Trespassing on my own blog

A protracted exchange between brother RR and Phreerunner continues on my multi-commented post Holme.

CLICK FOR LINK TO POST

I started to add a comment of my own, but after knocking it together I thought it may be wasted in a location not being visited as much by my readers.

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I often write my comments on another word-processor rather than directly into the comments box on Blogger. I was never quite sure why until today. It dawned on me that those replies I write first elsewhere are ones where I am not sure I am going to publish until I see how they turn out.

May I barge in on your exchanges and make a plea for the Mk1 Vauxhall Victor, circa 1958 as Worst Car Ever?

The bodywork seems to have been made from re-cycled Heinz Beans tins and developed into a lace curtain within about eighteen months.

There was a steering column gear-change that worked through umpteen different linkages, and even tough there were only three gears (I think) it was not easy to find them, whilst the macho short-shift gear stick favoured by the flat cap, cravat, sports jacket brigade had been eliminated; the reason for that was to provide a front bench seat so the passenger could slide into the driver, that was if a corner was ever taken fast enough, which was unlikely, thus causing an accident and write-off, hopefully before the embarrassing development of the lace curtain.

As you attempted to get into the car the rearward extension of the front wing or windscreen bodywork protruded in a pointy fashion threatening disembowelment.

One glance from a five year old would likely have elicited the obvious observation “the wheels are too small..”  That of course lead to chronic understeer.

Those are the faults ingrained in my memory, which may or may not be entirely accurate, gleaned from my employment as a finance company representative, much of my time being spent repossessing these and similar models from disillusioned owners who had found out that a three year hire-purchase repayment period had been woefully unrealistic.

With thanks to Google Images.
I even found a mustard coloured one (see exchanges on  Home mentioned above)

Hurricane Ali postpones DIY

It is only seventeen days since I last posted but I am getting anxious messages from fans wondering if I have fallen down a pothole or walked off the edge of Earth.

I have been busy with DIY. Firstly a new window in the rear of my garage which I made and fitted after being poleaxed seeing the likely cost of having it done professionally. I used up much of the left over decking timber I have been storing for several years (in case it might come in.) Construction involved seventeen pieces. I have a freestanding circular bench saw which enabled me to cut wood down to size with ease, but not without danger - I do still have ten digits on my hands. The cost of the window came in at £31.00 - £11 for some paint and £20 for two pieces of glass cut to size, 3 ft x 14in. each.

Next, I  bought a new shed to stand on decking Number Three which will serve as accommodation for my son W; I am in the process of insulating this which has been time consuming, researching methods, and obtaining materials, but it is now well under way.

On Tuesday I received a welcome phone call from Bowland Climber who comments here inviting me to accompany him and another friend J on a walk in the Bowland hills yesterday (Wednesday) and so DIY was put on hold.

BC made a brief reference to Hurricane Ali which has just taken out half of the USA and was reported to be now heading our way, albeit at  reduced  ferocity.

Our first objective was Parlick summit. I used to run up this hill and seem to remember a time of just under ten minutes. Today it took us half an hour, but only plodding of course, but the strong wind was behind us. The final section to the summit is seriously steep but we managed without stopping. On the lower section we did stop to watch a kestrel and possibly a peregrine, so it seems that the whole of wildlife has not yet been exterminated here in favour grouse and mono-diversity. ( I think that's an oxymoron.)

We walkers enjoy a good ridge after the labours of getting up there and so it was between Parlick and Fair Snape Fell. Hurricane Ali was blowing us along like clippers under full sail, and the views were wide ranging and somehow enhanced by the wild weather.

At Fiendsdsle Head we turned south-west to do what I erroneously call a descending contour on  a fine path looking steeply down into the bowl of Bleasedale. The wind was now coming at us sideways, then quite abruptly it brought lashing horizontal rain stinging into the face like mini machine gun fire. BC and J donned over-trousers and I tried in vain to fix the hood of my waterproof in place, but the wind just kept ripping it off. I was wearing Paramo Cascada trousers, supposedly waterproof, but the wet was forced straight through by the wind in an instant like broth being pressed through a sieve. We had about half an hour of this descending as quickly as possible in those conditions until we reached the valley bottom where the rain stopped, but the wind continued.

A rickety stile at a barbed wire fence gave both my companions problems, my father would have said it was "on the blink." I got halfway but couldn't get my now almost horizontal leg over. J was holding my body on one side and BC was trying to lift my leg over, then my sock became spiked on the wire, and all three of us were locked into a sort of sculpture not being able to move for fear of all falling over together with potentially dire result. By luck a loop of the wire lifted itself off its post and we were free to put the foot down and un-spike the sock. Twas all a bit embarrassing, but BC in his usual way was almost incapacitated by laughter - what good friends.

We carried on and stopped on the seat outside Bleasedale Church to est and drink. The church is dedicated to St Eadmer and I thought that may be of interest, but he doesn't appear to be patron of anything, and the best I could get from Wiki was:

As for Eadmer, apart from this brief moment in history in 995 AD, there appears to be no other trace and this unique dedication is his only memorial. The rest of his life is a mystery.

One would have thought they would have chosen somebody more interesting to dedicate their church to?

CLICK FOR LINK TO ST EADMER AND BLEASEDLE CURCH

Eventually we climbed a good way back up the slopes of Parlick before traversing round its middle to get us back to our starting point 

The best day out I've had for some time.

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BC's account is here:

CLICK

Parlick ahead

Watching the kestrel (before the steep bit)

Pendle Hill

Fair Snape summit

There were errors on the original which I have deleted and replaced with this revision

Blogger problems

Following the disappearance of some of the older photos on this blog I had a look at the Blogger forum and posted my problem. Surprisingly I had a reply asking for links to posts with vanished photos. I sent a couple of links and then received the reply below.

It seems that it is not the fault of Blogger, rather me using an app called Blogpress, so at least I now know what has happened and will be able to avoid this problem in future.

Blogger seems to be making more effort to communicate and resolve problems; n.b. their fixing for email comments notifications. In the past I gave that route up as a bad job, but will certainly go that way again if I have any more problems.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Thanks for your comprehensive reply. At least I now know how this has happened. I have used the app called Blogpress in the past when posting from my iPad during my long distance backpacking walks. Nowadays WiFi is much more widely available and I find I can post most of the time from Blogger Dashboard as I do at home from my Mac desktop. I have plenty of things to occupy my time and I don’t think I will bother to try and reinstate the vanished photos - water under the bridge, but I will certainly not be using Blogpress again. Once more many thanks for your efforts which have at least given me a certain peace of mind.

Burneside (and Blogger comments)

Thursday walk with Pete - 30th August 2018 - From Burneside

My previous post: "Holme" has now reached a record 38 comments with mention of:

Puns
Tractor history
Farmers' relationships with tractors
Writing style
English grammar usage decline in public bodies
Anti BBC protest.
Proust
Churchill
R M Williams
Undervalued perception of engineers
Abuse of costs of university education
Record number of posts on blog
Taking minutes at meetings
Diversification from subject on blog comments
Typing prone (or underwater)

Perhaps it's time to move on , but not really, long may such exchanges continue.

I notice that yesterday I received 572 pageviews on my blog - whether that has any correlation with the recent multi-comment post I have no idea. Many of those pageviews I suspect come from roaming search engines and the like rather than individuals reading particular posts.

Our walk set off from Burneside but we passed Tolson Hall on the way, but as this was not on our route I have no photos but there is a much better one than I could have taken on the link below. The original house was built by tobacco merchant Thomas Tolson in 1638 and there is a  quote from him which rings harmoniously for me:

"God by this meanes, has sent what I on this house have spent"

CLICK FOR TOLSON HOUSE

A later inhabitant of the hall, James Bateman erected a monument celebrating the capture of Napoleon which has a bit of interesting history. The monument can be seen on the right just before you turn off the A591 for Burneside.

CLICK FOR NAPOLEON MONUMENT

Burneside station.
 This is on the Oxenholme(Kendal)/Windermere route which gives access to the Lake District and where the service was suspended during the recent rail failure debacle.

Too small to show on map, but there were fish rising

I took this just to make sure something was working on the csmera - it could hsve just been my foot, but it turned out not too bad. This is just before we crossed the busy A591.

See next photo

Ratherhesth Tarn

The Howgills looking over the top of the huge James Cropper paper msking fsctory in Burneside

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I received the following email from Blogger which looks as though they are making efforts to sort notification of comments problems.

I responded as requested. I now receive TWO notifications of each comment. I still look at the comments list as shown in blogger Dashboard.



Hi, conrob@me.com! It’s been a while. We would like to confirm that you still want to receive email notifications when new comments on blog conradwalkshave been published. 
Please click the Maintain Subscription link below to continue receiving new comment email notifications from this blog. If you don’t want these email notifications, you can just ignore this message, or click the Decline link below. 

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Holme (100 comments)

Thursday walk with Pete - 23rd August 2018 - Holme

I enjoy my regular walks with Pete but often wonder what material I am going to find for a blog post. Today we had a number of fairly eccentric gardens presented to us at intervals, but there was no obvious connection, but they sparked off memories of such occurrences on my long walks

Sometimes, passing through  pretty villages, I note a succession of abodes with similar expensive fencing or fancy gates, or maybe a few houses together with solar panels on the roof. My erstwhile occupation involved selling and negotiating, and I have always been a sucker for a good salesperson. So I find myself imagining the professional who has had a good run in that locale, and I am not thinking of the bling adorned, BMW Sport driving, gift-of-the-gsb, sell-your-own mother type, more the suave, understated vendeur/vendeuse who has made such an impression flattering clients that they are only too pleased to recommend this charmer to their neighbours.

In between the quirky gardens an impressive hunk of stone with chiselled lettering, inlaid with gold proclaimed "Storth Ltd ." Behind there were extensive factory buildings, but no clue as to their operation. Later internet searching revealed their mission to be production of systems for controlling and handling slurry for farmers. I hope their control of slurry is better than their command of the English language - from their website:

"As the need for slurry storage increases due to government legislation, the value of slurry being put on the land at the optimum time and other outside factors, Storth offers an Above Ground storage in the form of Slurry Storage Tanks."

We enjoyed this little walk which we had taken against forecast showers which never materialised and therefore we may be seen as heroes. If we'd been drenched we would have been seen as foolish.

PLEASE CLICK ON FIRST PHOTO TO ENLARGE AND VIEW SLIDESHOW

The top of that field  is the line of the Lancaster Canal which Pete and I walked in sections a few years ago providing much interest and many blog comments

For Alan R
 I only take photos of ones that look unusual. Alan may say this is not so?

Test to email post from email

I am including a photo as well.

Blogger and photos

Fellow blogger Mark  https://beatingthebounds.wordpress.com/author/beatingthebounds/ replied to a comment I made on his blog resulting in me referring him to one of my older posts which revealed the blanking out of its photos which I have been aware of for several months. I reply here to Mark, and for the possible benefit of others. I would be interested to hear of similar experiences and if anybody knows of a solution.

Mark - oin’t worry about the photos. blogger seems to have blanked all photos I have put on the blog in the past uploaded from my iPad whilst on the hoof. Photos put on from my desktop iMac at home have remained. I despair at Blogger’s continued autocratic and idiosyncratic behaviour.