Tag Archives: global warming

Monday 26th February 2024 – IT LOOKS AS …

… if I’ll be back in hospital sooner than I imagined.

In fact, if the hospital had its way I’d be there now.

The nurse who telephones me every few days to find out how I am and so I told her, and that was that. She told the doctor and he issued the instructions, and left it to the nurse to find a date seeing as I turned down “today”.

Yes, it’s “all go” here in the apartment. I wasn’t in bed very early because I had things to do, even though I was tired. And so I didn’t have much sleep.

What sleep I had was quite good though and I wish that I had had more of it. There’s no doubt that I seem to be sleeping better these days than I have done but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. As I have said before … "" – ed … my nocturnal travels are very important to me.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and went to take the blood pressure. A very low 14.8/8.9 this morning, compared to 17.1/11.8 last night.

After the medication I came back in here and had a few things to do before I could transcribe the dictaphone notes. We were at school last night. There was an issue about climate change etc. Our headmaster gave a speech to a certain organisation about something or other on this subject. It turned out to be a huge self-justification about all kinds of things. I somehow managed to access the meeting so I stood up and made a speech simultaneously criticising him for all kinds of different things that had gone on in the past in the school for which I considered him to be responsible but no-one took any notice of me at all. I thought “fair enough”. My life carried on as usual, I had a nice girlfriend (and I wish that I knew who she was). Then I noticed that there wee jobs for school leavers. A couple of them were really interesting. One was to go to Kenya for a couple of years as some kind of exchange of teacher or something like that. I must admit that that appealed to me. Anyway I wanted to go to sort out the headmaster. He had a meeting of people my year at school at the start of the afternoon so I went five minutes early and said “I want to talk to you”. He looked at me and said “and what position are you after?”. I had to be honest and explain that although I was after the one in Kenya I’d come to see him on another matter. He took the greatest amount of umbrage with me criticising him for his speech. He was really quite aggressive with his defence of what he said which I thought was way, way over the top and out of place.

It’s one thing that I’ve noticed about Climate Change deniers and the others of their ilk. When you challenge their “beliefs” the become quite aggressive and try to shout you out of their argument. Yet the facts are indisputable.

"Climate change is a natural phenomenon" – indeed it is, but that’s no reason for us to do nothing about it. It’s like saying that the Titanic was going to sink anyway so why bother pumping? The answer is that by pumping it gave them an extra couple of hours for Carpathia to come to the rescue. And that’s why we have to keep on trying to save the planet – to give us more time to find a solution.

"The Earth is simply rotating on its axis like it normally does". Indeed it does, but at a rate of 1° per 7,000 years according to calculations made by Sir Norman Lockyer, so we’re talking of arcoseconds in real terms. But if that’s what is going on according to the naysayers, why aren’t other parts of the World freezing as quickly as the High Arctic is melting?

But seriously, anyone who has been to the High Arctic can see the evidence for themselves. I was talking to an Inuit on Bylot Island who told me that he used to come to the spot where I was standing to fetch a block of ice for his old grandfather to make tea. And then he took me to the head of the glacier where it was in 2018 – a walk of 1.5 miles
"So how old were you when you did this?"
"Twelve or thirteen"
"How old are you now?"
"Twenty-four"

The glacier has receded 1.5 miles in 12 years.

In the memoirs of James Rae he writes about battling through the snow and ice around Pelly’s Bay in August 1854 when he met a group of Inuit who gave him information and relics about Franklin’s lost expedition. We landed at Pelly’s Bay to refuel on our way out to Mittimatalik in September 2018 and there wasn’t a fleck of snow anywhere.

The presentation that I did on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR was afrer we’d sailed several miles up a Fjord on Ellesmere Island and I showed a slide of an Admiralty chart of 1857 which showed no fjord there – the whole island was covered by an ice cap all the way down to the sea according to the chart.

Bylot Island, where I talked to that Inuit, wasn’t even an island. If you look at the map you’ll see that the strait that separates it from the mainland of Baffin Island is called “Pond Inlet” because that’s what it was when Europeans first visited it. It wasn’t until the ice melted that they discovered that Bylot Island was actually an island.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, following on from the previous dream, the girl to whom the headmaster refused to talk … "which girl?" – ed … ended up teaching part-time at a college which was part of the story and in fact taught German to the guy who took over from her boss as whatever official position it was for which the girl was secretary, but she was still chasing her boss and trying to persuade him to either justify his speech or to withdraw it and the implications that it had against us, this particular girl.

It seems that there’s a chunk missing from these dreams somewhere, and that seems to be a regular thing. It makes me wonder what else I’ve missed, and I know that ON ONE OCCASION I missed a visit from Castor. Imagine that!

Having done that and pushed it out of the way I went to finish the radio programme that I was organising yesterday. It meant dictating the notes that I’d written last night for the final track that I’d chosen, and then editing it and adding it all in with the actual song.

And to my surprise it was exactly one second SHORT.

When they are too long, I can cope quite easily. I always include in my notes some things that can be edited out if necessary to bring them down to the correct time; but when they are too short it requires more inventiveness.

But one second isn’t too bad. That’s 20×0.050 second “silence generated” pauses in salient places and that’s the job done.

After that I chose all of the music for the next radio programme, paired it off and began to write the notes for it. I could have done much more too except that I … errr … had a rest

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper, with plenty of stuffing left over, thanks to having forgotten my mushrooms on Friday and a suspect tomato in the fridge. That will keep me going for a few more meals.

Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson, and then there’s an order to send off to LeClerc as I’m running low on frozen vegetables. So tomorrow late afternoon will see me blanching carrots and sprouts ready to freeze. Still, there’s some chocolate cake left to see me through

Then I’ll have to think about this hospital appointment. Will it be for a stay or just a day visit? I know that it’s for a lumbar puncture which I dread, but I can’t believe that they’ll send me home on the same day.

But as Macbeth said, "If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly". And he was right. No point in waiting around because it will still be the same. It’s as Terry Venables once eloquently put it – "if history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again"

Or as Vivian Green sang, "Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain"

Sunday 7th January 2024 – WHAT A WAY …

… to spend a Sunday – all doped up and nowhere to go.

Yes this morning they gave me some more sodium – sodium sulphide this time – but in liquid form. “Here – drink this!” and so I did, and it’s disgusting.

No hallucinations, so no Zero, Castor or TOTGA to keep me company, but it didn’t ‘arf knock me for six and I was flat out for a good part of the day.

It was rather unfair, because I was awake quite early – ridiculously early for a Sunday in fact. And there’s tons of stuff on the dictaphone too as you’ll find out in a minute.

One of the nurses came by. "If you need any help in the shower, don’t hesitate to ask". To which I took no notice.

But when the second nurse came past and repeated the same phrase, it was "Okay, okay, I get the message. I need a shower."

Mind you, it was nice under the shower. I really did enjoy it.

After breakfast I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I’d been living a kind of extremely nomadic life … "no surprise there" – ed …. It wasn’t that I was broke either. I had plenty of money. I was living in the attic of a folk club where I had to climb up a whole series of strange steps to haul myself up through into the top so all my post was being directed to my eldest sister. She forgot to deal with some of it for a while. It turned out that I’d had the option on a house for which I’d signed and for which the bank was arranging a mortgage but she didn’t give me some of the letters which meant that the option had expired so I wasn’t going to have that house after all. That was extremely distressing to me. At the same time I was driving around in BILL BADGER my old A60 van. It had no tax on it and I’d already been stopped twice by the police. It had no insurance on it either and they had noted that. I’d also driven through a speed camera at one time faster than I ought. I was living a temporary, nomadic life and none of this had been taken into account anywhere so one day I would be called to account, I’d have all these things on my driving licence. I’d have 9 points and with another 3 points I’d lose my licence. I could see that it wouldn’t be long before that happened, having these 9 points all together and then having to go carefully for all this time and in the meantime having the van MoT’d. I could see that all of my life at the moment was falling to bits. Nothing was going right and I had all kinds of problems. I was just extremely distressed by all of it.

And that’s not an unusual state of affairs in my dreams – and in real life too, is it? Nothing going right and the wheels dropping off everything all the time

I forgot to mention that at one point I had to climb into my attic at this folk club. There were plenty of people there. Sitting at the foot of the stairs was an old guy with 2 children. I thought that one of them was a girl so I said “excuse me, miss” but it turned out to be a young boy. That was extremely embarrassing too.

There was a young boy rather similar to Jimmy Clitheroe, very tight with his money and always trying to find some more. There was some kind of party that he had to attend, which involved spending £5:00 to go. He was keen to go but there was an argument downstairs at the door when someone who appeared to be drunk said that he was a representative of the Co-op or something. Jimmy Clitheroe pushed him out and closed the door, but the pane of glass broke. Everyone else was broke too. One old man who was there was complaining about how hard up he was. He’d gone through his accounts to show that he was broke, rang up the glazing company and gave them the measurements for the window. When asked about the payment foolishly gave his own bank card number. This boy Jimmy Clitheroe was quite pleased about this because he’s got away without paying anything but his mother had learnt what was going on. When it came to giving him his pocket money for the next week she handed it out and said “here’s you pocket money minus £1:00 for the old guy who had to ring up etc an here’s another £1:00 for the house for the inconvenience”. That meant all his pocket money and he didn’t have any money to go to visit his friends at this dance so he couldn’t go … fell asleep here … what I meant to say that everyone thought that he would be unhappy about it but instead he remembered the song about “one wheel on my wagon”. He went off singing that. That seemed to make him a lot happier about the situation.

For the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few right now, I don’t actually fall asleep. I am asleep when I dictate these notes – something that years of practice has enabled me to do. What happens is that slowly I drift off into total silence while I’m dictating and after a few seconds you’ll hear a slow, deep rhythmic breathing,

There was also a dream involving a herd of polar bears being given sledges on a kind of miniature railway to go downhill to the sea. Instead, on their way down they encountered a herd of wildebeest and the wildebeest encountered a couple of humans and you don’t really want to know what happened especially if you are eating your tea right now.

I was round at an estate agents later on trying to find a house. There was one described as “2 bedrooms with study” so I wanted to find out more about it. I noticed that it had a large garden, part of which was lawn etc and the other part was gravelled over as if someone had been parking several cars there. That immediately piqued my interest. There was also a discussion about commercial properties. There was a shopping mall that had been built a long time ago but no-one was quite sure when. Several of the units were empty so people were looking at them with a view to trying to find some kind of clue as to their origin. They seemed to think that it might go back as far as 1890 but that was doubtful. There was one big unit that was empty. It seemed to be the kind of unit that a certain ladies’ clothes shop was seeking so they contacted the shop. They came to see it but it wasn’t really suitable for them. In any case the description of “large sales floor with plenty of storage” didn’t seem to fit. I couldn’t find the storage anywhere. It certainly wasn’t in the basement underneath so I was wondering where it was and how it was controlled or made.

And then I was being interviewed by the police about something or other. They asked about my movements over the last few days. I explained that they were extremely difficult but nevertheless I pointed out two calls to the hospital between the first and the third of the month to which I’d been invited. That was what I’d been doing for a couple of days just recently. It was the First of March until the Third of March and this was about the Fifth of March. He saw that there were several difficulties recording them and asked me if I could transfer them over to my big computer. I told him that it would be put on the big computer in due course which seemed to satisfy him for the moment but to me he was more interested in my notes and records on the computer than he was on this murder in my opinion. He didn’t seem to ask me many questions about the murder at all.

Of course, in real life I was a great deal of use to the Cheshire Constabulary. Almost every day I was being asked to help them with their enquiries.

As I said just now, I’m asleep when I dictate these dreams. But usually when I’m typing them out later I have some kind of vague recollection of them in the back of my mind. Rarely though, I have no recollection whatever, and that one was one of those.

We then had an issue of dark olive green cabs for lorries that had been discovered somewhere in Greenland. These cabs were new and had never been fitted. I was trying to identify them. They looked very much like ERF cabs to me, or maybe Foden cabs but someone seemed to think that they were MAN cabs, and if I posted them as MAN cabs someone would immediately recognise them and claim them as theirs as not having been delivered. I was looking through the internet trying to find identical cabs that had been labelled but I wasn’t having much luck because for some reason the computer kept throwing me out of the page that I was trying to search so I couldn’t actually see properly what the results were of my search on line.

Finally there was an advert in one of these magazines about a girl looking for a companion. Out of boredom I replied. Much to my surprise I found that, mush as she was a bit of a flighty piece, she seemed to be quite nice and what’s more, she seemed to like me very much. We developed quite a good rapport quite quickly. It was while I was running the taxis so I could only see her on Saturday nights but somehow that seemed to fit in with her timetable too so she was there making plans etc on what we’d do on different Saturday nights. She planned a night where we’d go to have a drink or something and end up sitting on top of a kind of cliff somewhere like at Frodsham and watch the stars, which sounded very nice to me as we’d just been for a drink but for some reason we’d had to come home early. Back at home early she was making a drink. There was still a group of taxi drivers there waiting for work to come in, and there was a pile of little children being dressed in winter coats ready to leave. But while this girl was making a cup of tea I was standing right behind her as cose as I could be, holding her by the waist. We were laughing and joking. My elder sister came in and made some remark about us being home early but last week we’d ended up in some farmyard or other for several hours completely up to no good. I didn’t realise that I was being spied upon so closely. That was what I said, but it was all extremely humorous. My elder sister began to chat to this girl as if she was already one of the family. It ended up being quite a warm ambience of the type that we have in dreams every now and again, something that was quite pleasant and I didn’t want it to stop.

Terry came on line for a chat later, to remind me that it’s the anniversary of our visit to the Stade Louis Dior where we stood on the terraces and watched US Granville, who play in the equivalent of the Conference North with a team of taxi drivers, school teachers and shop assistants stuff the Girondins of Bordeaux in the French Cup.

And how Bordeaux were unhappy and completely lost their cool as well. It was embarrassing to watch a Premier League club behave like that.

We travelled many a mile together, Terry and me, and we worked on many roofs.

tt would always be the same story. Terry would ring me up a about 08:00 "are you free today?"
"You have to say the magic words, Terry" I’d reply
"Liz is baking."

And for someone who said how much he hated cats, I’ll never forget how gentle he was with those two feral kittens he found asleep in a tyre in his barn at Le Fournial.

Liz came on line later too and we had a chat for a while which was nice. I also had a chat with someone who appears quite often in these pages, but usually during a nocturnal ramble. That was lovely too but I wish that she’d appear in real life too. As for who she was, I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few names and have a good guess.

The doctor came by but didn’t have much to say for himself. He asked about the perfusion so I told him about the hallucinations, so I suspect that that’s reason for these drinks today.

Apart from that, I’ve had some reading to do. And talking about global warming, I’ve found a paper presented to the Woolhope Naturalists’ Club of Hereford as early as 1867 by a certain T. Curley, CE FGS, discusses the subject and that really is the earliest that I’ve ever seen where systematic global warming has been the subject of discussion.

Not only does he discuss it, he presents some interesting calculations too, some of which I know to be confirmed by other scientists and geographers.

But I’ve also been asleep for much of the time thanks to this witches’ brew of sodium sulphide. During one of my (many) dozes during the day I went off into a dream with a group of young people but I awoke quite dramatically and the whole thing evaporated from out of my mind. Absolutely all of it.

And now that I’ve had my depressing evening meal (I’m glad that I brought these extra food supplies) I’m going to have yet another one of these sodium drinks. So I imagine that it won’t be long before I start to fall asleep and disappear into the Arms of Morpheus. I suppose that I’d better find the bed quickly before I crash out on the ………. zzzzzzzz.

Sunday 26th November 2023 – NOW THAT WAS …

… much more like how a Sunday morning ought to be. I can’t remember a single thing about it.

Well, that’s not actually correct, because from about 00:00 until about 02:30 I remember quite a lot of it. But once I crawled quietly into bed, that was that.

In fact, it wasn’t until about 12:15 that I actually saw the light of day and crawled out of my stinking pit towards my medication. And as a result I didn’t have all that much time to transcribe the dictaphone notes before my porridge, cheese on toast and strong coffee.

That’s exactly how to start the day, in my opinion.

While I eat my meals at the table I’m either watching a film or reading a book. Films are usually in the evening and books usually during the day. And right now I’m reading THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK by Alfred Watkins, written in 1925.

He’s the author who developed the theory of ley lines and while some of what he wrote is discredited by many, a lot of it still holds good today and much of the criticism levelled at his work is erroneous.

But what caught my eye was a paragraph about vegetation, in which he comments that a change in climate may have accounted for a change in vegetation. For 100 years ago, that was a novel idea.

The first trace in print that I have been able to find that suggested the possibility of climate change was in Munn’s WINELAND VOYAGES : LOCATION OF HELLULAND, MARKLAND, AND VINLAND, written in 1914, and how Munn was roundly, and in some cases, viciously vilified by his contemporaries, some of whom, like Nansen ought to have known better.

And how many people have ended up subsequently with omelette sur le visage, as they say around here.

So back in here I carried on with the dictaphone notes. Mountains and mountains of them. I was still at school. It was coming up close to my A Levels. I’d been making all kinds of plans for things that I’d wanted to do. We had a young girl from India staying with us on an exchange visit. She was also at school. One day a coach pulled up at school and we all piled on. She was quite mystified. The coach set off but when it turned onto the motorway she began to panic. She said that school buses aren’t allowed on motorways in India. Anyway, everyone persuaded her and she finally began to understand that there was a play taking place somewhere nearby that was part of our A Level syllabus so we were going to see it, as we did at school on several occasions for different things. Gradually the discussion became rather more complicated than that. I suddenly began to understand that what was going on was that they were going to drop me off at the hospital or somewhere like that because my medical results and reports had come through. The hospital wanted to follow it up so everyone was taking advantage of this play idea by saying and doing nothing to me, just presenting me with a fait accompli when we arrived at the hospital. This was why the girl was quite worried – she’d actually heard the part about dropping me off at the hospital before she’d actually heard about going to the play.

And then I was back in this dream about that hospital – actually in the hospital. They were discussing physiotherapy arrangements. Someone said that there was an article available for me that I’d find quite useful. When they turned up I expected them to have brought the article with them but the person just came on his own and asked me to go with him to fetch it. That was pretty-much impossible because I didn’t have anything with me to help, like crutches etc. It turned out that there was nothing marked on their records for any patient at all who had mobility issues. I tried to convince him that maybe this was something that the hospital had to change because I couldn’t go anywhere to pick up whatever it was that he was offering to give me.

At another point I was down in south-west London staying with a couple. I noticed that the girl had a strange fancy for a certain type of car, a 3-wheeled vehicle but was one that I’d never seen before. She had one in which she drove around and occasionally another would turn up as she found it, and there was one parked down at the end of her street. One night as I was going to bed I heard some kind of commotion but I ignored it. Next morning when I awoke all the 3-wheelers had gone. There was a dark blue Ford Cortina MkIII down at the end of the street. The first thing that I heard someone say to her was “when did you have your new car?”. She replied “17:00 yesterday evening” and she chatted away about her new car. Then she began to talk about the one parked up down the end of the road. That apparently had a new chassis so she was planning to keep hold of it for a while and maybe use it at a later date. She was annoyed because she thought that she was going to go to church but apparently her boyfriend had other plans so we began to discuss these particular vehicles amongst ourselves.

While I was asleep I met up with those 4 gipsy girls who have appeared in my meanderings before. I’d first come across them somewhere else and when we were wandering around a fairground they seemed to be loitering around a few pill-sellers. My friend and I went along and tried to usher the girls away from temptation and try to organise them into going home. In the end the two elder girls began to hang around with my friend and me. The one that I particularly liked, I took her on a little exploration of the area and was pointing out one or two other things and items to her while we were walking around.

And that intrigued me. I scrolled back through several years of notes (I didn’t go back as far as the beginning of this project in 1999 by the way) to find an earlier reference to these 4 girls because it was evident that I must have known them from somewhere – but I couldn’t find a previous mention of them.

But interestingly, it wouldn’t have been the first time that I had discreetly steered a group of young people away from a situation that was on the verge of becoming unpleasant, and it wouldn’t have been the first time that one of the aforementioned had attached herself to me as a result either

Finally there was a football match taking place in the office between 2 teams. One of the players was very badly injured, a huge lump taken out of his back. When I looked, his shirt was a mass of blood. I suggested that I take him off to the Health Centre, have them have a look at it and decide what to do. I took the guy but I couldn’t remember where the Health Centre was. I went to the local switchboard on the floor where we were and asked to be put through to the Health Centre. Instead, she picked up an external directory and began to thumb through it trying to find the number. After about 2 minutes and I suddenly realised what she was doing I ripped it out of her hands and stuck what I thought was the Internal directory into her hands. It turned out to be another volume of the external one. In the end I ripped that out of her hands too and was busy having this major argument with her while this boy was bleeding to death at my feet. And I suddenly awoke.

You really don’t want to know any more about what went on during the night. Not while you’re eating your tea anyway.

A couple of people have been speaking to me on the internet during the day. Rosemary and I had had a chat (that I’d forgotten to mention) the other day that was interrupted so she called me back today and we carried on from where we left off.

Catherine spoke to me too. She was a lecturer at University who lives in Southern Germany but I know her through her mother with whom I served on various University committees. When her parents retired they went to live in Southern Germany too and as they live only couple of hours from Munich I usually pop in when I’m passing by.

Catherine was wondering how I was doing, and also wanted to tell me that her father was not doing too well, which is a shame. I hope that he recovers soon.

As well as that I made a big batch of naan bread dough, but I seem to have miscalculated. Instead of 8 balls of 100 grams, I made 10 balls of 80 grams.

Rosemary advised me to put my festering fruit in the fridge to stop it fermenting so I had to track down some containers with lids. I know where the containers are, of course, but reaching them, the way things are, is something else.

The rest of the day was spent on the radio programme. I don’t know what happened but dictating the notes last night was appalling. I made an absolute pig’s ear of it all and it ended up as quite a mess. Consequently it took me an age to untangle everything this afternoon.

However, it’s now all done, assembled and up and running ready for broadcast on … errr … 12th July 2024

Tonight’s pizza was excellent again and now that I’m fed, I’m going to be watered and then I’m off to bed.

Tomorrow I should in theory start the next radio programme but that’s going on hold for a while. It’s going to be quite complicated and will require a lot of research because 19th July is quite a significant day in the history of rock music, as far as I’m concerned. Instead, I’ll prepare the one after.

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed.

Wednesday 5th July 2023 – I MANAGED TO …

… beat the alarm clock again this morning, even though I didn’t feel anything at all quite like it. When it went off this morning at 07:00 I was sitting on the edge of the bed dressing

It goes o show that nothing in this life is permanent. I remember not so long ago going through a phase of not being able to get up out of bed at any price and I remember thinking at the time that it’s just going to go worse.

But the way that things have turned out, then I suppose that there are some grounds for optimism. I just wish that I knew what they were.

However, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … being up and out of bed is one thing. Actually being at my desk and working is something else completely.

Isabel the nurse was the first to dislodge me from my reverie this morning. She’s supposed to be giving me a blood test tomorrow but apparently this one is extremely complicated and has to be done at the laboratory.

The laboratory opens at 07:30 and I need to be there before 09:00. And she hopes that I won’t be in a rush because these are “special” tests that take about 10 days before the results are ready.

Next person to ring was the nerve specialist’s secretary. I was wondering why I’d been copied into a blank e-mail but it turned out that the e-mail should have contained the copy of the prescription that he sent to me. He wasn’t available and his secretary needed it for her records so could I send it to her?

It all sounds quite bizarre to me, but who am I to interfere?

Having sorted out the playlist for the next few days, I wrote out a few more notes for a radio programme. It’s quite strange really but my heart doesn’t seem to be in it right now.

But to be honest, my heart isn’t really into anything much right now. All my get-up-and-go seems to have got up and gone at the moment – quite a change from that dramatic burst of energy that I had a couple of weeks ago where I was ready to take on the World.

Yesterday I mentioned that I’d revised half of my first Welsh course book. Today I looked through the other half. And I’ll keep on doing that through the summer, I reckon. The only difficulty is that with my teflon brain, nothing is sticking. I’m going to have to do something dramatic about that too.

The rest of the day has been spent walking around on the Furdustrandir, the beach where the Norse voyagers landed on their epic voyage down the North American coast – or, at least, where I think that the Norse landed.

Everyone has their own preferred location as to which beach it might be, and find 100 reasons why it won’t be anywhere else, and then someone else finds 100 reasons why it’s not where anyone else says that it might be.

The early writes on the subject, like Carl Rafn, Gustav Storm and Arthur Middleton Reeves put the beach as far south as Massachusetts and quote the number of daegr – or “days” quoted in the Sagas, and the average speed of a longboat.

However, no-one is going to sail a ship in unfamiliar waters full of shoals and rocks during the hours of darkness, and they weren’t in a longboat anyway but in a cargo vessel.

William Munn wrote a book in 1914 to suggest that Newfoundland was the likeliest spot for the Norse to have settled and when confronted about the problem of “vines growing in the neighbourhood”, Munn’s suggestion that “maybe the climate was different in those days” – the first ever reference to Global Warming – was loudly ridiculed by his contemporaries.

In any case Vaino Tanner, the Finnish anthropologist, whose ancient Norse language is bound to be more reliable that many other Westerners, tells us that “vinland was originally a nomen appellativum derived from the early Nordic word vin (pronounced vinn), plural vinjar, which signifies grassland or pasture suitable for cattle.”

And as for the critics who say “grassland or pasture suitable for cattle in Labrador?”, they’ve obviously never been to Greenland and seen what passes for pasture there.

So I suppose that that will be my next project, if ever I finish this one. To write up my notes of my visits to the Norse sites in Greenland.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone again from the night. I had a couple of wax mannequins or dummies in my house that I used either for decoration or putting clothes on etc. What people didn’t realise was that they were in fact some old friends of mine, including Rosemary, who I’d somehow managed to kill and coated in wax as a way of disguising their bodies while I had a think about what I was going to do with them. They’d been around in my apartment now for a couple of years and I was beginning to wonder how long I could get away with it if none of these people had, say, featured on their social network in that time. Someone would be bound to ask me a few questions about them, where they are. One idea that went through my head was to use their mobile phones to establish some kind of connection so that their online presence would be noted but that would inevitably draw people in to where I was and that wasn’t what I wanted at all. I was in this enormous quandary about what I was going to do and how I was going to do it

My brother had his motorbike and we were planning on doing something with ours. We said that we’d meet at a certain pub after a music concert. He got onto the pub who said that we could leave our motorbikes there during the concert. We wandered slowly home to fetch the bikes. He had his and I told him to wait a few minutes. He said that his wouldn’t start so he’d have to push it. if we set off now we’d be there at the same time. Off we set. I went into the barn. It was filthy, untidy, dusty and dirty etc, a real mess. I even found 20p in the dust and an album cover from a Who album. Trying to get my motorbike down was really difficult. I had to pull myself up with my arms and elbows onto another half-floor above. I needed a great deal of strength to do that. I had to open a cupboard, the door opened upwards, take the bike out and somehow lower it down to the floor below. I wasn’t looking forward to doing this at all. I reckoned that it would be extremely difficult. Then I thought that I hadn’t run the motorbike for years so what if it doesn’t fire if the petrol has gone stale or something like that?

I had some cars that needed washing. They were all kinds but mainly ancients – stuff that you find that’s 100 years old that’s dragged out of a barn. I had them in this kind of workshop and coupled up the hose but it wasn’t long enough. It made life really awkward. Someone found an extension piece for the hose. I put that in but there wasn’t enough water pressure so it was taking just as long anyway. There were all kinds of stuff – vans from the 1920s rotten as hell. There was one vehicle that we couldn’t really identify at first. It was dark green and big like a furniture removal lorry with Yale locks on it. It looked as if it was from the 1930s. I thought that I could make out what was a Bedford plaque from much more modern times so we were sitting there trying to decide what kind of vehicle it actually was until we could get close up to it to have a look

Tea tonight was a vegan chili using the leftovers and a small tin of kidney beans. This time I used chili powder rather than tipping the tabasco sauce in and it worked well enough.

So now I’m going to bed. Exhausted yet again and I have to go out early tomorrow morning. And I don’t really feel like it, but then again I don’t really feel like very much at all right now. In fact, early though it may be, I’m ready for bed.

My cleaner did a good job of tidying up the place so at least I don’t have to worry about that. And that’s just as well. I have plenty of other things to worry about right now.

Tuesday 12th November 2019 – I USED TO BE A WEREWOLF

full moon granville manche normandy franceBut I’m all right noooooooooooooooooooow!

What a beautiful full moon we are having tonight. And to be on the safe side, when I had my morning shower today, I shaved the palms of my hands just in case.

And there was plenty of garlic in my evening meal too – ready for when I go to Castle Anthrax on Thursday

Last night wasn’t as late as it might have been. I was actually in bed at some time round about 01:30. Furthermore, much to my own surprise as well as doubtless to yours, I was up and about long before the third alarm went off, sometime between 06:07 and 06:19.

There was time enough to go on a nocturnal ramble, but I’ll spare you the gory details. After all, you’re probably eating your evening meal or something. Needless to say, a member of my family put in an appearance during the night. And that’s enough to put the willies up anyone, especially me.

An early start and early breakfast meant plenty of time to deal with the dictaphone notes and by about 08:30 I’d done 6 or 7. And I’m glad that I stopped where I did because I’ve reached what might be called a turbulent period in my life when I fell into the pit.

A shower next and a general clean-up and then I was off up to the Centre Agora for a meeting. And the net result is that tomorrow I’m off to interview a rock musician. And on the way home, I was buttonholed by someone else and invited to do another chat to some different people about Uummaannaaq.

weird garage residence le manege granville manche normandy franceThe walk up to the Centre Agora was very pleasant and interesting, especially as I stormed once more up the bank as if I was on my way to invade Poland.

But I came to a dead stop when I was this garage or car port or whatever just here. I wonder what the architect had in mind when he designed this. It certainly can’t have been anything that any normal person might have been imagining.

Probably some Cossack’s daughter. After all she must know the Steppes.

On the way back from the Centre Agora I called in at LIDL for some shopping. Not too much because I’ll be away for a few days starting Thursday and there’s no point in stocking up with supplies that won’t be eaten.

But there were grapes on special offer again and I love grapes, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. Which reminds me – just excuse me a moment …

After lunch I bashed on with the web site amendments and I have run aground there. I’ve reached the L’Anse aux Meadows pages now and I’m having a serious think about them.

When I wrote them back in 2010 I didn’t know anything like half as much about the Norse voyages to North America as I do now since I’ve been able to lay my hands on books by people like Carl Rafn, Arthur Middleton Reeves and William Hovgaard.

Rafn is a very interesting author because his Antiquities Americanae, written in 1837, was the first book to take seriously the Norse voyages to North America and the first to actually give scientific study to the Norse Sagas.

It was dismissed, even ridiculed, by many subsequent historians, even such reputable people as Nansen who described the sagas as nothing more than “works of romantic fiction”, but nevertheless inspired a great many people to take his work forward.

It led ultimately to William Nunn’s epic “Wineland voyages;: Location of Helluland, Markland, and Vinland” from 1914. Munn was the first person to pinpoint L’Anse aux Meadows as a Norse site (and as far as I am aware, the first person to pick up on Climate Change too) and which led 50 years ago to the excavations of the Ingstads and their discovery on the Norse ruins.

There was another phone call to be made too. I still haven’t received the paperwork for Caliburn’s insurance despite my conversation of 22nd October, so I rang them again. They told me that they hadn’t received my e-mail with my attachment, something that I find totally bizarre.

So I’ve sent them again. In the meantime they’ve sent me an attestation.

Then I started to pack up all of the rubbish in the living room. Cardboard boxes everywhere that needed moving out and an object that needs packing up ready for returning, as well as taking all of the rubbish out to the bins.

So much involved in the tidying up was I that I missed my afternoon walk. But seeing that I was already at 103% of my daily activity, I shan’t worry too much right now.

But tidying up, hey? What about that?

Tea was a burger on a bap with baked potatoes and veg., followed by fruit salad and blackcurrant sorbet. And it was all absolutely delicious.

trawler night granville manche normandy franceThis evening Iwent out for my evening walk. And straight away I was blasted by a wind the like of which I haven’t felt while I’ve been living here.

Out at sea was a trawler on its way back into harbour and the poor thing was struggling through the waves.

Even at this distance I could see that it wasn’t having a very easy time of it. Like I said, my hat goes off to whoever it is out there in weather like this.

full moon granville manche normandy franceOn and round the corner and into the shelter from the winds.

And here I could eve the spectacular beauty of one of the most perfect full moons that I have ever seen.

The one that I saw at the Phare des Monts on the North Shore of the St Lawrence in Québec in 2012 was certainly spectacular, but for completely different reasons and at a completely different time.

chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy franceThe moonlight was bright enough for me to be able to pick up some detail down at the chantier navale and in the outer harbour.

It’s not as clear as the photos that I took last winter, but that’s because this is a hand-held shot and the other one was on a tripod with a very long exposure.

However, I’m not going to be taking a tripod out in a wind like this. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that it didn’t do the Nikon D3000 very much good at all.

trawler night granville manche normandy franceBy now, the trawler that I had seen out at sea was now close to home. And I bet that the crew members were relieved. And so was I too.

And having seen it safely home I headed for home too. At something of a run too and I managed about 300 or 400 metres before I had to stop for breath.

But I soon found my second wind because I was able to run up the top flight of stairs to my apartment. And that reminded me that coming back from my morning out, despite having come up the hill without stopping, I had run up both flights of stairs with no problem.

Rosemary rang me when I returned and we had a good chat for an hour. And now I’m ready for bed. The fitbit, or what’s left of it, tells me that I’ve walked (or ran) 11.2 kilometres today, or 132% of my daily total.

I really don’t know where all of this energy has come from though. I hope that I’m not going to en up paying for it.

Monday 26th August 2019 – I DID MY FIRST …

… presentation today on an Adventure Canada ship and I was really pleased.

The subject of maps came up in the discussion and in particular Croker Bay where we were. it’s a huge, long fjord that branches off into two at the head. And so the question was raised. Why isn’t it shown on old maps?

The answer to that is simple.

The fact is that when this area was first surveyed in the mid 19th Century there was a glacier down it, as my Admiralty Charts tell me, and for that reason it was never possible to sail into it and explore it.

But when you see the fjord today, how long, wide and deep it is, it’s astonishing how much ice has actually melted away. Anyone who denies the existence of climate change needs to come here and have a look for themselves.

Last night I had a horrible night. Although I went asleep quite early on, I was awoken by I don’t know what at about 01:30 and that was my lot for the night.

Despite that, I still managed to beat the third alarm and was soon up on deck in the fog and mist. But a little later, we were in luck. We saw a polar bear asleep on a rock just on shore, right by where we were planning to land for Dundas Harbour. It was as if he was waiting for us.

It put the kybosh on the landing of course, but at least we had a good hour’s entertainment before he loped off to the other side, to our alternative landing point. So after a while waiting for him to move off, which he didn’t of course, we found another landing site in the vicinity. But not before a family of seals came along to join in the fun.

We had a cruise in the zodiacs around the bay so that we could at least look at the old Inuit settlement at Morin Point and the mast at Inglefield Hill, and then sailed across the strait to shore.

This new landing place is nothing like as historic or as interesting, but beautiful nevertheless. Probably one of the most beautiful places that I have ever visited. I surprised myself by climbing almost all the way to the top, which was quite an effort. Coming down alongside the waterfall was just as exciting. No-one was more pleased than me to have made it up there.

And the weather was perfect too. When I was here last year we were caught in a blizzaed.

After lunch we went for a cruise in Croker Bay (now that we can these days of course) and saw another polar bear, some walrus, more seals and some arctic geese. We certainly had our money’s worth this afternoon.

Tea was a disaster though yet again. Another one that took hours to come. And then they forgot my dessert. All in all I was waiting for two hours for my meal. I’ve no idea what was going on in the kitchen tonight.

This evening I helped the two young girls on board do a jigsaw and then came down here. Tons of photos to edit right now after today’s effotrts but even though we gain an hour tonight, after last night’s shenanigans I’m too tired to do anything.

So I’m off to bed. See you in the morning.

Friday 19th July 2019 – HAVING SAID …

… last night that I was looking forward to a decent night’s sleep, then once more I found myself being quite disappointed; I was so determined that I didn’t even attempt to watch a film when I went to bed, but even that didn’t help.

In something that is becoming rather too much of a regular occurrence these days, I was awake at 04:00 and needed a trip down the corridor. Back to sleep but I awoke once more at about 05:55. And that’s not the same as saying that I was ready to leave the bed. I did manage to beat the third alarm call – but only just.

After the medication I went up on deck to see what was happening, but I needn’t have bothered. Back in the open sea again and we are shrouded in fog and mist. There are a couple of offshore rocks and islands appearing through the gloom but that’s the best that I can do. I came back downstairs to my cabin in disgust.

Once breakfast was over, it was time to prepare ourselves for our little trip out. We are anchored offshore at the island of Uunartoq Qeqertaq.That’s Greenlandic for “hot place” so as you may expect, there is a hot tub here and many of our fellow passengers wanted a dip.

It’s an exciting place to be too, because it’s one of the world’s most recently discovered islands – dating from September 2005.

And if you are scratching your head wondering about that, let me explain. Until that date, it was “attached” to the mainland by a large ice-sheet and no-one knew for sure what was under the ice. But climate change is so rapid in this part of the world and the effects so devastating that the ice sheet finally receded at that date and we could see that underneath it was nothing but the sea.

What was much more interesting from my point of view was the fact that there was formerly an Inuit village here with many well-defined sod huts and several other features too.

Everyone shot off on the zodiacs to the shore and split up into several parties in order to go our separate ways. Those of us who were interested in archaeology headed off across the island towards the site.

We hadn’t gone far before we came to a grinding halt. There were several clearly-defined rows of pebbles all across the mountainside. These are quite clearly raised beaches and it shows just how depressed the island was under the weight of the ice-cap during the ice age, and how much isostatic rebound there has been.

It was quite noticeable that the Inuit settlement was entirely below the lowest line of raised beach, which shows that the latest major rebound must have been at least more than 600 years ago. It wasn’t until probably well into the 15th Century that the Inuit reached this far south.

There was however quite a cliff – probably about 20 feet – down from the settlements to the beach, and that’s quite possibly an indication that isostatic rebound is still taking place. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in Labrador a couple of years ago we saw evidence of rebound that has taken place within the last 70 years.

As for the site itself, our attention was drawn first of all to a row of single-family sod houses right on the cliff edge. These are unfortunately eroding away as the cliff face crumbles underneath them.

Set farther back was a row of multi-family sod houses, some with a clearly-defined dividing wall and one that even had two entrances. The stone lintels for that one were still present and almost in place.

What was surprising though was that even though we are in the tundra, each site was surrounded by a complete mass of wild flowers that resembled buttercups. All of the sod walls, part of the interiors and areas that were probably refuse pits were covered in them.

This is an indication of how much refuse each of these houses had accumulated during its occupancy and how fertile the soil must be at those spots. The thick and high sod walls would also help to contribute to this too.

There were plenty of other signs of occupancy too. We saw a variety of stone food caches in various states of repair, and several tent rings from Inuit summer camps in this location.

A square low wall only one stone high was there too. speculation was that this was the base of a more modern timber building of some description. There were several such wooden cabins on the island.

What must have been the most interesting find was the presence of several Inuit graves – low stone walls covered with slabs. Most had fallen down but one was still intact and we could see that there were human remains inside that one.

Someone else saw what he reckoned was the remains of a Norse longhouse but when we all went off to look, he could not find it again.

By now it was time to return to the ship so we had to abandon our exploration, which meant that I didn’t have time to visit the more modern graveyard. I would be interested to see what that was all about and who might be in it.

After lunch we had a series of lectures. Our Greenland guide gave us a discussion on farming in Greenland, after which there was a lecture on pre-historical archaeology in the High Arctic which was interesting.

There was then a 15-minute break before a concert given by our musicians Charlie and Nive. I went down to my room where I fell asleep, only to wake myself up by snoring too loudly.

The concert was short but very interesting and I had quite a talk with Nive afterwards She actually came from Uummannaq she was able to identify the girl who had posed for me there last year.

Tea was rather catastrophic. There must have been a problem in the kitchen because the food took an age to come to the table. Almost as if half of the kitchen was out of action. And they kept trying to serve me things that I couldn’t eat. Something of a disaster that all was.

And I had an argument with a fellow passenger – all about the Norse. He had been listening to far too much of the lectures given by our historian and to far too much of the newspaper speculation of 70 years ago. But things have changed dramatically with the discovery of new material and the application of new techniques. What was the current way of thinking back then is no longer appropriate.

Bu now the lights in the public rooms are being turned out. Someone is obviously hinting that it’s time for me to go. And while I’ve been loitering around here ,the ship, having gone up a fjord, reversed back down and has now turned round about 45° to starboard. She’s switched the engines onto tick-over and dropped anchor so it looks as if we are here for the night.

So I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow we will be landing at one of the destinations that is at the top of my wish list. That is, if the weather lets us.

Sunday 16th September 2018 – JUST BY WAY OF A CHANGE …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… I fell asleep last night as soon as my head touched the pillow.

But not as long as I would have liked because by 04:00 I was awake again. Clearly my guilty conscience is acting up again.

However I did manage to drop off (figuratively, not literally) again until the strident tone of first David Bowie and then Billy Cotton dragged me out of my stinking pit.

We then had the usual morning performance and then off to grab a coffee and watch the sun rise over Disko Bay. Beautiful it was too.

Two of the crew came to join me for breakfast but they couldn’t stay long as the team meeting had been brought forward. So I ended up mainly on my own – the usual state of affairs these days seeing as I seem now to have upset almost everyone on board ship one way or another.

This morning’s entertainment was a ride out in the zodiacs. We’re right on the edge of Disko Bay where there’s a huge glacier that calves off into the water. The trouble is though that there’s a huge subterranean terminal moraine at the head of the bay and the icebergs are too deep to pass over it.

And so they have to wait until either they melt enough to pass over the moraine or else there’s a collision from behind that forces them to capsize so that they might float over the top

Consequently the bay is packed with all kinds of icebergs waiting for the chance to leave. And then they head north on the Gulf Stream until that peters out and they are picked up by the Labrador Current that floats them back south again past Ellesmere island, Baffin Island, Labrador and Newfoundland and on into the Atlantic for their rendezvous with the Titanic.

But if you want to see them, don’t wait too long. Global warming is such that the glacier here is breaking off and calving at 35 metres PER DAY. It won’t be very long before the glacier grounds out and then there won’t be any icebergs at all. It will all just slowly melt away.

However, I was feeling dreadful.

I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that there have been times on this journey where i really haven’t feel like going off on an outing, and today was the worst that it got. I was flat out on the bed with all of my issues to comfort me. I wasn’t going anywhere.

But our team was last out and so by the time that we were called I was able to at least struggle downstairs to the changing room and dress for the weather.

It made me feel a little better, being out in the fresh air, and we did have a really delightful morning out, weaving in and out of the icebergs in the bay. Some were large, some were small, some were high, and they were all spectacular.

We had to return for someone who had missed the boat but once we were back out we stayed out for more than 90 minutes, freezing to death in the cold weather. But the view – it was totally spectacular.

Half of the boat was missing at lunchtime. They had gone on into town for restaurant food like Mooseburgers, walrus sausage and the like, at the invitation of the Tour Director. “Running short of supplies, are we?” The cynic inside me mused.

I stayed aboard though and was accompanied to lunch by the garrulous lady from a week or so ago and, true to form, I struggled to fit a word in edgeways.

I hadn’t changed at lunchtime because we would be first off in the afternoon. Heading for the town of Ilulissat on the side of the bay.

It took an age to reach there though. Our rather timid captain didn’t want to approach too closely for fear of the ice, so were were about 7 or 8 nautical miles offshore. That’s about 12-14 kms out so you can imagine the journey that we had. And in the freezing cold too.

But judging by the mass of blood on an ice floe that we passed, our passage must have disturbed a polar bear’s lunch break.

I can’t now remember if Ilulissat is the second or third-largest city in Greenland … "it’s the third-largest" – ed … but I do remember that it has a population of about 4,500.

Another claim to fame of the town is that it possesses the most northerly football pitch that I have yet to encounter, with the “grandstand” being a large and rather solid outcrop of rock.

There was a shuttle bus running around the town to take us to different places, but I went on foot for a good look around. Amongst the exciting finds that I made was an old DAB Silkeborg bus – a type that I haven’t so far encountered. After all, it’s been years since I’ve been to Denmark.

There were several memorials to various individuals and events and as my Danish isn’t up to much, I shall have to make further enquiries about them.

The docks was the place to go so I found the bridge where there was a good spec and took a few photos, including one of a chain suspension pipe – not a bridge.

There was also an exciting find where they had been widening the road. They had been drilling down into the rock in order to weaken it to break it off, and the drill bit had become stuck. And there it was, still embedded in the rock even today.

The boardwalk was the place to go, though. Up past the shops, the petrol station and the football ground. And then past the field where they kept the sled dogs.

Everyone whom I met told me how far it was, but I kept on going on foot despite the offer of lifts; and had a really enjoyable walk. I was really striding out now and it seemed that my worries of the morning had long-gone.

There were some antique sod-house ruins on the way past. And I wasable to identify them, much to the delight of our archaeologist. And some really stunning views too. But I climbed right up to the top with Strawberry Moose who had come along for the day out.

He had his photo taken on many occasions, including a few by me, and we all relaxed and chatted at the top for quite a while.

On the way back we missed our trail and had to retrace our steps for a while. I picked up one of the staff who accompanied me and she pointed out the UNESCO heritage sign as well as a few other things such as the home of the explorer Knud Rasmussen.

The dogs took exception to our leaving the area however and set up a howling cacophony of noise as we passed by.

Back in town, I had quite a laugh. A couple of young girls had bought a tub of ice cream (in this weather!) and, not having any spoons, were scooping it out with their fingers. One girl was rather timid but the other let me photograph her.

Our departure from the port was delayed as a Danish warship called, would you believe, Knut Rasmussen wanted to enter (he wasn’t bothered about the ice). And when we eventually managed to leave the port we were treated to the sight of a couple of men butchering three seals on an ice-floe.

It made me wonder about the earlier blood.

There were whales out here – we could hear them – but not see them. And we froze to death yet again as we raced back to the ship to miss the storm that was building up.

The Naughty Table was rather subdued tonight at tea. We had a new member who had been everywhere and done everything, and wasted no time in letting us all know, even to the extent of destroying the stories of another new member.

In the meantime, Yulia the bar attendant had seen His Nibs on the way out of the boat earlier today and lay in wait for a photo-bombing session.

Sherman was on the guitar later and we all had a good evening listening and joining in when we knew the words.

But I’m thoroughly exhausted so I’m off to bed.

The photos can wait until morning.

Saturday 30th September 2017 – AS I MIGHT HAVE SAID …

hatteras ferry north carolina usa september septembre 2017 … the other day, North Carolina is a ferry-spotter’s paradise.

We haven’t finished with them yet by any means, because now that we are on Ocracoke Island, we still have to get off.

There is more than one way to skin a cat, and one of the ways is to take the ferry over to Cape Hatteras. We’ve done that before, but so what?

bluff shoal motel ocracoke usa september septembre 2017While you admire the photo of my little home-from-home, let me tell you about my night.

I was dead to the world, that’s for sure, and our first nocturnal visitor was Michel from the football club – telling me everything that had gone wrong at the football club – just like he had done once in te Auchan in Montlucon.

As for our next visitor, it was either Nerina, Laurence or Cécile.And we were in my house, or whatever house that it was where I was living. It was up forsale although you would never have thought so with the mess – and someone came to see it. It was Christiane (what is she doing here?). My partner showed her round the ground floor and abandoned me to leave me to show her around the cluttered upstairs, even though I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I took her outside and showed her the jungle that was the grounds. She said that the car parking didn’t correspond to what she needed, so I showed her my idea which would have suited her – except that I kept on getting it wrong when I was trying to explain. After she had left I was sitting in the garden when my Inuit guide from Mulligan came in. He had a chain saw and began to cut up logs lengthways ready to sut them “across”. I was thinking to myself that I could do that, and there were plenty of other things that he would have been more profitably employed in doing.

My porridge didn’t take long to cook in the slow cooker, and I was away pretty smartish by 09:15, complete with free coffee from the motel.

ocracoke island hatteras ferry north carolina usa september septembre 2017A leisurely drive took me down to the far end of the island where I didn’t have to wait too long for a ferry.

You don’t here, by the way. There’s a regular shuttle service and there’s quite a rapid service, especially at this time of the year.

Had I come by here tomorrow, it would have been a different matter because they are going over to the winter timetable.

ocracoke island hatteras ferry north carolina usa september septembre 2017One thing that takes some getting used to is the route that the ferry takes.

This distance between Hatteras and Ocracoke island doesn’t look very much, but it takes 40 minutes to do the route, because you have to go in a rather exaggerated “S” route between the islands.

The channels across Pamlico Sound are quite shallow and despite the low draught of these boats, they can still easily run aground if they get it wrong.

ocracoke island hatteras ferry north carolina usa september septembre 2017The channel is marked for the entire length with marker buoys and signs, like these just here.

You can’t see for the sun unfortunately, but the buoys are marked red and green, for “port” and “starboard” just like a ship’s lights, but I was convinced that on occasion the ferry was passing to the wrong side.

But the channel and the sandbanks change after each storm so that’s not a surprise.

pelican pamlico sound north carolina usa september septembre 2017A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican,
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week
But I’m damned if I see how the helican.

and what does a pelican have in common with an Income-Tax Collector?
Well, they can bot shove their bills up their @r$e$

hatteras north carolina usa september septembre 2017Only seven or so cars on the ferry so it didn’t take long to unload. And we were soon belting off northwards up Hatteras Island.

The village of Hatteras itself is quite pretty and probably well-worth a poke around on another occasion, but i don’t have that much time.

I want to be north of Chesapeake Bay by tonight and it’s a long way to go.

cape hatteras lighthouse north carolina usa september septembre 2017We do have to stop at some point because even though we’ve seen it before, we have to go to look at Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

It’s the most famous construction on the whole of the Outer Banks.

Mind you, the Outer Banks just here are quite famous if you are a mariner. Not for nothing is Cape Hatteras known as “The Graveyard Of The Atlantic” with the amount of ships that have come to grief here.

old site of cape hatteras lighthouse north carolina usa september septembre 2017The lighthouse didn’t used to be back there. Until 1999 it was just in front of where this sign is.

You can see from the sign how the sea level has risen over the last 140 years, which prompted the romoval of the lighthouse to a safer spot.

But even though it’s so graphically laid out here, the USA Government still denies the existence of global warming and rising sea levels.

rising sea levels hatteras island north carolina usa september septembre 2017Yes, the official position of the US President is to deny clmate change, global warming and rising sea levels. Yet here on Hatteras Island the evidence is impossible to ignore.

Everywhere are signs “water on highway” and despite the absence of rain and strong winds, you can see that the sea is slowly encroaching onto the roadway.

This will all be under water in 10 years or so.

nights in rodanthe north carolina usa september septembre 2017We’ve been here before of course, and I reckoned that I would show you a photo once more of Rodanthe.

It’s significant because a couple of years after I had been here in 2005, they made a film set in Rodanthe.

And much to my surprise it really was filmed here too.

rodanthe north carolina usa september septembre 2017And the film seems to have brought unlimited tourists to visit the area, and with it the tourist attractions.

My memory of Rodanthe was that it was a quiet, sleepy place with a few tumbledown cabins and houses.

Not any more though. The tourists are out in force and have brought wads of cash with them. So the developers have cashed in.

herbert C Bonner bridge pea island north carolina usa september septembre 2017Here’s something else that is changing so dramatically too.

The Herbert C Bonner bridge was a quiet, sleepy bridge when we came by here in 2005.

Today, as the sea levels are rising, the bridge approaches are slowly being submerged and so they are constructing this huge mega-bridge right across Oregon Sound with its several miles of raised causeway approaches.

Not that it will do them much good because the rest of the Outer Banks will shortly be under water as we have seen.

From here, I don’t hang about. We miss out the Wright Brothers site at Kill Devil Hills (not Kittyhawk) just up the road because we have been there before, and eventually come off onto the mainland where I stop for lunch and fuel at, coincidentally,the same petrol station where I stopped in 2005.

strawberry moose buccaneer north carolina usa september septembre 2017But out haste doesn’t prevent us from yet another photo opportunity, does it?

This area is well-known for its pirate and privateer activity, and so Strawberry Moose decides to get in on the action.

Finding a suitable boat, he now tries to find a suitable crew, or else he will be all at sea.

We cross into Virginia just after here, and enter the city of Norfolk. And Norfolk is a nightmare to navigate.

There are two ways to go north – one is the I-95 and sit in traffic queues in Washington DC and Baltimore all day, or else cross Chesapeake Bay and cross the Delaware River and follow the New Jersey Coast.

But the Bay crossing in Norfolk, despite being one of the most famous in the whole of North America, is so badly signposted it’s unbelievable.

You drive around for hours down a succession of small street and eventually you see a small one-foot square blue-and-white sign.

Blink and you miss it.

chesapeake bay crossing virginia usa september septembre 2017Unfortunately, you can’t see it very well because there is nowhere to stop and photograph it.

For a start, it’s 23 miles long, 17 miles of which is across water, and if that’s not something of a record I’m not sure what is.

And not only that, it shortens my route by 153 kms, so the toll fee of $13:00 is a bargain when you take the cost of Strider’s fuel into consideration.

chesapeake bay crossing virginia usa september septembre 2017It’s not just a bridge either.

It crosses a busy shipping lane up to Baltimore and so in a couple of places it dives into tunnels. And these are quite long enough on their own.

And that was quite a shame because there were three or four mammoth container ships sailing up the Hampton Roads and I missed them.

On the other side of the river I put my foot down and move north towards the Maryland border.

But 18:00 looms up, I’m tired and I’m still in Virgnia. And at 18:10 the Shore Lodge Motel in Olney looms up out of the gloom.

The room is clean and comfortable and after much negotiating we agree on $70:00, incuding taxes, which is not unreasonable.

I do without tea yet again and crash out more-or-less straight away, but I’m awoken by a group of people chatting by the ice machine just outside the door.

After about a couple of hours of this, I’m beyond fed up, so I ask them if they wouldn’t mind going somewhere else to chat. Well, that wasn’t actually what I said, but it meant that.

But my sleep has gone now, and this is going to be a bad night.