Category Family History
Who Do We Think We Are
I blame Michael Portillo. The man has spent years traversing Britain by train, hunting out the quirky and obscure on our behalf. Our second “Portillo” was a visit to Barters Bookshop, in the old Alnwick railway station. One of the walls has a list of all the Alnwick railway workers, and there are several Dodds […]
Border Country
It was Sunday morning, and time for our first ever UK orienteering event. The local club, Newcastle and Tyneside Orienteers (NATO), were staging an urban race in Killingworth, which is an outer suburb of Newcastle. It was very relaxed, with a “choose your own start time and course”. We felt that we’d done our share […]
Wunderland
We’d saved a couple of things for a rainy day – but we haven’t had one so far. The first destination was the Emigration Museum (Ballinstadt), followed by a mandatory visit to Hamburg’s no 1 tourist attraction and Hobbsy recommendation, Miniatur Wunderland. Both could potentially occupy many hours. We coped with a replacement bus service […]
Livin’ La Vida Local
German weather forecasting is a dark art, clearly not yet mastered by the meteorological people. Today was meant to be raining, with possible thunderstorms. Instead it was blue skies with some innocuous clouds, and a temperature that topped out at 30 degrees. Plan A was to visit indoor venues, but instead we leapt straight into […]
Family Matters
Saturday night was the party – about 40 of my aunt Beryl’s closest friends and family gathered to celebrate her 80th birthday. It was a lovely night when we had a chance to catch up with relatives long unseen, and meet their partners and kids. There was a cupcake cake, speeches, and lots of reminiscing. […]
Gone West
Half of dipidydoo has headed west – Ian and I have joined my family in a visit to Perth. The occasion is my aunt Beryl’s 80th birthday. Also here are my cousins Mark, Jess and Sue, and my other aunt Carol. We tried to work out when all the cousins were last together in the […]
Gallipoli – Windswept and (Extremely) Interesting
In the words of my favourite Scotsman Billy Connolly, our tour of Gallipoli was most windswept and very interesting. Having left Pete and Ilze to their own devices in Istanbul, we were luxuriating in our huge hotel room in Eceabat with a panoramic view over the Dardanelles. We think this came about because Ian’s lunch […]
If it’s Wednesday it must be Belgium …
The Albion Hotel in Iepers/Ypres was very comfortable and not overheated like most other hotels here. Pete picked us up for our third and final day of touring the Western Front, concentrating on the Ypres Salient area. It was another lovely day so we have been really lucky. First we walked to the Menin Gate […]
Tale of Two Mates
A heavy fog had descended on Amiens overnight, and the air was damp with condensation. As we drove higher the blanket lifted to another sunny autumn day. Something I hadn’t thought about was the foliage – we have seen plenty of leaf colour. They are falling rapidly as the temperature is about to plummet later […]
The Western Front day 1
Rue de la Roquette is certainly a much quieter street at 6.15am, and it was a good time to be trundling heavy suitcases, without the usual endless flow of people and traffic. We negotiated the metro to Gare du Nord then headed upstairs to stand under the huge, old fashioned Departures board, waiting to see […]
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