One year – May to July packing
Rohan’s Cool Silver t-shirt – worth its weight in gold?
As you may have noticed in the pieces so far in the One year series, there is a common denominator in the postings related to the posts on our travels in May and Junes 2015, but it’s hardly mentioned at all in the posts about the trip to Lisbon in July.
We know how much stuff can go in the back of a Skoda Fabia when the seats are down, but anything we took along on the Somerset trip had to be packed around Betty Bike – Caroline’s trusty touring/commuting cycle.
Betty’s sturdy and took up more room in the car than we thought, so packing had to be on the minimalistic side, which is why we took small bags with us and shopped locally when we got to the apartment we’d rented for the week.
There were a few luxuries though as I’d shoved a few DVDs into a carrier bag in case we felt the need for some televisual entertainment and I’d also decided to take along my DLSR as well as the usual Nikon Coolpix S3100 digital compact camera.
As the weather was destined to be changeable according to the advance forecasts, a couple of micro fleece zip necks (TNF and Craghoppers) were packed into my Karrimor holdall along with a pair of Peter Storm soft shell trousers, a couple of Rohan’s Cool Silver t-shirts and a couple of the same brand’s Essential t-shirts, three or four pairs of Rohan Silver trunks and a few pairs of M&S dress socks.
With that lot in the bag plus a pair of Merrell shoes and a pair of Brasher sandals, that was about it apart from a couple of travel towels plus my wash kit, meds and Kindle.
The bag wasn’t full and could be easily squashed into any gaps around Betty Bike once her front wheel had been taken off in order to get her into the back of the car.
Caroline was also using a Karrimor holdall, but her clothing mix included travel clothing from either Rohan or Royal Robbins and a few bits of Endura, Altura and Tenn cycle clothing too.
Your starter for Tenn – great shirt for cycling or daywear…
Did we take the right kit with us? We certainly did. The only pieces that haven’t been mentioned so far are the Berghaus and Nike waterproof jackets we took along or my TNF hooded soft shell. Only the waterproofs were used to protect the innocent…
Anything else? Well we did some shopping at the Rohan shop in Dunster, but that was for a few items that were required for the Lisbon trip that we’d decided to take a few weeks later. Even at that stage, Caroline and I had plans for Europe, unlike some who have been in the news over the last few days – allegedly!
As the visit to North Norfolk in June was a short one and Caroline wasn’t taking Betty Bike, we didn’t really need to pack much given the advance forecasts and the relaxed nature of this trip.
So it was a scaled down packing list compared to Somerset – the clothes we were wearing plus three t-shirts each, socks and undies, a spare pair of trousers and the usual travel towels, wash kits, meds and Kindles. The DLSR was left at home in favour of the Nikon and that was it.
Or was it? Well no, not really as Caroline was planning on hiring a bike whilst we down in Norfolk, so her bike clothes, helmet and gloves were also in her Karrimor bag.
And so to Lisbon via a night drive to Liverpool John Lennon Airport and a late arrival at the Hampton by Hilton hotel as Caroline had spent been at a family wedding.
Baggage choices? Our trusty Osprey Farpoint 40s as we were travelling hand luggage on easyJet.
And the contents? A security friendly travel wash bag that had been bought for the journey. It was originally full of predominately Gillette travel products, but a little pruning and replacement ensured that the new contents covered all eventualities.
The disposable razor and small tube of toothpaste were retained, but in went a plastic cased Dove roll-on instead of an aerosol. That was followed by my Slim Sonic Toothbrush, a bottle of Lifeventure Fabric Wash for the clothes, 100ml of Lush’s Flying Fox shower gel, a small bottle of tea tree oil, a similarly sized King Of Shaves shaving oil and two small bottles of Nivea Factor 50.
As before, my usual prescribed meds, yellow Warfarin book and repeat prescription forms went in along with a pack of indigestion tablets and a few sachets of recovery powder (just in case there were too many glasses of vino collapso imbibed over the course of a day…).
Worn items included Salomon ventilated trainers, a pair of Rohan Goa trousers, one of four Rohan Core Silver t-shirts (the rest were in the bag along with a couple of Rohan Element t-shirts).
Why so many t-shirts? As good as all of these shirts are, expectations of 30+ C meant that for once I was playing safe and wearing two shirts per day rather than one. I did however regret not having a couple of polo shirts as smarter options as we were eating out so much over the course of the week.
Rohan Cool Silver trunks and suitable socks completed the worn outfit and yes, there were spares in the bag of these. Other packed items included another pair of Goa trousers, my Nikon Coolpix and charger plus my Kindle and charger, a newly purchased Rohan Stowaway Daypack 20 and a travel towel. Oh, and a copy of Rough Guide‘s Pocket Rough Guide to Lisbon plus a pair of Next espadrilles for sock free days or nights out…
Caroline packed a couple of Rohan Serene vest tops, a Rohan Malay Linen Plus top and a few other items from their travel linen range.
Footwear choices were a pair of Ecco Blom Lite Mary Jane shoes and a pair of Merrell sports sandals. Her day bag was a Rohan Stowaway Daybag 3 that held her passport, camera, travel wallet, tissues, sun cream and a small bottle of water.
Washing was done before we went out and left to dry on hangers next to the windows once the clothing had been rolled up in a travel towel to squeeze out excess water.
The Rohan Goa trousers were just right for the trip thanks to a lightweight fabric that washed and dried quickly, two zipped pockets to take wallet, camera, reading specs and guest house keys.
Out of all the things we took along with us, there was only one piece of kit that required a rethink. I’ve no doubt that the Rohan packable day sack will come into its own, but I have to admit to making a personal wrong choice by using it over the first few days in Lisbon. It was a bit too big for what I wanted to carry around and I ended up buying a small cotton bag that sufficed for the rest of the week.
Coming up next – One year – August 2015.
London, Lonely Planet and a tube strike!
Cat, pigeons, action…
No smoke on the water – yet…
Time will tell as to how much time it will take to sort out the situation that we woke up to here in the UK last Friday. The current situation appears to be as clear as mud with allegations and conjecture to the fore rather than any hard facts as to what’s going to happen and when it’s going to happen.
The population has spoken and it’s now left to the politicians to get a grip, decide what is going to happen and when it’s going to happen. As it stands at the moment, it may be around three months before a new PM moves into Number 10, Article 50 is acted on and the fun starts…
The initial fallout may start with increased petrol prices over the next few days, but until some solid answers come our way soon, we the people may well be wondering what the heck is going on and whether there is a Plan B as it’s beginning to look and sound like there may not be a Plan A…
Normal service on wisepacking will resume on Tuesday!
One year – June 2015
Deepdale Backpackers, Burnham Deepdale, North Norfolk
There are times when we just pack a bag and head off at short notice for a few days r & r to a place where there’s almost no mobile phone reception.
Which is exactly what we did in early June last year. Caroline had a few days between shifts and once a couple of things were rearranged, we headed pointed the car towards one of our favourite haunts – North Norfolk.
Our place of choice on all bar one of our visits to the area has been Deepdale Backpackers, a hostel with both dorms and en-suites plus a campsite, tipis, yurts and shepherd’s huts. There’s a supermarket and petrol station next door, a cafe, a few retail outlets and a couple of decent pubs in walking distance.
Holkham Hall is just down the road, as is Holkham Beach (as seen at the end of Shakespeare in Love) along with Burnham Market (if you can find a parking space and successfully negotiate other road users who make you remember a memorable Bruce Willis line from Die Hard (“Who’s driving this car? Stevie Wonder?”).
National Trust has several properties in the area and whilst we’ve been to Fellbrigg Hall and Blickling Estate before, Oxburgh Hall was a new one on us and visited as we’d just renewed our National Trust membership just before our visit.
Oxburgh Hall near Swaffham – a National Trust property
Also in the area is Holt. Bakers and Larners department store. It’s always worth a visit as it has a food hall that caters for all tastes, especially if you’re a foodie.
We’re not, but we can usually find something in the food hall for a snack, evening meal or a top up on sweet stuff such as nougat or Turkish Delight.
The kitchen department has also had some trade from us too as we had some difficulty a couple of years ago in finding decent potato peelers.
Did we stock up on three of these? Yes, even though they were flagged up as Lancashire Potato Peelers (we’re from Yorkshire!).
On the outskirts of Holt is one of the end stations on North Norfolk Railway, the other being Sheringham on the coast. Steam and classic diesel trains run between the two, giving passengers a hint at what rail travel used to be like before before Beeching’s axe fell on so many rail lines around the UK.
The beach at Sheringham, plus granite blocks to prevent erosion..
Guess why there’s rope near the slipway in Sheringham
Sheringham is another place we try to visit when we’re down there, either to wander along the promenade or do the odd bit of shopping for bags of fudge at the RNLI shop in the town.
Thankfully this was a sunny day so we could wander around without wearing two down garments (one down jacket, one down vest) each or ponder what steps to take when we spotted the Amy Bomb Disposal Team taping off the beach (the answer to the steps question was easy – bloody big ones!).
Yes, both of these had happened during a past visit – on the same day!
Caroline also likes to get out and do some cycling when we’re in North Norfolk, either on her own charger or on a hire bike. Coffee stop is usually at Holkham Hall or Wells-Next-The-Sea and lunch is wherever we find that’s worth stopping off at.
On this occasion it was a pub we’d driven past, but had never visited. It was pleasant enough place, but there were a couple of perceived problems with my meal…
When did it become almost compulsory to serve decent burgers in Brioche Buns? And when it did it become almost compulsory to slather salad with a salad dressing?
After this experience, it’s now compulsory for ask for a standard bun on a decent burger and for any salad to not be coated in salad dressing. Any that don’t comply get sent back, no messing!
Just don’t get me started on places serving roast beef or lamb which is pink, bloody or both. You wouldn’t like it when I’m angry!
Wells-Next-The-Sea
Next stop? Liverpool John Lennon Airport & Lisbon!
http://www.deepdalebackpackers.co.uk
One year – May 2015 II
Wells Cathedral
If it’s Tuesday then it must be Wells…
We’d joked about visiting Wells, largely because Caroline and I are both fans of the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost film Hot Fuzz.
Hot Fuzz can be regularly caught on ITV, but we have it on DVD for those nights when Caroline comes back in from a 14 hour nursing shift and needs a little bit of light relief.
Spotting the locations used in Hot Fuzz is fairly easy (although the National Trust shop seen in the film has closed down), but even so, taking a look around Wells doesn’t take too long unless you’re having a meal or taking a wander around the Cathedral.
I chased coffee, went to the bank and had a look in a camera shop whilst Caroline visited the Cathedral (it’s a long, long time since I went to church for anything other than a wedding).
As seen in Hot Fuzz…
With the Wells visit taking just a few hours, we headed back to Dragonfly, parked up and then went for a wander along the canal as far as the cafe at Maunsel Lock where a coffee and cake stop was declared.
Now this may have been a Tuesday, but the cafe was quite busy with people stopping off as they were taking advantage of a rather fine day. Some were walking, some were walking their dogs whilst others were cycling or taking a look at the planetary sculptures placed by the side of the canal.
After what was now a full day out, an executive decision was made not to do much cooking on the night so the car was fired up in search of food.
No, we didn’t go to the pub, but we did hit the service area just off the M5 near Bridgwater. Yes, there’s an M&S Food outlet there so it was salad time for Caroline whilst I indulged in a pack of chicken portions.
The latter may be snack food, but by ‘eck it tasted good once heated through in accordance with the instructions on the pack (I have had food poisoning before after eating chicken, one reason why I’m not rather picky when it comes to food being cooked properly – losing a stone and a half in a matter of days isn’t my idea of fun!).
And so to Wednesday.
As Caroline had Betty Bike with her, it was time to take Betty out for a ride to Taunton via the canal tow path. I took the car down to Taunton and got my bearings in a town that I know reasonably well from visiting friends in the town during the late 1980’s and a work trip in Y2K.
Although I remembered my way around town, it didn’t appear to have the same appeal as it did all of those years ago. Maybe that’s down to most towns and cities having the same shops in them which have sounded either the death knell of local traders or marginalised them to secondary locations where the rents and business rates are more affordable.
But I digress. Caroline arrived in Taunton and a light lunch in a nearby pub was declared. Once consumed, we had a wander around and Caroline got back on the bike and headed back to Dragonfly whilst I tried to leave Taunton.
With both of us back at the same destination, there was a problem. Betty had a flat and there appeared to be something up with the other tyre too. I knew of a bike shop in Bridgwater, but they weren’t able to help, so it was time to hit Halfords.
So Halfords was found, the problems explained and fixed whilst we went to top up our caffeine levels in the centre of Bridgwater. Once back, it was time to pay for two new tyres and a couple of spare inner tubes and we were on our way once more.
Whilst we prefer to deal with smaller concerns when it comes to food, bikes, photography, computers etc, on this occasion it was ironic that a large trader had come to Caroline‘s rescue.
There may have been question marks over using a big shop, but Halfords did the job and did it well, just as they have in the past with the couple of bikes I’ve bought from them in the last thirty years.
And in Part III…
A town before a festival, a motor museum and home – that’s tomorrow’s posting folks!
Public hols – pain or pleasure?
It’s another long weekend here in the UK thanks to the Bank Holiday that usually occurs over here on the last Monday in May every year.
Will we be heading off anywhere? Nope. Not over this weekend anyway – we usually have a holiday weekend substitute up our sleeves where we head off from home or a campsite and do stuff over three days when everyone’s either at home, working or at school!
Caroline’s working and doing some babysitting for her daughter whilst I’m doing some sorting out at home in readiness for a tiler coming to do some work in the bathroom on Tuesday.
It’s already been mentioned in the news today that the roads will have 50% more traffic on them today as people head off for the weekend. I know to my own cost as to how long it used to take me to do a 25 mile journey over a Bank Holiday Weekend – what was normally a 45 minute journey from Skipton to home did take 150 minutes on either the Sunday or Monday of such weekends.
Those heading over to France this weekend may well have other problems as they feel the effects of the industrial action that’s taking place over there at the moment – car drivers are being advised to have full tanks before they board a ferry or Eurostar train over the next few days.
Bamburgh Castle and beach – at a quieter time of year!
Shopping’s a virtual no-no as people flock in their hoards to wander aimlessly around malls in search of things that they may not actually need, but this scenario is expanded to happen over the next week or so as it’s the half-term school holidays next week. Any shopping we do is more likely to be for milk or bread rather than more clothes or tech stuff.
So, apart from the sorting out at home, what are we going to be doing over the holiday weekend? Caroline’s weekend is sorted through work, babysitting and a long cycle ride with her club tomorrow and I’m going to sort out some more photos for wisepacking.
With the TV offering an excellent selection of visual experiences over the weekend (NOT!), then it’s going to be a mix of listening to the radio or some CDs, watching the odd programme of interest or starting and finishing one or two box sets.
We’re already part way through the latest Young Montalbano box and have Our Friends In The North, Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, Francesco da Mosto’s Italy From Top To Toe, Guy Martin’s Speed and the double pack of Jean De Florette & Manon Des Sources to think about.
Any that we don’t watch now will be saved for the imminent infestation of sport on TV over the coming months – football, tennis, darts, cricket, the Olympics etc.
Still, there’s one set of sports broadcasts that won’t be missed – the Isle Of Man TT races.
Even though one of the more charismatic riders is giving it a miss this year to do a very long mountain bike ride in the US of A!
One year – the answers!
Wells, Somerset – one of the locations for Hot Fuzz – May 2015
Ogden Water, West Yorkshire – June 2015
Tram 28, Lisbon, Portugal – July 2015
Padrao do Descobrimentos, Belem from Rio Tejo, Portugal – July 2015
Torre de Belem from the Rio Tejo, Belem, Portugal – July 2015
Centro Cultural de Belem, Belem, Portugal – July 2015
It’s a sign! Between Estoril & Cascais, Portugal – July 2015
On the beach near Cascais, Portugal – July 2015
Sandeman’s Port Lodge, Vila Nova de Gaia, Porto, Portugal – September 2015
Viana do Castelo, Portugal – September 2015
Canal Central, Aveiro, Portugal – September 2015
Praca 8 de Maio , Coimbra, Portugal – September 2015
View from a room, Newcastle-upon-Tyne – October 2015
Villa Real de Santo Antonio, The Algarve, Portugal – March 2016
Fishing boat, Cabanas, The Algarve, Portugal – March 2016
Tavira skyline, The Algarve, Portugal – March 2016
To Swaledale – and beyond! Keld, North Yorkshire – May 2016
Broad Haven beach, Pembrokeshire, Wales – May 2016
One year
So many places in just three countries…
One of the locations for Hot Fuzz – including part of the end battle!
The scene of The Great Teddy Toddle in deepest Yorkshire
A smaller version is on the bookcase downstairs
The view from the river
The view from the river, part II
Art for art’s sake?
Hot day, cool beer – but not on The Algarve!
And it’s still nowhere near The Algarve!
And no, it’s not Zorro! Or the next Bond…
A grand design?
And not a Cornetto in sight!
Market square heroes?
No fog on the Tyne…
Has someone painted the town red after hearing about Mourinho’s next job?
Provider of local specialities?
Spot the supermarket…
For when you need to know where the highest pub in England is…
One week ago
You can take some guesses as to where these are – the locations will be revealed tomorrow!
No prizes though as it’s just for fun.
All photos by Keith Rickaby on a Nikon Coolpix s3100 digital compact camera
A roof over your head…
A Portuguese Pousada…
Out of all of the places Caroline and I have stayed in over the last year, this is the one that ticked all the right boxes, even though it’s several notches above our usual choice of accommodation.
Pousada do Convento da Graca is a luxury hotel in Tavira on the Algarve at a price that didn’t break the bank thanks to the over-55’s rates available via the Pousada chain’s own website and the likes of Expedia (which is where we booked our week long stay plus Monarch flights from the UK and private transfers from and to Faro Airport.
Our room was a generous size with a luxurious bathroom and a good buffet breakfast was part of the deal. Pousada do Convento da Graca is a converted convent complete with church and cloisters that is a few minutes walk away from Tavira‘s centre and bus station in one direction and the railway station and Lidl in the other direction.
Apart from breakfast, we ate out for both lunches and evening meals (and saved a reasonable amount in doing so – eating in was around €65 for two without wine or beers whilst our last night’s meal in a local restaurant cost €40 for two mains, two desserts, two coffees, a bottle of wine and a bottle of sparkling water.
Old school…
Redworth Hall Hotel near Darlington here in the UK was an independent school that I used to pass twice a day when I went to and from work in Darlington back in the 1970’s.
Caroline and I stayed there three years ago, but decided to check in again last November as part of a break in the North East.
Large rooms and big, comfortable beds are the order of the day, as are good breakfasts and some fine in-house catering (they even made sure that their take on a good burger came with a decent regular bun as requested rather than a Brioche bun).
http://www.thehotelcollection.co.uk/hotels/redworth-hall-hotel-durham
Lisbon dreams…
Yes, it’s back to Portugal time! Lisbon Dreams Guest House has a hostel vibe to it, but that is a good thing.
There’s double rooms with shared bathrooms plus very luxurious bathrobes to wander from your room to the bathroom and back without upsetting fellow residents. Breakfast is a simple affair whilst evening meals can either be taken in one of Lisbon‘s many eating places or prepared in the Lisbon Dreams kitchen – the Guest House is situated above a mini-market with a good choice of meat, fruit and bread which is a boon for self caterers.
Lisbon Dreams is in the Rato area of the city, but it’s a quiet area around twenty minutes walk from Rossio Station and ten minutes from Principe Real‘s bars and eating places. This isn’t a bad thing though, especially if you’ve been eating out as the portions can be rather generous at times…
http://www.lisbondreamsguesthouse.com
Chilled hostel.
It only seems as though we were at Hamilton Lodge in Fishguard last week and there’s a good reason for that – we were!
For five nights in the double ensuite room (others with shared facilities are available). Light breakfasts are provided, there are several pubs and takeaways in the town centre (the nearest is a Chinese immediately opposite the hostel) and there’s Q and Jet.
Q is the laid back owner of Hamilton Lodge and Jet is a black labrador who tends to get spoiled rotten by those staying in the hostel… like us! Q has put together a comfortable environment and one that’s great to relax in either indoors or outdoors in the garden at the back of the hostel.
There’s a good kitchen to prepare meals in with hobs, oven, microwave and toaster (there’s a Co-op, a Costcutter and Tesco Express to get supplies from, along with several independent retailers too), that garden to relax and unwind in, wifi and TV’s in each room too.
We will return. Oh yes, we will return!
And I’ll be writing more about Hamilton Lodge in the not-too-distant future.
http://www.hamiltonbackpackers.co.uk
Guess where?
Caroline and I have stayed in three proper hostels in Portugal – one H.I. affiliated in Lagos and two independently run hostels in Porto and Aveiro respectively.
Aveiro Rossio Hostel is our choice out of the three as it’s in the centre of Aveiro (but a long walk from the railway station) and therefore near the gondolas on the canal and several bars, cafes and other eating places in the centre.
Like Hamilton House, there’s a chilled atmosphere, light breakfast and a kitchen to use at other times. The double ensuite room was simply furnished and comfortable whilst the hostel lounge had an interesting mix of furniture and artwork around the room.
Any problems? Only with the door code to get into the main entrance as the keypad was playing up, something that didn’t worry us as we were coming and going at sensible hours whilst staff were in attendance and not coming back in the wee small hours.
After two nights, it was time to move on to Coimbra for three nights and boy, did we wish that we could have taken Aveiro Rossio Hostel with us (and on so many different levels too)!
http://www.aveirorossiohostel.com
And just for the record, all of the accommodation mentioned was paid for by ourselves!
All will be mentioned again in the One Year series of posts that’s coming soon!
Should it stay or should it go now?
No, I’m not referring to the UK‘s vote on June 23rd as to whether we stay in the EU or get the flock out of there… *
It’s a comment as to whether I take the Apple iPad Mini 2 that I bought a few months ago along when Caroline and I go travelling.
The sharp eyed may have noticed that there were no references to the iPad in the pieces I posted last week regarding packing for our recent visit to Tavira.
Yes, it was used the day before we headed off, but after the last emails and a look at the weather forecasts, the iPad was switched off and stayed at home.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the iPad and I’ve found it useful for checking emails, web browsing, watching programmes on BBC iPlayer and reading via the Kindle app, but I didn’t feel that it was going to be necessary to pack and use it whilst in Portugal.
There are times when it comes in very useful, especially when using it to log into newspaper websites that I can’t always access on the desktop.
Although the iPad has an adblocker installed, I can still read newspaper copy on the iPad without the need to look at anything up to 45 ads appearing…
One thing that is noticeable is the battery life. It may not use that much power when watching something like an edition of Michael Wood‘s recent series on China, but if you’re spending a bit of time on the Internet at different times of the day doing some research, then the battery does run down that little bit faster.
At the moment, I’m charging the iPad up on average about once every two days, which is fine by me as it can be on the desk charging from the mains charger whilst I’m doing stuff on the desktop.
On a different note, there are also recollections of a couple of recent meals out when several were constantly checking their smartphones or indeed checking stuff on their iPads rather than talking to their fellow diners…
Now this wasn’t just something that was spotted here in deepest Yorkshire.
It was also spotted in Tavira as people checked their phones by the pool to find out what TA had to say about a restaurant they were thinking of dining in, check their emails and other assorted goings on via their phones.
Although a couple of individuals were using iPads or laptops in the cloisters of the Pousada, one couple had his and hers tablets that they were using at the breakfast table in the dining room rather than talking to each other.
Were they techie obsessed twenty or thirty somethings? Nope, they were silver surfers!
I’m still not ruling out taking the iPad with me when we head off somewhere, but the booking of our next trip just proved that you don’t necessarily need to have one when you’re researching a potential destination and accommodation in said destination.
I’ve been using the iPad to track prices on four different websites for a potential visit to the Greek Islands. The prices were right, the flight times were right in some cases and the parking fees at Manchester Airport could be lived with. I’d even got a trio of brochures to do some cross-referencing with as I did the surfing…
But then it happened. The iPad needed a charge so I plugged it in and then remembered a book that I’d leafed through a few times since it arrived last year – the 2015 paper edition of The Independent Hostel Guide.
Its proved useful in the past and it came up trumps once more. A hostel somewhere in England that offered B&B accommodation at a reasonable price in an area that I know quite well, even though it’s 15 years since I was last there and over 20 years since I took groups there for three or four day backpacking trips.
Old technology ruled as I used a phone to make the booking and pay the deposit and the only time that ‘new’ technology got involved was when I received the confirmation email yesterday and when I checked the bank a few hours ago.
So on this occasion it was a case of “Apps? Where we’re going, we don’t need apps!”.
I used the paper copy of the Independent Hostel Guide – http://www.independenthostels.co.uk
And that * above? I’m very happy to maintain the status quo and keep on rocking all over the world!
And Europe too…
Accessories after the fact…
If you read my poshpacking post a couple of days ago, you may have noticed that I talked about the clothing and other bits and pieces that I took over to Tavira, but missed out on a few things that ensured that my Osprey hit that 8kg mark that I mentioned in poshpacking.
Three things that weren’t in my pack were my camera, Kindle and dumb-ass phone. Two out of the three items were used in Portugal and one wasn’t.
The Nikon Coolpix S3100 has been worth its weight in gold. The pics are pretty good and the few that aren’t are either dumped off the SD card on the day that they’re shot or nuked when they hit the Mac Mini that wisepacking is put together on.
As ever, the old style Kindle proved its worth. Quite a few books had been added before we headed off to Portugal so there was a good mix of biographies, travel accounts, business stuff and quite a few amusing tomes too.
The best one was started on the plane over to Faro and finished whilst in Tavira – My Dining Hell by Jay Rayner, restaurant critic for The Observer. His weekly column in that paper is always a joy to read and his book highlights several of his Greatest Hits (and mentions which ones are still around and which ones have disappeared into the ether).
Now I did take the respective chargers over for the Nikon and the Kindle with me, but neither were needed as both kept their charges well over the course of the week. The bag used to store the chargers & plug adaptors and any spare SD cards came from IKEA and was one of bags or packing cubes used to keep my stuff sorted and in order …
The phone was only taken along as we were driving to and from the airport rather than using the mix of buses and trains when we flew to Lisbon from Liverpool Airport in September 2015.
I did switch it on a couple of times whilst in Tavira, but the phone didn’t connect with any network, unlike Caroline‘s smartphone, which did and took texts and calls from her family as we’d flown over to Portugal on Mothers Day UK.
Anything else? A small bottle of Lifeventure‘s Fabric Wash did the usual trick when we were washing clothes out throughout the week – around half a bottle was used, even though we were washing shirts, trousers and underwear during that week.
Fortunately we did have a sink plug in the washbasin this time around and we didn’t have to source plug substitutes by buying packs of Pringles or tubs of Hagen Daaz ice cream!
An umbrella was taken along and placed in my day bag along with my reading specs and Transition lensed sunglasses every day… With the food being so good over the course of the week, the Sainsbury’s indigestion tablets taken along as a precautions weren’t needed either.
Some sachets of Tesco Recovery Powder were used however by myself, largely after drinks orders were lost in translation and large beers arrived on the table instead of small ones or after nights where the two of us shared a bottle of wine (we usually make a bottle last 2 nights at home, largely because of one the meds I’m on after surviving a stroke…).
Small packs of Wet Wipes did come in handy on a few occasions. The first was after a meal based around lamb cutlets where the only sensible option was to pick the cutlets up in my hands to eat them rather than trying to use a knife and fork.
The second was after a mini-meal of croquettes at a street cafe in Tavira and the third was after stubbing my toe whilst wearing the espadrilles that I’d taken along.
Yes, blood was drawn and yes, I’m on anti-coagulants. Fortunately the wound wasn’t a gusher, but the Wet Wipes did their job when Caroline used them to clean up the mess that had been made.
Owt else? A folder containing the boarding cards, car parking ticket, fast track security booking along with details of Expedia booked airport to hotel and back car transfers and our hotel booking information.
Other items in this folder were copies of our passports, travel insurance details and bus & train timetable printouts too. Had we photocopied twenty pages of guidebook information and taken those with us?
You might think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment!
wisepacking 
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