Interlude: Random Loughborough outings and the Queen's Birthday

Just a few quick pictures from Loughborough to bridge the gap until our next scuba-related post!

These pictures were taken on the Queen's birthday, in Queen's Park in the centre of Loughborough. This was her actual birthday on April 21st, not the floating Saturday in June when the official party in London occurs, with the Trooping the Colour and whatnot.  It was a lovely day out, and any day without rain in the UK is one that you have to get outside and enjoy! We thought we'd have a picnic in honour of Her Maj's special day.

 

 

The building below is the Carillon Tower and War Museum. It was built as a memorial to the local casualties of WWI in 1922, and the 47 bells in the tower were built at a local foundry. This business is best known for making the huge bell (Great Paul) for St. Paul's Cathedral in London, which weighs over 16 tons! The cast for that gigantic bell is also in this park. I had never considered the process of bell-making before, but the big bell apparently took 4 days to cool and set, so they didn't know for quite a while if it will sound the correct musical note. I have no idea how you design a bell to ring a specific musical note, but that's why I don't work at a bellfoundry. Apparently this foundry and staff have been in business one way or another since the 14th century, and are now the largest bellfoundry in the world!

Anyways, the Carillon is apparently the only purpose-built Carillon in the UK, and is said to have a great view over Loughborough. I wouldn't know, because the visiting hours for this tower are incredibly short and we keep missing them!

This park has a lot of interesting and disparate areas, like a bird sanctuary and a bandstand. It also had one of those areas which is a combination of playground and workout equipment, with signs to show you how many calories you can burn if you climb up and down a pole again and again for half an hour. But what kind of fool would do that?

Oh.

Whee!!

One of the gardens is themed around the Olympic Rings, and has colour-coded floral areas to correspond to the different rings. Apparently the 'black' garden was an interesting challenge for the landscape designer. Since the flowers were just starting to bloom, it wasn't fully impressive yet, but it was already very lovely! People in the UK seem to be much more into gardening than people in Canada - I don't know if it's because they have the benefit of a much longer growing season, if they have less space for lawns and therefore the garden is the decorative touch on a house, or if there's another reason altogether. I have been realizing this spring that I really miss my gardens at home, and hope they're still in one piece when I get back to them!

After our picnic (with cheese brought back from Switzerland and the Netherlands!), we also took a stroll through the downtown core. I do love the repurposing of old houses and buildings in the UK, although less so when it's my workplace and there are annoyances like having to use a few weak radiators for heating the entire place!

This is our bank!

Town Hall, and the remains of the weekly market. Loughborough has a market every Thursday and Saturday, going back to around the year 1200. They take down the stalls every Thursday night, just to turn around and put them back up on Saturday morning. I don't get why they don't keep them up Friday or change the market days!

Our local movie theatre is to the left

This is Justin sitting on Sock Guy, a local landmark. Inside Town Hall there are a few art galleries called Sock Gallery and Sockette Gallery. Also, didn't know this until now, but the statue is only wearing a sycamore leaf over his lap and one sock. Justin did not know this when sitting on his lap, I think!

The next picture was actually from the drive down to Chepstow, but I thought it illustrated something interesting about the UK. Of all of the too-narrow, hairpin-turned roads in this country, it was a little frightening to see that this one was EXTRA dangerous. Of course, they aren't actually going to DO anything about it... just try and scare you into slowing down.

More pictures from the drive to and around Chepstow:

Just an average view here. We don't even stop the car anymore, just roll down the window!

This is a service centre on the side of the highway. It looks like a hobbit house!

The sunsets in the UK really are incredibly beautiful. I've actually read that the increased haze/pollution/smoke in the air helps to disperse the colours and give these spectacular views. Ummm, looking on the bright side?

That's it for now! Justin will be back soon with more scuba adventures and tales of shenanigans!