VISITS TO FULHAM PALACE  

 Thursday 18^TH and Monday 22^nd September 2025

Following the successful tour of the visit to Wells Cathedral and Bishop’s Palace in 2024, we have made arrangements to travel by minibus to Fulham Palace, the former home of the Bishops of London.  The plan is to take a guided tour of the Palace in the morning, followed by lunch in the cafeteria, and a guided tour of the riverside gardens in the afternoon. Because of the large number who expressed interest initially we are repeating the tour.

If you are interested in going on this trip please contact Chris, saying whether you would be free on either date, or which date would suit you best.

As this is some way ahead, we are only asking for expressions of interest at this stage. Payment of £24 per person, to cover both minibus and the two tours, will be asked for nearer the time.

Interested, or any queries?          Please contact Chris Coffin  –  kriskoff@gmail.com

A total of 11 Questers visited the above museum on Monday, 14^th April and Robert who was driving (as always) did us proud by arriving at the Guardroom at the appointed hour safely and without incident.

I say “(as always)” because he is currently the only driver registered to drive the minibus.  Remember, we are all getting older so there will be a time when either Robert does not want to continue driving or can’t drive but I hope it doesn’t come to that!  Or the U3A would have to hire another bus driver to take us on our trips or everything would be self-drive. To that end, think if you could give something back to the U3A such as volunteering to drive the minibus or even volunteering to do the coffees and teas!

The museum was very interesting with lots of items of equipment on display. Of particular interest was the many and varied selection of medals awarded to Corps members for either service or bravery awards. Paul (our guide) gave us the history of the Corps relating many interesting facts associated with the displays.

The picture below shows part of the Questers on the visit. (I was also looking for any reference to the R Signals unit I served with for 2 years in Shetland but that also was not in evidence, probably due to the nature of the work undertaken by the troops there.)

All in all, a good visit enjoyed by most I think.

The mini-bus arrived at the factory in good time (thank you Robert) for a refreshing drink provided by our hosts and the tour commenced with a short film about the company’s philosophy  of continuous development and capabilities.  A question and answer followed prior to a view of both historic and current models.

One of the more interesting watches was only available to pilots who have been obliged to leave their aircraft using Martin-Baker ejection seats where the movement is seated in flexible rubber inside the standard case so that it could withstand the extreme G-forces involved, other limited editions included a model celebrating the achievements of the code breaking staff of Bletchley Park which contains a small piece of one of their, (very rare), code sheets visible on the side of the case.

Bremont have temperature controlled rooms where a small team of highly skilled watchmakers undertake repairs of any quality brand of time-piece.  On another floor the main production line assembled their current range amounting to about 12,000 watches a year and they have capacity for twice this.  At each stop there were show cases exhibiting the various components and stages in their manufacture.

Currently components are manufactured in  Switzerland or Germany, but they have plans to bring some of this back to the UK.  This was a well organised, interesting and informative tour by a company used to doing things properly.

Norma Bryan