PLANES! Duxford Imperial War Museum (Ashwell) 1 November - 4 November

The Blackbird. Almost as cool as our Corolla. Almost.

Anyone who is not interested in planes should probably skip this post.

On our back to London we stopped off at Ashwell for a couple of days to sort out the van, and to see the Duxford Imperial War Museum. It is based at an old aerodrome, which had been an RAF base from the First World War through to 1961. Most of the exhibitions are based in the original World War Two hangers. It is still a working aerodrome and they have several air shows a year.

Inside the main hanger, they really stuff the planes in there. That is an Avro Vulcan bomber in the background.

Jane piloting a helicopter - kind of.

The Concorde. The nose 'droops' down on approach to landing so the pilots can see where they are going.

Not much room. The hull expands by a foot when flying leaving a gap in the inner hull above the flight engineer. Apparently it was a jolly jape to stuff his hat in there, thus trapping it when the plane cools down and the hull contracts again.

Very, very cramped - I'm kneeling on the floor. If I was sitting on the chair there would only be a couple of inches between the top of my head and the overhead locker.

An Avro Vulcan - the UK's nuclear deterrent until they started putting nuclear missiles in submarines.

Nuclear bombs go here.

One of these is a deadly attacker of the skies, and the other is a plane.

The 'Conservation in Action' hanger had the museum's current restoration projects on display, and you can watch the workers in action. It is incredible, and gives a sense of the huge scale and complexity of the projects. I also loved the 'Flying Aircraft' in the Hanger 2. While the museum itself does not have any flying planes (due to the cost and complexity), this hanger houses the privately owned planes which ARE in flying condition. The museum staff services and restores them, and the planes are often used for filming. We recognised a couple from various movies including "Memphis Belle".

A B-17 in for restoration. 

The wings.

These are the privately owned flying planes. We could have bought shares in a flying boat at 17,000 Euro a share. Maybe for Christmas.

No plane builder's cleavage thankfully.

On the other side this plane is the Memphis Belle (from the movie)

There were two stars of the show for me:

The Concorde - the fastest passenger plane ever with a top speed of over mach 2 (2,170 kmh), it set the speed record for a civil plane in 1974 which still stands. The Boeing we flew to the UK on has a maximum cruising speed of a bit over 900kmh.  It only made any profit for the airlines operating them because the French and UK governments wrote off ALL the development costs.  It's also a good thing it only took 3.5kms to cross fly from London to New York - it is very, very cramped inside.

The SR71 Blackbird - this is a reconnaissance plane that was designed to fly faster and higher than any missile. It still holds the records for fastest and highest continual level flight (also set in the 70's).

Favourite amazing facts:
 - The heat of flying at over Mach 3.3 (3,500+kmh) and at over 80,000 feet meant the plane expanded (like the Concorde). So when it was sitting on the runway, cold, nothing 'fitted' properly and it would leak fuel.
- The pilots had to wear pressure suits to deal with the heat and atmospheric pressure. These became the space suits they used on the space shuttle. On landing, the canopy was over 300 degrees celsius.
- It is mainly constructed out of titanium, which they had to get from the Soviet Union - quite an impressive feat in the middle of the cold war.

The American Air Museum -  a very cool building.

A B-52 Stratofortress - it is HUGE!

Duxford, good with planes, not so hot with geography. 

New fact - the pointy cones in the engines are to slow the air down from supersonic to subsonic speeds.

Also, a quick shout out to the village of Ashwell - we didn't take any photos because we only saw it at night - but it seemed lovely!

The REAL highlights of the visit - the pre-fab house!!!!!!!! And......

...........THE VEGETABLE GARDEN...............!!!!

London- 4th till 8th November

Once again we came, we ate, we took next to no photos!  Prior to our flight home to NZ we took the chance to spend a few days in London.  We dropped the motorhome off for a bit of TLC and stayed in a hotel in South Kensington.  We spent a lovely few days catching up with friends and family.

Dinner at La Chapelle with Marnie and Sam

A superb degustation menu with matched wines at La Chapelle with the lovely Marnie and Sam got us off to a great start.  The highlight for me was probably the crab ravioli or the intense mushroom risotto, although the pigeon deserves a mention.  It was incredibly tender and actually quite delicious!

Inside the V and A museum - these are plaster casts of famous bits of sculpture. That is Hadrian's column (in two bits)

This was a wooden sculpture from the late 1700's and was owned by the Tipoo Sultan (for anyone who has read the Sharpe books). When the handle is turned the tiger growls, claws and bites the British soldier, who emits cries of anguish. 

A gorilla made out of wire coathangers.

We got to spend some time with my sister Sarah and my brother David, sister-in-law Justine and nephew Hudson.  It was also fabulous to catch up over a lovely, lazy (for us!) Sunday lunch with Amanda.  I have no photographic evidence of any of this!

Throw in a bit of shopping and some mooching around the V&A museum, and that's that!  Off to NZ we go!

York, England 26 October - 1 November

Clifford's Tower - much beloved by the local geese.

After a fairly wide ranging adventure with Josh and Helen we decided to find somewhere we could stay put for a few days and decided on York.

What a contrast! The weather picked up, the city itself was crowded and busy and the campground we wanted to stay at was fully booked! We found another one quite close by, which was an easy bike/stroll along the river.

Clifford's Tower also had a mirrorball in the middle - if you look carefully you can see  torches hanging from the handrails. 

Going for a walk around the walls.

The River Ouse.

We also went on the world's most boring brewery tour - the guide (sitting) spoke in a monotone and somehow didn't use any punctuation. Or conjunctions (joining words, to everyone who did irrelevant stuff at school like science or maths).

The York Minster. This door is about halfway along the length, it's pretty big.

Looking up inside the tower.

The Chapter House - perfectly circular and quite spectacular.

The gargoyles and little carvings are always the best bit.

The view from the top of the tower, it has been a while since we went up one. They have set times for the tours to make sure that people are not going up and down the stairs at the same time as there is nowhere to pass. I had to turn sideways to get through one bit.

The world's largest digital photo 'of its kind' (whatever that means) according to the information panel. 

Look at those angry, angry eyes. I banged her on the head a bit putting the helmet on, and it got a bit stuck getting it off. Anyone who has owned a cat knows that eyes like that mean you are about to scratched in the face.

Out for a drink at the Kuja Lounge. Normally an Old Fashioned has a couple of measures of bourbon in it  - not an entire glass.  I gently nursed a pint of mid strength beer for the next hour.

We went out for a lovely steak meal. The service was rubbish, but it was OK because the food was great and they forgot to charge us for the bottle of wine.

'......and then I strangled him to death with my bare hands. Are you listening?'

The ruined abbey in the grounds of the museum.

We had a recent comment from someone, I won't say who, that there were 'too many photos of Josh and Morgan holding hands and not enough photos of Jane. So here we go Barb, this one is especially for you.

We took it pretty easy -  we had a few bits and pieces to do around the van, plus boring admin stuff we had put off doing while we had our mates with us. It was great being able to do this within an easy walk of town.

York was quite bustling, it must have been school holidays for the first few days we were there - and it was weird to see queues at attractions for the first time in ages. The main attractions in York are the old city walls, which almost completely encircle the city, and the York Minster - one of the largest Gothic Cathedrals in Europe.

We also went to the movies (Tintin! It was ace), went to the markets, and went out for various meals and drinkies.  An excellent stop, and we enjoyed ourselves a great deal (we did catch ourselves saying Josh/Helen would like......sigh)

Is it going to be as good as that picture on the wall?

Yes, yes it is.

And for desert, a pork roll with crackling and apple sauce. 

Crepes with Nutella! Eeeeeeeeeee!

We found a pub that only served craft beer and ale - and had about 15 kinds on tap. Josh would have loved it!

This place was called 'Evil Eye' and was a very studenty bar that did great cocktails and really, really good asian food. We felt old. 

Jane's secret, Bile Beans.

This is not York, it is a village called Barnard Castle where stayed for a night. It is such a cool photo I thought I would put it in.