Folks at work have referred to my travels as a tour of Dying British Seaside Towns, and they maybe have a point. Bournemouth clearly has had better days, and Blackpool is less ‘faded glory’ and more ‘decaying remnants’, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that Aberdeen isn’t the crumbling industrial wasteland it was described as.
It’s rather nice. It’s like Edinburgh if those awful tourist shops selling plastic tartan crap had never existed, so instead you have the sort of shops & cafes that people in a city centre are more likely to use, and you need to pay a little bit of attention to find anywhere that’ll sell you some postcards.
I’m told that I got the small season of good weather, and that it’s miserable there the rest of it. Given that the person in question got snowed on in Aberdeen in May, it may be that they’re biased. Or in possession of accurate information.
I left Blackpool on the Friday & made it to Aylesbury in pretty good time thanks to a lucky connection at Preston where the train arrived as I got to the appropriate platform.
The reason for the trip was a birthday BBQ “Sausage Party” for Becs on the Saturday, with the idea that people would bring weird sausages. I managed to miss the fancy dress element, but was reminded in time.
Maybe wires got crossed, or maybe the folks I was with just ran with a theme, but that theme was ’90s. It’s slightly worrying that all I needed to do to hit a 90s theme was out on a bandana & tie my flannel shirt around my waist.
I didn’t take any pictures of the party, but I did take one of a cafe breakfast that day, so here it is
It was a fun day. 🙂
The very next day I went to Aberdeen, which was a mistake in terms of planning. Should have booked a sleeper trip instead for a few days later so that I could enjoy the weekend, instead of leaving very early to get a train to London so that I could not quite run but certainly walk at my best speed to get to the unreserved carriage in the hope of getting a seat
The booking websites were uncooperative, and I ended up with a ticket to Aberdeen but no seat reservation, which isn’t ideal. I got a bit lucky when it came to boarding; A family with a million suitcases was blocking the closest door to the unreserved carriage, so I went to the other one. Turns out only half of the carriage was unreserved, but my route let me walk through the reserved bit to get to the unreserved, where there were still seats free because nobody could get to them through the million-suitcase-family.
The idea that I’m going to do a day by day account of my time in a Digital Nomad Co-working/Co-living space is just as appalling to me as it no doubt is to you, so let’s all agree to set that idea aside right now. This is going to be a bunch of images, with some commentary of the things which stand out to me.
When we last spoke, I was leaving Bath & heading back towards Aylesbury on an unevenly-packed train, in what turned out to be a wildly uneventful journey.
Most of the reason for a return to Aylesbury is to see friends, though the specific timing is because of a work Company Update in Oxford. ( They’re trying the idea of smaller regional events, instead of enormous one, for these updates. I guess putting people in the same room as the speaker(s) increases the chances that they’ll pay attention, unlike a Teams call )
This time I’m staying in the Guest Suite at Chateau Guineapig¹.
There’s not a whole lot to say about spending a week in Aylesbury. Not that it wasn’t enjoyable, because it was, but there’s nothing I did that I’ve not done a thousand times, so the events are not exactly newsworthy.
I got my old desk back. Hadn’t booked it or anything, but it didn’t look like anyone was using it. Turns out that it’s not actually bookable on the system, presumably because nobody added it to the list of available desks; Given that this was the last week in that office for anyone for a while, it makes some sense.
Quite a few pub trips.
A semi-cheeky Nandos trip.
Swapping a few things in & out of storage.
The company update is covered in a different post, but as a summary; Not my best day ever.
¹ otherwise known as the spare room at A+Ks place.
I’ll be blunt; I had a bad day in Oxford. Made the best of it, but it wasn’t a good day for me, despite carefully worded dissembling when asked about it by various management team folks.
Mostly it was the crush of people & the wall of noise that got to me, and it hit hard.
I’m probably tempting fate by saying this, but my packing process feels like it’s getting faster. Some of that will be because of the things which never made it out of the bag(s) in the first place, but I’m thinking that a bunch of it is due to having a designated spot for (most) things, so it’s just a case of findings the thing & stowing it, no decision making required.
For a long time I’d been doing the much-advised “tightly roll all your stuff to save space” thing, but after some experimenting, I’m not sure that it’s as generally applicable as travel blogs/vlogs/instagrammers like to think. Recently I’ve gone with “fold until it’s roughly the same dimensions as the bottom of the compartment”, which then lets me stack things and let the weight of the stuff above compress it for me. To be fair, this is for things like Cargo Shorts, Sweatpants, Hoodie, … Not the things I’d need regular access to, so it doesn’t matter much if I need to move something to get at it. ( The Big Black Bag is a sort of front-of-the-top loader, a squat rectangular shape where the front ⅔ unzips )
Didn’t sleep amazingly well on Friday or Saturday nights, so my precautionary 2 hours before alleged checkout alarm was very useful indeed. Most of the packing up was done the night before, so I could do the second to last bits (any clothing items I’m not wearing, laundry, anything in any room of the place gets moved to the bed) before wandering out to get some breakfast from the amusingly named Boston Tea Party¹.
I was impressed. They had a nice location, on a corner jutting into a square, so they could have outside tables and awnings. Good food, and one of the “scan the code to order at your table” systems, which are great for a low-brainpower morning.
In theory I was supposed to check out by 10, but since the owner had basically said “please be out by the time the cleaning lady arrives at 12”, I feel that my 10:15ish departure was OK. ( A bunch of that was just putting things back roughly where they belonged; unfeasible number of cushions back on the sofa, weird embroidery cushions on a chair and not the floor, chair by the desk and not in the bedroom fireplace to keep the ghosts at bay, … )
I made a stop a the pinkest & most floral cafe I’ve ever seen; Sweet Little Things. It’s like drinking coffee in a very fancy cupcake.
As a side note; Is Bath one of those Hen/Bachelorette party cities? There was a group who showed up while I was there, but then went to one of the other locations in Bath, possibly because of size of group or whether they were doing actual breakfast; The location I was at had apparently called the other one to let them know a group was incoming .
Then there was another smaller group I passed on the way to the station, and I’m pretty sure I saw a few more during the week.
And then to the station.
It got oddly crowded on the platform after the photos were taken, I’m told due to there being no trains yesterday because of rail strikes. As a stroke of luck I’d noticed that the Great Western Railway app had a ‘how full is this carriage’ indicator on their live train information screen; It had been blank earlier, presumably because the train wasn’t running yet, but had now updated to show that the middle of the train was full ( I’m assuming it’s showing reserved seats, not actual people per carriage ), so I moved myself to the far end of the platform to line up with the back of the train.
Surprisingly, it worked, and the last carriage isn’t full. I don’t think there are any empty doubles, but I’ve not got anyone sitting beside me, and I can see some empty seats around. Meanwhile, much as with the trip out here, they announced that they couldn’t do the cafe cart service because they can’t move through the train.
Maybe it’s just a polite fiction, and there is never a cart?
¹ Who are a chain, maybe a franchise, that I’d never heard of prior to going to Salisbury. Looking at a map, I think I can see why;
There was a bottle of prosecco in the fridge, next to the milk. There’s a bath. I’m in Bath. I’ve visited the historic Roman baths in Bath. Where else could I possibly post from?
I took no pictures of my bath¹.
You’re welcome.
I enjoyed the Roman Bath … tour? Walkabout?
It’s set up to vaguely guide you through the site, and they give you a little audio tour thing to listen to, where you punch in the track number from an interpretation panel and it plays the next bit. On a whim, I took some cheap-ass wired earbuds from the Stonehenge tour, which turned out to be a great move, as it meant I didn’t have to hold the audio device to one ear all the time.
All up, I spent a smidge under 3 hours wandering around; Time well spent.
¹ In the proper luxurious style, not only did I have the bubbling wine, I also had fancy chocolates and a volume of classic literature. By which I mean a packet of peanut m&ms and a Murderbot story on my e-reader.
The trip here was uneventful, but mostly because I boarded the train as soon as I could & got a seat. Not everyone did, because it was full of folks going to Penzance whose train was supposed to be leaving from Paddington, but was instead leaving from Reading. I don’t know why.
Anyway, I had a window seat, so I read and dozed my way to Bath. The train staff gave up on the idea of moving through the train, so no ticket checks, and the tea/coffee/snack cart parked itself in one place and made “I’m in this carriage, but only come to get stuff if it’s safe to do so” announcements.
Finding this week’s place was surprisingly easy, and … It’s very nice.
I put a chair in front of the creepy fireplace to block the ghosts
Monday was a holiday, and I spent most of it just sort of wandering around Bath. I found the Royal Crescent by following an arty map from the wall of the place I’m staying, and The Circus by accident in the process.
A very niche operation, and we’re wondering about those flag colours I’m not sure who Quiet Saint Coffee is, but I plan to visit their shrine at some point
Tuesday, … How to cover Tuesday?
Tuesday wasn’t great. I’m not entirely sure why, but work was frustrating & annoying, and that kind of spilled over into the rest of the day.
Let’s just skip over Tuesday, shall we?
Wednesday?
Better than Tuesday, but still annoying.
On the plus side, I did go for a walk ‘upriver’ to find a pub formerly owned/run by the folks who now own/run our not really local pub in Aylesbury. Didn’t go in, because a pub is absolutely the last place I want to be after two annoying days in a row, but it was beside a bridge with the now standard picturesque view of the Avon, so that was worth the trip.
I think I should stop doing the day by day report; On any given working week, unless it’s an odd week or I’m doing a bunch of coworking space trips, it’s going to be something in the Good Day/Bad Day spectrum, and even I’m getting bored reporting on that.
So, Thursday was a better day, though I’m not sure why. I was feeling a bit unwell in the lungs the last few days, so maybe that had something to do with it? Anyway, tried Quiet Street Coffee for a morning beverage, and they were pretty good. And I went for a stroll down the canal to see what was there. (A couple of really sunk boats at one place)
Friday, sadly, started well but descended into shit as the day went on. My planned “get these things done” turned into “how in the hell is that system which has been specifically disabled so that it can’t access the outside world doing the very thing that it is specifically not supposed to be doing?”, which ate the rest of the day.
I did try another coffee place for the morning; The Bath Coffee Company, which is a little place in one of the many squares around here. Got to sit at a little outside table & enjoy the morning before going to work, which was quite pleasant.
I really do wish I was enjoying Bath more; It’s nice, and there’s pretty architecture and some nice parks, but the week of work bullshit really is affecting my view of the place. Doing the Roman Baths tour thing tomorrow, so hopefully that, plus the weekend, will improve things.
Back to the Geovation hub to work today, even though I (correctly) expected it to be deader than yesterday. I stopped off at the coffee place from yesterday ( Goswell Road Coffee ) and hung around in there for a bit.
They may be winning the “weird decorating” prize.
Pretty sure that’s a Sinclair C5 (not my picture; from where I was sitting there was no non-creepy way to take a photo)
The hub was, as predicted, dead. Other folks have commented that it’s cliquey & techy, and I’d have to agree. I know they do networking events, and I’m guessing that’s the only time that people from different groups interact. Still, got some work done, which was the point, and left in the early afternoon, which was the consequence of some late-ass finishes earlier in the week.
Commuting through London when the footpaths & underground aren’t rammed? Pretty nice.
Moving through London when you get to a tourist bit? Not great. Kind of annoying, because people move really slowly and spread out to fill the space.
Still, I had a nice time, learned some things about actually working in this city, and now hold a firm opinion on a specific underground route, which feels like a win to me.
Someone seems to have moored a small building off Greenwich
The plan for Saturday was to get an early start & go to the British Museum before it got crowded. This didn’t happen.
What did happen is that I got there later than planned, got through some of the Mesopotamian & adjacent bits, and left earlier than planned because it was too crowded to move through & the airflow … wasn’t? Should have expected that for a Saturday.
Still, I saw some stuff, and marveled at the tiny tiny cuneiform writing, and learned about sealing up contracts in clay envelopes with a summary and rolled-on pictures on them as an anti tampering technique, so that was pretty cool.
Canary Wharf continues it’s impressive streak of confusing me, so well done there; Didn’t know there were ‘underground’ bits below the various plazas and parks. Also didn’t know there were parks.
Found some artwork though, which was nice
Greenwich on the weekend is a madhouse. People in all directions, and pity anyone trying to drive anywhere. I spotted someone who’d probably gone the wrong way, thought they’d found a route out that didn’t require reversing, and were then blocked by a taxi doing something weird.From that point, they were probably better off parking the car and recovering it after sundown, because the odds of them manoeuvring back out in that crowd were not good; Could be done, but you’d need a spotter and a lot of yelling at pedestrians.
I kind of want this to be a detective agency, or at least a pair of amateur but surprisingly effective investigators. Maybe they’re involved in the production or sale of their respective substance, or maybe they’re just importers who keep finding bodies/evidence of crime.
( OK, this does maybe link nicely to one of my Gen Con games – CHEW )
I could also see it as a wacky superhero cartoon, with a sentient bottle of champagne & wheel of cheese fighting superpowered food crime. Whatever that is. Kind of the opposite of Milk & Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad, for those who remember that.
It turns out that I’ve evolved a check-out routine without realising it.
Everything that can be packed the night before gets packed. Clothes for the next day get set aside.
On the day, everything is either on my person or on the bed, so that the rest of the space can be checked. As soon as something can be packed, it gets packed.
Google maps gave me all sorts of interesting options for getting between Greenwich & Paddington, including walking from Lancaster Gate because the stop is a lot closer than it looks on the standard map, but in the end I went with a three-line hop; DLR to Bank, Central to Oxford Circus, Bakerloo to Paddington.
Made it with an hour or so to kill, so I found a relatively sane bit of the station to hang out in, and checked the departure boards online. Got a window seat during the early phase when the platform was announced, which was lucky, as the train filled up with folks heading for Penzance whose train was for some reason starting in Reading, not Paddington. (People were standing in the vestibules in some carriages)
Leaving Salisbury went smoothly; I’d packed everything I possibly could, done the dishes, and even vacuumed the night before, so all I really needed to do was shower, put on the clothes I’d set out the evening before, and go, retuning the key to it’s lockbox & dumping some rubbish on the way out.
Me being me, I still did some paranoid checks of things, but the intention was good.
The train to London arrived confusingly, in that the SWR app and the station signs said it was approaching and between two stops, while the announcement said it was the empty train already at the platform. One final spooky mystery of the stay?
The trip itself? Uneventful. Pretty scenery, stops in tiny little villages, and eventually London Waterloo station. Because of my extreme cleverness of checking out on a work day Monday and not going for early check-in at my hotel, I booked another Brewdog Deskdog co-working desk, this one at their super convenient Waterloo Station site. (Which would be easier to find if they had consistent signage at Waterloo station)
view of the trainside of some Waterloo Station platforms
The Waterloo location is specifically called out as being more expensive, and I get why now; it’s purpose built for co-working. Open early, a lot of space, a few one person pods for calls & meetings, and in a space where someone wandering in would be really obvious.
Also, there are two levels, and there’s a slide.
By the time I was in the mood to try the slide, there were some kids having a great time on it, and I didn’t want to disrupt them
I’m liking the Deskdog thing. It’s an interesting space to work out of, quiet enough that I’m getting work done, and the fact that there are people around is something of a calming influence when you really want to call someone an idiot. Or worse.
There were a few other people using the ‘main” space ( set up with big tables & power outlets ), a few singles, a couple of people who seemed to be working on something together, and a group who acted like they knew each other who’d maybe all come together there for an in-person gathering.
Part of the point of this London week was to try out working in London, and to try out co-working spaces; The Company is part of one in London (Geovation), so I had an introduction session for that over teams. Felt a bit odd to be talking about a space from a different equivalent space, but it turns out that the Geovation thing is more of an incubator which has some office hubs; They’re big into networking & development & the like, which really didn’t come up when anyone at work mentioned the space. Work folks were all about hotdesks & meeting rooms.
I also did some rearranging of Gen Con Events; Gave back a ticket to something I wasn’t as keen on so that I could get something else. Not an unheard of process for me where the Gen Con schedule is concerned.
Worked from Brewdog until about 4, then scuttled off to the hotel to finish out my day from there before the Underground got too busy.
Had an early night, and I worked the Tuesday from the hotel so that I could sleep longer, which only sort of worked. Did go for a morning wander around Greenwich though, so that worked out ok.
Took this picture at Greenwich Markets as a “nope” image, but it was pointed out that this could be an outreach sort of deal by aquatic life, or a side venture by the band Eels
Remember Eels?
I have a desk booked at the Geovation hub for Thursday & Friday (security needs a 24 hour warning), and another Deskdog Waterloo booking for tomorrow (Wednesday). I’d initially thought they were booked solid at Brewdog, but a bit of playing with finish times makes it look like they have a large afternoon group booked, so I’m there until 3.
Went for an afterwork walk under the Thames (some brain donor had left a couple of ride share bikes in the tunnel), then took the DLR further in & wandered around for a bit until I accidentally found St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Deskdog Waterloo continues to be good. Given the size of the Waterloo bar, it did take a while to find someone to tell me where I was supposed to be sitting (the space from Monday was roped off), but I also found a coffee shop in the bar that I’d missed the first time. Explains the “whatever you want” reaction when I’d asked what sort of coffee they can do. The seat this time (actually a booth) had a view out of the building into The Outside World, and there were a bunch of folks doing work, having meetings, that sort of thing; it’s a nice environment.
Getting there from Greenwich in the morning was easier than expected, despite the absolute maze of Canary Wharf; I don’t think I’ve ever taken the same path through that place twice when going to or from the DLR.
The environment does make it easier to not take breaks, which could be an issue.
Went for a bit of a wander in the evening, and ended up catching, if not adequately photographing, a nice sunset.
Thursday was a Geovation Hub Co-working Space day. Getting there was surprisingly easy; DLR to the end of the line, thus avoiding the Canary Wharf Experience™, and the Northern Line to the closest station, which isn’t that close because of Farringdon just being like that.
Arrived in time to get coffee with an excitingly expressive name. They had merch, and I was tempted to get a sticker for the work laptop.
For a place that made suck a big deal about booking numbered desks, I didn’t see any actual desk numbers. I sat where the little diagram said I should, or at least where it said the desks my number was in were supposed to be, because again, no desk numbers that I could see.
Sat there in the more social area by the kitchen, did work, chatted to the one other person at the table about his startup & my work, and it was nice enough, but … Not the networking powerhouse I’d expected. Mostly small/medium groups who already knew each other, presumably because they work together, keeping to themselves.
Probably it’s different when there are more people in the hub, but it felt a bit dead. Back again on Friday, so we’ll see how it looks on what I’m assuming will be an even quieter day.
Took the Elizabeth Line back, just because I could, at least as far as Canary Bloody Wharf. It’s nice, and all shiny and new and vaguely purple.
