I woke up in the morning and decided that I would head to Edinburgh on an early train, rather than stay in Bristol for another day. Another option was to spend the day in/around Bristol and then catch a sleeper to Edinburgh, but I decided against that option.

So, off I headed to the train station and I arrived at about 11:53. The train was scheduled to leave at 11:58, but due to a broken rail somewhere the train was running about half an hour late.

The train was the Virgin service to Edinburgh, stopping at about eight stations between Bristol and Edinburgh. The landscape was quite nice, but due to battery problems, I couldn’t take any pictures. The train lost an additional twenty minutes or so due to signalling problems, meaning we didn’t arrive until about 18:30.

Upon arrival at the station, I immediately headed to the accommodations booth since I had only been able to secure a hotel for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. They were able to get me a room within walking distance of the train station. It’s not bad, but a little pricy at 70 pounds/night. The other hotel is 50 pounds/night, but they warned me about the street noise.
I’m going to check it out this evening and see what the sources could be. If it looks like it’ll be too noisy, I’ll stay where I am now. If not, I’ll probably change hotels tomorrow.

So, I’m out and about exploring Edinburgh. Within two blocks is The Castle, as it’s identified on my map, overlooking everything. This is a seriously defensible spot with nearly vertical slopes and high walls on top of the slopes.

At the base are the Princes Street Gardens. There is an amphitheatre with outdoor seating and there was a demonstration of highland dancing taking place when I walked by. Unfortunately, it was almost over, so I only saw a couple of dances.

As soon as I’ve uploaded the pictures from yesterday, I’m going to continue my roaming while there’s still light and get a bite to eat, too.

Click here to view the pictures from Day 12.

Well, I’m in Bristol.

After arriving at the hotel, I unpacked some of my stuff and then headed out to see what there is to see in Bristol. I think I have mixed feelings about the town, at least based on what I’ve seen so far.

There are some very old buildings and some even older gates in downtown Bristol. I wandered down to Harbourside because that’s not too far from the hotel and there are a number of things there. But when I arrived at about 1830, it was a bit of a ghost town. I don’t know if that’s just because it’s a Monday, or if it’s like that all the time.

After grabbing a bite to eat, I wandered back towards the hotel. On the way, I heard the peal of a bell tower and followed the sound. It turned out to be an old church. I stood and listened for about 10 or 12 minutes before the melange of notes organized themselves into a descending run of notes. Very impressive!

From there I walked a couple of more blocks and found myself in front of the hotel.

I had planned on staying here two nights before heading to Edinburgh, but I may change my mind tomorrow morning and head to Scotland in the afternoon. Time will tell.

I’ll put pictures online when I have access to a faster connection. Right now I’m using my cellphone and it’s not fast enough to upload pictures.

Click here to view the pictures from Day 11.

Well, I’m in Bristol.

After arriving at the hotel, I unpacked some of my stuff and then headed out to see what there is to see in Bristol. I think I have mixed feelings about the town, at least based on what I’ve seen so far.

There are some very old buildings and some even older gates in downtown Bristol. I wandered down to Harbourside because that’s not too far from the hotel and there are a number of things there. But when I arrived at about 1830, it was a bit of a ghost town. I don’t know if that’s just because it’s a Monday, or if it’s like that all the time.

After grabbing a bite to eat, I wandered back towards the hotel. On the way, I heard the peal of a bell tower and followed the sound. It turned out to be an old church. I stood and listened for about 10 or 12 minutes before the melange of notes organized themselves into a descending run of notes. Very impressive!

From there I walked a couple of more blocks and found myself in front of the hotel.

I had planned on staying here two nights before heading to Edinburgh, but I may change my mind tomorrow morning and head to Scotland in the afternoon. Time will tell.

I’ll put pictures online when I have access to a faster connection. Right now I’m using my cellphone and it’s not fast enough to upload pictures.

Click here to view the pictures from Day 11.

Today, I travelled from London to Bristol on the 1445 train out of London Paddington operated
by First Great Western. (I had hoped to be on a slightly earlier train, but there was a
broken down train at Victoria Station. It delayed the trains from Wandsworth Common by about
twenty minutes or so.)

Making my way from Victoria Station to Paddington by bus, I arrived at the cavernous station,
found a ticket agent and had my railpass validated. I then boarded the first class coach
where I’m typing this entry from.

I’m going to spend a day or two in Bristol and then head up to Scotland for most of the rest
of the week. This is going to be the most expensive part of the trip, not because of the
train tickets, but because of the hotel accommodations. I could probably have found a hotel
upon arrival at Bristol Temple Meads station, but I decided to book something over the Internet.
So, I’m going to be staying at the Bistol Thistle.

Right now, I’m at Bath Spa.

More to follow…

Today was our first excursion out of London. A couple of days ago, Rob said “Hey, would you
like to go to Bletchley House?” to which I responded “Of course!”. He ordered tickets on the
Internet and we took the train from Wandsworth Common to Clapham Junction (the busiest train
station in Britain) to Watford Junction to Bletchley. It took about 1:45 to get to Bletchley.

For those of you not up on your cryto-history, Bletchley House is where the German Enigma code
was broken during World War II. Breaking the code required at its peak about ten thousand
people working at Bletchley House. Bletchley is located at the junction of two rail lines,
one running out of London and the other between Oxford and Cambridge.

For much more information about the history of Bletchley House, visit the website.

While we were there, we saw some of the actual buildings used by the code-breakers during
the war. Some of the buildings have been destroyed, but a number still exist to this day,
rescued from the wreckers ball by the hastily-formed Bletchley Trust.

There are museums in most of the buildings, with exhibits about the code-breaking activities
themselves or about life at Bletchley House back then. Included among the exhibits were
mock ups of the Bombes used to recover the daily Enigma rotor settings and even a working
Enigma machine. There are only a handful of Engima machines in existence today and most fetch
a price of GBP 30000 or more at auction. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve seen and played
with two of the very small handful in collections available to the general public: the one
at Bletchley House and the one at the NSA museum in the US.

Also on display was a Bombe that’s being built from scratch based on the original plans and
another machine called Colossus. When Bletchley Park was decommissioned after the war, all
of the machinery was dismantled or destroyed (except, of course, for one or two examples
“just in case” — but these were destroyed years later) so no examples remain. Building these
machines from scratch is a tremendous undertaking. The amount of wire in them is incredible!

Anyways, there are always activities going on at Bletchley House. When we were there, there was a gathering of
old and/or fancy cars and more impressively a fly over by a Spitfire. The Spitfire did two
low-level fly-bys at a few hundred feet. On board was a small packet of special-issue covers
from the Bletchley House Post Office. (Yes, there’s a real post office there.) They arranged
to have forty covers specially flown in the Spitfire. I ordered one and it should arrive in
two or three weeks.

I mentioned that it took us 1:45 to get to Bletchley from Wandsworth Common. Well, our return
trip took a little longer. Somewhere between Sudbury Junction and Clapham Junction, the train
came to a stop. This would not have been unusual, except for the fact that the train never
moved again! We learned from the announcements and from the conductor when he walked through
our car, that the pantograph (the bit that touches the overhead lines for power) had damaged
the overhead line equipment (OLE) from around Sudbury Junction to where we stopped. And, because
of engineering works on the tracks behind us, it wasn’t possible to deploy an engine to rescue
us.

After spending about three hours on-board in an increasingly stuffy car, they finally decided
to detrain everybody. So, we exited the train with the aid of the local fire brigade and walked
back along the tracks to the nearest bridge where there was yet more confusion.

Eventually, a bus showed up and took us to Clapham Junction after stopping at one or two
other stations in between. The fact that it took a circuitous route was bad enough, but a
few people had to stand because there weren’t enough seats. To top it off, the bus driver
didn’t actually know where the stations he was driving to were located.

Needless to say, we were not amused.

We finally arrived home between 22:30 and 23:00 after catching a cab from Clapham Junction.

Rob’s going to submit our tickets and food and taxi receipts to the train company for
reimbursement.

Still, people were remarkably calm, though nerves were starting to get stretched a bit thin near
the end of the ordeal. There were quiet rumblings about using the emergency door opening lever
to get some fresh air into the cars.

Click here to view pictures from Day 10.

Saturday, Yuki and I headed off to the London Zoo, leaving Rob at home. (He was tired from all the walking we’d done earlier in the week.)

The London Zoo is on one corner of Regent’s Park. It’s been around for quite some time and they have been modernizing most of the cages and facilities, apparently because they were found to be less than ideal for the animals, according to some study.

Anyways, we saw all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures during our visit. We saw lions, tigers, lynx, penguins, big monkeys, tiny little monkeys, meerkats, giraffe, pigs (exotic ones, not the kind that you see on farms), otters and other animals whose names I forget.

And we saw reptiles: snakes so venemous that they practically only have to look at you and you’ll be looking for some anti-venom; lizards; frogs; crocodiles and alligators. In fact, we saw where one of the scenes in a Harry Potter movie was filmed. It was a scene in which our hero Harry is talked to by an enormous phython.

From the zoo, we made our way to Chinatown to go shopping and then we headed home here Yuki made an amazing dinner. If she cooks meals like that all the time, Rob’s going to
have to watch his weight! (Sorry, Rob!)

Click here to view pictures from Day 9.

Rob and I packed outselves off to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and spent about 4 hours walking around the 300 acres of the Gardens.

The gardens include everything from meadows to a temperate climate greenhouse to a tropical climate greenhouse to a walkway in the treetops. It takes in Japanese stone gardens and bamboo growing outdoors. In short, there’s almost everything, even various aquaria.

Upon arrival at the train station near the Gardens, we found a single sign pointing in the approximate direction of the entrance. It was only sheer luck that we happened to see the ornate wrought iron gates in the distance and decided that they most likely belonged to the Gardens.

The tropical greenhouses were very impressive. Huge palms and tiny little plants. There was a spiral staircase leading up to the roof of the greenhouse which afforded an amazing overview of the place.

In the basement were all sorts of aquaria from fresh water to brackish to salt water. Tropical fish and corals were everywhere.

Being a tropical greenhouse, the humidity was somewhere in the neighbourhood of 110%. How it managed to not be raining inside is an excellent question.

From this greenhouse, we headed off across the 300 acres of land. We admired the rose gardens and other flowers. The trees were equally impressive. Some of the oak trees were absolutely huge, measuing over a metre across at the base.

The Gardens run along the River Thames, so we had a chance to watch a couple of rowing shells on the river. The tide was out, so the water level was very low.

Next we came across a walkway through the treetops. Made of industrial scafholding, the walkway wound its way between the sequoia pines and other tall trees. Bird houses and feeds were up here and from here we saw the most amazingly brightly coloured bird that I think was a pheasant.

After the treetops, we came across some peacocks roaming the grounds. Big birds with horrible calls. At least they make up for the calls with their plummage, even if we didn’t see any of them spread their tail feathers.

By now we’d been on the go for several hours, so a short stop for food and then we were off to see the Japanese rock gardens and then the temperate greenhouse.

The temperate greenhouse was not as hot or humid as the tropical greenhouse, but the plants were just as impressive. We also saw koi in a couple of ponds in the greenhouse.

Our last stop was the gift shop, of course, we were bought souvenirs.

From the gardens, we headed home and called it a day.

Click here to view pictures from Day 8.