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| Just part of Atlanta's massive airport. |
Travel stories, tales and yarns from the world of travel published in conjunction with travel portal, traveloscopy.com Online since 2002
April 25, 2014
April 24, 2014
Cobb and Co in West Dorest
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| Classic scene: Meryl Streep on The Cobb at Lyme Regis is one of the most timeless moments in cinema (Sygma) |
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| The crowded sandy Town Beach on a hot summer day |
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| From the cobb, across the harbour |
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| From the cobb end, across the water to cute seaside town of Lyme Regis |
By Graeme Willingham
The cloaked and hooded Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant's Woman 1981 movie would have been swept off the cobb at Lyme Regis by the huge waves and gale force winds that lashed UK's West Dorest in January. Lieutenant's Woman, one of the most unforgettable scenes in cinema.
Two boats sank in the harbour, some beach huts outside the harbour were damaged, but fortunately the cobb, or breakwater, built in 1313, again stood firm and protected the main beach, which strangely, is foreign ... it's made of sand imported from France.
Southern England's coast is dominated by rocky and pebble beaches, but at Lyme Regis the council created a sandy beach at the town centre's seafront, flanked though on one side by a natural ankle-breaking rocky (well, big irregular-sized grey pebbles) beach, and the other side by a beach of easier-to-navigate smaller uniform light tan coloured pebbles, also imported. This beach is about 2m high so acts as a backup breakwater for the seafront wall.
Behind the sandy beach is a collection of fish'n'chips shops (Herbies was prominent), cafes, restaurants, ice cream kiosks, pubs and tourist shops, combined making a quaint seaside community worth investigation
When we visited Lyme Regis on a hot July day last year (it's approaching that time again), the sandy beach was packed with beachgoers (pictured). Crowd wise, a bit like Bondi. But only a bit. The built-up pebble beach was well patronised too, but the rocky beach was virtually deserted, apart from a set of tentative tourists trying their luck hobbling into the "open sea", and a couple of angry mums rounding up their escapee kids on an unapproved excursion of discovery towards fossils in the crumbling grey cliffs which are part of the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site.
Along the cobb, kids and adults were fishing, and couples were sitting, looking back to the beach and cute township across safely moored fishing boats.
The cobb has to be walked, to the very end. To where Ms Streep stood, drenched by spray, staring out to sea.
April 21, 2014
Struth! Tipping the scale - who would have thought?
IN his continuing search for the more weird, whacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says that while the vast majority of Australians will tell you they've an aversion to the concept of tipping, a survey just undertaken by MasterCard has found that 46% of us claim that we are, in fact, regular tippers.
MasterCard surveyed 7,932 people aged between 18 and 64 years across fourteen countries in Asia and the Pacific, and found the worst tippers to be the Japanese – just 4% saying they leave a tip.
At the other end of the scale, 84% of Thais said they always left one, 78% of Indians and 73% of Philippinos.
With 46% of Australians saying they leave a tip, we're well in front of our New Zealand cousins – over there, just 12% tip regularly, while in Myanmar 42% do so, 33% in Indonesia, 31% in Malaysia, 20% in both Singapore and Vietnam, 10% in South Korea and 12% in Taiwan.
And overall those aged over 45 were generally quicker to offer a tip than those between 18 and 29, with men more regularly opening the wallet than women.
World's most expensive - empty - airport.
GOING CHEAP – YOUR OWN $1.7B HOLIDAY AIRPORT
David Ellis
IF you think Qantas has problems, consider a whopping international airport in Spain that cost almost the equivalent of AU$1.7-billion to build in 2008, and although able to handle a mind-boggling 10-million passengers a year, hasn't seen a single plane or passenger for over two years.
And when it recently went up for auction with a starting price of just $170-million – a mere ten per cent of its original cost – the modern, pristine but idle airport did not attract a single bid.
Now the receivers are thinking of lowering the reserve to just AU$136-million… and if they don't get that, they've indicated they'll maybe even think about no reserve at all – proving, that indeed, desperate men do desperate things.
The bizarre case of the Ciudad Central Airport in the city of Ciudad Real, about 200km south of Madrid, began during Spain's property bubble whose origins were in the late 1990s, a time when developers were throwing money at anything they thought people would have a use for, and which imploded dramatically in 2008 – just as the airport opened.
Ciudad Central had been seen as a hub for millions of holidaymakers who would fly in from around Europe and Britain, taking the high- speed AVE train from a station right at the airport to Madrid and archaeologically-fascinating Cordoba (each about just-50 minutes away,) and to Seville and Malaga a further hour or so by the AVE.
But the proposed AVE station – that would have been the first-ever high-speed rail station at a Spanish airport – never eventuated, the bottom fell out of both the property market and the Spanish economy, and rather than flying-in by their millions, tourists and other travellers stayed away by the never-to-arrive plane-load.
Built as Spain's first privately-owned international airport, Ciudad Central appeared almost jinxed from the start, when the developers named their massive $1.7-billion venture Don Quixote International – a name considered by many as a poor choice, with the 17th century Spanish literary figure, whilst chivalrous, also quite delusional.
The name did not last long, and Don Quixote International was soon changed to Ciudad Real Central.
And it had everything, from a runway that at 4.2km was one of the longest in Europe and able to take the world's largest aircraft the A380 Airbus, a terminal that could handle those 10-million passengers a year, over a thousand undercover car-parking places, facilities to shift 47,000 tonnes of air-freight annually, maintenance hangars, a heliport, and a covered 300m long walkway to where the AVE station was to be built.
And around all this, an eight square kilometre industrial zone for industries wanting direct-access to freighter aircraft.
Only two things were missing: passengers and those freighter aircraft.
The first passengers had flown into Ciudad in December 2008 on low-cost and charter flights, but major airlines showed no interest.
Eventually eighteen months after opening, Ireland's budget airline Ryanair ventured-in as the first international airline to use Ciudad, with three services a week from London's Stansted Airport. But these lasted only six months until November 2010, carrying some 22,000 passengers in that time.
Air Berlin also flew in for several months, and on October 29 2011 Spanish low-cost service Vueling spelled the final death of Ciudad Real Central when it flew its – and thus the airport's – last service there. After staying open to handle a scattering of private aircraft movements, Ciudad officially closed in April 2012.
The airport's operators filed for bankruptcy with debts in the hundreds of millions, and with total passenger numbers after three years failing to pass the low thousands, compared with the much-hyped 10-million annually.
Since closing, the airport's been used for the filming of a number of motor company advertisements, and it was used for some scenes in a movie "I'm So Excited!" – a comedy that coincidentally is about a flight from Madrid to Mexico that develops mechanical problems, and the reaction of its bisexual pilots, three gay stewards, and those in First Class whom it eventuates include a hit man, a fraudster, a female blackmailer and a film star with girlfriend problems.
And while you're figuring all that out, the receivers of Ciudad Real are still figuring out how they can find someone who wants to buy Spain's most-modern, if emptiest, airport that's going cheap… real cheap.
………………………
PHOTO CAPTIONS:
[] SPAIN'S biggest white elephant, the abandoned $1.7-billion Ciudad Real Central Airport that's just over five years old. (Wikipedia)
[] FORLORN sight from outside, but inside the airport terminal remains in pristine condition. (FlickR)
[] ABANDONED check-in counters ready for action the moment Ciudad Central goes back into business. (Spain Free Press)
[] CARPARK with over a thousand under-cover spaces. (Wikimedia)
[] GOING nowhere: this covered walkway was supposed to lead to a high-speed rail station at the airport. (Spain Free Press)
[] AIR-BERLIN was one of the few international airlines to use Ciudad Real Central, but pulled out after only a few months. (Air-Berlin picture)
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