UK - Canterbury

With the typical English 'summer' setting in over the last few weeks, it's been a bit tough to get out of London (due to flooding everywhere). Finally a sunny weekend emerged, so we went down to Canterbury to check out the sights.

We did a river cruise with George as our rower and guide along the River Stour. We followed this with a gentle stroll through the historic city. Apart from all else the main attraction is still the cathedral, and it is worth the visit.

The cathedral is a massive structure with intricate carving and decoration all over it.

Inside it is even more spectacular. The sheer enormity of it is hard to describe but there are multiple altars in the crypt, nave and quire.

Choir area in the center of cathedral looking towards the front

There are many intricate stained glass windows all along the sides and ends and our camera just didn't do the colours justice. The original stained-glass windows were removed during the war for safety. In hindsight this was a good call as the replacement windows were damaged. The original windows were subsequently returned to their rightful place.

The intricate carving seen on the outside was replicated inside as well. This is a shot looking up one of the towers.

We were lucky enough to hear the choir practicing for the Evensong later that afternoon.

London - Red Bull Air Race

Seeing as Claire isn't really in the best form for adventure sports at the moment we thought we would go and watch others do it instead.

The activity of choice was flying, in particular flying down the river Thames at a height of around 5-10 metres, while dodging inflatable 'gates' going at speeds of up to 400km/hr. Impressive to say the least. It was very reassuring that one of the pilots has a day job with British Airways, although if he flies his jumbo like his racing plane it could be an interesting flight!!

The race caused the closure of the London City Airport and the river. The planes first had to battle the highrises of the Canary Wharf financial district in order to get low enough to enter the course (outside Millenium Dome), as the plane must be below the height of the gates as it goes through or they get a time penalty. Red gates have the plane flying through sideways and blue gates must have horizontal wings. More time penalties apply. The course is completed twice with a 'half cuban' (upside down loop) at the half way mark.

If you have the same question that we did, what if the planes hit the gates? That was answered, and happy to say apart from a loud bang as the 'gate' burst, the plane continues although off course. There were crazy guys sitting on the pontoon just waiting for this, and the replacement 'gate' only took 5min to go up.

Unfortunately the photos weren't too good as we had to rely on the camera phone, as someone forgot either of our 2 cameras....

London update

It has been a little quiet over the last few weeks, as the we've been busy in London. It didn't help that last weekend Claire was in too much of a hurry to catch a train (see photo). The outcome was a very painful sprained ankle. Not good, although the recovery is progressing well.

Other crazy things we have seen in London lately is a bizarre art sculpture on the South Bank. It was a series of water fountains that showed water coming out a few different ways from the sculptures. Modern art !?

In other news, the local cygnets (swans) are growing up quickly. They are living at Canada Water which is near our local underground tube station. The babies are almost ready to go it alone, and lose their grey feathers. If only the local council would clean away the rubbish that is thrown into the water...

Le Tour de France hits London

After a fortnight of terrible weather, the sunshine returned for a big weekend across the UK. Londoners definitely had much to choose from as this weekend saw the finals at Wimbledon, the Formula 1 at Silverstone, the Live Earth concert at Wembley stadium, and the start of the Tour de France.

Claire did her good deed for society and volunteered at the cycling for both days (the Time Trial on Saturday and the 1st stage on Sunday). Unfortunately she was 'backstage' for the entire Time Trial so only saw the riders for the few seconds it took to pass her on Sunday. Steve caught up with Sharyn & Conor to watch Saturday's festivities, and took numerous photos. Apparently over a million people turned out, and I could definitely believe that as I have never seen so many people in Hyde Park.

Nice flower bed in Hyde Park













Conor & Sharyn













Our best vantage points were near Westminster, and I saw the last few riders across from Buckinham Palace.


In the warm up, I think he was a mobile phone addict!!














They averaged about 50km/hr, so bit tough to photograph the riders side on













At a corner on Buckingham gate



























The winner of the Prologue - Fabian Cancellara



























Lots of people watching one of the many big screens around London













Before Sunday's stage, I caught the Caravane, where the Tour sponsors create interesting floats.













Just bizarre... Pizza anyone??













Water bottle













Motorised Wheelie Bin













Although the race didn't officially start racing until they reached Greenwich, they were still going mighty fast

FRANCE - The Jura

As it is getting into summer in Britain, we decided to do what all brits do at summertime. Head to warmer climates. Our choice was to do a week of trekking through the Jura vineyard district of France (near the Swiss border). After getting some cheap Eurostar train tickets to Paris, and a connecting train to Mouchard, we arrived about 6 hours after leaving London.

We did 5 days of hiking, doing between 12-20kms each day. You would have thought that doing that much exercise would be good for your health, however we also managed to eat an abundance of local food and think we actually put on a few kilos!

For the vast majority of the trip we were following a marked track known as the Grande Randonneee - the 'GR'. The GR tracks are quite famous and go through France, Italy, Belgium & Holland. It was a really simple yet effective way of marking out a track (Australia could learn something here). All you do is follow a series of red & white flashes on trees/posts/buildings. They also have some other markings for local tracks, as well as for mountain bikers.

Directional markers

We started at les Planches-pres-Arbois, and managed to do a bit of exploring of the surrounding area when we arrived on the first day. Most notably lots of waterfalls, including at our hotel - a converted watermill.

Claire at Cascade le tufs, just behind the hotel We began our first day of walking with a trip to the nearby Grottes des Planches (caves), where we took the guided tour. A bit more understanding of the language would have been helpful for us, but the formations inside were quite stunning anyway. The rest of the day was spent travelling through the quaint and picturesque villages of Mesnay, Arbois, and Pupillin on our way to Poligny (18kms). There are many opportunities to sample the local wine and cheese but little in the way of supermarkets for food!!

Bridge at Arbois

On our first 'rest day' we decided to get up into the hills behind Poligny. The area is surrounded by limestone cliffs and while Claire elected to remain at the bottom of the ladder Steve headed up with the camera and found a cave.

We also took the chance to find out about cheese making with the focus being on the local Comte which is only produced from the high fat milk of the local Montpelier cattle. We had noticed during our walk that there were a lot of pastures but hardly any cows grazing. Each cow has to have at least 1 hectare of land to itself to graze on!!! No wonder they all wear bells, the farmer wouldn't find them otherwise. It was also interesting to discover that the farmers of each village unite to produce their own cheese.

The landscape that we were walking over changed all the time from vineyards as far as the eye could see, to pastures, to forests to rocky cliffs. The villages all had building that were hundreds of years old and covered with bright flowers. Many of the windows had a thermometer hanging as well as the window box. One notable area was Chateau-Chalon which has been recognised as 'un des plus beax villages' (We think this means a really pretty village).

View of Chateu-Chalon as we left through a vineyard

Apart from the musical cows we came across hundreds of these big fat orange slugs. At times it was tough to avoid standing on them.

Another notable feature of the entire area were the religious shrines alongside the roadside or just popping up along the track deep in the forest. While walking around the village of Passenans we found this altar in a cave with the stations of the cross weaving there way up the mountain behind. There are regular services held there as well.

Grotte Notre Dame de Lourdes

The weather was pretty good for the most part, (storms most nights), until the last day. With about 2hrs of walking still to go the rain set in. Not only that, but the 2 big black dogs protecting the farm we were walking through decided to make their presence felt. A few nervous moments, but they were only interested in playing and accompanied us down to the next village when they proceeded to attack cars driving back towards the farm.

The investment in trekking shoes and hiking pants was definitely worth it and something we will consider doing again, maybe in Italy or Spain or Scandanavia or...... Oh and just so no one forgets what we look like we have included the self portrait as well.

Au revoir