Santa Pod 5th November 2011

I entered a competition in the local news paper 'The Beds on Sunday' to win tickets to go to Santa Pod (the Drag Racing Strip) to see their firework display. You had to say when Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament, it was 1605 and I was lucky enough to win tickets. It wasn't too bad weather and the promised rain didn't materialise. With my camera it wasn't possible to take pictures of the fireworks, so apologies for that. They (the fireworks) were excellent and one of the best displays I have seen for a long while. The bonfire was also quite impressive and, although it was hard to see, it was lit by the jet engine that was mounted in a Volkswagen Beetle!

There was some on track activity with motorcycle stunts and a number of jet powered vehicles putting on flaming displays. There was a jet go-kart!, a jet powered Volkswagen Beetle and the jet truck shown below. Not a bad evening out but perhaps a little disappointing if you expected to see more car action.

Hells Mouth Cornwall.

One of the places we visit regularly in Cornwall is Hells Mouth on the north coast. After seeing this video we will be standing back a bit in future...  Cliff Fall Cornwall

A visit to Cambridge 7/10/11

On a day visit to Cambridge we stopped on the way to have a look at the American Cemetery at Madingley. This is a quiet, moving place with rows of white crosses each one representing the final resting place of an American killed in the Second World War whilst serving in the UK.

There are over 3800 Americans buried  on the 30 acre site. The site it's self was originally donated by the University of Cambridge. Along the front of the site is the Wall of the Missing. This lists over 5000 more Americans whose bodies were never recovered or identified.

The crosses, the gardens and the Chapel are all immaculate and great care is taken of them. When you see the crosses stretching away and seeming to almost go on forever it's a very moving experience. In the rush of modern life it's easy to forget all the amazing people that gave their lives so that we can live as we do. This place serves to remember the individuals and to remind us of the sacrifices that were made by so many.

We used the Madingley Park and Ride bus to get into Cambridge. There is a huge car park and comfortable frequent buses that take you to the centre of Cambridge for a price of £2.40. With the congestion and difficulty of finding a parking place this is certainly a good way to get to get there (along with the guided bus but more of this later). Cambridge centre is mostly pedestrian-friendly and most sights can be easily reached on foot and much of the central area is traffic-free. Bicycles are everywhere in Cambridge and one has to be careful not to get knocked over by bikes that often travel on the footpaths and have scant regard for things like traffic lights!

Almost as soon as you get off the Park and Ride bus you see the Round Church building which dates back to about 1130 AD making it one of the oldest buildings in Cambridge. It's no longer used as a church; it now houses exhibitions on the history of the church and Christianity in Cambridge.

I worked in Cambridge about twenty years ago, since then many new and modern shops have been built some of them in large well designed shopping centres. However the old streets and alleyways with many unique shops still exist and are well worth exploring. There are numerous eating places and visitor attractions such as the punts on the river. Most tourists will be attracted to the Universities impressive colleges.

Whether you interest is shopping, history, dinning or just people watching you will find plenty of interest in Cambridge.

As well as the conventional Park and Ride Cambridge has a 'Guided Busway' and we went to have a look at the Huntingdon station. This has a well designed car park with wide bays. The cost of using the bus to travel to and from Cambridge is £5.40 although to me the prices were rather confusing with two bus companies operating on the route and appearing to charge different amounts.

Basically conventional buses have been fitted with small guide wheels and travel in concrete channels. These buses can also travel on normal roads when they get to the end of the actual guided part of the route. This appears to make for a flexible system.

Start of the Guided Busway.

The buses travel at just over 50mph without
the usual traffic problems.

Hamfest 30th September 2011

We went to the Hamfest at Newark, Notts on Friday 30th September. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a camera so this is just a short text blog. The weather was amazingly good for the last day of September and in fact the next day was the hottest (29.9C recorded at Gravesend for many years). Most of the route to Newark was on the A1 which over the past few years has been improved a great deal with many of the roundabouts being replaced with motorway style  junctions. Apart from the occasional bottleneck caused by lorries slowly overtaking each other it was a pleasant journey.

A Hamfest is a rally for people who enjoy the Amateur Radio Hobby. It's part social event where you meet up with old friends and part a chance to buy new and secondhand equipment. Many of the manufacturers of radio kit attend this event and there is a chance to discuss with them their products.

It may appear that this would all be of little interest to Julie but in fact she probably knew more people there than I did, this is because she used to work for the RSGB (Radio Society of Great Britain) who had many of their staff at the event. Anyway we both spent quite a bit of the time chatting to people we knew and a good time was had by one and all.

I did buy a few items that included a GPS SPeaker mic for my Icom Dstar Hand Held radio, a DV Dongle (a device that enables you to talk on Dstar via a computer) and a new bracket for the aerial on my car. I'm pleased to say that once home I was able to successfully get all the new kit working.

Another good day out and once again sorry that I didn't have a camera to record it all.

Bedfordshire Steam Fair 17/9/11

Sorry to pop this item in out of order but I just haven't had time to write the Cornwall entries yet.

Today (17/9/11) we went to the Bedford Steam fair that is held at Shuttleworth, not far from the A1. The Shuttleworth site has an airfield and a large collection of old aircraft. For the price of entry (£10 this year) you get to see the huge steam rally and the aircraft in the museum. The rally consists of not only steam driven items but military vehicles, old tractors, motor bikes, caravans, cars and just about every type of old mechanical device you can think of :-).

This event always attracts numerous Showman's engines, here is one of the best examples..

And here are a few more of these impressive showman's engines, quite a few more were scattered around the site powering fairground rides etc..

Another of the delights of the Bedford Rally are the live steam demonstrations. The steam ploughing, with the two traction engines either side of a field pulling the plough to and fro across the fields is always worth a look.

The next three pictures show a road repairing demo. The concrete and brick rubble is crushed into a suitable size by a machine that is powered by a large stationary steam engine. A narrow gauge railway then takes this material to where it's needed and where the trucks are tipped up. Eventually a steam roller will come to compress the hardcore into a road surface.

Crushing the hardcore.

The little railway engine used to haul the trucks of hardcore.

The truck is tipped ready for the roller

There's a very wide variety of vehicles at the show including quite a few military ones....

Another feature are the huge traction engines with 'cranes' that move trees about ready for the saw benches that turn them into planks and beams.

We had a great day out and came home with a few items from the market area. If we had to choose one Steam Rally to visit in the year I think that the Bedford Steam Rally would get our vote. There must be something to interest everyone at this splendid event.

Our base in Cornwall

We are regular visitors to Cornwall and love the place. This time we we were to spend 40 nights in the county. With such a long stay it would be difficult to describe each day so instead I will do a short series of blog entries about some of our favourite places.

We stay at a small five van caravan site that lies between Redruth and St Agnes, the nearest village being Scorrier. The site owner has become a friend and many of the other visitors are 'regulars' and have some interesting stories to tell.

Our site at Scorrier

 The site is on a slight hill with a clear view of Carn Brea and great TV reception and a good take off for my radio hobby.

South from the site.

Also on the site owners land is a beautiful old mine building, this lies more or less directly to the south.

Carn Brea that lies to the south west.

So that is where we were staying and in later blogs I will mention some of the places we visited.

Westward (the beginning) July 2011

On the 20th July 2011 we set off on our journey westward.Our first destination was the five caravan site at Alice Farm just to the south west of Frome in Somerset.Our route (as chosen by the SatNav) was A43 to Oxford, A420 to Swindon, M4 and finally a rather complicated route that included the A361 and A359. It was a trip of about 140 miles. It was a bit of a showery day but the traffic wasn't too bad and it was an uneventful trip.

Alice Farm near Frome Somerset.

 The site was a well kept one with individual 'hard standing' for each van.The hard standing was hogging on a muddy base and unfortunately we chose a bay that was a bit 'soggy'. It did dry out though.There was a pleasant view of rolling fields with lots of cattle.

The Telescope Shop Frome

The tiny streets and quaint shops of Frome

We visited Frome and Stonehenge on 21st July. Frome is a very pretty town with mainly stone built buildings. Our main reason for visiting was to see the specialist telescope shop there. This was in an old part of the town with very narrow winding streets.On the outskirts of the town they have large modern supermarkets like Asda and Sainsbury.

Stonehenge

 

Moving on to Stonehenge we were quite surprised to find a huge number of visitors, probably about 80% were from other countries. Parking cost £3 and entry to the area immediately round the stones was £7.50 each, luckily as members of the National Trust it was all free to us. You could get to within a few yards of the stones with just a rope between the spectators and the stones. You get supplied with a small device that gives a commentary on what you are seeing. One of the stories tells how years ago visitors used to borrow hammers from the local blacksmith to knock bits of stone off as keepsakes!

A couple of 'typical' tourists.

 On the 22nd July we travelled a further 160 odd miles down to Scorrier in Cornwall.

The journey continues.........

RAF Waddington 2nd July 2011

Always very impressive the Vulcan shows its distinctive shape.

RAF Waddington is just outside Lincoln and in terms of personnel is one of the largest RAF bases. Their airshow is a long established tradition and attracts around 120,000 spectators each year. We particularly wanted to see the Vulcan as Julie had never seen this aircraft flying.

The show was due to start at 10:00am so we left home at 06:00 to arrive well in time. All went well with the drive up the A1 but within a few miles of the airfield there was a road accident up ahead and we were diverted. There was a long delay (we had some entertainment from the special 'Air Show' radio station but were a bit disappointed to arrive only minutes before the show actually started. At £52 for the two of us and £7 for a program it wasn't the cheapest day out but promised to be a special day.

The static display was perhaps a bit less impressive than we had hoped. There was a slightly strange mix of small civilian aircraft and some more exciting military hardware. Certainly not as many military ones as I had expected.

Tornado GR4

A couple of Tornado GR4's from Lossiemouth put on a great display ( and an extremely noisy one) of their role in places like Libya. I must say that this was the sort of thing that we had come to see and the two aircraft beating up the airfield along with ground explosions etc really increased the excitement level.

USAF Thunderbirds

The United States Airforce Thunderbirds don't appear in the UK very often and then usually at USAF bases. They last appeared at Waddington in the year 2000. Back in 1971 the Thunderbirds appeared in the UK at RAF Bentwater in F4 Phantoms, a truly impressive plane but these days they fly F16-C's. To be honest their display was a little spoilt for us by extremely long vocal introduction that seemed to drawl on for an age before the planes took to the sky. Their display was exciting but later when the Red Arrows gave their immaculate display I felt very proud of the UK team. It was perhaps rather unfortunate that the Blades team, who are based locally to us at Sywell, were on immediately after the Thunderbirds. Despite some fantastic precision flying and breath taking close passes their propeller powered planes were no match for the noise of the jets.

Team Viper is the only Hawker Hunter display team and put on a great, if perhaps rather long, display. The B17G or Sally B as it's know was up from her home at Duxford.

Overall we were glad that we had visited this big event but something seemed to be missing and Julie and I would have preferred to have seen a lot more fast, noisy and exciting jets. Even the Vulcan as great as it was didn't manage to set off any car alarms as it used to do.

Royal Norfolk Show Plus 28th June to 1st July 2011

Our pitch at Mildenhall

We took our caravan to the Round Plantation Caravan Club site in Mildenhall on 28th June. We use the Mildenhall location as a convenient place to stay when we go to the Royal Norfolk Show. Although there are quite a number of pitches on the Mildenhall site they are located in 'glades' in the forest and from each pitch you can't see many other caravans. For much of the time the site is quiet and squirrels and other wild life play round the vans. However the site is close to both Mildenhall and Lakenheath airbases so there can be aircraft noise, some times this can continue into the night and early morning.

Jazzy the cat comes with us these days

 We were rather concerned that we were travelling quite a bit and leaving our cat Jazzy on her own so we decided to take her with us in future. She is great in the caravan but the actual travelling can be a bit of a problem, particularly for some reason coming home makes her wail a lot and get quite upset, hopefully she will eventually get used to it.

One of the food halls at the Norfolk Show

On the 29th June we drove up to the Royal Norfolk Show which is held outside Norwich. It's a huge even with something for virtually everyone. Our first port of call at the show was one of the huge food halls. Many of the stalls offer samples and you can buy everything from fruit juices to cakes and steaks. A good number of local beers are also on sale.

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Livestock is an important part of the show

Livestock of all shapes and sizes is an important part of this type of show. Cattle, sheep, pigs, chicken etc. etc. all have their own individual shows. In the main ring there are show jumping events and carriage driving contests.

Lots of variety included in the main ring entertainment

The main ring also has a wide variety of more 'general' entertainment. This year amongst other 'acts' were the White Helmet motorcycle display team and the Young Farmers put on a very entertaining show of their own. They had converted a number of ride on mowers adding huge engines to some of them. They also did an amusing take off of the red arrows whilst pushing wheel barrows.

Some of the machinery on sale is pretty big (in price as well)

 I love tractors and there is every type of farm machinery you can think of on sale. There are also hundreds of stands selling smaller items and I found the log splitters of particular interest even though I couldn't really justify buying one. Gardeners are also well catered for and there are competitions for garden design. Whether you want a Jacuzzi or a thatched gazebo you could find a variety on sale at the show.

Vintage machinery well represented

Another large area is devoted to vintage machinery. Old tractors and vintage stationary engines are in this part of the show. 

Basically there are so many different facets to this show that it's hard to do it justice in my blog but if you get the chance to visit this annual event I don't think that you will be disappointed.

We had an extra day or so at Mldenhall so the first thing we did was to have a look at the activity at the Lakenheath USAF air base. Normally they have a dedicated viewing area where you can park and watch the activity, this time this area was closed for some reason but no one seemed to object when we (and several others) parked on the side of the adjacent road and watched from there.

Lakenheath has some exciting action at times.

We eventually also found a small viewing area for the Mildenhall air base at a site called the Nook ( http://www.thenookcampsite.co.uk/site/thenookcampsite/price-list  ) where for a fee of around £1 you could get a good view of the Mildenhall runway, unfortunately we only found this place just before coming home so we couldn't take advantage of it.

On the Thursday we decided to visit Bury St Edmunds. This turned out to be a very interesting town with both modern and older sections. We didn't have time to visit the Cathedral or the Abbey but no doubt we will be back to see them. 

Bury St Edmunds

The older part of the Bury St Edmunds town contained lots of unusual shops. Julie found the Steam Trading Cooking shop of particular interest. In short a good mixture of old and new and a place that will have us returning before too long.

A walk down Memory Lane to Kent in June 2011

The bakery in Snodland where my mother used to buy me
battenburgs when I was about 3 or 4 years old.

We left for Kent with our caravan on the 6th June. We had a good journey down the A1/M25/M2 and even the cat behaved herself. We stayed at Manor Farm. Marsh Road Halling. This was always going to be very much a wander down memory lane as I was born nearby and spent the first 25 years or so of my life in this part of Kent. Despite this area only being a 100 miles from where we live now, I had rarely been back. The first thing we noticed was the difference in driving and the volume of cars, the pace of every thing in Kent seemed so much faster than home.

Nursery Cottage, where I was born.

One of the places I particularly wanted to visit was the house where I was born. This is situated quite near the village of Harvel. The actual house is Nursery Cottage and it's located near one other house, Poundgate. The only other nearby inhabited place is the White Hart which hasn't been a public house for many years. Over the years the house has seen many changes, for example when we lived there, there was no electricity and our lighting came from oil lamps. The house was also much more closely surrounded by trees, the garden (now open lawns) was an orchard. When we visited there appeared to be no one at home so we weren't able to learn anything about what has been done to the inside of the house etc.

The two bungalows built on the plot of 55 Rochester Road

A small section of what was the rear garden of 55 Rochester Road.

 From Nursery Cottage my parents moved to 55 Rochester Road Halling, this was also known at 'Glen-Avon' This had a large garden and when eventually my parents wanted to move on, 55 was bought by a developer who pulled the original bungalow down and filled the garden with two bungalows, 53a and a new 55. Although obviously we weren't able to get pictures of the original bungalow with it's veranda style we did get some of the two new buildings and more importantly the lovely view from the back. I spent much of my childhood with a telescope looking at the view with in the foreground the railway, then the River Medway and finally the beautiful countryside. The other side of the river has marshes that give way to wooded hillsides. In the 50's when I lived here the army sometimes came to a temporary camp over the river and conducted mock battles and built bridges etc, all amazingly interesting for a 10 or 11 year old boy.

Peter Lingham in his 80's and still working hard at Court Farm

 Whilst living at 55 Rochester Road I went to work on a local farm each summer holiday, this was Court Farm at Upper Halling. Peter Lingham who was the farmer in the 50's still lives there and currently works the farm with his son Andrew. Peter Lingham had quite an influence over me and it was a pleasure to meet him again. Remarkably although I hadn't seen him for almost 50 years he seemed to have changed very little! We talked about things like him originally paying me 1/6d an hour when I was about 7 years old and me learning to drive a tractor at that age towing huge trailers of straw, all enough to give current health and safety people a fit. Near to the farm I saw the house where a friend of my parents (who I hadn't seen since I was about 10 years) old lived. When I enquired I was astonished to find that although the husband had died four years earlier the wife (Heather Homewood) still lived there. Her son Ken (who I played with as a small child) was visiting and we all had a great chat.

25 Copperhouse Road.

 After 55 Rochester Road my parents moved to 25 Copperhouse Road, Knights Place, NR Strood.

The first property I bought, 9 Woodhurst Close Cuxton.

The first property that I bought was 9 Woodhurst Close Cuxton. I dug a drive out at this address by hand, taking all the soil away in bags to the local tip!

My parents property at 27 Stanhope Road Cuxton.,

In order to be near to me my parents later moved to 27 Stanhope Road Cuxton. My father sadly died at this address and my mother then moved to Cambridge as by that time my work had taken me there. This and her subsequent moves are not covered by this blog.

Halling Ferry steps.

Our caravan CL (the site we stayed on during this trip) was near the Medway and we spent some time walking on the banks of the river. We were able to see the ferry steps where some 50 years earlier a Mr Stevens (the ferryman) had used a small rowing boat to take people between Halling and Wouldham.

The bit of Margate's Dreamland left standing.

We also visited Margate which in my opinion has become rather down at heel and only a shadow of its former self. What used to be the huge amusement park called Dreamland has shut but a small section of it remains undemolishedRamsgate which seemed more up to date than Margate and perhaps worth a further visit later.