Firstly the flight, Ryanair to Bristol
airport, boy talk about hard sell, right from the moment you board
the airplane. They have everything, scratch cards, calendars, I'm
sure that if the flight was longer they would have tried to sell me
the plane. Hertz gave us a nice little Ford Fiesta,so it was off
south to Dorchester.
On the way to Dorchester is the Fleet
Air Arm museum. Whilst it is primarily a collection of military
aircraft they did have some civilian aircraft notably a Concord.I
think the stand-out for me though was the Sopwith Pup, a 1916 first
world war biplane fighter. It was fantastic to see the construction
up close , it's definitely a fine line between the foolhardy and the
brave flying in one those aircraft. The girls were saved as the
museum had great tearooms although they enjoyed walking inside the
Concorde.
It was approx. an hours drive south
before we hit Dorchester, a very picturesque little town. There was
some very beautiful architecture, stuff that you cannot hope to see
in Australia and its surprising the mood that it evokes, that cliched
small English village. My romantic notions of village life was
quickly shattered. As with all european hotels it took a while to get
use to the amount of stairs one has to traverse in order to get to
your room (might do me some good). The first day was coming to a
close, time for a feed and sleep, it had been a long day, 3.00am
start.
Early rise and a big breakfast. As part
of the Hotel booking they throw in breakfast, and for me that means
the full English breakfast, eggs, toast, pudding, beans, bacon, hash brown etc. drowned with plenty of coffee/tea. The girls had
serious shopping to attend to whilst Karl and myself were off to the
Bovington tank museum. I pleaded, successfully for a lift to the
museum prior to their shopping marathon. It is at this point that I
have to whine about that crap english road signs. There are signs but
they just don't correspond to the directions of the road, for
example 'A37' straight ahead but as you go around the round about
straight ahead is grass and you really need to go right. My advice,
if your going to drive in rural England have a navigator or a Tom
Tom.
Bovington tank museum: we eventually
found it. It was a fantastic day, a great collection of vehicles
with alot of history, was too much to take in. Michelle and Laura
finally found us in the afternoon somewhat sodden but very happy with
the days adventure.
Day 3, another big breakfast under my
belt it was time to hit more museums. The town museum was only
several hundred yards down the street, well planned eh! and proved to
be a real treat. It a lot of modern sculpture and the inside of the
museum reminded me of a small Royal Exhibition Building They also had
a great section of the roman period of occupation, notably a
skeleton recovered from Maiden Castle with a ballista bolt lodged in
the spine, maybe a victim of the Roman Legion Augusta II that besieged and subductated this area in 43AD. Maiden Castle lies just
outside Dorchester (5min) and is the largest iron age hillfort in
Europe. Luckily the sun was shining and the walk of the Maiden Castle
perimeter provided a fantastic vantage point with which to see the
surrounding countryside.The earthen ramparts, their shear size
is breathtaking, something that no picture or text can could adequately describe simply something to behold.
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