Much Marcle Steam Rally

Today we went to the Much Marcle Steam Rally. Much Marcle means three things to me. It’s where Weston’s Cider is made, it’s adjacent to where my father in law was born and lived his young life and it’s where Fred West lived and buried his first wife and child. (in the Finger Post field)

It’s sort of in the back of beyond but near to the M50 and if ever a place was rural, then this is it.

We arrived for Mike to open the Rally and he was invited to enter the ring on Lord Lascelles, considered the finest Traction Engine in the world.

 

 

Here are some of the other exhibits

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good to see that it's not just old men that have a love for these machines.

 

 

Not everything is exclusively steam, there is room for petrol,

 

diesel

 

and even paraffin,

 

 

 

oh, and not forgetting pedal power.

 

But my favourites were the farm machinery.

 

 

 

I loved the way two Traction Engines pulled this plough up the field, with two extra people for ballast.

 

I remember a combine harvester like this on the farm where I used to spend my school holidays, this one is from 1963!! It makes me feel a bit of an antique!

 

It was one of the best days out we have had in a long time.

It continues tomorrow, 20th July, if you are near enough to visit.

And next weekend is the Welland Steam Rally (next to the Malvern 3 Counties Showground) which is even bigger. 25th, 26th & 27th

http://www.wellandsteamrally.co.uk/index.htm

 

I am still here!

It’s been more than a month since The Race for Life and I have been told off for not getting an entry in about it. Where has that time gone? For those who were wondering, no, I wasn’t hospitalised after the event, just madly busy. A big thank you to all those who sponsored me, I raised a total of just over £200, an amount matched by the other members of The Black Country Gob team.

It was a beautiful day

 

and everything went well for us. We didn’t do a wonderful time, due to the vast number of us cramming into paths, that were only wide enough for two at times.

 

The Black Country Gob team did it in an hour. My sister and niece went off with the runners at the front (very ambitious) and they got round in 35 minutes. Not bad but I don’t see the 2012 Olympics beckoning.

 

 

I would definitely like to do it again next year.

The Race coincided with the arrival of Catherine’s In Laws, Vera and Biff, so the next few days were taken up in entertaining them. We did Cream Tea in the Cotswolds (Chipping Camden),

a real Indian food night out and then I had them all round for dinner here at George Mansions. So it was a busy few days and then at the end of the week, we had Isabella’s second birthday party.

The following week there was the annual Year trip to The Butterfly Farm at Stratford upon Avon.  We also went on a boat trip on the River Avon, this is how the Royal Shakespeare Theatre is looking at the moment.

 

It rained almost all the time we were outside but it didn’t spoil the day. It was just a little annoying though to find ,when we returned to Worcester, only about 20 miles away, that it had been dry there all day! So I still had to go and water the allotment!

Then I went on a Year 2 trip, all day to Worcester Cathedral. I must say that I think a morning would have been enough, we were all flagging by half past two.

 

Two Friday’s ago it was the School Summer Fayre.

 

 

One of the teachers I work with got the chance to put into practice the 'Positive Handling' Course we went on recently, whilst restraining a truculent, oversized bear.

What hard work that  day was was. Humping tables and putting up Gazebos and later dismantling them.

We had the annual Family Picnic on the last Sunday in June. It rained but were we deterred, no, of course not, we’re British!

I would show you some pictures but AOL has decided to not let me. I'll try to put those in later.

Catherine and I have bought tickets for a sort of festival weekend in September, We shall be camping. The first time I have ever been to a camping event. I did have a tent on a farm in Mid Wales when I was eighteen but to be honest, the only thing I remember from that was the sex!! LOL!!! And being woken at 6 am by a sheep that had climbed onto the roof and was licking the canvas. I was with S H who was the first love of my life and we were together for nearly three years.

Anyway, Catherine and I are going to a sort of mystical, healing weekend, which also celebrates the Old Gods and therefore the seasons. I was talking about this in the Staff Room at school. We have a couple of ‘Happy Clappy’ Christians. They like to go on Christian camping weekends, yet you would have thought I had said I was going on a boil a baby weekend. I am totally tolerant of other people’s beliefs and religions but it strikes me that the more zealous you are of your own beliefs, the less tolerant you are of other people’s. This opinion was reinforced by watching Louis Theroux (sp?) recently who spent some months with a truly horrid religious group in America. They were billed as the most hated family in America. I can understand, after seeing the programme, why people would think that.

So when I return from the weekend, I shall take pleasure in showing off my photos of the Wicker Man ceremony because I believe I have as much right to my beliefs as anyone else and as we won‘t actually be hurting, or killing anyone, (unlike the film) and only trying to heal people and this ravaged land of ours, why would anyone have a problem with it? Who is to say who is right?

aoljpictureUpload, aoljpictureUpload_8