Everyone made it to the correct bus stops on time and the children all appeared to have slept well and enjoyed their evening.
Minimal traffic on the way up north didn't detract from the fact that the Black Country Living Museum is a massive open-air demonstration of how life was and could have been back in the 1850s or so. This means an excursion to a coal mine, a trip on a 1960s double-decker,
watching the chain-maker at work
and inspecting the parlour of a typical back-to-back terraced house. We also did some old-style playing in the street, with hoops and sticks, ball-and-cups and skipping.
Intense doesn't begin to describe the coal mine experience, with complete and utter darkness enveloping us and a disembodied voice telling us about the reality of life at that time down the mines. We also took a narrowboat trip down a tunnel to see the reality of limestone mining in the Black Country region. Two of the boys also helped "leg" the boat down the tunnel, pushing it from the side!
After a lunch of traditional fish and chips - which were really rather good - we also visited a schoolroom with an old-fashioned school master, inspecting hands and repeating timetables, with the children practicing writing on slate tablets!
Ringing the dismissal bell, below:
We checked out the pharmacy and heard about medicinal uses of plants, saw the hardware store and sampled the wares at the sweet ship, unsurprisingly.
I suspect that those children who spend more time at an old-style Finnish summer cottage aren't quite so scared of the dark and can put a value on running water, but still, the reality of how hard life was at that time wasn't completely lost.
Tomorrow we're back in London, going even further back in time at the British Museum; we'll also then be off to our musical - Matilda - in the afternoon before a later return to Abingdon.
Updated at 21:49 UTC: pictures added. Enjoy!
- Bret
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