Airfix Model Planes - Spitfire, Lancaster & horrible glue

I was talking to my friend Micky this week and don’t ask me why but the conversation turned to Second World War fighter planes and the difference between the Spitfire and the Hurricane.

Although the Spitfire is probably the most famous of all the British planes used by the Royal Air Force during the war the Hurricane was in fact the principal fighter in the Battle of Britain and not the Spitfire as most people think. In 1940 there were thirty-two squadrons with Hurricanes and only nineteen squadrons of Spitfires. They looked similar but there were differences between them and they complimented each other and worked closely together to shoot down enemy aircraft. The quicker Spitfires were best for engaging the Luftwaffe’s fighter planes, like the Messerschmitt, whilst the Hurricanes took on the fleets of bombers like the Junkers and Heinkels.

I can tell the difference between them because when I was a boy I used to like making model aircraft from Airfix self-assembly kits. The Spitfire was much better looking with elliptical wings, a slim body and a long raking nose. The Hurricane was chunkier with a higher cockpit and stumpy little wings. My first Airfix kit was the Hawker Hurricane and I have to say that after that it was always my favourite of the two.

In the beginning Airfix was sold in F.W. Woolworth & Co. Ltd. for two shillings (that’s 10p today) and the first in the range, in 1952, was a very small scale model of Francis Drake’s ship the Golden Hind. It was so successful that Woolworths than began to ask for additions to the range and soon Airfix began to produce more polybagged model kits. The famous duck-egg blue Spitfire model appeared in 1953.

An Airfix kit was notoriously difficult to assemble and the only absolute certainty was that once it was finished it definitely wouldn’t look anything like the picture on the box. Getting the fuselage and the wings snapped together was usually a fairly straightforward procedure but things quickly became increasingly complicated after that, with fiddly little bits and pieces that required huge dexterity, great precision and unnatural amounts of patience to position into exactly the right place. I was often a bit over eager at this stage and would prematurely glue the obvious parts together without reading the instructions properly and then realise that some of the fiddly bits needed to be planned for and carried out before the larger bits were put together. Two good examples of this was the propeller on the Spitfire and the tail gunners position on the back of the Lancaster bomber which would only turn or swivel as intended if placed in position before permanetly attaching the fuliage section together.

What made things especially difficult was the Humbrol plastic cement glue with its curious smell and a habit of exuding the tube nozzle in far greater quantities of stringy ooze than you could ever possibly need for such a delicate operation and it would end up in sticky white flakes on the end of your fingers or big dollops on the dining room table that would strip the varnish off and end up in a telling off. I always found the gluing together part of the operation especially tricky when finally putting the cock-pit window into position at the end and my model was always left with smears on the plexi-glass that if this was a real plane would have made it virtually impossible for the pilot to see where he was flying. And thinking about the pilot, one of the most irritating things was to discover that I had got the cockpit in place and the whole thing finished before I had placed the pilot into his seat and there he was rattling around in the bottom of the box along with all of the bits of discarded plastic and the double sided page of assembly instructions.

After the gluing together stage came the painting and this was an equally messy affair with paint dribbling down the fuselage, bits of wool and hair getting stuck on the model and fingerprints in various places where I had tried in vain to rectify the damage. Paints came in little tins and it was sensible to let one colour dry before applying the second but I rarely had enough patience for that. Finally came the delicate process of applying the decals which had to be separated from the backing paper by soaking in water and then requiring a most delicate touch to manoeuver them carefully into position on the fusilage and the wings. Sometimes if I was lucky they could be used to cover up the dodgy paintwork but mostly they would end up on first contact in the wrong place and crease and tear as I tried to correct the error.

I finished the Hurricane and the Lancaster to some sort of sub-standard but I can recall making such a mess of a Westland Lysander that as soon as it was completed I was so ashamed of it that I immediately consigned it to the bin. Airfix was also popular in the United States, France and Germany, but here the swastika transfers on Heinkels and Messerschmitts were banned.

Airfix model aircraft were an important part of my childhood in the days before computer games and a really significant thing about Airfix was that it taught important life skills like reading assembly instructions that were as deeply impenetrable as the Amazon rainforest and which were useful later in life for dealing with flat-pack furniture assembly.

Family Holidays in the 50s & 60s

I haven’t been on holiday in the UK since September 1986 when Sally was one year old and we went to Wales in a self-catering chalet near Caernarfon and it rained so much and the leaky wooden chalet was so cold and so damp that we gave up after four days, returned home and vowed never to do it again. Since then I have spent my summer holidays on Mediterranean beaches where the sun is guaranteed the beer is always cold and the ladies sunbathe topless. It wasn’t always like this of course. When I was a boy in the 1950s and 1960s family holidays came once a year and were rotated tri-annually between a caravan in Norfolk, a caravan in Cornwall and a caravan in Wales. I’m not being ungrateful because these holidays were great fun and in those days it was all that my parents could afford. To be perfectly honest the very idea of going to Europe was faintly absurd, I knew of people who had been to France or Spain (or said that they had) but I always regarded them as slightly eccentric and certainly unusual. As for going further than Europe we might as well have made plans to go to the moon!

In the 1950s about twenty-five million people went on holiday in England as life returned to normal after the war. Most people went by train but we were lucky because grandad had a car, it was an Austin 10 four-door saloon, shiny black with bug eye lights and an interior that had the delicious smell of worn out leather upholstery, which meant that we could travel in comfort and style. Although there were not nearly so many cars on the road in the 1950s this didn’t mean that getting to the seaside was any easier. There were no motorways or bypasses and a journey from Leicester to the north Norfolk coast involved driving through every town and bottleneck on the way which meant sitting around in traffic jams for hours and worrying about the engine overheating. Just getting to the coast could take the whole day and usually involved stopping off about half way along the route for a picnic. Grandad would find a quiet road to turn off into and then when there was a convenient grass verge or farm gate he would pull up and the adults would spread a tartan blanket on the ground and we would all sit down and eat sandwiches and battenburg cake, they would drink stewed tea from a thermos flask and I would have a bottle of orange juice.

I seem to remember that one of the favourite places to go on holiday at that time was Mundesley which is about ten miles south of Cromer where there were good sandy beaches and lots of caravans. I last stayed in a caravan in about 1970 and I have vowed never ever to do it again. I just do not understand caravanning at all or why people subject themselves to the misery of a holiday in a tin box with no running water, chemical toilets and fold away beds, there is no fun in it whatsoever. The National Statistics Office has estimated that British families take 4,240,000 towed caravan holidays a year year, how sad is that? To be fair I suppose it was good fun when I was a five-year-old child but I certainly wouldn’t choose to do it now when I am ten times older and a hundred times fussier. Caravans simply had no temperature control, they were hot and stuffy if the sun shone (so that wasn’t too much of a problem, obviously) and they were cold and miserable when it rained, which I seem to remember was most of the time.

Bad weather didn’t stop us going to the beach however and even if it was blowing a gale or there was some drizzle in the air we would be off to the front to enjoy the sea. If the weather was really bad we would put up a windbreak and huddle together inside it to try and keep warm. Most of the time it was necessary to keep a woolly jumper on and in extreme cases a hat as well and Wellington boots were quite normal. As soon as the temperature reached about zero degrees centigrade, or just enough to break through the ice, we would be stripped off and sent for a dip in the wickedly cold North Sea in a sort of endurance test that I believe is now considered even too tough to be included as part of Royal Marine Commando basic training. I can remember one holiday at Walcote, Norfolk, in about 1965 when it was so cold that there was a penguin on the beach! After the paddle in the sea we would cover ourselves up in a towel and making sure we didn’t reveal our privates struggled to remove the sopping wet bathing costume and get back to our more sensible woolly jumpers. Then we would have a picnic consisting of cheese and sand sandwiches and more stewed tea from a thermos flask.

If the sun did ever come out we used to get really badly burnt because when I was a boy sunscreen was for softies and we would regularly compete to see how much damage we could do to our bodies by turning them a vivid scarlet and then waiting for the moment that we would start to shed the damaged skin off. After a day or two completely unprotected on the beach it was a challenge to see just how big a patch of barbequed epidermis could be removed from the shoulders in one piece and the competition between us was to remove a complete layer of skin in one massive peel, a bit like stripping wallpaper, which would leave us looking like the victim of a nuclear accident.

We didn’t always go to Norfolk and we didn’t always stay in caravans. If we went on holiday with Mum’s parents who lived in London we would get a train to Herne Bay or Margate in north Kent and stay at a holiday camp in a chalet which was just about one step up from a caravan. Actually my grandparents were probably some of the first people that I knew who went abroad for their holidays when in the mid 1960s they went to Benidorm and came back with gifts of flamenco dancers and matador dolls and I can remember thinking how marvellous that sort of travel must be. I went to Benidorm myself in 1975 and although the sun shone I think on reflection I probably preferred Mundesley and Herne Bay.

Beach holidays in the fifties and sixties were gloriously simple. We would spend hours playing beach cricket on the hard sand, investigating rock pools and collecting crabs and small fish in little nets and keeping them for the day in little gaily coloured metal buckets, stirring them up ocassionaly before returning them to the sea at the end of the day. There were proper metal spades as well with wooden handles that were much better for digging holes and making sand castles than the plastic things that replaced them a few years later. Inflatable beach balls and rubber rings, plastic windmills on sticks and kites that were no more than a piece of cloth (later plastic), two sticks and a length of string that took enormous amounts of patience to get into the air and then huge amounts of aeronautical skill to keep them up there for anything longer than thirty seconds.

I remember beach shops before they were replaced by amusement arcades with loads of cheap junk and beach games, cricket sets, lilos, buckets and spades, rubber balls and saucy seaside postcards. I can remember dad and his friend Stan looking through them and laughing and as I got older and more aware trying to appear disinterested but sneaking a look when I thought no one was watching. For a treat there was fish and chips a couple of nights a week but this was in the days before MacDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken so most of the catering and the eating was done in the caravan or the chalet or if we were really unlucky in the dining room of the holiday camp. I think that this is what put me off school dinners later in life. I once worked in a holiday camp kitchen, at Butlins on Barry Island in 1973 and based on what I saw believe me you really don’t want to eat in a holiday camp restaurant because it isn’t Masterchef I can assure you.

Later, after dad learned to drive and bought his first car, we used to go to Cornwall and Devon and North Wales, to the Nalgo holiday camp at Croyde Bay (still there but now called the Holiday Village) and the Hoseasons holiday village at Borth, near Aberystwyth. The last time I went on the family holiday like that with my parents was in 1971 to Llandudno and by my own confession I was a complete pain in the arse to everybody and I don’t remember being invited again. In 1975 I went to Sorrento in Italy and nothing has ever persuaded me to go back to British holidays in preference to travelling in Europe.

Bird Watch, November

Winter arrived in Lincolnshire today with the first snow since Easter and by mid morning the garden was under a generous covering. This had the effect of bringing back to the garden all of the birds that seemed to have been missing just recently and it made me realise just how difficult feeding can become for them when their routine is disrupted by the weather in this unexpected way.

The Blackbirds are always the first to arrive and they show little fear under normal circumstances so it is certainly not unusual for them to be found waiting by the front door for the first handful of sultanas and this morning was no exception. Being Sunday I was later than usual and judging by the amount of footprints in the snow they had either been waiting around for some time or had made a lot of return visits just to check.

The Starlings were squabbling noisily over the homemade fat ball and as soon as the bird table was filled up they descended in huge numbers from the surrounding trees and roof tops. They certainly are the messiest feeders in the garden and if they were human diners I certainly wouldn’t want to be sitting next to them in a restaurant without a full suit of protective clothing. They quickly demolish the contents of the table but about 50% ends up on the ground and that suits the ground feeders like the Dunnocks who simply wait around and pick up the food that falls off the table. The Collared Doves are as bad because they have a preference for the sultanas and to get to them they simply throw the bread over the side with a flick of their beaks and underneath the sparrows pick it up and fly away with it.

There always used to be thousands of sparrows but there numbers have been declining rapidly. Population estimates in 2000 gave between 2.1 and 3.6 million pairs breeding in the United Kingdom which is an approximately 50% decline since1990. This decline in numbers is now so serious that the sparrow is on the RSPB red list of conservation importance.

The RSPB together with De Montfort University and Natural England have investigated the decline of the Sparrow and in a three year study in Leicester they found that numbers have fallen by nearly third. Every pair of house sparrows must raise at least five chicks a year to maintain the population, but many are starving to death in their nests or are too weak to live long after fledging. The study found that chick survival was higher in areas where insects, such as aphids, are more abundant because although peanuts and seeds are great for birds for most of the year, sparrows need lots of insects in summer to feed their hungry young.

The decline in London is even worse. More than 2,600 sparrows were counted in Kensington Gardens in 1925 but numbers dropped to 885 in 1948, 544 in 1975, 81 in 1995 and only eight in October 2000. The RSPB says that gardeners are to blame because of current gardening trends that have removed the indigenous plants for more fashionable and exotic species. I am taking the advice of the RSPB and making sure I have the right sort of plants for the Sparrows in my little garden.

Also back today was the Robin put perhaps he was just more noticeable today with his vivid red breast standing out against the white of the freshly fallen snow. He usually comes and goes without stopping very long but today he was in no hurry to go anywhere until he had had his share of the food. All of the Tits were around filling themselves up with peanuts and a pair of Chaffinch were picking up the pieces from underneath the seed feeder. The Goldfinch were there as usual and the weather didn’t seem to be bothering them at all and they were feeding in their normal unhurried style at the thistle seed feeder. They can do this because apart from the Greenfinch none of the other birds seem to have the taste for thistle seeds so there is virtually no competition for their favourite food.

Because of its diet of prickly thistle seeds the Goldfinch is associated with the Crucifixion and the Crown of Thorns. According to legend a Goldfinch flew to Jesus on the cross and pulled a thorn from his head and to this day the birds retain the mark of the blood on their face. This is a bit like the Robin story of course who got the blood on his breast doing a very similar thing. The goldfinch appears in more than five hundred Medieval and Renaissance paintings, many of them depicting Mary with the infant Jesus and in Christian symbolism this represents the foreknowledge that both of them had of the Crucifixion. Because it symbolizes the Passion, the goldfinch is considered a ‘saviour’ bird and is often pictured with the common fly, which represents the sin and disease from which Christians believe Christ saved them.

The Goldfinch has also featured prominently in European folklore and early English literature. In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales the Cook was described as being “as merry as a goldfinch in the woods” and during medieval times, presumably because of the religious association, the bird was used by some as a lucky charm to try and ward off the plague.

The snow didn’t last long of course and by early afternoon the sun was out and a rapid thaw had set in. The snow was retreating across the lawn aand with its disappearance the birds began to slip away as well. That’s a shame but at least I had the pleasure of a full morning of satisfying bird watching.

In the News, Sergeant, Ross & Woolies

News reports do not usually inspire me to make entries in my journal but this week has been exceptional and there have been three events that I think are worth commenting upon.

John Sergeant resigned from Strictly Come Dancing and there has got to be more to that story than the BBC are letting on. Sergeant was a hero and his growing status and power were putting the show at risk of being taken over by the people who pay the license fee and the BBC simply could not allow that to happen and I subscribe to the view that he was pushed out. With his erudite wit and amiable persona he was becoming a bigger star than Bruce Forsyth, which wasn’t difficult given the aged impresarios increasingly embarrassing failure to deliver his lines or his jokes, and he was making the self-important judges look ridiculous. It is a real shame because this year Strictly Come Dancing was the best yet but after the Sergeant withdrawal it is hardly worth turning the TV on to watch it.

The Sergeant issue was important because it was a part of a broader British revolt of the people who know what they want against the people who think that they know what they want (if you know what I mean). It was a beautifully choreograhed act of viewer disobedience that has put the BBC and the judges firmy in their place. Strictly Come Dancing is supposed to be a Saturday night entertainment show not the Royal Ballet or Tchaikovsky so when the public said "let's show them where they can shove their culture, rules, skill, art, taste and beauty" then the BBC should have listened to what we were saying.

But the BBC don’t listen because it is an arrogant dinosaur with little regard for the viewing public, which brings me to the next news item that has irritated me this week. The BBC have investigated the Jonathan Ross/ Russell Brand scandal and have decided that Ross can keep his £6m a year contract. Why don’t they consult us before making these decisions because most of us, I’m sure, would be delighted to see the back of this overpaid, self opinioned, deeply offensive and talentless prick. To put this obscene salary into some sort of perspective it takes the license fee of nearly sixty thousand homes in the UK to pay it.

And it isn’t the first time that he has overstepped the mark and got away with it. When Conservative party leader David Cameron appeared on the show, Ross began a line of questioning relating to ex-Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, culminating in the question 'Did you or did you not have a wank thinking of Margaret Thatcher?' Now, I don’t like Margaret Thatcher but that is outrageous and not even the slightest bit funny. What is almost unbelievable is that the grossly overrated Ross was publically defended by the BBC but thankfully at least repeat showings of the interview have been banned.

In 2006, Ross was criticised when he made a tasteless joke against Heather Mills, soon after she and Paul McCartney announced they were to divorce. He called her a liar and that he ‘wouldn't be surprised if we found out she's actually got two legs’. I don’t think we want that man on our TV screens and it is the duty of the BBC to listen to us all.

I could go on because I find Ross to be completely rancid and objectionable but I couldn’t express my views nearly so articulately as one man who left his comment on the BBC news web site:

‘YOU ARSEHOLERS AT THE BBC WHO HAVE LET THIS SHORT TONGUED BUCKET OF HORSE CRAP BACK ON, LETS ALL GET TOGETHER AND REFUSE TO PAY LICENCE FEES I’M SICK OF THIS FOUL MOUTHED TWAT’

A beautifully crafted comment I thought and delivered so perfectly that it simply cannot be improved upon.

My final news item was the story that Woolworth’s is struggling to make ends meet and may be about to disappear from our High Streets and this has made me both nostalgic and sad. When I was a boy I used to catch the Midland Red R66 bus into town with my friends every Saturday morning. We would go to the cinema or to the swimming baths and would always finish our trip with half an hour or so in the town centre shops and this always included a visit to Woolies!

In the 1960s the shop was still called F.W. Woolworth & Co. Ltd and in Rugby it was a big store, with entrances in both Sheep Street and High Street and it had two large floors and an escalator. It sold practically everything and at around this time of year you could do all of your Christmas shopping in one visit. That is shopping at its absolute best! It was modernised in the 1970s and became simply Woolworth.

Woolworths was bright and cheerful and was always busy and best of all it was cheap. It had distinctive wooden floors and it was very red and it sold lots of own brand items that in the 1960s no one was quite so snobbish about buying. It was much busier than Marks and Spencers or Boots and it was a fun place to shop. Woolies suffered badly from shoplifting I seem to remember because with so many diverse items on display it was easy to nick things instead of paying for them. I remember my pal David Newman stealing an Alf Garnett LP of Second World War songs, I don’t know why he did it, he didn’t even have a record player and he gave it to me! The boys of Rugby School (where Britain’s finest young men were being educated) were banned from using Woolworth’s not because as an issue of class but because they used to thieve so much that the management of the store had to bar them from entry.

It will be a shame if Woolies goes under or gets taken over and disappears from our town centres. Next year it will be a hundred years old in the UK (the first store was opened in Liverpool in 1909) and the High Street just won’t be the same without it. I don’t do a lot of shopping myself and I haven’t been to Rugby town centre since 2003 but I can still remember the town before it was pedestrianised and a lot of the shops that have gone, the International Stores, MacFisheries, Overs the bookshop, Berwicks the record store and Timothy Whites, the chemists. The closure of F.W. Woolworth and Co. Ltd. will be a very sad day. But it will never be forgotten and if anyone is interested this is a very good web site, http://museum.woolworths.co.uk/

Salzburg - Day 4, Germany, Bavaria & the Nazis

How wrong I was because when I woke up and inspected the weather it was absolutely pouring, the streets were full of rapidly spreading puddles and no one was walking about without an umbrella. It didn’t look very promising and the weather forecast channel, which was showing web cam pictures from Austrian cities and ski resorts from all around the country only confirmed that today was not going to be very special. This was a shame because today it was Kim’s birthday and it looked like being a wet one.

After breakfast we checked out of the hotel, left our bags for collection later on and walked again to the train station, because today we planned to go to Bavaria in neighbouring Germany. It was raining heavily and my £1.50 umbrella from Wilkinson’s simply wasn’t up to the task and my trousers and my shoes were getting wetter by the stride. At the station I examined the damage and the rain had gone right through the shoes to my socks. Whenever I buy a new pair of shoes I always decline the pushy invitation to add the shoe protector offer to my purchase and today was a day when I wished that I hadn’t.

There was a much better railway fare offer today and although we wanted to pay individually the man at the ticket office explained patiently (several times) that we could buy a group ticket for all of us for much less. Mike eventually worked out what the man was saying and the basis of the deal and we got our group ticket for a very reasonable €30 for the return journey to Berchtesgaden.

Berchtesgaden is a municipality in the German Bavarian Alps and is is located north of the Nationalpark Berchtesgaden in the south district of Berchtesgadener Land. It is near the border with Austria but although it is only thirty kilometres south of Salzburg the route is not particularly direct as the line runs first west and then south so that it can follow the river valley to the Berchtesgaden railway terminus. What is fascinating about Berchtesgaden is that it has a very close association with the history of Nazi Germany and that is why I was interested in visiting the town.

The nearby area of Obersalzberg was purchased by the Nazis in the 1920s for their senior leaders to get away from Berlin from time to time for a bit or r&r. I find the concept of them buying anything quite interesting because later on of course they just took anything they wanted (like Czechoslovakia and Poland for example) without paying anything at all for it. Adolf Hitler's own mountain residence, the Berghof, was located here and Berchtesgaden and its villages were fitted out to serve as an outpost of the German Reichskanzlei office or Imperial Chancellery whenever the Government arrived in town.

In the closing stages of the war the Allies feared that Hitler would leave Berlin and set up an ‘Alpine Redoubt’ to continue the war from the mountains, so the British bombed the Obersalzberg complex on 25th April 1945. Many buildings were destroyed, and looting, first by locals and then by the US occupation troops finishedthe job. One of the conditions for the return of the Obersalzberg to German control in 1952 was the destruction of the remaining ruins and so the ruins of Hitler’s Berghof, the homes of Bormann and Göring, an SS barracks complex, and other buildings were blown up and bulldozed away.

By the time that we arrived the rain had stopped and although it was still very overcast at least I didn’t have to worry any more about my feet getting wet. We arrived at the railway station that was a typical Third Reich building that had been built for the Nazis and included a reception hall for Hitler and his guests. It has gone now but next door was once the Berchtesgadener Hof Hotel where famous visitors stayed, such as Eva Braun, Erwin Rommel, Josef Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. It felt slightly chilling to be walking in the footsteps of the most evil men of the twentieth century and it seemed strange that this pretty Bavarian town was once home to these people. It is an interesting that Hitler's sister Paula lived here after the war until she died in 1960 and was buried in the local cemetery.



After a visit to the Tourist Information Office we talk the steep walk towards the town and arrived evntually in the busy main square that was surprisingly touristy. It was time for refreshment so we selected a café and found tables in the window that had good views over the mountains that at nearly three thousand metres high are the third highest in Germany. We couldn’t see the tops today because they were covered in cloud but somewhere among them was the Kehlstein and at the top of it was the Eagle’s Nest.

Its proper name is Kehlsteinhaus and it was commissioned by Martin Bormann in 1939 as a fiftieth birthday present for Hitler. It was a huge construction project and took thirteen months to build so I couldn’t help wondering how they kept it a surprise? It is situated on a ridge at the top of the mountain and is reached by a spectacular six kilometre road that cost thirty million Reichsmark to build (that’s about one hundred and fifty million euros today). The last one hundred and twenty-four metres up to the Kehlsteinhaus are reached by an elevator bored straight down through the mountain and linked through a long granite tunnel below. The inside of the large elevator car is surfaced with polished brass, Venetian mirrors and green leather. We didn’t have enough time to visit the Eagle’s Nest today so I suppose we will just have to come back another time.

The weather wasn’t brilliant in Berchtesgaden but at least it wasn’t raining so we walked the length of the town with its typical painted Bavarian houses with all roads leading to a large square with a war memorial and commemorative paintings on the walls of the Town Hall. Sometimes it is easy to forget that although the Germans were the aggressors in the two world wars of the twentieth century that this was a catastrophe for them as well. Just as in Salzburg the shops were interesting and many of them sold traditional German clothing; the girls giggled while they tried the Julie Andrews dresses and Micky treated himself to some wollen shooting breeches. It is interesting how Geman people are quite prepared to wear these traditional clothes in a completely unselfconscious way and at one point we saw a young lad of about fourteen in full lederhosen and braces, felt hat and cape and I wondered how difficult it might be to get a fourteen year old in England to walk around the streets dressed like that. To be fair it wouldn’t be right to expect it because he would surely be beaten up within fifty metres of leaving the house.

It was obvious that the sun wasn’t going to get out today but it was pleasant enough to sit outside at a café and have our predictable lunch of soup and strudel served to us by waitresses in traditional Bavarian clothing. By now we had really exhausted everything there was to do in Berchtesgaden on a rather dreary and overcast day so we walked back to the railway station to catch the three o’clock train back to Salzburg. For the first half of the journey the train descended down the mountain to Bad Reichenall and then it turned into the low plain and returned effeciently to Austria.

It was cloudy but dry for the entire journey but no sooner were we back in Salzburg than the heavens opened once more and there was a total deluge to such an extent that we had to shelter under a shop canopy until it eased off. This took a few moments and as soon as we could we moved on towards the old town. I made the mistake of taking a route through the Mirabell Gardens, which were thoroughly wet through with sodden grass and great puddles to negotiate and my shoes started to leak through to my socks again. We arrived in the city centre but it was really quite miserable so we didn’t go very far and in a side street we found a restaurant and decided to shelter there for a while. It turned out to rather friendly and hospitable and as there were no signs of the weather improving we just stayed on and eventually a quick drink became another more leisurely one and then a full meal that turned out to actually to be rather good.

It was still raining when we left and walked back to the hotel to collect our luggage. We didn’t need to take on the water fountain this evening because it was difficult enough just keeping out of the rain. Somewhere along Linzer Gasse we all became separated when the girls got caught up in a last minute frenzy of shopping for gifts and souvenirs.

After collecting our bags we caught the trolley bus back to the airport and there was another torrential downpour that meant we had to share our seats with people sodden and dripping, which made it a bit uncomfortable. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time and decided to go straight through to departures but Margaret was unsuccesful in smuggling a small bottle of champagne through security and so she and Kim had to go back outside and drink it before being allowed to join us in the departure lounge. I like champagne but in my opinion there is nothing very sophisticated about swigging it straight from the bottle.

Even though the final day had been disappointingly wet we had enjoyed Salzburg and the hospitality of the Austrian and the German people and I for one was sorry to leave when the plane took off on the return journey to the UK.

Salzburg - Day 3, Castles, Palaces & Birthdays

Today was Margaret’s fiftieth birthday so as the original five we arrived early in the breakfast room and put up banners and balloons in the way we do to draw attention to the misfortune of reaching birthday milestones. The hotel provided an above average breakfast and this morning, after the birthday girl joined us, we enjoyed the moment and didn’t rush to get away because today we planned a walking tour of the city.

Just like yesterday the day started with a lot of cloud but it was already clearing nicely as we walked down Linzer Gasse stopping only to visit a graveyard to see the tomb of Mozart’s wife, Constantia, and by the time we crossed the river and entered the old town the sun was shining and the temperature was rising nicely. We planned first to visit the Hohensalzburg fortress so we purchased our tickets for the ride to the top on the funicular railway and took the quick journey up to the castle courtyard.

From this elevated position there were some tremendous views from the battlements. To the south and west were lush green valleys and high mountains decorated with farmhouses and huts and to the north and east was the city spread out like a ribbon of pastel colours all along the river valley in both directions. Inside the fortress there was a room displaying marionettes, and another with a Lowry like display of an attacking army. There was a museum about the fortress that included a lot of military uniforms and a room with some unpleasant implements of medieval torture including some curious chastity belts whose design characteristics looked as though they would surely be effective in preventing sexual activity but had some inherent features that I suspect made maintaining personal hygiene a bit of a challenge!

There we learnt some interesting facts including the story about painting an ox during a siege in 1525 to fool the attackers into believing the castle was well supplied (when it wasn’t) and earning the citizens of Salzburg the nickname of ‘oxen washers’. Also that the wealth of the city was based on salt mining which gave the city its name and that the fortress was never taken by an attacking army until Napoleon marched in invited in 1801. Finally we enjoyed a guided tour around the battlements including a climb to the top of the castle where we took one last look around and admired the magnificent views before we left the fortress and retuned to the city on the funicular.

In the square at the bottom there was a small market and some men playing chess with metre high playing pieces that we stopped and watched for a while and then set off around the streets to explore the adjacent churches and courtyards and at lunchtime we returned to the pavement café that we had used the first day and had more soup and had a very pleasant and relaxing hour in the sunshine.

Returning to the streets there were lots of shops selling Mozart products and the great man stared out with a bemused stare into the streets from a thousand chocolate box lids. I would say that Mozart is much more in evidence than the Sound of Music in Salzburg and everywhere there is Mozart memorabilia in the same way that Stratford-upon-Avon exploits its Shakespeare connection. There was another familiar name as well because sadly everywhere it seems has to have a MacDonald’s, and Salzburg was no exception, but here even the purveyor of junk food looked a little classy and had joined in the fashion of having an elaborate sign hanging over the narrow street outside.

There was a street market in the university square that wasn’t extensive but had a good range of produce nevertheless. There were free samples and we tried a variety of cheeses and some especially good Hungarian sugar bread. We saw Mozart’s house but didn’t go inside and walked past the famous concert hall where the annual Salzburg music festival is held and then we were back at the river.

We left the old town and took a pleasant walk along the banks of the Salzach and walking in a northerly direction the river was overlooked on the western bank by the dominating museum of modern art which was a new concrete building that looked ugly and out of place and I wondered what the city planning department must have been thinking of when they allowed it. One thing we discovered was that you have to have your wits about you when taking this walk because the footpath merges without warning into the cycle way and if you are not paying attention then it is easy to get in the way of the people whizzing about on two wheels. All along the river were large nets on posts and while most of us wondered what they were Micky quickly identified that they were litter catchers for people on bikes who didn’t have time to stop and use a conventional bin.

We were walking towards the Mirabell Palace gardens where we found one of the Sound of Music film locations. This was the Palace gates and elaborate water fountain where Maria and the children danced, skipped and sang do-re-mi. The gardens were immaculate, the summer bedding had been recently removed and the edges of the lawns and the flowerbeds were clean and sharp and some of the winter flowering pansies had already been put in place. We had our picture taken by the gates in full Sound of Music pose but resisted the temptation to burst into song. Next to the formal Palace gardens was another, this time informal garden, with curious marble dwarf statues that we wandered around before leaving through the front gates into Markartplatz with another Mozart museum.

Salzburg is famous for its cafés and its cakes and a short distance from the Hotel Mozart was the Café Fingerlos, which came highly recommended in the guidebooks because of its innovation and its prices. It was late afternoon and the sun was extremely warm now and there was a bright blue sky so we sat at pavement tables on Franz-Josef Strasse and made our selections from an extensive menu and after some moments of indecision, which seemed to irritate the waitress, finally choose our cakes, sat back and waited for them to arrive. And we were not disappointed because they were delicious and this was a perfect way to end the walking tour of Salzburg.

In the early evening we met again at the hotel bar across the road from the Mozart and tonight I think they realised we wouldn’t be dining there so they left us alone to enjoy a couple of pre dinner drinks. Afterwards we walked into town through the shops back to the Goldone Este. I find that about eight o’clock in the evening is a great time for shopping as most are closed and the others are thinking about it. Here the shop windows were meticulous and the merchandise was sophisticated and chic. And it was expensive too! We especially liked the clothes shops and my favourites were the traditional Austrian outfitters whose entire stock seemed to be made up from leftovers from the Sound of Music film wardrobe.

At the restaurant there was champagne to accompany the meal to celebrate Margaret’s birthday and we sat chatting and drinking until late and probably kept the staff from closing and going home. I think we had too much wine because on the way back to the hotel we played chicken by running through pavement water fountains. They were the sort that varied the height of the flow and the object was to wait until the stream had slowed right down and run through it without getting wet before it picked up again. I know exactly what you are going to say – Tut-Tut, Brits behaving badly abroad!

After a final drink in the lounge and a game of gin rummy with Micky’s new pack of playing cards and then to bed. There was a clear sky and there were stars so I was optimistic that tomorrow the weather would be good again.

Molly - 6 weeks old

Last weekend and continuing right through this week I have had the misfortune to suffer from the worst ever recorded case of man flu since medical records began so I had the disappointment of not being able to visit little Molly.

Man flu is a strain of flu so powerful and so deadly that it can only be matched by the Bubonic Plague. It is an incurable virus, which has mutated to only effect the "XY" gene found in men. The virus attacks the immune system ten thousand times more seriously than the average flu virus and causes excruciating pain and discomfort for the victim. Man flu has no cure and although this deadly virus is mostly laughed at by women this is almost certainly because, luckily for them, they cannot contract it themselves and consequently have absolutely no idea just how awful it is. When a man gets this terrible affliction all he could hope is that by using all of his strength that he will eventually pull through and recover. Incidentally, and I want to clear this up here and now, there is no credance in the alternative (female) definitions of the affliction as 'Sympathy Fishing' or 'Chronic Exaggeration Syndrome'.

Actually I was really worried that I might have given it to Molly when she visited last week but happily that doesn’t seem to be the case and anyway thinking about it logically she is female so obviously she can never fall victim to this deadly virus.

So I wonder what I might have missed? Well according to child development articles, quite a lot it seems. By six weeks a baby is becoming accustomed to its surroundings and will take comfort from familiar sights and sounds and they will also start to start to move their head to search for things. I had noticed this even last week when Molly had been able to support her own head and lift it a little and begin to look around.

And the really big development is smiling! Last weekend Molly pulled some faces that I dismissed as wind but it seems that I may have been completely wrong and this was indeed the first signs of happiness and pleasure because at five to six weeks a baby smiles for the first time. How exciting is that?

Not as exciting as communication I have to say because also at this time a baby (unbelievably you might think) can already begin to start and try to communicate verbally and scientists have discovered that new born babies are beginning to form different combinations of sounds as early as this and are even beginning to form vowel sounds. I think I may have helped here because last weekend at five o’clock in the morning I took Molly all around the house and explained what every single electrical item was and exactly what it did. I am confident now that she is going to be a scientist.

I missed seeing her last week because I wanted another a go at pushing the pram! It is fantastic, such a better design than those we had for our own children and so much more manoeuvrable. I especially liked pushing it around the shops and taking it into difficult situations just to see if I could negotiate my way out of little problem areas. Prams design seems to have come along so much in twenty-five years or so. When we were parents snobbery demanded that we had a Silver Cross pram because this was like the Rolls Royce of baby transport but today there is so much more choice. For a short while in 1987 we had a double buggy for Sally and Jonathan but this proved hopeless to use around the streets of Stratford-upon-Avon without causing total chaos so we abandoned it fairly quickly and sold it on to an unsuspecting victim.

This week Molly has been out on her first walk around the village suspended around Sally’s neck in what looks like a piece of medieval torture equipment but which I am sure is completely comfortable. Earlier this year I saw some people in Greece with a combination backpack/baby carrier and I thought that I might like to try that out if I get the opportunity. Maybe sometime next year I hope.

Disappointing then not to see little Molly last week but I am pleased to report that the signs of recovery from the man flu are quite promising at the moment and I think I am going to live so I am confident therefore that I will be able to catch up with my precious little granddaughter this coming weekend.




Two beautiful little girls!

Salzburg, Day 2- Mountains, Lakes & Villages

After the good weather of the first day it was disappointing to wake up the next to lots of cloud and mist and a few dreary spots of rain. The grey clouds were hanging about the valley and congregating at the tops of the mountain and Salzburg didn’t look anywhere near as cheerful as yesterday afternoon.

While we were having breakfast however the day slowly began to improve and by the time we left the hotel the cloud was beginning to lift and the sky was beginning to brighten but it was still a day to take the umbrellas just in case. Today we were going out of the city and visiting the village of Hallstatt, which claims to be the most attractive village in all of Austria. I forgot about reassigning transport responsibilities and marched us the short distance to the railway station and there we purchased what we considered to be quite expensive tickets (compared to Eastern European prices) for the ninety minute train ride.

We were delighted to find that the carriage was one with individual compartments because these are our favourites and we settled in for the ride. There were only six seats in the compartment but this didn’t matter and we took it in turns to either sit or stand in the corridor to enjoy the view. Salzburg is situated just north of the Alps and is relatively low lying and although Halstatt is south east of the city the first part of our journey took us due north east towards the town of Attnang-Puchheim where we were due to change trains when this one continued on to Vienna. There were excellent views from the corridor looking south at the Alps as they rose majestically out of the low lying plain and the peaks were becoming visible as the weather struggled slowly to improve.

At Attnang-Puchheim we left the express train and changed to a slow, stop at all stations, variety that travelled in a southerly direction into the mountains and towards our destination (or so we thought). The lady at the train ticket office in Salzburg had thoughtfully provided us with a timetable that included an explanation that the final part of the journey would be by bus because the line was closed for repairs but as it was in German we hadn’t fully understood the significance of this until it was explained to us by the ticket collector (also in German of course, which didn’t exactly make it a great deal clearer).

The first stop was at a place with the unfortunate name of Wankham and this reminded me that place names in Germany and Austria can be a bit of a challenge and it can be difficult grappling with places that might possibly have been named by somebody suffering from tourettes syndrome; places like Wolfswinkel, Alpfahrt, Fuchs and Koch (all genuine I assure you).

The scenery was spectacular now and as we moved further into the Salzkammergut (see what I mean about a challenge?) the railway line followed the western shore of Lake Traunsee and then followed the River Traun into the Alps. This is an area of outstanding natural beauty that stretches from Salzburg to the Dachstein mountain range and spans the federal states of Upper Austria, Salzburg, and Styria. The name Salzkammergut means ‘Estate of the Salt Chamber’ and derives from the name of the state authority that managed the precious salt mines in the time of the Habsburg Empire.

The journey came to an end at the spa town of Bad Ischl, which is where the Emperor of Austria-Hungary Franz Josef had his summer residence and here we were decanted with some confusion onto a bus for the remainder of the journey. As the bus was replacing a train it did not go directly to Hallstatt but had to detour several times to stations along the way so this journey took longer than might have been reasonably expected.

Finally Lake Halstättersee came into view and it was delightful with a calm, glass like surface and reflections of the autumnal mountains dancing on the water. It was only a narrow road because until as recently as the late nineteenth century it was only possible to reach Hallstatt by boat or by narrow trails. The land between the lake and mountains is sparse and precious and the town itself has exhausted every free patch of it and the first road to Hallstatt was only built in 1890. The bus arrived in the village through tunnels blasted out of the rocks and dropped us off at the southern end of the village. The weather was still disappointing but the village was thoroughly charming and I was immediately prepared to accept its most attractive village in Austria claim.

The village is set on piles driven into the lake with an intricate system of intersecting timber ramps, butresses and ascending terraces like hanging gardens creating an air of mystery and the eeriness of mirage, a village that seems to be almost lost in the middle-mist of folklore and fable. The mountain flanks rise sheer from the lake, leaving no room for a road and all but the smallest of vehicles are prohibited from entering the centre of the village.

The walk into the village along the water’s edge took us past some modern art sculptures floating on the lake that were interesting but seemed out of place and I was pleased that they were only temporary and then we began to climb towards the centre of the village. It seemed quiet and deserted but as we reached the central square it became busier, mostly with children on school visits. It was lunchtime so we were all getting hungry so we choose a café and stopped for some refreshment. After soup and cakes we returned to the streets where it started to spit with rain but it blew over quite quickly and the skies started to clear and then we saw the first of the sun beginning to poke through.

We were glad of that and as we walked through the streets and began to climb even higher the weather improved still further. We walked through streets with houses built into the mountain, hanging on to the mountain and on top of the mountain and on the other side they were built right up to the edge of the lake. We were especially impressed by the cat flap about twenty metres off the ground and accessed by an intricate system of ladders.

Although this was October there were still flowers growing in the gardens and by the side of the road but we didn’t see any Lentropodium Alpinium because this is a summer flowering plant. Lentropodium Alpinium? Well, that is Edelweiss to you and me and is considered to be something special in Austria. So special in fact that it is a protected species and picking of Edelweiss is a crime and can result in an on the spot fine if caught. The most reliable place to see it is on the reverse of the Austrian two-cent euro coin.

By the time we returned to the bus stop the sun was shining and there were some great views of the village sitting next to its reflection at the side of the lake and we were all sorry to leave. We boarded the bus that had plenty of spare seats and set off back to Bad Ischl but then at the first stop were ordered off the bus onto another with no spare seats and full of teenage children on the way home. None of had really expected to have to take a ride on a school bus as a part of our excursion and we were glad when we arrived back at the station.

The train was waiting for the bus connection and as soon as everyone was on board it left quickly with some time to make up if it was to make the connection at Attnang-Puchheim. It was a bit late but the Austrian railway system seemed to have all of this under control and the departure of the train for Salzburg was held back for ten minutes so that those who needed to could make the connection. Somewhere along the way Micky, Sue and Christine adopted an orphan Chinese girl who was travelling alone and who seemed completely lost. Micky was doing his best to help her out but his Chinese is worse than his German and he wasn’t doing especially well. We arrived back in Salzburg and we worried that she might be with us for the rest of the holiday but we managed to shake her off and we left the station and walked back to the hotel stopping on the way for a drink at a hotel with pavement tables with an attentive host who was optimistic about tempting us to an evening meal.

It was nice enough but it was a bit too quiet so we declined the invitation, returned to the hotel and after a very short while assembled together again to go out for dinner. After a couple of glasses of wine Kim and I were in reckless recommendation mood again and we took everyone back into the city and to a restaurant called the Goldone Este and we had a nice meal and plenty of wine and beer and then returned to the hotel for a final drink before going to bed. It had been a good day, Hallstatt had been delightful and we had enjoyed our train journeys as usual and we looked forward to tomorrow in Salzburg.

Starlings

All of the frantic activity in the garden that was a feature of the spring and summer has now subsided and the birds are making less frequent appearances. The main visitors at the moment are the sparrows that gather gregariously in the branches of the trees and wait for the food to be taken to the bird table, which they transform instantly into a hub of busy feeding commotion. Blackbirds pass by early in the morning and the tits and the finches pop by any time of day. I am not spending nearly so much on birdseed and even the fat balls last for days. A few Wood Pigeons stop by to clear up after the sparrows and there are still a good number of starlings but not nearly so many now that the fledglings have assumed their winter plumage and are fending for themselves somewhere else.

Starlings are not everyone’s favourites but I miss them. They are gregarious birds, and while in the summer they live in small loose groups, during the winter months they join thousands of others into communal nighttime roosts, which can number several thousand birds, and then spend the day feeding in smaller flocks. The sudden disappearance of the starlings in the winter is caused by summer roosting sites becoming unavailable which forces them to relocate, resulting in the temporary abandonment of some feeding areas.

In the wintertime, both resident and immigrant birds form large roosts, gathering in buildings, trees or reed beds. The roosts often number several thousand, but those that gather in reed beds, for example in Norfolk, can number over a million birds. As the day draws to a close, the Starlings return to the roost and before settling down for the night the increasingly large flock darkens the skies as it swirls around making patterns in the sky. Although not in these great numbers I have seen several large flocks close to where I live and a starling flock like this is called a murmuration, a word that perfectly describes the rustle of thousands of pairs of wings. Starling murmurations are one of the most dazzling displays in the natural world, as a flock continually changes shape like a monchrome kaleidoscope. It seems that my Starlings have just flocked off!

The movement of the flock is a brilliant piece of choreography and ornithologists have discovered that to be a member of a flock individual birds have to learn three simple rules: Steer to avoid crowding local flockmates (separation), steer towards the average heading of local flockmates (alignment) and steer to move toward the average position of local flockmates (cohesion). This is called the flocking algorithm and was first worked out in 1986 and subsequently became important in the world of computer graphics and is used extensively in both developing games and making movies.These huge winter gatherings are boosted by thousands of birds that come to Britain's milder Atlantic climate to escape the harsh cold of the European continent, especially from Scandinavia and Russia. There are several reasons to get together in the way they do, safety in numbers of course, information exchange (if some come back from a good feeding area others may learn of it) and warmth at night through roosting closely together. The birds feed up to twenty miles away from their winter roost but return each evening for company.

Although the Sparrow and the Starling are on the conservation red list in this country it is interesting that by comparison they are doing rather well in the United States. The European Starling was introduced into North America in the 1890s, and quickly spread across the continent. It is a fierce competitor for nest cavities, and frequently expels native bird species and is therefore widely regarded as a pest and has been blamed for a decline in indigenous bird populations, especially the infinitely more attractive Bluebird. The Sparrow and the Starling together with the Pigeon are the only three unprotected bird species in North America, they are all introduced and there are more of them than all the other birds put together.

The European Starling is resident in the US because in 1890, a wealthy American businessman, Eugene Schieffelin, introduced sixty Starlings into New York Central Park and then another forty the following year. In doing so he radically and irreversibly altered America’s bird population because today European Starlings range from Alaska to Florida and even into Mexico, and their population is estimated at over two hundred million.

Schieffelin was an interesting man who belonged to the Acclimation Society of North America, a group with the seemingly laudable, if misguided, aim of aiding the exchange of plants and animals from one part of the world to another. In the nineteenth century, such societies were fashionable and were supported by the scientific knowledge and beliefs of an era that had no way of understanding the effect that non-native species could have on the local ecosystem.

Actually some recent revisionist thinking has concluded that the introduction of the Starling was perhaps not as devastating has had previously been suggested and one thing is certain and that is that is was not nearly so thoughtless as the introduction of the European rabbit to the continent of Australia in 1859 by a certain Thomas Austin who wanted them for his hunting hobby. The effect of rabbits on the ecology of Australia has been truly devastating and entirely due to the rabbit one eighth of all mammalian species in Australia are now extinct and the loss of plant species is at present uncalculated. They have established themselves as Australia's biggest pest and annually cause millions of dollars of damage to agriculture. The introduction of the rabbit was an ecological mistake on a monumental scale!

When he wasn't tinkering with the environment Eugene Schieffelin liked joining clubs and societies and his obituary in the New York Times in 1906 listed his membership of The New York Genealogical and Biographic Society, The New York Zoological Society, The Society of Colonial Wars, The St. Nicholas Club, the St. Nicholas Society and the Union Club of New York which in the 1870’s was generally regarded as the richest club in the world. Obviously Schieffelin had too much money and too much time on his hands!

An alternative theory behind the introduction of the European Starling is often quoted but is probably not true. It is said that he belonged to a group dedicated to introducing into America all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's works because they imagined the sound of Shakespeare's birds warbling their old world songs on the tree branches of America. If this were true he must have been unusually familiar with the works of the Elizabethan bard because Shakespeare’s sole reference to the starling appears in King Henry IV, part 1 (Act 1, scene 3): “Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but ‘Mortimer.’”

As well as the Starling Schieffelin was also responsible for introducing the House Sparrow, which was released into Brooklyn in New York, in 1851 and by 1900 had spread as far as the Rocky Mountains and is today common across the entire continent. The sparrow too is regarded as a pest as it is in Australia where it was introduced at roughly the same time, paradoxically as an experiment in pest control. How badly wrong can an experiment go I wonder?

Schieffelin wasn’t always successful however and his attempts to introduce bullfinches, chaffinches, nightingales, and skylarks were not successful.

Interestingly the House Sparrow gets four mentions in Shakespeare’s works, in Hamlet, As You Like It, The Tempest and Troilus and Cressida. The full list of avian references in the works of Shakespeare were researched by the Scottish geologist Sir Archibald Geikie and recorded in his book published in 1916, ‘The Birds of Shakespeare’ and they are the Blackbird, Bunting, Buzzard, Chough, Cock, Cormorant, Crow, Cuckoo, Dive-dapper, Dove and Pigeon, Duck, Eagle, Falcon and Sparrowhawk, Finch, Goose, Hedge Sparrow, House Martin, Jackdaw, Jay, Kite, Lapwing, Lark, Loon, Magpie, Nightingale, Osprey, Ostrich, Owl, Parrot, Partridge, Peacock, Pelican, Pheasant, Quail, Raven, Robin, Snipe, Sparrow, Starling, Swallow, Swan, Thrush, Turkey, Vulture, Wagtail, Woodcock and the Wren.

Some people research some very strange things!

Salzburg - Day 1, Mozart & Julie Andrews

It was an early start again for the breakfast flight to Salzburg but there was no need to rush because I received a special offer on car parking and for a reasonable £60 booked four days in the short stay car park right outside the terminal building. On-line check in made it even easier and even though Christine was selected by the airport Gestapo to turn out her bag for their perverse amusement we cruised through security and choose a table in Wetherspoons pub and had a sit down and a leisurely cup of tea.

A little too leisurely as it turned out because Kim decided to go browsing in the duty free shop and, not for the first time, completely last track of time and I had to go and fetch her and remind her that we had a plane to catch. We walked all the way to the departure gates but then realised something was wrong because our gate number was not there. I had brought everyone to the wrong end of the airport (and it is a very big airport) and we had to turn around and walk briskly (very briskly as it happened) back to the shops and then onto the monorail to go the correct gate. This put me in a bit of a flap but the others were all quite calm and we made the plane and settled in for the short flight to the W. A. Mozart Airport in Salzburg.

It was still early when we arrived and the thin cloud was still clearing but by the time we were through arrivals and passport control and waiting for a trolley bus into the city the sun was beginning to burn through. The bus arrived and the journey took about twenty minutes but this was not my best day with transport and I made another mistake and made us all get off of the bus about five stops too soon and that meant a walk of about a kilometre to find the Hotel Mozart. It turned out that the people of Salzburg are not too imaginative and almost everything is named after the famous composer.

Mozart was born in 1756 and was baptised with an excessive and unnecessary collection of names, Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart! No surprise then that as he became famous he shortened that to Wolfgang Amadeus, which was a much better name and what great foresight he had because that way it fits so much easier on the album covers. Wolfgang was an interesting man, probably the eighteenth century equivalent of a modern rock star; he earned a huge amount of money, spent it all and died a very poor man. I do like his music and he was extremely prolific. He started composing at five and died young only thirty years later but during his life he managed to compose over six hundred major pieces of music and I calculated that as nearly one every two weeks. That was impressive productivity!

Although it was only eleven o’clock our rooms were ready so we were able to check in and freshen up and after the long walk we were glad of that. We didn’t waste a lot of time however and within fifteen minutes we were ready for a stroll into the city. The friendly man at the reception desk gave us a map and a brief guide with some restaurant recommendations and then we were away.

We walked straight to the old town crossing the River Salzach on the way, negotiating some busy main roads and then through an archway into the world of Mozart and Julie Andrews. The sun was shining in a watery sort of way and the pastel coloured facades of the riverside buildings looked cheerful set against a backdrop of pale blue sky and hillsides radiant in autumnal yellow, russet and bronze. We walked through the main town squares, the Alter Makt and Residenzplatz, and around the streets underneath Hohensalzburg fortress that rises high above the city on an impregnable rocky bastion.

It was lunchtime by now so we found a pavement café with tables in the sun in a square with a statue of Mozart and we had bread and soup and apple strudel and a first glass of Austrian beer and when that was gone we walked a little more.

Just around the corner was a travel agency selling Sound of Music tours and I thought that this might appeal to the girls. The film is one of the most successful ever and is based on the story of the Von Trapp family. The Captain was a very successful Austrian naval captain during the First World War but found himself promptly unemployed after 1918. Now this won’t come as a surprise to anyone who examines a map of post Great War Europe because Austria was stripped of its extensive empire and reduced to a land locked central European state with no access to the sea and presumably therefore without a requirement for naval commanders, however successful they might have been.

The Captain had to find an alternative career and discovering that his children possessed a talent for music exploited this to create the Von Trapp singers. When one of the children fell ill with scarlet fever he employed the novice nun Maria to care for her and the rest is history. I like the film but it takes a few historical liberties; for example the family actually didn’t hike from Salzburg to Switzerland to escape the Nazi’s but in reality simply took the train to Italy and then to Switzerland, now that must have been a whole lot easier and besides, if they had climbed all of the mountains between Salzburg and Switzerland they would have had to go through Nazi Germany and would have been extremely lucky to arrive, not to say completely knackered by the time they got there! The film is shown every night at eight o’clock on Austrian TV and the British Government has a copy ready to broadcast in the event of a really bad national emergency.

By now there was a fantastic blue sky streaked with white clouds and the views across the river Salzach towards the fortress were magnificent. We walked along the river and then down the main shopping street before buying tickets for a lift to the top of the cliffs up to the museum, which, on account of this being Monday, was closed. It seems we always visit museums on Monday! At the top of the gorge there were spectacular views over the city and a wonderful woodland walk. The trees were adorned with golden leaves and there was a thick carpet of those that had fallen already and there was a pungent smell of decaying foliage that was definitively autumnal. The woodland walk took us along the ridge of the gorge through piles of leaves and fallen conkers and then diverted into the hillside along some lonely tracks. The path meandered towards the fortress and soon we were walking again under the shadows of the fortress battlements.

After the early start and a long day we were a bit tired now so after a stop at the café where we had had lunch earlier we walked slowly back to the hotel. Before resting however I carried on to the railway station to get some timetables for our planned excursions and called in at a Spar supermarket for some wine before returning and joining the others in taking a little refreshing nap.

The hotel was in the New Town and that evening we didn’t plan to walk too far so we wandered down Linzer Gasse and choose an Austrian gastro pub called the Alter Fuchs for our evening meal. Kim and I had been there before but we had learnt nothing from our negative recommendation experiences in Galicia and we didn’t hesitate to go inside and take the others with us. Fortunately on this occasion the place didn’t let us down and we had five plates of substantial food, lots of beer and wine and a thoroughly enjoyable evening. There was an interesting waiter who was German but had spent some time living in Yorkshire and who was keen, perhaps a little too keen, to impress us with a repertoire of colloquial expressions that he had picked up along the way.

It wasn’t late when we returned to the hotel and Micky, Sue and Christine were tired and went to bed but we stayed up in the lounge and had another drink because we were expecting two others to join us who had flown in on the afternoon flight and it seemed only polite to wait up and meet them. This was Mike and Margaret, some old friends of Kim’s who were joining us to celebrate Margaret’s fiftieth birthday and they arrived soon after and Mike explained in great detail how the trolley bus that we had got off too early stopped right outside the hotel and based on my performance today I thought that I might put someone else in charge of transport arrangements tomorrow.

Galicia - Day 3, Portugal

When we woke up there was some cloud over the hills in the distance but I was much happier when I was able to confirm that these were away to the north and today we were planning to drive in the opposite direction into neighbouring Portugal.

Breakfast was a similar affair to the previous day with huge chunks of bread and jam but the Spanish guests weren’t complaining and we forced it down to be polite. The lady serving breakfast seemed to be impressed when I tried a bit of basic Spanish and refills kept coming regularly after that. The tea was surprisingly good and we discovered later that, unusually for Europe, people from Northern Spain and from Portugal are rather partial to a good cup of tea.

We left the hotel and because it was about a hundred kilometres to the border we took the direct route south down the E1 motorway, the Autopista del Atlantico. I usually try to steer clear of the motorways because of the tolls and although this was costing a couple of euros at all too regular intervals it was a good decision because it was a nice easy road to drive without a great deal of traffic, probably because everyone else was doing what I usually do and avoiding the tolls and using the congested coast roads instead. And it was an attractive route as well that took us through green pine forests and spectacular rural scenery with occasional glimpses of the azure blue sea. The coast of this green corner of the Iberian Peninsula is known as the "Costa do Marisco" which translates as the seafood coast and the ninety-thousand fishermen from the Galician coastal ports provide all of Spain with fifty per cent of its fish and that is quite a lot because, after the Portuguese, the Spanish eat more fish per head than anyone else in Europe.

The motorway took us first past Pontevedra and then over a suspension bridge and past the city of Vigo, which is the largest fishing port in Spain and finally to Tui, the last city in Galicia, before crossing the River Minho into Portugal. After the heart stopping moment in Slovakia when we travelled to Austria without passports this time we had our documents ready but they weren’t required and we drove effortlessly into another European country, left the motorway and drove down the south bank of the river and on towards the coast. After the motorway the quality of the road surface quickly deteriorated on the coast road but it was enjoyable motoring and there weren’t too many cars about.

After a short while we came to Caminha, which is an ancient fortress town overlooking the river Minho and is rich in historical and architectural importance. It didn’t look too promising down on the river but a short walk to the centre revealed a most appealing town with manorial houses and medieval defensive walls, a Gothic church, and a very attractive main square with cafés and a 15th century clock tower. Especially interesting were the houses with colourful tiled walls in bright blues, greens and yellows. There was one of those old fashioned hardware stores that you rarely see in Europe anymore and all of the houses had metal balconies that reminded me of pictures of Latin South America and Cuba. Portugal is one of the poorest countries in Europe, and behind the tiled walls we could see that the houses were made of tin, but it is the seventh safest country in the world and the fourth biggest consumer of wine, after France, Italy and Germany, and so we choose a table at a café next to the town’s renaissance fountain to help them maintain this statistic.

The place had an easy ambiance and a lazy appeal and we walked around the streets that led to a church at the top of the town. The Rua da Corredura was the town’s main street but the shops were evidence that the people of the town don’t have a lot to spend and the hardware shops in particular had only basic items for sale which we have probably not been seen in the UK in over fifty years, especially the outdoor washboards for doing the laundry.

The steep street of Calçada de Santo António took us to the church with a large well-maintained graveyard full of impressive crypts and tombs, which must cost far more to build and maintain than the people could surely afford. Kim and I went into what we thought was a church but turned out to be a Franciscan convent and school and we were immediately intercepted by a four foot high, hundred year old nun who seemed pleased to see us and insisted on providing us with a short tour of the church and an explanation of the building. This was all in Portuguese of course but we nodded along in the way that you do when you cannot understand a word that is being spoken and this seemed to encourage her to carry on. S he gave us all some pictures of St Francis, for good luck I think, and then she gave us perfect directions to return to the car that was parked next to the estuary looking out over the river back into Spain. On the way back we went into a little shop and bought tea towels and tablecloths and I worried about that in case it signified a turning point in my life because I have never done that sort of thing before!

We returned the way that we had come and onto the motorway and back into Spain. This was a really relaxing drive as we travelled along the elevated sections of the motorway at the same height as the tops of the pine trees we admired the views all around. Galicia has preserved dense Atlantic forests where wildlife is commonly found and is relatively unpolluted. The untouched countryside is composed of green hills, steep cliffs and estuaries and is very different from what is traditionally imagined as typical Spanish landscape. In a very short time we were back at Pontevedra where we left the motorway and headed west out to the coast and to the resort of A Toxa at the end of a long peninsula. An important geographical feature of Galicia is the presence of many fjord-like indentations. These are called rías and are divided into the Rías Altas, and the Rías Baixas and they are important for fishing, and make the entire coastline an important marine area. They also make for long journeys because the roads follow the coast and seem to go on endlessly before reaching anywhere.

The reason for driving to A Toxa was simply to see its only famous tourist attraction; the small twelfth century church of San Caralampio set in beautiful gardens and which is completely covered in scallop shells. We crossed the bridge from O Grove to the island and drove straight to the church. It had been a long way to drive but it was really worth it and the church looked magnificent in the early afternoon sun and framed against a perfect blue sky with its gleaming scallop shells bleached white by the sun. The place was extremely quiet with no shops or restaurants but we were hungry now so we drove back to O Grove, parked the car and looked for somewhere to eat. We found a sea food restaurant with pavement tables just catching the last of the day’s sun before it dipped down behind the waterfront buildings and we enjoyed more sea food, well, some of us enjoyed more seafood, and afterwards we walked around the busy little harbour where they were preparing for a major festival that was due to begin sometime during the following week.

We left A Toxa and followed the coast road and got mixed up at a roundabout where we missed the road to the new motorway and ended up instead on the coast road where we crossed the Rio Umia and arrived in the town of Cambados, which didn’t look especially promising but we had lots of the afternoon left so we parked the car and walked into the centre of the town, which rather took us all by surprise.

Cambados is at the heart of Albariño wine country and there were lots of shops with tempting offers. At the top of the town was a large square with leafy trees, cobbled streets, stately houses with original balconies and the neo-classical church of San Bieito where, this being Sunday, there was a service taking place inside. In Cambados the most famous houses are those of the vineyard owners and the wine merchants, the Royal Hospital and next door, built on the remains of the old seventeenth century stately home, the National Parador of the Albariño. The was a friendly little bar next to the five star hotel so we sat in the last of the day’s warm sunshine and had a last drink before returning along the coast road to Pontescures.

The journey was slow through all of the little coastal towns on the way and culminating in congestion in the scruffy town of Villagarcia de Arosa and with my patience only just holding out I was pleased to get through it and onto the relatively open road back to the hotel. It had been a long but rewarding day and I for one was really pleased to reach the hotel bar for a glass of cold beer and a plate or two of appetizers before eating once again in the hotel. The evening meal was interesting, Sue and Christine bypassed the main meals and went straight for the sweet and Micky had a beef kebab that had lots of chicken bones in it and when questioned the hotel owner looked surprised and declared this to be a good combo!

At the end of the meal I requested the bill and surprise, surprise he had forgotten about the free meal offer and charged us for everything. I challenged this but he explained that we had messed him about by not accepting the truck stop hotel, this had cost him money and he couldn’t therefore honour his free meal offer. Excuse me! Messed him about? I don't think so! I was the one who nearly lost all my friends! We were the ones inconvenienced by his faulty plumbing story but he wasn’t budging and I wasn’t in the mood for an argument so said no more and soon after that he disappeared and we didn’t see him again, and we never will because this is a hotel that we will not be returning to.

The next morning we woke early, had breakfast and I practiced my Spanish again and it was worth it because after that the breakfast lady brought us croissants as well as bread and lots and lots of tea. After that we drove without incident back to the airport returned the car and waited for the flight that brought us back to Stansted in time for lunch at a nearby country pub where Sue and Christine choose fish, cooked English style, as they prefer it, and I think they were glad of that!