In the Water, 21May16

Saturday 21May16. It's grey and drizzly outside our cosy cottage, not surprising considering it's 5:00am in central England. Strange village-centred annual activities are stirring in several of the residences, or at least their outbuildings. Soon processions of villagers and their unusual temporary artworks will assemble and converge on their community's most vital natural assets. But more of that later.

First, an account of our journey to here from the opposite side of the world. This was planned over four months, and the plan worked well, due in a very great degree to the ability, in modern travel, to predict accurately what will happen and when, and to easily communicate globally. Takes a little bit of the adventure out of it, I guess, but we can probably do without that at this stage of our lives.

What would Da Vinci have given to be able to do this? But it's all mundane to most travellers who rarely give a second thought to the sheer scale of organization going on behind the scenes. Sort of like building the Pyramids every day, accurately, without fuss. It's still astonishing to me, who first travelled this route by sea for four weeks as a child, albeit in the opposite direction.

Every arrangement we made happened on time, at the expected and usually prepaid cost, with minimal fuss at each interface. And so we arrived, from Australia, at our accommodation in this charming and ancient village in England yesterday having neither proffered nor used, during the entire journey on several modes of transport, any "paperwork" except passports, credit cards, disposable boarding passes (issued en route), Immigration in-out cards (completed and disposed of in situ), currency and driver licences. Already the boarding passes are passing into history and probably the remainder will too as the agent of their demise, the smartphone in its various forms, becomes ubiquitous.

Brisbane to London via Singapore, SIA. Tap once for sound, twice to like.

A video posted by Mary & Kev Long (@noosatravellers) on May 21, 2016 at 1:35am PDT

A few observations on our journey:

(1) For an Australian shopper travelling internationally there are still no real bargains at airport shops, but somehow the shops persist as does the Duty-Free myth.

(2) Smartphones now are permitted to "roam", for most of the trip, on Singapore Airlines SIN-LHR flights and presumably other destinations. But thankfully voice communication on them, at least in Economy class, is discouraged. On the ceiling of the cabin a new sign depicting a smart phone has appeared next to the seatbelt sign, where the old no-smoking sign used to be.

(3) On our aircraft SIN-LHR Internet access was available most of the time, at cost.

(4) Heathrow is now a pretty good airport. We cleared Immigration and picked up our bags quickly. But it was still cold outside.

(5) The best deal for data SIM cards for arriving passengers at London remains an off-airport agency (we used the communications carrier Three, at Hemel Hempstead, 30 minutes drive from Heathrow).

(6) You generally don't need a GPS-equipped hire car as your smart phone (or better, tablet) will do that job better unless you're travelling to remote locations.

(7) Expecting to get a good night's sleep on a SIA A380 in Economy class is unrealistic. Surprisingly, there was better space in our seats BNE-SIN, in a Boeing 777.

(8) When leaving Australia from Brisbane there's no need to manually complete an Outgoing passenger card if you have the App that does it for you (it's called a Digital Departure Card). Also, for Australians holding the new chip-equipped passport, there's no need to interact with a human at the border gate; you just scan your passport, pose sweetly for a picture and through you go, hopefully.

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Back to the present and our village, Ashford in the Water (yes, IN the water). Venice it's not. It's better and much cheaper.

We drove straight to our cottage, were given early access immediately, and spent a little time settling in and having a lie down (38 hours since leaving home, somewhat tired) followed by a quick walk around yesterday, until the pub, 100m away, opened at 6:00pm.

One for our good friend Josie, to spur her recovery from illness. Nearby cottage. By Kev

A big rainbow trout, probably 2kg, in the River Wye, on which the village is situated. By Kev.

The local churchyard contains 293 standing headstones. By Mary

Not our cottage, but nearby. By Mary.

The very worn stone step at the kitchen entrance of our cottage. By Kev

Thanks for viewing

Mary and I welcome your email feedback and comment. Click here to email us.
Kev Long
Author iPad Traveller for iPad and Mac.



The technical stuff:
Our main iPad is connecting to the Internet mainly through a cellular connection provided (prepaid, 3gb for three months for £16) by the UK "Three" network. On high ground and in town environments this connection has so far proven quite good but, as in Australia, some places lack good coverage so no or poor connection. There are quite a few WiFi options available too although not always advertised. Just ask if you're unsure if available. All except two of our accommodation reservations include free WiFi which is of course the preferred method of transferring large amounts of data but I have been posting these blogs and their images sometimes using only a cellular connection either from inside our accommodation or on the roadside.

Mary's iPhone is operating using an Australian SIM card (Optus prepaid) which is roaming while in the UK and gives us the ability to make phone calls (not cheap) and send and receive SMS. It also uses WiFi, can connect directly to the Internet through the local cellular system (expensive), and use a Personal Hot Spot provided by the iPad (essentially free as the iPad connection is prepaid).

Location:Greaves Lane,Bakewell,United Kingdom