Great Britain Day 6 Conference and Iron Bridge Gorge

Day 6 was part conference part sightseeing for me, and all sightseeing for Zach and Lincoln.  I went to the conference for most of the morning while Zach and Lincoln say the rest of their Tolkien sights.  Then they met me to join the women in physics for a tour of Iron Bridge Gorge.  It was a day of a lot of issues around how the conference was set up for families, but all in all it turned out to be a good day.

First talk of the morning was about biophysics and women in physics.  The speaker was amazing and she has done lots of super cool things.  She also talked quite a bit about all the work she now does on policy to get women in physics.  Unfortunately that was a lot of the conference I was able to see.  I was supposed to have key access to my room, but a long series of mixups meant it took me a full hour before I was finally able to get into the room.  By the time I pumped I missed the majority of the workshops for the day.

On the brightside since I only had 30 min I walked over to the campus art museum to see their small collection of impressionist art.  I passed the Poynting physics building along the way!

Monet at the Barber Art Museum.  The museum was small but it had lots of cool things in it for its size

I made it just in time for our little 2 min intro session for the posters.  It was somewhat disorganized and a few people couldn't figure out what room we were in.  Then they passed out the lunch and gave us only 30 min to eat it and visit the posters.  The end result was that basically none of the posters had any visitors.  I did talk to a few very interested people but they really need to work on the timing.

Next stop with our packed lunches was the coach buses to take us to our field trip.  I had emailed and emailed and emailed to see if Lincoln and Zach could come with.  I had finally gotten the ok I thought, but then when we went to get on the bus they didn't have us written down for 3.  So then we had to get off the bus with a screaming starving baby (because at this point it was way past his meal time).  Finally they let us on after enough people didn't show up and we were off to the Iron Bridge Gorge.  I got to sit in the front row which also meant all the passing drivers saw me with my boob out trying to feed Lincoln.  Really it was a great bus ride!

We did finally make it to the Iron Bridge Gorge.  This is the birthplace of the industrial revolution.  They had coal, iron and transportation which meant they were the first place industry really started in the world.  Again the tour was only somewhat organized (like most of the conference).  We got a good intro by the museum founder, but Zach and I missed a lot of it because we were stuck in the entryway with a somewhat unhappy baby.

Lincoln got pulled out of the stroller to calm him down. Then he tried to eat the exhibit

After that adventure they wanted us to climb back on the bus to drive like not even half a mile.  Instead we said we would join them at the bridge.  After thinking we lost them for about 30 min they finally all showed up.  Here is us on top of the Iron Bridge (first one in the world built in 1790's used for auto traffic until the 1950's.

The Iron Bridge

And this is how we roll.  No changing tables, well then we change you on the side of the path while the rest of the group hears about the construction of the bridge

And finally the way back.  There was some lovely scenery and Lincoln mostly slept.  Unfortunately there was also an accident so we got back late.  Then when I tried to retrieve the milk from the room they said would be unlocked, it was of course locked.  At this point there was no way for me to get to the conference banquet since the timing was all wrong and there was no milk for me to leave.  So I sadly had to skip yet another event due to poor organization.

Plan B was still pretty good though.  Our hotel had a jazz band playing that we stopped for a while to hear while Zach got us take out Persian food.

The Persian place we went to

And the night ended with us enjoying our takeout on our bed watching bbc while Lincoln enjoyed his jumper.

Zach and Lincoln's Adventures, Day 3:

We started out with a walk through Shire Country Park. We got to see another part of the area that inspired Tolkien. I think there's a relative of Old Man Willow....

After the walk, we went through the Sarehole Mill Museum. This was a working mill when Tolkien lived across the mill pond. It had a great mix of mill history and Tolkien exhibits.

Then we met back up with Jolene!