Starting at the car park at Finkle Street, near Wortley, a walk along the Trans Pennine Trail to Oxspring and back. Just over 10km. The path is really well maintained, mainly tarmac, although there are a couple of sections at the Finkle Street end that get churned up by trail bikes and horses so would be very muddy after rain.
Quite a boring section of the trail, mainly tree lined the whole way so the views are restricted, although there are many intersections with public footpaths and bridleways so lots of scope for making loops out to the farmland and hill.
It was about 9am when I started and there were a lot of trail runners, bikers, dog walkers, horse riders and many families doing bike rides in the sun.
I was going to go on to Penistone but found the path quite boring despite the people around ! so did a loop of Oxspring village and back to the start.
Main point of interest along this section was the tunnel at Thurgoland, sound of horses clip clopping there way through was loud !!!.
Best part of the morning was the ice cream sold at the farm shop in Finkle Street, I didn’t check the flavour though as I just stuck my hand in the fridge and picked out the first one. Turns out it was Lemon and Ginger, nice but not what I was expecting with the first mouthful. Our Cow Molly.
With just under a year to go until the Cateran Yomp 2021 I will class this short walk as my first training walk. Actually did this to add a few kilometres on the #100for100 challenge. It is the 100 year anniversary of the Royal Signals this year and has all the phsyical get togethers, events, reunions etc have been cancelled due to Coronavirus there are a few virtual challenges and events running.
Metrics as recorded by Garmin Vivoactive 3, nice walk around the reservoir with a brief walk up to the cliffs above. Couple of breaks for water etc on the way around.
After the 2020 event was cancelled due to the covid pandemic and deffering due to an heel injury for the 2021 event I am hopefully finally Going for Gold at the Cateran Yomp 2022, raising funds for ABF – The Soldiers’ Charity. If you stumble across this any support you may offer will be gratefully accepted. Or sign up yourself and come enjoy Scotland in June.
I did volunteer at the September 2021 event and despite spending 9 hours in a field in the middle of rural Scotland it was a really enjoyable event. Lots of tea and snacks made the time fly, The participant and volunteer numbers were well down on previous years but £400000 was raised for the charity which was great,
So time to dust off the boots and start training again.
Lucky old me won a pair of socks courtesy of Trail Walking magazine and Bridgedale.
2.3 miles to the base of the hill leading up to the temple complex., set off early but was still baking by the time I got there.
You can get horse rides on this beach, most of the horses are at the town end of the beach. Bit like Blackpool and the donkeys really, but hotter.
A few small stalls on the way up , so stopped off for a welcome Watermelon shake.
Made a donation and carried on, there were a number of donation boxes throughout the temple complex to help feed the cats, dogs, dogs and cats , and monkeys. Funnily enough I only saw 1 cat, no dogs, lots of monkeys though.
Lot of steps on the journey, more bloody up.
A few shrines on this part of the hill, there were people praying so did not want to take photos, but not a lot to see really. Except for the monkeys 🙈🙉🙊. There are lots of them, but they do not bother you at all like other places. In fact they try and avoid you where possible, they seem quite shy at having photos taken. When I raised the camera to get them face on they just turned away, guess they do not have Instagram.
I wanna be like you.
View from the other side of the hill. A European drowned and was dragged out of the water on this beach, about an hour after the photo was taken. Saw online he may have been Italian and possibly suffered heart attack. I have been on this beach before and it is quite shallow and no current so swimming is not hard there, so maybe just the heat got to the guy. The white temple is the most scenic part of the complex, but my camera battery was just about done. Also it was more up and I was getting hot and tired so just headed downhill.
At the bottom of the hill there is a small fishing village and fish market, lots of restaurants with that days catch and tanks full of crabs, prawns and other weird looking things. If you are not too keen on the smell of fresh fish you wouldn’t like this place. Bit early to eat so I carried on to find the Songthaew back to Hua Hin.
I had a soda water at one of the small shops and to ask the way, the servers in there couldn’t decide the best/quickest way to the station. So took the majority decision on the route by a show of hands.. .i.e who thinks left then right, who thinks right then left ?
They voted the wrong way in the end (a bit like Brexit) and the route took me back to the beach, down a bit, back inland and along. But 15 minutes later here it is.
10 minutes and 24 pence later I was in Swensons cooling down with a Strawberry and Banana ice cream.
Had dinner at a local Thai place in town, Panang curry. It was spicy, salty and sweet but no nuttiness as there is supposed to be. Could taste the lime in the curry sauce though. Also no veg in the curry, I think they were cutting corners. £3.50 with the beer.
Had a few more beers at a couple of bars and then had a coffee at Starbucks before getting a taxi back to the hotel.
Couldn’t decide if I wanted an iced black coffee or a hot black coffee, so the waitress persuaded me to try this thing. I am a sucker for a nice smile. First time I have had anything but black coffee for years, the sun must be getting to me. Iced Salted Caramel Frapuccino and cinammon bun I think.
Haven’t done much last couple of days except eat and swim. The pool has been very quiet and apart from a few kids using the paddle pool area I have been pretty much alone there. Most of the guests in the hotel are Asian so not sure if it is just a cultural thing about the pool.
Keep coming across different weird models in the hotel, also stumbled across a small pool with 5 or 6 terrapin/turtle things in it. Thought it was just a model until they started moving. Not very big pool and the poor things were trying to get out so cannot be too happy there….. do not like to see this kind of thing in a hotel.
The Bluport mall has a good selection of restaurants, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Laos, Pizza. etc some quite cheap and some expensive. The usual suspects are also here, KFC , Burger King, Starbucks etc.
There is a small food court area serving street food type dishes, this is usual for Thailand shopping centres. These are cheap. Had a quick walk through with my phone but will try and get a better video with my camera later in the week.
Had roast duck, roast pork and crispy pork belly with rice in some kind of gravy for £1.56, also came with a small bowl of broth which was tasty. I think the dark sauce was Hoi Sin with green chilli. Was sweet but not very spicy. Mango and sticky rice with coconut cream sauce for afters, my favourite (one of many) £1.20 for the dessert.
The card on the tray is the payment card, you load the card with cash at a kiosk and then use the card at the different stalls. You can keep using the card until it expires (not sure how long they last), anything left on the card you just cash in when ready.
Kit Kat in a bun, who would have thought.
The take away salad bar puts Morrisons to shame.
There is a 6 screen cinema in the mall, all the screens are showing the new Avengers movie. It is forecast rain in the afternoons for next few days so may give it a go.
Hotel restaurant was quite lively yesterday so had tea/dinner there. Spicy seafood fried rice (prawn, squid, mussels, clams) and some Thai fishcakes.
Took the minivan from Kanchanaburi to Hua Hin, costs about £12. You can get it cheaper by buying at the bus station but booked it at an agent as they arranged pick up from the guesthouse to the station. Took just over 4 hours in total.
Staying at Sailom Hotel, about 2 km out from the centre but easy enough to get to when needed, There are regular Songthaews running up and down the main road outside the hotel, cheap and easy to use. The hotel is right on the beach, has a cooling breeze off the ocean, it is a very quiet spot and even has some English channels on the tv. Rooms are a bit dated but are comfortable and the mattresses are not too firm. Don’t think i have mentioned but a lot of places, especially budget end, have very firm mattresses. In fact some of them are like sleeping on concrete, I don’t mind but can be a bit concerting if you fling yourself face down on the bed and don’t bounce.
Had the pool to myself yesterday afternoon, nobody else used it in the couple of hours I spent there. There is another smaller pool that had a few people around it. Think i will spend he morning at the pool again if it stays quiet.
Ate in the hotel yesterday and it is a bit pricey so will go out later today to find somewhere that has cheap eats.
Not a bad location for the included buffet breakfast though.
Bluport mall is 5 minutes walk away and will have all the usual mall facilities, expect there will be a cheap food court there so will check it out. Maybe go down the bar street tonight and pick up something cheap and cheerful, also some food. There is always street food in the bar streets.
There is a small market with food and drink stalls just outside the train station, also some restaurants around the area and some floating restaurants on the river. The bridge is a popular photo hot spot, many people trying to get the perfect instagram shot, especially if there is a train due. There are viewing platforms along the bridge so if a train does come along (only about 4 a day) then you can stand on them until the train passes. You can also take a speedboat or raft ride down the river and visit some sites further out.
Most people congregate around the first half of the bridge, not many actually make it all the way across. It takes more effort dodging all the people stopping to take pics than it does to walk across the bridge,I crossed the bridge and visited the temple on the other side. It is very quiet at the far end.
This is not actually the river Kwai, the guy who wrote the book got his rivers mixed up. The river the bridge was built over river actually called Mae Klong, however once the film of the book came out tourists started to visit the place to see the Bridge on the River Kwai. To stop confusion the Thais decided to rename a stretch of the river to Kwai Yai, which is where the Bridge is,
Small restaurant at the other end sells durian ice lollys if anybody fancies one.
There is also a small monument to the Chinese who died working on building the railway, it is not very well maintained and doesn’t look like it gets many visitors. Basically it is just an open air photo gallery.
The temple on the far side is Chinese, a lot different from normal Thai Temples.#
Set of status representing the Chinese Zodiac, I was born in the year of the pig,
Two monkeys having a chat,,,, who do they remind you of ?
Walked about 5 miles in total and was hitting 40 degrees when I got back to the guesthouse, the last 500 yards seemed to take forever. Suffering a bit from the heat and felt sick so just chilled by the river a bit
Off to the seaside tomorrow so hopefully should be a bit cooler there,
Found out at 8am this morning that the guesthouse only starts breakfast at 9:30, wtf is that all about. Anyway i took a walk up to the railway museum and war cemetary and found breakfast along the way.
It was at The Nine guesthouse, bit more expensive than the Smiley Frog but looks nice and in a quiet area. As you can see they have cat on the menu and it is really fresh.
I settled for egg on toast and a cup of tea.
Made my way to the Thailand-Burma Railway museum, not as boring as it sounds. The exhibits are well laid out and documented, they describe the story of the Japanese invasion and the building of the railway very well. Some of the exhibits are a bit graphic.
£3.63 entrance fee but you do get a drink with that at the end.
Spent about an hour altogether including a 10 minute film of veterans describing their experiences.
Of the 30,000 British pows around 7000 died during the building of the railway, mostly of malnutrion and diseases such as malaria and cholera. The Japanese offered false contracts to asian labourers to also work on the railway, they were treated even worse than the POWs and died in their tens of thousands, some of the Asian labourers had taken their families along on the false promises of the Japanese. There is no record of how many wives or childen would have died along the way.
There are quite a few good films about this period, Bridge on the River Kwai, To End All Wars, the most recent would have been The Railway Man.
Just across the way from the museum is the allied war cemetary,there are actually 3 in the area. Two thirds of this one seem to be British. As far as possible after the war the bodies of those who died in the jungle etc were recovered and identified and then laid to rest at the cemetaries around Kanchanaburi. The ashes of those cremated in the pow camps were also recovered and laid to rest here.
The cemetary is well maintained and cared far, each grave is marked by a headstone with the persons, name, rank, number and corps/ship. There is an index at the entrance which lists all the names, so any living relatives can easily find their graves.
There was actually a Thai school trip while I was here, the children had workbooks to identify various things about the cemetary, e.g youngest age, family name of the school teacher (who was English), which nationalities etc. Nice to see the kids so involved with their countries history, makes me wonder how many of kids in UK schools would know about what went on here.
Cup of ice coffee at Gravite on the way back, small coffee shop but the guy who runs it takes his coffee very seriously. Has no machines in there, he grinds all the beans by hand to order and uses drip feed method through filters. Takes a while but gives a purer taste to the coffee. I had one of the specials of the day, it was a Thai brand from the North. It tasted like just about every other coffee i have ever had but didn’t want to upset the guy after all his hard work.
Chicken Fried rice for lunch/dinner.
Been raining most of the evening so stayed at the guesthouse and had a bit of a feast for dinner/tea, spring rolls, pork with fried kaffir lime leaves and chilli, watermelon shake. About a fiver all in, the lime leaves give a really good lip smacking zing to the dish, The guesthouse gets good reviews for the restaurant but I find it only so so, everything i have had seems to be a bit over cooked.
I was going to get the train down to Kanchanaburi but my back is still a bit sore from the fall and didn’t fancy the two hour ride on a rickety old train. Asked the landlady about a taxi as it is only an hour or so by road, 1000 baht which is about £24. Luckily her grandad said he was going that way and would take me for half that – result.
Had my last breakfast of rice porridge and black coffee, princely sum of £1.21 and said my goodbyes. The porridge tastes better than it sounds, it is rice in a seasoned broth with lemongrass, galangal, onion, spring onion, coriander and carrot. There are variations in different regions. Was actually too much and I could not finish it.
The cook came to say goodbye.
I thought we would be in for a wild ride when I got in the pick up, Toyota Hilux, as he said “go slowly, my eye not so good”. Took his sunglasses off and his left eye was swollen and inflammed….. oh well in for a penny in for a pound and at least I saved £12,
The roads were quiet anyway so it was uneventful, but he could not find the right route to the guesthouse so I ended up walking the last half mile.
Staying at the Smiley Frog guesthouse, rooms are basic but it is very clean and has air con, en suite etc. The room is about half the size of the guesthouse I just left but the same price. It is off the main street so it is quiet but close to bars and restaurants.
There is a nice garden at the back overlooking the river, very peaceful there and spent a couple of hours chilling. A few noisy boat tours went up and down but only disturbed the peace for a couple of minutes
Had enough rice for today so had fish and chips for lunch/dinner. Was ok, not sure what type of fish it was. Probably catfish and it hadn’t seen a river in quite a while. All the menu items here were cheap as well, mine cost about £4 including watermelon shake.
Took a walk down the street in the evening, had a few beers at a sports bar and watched Rugby. The street was fairly quiet with about 20 bar/restaurants – Usual mix of backpackers, expats, tourists….
What better to finish the night after a few beers than a ham and cheese toastie from the 7/11 shop. £1.10 with a bottle of water,,,
Had a walk out to the waterfall, actually only about 15 minutes from the guesthouse so not too far. It is accessible from the main road so gets day trippers stopping off. Although it was quiet when i was there, mostly thai. A family of four did turn up, sounded like they were Dutch, expect they were on a tour as their guide was hurrying them along.
A few snaps along the way.
Decided to walk a bit further into the park to see if I could find the source of the stream.. but the signs in English ran out. Came to a crossroads but nothing to indicate which way so followed the stream into the bush a bit further…. soon became overgrown so headed back to the waterfall area.
Came across a snakey thing in the bush though..
Looks like they have had trouble in the past with people taking a bath !!!
Nice area to just hang out for a while, a lot of shade and the water keeps everything cool. Although this area is not as humid as say Bangkok it does get very hot and it saps the energy out of you.
Also saw a sign that said “Do not write or etch on the trees” thought it might have lost something in the translation until I came across a clump of bamboo with loads of graffitti.
There used to be a train station here also but it is now disused, there is a train though. Dates from the 1940s and was supposed to have been used by the Japanese.
This is someones house not far from the guesthouse.
20 metres down the road, this is also someones house. There are some ploughed fields around the big house, so guessing the people in the small house work the land for them.
Back to the guesthouse and my well deserved 12p cola ice lolly.
Tea/Dinner of spicy chicken and basil with a large beer, less than £3….
Go with Brian 