Tower Bridge

So continuing my theme of historical buildings as part of this blog (maybe I should set up a specific historical sites blog and work on my travel-writing skills? *shrug*)...this time I am talking about a bridge, possibly one of the prettiest bridges that there is in the world.

On Saturday we battled our way through crowds of blue and white painted Gillingham supporters on the underground to get to my best friend and her husband for lunch in central London. It was a humid, overcast day, but after lunch we decided to do something touristy that might give us some respite from the heat. We headed up to Tower Bridge, none of us ever having gone up it before. It's one of those great London monuments I take completely for-granted. I've always liked the look of it. I was impressed when, in my first year at university, I was at a cocktail party aboard the Dixie Queen for the James Bond Appreciation Society, and the bridge lifted to let us through. I found it highly amusing when I was a teenager walking along it to get to HMS Belfast with my scout troop when I heard an excited American tourist loudly exclaim, "Wow! So this is Tower Bridge!" And when my old uni housemate and I took our Canadian friend to see the Tower of London, I got lots of pretty pictures of the bridge, taken from the tower battlements. But no, perhaps in true British resident style, I hadn't actually been up one of the towers itself, and neither had my companions.

So, we climbed the many stairs to the top - not the most sensible of choices on a particularly hot day when our water was in short supply - at least it was cool in the tower. The galleries were worth the climb (except the freaky barrel organ music playing the background - I mean seriously, what is that about?). The views up and down the Thames were stunning - Canary Wharf on the one side; St Paul's Cathedral, HMS Belfast, City Hall, and the London Eye on the other. We stayed there for some time, practising our panoramic photography skills, and enjoying the cool breeze that drifted in through the open windows. I must say, much of the exhibitions on the history of the bridge and its construction, on bridges around the world, and on the bridge hydraulics etc were lost on us, although my fiance indulged in the sciencey stuff. Sorry to say I let down the history side of things, but personally I was more taken with the view :)

We descended from the opposing tower to the one we had climbed - don't ask me which is which, I have no sense of left or right, or north, south, east, and west :P I am good with directions though, go figure! I digress... So, we then followed the exciting blue line along the pavement to the engine rooms, which were vaguely fascinating. At least, my fiance and my friend's husband seemed pretty interested in all the old equipment. My friend and I were disappointed with the lack of hands-on displays and toys to mess around with - the Science Museum it ain't, bah! Although there was some hands-on stuff right at the end, hooray! And to be fair, it is a fairly small museum.

It was then on to Mr Whippy ice-cream cone complete with flake by the river! This was a new novelty for me, as having grown up on the coast and near forests, I always associate Mr Whippys with those places. It's just not a London thing. Ah well, it was fun to be a London tourist for a couple of hours. We then reverted to the less touristy activity of a drink in the OXO Tower, looking across the river, and watching the world go by. I guess it's technically still spring, but hooray for beautiful summer afteroons spent with best friends :D As much as the city generally stresses me out on this occasion I couldn't have felt more relaxed.

Battle Abbey

When I wrote my post about castles back in April I said that I would report back on some of the ones I visit. Well, why stop at castles? They are my favourite type of historical building admittedly, but there are many more fascinating ones round and about.

So onto an abbey!

Yesterday morning we decided to brave the rain and go to Battle Abbey, which is next to the field where the famous Battle of 1066 took place, hence the name of the town. It took us just under an hour of driving through continuous torrential rain to get there, and when we made it, looking drop-dead gorgeous in our kaghouls (as you do), the custodian warned us that most of the site was outdoors. We were unperturbed however. We have both grown up on British summer holidays, and are therefore old hat when it comes to visiting open-air sites in rainy weather.

The abbey, owned by English Heritage, is an interesting place. It was allegedly in a privileged position due to its proximity to the famous battle, and therefore received great honour and wealth. I've often struggled with this about abbeys, monasteries, and priories, and I'm still unsure what to make of them. The museum in the Gatehouse gives a good illustration on life as a Medieval monk. There were many artefacts in the museum in glass cases that had special alarms fitted. Even items that many of us (including me with an archaeological background) would consider to be of little monetary value (always of great historical value), seem to have been targeted or actually stolen at one stage or another, so needed to be kept closely guarded. The abbey itself is mostly ruins, very little of what the Normans built remains, although there are number of rooms built later in the Medieval period, that retain their original shape and vaulted ceilings, so you can get a sense of what the space was like. After the dissolution of the monasteries Henry VIII handed Battle Abbey over to some lord, who turned it the western part into his private home. That part is now a private school.

For us the most fascinating buildings were the little dairy, and the ice store, which were built in the nineteenth century. The ice store initially looks like a Second World War Anderson shelter, although made out of brick. You enter and go down some metal stairs to stand above what looks like a well. My fiance was enamoured - as he always is by anything underground and apparently secret - whereas I freaked out a bit at how unsturdy the metal seemed, and turned to leave too quickly, smacking my head on one of the low wooden beams at the entrance, doh!

Undoubtedly, my favourite area of the site was the battlefield itself. The view from the abbey across it is stunning. As the rain cleared and rays of sunlight burst their way through the clouds, the field spoke of nothing but peace and beauty. And yet it was where, almost 1000 years ago, the course of English history changed dramatically. It is where hundreds of men died, and much blood was spilt, where history was turned on its head in a day. You would never know it to look at it now. It is like peace has descended upon a place that was the witness to so much pain, and cleared it of all agony. It is a strange phenomena. I had a similar experience, although the history is achingly recent, when I visited the Somme battlefields in France. It seems like a trite example, and it does sound like I am being sentimental, but for me, this sense of tranquillity demonstrates hope. Hope of healing. It can be hard to relate to soldiers in 1066, but they were real, living breathing men, who had families. 1066 or 1916 the principle of lost lives is the same, and there is a beautiful melancholy about those battlefields now. What will it be like for those places, destroyed by battles, not just wars, but of all kinds, now? Sometimes it feels like those places will never know healing, will never be beautiful. But I have a hope that there is.

Ok, seriously off on a tangent there...

I should end that serious note, on a silly one. In the cafe at the abbey there were quotes relating to the Battle of 1066 dotted around the walls. The one next to our table read, "The Norman Conquest was a good thing, as from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become top nation." Sellar & Yeatman, 1066 and All That, 1930 - to which my fiance responded, "The irony is that the opposite was true for France!"

Enough! (and Hooray for the Phantom Bat)

Right, now I really want to let rip and lose my temper at the government for what they are doing to my county! Go here.

Build, build, build, it's all they flipping do. And what? Any more jobs to go with that? No, and there aren't enough for the volume of people who live there anyway. Mmm, let me see, Labour think it is a terribly good idea to build all over green field sites, to expand villages into towns with no real community or infrastructure, and to basically completely destroy everything!

If you read my previous post on over population you might be thinking "you can't have it both ways Fire Fairy", and of course, a greater population does mean more homes are needed, and it doesn't sit well with me, it never did. But, it wouldn't be quite so bad if they actually built affordable houses, that were comfortable but not huge. Take the village where my parents and brothers live as a prime example. All of the new houses that have been built there since we moved into ours in summer 2001 have been hideous sprawling mansions, with no character, behind gross electric gates. The residents do not get involved in village life, give nothing back to the community, and their beastly homes take up a disproportionate amount of land i.e. three six bedroom monsters with private gyms take up the same space that approximately twenty reasonable sized homes for the average Joe would take. So, now that these huge houses have taken up so much valuable space, where oh where will all these new houses the government want built go? It's annoying, because they push first-time buyers out of their home towns by building so-called plush pads, and then they discover they need to build more and more houses elsewhere, and by doing so communities slowly begin to disintegrate and lose their identity.

Space is not being used wisely! Sure, we don't all want to live on top of each other, and we see examples of this in very built-up areas, where new developments are crammed into even the tiniest of lots. What about disused buildings that have fallen into disrepair? Why isn't more being done to renovate them, providing homes in spaces that were originally allocated as such? Often brown field sites are not always picked before green field sites which infuriates me greatly. Not only does it have a negative effect on all things naturally beautiful it is ultimately destructive to animal habitats, trees and plants. Flood plains are becoming over-burdened, we are encountering problems with the water supply, and traffic is also growing at an alarming rate, further burdening our planet with pollution and potential disaster.

I'm so annoyed about this because our area of the country constantly feels trampled on. From the sewage works being built in my old home town to take the rubbish for the city a few miles away, () to the new football stadium being built on a green field site by a tiny village, instead of the sensible option to build it on a brown field site next to the city station. The views of the residents of these places were treated with utter disregard by the government.

One news story that did raise a smile for me though, was about a developer who has had to build a special house for bats found on the site where he was building flats (not in itself a wholly negative thing, as he is replacing two houses). But still, go bats! Note this amusing quote from the developer, "I just feel that perhaps we have gone a step too far in the protection of one bat which as of today no one has seen. As of today we have spent £20,000 to £30,000 building a structure for a phantom bat that is heated on the say-so of an ecologist who found some droppings in the house." And his point is? The bats deserve protecting if their habitat is being destroyed by yet more development. And 800 droppings are fairly good evidence of the existence of bats that haven't been seen. Are these builders working by candlelight? I doubt it, so it's no real wonder considering bats are nocturnal. Even if the bats no longer dwell at the property, creating a habitat for them can be no bad thing. After all, they have just as much right to lofts as humans and spiders do :)

There are glimmers of hope on the horizon in the form of novel bat houses... Ok, it's just a story that made me grin muchly, but I feel tired on behalf of my homeland for all these new buildings being smacked upon it. When will it end? Can it end? Is it just us, or is the rest of the country experiencing the same problem? And is it all really necessary? And have I now just found myself in a depressing conundrum with my opinion on over population meaning one thing, but the reality of over development meaning another. More for me to ponder about... I shall also daydream some fantastical solutions - I mean we could always emigrate under the sea like Homer Simpson visualises...or we could move to space a la Pixar's Wall-E, although I'm not so sure about the sedantry lifestyle... Or maybe we could all run through the next antique wardrobe we see and find ourselves in Narnia... *sigh* If only...

Exciting News!

My boyfriend and I are now engaged! On Saturday we went up onto a secluded spot of heathland on the South Downs for a picnic, where he got down on one knee to propose. It was beautiful.

We are both very happy and excited, and are so so blessed to have each other.

Just wanted to share the exciting news with anyone who may stumble across my blog :D