This year’s holiday

…will probably not be happening due to a lack of money.
BUT! if it were happening, then where might I take the family? Well, “travel specialists” Tourdust.com have come up with a few places that you might want to head off to, if you can get your tongue around their names.

Top of their list is North Wales’ Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which translates as “the church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio’s of the red cave” and which instantly indicates that this is not actually a list of nice places to go which happen to have long names, but rather a list of places which happen to have long names. Anyone who has been to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch will surely agree that the most charming and remarkable thing about it is (unsurprisingly), its name. And after you’ve had you photo taken by the sign at the railway station, you can immediately get back on the train and head for somewhere more pleasant. Like England.

Moving on past Poland’s Szczodrzykowo (“to be fair I could have chosen almost anywhere in Poland for this entry”) and Tápiószentmárton in Hungary we eventually arrive down under in Taumata on New Zealand’s North Island, which doesn’t seem so bad, until you realise that Taumata is short for Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, a Maori name which amazingly when translated into English is “the church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio’s of the red cave”.

Who knew?

While SA doesn’t make it onto the Tourdust list, we do of course have Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein, which doesn’t translate  to anything involving churches, red caves or rapid whirlpools, but rather “The spring at which two buffaloes were shot completely dead with one shot”. Which is very South African, isn’t it?
I’ve done some rudimentary calculations and I think that you’d have to have used at least a .375 H&H or even a 9.3 X 62 and then have got extremely lucky to have shot two buffaloes completely dead with one shot. Any lesser weapon would surely only have yielded a partial kill on one or both animals. Which would have made for a more interesting place name, but isn’t something to really crow about, not like double complete death. With one shot.

Interestingly, right next door to Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein is Plekwaarbiltongvandietweebuffelswatmorsdoodgeskietismeteenskootgemaakwasfontein.

Which sounds a much tastier place to head to.