Holiday Snapshots
After approximately a month, I have eventually got my holiday pictures onto my computer.
So for your delectation, here are some of them, with commentary.
This was the day we went to Wierdale. Wierdale has a beautiful river in a gorge, and lots of pretty scenery. You walk up the valley, alongside the river, and near the top you came to an area with piles and piles of rocks. Fluorite and fossils are rife there, so we generally take a picnic up there and spend the day breaking rocks with our geology hammer, or roaming about the hills. It's lots of fun, in a healthy fresh-air sort of way.
Matt being a gargoyle.
My brother, H, being Thor. Although you can't tell, he is at this moment shouting "I WIELD THE AXE OF POWER!" We didn't like to point out that it was the geology hammer.
Some interesting photos of interesting trees.
We also went to an 'Otter Trust', which would have been more fun, had it not been icily cold and raining very very hard. The otters were... ottery. There were also miniature goats (so. cute. I had the two I was going to try and steal all picked out, and I figured that I could wrap them in my coat to get them out, but my family vetted (ho ho) me for goats before we left. Bastards.) and Highland cows and guinea pigs and rabbits. There was also a massively obese Pigeon sitting on the wall of the barn, that H insisted on calling 'the wall rabbit'. Weirdo.
A Highland Cow in the rain.
The Guinea Pig of DOOOOOOOOM!
Ok. In the second week, we went to see some Viking re-enactors. Now, I've seen more than my fair share of Viking groups, but these ones were really outstanding. I wanted to join in the battles and defeat the bad man. This feeling wasn't helped by the fact that me and H (I know, I know. It should be 'H and I', but that just feels too much like I'm singing the alphabet song...) had bought plastic battleaxes. So we were armed and everything!
A battle scene.
Lining up with shields.
My brothers in typical poses.
Oh, and on either side of a severed head on a stick, and a hung man.
I love this picture.
And one of the other days we went to the beach. H was being Jesus and walking on water. And yes, my sister and I are both standing.
And finally, a picture of my sister blow-drying her hair after dyeing it. Ooooh, I'm so dead if she finds I've posted this...
posted by Hieronymous Anonymous @ 5:51 pm
8 comments
8 Comments:
When we holidayed (can I put that in past tense? Is "to holiday" even a verb? I need to brush up on my english)in Wales there was a Viking village recreated near our cottage. It was fairly cool but even cooler was the nearby farm/petting zoo, featuring EDWARD THE PIG!!!!! Try typing "Castle Henlys" or variations on that spelling into Google and see what you get. It was amazingly neat.
I was in York many years ago, and there was a big Viking exhibit set up. I'm not sure how permanent it was, but it was rather fun. I even got to mint fake Viking money, of which I think I still have some laying around here somewhere. I didn't get to chop off anybody's heads, or capture the Orkneys, or anything fun like that, though. I suppose they wanted a limit on their realism.
Petting zoos seem to have disappeared around this area, largely due to lawsuits ("That dreadful viscous guinea pig squeaked at my dear little Timmy, and now Timmy needs $50 million to help him overcome his mental anguish!"). There is an aquarium where you can pet horseshoe crabs, clams (woohoo! the excitement!), starfish, and rays. They keep the tanks with the sharks, the sea urchins, and the electric eels well closed up, though.
Yay! My daring attempt to use italics has succeeded!
In York, there's a couple of permanent Viking exhibitions. I can't remember the name of the slightly more staid one, but there's the Jorvic Viking Centre, which has a part where you go on a ride around a 'typical Viking village', complete with robotic Vikings, artificial smells, and the like. Really enjoyable, unless you're like me, and halfway round start thinking: "What if there's human souls trapped in those mannequins, doomed to repeat the same actions over and over again?"
LOL - Robotic vikings and artificial smells
If automatons have souls
do computers?
what about washing machines
Cookers? Microwave ovens
My non-existence of god, the possibilities are endless.
I remember riding around looking at the Viking automatons doing Viking stuff. And a giant fire-breathing dragon, too, which I'm sure Smerk would enjoy. So that must have been the Jorvic Viking Centre. I don't remember if I visited another one in York or not.
If a squeaking guinea pig is grounds for a lawsuit, then the highwayman goats definitely were. At the door you could buy little bags of alfalfa pellets to feed the assorted critturs, and the goats would ambush you to steal the pellets and any other edibles you might be carrying (like you jacket, your wallet, your watchband, my brother's hair...)
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