Down In Time For Tea And Thunder

Wednesday 16 August 2000. The trip back down the mountain was again one that left some of the passengers unable to look outside at the steep drop!

The water that flows out from under the glacier at first takes on a muddy appearance as it is full of bits of rock and frozen detritus that the glacier has scraped away over the centuries. It collects in a lake which overflows here and which in turn fills a lower lake where the rubbish sinks to the bottom leaving the water to purify a bit.

Here you can see the difference in height between the two bodies of water and the difference in colour of the water.

At the bottom end of this lower lake are two enormous dams, built to withstand ice as well as water. The brighter patch above the lake in the top right corner is a glimpse of white water cascading from the lake at the lower edge of the glacier whilst at the left of the picture large patches of ice can be seen even in August.

The road winds down the pass in a snaking series of hairpin bends. Some people refused to look. Others kept up a less-than-soothing running commentary.

As it happened there was no need to make up horror stories - at one bend we passed a few cars stopped next to a motorbike that had run off the road. The biker looked in a bad way, flat on his back with someone pumping his chest...

We came through a short tunnel and to a patch of snow. Chris stopped the coach and the younger passengers shot out to play for 2 minutes.

12 year old Sarah was most indignant because Chris told her to wipe her pants clean before getting on the coach - she had fallen on her behind!

After our meal at the hotel that night, we set out to walk to Zell for an Austrian beer festival. We got half a mile and the heavens opened. Thunder and lightning flashed around us and we sheltered under the eaves of a small shed between the local and main railway lines.

"It'll slacken off in a minute," said Miss Franny confidently. The storm moved from the mountains to directly overhead. The rain got harder and harder and it went dark.

The shed was no shelter now. We got to the road running alongside the railway and sheltered under the porch of someone's house. They must have heard us talking because the door opened and an elderly couple, after realising we didn't speak German, motioned us to step inside. We were soaked and dripping by now so I declined - we would have wet their carpets and their porch was keeping the worst off us. We thanked them and, bless them, they went back in and then came back with an umbrella for us.

An hour later we were still there. It had now gone fully dark as night approached... The rain was so hard that the train signals shone red beams across the sky.

I took a photo using flash. The flashgun lit the drops of rain up and on the screen of the digital camera we saw just how many drops were in the air in whatever very small fraction of a second the flash fired for (somwhere between 1/200 and 1/1,000th of a second).

This photo became the cause of much hilarity amongst the other passengers for the rest of the holiday! Every time rain splashed the coach windows or we passed a puddle there came cries of "Quick! Are you going to photograph it???"

Eventually we gave up, knocked on the door to give the umbrella back and thank the owners and then we just ran for it back to the hotel. One good thing came out of it though - the lightning hit and stopped the church clock opposite our bedroom window. We had a blissful bell-free morning! Oh... and the beer festival was called off due to the storm.

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Palais de Versailles

Sunday 30 May 1999. The coach set off at 9:00am for Versailles and although warm, it was rather dull. By the time we reached the palace it was obvious that a storm was in the offing.

None-the-less we left the coach - no choice actually as it was not stopping in the coach park at the palace - and we walked into the huge cobbled courtyard and joined a horrendously long line of people waiting to go into the palace itself. The people on the right are somewhere near the back of the queue and the front of it is between the two wings on the right.

It was going darker and darker and I left Fran in the queue and went to see if there was another way in. There wasn't. On the way back I photographed the statue of Louis XIV and the sky gives you some idea. It was to get darker however. As I got back to Fran I was surprised to see she had moved up the line quite a way. The more nervous were bailing out and heading for the cafe and toilets! A few drops of rain fell - I notice these things, being bald...

Hardly had the rain started than it suddenly got a lot darker. The automatic sensors assumed it was night and the floodlighting came on. There was a test flash of lightning and it was successful so there came a lot more... Suddenly it stopped raining and instead the air turned to water. At least that's what it felt like. I've been in Florida thunderstorms which I thought were bad but this was unbelievable. In no time at all everyone was soaked through to the skin with icy water whilst thunder and lightning were horrendously close. I'll show you the scorch marks later... The cafe and shop closed its doors as there were so many people fighting to get in they were in danger of suffocating. People were literally screaming - the air was so full of water that you could hardly breathe or see.

The gutters and drains of Versailles are wonderful. Water is collected off the roofs and pours out the mouths of gargoyles. Beautiful in a shower, but in this storm the people in the narrow space between the two wings of the building were subjected to the equivalent of a row of fire hoses directed onto them from the rooftop. It was ten minutes before another door was opened and by then the mass of people was so compacted as we huddled together that we were just swept into the building. In no time the floor of the foyer was awash as all you had to do was grip a bit of clothing and water would gush forth.

It took a long time to get tickets to go into the palace proper as by then the foyer was choked with people wandering aimlessly and dripping in several different languages. The caissier had given over asking and was simply ringing up the till and pointing at the displayed price. My glasses were misted over - I took out my handkerchief and added some water... Having got the tickets we squelched up the staircase and decided the jackets we were carrying were simply making our arms wetter. We stuffed them in a plastic carrier bag and forgot about them.

When the Revolution emptied the palace of its inhabitants and showed them what a good time you could have in a condemned cell, all the furniture was being taken out and auctioned off until it was realised what was happening and what remained was left alone. Consequently many of the rooms are empty of furniture. Some contain paintings and some contain odd items. The decor though in all rooms is stunning. Gilding is in evidence throughout and there are some wonderful ceiling paintings and mouldings.

Some national stereotypes were emerging. The French were standing, dripping and sullen. The Germans were all organised and taking coats off, folding them and putting them into bags. The Brits were taking shoes off and tipping them up to literally pour a stream of water out, shouting to their mates: "Ha ha ha! Look at this!!!" A peep though a window showed that the rain had almost stopped and certainly the storm had passed over. We were later told that Paris had never had such a storm. As I said - I'll show you the scorch marks later...

It must have been heartbreaking for the staff and custodians as almost everywhere the exquisitely tiled floors were just full of water from people's feet. They were lucky the floors weren't carpeted. Meanwhile back to just before the Revolution, Paris could be dangerous and the chateau at Versailles was far enough away to have warning of any mobs but not so far as to be unaware and unable to send troops. Besides, Louis' court lived there also and thus he had them under his direct control. From 1682 to 1789 Versailles was the home of the kings of France. Everything had been built especially for Louis XIV: the palace itself, the town to house the builders and the tradesmen who served and fed them, the gardens, the water supplies, and a large hunting park. There was only a couple of villages full of peasants who had to be ejected before work could start...

The hunting park is no longer part of the estate but even so there are 800 hectares of land, 20km of roads, 200,000 trees, 35km of canals, 2153 windows, 700 rooms and 67 staircases... We had no time to go through all the rooms and the ones that we did see we saw only briefly, taking a quick glance, a photo and moving on, leaving a little puddle of water if we paused too long... Happily, water is a distinct feature of Versailles and the fountains in the garden are absolutely beautiful. We shall see some of them later, but the fountains are only switched on for a limited time and for most of that time we were indoors...

Carrying on our trip around the Palace of Versailles we complete one wing of the building and find ourselves back looking through the doorway at the beautiful Royal Chapel. Whilst the rain had stopped, as you can tell from the trousers of the chap on the left, we were still all very wet! I was relieved to find my cameras were ok. Later when Fran checked her bag, we found that any paper in it had tended to fall apart - like money for instance... I checked my pockets and brought out a few soggy scraps of paper myself - money and tickets to the garden... They had just disintegrated and there were just lots of half-inch tatters of paper!

Louis XIV's clock of 1706 in the Mercury Drawing Room. On the hour, animated figures of the King and of Fame descend from a cloud. The room was the State Bedchamber in 1682 and now contains the bed that Louis-Philippe had made for the bedchamber of Louis XIV when Versailles opened as a museum.

The Hall of Mirrors connects the War Drawing Room and the Peace Drawing Room, all devoted to the victories of Louis XIV. It was decorated from 1678 to 1686 and it was here that courtiers would wait, hoping for the ear of the King as he passed through on his way to morning worship in the Chapel. The room was spectacular to say the least and it was easy to visualise the masked and full dress balls that were held within these mirrored walls.

One of the candelabra from the Hall of Mirrors. M'sieur Vallaire had told us that there were no bathrooms or toilets in the palace. Certainly, they didn't wash as much as modern folk, believing that too much washing destroyed the body's natural resistance to disease. He also said, Napolean liked a bit of smell and always sent a messenger home two weeks in advance to warn Josephine not to wash! Perhaps that's the real reason for "Not tonight, Josephine!"

This is one of gallery rooms, hung with massive paintings, thronging with saturated tourists. The paintings depicted Napolean and someone had carelessly left a dirty great column standing in the middle of the room. Not mentioned in the guide book, I can only suppose that in a state of excitement someone put it down and forgot to pick it up again...

This gorgeous room was Queen Marie-Antoinette's bedchamber. It was here that the queen gave birth publicly so that there could be no doubt as to the true identity of the heir to the throne. In her memoirs, Madame Campan, First Woman of the Bedchamber described a huge crowd rushing into the room to witness the Queen give birth, actually climbing on the furniture for a better look. The King and Queen each had their own apartments, decorated similarly.

Ok folks, we are about to go into some very soggy grounds and gardens. The lightning scorch mark is somewhere outside - you may want some time to prepare yourselves...

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A Rainy Day in Lesbos

24 May 2012. Thomson Celebration arrives off Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos. The anchor is dropped in the sea outside the harbour as we are to be tendered in on the ship's boats. As usual those people who have booked excursions will be given priority and we are just intending to get off and have a walk around so there's no particular rush to get up and rush out.

When we do crawl out of the pit and make our way aft for breakfast (how these nautical terms just trip from my fingers!) we notice that the decking is a touch wet. Come to think of it, I did think I'd heard thunder in the early wee hours before daylight and a full bladder roused me fully from sleep...

We ate a leisurely breakfast on deck but underneath the awnings which were doing a good job of keeping what we thought was a bit of rain off us. We went down to Deck 2 and did a double-take at the queue for the tenders. We decided to go back up and try again a bit later in the morning.

We went back up on the deck and immediately did another double-take - this time at the weather. It wasn't just raining, it was absolutely pouring down. I mentioned the fact on Facebook only for lots of our "friends" to remark how nice it was in England. Thanks guys...

The tender operation was suspended once or twice for short periods due to the weather. The small boats were certainly bobbing up and down a bit more than the Celebration was doing!

It scarcely let up all day. At its height, the rain was so dense that all that we could see of the above view was the white bits on the ferry in the harbour. The land was totally hidden from view!

The headland with its picturesque castle was lit up at times by vivid pink flashes of lightning. How appropriate for Lesbos we thought...

I've still not been to Lesbos...

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A Trip To The Vet's

I'm up in Stirling in Scotland at the moment, ready to deliver a Change Management workshop tomorrow.

It's a bit muggy but thankfully I've missed all the rain that's been sweeping the eastern side of the country. We got it last night around 3:00am when the bedroom kept lighting up and all sorts of crashes and booms were heard - yes, I'm a strange sleeper...

Actually I can't remember when we had the last decent thunderstorm. The one that sticks in my memory was when a single thunderbolt crashed through the roof of a house about a quarter mile away also in the middle of the night and just about everyone in Bispham jumped out of bed in a fright thinking Hitler was having another go...

Anyway, last night's was a doozie! Consequently I'm bushed. We got up and had to take one of our cats, Tigger to the vet - she's been a bit off for a week or so but was really off this morning. Not that she was too far out of it to resist going into the travel box and she most definitely did not appreciate where the vet put that thermometer...

But she was most thankful to be home and brightened up considerably, thus making the whole journey a bit of a mockery. She was suffering from a bit of heat exhaustion, poor thing. So am I now...

She was also a bit put out to be called obese too, but never mind Tig... runs in the family...! So I left the house with fans blasting out and am now wishing I'd brought one up here with me! Jess, our other cat kept a wary eye on proceedings once he saw the travel cage come out and when we got back with Tigger, he was sitting underneath the table on one of the dining chairs, right against the wall where he thinks we can't get at him. He says he doesn't care what his temperature is after talking to Tigger...

Happy 21st Birthday!

Today we played for a 21st Birthday Party out to the north of Preston. We've played this one a few times now - not always for a 21st of course, but we did the young lady's 18th and her brother's 21st and this year was her turn to be the magical 21.

The garden party started in fine form with brilliant sunshine as you can see.

By the time the champagne cork popped and smacked David in the face - were they trying to tell him something - anyway, two and a half hours of his singing had not done much for the weather, as can be seen here as he poses with the wayward champagne cork.

Not long after this, thunder rumbled and then the heavens opened and stayed open and we had to quickly drag everything back into the tent/gazebo. The rain wasn't going anywhere though and we had to dismantle and start to dry everything out.

At least we had managed to do a brand new version of Bridge Over Troubled Water for the party girl's gran - as promised a couple of years ago!

Bonfire Night 1981

A bit of a wet washout for anyone hoping to get a bonfire in tonight. Last night wasn't too bad but this afternoon Blackpool's had rain, sleet, hail, thunder and lightning. On Wednesday night, which was the night - 5th November - I was on a train coming down to Blackpool from Glasgow. No, I'd not been to the Manchester United / Glasgow Celtic match, I'd been delivering a workshop there for work.

I saw a very few fireworks as the train sped south through Scotland and not very many through the Lake District but once I got off the Glasgow-Euston express at Preston to catch my local train to Blackpool, the sky was constantly lit up by the flashes of exploding fireworks.

The photos are from my collection. I took them on 5th November 1981 when a few folk gathered to light bonfires on the beach. It was a low tide that night...!

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Weird Weather

A spot of strangeness last night. We were sitting in the living room all nice and quiet when Fran, who was sitting facing the curtains, suddenly said "What was that?!?"

Next moment a huge clap of thunder outside closely followed by a hailstorm that was so loud against the windows that both cats were spooked and we were peering out into the dark trying to see what was going on.

I was in the middle of my brain-age test too on Fran's Nintendo... Consequently I now have an aged brain age, despite having had it down into the thirties consistantly for days! Fran thought this was quite funny until I reminded her about her 70-year-old brain a few days ago...

I'm hoping to be let back into the house today at some point...