Serendipity

Today I was out and about dealing with small details of the equipment in my new campervan.
You might not know it but I was a car nut (like, petrolhead..but a bit more cerebral) in my youth and achieved my ambition to join a major motor vehicle manufacturer. In fact I won a scholarship from General Motors via Vauxhall Motors in Luton to undertake a Degree Student Apprenticeship. I graduated from the 5 year course in 1969.
After 18 years in the motor industry, completing as the Director of Engineering within the Cape Industries Group, and a few years earning my fortune elsewhere we found ourselves in the West Country, downsizing with our reducing family to Wells in Somerset. I took a position as operations manager of a small company producing composite mouldings. I will not tell you where this company was for reasons you will discover shortly.
Also for the last decade I have been an associate consultant to the leading engineering company in the UK, Frazer Nash Consultancy.
It so happens that the the business I had in hand today is at the same location as the factory I used to run 20+ years ago. It was quite strange going round the site where there used to be a lot of activity, and finding it a bit run down and quiet compared with the old days.

I was mouching about on the way out and saw this:

I recognised the car, remember I was a car nut and had seen these things before at Hill Climbs and Circuit Races
This is a closer view, click it to open:

What's more is the rest of them inside the works:

In all there was about 8 rare vintage Frazer Nash cars and a few other marques as well:

One of the most impressive was the 1935 entry to the Le Mans 24hr race:

Now remember that this building was my Goods Store in the mid 1980's and it now houses a rare collection of Frazer Nash cars, the birth company of my recent employer, and cars that I had known from my youth. And why did I even go back to that site after all these years, to the factory I used to manage,  what drew me back to that remote location, where I had no ordinary reason to go... Spooky or what.............

Ancestral Home

It is a fact that I am the first of all our family to earn the qualifications at school, and to graduate from university. This was at the time of Harold Wilson's 'white heat of technology' but it was still at a time when children were screened on ability, and fortunately I managed to get into Grammar School where the education was first class.
So with all that I live the lifestyle in the City of Wells.

Wells Cathedral in the January sunshine

I live here with all that goes with it

I walked the dog around the Bishop's Palace and they have drained the moat for maintenance.  Since the Bishop of Bath and Wells is a member of the House of Lords I hope he hasn't claimed this activity on his expenses!

Must have been some burglar protection to build a moat to keep the locals away!

I had to go North on Family business. I topped the tank at Tesco in Shepton Mallet. Wow! a tankful costs nearly £100! That is over £6 per gallon!

The Lake District. This is the view from Kirkby in Furness of the Coniston Range in week January sunshine

Whilst I went to University my ancestors were wood workers. My great uncle made the altar rails for Cartmel Priory.
They look pretty simple but the quality of the cut and finish is exquisite.

The same uncle made the Altar Cloth Chest, which is again extraordinary in application and detail.
I am pretty handy with wood work tools but I would be hard pressed to make such a vast cabinet as this. 

You might have gathered that my ancestors come from Cartmel in Furness.  We are descended from people that lived for quite some hundreds of years in this village. But my Grandfather moved away at the time of the Great War, after he had been gassed, for work on the local railways. I and my father were born nearby in Barrow.

So my ancestors lived in the shadow of Cartmel Priory.   Is it so different today?