Bressingham Rail Museum

Bressingham Rail Museum and Garden

A railway enthusiast's garden. Alan Bloom set up a garden centre and with the spare money he made he rescued some traction engines. His collection grew and he fixed them up, now he has a full size track and several Great Western engines that were so beautiful that they were perfect as if the queen had ridden in them. In fact she had actually ridden in the carriages. There were several royal coaches. They had a bath, sitting room and beds with lots of decoration. He also had 3 guages of railway through the garden.

They had a merry go round or the “Gallopers”. There was a steam engine attached but unfortunately the steam engine was not going. George rode a three-seated chicken, Max was on an ostridge. We were given 5 pound to buy an icecream. We played on an old stem roller, we filled the fire box with stones but were told off by dad. We had to pick out the rocks and I also found a spanner I there that someone else had put in.

The garden railway went in a large loop. There were teddy bears hanging from trees and tied to water tanks and branches. They are for the young people but to us they looked grubby from the soot and it seemed a bit like teddy bear torture!

They had a room full of about six cabinets, all of them were filled to the brim with Mamod and Wilesco traction and other steam vehicles pus a few Dinky toys. I dreamed that they were for sale. But of course they weren’t.

They had a full sized steam truck and lots of traction engines.

Mum liked the grarden as there were a few New Zealand plants. There was something strange, soap on bits of wire. It turns out that it was to stop the deer eating the tastiest plants. The deer

came in every morning an night. Mum thought it might be for the snails. The deer put their noses down to gobble tasty plants and pooh, they get soap instead and get put off. Run away!

Duxford Air Museum

The Blackbird taken by Max, just look at those lines.

BY MAX

We went to Duxford from Bronwyn and Andrew's place in London (spent the night in a pub -ed) We first played with the flying and science displays and then we saw the Concord (and other fantastic planes too like the first ever planes and aerobatic ones) It was so hot that we really needed lots of water and icecreams. Planes were flying around too, you could go for rides. Some were doing skillful aerobatics.

We went to the tank shed, George and I thought and planned to make a pedal powered tank at home. We drew plans. We found out lots about the world wars. It must have been horrible but exciting too. I didn't know they used so much barbed wire.

The Blitz of London was awful. We got to make a necklace out of buttons. There were boxes and boxes of old, shiny war buttons with different sizes and patterns (monograms) Henry made one about 6'' in diameter covered in buttons. He was very pleased with himself. Especially since e got to take them home. This was to teach us about rationing and using old things again.

We saw a B52 bomber, It was huge and it dropped hundreds of tonnes of bombs in a raid. It had lots of sets of wheels under its wings since they were so huge. It was just scary! I also saw some bouncing bombs as were used by the dam busters. The black bird was huge too for only two pilots. It can go so fast that you can fry an egg on the window (if it didn't get whipped off -ed.)

It was used for spying. It doesn't have any weapons. It shaped for speed and painted to hide in radar. It has lead in its paint.

We loved the shop. I got a spitfire and a parachute man. George got a Messerschmitt 109 plane that goes round and round. Henry got a package of war posters, ration books etc. (They are really interesting -ed.). He also got a naval, army and airforce man and Winston Churchill (he was the prime minister in the war) We bought Usborne True Stories "The Second World War" by Paul Dowswell.

Before we went on holiday we read "The Machine Gunners" by Robert Westall. It was fantastic. It had lots of tense situations for Chas the hero . He tried to shoot German troops and planes down (they were expected to invade Britain and were bombing often -ed.) He got a machine gun out of a German plane that had been shot down. It was very exciting. In the end it was a bit sad.

duxford.iwm.org.uk

The First World War By Henry

POPPIES RED AS BLOOD

The anciant Belgian to

wn of Ypres [eep] was a point of a

huge front line that went as far as Switzerland.

The reason poppies-among others-are such a strong

reminder of the 1^st Battle of Ypres was that when the

the ground was very boggy and was almost entirely

mud, the first plant to grow back was the poppy. Indeed, the only plants

for miles around were dead tree trunks and stumps.

What would grow though, in their thousands, like

red grass, was poppies. In the battle, soldiers were often

burried where they fell. Crosses were everywhere,

and in between them were row on row of poppies.

This was left in the mind of the few live soldiers

and music and poetry was written. Several of these

can be read today, and pieces like Flanders fields

are now famous.

The First World War

The cause of the first world war was the result of an arms race between Britain, France and Germany. There was peace in 1914, but it was armed peace.

Many governments believed that the sheer size and force of their army, navy or air force would keep the opposition from striking.

Back in 1899, the ruler of Russia warned that the arms race in Europe would do the opposite of its intention. War was looming on the horizon.

The Alliances

Up until the late 19th century, Germany was made up of 39 states. In the 1817’s, they led a successful invasion of northeast France. Fearing retaliation from France, the Germans formed an alliance with Austrio-Hungary. A promise was made that they assist each other with military aid, should they be attacked by Russia. In 1882, Italy joined Germany to form a triple alliance, known widely as the Central Powers. Secretly, however, the Italians also made a pact with the French, to stay neutral if the Germans invaded France.

The Navy

Germany was very quick at building their infrastructure and making the most of their coal,iron and steel. Their ambitions were so strong that by 1915 they had out competed Britain and France as the world’s top industrial nation. The new ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II also had ideas of a “Land Of The Sun”, to compete the nations of Britain and France. But if he was to do this, he had to expand is Navy, so he ordered the construction of a new fleet of war ships. This method was such that Germany had colonies in Africa, the Far East and the pacific,and the second biggest navy in the world, next to the British Royal navy.

By then, Britain had built a entirely new form of battleship. It was called the H.M.S Dreadnought, and this struck fear into the Kaiser. He ordered that a German Dreadnought be built. Germany now had 20 Dreadnoughts, Britain had 30. War was looming on the horizon.

Growing Power

Over the 1830’s, Russia and France were increasingly worried about Germany’s growing power as the Kaiser had gifted important positions to military officials. In 1893 they formed an an alliance with Germany and other central powers their top priority.

Britain was also concerned about this, as German powers might threaten their empire and navy.

Germans March

This caused outrage in Austria and Hungary, and the central powers, with Germany, promptly declared war on Serbia on July the 29th, and her ally, Great Britain, stepped in to defend her fellow nation. On July 30th, Russia declared that it would offer assistance to Serbia’s aid if need be. Kaiser Wilhelm II, seeing this as aggression, so war was declared. Then, like clockwork, France put their troops forward with Russia. Again, the central powers declared war on France. Kaiser had a crafty idea. He knew that Russia would take time to enter the German border, as it had poor rails. Meanwhile, he would defeat Paris.

Is Britain in or out?

The Russians would have arrived by now, so the Kaiser would in turn defeat Russia. This was put into effect, but because of the hurry, he took the most direct route to Paris- through Belgium. Now, after the argument over the Dreadnoghts, Britain was left to its own devices for a while. But now, Germany was invading Belgium. Britain had had a treaty over this, and she wasn’t going to break it. An attack by Britain was not in the Kaisers plans. Still, they did have the largest navy in the world, and Britain announced war on the central powers [Italy, seeing war beginning, had resigned pronto to their pact with France, see earlier.] 11 hours after the invasion. The Ist World War had began.

CONDOM

This is a small town which we visited. It is in South Eastern France. It was close to the canal where we were boating. The houses are made of stone and the streets are cobbles and narrow.

The First World War was a great loss of men for France and the memorial was quite large for the town. The men it remembered are still remembered as we can see by the flowers. We noticed that there were lots of brothers on the lists, there was even four brothers from one family. It made us feel very sad. It was surrounded by trees and looked rather beautiful. It also remembered the men who died in the second War as there was another plaque added. There were not as many dead as the French were invaded early on and the swastika flew from the Eiffel Tower. So the French army was no more.

See also the Dolomites for more world war one history

Hay-on-Wye bookshops by Henry

Henry loves bookshops and Hay was full of them, the town is know for its bookshops, and has the only specialist poetry bookshop in Britain. There were so many lovely second hand books for so little, however they were all really heavy. Geoff bought an illustrated Uncle Rhemus. This book shop was our favourite. -ed

I expected many things from Hay, but not that it had a castle and that it was a book and antiques

town. Now books and especially antiques are my favourite things, and collecting natural curiosities is another pass-time. Well, the whole town was based around dozens of bookshops, one of the most beautiful had 3 floors packed with shelves crammed with novels, poetry, literitures, even some huge books reprinted from New Zealand , a book of birds and about the Maori. The festival was started by a man who won a lottery and spent the money starting a book festoval since the town was a book town! Now it is a huge festival every year.

Bristol by George

We went to Bristol first. Henry go to see Aardman, we got to wait in the foyer, but that was good too. We got tickets to baord the Great Britain a big steamer and sailing ship built by Brunel, a famous engineer. The ship was beautiful and huge. She had a horse stable that smelled of horse pooh! She had two cannons and the bunks were thin! We went on a bus trip and we saw some of Banksey's work.

By George Cressida Cowell at Hay

We went to hear Cressida Cowell at the Book Festival. She has written the books of Hiccup the Viking. Hiccup has a dragon called Toothless. Toothless is a bit lazy ad he stutters. She stared to write because she lived on an island when she was young and there wasn't much to do and they kept finding weird fish and things in the sea. There were cliffs there a bit like in the books.

While Henry waited in line to see Cressida , he did a couple of drawings as we had left our copy of her book back at the B and B for her to sign, he had plenty of time as the queue took an hour. There were lots of people and Cressida insisted on talking to each person carefully about their feelings.

By Henry at AARDMAN!!!!

(Henry was so lucky, much luckier than all us hangers on who also wanted to see the works! -ed) I have been looking forward to visiting Bristol ever since I heard rumour of what was within it- Aardman. Where Wallace & Gromit was made. Every part f the famous programme is made there- props, models, sets, the animations, the reproductions and the moulds in which the puppets are made. I had brought along a few of my own models, and I had taken no chances of breakages on route from New Zealand. We only got in as someone was exiting the building and we got to talk to the lady at the reception desk. She checked to see if Nick Park was in when she heard we were from New Zealand! I was allowed to look in the model making department and take photos too! I saw many props and so on. It was very interesting, especially when I was shown the moulds in which they made Gromit. They had every thing one could want when it came to model making for Wallace and Gromit. I heard that there were some rooms in which commercials were made and even staff weren't allowed in, let alone a 10 year old New Zealand fan. I also noted that there was a good bit more souvenirs and memorabilia in shops around Bristol.

By Max, The Canal Boat in Wales

The canal boat in Wales was very cosy and a lovely traditional, sleek boat. The canal was thin and shallow. There was no current, the wake of the boat was big. The boat was slow, in fact george and I could easily beat it walking. We walked for miles and we could just jump on at the bridges. There were about 226 bridges on the canal. We didn't do it all because we went to listen to Quentin Blake at the Hay Book Festival. (Andrew Ashby picked us up to get us to Hay during the canal boat trip, then he and Ben and Rachel joined us for a meal and trip - ed.) Quentin Blake said to be free with your drawing and do it everyday, when ever, what ever. He liked pens, quills smudging ink, paint pencils and looking at things! He was funny too and drew us lots of pictures. He even did requests!

George adds ...

I slept on the sofa for two nights, it was cosy and fun. I cooked some spuds for breakfast. The canal boat was 16 m long and it weighed twelve tonnes. I couldn't steer it because I was too short to see! Henry tried but he beached up the front!

From Henry, Hong Kong

We arrived in Hong Kong in a 777 200er aircraft with $1,400 of the native currency. ($300 NZ) The airport is gigantuan. It is in the tropics, so it was very, very hot. Hong Kong was different from home. Where it wasn’t green with forests and lush vegetation on steep hillsdes, it was commercial factories and domestic housing estates and huge apartment buildings as far as the naked eye can see. There are shops and hotels, and we were staying in one called the Harbour Plaza in North Point. The hotel looked grand , it was very comfortable. There was a buffet breakfast and I had a large amount, what an amazing choice, I was famished as the plane food is horrible. I passed the time studying coins and notes. (This has become a continual persuit- ed.) They were rather interesting (they have to be complex to prevent forgery). It is easy to loose ones hat in a taxi when you are very tired. The taxi was small, full of us and luggage and stopped in a dark foyer so that my best train hat was invisible on the floor in the back.

We visited the Ocean Park. My best bits were the jelly fish in large tanks in the mirrored, darkened display area and the pandas. (There was a great display of goldfish varieties and art associated with them - ed)

preliminary ramblings

By George

I hope I have enough money to buy a honda motor. If I can't get a motor I will look for a pocket knife. A Swiss Army one maybe. I would also like to look at Lego and war things. (George really enjoyed "The Machine Gunners" by Robert Westall. It is brilliant! I think he hopes to find shell cases on the ground and bits of messerschmits under bushes -ed.) And I am interested in the canal boat and doing interesting things. I will like going on the plane. I think it will be hot!

By Max

I would like to buy a pocket knife and I want to buy a Wilesco steam engine (Max raised lots on money by selling teddybears, however the boys seem to be very materialistic don't they, and the first trips proved this to be true -ed.) I looking forward to see a steam show and mountains. I want to ride on a roller coaster and a 747 and a canal boat.

I think it will be beautiful. There will be a lot more steam engines and more smaller houses . It will be crowded in some places and lonely in some.

By Henry

A few weeks ago, on a drizzly Friday, I heard that Mum has arranged and got tickets for a big vacation in Europe. I was ecstatic - I haven't been o'er the Tasman (although that was grand too). We skipped gym for a treat and ruined a bike with the trebuchet (teeheeheee - choking laughed). On May 24th I said "Au revoir" to school for 9 weeks. Went home and packed our bag. I'm going to try to use operation purswasion to get into Aardman*, the creators of Wallace and Gromit, and Chicken run. My favourite. Anyway, I'm taking some of my own models to show, they are made of plasticene, can't have them rattling on the way! So I'm taking no chances on packing (tissue inside of the ex-sewing box they are in, cheese cloth on the outside and tied with string and labels with transport details etc) My anticipations for Europe are - very bracing air, busy cities, interesting people, languages and cultures. Its history too. I'm 1/4 Dutch and low and behold, we're going to Amsterdam! Well, that's all I can say for the moment, for I am writing at home - we're leaving tonight - so that's all I can say!