Woolly says – A lovely weekend with lots of happy guests had passed, the human announced that we needed to go to the big city, a place that seems to terrify her which is strange given the number of cities we have travelled to. Whilst she mused about the driving side, I set about finding something of interest to head to.

Cities are fine, driving round them much less so and for some reason Hereford had some horrible roundabouts to navigate through. I liked my small companions plan to break the trip up.

Woolly says – With only a couple of expletives we managed to find and collect items from the first two places before resetting the sat nav to direct us to the Waterworks Museum. Established in 1974, the Museum is housed in a historic Victorian water pumping station which served as Hereford’s main water supply station for well over a century. Having squashed the car into the last available space we headed into the visitor centre where the smell of oil immediately started to engulf my trunk.

The main buildings had been constructed in 1854 supplying piped water to Hereford for the first time, as the industrial revolution took over many different types of pumps started to be developed, the museum seemed to have them all.

The first area held large numbers of machines some pumping and banging while others remain silent.

In one area we could see two long blue upright pipes that had water still being pumped through them, known as an open crank water pump, by 1905 these were the in thing to have in your pumping station.

A display on the far wall showed us some of Thomas Crappers early toilet system with a curious shaped bowl and a very nice looking sink unit.

All sorts of meters that had once read the pressures and in some cases charted them on graphs, long before the computer age took everything over.

We passed through an area with more machinery, this time with fly wheels and canvas straps, along with a wonderful Victorian fire engine.

Next came a huge black boiler known as a Lancashire Boiler it also housed a green frog which was curious, I paused to say hello, but he was busy talking to a young boy about how the boiler had worked so I waved and passed by.

We came to an area with a large wheel embedded into the ground before heading down some steps into the old engine house. Fitted in 1856 this pump drove the water from the natural springs below the city through wooden pipes to standpipes in the streets. It was an incredible site with small tunnels leading away from the water source, hard to imagine a man crawling through to remove a blockage or provide maintenance.

Much harder to understand was how the water pipes had been made of wood! Wouldn’t the water have seeped out? Doesn’t water rot when its wet? It obviously worked until lead piping became the norm, but it was curious to ponder the original pipework.

In the next room was the largest of the engines, the Worth Mackenzie triple expansion steam engine with its three large shiny wheels, it was an incredible piece of engineering. On the wall next to it was a whole brace of spanners some of which were for bolts four times bigger than me!

Heading outside we were greeted by what looked like one of Dr Who’s early Tardis’s, although odd in looks it had been installed in 1935 at Balsdean Pumping station, Sussex until the museum saved it from being scrapped in 2006.

Next to it was a small shed with a very industrious looking pump that had once provided the water supplies for the folk of Ledbury.

The high blades of the Climax wind powered water pump stood looking over the much older buildings and nestled next to it amongst the weeds was the current pumping station for the city in all its concrete glory.

Set up on the bank was Tangye House the original water pumping station at Leominster which now housed a whole variety of machines which were pumping and bumping away.

Perhaps the most impressive structure and the one that mot people would relate to water was the overshot waterwheel which was busy chugging the water round still.

We ambled into the children’s area which instead of the usual slides and swings contained old pumps or ones that had been adapted for children to use to test out how they could get the water moved or lifted in a fun educational way.

With a couple of places still to go to on the work front we headed back to the car which is when I spied the GWR colours and made a run for it to find out if there was a real steam train about. Skidding to a halt I found myself at a miniature railway station with tracks and a turning stile.

My grin reached from ear to ear as I spied a dinky steam train just the right size for a mammoth. With no one around to stop me I climbed onto the engine and started looking for some coal to get it fired up and moving. Sadly, before I had located the fuel the human arrived and having agreed that it was an absolute beauty and that yes it was made for me dragged me back to the car instead of letting me drive the train. Rather than sulking I set to annoying and proceeded to choo choo all the way home.