Went to Frome for a birthday party on Saturday, starting late and taking more than three hours using A30, A303, bear right at Stonehenge and waddle about through Trowbridge and Devizes having forgotten to take the map. Somerset in May has much to recommend it, and so does that end of Wiltshire where we spent the night with wife's cousins in Corsham. Bats in the gloaming, West country phonemes rumbling quietly in the street, took me back a bit and very nice too. Of course gave the traffic cauldron of Bath, where I was raised during the war, a wide berth.
Came back early Sunday afternoon on M4, uncrowded, where the middle lane was often doing a relaxed 90. Reminded me of posters I have seen here who complain that they are stuck in the middle lane at 60 because of all the trucks on the nearside and all the mad Beemers in the outer lane. A twenty minute jam for a crash, which plod finished sweeping off the road just before we got to the front of the tailback. Motorways are much much quicker and much much nastier.
The garish yellow squares of oilseed rape on Salisbury Plain don't offend the eye, but the stench the stuff gives off at this time of year certainly offends my nose. I don't get hay fever but I imagine those who do will agree with me. Anyway Somerset apple blossom is in another class altogether.
|
>>>>>doing a relaxed 90. <<<<<<
NEVER brag publically about speeding. You don't know who is reading/listening..........
Naughty Lud
dvd
|
Erm... thanks for the warning DVD and I certainly take the point, but I didn't actually say that I was doing 90. I spent a lot of time in the nearside lane actually
:o}
|
|
|
>>>>>doing a relaxed 90. <<<<<< NEVER brag publically about speeding. You don't know who is reading/listening.......... Naughty Lud
whats wrong with doing a relaxed 90 kph ?
|
|
|
>>>>>doing a relaxed 90. <<<<<< NEVER brag publically about speeding. You don't know who is reading/listening.......... Naughty Lud dvd
why cannot someone say, here, for example that they were doing 90mph - what would anyone be able to do about it, should they read that claim? Where's the evidence, other than a tall story (perhaps).
|
>>why cannot someone say, here, for example that they were doing 90mph - what would anyone be able to do about it, should they read that claim? Where's the evidence, other than a tall story (perhaps).
Absolutely no reason at all. The police have far better things to do than search internet forums for people who admit speeding. They could just go and sit on the motorway and catch them.
And I can't see how a succesful prosecution could result from a statement like that anyway. Unless someone wants to correct me?
|
|
Perhaps DVD thinks a) it is setting a bad example and more importantly b) some local authority or authorities will start to think about all the money that can be made with more stealthcams and the like.
|
Perhaps DVD thinks a) it is setting a bad example and more importantly b) some local authority or authorities will start to think about all the money that can be made with more stealthcams and the like.
>>
Utter bunkum. Many of my contemporaries, who should know better, often brag how fast they've gone in their cars, on a particular journey or stretch of road and I should imagine that a very large proportion of the country's drivers regularly exceed the statutory limits.
Suffice it to say, I don't, however.
|
|
|
|
|
The garish yellow squares of oilseed rape on Salisbury Plain don't offend the eye but the stench the stuff gives off at this time of year certainly offends my nose.
I love the smell of it now when it's in bloom - fantastic! The same for field beans. Bees agree, and gather nectar and pollen from oilseed rape very quickly indeed! I don't know of anyone who dislikes the smell - hay fever sufferers tend not to like the pollen, though - however, when it's fully ripe, that's quite a different matter, it smells like a gas attack of rotting cabages and chlorine gas...
|
however when it's fully ripe that's quite adifferent matter it smells like a gas attack of rotting cabages and chlorine gas...
Chlorine gas !!!! you have a very long memory FT....
|
Chlorine gas !!!! you have a very long memory FT....
A are also seeming unable to splee "cabbidge". Sorry!
|
|
Good word pictures Lud. Made me quite nostalgic for Somerset. Used to live near Wells at one time and always loved the Spring and Summer months there. Later moved to the centre of of Bath and enjoyed that too, but you are quite right about the traffic. Even then, some 18 or 20 years ago I used to be grateful to park within a quarter of a mile from my flat. Having said that, most things I wanted were within walking distance. Peaceful place to live except for the time when the the local crims nicked my Golf GTi. Miss it terribly still, or maybe I just miss being younger, who knows !
|
|
|
|
|
Bees like it because it has lots of pollen and stinks. But according to the person whose birthday party I went to Frome for - it was her 70th, she is a biochemist and spectacular gardener who keeps bees among other livestock - it makes unpleasant honey which is coarse and sets solid immediately. Of course there's probably lots of it.
|
Bees like it because it has lots of pollen and stinks.
I don't think bees are attracted to "stinky" things - they like flowery smells, nectar, and pollen, all of which OSR has in abundance.
But according to ... it makes unpleasant honey which is coarse and sets solid immediately.
It makes a delicious and very delicately flavoured honey, of fine-grained crystals. It does set very quickly though, as she points out, even in the comb.
>>Of course there's probably lots of it.
There is, and no mistake. It's a valuable source of honey.
|
|
Funny how tastes vary innit... I don't mind thick honey myself, but I am not a great honey enthusiast. Same thing with pongs obviously FT... rape's a bit heavy for me.
|
|
I'm with Lud on this one - I find oil seed rape scent almost oppressive, especially when surrounded by vast tracts of it in Bedfordshire. It is also particularly bad for hayfever and asthma sufferers.
|
"The garish yellow squares of oilseed rape on Salisbury Plain don't offend the eye, but the stench the stuff gives off at this time of year certainly offends my nose."
I'm one of those who thinks it looks most out of place in our countryside. Spring should be a time of bright yellow - but not in such concentrations and covering vast areas (we are surrounded by the stuff at the moment). A scatter of daffodils, yes, the occasional forsythia, yes - they herald the beautiful light greens as the trees come into leaf. But rape stinks - in flower and as it ripens. And it is the only thing that gives my wife hayfever - horrible stuff! Motoring link? Well, it's very distracting when driving as my wife points out every stinking, garish field of it and starts sniffing and blowing her nose!
|
|
its funny how farmers recently turned to growing rape seed because it has a high yeild and is a good money earner, but ever since they started growing crops for bio-fuels the world is suddenly starving !!!
|
"turned to growing rape seed because it has a high yield"
I seem to remember reading some years ago that they were paid for acreage planted rather than yield - that may explain it (but I might be wrong???)
|
|
along with chickens clucking - cows mooing - sheep baaing - pigs grunting not to mention farmers starting work in field at 5 in morning waking up up all these namby pamby moaning groaning townies - good job milk comes in cartons and eggs in box's and meat is shrink wrapped. Duh!!!!
|
"moaning groaning townies "
Not fair - have lived in same rural village for 28 years - my ancestors were farmers in Yorkshire Dales - spent my youth helping out my Uncle on his farm - lambing, harvest, spud picking, mangold harvesting, etc not to mention milking at 5am and 4 pm (by hand), collecting eggs, shutting hens up at night etc - all done "by hand" in those days - opening out, reaping, stooking, threshing etc but I loved it - learnt to drive on an old "grey" Fergie tractor (which had no effective brakes unless I jumped on all pedals - and sometimes that was not enough) - but we didn't have horrible stinking oil seed rape. Oh, and if he gave me a fag (Players Medium) and half a crown at the end of the week, I was chuffed!
|
|
I'm on the Northern edge of Luton and suffer from hayfever only when the feilds of yellow stench are in flower.
As for not mentioning doing 90, if anyone has read the pistonheads "prison" thread then they'll know that one poster had his prison sentence exacerbated by the prosecution read quite a few of one persons forum postings out to help show "mens rea" even though they had been written in a tongue in cheek style, that didn't come across during the reading.
|
This has just reminded me of one of the less obvious joys of an open car. The ability to smell your environment. The distinctive saltiness of a coastal route or the pine resin scent of a forest for example. Modern cars with their pollen filters and air con systems seem to deprive the occupants of this basic contact with nature. Or in my case it could be the thousands of stogies I have got through since I last had a "sports car". :-(
I have had diesels for years now and still can't get used to the smell but am I the only weirdo who actually misses the smell of 4 star? Something about the whiff from a carburettor on an old but powerful engine which never failed to stir the blood. Probably not allowed now because too many beagles or white mice objected or something.
|
This has just reminded me of one of the less obvious joys of an open car. The ability to smell your environment.
Same goes for a motorbike. Perhaps next year I will resurrect one. Wonderful. Early morning, an hour after sunrise, past mown hay fields near --. Over the -- hills, along the historic road, on a blazing hot Summer afternoon, chaff and fine dust from the harvest in the air, the fuel boiling in the carbs. The smell of nothing, on hard frozen roads traversing the country of --. Oilseed rape in bloom - and the opposite, oilseed rape "ripe" for harvest. Through the town of -- in the late afternoon, long shadows and low sun, over the white bridge, duckweed in the water, and the smell of the brewery wafting along.... time to find a B&B that'll take oily motorbikers, and stop until lunchtime next day....
|
|
Shoespy and FT: are we guilty of censoring in the memory horizon-to-horizon freshly scattered silage, large-scale pig units to windward, sewage farms and so on just a tiny bit? Refineries? Chemical works?
|
|
All part of the "rich tapestries" Lud. Just some are "richer" than others !
|
|
Aha. Pigs. Hm, yes, transient discomfort if one is mobile. Also, being stuck in sweltering heat in motorway traffic jams next to large net-covered open container lorries bearing signs saying "unfit for human consumption" is unpleasant. Motorcycling through Port Talbot through a foul haze of gritty sandy stuff from the steelworks falling through the air. Good and bad are both memorable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
>Oh, and if he gave me a fag (Players Medium) and half a crown at the end of the week, I was chuffed!
You were lucky!
When I were a lad...;-)
Got back from the other side of the pond a few days ago. Flying back over southern England I'd guess that at least 10% of the farmland is turned over to OSR. The pollen is a real PITA at the moment, my car is covered in it. The stuff eats it's way into the topcoat as well.
Kevin...
|
|
|
The title of this thread intrigues me.
Sounds so much like the title of a detective novel that I may steal it and write a book around it.
When it becomes a bestseller, Lud, I'll send you a few quid from my royalties.
|
|
|
