Anglesey Abbey
I’ve lived in the area for an embarrassingly long time given that I hadn’t visited Anglesey Abbey before today. We ended up having a lovely time, which was great as the day went downhill very badly at the beginning. I was tired and grumpy, and so the children (particularly L) being hard work rubbed me up the wrong way and we ended up not leaving until just before lunchtime.
Anglesey Abbey is good value (particularly for free - good to occasionally actually use the NT membership) as there’s the Abbey itself, nice grounds that have formal bits, big informal lawns, and planted walks, plus Lode (Water) Mill which was running today. K had a good time playing with the hand mill and getting his dark clothes covered in flour, we saw all the huge cogs and the lovely wood everywhere and the calm rumbling sounds.
J saw the mill stream and asked why it was flowing slowly even though the water wheel was whizzing round. (Excellent observation, I thought.) I guessed that it was to do with Boyle’s Law, (explained in terms narrowing the spout of a tap with your finger to make the water spurt) with the river being forced through a shallow channel to get passed the wheel judging by how much the buckets stuck out from the main wheel - to paraphrase Calvin and Hobbes: there’s a science lesson everywhere! We bought some flour - it was very nice to know where it had been milled, but rather heavy to carry given that I already had L on my back in a sling and various boy hands to hold.
We went around the house and counted the clocks (over 30) and my initial worry at the children (particularly K and L) touching or even breaking things that they shouldn’t was proven unfounded. There was a table that looked like it was topped by a painting, but it was actually an incredible mosaic made of tiny pieces of glass. It took the maker 5 years to create. J and K were suitably impressed, and loved hunting for the clocks. There was one that Katy thought had a little stream of water flowing out of it but it was actually a glass rod cleverly made to look like flowing water, and another one that had a tray with a zig-zag path on it going through a line of arches up the middle - the tray tipped up one way and then the other every 15 seconds so a ball bearing travelled backwards and forwards along the path. It was beautiful and told the time too.
After the house we mooched around the gardens for a bit, and found a splendid formal garden full of hyacinths, and then an informal bit designed by the Tellytubbies with lots of mounds and ditches which they all found excellent fun to run up and down. Back to the car tired but happy for a short drive home - and I wondered why hadn’t we come before.
Katy had the excellent idea to get J a half sized guitar for his birthday. I’ve finally got around to helping him learn - the idea is that we do 5 minutes or so every night just before bed. Tonight I think he got the names of the open strings by spelling out words like EDGE and AGA, plus C and F. It was strange in a very nice way to see him do all the things that I did when I started the guitar - having to lean it over to look at the strings, trying to make it make odd noises by rubbing your fingers up and down the strings or plucking the little bits of string up by the machine heads… I need to get him a proper book of lessons as pretty soon he’ll need to be learning simple pieces.
April 8th, 2007 at 9:52 am
One of the things that I am really enjoying about Gwenny learning the guitar is that you can’t really make it sound bad. I learnt the violin and the cornet for a while when i was younger - no idea how my parents put up with it!
April 8th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I have always wanted to play the guitar but never got around to it. We nearly Bought HRH a guitar for Xmas but he really went off the idea. May be next year (or do I mean this year)