Land of the Lost

Hi stranger.

If you are reading this because you still check this blog, well, good news, there is more blogging goodness but it had to find a new home. It's all very complicated and had to do with trade laws between England and Denmark and a cow in Greenland named something that I think translates as 'Daisy' but... I digest.

Here is the long story: We moved to England. And now we moved to Denmark. This blog is about England. The NEW blog is about Denmark. If you take your mouse and click on this next line right here, you will find the NEW blog. Forget this one, and remember the new one:

CLICK ON ME!

The Suspense Is Killing Me

The new blog is just taking its first steps.... give it some time. Before long, it will once again be a part of your daily lives. Let's get hygge!

To find out the big winner of the new blog title, just follow this link:

WHAT'S MY NAME AGAIN?

For the last time, Cheers!

Name That Blog

This blog is just about dead -- I can't be the Kept Man in England eating Tatties and Neeps anymore if I am eating... uh, whatever they eat in Denmark.

So, readers -- the four or five of you that are left -- I need some help. I'm taking suggestions for a new blog title and description.

Something like,

Donuts Without Holes:
The Life of an Expat in Denmark

And if you don't get the reference in that title, that is fine, just watch Caddy Shack some night and it will all make sense.

Seriously -- suggestions, please! There WILL be a prize -- IF someone tops my own entry.

Cheers!

Even Dragons Have Their Ending

It's day two of moving out of the Lilacs. Last night I was thankful to still have a mattress on the floor and a fridge with food and drink. Boo concurs. The movers will pack the rest of today then tomorrow they will start loading a bigger truck. A bigger crew comes tomorrow. There is still a lot of work to be done.

All this just brings us to the end of one chapter and the start of another. On Saturday, dog and I fly off to Denmark to start phase two of our European adventures. The big difference that can't be overlooked (and wife and I agree it makes us both a bit nervous) is that we -- except for minor differences -- speak the same language here but there, well, we will be struggling to do things that here we took for granted.

Take my ongoing dispute with SkyTalk, for example. SkyTalk is the phone company that somehow took over our phone services. These jokers have overcharged us an insane amount and for reasons that make no sense, I can't cancel the service. I have written six letters, had at least 30 phone conversations, and now have an ongoing dialog with a government agency that was supposed to help (but hasn't so far.) How would I have done any of this in Denmark?

Ah, well, the movers are calling and I have to run. This blog is about done... all that is left is coming up with a new name and tagline for the new blog.

Cheers!

The Bean Innuendo

Does anyone else see something horribly wrong with these products?

This is a marketing campaign that I think may be only have appeal in the UK market. Take a moment to sit and think about the meeting where people actually came up with the idea to market beans with phallic imagery.

There can't be that many bored expats in England that buy food just because its mildly humorous and/or potentially the most disgusting thing that they have ever eaten.

But it's not just the front of these naughty cans. The entire label is covered with fake news stories, all riddled with saucy content hidden under a thinly applied gauze of innocent context. We know what's for sale here.

The fact that this advertising works here might also explain why the banana is the most popular fruit (true, that) and why you can't find Twinkies at the grocery (also true.)

These beans were, by the way, far and away better than the Hunger Breaks. The meat was much more like, well, meat, and the beans weren't nearly as mushy. I would actually get these again. I may have been reeled in by the sexy label but I was sold on the hot and steamy saucy meat taste. Ew. I just made myself gag.
Well, that's it: the last bean blog before we move on to flatter pastures.

Cheers!

Cornwall's Clotted Cream Arteries

Over the long Easter weekend, we packed into the Volvo and set out for a four day, three night tour of southwest England. Our trip took us through the county of Somerset, then Devon, to the end of the island in Cornwall and back again. Winding roads, single track lanes, and impossibly crooked roads meant that getting around here, like the rest of England, takes much longer than the navigation system in the car can fathom.

Here is a map showing our route (pan and zoom):


View Tatties and Neeps in a larger map

Since our time in England is short, we wanted to get somewhere we were afraid we would never get back to. All of the travel books remark on the climate of this chunk of England that juts out into the warm air of the Gulf Stream and has an (almost) tropical feel with palms scattered about. The area is known for some signature tastes: seafood, pasties, clotted cream, cream teas, ice cream, fudge -- most of it heart-clogging.

Day 1: Hereford to St Ives via Padstow

Stormy weather followed our drive into Padstow -- jokingly known as Padstein since the celebrity chef Rick Stein has opened four restaurants, a deli, a cafe, 40-room hotel, and a cooking school here. After parking in the most ignorantly cramped car park I have ever seen (it took a 10-point turn to fit into the spot and there was no way the guy in the Land Rover next to me was going to get his door open.) We had reservations for a seaside lunch at the simply named, "The Seafood Restaurant" -- Stein's flagship restaurant. Perfectly cooked seafood was outmatched by so-so accompanying flavors and exorbitant prices. We didn't hang around Padstow -- the wind was so strong that neither man nor dog could handle the sand getting whipped into our faces. I was happy to leave -- the place surprisingly oozed "tourist trap" and "irritated locals".

St Ives was better. We had booked a cottage at the decent Garrack Hotel for the night and it had lots of grass for the dog to explore. From our room, we had a great view of the coast and the town. That night was dinner in town at the funky St Andrews St Bistro where I had pork belly (again) and it was the best I've had yet.

Day 2: St Ives to Penzance via Lands End


In the morning, the weather had cleared and the sun was warming things up. We toured the town and visited the Tate St Ives -- a little sister to the Tate Museum of Modern Art in London. The coastal main street of St Ives was packed with chippies, ice cream shops, fudge peddlers, and about a million Easter tourists. Boo had about as much fun as a dog can have on the beach here. A pasty and some fish and chips for lunch and then we were on our way to Land's End.

I hadn't done my homework or maybe I wouldn't have been as shocked to see that Land's End was a giant gaudy theme park venue, featuring things like Dr. Who Up Close. We skipped all that to get to the coast line behind the eye-sore buildings. This is the westernest most tip of southern England. The rugged cliff walks made for some great views and the dog enjoyed the abundant rabbit "kibble".

Next stop was Minack Theater, a open-air theater built into the side of a cliff over the ocean. It is used for active productions even now -- one local told me that they perform in all but the nastiest weather. We didin't have time for a show in our schedule but they were prepping for the night's show while we walked around.

Last stop for the day was the Abbey Hotel in Penzance -- highly recommended. The place is loaded with character (windy stairs, a mix of modern and old, and rich colors) and the staff was great. We had the best meal of the trip by far at the newly opened dining room of the hotel -- a boudin noir (black/blood pudding) ravioli was one of the highlights. My dessert -- a "deconstructed pina colada" -- was in the top three best desserts I have ever had.

Day 3: Penzance to Lynmouth via the Eden Project

Saturday morning found us on our way to nearby Marazion to hike across the low-tide causeway to St Michael's Mount, a part-time island that is home to a castle and chapel. It is historically the twin of Mont Saint Michel in Normandy, France. It was also closed on Saturdays -- allowing us to walk up to the base of the hill but no further.


Next stop was the ambitious Eden Project outside of St. Austell -- a place I have wanted to visit since we moved to the UK. In the bottom of an old clay pit, two 'biomes' have been built, one of which is the largest greenhouse in the world. The biomes, one dedicated to recreating a rainforest and the other to a Mediterranean climate, are intended to provide an educational view into the importance of these climates and how what we do as humans to interact with them. The whole place is a smart, eye-opening look into things the average person doesn't think about every day.

From here, it was the neverending drive to perfectly-placed Lynmouth. Lynmouth sits directly on the coastline of north Devon, on a gorge splitting a steep hill. The hill to cruise into the tiny town was a 25% grade -- you could smell the burning brakes of all the cars just arrived into town. Another cottage was our home for the night, this time it was Shelley's Cottage -- part of the Rising Sun Hotel. The cottage is famous for the supposed stay by Percy Bysshe Shelley (famous poet) for his honeymoon in 1812. The history of the place was great but I think the couch and bedding has needed replaced since Shelley was there.

Day 4: Heading Home!

On Sunday, we had breakfast brought to the 'cottage' -- awful! Greasy fried eggs on top of toast that had been -- no kidding here -- deep-fried in what tasted like the oil from last night's fish fry. Ewwwwww. We then spent an hour or so exploring the shops and streets (all two of them) of Lynmouth. We finally tried real Cornish ice cream -- I 'supersized' mine by getting a dollop of real Cornish Clotted Cream on top. Gross. Imagine a spoon of creamy butter on top of your ice cream. We set out of town across the north coast of Devon and back to the M5 to home.



Cheers!

Gluttony For Punishment

One of the best things about travelling is getting to tour grocery stores in different parts of the world. You don't know the brands, you might not be able to read the package, and in a lot of cases you just don't have a clue what you are looking at. On top of that, you may find that the importance of certain foods has shifted quite a bit from what you are used to. Last night, I was wandering around ASDA (becoming more and more like Wal-mart every day) and noticed that the canned food section is much smaller than the USA but most of it is different kinds of beans. Frozen potatoes (chips!) occupy about 60 feet of the frozen food section. You could get lost in the cheddar cheese section. There are a lot more kinds of bacon here. You can buy off-brand Marmite. And so on. If you look, there is as much culture at the grocery store as there is at a museum.

So, back to beans. I've blogged about the Hunger Breaks products before and just how nasty they are. I know I said I wouldn't do it again but oops I did it again. I stumbled upon another variety in the store and since our days in England are numbered, I had to check it out. That can was a beast to open.

This time its, "All Day Breakfast". From the can, a tantalizing mix of baked beans, tomato sauce, sausages, button mushrooms, bacon, and the real highlight: pork and egg nuggets with cereal (this was the deal closer for me.) I was pretty excited (not really) to find that the pork nuggets had a fancy yellow egg center, kinda like a Cadbury Creme Egg.

Of the three Hunger Breaks, this was actually the best -- edible enough with a healthy covering of Vulcan Fire Salt. I was happy to find that the mushrooms weren't 'pressed and formed.' Or could it simply be that I am just getting used to bland, mushy, soggy meat coupled with bland, mushy, soggy beans? Will I miss this stuff when we go?


Only one bean blog left before... the end.

Cheers!




"Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear." - Aesop

It's All Blarney

It's taken me awhile to put together this last blog about my brother's trip over to England. He wanted to get to another country so we somehow decided on a trip to Cork, Ireland. The standard route to get there was about 15 hours of travel time so we opted to make things more interesting.

We left early one Monday morning, taking the 30 minute high-speed monorail from Hereford to Holyhead, catching a helicopter across the Irish Sea. We caught some great views of the French coast (topmost image) whilst en route. The boat we arranged met us just off the coast of Kinsale, Ireland. We made the 40ft drop into the water (cold!) and climbed aboard and made our way inland up the River Brandon. Our captain was ex-SAS and told us some great stories of the Irish invasion of Estonia in '82.


View Tatties and Neeps in a larger map

Kinsale is great little town -- so great that we decided to buy it. We named a restaurant after our third brother. We didn't eat there, though (the food sucks.) Instead we ate at the acclaimed Fishy Fish. That meal was so good we bought that place, too.

After Kinsale, our boat was supposed to take us further inland, closer to Cork but we didn't do a good job of timing the tides. Our boat was stuck.


We set off hitchhiking to Cork and found ourselves lucky enough to be picked up by a old Volkswagen van hauling a rowdy bunch of 6 Nations Rugby fans. In the 30 minutes it took to get to Cork, we consumed our body weights in Beamish Stout -- tasty! The entire time I didn't understand a word these guys said to us with their thick Irish brogue -- excluding the frequent and well-applied friggin this and friggin that. Brilliant. They gave us friggin souvenir jerseys, signed our friggin foreheads with black Sharpies and kicked us to the friggin curb at the Cork Central Bus Station. We stumbled to our hotel from there.

Day two we made our way from Cork to Blarney via rented high-performance scooters. Mike got a ticket from the local pigs -- I was too fast for that. Squeeeeeeeel.

Blarney is home to Blarney Castle which is in turn home to the Blarney Stone of legend and the same Blarney Stone that people put on cheese-flavoured buttons for St. Patrick's Day. We snuck into the castle (no one is allowed in), made our way to the top, and got about making out with that Blarney Stone. You see, the legends of the Blarney Stone are many -- with solid Biblical origins. Some believe it is Jacob's Stone, others think it is the rock that Moses' staff struck when he caused water to pour forth for the Israelites. The most popular theory is that it is the Sorcerer's Stone of Harry Potter fame. Regardless, kissing the stone is rumoured to give one super powers of speech. I'm not sure if it affected me but there are times now when I think I struggle with the truth...

More photos, less Blarney:


Cheers!

Caerphilly Cheese Steak

On our journey into Wales, we hit two major castles and crossed into Mexico.

The first stop, about 2 hours drive from home, was Caerphilly Castle -- a monster of a place sitting on 30 acres in the middle of Caerphilly, a modern town outside of Cardiff in south Wales. The place is well-known for its castle and the cheese it gives its name to. The castle is the largest in Wales, the 2nd largest in Britain (only smaller than Windsor), and is an amazing example of 13th century military technology. It was a concentric design with walls inside walls -- to get to the middle you needed to cross three drawbridges and get through 4 massive doors and portcullises.


View Larger Map

From Caerphilly, we set out for Carreg Cennen (kare egg ken in) with a planned pit stop at the Pant-yr-Athro Country Inn and International Hostel. More importantly, the guidebook we had for Wales mentioned they also served up some Mexican food. The place ended up being quite out of our way and also closed and seemingly desolate. It was hard to tell if they were actually still a functioning business. Yet another attempt to find decent Mexican in the UK has failed!


From there, we finished the trek to Carreg Cennen -- a castle in by far the most dramatic location I have seen in Great Britain. Perched atop a high hill in the middle of rural Wales, it is quite a sight to see.

The castle actually sits in the middle of private farm land, surrounded by pastures of roving sheep. The hike up to the castle is a leisurely 30 minutes. The side of the castle opposite the winding hill approach is a limestone precipice that drops sharply down into a quiet brook and then again into more farmland.


View Larger Map

We left about 9AM Saturday morning for our little adventure, and returned back to the Lilacs around 6:30PM that night. We guessed we spent only about 2 and a half hours not driving. The last leg, after Carreg Cennen, was a crazy trip through the tiniest, steepest, narrowest, hedge-encroachedest, farm-vehicle obstructedest roads I had been on here yet. I was glad to get out of the car when we finally made it home!

Here you go, mum: more pictures!



Cheers!






“The Castle Aaahhhgggg - our quest is at an end.” - Month Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail (1975)

The Revolution Was Not Televised

Mon frere and I took a day trip up north towards Shropshire -- about a 2 hour drive -- passed by Ludlow and ended up at the Iron Bridge. It's at a scenic spot with a quaint town along side the River Severn. The highlight of the town, and part of the reason its one of less than a thousand World Heritage sites worldwide, is the Iron Bridge.



The bridge was opened in 1781 as the very first iron-wrought bridge in history and is considered by many to be the symbol of the Industrial Revolution. It was near this site in 1709 that Abraham Darby I pioneered a process for producing coke from coal. Darby's grandson, Abraham Darby III, later built the bridge. The whole process meant that iron could be produced much more cheaply than before -- the process spread and brought significant change to human development and is now known as the Industrial Revolution.


View Larger Map

Since it had never been done before, the iron-wrought bridge was built using techniques from wood carpentry and used things like dove-tail joints. It was also a bit over built and later bridges covered longer spans using less than half the iron of this one. The bridge is now closed for all but pedestrian traffic.



A striking contrast to the Bridge and its surroundings, straight up the River Severn loom towers from what looks like a huge nuclear facility -- we were surprised to see it at a World Heritage Site. But we were mistaken: true to the coal heritage of the site, it is a coal "super station" that began construction in 1929.

Cheers!