London

Monday, 7 July

I woke up knowing today is my big day!

My dad and I took the train from Swindon to Paddington, London. When we arrived, we walked to Hyde Park and had lunch. While we did that I wanted to take a picture, only to find that I had left my memory card at home! (Big Mistake) So we walked to the science museum and then to a camera shop and got another memory card, and back to science museum. This is what we saw there:

This the a replica of the Hubble space telescope

Sputnic (replica), first satellite into space

Apollo 10 command module 1969

At the science museum we also saw a hologram of a watch and did many of the interesting activities!

 You should know this!

BIG BEN

The London Eye

 St Pauls Cathedral

This is the lovely sunset from the train!

To all my friends at school: this is what it looks like from a train at 20:00pm!

TOUR DE FRANCE!

We went to see the Tour de France! The last stage in the UK, ending at Buckingham Palace.

That was our main reason to be there! All the cyclists came past in a flash, but it was worth while. I may never get that chance again! The Tour de France was very special for my dad and I, especially because we love cycling (but not that far!) if I could see it once more in slow motion it would be great! 

I really loved London and would love to go and see it again some day!

(I took all the pictures except the last one of the Tour de France.)

I hope you like this and enjoyed it!

Markham Grange Steam Museum

Our kind friend, Harry Moore from Ilkley, took us to visit the Markham Grange Steam Museum.

There we went into this large building, probably the size of a small aircraft hanger, and one of the first things I saw was a steam engine! It was a cold, wet and rainy day, but once inside it was nice and warm (probably from all the steam). We found the chief engineer of the museum, George Dickinson. He showed us how to start a three cylinder boat engine. Once started, he let me go in behind the safety barrier to work the throttle (faster, slower, forwards and backwards), simply by pushing/pulling a lever up or down.

For me that was an experience of a life time!
But there was another surprise in store for me and Alfrie (Harry's grandson). George said to us to follow him into a staff only area. There he lifted off a piece of fabric and showed us an early boat version of power steering!

He explained the mechanism and showed me how to operate it. It uses a chain connected to the rudder and the output of the steering mechanism.

Besides having a lot of steam engines they also have a lot of old tools, which are very interesting to look at.

A big thanks to Harry Moore for taking us on this visit!

Thank you for reading!