Tuxedo And Eden Camp
Oct. 28th, 2018 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lupestripeThis weekend our friend from Seattle, Tuxedokitty, came to stay again as he is currently in the UK ahead of Scotiacon. As is traditional, he could only stay 24 hours as he had other people to see, but we did make the most of the time he spent with us.
He arrived on Friday evening, slightly delayed due to traffic. However, he still pulled into our driveway at around 6:45pm, giving us plenty of time to unpack and have a cup of tea before deciding the weekend's activities. One quick look through previous journal entries enabled me to discover what he had and had not done in the local area and upon noticing that he had not yet sampled a Bradford curry, we decided this was where we would go for dinner. This turned out to be quite astute as Tux hasn't really had experience of the UK outside of its major cities and tourist places, so experiencing a poorer Northern town on a Friday evening was likely to be an eyeopener. This was certainly the case, with a number of drunk people stumbling around at 8pm and one of the more downmarket pubs operating a karaoke with tuneless catwauling. There were also a number of boarded up buildings, reminding us of the rural roadtrip we had taken with Tux last year, where we got to see the real poverty that also exists in the US. I think this experience did show a side of England of which he was perhaps unaware so it was useful in that regard.
It was also useful from a culinary perspective too as Bradford has some of the best curries in the UK. We had intended to go to The International but that was closed for refurbishment, meaning we ended up in the Kashmir instead. We had taken Volskar here back in July and so it was a second visit inside three months for us. I had the cocony this time - one of the highlights here being a range of dishes outside of a standard British curry menu - while we also introduced Tux to the onion bhaji. I thought we were only going to get one but we got a huge plate of them each, which was quite filling. The food here didn't leave us feeling too bloated though and the price was so insanely cheap at £8 each that we will have to come back again sometime. Tux also enjoyed it, and that was the main thing.
The rest of the evening was spent chilling at home, sober as Tux doesn't really drink. This was a godsend for us considering our recent drinking exploits, alhough we did swing by the supermarket before our return so we could get supplies. Most of this was for breakfast - with us going for bacon, egg and Harrogate sausages - with an early start planned as Tux wanted to visit Eden Camp. This was an hour and a half away and with Tux needing to head over to Liverpool to visit Skavi and Xolani at 4:30pm, time was tight. This saw us awaken at around 8am, wolf some food down and get out of the door an hour and a quarter later, with the day bright sunshine but bitterly cold, with a biting wind. This soon became sleety and rainy the further east we went and throughout our time at Eden Camp we had to dodge from hut to hut to try and avoid the weather. I hadn't been to Eden Camp for the best part of thirty years, having last been on a school trip in an undetermined year. I certainly hadn't been to this former PoW camp as an adult and one thing that surprised me most was just how extensive it was. The history of the world wars - and particularly the second - is done to death in British schools and yet there were loads of things here that I just didn't know, particularly the escape routes through occupied France and Spain. As a consequence, we ended up spending over four hours in the complex and we didn't even get to see everything. There were 29 huts to see although some of these were things like the gift shop, cafeteria and toilets. However, I would say there were about 20 huts of actual museum, with a huge range of personal local stories, including stories of some of the Germans and Italians who were interned here towards the end of the war. Interestingly, many were still here in 1948, something else I did not know, and all of these stories made the war more personal. However, what was worrying was the modern parallels that could be drawn between the rise of Hitler, who wanted to make Germany great again, and current political happenings so Eden Camp also offered a very sober account of how these things can happen.
There were a number of things we did not get chance to see, including the tanks and planes right at the entrance of the complex, on account of the fact we needed to get Tux back to ours to continue his journey. He also wanted to go to nearby Pickering, some seven miles away, to check out the steam trains on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. We knew there was a service at 3pm so we had to leave Eden Camp at around 2:30pm to get there on time. By this time Taneli had also met up with us - he had come to Eden Camp shortly after noon on account of me telling him Tux was visiting - and he followed us up the road too. We all reconvened at the olde worlde station and waited for the train to arrive, having gotten there about twenty minutes early. While we did, I disappered to try and find a local cache behind the main museum here but after ten minutes of frantic looking, I could not locate it. While I was searching through the trees and fallen leaves next to a dog poo bin, I heard the whistle of the train arriving, cutting it as closely as I could before heading back to the station to see the train depart at its scheduled time. Fortunately, the train was running a little late so I managed to park myself right on the end of the platform and watch the engineers do their final things before the train headed north to Grosmont. That side of the line I know better than this, largely because Grosmont is near where I grew up, while Tux was fascinated by the fact that this line was one of the oldest in the world, having been constructed in 1836. Seeing the steam train depart was such a thrill, as it always is, and afterwards we dropped by a local butcher to pick up some meat pasties, which we ate as we walked around the charming market town. Then it was swiftly back home to enable Tux to head to Liverpool promptly.
It was 4:45pm when Tux left, and with Taneli having joined us at our house, we had the rest of the evening to ourselves. I had a few odd jobs to do such as paying my credit card bill and cashing a cheque, but largely I was free. With an hour of daylight remaining, I asked Taneli whether he wanted to find a couple of caches in the local area, which saw us try and locate one near the church which was sadly missing and another by the bypass which we couldn't find at all. That area was so full of spiny trees and brambles that we got cut quite a lot and in the end night was starting to fall and being so close to a main road was dangerous. In the interim, I also managed to change my PIN numbers on my new debit and credit cards, which was another odd job I needed to do.
After this, we decided to head back to Taneli's place as we had yet to see his new house. He moved into the place in early September and it's really rather good, having been a former Victorian school. Inside, you can still see some of the ironwork around which a more modern shell is framed and aside from the backed up toilet situation, it is an excellent little flat and incredibly homely. I particularly liked the 3m tall windows. Before we arrived, we dropped into Lidl to grab some beers, going for a bottle each of their three own brand craft lagers, which for 99p each turned out to be good value indeed. We when headed to Taneli's and ordered pizza from Papa John's, sitting in front of the television all evening watching episode after episode of Paw Patrol. I had seen a few of these before but not to the extent of this, and it was an incredibly enjoyable evening, largely because we spent a lot of the time taking the piss out of it. Indeed, it was quite sad when we had to go, but with there being a direct bus back to Pudsey from literally outside his front gate, it was too convenient to turn down. At 10:38pm, the final service isn't too early either, so more visits are likely to take place in future.
He arrived on Friday evening, slightly delayed due to traffic. However, he still pulled into our driveway at around 6:45pm, giving us plenty of time to unpack and have a cup of tea before deciding the weekend's activities. One quick look through previous journal entries enabled me to discover what he had and had not done in the local area and upon noticing that he had not yet sampled a Bradford curry, we decided this was where we would go for dinner. This turned out to be quite astute as Tux hasn't really had experience of the UK outside of its major cities and tourist places, so experiencing a poorer Northern town on a Friday evening was likely to be an eyeopener. This was certainly the case, with a number of drunk people stumbling around at 8pm and one of the more downmarket pubs operating a karaoke with tuneless catwauling. There were also a number of boarded up buildings, reminding us of the rural roadtrip we had taken with Tux last year, where we got to see the real poverty that also exists in the US. I think this experience did show a side of England of which he was perhaps unaware so it was useful in that regard.
It was also useful from a culinary perspective too as Bradford has some of the best curries in the UK. We had intended to go to The International but that was closed for refurbishment, meaning we ended up in the Kashmir instead. We had taken Volskar here back in July and so it was a second visit inside three months for us. I had the cocony this time - one of the highlights here being a range of dishes outside of a standard British curry menu - while we also introduced Tux to the onion bhaji. I thought we were only going to get one but we got a huge plate of them each, which was quite filling. The food here didn't leave us feeling too bloated though and the price was so insanely cheap at £8 each that we will have to come back again sometime. Tux also enjoyed it, and that was the main thing.
The rest of the evening was spent chilling at home, sober as Tux doesn't really drink. This was a godsend for us considering our recent drinking exploits, alhough we did swing by the supermarket before our return so we could get supplies. Most of this was for breakfast - with us going for bacon, egg and Harrogate sausages - with an early start planned as Tux wanted to visit Eden Camp. This was an hour and a half away and with Tux needing to head over to Liverpool to visit Skavi and Xolani at 4:30pm, time was tight. This saw us awaken at around 8am, wolf some food down and get out of the door an hour and a quarter later, with the day bright sunshine but bitterly cold, with a biting wind. This soon became sleety and rainy the further east we went and throughout our time at Eden Camp we had to dodge from hut to hut to try and avoid the weather. I hadn't been to Eden Camp for the best part of thirty years, having last been on a school trip in an undetermined year. I certainly hadn't been to this former PoW camp as an adult and one thing that surprised me most was just how extensive it was. The history of the world wars - and particularly the second - is done to death in British schools and yet there were loads of things here that I just didn't know, particularly the escape routes through occupied France and Spain. As a consequence, we ended up spending over four hours in the complex and we didn't even get to see everything. There were 29 huts to see although some of these were things like the gift shop, cafeteria and toilets. However, I would say there were about 20 huts of actual museum, with a huge range of personal local stories, including stories of some of the Germans and Italians who were interned here towards the end of the war. Interestingly, many were still here in 1948, something else I did not know, and all of these stories made the war more personal. However, what was worrying was the modern parallels that could be drawn between the rise of Hitler, who wanted to make Germany great again, and current political happenings so Eden Camp also offered a very sober account of how these things can happen.
There were a number of things we did not get chance to see, including the tanks and planes right at the entrance of the complex, on account of the fact we needed to get Tux back to ours to continue his journey. He also wanted to go to nearby Pickering, some seven miles away, to check out the steam trains on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. We knew there was a service at 3pm so we had to leave Eden Camp at around 2:30pm to get there on time. By this time Taneli had also met up with us - he had come to Eden Camp shortly after noon on account of me telling him Tux was visiting - and he followed us up the road too. We all reconvened at the olde worlde station and waited for the train to arrive, having gotten there about twenty minutes early. While we did, I disappered to try and find a local cache behind the main museum here but after ten minutes of frantic looking, I could not locate it. While I was searching through the trees and fallen leaves next to a dog poo bin, I heard the whistle of the train arriving, cutting it as closely as I could before heading back to the station to see the train depart at its scheduled time. Fortunately, the train was running a little late so I managed to park myself right on the end of the platform and watch the engineers do their final things before the train headed north to Grosmont. That side of the line I know better than this, largely because Grosmont is near where I grew up, while Tux was fascinated by the fact that this line was one of the oldest in the world, having been constructed in 1836. Seeing the steam train depart was such a thrill, as it always is, and afterwards we dropped by a local butcher to pick up some meat pasties, which we ate as we walked around the charming market town. Then it was swiftly back home to enable Tux to head to Liverpool promptly.
It was 4:45pm when Tux left, and with Taneli having joined us at our house, we had the rest of the evening to ourselves. I had a few odd jobs to do such as paying my credit card bill and cashing a cheque, but largely I was free. With an hour of daylight remaining, I asked Taneli whether he wanted to find a couple of caches in the local area, which saw us try and locate one near the church which was sadly missing and another by the bypass which we couldn't find at all. That area was so full of spiny trees and brambles that we got cut quite a lot and in the end night was starting to fall and being so close to a main road was dangerous. In the interim, I also managed to change my PIN numbers on my new debit and credit cards, which was another odd job I needed to do.
After this, we decided to head back to Taneli's place as we had yet to see his new house. He moved into the place in early September and it's really rather good, having been a former Victorian school. Inside, you can still see some of the ironwork around which a more modern shell is framed and aside from the backed up toilet situation, it is an excellent little flat and incredibly homely. I particularly liked the 3m tall windows. Before we arrived, we dropped into Lidl to grab some beers, going for a bottle each of their three own brand craft lagers, which for 99p each turned out to be good value indeed. We when headed to Taneli's and ordered pizza from Papa John's, sitting in front of the television all evening watching episode after episode of Paw Patrol. I had seen a few of these before but not to the extent of this, and it was an incredibly enjoyable evening, largely because we spent a lot of the time taking the piss out of it. Indeed, it was quite sad when we had to go, but with there being a direct bus back to Pudsey from literally outside his front gate, it was too convenient to turn down. At 10:38pm, the final service isn't too early either, so more visits are likely to take place in future.
