Gregg Family

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Malpas Steam Rally - Sept 11th

We had planned this weekend around a yearly country fair exhibiting steam powered vintage tractors, held out on a farmers fields. These are truly beautiful beastly machines, especially when they are all fired up on coal.

There were about 40 full size steam tractors and rollers, and about 25 miniature ones. It seemed like a good activity for grandpas and grandsons.

There were also all sorts of vintage military vehicles, tractors, buses, trucks, and motorcycles. There were three personally-owned tanks. No need for the NRA in England I guess.

I've never encountered men with such toys!

There was a working steam fire engine pumping water. There were food booths and many antiques dealers were set up in tents.

There was also a vintage carnival, some rides powered by steam engines, and hobby tents. I was in mechanical engineer heaven. Debbie says I can have one.

Here's a link to the Malpas Steam Rally Website

Videos from the rally:

Some of the engines were getting stuck on the wet grass/mud.

Ironbridge, Blists Hill, and Llangolen canals - Sept 10th

Ironbridge, the site of the first cast iron bridge ever, in 1781.

We went to the Blists Hill Victorian Village . They had many period-dressed actors and such roaming the town. We learned a lot about children working the clay mines, brick firing, and early development of metal forging.

We were fascinated with the vast canal system covering Great Britain, and visited two canal aqueducts near Chirk. Here's a link to a map of the system, with hundreds of miles of canals and hundreds of self-operated locks and tunnels. The canal is generally only 8-ft wide, with some 16-ft wide places for passing, and occasionally a triangle for turning around. Before motors, horses pulled the boats from alongside the canal. The canals were built 200 years ago for the purpose of transport of materials and goods. Many people now own or rent up to 70-ft canal boats for pleasure.
This boat is on the highest aqueduct in the system, the Pontcysyllte aqueduct.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Avebury, Bath, St Fagans, and Orcop Sept 8,9

We took a train to Letchworth where we picked up our small motorhome and started driving on the left side of the road! The first stop was Avebury (click for link), a small village with ancient stone formations, sort of like Stonehenge without the tourists. No one really knows why the ancient people tipped up and arranged these stones, probably religion.

Then we drove on to Bath, parked outside town and took a bus into Bath. We had downloaded Jane Austen MP3 tour of the town, which was very informative. Bath has hot springs, originally used by Romans, and in Victorian times was thought to have healing powers, but it's just that people never took baths, and it was so refreshing to have a hot bath they just felt better, and some diseases were actually cured. While most of the residents were rich, there was a hospital for poor sick people to come to Bath and try to be cured, but they had to have 1 pound for transport of the body back home if they died, 2 pounds if from Scotland.

Thankfully, our GPS with ebay Europe chip worked, and we got around pretty good. The roads across Great Britain are a spider web, with a roundabout every couple miles, with three to six exits each. I like roundabouts better than stoplights, because you rarely have to come to a complete stop, but you have to concentrate on your driving much more than in the States, figuring out who has the right of way. Having just praised the GPS, it did get us into trouble on several occasions. Trying to get to the campground outside Bath, the GPS took us up a very small lane with rock walls on both sides, and cars were parked in this tiny lane further up the hill, so I had to stop and back all the way down the hill onto a busy street. There was a guy in his yard where we stopped, so I rolled down my window and explained that my GPS had directed me here, to which he said "happens all the time." I suspect that every motorhome and caravan (trailer) following GPS directions to that campground ends up stuck in the same lane. There was a wider main street about 20 meters on.

The next day we went the St Fagans open air museum (click for link) just over the border in Wales where some people only speak welsh, then headed towards Orcop, a town Debbies relatives about 5 generations back were from. Orcop is a very small village, and the roads got smaller and smaller as we got closer, with hedges very close on both sides of the road. There are virtually no shoulders on roads, so getting past an oncoming truck is a stressful maneuver. You basically find the left edge of the road by feeling with the steering, and even then you'll only have a couple inches clearance between mirrors. It's quite stressful. Occasionally, one vehicle has to back up to a wide spot to allow passage. I suppose a car would be easier to drive, but you wouldn't see as much over the hedges and walls which pretty much line every road.

Our GPS called the town Orcop-Holley (Debbie's grandfathers name), but there doesn't seem to be any trace of Holleys there now. According to one of Debbie's aunts who attended a family reunion in Orcop, there are two versions of who lost the family farm and fortune, either the American immigrants or those who stayed behind.

London Sept 4-8

On September 3rd, 2010, Debbie and Paul took off for London, England/Scotland, and Rome. We first spent four nights at a B&B in London, and went to a lot of museums. We had downloaded some MP3 walking tours of parts of the historic city, and some museums. One of the most interesting things about London is the transportation system, and getting to know how to get around. The underground subways (tube) is very quick, and the double-deck buses go everywhere.

We chanced upon the celebration of the 70th anniversary

of the Battle of Britain on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral. There were about 25 elderly (in their 90's) pilots and such, and their wives there, plus some dressed-up reinactors, and a real spitfire. There was also a flyover of a Lancaster bomber and spitfire from a WWII reinactment squadron. We talked to one old radio operator and his wife for quite a while. I think this event was especially significant because they don't expect to have many more. I was sure to tell the old guy thanks, but he didn't think it was that big of a deal.

We went to the British museum, which is curiously full of things from ancient Egypt, Syria, and Greece, not Britain.

The inscriptions would say these things were "found". I wondered if anyone would mind if I "found" some cool ancient British artifacts and brought them home to America....

This is me touching the original Stephenson's Rocket in the Science Museum, the first practical steam engine. We also went to the Victoria and Albert museum of design and fashion, the London transport museum, the British art gallery, and the Tate British, but we're not that into art, so we went through fairly quickly.

One of our favorite places was the Camden Lock Market. We went there in the morning just as things were opening. It's used to be a stables when shipping was done by canal barge and horses, but has been turned into a giant antiques market.

We went to a play "The Railway Children", a nice story with a real steam engine in the play, staged at a real railway station, with the audience on either side of the train track.