October 11th, 2023
I didn’t post anything about my travels last year as it
didn’t really seem Wandergliding worthy, although some of what I did was. My whole family was meeting up at my oldest
sister's place for Christmas in Maryland, including our 10 British relatives,
so I figured that I couldn’t miss that.
I decided to road trip down to my other sister Sarah’s place in Phoenix
and then fly over to Maryland for a month.
I drove to Edmonton to visit my stepfamily, over to Victoria to see
friends, a stop in Seattle to see a high school buddy (and got to see a Seattle
Kraken hockey game!), followed by dropping into see friends Kevin and Wendy
near Bend Oregon before hitting Utah for my first time. In Utah I met up with a recently graduated
paragliding student of mine, Marc, and we hung out for a few days in Moab. I then hit Bryce Canyon and Zion National
Park where I hiked the infamous Angel’s Landing before getting to my sister’s
place. The visit in Maryland was great,
apart from testing positive for Covid-19 an hour before the big Christmas
dinner, so I was banished to the basement!
But I digress…that was last year’s trip.
This year I’ve decided to head to Africa. The only bit of Africa that I have visited was
in Egypt on the coast the Gulf of Aqaba near Israel for a few days with my
girlfriend Naomi about 6 years ago. My
plan is to land in Uganda and also visit Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda. But to get to Africa from Canada, one must
stop in Europe, so I decided to not only visit my family in the south of England
but also visit some of my paragliding suppliers in the Bavarian Alps of Germany,
a few hours south of Munich. I’ve been
operating a paragliding school for nine years now and I have never been able to
put faces to names from the companies that I’ve been buying gear from. After Africa, I’ll stop again in Europe and
head to the Czech Republic (or technically Czechia) to see a few other
companies.
I flew over to London and had a one night stay there. I decided not to stay at a hostel closer to the city centre and instead deal with my jet lag at a place close to the Heathrow airport. I found a place through Booking.com and although it looked like a room at someone’s house (which is kinda like Air BnB), I went for it as it had good reviews.
I had an inkling that there might be a few paraglider pilots
on the same flight from Canada as me, on their way to Turkey to do a
paragliding SIV course (it stands for a French acronym meaning “Simulations
while flying”…which also means that you purposefully mess up your wing to
simulate when the shit hits the fan and deal with it…it’s always done over water
with a life jacket and a rescue boat below).
Getting off the plane in London, I stopped at a bathroom, err excuse me,
WC, and ran into Peter, a student of mine from about 4 years ago. His girlfriend Andrea, who learned how to fly
with us a year later, then appeared. We
chatted and caught up as we worked our way through customs, which is pretty
simple these days as we didn’t even have to chat to a border guard. Andrea has a granny in the Greenwich area of
London, and we talked about maybe meeting up later that day.
I grabbed one of those stereotypical black London taxis and headed
to my accommodation. The neighborhood
was row after row of similar looking red bricked townhouses. The address on Booking.com said it was number
37 but luckily, I had read one review that said that it was actually #2, which
was where I was at. I knocked on the door
but there was no answer. I called the
owner Joe and thankfully he answered as the taxi had left. Turns out there was a key in a lockbox, and
he told me which room was mine as the apartment was vacant. I dropped off my stuff and started to walk
towards the tube station to head into central London. It was about 4pm and I needed to do something
in order to stay awake and fight off the jetlag.
Since the place was only a few miles from Heathrow, plane after plane flew almost over me on their final approach. There were low clouds and occasionally I could only hear the plane and then it would pop out of nowhere. I opened the Flight Radar 24 app on my phone to check out the approaching jets. I noticed that a big A380, the big double decker plane, was about 5 minutes out so I loitered on the street, walking back and forth, trying not to look suspicious to those walking or driving by. I felt like a true “plane spotter”. And then she appeared, and I was not disappointed. Super cool to see it fly over, about 1000 feet above.
After a 45 minute tube ride, I hopped off at Westminster station to say hello to Big Ben. I wandered by the Parliament buildings over to Westminster Abbey, which unfortunately was closed to visitors, but I expected that since it was 6pm. I walked somewhat aimlessly around the area. There were a few pubs with crowds of people, mostly men in suits, standing on the sidewalks with their pints in hand. My guess was that a lot of them were politicians who had finished their day and that this was a common ritual. I wanted to find a place for a beer and a bite to eat but all of them were packed, noisy and hot. I jumped back on the tube and tried a different area but couldn’t find anything I liked. I hadn’t heard from Andrea and Peter yet, so I decided to get on the subway and head back towards where I was staying and find something to eat there.
I was about
halfway back when I got a message from Andrea that they were going to a pub with
her uncle in the Greenwich area. Well,
what the hell, why not? I got off at the
next stop and started to head back. I
had a cell signal as the train was above ground so I frantically messaged
Andrea to find out what tube line to transfer to before it went back
underground where I would lose my connection.
I thought I’d figured it out but when I got to King’s Cross, half an
hour later, I realized that the line that I saw on the map wasn’t actually a
subway line. It looked like I had at
least another 45 minutes to reach them…provided I could figure it out. I started to realize that if I did meet up
with them, it would probably be at least 11pm before I returned to my place and
since I hadn’t even met the owner yet, I didn’t like the idea. So I bailed on them and got back on the
tube. It was a good call as by the time
I got back, it was already close to 10pm.
I bought a shitty egg sandwich at a Sainsbury Express store and walked
25 minutes from the tube station to my accommodation. It was all quiet at the apartment but there
could have been someone there as the other bedroom doors were closed, but that
didn’t matter to me. I ate my sandwich,
watched some depressing news about the Hamas attacks in Israel and headed to
bed.
Good ol' Big Ben:
A heron enjoying St. James' Park:
The next morning, I finally met the owner, Joe. A Nigerian who moved to London 14 years ago, he
was a super friendly guy and even offered to drive me to a tube station as it
was a windy and rainy morning…thanks Joe!
I had a flight to Munich where I was going to spend the weekend before
heading 150 km south to a town called Füssen.
My plan was to visit one of my paragliding suppliers,
Independence/Skyman, but also hopefully visit the Neuschwanstein Castle, the castle
that looks like it is straight out of a Disney movie. Back in 1995 after university, when I went backpacking
through Europe, I lugged around a thick Lonely Planet book for Western Europe
(as this was before smartphones) and the front cover was a picture of this
castle…it’s about time to see it with my own eyes!
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