Welcome to our little home on the net. We are Steve & Rosemary and live in Buckinghamshire, UK. This is a blog of our life, sometimes interesting, but mainly boring. It is very picture orientated as Steve loves to take pictures, especially of wildlife. Sometimes he has his arm twisted by Rosemary and takes the odd snap of a weed.
I also add photographs to a shared google photo album which is here
We visited Cambridge, specifically to attend a lecture to celebrate 150 Years of Periodic Table given by Dr Wothers, as part of Cambridge Science Week. This was aimed at children (but I fancied the explosions as well) and the intention was to generate interest in science, so we took Julian, Phil and Selina.
Stopped by Caius College to show Julian where I had spent three years. Showed him the stone commemorating the life of Stephen Hawking place outside Professor Hawking’s college room, we also saw the double helix floor engraving celebrating Francis Crick and James Watson.
Lunch at The Copper Kettle and then we walked onto the the Chemistry Laboratory to attend the lecture.
The weather was said to be good, so it was time to get Morrison out for a little outing. The Camping and Caravan
Before we arrived at the campsite, we paid a visit to Sandringham visitor centre for some lunch. Of course, we had chosen half term, and the place was heaving with offspring. The restaurant good, Rosemary ate veggie (which she said was the best risotto she’d had), while I dined on Sandringham pheasant. Had mine been shot by Prince Phillip?
After lunch, we headed off to do some bird spotting at RSPB Snettisham. Here we parked in the free car park and then walked alongside several fishing ponds, and eventually made it to
We now drove to the campsite, checked in and set up home for the next couple of nights. Huge site, not all visible from one place, and took quite a while to walk around. Good to find that the wifi was free, and it worked pretty well for web browsing.
In the morning we walked into Sandringham through the woods. Here we had a coffee and then viewed the chainsaw sculptures and discovered Norfolk Rocks. All the kids were searching for Norfolk Rocks, we had never heard of them before. After this excitement, we went to the Sandringham restaurant for lunch. Again I ate pheasant, and
After lunch we walked back to the Campsite on another route and arrived home in time for tea.
The next day we packed up and headed home. We tried a couple of tourist spots on the way home, first was Castle Rising. This has one of the deepest dry moats I have seen, and incredibly steep slopes into it from the castle side and the surrounding countryside.
The next spot was the sluice gates on the Great River Ouse Relief Channel. Google found a route to the gates, unfortunatley Google maps had not factored in the locked gate to the power station.
Now it was off home after our brief stay away. The rain held off, the promised sun was not as much as it should have been, and it definitely was not as warm as it had been predicted. A week later and it would have been warmer.
Back at home, we were welcomed by a huge display of starlings. They congregated in our poplar trees. Some landed and fed on our field, and did that bit where birds on one side fly over the other birds and land on the other side. Eventually, the birds moved off to the trees on the other side of the road, and I assume then flew off to Otmoor.
On a sunny day, we visited Stowe Gardens to view the Snowdrops. We were told the displays were fabulous. On arrival, the car park was brimming with people. Why weren’t people at work, or were we all retired? We headed for the Snowdrops, assured by the NT ticket inspector that the displays were fabulous. We found the Snowdrops, though pretty and of various varieties, we were somewhat underwhelmed by the density of them. There were some nice winter aconites, cyclamens and crocuses planted through the snowdrops.
A walk through some more of the gardens on this bright, cool day, to view the lakes, the Rotunda, the Gothic Temple, Palladian Bridge and the Pebble Alcove with its beautiful crest and motifs outlined in pebbles. R hinted that she fancied one in our garden.
Back at the visitor centre we ate lunch, bought postcards and checked out the secondhand bookshop for some Science Fiction.
Managed to persuade Rosemary to go out for a musical occasion. We were going to see a performance of some of the works of the band Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Both Keith Emerson and Greg Lake are dead. Carl Palmer the sole surviving band member was the drummer, and with two other guitarists was touring Europe performing the works of ELP. Yes, they played the complete album side of Tarkus.
The concert was at The Stables in Milton Keynes, I had never been there, whereas Rosemary had, on a school trip with Selina when Selina was at middle school.
We started off by visiting Ikea and had supper there. I know how to treat a lady on a dinner date! Then it was on to The Stables for the concert. There was a support band, 4th Labyrinth, loud and not my taste, although the keyboardist had a good line in banter. R felt the female bassist would have a headache at the end due to all the dreadlock hair tossing she did. Carl Palmer then came on, his huge drum kit taking pride of place. The two supporting artists Paul Bielatowicz and bassist Simon Fitzpatrick played the guitars. Simon Fitzpatrick played the Chapman Stick for most of the concert. The music was recognisable as
Carl Palmer intimated he was putting together an ELP 50th anniversary tour with some ‘A’ list musicians. Shall keep a look out for that.
We drove over to Leicester to stay for the weekend with Norman and Valerie. Richard and Andrea also stayed over. They had been visiting Leicester to see a preacher being installed into his new church in Leicester. Saturday we visited the Cradock Arms for a beer, and then walked back home. We saw the new garden shed, Valerie’s pride and joy.
Evening arrived, with Richard and Andrea duly arriving for supper after the church service.
Sunday after breakfast, the men plus Andrea, went for a walk around the University of Leicester Botanic Garden. Afterwards, we all visited the Lansdowne for a traditional English Sunday Roast. Well at least the men stayed with tradition, the women failed to follow tradition and ate off the standard menu.
