Work Trips to London, Newcastle, Chester and London

Sometimes the work trips came thick and fast and this time we'll take a look at just a few of them over the period of May-June 2005.

We will start off in London on Friday 6 May 2005. London was a regular stopping off point as it was easy to get there for national meetings, there were lots of universities and colleges in and around it who could travel in for training sessions and there were several important partners that Jisc worked with, such as the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Association of Colleges and their subsidiary arm, the National Information and Learning Technolgies Association (NILTA). All three of these organisations were based in Centrepoint, just off New Oxford Street.

At 30 storeys, it was one of London's tallest buildings at this time and the view never failed to entrance me. On a clear day you could follow the line of the River Thames down to the Tower of London and make out St Pauls Cathedral, HMS Belfast, The Gherkin Building (30 St Mary Axe as the owners tried to name it, though once the nickname had taken hold of the national imagination it was going to struggle to be anything else) and further down the river to the Canary Wharf building.

Tuesday 10 May 2005. The Sage Building on the Gateshead side of the River Tyne as seen from the Newcastle side. Jisc infoNet was hosted by the University of Northumbria who were my official employers and I would regularly hoist myself over for meetings and sometimes for training (both giving and receiving) or project work.

Sometimes it would be onto a train with a choice of Blackpool to York then York to Newcastle or Blackpool to Preston; Preston to Carlisle and finally across country from Carlisle to Newcastle. Sometimes it would be by car up towards Kendal, then through Sedbergh and Kirby Stephen over the moors and hills of Cumbria and North Yorkshire up to the A66 at Brough to the A1M at Scotch Corner. From there it was north on the A1M to Gateshead, passing right next to the Angel of the North and finally crossing the Tyne Bridge into Newcastle.

Thursday 26 May 2005. Back in London again. Due to the time it took to get there any training sessions in London meant I had to travel the day before and whenever possible I tried to fit in a meeting with either someone from the London or South East RSCs. This evening I remember going for a drink with someone from the London RSC who took me to see the Peter Pan statue at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The following day was spent running a training course for Further Education colleges at International House on Piccadilly, opposite Green Park. This park was enclosed by the Poulteny family on the site of what had been described as a medieval swampy burial ground for lepers. It passed to King Charles II in 1668 and was officially named Green Park in 1746 as it was mainly meadow land with trees but very few flowers.

Charles II's queen, Queen Catherine of Braganza must surely have been one of England's most unhappy queens. She, as a Portuguese princess, was a Catholic which made her highly unpopular both at Court and generally with the population. Also she struggled with the English language and whilst Charles on occasion defended her, he was not shy about making known his many affairs. Indeed he made her accept his official mistress, Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland as one of Catherine's Ladies of the Bedchamber. When Charles first presented his known mistress to the Queen, Catherine fell into a faint. Lastly she was unable to bear the King a child, suffering three miscarriages during their married life.

There is an oral history (i.e. not written down) that Catherine had all the flowers in Green Park pulled up in revenge after King Charles picked some, only to give them to one of his mistresses.

Friday 24 June 2005. Chester Racecourse on a soggy morning after setting up a stand that I was manning at the annual Summer e-Fair of Jisc's Regional Support Centre Northwest. The RSCs supported colleges with e-Learning which included both online learning and any use of Information Technology inside or outside the classroom. The day before I had been giving a training session in Wales and rather than drive another two hours to home and back again on the following day, I stayed overnight in Chester with the RSC team.

During the period covered in this article there were more trips including Lincoln, Taunton, Tynemouth and probably more that do not appear in any other articles published on the index linked below. Sometimes it rains just too much even for me to contemplate taking photos...

Work Index