After another overnight ferry from Orkney to Aberdeen, a small group of us were transferred from the dock to Aberdeen airport to catch our flights home – I was booked onto an early afternoon Flybe flight to Birmingham. This was the Saturday that BA had its IT meltdown, and it was really interesting to watch […]
Although the focus of the trip was clearly on the prehistoric, and specifically neolithic, remains on both Shetland and Orkney, our tour leader was keen that the group should also get an understanding of more recent history. In particular, the sheltered anchorage at Scapa Flow, surrounded on all sides by the Orkney archipelago, was a […]
We caught the ferry from Shetland in the late afternoon of Day Three, had dinner on board, and disembarked in Orkney at around 11pm, getting to our hotel just before midnight. But we were all up bright and early the next day for the first of two days exploring the highlights of the Orkney Islands. […]
After the first overnight crossing, we arrived in Kirkwall, Shetland Islands at 07:00am, had breakfast on the ferry, then disembarked to start a two-day tour of the archaeological highlights of the islands. Mousa Broch is an iron age round-tower, from around 100BC, still surviving to nearly its full original height. You can see from the […]
I had a big birthday last week and was determined to spend it somewhere other than at work. Last year, I was running an equipment trial up at Durham University on the day of my birthday, and ended up buying a small iced cake from a bakery and taking that into the lab to share […]
I’ve been doing more tours of university physics departments, up and down the country. Last week it was UCL and Birmingham; this week saw two separate visits to Loughborough, as an industry guest presenter at a summer school on systems engineering for physicists. I could have done without making two separate trips there, but diary […]
Malvern Theatres has put on a few plays over the years from the Agatha Christie Theatre Company. They seem to have run out of Agatha Christies plays to produce, however (which surprises me somewhat as she wrote dozens of books), and have now metamorphosed into the Classic Thriller Theatre Company. Their first production in this reincarnation […]
Mullion is far too far away for me to consider driving myself there. It’s also rather difficult to get to by public transport. From Mullion, I caught a bus via Helston to Redruth (a journey of well over an hour, though the scenery was lovely and you get a good view over the hedges due […]
On Bank Holiday Monday, the plan was that Cousin David and his brother Ben would meet his cousins and some of Stephanie’s friends at the Polurrian Bay Hotel, and then scatter her ashes on the beach below. The hotel is in a beautiful clifftop spot, just outside the village of Mullion which is about 20 […]
I had a free day in Penzance last Sunday, before meeting Christopher’s family on the Bank Holiday Monday. I hadn’t realised quite how close St Michael’s Mount is to Penzance – a walk along the coast of only about three miles. The first mile or so is a bit industrial, as the coastal path is […]
