Crowds and Water in the Sun!

Bit remiss on typing up this one! Just call me slack!
Few weekends ago it was the Thames festival.. where you can wander along from Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge and indulge in music, food, clothes, ad hoc other items from round the world with zillions of other people from round the world!
It has travel stalls, information on the river stalls, back massage stalls, in fact too numerous stalls to mention!
Met up with Mr P and Miss A for a delightful afternoon of pushing our way through crowds of people and sampling all sorts of delights (nuts, flavoured beers, samosa - all free). It was a beautiful day for it.. just walking along, chatting, stopping to see some act or happening, and thoroughly just enjoying being in London!
Managed to catch some Russian dancers, rhythmic gymnasts and Jamaican kettle drummers - all pretty cool! They certainly had the crowds enjoying themselves!
It was great popping in and out of the permanent stores and discovered some fabulous artwork in a little gallery - even managed to speak with the artist!
What a fabulous day of sights, smells and sounds!

Secret!

Well it wasn't really. I was in Essex on the weekend and saw signs for a Secret Nuclear Bunker. Well, in my thinking, that's not so secret a nuclear bunker then if you have signs directing you to it! And it certainly had to be investigated!
Certainly was an interesting, though weird visit. At the entrance to Kelvedon Hatch, just a normal looking bungalow (though with an army jeep and kind of tank out the front - parked in a no parking spot as well - it was kind of obvious that something military was going on!), you had to collect one of those information wands before you headed off into the bowls of the earth, into a complex that was three stories high. It then directed you round the complex, with a little beep beep when it was time to move on, explaining what you were seeing at that particular point.
Odd announcements came over the tannoy "will the head typist come to the commissioners office" and such like. It was interesting to see where the British Government would be based if there was ever a nuclear strike, as well as all those old videos on how to survive if not allowed in the bunker - painting your windows in whitewash, how much to eat and also about fallout etc etc.
It was definitely one of the more quirky places that I've visited here in the UK! Especially as the only people we saw from the start, to the cafe at the end, were other visitors! It was also rather unerving with all the "you are on CCTV" and "don't touch anything" or "make sure you put money in the honesty box" as and when you could put money somewhere signs!

http://www.secretnuclearbunker.com