Tag Archives: wind farm

Sunday 12th June 2011 – WE’VE DONE IT NOW!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Terry and I have been hunting for the last couple of years for a decent mini-digger. We’ve made all kinds of enquiries but the end result always was that we could never find anything that we wanted.

In the end we decided that we would have to pay more than we wanted and buy something newer, but that never worked either.

That is, until today.

I went to Bacup to see a digger, a 2007 Takeuchi and while it was dearer than we were ever expecting to pay, in the end we’ve bitten the bullet and gone for it, faute de mieux – in the absence of anything better.

The cash will be transferred over on Monday and I’m picking it up on Wednesday night after I collect my new trailer.

Did I tell you about that?

caliburn overnight parking bacup burnley lancashire ukAnd so last night after dropping off Caroline I had a pleasant drive around the back of Manchester, Rawtenstall, Rossendale and all of that.

I found a nice quiet lay-by in the pitch-dark somewhere up on the moors between Burnley and Bacup and settled down for a nice, quiet sleep.

And a nice quiet sleep it was too. I didn’t feel a thing.

caliburn overnight parking bacup burnley lancashire uk wind farmPretty windswept it was too up on this hilltop, as I was to discover when I finally awoke.

And that’s hardly surprising, given the glorious view. That was Burnley down there in the valley on the previous photo and on this photo, there’s a wind farm for you to admire.

So a nice drive on into Bacup where I met this digger guy, who took me to see it in Accrington where it was digging out someone’s footings.

Once I’d recovered from the shock of committing myself to spending all of this money, I went to Preston – or rather, the Tickled Trout in Salmesbury – to see Sandra.

We had a really good chat about one thing and another and It’s nice to learn that in OUSA – the Open University Students Association – things are carrying on just as I left them.

Chaos, panic, disorder – it’s all still going on.

This evening I’m on the M1 at Tibshelf Services. I’m moving off in a minute to find somewhere to bed down for the night as I need to be in Ilkeston early in the morning.

-1

Wednesday 8th June 2011 – HAVING LEFT DAVE’S …

alston moor nenthead cumbria ul… last night at … errr … 05:30 this morning in broad daylight, I found a suitable place to park up.

We’re on top on a mountain on the Alston Moor somewhere not too far away from Nenthead.

And when I finally awoke … errr … this afternoon, I had some fun with some locals who were admiring Caliburn’s signwriting with consternation.
“Good place for a dozen wind turbines, isn’t it?”

The speed at which they climbed into their car and shot off, presumably to launch another NIMBY campaign against wind farms, was impressive to say the least.

Say what you like about these NIMBY environmentalists. They couldn’t care less about more nuclear powers stations being built, as long as they are in someone else’s back yard.

Having had a quick coffee, I drove for ages (and it was ages too) through all of the horse-drawn caravans littering the road between Middleton and Kirkby Lonsdale.

You have no idea – or maybe you can guess – how much I hate these after having to negotiate an endless stream of them on some of the narrowest and most winding A-roads in the country.

Horses out of control “driven” by drivers who don’t have a clue. They need tests and drivers’ licences – they need road tax and a minimum speed limit.

And – even more importantly – they need to keep a substantial distance between themselves and the one o front instead of bunching up in impassable lines of 10 and 12 outfits

Failing that, they can p155 off into a field and get out of everyone’s feet. There are plenty of bridlepaths and cartways where they can mill about at their leisure out of everyone else’s way.

I finally arrived in Middlewich just about in time to rescue Percy Penguin from work and give her my fullest attention. But it was touch and go, I’ll tell you.

Now I’m on Sandbach Services and I’m sodding off in a minute to find a place to sleep. Its [gulp] 02:31 and I have a lot to do tomorrow.

-1

Friday 29th October 2010 – THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN AROUND HERE FOR A WHILE …

avro lancaster bomber KB882 edmundston new brunswick canada… will know all about this aeroplane as you have seen it all before.

It’s KB882, a Lancaster from World War II and it is one of only three “combat veterans” still in existence. It flew to Edmundston airport under its own steam in 1964 and ever since then it’s been stuck outside in all kinds of weather gradually deteriorating.

I spotted it in 2001 and ever since then I’ve been fighting single-handedly (I do other things with my other hand) to persuade the clowns in whose hands this historic machine has fallen to surrender it up to the Imperial War Museum or some other worthy organisation who can put a stop to this disgraceful neglect and get it back into the air before it falls apart.

avro lancaster bomber KB882 edmundston new brunswick canadaIn 2006 I was told that things might be happening and so being only 150 miles away from it I drove out this afternoon to see what they have done.

And the answer is

  1. they’ve put a better fence around it
  2. they’ve raised it off the ground
  3. … errrr …..
  4. that’s it

What is happening to this machine is nothing short of a national scandal, a total disgrace and the city of Edmundston should be thoroughly ashamed of itself. In the 9 years since I last saw it it has simply rotted away even further.

So having expected that, my blood has been boiling all day and it’ll continue to boil for a while I suppose.


and that’s not all I’ve done. In order to cool off, I retraced my steps from 2001 and retook a few pics of the falls at Grand Sault.

When I was here back then, the falls were all frozen up (mind you, it was midwinter at the time) and so I wanted a few with the water actually unfrozen, as well as a few other photos of interest that I missed when I was up here.

mars hill wind farm maine usaBut I did get sidetracked a little … "no surprises there" – ed.

From Rachel and Darren’s house I could see a pile of wind turbines away in the distance to the north of Centreville and so I wandered off for a closer look. And at one stage I was so close to them that I could almost touch them, and my route towards them led off down a little country lane called Mars Hill Road.

international frontier usa canada maine new brunswick mars hill road upper knoxfordAnd here I came to a dead stop as here on this hill the road also comes to a dead stop.

This is a frontier between the USA and Canada, and an unguarded frontier at that, although I do suspect that the barbed wire, searchlights, man-traps and machine guns are in that forest somewhere and that the purpose of the wind turbines is not to power up the local villages but to power the spy machines lurking in the woods.

abandoned building for sale mars hill road upper knoxford new brunswick canadaThe actual border is that orange fence to the left and this building here, Darren seems to think, might possibly be the old Canadian customs post from when this was a manned … "personned" – ed … crossing back in the distant past.

>And it’s for sale, even though it’s totally derelict. And I have a cunning plan.

Now just suppose I buy it and demolish the property that’s on it. I could erect a huge billboard and use it to display Anti-American slogans and then set up some loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda messages into the USA from here.

If it works for the North Koreans who habitually do this to the South, no reason why I can’t do it from here into the USA.

-8