So, Clacton to Frinton by foot. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I cycled it too many years ago with Trevor and Jon and really didn’t remember that Clacton to Frinton was any longer than the very manageable stretch from Frinton on to Walton.

Well it is. We paid for four hours parking and were late getting back, despite only walking one way. Fortunately the parking attendant was nowhere to be seen, perhaps on account of the fact that today was an official scorcher.

You really have no idea how far between the two resorts you are when you’re walking along by the water’s edge, one side of your neck slowly cooking in the sun reflected off the sea. More than once I was sure we were almost there, and on neither occasion were we even half way.

No matter; the sun was full out, the tide was high and the sea was blue and crashing on the defences beside the path. We couldn’t have hoped for any better.

It took over two hours to make it to Frinton, passing beach huts by the hundred on the way, and when we got there we fell into a greasy cafe for eggs and chips and mugs of tea. Never had so humble a lunch tasted so good.

There was no way we were going to get back to the car on foot before it found itself clamped, so we walked up to the station and bought tickets back to Clacton, only to find we’d not get there for another hour and a half on account of a limp timetable and an inconvenient change. So we headed for the bus, and a bit of a shock.

When it eventually arrived (we’d just missed one) it was £7 each for a journey of not more than five miles as the crow flies.

Hmmm. Still, cheaper than a clamp, and it was such a lovely day it was well worth the money.

I hadn’t been in years and Rich had never been. We hadn’t seen Ash and Roman since last September and we wanted to do some geocaching away from home. So many reasons to head down to Surrey and Box Hill.

We stopped at Sal’s for breakfast and sat on the decking eating cupcakes in the sun. Very decadent, but Will – who is clearly a three-year-old Worrall Thompson – had been making them since he’d got up. The ones in the green cases were ours, apparently.

Surrey turned out to be not nearly so far from home as I’d remembered and we were down there in a little bit more than an hour. We stopped in Leatherhead to smash any illusion I had of this exciting town from my youth (not very nice as it turns out), then headed to Fetcham, past my old scout hut, the place where we used to buy the papers, my old nursery… I was surprised how well I remembered it all considering I left the county aged nine.

We had lunch at The Anchor in Bookham for lunch and then headed up the hill by way of the Zig Zag. It’s just as steep as I remember, the only difference being that Sal and I used to climb straight up the front of it every summer with my grandmother. How she did it, I don’t know.

The view from the top is still one of the best in the south, looking down on Dorking and out over several counties. I wasn’t in the least bit tempted to roll down it like we used to. That’s what happens when you turn mid-thirty: you start thinking about the climb back up again.

We had a successful session geoaching, though. We found four stashes in all before heading back to Ash’s for tea and then out to Epsom for dinner.

Isn’t this what holidays at home should all be about: catching up with the things you’ve missed.

The Moulin Rouge

Paris looks its best at night. The city is beautiful anyway, but when the sky is dark and the best of its buildings are lit up they really come into their own.

We left Lyon on a late morning train that got us back to the capital in time for lunch overlooking the Seine, a walk down to the Statue of Liberty and then the metro out to the Bois de Boulogne. Not been there in ages, but I do remember the shady ladies hanging around in the trees as they tout for business. I’m quite glad we were on Velibs which means we could ride away faster than they could totter in their impossibly high heels.

I say ‘quite glad’ because it wasn’t an entirely good experience hiring bikes. In principle it’s a great idea. There are bike stations all over the city so you can check one out at the start of your trip and then check it back in somewhere else when you’re done. The bikes are easy to ride and well maintained, but the actual check in/out system is a seriously convoluted process.

Or perhaps the translations were just a bit off.

Either way it took us ages to get Rich’s bike logged back into the system and even with mine we had to log out and then back in again to be sure, so I don’t think we’d do that again.

We were glad to be rid of them by the time we were done, and jumped on a metro back into the centre for dinner.

Pyramid at the Louvre

Neither of us was particularly hungry after a week of good food, but we headed back into the Latin Quarter for a cheap menu and found a little restaurant where they had cats roaming around under the tables then shot off with our cameras as soon as we had paid for one last walk around the city.

Up past Notre Dame, pass by the Pompidou Centre, down to the Louvre to squat down by the pools as everyone else lay on their edges and looked up at the stars, and then home by way of Montmarte, which seemed to have turned off its lights, so no photo opportunities up there.

Notre Dame

All very touristy.

Saturday – today – a walk through the flea markets and lunch and a train home. A bit of a shocking return to reality. After quiet, comfy TGVs we were back on the Eurostar with badly behaved British children running up and down the aisles, British parents leaving over the backs of their seats to talk to each other and a woman with a very flimsy grasp of French translating her paper’s obituaries into English.

Would rather be back in Lyon.

Pompidou Centre

The Arc du Triomphe, seen from La Defense

Last year was the first in about 15 that I didn’t make it to Paris, so it was good to get back – even if it was just for a few days either side of heading down to Lyon.

We had initially been planning on a trip to the ballet. Dad’s suggestion on account of the fact that there was something he wanted to see and we had never been, so he came up by train from the south and we did the same from the north via the tunnel and we met in the middle.

Without any ballet tickets.

Turns out it’s incredibly difficult to get your hands on any as there are all sorts of restrictions on who can buy what and when. There is even one day in the booking cycle when it is only open to foreigners and non Paris residents which strikes me as a bit unfair.

Opera Garnier where we would have, but didn’t, see the ballet

Rather unfortunately it coincided with Eurovision. I hadn’t realised this when I booked the train – stupidly – so our first job on arriving on Saturday evening was to find our hotel, dump our bags and then race to the Marais, which seemed the most likely place to find anywhere showing it.

But you know what? It turns out French bars aren’t all that hot on Eurovision. We found two showing it, but only one had the sound turned on. The other was showing the pictures on a telly in the corner with boppy music over the top.

Anyhow, we holed up in the one bar that was showing both halves of the programme and gently sweated through two and a bit hours of songs before hot-footing it back to the hotel for the voting.

Watching is back we didn’t miss much on the interval act although we would like to have heard the UK commentary as it became more and more abundantly clear that we were heading for last place again. Can’t say I’m entirely surprised: the performance was fine but the song didn’t really grab me the way it did Rich.

I wish I understood more of what the commentators were saying as they got very giggly at the national judges giving their scores.

Rooftops of Paris

Anyhow, we met dad the next morning and spent the next couple of days with him, eating cheap meals on the Rue Mouffetard (Bistrot Gourmand, since you ask – €9 for three courses) and training it out to La Defense, which Rich hadn’t seen before. Last time I was there I was late for a meeting at the top of the Grande Arche after my hotel TV, which I’d set as the alarm, helpfully came on muted. Next thing I know, frantic calls to see where I was and several arguments with taxi drivers who were averse to the very idea of heading towards Defense in the rush hour because of la circulation.

No such trouble this time around, leaving us time for a slow walk east through the tall buildings back to the metro by which we hot-footed it to Le Printemps for tea under the dome.

Well, that’s changed somewhat. Gone are the nice old mirrors and the brassware. It’s been considerably moderened up since I was last there ten or so years back and I’m not sure it’s for the better. The one thing they haven’t changed, of course, is that glorious glass roof, and the addition of mirrors on the tables, which I don’t remember from before, is a good one as it means you can easily look up by looking down, so no need to crane.

The dome inside Printemps

Look at that. Bikes, trees, no cars on the road. Can you even see the lodges hidden in the trees? No. Needless to say it was a fab week off work. I’d forgotten how good Center Parcs could be, and it’s no doubt twice as fun if you’re there without nippers in tow, as of course we were.

I’d also forgotten how packed with wildlife the place can be. It’s about ten years since I last visited, but they were an annual pilgrimage during my teens. This time around we even had a tame heron that paid daily visits to our patio and posed for photos.

And squirrels by the thousand, one of whom was persistent in his attempts to get inside.

That’s a reindeer on the right, which fortunately was penned in and not on the cusp of trampling through our lounge.

So, beyond the wildlife and the days spent riding our bikes around the forest we spent most of our time riding the flumes and the raipids, which weren’t nearly so rough as the ones I remember (although then, of course, I’d have been much smaller and the bumps much lumpier). The weather held up for us, which with Cumbria under eight feet of flood water, and the week before we disappeared being wall-to-wall rain, was extremely lucky.

We had two short showers, one during an ourdoor swim, which was quite magical with the pool lit cool blue, the steam rising into the night sky and the rain pattering down on the surface.

Do I want to go back? Err – yes. Tomorrow, if I could, but more likely this time next year.

Spring lamb (and mother)

The weather thoroughly spoiled us over Easter. Surprising, really, as spring bas been cold and wet so far.

We took the train up to Darlington on Thursday night, straight from work, leaving the cat and chickens in the care of the neighbours, and spent until Tuesday morning in the countryside before commuting back to London for work.

We packed in so much. On the Friday we went to Richmond, where we walked around the cobbled main square and down by the falls, and then motored over to Barnard Castle for tea in the Bowes Museum, which still has one of our family heirlooms in its collection.

I’d seen it from the outside as we drove past it when we stayed in Consett almost two years ago. It looks like a French chateau, externally, and that’s impressive enough, but inside it’s a whole other world with a grand staircase and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and that’s only in the entrance hall.

On Saturday we headed into the Dales proper, revisiting many of the places we stopped by when we stayed in Yorkshire last August (how the time flies), clambering over boulders on river beds, jumping over dry stone walls, hunting out the youngest lambs we could find in the fields…

The Dales

But we didn’t spend the whole weekend in the Dales: we visited some old family haunts in Darlington that I haven’t seen in 25 years or more, or not at all as they were my grandparents’ houses, vacated years before I was born.

On the Monday we went to Durham, a city I have always wanted to visit, and although we really only looked around the cathedral (internal photos forbidden) and walked along the river, it was good to be able to say I’ve finally been, and have reason to go back and see the rest.

Durham

It was a sharp contrast to the sights we saw on our journey there. If you go straight from Darlington it’s about 20 miles all told, but instead we drove through the industrial heartland surrounding Middlesborough. Not nice, but very interesting. One of my earliest memories – perhaps my earliest memory of all – is of being taken around the steel works by a family member when I was maybe two and a bit as I was still an only child at the time. At the end, as we left, I was given an absolutely lethal spiral of steel shaving with razor-sharp edges to take home as a souvenir. Needless to say mum put it in her handbag to ‘keep it safe for me’ and it was never seen again.

We did briefly break the car when the gear stick came off in Andrew’s hand, leaving us stranded outside Kettlewell. It looked for a while like we were in for a three hour wait for the AA to come and pick us up, but after retreating to a coffee shop with excellent teacakes it somehow fixed itself, much to our mix of relief (that we’d get home) and disappointment (that there would be no more teacakes for us).

It was a great weekend, and a brilliant start to the season, and for once the trains didn’t spoil any of it. We rode up on the East Coast Main Line, with all the free wifi and regular trolley service that entails, and it ran to almost perfect time.

What a shock it was to get back on our scummy commuter trains yesterday evening for the 30 miles home it takes an hour and a half to cover after work.

Ugh.

Hardraw Force

It’s been a bit quiet around here of late. Things have been busy, but most importantly we had a week away. Volkswagen lent us a car from its press pool and we took it to Yorkshire with the rest of the family to buzz around the Dales, drinking tea and eating scones in the little hillside villages (below) in between treks up muddy paths to take photos of the waterfalls (above).

We’ve been watching All Creatures Great and Small, so naturally we hunted out the spots that had featured in the show – tiny little Langthwaite, for example, where Seigfried and James could be seen driving over the humpy bridge in the show’s opening credits, and to Askrigg, which was the setting for the surgery at the fictional Skeldale House, and then to Bolton Castle where James – in the series, not real life – proposed to Helen, and she said yes. One day we drove out of the Dales to the real surgery in Thirsk and visited the World of James Herriot, which turned out to be an excellent little hands-on museum, and where we discovered that he wasn’t really called James Herriot at all, but Alf Wight (he wasn’t allowed to use his real name as it would have counted as advertising).

One day we visited the Black Sheep Brewery and came out smelling of hops and yeast from the vats of beer that put our own brewing efforts to shame.

And eventually, of course, we had to come home and back to day to day life. The cat was very glad to see us.

And day to day life is quite full right now, which is the real reason why the blogging has been so quiet. The proofs of the book, which comes out in either September or November, depending on who you listen to, have just come back from the publisher and so needed reading and correcting while we were away. I’m working my way through those connections now, ready to send back at the end of the week. It’s already sold over 1000 copies in the US on pre-orders, and looking Amazon’s UK listings it’s apparently the 61st best-selling digital photography guide.

The second edition of the Independent Guide to the iPhone has just been published, after several weeks of re-writing and editing. And we’ve all just finished working on the Independent Guide to the Mac.

So it’s been a busy time, which means blogging has taken a bit of a back seat, both here and over at Blagger.

Hopefully, as things settle down, that should all change. Typing fingers crossed.

Low Row