Shrewsbury Folk

Over the August Bank Holiday weekend we visited Shrewsbury (sometimes pronounced Shrowsbury) for its annual folk festival.

This was by far the largest folk festival we had visited - the main concert marquee had seating for 3,000 and it was packed for most concerts. There were many, many excellent performances but for me Nancy Kerr & James Fagan as well the Quebecois trio, Genticorum, were outstanding. 

Full details of the festival can be found at http://www.shrewsburyfolkfestival.co.uk/

We also took time to see the sights of Shrewsbury - a place I had not visited since 1961 when Banbury Spencer (now Banbury United) lost 7-1 to Shrewsbury Town in the First Round of the FA Cup. Here are a few photos from our visit.

Shrewsbury Castle - now houses the Shropshire Regimental Museum, with artefacts from the King's Shropshire Light Infantry.

Shrewsbury Castle was originally an Anglo-Saxon timber fortification, guarding the only dry-shod approach to the town. The Norman castle, built of red sandstone, was founded by Roger de Montgomery in c1070.

During Summer 1138 King Stephen laid siege and captured the fortress, which was held by William FitzAlan for the Empress Maud. Apart from the gateway, very little of the Norman building survives. 

Much of it was demolished during the rebuilding and strengthening of the castle by Edward I in c1300, when an outer bailey was also added. It was never used as a fortress after this date. Elizabeth I gave the castle to the bailiffs and burgesses of Shrewsbury in 1586, and little was done to the building until the Civil War, when further alterations were made. It was captured by the Parliamentarians in 1645, and it was not until 1660, when Charles II was restored to the throne, that it was surrendered to the Crown.

Laura's Tower - a summer house built in 1790 for Laura Pulteney, the daughter of the owner

A view of the Severn from Laura's Tower

Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury on 12 February 1809

Some examples of some of the splendid buildings in the town

The Market Square

The Abbey

The Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, commonly known as Shrewsbury Abbey, was a Benedictine monastery founded in 1083 by the Norman Earl of Shrewsbury, Roger de Montgomery. It is to the east of the town centre, near to the English Bridge. Notice how the clock is not in the centre of the tower.

A large amount of the monastery was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, but a number of buildings, including the church were left intact. 

Thomas Telford built his A5 road through the remaining part of the Abbey and now only part of the original abbey church is still in existence, which is still used today as a place of worship. It is now famous for its prominent role in the "Cadfael" mysteries by Ellis Peters.

The Battle of Shrewsbury - 1403

The Battle of Shrewsbury was a battle fought on 21 July 1403, waged between an army led by the Lancastrian King, Henry IV, and a rebel army led by Henry "Hotspur" Percy from Northumberland. The battle was fought at what is now Battlefield some three miles north of the centre of Shrewsbury. It is marked today by Battlefield Church.

Details in the Battlefield Visitor Centre tell us that Tottenham Hotspur FC take their name from Harry "Hotspur" and that their ground White Hart Lane is named after the White Hart which was the emblem of Richard II - believe that if you will.

Berlin - Luftwaffe Museum

I cycled from our campsite to the museum. It didn't look that far on the map but, including getting dramatically lost on my way back, I cycled some 40 miles.

The museum is in Berlin at a former Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force (RAF) airfield, RAF Gatow. The focus is on military history, particularly the history of the Luftwaffe of the Bundeswehr. The museum has a collection of more than 200,000 items, including 155 aeroplanes, 5,000 uniforms and 30,000 books. There are also displays (including aeroplanes) on the history of the airfield when it was used by the RAF.

Aircraft include World War I planes like the Fokker E.III as reproductions, as well as World War II planes like the Bf 109 as well as at least one aircraft of every type ever to serve in the air forces of East and West Germany. Most of those postwar aircraft are stored outside on the tarmac and runways, however, and many are in bad condition.

The airfield was also used during the Berlin Airlift in 1948 - there were films of these activities  in the museum (in German but they were fascinating).

Here are some of the photos from my visit

Berlin

We travelled by train from Potsdam to Berlin - with our bikes and stayed in Berlin for two days. We wanted to allow ourselves sufficient time to see some of the key sights- which we did by bike, tube and tram.


Here are some of the places we visited

Fernsehturm – Alexanderplatz

The TV tower, known as the Fernsehturm or the Tele-spargel (toothpick) is one of the largest structures in Europe. The total length to the top of the spire is 365m or 1197 ft. It was built in 1969 by a team of architects with the help of Swedish experts. It contains a concrete shaft, a steel-cladded metal sphere and a TV antenna. The sphere contains a revolving restaurant (Telecafé) at 207m and a viewing platform at a height of 203m.

Site of Hitler's bunker

The Holocaust Memorial

In May 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the fall of the Nazi regime and the end of World War II, the city of Berlin dedicated their Holocaust Memorial, designed to commemorate the murder of six million Jews at the hands of Hitler and his forces. 

The Holocaust Memorial, officially named the Monument to the Murdered Jews in Europe, can be visited at anytime – night or day. A subterranean Information Centre, located at the base of the memorial, offers stories of families and individuals who faced the wrath of the Nazi party and provides further information about the design and construction of the memorial

Occupying about 205,000 square feet (19,000 square meters) of space near the Brandenburg Gate and just a short distance from where the ruins of Hitler’s bunker is buried, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial is made up of 2,711 gray stone slabs that bear no markings, such as names or dates.

The slabs undulate in a wave-like pattern. Each is a five-sided monolith, individually unique in shape and size. Some are only ankle high while others tower over visitors. The paths that are shaped between the slabs undulate as well. Eisenman (the designer) hoped to create a feeling of groundlessness and instability; a sense of disorientation.

The Brandenburg Gate

The Brandenburg Gate was commisioned by Friedrich Wilhelm II to represent peace. The Gate was designed by Karl Gotthard Langhans, the Court Superintendent of Buildings, and the main architectural design of this landmark hasn't changed since it was first constructed in 1791

The Brandenburg Gate is located west of the city centre at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße. It is the only remaining gate of a series through which Berlin was once entered. The Brandenburg Gate became infamous in the Cold War, it stood between East and West Germany, becoming part of the Berlin Wall.

The Reichstag, the seat of the German Parliament

The building was constructed between 1884 and 1894. In 1933 fire broke out in the building, destroying much of the Reichstag. It is to date still unclear who started the fire, but the Communists were blamed.

During Berlin's division the West German parliament assembled here once a year as a way to indicate that Bonn was only a temporary capital. After the unification the decision was soon made to move the Bundestag (Germany's Parliament) from Bonn to Berlin. This decision resulted in a renovation which started in 1995 and was completed in 1999.

The Olympiastadion (Olympic Stadium) 

There have been two stadiums on the site: the present facility, and one that is called the Deutsches Stadion which was built for the aborted 1916 Summer Olympics.

The current Olympiastadion was originally built for the 1936 Summer Olympics in the southern part of the Reichssportfeld (today Olympiapark Berlin). During World War II, the area suffered little damage. After the war, the British military occupation used the northern part of the Reichssportfeld as its headquarters until 1994. From 1951 to 2005, the Olympischer Platz had a giant antenna transmitting for all the portable radios in Berlin.

Aside from its use as an Olympic stadium, it has a strong footballing tradition. Historically, it is the ground of club Hertha BSC. It was also used for 3 matches in the 1974 FIFA World Cup. It hosted six matches, including the final, in the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

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Where Hockey was played in the 1936 Olympics

Check Point Charlie

The Topography of Terror

The Topography of Terror (Topographie des Terrors) is an outdoor museum in Berlin. It is located in Niederkirchnerstrasse, formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, on the site of buildings which during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 were the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS, the principal instruments of repression during the Nazi era.

The buildings that housed the Gestapo and SS headquarters were largely destroyed by Allied bombing during early 1945 and the ruins demolished after the war. The boundary between the American and Soviet zones of occupation in Berlin ran along the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, so the street soon became a fortified boundary, and the Berlin Wall ran along the south side of the street, renamed Niederkirchnerstrasse, from 1961 to 1989. The wall itself was never removed from the site, and the section adjacent to the Topography of Terror site is the second-longest segment still in place.