Want to make a guess which country did I travel to this weekend? Good job, I am in England HAHAHA! Of course, I am not in London as usual. Went to Birmingham, the Wrekin(a hike), Cheltenham and Swindon Village for the weekend!
Birmingham
Birmingham is pretty quiet as usual (my second time visiting it). Met Xin at New Street, had 2-for-1 Caffe Nero coffee and hopped around for our dinner plan(we wanted to spruce up something nice). And we made… *DRUM ROLLS* Lemon Chicken Potato Skillet🍋🐔🍟 Making it was really fun simply because we got to try it out together! But after boiling the whole pack of potatoes, we realised that there were too much potatoes hahaha! In the end, we improvised and tried out another dish – Caramelised potatoes and it turned out amazing😍 Exchange makes you a better chef, can’t agree more than that! And presenting our candlelight dinner without the candles(yea, I uploaded the photos previously as well!)
The Wreckin
Went on a hike with the wayfarers from UoB on Saturday. This weekend, they were going up a hill called the Wrekin! And because next week is Halloween, many of the hikers dressed up and hike in them! There is one guy that put im the effort to design a scarecrow costume and he looked really into it, with straws jutting out of his pants and shirt. Applaud for his effort!
The hike is pretty decent and not too difficult. After Trolltunga, this feels rather normal, except that we are hiking with a bigger group of people haha. The views at the top is similar to that of Offa’s Dyke where you can see a lot of different counties. However, I was more amazed with the view at the bottom, with the shades of browning leaf and piles of leaf litter. Even though Autumn is really late this year, it is still amazing to see. I think I am becoming the son of Autumn, loving every shade of the orange and light breeze haha
Not a fully enjoyable hike tbh cause I don’t know the people there and there was a social dilemma on whether i should talk to them or not since I can’t reveal my identity (I crashed the school’s hike btw) And yea, when Xinyi stepped aside to talk to her friends, I did feel really lonely. Putting these negative feelings aside, I did manage to meet a few hikers and people during the journey:
1) A UK and Nepal duo! They are from wayfarers and have hiked with Xinyi at the Malvern hills. The UK guy is studying history and specialises in Greek history(OMG)! He shared with me about the UK love for cricket and how he preferred Birm from London! The Nepal guy shared about Nepal and also his hall life! I did enjoy talking to them and having lunch together haha!
2) A retired UK Professor who regularly brings his family out to hike. His wife was the coordinator of Wayfarers I think, and she teaches Sports Science. It’s quite admirable that they are both in their mid 60 or 70 and they hike faster than me😂
3) Two masters students from China. One who liked photography and one who likes travelling. Both were sharing with me how difficult it is for Chinese to travel from places to places if they are studying and that at the end of the day they would still want to go back to China to work and not stay in the UK. They don’t look old though haha!
4)At the top of the hill, there are a couple of elderly men who set up rebro sets are they were using some call signs as they communicate through the comm set. Apparently they are picking up signal with some guys doing the same thing in AUSTRALIA(WOW). Kind of reminded me of signals and army days haha. Nostalgia kicks in well.
And yep, kind of screwed up the last part of the hike and I am sorry about it, Xinyi..
Putting that aside, we went back to Birmingham and had a pint party (Oh it’s icecream, not beer😂). Thankfully both of us aren’t alcoholics cause alcohol in UK is quite expensive!
Cheltenham
On Sunday, bidded farewell to Xinyi *sobsobs* and travelled down to Cheltenham. Where is this place? Probably only those who stayed in UK would know of it as a train station. However, Cheltenham is more than just a train station. It is part of Cotsworld, which literally encloses the meaning “Sheep enclosure in rolling hills”. Cotsworld is the rural part of South England and covers 6 counties. It has a long history and preserves the best medival and old english houses.
So, after this brief background, I went to Cheltenham and to my amusement, the houses do look really English! They seemed to be built a long time ago and refurbished regularly till today!
Walked through the town centre and unsurprisingly most of the shops are closed cause it was a Sunday. It was not a ghost town though and I saw many families walking around the park and the children are really enjoying themselves. It seems like a friendly place to live in!
Something interesting I noticed was that the trees in Cheltenham are decorated with this red knitted poppy (flower) brooch and there are even congratulatory wreath made of these knits outside the Promanade. I was wondering what those flowers meant and I realised they are called Rememberance Poppies and UK has this tradition to remember the servicemen who were killed during WW1. They are starting to have fundraising events around UK (especially London) where the retired soldiers would dawn on their uniforms and sell these poppies to the public. Kind of cool to see actually!
Walking further up north, I went to the Wholefood Market that Xinyi found for me. It was about 20 minutes walk from the town and along the way I walked past a clock tower. Just on that day itself, the clocks around UK are set back by an hour for daylight saving but interestingly this clock tower has not been adjusted yet and is an hour ‘faster’. This probably shows that the Brits really don’t work on Sundays hahaha!
The wholefood market is nothing like that of Berlin or London but rather like Marche where you order the food, they prepare and you pay at the till. Got myself a roasted beef burger cause I missed beef so much! Not the best burger I have eaten though, the beef was left out for too long I guess:/
Swindon Village
So after lunch, I found a nice village that is near to the whole food market. It is called Swindon Village and the population size is only 112? Went up to it and saw an empty English cottage. It looks really pretty and I decided to ‘tourist’ it and just had my mini-photoshoot in the place😂 There were some people that walked by and saw me but I didn’t care about how they were going to judge me. Not coming back anyway!
Swindon Village is a really small village and there is literally 1 church, 1 primary school and some residential houses, that’s all! The architecture of the buildings are quite like that you can imagine on the cover of Enid Bytom though and it felt like I was in one of those fairytale towns😌
And that marks the end of my short but eyeopening weekend. I kind of like this, not going to cliché touristy places and still learning as I travel! Hope there will be more of this as I continue to go around places with people or myself! Now to end off, here’s me after my free haircut. I showed the person the Jin Goo photo. Guess they did a pretty good job in making me Korean😉
CinqeMinte 