Hi Ho, Catching up on my picture blogging, I now have various pics on various websites for you too ogle at. Christina has popped across the ocean a couple of times, and that has been a good excuse to get out and about and see the green and pleasant land. We've had a weekend in London, where highlights included some West End Theatre (Lion King), and together with 3 friends from high school my first English yum cha and Christina's first ever.
These pics are on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=36804&l=61d21&id=731953277
More pics are on Flickr - a better photo presentation site, of trip around mid-to northwest england:
http://www.flickr.com/photos
Click on "view as a slideshow" on the right, and if you want to see some pic info or title, just click on each pic. Click again to restart.
We also had a week over Easter together, where we went to Nottingham to start exploring the heritage of Robin Hood, and had a quiet ale in England's Oldest Pub, est.1189, where Richard the Lionheart stopped off on his way to the Crusades. We also caught the Nottingham Jazz Orchestra playing at the 5 ways hotel. It felt like walking into an RSL on bingo night. I've done some looking for jazz big bands to play in in the area, and the websites are dominated by pictures of grey haired men in american GI uniforms playing to the whole swing hits of the 30's and 40's era. Need to find somewhere to play 70's funk arrangements and such. But the band OK and it was good to hear some live music. We took a quick 2 day trip to the Lakes district, driving through Snake Pass in the Peaks district. We took a driving tour of the region, driving through sunshine, sleet, fog, snow, sunshine again. It is a beautiful area, with even higher peaks than in the Peak district, water all round, and a really great combination of manmade features like hedgerows and stone walls snaking over the hillsides. Fish and chips on Good Friday, KFC, Pizza Hut, Melton Mowbray pork pies (actually bought in Melton Mowbray), added up to at least 3 months worth of fast food allowance eaten all in a week. And to pondering the question of just how hard can it be to get peas right? Just keep cooking until they're soft, dammit. But the most important thing we learned, was to trust our GPS. GPS is always right.
Then Winnie and Andrew and some friends Sid and Debbie who were on their way back from their own Lakes trip, dropped into Loughborough, and we hopped off to Belvoir Castle, which has been mispronounced as Beaver Castle ever since it was built just to snub the French. The film Little Lord Fauntelroy was filmed there - a film that gets played every Christmas in Germany and one of Christina's favourites. So we went on the tour, Christina could point out where some of the key scenes were filmed, and an art historian gave us a 15 minute overview of one painting. We were a little underwhelmed by the 'military re-enactments', and then retired to a local gastro-pub for some fine pub food in a little village just outside L'boro called Woodhouse Eaves.
Some tasters:
