July 4 - the Pool and the Plane
Slightly belated, my report on the fourth day of July, when I attended two parties, one at Withington Baths and one under the wings of Concorde.
As I mentioned three weeks ago, Withington Baths is one of the pools where I swam as a schoolchild, and it's just been taken over by a community group as the council has built a shiny new one somewhere that isn't in walking distance.
I did a few shifts weeding (I need to do more, but haven't had much time in the past couple of weeks) the front garden...
... and planted some plants I got from the Parrs Wood Rural Studies Centre stall at Didsbury Festival, which I'm pleased to say have now flowered.
It's been open under the new regime for a couple of weeks now, and I managed to swim a mile (seventy lengths plus ten yards) last week, up from my usual kilometre (forty-four lengths), which I was very pleased about. There was an official party to celebrate the re-opening on Saturday afternoon - I couldn't stay very long, as I had to get changed and set out on the journey to the airport, but as they'd styled the party as our own Independence Day, and there was a pool, I thought there was only one thing to wear for it, the Tshirt given to me by
legionseagle for my last birthday.
As mentioned above, I had to hurry back to shower and change before setting off for the second party, which was a further instalment of my old school's 125th anniversary celebrations. (It's even older than Withington Baths, which are only coming up for 104. We had a gala concert in March, and a grand reunion picnic last month.) This was at the airport's Runway Visitor Park, which I'd never heard of before.
Fortunately it turned out I could get there by bus, though as the park is primarily used by daytime visitors, whereas I needed to be there shortly before seven, the bus service that goes all the way had already stopped. But I could get one that left me with a twenty-minute stroll, which was very pleasant once I got away from the outer airport buildings and on to a pre-airport country lane. There were clues that one was approaching, however:
This is where the daytime bus service arrives.
There are various dead planes scattered about the place, some free to visit and some requiring booking. Here are a Trident and a Nimrod.
But evidently one of the main attractions is just watching the planes take off and land from a platform alongside the runway.
There was a picnic area, and I liked this warning. You will not feed the flying pests!
But of course the biggest attraction is the great white bird Concorde, which is in a big hangar where we were to have dinner.
We strolled around under its nose sipping drinks while some girls from school played harps. Apparently harping is very popular now - there were eight of them!
I sneaked round the back to get a closer look at the famous wing.
I thought the little gate to halt boarding was very sweet.
It was time for me to board the plane!
We were all surprised by how small it is inside - two seats on either side of the aisle, and not particularly big ones. (Apparently the Queen and her husband took a couple each.)
The windows were also tiny. Our guide said the designers originally didn't want any windows at all, because there had been accidents in earlier high-altitude planes with windows blowing out, though that had been sorted by the time Concorde was built, and anyway they were told that passengers wouldn't want to fly in a plane with no windows at all. So the view wouldn't have been particularly good, though apparently you could see the curvature of the planet as long as you weren't sitting over the wings.
We weren't allowed in the cockpit, though it seems from the website that you can book longer tours which let you in there. (You can also get married, though probably not in the cockpit - I imagine Martin and Theresa would insist on that, though!)
And then we had dinner under Concorde, including a particularly fine crème brûlée (I don't normally think much of crème brûlée, but this was very good). Later on, they turned the lights down and had a disco, which was awfully loud, but after a decent interval I got a taxi back to the airport where I could switch back to public transport and come home.
I'm struggling to make time to post at present, but do remind me some time that I have to commemorate the end of Battlestar Galactica.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.
As I mentioned three weeks ago, Withington Baths is one of the pools where I swam as a schoolchild, and it's just been taken over by a community group as the council has built a shiny new one somewhere that isn't in walking distance.
I did a few shifts weeding (I need to do more, but haven't had much time in the past couple of weeks) the front garden...
... and planted some plants I got from the Parrs Wood Rural Studies Centre stall at Didsbury Festival, which I'm pleased to say have now flowered.
It's been open under the new regime for a couple of weeks now, and I managed to swim a mile (seventy lengths plus ten yards) last week, up from my usual kilometre (forty-four lengths), which I was very pleased about. There was an official party to celebrate the re-opening on Saturday afternoon - I couldn't stay very long, as I had to get changed and set out on the journey to the airport, but as they'd styled the party as our own Independence Day, and there was a pool, I thought there was only one thing to wear for it, the Tshirt given to me by
legionseagle for my last birthday.
As mentioned above, I had to hurry back to shower and change before setting off for the second party, which was a further instalment of my old school's 125th anniversary celebrations. (It's even older than Withington Baths, which are only coming up for 104. We had a gala concert in March, and a grand reunion picnic last month.) This was at the airport's Runway Visitor Park, which I'd never heard of before.
Fortunately it turned out I could get there by bus, though as the park is primarily used by daytime visitors, whereas I needed to be there shortly before seven, the bus service that goes all the way had already stopped. But I could get one that left me with a twenty-minute stroll, which was very pleasant once I got away from the outer airport buildings and on to a pre-airport country lane. There were clues that one was approaching, however:
This is where the daytime bus service arrives.
There are various dead planes scattered about the place, some free to visit and some requiring booking. Here are a Trident and a Nimrod.
But evidently one of the main attractions is just watching the planes take off and land from a platform alongside the runway.
There was a picnic area, and I liked this warning. You will not feed the flying pests!
But of course the biggest attraction is the great white bird Concorde, which is in a big hangar where we were to have dinner.
We strolled around under its nose sipping drinks while some girls from school played harps. Apparently harping is very popular now - there were eight of them!
I sneaked round the back to get a closer look at the famous wing.
I thought the little gate to halt boarding was very sweet.
It was time for me to board the plane!
We were all surprised by how small it is inside - two seats on either side of the aisle, and not particularly big ones. (Apparently the Queen and her husband took a couple each.)
The windows were also tiny. Our guide said the designers originally didn't want any windows at all, because there had been accidents in earlier high-altitude planes with windows blowing out, though that had been sorted by the time Concorde was built, and anyway they were told that passengers wouldn't want to fly in a plane with no windows at all. So the view wouldn't have been particularly good, though apparently you could see the curvature of the planet as long as you weren't sitting over the wings.
We weren't allowed in the cockpit, though it seems from the website that you can book longer tours which let you in there. (You can also get married, though probably not in the cockpit - I imagine Martin and Theresa would insist on that, though!)
And then we had dinner under Concorde, including a particularly fine crème brûlée (I don't normally think much of crème brûlée, but this was very good). Later on, they turned the lights down and had a disco, which was awfully loud, but after a decent interval I got a taxi back to the airport where I could switch back to public transport and come home.
I'm struggling to make time to post at present, but do remind me some time that I have to commemorate the end of Battlestar Galactica.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.