Sunday, July 7, 2013
Invertebrate photo page
This was going to be an insect photo page until we took the final image of a pretty snail at Much Wenlock. Largely thanks to advice from my friend Roger Farrow, some names have been able to be added! The first two were illustrated on a leaflet i picked up somewhere as Six-spotted Burnets (Zygaena filipendulae), Roger advised this is similar to the cinnabar moth Tyria jacobaea that feeds on ragwort and has been introduced to OZ and NZ for biological control. With that link made, it was very interesting to come across this article in the Guardian linking burnets, cinnabar moths and Wenlock Edge - the latter geological feature being very close to Tugford where we spent the second half of the trip.
A fairly typical dipterid IMHO
A bee!
A fly!
This is a caterpillar of a cinnabar moth.
The hoverfly is Episyrphus sp.
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War memorials post 1
This is to hold the first set of images specifically of war memorials. There ended up being too many for a single post, and a few others are included in the daily posts (click on 'memorials, in the labels section) to see all such posts . I shall try to add text to highlight the interesting features of the various memorials in the next few days.
Arundel, in the main square. It was about the first we saw, and started me thinking of collecting such images. There is a nice dedication, and ranks are listed.
The memorial for WW1 deaths from East Tisted only has 3 listed. I am intrigued by the third, who is shown as dying in North Russia in September 1919. I wasn't aware of WW1 being fought in North Russia and thought that it finished in 1918. (Some Australian memorials cite 1919 because it took a while to get back.)
This person seems to have been lucky twice (horse shot and Alma, severely wounded at Inkerman) before dying at Sebastopol). I am not aware of any Australian involvment in the Crimea.
A memorial by Lord and Lady Forster of Lepe to their two sons who died in WW1. I was attracted by the style wjoch reminds me of the crusdaer poses.
A member of the RFC who died 'on army manoeuvres'. So like the many memorials around NSW to people killed on flying training.
The Selsey memorial. As noted in the text 57 killed of a population of about 1500 at that time. (There is of course a chance that the 'killed' refer to a parish which might be larger than the Census village.)
This is a chapel commemorating the Worcestershire regiment in various conflicts. In the Worcester Cathedral.
This set of windows in the Cloister at Worcester commemorate various people who died in a number of theatres of action in WW1. The far right panel is to members of the choir who died in that conflict.
Not only Australians died at Gallipoli.
This is erected by the Earl of Stafford in honour of those who died in glorious victories (how many would have died in a defeat?) at Sutlej in 1845-46. I had never heard of that place, and according to Wikipedia it is in the Punjab area of India, and appears to be disputed territory these days. Further Googling shows this to be part of the 1st Sikh War.
A Boer War memorial.
Memorials to men of Tugford. The upper plaque mentions 11 who volunteered in WW1 of whom 3 were killed.
This memorial is in Hereford Cathdral. The flags are British Legion.
This set of memorials are to people associated with Hereford , but from a number of Regiments.
For the Herefordshire Regiment. The verse in the lower panel is the line by Rupert Brooke referring to "a corner of a foreign field that is for ever England".
A simple memorial in Leominster.
The main memorial near the Guildhall in Leominster> The idea of a garden of Remembrance is quite common.
The uniforms of the the three sons of the household of the household at Berrington Hall. The inscriptions on the pedestals should be legible if image clicked.
Back to the Index page
To second page of War Memorials
Arundel, in the main square. It was about the first we saw, and started me thinking of collecting such images. There is a nice dedication, and ranks are listed.
A small parish church in the village of East Tisted. Gives quite a story about each person honoured. I am surprised that in a village of this size (population of 200 in 2001) they lost 4 people.
This is the secular memorial in Hereford. The notice on the railings gives a number of details, incuding that about 2000 people from Herefordshire died in WW1.
To second page of War Memorials
War memorials Post 2
This is to hold the second set of images specifically of war memorials. There ended up being too many for a single post, and a few others are included in the daily posts (click on 'memorials, in the labels section) to see all such posts . Again, I shall try to add text to highlight the interesting features of the various memorials in the next few days.
The first of the Meyricke memorials in St Laurence, Ludlow. This reports the deaths of 2 members of the family in WW1.
It appears they were following family tradition. The second and third members of the family named on this plaque died at the battle of New Orleans (War of 1812, free of Australian involvment) and the Relief of Ladysmith. The final person died riding in a horse race.
Another victim of Gallipolli.
A memorial from Llangurig. The first in Wales.
The honour Roll from Llangurig. Those in gold are the fallen. They had a higher survival rate than many areas.
From Aberystwyth. The main memorial is very large and appears in the chronological entry for that day.
A garden of Remembrance in Church Stretton.
This plaque honours the link between Church Stretton and St Dunstans a charity serving blinded veterans.
These two paper rolls honour the dead of Church Stretton in WW1 (RH) and WW2 (LH). Again, long lists for a small town.
These next two are from the cemetery at Church Stretton, some distance from the church.
From Shrewsbury. This is a memorial to Colonel C R Cureton, a very senior officer woh died in the Sikh Wars
This plaque memorialises Admiral Benbow who died in Jamaica of wounds fighting the French (apparently for the right to capture a Spanish bullion cargo). This is called the Action of 1702 and I am not quite clear if this was a war or not!
Ironbridge; a nice memorial in that it shows the kit and uniform of the soldier.
Much Wenlock. The upper tablet, for WW1 has 68 names inscribed while that for WW2 below only has 16.
A simple memorial at Diddlebury.
I have no idea of the name of the place where this one was. I couldn'yt find a place name on it and the only building in site was a pub, with the name of a bland chain! I think it was in England rather than Wales, but certainly in the Marches,
In the cemetyery at Clun: distant from the church.
The main memorial at Clun, right outside the church
A collection of memorials in the the Church at Clun.
This is the centre top of the previous image. Some very evocative words on which to finish.
Ludlow, Church of St Laurence. This is the WW2 Memorial, in the main entrance opposite the WW1 memorial shown below,
The search for a souvenir gazunda
In 1997 we were touring Slovakia when I broke the hammer I used to knock in the tent pegs. It proved surprisingly difficult to find a replacement (known in Slovak as a kladivho) and that phase of the trip report became known as "The search for a good kladivho.". We now find - thank you SMH - that among the mementos of the impending Royal Birth in the UK are “..
souvenir potties ..(which) …have been given the
royal seal of approval." We gotta find one! (For those not familiar with English slang a pottie goes under the bed - thus "goes under" is pronounced "gazunda".)
In fact we found very few souvenirs of The Birth or even The Naming. This may be explained by the MD of a ceramics company who explained on TV that they tried to do most of their business by pre-order rather than shopfront retail.
Now I am back home I can search the net to see what is available. My first generated an up market site not offering a pottie as far as I can tell. In an emergency I suppose these jugs would serve but Stg3k seems a lot to piddle in, and #2s could be tricky during the training phase. This company offered a measuring jug for Stg 6.75 would could be useful in view of his paternal grandpa's scientific interests (but Waitrose can probably offer the same functionality for a couple of quid. In the end the nearest I got was an offer of a second hand potty-chair. located in the town of Prince George in British Columbia. (At least the purchaser will know it won't have been used by a bear, as they all crap in the woods.)
My conclusion that like a good potty the SMH article was full of it.
Our only relevant souvenir is the edition of Private Eye current when we left, of which the cover is reproduced below.
Other than this, I wasn't aware of any hysteria whatsoever. Excluding of course the media trying to find something to get hysterical about. For goodness sake, for this baby to become important:
In fact we found very few souvenirs of The Birth or even The Naming. This may be explained by the MD of a ceramics company who explained on TV that they tried to do most of their business by pre-order rather than shopfront retail.
Now I am back home I can search the net to see what is available. My first generated an up market site not offering a pottie as far as I can tell. In an emergency I suppose these jugs would serve but Stg3k seems a lot to piddle in, and #2s could be tricky during the training phase. This company offered a measuring jug for Stg 6.75 would could be useful in view of his paternal grandpa's scientific interests (but Waitrose can probably offer the same functionality for a couple of quid. In the end the nearest I got was an offer of a second hand potty-chair. located in the town of Prince George in British Columbia. (At least the purchaser will know it won't have been used by a bear, as they all crap in the woods.)
My conclusion that like a good potty the SMH article was full of it.
Our only relevant souvenir is the edition of Private Eye current when we left, of which the cover is reproduced below.
- Betty has to join the great majority which she is showing no signs of doing;
- Prince Chuck (who The Eye refers to as Brian for some reason known only to Lord Gnome pp Emmanuel Stobes) also has to meet his maker, and with his healthy lifestyle probably has a good few years left in him;
- George's dad also has to shuffle of (as a military helicopter pilot one would have to say he is the most likely to croak).
On the topic of airlines and air travel
When I first started planning this trip my intention had been to fly Emirates to Manchester as we did on the last trip. However it seems that Emirates are no longer an economically rational airline. Why is this so? Could it be that having lined up with QANTAS they are taking instruction on client servicing from Buffoon O'Airline?
Whatever. Plan B was to see what Expedia had to offer. There was also some doubt about whether we needed to go through Manchester. The only reelly reelly important thing was to avoid the world's worst airport (OK perhaps second worst - there is probably one in some regional centre of a small African country that is worse). The key part of our trip was in Shropshire which is close to Birmingham (hereafter Brum as the natives call it) so I explored flights to that fine airport. Expedia gave me a clue that KLM were the way to go having various flights to Brum.
I also wanted to stay the first night in Birmingham to have a look at that city and ensure we are in reasonable shape for the drive South. So, on Saturday 9 February, I thought I would also book a hotel through Expedia. Unfortunately doing the Hotel+flight option turned out that everything was driven by the choice of hotel (Wag that dog!) and one of the flights by KLM that looked particularly useful, due to being 4-7 hours shorter than any other, wasn't listed.
So back to the KLM site. I was able to choose the flights I wanted and by doing an online bank transfer (Westpac Payanyone is fantastic) avoided the $60 slug involved with credit cards. I also decided to reserve a couple of seats on the Kuala Lumpur - Amsterdam leg so that we stood a chance of getting some kip there. That was going to cost me $165 each but whatever. Then we got to the payment and it seemed to get to the checkout phase OK. However
Checking back to another part of the KLM site it appeared we had reserved the seats I wanted so I sent the money off - to some collection agency (Global Collect NV - presumably the NV stands for Nasty Violence, suggesting what will happen if you don't cough up).
So on Monday I rang KLM and it turns out that the payment situation was fine, but it will take 5 -7 days for Global Collect to send the cash to KLM. At that point the tickets will be issued and I can ring KLM again to sort out payment for the seats. The nice lady at KLM then asked if I wanted to reserve seats for other legs and was able to do it all except for the leg from Amsterdam to Guangxhou. So we have a row of two from Guangxhou to Sydney, which is when I would really like to get some sleep. Basically KLM end up getting a bouquet.
Interestingly, in looking up the link above for Global Collect I found that I could check on my bank transfer and it was rated as "In process" which is promising. That is about the first time I have found one of these status check items to be of any help!
In rather less than 5 days I found a couple of e-tickets appeared in my email. They mentioned nothing about the $330 I owed them so I rang KLM speaking to a very pleasant person with a Gallic accent. He could help me out for $177.80 per seat! I said what about the $165? There was then much fussing with him saying $177.80 was the go and me saying $165, but to his credit he nicked off- with me on hold - and found it was on the web site for $165 so did something and made it so. It took 45 minutes to save $25.60, so bad economics but good for my self esteem.!
Three days before we were due to depart I got an officious email from KLM stating they had to provide Advanced Passenger Information to the Poms. Presumably to allow the police to alert News Limited to our impending arrival. "Evenin' all." This is annoying as the information that was shown as required came to name, age sex, citizenship and country of residence, all of which could have been collected at ticket purchase time. However to get to that one had to go through three screen of KLM advertising. Definitely Buffoon O'Airline style customer service! They also had some optional fields for passport information but that:
The fun continues. The day before departure I got an email from KLM inviting me to check in on-line. So I try to do so and get a screen saying I can't check in online. One of the items you have to complete is the departure airport and it doesn't include Sydney in the pick list!! Then I try to ring KLM and get told that they are open from 9am. They are going to get a call which will pin their ears back a tad.
Whatever. Plan B was to see what Expedia had to offer. There was also some doubt about whether we needed to go through Manchester. The only reelly reelly important thing was to avoid the world's worst airport (OK perhaps second worst - there is probably one in some regional centre of a small African country that is worse). The key part of our trip was in Shropshire which is close to Birmingham (hereafter Brum as the natives call it) so I explored flights to that fine airport. Expedia gave me a clue that KLM were the way to go having various flights to Brum.
I also wanted to stay the first night in Birmingham to have a look at that city and ensure we are in reasonable shape for the drive South. So, on Saturday 9 February, I thought I would also book a hotel through Expedia. Unfortunately doing the Hotel+flight option turned out that everything was driven by the choice of hotel (Wag that dog!) and one of the flights by KLM that looked particularly useful, due to being 4-7 hours shorter than any other, wasn't listed.
So back to the KLM site. I was able to choose the flights I wanted and by doing an online bank transfer (Westpac Payanyone is fantastic) avoided the $60 slug involved with credit cards. I also decided to reserve a couple of seats on the Kuala Lumpur - Amsterdam leg so that we stood a chance of getting some kip there. That was going to cost me $165 each but whatever. Then we got to the payment and it seemed to get to the checkout phase OK. However
- I couldn't seem to get it to charge me for the special seats;
- their client service area wasn't open on a Saturday or a Sunday; and
- there was some requirement to finalise all of this by Sunday!
Checking back to another part of the KLM site it appeared we had reserved the seats I wanted so I sent the money off - to some collection agency (Global Collect NV - presumably the NV stands for Nasty Violence, suggesting what will happen if you don't cough up).
So on Monday I rang KLM and it turns out that the payment situation was fine, but it will take 5 -7 days for Global Collect to send the cash to KLM. At that point the tickets will be issued and I can ring KLM again to sort out payment for the seats. The nice lady at KLM then asked if I wanted to reserve seats for other legs and was able to do it all except for the leg from Amsterdam to Guangxhou. So we have a row of two from Guangxhou to Sydney, which is when I would really like to get some sleep. Basically KLM end up getting a bouquet.
Interestingly, in looking up the link above for Global Collect I found that I could check on my bank transfer and it was rated as "In process" which is promising. That is about the first time I have found one of these status check items to be of any help!
In rather less than 5 days I found a couple of e-tickets appeared in my email. They mentioned nothing about the $330 I owed them so I rang KLM speaking to a very pleasant person with a Gallic accent. He could help me out for $177.80 per seat! I said what about the $165? There was then much fussing with him saying $177.80 was the go and me saying $165, but to his credit he nicked off- with me on hold - and found it was on the web site for $165 so did something and made it so. It took 45 minutes to save $25.60, so bad economics but good for my self esteem.!
Three days before we were due to depart I got an officious email from KLM stating they had to provide Advanced Passenger Information to the Poms. Presumably to allow the police to alert News Limited to our impending arrival. "Evenin' all." This is annoying as the information that was shown as required came to name, age sex, citizenship and country of residence, all of which could have been collected at ticket purchase time. However to get to that one had to go through three screen of KLM advertising. Definitely Buffoon O'Airline style customer service! They also had some optional fields for passport information but that:
- seemed rather like sending ones credit card information over an unsecured link;and
- I bet we still have to produce them about 5 times on the flight so thi would just make life easier for someone in KLM
The fun continues. The day before departure I got an email from KLM inviting me to check in on-line. So I try to do so and get a screen saying I can't check in online. One of the items you have to complete is the departure airport and it doesn't include Sydney in the pick list!! Then I try to ring KLM and get told that they are open from 9am. They are going to get a call which will pin their ears back a tad.
Here we go again!
A niece is getting married in late July and she and her fiance have decided to have the wedding in the UK, his origin, and where they met. We have been invited and are planning to attend.
The first step was to find ourselves some accommodation close to the venue of the wedding. This is to be Acton Scott an historic farm in the general vicinity of Shrewsbury. It is at 'A' in this clip.
Having the date and venue of the main event fixed we decided the first thing to do was to book some accommodation nearby. A general issue with this is that Visit Britain - a Government funded body, which we used on our previous visit - is no longer allowed to produce its listing of accommodation. Instead one has to use private sector "equivalents". I have put quotes around the word equivalent because of Flabmeister's Law:
a musical interlude
.>
The first step was to find ourselves some accommodation close to the venue of the wedding. This is to be Acton Scott an historic farm in the general vicinity of Shrewsbury. It is at 'A' in this clip.
If any public service is privatised a lower quality outcome will be achieved.
Typically the service will provide:
- a lower level of user satisfaction (because the key stakeholder is the owners of the service not the end user); and
- cost the end user more (because the price charged has to include a profit for the owners).
A couple of attempts to use some of the equivalents which I found were hopeless. So when we noticed that cottages were part of the Acton Scott Estate portfolio that looked like a good idea. Then Frances read the site more closely and realised that the place was intended to be an historic experience - specifically the epoch before electricity! Pass!! She then came up with English Country Cottages which seemed reasonable. At least it offered a few places more or less in the vicinity of where we wished to go. (The owners of this brand - see below - talk about 20,000 properties but that includes all their places in Europe and from memory Visit England had about 60,000.) It didn't appear to be ordered in a logical sequence and certainly not by proximity to the selected target location.
Whatever. We found a place that looked good: Trap Cottage, Tugford. So we start to book. Under the Visit Britain deal this was a transaction with the owners of the venue and could be undertaken by an exchange of emails. That is far too convenient. Under this deal (where English Country Cottages is a brand of the Hoseasons Group which is a subsidiary of a US firm Wyndham Worldwide) one has to use their booking system.
(A parenthesis about Hoseasons. This name seemed familiar and when I looked them up for this post I found that they started as major agents for Norfolk Broads boat rentals. Their website claims that they initiated many developments in UK travel including the first online booking system (in 1999). Website design has moved on a lot since then. As will be apparent from what follows I suspect that this site has watched the parade stream by - note also the Law mentioned above.)
The website wasn't too bad until, on the payment page I noticed a typo I had made in our address. I have found that online systems can get grumpy when the stated address doesn't match the address attached to the credit card so went back to correct it. I then returned to the 'Payment page and found nothing worked. It appears it had made the booking for me and now thought I was making a duplicating booking. I couldn't find an email address to query this (welcome to the 21st Century, big innovators) and didn't feel like phoning the UK to sort it. Let us see what happens.
Next step was an email from Hoseasons saying they needed more information to complete the booking and if I hadn't called them by 3pm the next day they would cancel the booking. I wonder if they can spell Kustoma Cervis? The email gave their working hours including 10 -4 on Sundayof which the most convenient was 10pm on the following night. So I rang them.
Straight into a pick a choice system. I chose not to take "amend a booking" as I didn't think I had a booking and very shortly had a voice tell me that they didn't work on a Sunday.! Not happy!! Try again choosing the amend a booking option and get through to someone who sounds a lot like Ringo Starr. Unlike Ringo, who just sounded thick, this guy was really confused over what to do as the people I needed to talk don't work on Sunday. Eventually - I was paying for the phone call, so no need to rush - he worked out to transfer me to his supervisor. Keeping up the musical links, she sounded just like Janice Nicholls from "Thank your Lucky stars" even though she didn't pronounce the number between 4 and 6. She said she'd send a confirming email (thus far it hasn't arrived, but the time is still booked out, so I am hopeful).
The email confirmation did eventually appear: in my Spam folder! But anyway we are on the right track. So far Hoseasons have not provided details on how to get to the property, just the name and phone number of the owner, Why do these people rely on the phone so much? Are they daft or do do they have lots of equity in British Telecom? Fortunately Google comes to the rescue!
We have ended up booking two cottages with them, primarily because no-one else looked any better. The second one is at Selsey near Chichester and will serve as a base for exploring the South Coast, after a night in Birmingham when we first arrive.
I have called Hoseasons twice and each time have been able to sort of resolve the issue. On the last call I was given an email address to use butthat has failed left, right and, as one might expect, centre. Actually what seems to have failed left, right and, as one might expect, centre, is my transcription of the email address: read on. I found a query section on their website so used that to ask them to give me an email address for the caretaker of the place at Selsey since we need to contact them before departure and phone calls cost too much. They didn't have an email address but offered to pass on a message which offer I have taken up. They also offered her mobile number as a fall back, so a few brownie points - not quite a bouquet yet - to Hoseasons.
The email confirmation did eventually appear: in my Spam folder! But anyway we are on the right track. So far Hoseasons have not provided details on how to get to the property, just the name and phone number of the owner, Why do these people rely on the phone so much? Are they daft or do do they have lots of equity in British Telecom? Fortunately Google comes to the rescue!
We have ended up booking two cottages with them, primarily because no-one else looked any better. The second one is at Selsey near Chichester and will serve as a base for exploring the South Coast, after a night in Birmingham when we first arrive.
I have called Hoseasons twice and each time have been able to sort of resolve the issue. On the last call I was given an email address to use but
Monday, July 12, 2010
A Post-hoc Overview of the 2010 Trip
Basically I thought this was a damn fine trip. I make that comment a day after getting back with my body still very inclined to reject me as a result of the plane trip!
As we drove back from Sydney Frances and I talked a bit about the highlights and seemed to conclude that there were too many good bits all a bit different to the others. So instead I'll start off with the three big ticket B-interests and see what stands out.
The Big 3
Buildings:
This was initially intended to be an alliterative allusion to the Cathedrals, which started the whole thing off. However one should also include the National Trust places we went to. Possibly York Minster wasn't as good as expected, but possibly:
WRT to the National Trust places, those which stood out were Laycock, Anglesey Abbey, Fountains Abbey and Stourhead. All excellent buildings with good interpretive material. The last three also had very extensive and attractive gardens. The decision to join the National Trust was certainly an excellent idea (and we more than saved our membership costs by the free admissions.
Birds:
Another success story. I observed or heard (well enough to identify) 117 species, of which I hadn't previously recorded 13 anywhere and 44 of which were not on my (memory created) UK list. Many thanks to Ron Johns and Paul Holness for their great knowledge, guidance and, above all, hospitality.
Again joining the RSPB was a good idea. I am sure we covered the membership fee by some free admissions but basically it was nice to able to know what was where. This was backed up by the purchase of "Birdwatching in Britain A site by site guide" Redman and Harrap. None of the sites they suggested were failures, although everywhere was subject to the cry of "This is the quietest time of the year. Come back in migration or Winter." Perhaps.
In several places - notably in Norfolk - we found pubs that were well rated in the Good Beer Guide that had recently shut. It is possible that this was explained by a guy I was chatting to in the plane coming home. He observed that many pubs are now owned by a major company and the landlord (in the pub operator sense of the word) is basically a tenant: if the pub starts to do really well the owners increase the rent and the operator finds themselves losing money and pulls out (or becomes bankrupt and gets pushed out). If this is the case, it is one more problem introduced by the managerial philosophies pushed by Reagan and Thatcher (boo, hiss).
Selecting our accommodation through the Visit England page was a basic strategy. Without this we would have wasted at least one day per week trying to find somewhere to stay. As it was we had three lovely places with excellent hosts!
Flying with Emirates. Part of the reason underlying this was an initial thought of breaking the flight for a brief stay in Dubai. Given the climate there thank goodness we didn't do so. However the airline was entirely adequate and I suspect will be taking a lot of custom off QANTAS etc.
Car rental: We selected Alamo and a small diesel car through Expedia. This was entirely satisfactory with the car (a Skoda Fabia) having all the power required and being small enough to fit through the tiny country roads we used. It gave us about 52 mpg overall which compensated for the extra cost of fuel in the UK so that cents per kilometre were almost the same as for our Subaru in Australia.
As we drove back from Sydney Frances and I talked a bit about the highlights and seemed to conclude that there were too many good bits all a bit different to the others. So instead I'll start off with the three big ticket B-interests and see what stands out.
The Big 3
Buildings:
This was initially intended to be an alliterative allusion to the Cathedrals, which started the whole thing off. However one should also include the National Trust places we went to. Possibly York Minster wasn't as good as expected, but possibly:
- our expectations were too high; and
- we also went there on Day 1 when our brains were cabbage.
WRT to the National Trust places, those which stood out were Laycock, Anglesey Abbey, Fountains Abbey and Stourhead. All excellent buildings with good interpretive material. The last three also had very extensive and attractive gardens. The decision to join the National Trust was certainly an excellent idea (and we more than saved our membership costs by the free admissions.
Birds:
Another success story. I observed or heard (well enough to identify) 117 species, of which I hadn't previously recorded 13 anywhere and 44 of which were not on my (memory created) UK list. Many thanks to Ron Johns and Paul Holness for their great knowledge, guidance and, above all, hospitality.
Again joining the RSPB was a good idea. I am sure we covered the membership fee by some free admissions but basically it was nice to able to know what was where. This was backed up by the purchase of "Birdwatching in Britain A site by site guide" Redman and Harrap. None of the sites they suggested were failures, although everywhere was subject to the cry of "This is the quietest time of the year. Come back in migration or Winter." Perhaps.
Beer:
I managed to try a large number of beers in sufficient quantity (half pint or more) to record a view on their appeal. Thanks to the Royal Norfolk Show Food Hall I also had a sniff at a couple more breweries that are not recorded therein since they (wisely) gave out small free samples. In essence there was only one brew that I thought inadequate and a number that were excellent.In several places - notably in Norfolk - we found pubs that were well rated in the Good Beer Guide that had recently shut. It is possible that this was explained by a guy I was chatting to in the plane coming home. He observed that many pubs are now owned by a major company and the landlord (in the pub operator sense of the word) is basically a tenant: if the pub starts to do really well the owners increase the rent and the operator finds themselves losing money and pulls out (or becomes bankrupt and gets pushed out). If this is the case, it is one more problem introduced by the managerial philosophies pushed by Reagan and Thatcher (boo, hiss).
Other decisions
There were a number of other decisions made in planning the trip which worked out brilliantly.Selecting our accommodation through the Visit England page was a basic strategy. Without this we would have wasted at least one day per week trying to find somewhere to stay. As it was we had three lovely places with excellent hosts!
Flying with Emirates. Part of the reason underlying this was an initial thought of breaking the flight for a brief stay in Dubai. Given the climate there thank goodness we didn't do so. However the airline was entirely adequate and I suspect will be taking a lot of custom off QANTAS etc.
Car rental: We selected Alamo and a small diesel car through Expedia. This was entirely satisfactory with the car (a Skoda Fabia) having all the power required and being small enough to fit through the tiny country roads we used. It gave us about 52 mpg overall which compensated for the extra cost of fuel in the UK so that cents per kilometre were almost the same as for our Subaru in Australia.
Other items recorded/thought about
Weather
Astonishingly good apart from the first day which was appalling. As everyone has told us, since returning home how cold it has been in Canberra it sounds like another good idea has been proven.Weather
Language
I was a bit surprised at the weakness of the accents in the Southern areas. Perhaps we didn't mix enough with people who haven't travelled enough to 'knock the edges off' their larynxes or perhaps they are all subject to so much mid-Atlantic gibberish through the media that regional accents are vanishing. Even with that being said it was notable that a couple of people at the Royal Norfolk Show sounded 'normal' and we suddenly realised that they could probably find their way around Darling Harbour quite easily!
Officialdom
Other than the repetitious and annoying signs everywhere on the roads this was very little in evidence. I only recorded two instances of jobsworthiness (a parking inspector at Helmsley and an administrative person at Durham University). I guess we could include the business of transit passengers having to go through security at every stop under this category, but I prefer to regard that more as the modern equivalent of painting stones and other traditional ways of handling the unemployable and socially challenged.
Moving forwards
This is the first of the daily entries, for those who don't wish to read all the bon-mots and wisdom in the pages about planning.
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