Current mood:

satisfied

Filkcontinental trip
Before I say anything else I have to say this, because I'm too bouncy about it not to - Congratulations Urban Tapestry on being next year's guests to FilkContinental!! Woohoo!

And now about the rest of the trip

We headed off bright and early Friday morning (6.30am, for the interested) so as to get to mainland Europe in good time and hopefully get past Koln before rush hour. It was a splendid plan but unfortunately some French Fishermen decided to flex their muscles and go on strike and so we spent an extra 4+ hours sitting outside the entrance to Calais harbour waiting for them to relent. Luckily for us the weather was calm and the ferry lightly loaded with civilised people (this would have been a lot more unpleasant with the usual horde of British alcohol-bound daytrippers or if there had been any kind of swell).

On finally landing we made good speed through France, Belgium and Germany and were on target to arrive before sundown and before the opening ceremony. But then we found they had closed the motorway east of Koln for 2 junctions and took us all on an exciting minor road through some very small (and, I expect, very unhappy about all that traffic) villages. This took well over an hour and so we were late and missed stuff (the chance to see Katy in silver platform shoes for starters, though I did get to see the shoes later).

On finally arriving we unloaded, set up shop in our room (we were once more given a room to ourselves, the concom being well aware of our inability to sleep through noise - I love them all to bits for arranging this for us) and headed out to the con. We heard the last few bits of Alan Thiesen's set (notably The Inanimate Objects Love Song, which is quite daft) and Mike Richards' set and that was it for formal sets for the evening. There were circles then and workshops and I made it to the German for Beginners workshop that Franklin and Sibylle ran (very daft but I'm hoping I can take the push I got from it and actually make myself learn a bit more German this year - it's all very well being able to count and that stands me in good stead in the auction but is surprisingly unhelpful the rest of the time).

After that it being midnight and we having been traveling most of the day we wussed out and went to bed.

Next morning was taken up entirely by workshops, so I slept in. All morning. I finally got up in time for lunch and I think it was well worth it. The afternoon zipped past in a whirl of performances and the main concert (broken by the auction, in which I bought a sweater with Harry Potter appliqued onto it and much else was sold for good prices, including Thomas paying 60Euros for Franklin to MC next year's concert in a Sailor Moon costume. Heh).

After dinner there was the ever popular fire breathing demonstration, accompanied this year by some good fiery poi twirling done by an expert poi wielder (no, I'm not going to explain that - go look poi up on Google). Very cool (or hot, depending on how pedantic you're feeling). Then on to more concerts, the highlight of which was definitely Cosmic Trifle's GoH spot. The Necronomicon song has eaten it's way into a few more brains...

Sunday was again all workshops and I went for a walk in the woods. After scrambling down some very steep bits (we're on top of a hill, after all) and wading across a field of wet grass I finally found myself in a clearing beneath many tall tress, and there I stood and listened to the sounds of autumn. It was gorgeous - the trees all reaching high up above me, the sunshine dappling down through the far off leaves, the sound of distant humanity and more proximately the birds having a field day. It was mostly still and then every so often a breeze would stir the very tops of the trees and then shortly after there would be a gentle rain of leaves. There was steady patter of seed pods and possibly old rain drops falling down from high above and then when I returned to the castle the insistent tapping of a woodpecker. Quite the change from our usual trips, as normally it rains the whole weekend of FilkContinental - guess the weather gods got confused about the date!

Our trip home was marginally more successful than the trip out - we went a different way and encountered new and even more irritating roadworks so again availed ourselves of Phil's ability to drive fast rather than mine to drive slowly and made out way back to Calais, where we had enough time to pop into a supermarket for a little food shopping before catching the ferry home. To satisfy honour I drove us home from Dover, motorway pretty much the whole way, and it went fine (except the bit in Dover where it was 2 lanes onto a roundabout and only 1 lane off - nasty trick, but we survived and made it home in plenty of time to get a good healthy Alex fix before (with much protestation on his part) putting him to bed. I'm knackered now.

We had a lovely time as we always do - so wonderful to see all those friends we only see once (or, if we're very lucky, twice) a year. Looking forward very much to seeing them all again next year.