Summer 2018

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The Meteorological Summer arrived on 1st June as usual and as if by magic the weather stayed hot.

The photo above is the statue on Cheltenham promenade of Dr Edward Adrian Wilson BA, MB (Cantab.), FZS, a famous son of the town by virtue of being a member of both Captain Robert Scott's Antarctic expeditions. He was chief of the scientific staff, artist and zoologist of the British Antarctic Expedition, born in Montpellier and educated at Cheltenham college.

On the 17th January 1912, Scott and his party reached the South Pole only to discover that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it although they were the first British explorers to get there.

During the return journey, two of the party, Laurance Oates and Edgar Evans, fell ill and died; around 29th March 1912, trapped by a blizzard, Henry Bowers, Wilson and Scott died in their tent only 11 miles from their food depot.

A search party found their three bodies in November 1912 and erected a cairn over the tent.

The statue was unveiled by the former president of the Royal Geographical Society, Sir Clements Markham, in July 1914.

The second photo above is of another famous Cheltenham landmark, the Queens Hotel at the top of the Promenade.

The hotel was built on the site of the old Sherborne Spa in 1838 and boasts many famous visitors including Edward VII, Elgar, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Just in front of it, a construction that looks like the entrance to an undergound public toilet, is actually a memorial to those who died in the Crimean War and as such is quite rare. It orignally had a cannon on top taken from Sebastopol in 1856 which was removed to provide metal for armaments during WWII.

During the rewrite of the code for this new layout I used CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) code much more and was struck by how much things have moved on since I first set up this web site and in particular how much faster it is than using javascript. In particular the menuing system, which is currently written in javascript, has become very extensive and on old machines, paticularly android tablets, seems to take an age to load. I will therefore be working on some more radical redesign in the future.

We were watching a TV documentary the other night about a soldiers return to Iraq where he visited the underground remains of Ninevah around Mosul which date from 6000BC. Isis, the terrorist group, destroyed much of what remained above ground, but I digress. The mention of Ninevah reminded me of a poem by John Masefield called Cargoes which begins: Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir. It was set to music by Martin Shaw.

I couldn't remember the rest of the poem so I googled that line and found it straight away. I remember when we first bought Harmonie and it was difficult to get on the internet how frustrated I would get not being able to source quick answers to loss of memory or barge problems. We now take such things for granted but there are many other poems that I learnt in childhood which I can't remember but which are lurking on the net so another little project will be a new series of web pages containing my favourite poems.

The previous line of thought started me thinking about how computers have revolutionised communications in the past 40 years and to recollect how they have changed my life.

My first job as a seagoing cadet engineer was my first experience with computer technology and it was not in the engine room but on the bridge in the form of the Decca Navigator.

This was the predecessor of the modern GPS system in use today but as it used land based radio beacons to plot position it was of limited use deep sea. So when we are in the middle of the Pacific our clever deck officers gathered on the bridge every day at noon with their sextants to record the inclination of the sun, one of the few useful things they did!

If we arrived at the next port at the time predicted there would be great celebration!

Communication deep sea was pretty primitive and consisted of a radio officer employed by the Marconi company who sat in a cabin surrounded by huge electronic cabinets and a morse code key. He could speak to other shore stations and passing ships within range using VHF radio telephone but most of the time it was "dot.dot.dot".

With modern satellite technology you can now surf the net from anywhere and specialist engineers are carried on board to look after computerised electronic remote control systems and other electronic equipment. Main propulsion engine speed and direction was conveyed by mechanical telegraphs and there was no remote control from the bridge. Air conditioned engine control rooms are now the norm but in my day we sweated.

I came ashore in the early 60's and was employed as an estimating engineer with Lister Blackstone Marine in Dursley, Gloucestershire.

Most enquiries came by snail mail but increasingly the telex and eventually the fax machines were used. Computers were only used for accounts and were big mainframes kept in air conditioned rooms looked after by computer technicians which only large companies could afford.

Having decided what equipment we could offer to meet a specification we would make the necassary calculations to determine the equpment required, obtain quotations from suppliers if necessary, price it up and record a letter, specification and quotation into a dictaphone machine which a typist would translate into a hard copy and was usually full of mistakes. I once recorded a load of nonsense like "elastic" generators instead of "electric" and it came back almost word perfect!

I was eventually appointed as the company's sales engineer for Scotland. In fact my area covered everything North of the River Tees to Shetland, then after four years I was banished to Australia. Still no computers and we communicated by telex with the engine companies in the UK.

I returned to the UK in 1974 to start a new sales and service company for Ulstein, a Norwegian shipbuilder and marine engineer. The company manufactured controllable pitch propellers, gearboxes and transverse thrusters. We were very successful very quickly and soon built a factory to manufacture the bigger units in the range.

Mini-computers had arrived on the scene by this time and we had grown large enough to afford one. I remember we purchased our first computer from Wang. It came with a 10Mb Winchester disk drive the size of a large suitcase, a daisywheel printer that was so noisy it had to be put in a soundproof box and a Wang 2200 mini-computer with accounting software from Kerridge Computer Company in Berkshire. The whole package cost us £10,000 and we used to stand round the printer marvelling at its 40 characters per second as it printed out our invoices.

Later we upgraded to their bigger VS system and had terminals on every desk but then along came the IBM PC and we upgraded to a UNIX box. It killed poor old Wang who were ahead of their time.

Kerridge developed software to read telex input which we then distributed to the individual terminals so we had one of the first crude internal email systems.

The sales process was much the same as I was doing at Listers. The shipyards sent us details of the ship they were quoting for and we then had to carry out long complex calculations to determine the type of gearbox, the size of propeller shafting and the propeller itself that would satisfy the various classification societies like Lloyds or Bureau Veritas.

Then we would refer to our many price lists to build up a price that could be used in a quotation, the total process taking the best part of a days work depending on the complexity. I reckoned this repetitive task could be done by computer and employed Keith, a mate of mine and a professional programmer who had been made redundant by ICL, to write the software.

Keith beavered away for about six weeks keying in all the price lists into data files then coding all my formulas and the if/else statements I wanted into the Wang Basic progamming language until we had a working program. Now a shipbuilder could call us with a specification and we could key this in on our terminals while he was on the phone and give him an instant quote. But there are always bugs in any new program and that proved to be the case so Keith was still required but then, sadly, he died suddenly in his sleep. Keith was in heaven and I was in the poo!

Wang computers had monitors with green text on a black background. Keying rubbish data in meant rubbish data out or the program might crash. When a program crashed a line of code would appear on the monitor with a flashing green arrow at the point it crashed. I had no alternative but to learn how to program in Wang Basic and spent many 'happy' hours fixing the bugs each time the results were rubbish or the program crashed. Once a bug was resolved I would look to the heavens and curse my old friend Keith for his devious nature!

Once IBM PC's came along we linked them into our UNIX box and ran CADCAM programs so we could design components which could then be downloaded onto CNC machine tools without producing a paper drawing.

The photo above shows Superintendant Marine Engineer, Bob Brand, posing prior to launch with some CP propellers we manufactured in Scotland for his company Caledonian Macbrayne.

Merchant shipyards in Britain were closing every day and I persuaded our Norwegian masters to let us take sales reponsibility for the Benelux countries where we were not selling anything much despite them building ships the right size for our range of equipment. By this time our parent company had aquired most of the Norwegian marine equipment companies including Bergen diesel engines, Norwinch deck machinery and numerous other organisations.

Once again we were quickly successful and obtained the largest equipment order in the groups history with four ships sets of engines, gearboxes, propellers, winches, deck cranes, thrusters, steering gear and compressors. To cut a long story short the parent company then took the Benelux countries back into their own sales area and a group of us mounted a management buy-out which failed so I left the company with a brass handshake (the Norwegians are even meaner than the Scots so a golden handshake was out of the question despite 16 years loyal service).

The company was eventually bought by Vickers who in turn were then bought by Rolls Royce and the products we manufactured are still in production at the Scottish factory.

After a total of 16 years working for Ulstein we headed South with our ill gotten gains and bought a general store in South Petherton back in my home county of Somerset turning it into a specialist deli.

This was in the early 90's and the Web was just beginning to get commercial. I teamed up with a new software company who were developing on-line shopping software in javascript and Provender Delicatessen went from strength to strength sending our product all over the world.

By 2005 we found someone to buy the business and retired although unfortunately they leased the shop to people who had no interest in the web site and closed it down. Provender has continued as a shop for the last 13 years but at the time of writing it is about to close and its future uncertain. If they had kept the website going they would be financially secure by now as it accounted for a good 40% of turnover in 2005 since when on-line shopping has boomed.

If you bothered to click on the above you will have read a little of my life before Harmonie. Our life since has seen us travel extensively but since living ashore we have missed the social life we had when we were barging. It is quite difficult at our age to find new friendships as most in our age group already have an established circle of friends. We are still in contact with friends in Scotland, Somerset and France plus barging friends in Worthing and Bristol where we are house and dog sitting Tilly the Wonder Dog (TTWD) while the owners are on holiday.

We will have a ready made circle of friends and relations when we move to New Zealand but we will miss many here and hope they might come out and see us. My residency visa is proceeding slowly and we hope it will be approved in the next couple of months. We aim to do a big tour around to farewell everyone beginning in October.

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I expect you were totally absorbed by all that Geeky stuff above and as you can see I have been hard at work on the puter for the last few days. My next task is to figure out how to make a screen show in CSS instead of javascript as the new menu still does not appear over it and I will try to convert all the old pages to the new format which is a mammoth task. The new menu does not display well on a mobile due to its extensive levels and needs a rewrite with a menu just for mobiles.

We are currently looking after Tilly the Wonder Dog (TTWD) just North of Brissle and the weather is Gert Lush! Tilly has been taking us out walking twice a day and, being a wonder dog, she has a built-in satnav in case we get lost round 'yer.

We have also been further afield. Down to Litton in Somerset which is in the Chew valley and closer to home, Leigh Woods which is on the Southern side of the Avon Gorge. Both walks are described below.

Map of the Litton walk above.

We parked in the Litton pub car park which had been done up which meant that a pint and a half of cider was in excess of six quid. It was the day of the village fete so the main street was closed as we fought though the crowds to find our footpath. The first part was over several stiles and on two of them I had to lift TTWD over so unless you are dogless you should use back lane as we did on out return.

Once you reach the lane turn right and in a few yards there is a kissing gate to enter Bristol Waterworks land which is your return route but a few yards further on is another gate into a field. Going anticlockwise is a good idea to get the climb over first. The climb up over Shortwood Common was hot and sweaty but worse were the horse flies and we were both well bitten. It was good to get the climb over first as it was all downhill after.

You eventually meet the dam of the lower reservior, cross it and set off in a clockwise deirection around it. TTWD revelled in the brook that flows from Sherborne Spring. You eventually climb up to the "girt" dam over the upper reservoir, cross it to Peak's Girt Wood and return following the edge of the water back to the lane where you began the cicuit. Back at the Litton pub we enjoyed the expensive glass of cider on our return but it was some designer cider from Weston and wasn't Thatchers which is what cider's sposed to taste like!

Map of the Leigh Woods walk above.

Leigh Woods National Nature Reserve has been in the care of the National Trust since 1909 and is a beautiful area of natural, mainly desciduous, woodland stretching about 1.5 miles along the Avon Gorge.

Our walk took us first to Stokeleigh Camp which is a huge Iron Age fort on the edge of Nightingale Vally which runs into the Gorge and is the course Monarchs Way follows which is is supposedly part of the route King Charles II followed during his escape from Britain after the defeat of his armies at the Battle of Worcester in 1651.

From the gorge edge of the camp we had a lovely view across the Bristol Suspension Bridge to North Somerset and the Mendip Hills. This is excellent dog walking country and a nice place for a picnic. We also came across mountain bike tracks, one named "Yer Tis" and the other harder route called "Gert Lush".

There are so many tracks in the woods that it is very easy to lose your sense of direction unless you really know the place and I found the OS maps on my GPS smart phone invaluable to navigate.

We had Sunday lunch in the garden of the White Hart pub at Littleton Upon Severn then attempted to walk down to the river but took the wrong path and ended up in deep mud so had to turn back. I did not download the OS map to my mobile before we left so I did not have the benefit of GPS as Google Maps does not show footpaths. Lesson learnt!

Every week we need to go back up to Cheltenham to water the plants. On the way we detoured off the motorway to Wotton under Edge. We had been here before walking but found a scenic part of the Cotswold Way which we had not visited and our walk is described below.

We parked our car at Potters Pond car park and headed for the parish church from where the Cotswold Way is clearly signposted.

Our route followed the Way up the valley beside a brook, past some delightful gardens and paved all the way as far as Coombe. Here the Cotswold Way turns right while we continued straight on along a lane up the valley then turning left up a narrow path before emerging in another steep lane.

This lane continued steeply uphill bearing right until it met the main B4058 road. Directly opposite we followed a steep path to a kissing gate on the left just before the top of the escarpment. We were now in open meadowland on the edge of the escarpment on an airy path looking over Wotton and the Severn Valley beyond.

Below you are Strip Lynchets which are the remnants of the earth terraces of ancient field systems. On the top of the next promontory are Pillow Mounds which are the remains of medieval underground warrens which the Anglo-Normans built for breeding rabbits for food. You eventually enter a wood and shortly after turn sharply back left down a very steep path downhill and back into Wotton. A splendid walk full of varied views and interest of about two miles.

Weather here is scorchio at the moment. We had a bit of rain last night and it was a bit blowey and colder this morning when we caught the edge of the storm "Hector". The forecast is to get colder over the weekend then warmer next week.

In order to display better on mobiles I have now rewritten the menu and divided the web site into three sections; Barging, Travels and Living. This page is in the Living section so it has the "Living" menu at the top and should fit mobile screens better.

At the time of writing this latest page and the previous one are rewritten whereas all the other pages still have the original javascript side menu. I will gradually work my way through and rewrite all the old pages. Once complete you will have to navigate via one of these new sections if you want to go to a page in another section.

In practice the Barging section has very few updates or new pages since we sold Harmonie so is more of an archive. The Travels section is only updated with a new page each time we travel abroad and I will put a link to any new pages on the latest update page.

We drove down to the Mendips and walked around Ebbor Gorge and details of our walk are below. We then met up with the Hockeys for lunch at the Ring o'Bells pub in Wookey. This is a pub recommended by our friends the Palmers who live nearby and in fact their grandaughter Daasha is working there at the moment but was not on duty when we were there. It was a shame we didn't see her as it was way back in 2010 when last saw her when she was a guest on Harmonie cruising in Holland.

I had not visited Ebbor Gorge since my caving days. We parked at the National Trust car park and set off up the hill. The path over the top of the hill marked on the OS map has been re-routed North of the NT boundary. Added to that the farmers had blocked off styles to keep lambs in but that meant we had to lift TTWD over several until we headed downhill again into Ebbor Gorge and met up with the West Mendip Way.

This is another long distance walk running 30 miles from Uphill on the Bristol Channel to Wells. We did a chunk of it a few years ago from Crooks Peak East. We followed it to the bottom of the Gorge and then set off back up to the car park which is a bit of a slog.

After lunch we all went back up to Deerleap on Mendip as the Hoks had never been there before and where you have a splendid view over the Somerset levels. There is a photo of everyone with TTWD in the slideshow above.

Any pub which Mike Palmer drinks in has to serve good beer and Chris reckoned the Butcombe was in good nick as were the enormous sandwiches served with proper fresh bread, real chips and a side salad.

I have now completed the re-write of this page and have part completed several others. The slideshows are coded using a combination of HTML, CSS and JS but the code is quite small so should load quicker on tablets and older slower machines. You will however need a modern up to date browser to see them whatever the machine. The page displays on a mobile quite well if you rescale it to suit but the slideshows leave a large chunk of space below the image on a mobile which I have yet to resolve.

Two things I have been unable to resolve despite hours of experimentation is the menu disappearing behind the slide show and stopping the slide show when you hover the cursor over an image. Still work in progress.

Our next walking expedition was to Castle Combe in Wiltshire which is only about 20 miles away and on our next trip up to Cheltenham we again detoured, this time to Dursley for a circuit of Stinchcombe Hill. Both walks are described in detail below.

We parked at the big top Castle Combe carpark and walked down the road towards the village. The path we wanted was on the left and was well camouflaged by bushes so the GPS of the OS mobile map was needed to locate it exactly. Once though the bushes the path widened into an ancient road between high banks and led us steeply up the valley side to the top.

From here is was all easy walking as we followed the valley downstream. The path eventually led us to the valley bottom where we met the Macmillan Way. This is yet another long distance path which starts at Banbury and traverses the Cotswolds for 86 miles before finishing in Bath. We last walked on it from Bradford on Avon in 2016.

Further down the valley we turned off right down to the river where there is a bridge across the By Brook and TTWD had her swim. Here we turned back and followed the Macmillan Way back to Castle Combe village where we partook of a glass of Stowford Press cider which did not taste like cider is s'posed to taste like but refreshed the parts never the less. Beware the path marked on the OS map behind Brook House is non-existant and you must use the road.

To avoid the narrow road back to the car park we followed the Macmillan Way out of the village to the top of the hill then turned right along the edge of the golf course then left just before it meets the road. You end up in a housing estate but eventually the main road where you turn right and right again to find the car park.

Stinchcombe hill was a walk we did when we first came ashore for the winter to Bradley Stoke in 2013. It follows a very scenic part of the Cotswold Way along the scarp face of the Cotswolds around the perimeter of a golf course. We parked at the car park at the end of the paved road and follow the path clockwise round the edge of the golf course.

Just before the viewpoint of Drakestone Point there is a stone bench pictured in the slide show below. A brass plaque on the bench reads; "This seat was erected by the inhabitants of Dursley and district to perpetuate the generosity of Sir Stanley Tubbs bart in making this hill and the surrounding woodlands free to the public forever."

I presume "bart" is an abbreviation for Baronet for Sir Stanley was a Baronet, of Wotton under Edge. He was also the High Sheriff of Gloucestershire and a prominent Tory politician and benefactor. He died in 1941 aged 70.

We continued following the Cotswold Way until we came level with the car park again and them cut across a couple of fairways back to the car. We can recommend the Old Spot Inn at the bottom of the hill back in Dursley.

With the various rugby union test series against Southern hemisphere sides our players can take a well earned summer break. The home sides did relatively well with Ireland winning the series against Australia as did Scotland and Wales against Argentina.

England lost their series against South Africa two games to one, winning the final game in Cape Town and bringing to an end a dreadful run of five games lost. You would have to suspect Eddie Jones decision to train at sea level in Durban instead of acclimatising at altitude where both the first games were played despite the so called "sports scientists" saying it makes no difference. In both those first games England started brilliantly then seemed to run out of steam but that didn't happen in Cape Town?

England did have a pretty miserable Six Nations so something has gone wrong somewhere. Bruce Craig the Bath Rugby owner has complained at the number of players returning injured from England training camps which upset Eddie who had to apologise for his remarks. I think Brucie might have a point if training methods deprive England of players through injury and England did look tired.

We had a visit from the Harpers so TTWD made a couple of new friends. We also took her down to Somerset to meet my daughters family and she enjoyed wading through Shurton brook on the way to lunch at the Babbling Brook Pub.

The weather turned uncomfortably hot with temperatures as high as 30℃. We did venture out down to Severn Beach and walked along the Severn Way plus another one along the same long distance path from Oldbury-on-Severn as far as Oldbury Nuclear Power Station then back across the fields. On our way back we stopped off at Thornbury for coffee which is a delightful market town full of flowers but Peter and Jan will be back from their Canadian exploits tomorrow and TTWD will miss us.

I've cracked the slide show problem of pausing when you put your cursor or mouse over or touch an image if it is a touch screen, so in the slide shows above they will stop to enable you to view any image at leisure. Touch outside an image to resume the slide show. The problem of the slide show covering the menu remains and may be impossible to resolve for now. Everything displays properly now on a mobile phone except that the menu stays put at the top of the page.

Sad news from North of the border is that my old friend Brian Melville has died from Motor Neurone Disease. He was spared prolonged suffering as his demise came a comparatively short time after being diagnosed. Brian was an accomplished musician who played and sang with us in our Edinburgh folk group The Ghillies during the late 1960's. Brian could play almost any musical instrument he put his mind to and was a master on the bagpipes so was much in demand at Hogmanay. He was always known as "Brian Brian" because he always said things twice. I once introduced him to someone who asked why he was called Brian Brian and I told him the reason to which Brian Brian replied "no I don't, no I don't". He will be sorely missed.

Having become used to a twice daily walk with TTWD the habit has been hard to break and the weather has continued hot. We have tended to get up high on the Cotswolds where there has been a gentle breeze to cool things down and we have motored to the top to avoid any hard uphill slogs in the heat. We have walked around Leckhampton Hill above and Crickly Hill where the old Beeches are pictured below.

I have now completed all the pages in the Barging section with the new layout and I will eventually convert all the slideshows to the new CSS format which shrinks to fit any size of screen.

My New Zealand residency visa has now been approved in principle although they actually approved it "in principal"! One of my rellies said I "may need to brush up on his yeah/nah, bro, sweet as, fush and chups .. there's got to be a lot more.. I think he can go to ucol for a 101 on this kiwiana.. ?" Having visited NZ many times I thought I was fluent in Kiwiana but going to ucol for a 101 was a new one. I know ucol is the Universal College of Learning but 101 is a mystery.

It reminded me of a trip many years ago when we stopped for lunch somewhere in the NZ countryside and I asked for chips. The girl serving said "we've no chips only widges". I asked my Kiwi wife what "widges" were and she didn't know either. Turned out it was potato wedges. You will not go far wrong if you understand that Kiwi's often pronounce their "e's" as "i's" and vice versa hence "I'll have sex iggs please" and if a girl asks you for sex she might mean six!

Some of Sue's ancestors came originally from Lincolnshire so it has been on our bucket list to visit for some time. We thought we should tick it off before we depart these shores and so booked a hotel, basing ourselves in the city of Lincoln for three nights.

On the way there we called in at Stamford which is just over the Lincolnshire border from Rutland and a very handsome town indeed. I was a frequent visitor here during the time I worked for Lister Blackstone Marine as it was the home of Blackstone and Company where I was schooled in their engines and later brought prospective clients. Lister Blackstone was a well established name in the world of diesel engines but you were always put in your place if you dare mention Listers in Stamford as these were Blackstone engines, not Listers who manufactured much smaller less powerful engines.

Blackstone & Co were once the largest employer in Stamford and was founded in 1837 to manufacture Oil Engines and agricultural implements. The factory closed in 2002, a casualty of Britain's membership of the EEC when its markets were exposed to more efficient German and Japanese manufacturers.

The local librarian explained that there is a band of Jurassic limestone that stretches from the Dorset coast up through the Cotswolds and into Lincolnshire which is why towns and villages along the route so resemble each other.

We chose the Charlotte House Hotel in Lincoln which is located right next to the castle in a place called The Lawns. It used to be the nurses quarters adjacent to the lunatic asylum so we were in the right place!

The cathedral was also a few minutes walk away so we were walking distance from the city sights and began by visiting the castle. You can buy a combined ticket for the castle and cathedral which saves you 20% and is concessionary for old people like us.

Lincoln was founded as a Roman garrison town in the latter part of the 1st century. Yer Romains called it Lindum Colonia and it is easy to see how this was abbreviated eventually to Lincoln. Yer Romains left in the fourth century and the town fell into decline until the Vikings began raping and pillaging a few centuries later, liked it so much they decided to stay.

The Danes held sway until Bill the Conk came over in 1066 and two years later he gave orders to build a castle here. In 1072, Bills mate, a Benedictine monk called Remigius de Fécamp, laid the foundations of the cathedral. He was given the Bishopric of Dorchester, the largest diocese in England, as a reward for his help in the invasion and Remigius decided to move his episcopal seat to Lincoln in the very North of a Bishopric which then extended from the Thames to the Humber.

The cathedral has been damaged by fire and earthquake since its first construction and its central tower had a wooden spire making it the highest building in the world for some years before it was blown down in a storm. Our cathedral guide gave us a little history of Eleanor of Castile who died near Lincoln which we both found interesting.

Eleanor of Castile was married in 1254 to the future King Edward 1st of England as part of a deal to transfer ownership of lands in Gascony. At the time Eleanor would have been 11 or 12 years old while Edward about the same age. Despite this arranged marriage it became a love match once they were old enough to live together. Edward adored his wife and she travelled with him during his many battles and crusades, indeed they managed to procreate 16 children during their marriage until her death near Lincoln in 1290 aged 49 years and after 36 years of marriage.

Eleanor's organs were removed and buried in Lincoln Cathedral while her body was embalmed and taken to Westminster Abbey. It took 12 days to make the journey and at each place they rested Edward had an elaborate stone cross placed in memory known as "Eleanor crosses", the final one being Charing Cross. Her heart was placed in a Dominican priory at Blackfriars and her body in Westminster Abbey with a duplicate tomb in Lincoln.

Our cathedral guide also showed us a stained glass window in memory of George Boole which is devoted to the subject of learning.

George, the son of a shoemaker, was a mathematician who was born in Lincoln in 1815 and was largely self taught. In 1847 Boole publish a pamphlet called "The Mathematical Analysis of Logic" in which he described a new form of mathematical logic.

We usually count using decimals represented by digits from 1 to 9 but another way to count is by using only the binary digits 1 and 0. To represent decimal numbers in binary form (meaning only two parts), you simply arrange 1 and 0 in a unique way for each number using eight digits or bits.

Boole proposed to use 1 and 0 as true and/or false values. This became known as Boolean logic or algebra. Computers work by using two different voltages to represent true or false values and therefore do not have a problem with translating binary values to decimal numbers unlike us. Without Boolean logic computers would not work so George Boole was a bit clever!

Another famous son of Lincolnshire was Alfred Lord Tennyson who was born in Sommersby in 1809 and whose statue can be seen above. Tennyson was the poet laureate for many years and perhaps is best known for his poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade".

Few children of my age did not learn this classic poem but there are many lines from his poems which we often use without realising who wrote them.

For example; "Theirs [is] but to do and die" from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all," from "In Memoriam". Then there is "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. from "Ulysses".

We thought that Lincoln is looking a bit mucky. Dirty pavements stained with the remnants of a boozy night out which look as though they are never swept or cleaned. We spoke to some people at breakfast who used to live here who had the same impression. The city council would be well advised to spend a bit on cleaning if they wish to retain the tourist trade.

Just across the road was a Batemans pub, The Victoria. Now Batemans beer is one of my favourites and my pint was in prime condition as was Sue's Bombay Sapphire gin and Fever Tree tonic, however we nearly fell over at the price of over £9! More like London prices we thought. That impression extended to a meal at a Chinese restaurant where we paid £5.80 for a bottle of Highland Spring sparkling mineral water which costs 87p in our local Morrisons!

The castle is more than just a castle and has a court house and Victorian prison within its walls. In the basement of the prison is one of four surviving copies of the Magna Carta sealed by King John in 1215 and originally kept in the Cathedral. The Magna Carta guarantees the rights of the individual regardless of rank and is regarded as the foundation of modern democratic principles. Perhaps todays British Establishment and especially the European Union should have a read!

The photo above is of the prison chapel where the prisoners were each locked in wooden stalls for the service. Prisoners were kept apart for the duration of their sentence until the prison became overcrowded and was criticised for having up to three prisoners per cell. It seems that nothing has changed much. Incidentally the prisoners are dummy's and Sue is standing at the back.

We walked around the castle battlements and you are given an audio guide which provides a potted history of the city as you walk round.

Bill the Conk's first castle was built on an artificial earth mound called a Mott. Being originally an important Roman town, the Fosseway started here which ran down to Leicester and on down to the South Coast. There was also the River Witham which connected with the Trent and eventually The Wash so navigation was possible to the North Sea.

Beneath the Cobb Hall tower is The Strugglers pub. This is where people used to gather to watch 38 public executions between 1817 and 1859 when they ceased. The landlord of The Strugglers believed much of the ground below the castle walls belonged to him so he began to dig away the earth to create useable land making the walls unstable. Despite repeated imprisonment in the Castle and in London he refused to stop digging and was eventually placed in the nearby lunatic asylum that is now our hotel!

We visited Gosburton where Sue's Great Great Grandmother is buried. Sarah Arliss died of TB and exhaustion in 1872 aged 39 when her only child, also called Sarah was only 5 years old. We think she left England with her father Charles soon after. We know she is buried here as the Lincoln archives show it but were unable to locate any grave and the cemetery was overgrown.

We next paid a visit to Boston where Charles came from and his father was a seaman. Boston was full of people speaking a foreign language and Sue often felt distinctly ill at ease asking me to cross the road to avoid a couple of blokes who she thought drunk. Boston's crowning glory however is its Stump. St Botolphs Church known as the Boston Stump is one of the finest parish churches in all England. The church tower is 83 metres high and is a landmark from land and sea. Inside it is more like a cathedral than a parish church.

We continued to Sibsey and met John Fixter in St Margaret's parish church who said he was babtised and married in the church and often came here. We told him that Sue's Great Great Grandmother was also married there but he did not know any Arliss family. He gave us the name of someone who might have further information at East Kirkby where, according to the census, Charles and Sarah both worked in a Free Boys School. We surmised that the manor at Revesby might have once been that school but could find no evidence.

We continued over the Lincolnshire Wolds to Louth then back to Lincoln via Market Raisen which Sue thought might be nice as it has a pretty name but is wasn't! In fact we were generally unimpressed with the scenery in the wolds as it is supposed to be an area of outstanding natural beauty. It was pleasant enough farm land but nothing much outstanding, natural or beautiful other than the churches.

Vision Express

Just over a year ago I had an eye test at Specsavers and they told me I had a stigmatism in one eye. My new distance glasses affected my peripheral vision to the extent that I saw double when I looked right but I continued to persevere and hope my brain would get used to them. Finally I experience double vision driving at night on the motorway and drove back once from Bristol with one eye closed.

Back I went to Specsavers who tested the lenses to make sure the prescription was correct and it was. They then said that the horizontal distance between each lens was incorrect and gave me new glasses. This resulted in some improvement but the same problem remained and I suspected the astigmatism correction was incorrect. I decided to try Vision Express as Julie Walters reckoned they were the best!!

I told the optician of the problems I was having and suggested the astigmatism correction may be at fault. She agreed that it could be and she made a considerable change in the prescription but she also tested me with different lenses looking at vertical and horizontal lines and found another problem was my eyes were not working together very well so included a prismatic correction of 0.5 prism diopter in each eye. I now have no problem with double vision.

The new web site design has now been completed for both the Barging and Living sections. The last job is the Travel section and then I will get to work on the slideshows. The rewrite has exposed conflicts between CSS and HTML codes which have required work arounds and web site design remains an inexact science.

Cave Rescue

I have watched the recent cave rescue in Thailand with some interest.

As an ex-caver myself I observe that the media remain ignorant of the way cave rescue works. Most cavers will have participated in rescues from caves as it is usually cavers who rescue cavers. The only difference this time is that a group of non-cavers were let into a cave system by an irresponsible individual who happened to be their football coach.

I was an instructor in the Somerset Scout Caving Group which was formed because cavers were fed up with pulling scouts out of Mendip caves where their irresponsible Scout Masters had taken them. After its formation rescues of Scout Groups virtually ceased.

Those who participate in cave rescue are not brave or heroes but are usually just helping out their mates who are in difficulty. They are doing something they do most weekends as a hobby and are probably safer than on a normal caving trip due to the large number of people in the cave during a rescue call out.

Cave divers are cavers on steroids. When I was caving the fatality rate in the Cave Diving Group was about 10%

So they are not brave either just mad as hatters for caving underwater!! Follow this link to The Cotham Cave Club Hymn and UBSS hyms which describe cave divers accurately!

The heat wave continues and so does this story to another page.