Underwater.

Ever so slightly damp in Bishopstone this morning. Never seen so many cars abandoned and submerged up to the wheel arches.

My question is, why on Earth would you carry on driving if you can already see several cars in front of you already knee deep in water. Do people like the adventure? Is it the challenge? Phew, that was close! My car was NEARLY a complete write off

Emperor Penguins

I spent a whole hour charging up my camera batteries, so I could takes lots of pictures today and then spent another hour driving to the Cotswold Birdland Park and Garden which is the only place apparently in the UK where you can see Emperor Penguins, only to find on arrival their was a problem with my battery connections and I couldn't take a single picture-at least not with my decent camera. All I had as a back-up was my mobile phone and a small, cheap, compact camera. 

Still, they didn't turn out too bad did they? How could they not? Emperor Penguins are the most amazing creatures. Spending months huddled together in pitch darkness, without any food, during the seemingly endless blizzards of an Antarctic winter, trying to keep the egg they have balanced on their feet warm has got to win anyone's admiration. Even if they do walk like old men!

Best ebooks recently read...

The Long Bridge: Out of the Gulags by Urszula Muskus

Inflight Science: A guide to the World from your airplane window by Brian Clegg

Scott's Last Expedition by Robert Falcon Scott

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Anne Frank's Diary

The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac by Graham Farmelo

Giants: The Dwarfs of Aushwitz by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev

Orkney by Amy Sackville

Finally, some pictures of Max...

It's such great fun to watch a herd of elephants interacting. Today, at Whipsnade, while George and Scott ( Max's older brothers played a game trying to push each other into the water hole, Max-the youngest addition to the family, kept running around, falling over. The first picture shows Max with his father Emmet.

Latest from Whipsnade

Three weeks ago, at Whipsnade Zoo, a female asian elephant called Karishma gave birth to a calf named Max, weighing in at 129.5kg.

I so wanted to get a photograph of Max today, but sadly, all I really saw was the occasional glimpse of him as he peered out from behind his mother.

I think the picture below of an elephant is Scott his older brother.

Whipsnade in the rain

I do like Whipsnade Zoo, but if there is a failing, it's that apart from the discovery centre, they really have no indoor areas to visit, so when it's raining like today, everyone gets absolutely soaked.

For this reason, the following photographs were all taken today in the thankfully very dry, discovery centre.

Atomised

For me, one of the hardest scientific conclusions to accept is the belief that atoms comprise mostly of empty space. Empty space. Think about that! Imagine being in a huge, empty cathedral and your small and solitary voice echoing off every distant wall in a manner that suggests eternity. That's an atom.

The nucleus of an atom is made up of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons, and apart from the occasional electron whizzing round like an angry bee, that nucleus occupies such a tiny percentage of the atom as a whole, (100,000 times smaller), it has been said that if it were possible to remove all the empty space in every atom, the Earth would be reduced to the size of a grapefruit.

I don't deny that this is true. It has to be. When Rutherford conducted in 1911 his famous experiment where he fired alpha particles from a radium gun at gold foil he found that only one alpha particle in 8,000 would bounce back because it hit something.

What I find especially difficult is, if we are mostly made up of empty space why don't we just fall to the floor if we were to sit on a chair, or for that matter straight through the floor once we've been through the chair? Why conversely does everything feel so reassuringly solid?

I'm reading this particular science book at the moment which refers to a mysterious force that literally drives apart the electrons and nuclei of an atom so fiercely it effectively turns each atom's constituent parts into something resembling 'invisible girders.'

When you contrast that strong, dividing mechanism inside the atom with the strong nuclear force which glues protons and neutrons together in the first place, and thinking about those different component parts being both repelled and attracted at the same time, without us, well...falling through a chair when we sit on it, or life itself tearing our flimsy self to pieces, isn't life truly a miracle? Or is that the greatest understatement ever?

I am the Walrus!

I have mixed feelings about the natural history museum in Tring. On the one hand it fills me with such sadness seeing so many animals staring out of their display cabinets with such lifeless eyes, (all though I don't suppose it's any worse then seeing a stuffed pope in a glass cabinet which I did when I visited the Vatican many years ago), but on the other hand it's one of the few places you can get some idea of what so many animals actually looked liked that are now extinct.

I went there today because I wanted to see what a seal leopard looked like. I'd read about these ferocious predators that attack both seals and humans alike, with their razor sharp teeth in Scott's diary, but since you can only see them in the Antarctic (which I'm hardly ever likely to go to) & they're never going to appear in a zoo (imagine feeding time, with the keepers throwing a baby seal to them! ) this was the only place that could satisfactorily resolve my curiosity...

As you scroll down to look at the pictures, see if you can spot the Dodo's.

I

Butterfly Farm, Stratford upon Avon

St Jude's storm

After listening the whole night long to howling winds, and mysterious thud-like sounds as presumably roof tiles, dustbin lids and fully laden lorries were being thrown up into the air with abandon, I opened my curtains with a certain amount of trepidation. 

Given that a warning had been given by the met office to expect wind speeds of up to 90mph during the night, I half expected to wake up in Kansas with the roof missing, but as it turned out I didn't think it was too bad, at least initially. That was, until I drove through the village of Marsh....

90 Degrees South

While reading Scott's epic, 'The last Voyage' I've been entering all his latitude and longtitude co-ordinates from his journal and then inputting the data into an android app which literally plots the course he took to the South Pole by mapping it against google Earth. It's helping me to visualise his progress as he describes it.

It's such a heartbreaking read (on so many levels), but what really impresses me at the moment is the level of skill involved in such an extensive navigation.

Long before global positioning satelights (GPS), a mariner would have to first use a sextant to try to find Polaris, or the equivalent star in the Southern Hemisphere in presumably an often cloudy, night sky, then read the angle between that direction-assisting star and the horizon to work out the latitude, then he would have to use a nautical chronometer to establish the longtitude to extrapolate the approximate location and then do that EVERY single day to know exactly where he was. It fills me with absolute wonder. How on Earth did they manage? To me, that's like directing a rocket to the moon using an old ruler and a piece of string stretched taughtly against a map of the sky!

If the drifting pack ice, freezing temperatures, overloaded and leaking boat, strong tidal currents, leopard seals, killer whales, wildly spinning compass' (due to the proximity of the Pole) and ever dwindling supplies were not enough to contend with, it was nothing short of a miracle that he even got there.

Personally, if I was using the same navigation aids, I doubt I'd even make it to France even if I was half way across the channel and already pointing in the right direction!

Shrepreth Wildlife Park

Day trip to the Orkneys!

The journey started at Inverness Bus Station. 

Once boarded, we had a 3 hour bus journey to John O'Groats ahead of us. The young girl with the microphone on the coach gave us lots of information on the way. 

She told us about the Highland clearances, the 1863 Helmsdale gold rush, why all whisky distilleries are soot black (which they call angels breath), she pointed out Dunrobin castle which is the largest house in Scotland with it's 189 rooms, the statue of the much hated Duke of Sutherland who realised he could make more money raising sheep then collecting rent, hence the clearances-that Caithness is the least populated county in the UK, where sheep outnumber people 10 to 1 & showed us where the last witch was burnt in the British Isles ( Janet Horne in 1727, Dornoch ).

She told us lots more, but that's all I remember...it's a beautiful route to John O groats, mostly coastal, and often round lots of winding cliff side turns. 

John O Groats was a bit like Lands End. Lots of people jostling to pose for endless photographs in front of signs pointing in every direction imaginable with the estimated mileage printed besides it (including New Zealand straight down, through the Earth 12,875 miles apparently). There was an air of excitement which you could hear in the voices of some of the people you passed by. Maybe, a few had finally completed the Lands End-John O groats journey and it had taken weeks so they had something to celebrate.

We didn't have to wait more then 15 minutes for our ferry the Pentland Venture to turn up. There were dozens of scratches, marks and dents on the side of the boat, presumably from bashing the ferry against the jetty as it came in to dock, which was a bit of a worry. The ferry was so overloaded, it was shocking just how many people they managed to fit on board. Even the owner of the boat looked a bit stressed looking at this huge waiting queue when the boat was already mostly full. In fact, it was so full, someone even came along trying to persuade anyone who wanted to, to go on another day instead. I swear our ferry sunk two inches in the water once everybody was on board!

Anyway, after the 40 minute crossing, and disembarking we boarded one of three coaches that all had different itineries. Before we went anywhere we were taken to Kirkwall for lunch. I walked to tescos to get some food, then walked down to the harbour before heading back to the High Street which looked like any typical small town High Street with its usual selection of banks, shops, pubs, a post office & even its own cathedral.

The coach driver (who came from Glasgow initially but spent much of his life living in the South of England) was a fantastic guide, and very funny. He told us that out of the 3 drivers he was the good looking one, so whenever we had to re-board our coach after being dropped off somewhere, if we were unsure at all which coach to get on, we had to remember that, so if we came across a driver who was particularly ugly (his words not mine) by no accounts should we get on because it was the wrong bus! Personally, I thought all the drivers looked exactly the same, as all drivers seem to with their sedentry lifestyle, slightly balding, all with beer guts... :)

He told us about Scapa Flow, the large body of water in the middle of the Island, which during both wars, the Royal Navy kept most of it's fleet there because of the protection offered by the Islands. 

Tragically, there is a British warship called the Royal Oak that was sunk by a German U-boat, with the loss of over 800 lives in the 2nd World war. It was so sad to think of that ship at the bottom of Scapa Flow which is a designated gravesite, because all 800 bodies (mostly 18-19 year olds) are still on board. 

Almost the entire German fleet were also scuttled at Scapa Flow during the first World war, so there is so much wreckage lying on the sea bed, divers from all over the World visit the Orkneys to explore, but the grisly notion of all those dead sailors would put me off going anywhere near any of the wreckage.  At low tide, we could see several ships jutting out of the water.

The u-boat that sunk the Royal Oak skillfully navigated through the Islands defences. Churchill immediately ordered that the gaps into Scapa Flow be sealed, which was carried out by Italian prisoners of war. The gaps that were sealed up were called the Churchill Barriers, and they doubled up as roads, so suddenly most of the Islands were now connected following the war, which is how we were able to get from one island to the next so easily.

Skara Brae was an interesting site-supposedly 5,000 years old! The journey from the entrance building to the site feels like a quarter of a mile, and all along the route are paving slabs marked with historic events that took place the equivelant distance to the time in history when they took place. For instance, the first few steps outside of the entrance building contain slabs marked with the 'first man lands on the moon' 'the first man in space' 'the first telephone' etc. In fact, you're only half way to the site when you come across a slab with the sign 'the birth of Christ.' There was still 3,000 years to go back in time until you reached the time when this village was built! Some of the houses were so well preserved. One of the houses you could still see the original stone furniture inside!

We also visited the Ring of Brodger, the Standing Stones of Stenness and the Italian chappel built by the numerous Italian prisoners of war out of a Nissan hut, and miraculously painted, decorated and designed using the cheapest of materials they had access to. The statue at the front for instance, unbelievably was made out of chicken wire and concrete., but you'd never guess.

On the way back to John O'Groats, not only did we see a few puffins, we also saw a pod of dolphins.

Great day.