Boat Trip

We took a Thames Clipper downstream. We began our journey at London Bridge City Pier. There was no shortage of viewpoints. We started here.

HMS Belfast, Tower Bridge, Canary Wharf.

The view looking back.

The Shard, HMS Belfast.

The Clipper crossed the Thames to the Tower of London.

When I was little the 'Bloody Tower' caused great amusement, just being able to say it out loud without getting told off for swearing was great fun.

We passed under Tower Bridge and looked back at the Shard and City Hall.

Then we had to take our seats as the captain put his foot down. We sped along past moored sailing boats with the Gherkin and the Nat West Tower in the background.

We sped past HMS Ocean, which at 125foot wide squeezed through the Thames Barrier last week. It's here to protect London during the Olympics. 

We passed by Greenwich and the newly restored Cutty Sark.

I cheated with this photo, it was taken on dry land later in the day. 

As we headed downstream the O2 came into sight. 

Then we rounded the bend to see the new TFL cable car crossing the Thames and Antony Gormley's Quantum Cloud. Both huge structures.

We got off the boat at North Greenwich Pier and watched the cable car practising. No passengers yet as it isn't quite finished.

We chatted about value for money, apparently the cable car cost 6o million pounds, "that's 10 million less than Real Madrid paid for Christiano Ronaldo".

I love the way these pictures human contrast scale, us, the figure in Antony Gormley's Quantum Cloud and the gondolas, each being able to carry 10 people.

We had a little walk around North Greenwich and got closer to the O2. 

"It feels like we're in the future", said my 12 year old. I know what she means...

Not a bad value for money trip. All this for the price of a single ticket on the Thames Clipper. 

Next time I think we'll head upstream.

Since writing this post, the cable car is up and running. Great views and especially good as the city lights come on in the evenings. 

Unexpected Connections

Learning in museums can be all about making personal connections.

Sometimes people make the most unexpected connections.

A secondary school girl spoke to me the other day,

"See that dog's head?"

"...my brother's girlfriend looks like that."

It got me thinking, which dog do I look like?

You may be thinking, just the heads? One little boy, struggling with the idea of just the heads, was saved from the brink of tears when a quick-thinking gallery attendant reassured him that all was OK because the dogs were still intact, their bodies behind the wall. He left happy. 

If you would like to see the collection of dog's heads and perhaps decide who they look like. Visit the Natural History gallery at the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill.

http://www.horniman.ac.uk/

Urban river walk...

...In Catford.

We went for a walk by the river...

...where the rivers Pool & Ravensbourne meet.

There was something for everyone.

Bird spotting...

...this is where the Nuthatch live.

Tree spotting...

...we think this is a Hornbeam.

Art...

And paddling...

...they ended up a lot wetter than this.

We also saw two jet fighters overhead...

 ...practising, air security for the Olympics.

(Sorry no photos, they were too far away and too fast)

The Riverview Walk is part of a longer walk. The Waterlink Way... 

...where we could have walked, or cycled, all the way from Sydenham to the river Thames.

That post was two years ago. Now two years on and I walk/run this route every week. Love seeing how everything changes with each season, lovely spring blossom recently.

Plus even been treated to sightings of a Kingfisher and Great Spotted Woodpecker.

You can also download video and sound works made in response to the river, 'Here Comes Everybody', either here on the website here or scan the QR code on a plaque on one of the bridges with a smartphone when you're there. 

What would your birthday cake have looked like during wartime?

Visit the Imperial War Museum in London to see this great exhibition A Family in Wartime.

A Family in Wartime tells the story of the Allpress family during the Second World War. They lived in Stockwell, South London. The exhibition documents their family life during the war, and hence tells many a family story looking at the impact the war had on everyday life, such as feeding a family, maintaining a house and garden, doing the laundry, going to school, commuting to work, not to mention birthday celebrations.

There is a beautiful small-scale model of their family home as it was during the war, made by a model maker, the husband of one of the Allpress daughters. You can view it from every angle, the bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen, the Anderson shelter and even the inside loo.

We loved this exhibition, imagining our lives in the Second World War. We sat in the Anderson shelter and imagined what it would have been like to spend the night in there, discussed who would have which bunk and how we would have assembled it in our garden. My kids were quite impressed when I told them that I had found scraps of corrugated iron when I had been digging in the back of our garden (a London terraced house) when they were little. They must have been the remains of an Anderson shelter. The Second World War has been a piece of history that they have been able to relate to and connect with personally and being at this exhibition helped that to happen as they got to see genuine artefacts for themselves.

Having thoroughly enjoyed studying the Second World War at school, we went to this exhibition  a week before their 9th birthday, to be confronted with the question, "What would your birthday cake have looked like during wartime?" A timely question.

The answer, well with sugar rationing, icing on cakes was banned during wartime from 1940, to conserve sugar. They certainly wouldn't have looked like this...

Thank goodness sugar is not still being rationing now. In fact it came off rationing in 1953, 8 years after the war had ended.

 http://www.iwm.org.uk/exhibitions/a-family-in-wartime

"Who could paint as well as that?"

"Who could paint as well as that?", a question posed by an eight year old in our party as we admired the beautiful, delicate and very neat painting on the tomb of Sheri-ankh, an Egyptian woman in her early twenties who died around 2,400 years ago.

These intricate patterns tell a story about Sheri-ankh's life and her religious beliefs. The Ancient Egyptians believed in life after death, but could Sheri-ankh ever have imagined that her mummified body and tomb would end up on display in Northern England in 2012? That her life would make an impact in the twenty-first century, particularly impressing eight year olds with the painting skills of the Ancient Egyptians.

If you too would like to admire the work of the craftsmen or women who painted Sheri-ankh's coffin, visit Secret Egypt: Unravelling Truth from Myth at Tullie House, Carlisle.

Colour Inspiration

"Wouldn't that pinky-brown be a lovely colour to paint your walls?"
A question put to me by a visitor as we admired these beautiful Passenger Pigeons at The Horniman Museum.

These beautiful birds are now extinct but used to account for forty percent of the North American bird population. Apparently a flock, which usually contained around two billion birds, could sound like thunder. Imagine being there as they flew past?
The last passenger pigeon was said to have been shot in 1900.
How do they know that?
And how on earth do flocks comprising of billions of birds disappear from our planet?

Nevertheless we can still admire them at The Horniman Museum. Inspiration for saving endangered species or perhaps for choosing the paint colour for our walls.

"Is it older than the Victorians?"

As we were walking over the bridge to Eilean Donan Castle we were chatting about how old it was.

"Is it older than the second world war?" asked T age 8
"Is it older than the Victorians?"  asked M age 8

We reassured them that of course it was a lot older than those two studied-at-school times.
However, all was not as it seemed, despite the castle being originally built in the mid 13th century, the castle as it stands, as you see it today, was restored between 1912 & 1932. That makes most of it newer than the Victorians and older than the second world war and even more surprisingly newer than our Victorian terraced house.

LT.-Col. John Mac Rae-Gilstrap took a 13th century ruin and turned it into a family home. You can read more about it on their website here. They've got some great before and after shots.

A particular hit with our family was the Victorian/1930's style kitchen, complete with plenty of 'stuffed' hanging game, ready to be used in the next meal. A mouse in a mousetrap, with a cat ready to pounce, under the kitchen table. A pile of clean dishes on the draining board just starting to topple over, being caught by a flustered maid. Beautiful vintage mixing bowls. All "cool!".

In one of the bedrooms there was unexpectedly, a huge beautiful painting of dignitaries leaving St Paul's Cathedral at Churchill's funeral, and next to it a small outline drawing to let you know who each person was. Great for people spotting.

There were plenty of nooks and crannies to explore both inside and out, and keep three generations of our family happy on our visit, but we could have stayed...


http://www.eileandonancastle.com/home.htm