Things we didn’t post in July

Yeah I know, we can both be lazy sometimes, anyway there is some junk we did in July that we did not get around to posting because of laziness, busyness or both.

The Bournemouth Oceanarium:

We spent an afternoon with the fishes. Bournemouth actually has a pretty nice aquarium for a town of that size. We saw piranhas, upside down catfish, skates, deep sea crabs, a bunch of stuff. They even had one of those tunnels that you could walk through with a tank all around you. We got to watch the turtles and rays get fed while we were in that tube. Pretty cool all in all.

Corfe Caste:

Dorset (the County that Bournemouth is in) is chock full of historical landmarks. Among these are the ruins of Corfe Castle. It is located about an hour and a half away by bus in the gap between the Purbeck Hills. Corfe Castle was ordered to be destroyed during the English civil war because it was a stronghold of the Royalists. It seems a pitty to purpousfully destroy one’s history but I am sure they had good reasons at the time. The ruins were very impressive and it was very windy. Afterwards, we had lunch in the picturesque town at the foot of the castle.

Swanage:

Across the Poole harbor from Bournemouth there is a small town called Swanage on a lovely stretch of  the Jurassic coast. We decided to take a bus over on one wet cold weekend.  We got there in the afternoon and hiked a couple of miles along the coast and saw the Durlston Castle and the Tilly Whim Caves. We did not quite make it to Durdle Door (Durdle Door is a landbridge that is famous in these parts). Yes, all of these things sound like made up names that would show up in Harry Potter or other children’s literature, and we enjoyed making fun of them. Once we had hiked back into town we watched a parade that just happened to be going on. The highlight of the parade had to be the moving Thriller recreation that even included little 3 year old zombies. Very cute.