A little bit about walking in and around King’s Lynn.
While King’s Lynn does not brag about such things as ’15 minutes Cities’ or being a ‘Walkable Neighbourhood’ it is, in spite of really being two medieval towns in one (hence two market places, two guildhalls, two major churches etc) exceedingly compact, which means that a lot of things can be done on foot. This post looks at some of the things that I regard as absolutely walkable.
MY LOCATION IN RELATION TO THE TOWN
I live these days in a suburb that is just outside town to the north. I have two very good footpaths that are almost immediately accessible from my home and a third not much further away.
AMENITIES THAT I WALK TO
The town centre among many other features boasts a Morrison’s with a very wide range of stock, a Sainsbury’s suitable for top up shops but not for major food shopping, a Wilkinson’s, sundry other shops, a library, my doctor and my dental surgery and the bus and train stations for travel further afield (if and only if I am travelling somewhere north of Lynn there are bus stops closer to me than the town centre). This areas is also well equipped with historic buildings.
Gaywood is also comfortably walkable from home, and that has its own shopping area and a library.
OTHER WALKABLES
The Hardwick Industrial Estate is even for me a substantial walk from my home, but I have done it. Last night the West Norfolk Autism Group had a fundraiser at the Masonic Centre on Hamburg Way, which is near the outer edge of the North Lynn industrial estate, and is a little further from my home than the town centre, but I walked both ways.
With so much stuff within walking range it is a rarity except on work days for me to use any other form of transport.
A look at developments in the Womens T20 World Cup and a bumper photo gallery.
Since I last blogged there have been three games in the tournament: Ireland v England, South Africa v New Zealand and Australia v Bangladesh. This post looks at those matches (the first of today’s two matches, between India and West Indies is just getting underway).
IRELAND V ENGLAND
England were heavy favourites, and the match went to form. However Ireland showed a bit of fight. They were 80-2 at one stage but a collapse led to them being all out for 105. Sophia Dunkley made a brutal early assault on this small target, taking just 21 balls to reach 50. However, Ireland never completely gave up, and although England had plenty of time to spare they were six wickets down by the time they crossed the winning line.
SOUTH AFRICA V NEW ZEALAND
This was a must-win game for both sides, as each had lost their opening match of the tournament. New Zealand did reasonably well with the ball, only a fighting 40 from Chloe Tryon getting SA to 132-6 from their 20. However, for the second time in as many matches both Kiwi openers went without scoring, and it was soon 18-4. New Zealand did not improve much from this awful start, eventually being all out for 67 to lose by 65 runs. This total was nine runs fewer than the Kiwis had scraped against Australia in their first match of the tournament.
AUSTRALIA V BANGLADESH
Bangladesh could not score with any speed, although they did at least reach three figures. They bowled better than they had batted, and although defeat for Australia looked a serious possibility it take them until the 19th over to finally reach the target.
PHOTOGRAPHS
I have another big haul of photographs. I plan my walking routes to to ensure that opportunities arise, and also, living as I do on the edge of a very compact town I am able to conduct almost all of my non-working life on foot, and whether I expect the opportunities to arise or not I never venture forth without at least one camera…
This picture and the two following show the Egret, this time in the vicinty of Bawsey Drain, in flight.
A look back at England’s consolation win over South Africa in the final match of the ODI series, a description of a walk and a load of photographs,
On Wednesday England and South Africa played the third and final match of their ODI series in South Africa. South Africa had already won the series having won the first two matches.
ENGLAND 14-3 AND THEN…
South Africa won the toss and put England into bat. In the early stages they would have had few doubts about the correctness of this decision as England were 14-3 early on. Then Jos Buttler joined Dawid Malan and England began to fight back. At the 30 over mark England were 149-3. Overs 31-40 yielded a further 90 runs, and both set batters were still there. England’s hopes of a really substantial total suffered a setback in the 41st over, when Dawid Malan was out, to end an England all time record ODI 4th wicket stand. In the event dome bright hitting from the lower middle order batters boosted the England total a a mightily impressive 346-7.
ARCHER FINDS HIS MARK
Much of the interest in England’s defence of their total centred on Jofra Archer, in the side in place of Olly Stone and hoping to demonstrate that injury woes that no so long ago seemed to have put his international career in jeopardy were behind him. Archer bowled magnificently, being consistently the quickest bowler on either side and making a number of crucial interventions. When Markram and Klaasen were threatening he dismissed Klaasen, and then followed up by dislodging the dangerous David Miller cheaply. Similarly when Klaasen and Jansen looked threatening it was once again Archer who broke the stand. It was only fitting that the delivery early in the 42nd over of the South African innings that claimed their last wicket was bowled by Archer. South Africa were all out for 287, beaten by 59 runs, and Archer, just into the last of his 10 allotted overs, had claimed 6-40 on his return to international action.
A TERRIBLE PLAYER OF THE MATCH AWARD DECISION
In a match in which 633 runs were scored in just over 91 overs a bowler taking six cheap wickets, including removing several batters just as they were starting to look dangerous, should be a sh00-in for the Player of the Match award. However, cricket is a batter’s game, and Jos Buttler’s century allied to three catches behind the stumps got him the award. The simple fact is that without Archer’s bowling Buttler’s runs would have counted for nothing – it was only the fact that largely due to Archer SA were bowled out that prevented England’s total from being overhauled – SA were up with the rate almost all the way through their innings, and never dangerously far adrift of it.
BOOSTING THE PHOTO GALLERY
I already had quite a few photos to share from earlier in the week, and today, although the weather was not as pleasant for walking as it had been on Tuesday and Wednesday yielded plenty more. I had decided that today was the day to put in a repeat prescription form, which meant there was one fixed point on my travels, but otherwise I could pick out my own route. I set off from the back door of my home, headed past the two ponds close to it, then along the Gaywood where it flows past the Kettlewell Lane trees, across Littleport Street, down past Highgate Methodist Chapel, across another section of the Gaywood and on past the station and an ASLEF picket line, and through the walks to where I had to drop off the prescription request. I then headed for the Broad Walk, which I followed through the Guanock Gate before diverging through the Vancouver Garden and then along the path that cuts diagonally across the Recreation Field before joining St John’s Walk where the latter meets Tennyson Avenue. I crossed Tennyson Avenue and walked along the path that runs between the grounds of King Edward VII Academy on one side and the King’s Lynn Academy on the other and then crossed Gaywood Road, and continued on past Lynn Sport until I reached Bawsey Drain, which I then followed to its junction with Columbia Way, before walking about half of the next section and then turning back. I followed Columbia Way as far as Greenpark Avenue and then headed down that road and walked a tiny section of the Gaywood River Path before heading back home by way of the Discovery Centre. In total I was out and about for approximately two hours, and got some decent photographs.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Time for my usual sign off…
A blue plaque giving current Northwest Norfolk MP James Wild appropriate levels of respect.Today’s photos start here.This deer was too far distant to make an ideal subject, but I did my best.
Today we have a non-cricketing post as I extend my ‘accepting extra walking’ series with a look at Greenwich.
Welcome to to third post in this sporadically published series (see here and here). Today the London element of this post concerns Greenwich, which I have written about in some detail on my London Transport themed website (here).
GREENWICH
These days, since the Docklands Light Railway was extended southwards from Island Gardens maritime Greenwich has had its own station, called Cutty Sark after the old tea clipper (Ester has recently posted a picture of it on her blog). This section focusses on the various alternatives to using that station.
One stop north of Cutty Sark is Island Gardens, from which you can enter the Greenwich Foot Tunnel and walk under the Thames to get to maritime Greenwich.
Greenwich and Maze Hill stations are also within easy walking distance, and there is an interesting walk largely along the river front from Deptford. New Cross and New Cross Gate are both also within range. For the seriously venturesome one can travel to Woolwich to get a close look at the Thames Flood Barrier first, and then walk along the Thames westwards until arriving at Greenwich. If you use the DLR and alight at King George V station, one stop from the terminus at Woolwich Arsenal, you can avail yourself of the other opportunity to walk under the Thames by using the Woolwich Foot Tunnel (I actually did once do this precise thing in the days when what is now the DLR spur from Stratford to Woolwich Arsenal was the tail end of a regular train line that started at Richmond and finished at North Woolwich, located roughly where today’s King George V is).
If you do make a trip to Greenwich at some point when the situation allows, and your mobility permits you to be more venturesome I recommend at the very least making your destination for arrival Island Gardens and the point of departure for your return journey Greenwich. That will enable to you to enjoy all of Greenwich’s finest attractions.
My own plan of campaign for when the opportunity arises has two components for the outward journey depending on circumstances: 1. If the train from King’s Lynn to London that I am on calls at Finsbury Park, I will alight there, change to the Victoria line, change again at Highbury & Islington to London Overground and change one final time at Shadwell to the Docklands Light Railway, alighting at Island Gardens to approach Greenwich by way of the foot tunnel. 2. If the train to London does not call at Finsbury Park, I will board a Circle/ Hammersmith and City/ Metropolitan line train at King’s Cross, change at Baker Street to the Jubilee line and change to the Docklands Light Railway at Canary Wharf heading south to Island Gardens.
For the return journey I will aim for Kings Cross by catching a train from Greenwich and changing at Waterloo East to Southwark (Jubilee), and according to mood and time considerations will either change at Baker Street or stay aboard the Jubilee line train until I can make the cross platform interchange at Finchley Road.
A google maps creation showing my advocated stations for a visit to Greenwich.
London connections view of the area
Close focus on the stations around Greenwich.
Showing the every station I mentioned as a possibility.
The first of two relevant double page spreads from my ancient A-Z
Close focus on the immediate area of interest.
Close focus on Woolwich.
BARNSLEY AND MANVERS
Manvers is a purely light industry location not far from Wath-on-Dearne. I had two jobs there, first for a mobile phone network provider, and then as a scanner operator enabling the destruction of paper copies of old documents. I was sometimes compelled to accept extra walking – the bus that actually went through Manvers did not start running until too late if I had a really early start (and in the second job, as a scanner operator, I worked split shifts, 6AM to 2PM one week, 2PM to 10PM the next). However I also sometimes chose to walk the extra distance to Wath-on-Dearne and get a bus back from there because it seemed preferable to waiting at the bus stop at Manvers. The first bus from Barnsley to Wath-on-Dearne left at 4:34 and there was another at 5:35, too late for 6AM start, but just early enough if one had a 7AM start. The first bus to Manvers did not leave until 6:33, too late to be of use for a 7:00 start.
A LINK AND SOME PICTURES
Given that one of the attractions at Greenwich is an observatory I thought this tweet from Milky Way Astronomers explaining the colours of meteors seemed an appropriate segue into my usual sign off…
Something very different from my usual fare, but every bit as much me as anything that has appeared on this blog. The focus is on occasions when I accepted a longer walk than necessary.
If this post is well received it could be the start of a new series, hence the 1 in the title. As a lifelong non-driver I am looking at examples of situations where for various reasons one might accept extra walking rather than use public transport. I am starting with a particularly dramatic example from my younger days.
STREATHAM/ TOOTING
The boundaries between Streatham and Tooting are somewhat blurred. On postcodes, SW16 is Streatham and SW17 is Tooting (the rest of the late SW postcodes are SW18 – Wandsworth, SW19 – Wimbledon and SW20 – West Wimbledon), but on constituencies some of SW16 is in Tooting, including the postcode I called home for 20 years of my life, SW16 6TE. That house was situated pretty much equidistant from four stations, Tooting Bec on the Northern Line, Tooting, Streatham and Streatham Common all on suburban railways, all of which were 15-20 minutes walk away. Before the time I am talking about in this post I had also used Balham, further distant but still walkable, as a starting point for some journeys, and had occasionally chosen to walk home from Wimbledon, a considerably longer walk. The two pictures below, both created by using google maps show the wider area around my old home and then a closer focus on its immediate surroundings:
GETTING FROM TOOTING TO BRIXTON WITHOUT DRIVING
It was in 1997 that I did a few temporary jobs for Lambeth Council via an agency, which involved travelling to and from Lambeth Town Hall, in Brixton. At that time I was not a big fan of buses, so I have to admit they did enter my thoughts. Because of the way the railways both underground and overground work I had basically two options using them: Northern line to Stockwell and then one stop south on the Victoria line, or Streatham to Herne Hill and then Herne Hill to Brixton, three stops in total (2,1), but a change and potentially significant waits for trains at both stages. I actually decided that the time saving was not worth the cost of travel, and opted instead to walk the whole way. There were many possible walking routes, and I experimented with a few different ones. I came to the conclusion that the best route for my purposes was to spend the early part of the walk there/ later part of the walk back away from main roads, so I used Telford Avenue as my link road from the end of Tooting Bec Common to the A23. Immediately after Telford Avenue in the Brixton direction the A23 meets Streatham Place, which is also known as the A205 aka the South Circular, which swings north towards Clapham before turning south again towards Richmond before a final northern turn to where it meets the North Circular (A406) – at the eastern end they do not quite meet.
NEW MALDEN – TOOTING
Between November of 1997 and September of 1999, when I returned to full time education, I worked as a data entry clerk for a furniture company, based in an office above their warehouse in New Malden. That is significantly further from Tooting than Brixton, and I had a pretty much unvaried route in in the mornings: I would get a train north from Balham to Clapham Junction and then travel out from there to New Malden. In the evenings, especially if the weather was decent there was scope for much more variation, as if I started back along the main road, rather than go into New Malden, I get to Raynes Park, Wimbledon Chase, Wimbledon and South Wimbledon with varying lengths of walk, each of which offered ways to travel onwards, and on more than one occasion I actually walked all the way.
Here a few A-Z map pages to help you orient yourself, and to end this section:
These pages are just north of where I lived at the time I am talking about in this post.
The Wimbledon pages.
The pages that include my old home.
A close up of the area where my old home was – unfortunately because of its proximity to the centre of the book the key area is a little bit blurred.
LINKS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
This post, even more than most of mine, is very much an autistic person’s post, so I start the links section by directing you towards an excellent thread by Ann Memmott in which she superbly takes apart some derogatory stuff about autistic people. A screenshot of the start of the thread is below, and I urge to to read the whole of it by clicking here.
Finally, the London Transport Museum have recently produced bitesize histories of the Metropolitan and District lines, which you can read by clicking the respective line names. If you enjoy their efforts, pieces about those lines that I created can be viewed here, here and here (three links, because the original Metropolitan Railway route is actually now served by the Hammersmith and City line).
An account of two staging posts on my journey back to health and fitness, plus a few links and plenty of photographs.
INTRODUCTION
This post details a couple of staging posts on my recovery from the cancer that almost killed me at the back end of last year that occurred on Thursday and yesterday respectively. I end this introduction with a mini-challenge – below is a photograph of mine with all the colour removed – can you identify the butterfly in it? (answer located in the photographs at the end of this piece).
THURSDAY: THE SIGNATURE DISH
Due to my illness and the fact that this requires over an hour of cooking time I had not done it in about a year, but, emboldened by my all-clear on Monday and generally improving state of health I had resolved to try it. I obtained most of the necessary ingredients by way of an online Sainsbury’s shop, delivery arranged for 3-4PM on Thursday. However, I realized that I had forgotten to order lemons and went across the road to the local shop to buy them (annoyingly they came packaged in plastic – ugh!!). I could simply refer you to my first ever blog post and leave it at that, but I am going to describe the process as it occurred.
Just after 5PM I squeezed the lemons (four of them), assembled my extra flavourings (two teaspoons ground cumin, one tea spoon ground coriander, one and a half teaspoons salt), and measured out 150mls of water. Then I prepared the ginger paste by chopping half a ginger root into chunks, adding a little water and whizzing them in my mini-blender until the mixture was paste-like. After that I started cooking the chicken thigh fillets in the pot I would be assembling everything in for the final stage (a minor irritation – there were five of them, when six what have been a much better number). While the chicken was cooking I chopped the stalks off the fresh coriander (a 100g bunch) and then chopped half a head of garlic as small as I could manage. Once the chicken was golden on both sides I placed it in a bowl and covered that bowl with a plate. Then I put the garlic in the pot and stirred it while it cooked for a minute, before adding the ginger paste and stirring the mixture together. Then I added the fresh coriander and extra flavourings to the mix, stirring it all together for about another minute before adding the chicken and associated liquid from the bowl. Then I added the lemon juice and water, and stirred again. At this point I turned the heat up for long enough to get the mixture bubbling, turned it down again and put the lid on the pot. I then left it for 15 minutes to pick up flavour (my evening carer arrived at this point and was impressed by my efforts). A quick taste of the mixture confirmed that I had not lost my touch, and I then started the water boiling for the pasta accompaniment (the original recipe from which I created my version stipulates rice as the accompaniment, but it works at least as well with pasta and the latter is easier to cook). Once the pasta was cooked it was ready to eat, and I served myself two of the thigh fillets, and spooned a decent quantity of the juices over my pasta. It was an excellent supper, and I shall eat the rest of it tonight.
SATURDAY – TO TOWN AND
BACK UNDER MY OWN STEAM
I had arranged to have lunch in town with my aunt, and had decided to use the occasion to test out my improved health by walking there (and, I hoped, back). We had arranged to meet up at 1PM outside the Lynn Restaurant. My music session (at the Discovery Centre, which from the point of view of the walk to town is effectively the same as starting from my bungalow) ended at 12:15PM, which left me 45 minutes to reach my destination, and I had some library books with me – my plan was to take a view at the train station as to whether to divert to the library to return them or take the more direct route to my destination. When I checked the time at the station there were 20 minutes remaining, which was enough for a quick call at the library to return the books. I duly arrived outside the Lynn restaurant dead on 1PM. My aunt suggested a new restaurant which had opened up where Top Shop used to be, but when we got there it turned out that we would have a long wait for our food, so we reverted to the Lynn Restaurant. The meal was excellent, and at the end of it I felt strong enough to make the return journey on foot, and again went by way of the library to take some more books out.
I was very tired by the time I arrived home, but for the first time since becoming ill I had walked to and from the Town centre unassisted.
CODA: THIS MORNING
This morning once my carer had called I went out for a walk, and emboldened by yesterday, I went to The Walks, heading as far as the Vancouver Garden, where the bandstand is located, before returning by a different route – taking the path the St John’s Walk, and then heading along Tennyson Avenue, crossing the main road at the lights and taking a cut through to Columbia Way that I have known for some time although not used in a while – it involves several short sections of firm but unsurfaced road which can be traversed in one by a pedestrian but not by a motorist.
LINKS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
I have a few links to share before we get to my usual sign off:
A powerful counterblast at Autism Speaks fromCambria Jenkins.
A petition on 38 Degrees calling for increased fines for those who break electoral law (an idea approved by all UK political parties other than, damningly, the Tories and their minions the DUP). Please sign and share by clicking the screenshot below:
Now for my usual sign off…
Four shots from music
Three shots from the new restaurant.
Four shots from the Lynn Restaurant
The door to the hobbit quarters!
The butterfly featured in the intorduction to this post – a red admiral.
A painted lady.
When the sun catches them at the right angle the feathers on a magpie’s back look blue rather than black.
An optimistic account of the latest milestone in my ongoing recovery from cancer.
INTRODUCTION
This is an optimistically titled post , borrowing a metaphor from my favourite sport, based on events from today. As I hope you will observe the optimism has some justification…
A TOP UP SHOP AND GAYWOOD LIBRARY
I was running out of coffee and had already decided that I would venture to the local mini supermarket to see if I could stock up there. I decided once I had sallied forth that if I felt reasonable when leaving the shop I would do some extra walking by way of asserting my continued recovery. The purchases duly made (I also bought a couple of biros as I have something of a shortage in that department) I headed off in the general direction of Gaywood Library (smaller but also closer than the main Kings Lynn library). I selected three books from the library (restricting myself to an easily carryable number), gave myself a short restorative break by logging into one of the computers to do some stuff there and then completed the process of borrowing the books.
I walked back by way of a stretch of the Gaywood River, some meadow and the Discovery Centre, arriving back at Columbia Way at about 12:45. I was out and about for just over the hour, meaning that my total time spentg walking was about 40 minutes.
Although I am quite tired from this little excursion I am also glad that I made it, and mark it off as another staging post in the long process of recovery.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Here are the photographs from my little expedition:
Mallards enjoying a section of the Gaywood River…
…and demonstrating that they can fly.
Gaywood Library
Immediately outside Gaywood Library
Mallards in formation on another section of the Gaywood
The first of three brand spanking new information boards about the Gaywood River
A brief account of another staging post on my road to recovery.
INTRODUCTION
This afternoon saw another staging post in my receovery from cancer…
MY FIRST INDEPENDENT OUTDOOR WALK SINCE BECOMING ILL
Just before 2PM this afternoon I left my bungalow for a short walk. Although fairly cold and very grey the weather here is by no means terrible given that we are at the back end of December, so having donned by black beanie to cover the most obvious signs of the treatment that I have been undergoing I was ready to sally forth. I was out and about for approximately 15 minutes and save for occasional photography stops was walking all that time on my unaided own. Here are some pictures…
This map is on display in my front porch.
A Czech sculpture and some other bits beneath the map.
The green space I look out on to viewed from one corner.
My local shops (the chippy is closed, it being Sunday).
A swiming gull on a pond that faces out on to Harewood Parade.
The oldest item in my collection – this trilobite lived approximately 438 million years ago.
An account of an educational event about the Gaywood River that took place in the Scout Hut on Beulah Street on Sunday.
INTRODUCTION
I have had a very busy few days, which is why there have been no new posts here since Saturday. I will mention my activities since Monday in later posts, but this post is solely concerned with the activity that dominated (in a good way) my Sunday. At the end of this post I will be including a variety of links related in various ways to its content. Here is a map showing the course of the Gaywood River:
FINDING OUT ABOUT THE EVENT
I got an email from my aunt a few days before the event was due to happen explaining her role in it and asking if I wished to meet her there and go back to hers for sausage and chips or if I would prefer a saturday supper. I decided that the event could be quite interesting, so I opted for the former course of action.
GETTING THERE
Since the event was taking place at the Scout Hut on Beulah Street, which is on the bank of the Gaywood (Beulah Street ends in a bridge that crosses the Gaywood into the car park that serves the Scout Hut) I was going to walking, and since it was a bright, sunny morning I decided on an extended route. Leaving my flat I headed across Baker Lane Car Park to the bridge over the upper Purfleet, heading across King Street to the north bank of the lower Purfleet. Here are some photos from that early part of the walk:
From there I followed the line of the Great Ouse as far as my favourite cormorant observation point…
…before heading round by way of All Saint’s Church to the Library and entering the parkland area, following the Broadwalk until the path through the Vancouver Garden splits off from it, when I followed that and then the path out of the Vancouver Garden that joins the Tennyson Road end of St John’s Walk, at which point I was back on what would be the officially recommended walking route to Gaywood. There were squirrels about (in King’s Lynn only the grey ‘bushy-tailed rat’ variety as opposed to the red ‘Squirrel Nutkin” variety), though it is not always easy to get good photos of them…
This picture and the next feature the heavily sculpted segment of the Gaywood River that passes through the parkland.
Apart from photograph opportunities the other plus side to being held up a by a train at the Tennyson Road level crossing is that you can cross the road itself in perfect safety as the cars are all stationary.
From Tennysod Road I followed the footpath the runs between the King Edward VII Academy and the Lynn Academy to Gaywood Road, which I crossed, then crossing the Gaywood on a pedestrian bridge before following its bank all the way to the Scout Hut.
Although darker than their usual colouring I think from the markings that this is a peacock butterfly.
A section of the Gaywood River
AT THE SCOUT HUT
Immediately outside the Scout Hut the Gaywood Valley Conservation Group had a gazebo and display boards (it was there that I took the photo that appears in the introduction).
Inside the hut was the Civic Society Stall, a cake stall, and various river related learning activities (colouring in pictures of river creatures for the artistically minded, an A-Z quiz of which more later). Although it was not the first thing I looked at, because it was my aunt’s reason for being there I start with…
THE CIVIC SOCIETY STALL
They were looking for people who knew about the history of the Gaywood river, because information boards will be going up at various points along it. They already had some good stuff, but wanted more.
Now we turn out attention to…
THE REST OF THE INDOOR ACTIVITIES
The cake stand looked awesome but discipline prevailed, and I did not sample any of the products. Although it was not really aimed at people my age I did the quiz, and predictably got all the answers in short order. The colouring proved popular, and many of the coloured creatures were then stuck on to a large picture of a river on the wall of the hut.
I will reveal the answers (just in case anyone did not get them all) in a later post.
That is the inside stuff finished, but there was also plenty going on…
IN THE BACK GARDEN
There were two major centres of activity in the back garden, and I make my first port of call there, as I did on the day, at…
THE NORFOLK WILDLIFE TRUST GAZEBO
The Norfolk Wildlife Trust were showing children how to make portable ‘bug hotels’, and they also had a natural history display including a folder full of photographs of animals, and a stash of leaflets, to which I may return in a later post.
We now come to what was for me the best of all the exhibits, courtesy of…
THE NORFOLK RIVERS TRUST
There were two parts to this exhibit. The minor part was display showing graphically how different treatment of land in the winter affects the soil:
These three models were side by side demonstrating what happens to soil when there is nothing there at all – gets washed straight into the river)…
When there are dead leaves covering it – still lots of it ends up in the river…
…and what happens when something suitable is planted – note the much clearer water at the end – most of this soil remains in place.
The second part of this display was a living exhibit from the river – two large buckets of river water with creatures that naturally live in it there to be seen (the amount of dissolved sediment in the water, the small size of these creatures and the fact that some of them live on the bottom of the river means that this the only way to make them visible). There was also a small sample dish which the person running the exhibit used to show as very small curiosities…
This is one of nature’s smallest houses – within it is a caddis fly larva, and at some point the adult fly will emerge.
The next three shots are of small sticklebacks.
This was described as a gudgeon, but looks different to the other gudgeons we will see later. The silvery sheen to its scales suggests a dace to my eyes.
I am not sure what this piebald fish is, though it could be a stickleback.
This shot of the sample dish showing the thumbnail of the dxemonstrator reveals just how tiny that Caddis fly home actually is – it was in this same dish that I saw it.
Two gudgeons in the second bucket – note that as would be the case in the river they are at the bottom.
There was also a story teller outside…
LINKS
To start this section we look at organisations who were actually involved in some way or other with this event:
Wildlife & Planet – interesting stuff about wildlife from all over the world.
WEIT– the website that grew out of Jerry Coyne’s classic book Why Evolution is True.
Science Whys – the blog of Brandeis biology professor James Morris.
Rationalising the Universe – sets about accomplishing the big task laid out in its title and does a good job of it.
Faraday’s Candle – a science website that will really illuminate your life.
I conclude this section by mentioning a couple of bloggers who regularly feature nature in their work:
CindyKnoke – keen photographer and nature lover. Below is the feature image from (and link to) her most recent post:
Anna – her posts about fighting to save nature in her part of the world are always inspiring, and her two recent series of posts “Paradise on Earth” and “Butterflies in Trosa” are both stunning. Below is the feature image from (and link to) her most recent butterfly post.
CONCLUSION
This was an excellent event and I learned a good deal about the history and nature of the Gaywood River. I have one kvetch which is that the event was poorly publicised – I only found out about it through my aunt and then only a few days before it was happening, meaning that anyone else I might have alerted would almost certainly have had other plans. If half of you have enjoyed this post even half as much as I enjoyed the event I have done a good job. I finish by urging you to take the time to follow up those links.
An account of the walking route from Balmacara to Kyle of Lochalsh.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the latest installment in this series about my Scottish holiday. Today we deal with Monday’s principal activity, which was a trip into Kyle of Lochalsh. Previous posts in series:
We had noticed the presence of a footpath to Kyle of Lochalsh, and I was particularly keen to sample it. I was not expecting the walk to pose too many problems as the distance was only three miles. However, I had seriously underestimated the difficulty of the terrain. Thus it was that after a brief period in Kyle of Lochalsh we got a bus back.
LEAVING THE ROAD – WOODS
The footpath began by climbing up through some woodland, before emerging into the open.
This shelter framework had been built straddling the path and left there.
ON THE HEIGHTS – TO SCALPAIDH BURN
The middle point of the walk, until we crossed a footpath running between Scalpaidh Bay and Loch Scalpaidh, took place high above Lochalsh. This junction came at the crossing point of the only major waterway on the route (there were numberless minor waterways cutting the path at various points – this is northwest Scotland we are talking about!).
THE DESCENT INTO KYLE OF LOCHALSH
The final stages of the footpath were on a steady downhill gradient as we approached Kyle of Lochalsh. The whole walk took two hours due to the difficult terrain (there were points when the path was almost indistinguishable from what as around it). We walked it on a warm day during what had been by the standards of the area a dry period.
This was the first sight of Kyle of Lochalsh from the footpath.
Kyle of Lochalsh Co-op – it has an adequate but overpriced stock.
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