A Once in a Lifetime Event part 2

The first morning we woke up at five AM and could not get back to sleep and so by the end of the first day we were ready for bed at around eight PM. By the third day we were in sync with local time and waking up at a more respectable hour and able to stay awake until a normal bed time.
We had nothing special planned for the first week, but went to the shopping centres and spent a few dollars and then went to see the movie Dunkirk.

Although not rated highly by the critics, I thought this movie was really well made.  It followed  several people caught up in the terrible situation of the British defeat in France with the struggle to help or to get home. Although it tried to tell you right at the start, it took me a while to catch on that we were seeing the same events from different people’s perspectives over different timescales, but it works and once you understand it makes a great deal of sense.

 Dunkirk was a big deal for my parents for a couple of reasons. One it was a real morale booster in a war that was going seriously wrong. Britain was losing in Europe and Africa where it seemed that Hitler was unstoppable. Miraculously, by out of the box thinking, hundreds of stranded soldiers were saved from capture or worse by the action of civilian volunteers. The second thing that made it important to them was the use of the ‘little ships’, just like the boats they loved and holidayed on whenever possible.

Some of the actual boats used by the evacuation photographed at the time as they are towed down the River Thames to the sea.

 One of my aunts had even owned a boat that was believed to have been one of the little ships. So I was brought up hearing about how amazing and wonderful a miracle Dunkirk had been. After seeing the movie I revealed how ancient I am to my grandson, by mentioning that I had worked with someone who had been on the beach at Dunkirk.

A still from the movie

Charley Featherstone was a great friend of mine, one of those work colleagues you get along with really well and never forget. He had been part of the rear guard in the retreat, he had managed to return to England only by dumping all his kit and swimming out to one of the last boats to leave. He was always resentful, that having returned to England to continue the fight for his country, he had been charged by the army for losing his equipment and docked pay to cover the cost. Having survived Dunkirk and working with me, he died of lung cancer aged under 60.

For this year’s trip to visit the family, we were not planning on going anywhere special until the twenty first of August. On this day, we planned to cram ourselves into the thin line stretching all the way across the USA, along with a considerable portion of the population of the USA, plus all the foreign visitors like ourselves who came to experience the solar eclipse.

Although the eclipse would be visible across the entire USA and several other countries. A rather narrow strip is the only place where the sun was due to be completely obscured by the moon passing directly in front of it. This area was where what is known as totality would take place. Everywhere else only a chunk of the sun would go missing and the further away from this narrow strip you were the less of the sun would be hidden.
The family do not live very far from the line of totality, so we had booked a parking space in a local airfield at Atchison and intended to spend the day there on the day of the eclipse.

On this map, the family live about where the n is in Kansas City.

As you may imagine, eclipse fever had struck America, which had become known as The Great American Eclipse.

 On every TV channel different people were showing you how to view the eclipse safely and warning you of the danger of looking directly at the sun. The internet was full of gadgets, instructions, maps of the path and DIY methods for viewing safely. Special glasses were being sold and Amazon recalled some thousands of eclipse glasses because they could not check their validity, having sold out completely. They then, unable to get them all back, refunded everyone who had bought them. Many of the shops around the area instantly sold out and we were lucky because having discovered the Amazon glasses, that TS had bought back in May, could be unsafe, we managed to find a few still in the local Dillons store.

Some of the eclipse glasses we bought.  The unopened package was the one which Amazon suggested could be below standard, so they never got used.

People whose houses were under the path of the eclipse had been reported as renting them out for the day for thousands of dollars and many sites had been issuing tickets to avoid a rush on the day. Unscrupulous people had been printing fake tickets that had been sold for outrageous sums which would not actually get you in to the place they claimed to be for.
People started to openly display their idiocy, one woman was reported as having asked if the eclipse festival could be moved to Saturday, since it would be more convenient as she would not have to take her children out of school to watch the eclipse and others reportedly putting sun block directly onto their eyes and having to be treated in hospital.  All of this against a background of tweets and statements by a president, who seems to find saying sensible things difficult, with the subsequent furore in the media each time he opened his mouth.

On top of that the weather continued to be cloudy and dull with rain and thunderstorms occurring as the day of the eclipse approached.

This kind of weather is unusual and at least ten degrees C cooler than is normal for Kansas in August.  I always want to burst into song when I hear that phrase, having been brought up on all the 50s musicals, and Kansas is indeed corny in August, the fields all around are full of corn, not quite as high as an elephant’s eye, as suggested by another 50s song, but getting on.  Be that as may be,back to the narrative.
Since this was the first eclipse to be accessible to US citizens over a wide area for 90 odd years, it would be a national disaster if the day was cloudy, so we waited and hoped for a sunny day.

Kansas in August 2017 not quite as expected

A Journey, Leading to a Once in a Lifetime Event part 1

Four o'clock in the morning and the alarm had gone off, it was time to get up. We had packed our suitcases the night before and gone to bed early to try to get as much sleep as possible before the grizzly hour we had to wake. Two zombies staggered around the house getting ready and promptly and on time the taxi arrived and we were off to Heathrow. High in the dawn sky Venus was a startlingly bright star and visible all the way to the airport even as the sky lightened to full daylight.

Because you are supposed to allow three hours to check in and go through security, we had needed to leave the house by half past five. Soon we arrived at Heathrow and our taxi driver helped us find a baggage cart and pile on the three huge suitcases and carry-on bags and we headed for the check in.

If all had gone well, we would have already been on our way at a reasonable hour the day before, but a strike by the air crew of the ‘wonderful’ airline we had booked with caused our flight to be a day late and very early.  Not naming any names, this airline's name starts with a B and an A. Not all bad though, our substitute flight had us booked onto an American Airlines Dreamliner, which proved to be much more comfortable than the BA aircraft we returned on.

 After checking in the three large suit cases we went through to the security area where I managed to set off the metal detector twice. First I had my mobile still in my pocket and then because my wallet has metal plates to stop my contactless credit cards being read by people with whom I do not wish to share my bank account. Inside the departure area, we found somewhere to get breakfast and having eaten we wait. Although we were requested to arrive three hours before take-off, we always seem to have a long wait in the departures lounge and so we sit and people watch and wait for the flight to be announced, watching the information screens to see which gate we will be departing from. Eventually it is time to board the aircraft and this is done excruciatingly slowly by ticket numbers. We shuffle forward down the long corridor and eventually board our flight for Chicago. After a lot of struggling to get our carry-ons into the overhead bins and the smaller ones under the seat, we are on our way. Well, we are trundling along what seems to be an endless runway and about the time I start to believe that we are going to drive all the way on the ground, the aircraft starts to accelerate and we are off the ground.
 This is the bit that I love and TBH hates, I like to look out of the window and see how much I can recognise from the air and since Heathrow leaves from London I can often identify more or less where we are until we get above the clouds. Once over the clouds there is nothing to see, so I usually turn on the map and watch the flight slowly crawl across the country to the coast over Ireland then on to the Atlantic.

 Hours of tedium pass, neither of us have ever been able to sleep on any aircraft and after hours of playing stupid games on my iPad and watching Guardians of the Galaxy vol II and Hidden figures from the list of in-flight movies, I realise we are approaching Lake Michigan and starting to descend. Our ears then start to pop and block alternately as the air pressure changes and eventually we are bumping along the runway with the engines in full reverse thrust and slowly we slow down to taxiing speed and we eventually arrive at the terminal.

From the aircraft window, you can see the Sears Tower in the distance.  We have definitely arrived in Chicago.

The introduction of the ESTA, which you have to fill in to visit the USA, and an electronic passport has improved our entry no end.  Because we have used ESTAs since 2008, all our details were on record and all we had to do at passport control was offer our passports to a scanner, stand in front of a camera and the gate opened and let us in.  Very little queuing and easy as pie, a big improvement on what we had to go through before, where a very stern looking individual would gaze at us suspiciously and after a long rigmarole with our passport and other papers, reluctantly let us through.

The next piece of tedium is waiting for our checked in baggage to emerge from the depth of the baggage handling conveyors and after we watch an an endless row of other people’s suitcases pass by, ours eventually emerge one by one and I was able to pull them off the carousel as they got near enough to reach. Loading them onto another baggage cart, we can then check them in again for the internal flight.
 From the International terminal at Chicago, to join our connecting flight, we have to take the airport’s train to terminal 3 and go through the security once more. After another struggle to get all our bits into the trays for scanning and checking and then get them all out again and packed back into our hand luggage we can sit down and wait for the connecting flight to Kansas City.
The connecting flight is not for another two hours or so and so we wait once more sitting it out. Waiting, I must add, is better than having to rush. From time to time we have been hard pressed to get to the connecting flight and running through a large airport carrying your hand baggage and arriving completely out of breath just as the gate is closing is not too much fun, so a long wait is quite acceptable, only requiring patience rather than physical stamina.
Eventually we able to board the flight and we were crammed into the much smaller aircraft with less space for hand luggage, so one of our bags has to go in the hold. Finally we were off, trundling down runway after runway. Chicago airport is big and has a maze of runways which criss-cross each other. The surrounding runways are full of other aircraft waiting to take off or arrivals taxing to their terminal. so often you have to wait at a crossroads whilst another aircraft crosses in front of your aircraft.

 This bit is always the longest part of the trip subjectively because we know it is only a short flight to Kansas City compared to the twelve hours and two movie flight across the Atlantic.
Finally we take off and we are on the last leg of the flight.

At first it is cloudy and I cannot see the ground.

Soon the clouds start to break up and I can see the Missouri River snaking its muddy way through the Illinois countryside 

Coming into Kansas City we pass over the Missouri River again and we know we are about to land when we can see the junction where the Kansas River joins it and the tall buildings of Kansas City skyline just behind.

 Soon we are down and making our way along the runway to the terminal.

The KCI terminal

After a short wait, we get off the plane, passing through security and there are the family waiting for us. We have finally made it.

Another day out

Not too far from where we live is the Slimbridge Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust and in July we thought it would be a good idea to pay a visit taking a friend along who is keen on bird life.
The area has been a wildlife trust for many years, founded in 1946 by Sir Peter Scott, the son of the Artic explorer captain Scott. The trust has been open to the public since it was first founded.

The Better Half (TBH) grew up in the same area and has visited Slimbridge as long as she can remember and I had also been there long before we met, so it is a familiar place for both of us.

On the way we cross Minchinhampton Common where it is traditional for the local farmers to summer their cows, so there are often cows wandering around, but are usually not a problem but this day, there was a traffic jam resulting from more cows than we had ever seen there ambling across one of the road junctions where two intersecting roads cross the common.

After this brief holdup, we duly arrived at Slimbridge. To get to the wetlands, you have to cross the canal and there is a swing bridge which is opened for boats to go through every now and then which halts the road traffic for a short while. Since this is fairly infrequent, I got out of the car and placed myself in a position where I could photograph the boats going through. Just by the side of the bridge a swan had made a nest and there were a number of signets sitting on the nest.

The Slimbridge site is huge and it is not possible to walk everywhere on one visit, without hurrying past most of the different areas, so this time we decided to go to some of the more distant parts of the wetlands where we have not often been. We wanted to see if we could see some of the rarer species that can be found there.

From the hides we were able to see many waterfowl and at one point saw some avocets which please our friend immensely, since they are hard to find away from a place like Slimbridge.

Further on we saw a large bird in the distance and realised it was a crane.

Moving to a higher level in the multi-story hide, we soon spotted two more. These birds have only recently been re-introduced into the UK and are slowly spreading across the natural wetlands.

 We were seeing three and after wading around for a while they took off and flew out of sight.

There is a hide at the end of a long path which is for watching kingfishers, but although we stayed for a while, much to the relief of my feet, we did not see any.
We then wandered through the main visitor area and looked the various less timid birds that were looking for food from the visitors or finding their own in the ponds and waterways that have been provided in the grounds.
There were still a number of chicks around with their mothers, still looking cute and fluffy

A Moorhen and her chick.  The chicks always have extraordinarily long feet for their size

Some flamingos from the West Indies, not usually found in the wild in the UK, but part of the preservation work

Another imported species

And the otters

After our visit, we had booked a table at the Tudor restraint, where we have been several times when in the area because it is a good place to eat and after a meal, we returned home.

Another Year, Another Reunion

This time it took place in Hull, City of Culture 2017.

Hull town centre

We would not normally have been able to make it had there not been an eclipse due in August, but due to my desire to see a total eclipse first hand and also due to the fact that it was going to pass very close to TS’s (The Son’s) abode in Kansas, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss and most of the family involved agreed. So, not being in the USA in June, off we went to Hull. The hotel we were booked into was the oddly named Lazaat hotel a little way out of Hull and that was our first destination.
Driving up was easy, being a Sunday the roads were free of most of the larger vehicles and for a change, there were few roadworks, although the lower part of the M1 had a 50mph stretch.

Once there we gathered in the hotel meeting old friends as they arrived until it was time to eat. After the meal, our group organiser had arranged for a local lad to give a talk on the history of Hull. What the poor man did not seem to realise was that firstly no one but the organiser and his wife had ever been to Hull and secondly that we were all professional presenters, and he was not. Although we were too polite to mention what a crap performance he made, it was not completely uninteresting and we were able to find some of the places he was talking about whilst we toured around the town the next day.

The next morning we set off for Hull town centre, where we parked in the Princes Quay Shopping Centre, a modern shopping mall with a car park that has no barriers or ticket machines but works by number plate recognition. We had taken two of our crowd with us, to save the number of cars being used and we all decided to head for The Deep.

We had been advised to take the road train, which is a hop on hop off tourist guide. This takes you in a circular tour that included The Deep which is an aquarium and we decided to hop off there.

 The commentary on the road train is canned and aimed at the average four year old with an interest in historic buildings that look like owls. It was very loud, so everyone could hear you coming and get out of the way of what was obviously a bunch of tourists. The ride was interesting both from the point of view of the commentary, although ear plugs would be useful, and the state of the suspension of the train. Every time the train went over a speed bump, there was a lurch and then a bump followed by another lurch as each carriage went over it.

The building that the road train commentary claimed looked like an owl

At one point we all had to join in a singing competition, which set each coach load of passengers competing against each other. Unfortunately whilst the canned commentary was aimed at three coaches, that particular day only two coaches were attached. So the singers in coach two seemed to be strangely quiet all the way through the competition. We separated from our two passengers, arranging to meet up around four PM. From the Deep, we walked back into town, since it meant waiting for about forty minutes for the train and anyway it was a nice day and no obligation to sing on the way.

 Hull is an interesting city with a lot of odd buildings that have been spared the demolition man in a random sort of way. Of course, one of the demolition men was a German called Schicklegruber or something who took a dislike to whole buildings in England on general principle. Hull claims to be one of the most bombed cities in England and did suffer a disproportionate number of casualties during that conflict.

One of the interesting features of Hull is Holy Trinity Square, outside Hull Minster. Several flag stones have a very shallow pool of water over them to form a reflecting pool at intervals all across the square.

One of the reflecting pools in Holy Trinity Square

 After walking around the town centre for a while, we took the road train and stuck with it until we had done the entire circular tour. By that time it was around four PM and we made contact with our passengers and we all headed back to the hotel.
That evening, instead of eating in the hotel, we all went to Papa’s Fish and Chips, a really good fish and chips restaurant, which is much more than just a chippy. It is a little way out of Hull, on the A164. The meal was one of the best of its kind I have had for some time and well worth a visit if you are in the area.

On the second day we returned to Hull without any passengers this time. In town we walked to the museum quarter where there are four separate museums, one of which is a trawler, the Arctic Corsair. After doing just one museum, we were pooped and ready for a sit down, well I was anyway. So we had a sandwich in a local café and then once recuperated, we walked into town to the People’s museum. This is centred on the two world wars and was quite tiny, consisting of a single room inside a shop. After a short look around, we encountered a man sat at a computer who asked the Better Half if she had any relatives who served in WWI. Since her grandfather had been one of the fallen in WWI, we then spent an informative half hour being shown various records, including his grave in Amara.

 Our last visit was to see the smallest window in the world. This is in an hotel and must have been impossible to see if you did not know it was there. There are various legends about what it was used for, from avoiding the press gang when they were in the area, to spotting when a coach had arrived at the hotel and getting ready to receive guests. Without the plaque it would be dismissed as a deep slot between two bricks and never recognised as a window.

The vertical slot is the window

That evening, we went to eat at The Humber Bridge Country Hotel, which is in Lincolnshire on the south side of the Humber. This meant that we had to cross the famous Humber bridge, which is a toll bridge but not as expensive as the Severn crossing.

The hotel is set by a lake and is a really pleasant spot with views across the lake from the dining room.  The meal was really nice, but there was some problems with service, since they did not have a full staff on duty for reasons beyond their control and some meals were a bit delayed.  However, the meals were worth the wait.

The view of the lake from the hotel

On the last day, we said our farewells and headed off for home under the most appalling conditions. The motorways were saturated and there was dense spray, particularly around lorries, so the journey was not as relaxing as the journey to Hull.  On top of that, we heard on the radio that the M42 was blocked, so we kept on the M1 and went home via Oxford.  There is not a lot of difference in mileage, but the M1 had a 50 mph limit most of the way to our turn off.

Besides that, we encountered four wide loads at different times along our route, which caused the traffic to bunch up and slow down on each occasion. When we finally got home, I started to come down with a cold and for the next few days was as weak as a kitten and did not feel much like doing anything but sit and feel sorry for myself.  It was not such a bad cold, but it seemed to knock me sideways, probably a result of getting old. As a result, this blog post is a bit late and has formed a queue as other events have piled up which are worth blogging.

A sudden day out

The weather report said Monday was going to be a sunny day, so being retired and having done all our chores on Saturday and Sunday, and like Mr Mole in the Wind in the Willows we decided not to waste a lovely spring day and so on the spur of the moment we went out for the day.
Having an annual pass for Blenheim Palace, we headed off to Oxfordshire and the village of Woodstock.

Getting out of the car, the wind seemed a little fresher than we had expected, but it soon warmed up. The grounds of BP are so vast, in the years we have been visiting there, we have never done it all, so there is plenty of scope to find something new each visit.
The first stop was the cafe for some coffee.

We then strolled around the gardens.

 To get to the larger gardens, you have to go through the main building and then through this ornamental garden

You can then either go down by the lake or along past the South Lawn to the far side of the grounds.

One of the local residents

A spring idyll, sunshine, daffodils in the foreground and sheep grazing in the distance

The parkland has a large variety of different trees

The house viewed from the south

Not a well kept secret

After this walk, it was lunch time and we ate in the Water Terrace Cafe.  The meal was not exceptional but better than a motorway service stop.

After lunch, we then walked off in a different direction heading for the weir. 

On the way we passed all this blossom

Last time we were there, the weir was not running very fast owing to a lack of rain, but today it was trying hard to imitate Niagara. 

This year the weir was flowing well

Last year,

Walking back, we passed under this tree, which was literally buzzing with activity as several dozen bees were gathering pollen.

A bumblebee working hard

I am glad that I do not have to find my lunch in such an undignified manner.

The amusing thing about this posture is that they keep flapping their feet, even though they are in the air and so gives them no purchase.

After that, we were walked out and so around three, we started back for home.

On the  way, I was reminded that this is the time of year when you can see where the local houses dumped their garden waste when no one was looking. 

Feral daffodils

If you look at the ditch opposite a house in a country lane, you will often see daffodils growing there in the spring. Sometimes in the ditch or just on the edge of it.  When gardeners dig over a flower bed, it is not unusual to accidentally dig up a few bulbs that were planted there and disposing of the waste soil, they get disposed of too.  If the gardener decides to dump their rubbish in the nearby ditch, rather than find somewhere to dump in on his own land, a few months later up come the daffodils.  So you find these little clumps of daffs at intervals along country lanes opposite a lonely cottage or two.  Just occasionally you will find an isolated bunch where there is now no house.  This show where there was once a farm hand's cottage.   In the 60s, you would often see an old abandoned cottage which once housed a farm hand and his family, but since farms have become more and more mechanised, these workers were no longer needed.  In those days, people were moving away from the country and so a small isolated cottage with poor accommodation and maybe no bathroom, no mains water or gas, were not saleable. So they remained empty and fell into disrepair, to the point where it was more economical to pull them down and plough up the land they occupied rather than repair them.

Lastly, this sign has always made me wonder.  It is not the thing you expect to find in the middle of the Oxfordshire countryside, but it is a rather specialist zoo and does in fact hold a collection of crocodiles and related species from all over the world.