Australia & Ashes 2017 - 2018 - Day 2 -24th November

Day 2

Practically the whole of day 2 was spent on board the aircraft.  Including pre flight waiting to take off and and post flight waiting to be allowed off the aircraft, it was around 17 hours in total. For this reason, there is not a lot to discuss except the splendor that is first class on Etihad.

This is actually my cabin!!

On boarding the flight I was escorted by an attendant to my first class cabin and offered a welcome glass of champagne, which I accepted gratefully, I was then left to settle in before a series of visitors came to see me. My own attendant, two stewardesses and the Chef who went through the choices of food available to me throughout the flight. Then more champagne and I was left alone to relax.

I was really well looked after during the flight  and at various stages was brought food and dink of my choice.  During the first lg of the journey, from London to  Abu Dhabi I had requested  a Fillet steak served with fries and a whole roasted garlic and it was delicious accompanied by a recommended Bordeaux wine.  On this leg, from Abu Dhabi to Sydney, I opted for loin of lamb with herb mash and roasted vine tomatoes, this time accompanied by a Gruner white wine from Germany.  This was even better than the  meal on the first leg.

Yesterday's Dinner

After a little walk around the area and a short while in the bar I returned to my cabin and watched some TV before changing into the PJs supplied and laying in the bed which by then had been made up for me. It was time to try to get some sleep before arriving in Sydney early on Saturday morning.

Australia & Ashes 2017 - 2018 - Day 1 -23rd November

Day 1

It seems to have crept up om me so fast I can’t believe I am leaving for Australia today.  It’s a glorious day here in Newport and the sunrise seems to be extra special today. It may be due to the fact that I have not slept all night, staying up watching the first day of the Brisbane test match.

I wonder if I will experience more sunrises like this on the other side of the world in the next three months.

A well as visiting my family in Sydney I am also going to follow England in the latest Ashes series.  I will watching them in test matches in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. A one day match in Brisbane and a T20 match in Hobart so I will be doing a fair amount of travelling just to watch the cricket.  I will  also be attending the Sydney leg of the HSBC Sevens tournament in January.

I will be fitting an awful lot in, as there is much I want to do with Amy, Justin and the family, including trips to the Opera. Then, to top it all, the Sydney Festival will be in full swing during my stay. Bring it on.

After a morning of finalizing things, making sure I had everything, saying goodbyes, Kevin picked me up and we set of on an uneventful journey to Heathrow.  We arrived in plenty of time and while Kevin set off immediately for the return trip to Newport, I was whizzing through check in and security to then find my way to the Etihad lounge where I settled in and started to relax.

Lovely place with a great choice of food and drink all served by most attentive waiters. 

It is now 6.50 and the flight is due to leave at 8 O’clock so I’ll sign off now and my next blog will hopefully be from Abu Dhabi.

Iceland November 2017 - Day 6 - 4th November

Day 6

Having packed most of our stuff last night before going to bed we had little to do this morning prior to leaving.  We got up fairly early and had breakfast before leaving the premises as tidy as when we arrived.  We showered and finished packing before some final photographs and packing the car ready to go.

So it's goodbye to this

And this

Last view across Whale Bay

We will remember this place with  good feelings and cannot recommend it too much to anybody thinking of coming this way one day.  I am sure I will be coming back to Iceland one day, perhaps to the North or Eastern side of the island and will have no hesitation in booking another Nordic Lodge to stay in.

Abi's last photo at the Lodge

We then set off around Whale Bay for the last time and headed towards the Golden Circle area, this time looking for the Secret Lagoon.  Today, with snow covering the mountains the views seemed even more spectacular.

As we were makiing good time Abi suggested that we stop off on the way to see the Tectonic Plates of Pingvellir.  It turned out to be a good decision to make.

Pingvellir Visitor Centre

Iceland is a place in the world where a mid-ocean ridge can be seen on land. What's more, Iceland is probably the only place in the world where the effects of two major tectonic plates drifting apart can easily be observed above sea level.

Drifting apart

As well as its astounding beauty, the dramatic landscape at Þingvellir offers a chance for us to see, on land and in shallow waters, the tectonic processes occurring along the submarine parts of a divergent ridge; processes that have been at play for millions of years.

As it was explained to me, a tectonic plate is simply a massive slab of solid rock that floats separately from the other tectonic plates, interacting with them along the boundaries. All of the continents are embedded in the tectonic plates and they drift  quietly yet ominously along. The reason that tectonic plates are able to move, despite their colossal weight, is that the two types of crust, continental and oceanic, differ significantly in composition. The continental crust is predominantly made up of granitic rocks, whilst the oceanic crust consists of higher density basaltic rocks (therefore heavier), enabling the tectonic plates to float, not unlike icebergs.  I now understand a little more about this.

Time to leave

We then had to move on as we had a booked in time at the Secret Lagoon so it was back to the car and a drive through ever more spectacular scenic areas.

Better go this way then.

When we arrived at the Secret Lagoon the first thing that hit us was the fact that it was so unspoilt. While the Blue Lagoon was obviously built for tourism, this place felt like it was dug out of the ground just for locals.  We soon found out that that was indeed the reason for it's being.

The original changing rooms still there for curiosity and history only

The history of The Secret Lagoon is straightforward: originally built in the early 1890s, what became to be known as the Gamla Laugin, was Iceland’s first swimming pool.  Indeed local ladies used to take washing down to the pool saving on heating water over a fire at home.

Early bathers

The walls of the small cafe are lined with old photographs

At the turn of the century, swimming lessons were offered to local families and for many years it was one of the only places to learn to swim in the area. This carried on until the late 40s when modern swimming pools were opened in towns around the country So Gamla Laugin was gradually forgotten.

For scores of years, Gamla Laugin was virtually abandoned until its current owner decided to give it new lease of life in 2005. By this time, people had forgotten about the pool and the owner began to use it as a private heated swimming pool just for himself and a few friend., It remained a secret for several years and that is how The Secret Lagoon got its enigmatic name.

Natural hot springs feed the lagoon with 38-39°C water. this bubbles up from way down within the earth at a rate of 10 litres per second, constantly replenishing itself so that there is a steady supply of fresh clean water in the pool at any given time.

The hot springs outside the lagoon however are much hotter.  Even reaching 100 degrees celsius and for security are fenced off out of bounds.

Hot water pool, bubbling up

Hot springs

Kev and Abi, as close as we were allowed to the hot springs (90 to 100 degrees celsius)

With the completion of changing rooms and other facilities such as new showers, outside deck, walkways and a small café, The Secret Lagoon was re-opened in the 2014 and was an immediate hit with tourists. Even though the secret is now out, its owner, who shuns the spotlight, wants to keep the lagoon low profile and does a minimum of advertising. The pool, after all, was built for the tiny community that inhabited the area at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries and can only take so many bathers at one time. 

It's hard to believe that the outside temperature while we were here was minus two degrees!

How we wished we could have stayed longer, but eventually we had to leave the pool and prepare for the last leg of our journey back to the airport for our flight home.  This had without doubt been the high spot of my week.

Time to go

At the airport we had a meal and a few drinks before boarding the aircraft for our final, uneventful, BA flight. 
 

Back home though could not be termed uneventful. Checking out and leaving the airport was speedy and we were soon heading down the M4 towards Wales.  Then it all changed. The M4 was closed between Junctions 19 and 20 and we had to find a route around before picking the M48 back up at Aust to cross the Severn Bridge.

A Journey that should have taken under two hours eventually took us four. This did not detract from our break though, it was a trip we will all remember.

Iceland November 2017 - Day 5 - 3rd November

Day 5

I was awoken at around 6.00am with cries of excitement.  It was snowing outside and the decks were getting covered. Not a lot, just a sprinkling but the surrounding hills were already covered and it all looked magical as the sun began to rise above the mountains on the south side of Whale bay.

After taking loads of photographs we had breakfast, and got ready to go out for the day.  Today we went into Reykjavik and did a little exploring.  At first we felt a little diossapointed as it all seemed so grey and unwelcoming but we soon realized that that was more to do with the weather than anything else.

One of the main reasons for coming here was to book a midnight tour to find the Northern Lights so we headed to the Information Office.  After checking a few of those available, we booked one that seemed to suit our needs.  We were to be picked up at 9.00pm in a street adjacent so we then got on with the rest of the day.

We had come prepared to go to the Blue Lagoon so we  decided to head there now and set off on the 24 mile journey. The lagoon is a man-made lagoon which is fed by the water output of the nearby geothermal power plant Svartsengi and is renewed every two days. Superheated water is vented from the ground near a lava flow and used to run turbines that generate electricity. After going through the turbines, the steam and hot water passes through a heat exchanger to provide heat for a municipal water heating system. Then the water is fed into the lagoon for recreational and medicinal users to bathe in.

How disappointed we were once we had arrived to find out that there was no entrance without pre-booking. No way would they waver, they just said we would need book for another day.

As we were flying home tomorrow we decided not to do that and left the building and headed back to Reykjavik.   We decided that we would spend the rest of the day here in town before  going on the Northern lights this evening.  We were all getting hungry so we went to a restaurant called ‘The Grillehaus. Fantastic food and plenty of it. I can assure you we were not hungry when we left there.

Lunch in the Grillehaus

We also decided that we would go to the Secret Lagoon tomorrow as recently recommended to us by various people. So before carrying on we went online and booked three places just in case.

Kevin and Abi then went on a bit of a shopping spree while I went to the Icelandic Punk Museum. This was a fantastic museum, housed in a once grand underground toilet in the middle of Reykjavik. Located down below Bankastræti, not far from the harbor docks, this tiny museum is dedicated to the Nordic nation’s punk scene, from its beginnings in the late 1970s all the way to the break-up of the Sugar Cubes in the early ’90s. The exhibits are in the former toilets and washbasins, with a jammed-in collections of photos, posters, hand-bills, instruments, stage equipment, and streaming videos of classic club shows.

Later we all met up and went exploring some more before stopping for coffee and cakes . After a leisurely break we went off to meet the minibus to begin our evening adventure.

We parked the car on a side street and went to the allotted bus stop to wait for our mini bus.  It was freezing as we waited on the roadside  The bus finally arrived, about 15 minutes late and we got on and snuggled down in the warmth of the bus interior. Heading off into the darkness picked up a few further passengers and carried on into the night looking for the Aurora Borealis.  

After about an hour the driver, who had been entertaining us en oute pulled off road and gradually slowed to a halt.  After talking us through what was about to happen we all left the bus and stood gazing into the night sky.

We could all see it, the Northern Lights, but they were a white blanket effect to the naked eye.  But, first of all, Abi, then everyone who wanted to follow her, started to take photographs on their mobile phones.  These photopgraphs clearly showed the emerging colours of the Northern Lights. Incredibly I could not join in as my camera and mobile phone both chose to lose all power earlier in the afternoon and by the time I wanted to use them they were both flat.  Thank goodness Abi had taken some good shots using only her mobile phone.

I am not sure if you can get any idea of what we saw as these were taken at midnight with a full moon using a Samsung S8 phone camera.  It appears from what our guide was telling us was that the sightings that we have all seen images of rarely ever happen and he had only seen this phenomenon twice in his life.  Most images are captured using digital photography to very specific guidelines.

However, this did not diminish the excitement of going on a midnight safari to hunt the Northern Lights.

We eventually headed back to town at around midnight and then collected our car and drove home to Brekka Lodge.  After a late drink we eventually called it a night at around 2.00am.

Last day tomorrow and we are determined to make it a memorable one