Join us for a few days touring around Wiltshire, The Cotswolds and Avon with a sneaky dash to Oxfordshire for good measure. Lots of history, stone circles, burial chambers and hill forts amongst other items of interest.
Each place of interest is shown on its own separate article, reached by clicking/tapping the photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.
The other day I had to go to Bristol for a work meeting and took the train. It's a fair chug down from Blackpool to Bristol, involving changes at Preston and Birmingham New Street.
As I got off the train onto the platform at Bristol Temple Meads I thought my luck was in and that a steam train was in the station. It turned out to be a static display of old coaches bearing adverts for the Dartmouth Steam Railway in Devon. This used to be known as the Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway so what Paignton have done to be so ignobly dropped from the name I'm not sure - the train still starts from there.
Bristol Temple Meads has an interesting history, being the original western terminus of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway (GWR). The original station has changed a lot, being expanded twice and having extra platforms slotted in when the broad gauge (7 feet and a quarter inch) track originally used by Brunel was converted to standard gauge of four feet eight and a half inches.
It has platforms numbered from 1-15. Passenger trains do not use platform two and platform 14 does not exist. Some of the signage refers to an older platform numbering system. Altogether my sort of station!
Temple Meads refers to a nearby church built originally by the Knights Templars and "Meads" being an old word for meadow - the area around the station was meadow at the time of building.
Large version of the photo: temple meads
Tuesday 28 May 1998. In the previous entry Fran and I visited the S.S. Great Britain in Bristol Docks. The well-known saying that is the title of this entry was stamped onto the ship's bell.
In its ship-building days, Bristol had a reputation second to none and that led to the saying becoming part of Britain's folklore. Along with such gems as "Red sky at morning - shepherd's warning" which meant that if the clouds were low enough to be tinged red by the rising sun it was likely to rain. Its sister saying is "Red sky at night - shepherd's lass is a bit o' alright!" or something like that...
Anyway this has nothing to do with our entry here except to pad it out as, although I took plenty of photos, I don't have plenty of tales to tell!
The Great Britain is a fair bit away from the city centre so we took a ferry through the old docks. Bristol has a history not only of ship-building but as a port, where not all the goods are to the city's credit. Slavers used Bristol with over 2000 slave ships setting out in the 110 years from 1697 to 1807.
It was an important wine port also. England's best known sherry, Harveys Bristol Cream, is so called because the Harvey family were based in Bristol.
We came to the city centre and immediately noted the sky. "Dark sky in afternoon - makes it hard to play the bassoon".
There being no such thing as mobile Internet in 1998 we went in search of a Tourist Information Office to find some accomodation for the night. The place was absolutely full. So was Cheddar, Wells, Weston... We spent two hours in the Tourist Information Office and didn't have any luck until we said we were going to head towards the Cotswolds and was there anything up that way?
We eventually secured a room in a guest house in Cirencester - the place we started this holiday with a brief stop at the Roman arena! It was an hour's run so we set off back towards the car which was parked near the Great Britain. The sky wasn't quite so threatening now. "Sky turning fair - don't put Domestos on your hair" so we walked back down the docks instead of taking the ferry. Well ok - the ferry was nowhere in bloody sight actually, but the walk was ok.
This wasn't a ferry, but a pleasure cruise around the docks where they tell you things like the dockside Post Office had to have the cellars excavated and when they did, the skeletons of scores of people were found. Must have been hellish working for the Post Office in those days...
Now I remember that story because I had been to Bristol for a conference a few weeks previously and they had taken delegates on such a trip and it's the only story I remember! Oh the days of hospitality...!
As we neared the car we came across this little fellow, quite unperturbed that his home was bobbing up and down as the wind got up and the sky was definitely going dark again! "Daytime street lighting - tomcats start fighting!"
Look, alright, I'm making these up as I go along, ok? I have visions of folks in other countries going, "Here! Look at what they say in England!" I could start a national trend in Mozambique or somewhere where folk gather and intone solemnly "Daytime street lighting..."
So we head north to Cirencester where we find our guest house is managed by a very friendly Chinese couple. We walked into the town centre to eat in a pub and found just one customer with a dog and a pint and no-one behind the bar.
"If you serve yerself, can yer pour me a pint?" said the customer, nodding sagely whilst the dog stared at me with a look that clearly said "When the sun's done shinin' on that hillock - take no notice, he's a pillock..."
Tuesday 28 May 1998. Having spent this Tuesday morning in the Roman baths and walking around the city of Bath, we have motored up to Bristol for the afternoon prior to continuing onwards towards the Cotswolds for the rest of our holiday.
We had looked around Brunel's steam ship S.S. Great Britain soon after it opened to visitors in Bristol after being salvaged and brought back from the Falkland Isles where it had been rotting to bits for a considerable number of years.
The last time I saw this ship was 1977 and it was still a hulk, with more holes than was good for any lump of iron designed to float on water. The 6-bladed propellor had just been fitted and I can't remember seeing much of the inside of the ship at all.
The design of black squares by the way was deliberate to fool any pirates that the ship had a row of gun ports.
The interior of the ship looking towards the stern windows. Passenger cabins are behind the doors to the sides and a couple of these incredibly tiny rooms have been restored to give an idea of the cramped space that even first class passengers endured. That old couple who snuggled up in the film of Titanic had a really luxurious space compared with this ship!
The dining room had been restored to a state where it could be booked for parties or functions. It looked rather splendid, but - surely those chairs were not quite of the correct period? They looked suspiciously like conference chairs that could be locked together in rows...
We saw the engine compartment, but not an engine. A replica of the engine was being built and presumably has been duly fitted at some point since 1998. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the engineer, had fitted an engine sideways into his ship to drive a propellor rather than side paddle wheels. It was the first ocean-going propellor-driven iron ship.
We emerge onto the deck through the door of a tiny little protuberance on the deck - if you weren't sure what it was you'd have taken it for a privy.
And no, they didn't grow lettuce and cucumbers onboard - those are not frames, they are skylights to light the decks below. When you consider that this was the largest ship of its time, it still seems (not seems, but is) small compared with the liners of today.
Miss Franny had a go at steering the ship. She is however facing the rear end. There would be two people steering, which they would do from each side of the wheel. Then if one got washed overboard or needed to break off to do a quick hornpipe or something, there would still be one man left to steer.
Despite the engine the ship was rigged to carry sail, which it did to conserve fuel and do its bit for the green movement and sustainability.
At the forrard end (14 years since I worked at Fleetwood's Nautical College but the terminology just trips from my fingers!) we found the ship's bell and as you can guess it didn't take me long to discover someone had removed the clapper. Undaunted I gave the inside a hefty swipe with the edge of a coin and it gave a nice little ding! Nobody rushed up with a tot of rum though... quite disappointing!
We have visited Bristol before though and I remember one work trip to a conference over ten years ago where we all had a boat trip around the waterways and harbours and docks which was both interesting and at times hilarious. (I was on the boat with a bar...)
Quite apt being in a city with a strong seafaring history as I'm currently re-reading the Bolitho books of Alexander Kent.