GBbabe

DH and I are planning a blowout trip this summer. We start with the internationl mining history confrence in Cornwall on June 9 and come back to the US on the QM2 from Cherbourg July 24.

The outline now is 1.5 weeks in Cornwall/Devon - as many mining sites as we can fit in
1 week in Wales - as many mining sites and steam railroads as we can
1 week Cottswolds - walking
1 week Scotland - Glasgow, Ft. William, Inverness, & John O Grouts
1 week London/SE England - have seen the main touristy stuff, now branching out
1 week Paris/Normandy

Our interests are: mining, steam trains, ships/shipping, historical industry, big houses, intermediate walks, museums - local history and transporation.

We have been to England before and are looking at seeing the things we missed before and going to new areas.

Right now, I would like to know if there are any holidays, special celebrations, events, that anyone knows of that might impact our trip.

Thanks.

yk

Trooping the Colors takes place sometime in June. I personally would try to attend some of the events if I were around.

Hampton Court Palace Flower Show takes place in July
http://www.rhs.org.uk/whatson/events/hampton2009.asp

BBC PROMS starts mid-July
http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2008/

twk

Regarding Trooping the Colour, the official ceremony is on June 13, so odds are that the OP can't make it. Even then, getting tickets to the official ceremony can be tough for a foreigner. The actual ceremony and (the last dress rehearsal the week before, for that matter) require payment of a fee for tickets, and the catch for foreigners is that the tickets must be paid for by check drawn on a British bank in pounds sterling. When we went to the second dress rehearsal in 2007, we enlisted the help of our landlady to write the check.

For those interested, you have to send in an application in January or February. When I made application in '07, the address was:

Brigade Major
HQ Household Division
Horse Guards
Whitehall
London SW1A 2AX
Great Britain

You need to tell them how many tickets you want, who will be attending, and provide two international reply coupons. Even if you can't get tickets to the ceremony, watching the procession up the Mall to and from Horse Guards beats the heck out of changing of the guard, so anyone in London on June 13, or the preceding two Saturdays, should go check that out.

sheila

I'm getting annoyed now. This is the third time I've typed this. I'm checking things on other tabs and it keeps overwriting this one. Grrrr!

Scotland

Mining- There's the Scottish Mining Museum in Newtongrange outside Edinburgh and the Lead Mining museum at Wanlockhead

Steam trains,- you obviously know about the Jacobite, but there are steam trains at Grantown on Spey and Bo'ness and there's a narrow gauge one at the transport museum in Alford.

ships/shipping- Glasgow has our biggest transport museum and it also hosts the Clyde Maritime Trust with the tall ship Glenlee. No trip like yours would be complete without a trip "doon the watter" on the Waverley. In Dundee you can visit the Discovery- the ship Captain Scott too to the Antarctic- and the Unicorn, an old frigate. The Fisheries museum in Anstruther is really good. There's a very good maritime museum in Aberdeen, a lighthouse museum (does that count)in Fraserburgh and you can see the Buckie Drifter- fishing heritage centre- in, of allplaces Buckie. Portsoy hosts the Scottish Traditional Boat Festival from the 2nd to the 5th July. And then there's the Para Handy on the Crinan Canal.

historical industry,- the biggie is New Lanark, a world heritage site, but other things which come to mind would be the Jute Mill in Dundee- name slips my mind, but it'll come back to me- I remember, it's the Verdant Works, the 18th century iron foundry at Bonawe, the length of the Caledonian Canal, especially the locks just west of Fort William, any distillery, but Dallas Dhu at Forres is a mothballed interpretation centre now.

Big houses- well, there are so many I'm not even going to start. Try the National Trust for Scotland site, and the Historic Scotland one.

Intermediate walks,- ditto. When you've worked out a route, I'll make some suggestions but it would be helpful to know how long and how steep yo have in mind.

Museums - Every village in the country seems to have one. You'll find a fairly full list here:-

http://www.britainexpress.com/scotland/museums/

Please let me know if I can help further.

nona1

As you are interested in industrial history you might want to squeeze in a visit to Iron Bridge. Heart of the industrial revolution.

flanneruk

"mining, steam trains, ships/shipping, historical industry, big houses, intermediate walks, museums - local history and transporation" in the Cotswolds. Some of these might not merit a detour of themselves, but are probably worth choosing a walk to go through or past.

<b>Mining </b>: The world's acquaintance with fossils, dinosaurs and everything that turned into palaeontology started when by products of the Stonesfield slate mines were investigated in the 17th century. The mines are now worked out and invisible, but the fossils found in the mines dominate Oxford's University Museum, and the slate mined makes up most pre-1950 rooves within a 15 mile radius.

Slightly on the edge, there's a 700-year tradition of free coalmining in the Forest of Dean. www.fweb.org.uk/dean/deanhist/index.htm

<b>Steam trains </b>. Getting to the Cotswolds (or Wales) by train involves passing through Didcot, which often has steam up. There are a couple of minor heritage steam lines: www.cotswolds.info/steam-railways
We occasionally get real steam trains carrying passengers along the proper intercity railway line at the bottom of our street, but I've never found out who runs them

<b> Ships/shipping</b>. OK, we're as far from the sea as it's possible to be. But google William Smith, a major pioneer of geology, who was not only born at Churchill, but made most of his early discoveries surveying the routes for canals in the SW of the Cotswolds. There are various examples of his phenomenal (and beautiful) maps around London, but he's best invrestigated aas a challenge. There are several sites about our canal network, especially www.cotswoldcanals.net and the unconnected www.cotswoldcanals.com. The Oxford Canal, on the NE edge, is also a great centre for walking

<b>Historical industry </b>. Apart from around Stroud, we don't really do historical industry (though there's a healthy slug of biotech and high tech motor-related stuff in the NE of the region. But that's future indusry, if it avoids going belly up, rather than historical). All that damn technology put our manufacturing out of business. But if you're interested in pre-modern production (ie how you made and processed wool in the 16th century) let me know and we'll see how to help

<b>Big houses</b>. Fewer than you might imagine, since most big old houses round here are owned by people who don't want a bunch of oiks walking round them and are rich enough not to need to. But three houses on basic walking routes I'm fond of and are visitable: Sezincote (sometimes), Chastleton (needs prebooking) and Rousham (the house is OK: it's the garden that's amazing). One that's on a basic walking route and to my mind should never have been allowed to be built and ought to be torn down, but the walk it's on's nice: Blenheim. Which brings us on to:

<b> Transportation </b> Blenheim's parkland is intersected by Akeman Street, the Roman road from Cirencester to St Albans. Roman roads aren't that rare here - but you can walk along a lot of Akeman St, which is generally for walkers or horses only, and be amazed at how unstraight and bumpy the Romans could make their roads if they wanted to.

<b>Local history museums</b>. The two best are the Corinium Museum in Cirencester and the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock

Just about everything mentioned is on, or 50 yards off, a major footpath, and easy to fit into one of those 12 mile circular walks where you're never more than two miles from a pub.

rickmav

What a great holiday. Will anxiously await your trip report. You might find something in ours, from a visit to Devon this fall, that might satisfy your interest in stately homes. http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35164172

You can scroll down past the London and intro stuff.

GBbabe

Wow! Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone, especially Sheila and Flanner.
The Scottish Traditional Boat Festival,looks interesting and could fit our schedule.

Barbara