Blogs from Leicestershire, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 2

I have had an enforced absence from the football obscurities of Eastern Europe of late. The closest I have been is watching Shepshed Dynamo, if that counts? There hasn't been a great deal of time for travel recently. A family bereavement and unrelated illness of another, curtailed any provisional plans. There are always provisional plans. If Mohammed cannot go to the mountain, the mountain can come to him. I scoured the lower leagues for inspiration and hatched a plan to see another Dynamo play. Loughborough Dynamo that is! In the old East, Dynamo was the prefix for the clubs under the control of Secret Police. There were many incarnations - Dynamo Berlin, Dinamo Bucharest and perhaps the most famous in Britain .......Moscow Dynamo. As puppets of a less than friendly section of the state apparatus, they ... read more

About 25 years ago, some friends of mine were walking down Maid Marion Way and a car pulled up alongside. A cheery American leaned out and said “Can you tell me the way to “Looga Barooga”. We still call it that to this day. Loughborough, pronounced Luff Burra, just doesn’t flow off the tongue. We haven’t been for a while and had never been on the bus before. The journey seems to take an eternity. The Other Half got agitated. We were en route to what I would refer to as the Hereford trilogy, but more of that later. The bus now takes a detour through the Railway Station. The Railway Station is somewhat divorced from the town centre. A typical Victorian add-on to an existing town. The Brush engineering plant seems to have shrunk and ... read more

Day 89 out of 120. We are getting weary of sitting around waiting for our next great adventure. OUr feet are becoming itchy as we pound the floor in anticipation like two prize fighting bulls waiting to gore an unsuspecting matador. Quite apt given our next trip will take us to the Iberian Peninsular. Suzy has been partly washed and polished . This always proves a job of great enormity, Unlike a car it takes forever . ARmed with a bucket full of soap suds and a cloth it is a fairly quick job to wash the dirt and cobwebs off a car. It takes a little longer to polish it but compare that with a motorhome and you are talking a job that takes at least four days. One to wash the front and one ... read more

Leaving Calke Abbey we felt full to bursting. The National Trust kitchens and tea rooms always deliver a decent meal made with fresh and inventive products at a reasonable price in particular nice settings. . We felt though still a bit frustrated that we had failed to see the house in its full un-stately condition. Oh well you win some and you miss others. There is so much to see so perhaps we will get back one day. The Park with its tranquil and welcoming grounds. Ticknall Limeyards where there are the remains of the lime burning industry; the Tramway built between 1799 and 1802 which linked the new canal with the Limeyards; the reservoirs and ponds. But we were moving just down the road to the next county of Leicestershire and to the town of ... read more

After a mediocre breakfast in the hotel restaurant (we should have ordered just the continental) we moved on to Robin Hood country. First stop was at the Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre where we took a walk through the forest to the Major Oak (named after a Major in the British army not because of its size). At about 1000 years old, it has a large cavity in the middle of the trunk and its huge branches are propped up all around to try to conserve it. Several other trees are between 400 and 800 years old and are tended by the conservation staff to try to keep them thriving with mixed success. The forest was not what we expected of Sherwood with more open spaces and they even let cattle in to graze in some areas. ... read more