Climbing the Roaches

A panorama across the idyllic peak district landscape from The Roaches

On the Friday afternoon we headed north to Leicester to spend the weekend with our old friends Linda and Bernard Spies. We immediately set off to the Peak District with the intention of climbing in an area called The Roaches. We camped in a beautiful field below a lovely rocky formation called "Hen Cloud" and set up camp while being molested by the most persistent midges we had ever encountered.  Midges in South Africa are annoying - here in the UK the are vicious and bite - hard!!! Soon our faces were covered in mosaics of red midge bites and we cooked and ate while walking in circles to try and keep them off!

The walk to the Roaches was made all the quicker by the cloud of midges following us.

Team Spies as we prepare for the first climb of the morning.

We had brought our climbing kit to the UK with us thinking we'd be on rock a fair bit, but as it turned out we barely encountered rock at all either due to limited transport options or the consistent rain we had experienced. Linda and Bernard are keen climbers and this was to be only their second climbing trip of the year! We made up for it though on the Saturday morning with a number of routes. Climbing in the UK is however quite different to at home. Whereas most climbers in Cape Town would consider themselves sport climbers, i.e. they clip into protection which has been pre-drilled into the rock, in the UK sport climbing is frowned upon and most routes are traditional routes - whereby the lead climber places mechanical protection devices into the wall as he is climbing - and the second climber removes these as he climbs. The protection has lovely names such as cams, hex's, nuts ad friends.  We were climbing on Gritstone which is like a combination of the features of sandstone with the texture of granite, and then covered in wet slime and moss for good measure (this is the UK after all). It was really fun climbing and though the walls weren't necessarily high we could link up to three pitches together making for some fun routes.

The gritstone was a wonderful refresher course on trad climbing. Very featured rock with lots of protection options at reasonable grades.

Linda and Bernard sometimes let a wookie get between them... 

Team du Toit

The UK grading system also took a bit of getting used to. Routes are graded not only on technical difficulty of the moves, but also on the availability of protection, or lack thereof, and also the exposure (to wind, elements, or open space below you). Their grading was termed from Moderate, to Difficult, to Severe, to Very Difficult Hard Severe which apparently is much more difficult than Hard Severe. Geoff wanted to lead, but was clueless as to the actual difficulty of the routes on a South African basis and we established after a few routes that he could climb up to Severe which was probably a grade 16 in South Africa…??? Anyways we had a wonderful weekend of climbing with great old friends in a most idyllic countryside setting. 

Some of the belay points had amazing veiws! - Bernard

Geoff deftly working loose the moss where he wants protection to go!!!

The stunning Don Whillans Memorial hut set in the 'enchanted forest'. Don Whillans was a  top climber in his day and was famous for a number of first ascents. He is however also known by many climbers as the inventor of the Whillans Harness, or "Ball-breaker" as anyone who has ever had the privilege of using it can attest. Harnesses have thankfully come a long way since then!

Beautiful!!!

The belay stances can get lonely at times...

We actually saw this scene...!

Bristol - Showcasing Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel is one of Geoff's engineering heroes. The son of Mark Brunel, already a well respected engineer himself, he cut his teeth in construction building his father's design for the first tunnel under the Thames.  By the age of 24, and needing to establish his own reputation as an Engineer, he boldly entered 4 designs in a competition for a long span suspension bridge over the river Avon in Bristol. 

The Clifton Suspension Bridge

His designs were commended, but ultimately rejected by the appointed adjudicator, Thomas Telford, as the spans were "unrealistic" and "unstable". ( Telford - reputedly the greatest engineer of his generation had recently experienced the failure of one of his bridge designs and was cautious of ambitious spans). Brunel however, undeterred, re-designed the bridge, narrowing the span to meet Telfords requirements and challenged the competition administrators to reconsider. They did and his design was chosen.  Building commenced on what was at the time the largest ever span and the highest suspension bridge in the world, but due to delays (wars, lack of funding, etc), Brunel would never see it completed.  The bridge (known as the Clifton Suspension Bridge) between the suburbs of Clifton and Ashton now stands as a monument to him and remains impressive both in its size and height above the river.  Nowadays with our modern materials we have bridges with much larger spans, but Brunel's bridge was far ahead of his time.

The steel work is impressive, and innovative considering high tension steel was not yet available.

There are pedestrian walkways over the bridge and a great info centre.

Continuing with Brunel, the next day we headed down to the SS Great Britain - a large steam/sailing ship.  

Brunel designed her for the Great Western Steamship Company to run between England and the United States and to tie in with the extensive road and rail network that the Great Western Rail Company was developing. (Brunel incidentally also designed much of the rail network too.  The SS Great Britian was designed to be one of the biggest paddle steamers in her day and Brunel used many breakthrough technologies on her such as a hull made of overlapping steel plates instead of wood.  In 1840, more than a year after construction on the SS Great Britain had commenced a small wooden steamer called the Archimedes called in at Bristol harbour. Brunel was so impressed with the innovative propeller system to drive her, that he persuaded the Great Western Steamship Company to abandon the paddle wheels that he'd designed for the ship and allow him to re-design the ship's machinery to work with a propeller instead. Pretty gutsy considering construction on the ship had started 18 months earlier and the new engines were already partly built!! Not only would the change delay the completion of the ship, but it would have to be completely redesigned. Brunel was absolutely convinced of the benefits of a propeller and stated the reasons clearly to his Client including a lower centre of gravity, better control when the ship was heeling, more power etc.  Brunel used contacts in the royal navy to test out different propeller designs and showcased his new propeller by setting a paddle tug and a propeller driven tug with equivalent sized engines against each other each pulling on one end of a rope.  The propeller driven tug very quickly pulled the steam paddler backwards through the water.   However, Brunel's propeller was extraordinarily efficient (similar to propellers nowadays, and the iron blades used at the time could not withstand the stresses imposed on them and damaged easily. As a result the ship's owners replaced the original propeller with a more robust and less efficient one.  On her first transatlantic voyage from England to the United States (with Brunel's propeller), she cut the paddle steamer crossing time from 31 days to just 12.   This propeller had a diameter of 4,7m and weighed 3,9 tonnes. It drove the ship at up to 12 knots - pretty impressive. 

Another impressive design that Brunel came up with, and we were very impressed by was for the rudder. Conventional rudders pivoted on the front of the rudder blade.  Brunel designed the rudder to have the stock (the pivot point) so that the area in front and behind the pivoting point were equal.  This meant that the water pressure on the rudder was balanced and so the crew could turn the rudder with much more ease.  Modern rudders work in exactly the same way as Brunel's rudder. 

We could go on about the innovated designs Brunel used on the SS Great Britain, but they're probably only interesting to the Engineers and Sailors among us. 

Work started on the SS Great Britain in 1839 and she was launched in 1843.  In her working lifetime of 90 years (she is now over almost 170), the SS Great Britain sailed round the globe, passing both the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, no less than 32 times!  She sailed both as a steamship and as a sailing ship and has worked as a passenger liner, Australian Immigrant vessel (transporting people and goods between England and Australia), as a troop carrier and as a coal store.  She has now been restored in the dock that she was built in and we can thoroughly recommend a visit to the ship and museum.  Leave yourselves most of a day though.

Lucy on the deck - she has both sailing masts and a funnel.

In the engine room.  They have set the engines to move as if they were working so you can see how they run .

The dry dock has a glass roof which they keep covered in a layer of water so that it looks like the SS Great Britain is floating.  This not only serves an aesthetic purpose, but creates a sealed environment below the waterline which they dry with big de-humidifiers and heaters.  There is quite a lot of corrosion in the hull caused by salt bonding to the steel and the only way to minimise further damage is to keep it as dry as possible.  The topsides have not been exposed to as much salt as the underside, so they can overcome the corrosion there by painting the ship above the waterline. 

Lucy always loves an overhanging stern on a sailing vessel.

Brunel died at the age of 53 from over working and was responsible for many engineering breakthroughs and new technologies that changed the world.

English friends and family - a whirlwind tour of southern England

Back to our base in the UK and we spent a fantastic day in and around Bookham.  Geoff headed off to explore the local cycling routes and ended up cycling up Box Hill which is where the Olympic Road Cycling time trial event takes place.  Lucy spent the day harvesting fruit, veg and flowers from Jenny's allotment.  It is so nice to have dinner almost entirely of produce that you picked!

Raspberries, tae berries, snap peas, beans, potatoes, black currents, more black currents, strawberries, courgettes, rhubarb and sweet peas!

Box hill getting ready for the Olympics.

We spent a night down with Maggie and Jeremy Robinson on their farm in Devon (we were there in the end of May) to catch up with them and to see Maggie for her birthday.  It was great to see their son Thomas and his fiancé Natalie again too. On the way down to Devon we stopped at Stonehenge.  Both of us were sceptical of the hype around a pile of stones, but we thought we'd better check it out ourselves.  We found it really interesting and the size of the stones is just massive!  The audio guides available provided interesting commentary on the history and building of the henges and we'd recommend that you take one walk around with one too while you're there.

The familiar stone circle.

Audio-guiding on a typically wet and chilly summers day...

The stones were just MASSIVE, some weighing ~ 45 tonns!  How they got the blocks on the top we're still not so sure....

Then it was off to Bristol to see Jessica Robinson and explore the city a bit (see blog on Bristol and Brunel).  Bristol is also home to Banksy (a very elusive graffiti artist, whose identity remains a trade secret). He is famous for his distinctive black and white street art which now appears all over the world - but is particularly evident in Bristol.  We were lucky enough to find at least two of his pictures while we were in town.

One of Banksy's murals. Another "artist" took a paint-gun to it...

There were public table tennis tables set up all over Bristol.  It was such a novelty for us that we had to have a game even though it was raining!

The distinctive Radcliff Camera

Oxford was our next stop where we stayed with Louise Robinson (yip - the whole family!) and enjoyed exploring the town.  One of the highlights for us was the tour of the ancient Bodlian Library and Evensong at Christ Church College. We met up with Guy and MJ Axelson for a lovely dinner and to meet their chickens :)

The gargoyles were brilliant!

The stairs up to St Mary's church tower were well worth it - the view was stunning.

The bridge of Sighs

The school of Divinity beneath the Bodlean Library. It was also shot as the set for the infirmary at Hogwarts School as part of the Harry Potter series. Look familiar?

Dinner with Guy and MJ.

The weekend saw us meeting up with Bernard and Linda Spies (mountaineering friends of ours from South Africa) in Leicester before heading out to the Peak District to go climbing. Our wonderful Peak District climbing trip is documented in our next blog "Climbing The Roaches".

On our way home we walked the brilliant maze at Clivendon Estate (a National Trust property) before having tea with Andrew Mitchell (Lucy's cousin) in Maidenhead and dinner with Karina Haines (one of Lucy's good sailing friends) in Northwood.

The maze was a-maz-ing!

We enjoyed the bird sculptures in the gardens.

Our last two and a bit days were spent in and around Bookham, mostly sorting though our things and packing up.  We did however get out to see the chocolate boxy, quaint town of Shere, explore the impressive Clandon Manor House and Hatchlands Manor House - both National Trust houses.  Clandon is an architectural masterpiece featuring a double volume marble entrance hall with life size friezes of people emblazoned onto the ceiling. Its collection of 18th century furniture had been bequeathed separately to the national trust and included beautiful furniture with inlaid designs, the detail of which we had never seen before, and a bizarre collection of china figurines and birds - impressive but we're not sure we're going to start our own collection any time soon.  Clandon was the family house of the prominent Onslow family, 3 of whom were speakers in parliament, and we enjoyed 'spotting' two de Laszlo portraits (see blog in April on "London - Friends, culture and tubes).  There is also an authentic Maori meeting house in the garden complete with wooden carvings and mother-of-pearl inlays.

Shere all decked out in British bunting.

The entrance hall at Clandon

Hatchlands is completely different and the National Trust inherited an empty house.  This they've rented out to the Cobbe Family as their residence and houses their personal display of artwork and Mr Cobbe's piano collection.  Visitors are allowed access to the ground floor only during certain hours each day to see the items.  In amongst portraits of famous people and by famous people is an original painting of William Shakespeare (the one of him in a dark jacket with lace collar and a goatee) and of his only known patron the Earl of Southhampton (this portrait was thought to be Lady Norton, the Earl's grandmother, but a few years ago it was discovered that it was actually of the Earl himself!).  There was also a number of paintings by Titian and some sketches by Rembrand van Rijn.  As for the piano's - they were amazing.  We lost count, but think there were about 42 in the house and their owners ranged from Marie Antoinette, Chopin, Liszt, Schubert and Edward Elgar, (who had inscribed the works he had composed at that instrument on the instrument!) to name but a few. Geoff couldn't believe the wealth of history and heritage sitting in such a private collection. We couldn't play any of the piano's, but they do allow tours with the owner a handful of times during the year when he performs on them.

One of Chopin's piano's.

Elgar's piano with the titles of the works he composed on it written inside on the wood.

Hatchlands House.

We were very glad to be able to wrap the European part of our trip off with dinner and chocolate birthday cake for Uncle Charles's birthday. 

Cake for Uncle Charles' birthday

A very big thank you to everyone who hosted us along the way  - you allowed made this dream trip possibles for us by your generosity and kindness. We have really enjoyed getting to know members of our families and friends in their home settings.

Jenny and Charles and their dog Danny

Visiting friends: Nuenen and Billerbeck

We left the beautiful Belgian countryside with a car boot full of Belgian chocolate and beer which Geoff thought would be gifts for our next hosts. He was only partly right as Lucy wasn't keen on giving away her newly acquired chocolates!

We headed through to Nuenen, near Eindhoven, where we stayed with Willemijn and Sander and their bubbly son Oliver. Willa had been Geoff's host sister back in Cape Town and this is the closest he has been to uncle-hood so far. He didn't drop the child once and even tried to teach it to play the piano!

The wet and cool dutch weather kept us town bound, but we enjoyed the picturesque town of 's Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) with its lovely dutch brickwork and canal systems.

Is this what "Baby Mozart" is all about? Geoff and Oliver thrashing away at the ivories...

Willemijn and Sander with little Oliver

Den Bosch town square during a break in the wet weather

The brickwork is exquisite

The cathedral of St. Nicolas only recently completed a 20-year long restorative facelift. It is a stunning architectural work including an angel with cellphone reception to whom you can forward your messages and confessions...

Some of the spectacular flying buttresses

The leaning walls of some buildings illustrate the trying founding conditions the Dutch have to deal with -  this building had some spectacular reinforcing tendons which were simply incorporated into the facade,

Though we were fascinated by the churches we saw, they were not the focus of our travels. They are however monuments to the prosperity of towns and remain focal points for the small towns. Our next destination was Billerbeck, near Munster in Germany. Here we stayed with the Dittmar family.  Anna Dittmar and Geoff are old friends from his high school exchange to Canada.

Anna and Geoff: Some might say that they haven't changed much since high-school, although they are cumulatively a little more hairy now...

Anna introduced us to the extraordinary world of ice-cream spaghetti, beer enhanced ten-pin bowling and raclette (a german culinary experience involving grilling and frying your food at the table).

Spaghetti al fresco anyone? Anna used to work in this classically styled ice-cream parlour. Their pistachio ice-cream was spectacular.

Raclette is a very social way to eat dinner. (Verena, Geoff, Nikki, Christiaan and Anna)

We also took a cycle ride through the local countryside to visit Anna's future in-laws. A break in the poor weather made for a spectacular ride through barley fields and forest amply rewarded with waffles and sour cherry sauce - yes please!!!

Outside the local cathedral - which is apparently disproportionately large for the  town of Billerbeck.

Lucy decided that european bicycles suited her far better than her mountain bike at home.

Christian (Anna's fiancé), Anna and Geoff

Billerbeck has a strong stone-working tradition which was evident in a number of the buildings and public sculptures. 

We tried to re-create a babotie from local ingredients and it actually turned out alright - our hosts loved it!

After a lovely couple of days visiting friends, we headed back to Schipol to return to the UK for our last two weeks in the northern hemisphere.