Coleopterists Day

Yesterday morning, nice and early, I headed down to Oxford to attend the BENHS Coleopterists Day at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The park and ride service from the outskirts of the City was great, and I was soon enjoying a cuppa and bacon roll at pre-arranged breakfast meet-up with Bill Urwin & Will Heeny and good to meet Martin Fowlie there too. The event was great, with a good range of talks and presentations, and during the day I also put faces to a good few names that I know from using their keys or online references. Also good to hear from recording scheme organisers.

Aside from the event, the venue itself was fantastic; a really great lecture hall within the museum which is housed within a truly impressive building. I had a very quick mooch around during the lunch break, but I would like to go back to have a proper look around. Here's a few snaps I took.

All around the perimeter of the display area, as you can make out in the above pic, there are columns between the arches are made of various different stone that are all named, which I thought was a great and subtle feature of interest. Here's a couple of examples:

The internal construction was just as interesting as the displays, and the natural lighting really helped to lift the building.