My visit to England.

I went to England for training at the Warner and Swasey Turning Machines Company. The training was originally scheduled at the Halifax factory in West Yorkshire. But after our ticketing and a few days before our departure from India, the Company was taken over by Bendix Automation Limited and shifted to Telford in Shropshire. Our team on this visit consisted of three members. We flew from Bombay to London via Dubai. At Dubai, our aircraft landed for over two and a half hours so we made some purchases at the airport and mostly enjoyed the window shopping. And from London, we flew to Leeds/Bradford airport as per the original travel arrangements though Birmingham is the nearest airport to Telford. We were received at the Leeds/Bradford airport by the Chief Marketing Manager of the company, who took us in his car to our Hotel in Telford, by covering a distance of about 175 Km.

The training was on Operations and Maintenance of a W & S Universal 315 CNC Lathe which we have procured from this Company. The machine was ready for dispatch and apart from the training we also had to inspect the machine and witness the job trials on it. Being winter we had a short daytime of about 7 hours. Every evening after training we used to go out for shopping or nearby sightseeing. There are many Indian restaurants in the close-by town of Wolverhampton, some of which we visited. During two evenings we were invited for dinner by the company personnel. During two weekends we went to London travelling by train from Wolverhampton. We went on sightseeing for the first time by bus and then on subsequent days and trips we went for shopping and sightseeing on our own mostly travelling by London Underground/Tube trains.

Surprisingly my son Srinath is now connected with all these far off places from Hyderabad to which I have been. He is in England since September ’08. He was initially residing in Wolverhampton but he is now staying in Birmingham and pursuing Post-graduation studies at Telford.

On our return journey, we flew from Birmingham to London. We stayed in London for a day. As Government of India employees, our Hotel accommodation between connecting flights are taken care of by Air India and on all flights, we are seated in the comfortable ‘Club Class’. The next day we flew non-stop to Delhi and from there to Hyderabad. The attached pictures are from this trip.