Zell-am-See, Austria 2000

Saturday 12 August 2000. Another morning outside Blackpool Tower at 4:30am in order to catch the coach down to Dover for the ferry to Calais!

We set off in a taxi from Blackpool, catching our feeder coach at Preston. We reached the Interchange at Dover without incident and found some time to eat there whilst the other coaches arrived. Leger don't have coaches of their own but instead use coach firms from around the UK.

These pick up at various places on the way down, zig-zagging across the M6 from town to town. One particular coach seemed to have zig-zagged on the actual motorway, the passengers from that feeder had nothing polite to say about the driver or his firm... However, he had nipped off smartly in a car at Dover so wasn't about to put anyone else at risk. He probably stood a good chance of being lynched by the sounds of things!

Onto the boat! The coaches are left on the lower decks whilst we go up to see how easy it is to stand still! (It was!)

In fact it was a lovely day, the sun was shining, the White Cliffs of Dover were receding in the distance so the risk of bluebird droppings was fading and all was well with the world.

Once at Calais we turn left for Belgium and motor through Flanders in order to stop overnight at a hotel in Antwerp.

Tomorrow will be a long day. The drivers of our main coach, Keith and John, warn us that we have to cover over 700 miles to Austria!

Sunday 13 August 2000. Our coach was from the Essex firm of Harris's and was in their dark green livery rather than the Leger white with blue and green highlights. John and Keith struggled to fit all the luggage into the lockers. "I like a jigsaw!" was John's comment. "Ah good," I said, "shall we bring the rest out now?"

We passed from Belgium into Holland and then to Germany. Markers pointed out the distance travelled every half kilometre - every 1/10 in Holland and Belgium - and I had to reflect that this was far better than the English system of none at all!

Late in the afternoon Keith called over the intercom: "You've come to see mountains - have a look through the front window so I can turn round and go home again!" We'll see them later in another article. For now we are at the hotel - the Pinzgauhof in Schuttdorf. "They've not made up the beds!" says Fran.

Never mind that! The loo is back to front! Now apparently this is a feature of toilets in Germany and Austria and sometimes in the Netherlands too. Here's why, because I know you are fascinated... The shelf allows an examination of poo - you may wonder why doctors say "have you seen any blood in your poo? when you know and they know that you would have to go excavating through layers of toilet paper and then dipping to find a bit of poo to examine. This handy shelf accomodates a close examination without all that!

You're dying to try it now aren't you? And...! No splashbacks! There's a whole science behind this but I'll spare your sensibilities for now and just point out that you can get a nasty surprise if you don't check and flush before... well let's just say that a splashback might be preferable...

Return to Austria 2000 Index

Travel to France

It's Friday 28 May 1999. Ugh! What's this??? 4:30am and we are tumbling out of bed to get down to Blackpool Tower to be picked up by a feeder coach taking us to Dover to catch the ferry to Calais. The majority of the photos on this holiday were taken on a very early digital camera and the quality may be not quite as pristine as I would normally like! We are on a weekend trip with Leger Coach Tours to Paris and the Palace of Versailles.

We got to Blackpool Tower a bit early for the coach and crossed to sit on a bench on the Prom. This at 5:30am! A family came and stood in the lay-by, then a couple and we stayed on the Prom until the bus came and then got on still half asleep after the others had got on. Then we made a few more stops to pick people up and then motored south, stopping for breakfast on the motorway.

As we stood in the queue for breakfast Fran said "I know that woman!" and the couple who had been picked up in Blackpool turned out to be one of Fran's work colleagues and her husband! One of the feeder coaches had missed someone and had had to go back for them, so many of the tours including our own had to wait for them to get back to Dover. Above we see the coach interchange where the coaches line up in order - each tour is numbered - and luggage and passengers transfer from their pick-up coach to their tour coach before the crossing to France.

Miss Franny's not looking too happy here and this is before the ferry had even moved away from the dock! I knew I shouldn't have taken her to see Titanic at the cinema... In the background a P&O ferry, freshly arrived from Calais, prepares to reverse into its docking bay. A couple of floors below us, the trickle of cars and wagons onto the ferry has stopped and preparations are being made to cast off. Miss Franny is probably contemplating whether she wants to eat or do a little reversing herself...

The ramps are lifted and the water churns as the ferry slowly pulls away from the dock, the land, and England. This will be our first visit to mainland Europe and our first to a country that speaks a different language to us. I won't call it a foreign language because this time it will be us that are the foreigners!

We stood along with a few of our fellow passengers at the ship's rail, feeling the hitherto unknown sway of a ship larger than the local boating pond rowing boat and staring at the receding line of Dover cliffs, wondering whether we would make it across the 20 odd miles of mountainous seas, crowded navigation ways or whether we might be struck by the kraken or plucked from the deck by a giant octopus, only to be half drowned then stung by thousands of irate jellyfish... It were proper boring in th'end though...

Even Miss Franny decided it was calm enough to risk eating something and by the time we re-emerged onto the deck, Calais was only a short surf, swim or jet-ski away.

We were herded back onto the coaches - "Shep, come by...". Once off the ferry, our courier for the weekend boarded the coach and introduced himself as Vallaire. Hailing from Belgium, he kept up a steady patter throughout the weekend and ensured that we knew what it was we were looking at. We motored south through France, staring at all the countryside and wondering where they hid the towns...

We still had a spell in the coach before us, and it was to be gone midnight by the time we reached our hotel in Bougival. We stopped for a break at a rest stop and I tried out my French for the first time since school almost! All went well happily and although Miss Franny ended up with a toastie instead of a sandwich I felt good that I had managed to avoid having to call on the staff's knowledge of the English language - which would have undoubtedly been better than my French!

Return to Paris and Versailles 1999 Index

Vintage Postcard Time No.1

Today we'll take a look at some old postcards from my collection. These have all come from antique stalls at GB Antiques in Lancaster from a recent visit. The Edwardians were great ones for postcards. There was no email and alternatives were expensive. Postcards were a little cheaper than writing a letter and much cheaper than sending a telegram. Telephones had been invented in the 1870s but only started to become popular after World War One when prices came down and in any case telephones that you could carry in your pocket were a long way off yet.

Cameras too were expensive and few and far between as yet. Telephones in the early 1900s were totally rubbish at taking photos. To take photos of people on the not-very-sensitive film of the day, they had to sit still for anything up to two minutes. Many commercial photographers would have special clamps that they would attach to the back of your head so you couldn't move whilst the photo was taken. If you were of a mischievous bent, you could look one way for half the time and then the other way for the other half whilst your head remained steady in the clamp and the photo would look like you had two pupils in each eye! Try doing that with you iPhone! Hah! So with no telephones and very few cameras, people on holiday bought postcards. Sometimes to send to their friends saying things like "Wish you were here" - mostly a lie, but it was cheaper if you only wrote four words... Sometimes, in fact many times, postcards were bought to be kept by the buyer and stuck into an album as a souvenir of the holiday. Which explains why there are so many early postcards with no writing on them. Like this one of Bridlington.

Move up the coast from Bridlington and you come to Scarborough. This card too has not been used. People would hold postcard parties where postcard albums were passed round and used to re-live the excitement of a holiday. Later you would take your own photos and show friends and family your photos on slide film, with a projector and screen in a darkened room. Oh what fun we had... Now we don't have to do that as there are new ways through technology of boring our friends and even people we don't know, via websites and writing er... blogs... er... let's move on!

Postcard manufacturers realised that they could use more than one view on a single card in an attempt to appeal to the natural stinginess of some holiday makers. This card was sent between two sisters who it seems had each gone on holiday but to different places. The postmark is a little indistinct but it was sent on 17 August in either 1913 or 1915. I suspect 1913 really because the other sister had sailed to the Isle of Man and during wartime that might have been a bit more risky! The card was sent care of the recipient's guest house in Douglas.

The message reads: "Dear Sister," (Perhaps the sender was a bit forgetful and couldn't remember her sister's name?) "We arrived safely after a pleasant journey. Are enjoying ourselves immensely. Hope you are doing the same and I hope you had a pleasant voyage. Give my kindest regards to Janey. Your loving sis, Alice xxxxxxxxxxx" (Alice obviously was worried her sister might also be forgetful and either forget she had a sister or didn't realise that Alice was her sister?)

A postcard of Great Yarmouth with hand colouring and a painted cloudscape. Buildings and other details have been picked out in ink. These tricks of the trade are one of the joys of collecting old postcards for me. Night time shots that are just darkened and painted over photos that were taken in broad daylight, with obvious shadows from the sun, the moon in the wrong direction and cars with headlights shining the wrong way are great fun. This card has not been written on or sent through the post, so another collector's item.

A between the wars postcard showing The Pier and Sands, New Brighton. The water is the River Mersey rather than the sea and it's Liverpool that you can see across on the far bank. A collection of masts or cranes and derricks on the left side are on Liverpool Docks. The pier acts as a means of boarding steamers for a trip across the river or up and down the coast.

The card was sent by a child to her aunt in Deepdale, Preston on 12 August 1935. It reads: "Dear Aunty, We landed quite safely and the weather is lovely and we are having a glorious time. We have been in the water all the time and the lodgings are posh. Yours sincerely, Jean." It was quite common for Lancashire folks to say "landed" meaning simply "arrived". I suspect Jean didn't fly from Preston to New Brighton... Also to many people from industrial towns, guest houses did seem posh - some had a toilet on every landing for Pete's sake! At this time many people would still be using a toilet in a little out-house in the back yard.

Another unused card showing the Saxon water mill at Guy's Cliffe in Warwickshire. Postcards were produced at first by small family-owned studios by a single photographer, but then as they became more and more popular some very large firms came into being, employing photographers to take photographs of a region or even around the entire country. Francis Frith is still a very well known and recognisable brand. Tucks, Salmon, John Hinde Studios, Valentine & Sons, and many others sprang up to fulfil the demand.

A multi-view card by Valentines from Ilkley in Yorkshire sent on 10 September 1954 to a friend in Lytham St Annes in Lancashire. Somehow the card managed to get postmarked twice - once in Leeds and once, the day after, in... er... Ilford. Folks in Ilkley were obviously not quite sure where Lancashire was...? The postmark includes a post office advert that reads: "Save time. Buy 2½d stamps in books, 3'9d a book" (3 shillings and ninepence - 18.75 pence).

The message reads: "Ilkley 10/9/1954. Up north again, this time to Ilkley where my friends from Leeds have moved to. The country is wonderful round here isn't it? How are the ballet activities your way? I've been twice to Festival Ballet this summer. Bye now and best wishes from Pam."

To finish with for this article we'll go down to the far south of the country to Dover. On this card, sent in 1918, there are still masted sailing ships in Dover Harbour, though most of the vessels here sport the funnels of steam power. There is at least one paddle steamer with side paddle wheels to be found. The castle makes for a dramatic horizon towards the right of the photograph.

The card could easily be from a returning soldier, writing home to his mother in Glasgow. It was written in pencil in a very neat hand: "Dear Mother, I have arrived safe at Dover alright, so I am getting on champion. I met Mary at the station, so she was telling me that she doesn't like her new job. Well this is only a P.C. but I'll write a long letter on Sunday. I remain your affectionate J.M. Rae Dov(er)"

Alex Versus the Monster Trucks

My old schoolmate Alex has a strange relationship with his motors.

Either they, or he, have a habit of collecting collisions in the way other folks collect stamps... His latest sad tale unfolds:

"I was tootling down to Kent last Monday, with a stop off at Elaine's sister's in Long Buckby, when some hare brained carrot crunching twat from Great Yarmouth decided it would be a good idea to smash my car to smithereens with his 39 ton Volvo truck on the M1 intersection with the M6. I was stationary on the roundabout between the two motorways, indicating right to change lanes, when there was an almighty bang and the car just rocketed forwards ten feet.

I tried to drive into the side of the road and a cloud of blue smoke drifted from under the bonnet before I just coasted to a standstill and administered the last rites to a good and faithful servant (the car - not Elaine).

Fortunately neither of us was seriously hurt although Elaine still has a bruised and swollen arm and we both had stiff necks the following day. When I opened what was left of the car boot to get our luggage out, the carpet was folded into a neat ruck in the middle because it was about six inches shorter than it was when we set off!

I wouldn't like to have been in that smash in many other cars - the passenger cell was completely intact and the exploding head rests had stuck out to minimise whiplash - I didn't even know they were there!"

Doesn't sound the ideal start to a holiday?

"Meeting East Anglia's answer to Mad Max wasn't the only piece of bad luck that we had while we were away. Coming back to the hotel on the Thursday they had a power cut, which of course meant no water, no functioning toilets and worst of all - no, not the bar, there was an Oddbins down the road - even worse than that, no telly! They finally got the water going enough for a cold shower just before we left on Friday."

Blimey! But the holiday?

"Despite all that, we had a great four days in Kent. Dover Castle was very interesting although the town was an abomination.

Canterbury was and is, a fine city with an even finer Cathedral. Not the finest, but dripping in sufficient history to make me wish that I could have spent the night there alone, just to listen to the walls speak in the dark of the night - coincidentally "Becket", the 1964 film with Richard Burton and Plenty O'Toole was on on Saturday night, and very good it was too.

Whitstable stank like the back of a bin wagon and Leeds Castle was beautiful to behold from outside but with a mediocre interior and grounds that were more reminiscent of a municipal park than a country estate.

So a bit of a curate's egg then, but sufficiently interesting to make me want to brave the 7 hour journey home through the appalling traffic and go back some day. I think that the Kent Tourist Board could only agree that that was a fair minded and succinct chronicle of my brief perambulations around the Garden of England, though admittedly not quite as expansive as the 24 pages that you give it on your web site."