I recently had a lovely weekend with friends of over thirty years in the Belgium city of Leuven. It was a celebration of getting old for one of us and we got together for probably the first time in twelve years. We live in different ends of the country and in different countries now so getting together is just a little bit harder than meeting up at the Star Of India or King Willy IV. It’s odd but when comparing technology from now to then and the ease of keeping in touch I feel it’s amazing we ever did anything. Imagine having to phone call people and organise things “live”.
So, trains, cars and cars on trains meant that we had a weekend in Leuven. It’s a very pretty town and had a lovely atmosphere, probably aided by the fact it’s a university town. On the Saturday we just met up, found our lodgings and drank and ate. On the Sunday we ate, drank, ate and drank and somewhere in the middle of that there was a visit to a little brewery on the edge of town. It definitely was not Stella Artois which has it’s home at Leuven.
Leuven Town Hall
Leuven has a large pedestrian area, although there were many bicycles on the loose! The roads were nicely wide and there were statues here and there. Effectively within the main ring-road the place is safe, quiet and impressive.
A Leuven Street
At night the town is gorgeous. It’s well lit and oozes sophistication – apart from that one little street which has a McDonalds – the rest of it is lovely.
Leuven Cocktails
This past week I also spend some time in the UK equivalent town of history and cobbles. I went to Canterbury. The streets are thinner but just as full of tourists as Leuven. There were many eateries but not so many bars which is a shame I guess. Canterbury is a university town and also the home of christianity in the UK – not that that fact is a draw on me going there. I’ve been in the cathedral and so am not that fussed about getting inside there again.
Canterbury Streets
You can see from the picture above that Canterbury does pretty well in the “cobbled streets and old buildings look” category. Maybe Leuven is a bit better as they rebuilt the whole town after the first world war and made it look like it did before!
So the previous communication about places of abode consisted of a group of friends who grew up on the Hertfordshire borders. Two of us lived in Essex, although A only live in Essex by about 20 metres, and two of us lived in Herts.
I have another bunch of friends from university and there are parts of the internet dedicated to them. We are further spread around the world as follows:
Me in Kent
M in Fulham
J in West End
R in Houston, TX
A in Atlanta, GA
It’s a more interesting question about cardinal extremities for this bunch.
Here’re the numbers [to within a few miles each]
Me – 51°19′ N 0°28′ E
M – 51°29′ N 0°11′ W
J – 51°20′ N 0°37′ W
R – 30°10′ N 95°30′ W
A – 34° 01′ N 84°14′ W
So, in summary R is furthest south and west by a long way. M is furthest north by about 10′ and I am furthest east. Yippee, I’m first to see the sun and more than likely the first to be asleep!
But, the plot thickens very slightly as there is another who should be included in this group but he isn’t part of the Fulham Five. K lives in the Midlands and given his approximate location is:
52°26′ N 1°34′ W
K is clearly the furthest north of all of us.
I am the only one in the eastern hemisphere though!
Recently in a discussion with a group of friends D ended by saying that all was quiet on the southern front. He lives in Offenbach and so, therefore, not that you know just yet, he lives furthest east of that particular group of friends.
Some Friends – Map
So, D gets the furthest east and also south but not by a great deal. I’ve got some calculations to do in a minute. J lives in Saltash and is clearly the furthest west, and close to being the southern most!
Now some numbers:
J – 50° 24′ 21.78″N
D – 50° 6′ 32.47″N
The north-south distance between these two is:
0° 17′ 49.31″
Which turns out to be 33km.
I was more interested in who is the furthest north and by how much. The numbers for those, are:
Me – 51° 19′ 5.60″N
A – 51° 20′ 6.24″N
You can see that’s pretty close. The north-south distance for these two is:
0° 1′ 0.64″
Which turns out to be 1.872km.
It’s much closer than the difference between the other two, but I am neither the most north, south, east or west. Boo.
[The domiciles of D and J have been approximated but with 33km between them that’s not particularly an issue].
A part of the summer’s tour was to visit the West Country to see friends. As I’ve been driving around quite a bit I found some radio series to listen to. I already listen to podcasts and I do that mostly when I am running so I wanted other things to listen to while driving. I had an audio book version of Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan and then I listened to all of Cabin Pressure, a radio situation comedy by John Finnimore. Cabin Pressure is brilliant and so very well written, I’d recommend it to all.
I spent two nights at the Kilna Guest House just on the edge of Tideford. This is a few miles along from crossing the Tamar bridge and so is definitely in Cornwall.
On my first night there I went to see a film in Plymouth at the Vue cinema, I watched David Brent. On the first full day in Cornwall I has a quick run around the lovely countryside.
After that I then met with my good friend Jamie and he had a surprise first activity for us. We travelled a small distance along the A38 to Adrenalin Quarry. For a relatively small sum we were able to launch ourselves off the top edge of the quarry and fly down the zip line for 490m.
Zip Wire
It was pretty good fun and there was a video service available so we decided to do the whole thing again. Having looked into zip wires a little bit there’s one in Wales which is a mile long! I would really like to do that one. At the end of the Adrenalin zip wire we were about one metre above the lake travelling at 40 miles per hour.
The set up at Adrenalin Quarry was very professional and one of the best outdoor activity centres I have been to. I was very impressed and the technology was impressive. To get the video I just needed a code number for their website which was printed on a wrist band. Inside the wrist band was an RFID chip which I placed near a reader just before we launched off the platform. It all worked very well.
Later that afternoon the full-on sport experience continued with frisbee golf at Mount Edgcumbe House on the opposite side of the Tamar from Plymouth. We bumped into more experienced players of frisbee golf and they had different frisbees for different distances and conditions, it was quite an impressive set up and just a little nerdy!
Frisbee Golf at Mount Edgcumbe House
I have been around the grounds of Mount Edgcumbe a number of times but never actually inside [I’m not even sure if you can see inside] maybe next time I will go inside and have a nose around. Now that I’ve seen inside a few of these old houses they do seem similar and less impressive the more I see!
Mount Edgcumbe House
That evening was a meal in Saltash and then back to the guest house for sleep. I didn’t run the next morning but instead got ready to drive across the county towards the end of lands. I have other friends in Camborne and so listened to more of Cabin Pressure along the way. This was my first time to Camborne and I was curious as when I was at college the Royal School of Mines had a traditional rivalry with Camborne School of Mines and so I have been aware of this place since the early 90s!
While having a bit of an overview of the road map I noticed a monolith along the way and so I thought I should probably divert to see it. According to Wikipedia it is the largest prehistoric monolith in Cornwall. At the top of St Breock Downs I thought it’d be worth seeing.
St Breock Downs Monolith
In the picture you can see the monolith and the Beast! I managed to take a photograph of the side without a graffiti penis! According to my OS map app there was also a trig point nearby and so I walked the short distance to that also.
St Breock Downs Trig Point
The roads heading to the monolith were “classic” Cornish roads as they were single track two way roads with very few passing points. After this I stopped off for a coffee at “Cornwall Services” and then kept going to Camborne.
Later that afternoon a trip to the beach was required. It wasn’t cold nor too hot and there were sunny intervals. I didn’t take a hat and so I got burnt on my head. I should have known better.
Gwithian Beach
Clearly the southern most point of this island beckoned and the next day we travelled to the Lizard via a short time in the viewing area of RNAS Culdrose to see what was happening. We were quite lucky as there were about four Hawks doing their thing in the skies along with one Sea King. The Hawks were quite loud but not as good as the Tornados seen at RAF Marham. They were practising landings by performing touch and goes. Hopefully there’ll be F-35s here soon as they prepare for duties on the carriers.
Hawk, RNAS Culdrose
Pub lunch at Lizard and a stroll around the lighthouse and southern most point. It was very pleasant and lovely weather. One day I might have to order some pasties to get that authentic Cornish taste here in Kent.
Later that day we visited a monument on top of a hill near Camborne and from this vantage point you can see the impact that mining had on the landscape. There are small industrial buildings dotted around the place with chimneys clearly visible.
Carn Brea
And so the trip was over. The journey home was smooth enough. The roads were flowing quite well until the M25 which was to be expected. This was the last big trip of my summer although I have still to write about the biggest so keep an eye open for that!
Twitter followers are like buses. You don’t get any for ages and then along come two old friends all at once.
Nice to hear from you Pom – going to be a regular tweeter?
Good to get Daffyd following me. Perhaps my website will get more views.
Now I just need about a million more and I’ll be just like Stephen Fry, although without the tv career, writing abilities, height and coolness.
I think I am nearly ready to inform friends and family and the world about this website. I wonder what sort of response I’ll get but as this is a vanity / personal project I don’t really care. I think I’d like to improve the look and get away from using the default theme, although I have looked at others and I prefer the default theme, then I will add content! I have started to map out the shape and design of the website.
The picture is just a trial. Think my niece took the photo but it looks cool.
