ENGLAND Travel - A Time for Friends

Hi family,

Here we finish our Great Trek back from Chamonix to G&G Spark in England.

Staines-Upon-Thames, near London, ENGLAND

Jul.19 - Jul.22

Summer went into hiding when we crossed the channel back into the UK.

Route from Dover to Devon, via London

We were now in for a bit of Southern England, looking forward to the sandy beaches where Colin’s friends Barney and Lynne live on the South coast.  Believe it or not, it is quicker to pass by London, en route from the White Cliffs of Dover on the Southeast coast, to the beaches of Devon on the Southwest coast, then to head directly along the coast.  That’s because there is no such thing as a straight road in England - except for the road from London west to Bath which was built by the Romans - and the narrow, sometimes single-lane roads along the coast would have added hours to the drive (and subtracted hours from driver lifespan - just ask dad WJJ).  This is good news though, for we got a few days visit with my old school friend Alex and her family in Staines, on the outskirts of London.

There are those people you meet in life for whom friendship is not affected by time and space, including sometimes long lapses between communication.  When the Jamieson family moved to England in 1993, and the Jamieson kids attended Reading Blue Coat School, Alex was the 'head girl' (as these English, Harry Potter-esque schools tend to have, along with a 'head boy').  Out of duty, she talked to us newcomers at the school, made sure we were getting around ok.  It turned out we liked talking to each other.  And so we pick up whenever our paths connect online or cross in real life.

Staines - Still warm enough for dinner outside,
across the table from Lillie-Rose (12), Alex, Jasmine (10);
 Dad Simon missing, away filming the British Golf Open

And then the rain really started...

Brixham, Devon, ENGLAND

Jul.22 - Jul.29

Devon was Colin’s turn - a reunion of sorts for him and his Hong Kong friends, all gathered in Brixham where Barney, Lynne and family now live.  It was a week of stormy beaches, wet hikes, blustery fort visits, and blowing horizontal-rain-in-the-eyes coastal running, warmed by occasional sunny peeks and merry companion cheer.

Brixham - Barney & Lynne's backyard: Good times, good food, and
some a-little-older-than-Darwin kids with pretty decent soccer skills;
Barney's son Alistair kicked the ball with Darwin for quite awhile

Broadsands Beach - usually packed like sardines;
the advantages of stormy weather

Brixham Harbour - a rare sunny peek

Finding a place in Brixham in the middle of summer wasn't easy.  While we ended up in the Landscove holiday trailer park(!!), it was cozy, clean, waterproof, and only a few steps from the West Coast Trail along the sea.  A short hike along the trail brought us to the site of an old fort - originally an Iron Age fort (ie. from a few hundred years B.C.), upgraded in the late 18th century when the British were still worried about French invasions (all of Europe seemed to be fighting and creating a tangle of alliances during the 18th century, which included of course the French and English duking it out in the new territories of North America).

West Coast Trail - inspired by the soccer kids, a new sport: Soccer Hiking

Fort at Berry Head - exploring the old ruins was
enticement to get Darwin and I out for a few wet hikes

Fort at Berry Head - here we go again, talking
about war...

Brownstone Battery - Searchlight housing:  taking refuge from the grey
rain at a WWII defence site while running along the South Coast Trail

While I began wondering about the intelligence of exposing a 4-year-old to so much history and theories (and tanks and boats and planes and canons) of war, my friend Tereza in Squamish, mother and confidante of a boy same age as Darwin, noted this interest in war was not uncommon among boys this age.  Back in our hunter-gatherer days, was this about the age young boys began to leave mom and attend the hunt with dad?  And then, when our agricultural culture developed, only a mere blip in our human timeline, perhaps our ingrained hunting genes simply found a new thrill outlet in hunting each other...

Fortunately, sparks of enlightenment continue to find ways to preserve history while promoting togetherness.  The Guardhouse Cafe, located in the old guardhouse for the fort, serves really good coffee and food, and houses a little museum describing the geology, fauna and history of Berry Head.  Within its tiny space, it still manages to incorporate interactive outlets to occupy children - critical to museum success (so parents can actually silently read all the fascinating information).

Guardhouse Cafe - a wet expedition bonus, our favourite English
snack of Flapjack (favourite French of course being croissants)

After a whirlwind 1,750 km (not including the ferry crossing) put on over 13 days through 4 cities (Chamonix, Annecy, Staines, Brixham) in 2 countries, not to mention 27493574857 readings of 'The House at Pooh Corner', the Great Trek ended back at G&G Spark’s for some much-needed stay-in-one-place-ness.  Absolutely no car rides anywhere for awhile.  No planning, no logisticising, no packing/unpacking/re-packing.  None.  Nada.  Zilch.

FRANCE Travel - A Time for Friends and Culture

Hi Family,

The June-July Chamonix “summer holiday” is over.  Thus begins the Great Trek back to England and G&G Spark.  Rather than the 3-day march we took to get to Chamonix in June, we’re dilly dallying with friend visits not-on-the-way back to Croft.

Argentiere, Chamonix Valley, FRANCE

Jun.8 - Jul.16

Our first friend visit actually happened shortly before leaving Chamonix, when my friend Angelika came with her family from Geneva to spend the weekend with us.  Angelika and I started at CP at the same time back in 2000, she in the East, I in the West, and met when we attended conductor training school in Montreal.  We were going to run CP together one day - this was back when the eastern part of CP was a separate entity - she from Montreal, I from Calgary.  She’s smarter than me and left CP a few years before I did.  I went to her Indian wedding in Montreal, borrowing Adele’s salwar kameez, eating more food during the 2-day festivities than the previous two months.  She and her husband, Mati, moved to Hong Kong for a few years, where, unbeknownst to Colin, Mati mingled in the climbing scene with one of Colin’s Hong Kong friends.

With small children in our group, our time together in Chamonix was picnicky and visity.  It was great.  Sunday morning, Angelika and I had a glorious child-free hike together, rewarded afterwards with, you guessed it, ice cream (including the rest of the family of course).  It was lovely, and somewhat of a relief, to see Darwin playing with Angelika's children.  They are gentle and kind, and Darwin's spidy senses seemed to pick up on that.  Since losing the nursery school time in Settle, I fret over Darwin's general fear of other children.  Colin insists anyone should be rightfully afraid of children - they are erratic and easily unhinged.

Argentière - Picnicking in our apartment backyard with
Angelika, Mati, Maya (8) and Alek (6)

Annecy, FRANCE

Jul.16 - Jul.18

I had been following the 2023 Tour de France while also reading “The Racer”, a book written by a retired British pro, David Millar, about his last year of professional bike racing after 15 years in the sport.  What a difference an insider’s view makes to the gist of the complex team-but-individual-sport of these multi-stage bike races.  It turned out the Great Trek back to England was going to intercept the Tour at about the right place and the right time, in Annecy.  A few hours of logisticizing an interception (with some insider paraglider-landing-site, crowd-avoiding, non-nightmare-parking beta from Colin) and voila!

Annecy - Stationed next to some British fans who spend the
first part of their summer 'literally' following the Tour, Darwin
eagerly awaiting the next vehicle spectacle

The rest of us were far more interested in the cyclists

The vehicle cacophony

It should be called the Tour de Car Spectacle.  The number of souped up support vehicles and motorcycles - carrying team directors, spare bikes, spare parts, spare whips, team paraphernalia, police, media, VIPs, and who knows what else -  was overwhelming.  Then, somewhere in among all of the vehicle cacophony, come some tiny cyclists sucking in all those exhaust fumes as they work their ultra-fit butts off, only but a minuscule few seconds of the endless parade.

We were lucky - there was a breakaway group (which included Canadian rider Michael Woods who won Stage 9, only the third Canadian ever to win a stage, and at 36 years old!!) which meant we got double the cycling part.  I couldn’t help but notice how young most of the riders all looked (even Canadian Michael), and thin - apparently weight optimization is a big part of training, enough muscle but not too much weight to get up all those big climbs.

It would also be great to read the book by the retired “lead logistician”.  Who decides the route (I’ve seen the 2024 route is already set), determines the road works and contract projects to get the route up to snuff, directs the road closures which seem to be timed to the second to limit total closure time (as we experienced (successfully!) on our drive to Annecy on race day), determines the timing points for each course ‘marked’ location, etc....  I haven’t found it yet though.

This completed our Chamonix Big Sports hat-trick (Paragliding X-Alps, Marathon de Mont Blanc, Tour de France), now time for a bit of culture, which is Annecy’s forté.  It is a pretty town on the edge of the mountains and the edge of a lake, which gave us a little bit of wander time, a little bit of (extremely crowded) beach time.  As we continue to re-learn, 4-year-olds do not love exploring narrow old streets and people-watching in a café.  Nope, not even if they get to take a scooter.

Annecy - Old Town

Annecy - D: "Mom, where are the croissants?
Can we have an ice cream?"

And yes, we still had to earn our ice cream...

Annecy - with the frisbee purchased for free at the
Austwick Cuckoo Festival 'garage sale' near Settle

Onward from Annecy, it was also time for more conversation about “war”.  Because the Great Trek followed a significant part of the WWI Western Front, we often came across large war graveyards and memorials.  One very large memorial at Vimy has a different effect compared to seeing row upon row of crosses - graves - in a field.

St. Quentin French Military Cemetery - located near our hotel,
en route to the Calais-to-Dover ferry

Darwin I suppose was still trying to grasp “different countries and cultures” in general, nevermind that they inevitably all wanted to annihilate each other at some point through history.  To try and “explain” it in a 4-year-old context, I asked him what if some people came into our house, knocked down some walls, changed the decorating, took away some of the furniture, changed the rules and wanted you to do all the dishes and vacuuming all the time.  You would fight back and try to get them out of our house.  The Germans had come into France, and France was trying to get them out.  And lots of soldiers died - German ones, French ones, and all the other countries that came to help.

‘They’ always say “careful what you say to/in-front-of children”...  For weeks after this, the ‘bad guys’ in Darwin’s playing were always The Germans.  I tried explaining with more explaining - about current wars involving other countries, innocent soldiers, bad leaders - which just guaranteed that nothing sunk in.  Sometimes, maybe it’s best just to shut up.  I also concluded that if you can’t explain to a child a good reason for doing something - like invading another country - it’s probably a dumb thing to do.

The world would be happier if we all just ate a bit more ice cream...