On the move

I'm not the only family member who seems to be constantly on the move these days.  Last week, wee Brother has once again flown the nest and headed to Beijing to start his new job.  He is officially the most adventurous member of the family, having lived and worked in Scotland, West Palm Beach, Hong Kong, and now Beijing.  For the rest of us, while we rarely migrate, we do love travelling - trip to Beijing is now top of the list!

Mum on Windchime some years ago

Not to be out-done by wee Brother, wee Sis is also in the middle of an epic adventure.  At three to four miles per hour, she is currently bringing Windchime back to Cambridge from Birmingham after a major refit.  Along with promises of eternal gratitude and decent beer stops, and unexpected but superb weather, a small army of friends have been persuaded to help along the way.  Even my water-resistant (that is resistant to getting into water - any pool, canal, river or open water) climbing partner has been persuaded to trade climbing for cruising for a week.

Sadly for me, I don't get to join in the fun as I have my own European tour to come - eight European cities in five weeks; all work and no play.  I had often wanted to be Phileas Fogg when I was a child, perhaps Golf Boy can be my Jean Passepartout...

Windchime Journey Projections Waterway	From	To	Miles	Locks	Hours
Worcester Birmingham Canal	Stoke Prior	Kings Norton Junction	11.75	35	8.5
North Stratford Canal	Kings Norton Junction	Kingswood Junction	12.5	18	7.5
Grand Union Canal	Kingswood Junction	Gayton Junction	43.25	59	24.5
Northampton Arm	Gayton Junction	Northampton	5	17	5
River Nene	Northampton	Peterborough	61	37	36
Middle Levels	Peterborough	Denver	30	4	11
Great Ouse	Denver	Popes Corner	20	1	7
River Cam	Popes Corner	Cambridge	14.25	3	5.5
			197.75	174	105

This day in history

31 August 2003: My first taste of outdoor climbing (Loudoun Hill).

Food, glorious food

It's becoming clear, I have to concede that I'll never get this work-life balance right.  This is the peak of the climbing season, and I have been out of action for three weeks due to work commitments.  Golf Boy and I had previously planned our annual Far East adventure for September, it's now been postponed till Jan 2012 because I struggle to find space in my work diary.  Unsurprisingly, my blog and flickr have both been gathering dust.  However, one thing I refuse to give up and always manage to fit into my work travels is an indulgent food experience...

O Ya, Boston - this is my second visit in two years, I still maintain this place produces some of the best food I have ever eaten.  Generally, Japanese food is renowned for its unusual but sensational flavours and immaculate presentation, the food at O Ya is all that at the highest level.  We had 19 courses and a variety of sake pairing, it was four hours of pure indulgence. 

Cail Bruich, Glasgow - this is not a work-related outing, but a great discovery worth noting.  Cail Bruich is within 15-minute walking distance from our flat, with great reviews of modern Scottish food, but somehow we never got round to it.  Always resourceful, Golf Boy got us a voucher for Chateaubriand, so off we went.  The reviews were spot on, and we were not disappointed - the menu is imaginative and the food is superb.  The only slight disappointment was our restriction on having Chateaubriand due to the voucher; while it was a supremely good steak, I was also very tempted by everything else that was coming out of the kitchen.  

Few days after our visit, we read that Chris Charalambous (chef and proprietor) was invited to spend a few months at Noma (top restaurant in the world since El Bulli announced closure) in Copenhagen.  I guess there's no reason not to stop by more often.  

York and Albany, London - my second encounter with the Gordon Ramsay empire.  I'm still no fan of the man himself, but this was another undeniably good meal.  

Monachyl Mhor, Trossachs - having read great things about this place and being impressed by Tom Lewis on the Great British Menu, we have sent various family members and visitors along, but never ourselves.  Now, we have finally made it to Monachyl Mhor ourselves!  

We had a great time, and learned a lesson in wine etiquette.  I'm quite sure we aren't the only ones guilty of this, but when the waiting staff comes to present you with the wine you ordered, most of the time you'd just glance at the bottle, nod politely before tasting and having your glasses filled.  Well, we did just that, and only after a short while of sipping and chatting did we realise that it was not the wine we ordered.  It was also when we suddenly remembered that she also said "this is our last bottle in the cellar" that sent a mild panic between us.  We queried the waiting staff, she went away for quite some time and brought back the sommelier; meanwhile Golf Boy was turning pale at the thought of us having been given the most expensive bottle of wine from their cellar.  Well, it was a more expensive bottle, they changed the wine without fuss and offered us the two already poured large glasses on the house; panic over.  Needless to say, I got a long lecture from my sommelier brother.

St Pancras Booking Office, London - the newly refurbished St Pancras Hotel bar, recommended by my sister who stopped by while waiting for the Eurostar.  Their champagne cocktails are the best, and the best quality bar snack you'd find anywhere.  Just as well I didn't have a train to catch, I'd be certain to miss it.

Nakajima, Tokyo - this is a meal that I did end up missing the train for.  I had planned to get the Shinkazen Nozomi to Kyoto at lunchtime.  However, I was too tempted by a one-Michelin-star lunch for 800 yen, so the bullet train has to wait.  It's a tiny restaurant on a side street in the basement.  Judging by the queue, it's clearly very popular.  In the evening they serve Japanese haute cuisine, but at lunchtime, they only offer four sardines dishes on the menu, all for 800 yen; I had the sardines sashimi.  I sat at the counter and watched the chefs at work, while having the best sardines I've ever had.  

Operation 'Bottomless Pit'

Four weeks of French polishing has transformed our stairs and landings from rustic-student dive to grown-up Georgian elegance.  We have made progress on Operation 'Bottomless Pit'!

I'm not generally one with much enthusiasm for home improvement, but I'm beginning to see how some people seem to spend a substantial amount of time and money renovating and updating their homes.  It's hard to tell whether I'm turning into one of these enthusiasts or loosing the plot from excessive inhalation of the polishing solvents, we have now committed to a further two weeks of work downstairs.  

Currently, I'm writing this in a flat with no internal doors and no downstairs flooring; I suspect it's the latter.

For the geeks out there, here's the journey of transformation so far - French polishing with elevator music.

Norwegian Ice

It's been a couple of months since my Norway adventures.  As we're coming into spring, I was beginning to wonder if I would again be in the mood to blog about my ice-climbing trip.  Well, as it happens, all I needed was to be stuck in a hotel room while a snow storm swept through Worcester Massachusetts to recondition my brain.

It might seem obvious, but what I learned from my trip was that ice-climbing is not rock climbing; it is also not Scottish winter climbing.  Vertical frozen waterfalls are really a different kind of beast.

In some ways, it's so much more fun with all the extra gear you get to play with - the axes, crampons and ice screws; even the mounting of the ice-screw holders onto your harness could become a little project for the evening.  Further, what could be more therapeutic than repeatedly throwing an axe and kicking sharp points into a giant lump of ice?!

On the other hand, all that extra gear creates ridiculous challenges:
- More gear equates to more weight to move up the waterfall with you, it's quite amazing how heavy the axes and crampons become over the course of the day.  At the end of the day, even walking out on flat ground was a struggle with my crampons.
- Axe and crampons placements that are good enough to climb on require strength and precision.  Neither gentle tapping towards achieving an ice sculpture nor mad hacking of the climb to release giant ice boulders onto your belayer were helpful.
- Ice screws are a clever invention, but incredibly fiddly; for me, it is still impossible to hold onto my axe with one hand and screw in (or unscrew) with another.  On leading, this is very inconvenient.
- Failing on any of the above would result in falling with all the aforementioned gear, which is highly undesirable.

Although my week of ice-climbing is probably the most physically and mentally challenging thing that I have done for some time, I have had a fantastic trip (see Rjukan photos here).  Rjukan is stunningly beautiful, I can see why it is the place to go for ice-climbing.  As an added bonus, we ended the trip by spending the last day in Oslo (see photo of Oslo harbour front) and went to see Edvard Munch's work at the National Gallery.

Norway definitely has a lot to offer and I like what I have seen so far; however, it is only fair to report that Norway did live up to it's reputation for being an extremely expensive place to visit.  I thought I was prepared, but it is not until you hand over 200 Norwegian Krone for your burger and chips do you truly feel the pain.  In one of his regular columns, John Simpson wrote about his recent trip to Oslo to cover the awarding of the Nobel Prize.  While I'm not sure I share his choice of Norwegian survival essentials of silk long johns and cherry vodkas, I fully subscribe to his view on the "unthinkable prices"of all things in Norway - which reminded him of Woody Allen's line in Manhattan from the taxi he and his girlfriend were travelling in: "you're so beautiful I can scarcely keep my eyes on the meter".

Global Domination

It seems there is still some way to go...  Golf Boy is not happy that I have covered 3% more than he has, I can see golf trips to Isle of Man and Guernsey ahead...

Create your own travel map


Ollie has traveled to: Australia, Austria, Bermuda, Cambodia, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, USA States: California, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island

Udon Love

Clam chowder udon at Koya in London.  

The udon is freshly made and the chowder is rich, but not too creamy, and absolutely delicious.  It's Udon heaven, one of the best bowls of udon I've had for a long time.  

Sun, sea and sand

For the past years, it has become customary for Golf Boy and I to escape the January blues and spend the month far east.  We would stop over in HK to catch up with the family and spend a couple of weeks on various little adventures in neighbouring countries.  The superb travels, fascinating cultures and amazing food aside, I cannot deny how smug and satisfying it is to have an 'I don't do January' out-of-office reply on your work email.  However, this year, there is a change of plan; we're not heading east till the summer.  If you're thinking that spending summer in Asia is an odd choice, you'll be right.  Hot and humid comes to mind, and having grown up in HK, I should know better.  Well, I do know better, but an upcoming work trip to Japan in July has created an opportunity for Golf Boy and I to visit one of the most expensive countries in the world 'subsidised'; it is hard to resist.  So, watch this space for tales from the land of the rising sun.

In the meantime, Golf Boy and I decided to go for a modest of 'sun, sea and sand' trip for some quiet distractions.  Having ruled out Tunisia and Sharm el Sheikh (this is prior to the political unrest in the Middle East, which is unlike us considering the timing of our previous trips to Morocco and India...), we settled on Lanzarote.  This is supposed to be one of the less developed islands of the Canaries with fascinating geology, decent beaches, warm weather and a decent wine production; we were keen to experience all this and not those that earned this island the unfortunately nicknamed "Lanzagrotty".

Miserable Golf Boy with food poisoning

Not really ones to lie on the beach, we pretty much saw the whole island in the five days we spent there (edited photo highlights here).  The geology is extraordinary, and we were most impressed with the National Park and the volcanic caves.  The places of interest and tourist hot-spots on the island are a collection of Cesar Manrique's artistic and architectural outputs.  He was truly a man with vision.  This is all good, but Lanzarote is surprisingly expensive when it comes to eating out.  It may be that we were staying at quite a remote village, away from the resorts where there are more competition, but we definitely didn't feel we got value for money.  In the end, uninspiring and expensive food, a severe tropical storm and food poisoning (of the delicate Golf Boy) really led us to feel a little disappointed with the trip.

We weren't "wowed" by Lanzarote, but I don't think it was supposed to do so.  All in all, we did enjoy our short break on the island, and I would like to stand up for this little island - Lanzarote certainly does not deserve its nickname.

The White Rabbit

This may be the Year of the Metal Rabbit, but my year so far seems to have taken a cue from the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.  2011 has started with a pathetic few days in bed with the flu, a mad dash to Manchester, stop-over in Liverpool, a treat in London and a wee adventure in Lanzarote.  Hmm... all a bit manic I thought, perhaps I should 'restart' my year at Chinese New Year.  So here we are, 11 days into the Rabbit Year, I'm finally getting a restful Sunday at home, though not before a week of adrenaline overdose in Rjukan and a work trip to Paris.  All a bit fast and furious, but certainly not all work and no play and I'm certainly not complaining.  There has been many highlights, which I will blog in the coming days.  Here's a start:

Dinner at the Savoy Grill

Kicking off 2011 with a trip to the Savoy Grill was quite a treat.  Having followed the TV documentary on the Savoy Hotel's three-year refurbishment, I simply couldn't resist suggesting the Savoy Grill for dinner with my American boss who happened to be passing London during one of my regular London trips.  Despite a Gordon Ramsay establishment, I was not disappointed.  Stepping into the Savoy Grill was indeed stepping into Agatha Christie world.  There was none of the 'Professor Plum being murdered with a candlestick in the library' type of excitement (well, fair enough, that's more Cluedo than Miss Marple), but the menu and the food definitely made up for it.  Everything on the menu was enticing (erm..  for non-vegetarians) and the food was really good.

We were really tempted by their charcoal grill (seems to be their speciality), but in the end, we went for the braised beef shoulder and roasted fillet and the special lamb saddle instead.  They do a lot of table side preparation, which is fun to watch.  To much of the stress of the young waiting staff (who were extra attentive but still have this rabbits caught in the headlight look about them), the lamb saddle (and the millefeuille!) were presented and carved on the trolley beside the table; I think they also do the lunch trolley everyday.  I recently heard Michel Roux talked of the theatre of dinning, I think I'm sold!

So if you happen to be in the neighbourhood, I would recommend lunch at the Savoy Grill.

Happy New Year!

Got a Flipvideo from Golf boy, took it out for a test drive - fantastic fun!