AROUND OSTERLEY PARK AND HANWELL LOCKS

The best bit about this walk for me was the flight of locks on the Grand Union Canal.

The six locks (although I'm sure I counted at least 9) that make up the Hanwell Flight of locks not only take the canal up a hill - but also round a bend. That's some impressive engineering. That means I couldn't get a picture of all 6 (or 9) in a row - but this gives you an idea:

Osterley Park's pretty nice too - with this neo-classical villa in the middle of landscaped parkland and lakes. Apparently it houses the collection of work by Scottish artist Robert Adam.

Oh, and this is the view of Wembley from a bridge over the M4 motorway!

Richmond Park

I've been to Richmond Park a lot and love it every time - whatever the weather.
The other day we went for a lovely Sunday stroll along the river from Richmond to Teddington.

After encountering a herd of rather large cows - we stopped off for a gorgeous roast beef! We then wandered back through Ham Common and the park.

This is the hightest point in the park - Henry VIII Mound - and through the keyhole of ivy you can see 10 miles away to the dome of St Paul's Cathedral.



Honest.

It's not clear from the photo, but in real life it's really quite amazing. Apparently, it was from this spot that the king saw the smoke signal to tell him Anne Boleyn had been beheaded at the Tower of London.

BIG CATS AND MAD MONKEYS

On Monday 29th August I went to visit my birthday present from Andy. For my 28th birthday he bought me sponsorship for a year of a Red River Hog, knowing my love all things swine! Last summer we'd been to Port Lympne animal park and it was absoutely brilliant. So this year we went to its sister park, Howletts, near Canterbury.

Personally, I prefered Port Lympne - especially as out of all the animals at Howletts the ONLY one we didn't see was my Red River Hog! Typical. But we did see some really cool elephants, tigers, monkeys of all descriptions - a lot of Langurs (called Bernhard) and funky Gibbons - and lemurs.

We then spent around an hour wandering around Canterbury which was pretty gorgeous.

The Cathedral was enormous and very old - the castle, while also old, wasn't so big and smelled bad!