Have
I ever told you I don’t like catamarans?
In fact, I hate them with a passion!
Let
me take you back to Easter Saturday 2002.
Peter and I were visiting our late great mate Tony Clapham in
Wellington. It was literally a flying
visit with us only there for five nights.
Tony, ever the perfect host, arranged a surprise food and wine excursion
to the Marlborough region at the top of the South Island which meant
an early departure from the Interislander Ferry Terminal for our day trip on
the most shocking of days.
So
there we were, staring at the world’s largest passenger catamaran through teeming
rain in a howling gale. Tony was only a
wee chap so Peter and I kept a firm hold on him for fear he’s be blown way or
off his feet at the very least. Ever
generous, Tony had booked us into the Business Class Lounge which apparently included
a full cooked breakfast but it just wasn’t safe to turn on the stoves so we
were given a lukewarm cup of tea and a biscuit instead.
That
was actually more than I needed because I was in the toilet throwing up before
we even left Wellington Harbour which was a good thing given there wasn’t a loo
to be had 20 minutes later. People were
spewing into urinals, hand basins or just onto the floor.
Now
fast forward 18 and a bit years to Lin, John, Peter and I all tootling off to
Seahouses in Northumberland singing ‘We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday’ until
we reached the end of the driveway about four metres into our journey when the
others told me to stop or get out. We
were going to see the celebrated puffins of the Farne Islands, this being the
season and all. Now imagine the look on
my face when I saw a bloody catamaran waiting at the wharf.
“Oh joy oh bliss” I muttered to myself as I
hobbled back to the Boots Pharmacy we’d passed on the way from the car
park. “Kwells please, your largest
packet of Kwells. No, make that two and I
won’t need a bag, just serve them on a plate if you don’t mind!”
It
was a glorious day but the sea was choppy and my issue with catamarans is they
bounce over the waves rather than making the least effort to cut through them, lazy bloody boats! In fact I’m not
even sure they deserve to be called boats; most of them are just smart looking flotsam!
So
there’s me feeding the fish half my undigested order of Kwells but I
fortunately managed to keep down the second packet and the day improved
rapidly. I can thoroughly recommend
Billy Sheil’s Boat Trips although the completely unrelated line about Billy Sheilds
from Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band refused to leave my mind and that
makes me wonder (as they say in Stairway to Heaven) if it had something to do
with the overdose of Kwells. Oh dear, it’s
just occurred to me that they must have spun out those poor fish which have
actually evolved to live with chronic sea sickness!
Anyway, we made it to the Farne Islands, two of them in fact, and we saw puffins which eluded us three years ago in Iceland. That said, we did stand on the black sand beach at Vik as they pelted hell-for-leather overhead like chunky flying penguins. Whilst that in itself was an odd yet entertaining sight it was rather difficult to appreciate their colours or much else about them. Not so on the Farne Islands though.
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| Puffins on the Farne Islands |
We
had a lay day after that just to relax and have a potter about Lin’s amazing
allotment which is a couple of km from home.
Each time we’ve visited she will disappear for an hour and return
carrying a rustic basket brimming with freshly harvested produce of all kinds. I enjoy a visit to the allotment because it
gives me a chance to wander about, search the pond for newts (which I’m yet to
find) and chat to people’s chooks which always reminds me of just how much I
miss our own Girls.
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| Lin on her allotment |
Our
final full day in the North saw us take a long awaited trip across the Pennines
to the beautiful Lake District where our first stop was the Derwent Pencil
Museum in Keswick. Derwent not only made
the world’s very first pencils the have also produced the world’s largest one
and you know how I just can’t resist a ‘Big Thing’. Mind you, the Big Pencil does look a little reminiscent
of the Big Rolling Pin above Henri’s Wodonga Bakery in Victoria but I’m giving
it to the Big Pencil hands and pins down!
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| The World's Biggest Pencil |
I
never became bored during school holidays as either a kid or a teacher, in fact I don’t think I’ve
ever felt bored in my entire life, so I never looked forward to returning to
school. The one thing that made the
whole idea more bearable was the thought of a brand new tin of Lakeland
Pencils. Sadly, I have since discovered
that my Lakelands may have not been entirely genuine. Check out the small print in bottom right-hand corner of the
tin below. Lane Cove, NSW.
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| A vintage Lakeland pencil tin albeit possibly Australian |
Pencils
aside, the Lake District is just stunning and is on our bucket list for a
return visit of a few days duration at another time, either at the end or the beginning of the
season. The whole area
is quite understandably a little over loved but people were well behaved and
pleasant, there were just a lot of them.
And this, of course, is the place where Lin and John frequented folk
clubs and the like 45 years ago without ever having met one another.
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| The Lake District |
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