Been to see the Poppies.

This past week I was finally able to make the trip to the Tower of London to see the stunning display of ceramic poppies. There had been a lot on the news about them, but in the flesh they were quite outstanding!

We left HQ at 5pm and drove through the heavy traffic and pouring rain to get into London around 6.30pm. When we arrived they were reading the roll of honour, it had stopped raining but it was very windy and quite hard to get a decent photo in the low light. 

As far as you could see there were thousands of bright red ceramic poppies. They are part of an art installation, by Tom Piper,  commemorating the soldiers who lost their lives in the first world war. The Poppies were on sale for £25 with the money supporting the British Legion and Help for Heroes. I had fully intended to buy one, but the day we visited they had sold out. Each one of the 888,246 poppies had been claimed and will be posted out to their new owners after Armistice day 11th of November 2014 100 years since the start of World War 1.

Looking our of the Tower of London towards Tower Bridge.

The reason we were visiting was to see the ceremony of the keys. The Yeoman Warders are responsible for locking the Tower every night at 10pm. The ceremony has been carried out every night for the last 740 years. We were lucky to have been invited into the Officers mess for dinner. So we had a short tour of the Tower followed by dinner and then the ceremony. It was a very good evening, the rain held off for the most part and I was pleased to have been able to see the Poppies. 

I missed out on the Poppies, but I was able to get a commemorative coin, I think that the coin will be a whole lot easier to keep. 

The weather today has been beautiful, a lovely autumn day. So we went for a walk in the woods, we have worn out Hunny, who had a good old sniff around ! I took my camera and was surprised at how many different fungi there were all over the place! I need to try and work out what they all are!!

I love these little ones, they are tiny less than 2 Cm's tall!

I love the texture on this one!

These were growing on a very old and decayed log, there were hundreds of them. 

The last of the summer ladybirds.

Hunny enjoyed the walk!

I hope you all have a good week and I hope the weather holds we still haven't had to switch on the heating, which is a bit of a record seeing how we are heading into November!!