Mangapps Railway Museum

Today it is 200 years since the start of passenger railway travel in Britain! On 27th September 1825, George Stephen's Locomotion No. 1 travelled from Shildon to Stockton with a few hundreds of people on board.  This was a massive day in the history of travel and journeys.  As someone who spends almost 2 hours a day on board a train, this is hugely important to my life! I only realised this anniversary about 10 minutes ago as I was listening to Radio 3's Train Tracks show with music and words relating to train travel.  You can read more about it here and catch up on BBC sounds.

It's totally serendipitous, therefore, that I was going to publish my visit to a railway museum.

I hope you enjoy my day out with trains!

Back in mid-August, CBC's brother and his partner came out to see us and had a day out together.  We went out cycling and ended up cycling to Essex Marina to take the Burnham ferry (it's a motorboat that travels in the Summer months) to Burnham-on-Crouch.  This town is served by a branch railway line and you arrive on the jetty in the centre of town.  Sadly, the guy who has been running it for years has recently had to give up the business due to some sort of life-changing health condition and it's being currently run by a new owner and helped out by some other sailors.  The guy who picked us up used to be a Police-diver.

In Burnham, we went to go and have some fish and chips for lunch from Essex's best fish-and-chip shop and after a tea and cake in a nice cafe next door, we cycled onto our next destination,  Mangapps railway museum!

Run entirely by volunteers and on private land, this is a railway museum with lots to see and do.

We saw this old tube train outside as we arrived.

Inside there is loads of wonderful old signs and posters and benches.

It is quite extensive inside but not overwhelming somewhere vast like York railway museum.

You could get onto and up close to lots of the stock.

Every hour, you can take a short train ride to the other end of the field!

You could tell the volunteers LOVE what they do!

I miss trains being like this!!! Honestly, more comfortable than the current ones!

At the end of the field, we got out for a stop.

It was  Diesel running that day but they do have steam days.

Here was our noble steed.

Here's a rare picture of CBC!

The volunteers were very knowledgeable!

I enjoyed looking in the station master's office and a waiting room and a signal box!

There's SO many pieces of history to look at.

One couple got to have a go at changing the signals. We were in a bit of a hurry to see round as we had arrived fairly close to closing time so wanted to see round rather than try this.

You can see the signals change as you do it which was very cool and see what safety measures are in place to stop an accident.

You could go inside most of the trains and there were items relating to railway people and their jobs, model trainsets and much more.

I really enjoyed having a wander through this tube train by myself!

I used to love those black shiny handholds when I was a child!

Here's the signal box you could climb!

 We really enjoyed it and I really recommend you go to visit it if you are ever in Essex. Here's the website for details.  You can get there by train by travelling from Liverpool Street to Wickford where you change for the Southminster line (usually only one an hour) and go to Burnham-on-Crouch. Many people like to go crabbing here too!

After this, we cycled back towards Burnham and got the return ferry before cycling back home. We took them out to dinner and then they headed back to London.

Cottage industry

This year, CBC has reduced his working timetable to 4 days a week and stepped down from HoD. He's doing two gardening/horticulture  courses on his extra day.  This means we have a reduced income.  I'm trying to be extra careful with making sure we use up things and be better prepared in terms of food etc. I've been trying to also make more healthier choices. We usually eat a lot of vegetables but I need to increase my uptake of fruit.

Anyway, here's a few things I've processed recently.

The above are cobnuts from my Dad's garden.  I may have mentioned that their beautiful cob-nut trees were heavily pruned when we were there. I tried to rescue some of the hundreds of immature nuts. I left them to dry out in a plastic mushroom crate in an old clock box and they seemed to have dried. On Saturday, I shelled about 200 of them. I gave a box to my sister to take back for my Dad. I put the rest in a box to keep as a snack for my breakfasts on the way to school. 

 

Over the past few months, when our loaves of bread have gone too hard, I've been sawing up the bread into chunks and putting in the oven with olive oil and herbs to make croutons which we've used for soups and salads and just a snack.

Last Sunday, I picked some nettles from the edge of the field near church and made a batch of  it for our lunch and a couple of dinners where I had rehearsals. It was delicious.   I added a box of croutons to it.

I was running low on washing powder and no chance to get to the eco shop to refill so when I went to my Godmother, I went and picked up a large bag of conkers from the pavement outside the vicarage and made 2 litres of laundry liquid from it.  Conkers/Buckeyes contain saponins and you can use Nancy Birtwhistle's recipe to make almost completely free washing laundry liquid. 

I made 2 litres of it!

I may have mentioned that there is an apple tree down the road in the carpark which has many windfalls which no one picks up or picks. So I have been going for a walk to go and fetch them. Often, half is bruised and uneatable but it was worth getting them for any content!

At the end of my Light Music weekend, there was some food and other things left over including about 10 carrots and some amazing Chicken stock. I made a big batch of soup from it and homegrown beans, tomatoes,  courgettes and onionscapes plus a box of reduced yellow split peas I'd bought ages ago. Delicious and it catered for us for 2 evenings in addition to the first evening's dinner. Even better, the jam jars I transported the stock home in from camp are now my regular receptacles for taking soup to school so it won't leak in my bag!

I've been enjoying lots of homegrown harvest

Do you spot the Nasturtium seeds? Well, these come from the Nasturtiums that I planted from the seeds I foraged in Madeira. I'm putting them in vinegar to make Poor man's capers as taught to me by Vintage Vix!

Do you spot those leaves down the bottom?  They are Aztec broccoli, given to me as mini plants by my mum. They are growing in my raised bed!

It's been a bumper year for Blackberries!

With some apples from my Dad's I made 5 boxes of stewed apples and blackberries in honey.

In addition, using more of Dad's apples and all the windfalls, I have made about 12 boxes of fruit amber using blackberries, apples and a little homegrown Rhubarb!

It's very satisfying to make my own!

xx

 

A few Summer outfits

Hello there!

We are several weeks into term now.  I was really sad on Friday at school because we are really late starting clubs because the person who does them was away. And then, the payment for clubs has gone up by a lot.  And when I looked at sign up for my clubs, I had only 4 signed up to Drumming Club, 9 to year 3-4 choir and only 11 for choir.  And I've been told the deadline is Monday. I miss the old days where I was able to just run my own things and I'd have big numbers. I cannot run any of those clubs with those numbers, I just can't. Anyway, I did raise my concerns so I hope and pray that perhaps something can be done.  I feel really despondent. 

This weekend, I have a gig on Clapham Common. We are playing Balinese Gamelan for Colourscape.

I found a few photos I'd taken of some outfits I really liked so I thought I'd share them before the seasons change:

A few times, people have told me red really suits me and looking at this outfit, I agree, it IS my colour!

Incidentally, the first time CBC and I danced together, before we got together, I was wearing a red dress!

This LK Bennett was charity-shopped a while back and I really like it. It's knitted but the short sleeves make it different. I teamed it with my Nan's gold necklace. It's funny because when she died some 25 years ago, I took her dressing table box of costume jewellery, nothing expensive and I kept most of it for sentimental reasons. This chunky necklace was never my taste but this year, I've found myself drawn to it and wearing it this year.

These Lucy and Yak trousers were charity-shopped earlier in the year.  It was funny because my friend Jen had a pair of Alexa trousers by Lucy and Yak a few years ago and I really, really liked them - they looked so comfortable.  I've been watching them on Vinted for a few years, particularly in the Sunflower pattern, which always sell well. When I saw them in a charity shop when I was hanging around waiting for CBC, I was so happy because I could try them for size. The size S fitted me perfectly and I made a donation to charity!

The Rieker lattice shoes (charity shopped of course, about 4 years ago) have been the shoes I've worn the most this Summer.

To complete the outfit, I added my Rochester-charity-shopped jacket and an ASOS wool hat.

I carried the jacket and shoes into the following outfit worn for a Thai meal out along with a Majorcan belt and my Sari-recycled dress from Padstow.

The shoes continued into this outfit featured a black skirt with Indian dancers which was, yes, you guessed it, charity-shopped and a crocheted top I charity-shopped (naturlich!)  only this year.

I have neglected these brown Asos sandals, back of a cupboard in a shoe box under other shoes but it was nice to wear them again.

The garden Crocs ruin the look somewhat of this Laura Ashley dress! CS-ed of course! 

Here's an outfit from Northumberland. All CSed. The linen and cotton mix cardigan was my only purchase in Hexham. It was £1. The skirt is from Fatface originally and is a comfy jersey. 

Plus CSed straw visor. 

Finally, the rainbow dress in another incarnation, with a Dorothy Perkins t-shirt and my Moshulu sandals. 

Any favourites here?