Portsmouth

My Dad wanted to see HMS Warrior, the largest, fastest and most heavily armed and armoured the world had seen at that time now stationed at Portsmouth harbour, apparently he'd wanted to see this for while. It was part of Portsmouth historic dockyard which encompassed a number of other attractions, this was a good thing as the recommended viewing time to allow for The Warrior was 1 hour, but Dad managed to spend about 3.5 hours on it.

Deck of The Warrior

The Warrior was build in 1860 and has been restored now to it's original splendor, it had originally been built as a deterrent to ward off the French and must have been so frightful to behold at the time as it never needed to fire a shot in anger. It had a whole deck of guns including 36 cannons, a room full of riffles and hand guns, and close actions weapons like swords and dirks (I don't know what they were exactly, I'm just trying to sound learned). Each cannon required 18 men in areas called Messes where they ate, slept and relaxed, the Mess seemed to be a big bench table between each cannon, Mesa is Spanish for table but in old French it meant 'portion of food', anyway it probably ended up a mess with  that many people. In contrast the officers had their own cabins with writing table, for updating their blogs, raised beds with storage cupboards underneath all in one nice piece of furniture. The officers had a dinner hall with decorations that really shouldn't be in a boat, as all the port and sherry would most likely crash onto the floor, the captain has the whole rear end of the boat surrounded by windows and seats far away from the 10 boilers, 40 furnaces and massive 5468 horsepower engine room.
Warrior underwent a number of name changes and uses ending up as Oil Storage Hulk C77, how dull, the Navy decided to sell her off, but due to a downturn in demand for scrap iron no one wanted to buy her, poor old thing.
50 years went by and having refueled about 5000 ships, she was saved from scraping by The Maritime Trust who restored her to her initial glory as The Warrior.

HMS Victory

Also at the dockyard was HMS Victory, another wonderful old battleship launched in 1765 for the Royal Navy, the ceilings were much lower on the Victory and seemed like a tardis inside, interestingly the top rear deck that go up some steps on old ships was called a Poop deck, it forms the roof of the captains cabin, again it comes from the French word for stern - La Poupe.

Officers quarters on HMS Warrior

Cakes and Pies

Here is what one might find on a typical day in my Nans kitchen: 32 pies, 2 batches of rock cakes, 2 chocolate cakes, and some funny things with cherry's on top. She doesn't eat all these bakery products herself but gives them away. Some may remember the famous long distant chocolate cake that my Nan sent all the way to where I was living  in New Zealand, and even after a week in transit still tasted pretty good so imagine what these things taste like fresh, best cakes in the world clearly.

My brother and his family came down for a visit so my Mum put in an order for some rock cakes, you can not past through my Nan's house without gaining a few pies. The pies are the best pies on the world, they're all dessert pies - apricot pies, apple pies, blackberry pies, redcurrant pies, apple and blackberry pies...
Best enjoyed hot with single cream poured over them. New Zealand only seems to have one type of cream worth bothering with called 'Cream', in England you can get Clotted cream, double cream, extra-thick double cream, whipping cream, whipped cream, single cream and sour cream. Squirty cream doesn't really count, unless you're making Biscuit Wow and then it's perfect.

My lovely sister in law enjoyed a well deserved piece of Nan's chocolate cake, nom nom!

Dorset

Lulworth Cove

Lulworth Cove is a nice circular cove in Dorset, I used to cycle around places like this when I was at University in nearby Bournemouth, I would generally get the train somewhere with my bike and take a OS map of the area and then cycle around, get a bit lost and then try to get back to Bournemouth. I remember coming down the hill into Lulworth Cove and going 48mph - almost as fast as a Subaru! My bicycle started wobbling so I had to slow down, it was also a 30mph zone, bicycle power! On another occasion I took the train to Weymouth, (the location for this years Olympic sailing events) and cycled back along the coast as far as Wool, which is a place as well as a material, at one point the path had slipped into the sea and I had to cycle round a herd of cows, I didn't think anything of it until I looked around and saw them all following me, I cycled a bit faster and glanced around to see the herd stampeding after me. The ground was very rough and lumpy and I just about kept control, but I had to hide in a thorny hedge for 2 hours with now way out covered in cow pats, in the end I fought my way through the dense spiky hedge through to the next field. 

This time wasn't so terrifying, we had a cream tea instead, we rated it 6/10, and this was mainly because the jam lacked flavour and the scones tasted a bit weird. The picture below is the not the cove, but the other direction as I find it more interesting, I went to the view point of where I had taken a photo the time I had come by bicycle and later had made into a painting. So I went to see if much had changed. Not much had except the trees had grown a bit. 

The other side of the cove

My painting of the cove, painted whilst at Uni, still need to sign it.

Longleat and Center Parcs

Center Parcs

Every time I visit the UK I suggest some random spur-of-the-moment activity to my mum and see what she says, this time I suggested a spa day at Centre Parcs near Longleat, and because it's so near to Longleat house and safari why not go there too. She said yes, she normally does so we booked a day spa at the Aqua Sana Spa in Center Parcs.
I'd always wanted to visit Center Parcs, it was a place other children always went on holiday to when I was at school and seemed like a magical place but I had no idea it had a spa until Cathy, who I'd met on the Green Tortoise canyons tour said she'd had a lovely spa day there, I thought this was a fantastic idea to spent a day doing zero.
The spa had 18 different steam, sauna and relaxation rooms plus a pool/Jacuzzi. Although I found I wasn't very good at doing zero, so while most people were drifting of to sleep or into some form of meditation in the relaxation rooms, after a few minutes I wanted to go to the next room to see what it was like. To properly relax I needed my book but all my books are on my Kindle which isn't ideal for steamy wet rooms. Anyway, all rooms were wonderfully decorated with intriguing names like Balinese Multi-Steam Bath, Japanese Salt Steam Bath, Tyrolean Sauna, Turkish Hamman and Tepidarium, plus a load more, our favourite was the Greek Herbal Bath which had three different herbs in three separate piles on a gauze heated plate above which was a bucket and every 12 minutes the bucket rotated upside-down and squirted water onto one of the herb piles to infuse the smell, it rotated round each three herbs. Initially I imagined the bucket full of water and would cause a deluge over the herbs and wash them all away.
There was also a Pensive, like the one in Harry Potter, unfortunately it was out of order and they had called it the Ice Fountain instead.

Aqua Sana Spa at Center Parcs

Longleat House and Safari Park

Longleat House is a big ol stately home that rich people live in and gets past down through the male family line, due to the hefty death duties that apply to such a big country pile, one inspired heir- Henry Frederick Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath, decided to open the house to the public in 1947 order for Longleat to survive. The idea for a safari park came in the 60's but Henry didn't like the idea of caged animals, his adviser said "we won't cage the animals, we'll cage the people", and so it was, in 1966 the drive through safari park opened and the animals wandered freely. It was the first safari park outside Africa.

We got there before the house officially opened but they were offering a look behind the scenes into the private rooms of the current 7th Marquess of Bath -Alexander Thynn, to the modest group of people who had got there early. The 7th Marquess is known for his lively jumpers and decorating style, as the house is now looking after itself rather well, he didn't really have to worry about much so spent a good deal of time repainting his part of the house in bright primary colours, creating murals all about the place, collecting art  and having relations with 'wifelets', his wife apparently doesn't mind this, probably because the estate is worth $157 million now. They don't tell you the last bit about the wifelets on the tour, but do speak highly of his painting 'style' which are akin to children's drawings. 

In 2010 he past management of Longleat to his son who now apparently intends to evict the wifelets from their estate cottages, and possibly even remove his Lordship's murals. 

The good thing a Longleat Charitable Trust was set up in 1966, which has helped to relieve poverty amongst people living around the Longleat Estate and Cheddar Gorge area, supporting pensioners and providing grants to local institutions. 

There is also an excellent hedge maze.

England

England is full of nice things, like Great Britain doing well in the Olympics and proper cream teas with clotted cream, and people who know what a cream tea is in the first place, the problem is you have to come to England to find clotted cream and a decent selection of teas. I was disappointed that the T shop in Wellington didn't have Darjeeling, how can a shop selling only tea, not have Darjeeling? I loved American food but the few occasions I found myself at a buffet, I would always heap several spoonfuls of cream onto my bowl only to find it sweetened and destroying its natural creamy flavour. 

Another nice thing about England are old things, old buildings, old vehicles and old villages. Old things are nice because they have some history, they can also break down and fall down, but this adds to their charm. Thankfully there are plenty of people who enjoy restoring and fixing all these old things, and a large group of these people had amassed at Beaulieu National Motor Museum and gardens for the 50th Graham Walker Memorial Run, (father of Murray Walker, the Formula 1 commentator). The run wound around 48 miles of the New Forest area and villages and then back to the motor museum. Each participant had a list of navigation instructions consisting of things like 'Cross Cattle Grid, then T.R S/P Sowley 1 quarter mile (M,A)' and 'T.R Grass Island with Oak Tree' and so on until one either broke down, got lost or reached the end of the run. The Morgan was excellent and despite my Fathers lack of faith in my ability to read instructions, we didn't get lost or break down. 

As the run took place from the motor museum, we had access to all the exhibits, one being The World of Top Gear, of course being Top Gear, the cars on display weren't cars as such anymore, but experimentation's, pushing the boundaries of what the car can be. Cars on display included the TGV12 'sports train', the indestructible Toyota pick up, the Snowbine, the Reliant Robin Rocket, a caravan airship, the Hammerhead i-Eagle Thrust, a fine selection of 'motorhomes', the reasonable priced car, double decker cars and Anne Hathaway's cottage. Plus a whole load more, my favourite being the Cottage.

The Top Gear Cottage

Inverness, Scotland

I flew back from Newark in New York to Heathrow in England, and then back out of Gatwick the same day to Scotland. Finally I'd made it back to the highlands, in particular to my garden in Inverness that I had been looking forward to weeding for some time. The garden does has a house attached to it which is nice and will have some new tenants moving in shortly, but it was nice to stay in for a few days to remind myself I did actually own, or at least part of it.Apart from weeding the garden and disguising the resulting bald patches in purple slate to give the impression of a well tended garden, I visited some friends I hadn't seen for a long time and went to our favourite restaurant in Aviemore; The Skiing Doo, which specializes in burgers and relish, the relish is the most important part.
New York to Inverness is quite a contrast, but to be honest, I prefer Inverness, it's an outdoor place for outdoor people, it's hard to find a crowd there. Mind you the New York in Breakfast at Tiffanys I watched on the plane, had almost no one in it, so that was probably quite nice.
I spent most of the next day being a zombie, whilst jet lag and  travelling caught up with me, one more flight  back to England again, the last flight for a while until South America. The next day I had a funeral which is why I had such a short time in Scotland, then I could finally have a nice long sleep, read my book and do nothing.

New York

New York is massive, it's so bewilderingly big it takes over an hour to get from outer Queens to Manhattan.
Brooklyn alone has 2.5 million people and the most populous borough of New York. Most of the population explosions in New York happened between 1771 and 1910, with 126% growth in 1790, by 1860 the city had over a million people with the total figure in 2011 being around 8.2 million.
Why New York is called 'The Big Apple' seems lost in history somewhat, apparently the earliest citation is in a book in 1909 where the author Martin Wayfarer writes "Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city. . . . It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap".
 There are a number of variations on this quote including:

• "'the big apple,' gets a disproportionate share of the sap from the country's tree of wealth which is rooted in the Mississippi Valley."
• "New York [was] merely one of the fruits of that great tree whose roots go down in the Mississippi Valley, and whose branches spread from one ocean to the other....[But] the big apple [New York] gets a disproportionate share of the national sap."

The term was later popularized by a sporting journalist when writing about horse racing in New York in the 20's, he kept repeating it and so it stuck. 

New York is very different from York, York has cobbled stones, castles walls and bits of grass about the place, New York put all the grass in one location and has lots of things stacked up high.

It was first called New Amsterdam, probably because it's so flat then the English came and decided that was silly name and called it New York after King Charles II gave it to his brother, the Duke of York, he did this because there were no hills big enough to put castles on top of.

There you go, everything you need to know about New York.