Isolation 96 & 97

I set the alarm on Saturday for 9am to make sure that I was up in time to go for a run and do "adult" parkrun with Alex at around 10am at Temple Newsam.  I woke up a bit before and then woke Alan up to see if he fancied doing it too and he did join me.  We drove over and saw Han's house for the first time since the fire damage repairs had been completed. It was looking really good and we had a coffee and then took Alex to run a "not" parkrun.  There was a socially distanced race going on and so we ended up being cheered on by the marshals!  

Alex hasn't run much and so there was a good amount of walking and we got around in about 51.51 and had a good chat about a lot of things.  We had an ice lolly at the end and Alan finally got to enjoy a feast - I had a cider refresher and Alex had a screwball.

We spent a bit more time at Han's and went for a walk with her as James was desperate to ride his little car around the block.  His behaviour was quite challenging and we think in part because he'd not seen us for a few weeks.

We headed home and then I made some pizza for lunch on tortilla bases and some salad.  We watched some tv and then Alan went up for a bath and a nap and I cleaned the cat litter trays at last and did the recycling as well as loading the dishwasher and cleaning the kitchen and doing a load of washing.  I then had a bath and got ready for Cyberfest 3 by Beer 52 an online beer festival which had a 4 hour live stream with commentary on the beers provided, comedians, music and interviews with the brewers.  There were 12 beers and a special glass, but we only managed to get through 6 during the time we were drinking.  They were the ones in bold:

• Northern Monk **England** - Patrons Project 18.03 TDH Pale Ale 5% **440ml**
• De Leite **Belgium** - Cuvee Uncle Pol Flanders Red 7% - very weird, but interesting blended concept, very strong lambic flavour.
• Vocation x Brew York **England** - Sweet Temptation Stout 6% **440ml** - I had this at the end, I perhaps shouldn't have done as I was quite full, but it was a really tasty sweet stout.
• By the River (Wylam Tap) **England** - Heedhunter DDH Pale Ale 4.5% **440ml** - Our first beer, really hoppy and fresh to start off with.
• Ale Browar **Poland** - Hazy Rooster DIPA 8.9%
• Mothership **UK** - Hazy Peach Pale 5.5%
• Funky Fluid **Poland** - Gelato Pastry Sour 5.6% **500ml** - A crazy combination of flavours, but delicious, as the presenters suggested, you'd likely only have one as it's quite sweet.
• Round Corner **England** - Drovers Hazy Session IPA 4.3% - Alan loved this one, I thought it was good, but didn't stand out as much as the others did for me - the challenge of having lots of strong flavours together.
• Glen Affric **England** - Rutting Stag American Red 5% - Another very drinkable and nice beer.
• Heaney Farmhouse **NI** - Pale Ale 5%
• Sori Brewing **Estonia** - Madonna of Sori 5.3%

The rest we get to look forward to trying later!  I think we'd have been really smashed if we'd attempted all 12 let alone getting 2 boxes so we had one beer each!  The comedy, quizzes and music helped the evening along and I concluded that it was a lovely day.  Qubit was a big fan of hiding in the Beer 52 box!

We'd ordered a takeaway from a new place Fire it up! for tea as Alan was craving a kebab and I had one too, but it was INSANELY spicey I think they basically coated it in just red chilli sauce, I had 2 attempts at eating it, but couldn't complete it.  I had chips and some strawberry cheesecake as well.

We went to bed and I was ridiculously full and fortunately fell asleep quite quickly.  

We woke up quite late and I don't think that Alan had a great night of sleep so we dozed and napped and I snuck downstairs to feed the cats and put a loaf of bread on in the breadmaker.  I felt very full of anxiety, which I'm assuming will be the drinking as it tends to affect me if I've had a few drinks the morning after.   Eventually I got up and made scrambled eggs, sausages, toast (with marmite for me) and coffee and orange juice.  The bread was a bit too doughy, but everything else was ok.  We watched the end of the Addams Family movie and then I watched some Storage Hunters whilst Alan went up to watch Formula 1.  

I did a load of washing and then got ready to go for a run and did 8K fairly steadily as I woke up with a sore stomach which is likely a combination of beer and far too spicey food.  It took around 45 minutes and then I got back home later than I'd thought as it was 6.30pm and we were booked for our first post covid meal out at Pizza Express at 7pm.  I managed to get showered and changed and to Pizza Express by 7pm. 

We got to the entrance wearing our masks and waited for about 10 minutes before anyone came to show us in, but once we'd sat down we looked at the online menu, but ordered from a waiter.  We sat in the middle of 3 x 2 seater tables and there was one table allocated for social distancing and to put used dishes on for collection.  I had an elderflower drink and Alan had still lemonade and I shared olives and I had some calamari and Alan had dough balls.  For my main I had a vegan Giardiniera and a side salad and Alan had a Calabrese.  The food was much as I remembered and tasted nice, although it was disappointing that some of our favourites like the Dolcetti desserts and the arancini starters were not on the menu, but I completely understand how restaurants have had to change the way they work.  

We headed back and I plugged in Lauren's friend Lorraine's live Instagram where she was practicing some of her comedy and then I finished watching this and Alan watched Ricky Gervais Animal and made us hot apple brandy and then I grabbed us some ice lollies and ibuprofen as we both had aches and pains.

New York Marathon - Marathon Number 11 and how not to run or train for a marathon!

In a fit of pique in January when Alan realised that he had a fair few air miles from his credit card (definitely recommend a reward or cashback credit card if you end up putting a lot on for work that you claim back!) he asked if I fancied going to New York again.  I'd been twice before and both times loved it and so was up for the idea, he then did some research and found that Sports Tour International offer guaranteed marathon places with a combined holiday package and asked if I fancied it - and so feeling positive about my running in the midst of Red January I said yes!

Now first things first, it's not a cheap marathon to run or enter.  I think that the ballot places are most likely as tough to get into as London and if you want to run as a group of friends/couple the likelihood of everyone getting a ballot place is probably very limited and I believe it still costs $358 per place if you are a non US resident.

If you are speedy you could try and run a qualifying time which is even tighter than London as for the 2020 race you would need to be nailing the following times, broken down by age group: 18 to 34 years old (3:00 for men, 3:30 for women) 35 to 39 (3:05 for men, 3:35 for women (I'm sure you still have to pay those chunky entry fees!).

You can also try and secure a place by running a "virtual" marathon between the 31st October and 3rd November.... although this has already happened for 2020 - but more information is here - again I'm guessing you'll still have to pay, although the fees listed for charity places seem to be around $150 and I think that is for US charities only and with fundraising targets of c$2650.  I've tried to see what the fundraising targets might be for UK charities, but it seems as though you have to apply and will still need to pay for your flights, accommodation and the $358 fee.

So the costs are a bit prohibitive, but the good news is that you get all of this stuff included in your fee:

• Entry to the 2020 TCS New York City Marathon, including fluid/fueling stations, medical support, entertainment, bag-check handling, and security 
• Official New Balance technical shirt 
• Official transportation to the start from Midtown Manhattan, Lower Manhattan, or the Meadowlands Sports Complex (New Jersey) - Start area, including breakfast and entertainment 
• Finisher materials: medal, food, beverages, and United Airlines/Foot Locker Heatsheet™ 

However...it's worth nothing that:

• The drawing is free to enter and limited to one entry per person
• Entry fees are charged upon acceptance. 
• Once an entrant is accepted, the entry fee is nontransferable under any and all circumstances, and is also nonrefundable under any and all circumstances except in the event of cancellation of the marathon.

There are a few other ways to enter, but most likely out of reach for a few of us, but if you are interested and a budding elite athlete or philanthropist, here are some ideas.

Accommodation in New York is also not cheap, Sports Tours sell packages that include guaranteed entry plus accommodation, flights, transfers and other extras or a combination of your choosing.  Alan being a frugal (definitely not stereotypical Yorkshireman(!!)) knew that the air miles sorted our flights (although we paid the usual air taxes) and we went for the guaranteed entry and minimum accommodation option of 3 nights to save money.  We then used Hotwire to book a cheaper (and better quality) hotel for our last 2 nights.  Hotwire is great if you are a bit relaxed about exactly what hotel you get - it allows you to stipulate an area and price range for your chosen dates and tells you what you might get and then you book blind and find out where you end up after you've paid.  It's always worked really well for us previously (we didn't end up in the Trump hotel - phew no ethical conflict!).  This time it took us to Hyatt House in Midtown/Chelsea area - only a few blocks from most of the places you'd want walk to in NYC, very roomy and a really friendly welcome.

New York Marathon was something Alan and myself both hoped to look forward to and train well for.  The reality was that life got in the way a bit; things like getting engaged in April and married in September, Alan having a slipped disc injury flare up after London Marathon and not running more than Liverpool Half in May, me studying for and completing my CIRF course in September, both of us being a lot heavier than when we were at our running peaks back in 2016, me currently trying to be more than one person at work as well as my own on/off niggly injuries,  This all meant as the weeks passed I was starting to dread the marathon I should be really excited about.

We'd clearly invested a lot of money in our trip and 4 days before race day (having only run 8 miles the Sunday before and the furthest before then being the Leeds Country Way (11.5 miles) on 1st September) I was really ill with a heavy cold/flu and I ended up working from home (not something I tend to do!). I was really worried as to whether I could make it around.

Alan and I had discussed our game plan for the marathon and as a qualified Coach in Running Fitness I would always recommend training appropriately for a marathon as it is a distance not to be trifled with!  So none of the below is what I would actually coach.

However, with money invested and a non transferable place, we decided to research how long was available to complete the course and make it a true sightseeing trip of NYC.  They have 4 waves and 3 different starts, somehow I'd ended up in Wave 3 and Alan in Wave 2.  We checked and he was able to start further back in my wave.  The sweep vehicle is 6 hours and 30, but unlike London starts at the end of the starting pack - so being in Wave 3 would mean we had more like 7 - 7 hours 30 until we were swept up.  They also keep the finishing line open until 7.25 pm.  This was my 11th marathon and Alan's 8th and I wouldn't recommend taking on a marathon as we did without the training, but we have the benefit of knowing what the demands of this distance are on our bodies and how to mitigate for this we knew we'd likely complete it, even if it was slow.  We figured that we could walk run c9mins 15 secs KM and get around in sub 6.5 hours and so that was the plan.

We flew out from Manchester with Virgin at 12.30pm on the Thursday and Alan had strategically booked seats that allowed for him to comfortably stretch his legs and didn't have to pay extra to do so.  For the week between our clocks going back and the Sunday of the marathon, NYC is only 4 hours behind UK time, so we arrived at a reasonable time.  We made our way through crowded transport with the Air Train and then the subway to the Port Authority and we walked a few minutes to the Sports Tours International Hotel which was Double Tree by Hilton New York Times Square West.  It was a good location to get to the Expo the following morning - around 15 minutes walk and also to the transfer buses on the morning of the marathon - around 15 minutes walk as well.  The room was small, but functional and my only issue was that the shower seal was not present so the room flooded when you showered - Alan was also sad there wasn't a bath!  Our first evening was a bit functional as I was still really poorly and so we grabbed a Five Guys for tea after checking into our room and got an early night.

The following day we went along to the Expo to pick up our race numbers and marathon t-shirts which were great - long sleeved and technical.  Only slight niggle was I had to get an XXL as they'd run out of L and XL and M was a bit of a suffocating fit!  However it looks great and I will definitely wear it often (first outing was to parkrun this morning!).

Speaking of parkrun - there is one in New Jersey - Delaware and Raritan Canal, you can get a train and an uber, or there was a bus arranged via Facebook...needless to say we didn't partake as it wouldn't have been sensible prep for either of us in these circumstances - they did have a record turnout of 111 as a result of the marathon.  There is also an optional 5K Abbott race that gives you a great hat souvenir and is "race to the finish" for the last 5K of the marathon I believe - again not good prep for us so we gave it a miss.

 

The Expo was fun, and despite feeling gross I managed to enjoy picking up free samples of compeed (Just as we were saying damn...we forgot the compeed!) and we bought some cool looking, roomy and comfortable NYC Marathon branded running belts for $23 each.  I also realised I'd totally forgotten my running nutrition, but fortunately managed to find the same Shot Bloks as I use in the UK, but with exciting new flavours like Margarita with 3 x extra sodium - useful when you sweat a lot!

We grabbed a self serve deli salad for lunch (they do it by weight rather than what you can cram into a container so it was a rather expensive, but delicious lunch!).  And after a bit more exploring we went back to the hotel so I could rest and Alan went to get breakfast for the following morning and picked up bananas, croissants and belvita.  We somehow managed to find a table that evening at an Italian restaurant - Il Punto and filled up on pasta.

That night the clocks went back and fortunately we had an early night as we were still jet lagged and so the obscenely early start of 4.30am to get the 5.30am transfer bus meant we still had around 6 hours sleep.  Classically I had the anxiety sleep I get pre-marathon and kept waking up, panicking about everything - again not what I recommend as a coach.  Eliud Kipchoge reportedly gets a religious 8 hours per night plus a 2 hour nap during the day!

We'd laid out our kit the night before and so we got ready quickly with each of us putting on a throw away t-shirt on and walked down to reception where the Sports Tours International rep met us and at 5.10am walked us down to the bus stop where the marshalls were super enthusiastic even at that eye-wateringly early time!

The bus takes you across to Staten Island and took around 45 minutes as we watched the sun slowly rises over NYC.  The weather was perfect running weather - completely dry, clear sky, but pretty chilly as a result!  We got off the bus and walked through to the security gates - it's a sad fact that you have to be scanned for weapons and bombs and aren't even allowed to wear large fancy dress costumes or camel bak style water packs.  

We then were in the race start village which was great!  We had complimentary coffees, bagels, Gatorade  and water as well as picking up Dunkin Donut hats (brilliant marketing on their part!).  There were also Honey Stinger waffles and bananas available.  We found a spot to sit down at around 6.15am and then had over 4 hours to wait until my 10.35am start wave!  It was a great atmosphere, everyone was in good spirits, but it was FREEZING!  We'd fortunately picked up rain ponchos and so we huddled together and tried to keep warm, but if there is one piece of advice I can give for race day it's please take extra layers and even old blankets to use and then donate to the goodwill bins (which I thought were excellent ideas!).  

About an hour and a half before the start we wandered down towards the blue start village area and I had a quick glance in the Therapy Dog tent (if I wasn't so cold I'd have been tempted to sneak in for a stroke!)  I needed the toilet again (they were plentiful and with not many queues) and as I walked back, I spotted a full goodwill bin and so "borrowed" a blanket for the last hour of our wait to share with Alan (we returned it to the bin after we'd finished with it).

I realised as we were waiting that my hair band had fallen off... I tried tying my hair up with string from the start village bag, but it wasn't great.  At least my buff would keep most of my flyaway thin hair away from my face I hoped. 

We queued up for our wave having heard the cannon fire for all the previous waves!  When you sign up you can either choose a bag drop (as you get at London Marathon etc) or a post race Poncho - we went for the poncho which meant that we didn't have to drop a bag off with the UPS trucks.

We were in our wave, it was all becoming real and we were about to take on 26.2 miles.  The sun was shining, the atmosphere was buzzing and we started to walk towards the bridge for our start.  As we walked over the bridge I noticed there were lots of clothes thrown on the floor (no goodwill bins on the bridge as per all the regular tannoy announcements!) and I said to Alan "I wish there was a spare hairband" and 2 steps later there was one there so I was able to discard the ineffective string and properly tie my hair back!  I then said "I wish I could find £1m" sadly this wish wasn't granted...should have gone with that first?

We were started with a cannon, ticker tape and the sound track of "New York New York" and even though there are 2 starts as per London Marathon, there are more runners (53000) it somehow felt more intimate as a start rather than being moved like cattle over the start line.  

The first 2 miles is just running over the Staten Island Bridge, loads of people stopped for selfies on the bridge, but we cracked on with our slow running plan and cleared the bridge in a solid time of just over 20 minutes.  The bridge workers were super excited to cheer all the runners on!

We then got onto Brooklyn and that's when the support really kicked off!  It's a hard to describe the dichotomy that New York Marathon was both more and less serious than London Marathon and other UK races.  More serious - very few fancy dress costumes at all, no club runners generally, but everyone mostly in serious running gear and certainly walking around NYC before and after lots of very obvious "runners" or as Alan sometimes referred to them "running w**nkers" i.e. always in running gear, wearing their medal for 3 days after the race even in the airport with a hint of arrogance about them.  Less serious - overly enthusiastic supporters who literally screamed with excitement, even by the time we reached some of them after 4 plus hours, people with great sense of humour on banners like at mile 10 "you're nearly there - Fake News! and printing out huge personal pictures of runners faces and even their pet cats and dogs.  NB. I'm definitely printing out massive Maya and Qubit faces for the next race I have to support Alan for!

Brooklyn I think was my favourite in terms of support - it was the longest section and had full on marching bands, rappers and rock bands - we loved it!   Alan kept a close eye on his heart rate and we adapted our pace to make sure we didn't peak his heart rate and so ran walked and got fairly quickly to around 10 miles and I figured as we had the opportunity to do so I'd use the walking sections to share some of the atmosphere, sights and sounds of the marathon on facebook live.  I'd intended to use it as a distraction to Alan from his sore back, but I'm not sure he altogether appreciated it!  The first time I'd taken my phone out I started jogging and ended up throwing shot bloks everywhere!  

The water and Gatorade stations are pretty frequent (every mile?) after the first 3 miles (none on the Staten Island bridge) and they all had paper cups which I think I preferred as it felt potentially less environmentally harmful that plastic bottles and was certainly much less of a trip hazard.  I tend to not recommend using anything on race day that you haven't had in training and Gatorade isn't something I've had much of before, but it worked well for me on the day.  There are also toilets every mile and fortunately we only needed to stop once.  The best thing is that there are formally arranged and informally arranged music stations around 3 per mile!  I had quite a few dances as we were running along and we clapped every single band and singer regardless of talent!

I like to count down all long distance races in miles, kilometres and parkruns to mean that I'm ticking something off every few minutes.  As a distraction (annoyance?) technique with Alan we nominate parkruns for each 5K segment of the race and always finish on Woodhouse Moor of course!  We ticked over the halfway point and then soon reached Queensborough Bridge which is 16 miles in and even though the bridge itself wasn't the most scenic there were some great views across to Manhattan Island as we trudged over onto Manhattan and up into Harlem before heading into the Bronx and then back into Manhattan for the iconic finish in Central Park.

       

I had hoped that by not spiking my heart rate and run walking it would mean my legs didn't get that 20 mile ache where every step hurts a bit.  Neither of us hit the wall as a result of the slower place which was great and actually we could have taken advantage of the 20 mile Biofreeze station, but the end was in sight so we kept going.  We continued with our Facebook live breaks which I certainly enjoyed and it was nice to get support from our friends back home whilst we were running!

 

The last couple of miles you can count down the blocks until you hit Central Park and the support continues to be great - I really enjoyed a brass band just before we hit Manhattan again coming out of Harlem.  Once you hit Central Park it feels like the end is in reach, but there is still a good nearly 2 miles to count down (amazingly our Garmins were fairly accurate despite all the huge buildings that usually skew GPS).  There was an incentive to run the last mile the fastest - we tried, but Alan's back by this point was incredibly sore so we had to walk a bit, although we did manage to run over the finish line!  

As we crossed the finish in 5 hours 51 minutes (my second slowest ever time next to Medoc - the wine marathon!) we held hands and it was an amazing atmosphere.  We then walked down to pick up first a heat sheet (necessary as it's a 30 minute walk to get your poncho or bag), then the great big apple medal, then a very good quality (and reusable!) goody bag which included water, an apple, pretzels, more Gatorade, protein shake, Honey Stinger waffle, biofreeze and I think some other things!

We walked down to our poncho collection point and they were fleece lined, waterproof and felt like a hug!  It was funny watching all the runners dressed in them as we walked out of the marathon area.  Fortunately we had no need for the reunion point as we ran together, but like all big races phone signal is patchy, so definitely worth pre-arranging a meeting point if you need one.  We staggered a bit confused to the subway and managed to get on a train back - it was only 20 minutes walk, but we'd done just enough thanks.  The trains were rammed and one lady even passed out and had to get off the train early - she seemed ok thankfully.

After a shower and change of clothes we had just enough time to walk down to the pre-booked post race celebration party (kindly only 5 blocks away from the hotel) for £20 we got 2 cocktails and canapes which included tasty mini slider burgers and meant we didn't need to buy dinner.  We chatted to one of the reps who was lovely (I feel this may be my future "retirement" job!) and after the food was done and we'd had a final JD and ginger to celebrate we walked back to the hotel stopping off at Shake Shack for a celebration Salted Caramel milkshake and then went straight to bed clocking up 66267 steps for the day!

All in all, whilst it was nearly a personal worst for me in terms of time, it was definitely a personal best in terms of experience and atmosphere.  It was lovely to "run" a whole marathon with Alan and cross the finish together and not once did we argue about stopping or pace.  The views were incredible and the organisation was great!  I said as we set off and as we shivered in the start village "I definitely won't want to do this again"...but I might have changed my mind...

PS. if you want to do NYC 2020 it's their 50th anniversary and I think the day before Trump is either re-elected or knocked out of the Whitehouse - could be an interesting time to visit!

Day 8 - a Lazy day on Gili Air

Most people that know me will think of me as fairly adventurous with all my mud races, marathon running and travelling, but one thing that I struggle with a fair amount is boats - I'm not scared of them, in fact my parents used to own a barge for many years and I even remember falling in a few times as a child.  However in recent years I seem to suffer from terrible seasickness - on ferries to Norway and Sweden I was violently sick after just a coupl of hours, on a catamaran in Mallorca I brought up my entire breakfast (and let me tell you there are far better things to see for a second time than chorizo and goats cheese!) and even on a small crossing I feel a bit uneasy.  I guess now I'm more worried about being sick which makes it worse.

So Anna wanted to go snorkeling and see some sea turtles, I'd loved to have given it a go, but I was nervous and also feeling pretty uncomfortable after about 17 mossie bites, so she was going to join an organised tour of the 3 islands at 9.30am coming back at 3pm and I was going to chill out and read etc. 

Unfortunately the boat went without her!  We had a wander around the island looking for alternatives, but the best option seemed to be one of the guys back at Segar Villages taking her on the private boat for a couple off hours for the equivalent of about £25.  Once we'd decided that we did a bit more chilling out back at the same place as we'd done the previous day, ate some lunch and then Anna went off at about 2 pm and so I took advantage of the opportunity to have a decent shower and then let my hair dry before I got too hot and had to put it up again!

Anna loved her trip and saw 7 sea turtles as well as even better fish than we had seen on the beach.  She got showered and changed and we went off for a drink - happy hour margarita - at Paridiso bar - very loud pumping music which seemed incongruous with the calm feel across the island in general.  

We moved on and went back to Chill out Bungalows, hopped onto a beach hut bench and had another lovely meal.  We went for another pizza which we shared and then I had the Lombok Salad again with some cheesy chips.

I went to bed feeling quite relaxed, although still itchy from the mossie bites!

(Some interesting messages below on restaurants that I saw on Gili)

Day 7 - Waking up on a Desert Island

On our first morning on Gili Air I work up to the sound of the waves crashing outside (which we could hear as long as we'd turned off the Air Con!)

We wandered over to the reception area which was the only place you could consistently get WIFI and ordered our choice - Anna had a chocolate pancake and I had an omelette with garlic, onion, tomato and cheese and I had an iced coffee.

After breakfast we packed up our beach stuff including snorkels and walked all of about 100m down to Gili Air Santay Bungalows & Restaurant where we set up in a beach hut and grabbed a couple of drinks.  I had lots of blogging to catch up on and my only goal of the day was to catch up, do some painting and read some of my book.

Anna jumped straight into the sea and came back marveling at all the different fish that she had seen including Angel fish.  I was inspired to chuck on the mask that I had bought from the supermarket back in Ubud and give it a go.  Unfortunately for me my initial walk into he sea which is extremely shallow for the first 50m - up to knee height - was a bit painful as there was lots of coral which jabbed into my feet.  I managed to get out to a reasonable depth to swim, put my mask on, adjusted it, but it seemed to make no difference what I did - I would put my head in the water - try really hard to breathe just through my mouth which I struggle with at the best of times and still I'd get water in my mask.  I saw about 5 fish which was nice, but got frustrated and walked back to the shore wincing as I stepped onto the coral with my bare feet.

We had a break from all the relaxing for lunch and I ordered Gado Gado and a Yellow fish and coconut curry - both were beautiful, but huge portions so I didn't end up eating much of it.

I continued to catch up with my blog until Anna kindly leant me her snorkel and mask to have a try myself.  She was also kind enough to let me squash my size 8 hooves into her teeny size 4 sandals so that I could get into the water without having to feel the scratchy dead coral underfoot.  Not having the mask fill up with water every 10 seconds made such a difference.  I was enthralled I saw fish that I’ve only ever seen in fish tanks at aquariums or on the TV!  There were bright, vivid electric blue tiny fish darting about in small schools only about 2 or 3cm long.  There were multi coloured and iridescent parrot fish who are about 20 cm long and just don’t realise how pretty they are.   There were loads of black and yellow angel fish about the size of my hand picking away at all the coral and nibbling the bottom of the seabed.  There were hundreds of tiny striped fish a green tinge darting around near the surface.  Lots of larger probably white snapper type fish along the bottom of the seabed.  As I swam around I kept marveling what I was seeing, wishing I had an underwater camera to record it all and trying really hard to commit everything that I could see to memory.

I've added some pictures of the types of fish that I saw - I didn't take them sadly, but they are the fish that I was looking at!

After my underwater adventure I relaxed in my beach hut for a bit longer while Anna took turns to alternate between lying in the sun on the beach and taking time out in the beach hut. I'd brought a book, brushes and watercolour paint set from home that I'd bought at Tate Modern in London just after I'd run London Marathon and painted a picture of the view I had from my beach hut.  I know I'm not very good, but there is something really relaxing and therapeutic about just painting.

We headed back from the beach and I decided that I wanted to try out some yoga at H2o Yoga which was about 5 minutes walk from our hotel - I showered and put on some leggings and a dress and sprayed the rest of me with mossie repellent - unfortunately I hadn't mitigated for the fact that mossies can bite through material and after a lovely 1 and a half hour yoga session which was challenging, but also relaxing.  The teacher was American and it was quite a busy class, but with not too many people that she wasn't able to help those with less experience and make adjustments.  It felt friendly, but perhaps I preferred Yoga Barn for feeling more welcome - although it was clear that some of the people there were regular attendees,  The session cost 100000 rupiah which is the equivalent for about £5 and so pretty good value for money - I just wish I didn't get so bitten during the class.

I headed back to the hotel and we got changed and went out for dinner - we walked up and down for a bit looking at a few different restaurants and eventually decided on Chill Out Bungalows.  Lots of the restaurants on Gili Air have the fish caught that day on display including red snapper, white snapper and perhaps most oddly - parrot fish - we weren't sure if we could bring ourselves to eat the gorgeous fish that we'd been marveling at only hours beforehand in the sea!

Our meal was lovely and the restaurant was really quite busy which is often a good sign.  We shared a pizza for a starter (after lots of curry I had started to crave a bit of western food - terrible I know!) and then I had a Lombok Salad which was spicy, but not head blowing off levels of spice and I had some potato wedges which were huge!  Full and happy we went to bed as things shut down on Gili Air in general pretty early - i.e. by 10pm most of the restaurants were in the process of closing down.

Bali Day 6 and Lombok and Gili

Made's friend came and picked us up at 6am to get us to Denpaser airport for around 7am - we were extremely early for our 9.10am flight and so picked up breakfast...we were bad... we went for Burger King and befriended a rather interesting looking chap who was in a brown patterned shirt from Lombok and was buying a special BK soup.  He then turned up at every point we were at in the airport - including our flight!  

Domestic travel in Indonesia is interesting - we got scanned twice as you do in the UK before we got on the plane, but none of the liquids in transparent plastic bags debarcle and I took through 2 x 1.5 litre bottles of water without them batting an eyelid.  You have to have your wits about you as people will push into the queue in front of you and our boarding passes said gate 18, but then the screen said gate 17 and then the annoucement was gate 18 - with only a handful of passengers to get on the plane it was very much a case of "blink and you'll miss it!".  I had a 2 minute panic where I thought I'd lost my phone, I hadn't, but in running around for a minute I managed to completely fall flat on my side on a tiled surface - ouch - the bruise is yet to materialise though!  We got on the plane which was 2 seats either side of the aisle and was small, but felt perfectly safe.  Wings Air was really cheap to fly with and there were some questions over the safety record, but it all felt fine.  

As soon as we took off, it was time to land with only a 30 minute flight between Denpaser and Lombok airport.  There was a brief moment of confusion where it seemed like we collected our luggage direct from the plane, but soon enough we realised ours was going to come out on the carosel as usual. 

We grabbed our bags and walked through into the throng of taxi companies shouting and vying to get your attention. After a few minutes we managed to negotiate a 2 hour transfer to Bangsal harbour from the airport which is in Matram for 247.5K rupiah - about £12.50 and had a very interesting taxi journey through mountainous rainforest with hundreds of monkeys lining the sides of the road.  

The taxi went to pull through to Bangsal harbour, but was stopped and we could either pay 10000 rupiah (50p) or walk about 400 yards the rest of the way to the harbour which we did although it was all very confusing.  I'd read tips on how to buy boat tickets to Gili Air as there were a few horror stories on the web about how you can get conned into spending lots of money on a ticket for a "fast boat" only to end up on the public boat which costs 10000 rupiah.  I followed the directions from someone on Trip Advisor and took a right at the harbour past the building with orange pillars and a blue roof and we bought tickets to Gili Air from the office there - we asked about the public boat, but it only goes when there are 30 people (apparently) and we would have been passengers 1 and 2 and there wasn't much to do in the port - even lunch wasn't an option with a small handful of shops selling drinks, crisps and cigarettes.  We instead spent 75,000 rupiah each on a fast boat ticket for the 1pm boat (at this point it was about 12pm) and we bought drinks and then waited around for the boat.  As we were waiting we met up with a couple of aussies (well they'd been in Oz for 35 years originally from Brighton and Grimsby/Cleethorpes) who had been apparently waiting for the same boat since before 11am - they'd changed their tickets and managed to get on the same boat as us which left at 1.08pm after they'd been told that their boat was broken.  

After a fairly straightforward crossing (I get terribly seasick on boats!) we arrived to Gili Air after about 15 minutes and I thought for a moment it would be a case of jumping into the shallow waters on the shore to disembark, although after walking along the side of the boat we managed to get onto dry land.  

Gili Air is tiny - you can walk leisurely around the whole circumfrance of the island within 1.5 hours and we were probably only about 1km from our accomodation at Segar Village, but we negotiated a 70,000 rupiah ride to our hotel on a horse and cart!  The horses are so cute and have loads of bells so it almost sounds Christmassy against a paradise beach backdrop.  There are no motorbikes and no cards on Gili Air and with a population of 1800 you really do feel that you are in the middle of nowhere, although with so many different bars and restaurants you don't feel at all like you have left civilisation!

Our room is lovely - stone and coral floors and walls and our bathroom is private, but outside - I had a brief shower looking up through the trees before we headed out to grab some lunch at one of the many beachside cafes.  Our lunch whilst coming from a very basic place was gorgeous and we sat in a lovely beach hut relaxing and watching the beautiful sea.  I had calamari and chips with pickled vegatables (which also included pineapple!).

We continued our walk around the island and got to another point for a stop off and it was happy hour cocktails and so we had Long Island Beach Cocktails - buy one and get one free and lounged around on beanbags and drifted off into a snooze for about an hour! Slowly the Dire Straits album that was on repeat got louder and louder and we woke up and decided that it was time to move on and walk a bit further and so we carried on around the island perimeter and were soon at the port where we'd first arrived.

We kept going back to Seger Villages so that Anna could have a shower and we then went out for dinner at Turtle Beach - we had fish soup and then I had shrimps and avocado and some chips.  It was gorgeous food and we felt very relaxed and so we had a nice early night and slept in our princess style bed with mosquito nets!