Seamer Road Mere, Scarborough

A favourite Sunday afternoon walk! We have spent the last two Sunday afternoons at the Mere walking round and feeding the birds. It is so much nicer thanPeasholm Park, which is a stangant, commercialised, ugly blot on the landscape. It is full of feral pigeons and grey squirrels with a smaller variety of birds than at the Mere. Also the water is stagnant and black as hell.

Some photos taken yesterday at the Mere:


A resident Chinese goose


A coot with young. Coots will kill their own chicks


A family of geese


A goose with half of its top beak missing! It was able to feed OK though









Some views of the Mere


A swan on the Mere

As a kid I used to love going to the local pond or river with my fishing net and jam jar to see what I could catch - usually water snails, pond skaters, tadpoles and sticklebacks. The freshwater environment is my favourite natural environment, I would probably have been better doing freshwater biology instead of marine biology at university.

Transylvania

I suppose this article I'm posting a link to has to be one of the most interesting travel articles I've read in ages.

I don't intend to go to Transylvania, but the way it is described in this article makes you think it would be worth a visit!

Read it here.

The Mighty Deltic

The Mighty Deltic in Pickering

Readers may wonder why I titled this latest post "The Mighty Deltic". Well, the answer is simple.

Today we went to Pickering, and it was Diesel Gala weekend on the North York Moors Railway (visit them here) Usually the trains on here are steam hauled, with a few exceptions, but this weekend is given over to the diesels.

If I had known about the special event, I would have had my camera to post some video, but I didn't so I'll have to post some photos taken on my Mum's mobile phone instead :-)

The one engine I had chance to photograph was a huge green Deltic just before it was attached to the carriages in order to leave Pickering. Seeing these superb locos made me think of the vile, horrible, cold things we have to put with on our railways now - namely the Class 185 built in Germany by Siemens, it is a foul train, putting it mildly, but the main services from our local station are operated by these monstrosities. I wish it were the Deltics operating from here instead!

Close up of the Deltic's front

The Deltic was built for use on the East Coast Main Line - however it was replaced on this route by the Inter City 125 in the 1970s.

The Deltic leaving Pickering station

There is a Deltic Preservation Society for those who like the Mighty Deltic, they can be visited here.

British TV's best adverts

Usually the adverts on British television consist of nothing but settee sales, dining room sales, kitchen sales, carpet sales, windows, double glazing, bedroom furniture sales and boring rubbish like that.

At the moment there are a couple of ads worth seeing - the Crusha Kittens and Cravendale Milk.

Here they are:


The Crusha Kittens strut their stuff in the gym.



The Cravendale Ad.

Enjoy 'em!

The madness of domestic appliances

How many other people have domestic appliances as loopy as the ones we have? We have a fridge which rattles (it never did this before it was defrosted) and a hoover whose wheels drop off.

We never have any luck with hoovers - we have returned several to the shop in the past few years. The first was was going great until it started glowing. We replaced this with another, which went great until the wheel dropped off. So then we got another, a so-called upright, except that it doesn't stay upright it collapses and yes, you guessed it, the wheels drop off! Now we have to kick the wheels back into position all the time, it picks up OK but the wheels are maddening! We are on the lookout for another one but we don't know which type to get, I say I just want one which works!

And to cap it all the computer is playing up! The DVD-ROM drive and the CD-RW drive won't recognise disks, even though they open and close OK, once that disk is in they are unresponsive so it is going to be repaired next week.

Oh to have normal stuff!

Grand National, Snow etc

The snow returned at the weekend. When I got up yesterday it was white over, after a white Easter, and then warmer weather last week, it was annoying to have to get dressed in winter gear again to go out. There was more snow today but thankfully it is bright with blue sky as I am writing this.

I also collected my Grand National winnings today. I had £1 each way on Comply or Die, the winner, and I got £10.75 winnings, a bit more than I expected really. I can't complain at £8.75 profit when I thought I might have got around £5!

Grand National

It was the Grand National today - Britain's greatest horse race which is held annually at Aintree in Liverpool.

I have backed horses most years since the late 1980s, most of the time I've won nothing but occasionally I've had a return on a horse which was placed (four are placed in the National) when I've had an each way bet (I never place any other kind, I would never waste money on backing something to win!) and on three occasions I have backed the winner - including today. This year's winner was Comply or Die, ridden by Timmy Murphy.

In 1994 I backed Miinnehoma, ridden by Richard Dunwoody.

Miinnehoma and Richard Dunwoody win the 1994 Grand National

In 2005 I backed Hedgehunter, who was ridden by Ruby Walsh.

Hedgehunter, ridden by Ruby Walsh, winning the 2005 Grand National

Comply or Die and Timmy Murphy win the 2008 Grand National

The Grand National is the only horse race I bet on.