Yesterday I visited Carlisle to keep my research binge going. I found the castle that the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment museum is housed in pretty easy, afterall, it is a castle in the middle of a city. Parked up, headed in, paid £3 entry (good old student ID) and went inside. I had a look around the castle first, it’s pretty small, quite interesting, but there wasn’t much information about telling you about the place, which was a bit disappointing since I didn’t have time for a tour. I went into the little museum and looked around at the vast array or militaria and memorabilia that they have. I was very impressed, the Regiment dates from the late 18th century I think, and they had stuff dating from then to pretty much the present.

After roaming around I asked the curator what kind of stuff they had for my dissertation, unfortunately they only had a few things at hand for me to take a look at but when the guy next goes into the archive he’s gonna get a few diaries out and I can go back next week.

Little cameraphone pic of the castle Keep:

Picture of the millenium stone which is supposedly a curse upon the city. The ‘curse’ has resulted in the floods of 2005, the relegation of Carlisle Untied to the conference (though they are back in the league now), and for the fire that occurred in the Carr’s flour factory (Carr’s is Delia Roberts favourite flour, so there). It’s part of the Carlisle Millenium Gallery, that was opened by the Queen in 2002. There was a free art gallery nearby as well which was quite nice.

One of the days highlights was happening upon a food fair that’s going on in the city centre at the moment (it’s on till Bank Holiday Monday for any locals who are interested). There was loads of stalls, with various european countries being represented. I bought smoked sausages from Germany, pate from France, Churro from Spain and various fudge from, errr, England. There was also Indian food, Greek puddings, French clothing + perfume, local preserves, local organic meat, German beer and spirits, Dutch cheeses and waffles, lots of different types of bread, flavoured meringues (I’ve never seen such a thing!), a paella man, and organic pasta from Italy. I also bought a Sigur Ros album (haven’t listened to it yet, but it comes under StevieG’s recommendation) and a second hand Great War diary that was 1/4th of the Amazon price (secondhand Amazon mind you).

And to finish of this rather long and multi-media-fied post, a picture of me eating a giant German bratwurst. Tasty as…… something that’s very tasty, but it really shouldn’t have been lunch.