The Queen and other attractions

-- Warning! This post contains nudity. How does this relate to our honourable head of state, I hear you ask? Read on, and all shall be revealed. Literally. --

Summer is a great time to be in London. For such a big city, there is an amazing array of parks and green spaces, and an endless series of outdoor events. Flugtag, for example.

The concept of Flugtag is pretty simple - build a homemade, human-powered flying contraption and "fly" it off the end of a 10m pier into water at Hyde Park. Most of the competitors don't take it very seriously, of course (giant disco ball, flying submarine), and there were quite a few themes based on movies (Star wars, Mary poppins), and there aren't many who make a serious attempt to get any kind of distance. This is the best one we saw:

The record is about 60m, set in Austria, but the brits apparently value silliness over technical ingenuity, and there weren't any serious attempts to beat that.

Another outdoor event we made it to was Trooping the Colours (not Trampling the Colours as Bek called it). This is an annual event held in June to celebrate the fact that the Queen's Birthday is in April. It has everything you would expect from a royal celebration - men (and some women) in smart suits and silly hats marching as if their life depended on it (ok, so not all these photos are ours)...

...horses tossing their heads and wondering what all the fuss is about...

...a big brass band to end all big brass bands...

...police with bullet proof vests and machine guns facing the crowd and playing "spot-the-terrorist"...

...oh, and the queen too - flashing past elegantly but very fleetingly in her horse-drawn carriage.

To top it all off there was an RAF flyover from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace, which I captured expertly with my superior camera skills:

But that wasn't the end of our fabulous day - oh no, the icing was yet to come (and not from the cake shop we stopped at with Dave and Alecia). Serendipitously, we were also blessed with another parade that day, one which didn't involve smart suits or silly hats - or in fact any clothes at all. It was, we soon discovered, the World Naked Bike Ride:

Why would several hundred people subject themselves to such discomfit and humiliation? Well, three reasons apparently:
- Protest against dependency on oil,
- demonstrate the vulnerability of cyclists on the streets,
- celebrate body freedom.

An interesting collection of causes.

Hurrah for summer!