After a very good night's sleep and an warm shower, I walked a bit before breakfast. I strolled down to the bottom of the incline plane which was used to move barges between the upper canal and the river Severn. This mechanism was used in place of a lock and dam for the very steep gorge walls. There were parallel tracks with carts on them and ropes attaching the two carts at the top. An empty barge would be loaded onto the cart at the bottom and a full one at the top. Then, the weight of the full barge going down the hill would lift the empty barge to the top to be refilled. Very clever.
Breakfast was a full English Breakfast as a Buffet and I could have as much coffee as I could drink. Not only that, it was real "filter" coffee. Unfortunately, I have managed to loose my travel plug adapter - probably in Oxford. Since it is not my passport and not the train ticket, I can find another one. After breakfast, we cleaned up the rooms and stashed our luggage in an empty classroom attached to the hostel.
From there, we hiked up the hill to the Victorian Town. The ramble was a bit muddy, but we all made it to the top and took some time to explore what life was like a century ago. They had many miniature steam trains running all around for the delight of the children. We were able to walk back to the top of the inclinded plane to see how the mechanism worked from the top. Then, the museum had set up a working plane elevator to demonstrate the concept and we took it to the bottom of the little valley. At that point it started to rain and we headed back to the bus stop to take the bus to the bottom of the hill.
A subset of the class went to the "Tar Tunnel" which is a recently re-discovered tunnel with lakes of tar at the end. Pictures were taken, lunch was eaten back at the hostel, and we boarded the bus to the top of the hill to wait for another bus back to the train station. That regional bus took quite some time to come because it was a Bank Holiday, but eventually we were on our way to the station and from there to Wolverhampton.
In Wolverhapton, we met up with Jessica Schenk (11), a recent Wartburg College graduate who is doing a Young Adults in Global Missions year in Wolverhampton and had arranged homestays for us. We had some time to kill, so we looked for some warmer clothes for some of the students. We also found a Poundmart where I was able to purchase a plug adaptor for one pound - a real bargin compared to what I had anticipated. We also found Jeri some gloves in the drug store next door. We all met at the church Jessica is working at and had a nice British tea with biscuits (cookies). The students were all picked up and Jessica, Jeri and I walked to the house she is staying at this year.
We started a load of laundry, met the owner of the house, Monica, and then walked to the fish and chip shop for a cheap dinner. We found a tiny geocache in the park along the way. Getting some Cider at the store next door, the three of us walked to the park and ate a delicious, and greasy meal. One of the other families the students stayed with are avid geocachers, so I passed on one of our path tags and the football trackable to them via Jessica.
No comments:
Post a Comment