SB XLVI & some beer notes

Not much to report this week, blog fans.  It's been a cool week (near or slightly below freezing).  We thought we were in for Blizzard 2.0 this weekend but it turned out to only be a light dusting on Friday.  Saturday was quite cool but clear and sunny.  In hindsight, we probably could have gotten out.  Today, a few ticks about freezing but cloudy and not worth getting out in.  I actually did some tax prep work (oh what fun).  Ready for the weather to break so we can get out a little more.

Speaking of getting out, we are headed to London on Thursday for a long weekend (the half term school break is this week).  First time since we moved here so we are looking forward to it.  Next week's blog should be a touch more entertaining.

In case you are wondering, our 2012 travel plans so far are:

Easter -- Belgium/Holland
May -- Lake District, England
June -- Scotland Highlands
July -- TBD (Normandy??)
August -- Cornwall (England)
October -- TBD, but likely UK

We are certainly looking forward to the trips to come.  It is important to remember though that we aren't on a 3-year vacation here.  We have work and school and the ups/downs that go with that.  This past week was particularly hectic on the work front for both of us and we are looking forward to the short break.

As I'm sure everyone knows, the Super Bowl was a week ago in Indianapolis.  It was the first time where I really felt like we missed something big from being over here (though I can't and won't complain).  It sounds like Indy really put on a good show.  So proud of the city and I look forward to the next one in town so we can participate.

Trent, a friend from work in Indy, was in town on business and we had him over for dinner last night.  It was a really nice visit and so glad that he looked us up.  Good to catch up on old times and hear what people are doing back in Indy.  Trent was super thoughtful and brought me the SB hat pictured above and below.  Thanks Trent!  Even better, it just promotes Indy and not the teams (couldn't have a Patriots logo on a hat I own).

 A little fuzzy, but here's the back with the Indianapolis call out.

Now, a quick digression into a brief (?) beer discussion.  In general, I (and my US friends) have been somewhat disappointed with the beer here.  To me, they just have 2 main types (ale and lager) and very slight/subtle variations around each one.  I miss my favorites and the variety back in the US.  That doesn't keep me from trying though!

One nice thing is that you can buy singles of pretty much all of the beers so you can try different ones.  (Before you think I'm a big alchy, I just have 1 a night when cooking dinner and maybe a couple extra when socializing with friends on the weekend). 

This one caught my eye as it claimed to be the original Budweiser (albeit not the "King").  It was similar to US Bud in that it was a lager, but it did not have the rice element/taste that the US version has.  It's close, but I probably liked it better.  Now, just like with our history attractions, I had to look this up.

According to the wiki entry (link), the original Budweiser was founded in 1785; was imported to the US in 1871 and Anheuser-Busch started using the name on its own product in 1875.

A second company (now named Budvar) was established in 1895 by mainly Czech brewers, which also started exporting beer under the name Budweiser . . . . These exports into the US market led to the Budweiser trademark dispute. Negotiations between the three companies, the two from the original town and the American Anheuser-Busch, about using "Budweiser" reached an agreement in 1911 that allowed Anheuser-Busch to use the brand "Budweiser" only in North America.

In most European countries American Budweiser is not labelled as Budweiser but as Bud, and the name Budweiser refers to the original Czech beer, Budweiser Budvar, except for the United Kingdom, where both beers are sold as Budweiser.

Get to learn all sorts of things (some more relevant than others) while over here.

I was also happy to find a "local" brew that didn't fit solidly in the ale (bitter) or lager category.   I'm no beer expert and I generally associate porters as being dark and malty and a little sweet and stouts as a little more bitter but I could be completely wrong on that.  At any rate, it was a nice change of pace and one I'll have to work into the rotation.  I found it at Marks & Spencers (Kingsway) for any locals out there.

Again, according to Wikipedia (link), Porter is a dark style of beer originating in London in the 18th Century.  The name came about as a result of its popularity with street and river porters.

So, hopefully a few nuggets of info even if there weren't particularly historically noteworthy.  Have a good week.

Snow!

Well, we got our first real snow fall since we moved here.  It was a proper snow (about 4").  I haven't been driving in it yet.  They certainly aren't as prepared here.  No plows or salt.  Rumor has it that they do grit (sand) the roads but I didn't see much of that last night and this was one was no surprise. 

Glad it came on a Saturday so we didn't have to be out in it and had plenty of time to shovel out today (Sunday).  I sure hope they get the parking lots at worked cleared or it will be a right mess tomorrow.

Here's our front drive.  Notice that both cars are outside as usual.  The garage is for storage since it isn't internally attached and has a manual door (and both wouldn't fit in anyway).

 

Our trusty Pink Panther plastic ruler denotes that yes, it was a proper 4" of snow.  I shoveled for over 2 hours since we have a long (shared) drive.  I had to borrow a shovel from the 1 neighbor who has one.  I'll go buy one so it will be sure not to snow again.

No TV reception when we woke up this morning.  Here's the culprit.  That wasn't going to stand between me and the Super Bowl though so I carefully cleaned it off.

Here's Duffield Road (A6) that leads to our house.  Rare not to see any cars.  I think traffic has kept the bulk of the snow off, not any city workers.

This is the long stretch up from the road.  Our house is in the back (winding to the left and then some).  I shoveled this hill and shaved off the high stuff all the way back.  Nice work out.  Felt good to be a productive member of society (for a change?).

 

The snow actually started last night.  We were headed to the Westfield (mall) to drop Alex off for a movie (and sleepover).  We stayed to watch War Horse and eat at Pizza Express and this was how it looked when we left.  I was smart enough (or chicken enough) not to drive.  I didn't know how the roads would be and not sure how our rear-wheel drive cars would do so we took a taxi each way.  It was a little challenging to find one on the way back but it worked out.

 Nicole was able to make a nice snowman in the back yard.

Skipping back to last week . . . 

Nicole had a group project to work on so I took Alex to nearby Allestree Park.  I was feeling a little cooped up but didn't want to go too far given the less than ideal weather.  January is definitely a non-ideal month since a lot of activities are either weather dependent or flat out closed (even the indoor ones).  We had a nice little walk.

The water fowl (required animal shot) were used to the feedings I would say.  We were ill prepared but there was a small child next to us throwing in some bread.

Typical, at least to me, British.  It was close to freezing and damp.  Nice day for a round of golf!  The park has a golf course in the middle of it.

some good climbing trees -- Alex is obviously going with function over form with the multi-colored coat, red sweat pants and camouflaged boots (wellies)

Father/Son Day & Where Exactly is Derby?

Fairly slow week in terms of blog-worthy items so I thought I'd give a quick geography lesson.  But first, a quick weekend recap:

Alex's school had a teacher's workday (call an Inset Day) on Friday.  I believe they get 5 for the year.  This one was a little unusual in that his school was the only nearby school to have it so there were no holiday care options.  Since I have a few more vacation days than Kuk, I took the day off.

You may recall that we had a nice outing last year during an Inset Day (link). Alas, the weather was not conducive to outdoor activities and some of the possible indoor options were closed (as are many of the tourist sites this time of year).  So, we went to see a movie, had lunch and ran a few errands.  Alex enjoyed the movie (Puss in Boots) and we had a nice day.  There are some photos below.

On Saturday we had our friends the Connells over dinner.  We met them through Nicole (Derby High) and Andrea also works at Rolls-Royce.  We had such a good time that I forgot to get any photos.  [rats]

For today (Sunday) the weather was a little risky for an outdoor activity.  It's decently warm here (50F) but very windy.  It was going to be cooler and perhaps rainier up in the Peak district where we would have gone.  Nicole got a better offer and Alex and Kuk were angling to be relieved of their family obligations so I decided we would just stay at home.

Highlight of the day for sure was Scrooge McDad springing for some popcorn and a soda at the movie theater.  A rare event indeed!

Unfortunately, the lights just went down and my little flash was working hard.  Tried to capture the fact that we had the place to ourselves initially.  Huh, go figure, empty at 11 am on a Friday.  One other father/son (from Walter Evans Primary too) also showed up.

We had a nice, albeit slow, lunch at Nandos home of the "legendary Portuguese flame-grilled Peri Peri chicken."  We each got some wings and they were good.  It's not really fast food but you do order at a counter.  It reminds me of BW3's but much slower.  I assume that nothing is pre-cooked.  In fact, they might not kill/pluck the chickens until you order based on the elapsed time.  Nice lunch, outside of the food wait.

Okay, now on to the geography lesson.  After visiting folks at Christmas I thought some pictures might help explain where we are living. 

Derby is very close to being in the geographic center of England.  It's also close to be the farthest from the coast.  As you can see from above, we aren't in London!  In fact, we are around 2 hours away (to the NNW).  Some will daytrip to London but that's not our preference.  We will visit over a long weekend in February.  The closest major airports to Derby are Birmingham (1 hr) and Manchester (75 mins).  It's about a 2.5 hour drive to Heathrow in London.

Derby is a city of 236,000 people in 30 square miles.  Indianapolis has 820,445 people in 372 square miles (about 30% as densely populated).

Scotland is to the north.  Edinburgh and Glasgow are about 4.5 hours away but there's a whole bunch of rural Scotland further north than that.  We hope to get there in June.

Wales is on the west coast (Swansea and Cardiff shown on the map are in South Wales).  We visited the wonderful North Wales back in April 2011.

The green area to the NW of Derby (W of Sheffield) is the Peak District NP where we have gone for hikes many times.

The next two green areas to the north are the Yorkshire Dales and Moors NPs.  Further north and west (above Barrow in Furness on the map) is the Lake District, a popular (and pretty) NP that we hope to visit in May (about 3 hours away).

In August, we plan to take the quintessential English holiday (vacation) and go to Cornwall.  Cornwall is the county in the extreme southwest corner of England.  That should take 6-10 hours depending on traffic (no, really, everyone goes and it can be quite backed up).

I've zoomed out a bit here so you can see most of Europe.  First, a few definitions:

Derby is in England, the largest country in the United Kingdom.  Great Britain is (generally) the island consisting of England, Wales and Scotland.  The UK is Great Britain + N. Ireland.  The British Isles are GB + Ireland (the island).  The Republic of Ireland is a separate country not part of the UK (they use Euros, etc.).

I found 2 humorous (and educational) You Tube clips explaining this.  Give them a try:

Clip 1:  Get it Right

Clip 2: The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England Explained

England is 95% the size of North Carolina (NC is roughly 54,000 sq miles).  Scotland is 80% the size of Indiana (36,000 sq miles). 

Great Britain is almost 89,000 square miles; roughly 2.3% the size of the US, but has 19% of the population (i.e. 8 times as densely populated).  If you just consider England, it's 12 times as densely populated.

Now, back to the Europe map.  We are obviously a lot closer to many countries than in the US.  For reference, the distance from Derby to Istanbul, Turkey (way to the south east) is 1641 miles which is about the distance from Indianapolis to Las Vegas. 

Ireland, France, Belgium and The Netherlands (Holland) are quite close.  It's particularly noteworthy how close France is (26 miles from Dover to Calais across the English Channel).  It's certainly easier to reach the countries of Europe from Derby (than the US) and we do aim to take advantage of that.  However, it does tend to take at least a half day (or more) to travel to any other country.  

At first, I thought we might visit more countries because of their proximity but I'm finding that one-at-a-time generally works best for us.  In fact, most of our destinations this year will be in the UK!

Now I've zoomed out farther so you can see across the Atlantic.  The thing you should notice is how far north we are.  As a result, we have very short days in the winter and long days in the summer.

Our latitude is 52°55'.  Here are some US places for comparison:
Indianapolis    39°46'
DC                 38°54'
Bangor, Maine   44°48'

In terms of European cities:
Moscow   55°45'
Copenhagen  55°41'
London    51°30'
Paris  48°51'
Rome  41°54'
Madrid  40°25'
Athens  37°59'

I hope you found the geographic lesson informative and perhaps even a little entertaining.

Finally, we have Nicole's meal-of-the week.  She picked out and made a new pasta dish with ham, mushrooms and creme fraiche (that French "sour" cream).  We used some very colorful farfalle (bow tie) pasta that we picked up in Rome.  The green beans and beets were forced on her to round out the menu.

Have a good week.

Ashby De La Zouch Castle & the National Brewery Museum

Today was a fine, albeit brisk, Sunday afternoon so we decided to hit a couple of sites.  The first was the Ashby de la Zouch Castle [wiki link] just over 30 minutes away.  It was going to be a family affair as usual, but Alex attended a sleepover birthday party with 6-8 other boys and let's just say he wasn't quite up for it.  So, it turned into a nice father/daughter day out.

Coincidentally, my buddy Jay happened to visit the castle yesterday (great minds think alike) and I am going to shamelessly plagiarize his blog for the description (thanks Jay).  Any factual errors are Jay's fault.  :-)

The castle was built in the 12th century as a fortified manor house.  William, Lord Hastings, acquired it in the late 1400's and made improvements to the property, including fortifying it into a castle.  (A side note on William was that he was a very generous lord, he paid his servants too much and didn't charge his guests at all which led to massive debt.  Generosity was probably not very common in those times.)  The castle eventually became an important footnote in the English Civil War.  The owners at the time were on the side of the Royalists, or Cavaliers, and housed retreating Royalist forces in 1645.  The Parliamentarians . . . caught up to the Royalists at the castle and laid siege to it from September 1645 to March 1646.  Terms of surrender were eventually negotiated with the family being allowed to leave because the castle was never breached.  (Some kind of chivalry thing I guess - the better the loser fights the more favourable their terms are.)  Some of the Royalist forces were killed but the castle was demolished as part of the terms which is why it is in ruins. 

The castle is also famous from Sir Walter Scott's 1819 novel Ivanhoe.  The novel mentions the castle by name [Steve here] and turned it into a tourist attraction in the 19th century.  

The audio tour didn't take itself too seriously and actually featured some role play acting between the 2 characters that both Nicole and I enjoyed (better than a dry monologue). 

On to the photos . . .

A shot of Nicole on the grounds.  I wanted to make sure to get the frost.  It was just above freezing but obviously not in the shade.

View of what remains of the tower.  The rest was blown up as part of the surrender.  Look at those blue skies.  We don't get that too often this time of year.  Or any, really.

Sunken gardens and more frost.

Closer view of the tower.  We would walk the 98 large steps up to the top.  It's a rule of castle viewing -- you must climb to the top!  Larger rooms on the left; smaller on the right.  I find it interesting to see these multi-story cutaways without the floors.

at the top as promised

 view of the [former] gardens below

semi-artistic shot #1 -- I liked the funky moss at the top

St. Helen's Church next door.  Can you make out the remaining Roman numerals on the lower part of the former clock?  At least that's what I thought it was but the numbers are 6, 9, 7 and 3.  What?

semi-artistic shot #2.  Nicole requested this one.

arches from long-ago vaulted ceiling

School next door.  Wouldn't that be creepy?  It's only 100 years old or so.  Modern even.

semi-artistic shot #3

self shot -- if only my arms were a little longer -- happy days

very cool tunnel within the complex -- very dark, most of the light is from the flash

 good shot of Nicole and the castle ruins from across the grounds

On our way from Ashby to site #2 in Burton-upon-Trent, we saw this Greyhound Inn. Had to stop and take a photo given our history with greyhounds.  Too bad there's a tacky curry night sign up.

Quick tangent on the drive.  It wasn't that far away but it was painfully slow through many towns.  I actually like the roundabout system here in the UK for the most part, but this route had lots of mini-roundabouts with painted circles rather than a median in the middle.  Very difficult when you aren't familiar with the area.  Don't care for the mini-roundabouts.

Next stop was clearly my vote and not Nicole's.  Burton upon Trent has quite a brewery tradition and the National Brewery Centre  is located here.  Two of the larger breweries were Worthington and Bass which merged back in 1927.  In the early 2000's it was purchased by Molson Coors!  From the Burton wiki page:

For centuries, Burton has been associated with the brewing industry. This is due to the quality of the local water, which contains a high proportion of dissolved salts, predominantly caused by the gypsum in the surrounding hills. This allowed a greater proportion of hops, a natural preservative, to be included in the beer, thereby allowing the beer to be shipped further afield. Much of the open land within and around the town is protected from chemical treatment to help preserve this water quality.

a very large can o' Bass

 only 4 ingredients in most beers -- barley, hops, yeast and water (cool beer wiki)

The photo above is an example of what they have in the museum (stressing the more manual aspects of beer making before mechanization). Given the off-season, I should have tempered my expectations, but I was a little disappointed.  They still have guided tours at 11 but we missed that by a lot.  The shire horses, steam engine and actors are off until spring.  There was a decent amount of info for a self tour.  It was okay but not great.  I'd recommend waiting until spring for those interested.  No actual brewing on the tour either, btw.

Ah, but we did get samples (unfortunately served in these dentist rinse cups).  These are my 4.  Nicole got soda -- I didn't take hers.  I also opted for the mid-tour break rather than the end tour sample since I was driving and all.   I had Worthington's Winter Shield, Worthington's White Shield, Brewery Tap and a stout (8%!).  Can't say I was that impressed.  The Brewery Tap was the best and the Winter Shield was okay.  The stout was pretty bitter and the White Shield was nasty.  I've realized that I prefer American or Belgian beers.

A rare Coors Light tap.  Don't know that I've seen one here but I haven't been looking either.

Had to settle for a life sized photo of a Shire Horse (bred for pulling heavy loads like grain and beer carts).  Nicole was purposely placed to cover the anatomy (it was a little graphic for some in this audience).

 very cool beer bottle car in the not so cool winter shed

Ah yes, my wonderful wife.  I did not forget her.  As mentioned earlier, Alex was at a sleep over last night so we capitalized by ditching Nicole and having our first UK date (after 10 months -- phew).  We went to a nice gastro pub up the road in Duffield called The White Hart.   Kuk had a seafood pizza for her main.  Notice the rocket (arugula) in the middle.  Very British.

I splurged and got the fillet (pronounced fill it here -- snicker, snicker).  Came with a wonderful peppercorn sauce, fancy potatoes, onion rings, grilled tomatoes and marinated portabella mushroom.  I found a good British steak!  (though not cheap at all, in fact the filet mignon here is quite pricey -- this was £23; okay for a special occasion).

 shared dessert of another local treat -- sticky toffee pudding

Continuing on the weekly food theme:  Nicole made a challenging vegetarian chili with cheese quesadillas).   It was a good effort but we all wished for some ground beef in the end.  :-)  Kuk missed out on this as she continued her jet setting ways and was in Germany the latter half of the week.

And finally to follow up from last week, here's where the "polenta" (corn meal) ended up.  Sauteed chicken with an interesting salsa of mango, corn, beets, cilantro and garlic.  Better than it looks (food pictures are tough).

That's all for this week.  Thanks for reading.