Showing posts with label places. Show all posts
Showing posts with label places. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Family days out ought to cater for everyone in the relatives. Whether you're on holiday or entertaining children during school holidays, a good day out puts the whole relatives in a great mood. Keeping your youngest children happy can mean the difference between a great holiday and an ordeal. And finding something that keeps the youngest as pleased as the teenagers - while not boring you idiotic or costing a fortune - is truly heaven sent. Have you enjoyed a good UK day out with your kids recently. Where did you go? What did it cost? Share the fun
# What: Artifacts & interpretation of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's favourite ship, raised from the bottom of the Solent in 1982, over 450 years after she sank.
# What else: A new museum being built around the preserved hull of the Mary Rose herself. The new museum is scheduled to open to the public in 2012, in time for visitors to the London Olympics.
# Where: Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth PO1 3LJ
# Contact: Visitors Centre, +44 (0)23 9283 9766
# Hours:From 10a.m. to 5:30p.m. in Summer & to 4:45p.m. in winter. Open every day except Christmas Eve, Christmas Day & Boxing Day.
# Admission: All inclusive ticket is valid for all attractions at the Historic Dockyards, including countless entry for a year for some (but three times admission to the Mary Rose Museum). Tickets adult, senior, kid, student, & family of up to seven persons, including seven adults or seniors.
# Getting There:

* By train Trains leave regularly from London Waterloo & London Victoria for the hour & a half trip to Portsmouth Harbour. Check National Rail Enquiries for times & prices.
* By coach: Greyhound Buses from London Victoria cease at The Hard, a terminal area outside the way in to Portsmouth Historic Dockyards. The company offers discount fares to Historic Dockyard visitors.
* By automobile 72 miles south of London by the A3 & the M27. The Mary Rose Museum is close to the way in to the Historic Dockyards on the corner of Queen Street & The Hard. Parking on site & in nearby parking lots is signposted. A Park & Ride Service is available Saturdays & Bank Holidays.
So I was interested to see that The Ship Inn, in Fowey, Cornwall, no longer boasts about its haunted room. When I visited the elderly pub with rooms, over a decade ago, all the guests knew about the 16th century paneled room that could never be painted or plastered without the refurbishments peeling off, virtually overnight.

I've noticed lately that the spookiest places are not the ones that brag about their ghosts and haunted chambers but the ones that don't make much of a fuss about it. The shiveriest experiences I've had have been in unexpected places where no one warned me but locals nodded knowingly after.

My own stay at the inn, possibly connected to Sir Francis Drake, was uneventful. But I notice that now the place still promotes the 16th century paneled room but makes no mention of the ghost...Hmmm. possibly worth checking out this Halloween?

While there, I met a couple celebrating their 25th anniversary in the same room where they had spent their honeymoon. "Wanted to stay in the 'aunted room but me lady spouse would 'ave none of it," the husband told me in a rich, elderly style cockney accent. "Wanted to stay in it on me 'oneymoon 'n all, but 'herself weren't 'avin none of it then neither."