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Follow the Brown Signs Blog - October, 2009

You gotta gimme some Moor

October 15, 2009
Yesterday was hot and lovely down here in the West Country, shame then that most of it was spent in the car. I wanted to get to Cornwall you see, and as much as I've spent a lot of time on roads and looking at maps in the last few weeks I kind of underestimated how long it would take to get to places down here, especially with such terrible traffic on such long and winding roads.
Here is an example of the road we drove down for a...

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Minature ponies, paperweights and gin

October 14, 2009
So the second leg of my trip began on Monday, after a small delay to the tune of mother-gets-pneumonia. The family holiday down in Torquay turned into a sisterly 4 day break. My mum insisted we come down without her and she was feeling a lot better when we left, so please don't shout at me for going, thank you.

We (I) drove down without any stops, despite Jo's ever louder shouts during the last hour because she needed a wee so bad she insisted her bladder was going...

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Aquaplaning, not getting into lighhouses and a lot of small trains

October 9, 2009
As it began to seriously piss down with rain this morning I started to get a hankering for the seaside, and the Kent coast is a great place to go in the rain, in fact I don't think I've ever been when it's not raining. So south bound we went. I wanted to see the lighthouse at Dungeness but as it appeared through the mist and rain a very obvious sign let us know that the lighthouse was closed. Right by this lighthouse however was a little railway, and a little train...

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Bad bowling and dressing up like a tudor man

The idea of going to Orpington Super Bowl as part of my discovery of Britain via the Brown Sign Way appealed to me, massively. Not just because I could relive memories of bunking off lessons at Orpington College when I retook my A-levels there, but also because I have been seriously steeped in British history recently and I wouldn't mind some inane Thursday afternoon frivolity, such is the joy of brown tourist sign variety.
So, after helping my sister with her painting and decorating job so she would finish...

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Londinium: Brass rubbing, Thames path walking and shopping

October 8, 2009
It was weird to be waking up in my own bed yesterday, and strangely part of me wished I was in a far away place with unknown adventures to be embarked on ahead of me. That lacking, I got up and did the gigantic mountain of washing up which has been accumulating because the dishwasher is broken, oh it's good to be home.

I had a look through my "brown sign symbols completed" and my "brown sign symbols not completed" lists and was immediately drawn to a praying knight...

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Caving and flying (in more ways than one)

October 6, 2009
The main event today was caving. I know I know, I've already done a cave, but sadly I don't mean caving as in going underground and chatting to a miner about his work, I mean caving as in giving up, throwing the towel in, getting too hacked off for words and coming home. Technically I was supposed to be coming home on Friday for my pal Lau's big 3 0, but I was tipped over the edge this morning and it all got too much.

I did end up...

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Rutland waterless activies

When I got up yesterday I had a bath, for an hour. Sounds odd but I seriously needed one, I have been showering you understand but a bath is a very different experience to a shower, so I lay in it for a long time and went wrinkly, then I was happy. Having it in a carpeted avocado suited bathroom is quite a weird experience though I have to say. I had a nice breakfast, but held back on yet another full cooked breakfast, just poached eggs this time. I...

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Waterways museum and hiding in hides

October 4, 2009
After Friday's day of rest I felt about a billion times better both in body and mind, and as I consequently had less trouble using my right leg I thought some gentle brown signing was in order. I would have liked to head up as north as Hull and do some industrial port attractions but on the way was diverted by a sign for a waterways museum which had the bonus of being located in a town called Goole.

The museum was the Yorkshire Waterways Museum and was an...

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Mills and extremely painful country walks

October 2, 2009
As much as the Peaks are beautiful and full of things to do I thought I better branch out and head for Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire borders area. I've got quite a few brown sign types done now so I actually (shock horror) did some research into what there was to do around the area. I first headed for a wildlife park but in my eagerness I arrived like a right keeno an hour before opening time so had to sacrifice that one and head off on the rest of my brown signed...

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