Ah, the sounds of summer in the city: the gentle tinkle of glass on pavement...

The fashions hark back to the mid-1980s, there's a recession on which is accompanied by mass youth unemployment, there are riots on the streets of Toxteth, London and Birmingham sparked by police brutality - yes, the Tories must be back in power again...

But politics aside; we had one of our best days for ages yesterday at the Science Museum's 'Big Object Store' at Wroughton, on the site of the ex-WWII aerodrome just outside Swindon. WANHS had organised a behind the scenes tour of the store, archive and library as very little public access is allowed at the moment due to the deteriorating state of some of the aircraft hangars that are used to store the objects and financial constrains forcing them to abandon anything outside their core remit. 

It was absolutely stunning. First there are the WWII hangars which are brill. in themselves, but then to go in and find them stuffed with everything from lawn mowers to Polaris nuclear missiles (stuff that make bomb go bang been safely removed), taking in mark 1 hovercraft, trams, 18th century fire engines, a Dan-Air jet and just about anything you can think of in between. We went in 2 stores, a refurbished store (who'd have thought that an empty warehouse could be so interesting?!) before seeing the archives. The archive building included a very early Daimler with the Royal Carriage Collection - they were all housed in the archive because the conditions were better for them than in the hangars.

 I had an interview at the library in 2008 before I got this job and I'm now rather glad that I didn't get it 'cos I would never have done any work and would have been sacked! The archive includes coach builders' plans of their custom-built bodies for Daimlers, Bentleys, Maharajas' Rolls Royces, etc. They have Donald Campbell's photos and diaries, plans for the Conway and Britannia tubular bridges, Charles Rolls' photo albums of his early exploits driving motorcars and motor bicycles, Barnes Wallis's plans for the R100, the paintings of Egypt from Napoleon's Egypt expedition, and so much more. I could quite happily go up there everyday for the rest of my life and just look through the archive a drawer at a time! Honestly, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Almost as good was driving the length of the main runway to get there. Well worth a day off work. We had lunch at Barbary Inn, Broad Hinton. Beer was excellent and the food was a little slow but very nice.

Seeing the hovercraft, hearing about their Concorde and reading elsewhere about the final Space Shuttle flight made us rather sad. All of these innovative mid-20th century projects have now been de-commissioned - no hovercraft has taken you across the Channel for over a decade, no Concorde will fly you to New York in record time, no Shuttle will ever get the chance to take you to the moon for a holiday - it seems to show a lack of ambition and financial will in the governments of Europe and America to fund exciting projects. But perhaps I've just answered my own point. Perhaps it's an indication of innovation and development moving eastwards as Japan and China develop bullet trains, use hovercraft and American astronauts start hitching a lift with the Russians.

More birthdays and holidays

You know, I think it will take me a very long time to lose the thrill of going for holidays during 'term-time'. Not only are they cheaper, but there are less people around and the weather is generally better - 'cos, as we all know, it rains as soon as the school holidays start.

The latest vacation was a week in the Elan Valley in Wales, during the first week of June, with all Jon's family to celebrate his Mum's round-number birthday. So, that's 7 adults and one two-and-a-half year old in 2 cottages in the middle of nowhere - some of the participants (Neil and Helen) couldn't even find the cottages and we had to send out a search party (Claire) to meet them and escort them in! (And even then they didn't believe where they were being led and thought Claire had taken the wrong road!)

The cottages were great and very eco-friendly (of course, the Centre for Alternative Technology isn't that far away), with rain water used to flush the loos, solar panels to heat the water for showering and a wind turbine for electricity. If it had only had a reed-bed sewerage system as well I don't think I'd have ever come home! The owners had a small-holding so there were sheep, ducks and chickens wandering round. Archie loved feeding the fowl and no, it isn't my fault that by the end of the week he was running round shouting, "Cock! Cock! Cock!".

The Elan Valley is gorgous. There's lots of places to walk and some excellent paths and bridleways, the Elan Valley Way and the Wye Valley Way are very well marked. Brilliant biking roads and there were lots of lovely motorbikes to gawp at, especially at the weekend. The valley is a series of reservoirs that were built in the late 19th/early 20th century to provide water for Birmingham; completely flooding the valley and displacing the residents. The dams are very impressive. There was a smaller reservoir, the Nant-y-Gro, which provided water for the workers' village whilst the other dams were being constructed. But, in 1942, Barnes Wallis was allowed to blow it up as part of his experiments to perfect the explosive depth charge that would be used a year later in the bouncing bombs that destroyed the Mohne and Eder dams. The surviving bits of the Nant-y-Gro dam can still be seen at each side of a small burn that trickles into the Cader Coch reservoir. There are lots of pictures in our photo album over on the right.

The nearest town was Rhayader which had two good butchers and various other shops and we had two very good meals at the Elan Hotel - we're very tempted to go back with the bikes and stay there.

Jon and I walked the 6 miles over to the Red Kite Centre at Gigrin Farm and met the rest of our party there one day. It was an amazing experience watching these enormous birds (6 foot wingspan) and getting really rather close to them. The farm owners put meat out once a day and dozens of birds appeared, in fact we could see them waiting on the hillside and in the trees just behind the farm! As well as Kites there were Buzzards and Crows joining in the fun - in the winter there can be up to 500 birds coming to each feeding session and some have even come down from Scotland (they can tell by the rings put on their legs).

We also visited Devil's Bridge and the ruined Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida. Oh, and sat around and read lots too. The weather was glorious and the owner said she's lived there since 1974 and she thought it must be some sort of record: a week without rain!