Return journey to Lincoln and the Architecture Students exhibition

This morning was the last foray to let the chickens of our neighbours before the latter returned from their holiday in Yorkshire. I was rewarded with an egg, pristine and still slightly warm, nestling on the hay where moments before a chicken had roosted.

Toast, tea and a boiled egg later, Mrs T and I set off for Lincoln, to collect Miss T for the summer break after her second year at University.

We traversed the dangerous stretch of the A14 to Huntingdon at a remarkable speed and without incident and left Cambridgeshire on the delightfully six-laned and quiet A1 North. Past Peterborough, the road began to undulate on the increasing but gentle rolling hills. The fields were looking greener here, compared to the severely drought ridden Eastern counties.

Twice, we saw red kites with their distinctive forked tails and slightly raffish wings, wheeling above us as we thundered past at 70 miles per hour. At Newark, we turned off onto the A46 in anticipation of having made good time to Lincoln, only to encounter a temporary queue within a couple of miles of the city.

Miss T kept an eye out for us and directed the car to a small hidden car park, a short walk along the quay to her accommodation for a short break. For lunch we dropped in on Prezzos, for salads or soups according to taste. As part of my campaign towards a reduced waistline, I thoroughly enjoyed the lighter option of king prawns on pizza bread with a good mixed salad. The latter enjoyed all the more in the knowledge that the UK has not been affected by the plateauing E. coli outbreak in Germany, now tentatively linked with a Northern German restaurant in Luebeck and another in Hamburg.

Miss T invited us to view the exhibits by architecture students in their third and fifth years. We spent an hour wandering around and I was increasingly frustrated with the presentation of the otherwise excellent and imaginative displays. In most instances, there was little attempt at clearly presenting a story that the visitor could follow. The exceptions were some of the third year students, who added legible labels and had a clear flow in their exhibits for the eye to follow through.

From my experience of attending Ecobuild and accompanying German companies in the Green, restoration and retrofitting sector, I was also surprised by the apparent lack of obvious major inclusion of energy efficient and other green features in many of the works.

We then returned for a cup of tea to the student lodgings and took on the surprisingly simple task of collecting Miss T's packed luggage and possessions. I was even more surprised that the economy of materials to be returned home left the rear windscreen of the car still clear for visibility.

The journey back passed equally well and without problems, with high cloud gradually coming from the West as a harbinger of the meteorlogical change to cooler wetter weather expected tomorrow.