A short trip to France

Is it worth writing about?

Not so far! A gentle drive of 450 kilometres with a friend of thirty-eight years standing to stay overnight with a couple of friends of thirty-six years standing on a beautiful late summers day with barely a cloud seen all day is all that happened.

I managed to leave the door open when we locked the car up for a piss stop (nothing disappeared) and we had a gentle walk for half an hour on The Ridgeway where we watched a red kite, a kestrel and various farmers driving assorted large pieces of mechanical equipment but this is hardly worth writing a blog about. Just one thing, if you don't know what The Ridgeway is, look it up and learn some English history.

An amble across northern France for a couple of hundred kiometres is also not worth mentioning to most of you as you know that driving pretty slowly down small smooth French roads through a series of, invariably pretty, villages with negligible traffic on a lovely late summers day is one of the pleasanter ways of polluting the planet.

For those of you that don't know northern France the differences from Southern England are quite stark - shutters, lots of unharvested maize (corn for the yanks), a horse and cart, charolais cattle, flat and woodland. It was the difference in that short hop across the channel that gave me the travel bug forty yearts agao. The one thing that seems to be evidently different from that first trip (at least in West Normandy) is the lack of those great long avenues of trees that you used to see forty years ago.

Arrived at the curcuit at Le Mans and, after dealing with the usual French bureaucarcy which most notably consisted of relieving us of the, not inconsiderable, amount of beer, cider, wine and Calvados that we had bought on the way through Normandy. This was because they were in glass bottles - not unreasonable really, we should have read the rules. Obviously four bottles "slipped our mind" when we were handing the goods over.

The camp site was practically deserted and it was evening so we demolished large amounts of cheese and wine, after visiting the bar obviously. We then watched a bit of the night practice, which is quite spectacular. They come round a sharp bend into the home straight doing about 90 kph then accelerate up to 250 or so whilst fighting to keep the front wheel on the ground - scary stuff. Yes, we had come to watch the twenty-four hour motor-bike race. We wandered round the back of the pits and got talking to a team that were in the sidecar race scheduled for Saturday morning. There were four teams within five points at the head of the world championship with this lot, Brits, in the lead. Le Mans is the last race of the year and the difference between first and second place is five points so essentially which of the first four teams won the race would be World Champions. 

The Smith family all need large amounts of sleep so Joe went to the bed and I went to the bar, with a spare bottle, to read. I had just finished the bottle when a guy comes over to speak to me and I join the other nine people in the bar. Here we are oddities, we are not French. At the car race half the people are English but endurance bike racing is very French, three quarters of the riders are French, there is only one British team ; there forty-one French teams and thirteen from other European countries. 98% of the spectators are French. So this lot adopted me, a couple of them tried to speak English, they poured wine down me - great. I had to leave in the end because the guy who was talking to me got so pissed that he kept endlessly repeating his apology about his poor English.

So, I retired for a quiet night. You must be joking. About one biker in fifty thinks it is a good idea just to sit there revving shit out of their engines then cutting the throttle so that they (the bike, not the biker) backfire. This goes on constantly including all night. Joe had not drunk enough so he lay awake; I had not made such a stupid mistake

Watched some practice in the morning and then rode our bikes (we were sensible enough to bring Bromptons - folding bikes - with us) to a good spot Joe knows for lunch. I just headed off south-west, Joe kept looking at the map and asking people. (Joe is good at Foreign.) This all took a while and we wandered around a lot so we arricved at 1.50 - too late for lunch in France. Obviously this was Joe's fault but he blamed me! I can guess which side both readers would be on.

So we had to sit and drink Belgian beer for most of the afternoon. In the evening we did go into the nearby village for a damn good meal and, of course, Joe went to bed and I went to the bar. The camp site is not full but their are now lots of these idiots revving shit out of their engines. I asked one buffoon why and he said "ambience" These guys are all fuck-wits; only one bike in twenty is less than 1,000 ccs; they are monsters. For non-bikers 400ccs will give you a bike capable of easily doing 150kph fully laden and with a passenger - why do you need more? Testosterone.

I was last here for the car race in 1996 and the fair ground rides were horrendous then but nothing like this. The worst punishment was where you are put in a capsule, or spherical cage is a better description, on a sort of reverse bungee jump. You shoot about 70 metres in the air and fall back again with the capsule going anywhere and you revolving in several different planes at once. You then bounce up and down a few times until you throw up and then they let you out. 

Two by the time I get to bed and, ignored the noise, which was truly revolting and Joe tells me went on at similar volume all night. I had had enough medicine to sleep through it of course.

Just about to go and watch the side car race, we have been here two days and managed to miss the first two races this morning. Joe has gone with an empty plastic bottle to try and recover the Calvados.

Well the side car race was exciting, the lead changed four times but it was our guys who won so that was a good start for the jingoists. Unfortunately by this time we did not have the right pass to go and congratulate the guys.

Could the one British bike in the main event repeat the feat? No. They were fifth from the start of the race and stayed there. At the end they were 16 laps or 65 kilometres behind the winners who had done 3,800 kilometres.

We started watching at the top of the circuit where they came under the Dunlop bridge doing 200 kph+ and plunged quite steeply downhill to take a brutal right turn (off the circuit used for the car race) at about 90 kph. They all made it round the first lap but not all the second. All in all we saw four bikes stop for various reasons in the first hour but the rate of attrition was surprisingly low, about forty bikes finished. The riders are all heroes, not just the winners - they don't have balls of steel; they are titanium. They are so fit - riding a motor bike at high speed is physically very demanding involving throwing your body around a lot at every corner to change the centre of gravity of the bike/rider combinataion. The riders show those overpaid prima donnas who drive around in protected coccons called Formula One for what they are - whimps.

We watched for three hours from various vantage points around the circuit and have huge admiration for all the riders. We could get around easily because we had taken the bikes, which was a great idea. That is unless you object to showing how the bikes fold, letting some pissed-up Frenchaman borrow it or object to  being pushed up hill by other assorted gentlemen who had consumed the odd glass of vino.

We decided to go and watch in the bar but Joe got stopped on the way by the security men who returned all our booze to us - we are obviously two sensible elderly gentlemen. In fact the security guys all knew us because of the Bromptons - they are a novelty in France. We went to the bar and what was on TV - Sale versus Saracens - Rugby Union to the unitiated. A reasonable game but not really solving our problem - which was keeping track of the racing. For the bike race they use a circuit which is only 4.1 kms long so lapping had started within fifteen minutes, the bikes are all the same shape, you can rarely read the numbers because they are going so fast and the colour schemes are not distintcive enough to be able to recognise every bike. This is considerably different from the car race when these things aren't a problem - and there is a radio channel in English for a week too.

Found a leader board at the circuit at midnight and there are three bikes on the same lap. As a lap takes one minute forty seconds that makes for pretty close racing after nine hours.

Our camp site is inside the circuit and relatively quiet and peaceful. On the Sunday morning we went to the big campsite outside across the road where most of the noise came from and where they had burnt a car the previous night! It was the Wild West - the idea of no bottles wasn't in play. There was shit everywhere most notably great piles of beer bottles and cans; the concept of rubbish tips or recycling was clearly unknown.  We also wondered if people would see two old farts on interesting bikes and think they could steal them from under us. We left.

At 11.30, after 20.5 hours racing there was a change of lead.  A Yamaha had dropped back four laps to fourth from the three contenders on Saturday night but the Kawasaki, for the first time, lost the lead to the Suzuki. Refueling stops took fifteen seconds plus about the same time lost in the pit lane but they were out of synchronization and the Suzy stopped with fifty minutes to go until the end of the race having already lost the lead so the Kwacker won by a minute for the third year in a row. BMW were third, two laps down so with the Bitish Honda in fifth it meant five different makes of bike in the top five. The Suzuki team have the consolation of retaining the World Championship

To our surprise many people left before the end of the race and the campsite was nearly deserted overnight. There had been an offer to include camping in tents that you did not bring and you could keep the tent. A couple of guys who had used that offer had left at midday and not taken two of these tents. They were just opposite so I suggested to Joe, a good Yorkshireman, that he nicked one. He thought about it but for too long; when we came back at the end of the race somebody had had them.

The bar had run out of booze so we had to rely on our own stocks. The only Brits we had seen or heard were a couple of lads from Derbyshire who helped us with this task in excahange for some beans - we drive a hard bargain. There was wood in various places around the camp site to have a fire. One stack was twenty metres from us so we practiced, in Norman's absence, our pyromaniac tendencies and got a huge fire going. Pity we hadn't moved the stack or moved ourselves nearer to the stack!

On the way back to Caen we manged to waste half an hour looking for a petrol station that would take our cards. We failed, so no cheap diesel and we drove an extra thirty km doing a bit more polluting. When we got back to England, the northbound service stations were not selling diesel (obviously everybody fills up in France) so we made good progress but we had to stop in Guildford. You cannot get back on the A3 at the same junction so I ended up adding another fifteen miles to our travels. We were lucky. There was a coach crash that night in a tunnel on that road that killed four people and closed the road for twenty-four hours. Joe reckoned it happenned about 5 minutes after we went through so it was fortunate that we hadn't been able to fill up and get delayed!

I am going walking in Turkey in mid-October and thinking of visiting India and/or China at Christmas so may have something to say on either occassion if it is of any interest..

Another county

Another Country

The leaving of Kiev had two oddities although stupidity is, perhaps, a better word for at least one. The taxi driver did not believe that his right hand could function without his phone in it whether steering, changing gear or simply resting his hand on the front passenger seat, even while I paid him the phone never left his hand.

When you get to security at the airport you go through a door. You then disrobe taking out your computer, liquids, get your belt off and your shoes etc. The usual mindless pointless shite that is dreamt up by those with the lowest IQ i.e. those that work in "security". But In Kiev these morons plumbed new depths. You can only do it one at a time! So there is one idiot telling you to take off your belt, put liquids in a plastic bag etc., another sitting at the machine, a third and fourth (of different sexes) watching you through the mind-stripping device and a fifth to tell you that you have a tube of smarties in your bag and you should have shown them separately. You have to do the whole process before the next one can get past undoing his belt, taking off her shoes etc. The roller on exit from the X-ray machine is twice as long as the one at the input end and the output end has tables so you can recover your dignity or get strip searched as appropriate. Surely, surely even the morons who work in security can see that it would be more efficient to swap the roll in for the roll off. Just move the x-ray machine about a metre and you could more or less double the throughput at no extra cost.

Obviously not.

The country began badly.

I have about €160 in Ukranian whatever they are called. I tried exchanging them at a couple of places at the airport when I arrived at Bucharest; they wouldn't take them. One lady suggested “town”. Huh, I have tried four banks, one of which had zloty, forints and czech crowns on the board so they must take them. Oh no. What sort of country does not take the currency of an immediate neighbour? Israel, I know. So, if anybody is thinking of visiting Ukraine, a lovely country, I have some currency that I will sell at a discounted price!

There was a “tourist information” booth at the airport. This was circular and completely enclosed by plastic; I had to speak to a microphone. When I was teaching in Spain one of my students put it brilliantly to explain why nobody likes flying – it is because you are not treated like a passenger or, God help us, a paying customer, but as a security risk. Clearly the Roumanian government think the same – there were no brochures or handouts of any sort. When I asked about a map I was told I could buy one where they sold the bus tickets into town. Rubbish. “No maps”. I bought a bus ticket and got on the bus and put my ticket against the machine which duly beeped. Just as we got in to town an inspector got on and said that I hadn't registered my ticket. There are apparently both a green and a red light, I hadn't even looked. I showed him my receipt etc. No, I was fined 50 ron (10 quid). He gave me another card that he said I could use on any bus that day – as if I am going to get on another bus and have some other thieving bastard charge me 100 ron because that pass wasn't valid on his bus.

It was 6.30 on Saturday evening so all possible map shops were closed but wifi is universal in all bars and restaurants so my friendly waiter soon sorted me out and gave me simpler directions to get to my hotel than google. The hotel gave me a free map.

There are a lot of tourists here (I have heard English or, rather American, here a lot for the first time on the trip) and the place is quite well set up to take your money but that is no thanks to the government. The Minister of Tourism should be shot.

Well that was a bit of a gobsmacker.Sunday evening so I wandered into a church. This was rather different from Odessa – dark with lots of gold. Like a catholic church. There are few seats and only two being used. The other seven members of the congregation were on their knees – quite often with their faces on the carpet. The priest is not facing the congregation (and there was no bloody great cross to face either but there must have been something) singing away. Not full throated but gently and quite tunefully. The suckers (ooh, sorry, congregation) obviously know the procedure off by heart just like the priest because sometimes they did the sign of the cross (which happened about once a minute) before he did. I didn't notice whether they used two fingers or three; I should have done because the difference was vital in one of the great spats that Christians went through a few centuries ago that led to wars and all the usual religion based evils. I watched for fifteen minutes or so and left in amazement wondering how long the whole stupid performance went on for. All the evidence from school and university results suggest that women are more intelligent than men so why do they fall for this God drivel? There was only one man amongst the suckers and this about reflects the balance of people I know. I can only think of one male who might possibly at one time have been associated with the tenth century non-sensible out-dated concept of God but I can think of at least two women, both very intelligent and well educated, who I know well and who actually believe in the God delusion. It is a mystery.

My dad has been telling me to go for years.

When he retired he started going for bus trips. Not my idea of fun but when you are sixty and haven't pissed around the world like I had even thirty years ago what do you do?  Go on bus trips. He kept on about two places. Istanbul, which I finally made it to a couple of years ago, and Bucharest. For many students of history Istanbul is obvious but why Bucharest? The Roman remains perhaps? The old city? The museums?

No. Ceausescu. Those of you who are unlucky enough to have had thirty plus years of life may remember Christmas Day 1989 where, on live TV, there was a sort of kangaroo court that condemned the last communist dictator.  They took Nicolae and the missus out the back and shot them, although that bit wasn't shown on TV. This was rather different from the perspective a few years before when The West courted our Nicolae - state visit to the UK in 1978 when he had dinner with Queenie, talked to Uncle Jim etc. (He also went to The States to meet Jimmy et al.) What he did that attracted my dad's interest was build. A massive building that was for the dissemination of propoganda but is now used for Parliament (so no change there then) at the end of a three kilometre long boulevard. (I was actually prepared to pay to go in but you had to go with a tour group and the place was crawling with people - mainly yanks - so I didn't break the rule of spending money on anything other than, food, booze, maps, accommodation and travel.) This little avenue is about seventy metres wide of which only three lanes each way are for traffic, the rest are for walking, cycling and trees. The propaganda building and all the ones in the area are made of stone (or, maybe, stone clad) down to the majestic array (and, intermittently beyomd) of fountains about 700 metres down the avenue. I didn't count the fountains but 200 is probably a decent estimate.

This lot was all put up towards the end of his time in the late 80s but I can see why my dad was so impressed - so was I.

And some people would like his rule back. The hotel receptionist is one. About twenty-five, she disparages the disorder and incompetence since.  So not just the old timers then.

Bucharest is hot - the receptionist had said 44 which I am sceptical of but certainly high thirties and dry - dessert dry or, even, desert dry so walking around you must burn off at least half a litre of sweat per hour so you are constantly thirsty - and you know what my favourite liquid is...  Actually I have managed to restrain myself a bit with some water and fizz but you can only drink so much of those. The old town is just a collection of bars and restaurants and there are a few other impressive buildings but there isn't a great deal to commend Bucharest; I preferred Odessa and Kiev although that may be because they are a bit more difficult with a negligible number of English speaking tourists.

Needless to say when I got to the airport the Minister of Tourism had been at it again. I couldn't get on the plane because I hadn't used the Chishinau to Bucharest leg earlier this afternoon.  Fortunately, when I got a bit higher up the chain of command the lady had more sense and just issued me with a boarding pass.

Trip summary                  Planned            Actual
Countries visited                      1                   3
Cities visited                            1                   4
Kilometres roller-bladed        1,000              0
Museums visited                      0                   0
Churches visited                       0                  2!
Conversations not with waiters/
hotel receptionists                    0                  0 (Bart doesn't count)

I have read some good books (apart from an Ian Rankin and some science fiction short stories when it all got a bit too much - A Kindle is a wonderful thing in such circumstances.)
Brave New World (at last) by Aldous Huxley. Surprisingly still very interesting after 70 years.
Democracy Kills by Humphrey Hawksley. Not quite in accordance with my views (he thinks that it can work in some circumstances) but good to read a book along those lines.
Peoplequake by Fred Pearce. Forcasting a world-wide human population crash. A little surprising but obviously a good thing and easily read.
The Selfish Gene (at last) by Richard Dawkins. For an accademic Dawkins writes quite well for the common herd. (Incomplete as yet)
Why the West Rules - for Now by Ian Morris. No less a historian than Niall Ferguson says "The nearest thing to a unified theory of history we are ever likely to get." It is brilliant - the best read of the holiday. My copy will go to Stevo next after I have finished it but it is well worth reading if you have any interest in history.

I got on the plane OK so that is it.

I am going to the Le Mans Twenty-Four Hour Bike race next week so I might write if it is interesting enough. Otherwise probably nothing until Christmas/New Year because I lead such a boring life.

Kiev

Kiev

I usually stay at the sort of place where I am lucky to be staring at a wall out of my window but in Kiev I am on the twelfth floor looking down on the Opera House – don't worry I won't be darkening their doors to see Radio & Juliet; I am about to try my luck at a jazz club. Not a fan of jazz but I am willing to try most things. Food and vodka is on offer as well so there is hope.

Kiev is full of really nice buildings – most of them look nineteenth century although I suspect that a few are a bit older and some younger, There is an interesting variety of styles but the blocks are all substantial with either ten to fifteen windows across, or four to eight floors high, or both. They have made the air conditioners on the outside look relatively inconspicuous – the worst blemish (of which I have seen two) is a big horrible yellow M. (This information is probably wrong, large parts of the city were dynamited in the Second World War by the NKVD after the Germans had occupied it, killing quite a lot of Germans and, presumably, quite a lot of Ukranians too. {For those that don't know, the NKVD was the predecessor of the KGB – the USSR Secret police}.) The fairly modern block I am staying in is not so nice but I don't have to look at it so I don't care. Some of the very modern ones are also pretty OK so it is a nice city to look at once you have escaped the railway station.

Speaking of which - the day began badly. I was on an overnight train and we were half an hour late in. Railway stations always seem to attract the rough end of life – grotty markets, beggars, crappy roads, hassling taxi drivers etc. but I had managed to buy a map on the station and had booked a hotel whilst in Odessa so I was a lot more confident than when I arrived in Odessa. Found a nice breakfast stop and studied the map carefully – having looked at the google map of the hotel's location when I booked it and assiduously written down the name in the dodgy script they use here, as well as in Roman characters. I was feeling very confident. Did it do me any good? Did it hell. I had to get the old tinternet working and it was a main street with significantly different spelling than the version I had. Oh yes, mine was right but it was probably in Russian cyrillic, not Ukranian, or vice versa.

One thing that made an impression was that I was wandering along, map in hand, looking for the hotel when two men, separately, stopped me within a couple of hundred yards and asked if I needed any help. Can you imagine that in Sunderland? How silly of me, no tourists visit Sunderland except football fans supporting the opposition so they are there to get beaten up.

My last day in Odessa was quiet, I did go to the beach and swam in the Black Sea – for about thirty seconds - warm it is not. I had checked out of the hotel and my train was at 00.52 a. m. That condemned me to the rest of the day with little to do and no shower so I did lots of walking. Imagine the state of me, and particularly my sandals, when I got on the train. I thought I had booked a bed in a four berth cabin but, fortunately, there was only one guy to enjoy the pleasure. We didn't exchange a word – can't think why. Actually the smell of the mouldy carpet was worse than my sandals and I am sticking to that story.

You know that it is time to leave a place when you can confidently walk round without looking at a map but Odessa had been kind to me so I think that it is a nice place for a lazy few days in a country with significant language differences to the West. (Although you do realise after a while that quite a lot of young people speak English to a reasonable standard)

It is the twenty-first anniversary of Ukranian Independence Day tomorrow and they are busy setting up and testing sound equipment for what will obviously be a free music show in front of the Independence Monument; it will be a bit like a free concert in Trafalgar Square with old Horatio looking down – can you imagine it? His Lordship liked a bit of fun so he would probably have approved - not sure about such august institutions as teh National Gallery though. We will see what the morrow brings on that front.

There are lots of parks, flowers in the streets and “Christmas” type street lighting. How much is for tomorrow I don't know. It may be because Kiev is hosting/has hosted part of Euro 2012 – I assume that this is some football tournament. (There are certainly lots of new tourist information signs up  in English.) One nice touch is that there are eighteen carts in the square each with a three metre high egg in it, every one painted differently. Eighteen not twenty-one; there are twenty four oblasts (provinces/states) in Ukraine so it can't be that..

One thing for the football hooligans to do is that the city claims to have the longest zip-line in Europe (or Tyrolean something or other, as they call it). This goes across the river Dneiper which, even this far from the sea, is a good four hundred metres wide. I timed the ride at 40 seconds for about half a kilometre and, given that there is an uphill finish to the catchment point, it must have meant that the suckers were doing 60 kph+ in the middle of the river. Doesn't sound much to a cocooned car driver/passenger but you try it cycling/skiing and then you have some control – well not me, obviously.

“Teas” here are quite interesting – they seem to have the Chinese beaten for inventing dodgy infusions. Mango tea I liked but “Spring tea” which I had today was a bit strong. It was red and definitely had berries in it. The same menu – English only - had a meal called “Home made fat” - I wonder why I didn't try it?

The “Jazz” club was interesting, mainly English/American popular songs but quite well done. Fronted by a woman who sang and played a bit of sax; it is a five piece where the boss was the bass player; the only thing longer than his face was his fingers. Very odd though, I walked in before the band started and they had 3 large TV screens in this forty square metre room all showing “Some Like it Hot” with the sound off. Now, surely, the point about Some Like it Hot is the Billy Wilder/A.I.L Diamond script so why have it on silent. It got more bizarre – once the band got going they switched to bloody football. Why? I assumed it must be for the drummer because drummers are proverbially thick and, therefore likely to be interested in soccer but he wasn't watching much. After about fifteen minutes they swapped the TV back to “Some Like it Hot” where we had left off and when it got to the end, they played it again; it must have been on some sort of loop. Bizarre. (Did remind me though that I haven't seen it for at least twenty years and I forgotten most of it; I must know somebody with a copy.)

I left at eleven thinking of a little wander and a nightcap. The wander was quite pleasant, the nightcap more difficult, nearly everywhere was closed (although, of course, I managed). It felt a bit like Plymouth. Funny I should mention Plymouth. Kiev is 50 degrees 45 minutes north, just north of Plymouth. Now that did surprise me.

I ambled down to the main street on Independence Day to find that it, and some side roads, was closed off to traffic. On the main drag there were stalls set up and another little music stand (as well as the big one), basketball games, people doing silly things with bikes and those leg extension things that help you run faster, plus various speed machines on display. All rather badly organised and a bit chaotic but charming for that. Can you imagine Whitehall closed off for a days so that people can have a bit of fun each year on, say, Queenie's Official Birthday? It reminded me a bit of Queen's Day in Amsterdam. It was quite a big thing for the crowd - which I would estimate only in the low tens of thousands although there was probably quite a lot on TV.

Back to the hotel about four just as the military and para-militaryguys in the side streets were packing up and heading out, presumably on the basis that rioting did not look likely. One of the ways that Eastern Europe shows its history is that there are far too many police and para-military. They are everywhere and, essentially, doing bugger all; it must be a significant drain on the economy.

I was back down on the main street again at 8 but everything had packed up and gone except the big stage. Rather disappointing! They did a good job of putting on a show with at least eight big screens (and one of them must have been fifteen metres by twenty), the trouble is the show was crap. The singer(s) had a couple of dancers but no band! Essentially they were singing with a pre-recorded sound-track; I did wonder if they were lip-synching but didn't hang around long enough to decide.

In my amblings I did find another show which was classical music (I heard Dvorjack mentioned) with four tenors and then a soprano with a proper orchestra - a far better entertainment.

The fireworks went off at ten, presumably indicating the end, but I was in a Belgian bar drinking de Konnick by then.

Getting older by the minute

The day began badly.

There was a knock on the door at 3.40 a.m. And then another. “Bart” I said. Nothing. I turned the light on. “Bart there is somebody at the door” Nothing. I get up and acknowledged the knock on the door after just under 3 hours sleep. It was only when I shook Bart's foot that he woke up and got ready for his 4 o'clock taxi. He wandered off but that, plus some irritating mosquitoes, did it for my sleep.

I was up at 6.30, too early for breakfast. Well, I wasn't really, although it was before advertised time. After three consecutive mornings I couldn't face more tasteless cheese, dried up cucumber and tomatoes plus dry bread (and salami for the carnivores) so I had some fruit juice and headed for the train station. For some reason the train ticket office is only open from 14.00 to 15.30 each day so I was ticketless but the guy let me on anyway. Bart had predicted that, either I would sleep through my alarm, or they wouldn't let me on the train and I would end up on a horribly uncomfortable bus, of which there were plenty, as opposed to one train a day at 07.30. When I saw the slatted wooden seats with a curve in the back to make you sit up straight I begun to wish he had been right.

Not much chance of catching up with my kip then, although I did nod off a few times in the five hours it took on a trouble-free ride to Odessa. Trouble free but not boredom free; train is my favourite form of transport but there was remarkably little to look at, at least out of the window.

Odessa railway station – no tourist information, no ATM, nothing in English, in fact nothing I could understand because everything is in the cyrillic alphabet. Hmm, my Ukaranian (and Russian come to that) is significantly worse that my Moldovan. In fact Moldovans speak a romance language (called Roumanian) so you can understand some words and guess some others – and not just because it is written in Roman Script.

This is looking tricky. When I first arrived in China I obviously had a similar problem but then I was travelling with an Israeli friend who had been before, we were met at the airport, had people to help us, stayed in a flash hotel and the street signs were written in Roman Script as well as Chinese (not that that helped much to begin with when I couldn't pronounce anything.) I was beginning to think that guide books were, perhaps, not such a bad idea if it is a bit difficult. Anyway, after about twenty minutes I found an ATM that worked. Slight problem was that, as I was using the machine, three guys who were chatting away came up to the machine. Did they wait behind – er no. I looked up and there is one very large guy leaning on the wall to my right, another large guy leaning on the wall to my left and I knew that there was a third one behind me but it was broad daylight in a busy street. I grabbed my cash, ducked under the arm of the guy on my left and exited hastily. It was just a case of different culture but things were not at their best in my mind.

Found an open restaurant – I was hungry, it was one p.m. by then and I hadn't eaten or drunk anything. The lady didn't speak any English but I had the trusty “Point It” book that Lori had leant me and that got me a damn good fish salad and, of course, I can get beer anywhere in the world (yet another country where it is called “pivo”). I was feeling better because I was fed and watered and the young lad there helped me as he did speak some English. “wifi” seems to be universal and they had it so I booked a hotel and got the lad to get me a taxi and he put me in it with directions to who knows where. It is rather sad that when someone helps you, you say thanks and never think of them again but I suppose that I, and, one hopes, both of my readers, have done the same on many occasions. The taxi driver wandered all over the place until he had got the price over €2 and then dropped me at the right place. Reception was on the top floor of this rather obscure building so it took me a while to find it and, of course, nobody speaks English. From then on it was great – nice room, pleasant streets – a street near me is pedestrianised with lots of bars and varied nationalities of restaurants on it and bouncy castles, springboards etc. This felt like a city on a Sunday afternoon when people were enjoying themselves. (I later learnt that this was downtown – there are some rougher areas but after Chisanau …)

A wander past the port, which is very active with lots of containers on the docks, not to mention massive heaps of coal waiting to be hoovered up. It seemed to be thriving and not missing being a base for the USSR Black Sea Fleet. I arrived at the beach which seemed to have more concrete than sand but lots of people enjoying themselves. I had acquired a map so I was confident in finding my way back despite the fact that the spelling on the map was somewhat different from the spelling on the road signs. Both were in cyrillic but careful matching revealed significant differences e.g, many names on the map began with, say, k but the street names began ek; you just have to try and make sense of the key middle group of characters. I am such an arrogant type that I believe that I can navigate despite such minor difficulties. I count the junctions and turnings and always claim to know where I am. Why are people always asking for directions from me? Three in an hour, two in ten minutes today – my ex-wife was amazed that I could direct somebody to Brooklyn Bridge within 24 hours of arriving in New York. Occasionally I am right.

Back in to town, more TMS, a good dinner and bed. That was me done for the day, I had been up for quite a while.

The day began well.

Not exactly up with the lark but good enough to find a decent website that had lots of information about travel options so off to find their office. But first a good breakfast; an interesting omlette, coffee and an unusual array of fruit and vegetables in my juice, such a contrast to Moldova. Then off I go and I begin to realise that I am in a bit rougher area of the city. Not complete crap but not so “luuuverely” - buildings a bit rundown, not so many “nice” shops, banks appeared to be non-existent – you get the idea. Anyway after a decent stroll and a bit of a struggle with Ukaranian building numbering I found the people I was looking for on the fifth floor of some non-descript building. They were extremely helpful and if you are ever in this neck of the woods try http://travel-2-ukraine.com

I decided to locate the railway station for future reference. Tricky. I saw this building with a large dome on top of it with a flag that looked as though it was near the railway station and I thought that I should look at it after I located the aforementioned place for the dispatching of people on public transport.

Diversion did occur as I was getting thirsty (it is thirtyish here, about eight degrees warmer than Moldova) when I looked in one of those big fridges that normally hold all sorts of variety of shit made by coca-cola. There was nothing in it but beer and, wait for it, I walked away and went into a shop to buy a tonic water. I saw a couple of other similar fridges but it was typical of the area I was coming in to around the railway station – run down, people selling cheap shit on the streets, megamarkets – quite similar to Chishinau, just not so prevalent.

It will come as no surprise to some of you that my complacency about my navigation abilities came unstuck. After a good ¾ of an hour wandering around I finally located the train-station under the aforementioned dome with a flag so there was no need to look at or for it after all.

Ukraine, like Moldova, seems, mercifully, relatively uncontaminated by the evils of religion. There are, by western European standards, very few churches. However, I rather like the onion-dome shaped cupolas and have tried to go in to a couple. Yes, they were closed; the god of consumerism reigns in Eastern Europe too. (The following day, I did get in one and it was rather pleasant. The design lines are similar to drab northern European churches but it was light and airy inside with white being the predominant colour, not bloody gold as in Catholic churches or grey as in Protestant ones. The impression was rather ruined by a shouting woman being dragged out on her arse by a couple of heavies – I kid you not, I couldn't make that up.)

Why are eastern European women so beautiful? Sorry ladies, girls, feminists and other assorted people of a different gender and sexual orientation than me but I have no idea what makes for a handsome man (apart from the fact that he doesn't look like me) and have no interest in finding out. The simple fact is that they (Eastern European women even including Moldovans, not men) are not more beautiful; just more careful. There are a few stunners but not many, just as in any society. What they don't do is get complacent, so many women of fortyish are still damn good looking. You see a woman walking round with a six year old girl and you think that they must be sisters but you can tell by their behaviour that they are not. In England if a girl is stupid enough to have a kid at the age of sixteen or seventeen she looks thirty-five when she is twenty odd, not here. It is an interesting contrast with, say, Cuba where the girls at sixteen are all stunning – lovely figures, great complexions, a magnificent mix of racial backgrounds, fabulous eyes etc. but by eighteen they have all reached the legally required minimum weight of seventy-five kilograms no matter how short they are and a lot of them are under 1 metre 60. Of course this is not to say that Eastern European women are that good looking – after seven years in the Far East I can say, with at least a seventy per cent certainty, that if a woman looks like she is eighteen she is less than thirty.

OK, I have pissed off all the women, PC men, gays, feminists and assorted ignorant liberal-minded people etc. So, Gary, shall I bother continuing?

An audience of one does mean that you don't have to hold back!

One last thing on the subject of women and affection. Here, as you will see further east, lots of young women holding hands or hugging each other. What a shame that westeners are so restrained that we think that women holding hands are gay - and we look askance at them and cannot just accept that life is like that. Or am I just being a male chauvanistic pig as normal?.

Actually my next subject is pretty innocuous – traffic lights. I first came across the countdown timers at traffic lights in China a dozen years ago and have seen them for both cars and pedestrians in a few countries since. What the Ukranians have done is add flashing green lights for car drivers. They (the drivers not the lights) know that the four or five flashes precede the lights going amber so they can gun it or slow down whichever takes their mood. Isn't that sensible? Why don't we do it? The law in the UK says that you must approach a set of lights at such a speed that you can stop so if you are two feet short of the line you should be down to 2 mph, if you are two inches you should be well below baby crawling speed – cyclists remember that the next time the cops give you a hard time for jumping the lights. Having said that if there is no timer for the pedestrians you had better be damn quick, once the light turns red you have about three seconds before it goes green for the cars.

So what do you predict doing on your sixty-first birthday? Today is mine and fifty years ago I wouldn't have predicted spending it on a beach in Odessa, nor twenty years ago, nor a year ago, nor last week. Just as well really because I didn't. I had planned to but I had to move rooms and this took until 1 p.m. When they moved me into a room with a three piece leather suite and a jacuzzi what was I supposed to do?

Actually I went back to the railway station for the third day in a row to make sure I could go again on the fourth. I joined a queue, after ten minutes the shutter came down on the guy in front of me saying that she had gone for a ten minute tea break. And some of you think that I am not a linguistic expert. I joined another queue to be told that I was in the wrong queue and go over there somewhere. A bit tricky. However, there were some signs in English (contrary to my first experience) and “advance bookings” did the trick. I was smart enough not to join the queue where the lady was soon to go for a tea break and after twenty minutes or so got to the counter. I had attempted, in my immaculate handwriting, to write Kiev in English, Ukaranian and Russian plus the date and time of the train I required. Any questions were answered with a nod and I appear to have the correct ticket. Piece of piss dealing with Johny Foreigner in her own lingo.

In my mega room the jacuzzi didn't jacuzz but at least it was a big bath to lay in for an hour or so.

I decided that I would have a damn good dinner then go to a blues bar that I had spotted. Now some of you know that music is not very important in my life and I am certainly not very keen on blues but....

In fact Odessa has some rather impressive 19^th century architecture. The city was only founded just over 200 years ago by that very impressive German lady – Catherine the Great. This is much more my field – history (plus cinema and theatre but I am not sure that my Ukranian or Russian is up to either- hence the blues bar) but the place is really too new for a lot of good architecture.

Dinner was excellent, helped by a waitress who spoke good English and recommended a couple of vodkas and a pud. Actually her recommendations were crap but she tried hard and did get me a ten per cent discount – ooh, how difficult was that. Obviously the tip was … Hm, I don't know.

Found the Blues Bar. Empty with football on the many TVs. You can't win em all. So I was back in the hotel by 11. Should have remembered where the clearly labelled in English “Strip Club” was. Ooh, yet more readers gone. Oops no – just Gary left and now he has gone.

One last thing about Odessa. It is a tourist town – mainly for Russians although I did hear somebody speaking English tonight for the first time. I rushed away, obviously. Tourism does mean horse rides in the street, people dressed up and painted in one colour to stand still (I wonder why anybody gives them money), snakes and small crocodiles to wrap round your neck – that sort of shit. One thing I saw today was people climbing across various difficulties on rope bridges. A bit different and, doubtless, health and safety would stop it in England but it looked like fun. One of those things that you would have done it if there were two of you but not on your own.

I have been wondering over the last few days if my appetite for aimless wandering on my own is nearing its end. Let's face it, I have spent many hundreds of days wandering round towns and cities looking for something interesting (remember, I detest shopping) and many places are not that interesting but, unlike Chishanau, I like Odessa.

So maybe there is hope. But I would rather go walking up something big.

Maybe it is time to go diving.

Where are we and why are we here?

The day began badly.

It was the recollection that thirty years ago I contracted hepatitis. You never know exactly which day it is when such an event happens because the gestation period is only about three weeks. However, I do recall this rather this rather nice restaurant in Lima with cerviche at about the right time, but how come my bitch of a girlfriend didn't get it? What reminded me of it was Bart banging about how shit Brian Adams and Rod Stewart are in this Sports Club in Bucharest when Supertramp came on. For those of you with a decent memory and enough vintage will recall that Supertramp's hey-day was thirty years ago when I used to listen to them a lot.

Actually the day had begun a lot earlier really badly.

If getting up at 5 a.m. isn't bad enough how about being in a Wetherspoon's pub having your first pint of beer at 6.50 a.m. Bart had had a sneaky free whisky whilst I was reconstructing myself after going through the Genome sequencing machine or whatever it is that you now have to do when the beeper goes off at security when you have left a key in your pocket,

We had time to kill in Bucharest. We had a nice walk by the arrow-straight motorway, with huge American style adverts alongside, to the Water Park. Naturally, we were not going to pay a fiver each to get in to this venue for 1 ½ hours – we doubted that the quality of lusting was worth it. So we go to the health club which sold beer, tobacco and not much else. The nearest we got to sampling Roumanian food was to eat some manky cheese and chutney sandwich that Bart had made last week. We did then manage to find a decent bar with cheap beer, no MTV but lots of (well two) seventies fruit machines with men who all smoked and no women, obviously, before returning to the airport to go to our real destination - Chisinau.

Any the wiser? Well the plan was that we would have a fortnight roller-blading round Moldova. Of course you know where Moldova is. Well I will save you from having to admit your ignorance - it is a little country between Ukraine and Roumania that declared its independence when the Soviet Union fell apart. And you have never heard of it unless you have read Tony Hawkes book about playing the Moldovan football team at tennis. What is odder still is that you do not know about Transnitria - the breakaway strip on the eastern side of the country which is not recognised by any country but has been a de facto separate country since just after Moldovan independence.

Of course Bart has changed the plan and is leaving after four days. Bart normally leaves after four days in the hope of getting his carnal desires satisfied. A better chance this time than last time he did it in Paris unless CC1 has read this blog.

We arrived OK and got to our hotel and ventured out to get some food and top up our alcohol levels. The first thing that you notice is the dark - there are no street lights at all except on the main drag and even there the real lighting is provided by the shops - and not many of them are lit up. The next thing we saw 100 metres down the street in an Irish pub - our first sight of Moldovan culture. Our next was wondering if the two ladies in the restaurant were working girls or just dressed slightly provocatively. Frankly I don't remember much more about the evening because we had kept topping up on the alcohol all day.

The next day began badly.

We staggered down for breakfast just before the deadline of 10 but were so overwhelmed that we retired to bed again for an hour and a half. We then had a five hour walk round and the only thing that we had bought in Moldova apart from food and booze was two maps at the outrageous price of six quid between them. This is typical of the pair of us, we don't like spending money except on the necessities of life - travelling and, in Bart's case, coffee or, in mine, beer. But there was not a lot of things to buy - shops seemed to sell food or clothes or flowers; there was no hardware shops or hairdressers, camping or furniture shops, estate agents or petrol stations. Hang on, I am criticising a place for lack of estate agents and petrol stations? Bart likes to get his haircut in every country he visits so the absence of barbers could be regarded as regretable. The chances of finding a rollerblade shop were, indeed, very thin.

Moldova is supposed to be the poorest country in Europe but it doesn't seem particularly poor; most people are smartly or, at least, cleanly dressed, the underpasses don't smell of piss, there are lots of trees in the streets and Tony Hawkes assertion that all the manhole covers have been stolen is not, or is no longer, true - we have only found one revolting hole to fall down because of the absence of such a utilitararian device. There is a smattering of beggars often with conspicuous physical injuries e.g. a man with two genuine wooden legs, or old women in peasant dress who were born some years before me or a bit later and have perfected the poor old peasant look off to a tee.

Moldova must be one of the few countries in the world (except Bhutan, Tuvalu and the Kerguelen Islands maybe) not to have a Tourist Information Office. However, the "Tourist Map of Moldavia" highlights "Objects of Global Importance" so we went to see one of these - it was a park with a pleasant fountain in it. The map also mentions the wine tour which we didn't take - can't think why. We decided not to bother only partially because there were no cars to hire and no trains going at any civilized time and the bus routes are a nightmare.

After another hour and half rest, we ventured out for food. Rather unusually Bart got into the booze - vodka in this case - before we did what we are good at - playing competitive games. In this case bowling in which I would, unusually, normally expect to beat Bart. I signally failed to do so. This was the only other thing that we spent money on except food, booze and travel

The day began badly. Just made in for breakfast and only needed half an hour's rest afterwards before checking out to find the bus to go out for a walk along the river Dneister which is 23 kilometres away. We went to the bus station where we were eventually told to go back to the street we had been staying on! The way proved rather odd, through a seemingly endless market. It was here that brought home some of the similarities to China - endless shops and markets with loads of people wandering around buying not very much and the grouping of shops, it was no coincidence that I mentioned flowers yesterday, we saw loads together but none today, one I noticed particularly today was kids back to school stuff - about fifteen within twenty stalls.

We waited for forty minutes at the bottom of the street for bus no. 31, then fifteen more at the next junction up the road then another ten at yet another junction before I got completely fed up and we retired to the Irish Pub I mentioned two days ago to get my computer out and listen to TMS.

I realise that there are three people in the world who do not know what TMS is so I will explain; Test Match Special is the best programme on the radio where people drivel on for ages about pigeons, cakes, and buses. The diversion is where they have to mention the greatest game on the planet - Test Cricket. England are, allegedly, the best country in the world at cricket but they are currently being challenged for that title by some uppity South Africans who appear to be rather good at the game.

So, after lunch, I booked us into another hotel where we could continue to listen to TMS until 8.30 p.m. Moldovan time. For the ignorant, Test Cricket is the greatest game because it changes so quickly and there were lots of action so we were not diverted.

We have searched for book shops, cinemas, art shops and other signs of culture (we don't do museums) but Moldovan's don't do culture unless you count wide-screen TVs showing MTV. Food options are similarly limited - Andy's Pizzas or Roy's Cafe - we have tried both. Food is fatty and meaty. We haven't seen a single Indian or Chinese restaurant (or any other nationality for that matter) but we did see some kids rollerblading in the park. At least I managed to put the bowling position straight that night.

Oh no, it happened again. The day began badly. So badly that Bart missed breakfast; this is not good news; a coffeeless Bart is a grumpy Bart. I alleviated the position by bringing him one but it was still gone 11 when we staggered out. This time we had got better directions and got the bus successfully to the river Dneister for a few hours walking. It was supposed to be a tourist place because they built an artificial beach twenty years ago but you could have fooled us. We had a pleasant stroll although we had to beat a hasty retreat at one point when we came across a copulating couple: we managed that last year canoeing too. We walked across the bridge to Transnitria but didn't tary when we spotted a man in a camoflage suit and with a big gun. Food was even worse than usual so we beat a retreat to our hotel and back to TMS.

A quiet evening because Bart is leaving on a 6 a.m. flight in the morning. The highlight of Bart's trip was scoring 134 at bowling. The highlight of mine will be following Bart out of Moldova a couple of hours later but going in the opposite direction.

A Little Wander with Pete


This was written in December 2011 and I have now given up trying to download photos from my phone so there aren't any. A bit of a pity a couple of them are quite decent.

We were both warned several times that we would end up killing each other. The trouble is that we are a bad influence on each other – we might go out for a couple of beers, in theory at least, and it will invariably be 3 in the morning if we have a quiet night. Pete can also be a bombastic, opinionated sort so it is a good job that I am a quiet, retiring chap who readily admits his own faults, or we would have had no chance.

So where to go? Much dithering later we had decided on Jordan. The primary reason for the trip was to escape Christmas. Pete has got bored with staying with friends in Manchester and I have not spent a Christmas in the U.K. this millennium – a trend I have no intention of breaking because Christmas is the most boring time of the year in the UK for anybody who is not a brat or infested by them.

The only reason for choosing Jordan is Petra but first you have to deal with arriving in Amman. Clearly Johny Foreigner has to be impressed with the arrival of the imperial masters so we arrived in white suits. Johny was duly impressed so we weren't quite last at immigration. We took the precaution of getting a litre of gin and a litre of vodka. The problem was that we arrived at the hotel at 1.00 a.m and Amman was shut. No chance of getting any mixers so we retired to the roof terrace for a couple of hours until we froze our bollocks off. Amman is at 800 metres and it was bloody cold - a degree or three above freezing. We decided to retire but neither of us was sleepy. So testing the TV was the option or we would have to talk to each other. We started at channel no. 1100 and worked our way down. The problem was that most channels were filled with talking heads in Arab headdress. “Jihad TV” says Pete. Next channel was “Jihad TV”. “Jihad TV”, “,Jihad TV”, “Jihad TV”, “,Jihad TV” the cry continued. We then found a sports channel with a distinctly good looking young woman in western dress talking to an immaculately dressed “towelhead” as the ever PC Pete called him, but that was too boring to persist with. This went on through about 300 channels with occasional pauses to talk shite. We were still at it at 4.30 and we decided not to pull an all nighter but get some sleep. A slight problem – the first call to prayer from our next door mosque occurs at 4.40 – call for a swig of vodka – followed a few minutes later by the call from another mosque. Response? Another swig, Fifteen minutes later? Yep, you have guessed it. About 6.30 we got to sleep.


Up with the lark at 1.00 p.m. I sallied forth leaving Rude – as he is called with good reason – to sleep for a bonus hour. I was back in five minutes. I had been offered the complimentary breakfast so got Pete up. When mine host offered this delight, I pointed out that breakfast finished at 10; he replied that they were quite flexible. Not a bad start when considering the Jordanian character.


So out for a stroll through the markets. When we went into the fruit market to get some fruit Pete was particularly impressed with a cow's head in a bucket and the fact that you could buy guns in the shops. He was also surprised by the number of incomplete buildings – I consider that normal but I have spent a long time outside Europe. The map we had was also incomplete so we climbed lots of steps to get to the area where there might be some bars. Pete was sceptical about my navigation; I cannot think why. We found the most important street and there was a real contrast with the downtown area where we were staying – clearly richer and more westernised. We sampled a couple of bars – incredibly expensive, a 33cl bottle of Amstel costs £5 upwards - €6 or $8US. (A Jordanian Dinar is approximately one Euro and all prices from now on will be in JD.)


On the way back to the hotel we paused to buy me another jacket (I already had one on) as I was cold but when the guy asked for 38JD Pete countered with 30 – much too high as an opening offer - so I walked out. Pete followed five minutes later minus 25JD but plus jacket, he had learnt a lesson about buying in Arab countries.


The hotel directed us to a local area for a half reasonable dinner, back up the hill for a few drinks and back to the hotel by one. Trouble was that we had bought some orange juice to mix with the gin and vodka and this time we had no trouble pulling an all-nighter.


So down for breakfast at eight. Trouble was that it was identical to the day before's – omelette, pitta bread, humus, soured cream, cucumber and tomatoes so Pete went into a rant about variety. Those who know Pete will not be surprised - every day since he has gone on about the inadequacy of breakfast – and on – and on - and on.


A tour of the local Roman Amphitheatre - all of 100 metres from our door - had proved beyond us the previous day but we now corrected that for the price of 1JD. Not the biggest or best of its kind that I have ever seen but well preserved/restored with the usual excellent acoustics. We then walked up the hill – Amman was built initially in the valley but has spread to the surrounding hills - steep hills. Population sixty years ago was 2,500; it is now 1,000 times bigger. The higher areas are now more fashionable, popular and, presumably, a bit cooler in summer. We walked the direct route - straight up the hill – thus unintentionally avoiding the entrance fee to the rather impressive citadel. This is well worth a visit should you find yourself in Amman – some Roman stuff but also some later Greek Christian and early Muslim constructions in a very good defensive position.

Perhaps not surprisingly, we were tiring fast and went for lunch in a fish restaurant we had spotted the previous evening. The food tasted pretty good, but then that is to be expected when you wait an hour between ordering your food and receiving it. Service is normally pretty good in Jordan – in fact often too good – main courses arrive before you have finished your starters and the waiter – and it is always a waiter - will often try and whip away the remains of your starter. (Jordan is one of the more liberal-minded, by western standards, Muslim countries but women still definitely belong in the home.) As the food can best be described as monotonous and uninspiring this would not normally be too much of a disadvantage but if you have taken the trouble to order a starter you probably think it is worth eating.


Back to the hotel and we managed a desultory beer on the roof. By the time I had got the TV working – shockingly, I am the technological expert on this trip – Pete was asleep at 6.30. I was determined to stay awake for long enough to make sure that I didn't wake up in the middle of the night so got through all eleven hundred channels, two hundred of them twice before I settled for the last half an hour of “Panic Room” (Jody Foster and Forrest Whittaker - I thought it was indifferent the first time round so you can see how desperate I was) before sleeping, sober, at 10.


Christmas Eve and we really got cracking – essentially with our own taxi for the day that cost 90JD and would end in Petra. Stops to look at a two thousand year old mosaic and to admire the view where the mythical Moses is alleged to have snuffed it took us to the Dead Sea. This is to be thoroughly recommended. We had dropped 1.600 metres to the lowest point on the land surface of the earth (this was so we can outboast Bart about going to the highest airport in the world at La Paz) at 450 metres below sea level and dropping by a metre a year.

Joe had told me it was just about worth swimming in. He was completely wrong – you can't swim in it. I normally do breast stroke; this is desirable in the Dead Sea because you can keep your head up so the water does not get in your eyes or mouth – a thoroughly unpleasant experience. The trouble is that you cannot stop your feet coming out of the water behind you even though you are laying face down because the density of salt is so great. If you tread water in your local swimming pool you can keep your nose and mouth out of water by tilting your head backwards; in the Dead Sea your feet are off the ground and you are not paddling but your head and shoulders are clear of the water. When you get out of the water your skin dries and it feels and looks like you were covered in a white lotion.


We had, obviously, taken the cheapest option (a mere 15JD each) of a place to swim. We found out one of the reasons it was so “cheap”. The sea had retained a good quantity of heat from the summer, the showers had not.


The level of the Dead Sea continues to drop – mainly because of the amount of water the Israelis steal from the River Jordan to fill their swimming pools – so it is getting ever more saline. The Jordanians are planning to build a pipeline from the Red Sea to keep it reasonably topped up. The Israelis originally refused to participate but have now changed their minds – according to our unbiased Palestinian taxi driver. Incidentally, over 60% of Jordanians are ethnically Palestinian rather than Bedouin but this no longer seems a basis of conflict, unlike forty years ago, and inter-marriage seems normal.

On to Karak. This is a true mountain-top castle and the best castle I have ever been in – and I have been in loads - with the possible exception of the rather later dated Rethymnon in Crete. It was originally built by the evil Norman bastard Crusaders and was never taken by storm or starvation until after the “Horns of Hattin” when Saladin (who had already tried to take Karak twice) comprehensively defeated the Crusaders and forced their withdrawal from everywhere but a coastal strip on the Mediterranean in modern Lebanon. Even so Karak held out for eight months before they were starved out. The Arabs then added a further outer ring of fortifications to the Crusader keep and bailey. Much of it still exits and a lot of the rest has been restored. Pete's enquiring mind came to the fore; if there was a hole in sight he would disappear down it – and there are a lot of holes. There are holes in the walls, holes in the ground and holes in the holes – he went down all of them. The steepness of the walls and surrounding rock faces (some of which were modified to smooth them out so they could not be climbed) made you realise why it was impregnable to force. Karak is a must not miss if you visit Jordan and have the mildest interest in history.


And so, in the dark, to Petra – as full a day as you could wish for. Once in Petra we did manage to find two places that served alcohol in the evening and Pete bought some things that Motor Racing drivers wear across their noses (or used to) for me to try and reduce my “night noises”. He claimed that they work but I just think that he just got used to them, the noises not the nose attachments, like most people do.


I am lucky or skilful enough, depending on your opinion, to have been to many of the world's great, large archeological sites – Macchu Pichu, Luxor, Angkor, The Great Wall, Borrobodur and Tikal being the largest; most people think it is luck. Petra is right up there with the best – it is even tempting to say that it is the best after Luxor but time will tell what my view will be.


You have seen photographs of the view of the treasury building through the rocks as you walk in down the high gorge called “The Siq”, you have probably seen photographs of the monastery; you ain't seen nothing.

First of all, it would be an utterly spectacular walking area if there were no Nabatean tombs, Roman remains or pretty girls. The gorge is truly impressive, actually deeper and as narrow as the Samarian Gorge in Crete but it, and the whole area, is wonderfully coloured. I can't remember seeing anywhere with such variety of colours on the surface of rocks – unless they are lichens. Some of the cliffs are naturally vertical, other places make good scrambling, there is plenty of easy walking if you want it and the views from the peaks are also well above average.


Secondly there is a fair bit of Roman stuff. The Nabateans surrendered to Trajan in 106 A.D. The Nabateans were extremely wealthy because they had control of water on a key trading route in a secure place. The Seluccids (one of the successor states to Alexander the Great) had been unable to defeat them and neither had the Romans but the Romans had diverted the trade routes so Petra's importance was declining. Nobody with any sense fought Trajan – the best of the warrior Emperors under whose reign the Empire reached its greatest size - so a fairly amicable agreement was reached and Petra became part of the new province of Arabia. The Romans were their usual industrious selves and started building. Some of what you can see is pretty good but there is lots still under the sand and it is one of the areas of Petra where archeologocal teams are busy every year.

But without the Nabatean tombs Petra would not be famous. There are, literally thousands of them. Just to reassure my dear reader I can speak English – I know what “literally” means and do not use sentences like “Oh my God, it was, like, literally very unique you know.” Please tell the other reader.


Some of the tombs have frontages in the styles of the Treasury building or the Monastery but are not complete or as well preserved as those two. These can easily be thirty metres high and are carved out of the solid sandstone back to a depth of twelve or fourteen metres and some of the rooms are five or six metres tall – yes multi-floored tombs. Others have had the floors dug out to reveal the bare rock and cavities dug for multiple bodies. There are not many of these but there are many just holes dug in the side of the cliff – Rude obviously had to explore dozens of them – with “streets” layered one above another up the side of a cliff. How the people got to these holes is difficult to imagine although you can see traces of steps carved into the rocks in many places. The effect of wind and sand blasting away for two thousand years has clearly taken its toll on some of the flights of steps.


How did they chisel these things out – OK it is only sandstone but drills and dynamite were not an option, just hammers and roughly made, presumably, pretty blunt chisels but these are not widespread on the site. How the Nabateans lived is not yet clear – some believe that the tombs also served as living places with some sort of screening across the front. This would be relatively cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Others believe that the people lived in tents and the thousands of carved holes were only for stiffs. That is one of the things that makes Petra so fascinating – much is unclear and you can allow your imagination free rein. And what happened to the Nabateans? That is also unknown – they seem to have disappeared as a distinct tribal group not long after incorporation into the Roman Empire.


We had two, admittedly fairly short, days exploring and we might have seen about half the stuff worth seeing. The best bit for us was going to the “High Place of Sacrifice” which has a wonderful view after a relatively easy walk but, more importantly, has some of the best buildings when you walk down the steep return route. You could try for ten or twelve hour days but, for us, five or six hours with no food and little rest was enough especially with Pete constantly hassling to look at the next hole. If you plan to visit Petra once in your life then three days would be about right – see most of the interesting stuff but not too repetitious. Even though I am now an old fart I think I will be back. Of the big sites I have been to: various parts of the Great Wall are an eye-opener but only Luxor has lured me back – Petra is that good.


However, we only had two days left so it was the night in the local “Bedouin camp” and on south. However, we needed something edible so went to the local Chinese restaurant first. Not too bad – Hong Kong style food but expensive. The Chinese are not famous for pudding but I tried for fried bananas as they were on the menu. No bananas, but after some language understanding I ended up with sugar coated battered pineapple – actually very tasty and you dip them in water just before you eat them to stop the sugar running. Rude will not let me live this down for three reasons – he claims to have worked out that the sound coming out of the Chinese lady's mouth meant pineapple not egg before I did and, secondly, that the pineapples were tinned rings and, finally, I could not initially remember what the cold water was for. .

The only reason that I had agreed with the camp idea was that you can get a fabulous view of the stars if there is no ambient light and the winter sky is clear. Being brought up in rural Derbyshire means that I am quite familiar with this sight, or was fifty years ago. Rude is a confirmed city boy so has little real exposure to this view. After some crap food, smoke filled tent, horrible music and enforced jollity there were still plenty of lights on around the “Bedouin camp” and it was cold when we gave up so Pete spent about 20 seconds looking at the sky which was pretty good. Actually it was up to its usual spectacular winter show as I found out when I went for a bit of relief at 4 a.m. But, for some strange reason, Pete did not leap out of bed to look.


A few words from the man himself at this point:


There are elements of this place that are a nightmare and much of it is boring old cunts, who not only insist that they are sole travellers but who insist on foisting themselves on you. Not once, but twice did this happen. One dried up old hag from NZ but then a boring older bastard who has simply been everywhere. Boy was he happy about telling me all about it too. What with him on one side and Ed “No, no... let me tell you about China” on the right of me.


Wadi Rum. Wadi means river or river course. Well there ain't much sign of a river in Wadi Rum. People go there because of the rock shapes sticking up out of the sand and because of “Lawrence of Arabia”, These (the rocks, not Second Lieutenant Lawrence) have been blasted by the wind and sand into some pretty interesting shapes. Lawrence, that well known self-publicist, spent a fair amount of time in the area although there is no evidence to suggest that he actually stayed in the places claimed.


The day started badly – a “photo opportunity” for no apparent reason in the middle of nowhere, some very doubtful “Nabatean” carvings, a visit to T.E. Lawrences “house” which he didn't stay in and was probably a Nabatean construction. However, I did climb my first genuine desert sand dune, the rude one did climb over a natural arch (no way was I going that high in the air with only a metre wide bit to walk over), and we went down some genuine rough sandy areas on the way back in the four wheel drive that was the most battered and oldest that we saw.

We then had an hour's ride on a camel. Half way round our guide stopped and we got off – me relatively in control, Pete by catching his marriage equipment on the wooden bit that sticks up
on the front of an Arabian saddle as he pitched head -first off his mount as he, his mount not Pete, bent his front legs to the knee. A laying camel (the position on which you mount them) after mounting by some fat git like me gets to her knees with the front legs (so you have your arse sticking backwards) followed by the hind legs going to full height (so your head is sticking forwards) and the front legs coming up to full height so you are now relatively stable. The reverse is true when you dismount so the camel going to her knees at the front was normal when she pitched the rude off. Naturally I was all sympathy. We were rather surprised when our host requested tissue paper. He started a “traditional” Bedouin fire with paper and a cigarette lighter whilst we fed the camels on dried bushes. The paper was a bag that was sticking up out of the sand. Nothing bio-degrades there and everybody – especially the locals just chuck everything out of the window of the 4 by 4. I was glad when we finished the camel ride and will resist making comparisons with knowing how a hard-working lady of the night feels after a busy shift. Let me just say that I will not be rushing to repeat the experience.


If you ever go to Wadi Rum take a few bin bags with you and collect rubbish. Also make it clear that you driver must do the same or no tip. They will get the message but it does need doing. Once you have sown the idea camps will advertise themselves as the ones who are “eco-friendly” by collecting the rubbish. What happens to it after that...


Not much more to report really.

On to Aqaba, Jordan's only port on the Red Sea, which is a tourist diving centre. Main attraction – bars and cheap off-licences plus a greater variety of food. Oh yes, and quite warm. We had failed in one of our objectives – riding a camel in our white suits (too cold) so we wore our suits in Aqaba and didn't feel out of place. We dipped our toes into the Gulf of Aqaba and off up the highway on a bus and back to Amman.


Suits back to England just proved what a pair of plonkers we are.


Coming very soon – Not Rollerblading in Bessarabia