Posted by trev on July 27, 2010 – 4:28 pm
During a 6 week excavation, English Heritage archaeologists have announced the discovery of a a ceremonial building thought to date from the Neolithic times, thought to be around 4500 years old. The remains of the structure were found at the mysterious Marden Henge in Wiltshire – a site which is very little understood by archaeologists.
English Heritage pre-historian Jim Leary said: “This discovery has exceeded our expectations and is very exciting. It looks to be a Neolithic building which is equivalent to a priest’s quarters.”
Henge monuments such as Marden Henge are very special as they originally were topped by standing stones as seen at Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire, and Castlerigg in Cumbria. Marden no longer has it’s stones, but the new find may cast more light on the original purpose of the surrounding henge.
Full details from English Heritage
Note: Members of English Heritage can get into Marden Henge and 450 other English Hertitage owned attractions for free – click here for details of joining.
Posted by trev on July 27, 2010 – 2:48 pm
English Heritage are hosting an exhibition of Kenilworth Castle through the ages from the original Norman keep through to the Tudors who lived in the castle. Explore the living history camps and let the exhibition guide you through the turbulent history.
The exhibitions run on Sun 29th & Mon 30th Aug (bank holiday).
Note: Members of English Heritage can get into Kenilworth Castle and 450 other English Hertitage owned attractions for free – click here for details of joining.
Posted by trev on July 27, 2010 – 12:36 pm
Pendennis Castle in Cornwall is hosting it’s Grand Victorian Fayre on Sun 29th & Mon 30th Aug (bank holiday), ideal for a family day out.
Experience 19th century entertainment at its finest! Marvel at the breathtaking gymkhana skills, enjoy the silliness of the Victorian side show as we challenge you to count all the fleas in the Victorian flea circus, meet the ‘Soldiers of the Queen’ and don’t forget to curtsy for her majesty as she passes by.
The castle was originally built by King Henry VIII to counter the sea born attack from the French and Spanish in the 16th Century and has been adapted over the centuries for various uses. It is now owned and managed by English Heritage.
Grand Victorian Fayre web site
Note: Members of English Heritage can get into Pendennis Castle and 450 other English Hertitage owned attractions for free – click here for details of joining.
Useful links:
More about Pendennis Castle
Hotels in Falmouth
Posted by trev on July 27, 2010 – 12:03 pm
As an extension of our recent guide to how to keep the children entertained these Summer holidays, we’ve included a few more suggestions for family days out, this time from the Telegraph.
Camera Obscura & World of Illusion in Edinburgh claims to be the one of the oldest purpose built visitor attractions in the country, celebrating it’s 175th birthday this year. With the new £1.2m revamp, the attraction has many hands on activities ideal for children such as the Giant Vortex of Light, Mirror Maze and 3-D images hidden in Magic Eye pictures on the walls.
Beamish Museum Great North Steam Fair celebrates all things steam from the vintage locomotive to the colliery winding engine in an exhibition based around the famous reconstructed living museum. The fair runs from the 2nd 5th September.
HMS Belfast – The Imperial War Museum’s light battle cruiser – is running a Shipshape Science Summer Fun Festival to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society. There will be drop in science workshops every Saturday, ideal for families, to complement the exhibition “LAUNCH” which explains amongst other things how 11,370 tons of reinforced steel don’t immediately sink.
Merlin Festival in Carmarthen celebrates the towns’ apparent connections with Merlin – the wizard said to have been the linchpin behind King Arthur’s conquests and reign. The festival takes place on August 14th and is likely to be very popular following the recent adaptation of the legend by the BBC.
Useful links:
Telegraph guide to family days out
UK visitor attractions
UK hotel guide
Posted by trev on July 26, 2010 – 8:45 pm
The world had just emerged from one of the most costly wars in modern times, much of London was in tatters and Britain was under rationing….so how did a country in such a dire state manage to host the most prestigious of Olympic Games and how does this compare to the forthcoming 2012 games?
In a new series, the BBC is exploring how the 1948 Olympic Games was staged using archive photographs, newspapers and film from the BBC itself as this was the first time British television had played a part in bringing the Olympics to the world.
The comparison is stark such as the competitors having to afix their own starting blocks to the tracks with hammer and nails, and some events such as gymnastics taking place in public parks rather than highly expensive custom built domes and other structures. One thing that is certain however – in 1948 the nation rose to the challenge of hosting the world’s greatest sporting occasion. Very soon the spotlight will be on London again…
Useful links:
BBC Looks at 1948 Olympic Games
Hotels around London
London tourist attractions
Posted by trev on July 26, 2010 – 6:03 pm
With the Summer Holidays officially starting this week for most schools, there’s the inevitable dilemma - how do you keep the kids entertained. There are of course plenty of attractions around the UK but with many family tickets costing £100 or more a day, where can you go that doesn’t cost the earth?
National Theatre – Watch this space is a free summer celebration of outdoor theatre, circus, dance, acrobatics, storytelling and film for all ages, held at the National Theatre on London’s South Bank.
Again in London, the Victoria and Albert museum is providing kids with an exploration backpack full of games, puzzles and everything they need to get the most out of the museum in a fun way.
Perform and Perform Plus are offering children around the UK the chance to enrol in a free session with this unique drama and dance school. From 3 months upwards, children can experience the unique mix of drama, dance and singing as created by Perform.
Travelling north of the border, the Fringe Edinburgh Festival is running from the 6th to 30th August. Originally setup as an alternative to the main Edinburgh Festival, the Fringe has grown into a family event all of it’s own with different performers and events daily. Tickets start from just £4 a day.
Staying with the Fringe, on the 27th August – Axel Scheffler, illustrator of the Gruffalo, will be giving a children’s masterclass at the festival with tickets from just £8.
For cycling fans, Blackpool is hosting the Nocturne Series which will featuretop British teams take on a range of international challengers. The start / finish area will be packed with attractions and entertainment including the Rollapaluza roller racing, Red Bull Stand Off.
Posted by trev on July 26, 2010 – 6:02 pm
It’s pretty inevitable that almost everyone reading this at least from the UK will have either experienced a short break or a holiday by the great British seaside. I admit to having spent plenty myself when younger mostly around the south Devon, Dorset and Cornwall coastlines on beaches hunting for fossils.
During this period, many of the seaside resorts were in rather a bad way as more and more people deserted them for warmer climates and sangria’s in the sun, and a lot have declined to such a point that it is unclear how they could be revived.
However the good news is that around the turn of the Millennium, the seaside resort quietly started to become “hip” with the movers and shakers, and what they discover one year the rest of us usually pick up on soon after. It has taken a little longer than usual for the seaside to become cool again and a lot of investment money, but many resorts are now updating their image, repainting the buildings and generally trying to attract a new generation back to the wonders of the family seaside holiday.
As we reported a little while back, Weston-Super-Mare has spent £50m revamping the Weston-Super-Mare pier and other examples include the Art Deco Midland Hotel in Morecambe which underwent a huge restoration programme to bring the original building back to life.
Posted by trev on July 26, 2010 – 4:35 pm
Residents in the tiny village of Draughton in Yorkshire have proven their honesty credentials after a Skipton shop keeper setup a shop in an old phone box.
The old village shop had closed in 2008 leaving residents with no choice but to drive to Skipton, but after a short trial with newspapers, Lewis Cooke took up suggestions to use the old red BT phone box as a dropoff point for fruit, veg and pretty much everything else his Skipton shop sells.
Since the phone box collection point was setup nothing has been stolen. Mr Cooke expects this to become even more popular during the Winter months as it becomes harder for people to get to the nearby market town.
More on the BBC
Posted by trev on July 26, 2010 – 2:41 pm
Award winning British poet, playwright, and novelist Simon Armitage is in many senses “singing for his super” by walking the 264-mile Pennine Way with no money and instead staging nightly poetry readings in halls, houses and pubs en route in return for donations, accommodation and food.
The poet who has been the recipient of accolates such as The Sunday Times Author of the Year, a Forward Prize, a Lannan Award and an Ivor Novello Award is embarking on this trek to see if he really can make his poetry pay it’s way, along with an attempt to make the readings much more intimate and personal to those who come to listen.
As he nears the end of the journey, it seems it really is paying off with large groups coming to listen to the poet reading his own popular works including GCSE students who stood at the back of The Lodge – a remote Derbyshire study centre – and who will most likely be studying this modern day poet’s works for their exams.
The motivation for all this? Armitage says along with bringing the poetry to the people, a big motivation is to recreate the ways of the Medieval poets who would tour the countryside in the same way before the invention of the printing press.
Armitage now plans to put some of his experiences into a book about the people he has met along the way.
Next weekend we’re attending a long anticipated family wedding at the Tower of London (yes, really). Now of course we have lots of pals in the hotel industry in London, but no, contrary to public belief we do buy hotel rooms just like anyone else. You can’t keep asking friends whether you can stay in their hotel can you?
I digress of course; but we’ve had some very hairy times being put up for free in this and that Presidential Suite. A long time ago we were travelling across the USA with our young family and were staying in Palm Springs; a friend had arranged the accommodation. When we checked in it was embarrassing because of course they grabbed the car, opened the lid to the boot/trunk, and then stood back in amazement at the plethora of different plastic bags we had with various degrees of dirty washing waiting to be processed. How does a bell boy carry all those bags upstairs? When we eventually got to the check in desk (it was about a quarter of a mile’s walk from the front door) we were greeted with a wide cheesy grin and “do you know someone high up in Marriott, Sir, or are you related?”. No I replied. Of course that was because we had been allocated the Presidential Suite. This was replete with a packing case filled with straw which looked like it had just been jimmied open, very theatrically, and inside were some of the best French wines and cheese money could buy. Blimey! We were staying for four nights. We had no idea what the bill was going to be. 50% off, comp, or what? We didn’t have much money and so spent the 4 days trying hard to be frugal. Cheese and wine has its limits. They must have thought we’d got rich by not spending because at the end of the stay when we checked out our bill had virtually nothing on it. And yes the room was comp. If only we’d known it. On top of that the GM insisted on showing us round the whole place and then he and I had a business meeting in his office comparing turnover. His turnover? About $50M. My turnover was less than £1M.
Anyway, back to OTA’s. So we’d booked this hotel for next weekend back in January, near the Tower of course. Last week we rang because we needed to extend the booking by a day. They didn’t have it. It had been cancelled. By the OTA. Which, we discovered on Google, had gone bust and filed for Chapter 11. The people we booked through hadn’t told us of course so if we hadn’t wanted to extend the booking, we would have turned up to “no room at the inn”. Great! So what’s my tip?
Why not book with a human being, at the hotel. That’s what we all used to do. We believe, often onerously, that we may just get a better rate. And whilst sometimes you might, it may not provide you with a room!
Mike Bevans is the Owner of Linthwaite House Hotel in the Lake District.
