rachel) and took my stitches out of my arm. I had a piece of skin taken to make sure I don’t have the cancer, I have been telling people here that I was bitten by a white tale spider and the flesh eating venom has just been neutrilized by my bodies natural enzymes, now I can get it stitched up.

This was done in Perth and I needed to have the stitches out 7 days later. Following their advice I took them out myself, I thought all was well until I woke up covered in blood (flash backs) and my wound reopened. After 12 hours of bleeding I decided the doctor needed to be seen. We found a walk in doctor and he said it all looked good and to come back in 7 days to have some more stitches in…..If I want. Anyway I will see what happens in the next week, I hope I don’t need to use the penicillin meds he prescribed for me.

Once we had finished at the the doctor and a reading of a very informative “drink responsibly” book we went to have lunch in a pub. Today we had the last English thing, it was a English breakfast, always good. So far we have had pies, bangers and mash, English breakfast and fish and chips. I think that is all the main ones covered.

After breakfast / lunch we went on a walk to Buckingham palace, it hadn’t changed much since I was last year. We continued into Hyde park where we walked around the man made lake thing that we both decided would not be good to swim in.

We started and were actually to early to go into TATE museum near us so we continued on past London eye and to TATE modern, it is a big building that was used in the movie “children of men” (gold movie). We went in and saw all the art and what not, nice stuff, but I am still struggling with the concept of “art”, what makes one squiggle on a page mean more than another? anyway that’s how art is.

The River Thames, London Eye and Westminster Abby

We then stopped for a beer at young’s brewery outlet, had a dark stout which tasted really smooth…….for 10 in the morning. One thing if forgot to mention is that the weather has been out of control. there is not comparison to when I was here in November. We have been getting around in a shirt and shorts the whole time, it has been great and I really hope that it keeps up this way.

Ryan and Westminster Abby……meh

After the beer we continued walking up the river and past London bridge, we continued over tower bridge to London Tower……which is more of a castle but I can understand how it would have looked like a tower back in the day. This is something that we decided we wanted to see so we got tickets and went for a tour. One thing I did not know is that the crown jewels are held at London tower, needless to say they are shiny and are worth some where in the vicinity of 250,000 pounds.

Tower Bridge

We walked the walls and got to see a lot of the city, but caught the tube back to Victoria station as the walk had made us a little sleepy and we wanted a sleep before we went out on the town.

The White Tower in the Tower of London

The Tower of London and some dodge guy

When we got back there was a whole new group of people in our room. We are staying in a hostel with 6 beds in the room and people only seem to stay a night or so, nothing more. This group were from Texas and were traveling for a few weeks before continuing studies in Paris.

We went out on the town and had a jolly time. Also Ryan’s cousin Kate joined us. Myself and Kate enjoyed Ryan’s drunken antics and where amused for many hours. nothing suss

Big Plasma stuff

First thing in the morning we went for a walk to what we thought was Hyde Park and went for a run (I know good hu!), as it turned out what we ran around was Green Park, a much smaller park than Hyde Park. We then went back to the Hostel, had breakfast and got ready for the day.

We walked quite far past the Palace then to where Ryan needed to get his exam papers, they gave them to him even though the thought he looked like a shady character who was not to be trusted. We then walked to Piccadilly Square and marveled at the big screen technology, there were many and it is a really busy intersection.

This is where Cycle Europe 08 almost ended.

We then walked into the West End and brought tickets to see Spamalot, a Monty Python musical that rips off a lot of “The Holy Grail”. Here is a tip for young players, buy your theater tickets the morning of the show as people cancel or they are desperate to get rid of them. We got second row seats for the price of the seats at the back of the theater.

I know! how blue is the sky!

We then continued walking to Trafalgar Square where we went into The National Museum and looked at some old art. at this stage we were getting hungry and saw a “cheep” Indian place which had a 4 course lunch menu for 4.95 pounds, that’s a good deal, but then after the dodge Indian running the place tacked on 6 pound for nan bread and a 3 pound service charge to round the whole meal to a clean 20 pound we decided not to eat in Indian restaurants again (dam you Shagun).

London Eye, we opted not to go up, next time.

After the rogering that was lunch we walked down to see Big Ben and the London Eye, the weather was really nice so there were a lot of people all over the place. By the time we had walked all this distance we decided it was time to go back to hostel and get ready to see the show. The walk back was quite long but we made it, got ready and went to see the show which was funny as expected.

That night we lasted a bit longer, but were still in bed by 12:30am, we put this down to jetlag as well and decided the next night was the night to party.

]]> http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/a-walk-around-london-to-see-stuff/feed/ 0 http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/first-day-in-london-we-made-it/ http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/first-day-in-london-we-made-it/#comments Tue, 20 May 2008 12:05:41 +0000 Brodie McCulloch http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/?p=154 We are laying in our beds at 7:15 pm London time. we have had dinner and are buggered…..seriously that flight was massive.

Once we touched down at Heathrow, London at 8:00am we went through customs, who had a lot of questions actually about what we were doing in London and when we were leaving. Once through out bags arrived, which was amazing because we had been on two different airlines which were not partners and three different planes.

We made our way to the tube and paid our 4 pounds to get to the center of London. The tube is an interesting place, people on it tend to look down, or look away, no one wants to talk….at all. Even me talking to Ryan looked out of place in this hollow tube of unemotional.

We arrived at our station Piccadilly, we then made our way up the stairs to the surface, our first look at London. I had been here before but not for a long time (more than 2 days), I turned on my pda and gps, but after 34 hours of travel the batteries failed me…..thank you technology.

On the technology front Ryan was convinced that everything so far was touch screen, he had tried pushing every flat surface instead of the button located and raised below it. We got some laughs when he tried to push the green man on the cross walk light, instead of the button. The one thing that is touch screen is my PDA and he had trouble with that one.

After some helpful directions from an old man we made found our hostel, the Astor Victoria. It was mayhem, there were people everywhere, it was 10am and this is checkout time. We went in to check in and were told that check-in didn’t begin until 2pm. So we had four hours to kill.

We left our backpacks and went for a walk, London is a easy city to get lost and found in, we walked up to Victoria Station, changed my worthless US $ and walked around for a bit.

One of the best things about England and London is that there is a pub on every corner. You can have a meal and a pint for super cheep. So we sat down, had a pint and looked at how things had gone so far. Besides Ryan almost getting his Swiss pocket knife confiscated in Switzerland (which would have been a story for the ages) it had all gone smoothly, I’m not sure how he thought he was going to get a pocket knife on the plane in his carry on.

I am happy with our first day in London, even though I am in bed at 7:15 it is 2:55 am in Perth and this makes me feel better. If I get on the right time zone now it will make the coming weeks much easier.

Oh yeah, no photos….there are going to be a lot of photos so calm down.

Flight from Perth, Australia to London, England at EveryTrailMap created by EveryTrail:Share GPS tracks

We then boarded Swiss Air for a 12 hour flight to Zurich, once in Zurich it was a mad dash to get to our next flight which was only 2 hours to London. In the future I think I will look for a more direct flight, I think the A380’s fly direct. That would be golden.

It was freezing cold and you would have thought I would have learnt to dress warm….not the case.

Anyway it was great to see and gave me a good look at England (I slept on the way to London the week before )