Travel Journal 2016, January to March
We're great fans of Great British Railway Journeys (click here), a BBC production that appears on UK national television at 6.30pm weekdays. The program is based on the Victorian rail network laid down in the 19th century and covering the length and breadth of the country.
The presenter is Michael Portillo (you'll find his wiki entry here) who searches mainly for historical items of interest near the rail network. Michael is not just any presenter. He's a former British Member of Parliament having served as a junior minister under Margaret Thatcher, later as Defence Secretary and then Shadow Chancellor. At one stage he was a strong contender to lead the Conservative Party.
We just happened late last year to be staying at the Camping and Caravan Club's Walton on Thames site, blissfully ignorant of its importance as the origin of British camping and therefore a contender for a segment on Portillo's program. Against Rosemarie's better judgement I agreed for us to be interviewed by Michael, who I have to say came across as a very friendly and professional journalist rather than an ex-politician. Somehow, a few seconds of our interview made it past the cutting room and we found ourselves on national television tonight!
Dropped in for a coffee at the Dee Light Bakery in Balham. Run by a delightful young lady from Berowra Heights, just north of Sydney, the flags were still flying from Australia Day. Highly recommended if you're in the Balham or Tooting area.
Parkrun is a technology-enabled grass roots sports participation phenomenon that was started in the UK in 2004 by Paul Sinton-Hewitt. All you do is register on the web, print off your barcode and choose one of hundreds of Saturday morning (at 9am) 5 kilometre runs in a park near you. You just turn up and wait for the start. At the finish you flash your barcode, your time is recorded and that afternoon you log on to see how you did. All details of all your runs are there (even including a percentage measure of your time versus that of the world record holder for your age and gender category.)
It costs absolutely nothing, with all the organisation being done by volunteers and with costs funded by sponsors. As of the end of 2015 there were 100,000 runners participating at almost 800 locations globally each week (although still mainly in the UK). Over two million had registered overall and 12.5 million runs had been completed.
The Parkrun home page is here. The Wikipedia entry is here.
For most of the time we were at Blackboys it rained. And rained. The view from our window of our van parked next to Gordon and Tina's garage was mostly like the sodden scene (Jan 13) above. In perusing the Ordnance Survey maps of the surrounding area I noticed Huggett's Furnace and planned a run there between rain showers so I could report back to my good friend Peter Huggett on what some of his ancestors or namesakes did in this part of the world.
A quick internet search revealed that this was the location of the casting of the first iron cannon, in Henry VIII's day, by Ralph Huggett, see more information here. The map above shows the route from Blackboys - nice and hilly it was too, although pleasantly damp.
Our new Kiwi friends, Jenni and Duncan, fellow motorhomers, got us to do a bit of house-sitting late last year. Word got around and on New Year's Day we started another house-sit, this time for Tina and Gordon in East Sussex in their magnificently renovated house in Blackboys. It was also the start of an enjoyable two weeks of dog-sitting a couple of delightful canine characters, Enola and Eva.
As we've said elsewhere one of the great things about our current nomadic lifestyle is that we keep meeting up with our Australian relatives and friends visiting Europe. (Calendar 2015 saw our "visitor book" entries total 26!)
Purely by chance we happened to be driving from London to East Sussex for a house-sitting commitment (see above) and our Lindfield neighbours of 20 years ago, Kirk and Louise, with their four children were visiting Hever Castle which happened to be right on our route! So we met up, had a quick coffee and arranged to catch up with them as they passed through London in a few weeks' time on their return from skiing in Spain. After one day into the new year our visitor book is already up to 6! (No time for photos; it was bitterly cold and the West family was in a hurry.)
