Bournemouth England - Weekend Trips - June 7, 2009

Weekend trip to Bournemouth! Since our weeks are long, with Kim working 6 days a week, Seth in morning and afternoon after school clubs, and me working long hours as well, we try, imagination dependant, on doing something every weekend. This weekend, we decided to go downtown and to the beach. Now, I'm sure that everyone goes into their town center frequently, but, we don't. Reason is that in our section of town, we have everything we need, and there's no real need. As for the beach, even though we live a 10 min drive (or 45 if traffic is bad - no really, we have horrible traffic problems here), we just don't get there as often as we should.

And - what do you see in the center of our town? London has "The London Eye", which is a big glass ferris wheel on the Thames - great views, and right next to the Parliment Buildings and Westminster, so you are in the center of it all. In Bournemouth, since we don't have the river Thames to place such a wheel, we have "The Bournemouth Eye". As you can see, it's a helium balloon. On this shot, it's slowly ascending.

It's not like a normal hot air balloon, as you don't just jump in and see where the wind takes you, but it's attached by this rather fragile cable. According to the little blurb before you enter this rocket to the moon, it says that the balloon is only 3 tonnes and the cable will support about 45 tonnes, so it's well more than enough. I just wonder if they've watched alien movies, where the alien zaps the cable, and the people go shooting off to space. Probably not. If aliens do something like that, I was prepared - I took two mobile phones (or cells if you prefer) so I could easily call for help.

While we're looking at this super strong cable, anyone notice the weakness in this contraption (other than the minimum wage support staff)? I'm thinking if I wanted to send this balloon to Never~Never Land, all you'd have to do is take out that 10p cotter pin. Hope you've packed your Tang, cause you'll be the man on the moon! Also, should that silver/white disc have a crack in it?

As we start to rise, you can see Kim down below - she's on the bench wearing a pink jumper.

You can still see her, although she's a little smaller. She's now out of shouting/screaming distance so luckily (as said above) I have two mobiles to contact her on.
In one of my other pages, I think I said that Plymouth means city on the mouth of the river Ply. Bournemouth is the same - running through the middle of town, is the river Bourne. I'm thinking I'll do what Evil Kaneevil never did, and jump over the river - no motorcycle needed!

Author's Update: Later in the summer, I was successful in jumping over the mighty river Bourne.

We have now arrived at the top of our journey - this is looking Northish.
-At the very top left, you have a long strip covering several inches - that would be our local international airport. You can fly to NY from that airport and we used that airport when we went to Tunisia.
-On the far left, you have the Standard Life building - it's the round one with the brown ribcage.
-Our place would be just under the airport - we're not that close driving distance to the airport (about a 12 pound journey) as there is a river between us.
-Directly below, you have some of the city's shopping, starting at Beales with the pedistrianised road snaking up the hill.
-The brown brick building on the far left, with the green fountain to its right is called "The Pavilion" - it's where they have plays etc. The building that's joined to it is/was an old hotel. It's a beautiful building that some eejet bought and milked and ran to the ground. Now they're repairing the building, so hopefully soon, it'll be back running again.
-The grey & black building just above it and appearing to be on the beach is the old Imax theatre and shops. Imax pulled out a while ago, and other than one or two shops, the building is empty. The locals here hate the building and they want it torn down. You can't really see it, but just a little more left behind the ropes (you'll see more in the next picture) is the peir. This is where the ground is level, but either side of the peir, and the beach rises into cliffs. We still have plenty of beach, but all along the coast from peir to peir you will have the beach and then the cliffs.
- If you follow the beach from left to right starting at the grey Imax building, you'll see a grey tear-dropped roof. This building is a museum - it doesn't look very big from the outside, but includes the house next to it and it quite interesting. Continuing up/right from there, you have numerous high rises and you'll eventually get to Boscombe Peir. Just on the other side of the peir, they're making a surf reef. Basically they're dumping a lot of soil into the water to make better surfing waves. This project should be completed fairly soon and then we'll have tonnes of surfer dudes walking around town.
- Following the beach past Boscombe Peir, it leads out onto Warren Point. This is a very nice area, as you don't get the crowds that you do on the main beach. That being said, you don't get tonnes of people on the main beach either.
- Off the tip of Warren Point, you'll see the Isle of Wight. We were there during one of Seth's school breaks, and it's quite a nice island. From Warren Point, you get good views of The Needles (white chalk cliffs attacking the sea).
- Following the beach around Warren Point, this will lead you into the city of Christchurch. Unfortunately you can't get to the Christchurch beaches easily, as there is a little bay inbetween which you can kinda make out. On Warren Point they also have beach "huts" which are worth a pretty penny.
Scroll to the right for the entire picture.

Continuing from above, starting at the IMAX going to the right, we have:
- In the white building with the green roof is a resteraunt, and just behind it in the white building is Sealife, which holds our local aquarium.
- Going up the hill (or 4'o'clock from the aquarium) is the B.I.C. (not pronounced BIC like you'd imagine). At the B.I.C., they hold quite big events, one of the more notable events was the conserative's party meetings. Oh joy. That just meant that the downtown core was crawling with Police. We saw Jimmy Carr (the commedian, not a relative) there a couple months ago.
- Onto the next/last section, you'll notice there is a parking lot. This photo is quite deceving, as it makes everthing look flat, but it's a couple hundred feet above the beach. Anyway, the special note about this parking lot, is that's where our car is parked. It's the silver Honda Accord at the far end on the second row.
- As you continue along the beach, with every step, the property goes up about another thousand. Where the beach starts to curl from right to left, that is about the start of Sandbanks. Sandbanks is the third most expensive areas in the planet, behind only London and Hong Kong. We went through Sandbanks at Christmas thinking that there would be fantastic Christmas lights and displays (since it's such an expensive part of the world) but the lights were very few. This is because the rich come here only as a summer home. They can have a property worth 5 or 10 million, and only used for 3 or 4 months in a year.
- At the end of this pensula, you have a chain ferry which will take you to Studford. Any guesses what's there? The hint is in the first part of the name. (It's a naturalist beach).
- And, lastly, just into the bay, is Brownsea Island. That is where Baden Powel invented Scouting. Brownsea Island is also home to one of the worlds largest colonies of the endangered Red Squrrel. Seems that they're dying out because they're more shy than the Grey Squirrel, and the Grey Squirrel has some disease which kills the Red Squirrel. So, I think Grey Squrrel's aren't allowed on this island.

The next picture from the Bournemouth Eye, is of the Bournemouth Pier. On the pier is a theatre, which has a number of shows each year. Mainly, they're a bit old for Kim and I, so we've never been. Parked on the pier is a blue and white ferry/tour boat that will take you along the coast. We did it last year, and went to Brownsea Island and back. The red and yellow boat is a speed boat, which zips around bay for about 10 minutes. Seth and I went on it this summer, and it was quite fun. On the back of the pier, they have some carnie rides (more on that later). Over the past couple years, they've been fixing the pier. It looks much better than it did when we first moved. Sadly, they now charge you to walk along it and much more if you want to fish.

We have now started our decent. Boo - hiss. On our way down, I noticed these -- racing boats! So, once the balloon got close enough to the ground, we jumped out (doing break-falls as not to injur ourselves) and we did a quick walk down to the pier.

Here we have little CinZano zipping by. You'll notice that the three boats behind it are going the wrong way!

I liked this black and white boat's shape. He wasn't the fastest, but I liked his lines. Plus, he wasn't an opentopped, so that you could race it during any weather. He stopped for a minute by the pier, so I was able to get this fairly close shot.

Here's the Drivers 25 special. Seems like it's spending more of it's time out of the water than in. Isn't that cheating?
In the background, you can see several sailboats. That is the otherside of the circle where the boats were racing, so the course was quite broad.

This guy's orange stripe at the bottom of the boat was originally straight, but he hit a couple of rough waves, causing the lines to jump.

And here comes little CinZano, with the Isle of Wight behind him. You can just make out The Needles on the right of the island.

One last pic of little CinZano. In the background, you can see a yellow boat on the back of the circuit.

After watching the raceboats for a while, I decided to take a couple quick pics, back towards the balloon (the computer joined these much better than the ones from in the balloon). Starting from the far left, we have:
- Sandbanks
- Tiny tiny beach huts, getting bigger and bigger along the coast
- A yellow bouncy slide - we've spent many an hour there
- The B.I.C. on the hill
- Oceanarium
- And, then high in the sky on it's ascent, the Bournemouth Eye.

After an endless amount of energy spent on watching the speed boats, Seth wanted to go on some of the carnie rides. One of his all time favourites, is the slide. Go a couple pics up just to see how tall this slide is. It resembles an old bee-hive burner, that they used to use at sawmills.

One of Seth's other favourites, is the merry-go-round. He often likes heavy machinery (trucks / bulldozers / etc), but for today, he choose speed!

When Seth rides, he sometimes likes to freestyle it.

Sometimes, he totally throws caution to the wind. What an amazing sense of balance!

And, with that, I leave you the last picture, as Seth on his journey to find some flat road, enhanced by serious speed.

Hope you've enjoyed these weekend pics.