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.

Chester 24th-27th May 2011

We have just had a few very pleasant days in Chester area staying with Julie's parents. The weather was slightly cooler than recent days and there were a few showers plus quite a wind, however we were able to get out each day. We also spent some time looking round Pat and Peter's (Julie's parents) well looked after garden. Our first trip out was to Chester city. We travelled on the park and ride bus that started from close to Chester Zoo.

The streets of Chester are full of life

The Rows Chester

Chester is a delightful, vibrant, city. The thing that struck me most was that there were numerous shops that were unique to Chester. Most cities/towns these days are almost carbon copies of each other but not Chester. The Rows, which are a system of walkways that form continuous covered galleries that are above one level of shops, contain an upper level of further shops have a huge variety of shops. This form of galleries originated in the 13th and 14th centuries although the Chester Rows can be traced back to the Roman occupation of Chester. There are lots and lots of Roman remains in Chester and you can usually find at least some archaeological investigations going on somewhere.

The River Dee at Chester

We walked down to the River Dee and found that many of the facilities in the area of the Band Stand were being spruced up and it all looked clean and tidy and ready for the many visitors expected in the summer. One of the pleasure trip boats was running and for £6.50 you experience half an hour on the river. We declined this offer in view of the changeable weather.

The Carousel at Bridgemere

On the next day our hosts took us on a visit to Bridgemere Garden Centre. This garden centre is billed as Britain's largest and most spectacular garden centre and this is no exaggeration. It's located on the borders  of Cheshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. Apart from the garden centre this part of the world is well worth a visit for the beautiful and largely undeveloped countryside. The garden centre covers 50 acres and is one of the largest garden centres in the World. It has 6 acres of themed award winning show gardens, I particularly enjoyed the raised bed vegetable gardens. The nursery grows nearly a million plants a year! As well as the 'normal' garden centre things there's a beautiful carousel and a number of huge shops. For example 'Hobby Craft' and 'Lakeland' have shops here. A shop called 'Nauticalia' was of particular interest as it sold a wide variety of high quality items that varied from electronic 'toys' to collectables of all types.

One of the award winning show gardens at Bridgemere

Many thanks to our hosts in Chester

Norfolk Broads 2011 Day 7

Inside How Hill Eel catchers cottage

One of several wind pumps at How Hill

This part of the blog covers our seven day holiday on a boat on the Norfolk Broads. To read the account of the holiday in chronological order please scroll down to read day one first.

20th May, Friday was our last full day on the Broads. We had decided to slowly make our way back to the boat yard to moor for the night ready to unload the next morning. Our first stop was at How Hill. There was plenty of free mooring there and some interesting things to visit. There was a victorian eel catchers cottage with appropriate furniture and complete with a garden from the period. There is also some interesting looking walks in this area and we planned to come back, possibly by car, to complete some of the walks.Our next stop was going to be to drop our mud weight some where on Barton Broad. However when we arrive on the Broad it was quite windy and a little chilly so we looked for somewhere more sheltered to stop. We headed towards Neatishead staithe but came across a sign that said the dyke leading there was narrow and would make turning difficult, so we gave up on that one. Gay's Staithe looked inviting (end on mooring) but was full. We returned to the edge of Barton broad and dropped the mud weight. It was immediately obvious that we were dragging the weight (it might have been better to let more rope out to get a more horizontal pull). We pulled the weight up and all went well until we had to get it over the edge of the boat and this was difficult because it meant leaning out over the water with a heavy weight at the end of your arm. Anyway between us we got the mud weight stowed. We cruised on to Barton Turf where once again moorings looked very pleasant but were all full. We returned to How Hill and spent a pleasant afternoon relaxing in the sun. There was an interesting incident when a duck first bit my finger (painlessly) and then started to come into the cabin area. This duck was a female mallard and a male duck suddenly attacked the female from the rear and she flew into the cabin. Luckily she could fly out the other side but not before frightening the life out of both of us :-).

There was obviously lots of new boat hirer's coming down river from Stalham as we saw many dozens of boats going by. There was quite a wide variety of standards of driving! Many of the parties on the boats were all male and each of the guys had a can of beer in their hands. We were quite pleased that we weren't going to be around over the bank holiday. When we arrived back at Stalham, at about 18:30 it was all quiet and we could easily moor. I fetched the car to park near the boat and we unloaded some of our kit. The next morning it was a simple matter finish off the packing. The boat yard people had everything very well organised and in a short time the boat was refuelled, the toilet was pumped out and it was refilled with water. A quick visit to the office revealed that we had used about £85 of fuel and we were given a £15 refund from the £100 we had paid in advance. After looking at some beautiful luxurious boats that we may rent in the future we left for the three hour journey home. Overall we had very much enjoyed our holiday and once we were home we were already planning to have another one on the Broads.

Saphire's driving position

The sun sets on a great holiday.

Norfolk Broads 2011 Day 6

St Benet's Abbey

Lots of beautiful homes at Horning and Wroxham

Thursday 19th May was our 6th Day. We had a cruise up towards Wroxham. We were looking for provisions and water. There were numerous lovely houses along the river at Horning and and Wroxham but they both had no available places to moor. We also passed some huge boats that were taking people on trips, passing these needed some caution. On the way back we visited Salhouse Broad where you have to pay to moor (end on mooring). The charge was well worth it though as it included water and it was about a twenty minute walk from the staithe to a nice little shop/post office where we were able to get the supplies we wanted. We sat at Salhouse for a short while and watched the trip boats moving slowly round the broad one after another.Further back towards our moorings of the previous two nights we stopped at St Benet's Abbey. The staithe here was rather low and getting off the boat proved to be a little tricky. However the ruin was interesting with a wind pump having been built into the gatehouse of the old abbey. A couple of plaques gave some details of what used to be on the site but further investigation on the internet might be interesting. Our final journey of the day took us up the Thurne to see if mooring at Ludham was a possibility but the inlet to the village was narrow and many of the moorings had been closed, those left were full so we returned to our usual haunt of Thurne mouth.

Almost everywhere we looked there was a heron

One of the large pleasure boats near Wroxham

Norfolk Broads 2011 Day 5

A wherry seen on River Bure

On route to the Ship Pub in South Walsham

Wednesday 18th May was our 5th day on the Broads and we had short ride to South Walsham Broad. We asked whether there was a shop nearby and were given directions to the village. It was about a 20 minute (or more) walk that was reasonably complicated (mainly left turns). We arrived at the Ship and enjoyed a pleasant meal. We then went to look for the shop, We were given directions but no one mentioned that it was half day closing and the shop was shut! After the walk back to the boat we cruised round Ranworth Broad but did not land. We started to go towards Horning but the lack of suitable moorings led us to return to virtually the same moorings that we had used the night before, Thurne Mouth.where we had another peaceful night.

Thanks to Peter here is a plot of our Wedneday travels.

The mooring near Thurle mouth where we moored.

Norfolk Broads 2011 Day 4

Reedham Chain Ferry 

Pub at Reedham, beware the tides!!!

We left Cantley and decided to moor at Reedham. As we approached a guy in uniform shouted that we were approaching the wrong way, I turned and he helped us to moor. At the time I rather resented his intrusion but later we found that his help was certainly needed. We walked up a hill to a small shop and bought some bits. When we tried to leave I untied the wrong end of the boat first and the boat was caught by the tide. It rotated and almost ripped the other rope from my hand. Julie was on the boat alone and only the help of a passerby prevented her from being swept away. The person who was walking by helped me hold the boat for a few seconds until Julie could make her way to the controls and use the engine to regain control. We were pleased to eventually get safely away from Reedham. We travelled towards Yarmouth hoping to arrive at low water as required. We were just a little early and could see the dangers, as we rounded the corner in Yarmouth we were met by a very strong tide coming down the River Bure. The engine was powerful enough to overcome the tide but it was hard work! We had read a number of warnings about not going round the outside of the yellow buoy and saw the reason for this. A cruiser had either chosen to go or had been swept on the wrong side of the buoy and had run aground, finishing lying on its side.We travelled up the Bure, Acle was charging for mooring and there was no room at Stokesby, so we travelled on to moor at Boundary Farm. There was some earth moving going on in the fields next to the moorings but there was no noise at night.

Cruiser stranded at Yarmouth after taking wrong course