Veni vidi vici

28 Jan 2024 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in London trips, UK Roman Amphitheatre Quest Tags: , , , , , , ,

My final three arena visits were solo trips. I travelled to the land of my grandfather for the two amphitheatres located in Wales. The Romans moved into this fabulous part of the UK around 48 ACE, but it wasn’t called Wales then, just a part of Britannia Major. My first port of call was Carmarthen in the South West of the country, known in Roman times as Movidurium, it’s possibly the arena that’s furthest west from Rome. Only half of the original structure is visible nowadays, but built in the 2nd century ACE it was an elliptical shape with the capacity for 4500 – 5000 spectators.

After a little wander around I made my way back east towards Newport to visit a little town called Caerleon, this was the home of the 2nd Augustan legion and 5000 soldiers were based there. The site named Isca Augusta had a very impressive amphitheatre, built around 90 ACE and big enough for 6000 spectators. I have to say up to that point it was the best preserved arena I had visited, there were lots of steps, tunnels and archways to explore, it’s the most complete amphitheatre in the UK. After a good look around I wandered down to the remains of the legionnaires barracks. There is a museum and remains of the Roman baths, unfortunately I left it too late to visit so I will definitely return for a proper look.

For the very last amphitheatre on my list I headed back to London where I based myself for my visit to St Albans. When I first planned my quest I wasn’t going to go there as the arena isn’t strictly an amphitheatre, as it has a stage at one end. But it is the only one of it’s kind in the UK so it’s very worthy of a visit. Just a 20 minute train journey from London the Roman town of Verulamium lies in the centre of beautiful St Albans. The arena was built around 140 ACE and it now lies in the Gorhambury Estate, so it was the only site I needed to pay to see, but it was worth the very small fee. It’s position is alongside the famous Watling Street that ran from Londinium to Deva Victrix, ( London to Chester), and it had a capacity of 7000 spectators. After a wander around I also checked out the hypocaust with a beautiful mosaic and a mooch around the museum with a group of very unruly school children and their harassed teachers.

So that is my UK Roman amphitheatre quest finished and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I love how reading a random post can generate a planned trek around my country to discover the history but also incorporate it into mini breaks with friends and family.

Stay tuned to discover what my next quest will be …

Still in the footsteps of gladiators

25 Jan 2024 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in London trips, UK Roman Amphitheatre Quest Tags: , , , , , , ,

I visited the next three amphitheatres on my hit list while enjoying mini breaks with family and friends.

On the way to the fabulous Dorset resort of Weymouth, a place full of many happy memories for me and my family, is Dorchester. A delightful town with lots to see and do, it’s roots date back to Roman times when it was known as Durnovaria. In the south of the town lie the Maumbury rings, a Neolithic henge. Around 60 ACE the Romans modified the rings to create an arena, the biggest in the UK, by digging out and flattening the inside and flooring it with chalk and sand. The banks were increased to the height they are as seen today. As my mum and my friend Deb waited in the car I had a bit of a mooch around the amphitheatre before we continued onto Weymouth for a few days in the sun.

Not long before the trip to London to celebrate the 60th birthdays of my friends Bev and Debbie, I read about the underground amphitheatre that was discovered in the Guildhall Yard in 1988 during an archaeological dig to prepare for the new Art Gallery building project. Initially when built in 70 ACE it was a simple wooden structure for the entertainment of the citizens of Londinium, but was upgraded to a more impressive stone arena with the capacity for 6000 people. Unusually it was built within the city walls, remains of the walls can still be visited around the area. We had a wander around the site in the morning before we went in our 1970’s finery to the Mamma Mia party at the O2.

Chester is quite a long way from Bristol for a day out to check out an amphitheatre, but it’s a hop, skip and a jump from Liverpool and that’s where I was staying with my friends Deb and Selena for a couple of days. We had the most amazing time doing all things Beatles, Cilla and Liver birds. On the way home with stopped off at Chester, known as Deva Victrix in Roman times, to cross another arena off my list. It was one of the largest amphitheatres in Roman Britain with a capacity of 8000 – 12000, but only two fifths are now visible to view. It’s still an impressive sight and also there are the lovely Roman gardens to stroll around and admire the beautiful mosaics.

Next stop Movidurium, Isca Augusta and Verularnium … aka Carmarthen, Caerleon and St Albans.

I went to London and I saw ……

30 Dec 2023 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in London trips Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I love my trips to London and there are several posts on this blog to support this. My last two visits to the Big Smoke involved two music legends and my two sons.

Back in August I met son number one, Scott, at Paddington station and we made our way to Sotheby’s to see the exhibition of Freddie Mercury’s possessions “A world of his own”. Fans and buyers could visit to view the items for a couple of weeks before the auctions arranged and managed by Mary Austin, Freddie’s lifelong friend whom he described as his common law wife and was his closest confidant. During that time there were 140,000 visitors from all around the world and the auctions raised £40 million, a large proportion of that amount was donated to charity.

Freddie collected a lot of fabulous stuff in his short life and 14061 lots were lovingly arranged over three floors and each room had vases full of beautiful lilies to fill the air with the most amazing fragrance. Everything was in temptingly close touching distance and while no-one was looking I managed a little pinch on the bottom of the sleeve of a jacket Freddie wore on a visit to Japan. When I mentioned it to Scott, he shot me a look that said “if we get chucked out of here because of you, I’m going to kill you”! It reminded me of the time myself and both my lads went to Destination Star Trek and I was trying to get a sneaky photo of William Shatner instead of paying the extortionate fee to do so. I was told a couple of times to stop and move along, which I ignored and my youngest son, Jake, felt the need to drag me away hissing “you’re gonna get us chucked out”.

So with that in mind I decided to try and behave myself on my next trip to London with Jake to see the Elvis Exhibition. It was a wonderful collection of memorabilia from Graceland, lots of amazing personal items belonging to Elvis, stage outfits, documents, vehicles, instruments and his every day clothes in all their 1970’s glory. This time there was no chance of touching anything as it was all safely protected behind glass.

It was a relatively small exhibition so before we headed home we made our way to St. John’s wood and after a yummy lunch at the Drunch café we wandered to the Abbey road studio. We really didn’t have time to do the studio tour, so we visited the shop and tried to get a “walking across the zebra” photo without pissing off too many motorists!

I am so lucky to have shared interests with my lads, it makes my days out to London really special.

Friends will be friends.

05 Nov 2023 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

I have not written in my blog for 14 months. I have not long completed my module to be an independent nurse prescriber and that took up most of my time between January and July, the need to write clinically and critically would have been hampered by any kind of creative writing. I’m not exactly sure though what prevented me from writing posts for the first half of the blog writing freeze. But I haven’t been loitering around, I’ve been on lots of adventures so I have plenty to write about now I have the opportunity.

For this post I’m going to pick up where I left off 14 months ago. In a long queue, slowly snaking through London on the way to see a much loved queen lying in state, 7 strangers became friends and the 2 am club was born. 2 am was the time we predicted we would get into Westminster Palace when we formed our WhatsApp group. After we had paid our respects to her majesty we vowed to try and keep in touch and meet up whenever we could.

In September on the anniversary of that day, 3 of the members of the 2 am club were able to meet up. Sharon, Amy and myself met in a very sunny Covent Garden and had a lovely lunch in the Ivy, mooched around and generally catching up on a years worth of gossip and news. Then ended with cocktails in Piccadilly before Amy and Sharon headed home and I retired to my hotel for the night. It was such a fabulous afternoon and hopefully in the new year we’ll be able to get a date that we can all make.

Friends can be made in the most unexpected places, I’m sure many other friendship groups like ours were created in the queue during that week and I hope they are able to get together as well.

The end of a majestic era

11 Oct 2022 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

I haven’t written in this blog for quite some time, I been busy collecting experiences to turn into blog post fodder for my merry band of followers.

But before I start to write and publish all the posts I have in my head at the moment, I just need to write this very special post.

This summer I was lucky enough to be a volunteer medic at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, but before I write about that due to the death of our beloved Queen I wanted to reflect on my amazing time at the Glasgow Commonwealth games in 2014. I was a field of play volunteer first aider for the opening ceremony, the Queen opened the games. My first aid partner, Scott, and I were positioned at stage left at the side of the track with a fantastic view of the performance, which is obviously why we were there, but also of the Queen as she was driven past. We were rewarded by her dazzling smile and a flash of her legendary bright blue eyes.

Up to now I had never given it a thought that there may be any footage of me at the games, but I wanted to double check whether the Queen was in a car or something else. So imagine my surprise when I discovered a Youtube video of the start of the Queen’s journey around the track with me and Scott in position.

This was a truly fantastic night and now that the Queen is dead it was the one and only time I sang the national anthem in her presence and it was an absolute honour to do so.

On Saturday 17th September I was one of the thousands of people compelled to join the queue to see our Queen lying in state. I travelled up from Bristol alone, but shortly after arriving in Southwark Park at the very start of the epic journey I made friends with my fellow queue dwellers, Amy, Emma, Sharon, Steffi and couple Amanda and Scott. Very quickly 7 strangers became friends, I set up a Whatsapp group so we could look out for each other on coffee and toilet breaks, we talked about everything and anything and supported one another for 10 hours as we weaved through the back streets and along the Thames to our final destination.

The first 8 hours went surprisingly quickly, but the last couple of hours in the organised queuing system outside Westminster Hall was soul destroying. We were definitely less animated as we inched along, our feet were numb, our joints were screaming and our backs felt like they were breaking, but we were determined to see it through together as a group. The feeling of relief was immense when we finally got through the security and into hall.

Although we only had 2 minutes to view and walk past the coffin, it was the moving and overwhelming experience.

When I left for London in the morning I had no plan for after I got out of the hall as I didn’t know how long I would be in the queue. Luckily I was rescued by my good work friends who happened be staying in Twickenham for the weekend, they gave me a place to sleep for the night when I couldn’t face arriving back in Bristol in the early hours.

So on Sunday we had a meander around Green Park to look at the lovely floral tributes and the wonderful messages left by children.

It was an amazing weekend and I’m so happy I decided to go and pay my respects to our fabulous Queen. I was so impressed with the organisation, everyone was so friendly and there was a lovely atmosphere. But mostly it was so heartwarming how strangers can become good friends.

Weekends in the Big Smoke

11 Mar 2018 1 Comment

by Carole Gardiner in 50 Fabulous things Tags: , , , , , , ,

 

The year 2017 didn’t just bring a landmark birthday for me, Selena was also fabulous at 50 and Deb was sensational at 60. So with our collective age of 160 years we decided to challenge ourselves by climbing over the O2 in Greenwich.

Trussed up in our harnesses and wearing our special boots we hooked ourselves up to the central rail and began the very steep climb to the summit on what resembled a ridged blue groundsheet. Luckily our boots had a sole that seemed to cling to the walkway. But oh boy wasn’t it worth it ……The views were amazing and we had 20 minutes to enjoy them, take photos and mainly to recover from the effort needed to get up there. Getting back down was a challenge as it was so steep there was a special knack of walking either backwards or sideways. If we were in any doubt of our advancing age it was confirmed when I referred to the O2 as the Millennium Dome, I was faced by a blank stare from a young lady selling tickets who was clearly not even born when it was last called that.

 

The following day we had a lovely time looking around Kensington Palace, Diana’s dresses and memorial gardens. We had the most fabulous time all weekend celebrating our special birthdays.

kesington palace

 

 

My other London weekend jolly was with my lovely friend Bev. We took advantage of some free audience tickets from Applause Store to watch Jimmy Carr’s Your face or Mine.

We travelled up the day before the show so we could have a mooch around,but not before we had a bottomless prosecco lunch at the London Grind on London Bridge. We got an hour and a half to drink as much prosecco as we liked to wash down some lovely food. Our dinner was not quite so classy as we left it too late to find a place still serving food, so we ended up sat in our pyjamas eating Burger King and drinking some more bubbles out of our hotel tooth mugs!

Fortified by breakfast we made our way to the London ITV Studios for the filming, it was so funny. A fabulous way to spend cherished time with a very good friend.

 

Saved by Bob

14 Aug 2013 1 Comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

When I was away on my weekend break I found a book in the beach chalet that I’ve wanted to read for a while. It took only 2 days to read ” A street cat named Bob “. It tells the true story of a homeless, recovering drug addict James and his pet cat, Bob, who he found injured and nursed him back to health.

The pair became inseparable and Bob goes busking with James and sits with him while he sells the ” Big Issue ” on the streets of London. Due to the popularity of the book this duo are internationally famous.

The book is so uplifting and heartwarming about a young man on the brink and pulling himself back with the help of this lovely ginger tom.