Noodling around New Bern

 

We've spent the past two days strolling around New Bern at a leisurely, southern pace, taking photos as we went. We've popped into art galleries and pretty little gardens, gone to an open house at a property in the historic district that's for sale (the realtor was AWOL, so the owner showed us around from top to bottom), poked around a funky flea market, done a slow drive-through of a neighborhood across the tracks and then walked around the disused train station. We went to the nearby (tiny) town of Pollocksville and photographed rural decay in abundance. As you can see from the pic above, we'll stop dead in our tracks to photograph just about anything.

While Jeanne was at her book club meeting yesterday, I took the trolley tour of New Bern, which was great. The guide was full of facts and anecdotes about town history from 1700 to the early 1900s -- much more than I can remember or recount. 
 
Today (my last day), we might take in a bit of water and nature.

Stats:
Wednesday - 7678 steps, 3.02 miles
Thursday - 9583 steps, 3.78 miles
$7.35 lunch
$20 for a metal dragonfly (gift for Jeanne and Tim)
$16 for trolley tour

Return to the Swamp

I'm back on Brices Creek in New Bern, NC. For those of you in the 413 who are thinking of visiting JJ and Tim, know that it's a really easy trip down - less than 3 hours from BDL to Charlotte, and then a short (somewhat bumpy) hop in a rather small plane (about the size of a Peter Pan bus) over to New Bern. JJ and Tim live about 10 minutes from the airport, and their house backs onto the creek. This photo is of cypress knees next to their dock.

This is low country - flat and just a few feet above sea level. There's water everywhere as New Bern sits where the Trent and Neuse rivers converge and head out to the ocean. Creeks, marshes, sounds, and then the Outer Banks. For our first day of adventures, we got in the car and headed southeast to Morehead City and Beaufort (pronounced BOW-fert).

The first stop was about 10 miles south of New Bern to see Tom Haywood's Self-Kicking Machine, outside Martha's Favorite Things Antique Store (unfortunately closed, but we peered in the windows and took a lot of photos of the exterior). The Self-Kicking Machine is actually a replica of the original, but it's in working order and we each took a turn cranking the handlebar and kicking ourselves in the butt for whatever things we didn't do, shouldn't have done, or need a bit of encouragement to do.

On to Morehead City to see the King Neptune, which is really about the only thing worth seeing in the town. The giant concrete merman sits on a dock next to a diving shop, looking forlornly over his shoulder towards land, as if he knows any attempt to turn around an go back in the sea is a futile endeavor.

We spent the greater part of the afternoon in Beaufort, a charming historic coastal town with lovely little cottages dating from the early- to mid-19th century and a marvelous Old Burying Ground. There will be scads of photos of the cemetery and the town on Flickr after I get home and sort through them. Before exploring the town, we stopped for lunch at the Spouter Inn (too windy to sit outside, but nice views of the water). When we got to the restaurant, there was a large group of women, all wearing red hats and lavender blouses or sweaters, just finishing their lunch. I thought we might be observing a quaint southern custom, but JJ tells me that there's an international movement of red hatters who lunch together. We later saw the ladies having a tour of the cemetery with a guide in period dress. I now have another thing to add to my list of what not to do in my senior years. You will not see me wearing a red hat while lunching.

The last stop of the day was Fort Macon, which was built in 1826, used throughout the 19th century, fell into ruin in the early 20th century, restored by CCC workers during the Depression, and recommissioned in WWII. It's now a state park with some historic recreations of soldiers' quarters during different times of use. Fortunately, it was late in the day and there were no busloads of school kids running around the place.

Happily, we didn't encounter any gators, snakes or pirates during our waterside adventures.

Stats:

$12 for lunch (crab cake in pita bread - yum!)

7661 steps (3.02 miles)

Winter Woes

It's sunny and warm today -- 69F (21C) with thin clouds in the pale blue sky. At last, I think I can safely say that winter is over. It's not that the weather was so awful this winter. Apart from the freak October Snowmageddon, which had me without power for 36 hours and left a trail of damage across New England, it was actually pretty mild with nowhere near our usual snowfall. However, this winter packed a punch on my wallet.

In February, Sadie the cat began having bouts of puking and diarrhea. These things are usually self-limiting in cats, but after five days of it I took her to her vet, who did x-rays (no sign of blockage) and recommended an ultrasound at Tufts Veterinary School. We had an appointment all set up for the next Monday, but Sadie took a turn for the worse and I drove her to Grafton on a Saturday morning and took her in through the ER. She spent two days in the Foster Hospital for Small Animals, where her team of five doctors and vet students got her stabilized on an IV, gave her meds to calm her tummy and chill out the diarrhea, and tested her from end to end. Based on the ultrasound, they diagnosed her with irritable bowel disease (not a real surprise, as this is a cat who has always had emotional issues) and sent her home with some nasty antibiotics and a prescription diet of new or "novel" protein -- venison and peas. She put up a stink about the antibiotics, but has really taken to the new food and is back to her old self. 

Just after I paid off the massive vet bills, I discovered that my 30-year-old refrigerator had died and everything in the freezer had thawed out. All those containers of tomatoes, peppers, and pesto that I'd put up last summer had turned to slush. I now have a shiny, new black Darth Vader-esque fridge, the bill for which I paid off in March, not two weeks before having to put new brakes in the Mini Cooper. I am now skint. 

At one point, between the vet bills and the death of the fridge, I was still holding out (slim) hope that I might be able to go to London in May, but quickly realized that wasn't going to happen. Much in need of a get-away, I'm instead going to take a little holiday later this month and mooch off my pals Jeanne and Tim in the swampland of North Carolina. Some of you might remember my posts about a long weekend I spent down there in 2009, puttering around New Bern and driving in the pickup truck through the lowlands and backwater towns. For this trip, I'm working up a list of sights that should be amusing, edifying, and full of photo ops, including:

• Tom Haywood's Self-Kicking Machine 
• Giant King Neptune statue
• Shackleford Banks (wild horses and seashells)
• Fort Macon State Park 

I'll try to write a post or two or three while I'm there, so watch this page for further developments.  

An (almost) uneventful journey home

I finally got to have a tuna and sweetcorn sandwich, purchased for only £1 from Boots at Terminal 4. It was quite enjoyable. Getting to Terminal 4 was another story. Read on.

My original plan was to save money and take the tube to Heathrow on Sunday, but I realized that planned engineering works on half the tube lines would make that next to impossible. So, I took the #36 bus to Paddington Station and planned to catch the 10:13 a.m. Heathrow Connect (the same train I rode in from Heathrow on). At the station, I went to the area where I'd emerged from platform 10 or 11 on my arrival day, and saw a bunch of temporary barricades in front of the turnstiles there. So, I looked around for a Heathrow Connect ticket office and didn't see one, but did spy the Heathrow Express ticket office. At the window, I asked the ticket agent where I needed to go for the Heathrow Connect, and she told me that it wasn't running due to planned engineering works. Bugger! I then had to pay £18 for a ticket on the (faster) Express rather than the £8.50 that the (slower) Connect would have cost me. But the Express trains run more often and I hopped on the 9:40, which got me to Terminals 1-3 in about 20 minutes. As the train pulled into the platform at Heathrow, we heard an announcement saying, "Passengers for Terminal 4 should exit the train, cross the platform and immediately board the train at platform 2." So I did, following two people who had gotten off my train. Another woman got on behind me, just as the doors shut in her husband's face and the train pulled away, leaving him and their luggage on the platform.

A member of staff was in the carriage near where those of us who got on last were standing, and the woman (an American) started asking him what she should do, as her husband had their tickets. He said that her husband could just catch the next train and they could meet at the end. He phoned someone to alert them to the situation. It then dawned on me that this woman was headed into town, so I asked if the train would be stopping at Terminal 4. No, it wouldn't. We were headed back to Paddington. The two men (also Americans) who had gotten on with me then piped up and said that they needed to go to Terminal 4 as well. The member of staff assured us that we could just get off the train at Paddington, wait a few minutes while they joined some other carriages to our train, and then get back on and go back to Heathrow. About this time the conductor came along, a very nice man who told us that people get confused and make this mistake all the time, especially on Sunday as that is the ONLY DAY that trains going back to Paddington share platform 2 with the trains for Terminal 4.

Back at Paddington, we waited for about 5 minutes before the train left again at 10:25 a.m.. When we got to Heathrow, there was no train yet on platform 2. While I was waiting, I looked up and saw the departure boards above my head, showing the alternating trains. A train pulled in and a different member of staff clearly announced that it was the train for Terminal 4, which got us there in no time. I looked at my watch as I finished checking my bag -- 11:05 a.m., which was probably exactly the time I'd be doing this if I'd been able to catch the Heathrow Connect in the first place.

Everything else about the journey went smoothly, although slowly. The plane to Boston was coming in from Paris, and was delayed due to fog in London. Although we boarded and took off about 1/2 hour late, we landed in Boston pretty much on time. The queues at immigration moved quickly, my bag was one of the first to arrive on the carousel, and going through customs was a breeze, with only a sweater and a book to declare. I had to wait well over 1/2 hour for the Logan Express bus to Framingham, where my car was parked, but our jovial driver Dave got us there in no time flat. I left the Massport lot at about 6:30 and walked in my front door at 8 pm -- exactly 16 hours after leaving Spooner's -- where I was met by much meowing from Sadie.

Note to self: Don't travel into or out of London on a Sunday ever again. And don't blindly follow groups of Americans anywhere. And, as John Betjeman said, always look up.

Expenses:
£18 for Heathrow Express
£1 for tuna & sweetcorn sandwich
£1.05 for bottle of water
$110 to park the car in Framingham
$250 for Sadie's critter sitter

5,958 steps (mostly in Heathrow)
2.29 miles on foot

I yarn stormed London

It's hard to believe that my nine days in London are almost over. The time went so quickly, yet it was long enough for me to feel the closest to being a real Londoner that I've ever felt.

Yesterday (Saturday) morning, while Spooner was at the steam bath getting all remaining traces of buffalo, pig and soil out of his pores, I took the two yarn bombs that I'd brought from home down to Meanwhile Gardens. I found good places to attach them -- I put a green one with leaf pattern on a metal railing near the pond, and a striped one on a hand-made stick railing in the wildlife garden. As I was sewing them in place, a young man did Tai Chi on the platform above the pond near my first location, and the birds and squirrels scurried and hopped around my feet at the second spot. My friend Helen used to come to Meanwhile Gardens, and to the stretch of canal next to it, often to photograph the birds, plant life, and the reflections in the water. I like to think she would have noticed my yarn bombs straight away, and would have smiled and approved of my creative mischief in her garden.

In the afternoon, Spooner and I went to two art events that bring street art indoors. The first was the Moniker Art Fair at the Village Underground in Shoreditch. We also walked around the car park behind Holywell Lane and looked at what was new on the walls there. Neither indoors nor out was as good as last year, but we saw some interesting things. After that, we rode the bus across London Bridge, walked through Borough Market for some nibbles (much of which was free samples of chutney, cheese and bread from various vendors), and took another bus over to Waterloo to see The Minotaur in the Old Vic Tunnels under the train tracks. Some of it was cool, some creepy, and some puzzling.

Another long bus ride took us to Hampstead for dinner with Greg and Esther at a nice little French bistro where we'd all eaten together a couple years ago. It was a great meal, with lovely company, and a very nice way to end my trip.

I managed to see most of the people I wanted to meet up with, though I really regret not seeing the ones I missed. I ticked off most of the things on my massive list of exhibitions, historic spots, markets and rambles. The places I didn't get to will just have to go onto the list for the next trip. Except for the first couple of days, my back held up and didn't ache. I didn't lose anything or get lost. The weather was decent -- no real rain to speak of, and the final two days were full of blue skies and sunshine. And I didn't wear my rain boots once.

Big thanks to Spooner and all my mates who made this such a fab trip.

Expenses:
£5 last top-up on my Oyster
£2 spinach packet at Borough Market
£10 tix (2) for the Old Vic Tunnels
£17 dinner and wine

17,738 steps
6.99 miles