East before North

Our key destination on this trip is a long way north, but as we wend our way there, we started off heading east to Skegness. We’d never been, it’s a place everyone has heard of (not sure if in good terms or not!) so we decided to go. And I’m glad we did.

It has big sandy beaches (although nothing beats our local beach at home), plenty of entertainment - we didn’t partake, and a fairly good campsite. Unfortunately for us it was damp and windy, but this is August in the UK, so fairly standard!

Next stop was Lincoln. Mum and dad had lived in Lincoln before dad retired and as Ian had never been it was another location on our list. We knew of a car park where lots of motorhomes stay overnight, so headed there. We had a lovely afternoon wandering around, down Steep Hill  and yes it is) and back up again.  

Visiting the Cathedral and castle and generally mooching about, we’d planned to meet Vera and Roger for dinner that evening, but as the afternoon wore on, reports were coming in that there was potential for a riot in town and being in a car park, near town, it just didn’t feel sensible to stay, so apologising to Vera and Roger for ditching them, we made a dash for a safer location. It turns out there wasn’t any trouble, but better safe than sorry. 

Having found a lovely pub where we could stay the night tucked up in the corner of the car park near Chatsworth, we settled in for the night, had a great night's sleep and delicious breakfast the next day before heading to Chatsworth.

It was at this point, I realised I had left a bag with important belongings in the castle tea room in Lincoln, so after frantic calls to Vera; who despite being really busy and having been abandoned the night before, rescued my belongings. We never made it to Chatsworth as we retraced our steps all the way back to pick them up. Thanks Vera, and sorry for being a pain!

Having recovered from my heart stopping, forgetfulness panic, we arrived in Buxton. A beautiful place with elegant tea rooms, woodland walks, stunning gardens and a great campsite (although as it was a quarry we had no phone or internet signal, which wasn’t so great!) We tried out a Derbyshire Oatcake, but it wasn’t a patch on a Staffordshire one, so we’ll be sticking to the Staffordshire variety in future.

Buxton also had a Serena! It was fabulous to be able to meet up, and once again, there was lots of chatter.

With a few days to explore the local area we  found plenty of sheep, dry stone walls and water. It’s a stunning location and very much reminded me of my childhood holidays.

We had two fabulous days out while in the area. The first was Eyam. Eyam is known as the Plague village. In the 1660’s Eyam was affected by the Plague. As a village they decided to isolate themselves to try and prevent the spread of the disease, at great sacrifice to themselves.  Sadly, it really didn’t help the local community, records show that from76 families in the Parish 259 people died.

Interestingly 84 families were not affected, and more recent research has suggested this may be due to the genetics of these families, the same genetic Delta 32 mutation that has been shown to give immunity to HIV if inherited from both parents.

The village is fascinating with a small museum and lots of information throughout the village sharing their history. The church has a beautiful stained window telling their story and several very old murals.

Our final day trip from Buxton was somewhere very special to me. Jodrell Bank. As many of you know, dad was a Methodist Minister, but before that he was a physicist.   Dad has told us more recently about some of the work he did relating to the cold war and designing valves that were used in the first televisions. He was a very junior member of staff, but did work and study in the team headed by Bernard Lovell (below) who led the development of the telescope and research at Jodrell Bank.

We had a brilliant day out, learning more about the history and work they do today. The telescope was ‘parked’ the day we visited as it was being painted, but the work is so vital, it is staffed 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week and is helping us understand the universe we live in. If you can get there and love science, or even just seeing stunning photos of our galaxy, then go. There’s plenty for kids as well as adults. A brilliant day out! 

I had really hoped to ring dad from there, I know he’d have loved that, but having not thought about it beforehand, I realised as a working Radio Telescope (there's more than one there, so several were still in action)  Mobile phones affect the telescopes, so all phones needed to be in Airport mode on site. I did manage to ring dad once we’d left and he told me all about his visit where Lovell showed them round the smaller, but still impressive telescope that was there before the current one.

I apologise for the mass of photos, but it was a very special day for the nerdy bit of me! I thought I'd also add a photo of dad and I from when I last saw him, as this day was very much about dad as well as me.