The Brits & weather

Three weeks in the UK and I've fallen into the habit of the weather being the first topic of conversation.

Our first week was warm and sunny, so was the third - in fact the Daily Telegraph ran a story last week headed "Heatwave to stay...with chance of 25C today"

But the week between was wet, cloudy and the temperature struggled to a peak of thirteen or fourteen celcius. But that doesn't stop the Brits stripping off if the sun comes out. 

We were huddled in a coffee shop, hiding from the eleven degrees and howling wind that took it much lower, when several women walked by enjoying the sunshine dressed like this:

Later in the week in Devon the temp dropped even more. The car told us that in the afternoon it was eight degrees:

And a few minutes later, even though there was no sunshine, they were in T-shirts, shorts, thin blouses to enjoy the balmy weather:

Last week someone said to me that people had been complaining about the cold since about November but a day of warm sunshine and they were already moaning about the unbearable heat.

I have hundreds of photos of our trip to sort out of course and I might post a few soon. More importantly, I found a bag of forgotten photos of Dubai back in the seventies so I'll be able to do a new 'Old Dubai' post when I've sorted them and enhanced the faded ones.

And now for something completely different.

Something that's intrigued me for a long time has to do with racing camels here in the UAE.

Very big, camels.

Big, clumsy and weighing over half a tonne.

So why were the jockeys very small young boys, replaced when it was acknowledged that was an unacceptable practice by even smaller robot jockeys?

Photo life.com

This makes much more sense to me, as we do it in Australia, where we have huge herds of wild camels by the way, with a proper grown-up human jockey:

Photo Greg White

It's a rhetorical question, I'm sure there's no logical answer.

BTW, the pic is from Australia's richest camel race with A$30,000 in prize money (Dh110,000), held every July way, way, way out in the bush in far western Queensland. It's about 2,000 kilometres from the state capital Brisbane.

Just a bit of background, that gives an idea of the vastness and sparse population we enjoy in Oz. Boulia Shire covers a land area of 61,176sq kilometres and has a total Shire population of just 600 people. That's four times larger than Greater London, which has eight million people.

The town of Boulia has a population of 300 people and the other town in the Shire, Urandangie, has a population of 35.

So there's a lot of empty space.

It fills up a bit for the camel races, when about 2,000 people turn up.

And of course, it's empty apart from the 250,000 sheep and 75,000-plus cattle that are usually around the shire. The wool clip is approximately one million kilograms weight. Yep, a million kilograms.

They say the largest employer in Boulia is the Shire Council, the main role of which is the maintenance of the roads within the Shire.

I'd say there's not a lot else to look after really.

And on that camelian note I'm disappearing for a while. We're off to the UK in the morning for three weeks.  Not sure whether I'll be posting much for the duration.

Boulia Shire Council has a website - a very good one actually - that you might be interested to look at to get a glimpse of a very different lifestyle. It's here.   Info on the camel races is under 'Events'.

Downtime

It'll be quiet around here for a while - I'm off to Oz in the morning for a couple of months.

The first week or two in particular I have a lot of running around with very little time for sitting at a computer. Hopefully things will settle down after that and I'll be able to get back on here, check the UAE blogs to keep myself up-to-date and even post a few things myself.

Am I looking forward to the trip?

You betcha.

Not tempted

We usually find something new and interesting on menus when we're in Singapore, and the last trip was no exception.

Chicken feet is a standard item in Chinese restaurants but this was a new one on me:



I've eaten crocodile meat back in Oz, but I draw a line at eating the feet.

I gave these a miss too:

And much like Dubai, No Parking doesn't apply to you if you drive something like a Lambo:

Now back in Dubai and there's an interesting story in today's papers. Given our reputation for enjoying a beer or two I had to smile at reports that an Aussie's been fined for consuming alcohol.

Our football team's former captain Craig Moore pleaded guilty to consuming alcohol and was fined Dh1,000.

A back issue

Well that was a different stay in Singapore from the ones we usually have.

Arrived late Friday evening, got ready to go out for coffee mid morning Saturday, bent over to pick something up...click...yell...on the floor in agony.

A joint in the back had decided to click out of place.

Ten minutes later I could move - just about and very, very carefully.

What I needed was a wellness solutions facility* .

But it was the weekend so they weren't open.

Spent most of the weekend lying flat, then I hobbled off to the first appointment I could get, which was 8am Monday. At 9am I walked out normally, if a bit stiffly.

The joint was back where it should be.

I went back a couple of times for work on the soft tissue which had been damaged, because another eight hours sitting in a cramped aircraft seat was coming up and I wanted to get it as right as I could. It worked.

I tell you all this not for sympathy but because some of you will, I'm sure, visit Singapore some time and you might also need a wellness solutions practitioner*

Away from our usual habitat the biggest problem is always who to call, who to see, who to trust.

Make a note of the name Jackson Yong. Far East Shopping Centre, next to the Hilton on Orchard Road. I hope you never need him but if you do you can call him on 683 65896.

Singaporean, trained in Australia and he's good. Very good.



* Physiotherapist

Even quieter for a week

At the end of the day we human capital were looking for a relaxation solution going forward, somewhere that's customer-centric, offers lifestyle concepts, comfortable sleep systems, ticks all the boxes...



...we'll be in Singapore next week.

Eid mubarak all.

Back to blogging

A week in the UK, one day to warm up when we got back, then a visitor for four days so there hasn't been time to blog.

I had a quick look and deleted the infantile comments from our new troll who originally used the name 'Bruno' but now has various aliases including, inevitably, 'Anon'.

I suppose some trolls are twelve year old schoolboys who get a kick out of using obscene words, while others are older in years but not mental capacity.

Before the internet you used to see the rude words that excite them so much chalked or sprayed on walls, now they scrawl them on blogs and forums.

I'll continue to delete them of course, so their efforts are pointless.

And so on with my catch-up post.

The UK was cold. Very cold. They've had their coldest winter for decades which the scenery reflected. Late spring but the early spring flowers were still blooming:






Most days were bright and sunny but the temperature was only around ten or twelve celcius and there was a strong cold wind most of the week that made it actually much colder. Walking around was uncomfortable so driving was the real option, with the countryside looking fresh, green and beautiful:



The best thing to do was drive through the countryside and find a pub:




In the pubs the meals were warming winter comfort food - it went down well too:




And one final pic, just because I like it:

Awayaweek

The Eyjafjallajokull -postponed trip to the UK's been rearranged and we're off early tomorrow morning for a week.

Thanks to the volcano we seem to have missed the heatwave - Brits were 'basking in temperatures of 19C' then.

Now the weather forecast says 5C at night, a max of 16C for the next few days, a mixture of cloud, sunny intervals and rain showers.

My comfort is going to depend on a small foldable umbrella, the nearest thing I've got to waterproof clothing (a 'showerproof' jacket) and sweaters.

See you in a week...

The volcano wins

"Eyjafjallajokull"

Even if I spoke Icelandic I'm not sure I could pronounce the name of the volcano that's just stuffed up our travel plans.

Mrs Seabee has had two days of meetings in England later this week and, with me tagging along, planned a few days holiday afterwards.

We were due to fly out tonight but the travel ban has been extended yet again and Emirates have just confirmed our flight is cancelled.

Just my luck. I've been reading in the Daily Telegraph: "Britain to bask in spring heatwave. The south will experience a ten-day heatwave" with temperatures possibly soaring to...wait for it...*gasp*...20C.

Now we'll have to stay here where there's not a heatwave. It's only 33C today apparently.

At least it happened before we travelled, so we're not part of a reported seven million people stranded because of the unpronounceable volcano.

The Royal Navy is being called in to collect stranded Brits, and some of them will be getting a lift home on the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. I wouldn't mind that, it sounds an exciting end to a holiday to me.


Heatwave.
HMS Ark Royal.

Emirates' Aussie resort opens

One of the big stories in today's Aussie newspapers' travel sections is the opening of the Wolgan Valley Resort by Emirates.

It's about 190 kilometres west of Sydney in the Blue Mountains, a stunningly beautiful huge National Park.

The area was named because oil from the eucalyptus trees which cover the area give the air a blue haze. The air has a very nice perfume too, as you can imagine.


Photo: The Australian


Photo: Sydney Morning Herald

If you fancy having a few days there for your next holiday you'll need to start saving. The cheapest suite is A$1,950 a night, which is about AED6,000, full board and including a couple of 'nature-based activities' each day.


The Sydney Morning Herald has one of the stories, which includes some good photos

UK pics

Here they are, the inevitable holiday photos.

We only had four days in the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire but we managed to see a few things and with the ease, and no processing cost, of the little pocket digital camera I ended up with hundreds of photographs.

We stayed in the largest village in the Peak Park, called Youlgreave. Like most English villages it's nestled in a valley (an interesting opposite to Italy where they're mostly on hilltops).



The village is built from the local stone and slate, old and new buildings alike, so there's an attractive overall style to the place:




What I'm told is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's smallest detached house is in the main street.



Called Thimble Hall it's basically one room with a ladder up to a few planks which make a sort of mezzanine floor. It was once home to a family of eight.

The village has a thriving community with plenty of activities on a regular basis. By chance we were there on the weekend the Youlgreave Show was being held.

That's a typical English country show, with residents exhibiting all sorts of handicrafts and things they grow, competing for 'Best of ' certificates.

Best tomato for example...

Plenty of beautiful flowers in all sorts of categories...

And one for the kids to enter their sculptures made from vegetables...

A couple of visits to the only town in the Peak Park, Bakewell, home of the Bakewell Tart (delicious) and Bakewell Pudding (not my favourite taste).

We were there on Monday which is market day so the town was buzzing. Monday is also the livestock auction day and that's well worth a visit...

It also happened to be the weekend when the Chatsworth Show is on, held in the grounds of Chatsworth House, home of the Duke of Devonshire. It's another of the country shows that are held all over England in the summer, highlighting country activities and produce and offering all sorts of entertainment.

I was, naturally, attracted by the vintage car rally, this Jaguar being my pick of the fifty or sixty cars on show...

They had amusing demonstations too, like the sheepdogs showing off their skills herding a flock of ducks around obstacles in the arena...

Plenty of food and drink stalls...

Including of course typical traditional English items...

We spent some time driving around the countryside too. This really is beautiful country...

You come across interesting little shops in the villages, like this licensed slaughterhouse and farm butcher shop - the meat and things like sausages from this area are absolutely top quality.



There are some beautiful little villages dotted all over the Park, a typical one being Milldale:

Across that little ancient bridge and there's a beautiful riverside walk...

The weather was kind of OK too. When we were further south in Leicester for a couple of days working it rained non-stop, but up in Derbyshire we only had a couple of showers. It was generally cloudy with some sunny spells so we were able to be out sightseeing most of the time.

And that's it for a few days, we're off to Singapore this evening for Eid.


Eid Mubarak everyone.

Pub grub

As I've said before after trips to the UK, I think people are wrong to laugh at English cuisine. In my opinion it isn't the cuisine but the way far too many people cook it that's the problem.

We enjoy pubs, the atmosphere and the food, and for our four days in Derbyshire, in the Peak District National Park, we stayed B&B in this one:



They have a big menu and the item that caught my attention was this one:



Here it is - it more than met my expectations:



This went down well too:



For breakfast this was served up:



That sets you up for the day!

Not only is it cooked well, equally importantly they start with top quality ingredients. This is farming country and the meat has a great reputation. An added bonus is that the pub owners have a son who's a local butcher so they get the best of the best.

Gathering the resources

A week to go before the very partial Metro opening and they seem to have met the self-imposed deadline of 999 but only just - only ten stations will actually be operating.

In Jebel Ali yesterday they were gathering the elements together, a train on the elevated section rehearsing running through a station and a fleet of feeder buses.





And that's it for a week, we're off to the UK tomorrow morning. Three days in Leicester working and then four days relaxing up in the Peak District.

I'm not sure what we'll be able to do because the weather looks very iffy, the forecast says we'll have top temps between 12C and 17C with plenty of cloud and rain. We might have to spend a lot of time indoors, places like pubs or restaurants maybe...

Back from the English summer.

Back in humid dusty Dubai after two weeks in humid wet England.

We missed this year's English summer by less than a week, it was a sunny 31C a couple of days before we arrived. Although overall it was showery we did get the whole variety of weather with rain, showers, clouds, bright warm sunshine, cold wind. They don't give humidity levels in the weather reports but it's always unrelentingly high and very uncomfortable.

The countryside is always beautiful though and I love the history.



Not only that but I enjoy the food.

English cuisine has an unfair reputation I think, it's not the cuisine that's the problem but the way it's generally been cooked. The trend has been to overcook everything, so the veggies are soggy, the meat leathery, the fish dry.

They're coming to grips with it though and now you can get well cooked food it's demonstrating what great combinations the dishes are.

That's always been the key to the cuisine I've thought - fish, chips & peas; roast beef & Yorkshire pudding; liver, bacon, onions and mash.

We ate mainly in country pubs - steak & ale pie, venison, gammon & eggs, that sort of stuff.

The best meals of all though were home made...like this home made steak & ale pie with potatoes, peas, runner beans and broad beans which were growing in the garden half an hour earlier. Nothing tastes as good as that.



As usual I have hundreds of photos to sort through and I'll post a few of the more interesting ones over the next few days.

Two weeks without a computer, two weeks with no news of Dubai so it's into the blogs to see if I missed anything...

I'm not here

Mrs Seabee has to go to the UK on a business trip and as she can add a few days vacation to the end of it I'm tagging along.

We're off tomorrow morning for a couple of weeks. Timed perfectly to miss the heat wave and run into cold wet weather according to the forecast.

The heat wave that's caused official alerts, the media full of dire warnings, was because of temperatures as high as 32C in parts of the south-east of England, where we'll spend some time. That would have felt coolish after the high forties we've been having here, but the forecast is for high teens to around twenty celcius. So I have sweaters in my luggage.

We laugh at what they consider hot but I must say that with the high humidity they generally have, and with everything so small and cramped - not to mention just about no air-conditioning - it feels more uncomfortable than the temperature reading would suggest.

We'll have time in Cambridge, Hertfordshire and York so we'll probably have all kinds of weather thrown at us.

If we get the rain that the forecast seems to suggest we will then I may be stuck indoors and have time to get on the computer. If I do there may be an update on here.

If not, see you around July 20.

Aussie road trip

We'll be in Singapore - again - all next week, on a business trip this time though.

Before we go I thought I'd indulge myself by posting some pics of the road trip we did a few weeks back in Oz, from Sydney to Queensland's Sunshine Coast.

It's a total return journey of about 2,500 kilometres. It seems a long way for a few days, but it's not really by Aussie standards. And anyway, except in Dubai, I enjoy driving, I enjoy road trips, I enjoy the countryside.

There's a lot of this through the windscreen..



You also go through a banana growing area, then through sugar cane plantations...



There's a lot of rolling countryside too, cattle farming areas...



But always you get back to eucalyptus trees...



In the Sydney basin a lot of sandstone...

Each type of countryside lasts for a hundred or more kilometres, which can get a little boring, but there are typically Aussie country roadside shops every so often to break the monotony...

And the unique signs you see nowhere else in the world...

With those you can only be in Australia, but there are other sights you probably wouldn't expect to see there...

There's a lot of country driving, long, long spells without hitting any built up areas. The country towns are very pleasant to drive into though...

We took the Pacific Highway, as I usually do, which is the north-south coast road, most of it just a few kilometres inland. Most of Australia's population lives around the coast and there are pleasant little towns along the route.

This is Noosaville, which is up on the north of Queensland's Sunshine Coast, as far as we went...

And just under halfway between Sydney and Brisbane is one of my favourite country towns, Port Macquarie...

And of course, just about all the way there are the beaches for which Oz is famous. This is part of Coolangatta on Queensland's Gold Coast just across the state border from New South Wales...

It was a great break, not only the road trip and visiting some favourite places but catching up with friends and family.

The bushfires in NSW were under control by the time we arrived, in fact from the mid-north coast onwards there were floods.

We were visiting friends in a little town called Bellingen . Two days before we started the journey the town was cut in two and the only road in was impassable because of floodwaters. Fortunately by the time we reached there it had subsided enough for the roads to be open so we managed to visit them in their new house.

In fact apart from the first two days in Sydney when it was grey and damp the weather was fantastic. All-day sunshine, mid to high twenties celcius, clear blue sky, fresh air...