Corrotoman River VA USA

Bill and Lydia’s home on the Corrotoman River

Bill and Lydia had planned to do a yacht delivery trip from Newport to Deltaville whilst we were in Great Falls with Phil and Lesley.  Had that worked out as planned, then we would have met up with Bill in Richmond on Monday 12 November, where he had work and a Veterans’ Day engagement, abandoned the hire car back at the depot and returned to Weems with him.  However, technical faults meant that Bill and Lydia left the yacht in a yard, close to where they had collected it, and returned home in a hire car.  Consequently, and fortunately for us given the volume of stuff we had accumulated at Phil and Lesley’s, Bill and Lydia each had a car in Richmond when we arrived to drop off the hire car so the hour’s drive back to their home wasn’t the squash we had expected it to be.

BV and Dragon Run(aka ‘The Twins’) on Bill and Lydia’s dock.  BV is on the face of the dock, bow to the left in the pictures.  Note the very different mast heights – and Dragon Runhas gone through the upper section of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) albeit working the tides very carefully

The volume of bits was representative of the amount of work we needed to do on BV – hence leaving Phil and Lesley’s with a couple of items still outstanding.  For the next few days it rained pretty steadily but we didn’t see much of it, spending our time contorted into odd shapes whilst marine DIYing.

New galley tap

First on the list of jobs was plumbing. To start with I fitted the new pressure reducing valve (PRV) to the hot water system.  Given that BV was built and fitted out in the UK, all the fittings are metric and getting hold of a metric PRV in the US had proven to be a step too far, hence the need to have it sent out from the UK.  Previously, we had a one-way valve where I fitted the PRV but that meant that when we ran the pump for a long time and the water pump kicked in and out, we sometimes had a surge of hot water, which was particularly noticeable when you were showering.  The more advanced PRV smooths out the boluses of hot water and, hopefully, means that there will be no more squeals from a near scalded shower occupant.  PRV successfully fitted, I moved on to replacing the leaking tap in galley, though I left the tap in the heads for an as yet unknown time in the future when I am feeling particularly masochistic. Fitting the galley tap was bad enough in terms of trying to fit enough of me to do the job into a small space, hands above head, back on a lip of teak no more than 1cm wide.  As a working position it wasn’t in the slightest bit comfortable but it was a veritable feather bed in compared to the position I will need to adopt to do the same job in the forward heads.

Whilst I was busy practising my best Anglo-Saxon vocab, Nicky collected and then fitted the newly dry-cleaned curtains. They certainly look a lot better for their clean, though the blackout material didn’t stand up to the chemical treatment as well as we would have expected.  Perhaps that’s the long-term effect of being sun-baked on a daily basis……

The new multiplexer fitted (centre of the picture with yellow and green squares on its bottom edge).  Now all I have to do is make sure that it is correctly programmed – a task that ended up taking the best part of 2 weeks!!

Task number 2 (whilst Nicky tried to stow all our food purchases and other spares that weren’t immediately about to be fitted), was to fit the new multiplexer.  The multiplexer is a wiring interface which basically allows all the electronics – the radios, the GPS receiver, the instruments and chart plotters – to talk to each other.  The previous multiplexer (think Spectrum ZX81 vs the latest Mac) had recently started to die, a state of affairs manifested by the fact that some of the cockpit data displays only intermittently showed the information they were programmed to display.  So, I spent another few hours in a new stress position (stretched across the chart table, working at arms’ length with a screwdriver in the electrics locker, without leaning on [Ed: ie breaking] anything critical.  Rewiring complete, and old boxes removed and disposed of, and all that was left for me to do was to connect the multiplexer temporarily to my computer to programme it so that it ‘knows’ which data source is feeding which instrument(s).  So far, that job’s taken me the best part of 3 weeks and whilst it’s more or less complete, there are still some irritating snags that I haven’t yet quite sorted out.

(Top left) old brass socket – they all looked similarly tatty.  (Other pics) New sockets fitted – a major improvement in the smartness stakes

Task 3 was much more mundane, something to let the poor little grey cells recover from the multiplexer reprogramming marathon – a half-marathon of fitting new sockets.  The brass sockets that we had fitted to BV shortly after we bought her (to replace the really tatty looking ones that were fitted) were showing their age.  Plus, having fitted the inverter, I wanted to fit an extra socket as a dedicated to taking the inverter’s output.  Happily, I can rewire sockets in my sleep, though drilling a big hole in the teak to take the additional socket was a bit of ‘measure twice, cut once’ moment.  The pictures don’t really do them justice but the new sockets do look an awful lot smarter and having the additional socket for the inverter is great.

The new 11lbs propane bottles (legal for the US and Canada).  It took a long time to hunt down ones that would fit in the locker but fit they do and with room to spare!

Task 4: confirm the fit of the new propane bottles.  A bit late this one as we had already had the bottles filled, but then we were confident that they would fit the locker – I’d done a lot of careful measurement and research online to find bottles that would fit.  The ones I bought are an unusual 11lbs size, which had taken quite a bit of work to track down and order.  The standard size in the USA is a 20lb bottle and they are easily exchanged at most petrol stations.  However, the 20lb bottles are far too large for our gas locker but the two 11lbs bottles fit into the space that our two 6kg (13.2lb) Calor Gas propane bottles fitted into which was a relief.  In fact they fit into the space very easily, more so than the 2.2lb difference in propane content would suggest, but the important thing is that they have the correct valve system to make them legal to be filled in the USA and Canada.  On our Calor Gas bottles if you opened the valve gas would come out, however, the North American valves will only let gas out if a regulator fitting is attached.

Task 5:  wait for a break in the rain and measure the height of the mast.   We had been meaning to do this for a while but the rather grotty weather forecasts were forcing our hand a little.  It was looking more and more likely that the winter storms would mean that we would be taking the Intracoastal Waterways route down at least as far as Beaufort, North Carolina.  When we had measured the mast back in the UK, we had been reckoning on big European bridges and so had ‘added a bit for safety’s sake’ at most of the steps.  Consequently, we reckoned the air draft (with burgees and aerials) at 20m (about 67ft), rounded up ‘for safety’s sake’.  Well, ‘for safety’s sake’ doesn’t really cut it on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) where the US Army Corps of Engineers has specified a minimum bridge vertical clearance of 65ft (though one or 2 are as low as 63 or 64ft). Knowing that Dragon Runhad run the gauntlet of the bridges from Norfolk to Beaufort and, from a cursory inspection of our relative mast heights from the bank above Bill and Lydia’s dock believing that BV’s air draft was less than Dragon Run’s, we knew that we needed to remeasure BV.  So, in a still (and dry) couple of hours, we hoisted a 30m tape measure up the mast on the burgee halyard and measured from the mast step to the burgee halyard block – 53ft 6in.  The burgee staff rises a further 4ft 6in above that – 58ft.  Then, from the mast step to the waterline – 4ft 10in.  So, a total air draught of 62ft 10in with the burgee up or 62ft with the burgee down.  Perfectly doable on the ICW.  Hooray!

Christ Church in the rain

Our final task was less of a task and more of a pleasure.  When we had first arrived with them back in Mat 2018, Bill and Lydia had both said that we should visit the historic Christ Church which lies about 10 minutes’ drive from their home.  We’d never quite made it there but we wanted to so on our final day on their dock, in the pouring rain, we stopped off at the church in the mid-afternoon, not expecting the museum and the ‘docent’s’ tour to be quite so detailed – we really didn’t leave ourselves enough time to do the exhibits justice.

With time not on our side, for once we had to whizz through the museum exhibits.  Suffice to say, the first Christ Church was a wooden building built in 1670 thanks to funding provided by the powerful landowner John Carter.  In 1730, his son, Robert funded the construction of a more impressive, brick church, built on the foundations of the wooden building.  At the time it was the third of its design in Virginia but today it is the only one left standing.  And that’s primarily because in 1786, the Anglican church was disestablished and then in 1802 the Glebe Act authorised the state to seize church property, so that those churches that had been funded by individuals returned to private ownership.

Robert Carter, who funded the construction of the current (brick) Christ Church

Three tiered lectern in the centre of the
Christ Church.  The bottom lectern was
used for reading parish notices etc. 
The middle lectern was used for conducting
 the service and the top lectern, ‘next unto God’,
was used by the minister for preaching the sermon

After a whistle-stop tour of the museum the ‘docent’ [Ed: Great word.  Means nothing in English but translates as ‘extremely knowledgeable museum attendant’] took us into the church itself.  Having remained in private hands and then been unused for so long, much of the church is original, including the now very rare high-backed family pew boxes (high-backed pews and pew boxes in most churches were cut down to a more ‘normal’ height during the time that Christ Church was essentially out of use).  ‘High-backed’ is something of an understatement.  The wooden walls of the pew boxes reach to eye-height so that the occupants of the pew box, when seated, couldn’t see out of the box and be distracted from the church service.

Christ Church was designed and built as an Anglican Church, very much in opposition to the style and excesses of the Catholic Church of the time.  So, there was no organ (psalms were chanted rather than hymns being sung) and there was virtually no decoration either inside or out.

It’s a very plain and sombre church but still rather lovely and another reminder of the history of this area.

Goodbye to Bill and Lydia

That was our final day on Bill and Lydia’s dock.  We had a lovely last dinner with them that evening and then, happily, Friday 16 November dawned bright and clear [Ed: and very cold!], with a good sailing wind from the northwest – a perfect day for heading south.  We topped up the tanks with a good slug of lovely soft well water, prepped BV for the off, and bade farewell to 2 people, amongst so many, who have looked after us so well and helped us so much.  We were sad to leave – we’ve had so lots of fun with Bill and Lydia – but we know that we are likely to be back in 2019 or, worst case, to meet up somewhere exploring Maine or New England next summer instead.

Corrotoman River, Virginia, USA

Great Falls 2 VA USA

Our week at Phil and Lesley’s was just as good as the first one we had spent there.  We had a fabulous time catching up with them and, though Nicky and I didn’t end up visiting as many museums and sights as we had thought we might because we were busy with other stuff, we had a great day out with Phil, Lesley and Jack in the Shenandoah National Park, visited the Udvar-Hazy Museum (both subjects of separate blog entries) and had an afternoon at the cinema with Phil and Lesley watching First Man.  In between, we caught up with admin, did some shopping (clothes, bulk food, etc), had a set of new logbooks printed, took in a High School volleyball match, made progress of sorts on the reunion event and had our new propane bottles (which had been delivered to Phil and Lesley’s home) filled.  Put like that, it doesn’t sound much but we filled our days and in the evenings en famillewe caught up with cultural classics that we have missed in our travels, notably Paddington, Paddington 2and The Incredibles 2.  I think Jack’d be delighted if we visited again soon – we nearly watched a film every other night, most of them from his favourites list!

By the end of our stay, the credit cards still had not arrived at home and the DuoGen was still lost in US Customs awaiting release.  Phil and Lesley assured us we could stay as long as required but we could have waited weeks for the final packages to arrive and we had lots of work we needed to do on board BV.  Added to that we didn’t want to outstay our welcome either in Great Falls or with Bill and Lydia, so we agreed that we would leave as planned and then drive back up from ‘wherever’ to collect the DuoGen parcels when they eventually arrived. The cards, we decided, we would have posted on to Dianne Tetrault, the OCC Port Officer in Beaufort, since they were not immediately essential and we felt we needed to make progress southwards. So, sadly, after the best part of 10 days with them, we said goodbye to Phil, Lesley, Georgia and Jack.  But we knew we’d see them all again soon, albeit very briefly.

Great Falls, Virginia, USA

Udvar-Hazy Centre (National Air and Space Museum) VA USA

The control tower (which we didn’t have time to visit) and the entrance to the Udvar-Hazy Museum

About 40 mins drive away from Phil and Lesley’s house, on the edge of Dulles Airfield, is the Udvar-Hazy Centre, part of the Smithsonian’s National Aerospace Museum.  Seeing as we are both keen on aviation we just had to visit.

Half of the main display hall

Opened in 2003, the museum houses a huge collection of aircraft and space vehicles, arranged in 2 interconnected hangers.  We were certainly impressed when we walked into the first and largest hall (the Boeing Aviation Hangar); there were aeroplanes everywhere and not just on the hangar floor.  Many had been hung from the roof in action poses.

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

It was hard not to be in awe of the Lockheed SR-71Blackbird surveillance aircraft, almost the first exhibit we came across, and (when in service) capable of attaining Mach 3+.  Looking at it, it’s amazing to think that it dates from the early 1960s, seeing service with the USAF from 1964 to 1998.

Curtiss P-40 Warhawk “Lope’s Hope”

But to also get our hearts racing, suspended above were classic WW2 aircraft such as the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk (above) and…

Top: The Enola Gay (famous for dropping the atom bomb on Nagsaki) and, in her shadow, the P-47 Thunderbolt. Bottom: Hawker Hurricane

Top: Corsair.  Bottom: Kugisho MXY7 Ohka
Model 22 (Japanese Kamikaze aircraft)

… the Enola Gay with the P-47 Thunderbolt and the British Hawker Hurricane tucked almost underneath her. There’s also a distinctive gull-winged Corsair, so important in the Pacific campaign, suspended from the hangar’s roof.

But the museum isn’t just about American and British aircraft.  There are aircraft from all parts of the world and all sides of every air war (military and civilian).  In the WW2 area we found an incredibly small Japanese Kamikaze aircraft.

A better view of the WW2 Corsair carrier deck aircraft

Top:  Lockheed T-33A Shooting Star.  Bottom: Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15bis ‘Fagot B’

One end of the hangar was filled with more modern aircraft starting with those from the Korean and Vietnam conflicts….

Mid-ground left: Lockheed Martin X-35B Joint Strike Fighter (prototype to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II). Foreground: Grummen A6 Intruder

… and then moving on the aircraft that are still in active service and those which are only just entering service.

Top left: Grumman F14D Tomcat. Top right:  Lockheed Martin X-35B Joint Strike Fighter (prototype to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II). Bottom: McDonnell F-4S Phantom II

In a carrier aircraft themed corner there was the amazing F14 Tomcat (star of the film Top Gun) and the older, now retired, F4 Phantom both looked mean and purposeful.  Beside them was a bang up to date F35 Joint Strike Fighter, the VSTOL variant that British and USMC are equipping themselves with.  We found it amusing to think that the prototype of the RAF and USMC’s newest aircraft is already a museum piece!

WWI Aircraft.  Top left:  French Caudron G-4 bomber; Bottom right: SPAD XVI

In a side hall of the large hangar we wound the clock back to WW1 and the period when aviation really began.  There were some fine examples of those wood and canvas WW1 machines.

Left and top right: Concorde; Bottom right Stits SA-2A Sky Babyunder the wing of the only surviving Boeing 307 Stratoliner ex-Pan Am Clipper Flying Cloud

Completing the circuit of the aviation hangar we saw one of the largest exhibits, the iconic Concorde Mach 2 passenger aircraft.  And from the largest to the smallest; close by Concord were a variety of small home-build aircraft, the smallest of which  was a tiny red and white biplane.  We initially thought that the wings still needed to be attached but reading the information panel it was clear that the aircraft was designed to have tiny stubby wings, even if it did make it look like it should be in a cartoon.

Top left: De Havilland Canada DHC-1A Chipmunk Penzoil Special;
Top right: North American P-51C Mustang Excalibur III; Bottom:  Nemesis

Air racing speed machines and aerobatic aircraft filled another corner of the hangar, including a Chipmunk, the aircraft I learned to fly in, albeit with a larger engine for better aerobatics.

Space hangar with Space Shuttle Discoveryin pride of place

We would have felt that we had got our monies worth from just visiting the main hangar but there was a lot more to see in the adjoining Space Hangar.  The largest exhibit there is the Space Shuttle Discovery.  Originally the museum was home to the Space Shuttle Enterprise(technically an ‘Atmospheric Test Vehicle’ since it had never been in orbit).  When the shuttle programme came to a close the museum bid for a shuttle that had actually been into space hence Discoveryhas been the centrepiece here since 2012 and Enterpriseis now at the Intrepid Air and Space Museum instead.

Mercury Capsule 15B Freedom 7 II

Of particularly relevance for us, because we were just about to see the film First Man, was one of only 2 surviving Mercury Capsules which played such a significant role in America’s part of the 1960s space race.

Hanging above Discovery is a first-generation tracking and data relay satellite

Whilst the Space Hangar is dominated by Discovery the more we looked the more space exhibits seem to appear. Suspended from the gantries we saw an impressive array of communication, weather and observation satellites as well as a ‘Manned Manoeuvring Unit’ (a propelled spacesuit for extravehicular activity) and, to the side, many examples of military space hardware – intracontinental ballistic missiles, TLAMs, drones and satellite destroying missiles.

All in all we thought that it was a fabulous museum.  I probably would have enjoyed just a little more information on each exhibit but having to read all of those information boards would have meant that we probably would have never got around the museum in a day.  As it was we really only touched the surface, doing a quick sweep around the exhibits.  It’s a hugely impressive collection of aircraft from such a wide span of eras and genres.  It made for a grand day out for a couple of aviation enthusiasts!

Udvar-Hazy Aerospace Museum, Dulles, Virginia, USA

Shenandoah National Park VA USA

Autumn Fall 2018 is not one that will go down in the annals of history as one of the most spectacular, the year was mostly too wet and too warm too late, but the colours were still rather lovely. We’d had several days of fine weather but the forecast was for it to break on the Monday.  So, Phil and Lesley proposed a drive out on Sunday 4 November to Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park to view the Fall colours and the never-ending vistas across rural Virginia before the rain and wind brought all the leaves down.

We made an early start which was just as well; the traffic in the final couple of miles to the Park’s entrance was abysmal.  Clearly, everyone else in the area had had the same thought as us!

The Skyline Drive stretches for 60-odd miles along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Close by to the Drive, the Appalachian Trail winds along just below the crest with campsites dotted along the route and warnings of bears at all the car parks and, presumably and more importantly, at the campsites.

We failed to see any bears but we didn’t go far from the road.  However, this deer, grazing on the verge, seemed entirely unconcerned by our presence or that of the other 5 cars that had stopped nearby with all the occupants taking pictures.

We took a break at the Skyline Drive visitors’ centre which gave surprisingly little detail of the history of the national park.  However, our guidebook says the following: ‘Shenandoah National Park, which contains seemingly endless acres of dark forests, deep rocky ravines and precipitous, surging waterfalls, has one of the most unusual histories of any US national park.  Far from being untouched for the past 300 years, this ‘natural’ landscape was created when hundreds of small family farms and homesteads were bought up by the state and federal governments during the Depression, and the land was left to revert to its natural state.’

As the blurb says, it’s quite difficult to believe that the wilderness landscape we see today is not original but equally it’s not hard to see that the Shenandoah Valley beyond is richly fertile.  As such, was one of the most fought over battlegrounds of the Civil War, changing hands over 70 (yes, 70!) times at the cost of around 100,000 killed and mained.  Staggering figures for such a relatively small area.

It might sound rather trite but standing on the edge of the Skyline Drive, looking out across miles and miles of Virginia and, perhaps, into West Virginia, we had a tiny inkling of just how large this country is.  We feel that we’ve seen quite a lot of it but we haven’t, not by a very long way. We’ve travelled slowly along the coast, spending time in some places, moving on through quickly in others and picking up small snippets of its history as we go.  We’ve got a much greater feel for the place than when we first arrived but the place is so huge, so diverse (goodness knows, the current political scene proves that only too clearly) that we’d need years here and far more travelling to really get to grips with the country.  Perhaps we need to something mad, like walk the Appalachian Trail!

Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, USA

Great Falls 1 VA USA

We drove up to Phil and Lesley’s home in Great Falls from Richmond on Saturday 3 November, a surprisingly fast and easy journey along the I-95.  We had last seen them in May and once again, it was lovely to see them and their children Georgia (now just 17) and Jack (12).  That first weekend was, for Lesley and the kids, a long weekend off school. The Monday was a school INSET day and the Tuesday voting for the mid-term elections.  In their area of Virginia, schools are used as polling stations so the schools were closed, which gave us plenty of time together – quite a change from their usual hectic working week schedule.  It was great to catch up with them all again, to discuss politics (mostly the mid-terms and Brexit!), and to start to move on the planning of a 30^thanniversary get-together of a dozen friends (plus wives/partners) from Phil and my early days in the RAF.

Once again, Phil and Lesley had provided us with a mailing address for all those random boat spares that a 20 year old boat needs and wants.  Most had arrived without hitch, which was great news, though the spare bedroom looked something like Santa’s grotto with the number of packages – just as well Nicky had booked us a reasonable sized hire car!  However, the replacement DuoGen (the wind generator head of the last one had broken off and fallen into the sea and sunk in a particularly strong gust in Port Washington and the rest of the unit was showing signs of imminent death) had not yet appeared and our replacement credit cards, ordered over a month ago, turned out to have an expiration date in January 2019 – not exactly convenient!  So, Nicky spent some time on the phone to the bank (again!) explaining our requirements but the cards were unlikely to arrive at home in time for them to be sent on to us at the Breddys’.  Another small problem to work through!

But these were but minor issues in the grand scheme of things.  The most important thing was to enjoy spending time with our friends – starting with a daytrip out leaf peeping.

Great Falls, Virginia, USA

Richmond VA USA

The stunning view across the James River towards Richmond from Lydia and Bill’s apartment.  In the foreground is the flood wall with a walking/running/cycle route along the top

View up-river towards the Manchester road bridge,
beyond which is the footbridge across the rive

We arrived in Richmond, Virginia in the dark on the evening of Wed 31 Oct, having been driven up from the OCC/Salty Dawgs party in Hampton by Bill.  Bill and Lydia rent a lovely flat in the now up-and-coming Manchester area, to the south of the James River, which they use mostly when Bill needs to be in Richmond for business. The flat is up on the seventh floor of the building and the views out across the rapids on the James River towards the city are fabulous, particularly, we saw the following morning, with the autumn colours on the trees in the islands’ public parks.

(Right) footbridge across the James River.  To the right of the picture are the piers of the original railroad bridge and beyond them is the new Manchester road bridge.  (Left) The city authorities have recently developed the James River area into a series of public parks, activity spaces and nature conservancy areas. Here, one of the local residents seems quite happy with life

We walked east from the apartment to join the walking/running route along the top of the flood wall, so that we had views across the river for our walk, and then headed west, along the flood wall path, to the relatively new footbridge that has been constructed across the river towards central Richmond.  On our way we passed the ruined piers of the Civil War era railroad bridge, some of which have had climbing protection added so that local climbing clubs and individuals can use them for practice and training.  Bill and Lydia had told us that the gentrification of both the Manchester area of the city and, indeed, the river itself, was quite new.  The city authorities have developed many of the islands as parks and have built canoeing and kayaking facilities, as well as the climbing ‘walls’, to encourage city residents to use the outdoor areas on their doorsteps.

Historic Tredegar, previously the site of a Civil War era foundry and now the site of the city’s American Civil War Museum.  During the Civil War Richmond became the capital of the Confederate States primarily due to its industrial facilities and shipping links

Richmond was the Civil War capital of the Confederate States, taking the role from Montgomery, Alabama, for a number of reasons, not least its industrial base and shipping facilities. The American Civil War Museum, which Bill and Lydia could not recommend highly enough, and with good reason, is located in Historic Tredegar, a Civil War era foundry which produced a vast number of cannon and other military equipment for the Confederates during the war. Unfortunately, photography is not permitted inside the museum but we spent several fascinating hours inside, gaining a much greater understanding of the events leading up to and during the war, as well as of the aftermath.  And whilst some of the displays seemed a little overly self-congratulatory about Abraham Lincoln’s announcement of the abolition slavery in southern states (which is what enabled the Unionists to win the war), other displays highlighted that civil rights for all were still, technically, at least another 100 years in coming, and in practicality much longer still.

The museum, as we saw it, is very much a historical educational establishment, with a huge number of written displays explaining the background to the war and discussing events.  Whilst there are artefacts and photographs on display these are secondary to the text displays.  One visitor we met in the museum apologised for it, saying that it had previously been much better, which we took to mean more artefacts to look at, less reading required.  We found the detail in the text interesting, a bit like walking through a well-written history book.  However, when we said as much to one of the museum staff she explained that the museum in this iteration was quite old and was currently undergoing something of a renovation.  Another part of the old foundry has been redeveloped for a new exhibition space and the intent is to include more artefacts in the displays, whilst trying to maintain the historical detail and explanations of the current museum.  If they succeed it will be a truly excellent museum (and we thought it was that already!) but it will probably take days of visits to do it justice.  The new display space opens in May 2019 – maybe something else for next time!

Virginia State Capitol Building, built up on a hill where it would once have overlooked most of the city

After much longer than we had intended in the Civil War Museum, we took a stroll around central Richmond up towards the White House of the Confederacy one of the branches of the Civil War Museum, where Nicky had been told they had on sale copies of a book that had been recommended to her (Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz).  En routewe passed the State Capitol Building, with impressive columned façade, sitting on a grassy hill.  It’s now slap bang in the centre of Richmond but presumably when it was built (1788) it was just on the outskirts, overlooking the city, set back a little as befits a building where the affairs of the State, and not just the city in which the building is located, are decided.

(Left) Statue of George Washington near the State Capitol Building.  (Centre) statue of Thomas J Jackson (‘Stonewall’ Jackson).  (Right) The White House of the Confederacy – the house where Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, lived for much of the Civil War, before Unionist troops forced the evacuation of the city

In the grounds around the State Capitol are a number of statues.  These include George Washington (of course) on horseback – hero of the country for leading the American Army in the War of Independence – and Thomas J ‘Stonewall’ Jackson one of the leading commanders in the Confederate army.  Jackson died in May 1863 of pneumonia, which he contracted having been weakened by wounds sustained in battle and the amputation of his left arm.  Military historians consider Jackson one of the gifted tactical commanders in US history and his death proved a severe setback for the Confederacy, affecting the morale of its army and the general public as well as its military prospects.

The White House of the Confederacy, a plain, Georgian-style house, was built in 1818 as a home for Dr John Brockenbrough.  Appropriately enough, the building is now almost entirely surrounded and overshadowed by the enormous blocks of VCU’s teaching hospital (VCU = Virginia Commonwealth University).  Presumably the only reason that the building still stands and has not be buried by another part of the medical faculty is that it is a National Historic Landmark. And, of course, the reason that it is a National Historic Landmark is because, for 4 years during the Civil War (1861-1865), it served as the executive mansion for the Confederate States and home to the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, and his family. The building was saved from destruction by the Confederate Memorial Literary Society and used as the Confederate Museum from 1894 until 1976 before being restored to its wartime appearance and reopened to the public in its current form.  When we stopped past, the house was open but the other displays associated with it, presumably artefacts from what had been the Confederate Museum, were being packed up, ready for their move to the new Civil War display space at Historic Tredegar.  We bought Nicky’s book, heard how the medical school would be taking on most of the buildings associated with the museum up here (other than the house, of course) and decided that time did not permit us to do a tour, interesting though it would have been.

Driving tour of Richmond, including areas such as Monument Avenue (right top and bottom), which we would not have reached on foot

The next day, Friday 2 November, Bill and Lydia took us on a short driving tour of Richmond en routeto lunch at an excellent little café.  We drove though some very attractive areas of central Richmond that we had not discovered on foot and also along Monument Avenue, which is too far from the centre to easily reach on foot.

(Top left) Statue of Confederate General ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.  At all the major junctions on Monument Avenue there are statues of important Confederates. Many, of course, are of generals (‘Stonewall’ Jackson, Robert E Lee, etc).  According to local lore, if the general’s horse is facing south then the rider survived the war.  If the horse is facing north, the general died in battle and continues to keep an eye on the Yankees.  (Top right) Controversial statue of Jefferson Davis  (Bottom) Sadly, we had no time to visit the Virginia Historical Society – perhaps one for the next time we are in the city?

Monument Avenue, as its name suggests, is home to a large number of the city’s monumental statues, as far as we could see, the vast majority Confederate generals on horseback.  The main exception, are a statue of Arthur Ashe, the Richmond-born tennis player, and a statue of Jefferson Davis on a tall column. Bill explained that this latter statue is controversial because Davis was not a native of the city and is only associated with Richmond because of his role as the Confederate president.

Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia (UVA) and their football team, the Cavaliers aka ‘The Hoos.

Later that afternoon, Bill drove us all the hour and a half northwest to Charlottesville so that Nicky and I could experience our first live college American Football game.  Indeed, our first live American Football game, college or professional.  Bill and Lydia avidly support the Cavaliers (aka The Hoos), the football team of the University of Virginia and, so far, the team had been doing well this season. It was raining so, since we did not have a gazebo to erect behind the car, instead of holding a pre-match tailgate party like so many of the other supporters, we sat in the car and had a bite to eat, whilst being given the low-down on the rules of the game.

Go on you Hoos!!

When we entered the stadium, in an absolute downpour, the enormous band was soggily doing its bit, marching up and down the pitch and spelling out its team’s name in a series of set-pieces. Then the team’s cavalier (yes, on horseback) entered the stadium and did his thing, whipping the crowd into a frenzy; a short cartoon featuring the cavalier getting the better of the other team’s mascot (a panther – the Pittsburgh Panthers) was shown on the big screen; the national anthem was played and sung; and then the game began.

The full works including enormous band and cheerleaders even despite the initial torrential rain

The many cheerleaders shimmied and danced and held up signs telling us when to make lots of noise, the band played enthusiastically from the stands and the first 2 quarters were close run with The Hoos just holding the lead when Bill and Nicky went out to buy warming hot chocolates.  Unfortunately, due to the state of the pitch as a result of the early rain (though, happily, it had stopped raining after the first 15 minutes), the band was not permitted to do its marching display at half-time and the cheerleaders, like the teams, retired to the dressing room, to warm up no doubt.  The third and fourth quarters were less successful for The Hoos (perhaps the cheerleaders shouldn’t have come out wearing jumpers) and they lost the lead and then Pittsburgh started to pile on the points. At one point a come-back looked achievable but then it was all over in a flurry of disappointment and the long drive back to Richmond beckoned.

When we had last seen Phil Breddy in Great Falls he had commented on how difficult it is to drive on American roads in the dark.  Unlike in much of the UK, he had said, most American road markings are not of reflective or high quality white paint, even on fast roads, and cat’s eyes are almost non-existent.  Happily for Bill (who was driving), the road between Charlottesville and Richmond is one of those rare American roads that is both fast, well tarmac’d and well marked, with good paint and cat’s eyes too.  Even so, at night it’s a long, dark journey (there are few road lights) and isn’t one I’d care to drive frequently.

Morning light on Richmond and the James River

We arrived back at Richmond safely, after a great day out but, especially, after a fabulous evening at the match – what a great spectacle, even if the wrong team won!  After a good night’s sleep, and a final drink in of the views from the apartment, Bill and Lydia dropped us off at our hire car pick-up point and we bade them many thanks and farewell for the time being, before hitting the road north to Great Falls.

Richmond, Virginia, USA