Long weeked = Road trip!

So here we are in the car again! I dont know why I feel obliged to take a photo of us sitting in the car as we get to where we're going, but here we are. This somehow proves we went, and reminds you all what we look like. Well, what Luke looks like, and the right half of my face.
Soooo, as I mentioned in the title, we've been working awfully hard in order to have a lovely 4 day long weekend to go away in, and we decided to do a random road trip. The way we decided was rather immature, I made one of those origami foldy things that kids play with (I should have taken a photo of that!) and it had a bunch of random directions in it... and we ended up going east. We had a lovely drive (I got to wear my sunnies again!) through the New Forest, which is the first pic here...


This door is of Titchfield Abbey - just another English Heritage ruin, but had some pretty cool gargoyles - I've put a photo in of the, but they were pretty high up so it was tricky getting a good shot.




After Titchfield, we carried on East and found ourselves at Porchester castle. You can start to see all the chalk cliffs at this point, but there's better photos of that later on. There's not a whole lot I can tell you about these ruins. They're cool to look around in, but in terms of historical placings, my brain is a sieve.


We next headed onto a town called Arundel. It wasnt on the Eastern coastal route, but we were driving along on the motorway, and Luke spotted the mother of all Castles on the horizon, so we drove over to it. And it was worth it - really pretty town. The photo below is the view we had from the pub we had lunch in.


Day two - we stayed the night in Eastbourne and the next day got our bikes out and headed to the imaginatively named 'beachy head'. It had a beach on it. And we spent most of the morning riding our bikes, pushing them up massive hills, and avoiding sheep, cows, and lots of poo.

These are the chalk cliffs that Dover is famous for - we're not quite at Dover yet though. That's also the start of the hill that the photo above this one was taken from. Below is more hills and cliffs. Also, a bit of mist thrown in for good measure. It was a bit spooky when you're up on the top, isolated, and surrounded by mist. In a good way.

Here's a photo of Luke 'fixing the bikes' on the roof racks. Whether mounting the car was completely necessary, i'm not sure, but he assures me it was.
This tree made me laugh. Evidence of the stiff nature of the breeze we were fighting.
After we'd finished at the sandless beach, we drove over to the South Downs Way, which is a national trail (footpath/bridleway) that works its way through rolling green hills along most of the south coast. The reason why we went was because there is a giant man, ' the long man of wilmington', carved into one of the hills.... we walked around those hills for about 2 hours looking for him, but eventually just gave up, and then spotted him as we drove away.... we'd been walking around on the top of the hill he was on. The map was very misleading. Or even wrong, yes, I'd go so far as to say that the map was wrong. Definitely.

Next stop on the tour was a town called Battle, about 10 miles north of Hastings, which was where the battle of Hastings in 1066 was actually fought. The rolling green hills, lanscaped gardens and wildflowers dont really capture the violence of battle, but it was interesting to see nonetheless.
After Battle we drove straight through to Dover, and picked a B&B that was reviewed in my lonely planet guide. One thing it specifically mentions is that it 'does not cater to children'. I would like to know who the Raggedy Anne doll on the bed, and the dolls house on the landing was for.
Final port of call was Dover castle, and it was well worth the visit. There's a 13th century keep, which unfortunately was closed when we were there, but was impressive to look at none the less, walks around the battlements, stunning views over Dover harbour, but the best bits were the secret wartime tunnels, and the medieval tunnels, buried in the giant hillside under the castle.
The secret wartime tunnels were first built by Napoleon to house troops that were stationed there, in preparation for invasion of france, and was rebuilt, expanded and reused in the second world war. It housed a hospital, and operation command post for much of the war, and one of the most famous operations run from there was 'Operation Dynamo', where 338,000 stranded troops were rescued from Dunkirk when the advancing German army had trapped them.
The tunnels themselves are quite claustrophobic, and they've recreated the scene well, with genuine furniture and equipment used at the time, so it looks genuine, it sounds genuine with air raid sirens and bomb blasts, and even smells genuine. The lighting flickers and everything during attacks. Very cool.
The medieval tunnels were also interesting, but not exhibited in the same way at all - they just are as you find them. Fun to explore though, lots of cramped spiral staircases, secret doors and murder holes and stuff. The tours through the whole complex are pretty cool too.

This was a suit of armour available for sale in the gift shop. Apprently in medieval times it was quite normal to have an 8 pack, AND a pot belly.
After Dover Castle was done we had to high tail it back to Bournemouth, so that's the end of the long weekend. In 2 weeks we're going to Amsterdam though, so I'll have some more pics then!

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!