Three days in London

The primary purpose for a birthday treat was to see Paddington the Musical at the Savoy Theatre but it morphed into three days and some interesting visits.

Having taken the train we checked into a Z Hotel (excellent) and then traced Burlington Bertie's footsteps along The Strand to visit the King's Chapel of the Savoy with the stunning ceiling, stained glass and plaques representing hundreds of Knights of the Realm.

Paddington was just enchanting, following his arrival into the Brown family and then paralleled the original Paddington film (the one with Nicole Kidman as the evil taxidermist). 
The effects, with a person of small stature in the bear costume and with a singer and puppeteer operating the facial expressions, were amazingly realistic.

Next morning it was a Thames Clipper to Battersea Power Station and to ascend The Chimney.  The lift pops out of the top of one of the chimneys for 360 degree views - you can see it in the photograph.
Spectacular, but the building interior is just a very up-market shopping mall.   
The lower photograph shows the large white tentage at the Chelsea Flower Show

From there a Clipper ride all the way down-river to Greenwich and a couple of rides back to the hotel on the DLR and Underground.

Dinner was at the newly re-opened Simpsons in the Strand - very traditional setting and food (Daily Telegraph readers and men in red trousers!)  An excellent dinner.

. . . and then on Friday morning the National Portrait Gallery before the train home.

A day out in January

 The timber order for the table I'm making was ready so, as the delivery cost for a small order was expensive, I went to Shepton Mallet to collect it - and to make the fuel and time cost worthwhile added a trip to the Haynes Motor Museum.  That's Haynes as in the publisher of car and other manuals - a collection of about 300 cars.

 

The warehouse at Timbersource - the saws and planers etc were at the back of the building, I couldn't go round there - my timber is on the upper shelf of the rack on the right hand side.

. . .  and at the Haynes Museum there was a  C-registration, 1965 Austin Mini in Island Blue.   This is the same as my first car, HLC823C, in the identical colour, purchased in June 1965.

Having had a past love affair with Land Rovers I thought this door hanging on the wall in the museum cafe was good fun!

All in all a great day out - albeit that it started to rain heavily when I reached Gloucester going south on the M5 and it didn't stop all day, becoming even heavier on the northbound return. 
If it hadn't been raining I was also going visit the Fleet Air Arm Museum at nearby Yeovilton - my previous visit was in the very hot summer of 1976.

A weekend away - Northumberland

 A trip, staying in Alnwick, to visit the "Christmas at Bamburgh Castle" tableau - themed on Treasured Tales - including Captain Hook, Jack & the Beanstalk, Aladdin, Rumpelstiltskin . . . and more.

The Christmas Tree was constructed with a spiral staircase and stacks of books amongst the decorations (a similar theme to the St Pancras Christmas tree a couple of years ago)

This chap, made from sheets of Corten steel was at Alnmouth

Other highlights were a visit to Cragside with a 6-mile scenic drive around the enormous estate (in the rain!) - and on the way home, the North East Land, Sea & Air Museum in Sunderland.

I did go to the Harrogate Woodworking Show on the way up to Northumberland - managing not to buy anything save for a £20 bundle of "useful hardwood offcuts"

UPDATE to Cotswold Airport - Part 2

Update to post - click:  Cotswold Airport - part 2

Looking through some old photographs I found one of me (aged 20) in the actual seat in the Britannia in 1968!  It's the last row on the port side of the aircraft - my father had the window seat.

Cotswold Airport - part 2

Continuing the tour we drove around the airfield to where the only surviving Bristol Britannia is parked - owned by a preservation trust and looked after by volunteers.

The aircraft is in Royal Air Force Transport Command livery.

Built in 1960 at Short Brothers in Belfast as an RAF transport aircraft it was taken out of service and sold to Monarch Engineering in 1976.  Subsequently registered to Afrek for commercial service in West Africa before being re-purchased by Monarch and sold to a Cuban airline followed by a short stint back in Africa before finally landing at Kemble in 1997.  

A very varied past life!

Here's the nostalgia bit . . . . 

What was especially interesting to me about the Britannia aircraft was that I flew in one (G-ATLE) in February 1968 as a passenger on a "charter flight tour" with Transglobe Airways- we flew from Gatwick to Gander in Newfoundland to refuel, then to Jacksonville, Florida (the trip was organised by a motor-racing club to go to the Daytona 500) - then to Jamaica for 3 days, Caracas, Venezuela for 2 days and then home via a day in Barbados for refuelling and crew rest and another refuelling stop in the Azores en route to Gatwick.

A couple of grainy photographs of me at Gander (excuse the Buddy Holly glasses, they were fashionable at the time):

Today's visit to the Britannia enabled me to get a photograph sitting in the exact same seat at the very back of the aircraft (albeit not the same one)

Followers will recall that I published a photograph of the Britannia G-ATLE a few months ago [  https://robgul-stuff.blogspot.com/2025/04/bristol-britannia-aircraft.html ]

Cotswold Airport - part 1

Another outing today, to Cotswold Airport at Kemble, near Cirencester (formerly RAF Kemble)

It's now the site of numerous aviation businesses including a "breakers yard" where retired aircraft are stripped of their engines, avionics and other re-usable/re-cyclable parts and broken up.

The Airport also hosts a number of historic aircraft including a Boeing 747-400 in British Airways "Negus" livery - it's maintained under a "preservation contract" as both a museum and as an event space for dinners, parties and even weddings.

 

The interior retains some first, business, premium economy and economy seating at the front and on the upper deck with the rear of the aircraft as the open event space.

The photograph of only about 40% of the economy seating area shows just how big it is with the rows of 10-across seats removed!

The Greatest Gathering - 200 years of railways

A big event at the Alstom train building works at Derby to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the first railway.  Lots of locomotives of every type and age together with complete trains.

A grand day out with my brother-in-law, Martin.

Just a few of the locos:

Aircraft technology

The Science Museum storage facility has a piece of the wreckage from a de Havilland Comet aircraft - recovered from the Mediterranean near Elba  (One of the 3 aircraft that disintegrated through decompression in flight in the early 1950s)

What is special about this item is that engineers were able to identify the reason for the failures - the windows and other panels had square corners and the expansion/shrinking that an aircraft experiences in flight with different pressure caused stress cracks at the corners of the apertures (they can be seen in the photograph)

This discovery is the reason why windows, doors and other panels on today's aircraft fuselages are rounded - reducing the stresses.

The Science Museum - not as you know it!

We had a tour of the Science Museum Group's "storage facility" at the Science & Innovation Park near Swindon.  

A purpose-built 300 x 90m building (The Hawking Building) houses over 300,000 items across a massive range of science and engineering subjects.  Items that are being "stored for the nation" and "conserved, not restored" - some items are swapped out with the main museum sites or loaned to other museums. There is also a facility for researchers.

The photographs just give an idea of the scale and diversity of the contents - the storage system itself was pretty impressive too!

The tours are only arranged from time-to-time with advance booking - well worth looking out for the booking dates.  

. . .  and a few bikes too.

Biggin Hill Battle of Britain Museum

 

A visit to the museum and adjacent chapel - with both a Spitfire* (pictured) and a Hurricane on display outside.

The museum has a fascinating display of RAF memorabilia and information panels depicting the methods for tracking approaching enemy aircraft and the efficient deployment of aircraft across 11 Group Fighter Command in 1940.   

The roles of women of the Air Transport Auxiliary (the pilots that delivered new aircraft from the factories) were illustrated together the WAAFs managing communications and aircraft movements. 

*the Supermarine Spitfire is always thought of as "the aircraft" in the Battle of Britain but there were considerably more Hawker Hurricanes, about two-thirds of the total.

Airbus aircraft factory tour

In September 2024 we toured the Airbus plant at St Nazaire, France.

The fuselages for all of the Airbus aircraft are built there, partially fitted out and then transported to the assembly plant at Toulouse* where they meet up with the tail-plane and wings etc.

Pic 1: The factory floor (we weren't allowed photographs and had to hand in our passports for the duration of the tour)

Pic 2: The various large Airbus parts are transported by ship . . . and

Pics 3 & 4: The custom-built Airbus transport aircraft (based on an A350) with a massive hold area - nicknamed The Beluga for the obvious likeness to a whale!

On a previous trip to the area I saw a number of Beluga flights.

* The tour is on "the list to do" - tied in with some holiday in SW France.

Brooklands Museum - a day out

A day out at the Brooklands Museum, Weybridge, with two of my daughters and two grandchildren.

Pic 1 - Z in the McLaren race car simulator (achieving fastest time of the day)

Pic 2 - F at the controls of a (complete) Vickers VC10 aircraft (with an ex BA Flight Engineer volunteer guide)

The museum is, obviously, on the site of Brooklands the world's first motor racing circuit and the neighbouring Vickers aircraft factory - really interesting exhibits.

10 December 2024

Flying boats in Auckland

Two Short Brothers flying boats - in the Auckland Motor & Aviation Museum.

Sunderland with gun turrets

Solent passenger aircraft

Handrail in the Auckland Art Gallery

Interesting wood panel wall with integral handrail beside a shallow ramp - in the Auckland Art Gallery.

A plywood pod in a museum

 Just been to New Zealand for 5 weeks - there will be some posts of various interesting stuff!

This is a "pod" made from layers of plywood with internal ribs - part of an exhibit at the Museum in New Plymouth. There are a couple of seats inside and an interactive screen.