I'll start this out with a sunset picture, taken about a half mile from where I'm working, which is right around the corner from the hotel where I started out before I moved into the farm house. The ripples are from a duck that dropped in for a quick meal. Before that, the water looked like glass. I took this standing on a wooden bridge on a "footpath", which are strewn around all over the place. They date back to feudal times, and are right of ways for hikers and bikers that are cast in stone and protected by law. They are a wonderful thing, and for most folks it means there are lots of different ways to get to work each day, not to mention getting some fresh air and excercise. The US could learn a lesson from this concept.

Here's the old farm house I live in. Not the whole thing, just the whole upstairs of the short part on the right, which includes the four dormer windows. It sure beats a hotel room!

Here's the rest of the "old farm house". My guess is it's several hundred years old.

Here's the "living room". Yep, that's real post and beam construction, tenons, pins, and all. You should see the beams in the barn where my bike lives...some of them are pushing two feet tall, and all were hacked out by hand. The TV gets three channels, all of which are BBC. They have one or two good shows per night, comparable to National Geographic documentaries, and their quality is beyond reproach. I spend my time writing web pages though.

The breaker panel is through that attic door to the far right. I figured that out the first night I was here, when I smoked my first piece of 120V equipment. I brought a power strip with me so I could hook up lots of 120V stuff all at once. You'd be surprised at the "report" I got when I plugged that sucker into 240V! It was rather impressive for a simple R/C circuit. Yes, it did take a while for the smell to go away, and yes, it turns out I didn't need the stupid thing anyway. I only need one electrical device at a time for the laptop, and if I want to plug in a portable hard drive, the laptop can live without it for a while, and overnight is made for camera and phone charging.

This is the back yard, in February. The beaten path was made by the yellow lab dog on the way to the fertile rabbit chasing grounds.

A little hint of spring is starting to show on the big tree in the back yard.

Don't laugh, there are not one but two convection ovens, a nice little fridge, and one of those space age countertops that looks like a plate of black glass with circles on it. The sinks are two stainless steel buckets with drains in the bottom. Very cool, in my humble opinion, and all you need to make two or three meals a day. Ambience is what it's all about with this place.

The kitchen is covered with sky lights and continuous glass on the backside of the house. I think you'd call it a "conservatory", at least that what an elderly lady on the plane told me. This will be interesting during the summer, especially since I have no A/C (few folks in the UK do) and it's forecast to be a hot, dry, "BBQ" summer. Still, it may never hit 90 degrees, and as odd as it seems, the humidity is fairly low most of the time, at least compared to Alabama! I didn't notice there was no shower when I came to look at it, but now I've re-learned to be happy with a bath.

A "front yard" view, back in February when everything was brown.

This "viaduct" was built in the 1800's, and is about 2000' from the house. The locals call it "Elizabethan era", and the story is that Queen Elizabeth went out of her way to come this way because the views were so nice. Several trains a day go doing at least 80 miles per hour, and they sound like a car going by some distance away, but the sound lasts longer. It's barely enough to notice, and they don't run late at night so it's not a problem at all. Although you can't tell from this photo, the scale of this thing is immense. There's a sign on one of the verticals to this viaduct that gives an emergency phone number to call in case the bridge is hit, because it may "endanger train passengers". The scale of these things is incredible, and my guess is the Queen Mary would have to get up a pretty good head of steam to knock a brick loose in it!

This guy is the "ferreter". I thought he was kiddin' at first, because he drove up in what looked like a plumber's truck, complete with ladder on top. Maybe that was his daily job, and this was a Saturday. He also had a dog. I joked "is that a ferret dog?", and he said "yup". It was an Airedale, I think. That's probably British for Ferret Dog :). The wooden boxes on his back have ferrets inside, which are used to "ferret out" rabbits, which he then disposes of "in the bin". I can ride through the fields on a bike and see ten at a time, so rabbits are a real problem here, as are moles. Moles are apparently easily trapped by putting a trap over their holes, but that's just something else to have to stay on top of, literally.

I took this picture up the hill a ways. Eight rabbits in one shot is not a difficult picture to come by around here.

This is the road from town to the house. Look narrow? It IS! But it's still a two lane road, and I guess people don't have a problem with it...it even has curbs, for some odd reason. Curbs add a new dimension to avoiding cars, because now you can also ruin your wheels if you get too far in the other direction.

It gets worse, but this is still two lane. There's a watercress farm next door to "the farm" so trucks are a real concern on the "single track" road between here an town. What you don't want to meet around one of these curves is a giant watercress truck! .

This is a seriously single lane road bounded by hedgerows. You can see the tire tracks take up the whole road, and these are narrow cars. If you meet somebody here, somebody's going to back up a long way, which people are more than willing to do. Sometimes you both start backing up, and it becomes a battle of the wills to see who's going to be assertive and take the opportunity to get on down the road. Even on my bike, people go way out of their way to give me plenty of room. It's almost embarrassing. It's as if car drivers are also bike riders, which is entirely possible and would explain their concern for bike riders. There are plenty of bike riders too, so it's something they're always on the watch for. They drive fast, but they also drive with their attention riveted to the road ahead of them, as if some idiot on a bike was just around the curve, waiting to be killed. I like that attitude...so far it has worked for me!

On the "big" single lane roads you get a little place to duck into when meeting a car. Everybody's really good about this, going out of their way to be the first to pull in and let you by. There's always a wave of thanks from the guy/gal that gets to keep going, or a flash of the lights at night. Road rage is not something you see out on the farm roads around here, and it's a good thing for me!

Here's a two lane road that's been turned into a one-laner by people parking on one side. The signage even calls it a single-lane, so these guys get to slide. There's simply no other place to park, I guess. Some towns are solid cars on BOTH sides of the street. The first night I ran into this was in Winchester, where I had to drive about 5mph and dodge left and right to keep the mirrors from being sheared off. I consider myself lucky not to have scraped one of them off, or worse! The speed limit is 60 mph if there are no signs to the contrary, and most roads are this way. I sometimes run across signs that declare "SLOW", and then show a "slower" speed limit follows. I'm usually already going slower than the NEW SLOW speed limit!

Here's a real "farm road". No passing here either, obviously. This is my usual rental car, a Skoda Octavia, which is essentially a VW Passat with Skoda badges, since VW bought them after the iron curtain fell. This diesel 5-speed gets about 42 mph average, and I pretty much flog it. It has plenty of power and is very smooth and quiet. I want one. Why was I in a field? To retrieve my bike after walking back from a long ride. I had a flat tire, and no pump! Did about 10 miles of bike riding and 5 miles of walking, so I got my excercise for the day. I have a thorn-proof tube and a pump now...

I didn't know it when I took this, but this is now on my bike route, which I do at least every other day. I have a nice little 15 mile trip that covers trails, dirt roads, and and mostly single lane farm roads, through some of the most picturesque countryside around. It's so far out that there are no powerlines, no power, no houses, no cars...just nice scenery and fields. In 15 miles I make about 40 turns, so the trip goes fast because I keep finding landmarks to turn at.

Certainly another one-laner. This is on my bike path also. The first time I rode through here, there was a white owl sitting on a fence post. When I almost got to him, he took off and flew down through the forest, maybe 5 feet off the road, and followed it right out the other side. It was so graceful, and had such a big wing span. It felt like something out of Harry Potter. Things can be ageless here.

This looks tight, and it is. I backed up several hundred yards one Sunday when I met four Land Rovers apparently out "on safari". I figured it was easier for me to back up than the four of them. I got a nice wave from everybody in all four. As you can see, there's not even room for a bicyclist here. The only way it could be worse is if there was a rock wall on both sides, and I've seen that too!

I've already seen my share of pheasants...they're everywhere. Apparently these guys would rather be hit by a car than have to fly over the hedges, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to make this picture. They remind me of Turkeys, as far as reluctant aviators go. I got the scare of my life the other day while bike riding. I was riding along minding my own business, and a pheasant flew up from abut two feet in front of my tire. Since I was going about 10 mph, by the time I got to him, he was flapping around like crazy, basically beating me about the head and shoulders. This is my new definition of instant heart attack, and now I'm real careful about looking for that pheasant along the the uphill path that's adjacent to the horse pasture, about 10.5 miles into the ride...

The limestone here is really soft... they call it chalk, sort of like the cliffs of Dover, which aren't that far away. The fields have a white tint to them after being plowed, almost like the cotton fields back home. Some of it is chalk and some of it is flint. There's plenty of both to go around. Lime in the water is a real problem here.

There are cameras everywhere on the motorway, but the ones that really count are the yellow ones. Apparently they are required to point them out to you with road signs, so everybody slows down for them. My GPS even came with them programed in, and a warning that one is approaching. The other 90% of the cameras are used for traffic congestion and other surveilance.

British speed camera technology is pretty amazing. The cameras automatically record your "number plate", and then time your car to the next camera, where they are recorded again. If your average speed is too high, you get a ticket. This may seem far-fetched, but I saw some video made by one of these cameras on the news the other night where a motorcyclist was automatically nailed for doing 122mph in a speed zone. The camera automatically zoomed in on his "number plate", filling the frame. And on the way to zooming in, the video revealed the rider's 12 year old son on the back, with no helmet or gloves...and the guy was going into a very sharp curve on a wet road! I think the guy's doing time now for that one. The word around the workplace is that bikers can do whatever they want because they have no front license plate. I suspect that is no longer the case.

I'm probably in the 98th percentile of speeders back in the US, but I can see where this system really is safer. Tickets are issued to all perpetrators, with no discrimination. You speed, you pay. This leads to everybody maintaining a similar speed on the motorway, which minimizes "overtaking" (passing), which minimizes accidents and road rage. Hotdogs who do 100mph don't last long. And if the cops need to find a car anywhere in the country, my guess is it could be spotted in minutes, and probably a complete record of where it's come from as well. Some people call that "invasion of privacy", but then I'd have to wonder what it is they have to hide.

I'm told that you can also get a ticket for exceeding the speed limit at each camera, so you can rack up three tickets at once. Theoretically, you can loose your license in a matter of minutes. Maybe that's why everybody obeys the speed limit around these things.

This speed check is due to construction on a big roundabout on the motorway. I generally love roundabouts, because they mean you rarely have to stop for a redlight. Roundabouts are where drivers practice a kind of graceful interaction where everybody is sizing up the players, and managing to blend right in to make everything work out for the best. The basic rule is that whoever's in the roundabout has precendence over anybody on their way in. That also fits with "yield to those on the right", which is another general rule, failing any other input. What I don't like at all is roundabouts on the big "dual carriageways". These continaully confound me, and often mean that I end up spiraling off to who-knows-where, or worse, going right back where I came from. It's like "pin-the-tail on the carriageway", where you try to figure out which way you're supposed to be going, without screwing it up. Directions are labeled by the name of the next major town or area of the country, not north, south, west, or east, so if you don't know where you're going, you're doomed to drive around in circles! Roundabouts are great, but roundabouts on the equivalent of the interstate are really bad news for outsiders. I finally broke down and bought a "Sat Nav" (GPS) for about a hundred bucks, and it tells me exactly which turn to take off the roundabout. Since I can still count to 6, I'm in pretty good shape now! I wish I'd bought it months ago.

And on the subject of traffic control, I don't think I've seen a stop sign since I've been here. There's just a white dashed line painted along the edge of the "main" road where other smaller roads feed in, and that line is your clue as to which road has priority. If you have a dashed line between you and the road you want to turn onto, you have to yield to traffic on the larger road, but not actually stop for them.

And along those lines, everybody in the UK has a "post code" that's 7 letters and numbers long. That usually pegs your house, or at least gets very close. So if you want to find someplace with the GPS or on Google Earth, putting in that simple post code will get you there. Try RG28 7RR and you'll see what I mean, although "my" house is the one at the end of the driveway just below the white one pointed out. My bike trails are up north of the house. The big farm just north grows watercress for the local area, and their trucks provide moments of stark terror on the little road between here and town.

This is a single lane road with no escape. The speed limit here is 60 mph, but nobody in their right mind would be doing that, fortunately. Reasonable speed is left up to the driver, so they don't waste a bunch of money on speed signs, nor do they have state troopers generating revenue on the other side of the hill. Wreckless drivers are apparently schooled early on, in the "school of hard knocks. The concept is brilliant, in my opinion. Beginners have to have "learner" placards on their car or motorcycle, just so you'll give them a wide birth. It's a white square about 8"x8" with a big scarlet letter "L" on it.

This stuff is "rape". It's mostly used for ethanol production and things like rape seed oil (similar to olive oil). It's really cool looking, and covers about a third of the fields in this area. If you did the Google Earth thing above, you can see the yellow just starting to show in the fields. It's a favorite target for the crop circle folks, which is probably why you see so many gates and "NO ACCESS" signs around fields. Speaking of gates, I've seen a hundred different ways to fasten the two halves of a gate together, as well as to hang them from the posts. I should start a web page on that alone...

This is my morning commute. At the top of the hill is the Wyke Down pub and RV park. I've met some real characters up there. Many are out-of-town contractor tradesmen, with a surprising number of engineers in the mix. I really enjoy talking to these guys about their projects, and about how things are done in England and Europe. On Saturday mornings there's a serious traffic jam in front of this place, because cars are "queued up" for a mile to turn into the field across the road for what's called a "boot sale". Not shoes....it's a sort of garage sale on wheels. Hundreds of folks show up with stuff to sell in the "boots" of their cars, and easily a thousand or more show up to sift through it, looking for a bargain. It's a summer thing, and they really can't get enough of it. When you think about it, it's the ultimate in recycling efficieny. Rather than a few people spending all day Saturday in search of garage sales, you can show up here and be assured of finding something useful, and they're all in one place. No petrol burned, very little time involved, and you've seen everything there is for sale in the matter of an hour or two. And you might have just connected with somebody you haven't seen in ages, and that alone makes it all worth it!

These purple flowers are Bluebells. It's just about everywhere on the forest floor in April. I saw much nicer stands of it, but this was the day I brought my camera on the bike ride.

This is a part of my bike ride. There's all kinds of wildlife in the hedgerows... hedgehogs (like ground hogs), rabbits, pheasants, insects, lots of birds, and even snails, I'm told. This kind of stuff is the reason I spend an hour and a half riding every afternoon while I've been here. It's just wonderful scenery.

My bike's a used Raleigh mountain bike with good Shimano components and a bomb-proof steel frame, which I paid a hundred pounds for (about $140). It's a little heavy, but I figure that's just more excercise for me, which is the main reason I ride anyway. I considered ditching the frumpy looking fenders, but they are nice on mud and wet roads, so now I'm planning to put them on my bike at home. Note the new bike pump on the frame. I rode about 15 miles on these things today and met ONE car along the way. Nice rolling fields, trees, thatched roof houses, and that sort of thing.

This is my "standard" bike ride, outlined in blue. Most of it is on footpaths, with a small part of it on single lane roads that see virtually no traffic. This is right at 15 miles, but I often deviate and explore new routes. I've done 28 miles one day, riding up to Wayfarer's Walk, down it a ways, and back. It's more fun than it sounds, and the scenery is excellent everywhere. As the kid I met on the trail said, "I've never gone for a walk or a bike ride and not come back feeling better!".

Most of the fields are delineated with hedgerows, which serve as fences, as well as wildlife refuges. There's a major effort to conserve and replace hedgerows that have been destroyed over the years. I think everybody here is recognizing the positive effects they have.

This is a brand new house under construction.

Notice the inlays of white stone, which is common in these areas as an architectural detail.

This is the typical footpath sign. Bridleways (horse paths) are similar. I think it's legal to ride a bike on a bridleway, but I'm told you'll have no trouble riding a bike on a footpath either. Now that things have warmed up a little, I meet an average of one or two people (and their dogs) per mile. They are all very friendly and quick to laugh at my silly quips as I meet or pass them.

This is a typical way of helping a hiker over a fence, but not allowing wheeled vehicles passage. This is the only place where I have to carry my bike over a fence. I don't mind, since it's about the only lifting excercise I get over here. I figure my weight plus the bikes is still only half of what some people weigh, and I'm careful not to overstress anything or put any kind of wear on the fence by touching it.

More of the inlays, on a very old wall around an ancient farm house.

This is a traditional thatched roof house. There are lots of them around. The word is that if a fire starts up there, you have to get it under control within four minutes or your house is toast. Sprinkler systems on the ridge are mandated by many insurance companies.

Another bike ride picture. Some of my "trail" is on footpaths around fields that farmers have opened up to the public. My bike ride is about half on the "single track" road, and the other half is on footpaths and other trails that appear on the Ordnance Survey Explorer maps (which is where my bike path map came from). I rarely see more than two cars on the paved parts, and often don't see any! I met an elderly lady who was pruning the cemetary at the tiny (and old) Woodcott church. She said she'd lived there all her life, and it had always been very quiet and peaceful around here.

I guess this 3' diameter log is a subtle way of saying "road closed".

Here's your clue that whatever speed limit you were just following (30 mph in town, in this example) is now gone, and you may return to the "national speed limit", which is 60 mph on a two lane road.

I just love this kind of stuff, but I guess I'm just an old sap.

A local church built of flint, I'm guessing. A nearby town is called Whitchurch, for obvious reasons. That's where I buy my "beef and ale" pot pies that I eat for dinner (along with vegetables) when I'm feeling the need for 450 calories.

Everytime I leave home, my wife tells me to "stay away from those Shielas". That goes back to some private jokes we shared back in the late 90's when I was in Wales for 6 weeks with 6 other guys. But the longer I'm here, the better the sheep look! Some of 'em kick though...

I'm told this yellow festooned bush is called Gorse. I took this from a place called "Combe Gibbet", a hill along the "Wayfarers Walk", which is an National walking trail that extends about a thousand miles through England. It passes within 8 miles of where I live, and goes all the way to the southern coast. It's the equivalent of the Appalacian Trail in the US.

Thatched roofs benefit from the wonders of chicken wire, although it may be called rabbit wire here.

Yep, 60 mph just past this sign!

I guess this is an admission that there's no way two cars can fit under this train viaduct at the same time.

One saturday I visited Popham Field, which is only about 20 miles from the farm. It's very similar to Huntsville's Moontown airport, a sort of hotbed of experimental and ultralight aviation. This guy is an "Auster".

A two-seater gyrocopter of some sort. They were certainly having a lot of fun doing touch and goes. Matcing "His and Hers" cold-weather outfits tell you she's not just a fair weather friend.

A very nice Beech Staggerwing, coming home from a long flight.

Lots of spam-cans too. The crosswinds were pretty high, and this airport has some "interesting" approaches that require a creative approach strategy as well.

This is what I mean by a "creative approach". You have to fly in at a 30 degree angle to the end of the runway to dodge the gas station (not the BP in the picture, the one at the end of the runway) and the trees, in a nice sideways slip (I think that's called a "skid"), and then take off and turn to avoid more trees at the other end, as well as "noise sensitive housing".

This is an Avion Pierre Robin. Visibility appears to be unsurpassed, and it looks like a six-seater from here.

Here's another example of slipping it in. Note the nice dip in the runway too, and the petrol station at the aforementioned approach end.

G-GRIN is a nice tail number for an RV. This may even rival Richard Mole's G-TREK.

I saw at least 30-40 experimentals there. They were relegated to a "back field" around the corner on a parallel taxiway from the main runway. There were lots of creative hangar techniques demontrated there, from a row of conex boxes to stuff like this "flexible hangar" that allowed owner/pilots to slide by on a shoe-string, rather than renting or building expensive hangar space. Another alternative was a design similar to this one, but the two halves slid together to cover front and rear of the fuselage while leaving the wings attached and exposed, but they were covered with their own envelopes of canvas. I'm guessing it took the guy 10 minutes at the most to roll the front off, remove and fold the wing covers, and go flying. This is about as fast and cheap as you could ask for in the general aviation world!

I found this Neuport 17 replica stashed in the back of the Staggerwing's hangar. I'm guessing it took him longer to get the engine cover off than it did the previous guy to get his plane ready to fly. And we're not counting moving the Staggerwing and the Rearwind out of the way...

...and here's his flying buddy's Fokker triplane replica, I'd bet.

This is the Rearwind, built in Kansas in something like 1929. Not bad for 80 years old, huh? The owner was waiting for the Staggerwing guy to move so he could go fly it. It has a radial engine up front.

The Staggerwing owner was doing a little re-rigging of his landing gear close-out doors. Is this plane not drop-dead gorgeous?

Here's an ME-109 fighter at the Biggin Hill airshow.

This is a Spitfire, a fairly rare two seater trainer, flown the a female "display" pilot who owns it. Biggin Hill was a Spitfire base during WW2.

This bird feeder is in Mac Wood's backyard. He taught me a lot about English culture, in many long discussions on everything from health care to crop rotation.

May 5th was a "bank holiday" in the UK, so I went back to Popham for another visit. On the way I passed a lot of old MGs, Jaguars, Austin Healeys, on the highway. When I got off at the Popham, I joined a long line of to-die-for cars like the picture above. To see more, visit my antique British car and motorcycle page.

And after that, see the trip to Durdle Door photos..

The photos above were mostly made after I'd been in England for a few weeks. I spent 8 months there, learned a lot about English culture and their ways of doing things, and took about 12,000 pictures. The photo below is one I took in the Lake District in July. We went on vacation in Scotland, England, and Wales, and this is just one of many gorgeous places we visited. I'm currently rewriting this webpage to incorporate those pictures and experiences as well, including the vacation, the Hawk Conservancy, commond expressions that bear an explanation, and visits with several English buddies I've met over the years and visited with. So come back in a few weeks and check it out...

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