Strutting around London: May 2012

Going to Manchester brought some surprised looks from our British friends and neighbours. We had decided to go because we had heard the Imperial War Museum and the Science Museum were very good and well, we just hadn't been there.

The trip up took us not far from Nottingham, home to the legendary Robin Hood. Well - Sherwood Forest is there as is the Major Oak but ....we wouldn't recommend going too far out of your way top see it though. The Oak is reputedly between 800 - 1,000 years old and weighs an estimated 23 tons with a girth of about 10 meters. According to the Robin Hood legend, he and his merry men sheltered and slept in the tree.......

The Major Oak.

We stayed in the Manchester Youth Hostel which is a stone's throw from the city canals. These canals were used for transporting the goods produced in and around Manchester during the height of its industrial might. Now they are simply picturesque and are home to many house boats - one of which had seen better times. Each day we walked past 'The Hobbit', it was lower and lower in the water.

We were also a 5 minute walk from the fantastic Museum of Science and Industry. The Museum is in the former Liverpool street station (the world's oldest surviving railway station) and has a huge collection of largely industrial based exhibits. A whole section of the museum is dedicated to restored and working steam engines of various kinds that chuffed, puffed and steamed away. See one of William' s videos below.

Among the amazing exhibits in the rest of the museum is one of the few surviving Manchester built original Rolls Royce cars. Henry Royce met Charles Rolls in a Manchester pub in 1904. They set up their now iconic brand in 1905 and in 1906 the company moved to Derby. This one, a 10 horsepower 2 cylinder car, was built in 1905 and was owned by Royce. It is the oldest Rolls Royce vehicle on public display.

Manchester is home to some interesting architecture. We aren't sure what the story is behind this building.

We did not realise that Manchester was, for 10 years, home to Emmeline Pankhurst who, of course, famously founded the suffragette movement. The house, although centrally located, is not easy to find and is tucked away in a side street of a big hospital complex. Mark & the kids trudged around up and down the centre of Manchester in the cold and rain. They had just about given up finding it when Mark asked a couple of taxi drivers who pointed to a building not 100 meters away. Fortunatley, although the centre had closed for the day, one of the women who ran it generously let us in and gave us a tour of the home and a run down of the history of the movement.

Sally’s great great aunt Alice was a suffragette, a fact that Mark only recalled when he and the kids were in the living room of the house where the first ever meeting of the suffragettes was held. Sally's mum later gave us more information saying that Alice..

'was a nurse at Gt Ormond St hospital. Considering her father was a jobbing gardener for Totnes council after retiring from the marines, it is pretty surprising that she aspired to a career as a nurse. When she left nursing she ran a small guest house at Llandudno in N Wales with a friend called Miss Keyes'.

The Pankhurst house is now an education centre - The Pankhurst Centre - about the history of the movement and about the position of women around the world. Once again, history came alive for Mark as he recalled learning about the suffragettes in high school.

Emmeline wrote of that first meeting.

“It was on October 10, 1903 that I invited a number of women to my house in Nelson Street, Manchester, for purposes of organisation. We voted to call our new society the Women’s Social and Political Union, partly to emphasise its democracy, and partly to define its object as political rather than propagandist. We resolved to limit our membership exclusively to women, to keep ourselves absolutely free from party affiliation, and to be satisfied with nothing but action on our question. “Deeds, not words” was to be our permanent motto”

The original piano.

In the living room.

Sally caught the train up to join Mark and the kids on Saturday morning. Unfortunately the Pankhurst centre was closed that weekend for a conference.

Mark had organised another 'kid surprise'. Having traipsed, somewhat soggily, around museums and galleries the kids were .....not overly enthusiastic when, on the way out of Manchester, we told them we were going to see a monastery where they could dress up as monks and practise praying in a 'real-life monk experience'. Oddly, they were more than a bit relieved when they found themselves at yet another go-karting venue. This one was speedkarting at Warrington http://www.speedkarting.co.uk. Built over three levels, this track gave far more bends and therefore was more challenging though, given the lack of long straights, it was not as fast as the one we drove in Denmark. Also, unlike in Denmark we had no accidents - Sally did feel a bit car sick though from all the bends.
See our European vacation 2011 blog post, the karting bit is down near the bottom of the post. http://struttingaroundlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/strutties-european-vacation-or-in.html.

The family Stig.

Mustang Sally !

Years ago Sally worked with a colleague with the last name of Frodsham. As we were driving home we saw signs for the town of Frodsham. We had to stop and take a closer look. We found a local park that had some creative and fun swings (which were definitely uncharacteristically potentially quite unsafe !) and a bit of a view out towards Liverpool.

The week after we went to Chester in February the kids went on a school skiing trip to France. We briefly referred to the trip in this blog http://struttingaroundlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/snow.html .The ski trip coincided with the first snowfall of the winter. The kids left school at 3:30 am and by the end of that day we had several inches of snow in London. Had the snow been earlier they most likely would not have been able to fly out.

The forecast temperatures of 20 - 25 below zero at the slopes at Alp d'Huez did not eventuate but it was still in the mid to high teens BELOW zero for most of their time. Needless to say they had a great time and are now dedicated ski converts. We have already booked their places for the next trip in 2013 and this time Mark will go with them reprising his late youth when he would drive 5-6 hours from Sydney to the Australian Alps on a Friday afternoon after teaching to ski all weekend and drive back on Sunday night to be ready to teach the next day. He actually still has his ski jacket from the 80s !!!!

The pictures below were taken by the kids.

On the way to the Alps having left at 3 am.
Does he look tired ?

The view from their hotel.

On the ski lift.

Sure does

Minus 18 ???? Surely not ! It doesn't feel cold at all.

The kids came back, complete with ski tan lines, to slush in London but were still able to have a good time.

At our local park.

A week or so later their was another snowfall and this proved useful when we hosted a cooking competition between the kids and Bernard, a colleague of Sally's, and his partner Simon. They made a mint chocolate cake while Aisha and William did a chocolate mousse style creation. With a full fridge we found it was easier to cool things down outside in the snow.