Random Walks in the Low Countries - Reflections and observations on the expatriate experience from an American scientist living and working in the Netherlands.

Essential Travel Only

November 26, 2020 by Dave Hampton

Well, the relaunch went (not) well…

It’s been a couple of months since I committed to getting back in touch with this blog and my readers, striving for a thrice-weekly update. I didn’t get there: life is (always) busy, there’s a FOSO (Fear of Starting Over) factor, recreational writing has become an unfamiliar habit. But the Covid-constrained times are also a consideration: What is there to say in an expat / travel blog when borders are closed and we’re all working from home?

I was reflecting on how to approach the return to expat blogging during my early-morning drive up to work this week. One could be prescriptive, the ‘Big 5’ personality traits that underlie success as a traveler and expatriate (extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability) may also be ones that lead to better outcomes during the lockdowns. Or it’s a story of perseverance, the ‘Stockdale Paradox’, describing an inner resilience that comes from facing reality and knowing you’ll prevail. Then there’s opportunity, organizational psychologist Adam Grant suggests using disruptive change to build new skills, renew best networks, and experiment with different ways of working and living.

There’s constructive approaches to essays in all of this. I follow a number of long-distance sailing vlogs and nomad traveler updates, and everyone has started from the same reality. as me. We’re abroad for travel, culture, people, and experiences. But borders are closed, quarantines lie at the end of every journey, and there’s no longer a way to indulge casual tourism. Rather, travel has become a matter of waiting, watching for openings, and then moving incrementally ahead. The best of expats and travelers are not moaning or repatriating as they adapt to the current circumstances: we all have been finding new ways to do what we love and to make the most of where we are at.

So in that spirit, I’ll take the second opportunity to relaunch here. I’ve been fortunate staying healthy, productive, engaged, and happy through 2020. There hve been lots of positive changes and adjustments. and I look forward to catching up with all of you again. I hope that you have all similarly found your way, and look forward to hearing your stories, thoughts, and comments.

Hello, its been a while….

August 24, 2020 by Dave Hampton

…almost three years, I’m afraid.

Back then, my blog editor had been discontinued, Google was abandoning the Blogger platform, and life was getting too busy to keep up my regular blogging. It wasn’t a bad thing: I was ready for a break and refresh, and to participate in expat life more than documenting it.

More recently though, lockdown and distancing have interrupted the face-to-face social conversations that I enjoyed over koffie en bierje. There’s been little chance to share stories and pictures, to discuss changes in the past few years and the opportunities ahead. I’ve missed the chance for thoughtful reflection together along the journey.

So, I’m committing to thrice-weekly essays while I get a feel for writing again and learn WordPress. There are lots of good things to share. I’m looking forward to catching up with you and to re-starting our conversations together.

I’d like to thank Joy Miller at 5J’s Design for her expert help in configuring and migrating the nearly 2000 posts with pictures from the old Blogger platform to the new dedicated home on WordPress. It’s a comfortable new address, and would not be possible without her patience and expertise.

Bringing things back online

June 7, 2017 by Dave Hampton

After a fruitless month of trying various fixes for uploads to Google Blogger, I’ve concluded that there isn’t a way forward with the platform.

Unfortunately, its not the first time that the majors have stepped back from supporting products that I rely on. But I’ve also learned from experience. The best thing is to take the steps necessary to migrate to new services, ones with fewer bugs and better capability. In the end, I want a platform that best serves my audience and supports my authoring…

So, I’ve begun the transition, registering a domain and engaging a support consultant. We’ll likely move the entire blog to a new platform in early July, with a new style template and, perhaps, additional personal pages. From your perspective it should be seamless: no content will be lost and the addresses won’t change.

My professional site, Stone Bridge Biomedical, should also re-launch at the same time. While my two domains won’t be tightly joined, they will be more consistent and professional.

In the meantime, I remain active on Instagram, can be reached by email, and am always available for a ramble along the beach or a biertje by the river. Thanks again for reading, and for bearing with me during the migration.

Sorting out the issues

April 21, 2017 by Dave Hampton

There have been fewer blog posts of late because of numerous technical problems with too little time available to sort them. Open Live Writer has only been able to publish intermittently because of an Error 500 associated with posting pictures. Blogger stores photos in dedicated albums in Google Photos, and the interface is, at best, inconsistent.

The project team at Github has suggested workarounds, but I’ve had mixed success in getting them running. Test posts have, therefore, been popping up occasionally while I run potential fixes: I’m sorry for the spam and will hopefully get things to settle down shortly.

Pixl1135 The camera also needed to go into the shop for another lens. This is the third time that the camera has stopped recognising its own E-mount glass, its never in the body, but always in the lens recognition system. I have replacement insurance with John Lewis, fortunately, but it leaves me without good photo support until the system comes back. Hopefully it will be resolved next week.

Finally, I updated the blog theme last week, slightly: Blogger has been changing its templates and a consultant suggested that uploads might start working if my migrated off of my 5-year-old standard. The blog and photos migrated fine, but I’ll likely make more aesthetic adjustments in the coming month.

However, I’m still around and doing fine. There’s lots to share once things get sorted, and as the workload eases up in the Netherlands and UK.

Braving the Dovedale Trail

April 2, 2017 by Dave Hampton

Morning dawned misty and cool along the Amber Valley, a former mining district just southeast of the Peak District. Evening at the Farm Hotel had passed with comfortable ease, from drinks with the owner of a pub Saturday night to a decent buffet breakfast to start our Sunday.

Flicking though the local outdoor guides, the nearby Dovedale Walk looked appealing: One of the most beautiful limestone dales in Britain, a variety of scenery with the ever-changing River Dove, the steep limestone cliffs and spires, the rare woodlands species and its many caves. The trailhead was in the nearby village of Ilam, near a rolling park, a stately home, and a looping bend of the Manifold River.

Given that it was a nice spring weekend, though, families were out in force by 10 am and the narrow roads into the village clogged with traffic. We dropped anchor near the trailhead and walked the rest of the way in, along the tidy homes and past the stone church to Ilam Hall, a once-fashionable mansion converted to youth-hostel by the National Trust. ‘tea and a beer, then off into the hills.

It’s lambing time in the northern meadows, sheep all across the trail the wound up above the roads and traffic. There was a steady line of walkers, some with dogs and sticks, others lifting children over the stiles, all sloshing along the muddy slopes. It made (my) balance tricky, but the rocky upslope alternate path was longer and steeper, so we stayed to the pastures and took things easy.

The Dovedale Valley is about a mile onward, a frothing river flowing through steep-sided limestone canyons. The first attraction is the Stepping Stones, a sequence of flat rocks providing a well-known river crossing. There’s a bit of a queue to wait, but the rocks themselves, flat-topped and each about a foot apart, don’t seem to be much of an obstacle.

Or so I thought. Crossing the first three, they were a bit more rough, muddy, slippery, and tipped than I’d realised. My ankle is similarly rough, wobbly, and tipped, and there was no easy way to go forward or back.

Stuck, I beckoned my w.wezen back for an assist (who thought I only wanted to take a picture). With a steady hand to hold, the crossing was done, eliciting embarrassing applause from the group queued on the other bank. Age and hesitation, but falling into the water would have been worse.

Onwards, up the valley through rock formations, weirs, and little named settings (Lovers Leap). The whole three miles up to Milldale was more than we had time for, but it was nice to get back up into the hills and alongside the streams.

The further ridges and peaks were drawing venturesome teens and booted hikers, and it would be fun to scale for the views some other time.

Chatsworth Gardens

April 1, 2017 by Dave Hampton

The great English landscape gardener, Capability Brown, transformed the working farmland and small formal gardens around Chatsworth House to rolling gardens in 1760. Joseph Paxton added the kitchen gardens and glasshouses a hundred years later during his period as head gardener.

Today the trails above the house meander through mature woodlands, flower beds, and sculpture displays between the working gardens. Turns in the path open to dramatic views of water and sky, framed by natural and architectural accents, the whole estate extending across 405 hectares.

Lancelot (Capability) Brown’s style was style founded on two principles. First, the practical: that the finished gardens should meet their ‘capability’, providing for every need of the great house. The second was elegance: the features of the garden must cohere to a grammar of features. The result was was a pleasing (for me, anyway) alternative to the geometric and boxed French gardens, lots of grassy planes with open views, scattered trees and hedges, and winding waterworks and lakes.

It didn’t come cheap: the Chatsworth gardens took 25,000 man and horse days to create, and cost over £40,000 (nearly £6 million in today’s currency). Still, on a sunny warm spring day, their real value is evident.