A new poem from "Be Prepared"

Be prepared for your visit to London with the London Guide.
Some people do not even try and are so sad when they come home!

This is a poem written for Strollon by one of these people:

I went to London to see the Queen. She couldn’t see me. She was having tea.

I went to London to talk to Van Gogh. He couldn’t hear me. His ear had come off.

I went to London to see Big Ben. He couldn’t hear me. He was just striking ten.

I went to London to see the Dome. It was no longer there and so I went home.

A stroll through Terminal 5

A stroll through the airport
Chaos and anger erupted at London airports last night.
I was at Heathrow where we were surrounded by mobs of very cross travellers.
Staff stood in the middle of the concourse and just told people to ring a very long number if they wanted information. Most of them did not have mobiles that worked, or their batteries were flat or they could not find a payphone.
Therefore here are a few hints for travellers in Terminal 5:
1. Plug sockets are near the toilets. They can charge the laptop and the mobile. You look like a tramp sitting on the floor but it is better than standing in a queue.

2. Go to any empty desks for information. Queues can be created at random. People think it has a purpose but often it is a crowd causing trouble. Other check-in desks welcome a friendly face and have the same information.

3. Use your looks and charm. I do not claim to have either of them but they work wonders on a hassled member of staff. Bad jokes are not welcome but always stroke egos and mop brows. Do you remember the hell of complaining customers?

4. Don’t get cross. You look an asshole to all other travellers and staff avoid you.

5. Grab a seat in a coffee shop. They can be gold-dust and buy you new friends.

I will bring you more hints next week.

Cycling across the Channel

I promised to keep you up to date with the news and history of famous strollers.
Well I forgot to mention the 30th anniversary of the first human powered flight across the Channel. Bryan L Allen cycled across it exactly 30 years ago. He is not exactly a stroller since he bicycled the whole way but he strolled at each end and so he qualifies for the Blog.
The plane had the romantic name of the Gossamer Albatross (a sister plane was solar powered and had the less suitable name of the Gossamer Penguin) with a wingspan of nearly 30 metres and an empty weight of 32kg. The key to man powered flight is the relationship between weight and the area of the wings. Therefore since we are so heavy, the machine has to have enormous wings. This plane's wing area was 150 square metres. Those people who attached wax and feathers never stood a chance.
He pedalled for 169 minutes to keep the "plane" airborne in order to get from England to France. This might not sound a long time but he had a head wind and he needed a lot of energy to keep the wings up. One of the team said that the maximum length of the flight was 170 minutes before he ran out of energy. His average height was 5 feet off the sea - try that on your next flight to France.
A copy of the plane is in the Museum of Flight in Seattle
I like to think that he only wanted to get to Paris to try our tours there since he had enjoyed the Strollon tours in London so much but I guess the prize of £50,000 was more important.
There is an award winning documentary about the flight that you can get from the internet movie database.
Although this might not be the most efficient way to reduce global warming and save the planet, we have to praise the man for showing that we must never give up.
In passing it worth emphasising that when you are on one of our walks, you are doing a lot more to save the planet than when you are on top of the tour buses. You could of course take a bicycle but I would not recommend braving the London traffic with earphones attached to an MP3 player.
Keep strolling.....

Charles behaved worse than Berlusconi?

Royal scandal: Charles caught swimming with "friends".
Strollon brings you another royal scandal.

Just like the Italian President, there is no doubt that Charles' reputation rises with each story of his affairs with women of all classes. Will scandal do for Charles what it has done for Berlusconi? We might not always be better than the Italians at football but our royals certainly beat their politicians!

His lovers ranged from shopkeepers to Duchesses seeking the fame and wealth that comes with political scandals. Age took away his sexual drive but in his heyday it was well known amongst the upper classes that if he did not make love at least once a day then he became impossible.

Although Charles has been famous for many things including a style of architecture, he is not known for having the looks of a Hollywood pin-up. We have come across many stories of his affairs - some are proven to be true but others have been fabricated to feed the public's love of famous lovers. One fact is that one of his mistresses called him Charles III because she had had 2 previous lovers also named Charles.

You can hear more about this at the website at www.strollon.co.uk.

You will by now have realised that none of this story involves our present Prince of Wales. This is the real macho behaviour of his ancestor King Charles II who used to swim in St James Park with his mistresses. He was never embarrassed to show off his sexual conquests that included Nell Gwynne who was an actress and orange seller in Covent Garden and is reputed to have bedded the king within a few days of meeting him.

StrollOn’s iPod walks are full of such anecdotes about the scandalous lives of the saints, sinners and strumpets that fill the history of London. Listen to some of them on our website. You can either download our own tours or you can make up your own from more than 200 chapters covering sights throughout major European cities.

Over the next few weeks we will be continuing our stories in our blogs and newsletter. If you have your own stories then please write to us at info@strollon.co.uk so that we can include them on our website.

The wrong result, relegation and rifts

I'm sure most of you had a fine bank holiday weekend, enjoying the early summer sun as it bathed the countryside in its glorious, unexpected rays of warmth. And if that was the case then good on you; I hope you managed to get outside with the family and burn yourself to a cinder. Because only then would you begin to empathise with me, although the resulting physical discomfort will have been as nothing to the emotional torture that a couple of members of the StrollOn team and I suffered come 3 pm on Sunday.

This was the moment that Stephen Fry's and my beloved Norwich City were relegated to the depths of the third tier of English football for the first time in 50 years. This is the footballing equivalent of being sent to the "naughty step" at nursery school. As I'm sure you'll recall from your days spent "in Coventry" it's damaging and very difficult to bounce back from.  

As a Canaries supporter I have now suffered two relegations in the past 4 years. My pride has been hurt, especially after having put so much time, money and love into supporting the boys in yellow and green since the days of my youth. Perhaps this hurt was more visible than I thought. Few of the friends staying with me over this distastrous weekend sought to pour salt into these newly opened wounds. Perhaps they feared that if taunted I might, like a wounded buffalo, react in an unpredictable and aggressive manner. Perhaps they were concerned that the reaction might not happen immediately, but that vengeance would be sought over time, at a time that suited me. And they would have been right, because I was an angry, angry little man.

Some time ago I managed to have a chat with the current CEO of the club on the phone after leaving a rather pointed post on the club's unofficial website, the Pink'Un. What I said to the man overseeing the club's gentle but inexorable decline was that I did not think that he was the right man for the job. Since 2004 he had made mistake after mistake. I, like so many others, no longer had faith in either him or the rest of the board. It was time for a change.

And not a change in players, manager or coaching staff and this has been done to death - the death of the club. Instead we now need to look at those in a position to appoint new managers and coaches and vet the sales and purchases of new players. Whilst we cannot change the whole board, we can make changes within it; electing a new CEO would, in my opinion, be a good start.

In the meantime, the team and I are going to continue thinking about other things, unrelated to Norwich City Football Club. The Summer Holidays are approaching when football clubs and supporters alike have time off to relax for a few weeks, recharging the batteries before a new season begins. And what recharging needs to be done. Come mid-June we'll know more about midwinter trips to Yeovil, Carlisle and Exeter. Since StrollOn's focus has become increasingly UK based to help service all those planning "staycations" this year, this might be a good chance to research first hand some of our lesser known regional centres. 

If you live in a regional centre which, you feel, has a lot to offer the discerning visitor then please do get in touch. We're always on the look out for new subject matter to cover in our next line of mp3 audio guides. Just send us an email and we'll be in touch.

Until then, StrollOn.com...

  

Next Easter will be audibly better

A good afternoon to all our readers and a very Happy Easter for this Sunday. As mentioned in my last entry I'm off to Norfolk for the weekend, which is unsurprising as that's where I come from. Unlike my girlfriend to whom you might expect me to be loosely related. 

But before I head off down the M11 and into the sunset I just wanted to assure you that next year Easter will be a more exciting occasion. Although we just missed the boat in 2009, come 2010 you can rest assured that our Easter Egg Hunt Audio Guide will be ready for action. Of course there'll be one in London, but I also want to find out from those travellers amongst you where else (in terms of European cities) you'd like to spend an Easter weekend exploring.  

Are we going for famed Christian and culture centres, such as Rome, Venice, Seville, Prague, Vienna and Paris, or are we looking for a different experience all together. Alley ways and small back streets make for the best discovery grounds, so maybe Tallinn or Split. So let me know what you think - it's you chance to make a difference to Easter 2010...

In the meantime, StrollOn...

Like the rest of the UK StrollOn looks closer to home

We have got ourselves into a right little pickle, haven't we? The pound has dropped so much against the Euro that is has now become prohibitively expensive to visit our favourite haunts in Spain, France and Italy. Once the preferred destination of city breakers and package holidaymakers alike we now simply cannot afford to even leverage a beverage when we arrive on the ground in Barcelona, Paris or Rome. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the World - in spite of crumbling markets and broken economies - seems to be finding enough loot to head in the opposite direction and make the most of the lowly pound. So much so in fact that we've hardly seen a drop (if at all) in year on year visitor numbers to London and the like. But what can we do? Do we just have to sit at home this year, riding out the storm? Personally I don't believe that the British will be fazed by a weak currency and rising unemployment. We may cut down on some luxuries, such as fresh vegetable and durable loo roll, but we will not cut down on them all. Which is why the word "holiday" continues to play on everyone's mind as the summer approaches. 

Much like me you do not want to be left behind in June and July, sharing your capital or home town with the barbarian hordes from mainland Europe and the US. No, you want to go abroad, but somewhere where your money will buy value. In which case we're suggested to avoid the Eurozone and North America and advised to consider new destinations. In Europe the best deals can be found in Iceland, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary and Turkey. Thereafter carriers have made it easier (on the wallet) to get out to both the Middle and Far East. 

Have a look at AirAsia and you'll see what I mean. The advent of the low cost, long haul carrier couldn't have occurred at a better time.  

But can you really be bothered to pack up, pay what is still (relatively speaking) a small fortune and head abroad? Holiday yes, but abroad really?! I think that this is when we should all stop a moment and consider the opportunity that has been put before us - the opportunity to get to know our own island a little bit better. And it will feel like arriving in a foreign country as you pass the railwayline in Brandon on the A1065, because I'm telling you that all your vacational needs can be found in Admiral Lord Nelson's county, Royal Norfolk. Just sit down, take a look at the following and tell me that I ain't as mad as a turkey drumstick...

You know it makes sense. I'm heading off there this weekend and I'll let you know how it goes should I manage to escape come Monday night. If not, follow my cries for help on Twitter. 

In the meantime, StrollOn...