One of the Magnificent Seven

This is what it looked like in Nunhead Cemetery (one of London's Magnificent Seven cemeteries) last weekend:

The Trees around Nunhead on Tour 3: York

August 4th, 2008.
Or should it be the Trains around...

York is famous for lots of different things and is a terrific and quite touristy City (and, we gather, a nice place to live). One thing is for sure: we find it hard to avoid the National Railway Museum. Technically, part of the UK "National Museum of Science and Industry" (NMSI), the railway Museum seems to have a character of its own. Not least, for me, because of the deep and abiding beauty that these huge steam engines have. Astonishing pieces of engineering and technology, they are liveried and polished and cared for to such a great extent that they seem more than just complex machines. Sometimes, looking at the detail of a cab or the side of a driving wheel with its rods and pistons, there can be a real sense of the numinous. If that doesn't sound too pretentious. I have also to say that any Museum that broadcasts videos of "The Night Mail" and has a large model railway gets my vote....

The details of those controls and the richness of the reds, silvers and greens seem wonderful to me.
Some of the engines seem similar at first...

While others are really quite famous...

The NRM also has quite extensive workshops, and while we were there perhaps the most famous railway engine of them all was undergoing what appeared to be a very extensive refit...

...and here is one of the people who made it all possible...

A thought of Chairman Humph

"Britain has the best trees in the world."

It Just Occured to Me, the reminiscences and thoughts of Chairman Humph,

Humphrey Lyttelton, London, 2007, p.149

Catching up...

Its been a while since I posted. Basically a BT problem with our ADSL link - which due to UK regulation - has to be sorted out by going through our ISP. Which is a slow and cumbersome way to get stuff fixed.

It was broke for a while, and then the rest of the family had first dibs on catching up. Sigh.

The trees around Nunhead on Tour 2: Cresswell Crags

August 3rd, 2008
Cresswell Crags is the only place in Britain where Palaeolithic cave art has been found (according to Wikipedia, at least). This picture above gives an overview of the site today.

The Cresswell Web site is a good introduction to the area and its attractions (http://www.creswell-crags.org.uk/). It includes artist’s impressions of the Crags as they might have appeared in the Ice Ages, with the caves looking out on a narrow river valley. I remember the launch of the site in the British Museum a few years back. The Beast of Bolsover (Dennis Skinner) came, as the local MP, and was very charming. I was involved in ensuring that the site would work when showcased in the Reading Room.

There is a new visitor centre under construction, which I guess was the reason why the entrance to the car park seemed a bit of a building site. However the existing centre isn’t bad, and gives a feel for Cresswell and the caves.

As you can see above, nowadays the valley that the caves look down is flooded, with a rather nice dark green, swan- and duck-filled lake. The caves themselves are only accessible as part of a guided tour (book in advance).

This was a short, relaxing break on the trip, but we didn't stay for the cave tours. The images here were taken through the protecting grills.

And, for the record, we spotted a rather nice tree.

The trees around Nunhead on Tour: Part 1

Every so often (about yearly) we get to leave Nunhead for an extended period of time that we call a holiday. This blog is therefore now officially On Tour.

This year's plan was to travel up the East side of Britain, to see a tad of Scotland, and then to come back down to the Home that is all Nunhead, via a lightning visit to Hadrian's Wall.

So come with us.

This will be a stirring tale of competing cathedrals (and castles); of neolithic man, Vikings and Romans; of Pluck, squirrels and ducks. Lots of ducks. Lots and lots of ducks. We will visit a poisonous garden. We will also see one Scotsman being dismembered, and risk being insulted in very bad French. We'll discover Scotland's only Lake and try to avoid being cut off by the tide. .

Oh, and in passing we'll look at some Trees.

'Cos that is what we do.

Dr Who in Kensington

The press yesterday was full of pictures (on around page 5) of Daleks and Davros in the Royal Albert Hall. The BBC children's Prom had been taken over by Dr Who and his monsters.

Self indulgent? Certainly. But the last episode of the last series had been far worse on that count. Dumming down from the Blue Peter Proms of the last 9 years ( we were at many of them)? For sure.

But I did certainly enoy the Dalek on stage, the Ood and the Cybermen. And we had a special episode all to ourselves. Tate turned up without being in the programme (surprise!). Lightweight (and too much of Murray Gold's incidental music), and annoying - but fun all the same.