October 10th.- Storm Force Winds!

I’ve not been travel sick since I was 10. Certainly never in a stationary vehicle but I came close last night! The wind was incredible and although fairly confident, there was a niggle at the back of my mind that The Goddess might get blown over. Also, not knowing the tides and the strength of the Sea Defences, the fact that our site did seem on a level, if not lower than East Fleet, the other side of the dyke, made me wonder how good their alarm system was. I’d already mentally planned a wade to the nearby amenities block and clambering on the roof.

Morning after the storm and the tide is in, where did my lovely beach walk go?

We had planned to book in another couple of nights, as we really loved it here but the forecast was for more of the same and a serious risk of coastal flooding. It was disappointing to be leaving Pinewoods, which, with good weather and out of season, would be hard to beat, anywhere.

We’ve yet to unravel the mysteries of the TV Satellite system, so with excellent WiFi, it was an added bonus to be able to watch TV via my laptop, not that we watched anything other than BBC Breakfast because, after weeks without, it seemed deliciously quirky to catch up with the news and weather, while sorting breakfast and planning our day.

We decided to move to Stonham Barns, as a more sheltered site, which is just round the corner from Mike’s Mother’s beautiful thatched cottage that she lived in, until a few years ago. It was heart wrenching for all of us when she had to sell up and move to Newport Pagnell but, time and tide waits for no man and as she is now 94 and unable to drive, there is no way she could have remained here for much longer.

We are on our way to Chelmsford and plan to be there Saturday. We are going for Mike to catch up with his half sister, Kate. It’s her birthday on Monday. Kate will be 56, yet we didn’t know she existed until July of last year. To say we were shocked is putting it mildly.

Mike’s Mother has made it clear that she wishes to have no contact with Kate and due to the circumstances, we do understand that. So Mum doesn’t know we are in touch with her youngest child. We respect what we have been told, that she wishes there to be no contact between her and the daughter she gave up at birth. However, we are old enough to do what we like. Mike has already met Kate, once. Spoken to her on the phone, several times. 

I’ve met up with her for dinner and in May went to stay with her and we went to London to see Muse together, which was one of my best ever concerts.

I refuse to keep Kate a secret, I just don’t, at the present time, choose to tell Mike’s Mum that we know about her.

A Bit More.

Staying at Wells Next the Sea was lovely and our old dog, Rowley was in seventh heaven.


I'm adding this extra post, so that I can put a few more photos in, as I'm restricted to 10 per post.

 Oystercatcher

 Curlew, their mournful cry is wonderful, almost heart-stopping at dusk.

And Crab Sandwiches, when you are so near Cromer, there has to be Crab Sandwiches!

Onto The Fens

Mike had a friend living in a little village, near to Wisbech

and we hadn't seen him for about 8 years. Jobs and distance made it difficult, especially as Mike worked weekends.

From when we first started our travelling, we’d decided that a visit to Dave and Bev in the cottage on The Fens had to be top of our list.

We had only expected to stay one night but we had such fun, catching up and seeing the local sights, we were asked to stay another night, so Friday night Bev cooked us dinner and Saturday night, I cooked a beef curry in the motorhome, beef left from the Roast at Rutland. Dave said it was the best curry he had ever tasted. I love Dave!  another night of merriment in the cottage ensued.

Sunday morning, Bev had to go in to work, (poor Bev, complete with hangover) she works for a company that supplies plants to Supermarkets and it operates 7 days a week. Dave said he’d take us out for breakfast in March.

Being something of a snob, I’d usually baulk at the idea of breakfast in a Wetherspoons Pub but the one in March was worth seeing and Eggs Benedict was enough to tempt me. It was the old Hippodrome Cinema and not a lot has changed.

After breakfast we left Dave, with happy memories of the weekend but later were to find we left with a little more than we’d bargained for. A rotten cold, complete with killer sore throat, which Mike managed to avoid catching for a week, then just as I was getting better, he started with it. You know you can get cough mixture for an irritating cough? Who’s supposed to take it? Me, or him because is cough is irritating the hell out of me!

Next stop was Wells Next the Sea, on the coast, in Norfolk. I had never, ever heard of this place. It was lovely, with beautiful beach walks, definitely a place to return to.

We had 4 nights there and 2 of the days, even though it was October,  was shorts, tee-shirts and flip-flops temperatures and we were planning to extend our visit but then Mother Nature changed our plans.

Moving East

Well that was the plan, only we decided another night at Haughton, Staffordshire, would be good, to have a rest and dinner in the local pub. Well, we were feeling rather flush after two days paid work. While we were there, we had an afternoon at RAF Cosford. Free! We like Free!! Some great planes there, good place to take children on a cold wet day, as huge displays under cover.

The next day we headed to Stamford, an absolute gem of a town that I accidentally visited last November and had vowed I would take Mike there. I did and he loved it, it’s like a smaller version of Bath and if you want to do a day of Christmas Shopping, you will find some excellent, out of the ordinary presents among the dozens of independent traders there, hardly a chain store in sight and well worth a day trip.

That evening we were booked into a site opposite the sailing club at Rutland Water. Why are sailing folk so up their own arses? Mike went into the Club to see where we were supposed to park and got short shrift, even though the site is obviously linked in some way to the club.

There was this field of caravans, all of which had obviously been there for ages, most with large awnings, yet not a single one was occupied. We fitted ourselves into a smallish gap between two vans, not wanting to be in the middle of the field on our own.

Had a lovely walk around the village of Edith Weston and part of the reservoir. A lovely, elderly lady came out of her house and insisted on giving us some apples from her garden.

We were cooking a large joint of beef for dinner that night and I decided to go the whole hog, homemade Yorkshire pudding too. It was lovely!

Later I did make a joke about the niggle in the back of my mind.  Where was everyone? To whom did all these caravans belong and where were they? Maybe we were about to be the latest victim of a Bates Motel type site owner?

We awoke hale and hearty the next morning and apart from a visit from a jumped up git from the Sailing Club who told us we should have parked in the middle of the field, there was no problem.

  

The Autumn Show

Having retired from Radio, Mike was surprised to receive an offer of a day’s work at the Autumn Show, Malvern but as this gave us an opportunity for a free weekend’s camping and entrance to the show, plus earning a bit of pocket money, it seemed too good a gift horse to look in the mouth.

It was rather exciting to park up at the show, the night before it started and be able to wander around, watching everyone setting up. We’d only previously seen it in the hubbub of Show days.

Saturday morning and there was a panic, as there had been an omission in booking someone for the gardening theatre, something Mike has been in charge of, many times, in the past. He offered to cover that and so, an extra day’s work was now coming our way. The pocket money was suddenly looking much more appealing.

The Show, as always had all the usual delights and the weather was good. We met up with many old friends.

However, as seems to be the way with me, there had to be a downside. On the first evening I had to get up to go to the bathroom in the night. I hadn’t realised I was used to the light showing the fridge was on, as an aid to negotiating the dog’s bed (did I mention Rowley is now travelling with us?) As we didn’t have electric hook-up that night, we were running it on gas. I could see the large white dog and stepped over him. What I hadn’t reckoned on was him not lying on his dark coloured bean bag, which I caught my foot it, crashed in through the bathroom door and fell face first against the washbasin, putting a tooth through my bottom lip in the process.

Mike had managed to lose the Neurofen somewhere and was very unpopular for the next ten minutes. Thankfully I had some frozen Broad Beans in the ice box and shoved a handful into a tea towel  and compressed my lip, until Mike managed to locate the tablets and after about 20 minutes of moaning and crying, I managed to go back to sleep.

Really odd, the next day I was only aware of my bruised and cut lip. The following day, the pain in my ribs, where I fell through the doorway was hell and made getting in and out of the cab agony for the next week. Not to mention lying in bed, when only my left side was an option.

We were making the most of the free camping at the Showground and planned to stay until Monday morning. On Sunday morning, our neighbours had packed up ready for a quick getaway in the afternoon. They had one of the few hook up points and as I do appear to have developed previously unsuspected blagging skills, asked if we could pay them  for the remainder of their unused electricity. No of course we couldn’t. We could have it for free!! So apart from nearly killing myself on the first night, it turned into a pretty good weekend.

Some of the sights of the Show.

The UK Tour Begins

After my disastrous encounter with next door's car, we collected Rowley, the dog and went to the village of Haughton, just outside Stafford. We stayed on a farm, which has good facilities, a Tea Room and small shop and some very cute animals. Dirt cheap too at £12 a night with electric hook-up. Only complaint, no Wifi. But I did survive that problem.

The village of Haughton has been awarded the best kept Large Village, in Staffordshire, for the last 3 years. I suspect this is a huge source of annoyance to the neighbouring village of Gnosall, the last, previous winner.

It was mainly because I wanted to go to the William Salt Museum, in Satfford to look at some books from the 1790s, which logged the meetings of the Rowley Regis Building Society, that we were staying here. I think they were the 13th, or 14th Society to be created and unlike the Building Society as we know it today, they were a group of individuals, who would meet once a month, in a pub and would order huge amounts of beef for a dinner. They would make a monthly payment into the society and between them would build a house, when completed a draw would beheld to see who would be given the first house. This would continue until, in this case, all 14 houses were built and the members each had a house. I knew that my 3 x great grandfather had been living in one of these Nailer's Cottages in 1841, together with his brother's family. Their surname was Ruston and from a newspaper article I once read, I knew a Ruston was one of the original members of the Building Society, 50 years earlier. So was fairly certain this would be my 4 x great grandfather.

It was really rather moving to read these hand written books, from more than 200 years ago and to see the X that Daniel Ruston made, as his signature.

There are two pubs in the village of Haughton and we walked, in the evenings, to The Bell. A good village pub with reasonable food. Our first night in there, we were sitting next to a group of people and suddenly everyone seemed to be getting their phones out. One of the party dropped to one knee and proposed marriage to the lady sitting next to him. She said yes and we all cheered and applauded. A lovely moment.

We hadn't gone to far from home on our first trip because on Friday, we needed to be at Malvern.

It does seem I will never quite stop my Husband from working!

What a Nightmare!!

Alarm was set for 4.15 am, to leave Ypres to catch the 7.10am ferry from Calais. The journey time should have been a little over an hour.

No! Only the French would close the entire Autoroute leading to this major port, in both directions, for weeks on end. Not only that , the diversion is through narrow, country, what we would class as B roads, with no lights and guess what, it was foggy. Very foggy.

There were times on that journey that driving into a solid brick wall seemed like a good option and there were times when I nearly did. Of course the signs were inadequate and we missed the ferry. Not only that, when we did make it to the port, again, the signs were pathetic and we, along with a few others, ended up in the Lorry section.

So we had to pay an extra £20 to catch the next ferry and sit kicking our heels for a couple of hours.

Once on the ferry, I managed to curl up on a seat and sleep for half an hour but I was very tired on the drive back up though England and the M25 is never good, at any time.

Having arrived home, we then had to go and do some shopping and for no other reason than I was exhausted, I reversed the bike rack over the bonnet of our next door neighbour’s car.

This was not a perfect day!

Time For Some Serious Reflection.

Our next planned stop after Bruges was something I had wanted to do for a long time. Something that really meant a lot to me.

As a child I was told by my Grandma that her older brother had died in the First World War. I also knew his name was in a book, in The Hall of Memory, in Birmingham, just alongside the new Library.

I didn’t full understand the significance then but there used to a be a series on the telly back then on a Friday night, which was when I would stay at Grandma’s house. It was called The World at War. The sombre music and black and white images gave me probably more understanding than a child really needed.

In later years when  I started researching the family and with the help of the Internet, realised, my Great Uncle Albert was one of the many thousands who died in the Ypres Salient, who had no known grave, as their body has never been found, or, identified.

My son, Simon, is in the Royal Navy and in 2004, was invited to go to Ypres for the evening ceremony at the Menin Gate. In his early 20s, Simon saw this as a bit of a jolly. Only when I told him about Albert, his thoughts on the trip rather changed. A strange thing happened, the date Simon crossed the Channel was actually the anniversary of Albert’s death and what had started out as a jolly holiday, turned into something much more meaningful for Simon, who took the time to visit many of the battle sites.

Since then I have wanted to go to Ypres myself and finally I was getting the chance.

We arrived at the town in the afternoon and I had already researched where we were going to park. It was free and easy walking to the Menin Gate.

In the afternoon we visited the Museum in town, dedicated to the 1914-18 War. It was interesting but there were some school parties going round and they did rather spoil the experience. However, some glares directed at the teachers, a bit of sighing and sitting in a resigned, I’m waiting sort of a way, did produce a fair amount of shooshing from some of those in charge.

In the evening we walked down to The Gate, where the traffic is stopped every night for the ceremony. We turned up about 20 minutes early. I suppose there were around a hundred people there. By the time the ceremony started, there must have been a thousand.This happens every night because the people of the town never want to forget the debt they owe to those who died, to give them freedom.

Not ashamed to say, I quietly cried throughout the whole thing.

The pictures below show Albert as a child, in a family group. He is far right. My Grandma is far left.

The other two photos are of him with three of his children, probably aged around 30. Then Albert in his uniform. He was 35 when he died. He was a talented singer, footballer and father of 4

The colour photos are from my evening at the Menin Gate.

The last black and white photo, taken from the Museum, shows how unrecognisable the countryside around the town became during the fighting.

Albert in his uniform, this is a section from his last known letter, written in September 1915, just before he died.

" This is part of Albert's last letter to Sarah, his wife written in September 1915.

I am writing this hoping it will not be necessary to forward it, I will leave it to someone to post, when they have certain news I am dead or missing.
During the next few days we shall be very fortunate indeed if we are not killed. There is a big attack coming on and my Battalion is in the front line. Our orders are to take two lines of trenches, so you see, this cannot be done without risk. 
In addition, prior to the attack, a mine is to be exploded just a few yards away and as we shall be lying in the open, there will be some weighty things flying about. Then there is the bombardment, the holding of the trenches… if we capture them, then a counter attack. Altogether it is odds that a few of us will cop something.
I hope you will not get this letter but if you do,
Remember my last thoughts were with you.
Albert died 25th September 1915."

The crowds starting to gather and before the road has been closed.

My Great Uncle, Albert Harrold, on the Menin Gate.

Traffic now stopped.

A happy family group, before their fourth child was born. They would have had no inkling of the terrible end awaiting Albert.

On Through Belgium.

We decided that Liege was a bit too busy for parking overnight, even though we had found a quiet, tree lined car park, for free but the City was really coming to life at 6 pm on a Saturday evening, with hordes filling the street cafes and the shops were still open. We thought the early hours might get a bit noisy, so we moved on and spent the night at a Motorway Services. A handy alternative when travelling at night and unlike home, you don’t get charged for staying more than 2 hours.

The next day we planned to use the Municipal Motorhome park by the Coach station, in Bruges. Water and Electric included and an easy walk into the town centre, through a Park. Not having Sat Nav, we did struggle a little finding the place and had a scary moment when we thought we had found it, tried to go through the barrier entrance but the car in front stopped and the barrier didn’t raise. They then sent their son back to tell us the Car Park was full and we needed to reverse out onto the main road. Mike had to go out and stop the traffic. That wasn’t my best moment!

Luckily, we had now spotted where we needed to be going, got ourselves set up and went for a walk around Bruges, which of course involved sampling a local beer and some chocolate.

We had been to Bruges, about 12 years ago and had always hoped to go back.

Doing it on the cheap £19.50 to park for the night, with water, electric etc seemed to good to miss.

Shall we dance?

Drooling!