This website is a continuation of Digital evidence that Bruce has a life (my CSS/HTML photoblog) and Just another bipedal sack of DNA and neuroses, because that’s what humans are (my original blog). Posts from Just another… have now been copied to this blog, so that I can eventually get out of LiveJournal altogether.
I’ve never encountered such naked xenophobia before…
I need to get this in writing, so it’s out of my head.
About 2:30 today, I was standing at Holy Corner bus-stop, mutually moaning with an older white human about the lack of buses. This person asked me where I was going: to a LeithChooses meeting at McDonald Rd library. I can’t remember how this led to the person saying that foreigners ‘should be sent back where they came from’ – the person’s actual words. The person then ‘clarified’ that her ire was against foreign beggars, who ‘the government’ was aiding to come to the UK – I would know if I watched TV.
Continue readingManchester – so much to answer for (aka first world problems)
My sister has a friend who lives in northwest London and had a significant birthday on Saturday 6 April. My sister can’t travel that far on on her own, so I went south to take her to the birthday party. Our travel should have been
Continue readingBruce and Elly’s greatest hits tour: days 13 to 16 (31 August to 3 October)
Thursday 31st
I have no photos from today, probably due to lack of sleep on the train. (ÖBB still hasn’t contacted me, almost a week later, to tell me whether or not it has found my laundry-bag.) However, cyclemeter reminds me we did a bus-tour. We didn’t go north of the IJ on that trip, but we did take the metro as far north as we could on the next excursion.
Friday 1st
Our first visit was to the Stadsarchief (city archives). It’s very worth visiting, not least because it appears to be on ‘Weasel Street’. (Here’s the tram-journey.). Then we took another tram as far east as we could get (IJburg) and watched boat-traffic along the IJ. Then Elly took me to a wonderful place. (here’s how we got there and back.)
Saturday 2nd
So today we went west, and happened on a brand-new, very friendly restaurant. (Here’s that journey.). Then it was time to come home: bus to IJMuiden and ferry to North Shields
Sunday 3rd
Bus from North Shields to Newcastle, then train back to Edinburgh
Bruce and Elly’s greatest hits tour: days 7 to 12 (25 to 30 August)
Bruce and Elly’s greatest hits tour: days 4 (continued) to 6 (22 to 24 August)
Tuesday 22nd continued
Berlin baby! Here’s how we got here. First, a train from Zaandam to Amsterdam Centraal; next, a train from Amsterdam Centraal to Berlin Haupbahnhof. (I have no idea why Cyclometer stopped recording before we even got to Hanover.) We arrived in the late evening, so don’t do any more than install ourselves in a hotel, then go back to the Haupbahnhof to eat at Hans im Glück. (Eating at Hans im Glück is one of the Deutsche Heilige Dreifaltigkeit: the others are shopping at a DM and doing laundry at an Eco-Express Waschsalon.)
Continue readingBruce and Elly’s greatest hits tour: days 1 to 4 (19 to 22 August)
Well we’re off again, this time without bikes, to revisit the scenes of some of our triumphs de Loreans. Both of us are a little shop-soiled at the moment. I can’t walk more than a mile without my calves starting to seize up, and cycling up any kind of hill is taxing. (Yes, there are hills in the Netherlands.) Elly may speak about her own issues – it’s not my place to do so, at least not here.
UPDATED: Bruce and Elly are passed by Dutchies on the left-hand side – and most of them aren’t riding electrofiets!
I’ve just updated the blog entries and photos from our travels in September. Read all about it on this blog-page!
Cycling summary
Here’s all the cyclemeter maps from our recent holiday. A few of them show ferry and train journeys – I’m obsessive like that! Over the next few days I’ll upload the rest of my photos to ‘Bruce and Elly get passed by Dutchies on the left-hand side …‘
Continue readingDays 14 to 16 (Oslo to Amsterdam), according to Elly
What Elly said: https://eleanor.scot/2022/08/25/2022-day-13-and-14-oslo-visit-day-15-cycle-to-ferry-10km-and-day-16-train-wrangling-to-amsterdam/
I’ll add photos later: this is just to show my follower I’m still here. Or at least that someone can post to my WordPress and Twitter accounts. How can you be sure it’s me doing so? Tot ziens!
Days 17 to 22: if it’s Tuesday I must be in Bognor Regis?
What Elly said. Picture to be added later. I have been in so many hotel rooms and lifts in artificial twilight I hardly know where I am!
I know I’m on a DFDS boat that will take us to North Shields, arriving tomorrow morning. My issue is I have yet another cabin number to remember, another route to it to learn, and my brain cell refuses to hold onto any detail at this level of granularity. And why does it feel like twighlight at 16:21 in August? Mein Gehirnzelle is verrucht!
Day 17: arrival in Kiel, trains to Hamburg, Osnabrück and Amsterdam
- 1 mile of cycling: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220823-1023-14512
- cumulative cycling: 222·3 miles
Day 18: Amsterdam to Zaandam
- cycling 7·8 miles: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220824-1149-40120
- cumulative cycling: 230·1 miles
Day 19: around Zaandam
We decided to cycle to Geversduin, to see the location of the hobbit house we’ll stay in some day. (One of Elly’s birthday presents years ago was a stay there. However, plans were scuppered by COVID.)
- cycling 25·3 miles: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220825-1328-39807
- cumulative cycling: 254·4 miles
Day 20: around Zaandam
No cycling – we travelled by bus. We spent our last full day in the Netherlands visiting a windmill museum! That might sound tratsch but it’s actually pretty and informative.
Day 21: Zaandam to IJMuiden to the North Sea
- cycling 17·5 miles: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220827-1207-60527
- cumulative cycling: 271·9 miles
Day 22: North Sea to home
- North Shields to Newcastle 10 miles: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220828-0947-31615
- Waverley to home 1 mile: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220828-1529-27003
- cumulative cycling: 283 miles