Barcelona Day One

Or I love Spain!

Well it was another early start to get to Heathrow for our 7:30am flight. Jules, Peter, Suzie (Jules' sister), Scooter and Andrea (Scooter's girlfriend) were all on the flight for Barcelona.

After checking in we grabbed breakfast and met up with Scooter and Andrea. The plane boarded on time and after an uneventful trip we landed in Barcelona. We caught the train into town and wandered down Las Ramblas to our hostel. It seemed that the hostel was perfectly situated, overlooking a square called Placa Reial (or the royal square).

We had some lunch at a restaurant on the square before walking through the centre of the city. Scooter's bags were "misplaced" by the airline, so he wanted to buy some clothes to tide him over before they found and delivered them.

We headed back to the hostel cause we were all stuffed. Considering people dont start eating dinner until around 10pm we decided to have a bit of a nap before heading out again.

After waking up (not at all refreshed) we headed out for some Tapas. After stopping for some coffee (where I had some hot chocolate the consistency of pudding) we headed back to the hostel for some rest.



The Placa Reial


A small beer with lunch...


Street Scenes


Gargoyles One


Gargoyles Two

SCT, Part Three

Or Lloyds List...

Well I think the pressure is on now. An article about the project I am working on has appeared in Lloyds List, an influential shipping newspaper.

The full article can be found here.

EVERY truck arriving at Southampton Container Terminals will be forced to book ahead under a radical scheme to end landside congestion at one of Britain’s premier box ports.

The scheme will ensure that this year’s peak season will see no repeat of the delays experienced at Southampton last year.

Although SCT and many other terminals have experimented with vehicle booking systems, this is the first time that any British port has introduced a mandatory requirement.

SCT, jointly owned by P&O Ports and Associated British Ports, has suffered more than most facilities from overcrowding as imports from Asia have increased much faster than anyone in the industry had anticipated over the past two years.

The company has received plenty of criticism in the past for not doing enough to relieve the situation.

The new scheme will be introduced on June 6, SCT's managing director Patrick Walters announced yesterday, and will apply to all vehicles without exception, including local shunters.

The idea is to smooth out the peaks and troughs during a 24-hour period, with SCT now planning to receive 120 vehicles an hour.

Lorries that miss their slot and arrive late, by “even a minute”, will be penalised with a charge of £25 ($47), although Mr Walters assured hauliers that the scheme was not as punitive as it seemed at first sight with plenty of ways to avoid a no-show fine.

A booking fee of £1 will be levied, but truckers prepared to work during off-peak hours will not have to pay.

Mr Walters described the scheme as ”revolutionary”, with SCT aiming to process up to 3,000 vehicles in a 24-hour period rather than around 1,900 at present by forcing hauliers to spread their arrival times throughout the day instead of bunching deliveries and pick-ups in the very early morning or the afternoons, as at present.

Addressing Containerisation International’s Freight UK 2005 conference in Liverpool, Mr Walters also said SCT had created an additional 400,000 teu of annual capacity by acquiring more land and reorganising the yard.

It has bought another dozen straddle carriers, arranged to have more manpower available in the busy second half of the year than in the first and undertaken training to create a multi-skilled workforce.

Overall, the port had invested three times as much over the past six months as in its entire history “in order to see us through the peak”, he said, even if that meant surplus equipment and manpower for nine months of the year.

Container lines are more concerned about port capacity in Britain than anywhere else in Europe, with Chris Bourne, managing director of MOL (Europe), admitting he was “nervous” about the next pre-Christmas season but praising the ports for doing “remarkably well” in the circumstances.

While calling for more feedering to help overcome inland congestion problems, Mr Bourne also questioned why this was not being done over British hubs rather than Rotterdam, which has seen a 40% increase in feedering to Britain over the past year.

Mr Walters said he was keen to develop more feeder services from Southampton to other parts of country and “claw back” some of the business lost to continental ports.

Speaking at the same conference, Drewry Shipping Consultants managing director Neil Davidson predicted there would be a British ports policy within five years but questioned how detailed or influential it would be.

In the meantime, feedering was one solution to the port capacity squeeze, he agreed. But Mr Davidson said he was unconvinced that the plans of some northern ports to attract direct calls could be made to work.

However, industry-wide efforts involving the Freight Transport Association, the UK Major Ports Group, British Shippers Council, Bifa, the Confederation of British Industry and other are now under way to find ways to resolving the country’s looming transport infrastructure crisis, Mr Walters disclosed.

Brussels Day Two

Or time for some culture.

Today was gonna (or should I say going to) be a day of culture. First stop was the Museum of Fine Arts (or in dutch the Musea voor Schone Kunsten van Belgie) which contained a vast collection of excellent paintings (particularly Flemish) from the 14th century onwards. It was most impressive, particularly those done by Bruegel the younger (although his Fathers work was quite good as well).

We also did a quick lap around the modern art section which, like most modern art, was weird and wacky and not really to my liking. But hey I am sure someone appreciates it.

After the museum it was time to go souvenir and postcard hunting via the Manneken Pis which is a statue of a little boy pissing. My grandmother has a statue of this from when she visited as a kid, so it was pretty cool seeing it. This signalled the end of our cultural tour!!

The afternoon was spent drinking beer and writing postcards (yeah it was tough) from a lovely place on the Grote Markt (or Grand Place for you heathens).

A quick stop at Neuhaus for some chocolates before heading back to the train station for our (first class) trip home.



A funky painting


Its twin


The Manneken Pis


The Galeries St Hubert


More of St Hubert

Brussels Day One

Or the capital of Europe.

After a decidedly average breakfast in the hotel we decided to walk around the city. I will let the pictures speak for themselves, but needless to say it is a lovely city.

Belgium itself is divided into Wallonia (French speaking) and Flanders (Dutch speaking) with Brussels lying in the Flemish area but being French speaking. It is very strange to see how the city has coped with this. Every single sign is in both French and Dutch and most people working in the shops seemed to be able to speak both (along with English as well). Similarly, being the capital of Europe there are heaps of government workers and associated lobbyists in the city all the time.

All of this combines to make the city a unique place. Also because of this, and the relative size of Europe, there are a heap of tourists constantly in the city. Just walking around for the day allowed me to appreciate this as well as seeing what the city had to offer. It is definitely an amazing place to visit and I can highly recommend it!

Some highlights of the day were eating lunch in the central square (Grote Markt in the proper language ;-)) which is surrounded by fantastic buildings hundreds of years old, the view over the city from the Palais de Justice and the wedding ceremony (I think it was a Turkish one judging by the singing and dancing) being held under the Arcade du Cinquantenaire!



The Porte de Hal - an old gatehouse.



The War Memorial near the Palais de Justice



The Palais de Justice



The lovely Jardin d'Egmont



More of the Garden



The Royal Palace



Somewhere in the city!



The Berlaymont in the EU Area



The Arcade du Cinquantenaire



The view form the top of the Arch



More Arch!



Parc Leopold in the EU Area.



A building in the Grote Markt

The Train

Or the only way to travel...

The plan was to leave work early and catch the 5pm train to London, meet up with Peter and then get on the Eurostar for our trip to Brussels.

Unfortunately I did not get away from work as early as I hoped so I had to run for the bus which, thankfully, was late itself, so I made it to the train station just in time to catch the train to Waterloo.

I met Peter at the station and we joined the long line of people getting on the train. Being a friday night there were plenty of people trying to get to the continent for the weekend.

We finally got on the train which left on time. I am not sure if I mentioned it earlier, but for an extra 18 quid each we were able to travel first class on the train. It was the best 18 quid I have ever spent. For the next two and a half hours we were plied with so much alcohol and food it was not funny. I can definitely recommend this for people planning to travel on Eurostar.

The trip took just over 2.5 hours which most of the journey being at speeds of over 300km/h! It was pretty cool.

Once we arrived at Brussels Midi station we had to walk to our hotel. We had booked into Hotel Ustel, which was just a short walk from the station and 20 minutes from the centre of town. As with most other European hotels the shower was busted and the room was tiny, but it was only a place to sleep so it was fine!

More tomorrow.

Monkey World

Or Justin's Taxi...

Yesterday we went to Monkey World. It is over in Dorset, about an hours drive from Southampton. You see Jules was given a Monkey sponsorship for her birthday a few weeks ago so we had to go and visit the monkey she was sponsoring.

Well there is not much to say about the place apart from the fact that there were a lot of Monkeys there. It was a bit much after a while, but they do a great job so I guess I should not complain.

Once at home Jules headed out for a girls night while Peter and I stayed in. A couple of hours later Tamsin (a mate of Jules) came back, she didn't feel like staying out or going home. So we all sat around watching tele and talking. Then about 2am Jules called she was drunk but also panicked. Apparently one of her friends had lost her bag and was blaming another friend. They were having a huge argument and Jules wanted me to go and pick them up and ferry them home (separately). One friend was going to stay here for the night and another somewhere else. Once we all got back here there were tears all round. Both Jules and her mate were pretty drunk! In the end there was not much else I could do so I headed off to bed.

This morning there were sore heads all around. Everyone had sobered up and apologies were made. The bag was found and it was all good! It was a good end to the weekend.

Next weekend Peter and I are off to Brussels while Jules heads off to Dublin.

Oh, before I go, I have been working on a logo for my company (Solixar). Let me know what you think!!

SCT, Part Two

Or 9 to 5, what a way to make a living....

You may remember in a previous post I was complaining about the long walk to work? Well it turns out that SCT run a bus service to and from the city. This cuts the walking time in half which is great!

Anyway, now seems like a good time to talk about what is going on at work. Basically SCT is a company that organises the sending and receiving of shipping containers. So container ships bring (and take away) containers and freight companies use trucks (or Lorries as they say here) to bring them to and from the port.

They have a computer system called VBS (Vehicle Booking System) which allows freight companies to book their lorries in to be services (which involves the loading/unloading of containers) for a particular time of day. That system is being redeveloped which is what I am doing.

The work is quite interesting (and it is money), but it is not in the nicest location. There is no chance to go for a walk at lunch or pop over to the shops, but I guess that means I can leave work earlier.

Well that is about it, I am sure I have bored you all enough.

More soon.

Shugborough

Or the long way home....

After another horrible nights sleep it was time to start again!

Today Jules planned for us to go to Shugborough House a National Trust property just outside of Stafford. We were then going to do a walk.

After arrivng we soon realised that there was far more to see then we thought. Apart from the house itself they had working servant quarters and a working 19th century farm. We started in the servant quarters which were pretty cool. The kitchens were huge as was the laundry area. From listening to Jules and Peter it is quite rare to see the servant areas in these posh houses so it was very interesting.

We then moved onto the house. It was originally built in the 18th century and is the home of the Earl of Litchfield. You can read more of the history of the house here. Needless to say it was pretty impressive. After a quick tour of the back garden we realised it was time for lunch. The restaurant on the estate was serving Steak and Ale pie which was absolutely yummy!

We then continued to look at the gardens before heading over to the farm. It was pretty cool. They showed us how cheese and butter was made in the 1800s as well as having a couple of cool animals.

By this time we realised that it was too late to go for a long walk, so we went and had some afternoon tea and walked followed by a walk along the river close to the house.

Once back Jules gave me a lift into Birmingham for my train back to Southampton. Unfortunately track work meant I had to catch a bus from Birmigham Airport to Oxford and then a train to Southampton. This turned a 2.5 hour trip to just over four hours, but I finally made it home!

Heaps of photos today....




The House



The Back Garden



Back of the House



Where's my lunch?



The lovely river (at the back of the House)



Part of the garden



More of the garden



Billy Goat!



A pony looking after a baby goat..



More babysitting



Time for a fish!



Or a canal boat?



The bridge home.

Cymru

Or English Heritage...

After a sleepless night on a slowly deflating air mattress (thank god for the cushions on Jules' lounge) we were all ready for our days activities. Peter made Jules tell him what we were doing but it was still a surprise for me.

I guessed correctly that we were going to head into Northern Wales, but along the way we spotted a couple of castles on top of two peaks. Thinking they looked pretty cool we decided to stop and see what they were like. The first one was Peckforton Castle which appeared to be a hotel and reception centre. The second place was Beeston Castle a ruined castle run by English Heritage. I became a member (for 36 quid I get free entry to all their properties across the UK) and we went up to look around. You can read more about the history of the place here but needless to say it was pretty cool and had an amazing (if cold) view across the country side.

From here we headed into Wales (or Cymru in Welsh). It was an interesting place. All the signs were in English and Welsh and the ambulances were called ambiwlans (incidentally, stop in Welsh is Araf - it is amazing how often NO and STOP appears on public signs). Anyway we were on the lookout for somewhere to eat lunch. We drove through a funky looking town called Conwy, where we stopped for a pretty awful lunch (we were desperate). After taking a few photos we continued on to our next stop, Penrhyn Castle.

This property was owned by the National Trust who, you may remember, I became a member of last week at Basildon Park. Unfortunately I forgot my temporary membership pass, so I had to pay to get in, but that was okay. You can read more about the history by clicking the previous link, but it was a pretty amazing castle. Although I am not all that sure I would have liked to live there...

After a quick tour of the gardens it was time to have a cream tea! The guy behind the counter went out the back to check if they had any scones left. One of his colleagues came over and started talking to us. Jules and I had no idea was she was saying but we did get the words "fruit" and "cherry". It turns out that they had run out of fruit scones and only had cherry ones left. That was okay and after finishing it was time to head off.

Because of the detour earlier in the day it was time to head back to Stafford. Driving through the Welsh countryside was pretty amazing. It would be a lovely area to cycle or walk in (when warmer). Because the battery in my camera went flat I could only snap a couple of shots. Nowhere near enough to do it justice.

After stopping at the Shire Horse (a pub in Stafford) for dinner we headed back to Jules' flat and off to what was no doubt to be an uncomfortable night on the deflating air mattress.......



Beeston Castle




The View




More Beeston




The Inner Keep




Me scaling the castle walls....




More Beeston!




Conwy




Penrhyn




and again...




Artistic close up shot...




Enjoying the garden.




A funky tree.




More Penrhyn