Juggling photos

 Well, I have been struggling today with the photos.  I need to move lots across to the new external hard drive, which arrived this afternoon (along with a copy of the Lawrence of Arabia DVD I treated myself to).  Nothing, absolutely NOTHING is in order and although I've deleted about 150, the same ones still seem to appear amongst the photos I'm going through.  You will have to be patient.

I am glad that I kept a journal whilst we were away, or I will be even more puzzled as to what is where in the photographs.  

Anyway, we even did a little family history research on the way, as our route took us through Northamptonshire, so we drove round the tiny village of Shutlanger, where many of my mum's Battams ancestors lived and died.  The little church was now a Village Hall and no obvious burials.  We walked around Stoke Bruerne churchyard, and only found one Battams burial, from the 2nd World War. Will have to do some research to find out where they were "planted."

We had a good flight out but after 2 hours I just wanted to run up and down the plane - I'm not good at sitting still for long periods, and am usually active.  The hotel seemed a little unprepared when we got there, as there were no towels in our room and when we asked for them, we were given small hand-towel sized towels!  We had to share the bed (no option to upgrade to twin then) and the duvet was long and thin - either our feet could be covered, or our top halves, but not both!  We put my coat across and Gabby used her broad woollen scarf over her top half!

Next morning we went to Madaba and walked through the town to St George's Church, which had an ancient mosaic, many parts were defaced though, due to Iconoclasts deliberately damaging anything they found offensive (certain animals for example, like lions).  This is the original St George of St George and the Dragon and I took a photo of the big painting of him slaughtering it, but that hasn't turned up yet!

The landscape looked rather bleak, but then it IS desert.  We were surprised to return to Amman after a couple of days at Petra and Wadi Rum and find grass had grown.

Gabby taking a photo of the fabulous view - the Canaan of Biblical Times.

The views were incredible.

Inside the rebuilt church were fabulous mosaics, and indeed this area is still famed for its mosaic work today.

This one amazingly survived because it was buried before the Iconoclasts got there.

One of the carvings from the original church.

Right, all for today.  Tired now and need a bath and some rest.  I treated myself to the DVD of Lawrence of Arabia - part of that (towards the end) was filmed at Wadi Rum.

I hope to sort the photos out tomorrow anyway.