Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

French ports of call

Tuesday, April 18th, 2006

76We stopped off in La Rochelle last night, partly because it is nicely en-route from Bordeaux to St Malo and partly because, having been the subject of our French text books (not to mention the home of my French teacher) it was somewhere we felt we had to see. We didn’t have long to look round but the area around the Vieux Port is certainly very picturesque – whether it would remain so in the height of the tourist season is another question. If nothing else though, the locals were happy to let Christine try out her French on them without immediately resorting to English.

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Victory in France

Monday, April 17th, 2006

64Today saw the exciting climax of our Easter holiday orienteering with the third and final day of the 3 jours du Sud-Ouest taking place on the coastal dunes west of Bordeaux. Going into the chase I was lying in second place on H21A by 1:49 having won the second day with an (almost) clean run. In third place was Matthias Mahr over whom I had a five-minute lead.

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Greek dining

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

Conveniently the project leader for the education I have been delivering in Raleigh this week also runs a Greek restaurant with her husband. Xios proved to be a very stylish venue. Phil and I shared the Nenita option off the specials menu which was both extremely appetising and very filling.

Oslo outing

Thursday, March 9th, 2006

39Work took me to Oslo this week. Having booked the hotel at the last minute the only remaining option at the IBM rate was the Quality Hotel Mastemyr. This turned out to be some 6 miles south of Oslo so I decided to hire a car. Fortunately, Hertz decided to give me a nice Toyota Rav 4×4 as, in my attempt to find the hotel, I visited some very snowy back streets. Eventually I admitted defeat and asked at a service station only to discover I was just one mile from where I wanted to be. Having looked at the map since I still can’t work out where I went.

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A day at the races

Wednesday, September 21st, 2005

Had a trip to Goodwood race course today courtesy of my employer. Having seen nothing larger than dogs racing before it was quite awesome to see these powerful beasts up close in the paddock. We didn’t spend much time in the stand as it was much more exciting to be right up at the rail as the horses thundered passed. The course even lays on a minibus out to the start so that you see the pre-race preparation.

Having lost my first bet I then proceeded to win in five out of the six remaining races. I was hedging my bets each way though which, combined with small stakes, meant I was only about £15 up at the end of the day. Still, with work paying for transport, food and drinks the day was definitely a winner!

Mourne Mountain Marathon

Monday, September 19th, 2005

23Having not gone to the Saunders this year because it was on the far side of the Lake District, it seemed a bit strange to decide to head over to Northern Ireland for the Mourne Mountain Marathon but the temptation of £0 flights from Southampton with flybe was too great. Even with a three hour flight delay it probably still took us less time to get to Belfast than it would to Ennerdale!
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Czech orienteering failure

Sunday, September 4th, 2005

Yesterday we went to the middle distance orienteering event that Petr was controlling for his club OK Jilemnice. It was a national competition for elite competitors and a regional competition for others. We had both entered elite. The area (called Omega after the building on the map) was steep and littered with rock features. This didn’t bode well for me as I’m not the most aggressive of runners at the best of times. With 23 controls any navigational errors soon added up. Suffice is to say that I ended up ten minutes down on the rest of the elite field and even Christine was two minutes behind the penultimate runner on her course.
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North Bohemia

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

After the bustle of Prague it was nice to be taken out in to the countryside by our Czech friends Petr and Petra. It was a three hour train ride out to the village of Studenec where we have been staying with Petr’s family. Try getting any train journey in the UK for £2 let alone one for three hours! Yesterday we visited Petra’s home town of Hrádec Králové and then stopped briefly at Nove Mésto enroute to the fantastic sandstone rock formations at Adršpach.

Today, Petr was busy preparing for tomorrow’s event so we took the bus North with Petra to the Giant Mountains. We walked along the ridge from Å pindlerův Mlýn and up to Sněžka, the highest mountain in the Czech republic. It was then a bit of a sprint back down the valley to catch the last bus back.