Barcelona by Bike

10 August 2006. The Island Star has brought us to Barcelona on our first ever visit to mainland Spain. The port is a mixture of industrial and cruise terminal with several office blocks and a cable car overhead that comes from the top of a nearby hill, and over to a tower built on a man-made island wharf. Presumably no one gets off there but stay on as the car turns round for the return journey. We were being incredibly active that day... The ship carried a compliment of mountain bikes and today we were going to join the two Austrian bike guides - Ollie and Alex and spend half a day riding round Barcelona. 27 of us went out to tour Barcelona by bike. Our group of 15 was led by Alex, who was far too fit. If I do a tour again I want it to be led by someone as knackered as me! There wasn't much chance to take photos as you can imagine. When I wasn't pedalling and needing to keep hands on handlebars, I was panting and needing to keep hands on knees... Hey, no, come on... I'm not that bad! Here we are at Gaudi's unfinished cathedral, La Sagrada Familia. In truth it was good fun and not too strenuous. We rode about 12 miles over a period of about 3-4 hours and had 3/4 hour to stroll about and visit a pavement cafe for a drink. Here, Miss Franny regards the camera with a look that says "I want to do this again"... And so after a whiz around the city we arrived back at the ship for lunch. The afternoon was spent reading and soaking up fresh air and sunshine. As we finally left at the end of the day we looked over the ship's rail at this unloaded cargo ship riding high in the water with the shadow of Island Star's funnel stack against it's bow. We are heading for Ibiza with its clublife, topless girls and sun, sea and sex... Well... I can hope... Hmmm - was that the reason for Fran's expression...?

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Oxford

Thursday 30 May 1998. We had seen a number of white horses during the week but had not seen what is arguably the most famous one - the Uffington White Horse.

Fran and I left the Rollright Stones and headed into Oxford which was on the way to Uffington.

Oxford has to be one of the most car-unfriendly places in England. Finding a car park was incredibly hard and we had a near heart attack when we found out how much it was to park in the dim and extremely tight dungeon that we drove into.

Oxford is of course a university town but instead of a single university it has numerous colleges, some old and famous, others less aged and renowned. It also has a number of old buildings in the shopping centre.

It is a place where the bicycle reigns on the road. There were hundreds of cyclists and collections of cycles awaiting collection.

We took the bus tour of Oxford. It is famous for universities you know. Have I said that already? Hmmm - more or less the only thing the bus commentary said also... Boring...

This is only my opinion of course, but on the other hand, the faces of fellow passengers all lightened whenever the commentator shut up and music came on the headphones... Even Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland got the merest of mentions.

I have to say that since that day I've been back to Oxford a couple of times and enjoyed it more, but back in 1998 it was easily the most boring place we visited and the lack of signposting and the awful policy attitude to cars did not give a good impression!

Tell you what... let's find that white horse... Moving on...

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Stealing Bikes and Buying Love

18 August 2001. We are still in Amsterdam. We have been exploring on our own for a while but are now joining the rest of the coach party.

Our rendezvous point is the restaurant where we shall have our evening meal. Ben's Bar. When we get there, there are already a few familiar faces from the coach milling about. We get a drink apiece and wait for our guide Chris and the rest of the folks.

We sat in a corner of the restaurant by a window that is only just out of sight to the right of the photograph above. On the left of the photo and directly opposite us over the canal are a few bicycles, chained against the railing. We were kept entertained throughout the meal by the antics of various tea-leaves, who were put out at the presence of chains, but who proceeded to remove wheels, seats, handlebars and any other bits they could before one persistent chap came back after having already taken the saddle. He produced a huge bunch of keys and tried them patiently until he finally was able to hoist the frame onto his shoulder and set off, accompanied by a rousing round of applause from the restaurant...

It started to go dark and an air of expectancy crept over Chris's party. She was about to lead us through Amsterdam's notorious red light district! She warned us against taking photographs. Although a quick visit to Google images will show that taking photos can be possible (you'll have to do your own searching - I'm not providing any links!) apparently both cameras and photographers have been known to be thrown into canals...

I didn't risk it. Although this could be because Fran didn't let me stand still for more than a second and also because shortly after spying a rather delicious form in a window lit by red fluorescent tubes, I walked straight into a crotch-high bollard and thoughts of making a transaction suddenly didn't seem as appealing... The rest of the group did however find it very funny...! There were very many windows, most of which were occupied by a comprehensive assortment of women. All ages (over 21 most if not all), sizes, shapes and colours were there. Dressed in lingerie, some were miserable, others bored and others enticing. Some could have been supermodels, really beautiful girls. Aw... Fran!!! It's not polite to look without buying...! Chris led us around at a hell of a lick (if you'll pardon the expression...). There wasn't even time to ask the price.

The coach picked us up and delivered us back to the hotel. Then a "men only" optional trip returned for a couple of hours. I wasn't allowed. In fact Fran maintained a firm grasp of my ear throughout the evening...

Now I know... The lack of photos may be a disappointment! So my final offering for the 18th of August 2001 is this. It was done just to illustrate this entry. The research I've had to do to produce this has been exhausting... And as I'm sure I've mentioned before on this blog - I'm rubbish at drawing people!

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Walking the Canals of Amsterdam

18 August 2001. Our guide, Chris, has left us to our own devices for and hour or so and we try to make sense of our map and head off along the sides of the canals to try to find the Anne Frank house.

The canals of Amsterdam are extremely pretty. Tour boats ply up and down them constantly and houseboats are moored along their length.

As a backdrop Amsterdam's unique narrow houses stand - though not altogether entirely upright. Amsterdam is a little like Venice. The houses are built over the water on wooden piles. If air gets to those piles - in years when the water level drops - then the wooden piles start to rot and the result is as you can see here. Buildings suddenly become lean-tos...

We found the Anne Frank House. Anne and her Jewish family hid in extremely cramped quarters in this house during WWII from 1942 until 1944 when they were found by the Germans and transported to the concentration camps. Her diary, kept until a couple of days before they were found, was published after the war. Anne herself died in Bergen-Belsen two months before the war ended. Only her father Otto survived.

We thought we were lucky to see no queue coming out of the door, but then we noticed the sign that pointed to an entrance around the side and that did have a queue. So much of one in fact that we reluctantly decided we didn't have enough time to wait.

Walking around in the heat was hard work! We found a bench beside an old inn of 1695 whose piles had been exposed to air at some time causing them to start rotting and making the place lean. Here we sat for a while with a drink cooling off.

We had walked past a canal crowded with boats so close you could literally walk across from one to another. A huge floating stage area had been set up and technicians were building light gantries, testing TV cameras and one chap was interviewing a young girl in jeans who suddenly let fly a stream of operatic melody totally out of keeping with her dress... Good set of lungs...

We also saw, though weren't too tempted by, the Cannabis Connoisseurs Club and The Hash, Marijuana, and Hemp Museum!

And everywhere there were the bicycles. Sometimes heralded by bells. Sometimes heralded by a warning shout. Sometimes accompanied by a scream of agony. Why do they not have brakes? Very strange! We did have to wonder how you would ever find your own bike amongst the huge numbers of chained or abandoned bicycles.

But all it takes is a small piece of individuality!

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Tour of Amsterdam

18 August 2001. If you have been following the Amsterdam weekend entries, you will know that we have just left a diamond house where I left with a diamond chunk I hadn't paid for. It was never going to make the trip home and indeed, as soon as I got outside and checked the end of my finger, it had fallen off with virtually no chance of finding it.

The wider a building the more expensive in the 17th century. So consequently all buildings are very narrow and somewhat tall. This means that the space available for staircases is very limited and they are certainly not wide enough to carry furniture up and down four storeys, so houses were built with a hoist at the top so that furniture could be swung up the exterior and in through a window.

Some of the houses were built leaning forward so that furniture didn't attempt to enter a window on a lower storey than it should... It is said the old Amsterdam wives would hoist drunken husbands up this way but then forget to swing them into the building until morning when they had sobered up... Ah yes... the old Flying Dutchman story...!

The Begijnhof began in 1346 when the buildings around this green were endowed for Catholic women who wanted religion but not the strict life of a convent. There were some habits they couldn't do without obviously...

The old church is still there and the only surviving wooden house in Amsterdam can be found on this square.

Leaving the Begijnhof, we walked down a street with a few paintings by the Old Masters displayed on the walls. This is in fact a roofed gallery with free admission and the subjects are Amsterdam's most important citizens, or at least the richest, as they had to pay for the privilege of being depicted in these large group portraits which were painted by Rembrandt, Hals and other great painters of the time. It is known as the Civic Guards Gallery.

And so we came to Dam Square with the Royal Palace and trams. Amsterdam is a city of bicycles. They are everywhere - 600,000 bikes for a population of just 800,000. When the other 200,000 want to ride a bike they simply pinch one. Bicycles can be bought more cheaply than a lock...

Some roads have bicycle lanes, meaning they may come from the opposite direction you would think. When crossing a road you must make certain to look, because the bikes, of course, are silent and usually ridden at speed and the majority of them, for some near-suicidal reason, have no brakes... We saw several near misses in the course of just this one day! Here our guide, Christine, leaves us to find our own way about for an hour or so and we are armed with a map and the intention of finding Anne Frank's House.

Meanwhile we are in search of a loo, Dad refusing to use the handy street conveniences...

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Boy On a Bike

These went through the scanner a bit ago too. Taken in 1967 these show me as a spotty 13 year old, voice just breaking, eyes starting to go blurred but still before I admitted I needed glasses at age 15.

Here I'm showing fine sporting form with my racing bike with Sturmey Archer 3-speed gearing. I think the bike had gears too... My jeans are far too long for my legs but Mum hadn't mastered the art of cutting them off and ripped jeans were still a fashion faux-pas so there are horrendously large turn-ups in evidence here!

I'm standing outside our house (which is behind the camera so you can't see it). We lived then in a village called Milnrow, between Rochdale and Shaw which, at the time of this photo, were still officially in Lancashire rather than some post 1974 made-up area called Greater Manchester.

The chap who lived opposite was called Norman and drove a ten-year-old Ford Anglia with a stick on anti-mist panel on the rear window. This worked on the double glazing theory except that if the glue was missing from any point around the edge of the panel then the panel used to mist up on the inside where you couldn't wipe it...

This one shows me standing in the local park, Stanney Brook park, named after Stanney Brook, the small gurgling stream that flowed through this part of the park on the right of the photo. We would go down trying to entice tiddlers into empty jam jars.

Sometimes we would play at rolling down the slope behind me in the photo until we felt sick, in some cases unfortunately meaning that we would feed the fish in the stream... 13... Such an awkward age for a lad in those days...

The park is seen in the distance in this shot which was taken from the back of the houses at the top of the road. We were on the edge of this little estate of bungalows and therefore had lots of spare rough ground we could play on.

I sent a couple of the photos to the Ladies-Over-The-Water via one of our regular emails.

The other two must have been too busy laughing but I got a comment back from Evy that said "I just love your photos John. You were really quite a handsome guy."

Sigh... "were"... past tense... and is that a note of surprise I read into it? Even bigger sigh...

Large versions of the photos: Oh come on, give over... Apart from anything else they were taken on a Kodak Instamatic so are not exactly great quality!