Can't complain about the British Summer

No, I can't complain, because having got back to the UK in mid May, it is true to say that the summer in England has been good with lots of sunshine.
I took a trip up to Lords to watch the Womens International match between the MCC Women and The Rest of the World Women.
It was a beautiful sunny day and Charlotte Edwards was interviewed on the field of play.

The ground was looking good

Suzie Bates won the toss and chose take her ROW team in to bat first.

There is nothing nicer than sitting in the sunshine and watching a quality game of cricket.

The ROW were batting well

At the end of 50 overs there was a healthy score on the board

MCC Women were scoring runs but not enough

Charlotte Edwards top scored as usual

However, the MCC Women could not reach the required total.

 The final scorecard shows a well earned win for the ROW women

Early in June I went on a steam train trip from Woking to Swanage.

At Swanage I made the mistake of having a largish pub lunch and then walking up the very steep climb to the Durlston County Park. The view from the castle made it worth it. I took the bus back down the hill to the station.

 Black 5 was ready to take us back up towards London

 One of the old semaphore signals at Swanage

Later in June there was cycle racing around the streets of Woking town centre.
Here are the pits.

Ride for the Elite Cycle Team and get a pink bike

A bit of a lead but still an hour of racing ahead

 

Hard work under sunny skies.

Eileen Roe won the ladies race and Tom Stewart won the men's.

 

In July I went to see my youngest daughter who lives in Malvern. We went for a walk across the Malvern Hills.

 

Malvern bloom

My eldest daughter has temporarily moved back to the UK from Sydney. Later in July I visited her new home near Much Hadham. We went for a walk through the local cornfields.

This Green Tye is a village and not a curry. It was a great place to stop for refreshment at the local pub.

 

In August I caught up with my daughter again and she works at a well known bank just across the road from the Royal Exchange.

  

I visited a museum and got to lift this gold bar weighing 28 lbs

 

 St Pauls was on my walk back towards Waterloo Station

 

I took this photo from the Wibbly Wobbly bridge.

 The South Bank featuring the recently opened Shard

Another trip to Malvern and here is the village of Powick in the distance. 

Ok, so the summer is over now and the weather in England is not so nice. The need to get back to sunshine has become overwhelming so in January I will be off to Adelaide for a month. It will probably be damn hot there, but I plan do some cycling, watch cricket and visit some of the Tour Down Under events. No doubt I will also be seeking out the source of most of the red wines that fill my local Woking supermarket shelves. ie McLaren Vale, Barossa, Adelaide Hills, etc.

Until the next time

Peewit

Trip to Greenwich

As my youngest brother and his family who live in California were over in England on holiday, I thought that it would make a good day out to go to Greenwich.
It seems like I was wrong.
I had visited Greenwich on my own a couple of years ago and had found that the place was a building site with access denied to many areas. They were filming the most recent, and most boring of the Pirates of the Caribbean series at the time. However I did at least manage to get to the Greenwich Observatory to see the Harrison clocks, and the Prime Meridian. Most of the points of interest around Greenwich are free of charge to view.

The weather in England has been very poor with endless rain and little sunshine. This day was looking to be much the same , but one has to make the best of it.

We took the train to Waterloo and then walked to the quays by the London Eye.
Here we boarded a river cruise to Greenwich.

The sky was grey but at least it was not actually raining.
The recently opened Shard now dominates the skyline south of the Thames.

On arriving at Greenwich we saw the Cutty Sark which again has just been recently re-opened to the public after it was partially destroyed in a fire.
It does seem that many attempts to renovate things actually end up in a fire engulfing the object in question. Maybe this is a tactic to extract greater sums of money for the renovation, or maybe it is just plain incompetence.


We decided to get some lunch and visited this Pie and Mash shop where we had "pie and mash". It was very nice and excellent value for money.


After our lunch it was time to go exploring. However we did see "The first shop in the world" nearby.


As we walked towards Greenwich Park it soon became clear that once again the whole place was a massive building site. It seems that some Olympic events were being carried out here. The entire Park was closed. The amount of building, steelwork, seating, electrical and communications infrastructure being installed was staggering. It must be costing millions. Most of it looked brand new and there were hundreds of construction workers. All this for a temporary structure.

We did attempt to walk around the Park to see if there was any access at any point but there was not. The best we could manage was to find a plaque in the wall on a northern boundary.


What a disaster, and it was threatening to rain all the time.
We made our way back down the hill and did at least pay a quick visit to the Maritime Museum. Soon after we boarded another river cruise boat back to Waterloo and a train ride home.

Avoid Greenwich.

Peewit