naples and pompeii 2017 (part 1)

Yay to the return of my travel blog, mainly because it means yay to being able to go and explore somewhere new. This time I had a travel buddy in the form of Johnny. He's an academic at the University of Reading and like me, just enjoys getting away for a little bit of exploration. Naples was the place of choice mainly because it such a cheap ticket and accommodation was decent. The added attraction was the chance to (finally) go and see Pompeii. Those of you who know how much I love Roman / Classical history, in fact anyone who loves classical history in general, know how important a trip to Pompeii is. 

Before this trip though, another very important occasion occurred. My (not so) little brother, Joseph, finished his basic training and joined my old regiment, the Grenadier Guards. Needless to say I am so so proud of him and seeing him 'pass off' the square was well worth the 4am start to drive from my dads house up to (not so) sunny Catterick. I have to say, the place has not changed one bit since I was there 10 years ago. It was an intimate family affair and only my military friends would really understand any information about it so I will just leave it there by saying I wish him all the best in his future career. Mandatory photo was also needed.

So after a great day in Catterick, I had to return home, finish packing and get ready for another 4am start to get to London Gatwick on a 6am easyJet flight. I had been warned by a few people that Naples was not the nicest place in the world but I always like to made those sort of judgements myself. Naples airport is fairly small and border security is not that tight so we were waiting for the bus into town within 30 minutes of landing. Driving into the town centre was a typical Italian experience. Horns blaring, the bus swerving in and out of traffic but i'd never experienced a time when the driver had to slam on his breaks hard causing smacked heads and one poor lady (who's husband told me had recently had a hip replacement) to fly and land on her bum. As I was gazing out the window nursing my mild whiplash, you could not but help notice the shear amount of graffiti and litter everywhere. One Italian guy on the bus who noticed me looking at it even said 'welcome to Naples'. I have to say that this was a common theme in Naples. I have mentioned in earlier posts about how the Italians seem to have a really lax approach to graffiti but Naples was on another level entirely.

We were fortunate that Johnny found a really nice apartment right off the main high street where we were met by the very chirpy Neapolitan landlord who told us all the good spots to visit, the best places to eat and how to get around etc. Despite a 4am start, we did decide to go for a wander and see what the city had to offer. As usual, I'm always interested in the history of a city I visit, especially those in Italy that have millennia worth of it. Founded roughly in the second millennium BCE by Greek sailors, allied to the Roman Republic during the wars against Carthage and eventually a Roman colony. Now though, the city really did just look like a mess. Churches had their doors covered up with green boarding, presumably to stop the graffiti that decorated the rest of the outside from ruining the probable decorations they had. Even buildings such as the main post office had giant penis pictures on them.

One thing Naples did have (aside from Churches) was Castles - quite a few actually all within the central area. Unfortunately though, they did not seem to get much for the money they wanted for entry. In the one castle we did go to - Castel dell'Ovo - was in such a great position for views up into Naples and around the coastal area. Most of the castles and even the Royal Palace again just seemed to have works going on, litter everywhere and generally not much information for those who are interested in learning things.

So for the food. Naples is the birth place of Pizza (apparently) so of course, that is something we had to go for. I like to try and stay positive but I have to say that it was just disappointment after disappointment. I got the feeling that even if we avoided the traditional tourist trap restaurant, due to the fact we were not locals, there was very little interest in anything. It was a regular occurrence to just be sat down and wait for quite a while just to get a menu. Waiters just seemed to look impatient when talking to you and most importantly, the pizza was crap. Maybe i'm just used to dominoes and what we did have was traditional but the food was just bland, watery and basically, very meh! Such a shame. One perk though was learning what a Connolo was (thank you to the Great British Bake Off) and yeah, very unhealthy so obviously yummy.

In Naples, you do get a very local feeling. It is quite hard to explain or I am not eloquent enough to explain but when walking around, you would not think you are in a particularly tourist attractive place. The main roads are all connected by tight alley ways with very local shops, people just stood around smoking and drinking. Mopeheads wizzing past people and past all the washing that you see randomly hanging out of windows. It was a much more closed environment than some of the other Italian cities I have visited.

For more photos of Naples and Pompeii, feel free to view my Google Photos album. here.

city breaks 2017

Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to write in a little while for a few reasons. Firstly, I decided to move my writing to paper in this beautiful new diary I purchased in Venice recently. Secondly, I may have mentioned before that I failed to get a scholarship for my masters degree and I failed to get the free accommodation that comes with being a senior student in halls. All of this added together means that I had to pause my studies and return to being an adult. So I got a job. I am, however, not going to speak out my job because..well....it's just a job. It pays the bills and allows me to save for future studies. 

One perk is that I have a little bit of extra cash to pursue a favourite past time of mine...travelling :D. A very dear friend of mine had to return to his own country recently (lets not even start discussing about how much I dislike UK immigration laws) so we made some plans together to visit some places in Europe.

Venice, Bologna, Rome and Vienna were on the menu and below are some photos for you to enjoy however, due to my pause in writing, I don't think I can go into as much depth as I usually like to. Italy is fairly easy to sum up though as overall very beautiful with on the whole, great food. The people are mixed, most are just indifferent towards tourists, some are irritated by tourists and a few are genuinely friendly. 

The most annoying is the Italian lack of action against graffiti, in fact, they seem to like it. It is something of a painful experience seeing ruins that are 2000 years old with some random pray canned characters written across the sides. The most important reason for these visits though was for my friend Emrys. I really hope he took away some great memories despite the heat, the smell of car induced pollution and his (blasphemous) lack of interest in classical antiquity. 

After Italy we went onto Vienna, a place I had never been so was quite excited for. Alas, Vienna is beautiful and clean but relatively dull. The museum of natural history has some great exhibits and the royal residence is very grand but 4 days is probably enough for anyone. Sorry for anyone that may have been excited to visit some day. Even the food is just standard Northern European and was quite expensive. Maybe the fact that it rained for 3 our of four days subconsciously damaged my opinion. 

A few weeks later, we jetted off on a weekend trip to Cologne, Germany. A small, Roman built town that again has the typical Germanic clean and tidy atmosphere. For my, the main attraction was just to see what the Romans built. Cologne is also a one-visit place for me. You can do most things in a weekend including a visit to the chocolate factory (yummy and cheap chocolate). Again, the main effort was for Emrys to enjoy himself and unfortunately the mists of time and my indifference to the place is making it hard for me to say much more.

So with that said, I will use this blog post as a 'get back into it' and I promise that my next one (Naples and Pompeii) will be much more of a fun read.

time for a detour

Well firstly happy days that exams are finally over for most people. I have one more left which is just a viva (a sit down with an external examiner so he can quiz me on my thesis) then all done. It would have then been nice to have another summer of travelling before starting the masters course I have mentioned earlier in September. Unfortunately, I did not get the student warden position in halls so I will have to commute again AND even if I am lucky enough to get the scholarship that I applied for (still waiting), after travel and rent I would be poorer than a super poor person having a really poor year. So I decided to put out the feelers for a job and luckily thanks to a friends LinkedIn page, I was able to see something that suited by experiences as a communications person in the Army.

So I applied, got shortlisted and then surprisingly got the job the next day. The pay is good and the other perks are good so I would have been stupid not to accept. So here is the detour. With any luck I get a 1st in my degree and then I will defer it for one year. Do this job and replenish the savings then do the masters part time. Hopefully within 3 years I will have done the masters (part time) and saved enough money to be comfortable to apply for PhD and hopefully move into London. 

......

I have sort of just come back to this blog after 2 weeks. I am now in Venice so I think I will have more to write for the next one...

scholarship madness

I am coming to the end of my time as an undergraduate (thankfully). Not that I did not enjoy every moment of it but I am getting to stage where my interests are lying in specific areas. This is the main reason I am excited about the prospect of starting a masters degree in Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology. Unfortunately, London is bloody expensive and living there is not going to be easy so I have taken some steps by applying for scholarships.

One is for £10k only and is based on financial need - basically I have to formally admit how poor I am. One is for £1k which is based on academic merit (and I assume, potential). I also applied to be a senior member living in University of London halls. This is a pastoral role being a responsible older student with a number of duties. Bonus comes with a free room, which would save me travel costs, and free food, I like food.

But here is the point of this blog post. After being spammed with emails at least twice a day by FindAMasters.com, I finally got what I was waiting for, the email saying that their scholarship process was now open. This consists of me submitting a photo that describes why I like to study. For me, it was an easy choice as if you look at the picture I submitted and do not immediately think 'how did that happen' (and 'wow' of course) then you might not be human.

30 people are shortlisted, 20 of those are based on social media popularity i.e. you have to vote so here is my plea...

Please follow this link (below) and vote for me and if you can, share with your friends. It would be greatly appreciated. Thank You :D

http://woobox.com/iezhej/gallery/4hpv9YQ8QRY

morocco 2017 (part 2)

So I was initially not going to talk much about actual geology stuff but was advised that I was being silly as actually, who wouldn't find geology interesting! I also need to point out that I tried to grow a beard and you might see it in some of the photos. Please forgive me, I looked like a complete hobo!

For me, Morocco is something new. For a start due to the completely different character of the geology in the first place. For example, some of the limestones (rocks formed in shallow water environments) are the exact same age as those that I observed in Spain however, as they were created in totally different ways, they have none of the same fossils etc present. The Atlas Mountains are also not typical of mountain ranges. Most people will probably remember from GCSE Geography (or GCSE Geology if you were lucky) that mountains form when two bits of continent collide into each other and them upwards. That does not happen here, in summary they are basically being pushed up and being kept there by hot mantle flowing underneath down from a large 'mantle plume' underneath the Canary Islands.

I have added some photos to my albums and you will see that most things appear brown. These are various types of mudstones and sandstones and conglomerates. The lack of vegetation was due to the fact that we were on the drier side of the mountains that has less exposure to the sun. This was hard to believe as my lips cracked within about half a day and despite covering myself in suncream, my nose was a vibrant red colour throughout. The area was also covered in evaporites such as gypsum (sediments chemically precipitated due to evaporation of an aqueous solution). It is always a funny sight watching geology students licking rock faces to see what time of evaporite you have (e.g. halite tastes very strong). I even managed to pick myself out a nice pink gypsum for my collection.

During out trip there, we were looked after by Moha and his team of drivers. He is a good guy who made the whole trip very easy so I have to add a cheeky plug for him and you can see his website here. I have to add though, that one of his drivers did like to put his foot down and due to the terrain in Morocco, the roads are quite curvy. Doing 120 knots around these bends whilst at the back of the mini bus was not a pleasant feeling and the subsequent g-force (yes, it felt that way to me) meant I had to steal a front seat for the long journey home or risk vomiting over everything.

Some of the highlights then. Firstly and most importantly came on the last day of fieldwork when our professor (Charlie Bristow) took us on a secret trek to see something secret. Luckily I also study palaeoecology at uni and the lecturer there told me that we would go and see some relatively newly discovered dinosaur footprints. As you can imagine, I was in complete 10 year old mode as seeing actual dinosaur stuff in 'real life' as opposed to a museum was a completely surreal experience for me and one of the main reasons I got into Earth Sciences in the first place. A few kilometres walk up a dried riverbed and through a hive of bees (one of which stung a friend of mine - I laughed and carried on - dinosaurs much more important than helping with stings and risk getting attacked too) and there they were.

There were two locations, at the first was 2 or 3 sets (hard to distinguish) of adult prosauropod footprints. One of my friends was able to fit his head in the space. At the second, there were 3 sets of adults and one set of juvenile prints in between. I held back a little wee and just imagine these huge pre-cursers to the even larger sauropods walking around in herds. What a great day (not even the threat of bee stings on the way back bothered me).

Another highlight had to be (most of) the food. Mornings consisted of bread, pancakes and fruit etc. Lunch times consisted of tinned fish, bread, olives, fruit and veg etc except for one day when we had these vegetable naan breads. The only way that I can describe these accurately is by saying that I could not physically eat anymore and had no pockets to take more. It was absolutely amazing food! Every evening meal was a Tagine. As a rule, I don't like meat off the bone and most of the Tagines were lamb, chicken or beef that was on the bone. Luckily, the starter was a really good traditional soup (don't ask what was in it) made even better with hot sauce. One Tagine however consisted of meatballs and egg, it was just the best. Overall, it was a good detox which unfortunately had to be ruined by a KFC upon my return to the UK.

I think this is all I have to say other than this was my very last bit of geological fieldwork as from September I start a different type of masters degree that will see me do different sorts of fieldwork. I'll always have my geology routes though and I do look forward to the alumni field trips that my university do.

morocco 2017 (part 1)

It has been a little while since I wrote my blog, mainly due to the fact that I have been busy trying to complete my Map and Thesis (dissertation for geology students) and other assignments.

Every Easter I have to go on to an assessed field techniques class. The first was in the Isle of Skye (Scotland), the second was in Scourie (Scotland) and the third was to Morocco. Unfortunately, I could have done with the training we got whilst in Morocco for Spain as it was geared for to the advanced level fieldwork required to complete the Map and Thesis. No worries though, learning via shear panic is always more helpful in the long term...

Morocco started off as most of my travels do, with delays and frustrations at the airport. After finally changing planes due to technical reasons we shot off to Marrakesh and from there a 6 hour journey through the Atlas Mountains to a place called Ouarzazate. Here we stayed in an ok hotel just to break the journey up to the place we actually needed to be, a place called Bou Tharar. This was a small village in the middle of nowhere but with fascinating geology, of course this had to be the place where we did our first bit of assessed work. This training ground would have been useful before going on my trip to Spain but hey ho. I won't talk much about the geology but the area was beautiful (some photos here) and had children everywhere. We were warned early on about the kids asking for 'stilo' or pens but nobody was prepared for the swarms of kids that seemed to come out of nowhere. Despite being told not too, I could not help but give a pencil to this one kid who followed me around for most of the morning, didn't beg and, along with a few others, was interested in what I was doing. They wanted to look through my hand lens and read my book which was actually really cute. Anyway, when I gave him the pen (thinking there was only 3 kids here) another few climbed from out of this ditch and came running over. It was weird and the pens had to go away.

I normally would not like to be rude about hotels and stuff but when we first walked into this hotel, in the downstairs dining area, there was a squatting toilet. As you can imagine, the first thing that I needed to do was check the toilet in the room and to my relief, it was a normal toilet. I like to think of myself as someone who doesn't mind roughing it, but squatting toilets is a no no.

From Bou Tharar, we moved into the Dades Valley for a bit more hiking and a sedimentary log assessment (one of the most boring bits of field work). The hotel in Dades was much nicer and with a pool, a freezing cold pool. Food was not as nice mind. Some more geo touring and writing notes about all the interesting regional scale geology that was taking place in Morocco followed up until ready to travel back to Marrakesh.

The journey back was not as painful as I first though, only 7 hours and the hotel at the end was a nice 4 star hotel. I won't talk much about it here as will write a part 2 with all the good highlights etc.

2017 - delayed new year message

Happy New Year to all of my readers.

I think I may start to blog a little bit more than just travel stuff. I delved into some non-travel writing whilst I was bored here and there but it seems that people do want me to write more things so I will give it a go.

2017 sees me enter my final term of the final undergraduate year. Luckily, I have secured a conditional offer to study at University College London in September, all eyes are on me getting at least 65% for that dream to be achieved. Hopefully I will then be starting an MSc in Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology - a mouthful I know, i'm not even sure what it all entails but what I do know is that it will help hugely with my application for PhD funding.

So, I will try and write more and please feel free to comment

Tom