Something is ridden in the state of Denmark

I’m on the plane leaving rainy Copenhagen for my last two days with old friends Paul and Silvia in London, for whom I was best man four years ago at a gorgeous wedding in Treviso, near Venice. While I remember it, I just want to give myself a round of applause for correctly predicting in my blog at the beginning of Wimbledon that dear old Andy Murray would go all the way to the semi-finals of the championships and get booted out by a superior player like Nadal. Don’t want to be smug but that’s exactly what happened yesterday.

It’s been an interesting and fruitful three days in Denmark and I’m slimmer and stronger-legged for my time there, which is saying something as much of the rest of my trip to Europe has been about piling on the kilos. Just as well that all my plans to review restaurants fell through – I arrived on Tuesday night and was just starting dinner near the hotel when I opened my welcome pack to see that I was meant to be dining at one of Copenhagen’s best restaurants at exactly the same time. Oops. I think the Media Officer, the aforementioned H, got the hump with me because we were supposed to meet and try another top restaurant the following evening but he cancelled. So sorry Helen, I won’t be filing that story on the three best alternatives to Noma restaurant in Copenhagen. You’d be disgusted if you knew what kind of backpacker fodder I wolfed down instead.

With the disappearance of media helper H I was left to my own devices and honestly I did pretty well for a grown adult male. The first thing I did was join a free bike tour of Copenhagen which came courtesy of the hired velocipede at my hotel.

What a great start to the visit this was. Blazing sunshine on Wednesday morning and a young, enthusiastic guide (Steen, who I mistakenly thought was called Sting after the yoga buff) to show about eight of us his city. We took in all the major sights including the Little Mermaid, the hippy city Christiana and various other landmarks like Round Tower in the old town and the Opera House. Bikes are everywhere in Copenhagen and most streets have dedicated cycle lanes, raised a little from the road and on both sides. What I loved most was seeing the special Christiana bikes which have an inbuilt trolley at the front, many of which I witnessed carrying small kids. It truly is a biking city, like Amsterdam (only a little more polite).

Old H had done well with the fantastic city centre hotel he booked for me, the Axel Guldmedsen. Really groovy Balinese décor, sensual basement spa, top-notch organic breakfasts and very helpful staff. One of the front desk crew, Kim, even leant me his own bike helmet when I told him I had to protect my crown jewels (that’s my brain in case you’re wondering). Others were very chatty and full of advice. The only minuses here were the fact that the outdoor courtyard was also an outdoor smoking area which meant non-puffers couldn’t sit out there in comfort and the fact that when they were minding my heavy suitcase the staff managed to destroy one of its wheels, rendering it unusable. They weren’t offering to replace it either or even contribute to doing so.

The smoking thing I discovered later is pretty widespread in Denmark. Apparently, ten years ago, as much as 80% of the population smoked and while that has reduced to 25% in a very short time, far too many young people are polluting their lungs. It just seemed anathema to me that a place that has an organic café and organic wellness spa should be promoting smoking in its only outdoor area and in fact the staff seemed to be the ones taking most advantage of it, puffing away at every opportunity out there. The Danes reckon it’s all about their freedom but as with every argument about human rights – the freedom to smoke restricts another person’s rights to breathe fresh air.

Ok, enough griping. My two day cycle up to Helsingor was just delicious. Equipped with a slightly more sprightly seven gear bike, I sped out of town via the series of lakes I’d visited on my first day and then took a cycle lane (National Route 9) that heads north alongside a major road. It wasn’t long before the route hit the seaside and the posh (mostly glass-fronted) mansions and marinas started appearing. Then there were the beaches like Bellevue at the edge of the Oresund, between Denmark and neighbouring Sweden. After cutting in land and skirting a royal deer park, the leafy track followed the railway line before rejoining the coast at Rungsted, where I stopped for lunch and a longish visit to the childhood home and grave of Karen Blixen, reincarnated by Meryl Streep, with a questionable Danish/English accent in the film Out Of Africa.




Blixen, one of Denmark’s foremost authors, was the second writer on this European trip to fire my imagination, the first being Tommy Hardy of Dawset. And her home, where she lived on either side of a seventeen year stint in Kenya, resounds with her character. Most poignant was her grave in the woods behind the house. The poor woman weighed just 35 kilos at her death, after starving because of treatment with arsenic and heavy metals for suspected syphilis earlier in her life.

From Rungsted I continued on at pace to Helsingor. This town’s a real mish-mash of historic buildings, extensive harbour works and multiple booze shops servicing the Swedes, who come over en masse on the fifteen minute long ferry ride from Helsinborg across the water. Most famously the town is home to Elsinore, Hamlet’s castle, and big fuck-off place with green turrets and domes, parapets and cannons aimed at Sweden.

Many of Hamlet’s lines are engraved in my mind following my final year exams at school and so I wandered around the old castle muttering quotes like:

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, things rank and gross possess it merely…”

“Oh that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew, or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon against self-slaughter…”

“Who would fardels bare to …sweat under a weary life”

Happy bloke Hamlet.

I was staying at a strange sort of casino hotel called the Marienlyst. The rooms were lovely, overlooking the sea and with most mod-cons and yet it was nearly deserted, probably because it’s largely an ugly 70s style construct. Still, the staff were sweet as …and I took full advantage of the indoor pool and sauna and just stopped myself from making an ass of myself on the waterslide.

The next morning I was shown around a bit by council official Ole Christiensen, a contact given to me by the BBC Nordic correspondent Julian, based nearby. Good of him to give me a tour and to cycle with me to Hamlet’s grave behind the Marienlyst Castle.

Not satisfied with Hamlet’s grave and castle, I determined to bike inland next to the Royal Palace at Fredensborg, in the hope of adding the Crown Prince, his Tasmanian wife Mary and their four kids (twins added recently) to my royal collection. But no luck unfortunately, just some very well organised and easy-on-the-eye gardens. Worth the twenty kilometre detour for sure.

I won’t go into the three times I got lost trying to find the coast again. Suffice to say that when in need, locals were incredibly helpful and all spoke perfect English. I stopped for lunch and a rest for my very sore arse by the beach. As I bit into my ham and cheese roll, a silver haired lady emerged from the sea in front of me. Without a stitch on.

“Hello,” I said slightly awkwardly.

“Hey, hey,” she beamed back. “Wilkommen” she smiled again.

So my first visit to Denmark has been a mixed bag but mostly great. It was only this morning when I left the hotel at 5.30am and walked the gauntlet of pimps, druggies, drunks and a host of sodden African prostitutes that I saw the other side of Copenhagen. One poor soul was squatting between two cars answering the call of nature and then a pissed bloke was pissing even more openly straight into the street. Still I guess it’s a free country isn’t it?

Once again as I tour this world of ours I am left saddened and angered by the huge divisions of wealth that exist out there. It shouldn’t be this way – life should not be all champagne, yachts and glass fronted mansions for some and smoke addled, intensely vulnerable and desperate for others.

Home in two days to another country with its own big divisions in wealth but boy am I looking forward to hugging my two daughters and holding onto them for as long as they’ll let me. There’s still Papua New Guinea to come next week but these last four weeks have been thrilling, funny, eye-opening and instructive. I feel lucky to have experienced it all and even luckier to be able to do it for work.

Daddy T does Munich part two

Right now I’m sitting in the Lufthansa Business Class lounge at Munich airport, which I’m supposed to be reviewing and which is supposed to be a replica of a Bavarian biergarten. That’s beer garden to you.

Well, it’s all very nice and all and it undoubtedly serves beer but the resemblance to an actual beer garden is stretching it to say the least. Plus it won’t let Daddy T get online without him paying T-mobile hotspot fees and offers only food that is guaranteed to make you fat. However, to compensate, the authorities here have made Munich airport surely the longest, largest and most likely to make you walk for kilometres. And to make sure you keep walking they’ve also filled it with millions of shops and lots of glitter and shine and window-thingies. It makes Heathrow look like a few provincial runways strung together.

I’ve just completed just over 40 hours in Munich, which is a bit of a cheat as the two definite stories I’m writing are called “24 Hours in Munich” and with great originality, I thought, “”48 hours in Munich”. It’s the same old story, I’ve got way too much material for the first piece and, erm, way too much for the second. The only problem will be providing direction on where to eat, really – the only thing the Munich tourist board was to take me out to lunch somewhere quaint. Breakfast was in the hotel and good as it was it’s hardly typical and dinner, again excellent, was in another hotel. Good job I know some locals to call and get tips from.

As for the Bavarian capital in general, well, I certainly loved it, especially today when, on discovery that a planned bike tour was going to take me on exactly walked on my first day, I did my own thing. It’s rare these days, when others organise my itineraries, to have twenty minutes to breathe let alone follow up myriad lost clothes strewn across Europe so a whole morning is a decided gift. On this, the hottest day of the year in Munich, I roamed the Konigsplatz and walked through the Botanic gardens with its authentic beer garden (that looked nothing like this one). I then found my way as if by chance and miracle to the Blue Spa above the Hotel Bayerischer Hof on Promedaplatz, where again as if by miracle I swam in the stunning open air pool, sunned myself on their terrace and then had a last minute half-hour massage with a rather grumpy but intensely talented Greek therapist. Lovely way to bid adieu to the city.

On both days I was hugely impressed with Munich’s subway and underground – very regular, very smooth, very uncrowded and very clean. It just shows what you can do when you try. No wonder the streets are so wonderfully bereft of traffic. If I hadn’t have been so busy walking everywhere, which is my means of really getting to know a city, I’d have got on it and ridden every line to their last stops just for the hell of it. Would I have made it in 24 hours though?

Next stop is another new city to me, Copenhagen, where I was due to review the top three restaurants other than the orgasmically successful Noma, write about the country’s impressive environmental advances and go cycling to Hamlet’s castle. However, poor old H, the poor old Press Officer for Copenhagen tourism is a man with too much on his plate to help an individual Aussie journalist visiting in peak season. I sympathise, I really do, H, all that galavanting with the Irish and German press must be hard work and I really know what it’s like not to have enough time. I’ve written back full of empathy and at least have a hotel for the time I’m there and a bike hired. But no restaurant bookings which will make the Copenhagen cuisine story interesting.

Oh well, it’s back to basics for Daddy T and I’ll bloody well have to make the most of my underitinerised time. More from the design capital of the world soon.

Beer and no knickers

Munich's English Garden

After a period of radio silence during which Daddy T had his birthday with a cacophony of cousins in a place called Wokingham, I am now in beautiful Bavaria, where the temperatures are soaring and I've been having some frightening encounters with long, fat white sausages and the occasional sour kraut.

Yesterday was my first ever day in Munich, which on first impressions over the course of a warm sunny summer's day is a rather lovely, compact and Italian-influenced German city. I spent the morning in the delightful company of Birgit, a local guide, who led me to beer kellers, through little alleys, into big look-at-me squares and for a stroll among some city centre parks.

A few things jumped out at me here. Under a bridge on a fast flowing brown river there was a young woman literally walking on water. But no, on closer inspection the person in question, and a few others also, was actually surfing. Surfing! Well get me out in the green room in the sharky brine for a bit of a lefty or some other blokey Aussie expression I've never had cause to use as the only thing I've ever done on a surf board is fall off it. This wasn't just surfing though as the wave never actually goes anywhere, just stands up like the squares saying "look at me" while the water smashes downriver from under the city at a pace that's guaranteed to clean your ears and everything in between. Bloody oath, this mob were surfing a standing wave in, well if it weren't the world capital of beer drinking you wouldn't believe me, Munich.



Only just over that shock, Birgit led me through this former Englishman home, to the Englistshe Garten, 6 kilometres of woods, small rivers and meadowy grass where Munich's finest go to sun themselves. Some with nothing on, not a stitch, no knickers or anything - in the middle of a city. As if it were utterly normal. Which to them, it is, but to those of us with a little less "look-at-me and all my tackle" tendencies is just a little risque.

The rest of my exceptional day in Munich panned out a little less alarmingly but there were still things sticking out at me at odd times like the characters in the city hall Glockenspiel at 5pm and the bosoms of some hearty frauleins dressed in traditional Bavarian attire at the beer garden I rested in.

By the evening I was ready for some rest and there's honestly no better place for that than at the Blue Spa at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. Set over the top two floors of the smart hotel, it features a pool with a retractable roof, deck with sun loungers, sauna and steam room and a bevvy of therapists ready to iron you out. I had a lovely dinner downstairs with Erena del Campo, the hotel's PR, then spent a couple of hours swimming, being massaged and finally trying out the sauna and steam room, which was of course, clothes... optional. Well if you can't beat them join them...

It's the first week of Wimbledon, it must be...raining

Shaun the Sheep, my new image...


Well, I've made it back to the city of my birth and even had dinner in Wimbledon, where I was brought up, on the night I got back from Bristol. How did I mark my return? With a meal at the Pizza Express in the village, a place I probably took my first date to if only I could remember it.

The inclement British summer continues but everybody's still trying to make the most of it, sitting outside pubs freezing their buns off and in generally good cheer in spite of the tough economic situation. I just love London when I'm in an expansive frame of mind - and I rarely laugh so much as when in the company of sardonic, self-deprecating English people. I also had a lovely long chat with a cab driver from Ghana yesterday which ended with a mutual "it's been a pleasure to talk with you" and no I wasn't half-cut after a long night in the pub.



Wimbledon village on a sunny day...

So, anyhow, within a ten minute walk of the home my family lived in for 43 years, the tennis championships continue, when the rain stops occasionally, with the ridiculously high hopes, aspirations and even a fair few wagers of all my former countrymen and women riding on the bony shoulders of Mr Andrew Murray. Why do we do it to our poor sports people? We've turned David Beckham into a fairground attraction (actually that was probably more Victoria's fault), Lewis Hamilton into the Great Black Hope, the England/South Africa cricket team into a bunch of show ponies and now we put an irritable Scot under ludicrous pressure to come up with our first Wimbledon men's singles trophy since dinosaurs roamed the earth. He's better than Tim "NIce" Henman but come on, he'll never be a flamboyant Nadal, a meticulous Swiss watch like Federer or even a grumpy, teeth-gritting winner like Hewitt. My prediction, another glorious exit in the semi-finals.




In case anybody should be interested in what it was like growing up in Wimbledon and falling asleep at the tennis final then my Herald/Age story from a few years back will shed some light: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/activity/active/love-all-wimbledon-20081113-64e2.html

The adventure continues for me with a trip to luverly Walthamstow today to meet up with my long lost cousin Tom. We rediscovered each other two years ago after the last member of my immediate family, my brother Alex, died in Barcelona and he's an absolute one-off. Once ultra religious - a leader in his local church - but also fascinated by geology, Tom set off on a journey to prove the Bible right by exploring geological sites around the UK. Within days he could see that much of what he believed to be gospel was not and he renounced his religion to go on a different spiritual path. Amazing man, I'm lucky to have him as a friend and he'll no doubt be taking me on a favourite walk.

Family nostalgia must be in the air because the other day, at Bristol Zoo, I met with another cousin from my Dad's side, Richard and his lovely wife Anne. I hadn't seen Richard since 1988 but was a bit taken aback when he said "it's probably fifty years since we saw each other" because I wouldn't have been born if that were the case. Somewhat surreal to stroll among penguins, weird-looking okapis (half zebra/half antelope) and gorillas with a distant member of my family tree. And by the way, I'm not talking about one of the gorillas.

I just loved Bristol, especially on the second day when I visited the brand new M Shed (probably the best museum in terms of inclusion and interactivity I've ever visited), the SS Great Britain (again, wonderfully presented) and cycled up to and over Clifton suspension bridge (what a structure) with my old work colleague, actress Susie Fugle. Fantastic to be shown the city on bikes by local Susie and to meet a fellow Aussie working at the Lido, a gem of a place that has a pool, cafe, bar and spa on a suburban Clifton street.

But now, before departure for Munich on my birthday on Sunday, I'm into hard-core catching with mates. The nucleus of the group I'm seeing here was formed at Manchester uni back in the 1980s. There's ex-lothario Monty, the always good-natured and furiously industrious Paul from Bolton, me and of course my erudite and unwaveringly supportive gastronome mate Phil, who also, by coincidence was brought up in Wimbledon. We all did Drama, we all support Man Utd and we all stayed on in Manchester for a year extra living in condemned council flats where murder, armed hold-ups, heroin addiction and pregnant 12 year olds were common. And that was just on our floor! One quick story from those days: one of our flats was robbed (again) and some of our worthless possession taken. But after making some enquiries our next door neighbour said it was her eight and nine year old who'd broken in and to ask them where they'd put the stuff. When we did, the little boy, Micky, said "yeah, it were us and you'll find yer gear by the bins at the bottem of dem stairs." Little Babs, who was deeply in love with the curved hipped Monty once also said to him: "I love yer so much that I like yer!"

Well, speak of the devil, the old devil Monty's here for breakfast so I better go. I'll keep you posted on the weather, Andy Murray's form and the British nation's great expectations.

Knickers and Veuve Cliquot

First of all, thank you to my new followers - Mike, Gabrielle, Ben and Mike. I'm aiming to get up to a hundred in the next few weeks of travelling the globe so please do follow if you can. It's only a short step away from global domination after that so get in when I'm still, relatively speaking, on my knees!

I've now been on the road consistently for over a fortnight and the signs of wear and tear are beginning to appear. Call it advanced senility if you like but over the time in Ireland, London, Dorset and now Bristol, I've been forgetting things all over the place.

Well, no actually. I've been thinking I've forgotten things all over the place. Most days I've thought I've left money, passport, crucial piece of personal apparel or my brain somewhere only to discover them later, safely tucked away in my luggage. I set the poor old staff of the lovely Monart Spa Hotel in Ireland on a wild goose chase over two days looking for a pair of wet swimmers that I was convinced I'd left in my room/the pool area. Only to find them in my suitcase.

Yesterday in Bristol I excelled myself. Arriving at 11ish at the gorgeous boutique Hotel du Vin (of which more later) - www.hotelduvin.com/hotels/bristol/bristol.aspx - my room wasn't ready and since I was about to go for a three hour cycle along the old railway route to Bath, I used their loos to change into my cycling gear. Bristol is where Sustrans, who are responsible for the impressive 13,000 mile network of cycle tracks that criss-cross the UK, emerged back in 1978 and the Bristol to Bath cycle path was the first of their routes so, being a dedicated peddler, I felt duty bound to do it. So there I was in my cycle gear with most of my overnight gear, including 2 pairs of knickers, crammed into a laundry bag ready for my return.

It's probably an exaggeration to call the route lovely as it passes through some pretty rough parts of the city initially and takes a while to reach the countryside between Massive Attack's Bristol (the band emerged from this city in the south-west) and Jane Austen's Bath. But, impressively, interesting sculptures line the path giving the distances to each city and since this route was created by tarmacking the old train line, you pass through old stations along the way.



My favourite was Warmley, half way along, where sculptures of bygone passengers stand on the platform and the old ticket office now houses a cafe. When you reach the upsy-downsy countryside it feels like you are escaping the rumble of the city, which was surely the point of its creation.

Anyhow, when I got back after the thirty mile cycle, I found to my delight that I'd been allocated a deliriously delicious suite at the Hotel du Vin. All rooms are named after wines here and the suites get theirs from champagne of course, darling. It's called Veuve Cliquot and as much as you can on a fast-paced press trip, I've been luxuriating in it since arrival.



Not for the first time when I'm in glamorous, romantic locations on my own I do yearn for my significant other. I mean I loved having a long hot soapy bath in one of two claw-foot tubs that stand next to each other (with a champagne bucket on a table in between them) on the upper level of the open plan suite but ...The Hotel du Vin's been lovingly crafted out of an old sugar warehouse in the centre of the vibrant city and much of the brick work and space is still here.

But what of the knickers, I hear you demand to know? Well, a while after my bath, I was getting ready for a hard night of more eating - this time at the French-style bistro downstairs at the Hotel du Vin, when I realised to my dismay that I had no underpants. That I had, most probably, left them in the toilets when changing earlier in the day. There was nothing for it but to ring reception and sheepishly enquire. Alica, who answered my call and sounded French and therefore well used to people losing their knickers, was completely unfazed and went to look for them and make enquiries of housekeeping. "Idiot travel writer has his knickers in a twist," I imagine she said. In the meantime I went through my overnight stuff with a fine tooth comb and still couldn't find them. What the f...ing hell had I done with them. Answer: to save space I'd tucked them into my shoes. Thus making them almost invisible. Well done, dunderhead! I rang Alica and we both laughed our heads off at my idiocy. I don't suppose she'll forget the mad Aussie journo for a while...

Finally, suitably attired and in no risk of chaffing, I went downstairs for a drink in the stylish bar followed by a desirably light dinner. As my paunch has grown ever more spectacular after three gargantuan meals daily I opted for some beautiful late season asparagus with hollandaise sauce and a crab and avocado salad. Just what the doc ordered.

My day still wasn't over. In the twilight hours of Monday night, I joined John for a Haunted and Hidden Bristol tour - www.hauntedandhiddenbristol.co.uk/. They usually run on Fridays and John's an enthusiastic teller of stories, both ghostly and otherwise. My favourite was about the haunting of the seventeenth century pub the White Hart by one of two brothers killed in a fight - spine-tingling stuff. John's also a great source of information on Bristol's historic music scene with tales of the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, The Stones, Crowded House and Dire Straits playing and staying here over the decades. His walking tour also makes this unwieldy city, with big roads that rush around the centre, much more manageable and the depth of history palpable so well worth doing.

So today, my time in Bristol pans out with visits to the brand new M-Shed - www.mshed.org/ - where I hope to find out more about Ardman Animations, founded in Bristol, who brought us the incomparable Wallace and Grommit and Shaun the Sheep; the SS Great Britain, the ship that brought the first touring English cricket team to Australia in 1861 and finally this afternoon, Bristol Zoo, where I'll be catching up with my long lost relatives, Richard and Anne Scott. We haven't seen each other in twenty odd years so it should be interesting.

Now, just to make it through the day without thinking I've lost something!

Useful links: http://www.visitbristol.co.uk/; http://www.sustrans.org.uk/

KIss me Hardy

About to leave the little village of Evershot, near Dorchester, in Dorset, after a weekend saturating myself in Mr Thomas Hardy. I'm much more fond of the old scribe after this visit and much taken with the fact that he used to cycle prodigiously even in his old age - he lived to 88 which was seriously ancient in those days. He's the only iconic writer I've ever come across who was mad for cycling and would peddle to Southampton and back from his home, Max Gate, just outside Dorchester, in a day. That's eighty flipping miles. Maybe if Charlie Dickens had done the same his novels wouldn't have been so, erm, long.

Fittingly, my next stop is Bristol, where I've asked to go cycling along the Bristol to Bath cycle path. The modest forty mile return journey is due to take place this arvo, when the BBC weather forecast shows belting rain and a big black cloud.

Visiting the cottage where Hardy was born and brought up - in tiny Bockhampton - and the house he designed and wrote in for the latter decades of his life has really got me into the old fella again. At school and uni I liked his dramatic, flowery and somewhat morose accounts of country life under threat from modernisation and I'm definitely keen to revisit books like Tess, Far from the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure.

What a wonderful job I have - there is such variety and I am always learning, although I confess I often forget about it soon after (like all the stuff I knew just before my exams as a yoof). But I guess what I'm saying is that I'm so lucky to be enriched by my travels, garnering more and more knowledge, experiencing more and more adventures, meeting an enormous range of people from traditional tribespeople and indigenous elders to royalty and government ministers. I've rarely met anybody I thought had no redeeming features, even if they were right of Baroness Thatcher (who's distant family were no doubt responsible for repairing many of the rooves here in picturesque Dorset).

We finally saw the sun yesterday and it shone for at least three hours. It made our Hardy walk, a visit to the extraordinary Maiden Castle - a huge Iron Age fortress just outside Dorchester which is thousands of year old - and our drive to the Crown Inn in Marnhull, immortalised as the Pure Drop Inn in Tess of the D'urbervilles, all the more enjoyable.

Right, better move on, an Everest-sized breakfast awaits us downstairs here at the Acorn Inn and then it's a two hour drive to Bristol, a city I haven't been to since I taught there many moons ago.

By the way, sorry for the lack of photos breaking up Daddy T's rambles. That will be rectified as soon as I have more than a second to post stuff. Thanks Mike for joining the ranks of my followers. I'm going to make a concerted effort to get people behind the blog so if you'd be kind enough to follow, I'll reward you with sex, lies and maybe some videotape...

Hold the front page, the sun is out

It's just after 7.20am in the morning here in Evershot and thanks to Phil leaving the curtain ajar in our twin room I've been awake for over an hour already, woken by a brilliant shaft of rarely glimpsed English sunshine. If I were the praying sort, I'd be offering up a quick request that the golden orb in the sky should prevail today and as in my daughter's favourite nursery rhyme (Itzy-Bitzy Spider) dry up all the rain so that me, Phil and Itzy can venture out in search of Tom Hardy today.

Is there such a thing as a sun dance I wonder and what does it involve? Germans running around naked depositing towels on sun-loungers by the pool?

The Acorn Inn is an absolute delight. One of those old English country pubs that not only has bags of atmosphere but also serves excellent food, is full of good cheer as well as beer and even has a long thin games room featuring a dart board, a pool table and get this, an ancient traditional skittle alley. It's like ten-pin bowling without the silly shoes and seems like a fiercely enjoyable game to play among friends while you're having a pint of Dawrset's finest ale. Phil, whose antecedents hail from Belgium is not only naturally good at drinking beer but seems like a dab hand at the old game and so he beat me three times in a row at skittles. The other good thing about the game is that it's actually the most active pub game I've ever played, what with having to set up the nine skittles at the end of the alley every time they've been knocked down. So you can eat and drink in all good conscience knowing that you'll only be putting on 8 kilos instead of 10 on an average night at the Acorn.

No sign of Phil stirring enough to make us a cup of cha so it looks like it'll be down to me. More from the (weather) front later.

DADDY T