Have just got back after a long weekend in Roundabout Land -or Milton Keynes as some people know it.
Stayed with some friends and made a number of interesting visits on Saturday and Sunday. It was Milton Keynes' Heritage Open week and so we pootled around a few sites.
On Saturday morning we went to Ridgmont Railway Station - a fascinating little place. It's a working station for local trains to Bedford but the reason for our visit was the old station museum and tea rooms.
We were met by some very enthusiastic people. There was no need for a tour of the museum because it was very small. One of those higgledy piggledy places with everything stacked high and all over the place - which gives it a special charm. After a look round we had cups of tea. It was all very oldie worldie and you will find a few pictures from the days when the station was a home for the stationmaster.
Like our own Weybourne Station, Ridgmont has been used in films, the most recent being the 2011 film One Day which is based on the book by the same name which I tried to read but just gave up on.
After Ridgmont, it was a shortish drive to the village of Woburn - yes that of the Abbey and Safari Park, neither of which we visited. It's a quaint village centre and we have some pictures of that as well.
Then it was off to a church at a strange place called Bow Brickhill. Actually it wasn't that strange a place. It was just that we couldn't find the church. It was up a hill at the beginning of some woods and not easy to find. It's debatable whether a decision to climb the tower was a good one. Let's say health and safety may have had something to say about it. The first steps were very narrow and claustrophobic and then there were two ladders to climb before emerging onto the roof from where you can apparently see five counties. So I guess that would be Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and maybe Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire.
On Sunday we went to two very different and very interesting churches. They were both a stone's throw from Milton Keynes. I find MK a strange place. There are open spaces, walks and lakes everywhere and loads of lovely little villages that still exist with their own character despite having this giant built all around them.
The first visit was to St Lawrence's Church at Broughton (pronounced Brorton as opposed to nearby Woughton which is pronounced Woofton). The amazing thing about this small country church are the paintings on the walls. These were plastered over in the 16th century. They were painted in the 15th century to teach the Christian faith to those people who could neither read nor understand Latin. But then Henry VIII got going on them.
Some of the paintings are aggressively disturbing, almost threatening but they were wonderful to see. In an effort to protect them once they had been uncovered, they were spread with egg white which subsequently became very hard and sticky and had to be stripped off again. Today the images are well preserved and will continue to be so. Do give the church a visit if you are in the area.
One of the most amazing things in the church is the ability to leaf through two very historic 15th century books. These are chained up but accessible for viewing. I don't think I've ever got so close to ancient texts.
The church at Willen was, in contrast, very modern despite being built in the 17th century. Up to the weekend I had never heard of Robert Hooke but he seems to have been a genius much in the mould of Leonardo Da Vinci.
Hooke was the mastermind behind the work despite only visiting the area once. He was a close friend of Christopher Wren and helped with St Paul's Cathedral. He was a scientist, an architect and an overall genius. His achievements are just too many to mention here. If you are interested, do look him up on the internet.
We had a walk around Willen Lake and then called it a day. There was a very large Peace Pagoda in the country park around the lake and I took some shots of this.
As I've already said I hope you enjoy some of the photographs of our weekend away.
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Was a little confused by Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon referring to "our nation" when paying tribute to the Queen. Isn't Sturgeon the woman trying to break up part of "our nation" or have I got that wrong?