The camelias are out in force now too, very pretty! I would definitely recommend a visit. Hopefully we'll be going back there in June to see the azaleas and rhododendrons, they were amazing last year! Might take along a picnic too..
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Leonardslee Gardens, Horsham
Baby wallabies!! =) How cute is that? We went over to Leonardslee Gardens on Sunday, and look what we found! It's quite lucky lots of the babies are albino, or we might not have spotted their little ears sticking out of the wallaby pouches! This one poked its head right out to have a wash! If you like that sort of thing, there are few more photos over on my flickr account..
Friday, April 16, 2010
Windscreen wiper FAIL
Before I forget, take a look at this interesting use of a windscreen wiper we spotted just outside Horsham the other day.. yeah I think it's got some work to do before it gets any visibility out of that window!
Skywatch Friday: Sunshine!!
A lovely day for a trip down to Brighton to pick up my birthday pressie..
.. but still with a touch of volcanic Icelandic dust in evidence! It was bizarre to drive past Gatwick earlier and see absolutely no planes in the air!
For my skies from around the world, check out http://skyley.blogspot.com
Location:Horsham
Friday, April 09, 2010
Skywatch Friday: BBQ weather!
Just heading home for a BBQ, the first of the year! Hooray! I just hope it manages to stay warm enough til then!
Location:Dorking
For more skies from around the globe see http://skyley.blogspot.com
Wowser!
What a nice week to have off work!! We've already got all our BBQ stuff ready for this evening to celebrate all this sunshine! =)
Monday, April 05, 2010
Broadbridge Heath walk
Well today, after realising at the crucial moment, that our new National Trust membership cards haven't shown up through the post yet, we decided not to fork out £11.50 entrance fees (!) for Wakehurst Place, and headed back home for a more local walk.
We drove over towards Rookwood Golf Course and parked up near the entrance to the fields on Robin Hood Lane. There's a really nice field walk across farmland there, and you usually spot a few deer running about the place too!
I always like finding new circular walks, this one is about 2 miles and it's quite relaxing, no hills or anything. It seems to be quite popular with dog walkers. We normally get to the farmer's house and then feel we ought to turn around again, but today we actually followed the proper public footpath signs, and it turns out the paths lead to Broadbridge Heath Lane, just near the village. Just walk along this road for a while, and you see a right turn back on to Robin Hood Lane. Lovely! I like it when a plan comes together.
We drove over towards Rookwood Golf Course and parked up near the entrance to the fields on Robin Hood Lane. There's a really nice field walk across farmland there, and you usually spot a few deer running about the place too!
I always like finding new circular walks, this one is about 2 miles and it's quite relaxing, no hills or anything. It seems to be quite popular with dog walkers. We normally get to the farmer's house and then feel we ought to turn around again, but today we actually followed the proper public footpath signs, and it turns out the paths lead to Broadbridge Heath Lane, just near the village. Just walk along this road for a while, and you see a right turn back on to Robin Hood Lane. Lovely! I like it when a plan comes together.
Friday, April 02, 2010
Skywatch Friday: Good Friday edition
Phew, the rain managed to clear up in time for our evening up in London! Just in time to make us look really weird wearing ski attire to keep warm, excellent! Hehe..
For more skies from around the world, check out http://skyley.blogspot.com
Location:London from the train
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Olaf Priol, Flair Spool and Raif Lopol
-A radical new "Dirty Harry" style advertising campaign from Labour
-A James Bond makeover for the AA in Project Apollo: using AA Rocketmen to take on the M25
-The circle line to house Hadron Collider II
-The Queen saves a bit of dosh and flies easyJet:
-Virgin Media reveal their secret use of ferrets to maintain their cable networks, used for their "strong nesting instinct, their long, lean build and inquisitive nature, and for their ability to get down holes":
-and the first ever lickable newspaper is printed, though you ought to beware of the nuts contained therein:
I think my favourite though, is Google's new Google Translate for Animals software:
Check out the demo =)
If only every day was as productive, the world would be a magical place!
Monday, March 29, 2010
Jack the Ripper tour of London
So, on Friday, for Mum's birthday treat, we ventured into deepest darkest East London for the Jack the Ripper tour. We got to Aldgate East station a little early, so we popped into the local pub, The White Hart, for a drink. It's funny, you instantly know which part of London you're in, people are totally cashing in on the whole Jack the Ripper thing. I think everywhere wants to claim some kind of spurious connection to the guy. This pub is rather proud of the fact that Ripper suspect, Severin Klosowski, worked as a barber in the cellar. We took one look at the creepy side-street running alongside the pub, and decided that was undoubtedly where our tour was going to take us.
We met up with our tour guide outside Aldgate East station at 7, and were not disappointed. We headed straight for the creepy side-street! It turns out, this is the very street where the second of the Whitechapel murders happened. The murder of Martha Tabram.
Next stop was the home of two more victims: Mary Ann Nichols and Elizabeth Stride
The common lodging house on Thrawl Street/Flower and Dean Street, a bit of a notorious criminal rookery, and the home of lots of prostitutes. It has since been demolished, but the frontage archway remains, moved over one street to form the entrance to a modern housing estate. The young kids living there looked quite excited about all the visitors standing outside their homes, and stood around listening to our guide. I'm not sure how much I'd want to know about the history of my home if I were them though!
Here's our tour guide, John Bennett, outside the temple in Spitalfields. To our relief, he was a local historian rather than any kind of *ACTOOR*, which meant that he was full of interesting knowledge, and he didn't appear to feel any urge to creep up on us and scare us like they do in the London Dungeons. Phew! I think the dark is plenty enough to make it atmospheric without that sort of thing!
Next stop: The Ten Bells - a very famous pub in Jack the Ripper history. It's been standing there since 1752, and the interior remains the same now as it was in the days of the Ripper, when it was patronised by the victims Annie Chapman and Mary Kelly. More recently, it has also been patronised by Johnny Depp whilst researching for the film 'From Hell'. How exciting! He drinks Guinness apparently. My goodness..
We toured around the backstreets to where Annie Chapman was murdered, in Hanbury Street, and then on to what used to be Dorset Street - now called White Church Lane, where Mary Kelly was found. I definitely felt sorry for the lady standing in the exact place where that horrendously mutilated body was found, it certainly was nice of our guide to point that out to her!
This is where the only piece of evidence ever categorically left by Jack the Ripper was found, just at the doorway where the white lattice pattern can be seen in the centre of the photo, on Goulston Street. A piece of fabric from Catherine Eddowes' clothing, coated in blood, was dropped right there. Right by 'Happy Days' chippy. Nice.
Finally, we made our way in to the City of London, for the final location: Mitre Street
This square may look nice and well lit now, but back then there were parts that were completely covered in darkness. Even with police patrols from all sides of the square, on high alert for a serial killer, nobody saw or heard Jack the Ripper murder Catherine Eddowes in there.
Looking at the map of where we walked, it's crazy to think that all that happened within a mile and a half area. All of it happened in such close proximity, and with everyone on the lookout for a murderer, it seems incredible that he got away with it. I think our tour guide must have been right, Jack the Ripper had all the luck. Either that, or he wound up in prison, or an asylum for something completely unrelated. Little did the police know who they had caught.
I would thoroughly recommend the tour, it's absolutely fascinating, and not all that creepy really!
Friday, March 26, 2010
Skywatch Friday: Not raining!
Just in the nick of time, the weather managed to clear up for our evening in London! =)
For more photos from around the globe, visit http://skyley.blogspot.com
For more photos from around the globe, visit http://skyley.blogspot.com
Location:Oxted
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Aah.. Mumbai Spice.. smells soo good..
..but what I want to know is, where's mine?!? I just got back to London Victoria after my conference, and was instantly distracted by this wonderful smell.. I thought at first it was one of the restaurants at the station, but following my nose led me straight to a makeshift Indian restaurant stand, handing out free samples!! Yumm.. but imagine my dismay when I realised they only had Chicken Tikka Massala! Nooo!! Where's my vegetarian one?! I am so hungry for my dinner now!
Apparently it is some kind of publicity stunt to advertise the launch of a new ready meal range. Hmm.. I really hope they start selling a veggie version of those things, although maybe it'd be better for my health if they don't!
Apparently it is some kind of publicity stunt to advertise the launch of a new ready meal range. Hmm.. I really hope they start selling a veggie version of those things, although maybe it'd be better for my health if they don't!
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Denne Hill, Horsham
Hooray! Today we finally made it up to Denne Hill, Horsham's answer to Reigate Hill! We actually did it the cheaty way by driving along Worthing Road towards Southwater, and parking up in a private road right at the top of the hill, next to a public footpath. It's excellent, you just walk across the field, and there you have a lovely view all over Horsham! Unfortunately my phone camera doesn't really do it justice, we'll go up there again and take some proper photos soon. You can also look straight across, over the town, and see big hills on the other side too! I'm pretty sure I was looking at the North Downs and Leith Hill over to the left, but I noticed there was a smaller hill a bit closer by too. We'll have to investigate! As long as it's not the stinky Warnham landfill mountain, it might be worth a visit!
Now that we know where we're going, I think that will make a really nice walk up from the church in town. All you have to do is walk around the back of St Mary's church, over the river, through the field alongside the cricket club, over the railway bridge and you're at the bottom of the field in this photo! Should only take about 10 mins from the church I reckon. Next time we'll try not to cheat!
Now that we know where we're going, I think that will make a really nice walk up from the church in town. All you have to do is walk around the back of St Mary's church, over the river, through the field alongside the cricket club, over the railway bridge and you're at the bottom of the field in this photo! Should only take about 10 mins from the church I reckon. Next time we'll try not to cheat!
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Bonsai!
For some reason, today we ended up on a Bonsai mission! It started out as just a quick trip to the garden centre to use some of the vouchers I got through the post, and it ended up as a garden centre crawl all over Sussex and Surrey..
We've been wanting to replace James' poor dead Bonsai tree for a while, but it turned out that the only good stockist we knew of, in Bluewater, had since gone out of business! We've seen a few in garden centres and supermarkets since then, but nothing special, and not much choice, so we've given it a miss until now.
This morning though, James saw the Bonsai section in the local garden centre, and decided he missed his tree and wanted a new one today! They didn't really have anything good there though, so we set off for Architectural Plants in Nuthurst, the most awesome garden centre ever, as we thought if anywhere would have them, they would. Sadly, we forgot that Architectural Plants specialises in HUGE, fully grown trees!! We tried asking at the desk, and they were a little taken aback.. err, but they're tiny little trees aren't they?! They did give us a good pointer though, and sent us off in the direction of Leonardslee Nursery, next door to Leonardslee Gardens. It's a lovely little place, specialising in camelias, and azaleas - sadly, they didn't have any Bonsai trees either, but the guy who ran the place was really helpful! We honked as we arrived, at the request of the sign in the car park, and the owner came out to greet us. When he heard what we were after, he said he knew a place, and took us into his office to google it. Hoorah! He found us the post code of a place called Herons Bonsai near East Grinstead, which sounded promising, and off we went (stopping to admire his camelia collection on our way)! I think we'll be going back there next time we want any of those!
So, we plugged the post code into our SatNav, and 10 minutes later arrived at Herons Bonsai! This place is amazing! It turns out this is pretty much the best place in the UK to buy Bonsai trees, what a lucky find!! They have literally thousands of trees of all sizes and varieties, it really is amazing just to walk around and have a look! They have large outdoor evergreen Bonsai trees, which are just beautiful, right the way down to little indoor ones. The interesting thing is, although they have some extremely expensive ones, the standard ikkle indoor ones are a really good price! You can get them from £5 upwards, and there's just so much choice. I think the one James bought today was about half the price of the one I bought from Bluewater! I would definitely recommend going there, I think we'll be going back in the summer to see all the trees in full bloom, it looks brilliant on their website. I think you could spend a nice while wandering around their Japanese gardens in the summer too. Now, to save up for one of those big outdoor ones, and possibly some Japanese garden ornaments too!
We've been wanting to replace James' poor dead Bonsai tree for a while, but it turned out that the only good stockist we knew of, in Bluewater, had since gone out of business! We've seen a few in garden centres and supermarkets since then, but nothing special, and not much choice, so we've given it a miss until now.
This morning though, James saw the Bonsai section in the local garden centre, and decided he missed his tree and wanted a new one today! They didn't really have anything good there though, so we set off for Architectural Plants in Nuthurst, the most awesome garden centre ever, as we thought if anywhere would have them, they would. Sadly, we forgot that Architectural Plants specialises in HUGE, fully grown trees!! We tried asking at the desk, and they were a little taken aback.. err, but they're tiny little trees aren't they?! They did give us a good pointer though, and sent us off in the direction of Leonardslee Nursery, next door to Leonardslee Gardens. It's a lovely little place, specialising in camelias, and azaleas - sadly, they didn't have any Bonsai trees either, but the guy who ran the place was really helpful! We honked as we arrived, at the request of the sign in the car park, and the owner came out to greet us. When he heard what we were after, he said he knew a place, and took us into his office to google it. Hoorah! He found us the post code of a place called Herons Bonsai near East Grinstead, which sounded promising, and off we went (stopping to admire his camelia collection on our way)! I think we'll be going back there next time we want any of those!
So, we plugged the post code into our SatNav, and 10 minutes later arrived at Herons Bonsai! This place is amazing! It turns out this is pretty much the best place in the UK to buy Bonsai trees, what a lucky find!! They have literally thousands of trees of all sizes and varieties, it really is amazing just to walk around and have a look! They have large outdoor evergreen Bonsai trees, which are just beautiful, right the way down to little indoor ones. The interesting thing is, although they have some extremely expensive ones, the standard ikkle indoor ones are a really good price! You can get them from £5 upwards, and there's just so much choice. I think the one James bought today was about half the price of the one I bought from Bluewater! I would definitely recommend going there, I think we'll be going back in the summer to see all the trees in full bloom, it looks brilliant on their website. I think you could spend a nice while wandering around their Japanese gardens in the summer too. Now, to save up for one of those big outdoor ones, and possibly some Japanese garden ornaments too!
By the way, this is the one James finally settled on, it's a Chinese Elm - apparently it's the most difficult type to kill, which is always good! =)
Hehe.. It's the IKEA song!
Well I was actually after the official music video for the Fireflies song by Owl City, but hey, this will do!
Friday, March 19, 2010
Skywatch Friday: More rain!
Ah so what it's raining again, we live in England afterall! It's Friday, yay!! Plus, only 2 weeks to go til April, the month I'm actually on holiday more days than I'm at work, double yay!
I had an invite to a big of family gathering through the post today, very exciting! The funny thing is, it's a gathering of a whole load of family who have never met before - sort of like a genesreunited convention! I think old Pierre Dulieu and Margaret Rouviere would have never believed that 320 years after fleeing Nérac en Guyenne for England, all of their hundreds of descendants would be meeting up for a cup of tea and a biscuit in a church hall in Essex.
I had an invite to a big of family gathering through the post today, very exciting! The funny thing is, it's a gathering of a whole load of family who have never met before - sort of like a genesreunited convention! I think old Pierre Dulieu and Margaret Rouviere would have never believed that 320 years after fleeing Nérac en Guyenne for England, all of their hundreds of descendants would be meeting up for a cup of tea and a biscuit in a church hall in Essex.
By the way, more Skywatch Friday skies from around the globe can be found at http://skyley.blogspot.com
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Spring has sprung!!
Wow, I glanced outside the window this morning to find that overnight, all of the daffodils in our garden have flowered! =) I think that definitely marks the arrival of Spring, in our garden at least! I think all that extra light from the hacked down hedge has helped, for once we have stuff flowering early! I think we might need a bit of fertiliser for that grass though..
Friday, March 12, 2010
Skywatch Friday: For all those with lovely sunny weather today..
Here's a nice bit of schadenfreude for you! Yucky rain! I'm not going out in that!! At least it's the weekend though, wohoo!
See more (definitely prettier) skies from around the globe at http://skyley.blogspot.com
See more (definitely prettier) skies from around the globe at http://skyley.blogspot.com
Location:Dorking
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The hill with lots of names
We decided to go for a walk around Reigate last Saturday. I love this view from the top of Seale Hill, or should I call it Colley Hill, or even Breakneck Hill?! I think the name depends entirely on where abouts on the hill you're standing! The north slope, over by South Park, I would definitely call Seale Hill, whereas the the view in this picture: the steep slope down into the park on the south side has always been known as "breakneck hill" (for obvious reasons). I guess if you're not on the hill, you call it Colley? Seale is my favourite though. I just like the idea of it being like a great fat seal lying down next to Reigate!
They've done a nice job with the sunken garden down in the park, it's a lot more open now which is good..
We were talking about Horsham, and saying the one thing missing is a nice hill with a panoramic view over town. We were thinking about trying to convince Horsham District Council to hire Monster Movers for the job - I think they'd go for it! Anyway, as it turned out, there is such a hill in Horsham afterall. Very exciting, although Monster Movers will be disappointed. I'm just waiting for the weekend now so we can go and check it out!
This is the view across the top of the Reigate Seal(e)..
They've done a nice job with the sunken garden down in the park, it's a lot more open now which is good..
and the new Space Age cafe! Though, I'm still not entirely sure where the doors are..
and the Priory is looking different too! It's really hard to remember what used to be on that grass though! Was it tennis courts?! I'm so confused!!
Climbing, climbing, climbing..
That's the one I cleverly decided to climb on top of, and then was too scared to jump off! A ladder would have been handy!! Instead I somehow had to climb my way down backwards, not feeling quite so clever, hehe..
The walls with all the ropes dangling off are for climbing with a harness and all that stuff. If you look at the angle of that yellow wall, you can kind of see why! That one is still beyond me, I don't think I quite have the muscles for overhangs!
These are the walls around the other side, they look a bit more like rock.. lots of nice bits sticking out to whack your knees on!
This is the other side of the archway.. it's funny, it looks like there are a nice lot of grips to hold on to, but it turns out you're supposed to choose one colour, then try to get to the top using only those ones! It definitely makes it a bit more difficult! They give different difficulty ratings to different colour routes and write them up on a chalk board, so you can see what you're letting yourself in for!
We both managed to climb up the bit in the middle here the other day! It's a shame we can't really take photos of eachother climbing, but I think it probably isn't ideal belaying practice.. "ooh sorry I let you fall on the floor, I got a really good photo though!" Maybe not..
We did manage to grab some photos of us bouldering in K2 though! =) There's a lovely big crash mat underneath that so it doesn't matter too much if you fall off!
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Destruction
Whoa, check out our garden.. our neighbours have been very busy chopping down our back hedge!! We could have an amazing bonfire party with all of that firewood.. hmm.. must buy marshmallows..
Bizarre buildings!
Following on from my links a while ago to weird and wonderful hotels, here is a more generic bizarre buildings link for you, just scroll through these! I found this page randomly when I was searching for cool places to visit in England.. unfortunately none of them are, but entertaining nonetheless!
Friday, March 05, 2010
Skywatch Friday: Blue and Springy!
I went for a bit of a lunchtime wander today to get my Skywatch Friday photo, it's so nice when it's not raining, I do really start to appreciate where I work! First of all I went over to eat my lunch in the sports field looking out over Box Hill, then I headed over to Denbies Vineyard and then along the road towards Westhumble. Here's one of the houses I passed - very pretty! They must have such great views - Box Hill in the back garden, and England's largest vineyard in the front! Oz Clarke would approve..
As I was walking along that way, I thought I'd pop in and take a look at the stepping stones that cross the River Mole at the foot of Box Hill..
Eek.. tree down!! It looked pretty much impassable what with the hulking great tree that's fallen down across the path of stones, paired with the crazily high water level! I guess it's all that rain we had last week! It's strange to see it so uncrowded, normally there are at least 5 dogs swimming around in there having fun, and people jumping all over those stones! I wonder how long before the National Trust go and fish it out..
Still no photo of that archway at the climbing wall I'm afraid - we went there the other day and it was really bizarre, they'd taken down all of the hand grips and were painting half of the wall in preparation for a bouldering competition. I assume they'll be putting the grips back before then?! I guess it could make it a bit more challenging if they didn't! The bad news was, they were revamping all the easy routes up the wall, so we got lumped with all the difficult ones. Amazingly we both actually managed to get to the top of our very first 5+ grade route though (classified as 'hard very severe' -hehe, I love that over the top description), with an overhang and everything! Wow.. I don't think that'll be happening again soon!
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