Glad we made the effort…

to go to London in this hot fluffy humid weather!  We wanted to go to the Scott’s Last Expedition exhibition at the Natural History Museum.  Maurice and I have long since been fascinated by Captain Scott and his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, so when we were offered free tickets from Maurice’s employer, we decided we’d take a trip to London.

But… we kept putting it off for one reason or another, and like everyone else avoided London over the Olympics.  The exhibition is ending on 2nd September, and due to other commitments, our last hope was yesterday. But then…. the weather forecast was for very hot humid weather, up to 32 degrees in London!  Eeek!  I do not do well in hot weather, and Maurice wasn’t so keen to go if I was going to complain all day (LOL!).  But then we realised that the trains would be air conditioned – in fact, sometimes they are too cold!, and hopefully the museum would be cool, maybe a little of that icy wind from Antarctic for atmosphere!

Well, we made the effort and we had a wonderful time.  Although it was hot and humid outside, we hardly felt hot at all, just a little on the underground, luckily only 2 stops, and waiting for the train home on Victoria station.  The exhibition was very well done.  The central part was the size of Scott’s hut in the Antarctic, with the floor plan drawn out for where the beds etc were.  There were lots of artifacts from the expedition, and they were showing film taken during the expedition.  Two things stood out for me, the hardship that the men suffered during the months they spent in the Antarctic, especially over the long dark winters, and the pioneering scientific research they did into weather, geology and wildlife.

Here’s some photos from the Natural History Museum:

It’s a lovely building with some fabulous architectural details.  The main hall is filled with this huge replica of a Diplodocus dinosaur.  It is incredibly long from the tip of it’s nose to the tip of it’s tail!

We spent a little bit of time after the Scott exhibition looking in the ‘Cocoon’, which is a fabulously interactive display of collecting and classifying.  Look at this gorgeous collecting case full of butterflies!  I’m doing an online class Ode to Nature at the moment, so this exhibition really inspired me!  More details on that class on another blog post later in the week!

I was also on the look out for photos for Rinda’s scavenger hunt.  Here’s my horse! 

 

And a photo of me with a symbol of my nation.  This is Victoria Railway Station in London with union jack flags flying a plenty due to the Olympics!

I have a few more photos to show you and will do so in another blog post later this week.