Castle Drogo

Castle Drogo is the last castle to be built in the United Kingdom. It was built between 1910 and 1930, taking about 20 years to build. It was built by a rich guy named Julius Drewe near a city named Drewsteignton (coincidence? I think not!). He decided he wanted to live in a castle, but he didn't want one of those old dusty ones, so he decided to build his own. The house is built entirely of granite, each block had to be specially quarried and laid by two stone masons. (no wonder it took 20 years) Sadly, he only lived one year after it's completion. In the 70's England raised the taxes on the rich into the high 90% range, so they couldn't afford to keep it and gave it to the government to be maintained as a historic building.

Of course 'loo' is the Brit slang for bathroom, so "Andy Loos" made us laugh.

The Eden Project

The Eden Project is at the southwest tip of England and is a set of 'biomes' - domes designed to simulate the climate of different parts of the world in order to grow and study plants. The focus is understanding the relationship between plants and people.
The largest dome, the jungle environment, is the largest greenhouse in the world and could fit the Tower of London inside. It has a waterfall and a flowing stream. The focus is on the future, studying about recycling and botany. The location is even about recycling, it was a spent China clay mine that they reused. The flowers were beautiful!

The robot is built of all the electronics one person would throw away in a lifetime. (check out the teeth, they are computer mice)

The teaching center is called 'The Core' and in the center of 'The Core' is a round room with 'the seed' in it. It is the largest sculpture in the world made from a single piece of stone. It is a gigantic piece of granite. It represents the beginning of something special at the Eden Project to help the world.

The LaRoques Come and Visit - April 2009

Barbara, George, Webb and John-Luke decided to come and visit us. They flew to Paris on Sunday (12th), spent three days there and then took the train to London on Wednesday (16th). I met them at St. Pancras station and brought them home to stay with us a few days. They flew home this morning after a whirlwind week of siteseeing in London.

Buckingham Palace on a rainy day - they did the changing of the guard, but pretty boring without the band who do not perform on bad weather days (messes up their hats)

We rode the hop on / hop off open top, double-decker buses around London.

The Windsor Castle trip

Pizza after the castle

Uffington White Horse

England has a series of giant white figures, most are horses but a few men, in several places around the country carved in chalk on the side of hills. Most of them are 200-300 years old, but a few are much older. The Uffington White Horse is the oldest - and coolest looking - and is estimated to be 3,000 years old - similar in age to Stonehenge.

The interesting thing is, you can't really see it to appreciate it from the ground. The picture at the top of this post is an aerial shot stolen from Wikipedia. So whoever built the thing, did it to be seen from above. Hmmm.

We climbed the hill to get a close look. These are taken standing beside it.

This is the head.

The left picture is a rear leg. The right is a front leg.


This is the tail.



This is looking from the top of the hill down on Amanda and John.



The best shots we could get of the whole thing from the ground.

AFA - Corfe Castle (April 2009)

Corfe Castle is one of the most impressive castles in all of Europe - except we arrived 400 years late to see it. Sadly it is in ruins. Over and over we've seen these incredible strongholds, placed in perfect defensive positions, castles that withstood many attacks, always, always were betrayed by someone inside. The picture above is taken from the train station in the town below the castle. The town is served by a restored steam locomotive that we rode to Swanage beach.

But nearby in the village, a craftsman painstakingly recreated the castle and surrounding village as it would have looked 400 years ago. So you get a sense of how amazing this thing would have been. An outrageous modeling job. The little church has bells that ring and a choir that sings - or at least that is the way it sounds. The houses have people in their courtyards, and sheep and cattle in their fields. And notice the little trees - they appear (without exhaustive scientific testing) to be real. They must be groomed like bonzai trees.



The center shot is cool because you see the kids in front of the model, and behind the model in the distance on the left you can see some of the actual remaining castle walls. We are probably a mile from the ruins, so you get a sense of how huge the thing was.


Amanda and I played a game of giant checkers. I kicked her butt - however, impartial observers might say that it was a draw because we gave up the game before I actually kicked her butt. (now I will find out if she reads the blog)