UK week 14-15; HMS Belfast (and Chelsea parade, Battersea park, Cliveden)

Top, barbie at Dan and Rachel's, with a post-burger wrestle, our first English bbq as temps have kept climbing, hitting the hottest on Sun-Mon May 23, of round 28 degreees and windless. Above, Chelsea's celebrations on the Sunday following their FA Cup win gaining them the elusive Double for 2010.

Adventure playgrounds like this one at Battersea Park are so cool - real Huckleberry Finn feel and kids encouraged to take risks. On a Sunday there was pool, table tennis and craft stuff inside too.

George spins Lara round, even more un-nerving this way up.

At another war memorial, this one at Tower Hill to the thousands dead in merchant ships during WW2

Aye aye, we prepare to board the HMS Belfast museum ship, seen behind. The only surviving warship from the Second World War still afloat so they say.

Ellie: "It is a really cool war ship that you can go inside. There are different rooms on different floors. We did the bottom floors. The first floor we went on had the washing p[lace where you wash your clothes and the crapenters."

A crew to make Captain Bligh nervous.

Lara: "I liked the ship. There were lots of hands on things. You could touch the injured man in the hospital."

Sam: "My favourite room was the hands-on [Launch exhibition 'How Ships are Built'] and the torpedo one because you can make boats in the hands on and watch movies of torpedoes in the other room."

Climbing down into the boiler room. Amazing to be wedged in among all these pipes where engineers kept this ship going while she fought off Iceland etc

Rosa says: I like going oh the ship I like makiug my own warship.

From war to art, after the ship we caught a free 10 minute dance inside the new "Portvilion" dance bubble set up next to Tower Bridge. The video is funny, but so far we've failed to get this blog to accept our videos.

Next stop, National Trust's Cliveden House, one of England's foremost Italianate estates that was home to Lord and Lady Astor and Party Central in the 1920s. Here is Sam inside some wicker thing at the estate playground.

On guard! The date on the grass says 1668, marking the time and place of a duel between the famously brilliant and famously seductive Baron who built Cliveden, and some husband he cuckolded. Don't know who won.

Swathes of lawn ideal for rolling.

And below the Buckinghamshire house, the Thames where we went for a brief wettish row. Spot the cows cooling their calves behind Sam.

Yeh, it'll do, we'll make an offer.

And to finish our day, we hunted round fenced-off privately owned pondsides such as The Queen Mother Reservoir till we found public access to this great spot at Wraysbury, behind the village green where they were playing cricket. A pleasant dip to cries of Howzat.