Grandad's photos

We spent the last day in Glendalough checking out a few things that we still had not seen. Up in the valley there were a lot of ruins from mining operations, including this stone that has been cut in two somehow. The cut faces were exactly flat - how would you do that?



We had to leave our lovely modern self-catering cottage in Glendalough for the much more down-market YHAs, and it was a bit sad to see Ireland disappearing behind the plane's wing.



After travelling from Ireland on Aer Lingus A320 to Birmingham, we picked up our Vauxhall Corsa from National/Alamo and set off for three days in Stratford-Upon-Avon, followed by 3 days in Arundel, close to the South Coast near Chichester.




Here is the Stratford Youth Hostel and The Garrick Inn, said to be UK's oldest pub.

Stratford has a wide range of things to see that are Shakespeare-related, as well as exorbitant parking charges, nearly $NZ3 per 20 minutes that soon chased us out.



We looked at the Shakespeare's Birth-place exhibition, followed by a stroll around the town's canals and a visit to Anne Hathaway's Cottage.

England has an extensive canal network that was built around 1790, before the railways were invented and took over carting freight. Canadian Geese have moved in and become a pest.



Here's how to get your canal-boat through a lock. Having the wife steer is helpful, leaving the men to operate the locks, puff on their pipes and give advice.



Once the boat enters the lock, the lower gates are closed and the upstream valve is partly opened, to flood the lock.



When the levels equalise, the upstream gates are opened allowing the boat to pass through.



Anne Hathaway's Cottage: a stunningly preserved cottage from the 1600's, kept in the Hathaway family for hundreds of years and handed over to a Trust in good condition for the public to view. It is a well-to-do farmer's cottage, originally with 70 acres of land.




Travelling around the Cotswolds was most interesting, every street is a photo opportunity. This one is from Stow-on-the-Wold.

We visited Chedworth Roman Villa, dated about 300AD. A farmer found some brickwork in the 1800's and uncovered many of the old stone walls, preserving any artifacts and fitting caps to the stone walls to prevent them deteriorating further. He built a museum on the site and people visited from all over England. It is now run by the National Trust.



This was a 30-room mansion, with views across the fields. Only the stonework is existing, the timber walls and roof have long gone.



Many of the floors had under-floor heating, powered by a couple of fires and a few slaves working to keep them stoked.



3 rooms were bath houses, under-floor-heated, with detailed mosaic tiles.



The Heritage Motor Museum was next. As we didn't have time when travelling North to see Donington Park, this was second best. This MGB has been cut down the middle.

We visited Charlecote Manor, entering through a long drive with tame deer wandering around.




Unfortunately you can't take photos inside these National Trust properties which have elaborate interiors and many fine paintings.

We headed down to West Sussex just to get a feel for where the Greentrees came from. It actually becomes Hampshire, and by chance we spotted a sign to Warblington Church as that was listed as one of the birth places in the family tree.



Warblington Church is the church of St Thomas Becket, and there are ruins of a small castle nearby.



We were really lucky to find this gravestone, and it led to further research in the museum in the nearby town of Havant where they were most helpful and gave us 30 pages of Greentree info (free), followed by some newspaper clippings the next day from Waterlooville. Some of the Greentrees were in fact a bunch of ratbags and Australia was their next destination on a convict ship. The Poms were a bit bemused that we found convict ancestors interesting. Not in their family trees!



We had a beer in this nearby pub, by a bridge leading to Hayling Island. Looking to the right of the pub you can see the Warblington castle ruins and the spire of the church. On a map, look just East of Portsmouth.



We headed for Battle to see the Battle of Hastings site but were running a bit late as well as not finding anywhere to park. A visit to Bodiam Castle nearby was most interesting, a genuine moated castle truly from the 'days of knights'.

Arundel has the most stunning castle and church dominating the town.



Here are 2 photos of the Arundel Castle's moods.



The river Arun runs through Arundel, out to sea in Littlehampton.

Friday, our last day in England was a bit unplanned, we pretty much followed our nose to see what we could find, as well as enjoy our last pub lunch. After deciding not to visit the Arundel Castle due to the exorbitant entry charges, we headed south out of Arundel to Littlehampton.



It has a harbour on the outlet of the river Arun, with fishing boats, Royal Lifeboat, yacht marinas and a gravel beach with bathing sheds.



It also had a pleasant wildlife park where we photographed several of England's birds and one of some more squirrels that chattered at us from up in the trees.



The Magpies in England and Ireland are quite different from ours, with a long tail.



A Coot and a Moorhen.



Right is a Black-headed Gull, in winter plumage, it loses its black head plumage.


Ruth tells me this is a Wagtail, and it's not a common bird.



The last place we visited was 'Polesden Lacey', a large manor house in Surrey that we spotted while on the way back to Heathrow. A lot of famous people have stayed there over the years. Being National Trust it was free entry.


Some squirrels were hopping about close to the walking path in the grounds, gathering acorns. Apparently they forget where they bury them.

Then to Heathrow, wasting over an hour in first-gear traffic jams on the M25 followed by bedlam at Heathrow Terminal 3 with far too many people trying to leave London at once on a Friday evening. There was a long queue just to join the long queue for passport control.



Air NZ flew us on this 747 'Bay of Islands' which appears to be one of the older in the fleet and the entertainment screens did not work properly, resulting in Air NZ refunding us 60 Airpoints Dollars. Pretty expensive for 300 people, about $18,000 worth of refunds. A better computer engineer would be a good idea. The trip back through Hong-Kong was uneventful, and the new Hong-Kong airport was a nice relaxed place, with free internet. I didn't take any pictures as I was worried about being nabbed by government officials who may not like a Nikon, but I would have like one of the 'plane-wash' crew cleaning the dirt off the tail of a British Airways 747. In fact we noticed most of the planes at the airport were very grubby looking, I think China's air pollution is causing it.