“We’re heading off to the secret fountain.” OK, I thought, time to see some cheesy tourist attraction with some vague connection with Absinthe. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

I drove the worst car in the world (a 4-wheel drive Fiat Panda), out of the valley floor and up into the hills and forests. The leading car gave barely enough confidence that the driver knew the way. The fountain is reputed to be “secret” after all! We wound through farms, fields, and then forests, heading ever upwards from the valley. We eventually parked near an innocuous junction, next to stacks of recently felled logs.

The forest was wet with that morning’s rain, and the continuing drips from the surrounding trees seemed to echo the recent weather. We were led across the road and down along a typical gravel fire-break in the forest. It was in the middle of nowhere, even my portable sat-nav could not muster up its location.

After a few hundred yards, a sign appeared: “Fontaine La Discrete” and we left the main track into a small makeshift clearing. I first noticed the heavy wooden picnic table and seating. Large enough to accommodate perhaps a dozen individuals.

Before it stood what at first looked like a large bird house perched on wooden legs. In what might be regarded as the attic, was a small slot and padlock. Below, a door which opened to reveal a bottle of La Clandestine Absinthe and two absinthe glasses.

If you know anything about absinthe, you know that it should be diluted before drinking, so fresh water was provided by a nearby mountain spring. Though the water itself surfaced a few metres away, it had been redirected through a wooden channel to where it could be conveniently used to louche one’s absinthe. The ritual is: to break from your wandering over the mountains for a glass of locally distilled absinthe, diluted by gloriously fresh spring water. You would then demonstrate your gratitude by dropping a little money into the locked upper slot, and continue on your way.

This secret absinthe fountain is one of several dotted around these hills, we were told. This one is maintained by a boy who would regularly purchase the absinthe directly from its distiller, Claude Alain Bougnon in the nearby town of Couvet, then reaps the financial rewards left in the locked compartment by grateful travellers.

This experience was a distinct highlight from a wonderful weekend. Here’s some video…

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I don’t have any urge to get a sat-nav and for my limited UK use, and a week or two in Spain each year, CoPilot Live on the iPhone works perfectly. As with other turn-by-turn applications, it can run independent of any network connectivity – a real money saver when travelling in Europe. But CoPilot Live does not have what I am looking for in a tool to explore our new home in South West England. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

For accurate detail, I don’t think you can beat maps by Ordnance Survey. I was taught to read them when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and have used and trusted them on many a journey, particularly on foot. So when I saw an iPhone app that would give me official OS maps for an entire area of the country, right in my hand, I had to have it.

Outdoors

Outdoors South West covers – you guessed it – the South West of England. A quick peek at the Ordnance Survey site and I estimate it covers the same as about 25 x 1:50k OS maps. Those would work out around £200 to buy, where the app costs just £14.99.

The app allows you to enter a route and save it, with descriptions not only of the route as a whole but any of its way-points. There are a small number of cycle routes in there already, but I haven’t yet worked out how (or if) you can add additional routes from elsewhere.

The maps are downloaded to the phone, so do not require a network connection to use. They are location-aware, so, like other mapping apps, you can pinpoint your location using GPS. In addition to the whole South West, the application contains the entire UK mainland at a resolution similar to a typical road map (1:250k).

The whole of the UK seems to be covered, with other versions for South East, North West, etc. Each the same price. There are specialist maps covering all the national parks, for example, and a low cost whole UK 1:250k scale map at just £0.59.

This enthusiasm may sound like some advert for the app. But no, I’m simply delighted to have all these quality maps so accessible, even in the middle of no-where.

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I remember many years ago toying with the notion of moving to a more rural location; Exmoor in that case. Having experienced a rural childhood, it seemed natural to live in such an environment. Now, we have actually done it: we live in Cornwall. To be precise, the spectacular North coast of Cornwall. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

This is an area in which I have vacationed several times. An area rich in character, both natural and man-made. A mecca for surfers and walkers, and, it seems now, cyclists. It’s a place many can only conceive of as a holiday destination. Yet, here we now live, within sight of the sea, and within walking distance of the shore and the spectacular South West Coastal footpath. Little more than fields and sheep out the back, and an infrequently travelled road out the front.

It feels strange living in this new environment but with the familiar chattels of the previous ones. Familiar objects are in new locations. It will take me months to re-learn where everything lives in the kitchen.

We talk a lot about how things feel here, but that is the key to this move. The timing feels right, the location feels right, the house feels right. But there are equally significant practical elements to this move. More space, better organised space, more efficient space; in surroundings that both relax and inspire.

Are we just lucky?

Here’s how I see it: we have decided to live our lives in a particular way that has offered the opportunity to do this. Our jobs are geographically independent – the most important factor in our case – and we are comfortable being more isolated. We no longer need to be near London, and we have certainly become worn down by the frenzied lifestyle of near-London living. Simply, we want a better quality of life.

Moving here comes as a result of the recent life decisions we have made and, most critically, the drive to kick complacency firmly in the rear and make the move. In a few weeks the stress and disruption of the move itself will be long forgotten and we can settle in to complaining about the noise of the seagulls.

Back to the old routine

Today, it is back to work after just over a week off making the move happen. Back to emails and discussions, to bug reports, technical solutions, and organising the same old stuff. Nothing will have changed there, yet it will all take place in these new surroundings. We will just have to see what the week brings.

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I was delighted in October to have my work accepted by the SGFA (Society of Graphic Fine Art), and Saturday was my first experience of one of their “Drawing days”. A group of members agree to meet at a location to chat and draw. The British Museum is a common target for these meets, offering such variety of subjects. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

This trip was specifically focused on the print room and an exhibition titled Revolution on paper: Mexican prints 1910–1960, but a meetup was also a big focus and my chance to learn more about other members of the society. Watch a video about the exhibition produced by the British Museum.

I learned a great deal wandering around the print exhibition with some people who understood much more about some of the print processes than I – plus a little help from Wikipedia here and there. Seeing the visual strength of some of the lithographs and lincuts, and the subtle tones of drypoint, I’m sure a printing press is in my future! (It is times like this I feel the gaping holes in my knowledge and experience having not attended art college.)

With so much to see and new people to chat to – many of whom wanted to natter with “the new boy”, I only managed one, brief sketch before having to head home.

Who are these people?

The members were a selection of artists and illustrators very much as I expected, and much like those I have worked with in various art and design studios in the past. I did not get to converse with everyone, but they were all a pleasant bunch to spend some time with and I did appreciate the chance to discuss “art stuff” in place of technology for a change.

The next drawing day, in 2010, will be a visit to the Imperial War Museum, which relates to the theme of next year’s SGFA exhibition in the Spring. It also relates to the second TableRappers novel now in planning (but no more on that just yet!). I haven’t been there since I was a teenager. I suspect I’ll have more than one drawing after that visit.

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Our typical exploratory excursions, sans GPS, consist of defining a destination or three, making a wrong turn or two, and at least once impulsively detouring to explore something that whispers of old stuff to look around.  ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

On the way to — some place or other, I cannot quite remember now — we spotted a sign easily translated even with our muy poco Español as: Castle of Castles. Both enthusiastic about historic fortifications and ancient sites, we made a rapid u-turn and headed for Castell de Castells.

The village of Castell de Castells, like so many Spanish mountain communities, clings to a steep hillside. A major road passes by its feet, and the promise of the “castle of castles” — with no immediate visible battlements, towers, or walls upon approach — taunts passers-by to head in amongst the jumbled buildings. 

Town planning

If there was ever any strategic planning in the layout of a rural Spanish town, then it was surely made over far too many bottles of suspiciously cheap wine, with no further attempt to settle the plans under the assumption they were appropriately laid down the first time. 

The streets of Castell de Castells appear to lead you perpetually uphill, taking you deeper and deeper into the clutches of the town with each neck-straining twist and turn. They rapidly transform from ‘quite narrow streets’ to ‘nothing more than gaps between rows of houses’. They become so narrow, that a pedestrian navigating the same ‘gap’ must dive into a doorway recess to allow a car’s passage (I am convinced one woman we saw on two occasions had to breathe-in, too).

You might expect such a constricted passages to have a one-way system to avoid vehicles meeting when travelling in opposite directions. You would be wrong. These were officially two-way roads, as highlighted by a sprinkle of other cars here and there, tucked into corners and recesses, facing in different directions. Thankfully, we were spared the opportunity to negotiate (in Spanish and Bad-Spanish) as to who should reverse and give way. (A negotiation made doubly tricky by the roads being too narrow to exit the car and attempt the exchange in the first place!)

You find yourself on the same stretch of road more than once, but no matter how you try, you are ever facing in the wrong direction to attempt to back-track to your point of entry. Perhaps the other vehicles collected in nooks are simply the abandoned transport of previously entrapped tourists who had similarly never discovered a way out.

There are corners, too

Dead-ends are commonplace. Tangled streets taunt the weary with the promise of escape, only to terminate with an un-drivable incline, or someone’s garage.

After several twists and turns, enough at least to have us make the decision to forget the castle and simply get the heck out of the town, we spotted a street notably wider than the rest. Along it were several parked cars, and some building work in progress. There appeared to be a left turn at the far end. “Hey!” we exclaimed, “This looks like a road people use more regularly.” We turned and found ourselves being forced to turn left into the narrowest street of all.

I suspect you think I am exaggerating, but the 90 degree turn into this street — which after perhaps two car lengths then turned 90 degrees to the right — was barely wide enough to accept our little Ford Fiesta hire car. We sat for a moment considering the options and decided reversing to be the better choice (the other roads were still narrow, but nowhere near as narrow as which lay that ahead). 

Decision made, I crunched into reverse, looked in my mirror and saw a van rapidly approaching from behind. Hemmed in! “This is how they get you,” I thought, “trap you in a corner then close-off each opportunity to escape until your hopes of freedom dwindle into mere hopes of survival.” Perhaps the entire village had become infertile and the only way for them to avoid extinction was to trap unwary travellers and gradually transform them into locals. At least I would more quickly become fluent in Spanish.

Our hesitation in negotiating the gap ahead prompted the van driver to emerge. “We are lost!” we admitted in our best phrase-book Spanish, expecting the patient local to suggest how we should reverse and be on our way.

Instead, he reeled off a series of directions that, with no hesitation or concern for vehicle size relative to street width, clearly indicated we should just pop on ahead to the left, make a right, then another right, and finally sweep left. We asked that he repeat, slower, after we informed him of our poor Spanish, and he did so, gesticulating more dramatically to assure us our path lay ahead. I simply stared, eyes front, predicting how our hire deposit was about to be scraped off the sides of the car as we attempted to make our way along what were, to our guide at least, perfectly adequate streets.

I am not sure how we did it

But we did. With wing mirrors adjusted for maximum view of the extremities of the car’s rear, we made out clutch-grinding way around the first corner — I estimate with around a centimetre to spare on the driver’s side — then the almost immediate right turn with a similar margin for error. The final right turn, again a full 90 degrees, posed the additional challenge of being briefly but sharply up hill. Hastily patched house wall corners suggested not everyone had survived the manoeuvre unscathed. 

The roads then almost immediately widened. Still not ample space for even the most careful two-way traffic, but compared to our recent experience a veritably motorway. 

I realised we were still heading up. Other than a brief descent into the street with the parked cars, we had been nose-up all the while. 

Unsure of exactly where this hopeful, wider road might take us, we drove slowly past a group of workmen, waiting for them to begin shouting and gesticulating that we were about to drive into another dead end. But all was well. A sharp, low-gear drop and we found ourselves on a major road once more.

I have driven around many narrow paths in both Spain and Malta, but never have I had to negotiate such ridiculous slivers of wing-mirror scuffing streets. I believe we might have been the talk of the town for the next few days as the tourists that got away.

Castell de Castells

Apparently, the area is a regular focus for walkers and mountain bikers. The castle does indeed exist, and, according to Wikipedia, consists of remains of an old Arabic fortification – I guess that should be more accurately termed Moorish fortification. There are also some nearby rock formations forming a natural arch, and remnants of 5000 year old cave paintings.

There is certainly enough reason there to revisit Castell de Castells one day and look around properly. I hope by the time we return, they have Park-and-Ride.

jEN’s post on Castell de Castells

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It is currently 0420 in the morning and there’s not even a hint of sleep meandering its way into my disturbingly alert mind. This very post is a clear demonstration of just how awake I am: I am rarely coherent enough during nights of insomnia to achieve little more than stare at the television in the hope overnight TV (which these days seems to be only for the hard of hearing) proves adequately boring to leave me snoring. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

I tried, of course, slipping under the covers around 1 a.m. to drift off lightly in the tantalising torture of expectant rest. Twenty minutes later and a shudder that some cultures apparently attribute to your body snatching back your escaping soul, slapped me to a greater waking state than I ever feel after a good night’s rest. That’s just great, thanks a bunch.

What’s the trigger this time?

The cause of this current state is a switch of timezones. I left gloriously warm and glowing Marin County – the spiritual source of mountain biking, a little north of San Francisco, over the Golden Gate Bridge, where the crusties munch on granola and all manner of exotic organic produce – leaving Saturday afternoon to return to the UK – a little West of London, dull, drizzling, grey and chilly – Sunday morning.

(A little customer satisfaction tip to all you taxi drivers out there, don’t turn up at the airport at the precise published landing time of the incoming flight, then complain at having to wait around for 40 minutes.)

The unpacking and scrub-up over with, it was time to rally the troops for the battle ahead: stay awake until normal bed-time. A great Chinese meal and lots of conversation did the trick perfectly.

You see, the theory goes that adjustment is eased by immediately enforcing oneself onto the local timezone’s schedule. This works quite superbly when traveling West, it seems, where the effects are little more than a few days of caffeine-susceptible sluggishness.

It was all going so well

Having suffered on return journeys across the Atlantic twice this year already, I was determined to puff out my chest, broaden my shoulders, and prepare to stare the gnarled, warty face of jet-lag with knee trembling defiance.

Instead, I am wide awake, it is dark, damn cold, and I’m greatly irritated that tomorrow (or should I say later today) will likely prove very unproductive due to sleep deprivation.

Get a grip and be a man, man

Ask any regular long-haul traveler about beating jet-lag and you’ll have all manner of advice generally revolving, as above, around getting onto the local schedule as rapidly as possible. These people invariably forget to mention this is a one-way solution. Approach them later with your experience traveling East and the conversation runs something like this:

them: Hey, how was your trip, cope with the jet-lag?

you: It was fine on the way out, but I must have got the timing wrong for the way back, it was terrible. Insomnia, hunger at strange hours, bowel movements at even stranger hours. I felt like I had been in a Star Trek transporter accident and all my atoms were slightly out of phase. It was a vile, and pungent, experience. Is there something I did wrong?

them: You traveled back from West to East?

you: Thats right.

them: Oh, yeah, that’s a killer.

you: Well, thank you for your original half-arsed advice <insert appropriate tirade of sleep-deprived, emotionally charged retaliation here>

Without downing a cocktail of drugs, that are almost impossible to get in the UK anyway (should I be listening to more travel advice?), it looks like no matter what I try, the punishment for long-haul Easterly travel is several days ordering coffee like a zombie.

You never know, I might get some more blog posts out in this newly acquired slice of productive free time.

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As I write this, I am sat – very comfortably, and with a belly full of pizza, I should add – in the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, downtown San Francisco. Just a block north (ish) from Union Square Park, the hotel cannot be missed due to the absurd Beefeater-dressed doorman, pheeping whistles and hustling guests in and out of cabs. Now let’s not get into the rather tentative connections between Drake and Beefeaters, they are both very British and that’s clearly enough around these parts. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

The hotel is well dressed without being pretentious, and you know takes its in-room entertainment seriously when the every adult movie package assure you of “anal sex in every scene”.

The most challenging aspect of staying here – beyond a wifi connection with a mind of its own as to what you can access, when, and for how long (you should have paid the $10 per day option! I hear you cry) – is the city itself. I had forgotten the level of noise a city creates throughout the night.

There’s the doorman’s piping, the dinging bells of the Powell Street trolleys (one driver has a deliberately rhythmic tune), the constant, deep throated traffic, plus a sprinkle of meandering, homeless shouters.

I woke at just after 4 a.m. one night to an almighty, echoing, boom! Followed promptly by another. My first thought was a storm where the thunder had been distorted after bouncing its way through the city tower blocks. But the sound was  hollow, as though a giant drum was being played just outside. Another bang, without the expected preceding flash and I had to investigate.

It might have well been a giant drum. It was skip swapping time on Powell Street.

The renovations in the hotel opposite had filled the roadside skip enough to need replacement. I say skip only in the its practical sense, it was in fact an open topped container, with dimensions that would not look out of place on a ship carrying cheap Chinese goods across any ocean. It was a veritable “skiptainer”!

Our hapless, time-oblivious skiptainer delivery chap had arrived and dropped, quite literally, the new, empty skiptainer in the middle of the road – thus the sounds that had roused me. The technique to remove the skiptainer from the truck was to tip the rear until it slid off and slammed into the road. Then, to drive the truck forwards while scraping the rear of the skiptainer across the road, using the barely sufficient friction of its surface to hold the skiptainer in place, eventually letting it crash off the truck once free.

Now time to move the full skiptainer so the empty one could replace it. Simple enough, perhaps, unless, like our lovable, time-oblivious driver, you moved full skiptainer to a position preventing recovery of empty skiptainer!

More dragging, scraping, and slamming into the road later and full skiptainer had been moved while empty skiptainer had found itself in its alloted place.

But wait… it’s not quite correctly aligned.

Our glorious skipcaptain concludes it would be far too much effort to recover empty skiptainer once more to the trailer in order to move it a mere metre or two. Much better to reverse his truck, slamming it repeatedly into empty skiptainer until, after many chassis-twisting collisions – and associated echoing booms – empty skiptainer had been hammered into place.

I stood in my fifth floor window watching this in such amazement I never thought to capture the event with a video camera. And before retiring I noticed that not one of the other hotel windows I could see were revealing signs of other disturbed sleepers. I suppose some people are more suited to the sounds of inner city at night.

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Jesus and the joys of a Motel6

On arriving to Janesville base camp one one afternoon, we were overjoyed to see a very special guest was also staying that night – and a few friends, perhaps, as the car could easily seat a handful of chums.

We stayed at a Motel6 proved to be an interesting (and cheap, which was the whole idea) experience. Complete refurbishment was still well underway, but we had been assured one of the brand spanking newly decorated rooms. On arrival, it seems the outside of the building must be the ‘second phase’ of refurbishment.

New was what we got, and the interior was entirely new. Great new, modern bathroom, new furniture – which was pleasingly solid and heavy in quality – and the new TV was still fitted with a few of the little blue plastic sticky things that I can only assume are to protect particular points of the casing, yet are placed at entirely inexplicable locations. Most spectacular of all was the glistening gaiety of the Motel6 corporate duvet covers. Trucks, bears, skiers, and Motel6 logos, clearly screaming at all the possible adventures travelers might expect when partaking of the Motel6 experience – the picture barely does it justice. The ice machine delivered a taunting humming yet never any ice, and the only thing the dispensing machine was all out of was disposable razors.

It’s all about people, however. To greet us was a solidly built, calf-tattooed, orange woman with a voice decibel level appropriate to deliver announcements to a Butlins camp without a PA system. Each morning, a one-eyed guy would be dropped off for work and would eagerly start rummaging through the previous day’s trash for treasures. There was the midnight pacing guy upstairs who then paced some more around 4 a.m. (we deduced the first pacing session was him packing, the second him checking and leaving). There were the 542 (ish) Mexicans who had managed to squeeze in next door for a night. There was the early hours headboard slapping activity of nearby humping. And then there was the older guy who was taken away handcuffed by police, followed by the irate Mexican shouting into his mobile outside the very same door later that day – deductions are all yours.

See jEN’s post for her take on the Motel6 experience.

The best way to tell whether you are in the USA is look for a drive-thru. I did experience a drive-thru ATM for the first time, but could not resist capturing this drive-thru tobacco store, Smoker’s Best Friend.

You’ll find a couple more American oddities on my flickr page. To discover why our hire car is described as our “sweet sympathy ride” (see the topmost image) you’ll have to tune in to the next MinorTechnicality podcast.

*These oddities do not include images from House on the Rock, for which the word ‘oddity’ does not even get close to hinting at the mere essence quirkiness of that place. More on House on the Rock in another post.

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