Winchester Cathedral

Another magnificent British cathedral. Winchester Cathedral has a bunch of interesting things about it, but most of all it is huge, and magnificent.
Fact #1 - It is overall, the longest church in Europe.
Fact #2 - It was used as the Vatican in the movie, 'The DiVinci Code'
Fact #3 - There was a #1 pop hit called, "Winchester Cathedral" written about it in 1966. Horrible song - with whistling and a singer singing through a megaphone!
Fact #4 - There was another song done by Crosby, Stills and Nash called 'Cathedral' that is so good, I have it on my iPod right now. (not, unfortunately a major hit)
Fact #5 But the most interesting story happened in the early 1900's. The church, the construction of which was begun in 1079, was built on muddy soil and it was at risk of collapsing. So they had to pump out the water around the foundation and reinforce it, but that was likely to collapse the south and east walls of the cathedral. Enter William Walker.
(copied from Wikipedia)

"In his time, William Walker was the most experienced diver of Siebe Gorman Ltd. Working in water up to a depth of 6 m between 1906-1911, he shored up the Cathedral using more than 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks and 900,000 bricks.

Prior to his work, the Cathedral had been in imminent danger of collapse as it slowly sank into the ground, which consisted of peat. To enable bricklayers to build supporting walls, the groundwater level had to be lowered. Normally, the removal of the groundwater would have caused the collapse of the building. So to give temporary support to the foundation walls some 235 pits were dug out along the southern and eastern sides of the building, each about six metres deep. Walker went down and shored up the walls by putting concrete underneath them. He had to work six hours a day in complete darkness as the water contained floating sediment and was impenetrable to light.

After Walker finished his work, the groundwater was pumped out and the concrete Walker had put into place bore the foundation walls. Then conventional bricklayers were able to do their work the usual way and restore the damaged walls."
There are pictures of this guy actually doing this. He would work all week in Winchester, and then cycle 150 miles home for the weekends.

The center picture is a statue of William Walker in Winchester Cathedral - 'The Man Who Saved the Cathedral.'

Jane Austen

Road trip to Winchester! We stopped in to see Jane Austen's house one the way, and it turned out that she was the theme for the day. After touring her house (where she finished her novels) we went to Winchester, and ended up parking about a 100 yards from the house where she spent her final days in poor health - we walked by it and saw the plaque ("hey, check that out!!") - and then we toured Winchester Cathedral and her tomb was there.

The writing desk where she did her writing. And a bed similar to the one in which she slept.

This is the house in Winchester where she went for medical care when she became ill.

The back garden of Jane's home, we're relaxing on a bench waiting for the family Jane Austen aficionados. And a spectacular thatched roof a couple of houses down from Jane's house. The only flaw was they just thatched the side you could see from the street. (busted!)

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.