Londons the kew.

Today, I was finally back on Norwegian soil, for all of about half an hour. After the voyage from Hamburg to Oslo, my dear wife joined me onboard for a very enjoyable 1 night preview cruise when I swapped my boiler suit for my best attire.

I took a long weekend in London during the time that "Freedom of the Sea", my second home it seems, was laid up in dry dock in Hamburg. The ocassion was my cousins (on my dads side) wedding. A lovely affair it was too.

Mrs Longship joined me on the Friday morning and we indulged in a "shopping spree" in Harrods. Well, a few olives, some tights and some sweets. We did enjoy the Sushi bar though, I never knew just how tasty raw fish could be, it was exceptional.

Anyway, to the point of my ramblings from Freedoms internet cafe.

For me, there is no City I have visited quite like London. For people such as myself who are curious in nature and find facination in so much of life and history, London is frustrating. It's not the lack of interesting things, no, quite the opposite. There is so much of interest that you don't know where to start, and worse, when you do start you know that you'll never get to the end of it always feeling that you leave wherever you were half finished.

As an example, it was not before the umpteenth time I was in the science museum that I thought it would maybe be a good idea to start at the top floor, only to find that there was a huge aviation section on the 5th floor, which I had never seen because I was too busy looking at the steam engines, boat and cars down the bottom floors.

This time it was Kew Gardens that provided us with a wonderful but frustrating day out. We did admittingly give ourselves a rather short time, after the festivities onboard Hispanola the night before, Sunday did start rather slowly.

We headed sraight for the first victorian greenhouse we saw, the tropical rainforest one. By the time that we had finished enjoying the Banana trees, the rubber trees, the worlds largest palm, ginger, bamboo and so much more, we were already running short of time, only to discover the excellent aquatic display in the basement, which took up another chunk of time. This was followed by a wander over to the worlds largest compost heap, the one thing we had to see!!! A very friendly and peacock, who endulged us in a show of his wonderful tail. A chat with a few very brave and curious squirrels, a stroll through the Rodedendrums over the the Veg plots and the Rock Garden, before finishing off purchasing a starter kit for canivorous plants (Venus Fly trap attempt #6......)

Kew is a fantastic and fascinating place. I am so very jealous of folk who live in the proximity to make a season ticket a possibility. In the 3 or so hours we had, we were altogther to rushed and probalbly saw 15% of what we could have seen.

So, we decided that another trip to Kew is in order, a full day perhaps during our next visit to London town, whenever that will be. But then we would be missing out on the Natural History Museum, the Tate, the Tate Modern, HMS Belfast, the science museum, the London Observatory, the London Eye .................

The Struggle of the Seasons

It's a war out there.

Spring duly arrived to claim it's territory in early March only to find Winter stubbornly refusing to move aside.

This struggle is no way near over. Yes, spring has gained the high ground, the first rocks and the steepest slopes are now appearing through the snow, but it's a long hard battle. The snow which has been with us since mid November has now sunk and compacted down to around a little over half a meter depth but it is now dense and wet and the spring thaw has had little effect to the total volume of water to melt.

Just as spring begins to makes headway, for example, a light spring shower helping to wash away some snow, the temperatures fall and it starts snowing again. Just today, lovely spring sunshine managed to get the temperature up around 5-6 Deg C, but tonight, it would seem, the temperatures are on the way down past freezing again and it'll all be ice again in the morning.

This struggle has left it's mark on the landscape, once a beautiful pure white, now dirty grey. Through the constant melt and freeze, the gritting of roads, the passage through wet snow and so forth it is hard to tell the difference between snow, grass, gravel and tarmac.

It's been a wonderful winter and we have been very privileged to enjoy such conditions which haven't been seen for 40 years or more but now it really is time to start making progress with this years endeavors in the vegetable garden.

Come on winter, get out the way before it's summer.....