TV locations for the Famous Five series

[number 6]

Oh brilliant, O.Q.! I'am glad you've been to Durlston Castle. It's certainly a great place to visit. I'm sure Maria Esther will enjoy it, too!

[Onkel Quentin]

Dancing Ledge, Durlston and Corfe Castle, it will take a whole day to visit this three places, because they are outside the New Forest. Don't underestimate this. I always drive by rental car, and I need my navigation system. Than it is easy to travel around. Whitout the navigation system, I would be lost in the roundabout traffic and all the small streets.

[number 6]

Yes, I agree, O.Q. Good advice. The trip needs careful planning if you're not familiar with the area. Luckily, I know this part of Dorset really well, so it's easy for me to travel around & not get lost! I know the New Forest quite well, too!

The photos you've posted on this forum have inspired me to revisit some of the F5 locations in July. I need to photo most of them again! I've lost about 80% of my original photos/notes & I don't think I'll ever find them. I've looked everywhere, but to no avail. It's 10 years worth of labour down the drain! I had some fabulous photos of the locations, & a vast amount of information to compliment them with. I'm really gutted that the ones showing the interior of Gatewood House are amongst those lost. Being shown around the house & being allowed to wander around the garden freely, & for as long as I wanted, will never happen again. It was a one off opportunity. Now I only have fading memories of the interior. Oh, I despair!

[Daisy]

I'm really gutted that the ones showing the interior of Gatewood House are amongst those lost. Being shown around the house & being allowed to wander around the garden freely, & for as long as I wanted, will never happen again. It was a one off opportunity. Now I only have fading memories of the interior. Oh, I despair!

That is such a shame, but they may turn up some day when you are looking for something else! I know that happens to me occasionally. Mind you, it does give you a lovely reason for revisiting the places, although I appreciate you may not have the same opportunities another time.

[Onkel Quentin]

Number 6, I hope you will find them. The pictures from outside Gatwood House, we can watch them on the German fanpage. I am sure, if you ask again, you get permission to make new photos. By my visit last year in november,my digital camera get crazy, and told me to format the memorycard. So I deleted my photos from inside Burley Manor.
Sometimes you are the winner, sometimes you are the loser.

[Chrissie777]

...you have to go to Corfe Castle, it´s beautiful and it was the location of the first Famous Five Movie! (black and white in the 50´s ).

Onkel Quentin, in August 2008 when we lived in Uxbridge near London, we went for a long weekend to Corfe Castle Village, the Jurassic Coast, Lulworth Cove, Durdle Door and all the movie locations like Oliver's Bistro (around the corner from Viv's Ginger Pop Shop next to the post office) which was used in the first scene in "Five on a Treasure Island" (1957).
Check this out and you can see all the pics we took with the train station included:

Obviously all good things come to an end in the world wide web at some point. The photos of the Yahoo Group Enid Blyton members are gone even though I had added them to my bookmarks . Instead I'm getting now a newly designed enidblyton.net page.
Oh well...

[number 6]

Thanks Daisy & O.Q. I'm unlikely to find the photos. I've exhausted all possible places. I've been through all my stored boxes, etc, but there are no signs of them.

As Daisy said, it gives me an opportunity to revisit the locations again. That's not a bad thing really, as I can visit places I've not been to for years & see how they've changed over time!

Yes, I can relate to your disappointment with your deleted photos, O.Q! You're right, you win some & you lose some. That's life. As for getting permission to re-enter Gatewood House, well I think that will never happen. It was a definitely a one off. The owner is quite temperamental, to say the least!!

[Chrissie777]

Dancing Ledge, Durlston and Corfe Castle, it will take a whole day to visit this three places, because they are outside the New Forest. Don't underestimate this. I always drive by rental car, and I need my navigation system. Than it is easy to travel around. Whitout the navigation system, I would be lost in the roundabout traffic and all the small streets.

Way back in August 2008 we went from Corfe Castle Village in Dorset to Salcombe in Devon on a Sunday morning. From my first Salcombe visit in 1995 I remember that there WAS a four lane highway leading to Salcombe.
So in 2008 when we used the TomTom/GPS/Navi of our British rental car, it took us on hedge rows all the way to Devon. How we wished we would have had a road map!!!
It took us 4 or 5 hours to get from Dorset to Salcombe, Devon.

The problem with GPS is that you have no influence which road it offers you. Even if you know there is a wider multiple lane road in extistence, the GPS often gives you an inferior smaller one lane road where you have to drive backwards every once in a while to the next parking spot in order to let somebody go by.
We plan to go to Scotland next year, but only with a road atlas to find those well-hidden major highways/roads that the TomTom/GPS/Navi cannot find .

[Onkel Quentin]

Hy Chrissie, you are right, sometimes you "find" new roads with a navi. I use my own portable Garmin navi, so I always use the same setting (fastest or shortest way, etc...). Before I start to England, I make a update, it is free. And now I have all the places saved in the navi-memory, so it is easy to use. Also I have problems with the speed limit on english streets (I never know, which kind of road is which limit), and the navi tells it to me. (It is also not so easy to drive at the WRONG!!! side of the streets with a car, the driver is sitting on the wrong side, too!).

[number 6]

(It is also not so easy to drive at the WRONG!!! side of the streets with a car, the driver is sitting on the wrong side, too!).

I can remember being driven to the EB Society day at Lodden Hall, in Twyford, by @dick Kirrin (Another German F5 fan) in his left hand drive car. It felt really weird being sat in the passenger seat on the right hand side of the car....with no steering wheel in front of me!

[Chrissie777]

Hy Chrissie, you are right, sometimes you "find" new roads with a navi. I use my own portable Garmin navi, so I always use the same setting (fastest or shortest way, etc...). Before I start to England, I make a update, it is free. And now I have all the places saved in the navi-memory, so it is easy to use. Also I have problems with the speed limit on english streets (I never know, which kind of road is which limit), and the navi tells it to me. (It is also not so easy to drive at the WRONG!!! side of the streets with a car, the driver is sitting on the wrong side, too!).

Hi Onkel Quentin,

I drove all by myself in Cornwall and Devon in May 1995 for 11 days, taking the huge Scandinavian Seaways ferry from Hamburg to Harwich.
Put a big sign with rubber bands attached to the steering wheel which said "Links fahren!!!" (drive on the left lane).
In the morning I usually waited until some cars drove by and then I just followed them (same when I drove off the ferry in Harwich).
The roundabouts are tricky though as you have to turn left and then leave it turning left again.
And gas stations! For me they were the biggest hurdle.
Yes, same here: I drove our old Citroën with the steering wheel on the left side, so passing slow pokes on British roads was only possible on long straight passages.
As a former German I tend to drive too fast.

Regarding the Navi (in the US it's called GPS): André did those updates before our trip to Germany two years ago. My husband keeps telling me that the GPS always picks the shortest way which is not necessarily the fastest way (or the easiest way to drive on like the way to Salcombe, Devon).
I wish the GPS would offer the possibility to pick four lane roads rather than curvy and small country roads. When you have two castles in Scotland to visit on your schedule on one day, and these castles are 250 miles distance from each other, you want a fast route rather than a cozy, curvy country road.

We were amazed many times here in Massachusetts what big detours the GPS found for us, because we would definitely have picked a shorter route.
There's still plenty of room for the GPS inventors/developers to improve their system!!!

[Chrissie777]

I can remember being driven to the EB Society day at Lodden Hall, in Twyford, by @dick Kirrin (Another German F5 fan) in his left hand drive car. It felt really weird being sat in the passenger seat on the right hand side of the car....with no steering wheel in front of me!

Did he go very fast?

[Chrissie777]

...It felt really weird being sat in the passenger seat on the right hand side of the car....with no steering wheel in front of me!

Having no steering wheel in front of me doesn't keep me from instictively "pushing the brakes" when somebody else drives.

[number 6]

...It felt really weird being sat in the passenger seat on the right hand side of the car....with no steering wheel in front of me!

Having no steering wheel in front of me doesn't keep me from instictively "pushing the brakes" when somebody else drives.

Same here, Chrissie! Thankfully, @dick Kirrin was a steady driver & kep't to the speed limit!

[Daisy]

I have also been in the passenger seat of Dick Kirrin's car and found the sensation rather strange especially as I am a non-driver! So that's what the road looks like from a driver's point of view, is it?
I agree he is a very good driver.