Steam Boiler

Firstly cheers, I really appreciated the advice and constructive critisism on the b&w yesterday, I'm having a go at some of the suggestions, I've straightened it, and think it looks much better. I was going to continue the theme today but its been such an interesting day I opted to leave it for another time

Got up handy this morning and went for a walk through the Greenfield Valley to a lovely cafe which is next to Basingwerk Abbey. They serve a crackin all day breakfast which we really enjoyed.
By the time we left it was poring down, and we had no coats. A short distance away we stopped at the Exhibition of steam, today's picture is of the steam boiler which powers the pop bottling machinery.

Had a real interesting chat with the bloke who was firing her up, he told us he was almost eighty and grew up with steam and worked out of Liverpool on the steam ships, it also turned out that he worked at Camel Lairds which in its hey day was a world renowned ship builders and he worked with my Uncle Robert and knew the family well. What a small world.

The work he does today is voluntary and there are only a few volunteers to run this exhibition, today he had an apprentice with him who must have been about 60 himself.

The boiler takes 2 hundred weight of coal to start her up and then another 2 to maintain the pressure, once up to pressure she's ready to go.

As we were the only one's there due to the weather we got a personal tour and we were shown how the bottling was done. Here is picture of the bottling machinery not very clear. Women did this work mainly because they could multi task haha.

I wonder if anyone can guess at what this is used for?

All this was really so interesting. On the way back up the valley there were a few kids having fun, they must have decided that they couldn't get any wetter so were jumping off the jetty, I managed to get this young girl in mid flight.

Got so much packed into the morning it was brilliant, once home spent the afternoon
doing housey stuff and then enjoyed a glass of wine in the garden with my friend Cath.

Back to work in the morning, looking forward to seeing what my guys have been up to.

Hope you've all had a great weekend.