Verulamium Museum, St. Alban's

A great day out with our friends from Waltham Abbey. The usual amount of excessive scoffing of excellent food throughout the day including some rather large juicy blackberries from vacant plots on his allotments.

In the afternoon we had a trip out to St Alban's to view the Roman remains there and I have to say it was a most interesting and informative visit and exceptionally well done. We saw the Roman Theatre which was well signposted, describing what the area would have looked like when in full swing.

The musuem itself was one of the best local museums I've ever been in. So full of artifacts and recreations as well as original mosaics and wall paintings such as the mosaic shown in this shot. The displays were innovative too, including one where an actor described the life of a skeleton found in the area as if it was his own body he was talking about. Most effective as was the introductory video.

You needed to take time to try and appreciate that you were in the vicinity of and in the midst of a part of the country that was busy and affluent all those years ago and were following in their footsteps. A moving experience.

Which was more than could be said for the journey home at the end of the day. As we joined the M25 we were implored to travel at 40mph, then 50mph owing to roadworks and the closure of two lanes of the motorway. We did, and we moved over out of the two lanes, but the two lanes turned out not to be closed and we were flashed, tailgated, overtaken and undertaken by numerous trucks who were rolling along well in excess of the 50mph speed limit. Not only was it annoying it was also downright dangerous too.

And finally to make matters worse, the junction we get off the M25 motorway on to the M20 was closed without any warning and we had to go on a detour through A roads. Had there been a warning we'd have got off at the previous junction and onto the A2.

There was a stiff email written to the Highways Agency as we travelled the remaining distance home.