Thursday, July 19, 2007
Colchester - Day 3
Penny's car really does hate me.
Today we left Colchester behind and crossed the country to Penny's place in Alvechurch, although not without one or two problems (and a thing of joy) on the way.
The plan was simple: Get up, have breakfast, pack, go shopping, check out, retrieve the car, head west (taking in a heritage site or two on the way) and get back at a reasonably sensible hour. It started reasonably well in that the 07:00 planned time of rising turned into an actual time of 07:30, but we still managed to get breakfast over and done with well before 09:00. Packing was a little slower than planned (mainly because we were thinking too hard of how to schedule other things) but we got out to go shopping just before 10:00. Shopping was relatively painless, punctuated by some dramatic blurb reading at the independent bookshop (one of the senior staff found this quite amusing and wished that he could employ me as a professional blurb reader and general vocal advertiser). Our final explorations completed we finally checked out just before 11:00. So far so good.
That was when the fun started. First of all we'd managed to lose the car parking ticket at some time in the preceding 48 hours. Fortunately the excess for a lost ticket was about the same price as the overall cost for two and a bit days of parking, as Penny discovered during her first visit to the car park while dumping some shopping and searching for the ticket. After meeting up at the hotel to sort out where to load the larger luggage Penny headed off back to the car park while I got the luggage from the hotel to the appropriate loading area and waited for her. And waited. And waited. About half an hour later she returned to tell me that the battery was completely flat and that it was going to be an AA job. Fortunately the AA man arrived soon after and was both cheerful and efficient, two qualities that we both really appreciated.
As a result we didn't get on the road until about 13:30. several hours later than planned. This called for a rapid rewriting of our plan for the day and, sadly, we crossed Cressing Temple off the to-do list, leaving us with Learey Marney House. This house contains an eight-storey Tudor gatehouse, the tallest ever built, within its own grounds with a formal garden. The building is constantly being restored and renovated, and it's interesting to see just how much work is not only going into this but also how much still needs to be done. It was interesting to compare the renovation and repair work to the hotel we've been staying in, as there have been several things over the past few days that have suggested that the Red Lion runs on a very tight budget - beautiful public rooms but bedrooms and corridors that look a little 'tired, and perhaps not quite as many staff as you'd expect. I can understand it, given how much the upkeep of a Grade 1 listed building like that must be. The tower has the same problem, while some sections are clearly currently undergoing work others are clearly in need of attention. The main stairwell up the tower that had clearly held the nursery at some point was wallpapered in an, er, interesting wallpaper whose design looked as it had come from the thirties.
We spent an enjoyable three and a half hours wandering around the house and its gardens in bright sunshine before heading off west towards Birmingham. It became clear that we were heading into the bad weather and we drove through some quite impressive rain before finding an other 16th century coaching in in a little village on the A421 where we stopped for a meal. This was clearly a real village pub - domino sets and cribbage boards sat beside some books on a shelf and a dartboard hung on the wall beside our windowseat. The food was excellent, and extremely large steak for Penny and a simple but flavoursome chicken curry for me. We were talking to the landlord at one point and he told us a most interesting thing - since the smoking ban came in he's seen a huge increase in the numbers of women going into the pub for a drink or meal and a chat. It appears that this pub has now become an alternative to the coffee shop as somewhere to get together for a chat.
It was almost 23:00 and still raining heavily when we arrived at Penny's to be greeted noisily by Georgina, her cat. To whom it appears I am violently allergic, which is unfortunate as she's a very sweet thing who loves people. Fortunately I still have some of the antihistamines that I bought against hay fever at the van so I'm going to be able to see and breathe after all.
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Today we left Colchester behind and crossed the country to Penny's place in Alvechurch, although not without one or two problems (and a thing of joy) on the way.
The plan was simple: Get up, have breakfast, pack, go shopping, check out, retrieve the car, head west (taking in a heritage site or two on the way) and get back at a reasonably sensible hour. It started reasonably well in that the 07:00 planned time of rising turned into an actual time of 07:30, but we still managed to get breakfast over and done with well before 09:00. Packing was a little slower than planned (mainly because we were thinking too hard of how to schedule other things) but we got out to go shopping just before 10:00. Shopping was relatively painless, punctuated by some dramatic blurb reading at the independent bookshop (one of the senior staff found this quite amusing and wished that he could employ me as a professional blurb reader and general vocal advertiser). Our final explorations completed we finally checked out just before 11:00. So far so good.
That was when the fun started. First of all we'd managed to lose the car parking ticket at some time in the preceding 48 hours. Fortunately the excess for a lost ticket was about the same price as the overall cost for two and a bit days of parking, as Penny discovered during her first visit to the car park while dumping some shopping and searching for the ticket. After meeting up at the hotel to sort out where to load the larger luggage Penny headed off back to the car park while I got the luggage from the hotel to the appropriate loading area and waited for her. And waited. And waited. About half an hour later she returned to tell me that the battery was completely flat and that it was going to be an AA job. Fortunately the AA man arrived soon after and was both cheerful and efficient, two qualities that we both really appreciated.
As a result we didn't get on the road until about 13:30. several hours later than planned. This called for a rapid rewriting of our plan for the day and, sadly, we crossed Cressing Temple off the to-do list, leaving us with Learey Marney House. This house contains an eight-storey Tudor gatehouse, the tallest ever built, within its own grounds with a formal garden. The building is constantly being restored and renovated, and it's interesting to see just how much work is not only going into this but also how much still needs to be done. It was interesting to compare the renovation and repair work to the hotel we've been staying in, as there have been several things over the past few days that have suggested that the Red Lion runs on a very tight budget - beautiful public rooms but bedrooms and corridors that look a little 'tired, and perhaps not quite as many staff as you'd expect. I can understand it, given how much the upkeep of a Grade 1 listed building like that must be. The tower has the same problem, while some sections are clearly currently undergoing work others are clearly in need of attention. The main stairwell up the tower that had clearly held the nursery at some point was wallpapered in an, er, interesting wallpaper whose design looked as it had come from the thirties.
We spent an enjoyable three and a half hours wandering around the house and its gardens in bright sunshine before heading off west towards Birmingham. It became clear that we were heading into the bad weather and we drove through some quite impressive rain before finding an other 16th century coaching in in a little village on the A421 where we stopped for a meal. This was clearly a real village pub - domino sets and cribbage boards sat beside some books on a shelf and a dartboard hung on the wall beside our windowseat. The food was excellent, and extremely large steak for Penny and a simple but flavoursome chicken curry for me. We were talking to the landlord at one point and he told us a most interesting thing - since the smoking ban came in he's seen a huge increase in the numbers of women going into the pub for a drink or meal and a chat. It appears that this pub has now become an alternative to the coffee shop as somewhere to get together for a chat.
It was almost 23:00 and still raining heavily when we arrived at Penny's to be greeted noisily by Georgina, her cat. To whom it appears I am violently allergic, which is unfortunate as she's a very sweet thing who loves people. Fortunately I still have some of the antihistamines that I bought against hay fever at the van so I'm going to be able to see and breathe after all.
Labels: Colchester
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Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Colchester - Day 2
The plan for the day was to do the clock museum in the morning and the main museum in the afternoon and we actually managed to keep to the plan.
The clock museum is in the house of William Gilberd, the Elizabethan physician and physicist who originally coined the words electric and pole and published the first major work on magnetism, De Magnetica in 1600. Unfortunately they didn't sell copies of this so I'm going to have to do a bit more research before I can write an article for Baelfyr entitled Electricity IS Period. The museum contained a large number of both long-case and pedestal clocks and which led (much in the spirit of some other conversations we've had over the past couple of days) to a discussion of chameleon circuits and the Master's Tardis. Sad, aren't we? :) Particularly interesting was what was clearly a long case clock designed for scientists - as well as the clock face it had a thermometer and a barometer set into its front (we decided that this was the clock most likely to be the Master's Tardis in disguise). The house was full of the sound of clock mechanisms and chimes, all slightly out of step. In the Tardis room the combination of single- and double-beat mechanisms produced an extraordinary jazz-like syncopated rhythm.
The house also has a superbly pungent Tudor garden, recreated to contain the herbs, plants and trees common during the Tudor period. I was quite impressed by the number of identifiable aromas - although I'n useless at identifying plants Penny is exceedingly good at it and introduced me to walnut trees, purple sage and lemon mint amongst other things. I did recognise some of them, however, purely from blackwork embroideries, although naturally I had no idea what they were called. They looked like big spiky leaves with some gigantic morningstar ball on top. Or something like that...
Our afternoon was given over to Colchester museum, housed in the shell of the Norman keep of Colchester castle. This is very similar in design, although rather larger than, the White Tower in the Tower of London and the size difference is due to the walls having been built around the foundations of the old temple of Claudius, built a thousand years previously. We started off with the guided tour of the foundations and the roof. The foundations are rather strange, as you walk about within the voids excavated underneath the Roman foundations rather than them having excavated the foundations themselves. We then went up the main staircase - which is considerably wider than normal - up to the roof and the old chapel. The chapel has been identified based upon the building's similarities with the White Tower, given that the same architect was involved in designing both buildings.
The tour ended on the top floor of the museum which meant we did the museum in a most unusual order and almost lost the Normans entirely. In spite of this we dressed Penny in a toga (which was quite long and heavy), saw a pre-Roman rapier and the reconstruction of Boudicca's chariot build for the recent docu-drama. The thing I found most engaging was that we got to handle a piece of genuine Samian ware. I'm a big fan of Samian ware and would happily buy household items made of it. Unfortunately I've never been into a museum that sells it. I'm sure there must be a market for reproduction Samian ware - me for starters. We therefore managed to escape the gift shop without taking too much damage...unlike Virgin and the games shop earlier in the day.
For dinner, Penny introduced me to Café Rouge, what appears to be a French bistro range dotted around the South of England which serves a very curious version of garlic bread consisting of bread sticks drizzled in crushed garlic and melted butter. Rather unusual but quite pleasant. We had a minor panic when paying the bill as their electronics were down and we had to rummage around for cash which was something neither of us has had to do for quite some time. We then rounded off the day with Shrek the Third which was quite fun but simply drives home the message that babies are horrible messy things with which I want nothing to do.
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The clock museum is in the house of William Gilberd, the Elizabethan physician and physicist who originally coined the words electric and pole and published the first major work on magnetism, De Magnetica in 1600. Unfortunately they didn't sell copies of this so I'm going to have to do a bit more research before I can write an article for Baelfyr entitled Electricity IS Period. The museum contained a large number of both long-case and pedestal clocks and which led (much in the spirit of some other conversations we've had over the past couple of days) to a discussion of chameleon circuits and the Master's Tardis. Sad, aren't we? :) Particularly interesting was what was clearly a long case clock designed for scientists - as well as the clock face it had a thermometer and a barometer set into its front (we decided that this was the clock most likely to be the Master's Tardis in disguise). The house was full of the sound of clock mechanisms and chimes, all slightly out of step. In the Tardis room the combination of single- and double-beat mechanisms produced an extraordinary jazz-like syncopated rhythm.
The house also has a superbly pungent Tudor garden, recreated to contain the herbs, plants and trees common during the Tudor period. I was quite impressed by the number of identifiable aromas - although I'n useless at identifying plants Penny is exceedingly good at it and introduced me to walnut trees, purple sage and lemon mint amongst other things. I did recognise some of them, however, purely from blackwork embroideries, although naturally I had no idea what they were called. They looked like big spiky leaves with some gigantic morningstar ball on top. Or something like that...
Our afternoon was given over to Colchester museum, housed in the shell of the Norman keep of Colchester castle. This is very similar in design, although rather larger than, the White Tower in the Tower of London and the size difference is due to the walls having been built around the foundations of the old temple of Claudius, built a thousand years previously. We started off with the guided tour of the foundations and the roof. The foundations are rather strange, as you walk about within the voids excavated underneath the Roman foundations rather than them having excavated the foundations themselves. We then went up the main staircase - which is considerably wider than normal - up to the roof and the old chapel. The chapel has been identified based upon the building's similarities with the White Tower, given that the same architect was involved in designing both buildings.
The tour ended on the top floor of the museum which meant we did the museum in a most unusual order and almost lost the Normans entirely. In spite of this we dressed Penny in a toga (which was quite long and heavy), saw a pre-Roman rapier and the reconstruction of Boudicca's chariot build for the recent docu-drama. The thing I found most engaging was that we got to handle a piece of genuine Samian ware. I'm a big fan of Samian ware and would happily buy household items made of it. Unfortunately I've never been into a museum that sells it. I'm sure there must be a market for reproduction Samian ware - me for starters. We therefore managed to escape the gift shop without taking too much damage...unlike Virgin and the games shop earlier in the day.
For dinner, Penny introduced me to Café Rouge, what appears to be a French bistro range dotted around the South of England which serves a very curious version of garlic bread consisting of bread sticks drizzled in crushed garlic and melted butter. Rather unusual but quite pleasant. We had a minor panic when paying the bill as their electronics were down and we had to rummage around for cash which was something neither of us has had to do for quite some time. We then rounded off the day with Shrek the Third which was quite fun but simply drives home the message that babies are horrible messy things with which I want nothing to do.
Labels: Colchester
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Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Colchester - Day 1
Penny's car hates me.
As we'd arrived too late last night to find an appropriate long stay car park , first thing this morning before breakfast I got the car keys and instructions from Penny on how to disengage the alarm on the car so that I could move the car to somewhere more suitable. Indeed, when I pressed the button and opened the car door nothing happened and I was happy. Then, as soon as I turned the key in the ignition, the alarm started up. I silenced it and repeated the process three times before giving up and calling Penny on the internal phone system from reception.
We moved the car and walked back to the hotel, during which journey we came across a very suspicious looking wall. Penny thought that it was the original Roman one, but I was rather skeptical about the bricks and thought it a mediaeval repair. The question was settled in Penny's favour later in the day...
Breakfast was in a dining room dating back to 15-something, complete with oak beams and white fill. It was, as several other places we've seen today, crying out to host an SCA feast. After all, I said at the time, we do both have the gowns for it! After a leisurely breakfast we wandered into town in search of the tourist information centre, which we duly found in plenty of time to join a guided tour of the town before lunch. It turned out that we were the only two people on the tour and our intended 90 minute walking tour turned into a superb 150 minute tour with an excellent guide who seemed delighted to have not only such a small group but one in which the people were familiar with a lot of the applicable background history and archaeology and who could ask intelligent questions.
We started at the castle (built on the foundations of the temple of Claudius razed by Boudicca), and gradually worked our way around the Dutch Quarter (where lived the Flemish weavers who fled the Low Countries during the 15th century) and then out to the remains of the city walls, taking in a number of churches on our way. The most striking of these were the tiny Greek Orthodox church of St Helen (who was, according to British tradition, the mother of Constantine the Great) and Trinity church, one of the few remaining Saxon churches in England. The latter has a fascinating triangular 'arch', as the round arch only arrived with the Normans. I've taken some photos and am thinking of doing a drawing of it for Baelfyr; I suspect that I'll do an article on the delights of this town as seen by an SCA member.
We ended the walk outside a pub called "The Hole in the Wall" - which got its name from a 19th century publican blowing a hole in the city walls at his pub so that horse cab drivers could see the trains arriving at the railway station in time to get there to meet the passengers. By this time it was starting to rain and so we decided to go in for lunch. This is part of my campaign to support pubs now that the smoking ban is in place. I can certainly say that I go to the pub more often now. :) Lunch turned into a good hour and a half and a couple of glasses of cider.
By the time we'd had our long lunch there wasn't time really to do another museum so we wandered around the town and did a little more shopping before having a much-appreciated siesta. Well... rather later than the traditional siesta as we only had time for a quick meal before Die Hard 4.0 (I rather enjoyed it) late in the evening. Tomorrow is on to the main museums, but tonight I suspect that I'll sleep well.
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As we'd arrived too late last night to find an appropriate long stay car park , first thing this morning before breakfast I got the car keys and instructions from Penny on how to disengage the alarm on the car so that I could move the car to somewhere more suitable. Indeed, when I pressed the button and opened the car door nothing happened and I was happy. Then, as soon as I turned the key in the ignition, the alarm started up. I silenced it and repeated the process three times before giving up and calling Penny on the internal phone system from reception.
We moved the car and walked back to the hotel, during which journey we came across a very suspicious looking wall. Penny thought that it was the original Roman one, but I was rather skeptical about the bricks and thought it a mediaeval repair. The question was settled in Penny's favour later in the day...
Breakfast was in a dining room dating back to 15-something, complete with oak beams and white fill. It was, as several other places we've seen today, crying out to host an SCA feast. After all, I said at the time, we do both have the gowns for it! After a leisurely breakfast we wandered into town in search of the tourist information centre, which we duly found in plenty of time to join a guided tour of the town before lunch. It turned out that we were the only two people on the tour and our intended 90 minute walking tour turned into a superb 150 minute tour with an excellent guide who seemed delighted to have not only such a small group but one in which the people were familiar with a lot of the applicable background history and archaeology and who could ask intelligent questions.
We started at the castle (built on the foundations of the temple of Claudius razed by Boudicca), and gradually worked our way around the Dutch Quarter (where lived the Flemish weavers who fled the Low Countries during the 15th century) and then out to the remains of the city walls, taking in a number of churches on our way. The most striking of these were the tiny Greek Orthodox church of St Helen (who was, according to British tradition, the mother of Constantine the Great) and Trinity church, one of the few remaining Saxon churches in England. The latter has a fascinating triangular 'arch', as the round arch only arrived with the Normans. I've taken some photos and am thinking of doing a drawing of it for Baelfyr; I suspect that I'll do an article on the delights of this town as seen by an SCA member.
We ended the walk outside a pub called "The Hole in the Wall" - which got its name from a 19th century publican blowing a hole in the city walls at his pub so that horse cab drivers could see the trains arriving at the railway station in time to get there to meet the passengers. By this time it was starting to rain and so we decided to go in for lunch. This is part of my campaign to support pubs now that the smoking ban is in place. I can certainly say that I go to the pub more often now. :) Lunch turned into a good hour and a half and a couple of glasses of cider.
By the time we'd had our long lunch there wasn't time really to do another museum so we wandered around the town and did a little more shopping before having a much-appreciated siesta. Well... rather later than the traditional siesta as we only had time for a quick meal before Die Hard 4.0 (I rather enjoyed it) late in the evening. Tomorrow is on to the main museums, but tonight I suspect that I'll sleep well.
Labels: Colchester
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Monday, July 16, 2007
Driving to Colchester
Why is the debris always in my lane of the motorway? Why can I never remember which terminal I'm meeting Penny in? Is the A5 built entirely along a Roman road? How does a village get to be called Bradfield Combust? All of these questions, and more, I found myself asking at some point during the day.
Penny and I had planned to have a fairly early start, do a quick dash into Lancaster then amble down south to Colchester, dropping my car off at Manchester airport on the way at about 13:00. But the best-laid plans of mice, men and even women gang aft astray and at 13:00 we were still standing in the games shop in Lancaster. There was then as close a parking shave as you're ever likely to see as we were 20 minutes later than our pay and display ticket allowed and the warden was actually ticketing the car next to us as we arrived back. Fortunately he was working his way towards our car so we escaped with seconds to spare.
These slight delays (mainly caused by Waterstones and said games shop) meant that we didn't actually get on the road to Colchester until after 16:00. I always find it difficult to leave the caravan, which didn't help. First stop: Manchester airport. All well and good, and even the traffic on the M6 wasn't too bad except for the section where there had clearly been an incident of some sort as attested to by the shredded tyre sitting in the middle of my lane. Fortunately everyone behaved very sensibly (rare on a motorway!) and we fed into the two adjacent lanes without too much difficulty.
The difficulty came at Manchester airport. I had completely forgotten that Manchester has three terminals, arranged two and one with a long walkway between terminals 1 and 3 and the more distant terminal 2. And, of course, I ended up parking in terminal 2 when I needed terminal 1. So did Penny, although about ten minutes before me. Eventually I walked over to the defined rendezvous spot and waited a while before getting the helpful information desk people to page Penny. It turned out that Penny didn't actually hear the page as she had eventually moved from the terminal 2 car park to the terminal 1 car park and was, at the time, trying to work out how to find the arrivals hall.
Finally we got together and headed off further south, dodging things like Manchester during the rush hour and roadworks on the A14. We also avoided the A5, although it was on the same map page and looks, to my eyes, suspiciously straight for a road. The road from Bury St. Edmunds winds its way through some very picturesque little villages with equally picturesque names - although I have to wonder about Bradfield Combust. Is this a village likely to explode at any moment? Such thoughts were aided at the time by some quite spectacular pink lightning that lit the sky from behind the clouds ahead of us.
Colchester was a little larger than we expected, and we got lost amidst the roundabouts and the one-way traffic scheme. Nevertheless, just short of midnight we found the hotel - the Red Lion Hotel in Main Street. The website had informed me that it was a Tudor coaching inn but that hadn't prepared me for the astonishing vista of wooden beams with wattle and daub fill that greeted me once I walked through the doors. Photos will most certainly follow. Our room is a little bit more modern and, even for a hotel room, rather warm, but after the drive I doubt that either of us will have any problem getting to sleep.
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Penny and I had planned to have a fairly early start, do a quick dash into Lancaster then amble down south to Colchester, dropping my car off at Manchester airport on the way at about 13:00. But the best-laid plans of mice, men and even women gang aft astray and at 13:00 we were still standing in the games shop in Lancaster. There was then as close a parking shave as you're ever likely to see as we were 20 minutes later than our pay and display ticket allowed and the warden was actually ticketing the car next to us as we arrived back. Fortunately he was working his way towards our car so we escaped with seconds to spare.
These slight delays (mainly caused by Waterstones and said games shop) meant that we didn't actually get on the road to Colchester until after 16:00. I always find it difficult to leave the caravan, which didn't help. First stop: Manchester airport. All well and good, and even the traffic on the M6 wasn't too bad except for the section where there had clearly been an incident of some sort as attested to by the shredded tyre sitting in the middle of my lane. Fortunately everyone behaved very sensibly (rare on a motorway!) and we fed into the two adjacent lanes without too much difficulty.
The difficulty came at Manchester airport. I had completely forgotten that Manchester has three terminals, arranged two and one with a long walkway between terminals 1 and 3 and the more distant terminal 2. And, of course, I ended up parking in terminal 2 when I needed terminal 1. So did Penny, although about ten minutes before me. Eventually I walked over to the defined rendezvous spot and waited a while before getting the helpful information desk people to page Penny. It turned out that Penny didn't actually hear the page as she had eventually moved from the terminal 2 car park to the terminal 1 car park and was, at the time, trying to work out how to find the arrivals hall.
Finally we got together and headed off further south, dodging things like Manchester during the rush hour and roadworks on the A14. We also avoided the A5, although it was on the same map page and looks, to my eyes, suspiciously straight for a road. The road from Bury St. Edmunds winds its way through some very picturesque little villages with equally picturesque names - although I have to wonder about Bradfield Combust. Is this a village likely to explode at any moment? Such thoughts were aided at the time by some quite spectacular pink lightning that lit the sky from behind the clouds ahead of us.
Colchester was a little larger than we expected, and we got lost amidst the roundabouts and the one-way traffic scheme. Nevertheless, just short of midnight we found the hotel - the Red Lion Hotel in Main Street. The website had informed me that it was a Tudor coaching inn but that hadn't prepared me for the astonishing vista of wooden beams with wattle and daub fill that greeted me once I walked through the doors. Photos will most certainly follow. Our room is a little bit more modern and, even for a hotel room, rather warm, but after the drive I doubt that either of us will have any problem getting to sleep.
Labels: Colchester
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