Funny names and stuff in Bristol

We have been away for the weekend because mummy had to go to a wedding but we got to have a lovely day out in a place called brizzle. We had to go over a really big bridge to get there because the wedding was in Wales. Mummy said that Ruthie would like Brizztol because it had lots of old America stuff.

We parked the car up in a big place near the  motorway and we got a long bus into town and it was so huge it had to bend in the middle to go round corners.















There was a man called John Cabot who had a boat called Matthew which is a silly name for a boat but it was only little because there was a replica of it next to a statue of him and we went to see them and we wanted to go on the boat but they had a special party going on so we couldn't.

The building behind where the statue was used to be a warehouse where they stored stuff that came into the town off the boats and now it's an art gallery but we only went and had a coffee there because it was a nice day and mummy said we needed to be outside after being cooped up in a wedding all day before.

Then we went to another bit of town and we found lots of statues there and one of them was a man called Archie who was born in Bristol but went off to Merica and changed his name to be an actor and they all know him as Cary Grant which is another funny name.

There are lots of nice places to eat in Brisztle but we found this great market called St Nicholas which is also a funny name because that's what Santa's real name was and it isn't Christmas. But anyway we had lunch there because there were lots of places to choose from and we had Carribbean and it was curry goat and rice and peas and vegetables and we really enjoyed it.

Unclclelelcle's Day

 Sunday was Unclclel's Day so we went out for the day and took Rutie with us. We started out by going to Denstone Hall farm shop. It's on a proper farm and there are cows and things. And fields. And barns like this one.

There's a good cafe place at Denstone and we were having breakfast.  Mummy had the oatcakes with bacon and Uncncelce Kevin had the almost full English. It would have been a full English but they forgot his black pudding.  Bamburgh helped by reading the menu because there were new things on it.

 Then we went to a town called Lichfield. It had lots of important people that used to live there like a man called Erasmus Darwin who was the grandfather of another man called Charles Darwin who invented evolution. Mummy has a poster of him on the wal in her office.

This house belonged to a man called Dr Johnson who wrote books and a dictionary.

Lichfield has a big church in the middle called a cathedral. It has three spires on the top. That's the pointy tower things. You can see them for miles and miles but they're really impressive up close. They are so tall that we couldn't get them all in the picture.

Inside the cathedral is really posh and it has all this stone vaulting and stuff and this thing next to us is called a font and this is a very ornate one.

We saw lots of stuff at the cathedral. There were big high windows with all coloured glass in them but they didn't come out very well in the photo.

There was treasure too, but they didn't really like you taking photos of that.

Visiting a pretty garden with Ruthie

 We took Ruthie to look round a pretty garden that's near where we live. It's called Whatton Hall but they won't let you look round the house, just the gardens. They are quite big though and it took all afternoon.

There were lots of these plants called  ro-do-den-drons and they have pretty pink flowers. And there were yellow ones too and red ones but this one was the prettiest.

 There was one bit of the garden where they put their pets after they died. I think these were all dogs but it was hard to read because the stones were all crumbly but one of them said it was a terrier so that's why I think they were all dogs. The stone said he was faithful but I couldn't read his name, which was sad.

 There was a big pond with ducks and we sat by it and watched them. It was peaceful under the trees by the pond.

All round the garden there were funny looking statues of animals and things. These were called cass-o-waries and they were big strange birds. We thought they were funny.

There was one bit of the garden where there were all Chinese things and some of them were scary looking men. The sign said they were copies of statues that were found in an old Chinese king's grave. He had lots of them made out of terracotta that's a red sort of pottery and he had a whle army of them. The king's name was Chin and that's why they call it China. The scary men were very tall and some of them were standing under big umbrellas.

Ruthie at the manor house

We took Ruthie out to see a bit of history because she said she kind of missed seeing the castle in Ashby. But we've been to the castle and we know a lot of it has fallen down and it's quite scary when you go up the tower and so we took her to a place where there's lots more to see and it's not scary and high up and tumbledown and you don't get wet when it rains. It's called Donington le Heath.

There are lots of things to see at Donington and loads of history because it so old. You can see how old it is just looking at the walls but the garden is good and has lots of tall hedges in it like they had in the olden days. If you look in the pictures you can see that the house has lots of wood in it and there's this clever thing they can do with wood to find out how old things are. They take out a really small bit and count the rings and they can tell when the tree was cut down. They have to compare it with a big sheet that goes back thousands of years, to check the pattern, but it means they can tell you an actual proper date like 1066 or 1776 not just some century or other. So they know the house was built between 1288 and 1295, which means the builders must have been REALLY slow!

The kitchen at Donington is dead good. They've got it all set out like it was working and there's food all over the table but none of it is real. It's plaster and things except the bread and that's real but they coated it in something to stop it going off so you can't eat it but it looks like you can. We spent ages looking at recipes and medicines that you can make out of herbs and there was this massive plastic cheese on the table and if it had been real it would have been yummy except they didn't have fridges then so it might have gone a bit runny in summer. We thought it would be nice to sit round the big kitchen table and eat cheese and bread and fruit and chicken and stuff.
The curly things on the plate are called jumbles. They are a local tasty biscuit.

There's lots of good rooms in Donington and we liked them all but you couldn't see much in some because they had an exhibition thingy on but we liked the bedroom. It had a big bed with curtains and they said that King Richard the Third had slept in it. I hope they changed the sheets since then because it was supposed to be before the battle of Bosworth in 1486. I don't know how they know but it was probably written down somewhere because they have lots of records about the Manor House and they can read up all sorts of interesting stuff. Like back in the 1960s the house belonged to a farmer and he used it to keep pigs in. I wonder how they managed to get upstairs?

Don't forget to check out Ruthie's own blog to find out why she came to visit us.

Ruthie's visit to Ashby

We have a local market town called Ashby de la Zouch and we took Ruthie to see it. Its name is a bit French because it was once owned by a Norman Frenchman back in eleven hundred and something which was a long long time ago. They built a castle there and there's some bits of it left but we thought Ruthie might prefer to go shopping and have an English afternoon tea, so we did that instead.

There are lots of old buildings and the main street looks all old and rambly and there are historic old pubs and stuff. You can see the Bull's Head in this picture. It was built in Elizabethan times and you can just see the timber stuff on the front of it.

At the end of the shopping street there's a really tall pointy monument to an old lady of the manor. She was Countess of Loudoun and so it's called the Loudoun monument and it was built by a man called Gilbert Scott who also built St Pancras Station in London.

The building in the background is the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes. It was designed by F.A. Walters and built in 1908-15 at the expense of the 15th Duke of Norfolk. We didn't go round it, but it's very impressive isn't it?

After we went shopping we went and had a cream tea with scones and jam and stuff. It's typical English so we had to let Ruthie try one.

Find out more about Ruthie here