Friends and Family (Various Places ~ England)

August 2019

As usual we spent about a month in the UK running around catching up with family and friends and during this period also took a week long cruise to the Norwegian Fjords with Sally's Mum, Doris, and niece, Emma.

First port of call was catching up with Kate (my, Richard, little sister) in her recently purchased Victorian terrace house - which once the planned renovations are done will look amazing plus the house backs onto a massive Jewish Cemetery which will never be built on.

Great view out the back but if the dead ever do rise then Jake and Kate are totally screwed.

Having not been round this part of London for a long time we scouted out two of the recent artworks. Alistair Gormley's "Quantum" which viewed from the right angle you can see the form of his figure.

Quantum

The second was built for the Olympics and is central to the urban redevelopment of a large section of land. The view from the top is great and if you are have enough the trip to the bottom is via a helter-skelter skelter type slide.

Olympic Torch sculpture.

Whilst out and about in London dropped into the Science museum just so I, Richard, could check of the Babbage Difference Engine (for the non geeks out there this is the forerunner to all modern computing).

Babbage Difference Engine

A trip to the UK wouldn't be complete without a trip to the seaside so we headed down to Poole and caught a return ferry to the seaside town of Swanage and then took the steam train up to Corfe (castle).

Corfe Castle

Given the fact it was a gloriously warm day and in the school holidays the beach was packed. Now there are a few things that are quintessentially British when it comes to the seaside - a very non-PC Punch and Judy show, beach huts (which now sell for the price of a small house), tidal swimming pools, crabbing (think the idea is to see who can catch the biggest crab), laying claim a chunk of the beach with little cloth divider walls. The only thing missing were the donkey rides.

One place that we have past inumerable times as we have driven up and fown the A303 over the years but never got round to checking out is the Hawk Conservancy. Spent a good few hours here wandering around at the exhibits and watching the flying demonstrations of various birds.