Robot Claw – Page 607 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

To The North

July 29, 2010

Got any questions? Put them in the comments…

After Keswick we headed north into Scotland. But not before a morning walk to get some (English) money. As you can see, the weather had changed overnight:

Again, lovely British weather 🙂

The drive to Scotland was uneventful except for the bit over the mountain. I include the following shot not only to show how low the visibility was, but also because it is the only shot of the car I ended up taking!

On many of our long drives we have stopped at rest stops to get vittles. This has often been M&S Simply Food, especially such things as fruit cups, cheese and lemonade. Brunch therefore, has often looked like this:

Edinburgh is a very, very old city (the first inhabitants occupying the location of the current castle 6000 years ago) and there are a great deal of old buildings in the downtown area. But more on that in tomorrows entry!

Today we just frittered around the city to get our bearings:

As you can see the chameleon circuit makes the Tardis look a bit different up here. And yes, that’s a Nessie hat!

This bill poster demonstrates the cavalier attitude the scots have toward copyright:

And here’s a couple of food shots, of KLS and JBF:

And here’s a shot of what I absolutely positively did not have for dinner!

Strangeday

July 28, 2010

Our next destination after Blackpool was Keswick, in the popular Lake District in the northwest. However we decided on a detour to Barrow-in-Furness, the ancestral home of KLS’s grandma.

I was unprepared for how reminiscent of Australia much of England is. It is perhaps obvious given our heritage, but the similarities go far beyond languages into such things as street signs, shops and even the ‘flavour’ of the variety shows on television. Even though we only whirlwinded through, Barrow-In-Furness was the place that reminded me most of my home town Newcastle, and it was a bit surreal. Walking through an empty pedestrian shopping district on a Sunday almost gave me Hunter Street deja vu.

One of the most unexpected delights of our trip was to be found in Barrow – and that was Furness Abbey.

Once the seat of power in the region, the abbey was abandoned hundreds of years ago and now exists as a large and spectacular ruin.

As you can see we were free to wander (and climb up on) the ruins as much as we wanted. The site is managed by the national heritage organization and they have done a great job explaining the history of the abbey and the events that led up to todays ruin.

We couldn’t help but imagine how suitable the ruins would have been for a movie site. I also dubbed it the best live-action AD&D site in the world. Take a look at that shot above right – couldn’t that be a room of storopers just awaiting an unwary adventurer? 🙂

After Barrow, we drove a motion-sickeningly-and-yet-mesmerizingly-beautiful road to Keswick. Here I am making friends with the carved bear outside the B&B:

Yep, that’s the umbrella I bought in Blackpool. At this point, we haven’t quite worked out how to get it back to the USA…

Keswick is a picturesque little town on a lake surrounded by sheep fields. Take a look:

The water was crystal clear and mirror-still. Although it wasn’t raining, the sky was overcast and the clouds sat low on the surrounding mountains:

Late in the day we walked through a sheep field into the town…

…where dinner was Chinese followed by ice-creams each!

Seaside Rendezvous Too

July 28, 2010

Ok, where was I… ummm… oh yes: Scarborough!

Scarborough was a moderately low-brow seaside resort. Beautiful, but they did sell chocolate gentleman’s sausages so they can’t claim to be prideful. However the next day we cut across the country to one of the most famous seaside towns of Blackpool.

There it is: REAL ENGLISH WEATHER!

We had enjoyed glorious sunny days for the entire first week of our trip, and it wasn’t until Blackpool that the rain came. Even then it was little more than a heavy drizzle, but enough to make me go and buy an umbrella (see a future entry for details…)

The leftmost shot shows the Blackpool tower (admission, £17, we passed) and both the central and (in the distance) northern piers. These were like the Brighton pier; containing amusement parks, arcades and restaurants. The rightmost shot is looking back in the other direction (both shots were taken from the south pier, at different times) toward Pleasure Beach (the rollercoaster).

I went down to the waters edge and put my hand in. It was very, very cold and great amounts of sand were suspended in the water. I imagine it would have been an uncomfortable swim.

Pleasure Beach is a very good looking amusement park and is apparently Britains top tourist destination. We walked past just after it opened (our hotel was right next door) and the lines to buy tickets were mind-bendingly long. We didn’t go in, which was a shame since that giant coaster is one of the worlds tallest and looked like a lot of fun.

Here’s two pieces of airbrush art from rides on one pier:

Yep, Blackpool isn’t about high class 🙂

The streets were alive with Britoners of all ages and all classes. Many of these were gangs of roaming females all dressed alike: hen parties (aka. bachelorette parties). Drunkenness was on full public display. Everyone was having fun.

I ate the best fish’n’chips of the trip here:

< Yum!

And JBF and I shot some Terminators:

And here are the horsey rides, protecting themselves from the rain:

Blackpool had 1.5 surprises for me. The first requires some backstory. For many years Britains only official Doctor Who museum/exhibit was in Blackpool, right on the promenade. It closed late last year, but I was surprised and elated to find that the gift shop is still there. I was amazed by some of the stuff they had for sale, and even made a few purchases. Alas most of the stuff was either way too expensive or impossible to bring home. Such as the finest item of them all:

< Yum!

The other surprise relates to the Blackpool Illuminations. Every year in September the city turns on a large amount of lights all along the seafront. This is a big spectacle, and is always done by someone famous (such as David Tennant or the Top Gear guys). Even though the lights are not on yet, they are there, and you can guess my reaction when we discovered the particular sets of lights outside our hotel were themed around Doctor Who!

Blackpool was kitschy and quaint, saucy and quite a bit special. I wish we’d had more than one day there.