Bigbury Day 4

A quieter day to rest in the middle of the holiday. In the morning Mum and I had a walk along the beach as far as Burgh Island. It was still wet and windy and on the way back the heavens opened and we got rather wet. In the afternoon and wearing dry clothes we took a short trip over to have a look at the village of Aveton Giffard. It was pleasant enough, but we didn’t venture too far

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Bigbury Day 3 PM

Some background: Very many years ago someone bought me a copy of Paul Karau’s excellent “Great Western Branch Line Termini – Volume 2” (I never had volume 1). Reading this inspired me to the idea of one day modelling Princetown station in Devon. With retirement now not that many years away, I have started to embark on this project and am currently in the “historical research” stage. A key task for the holiday was to visit the site of Princetown

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Bigbury Day 3 AM

I started the day with a bracing walk along the beach to Burgh Island and back. The cliffs are well worth a closer look with a wide variety of different rock formations and several small caves. After a short break we all set off for a walk over Folly Hill and down to the Avon on the far side. The views from the top across the mouth of the river were well worth the climb although the route down the

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Bigbury Day 2

In the morning we drove over the Bantham on the opposite bank of the estuary. Parking was a whopping £6.50, but fortunately I noticed that parking restrictions 100m back up the main street ended on the 30th September! We walked around the headland and then up above the cliffs. It was still very windy, but the sun came out occasionally. In the afternoon we drove over to Kingsbridge. By the time we got there it was getting towards the end

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Bigbury Day 1

The first day of our Devon holiday in Bigbury-on-Sea, much delayed from our original Easter booking which had to be re-scheduled due to the pandemic difficulty. The weather was poor with strong winds and occasional rain but the view from the flat over the Avon estuary was still excellent. There were a lot of kite surfers in evidence and with the high winds they were going jolly fast. We had a walk down to the beach below our flat which

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Silchester

Each year, on my birthday, we have a trip out to somewhere that appeals to me and this year it was the Roman town of Silchester. There are no remaining buildings at Silchester except for part of the Amphitheatre but the extensive city walls are impressive and remains of the previous iron age fortifications can also be seen. The site is in the care of English Heritage but is free to enter and – contrary to what it says in

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London Feb 20 Day 1

Day 1 of our short two day trip to London staying once again at the Civil Service Club. Our first disappointment on arrival at the club to drop our bags was that the restaurant no longer opens on Wednesdays. Apparently it is now only open Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I am sure it used to be the case that it was open every day except Sunday and Monday. The bar menu is still available. We opted to spend the afternoon

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Normandy 2019 – Day 5

Today was the day to visit Bayeux, obviously to see the tapestry, but also other delights which might present themselves. We started with a look at the cathedral. This was fairly interesting and the crypt contains some medieval paintings which Dad spent some time trying to photograph in the poor light where flash is not permitted. Moving on to the tapestry, the good news was that there wasn’t too much of a queue. The tapestry is well displayed – indeed

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Normandy 2019 – Day 3

Today we intended to visit the zoo, but on the way there it rained heavily so we decided to visit Caen instead. Caen is a big city and Dad did quite a bit if hyperventilating as he tried to drive to the centre and park. In the end we found a central underground car park which wasn’t too expensive. Dad and Sophia started by heading for a large ruined church near the centre. Bizarrely, this was not only completely fenced

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Normandy 2019 – Day 2

Today we had a bit of a lie in and then went over to have a look at the local town, Vire. Dad strongly approved of their parking policy which seemed to be the novel idea of having large free car parks in the middle of the town! After lunch – where Dad got into the swing of being in France by opting for Moule Mariniere – we had a look round. Unfortunately, the extensive town museum was closed for

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