Cresfest 2025 in Creswick

by Miss Penny Black

For many years my friendship group has been tossing around the idea of all retiring to a country town where we can all be within a few minutes of each other. One of my friends is very keen in Creswick being the destination and, since I’d never been, I decided this year, while I wasn’t working, would be a great time to check it out. Cresfest is an annual folk music festival that happens in April so it seemed like a good chance to see the town at its best.

I left Melbourne at midday on Friday and it took a bit over two hours to get there from Heathmont. Creswick is near Ballarat, which is on the opposite side of Melbourne and, unfortunately, involved driving down the Calder freeway. ‘Godforsaken’ might be a little dramatic, but it’s a drab and dull drive for an hour on a rubbish-strewn road with sad old farms every so often.

Creswick itself is surrounded by small hills and forest, making it a bit of an oasis in the somewhat barren landscape of central Victoria.

I arrived a bit after 2 and had a look around the Airbnb I’d booked (‘the house on the hill’ if you like the look of it). The house was very nice and well appointed except for the fact that all the lights, bar the lamps, were fitted with cold white globes, there by reducing the coziness of the property by half. Why anyone, anywhere outside of a medical setting, would put in blue white light over warm white is a complete mystery to me.

The house is built on a hillside overlooking the town but the front of the house is just bedrooms so there is a pod on the side of the house with a glass wall and a lovely view.

It has a log fire and some uncomfortable single wicker chairs, which is a shame because lounging in front of a fire in really comfy chairs is a premium night time experience.

After poking around the house and making a mental note of all the things I’d change if I owned it, I went for a walk down the main street, which is about 200 metres away down a steep hill.

The main street of a Creswick definitely has a fancier end. There is a French patisserie with very posh case of pastries, several historic pubs and restaurants and a local library that looks like it was built very recently with zero concern for the gold rush era streetscape.

No photos of the library, it was too ugly.

After a lap and a detour down a side street I walked back to the house and jumped in the car to visit the local lake.

Very pretty, possibly enhanced unfairly by the flawless weather. Jane tells me the water is always freezing.

For the rest of the afternoon and half the evening I drank wine, listened to the Parenting Hell podcast and did some drawing. I watched the sunset, birds flocking around, and ate a slice of cauliflower bake that I brought from home.

Jess and Christophe arrived mid evening and we had a few drinks before going to bed at a very sensible hour.

In the morning I was pleased and surprised to wake up without a hangover.

We had all bought Saturday tickets for Cresfest so the first order of business was getting our digital tickets translated into wristbands. Our first act of the day was a duo of Indian guitarists who played bluegrass (so they said, folk music is a whole new world to me) and got the crowd to sing along to Home Among The Gum Trees, which was twee but cute.

Jane and Ash were driving up on the day so I went back to the house to meet them then we walked back down the hill together. After not being able to get into a show that Jess and Christophe were already in (there were 20 venues spread out around the town) we sat outside the pub for a chat, got some lunch then went to see The Tuck Shop Ladies, who were very entertaining, playing short, funky, original songs.

We walked to the primary school to check out what was there and Jane booked a session with a fortune teller. We also caught a bit of a lovely father and daughter act who turned out to be friends of Kat’s. Small world!

I got a bit tired of wandering and headed back to the house in the late afternoon to sit in the sun and relax. Eventually I lit the fire and then everyone else came back and we sat and had a very pleasant chat for a while before Jane and Ash headed back to Melbourne.

The overall assessment of the festival had been that it was a bit overpriced, poorly signed (the food vans that had set up at the primary school were completely out of sight of the rest of the festival) and it would’ve benefited from more stalls. However the acts we saw were good, the crowd was lovely and the weather was 10/10.

Being so used to electronic music festivals, it was strange to be sitting down listening to people play, but it all felt very civilised and I expect it’ll get better every year.

26May2023

Buttermere: Last Day!

by Miss Penny Black

Before I do anything else, here’s some pictures of the inside and outside of our little cottage.

Please note all doors and windows are 2/3 normal size.

The tiny windows and low ceilings definitely add to the doll house feel.

A bedroom that is barely big enough for one bed, let alone two. The beds are so small our feet hang off the ends!

Mark and Sue went off to climb Rannerdale Knotts, the home of one of England’s largest bluebell fields. Unfortunately the bluebells are mostly done here so the rest of us opted to dither around the cottage until 11:30 then walk to Buttermere for lunch.

We somehow managed to take the wrong track once again (a different wrong track this time) and had to jump the stream. It’s a track that’s about 500 metres long and we somehow are yet to find the right path.

Back to the same cafe as the previous day for a different type of pie and a different flavour of fancy lemonade.

Across the road from the Buttermere pubs is a walk that goes alongside a deep beck. We headed up and along, enjoying the shade on such a warm and bright day.

It’s (yet again) hard to capture but the side was steep and dropped away sharply. The path was fairly flat but narrow and I started to feel a bit of vertigo. It was annoying that, on such a straightforward path, I felt suddenly very anxious and had a moment of panic. Sometimes I wonder if I’d been more outdoorsy and comfortable with this sort of thing if I’d kept up the walking we’d done with Mum on our childhood holidays. We used to go to the Blue Mountains and climb down ladders on cliff faces ands scramble around. Still, I do what I’m comfortable with doing and that will have to be enough.

At the end of the path we went through a gate and onto the open hillside, just in time to see a jet zoom past.

A fairly awful photo of one of the fighter jets. I cropped a tiny section of a much larger photo so sorry for the quality but I’m amazed I got it at all.

Sometimes you don’t have to climb too high for amazing vistas.

Poignant feelings given it’s such a stunning day but also our last proper day here.

Eventually we walked the short distance down to the road and took yet another path back through the wood and field to our cottage.

We spied two little black lambs drinking from the beck.

We have really enjoyed being here in lambing season. From our sunny spot by the kitchen window we watching little groups of lambs climbing on logs, chasing each other and annoying their mothers.

Almost definitely the last photo of a person on a bridge.

A shaded wood with the last patch of bluebells.

Back to have a drink in the sun and relax before dinner.

Sue and I decided that if we ran a bed and breakfast she would do the greeting, the laundry and the continental breakfast, I’d do the shopping, cooking and gardening. That seemed to cover pretty much everything so we’re good to go!

Dinner was at one of the Buttermere pubs. I didn’t take any photos of food but here’s the actual, very last photo of our group and a bridge.

I talked them all into standing by the sign and then informed them that they’d been unwittingly lured into a final bridge photo.

Lea managed to finally post the card she had forgotten to take to the postbox for the last week.

A last look at the lambs on the way home…

In the morning there was nothing to do but pack up. Sue, Mark, Lea and Pete left just after 9:30.

Luke and I weren’t going anywhere near as far, so we hung around until almost 11 packing our things and using the wifi. We had a chat to one of the caretakers and she said the scratching Pete and Lea heard in the roof above their bedroom was a protected colony of bats! We’d seen them fly out the previous evening but they were so small and dark we thought they were birds.

We’ve all loved our time in the Lake District and felt very fortunate to have had such stunning weather. Blue skies every day (well, for at least part of every day) and only a spot of rain overnight.

I’ve really enjoyed sharing my favourite place with Lea and Pete and, apart from a few hairy moments, the walks have been pretty right for our ability levels. The food has been great and our accommodation, while quirky, has been perfectly located. Luke and I are looking forward to a better bed tonight though!

15Apr2023

Hiking: Askham to Winter Crag via Pooley Bridge

by Miss Penny Black

I realise those names aren’t going to mean much to most people but it was my first day of real hiking! Very exciting! And all to places I’ve never been before. Last time I mainly stuck to the Cumbria Way, which heads through the middle of the LD, north to south, but this time I’ve started in the far east.

Last time I was here in the Lake District I used waterproof paper maps, but this time I’ve downloaded the OS map app and it’s saved a lot of room in my pack! I had to carry four giant sheets for the entire region, it’s nice to have that space free for other things now.

After a marginally better night of sleep I had French toast and bacon for breakfast (it’s really the best thing for my health to be leaving the Punchbowl, I think I’ve had too much of a good thing) and found an Airbnb property in a valley off Ullswater, the closest and second largest of the lakes in Cumbria.

I set off in beautiful sunshine and headed west through the village. Most villages are in valleys so they are close to water, but this means every hike starts with an uphill climb, so by the time I’d got to the top of the rise I was in short sleeves, despite it being about 5 degrees.

A panorama of fells, snow-capped in the distance, ringed the horizon and I felt my spirits soar.

I took a little deviation from the path to get to the highest point on Heughscar Hill, where I had a wonderful surprise.

Fell ponies! I had no idea if they were the sort of wild animals you could get very close to. Like any sane person, I’m wary of animals that weigh five times as much as me, but they seemed extremely unconcerned by my presence and the track brought me closer.

They had very long manes and were middle-sized, bigger than Icelandic ponies but not huge. There were 14 in total, one grey and the rest dark brown. After a bit of research I learned that wild fell ponies are quite rare and have been in England since before Roman times. Around Ullswater and north of Kendal is the best place to see them.

Fortunately the hail was tiny – smaller than a pea, so I put on my hat and coat and I was fine. It didn’t last long and it was preferable to rain as it just bounced off.

After I got to the top of the hill I started seeing other hikers in the distance, all heading towards High Street, an old Roman road and ridge that runs 20 miles from near Askham to Windermere. Walking it had been my main goal for this trip but now that I’m seeing the tiny little people on top it seems very high.

I walked over the hill and down into Pooley Bridge. The sun came out again and the small town was heaving with day trippers and campers. Ullswater is ringed with campsites and hotels, and there’s a 20 miles circuit walk of the lake.

I stopped in the town and first looked at a church hall craft market, where I definitely wasn’t going to buy anything.

I bought three things. In my defence, they were all very small things.

I asked one of the ladies where to get coffee and she recommended a cafe/bookstore around the corner. I can’t think of a better retail combination!

I had a very nice coffee and a slice of a citrus something-or-other.

I also used the bathroom, which is something I wouldn’t normally mention on the blog, but check out this wallpaper!

The owner of my accommodation for the coming night had recommended talking the lake steamer down the the far end and walking from there, but I had all day (it was only 11am) and it didn’t look far on the map, so I decided to walk.

Once out of Pooley Bridge the crowds subsided to a constant stream rather than an impenetrable scrum, and I saw lots of sodden spaniels, romping retrievers and dripping dachsunds, all enjoying the water.

I looked longingly at the little sailboats out on the water, but apparently they are all privately owned, all the boats for rent were motorised or of the paddling variety.

To be honest, after two lessons this year I’m not sure I’m entirely qualified to take one out, but still…

I took a few breaks along the side of the lake as there didn’t seem to be much rush. The path eventually moved away from the water and up into the hills, where the ubiquitous streams and bogs started to appear. In Australia, if you went out bushwalking, a stream or river would be something you’d come across a couple of times a day, if you were lucky. Here it’s more unusual to not be walking over shallow running water or wading through mud at every gate.

At one point a nice family helped me hoist my bag over a drystone wall and I got my first injury on the pointy slate but it was just a little cut on my leg.

It’s funny how distances on maps can look so short in the morning and turn out to be so very far by mid-afternoon! After several hours I still had several valleys and hills to negotiate, but I finally got to my destination; Wintecrag Farm.

Altogether I did 17km (or, less impressively, a bit over 10 miles) carrying about 10kg and only one blister to show for it. A good first day!

31Aug2018

Oxford: Authors, Ancient History, and Artifacts.

by Miss Penny Black

We caught the bus from Cambridge to Oxford via Milton Keynes. There was a man on the bus who smelled so strongly of cigarette smoke that we had to move away from him. Still, at least he wasn’t cutting his toenails like the guy on the bus we caught to Heathrow a while back.

We arrived in Oxford around 1:30 and paid to leave our bags at the Oxford Backpackers. Four pounds per bag wasn’t a bad deal and the staff let us use the toilets too, which was nice of them.

We set off for a wander around town. Obviously I had to take a photo of this pub, almost next door to the school Ronnie Barker attended and named after one of the most famous Two Ronnies comedy sketches. We would’ve stopped in for a drink but it’s a Wetherspoons – urgh.

First stop was lunch at the Eagle and Child, the pub frequented by the illustrious Inklings, who included JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis.

It’s a smallish, dark and pokey pub that was heated to a startling temperature, but at the very back was a room that was less like a Saharan midday and had enough light to read the menu. We shared a chicken and chorizo pie that wasn’t half bad and left feeling fairly satisfied.

Next was a walk around the Natural History Museum. It looked a lot like the one in London but on a much smaller scale and was also free to enter.

There are a lot of interesting things to see. One of the exhibits that grabbed my attention were a gigantic wasp nest that was grown deliberately by some psychopath.

They had a good insect display with a few cases of live bugs including giant cockroaches. Another good section was a history of British culture with some great graphs showing immigration patterns across the centuries and one showed how different languages affected place names.

Our last stop was a Tolkien exhibition in the library that is opposite the Radcliffe Camera. Although it wasn’t large it did have a good number of original items on display and I thought the artwork was most interesting. Tolkien designed the dust jackets and illustrations for early editions – and drew all the maps of course. I had not known that he was born in South Africa, although his family moved back to England when he was three. Sadly photography wasn’t allowed so here’s a photo of the Radcliffe Camera instead.

We had a short walk through town before picking up our bags and heading to our Airbnb. As we booked this trip quite late we’d decided on just a room in an apartment. When we arrived the owners told us we’d have a continental breakfast provided every day – a nice surprise!

Next: Blenheim Palace.

15Nov2013

New Orleans

by Miss Penny Black

Our last day in New York had seen temperatures below zero, so we weren’t all that sorry to be flying south. We’d booked cheap flights with American Airways and were detouring via Washington, which still only meant we spent three hours in the air, which wasn’t too bad.

A few notes on our flying experience. This time we did have to take off our shoes and go through those body scanning machines – our first time. It seems a trifle strange that we have to do this for internal flights and not coming into the country. It sort of suggests that they think the terrorists are already here. Our transfer between flights was the shortest I’ve ever had – we literally walked off one plane and our next flight was already boarding at the gate next door. There was time to go to the toilet and that was it. Cutting it a bit close! Apart from that it wasn’t a bad experience. I always read about people having terrible times in domestic US flights but we had no problems. I was just glad I didn’t wear my 14 hole boots. They take about 15 minutes to get off and put on.

Our taxi driver from the airport was the most talkative yet – an older guy from Vietnam. We could hardly understand anything he said but he was very keen to say it. Telling us the area we were staying in was good and all about his family who live in Springvale in Melbourne. Almost everyone we’ve met around the world knows someone from Melbourne, or so it seems.

Our deluxe accommodation. It looks just as grand on the inside, don’t worry.

We’re staying in an Airbnb house that is supposed to be shared but the guy who lives here is away and there’s no one else staying here so we have to it ourselves. Which is just as well because the room we’re in is adjacent to the kitchen and we’d have people walking through it. The house is pretty old, with peeling paint and looks like nothing has been fixed, ever. It’s got a claw-footed bath, which is nice, but the water doesn’t drain properly and by the end of a shower it’s a quarter full. In the fact the whole place sort of feels like it was recently abandoned by a hoard of first year students. And the front rooms smell very strongly of dogs. Oh well. It’s cheap and we can spread our stuff out and the kitchen’s clean.

After a girl who looked about 15 and was carrying a baby let us in and explained everything we walked a few blocks to a bar called ‘Port of Call’. The vibe was laid back, the music wasn’t too loud and the menu was simple – enormous cocktails with a tropical theme and burgers with baked potatoes. When you order burgers here you often get asked how you want them cooked – like streak. It’s a nice touch but I can’t bring myself to eat pink burger mince. Not yet, anyhow.

The guy behind the bar had an accent like Sam from ‘True Blood’ and was really friendly. He even ended up showing us photos of his dog and an amazing ‘epic meal time’ style construction he’d made of a football pitch and stadium that was made of dip and sausages and meat sticks… it’s a bit hard to explain but we were very impressed. At the end of the night they almost under charged us by about $60 but we pointed it out and the manager gave us a cocktail for free, which was nice. We staggered home and I felt rather sorry for myself the next morning. Lesson learned – you can’t turn your back on New Orleans.

The next day we walked down Frenchman Street and through the French Quarter. All I know about New Orleans I learned from Anne Rice books so I know there’s areas with big mansions, the cemeteries are above ground and voodoo and swamps and all that stuff. So not much, really. Our area looks like an outback Australian town – lots of weatherboard and broken down cars. But then it also kind of looks like Priscilla had swept through and so lots of houses are painted really brightly and there’s mardi gras beads hanging from doorknobs and railings. It’s quite charming.

Beads everywhere!

Although we’ve been warned about the streets being dangerous we’ve not seen anything untoward as yet and I’ve only heard one siren, which is a nice change from New York. People say ‘Hi’…or rather ‘How y’all doin?’ when we walk past and the lady at the supermarket somehow managed to use the word ‘darlin’ 50 times in the space of two minutes.

Speaking of shopping, we went into a pharmacy and were taken aback by the fact that the first thing we saw upon entering was an enormous row of alcohol and bottles much bigger than you get at home. There were two litre bottles of Smirnoff for $20! But… in a pharmacy. Not something I’ve seen anywhere else around the world. Only in America?