Becca Jane St Clair

We have a garden railway. Or, I should say, my husband has a garden railway. For many years he had a short lower circuit that went around the perimeter of the garden below the driveway, but he had always wanted to expand, and he set a goal of getting it done by his 40th…and he did! He, along with Ben (his brother), Mark, and a few other people managed to build the upper circuit in what boils down to about 7 days – just all spread out over the course of several months. I helped too, though my main “job” was supplying cups of tea and making lunch. Still, it helped!

We celebrated Tim’s 40th and my 31st by having a party on the 29th of August, and we also used this date as the official opening date of our completed railway, though we still have a few platforms to put in this coming Summer.

I don’t have much else to say about it, so I’ll just post a whole slew of photos:

When Tim and I were travelling by rail a few months back, our train was delayed. When we got to the station, we saw that another train had been delayed by quite a bit more than ours had, and when we saw the train, Tim knew the reason.

The electricity had gone out on part of the train, so they were using a signaller’s lantern as a train headlight.

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In July, Tim was scheduled for his annual work physical in York and I decided to tag along for the day to wander the city during his appointment. Of course, we took the train up to York, and since we had time before Tim’s appointment, we had a wander around the National Rail Museum. We visit it alot, but you always see things you didn’t see before – either because you hadn’t noticed it or because they rotated something new in. The NRM has the same problem a lot of museums have – too much stuff and not enough places to show it off – so they let visitors take a walk through their store rooms where you almost always notice something you hadn’t before because there’s just THAT MUCH stuff in it. Tim and I saw loads of things that we wished we had!

After the NRM, Tim was off to his appointment, and I headed off into the city. The NRM is across the street from the train station, and train station isn’t quite in the center of town, so it is a bit of a walk. Fortunately, a nice man selling newspapers outside the train station pointed me in the right direction and I began my wander…..to get lost.

I had wanted to do some shopping in some specific stores I knew were in York but not Lincoln, and I couldn’t find any of them. Even the little souvenir shop I was positive I knew where it was….couldn’t find it. I think I probably walked in a circle at least twice. I did see things that looked familiar and that I remembered from previous visits to York, though, so I don’t think I was honestly lost. Plus, I could nearly always see the Minster, and if you can find your way to the Minster, you’re definitely not lost! I did discover a few shops I hadn’t seen before though, so that’s always a treat. Then, I was in the “square” and just about to leave when I turned around and saw a church was having a used book sale! Books for only 50p! It was about this time that Tim called to tell me he was done, so he met me there and between the two of us, we spent over £10. For a good cause and used, but this meant that our packs were full and HEAVY, so we decided to call it a day. While walking back to the station, we spotted a street artist who had painted himself purple, so naturally I had to get my picture taken with him.

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One sunny day back in May, I asked Tim if we could go to the seaside. Growing up, I used to love going to the (New) Jersey Shore, and I had been looking forward to once again, living close to the seaside. From where we are in Dunholme, it’s only about a 45 minute drive to Cleethorpes, about the same as it was from where I grew up in East Windsor to get to the New Jersey coast. We picked a Friday, figuring it wouldn’t be as crowded and packed up a lunch, grabbed a blanket, and headed out.

We parked down by the Cleethorpes railway station and planned on walking down to the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway, about a mile down the promenade (what we would call a boardwalk in the US, though it isn’t on boards).

I noticed a few differences between trips to the shore in the US and a trip to the shore in the UK. The first one has to be the lack of a boardwalk. Like I mentioned above, they call the strip of shops and food counters and restaurants a promenade. While it might be raised up from the actual beach, it’s not on planks of wood like it would be in the US. It is made of brick and concrete. It was also interesting to find out that Cleethorpes is called the “seaside”, but the “seaside” is actually the mouth of the River Humber. You can even see across to the Spurn Head Lighthouse if the weather is good! This also explains why there is such a wide tide. When the tide was out, you could barely even see the water from the promenade.

We walked across the beach, and I was surprised to see donkey rides offered every few yards. Tim explained that it was a big thing for kids to get to have a donkey ride down the beach. I have never ridden on a donkey, and had never seen it offered on a beach before. Looking out to “sea”, you could see ferries, container ships, cruise ships, and oil rigs. Definitely not something you would have seen going to the Jersey Shore!

We picked out a patch of sand far enough away from the shoreline to not get wet, but close enough to a set of access steps so we could easily get back up to the promenade, and settled ourselves down to have some Lunch. After Lunch and basking in the sun for a bit, we walked down the promenade to the railway and had a ride.

The Cleethorpes Light Railway isn’t quite narrow gauge (even though I called it that in my vlog), but is what gets referred to as “miniature”. The track is 15 inches wide, so it’s not quite two-foot gauge, but it’s also larger than the 5 and 7 inch “garden railways” we have previously been to. The trip is about a mile long, and you can even stop at the midway point to have a drink in the smallest pub on the planet, at only 2.4m x 2.4m.

Cleethorpes is also home to a castle, believe it or not! The castle is called Ross Castle*, and it’s not actually a castle at all. Ross castle is a mock-up of castle ruins, built by the railway in 1863 to attract more holidaymakers to Cleethorpes. It looks very artificial, but as it is a “castle”, we had to visit it. From the top you could see all the way down the promenade and pretty far out to sea.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtvjiAi8p1g

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It’s no secret, my husband is a big transport nut. And surprisingly, I’m starting to turn into one, too. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, one of Tim’s job benefits is rail passes. We get a certain amount per year, but each time we use it, it’s valid for 48 hours. We try to plan overnight trips or back-to-back daytrips to make the most of our passes. I put in a request to go to London, as London is in my top 5 places to visit in the UK, and I hadn’t been to London since I moved. Tim agreed, and I’m sure I shocked him when I told him where I wanted to spend the day – The London Transport Museum and the Imperial War Museum.

The London Transport Museum is in Covent Gardens. If you’re approaching the market from the underground station, walk around the left side and you should see the entrance straight ahead. Admission to the museum is £13.50 for adults, but this includes an annual pass to return at any time in the following 12 months.

The museum has everything and anything related to transport in London, including old underground cars from the ages complete with models dressed in the fashion of that era. When you walk into the museum, they have the walls decorated with maps of transit systems all over the world, and imagine my surprise to see a corner of a New Jersey Transit map!

In addition to underground cars, there are plenty of busses, trollys, trolly busses and trams on display – even some horse-drawn vehicles from the 1800s! They have over 80 assorted transportation vehicles in their collection, 20 of which can be seen at the museum daily. If you want to see the other vehicles, you have to pay a visit to the depot Acton Town. Many of the vehicles are open so you can climb aboard and see the interiors.

There is so much to see at the Transport Museum, if I went into detail you would feel as though you were reading a novel, so I’ll let you go down and explore it on your own.

Our second stop for the day was the Imperial War Museum. The IWM is surrounded by the Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, a perfect spot to have a picnic lunch before entering the museum. This museum is free, however if you want to see one of the special exhibits there might be a charge.

I wanted to go because they were having a Ministry of Food special exhibit showcasing life during World War I and II, including the “Dig for Victory” campaign and the Women’s Land Army, two topics that interest me.

By the time we got to the IWM, I was very tired and I was starting to not feel too good, so I skipped out on parts of the museum in order to make it to the MoF exhibit. The MoF is running until 3 January 2011 and there is a small fee (less than a fiver). To be honest, the exhibit didn’t have anything “new” in it. Everything that was on display was something I had either seen elsewhere or read about, but I think that was to be expected since this is a major interest of mine. I even have been trying to decorate my kitchen in the post-war style. But if you are unfamiliar with the MoF, this would be a great exhibit to take a look at, and you don’t have much time left to do so!

After the IWM, we wandered over to the Thames, and I debated getting a ticket for the London Eye. Tim doesn’t want to go on it, so I would have gone up on my own. I decided not to, and hope that I can ride on it when my mom visits in December.

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Way back in March (yes, I know….I’m horrible at posting!) Tim and I went to the Museum of Lincolnshire Life

The Museum of Lincolnshire Life is FREE and is absolutely fantastic. Lincs Life has exhibits showing the county’s culture and people from 1750 to present day, with a large exhibition of the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment, where I found an interesting US connection.

Those of us who grew up in the US and studied US history have all heard about the “shot heard round the world” – The first shot that signified the start of the American Revolution (or if you’re in the UK, you call it the “American War of Independence“). As it turns out, the first shot was fired at a Lincolnshire man!

They also have a tank called Flirt. Flirt was the first tank (a Mark IV) built for World War I, and she just happened to be built in Lincolnshire. The museum also houses a Ruston engine, and other assorted bits of transportation related to Lincolnshire.

They even have a section of mock store-fronts and a section to play “dress up” with clothing from the different eras.

A friend of mine who used to work for Lincs Life told me they occasionally rotate the displays, and that they have loads more items to exhibit than they have room for, which means I’ll be sure to visit again! I loved learning a little bit more about the county I moved to. Paired with some of the other museums, attractions, and community events I’ve attended, I’m starting to feel like I fit in here.

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Well, this was going to be a video post. I spent three hours on Tuesday morning editing video from the Wales trip to upload to YouTube, and then spent about the same amount of time dealing with a slow internet connection while the files were uploaded to YouTube.

Twice now YouTube has “failed to upload” my first video. When I go to the video page, all it says is “upload aborted”, which it wasn’t. YouTube gives no further information, other than telling you to make sure the file us smaller than 100MB (the file it keeps rejecting is 97MB) and to run it through video editing software to convert it from raw video (which I had. I was trying to upload wmv files).

YouTube gave me the same error for my second video which was 95MB. My third video of 90MB also failed. I finally managed to compress the first video down to 45MB, and got that one uploaded, but the quality is so bad I don’t want to share it.

I don’t know if this is a YouTube problem or if there is a problem with my files. I suppose the only thing to do is to try to upload again, but it took so long on Tuesday trying to upload things multiple times that I don’t know if I have the patience to try again.

Google Video no longer allows uploads, so as far as I know, I’m out of options. I tried sharing the video on facebook, but the upload just hangs.

*edit* On a whim, I tried YouTube again. And it posted the first video, finally.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ucUJ5yMEfY

The other two still aren’t uploading, but at least I got one up!

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Remember, remember, the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason, and….

A wedding?

Hard to believe, but today Tim and I have been married for one year! We’ll be celebrating tonight over at the Lincolnshire Show Grounds for their annual Bonfire Night festivities, which include fireworks in addition to the giant bonfire.

When we were picking our wedding date, Tim and I joked that we would get married on the fifth of November, so we would never forget our anniversary and we would always have fireworks on it. As luck would have it, it just happened to work out that we really DID get married on the fifth of November in 2009.

We’re still just as in love as we were when we got married, and I hope it stays like this forever. I love you Tim! Happy Anniversary!

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The last train we visited in Wales was the Ffestiniog Railway in Porthmadog.

The Ffestiniog Railway runs for 13 and a half miles from Porthmadog to Blaenau Festiniog, where it meets the standard gauge lines of the national rail network. The Ffestiniog is gorgeous; the train winds around spirals, horseshoes, and tunnels,and climbs over 700 feet along the way.

The Ffestiniog Railway is the oldest railway in the world and was created by an Act of Parliament in 1832, however it has not been in continuous service the entire time. Traffic on the line ceased in 1946, and it wasn’t revived until 1954. In 1990 the railway became involved in reviving another local railway – The Welsh Highland Railway. Plans were to connect the two railways in 2010, and while we saw the completed connection on our visit, they were unable to run trains at that time. They have since opened the connection, and this past weekend was it’s first weekend in service!

We still managed to experience a first, though. I was taking photos of the shiny, black engine bringing in the passenger cars and I was curious as to why it did not have a name plate, so I texted my husband. He was quick on the response and wrote back “I’m jealous, that’s their new engine”. The engine would come to be known as Lyd, but we were watching the engine’s FIRST EVER APPEARANCE on the Ffestiniog. It was being run in and tested, but would not be pulling out train. Instead, we rode behind Blanche, whose sister engine shares my mom’s name.

The ride was fantastic. Despite the chill in the air and the drizzle, I rode in the open car so I could stick my head out and take photos. Boy, was it cold! I was glad I had brought along gloves and a scarf. I wish I had remembered the tunnels before I picked the open car, though – inhaling the smoke wasn’t very pleasant!

We decided to explore Blaenau Festiniog, but it was a very small town and there wasn’t much to do. Once again, we managed to find a small hole in the wall tea house to have some Lunch before heading back to the station….where to my great joy, we got to go behind one of the double fairlies!

I love the double fairlies. They are incredible machines with TWO boilers that meet in the middle with two separate smokeboxes – one facing forward and one facing backwards. At first glance, you might even think that there are two locomotives back-to-back instead of it being just one. I spent most of the return trip with the camera out the window trying to catch the engine.

Unfortunately, it started to pour once we got back to Porthmadog. Helen and Mark wanted to explore the shops of the town, but since I was carrying Tim’s rather expensive camera I chose to spend my time reading in a cafe. We returned to our camp site later that evening and began packing for our trip back to Lincoln the following morning.

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Recently, my husband was ill. It started on a Friday, and we thought he hit the worst of it on Saturday, but by Monday, he was still feeling under the weather and he began to feel worse overnight on Tuesday. Scary worse. To the point where I wondered if I was going to need to wake my in-laws at 4AM to take us to A&E (I don’t drive).

I went online and filled out the NHS symptom checker. The online service told us that because he had been ill for more than 48 hours, medicine wouldn’t help at this point, and that a nurse would call us to evaluate the situation.

We got the call around 5AM and it was determined that Tim did not need A&E and shouldn’t go to the GP, either (due to spreading the illness). We were advised on what he should eat/drink and what kinds of medicines he could take. At 5 in the morning, when most people who are ill would probably think to head to the hospital if they were feeling as bad as Tim was.

We had to call back an hour later when Tim started showing other symptoms (we were told to call back if things changed). This is the point where if there wasn’t NHS Direct, I would have suggested A&E or After Hours. The nurse on the line, however, told us we didn’t need the hospital, which put my mind at ease.

According to the Telegraph, calls to NHS Direct cost £25.53, and a GP visit costs between £20-25. There are those who call for the closing of NHS Direct, sighting that it will save money. Sure, it just might save 53p-£5, BUT you need to then consider how many more people will be calling the after hours GP service or showing up at A&E. How much does an After hours visit or A&E visit cost the taxpayers? Probably a lot more than £25.53!

An article in the Guardian claims 1/3 of all calls to NHS Direct still result with a trip to A&E or the GP and this is a sign that NHS Direct doesn’t help….but what about that other 2/3 who get answers to their questions? If NHS Direct receives 27,000 calls on a daily basis (again, what the article claims), that means there are 18,000 LESS people each day crowding A&E, After Hours, and their GP office. Surely, you can’t scoff at that!

I don’t think the government should get rid of NHS Direct. The new plan, to create a “111” information number won’t be as effective for one glaringly large reason: the operators answering the phone won’t be trained nurses. Plans are to give operators 6 hours of “anatomy” training and basic first aid, and then have ONE nurse on staff. I don’t like that. How will it be any better than someone going to Google and entering their symptoms and then finding a website that tells them they have something far worse than they actually do? When I put in my husband’s symptoms, the number one result was Swine Flu (which he didn’t have). If we hadn’t already spoken to a nurse directly, I probably would have been panicking! The second illness it kept telling me he had was Meningitis (again, he didn’t have that). Both are really scary and a LOT worse than what the nurse said. I can just picture calling into 111 and being told that you have a life-threatening illness when you really don’t. Something like that could cause further problems for someone just from panicking.

I sincerely hope the government decides against closing the NHS Direct number. If they’re worried about staffing issues, why not only have it open in the evenings,on weekends, and holidays? During the day, people could call their GP office if they had questions, but I think having NHS Direct is crucial for emergencies in the middle of the night.

News articles I mentioned:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3253245/Every-call-to-NHS-Direct-costs-25.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/27/nhs-direct-health-phone-service

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…And we’re back to the Wales posts. Followed by the Austria Posts. And a bunch of other posts I need to make….

Wednesday was a fantastic day for all of us. A friend of ours from the 16mm crowd, Dave, volunteers as an engine driver on the Welshpool and Llanfair Railway, so we decided to time our visit with when he was volunteering so we could get to ride behind a train he was driving. An extra added bonus was Dave offering to take all three of us on a tour of the “behind the scenes” (behind the steam?) areas after his last train for the day – disposing the engine, a walk down the track, and a glimpse in the workshop and engine shed! Dave even took us each up into the cab to show us what it looked like and gave Mark a short cab ride.

For me, it was the second time being in the cab of a narrow gauge engine while it was actually steaming (and not in a museum setting!), but it was still exciting. I know Helen and Mark enjoyed their turns as well.

We arrived at Llanfair station quite early. Dave was driving the second train of the day, and we timed our arrival for right after the first train had departed, so the station was relatively deserted. While Helen and Mark enjoyed a cup of tea, I took a wander down the platform taking photos. My favourite photo of the day will appear below, of the three fire buckets. While I was taking photos of the fire buckets, the signaller popped his head out of the signal box and asked me if I wanted to have a look around since it wasn’t busy. Did I? Of course I did! After all, Tim is a signaller. I managed to get photos of the frame and the diagram (drawn by the signaller I was talking to) before I needed to leave the box in preparation for the engine coming through.

To our surprise, Dave wasn’t bringing the engine in! There was much confusion, until we actually saw Dave and he explained that they have different people run in the engines from who will be the ones to put it to bed in the evening. Whew.

We had a pleasant ride down to Welshpool and waited while Dave and his partner for the day, Dan, did their midway maintenance work before running the engine back round to the front of the train to take it back. Dave showed Mark what he needed to do every step of the way – I hope he was taking notes! Since Dave was driving the second and fourth trains of the day, we decided to walk into Welshpool proper (about a mile or so) to get some Lunch and then head back to the station to take Dave’s second (and his last for the day) train back to Llanfair.

Welshpool isn’t much to talk about. Other than the railway (and let’s be fair, a lot of towns in Wales have narrow gauge railways!), it’s a typical town in Wales. Lots of shops, both unique and chain, dotted the main street along with restaurants and pubs. We travelled off onto a side street and found a small eatery called the Lunch Box that had reasonable prices.

Since we still had time, we did a bit of browsing and shopping before heading back to the station, and we managed to get to the Welshpool station as Dave was bringing the train in, so once again, Mark went to watch Dave do all his routine maintenance and Helen and I got on and found seats. Mark came rushing up to us to tell us that Dave was going to give him a cab ride up to the front of the train, so I ran down the platform to get some photos of Mark in the cab, then ran back up to try to get photos as he went past.

After the return to Welshpool, we browsed in their gift shop and headed back to the car to drop off our shopping while the rest of the passengers departed. We went back in and Dave called Helen and I over and asked us if we’d like to join him while he gave Mark a tour. Of course, we agreed!

We had to wait while Dave and Dan serviced the engine for the evening, and Dave was kind enough to explain everything he was doing step-by-step. I’m sure it took Dave and Dan twice as long as it usually did, but we surely appreciated it!

Our tour started with a walk through the sheds, where Dave showed us some of the other engines they regularly use. We also got to walk through the workshop, where we saw several engines that were being worked on, engines in pieces, and what the volunteers did to amuse themselves! Farther down the line, there was another shed, and this one contained some engines awaiting servicing, and several passenger cars.

It was fantastic getting to walk down the tracks, and getting to see things most visitors don’t. We’re all really grateful to Dave for taking some time out of his free time to show us around!

I can’t wait to go back and ride it again – Every time I ride a railway again, I see new things that I hadn’t seen before.

If any of the photos don’t resize properly for you, please let me know so I can fix them!

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It’s November 1, and in addition to it being All Saint’s Day and my friend John’s birthday, it’s also the start of NaNoWriMo, a month long writing project for people all over the world….but it’s also NaBloPoMo. NaBloPoMo is for those of us who don’t want to be committed (or can’t!) to writing a full-length novel in a month, but still want to participate. All you have to do is commit to writing one blog post per day for the entire month of November. If you succeed, you are even eligible for prizes at the end of the month.

I’ve signed up. I have so many things to backlog, I figure a month of solid posting will be good for me. Hopefully, I’ll have time and remember.

Oh, and BTW, this is Post #1, as today is still 1 November….for an hour and 45 minutes here, anyway.

If you’re a fellow NaBloPoMo, you can get to my profile page here.

I can’t guarantee brilliant posts every single day, but I can hopefully promise at least one post per day with something in it.

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I know, you’re scratching your head. I can hear you thinking What? She hasn’t been there a year yet!

And you’re right. I haven’t been here a year yet, BUT as of today, I have officially spent 12 full months in the UK during my assorted visits.

So here’s the break-down of my “first visits”:
October 17 – October 31: 2008
November: 2008
December: 2008
January: 2009
February: 2009
March 1-24: 2009
March 25-31: 1997
April 1-4: 1997
April 4-6: 2009
April 7-30: 2010
May: 2010
June: 2010
July: 2010
August: 2010
September 1-15: 2010
September 16-30: 2009
October 1-16: 2010

And I swear, I haven’t forgotten about everything I need to blog. I just seem to have developed a social life and since we got back from Austria, I feel like I’ve been constantly on the go! Updates soon!!

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I’m starting to edit the videos together from our trip, and I have the first one up on YouTube.

We compiled this during an afternoon of steam train chasing — basically, we followed the route of the train and met it at different places on the line to take pics/vid. I was the videographer.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNpTjIu5QVk

This one was compiled at Amstetten while waiting for our train to Vienna – some freight and even a brand new passenger train being delivered!

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya-dDbQ1lyA

We’re back from our two-week European road trip! We had a GREAT time and loved camping. Photos are slowly going up on Facebook….between the two of us, we have over 2500 pics to go through, but Tim has way more than me (since he took more when we rode trains than I did!)

Here’s a breakdown of what we did:

Day .5 – Drove down to my friend Lou’s house to spend the night
Day One – Got on the ferry from Dover-Calais. Drove across France, Belgium and into Germany to stay in Oy-am-Mittleburg for the night
Day Two – Neuschwanstein, then drove to set up camp in Zell am Ziller at Camping Hofer
Day Three – Kristallwelten and Innsbruck
Day Four – Zillertalbahn
Day Five – Achenseebahn and Achensee
Day Six – Drove across Austria to set up camp in Nußdorf at Camping Gruber along the Attersee
Day Seven – Steyrtalbahn
Day Eight – Vienna (by rail!)
Day Nine – Murtalbahn
Day Ten – Salzburg
Day Eleven – Ybbstalbahn and Mariazellerbahn
Day Twelve РLong drive into Germany, overnight near K̦ln
Day Thirteen – Drove back to Calais, decided to take an earlier boat instead of another overnight and we arrived back in Lincoln at 12:30 in the morning.

I still have to finish up posts about Wales, then I’ll start in on Austria, but I do promise to blog about everything!

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We’re off to Austria for two weeks. The remaining Wales updates will be posted when we return along with Austria posts…I just didn’t have time this week to make any scheduled posts for while we are away.

Today my husband (and yes, I still get a thrill saying that) is celebrating his 40th birthday! Yeah, we’re only 4 days apart (but I’m 9 years younger). It certainly makes having parties a lot easier. We had a big bash on the 29th and I’m sure I’ll be posting pics from it soon.

And now I can tell you all what we got him for his birthday! Me, his parents, grandad, aunt, & siblings all pooled our money together and bought him the driver’s experience at Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway! Ben (Tim’s brother) and I had wanted to get him a driver’s experience and we had been discussing it MONTHS ago…but all the places I checked wanted between £300-£600 for the experience…PLUS, they were all located in Wales, which meant that at the very least, Tim and I would have had to travel down to Wales (okay, that’s free on the train for us) and get accommodation somewhere. If anyone else wanted to come with us to see Tim drive, they’d have to shell out the same, so the driver’s experience would have easily started costing the family over £1000. I had thought about contacting friends to see if they wanted to contribute, but in the end, Ben and I had given up the idea and I told Tim we just couldn’t afford it.

Until we were at the Cleethorpes Light Railway last month. I snuck away from Tim (“I have to use the loo…”) and spoke with a secretary who told me their experience was only £150 for the day and it would include an opportunity for family to then ride behind a train Tim drove for free, too. I immediately texted my mother-in-law who agreed that it was a good price and said she and father-in-law would contribute, so I purchased it that day on a gift certificate for Tim to redeem whenever he wants. Even better is they claim “Your day’s training will be tailored to your level of experience, skill and ability”, so hopefully, Tim will really get a great day out of it since he already has quite a bit of experience, skill, and ability when it comes to trains and steam!

We presented it to him at his party…and he was [I’ll edit this in later as I’m writing this four days early. If I forget to update, assume he was surprised and happy]

I can’t wait for him to go!

*Of course, Tim did start to get concerned when my loo break took over 20 minutes. I blamed it on the long queue! Fortunately, there really was a queue as they had forgotten to unlock one of the toilets, so we all had to wait for the only open one.

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So sorry about the not re-sized photo in my last post. I wrote all the posts last week when I had time and scheduled them for later publication, so I didn’t catch it right away since we were out all day. When I add photos in a gallery, WordPress does it all automatically and makes the gallery, but for some reason it seems to not resize one photo and then I am unable to manually resize it, so I have to go in and delete the offending photo.

It’s now been taken care of, but I’m sure it messed things up for some people. Sorry about that. If it happens again, please send me an email or poke me on IM to fix it.

Tuesday brought us rain. Not wanting to walk around castles in the rain, we headed over to the Isle of Anglesey. Anglesey is the largest Welsh island and the largest island in the Irish Sea, as well as the fifth largest island surrounding Britain. It covers over 700 square kilometres of land (over 250 square miles) and includes the port of Holyhead. You might remember that my mom and I took the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead (and back) as part of our visit to the UK in September 2009.

Our first destination was the Pili Palas, a butterfly hut that included a reptile room, bird room, farm animals, and other insects (There was a row of spiders which I avoided looking at!). The butterfly section was kept at a balmy 80 degrees Fahrenheit for the tropical butterflies…which were allowed to roam all over the room. Unfortunately, the extreme change in temperature (from the chilly outside to the warm inside) caused the digital SLR to steam up. Fortunately, I also had my small camera with me, and I was still able to take photos of the butterflies. Also unfortunate was Mark’s displeasure for the heat. He did not spend much time with Helen and I as we admired the butterflies, and we moved quickly through the rest of the palas.

Our second stop was Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. No, I’m not kidding. It is, in fact, the longest town name in the United Kingdom, and is tied for the third longest word in the world as far as I can tell*. The town name means “Saint Mary’s Church in the hollow of white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of Saint Tysilio near the red cave” in Welsh. Most people refer to it simply as “Llanfair PG”, but I kept calling it “Llanfair gogogoch”. I remember when I was at Penn State and I lived on the International Language floor, all our rooms were named after international cities and one of the rooms got the name “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch”…though we all thought the town was in Scotland, and were told it was the home of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. Whoops.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is pretty much only known for it’s long name. There’s a railway station and a shop/cafe. After Lunch, we shopped for a bit, then wandered over to the station to take some photos.

It was still early in the day, so we headed over to Beaumaris. We did not go into the castle grounds since none of us were in the mood for climbing lots of steps, but we took some photos and explored the town and waterfront area.

On our way back to the mainland, Helen spotted a spot to stop where we could get photos of both the Menai Bridge and the Brittania Bridge, the two bridges that connect Anglesey to the mainland.

*Through research, it appears to be the third longest word in the world at 58 English characters, but in Welsh, double letters count as one letter, so it then becomes tied for third. The longest word in the world, by the way, according to the Guinness Book of World’s Records is the Swedish town of NordöstersjökustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoranläggningsmaterielunderhÃ¥llsuppföljningssystemdiskussionsinläggsförberedelsearbeten, which apparently means “Coast artillery flight searching simulator area material maintaining follow-up system discussion post preparation tasks of the Northern Baltic Sea”.

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I’ve talked about this in a few places, but not given much detail. Tim has a Canon EOS 300D. I, do not. I tried using his camera in 2008 when we were in Wales and I thought his camera was too heavy, and so I gave up on using it…but recently he encouraged me to play around with it. I love it. I took all the photos in Wales exclusively with the SLR camera, and even took loads in manual focus.

Does this mean I don’t want my new Olympus mju 3000? No way. I’m so excited for my new camera my mom and aunt gave me for my birthday. I love having a portable camera, and I can’t wait to try out the new settings. Sometimes, a small point and shoot can take just as nice photos as a big SLR.

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