A pilgrimage across southern England

[malmomike77]

It's nice to see that the wood from fallen trees is harvested which enables the survival of the woodland.

Actually the opposite. Most woodland managers now recognise the value of leaving fallen trees to rot as the micro environment they generate fosters growth of fungus and its been found these fungi growing underground link with the roots of the trees and help provide nutrients and other benefits. After the great storm in 87' they subsequently found that most woods recovered better if they fallen trees were left where they fell.

I don't know which type of tree that was... MalmoMike?

Look like a Lime. Its a shame its not in flower as the perfume from the lime in full flower is amazing, not a tree like it. If you are in a wood where one is flowering the breeze carries it everywhere. The wood from lime is the best for carving you can get as it has little grain and is relatively soft. They grow to a large size and i think the one which you also showed which was large and had many top shoots is also a lime.

Great Danes are lovely dogs but sadly don't live long. I had a Great Dane in Nepal years ago but she left as she had to get back to work.

[Reg Dingle]

^^It's a Great Dane, I think

[Mendip]

Fantastic day out. What did you eat for lunch and did the Irish wolfhound steal before you could scarf it?

I had a bag of Quavers with a pickled egg dropped in, the daughter just had Quavers.

[Mendip]

^^^ Interesting stuff Mike, I was reading recently how trees are connected by fungi and are thought to communicate along lines of fungi roots, or something like that. Fascinating.

You can see that a lot of the fallen trees have been left to rot, by 'survival' I was more suggesting that by harvesting wood, the woodland management is financed to some degree.

[malmomike77]

They'll rotationally coppice every 5 years or so, staggering it across the woodland. Most coppiced woodland is managed like that for charcoal.

[BLD]

^^^ Interesting stuff Mike, I was reading recently how trees are connected by fungi and are thought to communicate along lines of fungi roots, or something like that. Fascinating.

You can see that a lot of the fallen trees have been left to rot, by 'survival' I was more suggesting that by harvesting wood, the woodland management is financed to some degree.

Slightly different. Many years ago while working for Cra who later became rio tinto we were sampling the leaves of specific trees in the eastern Goldfields of Western Australia these bags of leaves were burnt and the ashes analysed for traces of copper,gold or base minerals with surprisingly good results. It was an inexact science though and managed to give a few geologists a chubby. But looking for minerals. Gotta try everything

[Joe 90]

It's a mystery to me how Joe can be picking ripe blackberries at this time of year up in the cold and bleak north

Never seen so many this year, took this before..

[Backspin]

Are you in the army Chitt ? Or is using the 24 hr clock a British thing

We have wild blackberries all over the west coast. They were brought here by the British in the 1800's. Spread like wildfire. I eat them like candy. Washing them is for pussies. I eat them right off the stem.

[Joe 90]

Are you in the army Chitt ?

Too old for that mallarky nowadays.

I'll eat them off the stem as well, while the dog merrily runs himself ragged trying to catch crows.

[Mendip]

But on a more serious note the acid will react with the calcium carbonate and turn to water, as it’s a neutralization reaction. You need to keep changing the acid or vinegar at as it reacts and disappears with that enormous mass of rock.

After a night in the acid bath the bubbles soon stopped... as you say Willy, it became neutralised. I topped up the acid and now have cleaned off most of the calcareous mudstone from the pyrite surface. But there is bad news... meanwhile I sent a few emails off to likely 'fossily' places and had this reply... the red text is my editing.


Hi Mendip

That’s a whopper (the ammonite). I’m afraid I would expect the pyrite to have taken over the specimen throughout, with the most likely outcome a large ammonite shape lump of pyrite. In any case the pyrite will rapidly decay now its exposed to air/humidity, so ultimately you will be left with a sulphurous dust and/or sulphuric acid :/


Fossil man


So it seems I risked re-igniting my hernia for nothing. On the plus side my mum now has a nice lump of pyrite in her garden and she won't need to get it taken away as it will just weather away of it's own accord. The perfect present really. At least I have a small ammonite to take home as a memento of the Dorset leg of our pilgrimage, but to say I'm disappointed would be an understatement. I may try and just smash it apart with the hammer to see what is inside.

managed to give a few geologists a chubby... Gotta try everything

It doesn't take much these days, mate.

We have wild blackberries all over the west coast. I eat them like candy. Washing them is for pussies. I eat them right off the stem.

Good luck with eating the low hanging blackberries on the Mendips without washing them first.

I usually give several bunches a good soaking... just because I can!




Yesterday was the daughter's introduction to a traditional English seaside resort in the summer. She has been to the pantomime in Weston-Super-Mare on several occasions during our winter Christmas visits and these places are truly grim during the winter months. They're also pretty grim during the summer but at least it was nice and sunny.

My first stop was Boots on Weston-Super-Mare High Street for a Covid booster jab. WSM has the highest concentration of mobility scooters in Europe... I reckon.



Many years ago there were some nice shops along the High Street, but they have deserted the place. After my jab we headed off to the seafront... followed by another mobility scooter convoy. I mean, WTF has happened to people. A little later on the pier I saw what must be the most obese woman I have ever seen sitting on a groaning scooter and I doubt she was out of her 30s. I maybe carry a couple of extra pounds at times but visiting Weston made me feel like an Olympian.



I resisted a 'Giant Gobstopper' but caught this seagull taking gulps of water from a fountain.



You can see in this pic where he'd taken a mouthful of water from the stream.



Our first port of call... the giant Ferris wheel.



The kiosk was blaring out George Ezra (according to the daughter) and it all felt very holidayey.



A tenner for the two of us... I thought it a bit high () but we did get four revolutions.



We went so high you could just see the sea. The Severn Estuary/Bristol Channel is blessed with the second of third highest tide in the world and Springs can easily be 12 or 13 metres, which creates a huge distance between high and low tide across the flat ground.



To the south, Brean Down which could be though of as the westerly-most limit of the Mendip Hills. There's a fort on Brean Down built to defend against a potential Napoleonic invasion. It's on our list if we don't run out of time.



And looking inland at the... Mendips, of course.



During this holiday together I've been sharing a lot of memories with the daughter to give her some idea of my past. For some reason, sitting in that Ferris wheel gondola brought back a long ago memory of sharing a cable car gondola from Mount Faber to Sentosa Island with a Filipina 'friend' I was knocking around with at the time. I kept that memory to myself.



The deal was, if the daughter joined me on the Ferris wheel, then I had to join her on this thing but much to her disgust I backed out. You should see the speed those cubicles spin around at... all I could think about was detached retinas and slipped disks. I must be getting old...



And the donkey rides of course. The island past the donkeys is Steep Holm and the island past the guy in red with a metal detector is Flat Holm. I think both are nature reserves. Wales is on the horizon.





The Promenade.



Every year toursits get stuck in the mud and are caught out by the tides. I'm not one to make generalisations but they alomost always have Brummie or Scouse accents.



Next on our itinerary was the Weston Seaquarium, which I was really looking forward to. I love to see the native species of the UK.

But we discovered it shut in March 2019 and was now a restaurant. There are still road signs to it around WSM... tossers...



And then on to the Tropicana. When I was a kid this was the world famous WSM open air pool with art deco diving boards (10m high) that was built back in the 1930s. Even Laurel and Hardy visted one time, back in the heyday.

My mum says that as a kid she used to get the bus from Brisol to swim in Weston's open air pool.



With Weston's decline the pool was closed in the early 80s and was redeveloped into a leisure complex called the Tropicana... which also eventually closed. The weather in the UK is just not good enough for open air pools and leisure complexes and they can't compete with cheap foreign travel. Maybe that will change post Covid and with climate change?

The place is still called the Tropicana and was where Banksey had his 'Dismaland' exhibition a few years ago.



It's now advertising the 'Sea monster'... which bizarrely enough is a North Sea platform which is being turned into some kind of art exhibition.



I think the old pool would have looked nicer.

After that we battled our way back down the Promenade...



To the main event...



The Grand Pier!



I was happy to pay the £2 entry fee, it was just enough to keep the riff-raff out.



Weston-Super-Mare is often referred to as Weston-Super-Mud... infairly in my opinion. It has a nice sandy beach that goes out for many tens of metres before the mud starts.



And besides, people seem to enjoy wading in the mud.



As a kid I spent many an afternoon clambering around in the mud under the pier to find coins that had dropped down between the decking. There is an amusement arcade at the end of the pier which provided an endless supply of coins. On a good afternoon we could make maybe 30p each, enough to cover the bus fair and get a bag of sweets. The daughter wasn't in the slightest bit interested in trying our luck down there... changing times.



And I noticed there are still plenty of gaps between the decking to allows coins to fall through.



First up, lunch. Cod and chips with mushy peas.



With drinks, for an eyewatering 29 quid. A big money shot...



The daughter has been asking me lots of difficult question lately... she's 11 and on the cusp of some big changes and I'm constantly expecting some kind of awkward question or other. As we sat alone eating our cod and chips she came out with,

"Dad, if you had a choice of never eating fish and chips again in your life or never eating steak and kidney pie again in your life, which would you choose?"

This was one of the hardest questions to date. Steak and kidney pie plays such a huge part in my life I had to go for fish and chips, but it took some thought.

And then on to the amusement arcade.

You put a pound coin in these machines and get change in 2p peices.



I just love these 2p nudge machines and can't believe I haven't played on them for probably 35 years or so.



The daughter played on the machine next to mine and became instantly addicted.



And I hadn't lost it!



I noticed there was no longer wooden deck flooring in the arcade area, cutting off that small income for the local kids. Of course it's always tempting to try and win big when you see a load of 2p pieces teetering on the edge, about to fall, but it's a fool's game. They all go back in... who wants to go home with a pocket full of change?



It was time to head back to the beach.



But there was still some more amusement to be had.

The daughter became concerned about some tourists who had walked all the way out to the water's edge and the tide was heading back in. She has a good set of eyes on her.



They were out there somewhere, but buggered if I could see them.



And then this guy drove out onto the beach and played a siren...



And eventually, back to shore they walked... grumbling in Brummie and Scouse, no doubt.



A quick 99 and then back for us as well. All of these ice creams haven't been kind to me.



A few pics of the beach from the pier.





The UK can be a great place if the weather is good.



But all good things come to an end. Another memory revisited, and no offense Weston, but I don't think I'll be visiting your Grand Pier again.



The days are ticking by.

[malmomike77]

^ Forgive me if 'm wrong Mendip but this was the feeling of you having a holiday reminiscing and possibly seeing the old places for the last time Are you planning on taking mini to Kernow to show her what being a grockle is like?

[Joe 90]

Didnt know you had mines named Speedwell down there, I thought the only one was oop here!

We did the tour last month..

Speedwell Cavern - Things To Do in The Peak District and Derbyshire

[DrWilly]

to Sentosa Island with a Filipina 'friend'

ho ho ho. I know what you mean! Maid’s day in Singapore.


Anyway, great day out, lil Mendip finally had a day that she enjoyed!

[Edmond]

Lovely.

First up, lunch. Cod and chips with mushy peas.



With drinks, for an eyewatering 29 quid.

Set up a Pla Nin pond and Fith an Chip shop nearby.

Last time we were in London we got a light Lebanese dinner near the Natural History Museum and the 90 quid bill was surprising. Could buy a Lebanese fertilizer storage facility for that!

[Topper]

I've really enjoyed this thread Mendip, thanks!

[hallelujah]

WSM has the highest concentration of mobility scooters in Europe... I reckon.


A little later on the pier I saw what must be the most obese woman I have ever seen sitting on a groaning scooter and I doubt she was out of her 30s. I maybe carry a couple of extra pounds at times but visiting Weston made me feel like an Olympian.

Did you get any of their numbers?

Joe said he'll be down on the first train tomorrow.

[Joe 90]

first train tomorrow.

Good luck with that, they're all on strike again.

[Reg Dingle]

^ This is on special at Tesco, bro...

[malmomike77]

Have you tried it out yet?

[Joe 90]

You fvcking wrongun Dill!

I can see Mendy taking a few jars of that back to Thailand

[Reg Dingle]

^ Erm... yeah that's why I picked it up..
to show Mendy.

[Mendip]

I thought you'd solved my problem of what to get the dogs for presents, but at £5.49 a jar on Amazon, bollocks to that... £38.43 for all seven!!!

Besides, I'd be worried it might aggravate my rash.

[hallelujah]

Besides, I'd be worried it might aggravate my rash.

In that case, get Dan dressed up in her best negligee, stick that wig on her again and tell her to get ready for something to really celebrate her golden years!






























Have we gone as low as we absolutely can with this one now?

[malmomike77]

Dill with inevitably post a pic with his King Charles licking the Peamutt butter off his dick so no, no i don't think we have

[hallelujah]

Dill with inevitably post a pic with his King Charles licking the Peamutt butter off his dick so no, no i don't think we have

When things go low, you can guarantee that Dil will have been involved somewhere along the line.

Did you see the picture he posted on the post your work out thread?

Howling (pardon the pun)!