Day off - and sunny!

Howdy all....
So we havent been up to much lately, the weather has been rubbish, and when its been good I've been working. But FINALLY this weekend, I had a day off, and the sun was shining, so off we went. We went to the Oceanarium - nothing that anyone who's been to the sydney aquarium hasn't seen before - but I chucked in a pic of the pirhanas (which i've never seen before to be honest), and a nemo pic :-)
Later on, we went to Tyneham village, which is a village on the south Dorset coast which was evacuated in the 1940's because the government requisitioned the land to be used as a firing range for army training. The village wasnt destroyed, and is now still in the same condition as it was when it was evacuated. If you take away the massive carpark and all the signs, it's likewalking into a time warp. Cool.
After that we went to Corfe castle - a really fantastic ruin near swanage. I'm not going to bother writing stuff about each photo, they're all pretty self explanatory, just different pics around, and one of Luke being silly. The Oceanarium photos are at the end - for some reason the pics always come through backwards when i upload them.




This one is rather cool, you can see how one side of the wall has slipped down the hill over time - its all on a massive hill.




These are pics from inside the church, and also the name tags from the schoolhouse, still with the names of the students at the time.


These are the pics from the oceanarium. I liked the little viewing domes they had :-)

And that's about all I have.... working now for a couple of weeks, and then I have a long weekend, so we'll go away somewhere... check back then for more photos!

Snow!!

It's just started snowing for the season now, here's the view from my bedroom window...
There's more snow due for later this week, so fingers crossed for tobogganing on the weekend!! woohoo!!

BATH!!

Not in 'had a ...' but 'went to...'. And it was great. The first photo is of Bath Abbey, built on the site of the original temple of the sun goddess, in the 17th century. All very grand, but we didnt go inside because it was closed.


The next few photographs are all from the ancient Roman baths - definitely worth a look, really interesting. It's cool in the photos where you can see the levels - the baths themselves are about 4m below street level, and then you can see a whole bunch of 17th and 18 century buildings, still very old, but on the current street level. Its a really good model of how time has changed things. The free audiotour that you get was a bit lame - it was quite good on the history of things, but hammed it up a bit. My favourite part was some gemstones that were found in the water, and each had really intricate carvings in them. There was a discus thrower, some cows, one of a woman, one of a horse - but the pictures are only about 5mm/1cm big. I couldnt' get a close up photo of the gems, but they were my favourite part. Apparently the theory is that people would wear their jewellery into the baths, without realising that the mineral mix in the water would loosen the glue that kept the gems in the settings, and they'd get out of the water minus their precious stones. Oops indeed. Apparently, also, the water is only green now becuase it's not undercover and the sun activates the algae in the water. Originally, it would have been a bit of a sacred place (you could imagine it too, with the water bubbling and steaming, but not because it was boiling), and the water was covered (you can see a photo of how it would have looked), and so it would have been clear. I've also chucked in our 'being stupid tourists' photo.
Oh yeah, haha, they put red noses on the statues. Sacrilegious!! :-)





Prior Park was our next port of call (and boy, did it take some hill climbing to get to), but the views were worth it. The guy who owned the quarry that provided the stone to build bath apparently got very rich (suprising) and so built a massive house and landscaped gardens to show off. They're very pretty though, as you can see.


These last few photos are just from wandering around Bath city centre. I dont honestly know what the first photo is off, there was no indication what the building was for - apparently home to the flower pot men, eggheads, and other assorted aliens. Like a refugee camp. But with better stonemasonry.



The house above was freaky - looked all normal but there was a freaky golden girl (literally, not Bea Arthur) looking at passers by out the window. Scary. The last photo there (i'm having a bit of trouble with the sequencing of photos, so just do your best to follow, cos i'm tired so i'm giving up) is just of some Georgiana houses - rich people lived there. There were 30 houses, all connected, built in a semicircle. Nice if you can afford it.


And that is what we did in Bath. We have a couple more ideas for weekends away, we're going to try to get to Iceland to see the Northern lights!! But we have to either do it quickly, or wait till next winter. So we'll see how we go. Either way i'm seeing it before I head home :-)
Oh, and i've booked my holidays and flights to come back, from 27th sept to 15th oct , so i'll see lots of you then!