A nice afternoon to a National trust house to look at Bernard shaws house. The weather was good so we made the most of it and had a walk around the gardens. With winter coming we shall not be visiting any new NT places now in 2019.
Well we arrived at the hotel in Barcelona in good time and was pleased with the accommodation in the gothic quarter. A basic room but it was clean and had a nice shower. Breakfast was good value with plenty of choice for you. The Spanish bacon was nice and was worth the money I think. It was in a great position in the city and close to many attractions nearby.
You Can visit the Picasso Museum for about 25Euro but watch out for the massive queues, I think you can purchase Prepaid tickets online beforehand and this would be a wise choice. From Wikipedia The Museu Picasso (Catalan pronunciation: [muˈzɛw piˈkasu], “Picasso Museum”), located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, houses one of the most extensive collections of artworks by the 20th-century Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. With 4,251 works exhibited by the painter, the museum has one of the most complete permanent collections of works. The museum is housed in five adjoining medieval palaces in Barcelona’s La Ribera neighborhood, in the Old City, and more specifically, it is located on Montcada Street,[1] a formerly very prestigious street home to wealthy merchants and nobility from the Gothic to the Baroque periods. It opened to the public on 9 March 1963,[2] becoming the first museum dedicated to Picasso’s work and the only one created during the artist’s lifetime. It has since been declared a museum of national interest by the Government of Catalonia.
Our 3rd year running at the steam Festival and yes the weather was great again. We left early and had the tent pitched up by 10:00. There were some great displays in the show with many food and beer tents to enjoy. I then had a go with Ashleys and katie 6th gauge steam engine. We also went around the main arena in it. Enjoyed it again and hopefully will return next year.
The Engine Driver
The Great Dorset Steam Fair (abbreviated GDSF, and since 2010 also known as The National Heritage Show) is an annual show featuring steam-powered vehicles and machinery. It now covers 600 acres (2.4 km2) and runs for five days. This used to be from the Wednesday after the UK August bank holiday, but from 2016 has been from the Thursday before the Bank Holiday until the Bank Holiday itself. It is reputedly the largest collection of steam and vintage equipment to be seen anywhere in the world.[1] The fair was founded by the Dorset Steam & Historic Vehicle Club, and has been held in Dorset, England, every summer since 1969. The show is now organised by Michael Oliver’s son, Martin Oliver, through Great Dorset Steam Fair Ltd.
Places Visited on a recent trip to London, we go down often and just choose an area and just walk around we don’t take Tubes or buses that way you get to see more.
This exhibition was by a greek artist called takis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takis. He does sculptures using magnetism and sound, i found it good but Gail did not think much of it as per normal. I shall keep trying to find strange and wonderful things to take her too.
Panayiotis Vassilakis (Greek: Παναγιώτης Βασιλάκης; 29 October 1925 – 9 August 2019), also known as Takis (Greek: Τάκις), was a self-taught Greek artist known for his kinetic sculptures. He exhibited his artworks in Europe and the United States. Popular in France, his works can be found in public locations in and around Paris, as well as at the Athens-based Takis Foundation Research Center for the Arts and Sciences.[1
This was Gail’s part of the trip to London and for once she done us proud. Its some old roman thing that most of the time i find boring but it was very interesting indeed. Again just walk off the beaten track and you find something interesting.
From Wikipedia. The London Mithraeum, also known as the Temple of Mithras, Walbrook, is a Romanmithraeum that was discovered in Walbrook, a street in the City of London, during a building’s construction in 1954. The entire site was relocated to permit continued construction and this temple of the mystery god Mithras became perhaps the most famous 20th-century Romandiscovery in London.
Another visit to the historic dock yards in Portsmouth. It’s well worth the trip even thou it’s a little on the expensive side at £39 each and bloody £9 for car-parking. We were lucky this time around as we see the huge new aircraft carrier HMS queen Elisabeth. Also on this trip we visited the submarine museum in Gosport docks across the water. After we had finished in the dockyards we had a nice pint in a pub on the water side.
Near to where we were staying lies one of the great Aqueducts that was built by the great Thomas Telford. The chirk Aqueduct was built between 1796 when the foundation was laid and finished in the year 1801. At 710ft in length and 70ft high and the water trough is made from Cast Iron. You can freely walk along the Canal and you can go through the Chirk Tunnel if you wish. Behind it in the picture above you can see the railway Viaduct that was built much later and took loads of transport from the canal. There is a pub down the valley called the Bridge Inn, if you have a pint from here and sit in the garden you will get a great view up towards the Aqueduct .
Chirk Pontcysyllte
it lies on the Llangollen Canal, immediately northwards of the Chirk Aqueduct. It is 421 metres (460 yd) long and has a complete towpath inside. The tunnel is designed for a single standard narrowboat, so passing is not possible. The tunnel is straight enough to be able to see if a boat is already inside the tunnel, and boats are required to show a light. Northbound boats must maintain power and momentum in order to push through, due to the shallow, narrow nature of the canal in the tunnel (such that water has little space to pass around the displacement of the boat), and the relatively fast 2 miles per hour (3.2 km/h) southbound current of the canal. The tunnel, the tunnel portals and the canal basin are collectively a Grade II* listed structure
Great visit to Waddesdon manor a national trust house and home to the Rothschild family. We always plan a visit near Christmas especially after dark as they always put on a great light show for the visitors. It only cost a few pound if your are a member of the NT, however plan your trip carefully it can get very crowded and there was a large crowd waiting for the bus back to the car parks. Please have a look at the entry in Wikipedia for more info I have also included a few links for your interest
A special year for the great Dorset Steam fair as it was the 50th Anniversary show, also they were going for the record of 500 steam engines all being displayed at a single show. The fair is enormous covering over 600 acres in total with everything from classic cars, foods, Beer, army vehicles, tractors and thousands more things. We decided again to camp this year so we could have a drink on the Saturday night, and this year we had a few pints of proper scrumpy Cider !. You need a whole day just to get round most things but you will still miss loads.
We decided to do this walk on the hottest day of the year I think about 28 deg of heat and very little shade on the walk. Transport links are easy for this walk as the GWR railway branch line runs from Cholsey and Tilehurst and cost about £10 for 2 people one way. From Tilehurst station you take a right and head towards the bridge over the rail line by the Roebuck public house, as soon as you come to the Thames head left towards Cholsey. The walk is flat with just a couple of small climbs along the way, the paths are well kept and you have to cross over the Thames a couple of times to keep to the path. Some lovely villages and towns are on route and you will visit Goring and Whitchurch on Thames. You can soon come off the path to visit these towns if you wish and you will find some nice pubs also if you fancy a pint. The walk was a long one and the heat was extreme but it was enjoyable with Some great scenery . Please check out the GPS file of ViewRanger to help you plan this one.
Cholsey is a village and large civil parish two miles (3 km) south of Wallingford, in South Oxfordshire. In 1974 it was transferred from Berkshire to the county of Oxfordshire, and from Wallingford Rural District to the district of South Oxfordshire. Cholsey’s parish boundaries, some 17 miles (27 km) long, reach from the edge of Wallingford into the Berkshire Downs. The village green is known as The Forty and has a substantial and ancient walnut tree. Winterbrook was historically at the north end of the parish adjoining Wallingford and became within Wallingford parish (run by its Town Council) since 2015. It is the site of Winterbrook Bridge, which carries a by-pass road across the Thames, and was one of the two main residences of the late author Dame Agatha Christie (the other being the village of Galmpton on the south Devon coast). John Masefield, poet laureate, was a resident of Cholsey.
We had a week off work but didn’t go away so instead decided to have a few days out. The weather was gorgeous so we set off to have a trip to the open air museum. We had visited here before many years ago with Kay and Stuart and thought we would have another look. The admission was £9.50 each and parking was free. The museum is full of saved local buildings such as houses and farm buildings, my favourite building there was a pre-fab house which you can go into and have a look around, these must have seemed like luxury, although small, coming from the bombed out buildings after the war. There is also a small chapel and a newly constructed Iron Age round house. We enjoyed a cream tea while we were there and a walk round the woodland path. It was a pleasant day although there wasn’t as much there as I thought
From Wiki:
The museum was founded in 1976 and aims to rescue and restore common English buildings from the Chilterns, which might otherwise have been destroyed or demolished. The buildings have been relocated to the museum’s 45-acre (180,000 m2) site, which includes woodland and parkland. The collection has more than 30 buildings on view including barns, other traditional farm buildings and houses.
Buildings of interest include a 1940s prefab from Amersham, a reconstruction of an Iron Age house, a Victorian toll house from High Wycombe, a “Tin Chapel” from Henton, Oxfordshire and a forge from Garston, Hertfordshire. A fine pair of cottages from 57 Compton Avenue at Leagrave, near Luton which started out as a weather-boarded thatched barn with central double doors in the early 18th century. In the late 18th century the barn was converted into two labourers’ cottages.
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