San Diego

A seaside excursion

We arrived on Thursday, 20 November 2014 having flown for more than twenty-one hours: seventeen hours from Oliver Tambo, Johannesburg, to Atlanta in America and then a bit more than four hours from Atlanta to San Diego.  We made our way to the Hilton Gaslamp Quarter adjacent to the Convention Center, which was of course where Pieter and Chris were headed for the conference. Strange about this was that we had won ten hours - in South Africa it was already evening but we were at the hotel at around eleven in the morning.  Luckily our room was ready.

The convention centre in San Diego

We were a little hungry and after quickly cleaning up a little we went looking for somewhere to eat. Chris (Chris de Wet, Pieter's colleague) was in the Hyatt, a different hotel, where we had agreed to meet him.  We headed further along the promenade to a place we had spotted from the shuttle. We were surprised to find that this was the restaurant where the seedy bar scene in "Top Gun" had been shot.  We were after all in California, home of  film making like almost nowhere else.

This is where the seedy bar scene was filmed.

After our ample and fairly good meal (expensive but we quickly learned to accept that food was more pricey than in South Africa), we ambled along the bayfront in the direction of a big sailing ship.

We were bone tired but going back to the hotel would only have meant keeling over right away and that would not have been useful for overcoming the jetlag.

The weather was a very pleasant 20-21C despite it being winter. We passed an aircraft carrier which is used as a museum for aircraft.  This was super exciting, but we decided to leave it for another day. The sailing ship turned out to be part of another museum containing six of seven vessels with two submarines amongst them.  This proved to be our undoing.What an excellent way to spend a few hours.

A wonderful maritime museum

There is a replica of an old sailing ship which was used in "Pirates of the Caribbean" - what a stunning ship.  It sways in the water where it lies reminding one how insecure one must have felt on such a ship in days gone by.

Next we clambered aboard the big sailing ship we had originally spotted.  It still goes sailing and is far bigger than the one we had got onto first.  This visit was quite educational as one can look at the different holds and see where people would eat and sleep as well as store goods.

The most fun we had was on the Russian submarine.  It is quite narrow and the interior is cramped. To move through it one has to climb through holes about a metre in diameter.  One has to really watch one's head as well as there is not much headroom.

Next we got onto the American submarine.  This was used for research and not for warfare so the difference between the two submarines is big.  It is way more orderly and neat and although spending time enclosed between iron walls below the surface is still a frightening prospect this looks at least more doable.

The periscope still works.

There are more ships but we decided the Belvedere, a ferry from bygone years, would be our last stop.  This ship still has lovely wooden benches and big windows for sightseeing.

We made our way back to the hotels resisting the temptation of getting onto one of the rickshaws (bicycles with carriages for about three persons each).

Baby swans

Abbotsbury Swannery in May 2014

On our last day, we were leaving from Heathrow that evening, Kevin and Madeleine took us to the Abbotsbury Swannery.  Baby swans were being advertised on numerous sign posts, but we had looked the other way.  After all baby swans are ugly ducklings now, aren't they?  We had a really marvellous last day.  

First of all Abbotsbury is a place well worth visiting, it has many old buildings that we just drove past.  Hopefully we will return there one day.  The swannery is right on the Fleet with the Chesil Beach clearly visible not too far off.  These protected waters must be what made the swans come here in the first place.  Many other species of birds are also to be found here.  

Originally swans are thought to have come from the Steppes of Eastern Europe, Russia and China, but the current population at Abbotsbury are probably from semi-domesticated birds liberated many centuries ago.  It is also believed that they wintered around the coast of Britain and Western Europe even when they were still completely wild. They are not held at the swannery, at least not after the cygnets are big enough to fend for themselves; they return every year because at the swannery they are fed several meals a day.  People no longer catch them as a source of food either.

In open waters all swans belong to the Queen, except for these birds at Abbotsbury and some on the Thames.  The swans are ringed with different colours to indicate who they belong to.

Because wild swans do not really rear their young in big groups and the cygnets take a while to recognise their own parents, some of them are kept in five pens from which the swans cannot take off.  They are given extra cygnets from other parents.  This helps keep all the baby swans, also those outside the pens, a lot safer.  All swans are allowed to leave in October. Adult swans are known to return the next year expecting to go back into the pens they were in before.

We entered eager to see baby swans, but at first saw only cobs and pens.

A bird on a nest was a step closer.

Baby swans! One has to be careful where one treads!

A peaceful coexistence inside and outside the pen.

To watch swans sifting through water with grasses provides insight into how they feed.

Here one can see the Fleet and the Chesil Beach in the background.

What a pretty picture!

New Quay, Jamaica Inn and the Dorset Coast Path

Our second last day in Cornwall and Dorset

On our way back to Bridport we stopped at New Quay, renowned as a holiday spot.  It was good to get out of the car and walk to the cliffs.  It is also really beautiful there.  People go there to bathe in the ocean and to admire the scenery.  On the day we stopped there, 25 May 2014, it was cool and not what we in South Africa would regard as a day on which to go for a swim.

It has to be said people wore diving suits.

Droves of people went in for a swim.

Picturesque

We went for a walk along the cliffs.

The cliffs are quite forbidding.

There was a sign warning people against jumping from these cliffs.  Apparently somebody had done so.  The worst we were going to do was clamber along the grassy edges.

Madeleine and Kevin on the edges.

Next we stopped at Jamaica Inn famous because of Daphne Du Maurier's novel "Smugglers at Jamaica Inn".  It was raining when we got there and we gratefully escaped into the inside of the pub. Imagine my surprise to find that dogs are welcome there.  Apparently that is a very old tradition.

Madeleine in front of the bar.

I was also looking about.

Just so that there can be no doubt. Lovely sign.

Inside it was cosy and warm, a good place to hide from the weather.

Our second last stop was Okehampton, the town with a moor.  It is quite rural and after having lunch we moved on.

We liked the art on the wall of the building.

Lunch on the bench

Our last stop was on the Dorset Coast Path, close to where there had been a landslide in February. The view from there is amazing, it was a fitting way to end our tour.

The view from the Coast Path

One can see where the landslide must have been.

The four of us on the Coast Path

Exploring Cornwall

So many exciting places, so little time

We spent two nights in the Youth Hostel in Penzance, a former Georgian mansion.  Penzance is at the south-westerly tip of England and has long been associated with pirates and plunder, but also stone circles of which I used to believe there to be only the one at Stonehenge.  It turns out there are many.

The youth hostel is housed in a really grand old building, but we spent the two nights in the smallest room we have ever had to share.  We still had a really good time.

Can you imagine this building once having belonged to just one family?

 One can't help but feel grand on such a staircase.

The really tiny bedroom

We did not really spend much time exploring Penzance itself, but did manage to get some photos of a ship portraying pirates from a time long gone.

The pirates of Penzance are now the stuff of fantasy and stories.

We were going to drive all the way to Land's End. Our first stop was to admire a stone circle. 

Then we stopped in a quaint town called Mousehole (just do not pronounce it the way it looks).  We took some pictures of the picturesque tenement houses.

Off we went through country lanes to places deep in the countryside where very few people go.  The roads were always of a fairly good quality though.

The country lanes were for the sake of reaching Porthcurno, the site of a secret World War II underground telegraph station.  There is apparently an excellent museum there, the Porthcurno Telegraph Musem, but sadly on this day it was closed. Even so we could still walk through the sculpture garden and look at some old telegraph lines on the outside.  

Kevin looks at the old lines

A piece of sculpture representing waves

An old cable connection?

These wires connected England to India (a British colony of bygone days) and ran all the way beneath the ocean's surface.  Porthcurno was chosen because it was quiet and the cables would not be in the way so much.

An old cable still visible in the sand.

The concrete cable hut and in front of it a hut for life guards.

More recent is the Minack theatre right next to the beach used for the communications cables.  The theatre is built right into the cliffside.  Here an actor told us the story of Rowena Cade, who created the theatre. One can imagine no better place for a play such as "The Tempest".  

From here one can see the beach on the previous photo.

Pieter, Kevin and Madeleine watching the actor on stage.

We were told the story of Rowena Cade by the actor who told it as if he were Rowena's helper of many years.

Rowena Cade was responsible for the creation of the theatre.

A picture of Rowena (1893 -1983)

Kevin perched on one of the first seats made in the cliffside.

Day visitors are still walking about as the stage is being set up for a performance.

Minack is still not situated at the most westerly end of Cornwall, that honour is reserved for Land's End.  You need not worry that you will not recognise it.  Bikers, hikers and other visitors show up there in droves, some of them having completed journeys all the way from John o'Groats (at the other end of the UK in Scotland).  It was windy and a bit cold when we visited so we did not stay long.

After this we just had to stop for Cornish cream tea somewhere along the road.  This is one of the great joys of visiting England, there are always coffee shops where one can stop and relax.

Madeleine at the table with our teas.

So that you think should have concluded our day, but it did not, we still visited St Ives, a truly charming place.

The beach at St Ives

A really small shop

A pastime on the beach is to build stone towers with getting them as high as possible as the main aim.  Crowds gather to watch people good at this build towers.

Kevin negotiated skilfully through these streets - but golly they were really narrow, as Pieter shows here.

Looking back I realize that we benefitted immensely from the long spring days and of course from the hospitality of Kevin and Madeleine.