When we went to England in 2017 we visited a theme park called Alton Towers, which I had visited in 1996. There was a specific ride, there that was my first ever proper thrill ride, called the Nemesis (Link to previous Alton Towers visit). When we went in 2017, Cameron, Alana, Kristine and I rode the Nemesis, but Tomas was an inch too short to be able to. We promised that we would take him back some day.
At the start of this Sweden trip, the Nemesis was closed for "refurbishment and retracking" and it opened again in March 2024 as "Nemesis Reborn". With the end of our contract nearing, we were running out of time to make good on our promise, so we looked at booking a trip to the UK.
The first plan was Alton Towers, but I was interested in returning to Warhammer World and Cameron was keen to check out some of the Premier League Football stadiums. We also managed to align with a Aston Villa game at Villa Park, where our family friend, Joe, would be playing as goalkeeper in a Carabao Cup match. He managed to get us tickets to the game, so we now had a full plan.
We flew out at 9am on Sunday, meaning that we had an early start to make sure we made it to the airport on time. The original plan was to drive to Cameron's favourite side - Chelsea's stadium, Stamford Park, but rescheduling (around the Carabao cup) had meant that a game was now being played at that time and so we wouldn't be able to get close to the stadium. Instead, we drove up to Rugby, the birthplace of our favourite game.
There was a Diwali festival on, so the town was packed.
Rugby is a town in Warwickshire and home to Rugby School, which was initially a Grammar (private) School. The school is known as the birthplace of the game of Rugby. The legend is that William Webb Ellis was playing football in 1823 and picked up the ball and ran with it, which led to the creation of the game of rugby. The World Cup trophy is the Webb Ellis trophy, named after William. While this has pretty much been disproven as an origin myth, it is true that the rules of rugby with codified at Rugby School and the first Rugby Football Union was created in 1871.
The town's name is believed to have come from either the ancient Celtic Droche-brig meaning Wild Hilltop or a phonetic translation of the Old English Hrocaberg (h being silent and berg being pronounced similar to beree). The name became Rokeby and changed to the modern Rugby in the 1700s.
We parked in a shopping center, and headed out, past the Diwali celebrations towards Rugby School Unfortunately the museum was closed for Sunday, but we did get to see the school and Webb Ellis Statue.
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| Rugby School |
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| William Webb Ellis Statue |
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| Rugby World Cup Sculpture. |
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| Rugby Clocktower |
The Diwali celebrations were starting to ramp up and a parade was about to start, so we decided to leave before we risked being blocked in. The rest of the drive to Stoke-on-Trent was uneventful, but parking was a nightmare, as it always seems to be in the UK. The narrow streets were filled with cars parked on both sides of the road and we ended up parking about a 5min walk from the apartment.
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| View from our window |
We arrived at the apartment about 4pm and were pretty tired. The combination of the start of daylight savings and the timezone difference meant that our bodies were still feeling that it was two hours later than it was. Almost every shop was closed at 4 on a Sunday, so Kris and I left the boys at the apartment and drove to a small store about 10min away to pick up supplies for dinner and breakfast - again fighting with parking at both the shop and back at the apartment.
