Please note it is not a Concorde, or The Concorde, it is just Concorde. This aircraft should never be named with an article, it is always spoken of as Concorde. 
There was a problem, it was closed.
Closed for a conference. 
Well, what can you do, this is a business and they need to make a living, managing Concorde requires funds so I really did understand. But we were a little saddened to miss out. We sat in the restaurant as the rain poured down over the airfield. The rain made the landing of the Emirates A380, the flight we will be on in 24 hours, totally invisible.
The table staff came over to collect our order for lunch and we asked if Concorde was likely to be open later in the day. She said, "no it is closed for the conference." We asked if there was any chance of seeing it since it was our last opportunity and she said she would see what she cold do.
She introduced us to Simon who manages the catering at this place. He organises the conferences and runs the whole show. He came over to see us and was the perfect host. He asked if we could hang about for while and he would personally host us for a tour of Concorde as soon as the conference was done.
Could we hang about a while????
- For a trip over Concorde. 
Wow… 
We had a warm coffee shop to wait in and a whole afternoon of air traffic to observe. Of course we could hang about.
Eventually the conference broke up and Simon came to collect us.
Then we were in the hanger, the two of us with Simon who took us all around Concorde. 
Inside and out, under and over, touching it and breathing it. 
My oh my what an experience.
Sitting in the pilot seat, Sitting as a passenger. Wondering who may have sat in this seat in the past.
This is a special example of Concorde. Its registration is G BOAC. It was the flagship of the fleet. It is also one the few to actually arrive at its final exhibition point under its own power. Many were dissected and carted to their museum home but G BOAC flew itself to Manchester.
Concorde began construction in February 1965 just months before we left Heathrow for Adelaide. I followed its development and flight program right throughout my youth. To finish our 50th anniversary tour of UK with a personally guided tour of Concorde was the best icing on any cake I can think of.
Simon was a delight as he chatted about Concorde in its new home as a conference centre. He introduced us to a Concorde guide who could answer my questions about the brilliant aircraft.
We took hundreds of photographs, some of them may actually tell a story. 

We are almost done now. Today and tomorrow are repositioning days to get us back to Manchester for the trip home. Today we left the amazing Boringdon Hall early for the trip to Bath. 
We have finally got coffee worked out. Took a while to discover that a double espresso (dopio) at a Costa takeaway makes an excellent Long Black.
We spent time on the motorways into Bath and I was again so impressed with British motorway etiquette. They do it so well indeed. 3 Lanes on a highway is perfect. 

These roads are busy all the time. The number of transport trucks is astounding as is the number of large Ford Transit types. As for cars, I am still convinced that the Audi, BMW and Mercedes drivers live their own lives. They seem untouched by things like speed limits. I can almost hearing them say, as they saunter past me, “80 is the new 60.”
I do need to comment on speed cameras, more importantly on the huge impact of average speed zones. These are common. You hit road works or a steep incline and discover there is an average speed zone. It is the most effective speed control measure I have seen. Even Audi drivers seem to notice, well not all of them. I certainly don’t wanna give ideas to our government so keep it to yourself, but average speed zones just pull back the speed amazingly well.
Eventually we left the motorways and dribbled our way onto the A and B routes. We had elected to stay this second last evening at Midsomer Norton.
The drive took us through Sandford. It did not look much like the Sandford of Hot Fuzz, but it could be the quiet English Village for Nicholas Angel to visit. 
Then we passed through Corston. OK, I can allow the spelling change but Midsomer Murders is based around Causton CID. Then finally we drove into Midsomer Norton. We came to stay just because of the name. It was a hotel to stay in just outside of Bath which gave us lots of pretty, little English roads to drive.
These roads are pretty - and little. So often we are trapped between massive hedges on the left and a semi trailer on the right. Driving is slow and highly taxing. Keeps you fully alert indeed. I am amazed at the signs that warn you that, “Oncoming traffic may be in the middle of the road.” And it is.
So here we are in Midsomer for our penultimate evening. Tomorrow is the road to Manchester. That will be all motorways - after we escape Midsomer.

We have done many great things in this past 3 weeks but today was an especially good, good day. 
Last night we spent a great evening in a wonderful hotel in Torquay. The Marquis Hotel was a great place with lots of history in the hotel itself. It was close to all we wanted to be near and was a comfortable place to be. 
And the internet worked well!
It has to rate as one of the better places we have stayed.
We ended the day in the best, best place we have stumbled across. In the intervening hours what we have seen and explored has made this a highlight day on all counts.
All this regardless of having to drop one of our selected tourist stops in order to fit one more in.

We had been to the very top of this Island nation about 11 days ago. On a spur of the moment decision we visited John O’Groats. It was not planned but it was a gem. So today we found ourselves close to Lands End at the other end of the whole country. It is 847 miles end to end and we have been to both ends.
Lands End is easier to get to so it is much more touristy. It even has a pay and display carpark but we actually found the £5 to park good value for the time we spent wandering over the coastal tracks. The tourist shops were not a high point but they were totally within expectation. 
Being at the very tip was like another milestone. We felt like we had earned membership of the John O’Groats to Lands End club. We did not have all the stamps to prove our trip. We had not made it a fund raiser or some other Glory Road but we did make it by car, train and 7 miles of foot tramping along the Yorkshire coast. So I think we deserve a certificate to say we did it.
The weather was perfect again, almost just like it was up at the top all those days ago.
From Lands End we drove the 10 miles to Penzance. It was not on our real agenda either but we were so close and it just made sense. 
Our parents loved opera. We were brought up on the heavy side of opera from Wagner to the lighter works of Verdi (Joe Green to his mates). A special favourite around our early lives was G&S, Gilbert and Sullivan. I knew Trial By Jury before I knew The Beatles. It dawned on us that in this trek we have managed 4 G&S classics. Today of course was Pirates of Penzance. We visited the Houses of Parliament for Iolanthe. The Portsmouth ship museum is of course HMS Pinafore and the time around the courts building in London remembers Trial By Jury. 
Fairly tenuous links perhaps but that has been the whole trip, discovering odd links that suddenly just make sense. Hence, walking about Penzance was a perfect G&S remembrance. 
Penzance is unusual across all the seaside towns we have visited in that it seems so normal. There is no huge tourism thing. We even found free parking on the sea front and that, in a country that charges for parking anywhere and everywhere, is spectacular.
Finally, with a great impression of Cornwall in out heads, we set off for our hotel on Dartmoor. We had a wonderful drive across the moor and stumbled on the prettiest camping spot. Families were building fires next to a river as they set up camp. It was an amazing scene that few international tourists would ever see. This was more of a local family holiday spot but just so delightful.

London is big, smelly, dirty, grubby and yes it is the centre of the western world. Perhaps NYC will argue. Paris most certainly will argue. Most of the world will however quietly agree that London is it.
London’s public transport is amazing. The tube is the most efficient system imaginable. One train every 3 minutes, stretching the full length of the platform, moving the maximum number of people possible - and it is full for hours. 
We laugh at Japanese stuffing people into their transit system but boy the tube I rode today was so solid with bodies. 
I wanted to check my pocket to see my wallet was still there, but there was no path for my arm to move legally towards my pocket. (My Wallet was still there.)
The city is clogged. 

You have to visit London sometime just because it is London but I will be leaving tomorrow just a little less than impressed.
I wanted to buy some things in a junk shop. I had selected about £40 worth of goods. They were all folded and dropped into appropriate bags. I was holding the bags as the shop owner took my credit card. Then the fun began.
Here in the centre of the centre of the known universe, he can’t make a credit card work. In fact he knows there will be a problem and says it always takes a while to connect. So we wait. 9 attempts. 9 void slips. I take back my card and give him back the bags of neatly packed goods that will not be travelling across the globe. He claims it is because he can’t get enough internet bandwidth to connect so the machine needs to use a phone line. The phone can only get GPRS and I saw this on the machine myself.
Why is the internet so so bad here?
I have not had acceptable internet access anywhere across the whole UK so far. I was ready to accept that in the back blocks of northern Scotland but this is London where a reseller says it happens all the time. 
We had exactly the same problem at a restaurant in York. It was not my card but the whole credit system that goes AWOL, regularly. We manage, we get by, we do those tourist things we need to do and credit cards do work in most places but, it is the failures that remain in your mind.
London more than York is a classroom. I have seen so many school groups wandering from all across Europe. In our own straw poll I suggest Italian as the main source of London tourists. Eastern Europe is however the main source of restaurant help. I have been asking where the table staff are from and the results have been mostly Hungary, Albania and Estonia. They find Australia so exotic and are amazed that we will fly so so far as tourists.
Final London observation! Brits love to stick things in their mouth. I have noticed so much smoking cigarettes and e-cigarettes. The e-cigarettes seem to need a different smoking technique. The 'fumer' seems to almost be hiding the electronic gun they are sticking down their neck. A normal cigarette is clearly on show as it has been for hundreds of years but these new sources of fumes are held totally differently. Hiding the tube is not so easy, mind you, they are so big. 
It is not just smoking though, every second brit seems to be soaking up an ice cream or a chocolate bar or a bag of chips or something. It is so much that it is noticeable to our colonial eyes.

We are in the last days of our journey. This part is to see some things we never got to see as children. Places that we recall mentioned never visited. The first step from Portsmouth is to Torquay. Oh, by the way, the hotel in Portsmouth was all I wanted. The internet worked a charm and there was an elevator. 
Score!!!

Again the civility of the British roads astound us. Motorways are fast and efficient. Entering a motorway creates its own little dance as everyone gets out of your way to allow you entry. True, you see it every time as you approach an entrance. Cars slip across into lane 2 or 3 to allow the newly arrived vehicles to join the traffic flow. Took me a while to work it out but it is so civilised. Three lanes all the way helps of course but it does just work.
We had the run into Torquay mapped out on our phones as well as on the maps but we knew better. We wanted to drive along the coast a little, not just be deposited into the centre of what we expected to be another Whitby. Yes, we knew better. So we did enter along the coast road. If you are ever tempted to visit Torquay, let me tell you, our way sucked.
It was not the traffic or the roads that messed us about. It was just that we got it wrong. What we thought was Torquay was a mess. It was old and dumpy and nothing like the vibrant fun place Faulty Towers and Agatha Christie had led us to expect. We parked and tried to enjoy what we found but it just seemed a dump. Nothing to excite us at all. 
“Lets get out of here!” We decided. We plotted the route away from where we were and no sooner hit the road out than we found the real Torquay. 
I am so sorry I doubted you Torquay. We saw a little corner of your ancient suburbs and we judged you… we were so wrong.
This hotel is wonderful. Elegant, grand, and the internet is the fastest I have seen yet (priorities I know). We did another 3 or 4 hours walking around the place which was a delight. 
Just one marring of the place I need to mention. Again we had a pile of little things collected ready to purchase from a local enterprise only to be told as we passed them across that the bank had just removed their credit card machine, could we pay in cash. Another pile of goods not crossing the equator, and another store holder who really did not seem too bothered.
We survived. 
Walking through the town continued to be a delight. Dinner was everything we could have asked for, and the credit card worked, and Torquay is now on the positive side of ledger.

Somebody asked me in 1965, what did I miss most of all about leaving UK for Australia? I was 11 and there was one thing that I truly, deeply missed as I set foot in Essendon Airport. I was so sad and upset that I no longer lived at the centre of time. I was no longer in the place that invented time. Time was no longer based in my home. I was 11, perspectives change but at that time I was quite upset to depart the home of time. 
London’s last contribution to this migrating Englisher was to teach me the 24 hour clock. It was so fitting to set the depart time of my BOAC Comet IV Jetliner at 1515. Yes - 50 years later I still know exactly what time we departed LHR. I asked dad what time 1515 was. He told me I had all the flight to Australia to figure it out and if I couldn’t he would tell me in Melbourne. 
So where should I pilgrimage on my one day in London? 
Greenwich!

The tube was an expensive commute again into the city but we coped. We took a long walk down to the Thames to find the river cruise to Greenwich. The city was its usual mess with the evenings garbage clogging footpaths. There was however much cleaning up going on. We did not know why but since discovered that the next day would be the Trouping of the Colours so the streets had to be clean. 
We boarded the boat and took a seat on the roof for the 90 minute trip along the Thames. This is a great way to see the city and we did see all the main highlights visible from the river. The crew member who drew the short straw to make today’s commentary was excellent and very entertaining. His stories really brought the city to life. He really knew his stuff and told tales about everything we passed.
I think London must be a tour guide’s friend. There are not many gaps to ad lib. The city’s history goes back so far that there is a story at every corner.

Just walking through the streets you discover a story. We stumbled into a statue as we walked along of Viscount Slim. We were sure that was a cigarette brand from years ago. (It wasn’t, the brand was Virginia Slims but took a while to recall that.) Viscount Slim - why was he important? He was Australia’s Governor General 1953 - 1959. I had never heard of him, but here is a statue to his greatness. He was important to Australians because he actually fought with the ANZACs at Gallipoli. 
So much history literally waiting to be tripped over. That must make great fodder for the tour commentator.

We left the boat at Greenwich and walked up the hill to the observatory. The place was of course crowded with school groups old and young. The queue to stand straddling the actual meridian was massive and I did not bother. I was more taken with the Shepherd 24 hour clock. It was one of the first electrically driven public clocks. It always tells GMT (now called UTC I know but I am in Greenwich) and is accurate to half a second. And… it was installed more than 100 years before I was born. This was significant to me… I loved it. 
Now I need to admit a crime at this time.
We went into the gift shop… you have to right! 
At the back of the gift shop is a stair to view a telescope. It was an open, sign-posted door to another exhibit and I wandered through it up to the telescope. I wandered all about following the only track available at the time, arrows this way and keep out signs that way. I finally emerged in the actual gardens. I had not paid a fee. I was not asked for a ticket. I was just there, inside, behind the paywall. I am still not sure how I got there but it happened. It was unintentional, honest! We did however find some less scrupulous people who seemed to know it was a way in and were intentionally using it. We went back to the gift shop and then on our way back to town.
Greenwich was a major joy for me. I loved it all. 
I have already written far too much about the other side of London so I will leave it there. The river trip and the time in Greenwich was a fantastic way to pass a day.

Enough heavy stuff let me tell you about the graffiti grannies. The pier at Saltburn is a wonderful walk in the brisk, bracing air. It was windy. Probably the reason there is now a wind farm just off the coast standing in the North Sea. We walked its 1500 feet out into the ocean but had to stop part way along. Sitting on the guard rail along the pier we discovered works of knitting. You can’t believe it I am sure but it is true. Knitted onto the tubular steel work we discovered these amazing works. They are wonderfully creative and perfectly executed but there was no notice to explain the craft.
We stopped a couple of locals walking past and asked what it was all about. We expected it to be a celebration of the life of some wonderfully important local hero. Maybe the world knitting champion came from round these parts.
No!

These knitting creations just appeared over night. No one has claimed responsibility. In the night some mysterious knitting circle turn up with perfectly crafted goods and sew them onto the railings. Each piece has a trailing portion that wraps around the pipe work and the works are sewn onto the rail. 
No one damages them. 
No one cuts them off and steals them. 
It has been going on for quite a while. 
Eventually they lose their colour and wear away. Then another batch appears. 
We were lucky to see them at their newest. Each one was clean and crisp and beautifully in shape. They ran on down the railings for 200 meters I guess. I could have photographed each one. They were glorious.
Our guides insist than no one knows anything about it. The newspaper has reported on it and still there is no claim of ownership.
We stood and took pictures and grinned at them all till a family walked by, little boy with them. He was looking at them like we were. Suddenly he burst into laughter.
“Dad, Dad, a house with hands!!!”
I loved that - he totally accepted knitting sewn onto the pier, but a house with hands was just too much for him.