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Well I didn’t think too hard about it, but it turns out that the Peaks district it a little on the hilly side! yesterday we managed 58 km. today though we used the car… glad too, its been wet! photos to come, there is some lovely scenery here…

Vancouver real estate is a fascination of mine for obvious reasons. (Obvious to those who know me.)

I was happy for our neighbour when he finally managed to sell his house.  The third realtor in about 15 months got the job done but of course part of the credit has to go to the recent uptick in the market (ie: spring summer 2009 have been decidedly better than the starting few months of 2009)

And I was happy for us — no longer in the limbo of having neighbours that were soon to leave.

So I thought.  We haven’t met our new neighbours, they never moved in.  Instead, the house is on the market again, for a mere $15K above the previous sale price.

So I’m having trouble figure out what the angle is here?  Are they prettying it up and pricing it low to attract multiple offers?  Or they just want to back out of it with as little loss of capital as possible?  They’ve spent probably a few grand on the place (I’m thinking interior paint and some flooring might have been cheaply updated.) — but seriously, whats the angle here?

Anyway, we’re still looking for new neighbours.

Won’t you be (please won’t you be) my neighbour?

“Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross

To see a fine lady upon a white horse

With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes

She shall have music wherever she goes”

Ok, It’s not my work – don’t worry – it’s a nursery rhyme (do you remember it?).  We headed to Banbury today to see the cross amongst other things.  It’s quite neat, although it’s Victorian (me thinks that’s not that old these days).  Anyway, Banbury is about 20 mins north of us on the train, so we took our bikes on the train and headed up there for the afternoon.  One of the highlights wasn’t the cross though, it was that the Oxford canal runs right though Banbury so you can sit and watch the boats go through the locks!  Banbury also played an important role in the Civil war, Charles I spent a bit of time fighting the parliamentarians here in 1644.

Anyway, this is Banbury Cross

More photos here

Obviously, 2D has been “asleep on the job”, otherwise this never would have happened last Saturday.

It’s international lefthander’s day today (13th August).

Happy day to all the left handers out there that I’ve whinged to about this right handed world!

They have a website, but it seems to be down…

www.lefthandersday.com/

Finally we’ve done the three most touristy things in York.  York is only slightly smaller than Oxford, but it seems to suffer from tourists more than Oxford, I’m not sure why.  What I hear you ask is “suffering” from tourists.  Picture this, a lovely foot path full of people looking up, down, left, right – in fact people looking in every direction except where they are walking.  Then you bump into them.  If they are English tourists, they apologise “sorry”, “sorry about that”, “Oh, I’m sorry”.  English people apologise for everything – believe me!  BUT if they are French, Spanish, American (and yes Australian) they just seem surprised that you walked into them when it’s obvious they can’t see you while they are looking up, left etc etc.  Oh and to add to this, they tend to walk onto the roads.  Unannounced.  They appear surprised when you almost knock them to the ground when you whizz by on your bike.

Anyway, enough ranting.  York = tourists.  But it’s still a lovely place.  OK, the three must see things in York in a particular order…

1.  The city walls.  York was a walled city, and most of the city walls and gate houses still exist.  They are lovely to walk around

2. York’s Minster.  England’s largest church. And large it is.  This time I went to the top, next time I’ll go to the bottom.  I also saw the middle.  Kate took the opportunity to go shopping while I went around this Church…

3. The National Rail Museum. Yes several large buildings full of trains and carriages.  This place was super amazing.  I expected a few trains, and a lot of little stuff.  I was really wrong, it was FULL of many trains from some of the earliest some very recent trains.

Beauties like…

Finally we went for a drive with Roger and Danielle to Bempton Cliffs.  The cliff home to many sea birds including Puffins!  We saw several puffins flying out and about and one sitting in the cliffs.  I wasn’t quick enough with the camera to get any snaps, but you can see that Kate found one puffin that didn’t move too quickly.

The easy to find puffin

I’ve taken a few more photos, feel free to check them out HERE.

It’s not only a fun place to say, but it’s a nice place to stay!

We went to Clun for a walk with the Ramblers, the UK’s largest walking organisation, for 3 days of walking.  We stayed at the lovely Clun YHA, we booked out the whole place.  Kate and I tented it (see the tent to the right behind the side of the building? that was home)

One weird thing about walking in the UK is that public footpaths can go anywhere, here you see us wandering through a field of wheat!  Right through the middle!  And there was a path there to boot!

There where many lovely views on the three days of walks that we did, there are many in the album here

Some ideas of the scenery though…

OK, some photos are scenic, but you can make up your own mind.  BTW, when it rains in these hill, it rains.  I’ve never walked in so much water, we were almost swimming!  But again, it was lovely.

Our kid has two stuffed animals that are his favorite companions.  One is a emu, one is a pig.  He knows what emus and pigs are — he can identify them in books and tell me what they are and what sounds they make.

But as far as I can tell, emu is named ‘Emu’ and pig is also named ‘Emu’.

It makes for a confused Daddy.

PS:Animal types have been changed to prevent, y’know, incriminating details about my child’s life from becoming public.  You can guess that he doesn’t actually say “Emu”.  Although that’d be pretty funny in itself.