Monday, 4 November 2019

Lupton lanes

Thursday walk with Pete
31st. October 2019 - lanes from Lupton Church (SD 568 808)

This walk was on the Thursday before my fireworks post above.

Pete and wife Elizabeth have driven BMW cars for many years. Recently they downsized from an  X3 to an X1. Both Pete and Liz are perhaps below average height and they have found that even with seats adjusted to full height the sun visors are still too high. That is something BMW may wish to address. Car manufacturers are probably scratching their heads to add new attractions and running out of ideas? My Kia has a headlamp addition that shines sideways when I go round a corner with no benefit whatsoever as far as I can see.

At Café Ambio last week Pete was telling me about the sun visors and I searched Amazon for sun visor extenders. As I share an Amazon Prime account with my daughter I can buy from Amazon with next day delivery and free postage and I ordered a pair (one left one right) and so delivered them when I went to pick up Pete for our walk. I have since learned that fitting was easy and appearance in keeping with the luxury of the car and functionality satisfactory. I GOT IT DONE! Which is more than can be said for our unelected pm who has, thankfully so far, failed to do so.

Our default nowadays is for narrow unfrequented lanes which can give parking problems at our starting point. Today modest Lupton church had parking adjacent and off we went after a brief look inside the church. Our lane had views of Scout Hill to the left. I ascended that hill in November 2010 when I was visiting the trig points on our local OS sheet - I seem to remember not being impressed, but today, with cloudless blue sky it looked inviting.

I have noticed recently, as with Scout Hill here, some OS trig heights have an additional height shown in brackets and have discovered from OS:

"If one height is shown by a trig pillar symbol, it is that of the base of the trig pillar. If a second is shown in brackets it is that of the highest point of the hill."

We had extensive views  to the Barbon Hills and the northern dales on the other side of our lane. I took a photo of a grotesquely windswept tree, testament to wild weather which must be a regular feature up here, but not today. On our return leg I captured the tree from the lower road as a silhouette and converted it into a black and white arty effort.

Back at Café Ambio we had a disappointment. Café tables and chairs are the norm here but in one corner there is a pair of comfortable leather upholstered settees which we nearly always commandeer. Today somebody was sitting in OUR place - oh dear! But, they have a new chef and our seating anxiety was assuaged by cakes even improved on previous excellence.


Modest Lupton church - 1867


Distorted tree - see arty shot taken from the lane below on our return

We often see old quarries like this now overtaken by nature - this probably supplied the stone for the church

Scout Hill - two trig heights:  284m and (285m.) - the latter being the hill's highest point according to Ordnance Survey



Lupton House (I think - not Lupton Hall) On close inspection it looks like the hammer that has had a new handle and a new head





7 comments:

  1. So - you got it done - I bet you wouldn't if you had had the House of Commons and the media busting their guts trying to stop you !

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. gimmer -I can be quite resourceful sometimes. N.B. my orginal comment I deleted only because I wrongly attributed it.

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  4. Do you use Google Chrome? I have tried nearly a dozen times and been forced to uninstall it. The reason being it interferes with blogging, strange given both come from the same source. One of Chrome's interferences took the form of abruptly delivering paragraphs with a different type size from the rest of the post. You'll notice your green quote illustrates this discrepancy. Perhaps you intended this (or didn't care). In which case you can ignore this comment.

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  5. RR - The green quote is different only because I copied it from an Ordnance Survey website and pasted as is.

    I use Chrome only to access my Yorkshire Bank Internet banking because when I use my default old fashioned Google I get some hiccups but Chrome works ok. I have no other problems or apparent limitations with my old Google and have therefore no motivation to change.

    By the way did you know that YB has now been taken over by, or has taken over, or has merged with Virgin Money. The name of Yorkshire Bank will shortly disappear. I hope they don't mess up the pension fund.

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  6. You say in a subsequent post you prefer not to drive at night. In this post you say your sideways-facing light offers no benefit.

    Here in Hereford many of the roads I use are narrow, tunneliferous (due to high hedges) and curvaceous. At night full-beam is essential. Thus these roads, a delight in daytime, become a nightmare during the winter evening rush-hour. Not everyone dips.

    The recommended stratagem is non-intuitive. Faced with oncoming glare one averts one's gaze to the left, and DOWNWARDS. Using the nearside kerb as an unreeling reference point of guidance. Alas, this only works part of the time; when you reach an incoming road junction on the left the kerb temporarily disappears. Were you to turn down this incoming road I assume your sideways-light would help by picking out the diverted kerb. But you say it only activates when you turn. An additional spotlight, aimed leftish and say 5 m ahead, slightly downwards would solve the problem. Or might your light be modified?

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  7. RR - Yes, they only work when what I would estimate to be about fifty percent of full lock is applied so obviously of no use in the way that you suggest. My problem with nighttime driving is more to do with assimilating what I am seeing ahead and the limited distance illuminated ahead, especially when on dipped lights. Other drivers seem to fearlessly fly past me when they can only have a similar distance to me of illuminated road ahead. I think reaction time is also a factor and certainly any multi-tasking fiddling with instruments and switches is not advisable. This is not all that serious but I prefer to avoid it if possible.

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