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. The National Memorial Arboretum


Q2. Private Herbert Burden


внимание друзья! The private's full name is given in some bios as 'Herbert Francis Burden'

It was with heavy heart that the Eastender wrote his puzzle blog this week, it was sobering and truly horrifying to read about the vast numbers of British, Commonwealth, Allied and indeed 'enemy' service personnel, who lost their lives in these insane conflicts, many of whom are commemorated at the National Memorial Arboretum, Croxall Road, Alrewas, Staffordshire, which is where the initial clues seem to place us. There are trees and sculptures dedicated to many different outfits, from different branches of the armed forces and civilian emergency services at this place. The NMA website states that it has around 50,000 trees, c 200 memorials and covers about 150 acres.

It seems to be one hundred years and a day since a bloke called Archie Duke, shot an ostrich because he was hungry, thus precipitating the industrial scale carnage of the first world war. The National Memorial Arboretum, according to their web site, was founded c 1997 using some money from the lottery fund, to reclaim a disused gravel pit.

There appear to be memorials to HMS Barham, HMS Kenya and a host of other otriads who were sucked into these armed struggles. A monument which depicts one of the ghastlier aspects of WWI is likely 'The Shot at Dawn' memorial, which commemorates some of the poor sods who had shell shock, decided to go home and were subsequently shot by firing squad, for making this very sensible decision. The model for the statue of the poor blindfolded squaddie, is said by some sources, to be a 17 year old private (born 22nd March, c 1898), called Herbert Francis Burden. Some references claim that he is also remembered on a wooden carving  in a church in Catford or Lewisham, probably because he was born in Lewisham.

The morse code clue has a flaw in it, it seems to refer to the one of the carvings on the GCHQ memorial
"--./-.-./-.-./…. ", the error is that there is an extra dot, due to the full stop in the clues text. If you remove this extra dot, the code en clair, becomes 'GCCS' which appears to stand for 'Government Code and Cypher School', which is carved on a stone sphere on the GCHQ sculpture at the NMA. There is also an inscription in binary on the globe, which is thought to represent the letters 'GCHQ'.

The forest proper which the puzzle author refers to, is most likely 'The National Forest'. The blurb on their website, says that it is 200 square miles in area and that there is a trail starting at the NMA which extends over seventy five miles through der wald, called 'The National Forest Way'.

According to some of his bios, the ninth astronomer royal seems to have been a chap called 'Frank Watson Dyson' (born c 1868), at Baptist Manse, Measham, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Derbyshire. Ashby-de-la-Zouch is shown as being in Leicester on some maps (they've possibly moved the county line since that biography was written ).