Gingerjo’s Blog

Mark and I have chosen our half-term break tonight. We’re off to Newcastle and Gateshead for a few days next month. We’re staying in a Travelodge so it’s costing us less than £100 for a three night stay. Needless to say we’re not expecting much. I’m looking forward to going to the Beamish Museum, but apart from that we haven’t got any firm plans for what we’ll do when we get there. I think there’s plenty to do though and I’ve sent off for a tourism brochure so hopefully that will have some good ideas for us.

For the first time since the last full moon we’ve had clear skies and no seriously light reflecting snow. I’ve been waiting all month for a chance to see Mars at ‘opposition’. Apparently this is as close as Mars will get to the Earth for at least the next 26 months so I was very keen to witness it. And I couldn’t miss it! There Mars was shining brightly with a red tinge not far from the Moon in the constellation of Cancer. The dead red world.

Being new to this stargazing malarkey I’m easily impressed. Most stargazers probably wouldn’t choose a spot in a field in the middle of Manchester (a seriously light polluted place) to view this, especially not when the moon is so bright. But it worked for Mark and I. We drove the few short miles to Sale Water Park and parked up. It has the advantage of being one of the few places very near to where we live where two important things can be found. Firstly a large field away from bright lights and tall trees, and secondly a nice pub. A short walk over the bridge into the middle of the field, with the grass crunchy under our feet from the frost, and we were ready to gaze up at the heavens.

At the moment Mars is only about 62 million miles away (with a magnitude of -1.2) so it rivals Sirius, the brighest star in the sky which has a magnitude of -1.47 (according to my book). To be honest it just looked like a really bright star to the naked eye, but that’s not the point. I can officially say I have witnessed Mars at opposition and lived to tell the tale. Obviously though I had to double check the January 2010 edition of the Sky at Night magazine with my new red light LED torch to be 100% certain that I’d identified it correctly. But what’s the point in buying an unusual torch off eBay if you’re not going to use it?

I also practiced my basic stargazing skills. I identified Sirius in Canis Major and the constellation of Orion, including the red tinged star Betelguese (which seemed about the same colour as Mars, or maybe even redder). I then found the consellation Auriga, with it’s bright star Capella and the nearby Kids. I saw Aldebaran in Taurus, although it wasn’t possible to see any other stars in Taurus because of the light pollution. Procyon in Canis Minor was easy to spot and helped me navigate my way to Castor and Pollux in Gemini. Again, these were the only stars in these constellations I could see with the bright lights of Manchester on the one hand, and the bright fat moon on the other.

As usual the Plough (or Ursa Major) was easy to find; I learned this one as a child. It seemed particularly huge tonight, and yet strangely faint. From here I found Polaris, the pole star, before getting reaquainted with Cassiopeia. We studied the story of Cassiopeia in primary school, and while I’d once been able to find her constellation I’d lost forgotten how to recognise her over the years. But she’s still there. Finally I was able to pick out Perseus which I’d never seen before, so overall I was very pleased with my progress.

I pointed out, well tried to point out, these various stars and constellations to Mark. We’ve settled on one constellation at a time so they can sink in gently. Tonight he learned Sirius and Orion. Then we went to the pub, had a pint and huddled up against the heater to warm up. All in all, it was a very pleasant trip out stargazing.

After some deliiberation this morning we decided not to tour the Wadworth Brewery in Devizes as we struggled to see what it could possibly offer that was worth ten pound each. We decided to visit Cheddar Gorge instead even though it was quite a long drive and not in any way on the road to Bath.

It was a pleasant drive through some beautiful countryside and the gorge itself is spectacular. There’s a small ‘theme park’ at the base of the gorge based around their show caves. We easily spent the whole day there looking around the caves, the museum, and the cheese, wine, cider, fudge and gift shops. We also had a snack in Poppy’s Tiny Tea Shop and they’re not lying - it is titchy but very pleasant. On the whole the gorge attractions were worth the sixteen pound admission fee, although the crystal cave is cheesy if you’re feeling generous or just plain rubbish if you’re not.

We drove to Bath after dark relying on the satnav. Worryingly Jane doesn’t seem to know her left from her right and she kept trying to persuade us to turn down roads that didn’t exist. At least Mark had someone else’s directions to complain about for a change. Parking at the Travelodge was challenging but the location is good - next to the river and only a few hundred yards of the city centre.

After a short mooch we found a fantastic Nepalese restaurant called Yak Yeti Yak. I’d never eaten Nepalese before but I’d thoroughly recommend it.

We visited Avebury again today. It really is a fantastic place. Once again we were blessed with lovely weather and fairly low numbers of other visitors.

They were giving guided tours of the stone circles and the manor so we went on both. We’d arrived too late to see the house last time, but it seems this was just as well. When there was a tenant living there you could hardly see any of the rooms, but now they’ve moved out you get to see lots of rooms. It’s not what I expected. It’s much older and more higgledy piggledy.

According to the circle tour guide a lot of the stones were broken up in the seventeenth century to build the village, but many of the other missing stones were buried in the 1300s because they offended the church. Seems like thet did us a favour for a change - otherwise the village would probably be bigger. In the 1930s an amateur archaeologist set about reinstating the stones and they even found a mediaeval skeleton under one of them. Look like they were crushed when pulling them down.

We then had a pint in a lovely thatched pub just outside Avebury on the road to Silbury Hill, before heading back to Devizes.

In the evening we had a nice meal in The Crown, a Wadwoth pub just a few yards from the brewery. We’re planning a tour of the brewery in the morning.

Having bought a new mobile to kill the time while driving down to Wiltshire I thought I’d see if my phone can blog. It seems successful so far.

Anyway, Mark and I are heading off to Devizes in Wiltshhire for a couple of days. Then we’ve got another couple of nights booked in Bath. When we visited Wiltshire in 2006 we didn’t have long enough to see everything we were interested in. We always said we’d visit again but this is the first chance we’ve had.

We really need this break too. It’s been a hell of a year. After all the preparations for the wedding, flying out to Vegas, working like a woman possessed over the summer, this is the first real chance I’ve had to catch my breath. I’m really looking forward to a few stress-free days before the slog begins again.

We don’t really have any plans for our trip. I guess we’ll collect some leaflets and perhaps pop in the Tourist Info in the morning. There’s a brewery though so that’s Mark sorted!

On the subject of food I promised myself I’d write a quick review of our meal at the Goat Inn, which is on the Caernarfon-Porthmadog road at Glandwyfach half a mile from Bryncir (LL51 9LJ). We’ve eaten there several times before and it’s been great, but the meal we had on Saturday afternoon was just the ticket. Saturday was horrible, cold and raining heavily. By the time we’d got to the car from the house we were soaked.

Fortunately the pub was nice and warm and the menu perfect for a cold autumn day. I had braised steak in onion gravy with new potatoes and vegetables, and Mark had the gammon steak with chips. Usually with gammon you have to choose between egg and pinapple, but not at the Goat - you get both and it’s proper gammon steak too not that horrible reformed stuff. The bowl of chips that came with it was humungous. My steak was completely fat free and melt in the mouth and there was lashings of gravy. We got a big bowl of vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and savoy cabbage) to share (although I ate the lot) and my new potatoes were lovely. I would thoroughly recommend eating here and this was easily my favourite meal of my weekend food splurge.

There are other pubs on the same road with a good reputation but I’ve eaten at those too several times and been disappointed. Next time we’ll be making an evening reservation - the number is 01766 530237. I’ve no idea what the puddings are like though because the main meals are so large that we’ve never had room to even contemplate afters.

We had lovely weather on Sunday so since Mark and I had popped down to North Wales to visit my Mum and Dad we figured we make as well make the most of it and get some exercise.

So we went for a walk around Llyn Peris in Llanberis. We’d never realised there was a slate quarrying museum there, but while it looks good for a visit it was mid-afternoon already so we figured we’d better head off up the hill. We followed the rocky path up the hillside watching the lakeside train go past below and the folk in their rowing boats paddling around the water. The view from the top above the trees was lovely. The path then mostly becomes road and makes for easy walking.

We were accosted by a retired quarryman who was bored and fancied a chat. He was telling us how his grandfather and father and himself had all worked to work from his little house and how he’d seen the valley change over the years. He’d also worked cutting the great cavities in the Electric Mountain ready for the turbines to be installed. Now with the building trade in recession he’s worried that quarrying slate locally will go for good. I hope not, but he’s probably right.

Afterwards we walked back down to the lake edge and round back to the car park. After a quick drink in one of the hotel bars we headed off in search of a hearty meal - the Spice of Llanberis seemed up to the challenge. We couldn’t be bothered standing in the queue for Pete’s Eats and a curry seemed just the thing anyway. It wasn’t bad at all - I’d eat there again.

We were lazy this morning so didn’t get up till late. We figured we’d have another National Trust day – always a good stand-by. We headed out in search of Chedworth Roman Villa.

On the way in a little town called Northleach we spotted the Museum of Mechanical Music so stopped off for a visit. It wasn’t cheap (£8 each) but it was fabulous. The museum is only one room, full of mechanical instruments from the past 300 years, but the one hour talk about their history was great and we saw all of them in action. The 1940’s gramophone that used a sharpened matchstick as a needle was quite surprising and the 18th Century music boxes were fabulous (and horrifically expensive). But the best bits were the pianos with rolls in that play themselves – they were spectacular. The really expensive ones had rolls recorded from the live performances of great pianists – we saw them play what was effectively a live performance by Rachmaninov, keys going and everything, just as the pianist stuck them. It was a bit spooky really – it was like his ghost was there. It was only afterwards that it occurred to me that I should have made a little video of it – it probably wouldn’t have captured it though.

Afterwards we moved on to Chedworth Roman Villa which required a drive down some very narrow country lanes through some glorious countryside. The villa itself has some large sections of the original mosaics in place but for my part I found it a bit dull, and so did Mark. Perhaps we’re just not into Romans. It was only 3.30pm so we felt a bit stuck for something more to do – we’d expected Chedworth to occupy a couple of hours, but we weren’t there very long. Tucked away in the corner of the roadmap was an attraction called Birdworld just up the road. We figured we’d have a nosey.

Birdworld is in a small town called Bourton-on-the-Water which is extremely pretty and very popular with tourists. The town centres around a shallow river that’s great for kids to play in banked by a green on one side and a series of pubs and restaurants on the other. Parking in the town isn’t cheap but we didn’t get there until 4pm so figured we’d only be there a couple of hours (they charge until 8pm!!). After a quick walk through the town we headed off to Birdworld which has penguins, flamingos, parrots, many other species and some rheas. I mention the rheas particularly because they had a two week old chick following his dad around (the dad raises the chicks – what a fabulous species). The chick was tiny – about the same size as a crow. According to the information board the chick will be full grown in only four months – rheas are huge birds. The chick will have to do nothing but eat! It was so cute.

Afterwards we headed back into the town for a sit on the green where a bird crapped on my head. Fortunately it must have been a very small bird. Then we discovered our parking ticket had run out, so we moved the car to the free parking in the town centre (after 5pm) and headed off to one of the pubs for a meal. Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the pub (but it was near the Motor Museum – the last in the row next to the river). The food was excellent, especially for the price. Mark has paella and I had a steak and ale pie which was delicious. It was a real homecooked pie with shortcrust pastry and everything, and Mark’s paella had huge chunks of meat in it. Even though I was stuffed I couldn’t miss out on the opportunity to sample a pudding there – I had tiramisu and Mark had apple pie. They were both gorgeous. I’d say the town was well worth a visit – you could probably spend the whole day there.

After much debate we settled on visiting the Ironbridge Gorge. There are ten different museums to visit as well as the Ironbridge itself so we bought one of their passports which will allow us to visit as many times as we like for a year. Today we visited the Gorge Museum which gives the history of the gorge showing how the local availability of coal, iron ore, clay and limestone kickstarted the industrial revolution. After a mooch around the town we headed off to the Tar Tunnel – a bricklined tunnel into the mountain that oozes with bitumen.

Then it was off to Blists Hill – a Victorian working town full of folk dressed in period costume – from banks to bakers, blacksmiths to candle makers. At the moment they are expanding the site considerably so it looks a bit scruffy but it’s still great. We bought some handmade candles and had a go on the merry-go-round type thingy.

We may go back later in this week to see some of the other museums.

On our way down to Cheltenham we visited Bridgnorth – what a lovely town! They have a little Cliff Train which trundles up and down between the top and bottom halves of the town – and it’s only 90p return – and it runs until 8pm. We walked around the castle walk (which has great views over the Severn valley) while listening to the bellringers practicing in the local church. Then we went down to the riverside and ate a packet of very nice chips from the local chippy. Just great! I don’t understand why I’ve never heard of the town before.

Now we’ve arrived in Cheltenham for three nights of sleeping in a furnace. They’ve rigged the windows so they hardly open. I’m sorry but I really have no desire to leap from the windows. The Travelodge is attached to a Harvester and a KFC so I guess I know what my tea’s going to be for the next couple of nights.

Hartlebury Travelodge is only just down the road from the Worcester County Museum, although that’s closed on a Monday so we couldn’t go. It’s also only a few miles from the West Midlands Safari Park, but we went to the zoo only a couple of days ago so we didn’t want to go there. It’s also within easy distance of Avoncroft Museum and Historic Buildings, but this sounded a bit like some of the things we’ll be seeing at the Black Country Museum later this week so we didn’t go there either.

In the end we decided a cheap day out was in order so headed off in search of National Trust properties. After missing the appropriate turn off we stopped for a brief look at the Hawford Dovecote – boy those Georgian’s lavished attention on their doves. It’s not worth taking a deliberate detour for but if you’re passing it’s worth a 5 minute stop.

Then after getting back on the right road we were side tracked by a pub called the Eagle & Sun which served a great value carvery. After stuffing ourselves senseless we finally arrived at Hanbury Hall.

We rarely seem to arrive at NT properties when they have things going on, but we arrived just in time for a guided tour of the gardens so we tagged along. It was very entertaining actually. Did you know that in the Georgian period a bowling green was a hugely prestigious thing? This was before the invention of the lawnmower so the green had to be cut by hand – some poor sod on their knees with a pair of shears!

The hall was being re-roofed so we had a rare opportunity to climb up the stairs in the scaffolding to an observation deck where we could see the guys at work. Weirdly for such a rare opportunity this is the second time we’ve seen it – we visited the roof of Dunham Massey last year too!

Inside the house you get the feeling that the Georgians must have spent an awful lot of time flat on their backs as the house has truly beautiful ceilings. One has to wonder why they lavished such attention on them. The main staircase in particular is spectacular.

The volunteers at Hanbury Hall are among the most enthusiastic we’ve met – bringing the house to life and showing a genuine fondness for the property. It did seem that many of them had ancestors who’d worked in service there and perhaps a personal connection and an interest in local history are essential.

Afterwards we went to Droitwich Spa for a quick look around. The Midlands are so not what I expected. I guess I thought they’d be very like the North West – miles and miles of houses and shops without a break, and where there is green it’s often bleak and depressing. But the Midlands are quite the opposite – lots of attractive and historic towns separated by rolling green hills and woodland. It’s quite lovely. I wonder if Midlanders know how lucky they are?

We were then treated to a fantastic thunderstorm – it felt like it was in the room with us! And wow did it rain. This didn’t cool the hotel room down though – it was still like sleeping in a furnace.