The New Newport News News 144:  Leeds

8-10-2025

Arriving in Leeds [by train], we walked out of the station, around the corner and straight to our pied-a-terre.  Riding up 14 floors, we were all stunned by the lavish penthouse Ron had found for us.

Resting a bit and moving in refreshed us enough to go out to eat.  Ron, however, was d-o-n-e, so we brought him some food.  We rambled a bit, finding all the shopping arcades closing at 6.  Daunted, we bought a few groceries, and found a wonderful diner called Pizza Pilgrims.  This slightly blasphemous name and the logo—In Crust We Trust—appealed to us.  We ate a leisurely 2-flavor pizza meal with loads to drink.  This was our first hot day in England and the restaurant had AC [few places do, in England, including our lavish penthouse].

Sadly, Andrew and Theresa refused to follow the rules and were electrocuted.

8-11-2025

Nearly giddy with excitement, the Buckitts set off by water taxi to the Royal Armouries Museum.

Andrew, Ron and Carol have wanted to visit this museum since Andrew was a young teen.  At that time, the museum had just opened, providing enough space for collections from the Tower of London and storage.  The goal of the museum was not just displaying, but recreating the use of weapons.  There was a series of demonstrations on PBS that we actually recorded and watch repeatedly.  John Keegan led the group in re-creating the weapons and how to use them.

The other locations of the Royal Armouries are Fort Nelson, home of the cannon, mortars, bombards and big guns; and The Tower of London for medieval arms and armor.  Ron and Carol have done the trifecta.

We watched 2 live sword fights, 1 Roman and 1 2-hand sword.  None of the professionals pulled any punches, but went all out.  They discussed how they have done research on the sword postures, many of which were published in the Renaissance.  They showed the ways they had to figure out how to flow from one to the next.  How they trained in slow-motion, gradually building up to full-on fighting.  Extremely impressive.

And yes, that’s a woman.  For the first time I believed a woman might hold her own-- for a while-- against a man. 

We spent most of the day at the museum, breaking up into smaller groups depending on interest and stamina.

But we all came together for lunch and thence on to the crossbow shooting range.  For just £8, 4 Buckitts shot 10 bolts at a paper target, which we got to keep.  It took a rather hunched over posture; Carol got 3 straight bulls-eyes but then got too tired to keep it up.  Theresa got an amazingly consistent 3” spread.  

They took the water taxi back—with the same skipper—and found some street food for supper, supplemented by a few groceries.

The penthouse, so full of glass, was quite hot.  Andrew, Ron and Carol had brought tiny fans from home; the penthouse had fans in all the rooms, so they survived the night.

BTW, this apartment had a clothes washer as well.  This is how Ron dried his blue jeans.  The framed picture on the right says, “Hello, sweet cheeks.”

¹ Cousin Vinny’s: a stop on a bus tour that involves a store, often with a demo of what they make there and a long opportunity to purchase.  Always includes restrooms. 
² Trough: an all–you-can-eat buffet.  Always looks more delicious than it is.
³ CTC is Cheap Tourist Crap.  It is not necessarily inexpensive.  Often to be found in Cousin Vinny stores.
⁴ Buckitts [4 Buckles, 1 Prewitt]
⁵ Former is a term usually used in connection with trains, and means one who loves locomotives and knows all about them personally, by name and number, and are foaming mad for trains in general. [ Ron and Carol like trains very much and love to ride them, but we are not foamers.]