(I’m going through some months-old draft posts; better post late than never, I reckon. Sorry for the disjoint nature of the posts …)

We junked our plans to visit Martha’s Vineyard once we’d looked at the times of the ferries, the crossings, and the bus services around the island. So on advice from Rebecca and Alistair we headed instead for Newport, Rhode Island. In particular we walked most of the famous Cliff Walk that skirts between the ocean and the backs of the houses on Newport’s Bellevue. This was once the richest road in the US, full of massive mansions built for the likes of the Astors and Vanderbilts in the second half of the 1800s. The building spree stopped with the great depression, and most of the houses were sold off by the 1940s. (BTW, good stretches of it are a rock scramble, not just a cliff walk …)

We could imagine the Great Gatsby being set here (and we later discovered part of the film was shot here), and someone walking with us thought that the party scene in Meet Joe Black was filmed in one of the gardens. We took a hint seen on www.tripadvisor.com and parked on Narangasset Ave, walked about 2.5 miles to Ledge Rd. We then walked back along Bellevue Ave to the car looking at the fronts of the houses, complete with little signs giving some history. On many of them we saw that these houses were regarded as “white elephants” even at the time. Much money doesn’t necessarily buy much happiness or much sense …

We drove a few miles to Fort Adams where we admired the view over the harbour and to the Claiborne Pell suspension bridge, and read our books for a while. Our stopping point was a generic Best Western, which we reckoned was much better value than the posh-ish Royal Sonesta we’d stayed at in Boston.

There’s been one thing that’s puzzled us so far: a number of houses have had large 5-pointed wooden stars painted red fixed to them. We haven’t yet worked out what they’re supposed to signify …

We went to the opening gig of the 2009 Cheltenham Jazz Festival. It was an eclectic mix of well-known jazz, full-on gospel, plus complete unknowns. Namely, Jason Yarde, Alex Wilson, Ian Shaw, Mica Paris, the Ruach Mass Choir, and 200 kids from Beaufort Community School and Stroud High School. And all held in Gloucester’s ‘GL1′ Leisure Centre.

Ruach Mass Choir

The Ruach Mass Choir swayed nicely in time with each other, but the very simple and highly repetitive songs they did didn’t thrill us. The first knock-out was Jason Yarde performing a medley of Amazing Grace – I cannot tell with piano. Hugely soulful at times, he then played one of his own compositions which showed off his fiery side as well.

School choirs

The schools had been tutored by two members of the Ruach choir, and did pretty well on some old favourites, such as I need someone to lean on and I wish I could fly, including some good vocal solos. Audience participation was uncouraged, and for This little light of mine even had 100 of the audience on the stage, including some very good impromptu solos.

The only particularly explicitly Christian song from the choir was a moving rendition of The heart of worship featuring the choir’s leader Nicky Brown. Some in the audience (including us) were definitely worshipping through it.

Mica Paris

I’ve heard of Ian Shaw but never seem him before, and he’s quite a puzzle. He solo’d on Down by the river (Change is going to come) in his strange mix of white-boy-gospel and screaming falsetto. I can’t quite imagine going to a full concert of his.

O happy Day was a good choice of finale, which summed up my feelings as well. Gospel’s not the sort of music to normally lift me, but this time the combination did.

With Emma now safely in Malawi, we thought we should see if we could go back to just using one car. After all we managed with one before she started driving lessons.

So I SORN’d the Fiat, which was an easy online operation at the DVLA. I’ve also applied to get the rest of the year’s car tax repaid. Stopping the breakdown cover was also easy, but it was more complex for the insurance. Given the hassle of insuring a car, and that she might want to be driving again in 4 months, we thought we’d see if we could get the insurance ‘hibernated’, reactivating it later in the year. But no, Admiral wouldn’t do this for us, so we had to cancel it entirely, and pay an admin charge for the privilege (grrr).

Still, overall that should save us nearly £600 on insurance and tax, given we had a teenage named driver. We’ll see if it gets us to walk more than before …

No, this isn’t a reference to today’s Baptisms, but rather my trip yesterday with Craig to the National Subarine Museum in Gosport. Fascinating place, including a guided tour around HMS Alliance (click the pic below for a virtual tour):

Amazing to think 2 chefs cooked for 68 men for up to 3 month tours in a galley about the size of the 2 desks in our office!

During a great evening seeing Phil and Rachel again (thanks, guys!), it wouldn’t have been right if we’d not played a game. Their suggestion this time was Aquarius, and so we played 5 hands. It has simple instructions, and enough variation within the game to always keep it interesting. The objectives can change all the way up to the end, making it unpredictable as well.

But not really a goof 2-player game, which is what we now need. Their suggestions which we’ll check out were Hive, Ticket to Ride: The Card Game, Entdecker: Exploring New Horizons (hmm: is this the right one, it says best for 4), and Niagara (also says best for 4).

We went for 2 walks – first starting at Horsebridge and the second around Tytherley. As we mosyed slowly around the second we saw lots of unusually-shaped trees. Despite Tim’s iPhone being sometimes in signal range, we couldn’t work out what all of them were, but we suspect a type of Cypress and Elm. This was the most striking:

Near it is a church, which had this weather-vane atop its spire:

Why a rooster? The preacher on Sunday had just happened to explain this: its a reminder of Peter’s denial of Christ. Yes, the same St.Peter who God then used to found the church, which is somewhat encouraging for this rest of us failure-prone followers of Christ.

The start and end of this walk was the Star Inn, Tytherley, where we had an excellent pint of Hidden Old Sarum bitter before an excellent meal.

Many thanks to Tim and Ann for a great few days – good food, great company, and space to chill.

Here are a few more pics from our gallery

We then moved to the rather splendid Ranvilles Farm B&B as a basis for the rest of our tour. It’s one of those old houses where nothing’s quite straight or level, and shows the character of its cheerful owners (in this case huge cricket fans). Slightly bizarrely, our 16th century room had a wet room hidden in what looks like a cupboard in the corner of the room.

Sam’s dedication saw the opportunity for another family gathering in Bristol. Martha, myself and my parents decided to make a weekend of it. We stayed together at 9 Princes Buildings B&B in Clifton, just down from the Avon Gorge Hotel, with similarly great views out over the Avon Gorge.

Our hosts, the Fullers, were charming, as was the house. With lots of thoughtful touches, and a great breakfast, the only possible thing to complain about was that the sherry waiting for us in the rooms was an Amontillado, not Croft Original.

We took their advice and went down to Hotwells and caught the ferry into the city centre, which was fun, and itself had some surprisingly good views: