Daughter No. 1 just announced that she is singing "Let's Face the Music and Dance" solo at her school's EOY Christmas concert.
Her choice.
I'm rather chuffed. One of my favourite songs.
Just saying 'cos I'm pleased.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Mon 24 Aug 15 at 22:36
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Congratulations to both of you. Good choice of song. I particularly like the jazzy version by Ella Fitzgerald. Bit worrying that Christmas functions ar now looming though.
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Thank you. I must admit the proximity of Christmas was my first, and depressing, thought as well.
I shall seek out the Ella Fitzgerald version, I don't know it.
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A friend of mine is currently banged up in hospital, so I needed to purchase a Get Well card. I was shocked to find Christmas cards on display.
I'm so tempted to get away from it all at that time of year, although solo backpacking in the mountains that time of year might be too cool even for me!
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Congrats on that No F. The name of that song rings a bell but no idea who/what/ when performed it. Time to Google.
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Legacylad, I've said it enough times, there's an entire hemisphere down here that will be sunny and warm at that time.
You would love, and I mean love, solo backpacking in the Andes.
Look up El Cajon del Maipo as just one example
www.cajondelmaipo.com/
www.cascada.travel/News/Top-5-Hikes-and-Treks-Chile
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>> Legacylad, I've said it enough times, there's an entire hemisphere down here that will be
>> sunny and warm at that time.
Except when the volcanoes are blocking out the sun. Still you can keep warm running away from all the earthquake induced rockfalls and mudslides. Don't run into the incoming tsunami tho.
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If a tsunami (why aren't we allowed to say tidal waves any more?) needs running away from in the Andes then that is one big a*** wave and it'll take out most of the world.
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>> If a tsunami (why aren't we allowed to say tidal waves any more?)
Because it isn't? This is (just in case you didn't know):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKA39LQOIck
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>> A friend of mine is currently banged up in hospital, so I needed to purchase
>> a Get Well card. I was shocked to find Christmas cards on display.
Mrs B had a similar shock when stocking up on bird food - the Garden Centre was stocking Christmas crackers.
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Have you ever been to The island of La Palma in the Canaries LL. Fantastic mountain hiking and wonderful climate and quite cheap to get to.
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Never been to LA Palma CG, but know someone who has been there several times for a walking holiday. There is, I believe, an observatory on one of the peaks.
My own preference for a walking holiday is for it to be a journey, from A to B, with side trips en route. Hence Alta Via's in the Dolomites with a bit of Via Ferrara thrown in for good measure, the SWC Path, GR5 from Lac Leman south to Nice, and my favourite, the Sierra's in northern CA.
Although someone keeps mentioning Chile......hmmmmm. Might be a step too far. I need to resupply with food every 4/6 days, fuel, reasonably settled warmish weather, but worth investigating.
Last edited by: legacylad on Tue 25 Aug 15 at 18:17
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Yes the European Space Observatory is at the the top of the Roque die Los Muchachos at 2,400 metres above sea level so that's quite a stroll. La Palma combines everything I like for a winter destination, sunshine, unspoiled scenery, great walking a national park and a couple of nice towns with some good restaurants. About time I booked!
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>>Although someone keeps mentioning Chile......hmmmmm. Might be a step too far. I need to resupply with food every 4/6 days, fuel, reasonably settled warmish weather, but worth investigating.
If you are genuinely interested I will ask. Its no particular hard work, and I know a couple of people who organise this sort of stuff, so if you wish I'll get you some details. It may be different from the US, but I will, however, bet you that there will be hikes you want to do.
It can be very hard core, although perhaps not for someone like yourself. What it is though is devoid of Health & Safety. You are allowed to injure yourself, or indeed kill yourself, down here. They will advise you not to do some stuff, but they won't stop you. Just don't expect them to pick up the pieces.
You would be welcome to descend upon us at the beginning & end for some civilised drinking. I mean the sort of "civilised" which doesn't involve walking afterwards. But at least that'd give you a place to arrive and get sorted before setting off.
As for types of trekking, then A-B is no issue, 5 days is no issue, solo or accompanied. Mountains, Glaciers, Deserts and everything in between.
Whether you'll ever again be satisfied with girly US hill walking afterwards is a different matter.
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Thanks for the offer, but I'm seriously considering walking a good half of the PCT next year. Several friends have thru hiked from the Mexican border north to Canada( 2650 miles) and two have the Triple Crown, which is the PCT, CDT and AT. Rather than walk S>N because of the snow conditions, I thought of just hiking the CA section,missing out the Oregon & Washington sections, N>S and starting slightly later. Still a decent hike, and I would have the sun on my face! I met a young couple doing exactly that last month and they were having a blast.
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One version cuts it for me
Good ole Frank - www.youtube.com/watch?v=r94g_47Weeg
and Nat starts off so well, such a good first half to this song - but suddenly rolf harris ruins it with his stylaphone.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwXhI0I2iaM
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There is a house in Fishguard that has a Christmas display adorning the front porch already. The full works too, tree, Santa, reindeer and snowman.
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>> There is a house in Fishguard that has a Christmas display adorning the front porch
>> already. The full works too, tree, Santa, reindeer and snowman.
Franklin's Gardens rugger ground is already advertising it's Xmas party deals. Other places will follow suit once the Bank Hol is out of the way
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I have already received several emails inviting me to 'book now' for Christmas parties, dinner etc. like a turkey, they can stuff that. I shall probably stay at home.....
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>> There is a house in Fishguard that has a Christmas display adorning the front porch already.
The address might even mean something to me. I lived on a bend in what might pass for a Fishguard main drag, West Street, for three years from 1949-51 or so.
Our rented house was sort of posh for the time and place but everything was shabby and dusty in those days. There was a lane beside the house leading to a field in which I think Gypsies kept the odd rough little pony. In the field there was also a urine-stinking WW2 sort of brick blockhouse thing with a reinforced concrete roof and on a big reinforced concrete plinth. I guess it was a bomb shelter. Everything was overgrown with nettles and foxgloves, very prolific in Pembrokeshire in those days.
Fishguard held its nose in the air but even at 10 I'd been around and thought it a pretty hick sort of place. The other kids were bigger than me and tough, but some were intelligent and good-natured so I had friends. It could have been worse.
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>> >>
>> The address might even mean something to me. I lived on a bend in what
>> might pass for a Fishguard main drag, West Street, for three years from 1949-51 or
>> so.
>>
>> >>
The road in question is called Heol Emrys. I don't know how much of the town you remember but the respectable estate it is on is called Penaraber, off to the right of West Street as you head down towards Goodwick. Fishguard is a fairly dead place now for a town, apart from the area round the main square most of the shops have gone, victims of out of town retail parks and the internet.
Not a place I go to very much apart from having a few customers there, even though I live only two miles up the road.
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>> apart from the area round the main square most of the shops have gone,
'Ocky White, Tailors'... is that still there? I guess not. My best friend at the County Grammar's father was the manager there.
Our doctor, a friend of my parents, lived with his rich mother on a sort of high circular road with a few expensive houses on it.
I remember the steepening hill as West St went down towards Goodwick. I guess Penamber wasn't there in my day.
On the other side of modern Fishguard was the old harbour, then much neglected but picturesque. I guess crowded with rich yachties these days.
And five miles down the road was Dinas Cross where we lived on a farm (I learned to milk cows) and I attended the council school for a scary but interesting term and a bit.
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>> >>
>> 'Ocky White, Tailors'... is that still there? I guess not. My best friend at the
>> County Grammar's father was the manager there.
>>
>>
>>
Ocky White, gone long before I moved here 14 years back. They had a department store in Haverfordwest which closed about five years ago.
Fishguard harbour is dead with only the Irish ferry making two calls a day, though there are long term plans to build a marina. Fishguard Harbour station is one line only now with seven trains a day calling. Upped from just the two boat trains four years ago with the re-opening of Fishguard and Goodwick station which had closed in 1962. When refurbishing it they had forgotten that the track had been moved a couple of metres out from the platform to prevent crumbling concrete falling on the line and had to spend a weekend moving it back again.
Dinas is down to one shop and a petrol station.
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>> Dinas is down to one shop and a petrol station.
It was always like that. I think there was a place where you could get mars bars, but I may be fantasizing. Probably the petrol station.
Our farmer landlord was a rough so and so, who hammered his WW2 surplus Jeep up the worst and roughest farm road I've ever seen, even in Africa. He treated his small herd of Herefords brutally, so they were well skittish as I came to know. I admired his style but the parents weren't too keen. He had a son who wasn't at all nice, the worst sort of ghastly rural Welsh yobbo.. Of course i was young and impressionable.
Perhaps now I have gravitas they'd take me more seriously, but I doubt it somehow.
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Actually we much more recently took the Fishguard-Rosslare car ferry. Perhaps on that occasion we stayed in a weird Goodwick hotel next to a cliff (they have cliffs in Pembrokeshire I remember). It had this sort of vertical garden with zigzag paths, with a nice old steel bridge to the upper floors.
I think I remember these things but may imagine some of them, not necessarily though (Gallic shrug).
I remember Dinas Cross much better although it's twice as long ago. Weird, no?
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 25 Aug 15 at 22:32
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Fishguard is/was a bit of a one horse town, north of the Landsker line and thus in the Welshry rather than the Englishry.
:-)
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Apropos of nothing.... - CGNorwich
