Tuesday 24th September 2019

Tuesday 24th September 2019 - Number 5919

Welcome to the Laws Family Register

We reach out to all, regardless of Race, Colour, Creed, Gender, Orientation, or National Origin, offering support for researching family history and documenting cultural inheritance.

Robert Henry Laws

1828-1881

Captain of the Barque 'Woolhampton'

my paternal Great Grandfather

This is Robert Henry's Wife

Sarah Ann Laws, formerly Fuller

My paternal Great Grandmother

1846-1924

R I P

Gone but not forgotten, this blog is dedicated

to all those who have borne our illustrious

surnames LAWS and LAWES Worldwide

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registrar@lawsfamilyregister.org.uk

John P Laws

'The Registrar'

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A Child of the Twenties

A suburban childhood of the Twenties

seen from the Nineteen Nineties

by my late father

John Robert Laws 1921-2008

Part 23

Further Afield Part 3

The highlights of the Naples visit were the late evening view over the lights
over the city, from a highpoint on the northern edge with Vesuvius in the
background. The ascent of Vesuvius itself and seeing the excavated city
of Herculaneum.

The volcano was pretty well behaved at that time and having gone up, by the
funicular rail car we were able to descend into the enormous crater where a
constant roman candle of lava blobs was building a new central cone.
Intrepid Italian entrepreneurs were busy pushing coins into the little blobs
before they cooled and selling the resulting souvenirs to tourists.

In contrast to the lively volcano, Herculaneum was many centuries’ dead.
With its heavy shroud of volcanic ash shovelled and swept away its slab paved
streets peopled with a few groups of tourists were not for me evocative of
the crowds of shoving and successful citizens who thronged its streets until
the Reaper came with his volcano.

For the same reason, it was not depressing either, it was another museum
with fine examples of a Roman town complete with arts and crafts collected
on the spot.

Why do I not remember the long journey back, it was just unmemorable
or were there too many little bottles with our packed lunches so that we
dozed on the wooden seats. Perhaps we just got tired, almost unthinkable in
one's teenage years.

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NORWAY

The Journey to Norway was different. We went on an old troopship and it
was boys only, a big party several hundred strong, from many schools,
no hotel this time we slept in hammocks slung above the tables where
we ate by day. It was hot and we had the occasional chance to sleep on
deck instead of in the hammocks. The hard deck was just as impossible
as the sagging hammocks. At least we learnt that a bed is a luxury.

Bergen was the first port of call. The ship tied up along the long quay
where the town faces out over the water and which seemed to us to be the
town centre. The funicular railway took us up to the viewpoint above the
town from which the town and its harbour and the fiord running out
towards the sea are laid out like a green map with blue water and red
roofs with toy boats at rest in the harbour.

We also went into the mountains by way of the railway which climbs its
way over to Oslo. The railway the like of which we had never seen before,
as it clambered through the steep ascent with the aid of a central rack rail
and crawled through tunnels and across rock faces to take us up and out
onto the high land. There we walked and saw the ski runs and the big wooden
structure of the ski jump all stranded in grass with not a flake of snow in the
hot sunshine.

Despite the rocky terrain, rich grass seemed to be the predominant colour of
the countryside as we sailed along the coast and into Sogne Fiord where
our ship was dwarfed to a toy again between the towering mountains on
either side. Here and there tiny fields of hay were patched into the forest on
the mountain waterside.

High prowed boats rowed with long oars used the water as a highway from
farm to farm and field to field. At the end of the fiord, we went ashore in the
ship's boats and walked up the valley beside the bubbling bouldered river
to the foot of the glacier which feeds it. A mountain of rather grubby ice
in the blazing hot sunshine turning into sparkling clear water with which
we quenched our thirst on the walk back.

The furthest north we went was Trondheim, a little stone town on a hilly site
beside the water. No doubt used to visitors, despite the infancy of tourism,
the peace did not seem disturbed by the invasion of a few hundred English
schoolboys. They had done their share of invading Britain a few centuries ago
and were themselves to be invaded by less welcome visitors only
two or three years later.

On the ship our amusements were simple, I seem to remember the old
English sports day pastime of jousting astride a slippery pole over a
canvas pool of water and we had a few homegrown concerts and
sing-along’s to disturb the quiet of evening at sea. Not that the North Sea
was quiet all the time, there were moments when we lost all interest in food
and spent time admiring the view over the rail. It was certainly different from
all our other trips,

The End

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