Days of yore

Somewhat ironically the Museum of English Rural Life does not lie nestled among rolling hillsides and wheat fields with poppies, instead it sits rather self consciously on a busy main road in the middle of the urban sprawl that is Reading, Berkshire. However, despite the interesting juxtaposition of subject matter and location this excellent museum manages to completely immerse visitors in all things rural, leaving you longing for the days of hopping on wagons for a lift down the road and great big picnics in fields at harvest time. Wagons are suspended from the rafters, scythes and man traps are gruesomely displayed behind bars and photos, videos and interviews bring the artefacts and the people who made and used them to life.

You gotta gimme some Moor

Yesterday was hot and lovely down here in the West Country, shame then that most of it was spent in the car. I wanted to get to Cornwall you see, and as much as I've spent a lot of time on roads and looking at maps in the last few weeks I kind of underestimated how long it would take to get to places down here, especially with such terrible traffic on such long and winding roads.

Minature ponies, paperweights and gin

So the second leg of my trip began on Monday, after a small delay to the tune of mother-gets-pneumonia. The family holiday down in Torquay turned into a sisterly 4 day break. My mum insisted we come down without her and she was feeling a lot better when we left, so please don't shout at me for going, thank you.

Aquaplaning, not getting into lighhouses and a lot of small trains

As it began to seriously piss down with rain this morning I started to get a hankering for the seaside, and the Kent coast is a great place to go in the rain, in fact I don't think I've ever been when it's not raining. So south bound we went.
I wanted to see the lighthouse at Dungeness but as it appeared through the mist and rain a very obvious sign let us know that the lighthouse was closed.

Bad bowling and dressing up like a tudor man

The idea of going to Orpington Super Bowl as part of my discovery of Britain via the Brown Sign Way appealed to me, massively. Not just because I could relive memories of bunking off lessons at Orpington College when I retook my A-levels there, but also because I have been seriously steeped in British history recently and I wouldn't mind some inane Thursday afternoon frivolity, such is the joy of brown tourist sign variety.