England – Railways

Or – What I Did on My Holidays, by Dyk Jewell, age 65 and a half.

For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by railways. Some of my earliest memories are of travelling by train (always steam in those days) to visit relatives. My grandmother’s house in Kingswear was right above the terminus of the Great Western line from Paddington (and connecting by ferry to Dartmouth). My other grandmother lived in Southern Railway territory in Salisbury. The locomotives there seemed very strange and smelt different. When I was a teenager I would visit the nearest depot at Laira and avidly collect the numbers of locomotives. My journey to school involved a short ride from Devonport to Saltash over Brunel’s magnificent Royal Albert Bridge. Occasionally we would venture further afield. Depots in Devon and Somerset were within easy reach. With judicious use of a day return ticket (for some reason they were much cheaper and we could get a train just after midnight from Plymouth and the rules were the return journey had to start before midnight the same day – so we would get back to Plymouth in the small hours of the morning and have to walk to the ferry to take us back to Torpoint) we could go quite long distances. In this way we went up to London and into South Wales – travelling through the Severn Tunnel.

Which is a long preamble to an account of two places I visited on the last day of our trip. Noreen and Jenny were doing important mother-daughter bonding (i.e. shopping) in Reading. I took myself off on a fairly short trip to institutions that I belonged to when we lived in England.

Pendon is a museum of transport and rural life in the 30s. It was started by an Australian called Roye England who arrived in 1925. It takes the form of models of the countryside, buildings and people. The detail is amazing – Roye’s maxim was – if you can see it you can model it. There are flowers in the gardens and even a robin on a spade.

The model railway side of it is impressive. They have developed motors and controllers that make the models operate in a very realistic manner.

The Great Western Society has its headquarters at Didcot. They have an wonderful collection of ex GWR locomotives and rolling stock, including some reconstructed broad gauge artifacts. Brunel designed the initial Great Western line, from London to Bristol, to use broad gauge (7 feet or 2.14 metres between the rails). Although it gave a superior ride and faster travel most other railways went with the cheaper standard gauge (4 foot 8½ inches, 1.44m). Where lines met a complicated system of mixed gauge was necessary.

This is Fire Fly, a reconstruction of an original broad gauge locomotive.

There were two operating trains (I went on both!). This is a typical mixed goods loco running a passenger service through a leafy setting.

And here is a pannier tank loco is working a local branch service with an auto-coach.

Finally, two of my favourite locomotives. I love these 0-4-2 tank engines.

 

The pinnacle of GWR technology was the King class. This 6023 King Edward II.

Right - enough train spotting. Next time I expect we will be back to walks or plants. (Today was Tulip Sunday but I have saved you from more photos of the displays there!)

Relatively England

Continuing the saga of our recent (although fast retreating into memory) trip to the northern hemisphere here is a quick view of our experiences in England.

We spent most of the time visiting relatives, and eating and drinking at many fine pubs. I also managed to squeeze in a few visits to establishments glorifying the heyday of British railway achievements. This post is about the relatives, meals eaten and beer drunk.

When we lived in England, our favourite beer was Brakspear’s. It was brewed in Henley On Thames and was one of the most highly regarded real ales in the 60s and 70s. Unfortunately it ceased production in 2002 and a new company has taken over the name. The product is still palatable but doesn't live up to the memories (but that could also be due to 40 years of drinking Kiwi beer). 

Anyway we sampled it at one of our old haunts – the Queen’s Oak in Finchamstead.

This is the oak tree

and the meal we consumed with Noreen’s mum, sister and brother-in-law.

Noreen is very partial to the traditional ploughman’s lunch. This is about as close as we got – it has modern additions such as pate and gherkins.

Next stop on our whistle-stop tour was to the Bath area where my brother and sister-in-law live. We had a magnificent lunch at the Hare and Hounds. Wop and Gill find it very difficult to take things seriously.

Whilst staying with them the youngest member of the Jewell clan came to visit.

Here he is with his mum, dad and Auntie Rosie.

For our final meal in old Blighty we did ourselves proud at the Chequers in Eversley Cross. Noreen had some fantastic concoction consisting mainly of gin

and a good time was had by all (forgive grainy picture due to low light levels).

London Revisited

Revisited because I posted First Impressions back in July and also because I spent four years in the late sixties at university there. One of the reasons for going back to London was to get together with some of my ex-class mates. When I was there the institution was the Northern Polytechnic but it has since been subsumed into the London Metropolitan University 

Here we are in the old theatre

and with our wives.

Elsewhere in London, Jenny was keen to show us the sights that she had discovered. One of her favourite places is Borough Market. The Exotic Meat Company has a special that is only offered to Kiwis and South Africans – Australian Coat of Arms burger (kangaroo and emu).

 

I particularly liked their horse burgers (shades of a recent food labelling scandal in the UK).

We decided that the theme of our time in London was transport – and different modes thereof. We travelled by trains (Dockland Light Railway above an Underground train)

buses (this is one of the legendary Routemasters)

 

cable car (over the Thames at Greenwich with the Millenium Dome/O2 in the bend of the river)

and boat

to Greenwich where we sampled the wares of the Mean Time Brewing Company.

Thanks to Jenny for organising our time for us. I could post umpteen more pictures of all the things we did and sights we saw, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Next instalment will be on our experiences elsewhere in England. 

Spring Colour

It’s that time of year when spring flowers break out and I post pictures to prove that winter is on it’s way out and sumer is icumen in. Here are a couple showing the modest display in our garden

 

and the slightly more flamboyant display in the Botanic Garden.

 

 

I’ve still got a few pictures from our recent trip to England to share. I’ll try and get round to posting in the next week or so.