According to Wikipedian, Doha, which means big-tree/sticky-tree, has a reputation for not being the most exciting place on earth, but it is changing. We visited one of the most magnificent art museums I have ever seen and also a pretty incredible modern art gallery. There are several others around the city and also under construction. Glancing though the Doha Time Out, there seemed to be plenty of cultural events. There were so many great restaurants that it was hard to pick where to eat. What we did eat was fantastic and inexpensive. In a different (cooler) month, I would have been happy to have stayed a little longer.

]]> http://nicolaoutdoors.com/entries/2011/05/15/doha-qatar/feed/ 0 http://nicolaoutdoors.com/entries/2011/05/15/belgium/ http://nicolaoutdoors.com/entries/2011/05/15/belgium/#comments Sun, 15 May 2011 07:12:55 +0000 nicola http://nicolaoutdoors.com/entries/?p=1005 I miss living in Europe. I love, love, love that you can walk from your house to the train station and in a few hours be having lunch in a different country. Thank you, Eurotunnel, for the Chunnel.

Since neither my parents or Ross had been to Belgium we decided to spend a few days together in Bruges and Brussels and do as one does in Belgium; eat chocolate and mussels, drink beer and looked at walk around looking at art (Dali, Picasso) and architecture. Stephen made the classic novice mistake and put his enthusiastically purchased beer directly on top of his carefully selected assortment of chocolates squishing them into an amorphous blob of fondant, praline, milk, white and dark chocolate.

]]> http://nicolaoutdoors.com/entries/2011/05/15/belgium/feed/ 0 http://nicolaoutdoors.com/entries/2011/05/15/portugal/ http://nicolaoutdoors.com/entries/2011/05/15/portugal/#comments Sun, 15 May 2011 07:07:26 +0000 nicola http://nicolaoutdoors.com/entries/?p=1001 We departed from Seville by (hire) car, sad to leave our friends but eager to travel east and to The Algarve. We crossed the border and stopped and enjoyed the change in scenery on the other side of the river from plains to sharp little hills dotted with small terracotta and white villages.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. -Samuel Johnson

As to London we must console ourselves with the thought that if life outside is less poetic than it was in the days of old, inwardly its poetry is much deeper.  – Goldwin Smith

Hemel Hempstead is a town on the Grand Union Canal in Hertfordshire, England. It is 38.6 km to the north west of London and part of the Greater London Urban Area. The first recorded mention of the town is the grant of land at Hamaele by Offa, King of Essex, to the Saxon Bishop of London in AD 705 and was called Henamsted or Hean-Hempsted in Anglo-Saxon times.  By the time William the Conqueror won the throne it was known as Hemel-Amstede and it is referred to in the Domesday Book as “Hamelamesede”, but in later centuries it became Hamelhamsted. Hemel Hempstead was announced as candidate No 3 for a New Town in July 1946 to settle people displaced by the Blitz. The new Second World War locals called it Hempstead but everyone I know has always referred to it as Hemel.

It’s a strange thing to visit the town of your childhood. My feet could find paths and shortcuts that I had entirely forgotten about. So many things have changed, mostly for the better, but many others are just the same. I never knew that I have been missing green fields and soft summer air heavy with pollen, bluebells, flint-flecked fields, the dark and winding canal, horse-chestnuts in full flower and the sound of express trains. England seemed gentle, even pastoral, and so I know that I have been way long enough to have become a tourist-in-my-own-town, or at least partly so.

Spring was busier (mainly because of the bees) that I would have wished for this year and we didn’t manage many weekends away, but with other a couple of months between holidays, I guess that  there really isn’t too much to complain about…

Two days before Christmas we quit town and drove to South Australia. We camped at Milang on the shore of Lake Alexandrina and on Christmas Eve we picked up groceries and walked out to Granite Island at Victor Harbour before heading down the Fleurieu Peninsula to Rapid Bay, where we (unsuccessfully) snorkeled for leafy sea-dragons. Early in the Evening we took the ferry from Cape Jervis to Penneshaw, Kangaroo Island.

Kangaroo Island has amazing geology. Everywhere you go there are incredible cliffs, caves, ridges and coves and then there are the pretty awesome Remarkable Rocks, Caves at Kelly Hill, Admiral’s Arch. We spent most of our week paddling, walking or swimming to get better views of all these incredible rocks. We also saw some pretty cool wildlife close up and tasted wines as well as honey from trees and bees that don’t live anywhere else.

Christmas weather can go either way and the website to figure out the camping options was too annoying to deal with so we decided to stay in cottages, which worked out pretty well as it was cold and very windy some evenings and it was good to be able to shower and relax  as well as to rinse out our wetsuits and kayak. We booked though stayz.com.au and stayed at Lindsay’s at Penneshaw, Blue Seas at d’Estrees Bay and The Roost (farmstay) at Nepean Bay. I’d recommend them all, especially the last two.

We decided not to take scuba stuff with us as the boat dives on KI are super expensive (more than double VIC prices) and we couldn’t be bothered to take that much stuff with us for a few shore dives. After talking to people over there, it would definitely be worth diving if the vis was good – we had a lot of wind and swell that brought in murky water so I think we made the right decision.

Here are some of the things we did:

• Paddled at Antechamber Bay
• Swam at Hog Bay in Penneshaw  – one of only a few beaches that we actually shared with other people!
• Walked along the coast at Sapphiretown
• Snorkeled at Browns Beach
• Tasted honey (and enquired about buying Ligurian queens)
• Tasted and bought wine  (the Sav Blancs were particularly good)
• Climbed Prospect Hill at discovered how much more verbose navigators used to be*
• Watched pelicans fish at American River
• Found a ruined chimney and giant olive tree in the woods
• Wished we lived in a stone cottage
• Walked on the beach with Australian Sea Lions
• Removed all the skin from my toe at Vivonne Bay
• Lost the car key in the sea at Vivonne Bay and found out it would take 3 days to get a locksmith over to help us out
• Snorkeled and sifted sand until we found the car key(!)
• Walked, snorkeled and surfed at d’Estrees Bay
• Ate pig face fruits everywhere (can never find the fruits at home!)
• Remarked at Remarkable Rocks and Admired Admirals Arch
• Watched New Zealand Fur seals get bashed by giant walls of water
• Paddled down a river to Snellings Beach
• Waited for penguins to come in (but got tired and went to bed before they did)
• Fished and snorkeled at King George Bay
• Swum at Stokes Bay
• Saw a huge crazy castle folly thing that should have been on the map but wasn’t
• Sandboarded on giant dunes
• Visited limestone caves (we also looked in caves at Tantanoola on the mainland on the drive home)

* ‘The eastern head of the lagoon contains three islands, upon two of which we landed on, and from appearances judged them to be breeding places for pelicans: on the third we did not land. These birds were in great numbers, and many of them were too young to fly. Not only commence their being here, but that they have selected this retreat for the closing scene of their existence; here, at a distance from man, the great disturber of all the vital principal that animated them, can quietly depart, without interruption, and perhaps without a pang. We found many young pelicans, unable to fly. Flocks of the old birds were sitting upon the beaches of the lagoons, and it appeared that the islands were their breeding places; not only so, but from the number of skeletons and bones there scattered, it should seem that they had for ages been selected for the closing scene of their existence. Certainly none more likely to be free from disturbance of every kind could have been chosen, than these islets in a hidden lagoon of an uninhabited island, situate upon an unknown coast near the antipodes of Europe; nor can anything be more consonant to the feeling, if pelicans have any, than quietly to resign their breath, whilst surrounded by their progeny, and in the same spot where they first drew it. Alas, for the pelicans! Their golden age is past; but it has much exceeded in duration that of man.’

Matthew Flinders, 1802

Friday night we boarded Ocean Trek from Huskisson wharf ..it was windy and rocky and I was feeling worried but the weekend turned out great. I loved the Ocean trek and would definitely board again. We did six dives (four on Saturday ad two on Sunday) and saw heaps of cool stuff including wobbegongs, nudibranchs, scorpionfish and a turtle :) Sadly we had to get off on Sunday afternoon and start driving back to Melbs. We drove the inland route home  via Canberra and stopping the night in Gundagai.