Inter-Planetary Lunchbreak

You could say last Sunday was a family day out with a difference: Famille Lunchista got nearly as far as the planet Saturn, using only bicycles for transport and Lunch for fuel.

About ten years ago some Astronomical wit from our local Uni teamed up with the nearest School, and Sustrans (the people who convert old railway track sites into nice flat, car-free cyclepaths), to create a 10km-long scale model of the Solar System extending along one of said paths to the South of the city.

There is an 8-foot diameter Sun near the chocolate factory (now sadly demised: what is our country going to do for future supplies of fuel?), accompanied by minor planets on their own plinths with useful information such as how far you have travelled. Using the "actual size" scale, walking pace is about three times the speed of light, and cycling is about ten times. The more relativistically-minded may thus work out how many years younger you can become by walking or riding along the route and, given that faster-than-light travel means that you finish before you started, profit from the fact that you can actually get that report written by yesterday, and still have time for lunch.

There is an organic nursery round about where the Asteroid Belt should be, and somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn (near the Cassini Probe in the picture, in fact) live a Polish family who run a cafe during the summer (that's terrestrial, Northern Hemisphere, to avoid confusion). You can stop off for a nice cup of tea that's almost big enough to float one of the Gas Giants in (yes they'd float: they are less dense than water).

In the past we have been known to go all the way to Pluto and back, but this time we turned off just before Saturn, to get a look at a local wood famous for its bluebells and slightly surreal sculptures. We sat and had a picnic lunch next to a wooden dragon, who didn't seem to mind.

And by how much did all this entertainment set back the travel budget of Famille Lunchista? The coolest amount known: Absolute Zero!