Wiltshire County - Stonehenge

Since school and work start up next week, we took a day off to drive out to Stonehenge. We're on the Surrey Hampshire border and it's just past the Hampshire Wiltshire border. So a drive west across the whole of Hampshire. Nice countryside. All farmland. Took about an hour. I kept my eye out for any crop circles, but didn't see any. :) I had to laugh when Stonehenge came into view. It looked some tall stones in a middle of a field surrounded by sheep. And people. And tour buses.

We had an enjoyable time. Always great to get out in the countryside for a walk. Lots of people were wandering around the fields and sitting out with their lunches. It was all quite interesting. I ended up joining the English Heritage society. It nearly paid for itself on this visit with the admissions and car park.

Luckily, I was able to find some of my letterboxing stuff amongst our wall of boxes. I had a little Stonehenge stamp I had carved some time ago but had never placed. So, it was taken and placed today. I usually try to do a title page for my logbooks and a FF certif, but we had our first blow out on a US to UK appliance. I put the converter on the printer and it started up and reset itself. Then suddenly, white smoke starts billowing out. Yikes. Thankfully it was old and inexpensive, so not a major loss. Inconvenient though.

England Football

Mr. TeamKing gets the call up today for the England Squad. (He wishes!) He loved meeting John Terry - courtesy of his brother's company 'King of Shaves'. Guess we'll be seeing some Chelsea games this season. :0

Adjustments

Since we haven't been out letterboxing yet, thought I'd make some notes on lifestyle changes. As a general rule, it really is quite surprising that the UK and US have a great deal in common. Obviously a lot of the specific systems differ. That was to be expected. Some for the better, some for the worse. But, all in all, it's a similar world.

That being said, these are the things that stand out. . .

-washer/dryer combo units (this is just such a bizarre concept that I'm not sure what to say - they're small and I've yet to figure out how to get clothes dried without them coming out wrinkled beyond belief. my domestic skills are looking bad.)

-hot and cold taps switched (instead of hot on left, cold on right in the US, it is opposite here - at least in our rental house. I keep burning myself and it's really annoying.)

-no mail pickup (the good part is that our mail delivers by 10AM. didn't even know mail COULD be delivered that early. the bad part is that they don't take outgoing mail. hence, you see the red mail boxes for pickup everywhere.)

-no extra trash pickup (maybe it's just our family, but we seem to create tons of trash every week. unfortunately, the 'rubbish' is only picked up one day every other week and then they only take the one standard trash bin. if you have more, you're out of luck. our chore this week is to find the landfill asap.)

-no pay at the pump gas (if you have young kids, this is really a drag. now I have to get them out of car seats, wait in line to pay, then back into car seats. boo.)

-military time (we bought a digital clock when we got here. imagine our surprise when we realized it was in what I've always called military time. 24hr time. I struggle looking at a clock that says 21:00 - what time is that, stop, figure it out. . .9pm. boo. I find myself using the analog clock and my watch in the afternoons and evenings.)

-TV license (did you know you have to have a license to have a TV in the UK?!)

I guess those are the most annoying things right now. I'll have to amend my list as time goes on. A few years from now I'll probably look back and laugh that these things bothered me at all! :)

Crashdown England!

We're here, we're here! Finally, all moved and settling in. Weather was great at the beginning of August. Then rainy for the last week or more. But beautiful this weekend. In between getting things sorted out, we found time to visit nearby Devils Punchbowl - awash in late summer purple heather, and then a trip to Suffolk county visiting family. I've been scouting out locations and ideas for letterboxes. So many places! And I ordered a new Garmin gps since my old one keeps cutting out in even the slightest of bushes. Looks like a fair amount of geocaches around here, but a bit lacking on the letterboxes.



Couple notes on things past. . .

A HUGE THANKS to the Georeynosos and the Popeteers for honoring me at their last geocache event in Houston! What fun to see the NW Houston crowd and a few of the other 'famous'? Houston cachers. I sure hope we can find an equally awesome group of people over here. Thanks guys! I'll miss caching with you. :(

A big Happy Birthday to boxing buddy Dewberry! Is she telling how many???

And finally another big thanks to my plb friends (you know who you are!) for the great birthday gifts! I had to hide them away from the younger TeamKing members who were quite interested. I'm going to miss doing postal letterboxing. Perhaps something will get started over here where we can pass some boxes around the country this winter. Wink wink. Nudge nudge.