UCAS Travels Week One

My next three weeks are filled with UCAS Events. At the time of writing, I'm not sure how I will post this blog entry. Given the length of time I am travelling I may post once a week.

Each post will include short posts written through out the journey.

Event One

Anyhow, today's travels started well with the much loved walk to the train station from home, apart from the having to carry my bag part. The train to London Waterloo was a smooth journey. However there were terrifying scenes at Waterloo, as a container had been broken open and wildlife from Jurassic World had escaped. 

Having survived the carnage and avoided near certain death I boarded the underground and continued my onward journey to Leeds. 

Departing the train at Leeds Train Station, my standard arrival process began;

Locate City Street Map

Locate and walk to Hotel

Request iron

Charge phone

Walk back to city for exploration

At this time I should also mention the view from my rooms window....

I found Leeds city centre and walked passed shops, bars and Town Hall. The city had a nice mixture of old and new buildings and architecture. I soon found another city street map which I used to locate my next stops. First the church, to rest my legs in the small green outside. Then the first direct arena, which I walked around. Its a shame you can't see part of the inside of these stadiums and arenas as you walk past. You can't see anything from outside, so no more information on that one.

I then started to just walk, in no particular direction. I ended up on a high street (Victoria Quarter) where I stopped to listen to a street music performance. Which I really enjoyed, I am a sucker for street performers.

After a while around Victoria Quarter I walked on to the river and found a couple of bridges to cross. At this stage Newcastle's bridges where looking very impressive! I did however take a brief moment to look at the padlocks left on Centenary Bridge. Which reminded me of the Southgate footbridge in Melbourne, where 'lovers locks' where also left on the bridge. However I did read recently that the padlocks are being removed from the Melbourne footbridge because of safety fears, which does seem ridiculous (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11612176/Melbourne-to-remove-20000-love-locks-from-bridge-due-to-safety-concerns.html). 

After taking 10 minutes to write down some thoughts and notes on the day. I made my way back to meet Tom and the Student Ambassadors for dinner. We ended up eating separately as I had walked quite far from the hotel. But did meet up for a chat and discussed our thoughts on Student Ambassadors, Summer Schools and Leeds later that evening. 

Over the next two days we attended the UCAS event to discuss opportunities and provision at our institution.

Outside of this we did walk around the city centre viewing the new and historic buildings, Leeds has a nice mixture of architecture, though having now seen the city no one thing would particularly attract me back to the city.

That being said, I enjoyed watching the street performers near Victoria Quarter, sitting in a church garden and visiting Leeds City Museum (www.leeds.gov.uk/citymuseum).

I had seen there was an exhibition of light on at the museum the evening before, which looked interesting. So the following day I managed to drop in and look around the museum. 

(Yes I arrived before the computers had loaded) 

The exhibition of light was not quite what I had hoped, however I did enjoy looking some of the other areas within the museum. Particularly the development of writing, Egyptian culture and Leeds a brief history.

The hotel (Holiday Inn Express) was ok, but definitely not the best place I've stayed. The room was good, but a twin not a double as booked. The shower was very good, but the tap water was definitely not suitable for drinking, which I discovered. The breakfast again had positives (sausages) and negatives (watered down scrambled eggs and lack of selection). But, and there's already been a few, the bed was pretty uncomfortable. So not somewhere I would rush to stay again.

Anyway it's time to move on to the next event. I'm currently on the Leeds to London train. Hoping to get home before 10pm before setting of for Sheffield tomorrow. I'm definitely looking forward to next week when I will be driving from one event to the next, and not returning home in between. It adds so much time and energy to the travel required. 

  

Event Two

Hello from Sheffield!

Feeling much more relaxed than I did this morning. The trains back from Leeds really took it out of me. Driving today was much nicer. Though that was mainly midday driving, we will see how much I like it after driving from here to home on a Friday evening.

On arrival I quickly looked up the surrounding area and worked out the city centre was a 50 minute walk away. Which is fine, but a little further than you'd like. Before leaving for the long trek ahead, I asked at reception to confirm the direction. Where I received two very bewildered faces when asking for walking directions to the city. After confirming I did know it was an hours walk, I was surprised and interested in the tram alternative that was suggested. In fact that's what I did. The tram cost £3.60 for a return and the journey lasted 6 minutes.

It was a while before I found a city street map. Thus I strolled through the city walking from one potentially interesting thing to another. Some buildings turned out to be much less interesting or entertaining than initially expected. However I did stumble across a few great stops. 

Sheffield Cathedral (I know, it's becoming a habit (I think that maybe a church joke)), was beautiful inside and had most of the cathedral open for visitors to walk around. 

Again I took the opportunity to light a prayer candle between walking through various sections of this grand building. There was an additional station set up at the rear with headphones playing; songs from the choir, the bells being rung and the organ being played.

After the beauty of the cathedral I made my way, in a direction I'm not exactly sure of. Anyhow, I found myself walking through the Sheffield Winter Garden. This is not particularly large, but its inclusion in the city centre is great. This along with the green outside the Town Hall and City Council building, which is next to the Winter Garden, is a great place to sit and take some time out.

However I was getting hungry and remembered seeing a Chinese buffet a while back and tried to work out exactly what point of the journey I needed to return to and which road that may have been. After a couple of wrong turns, initially I was not sure on the direction I needed to travel, I was on my way. The buffet was not that far away, when walking in the correct direction, then in I go (http://u-buffet.co.uk). The variety was not as vast as I had hoped for, however there was still plenty to choose from. The food was good and the staff where very friendly and quick to help you or clear tables. I did the unthinkable and had hot food, cold food (ice cream), cold food, hot food. I must say the last plate did feel a little unnecessary once I was eating it. But yummy all the same.

After that lovely dinner I walked, slightly slower, back to the tram stop. Where I nearly boarded the tram heading in the wrong direction. No worries though, I'm now back in the hotel charging iPads for tomorrow's event and looking forward to that drive! 

Saturday's Friday Recap

I made it home and have 36 hours to rest before getting back on the road. Which is needed because I currently can't talk and feel very tired in the mornings. So today (Saturday) is going to be a relax day.

To catch up yesterday, breakfast felt slightly un-required after the Chinese buffet, but I did manage half a bowl of cereal and a half of fruit. I also received a message about a gig for that evening, which involved meeting up at 7. This sounded like a great way to finish the week, hang with some friends and listen to music. The only trouble was getting back in time. It was possible, but we had travelled through roadworks to get to Sheffield and I was fairly sure we would see them again on the way back, this along with the fact it was a friend night meant that getting back for 7 would be ambitious. 

So when the time came, after another good UCAS event, we started the journey back to the south coast. Unfortunately we did not have access to the work satnavs, and the long journey meant using phones to navigate was out of the question, thanks to not so amazing battery life. Alas we had iPads! So with our Student Ambassador asleep in the back, Simone and I sorted the iPad to navigate our way back. Unfortunately this did mean that Simone had to hold the iPad all the way, though the thought of having the iPad on a window attachment did make me laugh as it would take up half the windscreen. Fortunately we did not end up in as much traffic or road works as I had expected, however it was still enough to prevent me from getting back in time to make the gig.  We stopped off at Oxford services around 6pm and where very grateful for a Harry Ramadans pie and chips. It was a fair drive from Sheffield to home, but I enjoyed discussing various topics Simone; family, work life, projects, our own histories. It was good and definitely made the drive go faster. 

As a side note the driving did remind me of my favourite road sign ever, from Australia of course. I couldn't find my own photo of the sign so I have utilised one from another site (http://driving.ca/auto-news/news/sleepy-drivers-almost-as-dangerous-as-drunks-study-3)

Today (Saturday) is a wash clothes, say hi to the cats, relax day, before going again tomorrow. Then starts week two, of three on my UCAS journeys. Unfortunately I didn't make it to the gig last night, which is a real shame. However I have no voice now, so I have no idea what I would be like if I had made it!