Portsmouth

1 - HMS Warrior (one of the first ironclad warships)


2 - Portsmouth was hosting some sort of Victorian Christmas Festival, but my main reason for wanting to go was to see the Naval museum, as well as to get a look at HMS Victory (Nelson's flagship at the battle of Trafalgar). The museum was a disappointing collection of slightly pointless trinkets, but the ship was well worth the visit.


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4 - HMS Victory, looking rather good despite her age...


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8 - The Victorian festival featured all sorts of costumed characters wandering about, as well as a few food stalls and things. Unfortunately the low light and rain hampered my photographic efforts.

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Stonehenge

1 - An early start on a freezing Saturday morning saw Emily, Peter, and I take a trip down to Portsmouth, with a stop off at Stonehenge. The Stonehenge site turned out to be pretty much as expected, but with busy highways each side and a visitor's centre that gave out audio guides that (unfortunately) required removing hands from pockets to listen to.


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5 - My tour guides providing a useful and complimentary lens holding service...


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Oxford (Part 2)

1 - Late in the afternoon I headed down the river for a short distance to catch some photos of the houseboats, swans, and other bits and pieces.


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Oxford (Part 1)

1 - Emily's work is a convenient bus ride distance from Oxford, so on Friday I went along to check out what all the fuss was about... One of the good aspects of winter travel is that there aren't too many tourists about, so I spent a very pleasant day wandering about and photographing old things. I also had a look through the Modern Art Oxford gallery - one of the installations featured a dentists chair and a couple of robot drills which proceeded to administer all sorts of grievous bodily harm to the chair's imaginary occupant. Quite the scene, standing there in the galley... in the dark... alone...


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12 - The Ashmolean museum turned out to be well worth a visit (I'm enjoying the free things!) - and included a genuine Stradivarius violin.


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14 - The Oxford Museum of Natural History housed a fascinating collection of bones and things...


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University of Oxford Botanic Garden

1 - I stopped by a very wintery looking Botanic Garden whilst hanging about in Oxford, as it turns out this is the oldest botanic garden in the UK, and the third oldest in the world (founded in 1621).


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Reading

1- Immediately after jetting into Heathrow, Emily kindly gave me a bit of a guided tour around the outskirts of Reading. This series is from Streatley


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6 - The next day (after a rather long sleep) I caught the bus to Reading's town centre. It turned out to be a bit of a pleasant surprise - an impressive shopping centre (by New Zealand standards), a shopping district complete with cobbled roads, and the ruins of Reading Abbey (1121 - older than I can imagine!), which happens to be the burial place of King Henry I. The ruins were fenced off, but you get the general idea...


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