Second Visits to Old Haunts; A New Fantastic Site

This past week, we returned to some places we went to last term: Canterbury and Beachy Head. Rather than show additional images of Canterbury Cathedral, we walked across town and took some pictures of St. Augustine’s Abbey, which is older than the Cathedral. It is also the oldest Anglo-Saxon Abbey in England (dating from about 598 AD) and has a right to claim the title of birthplace of English Christianity.

We then traveled to Beachy Head on the English Channel. It is just up the coast from the marvelous beach town of Eastbourne. Here is a shot of Brandon, Curtis, and our new friend James in a location about a half mile farther to the west than we traveled on our previous visit.

Our new site is Kew Gardens, in the town of Kew near the tony London suburb of Richmond. The gardens offer a vast variety of plant species from all over the world. There are greenhouses devoted to palms, bonsai plants, and water lilies. We were also lucky enough to visit the Princess of Wales Conservatory on a day when the world’s largest flower - the Titan Arum - was in bloom (we learned that it blooms only twice a year).

We also enjoyed the many colorful flowers that make the grounds so pleasurable for an afternoon stroll.

John and his mother, Grandma Joy (as everyone in the London Centre has come to call her), were impressed by the pinks and greens of one flowering bush.

Brandon wanted to know if the giant waterlilies would support him. We discouraged any experimentation.