My life in a nutshell - holiday tag

Dunwich

Thu, 28 May 2009 22:48:00 GMT

We went down to the nature reserve and saw buzzard, dartford warbler and avocet. We heard what we were reliably informed was Cettis' Warbler. A great morning in the still of the heathland beside the sea. No wind, not too hot, not too cold.
After getting back to the holiday cottage Jamie, Tom and I went exploring in the woods and fields around about. We watched an Apache helicopter from the nearby airbase orbit round a few times. They seem to fly all day and well into the evening. We found some spotted orchids growing in a damp shady patch at the top of a field. The cottage owner told us there were some in flower in the area.
After Tom and Edith were safely in bed Jamie and I went into Framlingham to buy a chinese takeaway. Twelve hours later I can still feel the leaden ball in my belly that is king prawn curry and salt and pepper chicken. I must have drunk five glasses of water overnight I was so thirsty afterwards.
I went outside about 2:30am. Nothing particulary interesting in the sky apart from a planet to the west and an owl calling in the woods.

Windy day in suffolk

Wed, 27 May 2009 22:47:00 GMT

Our fourth day on holiday in suffolk. We went to Orford which has a cool castle keep that you can go around (for a small fortune). The castle is so well preserved that it feels cosy inside! You can see all the various rooms which were the bedrooms (King Henry II stayed in one), kitches, store rooms etc. It was slighltly frustrating as I had a sense of 'so near yet so far'. I was standing in the bedrooms and bathrooms of a medieval castle, looking through the windows that knights and kings had looked out of but I didn't feel much empathy. Maybe it was the eleven month old strapped to my back, the other vistors, our self-imposed pace or the spartanness of the rooms which made it difficult to imagine how it must have felt.

From the roof you can see Orford Ness. This is a spit which is several miles long between the tidal river and the sea. It has been there for millenia which suprised me as I always thought of such things, especially on such a dynamic coastline, as being transient. You could made out several odd looking concreate structures. These were the top secret test ranges for the UK atomic weapns programme. No nuclear material made it to these ranges, they used to to develop the bomb casing and detonation mechanims.

We had another excellent pub lunch before a brief walk in the very blustery wind. We then went to Thorpness to fly the kite on the beach but the wind was so strong by this point the kites line broke every time we launched it. After repairing it four or five times we gave up, had a look round the windmill and the house in the sky and went home.

Satellites over Suffolk

Sat, 23 May 2009 22:45:00 GMT

Kids woke me up in the middle of the night and I couldnt get back to sleep so I went outside. With binoculars I watched two bright objects that traversed across the whole sky very very fast. I am sure they were satellites. They were two fast and bright for planes and too longevid for meteors.