Friday Flickr – Prague

A few days in Prague whetted my appetite for Eastern Europe.

It’s a few years since I visited Prague. I had a few days there over the Easter holidays and managed to pack an awful lot in. Although I know Western  Europe fairly well, I’ve spent very little time in Eastern Europe. Probably because when I first travelled in Europe all those years ago, I avoided Eastern European countries because they all required visas. Since then, they were never really on my radar.

Prague was a great introduction. As well as being a beautiful city, I found it easy to navigate and reasonably priced. I discovered some great museums, gorgeous architecture and a fascinating (and ultimately horrific) Jewish history.

Memories of communism are never too far away, but it struck me how quickly people had moved on. The huge McDonald’s outside the Communism Museum being one example of ‘then and now’.

My short sojourn is Prague whetted my appetite for Eastern Europe, but it’s now several years later and I still haven’t done anything about it. Looking back through my photos and reliving my memories makes me realise how remiss of me this is.

Click on the image below to access the Flickr album.

Prague

Ferry Across the Mersey

A WWI re-enactment, a ride inside a work of art, an iconic journey and a visit to a spaceport. Who knew a ferry across the Mersey would include so much!

Everyone must have heard the Gerry and the Pacemakers’ song Ferry Across the Mersey. But do you know any more than that one line? I didn’t until I found this Youtube video of their 1965 Top of the Pops appearance.

Why am I suddenly interested in this old song? Well, because this weekend I finally took the ferry across the Mersey.

Dazzle ship

I’ve been to Liverpool many times and always enjoy walking along the waterfront. But I’ve either not had the time or the ferry schedule hasn’t fitted in with my day, to be able to make this iconic trip.

Liver Building from the water
Liver Building viewed from the ferry across the Mersey

This weekend, with a friend and her 7 year old son who loves boats coming to visit, I was determined. We googled the ferries and found out that the commuter ferry doesn’t run on the weekend so we’d have to take a ‘cruise’ instead. It’s more expensive, but travels a bit further than necessary up and down the river enabling passengers to see more and spend longer on board.

Liverpool from the water

There’s also a commentary which I don’t know if you’d get on the commuter ferry. This actually made no difference as we spent most of our time on deck and so couldn’t hear much of it anyway.

Liverpool from the water

The ferry departs Pier Head on the Liverpool side of the river on the hour and makes two stops on the opposite bank. The first leg of the journey took 2o minutes and we disembarked in Seacombe.

Dazzle ship
All aboard the Dazzle ship

We’d paid a bit extra for our tickets to enable us to visit the Spaceport, but really didn’t know what this was or what to expect. It turned out to be well worth doing.

Two floors of exhibitions on the solar system, the universe and life of an astronaut with lots of buttons to press and experiments to perform kept us entertained for some time.

Spaceport

When we arrived we were just in time for a 25 minute film in the strange cinema where the seats are reclined and the film is projected onto the domed ceiling. The film was quite interesting – I learnt how astronauts start practising for space by wearing their bulky, clumsy spacesuits and diving into special pools where they are weighted in the water just the right amount to replicate the zero gravity found in space. They then have to perform the sorts of tasks they may need to do on space walks on replica space equipment – but the quality was poor. The colours looked very faded and it was hard to tell what some things were. My friend had seen the same film only recently in Winchester and said how much better it had been there, as there the colours were really vibrant.

The film had been included in the admission as was a ‘space ride’. This was a mock rollercoater ride through space. The carriage shunted from side to side and forwards and backwards as the ‘route’ was projected onto a screen in front of us. Although it sounds cheesy, it was quite effective and we enjoyed the 4 minute ride.

view from spaceport
Room with a view in the Spaceport

Leaving the Spaceport, we had about half an hour to wait for the ferry and so sat in the cafe with an ice cream and walked a little way along the river taking photos of the dramatic cityscape across the river.

Liverpool from the water

Back on the ferry, I took the time to read some of the information in a special exhibit explaining why the ferry was painted in such dazzling colours.

Dazzle ship

It was dazzling because it had been painted to replicate the Dazzle ships of the First World War. Dazzle ships were naval vessels that were painted in a array of brightly coloured zigzags and stripes to break up their silhouette on the horizon and thus confound the Germans. Ships painted in a solid block of colour stand out against the choppy sea. These days, with radar, it wouldn’t make any difference, but back then when ships had to be sighted for anyone to know they were there this gave our navy quite an advantage.

Dazzle ship

The Dazzle ferry is part of the First World War centenary commemorations and was designed by artist Peter Blake. I’ve always liked his work and loved the idea of being able to experience one of his works from the inside!

Leaving Seacombe, the ferry sailed to Woodside 10 minutes away. Here there is a U-Boat exhition which is included in the cruise ticket price, but we’d run out of time and it was about to close. Instead we stayed aboard and travelled the final 20 minutes back to Pier Head.

Liverpool from the water

Was it worth waiting so long to get the ferry across the Mersey? Definitely, because I got to do it on the Dazzle ferry (which is only going to be like this for a few months) and experience a Peter Blake work of art in a unique way.

As for that song? I was humming it in my head all the time I was on board. But only that one line. At each stop the ferry played it over the tannoy as we arrived and then departed, but they only played that one line too!

Beetles and the Liver Building
Bumped into these fellas just after leaving the ferry. I believe they were quite famous for their music in Liverpool too.

 

Who Moved My Cheese?

What would you do, if you weren’t afraid?

By Dr Spencer Johnson

book coverI put this on my Amazon wishlist recently as I’d read good reviews of it. Lo and behold, the very next time I went into a charity shop, there it was sitting on the shelf. Of course I had to buy it.

I was quite surprised by how thin it is. And it has quite a big font size. And a lot of the pages are simple illustrations (of a piece of a cheese with a slogan written on it). And some of the pages are taken up with the foreword, reviews, an ‘about the author’ page … you get the picture. Continue reading “Who Moved My Cheese?”

Friday Flickr – Lighthouses

This week’s Friday Flickr is all about those sentinels of the sea; lighthouses.

There’s something that always looks special about a lighthouse. They add such a dramatic finishing touch to a landscape or seascape. I like the stories that surround them – why and how they were built and what life was like by the keepers who lived in them. If I get the chance, I’ll always walk out to one and, if possible, climb to the top.

Although I’ve seen lighthouses in many places, most of the ones pictured in this week’s Friday Flickr are to be found in Scotland. And if you want to know any more about them, I highly recommend Bella Bathurst’s The Lighthouse Stevensons. She weaves the story of the amazing engineering feats of the Stevenson family in a way that reads almost like fiction. I had to keep reminding myself that this was all true.

My favourite lighthouse of all has to be Muckle Flugga of course. It sits at the top of the British Isles and can be seen from Hermaness on the north coast of Unst, my favourite island in my favourite archipelago. A walk from the small car park out over the moor, dodging diving bonxies (Great Skuas), heading left to see (and hear and smell) the magnificent gannetry, then backtracking and going right to find a spot to sit among puffins and gaze out to sea knowing Muckle Flugga and the nearby rock of Out Stack are the last land until Antarctica, has to be on any ‘best walks’ list.

Click on the photo below to access the Flickr page.

Lighthouses

Friday Flickr – Millesgården

Sunshine, sea and sculpture. A great way to spend my first day back in Stockholm.

For this week’s Friday Flickr I’ve returned to Sweden.

Millesgården, just outside of city centre Stockholm, is the former home of sculptor Carl Milles.

His house is now a gallery for sculpture and artwork. Best of all, the beautiful grounds, running down through terraced levels from the house to the sea, are a fabulous sculpture park.

I visited on my first day back in Stockholm when I returned from Northern Sweden. It was a hot, sunny, blue skies kind of day and Millesgården was the perfect way to spend most of it outside.

I took so many photos. I’d take a photo of a particular sculpture, then see if from a different angle or with a different backdrop and shoot a few more.

To access the Flickr album click on the image below.

Millesgården, Stockholm

 

 

Learning to be a Developed Woman

A weekend spent developing skills and learning about inspirational women.

I spent this weekend on a Women’s Development course.

I was offered a place on the course by the teaching union of which I am a member. As I’m always up for a bit of self-development I jumped at the opportunity. Of course, the fact that it was a free course and included a stay in a posh hotel had nothing to do with it!

Over the weekend I learnt the stories of many strong and determined women who stood up for themselves and other women and achieved many of the things we take for granted today. Not just the biggies, like getting the vote, that everyone’s already heard of, but things like being able to own your own bank account or get a mortgage without having to defer to your  husband and rape in marriage being made illegal. When do you think that law was passed? I was astounded to find out it was only in 1991.

As well gathering inspiration from these women we had a practical session on learning how to chair a meeting and finished with a grand finale where we were given just 15 minutes to write a powerful speech on an issue affecting teaching and then had to stand up in front of everyone and deliver the speech.

I’m used to standing up in front of people and talking, but my audience is usually much younger and less qualified than me. And most of the time they’re not listening anyway. It was a whole different ballgame to have to stand up in front of a cohort of my peers and speak passionately, articulately and knowledgeably on a topic I’d only had 15 minutes to prepare!

As I’d quite like to have a go a public speaking, whether it’s as a motivational speaker or just trying to flog my book (if I ever get round to finishing it), I felt that this was a really worthwhile activity.

But as well as getting to hone some important skills, learning a lot about inspirational women, eating good food and sleeping in a posh bed, I also got to meet some interesting and fun women and now have an email network to keep in touch with.

I’m well and truly developed.

Friday Flickr – Puffins Galore

Puffins have got to be cutest birds ever. I can spend hours sitting and watching them.

For this week’s Friday Flickr I’ve decided to go with a theme rather than a place.

And for my first theme, I’ve chosen puffins.

Puffins have got to be the cutest birds. With their colourful beaks and soulful eyes, to say nothing of their clumsy gaits and comical crash landings, how can anyone not love a puffin?

The best place I’ve found to see puffins is Shetland. There are two huge colonies; one right at the bottom of the islands at Sumburgh and the other right at the top at Hermaness on Unst (my favourite island).

Sumburgh is the easiest to get to as it’s on the Shetland Mainland (main island) and is easily drivable from Lerwick. You can even get a bus if you don’t have a car. I say easiest to get to, but it still involves getting to Aberdeen and then a 12-14 hour ferry journey before you even get to Lerwick.

Unst is a little trickier (but so worth it), as from Lerwick you have to drive to the top of the Mainland, get a 20-30 minute ferry over to the island of Yell, drive for 30-40 minutes to the top of Yell, get another ferry for 10-15 minutes over to Unst, drive as far as you can to Hermaness at the top of Unst (half an hour or so), then walk across the boggy moorland for around an hour (dodging skua attacks) to get to the most northerly bit of coast in Britain.

Looking out from cliffs there are a couple of bits of rock that belong to Britain (Muckle Flugga and Out Stack), but that’s it. No more land. You’d have to keep going until you reached Antarctica before you  hit land again.

Hermaness is well worth the effort of getting there. Not only do you get to see Muckle Flugga lighthouse (of Shipping Forecast fame), have the overwhelming sense of being on top of the world and sit among hundreds of puffins, but you get to experience a ginormous gannetry.

Puffins might be the cutest birds, but gannets are my all time favourites. They’re just so sleek and skillful as well as stunningly beautiful to look at.

The gannetry is a massive assault on the senses – the sheer number of birds, the sound, the smell – about the only sense not being assaulted is taste, though I’m sure that could be fixed just by breathing in through your mouth.

But back to puffins. Sit on the grass on the cliffs at either Sumburgh or Hermaness and you will have puffins pop up out of their burrows and crash land on the grass all around you.

They spend most of the year at sea and only come back to land when they breed. This means there’s quite a limited season to see them. They start arriving around April and have pretty much disappeared by early August.

I can sit for hours just watching them or snapping away trying to get the perfect photo. The photograph I really want to take is of a puffin with a mouth full of sandeels, but so far I’ve never managed this.

So I have a reason to keep going back. Not that I need one.

Click on the image below to access the Flickr album.

Puffins

 

Friday Flickr – Fair Isle

For this week’s Friday Flickr I’ve taken myself back to Fair Isle.

This tiny island was only known to me from the Shipping Forecast and the jumpers of my childhood. I’d also heard that visitors could stay at a bird observatory and I’d never stayed at a bird observatory before, so of course that appealed.

I drove for around 6hrs to Aberdeen, then took the overnight ferry to Shetland. Fair Isle lies in the North Sea between Orkney and Shetland and we passed it on the 12 hour ferry journey. Once in Lerwick, I had to backtrack by driving to the south of the Shetland mainland and taking the small mailboat, ‘The Good Shepherd’ 4hrs to Fair Isle.

It was worth it.

I stayed in the newly rebuilt bird observatory and spent my days wandering the length and breadth of the island in glorious sunshine.

Click on the image below to access the album.

Fair Isle

 

The Challenges of Setting Up a Website

Completing this challenge is going to be a much bigger achievement than I’d expected.

I’m learning so much.

That’s me putting a positive slant on things.

I’ve had two weeks off school for the Easter hols and I’m ready to go back just to have a rest. Or at least a break away from my laptop.

Before we broke up for Easter I began seriously working on setting up a website – one of the challenges from my 60 Things To Do Before I’m 60 list. I read lots of posts on the internet and other people’s blogs on how to do this and it all seemed quite straightforward.

Well, that part was.

I invested in web hosting – I’ve gone with Bluehost – and then installed WordPress.org and imported my blog from WordPress.com. All of this was straightforward and although a few of my posts have missing photos or photos that have lost their alignment, it was mostly fine. Much better than I expected.

Then the fun started.

I tried to change the theme. After trying lots, I eventually ended up with the bog standard one that comes with WordPress because none of the ones I tried would display properly. I’ve read that this can just be because they’re in ‘preview’ and it can be different when you go live, but so far I haven’t been brave enough to risk it.

I don’t mind the theme I’ve got at the moment, but it’s not the slick professional look I really wanted.

Next I signed up with Travel Blog Success. I’ve thought about this for a while and the timing was right. And they were having a sale.

Travel Blog Success comes recommended by a whole plethora of travel bloggers I follow. Most of them are affiliated with the course and earn money off referrals, but even bearing this in mind it seemed like a good thing to be part of. Even if only for the networking opportunities.

I only found a couple of negative reviews and they were by people who admitted they hadn’t joined or taken part and so were giving their opinions based on what they assumed it would be like. I disregarded these.

I’ve signed up for the main course and already I feel like I’ve learnt a lot. Even if most of what I’ve learnt is how much I need to learn.

Although my website should be backed up on the main server of my hosting company, it’s better to have a second personal backup as well. I also need to install extra security and firewalls, set up a password vault, change the admin address to one hackers won’t be able to find, install and set up Akismet to stop spam, get an email address to go with my site … the list goes on.

I’ve been trying to do all of these things and finding myself getting frustrated when things don’t work properly. Some of the programmes I’ve tried to install haven’t downloaded properly or I’ve had messages saying they can’t be opened or file extensions are corrupted, blah, blah, blah.

I’m sure if I was more computer savvy I’d get all of this figured out much more quickly. As it is, I consider myself to know a lot more than the average computer user who just surfs the internet and uses basic Word and email, so I can’t imagine how they would go on trying to do this. I like a challenge though and I’m going to feel much prouder of myself once it’s done than I would if I’d sailed through it.

And I mean what I said above; I’m learning a lot!

As well as setting all this up, I’ve been trying to finish the many, many posts that I have sitting in drafts. I’m enjoying going back to them and reminiscing and I’m enjoying all the writing. It is time consuming though.

I spent the first part of my first week off work working non-stop to try to get as much done as possible. Then over Easter I was at a conference for 5 days. The conference was heavy going; long days and lots of concentration needed. Instead of relaxing once I got back to my hotel room in the evenings however, I was spending several more hours on my laptop working. Now I’m home and working flat-out again.

Even though I’m working so hard on it, I’m really enjoying what I’m doing. So when I say I want to go back to school for a rest, I actually don’t. I’d rather stay at home and do this. If it wasn’t for those pesky bills needing paying I’d quite happily give up the day job.

I was hoping to go live with my website before I went back to school, but now I know it won’t be ready. Not only do I have to finish sorting out the security, but I also need to get my head round Google Analytics. I’ve opened the lesson on this and immediately closed it again. One thing at a time.

I do know I don’t want to go live until it’s set up though, as I want to be able to capture accurate data right from the beginning.

Once it’s done and I go live I’ll feel such a sense of achievement when I tick this challenge of my list.

In the meantime, this is one more post that I’m writing that no-one will actually see for a while.

Friday Flickr – Chania

Friday Flickr – this week I’m reminiscing on Chania in Crete.

It’s almost a year since I went to Crete for Orthodox Easter. I travelled around Western Crete for a few days ending in the busy town of Chania with it’s picturesque Venetian Harbour.

Chania seemed to have a bit of everything: an old town with winding, narrow streets; a new modern town; a backdrop of snowy mountains; sandy beaches; nice restaurants and tavernas; feet-feasting fish; a market; an old Jewish synagogue and Armenian built mosque, and of course THAT harbour.

It’s a place I’m sure I’ll return to.

Click on the photo below to access the Flickr album.

Chania, Crete