Phew, the last few weeks have been very busy and I’m looking forward to a week’s holiday in Prague next week.

At the end of May I headed up to Edinburgh for the Flood and Coastal Erosion Management Network (FCERM.net) Annual Assembly. I took a poster detailing the work on Dynamic Humber and a demo for Humber in a Box using Google Cardboard. I even won one of the three poster prizes on offer which was very nice. You can read more about here on the NERC-FFIR blog.

The beast in the middle of this busy period was Cheltenham Science Festival. This was an amazing experience and lots and lots of fun. I took the full version of Humber in a Box down with me, and along with River in a Box, it made up the stand for the British Society for Geomorphology. From Wednesday to Sunday the team made up of colleagues from Hull, Gloucester, Manchester, Exeter, Loughborough and Cardiff were there, and we must have had several hundred members of the public try the Oculus and flood the Humber. I think it was great success.

I spent much of my time walking around the site wearing a Google Cardboard (you can see via your phone camera, but you lose all depth perception!), handing out fliers and directing people to our stall.

Our stall was small and most the space was taken up by River in a Box – I occasionally had queues of people waiting for a go on Humber in a Box. We spent the week next door to a DeLorean, which played the music from Back to the Future. On loop. Ten hours a day. For six days. Above is picture of Gia Milinovich and Brian Cox sat in it. Don’t think Steve charged them a fiver for this pic.

There were plenty of sights to see. At the weekend, opposite us was this killer whale, with the option to take a #whalefie – I’m pretty sure it isn’t actually a whale? Did they do this on porpoise? There was also this dino skeleton – it had had a hard life with a bony tumor in its brain which may be why it had so many injuries on it. Still, it looked happier now.

This baby T-Rex was in better shape, even attacking the DeLorean. Maybe it appreciated the music as much as we did.

After Cheltenham I headed to Switzerland and ETH Zurich. I had been invited, as a guest of Tom Coulthard, to a workshop on Complexity in Geomorphology. Organised by Peter Molnar, this was an excellent workshop, I learned an awful lot and made some very useful connections. I also got to present alongside outstanding experts in the field such as Chris Paola and Doug Jerolmack.

Zurich is beautiful city, above is the view from the roof terrace of the building the workshop was in, and I hope I get the chance to visit again and for a bit longer.

I’ve been back a week and cramming lots of modelling in before my holiday – but I did get chance to say hello to #ducksatGees, who have grown loads whilst I have been away!