Sutton Bonington Campus - University of Nottingham

The weekend of September 10/11 2016 was a special time for Claire and I as we had decided to attend the 40th anniversary event for Sutton Bonington campus graduates from 1976. Yes, amazingly, it is 40 years since we graduated from Nottingham University!

We had a couple of days staying in Ashby-de-la-Zouch before the event. We visited assorted churches and cemeteries and made some good finds. Ashby seems busier than it used to be and our first house seemed smaller than we remembered it to be.

It rained quite hard on the Saturday morning but luckily the afternoon turned dry.  There were about 30 of us, almost the same faces as 10 years ago.  Even DK turned up in his wheelchair - "I fell off a ladder", he said.  He seemed on good form and it was nice to see him.  We stayed in one of the newer hostels beyond the old Hostel 5: goodness me the rooms seemed small although comfortable enough with those little bathroom "pods". The number of aircraft flying over seems to have gone up and some planes seem to arrive in the middle of the night. 

I am second from the left

We were amazed at all the new buildings, and extremely impressed with the quality of the facilities for modern students.  There must have been many tens of millions of pounds spent on the site. Our jaws dropped at the (current) devastation where the JCR used to be.  It is gone!  A new mid-campus "Plaza" is being created: doubtless it will be wonderful when it is finished.  The old Hostel 5 pond was long since filled in on safety grounds, only for modern designers/architects to add multiple new "designer" ponds elsewhere!

We had a meal together in the new facility (The Barn), but Martin and I didn't really think it was £30-worth.  Sloppy pate starter with inadequate bread, and just carrots and mashed potato with the main course.  Not very imaginative. But Sunday was sunny, and after a snacky breakfast in a café in the Costcutter shop on campus we went a walk down to the River Soar.  Altogether a very enjoyable weekend.  We will certainly like to attend the 50th and final reunion event in 2026.

From the UK to the USA - grave hunting!

This 13 day holiday called America's Founding History was organised by Great Rail Journeys and as has always been the case with this company the holiday was well organised and highly enjoyable.

Holidays such as this are rather hostages to fortune with respect to the weather and the energy and enthusiasm of the tour guide. We were lucky in both respects. John Rayment was one of the best guides we have experienced and the weather, although hot and humid, was overwhelmingly dry.

We visited (in order) Washington DC, Jamestown/Williamsburg/Yorktown, Lexington, Monticello, Charlottesville, Gettysburg and, finally, Philadelphia and, of course, we did some serious grave hunting along the way!

Arlington National Cemetery - Joe Louis, World Heavyweight boxing champion.

Arlington National Cemetery - Audie Murphy, one of the most decorated American combat soldiers of World War II.



The only minor glitches were due to Amtrak and British Airways. The rail trip from Washington DC to Williamsburg was - to be blunt - something of a fiasco. The train arrived 45 minutes late at Washington and then fell further and further behind the advertised arrival times at assorted intermediate stops before finally arriving at Williamsburg nearly 2 hours late.

The outwards trip from London Heathrow to Washington by British Airways was excellent but the over-night homewards trip from Philadelphia was spectacularly bad.

• The plane left Philadelphia nearly an hour late.
• The cabin was so cold that many people wore the supplied blanket over their head to mitigate the icy blasts coming from the overhead vents.
• The breakfast was both tiny and almost inedible. The croissant was so stale that it was solid and the Granola cereal fruit bar would not have been out of place as a surfacing material on a road.
• When we arrived at Heathrow there was nowhere for the plane to park and we just sat there for 20 minutes waiting for a slot to become vacant so that we could disembark.