Berchtesgaden

Monday 14 August 2000. We are startled awake on the first morning of our stay in Austria. Is it an avalanche? Is it the jangle of cowbells from the cattle on the hills? Is it the yodelling of a herdsman high on the hills above Schüttdorf?

No... it's the church bells of this church directly opposite our window! It started at 6:00am with four bongs for the hour then six bongs for the time then every 15 minutes, a bong for each quarter hour, i.e. one bong at quarter past the hour, two bongs at half past and three bongs at quarter to the hour. Hence the four bongs at six o'clock denoting the hour had been reached then another six bongs for six o'clock. At 7:00am the bell ringer took out all of his frustrations on yet another bell... After four for the hour and seven for the time, he rang out three sets of twenty bongs presumably to call people for morning prayer. There was a bit of moaning at breakfast from some sleepy tourists, though I always take the view that if you travel in foreign climes you don't start off by complaining about their traditions.

This was our hotel: the Pinzgauhof in Shüttdorff. I learned another important fact to bear in mind when using a back-to-front toilet (see first article in this series). Gentlemen with dangly bits should stand before flushing as the jet of water slides everything behind you forwards. A collision can be traumatic...

Ok, first excursion time. It took a while to find the coach - Driver John told us to look for and go down an alley. He must have had a different definition of an alley to me! They must be a lot bigger in Kent and Essex to Lancashire... The coach had brought holidaymakers on two trips. The other was a walking holiday so the coach had a few spare seats! We allowed ourselves to spread out a bit.

First stop was Berchtesgaden for which we crossed back into Germany - Bavaria. We hadn't brought any German money out with us (this was before the Euro came in), not realising that we were going to be leaving Austria but in the event it didn't matter as we shall see.

From here you could take an optional extra trip to see Hitler's wartime bunker which is nearby - just about where the von Trapps would have been arrested had they really attempted to walk over the mountains as depicted in The Sound of Music. We opted to look around the town. Wartime coal storage bins hold no interest for me...

Picturesque views were on all sides! Each house or hotel had its own colour scheme for the flowers and we seldom saw two the same next to each other. We saw many roadside shrines and some buildings also had saintly figures cast in relief on walls or corners or over porches.

Fran and I on the hill overlooking the lower part of the town and with a splendid backdrop of mountains. It was now getting towards lunch!

We went into a cafe and, apologising for my terrible German, I asked if Austrian schillings were acceptable. I was pleased when without even a flinch the proprietess answered back in German that they were. She turned out to speak excellent English, as did her staff. So, as she had answered me in German, I presumed I must have got it right!

We had a light snack then went berserk and undid all the good dietary self-denial with a slice of apfel strudel with ice cream. Iss gute... iss fielen gute!

Then feeling suitably guilty we had an urge to walk it off! We had another quick turn around the town and then decided that we had enough time to venture a bit further.

As the coach had come into the town earlier, the road went alongside one of the wonderfully clear pastel blue-green rivers. The river had passed under a covered bridge - just about unknown in England - and I fancied a photo of it. The hill was steeper and longer than I had thought! However, we made it down to the bottom and just look at the colour of that wonderfully pure meltwater from high in the Alps. Then back up to the coach in time where we fondly imagined - wrongly - that we had made up for the apple strudel...

Return to Austria 2000 Index

A Free Day in Sidmouth

Tuesday 29 August 2023. We have no excursion today as it's Andrew's day off so we have a free day in Sidmouth.

We walk (slowly!) up the hill to Connaught Gardens. These were developed from a cottage garden of the 19th century and were bought and developed by the local authority following the death of the own in the 1930s. The gardens were opened by the Duke of Connaught, the third son of Queen Victoria in 1934, by which time he was in his 80s.

I sat and sketched the view from the western end of the gardens where a set of white-painted steps, known as Jacob's Ladder, reach down to the beach far below. It is a shingle beach but traces of sand can be seen just at the edge of the sea. A teenaged girl was jogging up the stairs, along past my bench and then down the cliff path to repeat her circuit. "Wow, that's really cool!" she said. And proudly I suppose it must be if I can impress teenaged girls at my age...

A few spots of rain stirred us into walking back down the hill into town. We had seen a sign for a toy museum and went to have a look. I used to have one of these Merit games as a very young boy. I know I'm bigger now but even so I was surprised at just how small it was! It worked by magnets on the end of a plastic concertina scissor contraption like a trellis attached to the bottom of the lever and a fixed point somewhere between the lever and the playfield at the bottom of the box. This meant that moving the lever would magnify the movement of the magnet.

We came out of the museum back into rain and went to look for somewhere to eat. We found a little cafe in a courtyard where we have eaten before. It had obviously changed hands as there was a distinctly Asian look to the decorations, very exotic! We had a scone with jam and clotted cream each - utterly gorgeous. By the time we came out it was fine again and we walked down to the seafront and along to the cliffs at the eastern side of the Promenade, turning in to walk along the River Sid.

The weir. The path diverted through a small park onto the streets of Sidmouth.

The Swan Inn has stood here since around 1770 and is described as a traditional back street pub.

We turned left past the pub and thus came to one of the town's main shopping streets. Unable to drink alcohol any more because of the pesky medicals, we did the next best thing and went into the Old Ship Inn, now a Costa Coffee but I can remember it being open as a public house.

It dates from the 1300s (the Blue Placque says "1400s") and has known smugglers, rowdyism, so many unwashed bodies that the street outside stank so much it was just about a no-go area and rumours of a penny hang room upstairs - a room with a rope tied taut from wall to wall over which people could hang for a penny to go to sleep - and a report that someone once tried to enter with a dancing bear which caused great consternation amongst the customers!

A newspaper report of 1859 tells of the landlord being summonsed to court after a constable had visited one night to find 30 men, women and boys in the tap room with a man playing a fiddle and "girls of bad character" and people dancing. The fiddling (I'm thinking of the chap with the fiddle but...) and dancing went on until the early hours of the morning and the landlord was summonsed to appear in court. Apparently despite all these people on the premises the poor constable could produce no evidence of complaints or witnesses and the landlord got away with a fine of just two pounds, including costs!

Coach Trip to Sidmouth, August 2023, Index

Boscastle

Friday 9 August 1996. We left Tintagel and a few miles away we came to Boscastle where we had tea.

We looked in vain for the real cottage that is the inspiration for one of Fran's models. As we were in the last shop before going back to the car I found a postcard of the cottage and we were able to ask the shop owner where it was.

Boscastle is another of those never-changing fishing villages of Cornwall. The cliffs make a natural harbour, protected from the sea by a long inlet and harbour wall.

The village winds its way down alongside the River Jordan - what? Well not the one in the Holy Land perhaps but another smaller River Jordan that flows into the River Valency, seen here. There is a Museum of Witchcraft here, apart from the gift shops, perhaps the only nod to tourism. It very bizarrely contained the skeleton of a local "witch", Joan Wytte, who died in Bodmin Jail after being jailed in 1813 for brawling. She had been known for a local healer and clairvoyant and before her death aged 38 had become quite bad tempered violent, possibly due to a tooth abscess. Her body was somehow not buried and instead her skeleton became used for pranking the locals and for use in seances and eventually spent 40 years hanging on the wall of the museum. She was eventually decently buried two years after our visit, in 1998, after poltergeist activity in the museum.

We wandered down to the harbour and its boats with the neat coils tangles of rope. They young-uns must ha' been at they scrumpy agin'...

There was an aged bridge crossing the River Valency and I sat on the river bank to do this sketch. Eight years later it was totally destroyed by the great flood of 2004 and is now an elegant, though much less pleasing steel footbridge.

There was the gentle creaking and clank of a water wheel, almost hidden in shadow. The shop on the left promises books, music, crystals, candles, arcane artifacts & pictures. I do like a good arcane artifact!

Return to Cornwall Holiday 1996 Index

On The River Seine

Sunday 30 May 1999. After Versailles, the coach took us back to the hotel where we thankfully changed out of our wet clothes and got ready quickly to be taken back into Paris where we were to go on a boat trip on the Seine before going back to the same restaurant as the previous night for our meal.

The boat seemed enormous, and was certainly much bigger than those that I have ridden in up English rivers. It was fairly full when we boarded and we sat in the centre aisle at the front, near the young girl who was giving the commentary in four different languages.

When she stopped after French, English, German and Spanish I raised my eyebrows and said "Japanese?" which caused her to burst into giggles and say "Non!"

Holding the camera out, I took this of myself - expecting to see a bit more of the boat actually, but just look at that muscle!!! What? It's my forearm??? Oh... I thought it was a bit hairy... Alright girls, alright, yes you can be in the picture... Wow, a moustache and clip-on sunglasses - those were the days!

We got back to find the coach waiting for us, but it was warm again and we were all waiting until the last possible minute to get on board! The Eiffel Tower in the background shows the location of the landing stage for the boat trips. The trip had lasted quite a while and it was very pleasant sitting there watching the sights go by! The coach set off again, taking us on almost the last leg of our Paris trip.

We were now heading for Montmarte and the Sacre Coeur, the artists' haunt and one of the most romantic parts of Paris. My sketch pad hadn't been touched during the holiday as there was no time to stop long enough anywhere, but after Versailles, I had looked at the sodden mess of it and threw it away...

Return to Paris and Versailles 1999 Index

The Panthéon & Notre Dame

Saturday 29 May 1999. We are in Paris for the weekend on a Leger Coach trip.

Having left the Louvre, we drove into the Students' or Latin Quarter. In the early years of the Parisian educational establishments, Latin was the common language of the students who came from all corners of Europe. The photo shows the Town Hall of the 5th Arrondissement (district) of Paris. The area has long had associations with unrest and revolution. In 1832 the events remembered in Les Miserables, in 1848 and notably in 1968 when the world watched in shock as students built barricades and almost brought down the French Republican government of de Gaulle...

The Panthéon. This repository of famous dead bodies is the result of a rather rash promise of Louis XV in 1744 to build a church should he survive an illness. He did survive, but did not have the funds to fulfill his promise and public lotteries were held to finance the building. It was built on the site of a Dark Ages basilica which housed the remains of saints and kings and was finished just in time for the Revolution... Buried here are Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Louis Braille, the inventor of the reading alphabet for the blind. The sun was on the wrong side of the Panthéon to make for a decent record photograph, but as the coach passed the end of the street I snatched this semi silhouette from the window and have to admit to a certain liking for this shot. Notice also the light shining through the globe of the street lamp.

One of the great sights and monuments of Paris is the Notre Dame cathedral, on an island of the Seine: the Île de la Cité.

The coach dropped us off on the banks of the Seine, where a number of street market stalls were selling souvenirs and paintings.

I'm standing beneath a long row of orange trees, shaped into oblongs.

We walked down the river bank to take photos from the rear of the cathedral as once more the position of the sun meant that the front of the cathedral was in shadow. Like many buildings, Notre Dame is being cleaned for the year 2000. This means that there is a certain amount of scaffolding around the city, but not enough to spoil a visit for any but les seriously miserables...

The roof of Notre Dame includes this group of statues leading down from the central spire. We had no time to go into the cathedral unfortunately. A coach sight-seeing trip does not stop in any one place for long, but gives a good grounding for a follow-up trip. There was a fairly large queue in front of the entrance. We settled for buying a couple of souvenirs and I bought a hat to stop my head from going strawberry!

We were called back to the coach. A shame as an hour with a glass of vin rouge on one of these floating kiosk cafes would have been very pleasant!

Return to Paris and Versailles 1999 Index

Koblenz - Our First German Christmas Market

Saturday 7 December 2019. The third part of today's excursion, after the Rhine cruise and Boppard, is Koblenz.

It's mid afternoon as we arrive in Koblenz, the city at the point where the River Moselle flows into the Rhine. Several river cruise ships are moored up here and we sneak a peek inside as we walk past. The standard of furnishings in the cabins looks very high and luxurious.

We are walking up a main shopping street, Miss Franny looking in wine shop windows picking things for me to juggle later on our walk back to the coach... Bits of music in several different styles reaches us and eventually we come across these four guys who happily pose and/or blink as I take a photo. You win some, you lose some...

A massive shop selling Christmas decorations. I went all nostalgic when I saw these as my parents had a couple of glass birds just like these when I was still playing with my toys on the floor with bare knees rather than from behind a microphone. The pink one next to the gold one came home with us.

Ta Da! Our first Christmas Market! We've glimpsed others down side streets but decided to walk up the shopping street and then work our way back down doing the side streets.

Glűwein is mulled wine and lots of people were wandering round with glass mugs getting emptier and eyes getting glassier!

Well I don't mind if I do... The mugs came home with us too.

Not really sure what this was about... The policeman seems amused but what is that she's holding? A turkey foot? A set of withered bagpipes? And she's reaching for a bribe out of her purse too...

Time for a wander and getting into the Christmas Spirit. Or should that be "getting Christmas Spirits into us"...?

Ham and cheese on a stall. Fran considered getting a small cheese as it would have been cold enough in the hold of the coach. Kaiserschinken as the ham is labelled, is literally King Ham. Miss Franny shook her head. "I might want some cheese but I don't want any king ham..." Blimey... Alright, alright, calm down..."

We had a good wander around all the side street markets on the way back down. A group of people with brass instruments were playing just short snatches of Christmas Carols, getting a round of applause after each one. Literally just one verse for each one. Perhaps they were enjoying the applause!

As it starts to get dark it gets quite a bit colder. We set off back to the river with about 45 minutes before we are due at the coach, to walk along to a significant landmark. We reach the junction of the Moselle and Rhine rivers and looking across the Rhine, we see the cable car.

This is the landmark. A huge statue of Kaiser Wilhelm of WW1 fame with the base made into a prison by Hitler. It was specifically to hold Winston Churchill in WW2 and to incarcerate and humiliate him in sight of passers-by.

I have no tripod with me, but can't resist taking a few photos of the Moselle River at night.

I've always loved night photography anyway. Often quite ordinary buildings can look wonderful when picked out by lights against a dark sky.

We walked as far as the first bridge over the Moselle River and then turned back to return to the coach for our trip back to Assmannhausen and our hotel.

Once back we had just enough time before dinner to trot a way down the street to take a photo of the hotel.

Return to Magical Markets of the Rhine Valley Index Page