On the Sunday before I headed up North Martha drove me around some very nice countryside in Oxford and we visited some of her friends. There are some really lovely villages and country in England but you have to leave the main roads and motorways to see them, although you never have to go very far which is amazing.

People in Oxford kept asking me why I was going to Coventry, and they were genuinely curious as to why a tourist would head there but I was going to spend some quality time with Jan and so they accepted that. However, Coventry turned out to be a place I was quite impressed with, but let me begin at the beginning.

Martha drove me to Coventry and we checked out her house and I met her tenant Joseph, then we had lunch in a nice pub and went off to visit some of her other friends. After 7pm we headed for Jan’s house as she would be home from her hard labour of driving the articulated vehicle around all day, I think she said she had driven to Plymouth that day, she works for ASDA a subsidiary of Wal Mart. On the way to do all this we dropped in on Banbury, famous for its cross.

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross to see a fine lady upon a white horse, rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes. A recent addition to the Banbury Cross site is a very nice statue of this lady.

Banbury also has a church which is square and designed by Samuel Pepys. The ceiling inside of the church is plastered and decorated very ornately, if you are in the he area is it well worth a look, it was one of the nicest churches I have ever seen. It is just down the road from the cross

I was a bit concerned that Jan would take this opportunity to seek revenge for having lumbered her with the bananas in Bali when the monkeys were on her head, she said she would get me back. Instead she rewarded me by giving up her bed and being the perfect hostess.

Next day Jan and I headed into Coventry city, we began with the obvious and that is the two cathedrals, the one bombed in the war and the new one built right next door. There were a lot of impressive features in the new cathedral including the statue of St Michael and the Devil. Right next door to the bombed out cathedral was St Mary's Guild Hall which didn't mean a great deal to us until we walked under the arch and into the courtyard to find a fantastic old building which was open, for free, to the public. We spent quite some time there and although it did sustain some damage in the war it was left largely intact and any repairs made are in keeping with the original so much so you could not see where it had occurred. Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned here for 3 months in 1569, when you are in the building you get a profound sense of history.

We walked around Coventry and to a very impressive shopping centre and on to Spon Street which is a street where some very old buildings have been reassembled and are being used for business purposes. It is a perfectly normal looking street except for the old, old buildings some dating back to 1450. I liked St Fagans in Cardiff because you could see how life was in the past but I also like the idea of an old building still being used even if it has been moved. That was one of the reasons I was impressed with Singapore because they give their old buildings a tasteful facelift and find a new purpose for them.

Of course Coventry is famous for Lady Godiva, she rode naked through the streets of Coventry in protest at the taxes her husband was imposing on the population. Her statue stands in the middle of Coventry but she has had a large sort of cover over her complete with netting to try and stop the pigeons doing what they do best. This means it is not possible to get a good photograph of her with an ordinary camera, there is just not enough light so you might have to go there for yourself to see her in all her glory. Apparently the council are going to remove the cover and it seems all the locals are happy about that. Just near the statue is an amazing clock and when it strikes the hour Lady Godiva comes out on her horse and pauses and then a window opens above her and Peeping Tom pops out. It seems that the general population averted their eyese except Tom could not resist the urge, I have featured him above.

We visited the covered markets which sells everything from fresh foods, clothing, curtain materials and a whole lot more. Each path you take through the city is pleasant and there are some very nice features such as old churches, memorials to famous people who came from Coventry (and there are quite a few including the dude who invented the jet engine people like me now take for granted as we wing our way across the sky. Henry Parkes is from Coventry too, he was involved in the federation of Australia back in 1901 and it was his influence that caused Australia to be split into manageable states rather than one big country. We saw some squirrels along the way and fed them grapes which they paused to eat straight away instead of burying them as they had done with food given to them by other people.

As we were walking past the archeology site where an old abbey has been uncovered and is preserved just as they found it beneath a walkway (top marks for that as most places would simply build on the prime land and not worry too much about the archeology) we met Bob Brolly, a local celebrity that Jan was vaguelly acquainted with and he stopped and chatted. Bob is a DJ on the Beeb, BBC radio and he is apparently quite popular. He had been to Australia and all over the place and for some reason we covered a big range of subjects before we moved on. Coventry felt like that friendly and welcoming.

In the evening we went to see the film Mamma Mia (Jan's third viewing in two weeks), I laughed till I cried and one woman in the audience lost it and was laughing so much and we were all laughing at her laughing.  We stayed to the end of the credits and when we got into the foyer she was still laughing. Great movie. 

I liked Coventry, the city was not polluted and it was easy to get in and out of town as well as easy to get around it and everything we wanted to see was pretty close to the centre of the city. That was just a bonus, it was great to catch up with Jan and thank you for not paying me back .

In the morning, Jan's Lovely brother Charlie drove me to the station where I caught the train to Manchester. The trains are pretty good, if you book ahead and on line you get bargains but I just turned up, bought a ticket and climbed aboard. When I walked into the carriage I had to ask if it was first class it was rather comfy and swish. Very comfortable and quick journey, the two hours passed in no time and the countryside was nice too, we passed Jodrell Banks, the observatory and centre for astrophysics and saw two big satellite dishes. 

On wednesday Jan drove us to Althorp, Princess Diana’s home and burial place.

I was impressed from the start because they had a free car park and a courtesy bus to take you to the house and exhibitions. The stable block was being used for the Diana exhibition as well as the gift shop and café. What I liked was that very little had been converted, the tables in the café were in the horse stalls, obviously they had been cleaned out but the mangers and feed bins were still intact as was the original floor. I like original stables and most places have converted them to the point where they are not recognizable as stables. At Althorp they had plenty of staff members on hand to give directions and information, one told me the stables used to house 100 horses and they had 20 grooms to look after them. The building was certainly impressive. We had paid for a full tour and so we went into Althorp House for a look see. The house is still the family home of the Spencer's and is only open to the public for a few months of the year in summer. Because of this it looked very natural and not a “display” place. After viewing the house we walked down to the lake to the Diana Memorial and the place where she was buried, on an island in the middle of the lake. I thought the whole thing was very tasteful, the Diana exhibition showed a lot of her personal belongings including the wedding dress and many gowns and outfits she wore in public life. There were films of her as a child and a room which showed the things she worked towards improving. The gift shop could have been filled with the usual tat but even that was filled with tasteful things, mostly Althorp oriented rather than Diana memorabilia. It was a very nice property although Jan commented that there were very few flower beds and not much colour in the garden, still I wouldn’t mind living here if it wasn’t for the blessed English weather. No photos allowed inside and there was a lack of decent postcards, the interior has been refurbished tastefully and it still very much a stately home.

Manchester was not really about sightseeing, I wanted to catch up with Angie and Kate, cousins from my mother's side of the family as well as Amina who is Martha's daughter.

When I arrived in Manchester, Carole and Angela, two cousins I used to spend time with in school holidays, were there to meet me. I knew Carole (you have already met her when I went to Cardiff) was coming up from Cardiff but did not know it was a conspiracy, she decided that I might not come back again and it would be good for us all, Angie and Kate, Carole and myself to spend some quality time together. I thanked her profusely and joked that it was good of her to drive all the way from Cardiff just to pick me up at Manchester station, not sure of the distance but it is quite a way, probably 4 or 5 hours driving so thank you Carole.

Anyway we had a great time, reminiscing and laughing at all the tricks we played on each other and we went to dinner on Saturday night and began taking the worst photos of each other that we could. I met Angie and Kate’s extended family while I was there, missed a few of them but it was nice to put names and faces to my family tree. 

We walked Molly the dog along the canal and generally had a cruisey kind of time together. Nice to catch up with them and I am beginning to think I need to come back and do more family stuff so will see how that works out. We bought lottery tickets between us and hoped to win about 80 million but were not successful on saturday so we are having another go next week. Regardless of whether we win or not I do think I will return at some point before I am old and past it. 

Saturday, Amina, my other cousin and her friend Nina picked me and took me to her place not far away from Angie’s. It was fairly hectic at Amina’s and I was not particularly motivated to sightseeing although we did talk about going to Chester on Sunday but the weather was not good and we all got up late so we ended up doing a drive by of Manchester and faffing around. It was good though, a very lively day where conversation was concerned. One of the things Amina and I did was try to find the house where my mother was born but when we got to the street there were no houses at that end of the street. Oh well. I had been to my grandparents old place and taken photos of that and another house my mother once lived in so memory lane was partially evoked.

Forgot to get photos of Amina and Nina and even Maria, Amina's flatmate, you can tell I was not in tourist mode as the camera is usually out and in use.

Look out Lake District and Scotland, its your turn next