Day 66 - 68 Winding Down in Coventry

Peter Bate ·

Got back to Coventry  Tuesday night and went off for another Pub roast at the Toll Gate pub, within easy walking distance so pints all round. 

Wednesday went into the Coventry Visitor Centre to see the display of artefacts and such from the old S. Osburgs Priory which was excavated only a few years ago, interesting place.

Caught up with niece Jen on Thursday, disappointed that she has not delivered our new great nephew/neice before we left, but all is forgiven and we spent a few hours at the Melbick Garden Centre and gift shop plus a full English breakfast.

Friday there was a trip to Birmingham and then home to a slap up meal at the Old Mill, Baginton a restaurant some of you are familiar with.


Day 64 - 65 Scotland - Newcastle - Fountains Abbey

Peter Bate ·

Monday we left Scotland after some photos and went out side to 0 degrees, brrrrrrr.

After scraping the ice of the windows we set off for North Berwick beach which was very pleasant and on a warm day would be really nice, but it was good to be walking on a sandy beach even rugged up. We came here on Malcolm's recommendation and onto his next choice, Tantallon Castle.

Tantallon Castle is a semi-ruined mid-14th-century fortress, located 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) east of North Berwick in East Lothian It sits atop a promontory opposite the Bass Rock looking out onto the Firth of Forth. The last medieval curtain wall castle to be constructed in Scotland, Tantallon comprises a single wall blocking off the headland, with the other three sides naturally protected by sea cliffs. (thanks Wikipaedia). It was badly damaged by Oliver Cromwell and sank into disrepair, but still quite awesome especially given it's location on the cliffside. Great view of Bass Rock though.
 

Off then to Newcastle and a stop for lunch at the Lidisfarne Inn, it dawned on me that the road outside led to the  Holy Island causeway and it was only 2km away. Down the road we went and it was high tide so we didn't try to cross, just as well, but it looked good over there.

Another day, another Holiday Inn Express, near the city centre. Great breakfast though.

Walked down to Quayside and saw the Sydney Harbour lookalike bridge and the Gateshead Millennium span, both spectacular . 

Gateshead Angel of the North was the next stop. This is a huge metal statue of an Angel created in 1998 by Antony Gormley for no other reason than there is not another in the area, but there you go, modern art. It's 20 metres tall and 54 metres of the outstretched wings.

Back down the A1 with no real destination, thought about Harrogate however on the way Penny saw a sign to Fountains Abbey. She remembered this place from a childhood visit so off we went. 

I had never been and I have to say very impressed, it is a huge area and was built in 1132 as a Cistercian monastery. It lasted and grew for four hundred years until Henry VIII  closed them all, he had the roof removed and sold off all the lead and of course the whole thing just went down hill and crumbled away.

Just a word about history in the UK and Europe. Everywhere we went and visited historical ruins it was usually a ruin because either Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon or Adolf Hitler destroyed it, if it wasn't for these guys we would have a lot more complete historical buildings to look at. They had no sense of history.......

Penny enjoyed the memories though..... 

Day 62 - 63 Scotland - Saturday - Sunday

Peter Bate ·

Awoke in Scotland to a cold day on Saturday, spent the day with Marina and Malcolm where they were preparing for the influx of Wilde's for the afternoon and very nice it was too.

In the evening the next door neighbour was having a Diwali party, a Hindu festival, so all the Wildes and the Bates descended on them, I must admit the food was very nice. Then we all went outside and watched him spend a fortune on fireworks lol! 

Sunday was rugby day, Josh plays for a local team, Livingstone RFC. It was a tough game for the lads, I don't know what the score was but the opposition ran in quite a few tries. The best that can be said is that they scored more points against this team than any other this season. hmmmmmm!  Josh ended up with a fat lip and a belt to the head! 

In the afternoon we were introduced to Linlithgow, a very picturesque village not far from the house. It's claim to fame is Linlithgow Palace, this was a important place for Scottish monarchs before James I of England. Mary Queen of Scots was born here in 1542 and stayed here several times during her reign. Th church next door to the palace was nice and warm and they were practising their christmas pageant/pantomime /nativity play, apparently there are three wise guys in it.

 

Day 59 -61 Cov - Bletchley Park - Scotland - Wed to Friday

Peter Bate ·

Wednesday was a trip to Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. This was the famed cypher establishment during WWII that cracked the German, Japanese and Italian cypher codes.   A motley collection of mathematicians, engineers and crossword puzzle solvers were brought together in an effort to read the enemy cypher codes, those very clever people together with some great daring do adventures by Polish patriots and the Royal Navy managed to read messages and bring the war to a close an estimated two years earlier. Some interesting things we learned was:

  1.  The Enigma cypher machine was invented in Switzerland and was available commercially twenty years before the outbreak of war. It was invented for banks etc to keep their business secrets secret, a German company bought the patents in the 1930's and the military created a more secure version.
  2. Most of the initial work was done in the late thirties by Polish code breakers who already had access to commercial Enigma and were worried by German threats and potential invasion.  
  3. The Navy capture of an Enigma machine was only important for the code books that were recovered and not the machine itself. 
  4. There was a period of about nine months before the invasion when the Germans changed codes and added a fourth wheel to the Enigma machine, the codes then could not be read.
  5. The British had cracked the Japanese cyphers before Pearl Harbour but the Americans were sceptical at first

October 31, All Hallows Eve, we celebrated with great nieces Lilia and Elise who dressed for the occasion and prepared two pumpkins with the help of Nanny Twinn, unfortunately  both vomited all over the path.

Later Alan and I held a firework display in the back garden with oohs and aghhs emanating from the assembled crowd, including Auntie Vi from next door. 

 

Friday and off to Scotland for a weekend with Malcolm and Marina, weather was terrible at first pouring with rain but the further north we got the better it was until at Lake Windermere the sun was shining. After a tussle with the swans over who should eat my chips we proceeded to Uphall about sixteen miles from Edinburgh and the home of the Wilde's. We met the rabbits and look forward to Saturday to meet the clan.

 

Day 54 - 58 Ireland to Coventry and More - Thur - Tues

Peter Bate ·

Lazy days and slack blogging have led to five in one. 

Friday was the day we left Ireland, maybe for the last time, who knows.  Bright and early start at 4:30am to be on the road by 5:30am to Dublin. It was a wet beginning to the day and we completed the last of the packing and threw the last into the car. Said our goodbyes again to John and set off. 

The satnav led us easily to the Stena Line terminal in Dublin only to find out that due to high winds our ferry had been held up for an hour before docking. That did not bode well for our crossing, neither did the fact that they started boarding early and made no announcement, only found out by watching a line of cars driving around us, being as we paid extra for premium lounge and first on/off. Anyhoo it all worked out well we were not delayed by much and we arrived at Holyhead in good condition as the crossing was in moderate seas only, breakfast remained where it was.

Coventry came into view in short order and was good to be home.

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Saturday was walking day, in the morning Penny and I walked into town and back then in the afternoon we walked to the Farmhouse Restaurant for a meal. Lilia and Elise took their scooters and we all had good fun watching them do it. 

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Sunday, there was a surprise baby shower for niece Jen. Al and I dropped the girls off and we went to the National Motorcycle Museum at Solihull.  This was a project started in the 1980's to showcase Britain's history of motorcycle production and they ended up with around 350 bikes from the 1900's to the 80's. It came to an abrupt end in 2003 when a fire destroyed the collection, however they rebuilt the buildings and approx 200 of the lost bikes, then they added lots more to have the magnificent collection they have today. For those not interested in bikes I won't bore you with details, for those who are see the gallery of pictures.

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Monday, Pen and I went in search of Robin Hood in Nottingham, not only did we find out there was no such person but there was no Nottingham Castle where the sheriff lived. The castle was another example of Oliver Cromwell's vandalism as he had it pulled down after the civil war.

Nottingham is quite a pleasant place with a good mixture of old and new with lots of space and a light rail system, as well as a Costas coffee shop. 

In place of the castle there is a large house, well more of a huge stately home really, they have an exhibition of militaria from the Sherwood Foresters a famous English regiment which had it's origins in Nottingham. The second exhibition is about the history of Nottingham and the castle and was very interesting, guess you had to be there......(:-)

With all the hoo hah in the UK over the "Storm of the Century" we felt and saw very little impact in the midlands anything that happened was in the south. On our trip to Nottingham we saw not a tree out of place, we were safe. 

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Now we are up to date, today we did our usual trip to Stratford and Leamington. 

Stratford has a Costas, say no more. 

 

and now the bikes......