I feel veeerrrry tired. I went on an exciting coach trip today! It was to Kew Bridge, which is basically, I dunno, where is it. West London. Possibly Richmond? Just looked up Kew Gardens and they have a handy where to find us thing. It is Richmond that side of the river, anyway. Kew Bridge Steam Museum is on the north bank. Very close. Hey, they have a website! They have a map too! Excellent. Everyone's on the web these days, aren't they. *g*

So I went to the steam museum. I'm not madly into such things, but it's always been a case of balancing steam and older stuff (i.e. castles) when we went on holidays. I've been to things all over the country. Mum and John (brother) were going, and I thought why not? It was organised from the Museum of Power. Which is a voluntary Steam Museum type place. I go and help my Dad sell Pop Pop Boats there sometimes. Wow, the stuff I have to explain before I get to the point. *sigh*

John drove us to Maldon, which is about 45 minutes or so north(ish) of Southend. Still in Essex. And from there we got onto one of the two coaches, and set off around the London North Circular road! It must have taken about an hour, an hour and a half. The North Circular is a very strange road. There are loads and loads of houses on it that are deserted. They're not only boarded up - lots of them have really substantial metal grille type things on the windows. And some are even bricked up! I wonder whether that's to stop the house falling down and taking all the others with it. Because quite often the house next door is still lived in. I'm not quite sure why the houses are like that. Weird.

The Museum was quite interesting. They had a particularly well done thing about the history of water. (Hmm, I hope you can figure out what I mean...) There was a Hot Air Engine Rally, which mean people to do with that were all over the place too. Hot Air Engines don't have boilers - the air's heated directly in the pistons. There was even a little car driven by hot air, which was kind of cool. The man driving it had trouble controlling it sometimes. Heh... My favourite engine was the Maudslay engine. I think it was that one. They were all quite similar. But this one was small enough (though still huge) so that you could see what was going on. And you could see all the pipes that water was being pumped through. The engines are so beautiful. They don't make practical things so elaborately today. Sad.

When we'd exhausted everything there, we walked along the Thames a bit. Walked to the entrance to Kew Gardens, but couldn't be bothered to pay £6.50 each to look at plants. (Sorry, but that's how I feel about plants.) We had enormous ice creams instead. (Meant I didn't feel much like moving all afternoon, but hey.) Back at the museum Mum and I made friends with a ginger cat which we called Dribbles. It was the dribbliest cat I've ever met! John thought it should be called Slimer. But Dribbles sounds more like a cat name. Doesn't it?

posted by Fiery Fred @ 9:33 PM