Stirling Castle

We visited Stirling Castle on a nice August Sunday afternoon, and had a lot of fun exploring this most "castle-y" of castles.

What do we look for in a castle?  Nools and crannies, and places where we can imagine people like us, hundreds of years ago, indulging in terrible conflicts.  Here's one one the tiny corner turrets.

Sam enjoyed Stirling Castle immensely.  As much as I remember enjoying it when I was his age in the seventies.  I wonder if he will bring his children here one day?

The castle is plonked on top of an unerodable lump of volcanic rock.  It's Very high up, but you don't really understand how high until you take in the panoramic views from the gun batteries.

Above you can see the royal hunting park stretching out for a couple of miles - all the green bits you can see were owned and stocked by the castle.

The Great Hall is....great.  At the far end is the musicians' balcony, which would have been hidden by curtains according to Sam.  And the vaulted roof seems to be so high above the hall's floor.

On the opposite side to the hunting park is a great view of the Wallace Monument, commemorating a Scottish terrorist who killed lots of English people unlawfully.  But they like him round there, for some reason.  The guns on this side of the castle could fire upon that hill if needed to.

Nooks and crannies....there are so many hidden passages and archways in Stirling Castle!  Here you can see Sam standing on the exact spot where a mutilated, dismembered nobleman, with pretensions to the throne, landed after being thrown out of a castle window above.  No butchered bodies landed here while we were around, disappointingly.

Most of the walls are open to be walked around, although some parts are closed for repair due to frost damage from the last winter.  There's still Lots to explore though.

To their great credit, the castle seem to have endeavoured to open as many rooms (even those small and with no grand purpose) as possible for the public to explore.  Recommended!



Discovery Point - Dundee

Discovery Point is a great, very interactive little museum on the banks on the Tay in Dundee.  It tells the tale of a ship, the RRS (Royal Research Ship) Discovery, its achievements, its design, and its crew - ever heard of Shackleton, or Scott? 

The museum building is very smart and very interactive, but the star player is Discovery itself, which has been restored to a beautifully original condition.

There's a lot of interactivity here - for example, in the polar exploration area there are detailed (too detailed for Sam on occasion, which crossed the line into "freaky" territory) models of the crew's activities, side by side with fun ways for youngsters to mirror the men's achievements.

And here is Sam doing a spot of ice hole fishing (using magnetic bait and "catches").

Most of the ship is in immaculate order and really conveys the realities of life on board.  This is the maproom on the bridge.



Sam's favourite part of the visit?  Using the CCTV camera located at the top of the mast to zoom in on our car in the car park!

Scotland!

After an overnight stay in Newcastle we were on the road early and heading for Scotland!

We stopped to pose for cheesy photos at the border of course.  You have to, it's the law.

Then, bacon sandwiches eaten, we made our way further north than Sam has ever been before.

Crabs For Tea From Holme-Next-The-Sea

A while ago our friend Old Bob taught us how to find and catch crabs at Holme beach.  Here are a few photos of the morning.  The first two crabs we caught are in the bucket above (we caught four big ones all told, before heading home to cook them).

Here's Sam in a pool close to camera, Old Bob in the background, a flock of swooping seabirds, and Skegness windfarm in the distance.

The crabs spend the time when the tide is lowest hiding in holes in peat-like banks, covered with slippery seaweed.

Give us a twirl....

Here's Old Bob straight after dragging a crab out of its hidey-hole.

Holme beach is very long, rather pretty, and usually deserted.  Recommended!

To catch the shellfish we used hooks specially made by Old Bob, as modelled above by Sam.

Sam didn't pull out any crabs but he did find a very big starfish.

We loved crabbing, and have been back since.  And the crabs taste flipping lovely!

Lowestoft Air Festival 2011

Our first visit to the Lowestoft Air Festival was like the parson's egg.  The flying display was spoiled somewhat as several aircraft were cancelled due to weather, unserviceability and operational necessity.   Thank goodness the Red arrows turned up to steal the show, as they always do.

Even the opening attraction, the Army's parachute display team, could only risk a low altitude "pop and drop" due to the high wind.

Not surprisingly they all hit the drop zone.  Rather them than us!

A team of Russian Yak aircraft put on a nice, noisy, spirited show.

The Hawker Hunter on display had been liveried beautifully, and looked like a Zoom lolly, you'll probably have to click on it to see for yourself.

The wing-walking team were bonkers.  The two girls atop the aircraft even completely unattached themselves from all their harnesses for a couple of passes.  Absolutely crackers, but very enjoyable to watch.

 

And they flew VERY low!  The lowest flypast we saw all day.

During a weather-induced hiatus in the flying programme we took the opportunity to stroll along the prom to an imposing structure that Sam had spotted earlier - the "Para Tower"!

Victims/customers can climb the tower and then throw themselves out of a small hatch at the top.  Apparently this is quite a close simulation of an actual deplaning as undertaken by The Paras, and all the proceeds go towards the regiment's charity.  Sam was very gung ho about having a go....

So...."Geronimo!"....out he popped and down he drifted.  Huge adrenaline rush, judging by his excited gabbling for the next few minutes!

So, we will visit the Air Festival again.  As well as us two, there were 172,000 other people there at the same time, and a similar number the day after.  That's a LOT of people.  And it's a fun day out.  Recommended.

Cakes & Ale Campsite

For our first holiday of the summer we booked onto a campsite called Cakes & Ale, which is close to the village of Leiston in Suffolk.  £20 a night may sound steep but it's about the going rate if you want good facilities.  Breakfast isn't included, you have to cook your own:

This campsite is great for children.  Very, very quiet, and with tennis courts, football pitch, climbing walls, playgrounds, and safe tarmac roads to scooter or bike round.  You'll need to take chjildren, who else will fill up your kettle for you?

 

 We had another cutlery casualty, sadly.  This fork gave its tines in the frying of sausages.  We're keeping it though, it's coming on future trips with us.

 

The weather was fine when we arrived but was generally terrible after that.  The first and third nights in particular were awful, the wind was strong and the rain persistant.

 

Here's our view of Cakes & Ale, looking right from our pitch.  The toilet block was clean, basic, with plenty of hot water.

 

And in the other direction you can see the clubhouse in the distance.  Cakes & Ale is situated on a WWII USAF airfield, and the bar is full of memorabilia from that era.  Plus there's a one third scale model of a USAF Mustang fighter just outside Reception.  Fab!

There's sufficient lighting at night, but we think that part of the fun of camping is wandering around using our head torches.

Overall we had a great stay and we'll be going back soon!

Live And Direct From The East Coast!

Live from the east coast in general, and Lowestoft-ish in particular, a sample of our holiday snaps so far....