Portsmouth Docks, HMS Victory, the Mary Rose and a submarine.

Firstly my apologies if you're looking for a the details of the San Animal writing competition or for blogs about Spain please just scroll down this page.

As I'm in England at the moment I recently visited Portsmouth. In spite of being brought up there I had never before been on HMS Victory- Nelson's flagship.

 

This was a fascinating visit. The Victory dates from 1765 and is in a wonderful state of preservation. Besides fighting against the French and Spanish at Trafalgar she also fought in four other battles including the American war of Independence, the Napoleonic war, and the French revolution. She is the oldest commissioned warship in the world.

The first thing that struck me inside was how much larger it was than I expected although all the decks are low 'ceilinged' for stability. At the time of Trafalgar it had a crew of 800 aged from twelve to sixty-seven.

Hammocks were slung amongst the guns. The crew ate salted beef and pork, biscuits, peas, oatmeal, butter and cheese. The biscuits were often full of weevils and because the water couldn't be kept in a drinkable condition every man had a beer ration of eight pints a day!- so it wasn't all bad. Scurvy had been overcome by the time of Trafalgar as lemon juice was added to the rum ration . 

 

During the battle 'loblolly' boys were in charge of lobbing the bodies and their parts over the side! There were of course no analgesics and they didn't administer brandy etc prior to amputations as they knew that alcohol increased bleeding. You had to hope you'd lose consciousness quickly. On the plus side the surgeon could do an amputation in just one and a half minutes.

We saw the spot where Nelson was fell and where he was carried down below deck to die. Our guide said that Nelson put a blue handkerchief over his face so that the men wouldn't realise hat he'd been hit.
 If you want to visit Victory I would recommend going there as soon as the dockyard opens at 9.45am We were first on board which greatly enhanced the atmosphere as we managed to stay well in front of an excited party of school-children. The guides are very well informed and happily answer all your questions.
We next visited the Mary Rose museum where they have the ship dating from Henry the 8th in a state of preservation with numerous artefacts. This was extensive and very interesting but quite crowded.
We moved on and caught a 'water-bus across the harbour to see a submarine.

This was so interesting that I managed to overcome any feelings of claustrophobia. It is set up as it would have been with some atmospheric recordings relating to the time and the men, e.g. snoring emitting from a curtained bunk. It certainly made you realise how difficult life must have ben on board. Amongst many privations the men might be on board for as long as five months without washing! It was great to see the sub.after watching so many films in the past and I would thoroughly recommend it. Again the guides were both friendly and informative.

After this we had some well

earned lunch before going up the Spinnaker tower which has breath-taking views over Portsmouth.

If you're interested in visiting individual attractions tickets are £17 each, but a £25 ticket gets you into all the attractions, (there which are far more than I've described), and can be used over a year.

I hope you've enjoyed this blog, the next one will be out in September after a summer break - unless someone publishes one of my books!! Many thanks for your interest, Cathy.







Win £100 and help animals.

Hi, if you are looking for my blog, ‘Legless in Murcia – a visit to a bodega’, please scroll down the page. If you like animals and or writing –read on!

Win £100 and help abandoned animals!

Hi, welcome to a blog that’s a little different to the usual one. If you read my blog regularly you may have read about San Animal Santuario which is based in San Juan de Los Terreros on the Murcia –Andalucía border .  

A small international team of volunteers rescue abandoned dogs, puppies, kittens and cats. Due to the dire financial crisis in Spain, animals are dumped in rubbish bins, left on busy roads, or abandoned in the countryside. Recently a puppy was rescued from the countryside where he was found tied up in full sun, with no food or water, he’d simply been left to slowly die in agony.

San Animal Santuario find many animals new homes in other parts of Europe which incurs the additional costs of them being neutered, vaccinated, given passports and transported etc. There is also a programme to sterilise feral cats.

Well known author and tutor for Writing Magazine, Sue Johnson and myself have set up a writing competition in order to raise funds for the shelter.
 

Competition Rules.

1) Short stories of up to 1000 words on the theme of Sanctuary must be submitted by 31^st July. The theme can be interpreted in any way that you wish, for example a special place, or perhaps  someone's loving arms, or the sanctuary of a church or a place of safety, or shelter for animals or humans, or even a beauty salon!  The choice is yours.

2) Please type and double space your work on single sides of A4.

3) Include your contact details on a separate sheet – name, address, Email, phone no. Don’t put your name on the story itself.

4) There is an entry fee of £5 per story – or £12 for three - with the option of a full critique by Sue for an additional £5 per story

5) 1^st prize £100 2^nd £50 3^rd £25

6) Cheques should be made payable to S. Johnson, and sent with your entry to:

Sanctuary competition, The Gallops, Southam Lane, Cheltenham, Glos, GL52 3NY, U.K.

7) If you would like a critique please enclose return postage – all other entries will be shredded after the competition.

8)Results will be published on this blog and Sue Johnson's web site.

 Sue’s web site can be found on www.writerstoolkit.co.uk

A trip to a bodega / legless in Murcia.

Some Spanish friends invited us to look around a local bodega -vineyard with them. Ever keen to further our local knowledge and practise our Spanish we swiftly agreed to this idea - the husband being particularly enthusiastic about becoming more acquainted with the local vino. We met our friend Juan in Lorca.( For those of you who've read my previous posts about the earthquake that took place in 2011, you will be pleased to hear that this beautiful city is much restored to its former glory.) We drove off in our car and Juan explained that a few members of his family would be joining us. "Oh, who's coming we asked?" - eleven names later we realised that not all of Juan's ten brothers and sisters and their partners were coming but a fair percentage. Only one of them spoke English so we felt a language challenge coming on.
En route a Harley Davidson motorbike passed us. This was driven by Juan's brother Jose-Mari with his wife Maria-Jose riding pillion. In Franco's era all babies were named after saints - this makes for interest in any crowded place when trying to attract someone's  attention. A shout of Jose, Juan or Maria will elicit at least three people responding. A more cruel usage was used during the Civil War. When men were being called from a group to be executed, just the first name would be called followed by a long pause so that all the men with that name had to wait in suspense to hear their fate.
When we arrived at the bodega our guide explained that first we would look round the no longer used buildings which were used from the end of the Civil War in 1939.

Our guide explained that due to the impoverished state of Spain post civil war they had to be inventive. This photo shows the engine that was used for pumping purposes -it's from a Chrysler car!

 

Petrol was rationed to aprox. 36 litres per month. The tracks which the massive vats were moved on are an exact copy of British railway tracks. In another ancient building the wine was fermented. The man working there sang the whole time ,(rather like a canary in a mine in Wales !), because if he stopped the other workers knew that he'd been overcome by the carbon-dioxide fumes given off by the fermenting grapes.

Electricity was installed in 1973. Health and safety is an unknown concept in this part of Spain!



Talking of which in another building we were shown holes some 10metres deep. If a cat fell in they were able to climb up the pipe, but when a dog fell in once they had to lower a tray and amazingly he survived. Whether they continued with that particular vintage is unknown.

After about an hour of this our heads were reeling with trying to translate and look as if we had some idea of what was being said! We were taken across to the modern building where the wine is produced today and had another hour or so of explanations which I won't bore you with.



 

Apologies for the picture quality - I hadn't started the tasting, honestly!
Then came the tasting it was around 2pm, we hadn't eaten since breakfast, and we'd been standing listening to technical Spanish for two hours - it tasted pretty good. We all left staggering due to  the weight of our purchases probably and went off to lunch.
The restaurant was a tented extension in a field - as you can clearly see it's only rained four times here since October - don't moan at me - it's not my fault.

 

 

The restaurant only opens when it's pre-booked and we'd paid about £12 for lunch. Lunch consisted of  :

      Beer and tapas,

      Ham, cheese, thinly sliced pork, and bread.

      A large salad.

      Huge plates of roast kid and potatoes and roast chicken and potatoes.

      A choice of cold custard or rice pudding, (small bowls of custard are a popular pudding here).

      An almond cake.

      Not bad value for £12 each especially as it was accompanied by as much wine as you wanted and followed by coffee with three bottles of liquers left on the table for people to help themselves - Hardly anyone availed themselves of the opportunity to drink these. There is a very different attitude to alcohol here  and people in general only drink to accompany food. Spanish friends are puzzled by the concept of going for a drink without a meal. 

This was another great day with friendly and welcoming Spanish people. To be accepted here all you have to do is learn Spanish.

I hope you've enjoyed this blog, the next one will be out in June.Comments are welcome  

Thanks for reading, Cathy