Set The Controls ….

After we dropped Sophie off at school, we fortified ourselves with breakfast rolls and coffee in the Sainsbury’s cafe and set off to walk from the Sun to Mars and back.

The Somerset Spacewalk stretches the length of the Bridgwater & Taunton Canal from the central point of the Sun in the blip here near Maunsel Lock. In each direction it is about 11kms before you reach Pluto; the distances and relative size of the planets is on a scale of 530,000,000: 1 and Earth, when you get there, is smaller than a ping-pong ball. It certainly gives a different angle on the Solar System for today’s challenge.

We made it to Mars and back, having encountered just one small shower of the rain rather than the meteor  kind, and stopped to make enquiries at the Somerset Boat Centre just opposite the Sun, where you can hire kayaks, paddle boards and such like. There were quite a few people messing about on the water.

If you go large with this and the extra of the sun from another different angle, you can read more about the whole project or,if you have 10 minutes to spare, you could head for the heart of the sun with Pink Floyd

https://youtu.be/8RbXIMZmVv8

In the afternoon we picked up some paint for the porch and then I sat quietly and succumbed to what is either a cold or a particularly perverse form of hay fever.