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  Whalley, Lancashire, United Kingdom
Monday, February 18, 2008

.... Ok, I suppose the best place to begin is where I left off last time. Amazingly enough, we did manage to get up in time to say our goodbyes to Mike, Tich, Bec and Boags and still catch the bus to Sofia, the gritty capital of post communist Bulgaria. Thankfully, the bus trip back down from the Rhodopi mountains was no where near as harrowing as the trip up had been. It still had it's moments, but they came spaced at intervals of more than ten minutes, making our driver only approximately half as psychotic as the one who drove us up into the mountains a few weeks earlier.

Once we got off the bus in Sofia it was about a ten minute taxi ride to the "Art Hostel" backpackers place where we had booked a couple of bunks for the night. Upon arrival though, we found that they didn't know anything about our booking, but were happy to put us up for the night anyways. (I think doug is probably sending off some manner of complaint about that and the loss of our booking fee as we speak, or rather, as I type.) The backpackers hostel was about three or four stories high, cold, and pretty haphazardly decorated. There was a great little bar (and I mean little) down in the cellar and a few other backpackers hanging around. To Doug's way of thinking, it was dingy and terrible. I thought it was great and had heaps of character. It was pretty much exactly the type of establishment I had envisaged us staying in when we set off travelling. After a few beers and the discovery that we were sharing our dorm with an attractive young German girl, Barina (beep beep 'n beep beep yeah!) Doug started to come around to my point of view.

The next day entailed fighting off a rotten sodding hangover, negotiating a taxi ride to Sofia international airport, terminal II (which I have to say is a much nicer terminal than the one we entered the country through) and jumping on a British Airways flight to Heathrow. Amazingly (and completely contrary to expectations) this was all achieved without much difficulty. Once we had arrived back in jolly old England though, the wheels well off (in the strictly metaphorical and not literal 'British Airways' sense). It wasn't anything major, but because of fog earlier in the day all of the scheduled landings and terminal bookings at Heathrow had been thrown into chaos and we were landed at the wrong terminal where we had to wait about and hour and a half on the plane before they managed to get a bus to come and take us to the right terminal. The wait didn't worry us very much, because we had arrived at about 1700H and our bus north didn't leave until 2359H that night. What was a little annoying though, was having to spend that hour and a half on a plane filled in equal parts with whinging poms, and Bulgarians who couldn't understand enough English to know what the delay was about. Fun stuff!

The bus trip north to Burnley (in Lancashire) was pretty uneventful, and we both spent the time trying (quite unsuccessfully) to sleep and rid ourselves of travel weariness and jet lag (also unsuccessfully). We arrived in Burnley at about 0600H in the morning, and rather than call the number we had been given for Guy (a friend of Mike and Tich's who owns a pub (amongst some other business interests) and who had agreed to give us some work) we decided to grab some breakfast and wait until a slightly less ungodly hour to announce our arrival. Before we could even finish ordering our brekky though, we had been spotted by Guy, who came up introduced himself and paid for our breakfast! Whattaguy, Guy.
 
[I'll apologise at this point, if the narrative seems a little disjointed. Everything above this paragraph was written a couple of days ago, as was quite a bit below it. Unfortunately though, the computer gods saw fit to screw with the computer I was working with such that everything below the paragraph above was lost. After my customary explosion of poorly contained incandescent rage when such things occur, I decided to cool off and complete the blog later, i.e. today. So, anyways...]
 
After brekky, Guy drove us up to Whalley (yeah yeah, I know, "Where's Whalley?!"), a small English village which is quite likely to be our home for a few months, while we try and save up enough money to get us through the next couple of parts of our trip. The pub that Guy owns is the Whalley Arms, and we're staying in a couple of rooms above it. Whalley is a pretty simple little village and word spread fairly quickly that there were a couple of Aussies in town. Our first afternoon serving behind the bar gave us some idea of what it must feel like to be an exhibit in a display case. It was also a sharp lesson on the undeniable fact that, while we might all speak English, there are a whole load of differences.
 
Working behind a bar is probably a pretty similar experience all over the world and I didn't figure we'd have too much difficulty getting the hang of it, but half the time over here you just can't tell whether or not you've understood what someone wants because either; a) their accent is unintelligible b) you think you might have heard them right, but you've never heard of that drink before c) you've no fucking idea what they are talking about, or even if they're actually ordering a drink... So anyways, the bar work has been an experience.
 
Unfortunately, Guy can't really offer us enough hours for full time employment, so we're roughly in the process of looking around for some more part time employment, or maybe a full time job for one of us, and the other can work full time at the pub.
 
We've been getting out and about a little bit recently, checking out what little there is to see around Whalley, as you can probably see from the photos. Today, we're off to Blackburn, just cos we can, to catch a flick and sink a few beers.
 
Anyways, I guess that pretty much brings things up to date, so a big G'day to everyone back home from me 'n Doug and we hope you enjoy the photos! Don't be shy about leaving a comment on any of the blogs or photos either guys!
 
cheers
 

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Clitheroe castle. Old. Really old.   Comments!	renovation rescure comes to Clitheroe	doug adopts a sensible pose	rule britannia, eh?
behind bars	dougie. again.	view of clitheroe castle	dishpig in our accomodation at whalley arms
my room	doug's room   Comments!	the whalley arms   Comments!	the whalley parish curch   Comments!
function centre near ruins of 14th C abbey	me in the ruins.   Comments!	dougie in the ruins	entry to the ruins
the gatehouse	the thingywassit. y'know... the doover.   Comments!

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