Plan E

This being the fifth version of half term holiday activities, it is Plan E!

Yesterday was spent at the Imperial War Museum Duxford. There are lots of aeroplanes to see, the site copes well with children and families. The Airspace hanger contains displays and activities about the history and science of flight. There are also displays about the manufacture of aircraft. The American Air Museum is an interesting building, as well as containing a wide range of American military aircraft reaching up to the present day. Some planes - I noticed this in particular with the Jaguar ground-attack aircraft in Airspace - are actually rather smaller than one might imagine. A "boys" day out!

Today was a healthy day, visiting Otford, the location of the world's largest scale model of the solar system. This was the idea of Otford Parish Council, and the model had to fit within the parish boundary. Each planet is represented by a column, with a to-scale representation of the planet engraved in the top.

First, the Sun:

Then Venus:

And here is Mercury:

Jupiter is down the side of the playing fields:

And Saturn is in the car park of the local doctors' surgery:

The other planets are further down the village, with Pluto outside the village on a local hillside. Each planet is positioned to represent where it would have been at 00.01 GMT on 1st January 2000.

As we visited, we met the designer of the model, who was cutting the grass to show the orbits of each of the planets that are represented on the village playing fields. The model extends beyond the United Kingdom, with columns in the Falkland Islands, New Zealand and Los Angeles, these columns representing the positions of nearest neighbour stars in the galaxy.

That was the easy bit of the day! We then went for a 5.3 mile walk from the village, up the Darent valley, up the eastern side of the valley and back down again. [The link will take you to an excellent four page leaflet giving instructions for the walk - it really is a very accurate guide to what you encounter at each key point in the walk.]

It was a beautiful day, but a bit muddy underfoot in places.

Lunch:

Photo opportunity:

And finally, a carousel to look after the cows: