Tag Archives: Travel

Farms of Varying Kinds

by thehistoryinterpreter

Today it is raining again, as well as being ten degrees cooler than it was last week but we are here to see what has to be seen so we travel north into Lanarkshire to see the Scottish Museum of Rural Life. We witness some more strange driving (yes another woman) who seems to end up on the central grass of the roundabout facing the wrong way. Fortunately no ill effects and we continue on our way. Although the landscape is still bleak, as we get nearer to the outskirts of Glasgow, the settlements seem more prosperous. We encounter a cycle race on our way. It seems this is not the Commonwealth Games’ road race but lycra clad wanna bees.

We arrive at the museum and yet again we can utilise our National Trust memberships in order to gain entry. The state of the art museum has plenty of interesting exhibits and we also get Raymond the tractor driver to take us up the hill to the farmstead. The Reid family held land as lairds of Wester Kittochside from 1567 and later built a farmhouse on the land. The current farmhouse dates from 1783 and is substantial, suggesting that the Reids prospered on their 110 acres. After ten generations, the last of the line donated the land to the Scottish National Trust in the 1990s, allowing the museum to be built. Amongst the farm animals, I am most excited to see the soon to fledge baby swallows in the barn.028 27 July 2014 Whitelee Wind Farm

On the way home we call in at a rather different sort of farm, Whitelee Wind Farm, the largest of its kind in the UK. There is an impressive visitors’ centre, designed as part of the green energy PR machine and therefore free to enter. There are plenty of activities and it is great to see that sadly now rare sight, families doing things together. The land on which the 215 turbines are built is also designed for walking, cycling and as a wildlife habitat but the weather wasn’t suitable for us to explore on foot. We were very close to some of the turbines, which were 110-140 metres high and in action. One of the downsides of wind energy is held out to be the noise from the turbines but these were completely silent. What ever we might feel about wind energy, if we want to carry on consuming electricity as we have in recent years, we need to do something. Whilst agreeing that some locations are not necessarily suitable for turbines, I would rather see this than power stations and pylons.

Across the Border for Real (not a reel you understand)

by thehistoryinterpreter

After our quick foray into Scotland yesterday we retreated back to England. Now we are crossing the border intending to stay. It seems very strange being away knowing half my family are at home staying in my house but I will see the other half very soon. There is something strange up with the sat nav. Set it up for our destination town and road and it is twenty miles nearer than if I set it for the campsite itself. Fortunately I discover where I have gone wrong in plenty of time. I am sure I can’t be the first person to confuse Culzean Road, Maybole with Maybole Road, Culzean. We travel along the M6 and M74 before turning off on to the A70. Here the landscape is barren and desolate with evidence of open cast coal mining. The villages seem run down and depressed. Annoyingly the road we need is closed but we manage to negotiate the diversion and only one U turn is required before we arrive at Culzean. It seems we have not booked this site. We so have booked. My itinerary says we have so it must be so. They insist we haven’t. Fortunately cancellations mean there is room for us. This site has a swimming pool but it is £9 a day for a family. This is good value if you have a family with you but it seems rather a lot just for me so I invest in 24 hours’ internet connection instead and begin to catch up.022 26 July 2014 Walled Garden Culzean Castle 1

In the afternoon we visit Culzean Castle and Country Park. Apparantly Culzean is pronounced Culeen and this is the largest estate in Ayrshire. Our English National Trust cards mean we do not even have to part with money to see this Adam designed stately home on the Firth of Clyde, once home to the Kennedy family. There is a list inside of some of the many servants who have worked at the castle at various dates. Many of these are clearly taken from the census returns but one, from the 1740s, is Scipio Kennedy who, with that first name and sharing has he does the family name, must surely have been a slave.

Today is decidedly cooler and by mid afternoon it has begin to rain but undaunted we look at the walled garden. This is huge and more a garden with a wall than a walled garden in the traditional sense, although the head gardener insists that the walls do have warming properties. Talking of warming properties, it seems every shop on the premises has its heating on full blast. I know it is not as hot as earlier in the week but this does seem unnecessary. We look at the deer in the deer park then investigate swan lake. This is not a balletic performance but a lake with swans and terns on. By this time the rain has set in and we are getting as wet by the lake as we would in it so we head back to the van.

 

Witchcraft and School Friends

by thehistoryinterpreter

Hastily, I should explain that he two parts of the title are not connected!

Saturday I got up at the crack of dawn and dawn cracks pretty early in June in the UK, to set off for London. As I heaved a case of books on and off trains I started to realise that a week of moving books and furniture (there will be a forthcoming post about this activity) had taken a toll on my back. Notwithstanding, I arrived at The Society of Genealogists to take part in their Seventeenth Century day seminar. Unfortunately even my ‘first train of the day’ start was not early enough to get me there in time to hear Elsa Churchill but I caught most of Colin Chapman’s informative session, packed with sources for C17th research. Colin and I often turn up on the same bill and it is always a pleasure to listen to him. After the lunch break and some running repairs to the air conditioning, which appeared to allow the room to be cold or hot but nothing in between, it was my turn.

I chatted about the impact of witchcraft on the lives of our C17th ancestors and lightened my load by re-homing some of my books, in return for a perfectly reasonable sum of money. Strangely, after becoming interested in this topic as part of my general foray into the social history of the C17th, I discovered that one of those tried for witchcraft, Joanna Elford, was probably related to me. I was followed by Michael Gandy and was very thankful that it wasn’t the other way round. Michael’s subject was how to read C17th handwriting and I suspect the audience were expecting sight of letter shapes and perhaps collective interpretation of documents. This was not to be. It takes an exceptional speaker to engage an end of the day audience for an hour and a half with not a single visual aid. Unbelievably, Michael held the room in thrall with an entertaining, relevant, tour de force on this topic without actually showing us any C17th writing at all – brilliant.

Then it was off to catch up with my school fellows who made up the class of 1974. I had missed the reunion itself but fifteen tail-enders were to spend the night in a nearby hotel and I set off to join them. School reunions can be fraught with anxieties: ‘What shall I wear?’ in my case compounded by the lack of room in the case full of books and the need to make it suitable for the talk as well. ‘Will I recognise anyone?’ ‘Will anyone recognise me?’ and if they do, does this mean I have worn well or that I still look as gawky as I did at school? ‘Have I been sufficiently successful?’ And most importantly, ‘How do my wrinkles/greying hair/middle aged spead compare?’. Of course anyone who voluntarily reconnects with a group of people they haven’t seen for forty years is going to be someone who is comfortable in their own skin, someone who feels they have ‘arrived’, by their own standards if not by anyone else’s.

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I limp my way as far as East Croydon station and decide that I really can’t face trying to find out where they have hidden the 64 bus stop since I was last here. I therefore elected to spend a high proportion of my book sales money on a taxi to the hotel. Said hotel is ‘posh’ by my standards. Ok, I know most of my hotel going is of the Premier Inn variety but this is four star. Although the surroundings are lovely it turns out that really only the prices are four star. Admittedly our party was accompanied by two sets of wedding guests and a group of England football supporters, who may well have been renegades from one of the wedding receptions but the service was execrable. I was expecting the food to be of the variety where you need a magnifying glass to see anything beyond the drizzle but there were several mouthfuls on each plate. Unfortunately, I somehow managed to choose something that contained two of my least favourite foods but that was my own fault.

My room is situated in the furthest reaches of the building, on the top floor and along an extremely long corridor. I struggle along with my case, which although no longer quite so full of books, was still heavier than my increasingly ‘twinging’ back was comfortable with. I come to terms with the room’s idiosyncrasies. The shower has no visible means of being switched on. I try turning, pushing and pressing various parts of the mechanism and am on the point of giving up when something I do results in water gushing out. Sadly, it took whoever was in the neighbouring room until 2.00am to work out how theirs worked and then they had a noisy and lengthy shower. Then there was the bed. To begin with I had twin beds that had been pushed together. I kept losing things down the narrow gap between the beds. Having retrieved the Kindle for the third time, whilst listening to midnight wedding revellers, I was beginning to despair. The bed was also as hard as ….. I will refrain from making any of the possible obscene similes here and just say it wasn’t very hard, not ideal when one has a bad back.

Of course none of this really mattered because we were there to meet our former school fellows and the chatting and reminiscing was in full force. We all have slightly different perceptions of the rarefied atmosphere that was our alma mater but agreed that we had an excellent grounding for our varied futures. Whether school days were the best or worst days of our lives, if we are historians, we should be recording our memories. Of course it is much easier to recall those memories in the company of those who shared them. If an actual reunion isn’t possible, what about a virtual one? Facebook, Google+, or just plain emails, are all possible vehicles for this. I and my classmates may not being doing this again in another forty years but a good time was had by all.

Then there was the journey home. Now, as I have said on previous occasions, I am no longer fit to be let out on my own. One of my former school fellows had offered to shepherd me back to the station. Where I come from two busses a day is considered a regular service but of course I am now almost in the metropolis so there are plenty of options, despite it being a Sunday. We are going for the tram. Ah, there are no trams. The police have cordoned off the area round our destination due to an illegal rave. I know I and my former classmates were on the rowdy side but to call us an illegal rave seems harsh. A bus driver is planning to go as close as the police will allow to the station and we hop on board. In my case the ‘hopping’ was more of a hauling but we are on our way. Although the road is closed, the station is open and I start the journey home through the engineering works and tube line closures. I manage to get an earlier than planned train out of London but sadly not early enough to get a different train from Exeter onwards. Two hours on a wooden bench at Exeter station puts paid to any remaining mobility in my back. Eventually home safe and sound. Now to edit the ‘year book’ that we are compiling; interesting to see the different paths that we have all taken.