Here's a few photos from England....

 

The small Bristol International Airport -- where we flew into England from Newark. I highly recommend this quiet, unstressful airport. We got from the plane, through passport control, baggage claim and to the curb in 20 minutes:

 

Bristol Temple Meads train station:

 

Me, on 3 hours sleep at the Bristol station:

 

The interior of our train from Bristol to London. These are brand-new, and this is First Great Western Railway's first class accommodation -- but we sat in economy class:

 

Where our train (second from right) ended up -- at London Paddington Station:

 

I'm going to bed now. Here's hoping for 12 hours of sleep!

Too bad you had to go to England and miss the NARP meeting  :wink: , but I guess the trains kind of make up for it! :-)

 

Neat shots. It's a trip I'd like to make, some day.

^ You look like death warmed over, KJP  (just kidding...)  :-)

I am jealous! I cannot believe you consented to be photographed under jet lagged conditions! I think I mentioned last time went, but if you can take an overnight trip to Edinburgh you really should. It is an amazing city  and the Scott culture is a blast. There is lightning fast train out of London (either Paddington or Kings Cross). I cannot remember the name, but I am sure someone around there will know. It is express, no stops, and even a glimpse of rocky coast line along the way.

 

Have a nice trip. I have been to London around this time of year and the weather was much nicer than Cleveland. Pretty scary.

Go to Harvey Nic's and cheer yourself up!

Love the trains.

actually Ken looks like local in that pic. very Brit

love that bristol station. i wish we (still) had stations like those in the states.

Sorry I didn't get to download any pictures today. Was on the go in London from 9 a.m. to 11:45 p.m. Took some bus tours, visited the British Museum and saw Spamalot at the Palace Theater at Cambridge Circus. It's now after 1 a.m. and I've got a 10 a.m. train to catch back to Bristol. There we rent a car and head for Torquay where we spend a week. I'd rather stay in London but I'm keeping an open mind.... Hopefully more pictures will soon follow....

Here's 11 more (of about 170 pictures I took in the last few days in London). I'm now in Torquay, where there are palm trees but it's in the 40s.

 

Our hotel in London, the Hyde Park Radnor. It's about three blocks south of Paddington Station...

 

Police efforts to keep crime under control in the neighborhood of our London hotel are well documented....

 

Relatively quiet time at Piccadilly Circus...

 

Random London street scene...

 

 

Along the Thames...

 

Back near Picadilly, near the lunch hour....

 

 

Cambridge Circus and the Palace Theater where we saw Spamalot...

 

Park just north of Victoria Station....

 

Street scene at the east end of Kensington Green...

well that looks like very londony weather that is for sure. can't wait to see more, so keep'em coming. and some torquay too.

Neat shots, amazing density.

Actually, the weather was very nice on our last day in London. It was partly sunny with highs in the mid-50s. I actually got a little sun burn during our two-hour bus tour! But the sun was so low in the sky, so it looks kind of murky in the photos. The last photo I took that day was the one at Cambridge Circus and it had started raining lightly by then. The weather is pretty yucky here in Torquay, with fog, drizzle and highs in the 40s.

OK, here's some more pictures. These are of Torquay, Brixham and Dartmouth on the English Channel. These I took today.

 

This is the view from our bed and breakfast in Torquay:

 

This is Kents Cavern in Torquay. Why show a cave on urban website? Because this is one of the first known human dwellings in the British Isles, with human remains found in the cave going back some 700,000 years:

 

 

The waterfront in Torquay:

 

The beach in Paignton, just south of Torquay:

 

And the waterfront in Brixham -- an amazing little town tightly clustered between the hillside and the English Channel:

 

Dartmouth, another great little town, this one at the mouth of the Dartmouth River:

 

 

Views from and of the Dartmouth Castle, which protected the mouth of the Dartmouth River for 600 years until it was destroyed in England's civil war in the 1600s:

 

 

 

More to come.......

nice.  keep the pics coming!

Interesting places!

Never get tired of seeing photos from the UK.

Good! Cuz' here comes some more! These are a select few from the last two days, including a two-hour drive west to Land's End from Torquay and a tw0-hour drive east to Christchurch to see -- Christchurch, one of the oldest in England.

 

So, yesterday we drove west, first to Penzance, the largest city at the westernmost portion of England, and was the departure point over the centuries for many ships (be they military, commercial or criminal/pirate) heading west, once it was proved that a ship wouldn't fall off the end of the earth. Today, Penzance is a shipping and tourist city:

 

Just west of Penzance is St. Michael's Mount, a fortress set atop a rocky outcropping just off shore in the English Channel. At low tide, it's possible to walk from shore to the fortress island"

 

The Penzance waterfront:

 

Welcome to what was once considered the end of the Earth. Land's End is 12 miles west of Penzance and is a rocky, windswept and harsh environment. Actually, the Isles of Scilly are another 15 miles offshore, west of Land's End, but this is the farthest west you can go without a boat. About 2,000 miles west is Newfoundland. But no one here knew that until as recently as 1500 -- which is pretty recent in the history of Britain:

 

A brief glimpse of the farthest western point of the main British island:

 

While having another terrific English breakfast at our B&B in Torquay, five passenger trains went by in that one hour. This was one of them. The rail line into Torquay is a branch line of a branch line, yet in one hour it produced as many passenger trains as the number which serves Ohio in a single day:

 

About two hours east of Torquay is Corfe Castle, the name of the fortress as well as the town which grew up around it after the fortress castle was built in the 11th century. It was mostly destroyed during the British civil war in the 1600s:

 

Some views of Corfe Castle and its namesake town:

 

 

 

Our last stop before sunset was at Christchurch, to see the namesake church built in the 11th century. Christchurch is on the east side of a fairly large city called Bournemouth on the English Channel. It's a very pretty church, but we didn't stay long. Here's one of the picture I took of this church, which isn't as large at Salisbury Cathedral, Yorkminster or Westminster Abbey. But it was pretty large for its day, and predated its larger cathedrals by a century or more:

very cool little town. nice shots of the castle ruins.

still more typical gloomy brit weather.

 

otoh it does look like a great place to explore around there.

Gloomy weather? The sun was out in all but one or two pictures in that last batch. The only reason why it probably appeared gloomy is that the sun is lower in the sky there. London is roughly at the same latitude as Calgary -- as in Canada.

Are you enjoying yourself?  More pics please!

Gloomy weather? The sun was out in all but one or two pictures in that last batch. The only reason why it probably appeared gloomy is that the sun is lower in the sky there. London is roughly at the same latitude as Calgary -- as in Canada.

but the temps are seriously tempered by the gulf stream.

On Wednesday, we traveled to Tintagel. It's a tiny town in Cornwall on the Irish Sea. There was a castle built on a rock outcropping in the sea during Roman times but became inhabited on a full-time basis in 400-500 AD. It was also the place where King Arthur allegedly was born.

 

But before we traveled there, I stopped off at the train station down the street from our B&B in Torquay. It's a "suburban" station where local trains travel through at least every 30 minutes in each direction and expresses roughly every hour:

 

OK, on to Tintagel (Tin-ta-gel). To get to the rock outcropping into the Irish Sea requires lots of climbing -- hills, steps and more steps. The steps are made of stones and aren't evenly spaced. Plus, they cling to the sides of cliffs that, if you suffer from vertigo or are out of shape, this excursion is not recommended:

 

 

 

 

 

 

A temporary bridge was built to bypass a section of steps that disappeared earlier this winter when part of the cliff slid away. Doesn't exactly make someone feel terribly safe:

 

 

More coming -- including Plymouth (from where the Mayflower and its pilgrims departed for America), Glastonberry (where Joseph of Arimathea supposedly visited with Christ and built a small church that lasted until 1184 before it burned down and was replaced with a massive abbey that King Henry VIII destroyed). Tomorrow (Saturday), I visit Bath -- named for the Roman baths which still stand there nearly 2,000 years after they were built.

wow those are beautiful

wow.  One slip on those stairs and ........

Gorgeous photos. The historic structures and ruins seem even more amazing to me when I consider that they didn't have powered machines to shape or transport stones and timbers and put them into place. They accomplished all that, sometimes on a massive scale, with manual labor and animal power.

Gloomy weather? The sun was out in all but one or two pictures in that last batch. The only reason why it probably appeared gloomy is that the sun is lower in the sky there. London is roughly at the same latitude as Calgary -- as in Canada.

 

not necessarily. you get blue sky sunny as blazes at the poles. low in the sky has nothing to do with it here, there are no long shadows. its just the local weather. your pics have lot of typical british grey/white/ocean haze cloudiness that screams england. the clev is a lot like this too.

 

scrolling down from the top, until the last batch this castle ruin was the first pic

i detected any real sun at all, and from the background clouds it looks pretty typically fleeting

 

now as i said from the last batch at tintagel i am finally seeing some sustained bright sun. alright then, carry on!  :wink:

 

 

 

 

Amazing photos!  :)

Beautiful scenery!

Thanks for all your compliments. I will be able to post more in the next couple of days now that I'm back in America. I was sad to leave England and am looking forward to going back again, and again and...

 

BTW, if you are going to England, I highly recommend a stay in the Torquay area. And if you're going to stay there, stay at the Ashwood Grange Hotel. It's a wonderful B&B owned and operated by Stuart and Clare Anthony. We became fast friends in the week we stayed there. If you go, tell them the Prendergasts from Cleveland recommended their fine place, and that we already miss them very much! See:

http://www.ashwoodgrangehotel.co.uk/

These are fantastic...and I am fantastically envious of your trip.

Thanks! Then you might like these. We drove around Dartmoor National Park...

 

We started out at Lydford, a small town built in Saxon times (300 AD to 1000 AD). The remarkable thing about this town is that its ancient buildings are still inhabited:

 

 

 

 

Lydford Castle is no longer inhabited, but....

 

...it and the nearby trail to a river gorge make great settings for haunted fun at Halloween, decorations for which were stored near a gift shop:

 

We drove south toward Tavistock which was the setting for important research into human psychology. There is also a lovely and large church there, photos of which I shot through the windshield of the rental car:

 

 

Then there was this dramatic sign on a gate on a road in Tavistock:

 

We continued farther south to the decent-sized city of Plymouth where Pilgrims departed for America aboard the Mayflower. The English don't dismiss this event from 400 years ago. There is a museum in Plymouth devoted to the Pilgrims. Some things look very different these days in Plymouth, and some things don't. Here's the old part of town that survived World War II and post-war renewal:

 

This circular area of old housing near the waterfront is called the Hoe:

 

 

More views of Plymouth's harbor:

 

A happy lighthouse and its wanna-be light pole next to it:

 

The citadel in Plymouth is tucked behind this massive wall, at upper right:

 

 

Our rental car is dwarfed by the citadel wall:

 

Some things haven't changed much around Plymouth harbor....

 

...But most has:

 

There is still more to come.

Stunning.  A country of extreme natural and man-made beauty and in such a compact area.  Sure makes the USA seem like a real youngster.

These pictures from my second-to-last day in England (March 21) should add to that impression, clvlndr. These show my visit to Glastonbury and then to Cheddar Gorge.

 

Some places are historical. Glastonbury is history. This accurate description from Wikipedia says it all:

 

Glastonbury Abbey in Glastonbury, Somerset, England, now presents itself as "traditionally the oldest above-ground Christian church in the World" situated "in the mystical land of Avalon" by dating the founding of the community of monks at AD 63, the legendary visit of Joseph of Arimathea, who was supposed to have brought the Holy Grail and planted the Glastonbury Thorn.

 

It is also the reputed final resting place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. There is no documentation to prove this, however (see my earlier pictures of Tintagel showed the apparent birthplace of King Arthur -- we also saw in London's Palace Theater a performance of Spamalot, the Monty Python account of King Arthur's life. So this vacation had more than its share of Arthur!!).

 

For more of Glatonbury's amazing history, visit:

http://www.glastonburyabbey.com/   or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Abbey

 

Anyway, time for photos. Let's start in the town, which has more than its share of "new age" shops and people:

 

A 16th century public house now preserved with other uses:

 

My sister gets a kick out of the drummer. There's lots of street performers in Glastonbury:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is St. John Church in the town. It's a very old church, though I don't know the date. I suspect it was probably built after Dissolution, when King Henry VIII seized all properties of the Catholic church in England and formed the Church of England. He named himself supreme leader of the church, ordered the torture, death and dismemberment of anyone who opposed him, and used seized church assets in part to build a navy to oppose the Spanish Armada. BTW, the Pope was a Spainard. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the stones from Glastonbury Abbey were used to build St. John Church, as stones were used to build other structures in town:

 

 

That's St. John, as viewed from the abbey. That's my mother sitting in the distance:

 

More pictures of the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, which was built starting in the late 1100s after the Lady Chapel on this site burned down. The Lady Chapel supposedly was built in 63 AD:

 

 

King Henry VIII couldn't stop people from praying at the abbey and its Benedictine chapel, which is still intact (also visible at the bottom of the photo above):

 

This is reputed to be the final resting place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere:

 

There are guides dressed in period costumes. This informative fellow was dressed in the style of the Dissolution era:

 

 

 

 

 

The tiny St. Patrick Church, on the abbey's grounds:

 

On Glastonbury Tor (tor means tower), a hillside overlooking the abbey are the remnants of St. Michael Church, the place where Joseph of Arimathea supposedly hid the Holy Grail:

 

After Glastonbury, we headed to the town of Cheddar (yes, as in cheese. There are actually cheese processing plants here, so it may well be the place where cheddar cheese got its start). But we weren't there for cheese. We were there to see an amazing gorge leading northward from the town into the hills. Sadly, a rainstorm hit just as we arrived:

 

 

 

 

Only one more day to go....

Those are some phenomenal pics, KJP.  Way to go!

If I could only find Scottie and the Transporter Room, I'd... what are your coordinates KJP?

I'm back in the USA...

 

I've got the last batch of pics ready to go. I shot these on my last full day in England, Saturday March 22...

 

We left that morning for the last time after staying a week at the Ashwood Grange Hotel in Torquay. We said goodbye to Stuart and Clare Anthony, owner-operators of this terrific bed-n-breakfast:

 

 

It was pretty easy to find the Ashwood Grange Hotel. This was parked across the street from it:

 

We headed up the M5 to near Bristol and found this estate which may have been a family property. Too bad it isn't any more! We have lots of Ashtons in our family history and they came from this area of England:

 

One of the gates to the estate:

 

A church in the town of Long Ashton:

 

The estate is popular with equestrians and dog walkers:

 

The main house:

 

 

 

 

We then headed over to Bath Spa, a city founded around a Roman bath built atop natural hot springs. Here's some street scenes from Bath, where masonry and ornate architecture are much in evidence:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The city has an amazing minster. Here's some shots of it:

 

 

 

And here's why Bath got its name. Yet, the nearly 2,000-year-old Roman baths were buried under 15 feet of dirt and city streets when they were accidentally discovered in the late 1800s. Fortunately, the Brits immediately refurbished the baths and even created their own Roman statues to adorn the site:

 

 

 

 

Who's that handsome guy in the light-blue jacket? My sister took this photo of me:

 

 

Here's the source of the hot water, which comes from a natural spring and empties into the Roman baths. Note the steam coming from the water:

 

 

After that, we headed to a Holiday Inn near the Bristol International Airport. The next morning at 6:30 a.m. we headed to the airport and flew home. And that was the end of a truly wonderful trip. I can't wait to go back.

Fantastic shots and thanks for posting them KJP! Haven't been to England but definitely will go some day (hopefully, maybe after the kids finish college :-o)

Then there is this reason for going to Europe:

 

^ok they have portly people there too. the dollar to GB pound is pretty awful I see. I am spending one night in London next month. Crackers and beer for me it looks like

Or have jacket potato with chili, salad garnish and a pint. Cheers!

OK, I finally got around to pulling some still pictures off the 7.5 hours of video I shot during the trip. Here's a few focusing on aviation and the sights therefrom...

 

Planes, planes and more planes at Newark Liberty International:

 

As often happens, our flight sat for 45 minutes near the end of the runway at Hopkins in Cleveland because Newark didn't enough space for our plane. When we finally got to Newark, this was a fascinating shot:

 

Our Continental flight to Bristol, England took off from Newark shortly before 10 p.m., giving us some great views of the Manhattan skyline:

 

Best viewed in a dark room (too bad the colors of all the lights didn't come out from the video):

 

 

We began banking to the east over Hoboken and the Hudson River. Are we actually going to fly directly over midtown Manhattan??

 

You betcha! It was an amazing view at night!

 

The next morning, I realized we were in an aviation convoy. Not only were we surrounded by fresh contrails, but the mad rush of fliers from America to England is plainly visible here. No less than two other planes are within eyesight at dawn over Ireland:

 

Welcome to lil' ol' Bristol International Airport. Lots of flights take off from here, but mostly to continental Europe. As far as I could tell, ours was the only flight from America into this easy to navigate but small airport. This was shot from the bus leaving for the Bristol Temple Meads train station:

 

This is a intentional break from the aviation stuff. To see what happened in between all the flights and airports, please see the rest of this thread!

 

OK, so we get back to the Bristol Airport on Sunday March 23 and are a little disconcerted at what we see on the departure screens. Ooopss!! Kinda reminds me of home:

 

Our own departure to the U.S. was delayed 40 minutes by a problem with the plane's elevator (one of them wasn't raising on our right wing). The problem was corrected and we got underway. Arrival back in the U.S. revealed the usual clogged Newark Liberty:

 

 

 

 

Bye bye, New York City:

 

Hello downtown Cleveland!

 

So ended a wonderful vacation, thanks to the fine folks at Continental!