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On Good Friday I was done with work but instead of going home like everyone else I stayed in China for a few more days. There’s loads of day trip opportunities around Suzhou, including one of China’s largest lakes, but that will have to wait for another time because I instead picked one of several historic “canal towns” nearby. This one is called 同里 “TongLi”: the characters mean “with” and “inside” but I’ve no idea what the etymology is. It’s about an hour from Suzhou by long distance bus. The “long distance” bit is an important distinction as it means it departs from a totally different bus station to regular buses and boarding one involves a tortuously complex ticket buying and queuing system. Riding it was an interesting experience. Let’s just say I’ve been on cleaner coaches. But on the way back I made friends with a fellow passenger and got to practice my Chinese a bit, so overall it was a positive experience.

Modern Tongli has about 30 thousand inhabitants but the old town core is incredibly well preserved, perhaps due to a fee-charging tourism zone. The town is criss-crossed with canals, miles of them, to the extent that it has hardly any real roads. Apparently Suzhou was like this too once, but most of it was concreted over in the 20th century.

With a single “town pass” you get access to a myriad of old buildings and gardens. I ambled around so many beautiful traditional gardens that they all blended into one and I can’t recall what was the significance of each.

Anyway it all made for a nice relaxed atmosphere. All the guides I read cautioned that it would be heaving with tourists as it’s a popular day trip from Shanghai, for local Chinese at least. But I think I got lucky by visiting on a weekday. I ate lunch outside the house of an old lady who had set up some tables by the canal side. It was very… homely. But no sign of food poisoning and the tea was lovely so an excellent choice.

The evening light was fantastic so I snapped a few photos of the colourful waterfront houses before hopping on the bus back to Suzhou.

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Sunday morning I’d mostly got over my jet lag so it was time to go on a proper adventure. Nanjing, about 140 miles along the Yangtze from Suzhou, was my day trip destination. However, when I got up the world was blanketed by a suspiciously unnatural looking yellow cloud. Hmm. Anyway it soon moved on its merry way and I headed out to the train station.

Now, ordinarily back in England 140 miles is way beyond my normal day trip range but in China they have Advanced Train Technology which travels the distance in around one hour and only about £11 each way. Look at the nose on this thing! In the carriage there’s a handy speed display which hits about 270 km/h.

南京 “Nanjing” literally means “south capital”. That’s because it was the capital of China at various times in history. Most recently as the capital of the Republic of China until the revolution in 1949. All this means Nanjing is full of historical attractions. The most obvious being the massive city walls. There’s over 25km of surviving wall which makes it the longest intact city wall in the world. I first encountered it walking around the lake from the train station.

When the wall was being built in the Ming dynasty around 600 years ago, the emperor had a really great idea. He required all the towns and villages in China to send a quota of bricks for the walls, but each brick had to be marked with who made it and where it came from. So makers of defective bricks could be identified and punished. You can still see (and read!) the markings to this day!

You could spend a day walking along the walls. Sadly I didn’t have a whole day to spare so I just did a select section from the station into the town with a small detour onto a very crowded island in the middle of the lake. You can see from the mountains in the background how different the scenery is from Suzhou and the southern half of Jiangsu which is almost entirely flat.

After coming down from the wall I wandered around the huge Jiming temple. Jiming is 鸡鸣 “cry of chicken”. Lost in translation perhaps. Then I started to get a bit peckish. What to eat? Two Chinese people I know had independently suggested I try 鸭血粉汤 when I said I was planning to visit Nanjing. So I picked one of those “local” canteens on the street, which is always a bit of a gamble but seemed popular with the locals.

What is 鸭血粉汤? Well it translates as “duck blood soup” but it’s a lot tastier than it sounds. 超级好吃! In the bottom is some odd looking dried been curd strips which were quite fun to eat.

After lunch I caught the metro to another local attraction, the massive mausoleum of the founder of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen. Here’s a useful bit of trivia: he’s the guy on all the Taiwanese bank notes; the PRC ones all have chairman Mao. If you’re the sort of person who stuffs all their Chinese-looking money in the same drawer, knowing this can help to avoid those embarrassing situations where you try to use the wrong money. Not that that would ever happen to me. Nuh-uh.

As you can see there is rather a lot of steps leading up to the mausoleum. It’s actually on the side of a mountain that looms above the city. There are several other interesting attractions on the mountain including a temple and a hike up to the summit, which I didn’t have time to do. There’s lots of pretty woodland too, which you can see in the photo below along with, unfortunately, the return of the smoggy cloud.

In a very random encounter on the way down I bumped into some of my colleagues from Taiwan who had also spontaneously decided to come out here for the day. A good opportunity for dinner, but it curtailed my maximal sightseeing strategy somewhat. I reckon there’s enough remaining attractions here to fill a weekend, so definitely worth another visit in the future!

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Plants also have lives. Think about that next time you consider picking one, eh?!

Speaking of flowers, while I was in China I saw cherry blossom trees almost everywhere: even outside the factory! Apparently this year is not as impressive as previous ones due to strong winds recently. Still looks great though.

I’m back in China again for work this week visiting a factory in Suzhou. After a slightly crazy Friday where I landed at 8:30am after an 11 hour flight and then did a whole day of work, I had the whole weekend off to go exploring. I’d done a little bit of sightseeing in Suzhou last November, but only had two half days so didn’t get to see much.

Saturday morning I overslept a bit and then went exploring. My colleague stayed at the hotel and worked. Weird. Anyway, first off I went to 盘门景区 “Panmen Scenic Area”. Not really sure how to translate 盘门: “plate gate”? The gate bit I suppose is referring to the area being the old gate in the city wall pictured below.

Fans of city walls should check back in a few posts time. The main attraction of the sprawling area is the tall pagoda and picturesque landscaped lake.

I got quite excited about going up the pagoda. But sadly you can only go up to the fifth floor and outside only up to the third. Never mind, the view is still pretty good:

Afterwards I wandered back into town and stumbled upon what is to date my favourite Suzhou attraction: 网师园 “Net Master’s Garden”. It’s a bit like the “Humble Administrator’s Garden” I visited last year but smaller, quieter, and more charming.

It’s not actually a garden as such, rather a large house with a number of little open spaces and this large lake in the centre. In some of the little buildings are small shops selling local artwork. There’s also a quaint tea house where I wasted an hour or so drinking this tea in a glass with jasmine flowers floating in that all the old people here are mad keen for. Pretty good start to my “work” trip, so I headed back to the hotel to plan my Sunday adventure…

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This week I made a return to familiar territory and went for a walk through the Chilterns from West Wycombe village to Henley. My public transport options are a bit different now so hopefully my routes will be more varied than when I lived in Maidenhead. That’s a positive way of saying I have to take buses everywhere now.

The afternoon today was so beautiful. Definitely the best weekend day to be outside so far this year. Here’s a pretty old barn and very tall tree near Fawley.

Can you spot the black sheep?! I discovered today there is something strangely soothing about sitting and listening to a herd of sheep munching grass. I should produce one of those new age relaxation tapes. Would make a fortune.

It’s the weekend again and time to go canalling. This week I decided to put my Birmingham ambitions on hold and walk the other way into London.

The section from Uxbridge to Hanwell was a bit dull, but there were some interesting boats to look at. I took a detour to explore Southall which inexplicably has nowhere you can get a cup of tea.

The most interesting spot on the route is at Hanwell where the canal drops down a steep flight of locks. At the top is the Three Bridges: a three-level crossing of railway, canal, and road designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In fact, it was his last project before his death. It’s always a bit of a novelty to see water flowing above other things. By the side of the locks is Hanwell Asylum which has a lovely brick façade and looks exactly how you imagine a stereotypical creepy Victorian mental asylum should.

Eventually the Grand Union canal flows into the Thames at Brentford. At some point I lost the path in a canal-side industrial wasteland and decided to call it a day. It had merged with the Thames Path at that point so technically I’d done it already. (Back in 2010, doof.me.uk fans.)

In Brentford I ate what must be one of the most unhealthy muffin products ever created: it had two kinds of meat, egg, cheese, “jam”, and was all fried. Definitely undid any positive effect the exercise might have had.

It occurred to me recently that as I live on the Grand Union canal I ought to go exploring along it. One way leads to London, which is interesting enough, but the other leads to Birmingham, a place which I have only ever been to once before, and then only to the train station. It’s only 140 miles away. Sounds like a project. Part the first: Uxbridge to Hemel Hempstead.

This is a gloomy looking abandoned industrial building near Rickmansworth. I’ve no idea why there is a huge monkey hanging from it.

I took a detour into Watford for lunch even though it’s not technically on the canal. The “North” officially begins at a place called the Watford Gap which for a long time I thought was located just north of Watford itself. It’s not: it’s much closer to Coventry. Perhaps I’ll encounter it later on the canal! Anyway, without that claim to fame Watford doesn’t seem very interesting. I guess it is one of the most northerly areas of London, which is somewhat noteworthy. The town centre was a bit bland and post-war, although there was a nice market area with a Japanese cafe.

This is a lock just south of Hemel Hempstead. There are a lot of locks on the canal: 166 in total. A bit later on I passed the offices of Imagination Technologies where I tried unsuccessfully to get a job once.

I’d visited Hemel Hempstead once before but in true doof.me.uk style I blundered into town after dark without any time to explore. I don’t think I missed much, the shopping precinct was very generic but crossing the Swindon-esque pentagram of mini roundabouts to get there provided a bit of entertainment.

Next stop Leighton Buzzard and Milton Keynes!

Last weekend was wet and muddy but I managed to go on a short walk from Chesham to High Wycombe. I wanted to get to Henley but progress was slow and boggy so I’ll leave that for another day.

In High Wycombe I saw this interesting abandoned mill or factory building. I wanted to explore a bit more but the area felt a tad unsafe.

While I was in Norway I noticed something very alarming. They have two kinds of pedestrian crossing sign!

The left-hand one looks like a normal crossing sign with the gentleman going about his business in the regular manner. But the one on the right is a sinister crossing. That guy is a) wearing a hat – suspicious – and b) he is sneaking. This sign is also curiously absent from the Wikipedia list of Norwegian road signs. What is he doing? What is the purpose of this crossing??

I was back in Olso again last week and snuck out on my lunch break to explore the former airport at Fornebu.

Now that the airport is decommissioned the area is a trendy office park for start ups as well as some of Norway’s large state-owned companies.

It’s unusually warm this winter in Norway. While I was there the temperature hovered around freezing and some of the snow even started melting.