Brookfield Quaker School revisited

As hinted at in a previous post, I wanted to revisit the Brookfield Quaker School near Moira and I had the opportunity to do exactly that last Saturday morning en route (sort of!) to Rostrevor. The image above was shot from the road off the main A3 and gives some idea of the size of the property but not its condition.

To be honest, not a lot has changed or deteriorated further since my last visit a year ago - the grass, nettles and shrubs have grown but nothing has collapsed and even the bell tower seems as precariously balanced as before. The vast number of Jackdaws seem unable to topple the remaining skeleton of the clock.

Having confirmed the name of the School as Brookfield rather than as I originally thought, Brooklands, I have discovered a small number of web articles that outline the School's history and try this link to one excellent and comprehensive historical account. I have included an image from this article below for an immediate comparison of now and then . . .

Lack of imagination?

Never have so many silver cars been gathered together in one place at one lunch time in the car park of Osborne Park House! To be fair Muriel was probably the first with her silver Honda Jazz and there were a couple or other coloured vehicles around but still - we head to the black and white and the bland! I must, at this point state that my car is metallic sky blue - so there! 

Baggage free travel

Always one to try something new and a different approach to weekend travel, I went to Belfast with Hand Baggage only. Surprisingly Ryanair allows 10Kg of Hand Baggage and 15Kg of Checked Baggage . . . with the Hand Baggage limited by size. I managed to stuff four days of clothing, the PowerBook and cables and limited toiletries into my aging, 15 year old 25 litre Berghaus back pack and glided through security having checked in online. This process was doubly impressive as I printed my own security cleared boarding cards and with this process one gains Priority Boarding and I went to the head of the queue each time. This also saved me £18 as I didn't check a bag and also £4 each way as I didn't need to check in at the airport. Seems a no brainer and I'm sure I'll travel this way again in the future.

Weekend in the tropics!

As previously mentioned, I nipped over to Northern Ireland last weekend to see my Mum and set up a new iMac for Frank and Noreen, Sinead's parents. The flight went well, was early but the landing must rank as one of the worst I have ever experienced! The last flight into Belfast City Airport, back in March wasn't that great either but the pilot then, had strong winds to contend with, whereas Friday's incumbent had perfect conditions and sunshine. Possibly the glare fooled him into thinking the runway was actually nine feet lower than advertised!



As we were a good twenty five minutes early another aircraft occupied our slot at the terminal, so we sat and then trundled around the apron until that aircraft was dispatched. The upshot of all that was, that I was bang on time and as I took a call from Chateau Ribagnac in France, I walked down the steps of the aircraft, through the terminal and straight out to Muriel who was waiting in the Short Stay Car Park, having circled around once herself.

As the title of this post suggests, we had wonderful summer weather for the entire weekend and that miffed my darling wife, something rotten! More later . . .