Milton Keynes

Today I drove down to Milton Keynes to visit Jonathan & Dillon. We went to the Flying Fox Inn at Woburn for a light lunch and did some shopping in central MK.

In and around the Black Country

I spent the weekend with Louise & Vernon. On Saturday morning Louise & I went to Solihull whilst Vernon played golf. In the evening we had a lovely meal at Prezzo in Bromsgrove.

On Sunday we went to the Black Country Living Museum, 1 mile north of Dudley town centre.

Over fifty historic buildings from all around the Black Country have been moved and authentically rebuilt at the open air museum, to create a tribute to the traditional skills and enterprise of the people that once lived in the heart of industrial Britain. Covering 26 acres of former industrial land, the museum transports visitors back in time from the modern exhibition halls to the canal-side village, where costumed demonstrators and working craftsmen bring the buildings to life with their local knowledge and practical skills.

Whilst not cheap, I can recommend Hobbs’ fish & chip shop! This 1930′s shop in the museum village sells traditionally cooked cod, roe and chips; reputed to be the best in the midlands, using beef dripping for frying.

Forge Motorsport Action Day

Yesterday I went to the 2011 Forge Motorsport Summer Performance Car Action Day at the Castle Combe Circuit near Chippenham, Wiltshire.

The Drift Team were just starting when I arrived, taking the corners at high speed and at right angles to the tarmac, no doubt made more tricky by the fact that the track was wet from the rain.

During the afternoon the rain stopped and the sun came out. There were loads of performance cars to look at from the hundreds of car clubs that attended, and plenty of track action to see from the banking around the circuit.

Weekend in Yorkshire

It’s back to work again tomorrow after two weeks on my hols.

I decided to spend last weekend with Andrew and his family and so I booked Friday and Saturday nights at the Ramada Wetherby hotel.

I set off for Yorkshire at 8:30 on Friday morning, and after an hour’s driving I broke down on the Motorway. The engine cut out and would not re-start, so I called Autonational Breakdown and they arranged to send a recovery vehicle. The Highways Authority turned up and took some notes but were happy to leave me on the hard shoulder to await the breakdown truck. The breakdown guy arrived and initially thought it was a fuel pump fault, but after various tests it was clearly not, and so he winched the car onto the back of his truck and took me and the car back to my local garage.

The car had undergone a major service at the garage in May, which included new spark plugs, oil, filters and timing (cam) belts. Hooking up the car to the OBD-II scanner revealed a cam shaft fault. On further investigation the technician discovered that the secondary timing belt had broken. Not a quick repair as it would have caused damage to several, if not eight, exhaust valves. Then, of course, it was necessary to try and diagnose why the belt had broken.

I’m very grateful to the parents for agreeing to add me to the insurance policy for their Lupo, and allowing me to borrow it so that I could continue my trip. I eventually made it to the hotel for 8pm instead of noon as I’d originally planned. I spent the rest of the evening with Andrew, Sarah, Fiona, Anna & Murray.

On Saturday, Anna & Sarah continued with food preparations for that evening’s BBQ in the garden. It was to celebrate Fiona’s 17th birthday. Andrew mowed the lawn and filled Noah’s (empty) sandpit with water to make a paddling pool. Once Anna had added cup-cake mixture to 24 ice-cream cones and cooked them and then piped vanilla butter icing on top, Fiona went to go and buy Matchmakers or something similar to stick in the icing to make the buns resemble 99 ice-creams. Matchmakers couldn’t be sourced locally and so small sections of chocolate fudge fingers were used instead.

The cones were a little unsteady by this point and so Andrew was challenged to make some sort of rack to stand them in. After a few minutes poking about in the loft he came up with a length of kitchen cabinet kick panel. Then Andrew drove Murray & myself to Auto Spares Kippax to buy a drill to make suitable ice-cream cone sized holes.

On returning home, Andrew quickly drilled 25 holes in the panel, sanded the holes and added a block of wood at either end to stand the panel off the table. The cones fitted nicely into the rack and looked great along the back of the table in the dining room alongside various other puddings and the birthday cake.

Paula and then Fiona’s Danceology and college friends arrived and Anna organised a game of Empires (which I was very bad at). By the time the game had ended the BBQ food was ready. We had beefburgers, sausages & salad followed of course by the various puddings. Anna then organised a game of Ghetto Articulate, but I joined Sarah & Paula on a walk with Flossie the dog. Paula then got a lift home and later that evening I returned to the hotel, leaving the teens to their Wii games and sleepover.

On Sunday morning Fiona’s friends left. Then Ross came over and took Fiona for a pub lunch. Andrew, Sarah & I went over to Thorp Arch. On our return to the house we had something to eat and then I left for the journey home.

Weekend with Louise & Vernon

I drove the parents over to Louise & Vernon on Saturday morning. We went for a pub lunch at the Queens Head Inn followed by a walk up the Worcester and Birmingham Canal towpath. In the evening we had a lovely garden BBQ.

On Sunday we went to Ashdown WW2 Camp for the ‘Wartime in the Vale’ event, said to be the Midland’s largest military vehicle and re-enactment event celebrating Armed Forces Day and the wartime contribution made by the people from towns and villages throughout the ages in The Vale of Evesham. We then went on to Evesham Country Park. It was an interesting day, but very hot weather.

An evening trip to Stratford

Andrew mentioned on Messenger the other day that he’d be spending a few days in the caravan at Atherstone, so I rang his mobile this evening to see if he’d like to meet up in Stratford-upon-Avon. I spoke with Sarah as Andrew was concentrating on driving somewhere, and after a few calls because the signal was so bad, it was agreed that we’d meet outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in a couple of hours time.

I’d just parked the car when I got a call from Andrew to say they were at Tesco’s and would be with me shortly, so I walked to the theatre and waited by the river. I think the geese and swans were a bit put out that I wasn’t feeding them anything. It was about 8:30pm by this time, and I did the obligatory ‘Just checked in at..’ status update on Facebook, and then sat admiring the view. The weather was still nice, although there was a stiff breeze. There were people milling about, but I was surprised by how quiet Stratford was.

A short time later Andrew and Sarah arrived. It was a nice surprise to find that Fiona and Flossie were with them too. I hadn’t seen any of them since Anna and Murray’s wedding in Yorkshire back in June last year. We had a nice walk along a length of the river Avon and back.