Tagged: thames

Andrew Burdett sat in the passenger seat of a PA-18 150 Super Cub at White Waltham Airfield.

My First Flying Lesson – 8 September 2015

Today at noon, I found myself at White Waltham Airfield in Berkshire, preparing for take-off during an introductory flying lesson. Once in the skies, we passed over wide fields, busy road networks, and the ribboning Thames below. Still persists the childlike wonder of seeing from above the places one thinks one knows so well.

With its candle lit, Andrew Burdett was delighted with the cake father Richard had made.

My Late‑eenth Birthday – 22 June 2014

A birthday in late-April is no time to hold a celebration (examinations begin in the early weeks of May), but two months on, my late eighteenth birthday party was blessed with wonderful weather.

Five years after the family hosted an evening boat party to mark Mum’s 50th and Harriet’s 18th, I picked this Sunday afternoon to hold my very own. With me engrossed in revision, Dad had done the vast majority of the organising, although I came up with the finer details: deciding on the menu, compiling the playlist, and suggesting a ‘Henley’ dress code.

Temporary signs and fencing prevented cars from driving down the flooded lower road.

Cookham Floods (with pictures) – 11 January 2014

Whatever age you are, there’s nothing more curious than a speed-limit signpost, only its top still dry. The white painted road-markings, which dive down beneath the water-line, are the subject of many a photograph. For me, though, it’s the impossible image of all of this water, somehow made possible by a complex combination of currents and clouds.