Friends Around the World

I have missed all of my friends from the U.S., but I have made lots of new friends. Making new friends is a great way to get to know a place better. I have made British friends and I have also made American friends at Harlaxton. When I first got to England I made friends with a few of the kids my age who had come to Harlaxton too. These were the kids who helped me find all of the secret passages at Harlaxton. As the weeks went by I got to know a few of the kids on my footy (soccer) team in England. Nathan is one of my favorite British friends, and he and I hang out alot together. I have had fun exploring the woods at Harlaxton with him and going over to his house and climbing trees at a park by his place. It has been a blast. Another boy on my footy team named Reuben and I have become good friends. We have been newt hunting and he and his dad took me to a Nottingham Forest football game! These friends are like my good friends back home because we can cause trouble together! While I was playing with my British buds I was also making new friends with the college students. Who said college students can’t play sports and be fun? Well whoever does is wrong. I will not name all my college friends because you would be hearing a lot so I will only tell you a few:  Dex, Bill, Riley, Anna, Jordan, Griffin, Jack, Emily, Kait, Christy, Ben, Eric, Craig, Sam and Stephanie are a few of the college students I have gotten to know. A few of the Harlaxton kids I have gotten to know are Laith, Michael, Maddie, Brendan, Ryan, and Jacob. I have done almost all of my adventuring at Harlaxton with one of these kids. In the woods we have found bunkers and sniper nests that were used back in the war because British troops were actually stationed at Harlaxton. My friends and I also play board games (Risk) most every day and also Legos. Missing Harlaxton and England friends will be one of the many reasons I will be sad to leave England. Thanks for going on the expedition with me through this blog!

Chess and Bridges

We’re on the go today, so we don’t have much time on the computer. We (Brock and Layla) are doing this blog together! Today we were heading into London. As we were leaving Harlaxton Village, we remembered we’d never blogged about the twist that is on the chimney pots on top of houses here. Most chimney pots just have a boring old rectangular shaped one, but the ones in this village are not plain old normal chimney pots. They are chimney pots in the shape of a chess piece. The ones we could see easily were the rooks and pawns. The idea was made in the 1800s. Since both of us are fans of chess we thought the chess pieces were so cool. They were meant to be guards, but all we were thinking was how to get on the roofs and start playing. If you ever need giant stone chess pieces, you know where to look for them. In that same little village there is a small little post office that we use for most everyday foods because it is like a mini grocery store. You can find these chess chimney pots all over England. Speaking of which, you can see them in London. That’s where we spent most of the day. One of our favorite places in London to see is Tower Bridge. We learned it used to be the largest bascule bridge ever. That is interesting if you know what bascule means, but we had to remind ourselves by looking it up. It is French and means "see-saw". The bascules were operated by hydraulics and used steam to pump the engines. The bascules still run by hydraulic power but starting in 1976 they use oil and electricity and not steam to power the engines. It took 8 years and over 400 workers to build Tower Bridge. Tower Bridge is on the River Thames. As a special thing, in 1977 the Tower Bridge was painted red, white and blue for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebration. This year is the Queen’s 60^th Jubilee which is her 60^th year as Monarch. They call it the Diamond Jubilee. There are things all over England celebrating this. Maybe they will put diamonds on the Tower Bridge! When we saw it in person, though, it had bright blue trim and was beautiful.

Lake District

As the days are ticking down we tried to pick our last few places to visit. We wanted to pick a stunning place because we realized we are actually very sad to leave England. We settled on the Lake District. The Lake District has majestic mountains and shiny lakes. First we wanted to visit a town right by the sea, so we chose Barrow-Furness. We went to the docks and looked at ships and seagulls. I saw Navy ships and I found out that they make submarines in Barrow as well. I saw a few jelly fish too! I also learned Emlyn Hughs was born in Barrow-Furness. He used to be the captain of the England national team and also Liverpool FC. That made me want to play footy, so we did that. We also played footy tennis, badminton, golf, and the best part was hiking. We did so much in the Lake District. We drove way up into the mountains and stopped at a place called Elterwater village for the hiking. We saw lots of sheep and I even saw a few lambs practicing head-butting each other. They were so cute. We walked parallel to a small stream. The stream got bigger and faster and then there was a small waterfall! It was small, but powerful. The sound was exactly like the ones you use to fall asleep. I loved it. We walked a little more and we saw another waterfall. This one was 42 feet tall! It was called the Colwith waterfall. We had to start heading back to Harlaxton, but I would go back to the Lake District in a heartbeat. On the way home (to Harlaxton) we stopped in a quaint town called Windermere. The town had a main road with lots of small shops. All of the shops had their own charm. The town sat on a huge body of water. The day was fantastic.

Greenwich and Prime Meridian

Outside of London there is a small town called Greenwich. Greenwich is small, but it is on almost every physicists bucket list. Greenwich is the Prime Meridian of the world. The Prime Meridian separates east and west which makes it control time too. Many representatives from different cities got together in 1884 in D.C. and decided which city should be picked to be the Prime Meridian of the world. Out of all of them Greenwich was picked. One of the main reasons Greenwich was picked was because over 2/3 of the ship maps used Greenwich for the Prime Meridian. When we got there we looked for the signs that said The Royal Observatory. The Royal Observatory is where the big Prime Meridian part is. All around The Royal Observatory there is a beautiful park with lots and lots of dogs being walked. Right in the middle of the flat park there is a big hill that does not seem to really fit. On top of the hill sits the Royal Observatory. We went into a museum and saw lots of cool telescopes. Some were huge. We got to see a section of a 40-foot reflecting telescope that was used by William Herschel. He’s the guy that discovered Uranus! There were also lots of sundials and clocks. One clock used time with degrees instead of numbers, which made 12 o’clock equal -360. We walked outside onto a porch where there was a line going straight with a point going out. This was the exact line for the Prime Meridian. At the moment I was on the west side of the world. I walked up and all of a sudden I was on the east. I started jumping from one side to the other like a two year old. How many times can you be standing on 0 degrees longitude? We then headed back toward the middle of Greenwich. As we were walking we saw a market. We walked through and I got a fruit kabob. It was tasty. Greenwich was fabulous.

Newts

It was just a regular day walking around the Harlaxton grounds when I remembered how people had told me there were newts all over the woods. I decided to give it a shot. I walked to a small stream and started looking around. I picked up a rock and there laid a small newt! I was so excited. I really did not expect to find one so I was a little off guard. I played with him/her and got a few pictures. I then let it go. That night I was getting a little antsy so a college student and I went and we caught six more. We let each one go after we caught them. I went home, but at around eight I was starting to go crazy because I could not stop thinking about the newts. I went out with a flashlight (called a "torch" in England) and I immediately found out they are nocturnal. I caught nine easily. I brought them all back and my mom found a bowl for them. Then I looked up some things about them. All the sights made it sound like I had smooth belly newts. The smooth newt is the most common newt in the UK. The smooth newt is known for their smooth orange bellies. The next day I went back and looked a little more. I was getting a obsessed with the little critters. I walked back to the stream and checked a few more things out. I did not find newts, but I did find newt tadpoles that were so cool. Just like frogs, newts have tadpoles. The tadpoles that I found were only about 1/50 of the size of the grown-up newts I found. You could tell they would be easy prey, but that is why there are thousands of them. A lot might be eaten, but a lot would not. That is the newt way of life. Now the newt way of life is get out of the pond alive, grow into a newt, GET CAUGHT BY ME, get placed back in the wild, and then grow up. Newts beware, Brock is here!

Rutland

Rutland is where we went today. Rutland is a beautiful county with a huge lake and nature reserve. When we got there we were met with an outstanding view of Rutland Water. Rutland Water was completed in 1973 and at the time was the largest manmade reservoir in Great Britain. You could see people fishing, boating, and even just laying out on blankets to enjoy the water. We decided to walk around the lake. As we walked we saw what was set up to be a bug hotel. That is what they make to help bugs have a good habitat. Over 2,000 different species of bugs live in an average garden and they made the hotel work for all the bugs! It is meant to help save insects that are going extinct. One of the pictures you see is the bug hotel. We walked two more feet and we saw an osprey nest that people could help make. I got to put a stick on it. One of the nature wardens was holding a small male chaffinch. A chaffinch is a small bird with a pretty orange breast (the male has more colors than the female). The worker said that the bird had flown into a window so he was taking care of it for a little bit. It was cute. We walked back the way we came. If we would have walked the other way and kept walking around the lake we would have done a full 9-mile circle. We saw a sailing club called Chandlery and we stopped inside for lunch. It was tasty. We then walked back and enjoyed a little more time by the water, laying out a blanket to read books. Rutland is one of the prettiest places I have seen yet.

Bats

Harlaxton Manor holds many surprises. One of the best surprises is the endangered species of Barbastelle bat that lurks in the Harlaxton coal tunnels. There are only four colonies of the Barbastelle bat in all of Britain and Harlaxton is one of them. Harlaxton Manor is also home to the noctural bat, the biggest bat in Britain, the long eared bat, and the pipistrelle, the smallest bat in Britain. There are 18 species of bat in Britain and 11 can be seen in our county, Lincolnshire. A few people come to Harlaxton several times a year to check and make sure the bats are okay. My family and another family were really interested in the bats, so the people were nice enough to bring some in to the Van der Elst Room. They came in with three wooden boxes. They explained that the boxes were bat boxes and that they had live bats inside. We got really excited. The first bat they showed was the long eared bats. I did not understand why they called it the long eared bat because it had anything but long ears. But all of a sudden two huge ears unfolded from the bat’s head. The ears were almost the size of the body! The next bat they brought out was the pipistrelle. It could have fit through a door crack it was so small. It was the size of a half dollar. It was so cute. Finally they brought out the nocturnal. It was over two times the size of the pipistrelle. A noctural can weigh 40 grams and an average pipistrelle only weighs about 5 grams. The pipistrelle might be small, but it has a huge diet. Like all bats in Britain it eats insects and if you have an insect problem call the Pipistrelle Busters. A pipistrelle can eat over 3,000 bugs in one night. The people told us many fascinating facts. I hope I have not batted you away from my blog by posting this.