Fractal Blog

Yesterday was another gorgeous summer day, and on a Bank Holiday weekend, too! So we decided to go for one of our favourite pursuits: Boating on the Avon. Not having access to a car we had to take the train to Bath and walk from there. We walked through Henrietta Park on the way to the Boating Station. On a totally calm day the reflections were perfect.

We arrived very early, before 10am (blame the jet-lag). The Boating Station wasn't quite open yet so we hung around admiring the view. This is an array of punts but we were after a rowing boat. Those-Who-Provide-Most-Of-The-Muscle-Power claim that rowing is more civilised than pushing a boat around with a stick. Nothing to do with being not very good at pushing a boat around with a stick...

With no wind to speak of, and no boats out yet, the reflections in the river were perfect.

Wildlife-spotting is usually very successful on the river because a boat is so quiet. Yesterday we saw a squirrel, a moorhen and a dove as well as the usual ducks but the prize of the day goes to this heron. We followed it down the river.

On the way up this weir forms an impenetrable barrier whose location coincides with that of a pub. The natural thing to do is to moor the boat at the thoughtfully-provided landing stage and have lunch in the pub garden. The setting was absolutely lovely in the sunshine.

Having landed in a rainy, cold London in the middle of the afternoon (16 degrees in the middle of summer?!) we didn't hold out much hope for the Bristol weather. But half-way down the M4 it got much better and we found a lovely, warm summer evening waiting for us in Bristol. I'd forgotten how much I missed the bright colours of summer. This is the view from our serviced apartment.

Today we went for a walk. Not very much has changed, actually, except some of the building works are slightly more advanced than they were a year ago. The most obvious change was that somebody seems to have put down a fake beach in front of St Mary Redcliffe, complete with sand. What's wrong with going down the road to Weston-super-Mare?! Clearly not even the organisers were thinking of swimming in Bristol Harbour, judging by the fence.

Our journey back to the UK from Melbourne was business class via Hong Kong. We had seats on the upper deck. Really neat. Hong Kong was very damp on arrival.

The entire area had the appearance of sogginess. This is China from the air.

These Chinese islands looked pretty so I took a photograph. 10 hours into a 24-hour flight and diversions become a priority. Had video-on-demand though. And noise-cancelling headsets.

Not sure which mountains these are. Could be the Himalayas. They looked imposing even from a height of 10,000km.

We're going back to the UK in three days, so yesterday we took our bikes for the last time to Lysterfield Lake Park. It was a sunny winter day with the hint of a promise of spring to come. It's sad to have to leave.

Even the kangaroos turned out to say good-bye.