Becca Jane St Clair

Just because Google offers walking directions, doesn’t mean you should follow them.

On Friday, Tim and I made plans to go see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I knew where the movie theatre was and I knew how to drive it, but Tim and I would not have access to a car on Friday. I used Google’s new walking direction feature, and it surprisingly took us the same route as we’d go via car.

Problem: The road (Schoolhouse Lane in Manor Twp) doesn’t have a sidewalk for most of the road! It doesn’t even have a shoulder at parts of it, and some of the homes along the road have Poison Ivy along the curb, so you don’t want to walk on the edge of the lawns. It was hard going and we kept getting dirty looks from the cars whizzing by us, but we finally made it over to the cinema.

As for how we liked the movie, that’s probably best for a different entry.

We’re leaving in a few minutes to head down to DC for a week, so see you on the flip side!

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I started this blog exactly a year ago today! How exciting! My blog was originally started so that my mom (and other family/friends) could keep up with what I was doing while I was spending two months in Manitoba and whatever other trips I took. This expanded into becoming a log about 6 months traveling/visiting the UK, then into including video logs, personal stories, etc.

In 2008, I visited 5 countries (if you count England and Wales separately), and in 2009 so far I’ve visited 2 (and plan on adding France (okay, it’s just for a layover), Wales, and Ireland by the end of 2009). In the year that this blog has spanned so far I’ve spent 2/3 of the year outside of the United States! That’s pretty impressive for me.

So what’s in store for the blog for the next year? I’m not really sure. There’s a week in DC coming up while Tim is visiting, followed by 2 weeks in Ireland and the UK this fall, and then after that….we’ll see where it goes. Current plans are to spend Spring/Summer 2010 in the UK, but I hate having such a long gap between visits!

If I’m not actively traveling, I intend on updating the blog at least once/week with articles about traveling, and maybe some local or personal entries so the updates don’t die.

To all of you who have been reading this: Thank you. I hope you continue to read and please leave me comments! I love hearing what you think.

Don’t forget, you don’t need to come directly to my blog in order to read it. You can subscribe to the RSS feed in your favourite RSS reader, add the LJ RSS feed if you are on LJ, or read the entries on my Facebook. Comments are always welcome, just remember if you are reading it via the LJ RSS to head over to the blog site to leave a comment. The LJ comment feature doesn’t actually send comments to me, it only shows them to other LJers.

I think I’m all caught up on the UK trip that spanned October 2008 – April 2009! And just in time, too, since Tim arrives in ONE WEEK for his three week visit to me! 😀

[This entry refers to a day trip taken in March 2009. As requested, I will be going back and blogging the trips from January – April.]

Tim had a day off mid-week, and since it had been such a gorgeous week so far, we decided to head towards the seaside. Previously, we went North to the seaside in Yorkshire, but this time we decided to stay in Lincolnshire.

We started our trip by driving through some of the small towns along the way, including Market Rasen and Louth. We explored the small town shops for a bit before heading on a drive through the Lincolnshire Wolds. We actually pulled over to the side of the road to enjoy a brief snack and just to enjoy the scenery.

I can’t remember where we made our stop for Lunch (hopefully Tim will comment and let me know!), but it was a small walking path surrounded by a wetlands/wildlife area. The carpark even had a port-a-john. We sat down for our picnic lunch at a small pavilion platform built out on top of some of the wetlands. It was quite windy and chilly, and I actually wound up putting on extra layers while we ate! [*edited to add* Tim informs me we stopped at Tetney Marsh]

After Lunch, we followed the coast all the way up to Mabelthorpe, where we happened to spot a sign for the Seal Sanctuary. We checked and the place was open, so we decided to visit the seals. We soon found out that not only were there seals, they had all sorts of wildlife from around the United Kingdom as well as animals formerly native to the United Kingdom, from wild cats to pheasants, beavers, foxes, owls, ducks, and a whole slew of other animals. We stayed until it was closing time for the facility, since we were having fun wandering around and seeing all the animals.

I think we spent the most time looking at the wildcats – Tim told me it had been one of his goals to see one up close, and we were lucky enough to see three! These cats were huge, but I still think my own “little” housecat could pass for a small wildcat.

We were super tired when we left, but we still managed to stop off at Tim’s grandparent’s house to visit his granddad for a bit. I was yawning and was very unsociable, but Granddad didn’t seem to mind.

For dinner that night, I had Brown Sugar Chicken in the crock pot, from A Year of Slow Cooking, but since we were out of the house for over 10 hours, it wasn’t too great. Oh, well. Can’t win them all.

(photo by Tim) A random tank on the side of the road….

(photo by Tim) Wildcat!

(photo by Tim) Me looking at Geese

For more photos (most of them taken by Tim), please see: http://photos.beccajanestclair.com/uk-trip-2008/mabelthorpe/

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Tim walking the boat:

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFYNl5MnksI

It *does* get brighter at the end, I promise!

[This entry refers to an event from March 2009. As requested, I will be going back and blogging events from January – April.]

Tim’s cat, Prudence, likes to be outside when there are people around. She also likes to walk around on the garden rail tracks:

Watch out for the that train!

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[This entry refers to a day trip taken in March 2009. As requested, I will be going back and blogging the trips I only posted vlogs about January – April.]

While we were going through brochures at Little Chef on our overnight in Oxford, we snagged a brochure about the Black Country Living Museum. It looked to be similar to Beamish, and since we had such a great time at Beamish, we put the brochure into our stack of “visit later”. We decided we really needed a full day for that museum.

One of the last trips Tim and I took together before I left was the trip to the Black Country Living Museum.

Similar to our situation when we went to Beamish, only certain portions of the museum were open while we were there. Fortunately, we were still able to walk around the areas that were closed, we just were unable to go inside the buildings.

When we walk in to pay our admission to many sites within the UK, we often get asked if we’d like to gift aid our admission. Since Tim is a UK taxpayer, he can opt for this option which then allows the charity (site) to claim back the tax he pays on our admission. In order to do this, they need to know your full name and address. Imagine our surprise when as we’re looking at the displays in the main entrance, a man walks up to Tim and says “Is your last name L_____?” Turns out, the people behind us in line shared the same last name and were most likely distant cousins of Tim’s!

We were disappointing to find out the tram was not running, but we were soon on our way on foot. We checked out a “mini” coal mine/railway before heading over to the model coal mine. After being given hard hats and flash lights that only shined as bright as a candle (what the original coal miners had to use to see!), we went down into the mine with a guide. Once again, we were in a location with low ceilings and were told “you might have to duck down”….and I was able to walk the entire mine without ducking! I’m not the type of person who usually gets claustrophobic, but I really couldn’t wait to get back to the surface.

After exploring the coal mine, we went and saw a crooked house and a house entirely made from aluminium. The house (and many houses in the area) actually started to sink and become crooked based on the activity going on in the mine below! We also checked out the village school, the pub, sweet shop, garage, and the chippy.

Eventually, we wound our way down to the Dudley Canal and discovered the opportunity to travel through the Dudely Tunnel by canal boat. Fortunately, we were able to get on the next boat and headed off to explore the Tunnels and learned about the history from our guide.

Our boat only had about 7 people total on it, so when it came time to take volunteers to “walk the boat” through the tunnel, Tim volunteered along with a girl from another group. (video currently being uploaded to YouTube) Before canal boats had motors, husband and wives moving their goods through the tunnels had to “walk the boat” through each tunnel by laying down on wooden boards and placing their feet on the walls of the tunnel. Tim said it was hard work!

After the boat ride, we explored a little more, and we found the tram shed open, so we peeked inside and got invited in by the man working in there. He and Tim got to talking, and the man offered to give us a ride on the tram back up to the entrance!

We had a fantastic time, and I’d love to go back in the future when everything is open.

The rest of the pictures and video will be posted later. I need to see if Tim took any pictures, but for now, here’s a few:

Tim walking the boat

one of the closed tunnels

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Occasionally, I like to post things here that are useful to the masses, as opposed to just blog posts….

Just in case anyone else is having this problem:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Applications then scroll down to mailto and make sure GMail is selected in the drop down. If GMail doesn’t show there, follow the lifehacker instructions on how to add GMail to the options.

Also, if you were using Better Gmail 2, No Squint, or any other add-on that firefox 3.5 tells you is incompatible, search for the websites for each add-on and on the sites there should be updates for 3.5 and instructions on how to install.

It’s also worth noting that Firefox 3.5 doesn’t have a huge memory leak previous versions of Firefox seemed to have been plagued with.

[X-posted to LJ]

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I’m in the process of adding blogs and links to the main page of my blog. If you’d like me to add your site, please leave me a comment and I’ll add you. If you have a link to my site or blog on your site, let me know so I can reciprocate! These links are different than the links on the link page for Flutterby Design. Links on Flutterby Design are affiliate/reciprocal links only.

[Note to LJ users reading this via the LJ feed: Please click on one of the links at the top to go directly to my blog to leave comments, as comments left on the LJ feed will not be seen by me.]