ABroad

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Wednesday 29 June 2016

The Decoy & Orwell Park

08:58:00 1 comment
Ok, so a week or so ago we were privileged enough to spend our time living in an area between two villages Nacton & Levington, Northeast of London and a stone's throw from a major town Ipswich which is almost the equivalent size of Ballarat, in Australia. During this time I've been pretty bloody fascinated by the history, and significance of the countryside we've stayed in. Specifically the estate we've stayed within - Orwell Park. 

Decoy History is exactly where we stayed with lovely couple and their Toller dogs. 

  • In 1925 Tom Baker took over 9300 ducks from the decoy. 



Decoy house






Remains of one of four decoy's
The dead house - where ducks were prepared after been caught


Orwell Park Estate at the moment comprises of 3000 acres surrounding Nacton & Levington, and runs along the banks of the River Orwell. Within the estate are almost 60 houses, containing workers or private tenants. At its most significant, under George Tomline, the Estate included 30,000 acres consuming the area south east of Ipswich all the way to Felixstowe, north of the River Orwell. Many members of the royal family have visited the Estate over its history for one reason or another. 
Original Orwell Park Estate Mansion- now a private school
The original Orwell Park Mansion in 1937 was turned into a school and is now a distinguished private Prep-10 school.
Current Orwell Park Mansion
Other interesting information I manage to find out was that the average rainfall 18-19" per year which is a fair bit less the the Ararat area of 22" surprisingly. The estate is currently running under the business Home Farm Nacton producing cereal crops (wheat generally averages 3-4t/acre), vegetables such as cauliflower, asparagus, broccoli, parsley and potatoes. The workforce within Home Farm Nacton is significant, without knowing exactly there must be +30 employed.
This is just a brief post for future reference.

WA2 - Fresné-la-Mère France - Week 1

08:51:00 No comments
Our second Workaway is at a Bed and Breakfast in Lower Normandy France. Our hosts Peter and Su are a middle aged British couple who moved over to France about 6 years ago with their two children to have a bit of a crack.

The BnB is a massive 1850's farm house, with surrounding barns which have partially been turned into usefull rooms for workawayers or personal use.

The village Fresné-la-Mère is tiny, and is surrounded by bulk farms (I believe Normandy is the great bowl for France). We are about 5km from a larger town Falaise.

Peter and Su have been hosting workawayers almost constantly since they've opened their doors around six years ago and have a pretty good process with explaining what is required and organising jobs depending on the workawayers ability.

The BnB has 5 rooms of different configuration, a communal guest room and dinning room. Pete (an experienced chef) offers dinner each night.

A typical day:

8.30am - Wander over to the main house for breakfast.
9am - Start work, strip rooms, begin ironing sheets or cleaning bathrooms of rooms booked the night before.
12pm - Lunch followed by a break.
2pm - Begin jobs such as mowing, gardening, general diy, looking after animals,  slashing the paddock, etc. until knock off at 4pm.
4pm - Free time until tea. 

The food we've been provided so far has been amazing. We've had some local 'traditional' foods, ciders and wines and some British stuff as well.

 Each day we learn a couple more french words and really just soak up the countryside and relax after work since we've been working pretty hard. At the moment its all pretty low key, and we aren't too adventurous. The next couple of months are going to be full on so we are taking the time now to skew some spending and enjoy the simple things. 
Old empty barns looking through to the pond and paddock.

The main BnB house.

Looking from the paddock back toward the town, our accommodation on the left - first green door.

Driveway off the main street

The main house on the right and barn's on the left.
The selection of cakes at the local bakery - plan is to try everyone before we leave :)

Main street of Fresné-la-Mère
A flea market we visited at a neighbouring village


Lunchtime frothies
Amy full whipper snipper mode.

Slashing their paddock to keep on top of their stinging nettles.
We've hired a car and booked some accommodation in western Normandy for the first weekend in July to watch the first two stages of The Tour de France. Pretty bloody pumped to see what its all like first hand.

Friday 24 June 2016

Paris

04:51:00 No comments
Initially Paris didn't really appeal to me, it's just not a place I'd ever expect to spend time in. We all know the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, etc. and major attractions don't usually fire me up.
Annually France has 10 million more tourists than anywhere else in the world, and I gather they all go to Paris, so masses of people don't usually excite me either. Meanwhile, Amy couldn't wait to get into it!

 As we leave Paris and head to our next French destination I leave on a massive high and happy with what we experienced and would highly recommend you visit!

 You Must:
  1. Go on a walking tour as soon as you arrive - get your bearings and consume some history.
  2. Go on a food tour - ours was quite expensive but worth it (rolled out half pissed and almost uncomfortably full) Secret Food Tour We learnt where to buy good authentic french food, what to look for and how not to get ripped off.
  3. Paris at night was beautiful - we felt safe and it was easy to get around. 
  4. The metro is easy and far more efficient then the London system.
  5. Go to Basilique du Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre (Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Montmartre) - for me the highlight! Visit before dusk, and watch as darkness sweeps the city.
  6. Get a French book and try to speak some French, it was actually a bit of fun!

Monday 20th June

 We had a sleep in and a bit of a spell before we decided to head out. The weather was shithouse so we weren't overly excited about getting our and about.
Eventually we managed to leave a very small apartment in District 4 and head to a couple of shopping centres just for a look around. Paris is pretty famous for it's shopping centres. I think it was one of the first cities to do the big indoor shopping centre....

 Not really having a plan of attack I was rattled (Amy was solid) - I wasn't too sure what to do and it was bloody wet. Over a coffee Amy convinced me to open the wallet and splash a bit of our hard earn on a couple of tours because we were not getting anywhere ourselves and at this stage we hadn't spent any cash on classic tourist activities. 

 We looked to Tripadvisor and booked a walking tour for Tuesday night (60Euro - 100AUD), and a French food tour (190Euro - 300AUD) for the both of us. 

We are in Paris at the same time as Euro16 - a soccer competition for majority of the European countries. The population of Paris has swelled with tourist from other countries and it's pretty bloody busy. Security around major attractions like the Eiffel Tower was intense, including a pat down to get through. 



Taking refuge from the rain in one of the many amazing shopping centres in Paris.

Two story train on the way to the Eiffel Tower



The Eiffel Tower was under quite a lot of security due to the Euro16 soccer championships.

We bought tickets to get to the first level of the tower. It was too overcast to see anything at the top so we didn't bother!




Tuesday 21st June

Massive day today as we were out most of the day seeing the sites. Today France celebrated - Fete de la Musique - and all day music festival celebrating the beginning of summer. Because of this celebration, a lot of things were open later than usual and metro was to run all night. This was a pretty amazing experience as most restaurants and cafe's had amateur performers outside providing a vibrant and exciting night. 

Morning - Notre Dame free walk thru - back to the apartment for lunch - headed to Promenade Plantee - got some arvo tea and a beer - back to the apartment for a nap - heading out for tea and to our walking tour we'd booked the previous day.

Interesting things we saw on the walking tour:
  • Roman colosseum dating back to when the Romans civilised Paris bloody 2000 years ago.
  • New vs Old Paris. Paris used to stink, so George Haussmann in the 1850s demolished crowded medieval neighbourhoods turning them into wider streets, squares and parks new sewers etc. The housing capacity went from 20,000 to 40,000 after the modernisation. 
  • Existing Roman wall showing how small the city was a couple of thousand years ago, and France's elite school which has several Nobel Peace Prize winners under its belt. 
  • Churches everywhere - something like 113 churches in Paris.
  • Centre of Paris still built on medieval foundations, still signs of torture chambers etc. in and under some of the pubs.
  • First cafe in Paris with history of Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin and other noteworthy characters.
In line waiting to enter Notre Dame - moved surprisingly quickly.


Inside Notre Dame




Seine side of the Notre Dame

The rear of Notre Dame
Headed back to the apartment for a sanga before we headed back out to walk along the Promenade Plantee - an old railway transformed into some gardens. Interesting walk above the streets.
Walking the Promenade Plantee





Tuesday Nights walking tour.
Remains of a Roman Colosseum - typical shows were slave vs. lion
Remains of a Roman wall dating back to around 200AD
"New Paris" Typical Architecture - Open and stylish. This form was implemented by Napoleon as he wanted to drive out the stink which Paris was surrounded in around the 1800's. He tore down 20000 buildings to redevelop the city and rebuild as shown a more open, stylish city and doubled its capacity to 40000. 

"Old Paris" - Plain, narrow & smelly back in the day. Very pleasant now.
Tower which is apparently nearly as old as the Roman Wall above the most elite high school in France. 

Le cafe Procope - The cafe responsible for bringing the espresso to Paris in 1686. Often visited by notable people such as Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin and famous writers.

Fun Fact: Benjamin Franklin was a diplomat and lived in Paris for 9 years, where he managed to Father 33 children during that time, in his early 70s! 



After the tour we just waltzed around to see the city at night.
Notre Dame at night.


Arc de Triomphe

#metrolyf - Trains are cleaner and the metro system is much more significant than the London underground. Once we got our heads around it all and the Paris Metro app, in conjunction with locating ourselves with the mapsme app, it is so easy to use the metro system offline, to jump from line to line to get where you want to go. 


The Eiffel Tower was going off as Turkey just won their game in the Euro's. They'd all came out after that in support of the win. It was pretty full on...
Wednesday 23rd June
Luxembourg Gardens and a Gelato




Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre

Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre - Overlooking the city

Food tour.
Butcher, the way to know it is a real authentic butcher is by the poultry, you can see up in the top right hand corner of the photo, the duck with its head and feet still on, guts remain as well. A way to show the buyer how fresh the poultry is. 


Cheese - this stick denotes this specific cheese has been made a specific way, using specific ingredients in a specific area. The French really value local product and methods, they use language and stickers like this to show that. It is referred to as AOP, authentic origin produce or something like that.
Pain is Bread and Pain Pain was the name of a pretty sweet bakery.
Boulangerie & Patisserie means Bakery and Pastry, this term also means that all products inside have been baked onsite, from scratch - authentic baked goods. 
This is a list of recommended cheese, meat, desserts and restaurants in Paris to go for authentic food without the tourist attachment.

Creeping on the tour.

Our food tour was in District 18 of Montmartre, so after we headed back to Basilique du Sacre-Coeur to see the sun go down and reflect on the time spent in Paris so far. This was my highlight of Paris. There were heaps of people, street performers and just an awesome vibe as we looked over the city and took it all in.





Merci  Paris

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