Food and locale: Everything you could eat and more, lager and wine, and lots of green grass (despite heat – lots of watering), plus air con
Entertainment: French Extravaganza (every bloody night)
Celebrity rating: 0
Carbon: Ouch
This year’s holiday:
Location: Robin Hood’s Bay, Boggle Hole, Fylingdale, Buxton
Operator: Cassidys (and my mate Ian)
Cost: 75% less than last year
Travel: Taxi, train, taxi, van (350 miles), lift from Ian, train, taxi
Food and locale: Quorn, pasta, flies, bitter/ale, cold and blustery, drafts
Entertainment: Ian, kids and amazing music (esp The Futureheads and Imperial Leisure)
Celebrity rating: 9 (Emma Roberts had been there once for Wild Child – see link)
Carbon: A lot less than last year!
Summary: I think this year’s holiday was the most relaxing I have had for years, and T&M enjoyed it more than they have a holiday in ages. Just drive (very slowly – that is the only ption in a 1972 VW Camper) and sit and listen to music. Even cooking on the stove was strangely relaxing (if not for the fly). Greece was more of a rush and a push to get there and enjoy – at all costs.
So – yeah, we hired a van. Result all round. Our friends at flightlesstravel (see link) may be onto something.
Wish I knew the full accurate costs of each holiday: money, environment etc
What an ace weekend. Old friends, new friends, lots of nice beer and laughing a lot. Very funny, mellow and just downright good! (and even Co-op bubbles and a fridge magnet)
Car Free? Well….
Home to Edinburgh Train Station – Taxi (I was late back from work and we had lots of bags)
Markinch to Festival -Taxi (last festival Bus at 630pm – bit early for a late one! (Hey, we also saw a showdown between local taxi drivers looking for our trade: all cracks off in Markinch))
Back from festival – given a lift (thanks Duncan and Boyley)
From Dot’s to Leuchars – lift from Dot
There’s lots of people who help us out with lifts, especially when we go to rural areas and need to get to/from the station. Good chat with Brodie about helping with petrol at the end of the blog…
So kind of car free.
Mind, we did take our strawberry pot incentive for using public transport. They were very sweet. (Could have done with verification (smartcard?): I talked to an old lady who admitted she had lied – the shame!!!)
This posting is dedicated to all chickens who have just laid their first egg.A perfect long weekend: camping (well, soft camping in Dot’s garden), friends, turbo-nerf-ball-throwing, G&T’s, fantastic trip to an organic cafe, lager, craft fare, takeaway…
..and the City Car Club alowed us to do this.
And what a day Thursday was: getting our Car Club membership through( the smart card opens the car) and then the Annual (smart card) Bus Pass (courtesy of my employerl!).
Shame these cards are not on one lovely card though, which could do lots of things and provide lots of incentives and rewards for its use. Just like the egg laying wool milk sow card (or should I say eierlegendewollmilchsau) that they have in Bremen which on one card delivers: car club, bus pass, electronic purse, tourist offers….(see link)
Having migrated back to the UK from Belgium on the 14th April with the car, the Family Cassidy were settling into Edinburgh. The car had been used a few times – to the tip a lot to get rid of rubbish, supermarket a couple of times, drive up to Fife once. But basically the car was just gathering grime at the back of the house and also getting in the way of our games of cricket out back! We were renting a flat about 2.5 miles from city centre on a well served bus route and about 1.5 miles from kids’ schools.
So…it was time to say goodbye to the car/voituire.
The Controle Technique (a test that every car which is sold in Belgium must have to guarantee it is safe) had been taken before we left and was only valid for another few days.
The Family Cassidy drove down to Hull to get the ferry back to Belgium and say hello to Francoise who was buying the car, and goodbye to VW…
What would happen? Tears? Beating of chests? What would we feel like without the car? Would the Cassidys without their Touran be like Dr Who without his Tardis…??
Only one way to find out…let’s just see what happened….6 June 2010 – start the clock.
Today started so well. Nice run up Arthur’s Seat and views which seemed to say “This is the day when England achieve”.
I had laughed at the Scottish strategy to win the 2034 World Cup by having children with Brazilians (see link) and thought that really, today, it would be the start of something big.
So we set off to Fife – 40 miles away – on the bus and train, to enjoy the game at Boyley’s footy party. It would be so easy to pop up in the car, but, that wasn’t a choice. Planning to get a taxi from the station (Leuchars) to Boyley’s.
Dot rang to say she’d pick us up and we could have a pre-match-relaxation-walk on the beach. Hurrah! This would not have happened if we’d driven -we’d have been straight to Boyley’s. All very sociable and nice. Thanks to public transport…?
I do feel a bit bad that people give us lifts: we go car free and they pick up the tab. But it wasn’t a big detour for Dot and we did have a nice walk. Flick was happy too.
Little did we know that England would never show up (well, we kind of guessed they wouldn’t).
And not driving meant I could ehjoy a beer and had empty bottles to throw at the telly.
So it was Tess’ first day at the new school (actually it wasn’t – it was her first day in a new class having changed year after a few weeks of arriving here in Scotland). At this stage we still had the car, awaiting our trip back to Belgium to sell.
Try and work out the main reason for Tess not wanting to walk? Was it really fear of falling down?!!! First correct answer wins a beautiful lounge suite (hint – it’s all mind maps I reckon…)
At least she finished the day singing…
Another normal breakfast in our home!! Go Maddie !! Just like your role model of the time (see link)
(News update: she has walked every day and gets up earlier to meet her mates earlier so they can all walk as a group. Nice one Tess)
Brodie and Dot are our friends. Brodie is from Fife. Lovely rural Fife. She is studying art in Edinburgh. Her Mum, Dot, comes to visit often but still worries about how her daughter is getting on. Very artistic Dot and Brodie. Look at Dot’s jewellery link opposite: Dot Sim
Brodie’s transport-life is typical of many students. In Edinburgh she catches buses and walks a lot. Brodie also cycles quite a bit.
She also likes to go home to Fife to see friends and Dot and Flick the dog. She does have an old car, which she had when she lived in rural Fife and needed to get around as a 19 year old. She has it with her in Edinburgh but if anything its a bit of a nuisance – she only really uses it when she goes home on a weekend. Even then she sometimes uses the train to get home.
Brodie qualifies for a range of discounts – if she took out a monthly contract with Lothian Buses she would get cheap travel by buses and also reduced price travel on night buses. With Scotrail she can get some student discounts. She can also get a National Young Person’s Railcard to get discounted rail travel. I am not sure, but with her Young Scot Card she can get certain discounts…..Oh, and when she gets to Fife can she get a discount with Stagecoach buses from Leuchars?
A bit messy all these different offers. And some require a commitment up front: eg with a monthly bus pass she would have to predict how much bus travel she would make – but she also likes to cycle so maybe wouldn’t get her money’s worth. Same with Railcards – a great deal – but a commitment up front.
Would be nice to get the discounts – and incentives to travel – in more real-time. Hard to do in some ways, but technology is making this easier.
It would be also nice if lovely Dot could top-up Brodie’s travel account every now and then – just to help out a bit. Brodie would like it. Dot wants to: what a nice Mum.
(UPDATE 2014 – Lothian now have a mobile app which can carry single tickets. This could be topped up by Dot. Also there are a range of other ticket types available on the app.)
So it’s not just this generation of Cassidys giving up the car. Chris and Aud (aka Mum and Dad) gave their car up a year ago. Chris was 83 and was less confident driving, and the car needed a lot of work after failing its MOT. Chris decided enough is enough.
Chris told my sister (Suzi) and I about his decision when we visited. Audrey asked us to go to the “other room” where Chris was waiting to tell us “some news”.
Suzi and I looked at each other: after 50 years of marriage had they decided tom split up?
Chris is not a man of speeches. This was an event. Chris looked at us and started:
“Listen, I have something to tell you. Now I don’t want you worrying, or talking us out of it, but me and your Mum have been talking and we’ve made a decision….”
My Mum later told me that she had cried when they decided to give up the car. They had always had a car, struggling to keep it running at times as we were never flush with cash.
Audrey said that she felt that this was the end of their independence, their flexibility.
Since then they have got used to walking to the local shops for most of needs, with a weekly walk to the town centre (about 2 miles away). Audrey says they are lucky that they have a nice local community, and the good buses. Audrey catches the bus into town quite often too – always has. Chris has never caught a bus and will never. He has no knee cap on this right knee (awful accident aged four – in hospital til he was 13, crutches, callipers, nearly an amputation) and has always said that he would be unstable on a bus. Can’t sit down. This is probably true to an extent – but old habits die hard.
He walks to the pub everyday for his 1.5 pints. Not bad at 84. They say they don’t really miss the car, and Suzi takes them to the supermarket once in a while for a big shop (Suzi lives an hour away). But one thing is for sure, they feel better off – the car was a drain on resources.
What a car it was – Suzuki Swift – 21 years old and 50,000 miles!!! One (very) careful owner
After a busy time packing and saying our goodbyes we took the car to the ferry..oh no – we were supposed to be selling the car weren’t we? Well it turns out that if you are travelling to the UK and have cats forget NOT using a car!!
Eurostar = only guide dogs (we could have disguised Andrew and Oswald but I think they would have found it hard to stay in role)
Footpassengers on Ferries = P&O only. But we needed to go to Hull with P&O = No pets with foot passengers, unless guide dogs or hearing dogs. (We need to train the cats better)
Hire a car = yeah right! £1200 one way ( we could have made it much cheaper if we did two hires – one to port in Belgium and other from port in UK, but dropping the car some way from the ferry terminal and arranging transport between these points is a big pain).
Fly = only via Heathrow – we wanted to go to Edinburgh.
Removals company = they kindly offered. Only £1500 – a snip
So – take the car and bring it back to sell – what a pain.
Ah well, at least there was a celeb on the ferry – nice one Mads (the really annoying Sophie Dahl can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJFufGa8upk
