Back to the UK

We had PULSE@Parkes session from Cardiff in December. Rob was in the UK following the dotAstromony conference. He decided to take advantage of the both of us being in Europe and ran our first international session. It was run at and in collaboration with Cardiff University and involved students from the local schools.
My trip to Cardiff was the first long drive in my new car which I had bought just a few weeks earlier. It's a Volvo, what a surprise! I'm very pleased with it. It eats up the mile, sorry kilometres, on the autobahns, is quick enough that I can overtake safely on the crazy German roads and is surprisingly frugal. I drove through Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France before taking the tunnel to the UK. Once on the other side I had to concentrate hard to drive on the left. I was finding it hard going before I stopped off at Doug's for a quick pit-stop. It was just a flying visit but it was great to catch up for a bit. By the time I left I felt infinitely better and the rest of the drive was easy.

The PULSE@Parkes session went well and I think the students enjoyed it. We has a bit of local press too (albeit rather inaccurate). It was nice to meet up with Rob again and catch up with the latest gossip from down-under. It was also a good excuse to visit the family. Despite passing right by Nick and Ceri the timing meant I couldn't pop in, a shame but we knew we'd be meeting up at Christmas.