Beltring 2000 part 3
The major purpose of our trip to England was to see Beltring, but having
come so far and endured all that time in airliners we were going to make
the most of it. What follows is the military/technology related portion
of the rest of our trip.
We concluded that we made one big mistake and that was to have our holiday
after Beltring. Far better to have had the holiday first for one reason.
Beltring is roughly when the Europeans and Americans start their summer
holidays, England was packed with Spaniards and Americans, normally
quaint attractions like Chester, Oxford, Cornwall and York were absolutely
teeming with people. Places like the York "Yorvik" viking centre had huge
lines out the front and to see these attractions meant much wasted time.
The other mistake was to travel around England in an anti-clockwise
direction as all the tourist information we found was for the region we
had just travelled through. It would seem the English network of Tourist
Information centres has an expectation that you travel clockwise and
provide info on their local area and the next on that basis.
I can just hear Richard Notton's reaction to this "bloody Australians,
always doing things their way".
A while back I read somewhere that a rather unique English mode of transport
was soon to become extinct (1 to 2 years) as they are running out of parts
and it is not economically feasible to make more. This is the cross-channel
Hovercraft, to my knowledge these massive vehicles have no equal anywhere
else except in the Russian and American military and as few of us will ever
get the chance to ride in those I thought it would be our only chance and
so we took it. Via the internet (www.hoverspeed.co.uk) I tried to book our
tickets from Australia and for some reason couldn't succeed. But a day trip
Dover/Calais/Dover, foot passenger, was £8 each, bargain stuff! So in the
end I phoned and it ended up costing £10 each, I wasn't arguing as "a tenner"
was still a bargain. For twice as much you can go "First class" which we did
on the way back in order not to share the experience with a school class of
sea-sick kids, which promised to be very smelly and messy considering there
was a Force 5/6 storm outside. As we didn't exactly have cast iron stomachs
ourselves we knocked back the meal which is inlcuded as part of the first
class ticket and this threw the hostess into a quandry - she didn't want
us to leave until we had been provisioned with a can of drink and a snack
each. Nothing wrong with the service!
The Hovercraft is VERY different to ride in, there is a noticeable
amount of vibration and background noise and the sensation is very
different. It scoots along at around 40 knots. We were both intrigued and
very glad we took the chance to ride on it. When in Calais you can get from
the Hoverport to the city centre direct by bus for £1 each way. The bus is
Hoverport dedicated.
|
|
|
|
Once back in England we headed off to the Duxford Annexe of the Imperial War Museum the first thing the next day. This is a former "Battle of Britain" RAF base. There is an impressive collection of aeroplanes and a good collection of MV's, at certain times of year they get the tanks out and have a live day.
One of the things that caught my interest was a Concorde which you could walk through, this one was the flight test version. Whilst in there we discussed their safety record and listened to a discussion between a warden and a woman about how only one Concorde no longer exists as it was scrapped after returning from a heavy landing in South Africa.
It wasn't till that evening that we heard about the events of that morning at Charles DeGaulle airport and the tragic loss of the Air France plane....................
|
|
The Concorde cockpit area.
|
|
A section of the Iraqi supergun. If you have read my article about the V3 in Normandy (Normandy-Beltring 1999 article), this is a similar concept but with a much bigger calibre gun. The gun sections were detected by British customs and prevented from leaving the country.
|
|
The driver's position in a ZSU-23 Anti-aircraft tank.
|
|
A sectioned Ferret.
|
|
A neat way of turning your £Million Chieftain tank into a table.
|
|
I knew that somewhere in England there was a V1 on display on its launch ramp.
Found it!
A replica V1 (the real one is inside the museum) on a genuine section of launch ramp. To left and right of the launch ramp is the heavy shuttle that propelled the V1 to launch speed.
After lunch we headed for Derby to visit Andrew Jeffery and for me to have a drive of his Saladin armoured car. Andrew has written several extensive articles about his vehicles for my website, but it is always nice to see something "in the skin", even better to have a drive of it! His mother insisted we stay for tea and a very nice fresh salmon was served. It was after returning from a ride around the local area in the Saladin that Fran related what she had seen on TV of the Concorde, that was unexpected news.
Andrew makes a living from scratch built scale working models of traction engines (1/6 scale), just like the full size thing, including boiler certification! So we visited his factory and had a look at what he does - most impressive.
Look here:
http:www.livesteammodels.com
|
|
Saladin driving - Myself in the driver's seat, Andrew crouching and Martin standing.
Next site of interest was Hadrian's Wall (The Roman Empire's equivalent to the Great Wall of China), this was the northern most point of the Roman Empire and now marks the English/Scottish border. We selected 2 of the many identified places of interest to visit; the first being "Chester Fort" (no relation and nowhere near the city of Chester). There is an excellent museum with this ruin. It really makes you realise just how far down civilisation sank with the fall of the Roman Empire; in 450AD this outpost had functioning under floor heating, piped fresh water AND a sewered ablutions block!
|
|
Myself at the entrance to the sauna and spa complex. There were 6 increasingly hot baths with a 7th cold plunge pool at the end.
|
|
A detail shot of the remains of one of the elevated floors, all made from stone, which provided the cavity for the under floor heating.
Moving on to the next attraction which was the hill fort now known as "Homestead Fort", this is much less defined but is worth the tramp. Both locations belong to an organisation (as do 100's of historical sites in England eg., "Stone Henge") called "English Heritage". If you intend visiting more than a couple there is a big saving to be made on admission fees by actually joining "English Heritage". I formed the distinct impression that English Heritage is a "get fit" club in disguise, as all ancient attractions seem to be at the top of a hill and the car park at the bottom.
|
|
A section of Hadrian's Wall we stopped and looked at.
The next photo is of no military/technical interest, but I have included it to show you what England is like in the school holidays. The normally "touristy", but comfortable, walled city of Chester turns into a jostling mayhem at that time of year.
|
|
Chester city centre
Several years ago there was a news report on the TV of how a U boat had been recovered off the Kategut near Denmark. This was one of the fabled "last" (supposedly THE last) U-boat to leave Germany and was reputed to be carrying a fortune in loot. A Danish millionaire bankrolled the recovery and that was the last it was mentioned, other than that there was lots of wine on board but no loot. I happened to come across a mention on UBoat.net
http://uboat.net/gallery/u534/visits.htm
that this vessel U-534 had ended up in Wirral, near Birkenhead (near Bristol) in England and that you could get a tour through it, but only if you booked by phone, so I did. PH 0151 650 1573. (If you are trying to find it, follow the "Historic Ships" road signs.) What they do admit to finding on board was 2 acoustic torpedos, which although known to exist, none were captured. When I queried how they managed to extract 2 live and rusty torpedos out of rusty tubes I was told that the tubes were still air tight and were not rusty internally - the wonders of German engineering - after 45 years in salt water! One example is now in Germany, the other in Denmark, both were examined in detail and surprised the experts with their level of technology.
Supposedly Himmler was on board this vessel when it was sunk and was rescued by an E-boat immediately afterwards.
The tour guide mentioned that several features on this boat were still unknown on English subs at the beginning of the 1960's eg., fridge, tuned valve wheels (each emits a different musical note when struck so that the correct valve can be located in the dark) push button steering and depth control (using palm of the hands) etc.
It is a bit weird to stand there and look at the hole in the rear compartment that was caused by the depth charge that sunk the boat.
No internal photographs are allowed as the Danish owner wants you to buy his small book on the U-534.
|
|
U-534 in England.
Sorry about the quality of the photo, but a rusty sub with a red brick building in the background makes for a lousy photo subject.
|
|
Depth charge damage to the rear compartment.
Next attraction was the SS Great Britain, the world's first iron hulled ship, this was another of the engineering output of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of the most gifted engineers ever. It was unique in its day for lots of reasons and is quite intriguing to see, especially when you realise it finished its days over 100 years ago in the Falkland Islands and was scuttled in the 1930's. It was refloated onto a barge and towed back to England where it now rests in the same dry dock it was built in.
|
|
A shot from down in the dry dock. I forgot to get a picture (there isn't the room to do so anyway) of the whole ship.
Back to tanks. Next stop was the Bovington Tank Museum to see a Thursday "live day" only to discover that these have proved so popular they have been run most week days this summer.
|
|
|
|
A chinese T-59, rough and loud.
|
|
Jagdpanzer, Chieftain and Sherman. Note the helmet sitting on top of the Jagdpanzer. Bovington has a policy that all tank crew must wear helmets.
|
|
On the left a Brunel rail bridge, in Plymouth.
Somewhere near the bottom of Cornwall I spotted this rather interesting building ruin sticking out of the rock. There were no signs to give any idea of its name or history.
|
|
We had been to Lands End and were now making our way back up Cornwall when we were passed by a Coffee Pot Scamell Wrecker in civilian colours. Then we were passed by a Mk 1/2 Ferret; 1 x MV is curious but 2 by MV meant a rally somewhere. So one quick U-turn and we were off in hot pursuit; to discover a steam rally with about 5 MV's and sundry other old and vintage vehicles as well as quite a respectable turn out of Traction Engines and ancillary equipment.
In one field was an arena with Traction Engines trundling around it and in another working displays, a small flea market and misc., vehicles.
There were 2 separate Traction Engines set up driving saw mills, another driving a hay bailer and a further one driving a rock crusher, all very well presented and in action.
There was even a 1/6 or 1/9 scale traction engine driving its own scaled bailer and producing 6" long bails of hay!
|
|
Traction engines on parade. The smell of coal smoke was quite noticable.
|
|
General view of the Traction Engine field.
|
|
One lovely example..
Next interesting stop was Tintagel Castle (ruin), which is another English Heritage "get fit" site, just like Homestead Fort you have to walk downhill from the car park and then uphill again to get to the site.
Tintagel Castle is supposedly the birth place of King Arthur of Camelot, but there is little in the way of records to verify any of its history let alone a link to King Arthur. It is all very old and impressive.
|
|
Looking down at "Merlin's cave".
|
|
If you take the higher path to the castle heights you go up a set of steep steps but these are nothing compared to the set that go down to the causeway (which then leads to an island). In the photo you can see a man in the centre hanging on for dear life as he decends one of the easier portions. The photo doesn't do justice to the pitch of the steps.
|
|
At the upper left of the above photo is the steepest set of stairs you are ever likely to come across.
Well, that's it for the Beltring 2000 trip!
I would like to publicly thank the following people:
- Andrew Jeffery for the ride in and drive of his Saladin
- Most of all my wife Fran for putting up with "what, more green stuff?" as she classes anything with military connections.
