As the London Aerodome, the RAF Museum's London site was the birthplace of aviation in the UK: the first airmail, parachute jump and aerial defence of a city all took place there.
It was a major centre of First world War aircraft production and later became RAF Hendon, playing a key role in the Battle of Britain.
https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/
These are photographs of staff and residents of Camphill Milton Keynes celebrating Pancake Day by doing Pancake races on Tuesday 21nd February..
Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, is the traditional feast day before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Lent – the 40 days leading up to Easter – was traditionally a time of fasting and on Shrove Tuesday, Anglo-Saxon Christians went to confession and were “shriven” (absolved from their sins). A bell would be rung to call people to confession. This came to be called the “Pancake Bell” and is still rung today.
Day 17 July 20th 2022
Today I was joined by Deanna and Andreas, as Ally had to return home for the day as her mother was unwell. The original plan was for use to give Ally a lift to Stafford station so she could catch a train to Birmingham New Street. However, Birmingham New Street has closed due to electrical problems and no trains were running between Stafford and Birmingham, Ally was driven to Birmingham by one of the spare drivers. As an organisation the Commonwealth Games/QBR took good care of its staff.
It was an unexpected pleasure to be working with Deanna again. She and I had both been volunteers on the 2014 QBR in Scotland, Host and Driver respectively and had worked together on a couple of days. Neither of us, in 2014, could have expected to work together again 8 years later on another QBR. Andreas was with us as chaperone for the underage BB that we had today.
We left Yarnfield Park around 9:30 and headed for Stafford to refuel, After the previous problems with the Shell fuel card, knowing that it worked at Shell filling stations and Stafford had the nearest Shell site on our route. The Shell site post code was entered into the Sat Nav, once again it didn’t disappoint us and set us off on a route that, at times, was quite narrow but fortunately we never encountered any oncoming traffic. As the following video shows.
Whilst it seemed a rather muddled route at the time, consultation with a map later revealed that the Sat Nav had done its best to make as direct a route as possible.
After refuelling it was a straight run done the M6 towards Cannock and Chasewater Park. We had been told to avoid the M6 Toll as this is quite expensive. We disobeyed the Sta Nav and stayed on the M6 when it told us to go on the M6 Toll, then blindly followed the Sat Nav’s directions as it took us 10 miles down to the next M6 junction at Walsall, turned us round and took us 10 miles back up the M6 to the junction with the M6 Toll – so we didn’t avoid the toll. We should have looked at a paper map. We arrived at Chasewater in plenty of time and were able to have a snack and coffee in the cafe with the other QBR crew that arrived a little before us.
The Baton was going to do a circuit of the park and then be carried by a wake border on the lake. This looked as though it might be rather hairy so Andreas spent some time with the 12 yr old BB who was to handover the baton to the wakeboarder, which required the young BB to walk 50 m along a flexible jetty comprising small floating plastic tiles - each tile roughly the size of a front door mat.
Everything went very smoothly, the young BB walked down the jetty handed over the Baton to the wakeboarder who then performed some amazing tricks whilst carrying the baton including turning somersaults in the air, the first of which didn’t quite work resulting in both wakeboarder and baton being completely submerged.
It was time to leave Chasewater and make our way to the next location, Tamworth. Realising we’d not had any lunch, it was gone 3pm and shouldn’t take long to get to the next collection point, we decided to stop at the first Greggs, Costa, Starbucks, KFC, Burger King or McDonalds that we came across. We reached Tamworth and our collection point without seeing any of the fast-food outlets. So widened our search to include BP and Shell garages as they often had M&S or Morrisions attached that sold sandwiches – we were getting desperate.! A BP garage was spotted and it had an on-site Subway – so Subways all round!
The Relay route was around rather than through Tamworth,
consequently involved three shuttle buses of BBs. All the roads were closed so
there was no possibility to leave the convoy having dropped off our BBs. As we
approached the final roundabout before the event outside the fire station Deanna
spotted that the council were opening up the road behind us, I was able to
continue around the roundabout and we made our exit.! As we had picked up one
BB needing a ride back, we returned to the collection point before heading for
tonights hotel – the Village at Solihull.
What is the meaning of Candlemas Day?
Candlemas is celebrated on 2 February and marks the return of light, a symbol of protection and prosperity. This Christian festival commemorates the presentation of Jesus at the Temple of Jerusalem, referring to him as the light of the people of Israel.
July 19th 2022
Today Ally and I were back working together again. We were
also joined by Sharni, one of the Media Ops team. Our planning yesterday
evening indicated that tonight’s hotel was on the way from our first drop-off/pickup
and to our second drop-off/pickup, so we would be able to stop off there
mid-day for some lunch. Or so we thought!. We left the Hotel at 8:45 for, what has to be
the closest collection point and drop-off, the International Centre literally
next to the Holiday Inn. The BB segments were around the grounds so whilst Ally
was putting them in position I was able to sit relaxing seated in the comfy
chairs in the air-conditioned reception area of the Centre. The air
conditioning was very welcome as it was it was already very hot, and was to get
much hotter.
As we were to be the next Pickup shuttle we departed from
the Centre in the convoy positioned behind the Medic’s Defender and made our
way to the Harper Adams Agricultural University, and the appropriately named
Poultry Drive. Although we had a police escort, it was not blue lighted, a
number of cars and vans managed to get themselves in the convoy. The police
motorcyclist would then attempt to ‘weed’ them out.
After completing our pickup shuttle duties, and no BBs
wanted a lift, we were free to make our way to tonights hotel Yarnfield Park. We
were somewhat disappointed when we discovered what Yarnfield Park actually was
though. It was a large commercial training centre, with rooms in accommodation
blocks and a central admin block with the canteen (not restaurant) and dining
hall - very much like halls of residence
at University! What was interesting though was its history. Between 1939 and 1941 a massive ordnance and
munitions facility was built on 1,200 acres of land near the Staffordshire village
of Swynnerton. Seven hostels to house the munitions workers were built in the
nearby village of Yarnfield. Three of the hostels were taken over by the GPO in
1946 to become a training school for telephone engineers. In continued to be
owned by BT until 2010 when it became privately owned. The BT company Openreach
still has a training facility at Yarnfield Park.
After having something to eat (crisps and fruit) and a
coffee it was time to leave to carry out our afternoon duties in Leek, where
once again we were dropoff and pickup at the same place. It’s very unusual to
do both roles at the same location. In Leek the BB route was through the centre
of the town, the roads had been closed as it involved driving the wrong way round
the one-way system, working back to the council offices. At the end of dropping
off the BBs to do the pickup it would have been necessary to go around the
route again, the roads would have reopened which would have made things rather
tricky if not impossible without breaking the law. Luckily none of the BBs
needed picking up as it was only a short walk back to the council offices.
The Sat Nav chose an interesting route from Yarnfield Park
to Leek which involved driving through a ford and past a garden with a giant
fibre-glass or plastic swan that had been used as feature and planted full of bright
flowers. This was really huge – the sort of thing that water parks have as pedalos
for people to ride in.
We returned to Yarnfield Park, the crew evening meal and planning tomorrow's activities.
These are some photographs of one of the drama groups in Camphill Milton Keynes performing a play called 'Stone Soup' at the Chrysalis Theatre.
Stone Soup is a European folk story in which hungry strangers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoys, and exists as a moral regarding the value of sharing. In varying traditions, the stone has been replaced with other common inedible objects, and therefore the fable is also known as axe soup, button soup, nail soup, and wood soup.
The Milton Keynes Dragon Boat Festival takes place at Willen Lake and up to 48 teams compete over the 200m race course, watched by several thousand spectators. As well as the exciting races, a wide range of bankside entertainment, food stalls and fun activities guarantee a fabulous day out for all the family!
The Milton Keynes Dragon Boat Festival is mainly aimed at corporate groups who are looking for a great team building day out whilst supporting and raising money for a charity of your choice. Upon entering, you can choose to upgrade your entry package to include a donation to the charity of your choice or you can simply raise funds in your own way!
