Pix of the Day: Dumfries & Galloway Tour Part II
CREDITS: © Tony Richards/LakelandCAM.co.uk
MAPS: Rhinns of Galloway (Ardwell east, Portpatrick west), and Castle Douglas
Click the thumbnails to popup an enlarged picture.

There is no Part I, but this Part II is a logical follow on to yesterday's item about Logan Botanical Gardens. The first picture is of Ardwell beach: Port Logan is on the west coast of the Rhinns of Galloway, and Ardwell on the east. The west coast of the Rhinns takes the brunt of the incoming Atlantic weather fronts as well as the warm waters in the tail end of the Gulf Stream. The west coast is blunter, more rugged, and entirely up to its job, whereas to the east in the lee of the weather the coast is gentler and less rugged. Most of the beaches hereabouts have few if any vacation visitors . If you go there you will be able to beachcomb in majestic solitude, because the beaches of Galloway also provide some of the most interesting flotsam and jetsam you might hope to encounter on the coasts of Britain.

Portpatrick on the west coast of the Rhinns faces directly to Ireland, often receiving a blast of wind and salt water for doing so. It was the original point of departure for journeys to the Emerald Isle, but after some maritime disasters, and the general problems of sailing in stormy waters to begin the journey, the ferry services were relocated in the sheltered and calmer waters of nearby Loch Ryan, based in the ports of Stranraer and Cairnryan. The town still has a delightful feel of crusty old salts and derring-do, but also amenities for vacation visitors. When I lived there we went as often as we were able to afford to a restaurant that had great food with a very relaxed atmosphere in its elegant glass atrium covered dining room.

The third picture was taken in the walled gardens attached to Threave House. Lying just outside the town of Castle Douglas, whose name comes from the most prominent family hereabouts, the infamous Black Douglas clan whose emblem was a heart, the place is another chapter in an ancient history. The family greeting, 'Welcome Tae Ma Hoose', carried the risk of being thrown into the dungeons of the Douglas stronghold on Threave Island in the River Dee, built in 1369 by Archibald the Grim. The castle is now in the care of Historic Scotland.

In more settled times the modern Threave House, a Scottish Baronial style mansion, was designed in 1871 for Liverpool merchant named William Gordon. The gardens were laid out by the original owner, though in the care of the NTS (National Trust for Scotland - some browsers have difficulty with this web site) they have become a center of excellence for students gardeners and landscapers , and a major attraction for vacation visitors. When we visited many years ago there was an amazing wall trained and fruit bearing apricot tree.

AR Devlin's South West South West Images Scotland Photo Library has a Threave gallery, which gives an idea of the garden's richness. Those who enjoy walking may like to try the Threave Estate walk, or even use the SUW (Southern Upland Way) to link the region's gardens on a spectacular hike of heroic proportions. Cyclists may like to try the route suggested by Skye House's cycle routes library based in nearby Kirkcudbright. A more leisurely tour of the area by motor car is available from the motoring organization AA Travel.

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On This Day in 2002: Greatest Mountain Man Wednesday 31 July 2002

These pictures of James Bridger (1804-1881) are the most commonly seen pair of three portraits widely available on the net. I have been unable to ascertain their owners, though I guess by now they must be out of copyright. If anyone claims or notifies ownership I will be pleased to give full credits and provide links to their true home pages.

Jim was born in Richmond, VA on St. Patrick's Day in the same year that Lewis & Clark stopped at Waverly, MO to repair their oars on a journey up the Missouri River that was to herald the opening of The West. When he was only twenty years old, Jim was the first white American to see the Great Salt Lake. He was a trapper, trader, scout, map maker, and teller of tall stories. He died in Independence, MO on the farm he bought for his 'retirement', revered by his contempories as 'Old Gabe'. Surprisingly many Americans I have spoken to either did not know his name, or were unsure of just who he was, when he lived, and what he did. Over the next few days I hope to provide all that information, with links to the best Jim Bridger resources on the web.

This item was the first of three parts: the others are in the August 2002 archive.

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A special [Jim Bridger] archive will be available Monday 4 August 2003

Pix of the Day: Subtropical Scottish Palm Trees
CREDITS: © Tony Richards/LakelandCAM.co.uk MAP: Port Logan
Click the thumbnails to popup an enlarged picture.

OUR WEB MASTER WRITES: Regular readers will know that I moved to the hot mountain desert of south west Utah from the very north west corner of England, right on the Anglo Scottish Borders. In my third summer of acclimatization (cutely known in Merkinese as acclimation, and in my case assisted by health improvements), I am beginning to be comfortable with three digit temperatures. Even the rising humidity of late July and August, doubling and more from a normally relatively dry 10% to an occasional 30%, has not caused me too much of a problem.

The locals refer to the temperature highs, meaning above 110°F (43°C), as 'toasty'. During the heat of the afternoon, those with an option to do so mostly remain indoors, where there is always some form of air conditioning. As with people all over the world, the dwellers in this region take a pride in the noteworthy extremes of their habitat. This naturally leads to questions about the weather I experienced where I lived before arriving in Utah, quite reasonably accompanied by expectations of the declaration of equally noteworthy extremes, albeit in an opposite direction

My standard answer is that the Borders is a temperate maritime region, experiencing temperatures about 30°F (17°C) below my new home, and much higher rainfall figures than the scant annual eight inches of the high desert southwest. Superficially this seems to give my companions much satisfaction. However, Plato said the devil is in the detail, and so it proves in this case.

Snow falls in the Inter Mountain West are much higher here than in the UK, and lie for much longer into the season; rainfall from electrical storms regularly devastates the land, in a way only rarely seen anywhere in the British Isles; clear winter skies often cause overnight temperatures to fall below freezing, with perceived comfortable daytime temperatures dependent on insolation.

The flip side of the detail is equally devilish: south west Scotland experiences ambient three day mean temperatures above the magic 42°F (6°C), so the grass never stops growing, unlike the desert where the clear night skies in winter often produce a nip of frost that halts the grass growth, which in any case requires irrigation; Scotland's Grampian Plateau experiences sub Arctic weather lasting many days and inhibiting activity, whereas snow on the Colorado Plateaus is often followed by fine weather that allows enjoyment of the outdoors.

Hey-ho, nothing in life is ever as simple as we like to make out. At this point in any comparative weather conversation I always feel it is appropriate to mention Scotland's sub tropical gardens! In the sheltered Port Nessock Bay, on the western shore of the Rhinns of Galloway, lies Logan Botanical Gardens, which is now in the care of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). I have wonderful memories of living in that part of the world, and Tony Richards' pictures, taken on a jaunt there from his usual stamping grounds in the English Lake District, certainly rekindled a few. Quirkily Logan lies further to the south than the part of England that was my home. Logan, along with the terraces and parterres of nearby Castle Kennedy Gardens, where I also lived for a time, was used as a location for the 1973 cult movie The Wicker Man.

Scotland has many other wonderful gardens, though none as exotic as Logan because uniquely it benefits from the warmer waters at the tail of the Gulf Stream. The RBGE lists ten locations that they manage, and Dennis Hardley's ScotPhoto.com has a comprehensive selection of pictures of Scottish gardens that you may view.

I enjoyed today's pictures from Tony so much that tomorrow's feature will be a sort of Part II celebration of South West Scotland; included will be visits to the east coast of the Rhinns on the delightful beach at Ardwell; rugged Portpatrick that was the original ferry port for Ireland before relocation to the sheltered waters of Stranraer in Loch Ryan; and finally the walled garden at Threave, in the lands of the Black Douglas! For a Scottish vacation with plenty of amenities and places to visit, but without the crowds, Dumfries & Galloway is highly recommended.

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On This Day in 2002: Buttermere Crimes & Fibs Tuesday 30 July 2002
CREDITS: © Julian Thurgood/VisitCumbria.com MAP: Buttermere
A locator is available from the FindaChurch.co.uk searchable database.

This is St. James' or Buttermere Church in the English Lake District. The carved angel was commissioned from landscaper and sculptor Jonathan Stamper after thieves stole the original from the church. Other criminals have passed this way: in 1802 a plausible scoundrel by the name of John Hatfield arrived in the area. Passing himself off as being of high born social status, he courted Mary Robinson, who was known as the 'Beauty of Buttermere'. The full story may be read on Steve Bulman's web site. Wordsworth and JMW Turner passed this way, the latter painting a rather dull scene that is in the Tate Gallery collection. Another visitor was Robert Grindell of Manhattan in search of his forbears. He did discover the true story of his grandfather Joseph and laid to rest the fanciful family story. "Oddly enough, though, this discovery did not dampen my pleasure in searching out this part of my family history. If anything, it heightened it. I even have a fonder feeling for my grandfather Joseph whose romantic fib about how he came to the New World gave me, many decades later, the chance to play Sherlock Holmes."

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Pix of the Day: More Perceived Potential Threats

As recently as Saturday our Feature Writer said in the 'On This Day in 2002' section, "We have Wolf Spiders here, which fortunately are harmless because occasionally one will crawl across my feet as I sit at the computer, and Black Widow Spiders, which I have yet to see." On Monday we were invaded by wasps. Today a Black Widow spider (Latrodectus hesperus) put in an appearance. By the time you read this we expect to have discovered a nest of rattlesnakes in the timber pile by the door, and to have been overwhelmed by scorpions. A number of people wrote to suggest leaving the wasps alone: we were gratified that so many are prepared to live and let live.

As we write the spider has removed from clear view in the center of the web, and we think this may be a different perceived order of threat magnitude. Already we are experiencing imagined pricking sensations on our skins. Can we overcome our hostility through chanting "Serenity now!", and making like we didn't know this terror was lurking in wait for a moment of inattention on our part?

The LDS (Mormon) Pioneers who settled this area saw all challenges as a test of their fortitude before the Lord. We acknowledge that we are bereft of fortitude, so this may be a way for the Universe to measure just how craven we are capable of being. Sensibly it might be a good plan to become informed about the issues here.

We have already learned that the Black Widow female spider (the dangerous gender) 'rarely leave their webs' - but 'rarely' is not up to snuff, because we need to be reassured that they NEVER leave their webs. Serenity now! Thankfully we have an appointment that will take us out of the house for the remainder of the day. If they do leave the web, is it at night? How far do they range after they have left the web? Serenity now! Do they bite or sting? Serenity now! We are trying to overcome hyperventilation by breathing slowly in and out of a paper bag.

If our research is prematurely ended by a violent confrontation, and this is to be the last update to this weblog, you will at least be able to guess the most probable reason why! We never thought it would all end so ignominiously in this way.

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On This day in 2002: Autumnal Preview Monday 29 July 2002

This picture of a glorious autumn day in the English Lake District comes from the Mikes-Eye website, where they offer prints, calendars, jigsaws, and cards featuring original Lakeland pictures. The featured picture is the foot of Derwentwater lake and the North Western Fells. The Mikes-Eye flagship products are the videos, which team much loved classical orchestral music with stunning footage of Lakeland scenes. Music lovers will enjoy the visual enhancement of the music, and hill lovers will enjoy identifying the Lakeland scenes, all of which as listed, and many of which are fresh looks at familiar subjects. There are six titles featuring the works of Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Rachmaninov (my own favourite), Sibelius, and J.S. Bach. Videos are reasonably priced, with a special offer if all six are purchased.

[UPDATE: since last we visited Mikes-Eye have added a visitors' gallery alongside Jenny Wren's Tearoom in the village of Uldale in John Peel country. The tearoom web page shows the view across to a neat gap in the hills, lying between Meal Fell on the left and Great Cockup on the right: named Trusmadoor (locally pronounced 'THRESH-ma-deer') it is one of the most delightful passages between hills we know. The source of the River Ellen [thanks to Stuart Rae's glossary of Lakeland place names], which runs to join the sea at Maryport, gave its name to the containing administrative district of Allerdale. Local guide book artist AW Wainwright was a person with both feet firmly on the ground, but in several descriptions he is clearly drawn to Trusmadoor's woowoo ambience. In Book Five, 'The Northern Fells' in the 'Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells' series, on page six of the chapter about a fell named Knott he says,

'Nobody ever sung the praises of Trusmadoor, and it's time someone did. This lonely passage between the hills, an obvious and easy way for man and beast and beloved by wheeling buzzards and hawks, has a strange nostalgic charm. Its neat and regular proportions are remarkable - a natural 'railway cutting'! What a place for an ambush and massacre.'

It seems that even an old curmudgeonly Parent Type like Wainwright was unable to suppress his Child Type in such a place of delight and mysterious energy.]

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Pix of the Day: Invasion Day of the Paper Wasps

The corporate headquarters at ODAAT Towers was buzzing like a beehive during the preparations for today's feature item. Unfortunately the buzzing was quite literal rather than an onomatopoeic simile, and was eventually tracked to some wasps building in the eaves. Our research assistant went out onto the web and determined that the creatures were probably paper wasps. However, her talents are more suited to other areas of expertise and endeavor, so we are happy to stand corrected if anyone out there knows better.

Now a decision must be made on what action, if any, is appropriate in response to this invasion of our sovereign territory. At the moment doing nothing is favored: if the wasps are prepared to go their own way without bothering us then that leaves the way open for detente. Without wishing to cause an escalation of tension on the other side, we have thought it advisable to station a giant can of 'Raid' in a silo close to the incursion across our borders. The UNL (University of Nebraska, Lincoln) have a superb entomology resource at EntWeb (University of Nebraska Department of Entomology) with a page on the management of stinging wasps, including the symptoms and treatment of casualties.

One visitor advised that the best way to deal with this was to pour a kettle of boiling water on the insurgents: notwithstanding that this utterance was delivered while craning up to see the nest we thought this gravity defying requirement was beyond even our skills. All visitors seemed to have an opinion, though when asked for their experience with such incidents they frequently admitted their advice was hearsay.

Whilst we are not generally inclined to attrition or vindictiveness, we did wonder if we might be able to arrange an SCI (Scavenging Caterpillar Infestation) without fear of reprisal. Just uttering the name of such a dreadful WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) would be terrifying, though we believe from that link that such things are actually quite hard to find. We also thought of asking the United Nations to intervene, but read that their deliberations are like elephants making love: they raise a lot of dust, but the results take a long time to be delivered.

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On This Day in 2002: Magic Circles Sunday 28 July 2002

This may be one of those 'You Had To Be There' photographs. The rocks in the foreground are what is left of the Neolithic age Elva Stone Circle, in a picture taken from Julian Thurgood's Visit Cumbria.com web site. I think that possibly one needs to be of a woowoo disposition to get the most from these places: certainly when I lived in nearby Cockermouth and visited this site the situation and the associations with the past set my skin a-tingle. Julian has a Cumbrian Stone Circles page and there are further links at the Open Directory. Visitors of a more prosaic disposition may prefer to just enjoy the fine view of the mountain in the background, called Skiddaw. [The following links have been changed from the original item because the resources used then are no longer available. Ed.] Andy Burnham has a section devoted to Cumbrian henges, which includes a detailed page and photo gallery on Castlerigg Stone Circle, which is close to Elva, but much better known and more often visited.

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Pix of the Day: Soaring Walls of Zion Canyon

Yesterday we referred to making an odious comparison between the rock faces of the English Lake District and the soaring rock walls of Zion Canyon. We were prompted to make the comparison when invited to a picnic in the canyon: a few years ago we had attended a similar function, a birthday party to honor former BBC Radio producer and author Bob Orrell, held in the depths of the Ennerdale valley in Lakeland, with llamas grazing nearby, and Pillar Rock looming in the distance. On that occasion we remarked that with Pillar Rock as the back drop there were probably few places on earth that made for such a spectacular picnic site.

Sadly Bob's earlier books about pack horse travelling seem to be out of print, though 'Blowout', a radio operators eyewitness account of a doomed North Sea oil rig, and another about the monuments of Lakeland, seem to be still available. We were pleased to learn that he completed the restoration of a boat named Amulet that he was working on when we last saw him, and even undertook a journey in her to the Western Isles that resulted in a book. It seems the old reprobate is still going strong, with another book due out about his seafaring adventures.

We digress: when we first arrived in southern Utah, we were inevitably taken to see Zion Canyon, when a remark was passed about having previously seen the Alps. Although true in itself, the context is now lost in the mists of time. However, it seems to have been taken to indicate some disappointment with the stature of Zion's peaks and rock walls. This could hardly be further from the case. Judge for yourself. We suggest that once again it has been demonstrated that people do not actually listen to what is said, but rather to a sound bite impression of what they think might have been said. Rather than worrying about being called to speak in public, most people would be better employed by concerning themselves about being asked to listen in public.

On the day the pictures were taken at the picnic site beside the Virgin River the weather was just right for the occasion: not too hot in the low hundreds, with a cooling breeze at the canyon entrance, which must be around 4,000 feet of altitude. Later in the afternoon a thunderstorm developed over the mountains, which explains why the Zion heights are not seen as they usually are, bathed in glorious sunshine. On the return journey we were treated to the strange sight of torrential rain blowing across the roads, but intermingled with dust devils.

We passed Grafton, the ghost town where the bicycling scene in a 1969 movie was filmed, about a local boy Robert Leroy Parker a.k.a. Butch Cassidy who had teamed up with Harry Longbaugh a.k.a the Sundance Kid. Several huge forks of lightning cracked down on nearby Eagle Crags and Canaan Mountain, followed almost immediately by deafening rolls of thunder and blasts of wind. Since that storm the humidity is still high, but with lower temperatures things have been more comfortable. More electrical storms are forecast, which can make things dangerous in the narrow canyons because of flash floods. Certain people reading this paragraph may discern that we are quite impressed by this country.

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On This Day In 2002: Moving Mountains Saturday 27 July 2002

After Tony Richards published his picture of Blea Tarn in the English Lake District, one of his sharp eyed readers noticed that the hills on the horizon looked like the profile of Lakeland poet William Wordsworth (this one by Edward William Wyon is in the National Portrait Gallery). Here in the United States such things are not left to happenstance: sculptor Gutzon Borglum simply selected a suitable mountain, then between 1927 and 1941, with the help of 400 workers, sculpted the 60-foot busts of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln to represent the first 150 years of American history. What became the Mount Rushmore National Monument in Keystone, South Dakota, is now world famous. How about Disraeli, Gladstone, Churchill, and Thatcher on Great End?

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Pix of the Day: Eternal Friendship Is Guaranteed
CREDITS: © Tony Richards/LakelandCAM.co.uk
MAPS: Borrowdale, and the Bowder Stone location.

We were lucky enough to be invited to a picnic in Zion Canyon yesterday. The lady who cooked the 'Ma Hall's' recipe beans in a Dutch Oven, which is a heavy cast iron pot with a handle to hang it over the fire or built in feet for standing on the coals, pointed out to us where the 5.8 magnitude 1992 Zion earthquake occurred: Amos 1:2 'And he said, The LORD will roar from Zion…'. The exposed water pipes may still be seen. A 5.6 magnitude earthquake in 1933 was responsible for a large landslide at the west entrance of Zion National Park. Both landslides continued to move for hours after the earthquake, probably because of water and clay deposits beneath the surface of the landslide area. The epicenters of these quakes are often a great distance from Zion, yet they can still exert dramatic effects.

We had planned to make an odious comparison between the heights of rock faces in the English Lake District and the truly awesome rock faces in Zion Canyon. However, the Bean Lady mentioned a balanced rock that had fallen [CORRECTION: we have been informed that the balanced rock did NOT fall - this is under investigation, probably becoming a feature in its own right when the information is to hand] during the earthquake, and we were delighted when arriving home to discover that Tony Richards was featuring Lakeland's own balanced rock, known as the Bowder Stone! It is said that two people who shake hands through the small passageway that passes under the Bowder Stone will remain friends eternally.

The invaluable VisitCumbria.com has more information on measurements of this glacial erratic, which stands on the opposite lake shore to the first NT (National Trust) property purchased at Brandlehow Wood, and was itself an early purchase by the NT. A photographer from the 19th century, Francis Frith, visited in 1860 (the image is incorrectly captioned) and again 1893. It is interesting that the mature woodlands in which the Bowder Stone now sits were not there one hundred years ago. Now honor has been served with this feature, so that tomorrow we can show you the grandeur of Zion without anyone feeling that Lakeland has been belittled or insulted.

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On This Day in 2002: Little Miss Muffet Friday 26 July 2002

From Josh's picture galleries at nf0's Life comes this pleasant flower picture: arachnophobes should look away now! I find spiders fascinating creatures. We have Wolf Spiders here, which fortunately are harmless because occasionally one will crawl across my feet as I sit at the computer, and Black Widow Spiders, which I have yet to see. Josh has lots more subjects in his galleries, plus his weblog - well worth a look. Aficionados of trivia (which is just information for which the need is in the future) may enjoy Eric Shackle's page from Brookmans Park, between Hatfield (map) and Potters Bar in the English county of Hertfordshire just north of London, home of Dr. Thomas Muffet (or possibly Moufet, or even Moffat) who lived 1553-1604. He was an entomologist and wrote 'Theatre of Insects, the first scientific catalogue of British native species'. Eric's ebook web site is a mother lode of information that you may be needing any day soon. Steve Heliczer has a gallery of modern day residents of Brookmans Park.

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Pix of the Day: Fascination With Gradual Change
CREDITS: © NAME/WarrnamboolCAM.com

We have a weakness for observing gradual change, especially as patterns of road transport supersede one another. Those who are bemused by the last sentence are probably best advised to quit while they are ahead, though if you bear with us you may begin to see things around you that you never noticed before. We say this with all modesty, but we have become aware that some people are just blind to such things. As roads are developed, improved, realigned, or upgraded, they leave behind testimony to their previous use. Often this contains clues to social, fiscal, and industrial developments. We know a place in the northwest of England where the arrival of the railway, at a stroke, turned the pattern of road communications through ninety degrees. The old roads are still there, but exist only as lanes that run to the railway, then cease abruptly, to begin again on the far side of the tracks.

From Hurricane, UT, State Route SR-9 climbs the edge of the Hurricane Fault onto the Colorado Plateaus heading for Zion. We find it endlessly fascinating to observe the line of the old wagon road built by the Pioneers: different availabilities of road building equipment; different levels of motive power available for the vehicles that would travel on the roads; and different availability of financial resources to do the building. All of these things have an observable impact on the end products.

This pair of photographs shows three iterations of road transport in the town of Allansford, now a suburb of Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia. The picture on the left shows the new bridge that replaced the old bridge. The picture on the right hows the original fording of the river, seen through the balustrade of the bridge that was in turn its replacement. We think that pictures like these of nothing much in particular, which are now increasing in number because of the web and digital cameras, will provide valuable information for people in the future wanting to know more about the superficial appearance (which of course has deeper implications if you are able to read the clues) of life in the past.

Just as oral history was developed as a new discipline by interviewers such as Studs Terkel, we think that in addition to the existing discipline of photoarchaeology will be added a discipline of deliberately recording things whose significance is not the present, but the present seen from the future. We suggest that the last picture in that series (content may change by the time you visit) of the local store makes an ideal example of the genre. Anyone for 'photosemiotics'? Or maybe 'photosemeiology'?

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On This Day in 2002: Langdale Triptych Thursday 25 July 2002

Recent pictures of the Langdale valley in the English Lake District were well received, so I thought you might enjoy this recent Langdale haymaking triptych from Tony Richards who is a blog favorite. The peaks in the middle picture are the five Crinkle Crags, which have a special place in the hearts of walkers in the district. Click on the pictures to see them full size.

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Pix of the Day: Speedy Skimmers Choose Lakeland
CREDITS: © Dave Newton/Daves-Lakeland-Mountains.co.uk
MAP: Wast Water & Coniston Water

Recently we featured a picture of Wast Water, taken by Dave Newton. Dave had an arrangement, on that same day he took the picture, to meet rowers Rob McAllister and Rupert Merritt who were going to take their boat out on a training exercise in Wast Water as part of a training camp in Lakeland as preparation for entering the National Championships of Great Britain. Ever since we have been worrying that if this pair should become famous, then we will have missed a golden opportunity to name drop. Ill fated Donald Campbell in his boat Bluebird was killed on a nearby lake, Coniston Water, trying to break his own world water speed record. This looks much safer, and we wish Rob & Rupert the best of luck with their aspirations.

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On This Day in 2002:
Google answers for the search term "Wednesday 24 July 2002"

The Glacier Society aims to unite polar interest from around the world. The Google answer that caught our eye was a report by the Argentine navy that their icebreaker 'Almirante Iriziar' had become ice bound while trying to rescue a German research vessel 'Magdalena Oldendorff' that was trapped in an Antarctic ice field. All this and more on an interesting web site.

We confess that we find Ann Robinson strangely compelling on the otherwise tedious quiz show Weakest Link, which we first watched only because we thought it was something to do with the web. The American version of the show now has a blander presenter after Ann was replaced, though we had no problem with her perceived rudeness, lack of sensitivity, and heavy sarcasm: presumably the target audience is made up solely of single people, which would account for the change.

That BBC web page has lots of interesting links to other comedic practitioners, including a favorite of ours Caroline Aherne, who found national fame in the UK in 1994 with both The Fast Show and The Mrs. Merton Show, whose eponymous character was a sweet old lady who would ask the most outrageous, below the belt questions of her guest stars. "So, what attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?" she famously asked of his stage assistant and partner 'the lovely' Debbie McGee. The most powerful venoms are usually delivered with little fuss. We understand the Aussies now benefit from Caroline's subtle writing for TV sitcoms.

Finally we happenstanced upon Duck Flat Wooden Boats from Mount Barker, South Australia, whose oxymoronic (a word we just invented in the American tradition of turning nouns into adjectives) 'What's New Archive' has an entry, "We're all very excited about the new Mundoo II that we've recently designed." We actively enjoy the enthusiasm of people who take a modest pride in their achievements, and tarried a while checking out the Google entry, and the brochure we downloaded. A link from the Duck Flat site led us to the Institute of Backyard Studies, where we were introduced to the Meat, Metal, & Fire of Australian culture. We were relieved to discover that Blokes & Sheds is an international phenomenon.

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Pix of the Day: History Lies Buried in the Soil
CREDITS: © Tony Sainsbury/EyeOnTheLakes.com MAP: Cissbury Ring

Tony Sainsbury took a break from his north west of England home, where he runs EyeOnTheLakes.com web site, to visit the south coast English county of West Sussex. The name of the place in the picture is Cissbury Ring, which had us off searching the web for more information. Our search led us to David Staveley, whose second name is by happenstance derived from the eponymous place in Tony's home territory, who has a detailed Cissbury Ring page in his Sussex Archaeology & Folklore section. A very interesting and well done web site, and worthy of an extended visit if this sort of thing interests you. Ditchling Beacon had a familiar ring to its name: we guessed that we had heard it as a high point on the annual London to Brighton bicycle ride. The blessing, and the curse, of the web is that it just goes on forever!

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On This Day in 2002: Taos Pow-Wow Tuesday 23 July 2002

Over at FotoFeed.com there is a series of pictures of the Taos Pow-Wow taken by John H. Farr. The Native American life of the pueblos (considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States) is the basis of the festival, but there are other facets of New Mexico life to be seen. The event attracts entries from associated cultures and other areas of North America. John did a short article on the 2002 pow-wow, which includes a photo tour.

If you missed the pow-wow but are interested in native American culture then try IndianVillage.com who have a calendar of events that seems to be well maintained. If you are interested in visiting the Taos area to enjoy its many attractions TaosVacationGuide.com have lots of information, including a map showing the local hot spots in the 'Enchanted Circle'.

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Pix of the Day: Odious If Meaningless Comparison
CREDITS: © Tony Richards/LakelandCAM.co.uk MAP: Malham Cove

Today's feature picture is of Malham Cove in northern England. A delightful place for sure, and not one that we mean to denigrate by means of an odious comparison that we regularly make. At the end of the road that our house stands on is the Hurricane Fault, the longest exposed displacement fault in the world. It runs more than 200 miles from Cedar City 30 miles north of here, then southward, unbelievably crossing the mighty chasm of the Grand Canyon, then continuing beyond that rift before finally ending halfway across the next state. Also at the end of our road is Gould Wash, contained in a box canyon. There are three spectacular waterfalls along the length of the canyon. At least there are waterfalls if it rains up on the massive Colorado Plateaus, including a final headwall waterspout that plunges almost a thousand feet. We saw it during a winter cold snap, when it was a spectacular ice fall hanging five from the canyon rim, to mix two different sporting metaphors.

As we write the TV channels are carrying a NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) National Weather Service warning of thunderstorms in east central Washington County here in Utah, so a flash flood might produce spectacular waterfalls even in the otherwise dry season. This update may well be delayed, because the electrical storms often disrupt the power supply.

On with the tale: some neighbors kindly invited us to dinner, and from the rear of their house Gould Wash, normally completely dry at this time of year, emerges from the Plateaus geological province to cross into the Great Basin geological province. Those same neighbors asked what it was like in Britain, for although they had visited London, they had never seen the rest of Britain. Our usual response is to explain that in Britain people travel many miles to visit Malham Cove, to gaze in awe at its dry cliffs, for the limestone rock long ago swallowed the stream in the valley behind.

The point here is that if Gould Wash was anywhere, and we do not use the word lightly, we mean anywhere in the UK, there would be a vast vehicle parking area with a concomitant infrastructure to service the huge crowds of visitors. Britain is like fine porcelain: exquisite, detailed, and the more carefully it is examined the more there is to see. As Eric often said of Ernie on the Morecambe and Wise show, "Small but beautifully formed". Here Gould Wash is just one more magnificent canyon in a huge brutal landscape baking under an unforgiving sun. This country is vast. There are canyons everywhere. Several of them are world famous. Poor Gould Wash. Canyons sometimes find it very hard to stand out in a crowd.

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On This Day in 2002: Twin Peaks Dams 10,000 steps
Google answers on the search term "Monday 22 July 2002"

That Mercury Sabre hire car was used by John Hartnup on his GNR Lies (Great Northern Road Trip 2002) crossing and recrossing the US and Canadian border. With Debbie he visited Twin Peaks, a fictional name for the setting of an eponymous TV series that was based on North Bend, home of Twede's Diner, formerly the Mar-T Diner, which was used as the Double-R Diner in Twin Peaks. We never saw a single program in the series, but 'damned good cup of coffee and cherry pie' still managed to enter our everyday speech. Those links will lead you into a variety of interesting stuff by John, including another road trip on Rout 66, and a visit to Minsk!

Capital Regional District, otherwise CRD, is at the south end of Vancouver Island, and is a Canadian Regional Government administrative area, serving three electoral areas and thirteen municipal governments including the City of Victoria, capital of British Columbia. The web site explains that in 'a 'regional district' a number of local governments join together as partners so that they can benefit from economies of scale and eliminate duplication of effort on a region wide perspective. The provincial government established the 'regional district' concept of local government in 1966 because it recognized that some problems transcended municipal boundaries and there needed to be a partnership that could step forward and deal with local issues on a region-wide perspective.'

This concept is in action at the Sooke Reservoir Expansion, and it was the records of construction of the Sooke Dam and Deception Dam Spillway that caught our interest. We think this sort of thing will probably bore most people into catalepsy, though the few among you with long attention spans, and an insatiable need to understand anything that comes up on the radar, will probably spend as much time as we did examining the time lapse sequences. After that you will probably begin to wonder how much effort would be required to create a digital flip book: our R&D labs are working on the problem even as we write.

Lastly we go back to the PCA (Pedestrian Council of Australia), which we visited only yesterday. Today's item is a bit more up beat, however. It seems that there is a magic figure for fitness through walking: take 10,000 steps every day and eventually you will end up fit. The idea has been around since the 1950s, says 'Prevention' magazine walking editor Maggie Spilner, and the PCA has more details, plus some suggestions if you decide you want to start counting.

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Pix of the Day: High Summer in Glorious England
CREDITS: (top row left to right) © Charles Winpenny/CornwallCAM.co.uk
© Tony Richards/LakelandCAM.co.uk
© Dave Newton/Daves-Lakeland-Mountains.co.uk
(bottom row) © Ann Bowker/Mad About Mountains

Click thumbnails to popup an enlarged picture.



Despite a few moaners, there has been some fine summer weather in England. Don't believe all the tales about freezing fog, howling winds, and rain that one old farmer described to my father as "coming down in stair rods". When none of those things are happening, then they have the finest weather in the world! To prove the point here are six shots, ranging from Cornwall in the south to Lakeland in the north.

Specifically, the top row from left to right are: Hayle in Cornwall by Charles Winpenny; then all the other in Lakeland; Slaters Bridge in Little Landale by Tony Richards; Wastwater and Great Gable by Dave Newton.

The bottom row are all by Ann Bowker, from left to right: Ullswater from Arnison Crag; Derwentwater, Keswick, and Bassenthwaite from Walla Crag; and the River Derwent near Portinscale, as a fitting finale to these excellent pictures from some of my favorite web sites. My sincere thanks to all those people whose web sites have given so much pleasure to me and to so many others.

Have you noticed how much water there is in those pictures? As Billy Connolly said, liberally sprinkled with a light shower of expletives, when someone mentioned the rain, "Of course it rains, that's why it's so green!"

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On This Day in 2002: Bullbars, Hampers & Champers, and FAB1
Selections from a Google search for pages containing 'Sunday 21 July 2002'

You know the methodology by now, surely: when our own archives are missing a date match entry for last year, we take the preferred longform date of that day, then ask Google to find an interesting page containing that date text string.

The first entry to catch our eye was an item on the PCA (Pedestrian Council of Australia) about what we fervently hope will remain a uniquely Australian traffic problem. It seems that hundreds of NSW (New South Wales) drivers have been equipping their vehicles with 'Mad Max' style bullbars.

The picture featured here shows a car with 'Dances With Pedestrians' on the front, and 'A Bullbar in the Country is Worth More Than a Pedestrian in the City' on the back. The pedestrians complain that these things are not only aggressive but also illegal, and that the promised action by government has failed. Worryingly the RTA (Road & Traffic Authority) spokesperson claimed that the bullbars in most of the pictures submitted to them appeared to be legal!

Our second choice was a piece on a Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts' Club (Central Southern Section) 'Hampers & Champers' meeting at West Dean. Paul Capper is seen here serving 'champers and shorts' from his 1969 Rolls-Royce Phantom Six hearse. Our publisher claims that when he lived in the UK such absolutely spiffing events were all the rage, darling, and that all properly run clubs were wholly opposed to that awful contemporary habit of omitting correct punctuation from their official titles. One needs to try and maintain standards, and keep up appearances, old chap.

Our final choice came from the Samizdata.net weblog, which claims for itself an inability to run on what they say is an 'idiotic' Apple 'Safari' browser. This admission of poor webmastering skills is as disarmingly frank as it is unnecessarily vituperative while clearly being untrue. 'Samizdata' is derived from Samizdat, a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the former USSR [self-publishing house].

Where were we going with this? Oh yes, Perry de Havilland's 'Thunderbirds are Go!' entry on that weblog claims the children's program was a 'libertarian political message'. Although mentioning that one of the characters was British aristocrat Lady Penelope, who cruised in a pink six-wheeled armored Rolls-Royce, capable of travelling at 200 mph, complete with a hidden front grill mounted auto-cannon (vehicle registration number FAB1), completely ignores the fact that proletarian hero Parker was the one who did the driving!

Political commentary is just not what it once was. Come to think of it, why does Parker get called by his last name, but the toffs like Penelope Creighton-Ward get called by their first names? This confuses Americans who know that Jeffrey is referred to as Lord Archer, so are unable to understand why Richard, founder of Virgin Group of companies, is not called Sir Branson. Come to think of it, we are just as confused.

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On This Day in 2002: High White Peaks, Low Green Fire
Pages returned when searching for Saturday 20 July 2002

Today for this section we again used the method of entering our preferred long form date into Google, because our own archives lacked an appropriately dated entry. The two following dates are also similarly missing. Google's image finder facility returned over 40 solid entries, so that we were almost spoiled for choice. Once again we had so much fun that we have used the entry for our lead item, combining 'Pix of the Day' with 'On This Day'. Click the thumbnails to visit the source pages that contain the relevant picture, and text links for our recommended pages in the source items.

First to catch our eye was Dwight Clark Peck's mountain picture. Dwight by his own admission is 'a quiet, middle-aged gentleman who has managed so far to keep more or less out of harm's way'. Our chosen date appears on the first of six pages, which describes a journey Dwight made from Switzerland, across the high snows of the Alpine mountain barrier into Italy.

The rationale for the journey makes interesting reading: 'There are many ways to go from Switzerland to Italy. [1] There's the airplane, or at least there was before 9/11 made the airport security personnel all uppity and then Swissair went bankrupt. [2] There's the rail line, superb service on the Swiss side, sometimes a little tardy to the south, and crowded, not crime-free, and pretty smelly. [3] There's the automobile, over the Grand St. Bernard, the Simplon, lots of passes, lots of tunnels, some of them kind of pricey and carbon monoxidy, and then there's the occasional horrifying tunnel fire to be borne in mind. And there could sometimes be some falling asleep at the wheel issues. Who knows? Plan for the worst scenario. [4] And then there's walking. On balance, walking sounds like the way to go. So let's try it!'

I have personal experience of this same selection process, though being a less bold adventurer I elected for the motor vehicle tunnels: the approach roads in either direction are spectacular, though the tunnels themselves are travelling's more depressing experiences. Dwight arranged a four day weekend away from his job, aiming to cross into Italy then return without ever being missed. Many heroic journeys seem to start with such seemingly prosaic initial plans.

We cheated only a little with the picture: it is from much later in the journey, when Dwight was route finding for a safe return to base. There is nothing like planning, organization, and skill management to ensure a safe return; and this was nothing like planning, organization, and skill management. At a critical point on the return journey the travellers lost Switzerland, which although a small country in relative terms is nevertheless a country, at which point the caption for the picture reads, 'Wait, I've seen THAT one before. On chocolate wrappers. Switzerland must be down to the right.' Did they make it back without incident by using a chocolate wrapper as a map? If you like whimsical travelogues then this one may be worth a visit to find the answer.

Our second selection was another mountain site, this time a commercial trekking company that organizes climbing trips to the Himalayas. David Hamilton of High Adventure reassures potential clients that Gasherbrum II at 8,035 metres (26,362 feet), or almost 5 miles above sea level, 'is the safest and 'easiest' of the Karakoram 8000m peaks. It is an ideal choice for suitably experienced climbers wishing to attempt their first 8000m peak. The route offers straightforward climbing in a superb and dramatic location. Well organised and adequately resourced expeditions to this peak have enjoyed high rates of success in recent years.' Having noted the quotation marks around 'easiest', we would probably have added them to 'straightforward' had we been writing that piece.

A tough lady climber of our acquaintance ascended to within 500 feet of the summit of Gasherbrum II, then sank exhausted into the snow, completely unable to progress further. She said it was one of the most wonderful experiences of her life. High Adventure's associate, JaggedGlobe.co.uk, have detailed background information about Gasherbrum II, including an excellent picture taken by David Hamilton.

Our third selection from Google's offerings posed a moral dilemma: not for us, because we just overcame all potential problem by acting as though they could not exist. However, the less philosophically robust among our readers might see a problem that Google's entry returned a 404 because the page no longer exists, thus making the entry invalid in some eyes. Undeterred, because we are mature enough to know that rules are just guidance for individual conscience, we cut back to the domain root, and were rewarded by some of Cait Hutnick's photography on her Light of Morn web site. Some call it 'stumbling into the pastures of heaven'.

We did eventually manage to find the image that was the original Google entry, a view of the Boccardo Trail heights from Alum Rock Park's Todd Quick trail, which is a property of the Santa Clara County OSA (Open Space Authority), but by then we had become entranced by the snakes. "Tru-s-s-s-t in me!", if you ever saw the Disney film 'Jungle Book', those green boas are fascinating.

Lots of interesting stuff on this web site if you dig around. If after a baking session Cait ever finds herself with surplus of Chanterelle Croissants then she may like to know that the USPS (United States Postal Service) make regular deliveries in our area, a service regrettably not performed by the captain of their bicycle squad.

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Pix of the Day: Five Times Wider Than It Is Deep
CREDITS: © Brian P. Lawler/www.TheLawlers.com
Click the panorama thumbnail to popup an enlarged version.

Brian P. Lawler writes for CreativePro.com, which is an invaluable resource for graphics professionals. Brian's latest article is entitled 'Preserving History with Panoramic Portraits'. Brian's own web site at TheLawlers.com has all kinds of goodies, but his panoramas gallery and graphics arts essays deserve special mention. Brian describes the day when today's featured picture was taken,

"On a beautiful day in early June, I arranged 63 park rangers and four horses into a circle around my camera in Yosemite National Park. The occasion was the twelfth anniversary of the last time the rangers got together for a group-in-uniform portrait."

The backdrop for the amazing picture that resulted, taken in the famous Cook's Meadow near Yosemite Lodge, includes Yosemite, Half Dome, and Cathedral Spires. This certainly knocks spots off the backgrounds used for the panoramic photos taken when I was at school. The only thing to relieve the monotony there was if some callow youth on one end could be persuaded to run round the back, so that he appeared a second time on the other end.

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On This Day in 2002: Pioneer Agriculture Friday 19 July 2002

If you read Monday's entry about the Pioneers trekking to Hurricane, UT then this shows how they fared once they got here. By dint of hard work and enterprise they turned the desert into an agriculturally productive homeland. The local Heritage Park displays a selection of the machinery they used, and the flowers show how the irrigated land brought forth fecundity. The story of how irrigation was achieved by construction of the Hurricane Canal to tap the waters of the Virgin River will be told later.

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Pix of the Day: SAFOD Boring Project
CREDITS: © United States Geological Survey/www.usgs.gov MAP: Parkfield

We found this item when researching for the 'On This Day in 2002' feature, and thought it so interesting that it became our lead item. This is what the original BBC article says: 'In Parkfield, California, seismologists are busy drilling a 2.2-km vertical hole deep into the Earth. This is part of a plan to install instruments directly within the San Andreas Fault Zone near the initiation point of previous high-magnitude earthquakes. The instruments, set in an even deeper hole, 3 to 4 km beneath the Earth's surface, will form a San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) and will reveal directly, for the first time, the physical and chemical processes controlling earthquake generation within a seismically active fault. Molly Bentley finds out how observing quakes 'up close' marks a major advance in the pursuit of a rigorous scientific basis for assessing earthquake hazards and predicting earthquakes.'

Presenter Geoff Watts may be heard (RealOne player software download required) in a web repeat of the BBC radio program Leading Edge, first broadcast on Thursday 18 July 2002, with a report from Molly Bentley about the SAFOD project. The International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) has a whole SAFOD section; insights and links into the investigation of the geophysical structure of North America are available from the EarthScope web site; and the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program for Northern California has a Parkfield page with a 360° interactive viewer for the drilling site, taken from the drilling platform.

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On This Day in 2002: Pilgrims, Parishes, and Ruins Thursday 18 July 2002
Click thumbnails to go to the source page.

If you visited us yesterday you will know that this feature, which usually takes an item from our own archives, does a Google search for the matching date if we do not have an item of our own available. Today we used Google's image finder feature to discover Pada Yatra pilgrims in Sri Lanka; the 1816 Parish Church of St. George in Belfast; and in Northwestern Argentina the Inca ruins of Coctaca. We cheated slightly in Belfast: Google found the picture of an ornate screen on that page, and we thought it was more meaningful to show the facade of the church.

Enquiring minds will want to know a little more about these places:

Pada Yatra is a traditional 55 day north to south foot pilgrimage from Jaffna to Kataragama along the east coast of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). It is a mobile festival along a series of sacred sites that maintains the oral traditions of the rural people. In recent years it has attracted up to 10,000 participants.

St. George is a Church of Ireland (Anglican) church in the United Kingdom province of Northern Ireland, a country where religious differences have been the cause of violent clashes between opposing factions.

Northwestern Argentina's provinces of Jujuy and Salta were the cradle of settled agricultural development in the region, and were the most heavily populated area of what is modern Argentina before the Spanish developed the coastal areas. Tribes on the Altiplano, such as the Diaguita, were a bulwark against the spread of the Inca culture across the Andes onto the lowland pampas. Humahuaca is the closest town to the ruins at Coctaca, which are often described as 'mysterious' growing terraces: in fact they are so mysterious that we were unable to find detailed information.

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On This Day in 2002: Some Unexpected Program Changes

If, If, If…Wednesday 17 July 2002

Click either thumbnails for source page.

Recently in this section of the weblog we have been featuring the date matching item from last year's archive. There was panic in the Editorial Executive Office earlier today, well at least some heads turned accompanied by a brief lull in the buzz of conversation about yesterday's stage of the Tour de France, when we realized that there were two consecutive days from 17-18 July 2002 without matching entries in the archive. Somebody asked the Copy Boy to think up an idea for a temporary replacement feature, and a normal leisurely calm returned to the throbbing nerve center of our organization. We think that Boy will go far and his will be the Earth, if he can keep his head when all about him are losing theirs and blaming it on him, as Kipling foretold. What follows is the Boy's best shot. We hope you enjoy the change. Meanwhile we hope you enjoy this triple featured sites items as a replacement for our usual format. Try to think about it as the ever popular 'Three for the Price of Two' offer that make shopping such a wearing process of making nerve racking decisions.

Using our preferred date format of 'DAYNAME DD MONTH YEAR' [Please, everybody, make sure the Publisher doesn't see this, or we will have to do yet another piece on how absurd the most common American date format is in the computer age- Ed.] we did a Google search, and accepted the top three answers.

Top answer on Google was the Now This Log weblog by Steve Bogart. Lead item for our chosen day was 'Useful page for transitioning Mac owners: Mac OSX: Where The Files Belong Now [Westwind]. We made a quick note to pass this on to FotoFeed author, and a favorite web destination of ours, John Farr, who has recently taken delivery of a titanium PowerBook among the Wet Magpies, with the world's finest operating system ready installed.

Second up was Lying in Ponds. This site would earn an entry here, if only for the derivation of its name:

'The title is an allusion to a line from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. King Arthur had been explaining to 'Dennis' and another peasant that he is their king because the Lady of the Lake presented him wit