Things for which I am thankful – Travelogue 2 – unlimited by numbers, gratitudes…
Home to Hull – Ferry to Rotterdam, A – Mothern near Strasbourg, B – Lyon, C – Champagne region and back to Rotterdam and the ferry back to Hull! Some 1,400 miles…
Grateful to still be able to make such a road trip at the advanced age of 71! Getting to Rotterdam was easy – 1.5 hours drive to Hull ferry port and an ovenight ferry which left us most of the day to get to Mothern near Strasbourg. This is in the North-eastern corner of France just over the border from Germany and was a good 7 hour journey with stops – the longest leg of the holiday so glad it was first…
Mothern is a fairly small village on the banks of the Rhine which divides France form Germany and much of the centre of the village is half-timbered buildings like this…
The Rhine at Mothern is already impressive in size but actually, not very interesting to look at…
Mothern was about 40 kms from Strasbourg and we spent our first day of three, visiting the city that houses the European Parliament.
Here there were also many half-timbered buildings although I never found anyone to ask about the age of the buildings – I have a feeling the technique was used far longer than in England – perhaps due to the abundance of timber in the area…
The building below was once a barracks but what really intrigued me, once we got close to it, was that all the details around the windows are Trompe l’Oueil – something I once did a bit of in one of my past careers…
For our second day in Mothern, we crossed the Rhine back into Germany (we travelled down through Germany – see last week’s account of German drivers) and headed for the mountains of the Black Forest.
The Black forest is the home of the eponymous gateau which gained Europe-wide popularity in the ’70’s (they grow a lot of cherries here) so naturally we had to go in search of some! Upon arriving in the town of Freundstadt, we discovered that they take Sunday closing much more seriously than in England so the only eateries open were ice cream parlours and so we had to settle for a Black Forest ice cream dessert ( liberally soused with Kirsch) and so eager were we to tuck in, that we forgot to photograph the desserts first and had to resort to photographing the menu – still it proves we are not of that generation that feel the need to photograph and share everything they eat – lol…
Freundstadt lived up to its name (literally Friend-town) as a Turkish couple who have lived in Germany for thirty years, invited us to share their table as the place was packed, and then paid for our desserts too – many thanks…
On our third day, we decided to head north into a national park (more forestry) and since you have to put a destination into the satnav, I chose a castle that was marked there, although I didn’t zoom in to examine the destination…. Eventually we turned onto a small road which became a track in the woods and wound up through the woods – increasingly rough – the centre vegetation giving the underside of the car a good brushing…
We were in the middle of nowhere – the fabled destination to which a satnav will famously take you given half a chance… Discretion being the better part of valour, I eventually zoomed out to see that the track continued to spiral up a hill to the alleged castle -(goodness knows what sort of ruin it was) and we decided to turn round and go back. We stopped to photograph animals in some kind of sanctuary/farm near the start of the track.
No idea what sort of porkers these are but perhaps some kind of rare breed…
These are miniature goats, the kids are about the size of a small dog. Both they and the pigs were munching on windfall apples from nearby trees…
Lastly some endearing donkeys…
And that is where I am going to leave this travelogue till next week- after all, you can only absorb so much of other people’s holiday pictures…
I wasn’t sure if I would write this week as we are now on holiday in France, Misky suggested taking notes for later posts and Clark also said this is a tradition in the TToT but I have a lot of thoughts about the journey and decided to write them as a travel piece without numbering the grats (or hypograts)…
I conceived and planned this holiday quite quickly – it had to fit in before a reunion weekend with my school friends of 50+ years ago in October plus an important inspection at work, and even though the time of anticipation was small, there was still that countdown which seems to slow time, but eventually the last day of work came and went, my boss’s parting call “Take care – I still need you in my life!” Take that as you will…
We decided to take the overnight ferry from Hull to Rotterdam again, as we had earlier in the year when we holidayed in the Netherlands. I am always reminded, when finally catching sight of theRiver Humber, of Hull’s great Metaphysical poet, Andrew Marvell, who famously wrote the attempted seduction poem, “To his Coy Mistress” which enchanted my imagination when studying it at school but which I now take, at the age of 71, as a wider reflection on the shortness of life generally, and the need to make the most of it – very metaphysical… In the poem, Marvel says to his would-be lover, “Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain.” and a muddy tide it is, the waters never other than murky… You can read the full poem here, and a poem in which I introduced the lady’s somewhat indignant riposte, here! Indeed, when we arrived at the ship and looked over the side of the dock, she appeared to be resting on the mud with the tide still ebbing and as the hours neared the departure time, a strange small ship was loitering on the seaward side of the ship – a ship that I looked up (Oh, the joys of the internet!) and discovered she was the UKD Marlin – a trailing suction hopper dredger! UKD presumably stands for United Kingdom Dredger – who knew? And the UKD Marlin was just itching for us to set sail so she could go about her vital business of hoovering the RORO berth clear of Humber mud!
The good ship UKD Marlin getting about her business as we head out down the Humber…
The Captain of The Pride of Rotterdam had welcomed us aboard with the news that the wind would be rising from the South-west to be gale force seven in the latter part of the crossing, and so we could expect some rolling during the night. Visiting the toilet in our cabin in the wee small hours of the night, I was momentarily spooked by the unexpected movement of the red emergency bell pull. (the check-in lady had kindly upgraded us to a disabled cabin so that Barbara could use her boot-scooter on board and have room to park it in the cabin) Then I realised the movement of the bell-pull was a result of the said rocking and rolling of the ship and returned to my bunk to be rocked in the cradle of the deep until we passed the sheltered waters beyond the Hook of Holland. You may find this video of the spooky bell-pull’s movements oddly relaxing…
The ferry docks at eight in the morning and on that occasion, we had only an hour-and-a-half drive to our destination – a reflection of how compact the Netherlands are, but yesterday, we had a drive of six-and-a-half as measured by the satnav. Of course, that doesn’t allow for holdups or breaks, and the reality was nearer eight-and-a-half hours! First off, it took nearly two-and-a-half hours to leave the port – due to our shooting-ourselves-in-the-foot exercise (Brexit), we are now obliged to use biometric data to pass into Europe which means getting out of your car, entering a booth and loking into a camera as well as placing your fingers on a fingerprint scanner and so we crawled along in a queue of cars, eager to be on our way with a long drive ahead of us. Curses be on Nigel Farage who led the campaign to take us out of Europe and who still gets paid a pension from his stint as a Member of the European Parliament – oh the irony…
Eventually we were on our way and had a choice of three routes, courtesy of Google, with six hours minimum on the table. We decided to take the middle route, figuring that an extra half-hour was neither here nor there – this would have taken us through five countries – imagine that! Netherlands, Belgium, tiny Luxembourg, Germany and finally France. A half hour in, the implacable lady that is the voice of my satnav, stated that delays on our chosen route would result in additional driving and we could save twenty-two minutes by switching to an alternative route – I decided to accept, though without time to stop and inspect the new route since we were on a motorway – it turns out that Google simply took us back to the “mainly through Germany” route so we missed out on our five country marathon – c’est la vie…
Freedom of movement between European nations in the Schengen zone means that crossing into Germany is marked merely by a roadside sign – blink and you could miss it! What I could not miss, was a change in the culture of driving. all the way through the Netherlands, the speed limit had been no more than 100kms per hour (62 miles per hour) but once in Germany, on their famously named “autobahns”, the speed limit sometimes rose to 130kph (80.77mph), which drivers took not as a limit but as a challenge to achieve or exceed. In England, the national speed limit on motorways is 70 mph, although, in practice, the speed where traffic is free-flowing is often nearer 8omph. Not only do drivers in Germany achieve the speed limit but they aggressively tailgate anyone who gets in their way of reaching their goal! The result is, (and we were travelling on a lot of two lane motorways), that you end up with a big difference between the fast outer lane and the nearside lane where lorries and those who want to travel at a more modest speed are, and this makes moving out into the fast lane quite hazardous, calling for bouts of sudden acceleration to match the speed there. This different culture kicked in the moment we crossed into Germany…
To begin with, we were driving under grey skies with even the odd drop of drizzle, but as the day wore on and we progressed South, the skies cleared and the temperatures soared until even driving with the windows open did not relieve the feeling of driving in an oven… The landscapes at the journey’s outset were also rather beige, if not grey, lots of featureless factories arrayed in Dutch neatness, and when finally we hit the countryside, it was flat and uninspiring, but by the afternoon, we reached the Mosel wine-growing area where small vineyards were arrayed on the slopes of volcanic rock. Speaking of rocks, we stopped to stretch our legs at a “Rastplatz” (Rest place) called “Blau Stein” which conjured up an image of beer steins overflowing with foamy lager – something which, considering the heat, would have been most welcome at that moment (if I wasn’t driving) but sadly the most this rest pace had to offer, was somewhere to stop, and toilets. There was, however, a large boulder painted blue and I realised the error of my fevered imagination, not a beer stein, but a Blue Stone lol…
From that point on, the landscapes became more exciting, extensive woods, almost mountains and masses of windmills! There had, of course, been lots of wind-power in evidence in the Netherlands where windmills have been in vital use for centuries, but Germany too, has embraced the wind farm as a way to cut down on CO2 emissions as well as to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas in the age of global warming and political heat. In England, there are still many objections to on-land wind farms, which I find extraordinary given a year which has seen five heatwaves one after another. I think that all these NIMBYS (Not in My BackYard) should be forcibly relocated to live right next to one of the remaining coal-fired power statioins to see how they feel about windmills then. I feel that when the generation that grew up with the Teletubbies comes to power, they will embrace windmills and feel inexplicably comforted by the sight of them…
Evetually, still with an hour-and-a-half to go, we crested a rise and saw before us the broad sweep of The Rhine valley which moment, put me in mind of Keats’ poem describing Cortez first seeing the Pacific Ocean from “a peak in Darien” and so I felt the need to record the moment with a video…
Finally, at 7.10pm, we arrived at our AirBnB – a maisonette in the garden of out hosts who were most welcoming. The garden is at once familiar, a bramble trained along a fence, rhubarb and blackcurrant bushes and novel – peach and fig trees and a grapevine over a trellis. We disgraced ourselves by locking ourselves out whilst having a last cup of tea (alright, it was me – my fault) but it was only 10pm and we had no choice but to rouse our hosts ( Nous sommes desolais…) and get them to let us in – and so to bed…
So that’s it folks – Day One of our French road trip…
1 – My apologies for not visiting all your TToT’s last week but I am in the midst of the A to Z 2026 Challenge as are some others of you and I have had 66 comments to respond to as well as visiting back and continuing to write new ones – 2 more done this weekend – just 8 to go (for which I am thankful!) If you want to look in its at https://how-would-you-know.com/a-to-z-challenge-2026-h-is-for-historical-fabrics/
2 – I thought I would share a few more pictures and thoughts from our holiday in the Netherlands. One of the things that defines the landscape, certainly in “The Green Heart” where we were, is that every tree has been pollarded and in some cases, espalliered and the branches then pollarded. I asked a lady in a posh clothes shop we visited why they were so keen on pollarding and after aa moment’s thought she replied ” Because it makes them all look the same…”
The road to Bodegraven, the nearest town – crossing some fields delineated by drainage ditches.
It seems like it was too early for cows to be out in the fields and this is after all, a cheese (Gouda) producing area…
3 – In the picture above, you can see a cyclist and from the advancing car you can see that this is a single-track road (with passing places) but cyclists, of which there are plenty, are given a wide bert. In the cities, rather than graduate to a car when you have children, you buy an “Urban Arrow”…
You can see that this is an electric bike which lends assistance to the parent…
4 – We made a visit to The Hague – not the most successful day out, partly because we didn’t have a clear plan of where exactly to go and partly because finding a parking space was difficult and once found, expensive. Parking for 3 hours costs about 33 Euros ($38.70) which is clearly designed to encourage people to use bicycles or public transport… Eventually we parked in a disabled bay, unloaded Barbara’s boot scooter and set out to explore what turned out to be an African quarter. We decided to have a meal at an Eritrean cafe – chicken and eggs in a spicy sauce served on asoft, sourdough crepe cooked only on one side. Whils sitting outside, we were able to people watch but also to admire the architecture which I judge to be late Art Deco…
5 – One day I would like to write abook on Signwriting (something I used to do in a previous life) heavy on pictures, so I never miss the chance to photograph signs – especially abroad and the signs below have a different style, and age to those I am familiar with…
This shop has a sign dating back to late 30’s, I think, but laid inside the window are signs from an earlier period…
6 – In Bodegraven, there is a working windmill (well, on certain days) and although I didn’t manage to get the tour, I took these pictures. I was told that this windmill can be used both for grinding corn and for pumping water.
You can see the furled sails
It appears that the windmill is turned to face the wind manually using the “steering wheel” on the balcony…
7 – and from one old windmill, to a modern one in the Port of Rotterdam as we sailed out into the North Sea at sunset…
In the gathering dusk, even an oil refinery can look like fairyland…
Farewell to the Netherlands as we sail west…
8 – And back home, some new solar lights that Barbara ordered grace the garden by night…
1 – So we are currently on holiday in the Netherlands in which case, this is a TTOT travelogue…
https://youtu.be/ltd34wDpnTE sorry the embed is not working but click the link please to see the massive port of Rotterdam…
2 – Gouda is the nearest city and here is its impressive Town Hall…
3 –
3 – https://youtu.be/B3xx5dH8u0k sorry the embed is not working but click the link please to see a street organ playing the Rolling Stone’s “Satisfaction (I can’t get No…)”
4 – Barbara in handbag heaven! She had purchased a suede handmag some weeks ago and asked me to get some waterproofing spray. I duly sprayed it and thought that the darkening was the wetting effect of the spray – only to find thar, in very fine print, the spray was labelled “Black” – so I owed her a handbag…
5 – After a quick trip to the local supermarket to practise on her new “Boot-Scooter”, Gouda was her first experience of driving round a busy town and she passed with flying colours! Note all the bicycles outside the Library/Cafe… Bicycles often have a separate, parallel road and where they crossover the car roads, each a re traffic-lighted. Families drive bikes with large child pods and youngsters graduate to riding at an early age! This is a country where cycling is truly important…
6 – The Gouda LEGO shop…
7 – Just to prove I know how to take a selfie – still working on the smiling bit… We drove to look at the flower growing area and these are fields of Hyacinths. Whilst buying some tulip bulbs nearby (its a bit too early to see the tulips) the shop owner told us a lot of interesting stuff including the fact that these hyacinths are being grown for the bulbs, not the flowers – so all the flowers in the bicture will be picked and thrown away in order for the bulbs to grow quickly – its still a three year plus project to grow them to a saleable size…
Note the windmill in the background – these windmills are for pumping water, not grinding corn and there is water everywhere, here – all in the process of draining the land (largely below sea-level) and raising the water to higher and higher channels before pumping it into the sea!
Even in the centre of town – nearby Leiden – there is a large windmill for pumping – they are kept working as a backup for the electric pumps – the Netherlands are very flat – we have yet to see a hill – and there is a lot of wind!
8 – Monday we drove to Amsterdam (under an hour away) to visit the Rijksmuseum. We had discovered that the Van Gogh Museum is booked up ten days ahead which was a disappointment, however we did see four Van Goghs in the Rijksmuseum…
The location of the four Van Goghs was marked by a small crowd! Barbara slipped in from the side since she was low enough on the scooter not to get in the crowd’s line of sight!
We also chatted to the Museum Attendant who was full of stories which he was dying to tell but most people ignore him. The small painting in this picture was painted in twenty minutes by Van Gogh while he waited for a friend to join him in visiting the newly opened Rijksmuseum. Also, The painting at left in the crowd picture, is one of the few paintings Van Gogh sold during his lifetime – to his sister.
Not “The Girl With the Pearl Earing” but painted in the same spot, I think, “The Milkmaid” by Vermeer – this was Barbara’s favourite painting. It cost us 50 euros to visit the museum which made us very grateful for the free entry to British Museums (though they are talking about charging tourists in future…).
Sunset from the living room window of the houseboat which is our home for the week…
9 – The A to Z Challenge 2026 started today (April Fool’s Day – perhaps because many participants are wondering why they have let themselves in for this – again!) – ! have got 16 0f the 26 posts in the bag though… https://how-would-you-know.com/all-you-need-to-know-about-weaving/
10 – And we visited Utrecht…
Utrecht’s Dom Tower, the remnant of a cathedral destroyed in a storm in 1674… Needless to say, we did not attempt the 465 steps despite the promise of an unparralel view from the top…
“Four seasons in one day” sang Crowded House and as you draw nearer to the Equator all the seasons happen in every day’s cycle
In Tennerife, north side of the island you wake to blue skies and yet already a wisp of cloud pours over the lip of Mount Teide like the tentative sign of an eruption by this still hot to the touch at the top, relatively sleeping giant, but as the morning wears on the cloud finds it’s level and spreads less threateningly over the pine forests below the crater edge shrouding them in fog on out over the banana plantations that surround Puerto de la Cruz then on over the city itself where, just after lunch they deliver their own micro-seasonal rain hardly worth the unfurling of an umbrella but nurturing the bananas as reliable as clockwork except when the occasional Atlantic storm disrupts the proceedings and having delivered their promise, the clouds dissolve and the season of sunny evening takes their place…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, kim881 in Poetics, invites us to write about “micro-seasons” after the Japanese custom of dividing their year not just into four seasons but into seventy-two “micro-seasons” such as ‘frogs start singing’ and ‘crickets chirp around the door’…
Is it a crime to sup on a Sleeper Shark Genus: Somniosus microcephalus the solitary fish swimming in the dark waters beneath the Arctic ice so few and far between this shark is seldom seen but in the photographs captured the curves confirm this clearly is a shark but unlike its cousins – sleek Silvertips the Greenland Shark is no beauty it’s skin blotchy and rough…
On an exchange visit to an Icelandic ladies’ choir did I commit that crime? Our own ladies, scandalised at the first stop on our itinerary a swim in the Blue Lagoon – by naked women brazenly European walking around in the changing room were equally horrified in Reykjavik’s covered market to be offered seagull’s eggs and Rotten Shark – kæstur hákarl a national delicacy but foodie as I am I agreed to give it a go… “Best hold your nose” our host’s advice but not before I’d caught a whiff like ammonia I took a small white cube upon a toothpick and ate nose pinched it was not as bad as some wimpy celebrity chefs have claimed…
I was not told that this was Greenland Shark nor that it is now known to be the longest lived vertebrate thought perhaps to live as long as four to five hundred years one hundred and fifty before the poor creature is ready to breed imagine then it’s lonely search for a mate deep in the Arctic dark and the secret of this shark’s longevity – slow living – snail’s pace metabolism which is why, flesh full of bodily toxins the freshly caught Sleeper is poisonous but the peoples of the Arctic are not ones to waste a food opportunity and so they figured out to bury the shark for six to twelve weeks weighted to press out fluids whereby fermentation detoxifies to feed the nation it’s infamous dish at the midwinter festival þorrablót
Now that the Methuselah nature of the Greenland Shark is known it is not legal to hunt or kill this oldest of fish but fishermen’s bycatch provides sufficient specimens to feed the Icelandic appetite for Rotten Shark – so it was no crime to taste this long-lived being whatever my fellow singers said of the smell, but now that I know of what I ate, I carry the thought swimming in my imagination of this patient, slow-living denizen of the dark depths the Greenland Shark…
I have no skills for flight, or wings to skim the waves effortlessly, like the wind itself unaided, but I have flown in man-made machines, looped the loop in a Tiger Moth, watched men practise dropping food-sacks from inside a low flying Hercules. I have circled and landed in a glider and watched kite-boarders risk life and limb lifting off from Elounda Bay where once Imperial Airways flying boats landed on their way to India. Recently I saw a replica of the Wright brothers first flyer, one which is occasionally towed up to fly, briefly, perilously and from that to the climate polluting jets that crisscross our skies with contrails, from which I have had my share of gazing with wonder at the Earth below whilst transported unimaginably far, I have most certainly flown even though I have no skills for flight…
A signature dish usually has a story Rooting its cook in the time and place Where it was acquired and from whom…
Palaver Sauce was my first glorious excursion into cooking in a different way, and I brought it out at dinner parties for many years and told its story. The American professor of West African studies who taught my fellow student and I to stew the things which convention would say ought not to go together, red meat and white, and salt fish…
Goat—funkier than lamb, nearer to mutton Chicken – chopped in chunks still on the bone Salt Dried Cod – ancient African currency that once bought slaves Spinach sauce rich with garlic and chilli Turmeric, my own addition.
Palaver is the Portuguese word for quarrel but there is no argument once cooking’s worked its magic.
My old boss Tony, took me for a meal in Manchester, in a church converted to a hotel and restaurant with a swimming pool in the Lady Chapel and Venison Marinated in Strawberry and Stilton on the menu. Tony gave me my first job as a cook—I will not honour it with the title chef. Ratatouille Chilli con Carne Six Quiches, various and six buckets of salad each morning developed my skills and gave me staples so that years later when I opened my own restaurant, Frewin’s, The Carroll Hotel long gone, I sentimentally made that Venison dish my own signature, menu centrepiece…
Small things can make a signature dish I nestle walnuts into Apple Crumble topping For who thinks of roasting walnuts Yet how delicious is this tiny touch Browned at the crown but protected from burning A rival to its cousin Pecan Pie.
But crumble never overtook Bread and Butter Pudding at Frewin’s – I made a rod for my own back with that one, so often was it ordered, but at least it could be made at a moment’s notice – the ingredients always to hand…
Buttered Brioche bread Cream Milk Eggs Veins of sugar and raisins interleaved
Ramekins into the microwave until the mix began to rise and then into the oven to swell and brown – the look on diners faces when the souffle impersonating dessert arrived hot foot…
Christmas Dinner for the whole family, though a favourite feast, is my least favourite meal to cook – all logistics and creativity giving way to tradition. Yet special meals are not always for the many, once, I spent a quiet Christmas with just my sister, Carol, in a town in Roscommon where a halal meat packing plant had populated the place with Pakistanis and the supermarket shelves with foodstuffs I could have found back home in “Bradistan*”. I decided to treat Carol to a “desi**” breakfast such as we had both enjoyed in Bradford. Such fun making wholemeal, spinach pooris, flicking the wrist to spin the disks discs like frisbees, into the deep fat fryer – watching them inflate like little green footballs then eating the curry and lime pickle with pooris and fingers, not forks and spoons.
Also at Carol’s command I recreated a Victorian favourite Sussex Pond… Suet Raisin pastry Crudely thrown together Roughly rolled out To line a plastic bowl A chopped-up lemon And equal weights of Butter and muscovado The filling in and Pastry top crimped down – Four minutes in the microwave Is all it took and When the pudding – Turned out on a plate Was cut into – out poured the Pond water, rich and brown Its sweetness offset by The chunks of lemon. This too graced my restaurant Tables for special guests With suitable appetites for Suet pudding – I promised To deliver in just twelve minutes Start to finish and I never lost my race…
Food is life, and love, and comfort and is it any wonder that it generates stories rooted in people, places traditions and relationships flavours and feasts remembered…
* So many Pakistanis came to work in the mills of Bradford, that it was sometimes referred to as Bradistan.
** from the Sanskrit word “Desh” meaning “country”. The word “Desi” refers to something “from the country” and so for Pakistanis in Bradford, it means things from the old country – desi food, desi calendars, and desi dress.
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, in Poetics: Satiating the Soul, Punam invites us to celebrate any or all of the things that go to make up the Hindu festival of Diwali – cleaning the house, preparing food, and celebrating the festival of Light with friends, family and everyone else…
I have been intrigued for some time, by the idea of the lyric essay and have bought books by Claudia Rankine and Kathleen Graber as examples, but the form is as slippery as a fish and impossible to pin down. Writers.com begin a very good attempt at definition by saying “Lyrical essays explore the elements of poetry and creative nonfiction in complex and experimental ways, combining the subject matter of autobiography with poetry’s figurative devices and musicality of language.” This is my first serious attempt at the form…
