7 June 2010 In Nottingham

Lyn in Robin Hood hat



Mick's house in England from ages 2 to 18



Mick's Primary school from ages 5 to 11



Mick's mother and Father's commemorative plaque ion the Garden of Rest at St John's Church Carlton Nottingham



Carlton Police Station where Mick worked



Council House in Nottingham City Centre



Mick by the Lion he used to sit on as a child



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After a great English breakfast we left to visit my Aunty Madge. Madge is the widow of Mick's fathers brother Gerald. She is 85 and totally deaf, but lip reads really well except with Lyn's Australian accent, she didn't have a clue what Lyn was saying, however when Mick spoke to her she understood every word. She was very pleased to see us as Mick hasn't seen her since he was a little boy.

It was then onto show Lyn all the places that Mick frequented between the ages of 2 and 18. First stop his house in Bakersfield. Even though the GPS was telling us that his house was nearby he didn't believe it and reentered the address. It turned out that the GPS was correct and his house was not far from Aunty Madge's house, although he hadn't recognised any of the roads as they appeared much narrower and shorter then he remembered. After taking some photographs it was off to St John's church were Mick's mother's and father's ashes are scattered in the garden of rest. Although Mick's father died in Australia, his sister Joyce after (a lot of effort) brought his ashes to St John's in 2009 to be placed alongside his mother. A memorial plaque was also placed in the path in the garden of rest.

Next stop the police station at Carlton where Mick worked when he was a member of the Nottinghamshire Constabulary. The station has been demolished and completely rebuilt. It was opened by the Princess Royal on 22 January 1997. (A prize goes to the first person to tell me who the Princess Royal is/was?)

Next on our agenda was the two schools Mick attended when he lived int the UK. The first was Jesse Boots Junior school and the second Greenwood High School, both of which had extraordinary security so we couldn't go in.

We then drove into the city centre and parked at the Broadmarsh multi story car park which cost 2 pounds and 80 pence for 2 hrs parking. We then took some pictures of the Market Square with Mick standing behind the lions in front of the Council House where he was photographed as a child 55 years ago.

After a busy day reminiscing we walked back through the shopping centre, visited the Information Centre then headed home (in the traffic).

Chinese for tea tonight. Not a bad feed at all.

Checkout Lyn in her Robin Hood hat! What a sort.. Puts Russell Crowe to shame.

6 June 2010 Drove from Newcastle-under-Lyme to Nottingham

Accomodation at the Tudor Hotel Nuthall Road Nottingham



The Road out of Nottingham travelling South



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Today we drove from our relatives place at Newcastle-under-Lyme to Nottingham. Using the Nokia N95 GPS it went very smoothly and we got here in just over an hour. We stopped on the motorway to help a damsel in distress and whilst we were stopped a storm came over so we got drenched. She had a flat tyre and couldn't get the wheel nut off. It was one of the wheel nut locking devices and the fitting to remove the nut had 3 pins on it with corresponding holes in the nut. Bloody useless as it kept slipping out of the nut. She said it would cost 150 pounds to get the road service out to help. (I have lost the pound key since I am having to use my laptop now we have left Davina and Roy's place and the laptop doesn't have a numeric keypad to enter the codes necessary to get it.

We are staying at the quaint Tudor Hotel for a week whilst we catch up with my relatives.

5 June 2010 - Town of Stone

British way of fishing using electronics. What's the point?

Mute Swan (yes, they can speak)

Maggotts - used as bait for fishing



Canal lock for negotiating canals with changing water levels



Narrow Boats



Bread made in a flower pot!

Green Eggs from a Mallard Duck

Smoked Kippers - Yum

Markets at Stone

Market Fare

Today we had a little trip to the town of Stone, not far from here. They have a lovely country market with all manner of stuff for sale including lots of foodstuffs you don't see in Aus. There was a guy there selling fish and he had a Kipper smoker going at his stall.

We bought quite a bit of food including pork pie, apple pie, various biscuits, pigs tongue, ox tongue and black pudding etc. The tropical type fruit for sale was from Chile, Spain, Portugal etc. Didn't see anything from Australia. Lyn bought an Avocado which was big by Australian standards as our hosts had never tried it but when she cut it up it was bad inside. I think it came from Portugal.

We had a lovely salad for tea.

After the markets we walked down by the Trent & Mersey Canal. The Brits are certainly mad about their Narrow Boats. There are hundreds of them buzzing about on the canals. You just can't be in a hurry as the locks appear at regular intervals and must be negotiated. It's usually an elderly couple wiling away their retirement in the peace and tranquility. Nothing like that in Australia where everyone is madly driving everywhere getting stressed out.

The fishing in the lakes is also interesting. The fishermen all have multiple rods connected to sophisticated electronic devices which beep when they get a bite which didn't seem to happen at all. They just sit in their little tents waiting for the alarm to go off and I imagine (since we never saw it happen) would run out and grab the rod and haul the fish in. They seem to mostly use maggots for fishing and feed some of them dye to make them a different colour. We have also seen lots of bleached swans here!

The weather over the past 2 days has been superb and you guessed it, it rained overnight just to keep the gardens moist. Perfect really.

As Joyce said in an email, Samantha left her "A" game in the dressing room at the French Open.
Never mind. The Italian was very happy.

We leave for Nottingham today. The place of my birth.

4 June 2010 Cost of Petrol

Hire Car - Vauxhall Astra 1.6l turbo



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Vauxhall Astra

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For those interested, the cost of petrol here currently varies between £1.13 ($1.96 Australian) to £1.30 ($2.26 Australian) per litre. These are the cheapest and most expensive prices I have seen so far.

So stop moaning!

The car we have rented is a Vauxhall Astra with a 1.6 litre petrol turbo-charged engine (Garrett Turbo-charger). It has a 6 speed manual gearbox, aircon, power steering, cruise control, climate control, electric (front) windows, and the handbrake is a button you pull up on the centre console which automatically disconnects when you want to drive away. That took some getting used to particularly when I couldn't find it when I tried to drive away from the hire place (Hertz). The cost for the car hire for 107 days was $3400. I reckon about half the cost of what it would cost in Australia but the dollar is strong against the £.

(Strange having a keyboard with a £ sign. I'll show you again £, cool heh? Also has a $ sign. The £ is above the 3 so the # is buried on the left of the keyboard).


It had 2700 miles on the clock. Lyn took it for a spin around the car park at Wedgwood where there were no cars and ..."she wants one!".


Lyn is very quiet at the moment so I am free to blog. She has taken up Sudoku and she is becoming an expert at it but she had to buy a BIG rubber as she wore one out!

We don't watch much TV here. And I think I prefer sitting quietly except when the French Open is on. They show the whole lot of it here and we did catch Sam Stosur's semi-final win.
Go Sam. From what I have seen the TV technology is way ahead of Australia and the car radio display shows what program is on and sends out all sorts of messages to text the station with info etc.


Better go.

3 June 2010 - Outing to Alderton Boat Lift and Jodrell Bank

Alderton Boat Lift

On a boat entering the Alderton Boat Lift

Upper part Alderton Boat Lift

Alderton Boat Lift

Boat entering upper part of the Alderton Boat Lift

Gear invented by Andre-Gustav Citroen

Jodrell bank telescope

Lyn at Jodrell Bank telescope

Our hosts Roy and Davina Perrier at Jodrell Bank telescope

Today we went out to the Alderton Boat Lift which was built in 1875 to lift and lower boats 50 feet from an upper canal (Trent and Mersey Canal) to the lower river (River Weaver).

It was the first lift of it's type ever built in the world and has two Caissons in which the boats are raised and lowered from River to canal and Vice Versa. It currently uses 2 large single hydraulic rams and the hydraulic fluid flows from one to the other to raise and lower the Caissons containing the boats.

The Cassions are full of water so the boats are still floating during the journey up or down and one acts a s a counter balance to the other. This is done by raising the water level in the upper Caisson so that contains more water then the lower one so that it naturally wants to descend whilst the other one comes up. It uses pumps to pump the hydraulic fluid from one to the other.

In 1906 because of corrosion in the hydraulic rams caused by the salt and other pollutants in the water, the lift was converted to use a system of electric motors and pulleys.

In 1983 the lift was closed as other methods of transport were being used and was left to rot away.

The lift was reopened in 2002 after a group of people got together and raised £3.5 million for a project to rebuild it. As well as major works to the structure, it also involved converting it back to using hydraulic pistons but this time using modern day hydraulic fluid rather than water.

If you look at the centre one of the pictures I took above us, you will see a geared wheel as part of the mechanism. The dual chevron gear, was invented by Andre-Gustav Citroen and apparently this shape is used on the front of all Citroen cars as their bonnet emblem today.

(Perhaps not quite a spectacular as the Falkirk wheel opened in 2002 to link the Union Canal with the Forth & Clyde Canal at Falkirk in Scotland but still very impressive never-the-less).

JODRELL BANK

After a quick lunch we headed off to have a look at the Jodrell bank radio telescope which was having some maintenance work done on it. As we were walking around it a loud alarm sounded and the thing start turning on both axis to almost face where were standing. It was pretty spectacular to see such a large object turning. Roy said he was surprised that they would move it as it was undergoing maintenance but I told him that I had given the telescope 'driver' 5 quid to give it a spin. He was duly impressed.

2 June 2010 - Wedgwood

Wedgwood display - for sale

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Painter in action

Making Wedgwood brooches

Making Wedgwood medalions

Lyn at Wedgwood Museum

Mick standing next to Josiah Wedgwood

We went out for the first time today in the car with no English guides. It was a bit hairy with roads and traffic everywhere. We decided to go to the Wedgwood factory. It's the first time I realised there is no E in the middle of the word.

We used the Nokia N95 onto which I had loaded the UK maps before leaving Aus. It worked perfectly and got us there and back without a problem. The $25 for the UK map data was money well spent (ebay - Garmin maps).

We spent about 4 hours there and in the end were suffering overload after visiting the museum of fine pottery which is huge. We also saw them making and painting the pottery from start to finish. We didn't have a go at turning a pot but instead watched someone else make a fool of themselves. I probably could have done it, easily!! We had a nice lunch there and a reasonably sized cup of coffee. (See the previous post).

Me standing next to the statue of Josiah Wedgwood.

We left at about 4.30pm. Bad mistake that. The roads were chocker-block with traffic but we met the challenge and were very proud of ourselves. How she knows where all the roads are is beyond me. We met some nice people and the bloke asked me where I was from as I seemed to have a mixed UK/Aus accent. I was worried I was reverting. This confirms it.

Anyway check out the pics.

1 June 2010 - Raining today.

Raining today. It's not bad though, sunny one day raining the next. I think Australia would prefer that to the drought.

The bird on the previous post was a Thrush. When I took the picture we were talking about it outside the pub (Boat Inn) and a young couple came past with a baby in a pram. The guy having overheard our conversation (well at least part of it) said that yes it's a terrible thing to catch, as his wife had had it. Obviously not ornithologists! Anyway, the Song Thrush was singing beautifully.

Having a few problems getting accommodation but have managed to get a room in a small hotel North of Nottingham (the city where I was born). It cost £385 (about $650) for a week including full English breakfast so we leave Newcastle-Under-Lyme on Sunday to travel to Nottingham. It will take a while as it is 90 klms or 55 miles. Don't laugh. You should see how narrow the roads are and how much traffic is on them.

Went out shopping today. The shopping centres are very clean and a have a good range of stuff. Much of the stuff in the supermarkets we haven't seen in Australia. We stopped at a cafe for a coffee as well. I reckon the jumbo sized cup had about a litre of coffee in it. We can't fault the food though, very fresh and tasty whatever we order.

Huge Coffee Cups

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