Sorry it's been a while between drinks, I haven't found the time to write any posts for a while. I'm currently in a hostel in Amsterdam and took some time out of my busy schedule for some blogging. Be warned, this is a long post with few photos. It's taken me a few weeks to write this one!
So where was I? Ah, just stayed at a dodgy hostel for my first night in Belfast.
I had a poor night's sleep because people kept coming in during the night, and the sun woke me up early because the curtain wouldn't close properly.
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| My bed for the night (top bunk in the centre) in Paddy's Palace hostel. |
I took advantage if the free breakfast as usual (toast and cereal). I had to try and get my money's worth eh. One of the Australian girls had a jar of Vegemite which she let me have some of ☺
I didn't hang around too long; I packed my bag and rolled right outta there! I rode back in towards the city centre and saw a sign to a hostel, which I spontaneously followed without much thought.
I went to reception and enquired, I wasn't actually planning on booking in, I just wanted some info, because I wanted to do some more research before settling on a hostel. But he was like "so it's just for one night?"
"Ah...yeah, it'd just be for tonight"
"Okay, we have space in six bed dorms for such and such pounds, eight bed dorms for such and such, etc, which would you like?" (He didn't actually say "such and such" though).
"Ah...I'd just go the cheapest one" I replied.
"Okay, that's six-fifty, for the twenty-four bed dorm"
"Ah...okay".
Like I say I wasn't planning to book in straight away, but I was there, it was cheap, it was easy, and he'd talked me into it, so I just thought "why not? Just do it, there's nothing wrong with being spontaneous."
I booked in for the night. The Wi-Fi wasn't free though, had to pay another two pounds for that. I was feeling so tired and lethargic I just collapsed on a couch there with my iPhone and surfed the net, I didn't feel like doing anything. And it was only 11 o'clock in the morning. I couldn't be bothered looking at tourist attractions, or even wandering around exploring the city on my bike as I often like to do.
I had a look on Hostelworld, and discovered this hostel, "Linen House Hostel", was quite poorly rated, even less than "Paddy's Palace" where I'd just come from. "Great", I thought (sarcastically).
Ones experience of a city can be strongly influenced by the hostel one stays in, and I wanted a good experience in Belfast! The accent of Belfastians (is that the word for people from Belfast?) would probably be my favourite accent in the world.
I had an idea: find a good hostel on Hostelworld, tell Linen House Hostel that I'd just discovered my favourite band were playing in Dublin so I wanted to head there straight away if possible (which was half true), and ask if I could have a refund. Then I'd go to the good hostel.
Hostelworld reckoned "Vegabonds" was reputedly the best hostel in all of the United Kingdom, so I rode there to check if they had vacancies. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly being a Friday night, and being the best hostel in the UK, they were booked out, damn! The place had a really good vibe too! I spoke to one of the staff who made suggestions of a few other hostels. He sounded Australian, he was like "you're best bet would be Lagans Backpackers or the YHA International" and he pointed them out on a big map in the hallway which had all the hostels in Belfast marked on it. Then he warned me to "stay right away from this one and this one," pointing to Paddy's Palace and the Linen House Hostel. "Great", I thought sarcastically. I'd inadvertently managed to book into the two worst hostels in Belfast, for the only two nights I was there.
I gave up and went back to the Linen House Hostel. I thought "it's too much hassle trying to change hostels now, it doesn't matter, I can learn from this, it's all good experience". But as Oscar Wilde said, "experience is the name we all give to our mistakes".
So what could I learn? Firstly, the ratings on Hostelworld do mean something. The hostel I stayed at in Edinburgh, Caledonian Backpackers, had a rating of 92 %, and that was the best hostel I've ever stayed in. Vegabonds rating was 96 % so I'm sure it would have been good.
The other lesson would be to do some research or investigation into hostels (when there are options, i.e. when in cities) into which hostel is the best for me, and not just be spontaneous.
So what makes a good hostel? The things I look for are a free breakfast, free Wi-Fi and bike parking. Laundry is useful if I have clothes to wash, and a kitchen too so I can cook and save money since I'm a cheap skate. Cleanliness is nice, a good common area is important to meet other travelers, a bit of character in the architecture of the building doesn't go astray, the cost has to be reasonable, and friendly/helpful staff. I like a late check-out time too. Most importantly though, it needs to have a good vibe, a good atmosphere.
The Linen House Hostel turned out to be not so bad. It didn't have much of an atmosphere, but at least the Internet worked. The kitchen was fine (although the hotplates weren't very hot I later found out, they were really just 'moderately-hotplates'). This seems to be the norm for hostel kitchens though.
The place was originally a linen factory, and it was converted to a hostel, so it wasn't originally made to be lived in, and there were little things like a lack of power points, since there originally wouldn't have been any. This hostel didn't provide a free breakfast either, but you can't really complain for the price, £6.50 is the cheapest hostel I've seen.
I barely even got out that day, I withdrew into my own little world on my iPhone. Actually I did talk to one guy - he was wearing an "Airbourne" T-shirt. For those who don't know, Airbourne are a straight-down-the-line rock band from Warrnambool, Australia, who sound like AC/DC. One would assume a bloke in an Airbourne t-shirt would be Australian, right? So I asked him: "are you Australian?"
"Nah I'm from England actually..."
"I thought you were Australian because you're wearing an Airbourne t-shirt, they're an Australian band"
"Yeah, a few people have told me that... I just really needed a t-shirt, and I found this one in an op-shop for three pounds".
This guy was pretty interested in what I was doing with regard to how I was traveling, because he was considering getting a cheap bike to tour as well. He was surprised I hadn't had any mechanical problems for the whole five weeks I've been traveling, I told him it's because it's a good quality touring bike.
He'd been traveling via public transport and hitch-hiking.
He also said he wants to run ultra-marathons, reckons marathons are too easy, and anyone can do them. But he's been going to the gym and bulked up so his plan is to get the girlfriend then gain the long distance runners stature, (skinny) and run ultra-marathons.
And I think he was more disorganised than me with regards to forward planning too. Glad to see I'm not the only one. And his favourite kind of weather is rainy, because it clears the streets of people.
Other than talking to this bloke, I did some blogging, researched hostels for Dublin (see how prepared I was being?) browsed some web pages and the usual twitter and Facebook and before I knew it, it was dark and time to organise something for tea.
I hopped on the bike and rode to the Tesco (one of the major supermarket chains) in the main street.
To my astonishment, it was already closed! 8:30 pm on a Friday night, and it had closed at 8 pm, and this was a major city! Even the supermarket in my small home-town of Daylesford is open until something like 10 pm!
I searched for another supermarket on Google Maps and rode to one further out. I saw that it was massive, and thought "cool, it'll be open for a while yet". It was open until 9 pm, I had less than 15 minutes. This may seem like enough, but when you have to lock up the bike, and the place is big, and you're unfamiliar with the layout and most of the products, and when you haven't worked out what you're going to cook, it's not really enough time. I was under pressure, decided on a beef stroganoff, bought a whole bag full of stuff for it, and I was the last customer.
I said to the check-out chick "I'm surprised you close so early, you caught me by surprise... are there any that are open later?"
She said "the only ones would be the 24 hour ones out in...[and she named both of them, whoop whoop probably]",
And because I was rushed, I'd forgotten an important ingredient - onions. I love onions! I was so annoyed at myself, I would have to make the stroganoff without onions.
I rode back to the hostel and was pretty starving by that stage so I scoffed down half a dozen slices of toast with jam, then cooked the stroganoff.
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| Cooking a huge beef stroganoff in the kitchen of the Linen House Hostel, Belfast. |
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| The beef stroganoff I cooked, to serve one. |
So I took it to a table and sat down, then realised it must have looked pretty funny, one guy sitting down to eat a massive pot of stroganoff on his own. I grinned at the thought, and indeed there was an older bloke at the table in front of me watching.
"You reckon you've got enough there mate?" he asked.
"Yeah, it should do me I think", I replied, still with a grin, and he laughed.
"Nah, I should have some left over for when I'm on the bike tomorrow..." I said, and the conversation went from there.
He had been watching the TV with a beer, but he started chatting with me instead, he was an interesting bloke to talk to. Like I say, he was older than your average hosteller, at thirty-four years of age. I find it's often good to chat to older people because experience, wisdom and knowledge tend to come with age. Older people have lived more, they have more stories, better understanding of the world, more advice, etc. And this bloke had certainly done his fair share of traveling.
Once in a conversation, I often like to sit back and do most of the listening, let them do all the talking. This way you learn more. You don't learn anything if you're the one talking the whole time. But at the same time a conversation goes both ways, so I would answer his questions and maybe ask him one, or he would just add something and then take over the conversation again, he was happy to talk.
He was born in Scotland, but moved with his family to Hong Kong for a bit when he was young, then to Australia and lived near Wollongong. He worked in a bar in Sydney for a while, and lots of Irish back-packers would come through, work for a month maybe, then keep going on their travels around Australia, then later come back and work a bit longer, and one day he said "stuff it, I'm going with them". So he travelled around Australia a bit, he picked tobacco for a while, which he reckoned was good money. He also picked pears. I knew where he was coming from, because I've picked pears, peaches, plums, nectarines and apricots for several seasons up around Shepparton and Cobram, and met plenty of back-packers, as well as locals, while doing it, and I really enjoyed these experiences, and earned money at the same time.
When this guy was going around picking though, he reckoned one Aussie guy he was working with would pick for half a season, then go up to the Northern Territory and herd cattle for six months, and alternate like that, he'd been doing it for years. And this bloke had a little shack, with an outhouse, and the bloke I was currently chatting to (unfortunately I never got his name) had been in there and there was a big stack of pornographic magazines sitting beside the toilet that this seasoned cattle herder/fruit picker had built up over many years, pretty funny.
He was picking tobacco near Orange in NSW, and in the town there was a guy who ran a massive Olympic sized swimming pool, but never got much business because it was only a small town. These guys on the farm though would have days when there was no picking to do, so on their days off a whole bunch of them would go to the pool for the day, the pool manager must have loved it, with patronage suddenly increasing by about 500 %.
He told me a story about when he was hitch-hiking once. He was catching a train somewhere but didn't have the money to catch it all the way so he had to hitch-hike. He got in an old car with a middle aged couple that had pulled over for him. They had the esky sitting between them and were like "hey mate, want a beer, yeah grab yourself a beer, here you go", and the woman passed one back, and passed another one to her husband who was driving, and he was just thinking "oh shit, what have I gotten myself into, I'm going to die!" As you can see though, he survived.
We talked about differences between Australian states, he reckoned you could tell the difference between a Queenslander and a Tasmanian for example. And a city person from a country person, their accents are different too.
This bloke moved to Dublin when he was about twenty-four, and he's been living there for the past ten years. He works as a freelance journalist, which would be a great job because of the flexibility and freedom. He can work his own hours, and wherever he likes, with his own creative control. He'd do graphics for things like magazines, music album covers, etc, and also creates some of his own artwork and sells that. He mentioned he met some people from Melbourne band The Wishing Well in a pub there a few days ago too.
The reason he was at this hostel in Belfast was because he was on his way to London, can't remember if he was moving there or just doing a bit of a stint there, but he thought he'd stop-over in Belfast for a few weeks just to see the place, since he'd never been there during the ten years he'd been living in Dublin.
He had the same problem as me here too. Tonight he'd felt like having a quite beer before bed, so he'd gone out to find a shop. He asked a few people if they knew where a shop was, they just gave him a funny look, as if to say "why would you want to do any shopping at this hour? That's crazy" but they'd say something like "awh no, won't find anything open at this hour", and it was only not long after 8 o'clock on a Friday night! One guy pointed him in the right direction though, and he found a shop to buy a bottle of beer.
So Belfast is certainly not a 24 hour city, much different to Sydney or Melbourne where shops are open all the time eh. I guess it stems from the days when Belfast used to have a curfew, and people wouldn't be allowed outside after 9 pm or whatever hour the curfew was.
He told me about a guy he'd come across staying in the hostel who was pretty harmless but a bit crazy. He wouldn't go out after 8 pm. "They'll kidnap you, kill you and you'll never be found, they'll cut you up into pieces and throw you in a river," he would say, as well as things like "oh, I wouldn't walk down that street after 9 pm, full of Catholics."
This bloke actually asked me a lot of questions, which was nice of him, to show an interest in what I was doing. Questions like how I go being on my own, how I go with food, did I take the bike on the plane (actually this is one of the most common questions that people ask me). And about where I was from, what I'd be doing next year. He reckoned he used to walk to work in Sydney, reckons Melbourne is better for cycling because the road space is more spread out, whereas Sydney is more compact, and not as good for cycling.
We talked about people who do crazy things. He mentioned a guy that's been riding around on his bike for ten years, and he travels at about one kilometre per hour, he's in no hurry to get anywhere. Also the bloke that was kayaking from Australia to New Zealand, and they filmed a documentary on it, he got submerged by a wave and drowned after about thirty days, not far from reaching New Zealand, only 80 km or so, very sad.
And another bloke who set out to walk the length of the Amazon river with his mate. It was meant to take eight months. They had a bit of a disagreement and his mate ended up pulling the pin and abandoning him after about six months, so he went on on his own. He somehow survived local tribes who wanted to kill him because they thought he was a white devil coming to threaten their village, and poaches and drug traders who wanted to kill him because they thought he could have been a spy/informant or whatever. The trek ended up taking two years and costing $20,000 more than he had planned for, funds which he had to borrow from his family, but amazingly and impressively, he made it. "Now why someone would want to do something like that, I'm not sure", was what this bloke had said about that. It is pretty crazy, but it seems some people feel the need to set massive challengers for themselves, and then they're not satisfied until they achieve it. Like people that climb Mt Everest, or trek across Antarctica or the North Pole or whatever they do. Or this guy I can remember reading about in the Age one day, he was an Australian bloke who was a deep sea SCUBA diver and held records for deepest dives and such. There was this underwater cave about 270 metres down, and another diver had perished down there while doing a dive some time earlier. Anyway, this guy volunteered to do the family of the deceased diver a favour and decided he'd try and dive down there into the cave and fetch the remains of his body for the family, and then they could have a proper burial for him. It was a high risk dive of course. He made it down to the cave, and never made it back, perished there with the other guy, leaving behind his wife and young children, pretty sad.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, we talked about people who like the quiet, unadventurous lifestyle, and feel no need to travel at all. His brother, for example, had been interested in real estate from a young age and bought a house in inner Sydney, knowing that it wouldn't lose its value due to its good location. So now he's settled there with his family, and because of the mortgage he's locked in to full time work for the next twenty odd years to pay it off. Not really a position I'd like to be in.
He knew this bloke from school who dropped out at sixteen, worked in a trade, earning plenty of money. And he'd asked him "don't you want to go out and see the world?"
He was like "nah, I can see it all on TV...I want to save up and buy a house"
"Where?" he'd asked.
"Right...there" and he'd pointed just down the road. And that's what he did. Some people never travel more than about forty kilometres out from their home town their whole life! The freelance artist I was currently talking to couldn't understand this sort of behaviour, but he'd just let him be, because he was happy. I guess I don't understand it either, I fall into the group that likes to get out and about, to be free and explore, and not to be stuck in one spot.
We talked about Americans travelling, how most only go to countries like the UK and maybe mainland Europe if they're brave, because the media and TV in America tells them that other places are too dangerous. Asian countries, Middle Eastern countries, South American countries, etc, they're all too different, too dangerous, and you would never consider visiting there! That's what their media apparently tells them, anyway.
He mentioned a few guys he knows from Dublin were heading out on their bikes to tour around indefinitely, and make money through photography, by taking photos along the way. He asked if I was taking photos or keeping a blog or anything like that, and I told him about my blog. He reckoned I should make everyone back home jealous by taking photos only with good weather and smiling in all the photos in the blog, even if I wasn't enjoying it.
We talked about planning, how it's hard because you're going through so many unfamiliar towns and places, and each new town you have to work out where everything is, like the toilets, the supermarket, maybe a place to camp, whatever, but you initially don't know where anything is. And if you don't do any planning, you'll go through places and cities and miss things, and later people will say to you "oh, did you take the such and such [safe and scenic] route" or "did you see such and such there, it's amazing!", and you'll be like "no, I ah...didn't know about it..."
He told me where he thinks the most beautiful areas of the UK are - the Scottish Highlands and the West Coast of Ireland. Both look so untouched, so naturally beautiful, you'll look at the grassed mountains and say "wow, isn't it beautiful?" But if you ask an historian or geologist, they'll tell you it was all forests 200 years ago, before all the trees were cut down.
He also told me all about Dublin. He said begging is legal there, but the police push them all off the main tourist street because it portrays a bad image. He told me where the junkies hang out, and how you get bunches of violent drunken youths, often coming over from England for the weekend, just to wreak havoc. He reckoned the young sixteen year old kids will scare you more than a big burly six-foot-four bikie with a beard and tattoos.
He told me about how Dublin is a very expensive city, lots of people in Dublin drive north into Northern Ireland on the weekend and stock up on groceries and especially on cigarettes and alcohol because they're cheaper in Northern Ireland due to the exchange rate.
Throughout this extended conversation, I kept nibbling away at my beef stroganoff, when I have food in front of me I can't help but eat it, and I seriously ate way too much! I was so full that it was painful; afterwards I had to just sit a while and let it start to digest. So it turned out to be a late-ish night, 2:30 am, sleeping in a 24 bed dorm.
Ride stats
Distance: 11.71 km
Average: 15.6 km/h
Maximum: 33.8 km/h
Time: 44:52
