27 April 2008

Fun in Farndale - 26th April 2008

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The daffodils are out, and the best place in the UK to see them is Farndale in the North Yorkshire Moors. So off we went for a bit of horticultural ogling.

Each year thousands of people from all over the UK trek to the tiny little village of Low Mill for a glimpse of natural splendor which lasts no more than six weeks. The roads you drive down to approach Farndale are of the single lane, rock walls and hedges on either side variety, making the journey quite slow, but very picturesque. The other main impediment to rapid travel is the great profusion of pheasants currently out and about in the moors. We chased one down the road beeping our horn, as he simply wouldn't leave the bitumen! One of the park rangers told us that, as they are deliberately bred and released for the season, not all of them end up working out how the fly. The male ones are actually quite pretty and colourful, whilst the females are a dull brown.

The daffodils themselves didn't disappoint. Despite being the end of the season, with evidence of a certain amount of wilting, we got an unusually warm (20C) and sunny day which more than made up for it.

Of course, spring doesn't just mean flowers. The lambs were out frolicking and doing their best to look preposterously cute. I took the opportunity to shoot a few of them.

With my camera of course!

We took the 'scenic route' home, passing through many tiny farming villages. This is real James Herriot country and without a doubt the best part of England we have visited. We are looking forward to spending much more of our time in this area, which is not much more than an hour's drive from Hull.

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22 April 2008

Mini Maladies - 22nd April 2008

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Those who have ever owned a BMC orphaned car, know that they can make life a little interesting sometimes. I had such a typical experience this afternoon...

I decided to take a trip up to Malton this afternoon to pick up the cricket team's new kit (the old kit having been destroyed in the floods last summer). Malton is about a 30 mile drive north of Hull. The road to Malton is one of those North Yorkshire 'B' roads - the sort that Jeremy Clarkson tends to use when he needs to test drive the latest Aston Martin. So to be perfectly honest, my right boot was stuck firmly to the floor all the way there and half of the way back.

About half way back I noticed that the mini was cutting out at high revs and full throttle. I thought to myself, 'well it is probably time I had a look at the plugs and replaced the leads.' The problem got worse however, until I had no power at all and had to pull over to the side of the road. I had a good fiddle with the various leads and connectors under the bonnet, and when I tried again, the car started and was revving normally. 'Job's a gooden, time to offsky then' I thought.

Then I realized that the carpet was on fire. Apparently the floor had become rather warm. So I whipped the seats and various bits of carpet out of the car, stomped on the smoking bits, and waited for the car to cool down before continuing my journey. I must admit that this wasn't a problem I was ever likely to encounter in the mini at home, as it never had carpet in it in the five years I drove it. I can only deduce one of two things; either european safety regulations state that a car must detect if a driver is enjoying a casual interpretation of speed limits and must proceed to set itself on fire in order to protect the driver, or the numpty that restored the car last forgot about the heat shield. Still, all in a days work for a mini driver!

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13 April 2008

Cardiff - 12th & 13th April 2008

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We heard from Shaun that he and Annabel would be in Cardiff for the weekend, so we thought we would go down and see them and Tad who is currently studying in Cardiff.

So in the wee hours of Saturday morning (about 8:30am) we headed off on the series of motorways linking Hull and Cardiff, a journey of about 250 miles. We stopped about half way, at a set of motorway services on the M42 just south of Birmingham, and noticed an awful lot cars were parked in the car park. A lot of British cars in fact. It turns out that it was exactly 1 year to the day that the Longbridge factory shut down, and so a ‘Pride of Longbridge’ day was being held. A whole platoon of Rovers, Austins, MGs and other BMC orphans had gathered in the car park and were then driving to Longbridge in commemoration of the history of the plant and the cars built there. If only we had taken our mini, we may never have made it to Cardiff.



We booked a night in the same hotel in which Shaun and Annabel were staying, so we met up with them at the hotel and went to the new developments around Cardiff Bay for some lunch. Cardiff Bay houses the Millennium Centre, a performing arts centre with quite striking architecture.

After lunch we headed into town to meet up with Tad. Cardiff is quite compact and with a population of around 300,000, not much bigger than Hull. The five of us had a lovely stroll around the Millenium Stadium, the Castle and Bute Park before retiring to the hotel to freshen up and make arrangements for dinner.

It was obviously a busy night in Cardiff as no restaurants could fit a reservation for five in until nine o’clock, so we ended up meeting up in the bar at the hotel, which was quite nice, for a pub meal and a few drinks. It turns out that we must have been quite thirsty, as we eventually poured Tad into a cab at 3am before the long journey back to our beds. Thank goodness the hotel had an elevator! That one flight of stairs was probably insurmountable.

After a quick kip and a nice greasy breakfast we were back on the road.

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Steamy Pickering - 6th April 2008

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Due to our being inundated with a request to continue blogging our activities over here in England, Maria and Fletch Abroad is back and the same as ever! As a result we have decided to organise interesting weekend activities to provide fodder for the blog. It’s a real trial I can assure you, but we do it for our adoring public.

For our first weekend after returning from our Easter holidays, we decided to check out the Spring Steam Festival. There is a railway line operated by a bunch of enthusiasts called the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. This particular weekend they had some visiting steam engines running on the line as well as their own stock. We grabbed Antonio, a colleague of Fletch’s who happens to live in the flat below us, filled up a thermos and drove from Hull up to Pickering, a journey of just over an hour.

Pickering station was extremely crowded and we had some difficulty getting a seat on the 2 pm train, as much of the train was given over to dining carriages for Sunday lunch. Drawn by Bittern, a Gresley A4 class locomotive which once pulled the King’s Cross to Newcastle leg of The Flying Scotsman, the train’s 18 mile journey to Grosmont was extraordinarily picturesque despite the weather which by this time had turned decidedly soggy.

Grosmont houses the maintenance sheds for many of the NYMR’s locomotives and we spent an hour or so having a goosy gander at the various steam engines before jumping on a train pulled by a similar locomotive called Union of South Africa. By now the weather had turned decidedly wintery, and the journey back to Pickering felt quite like Christmas.

The roads driving back to Hull were quite treacherous and we decided to do something that involved less driving the next weekend.

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