Milton Keynes - what a revelation

The Tree Cathedral, Milton Keynes

This week has been much the same as last week really. Cooking, walking climbing, rehearsing and pottering with Smokey.

The Chinese extravaganza worked well, pork and prawn dumplings, which I cooked two ways, steamed and as potstickers, bottoms browned in a frying pan before adding water to steam the rest of them, till the water is gone and the base is crispy again. Sounds much harder than it actually was. It also worked with the second batch, the following day, from frozen. Raw the dumplings will just disintegrate if left, so open freeze them is the recommendation. I couldn’t believe raw pork would steam from frozen in only a minute longer than fresh, but they seemed to be cooked, and we haven’t died! These were followed by yuk Sung. Pork and water chestnuts fried up with some crispy rice noodles and eaten wrapped in iceberg lettuce leaves. Yum

Home cooked Yuk Sung - delicious!

Today is roast pork, a bit extreme in this heat, but the joint was reduced to £1.50, so it had to be done. We also got some piri piri ribs and some breaded cod for £1.45. These are the bargains we like and we only went in for bread rolls!

Another group photo of us all at Commonwealth Games Rehearsals at Longbridge. We were at the back again so assumed we wouldn't be visible, but actually we are - just! So I've put a zoomed in bit below

Rehearsals are still going well, good fun and a great atmosphere. Sunday will be different, firstly it’s in the afternoon so no hideous early start, and secondly it’s at Alexander Stadium, where our marks on the ground will be tiny compared to what we are used to, but at least a ramp will be a ramp!

So you can see Jackie on the left and a bit of Brian on the right

With Caroline at the climbing wall

We’ve been climbing with Caroline again which is lovely, we get to see a whole different person when it’s just the three of us. Today just Brian and I went though, took the rope and did some leading, first time in a very long time. Thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and lasted a lot longer than expected. Somewhere inside us must be some good technique!

Caroline looking quite impressive on the wall

One of the Winnie the Poo statues in Browns Wood

We’ve walked more of the parks. Sunday was 30 years of the parks in MK so Campbell Park had a little event, brass band, cream tea, free guided walk with chat about the trust and how MK was built around all the green spaces. Browns wood has all the Winnie the Pooh characters which were lovely, though it was a bit underwhelming. The tree cathedral was beautiful and calming with trees in the shape of Norwich cathedral. Caldecott Lake with some very friendly geese, Brian got slightly pecked taking pictures, and a pub to park in. Great Linford Manor Park has some interesting sculptures including wooden sheep to compete with the concrete cows!

The Peace Pagoda at Willen Lake

This is a modern sculpture, the Medicine Wheel

Talking of the concrete cows, we discovered, talking to people on Sunday, that we thought we’d seen the concrete cows, but we’d only seen the surrogate concrete cows. The real ones are cared for at the MK museum, where they were originally made, so that was where we went yesterday. We had a very full day there, a great museum, so much stuff, and so many people actively waiting to tell you about things, be it transport, the lace they were making, the music players through the ages, the telephone exhibition, or the poor blacksmith working in the Forge.

Getting pecked by geese at Caldecott Lake

We had a robot delivery, well it had to be done. So milk and hummus arrived 25 minutes after order placed. We tracked it on the app before going down to the end of the road to watch it turn up. On arrival you tap the app and it unlocks the robot so you can remove your purchases. It announces your delivery and all is good. We think if we’d wanted it to sing to us (which obviously we did) we should have ‘ordered it’ as a purchase! Next time then!

A short Youtube video of our robot delivery

We are also still having a lovely time with Smokey, though, unsurprisingly, he is spending a lot of time outside. He does like fuss though you only have to talk to him and he rolls over for you to tickle his tummy . I’m also on a mission to get into the garden without him knowing. It doesn’t matter how asleep he looks or how quietly you put the key into the lock of the patio door, it’s impossible to unlock the door without him waking up and coming over.

The wooden sheep sculpture at Great Linford Manor Park 

They have very cute faces!

There are interesting sculptures all over the parks of Milton Keynes, here's another in Great Linford Manor Park

These are the old Alms Houses on the Linford Estate. Currently the grounds in front are undergoing a £30M refurbishment

Linford Manor. The manor is in private hands but all the grounds are now owned by the Parks Trust. The manor owners have the best of all worlds, they still have access to all their grounds but now the Parks Trust looks after them. The only downside for the owners is the constant stream of visitors. A small price to pay?

We had lunch in this lovely old pub in Linford village. Linford is one of five villages that were incorporated into the new town of Milton Keynes in the early 1970's and, if anything this is one slight criticism of the city: we love the spacious layout, the fast roads that interconnect, yet don't impede pedestrians and cyclists as they are all crossed by underpasses or bridges. The habitable areas are separate yet near to these roads behind woods and parks, there are so many parks and lakes, shops, restaurants and takeaways are readily available, but the thing they lack are traditional pubs. There are pubs, but they are modern eating type places, this type of pub is  rare (obviously as its a new town) and not on a nearby street corner. You can drink in the pubs that are around but really they'd prefer people who are eating.   

Milton Keynes museum and the 170 year old cedar tree

Its a lovely old museum with something for everyone. The many volunteers really know their stuff and very keen to chat

Now here's an interesting thing: look at this sign in the transport part of the museum. They claim a British chap called Herbert Akroyd Stuart was the first to invent the diesel engine (which he called the oil engine) in 1830, 3 years before Rudolph Diesel. There you go, British not German!

And here are the original concrete cows of Milton Keynes, in a museum! The one's we saw in the park are copies

And since we haven't put a single photo of Smokey on, here's one. He's been really struggling in the heat, poor love, so sleeping has been high on his priority until after dark when it's cooler

And finally, this youtube video has absolutely no connection with us at all, but it's the video from the handover ceremony of the Commonwealth Games filmed in Birmingham City Centre in 2018 at the end of the Gold Coast games in Australia. We're hoping the opening ceremony we're involved in will be similarly entertaining. We're putting a lot of effort into it and it's enthusing us tremendously. It makes us proud to be a part of it. One of our fellow performers did take part in this video. Have a look: