World Cross Stitch

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!