Today we bid farewell to the Thames, and made a right turn onto the Kennet and Avon canal. As you can see from the picture, we had yet to escape from the urban sprawl of Reading. Reading has redeveloped the canal front area with shops and offices, but unlike boater friendly towns like Banbury or Coventry, they have put a fence up next to the water and don’t want you to moor there. To be fair, this part of the…
Does this room look familiar? You might have seen it before looking like this. Today we visited Basildon Park, a National Trust stately home that sometimes doubles as a TV and movie set. Several of the rooms were used in Downton Abbey (as the Grantham’s London house) and the recent movie of Pride and Prejudice. Basildon is an imposing Georgian house built in 1776. It looks a bit more friendly from the gardens at the back, though still somewhat formal….
While the canal system takes you through the industrial heartland of England, past factories and terraced houses, riverside properties along the Thames are expensive, and even the boathouses, gazebos; and follies by the river are vehicles for conspicuous consumption. (Apparently the Oxford comma is still stressed out from the recent kidnapping attempt, so we are getting some help from the Keynsham semicolon.) Let’s take a look at some. Yep, that’s a boathouse with a thatched roof. A couple of two…
Today we set off down the Thames. There is no river that has done more for British culture, from the Magna Carta to Pink Floyd. It’s quite a change from the canal system. First of all we have to pay a separate license fee – fifty quid for a week for a boat of Pegotty’s size. The river itself is much wider and deeper than the canals, which means we can go faster. The speed limit is a breathtaking five…
You know you are old when you see stuff you own in a museum display case. I own this exact model of cylindrical slide rule that’s on display in the History of Science Museum. I probably used it in my O-level maths exams, as it was faster than log tables. What’s more, it’s in the same case with bits of Babbage’s difference engine. The difference engine was intended to calculate mathematical tables, by performing iterative calculations and stopping when a…
So. In London, there has been a long-standing venue called The Proms, musical performances in a variety of genres. Haven’t made it to that, but we went to a performance last night of The Oxford Proms. It was held in the historic Sheldonian Theatre, a Christofer Wren listed building. Entering the space my first impression was, “Where’s the body?” Could have been the scene of one of the paintings of an anatomy lesson presented to students (all male, of course!)…
Where else but the Pitt-Rivers Museum would you find a case labelled Buttock Ornaments – Africa? Or a couple of cases of betel chewing equipment… next to the opium pipes and snuff boxes. General Pitt-Rivers was a Victorian army officer on a committee to design a new rifle for the British Army, so he started collecting guns. However, once he started collecting, he found he couldn’t stop, and he went on to collect pretty much everything made by the hand…
It was raining this morning, so I stayed back at the boat while Paula took the laundry to a launderette. This afternoon it cleared up a little and we had two appointments, one at one of the oldest colleges and one at one of the newest. It’s not just the colleges that have a long history in Oxford, though. Some of the pubs do, too. The Bear Inn can trace it’s history back to 1242 though the current building only…
Oxford is happy to cash in on the fact that the Bodleian Library was used as a set in the Harry Potter movies. The tourist shops seem to have as much Hogwarts memorabilia as Oxford memorabilia. However, they are totally missing out on the latest craze. The idea for the game of Pokemon came from the traditional Chinese sport of cricket fighting. Male crickets are stimulated to aggression and put in the same container to fight until one runs away….
We stopped for water in the professionally quaint canal side village of Thrupp today. Thrupp is such a great name that Paula and I have been saying to each other for the past couple of days, echoing it back and forth. “Thrupp.” “Thrupp.” “Thrupp?” “Thrupp!” Thruppity-thrupp Thrupp-Thrupp.” I admit it’s not the most fun thing you could do with your mouth, but it’s up there with whistling Terrapin Station or eating a Hershey bar. The water pressure in Thrupp is…