There’s a distinctly maritime theme to this trip as I started with a visit to Chatham Historic Dockyard, I had a decent enough run down until the tyre pressure warning came on. You can’t check what the pressures actually are unless you stop moving, and that wasn’t viable on the QE2 Bridge! As the steering and handling weren’t affected, and I was fairly close to my destination, I pressed on, only to find on arrival that a front tyre was most of the way down.
As the place was just about to open I decided to forget about it for a while and get the visit done first so I unloaded the scooter* and got checked in. We’d been to the dockyard some years ago but hadn’t seen everything, the one thing I was very keen to visit was the ropery so I booked the first tour time for that and had a general bimble. Inevitably the first things I found were railway related! They do actually operate trains on some days but weren’t doing so today.
A very unusual Peckett loco (we’re not related)
Snag one at the ropery was that the disabled lift is out of order; even a week ago that would have been a problem but fortunately the sciatica has been much improved over the last few days so I could park up the scooter and walk. The lady giving the demonstration was excellent, she showed us how to make a hawser (a three strand rope) on their small demonstration rig then took us though to the main ropewalks, the building is huge! It needs to be to produce the length of ropes required, bearing in mind a sailing ship could need 300 miles of ropes and the anchor cable could be up to 720’ long. The ropery is still in commercial use and I did wander round the shop but I couldn’t think of any use for a natural fibres rope at the moment so all I’ve got is a short sample in exchange for a donation.
It was the longest building in Europe when built!
I carried on bimbling, going round the large items area, which is mostly the things the REME and Greenwich Maritime Museums haven’t got space for!
I liked the juxtaposition of this mock up Polaris nuclear missile and the sign!
Adjacent is a collection of lifeboats courtesy of the RNLI who are not, contrary to some people’s opinion, just taxi drivers for illegal immigrants! Credit goes to whoever laid it because the elevated sections are scooter and wheelchair accessible.
The only** Harbour Class Lifeboat, built for and stationed at Poolbeg, Dublin.
The last thing I looked at was the No. 1 Smithery (sic) where there’s currently an exhibition of Lego shipwrecks plus a larger number of paintings and models, again part of the Greenwich collections. I finished off the visit with a pleasant lunch, during which it started raining which was just what I didn’t want! Fortunately it didn’t last long and had just about stopped when I tackled the car.
Part way through!
The cause of the problem.
I had to do a double tyre swap as the spare is a space saver which has to go on the back, fortunately it wasn’t too difficult to do. Had my back not been much better I’d have called the AA but felt that might get messy as I’d have had to find someone from the dockyard and let them know, then almost certainly had a long wait.
I was contemplating what to do to get the tyre replaced (I knew it probably wouldn’t be repairable) so was heading to the hotel at a steady speed when I passed a KwikFit. It’s not somewhere I’d normally use but needs must and all that! About 30 minutes and £280 later I drove out with two new Dunlop*** tyres on the front and one of the lads had packed everything back away in the boot for me. The front tyres were reaching end of life anyway so it hasn’t ready cost me very much and I still enjoyed the day.
*Following the bad sciatica attack over the last trip to Devon I decided to buy a mobility scooter. It’s had a moderate amount of use at home but was invaluable today. It’s something I’ve been debating for a while anyway as walking, and standing, can be a problem.
**More were planned for use in confined waters but the Second World War halted production.
***He quoted Yokohamas but then found they’d already been used so let me have the more expensive Dunlops at the same price.
