🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Want to visit Wales

Over a year ago we visited Llandudno and walked along the pier at the seafront. This is at the far end looking back at a magestic hotel. We also went up the Great Orme mountain in a tram car (there is a chair lift too). We went back to North Wales at Christmas and stayed for a couple of days, but that’s the last time we had a trip over there because of covid 19. I would love to live over there but we would never be able to afford it and I would miss all my friends here. But once life has got back to a more normal situation I think we will start visiting the beautiful countryside of Wales again. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Tea tonight, Thai salad

I went out to our local Thai restaurant, Sawadee Thai taste in Stoke and had a Green Papaya salad with seafood. It was extremely tasty. We also had thin rice noodles with some chilli’s and mixed vegetables. This is the third time I’ve had it because it tastes so nice. I would have taken a photo but I’d eaten the food before I thought about it.

Mini gingerbread man

Yes, it’s a mini gingerbread man. A treat with a cup of tea. Nice and spicy with a good snap. Dunked in to his knees first, then waist, and body, finally his head. Sorry gingerbread man, but you were very tasty. I might find room for another!

I know that far more elaborate ginger biscuits used to be made, for some reason I remember them being mediaeval? Maybe made in the Netherlands? Someone please let me know. I do know they are made in Market Drayton, in Shropshire. I can’t tell you more….

Can I see an elephant?

Strange towering cloud seen on our walk. Looks like someone walking with their hands being them and with an Elephants head, trunk raised.

Will our children and our children’s children even recognise Elephants, or Lions and Tigers and all the other animals (and plants) that are becoming extinct? When the last Elephant in the wild has its tusks hacked off by trophy hunters or illegal poachers, will someone notice or care?

Man sets himself up as the most important animal. But that means we should care for what lives on Earth. Not destroy it.

Late summer sky

Lowering grey clouds above the Croft at Penkhull. We walked around this afternoon exploring the area again. We had climbed up the steep hill and down another steep one on the way back at the end of the walk. The hill we descended has been recently resurfaced. The tarmac was well laid, but the hill is so steep I felt like I was going to slip and fall as the surface was not textured. As we walked down my legs started to shake as I took my weight on my shins. We had only walked for an hour and a half but we called in a shop and had to carry everything down the hill in a rucksack. And am I the only person that washes their shopping when they get it home? Now I’m sitting and relaxing, I need a rest.

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Watching the tour de France.

As an ex cyclist (I fractured my skull in an accident), I have to say how much I admire the cyclists in the tour. In my healthy days I could ride forty or fifty miles. Now I can’t even get on a bike. I’m old and creaky. I wish I could go back to the old days. I never raced but I did Marshall bike races occasionally. My hubby came third in a tricycle time trial. We used to enjoy touring. After the accident I cycled for a year, then the bike collapsed one day underneath me. It came apart, its brazing below the handlebars had been damaged and suddenly the front wheel was stretching away from me and the pedals cluncked onto the road. I got a car. Big mistake.

Watching the tour brings back those memories. I wich I still cycled.

Distances

I like knowing things, so I thought I would look u some measurements.

The shortest distance on earth I could find was the thinnest section of the crust of the Earth which is only under the deep oceans and is mainly made up of iron bearing rock. That is about 5km.

But the thickness of the Earth’s crust varies between 5km and 70km, so the average would be about 35 kilometers. To give you an idea of how far that is, it’s approximately the same as Dover to Calais, which is 33.3km.

The distance from the Earth’s surface to space is 100 kilometers. Or three times the distance from Dover to Calais.

Going up in size, the distance from the Earth’s surface to the centre of the Earth is 6,371km. Which is 63 times the distance to space.

Now we go a bit further. The escape velocity from Earth is 11.19 kilometers per second. That is the slowest speed something would have to move to fly up into space and leave Earth’s gravity for good. The more massive the object, the more effort it would take to leave the gravity well of an object. So a gas giant planet is huge compared with the Earth but is less dense on average. I don’t know the figures. I didn’t look them up, but I read that if we were as big as Saturn it could gloat on our sea?

Going further out, the Moon, which is the furthest human beings have travelled to after reaching escape velocity is 384,400km away.

If you want to travel to the Sun the distance is 150,800,000 kilometers….

But man-made objects have gone further. We have sent probes into the vastness of space. Voyager Two has left the Solar system and is currently about 18,603,199,501 kilometers away. In distance at the speed of light that’s 17 hrs 14 minutes and 13.5 seconds (approximately) as of yesterday.

Of ccourse that’s nothing compared with the nearest star to our Sun. Which is about 4 light years away from the Solar system. And then… Space is infinite…

Eye-opener

Photo of my eye duplicated then edited in photodirector. Using a brush tool and a style tool. It might not be pretty but I hope it is interesting. I could imagine turning it into a print. The more I play, the more I learn. I like the colours, the shading, the contrast of marks even though they are created by an algorithm. To me it’s fun.