November 2014

[iguana]

In November, I went mushroom-gathering, made pumpkin pie, listened to whisperings in St Paul's Cathedral, took a riverboat along the Thames, and visited an astrophotography gallery.

St Pauls, Woolwich Arsenal, and Greenwich

Cep hunting

At Emily's mum's we went down to the woods to look for ceps, which I had never heard of before, but are an easily recognisable edible mushrooms. We had mostly been beaten to it by other foragers, but came back with enough to prepare a dinner for the three of us, cooked in a cream sauce with pasta. They were very tasty!

Pumpkin pie

With unwanted scrapings of pumpkin from Emily's Hallowe'en carving a few days prior, I made a pumpkin pie and everyone seemed to enjoy it! Emily's pumpkin was home-grown by her mum, so the flavour was particularly good, I think.

St Pauls Cathedral

Due to the Lord Mayor's Show St Paul's Cathedral was open to the public for free, so we went along to check it out. We went down into the vaults to see Alexander Fleming's tomb, and paid a little extra to go up to the outside viewing platform, where I got a few good photos, and the whispering gallery, a circular walkway with seating around the edge looking down onto the main cathedral floor quite far below. The accoustics are good enough that you can sit on opposite sides of the gallery and hear each other, speaking no louder than a whisper. We tried it and it worked!

The view outside was also rather good, and we were lucky enough to have a rainbow while we were out there.



Thames Clipper

After visiting St Pauls we took the Thames Clipper to Woolwich, which involves going through the Thames Barrier, which was rather cool.



We also got a good view of Tower Bridge, the Millennium Dome (where some people were running over it), and the Dangleway.

Astrophotography Gallery

We then caught the train from Woolwich to Greenwich where the observatory had this year's Astrophotographer of the Year exhibition. There were a few particularly good shows, and as always it is great to see these photos in a dark room with strong backlights to bring out the colours.

Finally for the day we ate at Bianco 43 where I had a calzone/pizza crossbreed, which was very tasty!