Bills Posts

I think for Gosport this is probably one of my favourite walks; from home along stoke road, westbound to the white hart. Cut across to join the disused railway track now excellent footpath & cycle way all the way down to The crescent, the remaining symbol of a bygone extravaganza then across to GAFIRS, Fareham’s lifeboat station.

Then perhaps my one part of the least popular for walking, but amazing for the scenery; the grave,led walk along the shore to Gilkicker Fort. Pausing to admire the verging on derelict Palmerston Folly, which is engaged in a game of ownership ping-pong. I pause briefly to look at the current state op progress. The brutal metal fence has been moved on for land side of the fort, which has been opened up just a little bit.

From the fort we move on to prepays one of the more dangerous parts of the walk,walking across the fairways two of Gosport Golf club’s fine holes, making sure that the players are not hitting their balls astray. I confess I don’t know the protocol do we, the walkers, give way to the players or vice versa?

Not long after we leave the golf club, we are heading for one of my favourite parts of the walk, Haslar sea wall. I do like to pause here to take a seat and watch the world go by, sadly though not today. On the to Haslar road, the road sided by the high brick walls that can become a real sun trap.

One we are over the bridge we are back in to territory that forms part of my walk during the week. And home. Today that’s a nice six and a quarter miles to add to the monthly total.

I arrived at the waterfront on, a day when the wind was cold enough to make you grateful for the three layers, including fleece and padded jacket, hat and gloves.

The sense of loneliness was palpable. The morning was strange, I had the feeling of the same grey colour being everywhere. Even the water in the harbour was rougher than usual.

I’ve written in the past about a Charles dickens film set, I think in Chatham dockyards. It exhibits a derelict industrial site. I just recall what I think are the first few minutes – I’ve been looking for the film, there are lots of versions it needs to be the right one.

A question that is going through my mind is why has this particular film had such a large impact on me? I think I was probably about twelve or thirteen years old when I saw the film at a complete guess. An impressionable age.

That feeling I get is very strong bordering on deja Vue. I won’t say I’m obsessed with the film, but I am going to make a determined effort to find it.

I’ve done what I don’t like doing because it usually ends up as a rubbish post, leaving the post until last thing at night.

This mornings walk was quite pleasant. Not much going on, but it gives me a topic to write about. With me rising in daylight hours I miss the morning chorus, but I had a fox sitting watching me as I walked across Walpole park towards the cockleponds.

Talking of the cockle ponds, for the last couple of weeks I have been following the cockle ponds population of moon jelly fish. Some of them are getting quite big – on the order of four or five inches across.

It’s nice to see them. Sorry, feeble post. I will try and. Do better tomorrow.

You are walking along, and there are some people working on a large hole in the ground. What do you do? Do you just walk past and not even think about what they are doing? Or walk past and perhaps wonder what they are doing but do nothing about satisfying your curiosity?

I couldn’t do either of those. If there’s a hole in the ground and there are people working on it, I might risk not talking to them – Sod’s Law says the hole will be closed up and the people gone, that’s the risk you take. Not always though, more times than not I will stop and have a chat with them. Always polite of course; “may I ask what you are doing”. It is really unusual for people to tell me to go away.

We were walking over the Wareham causeway, there was a chap in high viz standing over an open manhole cover. We stopped and did the asking. Turns out they were laying fibre optic for fast broadband. Lucky we did stop and ask. Lucky we did as he was gone when we came back about an hour later.

The header picture is a different example. I’m pretty sure I know why they are digging up the road. Getting the street ready for traffic where it has been a pedestrianised area for longer than we have lived in Gosport. Still though, when I’m walking past, I will pause take a look down to see what is going on.

The one thing that stays with me on my morning walks all year round is my gadget stick – in reality, my photo tripod, christened gadget stick by G6RTE Joly. I invariably take it with me on my morning walks. However, tomorrow will be an exception. I won’t be carrying it tomorrow.

The tripod has a ball head with a quick release plate. The problem is that the QRP is coming loose. I had noticed it a couple of days ago but it has steadily got worse to the point that I released my phone from the bracket earlier than I would normally because I was worried about falling off smashing the phone.

The QRP is held in place by what hope is a screw, and not a rivet. If it is a rivet, that means a new ball head. If it is a screw that can be tightened then we are good to go. two problems came to light; the screw / bolt has the same fitting as the ring doorbell, it’s a strange star shaped arrangement. Unfortunately, the ring screwdriver is just a bit too small.

I’ve ordered a set of what I now know (courtesy of 2E1PHW Pete) to called torq fittings not hugely expensive. They are due to arrive tomorrow, so I am hoping that the gadget stick will be back in operation Thursday morning.

Towards the beginning of April we were in Chichester for the day. As usual, my focus of interest were Waterstones and Kim’s. Kim’s is a second hand bookshop. It’s a really nice place over four floors it is absolutely a brilliant place.

I’d spent a good bit of time having a browse around. I done the science fiction, transport, astronomy and writing sections and was about to leave the shop and just by the counter is the section dealing with the counties of England. I found a book entitled Dorset by H.O.Lock. Turns out that Mr. Lock was a Major in the British Army. I haven’t been able to find out anything more about him.

I picked the book up and read a random page from near the front of the book. I really liked the style off Lock’s writing. I don’t know if he was from Dorset, but he wrote very respectfully. Of course, I bought the book and am now reading it. It’s a very nice read.

I’m making the odd note. One thing I found was the Dorset Natural History & Antiquarian Field Club there are references to the club on the net, and copies of clubs records can be bought for £7. I might buy one.

That led me to a huge range of resources at the Dorchester museum,, and then I found a website Tess of the Vale. Now, here is a lady who clearly loves the county. I shall spend some time exploring this website (surprised nothing on YouTube. She is on Twitter.

In the sense that I am going to go on a bit about topic that I have been on this week. Paul & Rebecca’s YouTube channel is absolutely fascinating. I found a similar channel, here are links to both of them;

https://www.youtube.com/@pwhitewick

https://www.youtube.com/@DaveFord

The Dave Ford channel is another new discovery, only found yesterday. He and his dog Logan go on walks. Nice relaxing, informative stuff. Well worth a watch.

There’s almost no point in my attempting to copy what they’ve done, repeating the same walks. I say almost, because what could be done is to focus on a different aspect. Perhaps going a bit deeper in to the history, or talking more about how people might have lived then – getting personal so to speak.

For example today I have been reading about King Edward the eldest son Of King Edgar, who had died but three years before. King Edward, soon to be known as Edward the Martyr was murdered at Corfe Castle apparently on the instruction of his step-mother who believed that her son, not the son of Edgar’s first wife should be king.

Fascinating stuff, but goes to show the research necessary before embarking on a walk, and making sure that you have interesting stuff to talk about.

Oh, and this is making me think about drones as well. Dave Ford doesn’t use one. But The whitewicks do and their footage is to be honest glorious.

I got to spend a bit of time in the Fareham Waterstones today. It’s always pleasant to have a browse. I know the layout of the shop quite well, with the latest non-fiction books displayed just inside the entrance.

One of the first books I picked up to have a quick browse through was Remainders of the day by Shaun Bythel. I’ve read one of Shaun’s books before. Of course, as soon as I started reading it, I knew that I would enjoy it. It’s the people that make it entertaining of course. I didn’t buy the book today. But I know that I’m going to get it in the future.

I had a walk up and down the high street. Fareham has an oxfam bookshop which is quite2 good, but it’s quite a way down the street. Anyhow, it was closed which was frustrating.

I caught the bus back to Gosport. I used my bus pass for the first time, which was good.

From my perspective, the USA dominates YouTube and their videos tend to come in three flavours; very political, very business oriented or entertainment. There are doubtless others, perhaps I’m using the wrong searches, well doubtless I am.

Pretty much all of the US videos I watch are very professionally produced especially the business ones. They put a lot of effort in to production. I sometimes find myself thinking that they are so determined to get as much out of their production as they can, which is absolutely reasonable. But, it can and does leave me breathless. The impression is they don’t take a breath. They aren’t all like that of course, but most of the ones I watch are.

On then to British YouTubers. From what I can tell there are by proportion not a lot. I only really follow very few perhaps five. Over the last few days I have found another husband and wife (uk) team; Paul and Rebecca Whitewick. It helps that a lot of their videos are focussed on the south of England, including Dorset. The most recent one I watched was about an aqueduct the Romans built when the occupied Maiden castle just outside Dorchester. Who would have known that Roman villas with mosaic floors were nearby (well, obviously, a lot of people, but I didn’t).

What I like about their videos are they are relaxed, and they aren’t worried about breathlessly cramming in information and thay also aren’t worried about the cameras they used being in view (carried) when they aren’t actively recording. It’s a kind of “untidiness” that I don’t see elsewhere. This really, seriously does not detract from the enjoyment I get from their programmes, which are well made and entertaining.

I look forward to watching more of them.

I was just looking through the news on my iPad, when I realised that last nights post wasn’t showing up in the list. When I went into the app I realised that it was still down as a draft, it hadn’t been published.

The most annoying thing about that is that the day count is reset to zero, so I’ve started again. I think the most I’ve ever got to is 120. Do I need to make it so that something is posted everyday, even if it is only one word. I really don’t want to do that.

It’s a motivation to ensure that my daily post is something relevant. I really do need to have a focus for my blog. I can’t write about the book at the moment for reasons I don’t want to explain.