Thursday 12th to Sunday 15th January 2023 We were delighted to be invited to Staffordshire to celebrate the long-awaited wedding of Liz and Martin, two very dear friends who have shared several of Travelling Herd’s adventures. Duncan and Phil [who regular readers may remember provided Matilda with a very welcome bath during our Narrowboat Adventure #4] invited us to stay with them the night before the wedding. It was a real pleasure to be able to catch up before the ceremony and Matilda particularly enjoyed meeting fellow wedding guests Jo and Paul face to face for the first time, having previously only met them over Zoom during lockdown. Long standing friends and their partners were seated together at the reception and the years and miles just slipped away. When Robert and Matilda first met [towards the end of 1989] Liz and Martin were a couple and we [along, we suspect, with many of their other friends and relatives at that time] expected them to become husband and wife. Life can be unpredictable and they went their separate ways. Two marriages, two families and two divorces later, we have finally borne witness to what many of us knew to be true – they were […]
UK
Friday 16th to Monday 19th September 2022 Derek continued to improve on his whittling, copying the lettering from the original and the final result was quite impressive. Waking early on Friday, Matilda ventured out to watch the sunrise as it bathed the cottage in a warm glow. The boats dictate our plans on the Scillies and when we checked the trips running on Friday, the best destination was St Martin’s as this was likely to be the only day we would be able to go there. Matilda decided that she would stay on Tresco and take advantage of the indoor pool. So while Matilda set off in her costume and robe, the other three set off for New Grimsby to catch Firethorn over to St Martin’s where they walked to the Day Mark, a navigation aid built in 1683 which is painted red and white. The views, as everywhere on the Isles of Scilly, are gorgeous and Gill pronounced it to be her favourite island so far. Any visit to St Martin’s with Robert obviously now includes The Seven Stones pub. He pointed its location out to Gill and they agreed to meet there later. When the Robinson’s failed to […]
Tuesday 13th to Thursday 15th September 2022 One of the pleasures of inviting friends to join us on Tresco is seeing their first reaction to the beauty, peace and tranquility of the Isles of Scilly. This year we are joined by the Robinsons who learned how to put up with us in close proximity on The Duke in April. We had hoped to meet them from the helicopter as they landed on Tresco for the first time and took the earliest boat from Bryher at 09:45. However, when we disembarked at the quay at New Grimsby we were told we would not be able to get to the heliport in time and that they would be taken straight to our cottage with their luggage, as would we. Having dropped various boat passengers at their accommodation, the driver subsequently relented and suggested he could drop our luggage at Green and take us on to the heliport to see if the Robinsons were still there. What ensued was a little like a Keystone Cops caper. We unloaded and left our luggage in the shed at the cottage and got back on the transport to the heliport where we were told that the […]
Thursday 8th to Tuesday 13th September 2022 Last year, Matilda noticed that there would be a Low Tide Event scheduled for the Sunday before our usual Tresco week, which was starting on 13th September 2022, so we planned to travel down early, visit the famous Jubilee Pool in Penzance, and spend a few days each on St Mary’s and Bryher, to enjoy the various pop up stalls on the sandbank. This year we opted to travel by train, leaving home just after 09:00 so that Matilda could make full use of her Freedom Pass. Black clouds were looming as we arrived in Penzance and made our way across the road from our accommodation in The Stanley to the Jubilee Pool which promotes itself as “the UK’s largest, most celebrated Art Deco sea water lido and geothermal heated pool“. Only a few hardy souls were swimming in the unheated pool. Although the sea water is geothermally heated and replenished daily it still seemed a little chilly and Matilda took up position in front of one of the inlets where there was a warm current flowing into the pool. After a short while, the black clouds fulfilled their promise and huge raindrops pounded […]