...and on

Another run out today, in a big loop.

10.6 miles apparently. The first 10 yards were the worst. My poor sore bottom complained, but the soreness faded after a bit.

Again, I was mainly on well laid traffic free paths, although I did have to travel on some busy roads around the dock areas. I hope they join things up at some point.

Follow the green line...

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Dramatic Sky!

Out and about... (slight reprise)

OK. You know the format. I tell you about my bikeride. I show the route on Google Earth, then I set the bit I videoed to music.

This time, instead of heading north, I went the other way. I had no clear objective in mind apart from just following the river southwards. I'd seen a bit of cycleway that ran along the dockside and wanted to give that a go, but in the end I went much further, to Tranmere Oil Terminal. Going south, it wasn't as traffic free as my previous ride had been. There were points where I had to travel along, or next to, some busy roads.

At Tranmere Oil Terminal, it was no longer possible to follow the banks of the river. I'd have had to ride along a 50 mph dual carriageway, or through New Ferry and Rock Ferry (Yes, it's what singer Duffy's album title comes from) Noisy, polluted and more dangerous, (the road, not the duffy album) which ever way I chose, so at that point, I turned around and retraced my steps.

My route took me around the back of Wallasey Town Hall, an impressive enough edifice, especially from the banks of the river, more so than from the road. I suppose they were trying to impress the people across the river, It took me past the ventilation shafts for both Mersey Road Tunnels. The newer, Kingsway tunnel's shafts are a modernist concrete. The older tunnel's brick built shafts are more art deco, as is a lot of it's associated architecture. You can read and see a whole load of stuff about the Queensway tunnel at the excellent CBRD site. This includes a video trip through the tunnel, (not set to music) and a written and photographic history. The Birkenhead shaft kind of reminds me of the Empire State Building.

                                                                                                        (image from here)

My trip also took in Birkenhead Priory, a 12th century monestary, and I think Wirral's oldest surviving structure, the two ferry terminals in Seacombe and Woodside, and the enormous shibuilding hall of Cammel Laird shipyard

I suppose Elvis Costello's "Shipbuilding" would have been an appropriate tune to put the video to, but sadly it's too short.

However, Elvis Costello's excellent "Tokyo Storm Warning" is exactly the required 6 minutes and 24 seconds.

Sadly, as I climbed the hill up from the river back to my street, one of my pedals broke. I won't be doing any more cycling until I've got that sorted.

Once again, this ride took me about 10 or 11 miles. In this case, I gained/lost about 580 feet in altitude along the length of the ride, from a high point of 89 feet above (mean) sea level to 0 feet above sea level. Because I went somewhere and came back by more or less the same route, the elevation profile is almost symmetrical.

Now, here's that nice Mr MacManus with some lovely images of the Liverpool skyline, and Egremont Promenade.

We're only living this instant.

Sherlock strikes again!

Today, the weather was clement!  So I girded my loins, and wound my merry way to the allotment. I was digging up the last of the spuds, when I noticed a curious thing.

You can see the skyline of Liverpool from the allotment, and today, the concrete pole that used to be called St John's beacon, but what is now the Radio City Tower looked almost as if it were on fire,  except what appeared to be rising from it was not smoke, but cloud. This column of vapour rose from the horizon right up to the cloud base. I briefly toyed with the notion that someone had nuked Manchester, but that seemed unlikely, and there are no reports of such a thing occurring on the BBC's news website.

So I suspected  a power station. But how could I be sure? I couldn't drive in a straight line from the allotment to St John's beacon, and then beyond. Too many buildings and fences and gardens and rivers in the way. But I could create a line using the power of Google Earth!

I made a placemark at the base of the beacon.



I made another placemark at the allotment.



Then I lined things up and let the "camera" drift eastwards.

We passed over Wallasey and Seacombe, then out over the river to the centre of Liverpool. Then out of the commercial heart of the city and into the suburbs. To Wavertree and Netherton. To Tarbock Green and Farnworth. And there! Directly in front of me was Fiddler's Ferry Power Station. I placemarked that too!

And as you can see, they line up perfectly. Google Earth was also able to tell me that the direct, as the crow flies distance from Allotment to Power Station is 15 miles. Or, if you prefer, 2,415,015 centimetres.



The wonders of modern technology!

Edit:

Wait! There's more! Those 2 million centimetres took me over hill and down dale. And Google Earth knows exactly how up the hills were, and how down the dales were too. And it's given me a topological profile of the terrain between Love Lane Allotments and Fiddlers Ferry Power Station.

My life is enriched! Thank you once again Google Earth!

As you can see, the river Mersey is a flat, sea level bit to the left of the profile. We head down to it, and up away from it, soaring up to a rarified 225 feet above sea level in the Edge Hill area of the city. Watch out for nosebleeds and blackouts before you float gracefully down to a mere 50 feet above the briny towards the end of the trip. 50 feet lower than the starting point, at an average slope of about 1.5%. Nothing that a good stout pair of walking boots couldn't cope with.

Seriously, I've been using this thing for quite a long time now, without necessarily looking deeply at every aspect, so it's still got some surprising tricks up it's sleeve! To access this function, click the ruler button on the top bar (between the planet button and the email button) then simply click on a point and move your mouse pointer to a different point. You'll see a line. When you want to make the other end of a line, click again.

But you're not just limited to individual lines. You can do complete and complex journeys by combining lines to make paths.

As you can see from the picture above, I've just found that we drive 2.5 miles to do our shopping run at Asda. I could use Google Earth to work out  a shorter route. The possibilities are endless!

Forty three and a bit

George Monbiot spent a chilly winter's morning skating on a frozen lake in Wales a couple of years back. He used his column to bemoan the fact that he would probably never be able to do so again. And then the next two years see heavy snowfalls.

Of course, he's really saying that the statistical likelihood is that future winters would be warmer, but I can't help feeling his need to make a point caused him to confuse weather with climate.

Anyway, snow it has. At 4pm the clouds were grey and the ground was dry. At 7pm, the sky was black but everything else was white. We've had about 4 inches of the fluffy stuff in a very short time, and although it's eased off a bit, it looks like it will continue for most of the night.

As with last time, I went to Vale Park and made a snowman. Well, actually a snow Dita Von Teese.

Grasping the nettle

Yup. It's a nettle.

Urtica Dioica. It's actually related to the cannabis plant, and if you look at how they grow, you'll see the same growth pattern of two north-south leaves, a bit of stem, two east-west leaves, repeat until fully grown...

I've had a phobia of the things since as long as I can remember. Presumably I got stung when I was little or something. I don't remember any particular incident that caused it, although I do remember early incidents of beig terrified by them.

I climbed through a hole in a fence and climbed partway up a railway embankment, but when I turned back, I found that I'd actually crawled under a looping nettle, and I couldn't get back until some kind soul held it back for me.

I also remember plucking up the courage to touch one. I was about 7 or 8 years old, it seemed to take many many minutes before I managed to quickly touch a very small one with my finger. But I did it. I was so proud of myself. And it didn't even sting me. A couple of days later, I went up Moel Famau with my family and found a big clump of nettles. "Look at this!" I said, and stuck my knee into them. They stung me to buggery. Back to square one.

There are worse things to have a phobia of. They stay in one place, unlike spiders, and living in a town, it's rare that I have to come into anything like close proximity to them. Still, it's had an impact over the years. When I was a child, other children could always generate an extreme response, by picking them and waving them at me. Little fucking shits. I've broken world records scrambling over garden fences to get away from them. I'm highly attuned to their presence, (nettles, not children) and can spot one even when mixed with other foliage. It's extremely rare that I get stung. Last time I did was in the grounds of a derelict house in Ireland, when I was hitching. Big bugger too. I brushed against it in the twilight. I had a bit of a panic attack as a result.

I suppose all phobias are limiting to some degree. It limits my freedom of choice and action. If you have a phobia, of pretty much anything, you know where I'm coming from. If you have no phobias at all, you'd struggle to understand, just as I struggle to understand how anyone can be scared of clowns or sticky labels.

The allotment, of course, has plenty of nettles. They're mainly on the margins, up the top by the compost heaps, but they sprout in the potato beds, and in the unworked bits of the plot. I have to get Bren to deal with them.


Today, I donned a pair of sturdy rubber gardening gloves, and although I didn't actually manage to grasp one, I did manage to touch one. I managed to do this several times. It made me shudder, and I couldn't keep my finger there for too long, but this is the first time I have tried to confront my fear for over 3 decades. I will try to go a bit further next time, maybe.

All the fun of the fair

Just a quick one... (if you can do anything quickly on blogger at the moment)

This...



Is a part of Wallasey Docks. To the right is a type of bridge called a rolling bascule bridge. Basically, a curved rack and pinion with a counterweight, and the leaf of the bridge carries a roadway over a lock of a dock. When a ship comes, they use an electric motor to move the rack and pinion - lowering the counterweight and raising the bridge. Centre left is a rusty old German U-Boat. That's now gone to Woodside Ferry Terminal in Birkenhead, about a mile down the road. Between them are a couple of warehouses. The image is dated March 2007, and those warehouses have now been demolished.

For the last couple of weeks, the bare land has been occupied by a fairground. This finished today, so we thought we'd go and take some photographs. I was hoping the darkness, and a long shutter time would give some interesting result, as many of the attractions were chucking people around. Sadly, a bit more care was needed, like taking a tripod, but it was a spur of the moment thing and we just grabbed our cameras and went.

Here are some of the better ones...













Gaudy or what!

Near Death Experience...

Joining a main road from a sliproad can be a dangerous and daunting task. One of my pupils got it very wrong today and nearly crashed.

(click to enlarge)

On this picture, we're travelling from the bottom right corner of the screen, joining the road heading towards the left hand side of the screen. We're travelling at close to the 40 mile per hour limit, and there's a car quite close behind us. On the main road, there's just one car, quite a long way back from the junction, but travellling quite a lot faster than the speed limit.

My pupil has a look over his shoulder, and sees the car in the distance, then has a couple of looks in his door mirror, but is unable to see the car. At this point, I don't know the car is there, and I'm concentrating on trying to get my pupil to give himself a wider field of view in his door mirror by leaning forward in his seat. As we approach the give way lines, I look to the side to find the car is almost alongside us. I immediately brake firmly and take hold of the wheel to stop my pupil from attemting to steer to the right. At the same moment, the car on the main road swerves sharply right to avoid us, and we miss each other. The person following us also has to brake sharply, and once things have sorted themselves out, he overtakes us on the main road. The driver of that car clearly thought it was the car on the main road that was at fault, and to an extent, he was.

There were two lanes available, and he was the only car on the road. He should have read the situation, checked his mirrors, and moved over into the outside lane. That would have allowe dthe traffic on the sliproad to safely join the main road. He was also travelling far too fast. Perhaps 60 miles per hour in a 40 limit.

But at the end of the slip road, there are give way lines. Drivers coming that way must give way to oncoming traffic. So we were at fault too. Perhaps, if an accident had occurred, we would have been liable.

The two things you need to do to emerge safely from a situation like this are, firstly, to be aware of what's going on around you. This specifically means what's going on behind you, and what's happening on the road you're trying to join. and secondly, you need to be travelling at an appropriate speed for the situation.

The first of these means good mirrorwork on approach, and early observations, backed up by further brief observations as you approach. Looking over your right shoulder can give a good idea of what's happening, and in a situation like this, the road you're joining is often not going to be covered by an ordinary look in your door mirror. There are a couple of problems with looking over your shoulder though. You're body twists around to the right, and this can cause you to turn the steering wheel to the right as well, which makes the car veer dangerously out of it's lane. Also, if you're looking over your shoulder, while driving forward, and something happens in front of you, well you're just going to smash straight into whatever it is, because you won't know it's happened.

The highway code recommends a glance over your shoulder as you approach the road you want to join.

Your door mirror will not really tell you what's going on on the road you're joining if you're sat back in your seat. If you lean forward in your seat, you get a wider field of view, and you still have some awareness, through peripheral vision, of what's going on ahead of you. Because you lean forward but your body is straight, the steering isn't affected as much.

If you're joining traffic that's travelling at speed, you also need to be travelling at speed if possible. If you're attempting to join a stream of traffic that's moving at 70 miles per hour, and you're doing only 30 miles per hour, you're allowing cars to close with you at a relative speed of 40 miles per hour. If you're doing 70 miles per hour as you join, then the gap you're moving into moves with you.

Ultimately, what happened today was my fault. My pupil is at test standard. He's not a learner except in the sense that all of us are. I'd assumed he'd be able to deal with the situation comfortably, so I didn't brief him about it beforehand.

Live and learn.