Places I go n'stuff
Nine months in Taupo. Restless. I suppose we are all inclined to self-criticism; I should have done this or seen that, should have saved more money, should have spoken to that person but in the end I guess that we do what we do. The spring came through the winter and we were stir crazy. […]
So I have settled, for the time being at least, in a ramshackle but charming hostel on the shore of Lake Taupo. New Zealand is an expensive country to travel about in and winter employment was in order. The town of Taupo (toe-paw, not t-ow-po) is fine, occupying an inlet at the north end of […]
It seems I have traded the North Atlantic for the South Pacific, a world apart. This ocean is different; bluer, warmer, stronger. I have always longed to see the Pacfic ocean. I can now say I have swum in three of the worlds oceans, the others – the Southern and Arctic – are not quite […]
When we started to drive, with teenage abandon, around the lanes that connect Polgooth, Sticker and St. Ewe a story started to trickle down into our hot-boxed Peugeot 106. In between St. Ewe, Polgooth and Pengrugla there is a little triangle of woods, a copse really, that the road dog-legs around, which we called Nunnery […]
A few days ago I was reading of Norilsk, an unimaginably oppressive, filthy, cold, dank industrial city high in the Arctic Circle. Once known for its Soviet Gulag labour camps (in which tens of thousands of prisoners died), it is now a hub of mineral mining. Nickel primarily but also palladium, cobalt, arsenic and coal. […]
Time moves on and we get used to it. As our accustomed minds gradually and continually fill up with life find ourselves shocked when we take note to see an hour or a week has passed with not much to show other than an underlying sense of non-achievement. The terminal feeling of helplessness at the […]
Just off the south side of the arterial A30 that cuts the Moor in two one can find Temple. A collection of farm houses and out of the way cottages, there is not much other than the small community that dwell here. Temple Church is the prime attraction. You see, if you blunder across anywhere […]
In a totally different vein to self-indulgent familial nostalgia I will be discussing an author in this post. An author of such titles as; ‘Stalin’s British Training, Breeding Concubines, Paedophiles at War‘ (2007) and ‘Hitler was a British Agent‘ (2005). I find this interesting. I came across this guy researching an upcoming post on the […]
It used to confuse me that this little village nestled in the lee of Rame Head and facing the beginnings of Devon from across Plymouth Sound is nominally divided into two. Cawsand and Kingsand. The actual reason is that the border of Devon and Cornwall once ran though the village until they changed it to […]
That Cornwall was once ruled by a separate and unique lineage of Kings ignites a schoolboy-like excitement. It makes me think of Tolkien. It also highlights that this little chunk of land oozes with its own idiosyncratic history. Just the names of the Kings brings to mind a wild, fierce and proud people roaming a […]
