Och aye the Noo/September 2007

Modern tapestry recreating ancient in Stirling Castle

We travelled north taking dear Elsie, John's new woman, with us, She's OK but WILL keep interrupting when I am talking.
Our 1st night was in Kippen where we had spent our 1st wedding anniversary. We had a struggle to find our accommodation since we had lack of information of proper address & surname. Eventually we seemed to have most of the village helping out the rather hapless & ill prepared tourists. We had a good meal at the pub where we had eaten 32 years previously & had quite a challenge to decide if it was even the same place.

Next day we went to Stirling & visited the castle.

Rather foreboding & sitting on its hill to be seen from miles away.

Most of the buildings originate from the 15th & 16th century & were built by James lV & V.

Princess Mary Stuart (daughter of King James V of Scotland and his French wife Mary of Guise) was crowned Queen of Scotland here when she was only 9 months old.
Argyll's Lodging just down the road only got time for a quick visit unfortunately. The 9th Earl was involved with the Duke of Monmouth, Charles 2nd's illegitimate son, in a plot to overthrow James 2nd. The plot failed & they were both executed in 1685. The rooms at the lodgings have been recreated as they would have looked in 1680 & are beautiful.

After all the culture we had been exposed to it was time to be refreshed by meeting Judith & Brian off the train for the drive up to Ullapool where we were staying. On the way we called into Dunblane for lunch, on the map as the home of Andy & Jamie Murray of Wimbledon fame & also place of the terrible massacre of dozens of schoolchildren in the primary school.

Our lodgings just North of Ulapool where great, - spacious, comfortable & warm.

Our 1st day we spent around the town. We had a lovely seafood lunch at a local hostelry, big prawns & rather smaller mussels but very good, all outside & overlooking the harbour.

Monday we went to the hydroponics gardens at Achiltibuie & had another great lunch of fish. Then onto the point to look in rock pools.

Our trip up to Cape Wrath the next day at the most northern point of Scotland was somewhat disappointing weather wise.

What must be really spectacular scenery was largely obliterated by cloud & mist. This area is a "geopark" & has rocks of 3,000 million years. We learned that Scotland was once located below the equator, moved to be part of the USA & then eventually became joined up with England. We learned about the Moine Thrust (Not what some of you may be thinking)

When we got to Durness we had a lovely walk around the Smoo caves.

A cathedral has been formed in the limestone caves & you can walk to the hole where the river bounces down into the top of the cave, - really spectacular.

Smoo comes from a Norman word, smuga meaning "hiding place". The caves have been known for hundreds of years & there are stories of spirits being there & being chased out of the top, not to mention various smuggling activities.

Judith & Gina

Judith & Gina Brian & Judith

Judith & I had a great walk the next day up on the hills around Ullapool taking in lovely views of the harbour & in the afternoon to Knockan Crag nature reserve to see the stories of the geology in the area.

In the evening the Youth pipe band gave a stirring performance to a very high standard & the Highland dancing was also lovely.

Friday was spent up the coast at Lochinver where there is a great visitor centre. This is the region known as Assynt & there have been crofters here for very many years. In the great "farm clearances" many people lost their livelihood & had to leave. Now people are returning & it is recognised as being a very successful co-operative.There was mention of Norman Mc Leod who was a Presbyterian minister who left the area & went to Canada with some of his followers. They stayed there for some years but uprooted again & went to NZ & founded the settlement at Waipu in 1833.

Our journey home took us via Edinburgh where we spent the night in flash lodgings where the chef was a protegee of Rick Steins so another nice bit of fish we had. The following day we went into town & met up with Nick & Amy, Anna & Scott & another friend of theirs.

Amy & Nick

Judith

Visit to Sam in London

Last Friday saw me hurtling from Leeds to London at speeds of over 160KPH with a drink in one hand and a paper in the other. Despite what is said about the cost and reliability of UK trains there are some exceptions. And the GNER rail service was one. Clean comfortable, smooth and fast this train had me at Kings Cross in a twinkling and onto the tube to Finsbury Park and so to my 50 pound a night hotel. 50 quid is cheap in London and I got what I paid for: a run down, but relatively clean, small cell like room with an ensuite. I wasn't about to complain about value for money.

It was a joy to meet up with Sam. On Saturday we developed a pattern to get me through the day. Every day we met about 10.00ish, did our sightseeing until about 1.00pm, then had lunch. After that we split up, I went back to my hotel for a kip and then we met up again about 6 or 7 for dinner.

So Saturday morning was spent looking for and finding the houses of Sam's & Nick's Great great grand-parents near Wandsworth. Sam's & Nick's Great grandparents Gertrude & Glenelg - (Nana & Pop) - were living in these houses with their parents up until their marriage, at ages 17 & 19, in 1909. A few years later they immigrated to NZ and eventually had a family of 5 children. One of these was Sam's & Nick's Grandmother (my mother), Peggy, and another was Percy (Snow) the lad who was hidden by Greek Families during WW2. The eldest boy Ron had 3 children, and 2 are alive and kicking in NZ, Lois and Russell. Frank is deceased.
Ivan was another of the 5 and had two boys. Percy jnr lives in Brisbane and Ian is in Taumaranui.
My mother, the youngest, had 3 children, John (UK), Margaret (Martinborough) and David (Cambridge).

Anyhow the hunt for the houses was on! I had done a bit of research using Google Maps, which seem to have dramatically improved recently. By putting in the street addresses which I had from the Marriage Certificate I was able to literally pin point the locations. Thus we were armed with accurate street maps and also my new and increasingly trusty friend Elsie, our Sat/Nav.

Note: Some members of my family tend to make snide and hurtful remarks about my relationship with Elsie. I put that down to jealousy and a blatant inability on their part, to see the possibilities offered by a relationship between a well meaning but illogical human and a logical, stoical and reliable piece of technology. After all, Elsie's ability to remain calm after having to repeat "recalculating, recalculating" for the 100th time is but one of the qualities which qualify her for sainthood, if not martyrdom.

Just out of Clapham, at 65 Bedford Road was the house that used to be owned by Nana's parents.

And a fine big house it is, now on a very busy road. It was a great thrill to find it as I had heard rumours that one of the houses had been demolished to make way for a bus station.

We were unable to go inside as the whole building appeared to be now in flats.

At the end of a block of beautiful plastered period terraced houses, it is itself also beautiful but of brick and of different design detail. Thus I wonder if it is actually the original building. Maybe it has replaced an older dwelling demolished during the war. However until I check with the local council it will DO! Whatever, the location is correct.

Now we were in for a long flat walk through Clapham Common, Pop's parent's house being near the other edge of this beautiful and highly used green area. We walked through carefully kept gardens and large spaces of green grass, quite similar to the Auckland Domain. The park then changed to numerous sports fields, full of young children playing Saturday morning soccer with their parents yelling on the side line.

It bought to mind all the wonderful friends we have made doing exactly that and screaming, "That's my boy!" at 8.00ish on a cold wet winter's morning up at East Coast Bays soccer club! However today was cloudless and a comfortable 19 degrees a 11.00am.

We soon found Melody Rd which was wide, leafy and very quiet.

As we got to the gate of number 47 Elsie said soothingly, "Arriving at destination on left." Exactly right Elsie, thank you.

Pop's parents house is also part of a beautiful terraced block all of which appear to be now flats.
It, like Nana's, is in excellent repair. Because of its quiet and convenient location I imagine it would be very desirable.

I would love to live there. I reckon that if we sold all our NZ property, together with most of our shares, we could possibly afford about a third of the building!

Unlike both my Wandsworth Great grandfathers I cannot be described as a "gentleman of independent means" so that option is off the table!

Having seen the location of the two houses we imagined both Nana & Pop meeting in the nearby park on their bikes. I know that Nana definitely had a push bike. And perhaps taking an outing to Hyde Park and walking near the Serpentine, just as she had told me she had done, with her long skirts and her parasol. What a different world Auckland pre WW1 must have been.

I salute my Grandparents for making a life for themselves and their family in such a far off land, cut off from the support of their families, and for making such a huge and terrible contribution to the WW2 war effort. Three of their sons were in the NZ Armed Services during WW2. One son was killed at the age of 26 as he attempted to escape from a Prisoner of War working party in Italy, March 1944. The other 2 sons were scarred mentally and physically for the rest of their lives.

On a much brighter note, I returned to my hotel, slept for nearly three hours and was met by Sam at Aldgate Tube and taken to his flat where he made Cousin Kate and I a fabulous filo pastry, mushroom and bean pie. We washed it down with a Montana Savvy and put the world to rights. Kate donned her witch fancy dress and flew out the door minus a broomstick for a party somewhere in London.

I learned later that there had been plans to take me as Poppa Bear but mercifully Sam saw sense!

And so Sam and I explored London. On Monday we visited the Tower.

Above: A satisfied Beef Eater

In the evening we met up with a cousin of ours, Adrienne. The last time Adrienne and I had met was in 1975 at our wedding.
It was so good to catch up with her and to chew the family fat over dinner and a bottle of French white which was reminiscent of NZ Chardonnay and I'll bet was made new-world style in stainless steel vats.. We have vowed to meet regularly. It was one of the highlights of the trip to London to meet her and to introduce her to Sam. Hopefully she will be at Nick's 21st next month. She is another of these wonderful people who suddenly appear or re-appear in your life and whom you seem to have known for a long long time. As Dave of Oratia would say: an experience totalle!

The following morning, Tuesday, I caught the same train back to Leeds and arrived back at the flat tired and elated, having survived London, and more importantly, having spent such good times with Sam and Adrienne.