Jennings

Just returned back home after four days of work in Cumbria, England. Spent several nights in a unexpectedly nice village called Cockermouth. Named after the mouth of the river Cocker. Home of the lakeland brewery Jennings. Cockermouth's high street, named Crown street counts several good restaurants: The Honest Lawyer, Tarantula and Seven. Not to forget, a pub that feels like home: Bush. Bush offers several beers brewed by Jennings: Cumberland Ale, Sneck Lifter and Cocker Hoop. The latter is my favourite!
Cocker Hoop

An award-winning golden bitter from an all malt brew, with Styrian Golding hops added at various stages, to give a classic hop flavour and aroma. A bitter beer of great character, appealing to those drinkers who really appreciate their beer and are looking for quality. Launched in 1995 as ‘September Ale’, Jennings Cocker Hoop has become hugely popular, particularly with Lake District tourists in summer. The name is derived from ‘Cock-a Hoop’, an old custom of removing the cock (or spigot) from a barrel and resting it on the hoop of the cask before commencing a drinking bout, but was changed to reflect the brewery’s location on the banks of the River Cocker.

Next week:The Trout will be my basecamp

Lovely hotel in a remote area with wireless internet!

Working in the UK with an international team

Our English project partner arranged for a beautiful working environment: Hartham Park in Corsham.

fraochaidhe

Freaky

from fraochaidhe, strange, unusual; frightening, frenzied, manic, mad, rabid, raving, wild

source: List of English language words of Irish origin, wikipedia.org.

Keekle

This colourful row of houses is located in Cleator, close to the train viaduct across the Keekle River at Cleator. The River Keekle is a river running through the English county of Cumbria. The source of the Keekle is to be found at Keekle Head Farm on High Park between Gilgarran and Asby. From there, the river moves gradually southwards via former open cast mine between Frizington and Whitehaven to Cleator, where it becomes subsumed by the River Ehen. The river is noted for its occasional abundance of salmon.

Cleator revisited

The largest group of Cleator's citizens: sheep.
Typical view while walking from The Ennerdale to The Grove for lunch. The Grove Court Hotel is run by the family Benn. Situated next to St Mary's Catholic Church and Grotto in the lovely town of Cleator. If you're thinking of having lunch out there, at least have the scampi fried in a light batter. Not like the well known fritters, but more like tempura, so much lighter.

Little Chef, the British answer to the golden arches

Bring your healthy appetite and they'll make sure you leave ready for your journey - wherever you're going. Their aim is very simple:

to be the motorist's friend, serving up quality food and offering great value for money. Expect freshly prepared food, using the best ingredients we can buy. Enjoy a welcoming, informal setting and watch out for some exciting dishes this Autumn like our hot Ciabatta sandwich and the incredible Double Olympic Burger – helping you beat the rush hour (and the hunger pangs).

Each year they welcome 20 million guests, serving: 10 million cups of tea, 12 million rashers of bacon, 13 million eggs and 13 million sausages!

Whitehaven

Always nice to be in this street (part of the 595 heading to Workington) in Whitehaven. This was the first time it was sunny, normally we drive out here in the evening or in heavy rain. Taken from the car, while driving on the 595, a picture of the Irish Sea from Whitehaven. Just outside of the Waterfront restaurant this picture was taken in the evening.

Wakey wakey, rise and shine, it's Starbucks time!

Right, Monday morning I'll be at Newcastle Airport again. After customs, fetch bags, through "nothing to declare", half way the hall on the left get some cash, some yards further down check for an interesting read, opposite of the bookstore is the Starbucks for a tall cappucino and a cinnamon twirl or whatever they call that stuff that lasts for a fortnight to digest, all the way down the hall to Herz to get car keys and all the way back to the other end of the hall, exit the building, get the car and leave the airport area ASAP to head for the countryside and relax all the way down to Lake Ennerdale...

Roly Poly and the team's sweet tooth

Chiefly British: A pudding made of jam or fruit rolled up in pastry dough and baked or steamed until soft. Good friend and project manager is fond of sweets. The UK is a fine place for enjoying sweets with typical names, many of them based on recipes dating back hundreds of year. When in West-Cumbria, do visit The Waterfront Inn in Whitehaven. By the way, the sweet tooth in question isn't roly-poly at all, no one knows what keeps him as slim as he is eating all that pudding:-)

The place to be...when in Ennerdale Bridge that is

Major Gowen: "A room with a view, please, Fawlty!"

Major Gowen, played by Ballard Berkeley, in Fawlty Towers was a bumbling, quintessential stiff upper lipped English gentleman. And proud of it! Well known for his distrust of foreigners in general, and Germans in particular, he could always be found wandering about Fawlty Towers enquiring if the newspapers had arrived yet. The only thing more important to Major Gowen than the arrival of the newspapers to keep himself abreast of the cricket scores was the opening of the bar. This was an era with less liberal licensing hours than can be enjoyed in England today.

“We loved this guy who was in his own world. He never quite understood what was going on, but always added his own interpretation of it.” — John Cleese.

For some reason or another I feel like being at Fawlty Towers when staying at our hotel in Cumbria. It's a nice place with friendly and customer-focussed people, but...

An example: [After dinner's main course] "We'd like to order some sweets now please?" "Certainly, I'll be just a moment and get back to you with the daily specials" After several minutes, she returns and says: "We're not serving sweets anymore, the chef's gone home." [bear in mind that it's only 9 o'clock in the evening]

Another one: [Just after midnight, my colleagues telephone rings him out of his sleep] "Yes?" "Oh hello, I'm just calling to tell you that your colleague hasn't arrived yet" "Right, thank you madam and good night" [In this case one of us was coming in late, struggling his way through bad weather with barely any view due to heavy rain, therefore arriving later than the receptionist intended to stay at her desk]

"Art sure, Timothy, 'tis ours? Methinks 'tis but a re-made."

Missing: a web2.0 addressbook

Tim O'Reilly's Radar, a must read as far as I'm concerned, came up with an interesting write-up. He echoes what a colleague and I were thinking last week when working on a project in the UK:

What really needs to be done is not just to connect the various social networks that do exist in internet network-of-networks style, but also to social-network enable our real social network apps: our IM, our email, our phone. Where, I keep asking vendors, is the Web 2.0 address book?

When one of the big communications vendors (email, IM OR phone) gets this right, simply by instrumenting our communications so that the social network becomes visible (and under the control of the user), it seems to me that they could blow away a lot of the existing social network froth. That being said, when I've had this conversation with Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, he's pointed out that he's well aware of that possibility, and has been working for years to layer additional value on top of the raw social network data. And he's very right about that.

Tim's Radar caught this on Jon Udell's blog.

Cumbria revisited and clubbin' with the Geordies

My colleagues and I have been working with our customer in Cumbria again for a week. Meaning two days of knowledge management masterclass in the Ennerdale Country House Hotel in Cleator, one day on site and a day of auditing. I cannot disclose details on the project itself, but let me tell you about our travels and places in the UK we visited. Monday afternoon we went from Amsterdam to Newcastle with jet2.com rented cars from Avis (normally we have Hertz' cars, but someone took the executive decision we wanted Avis this time, sorry Gary Christie, your services have been excellent, we didn't want to change!). I got a Ford Focus 1.4, the others had a Ford Mondeo - brand new cars, but didn't like them anyway. Sluggish, no torque whatsoever, trees love these cars most probably. The steering was OK though, quite different from the Ford Siesta we had to our disposal some months ago.

The Siesta had no engine, like other Fords, but the steering rack was quite different. Turning the wheel did not immediately lead to the car moving left or right, it rather felt like whisking double cream until it sets to a firm mass leading to the wheels actually turning.

Anyway, I got lost finding myself driving in the direction of Edinburgh on the M1, again somewhere between Hexham and Carlisle on the 68, again in Carlisle's suburbia (I apologise deeply to the driver of a Mondeo I followed to his front door, thinking it was my colleagues car), finally finding the road to Whitehaven and the Ennerdale in Cleator. Also apologising for speeding on the 595 from Cockermouth to Cleator and to the people asleep at The Larches for waking them up by revving the engine to obtain some speed (a full-scale Judas Priest concert would have been unable to compete). On arrival Eelco came out of the hotel to check if it was me and got back in to order me a pint of John Smith's...sheer heaven. During the week we enjoyed supper at The Waterfront in Whitehaven, savouring balsamic vinegar glazed goat cheese and cod stuffed with seafood with a saffron sauce all combined with a fresh and dry Chablis, the well known white Burgundy wine from the Yonne area. To top it of, we had an espresso, an essential the Ennerdale doesn't offer. On the Friday I worked at the hotel, the others worked with the clients' team nearby Cleator auditing a part of the business. We were given the advice to dive into the city centre of Newcastle on the way back home. So we did! Newcastle turned out to have a lively nightlife. Diner at Sabatini's was superb: Bruschetta, Gamberoni Livornese, Fegatini Burro e Salvia, Scaloppine di Maiale Pizzaiola and Scaloppine di Maiale Sassi. Accompanied by a Abbruzian Trebbiano. Ending with, yet again a espresso ristretto. Newcastle club scene we are ready! The Attic (25-27 Mosley Street, City Centre, Newcastle) seemed to be attracting the kind of people we liked to be around with (impressionable ladies). We spent some time on the top floor being amazed yet trying to look like as-if-the-devil-cares-about-bungee-jumping kind of blokes. Ethnographic participative research one might call it. Minding our own business I was suddenly being shouted in the ear by a young lady dressed in flimsy fabric. After having repeated several times whatever she tried to convey to me, she went away. Similar phenomena kept repeating throughout the evening, sometimes ending up into being photographed with one of them, mostly leading to one of us looking baffled by the Geordie dialect.

Howay man! Me is gan hyme, yous noot foony at all. Ye knaa what ah mean leik?

Wye aye! Tara now, pet. A cannit wait till a get back hyem te see wor lass.

The Ennerdale Countryhouse Hotel

Between the coast and the Lake District, Cleator is a former coal-mining village, with its typical rows of small terraced houses. With the closure of the coalmines Cleator has taken with some enthusiasm to the provision of accommodation and refreshment to passing Coast-to-Coast walkers. A feature of the village is its well-kept cricket ground. A mile away is the larger village of Cleator Moor, with more accommodation.

Not too bad to be working in the UK

The North Lakes Hotel in Penrith, Cumbria offers Thwaites Smooth Beer, a nice ale from the North of England. After a hard days work, the best refreshment ever.

Places

Being a professional traveller, working troughout Europe and sometimes the US, I visit many hotels. Sometimes great, sometimes odd, sleeping well or badly. The one on the first picture is somewere in the Lake District. We found it while travelling back to Manchester Airport from Penrith way up in Cumbria (UK). Very quite and ruraly located. Great place to work peacefully with an occasional Boddingtons as a refreshment.

The Grasmere Hotel, Broadgate, Grasmere The English Lake District, Cumbria LA22 9TA - England, UK

The next one, Jurys, is in Londen, a fine place to stay, slightly cheaper in weekends. Centrally located in Great Russelstreet near Chinatown.

Jurys Great Russell Street, 16-22 Great Russell Street, London, London, UK

The last one, in the Lake District, close to the M6 between Penrith and Kendal, is called Shap Wells. A fine place in a seemingly remote area on the narrow B6261. For some reason it attracts coaches/buses with elderly people on a trip to Blackpool. Five buses arrived just after we did, the restaurant became a military mess with a factory-like routine of serving the masses. The menu is geared towards these kind of large groups, the wines aswell (quite sweet), the room and bed were fine and the fresh air from the hills guaranteed a good night's sleep.

Shap Wells Hotel, Shap, Nr. Penrith, Cumbria CA10 3QU, UK