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Darlington, but grew up in South Derbyshire and watched the Toyota factory in Burnaston being built.
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(Peterhead)
RT, the dual carriageway, at the moment, stretches as far north as Balmedie, but there is also about a mile leading up to the Ellon bypass (though curiously the bypass itself is single carriageway). But along with the new Aberdeen ring road (Western peripheral route), which is due to be finished next year, the road from Balmedie to Ellon is being made dual carriageway all the way (I think that is also due to be finished next year).
Regarding Trump's golf course, that is just north of Balmedie, so fear not, it doesn't affect Cruden Bay! (which has it's own golf course, along with the beautiful beach)
Incidentally, using the term 'blue toon' for Peterhead is often mistakenly assumed to be because it is always cold (it isn't), but it actually to do with the colours the fishermen traditionally wore and nothing to do with temperature. And while nowadays, Peterhead is known as a fishing town, if you go back to, I think, the mid-late 1800's, it was a spa town, and was apparently a popular holiday or relaxation destination!. There was a hotel, I forget the name, which gained quite a reputation of notoriety, due to the behaviour of its wealthy guests whilst 'relaxing'!.
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(Peterhead)
RT, the dual carriageway, at the moment, stretches as far north as Balmedie, but there is also about a mile leading up to the Ellon bypass (though curiously the bypass itself is single carriageway). But along with the new Aberdeen ring road (Western peripheral route), which is due to be finished next year, the road from Balmedie to Ellon is being made dual carriageway all the way (I think that is also due to be finished next year).
Regarding Trump's golf course, that is just north of Balmedie, so fear not, it doesn't affect Cruden Bay! (which has it's own golf course, along with the beautiful beach)
Incidentally, using the term 'blue toon' for Peterhead is often mistakenly assumed to be because it is always cold (it isn't), but it actually to do with the colours the fishermen traditionally wore and nothing to do with temperature. And while nowadays, Peterhead is known as a fishing town, if you go back to, I think, the mid-late 1800's, it was a spa town, and was apparently a popular holiday or relaxation destination!. There was a hotel, I forget the name, which gained quite a reputation of notoriety, due to the behaviour of its wealthy guests whilst 'relaxing'!.
While I was in Peterhead, I travelled back to the Midlands, just for the weekend, a couple of times a month - the M6 was complete all the way north, and empty by modern standards, but the A74 to Hamilton was the dire old narrow dual-carriageway with bus-stops in lane 1, the M73 was still under construction, the A80 by Cumbernauld was ok and then it went pear-shaped as the single-carriageway A9 route was through the centre of Stirling, Dunblane, Perth and then up the A94 through Coupar Angus, Forfar, Brechin and Stonehaven - I tried the Anderson Drive By-pass for Aberdeen once but it was easier to go through the city centre - I had a 1100 Escort which never seemed to suffer being driven almost flat out, the journey taking 7.5 hours including a couple of comfort breaks - it would take me longer now despite all the dual carriageway as I'd be sticking to 70!
I was aware of the blue stocking connection, but when the Easterly Storm Force winds are blowing in from Siberia, the wind-chill factor is massive.
There used to be live bands at the Palace Hotel, every Sat/Sun, very well attended - but looking at Google Streetview, it's been rebuilt since.
I was only in Peterhead just over a year but have more affinity with the place than 40 years in Staffordshire!
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Originally from the Potteries but the family moved down to North Buckinghamshire for work . The area has been totally enveloped by MK which I has at last shrugged off its bad image.
One living nearby in Northampton, home to Cosworth Engineering and Mercedes power trains which is a huge employer.
So very close to a famous contributor to the column named Gordon Bennet.
But a question for Avant , do you still own that wonderful Audi Avant 2.5 . I have come to the same conclusion as him that this was the best car ever.
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"But a question for Avant , do you still own that wonderful Audi Avant 2.5 . I have come to the same conclusion as him that this was the best car ever."
Sadly, no: I had it from new in 2004 and kept it for just under the 3-year PCP term. I'd done too many miles in it and avoided the penalty by PXing it before the end of the term. The big mistake was what I got instead - the Mercedes B200CDI. They'd upgraded the A4 2.5 to a 2.7 and it had become too expensive to have another, although I wish I had.
There'e no doubt that Audis suit us, as SWMBO's A1 is constantly reminding us. Much as I loved the three Octavia vRSs, the 2004 Avant is still the best car of about 20 that I've had, and the A1 the best small car. I'd intended keeping the Volvo V60 long-term, and it's only a year old now, but it's a diesel, and there may come a time when an petrol A4 or Q2 may become very tempting.
KB - yes, I'm organist at Cucklington (actually in Somerset and in a different Anglican diocese) but deputise at several Dorset churches - playing around, if that's the right expression (no, it probably isn't).
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Does anyone know where Elekie doc lives ?
He is a regular contributor to the technical site and has been brilliant in sorting the many electrical problems that seem to affect modern cars.
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Avant, we drive along the A303 a few times a year as we journey to family in the west. I like that road, so much more interesting a drive than using a multi-lane highway. We usually stop at the bakery in the middle of nowhere on this road for some lardie cake. The vision of a loaf of bread on a table, on the pavement, in pouring rain, forever sticks in the memory from the first time we took that route.
Will keep an eye out for your V40 next time we approach your vicinity. As an aside many years ago the older generation used to rear calves. They came from Sturminster Newton market, long closed and redeveloped.
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We usually stop at the bakery in the middle of nowhere on this road for some lardie cake.
Ooooh - Dorset lardy cake - Yum! The nearest I could get to that over here is breton kouign-amann similar to the welsh cacan menyn, unless I were to take up home baking!
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York,, born and bred,
Where the traffic lights have a mind of their own , bus and cycle lanes everywhere, the outer ring road is a car park at the best of times and traffic on the A64 at the hop grove roundabout grinds to a halt on sunny days and bank holidays, not to mention race days !!! and a couple of years ago some councillor had the bright idea to close one of the main bridges into the city and fine drivers for using it ( later deemed illegal and all had to be refunded) oh and now were slowly dying as pollution levels soar in the city, other than that, its not a bad place to live!!
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(Peterhead)
RT, the dual carriageway, at the moment, stretches as far north as Balmedie, but there is also about a mile leading up to the Ellon bypass (though curiously the bypass itself is single carriageway). But along with the new Aberdeen ring road (Western peripheral route), which is due to be finished next year, the road from Balmedie to Ellon is being made dual carriageway all the way (I think that is also due to be finished next year).
Regarding Trump's golf course, that is just north of Balmedie, so fear not, it doesn't affect Cruden Bay! (which has it's own golf course, along with the beautiful beach)
Incidentally, using the term 'blue toon' for Peterhead is often mistakenly assumed to be because it is always cold (it isn't), but it actually to do with the colours the fishermen traditionally wore and nothing to do with temperature. And while nowadays, Peterhead is known as a fishing town, if you go back to, I think, the mid-late 1800's, it was a spa town, and was apparently a popular holiday or relaxation destination!. There was a hotel, I forget the name, which gained quite a reputation of notoriety, due to the behaviour of its wealthy guests whilst 'relaxing'!.
While I was in Peterhead, I travelled back to the Midlands, just for the weekend, a couple of times a month - the M6 was complete all the way north, and empty by modern standards, but the A74 to Hamilton was the dire old narrow dual-carriageway with bus-stops in lane 1, the M73 was still under construction, the A80 by Cumbernauld was ok and then it went pear-shaped as the single-carriageway A9 route was through the centre of Stirling, Dunblane, Perth and then up the A94 through Coupar Angus, Forfar, Brechin and Stonehaven - I tried the Anderson Drive By-pass for Aberdeen once but it was easier to go through the city centre - I had a 1100 Escort which never seemed to suffer being driven almost flat out, the journey taking 7.5 hours including a couple of comfort breaks - it would take me longer now despite all the dual carriageway as I'd be sticking to 70!
I was aware of the blue stocking connection, but when the Easterly Storm Force winds are blowing in from Siberia, the wind-chill factor is massive.
There used to be live bands at the Palace Hotel, every Sat/Sun, very well attended - but looking at Google Streetview, it's been rebuilt since.
I was only in Peterhead just over a year but have more affinity with the place than 40 years in Staffordshire!
After i wrote that post this morning, i refreshed my memory about the 'notorious hotel'. I had originally discovered the info while helping my youngest with a homework project.
Peterhead originally became a spa town in the very late 1700's, but the period in question was nearer 1840, and the hotel was the 'New Inn'. This is taken from peterheadtowntrail.co.uk:
The New Inn was the fashionable place to stay when Peterhead was a spa town. It's reputation deteriorated as the clientele became more colourful, including a group of rich and dissolute young men who formed the 'five bottles club'. This was Peterhead's answer to London's notorious 'hellfire club', famed for the drunken and outrageously immoral behaviour of it's aristocratic members. Around 1840 'lady' Belle Imlah began to hold court at the Inn, with her 'semi-nudist colony of voluptuous attendants'. Lady Belle was reputed to be th confidante of all the professional men in town, which may explain why her enterprise was not promptly closed down.
This particularly colourful and amusing part of Peterhead's history is not, to my knowledge, widely known, not sure why?!. I wonder, scott22, were you aware of this?, being a 'blue tooner'. I'm not one myself, i was born in Aberdeen (1972) and grew up in the Shetland Island's. Only moving to Peterhead in 1999, but been her ever since.
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After i wrote that post this morning, i refreshed my memory about the 'notorious hotel'. I had originally discovered the info while helping my youngest with a homework project.
Peterhead originally became a spa town in the very late 1700's, but the period in question was nearer 1840, and the hotel was the 'New Inn'. This is taken from peterheadtowntrail.co.uk:
The New Inn was the fashionable place to stay when Peterhead was a spa town. It's reputation deteriorated as the clientele became more colourful, including a group of rich and dissolute young men who formed the 'five bottles club'. This was Peterhead's answer to London's notorious 'hellfire club', famed for the drunken and outrageously immoral behaviour of it's aristocratic members. Around 1840 'lady' Belle Imlah began to hold court at the Inn, with her 'semi-nudist colony of voluptuous attendants'. Lady Belle was reputed to be th confidante of all the professional men in town, which may explain why her enterprise was not promptly closed down.
This particularly colourful and amusing part of Peterhead's history is not, to my knowledge, widely known, not sure why?!. I wonder, scott22, were you aware of this?, being a 'blue tooner'. I'm not one myself, i was born in Aberdeen (1972) and grew up in the Shetland Island's. Only moving to Peterhead in 1999, but been her ever since.
Some aspects of that behaviour still existed in the 1970s - I'll say no more and hope Scot22 wasn't born in Peterhead in '72/73.
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My Home town Stoke on Trent was once described by the Duke of Edinburgh as Ghastly.
He had obviously not seen Milton Keynes when it was been developed in the sixties!
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Born in a small town in North Kent called Sittingbourne and stayed there for the first 44 years of my life, then moved a whole 15 miles to Horsted which is just outside Rochester. 12 years till retirement then am planning to move to Cornwall.
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My Home town Stoke on Trent was once described by the Duke of Edinburgh as Ghastly.
My limited experience of S-on-T is that it is quite easy to drive straight through the middle .... :-)
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My Home town Stoke on Trent was once described by the Duke of Edinburgh as Ghastly.
My limited experience of S-on-T is that it is quite easy to drive straight through the middle .... :-)
Does anyone know where the centre of Stoke-On-Trent is?
It's a "polycentric" city - so take your pick from Stoke, Hanley, Burslem, Tunstakk, Longton and Fenton.
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