Mr & Mrs Stofberg

Pamiet Festival 2009

2009-08-18T05:37:00.000-07:00

So, due to a back injury i was unable to compete in any events at the anual Palmiet Adventure Festival. This is why I spent my time next to the river behind a lens in stead of in my boat. Well, after a bit of frustration, this is what i came up with. I obviously lost a lot of quality reduceing it to a size suitable for my bandwidth, but you can still get the idea.

Paris

2008-03-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, we went to Paris almost a month ago, and now only do I post the photos - pathetic blogger.
Better late than never!

Tamara and I took the trip across, or should i say underneath, the English Channel to France. We went on the new, and apparantly improved, Eurostar, which now, after a couple of billion Pounds reach Paris 15 minutes quicker than the old Eurostar.
This all happened around Valentines Day, and we stayed with old family friends of the McFarlanes the Frayssineau, better known as the 'Froggies'. Tamara also spent 3 months with the family back in 2005 as an au-pair.
We did all the usual stuff any respectfull tourist would have done, you can see some of the cliché photos we took everywhere. One thing that did catch us by surprise was the temperature. On our first day there it was absolutely freezing. We had to buy hats from one of the local street venders. We didn't paint Paris red, but we walked it flat!

We joined the Frayssineau kids, Marie and Constance, on a day at Euro Disney. You be the judge looking at the photos - was it warm,cold or bloody freezing? It was awesome though! We ended up really having a great time, doing all the major rides and waiting in all the major qeues.

Tamara and I took on Paris at night by doing one of the river cruiser, finding out exactly why Paris is called "The City of Lights". I do believe that this is the best way to do it.

On the Sunday we went to the Gardens of Versailles nad Marie Antoinette's farm. It was very cool and we even did some Geocaching there, picking up a cache in the gardens in front of the chateau.

Thank you to the 'Froggies' - Herve, Fred, Constance and Marie - for putting up with us and entertaining us for the weekend!

a quest for a white christmas

2008-01-01T12:32:00.000-08:00

With our first ever Christmas away from home and family, we gathered 4 other 'orphans', Duncan, Alderet, Simon and Nadine, and headed up to the Scottish Highlands. After a approximate 12 hour drive through rain and ice, we finally reached our destination - Big Sky Lodges, just north of Inverness. Just to put into perspective, we were just over 57 degrees North Latitude, which is pretty far. We had about 5 hours of light every day, which didn't give us much time to explore, but did however give us more of enough time enjoying the locally brewed whiskey, beer and the home made mulled wine. The lodge we rented was more comfortable and beautiful than we imagined, a beautiful wooden cabin with three bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a reasonable kitchen, wood burning fireplace, loft area and a nice living room. Fantastic! To our delight the farm also housed four 'Heilan' coo', or Highland cows. We always refer to them as "Buffy Koeie", referring to my mom's hairy pooch named Buffy.

The days before Christmas we spent exploring the country side, and took a drive down to the famous Loch Ness. No Nessie, but we did visit Urquhart castle on the banks of Loch Ness. This castle is estimated to date back to the sixth century, and we couldn't help but wonder if any Macfarlanes where involved in it's destruction a couple of hundred years later.

We went that far north with one main objective in mind - a white Christmas. This was unfortunately not to be, not with snow in any case. We awoke on a very chilly Christmas morning, with everything covered in a considerable amount of frost...close enough, we considered it to be our first white Christmas. The roads were all nice and white and I even got a chance to stand a frozen solid water pond.

We had an absolute feast for Christmas, in fact we had two. Tamara and the girls slaved away in the kitchen to prepare two of the best meals we've had in a long time. The first one on Christmas eve, and then of course Christmas lunch. Well done Tamara and her little helpers!

To our great disappointment the distilleries and castles in the area were closed between Christmas and New Year, but we still had a drive out to the country side. One thing about the roads in the UK is that they don't all have hard shoulders, and we can't just pull off the road to take a photo, which often has you hanging out a window in a moving vehicle to try and take a snap shot, and of course just as you press the button a car or a tree will jump into your shot. We did get a couple of nice photos on our little missions, but not nearly enough! These photos were taken around the lodge, Inverness and Brodie castle.

We also took the orphans on a day of Geocaching, which was very cool. We were kind of looking forward to moving on towards the end of the trip, and changed our plans a little bit to stop over at Nadine's sister's place in Falkirk, a short drive from Edinburgh, in order to visit the beautiful city of Edinburgh. The trip to Edinburgh was great, but more on that in another chapter.

canterbury

2007-11-16T09:59:00.001-08:00

For Tami's birthday we decided to get away from London for the first time and do some quality tourist stuff. Canterbury is not to far away and everybody we spoke to told us it would be great place to visit, and it was. We took a train cross country on Saturday morning and pulled into the hostel, which was, as most hostels are, not great! Perhaps to much time at the 19th Hole has spoilt us both.
Canterbury is an awesome town with nearly the entire town centre only for pedestrians. The town still has a large section of the old city wall that use to surround the village, and is also home to the very impressive Canterbury Cathedral.

The cathedral visit was awesome, my first time inside a cathedral. There was a formal choir practice with the organ playing at full blast - pretty impressive.
The town was awesome and shopped till we couldn't any more. Just about all the shops that you'll find in central London are here, but they are so much more accessible.

This photo is of a freezing Tami on her birthday, in her first semi-winter outfit. We refer to this photo as "die winter-meisie". We missioned into town with the mistake of thinking the sun shining means warm weather. She is wearing a couple layer of tops and my 'puffer'bodywarmer.
On the Sunday we went to Dover to visit Dover Castle and do the War Time tunnels tour. It was freezing! The wind was pretty strong and let me tell you, on top of that hill there was more than a slight breeze. It drove the cold air straight through our best fleece's form K-Way and Cape Storm and chilled us properly. Here's a photo of Tami in front of the main gate of the castle and one of us on the top. Don't let the sunshine in this photo fool you, it only lasted for about 3 minutes!

tami and john-fluffy's birthday

2007-11-16T09:47:00.000-08:00

Tami and John decided to have a joint b-day bash in a local pub called The Boathouse on the Friday night. A whole lot of people came, but unfortunately we only took photos of the same bunch as always. We sort of actually 'forgot' to take photos and by the time we realized we did, every body either had moved on or we couldn't care!

Tami's birthday was actually only on Monday the 12th, so we went down to the Waitrose to purchase some cupcakes. Not exactly a birthday cake, but they were very tasty!

cousin's visit

2007-11-16T09:26:00.000-08:00

Kim, on a visit to her brother in Germany, decided to pop into London for a short time. She arrived on the Friday, and basically only stayed for the weekend, leaving again on the Tuesday. It was great to see her again and her visit gave us an excuse to undergo the trek and madness of a day in Camden Town.
This was my first Camden experience and I must be honest, I quite enjoyed it. We didn't buy to much but it was the experience that was cool. We didn't see loads of punks, but some of the stores where these freaks obviously do their shopping, where very interesting, especially the shoes!

After Camden we took Kim to a Virgin Megastore to purchase some DVD's for herself and to shorten her Christmas gifts-to-buy list. When we arrived in Picadilly Square I thought the shop would obviously be closed, seeing as it is pitch dark already. I stopped off and attempted to take some photos of the Piccadilly sign boards, but they didn't come out as well as I'd hoped.

This photo, to my absolute shock was taken at 17:03...and it was as black as night! Not cool! After the girls did some shopping we wondered the streets, OK we got lost, towards the correct bus stop. To out disgust we found this coat hanging in a shop window. Now, this photo didn't come out that clear because I was trying to zoom through the shop window and couldn't use the flash, but it's obvious what it is! If you were wondering who killed Winnie the Pooh, we have an idea, and they made a nice fur coat out of him!

RWC Final - southfields

2007-10-23T03:53:00.000-07:00

We can not explain to anyone how grateful we were that the boys in green and gold managed to pull through on this one! Endless amounts of abuse from English colleagues and children were, without a doubt, in our future if the Poms had won...but, they didn't!
We chose to watch the game at a friends house in Southfields with a whole bunch of Saffa's. Our first choice was Zulu's Bar in Fullham, but when people started queuing outside at two o'clock in the afternoon, game being at eight, we gave it a skip.
Fun was had by all and the cry of "bokke" echoed through the Southfields streets.
On our way home, Putney high street was all Saffa, as hundreds of drunken supporters, most of them dressed in green and gold, roamed the street from pub to pub cheering.
Is was a great day to be in London! On Sunday morning just about every newspaper had an article claiming the "most controversial try" was in fact the turning point in the game....Blah, blah, blah!

new branches on the family tree

2007-10-23T03:41:00.000-07:00

This post is actually a bit overdue...sorry! None the less, this is just to confirm the two latest additions to the Stofberg and McFarlane families. First came Isabel Stofberg, then a couple of weeks later, all the way across the world in Germany, Max McFarlane. Welcome to the family little people!

Max

Isabel

"sandles" in Putney

2007-09-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

Auntie Sandy came for a quick visit right at the beginning of September. Although her visit was short, it was packed with activities. Tami managed to get a couple days off work to do the whole mother daughter thing. Thankfully the whole mother-spoiling-daughter thing also fell into place, and we both reaped the benefits of having a "mommy" around. Tamara took the old lady shopping and she got a full experience of London on foot, walking up and down high street after high street looking at shops and things to buy the rest of the litter back home. Tami's 70% discount at Accesorize and Monsoon also came in handy.
On the Sunday afternoon we took her to the German restaurant previously featured on this blog, Steins, in Richmond. This time however, we did did not attempt the 'grosse'wors platter, but instead opted for the smaller version and a cheese platter which we shared. The weather wasn't that nice as you can see by our clothing, but with a couple of beers and a nice meal you tend to forget the bad weather.

On Sandy's last night on Mud Island, she took the whole digs out to the GBK - Gourmet Burger Kitchen - to say thanks for letting her stay in our house. GBK is a legendary restaurant and is always a big hit, especially when it comes to burger lovers, should I dare say "connoisseurs", like ourselves. This place has truly magnificent burgers, both in taste and size. All patties are home made and everything is just great. GBK was the perfect way to finish off a 5 day visit to the UK. Be sure that if anyone comes and visits us in Putney, we'll be stopping by GBK for a meal.

The photos are of Auntie "Sandles"; Kobus and Allison; Felicity, Tamara and James.
One housemate, Simon, was working late and couldn't join us...he got GBK takeout though. John also joined us, but a decent photo of John doesn't exist, so I didn't post one!

richmond park

2007-08-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

Tami and I both had a Saturday to spare and we decided to finally visit Richmond Park. The weather finally played along and the weatherman dealt us one of the best weather-cards we've had in a while.
We took quite a while to get there, stopped off at a propper English pub for a drink in Sheen, and then entered the park. The park is beautiful, and huge! We took a walk and settled under a tree for a picnic, with one of the many herds of wild deer grazing right next to us. Very cool!
We chilled for a while, had a nice lunch, and lay under the tree reading our books. I was so relaxed, I actually fell asleep.

fitness

2007-07-28T06:57:00.000-07:00

I decided to finally bite the bullet and join digs mate, Simon, for a fitness session in Hyde Park with British Military Fitness. I thought I was going to die! Simon convinced me to join the intermediate group and not the beginners - Mistake! It's proper team fitness with a good all round mix of running, pliometrics, strength training and all round torture.
Tami and are not up to much this weekend, so don't expect any big blogging to happen this week!

german waitress

2007-07-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

We took this sneaky photo of one of the waitresses at Steins, the German place in Richmond. Caught John in the act of enjoying the view......

man of the year award

2007-07-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

We came across this in Richmond. The guy is sitting very comfortably on the back seat, while the lovely, obviously quite capable, lady is rowing upstream!
WHAT A GUY!

german sausage fest in richmond

2007-07-10T10:21:00.001-07:00

On Sunday we accompanied a couple of house mates to Richmond. Richmond is a beautiful area on the banks of the Thames and quite a hot spot for a Sunday outing. We went to this German restaurant called Steins. The waiter told us in his best English that we might want to consider ordering the "grosse" meat and sausage platter. According to him it's enough for six people. We fell for his sales pitch and this was what we got! It was unbelievable! Virtually the whole restaurant looked at us when they carried in the meter long platter filled with mash, worsies, potato slices, meatloaf and "sauerkraut".

When we left this place there was still plenty of food on the platter and we all felt a little sick! Another great aspect of this restaurant was their litre beer mugs....Here's John loving his Sunday out.

windsor

2007-07-10T09:47:00.000-07:00

On the 07/07/2007 we celebrated our 7 year anniversary. Pretty special don't you think? We decided to act a bit more like the tourists we are and went off to Windsor. This is a beautiful town which is of course the location for Windsor Castle - the Queens weekend pozzy! We went to Windsor castle and did the whole tour. It's quite a walk and I can see why some reckon the queen hasn't even seen every room. I was quite amazed to learn that some 180 people still ive in the castle every day....pretty cool. I must say the property can't be worth much - every 5 minutes there's a boeing coming over pretty low!

We also walked around the town a bit. It's really beautiful there and we had lunch at a nice restaurant on the river bank, followed by a long walk along the river.

Look closely at this building. The entire building is "leaning" to one side. I should've taken a photo straight from the front so you can line up with the buildings next to it.

sewage trouble

2007-07-10T09:34:00.000-07:00

So being in stinky London and sharing a house with 6 other stinky people has it's draw-backs. One of which is the incredible amount of stuff that has the potential to get stuck in the drain. We woke up on a Sunday morning to find the kitchen sink making a funny "gargling" noise and having the occasional spit-up. This was the result of a blocked water drain outside the house. With my best efforts of trying to save us some money, I had my hand firmly down the drain pipe which at this stage was filled with about 5 peoples shower water....at least it was warm. I cursed everybody that pees in the shower and dug deep!

Despite my best efforts and risking fierce infections, we had to get a plumber in. In took the "pro" all but 5 seconds to fix and he had to bill us for the hour - cheap at only £110!

the tourists

2007-06-24T05:28:00.000-07:00

We took the day off a while ago to go do some of the "touristy" things around London. Tamara has of course done all of it before, but we had to do it again. We took one of the open bus tours, which included a bus trip and a river cruise from the London Eye to Tower Bridge. It was all quite interesting and now I've seen all that I needed to see. We gave the London Eye a skip, for financial reasons and the fact that there was about a million people in the que.
The photo is us at Princess Di's memorial fountain.

photos around town

2007-06-23T14:20:00.000-07:00

This is Putney Bridge on the Thames. I took this photo on the way back from a local pub. I used the long shutter and the photo came out ok, complete with four swans.

This little Smart Car is covered in astro turf. It belongs to a company called Easigrass...guess what they specialize in? We see this little car driving around every once in a while, but came across it parked in Putney. We took the photo with Tami's mobile.

These Mini's are from the London Mini Centre.
They restore old Mini's to look like these, just like the ones from Italian Job. They look pretty cool, but carry a price tag from £6500 - £8500. Crazy!

bodiam castle

2007-06-12T12:24:00.000-07:00

I left Tamara alone at home for the weekend, so she decided to do some sightseeing of her own. Good friends Duncan and Ret took Tami into the English countryside. They visited this medieval moated castle known as Bodiam Castle.

Bodiam castle is a moated, curtain-walled castle which was built in 1385 to either reiterate the status & wealth of this ambitious knight of the realm or, as protection against French raids. It was dismantled in 1643. There is a ton of history attached to this castle, but I'm not going to go into it.

The photos Tami took here were, amazingly enough, taken with her cellphone, a Nokia 6300. We were both astonished at the quality of these photos.

If you feel like finding out more about this castle...www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-bodiamcastle.htm

3 peaks challenge with bmf and tenovus

2007-06-12T12:22:00.001-07:00

This past weekend I worked for a fitness and events company called British Military Fitness. Go check out there website: www.britmilfit.com and see what they're all about. BMF was managing the safety for a charity event organised by Tenovus, www.tenovus.com, for cancer patients and research. This event is called the 3 Peaks challenge and comprises doing 3 of the highest peaks in the UK in 24 hours.
It was the highest peaks in Wales, Snowdon mountain, in England, Scafell Pike, and in Scotland, Ben Nevis. The object was to climb all three peaks, including transport between the peaks, in 24 hours. It's quite a mean challenge, but I'm thinking about trying to take part myself.
My role in all of this was merely as a driver. The best thing about this was that in one weekend I got to see the Wales, England and Scottish countrysides. First we went to Llanberis in Wales, a small town situated in the Snowdonia mountains. Here competitors climbed Snowdon, the easiest walk of the three on Saturday morning. Then the competitors where off to Scafell Pike in the Lake Districts of England. Unfortunately I did not get to go here because I had to take the long drive up to the Scottish Highlands and a small town called Fort William to go to Ben Nevis. The drive itself was fun, mainly because I got to drive the latest Range Rover with all the extras like DVD, Satellite Guidance, TV, etc. This vehicle is an absolute pleasure to drive and made the 10 hours back to London feel a little shorter.
Unfortunately we always seemed to be in a rush, so stopping to take photos was out of the question. All the photos I took was literally taken in the drive out of the window.
I posted some photos here of Wales and Scotland, not great I know, but it's all I could do!

scotland

2007-06-12T12:16:00.001-07:00

wales

2007-06-12T12:06:00.001-07:00

teaching in the uk

2007-06-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

When your agent phones and says, "Look, this school isn't one of our best, so it's going to be a hard day at the office," you must know......
Today I had my first UK teaching experience, and let me tell you, all those horror stories you here people tell, well, they're probably all true! It was an unbelievable day and the blatant disrespect for authority was almost scary - 14 year olds telling you to F#$%-off.
Classroom handouts are nothing more than paper planes, balls to aim towards the bin or someones head, or, if you lucky, to turn over and draw pictures on the back.
All in all a good day. At the end of the day I must just the British Pound to SA Rand conversion, and it might just seem worth it!

forgotten graves

2007-06-03T08:38:00.001-07:00

We find this spooky scene, straight out of a horror movie, whilst geocaching. Some of the tombstones dated back to the middle 1800's, but we also saw some graves from the 1940's.

Something also rings a bell with movie called "Midnight in the garden of good and evil".

Some of the tombs have been moved....reminding me of

about 150 episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer".

You can't help but wonder how this cemetry was "forgotten," but surely there must be people out there that still has some relatives in here.

cool links

2007-06-03T08:17:00.001-07:00

I've been cruising around on YOUTUBE quite a bit and found some cool links. Go check out these videos:
Quiksilver Dynamite surfing.....should set up a voting pole to vote whether this is true or not.
Quiksilver:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xfBNxNds0Q
Here's one of a group of kayakers showing the world why it's not a good idea to run a weir.
Kayak Beat Down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE5N52V3IRk