Monday, April 28, 2014

Early days

Wednesday evening.
 We're now at Liz's flat and getting ready to crash. Tomorrow already has important events planned including a 10.00 am booking to see the Collider exhibition at the Science Museum in South Kensington.

All went well on the way over, other than the tedious overnight (8 hours) wait in the terminal at Singapore.

This means we experienced 8 hours flying to Singapore, 8 hours at Changi Int'l airport and then nearly 14 hours flying to London. Disembarking was a joy.

Bev was targeted by an Evangelist while trapped in the window seat. She received a helpful pamphlet that informed her that she was special and that God loved her. As the 14 hour leg of the trip dragged on Bev felt that if God really loved her he would have provided sufficient funds so that she could have travelled first class. What saved everyone, in fact, were the movies. 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' was worth watching and Bev thought 'Saving Mr Banks' was well done. The latter is of course of interest  to children's literature enthusiasts.

When we were finally on the ground at Heathrow, we picked up a pocket wifi modem in T3. We've rented it for a month to try to out-guess Telstra. It seems quite OK - easy connection, etc. It's a Huawei product, E5331. A$69 via Optus in Oz. A$136 for a month in the UK including 150 MB/day.

Thursday

Liz has a Nespresso machine, and has provided us with a "Welcome" box containing 15 varieties of coffee, 10 capsules of each. Great mornings to come.

The Collider Exhibition at the Science Museum concerns the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland/France, etc. The exhibition provides a series of excellent multimedia experiences of the outside and the inside of the collider, complemented with real examples of machine components


and more general artefacts, like the bicycles needed to get around the 27 kms perimeter of the collider. There are audiovisual chats from engineers and scientists and audio reports encountered as you walk through the simulated tunnel. Heaven for physicists!

After lunch at the museum, we headed back through the South Kensington Museums' subway to take the Tube to St Pauls Churchyard to collect the National Trust passes for the three of us to use in the Lake District. That was done without a problem.

Next stop was Two Temple Place to see 'Discovery', an exhibition of material from the 8 Cambridge museums. Lots of amazing items to view. The venue was a discovery too, a fabulous former Victorian mansion with lavish appointments everywhere from carved balustrades to marble floors and fireplace and the sections of carved wood wall panelling and enormous stained glass windows.


In the evening, a 45 min trip to Angel, meeting Liz for pizza before going to see Belinda in an Australian musical, We Live Here (?).

All too much and we were in a daze well before the end of day, but all three events were closing before we return to London, so it was see it now or never.

Friday
Russ off to Kensington Olympia by 27 bus to Europcar. Eventually drove off in a Fiat 500 L, 1.4 litre diesel. Initial hire cost for 17 days was thought to be 203 pounds, but the switch to the Fiat added 85 pounds. No research done so far on the difference in fuel consumption over the Vauxhall Astra, but the Fiat is roomier as well. We shall have to see whether we save the extra cost over the hire. We later realised that the prices quoted did not include 20% VAT, bringing the total to 350 pounds. The 5 pounds extra/day for the Fiat more than doubles the daily cost after the first fortnight.

So back to Notting Hill, parked inside Liz's Portobello Court (the auto gate was broken) and load up with bags. Then the magic of GPS weaves us north for an hour or more of suburbs to the M1, where we can finally relax.

By 4.30 we were at Stafford, 

having endured an afternoon of heavy traffic coming up the M1 and M6, just spending time on the transport day to the Lake District. Not crawling much, mostly 70 mph (115 kph) but continuous 3-lane crowds, shoulder to shoulder for 250 km. A$40 of fuel to get this far, just over half-way and using a quarter tank.

So we were well behind schedule for the day. At that point we had intended to go straight to the hotel, book in, then come back out to get Liz at 9.15 PM at Oxenholme rail. But with 212 mies to go, it won't happen. It will be so late when we get to Kendall that we'll just wait for Liz's train and save ourselves the extra hour drive.

And then it got worse. In the hour and a half after Stafford, we covered 40 miles. After Leicester the traffic vanished and we reached Kendal with time for fish'n'chips before meeting Liz's train.

Full dark for the 40 mins to the hotel, in the gate at 10 PM.













1 comment:

  1. Enjoying photos. Collider looked interesting. Seen YouTube clip of guy putting hand in front of particle stream? Wanted to test drive a fiat. More stylish than Astra but ?? Diesel:-((

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