Marc's Public Blog

Day #6: More rain

We started the day by going to Bourton-on-the-Water, a nice little town by a river:

Next, we went through Stow-on-the-Wold and then Bourton-on-the-Hill:

sun dials need sun to work

From there, we drove to Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare:

Shakespeare's tomb

Shakespeare theatre

We then finished the day by driving to Birmingham for the night.

Day #5: Rain, Sun, Rain

We started the morning by driving around Cotswold to burn time until we could get to Snowshill Manor that only opened at 11:00

Once we got to Snowshill Manor, we got a ticket to visit the manor at noon, and visited the grounds until then. The manor has a great collection of just about everything:

Last we Blenheim Palace, a huge palace with great gardens, where Churchill was brought up and used to live:

Then we went to see the several gardens:

a maze under the rain, good way to be motivated to get out quickly :)

We then finished in Northleach for the night. I found a tempting car to switch my rental car, for :)

Day #4: Light Rain

For our 3rd B&B, this was our best breakfast so far. English breakfasts haven't been bad as a whole as long as you avoid the sausage :)

We then had a longish drive to Whales and started with the Tintern Abbey ruins:

Next, we drove to Caerphilly Castle which was interesting, but sadly we came the weekend of a festival, so the place was packed and most of the castle was closed:

interesting that this is still standing

After that we went to Fagans National History Museum which is an open air Welsh folk museum:

interesting decors in the small church

From there, we headed to Cardiff for the night and went to the Bay for a walk in rain (not fun) and dinner, before heading back to our room:

fishing in the rain while covered

nice beach, great sunbathing :)

Day #3: Rain

We started with Salisbury's Cathedral, super nice. It was moved from a nearby city, old sarum some many years back, and it was beautiful:

nice fountain

one of the 4 remaining copies of the magna carta (basically making the kings be nicer to their people)

The best part was the tower tour:

the big wheel was used to take building material to the top of the church to build the huge spire that was added (and added enough weight to almost collapse the entire church)

it went much higher, but on percarious ladders, the tour itself stopped half way up

view of sunny england :)

We then went to the nearby museum:

Next, we drove to Wells, who has its own nice cathedral:

Nextdoor was Bishop's Palace:

And we finished at Glastonbury Abbey, "england's finest ruins" as they say ;)

Another day over, lots of driving, including many crappy roads again :)

Day #2: Rain

Since the walking tour of Bath only started at 10:30, we had some time to kill and we went to a nearby park to get a nice elevated view of bath, before going back down and joining our tour:

Next, we went towards Avebury for its random Stonehenge Area stones and burial sites:

For stonehenge, we avoided the complicated 2H+ tour that doesn't even let you walk to the site anymore (just around) and went to view it from a public road without dealing with the shuttles and time we didn't have:

what they found

what it's supposed to look like :)

And that was it for day #2. It may seem short but really it wasn't due to the amount of driving involved...

Day #1: Rain.

After landing in Heathrow and picking up our rental car, we drove directly to Bath. We got there by 16:00-ish and that was just enough time to check in our B&B and go to Bath Abbey, visit and take the tower tour for nice views of the area from high up:

Next, we went to the Roman Baths who got excavated pretty recently. They have the only natural hot source of water in the UK:

warm and full of minerals

In the evening (daylight until 21:30), we did the bizarre path night comedy tour. The humour was ok depending on who you ask :) but it also included a few acts of magic that were actually not bad. Not essential to do, but not a waste of time and money either :)

And that was it for our first half day in England.

Thanks to James for being my co-pilot and Andre for helping lead the big group for that day, lots of nice cars:

When Ruby Skye opened, I went and never looked back. But TFSF7 was all about a trip in memory lane and nostalgia, and 1015 was a great place considering it had 4 different rooms were different DJs could battle with their best sets (and they were good). Thankully attendance was just within the venue's capacity (on purpose or not), so it was packed but not crazy crowded.

And the sets were just great. DJ Blur brought back awesome tunes back to back, I could tell he worked on that set before showing up :) and then the other rooms were quite good too, including some hard trance and psytrance which I had never been able to get before. You kind of have to be in the mindset for it, it's not quite melodic trance, but I was in the mindset last night and it was a lot of fun.

Thank you to all the DJs who came to play, and this guy giving great light shows:

nice outfit :)

Awesome psytrance

Stay down! :)

40mn summary of the night (21:00 to 05:00):

Unfortunately, my plane with too much tape, tip-stalled close to landing and crashed badly:

The next day, we went to Discovery Bay, for very nice views. Another unfortunately thing is that the motor died in flight, and the plane was gliding so well that I didn't notice the motor died until it was too late to glide back. The auto-pilot did a fantastic job flying the plane back all the way to the ground.

Eventually I lost video line of sight, and never saw the plane again. I went looking for it a long time, and got my glide ratio wrong, it went much farther than I thought it could. It ended up on a golf course and a groundskeeper found it, put it away and never called me on the numbers on it:

A months later, I got a call out of the blue from a gardener asking if if I had lost a plane. I was not even sure what he was talking about given how long ago it had been, but sure enough, that was it. I was so happy. This allowed me to get the pictures and videos out of them:

I got a lot nice shots during the flight, though:

plane's getting low