Sunday Times Where Was I? Holiday Competition

Near as I can figure it, through the possibly flawed perceptual filters of my own reality tunnel, the most likely answers this week, seem to me to be:

Q1. Captain Nicholas John Barker


Q2. Wimborne Minster


внимание друзья! Very difficult this week, there is not much information available online about the skipper of HMS Endurance during the Falklands conflict and the puzzle author has created a veritable smog of historical data to trawl through. For question 2, The address of St Cuthburga's church is given as : Church House High Street, Wimborne Minster, DORSET, BH21 1HT, so it does seem to be in the town of Wimborne Minster.

Pretty sure the initial clues place us at Canford school, in the locale of a village called Canford Magna, in Dorset. The captain of HMS Endurance (a ship that was painted bright red and nicknamed 'The Red Plum'), was according to some web sites about the school, once a pupil there. Some of the bios on Nick Barker (born c 1933), say that he wrote several books, including titles such as 'Beyond Endurance' and 'Red Ice'. HMS Endurance is said to have taken part in operation Paraquat (originally called parakeet but renamed after the weedkiller, as it was thought to be deadly to those who took part in it) to recapture the island of South Georgia. Endurance seems to have been used to drop SBS personnel onto south Georgia via WASP helicopter and to evacuate a wildlife film maker and her team from the island, with HMS Antrim locking horns with a submarine called Santa Fe, which subsequently decided to leave the area, after Antrim's helicopters altered the skipper's parameters of absolute reality, by dropping some depth charges on him. Barker was a wily sea captain, adept at tactics, strategy and did not like the Whitehall Mandarins much, as he had warned them that the Argentinians were planning to take their islands back. His advice was ignored and they took it as a signal that the British government were not too bothered about keeping them. One of the Argentine garrisons on south Georgia eventually surrendered to HMS Plymouth and HMS Endurance.

Converting 21000 acres to hectares (c 8500), helps us find the estate  four miles or so north west of Canford school (one Kingston Lacy), which the national trust says was bought by a lawyer called Sir John Bankes (c 1632). A descendant of the Lawyer, one William Bankes, is said by some sources, to have (ahem) 'borrowed' a pink obelisk from the Egyptians (c 1815). Some very entertaining stuff happened while they were trying to ship this needle back to the UK. It took seven years to move it, mainly because they dropped it into the Nile, while trying to load it on the transport ship and a gun battle broke out with a rival mob of Egyptologists, who wanted it for their collection.

Moving a mile and a half or so to the north west of Kingston Lacy, brings us to a hill fort called Badbury Rings (use metres, not feet to find this type of thing on an OS map ). The rings are shown as 99 metres in height, not 327ft, as given in the clues. Some references claim that the remains of a Romano-British town called Vindocladia, lie a mile or so to the south west of the fortifications.

Travelling two and a half miles west or so from the Badbury Rings, would bring you to Tarrant Crawford and the ruins of Tarrant Abbey.This is said in some references, to be the burial site of Queen Joan (22 July 1210 – 4 March 1238) , wife of Alexander II (a total bampot by all accounts) of Scotland.

Here, the puzzle compiler, tries to create a smog of data, to obfuscate our attempts to win the holiday. This guy Aethelbald, depending on which sources you check, seems to have had four brothers and most of them were buried in abbeys all over the place, για παράδειγμα:

Aethelbert, buried in Sherborne abbey, Aethelred, buried in Wimborne Minster, Alfred, buried in Hyde Abbey and Athelstan, buried in Malmesbury abbey (by way of further misdirection, there seems to be a 99 metre eminence (Cam's hill, an earth works, possibly a hill fort) shown on the OS map, near Malmesbury). From looking at the photographs of these abbeys/churches, the one that most fits the bill, is St Cuthburga's, a twin towered Norman church, in Wimborne Minster. It has an astronomical clock inside, an effigy of a 17th century grenadier on one of the towers and a very fine three faced sundial in the grounds. The hapless betowered squaddie, is known locally as 'Quarter Jack', because he is said to strike a bell, every quarter hour.

link to the competition: (If the Sunday Times IT bod has fixed the link that is.... ;-) )

Where Was I?