Macca's Meanderings

SUNDAY - Whilst in the Edinburgh area we are staying in a self catering, three bedroom cabin on a 100 acre property belonging to Colin and Carol. They have their own loch (lake in english) with woods  (area of trees) right to the waters edge. Our cabin is nestled in the woods. The weather was delightful when we arrived however the forecasts were predicting wind and rain for Sunday and they were correct. On Sunday morning the scene through the large, double glazed bedroom window was not encouraging us to leave our toasty warm bed. During the afternoon the weather improved a little so we ventured out for a drive to Peebles. MONDAY - Happy Birthday Nancy. After a chat with Jayson, Tim and Laura and a text from Dean we went into Edinburgh for some site seeing. We did a few of the site seeing, open top bus tours and Bryan spent a few hours at Edinburgh Castle (Nancy had been previously). TUESDAY - Back to Edinburgh, this time Bryan spent the day at the Scotland Peoples C...

FRIDAY - Happy Birthday Jayse! We hope you had a great day. We left the Old Rectory and headed across the North York Moors. Initially the clouds were heavy and low, but no rain. We drove through Middlesbrough and on to Durham - more castles and cathedrals. Just north of here about 2,000 year ago the Romans built a wall (with a series of forts) across England, the Hadrian Wall, around 125 kms in length. An extraordinary achievement in their pre-mechanised age. We spent time looking through the Roman Chester Fort which has been excavated to give us a glimpse into life at this Roman frontier post. What once stood as a symbol of the Roman power of that day had slowly been covered by the surrounding earth. It was not all hard work for the soldiers though, on the banks of the Tyne River they had heated baths. Driving further north along the Pennine Way the hills have less trees. There's less cropping and more sheep and cattle. A sign advertised the Dunn's  Farm House B&B, s...

Way back in 1982 a young Englishman by the name of John turned up in Chinchilla looking for work. He was referred to the Macdonald farm and ended up stayed for the whole wheat harvest that year. John now manages his family's farm in Cambridgeshire which is not far from Hertfordshire where we were. After some phone calls we located John and his family. They were keen for us to visit. We enjoyed a very pleasant day and night with them. Aunty Lois had done a lot of family history research into the Dawbarns (Bryan's paternal grand mother) however there still remained some missing pieces in the 'jigsaw puzzle'. The Dawbarns came from around the Kings Lyn and Wisbech (pronounced Wis-beech) areas which are just a few kilometres from John's farm. We knew a Thomas was buried at St Peters in Wisbech however all the older head stones were unreadable. Lois's research had informed her that some Dawbarns had practiced in law for many year in this area. There still is a le...