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Other entries in Coventry

Festival of History

Today was our first big day out! The last few days had been absolutely stunning, bright blue skies and rather hot. Gorgeous!

We rose at 6 to be up at the station by 7 to catch the train. The train journey through Reading, then up through the countryside via Oxford to Coventry was rather fast and uneventful. You can't see much from the train stations, so Oxford didn't look like much, just a bunch of houses. We were in Coventry by 9:20, and decided to head off in search of breakfast before finding the bus to the Festival. Eventually we wandered around the huge town centre enough to find a McDonalds (there's always one if you wander for long enough), then decided to eat at the small place next door who had bacon and eggs etc for less. Yumm!

While we were in town we thought we'd better go check out the cathedrals. Coventry has several large and very old churches, and had an enormous cathedral called St Michael's. Until the war, that is. The whole town was basically flattened, and although some nearby medieval buildings are still standing, the cathedral was destroyed, leaving only the outer walls and the huge spire still standing. After the war, the ruins were left as a reminder. It is one of the saddest places I've ever visited - empty windows where once was stained glass, and when you're standing in the centre of the vast floor space you can feel how big and impressive the building must once have been.

There is a new cathedral now, built right next to the old one very soon after the war was over. It's quite modern-looking and has very grey walls on the inside - it's impressive but lacks the warmth of old stone buildings. The stained glass is stunning though.

It was then time to head to the festival. Once we had found the bus at the station, we were told that there was a huge line-up to get in at the gates, so we took the back streets and pushed in up near the front. It's great to be in a bus sometimes! The park that the festival was in is called Stoneleigh Park, and is not far from Coventry. Included in the history festival was everything from early British fighting off the Romans (Boudica et al), a Roman encampment, through Medieval times, to the English civil war, to Napoleonic times, Victorian times, and finally the first and second world wars. Whew! It took us the rest of the day to see all these displays and markets and battles and jousting and falconry and cannons and swords and music... Wonderful!

All of this was terrible, because it whet my appetite for joining a medieval group again :P Shane even said he might come along too if I could find one. Unfortunately there aren't any medieval groups in Berkshire as far as I can find. Ahh well.

Anyway alltogether a very enjoyable trip to the Midlands, and some inevitable sunburn (it was VERY sunny) has faded into a nice tan :P

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