Back to the south

I'm running a bit behind with the blog posts since we had difficulty with wifi for five days in Rochester.  The Premier Inn had their own wifi with only 30 minutes per day free, otherwise wifi would only work outside in the cold and wet.

Jenny, Trevor and Margaret enjoying lunch

So I start with leaving Manchester which was nearly two weeks ago now.  It was a bit of a rush to get to Stratford-upon-Avon by 1pm.  We had been invited to lunch by Jenny and Trevor Jordan who are secretary and magazine editor of the Moxon Society.  Jenny is Chris Moxon’s oldest sister (see our most recent blog from Manchester.  It was a delight to meet them in person – as with Chris, we felt we knew them quite well through emails and the Moxon Magazine.

The Avon River at Stratford

After lunch at the Pen & Parchment pub we walked around Stratford – part of a great crowd enjoying a wonderfully sunny Saturday.  We also looked at the Shakespearean theatre which included a couple of exhibitions upstairs.  One of the exhibitions showed props – such as rubber hands cut off.  Each prop was in a tray, and when that tray was appropriately placed on a centre table, it triggered a video describing how that prop was made.  Quite unusual I thought.

Trish, Margaret and her second cousin Ray in Banbury

After a couple of hours, Jenny and Trevor had to leave and it was time for us to check into our hotel in Banbury, about 45 minutes away.  I always go to Banbury on my UK travels since my second cousin Ray and his wife Trish and their daughter Tracey live there and we are great friends. 

Margaret at Balliol College, Oxford

We met them for lunch the next day, and then on Monday Trish came with us on the bus to Oxford.  The bus went round lots of villages off the beaten track – many of them were very pretty villages.

In Oxford we were particularly keen to see Balliol College since my birth grandfather – the scandalous Nevill Forbes – was a Fellow at that college.  He was there from 1903 when he was studying Russian and Balkan languages and history, and right up to 1929 – he was the second Professor of Russian Languages and wrote histories of the Balkans and Russian grammars.

T

Nevill Forbes was my birth grandfather

he College was right at the bus stop, and was open to visitors.  When I mentioned my interest, the gatekeeper said Wait a minute, and went off to find the Register of Balliol College, and found Nevill’s short biography of his time at the College.

Premier Inn - a favourite hotel chain

After three nights at Banbury, a pretty town with a canal through the middle, we set off back to the Southampton area, booking into a Premier Inn at Eastleigh, just east of Southampton.   Eastleigh is where the Spitfire was designed and built, and was a big railway centre. 

Coming to the rescue

We had to get a puncture in John’s wheelchair fixed and were directed to Halford’s, a sort of Bunnings which also had a bike centre.  So the puncture was fixed in no time by a very nice young man.  The next day we took it a bit easy – we were so tired, but walked up to the shopping centre after lunch.  There was a Mobility shop up there so John asked the owner to look at his footplates which were slipping and catching on the body of the chair.  Voila – fixed.

A great night with Linda, Paul, Ange and Peter

We had also invited Ange and Paul from Southampton (Ange is my 4^th cousin) and Linda and Paul from Angmering near Worthing (Linda is my 2^nd cousin) to have dinner with us at our hotel.  What a great night we had.  I had introduced the two couples to each other a couple of years ago – they had been hearing about each other for about four years before that.

HMS Victory at Portsmouth

The next day we decided to go to Portsmouth.  We find we can’t do everything – we just run out of time and energy, but did go up the Spinnaker – opened in 2005 – and spent nearly three hours at the Mary Rose Museum.

Checking out of the Premier Inn at Eastleigh, we were due to head to Rochester – not our original choice - we had difficulty finding a hotel with a wet room.  We hadn’t intended to go so close to London.  

John on Brighton Pier

But on the way, we detoured to Brighton, a place we’ve always heard of but neither of us had visited.  We spent about three hours there – not a place we’d choose to live or even go for a holiday but there were lots of photo opportunities.  It is very run down, and we won’t go into what we think of English beaches.

From there, it was a two and a half hour run to Rochester, getting caught up in Friday night peak hour traffic on the M25, but not as bad as the F3 to Gosford on a Friday night.

Rochester is a great place and deserves a posting of its own.  We were here for five nights.