Vacation 2010 Day 2. A walk along the canal part 2

This is a follow on post to this earlier one.

After Hawkesbury Junction the Oxford Canal begins. Soon the canal passes a hug sub-station of the national grid...... giant pylons carrying high tension power lines converge. The fog was so thick there was no color, all was monochrome greys except the sharp white disc of the sun.

The silence added to the eeriness.

A little later I passed a sole sole.... hah!

For some reason the scene reminded me of a Mizoguchi movie.....

As the sun rose it slowly began to burn away the fog, but stillness prevailed.

Bridge number 9. One of my dreams is to spend an extended period of time walking around England along the canals. There are plenty of bridges so finding a dry place to sleep would not be difficult.

The Oxford canal is a contour canal, so there are few locks and the route is long and windy, therefore the view keeps changing.

There are a lot of people living on the canals. There are also a lot of people on vacation cruising in rental narrowboats. Another dream is to have a vacation doing just that.

Vacation 2010 Day2: along the Coventry Oxford canal

For the second day of my vacation I really lucked out weatherwise. I was out at sunrise under a blanket of fog. My plan was to walk along the Coventry canal until the start of the Oxford Canal and then keep going to see how far I could get.

I've always had good luck with photography along the canals as they offer such perfect reflections.

I was surprised at how much wildlife there is along the canals, ducks especially.

A few miles along at Hawkesbury Junction is the start of the Oxford Canal which winds through the countryside to Oxford, 78 miles away. I plan on eventually walking all the way to Oxford, and then along the Thames to London, and this was my second leg of the journey.

One of the great things about walking the canals is that they are flat.... a pleasant change from Japan where every walk involves climbing. Another great thing is that there are pubs liberally scattered along their length. At 8 a.m. there weren't any open though.

A lot of people live on the canals, and there are a lot of people cruising them for pleasure in rentals.

Vacation 2010 Day1: Coventry.

I took a break from posting recently as I went on vacation.

A lot of friends and family read this blog, so I thought I would post vacation pics here.

My first day was in Coventry, the city I grew up in.

One of the first things I notice when I return to Europe are the trees. They are different from Japan. Older and gnarlier. The streets of European cities tend to have more trees than in japan.

It was really nice to see stone buildings, especially sandstone. This is Swanswell gate in the old town wall dating to the fifteenth Century.

The area around Millenium Square has been redeveloped with a great Transport Museum (free), and more public art. This statue is of Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine.

The skyline in my old neighborhood used to be dominated by the gasworks, but they have long gone and been replaced with Ricoh Stadium, the home of the Coventry FC.