Passage through India – Shimla in the Himalayas

“Shimla may have been called the summer capital, but for all practical purposes this was the real Capital of India as the Government of India stayed there for the better part of the year moving down to Calcutta and later to New Delhi only during the winter months.  As the summer capital of the British Raj, Shimla came to be known as ‘the workshop of the Empire’.” – Ashok Kumar, “A Journey into the Past”

The hotel in Shimla was very nice but built of several levels and terraces which made it rather confusing.  We approved our room and then I returned up several steps of stairs to the bar to order a beer.

When I got there I was gasping for breath and I wondered if I was having a medical incident but as it turned out it was all down to the altitude.  We were now two thousand, two hundred metres above sea level (about a quarter of the way to the top of nearby Mount Everest) and that is about two thousand, one hundred and fifty metres higher than where we live almost at sea level in Grimsby on the east coast of the UK.

From the top floor of the hotel there was a magnificent view over the Himalayas…

For our day in Shimla we were joined today by local guide and expert Sanjay Jadhur who met us at the former British Viceroy’s Lodge at the top of the city in the Observatory Hills.

It was designed by the British architect Henry Irwin and built in the Jacobean style, drew inspiration from the architectural style of the English Renaissance but also reflects elements of the castles of the Scottish Highlands. The building is of light blue-grey stone masonry with tiled pitch roofing. The interior  is noted for elaborate woodwork, teak was brought from Burma and was supplemented by local cedar wood and walnut.

It is a very grand building but it has to be said but it didn’t impress renowned architect Edwin Lutyens who  said of it – “If one was told that monkeys had built it, one could only say, ‘What wonderful monkeys — they must be shot in case they do it again.’ “

Shimla is spread across seven hills in the northwest Himalayas among lush valleys and forests of oak, rhododendron and pine is the capital of Himachal Pradesh that was once the summer capital of colonial India and even today there is still more than a hint of the Raj about it.

An interesting visit, wonderful gardens and great views followed by a brief tour of the interior of the Lodge, not a lot of it, just a couple of rooms where there was a photographic display of the final days of Empire and a gathering of all concerned to thrash out the details of withdrawal, independence and partition.  What struck me was that there were no photographs of Mountbatten or the British delegation which I thought was rather odd.

What had become obvious over the last two weeks was that in India there is little respect or regard for the British Empire or for Earl Mountbatten, who it seems made a dreadful mess of his most important job, but nevertheless he was an important player throughout 1947 so I was surprised to find no reference to him at all in the galleries.

Next up was a visit to a Hindu Temple, I forgot to note the name but I think it was the Sankat Mochan temple somewhere close to the centre of the city.

Now, I don’t want to be disrespectful here but a visit to a Hindu Temple is not especially thrilling I have to say.  A Muslim Mosque isn’t very thrilling either because they are plain and boring but a Hindu Temple is quite the opposite with an accumulation of random bric-a-brac and gaudy decoration like visiting an aged relatives house who has collected a load of junk over the years and leaves out proudly on display to impress visitors.

I suppose it would help to have an understanding of the Hindu faith but unfortunately my knowledge is a complete blank on this one.

Leaving the Temple we moved on to the heart of the colonial city, the Ridge and the Mall and this was a real shock.  We had come to see the real India but here suddenly we were in the heartlands of Tory Britain, this was like Chester, Stratford-upon-Avon or Weybridge in Surrey because this is where the British ex-pats built a town where they felt at home, where they recreated town life in Great Britain.

We walked past a  mock-Tudor post office to one side then on past the slate-roofed, slightly Welsh looking Town Hall, to reach the town square at the end of The Ridge and a Tudor style library and Victorian Gothic Christian Church with its very English village appearance.  Suddenly we were in the Cotswolds.   There was even a mechanical street sweeper lurking in a corner ready to deal with a shred of litter.  It is almost like a theme park and it reminded me immediately of Walt Disney EPCOT World Showcase where there is the recreation of an English town much like this.

Here is EPCOT…

And then a street of  shops and cafes that would not have been out of place anywhere in middle England, it was all rather odd, we had a sandwich lunch which was almost English but not quite and then collectively turned down the offer to go shopping for an hour or so and opted instead to return to the hotel to squander away the remainder of the afternoon, reflect on our India experience and prepare for the journey back the next day to Delhi and our final evening.

Passage through India – Wagah Border Pantomime and Partition

Leaving the Golden Temple we proceeded now to the Wagah India /Pakistan border.

We were going to see the  Beating Retreat Ceremony which has been a daily military event since 1959. The ceremony takes place every evening just before sunset at the border crossing which came into being when the Radcliffe line was drawn, separating India and Pakistan, and dividing the Province of Punjab into eastern and western sections. The eastern part went to India and the western part into Pakistan.

This is the only official road link on what is called the Grand Trunk Road  between the two countries and which crosses what is the political fault line which is the Indian Pakistan border and which passes through a colossal , rather ugly concrete border with heavy metal gates.

So we arrived early, way too early in my opinion and now we had to sit and wait, sit and wait, sit and wait.  In all that time all that happened was that a family was allowed through from the Pakistan side to the Indian side and they stood for a while with their suitcases blinking and looking bewildered wondering what to do next.  Were they being ejected, had their visas been approved?  They didn’t seem to know.   Eventually they realised that the crowds of excited people were not there to welcome them to India and they moved  slowly on.

I may have mentioned earlier about the visa application process which was quite difficult and asked several times about any connections relating to Pakistan and as I watched them step  tentatively  from one side to the next it all suddenly seemed to make some belated sense.

Eventually after something about twice as as long as the last Ice Age the show got started.

The ceremony started with a lot of singing and dancing and grand theatre and then a storming parade by the security forces from both the sides with a lot of bravado and strutting about. It reminded me of Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks, soldiers pretending to be Can’Can dancers at the Moulin Rouge and it ended in a contrived coordinated lowering of the two nations’ flags. One soldier stands at attention on each side of the gate.

As the sun sets, the iron gates at the border were opened and the two flags are lowered simultaneously. The flags are folded and the ceremony ended with a retreat that involved a rather reluctant and seemingly difficult handshake between soldiers from either side followed by the theatrical closing of the gates once again.

All rather odd.  India hates Pakistan, Pakistan hates India.  India loves Pakistan, Pakistan loves India.  In under eighty years there have been four wars/spats between the two, 1947/8, 1965, 1971 and most recently 1999. It is like two people who live together but can’t get on and live together,  How can a foreign visitor make any sense of that I wonder?

The tension spills over into sport.  India and Pakistan are two of the greatest cricket teams in the World but they don’t play each other except at neutral venues.  Since Partition only one Hindu has ever represented Pakistan and only seventeen Muslims have represented India despite the fact that India has the third highest Muslim population in the World.  Pakistan cricketers are excluded from the Indian Premier League for political and religious reasons.  How absurd is that?

It was all a complete pantomime.  Ridiculous really but to be fair I didn’t understand the relevance of it.  A bit of trivia for you,  the word ‘pak’ means pure in Persian and ”istan’ means land of so Pakistan is literally ‘land of purity’.  That is a very bold claim.

I asked Tour Guide Rahi about it and he was certain that Partition was entirely the fault of the British, their policy of divide and rule that set Muslim against Hindu and led to the events of 1947 which must surely go down as one of the major humanitarian tragedies of the twentieth century when hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and slaughtered for not even a very good reason.

India and Pakistan were separated in 1947 as the British withdrew from India.  It suits to blame the British and their admittedly clueless, clumsy and uninformed division of the sub-continent but surely others were equally complicit in a defiant statement of intent firmly set against compromise.  Viceroy Mountbatten gave up the attempt, referred it back to London and it all ended up going tits up.

I personally didn’t enjoy it, I thought the visit a complete waste of time, I had known about the tension between India and Pakistan but I would have preferred to have visited the Partition Museum but that seemed to get quietly dropped from the itinerary.  I would have preferred to return to the Golden Temple at Sunset but that too seemed to get quietly dropped from the itinerary so had to stick instead with the pantomime ceremony right through to the end.

I would most especially liked to go and see a cricket match between India and Pakistan.  No chance of that of course.

What happened to these main players?  Ghandi of course was assassinated in 1948,  Earl Mountbatten suffered the same fate in 1979, blown up by an IRA bomb, Jinnah was a chain smoker (fifty a day, or one every fifteen minutes based on a twelve hour day because you can’t smoke when you are asleep because you will set fire to the bed) and died of lung disease in 1948, Nehru lived until 1964 and died of a heart attack.

Cyril Radcliffe who drew the line which became the border was so saddened by the violence and death that his line had caused that he refused to draw his salary (£3,000 in 1947 or about £145,000 in 2024 values) and returned to England where he was created a Lord.  Some things never change and reward for failure is one of them.  He lived a long life until 1977.

When it was all over (thank goodness) we returned to the hotel, relaxed for a while before going to the dining room for another curry.  I had now had more curry in one week than I had had in the last ten years, maybe twenty years.

Tomorrow there was a long coach journey ahead across the Punjab from Amritsar to Chandrigarh but on the plus side there was a later start.

Passage through India – Jaipur to Ranthambore

“We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discoveries could have been made.” – Albert Einstein.

We were sad to be leaving Jaipur, it had been a good two days but there was a new adventure ahead – a tiger safari in the Ranthambore National Park.

To get there involved another train journey and we arrived at the station in good time but the platform information board kept knocking back the arrival/departure time in regular ten minute intervals.

This wasn’t such an inconvenience and it gave fellow passengers plenty of opportunity to have their picture taken with Kim.  All rather curious and we put it down to the white hair.  Tour guide Rahi told us that although India resents the period of British rule that they have no animosity towards English people and that was everywhere in evidence here on the railway platform as we waited for the train to arrive from Jodphur.

A different train this one, not an express but an overnight sleeper train with the sleeper carriages converted to daytime travel, only a two and a half hour journey this time so no on board catering included but vendors passed through regularly offering “English Snickers, English Snickers“.  I rather like Snickers but I still insist on calling them Marathon.

All Aboard…

As the train left Jaipur and made soporific progress through the suburbs we were in familiar surroundings, shanty towns, open landfill sites, poverty, destitution and begging but never it seemed despair and always a smile.  People waved as the train passed by as they most likely do to all trains that pass by and we waved  back.

In a response to a previous post my blogging pal Jude raised the issue of Indian state expenditure on space exploration when there is so much poverty.  I have heard this raised before.  As it happened, some time later I asked Rahi this very same question and he told me that India plans to be a world superpower and when the economy has grown then that will lead to social reforms.  He was certain that space exploration helps in this ambition.

“How do you eat an elephant?  –  Answer – “One bite at a time”

We should not forget that the modern state of India is less than eighty years old.

It was a good observation and a relevant question to ask and I thought long and hard about it and I came to this conclusion.  Putting things into perspective the UK Tory government of the last fifteen years has wasted billions of pounds on a vanity project railway line that goes nowhere, no one needs, no one wants and then stand by while privatised water companies (thanks Margaret Thatcher) gleefully pump raw sewage into our rivers and seas whilst paying millions of pounds to  shareholders and executive bonuses.  The River Ganges is the most polluted river in the World but in the UK Thames Water has plans to quickly catch up.

We have limited social housing (thanks Margaret Thatcher).  The privatised railways are completely hopeless (thanks Margaret Thatcher).  The  beloved National Health Service slowly collapses into a pit of  creeping privatisation (thanks Margaret Thatcher)  and it abjectly fails to tackle poverty and destitution in our own country.

And it has a space exploration programme.

India has successfully sent a mission two hundred and forty thousand miles to the moon, the UK high speed train project can’t even get one hundred miles from London to Birmingham.

We are the country with the social and economic problems that will inevitably lead to collapse.  At least the Indian government appear to have a plan.  They are going through a political, social, economic and technological revolution.  I don’t think that we are in any position to judge others.

A nice ride, a gentle ride, a very sociable ride where we got to know better those that we hadn’t really  got to know properly previously and before we knew it we were in Ranthambore, a railway station dedicated to the legend of the tigers.

Spot the odd one out…

The train arrived just after midday, a small station in comparison to Delhi and Jaipur and there to meet us was our ever reliable driver D P Sharma and his cheerful helper Chandu who as ever dispensed hand cleanser with a permanent smile and gave a helping hand up the steps.

D P was an excellent driver who drove the vehicle through the chaotic streets with the precision of a Harley Street surgeon performing open heart surgery.  As though it was a Rolex watch.  He knew every fraction of an inch of his coach and could guide it through impossibly small gaps but when it became extraordinarily tight or especially difficult it was Chandu’s job to give him assistance.  I would not have wanted that responsibility I can tell you.

Lunch was served at Jungle Villas and then there was a welcome afternoon of leisure at the hotel swimming pool which was very much appreciated.  The sun was shining, the water was cool but not desperately cold and most of us took a refreshing dip.  Roger did a thousand lengths.

And in the evening there was jolly entertainment in the garden, a travelling band of local musicians who entertained while tea and tasty samosas were served.  When they had finished they moved on to the hotel next door, it was close by  and we could hear them all over again.

It had been a very good day.

Later it rained quite hard and we became concerned about the next day when we were joining a jungle safari in search of tigers and it was going to be another early start.

Passage through India – Carpet Shopping in Jaipur

The reason for the swift end to the visit to the Amber Fort may have been because we had timed tickets or maybe because of a pre-arranged jeep transport pick-up slot but the real reason was revealed as we returned to Jaipur with a brief stop to see Jal Mahal, an abandoned Mughul palace floating on a  glassy lake.

We were going shopping; cue groans all round from the men and discreet smiles from the ladies.

We were visiting a traditional hand made carpet factory.  Whoop-e-do!  I have been to these before, once in Turkey and another time in Morocco – fifteen minutes of tour and information, complimentary drink (rum and coke) to soften us up followed by an hour of hard sell.

First a demonstration of block printing and then onto the carpets.  A line of Indian women sat spinning yarn whilst our host and guide spun us a yarn about hand-made carpet making.  A man sat cross legged threading a carpet which we were told would take him four months to complete and he had the unique pattern locked secretly in his head.

Whatever!

On next to the sale room whereupon once we were all inside the door was closed shut and firmly bolted to prevent escape.  A bit of good-natured chat again and a complimentary drink to soften us up but there were a growing number of salesmen starting to enter the room through secret doors eyeing us up like birds of prey.  I knew exactly what to expect, gladly took the rum and coke and  settled back trying to look disinterested.

Then the carpets started to come out as they were theatrically thrown down onto the floor accompanied by a bit of explanation about history, designs and methods of manufacture.

Soon there was a carpet barricade beginning to form that  was blocking our exit and all escape routes and I suspect there were armed guards beyond that.  I began to worry about how we might get away from here without buying a floor covering that we didn’t want and still the pile just kept getting higher and higher.

Eventually it only seemed fair to be honest with the salesman and tell him quite firmly that we didn’t need a new carpet.   Kim told him that we had bought a new one from John Lewis only a couple of months previously but being unfamiliar with UK department stores this information was meaningless to him.  I tried to explain that we absolutely had no intention of buying one today here and we didn’t really want the sales demonstration in the first place.

Bearing in mind that we had been told that it takes the man four months to make a carpet I couldn’t help wondering where they all kept coming from.  Based on that productivity information that man can only make three carpets a year, about a hundred or so in an entire life-time working flat-out but in this room there were hundreds and hundreds.  Either sales are desperately slow or there is a factory somewhere turning out machine made carpets.  I wonder which one it was?

Still it went on, on and on until somebody finally cracked and made a purchase so on behalf of the group many thanks to Ruth and Rachel and Thomas for saving us all from further sales purgatory.  The doors were unbolted and like pardoned convicts we were released with time off for good behaviour.  But relief was short-lived because only into another huge sales room stacked high with cotton and linen products where we were chased around by eager salesmen for another forty minutes or so.

Some of the group were getting irritated by all of this (you know who you are)  so it was my turn to step up to the plate and make a purchase of a couple of nice ethnic Indian blouses for Kim and once that was completed we were all allowed out and back to the coach.

As we finally left I calculated that we had spent as much time at the carpet warehouse as we had at the Amber Fort which was rather a shame.  All tour companies do this and I understand that they have to cater for everyone but as I looked around not many in our group were all that enthusiastic about shopping stop-offs and had it gone to a show of hands I suspect most would have preferred to visit more of the sites of the city such as the City Palace or the Hawa Mahal, the Palace of the Winds.  But we didn’t so I can’t tell you about that…

After a disappointing lunch there was more bad news.  More shopping.  This time a silver salesroom.  I had been through that before as well in Turkey and Morocco and one shopping experience a day is enough for me so I skipped this one and went for a solo walk along a crazy Jaipur street which turned out to be very successful because I came across the Hawa Mahal and then a liquor store and purchased some wine.  Ruby red wine is so much more satisfying than ruby red stones.

I rather enjoyed my walk along the Jaipur shopping street, it was crowded, it was noisy, I was stopped several times and invited into shops but I always declined and there was no pressure because these were polite invitations not aggressive demands and no thank you was almost met with a second attempt and then an acceptance and a smile.  I don’t mind being pestered if they don’t pester too much.

This post is dedicated to my friend Richard Adams.  He knows why!

 

 

Thursday Doors – Old Delhi, India

“Delhi is not just a city, it’s an emotion.” – Khushwant Singh. Indian poet and author

I imagined that India and places like Old Delhi would be an excellent location to indulge my love of old doors.  To be honest I was a little disappointed, not as many as I was expecting but here is a small selection…

I am certain that I could have found more in the back streets and alleyways but Old Delhi was like medieval maze and if I had wandered off I would surely have got lost.  It was a much better idea to stay with the guide and the group and avoid the need for a search party.

Passage through India – A Day in Delhi (part one)

“In Delhi, every corner has a story to tell.” – Ruskin Bond – Indian Author

Having gained an extra six hours by travelling back in time we were a little confused and on the second day woke earlier than planned.  In the hotel restaurant there was a good selection, a lot of curry but curry for breakfast felt rather strange so we selected the western options.

We had eaten curry the previous evening and enjoyed it.  Quite different to a curry in an Indian restaurant in the UK.  Spicy yes but also surprisingly more mild and gentle than I was expecting.  In the UK some people expect and tackle blazing hot curries that burn  and sear and lack subtlety.

We never had curry when I was growing up, meals were always the British staples.  We didn’t have pasta either, rice was for puddings and olive oil was for earache but not for cooking.

Then in the 1970s along came Vesta ready meals and curry and pasta began to nudge its way onto UK dinner tables and there was no going back.

It was a short bus ride this morning through the inevitable traffic chaos until we reached our first stop –  Jama Masjid mosque  constructed in 1650–56 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahān whose most famous work is the Taj Mahal in Agra.

We would be going there in a few days time.

Jama Masjid is the largest and most important mosque in Delhi and now the second largest mosque on the entire Indian subcontinent and a very impressive example of Mughal architecture.

When built it was situated in the Mughal capital of Shahjahanabad (today Old Delhi) and served as the imperial mosque of the Mughal emperors until the end of the empire in 1857.  Just as the British later, the Mughals came as colonisers and the Jama Masjid was built as a symbolic gesture of Islamic power and a symbol of their authority across all of India.

It is a big place with a capacity of twenty-five thousand people, about ten times more than Westminster Abbey  in London UK and five thousand more than St. Peter’s in Rome.  We stopped first to remove our shoes and socks because in the Islamic world no shoes are allowed indoors as the soles of the shoe are regarded as dirty and unsanitary. Muslims and guests  are required to remove their shoes when entering a mosque,

I was a little surprised to be allowed in to be honest, I have been to other Muslim countries, Turkey and Morocco for example where entry is strictly forbidden.

Suitably attired and bare foot the group admire the Jama Masjid…

I didn’t think my shoes were so dirty and when I came out my feet were soot black as though I had walked barefoot in a coalmine, the floor wasn’t spotlessly clean in the first place so I don’t think my shoes would have presented a big cleanliness issue.   To be fair however they were clearing up after a big event the previous evening and there was a lot of sweeping and rubbish disposal going on.

It was moderately interesting, I find mosques rather plain and boring without any decoration, icons, statues or paintings.  I have to say that I prefer a European Roman Catholic Cathedral and all the statues and icons,

We had left our shoes at the gate and I was pleased to find that they were still there when we returned because I didn’t fancy a barefoot walk through Old Delhi which is where we went next because these streets were dirty.  Really dirty.

Here was the real culture shock that I was expecting.  Poverty and destitution, despair and  malnutrition and deformity are all on public view.  In UK we cross the street to avoid a beggar or complain about street homeless sleeping in shop doorways but here it is all part of street life.  People here live on the street.

I was ashamed but liked it, I just needed to watch where I am treading as a little accident would certainly have made shoes very insanitary.

All human existence is on show here, a timeline of evolution and development running through the streets and all in vivid contrast.  Grubby corners, dirty beggars and then vibrant streets and coloured saris.  Different religions, trade and commerce, wealth and poverty, success and failure, suffering, destitution and poverty, improvisation, happiness and joy.  The full spectrum here on open street  display.

Except crime, I felt no sense of danger.  Eager fingers of desperate children and the persistence of vendors but I felt no danger.  India is a safe country, on a World wide crime index it is somewhere in the middle, safer than UK, USA and Australia,

What an introduction to India this was, a slap in the face, a punch in the gut, this might have been better at the end rather than the beginning of the experience but never mind, all that was required was to walk into a rainbow or help mix colours on an artists palette.  After one day I was in love with India.

Next up – New Delhi.

Ortigia 2023 – Archimedes and Indiana Jones

“Sicily was a gift from the gods to the Greeks.” – Salvatore Furnari

Happily the weather forecast was accurate and the disappointing heavy grey of yesterday was replaced this morning with welcome blue skies and sunshine and a very respectable December temperature.

The most important visitor site in Syracuse is the six thousand year old Neapolis Archaeological Park just a couple of miles away from where we were staying.  A year ago in Ortigia we walked there, had a coffee and then for reasons that I cannot really explain decided against paying the entrance fee and walked all the way back via the city.

This morning we set out once again for the park with the absolute intention of a proper visit.  It took about forty minutes to get there and we purchased our tickets and went inside.

I am going to say straight away that it is an OK site, I realise that it is important but it is only just about OK, it isn’t Pompeii or Knossos or Machu Piccu that’s for sure, mostly on account that over the intervening years most of it has been dismantled and used for building projects around the modern city.  A thousand years ago there was no UNESCO to protect sites like this from plundering and so visiting the site today requires an awful lot of imagination.

The part of the park that most people head for is the Ear of Dionysus, bottom right in the above gallery, because this featured in the latest Indiana Jones film Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.  Indy enters the cave and inevitably finds himself in an underground cavern full of danger and adventures.

There is no underground cavern full of inevitable danger and adventures of course just a dark empty cave that was once an ancient Greek quarry and then a prison.

I mention the Indiana Jones connection because much of the film centres on the city of Syracuse and its most famous previous resident, Archimedes, a mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, inventor and all round clever dick.  Indiana Jones is competing with Nazi villains to recover the fictional Dial of Destiny which facilitates time travel and in the wrong hands can change the course of history.  Archimedes invented a lot of clever stuff but there was no Dial of Destiny of course.

This is a statue of Archimedes on the bridge connecting Syracuse with Ortigia demonstrating one of his stunning inventions.

The film features a lot of locations from across the island, this is an unfinished Greek temple at Segesta near Palermo which I visited twenty years ago.  The film pretends that it is in Syracuse but it isn’t.

We walked the entire site, the Greek theatre, the Ear of Dionysus, a Roman Amphitheatre and the Tomb of Archimedes and when we were satisfied that we had seen all that there was to see we walked into the city centre with the intention of visiting some underground catacombs underneath a ruined Basilica but they were closed for the day so we returned instead to Ortigia.

It was gloriously sunny now and although the local residents kept their coats buttoned up around their chins and wore hats over their ears we were down to our shirt sleeves and we found a table at a cafe in the main square next to the magnificent Baroque Cathedral and simply enjoyed an hour or so  in the sunshine.

We finished the afternoon by walking to the extreme tip of the island of Ortigia to Castello Maniace which was built in the thirteenth century by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II as a defensive structure against further invasion.

Sicily, probably more than any other part of the Mediterranean, maybe even all of Europe, has been subject to so many invasions and waves of migration over the centuries from the Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, French, Spanish, to finally becoming part of Italy only with the unification of Italy in 1860.

Frederick built the castle and the city defences by plundering stone from the Neapolis Archaeological Park so whilst I was disappointed that so much of that was missing there I took compensation from the fact that I could see it here at the castle.

The castle also features as a location in the Indiana Jones film because the Dial of Archimedes time travels our hero back over two thousand years to the Roman siege of Syracuse  at which Archimedes  kept the Romans at bay for almost a year with a fascinating array of war time inventions.  Sadly for him he died at the end of the siege, slain by a Roman soldier against specific orders of the Emperor.

There is a museum in Ortigia with a history of the siege and some reconstructions of his inventions.  We didn’t go there because there are only so many museums that I ask Kim to look around and I know the limits.

Later we went once more to our favourite bistro on the basis that once we have found somewhere we like than it is pointless risking going anywhere else.  I don’t remember what I had to eat but I do know that it was very good.

 

 

2023 in Retrospect – Taormina in Sicily

In between holidays with grandchildren we squeezed in another trip to Sicily, this time north of Catania to the tourist resort of Taormina.

I learned an important lesson here – do not neglect the research.

Six months previously we had been to Ortigia, Syracuse and it was lovely but Taormina is on the cruise ship circuit and every day it was overrun with fat cats from the boats.

I wouldn’t say that I didn’t like it, it just wasn’t my sort of place, too many shops and boutiques ( don’t like shops and I especially don’t like boutiques) it was rather expensive ( I am a cheapskate traveller)  and it was just so busy (I don’t like crowds).

One time Kim asked a local man for a recommendation for an authentic pizza restaurant.  “Madam…” he said “…you are in Taormina, nothing is authentic, everything is fake, this is Disneyland”.  Obviously a man who laments progress and as a yearning for the past.

On the plus side we had a nice apartment away from the centre, there was a nice little local shop and after a couple of days we found some back street eating places.

There are a lot of places that I would go back to but Taormina isn’t one of them.

2023 in Retrospect – Skipsea and East Yorkshire

Travel wise there was a slow start to 2023 and we didn’t venture away from North Lincolnshire until mid March and then only fifty miles away to East Yorkshire.

Yorkshire is a truly magnificent county and not far over the Humber Bridge and with the city of Hull in the rear view mirror  we were motoring through wonderful countryside, rolling hills and green fields, wild flowers and hedgerows and punctuated every so often with picturesque and delightful towns and villages.

I could stir up a hornet’s nest of debate here but I ask the question, is Yorkshire England’s finest county in respect of scenery and countryside?

Blogging pals may disagree and offer their own nominations, Sue from Nan’s Farm would probably agree with me but Derrick would surely argue for Hampshire and the New Forest, Brian for Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds, Lois for Somerset and the West Country, Simon may make a strong case for Nottinghamshire and Sherwood Forest, my friend Richard would say Rutland and its reservoir, but no, for me, Yorkshire is my favourite.

My pal Dai Woosnam would have none of it and say Wales is the best (and he has a point) and Anabel would surely make a case for Scotland but I am talking here about only England

The first time that I went there in 2019, I fell in love with Skipsea almost immediately.  I liked the caravan, I liked the holiday park, I liked the countryside and I liked the beach and the sea.  The exceptionally fine weather helped of course.

I returned again post covid in August 2021 and then again just nine months ago in July 2022.  As the time approached to book a cheap Spring deal again earlier this year (2023) nothing would have stopped me going there again.

My Mum likes going to the caravan…

Let me explain about caravan holiday deals.

In the UK there is a very cheap and nasty daily newspaper (I use that description newspaper very loosely) called T’he Sun’ and several years ago they launched a voucher scheme that once collected allowed readers to book cheap caravan holidays in the UK.

The Sun newspaper is a curious conundrum, it supports the right wing Tory government and its extreme political views which cares nothing for the middle and working class and the middle and working class read the Sun and vote Tory.  It is something that I completely fail to understand.

I would never buy the Sun toilet tissue so I never got to benefit from the offer but a few years ago the voucher codes began to be published on-line so it was possible to get the offer without buying the rag.

So, I booked a caravan in my favourite resort of Skipsea for four nights for just £60, everything included.  An absolute bargain.

Such a bargain that I booked a second visit the following month and too my Mum for a few days at the seaside.

Skipsea is located on a rapidly eroding coastline and it changes dramatically with every visit.  I would gladly return but may have to be swift about it.

Travels in Spain – Cadiz

A city that I have always wanted to visit in Spain is Cadiz and as we were close by (or so I thought) it made sense to me to drive there from Tavira.

So what do I mean by ‘or so I thought’, well, by looking at a map it seems like a short journey around the coast to the Spanish naval city but it turns out to be a lot more complicated.  There is no direct route across the Doñana National Park which is an area of natural wetland without a road or rail infrastructure.  To get to Cadiz from the Algarve involves a three hour drive to Seville and then a turn south to the destination.

We decided to do it regardless and set out early one morning.  Tavira is only twenty miles or so from Spain and passage between the two is effortless across a modern motorway bridge.  The border with Spain is the Guadiana River (the fourth longest in the Iberian peninsular) and the  last time I made this crossing was in 1985 before the bridge was built which involved a ferry crossing between Vila Real de Santo António in Portugal and Ayamonte in Spain.  We were on a tight schedule that particular day and the inevitable delay knocked an hour or so off of our time-table.  Not so today.

Crossing the La Constitución de 1812 Bridge we arrived in Cadiz around about midday.  The bridge is the longest and highest in Spain and commemorates the fact that Cadiz, during the Napoleonic invasion was temporarily the capital of Spain and where the modern constitution was proclaimed.

Inevitably we had some traffic and parking issues but eventually found an underground car park and calmed down with a beer or two in a promenade bar overlooking the bay next to four hundred year old ficus trees brought back from South America, apparently..  Later we found our accommodation and after approving and settling in spent the afternoon by the roof top swimming pool.

The next day we set about exploring the city.  I liked it.  A city of narrow streets running north to south and east to west, all cut with the precision of a cheese wire and connecting one green space or plaza with the next.  All rather lovely.  All rather like any other Adalusian city like Seville, Granada, Cordoba and Malaga but unlike Seville, Granada, Cordoba and Malaga nothing special to see but all the better for that because despite the giant cruise ships in the harbour it wasn’t at all busy.

There was a busy market but sadly we were too late to see the fish, that had sold out long before we arrived so we settled instead for lunch in the market plaza instead.

Later we moved on to the Cathedral, a massive building built from the wealth earned from the lucrative South American connection built on conquest and looting.  The Spanish seaborne Empire of the seventeenth century.

As a consequence of the  adventures of the Conquistadors, Spain became the greatest, richest and most powerful country in the world at the time and as well as Brazil and conquering Peru and founding the city of Lima, they also added Ecuador and Columbia to the Spanish Empire thus providing immense new territories and influence and spreading Roman Catholicism to the New World.  All of the plunder returned to Spain via Cadiz and it became one of the finest cities in Spain and all of Europe.

It is a magnificent Cathedral but there were long queues to enter so we had a beer in the plaza and admired it from the outside.  Kim said that inside it would be much like any other cathedral and I am coming round to her point of view on this matter.

Later we wandered blindly into the labyrinth of streets and blundered our way to the shoreline and took a walk to a defensive fort some way out into the sea.  It was hot, very hot and we were tired so it was rather a disappointment when we arrived and it was closed and we had to walk all the way back.

We stopped for a while and sat on the embankment walls and looked out over the blue water of the bay.  A cruise ship came by, I purposefully ignored it and conjured up instead images of the Spanish Armada leaving Cadiz in 1555 to meet its watery fate further north in the English Channel and around the more hostile waters of the north.