6/21/11 Two redheads in a potato field...go figure

Warning:  Giant blog post follows this message

We have been to three different cities since our last post so it is time to catch up!  After we left the lake district we spent some time in Liverpool, which I might add, is a city that has a lot of bright character, but is also still kind of scary at night.  It used to be a very poor city, and that definitely shows in most of the town architecture and in the feel of some neighborhoods.

For those of who do not know Liverpool is the hometown of The Beatles.  There is a famous street, Mathew street, where the Cavern Club is located.  The Caver Club is a small underground bar where The Beatles made a name for themselves.  They played 241 shows in that bar and slowly rose to fame because of that place.  It was pretty busy, full of tourists I'm sure, but it felt amazing to stand in front of the stage where it all began.

We also visited Stawberry fields, which is only a closed gate now, but when they were kids it was a popular park in their neighborhood.  We managed to capture a picture of us standing next to Penny Lane on our way to strawberry fields as well.  Nothing really interesting is on Penny Lane nowadays, it is merely a street name,  but after visiting it I often wondered what significance this road had for the Beatles as kids.

On the last day we got a tour of Anfield, Liverpools famous soccer stadium.  Surprisingly enough the stadium is quite small.  Kinnick stadium is definitely far bigger.  That being the case the waiting list to get into a Liverpool game at Anfield is over a year, which is crazy because the soccer season spans from August to May, depending how well the team does that year.  The coolest fact we heard on the tour was the dual functionalitly of the soccer field.  It is part soccer field and part grave yard, minus the bodies.  Anfield is only one of two soccer fields that allow people's ashes to be spread across the grass.  Even Man U fans!

-Nathan,
onto Sarah...

After Anfield, we spent two days in Chester, a small Cathedral city about halfway between Liverpool and our first wwoofing site. The first night we stayed in a hotel for the first time, that was unfortunately in far poorer shape than any of the hostels we've yet to sleep in-even the bedbugs one! I'll apologize in the middle and in advance for all the Cathedral hubbub you'll probably read about and see in pictures from this trip, I am a medieval art history student, after all. Anyway I drug Nathan through two REALLY amazing cathedrals in Chester, and afterwards we found ourselves in the mist of the audience of a midsummer parade in the cathedral square.

Yesterday we entered Welsh country for the first time and after about 10+ tries I learned to prounounce my first Welsh word-Caersws ("Car-Sews" in a british accent), the name of the train station we had to get to where Kevin, our host picked us up and took us to our very first Wwoof site! After arriving I've been mostly baffled by the much more challenging pronunciations we've come across including the name of our little village "Llanidlous" (which begins with a "Ths" sound that is mostly a hiss) and "Aberystwyth" the nearest town.

I'm honestly a bit concerned that we're to be disappointed from here on out by our other wwoof sites because our first is so truly epic. Old Chapel Farm perches about half way down a valley in the middle of sheep-strewn picturesque Welsh hillsides and includes two stone circles, an ancient renovated chapel, an 800-year-old yew tree and the farmhouse the family lives in that dates to the 1600's. Here each Wwoofer is given their own plot of land and animal to take care of during their stay. I've been given Dylan, a motherless lamb to bottle feed twice a day and Nathan has been given a flock of 30 sheep, ten mothers and their twins to (wait for it) count twice a day and check for any sickness. We are looking after the topmost garden on the farm, which is actually fairly large and includes a small potato field and beds of many different kinds of herbs and vegetables. Nathan and I are bunking in the loft of the barn, which is quite nice minus the bugs...
After being shown our accommodations on our first day we really jumped into things by meeting our respective animals and being given the task of herding the whole of Nathan's flock into a small pen and then checking them for worms. This, my friends, involves peering closely at their bottoms to see of they, in plain terms, have just gotten over, or are currently experiencing a bad case of the runs. Once you have noticed said runs on said lamb or sheep, you then capture them by getting one person to straddle the sheep in the small pen and hold onto their horns while the other (Nathan) measures and squirts medicine down their throat. On his first day as shepherd Nathan noticed a tiny lamb looking quite unwell by the outer fence and notified Fran, our other host who took him into the sick pen. To our dismay the little guy, who is actually Dylan's twin sister, died this morning, but as is life on the farm I suppose...

Today was our first full day here and for breakfast we got to try the butter we had helped to make the previous night on our toast and had milk from the cow 100ft away in our cereal. It rained (yep) for most of the time we were in our garden, and after lunch we began preparations to cook dinner for ten strangers. During their time here each wwoofer has to cook dinner once, and on our second night here we were called upon. Having only the contents of a farmer's kitchen and little to no inventive cooking skills, we panicked a bit, but came out in the end with large portions of Tikka masala and baked potatoes to share. We have heard that during our short week here we will make cheese, dandilion wine and hopefully get to see a bit of progress in our overgrown garden. It's been a very busy day and a half and I'm sure we'll have far too much to share for one blog post in a few days. For now, did you know that a cow produces 4 gallons of milk a day and that a lamb can explode if it sucks too much air while being bottlefed? Wish us luck!

-Sarah

6/15/2011 A Green/Lakey/Rainy/Hikey Week

Today is our third and last full day in Ambleside, where we booked two bunks in a 6-bed dorm (cheap) but have been roommateless for all but one of the nights we've stayed here! It's definitely not the high season yet in this very popular European tourist spot, which means that we've gotten to enjoy both a lot of space and time to ourselves, but also lots of chilly, rainy days. But this is not to say the rain has kept us indoors. While in Ambleside we've walked around the neighboring lakeside villages, taken a double-decker bus tour of the district,  gone on a gorgeous four mile hike into the hills, taken a canoe out on the largest lake in Europe, rode a ferry across the lake to a small castle, and made a few very delicious grocery dinners in the hostel kitchen. The long hike was one of my favorite adventures so far, as halfway through we reached a set of huge caves, one filled with lime green water that were pretty eerie but really fun to crawl around. At the top of one of the lower peaks we reached we had a really beautiful view of the lake valley below (pics to come!). Being in the land of Beatrix Potter we've also spent a good deal of time admiring the wild, and not so wild, life in these parts. This includes giant Aberdeen bulls, Godzilla geese and swans, lake eels and slimy-oily black slugs. Tomorrow we move onward to Liverpool, the home city of the Beatles! Then it's just three days until our first wwoof site in  Wales, which we're very much looking forward to. We're currently thanking Gaia and our wise mothers for our waterproof Merrells, green rain jackets and thick socks and looking very forward to breaking into our real summer clothes stash once we get to the continent! Toms update: Split a toe open while on a particularly drenched treck to our Birmingham hostel. Sewing kit:1 Toms; -5

6/13/11 Day Something: Quick summary

I'm going to give you all a quick and casual summary of the trip thus far, and Sarah may add to it later.  We spent the first two days in London.  The first day we got in pretty early and had to go through customs and get all our bags so by the time we did that and trained to our hostel it was about early afternoon.  Checked into our hostel and walked around our small suburb of London, got a feel for the place, and had an early night.  The second day we were super tourists and rode on the London Eye, took pictures on it, that was pretty cool.  Walked around Parliament and Big Ben, and around Westminster Abby and such, and saw the British Museum.  Parliament is really an awesome looking building in person.  Anyway that was pretty much those two days.  We got pretty good at riding the tube, which is just an underground train aka a subway, only way nicer and not sketchy at all.  Then we left for Birmingham.  I liked Birmingham a lot.  The city was very industrial and looked very old and you could tell the buildings had so much history behind them, it was great.  Also, apparently the city has more canals than Venice.  They are not as BIG, you couldn't gondola down a lot of them, but there are more!  Kind of interesting. However the heart of the city was very modern, and had a load of shopping.  Their main mall is called the Bullring, because back in the day that area used to be a big open market and I guess where it's built is where they killed the bulls.  Either way the exterior of that building was so cool. ( we got pics)  There was also a food festival on Saturday which was really cool.  They had a beer tent, and dozens of individual food tends marked with a country flag that indicated what kind of food it was.  I ate from an aussie tent, and got a kangaroo burger.

That night the staff of the hostel took us out to a pub crawl, for a safe way for travelers to be able to go out and navigate the city.  I didn't stay out super later but Sarah stayed until bar close.

Then we left for the lake district.  This was our FIRST navigation fail, and it didn't even involve us getting lost. We had a bus take us from Birmingham to Preston, and a train from Preston to Ambleside.  We had 30 minutes to connect these two...The only problem was the bus station and the train station are not near each other.  So we got off the buss, went to the bathroom, put on our rain gear because it was pouring, and asked for directions. We got about one block didn't know where to go next and asked for directions again.  The second person gave us way better directions, "Just go straight on this road for a while."  at this point we had about 15-20 minuets to get to the station, not really sure.  So we walked straight for about 15-20 minutes, found the station, ran to print off our tickets at what is basically an ATM machine for pre ordered tickets, got the tickets, took about five steps and the train left.  We missed it literally by 30 seconds.  So we had to sit around for a while until the next train, not a big deal, just annoying and took us longer to get there.

So now we are here in Ambleside in the Lake District and it is amazing!  Lots of big lakes and hiking trails.  Oh yeah it rains a lot here too.  It has still rained every day we've been in England thus far!  We've got a few more days in this city, so more posts to come.  Comment if you have any questions about what we've done so far!

-Nathan

6/11/11 Day 4: Water n' Politics

We've always known that the weather in the UK is cloudy, rainy and rather dismal.  However, knowing it, and experiencing it are rather different.  We have some pretty good rain gear to help repel the weather-Gortex shoes, rain coats, and both of our backpacks have a water proof cover that wraps around the bag.  That being the case I never really expected how inclement the weather is here on the Island.  We have been in London for two days, and Birmingham for two days, currently still in B-Ham. On all four days it has rained in short spurts, showed clear skies, sunshine, wind, clouds and chilly breezes all at various times.  Basically what I'm getting at is even though we have been prepared, we are always somewhat unprepared. Let me elaborate.

Yesterday was fairly nice out when we went off on our way to Birmingham.  The sun was mostly out, some clouds, fairly warm.  We had to connect through two railways to get to an international rail station from where we were in London.  The first connection ride was probably 5 minuets tops.  We got outside and it was raining.  Since it had rained the previous days, but not THAT hard or for THAT long we figured we treck through it to the station.  It rained harder the longer we walked, and we got pretty wet.  When we got off the station it was POURING rain.  Sarah's rain coat was in the bottom of her 40 pound bag because the weather was nice a few hours ago we thought we wouldn't need it.  The ending of this story is pretty anti-climatic.  Sarah dug through all her stuff in the middle of the train station to get her rain coat, and we covered our bags with the rain shields.  I just realized at that point that you can always be prepared for something but you may never be ready for it! (Cheesey? probably...but true)

One other thing we've become aware of that I wanted to touch on briefly is how worldly Europeans are, and how unworldly most Americans are (including ourselves).  We befriended a fellow from France at our Birmingham Hostel.  We made small talk the first night, and the second night he tried to relate to us by asking questions about politics in America.  "Do you like Sarah Palin?" "Why do conservatives not like health care," But what really surprised me was how much he knew about statewide problems.  He knew a lot about the issues with Unions in Wisconsin.  I was shocked to even know he knew where Wisconsin and Iowa were, let alone individual state issues.  It was just interesting hearing him sound genuinely interested and knowledgeable about what goes on in the states.  It was pretty sad to realize how little we both knew about current French politics in return. Looks like we're moving in the right direction though.

-Nathan

6/7/11 Day 1: Bugs

Cherrio!

We arrived in London this morning, survived highly suspicious immigration officials and rode the tube to our hostel in a little borough without issue. We dropped our backpacks off for the day and discovered that navigating the subway and enjoying our neighborhood in Brent is worlds more enjoyable without 40lbs on our backs. We also developed a routine that I'm sure we'll repeat at every new hostel we visit henceforth: the bed bug check. Minutes after checking in to our first room at our very highly rated, very welcoming, clean hostel, Nathan, my knight in shining green packpacking gear, slowly peeled our white sheets back and scanned the wooden frames for telltale signs. Not only did he find a large clearly bedbug shaped half alive insect on the ledge right next to his pillow, but a small larvae in the seam of his blanket. We were quickly switched to a different room (where we will not be using our sheets), but hey, now we know exactly what these buggers (!) look like and have dodged one potential speedbump in our voyage. We had a lovely fish and chips/small grocery store dinner and are off on our first London evening.

More interesting things to come, we promise,

Sarah


PS: Here's our itinerary!

June 9-10 Sightseeing in London and staying at a Hostel in Brent, a little outside the city.

June 10th-11th Spending the weekend in Birmingham before heading to the Lake District!

June 12-15th Spending four days playing outside in Ambleside in the Lake District. 

June 6-7th Spending the weekend in Edinburgh, Scotland before heading to our first farm in Wales!

June 20-25th. Working at Old Chapel Farm http://oldchapelfarm.org/

June 28th and 29th Heading back to London to see Mumford and Sons play a concert in Hyde park! 

June 30th-July 2nd Sightsee in Amsterdam for three days.

July 3rd-5th Taking a train to Luxembourg where we'll meet up with my uncle and aunt who are living there with their three sons. They are bringing us to a a 4th of july celebration at the US embassy on Monday! 

5-6th Staying in Pisa before our second farm in Tuscany!

July 5-17th Working on "Penelope's Farm" in Tuscany, Italy.

July 18th and 18th Camping in Florence!

July 20-21st Camping in Rome!

July 22-23 Naples and Pompeii!

July 22-30th Here our plans are open, we hope to find a second Italian farm to work at, visit Cinque Terre along the coast and hopefully take a ferry to Greece for a weekend.

August 1-4th Staying in Gimmelwald, Switzerland for a few days.

August 4th-14th Open plans again, hopefully finding another farm with openings and seeing some of Germany before we fly out.

August 16th Flying home! Sarah has two days at home after this before starting school in Arizona on the 22nd, Nathan soon to follow.