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The YMCA International Community Centre on Mansfield Road is housed in what was the Bluecoat Charity School. The school was founded in 1706 as the first charity school in Nottingham and classes were at first taught at St Mary’s Church and then in a building on High Pavement. They moved to the Mansfield Road Site, a building designed by Thomas Chambers Hine, in around 1853.
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Last Christmas my brother had sponsored an elephant for me and once I’d filled in the registration form I received a free ticket to Colchester Zoo, which then became the focus of a few days away in Essex. Opened in 1963 it now cares for over 260 different species over 60 acres of parkland and lakes.
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Whilst driving back from the Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway we were admiring the Forth Bridges in the distance when we came across a designated lay-by where you could stop and take photos of the bridges and managed to get the last unoccupied spot to park the car for a few minutes.
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Further to our visit to Creswell Crags to go on the Rock Art Tour, this time we took part in an Ice Age Tour of Robin Hood Cave, the largest cave on the site.
I’m taking part this week in #travellinkup where the topic is Once in a Lifetime Experiences. I was trying to decide exactly what to write about since “once in a lifetime” usually conjures up the image of the kind of adventure holidays that I don’t really go on, partly because that’s not really my thing and partly because I have kidney disease, so a lot of those kind of holidays are things that I just can’t do. But really once in a lifetime experiences to me are those that take you out of your comfort zone, be it travelling to a new city, or a new country or jumping out of an aeroplane.
Two trips immediately spring to mind. The first was in between ending my degree and starting my masters when I travelled solo around Europe for about six weeks by train. That was back in the days before I had a digital camera so was carrying loads of film around (and lost a whole days worth of photos somewhere!) and staying in youth hostels. My itinerary took me from Paris (which became one of my favourite cities and where I ended up staying an extra day due to a train drivers strike), to Geneva then on to Vienna and up to Berlin (via a night train which was a horribly uncomfortable experience with no working toilet), from there on to Copenhagen and then to Luxembourg City, then Brussels (I hated the hostel so much I ended up booking into a hotel) and then back to Paris before returning home.
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The Bamburgh Dunes sit below Bamburgh Castle and we took one of the routes down to the beach from the castle’s car park – which proved to be rather a steep endeavour!
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Bamburgh Castle is another of Northumberland’s impressive castles, notable for its position on a rocky outcrop allowing for some wonderful views of the surrounding coastline. The area has been occupied for over 10,000 years and there’s been a building there since at least 547 with successive owners from the Normans, Anglo-Saxons and Victorians adding to the castle’s structure.
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One of the largest still inhabited castles in the country, Alnwick Castle has been the home of the Percy family for over 700 years. In 1309 Henry Percy purchased a Norman style castle and converted it into a border fortress – over the following years the Scots did mount raids against the castle – and since then it has been extended and rebuilt, and faced other threats such as during the War of the Roses and the Civil War.
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One of the things we definitely wanted to do on a recent trip to Scotland was visit Edinburgh Zoo. Naturally we were hoping to be able to see the pandas – a timed ticket for their enclosure is a must and is included in the main ticket price which is cheaper if booked in advance. Thankfully we were rewarded in our planning by arriving just in time to see the male panda enjoying some bamboo before lying down for a sleep in the sunshine.
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