Crichel Down

By a strange coincidence, while on a visit to Cardiff Castle this weekend just past, I came across a reference to the Marquess of Bute's wine-making venture.  As Mikkkel suggests, the wine (made at Castell Coch, a few miles to the north of Cardiff) had the reputation of being awful!

Someone (I think it may have been Miss Prism) mentioned, en passant, the painting of service vehicles (e.g. cranes, loco coal wagons, etc.) in black livery.  I certainly used to think that such vehicles were painted black, but I have come round to the view that this was only done by BR(WR), and that in GWR says they were Freight Stock Grey.  (I won

A belated comment about the date.

28 June 1914 came to be recognised as a momentous date in European history, after which nothing would ever be the same again. But the significance of the events of that day in a remote province of the Hapsburg Empire took a little while to sink in.

Station Master Woodcourt would still have been occupied only with his purely local concerns on 29 and 30 June, and for several weeks afterwards. It was only towards the end of July that the true impact of what had happened in Sarajevo on 28 June would finally impinge of everyone's conscience in this sea-girt isle.

In fact, it wasn't until the first week of August that it finally became clear that we really were 'in for it'.