Friday 26 July 2024

From March to Sutton Hoo, Canterbury, Dover and home to France.

 This year, in order to avoid going home during the Paris Olympics, we extended our departure date by spending two weeks jaunting around England.  Most of that trip has been covered in a series of Facebook posts, leaving only our last few days in England to cover here.

Much of the second half of our trip entailed staying with friends from our days in Oman. It was great to catch up with old friends, even if only for a day or two each. In rapid succession we stayed with Cathy and Nigel near Bristol, Jenny and Ian in Worcester, Bob and Ali in East Markham and Mark in March. 

Posing on the riverbank
The river Nene runs through March, and Mark's little house on the riverbank was quite a nice place to hole up for a night or two. March has a few interesting things - a fossil shop where I did not allow Katrina to go and buy fossilised dinosaur poo (again), a rather nice local museum and St Wendreda's church where the roof is held up by a flight of angels, 120-odd of them. 
The river Nene and narrowboats




Tools of the Fenland.
Those on the right are for catching eels

Both St Wendreda's and the museum remember a WW2 Brisbane bomber pilot J.W. Hocking who, when his plane encountered difficulties over March, directed his crew to bail out telling them that he would follow once he had ensured the safety of the village of March. He did not get out and the plane went on to crash just outside the village. 

The museum covers a lot of ground, with particular emphasis on rail and fenlands living. 

Pilot Officer Hocking's uniform

Almost the full 120 angels - truly a flight






St Wendreda's has been the site of a church since the 7th century. The current church is not quite that old and the roof is lined with 120 wooden angels carved between 1523 and 1526. They survived the attentions of King Henry VIII's reformation commissioners by dint of the villagers plying the commissioners with food, drink and church silver.  Thank goodness for human weaknesses as the angels are rather spectacular. I jave many photo's of the angels.


From March we journeyed on to visit Tranmer House (Sutton Hoo) and stayed in the rather lovely Wantisden park, in the middle of nowhere. Interestingly, the area around Sutton Hoo and Wantisden is where the series "The Detectorists" was filmed.  
Our campsite at Wantisden Park


We spent almost a full day roaming the grounds of Tranmer House and looking closely at their exhibits. Sadly most of the things on display at the Sutton Hoo site are replicas, as all the most famous originals reside in the British Museum. What they do have though, are some fantastic replicas with interpretive material and some more recent finds (think 6c Byzantine bronze bucket), all set in quite nice wooded parkland. If you ask nicely (at the entrance gate) there is a volunteer guided walk n talk in amongst the burial mounds.  Most excellent, my camera worked overtime even on the replicas!
The burial mounds

Byzantium bucket, discovered
onsite, with modern reproduction
alongside

That helm

Front of THAT HELM

Tranmer House
One of the interesting stories told, was that after Edith Pretty died her son Robert inherited the grounds and excavations continued sporadically. On hearing of a new find that had the archeologists excited and puzzled in equal measure, Robert travelled to Tranmer House to see for himself. He found the archeologists in animated discussion over a large unidentifiable metal object, unabe to agree on what it was, or speculate on a purpose. Robert asked to examine the item and to be shown exactly where it was found. Oh, I know what this is he said, they're my old roller-skates, Basil Brown (the original amateur archeologist of Sutton Hoo) let me bury them here, in part as a puzzle for future archeologists. 

And then with our time in England running down we headed off to Canterbury, particularly to look in awe at the Cathedral. It was worth making the effort. Canterbury may just be the largest Cathedral I have ever been to. Sadly, much of the cathedral was closed off for graduations, so we only got to go into a limited area.  Mind you the biers of Henry IV alongside Joan of Navarre, the Black Prince's bier and stained glass windows depicting the miracles of some guy called Tom were all accessible. Probably my favourite part was the St Gabriel's chapel n the crypt. When workers removed a wall around 50 years ago, they discovered original 12c ceiling paintings. The stone finials on the crypt pillars were also quite interesting, as they were carved very early in the cathedral's history and the stone masons were given more freedom over what they depicted. Many of the finial "heads" clearly represented pre-christian iconography. The heraldry on display, on the arched vaulting around the cloister is also quite amazing. 

Inside Canterbury Cathedral


The candle marks the spot of Beckett's bier, 
removed at the orders of Henry VIII during
the reformation of the churches
One of the many stained
glass windows showing
the miracles of
Thomas A'Beckett 


Looking up the Black Prince




Underside of the roof tof the bier of 
Henry IV and Joanne of Navarre





Heraldic display in the cloisters

And then, all too soon, it was off to our final campsite (and the only disappointing one) in England. Our final day was spent shattering the rule of one tourist destination a day, by visiting the white cliffs of Dover - very white, quite speccy - the Dover museum and bronze age boat, a lovely cafe (La Salle Verte) and a very quick driveby stop at the Battle of Britain memorial. 

Obligatory tourist shot of the white cliffs

Dover museum string of 6c glass
bead necklace

Saxon glass and bead necklace

16c gamers pouch

Elizabeth 1, dated 1598


Bronze age boat dating to 1575 to 1520BC, found during roadworks
for the A20 to Folkestone - the tunnel ferry port fittingly

From there it was off to Le Shuttle, with a 2 hours earlier than booked departure for France and a long drive home. 



The poignant Battle of Britain memorial, paying
tribute to those that gave so much in a conflict 
brought on by the fever dreams of a madman





Sunday 5 January 2020

The retiring type

After returning to Oman from the Safari holiday there was around 6 weeks to go from then til the end of my contract. People kept trying to get me to extend, but for me "it was time". 7 and a half years in Oman is a long time away from home and as I'm not getting any younger..............

The work was still interesting and the people good to work with, but I was tired and ready to move on. Retirement sounded real good.

Oman was a wonderful experience and a great place to live. Over the time there our horizons were expanded, we got to interact with a completely different culture and explore interesting countries. All in all the only regret would have been if we had not gone, so thanks to the various people that "bullied" me into making that big leap of faith/confidence. It turns out that I do seem to know my stuff, at least that's what a lot of Omani's, business people and international experts tell me.

The interim between returning and going was filled with selling things, farewells and getting the house ready to move.  Those 6 weeks went pretty fast with things coming one on top of the other. We didn't really have time to do much in the way of anything other than preparing to leave, or in my case work.

With around a week to go the removalist company arrived and our remaining things were packed into a container for shipping to Australia. Quite the change from when we had arrived with nothing but our personal luggage! We did end up selling almost all of the things we wanted to, but sadly mostly for no-where near what we would have liked to get. It was particularly bittersweet watching our garden drive out the gate on a truck! At least we know it's gone somewhere that it will be well treated.

Just before the removalist arrived we took our cat (Scraps) to a young Omani couple that cared for him in preparation for his (first) move to Abu Dhabi where a friend is hosting him. He needs to stay there for around 6 months before coming to Australia. It's the rabies laws.

After the removalists had left we closed up the house and spent the last few days staying with some Brit friends (the Benfields) - back to nothing more than our personal luggage!

The final little while at work was also a bit of a whirl, finishing things off, handing things over, reassuring people that they would cope, etc.  At the same time I was also spending a lot of time at the national radio station recording a series of short sessions on logistics and border management. Fun, fun, fun! And for my final day of work the whole team (20 strong)were flown to Salalah at the far end of the country for two days of team building at a rather swanky resort. A very nice farewell to work!

The guys from work didn't seem to want to let go of me just yet and my last morning in Oman was spent on a fishing boat, trawling for fish. Between four of us we caught a bunch of Tuna, such that my final dinner in Oman was barbequed tuna for the Hunts, the Benfields and their maid and driver!

As all things must, our time in Oman then came to an end and at 0400 the following morning we headed off for the airport and the next phase of life. It was a pretty standard trip to Australia, with the sole exception that I bought myself the retirement present of a drone on the way through Dubai.

In all the Oman adventure ran from 12 March 2012 to 30 September 2019.

On 1 October we flew into Brisbane and went to our son's place where I finally got to meet my granddaughter - Triana!  As to what's happened since then in Australia, that's a whole other post to come............ In the mean time here are shots from Oman!

My first sighting of Oman, late October 2011



Meet the camels

Muscat (Muttrah) from the water

Traditional dancers

Contemplating a purchase at the souq

Ruins in the mountains

The Grand Mosque in Muscat

The main prayer hall inside the grand mosque

Marshalling dancers at Muscat Festival

Who knew there would be international cricket to watch - Oman vs the Netherlands
Royal Oman Police, Mounted bagpipe band - although we met them we sadly never got to see a performance
 
The entrance to Wadi Shab, - what adventures await?

Old style decorations in an abandoned village

Exploring wadi

Traditional bull fighting

Celebrating the after effects of rain

Ruins in the mountains

One of many, many castles (Nakhal)

The iconic coffee pot

A proud Omani gentleman, who asked me to show the world what an Omani looks like

Horse sports, in this case saluting the Royal presence (one of the Princes)

Desert that goes, and goes, and goes - it seems forever

Some of the spectacular mountains

Joy of joys Wadi Bani Khalid

On the wild coast of Masirah Island

Bye Bye garden

The house is packed

Last view of Muscat - 30 Sep 2019