While at Citizen Chain I collected a few random pieces for the bike. The Brooks standard B17 saddle (honey and men’s…. couldn’t see that I needed a specific women’s one), the MKS GR-9 platform pedals and MKS toe clips with brown leather trim.

So that still left a surprising number of parts to order online from Australia. With the generous help of Nick and Naomi I ordered the majority of the parts from Wiggle, Chain Reaction Cycles, Rivendell and Velo Orange.

The parts that didn’t fit…

Shimano BR-550 cantilever brakes. The original bike had cantis so I thought these would work. Turns out none of the newly made cantis will fit old bikes.

The beautiful Dia Compe brake levers from Velo Orange. The change in brakes meant that I had to change the brake levers too.

VO headset. I can’t remember why, but there was something non-standard about what the frame required. The frame is particularly short at the front so it may have been to do with the thread length.

The bits that did work…

The Nitto Randonneur drop bars, bought from Nick as they weren’t the right size for him.

The Nitto tall stem (26/70mm). A hard one to track down but worth it so that I didn’t go from a standard hybrid height to a super-low drop bar height. Also needed a shim to make the stem fit the 25.4mm bars.

The seat post is new-old-stock of the original Kalloy brand and was found on eBay. It’s 27mm rather than the more standard 26.2mm.

Dura Ace 9-speed bar end shifters. These are so nice to use. Indexed to click on the right but not for the three on the left.

Stronglight crankset (Impact Triple chainset 28/38/48 170mm). I was deciding between a double and triple. I rarely use the three cogs in my city commuting but I figured there was no harm in having the triple for the occasional country ride I might do. I was also looking at Sugino cranksets but this one is now discontinued so I got it for the super-cheap price of $45.

I ended up going for v-brakes when the cantilevers weren’t going to work. That meant the Cane Creek brake levers were my only option. At first this was a little disappointing, but now I appreciate that I have top quality brakes which stop really well. They give the bike a sportier look than I was originally going for with the brown but it works nicely.

The brakes I have are Avid Single Digit SL V Brakes with Kool Stop salmon pads.

SRAM 9-speed cassette. Went for the 9-speed to fit the bar end shifters. 11-32 was the spec… for reasons I can’t remember.

Jack Brown (green) tyres. These feel amazing. Well, it’s probably the combination of rims and hubs too, but they bounce so nicely.

Mavic Open Sport Pros spoked at Cheeky Monkey in Newtown (the people who also assembled the bike).

Ultegra front and rear hubs 32 hole

Tiagra front derailleur.

Shimano rear derailleur.

SRAM 9 chain.

Chromoplastic fenders. Despite being plastic, these look great. They also have the advantage of being lighter, cheaper and quieter than the very nice looking Honjos.

After all that I also bought a New York Kryptonite lock but it’s heavier than I anticipated so I only use it when leaving the bike in dodgy areas.

I didn’t find my perfect bike that day but I instead found a frame – a Bridgestone RB-T. At the time I wasn’t aware of its historical significance, but I liked the look of it, how it could work for me and it was my size so I bought it. “Much easier to take a frame to Australia than a bike,” as a visitor hanging out in the shop told me.

Since then I’ve been learning what all the parts are called and what bits would be best for me, all thanks to the generous help of some clued in friends. I’m only just at the stage of understanding how all the parts work together so I definitely won’t be building it myself, no, that task will be left to Cheeky Transport in Newtown.

So here’s a photo of the frame, and next will be a list of all the parts followed by the built bike itself. Exciting stuff… for bike nerds at least.

Growing up with a small patch of Australian bush up the road I never understood why the woods were supposed to be scary. The bush has always been a place of adventure, discovery and good times. Warm, dry and bright with a strong eucalypt scent and the comforting buzz of insects. I never once found a trail of breadcrumbs or scary bears looking for porridge.

Back in Siuslaw, the road through the forest curved on and on – even tunnelling through a mountain – before ending up by streams, rivers and finally the coast. We drove through small towns which were variations on a theme with a few quirks thrown in. One town had an eBay shopfront where a power seller (TM) was dispersing to the world the goods of computer-illiterate locals.

We spent our first night of the road trip in the seaside town of Port Orford. It was remarkably smaller and darker than Google Maps told us (things always look bright and easy on Google Maps). Despite arriving at our B&B at 5.15pm it was well and truly pitch black. Being from the city, I can’t remember the last time I saw this much darkness, however it fitted in nicely with the wood fire and the home-made cookies at the beautiful Compass Rose B&B.

We headed straight out to dinner (“restaurants close at 8pm around here”) at Griff’s On The Dock, a slightly kooky place recommended on the Thorntree forum (“ask them what’s fresh and order it”), and by the B&B owner. The place reminded me of a tiny truck-stop – all red and white tablecloths, busy walls and a waitress with all the charm of your no-nonsense school canteen lady. Our table quickly filled with clam chowder, salads, calamari, halibut, steamed clams, garlic bread and beer from nearby city of Bend. The place really was right on the dock, a shack amongst boats, although we were oblivious to them as we curved down the ramp towards the sea. Like going through digital camera photos the morning after a party, we drove back to the dock to see just what we had done the night before.

Arriving to a town in darkness – especially one too small for a walkable strip or streetlights – means you need to wait til morning for it to reveal itself. We woke to see sunshine streaming through the forest and a view through to the marshes and a lake. It was a beautiful and secluded spot. Walking around the forest on a sunny day was nothing like the scary misty forest of the previous day. The ground felt like thick Persian carpet and there were soft textures in all directions. There were birds, salamanders, and deer hoof prints, although it wasn’t until we were leaving that we saw actual deer frolicking by the side of the road.

The dramatic coast of Oregon and the beaches of Port Orford are best left to photos – even my amateur ones.

But I think it’s fairer to say you’ll know why Nirvana wrote the music they did. It’s a city for book reading, movie watching, music making and discussions over coffee. Whenever the weather got too much for us – too cold or too drizzly – it was an excuse to stop at a cafe for chilli soup, for crumpets, or for coffee and a cookie; or an excuse to pop into the wonderful Elliot Bay Books to buy heavy hardcover things we never realised we needed; or an excuse to pop into yet another record store over-flowing with new and used CDs in all imaginable genres.

So I can imagine it would be a good place to hang out in a shed with a few mates and make some melancholy rock music. Although this grey weather = melancholy music theory doesn’t stack up when you think about Glasgow’s twee pop masters, Belle & Sebastian.

My list of things to check out in Seattle:

Georgetown. Unless you’re into Fantagraphics Comics there’s no real reason to come here, but this area known as the wild west has an abandoned industrial town feel to it – and in a good way. Cute cafes and bars are popping up around here too.

Capitol Hill. I think this is the swankier part of town. Suddenly there were people dressed in coats rather than in waterproof North Face jackets and sneakers (the uniform for the rest of the city). Pike Fish Fry is an excellent place for all your deep fried needs – even the vegetables are fried. The fish and chips were the best I can remember but there’s also pulled pork and hanger steak for the non-fish lovers out there.

Pioneer Square. Pretty area of downtown where Elliot Bay Books is located.

Pike Place Market. The tourist epi-centre. Buy some donuts because you want something warm and comforting then regret it later. On 1st Ave but still part of the markets is The Crumpet Shop. It’s probably the only place to go for decent tea, not to mention home-made crumpets.

Seattle Centre. More touristy-ness which is probably an equivalent to Sydney’s Darling Harbour but the lack of sunshine gives it an abandoned theme park feel, in a good way though (I’ve really got a soft spot for neon signs glowing in the mist now).

The Experience Music Project is in the Seattle Centre Park. Go there to check out more garishly shiny work of Frank Gehry and then stay to learn how to play the chord progression from Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’.

Coffee places other than Starbucks. I’m confused that Starbucks (the worst coffee in the world) comes from a place known for having good coffee. Did Starbucks once make good coffee but the standards went down as they expanded across the globe? It’s the white elephant in the room so I didn’t dare ask but instead found some places with a menu I recognised and espresso machines rather than drip coffee sitting bitter in the corner. A tiny hole in the wall, Cafe Bambino in Ballard just down from The Sneakery, served the real stuff, and the cafe underneath Elliot Bay Books did too.

The next day we set off on foot to the western side of the city. Past the Art Gallery of Ontario with its bulging submarine-like facade, a recent addition by Frank Gehry; past the Royal Ontario Museum, an old stone building which has been attacked by a contemporary steel with pleasing results; then to our destination Kensington Market. This is an open air market where the stalls all have shop fronts, more akin to shanty-town markets I’ve seen in South East Asia than to something like Paddy’s market in Sydney. Colourful fruit and vegie displays, smelly fish shops, European delis and Middle Eastern stalls of dried fruit and nuts sat amiably next to signs of gentrification.

The area around Nassau St is one place to find the work of local designers. There’s Hardboiled printing t-shirts with designs from locals, and across the road is Kid Icarus, a stationary shop with pretty cards, paper and actual prints from locals. Can we have one of these in Sydney please?

The area has a laid back hippy vibe, helped by the shops being more like converted houses with front yards. Like stumbling into a tea party you’re not invited to, I was on my best behaviour and decided against whipping out the camera. In front of the bookshop, This Ain’t The Rosedale Library, two guys solemnly tinkered on their clarinet and guitar as if they were sitting in their own lounge room with no one else around. Girls in beanies stood around with coffee in cups and saucers, presumably from the cafe next door.

Further south and a couple of days later we would welcome more of this hippie vibe. Want soy bacon with your French toast and maple syrup? Sadie’s Diner is known as one of the few places in the city to get a decent vegan breakfast. We met a couple of ex-pat vegans there who had recently relocated to Toronto with much ease, commenting on just how pleasant the customs people were.

We also met up some some “Irish” relatives while in town. I say “Irish” because, like my Mum, this cousin of hers left Belfast some decades ago. Being chauffered along the scenic route to Missisauga showed us more than we could cover on foot. The site of the yearly fair, leafy inner suburbs, High Park, a Polish neighbourhood and a strip known for its gigs. Despite having never met these relatives before, a common history and some similar interests – music, theatre, online media – gave us plenty to talk about. And we were of course pleased to have a wonderful home cooked meal after many nights eating out. Can anyone make mashed potato as well as the Irish? I think not.

Two other great things I must mention about Toronto: shoe shops and the Art Gallery of Toronto.

The Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto is dedicated to the history of the shoe. Yes, it sounds frivolous but the best bits were thoroughly educational from the oldest known footprints (found in volcanic ash) to early shoes from different continents and religions.

So given there is a shoe museum it makes sense that there are also many great shoe shops, particularly boots. If you’re going to spend half the year wearing boots you want to have a few to choose from. Gum boots are taken to a new level, and apres ski-boots are just as fashionable as regular boots. Even Camper and Nike make snow boots.

The Art Gallery of Ontario with its $18 entry fee almost didn’t make the cut. The special exhibitions weren’t that exciting and we’d just been to plenty of museums and galleries in NY and DC. But with nineteen Canadian dollars left in my purse and a few hours before our bus left I decided it was meant to be. The stars must’ve aligned because it was the best gallery experience I can remember. The Gehry extension to the gallery made a smooth transition from looking in the gallery to looking through the windows to the park and street below. The elevator had a video installation work which went for as long as your ride (“You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to”). There was a whole room of Henry Moore sculptures naturally lit by skylights at the request of his daughter. Canadian art was well represented and its significance explained. There were two floors of contemporary art, many rooms of drawings and a room crammed from floor to ceiling with paintings minus labels to demonstrate how women’s art used to be exhibited. I peaked around a corner from the drawings to look out the window and was invited to have a look at their study room and adjoining print archive where they store 60,000 works. They had a few works out on the tables for closer inspection, including The Vampire by Edvard Munch. The only disappointing bit was not being able to find postcards of the Gehry building in the shop!

It’s the fourth time I’ve been to NY yet it still takes me a moment to get used to the pace. Stay to the right. Walk without making eye contact. Speak up when spoken to. Know your order when you get to the counter. Don’t stop suddenly on the pavement.

Of course, breaking any of these rules will get you nothing more than a scowl from the people around you. You soon realise it’s all a game and the more you play the more addictive the city becomes. Soon you’re crossing against the lights ahead of the locals and cursing the subway gate when it doesn’t let you through on the first swipe. You start reacting without a thought and become an unaffected urban-dweller.

Needless to say, the buzz of NY was a welcome relief after a couple of days in DC. Driving into Manhattan that night to the endless blocks of tall buildings, busy sidewalks, colour, grit and dirt woke us from our DC slumber.

The East Village would be our home for the next four nights in a warehouse called East Village Bed & Coffee. It’s a simple and excellent idea: own a warehouse in a hip neighbourhood, put a few rooms on each floor, let it run like a share house complete with little signs telling you to clean up after yourself. Provide bikes to share and a dog, Mango, to greet you when you get in.

NY highlights (in small bite-sized chunks)

The food:

Porchetta has six stools and a huge lump of slow roasted pork. The shop front, about 2.5 metres wide, resembles that of an old-fashioned butcher’s with clean white tiles and a big glass window (see for yourself in exhibit A). The pork, slow roasted with garlic, rosemary and fennel, is served either on a roll or on a plate with beans and greens. We also got a chicory salad on the side and crispy potatoes with burnt ends. These ‘burnt ends’ were delightful little shavings of crisp pork – a fairy floss for the meat lovers of the world. Wash it all down with fresh lemonade.

Joe’s Shanghai has been doing soup dumplings, or xiao long bao as they’re known in Sydney, since the mid-nineties. They’re large, highly soupy and are served with the traditional vinegar and shredded ginger. Not quite to the standard of Din Tai Fung in Sydney or the even better Hu Tong Dumpling Bar in Melbourne, but a still a reliable feast. The ma-po tofu on the other hand more closely resembled the American-Chinese food we’d had in the past, too sweet and not enough chilli.

Some French restaurant on Ave A: I love that in NY you can go out for dinner at 10.30pm on a weeknight without feeling rushed or lonely in the restaurant. The food here was fine without being spectacular, but the real joy was its cosy local vibe which somehow made the wine taste better and the moules and frites just what I was looking for.

The outdoors:

The High Line is a new public garden made on top of an disused elevated railway line which once served the meat-packing district. It currently runs from around 8th St to 20th St but it will expand further north with it’s hardy plants interspersed between train tracks and stylishly formed concrete.

The artificial rolling hills and horse and carriages of Central Park are all a bit twee, but the size and placement of this park is hard to ignore. Walking through with the tips of buildings sticking out behind the trees makes the experience feel almost like a movie set. The weather turned cold so we wussed out on the original plan to cycle all the way through it.

We walked through Tompkins Square Park everyday and NY is spotted with little local parks like this one with a many fenced off areas serving different purposes. This East Village one is flavoured mostly with dog-owners and kid-owners, although later at night it seemed a little sketchy but was still harmless.

The culture:

The Tenement Museum is a lot like Susannah Place Museum in The Rocks area of Sydney; social history told through stories of the people who resided in the buildings. The tour starts in front of the bustling little shop on Orchard St with an introduction by the guide – not a dusty old guide, but a young hip one from Brooklyn – then proceeds into 97 Orchard St for the rest of the tour.

Doing The Met Museum and MOMA in one day would perhaps be ambitious for some, but we like to wander through somewhat aimlessly and then leave again before fatigue sets in. The Met’s scale, design and collection is reminiscent of European Galleries, and its setting right on Central Park makes it a beautiful tourist stop. MOMA is always satisfying with the permanent collection, sculpture garden and special exhibitions. We borrowed a MOMA membership card from our accommodation to get us into a member viewing on the new Bauhaus exhibition before it opened. I was so pleased with it that I’ve been carting the very heavy exhibition catalogue around with me since.

From my days of working for a museum I knew The Brooklyn Museum was the envy of all for its ability to experiment online and succeed. I didn’t realise just how much this approach carried over to their actual museum. We happened to be there for Target First Saturday where the museum is open for free until 11pm with performances and a bar. You may have been to after hours events at galleries before but I bet it wasn’t like this. The place was crammed with people of all demographics: the obligatory hip, young scenesters, Japanese tourists, African American families and older locals. It wasn’t about being seen or getting in for free, the museum has become a meeting place for the local community. People stopped to chat in crowded stairwells, kids ran around looking at African art, others lined up for over half an hour to see the temporary rock photography exhibition. While this happened up above in the wings, down on the ground floor a DJ was remixing Billie Jean to a crowded dancefloor and people peered through arches two storeys up to get a glimpse of the action. So the lesson here? Throw out the conservative approach to after hours exhibition viewings and instead let the public experience the museum in the way corporate venue hire clients do.

In DC I found myself making the same excuses I make in Canberra and talking up the positives of the place. Yes, the parks are lovely and the museums are great but where is the city centre with some sign of life? North-west of Dupont Circle had a certain buzz in the evening and plenty of restaurants and bars. Georgetown was leafy and pretty but it verged on being painfully quaint.

We hired bikes near the Washington Mall area to meander through the monuments and museums. I’m sure American tourists get a lot more from this place after hearing about it in school for years. My main connection was with the Lincoln Memorial where I remembered The Simpsons episode where Lisa went to him for advice. He certainly was imposing in real life. It’s a massive shrine that looks down upon the memorial pond.

The Smithsonian Air & Space Museum was next. It was huge, having to accommodate planes after all. We walked through some old planes and looked at space food sticks, so I can’t really say it was the most riveting museum experience. We then crossed the park to The Smithsonian National Gallery of Art, an imposing building, all stairs, columns and heavy doors without signs. This building was amazing, possibly more amazing than the art it contained. The rooms had the all the ambience and style of a European art gallery but without the crowds. A few rooms in was an indoor garden, green and lush with water features and garden furniture to sit and appreciate. Of course, more marble columns and a high skylighted ceiling.

Across the road at the east wing of the gallery is the contemporary collection. This one impressed with both architecture and content – Jackson Pollack, Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko and Roy Lichtenstein.

It took me a while to pinpoint what felt odd about all of the museums and then it clicked. The only people working in the museums seemed to be security guards. Security guards checking bags on the way in and more guards spread throughout the galleries. They were completely free of the usual information desks, membership signs or art students working between studying. If felt like no one was really curating exhibitions or enhancing the collection. They had a big pile of of great artefacts and art and so it’s just been housed in these museums and forgotten.

Of course, maybe I’d think differently if I’d slept the night before.

Down in the Mission on a Monday night, waiting for a bus, a Cuban band plays unnofficially in a corner square in front of a supermarket. A couple start dancing in front of the crowd and passers-by jump up on park benches to get a better view. We’d just finished a burrito (shared because even a single burrito in the US is family sized) at Farolito Taqueria after discovering Artillery (24th and Mission), a shop full of gear by really local, as in Mission area, designers. At first glance I thought it was just a hipster-den, but beneath the surface it actually had some substance. I walked out of there knowing I was doing my bit for the local community by buying a bag, a dress and a t-shirt for Peter.

Speaking of hipsters, there’s about 10 times more of them in the Mission area since we were last there in April 07, particularly on Valencia. Not that I mind. More cool shops in addition to the bookstores and record stores we visited last time, lots of bike porn (although far too many fixies) and even a decent coffee place.
Given the general low standards of coffee in the US, Ritual Coffee Roasters was quite a find only hours after I got off the flight from Sydney. I ordered a machiato to go and the guy tried to convince me to have it in a real cup in the cafe “to keep the temperature high and not have any paper taste.” I somehow didn’t think their coffee would be so precious to deserve such treatment and I was right. What came was more like a piccolo latte rather than an espresso with a drop of milk, but it was perfectly nice, almost as good as the stuff around the corner from work. I couldn’t believe that people were lining up out the door only to order grande mochas. Surely the single origin goodness wouldn’t come through in a milkshake sized chocolatey coffee? Baby steps, baby steps.

But the hipsters haven’t taken over this area, rather, they sit nicely in the varied pot of cultures. While Valencia is becoming gentrified, Mission St is still full of local stores, and most importantly for me, cheap good food. Mexican, African American and Vietnamese still dominate the area named the Mission because the first outsiders to arrive, the Spanish in 1776, they set the local Native Americans to work building them a mission. It never really turned out so they ended up handing it over to the Mexicans who made something of the area. Two Mission Mexican meals into the trip, I’m grateful for it.

But this was England and this was the M1. Two miles from Nottingham we all came to a standstill and soon traffic stopped flowing from the other direction as well. Turns out there was a major accident further down the road closing off both directions of England’s main motorway. That means everyone was going to Nottingham for lunch! Two hours later and our two mile crawl into Nottingham was over.

On the road again we were on the road south. Somewhere along the way we (I) decided we needed to go via Bicester, just outside of Oxford, for its factory outlet shops which included a Camper shop (yes, yes, the Camper shop tour of the world, I know). The delay meant I only had an hour to choose between pretty shoes, gorgeous leather and soft angora from Pringle before they closed.

It was now around 8pm (and still light, of course) so the original plan to cook at the Cotswold cottage went out the door. We stocked up on food at the supermarket next door but decided to go to Oxford, just down the road, for dinner.

By the time we finished dinner it was getting close to 10pm and we still had about an hour long drive to the Cotswolds and this is where things started to go wrong. Well not so much wrong, as things were’s going as I planned so I started to worry. To summarise: we were low on petrol and there are no open petrol stations at that hour in country England; we were vaguely lost the whole way there, thanks to the confusing numbers and signs of England’s roads; and we realised we didn’t have the street address for the cottage.

It’s just a cottage in Nailsworth. Turns out Nailsworth is full of cottages and we had no way of knowing which was the right one, except for Peter’s memory when he’d been here a good ten years earlier. I couldn’t believe we were in a town where everyone had gone to sleep, in a car with no petrol, looking for a house we didn’t know the address of!

Peter worked out the street quickly enough, and luckily it was daytime in Australia so we could’ve called the relos who know the place more intimately than us. Once we’d found the street we had to work out which of the 6 or so houses matched the description of where the owner said the keys would be left. Acting like cat burglars we felt around the front garden of one house looking for a table and a pot plant. No luck. A couple of houses later we found a gate and a table and a pot plant that had to be the one. The sound of the front door unlocking was the best thing I’d heard all day.

The next day the sunlight showed us just how beautiful the little cottage was. We were in the top storey attic room, three floors up winding stairs from the street. Even the carpeted bathroom with a bath and no shower was cute.

Just down the road from the cottage was the amazing Hobbs House Bakery, which was so good it makes we weep not being near it now. Oh how I love solid English/Irish bread with it’s wheaty flavour that, with a good slab of butter, can’t be matched by any bread around the world. There was also a gourmet grocer, a flower shop and everything else you’d hope for in a stereotypical (but fashionably upmarket) English village.

Over the next couple of days we drove to Bath and Bristol, we contemplated driving to Wales because it was there, and we met up with fellow Aussies who were temporarily working and living nearby Mike, Jackie and Brendan in the quaint town of Broadway for a pub lunch.

On the way back to London we spent a day in Oxford with Peter’s friend Oz who is doing a PhD there in something scarily academic and physics-like. Highlights: burritos for lunch, cookies and milk stall in the market, an insider’s tour of the insides of an Oxford college, long walks through parks, watching people (badly) punting and eating French for dinner.

And that was is for the green rolling hills of England because the next and last stop on the European voyage was London.

Driving from Edinburgh in our hired VW Passat we couldn’t really tell what the speed limit was. We assumed it couldn’t be more than 70 miles but people were speeding past us at any opportunity. Lesson 1: The UK speed limit is 70 miles but people like to go faster than that.

There’s some beautiful countryside on the road from Edinburgh south west to the Lake District. We met a friend of Peter’s for a Sunday pub lunch in Penrith (mm, chocolate bread and butter pudding) and then continued our journey south.

First stop was Manchester, a sparkling rejuvenated city with a massive mall, a curry mile, a little China town and a nice selection of hipster shops in the Northern Quarter. I can highly recommend staying in the Hilton Chambers around that part of town.

Manchester and Liverpool are both pretty big cities so I only recently realised they’re onlyl 45 minutes apart. So a daytrip to the Liverpool TATE was next on the agenda. We set off early to stop by Crosby Beach, north of Liverpool, to see a massive year long installation by Antony Gormley. Somehow we navigated close enough to the beach to see a brown tourist street sign telling us to go left. Scored! But that was the only sign and there was still a lot of coast to investigate. We decide to wander around from the second car park we pull into. There’s an old lady walking her dogs in the semi-rain and full-wind who I ask for directions. “If I had 20p for every person who asks me that! Keep walking that way and you can’t miss them. They’re staring all the way to New York.”

So we walked on and she was right, we couldn’t have missed them once we got to the right place. I should’ve given her 20p. If you’re ever in the area do drop by because it’s a mighty impressive installation. One hundred life-sized cast iron figures staring out to sea from a semi-industrial piece of coastline. Check out other peoples’ pictures to see for yourself.

The Liverpool TATE is also great. We went to see the temporary exhibition on Gustav Klimt but were most impressed at exhibitions from their collection, of which we only got through one floor.

We had a quick wander through the city centre and were reminded often enough that Liverpool was the home of the Beatles. No time for lingering because there was still Manchester to see more of, including Affleck’s Palace.

Sadly Affleck’s isn’t what it used to be. Or so I’m led to believe given it was my first visit. It’s a big old warehouse building on a corner that for years (since 1982 according to their website) has been a ecclectic and independent market. I think the story goes that the building was set for demolition but then ‘saved’ but a developer/businessman who now runs the market. There were a few more interesting stalls but most of it was aimed at the goth or clubber sub-cultures of the ’90s (or the kids of today just getting into those looks).

Our last city in the ‘up north tour of the UK’ was Leeds. After a few hours exploring the city we headed slightly out of the city to the headquarters of Norman Records. Norman are a mail order CD shop with an excellent weekly newsletter and a broad range of interesting music. Peter organised to check out their office and while he was there, also checked out their store of CDs. Richard, who works at Norman and also plays in a exellent band, put us up in his lovely Pudsey terrace (complete with cute garden and cat) but not until we’d had fantastic Indian at a place called Akbar’s in nearby Bradford. What’s not to love about 2 foot long naan that hangs from a cast-iron rod on your table? Mmm.