fewer – go grammatical
you have to love this kind of graffiti
September 2008
at home in the park
it’s a funky street embassador
museum of berkshire aviation
britain is full of quirkly little museums, many of which are shown on the excellent nothing to see here coordinated/produced by the lovely anne from i like
one such place is the museum of berkshire aviation. i’m not sure i’d recommend it though as it’s quite reader-intensive in the old school museum style of ‘look but don’t touch’. making it quite exhausting/boring depending on your age and attention span !
it promised some excitement for children but didn’t actually provide it (i wasn’t sure whether the sign above was something vintage or an actual modern bit of fun)
when i bothered to read all the words surrounding the cases it revealed a fascinating history of the woodley aerodrome as it rose to international renoun for its aircraft manufacturer, and airfield tomfoolery (dougal bader famously lost his legs after betting a friend he could do some low level acrobatics – the friend won the bet)
the highlight was getting to go in to a proper plane (the one shown at the above), although you aren’t allowed to sit on the seats.
worth a trip, even though you think they could do a lot more with the place to make it more accessible. it feels like a time-warp treasure trove. i may pop back on my own sometime and spend a few hours reading the signage and trying to work out the chronological order of the exhibits !
chevron refinery
the chevron refinery pops up on the landscape wherever you are around pembroke.
i liked the contrast between the beautiful natural landscape and the
harsh industrial plant producing petrol diesal, kerosene, jet fuel etc
i’ve recoloured the photo above slightly in an attempt to give it a more eery look. don’t think it worked, but these things are always worth a try !
pembrokeshire motor museum
we didn’t go to this museum but i was very tempted from the brochure
looking closer it appears the same two visitors pop up a number of times
i hope they had a really good time
they certainly took full advantage of the facilities whilst it wasn’t busy
pemrokeshire 2008
and so, that’s the end of the chronological trip through our pembrokeshire holiday. hope it wasn’t too boring. i still need to tell you about our holiday house, but that can save for another day.
meanwhile i’ve got plenty of more funkypancakesque photos in my blog pending file which i’ll pop in over the darker months as normal blogging is resumed.
day 15 aberdulais falls
day 15 was the final day of our holiday and we stopped at Aberdulais Falls which is just a few minutes off the M4.
it’s a fascinating place where a natural feature (waterfall) changed the landscape due to it’s effect on industry – in this case the working of tin
it’s also got one of the nicest views out a toilet window !
the waterfall is the main attraction of course so i took the opportunity to brace myself for some long exposure shots of flowing water
(just so you know, here’s what the waterfalls look like with a normal shutter speed)
vs this with a longer shutter speed
well worth a trip if you are whizzing down that bit of the M4
two pounds ninety nine pence
jane and esther were waiting patiently in an award winning fish and chip shop which obviously didn’t win any awards for speed of service. kezia and i were restless so we walked across the street to look at this gift shop.
nothing much passes kezia’s attention and she spotted that lots of the prices were two pounds ninety nine pence (apologies for not using the pound sign, it seems not to work properly on the blog)
2.99 was not a special price at all !
when things were a different price, they were often reduced from 2.99 (note the rare rogue 3.99 and 4.99 behind)
i thought it was brilliant. and hopefully you do too !
day 14 back to tenby
we decided to go back to tenby for our last day in pembrokeshire.
esther and i spent an hour doing a multi-cache geocache which involved finding clues round the town which when combined would reveal the final location
and then we went back to the beach for a while before i went on a photo walk of the twon which looked very nice in the sun
do they sell special seaside building paint somewhere or agree to use different colours ?
“i was going to have fluorescent purple this year, but marjorie has that”
here was a rare outing for my polariser (hence the dark sky)
meanwhile, back at the beach things were getting busy
jane buried esther
and a bit later she went to look a the sea (i think the girls must have been playing in the sea by then)
jane’s parents popped by too (it’s a bit where-wally today isn’t it)
this is a canon. there’s a lot of that at the seaside to calm the seagulls
and this is what it looked like first thing in the morning when we arrived.
dummy (and passers by)
of all the photos i take, i find people stare at me most when taking pictures of dummies
but that’s probably because they are so rare i spend longer than i usually do taking pictures to make sure the dummy is in focus
and to get a nice background (like this yellow t-shirt or the wall of legs on the top picture)
day 14 skrinkle and manorbier castle
our last day in pembrokeshire was also a rare sunny evening so we did a few geocaches before heading back to our holiday house for the last time
this is a self portait at skrinkle. possibly one of my favouritist place names
the comedy rock is called church door i think
it’s got its very own space station / youth hostel
then we went to manorbier which was a lovely little village. we ended up doing a walk round the perimeter of the castle, finding a couple of geocaches on the way
and then it was back to the holiday house (via a chip shop with the longest wait ever) for the great last night tidying up
day 13 back to barafundle
the weather was definitely getting better so we went back to barafundle bay after crazy golfing
it’s amazing what difference a bit of sun makes. and the coast round here is amazing
i might have boosted some of the colours on our holiday photos, but the sand really did look like this !
this was the view of the beach from the other side where a geocache was conveniently hidden
and whilst we were up there a boat parked up in the bay
there are plenty of worse places to park your boat i imagine
day 13 crazy golf
every holiday needs a trip to the crazy golf course and we went to this excellent one at Heatherton. it had a pirate theme and was your more sensible sort of crazy gold with pretend bunkers and sloping greens rather than comedy obstacles
we were the first on the course in the morning so we could lead the pace. we scored using the funkypancake family amendment to the rules (no one can score more than 8 on any hole, so people don’t forfeit the game by having one bad hole)
it ended up being down to the final shot by my father-in-law. if he pocketed the ball on a shot from a tricky bunker up against a wall, he would win against jane.
he hit it, and it went straight in to the hole but it bounced back out ! his next shot went in so it was a draw with jane. well done to them both
day 12 folly farm
day 12’s weather was the worst for consistency of soaking misery. i really don’t like theme parks at the best of times but this promised some zooage so i thought it might be ok. but it was too wet to pop out to see the animals.
there were a few inside though, but it was hot and noisey
the farm itself was obviously expecting the worst
ghost train out of action ? spooky
it’s a comedy electric shock chair. probably for parents who’ve had as much as they can take (and put themselves or their little ones in it, depending on their state of mind)
mice are very successful creatures. at what ? what does this mean ?
this was a small spot of loveliness.
and this comedian chap below was actually the highlight for me. he was
really good at his job and seemed to be really enjoying himself. worth
the admission price alone i’d say.