The missing miles

Post finished on Tuesday morning.
Firstly let me apologise for this post being late. I was halfway through it last night when I looked out of the window and saw plumes of smoke rising above the houses, it was coming from round the corner in St Andrews Drive. The next thing the power went down, everything died on me. I rang Janet, her lights were working ok, I went up the road to ask Barry, and his electricity was also cut. He said the Sub Station round the corner had blown up. Aha, that's what the smoke was then.

I went to investigate, and sure enough the fire brigade were in attendance, well they stood there looking at it. Nothing they could do, they went away and we waited for the Electricity Board to come out. By then it was getting dark and you could see candles in windows. I did think about getting the laptop out, but then I remembered sitting in my car once using it when the light was fading, it is not easy to see the small keyboard. So I thought sod it, and went to bed.

So here I am bright and bushy tailed starting where I left off. I had some unfinished business to attend to, the missing miles from the long walk. I didn't feel as if I had properly finished it when I arrived at the Humber Bridge that Saturday night, and got a lift home. I didn't experience the elation as I passed the finishing line, even though it was a finishing line that I had invented, which could be moved. I felt I had let myself down by not fully completeing the task. Yes it was a great achievement, I know that now, but at the time there was an element of sadness through not quite managing my goal.

I probably shouldn't be too hard on myself but that's how I am, if I do a job I want to do it right, or not at all. But then I always say, it's better to have tried than not to have bothered at all. So there is a conflict going on there. I suppose the answer is to set more realistic goals, those which are more achievable, but then that defeats the object of pushing yourself and discovering new highs.

Anyway, what did I do yesterday. I drove to the Humber Bridge, and parked my car underneath it on the southbank. There are steps which take you up onto the bridge. So here I am setting off to walk the missing miles.

Looking down, this was an old tile works, it looks as if they are rebuilding it. I'm not sure what it is going to be, it could be a leisure complex I suppose, maybe it will remain a tile works.

Arriving at the Toll Booths on the northbank.

There is a short walk down to the country park, through the car park and onto the foreshore. Here are a couple of views of the bridge as I pass underneath it and head for Hull. It really is a magnificent structure.

Here I pick up the Trans Pennine Trail, a national cycle track that runs from Southport in the West to Hornsea in the East. Here is the web site

www.transpenninetrail.org.uk

The path is quite clear and well maintained at first, but then further along parts of it are quite narrow and overgrown. At one point it runs alongside the main A63 dual carriageway with only a flimsy wooden fence between you and tons of heavy metal flying past. I felt a bit vulnerable for about 20 mins, and it was a relief when the path veered off to the right away from the road towards the waters edge. I came across some blokes fishing and stopped to chat, asking if they were trying to catch something for their tea. They said no, too many crabs in the water and not enough fish.

I came to the Retail Park, ooh look, that name rings a bell, ha ha. I have done many deliveries to this place in my big orange truck.

I noticed this mini truck cruising around, passing me several times, and found the driver taking a break and stretching his legs. I couldn't resist being nosey and asking him about his job. All he has to do is drive his advertising truck around busy places, that's all. Stop start all day long. No finding places to deliver, no humping boxes, no deadlines. He lives in Liverpool where the firm is based, last week he was in Brighton on the south coast, next he is going to York. He gets put up in hotels, does eight hours a day and the rest of the time he can do what he likes. Sounds like the ideal job for me, where do I apply.

Getting towards Hull, the path suddenly disappears into a dead end, I must have missed a sign somewhere, so the easiest option is to continue along the road. Here I am arriving at the Marina. A couple of shots to prove I am at the waters edge in the city centre.

What to do next. I know, last time I was here they were advertising a David Hockney painting which was going to be exhibited at the Ferens Art Gallery. I like his work. Bigger Trees Near Warter is the biggest painting he has ever done, it is 15ft by 40ft, it took 50 canvases to complete, and he painted every one in his studio in Bridlington. There is a short video film showing how he started the project right through to the end and transporting it to the Tate Gallery. Warter is the name of a place near Pocklington in East Yorkshire, and not a mis spelling of water. If you google 'Bigger Trees Near Warter' there is a Guardian article about it. It really is amazing.

Now, I have reached my destination and completed my walk. I have two choices, walk back to the car, or get the bus back to the bridge and walk over it to my car. I think the second choice is best as I don't want to be out too late.

If I had completed this bit at the time of the walk it would have added another six miles to it. The distance over the bridge from Far Ings Road to the toll booths is 1.8 miles, so double that and with the bits around Hull added to it, it has made a walk of 11.17 miles today. That'll do nicely.

Join me in keeping fit

Just back from a morning walk, and who should I bump into but the man on his horse. I have mentioned him before, he lives in my village and keeps his beautiful big brown horse nearby. Such a nice friendly chatty man.

How pleasant it is to stroll around the fields on a warm Sunday morning, and to stop and chat to people. I met several dog walking friends, and Henry choc lab had loads of fun running amock with his doggy friends. At one point there was six dogs chasing around, he has as many friends here as in his own village.

I've got five free days coming up this week, so while the weather is fine, I'm going to be out walking. I want to up the mileage to keep up the momentum. Don't want my muscles to turn to jelly after all that hard work I did on the long walk. I won't be stopping out overnight, I can do it by walking out and back from home everyday.

Winter is looming and the days are getting shorter, so now is the time to make the most of it and get out. I'll pack my sandwiches and get my boots on and go. This week is keep fit week. Are you going to join me?

Time spent cleaning teeth, a good investment

When I was young I hated dentists and did everything to get out of going. It was the dentist at primary school that put me off, it was awful. He set up his surgery in the old chapel next door, a dusty dark room. I remember standing there with my mouth wide open, he dabbed some horrible tasting brown liquid around my gums, then pulled a tooth out with what I thought was a pair of pliers. After that experience my mother could never get me to go again. Mind you with her fear of dentists as well she was probably glad she didn't have to take me. I didn't go for years after that, even when I had toothache, I suffered in silence untill the rotten tooth dropped out.

Then when I left home at 18 I thought I had better start acting like an adult. I went to the dentist with my friend who was having some work done, and was amazed that young children were happilly skipping through the door to get their teeth inspected. I decided if they could do it so could I, so that's when I started getting treatment.

I went to the dentist this week for a check up, it's a year since the last one. My lovely lady dentist Emma, is well pleased with me, she asked a lot of questions about how I clean my teeth, how often and what with. Then she gave me full marks for good oral hygiene and no work required. The check up cost £17, but I have no more to pay, hopefully for another year. So regulary cleaning your teeth saves you money, well worth the time and effort.

A ramble round Epworth

Time to get out walking again, I can't sit on my backside doing nothing. It was quite warm today, a bit overcast with a slight breeze, ideal for a 10 mile ramble around the Isle of Axholme. So named because it was an inland island surrounded by rivers, until it was drained by Dutch engineer Sir Cornelius Vermuyden. I parked in Epworth, birth place of John Wesley and Charles Wesley. This is the Wesley Memorial Methodist Church built in 1889.

The steps in the town centre have this plaque on a memorial stone.

There are a lot of restored old buildings, and a lot of small independant shops which seem to be surviving. I didn't see any empty shops, this is a very affluent area so I suppose people can afford to support them.

A lovely little shopping arcade is Fountains Court.

This is St Andrews Church. John Wesley's father was rector here in 1695, and his tomb lies in the churchyard.

It looks like some work has recently been done to replace stolen lead. Churches are now having to use alternative less valuable materials,

This is the main window behind the Alter.

This modern statue stands in front of a modern housing complex.

I'll tell you a little story, a bit of name dropping here. I used to have a stall at the Christmas Market in Epworth, and a very posh lady bought a small salt and pepper set off me, it was two matching painted china cats. A minute or two later the lady on the next stall said, 'hey, look, it's Lesley Garrett over there, the opera singer, she lives here.' I was dead chuffed, Miss Garrett was my posh customer.

Time to leave Epworth, past the Old Rectory, down a minor road, and across the fields towards the River Trent and Owston Ferry. This is the rather grand entrance to St Martins Church.

The church is down a long driveway.

It looks like they have run out of space for graves in the main churchyard, and are now using this plot of land next to it.

There is an old iron boot scraper near the front door. Now you see it.....

now you don't. North Lincs elf and safety gone mad. I had to move the cone out of the way to take the church shot, it was then that I found what it was covering up. Barmy.

Next it was across the fields to East Lound, then turn right back to Epworth. I was gobsmacked when I was walking down a track around the edge of a field. A big flashy BMW was coming towards me. I wondered where it was going to go when the track ended. The next minute it set off across a ploughed field. I thought what the heck are they doing. I stopped to put my jacket on as it had started spitting with rain, and turned round to see the car still in the field but coming towards me. As I stepped aside to let it pass, I saw two middle aged blokes in it, ha ha, it's just boys and their toys.

Nearly forgot, about the photograph competition, with no prizes. Felt tip pens. Slinky's. Not phone cords, but electrical curly leads, I used to make headphones for metal detectors with them. And the blue things are disposable hairnets, the type they use in food factories. They come in a strip and you pull them open.

A bit of kitty news. I called in to see Sue on the way home, we have two new black kittens. The police had taken them off two boys from a travelling campsite, they were sending them down a slide on a kids playground. The lads said they had found them. Anyway, they are safe with us now.

Thursday, 11 August 2011

Rollin around crying

I was in town this afternoon and these made me smile, seen in Home Bargains. Who remembers the agonies of sleeping in plastic hair rollers? I certainly do. It was sheer torture, waking up every hour to turn over, trying to ignore the fact that the plastic pins were sticking in my head. And for what? Just so I could go to work the next morning looking glammed up, because I was trying to catch a certain gorgeous lads eye.

Sometimes I washed my hair and put rollers in as soon as I came home from work, and if a certain young man came to visit it was panic stations as I ran upstairs and told mum not to let him in untill I was ready. Quickly tearing them out and combing through before I showed my face downstairs.

Then I got brazen and went to work wearing my rollers, as did other girls. We hid them under our hairnets. No not Ena Sharples type hairnets, those frothy white ones that they wear in a food factory. To do this was a sign that you were going out on a date that night, something to brag about. Dont tell anyone but sometimes I didn't have a date, I just didn't want to be the odd one out, ha ha.

So, it looks like they are making a comeback, maybe because Katie Price has been photographed wearing hers outdoors, and we all know that that thousands of little girls aspire to be like Katie. Perhaps they might become the new fashion accessory and we will start seeing teenagers wearing them in the High Street on a Saturday afternoon, because they have a date that night. You won't catch me sticking pins in my head again, ha ha.

I popped into TJ Hughes, our store is soon to be closing down. There is still a bit of stock for sale, but not much. I found a Regatta bodywarmer which will be great for walking, and a black sweatshirt, 40% off so a good price. It's a shame it's closing, I have bought the odd one or two items there, they always have stuff at reasonable prices. It seems a bit strange that we have had a new BHS and Primark open recently, yet a perfectly good shop gets closed down, perhaps they haven't been running the business very well.

I had a look in the newspaper, in WH Smith's, and there is my mush and the article. Of course I had to buy a copy. My goodness I look even worse on paper. All my wrinkles are showing ;o( Toodle pip.

Vanishing photo's

Hi everyone, You will see that a few of my latest photo's have been removed by Photobucket. I mentioned that I was close to my 10GB monthly bandwidth limit, now it seems I have gone over it, as more and more people are looking at my photo's. They have been temporarily disabled. As it is a monthly limit the photo's will be reinstated on the 23rd when the bandwidth usage resets to zero. So now I will start deleting the older photographs which are not on here. I have opened a new Photobucket account so will use this as a temporary measure while I look at other options.

Click on my mush

I am in the paper, ha ha. If you go to
www.thisisscunthorpe.co.uk
the home page of the Scunthorpe Telegraph, you will see my mush on the top right corner of the page. Click on it and it will take you to the story. I must say the photo they have used would not be my choice, Paul took others, but the write up is quite good.

Wednesday, 10 August 2011

No prizes for guessing correctly

I've been amusing myself indoors today, in between dog walks in the rain. Playing with some bits and bobs, and making some artyfarty pics with the camera. What do you think? Can you tell what I used? Sorry, can't afford any prizes ;o(

Not really 'free'

What a flippin pain, I have now received an email from Photobucket saying I am almost up to my free limit. I have 747 photo's on there. When you start with these photo hosting sites there is no mention of any limits untill you have uploaded some photo's. They advertise it as free hosting, suck you in, then when you are hooked they blast you with prices. I think that's all a bit underhanded and misleading. I'm gonna have to think about what to do next, I'm going out.

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

Busy day today

Maybe not quite as bad as the North London riots, but this is the litter I picked up from the front of the church this morning. Yesterday Graham the gardener spent all afternoon mowing the grass, getting it looking tidy for a wedding on Saturday. And our dead from the neck up teenagers did their best to mess it up again.

Yesterday I spent two hours cleaning all around the bench, scraping out all the weeds between the slabs and block paving, trimming the grass, and sweeping all the muck up. This morning we found that the above mentioned teenagers had broken off a piece of tombstone, and thrown it down behind the bench. The stone smashed into three pieces.

It's always the same, whenever we try and tidy things up in the churchyard and make it into a pleasant place to walk through, the youngsters always turn it into a tip again. I'm sure they do it deliberately. Someone thought it might be fun to dump this rucksack.

I spent two hours today cleaning all around the lychgate. We have six steps from the pavement up through the lychgate and the kids hang around here and drop litter all over the place, despite there being a bin next to it. All this area is now clean and I have moved the bin to it's proper place next to the pub, after the kids decided it would be fun to move it. Lets see what it looks like in the morning. I can see that I will have to check it every morning this week just to make sure it is tidy for the wedding.

I seem to have been busy all day today. This afternoon I went round to my neighbours back garden, to prune and trim my hedge on his side. He is getting on in years and although he does all his own gardening, I feel it only fair that I help him out by cutting the hedge. I dont think he would be very stable on a pair of step ladders reaching out with a pair of shears.

I've had my photograph taken today for the Scunthorpe Telegraph, they are doing a story about my long walk. I asked Paul the photographer if his job is safe, as the paper is changing from a daily to a weekly. He said he has been made redundant and finishes on Friday. I feel ever so sorry for him, he has taken my photo several times before and he is such a nice guy. He has a family to provide for, I hope he finds something else to do. He talked about retraining, maybe a plumbers course. It must be horrible to lose your job after fourteen years with the same company.

Remember Rocky, the little dog who lives up the road, who never gets taken out or let out of his garden? I saw the daughter take him out last week, but that is a rare occasion. Me and Barry tried our best to get the woman to let Barry keep him, but she insists that he stays where he is. Anyway, I took him for a walk today, my pockets bulging with doggie treats. He looks a bit skinny, so I brought him home and gave him a Felix cat food pouch, he scoffed it down.

Graham's dog, Lady, can't go on long walks any more because she had a mild stroke when she was out with him, so when Graham goes on his days out with the Ramblers I shall look after her. He's off on a local walk tomorrow but can't take her because it will be about 9 or 10 miles. Henry choc lab is coming tomorrow afternoon as well, so they can have a play together. So I'm going to be busy tomorrow as well.

Monday, 8 August 2011

38 years left

We have a mobile library that comes every Monday, and the books I get out are either non fiction, or autobiographies. I don't want to read something that someone has made up, because I think real life is far more interesting. I also want to learn something, so I'll choose a wide variety of subjects. For instance, crafts, vegetarian cookery, computers, travel, psychology, sociology, animals, gardening, films, in fact all kinds of books.

The three that I am reading at the moment are self help books :-
How To Survive Past 55, What science tells us about ageing well, by Deanna Wilson.
The Elephant and the Twig, The art of positive thinking, by Geoff Thompson.
Quantum Wellness, A step by step guide to health and happiness, by Kathy Freston.

Apparently there is a massive industry out there for these type of books, as people are keen to improve the quality of their life. They are almost like Bibles, follow these golden rules and you are guaranteed a life of success and happiness. I quite like that idea, everything you need to know in a book.

I have been reading all about keeping fit for life, putting the sparkle in life, the anti ageing remedy, why diet matters, physical excercise, becoming your own healer, stepping up to the life that is calling you, how to get the energy for the journey, and develop your talent. There's a whole load of advice and information for anyone who wants a long and fulfilled life.

I am so glad I got these books out, because it has confirmed to me that I am doing everything about right, and I therefore expect to live to be 100. Toodle pip :o)

Sunday, 7 August 2011

One for the blokes

It's been a blokey sort of day today. We have a group of people who have restored a ww11 Tank Slipway on the eastern bank of the River Trent. It was built at the beginning of ww11 for secret testing of amphibious craft prior to their use in conflict. The group meet at the bottom pub which is just along the river bank from 'The Tank Ramp'

Today there was a rally of various vehicles from the 1940's, at the pub, including a tank. The group have been working hard to organise the transportation of the last remaining DD Valentine tank from the West Midlands. Several months of fundraising has taken place to pay for it.

I went down there at lunchtime to take a few snaps. The locals came out to support the event.



And here is the tank.

Everyone was having a grand time, trips on the river, bouncy castle for the kids, hog roast, tombola, cake stall, and a few people dressed in 40's costumes.

At 2pm the convoy set off up the hill, through the village and headed for the picnic area which leads onto the ramp. The aim was to put the tank on the ramp. Here it comes.

Round the corner from Darby Road onto Tee Lane, leaving it's mark on the tarmac.

Followed by other vehicles.

If you want information about our Tank Ramp please look at this web site
http://www.burtonstatherheritage.org
Quite an event for our small village. I like these community get togethers.

PS. I'm still struggling with the pics. I can resize in Photobucket but when I copy and paste the link across it does not publish in blogger in it's new size. I have resized all these manually.

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