As dgym mentioned in the previous post, I am planning on doing something fun while he's busy chucking himself off mountains in Spain next month. Since cycle-camping around the Channel Islands sounded like my idea of fun, I decided to look into it.
Unfortunately, it didn't work out as planned.
My first intention was to concentrate on visiting the island of Sark, which is a lovely car-free haven of bikey goodness and apparently rather pretty. I soon discovered that the Isle of Sark Shipping company, the means by which one reaches the island, cannot carry bicycles over from Guernsey, therefore I would have to either walk around or rent one. At about the same time, I learned that Sark is about a mile across and probably not worth devoting five days to.
So Sark became a daytrip plan. I decided to base myself in Guernsey, and explore all of the islands. Unfortunately, that plan has fallen apart since I discovered that (a) all three of the campsites I could find on Guernsey are closed until April or May. (b) most of the guest houses and hotels are also closed until April or May (c) the ferry to Alderney doesn't start up until April. Alderney has little blonde hedgehogs, and if there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's that you should never pass up on the opportunity to see little blonde hedgehogs.
So hopefully that'll be something for a little later in the year and dgym will come along too.
But it's OK - I have also found out that getting to Ireland is cheaper than I thought and it even looks like there are some open campsites and hostels in March. I've just booked my train and ferry to Dublin where I'll be spending the first and last nights (it's a full day's travel between Dublin and the south UK) and will be getting the train across to the west coast, probably to the Burren - although I don't think I'll be riding a 6ft-wide ledge along the Cliffs of Moher like these crazy people.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
A nice place to live?
We have been trying to avoid high house prices, mosquitoes , noisy dogs and unfavorable self employment laws for a while now. The further we go the easier things become financially, but it also becomes much harder to see our family and friends. We have even tried to persuade family and friends to come with us, but the response has been less than enthusiastic.
If you can't find the house you are looking for, you can always try building your own. If you are prepared to do all the work yourself and use cheap materials you could end up with a nice place like this self built house for under £20,000. Of course we would have to change the name of our blog to Bike Hobbits, but but after that we should be all set.
Early next month I am going on a hang gliding course in Spain with Steve. I am really looking forward to it, it should be a lot of fun and hopefully we will get some great photos of the scenery and not too many of hospitals.
Hel has seen enough of Spain for now, and is planning on a little cycling tour of Guernsey and Jersey instead.
If you can't find the house you are looking for, you can always try building your own. If you are prepared to do all the work yourself and use cheap materials you could end up with a nice place like this self built house for under £20,000. Of course we would have to change the name of our blog to Bike Hobbits, but but after that we should be all set.
Early next month I am going on a hang gliding course in Spain with Steve. I am really looking forward to it, it should be a lot of fun and hopefully we will get some great photos of the scenery and not too many of hospitals.
Hel has seen enough of Spain for now, and is planning on a little cycling tour of Guernsey and Jersey instead.
Monday, January 15, 2007
hats and trikes
I meant to post this before. We got awesome hats for Christmas (thanks aunty Mo & uncle Mark). Dgym's goes particularly well with the trike. Check it out.
The world's smelliest sausage
In exchange for our selection of English goodies we were sent away from Portugal with a selection of the region's finest sausages. These included some tasty Jewish alheira sausages, which like a lot of Portuguese food, were strongly flavoured but really nice (especially with olive oil and a little piri piri), and some blood sausages - which Dgym wasn't keen on but I quite liked.
The third type of sausage we took back with us was the "stomach full of ribs" - I don't know what its proper name is, but is exactly as it sounds - a pig's stomach stuffed with its ribs. In Portugal, as we observed and experienced on several occasions, they are not wasteful when it comes to pig-parts.
This is the sausage before boiling. It was dried out and quite hard. We'd had it since December, but these things keep for months.
The first step was to wrap it in foil
mmm, easter egg.
Boil in the foil for an hour and a half. They tend to cook with massive pans in Portugal, this was the biggest we had and it barely fit.
After an hour and a half of boiling, the sausage can be unwrapped. It has swollen up during cooking, and is now quite soft and squishy.
Another thing that happens during cooking is that it starts to stink. I mean really, really stink. I didn't really notice because I have a lousy sense of smell and I was working so close to it anyway, but Dgym started raising a few objections.
The stomach is just a container and doesn't actually get eaten - so now it's time to break it open to get at the ribs inside.
Mmmm...
At this point, the ribs can be eaten - or they can be roasted for 20 minutes. I tried a few - they tasted OK, very strong as expected but not as gross as they look in the pictures. I then went with the roasting option and popped them in the oven.
The third type of sausage we took back with us was the "stomach full of ribs" - I don't know what its proper name is, but is exactly as it sounds - a pig's stomach stuffed with its ribs. In Portugal, as we observed and experienced on several occasions, they are not wasteful when it comes to pig-parts.
This is the sausage before boiling. It was dried out and quite hard. We'd had it since December, but these things keep for months.
The first step was to wrap it in foil
mmm, easter egg.
Boil in the foil for an hour and a half. They tend to cook with massive pans in Portugal, this was the biggest we had and it barely fit.
After an hour and a half of boiling, the sausage can be unwrapped. It has swollen up during cooking, and is now quite soft and squishy.
Another thing that happens during cooking is that it starts to stink. I mean really, really stink. I didn't really notice because I have a lousy sense of smell and I was working so close to it anyway, but Dgym started raising a few objections.
The stomach is just a container and doesn't actually get eaten - so now it's time to break it open to get at the ribs inside.
Mmmm...
At this point, the ribs can be eaten - or they can be roasted for 20 minutes. I tried a few - they tasted OK, very strong as expected but not as gross as they look in the pictures. I then went with the roasting option and popped them in the oven.
Served up with roast potatoes and green beans (You have to eat some fairly bland food with these sausages to balance out the super-strong flavours), I only managed a couple more of the ribs before my tastebuds gave up and decided they couldn't take any more. By this point Dgym had left the building to get some non-sausagey air, and I had completely lost my appetite and was beginning to realise just how much the place stunk of sausages.
We have been trying to get rid of the smell for the last 24 hours which involved disposing of every last trace of the offending sausage, opening lots of windows, burning scented candles and baking a chocolate cake in the kitchen.
We have been trying to get rid of the smell for the last 24 hours which involved disposing of every last trace of the offending sausage, opening lots of windows, burning scented candles and baking a chocolate cake in the kitchen.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
What now?
Having seen quite a few countries last year and found that most of them have quite a few good things going for them, but still not finding the desire to actually live in any of them, we are not really any the wiser as to where we do want to live.
That's partly due to our changing requirements. We started out wanting somewhere nice and cheap where we could buy a really cheap house and live off the interest on our remaining savings. Which wouldn't be a lot, but in countries like Poland or Slovakia, it would keep us in dumplings.
Our requirements now are slightly different. We don't want a huge journey back to the UK to see our friends and families (we have decided that we don't like flying, and we only like ferries if they stay away from the Atlantic - Trains are fine though). We have tried out freelance coding over the internet, and had some success - this considerably increases our budget. We want somewhere nice and quiet where the dogs don't bark all night, and we want somewhere that people actually eat food (yes, Spain, we're looking at you). We also have really gone off cycling in flat places, it's really boring. So some hills or mountains would be great.
France is still on the list - we're looking at winter lets and will hopefully rent one for a month or so, just to see what things are like there. However, self employment is widely reputed to be extremely difficult and expensive in France, so we're not convinced about that one. It's also possible that we'll end up back in the UK. Who knows....
Anyway - whatever we decide, we've had a really cool year - we saw so many different places and had different and interesting experiences in each of them - it's a lot to take in and it's easy for any one of those experiences to get lost amongst all the others. We hope you've enjoyed following our journey, and please don't stop reading because we're not about to stop cycling.
What's next?
Among all the stuff we're hoping to do this year - finding a house, getting married, building up our games site as well as keeping the freelance work going, we will be doing some more cycling.
Our bikes will be coming with us to France, so we'll be doing a bit of exploring there - and we're hoping to do an End to End at some point this year. We're not quite sure when that will be, but you'll be hearing all about it.
That's partly due to our changing requirements. We started out wanting somewhere nice and cheap where we could buy a really cheap house and live off the interest on our remaining savings. Which wouldn't be a lot, but in countries like Poland or Slovakia, it would keep us in dumplings.
Our requirements now are slightly different. We don't want a huge journey back to the UK to see our friends and families (we have decided that we don't like flying, and we only like ferries if they stay away from the Atlantic - Trains are fine though). We have tried out freelance coding over the internet, and had some success - this considerably increases our budget. We want somewhere nice and quiet where the dogs don't bark all night, and we want somewhere that people actually eat food (yes, Spain, we're looking at you). We also have really gone off cycling in flat places, it's really boring. So some hills or mountains would be great.
France is still on the list - we're looking at winter lets and will hopefully rent one for a month or so, just to see what things are like there. However, self employment is widely reputed to be extremely difficult and expensive in France, so we're not convinced about that one. It's also possible that we'll end up back in the UK. Who knows....
Anyway - whatever we decide, we've had a really cool year - we saw so many different places and had different and interesting experiences in each of them - it's a lot to take in and it's easy for any one of those experiences to get lost amongst all the others. We hope you've enjoyed following our journey, and please don't stop reading because we're not about to stop cycling.
What's next?
Among all the stuff we're hoping to do this year - finding a house, getting married, building up our games site as well as keeping the freelance work going, we will be doing some more cycling.
Our bikes will be coming with us to France, so we'll be doing a bit of exploring there - and we're hoping to do an End to End at some point this year. We're not quite sure when that will be, but you'll be hearing all about it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)