A walk around Overton, Hampshire this weekend rewards you with many creative scarecrows!
|
||||||
 |
 The Lawn was the place to be today, for the annual Parish Fete! A wonderful time as usual at the annual Parish Fete! It was once again held on The Lawn, next to the River Test across from All Hallows church, Whitchurch, Hampshire. Congratulations to Tosha for winning the darts competition! Over at the coconut tent, Tolii managed to topple one… and promptly drank its milk and ate the meat. His friend Jack also smacked a coconut off its pearch. Andrew had some luck at the Tombola: a fine bottle of red wine was won; as did Tosha, who won a… spoon! Doesn’t Katya look wonderful in her home-made floral wreath?                                     The Lawn was the place to be today, for the annual Parish Fete!  The entrance to the Mill I had some errands to run in Basingstoke this afternoon; on the way back I stopped by the new Bombay Sapphire Distillery in Laverstoke, next to Whitchurch, Hampshire (or Overton depending on your allegiances). Today was its first day open to the public. It is wonderful to behold. Thankfully you don’t have to pay to see the front area (exteriors and lovely River Test) and to enjoy the shop and bar (open til 6 for cocktails) – I didn’t have much time (or the inclination to pay £15 without bringing the family along too – kids to age 11 can get in for free) so the cocktails will have to wait until next time…when we cycle over! The staff were all very welcoming and quite receptive to ideas put to them (!) about incorporating silk from the Whitchurch Silk Mill into say silk ties for their uniforms; and a nice ribbon for the £100,000 crystal bottle of gin (and lesser items). The staff are all encouraged to cycle, walk, take the bus, or car share to get to and from the site. They’re considering putting on a bus to shuttle people from the Whitchurch and Overton train stations too. The managers and staff that I spoke with also like the idea put to them (!) about reducing the road danger along the B3400 with the creation of space for cycling ie a segregated path (several cycle into work already).  Laverstoke Mill gear at Kingfisher day centre, Testbourne (Feb 2003) They said the bicycle storage building will open up in the spring after the last of the building works are complete. Whilst I was in the bar, the place was unofficially launched: a just-filled glass of gin cocktail was accidentally smashed (not by me!). The company has rejuvenated the Mill and made it a place to behold. They won the BREEAM award for their “best practice in sustainable building design, construction and operation” and rightly so from what I saw and what I heard from the staff on site. Aside: Earlier today we toured Testbourne – rated an ‘outstanding’ school by OFSTED! – as our son Tolii will be starting there next year. The caretaker told me that the big gear that used to be on the pedestal in front of the ICT building had come from the Portal family who refurbished the Mill a few decades ago now. Unfortunately, a lorry driver banged into it in the mid-2000s and toppled it over, breaking the massive cast iron gear. Presumably it got carted away and melted down. My short video on YouTube: Bombay Sapphire Gin Distillery opens in Laverstoke, Hampshire  The River Test flows alongside then under the Mill. The entrance to the Mill  The pathway to the bar!  Follow the River Test to the entrance.  The shop and bar are over there.  In we go!  Laverstoke Heritage Room  Many photos of the Mill as a bank note factory.  History of the Mill.  The lobby. £15 per adult. Kids to age 11 free.  A glimpse of the greenhouse.  Just a dark corridor – looking splendid!  G&T Time!  A large bar serving everything possible* (provided it is Bombay Sapphire based)  Cosy room off the bar to enjoy a drink in.  The display cabinet in the cosy bar room.  The view of the bar from the cosy bar room’s door.  Can’t get enough of the cosy room!  Let’s go shopping!  A bit of a jump in the prices there.  Crystal you say? Made for Laverstoke you say?  Ting.  Cool.  This, that and some of those.  Don’t ask for whisky.  You can probably drink here too!  Shopping!  Future bicycle shed. Laverstoke Mill gear once at Testbourne (2003)  The gear was in front of the former Kingfisher Day Centre (now part of Testbourne school) until a lorry driver bashed into it, breaking it in two. A long time ago, in a company far, far away, I wrote some gawk. That”s geek talk for some code written in a UNIX shell that uses an extension of the ‘awk’ tool. There was great rejoicing amongst the software team as tasks that once had to be done manually were now automated. I eventually moved out of that area and into the world of object-oriented C++ coding and had a good run of a career on that (taking me around Canada and the US and then to the UK). Then, I met a wonderful woman who knew Matlab and soon we were married (there were other reasons). Matlab as some will know is a wonderful tool for processing, calculating, and plotting mathematical formula applied to data. The tool is script driven – no need to writing complicated C++ code for every little step along the way. Slithering Snake!Now, I’ve begun my transition from C++ into Python, a powerful, object-oriented scripting language not unlike Matlab in the way it works (so I’m told). I’m catching the wave of version 3.4 whilst many programs are transitioning from the older, popular, but incompatible, version 2.7. That’s geek talk for you got to start somewhere and it might as well be with the latest. » Continue reading A python takes me slithering down many a rabbit’s hole »  Why did a CEO send me some crisps? Find out… The popular UK telephone and broadband company towed me along for months during my contract renewal, but then when I looked at my bill this week I saw that they broke their promises. Along the way, they broke their promises to the people in the town in which I live, too. Separately, a CEO sent me two three boxes of crisps this week. More on that later. |
FriendsFun & GamesGPSNewsPhotos and Videos
PodcastsTechnologyWebsite DevelopmentWhitchurch
|
||||
|
Copyright © 2016 The Reeves-Hall Family - All Rights Reserved |
||||||
Recent Comments