What I Did On My Holidays...
23 Aug 2012 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
curiouswombatOr Return of the Ring, Tolkien 2012.
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gillo and I thought, back in May, that by August we would be quite ready for another adventure - and what an adventure it was!
I began to write a post covering the whole weekend, but realised it just wouldn't work - so here is a post just about the first day!
We stayed in The Burleigh Court Hotel - a 4 star hotel on the campus of Loughborough University - not the sort of thing that was the norm in my day, but we began to see the point of it the longer we were there! So we had very nice accommodation, at a reasonable cost. Loughborough is a very big campus and most of what was happening was a good 15 minutes walk from the hotel - but we discovered, almost by accident, that it was not only possible to drive from one end to the other - but that others also found this the best way to get around - and there was plentiful parking.
Sadly we were just too busy to make use of the spa and swimming pool....
We found out from the hotel staff that it had been the UK headquarters of Team GB in the run up to, and during, the Olympics - not surprising as Loughborough University is a major sporting centre. There had been a lot of extra security put into place and the receptionist told us they had been 'in lock down' but it had been exciting!
So - here are some of the extra defences that kept team GB safe -
As you can see, the two sides would lock together and make it almost impossible to drive anything up to the hotel.
By the time we arrived, got ourselves organised and orientated, and up to the part of campus where things were happening, the first session both Gill and I attended was by Martin Baker discussing how Gollum is used as a device to represent different things in different countries, greed for example. Then Kristen Thomas considered anachronism in The Hobbit and in Lord of the Rings, before the opening ceremony and dinner!
During that first afternoon we began to look around the exhibition and the dealers area - and one of those moments that will stay with me for a long time occurred; there was a painting of Elrond in armour*, and under it stood a young man who said "Hmmm - nice armour." He was wearing identical stuff. This picture is not one I took, it is courtesy of Jenny Dolfen, one of the artists.
The young man is called Simo Nousiainen, he is a Finnish metal smith, and he made the armour himself. It is so flexible he can actually do somersaults in it.
Another memorable moment, later in the weekend, was Simo, back in his armour, trying to sneak, unnoticed, late into a talk... :)
*It was a rather good picture - a younger Elrond than Hugo Weaving gave us, but clearly based on him, but it wasn't in the catalogue so I don't know who painted it!
Also that first afternoon we admired some fantastic art by a guy called Jay Johnstone - he considers how the Red Book would have been illustrated had it been discovered in the medieval period - and his pictures just blew both Gill and I away. Others too, it transpired over the weekend! Such a lovely guy too - he was so thrilled when we enthused as he had only just arrived, and it was his first ever try at exhibiting. As he was also staying in Burleigh Court we also met him over breakfast a couple of times.
After dinner in the university refectory - very tasty, and good company (this is where we first bumped into Pellegrina and also Wellinghill), we decided to go find our hotel bar and chill for the evening and this was when we discovered that the hotel bar was so far from the reception area and our rooms that Usaine Bolt would probably have required a feeding station at the half-way point... but it was a lovely bar, with lovely staff.
From then on, to get to everything we wanted to, we got up at cock-crow every morning; particularly as the dining room was just past the bar...
I think that is actually enough for one post! More soon.
gillo and I thought, back in May, that by August we would be quite ready for another adventure - and what an adventure it was!I began to write a post covering the whole weekend, but realised it just wouldn't work - so here is a post just about the first day!
We stayed in The Burleigh Court Hotel - a 4 star hotel on the campus of Loughborough University - not the sort of thing that was the norm in my day, but we began to see the point of it the longer we were there! So we had very nice accommodation, at a reasonable cost. Loughborough is a very big campus and most of what was happening was a good 15 minutes walk from the hotel - but we discovered, almost by accident, that it was not only possible to drive from one end to the other - but that others also found this the best way to get around - and there was plentiful parking.
Sadly we were just too busy to make use of the spa and swimming pool....
We found out from the hotel staff that it had been the UK headquarters of Team GB in the run up to, and during, the Olympics - not surprising as Loughborough University is a major sporting centre. There had been a lot of extra security put into place and the receptionist told us they had been 'in lock down' but it had been exciting!
So - here are some of the extra defences that kept team GB safe -
As you can see, the two sides would lock together and make it almost impossible to drive anything up to the hotel.
By the time we arrived, got ourselves organised and orientated, and up to the part of campus where things were happening, the first session both Gill and I attended was by Martin Baker discussing how Gollum is used as a device to represent different things in different countries, greed for example. Then Kristen Thomas considered anachronism in The Hobbit and in Lord of the Rings, before the opening ceremony and dinner!
During that first afternoon we began to look around the exhibition and the dealers area - and one of those moments that will stay with me for a long time occurred; there was a painting of Elrond in armour*, and under it stood a young man who said "Hmmm - nice armour." He was wearing identical stuff. This picture is not one I took, it is courtesy of Jenny Dolfen, one of the artists.
The young man is called Simo Nousiainen, he is a Finnish metal smith, and he made the armour himself. It is so flexible he can actually do somersaults in it.
Another memorable moment, later in the weekend, was Simo, back in his armour, trying to sneak, unnoticed, late into a talk... :)
*It was a rather good picture - a younger Elrond than Hugo Weaving gave us, but clearly based on him, but it wasn't in the catalogue so I don't know who painted it!
Also that first afternoon we admired some fantastic art by a guy called Jay Johnstone - he considers how the Red Book would have been illustrated had it been discovered in the medieval period - and his pictures just blew both Gill and I away. Others too, it transpired over the weekend! Such a lovely guy too - he was so thrilled when we enthused as he had only just arrived, and it was his first ever try at exhibiting. As he was also staying in Burleigh Court we also met him over breakfast a couple of times.
After dinner in the university refectory - very tasty, and good company (this is where we first bumped into Pellegrina and also Wellinghill), we decided to go find our hotel bar and chill for the evening and this was when we discovered that the hotel bar was so far from the reception area and our rooms that Usaine Bolt would probably have required a feeding station at the half-way point... but it was a lovely bar, with lovely staff.
From then on, to get to everything we wanted to, we got up at cock-crow every morning; particularly as the dining room was just past the bar...
I think that is actually enough for one post! More soon.
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Date: 24/08/2012 07:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 24/08/2012 09:59 am (UTC)