Just off the A45 in Coventry, there is a Sainsburys and an industrial estate on a road called Herald Avenue. I've known for a while that the site used to be a Triumph car factory but one night last week we were driving to the Sainsburys and it suddenly occurred to me why the road was so named: Triumph used to make a car called the Herald.

On the way home, we stopped at traffic lights behind a old-looking small car. My first impression was that it looked like an old Triumph but as we got closer I thought it might be something foreign or a kit car. Today, when I saw some car photos on a web page, I realised it was actually a Triumph Herald. That was quite a strange coincidence.

When Eleanor of Castile (wife of Edward I) died near Lincoln in 1290, her body was taken back to Westminster. At each overnight stop, Edward ordered a cross to be erected:

1. Harby, Nottinghamshire (near Lincoln)
2. Grantham, Lincolnshire
3. Stamford, Lincolnshire
4. Geddington, Northamptonshire (near Kettering)
5. Hardingstone, near Northampton
6. Stony Stratford (near Milton Keynes)
7. Woburn, Bedfordshire
8. Dunstable, Bedfordshire
9. St Albans, Hertfordshire
10. Waltham (now Waltham Cross) near Cheshunt in Hertfordshire
11. Westcheap (Cheapside), London
12. Charing (now Charing Cross)

To repeat the journey today by car would take a little over 5 hours, travelling 170 miles (avoiding motorways). The route would be:

1. Leave Harby and head west to the A1133 then south to the A1
2. Leave the A1 to visit Grantham
3. Back onto the A1 to Stamford. Leave town on the A43 towards Corby and Kettering.
4. The A43 goes through Geddington. Continue towards Northampton where it joins the A45.
5. South of Northampton, take a detour up the A508 to the cross.
6. Turn around and continue down the A508 to where it meets the A5 at Stony Stratford.
7. Follow the A5 south (either the modern one through Milton Keynes or the old Watling street) before turning off for Woburn.
8. Take the A4012 south to the A5 and on to Dunstable.
9. Continue south on the A5 then A5183 towards St Albans.
10. For the next leg of the journey you can either cheat and take the M25 to Junction 25 or go cross country taking the A414, A1M, B157 and finally B198 to Waltham Cross
11. Take the A1055 and A10 into London towards Cheapside
12. From there, the A40 then A4 take you to Charing Cross

I've missed out a lot of the finer detail of the route for clarity.

The only crosses still standing are the ones at Geddington, Hardingstone and Waltham Cross. The famous cross at Charing is a more modern replica.

This was a great day out - lots of free samples of food and drink (but mainly drink). The ticket cost includes one of the 'theatre' shows. We decided to see Gordon Ramsay. I would have been disappointed if he didn't swear, since that's what he seems to excel at.
He was demonstrating a 3 course meal starting with a soup. All was going well until he tried to liquidize the soup. He lifted the jug off the liquidizer base and it came apart, dumping the soup all over the worktop.
In the main hall there were more cookery demonstrations. We caught a glimpse of Anthony Worral-Thompson doing one of them. But the highlights were Gordon Ramsay's soup and the huge number of free samples we managed to obtain. We did actually spend some money though: 2 bottles of a decent sparkling wine (we made sure we sampled some first) and 12 big bags of kettle chips.

There are lots of version of the Magpie Counting rhymes. This one seems fairly typical:

One for sorrow, two for joy,
Three for a girl, four for a boy,
Five for silver, six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told.

I made myself a cup of green tea in work and, not for the first time, found some reasonably sized bits of twig in amongst the leaves.

Apologies for the photo being a bit blurred (it was taken on my phone) but you can just about make out the length of the twigs to be about 4cm.

Last night was the first proper frost of the winter. When we left the cinema, some of the other cars in the car park we covered in a reasonably thick shell of ice, especially the ones with wheel clamps on them.
Walking through the park to the station this morning, any exposed grass and leaves were also white. It seems to be proper winter now. I'm glad I managed to find my hat and gloves to wear. It's also getting closer to the time when we're going to have to start using the electric heaters at home, unfortunately we don't have any central heating and as it's a rented house there's obviously no point in installing it ourselves.

We went to see War of the Worlds at the Warwick Student Cinema. I was expecting it to be a better-than-average blockbuster and a return to the sort of film Steven Spielberg used to make. I wasn't disappointed. While it wasn't a great film it was entertaining and made good use of special effects without going over the top.

Last night, Emma had a craving for McDonalds chicken nuggets so we went to the local drive through to buy some. We paid and drove up to the collection window. The hatch opened, I was handed a bag containing the order and the hatch closed again. We weren't asked if we wanted any sauce with it and weren't really given a chance to ask for any. We eventually managed to get some barbeque sauce - we stayed there until the window opened again and I asked for some. The service was a bit crap and the nuggets weren't very hot. Not what you expect from somewhere like McDonalds.

I got into the lift in work this morning and pressed the button for my floor. The button lit up when I pressed it but went off again. I pressed again - same thing happened. I didn't want to press the button for the floor above in case it stopped at both floors, which would annoy the other people in the lift and make me look foolish.
The lift started moving, reached my floor and ignored it completely. Before I could press the button for the next floor, it was past that as well. Thankfully it stopped 2 floors up where I got out and walked down the stairs.