Blog 15 - Dogs, frogs and hedgehogs. Life at the castle.

Blog 15 - Dogs, frogs and hedgehogs. Life at the castle...

 

Twelve months of travelling will naturally toss up various highlights for various members of the family, but I'm confident we will all look back on the last five weeks as something unique, wonderful and (without trying to be overly grand or naïf) life changing.

When the prospect of working in the UK was scuttled, we looked for various damage control options to stem the financial bleeding. Living on UK pounds is hard, but not earning them makes it naturally harder - besides, we had run out of cars to sell, and there a precious few coal mine or chimney sweep positions for the girls to take on.

Renae hit upon house sitting as a way to gain free accommodation and see a bit of England, and registered for a few websites. We weren't really committed to an area or timeframe and we hoped the fact that we were a family and love/keep animals would endear us to prospective "employers".

For the first twenty five or so, not so much...

But we got a few days in Islington which was good, but then got word of a prospect for March/April, which, after sitting a surreal job interview-esque phone call (while sitting in a freezing car in the north of Scotland), we were told we had it.

It tied in frighteningly well, sandwiched between one set of grandparents leaving, and the other grandmother arriving. All we knew was that it was in Devon (cool, haven't been there yet. It's very green isn't it?) and there were two dogs called Jessie and Sparky.

About a week before we were to arrive, the owner sent us his address. It was called Reeve Castle.

I will remember forever the look on Jessie's face as she walked down the curved driveway up to the castle after we were buzzed in. It was sheer disbelief, her mouth a perfect O.

Reeve Castle was built at the turn of the 20th century (which I think makes it a "folly" rather than an actual castle). It indeed has a colourful history that we picked up through a bit of rumour, gossip...and Google. It was used as a key aviation marker by the Germans during WWII, prompting the owner to paint it green from its original yellow as a form of camouflage. It was owned by a member of the band Level 42 (don't know them? Lessons in Love? Running in the Family? '80's gold!). And it had a long period of being left derelict and neglected (think the Miss Havisham final bit of Great Expectations) where local kids would sneak around and probably get up to all sorts of illegal and/or immoral things.

It was then rescued and resuscitated by its last two owners, and the most recent family have invested considerable time and money (and still are) to bring it back to its former glory. And they are doing a great job, because the place is truly beautiful. Here's a few pictures...

We stayed very comfortably in a well-equipped house down the hill a bit from the castle. From the projector/TV that dropped from the roof and had speakers in built into the walls (the only way to watch Gravity!), to the beds that went up and down, through to waterfall showers, it was a little like a resort.

The grounds spread over 16 acres and had a tennis court, an adventure playground (the kids very occasionally came home for lunch...), huge old growth trees (pine, sequoias), a quarry area that was being renovated and we didn't really go into as it was unstable - though it will look amazing when it's finished and fully restored. It also had a koi pond with about 70 of the Japanese fish. They were strangely friendly, and would come over to be petted. They were all different as far as their markings too, and I think the kids named every one. They were my favourite thing.

Our job was primarily to look after the dogs and keep them fed and watered. There were works being done on the roof and grounds, as well as cleaners and gardeners so we also kept on an eye on who was in and out of the property. We checked the castle for water damage when it rained, aired it out on hot days, that sort of stuff.

So when I broke the TV day one, when the dog nearly sliced its own ear off day 17 running through barbed wire, and when the ceiling fell in in one of the bedrooms in the castle day 29, we were questioning ourselves significantly. Should we just do a runner??? (But I fixed the TV, the dog's ear healed with stitches, and the roof collapse...was expected. I kid you not)

I suppose after the last eight months, and being accommodation #61, it was a chance for us to try to remember what a "normal" (and after the last few paragraphs, I'm using the term very loosely) life was like. We cooked meals, we put our clothes into cupboards, we started a more structured schoolwork regime, we even got the kids into swimming lessons in the closest big town, Crediton. We didn't feel the desperate need to fill the days up, see every castle and do every touristy thing Trip Advisor recommended.

What we did do was check out Exeter and Torquay as our obligatory bigger cities. They were okay. We rode bikes along the Tarka Trail and saw otters in the river. We visited the northern beaches and towns, including Clovelly (a beautifully retained old seaside town which has the weird feature of charging a not particularly small admission fee to enter it), and the rather awesomely named Westward Ho! which is the only place in the UK with an exclamation mark in its name.

But the best stuff was done at home: walking around the grounds, going on night walks and findhedgehogs, frogs, newts, owls. We played tennis, we ran, we painted, we read. The girls spent their time outside with the dogs and on the playground screaming and carrying on. They tended to collapse at night like toys with flat batteries.

Renae and I were more mindful, remembering what peace there may be in silence (to borrow off the Desiderata). We discussed the books we were going to write and the lives we were going to lead after all this. It was the place and time on this trip that leant itself to that sort of introspection.

I think that may be it. I won't presume to say "we", though I'm confident the family share these emotions, but I feel remarkably fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience what I did over the last five weeks. I feel grateful. I feel re-energised and slightly recalibrated too. That's not a bad thing at all.

And now, heeeeeeere's Oma!!! Next post we'll be back on the European mainland commencing the "final push". For now though, bye from the Carolin-Vandenbergs!!

 

 

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Blog 14 - C'mon get happy

Blog 14 - C'mon get happy!

So I'm looking out a grey window to a grey sea with grey clouds and mist surrounding me. The ferry is rocking only barely and I'm happy to leave the motion sickness bags sitting in their little plastic holders. Billie is watching Despicable Me in the KidzCorner, having befriended a few little girls. Everyone else on the ferry seems to be reading or stretched out on the padded seats. It's 11.02am and we have set sail from Rosslare Harbour back to the UK, Wales to be precise. Tonight we'll be in the capital city, Cardiff for a few nights, then Devon...for five weeks. We are house sitting a castle. I'm not kidding

Since the last blog, I'm pleased to be able to add a new cast of characters to the story. Anne and Mike, or Nan and Pop, or Mum and Dad trundled through customs at Heathrow about four weeks ago. It was great to see them, both because we were missing them, the kids especially, but also because we felt that if we spent another second in each others' company, there may have been significant bloodshed.

We jumped onto the Tube, the kids nonchalantly, but proudly showing off their navigation and transport skills to their grandparents. (Jessie asked recently if we thought she was getting a British accent! To be fair, Billie has a few Pommy inflections going on) We spent a few days in Bayswater in a rather crappy flat in a beautiful part of London. We did a few necessary touristy things. Renae and Anne shopped. I ran around Hyde Park a few times in the afternoon dappled sunlight and fell in love with the city all over again. Renae and I saw "The Book of Mormon", a play by the South Park guys. It was irreverent and (for many I'm sure) offensive, but I consider it the funniest play I've ever seen and close to the funniest thing I've ever seen too. If it tours, see it. If you are Mrs Mooney reading this, don't see it!

Anne and Mike were happy (and generally have been happy the whole time) to fall in with whatever we wanted to do in London. We had a few mandatory rest days too due to inclement weather. All the storms that have hit the UK and Ireland generally missed us, though we have seen the results in our travels. Trees uprooted, fields flooded and, bizarrely, piles of enormous boulders washed up from the beaches, blocking roads. Cliffs are falling down, and a section of the Cornwall rail line now looks like a suspension bridge.

Anyway, after a few days in London, Mike and I went to pick up our transportation for the next bit of the trip. We are travelling in a nine seater minibus! People-wise we could have travelled in smaller, but luggage-wise there was no chance. We look and feel like the Partridge Family, minus the musical ability, and David Cassidy (boy that's an old person's joke!).

(Come on world, there's a song that we're singing...)

First stop was a little village called Hartington in the Dales. Driving in was like stepping back in time to a better, unhurried, pristine one. The Youth Hostel was in one of the most beautiful old buildings. Youth Hostels have come a long way from the stereotypical hippie/backpacker haven from the past, though I'm sure they still exist. Every one we've stayed at has been great. The place was clean, warm and comfortable the food was good, there were people to talk to and miniature pigs that the kids loved (they were really cute, funny little things). Not once did I feel that someone was going to beat me up or throw up on me...not even Renae!

(Hartington Youth Hostel - ugly isn't it?)

(Hartington)

And then we were in Wales (for the first time) and we stayed at a town called Llandudno on the Northern tip. Llandudno was definitely beautiful. It had a stunning long wide strand of beach, and lovely old houses and buildings dotting the landscape. They all lay in the shadow of the Great Orme, a large rocky outcrop where, at the top, you could see everything from the wind farms sitting surreally out at sea, to the snow capped mountains of Snowdonia. I'll carefully say it was "very Welsh", knowing I'll be corrected if I'm misleading you!!

(Llandudno foreshore and hotel strip, view from the Orme and the windmills in the water...)

Another interesting feature of Llandudno is the five hundred hotels and B&B's that you find there. This is not a big town by any stretch, and while we all loved our (Winter) stay with Nerys and Glenn at their hotel, I sense the place would become fairly unbearable in Summer. I couldn't even work out where they would all park their cars!

After a really enjoyable afternoon being fed and doted on by Jo's (friend of Anne) sisters, and a day visiting nearby-ish Conway, complete with castle visit and child meltdown (castle visit ranked high on Trip Advisor, child meltdown not so high...), we left Llandudno towards the ferry...

(This one's for you Jo)

BUT NOT BEFORE VISITING LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH!! Truth be told it's a fairly modest little town, but it's really funny seeing all these really long retail signs (eg Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Audi). The girls did an AWESOME job learning the pronunciation of the town, right down to the Welsh inflections (the double l's sound a bit like saying an s with a lisp - yes I know Jo, it's not quite like that, but don't mess with me. I've got a linguistics degree!!!).

(Yeah, that place...)

Onto the ferry, van and all. Bye Wales/Pound £/Mile, hello Ireland/Euro€/Kilometer!

First stop Dublin town. Ireland seemed to do something psychological to Mike. Immediately he started to speak in an Irish accent. Things like "Do you want to stop for a coffee?" became "Would you be wanting to be stopping for a coffee at all?" More strangely, he also had moments of "pirate". "Arrr, there's the laundromat" he'd observe while driving. I think he was beginning to sense that he could have Guinness at will. In fact we all got to the hotel in good spirits!

(Sightseeing in Dublin. The atmosphere is clearly electric)

(O'Connell St Dublin)

Here's a learning: if the top of your very big rental-minivan-family truckster thing clangs against the metal barrier in an underground car park on entry, DO NOT THEN TAKE YOUR CAR FURTHER INTO THE CAR PARK!!! (Actually, it was okay...once we taped the radio aerial down!)

Hop On-Hop Off bus tour of Dublin (and frankly, for most cities) is a greatest to get your bearings, learn some facts, and get free transportation. The drivers we had both sang and told jokes and it made for a great tour. We visited the Book of Kells, a stunningly illustrated book written by monks on calfskin in the 9th century. The rest of the family went off to visit the Kilmainham Jail while I went to the Museum of Modern Art to be pretentious...okay, more pretentious. Interesting to see what passes for art nowadays.

(Kilmainham jail)

We went to the Irish Writers Museum. People like James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift and Bram Stoker all came from Dublin. I bought James Joyce's Ulysses. I'm reading James Joyce's Ulysses...if he wasn't already dead, I would kill James Joyce, or at least put him on trial for crimes against literature. Best novel ever written? Seriously?????

What else? Anne slept a bit, Renae and Mike desperately tried to find a pub that played good old singalong traditional Irish songs, where you could carouse and spill Guinness down your front or the front of someone who could either beat you up or proclaim you their best friend ever. (I went and saw the Lego Movie with the kids)

Spoiler alert, Renae and Mike looked for weeks. They failed. Best they could do was cosy bar with about 15 musicians (mostly kids) playing jig after jig.

Belfast next (so brief hello to mile and £ again). Loved Belfast because we packed great stuff in. We stayed in a place called Hillsborough (The Queen has a castle there, true dinks) which was really pretty and green - pretty much the opposite of Belfast itself.

 

We saw the Titanic Experience. It was quite an experience. The building it's house in is amazing, but also, fittingly, it's on the site where the Titanic (and its sister ship...who knew?) were build. It was a great insight tracing the growth of Belfast as an import-export town (linen, alcohol and cigarettes!) but also the design and building process of the "unsinkable" vessel as well. It was a mammoth process. And of course the wreck itself and its legacy. We walked in to the sound of sea shanties, we walked out to Celine Dion.

("I'm king of Trip Advisor!")

But another massive highlight of the trip was taking a black cab tour of Belfast. You basically get a regular taxi and for 90 minutes the driver tells you a bit of the more recent history of Belfast and Northern Ireland - the unrest, the bloodshed, how things are now. We drove down streets lined with confronting murals, both in the Catholic and Protestant areas. Tom our cabbie was brilliant, honest, funny. It gave all of us a sense of perspective, and a bit of a reality check as well.

(J&B writing on the Peace Wall, next to Geoffrey Rush and...er...Rihanna)

AND...we took a drive to the northern tip of Ireland to see the (Unesco listed, there's another one...) Giants Causeway. I could bore you with the geological explanation of how they came into being, but lets just say they are cool hexagonal rocks that are pretty cool and unique!

(Billie - not looking down)

(Giant's Causeway)

Our next stop on our counter clockwise expedition of Ireland was Mulranny, Clew Bay on the west coast. We stayed a few days and it was significant because Mike's great (great?) grandfather emigrated from there to NZ. We embarked on a bit of a "Who do you think you are?" quest to find relatives. We think, we found some. They were Carolans, not Carolin, but as a Vandenberg (or is it Van Den Burg...or Van Denburgh?) I totally understand how these things can get lost in translation, or transportation.

(View from our accommodation)

(Nearby Achill Island, home of suicidal sheep)

So we met a family - a mum and four or five siblings and we may have gotten to where Mike's and their distant relations were siblings. It's still a work in progress, and if it comes to nothing, hey we met some nice Irish people!!

(A Carolin holding a Carolan. It's about the eyes...)

On to Waterford, home of the crystal, and Limerick, home of...er, the limerick! Both places nice. We had several days in a "cosy" (read small) cottage in Tipperary. It was like a fairy cottage. In fact the whole place was quite bespoke (they love that word here). But hey, there were horses and donkeys and ducks and chickens and sheep, so the kids loved it - even if the toilet was so small I had to pee leaning against the roof. How's THAT for a visual!

(Waterford factory. Not an Oompa-Loompa in sight...)

Stopped off after visiting Cobh (last port of call of the Titanic) to kiss the Blarney Stone! Apparently now I have the gift of the gab as a result! Can you tell???

(Blarney Castle)

So a brief stop in at Kilrane in Ireland's south-east, which was lovely (private joke for Anne, Mike and Renae there) and back we go to Wales and England.

STOP PRESS:

Fast forward a few days now, and I'm finishing this up at the Castle (hmm, more pretension!) about which I'll leave for another time.

Three days just out of Cardiff (was to be two, but the tariff of the hotel was good, and the place had a complimentary pool, spa, gym and sauna!). Spent a day in Cardiff Bay - like Docklands, except with personality and atmosphere. Mike and I ruined a good walk by trying to hit little white balls into holes with varying levels of success.

(Cardiff Bay)

And then they were gone, off to float on a boat down a moat or something! These last four weeks have been hilarious, frustrating, exhausting and relaxing, and we have loved every minute of it!

And all of a sudden the four of us are banging around a huge property, alone again...naturally. But we have more adventures in store, both here at the Castle, with my mum, Eurovision, New York...it's not over!!!!

Actually, the serenity is rather nice. I can hear the owls hooting. Must go.

Lots of love from the Carolin-Vandenbergs (and others!)

 

 

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