Later in the Day in Bergen

Thursday 8 August 2013. This is the second of two posts about our trip to Bergen - the first post dealt with the Bryggen UNESCO site and left us about to go looking for the famous fish market.

We crossed the road to the harbour and made our way round the edge of it. There are lots of distractions - every direction you look there are gorgeous buildings, lots of people, lots of activity and, for British tourists, the added complication of traffic being on the unfamiliar side of the road.

The first stall we came to was loaded with fruit. We quickly realise that the fish market is not just a fish market! The fish stalls are lined closest to the harbour and other food stalls, fruit, bread, fast food, woollen knitwear etc. as well as a number of cafeterias with tables set outside or under canvas cover can be found.

But there is certainly a fish market! Fish of all sizes and some strange shapes too. Some would definitely not win any beauty prizes - but that's probably not the aim... There are some formidable sizes of crab legs... Double this for two rows of legs and add a 12 inch diameter body between them!

And the knitwear is spectacular. I'd have loved one of these jumpers, but I'm a hot person (you know this, don't you, ladies...) I can't cope with jumpers in the UK, I'm instantly cooking and they have to come off (you know this, don't you, ladies...) even in years that don't have mini heat waves. Knitwear, as with reindeer skins and trolls, is one of Norway's cultural offerings. I'd never wear one of these jumpers, but they are tempting! Miss Franny offered me a hat with strings to tie under my chin... Er... thanks for the thought but...

Other bits of the city were tempting us too. It's a nice looking city is Bergen! We had to explore a bit and were in the mood for a mooch around anyway. The old buildings of the Bryggen had lifted our spirits and we were not yet ready to return to the ship.

We found cobbled streets with timbered buildings in the shopping areas too. We hadn't got as far as the city centre - which may well have been a bit more modern I don't know.

I sometimes feel that large global concerns are turning every part of the world the same anyway. You see the same shops, the same names, cars tend to be the same everywhere you go as well. We almost applauded when we saw a MacDonalds that had obviously not been allowed to have bright red plastic on the front of the shop. We avoided it none-the-less...

We saw this building at the top of a long straight street a few photos back. It's the Floibanen, a funicular railway station and there were queues of people extending out of the front door, standing in line to buy tickets to a place called Floyen which is 1000 feet above Bergen and there are spectacular views of the harbour from it.

The queues are seen from the hill at the side of the station building here, looking back down the street and across the corner to the Central Church.

We retraced our steps back down and had another look around the Bryggen area, finding a second alleyway that we had missed where the buildings on both sides were joined by staircases and walkways from the first and second storeys. We loved Bergen. We will go back someday and ride that funicular!

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Marseilles Vieux Port

9 Aug 2006. Wednesday morning finds us back in France, in Marseilles. Not having booked any tours, we left the Island Star for a bit of exploring on our own. The free courtesy bus, provided by the cruise company drops us off at the Vieux Port - the Old Port of Marseilles. You can't believe the number of boats here! At least a thousand boats and yachts are sitting in the huge marina, with people on perhaps one percent of them. Does anyone, anyone at all, have a boat based in a marina that they take out every weekend for a sail? It is a hot day - perfect holiday weather! There's a bit of a smell... The fisherman has just landed his catch and his wife is laying fish out in trays of ice, lopping off heads and chucking bits into plastic bags that are being snapped up by enthusiastic buyers. We resist with effort and walk around the marina, coming to one of the two forts that guard the harbour entrance. The Fort St Nicholas was built by the Chevalier de Clerville for Louis XIV. Louis reigned from 1643—1715. The fort was 200 years too late to defend Marseilles from the Spanish of Aragon. The harbour was protected in 1423 like most harbours by a massive chain suspended just above the water. We are talking big links here, not something you could unpick with your fingernails. They were designed to take the bottom out of any invading ships. The invaders in this case nicked the chain and took it back to Valencia. Yah Boo... On the other side of the port entrance is Fort St-Jean. It was built by Louis XIV again at the same time as the other one. The Sun King of France said at the time (this is not a joke...) "We noticed that the inhabitants of Marseille were extremely fond of nice fortresses" Ha hahhhhh! Nice try your Majesty. He actually built the fortresses to quell a rebellion in the city. The cannons of the forts pointed inland rather than out to sea! During the Revolution the Fort St-Jean was used to imprison Louis Philippe II, the Duke of Orleans and two of his sons. During World War II the Germans turned it into an ammunition dump. This exploded and didn't do the fortress a great deal of good... It was far too hot. We did the French thing and sat outside a cafe with a drink on the corner opposite the Opera House seen here. I breathed in deeply hoping for a little aria, but it was just too hot... The shopping streets were probably a bit cooler as they kept out most of the sunshine. At least that was Fran's excuse. Then after a mere lifetime, we made our way back to the colourful waterfront of the Vieux Port before catching the courtesy bus back to the ship. Next, we take a bike ride through Barcelona on four wheels - that's two each, right?

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Something Fishy...

The scanning - as you may just have noticed - has slowed down a bit as I've been very busy at work and not at home all that much to do any scanning! However, I'm pulling a few 1981 shots together for this entry.

In the summer of that year we visited the summer fair of the local branch of BLESMA - the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association.

At that time there were still a couple of old soldiers there who had lost limbs in World War One I seem to remember and their prosthetics included the use of old fashioned hooks to replace a hand.

There was a small fairground laid on for visitors as a fund-raising venture and Gill won a prize on one of the stands. She wanted a goldfish. We hadn't banked on this, but she most definitely wanted a goldfish and a comb, screwdriver or a small and tatty plastic toy wasn't going to sway her away from wanting a goldfish.

We arrived home with this small, over-hot and suffocating little fish and it lived for a day in a large glass mixing bowl until we could buy a small plastic tank to put it in. Gillian decided it would be named "Eric the Twink". I've no idea where that came from...

Eric, against all expectation, did not die half an hour after getting him home. He stubbornly held onto life, requiring the purchase of said plastic tank so that Fran could wash out his bowl and make more cup cakes...

We grew fond of him and a few friends were found for him. He did then eventually pop his clogs not long after the new friends came... But these grew to need a larger tank and a couple of them, a large goldfsh called Jaws and a shubunkin called Bluey are seen above.

Jaws eventually grew to around 6 inches in length and, exactly as with model train sets, we realised that if we wanted a more scenic environment then we had to shrink the scale somewhat and at Christmas 1981 a 3 feet long tropical fishtank made an appearance.

The fish were much smaller, more colourful, much more varied in shapes and behaviour and ...er... bred like rabbits...

But the hours of pleasure (or hypnotism) we got from sitting and staring at the large tank was brilliant.



Large versions of the photos: goldfish and shubunkin, guppy, fish tank

Bibury Showpiece Village

Wednesday 29 May 1998. We awake in Cirencester to a cloudy but bright day with the sun threatening to come out.

We are heading up throughs the Cotswolds and my map told me that Bibury was a "Showpiece Village", so we made it our first stop of the morning. It is indeed a lovely place and the sun ices the cake by making an appearance.

Bibury is a delightful village, with a trout farm and a row of cottages and some well kept gardens to enjoy.

If it wasn't for the yellow lines down the edge of the main street you could imagine yourself back in time here. The trout farm was either losing fish at a great rate or was a bit redundant, because the little stream that bubbled its way down the street, passing under several little bridges was teeming with them.

This is Arlington Row. A row of old cottages that makes as many appearances on postcards and chocolate boxes as the bridge at Castle Combe that we saw a few days ago.

In fact on that day (and visible to the left of the photo) a photo shoot was going on with a model walking a dog up and down the row whilst the small team of photographer, stylist and make-up artist made the most of the sunshine.

Here, away from those tell-tale yellow lines, it really is possible to imagine you are in a different century. In this photo only the road covering and the yellow H sign strikes a more modern note.

You see these small yellow markers all over the place in the UK and Ireland. They mark the position of the nearest fire hydrant which are all hidden in the ground rather than being street furniture. It does mean that cars don't run into them which TV and movies would have us believe happens all the time in America, sending great geysers of water shooting into the air. In the UK the water companies use leaks instead to waste water... My grandma had a car game where the first to see a yellow H had to shout "Fire Plug!". It keeps kids amused for ages and drives adults bananas!

Who wouldn't want to live in such an idyllic place? Yet town dwellers who move to the country can't seem to accept that it has its own way of working and existing and that sometimes it does smell when fields need fertilising, that there are slow tractors on the road, that going to the cinema involves a long drive, that animals make a noise when dawn breaks...

In the next entry we go in search of more hills of the dead and at one of them I have to enter by worming in on my belly. I hope you realise the lengths I go to for these articles!

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Castle Combe

Sunday 26 May 1998. We left Malmesbury behind and soon reached our next destination - the picturesque village of Castle Combe.

They call it "the prettiest village in England" and there is some justification for the claim. It is certainly popular with film-makers. Until recently it's biggest claim to fame was the filming of Dr Doolittle in 1966 but the view above will be instantly recogniseable to anyone who has seen the 2007 Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro film Stardust.

But of course, in 1998...we hadn't! This village features on so many chocolate boxes, jigsaws and advertisements though, that we wanted to see it for ourselves and take the same photos we had seen so many times!

The market cross dates from somewhere around the 13th/14th centuries and has this strange little structure in front of it. This is known as the Buttercross but is nothing to do with the making or sale of the yellow stuff. It was for tethering and mounting horses. You will see many old villages with a couple of steps leading nowhere and they are to get you high enough to get on a horse without having to be able to leap up to the saddle. We can't all be John Wayne!

The market cross itself provides a bit of cover for the market. The locals were weavers and wool cloth would have been the source of income to the villagers.

On the hill above is the castle that gives the village its name. It was one of the old earthwork hillforts from the Iron Age. The Romans used it to watch over the Fosse Way and the Normans built strong walls and a modern castle. All that remains again now are the earthworks.

This is the famous view that you see on chocolate boxes and biscuit tins, calendars and postcards. Normally with a bit more sunshine that I was afforded...

Not letting that put me off, I had my trusty pencil and sketch pad and spent half an hour doodling whilst Fran wandered around the few shops. This is the Town Bridge. There is another smaller bridge at the other end of the town sometimes called the Roman Bridge as the ghost of a centurion has been seen there, mainly at night after coming out of the pub...

The view up (or down!) river from the bridge is especially tranquil. A brown trout of quite a size was lurking amongst the weeds and rising to snap at anything that floated down the water. After a while of watching him, I realised that all I had to do was watch for something floating down and then he would pose for a photo!

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Istanbul's Basilica Cistern

Thursday, 19 August 2010. We are back in James Bond territory again.

In From Russia With Love our intrepid hero is taken by Kerim Bey, Head of Station T for Turkey, down into this huge underground water reservoir to spy on the Russian embassy via a submarine periscope hidden behind a mousehole.

In real life the periscope would have to be a very sophisticated version because the Russian embassy is nowhere near this place...

Since 1963 when the film was made the water level has been reduced to a few feet only and a huge amount of silt removed to make the apparent size even more impressive. A walkway has been constructed so that visitors can walk about the vast area without the need to ferry them about in boats as was necessary before.

With the removal of 50,000 tons of silt and mud between 1985 and 1987 two fabulous Roman Medusa head carvings were found to have been used as bases for pillars. The one shown is placed upside down and the other is on its side. There are two possible reasons for this. It was one way of stopping the image of Medusa from turning people into stone. Or placed this way they were just the right height needed to support the pillars...

So here are a few facts from the excellent, if quaintly worded, information pamphlet, seemingly translated from Turkish into English by someone who had little experience of either language, (but probably just showing how lucky I am to have been brought up to speak English instead of having to learn it later). In fact why is everybody else so much better at learning foreign languages than us Brits? Because they have to learn the most complicated language where the same letters have lots of different sounds - ough... ie though, through, bough, enough, cough...

The cistern was built between 527 and 565 AD. Not long after the period in which King Arthur was supposed to be chasing Saxons out of Britain and five centuries before the Normans arrived to show their descendants what it felt like to be invaded. It is 140m long by 70m wide with the roof supported by 336 columns of 9m height arranged in 12 rows of 28 columns. It held 100,000 tonnes of water.

There are some (bloody big!) fish swimming about down there...

In fact, let's finish with my favourite bit from the official information pamphlet and I salute the translator who decided this slightly sinister phrase would tempt us down the 55 steps from street level to see the undoubtedly wondrous place where all those (thankfully absent) rats chased James Bond after he blows up the Russian Embassy. It reads...

"The visitors melt into disappearance when they are here in the cistern to see the Medusa head, in accompany of fish and a smoothing music."

Fantastic!

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Marton Mere

As you drive into Blackpool on the main road from Preston, or if you leave the M55 motorway at the first Blackpool junction and turn right, you pass a windmill on a green on your left. On the right, not long afterwards are the building that housed ERNIE, the Premium Bonds winning number selector. Behind that building there used to be a large lake called Marton Mere.

It still exists, although thanks to the Victorian engineers who drained much of the Marton Moss area, the lake is now considerably smaller. It is a peaceful nature reserve, close enough to see Blackpool Tower! The brackish waters that seeped out of the mere, eventually draining into the sea gave Blackpool it's name. Today Marton Moss is home to hundreds of glasshouses and more modern lightweight frames, holding up sheet polythene, beneath which grow tomatoes, lettuce and all sorts of other produce that finds its way to the supermarkets of Britain.

It stretches around the back of the town and to the south to the rear of the airport runway. Many of the original cottages of the Moss still stand, built of duck-stone, named because their shape resembles the body of a duck. The stones were taken from the beach and piled up into walls, mortar and plaster and straw being used to keep them upright. A lot of the roads these cottages stand on are narrow, single-track roads with deep dykes and drainage ditches to either side, better suited to horse-drawn traffic than cars. Standing by the mere on a summer's day is a rewarding experience for nature lovers. There is a vast abundance of tiny moss-flowers that I wouldn't presume to know the names of, and birds wheel and dart, catching the midges and flies hanging in clouds above the water.

Time your visit well and you may be rewarded by seeing the swarms of fish fry. Only a small percentage will survive to spawn themselves. Marton Mere is a little haven of countryside close to the biggest seaside resort in the UK. If you visit, leave it as peaceful and tranquil as you find it. The photos were taken in 1982.

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