Neil forgot to go through the photos he had imported from both of their iPhones in the last post and remembered yesterday…so he processed and exported me a few new shots from the UK as well as the first couple of birds we’ve seen out back at the pond in a couple of months.

Weather here has been…well, the 5th level of hell isn’t too bad of a description…it’s been into 90s every day along with high humidity and pretty much no wind with feels like temps in the 103-110 range and the overnight lows get all the way down to 82. So…he’s getting out for his bike ride early between 0730 and 0800 as much as possible so he’s back before it really starts to be terrible.

Not really much new here…he sent his Nikon Z8 off for a couple of recalls…there was an issue with lenses not locking into place and another one with the strap lugs. He wasn’t having the first issue and doesn’t use the strap lugs as he uses a different strap that connects to either the body or the lens foot if he’s got one of his telephoto lenses mounted…but he sent it off anyway and 14 days door to door and it was back. The actual percentage of affected models is pretty small…2% or 3%…but Nikon is preemptively replacing the affected parts on every Z8 that was shipped in the first month or so and that’s a lot of bodies to repair…and the fix has been retrofitted into the manufacturing process so all is well. He also ordered himself a new 180-600 mm telephoto zoom lens…because you can always use a longer focal length for wildlife…the nice thing about this lens is that the zoom mechanism is internal and it’s unlike most zoom lenses in that it doesn’t get longer as you go to a longer focal length. It’s a bit heavier than his other zoom and prime telephotos…but longer reach than either of them so he’ll be happy. 

Other than that…pretty much nothing is going in. Connie’s been really busy with Ladies of Elks stuff this week but next week she’s going to figure out when we can go visit the kids and grandson Alex…probably in September after her meeting up in Daytona.

Anyway…here’s what we got for ya.

Another one of those fine roads we went down.

We had afternoon tea at this hotel…really fancy place we thought and the price reflected that.

And they got a shot of themselves out on the patio.

But then we discovered it was not quite as exclusive a place as we thought.

Over in Skipton we spotted these canal boats as we walked from our hotel over to the Cock and Bottle where we ate a couple of times.

Speed limit here…50 miles per hour…nuts we say.

This is the house that is the home and practice of Doctor Sigfreid Farnham and his fellow vets in her All Creatures Great and Small show from the BBC…we would have walked over and gotten some better shots but there were no parking places. The supposedly next door pub in the show is actually in a completely different village 30 miles away.

This was posted in the pub we ate at in Oxford…both Neil and Connie appreciate the sentiment of Andre.

Pano with the iPhone…it’s actually a straight road and hedge but those bushes have to be315 or 16 feet tall plus the height above the road…strangest hedgerow we’ve ever seen. 

This is one of the major roads between towns in the. Yorkshire Dales area…nice scenery but they really don’t believe in widening or smoothing out the curves in their roads.

Connie having a nip off her favorite whiskey…pretty much the only one she’ll drink. This is a really, really, really, like the smokiest tasting whiskey you will ever find…it’s Scotch and the barley is roasted over a peat fire after it’s malted and the smoke flavor really carries through into the final product. Neil likes it OK…but when he does drink Scotch he prefers a little less of the smoke flavor. Most Scotch whiskeys have a smoke flavor…and while Irish whisky has the reputation of being smooth…it’s actually only smooth for those distilled in the west part of the country…those from the east side (that is, the side next to Scotland) are smoky and when you order Irish you either order by brand or by smoke/smooth.

Another one of those really strange showers.

A pano shot of the orchestra at the Bath Abbey for the first concert she sang.

Like Alaskans…the British never throw anything away and they made themselves some men’s loo appliances out of old beer kegs.

This massive church is actually just a chapel inside Windsor Castle named the St. George Chapel…it probably seats 1,000 people or more and is where the late Queen is buried. It is also sinking on the far side and probably in another 200 years they’ll have to move the graves unless they figure out how to stop it from sinking.

Our first bird of the summer in quite awhile…an Osprey.

And a male Little Blue Heron in breeding plumage…apparently he got a late start on finding himself a lady friend or they breed both in the spring and at other times.

Interesting things found on the net.

Dwarf kingfisher…a South Pacific variety that’s smaller than the ones we have here in the US…

More math nerdery.

And finally…

Cyas.