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
Category: Holidays
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
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
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
Normandy 2019 – Day 1
The start of our summer holiday in Normandy. After depositing Gordon at the cat hotel we made our way to Poole to catch the ferry. There weren’t many passengers which made the advantage of our cabin rather less than it might have been, never the less it was handy having somewhere to retreat to and it also allowed us to keep the cool box plugged in to keep the sandwiches chilled. We ate on the ferry as we were intending
Sedbergh – Day 4
For our last full day at the cottage we took ourselves over to Bowness on Windermere, and on the way we stopped to look at the two viaducts Dad had viewed yesterday from Winder Fell. We visited the recently opened (we only missed the Prince of Wales by three days) Windermere Jetty boat museum. Everything was very new and shiny and Dad was of course much taken by some of the steam engines. Our only real criticism was that information
Sedbergh – Day 3
Today I decided that I would walk to the top of Winder Fell which overlooks Sedbergh and looms over the cottage. As I walked into town I passed an excellent tree stump sculpture of two owls which we had noticed being carved the day before. The route I took to the top started by climbing up to the head of Settlebeck Gill. Mostly this was not too strenuous although there were a couple of rocky stretches and the last few
Sedbergh – Day 2
After a slightly late start, we walked into Sedbergh and then followed a walk Mum had found to the Farfield Mill Heritage Centre where we had a modest but pleasant lunch (very nice soup) and a look round the various artists studios. We then walked back to Sedbergh and then spent rather too long in Westwood Books. Being a proper second hand bookshop (and a very large one) the books were rather more expensive than the charity shops we usually
Sedbergh – Day 1
A long drive from Wiltshire to Yorkshire hampered as always by Dad’s annoyingly slow driving and motorway congestion. Stopped for lunch at a Toby in Worcester where the carvery was as acceptable as usual. Staying in part of an old railway station much to Dad’s delight. Cottage seems very comfortable and Dad can step outside onto the old platform and pretend that he is a Station Master. Drove into Sedbergh to eat and discovered that it calls itself “England’s Book
Rome 2018 – Day 9
Our last day in Rome and actually more of a half day as we had to leave after lunch to catch our flight. We were going to go to what we thought was a Klimpt exhibition not far from the flat, but when we got there it turned out to be some sort of multimedia “experience” so we gave it a miss! Instead we checked out a local church and cathedral which we hadn’t had time to see previously. First