Hockey Hockey Hockey

If you are looking for thoughtful insight/political comment on the Olympics then this is not the place for you, this is a simple tale of my enjoyment of Hockey in London.

It may not be travelling far but for me any trip to London is an excursion that I don't always enjoy. This is because London is far to big an a hassle to get around. Coming from a small city such as Bristol I much prefer being able to walk everywhere, however sometimes you have to take the trip to the 'Big City' for proper events and predictably this time it was for the Olympics, and not to leave/return to the country like the last few times.

It was only ever going to be for the hockey, I really don't care too much for any other sport and it is rare to get such a good opportunity to watch the sport be played at the highest level. This was the main motivation behind going to the Olympics, rather than to "be a part of a once in a lifetime event" that so many others have (and rightly so)... although saying that, Rio  now looks rather tempting.

In the days before I was getting more an more excited and finally it was time. I made my way to London on the train, navigated (the relatively simple) trip, collected Savage and arrived in Harringay to get sleep before the big day ahead.

Day One of Hockey

We started the day with a trip to Westfield shopping centre to meet our old friend Alison, who berated us for being terrible at keeping in touch, for shooting off around the world. It'd been over a year since I'd last seen her... probably longer for Savage.

After brunch we headed in to Olympic Park, which was a lot bigger than we had expected but, in hindsight... of course its huge. We headed straight to Riverbank Arena and claimed our seats and got ready for game one: Belgium vs China....

This is actually day two but its a better panorama shot

It was a fairly dull game with one goal disallowed, for the hockey lot it was because the first strike at a short was too high (as this next photo demonstrates... boom!)

Short Corner

Hitting the ball

Running

After that it was time for the highlight of the day.... GB girls versus Korea. This was an immense 8 goal thriller with GB throwing the lead away before finishing strongly to smash home two more to secure the second win 5-3.

Bristols finest saying hello

Britain

Short Corner

Goaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal! 

Deflected short into the goal

After the thrilling encounter it was time to meet Dave and Jan at the entrance (and in Jans case) outside the park this meant a 30/45 minute walk trapsing through the huge crowds all heading in the same direction. It was a task, we decided the best plan was to send me alone and meet after.

Successfully collecting both new parties Jan demanded we go to the bar as she needed a drink, understandable after working 12hr shifts over the weekend. We ended up in the "card only queue" and learn't that the draft beer was broken, the first major foul up of the Olympics! This is an outrage was yelled, however I claimed in that case they would have to sell bottles at the same price as a pint, as it turned out I was right; take that £7 a pint cost at Olympics it only cost a measly £4.60.

Back in the Arena this time we were sat behind the goal for two more games.

A good Save

Riverbank Arena at Night

Another Cracking Save

Afrer this it was the end of a long day.... not, it took about 2 hours to get back to Davids. Once back we watched some highlights on the tv, both types of Volleyball and some Basketball.

The Olympic Stadium All Lit Up

Day Two of Hockey

In the morning I met with Jan for an early lunch and to actually spend some time wandering around the Olympic Park to really get a feel for it. It is nice, the atmosphere is random with lots off people moving about, the crowds aren't that ridiculous an we barely queued more than ten minutes to get in both days.

It did at times feel a little like 1984 with corporate madness on steroids. People walk around holding nothing but a sign that says 'Visa'. At one point they announced that there was 'entertainment' at the Band Stand and we should make our way over to it. This felt rather autocratic in the sense that "Entertainment is happening now, You will enjoy it". Otherwise there was enough choice in food that McDonalds wasn't constantly rammed down your face, no they save that for all the billboards at the tube stations. Oh and that tower thing that looks like a Helter Skelter is equally as bizarre... I mean what is it supposed to be?

Helter Skelter and Onezies

Jan in Front of the Olympic Stadium

 Once again time for some hockey after refreshments, first up New Zealand vs India. India started like a rocket, dominating and after 2 minutes won a short corner where they launched a rocket in to the top of the net. However those 2 minutes seemed to be it for the Indians as they never really shone again and New Zealand played solidly netting themselves 3 goals thanks to a flick and some tidy shorts to go on to win against the odds, the first real upset of the competition.

Penalty Stroke

Drag Flick

Slinnnng

Once again

Again it was time for the main event, GB vs South Africa. GB played well for the most part although South Africa held them and for a large section were the dominant side. GB scored first but allowed South Africa to equalise and go ahead. A frantic and spirited last five minutes from GB netted them a contested equaliser and almost a winner but it was too little too late having to settle for a draw.

Pre Games Formalities

Ashley Jackson Short

The Ballet

Splash

Team GB

This brought to an end the hockey and for me the Olympics. It was an enjoyable few days with an immense amount of hockey in a few hours. The journey home was again quite busy.

The Olympics has come to London(Britain) and it has inspired a lot of people, many are jealous I secured tickets and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Mitt Romney is totally clueless and hopefully GB Hockey will win the Golds. I've finsihed this just in time to watch the girls play there 4th match, this time against China hopefully making it 4 wins in 4 games.

Hockey Hockey Hockey!

"Nonsense, Bucharest is miles out of the way" An epic train Journey and a Sandwich

I recently read my friends excellent blog post about Sandwiches having Stories and this reminded me of one of the greatest sandwiches I ever had, which also has a pretty humourous story behind it. It has already been told on an older blog which is now defunct, I thought I would tell it again. It takes place largely in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. It concerns the trip we took from Thessalonika, Greece to Budapest, Hungary.

This event was early in my proper backpacking career on the first trip I took. I learnt two very important lessons in regards to travelling; 1. Never trust Dave with the timetable and 2. Jacob is actually insane.

Tanks on the Street in Athens... Signage to Thessalonika

The whole thing started badly as we waited in Thessalonika for 13 hours, we tried to find the beach which we knew was nearby but failed in the heat with our heavy backpackers and a seemingly endless construction site with walls blocking our path. For an international train station it was rather rudimentary, with a horrible Cafe and small shop to boot. It also appeared to be home to a large number of tramps, I refer to this time as Purgatory, endlessly waiting for yet more waiting. I bought a Greek Maxim to use up the last of my Euro's which would be fairly useless in Hungary.

First tell-tale sign of the impending problem that was too come - the board for the information for trains going to Budapest said 'Via Sofia/Bucharest. This appeared to be our train, we commented that Bucharest was miles out of the way.  In fact in my journal, Dave actually is quoted saying these (now) immortal lines "Nonsense, Bucharest is miles out of the way" Dave, was very much correct, it is miles out of the way, about 24 hours to be exact. Yes we were that arrogant to believe that the screen and the train company was wrong. We for some deluded reason believed our train to be taking a more direct route through Serbia Montenegro.

I don't see our train... oh phew its the arrivals

Finally it was time to board our train to Budapest, a nice affair with proper sleeping cabins much like the one from Paris to Rome. This was our second overnight train of the whole trip and it was a rather different affair. So we began are overnight trip to Budapest through the adjoining countries. First shock to the system, being rudely awoken by big burly immigration officers with big boots demanding passports at 3am. In a sleep filled haze this was achieved and we returned to sleep and we assumed we had crossed into Serbia. None of the peace and quiet of the Paris/Rome leg but we thought this would be good practice for more strenuous immigration issues crossing in to Russia and China further down the line. For reference, China/Russia border crossings are a hoot, with blackmarket currency exchanges, bizarre markets and being stranded for 2 hours.

You'd think we may have figured things out earlier, but without crossing the second border point (or the third for that matter) we awoke the next day and we figured we were nearing our destination as Dave had confidently asserted after checking the timetable that we should arrive in around an hour or two. He proceeded to ask the attendant what time we will arrive... "1130, Tomorrow" - Dave became rather puzzled,
"You mean today? Obviously thinking it was a language barrier problem.
"1130, tomorrow" the repeated answer.

Dave returned to tell us the bad news, and rechecked the timetable book.... oh yeah we noted we are on a train that goes to Sofia and Bucharest as previously stated and it quite clearly takes two nights not one. Armed with this new information that we were in a whole different country to the one we expected to be in, the daunting prospect of being vastly under-prepared for 48 hours on a train began to sink in. Although not the end of the world, we had limited food, money and water.

Not having eaten anything for the whole day we were beginning to get rather hungry. Luckily we stopped at the border for immigration checks. Some entrepreneurial kids came to the window and began to offer to sell us stuff. We scraped together a measly six Euros and asked for food from the keen grafters. What we were furnished with was beyond anything we expected. They returned with three kebab style sandwiches laden with meat,lettuce, chips and sauces that spilled out everywhere... it was a veritable feast. It also tasted fantastic and was hard work to finish. Salvation had come in the form of sandwich. This is the sandwich of my story, provided by budding kids trying to make a few bucks off the daily train that comes through town. So far it has been my only contribution to the Romanian economy. However the the train journey didn't end there and there are a few more events still to happen.

Late in the afternoon we pulled in to a station, a barron station with one small building and what passed for a platform. The attendant happily hopped off an we followed suit. As the attendant didn't get back on the train we didn't either. What happened next was also completely unexpected. The majority of the train pulled off leaving the last two carriages(one being ours) alone stranded in the middle of nowhere. We were left here for 3 hours. On the plus side there was a water fountain we could use to top up our water bottles. It was at this point that Jacob had his mental breakdown, something about a frog that we couldn't kill or stop that would kill us all. Im sure he still has nightmares about it to this day.

In the small writing (if you can read backwards it says via Bucharest)

Quaint Station

"Hey, Where'd the Train Go?"

Meanwhile... in Eastern Europe

When we arrived in Budapest we booked the correct train to Warsaw then and there. Having learnt a valuable lesson.
1. Check where the train goes.
2. Have some additional snackets
3. Romanians make awesome sandwiches

I never board an overnight train without at least one pot of chinese instant noodles, some fanta and plenty of money for the beer trolley! Optional extras... cards, mp3 player to share with the other people on the train. Seriously playing Drum and Bass to middle aged Chinese people is really quite amusing. Anyway we made it, and then the Danube flooded. Observe...

Holocaust Memorial... Budapest 

and the Same shot two days later (or as close as I could get)

Team GB sails Turkey

The last post was rather waterry themed and boatlike and this one follows on from that. The last proper sailing adventure I had was Panama to Colombia which was amazing. This time the location was the Bodrum Peninsula of Turkey and only involved one (attempted) border crossing.

Things didn't exactly start well, Sunsail never received our flight information and so we had to wait a whole ten minutes before the minibus arrived; where my parents assured us it was "a 15 minute transfer"... an hour later we arrived, dumped our gear on our new home 'Adelaide' found food before going to sleep.

View of the Marina

After a Turkish breakfast and briefing where we met our fellow flotii's and the lead boat crew consisting of Tom, Rachel & Erol (we had met them the night before but everyone was tired). I have at this point, just now realised that we represented GB entirely, our English Boat, the Welsh boat and our lead boats 66% Scottishness (The welsh boat was actually also 66% Welsh but they did fly a Welsh flag for the duration so they are officially Welsh for all purposes and shall henceforth be known as The Welsh Boat so as to avoid any confusion). As a group we will be known as Team GB, it is Olympics year after all.
We learn't we were the first flotilla of the season and as such were basically the guinea pigs, no problems here. While I spent the morning collecting essential supplies -Beer, Limes and Coke for the rum; the others went and bought non essentials - food and water (this is a lie, I actually only bought limes). At this point it'd be nice to point out some Turkish cultural differences... but the supermarket was very similar to a UK one.

Fully stocked we FINALLY left port and headed out to sea. Think ride of Valkyries style epicness... or not. A seemless exit and we headed into the fine breeze and hoisted the sails... 

Under Sail Day One

Enjoying the Sail

I believe it was the first day where we saw some Dolphins, I failed to picture them because everyone was more worried I might accidently catch a dolphin with the fishing line I had out the back of the boat... so yeah not my fault. I mean really, catch a Dolphin?
First stop was a bit of a change as the original plan of Rafting (see me if you are unsure as to what this entails) was a no go so we dropped anchor and free swinged (again, see me if unsure). The town was called Gumusluk or something to that and was quite small. We went ashore for a rum punch party which was actually pretty good. We had a nice meal of Turkish things... I can't quite remember. It being the first week me and my sister decided to recon the area and bars. I think we can safely say this was achieved as somehow in a tiny town I managed to return at 7am and my sister [like the idiot she is] swam back to the boat.

Attempting to Row with broken paddles in the bay

Sailing day two was upon us after I emerged from slumber and we had already left and were ready to bring up the sails. I had arrived at the right time. Now this part of the story for us is rather uneventful but for Tom & Rachel I am understood they were a bit worried. We turned to wind an tried to bring the main up, but it would not go all the way. Whilst we attempted to fix this we carried on our course to wind... straight towards Greek waters. Now this is a problem because as you may know, Turkey and Greece are not the best of friends despite being neighbours, and secondly without the correct papers/transits/etc you can face some serious problems. Y'know just like walking from Panama to Colombia or Mexico to America.

We did not really become aware of this until much later when we received a text 6 hours later "Um probably not a good idea to sail to Greece guys" and a few missed calls from unknown numbers. The radio should have worked too, but it did not.

Anyway illegal border crossings averted, I plotted us an excellent course to the next Marina. My excellently laid plans were almost instantaneously ruined by the lookout spotting some things, lots of things floating in the water blocking the course. On closer inspection they turned out to be.. MILLIONS of fish farms. Navigating this mess, we arrived at Maya Marina where I perfectly reverse parked (disclaimer: I'm shit at reverse parking in a car). Dinner this time was in a nice restaurant on the hillside, where my sister failed to leave the boat. Turkey 1 - Abigail 0.

Sunset over fish farms

Team GB

Abigail re-emerged from the depths of Valhalla or wherever it was and we re-embarked on the next leg of the sail. Largely uneventful we toured an island, and enjoyed some calm sailing downwind under the Genoa. Not on parking duties I cracked on with the beer and rum, finishing my books.

Enjoying a post Hangover Swim

Hilarious...

Next day was 'Free Sailing' where we got to choose where to go, given all the options it was quite clear there was only one real option, Torbay, Devon. Not quite, Torba was the actual destination and it was quite pleasant, we had a good meal and I enjoyed a 'Cornetto Disc'. Amusingly on 'free sail' day we all ended up in the same place, ultimately forcing Tom & Rachel(pictured above) to work on what is sort of a day off for them... sorry guys!

You may have noticed the French flags in a lot of the pictures... well the boats are registered in France and so fly French flags... It should be noted that this is not the standard French flag, there are two extra unnecessary colours on the one shown here, specifically the blue and red. (see me, if you don't get it once again)

Second to last stop was Gundogan. We got a little damp here on the journey in, Me and Abigail played cards in the sun while we waited for dinnertime after a very tasty lunchtime Mezze. Dinner was another good affair of Turkish dishes, fish and meatball type things. At one of the meals I had Buttered Octopus and it was fantastic. Once again time to head back to the boat and read before a sleep and the final leg of the tour.

Team GB set sail as per usual with us being the last to follow. We attempted to get the sails up and just gave up after the wind decided to be about as useful as a chocolate teapot (stolen from somewhere/one). Then came the rain... it was heavy. Fully soaked we blitzed on through into the Sun and enjoyed the last of the journey back.

A writers table?

Responsible Helming

Sunset in Turgutreis

Back at base camp we headed out for one last group meal, which was again very good, especially the onion rings. A surprise birthday cake was delivered for Andy and then came out the prizes: The Welsh: 'Best Exit' (crashed) and another I have forgotten, The English: 'Escape Artists'(Sailing to Greece) & 'Last Ones Standing' (First night escapades). We then headed out with the group to spend the last of our remaining Lira in the local marina bars and altogether drinking too much. Final full day was spent sat in the sun waiting for the bus to the airport.

Birthday Cake... it was huge

Due to 1st Night Antics

That was another week of Sailing, more wind and sails than Panama to Colombia. Oh a while back I figured out another reason why I like to sail and drink rum (sometimes at the same time), back in Primary school we use to sing this song:

When I was one I'd just begun

The day I went to sea,

I jumped aboard a pirate ship

And the captain said to me -

"We're going this way, that way,

Forwards and backwards,

Over the irish sea.

A bottle of rum to fill my tum

And that's the life for me."

When I was two I lost my shoe

The day I went to sea.

I jumped aboard a pirate ship

And the captain said to me -

"We're going this way, that way,

Forwards and backwards,

Over the irish sea.

A bottle of rum to fill my tum

And that's the life for me."

When I was three I hurt my knee

The day I went to sea.

I jumped aboard a pirate ship

And the captain said to me -

"We're going this way, that way,

Forwards and backwards,

Over the irish sea.

A bottle of rum to fill my tum

And that's the life for me."

When I was  four , knocked at the door

The day I went to sea.

I jumped aboard a pirate ship

And the captain said to me -

"We're going this way, that way,

Forwards and backwards,

Over the irish sea.

A bottle of rum to fill my tum

And that's the life for me."

When I was  five I learnt to drive

The day I went to sea.

I jumped aboard a pirate ship

And the captain said to me -

"We're going this way, that way,

Forwards and backwards,

Over the irish sea.

A bottle of rum to fill my tum

And that's the life for me."

When I was  six I played some tricks

The day I went to sea.

I jumped aboard a pirate ship

And the captain said to me -

"We're going this way, that way,

Forwards and backwards,

Over the irish sea.

A bottle of rum to fill my tum

And that's the life for me."

When I was  seven I went to Devon

The day I went to sea.

I jumped aboard a pirate ship

And the captain said to me -

"We're going this way, that way,

Forwards and backwards,

Over the irish sea.

A bottle of rum to fill my tum

And that's the life for me."

When I was  eight I found a mate

The day I went to sea.

I jumped aboard a pirate ship

And the captain said to me -

"We're going this way, that way,

Forwards and backwards,

Over the irish sea.

A bottle of rum to fill my tum

And that's the life for me."

When I was  nine I had some wine

The day I went to sea.

I jumped aboard a pirate ship

And the captain said to me -

"We're going this way, that way,

Forwards and backwards,

Over the irish sea.

A bottle of rum to fill my tum

And that's the life for me."

When I was  ten I bought a hen

The day I went to sea.

I jumped aboard a pirate ship

And the captain said to me -

"We're going this way, that way,

Forwards and backwards,

Over the irish sea.

A bottle of rum to fill my tum

And that's the life for me."

We also sang another song entitled "What do we do with a drunken Sailor" so y'know go figure....

Ps. Kudos for reading this far, a reward awaits you... not really. Also I brought the weather back with me, so you can pay me in beer/cider.

Saturday Afternoon Pictures

With no travelling or exciting adventures to speak off as current I will fill this void with photographs so enjoy... 

Harbourside view towards centre

An exciting thing happened in Bristol a few weeks back, so as any doting citizen I grabbed my camera and went to view this event. The magical excitement was a rather large docking in the harbour.... once our fine city was full of large vessels and now we have just one, which is dry docked (SS Great Britain - not the one below).

It has a stupid name.

Continuing the aqua theme, here is a swan enjoying the spring sunshine.

Loving the glare

You know what, I should just make this whole post about boats, here are some more from a recent outing to Cardiff.

Big Red

Sailing in Cardiff Bay

Red Sails

Inadvertently hijacking this post with boats was an accident, just turned out they are the best of recent photos.   Here is a somewhat more bleak one of the Arches from Bristol to end with.

City Arches

Well enjoy your Saturday afternoons.