(no subject)

[andrew_jorgensen]

After much searching, I finally found something to do in London that isn't at all fun. rahael and I were eating breakfast this morning -- cereal with blueberries and bananas -- when I felt something in my mouth that might have been an unripened blueberry, were blueberries just a tad more metallic. I fished around and pulled out a small silver-pewter object -- I had lost a filling. Joy. So now I have an appointment with a dentist on the Kensington High Street tomorrow, and until then I'll be eating with a ginger touch. And since we're having Thai tonight, what I eat will have a touch of ginger.

rahael has updated about our journey through the Cotswolds, but she's left her readers where I left her, in the Spa Station at Bath. After seeing her off, my father and I drove out of town, where we quickly came upon a sign for a "Canal Visitors' Centre." On a whim we checked it out: there was no sign of the "Visitors' Centre" I had feared, with its dioramas of 19th Century canal construction and earnest display cases featuring artifacts of the lives of the digging classes; instead there was a little cafe and, lo!, a canoe rental. So we paddled between the narrowboats for a bit. The canals of high-rent Amsterdam had prepared me for the adaptations people would make to the narrowboats to make them liveable (though I saw only one with a satellite dish), but nothing prepared me for our right turn onto the aqueduct.

Apparently, the engineer decided that he could build a nine-mile stretch of the Kennet & Avon Canal without a single lock, an impressive feat, but only if he took the canal from one side of the valley to the other. Twice. So he built aqueducts. (There was apparently a bit of local politics in the building -- the architect was convinced that only brick would be sturdy enough a material for the aqueducts, but the local industry was based on limestone, so the architect was overruled.)

There we were, canoeing over not only a river, but a road and the railway. The canal on the other side of the valley was peaceful, nearly empty of the narrowboats that had crowded the canal before, and well-populated with ducks. At one point, I looked to my left and realized that I was seeing the tops of trees. In my (admittedly very limited) experience, when I've been paddling and could see ground below me, I'm generally trying to figure out how to run the whitewater at the bottom, but the water in the canal was perfectly flat.

After returning the canoe to the rental shop, we drove to Stonehenge. We had been warned that it would be overrun with tourists, but at six-thirty in the evening it's nearly empty, almost idyllic. The National Trust won't let visitors anywhere near the monument, though, and it closes well before I could attempt to line up the sunset with anything, so no archaeoastronomy for me.

The next day we visited Bournemouth (which is much the Jersey Shore were the boardwalk tarmacked) and Winchester (where I did not dance on Jane Austen's grave). Then it was on to London where I was reunited with rahael. And now I sit in Leytonstone, trying to munch cakes with only the right side of my mouth.

Comments

[lynnmonster.livejournal.com]

So sorry about the filling! I *hate* having dental work done -- it must be much more complicated on vacation abroad.

But your canoeing trip sounds wonderful! Although I cannot fathom why you would want to dance on Jane Austen's grave.

P.S. -- Sekrit message from beastlydead: he really, really wants to get in touch with you. Something about PKD... I wasn't entirely clear on what. But I think he's writing about him and wants your input! So he inveigled me into promising to prod you to email him...

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Ouch. I can recommend a dentist in the Walthamstow/Chingford area, if you're interested. Don't know how the payment would work.

That acqueduct thing sounds fascinating.

Co-incidence alert

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

OK, so quite without my saying anything about it, you write an entry about an aqueduct which is ten minutes walk from my home address.

TCH

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

You got to go to Stonehenge! The south of England was the only part I didn't get to see on my tour lo those many years ago, which is ironic, since the part of my heritage that is English (admittedly skimpy) is from Devonshire.