South England in June 2017

[coliban_imp]

Hello,

in a speedy decision two weeks before the travel, we wanted to go to south England for one week. We startet with two friends in Hamburg, picked one buddy up in Düsseldorf, rode to Calais, took the fairy (P&O) to Dover and rode to Brighton where we met 2 english friends who joined in, so we were five in England.

On the first day in the evening, i´ve got seperated from the group and drove threw the "New Forest", an big area, several (sbout 10) miles big, where animals were living free, so i had to stop and wait until the pony stampede was over.


We lived in a cottage near Salisbury with several bedrooms, so there was enough place. It had a nice garden which was reaching until the river Avon.



Next day we visited the about 800 years old cathedral which hosted one of the four leftover exemplary of the magna charta. Which is one of the first written documents about the rights of some citizens and is said to be the fundament of many constitutions:

Inside the cathedral:

Next day to the Sammy Miller Museum for motorcycles. 83 years old Sammy Miller is on of the success-fullest championship winning motorcycle racer, in both road racing and trials. He build a museum with over 400 motorcycles, each one is ready to start for a ride: [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Miller]Sammy Miller
He is still working in his shop and restores old bikes and is still very fit.
In his astonishing collection of bike, there are many which are listed about 300.000 or more USD worth, especially the Brough Superiors:









The funny thing is, when we left the museum we sat outside for a while and met Sammy Miller. When he saw my CB100EX he asked me, which year this build was. I answered: "Last year" and he immediately jumped on my bike and smiled into the camera:
(Besides of that, in his live some decades ago he worked also for Honda in designing motorcycles)

Next day we rode to Stonehenge which is near Salisbury:

It was hot and in hour bike clothes we sweated. We had to wander one hour around and after that we laid down on a bronze age grave hill and felled into sleep for a quarter of an hour. We woke up by tourist who also wandered around the area.
We rode around the south of England, the weather was marvelous...






Funny was that at least two people a day were asking me something about my bike, no one asked something about the bikes of my buddies (ok, one guy asked something about the VFR 750). One day i was waiting at a traffic light when a young couple turned down their window and said that the CB100EX is the most beautiful bike the ever seen.


On the last day we visited hastings and the small town battle where William the conqueror won in 1066 over the english king Harold when William invaded England from the Normandie. This is also something we learned in Germany as children in the school. We took a tour when the hot sun was burning on us within our bike clothes on the fields were the battle happened.









For me it was confusing that in the exhibition of the battle there were no artifacts and things they fond in the ground. As a student i also worked on excavations of bronze age graves and i know that there are always some findings, artifacts or something which is left, especially if there was such a big battle like in Hastings/Battle where it was stated that there fought about 15-20 thousands warriors. Therefore i asked the history staff and they told me that there indeed was no artifacts at all about that battle so i answered, if there was nothing found about the battle then there haven't been any battle at all. They argued with me for an half an hour and were very upset that someone doubted that there was a battle in the year 1066 but they couldn't prove anything. So we all were a little bit disappointed that they taught us all the years a wrong story.

But apart from that, it was a really lovely trip.

Until the last day where it was raining cats and dogs and we had to ride back several hours in the rain. Then it happened that my heated grip on my honda refused to work.

[coliban_imp]

Back home i investigated the problem and it turned out that the board were the electronic for the heated grips were mounted was under water so it corroded. The housing around the board collected all the water, so it broke. At home i removed it and went to my Honda dealer which informed Honda for guaranty

It was a lovely week.

[stateboy_imp]

What an excellent ride and series of pics! Thanks for sharing Coliban.

[Cormanus]

Fantastic Coliban. A few familiar places there. Your comments about the Battle of Hastings is interesting.

[Lord Popgun]

The Hastings battle site is interesting. Some Google searching shows they don't know the actual site and are still researching and arguing about it. One group of researcher says Harold's death site is now under a roundabout, not at the abby.

[Elipten_imp]

Thanks for the trip report. Fantastic text and pictures.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[Rocky_imp]

Wow, fantastic pictures

[marvincon_imp]

Coliban, an explanation quoted below as to why nothing has been found on the battle site.

Archaeology could, in theory, provide evidence for or against the abbey’s claim. Unfortunately, the very act of building the abbey and parts of the surrounding town would have involved major changes to the topography of the ridge – the focus of the fighting, according to the sources – and so destroyed most if not all of the potential archaeological evidence that might be expected to survive from the 11th century. And a recent survey made by archaeologists from the Time Team television series if anything reinforces the notion that the abbey was founded on the spot where Harold fell.

[coliban_imp]

Thank you for the kudos.

Yes, it was a short trip but it was so interesting, the more i think about it the more fascinating aspects i find. One of them is of course Sammy Miller. He is a encouraging example how much a man can do by it will. He is a wonderful and friendly person, has an enormous knowledge about motorcycles, still restores them and kept himself, at his age of 84, so fit. He still rides his motorbikes and is so agil that there is no excuse for those of us who where on the trip, to mourn about something at an age of 55 or 60. [url=http://www.motorcyclemuseum.org/halloffame/detail.aspx?RacerID=394]Sammy Miller is one of the "[url=http://www.motorcyclemuseum.org/halloffame/detail.aspx?RacerID=394]heroes of motorcycles" in the American Motorcyclist Association [url=http://www.americanmotorcyclist.com]AMA.







People in England are very friendly, the landscape is fascinating, nearly every square feet (ok, except hastings/battle, but even there, there is an old monastery) of this land is full with history and prehistory (Stone age, bronze age, kelts, romans, normans....) . On top of that we were very lucky with the weather (except of the last day).

Yes, Hastings, Battle (Battle is the village where it is claimed that the battle between William and Harald took place) was irritating for us, but also fascinating.
First when we wandered on that museum route we discussed the sequences of the battle because we didn't expected something extraordinary. I asked about the artifacts of the battle when we did the tour around the battlefield (all the wooden figures symbolizing the area of the battle, it is, of course, a huge area because at least 14000 warriors were fighting and they had first come to that place, take a rest from the long march, arm theirself, find their positions, start the fight which lasted, according to the documents of the monastery, a whole day, etc.)

My british friends explained that the artifacts might be in the british museum although is was irritating that the Hastings/Battle museum had not one piece of it. When we arrived from the tour, after about 2 or 3 hours (as said, a big area) we went to the museum to ask some of the staff. And our british buddies indicated later that the woman which i spoke to seemed to already knew about the problem because she called the director of the museum immediately and asked in a specific way. They said, she asked him something "here is a gentleman who wants to know something about the missing artifacts", it sounded like they were already very familiar with the problem. And when the director explained me his point of view it seemed like he already though hundreds of times about it because it sounded more like a illogical excuse than a scientific explanation. It was good that we were 2 germans and 3 British subjects, my english is bad, but when my friends recognized the problem, they helped out with specific words which i didn´t remember so quickly. And when we had this discussion about a quarter/half of an hour, all the other staff in the museum, even 10, 20 meters away, stopped their activities, turned their faces to our small dispute and listened very interested. It was an unreal situation, it seemed not that one authority explained something to an ignorant german, it was rather that they were watching a verbal exchange of interesting arguments (which they already knew)

Beside of that, what marvicon posted was exactly the argumentation of the director of that museum. But that explanation is not lasting because of several arguments.

First of all, you always find at least some artifacts, no matter how much time pasted, no matter what changes made to a landscape. Beside of that, you had to remove 3 or 4 feet of the surface of the landscape right after the battle to make all artifacts disappear and that never took place, maybe when you build a very big complex of buildings, but that also only on that very place. And the area of the assumed battle zone is far bigger than the abbey. (but the strangest thing is that they celebrate every year reenactments where hundreds and thousands of disguised persons play the battle of hastings. One would never do that on a ground were archaeological artifacts were found or where an important battle took place which has such an historical importance to a nation. The ground would be destroyed and covered with thousands of new "artifacts". Could someone imagine that the authorities would allow such a circus were a real historical event took place, lets say in Stonehenge? No, that would be ridiculous)

As an example, in the year 9 AD the germans repelled the romans in the "Slaughter of [url=http://www.kalkriese-varusschlacht.de/forschung/archaeologie/funde-und-befunde/]Varus" were they killed 20000 romans (its nearly about the same size of the assumed Battle of Hastings), wiped out 3 legions of roman soldiers, 2000 years ago and you still find a lot of pieces and artifacts on many places in northern Germany (and, still, the real place gf the Varus battle is debatable).

You can take nearly every battle in history, you will always find something. If you do not find anything, the best answer is that the claimed incidence never took place or it happened in an other place.

Even at very older places you still find artifacts, even if the whole landscape really changed like in "Neanderthal" were workers found 1865 remains of the neanderthal people which lived there 30-40000 years ago. The neanderthal place was removed but in the years 1997 and 2000 they searched again and even when the original hill was completely destroyed, they still found remains in the rubbish which were still there, but about 10 meter deeper...(!)

We have to know that the church and the medieval monkshood were the only ones at that times which were able to read and write. And they used this knowledge to gain wealthiness, land and power. In medieval, they most important task of a month was not only to pray to god and replicate expansive bibles but to falsify documents, certificates, records, etc. where they always claimed that old documents (which they counterfeited) proved that the land or wealthy they owned (or wanted) was their right and their property. This took place in nearly every monastery or church.



After the hints in this forum i searched youtube and there is a video were they are more scientific and realistic: in the video [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhAXPI3ueW0]Time Team S20 Special - 1066 The Lost Battlefield
The historian Dr. Laura Ashe tells from the book from the monastery that the only source for this battle is in that book and that is a claim of the monastery, not a historical evidence. And she said, the monks wanted their contemporaries to believe that the battle took place at that abbey so they simply falsified the history when they said that Harold was killed at the high altar (on one picture i am standing in that altar) of their church to gain land and resources. (this strongly reminds me at the german history, where the church claimed that there was a king named "Karl der Große" who made big gifts to the church, they counterfeited an endless number of documents and the only "proof" of that story is - the same as in hastings - one single monk who wrote it all down. But german historians, the church and politicians claims that "Karl der Große" was the historical political founder of germany, france and europe all depending on one single source: a monk who's task was to falsify documents to prove the "old rights" of the church at that days...).

Ok, i end with the knowledge of one big philosopher, William of Ockham who discovered a principle called "Ockham's razor": "Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected"

That is,

Theorie One:
1) There ist no archaeologic evidence of a battle
2) conclusion: there was no battle

Theorie Two:
1) An Abbey was build in a place called "battle"
2) 100 years after this Abbey was build a monk wrote down a a story that William fought a battle with 14000 man and said that, if he would win, he would build an Abbey on that place
3) The monk did this to prove that the Abbey had the property on the land and the right in that countryside (for lumber, fishing, cultivate the land. Monasteries were medieval commercial enterprises)
4) After the monk wrote the story about the battle, Harold and William, the historians believed that the battle took place at that point

(The other places like the roundabout also are not the places where a battle happened, they suffer from the same proof: there are as well no archaeologic findings or artifacts (except one single axe which is not a proof for a battle))

Consequently one can say, as many historians do, like i learned now: there was never a battle, at least not in Battle...

So, the weather today is finde, i will have a ride today and take a photo of the CB1100EX with the new fairing...

cheers
(and forgive me my bad english!)

[Cormanus]

Coliban, your English is excellent. Is the second picture in your most recent post the cloister at Salisbury Cathedral? It's very lovely. As well as one of the four copies of the Magna Carter, I seem to recall there's also an ancient and still working clock.