Category: UK/England

On the way to work this morning, the sun was out, the air was crisp, and the sky was blue (with no clouds in sight).  Here’s two pictures I took on the way to work this morning:

This morning it was foggy when I went to London for the AWS Summit.  here’s a picture I took in town:

I took Tuesday off work and we went to visit Poleson Lacey (a national trust property).  All of the pictures can be found in our flickr set, but here are a few.

Over the weekend, we went to the London Coffee Festival.  It was cool!  Even though we paid £20 for admission, we got that back in freebies.  It was also neat to see all the coffee(s) and stuff in one place.  The neatest thing I saw was this machine to make turkish coffee (picture is first below).  It will soon be for sale in the UK.  More pictures can be found in the flickr set.

Yesterday, we went to Stourhead (here’s the National Trust page on Stourhead).  Here’s a few pictures:

 [Update 2014-03-23 08:56:53] Here’s a link to the set of complete images on Flickr

[Update 2014-03-26 08:26:41] Cyndi’s pictures are in the process of being uploaded.  Check the flickr set for the new pictures.

Yesterday, on the way home, there was a freak spring rainstorm.  Out of that was a great rainbow.  As we were on our way home, it even turned into a double rainbow.  Here’s some pictures.  The rest are on flickr.

Yesterday we went to Chartwell.  Chartwell was purchased by Winston Churchill in the 1920s.  He lived there until he died in the 1960s.  If you want to see all of the pictures we took, here’s the Chartwell set on flickr.

In a follow-up to this post on flooding in the Somerset Levels (that happen to be below sea level), Croydon also has a flooding problem.  Cyndi and I were up that way yesterday.  While Cyndi and Lydia went shopping, Isaac and I went for a walk and took some pictures.  You can see all of them in this set on flickr, but there’s a few below.

The problem, as I see it, is an old dry (or mostly dry) river/creekbed that has no where to drain.  A huge roundabout has been built where the creek used to flow.  So, the solution is to pump the water out.  But, when they pump it out, it doesn’t have anywhere to go so they have to rely on the storm sewers to take it away.  They had come up with a plan to flood a subway (not what you are thinking) with the water they are pumping out (but that wasn’t in effect when Isaac and I were there).

On one hand, I feel for anyone whose homes have water because of this.  I can imagine it happened overnight with no warning (like a flash flood).  On the other hand, I can’t imagine there’s no bigger pumps anywhere on the island to pump it out.  Using fire engines just seem inefficient to me

Everyone knows–or at least I assume everyone knows–that parts of the Netherlands (aka Holland…see this video for more information on this country)–are below sea level.  Well, did you know that part of England is also below sea level?  Well, it is:  Somerset  I didn’t know it until the news media started running stories about pumping in Somerset.  Here’s some news stories (along with a video you can watch):

Will the military help pump at Somerset
Pumping Continues (good video)

[Update 2014-02-16 07:42:14] Here’s an article about flooding in Croydon (with some pictures that Isaac and I took yesterday.

Image from alex foster via flickr

Here’s a picture I took yesterday on the way to work.  It was foggy.  Cold but not REALLY cold.  The sun was coming up.  Did I mention it was foggy?