This is the story
of our journey in cross stitch.
I was inspired by
the V&A’s Exhibition of British Quilting where individual pieces were often
embroidered with family or historical events, the Bayeux Tapestry and the
‘story sticks’ children make on trips and projects.
When we set out I
thought I would be mainly inspired by folk art and architectural motifs, but as
we went along I soon found that equally inspiring were the people we met and
the Helpx jobs we did.
Bulgaria was an amazing first destination. Country life and traditions were alive and
well and it was fascinating to see the difference in development communism
brings. Flashing through the countryside
on a corridor train, where outside doors are left open and the ground rushes
past under your feet in the toilet, left a lasting first impression.
We met the
delightful Jenni and Jordi, romantic Barcelona
supporters and very much in love.
Crete in May was
covered with daisies and we Helpxed for Susanne and Michalis, working on their Nature Park
and feeling a real sense that without people like us they really wouldn’t make
it. A heady feeling of making the
difference between giving up and making it, things are pretty hard in Greece. The other volunteers we met were a joy, the
lovely Natalie and Mara; it makes me smile to think of them.
June on the Greek
Islands, what a contrast to our existence on Crete, we had an amazing luxury
holiday on Santorini and Mykanos with Chris’s Brother, his wife and her father,
mainly sitting around in bars or swimming in the pool and one very memorable
sunset boat trip with Captain George.
In July to Athens and our first
Couch Surfing experience. It’s an
amazing way to meet people and experience things you wouldn’t as a
tourist. Lovely Lena LB put us up while
we sorted out our India
visas.
In the Peleponese
we met Phil and Shema and helped them with house renovations and lugging stuff
about. They were really fun to be with
and Shema and I giggled like school girls.
I’d forgotten what that was like.
After collecting
our India visas in Athens we were on the train again, through Thessiloniki
almost to Turkey
and to the only Helpx that didn’t work out.
But ‘hey ho’ we didn’t have to stay.
Back in Palamartsa in Bulgaria we were welcomed with open arms and helped
with Jenni and Jordi’s wedding, much better than Will and Kate’s, in my
opinion.
We arrived in Turkey on my
birthday. What an amazing country and
what fabulous people, so friendly and helpful.
After the longest bus and train journey from deepest Bulgaria to Izmir we did a wonderful Helpx in a small
boutique hotel, in Kirazli under the minaret.
Call to prayer always coincided with dinner so we didn’t need to say
grace! Nick and Maggie were our
wonderful hosts and I even wrote a new verse for an old song for Nick’s
Birthday.
In September in
Uzumlu in the pine clad hills behind Fethiye, in anther small hotel we met Ayse
and Gengis who gave us a wonderful insight into Turkish culture and hospitality
in return for our help. It was here that
I had a meeting with a scorpion that only one of us survived. We met fellow volunteer Brigitte, bright and
dazzlingly clever; she really raised my scrabble game!
Then began a
period of rather intense travel; first to Cappadocia
with its rock formations, not featured on my embroidery because of their
potential of being mistaken for a part of the male anatomy. Rather one of the hot air balloons that
hissed their way into the sky at dawn every morning in a very romantic
fashion.
Then Istanbul, Safran Bolu, Ankara
and back to Istanbul,
all in less than a fortnight on the fantastic Turkish buses with their trolley
dollies and 'in bus' entertainment systems.
An incredible snapshot of a fraction of Turkey. We CouchSurfed in Istanbul
with an Armenian called Alex, who truly relished his CouchSurfers, in his Istanbul apartment we met
four other CouchSurfers and learned to make a cake in a sauce pan.
October and Beirut! Still full of bullet holes and bomb sites,
soldiers, police and road blocks. Our CouchSurfing experience here put us in
parts of Beirut
where Tourists aren’t often seen. Lebanon was the
first place I felt nervous to be. Our
time in the sky resort of Bacharré, was our little countryside retreat and from there we dashed
to Baalbeck and Tripoli,
really fascinating and sometimes hair-raising experiences.
In Jordan it was just one sight seeing whirl, the
Dead Sea and Petra
and amazing ruins with mosaics, that Tony Robinson would die for, many just
protected by a bit of clear plastic and the sand blowing across. The mosaic I copied for my embroidery was at Umm
ar-Rasas, is Philadelphia now the capital of Jordan, Amman.
November, India
and culture shock, going from New Delhi to Diu, visiting Jaipur, Udaipur and
Amedebad in between. The sites, sounds
and smells were both indescribable and unforgettable. The amazing colours and cacophony of noises
will stay with us for ever. Our Couch Surfing
Experience here was really illustrative of Indian Society, from Govinder's small
apartment, clean but basic to the Mehta family’s lovely home and to Barbara and
Heinrik’s beautiful apartment, all lovely, lovely people. Ahmedabad’s Calico Museum,
give a full morning’s tour through their unforgettable collection of textiles,
the work was incredible.
On Diu we spend
two weeks eating fish curry and swimming with turtles and meeting all ten of
the other western tourists who had made it to that tiny dot on the coast of Gujarat.
Slipping through Kuala Lumpur and Singapore
(where one night cost as much as ten on Diu) we arrived in Australia and a
different approach to my embroidery.
From a wealth of cultural and architectural reference to virtually none,
I found new references in the landscape.
The world sailing
championships were on in Freemantle and then at our Helpx near Bridgetown we looked
after chickens watched the parrots cavorting in the sky, delighted in the tiny
jewel like blue wren surrounded by paddocks and Alpacas. The Bibby family with their four children
were a delight and farm sitting for them was a real experience of remoteness.
Then a real road
trip; returning a yellow Toyota Carola, twenty-one years old, with one white
wing, to Taree from Freemantle. Across
the Nullabor with its ‘ninety mile straight’ to Adelaide, then down the Great
Ocean Road to Melbourne. We camped, we
CouchSurfed, we stayed with the daughter of an old friend and a couple we had met in Diu. The vast landscapes of our journey filled us
with a real sense of space and emptiness only hinted at in few places in the UK.
It took us ten
days to get to Newcastle, just north of Sydney, to catch up with Natalie (Crete)
and then on to Taree where it rained and rained and rained. There was a rescue Kangaroo called Barney and
when it briefly stopped raining the countryside was delightful.
We spent two weeks
in Repton, where the weather relented a little.
We Helpxed, house sitting for a couple with a giant cat and doing odd
jobs. We used their Van to see a bit of
the ‘awesome’ sub-tropical rainforest and its giant trees.
Then Sydney and
the charming Stephen Bailey our CouchSurf host who showed us around and shared
recipes with us.
New Zealand’s South Island has places that look just
like England
and places where you wouldn’t be surprised to see a pterodactyl will fly
by. Near Geraldine we spent some time with
my Cousin and his family. Chris helped
him put a concrete floor in his ‘shid’ (shed), while I did what I could to help
around the house. We went on an amazing
freshwater fishing trip and came home with enough salmon and trout to feed us
for a week with out stinting.
Then our last
Helpx with the inveterate adventurer Lawrence McIntyre. At his latest adventure, Golden Bay Hideaway
we camped in a container, cooked on an open fire and raked up cockles, at low
tide, that tasted as good as oysters. We
took Lawrence’s
car and explored the area, soaking up the wildness, bitten by sand flies and
mosquitoes but drunk on the wildness and space.
All in return for cleaning his holiday lets and painting roofs and the
house truck.
We took a small
plane to Wellington and a bus to Auckland for a kind of ‘been there’ visit to the North
Island before flying back to Perth
for one last visit where the eucalyptus outside Mark’s house was
flowering.
Finally, on the
plane home I embroidered the quote Thomas texted when we set off.
The finished embroidery is just over two and a half meters long and we travelled 58,000 killometers!
