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
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
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| Sean O' Brogain's artwork in the cafe at Oldbridge |
We had an outstanding group of friendly, curious...
Greenwich - hub of maritime history
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| Pool of London to London Bridge circa 1710 |
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| Pool of London at the Tower circa 1710 - 1/1200 scale model |
An excusable digression.. Waterloo Day
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| Add caption |
Airborne Museum Oosterbeek
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| 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.
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| British Sherman in the museum forecourt |
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| 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
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| 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...