Uni, leaving Shrewsbury, enter Stoke

Good day to all!
Jody returning to report on a few days of activities in the West Midlands.
Friday was our vocational day, and I spent mine at Harper Adams University, which is an agriculture university. Having spent the last of my university days in Saskatoon at the Agriculture College it was good to see the comparison to another Uni (as the locals call it here) over in the UK. Haper Adams has become increasingly hard to get into, and to get in today you must get better and better grades, and the Uni is one of the top 50 schools. There is only 2500 students that go to school on campus and quite a few that do studies through correspondance. I started my day touring the Biodigester or the BD. The BD is brand new and has just been up and running in the last couple of months. Very expensive to set up but if you can afford it the investment looks to be worth it in the long run. I'd explain how it works, but I'm sure that most of you would be bored with the details. Basically digestible food waste as well as animal waste is pumped into tanks where methane is used to produce electricity. The rest of my day included chatting with a couple of the professeurs in the college about sustainable agriculture, a tour of the labs, and lunch with the head of the lab Victoria (who is going to Canada on the return GSE tour in June). The day ended with a tour of the dairy barn, where I watched them milk on their new rotary parlour, and an interview with the on campus media team. Everyone I met at the Uni was extremely nice, and answered any questions that I had. Thanks to all involved!
Friday night was a last meal at home with my hosts for the week. They were incredibly nice, and I even had a little taste of Port, which was quite nice, although it was a very expensive bottle! Saturday my hosts Peter and Trish dropped me off at the car park, and I said goodbye to my first hosts. Extremely nice people!
Saturday afternoon I met my new hosts for the week Paul and Gaynor and we were off to Stoke-on-Trent.
A quick change of clothes and we were driving to Blackpool to see the sights and lights of the city. We drove through some rain along the way and were a little skeptical about how the weather was going to turn out on the coast, but when we got there it was overcast but dry. We searched for a parking spot, and checked 5 parking machines and after a note in the window were were off down the Promanade. Rock (candy), fish & chips here we come! We had a look at the rides, a walk along the beach (too cold for a bikini mind you!) and the bungee which I didn't think I wanted to attempt we continued walking until the rain came. 2 tries to get into different hotels for coffee and we were sitting at a bar 5 hotels up the street. The hotel had the heat on so high you would think that it was the dead of winter in Canada. When we were finished coffee we put on our rain jackets, and headed out to check out the world famous lights as we headed down the Promanade on the Tram. When we got back to the car driving down the street we saw all the cars Queing up down the road just to drive through the lights. I am glad that we took the Tram to see the lights even if the windows were all fogged up.
All in all a good day was had by all! Off to see the caverns tomorrow!
One of these days I promise to get some pictures downloaded and posted for you all to see!
Bye for now
Jody