Bills Posts

In one way, it hasn’t been a very successful walking week. I didn’t get out at all on Friday or Saturday, they were very lazy days. On the other hand I have closed up over 20 miles. I know, that’s not many, but it’s enough for the week to keep my Walk 1000 on track.

Weather wise, there hasn’t been anything which would have stopped me from going out. Cold, and a bit windy on occasion but no rain, although one morning had the potential to get a bit misty. All of the walks were very enjoyable – once I’ve got up and got out.

Monday to Friday my walks take place between 0600 – 0700. It is very nice at the weekend to be able to have a choice as to when I go out. Normally, I choose not to go early in the morning – as you might expect. Today’s walk was between 1200-1800. I started out with the intention of doing my normal 3 mile route, but whilst the air was slightly chilled it was so pleasant that I thought I would extend it a bit.

I went down the old railway track, now a very good walkway & cycle track to the Iron Bridge, this is a very photogenic area. I returned to my normal route via a slightly different path, having added around a mile to the walk.

I usually head for the waterfront, you never know I might see a ship coming in, now I could check the QHM timings – I receive the email everyday telling me what are the main ship movements of the day, but today I’ll take my chance. As it happens, apart from the Gosport ferry, and a couple of small private boats, not a dickybird. Oh well, that is the luck of the draw. I did have a socially distanced chat with a couple of people; Ray, whom I say hello to every once in a while. He lives in the last tower block.

Ray told me about the Kingfisher that has taken up residence near the ramparts. We walked down to have a look if we could see it. There we met Tony. Tony’s a bit of a twitcher, and is quite socially conscious. He had been clearing out some glass that some vandals had thrown in to an area of water. The consensus was that we really do not understand why people do that.

It was a very nice walk, and very nice to get back and have a couple of tea.

I thought these two lovely birds were yellow wagtails. It appears not; grey wagtails. Yellows have a yellow head and are more yellow generally. Anyhow, I caught this picture this morning, both birds were bobbing about and every so often running over to the little pile of food that I have started putting down for them.

I absolutely love having these two in the garden. Those and the sparrows, starlings, pigeons, magpies and anything else that appears (potentially goldfinches). It is incredibly nice to have them appear.

Not far from us is a nature reserve, Titchfield Haven. Every so often I get the urge to go and spend some time in the hides. I am not an ornithologist, by any stretch of the imagination, but I do enjoy watching birds. Once again, thoughts of taking out membership are filtering in to my mind. My spotter scope is languishing unused in the cupboard. It’s time it saw light.

I have other occasional obsessions; model railways is one, I will have a layout one day. Not so long ago, I went through a phase of reading about philosophers. I re-read (actually I listened to on audible) Sophies World. That lasted a few weeks, and I still have the notes. I may go back to it, but I’m not sure what the endgame was going to be.

I’ll write about my occasional obsessions as they crop up.

Well, (Is it a cliche when people start sentences with words like Well, So or Now)? Anyhow, Well, wasn’t yesterday’s efforts pretty feeble? I think it must have been a massive case of indigestion. I was very uncomfortable for several hours, but did have a good nights sleep. I didn’t go for a walk this morning, it’s been a lazy day really, apart from being busy at work.

Apart from last night which I put down to an aberration, I feel that this weeks writings haven’t been too bad. I only really had a bit of writers block last night, well, it wasn’t writers block.

I quite like today’s picture (well, I like most of the pictures I put up on these posts. I’m watching Grayson Perry’s art club. We discovered it during one of the earlier lockdowns, and became quite addicted to it. He is such an unusual person, but seeing him in his home environment is very interesting, and of course seeing the artistic efforts of the public is what’s makes the show so interesting. Did I really think that reading the history of art would increase my interest and understanding of art? I’m not sure that it’s worked. I still look at things and go, I don’t understand that. For example, the man who photographs his shadow against the shed wall every morning, but then nearly every morning I walk to the waterfront and photograph that – what is my artistic measure?

Do you watch the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross, recorded in the 80’s I think. He produced some wonderful pictures. I quite fancy going around an art gallery. Perhaps we will be able to do that soon,

It was a calm day, quite a light breeze, but what little there was still caused a bit of wind chill. I’m not sure what the forecast is for tomorrow, but if it is dry, I intend to be out for my walk in the morning. I don’t mind it being cold.

It has been a bit nippy most mornings and I have been wrapped up well. I must admit I really feel for the crew of this small fishing boat.

OK, this is a moment of reality for the blog. It looks like I just ate too much of our rather delicious sausage hot pot for tea, and am feeling a little bit full, uncomfortably so. So I am going to have an early night and hopefully be fit for the walk in the morning. Sorry this has been a short post this evening.

I am going to do something I definitely don’t normally do in this blog. Just very briefly I’m going to talk about me. When I was at school, one of my favourite subjects was history. I can’t remember what it was that I enjoyed about the subject, I just remember that enjoyment. Then I went to college. There I met, what I still class as the most boring history teacher in the universe. He pretty much destroyed the topic for me.

well, I don’t think he really destroyed it, completely, lets say damaged. Anyhow, There have been a couple of times over the last 40 years where an interest in history has served me well. Not least spending four and a half years in Berlin, a city truly steeped in history. That the Berlin Wall came down halfway through that period was really the icing on the cake (and a period of my life of which I am always proud to talk).

Now, living in Gosport makes it almost impossible to not appreciate the fact that this town is absolutely stuffed with history. As to the question of why am I writing about history when on a Wednesday I should be writing about photography. Apart from the fact that my self imposed regime allows for occasional posts on random topics, I wanted to follow up on my post from Monday, where I commented upon the book of the week; The Gosport Journals. In particular the inspection of the fleet by Charles I in 1627.

A dear friend of mine who read the piece commented that Charles had prepared the invasion in support of the Huguenots. Now, I have heard of the Huguenots, but did not know who or what they were. Of course they were (are) a Protestant sect, born of the Calvanists if I’m not mistaken. I didn’t really know who they were either.

It was nice and good to have a train of thought triggered by a comment, and to do a little bit of research as well.

The last couple of mornings have seen (for me) some remarkably low tides. The picture above shows the rails and supports for the Old Gosport Ferry. The picture was taken around 0640, the tide still had five minutes to run before turning. The distance between the low tide and the high tide mark, clearly visible is almost 5 metres. I can’t remember the the last time I have seen it so low.

Taken from near the end of the Haslar Marina Pier Wall again to demonstrate how low the tide was I am not normally able to over see the decks of the Might Mouse light ship. Here I have a clear view in to the ships foredeck.

I think we have all heard of Spring and Neap Tides. I had never realised (I should have done) that these are not seasonal but monthly occurrences. Obviously tied primarily to the moon. The app that I use on my phone to give the tidal state also, logically, gives the phase of the moon. I’m going to have to pay more attention to that.

Again, you get an impression of the tide being low from the level of the lower walkway against the bracing pillars.

The temperature is also a bit up and down. Over the last few days, the temperature has been getting colder in the morning, definitely frosty this morning. I have been really appreciating the balaclava and gloves. The metal of the tripod that I take out with me in the mornings, gets almost too cold to touch, and I have to have a glove of, usually my right hand, to operate my phone. But, I always enjoy the walks.

I have only got one or two leaflets left to read. I’ve enjoyed reading them. I don’t know if any more than what I have were published. There has been a lot of talk about the occupants of cemeteries, but it’s the stories of activities at “Famous” Gosport Houses, and the story of Gosport itself. Including the article I’m reading at the moment about the Ghosts of Gosport – it only talks about a few of them. I am sure that there are more of them.

Some of the articles have given me ideas either for articles of my own especially Vlogs. I know that I am procrastinating with that. Of course, things like the merging of Alverstoke and Gosport are of particular interest, and then of course the disturbances of 1830 (the destruction of jobs through farm mechanisation). The article of how the frieze above what was the Gosport Library, was conceived and installed in 1901 is something that I can really relate to as it is still there today.

One of the articles goes back to 1627 and recounts the story of how King Charles I inspected his ships in preparation of an invasion of France. That invasion was to take place at La Rochelle, again I can relate to this, having been to that very place – more than once.

Then in 1689, a book was printed. It currently resides in the British Library has the sentence “Gosport: Printed by J. Phillpott near the Blue Bell, in Middle Street, in Gosport”. It appears that the public house referred to may have been the Bell Public House at 19 High Street which was demolished in 1973, meaning it, or it’s predecessor had been there for around 300 years! Food for thought.

I can’t let tonight’s post go without commenting on being very chuffed indeed to have reached No. 200.

Completely unrelated to walking. I opened the curtains this morning, as I did so, I noticed a fluttering of wings, and what looked like a couple of yellow wagtails flew off, but I couldn’t be sure. Then, this afternoon I looked out the kitchen windows, and low and behold, there they were. What I had identified as a male, and the other bird with muted chest colours, clearly a female. They were both bobbing so madly, as wagtails it was incredibly lovely to see. I just needed to say that. It is quite beautiful.

This month, I have walked 93.94 miles. Over the past two months, I have done 193.71 miles. Assuming nothing goes wrong, I am on target to reach 250 in the first quarter, which means that Walk 1000 is achievable.

The previous couple of weeks have seen some quite variable weather, but I have been able to get out every morning, which is good. The walks themselves have been very pleasant with at least one spectacular sunrise.

“I’m not sure what is going to happen weather wise over the next week, but as long as it isn’t raining heavily, and I don’t think that is forecast at least for the first part of the week, then it should be OK.

A year or two ago I read a book by Leonard White “The Story of Gosport” It was a very interesting book and I think in the context of recent activities, I probably need to read at least parts of it again. THat’s because there’s a period from 1850 onwards that is particularly interesting about the existence of the town.

Bringing Gosport and Alverstoke together as a borough was not an easy task and even ended up going to a public enquiry; this was around whether it would be Alverstoke and Gosport Borough, or Gosport and Alverstoke. It got quite lively with public meetings leading to threats.

I found a news paper report from 1891 about that meeting. My initial thought was that the news when I was young, in the 1970’s would be quite an interesting period with the minutes from the council and newspaper articles would be quite plentiful, I would look for items in the news papers that were controversial or funny and then do a vlog about it. But then I thought, OK that could be a bit dodgy, as time wise it’s relatively close to now. So then I thought, that OK, I know I can get newspaper articles from the 1850-1900 period (the report on the lively meeting was a very good read).

Now it’’s how to approach the Vlogging that is going to be interesting. I very much want to do this, but in my way.

I started doing this /366 thing, because I have had an urge to write for a long time. I have a couple of notebooks that are filled with rubbish that can only be dated between 2005 – 2008, with the particular job that I had at the time. I have other bits of writing as well, between then and now. The trouble was that there was no coherence to the writing, no theme, no purpose. Well, perhaps there is a purpose. To satisfy my need to write, in which case if the need is satisfied, do coherence and theme (or are they the same) matter?

Having a daily theme has certainly helped to focus my writing, but within the theme, it’s still a bit random. To be honest, I’m not sure what to do about this. Perhaps I should just accept that is the case. Just for a moment, I’m going to think about the Gosport journals. These have given me a couple of ideas about Vlogs. I’m kind of reluctant to write about them at the moment, I need to do some more planning and research.

Having said all of that, I feel that this weeks writing schedule has gone quite well. Once again, I don’t feel as though I have been blocked with ideas. Putting those ideas in to this blog, has made the week quite enjoyable for me. It’s nice to be able to just sit and type, and the words just seem to come out. Most of the time they make a reasonable degree of sense. Well, at least they do to me.