Thin ice

We are looking after our neighbour's dog Kiera, for a couple of days, so taking her out for walks has meant that I've been getting rather more excercise than is normal for me.

As if the novelty of being dragged about by an enthusiastic springer spaniel wasn't enough, the fact that we've had a pretty good covering of snow has made it even more entertaining. For a dog, even the most boring looking bit of hedgerow seems to take on added sniff-worthiness when it's smothered in snow, giving all the regular routes added value.

Most of our walks include bits of canal towpath, but as we've been having temperatures of ten below zero whole sections of the canal are frozen over. Narrow boats are ice-locked at their moorings and the ducks are skating about on the surface as they compete for scraps of bread. The only place where the water remains unfrozen is beneath the bridges and this where most of the ducks congregate when they've had enough of people laughing at them as they slither helplessly about on the treacherous surface of the ice.

Spaniels are typically keen to involve themselves with water, not to mention ducks, and Kiera is no exception to this rule, but there is no way that I'm going to allow her off the lead in these conditions. If you think that this is a bit unsporting, consider this.

A few years ago, a friend of ours was walking his dog along the towpath in similar icy conditions to those that we have at the moment. His dog was off the lead and had run onto the ice to harass the ducks. The ducks took a dim view of this and headed for the open patch of water near a bridge, so the dog followed. When the dog neared the clear patch of water, the progressively thinning ice broke under his weight.
The dog was unable to clamber up through the hole and vanished beneath the frozen surface.
Our friend tried to rescue the dog by breaking the ice, but by the time he had waded into the canal, located the unlucky creature and pulled him from the water, the dog was dead.

I was considering this unhappy tale as we strolled along the path, because on the loose snow lying on the ice covered canal were footprints where people had been walking.

The footprints were of an adult and a small child...

Let's try not to get caught out...

Back in the early days of this blog, I posted about a particularly memorable occasion, when Blight-of-my-life and I were stranded by snow, on the edge of Dartmoor. As the weather forecast is threatening us with the first snowfall of this winter, it's time to check that my Emergency Kit is all packed and ready for any journeys in bad weather.

Now I don't want to give the impression that I'm some kind of survivalist or apocalypse-watcher, but just taking the trouble to carry a few extra things in your vehicle can make a major impact on your comfort and wellbeing if you are unlucky enough to get caught out by freak weather or some other transport disfunction.

The occasions when I have been least well prepared for being stranded have always been when it was cold, so here's what I try to ensure that I've got with me when I'm driving during the winter.

Extra Clothing: The Land Rover heater is notoriously feeble, so I tend to wrap up warm for normal driving, let alone when conditions are at their worst. To supplement this, I carry a spare long-sleeved thermal vest and thermal "long-johns", woolly hat, gloves, spare fleece and a water-proof cagoul. Another wonderful bit of cold weather clothing are salopettes. I wouldn't normally have bought these, as I don't ski, but I picked up a pair of these quilted over-trousers from a charity shop for a couple of quid.

Footwear: The sort of shoes that are comfortable or practical for driving may not be awfully good for trudging about in snow, so I keep my walking boots in the vehicle. If you can find space for a decent pair of wellington boots, they 're also handy if your journey is disrupted by flood water.

Nesting Material: A lot of drivers keep a car-rug or blanket in their vehicle, but I prefer to carry a sleeping bag. If you can't get home and have to sleep in the car or camped on some good samaritan's floor, a decent sleeping bag can make life much more bearable.

Food & Drink: Although it is recommended that you should keep a few energy snacks in your vehicle; dried fruit, nuts or similar, I usually don't carry these. The thing that will really cheer you up if you're stranded in the cold and/or darkness, is a hot drink. Just the act of brewing up will raise your morale, so I carry a small camping stove, methylated spirit fuel and matches. I keep a few tea-bags in a zip-loc bag, a sachet of instant hot-chocolate drink and I also try to pack a tin of soup.
Whatever you choose to drink, don't forget to take something to drink out of and keep a plastic bottle of fresh water in the car; (It's difficult to make tea without water)

Warning: It's a very bad idea to use a camping stove inside a vehicle. They are intended for outdoor use only. If the possibility of accidentally setting fire to your car isn't enough to discourage you, bear in mind that your stove will produce carbon monoxide and this can kill you.

Other Stuff: Rules for what you must carry in your vehicle vary from country to country, but even if it isn't compulsory for you to carry a First Aid Kit, a decent flashlight, a tow rope and a high visibility jacket, all of these are worth considering.

And finally...
Don't forget to keep some toilet paper in your vehicle, sealed in a polythene bag to keep it dry. If you ever need this and you haven't got any, you are heading for misery.
I'll not elaborate, just trust me on this.

 

A sudden change of plan

I was intending to have a bit of a rant about some of the mean-spirited behaviour that I've seen during the recent snowy conditions.

You know the sort of thing.

People clearing the snow from their drive and piling it onto the nearest pavement, allowing them to get their car out, but creating a treacherous barrier for the luckless pedestrians.
Or how about the folks in vehicles with 4-wheel drive who don't make allowances for people in 2-wheel drive cars, bullying them into slithering out of the way as they barrel past; as someone who drives a 4-wheel drive vehicle, I find this kind of "I'm alright Jack-ism" particularly disappointing.

Fortunately, I decided that I wasn't going to start banging on about such things and decided to show you this instead.

It's one of the "5 Second Films" which were brought to my attention by Reallyfatbloke.



You can find more like this at "5 Second Films"

A message from our sponsor

It's been nearly a year since I started this blog, so as it's Christmas Day, I'd like to thank everybody who has been following it.

Your comments and support have made it even more fun than I ever expected it would be.


At last! The perfect excuse to not do anything in the garden.

Sometimes you just get lucky

The weather was pretty miserable here yesterday; no sun at all, 10mm of rain and horrible squally winds. When you get a duff day like that, it makes you appreciate it when you have one like today.
OK, it is December in Northern England, so you can't expect miracles, but at about 8:30 this morning, when I was scheduling a run of pulsar observations, the low winter sunlight striking the Lovell Telescope looked lovely.

Then I noticed the vapour-trail...

I'm really glad I had my camera with me.

Cobblers!

Here's something that I hadn't realised that I take for granted.
Shoes that don't let in water.

I've had these "Clarks Active Air" for a few years now and although they took a while to become really comfortable, they've been good shoes; black, shiny, sensibly smart. During hot weather, they haven't become intolerable and during the winter they've been warm, snug and, most importantly, dry.

So today, as I ventured outside to do the meteorology checks, I became aware of a most unwelcome, chilly squishiness under the sole of my left foot. There was that unambiguous wet sock feeling that I'd almost forgotten. It brought back the memories of every leaky wellington boot and accidentally submerged plimsoll that I'd ever had.
Sure enough, when I got back indoors and took off my shoes, the problem was immediately obvious. There was a hole, worn through the sole of one shoe.

Then I noticed something a bit odd (at this point, Horatio "CSI:Miami" Caine would be taking off his sunglasses and looking off to one side with that infuriating expression.)
The left shoe was much more worn than the right. This was a bit puzzling.
At first, I couldn't think of any reason why the wear was so obviously uneven.
I don't walk with a limp, run around in circles or do anything unorthodox with my feet.

Then I realized what had almost certainly caused it.

The clutch pedal on the Land Rover is extraordinarily stiff. It is so much harder to depress than the brake, that I've had to replace the pedal rubber three times since I've owned it. The brake pedal rubber is hardly worn at all. If the clutch pedal is taking that much wear, it's not so surprising that the shoe that operates the pedal also gets a disproportionately high degree of wear.

I guess it's just another variable to factor into the Cost of Ownership Equation for a Land Rover Defender.

Downpour n. a heavy fall of rain

The weather has been rather unusual recently. It's summertime and we're having great dollops of lovely warm sunshine, blue skies and balmy breezes.

Just to compensate , however, we've also had quite a few enormous rain storms; fearsome deluges, occasionally with hailstones, accompanied by salvoes of thunder and lightning. This is much more like the summer weather I'm used to.

As I was driving to work on Saturday for a night shift, it became clear that there'd been some serious rain at Jodrell Bank, even though three miles earlier it had remained stubbornly dry. The driveway from the main entrance was completely flooded in two places so when I got to the Control Room I thought I'd better warn my colleague to take care when he left at midnight.
He wasn't at all surprised that the drive was awash,
"I've never seen so much rain fall in such a short space of time." he said
"Have a look at the rain chart..."

We take meteorology readings every day and although we no longer supply data to The Meteorological Office, the information is used by our astronomers.
We have a Rain Gauge to record the amount of rainfall every day and we also have a Rainfall Chart Recorder that shows when and how quickly the rain falls. That's the handsome, brass instrument in a glass box in the picture.

When I looked at the chart I could see what he meant.

When the Rain Gauge was read the following morning, the total rainfall for the day was 35mm and, as you can see from the picture of the chart, most of it fell in about fifteen minutes. Quite extraordinary.

It's a good job it didn't rain like that at Glastonbury...

"The sun has got his hat on..."

This lovely looking thing is a Campbell Stokes pattern sunshine recorder. It focusses the light (and heat) of the sun through the spherical glass lens, onto a special strip of card. The card is scorched but does not burst into flames, leaving a burnt track that records the duration and intensity of the sunshine.

One of my tasks during a Day Shift, is to collect meteorology data, and changing the sun chart is part of this routine.

I was particularly pleased today, because it was the first Equinoctial Card of the year. There are three different types of card; one for winter when the sun is low in the sky, one for summer when it is at it's highest and an equinoctial card for spring and autumn.

The arrival of the spring, equinoctial card signals the part of the year when the length of days increases at the fastest rate. This always makes me feel good, because it means that soon it'll be summer, and that even Night Shifts will have quite a bit of daylight.

I mentioned this to my Guv'nor today, and he said, "Most people get that feeling when they see the daffodils coming out."

Anyone would think that there's something strange about the sight of scorched cardboard raising ones spirit

.

Told you so...

I was driving to work tonight when I heard on the radio that over a hundred motorists are stuck in their vehicles, on snow-bound roads near Exeter in Devon. I'm ashamed to report that I smiled a smug little smile.

We've had a bit of snow here over the last few days, but either we have got off much more lightly than other parts of the country, or they've just over-reacted about how bad it is. In spite of this, I've taken the usual precautions of putting extra, cold-weather clothing, a sleeping bag, bottled water, food and my faithful Trangia camping stove in the back of 'The Tractor'.

When I was on the 'phone, chatting to one of my brothers a couple of days ago, I'd asked him if he'd put any emergency gear in his car. He admitted that he hadn't, but doubted whether it would be necessary, as he couldn't remember any serious snow falls in his neck of the woods since he moved to Devon. Yes, that's right, Devon. He lives within 30 miles of Exeter.
"What d'you mean? 'it doesn't really snow around here'. ", I said, " I spent three days stuck in the snow down there in 1980. It's not something I'd care to repeat."
"Oh yes,", he replied "so you did. That was on Dartmoor though.",
"Well, the edge of Dartmoor. But it's not so far away, and you never know when you're going to get caught out."

We had been royally caught out as it happens.
I was living in Devon at the end of 1978, and although Blight-of-my-life was living and working near Manchester at the time, she had driven down to stay for the New Year festivities. We'd been to a wedding reception with a couple of her old college friends during the afternoon of 30th December.
Quite why we decided to go to the pub, instead of heading straight home, I can't remember, but I do remember that it was already snowing a bit as we drove there.
When we all came out of the pub, it was obvious that we'd miscalculated. Several inches had fallen, and settled very convincingly. Snow was still falling, the temperature was way down and there was a biting wind too.
We piled into Blight's Datsun, and she set off. We probably got about halfway back to our friend's cottage before the conditions finally beat us. We were balked on a hill by another car, mired in more than a foot of drifting snow. We abandoned the car and finished the journey on foot. It was fearfully cold, and we had all the wrong clothes. We were all still dressed for a wedding reception, and apart from a couple of extra jackets that were in the car, we were hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with sub-zero temperatures and over a mile of knee-deep snow.
When we finally made it to the cottage, I had the full Ranulph Fiennes ice-beard and matching eye-brows. Just how close to hypothermia we were, I don't know, but it was certainly much too close for comfort.
We were stuck at the cottage for several days. The temperature dropped to minus 17 degrees; so cold that the central heating oil froze. We had to go out foraging for firewood, and the metal handle of the bow-saw froze to the skin of my hand.
We finally made it off the moor , and into the nearest town on about January 2nd.
I won't forget that New Year in a hurry.

So if my brother is unfortunate enough to have been one of the motorists stranded on Telegraph Hill. . .