The League of Augsburg

Well, it'll be my birthday!


The Rapture Gaming Festival happens to be taking place over July 1st and 2nd and one of those days is my birthday. It is being hosted at Chatham Royal Dockyard, a site which I have planned to visit for a long time but never gotten round to. To get to Chatham is about an 860 mile round trip for me.



To go that far takes a little bit of planning, a few days away from home and over a birthday weekend,...

Understanding the Irish campaigns of 1689-1691- Storming of Athlone

Irish defences south of Athlone Castle and the bridge

Having spent time walking many of the battlefields of the Irish wars I am constantly gaining a better understanding of the actions that took place. The recent Promenades Travel Jacobite Wars tour gave me a chance to do some more sniffing around.

The Castle and bridge in 1691

Being based in Athlone allowed considerable time to explore this small...

Back from the Wars.. Promenades Travel Tour of Irish Battlefields 1690-1691

Field guns at Oldbridge

We packed a helluva lot into four and a half days visiting Oldbridge, Donore, Duleek, Athlone, Aughrim, Portumna, Nena and Limerick. We spent long enjoyable days walking the fields, forts, castles and sites of the campaigns of 1690 and 1691 in Leinster, Connaught and Munster.


Sean O' Brogain's artwork in the cafe at Oldbridge

We had an outstanding group of friendly, curious...

Greenwich - hub of maritime history

Pool of London to London Bridge circa 1710

Pool of London at the Tower circa 1710 - 1/1200 scale model


I love Greenwich. Not only is it a really interesting area with fantastic restaurants, bars and quaint shops, it is a hugely important centre of maritime history. On my second visit I manage to do lots of things I missed on the first like finding the most best galleries in the National Maritime...

An excusable digression.. Waterloo Day


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Five years ago today I was in the privileged position to have witnessed one of the two mega events at  Waterloo 200. Little memories include watching Charles and Camilla sweeping up with their entourage as UK representatives, literally almost colliding with Mr Farage as he made political capital at




Hougoumont and, hailing a bunch of HLI drilling in a field near the chateau in my very...

Airborne Museum Oosterbeek

Memorial to the Airborne Forces at Oosterbeek

This trip happened in November 2018 and for some reason I didn't get around to posting some of the lovely photos.

British Sherman in the museum forecourt

I am almost certain this is a 17pdr. I don't think Urquhart's men had too many of these to hand.

We spent an excellent couple of hours in this outstanding museum and finished our trip by crossing the...

National Museum of Ireland: 17th/18th Century exhibits











A little lead in on the late Elizabethan period with this musketeer and then the display moves on to cover






the 17th/18th century exhibits.  The section begins with a ' How would you invade Ireland?'  map with some notations on it.




We them go into the period of the Confederate Wars and the Cromwellian occupation. The mannequins were particularly good.





I was very taken by the simplicity of the Jacobite...

The National Museum of Ireland - a lovely wee surprise

The parade ground square at Collins Barracks which is an old British Army facility from the late 18th/early 19th century.

I squeezed this in whilst speaking at a conference in Dublin. What a wonderful find it was. In this first post I thought I would trail the variety of fantastic and interesting militaria contained in a very substantial and well laid out national museum. I visited the Collins...