Going Dutch

Windmills give Canvey a Dutch feel.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to go to Holland via Essex. This post is by Nicola Baird 

Canvey Island. The name has a potency - but it's not really an island, more a chunk of Essex jutting into the Thames estuary that's below sea level. It was disastrously flooded in 1953 which led to 58 people dying. There is a history of the east of England 1953 floods here. As a result a massive cement wall was built shielding "the island" from future spring tides. It's a bit strange walking beside the sea wall because you can't actually see the sea.

You may be here a long time
There's a 15 mile barrier which makes one feel as if you are in a prison.

The effect is magnified when a tannoy from the local football club announces "good afternoon". But fortunately near the sea front the sluice gates are open so you can go down to the slender beach and play in the paddling pools... And further around the sea wall becomes a grassy mound which is a pleasure to walk along.

We're visiting because my husband Pete is a Dr Feelgood fan, but I'm curious about why the Dutch were here, back in the 17th century, when making hay (not processing oil) was the big money-earner. You can still see cows grazing in the hay meadows at Canvey Wick, admittedly with today's income generator, a vast oil refinery first put up by Occidental, as back drop. There are also a couple of wind-powered water pumps that make it look more like a Dutch pastoral. Best of all are the  tiny, one/two bedroom thatched, hay-bale shaped houses dotted around the so-called Dutch Village, some dating back to 1618. There are also rumours that the Dutch drainage engineer Cornelius Vermuden helped drain Canvey (we know he did the Fens) probably because in 1623 around 300 Dutch men were on the case to make the island habitable.

All easy to see from the bus which runs frequently from Benfleet train station.

Canvey Island has many claims to fame besides it's relationship to oil. See more here. Wikipedia points out:

"The island was the site of the first delivery (1959) in the world of liquefied natural gas by container ship, and later became the subject of an influential assessment on the risks to a population living within the vicinity of petrochemical shipping and storage facilities."

It's also a long-established holiday park for the East End: one of my friends always went there every year for her summer holidays and she's not yet 40! Despite the big skies this is not really a holiday destination to show-off about to your friends. Instead expect a dormitory town of 38,000 people, many still with stories of working for the Occidental oil reprocessing centre that dominates the island's skyline, despite being closed in 1975. And it's the home of Dr Feelgood, Britain's best-known R&B band from the 1970s made that bit more famous after the film, Oil City Confidential came out. Extra respect if you also know their hits, Back in the Night, Down to the Doctors or their best-selling single Milk and Alcohol (jointly written with Nick Lowe).

We made up our own walk, along the grassy sea wall protecting Canvey Wick reserve via Islanders fish and chip shop (with sustainable MSC fish!), but here is another good route from Essex specialists - which gives you a chance to visit the Lobster Smack pub, starring Pip and Magwitch at the close of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.

As for going Dutch - well Pete kindly paid for the whole trip, he even made us sandwiches for the train. So clearly I owe him big time for a surprisingly enjoyable trip to Holland.

Sunflowers everywhere

Nicola, Pete, Lola, now 11, and Nell, now 9, spent three months travelling around the UK in 2007. They're back home now but still exploring ways to see Britain while exploring the world. This post is about a trip to Arles, Provence (France) via books, and is by Nicola.

Our homegrown sunflower seeds are starting to break free and head upwards which has helped extra engage the girls with Van Gogh's famous flower portraits. Back in March we'd been to the Oxford Literary Festival to hear three children's writers talking about their work - one of the most impressive (and certainly the man who made everyone laugh the most) was Frank Cottrell Boyce.

Cosmic sunflowers
Three months on we've now read three of Frank Cottrell Boyce's books aloud at bedtime (also on the tube, trains, in the garden etc) and he is a genius. See here for video clips with Frank talking about books and paintings to a class at the National Gallery. A truly "cosmic" writer as one of his character's might put it. But in Framed a key part of the plot is when the kids steal a really famous picture - Van Gogh's sun flowers.

Time travel
Roll on a couple of months and Dr Who plus new assistant Amy Pond turn up in Arles a few months before Van Gogh's suicide to assist him removing an invisible, fierce, blind alien.

Seeing Vincent Van Gogh with their favourite TV characters - plus recognising his pictures from the Royal Academy exhibition (we went twice!) - and generally being clued up really helped the kids talk about depression, highs and lows of creativity, what is art etc, and they know what one small bit of Provence used to look like. (In the Dr Who TV series these scenes weren't shot in Cardiff, but on location in Croatia which clearly still has narrow cobbled streets and is incredibly picturesque).

Treasure hunt
If you're looking for ways to inspire kids about art then Framed is a brilliant introduction to the National Gallery collection. Obviously, you could just go to the National Gallery but I find it's worth picking out a few pictures rather than going room by room. Either provide a treasure hunt of target pictures or get lost and in each gallery pick out the pic you most want hung in your bedroom. Another in-depth read about Van Gogh's final weeks - much of it spent drinking absinthe, sharing ideas and getting cross with Gauguin (who will be the subject of a huge exhibition at the Tate in September) - is to read The Yellow House by Martin Gayford (Penguin).


I think this is the first trip to France my family's made that mostly involved books and pictures. Strange that it was inspired by sunflower growing and a Dutchman.

If you like this post do bookmark it, or also have a look at Nicola's other blog, homemade kids: thrifty, creative and eco-friendly ways to raise children here.

All change

Trams may be admired in Amsterdam but at the installation stage it’s just chaos. This post is from Nicola Baird.

Edinburgh’s transport chief, Neil Renilson, is to take early retirement at the end of this year (2008). At just 52 you could see this as an exciting move for a bearded man who’s worked on the buses for a lifetime. Here’s his chance to do other things close to his heart: golf? Walking? Time with his family? Etcetera.

But like Renilson’s decision to back the tram, his news has not been met with enthusiasm. People are furious that Edinburgh is currently a miasma of alternative routes, traffic cones and white-hatted, drill-wielding workers digging up all the grand streets.

“I’m sorry you’re seeing Edinburgh looking such a mess,” was the first thing our taxi driver said to us as we got off the sleeper train at a distinctly chilly Waverley Station.

In London someone’s always digging up the roads – usually to sort out Victorian drains or water pipes. Or to lay cables. Or just for the end of the budget year hell of it. So diversions seem normal. But it is true that Edinburgh is not looking herself. The imposing grey stone parades are cluttered with orange and white cones, ticker tape and steel cage fencing that looks like it ought to be in use down at the zoo.

"It's a disaster. I never go in town now," was Maureen's opinion as she served us fudge from HMY Britannia down at Ocean Terminal.

I’m all for trams. I enjoyed watching the progress at Nottingham, have long admired the Amsterdam routes and think Edinburgh a real leader. They had the first car club (see pic above of one of the vehicles parked in a bank of four just off the Royal Mile. And now they’re using the tram to future proof the city against the oil price shocks that will rock all conurbations once peak oil passes. Trams are powered by electricity which can be generated from renewable sources.

Tram building is disruptive, easy to criticise and the schedule is slipping. It was due to open in Feb 2011 but is more likely to start in July 2011 (just before the festival) which looks set to add to the £512 million bill. My hunch is that Renilson expected to be the fall guy. So when we come back in three years time to be whizzed around by a tram that could finally sort out gridlock and make a Georgian city a carbon neutral place to travel around again I’ll be raising my whisky glass to him. Cheers.