So it begins

So that's what clean air is like

Published Date : September 5, 2004

Colchester Castle

I’m sitting on a nice, quiet train, reading a newspaper, and I glance out the window.  What’s this I’m seeing?  Green.  Open fields. Trees. Water.  Bestill my heart, I don’t think I can take this shock.  It has been just over two months since we’ve been out of London, and I don’t know how long since we’ve been outside a major city.

We were up fairly early this morning for the tube ride across town to Liverpool Street Station.  A return ticket to Colchester cost £15, and a little over an hour later, we were rolling to a stop in England’s first Roman capital.  We were immediately reminded of the fact that London and England are two completely different creatures.  No more hustle and bustle and rude people.  Instead, a picturesque town (pop. 160,000) where random strangers still say, “Hello” on the street, surrounded by the stereotypical rolling English countryside.

We arrived at Colchester Station just before noon on a glorious sunshiny late summer day.  Our first order of business was to find the town centre.  Apparently there are two train stations in Colchester.  There’s the North Station that we arrived at is about 1 mile out of town.  Colchester Town Station is right in the middle of town.  So after a twenty minute ramble down the main road past pastures and the remnants of the Roman Wall that once surrounded the city, we made our way to the Visitor Information Centre.  After picking up a map of the city (that we never looked at), we headed across the street to Colchester Castle.  The Castle was built by the Normans, and it was presented really well.  For only £2.90 each (student discounts are definitely your friend!) we had a wander around the interactive museum inside.  They had a lot of great things for visitors to play with: a toga to try on, a slave collar, a Norman helmet and shield to play with, Boudica’s chariot from the movie starring Alex Kingston (actually we weren’t technically supposed to play with that one).  Yeah, the whole thing was done really well.

Heading back out into the sunlight, we went for a quick look around the gardens.  They were really impressive and much larger than we expected, and with the great weather, they were packed with people making the most of the sunshine.  We were planning on doing a 2-hour self-guided walk around the village, but instead we decided to grab some food and park in the park for a while.  For the ridiculously cheap price of £4.90 we got a 10″ pizza to share and enjoyed an impromptu picnic. Our next task was to explore some more of the gardens.  In the process we stumbled across a cricket match, so we stopped for an hour or so to watch and laze in the sun.

Because Gray was spending the night, we set about finding a B&B for him (the nearest hostel is 10 miles away).  While he checked in, I had a breeze through the place’s guestbook and confirmed my suspicions:  not many foreigners make it to Colchester.  There were a few different nationalities dotted through it here and there, but the overwhelming majority of guests were English.  Welcome to the real England.

By this time it was getting late, and I had a 2-hour trip home, so off to the bus station.  Being on Sunday Service, the regular buses were only running every hour and a half, so I ended up paying £3 for an express coach to the train station.  It turned out to be nice drive as the coach took the scenic  route, passing through the University of Essex on the way.

The train ride back to London was full and uneventful.  Then it was another hour on the crowded tube.  Why did I come back to London again?  Anyway, it was a very enjoyable and much needed day away.

36 days to go

Published Date : September 8, 2004

The countdown is on now!  I am more than ready to move on.  Only four and a half weeks of work left, then a couple of days to finalize the last minute details before I’m off.  Actually we might be spending those last few days down in Cornwall.  We haven’t decided yet though.  It’s not a bad idea; I’ll get to leave Britain on a high note instead of just feeling like I’m running away from London.  We’ll see.

As for the trip, there have been a couple of snags/disappointments on that front.  There have been unknown problems with my plane tickets, so I’m still waiting for those to be couriered over.  They were supposed to be here about 3 weeks ago, and they’re promising sometime this week, but they’ve said that for the last two weeks.  There’s still time, so I’m not worried yet…just frustrated by the delays.  Snag number 2 is Occupational Health at work.  They had originally said that they would provide me with anti-malarials for free.  First though, I need an appointment with one of the doctors for a prescription, and the staff don’t seem too interested in helping me to set the appointment up.  If it comes to it, I can just go to a travel clinic and buy them, but free is always better!  The big disappointment is with Gray.  He was planning on joining me for the first part of my trip up to Cairo, but we found out that the expedition is full for that portion.  On the bright side, it means there’ll be a lot more people than I was originally expecting.  Bigger groups are always better on this sort of trip for smoothing out personality conflicts!

In the meantime, life goes on.  We were out at Crystal Palace last night for our last scuba diving class – or so we thought.  We need to go back to Streatham again on Friday to do some basic skills they never got around to teaching us.  We have to show them that we can swim 200m and float for 10 minutes.  Pretty tough!  I dunno if we’ll be able to do it (*note* sarcasm).  We already did our final exams, and yours truly got 100% (not that I’m tooting my own horn or anything :D) They’ll give us our Log Books back on Friday and then we go off and do our 4 Open Water Dives (I’m doing mine in Egypt, Gray is doing his in either Mexico or when we get back to Oz) and then we’re fully qualified PADI Open Water Divers.  Woot! Woot!