Seville

It was rather cloudy yesterday, which was great, as it was a very pleasant temperature all day.

We crossed the river; the banks are attractively landscaped, and are used for cycling, jogging, and walking. We visited the Torre del Oro. It is on a dodecahedron plan, and it’s part of the Arab defences of the city. There was another tower across the river, with a chain between them, to guard against attack by ship. Now it’s a small naval museum, and Phil really liked a lot of the ship models.

Torre del Oro

Then we went to the Alcazar, which is just amazing. The guide book was quite cool about it, but it is wonderful. It was founded  very early tenth century, but expanded several times. The truly gorgeous, I want to live here, bit was built by Pedro I of Castille between 1364 and 1366.

Pedro seems to have believed the Moors knew a thing or two about creating beautiful, comfortable palaces, and he was allied with the emir of Granada, who lent him craftsmen. The result is a wonderful mixture of Arab decorations with Gothic touches. It’s brilliant. Go at once.

See the Gothic motifs and the Arabic calligraphy.

Pedro's palace

Ceiling -isn't it heavenly?

Carving, with the hand of Fatima (at the bottom)

This is not to say that Pedro was a nice man;  he murdered an Arab guest for his jewels, one of which, an enormous uncut ruby, he gave to the Black Prince. It’s now in the Imperial State Crown.

Mind you, there’s a Patio of the Maidens, named for the tribute Christians had to pay the Moorish kings, of one hundred virgins.

There are also apartments built for Charles V, which, needless to say, are pompous and soulless, and there are apartments used by the present royal family when they visit Seville, but we didn’t visit those.

There’s the oldest painting to show the Americas, with the Virgin with Charles V, and native Americans under her cloak for protection. Poor devils, they didn’t know what they were in for.

There are very extensive, very beautiful and well maintained  gardens, from lovely little enclosed ones to an “English” garden, and there’s a maze, but you aren’t allowed in it. Perhaps they save it for the Royal family. Although Juan Carlos has been shown on TV abdicating, and he looks much older than our Queen. I can’t imagine him playing hide and seek in the maze. Whereas our queen can still walk backwards down steps in heels.

Patio garden, with acanthus

Patio garden with African lilies

Cistern, in the alcazar gardens

T

Then we had a coffee and went off to the Cathedral. The drivers of carriages are touting for custom all around there, and it upset me, because I bet all those horses end their days in the bullring, with their vocal cords cut to stop them screaming.

So the cathedral is apparently officially the largest in the world, by volume. It’s not an attractive building, and inside it’s full of monstrosities, usually solid gold or silver monstrosities. I think that’s all I’m going to say about it. Phil said he thought that Martin Luther had a point, and of course he did, but unfortunately the Spanish Inquisition had a great many points, not to mention thumbscrews, racks, fires etc, and weren’t afraid to use them.

The tower was the minaret of the mosque. It’s Almohad style, like the Kutoubia in Marakech, built about 1190. There are no steps, just a series of quite gently inclined ramps, and to give the call to prayer, the imam rode a donkey to the top and back down. They’ve stuck a Christian bit on the top, but it’s still a brilliant building. So we did enjoy that bit of the cathedral, and the Patio de los Naranjos, which was the ablution court for the mosque, is also nice.

By this time we had had enough, so we had a very late lunch of roasted red pepper salad and mixed fried fish, and  then staggered back to do our washing in the little laundrette of the holiday flats, and have a rest..

Today we went first to the Museo de Bellas Artes, but it was closed until later in the morning. There was a square outside, with benches and flowers and a couple of baobab trees providing shade, but unfortunately it was heavily decorated with dog mess and stank of pee. 

So we walked on to see the Metropol Parasol in Plaza de la Encarnacion. Again, everything was closed – the market, the archaeological bits underneath, the walkway above – and it was all quite depressing. Obviously the area had got badly run down, hence the parasol, but we were rather unimpressed by it. It’s supposed to be the largest wooden building in the world, but it doesn’t look wooden. If you go to the Globe, or similar wooden structures, the untreated wood has a lovely silvery sheen and you can see the grain. This looked like MDF – you couldn’t see any grains or knots, and it looked painted. Also the metal fastenings holding it together are very intrusive. So we weren’t keen, although it is daring to put something like that in the old city.

Then we returned to the museum, which was open at last. We did rather whizz through it as it is stuffed with huge religious pictures, everyone looking agonised and suffering, often with gold plates on their heads.  There are a lot of Riberas, and you can actually see that they are better than the rest, but I still wouldn’t want them.

The museum is in an old convent, appropriated by the state in about 1840, and the building is worth seeing. There are a couple of lovely patios and a huge (for a convent) and spectacular chapel.

The other good thing was some paintings of about 1920, so-called Sevillian naturalism, of everyday life. It was quite stunning to see how backward Spain was then. There was a painting of the women working in the huge tobacco factory, as in “Carmen”, bringing their babies to work and stopping to feed them, and hand working in groups at tables. Long before this, John Player had mechanised the manufacture of tobacco products in Nottingham, and made himself a fortune.

The entrance to the tobacco factory 4,000 women worked here, searched on leaving in case
 they tried to take out tobacco. It has a moat and sentry boxes. Now it's
the technical university. 

We walked through the old city, with its narrow alleys, and along the modern, that is, turn of the twentieth century, boulevards, which are actually very attractive. Seville is flat and traffic, except for the tram, is banned from some of the boulevards, so there are lots of cyclists and skaters.

After a bit we saw hordes of people done up in their best, as if for a wedding, with twelve year old boys in suits and such. We heard a drum and realised there was a smallish detachment of the military, with band and rifles, marching along. Then we spotted the biers, or whatever they call them, with statues of saints carried shoulder high.

The road had been strewn with rosemary, and as it was trampled the smell was delicious. The great west doors of the cathedral were opened, and people were flooding out.

There was a tourist information office, so I went in and asked what was going on. The lady I spoke to had difficulty understanding what I wanted to know, but eventually we established that today is Corpus Christi. I think she didn’t understand that I might not know what day it is.

For our final fling we had a look at Parque Maria Luisa. There are buildings built for a Spanish- American great exhibition in 1929, and although they are definitely impressive, it’s difficult to believe they were built as late as 1929. There are tiled scenes depicting something about each big Spanish city, and the latest events shown took place in the war of independence against the French. Mostly they show the local Moors surrendering. So this is a commercial exhibition, and instead of Bilbao’s signature tile scene  showing steel works, it shows the Moors getting beaten.

Plaza de Espana, built for the Spanish American Fair

Seville has definitely a big city, capital of Andalucia, appearance, but we don’t like it as much as Cordoba or Granada. The religiosity is overwhelming. You’re never out of sight of a tiled picture of a suffering Madonna or sacred heart, or half starved saint. There are churches everywhere, every few yards it seems, and meeting houses for religious brotherhoods. And the other off putting factor is all the bullfighting posters, pictures, clothes and such. This may not be permanent – Corpus Christi is apparently the day of a specially important bull fight – but it isn’t pleasant.

To Seville

In the evening yesterday, we went out into Cordoba to have a look at the Juderia. The Synagogue, the other thing, apart from the mosque, that we really wanted to see, is closed until August. So it was really a case of pottering about staring, and finding a bar for some tapas. It is really lovely, and very peaceful, much less of the busy young people vibe that there was in Granada. But that may not be a true impression, because it kept trying to rain, big but infrequent drops, and there were frequent rolls of thunder. So maybe everyone else had the sense to stay inside.

Patio in Cordoba

Statue of Maimonides, the Cordoban
Jewish philosopher and jurist

Eventually, we decided we had pushed our luck for long enough, and it would be really unpleasant to walk across the Roman Bridge in a serious thunderstorm, and returned to the hotel. Cordoba is the European city of culture in 2016, so we’ll aim to return then.

Today we drove to Seville. It was a pleasant drive, over rolling hills, with wheat, mostly already harvested, fields of deep yellow sunflowers, olives, and great masses of oleander in bloom in the motorway verges and central reservation. It all seemed much more fertile that from Granada to Cordoba, which had much steeper hills and was quite desolate in places. The only agricultural enterprise seemed to be olives. 

Grand doorway of the museum.

We stopped at Ecija, a really lovely town, which in Roman times was extremely rich, on the olive oil trade. The municipal museum, in a beautiful old palace, was surprisingly interesting.

The patio of the municipal museum, Ecija

 

Some years ago, the whole of the large main square was excavated, and some really high class statuary was found, piled into a pool behind the main temple. I don’t know who put them there; I would suspect the Moors, objecting to the representation of the human form, in particular the scantily clad human form, but the dates didn’t seem right.

Dying Amazon - Roman copy of a Greek original

There were also some very impressive mosaic floors. This one shows Bacchus teaching humans how to make wine.

The museum explained that the olive oil trade used large numbers of slaves. I don’t know who picks all those olives today. I’ve done olive picking and it is very labour intensive, and not at all simple to mechanise. Ecija apparently had an amphitheatre and a hippodrome, so the trade certainly paid.

Then we stopped at Carmona, also a nice town, high on a ridge, with a very ruined alcazar. The views across the plain are tremendous. There is a parador in part of the alcazar, I think in the stables.

Street in Carmona. The "sails" are surprisingly effective
at keeping the street cooler.

We visited a couple of churches, which have enormous and truly hideous gilded altarpieces for each chapel, and ghastly objects on biers to be carried through the city, all in silver. No wonder Spain declined; Britain spent the profits of empire on railways and establishing tea plantations in India, coffee in Kenya, rubber in Malaya etc etc., and Spain spent them on building churches with shockingly awful decorations.

We had an excellent menu del dia late lunch, and then continued to Seville. The traffic was quite challenging and Phil decided he knew better than the satnav, goodness knows why, but we got here and it’s a little apartment. So then we went to the nearby supermarket, for food for our breakfast, and then had a decent cup of tea.

Later we walked the short distance to the river. There were people fishing, sculling, and canoeing, so there was plenty to see. Also there are lots of bars, so eating should not be a problem 

Cordoba

We left Granada after breakfast and drove to Cordoba. The hire car is bigger than we expected. It is a Citroen with an automatic change gear which is supposed to be even more economical on fuel than a manual but it's awful. There is an alarming loss of power at every gear change, so you have to make sure you have loads of room to spare before pulling out on the motorway, or off from a roundabout. Also it does not creep forward in drive, and has an electronic brake, which is making hill starts a bit tense, until we get used to it.

Cordoba is just outside Medina al-Zahra, an abandoned city, which was lost until the twentieth century and has been being excavated ever since. The history was almost more interesting than the site. In the tenth century Abd el-Rahman, ruler of Cordoba, appointed himself Caliph, in the Ummayad line. At this time the Moslem kingdoms in Spain and North Africa being were threatened by the Fatimid caliphate - who were Shia.

Abd el-Rahman decided to build a new city, befitting a caliph. The works began in 936 and were enormous  - the flanks of the hills were terraced, walls about four and a half kilometers long were   built, there were palaces, gardens, opulent administrative buildings, and a large population. He allied himself with Byzantium against the Fatimids, and had Byzantine mosaic artists to decorate his palaces. Then, less than a hundred years after building commenced, the city was wrecked in internecine fighting.

View of Medina al-Zahra

The ruins were plundered, first for the treasures - sculpted capitals from Medina al-Zahra have turned up as far afield as Marrakech and Rabat. Then the ruins were plundered for building stone, and what was left was eventually covered with silt and forgotten.

It all reminded me of Daulatabad, in Maharashtra, close to the Ellora and Ajanta Caves, which was built on an even grander scale as a new capital and very soon abandoned. In both cases, only a fraction of the city has been rediscovered. It was even hotter than Daulatabad, and we scuttled from patch of shade to patch of shade. The car thermometer read 40 degrees when we were on the motorway, not parked.

As I said, the history was the really fascinating bit, and the museum was excellent - and beautifully cool! But the site showed how the Moors had taken over Roman ideas, and made them their own, very distinctive, style. There is a very luxurious residence, which the archaeologists believe, on what grounds I'm not sure, belonged to the caliph's chief minister. It had his own ensuite bathroom and latrine.

The mosque is very large and unusual in Spain, in that it is correctly oriented towards Mecca.   Most of the mosques took over an early Christian church, so they aren't, but this one was built from scratch.

Ruins of the mosque

After the visit we continued into Cordoba, to the hotel, which is on the banks of the Guadalquivir, just near the Roman bridge and opposite the great mosque. We had a very quiet evening, but got up early as the great mosque is open early and tour groups aren't allowed until ten a.m.

Breakfast was really good, except that, just as he finished off with a slice of chocolate cake, Phil lost a crown. The hotel reception staff were very helpful and pointed us towards a dentist only a hundred yards away, but of course he would not be open until much later. So off we went to the Great Mosque.

We walked across the Roman Bridge; the Guadalquivir river is big and has plenty of water in it, at present anyway. What happens later in the summer I can't presumed to say. There are ruined watermills and a nuria, or Arab water  lifting wheel, like we saw in Hamas in Syria, but it's not working. Actually, I think it was originally Byzantine engineering. The guard house at this end of the bridge has Arab gates, converted to renaissance style.

The Roman bridge

The nuria

The mosque is amazing. Apparently the original part was built by reusing Roman columns, and to get the height, the architect stacked a square block on each round  column. It was begun in 756, when Abd ar-Rahman I made the Christians an offer they could not refuse  for the Visigothic cathedral, and then it was extended several times, but always in the same style, of alternating brick and stone arches to give a distinctive red and white stripe. In the end there were  1293 columns. 

You go in from the Patio de los Naranjos,which was the ablution court. From here the mosque was completely open - there were nineteen arches, all but one now blocked off. The yard is full of hurtling swifts, which nest in the stonework. If they get chucked out, do you think they could be rehomed on the roof of our flats in Nottingham? They gladden my heart, I'd just love to offer them a home.

It was lovely and quiet, and although I missed the natural light that a mosque should have, it is a wonderful atmosphere. The place appears endless, like a forest. The mihrab, and the maksura on either side, where the emir and his companions worshipped, are gloriously decorated, by Byzantine mosaic artists. The Byzantine emperor also sent 1600 kilos of gold mosaic pieces to al-Hakam II, who wished to match the mosaics in the courtyard of the Ummayad mosque at Damascus.  There, they represent the gardens of paradise; here they are more stylized foliage and calligraphic patterns.

The mihrab

Ceiling of the mihrab

The maksuras on either side of the mihrab. 

Maksura

Sadly, in 1523, Charles V finally let the bishop and cathedral chapter stick to "proper" cathedral in the middle of all this peace and harmony. It's awful. I often find Catholic cathedrals  quite hard to take, and this one is so horribly out of place and contrasts so violently with the mosque that it's just appalling. I do not want to put you off, though; the place is so big you can largely keep your back to the cathedral bit.

Mind you, I found the Islamisation of Aghia Sofia in Constantinople just as upsetting. You have something perfect, absolutely perfect of its kind, and as it's not your kind, you have to deface it. Like blowing up the Bamiyan Bhuddhas.

So then we returned and Phil went to the dentist, who spoke French, so they could communicate. He stuck the crown back on, so it should see out our holiday. There are posters advertising dental implants for 500 euros "todo", so perhaps we could come back and pay for the holiday by having an implant here, instead of at home.

I went to the swimming pool on the roof and swam, and lazed, and read, and was very happy!

Granada

Oranges, in the gardens. Last time we were here, we got
ticked off by a Dutch guy, for trying to pick one.
We behaved this time.

We got up, had breakfast (good) and went straight out of the hotel to the Alhambra. It’s only about 7 minutes’ walk, and we had booked the necessary timed tickets from home.

The time we had for the Nasrid palace part, which is strictly limited on numbers, was 11.30 a.m. , so we went off to the Generalife and its gardens.

The Generalife, from the Mirador. Note snow on Sierra Nevada

We have been to the Alhambra once before, with our three sons, one February half term. We did remember quite a bit, but it was a very different experience in February, as opposed to June. The water in all the fountains was turned off and it was bitterly, bone chillingly, cold. The wind was blowing from the Sierra Nevada, which of course were completely covered in snow – there are patches left even in June- and as the whole place is built to be shady and attract breezes for coolness in the summer, it was a rather miserable experience. Although there were hardly any other tourists, whereas today there were enough to slightly take the edge off the experience. Still, we were seeing the palace as it was built to be seen, and it’s utterly gorgeous in the heat. 

You would imagine that the conquering Catholic Monarchs would have taken over the place. I could certainly entertain the idea of spending the summer reclining on cushions in those beautiful garden rooms, listening to the sound of trickling water, and probably an oudh, and drinking sherbet. I am assuming that sherbet as in 1001 Nights is not at all like a sherbet dibdab, which is actually my only acquaintance with sherbet of any kind. But that generation of Catholics still seem to have equated dirt and discomfort with holiness.

Detail of the plasterwork and columns in the Lion Court

The gardens are very well cared for, although of course not authentic.  There are lots of plants which would have been unknown to the fourteenth century, even though some, at least, date back to the Alhambra’s glory days. Everything is green and scented with lime blossom, thyme, oleander and cypress. It's just gorgeous.

There are millions of swifts, zooming around, and sparrows. The swifts are glorious but apparently a bit of a problem, because though everyone loves them and they eat flying insects, so are Good, they nest in the plasterwork, which is Bad. 

Swift, popping its head out of the plasterwork

There is a plan to persuade them to move to the Carlos V palace roof. It wasn’t explained what might happen to them if they refuse to cooperate.

The Nasrid palace is even more gorgeous and the plasterwork is amazing. There are traces of colour left here and there, mostly an azure blue. I’m inclined to think that the whole thing painted would have been quite overpowering, but everything you can see is in such exquisite taste that I think it must have looked good.

The Lion fountain. It's now surrounded by glaring white marble, but was  a
garden, with myrtles and other scented plants.

Quite a lot of colour left here. The lower bit is tiles, of course.

The alcazaba is pretty ruined, but the gates, particularly the Justice Gate, are very interesting, using all sorts of defensive techniques of sharp turns, dead ends etc.

Alcazaba, from the Mirador

The Charles V palace would be impressive if it wasn’t so horribly out of place. It’s all set up for open air concerts;  Granada is having a festival, sadly after we’ve left.

After  seeing all this, we were knackered and it was very hot. There was a French couple with a very young baby, who was very miserable, and I couldn’t help feeling they shouldn’t have brought her out. Much to my surprise Phil remarked on it first – he was worried about the baby, too. It’s probably that delusion that a child shouldn’t cramp your style.  The French seem particularly prone to it in my opinion.

It’s weird that you can usually identify peoples’ nationalities so quickly. There was a group of about ten middle aged men in Malaga. Noting that one was black, one was Asian, and one had red hair, it was clear to me that they had to be English, and yes, they were.

Anyway, we went back to the hotel where they did a good buffet lunch, with gazpacho and lots of salads as well as paella. Then we had a siesta, and after a bit I had a swim.

About half past six we went down the hill into the old town. It  was a lovely walk, heavily wooded,scented, with more trickling streams and masses of acanthus, which looks wonderful in big clumps. Tho old town is charming. We could look down on it from the Alhambra, and it is Arabic style, with very narrow streets and riads – they may have big renaissance doors, but the plan is still the open courtyard with rooms opening off. 

The old town

The old town

We climbed all the way up to the Mirador, where the views across to the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada are spectacular, and there are interesting views across the flat fertile plain.

Us, on the Mirador

We people watched, too. There were weddings, stag and hen parties, and rather to our surprise quite a lot of inebriated young Spanish men. It  is Saturday night. I do hope it isn't British tourists who have made public drunkenness acceptable. 

Then a taxi home – pretty tired by now.

Malaga

Yesterday we flew from East Midlands to Malaga. The security arrangements at East Midlands are just as inefficient as last time we flew from there. They don’t seem to consider it a problem that your belongings  are scattered in all directions, even though a passenger recently won a case against Heathrow because, while they were faffing about checking stuff, his laptop was nicked.  I did hope that this might have caused East Midlands to smarten up, but having talked to a supervisor (well, complained vociferously, to be exact) there’s clearly no hope for the system with staff like that.

Then when we were waiting for the bags to come up, some young men got into a shouting match, and I came over all teacher-y and told them ff for making me ashamed to be British. They did stop.  

Anyway, after this rather fraught journey, we arrived in time to find the hotel easily, due to some excellent preplanning by Phil, and go to bed.

After breakfast we got the bus into Malaga. The buses are convenient and easy to work, and we didn’t fancy leaving all our luggage in the hire car parked in Malaga. The outskirts of Malaga are pretty grim; American style strip malls, stack-a-pleb enormous blocks of flats, wasteland, and a rash of graffiti over everything. But the centre is delightful, with lots of gardens and shade and some lovely buildings. There is a charming Moorish style early cinema and a theatre which I imagine must be eighteenth century.

Docks, from the Alcazaba

We walked through gardens to the lift up to the Alcazaba. It was built over quite a long period but most of what you can see is early tenth century. It’s heavily restored, but gives a good impression, with peaceful secluded courts, fountains, gardens and open air living rooms. There’s some nice ceilings remaining, and the views over towards the bullring and the docks (rather smart) are good.  In one or two places there are reused Roman columns, and just below are the remains of a Roman theatre. There’s a fair amount left, but nothing like the theatres in Syria or Jordan, which were nearly complete except for the statuary.

Then we went to Museo Picasso. It contains works donated by Picasso’s daughter in law. It’s in an elegant sixteenth century mansion, which is well worth seeing, and in the basement are the ruins of some Phoenician houses from the eighth century B.C., found when restoring the house. Neither of us are completely sold on Picasso, but he certainly could draw. One does wonder whether Hirst can. Maybe he has to pickle animals instead.

We had a look at the cathedral. There was a sixth century basilica, which became a mosque, and then when the Catholic monarchs conquered Malaga, it was decided to build a magnificent cathedral. The plans were so ambitious it still isn’t quite complete. It is enormously high with an amazing vaulted ceiling, so it is definitely magnificent, but also rather ugly.

Phil under a baobab tree. We haven't seen a baobab
since we went to Nepal.

Then lunch. After some indecision, we chose a restaurant and had a salad of roasted red peppers and a platter of mixed fried fish. It was lovely. What a nice meal. They gave us a free liqueur, and I felt obliged, even forced, to drink mine, but I'm ashamed to admit that it made me very sleepy and rather useless on the drive to Granada.  I did pull myself together in time to help find the hotel, which is just outside the Alhambra, with Morrocan style decorations, very nice, and has a swimming pool – just the ticket after a hot drive.

The canal.

The canal that runs through Nottingham is really the river Leen, which ran through Nottingham and was the supply route for the castle, flowing as it did at the base of the sandstone outcrop on which the castle stands. It was canalised to make it more navigable and to try to control flooding.

It used to be pretty derelict and abandoned. But now some of the old warehouses are clubs and pubs, and there are lots of new blocks of flats. The canal towpath is a walking and cycling route, and it’s my shortest way to the swimming baths.

A longer walk along the canal can take you to the Trent, and the Victoria Embankment, which is really pleasant. Sometimes we go that way for a walk and sometimes we take the grandsons. One time when we were with them, a heron was on the path. It kept moving along the canal just ahead of us, making sudden darts to the edge, and every time it made a dart, it caught a fish. The boys loved it, especially because we were close enough to see the heron’s throat convulsing with each gulp. It looked as though the fish was still struggling on its way down.

There are quite a lot of waterfowl, mallards, coots, and Canada geese mainly, but occasionally greylag geese and rarer things; once a pochard spent the winter on the canal, looking quite out of place among the mallards. I imagined them leading him astray with their streetwise ways. The only birds that seem to manage to raise chicks are the Canada geese. I don’t like them – they are quite smart to look at, but whole aggressive flocks, producing vast amounts of excrement, aren’t an asset to any landscape. But they are brilliant, devoted  parents. Of course their size has got to be an advantage – even urban foxes probably think twice before tackling them – but mallards  are just hopeless. They don’t seem to hatch many eggs, which, to be fair, might be the fault of the foxes, but then if they do end up with ducklings, they are mostly oblivious of the poor little things struggling to keep up with mum. The ducklings  peep away in the most pathetic manner, swimming frantically, and I actually get quite upset. Not for long though; the ducklings mysteriously disappear after a day or two.

There are lots of fish in the canal. The water is pretty murky, so you can’t see them, but there are plenty of fishermen, one or two of whom I see often enough to say hello to, and one once showed me the contents of his keepnet. There must have been seven or eight really good sized fish; bream, he told me. Usually the fishermen just put them back, but apparently the East Europeans eat them. This is, apparently, bad form. I wouldn’t leap at the opportunity of eating anything that came out of the canal, although it can’t be so bad, otherwise there wouldn’t be fish at all.

Canal boats vary from the water gypsy / hippy sort of narrow boat, to narrow boats registered with holiday companies - it seems a bit odd to come to Nottingham and moor by the magistrate's court on one's holiday - to smart cabin cruisers. The canoes are mainly on the river, along with the various sculls and eights.  

I did take the kids to learn to canoe on the river, years and years ago. Of course the first thing we had to do was capsize and forward roll out of the canoe, and also of course, the first person to have to do it was me. For some reason I had a mental image of rolling out of the canoe straight into a supermarket trolley, but I had to set an example, so steeled myself and did it, and realised that the river is much too deep for a trolley to be a problem. But then the depth and the strength of the current gave me something else to worry about. Still, we all completed the course. I even had a certificate, but I don’t know where it’s gone. And it was useful – second son had a spell of living in a flat right on the canal and his workplace is also on the canal, so he bought a canoe from Gumtree and used it to get to work. How green is that?