Bearded Lady

This is the Bearded Lady of Guildford. Could be the most famous person in my town. Her name is Brenda, and she is 64 years old. I have been hearing about her and finally had a chance to meet her and chat a bit. This very nice lady is someone everyone talks about and is quite easy to pick out in a crowd. I'm making some great friends here!

The British Open

The British Open is the most famous golf tournament in the history of golf. I'm here in England and love golf, but watched the tourney on TV. The Open was held in Southport England at Royal Birkdale, which is on the northwest coast. The trip there for me would be 6 hours on the train, one way, with several train changes. With a terrible weather forecast I chose not to go. I guess 8 years in Arizona has just made me too soft. I hate cold weather!

CANAL BOATS

Here is an interesting way to see the country. These canal boats are privately owned, or can be rented. The boat owners pay the taxes and fees to be on the canals. There are clean-out stations and fuel docks around most villages. These boats are about 6 ft. wide and 36 ft. long so they can pass easily in the narrow canals. People use these as a live-aboard, or mostly for weekends or holidays. One can almost travel all of England in these boats as the canal system runs everywhere. A small diesel motor powers the boats and they need no experience to operate. Here is a picture of one of the locks that you can pass through and operate yourself. These boats are so confining as a live-aboard one would have to take a referee just to keep from fighting with each other.

The High Street

Most town's have a High Street in England. Like main street in my other life. Every weekend here the High street is closed off and out come the food vendors and craft dealers. There are always small bands, and music of all kinds, playing for donations. Here I found a unique Indian group that had a pretty good sound. These acts bring out lots of people including us. Great way to spend the day.

Guilfest

Guilfest is a 3 day camping festival held in Guildford's Stoke park. The park is a 5 minute walk from our flat so we spent about 10 hours there yesterday. The park is huge enough to hold about 3 thousand tents and acres of free parking. This is kinda like Woodstock, with over 200 bands and performers. With 7 stages of live music going 3 straight days it was easy to find some entertainment you liked. The headliner Saturday night was the band, Blondie who had many hits in the 80's. 'Alice Cooper' has even been here, who's from Scottsdale Az. our old stomping grounds. The crazy thing here is that the people that camp are not happy unless it rains and they are a muddy mess. If it doesn't rain they will get buckets of water, pour on the ground and play in the mud. We even found a tent with our name on it...Called 'Roddy's love hut'. It made us feel right at home!

False Alarm

So here we are standing out in the rain with all of the other inmates. We've just had our 5 th fire alarm go off in our building in the last 4 hours. There is a wiring issue that has to be sorted out so the fire dept is trying to get an engineer out. But in the meantime we keep getting herded to the streets each time. Sure is messing up my down time after a busy day of golf.