Dovercourt

My university house tenancy ran out on 30th June, whilst I still had several weeks left at my job before I could leave the area for summer (costs to stay somewhere for the duration of summer are through the roof, so I cleared it to get some time off), which meant that I needed somewhere to stay. I had not seen my grandparents for ages and was well overdue a visit, so they allowed me to stay in Dovercourt with them, which is about 40 minutes from my job by public transport (as opposed to 1hr 30 from my home). This was fantastic, because not only did it make work life easier, but it also meant that I could get some long awaited time with my Grandma and Grandad on my days off.

An American friend came to stay during the first week, as it was her first visit to England, so they took us both out and about when they could. There was a local event on to celebrate the ‘Harwich Festival of the Arts’ which meant that there were various activities such as a children’s parade one day, where all of the schools had given their upmost effort to create costumes and props in order to win various prizes.

I approved of the school below, especially, as their props were representative of recycling and saving the planet etc. which is something which I always love.

On the following day, there was a big band display at the Redoubt Fort in Harwich, which we attended. The bands were all really good, although I couldn’t help but compare them to my old school Dance Band, which was equally fantastic back in the day. The actual event claimed to be a food and drink festival, but that’s the one thing I would comment as quite poor, due to the fact that I have never considered four food stands as constitutive of a food ‘festival’. I don’t know about you, but I normally envisage a couple of platters going round of free samples and lots and lots of stands, but there was none of that. Unfortunately I couldn’t stay for the whole thing but the others did, and took pictures of the grand 10pm finale, which had fireworks in time with the classical music. It sounds pretty incredible! (Still no freebies, though…)
                                       

I went to Clacton several times during my stay, the first for a general shopping, and the second with Chris when he came to visit in my last week. We went up by bus, which was a new experience. I rarely even get busses in Ipswich, and am so used the the to-the-minute digital updates at London bus stops that the 8 minute overdue bus wait seemed to take forever when waiting to go to Clacton. Pricing was fairly similar to London at £8.80 for two returns, although I can’t remember how much a London bus is without an Oyster…I think it’s about £2.40? Four busses (2 people there, and 2 back) at London prices, therefore would cost in the region of £9.60 which makes what we paid sound fairly reasonable, actually. One thing I never will understand about waiting for a bus, however, is that they say English people love to queue but it is funny that so many have yet to master to concept of ‘not pushing in’. Let’s move on…
In Clacton, we paid a visit to the Mini Golf - in fact I think that was first stop after me winning last year (I was almost certain that I had written a post about last year’s visit but apparently not)! Unfortunately I can’t say I won this year, I think it was a fluke last time. I seriously intend to get some practice in to beat the boy at it next time we have the opportunity to play! I don’t know what it is about mini golf which I find so fun, afterall, I’m the least sporty person I know…perhaps it’s the therapeutic notion of whacking a ball with a metal stick! Nevertheless, I lost, so we moved onto the traditional seaside arcades; I say traditional, but all the prizes seem to be replaced by tickets which give you rubbishy little prizes worth very little, nowadays…tickets of which I won 60 and forgot to trade in. It’s okay, though, I’m not sure I would have been able to eat 6 whole penny sweets! In all seriousness, these arcades do seem to have got far more technical than they ever needed to be, have people genuinely lost so much interest in the oldie-worldie games that they need a giant version of their phone app?


As you’ll have probably realised, if you read my post about Great Yarmouth, I am a great believer in renewable energy, so every time I go to Clacton, I love admiring the wind turbines in the distance. Each time I go, there seem to be more and more, but to me that can only be seen as a good thing!

Being the zoo-y people we are, we were also extremely lucky when my Grandparent’s took us to Colchester Zoo in one of our last days there! I hadn’t been since I was a little girl, and Chris had never been, so it gave us the opportunity to compare it to London Zoo as well as being a completely different change of scenery. Colchester Zoo are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year which means that the ‘Stand Tall’ project has been taking place. Developed to raise funds for conservation through the zoo’s own charity ‘Action for the Wild’, the project involves in excess of 100 giraffe statues placed around Essex. This proved highly entertaining as we were spotting coloured giraffes all over the place whilst I was with my grandparents! The photograph below is the giant statue which stands in the entrance of the zoo itself.
                                                   
I thought I would just show a little selection of the animals. These were ones I loved especially, as they are creatures which aren’t at London Zoo, so I haven’t had opportunity to see them properly before (at least, not for 10 years or so).
                    


Over the next few weeks I will be immersed in knitting and reading but I will find some things to blog about, I’m sure. I am determined to get back into the swing of regular blogging, so keep your eyes peeled!