North to South; West to East

A very brief catchup on my travels...

Cotswold Way Walk, UK
On 3 May (was it only a few weeks ago?!), Jo and Tony and I met up in Stratford Upon Avon to start our walk along the beautiful Cotswold Way, south from Chipping Camden to Bath for 160 kilometres through woods and up and down rolling hills. We had a fabulous time. Stayed in B&Bs and pubs in Stanton, Cleeve Hill, Little Witcombe (where great pals Peter and Amanda and daughter Elizabeth met me for dinner), Middle Yard, North Nibley, Tormarton and Bath. Our lodgings ranged from 4 star to 1 star, but the breakfasts were always good.

We celebrated reaching Bath by having a cream tea at the famous Pump Room. We have a couple of ideas for next year's walk. I'll look forward to it, and to spending more quality time with Tony and Jo.

Saw Suzie again back in Thames Ditton before catching a cab into London and over the London Bridge to City Airport for my commuter flight to Luxembourg.

Luxembourg
I spent four days here. The first two were spent mainly at the Islamic Financial Services Board annual summit. I edit the standards produced by the IFSB. Good to see Abdullah Haron (we had a meetup in Kuala Lumpur in January), Isma and Erni from KL.

I walked around the old town and checked out the fabulous art gallery, designed by IM Pei. The city was *very* quiet over the weekend. I worked and went to see a couple of films. I was ready to leave by the Monday.

Berlin
Loved Berlin! Very user-friendly city, with so much to see and learn. It's on my list of places to return to and maybe spend a couple of months. I checked out a number of museums, including the Berlin Wall one at Checkpoint Charlie, just near my hotel in the former East Berlin area called Mitte. Ran under the Brandenburg Gate and in the Tiergarten. Fabulous to spend a few days with Di and Ron, friends from the week I spent in Ubud, Bali, when I first left Oz on 24 May last year. We spent one morning seeing another side of Berlin through the eyes of photographer and documentary filmmaker Jonnek Jonneksson (Ron's birthday present to Di). Di and I also saw a fantastic 3D film by Wim Wenders about Pina Bausch, the German choreographer. Stunning.

Ate lots of great Vietnamese food, and German chocolate from Fassbinder & Rausch. Also had dinner with Abdullah, who had flown in after returning to KL from Luxembourg the week before.

Singapore
I arrived in Singapore on Wednesday this week from Berlin via Frankfurt. Caught up with Betty from Towers Watson, and for lunch with Janis and Joel from John Wiley. Also managed to get to a good hairdresser for the first time in ages! Had dinner on Friday at Clarke Quay with Dead Runner pal Ellen (from Ho Chi Minh City, where she and I had dinner in late 2009). We took part in the Sunset Marathon last night, which started at 10 pm. For a number of reasons we decided even before we had started that we would pull out at the halfway turnaround. I walked the half in 3.5 hours and was back at my hotel by about 2.30 am.

Tomorrow I'm heading back to Kuching :-))

Catching up with friends in the UK

I stayed in Thames Ditton with Suzie and her family. (We last caught up in August in Alnwick, just before the Coast to Coast walk.) Fun to see her again so soon. Our great pal Deb, from our Helena May days, came over to spend the morning watching the royal wedding. I hadn't seen Deb since about 1989. Fabulous to see her again. She's mad for dogs and has got her pilot's licence.

On Saturday I took the train to Exeter in Devon to meet up with Linda (last visited in 2007) and her sister Pam. I met Pam in Sydney in 1994 after I moved back to Oz from Hong Kong. We spent a great four hours or so talking and checking out some op shops for gear for my Cotswold Way walk.

On Sunday, Suzie and David drove me up to Stratford-upon-Avon, to meet with Jo. Jo was one of our group that did the Coast to Coast walk. On Monday we drove over to Warwick for lunch, and for Jo to have a Reiki massage session. On Tuesday I worked, before we met up with our pal Tony for the start of the Cotswold Way walk in Chipping Campden.

Great pals Peter and Amanda were also able to meet up during the walk near Cheltenham ...

Anzac Day, Gallipoli

I spent 18 hours on the Gallipoli Peninsula, from about 8.30 pm on 24 April to early afternoon the next day, attending the Anzac Day dawn service at North Beach (next to Anzac Cove) and the Australian (at Lone Pine) and New Zealand services. So many people attend these now, it's a huge logistical exercise. Once you cross the Dardanelles on the car ferry, there's no way out except by the bus you came in on anywhere from 18 to 21 hours later. It was very moving having some knowledge of what happened there between 25 April 1915 and the evacuations at the end of that year, but I hated the whole experience of being corralled and herded about for all those hours, and of feeling chilled to the bone during the night. Was it *really* necessary to deposit us there eight hours before the dawn service?

I was very relieved when it was all over. I left Canakkale the next day and took a bus to Tekirdag, on the western shore of the Sea of Marmara in a region that used to be known as Thrace. I stayed the night there before heading back to Istanbul the next day. The following day I flew to London.

Turkish delight

I’m totally hooked on Turkey…

I’m writing this in Canakkale, the jumping-off point for my visit to Gallipoli for Anzac Day remembrance services. I arrived in a roundabout way yesterday from Istanbul, where I’ve spent the past three weeks. My ferry to Bandirma was cancelled due to high winds, which put a spanner in the works. However, fate was at work… I got chatting about possible alternative plans with a fellow passenger, a uni professor, who was supposed to be giving a speech in Bandirma, and ended up being offered a lift in the car his sponsoring university sent to rescue him. A very nice bloke, with whom I hope to stay in touch through Facebook.

I spent the night in Bandirma and came to Canakkale yesterday (180 km) by very comfortable coach for a tiny fare. If I needed any further reason to plan to spend time travelling around Turkey, that was it.

I’ve been working in Istanbul, but have also settled in and made it home. I was lucky that my visit coincided with the Istanbul International Film Festival. I saw eight films. They were all in cinemas near Taksim Square, so I got to explore that part of town. I also made a young friend, Ufuk, who was a volunteer for the festival. She helped me with tickets and we spoke a number of times and are now friends on Facebook.

I also visited Istanbul Modern, the main art gallery; took a Bosphorus boat cruise; and checked out Santa Sophia (which I could see from my bed), the Blue Mosque, the Royal Palace and Basilica Cistern in my neighbourhood of Sultanahmet. And I've been buying silver jewellery :-))

I got into a routine of having morning runs in Gulhane Park, just a three-minute walk from my home in Istanbul, Agora Life Hotel. Great people there. I’ve felt very welcomed by everyone: Kadir, Ifan, Isa, Furkan …

Other people in the neighbourhood also made it feel like my neighbourhood.

I think Turkish people are incredibly friendly. I’ll definitely be back for a few months, hopefully in mid-2012.

A walk along Lake Geneva: Days 4 and 5

I'm catching up after my blog has been blocked for three weeks...

I took the train from Vevey back to Lutry on Friday morning to meet Jacques at the waterfront for day 4 of my walk. The sun was back out after being drizzly the day before. We walked through an area of vineyards planted on the very steep hillsides and on every other possible surface. Some lovely villages clustered among the vines, with cellars open for tastings and sales. We ate lunch at a lovely terrace restaurant in Epesses, perched high above the lake. Jacques peeled off at St-Seraphin to catch the train back to Lausanne and I carried on to Vevey.

Yesterday was a stunning day, beginning with a pink and blue dawn complete with sleeping swans on the lake. I loved this amazing fork sculpture. The walk was mostly lakeside, and the kilometre or so just before Montreux was fantastic: gorgeously colourful flowerbeds and lots of bamboo art. In Montreux I had a coffee and croissant before heading back to the lake for the last hour of the walk: to Chateau de Crillon and on to Villeneuve. The weather couldn’t have been more beautiful. As I walked into Villeneuve I watched a couple of hang-gliders landing.

It felt a bit odd to have finished.

I took the train back to Lausanne, packed all my gear, did some work and then had a final dinner at Belleview with Liliane.

What a fabulous month.

A walk along Lake Geneva: Day 3

I still managed to get lost twice during today's walk. The day started with clear views across to the Alps, with Mont Blanc visible for the first time this month. In 2007 I spent ten days walking in and out of the valleys that surround Mont Blanc. It was my first long-distance walk. Loved seeing it again today.

Very beautiful scenery along much of the way today.

The weather changed after my lunchtime stop in Ouchy.

I love this photograph, which I took between Pully and Lutry. The guy was just standing there looking straight ahead. I didn't have time even to zoom in, but now I'm glad. I like the composition. His umbrella is so tiny... And I like the way the eye moves down from the umbrella to the poles in the water.

The hotel where I'd wanted to stay in Lutry was full, so after a bit of dithering I took the train to Vevey, where I'm staying at a hotel I noticed two weeks ago when Jacques and I drove through here on our way to Montreux. I'll go back to Lutry tomorrow morning to meet him for our walk through the vineyards, then will come back here for the last night of my walk.

A walk along Lake Geneva: Days 1 and 2

I was born without the map-reading gene, so the first two days of my walk from Nyon to Villeneuve, along Lake Geneva, have been interesting! Very little of the route is beside the lake. Instead, I've walked through woods and fields, through a golf course and a cemetery, beside a river, through vineyards, up and down hills, and along small lanes and main roads. I've had to backtrack many times, found myself back where I started after following the walking man sign, and in some places I've missed seeing where the lake path resumes. I've seen lots of dogs out walking, a fair number of swans, and a squirrel. I'm feeling surprisingly stiff and sore. But I'm having a fabulous time...

I walked from Nyon to Rolle yesterday (about 25 km) and about the same distance today (I'm guessing) to Morges. Tomorrow I'll reach Lausanne (which is visible from Morges) and then continue on to Lutry. Apparently, this next stage is all on lakeside path.

There are small villages scattered everywhere over the hillsides that rise from the lake, so I'm only skimming the surface. Views across the lake are to the French Alps.