Starring Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson and Donald Sutherland this movie had a fair bit of potential. Ben Finnigan (played by Matthew McConaughey) is a treasure hunter along with his soon to be ex-wife Tess (Kate Hudson). After spending the last 7 years searching for the elusive buried treasure he is obsessed with they are in debt and no closer to glory. The debt is also held with the obligatory villian, a gangster rapper known as Big Bunny. Donald Sutherland plays a mega rich passerby that decides to bankroll the continuing operation to find the treasure. The locations for filming are stunning, the acting perfectly fine, the story to tell is great, but I have an issue with the roles which are ridiculous. Ben is a ditzy klutz that just doesn’t suit the physique of Matthew while the blond haired, blue eyed Tess is the brains of the operation. Not that there is anything wrong with this however it was a painfully obvious roll reversal of the stereotypical character types that these actors "physically" personify.Then, they have thrown in an incredibly embarrassing ditz of a female character and the premise here is to show how ditzy she is and how she eventually learns that she doesn’t have to be like that. Plllleeeeaaassseee!!! Could we not have just a bunch of intelligent people dealing with the puzzles that come at them in order to find the treasure. The story of the buried treasure and the clues to find it are great so I don’t know why they didn’t make this movie more intelligent! Anyway, that’s my scathing report on it. Should you see it? Wait until you can get it on DVD, in the cheap section! 1 out of 5.
Fencing
This week we tried a bit of fencing. That would be the type with swords not number 8 fencing wire. After 2 hours of it we were already tired and hot as those masks get pretty hot inside. I don’t think I was also expecting it to sting so much when you get hit. Mind you I am a whimp when it comes to pain however Steve did complain when I accidently hit his bare hand in error. I think I came out worse though as I had both Steve and a guy from work that I was practicing the moves with and both of them managed to get me on the same arm. Needless to say I now have an arm full of bruises. It was good fun and I’m keen to try a few more times to see if it is something I want to continue on with. I think however I need to stop laughing so much and concentrate more. Hey, what can I say, it’s my secret plan to put the other person off their game! 🙂
Gallery update
Just a quick note. Steve has kindly gone through our 4000 odd photos from over the last year. He has culled them down and put them into our gallery for online viewing. Here’s the link if your interested. Cheers – Carleen www.dekarskigallery.net
Countryside jaunt
I think I have mentioned previously that we are going camping in May for a weekend. So at this point we are trying to lay low again and save some money to buy a tent and a decent sleeping bag for me. Hubbie already has his super-duper one that he bought in Oz for his tramping trips.
Saturday we wanted to head to the Bristol library to pick up some touring books instead of buying them at the moment however we found out it is currently shut due to a fire. Sunday we did a bit of a driving tour around the Severn Beach area. Now, personally I wouldn’t call Severn Beach a beach. Normally beaches conjure up the images of sand, surf, warmth, scantily clad bodies and the heady smell of coconut oil. You would be wrong in this case. The “beach” is a strong flowing, muddy estuary with green dyke like mounds either side that appear to have flooded recently leaving large areas of unstable earth slowly slipping into the water. I wouldn’t recommend swimming there let alone fishing.
On the up side you can see Wales just across the water, the Severn bridges that span a huge area between England and Wales both look stunning and the countryside is lovely and green.
We had spotted what looked like a church perched on a hilltop when we were crossing Severn Bridge one time so we thought we would do a search for it. We stopped for lunch in Aust at the Boars Head which is a 13th century pub. Then we continued wandering the laneways until we spotted the church perched on the hilltop. It was open so we went for a bit of a wander inside. Great views of the bridge and the estuary from the rear of the church. By the time we finished looking around it was raining again so it was time to head home. A bit of a quiet day but fun all the same.
Few changes
You may notice a few changes to the site. One being that the picture at the top of the site changes each time you log in. We have been going through our collection of photos that we have taken since we have been here and my talented IT expert has fixed them up so they rotate as you refresh. See the way I figure it is that IT is not so scary and hard after all. It has an easy solution. Just marry an IT pro! 🙂
Tents, beach and snow
To be re-entered
Caldicott Castle
As a last minute jaunt we decided to go for a trip over to Wales (only 15 minutes away) to have a look at Caldicott Castle.
On the way we stopped at the Chepstow Racecourse for their market day where we bought a load of strawberries, raspberries, apples, brocolli and some nice, hot Welsh cakes to munch on as we wandered around.
10 minutes later and we were at Caldicott having a look around the castle for only 3.25 each. It was a stunning day although still quite cool and quiet enough to have a wander without bumping into tons of other people. I have added a few pics. The daffodils are all out at the moment and Steve took some photos of his favourite variety (the ones that look like eggs in my opinion). Personally I’m a bit of a traditionalist and like my daffodils pure yellow.
Summer teaser
Today it was back to the woollen coat again. Supposed to be a low of 0 tomorrow and a low of -2 the next day with highs of (wait for it…) 8 and 6 degress C. Wow, don’t turn the heat up too much.
Summers coming!
Just a quick one to say that today was the first day in 4 months that I haven’t had to use my wool coat. I have been noticing that in the last week I haven’t needed my gloves or my hat but the scarf and wool coat where still in use.
But today, finally, the sun was shining, there was actually warmth radiating from the sun and it was time to take off the coat to show my incredibly fluorescent white arms and legs to the world. Woo hoo, bring on summer!
Stonehenge and the Westbury White Horse
Although we have been in Bristol for 10 months now and Salisbury is only 32 miles down the road we hadn’t been too focused on going to Stonehenge. I guess we figured that a pile of stones in a field couldn’t be that exciting so we didn’t bother.
As we had a spare day at the end of our Scottish holiday and the weather was a bit on the dismal side we decided to do a roadtrip down there. After about an hours drive as we motored up the road we crested the hill to suddenly see the stones laid out before us literally in a paddock complete with sheep (although the sheep are well fenced off from the stones) as are the tourists that haven’t paid to get inside to see them up close. It was quite an amazing sight.
We paid our 6.20 each (a lot cheaper than I was expecting) picked up our audio guides and went through the tunnel that takes you under the road to Stonehenge. If you really don’t want to pay the entry fee you can see the stones through the hurricane fencing but I figure for 6 quid just pay it. As we were there quite early the number of tourist buses were minimal so I would advise an early start there.
I already knew that you couldn’t walk right up to the stones so was prepared to be seeing them from a distance, but actually I felt we got close enough to understand the size and weight of them. The audio guide was quite useful although I didn’t listen to it all. I was interested to learn though that the whole area used to be covered in forest and very unlike the wide open bare plains that make up the area now. Nearby to Stonehenge is a military base so while we were doing the touristy thing we could hear explosions coming from over the hill from what sounded like a cannon, probably tank fire as we saw a number of tank signs at a later point in the day. It was rather exciting to be in the area.
Moving on from Stonehenge we decided to search for the White Horse in Westbury. It is called the Westbury or Bratton Horse as it is located near Bratton Camp which was an Iron Age hilltop fort. I didn’t realise this but there are 7 white horses carved in the hillside around the Wiltshire county. They are carved into the chalky hills (hence why they are white) and were something of a tradition at one point. There has been a white horse on this site for the past 300 years with different renditions of it being made over this time. The current one was re-designed in 1873 with the original horse apparantly facing in the opposite direction. In the last 1950’s it was thought that concreting the horse and painting it white would be cheaper and easier to manage. It was re-concreted in 1995.