Canal Dreams

 

Not exactly spaghetti junction!

Criss crossing England, and to a lesser extent the rest of the UK, is a huge network of canals unseen by the vast majority of the population. The bulk of the main cross country links are still in good condition but many are disused and abandoned, built over by housing estates or grazed by farm animals. In some cases there are heroic restoration projects underway and long forgotten routes are being reopened. The grandaddy of British canals is undoubtedly the Grand Union Canal which stretches from London northwards to Birmingham in the West Midlands and Leicester in the East Midlands. With a total length of nearly 300 miles this is a lot of canal! Here's a photo I took of the junction of the Grand Union with the Oxford Canal in Northamptonshire whilst enjoying an early morning jog along the towpath. Yes it looks very peaceful and idyllic but just around the corner is a hive of activity with dozens of canal boats laid up for the winter or under repair in the marinas. Other boats have paused for a while on their journey across the country. The vast majority of traffic consists of pleasure barges in contrast to the industrial cargos transported in vast quantities two and three hundred years ago. canal side 

One thing common to all canal boats is that they're narrow and many of the locks and tunnels on the older canals can only accommodate barges up to seven feet wide. In fact many of the 30,000 plus boats on the canal network have been converted from commercial barges. The canal side industry today consists of boat hire and boat repair companies but also enterprises, such as tea rooms and ancient pubs now catering for the touring folk - here's the Gongoozler's Rest Cafe near Braunston at the junction of the Oxford and Grand Union. So what's a Gongoozler you might ask! You'll just have to look it up as I'm not saying.

We were in Northamptonshire for a big family wedding and, as our AirBnb accommodation was close to the canal system we were able to show our overseas visitors some of the very photogenic sights to be seen during a canalside walk. Here's the Admiral Nelson pub where we had a fine meal and the next couple of photos are from our very pleasant walk home in the gathering dusk.

Looking for buns!

The final snapshot for this blog post is from Abingdon-on-Thames. This is where ten of us wedding guests joined up post wedding to clear heads and enjoy a jolly jaunt on the riverbank by running in the Saturday morning parkrun. We explored the town on the previous evening and found ourselves by the Abingdon Country Hall a rather grand building in baroque style built in 1683. It looks fairly sedate here (8 pm on a Friday evening here) but on special days once every few years (e.g. Royal Jubilees) a throng of local townsfolk gather outside the hall hoping to catch one of the several thousand fruit buns thrown down by the town officials - a tradition that dates back to the coronation of George III in 1761!

 

..........to another Half!

Three jolly runners!

 So fast forward a couple of weeks to  Cardiff. And it was a good 10 degrees  warmer than Cyprus for the four times postponed Cardiff University Half  Marathon, the biggest race in Wales; this year it was designated the Welsh Half Marathon Championships, so everything to run for, at least for an aged runner from North Wales! Ruby, Isaac  and myself  finally located each other in a huge crowd milling around near the start on a fine sunny morning.  Ruby was very well  prepared, I thought I was well  prepared and Isaac knew he wasn't, especially as he was hunting for safety pins to fix his number on his shirt.  We found the Welsh Athletics tent where our friend Eva kindly took this photo and she directed us to a reliable source of safety pins for Isaac. 'Comms' problems left us hanging around on the start line for over twenty minutes, an enthusiastic announcer ran out of encouraging things to say but eventually, like coiled springs, we reacted to the gun and charged off. And we all finished which was the  principal objective, Ruby had a  wonderful run finishing well under two  hours, Martin struggled towards the  end (Recovering from a cold? A poor  excuse though! But I was surprised to  finish in 1:40:00 - first V70 and Welsh  Champion.) And Isaac thoroughly  enjoyed his trot round - sore legs for a week but he's now aiming for the Newport Marathon - star man.

Bracing!

Just four days later and that brief window of warm weather was gone. On the very last day of March a bitter wind accompanied by snow had banished the' Fool's Spring' and we were well wrapped up again for our weekly Nordic Walking session on the Clwydian Hills.  This reversal of the seasons happens so often at this time of year - maybe this is the original April Fool that the weather provides us with on a regular basis. It's not just a North Wales phenomenon as all over Europe it's chillier than usual - for the second year running the vineyards of Bordeaux are seeing fires lit alongside the vines to save the new growth from being nipped in the bud by frost. It's not helping me with my attempts at spring gardening with my spinach, lettuce and rocket showing no signs of sprouting so far. I'm just glad I have a  greenhouse and my tomato plants are developing just fine. I am growing Roma tomatoes for the first time - these are Italian style tomatoes used for paste and other culinary purposes. I didn't know until after planted them that they are 'determinate' (I've read up on this!), in other words the tomatoes all ripen at the same time - just as well we have a big freezer. And just as well I'm growing Alicante tomatoes which are a more regular salad style variety which keep on producing through the summer - so I've determined that Alicante are 'indeterminate' tomatoes!

Roma at home-a! Don't they look good.

From one Half..............

Custard perhaps!

Red pillar boxes for posting mail are all over the place in Britain. But they are not confined to the UK and there are many parts of the world that were part    of the British Commonwealth which are now independent, and they too had these iconic pillars where you could    post your letters. In countries where they have been retained and are still in use, some are coated in classic pillar box red, e.g. Malta and Gibraltar; elsewhere they've been repainted other colours. In Ireland they all went green   in 1922 and in Cyprus we saw plenty of yellow ones - here you can still see the crown and the letters GR indicating that this was erected in the reign of King George VI. They're not exclusively red 

in the UK though - following the 2012 Olympics pillar boxes in the home towns of the various British gold medal winners were painted gold; we have one near us in Flint to commemorate our local hero Jade Jones who won a Taekwondo gold medal.

I'm still standing!

Some more Roman ruins, this time in central Paphos where successive stages of occupation have been gradually peeled away by archaeologists, this is the place where in the first century AD, St Paul the apostle was tied to a pillar and whipped - a very white marble pillar still stands among these ruins and apparently this is the one he was chained to. The church in the centre of the photo was built in the 13th century on the site of a much larger basilica. All very impressive and only a stone's throw away from the nightclubs and bars.

Every little helps!

I love wandering round supermarkets on our travels. Looking at what the locals buy provides a good indication as to what kinds of produce feature in their diet. Papantoniou's wasn't especially big but their fruit and veg section was rather amazing featuring a wide range of exotic fruit and veg many of which were unfamiliar to me, lots of different types of aubergine too. The fish counter was pretty impressive with lots of octopi (that is the plural isn't it?) and fancy shellfish. On the way out I spotted this sign which puzzled me a bit - I went back in and looked around and found some Sainsbury's tea for sale but that was about it. I guess the signage represents some sort of agreement that benefits the Cypriot shop in terms of attracting British visitors to do their shopping here.

Everyone's a winner!

And here we are, the real reason we came to Cyprus. A bit of a running festival, Vicky did the 5K and I trundled round the half marathon. Don't let the clear sky in the background (behind Paphos Castle) fool you - it was desperately cold, we'd run in sleet and rain and a stiff wind and by the time of the presentation I was well wrapped up, thankful that I'd brought a bag of clothes. 1:41:56 was my time and I was happy with that especially as I was able to stand at the top of the podium with an oversize trophy to wave around. Vicky was 40:19, she would have liked to have broken the 40 minute mark but, as I've said, the conditions were against us.