Saturday 17th January, Wassail at Dunham Massey

Wassailing is a bit of an old English tradition dating back to pagan times. In times gone by it was very common in apple-growing areas of England - particularly Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and so on. In fact if you produced cider it's highly likely that you would have been very familiar with the ritual of Wassailing. The general idea is to ensure a good crop of apples (and therefore a decent lot of cider) by scaring off any evil spirits by firing shotguns close to the tree. I don't know about evil spirits but if someone fired a shotgun that close it would scare the living daylights out of me.

The trees are encouraged to grow by hanging slices of toast in the branches. There's nowt like a nice bit of toast and marmalade, all washed down with a nice cuppa. Or cider in this case.

Rick, Les, Richard and meself were delighted to be asked to perform at a Wassail at The Dunham Massey Apple Company's orchards, not very far from Timperley. We dragged the Morris side down as well, they weren't doing anything special and we thought it would do them good to get out once in a while.

Photos courtesy of Rob Phillips, YouTube clip by Bob Sweet.

Monday 12th January 2015, more Dales Way

A bit late in posting: more Dales Way:

Bowness to Burneside

An early morning start from Timperley to drive up to Lancaster to meet Bella and Stuart who were to drive us up to Windermere for the start of the day’s walk.

Bella managed to find a suitable on-street (free!) parking spot for Stuart’s Tardis – and we were off. Uphill.

Some bloke in a Velez, stroking Bella. Rick in ecstatic mood.

Although the day was dry the ground was more than a little moist…it was ever so slightly totally waterlogged in many places. All the places actually – apart from most of the tarmac bits.

Rick demonstrates his uncanny ‘keeping his feet dry’ ability 

Like I said, it was ever so slightly waterlogged.

The walk wasn’t at all strenuous, I think we only ascended around 1100’ over the entire day’s walk. There were some significant bits of tarmac on the route, this is something I’d normally avoid. Given the extreme sogginess of the ground I was quite happy to get some tarmac miles in, Especially as my waterproof Goretex boots were leaking like a sieve.

A tree…..I think 

At the end of the walk my feet weren’t exactly soaking wet, well not COMPLETELY soaking wet, but they were a tad damp. I was a bit pleased to see the sign for Burneside railway station, it was our ticket to get back to the Tardis parked up in Bowness. The train whisked us back to Bowness in double quick time.

As can be seen from the map below, the route wasn’t particularly challenging, Apart from that bit to the south of Staveley. But I won’t mention that again.

Where we went (West to East):

It should have been 10 miles but we ended up doing nearer 11. This was mainly because we decided to explore the barren fields and farmland to the south of Staveley. I’d love to be able to tell you how much we relished the diversion. But I won’t.

Having got ourselves back to Bowness we headed back to Lancaster to pick up Rick’s car. But we were once again diverted, this time to the Watermill at Ings. The Collie Wobbles was (were?) excellent. As always.

Another pleasant day out – in excellent company too. Not much not to like. I’d like some waterproof boots though.

Rick and I got back to Timperley at a fairly sensible hour, certainly early enough for me to get showered and fed before heading out to Morris practice. But I decided an evening in front of the TV and the woodburner was a more attractive proposition. And so it was.

Bloggeroid...again

Les Barker-Teaching Geography To George W Bush@Brampton2007: http://youtu.be/-5oAAgv7ktE

posted from Bloggeroid

Sunday 11th January, Hide and Seek

Playing Radio

To recap, for those who haven’t been paying attention, this is Hide and Seek with radios. Some poor unfortunate will hide themselves away in the area covered by a particular 1:50k OS map. Said unfortunate will be armed with a radio transmitter with which he or she will transmit from time to time. The trick is to find the hidden station, ideally before anyone else does. There can be any number of ‘hunters’, there’s typically 5 – 10 out hunting on a good day.

Following the huge success of the last Radio Direction Finding contest in December (I won / came first / beat everyone else in etc), it fell to me to arrange the next event in the series. Competing in these events is great fun, hiding is just as much fun – it just takes a good bit of planning….and it helps if you have an evil, sadistic streak   ;-)

The hiding place was to the east of Poynton, Cheshire. The exact location was at the edge of Prince’s Wood – the tall trees should have given me loads of opportunity to erect a decent aerial. The bad news was that I’d gone up to the site the previous day with my able support team of Eden & Nat but the bitterly cold strong wind-driven rain, hail and sleet made aerial erection very difficult indeed.

Where we woz hidden

We managed to sling 130ft of wire up into the trees. The earth system consisted of a 4ft metal spike driven into the wet ground and a long section of barbed-wire fence. I tuned the aerial with my new toy:

The MFJ259C has proved it’s worth. Apart from making antenna tweeking a doddle it’s helped me learn more about aerials.

Like I said, we managed to get the aerial up but it would have been almost impossible without my eager assistants – thanks lads!

On the big day a total of eight teams took part, and along with their respective friends, relations, fans etc there was a total of 20 children of all ages in attendance. The children were mainly quite old – some were beyond retirement age.

My support team and I arrived on site in good time on the Sunday morning. Camouflage netting was set up, bacon butties were made (and eaten) and we were ready to go.

Chris Heys at the start – photo lifted from the group’s Facebook page 

First transmission was 10am but we weren’t heard at the start. In these cases The Envelope is opened. The Envelope is only to be opened in cases of dire emergency – like when the transmitter can’t be heard at the start. This Envelope contains an approximate compass bearing to give the hunters half a clue of where to start looking. The start of the event, the place everyone meets up at to take the first compass bearing, was in Sale, Cheshire – about 10 miles from the transmitter.

Multiple transmissions are made, in theory to a sort of schedule. Unfortunately I screwed up the schedule….but only a bit.

My assistants, Nat & Eden, were lurking in the woods. They were armed with a walkie-talkie and were able to keep me up to date with news of approaching hunters. This kept them entertained for a good while. I’m sure they ‘assisted’ those trying to find the hidden station!

First man in was Dave Peacock, who charged up the hill in fine style – arriving around 11.10am, a good 3 minutes before the next man, Chris Plummer. The remaining hunters (apart from one team) arrived over the following half hour. The hunters approached from pretty well the same direction, all were pleasantly confused by the woodland. The DNF (Did Not Find) team managed to locate the apres-event pub. This was A Good Thing, a very pleasant lunch at the Boar’s Head in Poynton  rounded of the day quite nicely. 

Not being heard at the start was a bit of a pain – and a surprise. A huge and resonant aerial system should have been easily heard at a range of 10 miles – particularly when the transmitter was located in an elevated position. This has happened loads of times before, I reckon the transmitter’s knackered. I’ll bring my own next time – I know it works! 

Not much in the way of photographs I’m afraid. I took my camera with me but was so engrossed in remaining concealed that I didn’t get chance to use it.

Test post

Essential kit for this week's static camp in t'Lakes.

posted from Bloggeroid

31st December 2014, New Year’s Eve in Mobberley

Edited: New photographs added*

The Plan was to put a New Year’s Eve Ceilidh together for 2013 but it was left far too late for A Plan to be formulated and implemented. The organising of an event like this doesn’t happen overnight, but in 2014 it DID happen:
A lot of work went into making this happen. It took me a couple of days to recover from playing all evening, but it was a huge success. There’ll be one in 2015 – the hall has already been hired.

 Just part of the band: L>R:  Marian, The Snowman, John McN, me

Karen, one of our drummers

Rob – a very fine caller

A very enthusiastic audience danced the night away until midnight when proceeding were halted for The Big Ben Bongs…..then the dancing started all over again.

Gill, busy calling the dances in fine style

And being as wot it was a Bollin Morris event it would be rude not to include a photograph or two of the side in action at stupid o’clock that evening….or was it the morning?

All the photographs were taken by Rob or his very tolerant wife, Mrs Rob. Rob was a busy lad that night. When he wasn’t calling dances he was either playing his box in the band, taking photographs, or somehow managing to spend some fleeting moments with Mrs Rob. We apologise loads to Mrs Rob for keeping her husband from her for most of the evening – but he did a splendid job!
We had a brill evening.

*the added photographs were taken by Paul Middlehurst

28th December, Black Lake, Lindow Common

Sunset today

I went out for a much-needed brain-straightener this afternoon and found myself wandering around Lindow Common on the outskirts of Wilmslow.

The name Lindow is derived from Llyn Ddu = Lake Black. The lake shot to fame in 1984 when the preserved body of a man was discovered by commercial peat cutters. The word on the street is that Pete Bog / Pete Marsh / Lindow Man may well have been a sacrifice of some sort. His body has been carbon dated to between 2BC and 119AD – so he’s quite old.