Knocked Out Cold

At last a post with no pictures as a forgot to take my selfie stick! Not that you would have wanted any images of the position I found myself in and its unlikely that I could have taken much anyway. I spent a couple of hours yesterday off this planet while under a general anaesthetic at Armidale private hospital as a Dr Karu performed a colonoscopy. I was told that the whole procedure only took 20 minutes ... not that I knew anything of it. I won't go into details of the procedure as you can look those up on Google, but you'll understand that any images taken would be unpublishable anyway!

The results were pleasantly negative ... so my life will proceed uninterrupted. Em, please don't tell Ella and Flynn what happened, although Max is probably old enough to have a good chuckle if Bec can find a few choice words to explain the procedure. However, Bec, tell him not to try it on himself. It could be messy.

AS

A Romanian Excursion

After Oxford, I was invited to Romania for 6 days by Professor Ion Ianos at the University of Bucharest and I spent a lot of time talking to students, a ministry official, and some mayors of country towns (communes) about regional development issues. However, I did manage to escape to the countryside for a few days and saw some spectacular sights that are the subject of this post. I apologise for its length, but I'm sure you'll agree that the Carpathians and cities or towns within and around that mountain chain are very attractive. I'll divide the images into four components: the Carpathians; Sanaia (see also http://www.montania.ro/en_Sinaia_info.htm); Brasov (pr. Brashov) and Bran.

First, then to the Carpathians, an impressive mountain chain rising to about 2600m. One could almost be in parts of Switzerland or Austria looking at the pictures below. The villages and resorts we visited looked for the most-part wealthier and better maintained than other parts of rural Romania I visited, but I suppose that the wealthy are attracted to such locations because of their beauty.

The next images show Sinaia, which is not only a wealthy looking town because of its resort function but also houses Peles Castle - the Summer home of the Romanian royal family (when it existed) and a monastery built by a nobleman after a visit to guess where .... Egypt and Sinai - the destinations of his pilgrimage. The royal compound is impressive, with a large number of palatial buildings in a gorgeous setting. Let' have a look:

Peles Castle setting

Me and Ion standing in front of the royal's summer residence

Other dwellings in the compound, and the castle again from a different angle.

Now for four images of the monastery.

After Sinaia, we headed off to the ancient city of Brasov. Dating from about 1234 in its current form, archaeologists have found traces of settlement going back thousands of years. The city region is home to about 370,000 people, of whom 250,000 are within city limits. This is contested country, occupied at various times by Germans, Hungarians, Turks, and - earlier on - Romans. Brasov's central area is very attractive, like so many central European cities. We spent quite a while walking around the town before sitting down to an excellent lunch - outside, of course, under umbrellas like those shown in the pictures.

After lunch, we headed off to our final destination of the day - almost a touch of Disneyland at the very famous Castle of Bran. Why famous? Well, it looks great and it is perhaps the single most famous tourist destination in Romania because of its reputed association with the guy in the picture. This Vlad Tepes, a Romanian nobleman who despatched those he didn't like by impaling them on stakes. He, of course, has been immortalised as Dracula by Bram Stoker a 19th century English novelist who never actually visited Romania. There's me by the way in the second and fourth of the photos.

All up a lovely  one-day trip at the end of a five week journey overseas, starting in Portugal and few posts back. I've been very lucky to have made this excursion and see so many wonderful sights.

AS

Oxford Sojourn

After the delights of the Peak District I headed to Oxford for the 4th World Economic Geography Conference. The first three such events were held in Asia, presumably because of the dynamic economic growth shown by that region. I went to the 3rd meeting in Seoul, missing the first two in Singapore and Beijing, and I was so much enthused by that conference I tossed my hat in the ring for this one in Oxford. In part, I was also attracted by the fact that for two years I lived in Oxford, but had never been back! That was from 1969 to 1971 when I quite my job as a systems analyst for the British Leyland Motor Corporation and decided to see the colonies before my newly minted PhD lost value. That's how I wound up in Australia ... and I still live there 44 years further on.

Another attraction for the meeting was that one of the residences for delegates was Balliol College. My father won a scholarship to go there in, I suppose, about 1933. Unfortunately for him, it was the depression and his family could not support him with all the other expenses of university life. So his scholarship was directed towards funding a position of articled clerk to a firm of London solicitors and he became a lifelong lawyer even to the day of his death 58 years later in 1991. Perhaps I should qualify that by saying that during the second world war he served in the Royal Artillery, but didn't manage to leave British shores.

Back to Oxford. I stayed there five nights and was busy at the conference for most of the time. So my stock of pictures is very limited, but I can say that not much seemed to have changed in the city centre during my 44 year absence! That's hardly surprising given the huge agglomeration of ancient buildings. My accommodation was also, unsurprisingly, Balliol College and the only pictures I have of my visit to the city concern the college. It has a pleasant quadrangle surrounded by the great hall in which we ate breakfast for 5 consecutive days.

The remaining pictures are of breakfast in the above hall and most of the participants are conference delegates.

It was probably the most attractive breakfast venue I've ever visited, except for St Catharine's College in Cambridge where Phillip hosted me when he was a student there also a long time ago.

AS

Peak District Landscapes

Now for my second group of images of the Peak District, which lies north of Derby and between Manchester to the west and Sheffield to the east. In other words, the district is the lungs of the industrial north, but as you will see there's not a hint of urbanisation. It is just picturesque and often grand countryside. As before, I'll deal with separate clusters of landscapes, and start with the Arbor Low stone circle and adjacent Gib Hill Barrow. These could be as old as 6000 years BP and the stones forming the circle are mostly lying flat -surrounded by a trench.

 And the Barrow:

Now to the Longnor district where we were staying, starting with a view from the back of our rented house. I took many walks in the lanes around the little town, often early in the morning when the light was crystal clear, and I nearly always had my camera handy to produce the next nine pictures. I often saw mist in the valleys in the early morning, chatted with cattle peering over the walls, and saw interesting shadows thrown across the landscape by hills and even the pervasive stone walls..

Much of the Peak District's landscape is formed from limestone and this has led to the formation of many underground caverns. We explored the Blue John Cavern - as members of a conducted tour - and were treated to a wonderful experience as we descended many steps into the depths of cave, stopping to admire interesting rock formations and mineralisations. The third and fourth of these five images show veins of Blue John, which is a form of feldspar. Max doesn't know it yet but he's just about to get a large lump of blue feldspar. The last image was taken above ground, and gives little hint of the dramas below.

At one stage we drove to the Derwent Valley reservoirs, which store water for the industrial cities surrounding the Peak District. Before we got there we crossed some of the higher, heather covered, and open moorland. We stopped our car a little way up the valley to take a walk through the forests surrounding the impounded bodies of water and found an amazing site. A group of youngsters was being filmed playing jazz numbers in the middle of the forest and alongside a little stream!

 
 And we found that one of the impounded lakes and its associated dams was used by the RAF during the second world war to practice destroying dams using bounding bombs! They subsequently successfully destroyed several major German dams in that country's industrial heartland, an exploit that was the subject of an interesting film ... the Dam Busters ... that my grandmother took me to see in Brighton when I was about eight or ten years old! These are the focus of the next three images.

Here's an interesting lake-side memorial to a dog!

One of the more spectacular piles of surface rocks we came across was called the Roaches. As a French speaker, I soon realised that name has nothing to do with insects (cockroaches), but is derived from roches (or rocks). The third of the following images reveals a well--known person.

And finally we come to the Windgather Rocks near Kettleshume. These rocks were a practice ground for rock-climbers the day we were there. Yes, that's me below.

I think you'll agree that this is a rather lovely district.

As