Royal Institution @OUComputing @OU_STEM

In one of his books, "Pies and Prejudice" I think, Stuart Maconie talks about a particular characteristic of northerners in London. We silently celebrate whenever we survive a trip on the tube. Our nonchalance, as we stroll away from the ticket barriers after managing to negotiate the intricacies of touching in and out and cutting through throngs of slower passengers hides an inner brio, a desire to punch the air that we got away with it again. I've lived in the south for more than 30 years but it still hits me when I find sunlight.

Today I was at the Royal Institution, with an OU computing colleague, running two workshops for children aged between 10 and 12. It's part of the Computer Science strand of the RI's summer schools. We use the same Lego kit that we use at the engineering summer school and we do a couple of the same exercises but in a very cut-down mode; this is a two-hour session rather than a full day. We still have to keep it moving forward though so it's a full-on couple of hours followed by a workshop reset, quick lunch and then we go again. We complete the workshop with a trip to Mars where our students demonstrate the path they've calculated and programmed into the robot. In previous years Mars was the Faraday Theatre but as that was in use we used the Georgian Room today. In the extras it's the room with a blue carpet and a taped red arrow (which shows where the robots were to start). Mars might be less red and slightly plusher than you have been led to believe. After the second session we wrapped up and loaded the kit into Jon's car in double-quick time and then I braved the tube back to St Pancras. 

For those who don't know it, St Pancras shares its tube station with Kings Cross and the actual tube platforms are a few miles walk from the railway stations. I was heading there rather than to Victoria because I booked the high-speed (HS) train from Maidstone West rather than the horrible train from Maidstone East through Bromley South where the last few inches of space in each carriage are filled with poor souls who play a horizontal version of Tetris as they try to maintain some last semblance of personal space. The high-speed route uses nice shiny Javelin trains and although there were a couple of people standing as we left Gravesend they were doing so from choice, there were plenty of seats. From Gravesend the train calls at Ebbsfleet and then joins the HS1 track and winds up the wick as it passes under the Thames and then across the flat marshland of Essex to the Stratford box and then St Pancras - standing isn't that bad and the views can be stunning. As a bit of anoraky here's something to consider. This high-speed train leaves the HS1 route to follow the north Kent line towards the Medway towns. In doing so it goes through the Higham tunnel which was originally built as the second longest canal tunnel in the country; it was part of the Thames and Medway canal and was built wide, high and deep enough to accommodate a sailing barge with its mast lowered. The railway company bought the canal tunnel in 1846 and it's now used by any train heading west out of Strood.

Nice surprise this evening in that there was a direct HS back to Maidstone West rather than changing at Strood onto a stopper along the Medway Valley. This was a Javelin at St Pancras but not the one I was on - I just thought the rainbow swirl made it a nice bit of blippage. I think that this one was going somewhere exotic like Dover Priory.

All up a good day, it's always nice to do some widening participation work  - and I smashed my 10k steps