For newcomers

At the bottom of each post there is the word "comments". If you click on it you will see comments made by followers, and if you follow the instructions you may also comment and I always welcome that. I have found many people overlook this part of the blog which is often more interesting than the original post!

My blog nick-name is SIR HUGH. I'm not from the aristocracy - my middle name is Hugh which relates to the list of 282 hills in Scotland compiled by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891. I climbed my last one (Sgurr Mor) on 28th June 2009

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Saturday 15 February 2014

Following The Yellow Brick Road

Friday 14th February, and today, Saturday 15th (writing this up over breakfast after a long spell of not being able to get on the Internet).


Wild wet and windy again yesterday, through the night, and again this morning. Went nowhere yesterday.

I'm reading a difficult book: Ancient Paths by Graham Robb. This is properly academic, not pseudo science. He has a theory about the Gauls or Celts or Druids, which all seem to be the same lot to me. We are talking about the inhabitants of what is now France between AD and 400BC. He reckons they established pathways between significant places based on equinoctial lines. The history of these people and their interactions with the Romans and others is complicated. I am over halfway through and will probably skip the rest, but there was one little gem for the brotherhood of list tickers which I seem to get associated with. Talking about part of his theory he says:

"The closest equivalent today is the Degree Confluence Project, whose adherents, in a peculiarly twenty-first-century spirit of mystical fervour and absurdist irony, visit intersections of whole-number latitude and longitude coordinates with a camera. These mathematically defined sites, are by their nature, nowhere in particular, which is why this admirable application of geekiest obsession and physical intrepidity is currently amassing what must be the world's most boring collection of photographs".

I'm of to do a bit of geocaching now!

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Home tomorrow.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

8 comments:

  1. Hope the winds and the wild calm down before you hit the road again.

    Especially the wild.

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  2. Hi Conrad,

    We sensibly had day off on Wednesday. Thursday we walked Gyrn Ddu, Gyrn Goch and Bwlch Mawr. We decided to travel home on Friday - from your blog weather was not too bad.

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  3. Interesting that the equinoctial lines are drifting toward the equator at a rate of .5 seconds of latitude per year.

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  4. HH and The Crow - Home safe and sound now - thanks.
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    WP - Sounds like you had a good trip. It just shows what can be done when forecasts are so bad.
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    Mike M - Oh dear!

    I found the whole thing hard enough going and now it seems even more complicated.

    I wonder if Graham Robb knows about this. If he finds out I think he might go and jump off a tall building.

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  5. what is an equinoctial line - the celestial equator - and what is that, might I ask - as the equinoctial points move about each year, why worry - or, alternatively, send an email to the BBC demanding that the government do something about it , or ask why they haven't done so yet: high time, in my opinion. It'll be midsummer at this rate before they get it sorted.
    Start a petition: stop the wandering equinox NOW!
    Also, why no good food guide to the Llyn peninsular: disgraceful, I call it.
    And after such a fruitful trip, too - glad you gainsaid our timorous guardians.

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  6. gimmer - The Londis in Criccieth does a good tin of Stag Chili Con Carne.

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  7. save some for us: I'll be right down - after the venison casserole is finished (at last they are culling deer round here at a proper rate and selling the meat for less than beef - herds of 10 or so a couple of years or so ago are now herds of 70 or more - so they are gobbling up the young tree shoots and clearing the understorey, thus stripping the woods and destroying the flora and habitat for low and ground dwelling birds and small fauna and hence the food supply for larger predators - their ony predator is man ! Bring back the wolves and the big cats, perhaps!)

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