Bills Posts

I joined the Gosport Society towards the begining of this year, after looking at the list of talks they had planned all of which (Even the Pubs Of Gosport) sounded very interesting.

And, My Golly, this evening was no disappointment . One was the meeting itself, which has inspired me to see if I can go to their Christmas Lunch, the second was the talk. This evening it was “Embarking the D-Day Armada” by Stephen Fisher. Stephen is a military archaeologist, who has an interest in concrete. Doesn’t sound very exciting does it? His talk takes you through the lengths the allies went through yto ensure that when D-Day came, they would be able to embark the soldiers and equipment needed for the invasion, get them off the other side of the channel and even through the countryside over bridges destroyed by the German army.

It includes the “Hards” the concrete ramps that enabled the landing crafrt to be loaded, the supporting roads that would be needed to get the men & materials to the Hards, the repair facilities needed for battle damaged landing craft and the Mulberry Harbours, in particular there is a museum in Welcheren in the Netherlands that comprises 3 intact mulberry caisons, you enter through one, the centre is a museum of Mulberry, and is partially buried – in this context, they were used to bolster the dykes that were damaged during the 1953 storms & Floods (this saw the beginnings of RAYNET in the UK) . There remains a lot of evidence of the infrastructure that was put in place, especially here in Gosport. Southwick Park, and the Map Room for the D-Day landings is there, I’ve had the honour of going to see that.

At the start of the evening, the Chair did his introductions, and talked about, amongst other things, the Gosport Railway Society, which I had no idea existed. It looks like they do an interesting range of talks as well.

What a fascinating evening. Just goes to reinforce just stuffed with history is Gosport.

Here are some totally random pictures for you. Of of interest is the picture of the grey night sky, with the streak of light in it. I don’t understand it, it can’t be the moon, it’s the wrong colour, but the source was static, and it was behind the clouds. Unusual.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Once again, I find myself at the end of the day, sat at my machine, having done everything else and now wanting to write a post and not having a subject prepared. It’s frustrating. I’d like to have a week of posts ready but that means running ahead of myself – perhaps tomorrow, I might start doing that.

I would like to understand why I have such a problem with food. Once again, I ate too much at tea.. Not helped by eating a doughnut that someone had bought. What I should have done is put it in the bin. I will try and do this next time. I also had too much bread with tea. Whereas I should just have had my portion and accepted it.

Frustratingly, there was a thing at work that prevented me from going for my lunchtime walk. So, I am down on my steps and distances today. Under normal circumstances I can get 20,000+ steps and 17-18KM walked or cycled per day. Todays step tally is around the 16,000 mark. Oh well.

The moon is full at the moment, and is up early in the evening. The way I come home takes me past a couple of bodies of water, I’m in a position to exploit the light producing some pictures that I like. According to the forecast, I should be able to go for my walk in the morning – that’s good. There are some pictures from my morning walk also.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

After a fine breakfast in the Buttery, Elayne went off and did her Christmas shopping with her sisters. Bill here, took the cowards way out by going and looking for historic and interesting Chichester. He found a bit of each.

Knowing that there was a high certainty that it would start raining around midday, I decided I would do any outdoor activities first. Starting with the Canal. I’m not sure what you would call it – The Basin? a rectangle of water at the head of Chichester Canal. At the moment, it looks like Father Christmas and his troupe of Reindeer are relaxing and building up their energy before the Christmas rush.

I strolled probably for a bout 10 minutes down the stretch of the canal. It really was most relaxing and very scenic. There were some interesting houses on South Bank Street (or perhaps just South Bank?) From there, I walked back up South Street to the Cathedral. I had the opportunity of a guided tour which I declined saying I didn’t have enough time . So the vicar gave me a leaflet containing a guided route. One thing I didn’t know was that the ashes of the Composer,Gustav Holzt (The Planets) were interred there. Not the largest cathedral in the world, but intriguing none the less.

Fro m the Cathedral, I walked not much more than four minutes to the Novium, a smallish museum, covering an part of a Roman Bathhouse. Coming out of the Novium in to the forecast rainstorm. From there, after checking I decided to come home on the train. It had been a very pleasant and enjoyable day.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

If you are a licensed amateur radio operator, I hope this evenings post will be of interest. If you aren’t and persist in reading, then I am sorry for the jargon – perhaps you might become interested in joining the community of hams?

Fairly regularly, I run the Isle Of Wight Radio Society’s (IoWRS) Thursday Night Net (TNN). It happens 2000-2100 local time most Thursday evenings. Everything is routed via the net controller who manages the net – this week it was me.

There are different ways of running a net, and different outcomes – no two thursxday evenings are the same. An abiding fear is that I put a call out and nobody comes to the party. Or possibly only one or two other people join in. That’s how tonights net started. What do you do? Let it run it’s course, or say “let’s not bother tonight” . That latter very rarely happens, I usually try to run it.

What helps is having a topic – that gets people talking, and often draws in more operators who wish to contribute. I should say, you absolutely do not have to be a member of the IoWRS to take part in the net, any licensed operator is more than welcomed to be involved.

Tonights topic was “what questions do you have about HF (High Frequency)?” Well, it was posed like that. What it turned into was as discussion about high noise levels on HF radios and what can be done about it.

A fair bit was discussed about what causes the noise (LED lamps, smart TV’s, broadband boxes were all cited as sources) . What to do about it was also discussed; Go mobile, add line filters, try different antennas, change the position of existing antennas that kind of thing. It was for me (an inexperienced HF operator) an invaluable, and interesting hour. If you are on facebook, look for the GB3IW page – there’s a live video recording there.

Here are some random, unrelated pictures;

• 

• 

• 

• 

Over the last couple of years through going to weight watchers and becoming a bit more active I have shed around 65lbs. I’ve become a bit stuck these last couple of weeks and this last monday, I stayed for the chat. It’s no longer Weight Watchers, it’s WW, they’ve become a whole body thing, which I get and don’t have a problem with.

Where I do have a problem is controlling my eating, and I am now becoming a bit worried that I am gaining weight again. I do not want to go back to what I was. So I have to do two things, the main one is bring my eating back under control, and do something about my fitness. Stupidly, at WW on Monday, I said that I was going to be honest with tracking my food this week. The trouble is that I am being honest, and it is almost like it has become a bit of a contest to see just how bad I can make it. This has to stop, I am better than this, and I can make it.

About this time last year, I started running. I did the Couch to 5k thing. The app worked incredibly well for me. I have never actually reached the goal of running 5km in 30 minutes, the best I have achieved is 4.3km. But, I’m not worried about that. I have though stopped running at the moment. The excuse I am using is that I had a twinge in my knee. How much am I using that as an excuse now? Probably a lot. Although, I don’t have a problem with walking.

I’m not sure yet what I am going to do about the phys side of things, but I am going to bring my food intake back under control. Here are some random pictures for you.

• 

• 

• 

• 

I think I’ve only put the date in the title, because it is a special day. The story of Guy Fawkes is well known, and I enjoy a firework display as much as anybody. But being a person who is owned by cats, tonight always causes me some distress. If only we could talk to them, and tell them that they are safe here, so we do the best we can to protect them. I can open the cat flap now, as it has quietened down. They’ll be relieved!

When I looked out the back door to assess the weather, I could see that the sky was heavily clouded, with a layer of smaller clouds underneath scudding along at a fair old rate. It was a bit blustery at ground level. It was a very enjoyable walk, with an excellent #Breakfastclub. We don’t always talk about radio related topics, but it featured quite a bit this morning.

I’ve started reading a bit about blogs, the first lesson I get is publish and be damned. Oh well. Not a brilliant post, but I’m persisting. What I would really like is to not be doing this last thing. I’d like to link it to my Facebook posts, developing threads which make it easy to write the post, rather than struggling to think of a topic. I’m not quite there yet. I have a locality project planned for the weekend. Let’s see how it goes.

In the meantime, here are some partially random pictures for you.

• 

• 

• 

Everybody hates Mondays – don’t they?  Well I’m not sure that I do. It’s pretty much like any other day really, except you can bring back memories of the weekend.  I’m hoping for you, they are good memories.  Somebody said to me on Saturday “isn’t the weather dreadful”? To which I replied “well…as long as I’m kitted out right, I quite enjoy weather like this”. I heard that the Needles (a formation of rocks on the western edge of the Isle of Wight) lighthouse had recorded a wind speed of 100mph – I haven’t confirmed that, but it seems likely. A fair bit of rain fell as well. And although my trainers got wet, I did enjoy being out.  You’ll have seen the pictures from yesterday’s blog I hope.  It was a lovely day.  It was frustrating at work.  I like to go for a walk at lunchtime.  Not today, it was very showery, and they were quite heavy, and of course one started just as I was due to go out, so I didn’t.  Just a normal autumn day.  

After yesterday’s wind and rain, todays blue skies have been a delightful change. I had to get out for a walk. Here’s most of my route today;

It was lovely. We have quite a few blue plaques around the town. There’s one that I had seen not long after moving here, but it had disappeared, and then today I just happened to look and there it was. It celebrates Henry Cort who developed a new process “Puddling” for managing wrought iron. I must do something here with other plaques

I walked down to the end of the Haslar Marina Pier wall, from where I did a brief Facebook Live. I walked round to the small lake by the Gosport Ramparts, I stopped on the way to have a chat with one of the towns street cleaners. I see him quite often. It’s nice to be able to say to them “thank you for looking after the town”. I saw this Cormorant sunning themselves at the side of the small lake. I must admit I did get a little too close to them, and they scooted off across the lake. I’d loved to have taken a picture of it, but was too slow. I was sorry I had frightened and disturbed them. They didn’t seem too disturbed though. By the time I’d walked to the other side of the of the lake the bird was back in the same spot, wings raised, gently wafting backwards and forwards.

I walked on round to the Cockle ponds, where I met a local Facebook Friend and we had a brief chat. The cockle ponds are a delightful little area. This group of Canada Geese were making good use of it, have a very placid float;

Today, they would be sharing the lake with members of the Gosport Model sailing club. I pretty much ended the walk near Walpole Park, where this sight met me;

Really frustrating. Do you get this where you are?

If you read my facebook post you may see some of the pictures used here again. Apologies for the duplication.

I’d written a piece about the weather today, or rather my experiences out and about in it – mainly revolving around how good is my wet weather jacket, and how very comfortable the new HoodyFleece, purchased by the Station Manager has been.

Then at the end, I wanted to upload a two versions of the same photo. Of course the pictures in question don’t appear in the image galley, and so I was looking to see ho I can force the gallery to bring in new photos.

In doing so, I lost the text of my post, but… Ah, now you see; I didn’t have a particularly good sleep period for a variety of reasons, have now come over all tired and forgot what I was going to say.

Anyhow, another attempt at pasting a gallery. If this doesn’t work, I shall just leave here.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I like walking. Not too far mind you. For example, I wouldn’t go on a 30 mile hike. But, I would consider a 5 or 6 mile walk quite happily, I probably push it to 10 miles with the right shoes.

Mon – Fri, I get up at 0540 and go for a walk, about 2 miles, and then at lunchtime, I will go for a 2 – 3 mile walk. Coupled with my 2 – 4 mile commute (2 miles there, 4 miles back if I go the long way, which I usually do gives me a bit of exercise most weekdays. I try and do a walk on the weekends, even if it is only to walk in to town, let’s say about a mile each way. The only thing that is really likely to interrupt this routine is rain – I always cycle to work, regardless, but I may not go for a walk if it’s chucking it down. If there are droplets in the air, I am more likely to walk than not, so there are tolerances in my regime.

Last year in October, I started recording my walks as I read about Walk1000, this is a campaign to encourage people to walk 1,000 miles in a year. In order to do that, you need to walk 2.79 miles per day, every day. Of course if you walk more than 2.79 miles in any one day, that reduces the amount you have to walk on other days. As it happens, I averaged more than that each day, and there were some days where I didn’t walk at all, typically a Sunday, or if it was wet all day. The beginning of last week saw the year come to an end, and my final figure was about 1,340 miles. Which I have to admit surprised me. I didn’t expect to be able to do it.

Because I like doing it, I’m going to continue to record my mileage until the end of the year. But I am also going to formally register for next years walk 1000.

As usual, here are some random pictures, mostly taken on my walks.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•