Drinking

Sunny Belgium

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Jane and I spent a few days in Belgium.  We had visited Antwerp several years ago and had been surprised at how much there had been to see and how interesting the city was.  We wanted to see a couple of different Belgian cities this time and to travel by train.  We booked the Eurostar to Brussels with an included ticket on to Ghent with the intention of also visiting Bruges.  Jane booked an impressive, centrally located hotel in a building with an interesting history; we were all set.

Ghent Post Office (Designed 1898) Now Shops And Our Hotel For A Few Days

The UK train workers dispute disrupted our journey to London and we decided to drive to Jane’s sister in Teddington, and impose on her our need for a lift to the Tube.  Fortunately, the Eurostar was on time, comfortable and smooth.  The onward journey to Ghent in a double level carriage was especially comfortable as we accidentally sat in the first-class upper deck and had great views of the Belgian countryside.  Taxis seemed absent at the station but the tram into the centre of town was easy to navigate and a bit of a novelty.

‘1898 The Post‘ – A Moody Looking Hotel

We settled into our hotel room and then relaxed into Ghent’s late afternoon sunshine with a stroll around the northern bend of the River Leie and past the Castle of the Counts.  We ended up at a sunny, packed bar overlooking the river and indulged in our first taste of local Belgian beer. 

‘Gravensteen’ – Castle Of The Counts, Ghent

We also had our first taste of Belgian beef – I confess that I ate more beef in our three days in Belgium than I think I have in the last three years.  When in Belgium….. 

We made our way back to the hotel for an early night (very early given the UK-Belgium time difference) and resolved to make an early start for Bruges the following morning.

View From Outside Our Hotel Including St Michiels Kerk

The rail journey to Bruges was again easy and comfortable.  Once in the city, we just walked around in lovely October sunshine for a while, just taking in the gorgeous juxtaposition of medieval architecture and the river and canal network.  Of course, there were hordes of tourists many of which were participating in large guided tours led by guides with little flag poles; not my cup of tea!

Me And Other Tourists Capturing The Sights In The Centre Of Bruges

We shuffled out of the main flows of these tours into peaceful side streets and quiet corners.  Wherever we looked we saw pretty bridges, attractive buildings with the traditional stepped parapet walls, and an overall sense of cleanliness and history.

Starting To Get Away From The Bruges Crowd

We walked north to a vegan café, Blackbird, that Jane had discovered online, for a well-earned brunch.  We had what turned out to be my favourite breakfast or our brief Belgian holiday; an acai bowl laden with fruit, yogurt and peanut butter accompanied by a wonderful cup of coffee.  I’m a nut butter convert now!

The ‘Blackbird’ Cafe In Typical Bruges Buildings

We continued to wander along the canal paths past stunning buildings and back to the city centre.  On our way we popped into the Bourgogne des Flandres Brewery for a local brew, a quick rest and a view of boats going up and down the waterways.  Then we pressed on to visit the 800-year old Belfort (Belfry) to learn more about the city and get a elevated panorama.  

Belfort, Bruges

The belfry dominates the main square of the city and required a 366-stair climb to get to its top.  On the way up is a Treasury with its artifacts and a lot of information about the city and, especially, the way the bells in the tower were used to signal peace or danger. 

Near the top we could enter a floor where the belfry carillon with its 47 bells sits.  It was installed in 1748 and has been repeatedly extended and restored.  It is like a huge musical box with a large cylinder with pins that cause the bells to ring in a particular sequence that can also be set by a keyboard.  We were able to see it working although the chiming of the bells is best heard from outside. 

The Carillon, Belfort, Bruges

At the very top floor of the belfry, the views were predictably spectacular. 

From The Belfort, Bruges

We resumed our wander through Bruges’s streets while skirting the densest crowds and made our way to Saint Saviour’s Cathedral, also known as Sint-Salvatorskathedraal.  This is a beautiful, airy space with a huge nave, impressive tapestries and remarkably vibrant stained glass. 

Saint Saviour’s Cathedral, Bruges

As with several of the historic buildings we visited whilst in Belgium, there was a Treasury.  This one had several lovely pieces on show. 

The Saint Saviour’s Cathedral Treasury

By now we were beginning to think again about beer and food.  We walked back towards the north end of the city centre and found a delightful waterside bar (it was hard to know if the waterways were river or canal but here the water was flowing and not at all smelly).  The sky was cloudless and the temperature, view and atmosphere was so perfect that we settled down for a lengthy session of beer and more beef – a very nice steak and chips this time.

Bruges’s Waterways

Replete, we decided we had had a lovely but sufficient Bruges experience.  Our phone batteries were low – I’d forgotten to bring my remote charger and Google Maps is such a battery suck.  Jane had to start asking passers-by for directions (I would rather use the position of the sun than ask anyone the way!)  Finally, a circuitous route took us back to the station, the return journey to Ghent and another early night in our hotel there to prepare us for a couple of days of Ghent sight-seeing. 

After An Irish Wedding

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I got up a little gingerly on the morning after the wedding.  My alcohol unit count and monthly quota had taken something of a battering the day before and my head was a little fuzzy.  It was a blessing then that the relatives of the bride and groom had laid on a lovely lunch with more drinks, at the wedding reception venue at Ballycurry.  I had enough scope in my alcohol unit quota for a ‘hair of the dog’ or two.

By now, after a damp start, the weather was gorgeous and the manor house and estate looked splendid.  After an excellent buffet lunch, we had the opportunity to see one of the recent ventures the bride’s brother has initiated to diversify revenues into the estate farm.  This was a substantial film set that has been used by the BBC and, latterly, for streamed series such as Vikings and The Last Duel.  The scale of the set was impressive and now the trick will be to find new ways of using it for further dramatic series.

The Film Set With The Estate House Beyond

The next day, our last full day in Ireland, again started with dreary weather.  We considered abandoning ill-formed plans to visit local gardens and to visit Dublin’s galleries and museums instead.  But as we left our Airbnb, blue sky appeared and we headed east over the mountains again to Glendalough.

Glendalough

This is an ancient monastic settlement, set in a glacial valley, and now a big draw for tourists.  We arrived just in time to find a parking spot among hundreds of cars and a fleet of large coaches.  The ruins of the towers, monuments and chapels are very picturesque.  The quaintness of the scene was enhanced by the presence of semi-tame deer mooching between the gravestones despite the crowds. 

Deer Amongst The Gravestones At Glendalough

Rather than loiter among the throng of tourists, or embark on the suggested nearby woodland walks, we headed off to lunch at Powerscourt Gardens.

Powerscourt Gardens (Including, Apparently, The Longest Herbaceous Border in Ireland)

The mansion at Powerscourt was destroyed by fire in 1974 and has been restored since as a tourist destination with a few high-quality shops (including a couple of Jane’s favourites) and a restaurant.  We were able to bag a restaurant seat by the window overlooking the 47 acre expanse of formal gardens and arboretum.  The view was great and the food was excellent quality and value. 

Powerscourt Gardens And Great Sugar Loaf Mountain

We worked lunch off a bit with an extended walk around the gardens.  These are varied in format and large enough to absorb the large number of visitors, especially as we moved away from the main building.  The sun was creating lovely dappled shade, the borders were full of colour, bees and butterflies, and the views were splendid.  I enjoyed our relaxed time at Powerscourt very much.

The Japanese Garden, Powerscourt

Our penultimate excursion (apart from one final, smooth charging up of the car) was again to the coast.  We visited Bray Head with the intention of walking along the coastal path for a while.  Unfortunately, this was shut due to a recent rockfall so we ventured up towards Bray Head.  This was a steep and stony climb that, until we reached the top, afforded none of the expected views of Bray or the coast to the north. 

Looking South and North West From Bray Head

Eventually I made it to the top of the tree line to get some long views up the coast and across to the Wicklow Mountains but I eschewed the final scramble to the imperious, concrete Bray Head Cross which was built in 1950 and from which, I imagine, the vistas are even more spectacular.

Bray Head Cross – It’s Bigger Than It Looks Here

Jane had one more thing on her bucket list for the trip before we left for Roslare and the ferry uncomfortably early the following morning.  That was to visit a traditional, rural Irish pub.  We popped into the one nearest to our Airbnb, Brennans in Kilteel, which was just inside Kildare rather than Wicklow. 

An Authentic But Rather Empty ‘Brennans’, Kilteel, At 6pm On A Monday Evening

As was befitting, I had a pint of Guinness (which took me fractionally over my 100 alcohol unit quota for the month but which was very nice and creamy).  In a nod to our normal UK-routine we completed the Guardian newspaper Quick Crossword over our drinks.  Then we headed back to our Airbnb to finish the Netflix Scandi-noir crime series we had started earlier in our trip, polished off the remaining chocolate and crisps, and had an early night.  It was a pleasantly chilled evening to complete our busy day and our brief stay in Ireland!

In Praise Of A Clear Head

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I have been monitoring the number of my alcohol-free days since 2005.  Over a decade ago I was drinking alcohol almost every day, and often drinking a beer alone in my flat after work in London.  Now I have a target of 50% drink-free days each month and I have achieved that for the last three years.

When I retired 5 years ago, I realised that although I was starting to achieve the target number of drink-free days, I was way off the target for units of alcohol recommended by doctors.  To galvanise myself for change, I set a monthly target for alcohol units consumed too.  That target is 100 units of alcohol per month.  That is still almost twice the recommended level but 50% less than where I was in my first two years of retirement. 

I have achieved this personal target for the last two years but it’s been a struggle, especially this year (for reasons I’m yet to quite fathom).  On days when I drink, I find that I average 6-7 units; that’s two thirds of a bottle of wine or three pints of beer (not, I think, an unreasonable amount of pleasure to have on a sunny evening in the garden, at a celebration, or in the pub garden on a lazy Sunday).  But multiply that by 14-15 days and I’m closer to the 100 unit target than I would like. 

Alcohol Units/Month Consumption Since 2019 (I’m More Consistent Now But Consistently Only Just Below Target (100 Units)!

I have been helped in recent years by the advent of decent no, or low, alcohol beer; I like those from BrewDog especially.  But now I have a new helper: ‘Clear Head’, a low alcohol beer served on tap at our village pub.   It’s quite a refreshing, hoppy and nice tasting pint.  Its recent availability on draft means that I can visit the pub more often and feel as though I’m having a proper pub drink (not the soft sugary stuff that I generally avoid, or mineral water that I can get out of the tap at home), while keeping my alcohol unit consumption down. 

One of the Best Low-Alcohol Beers I’ve Had

The net effect has been that Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and I have visited the local pub more often during this summer, especially during the recent heat waves, but I have still stayed within my alcohol unit target.  That’s good because the pub is so central to the community and our visits create opportunities for us to have impromptu meetings with other villagers and we just enjoy hanging out in the relaxed atmosphere there.  The only downside is that LSW is probably drinking a bit more alcohol because she usually goes for a can of the relatively strong craft beer rather than the low alcohol variety, but then she drinks slowly and so is well below the recommended unit levels.

Another bonus is that 5% of Bristol Beer Factory’s revenue on sales of Clear Head go to Talk Club which is the valuable charity organisation that helps establish and organise Men’s Mental Fitness chat groups such as that I have been attending in recent weeks in our village.  The sessions that I mentioned in my last post have continued to be fulfilling and have had the side effect of making me feel even more a part of the community.  The pub landlord, who helps run the sessions, even gives participants a pint of ‘Clear Head’ to accompany us through the meetings; really nice!

On Draft At Our Local Pub But It Comes In Cans Too

So, the heat waves are over for another year it seems.  The cost of living crisis seems to be drowning out concerns about the climate and related biodiversity crises.  However, the recent weeks of intense heat have underlined the need for us all to think about reducing our carbon footprint and adapting to the new climate that is inevitably going to envelop us. 

Local Lake Dried Up In The Recent Heat And The Same Lake Two Years Ago (With Cow)

LSW has planted most of our flower beds and terraces with relatively drought resistant plants so the garden has looked great throughout the summer with just minimal watering.  However, during the greatest heat, we had to have the blinds down all day in our kitchen/diner extension with all its glass.  Rather than be able to look out over the garden from the extension, we spent much of the heat wave sheltered in the cool of the old part of the house. 

Dry Garden And Sun Through Meadow Grass

We are thinking about ways to further adapt to persistent high temperatures in the future at the same time as trying to work out how we can isolate rooms we want to heat in winter so that we reduce overall energy demand and so save money in the face of escalating electricity and gas bills.  We won’t be alone in that.

Later this week we are off north to Edinburgh to see First Grandchild and his parents again.  The relative cool of Edinburgh may look an increasingly attractive medium/long term location as the south of the UK feels the impact of our changing summers.  Short term, though, I’m sticking to home in our village and an occasional pint or two of ‘Clear Head’ on draft.

Hope and Resolve in 2021

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Yesterday, Storm Christoph, which has been battering and flooding many parts of the UK, brought us a dramatic combination of rain, wind, thunder, lightning, snow, bright sunshine and then a great sunset.  I suspect that we might see a similar drama in events and a variety of ups and downs in 2021 as we wrestle with the coronavirus pandemic, the impact of Brexit and the normal hurly-burly of life.

Sunset Over The Garden After The Storm

Currently, the rather boring but necessary lockdown continues and Winter life revolves around meals at home, shopping for them, walking the local lanes and fields, reading books, listening to the (voluminous and ever changing) news, watching TV dramas in front of the woodburner, and sleep.  But the delivery of vaccines is providing some hope that, in a few months, we will be able to resume adventures around the UK and meet people normally again. 

Morning Mist On The Cotswold Tops

Yes, there are new variants of the virus and, yes, the death rate will rise yet further before it subsides, but there is expectation now that the current pandemic will pass (or, at least, become a lot less disruptive) during 2021.  Of course, I am dearly hoping that is the case.  However, I also hope that the Government does not hide behind an effective roll-out of the vaccines (assuming they manage that).  We must learn, and make transparent, the lessons learnt from doing almost everything too little and too late to combat the virus.  After all, this is hardly likely to be the last pandemic we need to deal with and we need to do far better next time.

Against the uncertain backdrop of pandemic and Brexit, it is hard to set concrete personal resolutions for the New Year.  The lockdown has induced a gentle lethargy in me (I’m one of the lucky ones).  I think it is going to take the fine Spring weather and an end of the lockdown to generate some proper enthusiasm to break that ennui.  So my resolution process this year is really to just continue on the path set over the last couple of years. 

For example, I will maintain my target of walking an average of over 15,000 steps a day.  Apart from a bit of garden pottering, that is really my only substantive exercise these days.  So, it’s good that I exceeded that target again in 2020 and I plan to do so once more in 2021.  That should be achievable, and be thoroughly enjoyable to achieve in our lovely countryside, provided I stay healthy.  Hopefully, many of those steps will be taken a little further afield than was possible in 2020.

Evening Mist In Our Valley

The 2020 resolution achievements I proudest of in 2020 were those relating to increasing alcohol-free days and reducing average alcohol units per day.  I beat my target of 40% alcohol free days by more than 10% – well over half or 2020 was alcohol free!  I also thrashed my 10% reduction target of decreasing my alcohol unit intake.  My tracking on the Drinkaware app has shown that I managed a 35% reduction in alcohol compared to 2019 and I now average 22 units/week.

That still leaves me well above the recommended limit of alcohol intake (14 units a week); so there is more to do.  However, there is a balance to be struck here.  Until I really can’t drink whiskey, wine or beer for precipitate health reasons, I need to weigh the benefit to my feelings and mental health with the physical risks of exceeding the rigour of what is recommended.  So many pleasures have been curtailed during this pandemic, reducing further the pleasure I get from what is now a relatively occasional drink is not in my set of 2021 targets.  I will just aim to at least repeat what I achieved in 2020 – that will involve will power sufficient to be challenging enough.

That, plus the continuation of walking, should help with my perennial objective of getting my weight below 11 stone.  By the week before Christmas, I had managed that.  However, for the second year in a row, the combination of mince pies, Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, brandy butter and a major Christmas dinner – lovely as that all was – tipped me over the edge of the 11 stone marker just before year end and just as it did in 2019.  My resolution this year is to reduce my weight to such a degree by mid-December that I can enjoy those Christmas excesses without jeopardising target achievement.

Other resolutions from last year have been a bit of a washout.  I failed to listen to the news on the radio less and listen to music more.  There was just so much news from the pandemic, to Trump, to Brexit, that I just couldn’t stop taking it in.  Plus I failed to reach my target of reading 20 books (I managed only 13, a poor show given how much discretionary time I now have and how much I enjoy good fiction).  I resolve to do better in 2021.

Long-Suffering Wife and I failed, for obvious reasons, to achieve our resolution to get out together around the UK more.  We made it to Belfast for the first time but other holidays to Cornwall and Wales were planned then cancelled.  This year, when the virus allows, we will revisit Belfast where Youngest Son is establishing himself, and visit Eldest Son in his new home in Edinburgh.  We also have booked, rather ambitiously, a family Christmas on the west coast of Skye; if that comes off, the world really will have returned to something like normality.

Memories Of Exploring The UK In 2020; Belfast Lough

This time last year I said in these blogs: “I think that 2020 is going to be a far better year than 2019”.  In some ways it was in that we had no sons in near fatal accidents.  Now, I really do think 2021 will be far better than last year but who knows what it will throw at us.  Good job my resolutions are not critical work targets that must be met; I can relax, be flexible, go with the flow and just be content with pushing myself just a tiny bit.

Early Snowdrops – A Sign Of A Brighter Future?

Changing Routines

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Two (relatively) big events have occurred in the last week. I saw my first two Forest Green Rovers Football Club games of the new season (both friendlies against much smaller clubs).  The new football season is starting at last and I have my ticket for our first game in League 2. I can’t wait.

Goal!
Brimscombe & Thrupp vs Forest Green Rovers
Brimscombe & Thrupp vs FGR

Second thing was the celebration of the replacement of the collapsed and then stolen local post box. I’m now in a rural community (Downend, Horsley) that comes together for things like this and pulls out all the stops – rather different from the polite insularity of the Barbican in London.  So, we had our local MP, speeches, balloons, tea and cake including one decorated as a parcel; lovely!

Celebrating Reinstatement of Downend’s Post Box
Cake to celebrate reinstatement of Downend’s post box

I wouldn’t say that I have found a new routine yet but there has certainly been breakage of the old one. Obviously the structure of weekends and weekdays has gone.  As someone already retired told me, “Every day is a Sunday”.  Also the routine of getting up and changed for work and then the whole structure of work, coffee, work, lunch, work, tea, work, home has gone.  So far, that is not missed at all!

I have kept some things the same. For example, I’m still getting out of bed pretty early, I’m drinking coffee in the morning (if only to keep the addict headaches away!) and I’m only having bread at weekends.  Some things that I only did at the weekends are now happening every day such as the 50 minute return walk to the local town (Nailsworth) to get the newspaper.  I’m a creature of habit at heart.

Some routines I’d like to preserve have been harder to maintain. For the last 12 years I have been counting the number of no-alcohol days I have each year.  The intention has been to increase them each year.  The graphs I maintain show I have been partially successful over the years but this year’s target of 125 days is in serious jeopardy now I have retired.

It’s just so tempting – especially in this sunny weather – to slip onto the terrace with a beer or stroll up to the pub for a pint (or two).  The temptation is even greater after I have undertaken things on LSW’s list of activities long postponed in anticipation of my retirement.  A start was made yesterday to clearing out the stables – starting with twenty 30kg sacks of render that was massively over-ordered last year and is now past its use by date.  After filling a skip with stuff like that, a beer was definitely required!  And so another no-alcohol day slides out of reach….. oh well….