Chess and Bridges

We’re on the go today, so we don’t have much time on the computer. We (Brock and Layla) are doing this blog together! Today we were heading into London. As we were leaving Harlaxton Village, we remembered we’d never blogged about the twist that is on the chimney pots on top of houses here. Most chimney pots just have a boring old rectangular shaped one, but the ones in this village are not plain old normal chimney pots. They are chimney pots in the shape of a chess piece. The ones we could see easily were the rooks and pawns. The idea was made in the 1800s. Since both of us are fans of chess we thought the chess pieces were so cool. They were meant to be guards, but all we were thinking was how to get on the roofs and start playing. If you ever need giant stone chess pieces, you know where to look for them. In that same little village there is a small little post office that we use for most everyday foods because it is like a mini grocery store. You can find these chess chimney pots all over England. Speaking of which, you can see them in London. That’s where we spent most of the day. One of our favorite places in London to see is Tower Bridge. We learned it used to be the largest bascule bridge ever. That is interesting if you know what bascule means, but we had to remind ourselves by looking it up. It is French and means "see-saw". The bascules were operated by hydraulics and used steam to pump the engines. The bascules still run by hydraulic power but starting in 1976 they use oil and electricity and not steam to power the engines. It took 8 years and over 400 workers to build Tower Bridge. Tower Bridge is on the River Thames. As a special thing, in 1977 the Tower Bridge was painted red, white and blue for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebration. This year is the Queen’s 60^th Jubilee which is her 60^th year as Monarch. They call it the Diamond Jubilee. There are things all over England celebrating this. Maybe they will put diamonds on the Tower Bridge! When we saw it in person, though, it had bright blue trim and was beautiful.