Aug 142014
 

We stopped at the Isles of Scilly and were tendered to the shore. We were on the later tour and there  was still a bit of mist around and you couldn’t see the shore. Earlier in the day there was quite a bit of mist around so the earlier group left the ship and were in the tender and could not see the ship or the shore! There was a nice dog on the boat and I must admit I am missing my German Shepherd.

This is looking back at the Marco Polo with us on the tender, the sky stills looks a bit misty.It wasn’t a long trip to the island.

The Scilly Isles are a group of five inhabitated islands and around 140 rocky granite non-inhabited smaller islands/islets. They are 28 miles from the Land’s End on the Cornish mainland. They have their own governing county council. As the weather is very good for a fair amount of the year they have an industry growing flowers particularly daffodils.

The map on the wall of the Scilly Isles

We wandered around a bit and came across a craft fair and Rosemary found some soaps made from cold pressing the flowers and herbs and I found some very nice handcrafted silver jewellery with the artist there in person.

Scilly Isles streetscape

We wandered around and had some lunch, not the Cornish pasty  I wanted as they had run out and the new batch was in the oven but they did have a very nice sausage roll. We were doing a bus tour of the island and I knew there were two buses, a modernish one and Katie. 
I was pleased we ended up on Katie as she had a character all of her own. The driver had to stop to give he commentary as you couldn’t hear anything over Katie’s rumble and the gear changes!

Then it was time to head back to the Marco Polo and the Research Help Zone and then evening sessions. I went to Paul Blake’s interesting session on ‘The tithe: its history, records and administration’. I have used some tithe records before and Rosemary was looking at the Tithe maps at the National Archives after finding some Tithe records on the Genealogist.

By attending Paul’s session I missed Marie Dougan talking on ‘Scottish wills and testaments’ but as I don’t really have much Scottish research I figured the Tithes was the better option. Sometimes it is a shame you can’t be in two places at the same time!

 

Lisa Louise Cooke helping in the Research  Help Zone


Then it was time to listen to Jackie Depelle talking on  ‘Reading the original: hints and tips for deciphering old documents’. Reading old handwriting is an essential skill for family historians so I am always interested in anything which can enhance my skills.

I am lucky in a way as I have had the perfect apprenticeship having to read doctors handwriting for 27 years!

The alternate program was ‘Online newspapers’ with Rosemary Kopittke which hopefully I will hear at another time.