We're back in the East Midlands of England, and in fact we never really left as it sits adjacent to Notts (as the abbreviation goes). Derbyshire is famous for a landscape called 'Karst' by geologists after the first person to be bothered to write about it viz. a spectacular assemblage of limestone valleys ~ called Dales ~ cut beneath the ice of the last glacier to cover Britain before drying out once they receded.
If it sounds confusing, bear in mind limestone is broadly porous, but not so when water within is frozen. If you want a modern equivalent, one way of 3-D scanning a human body is to freeze it solid and then slice it with a circular saw... although it's not something you'd want to try on a friend. Don't know though, maybe you would?
Our adventure begins at 'The Great British Car Journey' in the village of Ambergate where a collection of iconic British marques have been assembled by people like me whose gaze is fondly focused upon a past of pedal-cars, ice-creams and Boy Scout leaders now in prison. But look at this for the pedal-car of your dreams, alongside a full-sized Morris Minor in a shade of grey that is back in fashion after a period of 50 years... does that beat a blow-moulded body from China, or what?
We saw yesterday though, didn't we, how practically all of the superstructure of a 1940s model might be coach-built in wood but moving on to the 1950s and 1960s there was still a hangover in the form of cars with wooden doors; aping the trend in a newly-enriched America for 'shooting-brakes' to use for picnics:
And as someone whose body of work is something of a crapola of failed efforts, this one caught my eye. The Peel P50 was produced on the Isle of Man between England and Ireland for a few years in the 1960s (why?), holding the record for the smallest production car ever. What was best about it was the fact you could save on a coffin in the event of the inevitable collision and it is at least the same colour as a Lambo:
On the day in question, your honour, we are lucky to find ourselves amidst a 'meet' of car enthusiasts and my favourite amongst must be a first-generation Ford Capri. This baby was an effort once more to ape the trend in North America with flourishes of streamlining inspired by the Jet Age and colours more suited to sunny California than soggy days in the Midlands:
Let's leave this festival of personal means of transport however to explore the public of yesteryear in the shape of the National Tramway Museum in the Peak District of the same county; where exists as fine a collection as you could hope for in a setting restored to suit. Look at this drophead from Blackpool for example made specifically to enjoy days like these!
And do you ever see an image as iconic as this one (Ed. Yes)? For trams at Sheffield were among the last to be decommissioned, only to be replaced by dirty, noisy and less efficient buses in dirty, noisy cities were we mistakenly figured they'd have all the romance of Greyhounds. They've been re-introduced at great expense in cities like Manchester, because that's how we do things in great Britain:
And I said we'd return to Brush, didn't I, and do I break my promises (Ed. Yes)? For here is the legendary masthead from the Loughborough Works where some of the most iconic locos were built, besides the electrical bogeys powering such trams:
Moving however deeper into the dales, before we depart let us each hire a bicycle to ride along a line replete with cuttings and embankments that passes through some of the most imposing scenery anywhere, albeit smaller in scale than the Himalayas. The cycles are hired from Parsley Hay and the line formed a junction between local services and those between London and Scotland. Join Gromit and I now as we all ring the bells on our handlebars and shout "Express train coming throooooough!" as Gordon did in those books by that vicar with nothing better to do! Before we go too there's chance of an ice-cream at a recently-restored signal-box at Hartington just a mile along the track:
Well I hope you've enjoyed our days out this recent Bank Holiday in the UK as much as I have and if so, why not moan about how things were better back then like I do?
