A week in England

Pauline, Jackie & John at Cotswold Wildlife Park

How does time fly? We started off with a curry at Diwans with Helen and Ian on Sunday, no walking though he seemed ok. We were then busy at mums, new taps, grab rail to help her out of the bath, lock box for a key outside. That was Brian. Along with dentist and opticians. I was on more phone calls, sorting through loads of bits of scrappy paper. Taking mum to the opticians to see if the DVLA say she can drive, and then onto her friend Jan, in Droitwich. Lovely to meet her. Tuesday our annual trip to the financial advisor, never quick, but that’s because we spend more time chatting than working.

Ring tailed Lemur at Cotswold wildlife Park

'Hello' Not so tall now are you!

Wednesday another trip out with John, this time to the Cotswold Wildlife Park, for the four of us. He Sarah and I went many times in the past. He bought her a ‘keeper for the day’ experience for her 50th and has sponsored her a penguin for years. It wasn’t necessarily the easiest day out for him, but we did all have a good time and as he said to Brian when they bumped into each other in the chippy “that’s another ghost put to bed”. It’s all these ‘firsts’ make it all very difficult. Sadly we can’t have a third Wednesday this week as he’ll be in Texas working.

Do you know, the number of times we have visited the Cotswold Wildlife Park and never seen the Red Faced Pandas, other than a bit of fur sleeping high up in a tree, but on this occasion there was action, if all a bit brief 

I wonder if one of these is Sarah's sponsored penguin

With that, on Thursday we came back to St. Albans. They’d messaged to ask if we could cover a long weekend, and knowing how long it had taken Tatty to be comfortable with us, and knowing how many lovely restaurants there are in St. Albans, we said yes. Looking to see what was on this weekends I found a Led Zeppelin tribute band on, on the Thursday, at the Alban arena. They were very good, and gave a great show, it must have been very hard for them as the audience was tiny. A real shame, but we enjoyed it. The venue had recommended The Aspava, a Turkish restaurant next door, which we thoroughly enjoyed, and so started our eating marathon. Friday was Thai, which I’d really been looking forward to.

A casual conversation going on with a couple of lions less than 20m away. I can't imagine the conversation would have been so relaxed if that sheet of glass wasn't there! 

Jackie and her mum's visit to Jan in Droitwich

Saturday we went to Wheathampstead, a small village about 4 miles away with an interesting historical tour of the village. It wasn’t anything stunning, but they’d made the effort and we had a good, if slightly elephant focused, day. The quay by the bridge over the river Lea was damaged by a circus elephant who had been taken down there to drink in the 1940’s. The now nonexistent train was used to transport straw to Luton for the hat industry, and watercress to London. On the return journey washing arrived from London along with elephant dung from London zoo for the local vegetable growers. We then had lunch at the Elephant and Castle in Amwell, home of the local Farr brewery.

First job back in St Albans: make the bed and Max cat was insistent on helping us!

Waiting for Hats Off to Led Zeppelin to come on stage

Sunday we walked up and down the antiquities market, intrigued by how things we remember can now be antiques. Before deciding perhaps we should try Italian for lunch. A good choice, mixed fish, and a bottle of wine followed by a Sunday afternoon movie called Marvellous. If you want a feel good movie give it a go.

Today we’ve done our tidying, might pop out for a light lunch and just wait for the call to say they have landed safely, before back to Mum.

Tatty cat deciding a very small box is comfortable

It took Tatty cat two weeks to reach this stage last time we were here. Fortunately she remembered us and this was on night two

And Max cat also decided laps were the place to be

The sights of Wheathampstead. This is the old railway station closed by Mr. Beeching in 1965

The Crinkle Crankle walls (that curved wall on the right) and St Helen parish church (Saxon origins)

Bit of a story about this, so read carefully: This is Devils Dyke in Wheathampstead, The information board at the entrance described it as a defensive ditch built 2000 years ago. Nearby are other 'earthworks' named 'The Moat' and 'The Slad' and together archaeologists believe they enclosed a settlement that was defended by Catuvellauni, a local chieftan controlling lands to the north and east of the Thames. They also believe it could have been here that Catuvellauni was defeated by Julius Caesar in 54BC whilst trying to defend Britain again the advance of the Roman Empire. I put this photo and this description on a Facebook group I joined 'Ridgeway and Ancient Tracks of Britain' (I can anorak with the best of them you know - I had over 300 likes from this group of my blog post of my Ridgeway adventure (the entry before this) and, so far, 142 likes and 4 shares of this photo - they are quite an interesting bunch really!). Anyway, I had a number of complimentary comments and then one chap wrote "not a defensive ditch - far too big - it's a holloway (a paleochannel) from the last Ice Age" He went on to add "Indeed it's part of a 'Dyke' - these are the remains of Paleochannels which have been extended by prehistoric groups usually to join up bodies of water such as rivers and lakes. They are dry today but during the ice age they were massive water channels which reduced in size over thousands of years. Sadly, these baffle archaeologists and hence this 'defensive and boundary' explanation - yet I just completed the first detailed British survey and found over 1500 dykes in Britain including hundreds in Ireland and Scotland (and some in Scandinavia and not forgetting Holland) dating back to the Mesolithic period. No doubt that farmers and landowners used and adapted them in later years (and hence the confusion) for boundaries and cattle herding - but this is not their original use as the ones in Shetland and Scilly Isles (with minimal populations at the time of construction) can testify!!"   So there you have it - what do I know!