FIVE DAYS IN LONDON

Friday August 22nd
We took the train up to London to spend a few days with Fritha and Anthony and to celebrate Fritha’s birthday. After negotiating a couple of tube rides we took what’s called the Docklands Light Rail, which runs alongside the Thames to Limehouse, so called because they produced lime for mortar here as far back as the fifteenth century.
Where Fritha lives is amongst rows of converted wharf side warehouses, now very desirable residences known collectively as Canary Wharf. We met up with Fritha and Anthony and dropped off our case, before enjoying a late dinner at a riverside restaurant. The view from Fritha’s balcony is stunning, right out over the river and back to the City of London upstream, and more apartments downstream.
Saturday
The next morning Barb and I got up at around 9am. The others slept in so we made breakfast and headed into the city for a bit of sightseeing. Firstly we took the train to Covent Garden. This is a very lively tourist spot with lots of little cafes, restaurants and gift shops everywhere. It’s all grouped around the old Covent Garden Market, but today there was not a sign of a flower seller offering violets. No Eliza Doolittle singing “All I want is a room somewhere....”! Just street jugglers and buskers and lots of tourists like us.
We wandered around the area into what’s known as Theatreland for obvious reasons. Here we passed such famous landmarks as the Lyceum, the Royal Opera, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and then into Bow Street, familiar because of the Bow Street Runners, the Bow Street Magistrates Court, and of course one of the cheap bits on the Monopoly board.
I paid a visit to the London Transport Museum with exhibits of every kind of transport in this city since the eighteenth century. There were sedan chairs, horse drawn buses, trolley buses, double decker buses, and of course the London cab. There was also an interesting exhibition about the development of the underground railway. This featured a steam locomotive and coaches which comprised the very first underground, which must have been like travelling in a smoke and soot filled coffin.
We returned to Canary Wharf via the Thames Embankment, then by ferry under the great London bridges to the Docklands.
In the evening we enjoyed a magnificent dinner at a Kensington restaurant called the Babylon Gardens. The location was high above the city surrounded by a rooftop garden with its own pond, and full grown trees. We had champagne for Fritha’s birthday and good food and more wine. Finally home by cab and bed!
Sunday
We rose again at around 9am, once again leaving Fritha and Anthony asleep. We headed off to Waterloo Station where we caught a train to Hampton Court Palace. We had visited this wonderful Tudor red brick palace before, but things have changed a lot, if not to the building, then certainly to the way they show it off. There were people in Tudor costume, performing the roles of Tudor lords and ladies and inviting us to witness the finer points of jousting and courtly dancing. Barbara and I were cajoled into dancing the Pavan and the Galliard, in which we pranced up and down with Tudor abandon, accompanied by a band of strolling musicians.
We watched Henry V111, sitting in a wine cellar and playing cards with the Duke of Suffolk. Henry won of course, because as he pointed out, he was the King. And the sister of Katherine Parr showed us around the great halls and rooms of the palace. The Tudor Kitchens were among the most interesting exhibits. These great rooms with enormous fireplaces and blazing roasting fires displayed the foods of the time. The cooks, all in period costume, gave demonstrations of pie and sausage making, of baking, and roasting on spits, and cake making.
We took a ride in a wagon drawn by big Shire horses around the parkland which surrounds the palace, and inspected the ornamental gardens and the four hundred year old grapevine, which still produces 500 kilograms of table grapes each year.
By the time we got back to Fritha’s, Anthony had left for Amsterdam to begin his new job. So we decided to eat in. Fritha cooked pasta Bolognese and then we watched a DVD of Ünderbelly which we’d wanted to see for some time. It was strange to see pictures of streets and shops with which we are so familiar back home. Finally bed!
On Monday we were back in the City again. We took the train firstly to Fenchurch Street (Monopoly board again) then walked through empty streets past silent bank buildings and closed pubs. This is the area they call “The City”, normally a busy place but this was the August Bank Holiday. We made our way firstly to the British Museum. This is one of the few places where it’s free to get in. As museums go, it’s a magnificent place and we could have spent a week there. But we settled for a number of specific exhibits, in particular the Egyptian section. Here we saw a fantastic collection of Egyptian antiquities. There were mummies of all shapes and sizes. I had no idea there would be so many and in such fantastic condition, being thousands of years old. There were also the remains of a man who’s not been mummified, but buried in the desert sand. This 5000 year old body was in amazing condition, still with hair on its head.
We saw the famed Rosetta Stone, the large stone covered in finely chiselled writing which provided archaeologists with the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics.
There were huge Assyrian and Persian carvings and even a whole temple. And of course the famous Elgin Marbles! (No they’re not marbles as in kids alleys) These fine marble sculptures were taken from the Parthenon. Interestingly they now call them the Parthenon Marbles, dodging the fact that they were nicked by Lord Elgin. While it is amazing to see these ancient things, we have to remember that most of them were taken from other people’s lands.
We had a light lunch, and then walked towards Trafalgar Square, passing by one oddity, Smith and Sons Umbrella Shop, which has been selling umbrellas to the gentry since 1830. In its windows were brollies and shades and gamps with ebony handles and Malacca cane handles and plastic handles and every conceivable variation of umbrella ever designed.
We walked down Shaftsbury Avenue, through Soho and down to Trafalgar Square and heard the sound of violins. There was a rehearsal going on in the church of St Martin the Fields. There was to be a Vivaldi concert that evening, so we went in and spent a relaxing quarter hour listening to a string sextet at practice.
Then we walked across the road for a short visit to the National Gallery. Here, at no cost, you can marvel at works by Leonardo Da Vinci, at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and many many other paintings, too numerous to mention here. All too soon it was time to head back to the ferry, although by then we were getting pretty footsore.
As we walked towards Westminster down Whitehall, we passed the barracks of the Household Cavalry, where a crowd was watching an inspection in the courtyard. There were troops in fancy uniforms lined up while an officer with sword drawn, walked along the ranks. And sitting at attention on horses, two female cavalry officers awaited their orders. It was an interesting piece of pageantry which we just stumbled on.
Back at Canary Wharf, we decided to eat at home again. We sent out for pizza and finished watching Underbelly.
Tuesday.
Fritha had to return to work today, so she was gone before we even woke up. We did a bit of flat tidying up and then went sightseeing again. Some months ago we’d seen a documentary drama called Casualty 1906. It was set in the Royal London Hospital and dealt with medicine as it was practised in the early 20th century, in a large hospital in a very poor part of London. We had been to Whitechapel to see the hospital, which is still going, now in its 4th century. We could not visit the hospital museum at that time, so we returned to Whitechapel to try again.
This was quite a small museum but filled with fascinating information and stuff from the period. This is the hospital where Joseph Merrick, the so called Elephant Man lived out his days and there was quite a bit about him. There were cases filled with grim looking surgical instruments and another, dealing with the surgery done by a bloke called Jack the Ripper.
There was also a video about nurses in the hospital, made in 1968. This was of interest to Barbara as she was still nursing then. She got a good laugh when one of the senior sisters turned to a trainee and said “Nurse would you be so kind as to take this patient’s blood pressure?”
Barbara could not remember ever being addressed so politely by a superior in her day.
By now it was lunchtime, and we stopped in a local pub, where we had a hideous lunch of toasted ham and cheese sandwiches with chips. Yecccchhh!
After that we took the tube into Westminster again and spent the rest of the afternoon on a guided tour of the Palace of Westminster, i.e the Houses of Parliament.
These tours are limited to about 20 people at a time and the security is very very thorough. You put your metal objects through an x-ray and they photograph you before you go in.
Despite all that, the building is fantastic. We entered through a great hall which dates back to the eleventh century, with a ceiling supported by something like six hundred tons of oak beams which arch about sixty feet above. We were shown up the steps into the Central lobby with gilt and painted ceilings, and statues of prime ministers of the past. From there, long wood panelled corridors lead to the two houses. But first we went through the Queen’s robing room, a very elaborately decorated room with pictures of British historical events adorning the walls. This is where the Queen dons her robes before the opening of Parliament. All of this part of the Palace (and it is a palace still owned by the Queen) is much newer that the great hall. There was a big fire back in the 1800’s and most of what we see today was built since then.
We followed in the Queen’s footsteps to the House of Lords with its familiar red leather seats in rows on either side of the table. The main feature of this rather small room is the speaker’s chair. This has a filigreed golden canopy above a magnificent gilt throne. The Queen sits there before reading out the government’s programme for the next sitting.
We on the other hand were not allowed to sit down anywhere. We never found out why.
Again we crossed the Central lobby and towards the House of Commons, again with leather benches but this time with a speaker’s chair made of black bean. This was given to the Commons by the Australian Government. The two dispatch boxes on the table were given by New Zealand.
Finally we returned to the Great Hall where we could at last sit down, and even get a coffee from a small cafe.
Always with an eye to the tourist, they also have an exact replica of the front door of 10 Downing Street, so you can be photographed knocking on it.
Our final evening in London was spent enjoying a pleasant dinner with Fritha in a pub called The Narrow, which overlooks the Thames and is owned by Gordon Ramsay. Naturally the food was right up to Ramsay standards.
Wednesday
By the time we got up on Wednesday morning, Fritha had already left. She had to manage an event in Nottingham that day, so had taken a cab to St Pancras at 5am.
We had a leisurely breakfast before heading off to Paddington to catch the train to our refuge in the Cotswolds.
Our time is running out all too quickly, and we still have to visit York, Amsterdam, and Paris.

CANTERBURY AND OTHER PLACES

We’ve just returned from an overnight visit to Kent, Surrey, East and West Sussex. The highlight of this trip was the city of Canterbury and of course the cathedral there.
We had booked into a hotel ( the Pilgrim’s Rest) about five miles out of the city, in a village called Littlebourne and once checked in; we took the local bus to Canterbury. For the next few hours we strolled around the ancient streets (and through very modern shopping precincts) to the cathedral. You can see just so many of these places and we have, but Canterbury is very special. For a start it has been a place of Christian worship for 1700 years. Its square tower, known as the Bell Harry Tower, dominates the city, and once you enter the Christchurch Gate into the cathedral precinct, and then into the cathedral proper, you are met with this magnificent Gothic nave which is simply overwhelming in size and scale. Then of course there is the history of the place. Buried here are giant figures of English history, among them Edward the Black Prince, and the chapel of Edward the Confessor, and all of the Archbishops of Canterbury. There is a candle burning on the site of St Thomas a’ Becket’s murder. There are tombs of early Saxon and medieval saints such as St Anselm and St Theodore of Tarsus, who died in 690AD. We went down into the crypt which dates from the eleventh century. Photography is forbidden here, but I sneaked one without the flash. We could have spent many more hours (not to say days) here but we wanted to visit St Augustine’s Abbey or rather the ruins of the abbey which we only excavated in the 19th century. These are all that’s left of one of those places Henry the eighth knocked around a bit at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The place was actually founded by St Augustine in 598AD, and expanded during Norman Times. There are several Saxon kings buried here and when Henry destroyed the place it was all covered over and turned into garden’s for the pleasure of visiting royalty. Many of the walls are built from bricks originally made by the Romans. Our last visit was to the small church of St Martin’s. At first sight this is an unremarkable edifice, but it is in fact the oldest church in continuous use in Britain. This what the book says:
“The first mention of the Church is the statement by the Venerable Bede, written within 100 years of the death of St. Augustine. It reads: "There was on the East side of the City a Church dedicated in honour of St. Martin; built of old while the Romans were still inhabiting Britain." Bede does not state if it was used for Christian worship in Roman times, or if it was a pagan temple converted to Christian use at a later date.
The curtain of history is not again lifted until about the year 580. Ethelbert, the King of Kent, married Bertha, the daughter of Charbert, King of the Franks, who reigned in Paris. Bertha was a Christian and as Ethelbert was a heathen it was stipulated that Bertha be allowed to practice the Christian faith. Bertha was accompanied to England by her chaplain, Bishop Liudhard, and it was to this Church, rebuilt on the Roman ruin and dedicated in honour of St. Martin of Tours, that they came to worship.
We now jump to the year 597, to the landing in Kent of St. Augustine and his companions, bringing the Christian message. With the King's permission, it was to St. Martin's they came, and again to quote the words of Bede, "to meet, to sing, to pray, to say mass, to preach, and to baptize."
We took a bus back to The Pilgrim’s Rest but not to rest. We’d looked up a local pub in the good pub book of 2007. We walked the few hundred metres to get some dinner, only to find that the place was closed. (And had been for four years)!
We tried the pub across the road but they didn’t do meals. We asked where we might find a meal and the barmaid said to take a nearby road and try The Rose Inn. “You can’t miss it”, she said.
So we started to walk and 20 minutes later we realised that the barmaid must have thought we were driving because there was no sign of The Rose. We did eventually find it after 30 minutes and it was worth the walk. This little village of Wickhambreaux was set around a green. There was an old church, one or two big old houses and thatched cottages with oak beams, and an old weatherboard mill house with a water wheel and a running stream. The Rose Inn was a lovely low ceilinged place and you had to duck to get through the doorway. People must have been much shorter back in the fourteenth century when this place was built. But the meal was beautiful and the atmosphere was very friendly as it always is in these village pubs.
It was dark when we headed back to our hotel and walking along a narrow lane was a bit of a challenge. Every now and then we’d meet an oncoming car, and we’d have to flatten ourselves against the hedgerows. Anxious to avoid being turned into road kill, we made it back in a record 20 minutes .
In the morning we went back to Wickhambreaux to get a couple of snaps, then drove across Kent, through laneways with orchards laden with apples, and fields of new mown hay. Our next stop was for sandwiches on the Coulsden Downs. These are lovely rolling green downs at the top of Derwent Drive in the town of Purley, in Surrey. It’s where we lived back in the seventies. We even checked out our own houses in Purley and the Riddlesdown station where I took my train into town 35 years ago. Ahh nostalgia!
From there we drove on to East Sussex to enjoy afternoon tea with Beverley Seymour, our son-in-law Paul’s mum. His sister Catherine was there too and we spent a very pleasant couple of hours drinking coffee and telling them about our travels. Sadly we had to head for home in the Cotswolds a hundred miles away. The trip was fine until we reached the area of Heathrow and somehow got off the motorway at the wrong junction. There followed 45 minutes of sheer hell as we tried and tried to get back onto the M4. Every time we’d reach the roundabout leading to the crowded motorway, we’d miss the right turning and have to take off again. Eventually, after a lot of F words and soaring blood pressure, we made it and finally arrived back in Ascott under Wychwood at 8pm. We were too frazzled to prepare a meal, so we just had to have dinner at the Swan. That’s our story anyway!
We’re heading up to London today for a few days. Time is running out and we want to see a few more sights in that city before we head for home.

CORNWALL SOMERSET & WALES

We’ve had a busy and varied week at our little place in the Cotswolds. Last Wednesday we welcomed two friends from our time in North Melbourne, Peter and Del. It’s always a pleasure to see old friends again, and we showed them around the local sights. We walked the length of Crown Farm and enjoyed cream teas and other English things. We took them to Blenheim Palace (our third visit) and they took us to dinner at our local pub, the Swan.
Peter and Del left us on Friday, heading up north.
On Saturday Fritha and Anthony came down for lunch (at the Swan again) and we drove down to Lower Slaughter, that picturesque village near here, with a mill stream and a water wheel, (and more cream teas.)
On Sunday we packed up and headed south to Cornwall. The weather was pretty crummy with more showers than sunshine, but the drive down to Cornwall was uneventful. Our first stop was in a village called Illogan where we visited the parish cemetery. There in one quiet corner are two rows of war graves, set in immaculately trimmed lawns with a large cross looking down on the gravestones. One of these bears the name of an uncle of Barbara’s who was attached to the RAF during WW2 and died not long after she was born. A cousin of hers had been to visit the grave a few weeks ago and Barbara was keen to visit it also.
This quiet cemetery was mostly overgrown, preserved that way to provide sanctuary for birds, with creepers and grasses almost obscuring the gravestones. Only this memorial to fallen airmen from Canada and Poland, New Zealand and of course Australia, stood out among the tumble of old graves and tombs.
We drove on to the coast and peered through squalls of rain at the looming view of St Michael’s Mount across the bay. The former monastery stands a few hundred metres off the seafront town of Marazion. It was getting late by now so we headed off to the old mining town of Redruth where we’d booked in at a B & B. We found it in a very dull street in a very dull town. These were streets of houses in rows of grey stone with a pub on the corner and here and there a shop or a car yard. Our landlady was pleasant enough but fitting in well with the dull streets and the dull houses. She told us we could get a good dinner at a pub called the Plume of Feathers, just down the road. “Just down the Road” turned out to be a fifteen minute walk against a biting wind. The “good dinner” turned out to be something called “New York Chicken”, a chicken breast with bacon and a thick layer of melted cheese on top. And of course, chips!
We slept well enough and the next morning saw us driving back to Marazion with the aim of crossing to St Michael’s Mount.
The town itself consists of winding narrow streets with rows of those oh so British seaside guest houses and hotels looking out across a wide sandy beach. All of this, when we visited, was looking pretty grim, with the sand hard packed by rain, and little groups of summer holiday makers wandering along the sea front huddled under brollies.
You can walk across to the mount on a causeway but only at low tide, so we took a boat for the five minute voyage to the little harbour on the other side.
Once ashore, we looked up to the old monastery looking down from what seemed thousands of feet. And the only way up was by a long winding flight of stone steps. We took it in easy stages, stopping every now and then to catch our breath and to look back at the view of the harbour and the mainland. Once at the top we came to a broad approach to the building with battlements and cannons looking out over the water. It’s a long time since the place has been a monastery. The history of the building dates from Saxon times when there was some sort of religious settlement here.
Even before that there was a trading port exporting tin and copper to Europe as early as 400 BC.
The early buildings gave way to the beginnings of a monastic building with a chapel and so on in the eleventh century after the Norman Conquest, and you can see that in the towers and rooms that survive today. The transition to a castle started a hundred years later and was completed when Henry the eighth dissolved the monasteries in the sixteenth century. Given its position facing the open sea, it was an ideal lookout in case of invaders, and it was here they lit the first beacon flames to warn of the approaching Spanish Armada.
The building was eventually given to the St Aubyn family who still live there today, although the place is run by the National Trust. We spent a couple of hours exploring the rooms and the towers and turrets which look down hundreds of feet to a rocky shore. Between the seaward walls and the water’s edge, there are terraced gardens of salt resistant plants and flowers, which help to break the otherwise grim exterior. After coffees down by the harbour, we took the boat back to Marazion and set off along the coast to our next destination. Despite the weather, the drive was an endless delight with country lanes so narrow we needed to venture forward only in low gear. It was like progressing through an almost continuous green tunnel of forest trees and hedgerows, occasionally broken by little villages with thatched cottages and pubs.
We pulled into a small parking area below a place called Chysauster. We walked up a long slope across heath and grassy fields to this site. Chysauster is a group of stone walls laid out in circles, and 2000 years ago people lived here in a unique settlement, farming cattle and growing crops.
The walls are all that is left of what were called courtyard houses, a design which allowed the occupants to live in thatched rooms with their animals sheltered in the centre. There’s only one other settlement like this in Europe.
On we travelled again, down country lanes, turning north up the west coast of Cornwall and past more places with names beginning with Tre, Pol and Pen as most places in this region are.
We stopped in one seaside town and bought two huge pasties for lunch. This uniquely Cornish concoction is nothing like the pasties we are used to. They’re twice as big and stuffed with a delicious mix of potato and vegetable chunks and minced beef. They came fresh out of the baker’s oven and left us well sated.
Our next stop was the town of Tintagel, site of the legendary King Arthur’s Castle. If you ever get the chance, don’t bother.
This is one of those over commercialised places with shops full of junky tourist tatt and greasy takeaway food. The castle ruins are a long way down a very steep path which we decided not to tackle. (We’d been there 30 years ago.) We left it to the hoards of coach tourists who thronged every inch of footpath space and spilled out from pub doorways and shops.
We did look into the “Old Post Office”, a rickety old building with a sagging slate roof.
Before it became a post office this was a fourteenth century minor manor house. It’s been refurnished by the National Trust with a mish-mash of historic furniture.
It started raining then, so after a cup of coffee in an overheated cafe, we took off again, driving north into Somerset.
Again, another memorable drive, but for different reasons! We had a hundred mile drive to our next B & B and so we took a major road, putting the foot down. Then we spotted a holdup ahead with a police officer directing traffic. We never found out what the problem was but it meant we had to turn off the highway and take to the byways again. Once more we drove through beautiful lanes with overhanging trees and twisting and turning all the way. A few vehicles ahead of what was now a convoy, was a huge semi trailer and we were concerned that he’d get jammed and we’d all have to back up for miles. At one point we came to the brow of a very steep hill and plunged down the gradient until we reached a tiny little fishing village, with a harbour at the bottom. Then we climbed back up the hill on the other side, and at last back onto the main road. Our route took us up into the Exmoor National Park, a mixture of open heath and valleys with forest and little streams running through them.
It was after eight when we reached the town of Minehead, a flourishing tourist centre, and checked into our B & B. Our landlady recommended a place for dinner, provided we hurried.
This time we enjoyed a good meal of steak and a bottle of Australian shiraz, and we could relax. Despite a few hiccups, it had been a lovely day.
In the morning, and refreshed, we took off again, through more of Somerset, stopping once in a while to take photos of this glorious countryside. And then we crossed the magnificent Severn Bridge and into Wales, where all the road signs come in two languages. We followed the English ones to Tintern, site of the famous Tintern Abbey.
We were early enough to beat the tour coaches which rolled up a little later. We had been here back in the seventies when you could just stop by the roadside and wander in. Now you can only enter the site by paying a fee and walking through the inevitable souvenir shop. Still, the remains of the Abbey are beautifully cared for.
The first buildings appeared here in the twelfth century under the aegis of the Cistercian monks. It became a ruin thanks to Henry the eighth and what’s left stands in a wooded valley with forest rising above the stone arches and towers which are built of lichen covered local reddish stone. We bought a guidebook which identified each section of this extensive building, from the huge Abbey church, its nave and transepts, to the refractory, the infirmary and the abbot’s chapel.
We explored it all for an hour before pressing on once more into Monmouthshire and more glorious green vistas of patchwork fields and woods!
Our last stop before turning for home was the town of Abergavenny...remember the Marty Wilde song..”Taking a trip up to Abergavenny, hoping the weather is fine.”
Well the weather wasn’t that fine, nor was the town really but it did provide us with lunch (Welsh Rarebit of course), and a chance to hear something of that delightful lilting Welsh accent.
The streets were crowded once again with coach loads of tourists, so many of them fat women with fat husbands and fat children.
But none of that could spoil a wonderful trip through what must surely be some of the most beautiful parts of this country.

WEEKEND WITH FRIENDS

W/E Aug 2nd/3rd
We’ve just returned from a lovely weekend in Hampshire where we stayed with our friends Roy and Carol. We met them when we travelled to Budapest, Vienna etc on that coach trip, and got on very well. They were kind enough to invite us to their place in Southampton. It was a two and a half hour drive down the motorway to Southampton and we arrived just before lunchtime. Carol had prepared a very enjoyable meal and we shared a lot of laughs as well as a bottle of wine, recalling our coach trip together of several months ago. After that Roy drove us all to the city of Winchester where we spent a pleasant and instructive afternoon visiting local landmarks, and one local pub.
One of the old establishments here is Winchester College which goes back hundreds of years and ranks with Eton and Harrow. The pub at which we enjoyed a pint, featured old Winchester College desks as tables and lists of ancient examination results framed in the gents toilets.
We also visited Winchester Cathedral, a magnificent building with a history dating back over a thousand years. We saw the tombs and memorial caskets of bishops going back to medieval times and earlier. As you can see, the nave and transepts with their vaulted ceilings are quite stunning.
We wandered the streets of Winchester past a monument to King Alfred the Great, and went into the Great Hall, where they have on the wall the so called Round Table of King Arthur. In fact it dates back only to the fifteenth century.
Then we drove back to our hosts’ place and enjoyed a memorable dinner and more wine.
In the morning Roy and Carol took us to the New Forest to see the wild ponies which live there. This place is a mixture of scrubland and forest. Actually it was new at around the time of the Norman Conquest, and was planted to provide hunting grounds for the aristocracy. We saw ponies and foals just grazing along the roadside, and even on people’s nature strips. We visited the town of Romsey and a very old Abbey, again with magnificent architecture. It's also the burial place of Lord Mountbatten.

We spent a little time in a village called Burley, also known as the Witches’ Village because of its association with a coven of witches reputed to have practised their arts there. There are now several shops flogging witchy souvenirs and tatt.
Then we drove on towards the coast to the town of Lymington where the ferries go to the Isle of Wight. After a quick stroll around the waterfront, we enjoyed a seafood luncheon at the Ship Inn.
We had to head home soon so we dropped into the village of Beaulieu to buy ice creams and look briefly at the estate of Lord Montague.

All too soon we had to head home, but we have invited Roy and Carol to come up to Oxfordshire before we leave the UK and are looking forward to returning their hospitality. We are lucky to have made such friends during our stay.

A FEW DAYS IN "NORN IRON"

Sunday July 27th
Today we flew to Belfast, courtesy of Aer Lingus. It only takes fifty five minutes and we landed at the International Airport about 35 minutes out of the city. By the time we had checked in, we still had a few hours before dinner so we hopped one of those hop on hop off sightseeing buses and got a bit of a taste of the city. Actually this city is quite compact (population 300,000) and full of charm. It’’s streets are mostly wide with plenty of trees in the suburbs. Our bus took us past rows of elegant houses with well kept gardens as well as the more industrialised areas like the docklands and the famous Harland Wolfe shipyard. These days they only refurbish oil rigs, but in their heyday they built some of the world’s great liners, among them of course, the Titanic. Our guide said it might seem odd that Belfast is so proud of the Titanic, given its fate. But as she put it, “It was allright when it left here.”
We drove on through tree lined streets bedecked with masses of Union Jacks and Ulster Loyalist flags, the city having recently celebrated the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, highlight of what they cal, the marching season.
We saw the parliament building of Stormont, a huge mausoleum of a building set in extensive grounds against a background of the mountains which look down on Belfast. Driving back into the city, we crossed the River Lagan and passed the beautiful Tudor style buildings of Queens University, then through the commercial centre of town, a mixture of fine old bank buildings and more modern centres, including one owned by Westfield. Then into West Belfast and the Ardoyne where we saw something of past troubles! There was the old court house, the former prison of Crumlin Road, and many of those threatening and triumphal wall murals which shout the cause of Catholic Republican, and Protestant Loyalist causes. More on that later!
In the evening we enjoyed a good dinner in the dining rooms of the Crown Bar, a lovely old pub with embossed tiling all over its outer walls, and an equally elegant old bar inside. Thanks to some training from friends back home (you know who you are) we coped quite well with the distinctive accent here, and the constant references to “wee this”and “wee that”.
As the barmaid said, “What’ll yiz have. I’ll just be a wee minute lov, and bring yiz the wee menu”, or something like that.
July 28th
On the Monday morning we boarded a bus for an unforgettable drive right up the east coast to the Giant’s Causeway. Our route took us along the Antrim Road beside the waters of Belfast Lough through little towns and villages, many still with the flags out. We passed places with names like Newtownabbey, Jordanstown, White Abbey and Monkstown. Our first stop was in a seaside town of Carrickfergus which is dominated by Carrickfergus Castle, a grim Norman Castle whose ramparts look out across the Irish Sea. It was apparently the key castle responsible for the Anglo Norman hold on Ulster back in the twelfth century. Over its 800 year history it’s been besieged by the Scots, the Irish, the English and the French. It’s been a castle, an armoury, a prison and even an air raid shelter.
As we drove on up the coast we entered the area known as the Glens of Antrim. There are nine of them, the largest being a magnificent vista running down towards the coast, called Glenariff, Queen of the Glens.
Our journey took us further north to the famous Carrick-a-Reed rope bridge. This is a bridge connecting the tiny island of Carrick-a-Reed to the mainland. It’s quite short but it spans a very nasty drop to the sea, and was originally installed to enable salmon fishermen to gain access to where they processed their catch.
Barbara and I walked the kilometre along a perilous looking pathway to where we joined a queue of people waiting to cross, eight at a time. When it was our turn, we both stepped onto the bridge in some trepidation. It was a real challenge to keep going with the bridge rocking and the wind blowing and that awful drop to the sea below us. We talked to each other, encouraging each other along until a bunch of young people decided to play the fool at the end of the bridge behind us. The thing started to sway and I almost lost it, just a few metres from the end. Now I don’t usually make scenes but such was the tenseness of the moment, I shouted very loudly; “STOP FUCKING ABOUT!”
Seconds later we were both on firm ground and joining the queue to cross back again. We accomplished that with less fuss and rejoined our bus, feeling proud that we had conquered our fears. We’ll not be doing that again!
Further along the road, we reached the site of yet another ancient castle, Dunluce. This one is a dramatic ruin which sits out on a headland. Bits of it have actually fallen into the sea as the cliff receded over centuries. The castle itself is medieval but it stands on the site of an ancient Irish fort going back to Viking times.
Our next point of interest was a town called Bushmills. You may have heard of it. They make whiskey there. In fact they’ve made whiskey there for hundreds of years. It is the oldest distillery in Ireland, if not the world. And as a non whiskey drinker, I have to say that what they make there is pure nectar. It is like sipping liquid velvet and when it reaches your insides it warms you to your very depths. The world becomes your best friend. I might have another one some day.
Suitably buoyed by the Bushmills, we finally reached our objective by mid afternoon and looked down to the beach some hundreds of feet below, to the Giant’s Causeway. It took another half hour to clamber down a narrow pathway to the strange rock formations which comprise the “causeway “
This phenomenon was caused over many millennia as an enormous bed of lava cooled very very slowly, and rather like mud cracks when it dries out, thousands and thousands of hexagonal basalt pipes were formed. Actually they’re not all hexagonal. Some have eight sides, some six and four, and one is said to have only three. They didn’t tell us which one.
It was time to head back to Belfast again and by the time we got there, having walked for miles and clambered about like mountain goats, we were pretty tired. We had dinner that evening at the Europa Hotel. I remember the Europa Hotel from the seventies when I worked at the BBC in London. It was where most of the media stayed while covering the troubles of that time. I know some of you reading this will know that it had the dubious distinction of being the most bombed hotel in Ireland. All up it suffered from 23 explosions in its vicinity during those years.
I’m pleased to say it is still doing good food and wine.
July 29th
It was a rather overcast morning when we arose on the Tuesday. We wanted to visit the famed Mountains of Mourne...the ones that “sweep down to the sea” in the well known song.
We learned that the best way of doing this was to take a bus to the coastal town of Newcastle and then join a local bus which did a regular run through various towns around the mountains. We were advised to buy a ticket called a summer rambler which would cover the whole trip for seven quid each. Good value!
The bus ride to Newcastle took us south of Belfast this time through some very fashionable looking suburbs and on through towns and farming country, through Ballynahinch and Dundrum and finally to the sea. From Newcastle we joined a smally bus driven by a maniacal man with a crewcut, who seemed to think he was driving in the Mountains of Mourne Grand Prix. Over the next 45 minutes our bus climbed up into these beautiful mountains through glens and farmland until the trees gave way to open heath disappearing into low cloud and swirling mist. Then we swung down again and into a valley called The Silent Valley. This is the site of a major Northern Irish dam. Even though there were quite a few visitors around, the place certainly was aptly named. Barb and I took a long rambling nature walk through tall firs and spruce with a carpet of pine needle deadening the sound. That plus the mist made the whole place a truly “Silent Valley”.
By around half past two it was time to pick up the local bus again, and go streaking down the valley along winding roads at breakneck speed until we reached the coast again. And then back to the seaside town of Newcastle, where we had time to recover on the beach front before connecting with the bus for Belfast. In fact the walk on the beach was a break really because it was the one vantage point from which we could really see those “mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea.”
Dined again at the Europa. Bed!
July 30th
It was our last day in Northern Ireland, and of course we could not leave without seeing something of the recent history here. We knew the names, the Falls Road, the Ardoyne, the Shankill Road, the Crumlin Prison and so on. These days you can travel these places in safety, In fact they are a sort of grim tourist attraction. It’s the thing to take ä “black taxi tour.”
So that’s what we did and it turned out to be a bit of a curate’s egg.
We did spend an hour and a half driving with our guide, a bloke named Martin, through all those places, stopping at will to take pictures and to look at where so much sadness happened before the Good Friday agreement brought some sort of peace. In fact we saw what is called “the peace line”, an enormous fence which divides the two communities, Catholic and Protestant. It seems a bit of a contradiction to call it a “peace “line, but at least they’re not shooting at one another. I was surprised to learn that there are still crossing points in this fence line which are closed in the evening, and according to our guide, actually closed up on weekends.
This brings me back to our guide! He insisted that his was an objective tour based on historical fact, but I have to say he laced his commentary with a lot of opinion, and there was little doubt about who he saw as the good guys and who the bad guys.
Nevertheless it was very interesting, especially given that when working in London in the seventies, all one ever saw was film of a bombing every day.
We now wish we’d had a bit more time in Northern Ireland. There was so much more to see, especially in the beautiful countryside.

Obviously there are still tensions of a sort in these small sectors of Northern Ireland, but our overall impression that this is a very beautiful part of the world and the people who live here and work here are building a decent society together.
Enough preaching! I’ll take a wee break now and see yiz next time.