Rosie has an appointment with a doctor (ok, technician) in Havant, so we need to scoot back down south from our current location in Weston-under-Lizard. For real. That is the name of the town where the Weston Park is located. Havant is just east of Portsmouth, about a 5 hour drive away. We were at Popham Airfield which is only about an hour away from Havant, but we wanted to see the airshow in Weston-under-Lizard. At least things aren’t too far away here in England.
Rosie is going to Penguin Refrigeration to have a technician repair her Vitrifrigo air conditioner. We had another Vitrifrigo service company (Haven Refrigeration in Ipswich) back in May, but they didn’t have the parts required. We have made advance arrangements with Penguin, so hopefully all parts are on-hand.
Penguin Refrigeration is located in Havant and is near a tidal lake and the Southmoor Nature Reserve, so we got in a nice walk while Rosie was being looked after.
Rosie’s air conditioner was a bit tricky to fix, but the local Penquin technician was able to contact a technician in the Vitrifrigo factory in Italy and they figured it out! Rosie’s air conditioner is now good to go, and so are we!
It is time to head north as we need to be in Bannockburn Scotland in a few days to take part in an archeological dig (more on this in another post to come).
Along the way we stopped in a small town called Bilsborrow, which turned out to be a very nice little place. The town is situated on the Lancaster Canal. A path runs along the canal and made for a great walk The photo at the top of this post was taken at a lock in the town.
On one side of the canal was a quirky little area that had an cobbled street with old buildings on both sides. One of the buildings is now a pub/restaurant which has a courtyard right on the canal. Boats could tie up and have a pint!
Next door to the restaurant/store area is an open field where a cricket match was in full swing. We haven’t watched a cricket match before, so we settled in to watch. One person was standing on the sidelines near us and we asked about the rules of cricket and we found out that this was a community league where young up-and-coming talent met older down-and-going players, and that the rules were quite relaxed. In the middle of one explanation our cricket-guide dashed off to catch a ball. He was playing while talking to us!
We parked in a small dirt parking lot near the canal. It was quiet when we arrived, but the following morning we were awakened by cars coming and going. Watching for a few minutes we discovered that cars were dropping off students and small vans/buses were picking them up and taking them away (to school presumably). Right next to our parking lot was an immaculately manicured green area, which turned out to be a bowling green, so we watched for a while. It seems that there are two teams and one person from each team competes with one person from the other team. The interesting bit is that these competitive pairings all compete at the same time. Balls (bowls?) are rolling in every direction at the same time. We never observed an collisions between balls/bowls, but don’t know if this was due to competitors skill… or luck.
Right, time to move on. Next stop, Carlisle. No particular reason for stopping at Carlisle. It has a castle and it is on the way to Scotland, so why not.
We are stopping in at a parking lot that is in the middle of town. And it is a busy town. A little bit challenging negotiating the traffic and getting to the parking lot, but we made it without damaging or injuring anyone!
Carlisle castle was originally built in 1093 by King William II as an earth and wood fortification. It has changed hands (not voluntarily) many times over the centuries. In 1157 Henry II rebuilt the castle in stone. In 1568 Mary Queen of Scots was held prisoner in the castle (that woman really did get around – we have encountered her many times during our travels in Scotland). The castle is still in use today and the grounds house the barracks for the King Own Border Regiment.
Carlisle is the only city in Cumbria and is home to the County of Cumbria Council (administrators of the region). The city is busy/modern, but there are a few areas where old sections are still intact and are nice to walk through.
McVities, the maker of Hobnob cookies (a personal favourite), has a commercial bakery in the centre of town. When McVities is baking the town smells great!
