Sunday Snaps 10 - Beautiful Bath

Welcome to the latest of my occasional series of Sunday Snaps. Today I have three photos of my favourite city - Bath, England.

Bath was where I attended university sometime way back when, and I fell in love with this most beautiful of cities. It is named after, and centred around, the Baths formed by Britain's only natural hot springs. It is said that the city reminded the occupying Romans of Rome itself as both cities are built upon 7 hills. The Roman Baths remain to this day and are one of the countries most visited tourist attractions.

The first photo is of Pulteney Bridge and Weir, one of the most distinctive vistas of the city.  The bridge is one of only four in the world which has shops running the full length of both sides.

My next picture is of the bandstand that lies within Parade Gardens. I took this picture when we visited the city a couple of summers back, and somehow we managed to visit on a gloriously warm and sunny day - it must have been the only one that year! The bandstand always reminds me of the end of the BBC children's series Trumpton, which was one of my favourites when I was growing up. Every episode would end with the firemen playing a concert on the bandstand in the park - don't ask! :-)

The last snap for today is of the glorious Bath Abbey. This photo is of the South side of the Abbey, which shows some of the wonderful gothic architecture.

There is much, much more to the City of Bath, and I will no doubt share some more pictures with you sometime in the future. I am now itching to visit again after looking through all my photos. I can see a road trip coming up for us!

Enjoy what remains of your weekend!

New Boxes and Old Heroes

It was a good weekend here in the Yellow House. Sunday was Mother’s Day in the UK and we took some flowers and a small gift round to my Mum’s house to celebrate the fact. She was most pleased with the gift and we spent a couple of hours over there just hanging out.

We also had a visit from the satellite engineer on Saturday. The analogue TV signal will be switched off over the next two weeks in our region, as part of a programme to convert the whole nation to digital television. We already have satellite TV on our main set, but the switchover would mean that we would be unable to watch different shows on the main TV and our bedroom TV, or to record something other than the channel we are already watching. So, we decided to upgrade our satellite box, and move the old box upstairs for use on our bedroom TV.

The engineer was here for about an hour replacing our old satellite dish, installing the new box and moving the old one. The new receiver we have for our main TV is a Sky+HD box. Our TV isn’t an HD (High Definition) ready one yet, but it was more the Sky+ features that we were interested in getting. Sky+ is the UK equivalent of TiVo, as well as being a satellite receiver. So, we can now record over 200 hours of programming without the need for loads of video tapes or DVDs, record 2 channels at the same time, pause live TV and record a whole series automatically. The Yellow House has now truly joined the digital age! :) As a bonus, we now have access to all the satellite channels on our upstairs set. We feel like we are in a 5 star hotel! LOL

This is our new Sky+HD receiver.

In other news, today marks the 41st anniversary of Swindon Town’s momentous League Cup victory at Wembley. They defeated the mighty Arsenal 3-1 with the legendary Don Rogers scoring twice. This is still arguably the club’s finest hour – although I would suggest that their promotion to the Premiership in 1993 was a greater achievement. Anyway, today is a day to remember the boys of '69.

Yep, It Is Spring - Sort of.

My last post was entitled “Is It Spring Yet?” as winter seems to have lasted for about the last 5 years here! Anyway, imagine my surprise when watching the news today to find out that, apparently, yes it is spring already!

Now I know what you are thinking – “spring doesn’t start until March 20th” (if you are in the Northern hemisphere at least). I agree. The vernal equinox is the start of spring, or at least it has been for as long as I can remember. But now, The Meteorological Office here in the UK have declared that spring now starts on March 1st, and similarly summer starts on June 1st, autumn on September 1st and winter on December 1st. Oh, and because they have decided on this timetable, those are now the Official Dates for the various seasons. Not for me they ain’t! My diary still tells me that spring starts on the vernal equinox, and that’s still the day that I will be observing.

Anyhoo, in other weather news, the same Met Office say that this winter – that’s the one that ended on the last day of February obviously – has been the coldest in England for over 30 years, and for nearly 50 years in Scotland. I can well believe it, the cold weather seems to have gone on forever, and the snow has been a much more regular occurrence than usual. This was illustrated by this NASA satellite photo released in January of a snow and ice-covered Great Britain.



The Met Office have yet to release a seasonal forecast for this spring, even though it is already here! But then, given their track record for last summer – “a barbecue summer” it rained and rained – and this winter – “milder than average” coldest for 30+ years – it is maybe not so surprising.

I am just glad to see the sun come out for the last couple of days, even if it is going to go back in hiding again tomorrow!

Is It Spring Yet?

Fed up of this.....

Can't wait for this....

Okay, so we don't have any snow on the ground right now, and we don't live by the sea, but I've had enough of this winter. Spring seems such a long time coming!

Back to London, the Thames and the O2

In my last post I shared some pictures of London taken from the Thames river, and as it happens we travelled a similar journey yesterday. We journeyed up to London in order to see the Michael Jackson Exhibition at the O2. As I have mentioned before, we were due to go to one of his “This Is It” concerts at the same venue last summer, but MJ’s tragic and untimely death prevented us from achieving what had been a long-held ambition for the both of us. As a small compensation for missing out on seeing Michael in concert we decided that we would travel up to the O2 on the last day of the MJ Exhibition.

And so yesterday we rose early, well early for a Sunday anyway, and prepared for our day out. I managed to see a little of the start of the Australian Open men’s final as we got ready, but it was obviously not going to be Andy Murray’s day. Still 74 years and counting since the last British male winner of a Grand Slam tennis tournament! Maybe this year at Wimbledon or the US Open? Time will tell. Anyhoo, I was talking about our trip.... We left home about 9:45 which should have left us plenty of time to catch the train up to Paddington, but unfortunately we had forgotten to bring enough coins to pay for the parking while we were gone and so had to turn back towards the Yellow House after 5 minutes and go all the way back to get some more. This meant that our time window for catching the train was getting very narrow indeed! So, it was a race into town to go and get parked, and then a mad dash to the train station as the time ticked away. We arrived breathless at the station just as the tannoy announced that our train was waiting at the platform. So we ran again up the steps to the platform and jumped on the train, relieved that we had made it in time.

The journey into London was much more relaxed! We always enjoy travelling this way, as you don’t have to worry about the driving, or the other idiots who drive like crazy, or about getting parked at the other end. As the old adverts used to say here, we “let the train take the strain”. :-) Once we had arrived we headed towards the tube station. Normally we would take the tube all the way to the O2, but unfortunately the line that goes there was shut for engineering works yesterday, as were a lot of other routes. So we had to be very inventive with how we got to Greenwich. We took the tube to London Bridge (via Elephant & Castle) and then walked over to London Bridge pier in order to catch a Thames Clipper – a catamaran river-taxi – that took us all the way to the O2.

This trip on the river, although once again on a very cold day, was much more comfortable than the one I spoke of previously as we were inside this time and not sat freezing our wotsits off on the top deck! Here are a couple of videos that Dori took on our trip from London Bridge to Greenwich. The first shows the approach to Tower Bridge...

And this second one gives an idea of what it is like to travel the Thames. You get to see a mixture of old and new buildings, as well as some old industrial buildings that have been converted to new luxury apartments. The skyscrapers you can see in the background towards the end of the video are at Canary Wharf which is the modern centre of London’s financial district.

It was a very enjoyable half-hour trip along the river, and we agreed that we will have to do this again sometime in the summer.

We arrived quite quickly at Queen Elizabeth II pier just alongside the O2, disembarked and made our way over to the arena. After the rush earlier in the day, we now found ourselves with a little time to kill before our allotted time to enter the exhibition came round. Sadly not quite long enough to grab something to eat though! There are some great restaurants at the O2, many of which we have yet to sample. Before we knew it though, our time had arrived and we made our way into the exhibition.

The MJ Memorabilia Exhibition was just great. There were so many personal items there, as well as films, photographs and paintings of the great man. It was so sad to see some of the footage of Michael, and to see the little sandwich boxes that his children used to pack for him when he was in rehearsal for “This Is It”. But there were plenty of uplifting exhibits too, such as his handwritten lyrics to “Beat It”, plenty of his stage clothes and some items taken from Neverland. We were in there for a little over an hour but the time flew by – a sure sign that you are having a good time!

The exhibition was fantastic,and I felt that it was fitting that we got to see it at the venue of what would have been his comeback concerts, and indeed what was the site of his final public appearance in the UK. We would both so dearly loved to have seen MJ in concert here, and judging from everything I have seen both in the exhibition and in the “This Is It” movie, those shows were going to be something out of this world. Nothing could make up for missing out on that experience, but visiting this exhibition has gone a long way to healing some wounds and helping me to reconcile that some things are just not meant to be. The world lost a kind and gentle soul last June – a true Legend.

For Dori's view of our day out and of the exhibition, click here.

Sunday Snaps 9 - London...from the Thames

It's been a while since my last Sunday Snaps post, so here is the latest in the series.

These photos were all taken 5 years ago during a trip up to London on a VERY cold Sunday in January. We took one of the river boats that travel along the Thames, getting on at Westminster and off at Greenwich.

This first snap is of the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge.

Just opposite Parliament is the London Eye. You can take what they term "flights" in the pods of this massive ferris wheel and get some great views of London. The flights take about half an hour to do a full circle and are well worth trying if you get the chance.

Perhaps the most famous bridge in the country is Tower Bridge, which is named after the nearby Tower of London. It was a little surreal to be sailing underneath this famous landmark.

The last picture for today is of the rebuilt Globe Theatre, the original of which saw many of Shakespeare's original play performances. It is a wonderful project that has constructed a faithful reproduction of the original theatre.

Viewing London from the river is a very interesting way of seeing the city and some of its most notable landmarks, but I would highly recommend not doing so on the coldest day of the year!! :-)  We do have some more pics from this trip so I may share those in another Sunday Snaps someday soon. Stay tuned!

Snow Day!

As Dori mentions in her post today, we have had significant snow here overnight, and it has continued to fall during today too. The weather has been on a cold groove since a little before Christmas, but this week has seen it get even worse. Most nights have seen a very sharp frost that has made everything look like it has been placed in an ice-box. On Monday, which was my first day back at work since Christmas, our car refused to start and I had to call out the breakdown service. The verdict was that the car battery had met its demise and had gone to meet its maker. So, the New Year started with a £70 bill for a new battery, and a late start to my working week which was exacerbated by the fact that the delay meant that I was then driving into the office during the peak of the rush hour. Ho hum, things can only get better.

The snow started late yesterday afternoon, and the forecast was for anything up to 16 inches of snow in some areas of southern England. The reality was that we got about 3 inches or so where we live by the time I woke up this morning, but even that was enough to cause traffic chaos. With the snow still falling heavily, I was fearful that if I did drive into the office then I may not be able to make the return journey later in the day, so I rang to say that I would not be able to make it in – and by the sounds of it I was far from the only one in that situation. So, today is a Snow Day! Yay!!

Dori and I decided to have a walk out to see what the conditions were like around where we live, and to take a couple of pictures to share with you all. The wind was quite icy, and we both had our hats pulled down around our ears, and our scarves pulled up over our mouths. It was like a scene from “Scott of the Antarctic”! :-) I hope that you like the pictures.

The snow continued to fall quite heavily up until lunchtime, so it is now deeper than you see in the photos, and the forecast for tonight is for possibly more snow followed by a very severe frost. So the conditions tomorrow are likely to be even more treacherous than they have been today! I brought some work home with me yesterday, so I will work from home tomorrow if I can. At the moment there is no sign of this cold stretch ending anytime soon, and there may be another heavy snowfall at the weekend.

It may be time to barricade ourselves into the Yellow House and just wait it out until the thaw!!