A South African Sojourn, looking for Charlie's footprints.

Charles Percival Duce was my paternal grandfather. He was born in Bradford, Yorkshire on 30/11/1881. The family story is that he ran away from home to join the army. I can find no record of military service in the family previous to his action. He was recorded in the 1901 census as being in residence at the Cowley Barracks in Oxford. Although recorded as being 20, he would actually have been 19 on the 31st March. He was now Private C P Duce 6671 of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and destined for South Africa to fight in the Second Boer War.

This is the earliest picture I have of Charlie and I guess it was taken on the occasion of his 21st birthday,  that would be after the end of the hostilities (31/5/1902). He has now gained his Lance Corporal stripe and is wearing the Queen's South Africa Medal with 3 clasps indicating the theatres of action he was involved in. His 4th clasp is either not yet presented or as yet not attached. Here is that medal as it appears today. Any medal experts reading this will notice that the clasps are in the wrong order. Cape Colony should be the lowest, then Orange Free State followed by Transvaal with the South Africa 1902 at the top. The fact that he wasn't awarded the King's South Africa as well means that his service must have been confinded to within the period of 1st January and 31st May 1902.

Q

This is the reason for the reference of "looking for Charlie's footprints" in the blog title. I don't suppose for a moment that we will encounter anything personally pertaining to him, but it would be great to be able to gain some empathy and insight into his youthful but formative experience. He was destined to remain a soldier for most of the rest of his working life.

Chasing Charlie is just a small part of our plans for this holiday. Let me show you the complete itinerary which is detailed on the spreadsheet below. Full credit for much of this planning must go to Cameron Roy, who is married to our daughter in law's sister Helen. Cameron is a South African national and former pupil of that most august institution, Pretoria High School. He will be accompanying us on the flight out and up until we part after the Kruger Park visit.  

Sorry that the above is rather fuzzy, but it is a screenshot of the spreadsheet. You can try to expand the picture but I think you'll just get bigger fuzzy. Then again you could just wait and read it as it unfolds day by day. First blog should be published around 13th January next year. 

Copenhagen Saturday 24th September

Another bright and sunny day. We have decided to take the Metro into the city today and guess what happened.

As I was the thousandth passenger that day I won the prize of driver of the day. After two minutes training we were off! It was a great pity that I couldn't carry on all day as we had things to do besides looking at railway tracks. So, with some regret we set off on foot for the Rosenborg Castle. This is a view of the castle from the King's Gardens. 

 Rosenborg Castle was built as a pleasure palace by Christian IV at the start of the C17. It quickly became his favourite residence. From the start of the C18 it became more of a showcase for the monarchy's oldest, richest and rarest treasures. Guests were entertained and no doubt suitabley impressed. The castle opened to the public as a museum in 1838 when the absolute monarcy was dissolved and a constitutional monarchy replaced it.
Have a look at some of the treasures.

Most of the stuff of course comes from the late C17 and through the C18 when Denmark or rather the King and a few merchants became extremely rich through the importation of sugar and the forced migration of slaves. To be fair Denmark was the first country in the world to abolish slavery but only after 100 years of the profits. The whole museum was quite fascinating if a little dusty.
We headed into town for some lunch and enjoyed a lasagne with gorgonzola melted on the top. Delicious.
The Round Tower is another must see. Architectural interesting with a kind of indoor helter skelter ramp running up the inside giving access to first the church then the large hall (once the university library) above and finally the bell loft, before curling on up to the top. This is a view inside the Round Tower.

This is the Trinity Church. No doubt it is the protestant religion that gives rise to the restrained nature of the Rococo decoration.

Next some sites we encountered walking through the smart shopping district. This is of course the Danish open foam tennis championships (seriously).

This is a cheerful demonstration against the civil war in Ethiopia. We questioned the participants who told us, somewhat naively, that the war was bad because people died. They seem to support the incumbent government against the opposition, who I think are being murdered by the said government. The Ethiopian and Danish flags were much in evidence.
We headed back to the railway station where I was most disappointed not to be allowed to drive the train back. Apparently they thought my metro training was inadequate. Ridiculous!
For those of you who don't think I would tell you a barefaced lie on this blog, think again. No, I didn't drive the train. It was in fact driverless but had a dummy set of controls in front of the front seat.

Copenhagen Friday 23rd September

We indulged in a wee bit of a lie in this morning, which was a good start to a day that was planned to run a fairly gentle pace.   After a welcome croissant we rode the rails back to Copenhagen Central Station from whence we walked to Gammel Strand where we boarded our vessel for the Grand Tour of Copenhagen cruise. It didn't quite live up to its hyperbolic billing but was a pretty impressive trip that took in a lot of the sights from a watery perspective. Copenhagen could be be described as Venice meets Amsterdam. Have a look at the pictures to see what I mean.

The Marble Church in the Amalienborg Palace.

Canal leading to the Nyhavn (New Harbour, getting to understand this Danish then?)

A rather elegant pedestrian bridge trying to be a schooner.

Hans Christian Anderson's famous Little Mermaid Mermaid statue. Apparently he goes down particularly well in China.

 The Danish National Opera House. We're have a tour planned for tomorrow.

Part of the Charlottenborg Palace with the facade covered by what appears to be old sacks. I don't know why but as it is Copenhagen's equivalent to Tate Modern maybe it is an artistic installation in itself. A sort of ironic Banksy.

A photograph of a chap rudely taking a photograph right in front of me, meanwhile just behind me there is a chap...........
There follows some pictures on the theme of cycles. Copenhagen is the most cycle friendly city that I have ever encountered. It goes without saying that a huge percentage of the population appear to be cycling around the city all the time. The rest have left their bikes all over the place.

Next some of Copenhagen's inspiring structures.

See what I mean? Long live the Rococo!

And some are less inspiring but towering achievements nonetheless.

After the cruise we sat outside a restaurant and enjoyed a selection of open Danish sandwiches. Next stop was a visit to the Opera house which you have already seen if you have been paying attention. The journey involved a metro ride followed by a bus. Unfortunately the Opera was closed so we arranged to go on the 12 o'clock English tour tomorrow.
On our way back we wandered into Chistiania and could have spent a long time there. Most people seem to spend a lifetime albeit a short one, but certainly a happy one.
Here is how a guide book describes the place.
"Far out, man! This self-governing community was founded by hippies in the 1970s." Freetown Chistiania" is part utopian commune part-illict pleasure town. Pleasingly ramshackle dwellings sit amongst foliage and funky sculptures pepper the pathways. And in Christiania's "Green light district", knowing visitors are drawn by the sweet smell of independence. "

Well I feel a bit better about my writing after that. Have a look at some images.

I'm sure you get the idea. For some reason a very high percentage of the people seem to smoke. It was a self-sufficient community with all you needed contained within. There was also a huge warehouse that could have had the entire contents of ebay available inside. Resisting all temptation we returned to the hotel for some less ethereal pleasures. 

Fifty up but one more to do. Denmark and Copenhagen Thursday 22 September

I have for a while thought that there are 50 sovereign states in Europe and after visiting Denmark I thought that I would have completed my European oddesey.  Only while researching this trip did I discover that Kazakhstan is considered part of Europe. It is the only European country that you need to travel through, or fly over Russia,  to reach. Another challenge then.
Meanwhile back to the delights of Denmark and a little historical and geographical background.
Denmark is the southernmost and smallest of the Nordic states. It consists of a peninsula (Jutland) and an archipelago of 443 named islands including Zealand and Funen. Also included are the two autonomous constituent countries of Greenland (50 times the size of Denmark) and Faroe Islands (one 30th the size of Denmark). Sort of little and large relations. The 5 and a half million Danes are ruled by a parliamentary democracy and the Head of State is Queen Margrethe II.
The country is up there with the other Scandinavian states with its standard of living. It ranks very highly in world indeses for education, health care, prosperity and civil liberties. It has the world's highest level of social mobility and the lowest level of perceived corruption. The downside of all this is that it has one of the world's highest levels of personal income tax along with one of the highest levels of per capita income.
We left about half an hour later than planned so we were now a little tight on time but should still be fine........  until the expected traffic delays on the A47 at Peterborough but we avoided these by cutting through Eye.......  until we realised that everyone else had the same plan. By the time we got onto the A1 our arrival time gave us less than an hour to park, clear security and get to the gate which is a trek of, seemingly many a mile at Luton. The mid-term car parking that we had booked into contained about 5000 cars and 1 free space so that we had to drive around to find the needle in the car stack. Suffice it to say that we reached the departure gate at least 5 minutes before it was closed.
The flight was about one and a half hours and easy, as was entry into Denmark. We bought 2 tourist travel cards that last for 72 hours and cost £20 each. With these we travelled one stop down the line to Tamby where our hotel is. In the picture below you can see the station, a Danish bike (looks Dutch to me), Helen and a local postbox.

Only another 2 stops down and you arrive at Copenhagen Central Station. The architecture is interesting as it it was built to minic a gothic cathedral with germanic schloss undertones to the exterior. Note especially the "oak hammer beam" roof. How about the steam train weather vane?

Right opposite the Central Station is the one place most people associate with Copenhagen, the Tivoli Gardens. The other, of course is the disappointing small Little Mermaid but I suppose that the clue is in the name. We spent the rest of the evening in the gardens, a magical mystery land opened in 1843. It had 4.7 million visitors in 2015 which made it the second most visited theme park in the world. It has everything from white knuckle rides,  concerts, fairground stalls and bars and restaurants. Exciting by day but wonderful by night with twinkling fairy lights and culminating in a laser lightshow climax. I went on  the scariest ride I have experienced whizzing round on the end of a huge arm in a tiny open plane which twisted round whilst looping the loop at 100 kph. We also watched the comedy ballet. Have a look at some pictures. 

After that lot it was time to catch the train back to the hotel for a good night's sleep.

A drop into Pegasus bridge Saturday 9th July 2016

Helen doesn't really know any details of her Dad's activities other than that he was in 7th Parachute (light infantry) Battalion and that he was there.  It would be a real bonus to find direct evidence of Jock himself, but just being there today will be great. Let me show you round the memorial.

This picture shows the front entrance to the museum. Note the stylised para wings badge built into the porch. This motif is repeated on the side of the building as you can see in the next picture. Also note the flags of the Allied combatants, I'm sure you can work these out for yourself. 

The memorial itself is dedicated to the 6th Airborne Division and rather sidelines the role of 7th Parachute. The 6th Airborne did take the bridges but it was the responsibility of the 200 parachutists to defend the crucially strategic targets against the inevitable German counter attacks which came in the form  of planes, tanks, gunboats and heavy infantry fire. All of these were successfully repulsed at some considerable cost until the arrival of Lord Lovat's commandos at 13-30.

In the background here is the original Pegasus bridge. It was built in 1934, liberated in 1944 and replaced in 1994 when the canal was widened. It now stands in the memorial grounds. As does a replica of the Horsa glider and a section on the remarkable Bailey bridge. See below. 

You can see the present day Pegasus bridge in the background of this picture. As you come to expect with "other ranks", there is not much mention of names unless they are casualties so it came as no surprise to find no reference to Jock in the museum. Except..... he is in here somewhere! 

The next picture shows the famous Gondree Cafe as it was next to the bridge it trades on the epithet "first house to be liberated" in France. It has done so successfully for 74 years and is still run by the granddaughter of the war time owners. 

Back to Caen for an evening out. The efficient modern tram runs past our road end, so it's the obvious choice. Caen was of course flattened in WW2 with little surviving  except for the Abbeys where 2000 locals optimistically sheltered from the bombs. 

The Abbey aux Hommes built by William the Conquerer to atone to the Pope for his religiously illegal marriage to Matilda. 

The architectural style is of course Norman, as you can see inside and out.

Also inside you can see the last resting place of the good King. 

Finally some pictures of  "old" Caen. Tomorrow will be much the same as Friday only the other way round as it were. 

We did indeed have a good run back, enhanced by Lewis Hamilton's win in the British Grand Prix and Andy Murray's Wiimbledon title.