Isle of Man Guided Tour
There are so many places to visit on the Isle of Man, and one of the best things to do when you arrive in a new place is to take a guided tour. This offers you the opportunity to ‘sift’ out the things […]
Knockaloe and Pilates
Today was a memorable day in my life and in many peoples lives as we attended Pilates 1020. A quote below from the Knockaloe site describes perfectly why this event was put on. The turnout was amazing, stood in a field that was once the site of a compound within the camp with […]
A very long steam train
With the cold weather almost at an end, the Victorian transport system starts to come alive, and there is nothing nicer the the smell, the sound and the look of an old steam train.
Memories are made of this
Victorian Douglas
Wild Horses couldn’t drag me away from here (a story of the Horse Trams in the Isle of Man)
The Douglas horse tram service is the oldest horse drawn tramway in the world.It is unique in the northern hemisphere – the only other similar service being in Victor Harbour, South Australia. The service started life on August 7th, 1876 as the Douglas Bay Horse Tramway and was the inspiration of a retired civil engineer, Thomas […]
Boys will be Boys – The Reform system on the Isle of Man
I went to a talk recently titled Boys will be Boys about the treatment of juveniles during the 19th Century and how they were dealt with and was surprised at how harsh the punishment was during that period.
To the modern eye the treatment of juvenile criminals in the 19th century appears to be particularly savage. […]
May the Force be with you -Star Wars and the Dark Skies
There has recently been a lot of hype in the media about the new Star Wars film and tonight I am going to find out what it is all about. I have seen all of them and have always been a great fan of science fiction and the question ‘is there anybody out there’?
When we […]
Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen
We always think it pretty standard that on Christmas day we celebrate the birth of Christ and at Epiphany we get the Christmas tree down otherwise it will be bad luck! (But in some countries Epiphany signals the arrival of the Magi and the bringing of the gifts)
Most often we do not look for the […]
The Lusitania and the Wanderer
On Saturday I went to the Manx Museum to listen to a talk on the three ‘ships’ that were relevant to the first few minutes of the Lusitania’s sinking.
We all know about the sinking of the luxurious liner Lusitania in just eighteen minutes off the Old Head of Kinsale in Ireland in 1915 by a […]