After a final meal with friends in Charco’s in which I accidentally set off an explosion of ketchup, we were on our way. We had deviated from our original schedule so that we could see more people in Leeds, which meant that from here on in we were on borrowed time. Also owing to a scheduling cock-up on my part, my friend’s flight was a day earlier than anticipated. We booked no hotels or hostels, for the sake of the trip, we were staying in the car from here on in.

Milage from Leeds: 204,071 (That's 1,550 miles so far)

Having been in England and Scotland, we decided that going to Wales was an absolute necessity for us to complete a trip of mainland Great Britain. Time was against us though, so we headed to Denbighshire, a county I was (relatively) familiar with, though that didn’t stop me getting lost and stuck in heavy traffic twice.

Welsh? I think I'll stick with Japanese, it's much easier.

Staying on the coastal road we made our way to Prestatyn, where I used to work during the Summers (and will hopefully work again next year).

The Tower at Pontins, used for PGL activities.

The beach at Prestatyn. If only it hadn't chucked it down.

From here we went over to Rhyl, which is quite typical of a sea-side town (and where we used to go on holiday when I was a sprog (kid)). Timing was unfortunately against us, so following the Sat-Nav we headed back towards the M6.

Stopping at a few service stations along the way to eat, rest, and make use of various free internet points, I started to notice that it was getting quite late. However, with no hotels booked and no fatigue it meant that I could carry on going … and going … and going. Eventual, I pulled over at a roadside stop at junction 26 of the M5 for the night.

End milage: 204,430 (359 miles today)

I won’t lie, nor will I sugar coat it. Day 7 of my road trip really didn’t involve much of anything other than a bit of relaxing (in bed) and a trip to Asda. Seeing as I had the car with me I bought a load of canned goods (all own-brand as usual), with only very minor fear about overweighing the car.
Sorry if you feel a bit dissapointed, but this cat is even more so.

Waking up to surprisingly good weather, we departed the border-based car park where we had slepted, and headed south.

Literally, we slept at the border.

My friend wanted to go to Hull to see some friends before going back to Japan, so we headed in that direction. It wasn’t a long drive as such, but did feel like a bit of a journey. On the way I saw a sign for Mother Shiptons Cave, somewhere I’d been wanting to visit for a while. So I decided after dropping my friend off in Hull I’d visit the cave before heading on to Leeds.

Mother Shiptons Cave and the Petrifying Well were great to see, and the walking area was great also. Again thanks to the geat weather, the village (town?) of Knaresborough also really gave a fantastic impression.

Sebastian chilling at the River Nidd

Don't fall into the weir!

Sebastian has a crack at climbing up some wood

Don't get too close, you might turn into stone too

Use this well to make a wish but let your hand dry naturally

The cave where Mother Shipton (Ursula Sontheil) was born

Having a rest next to petrifying waters

Sebastian appreciated hearing Mother Shiptons tales, though afterward she did holler 'Gerroff my land!'

They even petrified Poirot!

The River Nidd (again)

Can you spot him?

Knaresborough Castle was really something

and had some great views of the viaduct

Sebastian finds a cave of his own

The viaduct over the River Nidd

Yes, that's our car parked over there

A pub named after one of Mother Shipton's prophecies

The entrance to the park

If this bridge falls the world will end, apparently

Another Sebastian sized cave

Comfy

Back in Leeds. Mileage: 204061

Day 2 – Leeds to Dundee

大きな地図で見る

I left Leeds pretty early in the morning, about 1:30 I think. When I got to Leeds I was actually still wide awake. So after doing a few things online I headed off towards Scotland and pulled over to sleep in the car when fatigue struck.

Where I had breakfast.

Sebastian admires the cows of County Durham

Sebastian meets some Scottish sheep

King of the Castle

The Bridge to Drumlanrig Castle

Glasgow Airport

We got to meet Desperate Dan in Dundee

With a relatively full tank of petrol I turned out of my road enjoying a slightly jumpy tune on the CD player (thanks to a rather bumpy road), with Sebastian, my brothers’ travelling monkey, in the passenger seat.

Starting Mileage: 202521

Sebastian shows how he intends to drive while I sleep.

Though he may have a problem when it comes to reaching the pedals.

Mileage at the end of Day One: 202663

The trip from the two tips of the island is something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. When I was working in Somerset I’d already visited Lands’ End, so just needed to go up north.

大きな地図で見る

You’ll have to pardon the Japanese maps, I took them from the Japanese version of this blog entry (but the English is there aswell).

The Plan

大きな地図で見る

13th August (Fri)
・From Telford to Leeds
・Sleep in Leeds

大きな地図で見る

14th August (Sat)
・From Leeds to Glasgow
・Pick up my mate from Glasgow Airport
・From Glasgow to Perth
・Sleep in Perth

大きな地図で見る

15th August (Sun)
・From Perth to John O’ Groats
・Sleep in John O’ Groats

大きな地図で見る

16th August (Monday)
・From John O’ Groats to Inverness
・Have a visit to Loch Ness
・From Inverness to Edinburgh
・Sleep in Edinburgh

大きな地図で見る

17th August (Tue)
・Enjoy the Edinburgh Festival
・Sleep in Edinburgh

大きな地図で見る

18th August (Wed)
・From Edinburgh to Leeds
・Sleep in Leeds

大きな地図で見る

19th August (Thur)
・From Leeds to Weston Super Mare
・Sleep in Weston Super Mare

大きな地図で見る

20th August (Fri)
・From Weston Super Mare to Nether Stowey
・From Nether Stowey to Lands’ End
・From Lands’ End to Exmouth
・Sleep in Exmouth

大きな地図で見る

21st August (Sat)
・From Exmouth to Salisbury (however, it’s still not been decided yet, so we might go to Brighton instead)
・Sleep in Salisbury (or Brighton)

大きな地図で見る

大きな地図で見る

22nd August (Sun)
・From Salisbury (or Brighton) to London
・Drop my friend off at London Airport
・From London to Telford
・The trip ends.

大きな地図で見る

大きな地図で見る

DrainsAid - It's like an alarm clock made of faeces

“Oh … shit!”

DrainsAid (yes they remove the space between the two words because … um … no I couldn’t find a reason either) had two trucks and were up the road doing … something. But this ‘something’ meant that not only was I going to miss the bowl of Shreddies that I was looking forward to (after I went and got milk the night before specially for it), but I also had to get the hell out of my room, lest I wish to vomit into my laundry hamper and further stink up the place.

I opened my bedroom door and was punched in the face with a brick-like fist of something I can only describe as a mummy’s arse, and the worst part was that my mouth was open. After wretching somewhats nastilly and giving all my inner strength to keeping the contents of my stomach down (I had eaten a mars bar during the night), I threw myself back into my less odour-filled bedroom and quickly shut the door. I threw on some clothes, any clothes, it didn’t matter which. I jotted down DrainAids phone number on a post it and shoved it in my pocket, took a photo of one of the trucks from my window, grabbed a can of air-freshener from the cupboard, stuck my head under my blanket and took a deep breath, and ran through the house spraying every cubic centimeter of air I could. After feeling faint, I crawled back to my room and stuck my head back under the blanket. Taking another deep breath I headed downstairs, where the smell had yet to have much of an impact (our toilets are on the middle floor, my floor), and was then out the door.

I wanted to call DrainsAid to find out why we hadn’t been given any notice that our house would be given the delightful aroma of swine-sphincter, but couldn’t stomach the idea of making a phone call on the middle floor. As they have a freephone number I headed to the phone box around the corner. Unfortunately there was someone already in there when I arived; a dying bee. Having already been subject to a wasp attack back when I was a lad, I didn’t fancy sharing any space with a pissed-off stinging thing-a-mi-bob. I popped to the next phone box along, only to find his equally dying and pissed off twin brother.

I took a walk down the road to my next nearest phone box. No bees in this one, just a lovely pile of sick. It didn’t smell though, and as long as I watched my footing I didn’t step in it; I really didn’t fancy looking for yet another phone box.

I got through to a guy at DrainsAid at about 2:10pm. I gave him details of what was happening and asked him why we weren’t told about it in advance. He said that he couldn’t find it on his system, but would give me a call back when he finds out. Poor guy sounded so downtrodden, perhaps they’re sorting the drains out outside their offices too, I thought.

I headed down to the Unipol (my landlords) office to see if they’d been told anything about works in the area, but again they’d heard nothing. They said that they too would get in touch with DrainSaid and see if they could find something out. Good ol’ Unipol. They asked me to get back in touch with them if the house still stank at about 4 o’clock, so in the meantime I headed to the Union for a bit of a nose.

While in the bookshop, nosing at the old crap that people don’t want section (aka 2nd hand books, three of which I ended up buying today), my phone rang. Unfortunately it stopped ringing before it had chance to actually make any noise. I had my phone in my hand so felt it vibrate, but it stopped just as I looked at the screen. I couldn’t even call them back, the buggers withheld the number. I knew it wasn’t Unipol (they don’t withhold their number and they actually wait for you to answer the phone), so I had a hunch it was DrainalAids.

HG Air Neutraliser for all Bad Smells - £4.57 at Amazon

DrainAid explained to Unipol that they had drainage work scheduled in the area either on Monday or tomorrow (I won’t lie, I don’t remember which), so it couldn’t possibly have been them. Oh DrainsAid, don’t be so silly. You know in this day and age everyone hates liars (and also carry phones with cameras). I explained to the guy at Unipol that I had taken a picture of one of the vans, to which he said he’d call them up again and then give me a call. After leaving the office I had a good look at the picture to see if I could see the license plate as well. My first camera phone wasn’t as good as this.

I had a call not too much later. Apparently DoughnutAid had indeed been working up the road on an Emergency call out due to some of the flats accross the road getting flooded. Now to me that’s a good enough reason for not giving us notice. There’s no need to claim that they weren’t there and there’s definately no need for the half-arsed attempt of “calling you back”. The only result from this is that DrainsAid now look like an unprofessional organisation who don’t even know where their own staff are.

Silly buggers.

I went to the pub and caught the end of the South Africa Vs Mexico match (it is World Cup time after all), before heading home to air out the house a bit more.

As usual with my complaints I invite DrainsAid to comment on here and will send them an email to let them know about the entry. It’s getting a bit late so I’ll probably do the Japanese version to this in the morning.

Nabe - Not too different from Jamaican soup back home

Let’s start with the easy one, exams. Well ok not quite that easy, in fact after every exam I left the room feeling I’d been completely destroyed in the head. Some exams, particularly my Japanese History exam, left me with that nagging feeling of self-doubt where I knew that I had either done fantastically well or scored worse than a celibate prostitute. Others, such as the Japanese listening exam, just smacked me in the face with a sense of failure so hard that even the worst posts on Failblog couldn’t even compare, though as a bit of a cheer-up plan, one of my Japanese buddies held a Nabe party as his place. I’ll talk about results shortly.

39!

King of the Juice

A couple of weeks back, we celebrated a friends birthday by doing an Otley Run. The Otley Run is basically a pub crawl typically done by Leeds students, beginning in Headlingley and finishing pretty much in town, and (though optional) fancy dress is normally worn. It’s the kind of pub crawl that covers such a hefty distance and number of pubs that it takes a whole day, presuming you can survive until the end that is. Facebook photographs have confirmed that I did make it the whole way, though memories are few and far between. Anyway, no one’s come back to me saying I did something I shouldn’t have (that I didn’t already know ^_~), so I’ll say it was a definate victory.

Last week was the return of LURPS, the Leeds University Rock Paper Scissors society. We had a tournament in the Old Bar and even had a guest player all the way from New Zealand. Details can be found on the LURPS website (photos coming soon).

We’ve just finished week 4 of teaching, and that does mean our exam results have been made available. I’m glad to say that I haven’t failed anything yet, though some results were bloody close. It’s also become apparent that I am much better at Japanese History in essay form rather than exam, as the exam itself severely hurt my overall mark.

Japanese Written – 53 – To be honest I’m generally happy with this, I’d have much rather got a higher score, and my practice exam clearly showed I am capable of better, but as far as written exams in Japanese go, this was a good result for me.
Japanese Listening – 46 – After the exam there were a lot of complaints about it being too difficult for our level, but to be frank I think in most cases it’s down to students not getting enough listening practice. Some students got scores upto and including 86 (out of 90), so trying to argue it’s beyond our level is pointless. In my case, I was just naff.
Critical Approach to East Asian Studies – 60 – A module that confused me throughout, and eventually turned out to be my highest scorer. 100% essay based, I was complemented on my bibliography (something I was worried about to be honest), but it was my spelling that let me down. I’ve not gone back over the essay yet, so I’ll take the markers word for it.
Organisation Management and Economics in Japan – 48 – No excuses here, 100% exam based, and I was shit.
Modern Japanese History – 50 – 50% exam and 50% essay. If only this one was 100% essay, seriously! With an overall score of 50, I scored 64 on the essay (the best mark I’ve ever got for an essay in my department), which means that I must have scored a pitiful 36 on the exam (40 is the pass mark by the way).

I also had the result for the Japanese Language Proficency Test which I sat in December. I knew all along I’d failed, but having the confirmation has finally put my mind at rest (but DAMN! 141 out of 400, that’s shit!).

So let’s end on a bit of good news eh. Think back to September, when I opened the auditions for Learn With Anna. Well the first bit of good news is that the animation is done, online and ready for you to view and enjoy. You can watch it at the LSTV website, or on Newgrounds (please vote 5 ^_~). The second bit of good news is that it’s been nominated for a NaSTA Award (National Student Television Association Award) in the animation category. Presuming no other student TV stations submit anything into this new category, then we’d get a victory by default, otherwise I’m not really holding up much hope for silverware.

Well, that’s me pretty much caught up. It’s taken a good three hours to jot this down, so if you’ve actually sat here and read all this then here’s a little reward in the shape of a very cute snowball fight.

The graveyard at university really reminds me of A Christmas Carol.

The view from my bedroom. Last night this poor lamp post was hit by a car and a rubbish collection truck.

The road towards Leeds city centre looks a bit bleak.

Glad I wasn’t under any trees when they shed their loads.

Hyde Park was the deepest snow area I walked through, with areas of virgin snow coming to just a few inches under my knee caps.

In yonder distance yee can see, a humble snowman who hath yet to be.

These guys were making an igloo. On my way back it was really impressive, but I didn’t want to take my camera out as the snow was coming down heavy again.

I shall name him … (looks around room to found a random and somewhat obscure name) … Leopold.

This may look like a spherical sculture covered with snow, but I can tell you this … I don’t remember it being there a couple of days ago (recent … ish … google maps pic), and there was a mysterious looking trail of missing snow, grass and mud leading to it from the park.

Evergreen trees … the laziest of all.

This little house and garden area really go well with a snowy environment.

The Queen Vic.

I’ll see you after.