Cannock Chase Caravan and Camping Club Site - Days 64 - 70 of our Autumn/Winter Tour
Monday 15th November - ☁☁☁⛅☁☁☁
Just a journey today from Malvern's Blackmore CCC site to Cannock Chase CCC site. 60 miles in all but the last 10 took as long as first 50 due to heavy traffic.
Tuesday 16th ☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁ - a bit dull and dank.
So to get our bearings in this new area we headed out for a 5 ish mile Walk along Marquis's Drive (which runs quite close to the site) to Brindley Heath Road Visitor's centre. And in so doing we pottered through lots of colourful woodland and passed by the old site of what was once RAF Hednesford. During the Second World War the site was established as a training facility and over 18,000 recruits including flight mechanics, riggers, and fitters passed through it and it was also host to a large number of civilians many of whom were employed as instructors. Later, in 1956 the site became a resettlement camp for Hungarian refugees, then later still the land was auctioned off and became part of Cannock Chase Country Park.
Certain areas of the forested parts of the Chase have become runs for mountain bikers and this one was called Devil's Staircase!😈 However, there were lots more 'runs' with quite fanciful names, but possibly more worrying were the location posts that provided info for emergency services in case of accidents. 🚑
Wednesday 17th ☁☁⛅⛅⛅⛅⛅
Today we paid a return visit to the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire which is a place we visited a couple of years ago. However, since then quite a few new Memorials have been added, and this lovely November day proved to be an ideal time for our exploration of them. The Arboretum is situated at the corner of the National Forest and the 150 acre site is home to many thousands of young trees, some fantastic flowering gardens and also nearly 400 memorials that represent the Armed Forces, the Emergency Services and also tributes to many civilian organisations. Therefore, it would be absolutely impossible to mention all of them but I did take pics of some of the most visually impressive ones.
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| This huge Memorial is the centre piece of the Arboretum and it's oval shape is divided into 3 sections by curved walls. The walls are then divided into numbered panels and the names of those from the armed forces who have died since 1945 are represented there. However, what I found very ominous was a huge area in the 3rd section that had no inscriptions! That area was obviously waiting for those who are yet to perish in wars to come! |
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| The two sculptures above were found in the centre section of the main memorial. |
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| Every poppy had a name on and they were all arranged according to the month in which that person died. |
This one was dedicated to the Parachute Regiment which was originally set up in 1940 following a directive by the then Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
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| This one represented The Pegasus Bridge Memorial Flight. On D-Day 6th June 1944 six Gliders were released from British aircraft and had to glide down in complete darkness to secure bridges over the River Orne, The Caen Canal and The River Dives in a mission that was vital to defending the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy. |
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| This Portal represents the threshold to the dangerous places the Police go to protect us - a place from where some never return. |
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| This one was to remember the British Children who were evacuated and separated from their families during the 2nd World War. |
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| The Royal National Lifeboat Institution was represented by this memorial |
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| And this one recalled the sacrifice of numerous firefighters following the horror of 9/11 when four coordinated terrorist attacks by the militant Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda brought the Twin Towers down in New York |
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| Another touching memorial was inspired by 'The Donor Family Network' in memory of those who have donated organs and saved lives. |
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| A memorial to the Gulf War (1990 - 1991) |
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| The very sad Shot at Dawn Memorial that commemorates the 306 soldiers who where executed after court-martial for desertion and other offences during WW I. Each post represented a life lost! |
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| This one was to commemorate The Royal Army Medical Corps |
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| And a beautiful Horse represented the contribution made by horses throughout history in times of war! |
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| And Captain Tom had to be there somewhere! One of the streets was named after him! |
Thursday 18th November 2021 ⛅⛅🌞🌞⛅⛅☁☁☁
Today's outing took us to the National Trust's fairly newly acquired magnificent 900 acre Shugborough Estate which sits on the edge of Cannock Chase. In times gone by the estate was owed by the Bishops of Lichfield, but eventually, in 1624 it was purchased by a local lawyer called William Anson and then it stayed in his family for the next 3 centuries. Following the death of the 4th Earl of Lichfield in 1960 the estate was allocated to the National Trust in lieu of death duties, but soon after it was leased to Staffordshire County Council and it stayed in their care for the next 50 years. However, during that time parts of the estate suffered from dire neglect so when the Trust regained it's possession in November 2016 a lot of work was needed to restore it to it's former glory. Thus a ten year project was hatched to restore many of it's grand features, particularly the walled garden and the Grand House.
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| Shugborough Hall from the front |
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| And from the back |
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| The footings of one of several old glasshouses. |
The walled garden was one of the first areas that we entered and it was one that seemed to have suffered from possibly the most neglect. During the time that Staffordshire County Council had been in charge the area had been mostly used for storage and huge swarths of it had become very dilapidated and overgrown with thistles and bracken. However, much of that has now been cleared to leave bear soil where planting will take place eventually, and additionally, the old greenhouses have been partially excavated to expose footings, tunnels and the old steam pipes that were used to heat them. The info boards told us that in the garden's 'hey day' the glasshouses grew everything from cucumbers, tomatoes, melons and pineapples, and the outside 'hot walls' were where pears, cherries and apricots would have been planted.
The estate also had a number of 'Follies', the first one being The Tower of the Winds!
It was originally built in 1765 for ornamental use but later in the nineteenth century it became a dairy.
Then, in the formal garden just in front of the lake we found this strange structure but I couldn't find any info to explain it's origins. You can't see it very well but in the middle of the pic there's the head and lower body parts of a bearded man but his chest and abdomen are missing! Maybe the ravages of the hundreds of years of weather caused them to crumble away!
Next came the Chinese House and bridge which was one of the earliest buildings on the estate.
And after that there were a couple more strange structures - The Cat Monument and The Lantern - but I didn't get very good pics of them!
Our final stop was at Hadrian's Arch which was constructed in 1765 and is a copy of an arch by the same name that can be found in Athens. It commemorates Admiral Anson, who in his time, circumnavigated the globe and oversaw the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War.
The plinth of the arch also provided a comfy seat for us to sit and sip our coffee while watching the Estate's herd of deer who seemed quite unconcerned by passer's by!
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Friday 19th November 2021 ⛅⛅⛅⛅🌞🌞⛅☁
Today we decided to visit Lichfield's 1,300 year old 3 spired Cathedral, and we were quite amazed by the ornateness of it's outside sandstone walls and the many sculptures that welcomed us towards it's doors.
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| Part of the Cathedral's hugely ornate masonry - there were literally hundreds of statues hanging from the walls. |
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| The Central Spire which stands 252 feet 7 inches high! Apparently, in 1646 during the English Civil War the Roundheads aimed their cannons at the spire and caused it to crash down causing huge damage. However it was obviously later rebuilt! |
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| The Cathedral's twin spires are 190 feet high. |
And once we went inside there was even more intricate and beautiful things to see.
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| Two magnificent Alter Pieces |
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| The Font which didn't arrive in the Cathedral until the 19th Century |
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| And The Lichfield Angel - this stone panel was discovered in 2003 and is thought to date back to the 8th Century. |
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| The only Medieval Cathedral in England with 3 Spires. |
After the Cathedral we went for a walk in the nearby Beacon Park and it was there that we found the unfortunate Captain Smith who was Captain of the ill fated White Star liner 'Titanic' which sunk on it's maiden voyage on 15th April 1912. He lost his life along with more than 1,500 people when the ship (which was said to unsinkable) sunk after hitting an iceberg.
Saturday 20th November 2021 ⛅⛅⛅⛅⛅⛅⛅
Today we decided to have a quick trip 'home' (Ripley) because we'd decided we'd got quite a bit of gear that was more or less surplus to our present requirements. Therefore, we loaded up the car and made the 40ish mile trip to deposit said gear in our daughter's garage, and hopefully this will make packing for our up coming moves a little quicker.
The other benefit to our trip was that we got to visit most of our close family while we were there. Our first call was to see John's Mum along with Sister Val and her husband John, and then we nipped over to Heanor to see Son Adam, his partner Vicky and Grandson's Max and Jack. Poor Vicky is still in a wheelchair (with 2 fractured ankles) after her accident while they were holidaying with us back in late October, but she's in good spirits and we've got everything crossed that her recovery will be rapid. Then after that flying visit we went back to our daughter Sarah and her family for a quick catch up before we headed back to our cosy home on Cannock Chase.
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| Most of the family had been Axe Throwing on Saturday morning. Paul, Jack, Adam, Thomas, Ben, Evelyn and Sarah. |
Sunday 21st November 2021 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞
Today was one of those gorgeous sunny autumn days so a walk was definetely in order, and for that we chose part of the famous writer J.R.R Tolkien's Trail. Apparently he spent a good part of his early life on Cannock Chase and he took a lot of inspiration for his books 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' from features that he found in this area.
Our walk initially took us by The Commonwealth War Cemeteries where more than 5,000 British German and Polish soldiers rest.
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Then we continued along gravel paths to The Glacial Boulder which is thought to have been transported to it's present position under a glacier from the Lake District many thousands of years ago.
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And there you go, that's another week done. See you soon 😘
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