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.