Education - Watermill Blog
18th - 20th August 2009

This weeks theme seems have been about education as the two working days are divided by a Dibnah's Day Out.

Tuesday was a normal working day with progress being made on a number of outstanding jobs including the repair of the metal wall cladding inside the mill.

Wednesday was quite different. Eleven team members and two supporters met at the Ludlow Food Centre with their cars and a navigator each for a trip to Acton Scott Victorian Farm. As well as being a fun day out there was a serious side to the trip. Acton Scott has a collection of farm machinery in working order, with many of the same machines as we have at the mill. In particular we wanted to get a close look at their winnower.

It's not far from Ludlow to Acton Scott but John had researched an interesting route through the Shropshire countryside, complete with tulip diagram route instructions.

The weather was near perfect for the whole day with all those that could travelling topless. The cars not the occupants, that is.

For many of us the route was an education in itself, taking in some beautiful countryside that we never realised was just out of sight  from the main roads. John had found a good pub for lunch, the Royal Oak at Cardington, that gave us an opportunity to re-group before going on the last few miles to Acton Scott.

The museum has set aside a small field for us to park our cars, a nice touch that we all appreciated. Other visitors to the museum also seemed to be interested in our collection of cars that included an E Type Jaguar, several MGs, two Morgans, a Triumph Stag as well as more modern sports cars.

The museum visit was rewarding as we got a good look at a number of pieces of machinery and got some good leads to other collections.

Even more rewarding was the arrival at the mill on Thursday morning of two visitors who used to be millers at Shugborough.  They added considerably to Richard's education by coaching him as he ground a bag of wheat into acceptable flour, working the mill harder than we have ever tried before.

They seemed to enjoy their visit and we really appreciated their advice. The rest of the day was quite tame by comparison, but we did make a bit more progress towards powering the large Wilson lathe with the Dennis single cylinder engine.

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