lynmouth 2006

Looking down the cliff railway from Lynton. This is a superb piece of small footprint sustainable transport, heavily used and profitable. It works on water power, freely drawn from a passing stream. Water's added to the descending car and the weight of the passengers and water lift the ascending car which is connected by cable. This will be running centuries after the last car has spluttered to a petrol-less halt.



A view of the main road. This whole part of Lynmouth was remodelled after the 1952 flood which happened after 9 inches of rain fell in the Exmoor hills.



An indoor robin in the restaurant where we had our lunch! Despite appearances he is NOT stuffed!



Looking back up the hill towards Lynton. Possibly one day the top station will be connected by narrow-gauge railway to Barnstaple, reviving the original Victorian plan for the superb Lynton and Barnstaple Railway, which is currently being restored. The original Lynton station was about a mile from the cliff railway, the consequent walk being one of the contributory factors in the L&B's closure. 

powerful reminders of where we're going

powerful reminders of where we’re going


On a day which brought continuing heat, headlining prospects of very large increases in gas and electricity prices and newsworthy powercuts in London, this evening Peak Oil and Climate Change must be in everyone’s minds, not just the cool people’s.

There’s something about the bleating of pensioners in particular that ‘something should be done about high prices’ that shows how out of touch these slavering, penny-counting, first-gear drivers are! Prices ain’t ever going to go down Grandad, so get used to it. You lot were amongst the most profligate of energy-wasters, and kept quiet like sheep when the transport systems of the future - trains and trams - were being wiped out by the unholy alliance of tories, labour and the road industry. There’s a distinct sound of chickens coming home to roost, and I can’t stand the clucking. So use less, make your homes more efficient and start thinking about the future for your kids and grandkids, rather than whingeing. 

yes! school hols!

Yes! School holidays at last!! This was Wulf proudly if self-conciously showing off his Certificate of Merit that he got for being brilliant and cute. In all my years at school I got NOTHING, despite my stratospheric IQ and angelic looks.

But school holidays are not long enough - they should run from 1 June to mid September at least. Bugger the whingeing working parents who shouldn’t have kids anyway, and Blair and his Utopia of double-wage-earner-prefect-christian families paying tax from birth to death on everything.They’re trying to REDUCE the holidays, shoving ‘em on in October or other drizzly times of year.

School should be for kids, holidays should be for scrapes and adventures and trainspotting and chilling to Plan B and Chopin and baseball-batting kids from the other villages. I’m surprised they don’t try to give ‘em homework to do over the holidays.

So Wulf will be quad-biking and swimming and climbing trees and digging up ants nests and having pub lunches and falling off station platforms and sniffing steam rather than glue.
Yes! School holidays at last!! 

energetic weekend, cars ...

A hot weekend punctuated by surprising bursts and amounts of energetic activity! Bowling Saturday evening, swimming Sunday morning ... it's not normal. Wulf added bouts of trampolining and water sliding to the above, and was still running around at eight in the evening.

Coming back from Bristol through the suburbs I was amazed by the houses on the way, most with three or four cars in the drive. How are these people going to adjust to a car-free future? Are they going to meet the challenge, or will they wilt and go quietly crazy as all their presumptions melt like early autumn snow? And should anyone actually care? 

towards a solar economy ...

We hear buzz-words such as 'hydrogen fuel cells', 'biofuels' or 'energy conservation', but none of this will help transform the world into a genuine solar economy.

Fossil fuels were part of the solar economy, but they are now in terminal decline. Using fossil fuels has led to enormous problems for us now and in the future - pollution, climate change, economic meltdown and consumerism. Had we not had coal and oil our true solar economy would have developed and prospered, even if technologically we may have been slacking. But technology is double-edged, with sinister byproducts such as weapons of mass destruction, CCTVs, television programmes for idiots, totalitarianism and isolation.

We need to scrap the past entirely, give up ideas like nuclear power and huge tidal barrages, all highly energy-intensive and inhuman in their scale, and concentrate on creating a world where we each generate our own power and grow our own food. Four acres to a family, a huge chav holocaust, no more immigration to fuel the economy and a resurgence of old skills. And a life that gives priority to family and fun, rather than Blair's nightmare vision of jobs for all from dusk to dawn, powerhoused kids with no childhood and a scrap pile for the millions that can't keep up.

We're ruled by idiots, too many morons have power (like the Israeli army, mad mullahs, christian funda-mentalists, middle-class chinless prefects and buffoons like John Prescott). These idiots will suffer more than us when the fan hits the shit because they're too busy chomping oysters and knocking back gin and tonics to read this blog ... 

dinosaurs, heat haze and abandoned railways ...

We live in the middle of a huge commercial forest. Meanwhile the world's oil is running out fast, speeded up by the incredible heat both here and in the US increasing demand for air conditioning, oh, and a small war in the Middle East.

All the cottages in the village have wood-burning stoves, and the Estate sell wood. So what is the latest brainwave of the tossers who 'run' the Estate? To replace wood burners with oil-fired central heating! I pity the poor tenants who fall for this communist rubbish! I'm sticking with my Tiroler, which used about half a tonne of wood last year.



A view over the Estate - with the grass rapidly turning brown in the heat.



Under here is our 7 1/4" industrial railway. I've been too busy this year to even clear the track, let alone extend it and run trains ...

the day the earth caught fire

I suppose we're going to have to get used to it. Heatwave after heatwave as global heating starts to run away. They ain't telling us everything! Do you even remember rain?

After a difficult night we tried to escape Bristol's heat by going right into the middle of the city at midday. It didn't work. We then popped down to Portishead to their empty swimming pool, but it was filled to the eaves with cancerous plebs. We never even went in. Then back to Bristol as the temperature peaked at 35 degrees. Conked out for an hour upstairs. Then had a hideous drive along roads full of idiot lorries and tractors, then home for a curry and a game of water volleyball in the courtyard. 

heat ...

With global heating accelerating and even the heavily censored government 'scientists' claiming a 3 degree rise this century (multiply by 3 and it may give a truer picture) today's heat is going to become commonplace. It was too hot to do anything much, the streets and pubs were almost empty, most people probably just kicked their heels at home waiting for the heat to subside. Forecast is actually for it to get hotter, with 35 degrees in London by Wednesday. And where's the rain?



Our attempt to keep cool involved setting this thing up in the courtyard, luckily there's no hosepipe ban here yet!




Wulf just kept far enough away to see what was happening without getting too wet! 

what's important ...

Being Pagan has loads of advantages. You can look beyond what's around you to something altogether larger. Pagans don't start wars - it would be like attacking ourselves. We don't have egos because how can you have an ego if you're just a part of something infinitely larger than yourself? We can't understand pointlessness because we can plan ahead infinitely - being alive is the point stupid! We can look aeons ahead into the future and think that what we do now can affect us in future lives, that every bit of good we do resonates through the ages to make the world and ultimately the universe a better place for all of us. We can love a storm or cold or discomfort as much as we love a summer's day lazing by the pool. We are naturally stoical, and a bit decadent too! Life's about fun, family and friends, it's not about getting one over on others, being randomly nasty, being bored or listless, disengaging from the world or whingeing. But most of all it's about being part of something larger, forever in a deathless multiverse. 

revenge of brunel ...

We all know that the S&D hates the GWR and the GWR hates the S&D. The S&D started it by running a railway through Great Western territory and letting the Southern and Midland in, the GWR got its revenge by closing the S&D in 1966. The S&D's getting revenge again by reopening, but the latest 'hit' was Brunel against me - and this time it's personal.

Trin took me on a mystery drive and walk on Sunday - and this was our destination. Little did Trin know that I suffer from terminal vertigo caused by exposure to the Eiffel Tower (in Paris, France) and the walkway on the Lady Isabella mine (Laxey, Isle of Man).

Every inch was a nightmare, the bridge swayed violently from side to side, the fences were loose, there were huge holes in the walkway ... I saw dozens plunge to an inconvenient death in the river miles below. Obviously any bridge built by Brunel would be shoddy, but this was horrific! Never again!!!! 

so what ARE we going to do when the oil runs out?

Images of roads packed with cars, oil reigning supreme, have uncanny echoes of the 1930s when Britain's railways were at their zenith, when the races to the north between the streamlined and luxury trains of the LMS and LNER were the biggest transport story going. Just 30 years later the tory/labour alliance headed by the twin dragons of Beeching and Castle turned the railways to mush with dodgy accounting, a sloping playing field tilted towards the morons in the road transport industry and an impossible dream - roads were going to last for ever, fuel too cheap to meter, every house would have two or three cars, congestion was going to be a thing of the past as every town and village got its lovely by-pass ...

Hmmmm. Hindsight's a wonderful thing. Now even the BNP is pushing Peak Oil and we all know that cars and roads will become a thing of the past so quickly that we'll barely realise what's hit us. Personally I think estimates of 30-40 years of remaining oil reserves are wildly optimistic, these figures don't take into account increasing consumption, wars and conflicts, waste and plain economics.

As petrol and diesel prices rise inexorably more and more of us will become reluctant non-car owners. The road network will shrink as maintenance costs become uneconomic with reducing use. Obviously rail, with its 300% advantage in energy terms relative to roads, will become the primary transport mode, using the variants of heavy rail, light rail, tramways and ultra-light transit, but how on earth are we going to build thousands of miles of railways/tramways in just a few years? Perhaps all local communities should take the iniative now, as we are in Norton Radstock, and start building the railways before Peak Oil hits with full force?

What's That Coming Over the Hill, Is It a Monster? 

Yesterday we quite innocently visited a place called 'Noah's Ark', near Bristol. The first warning sign was a 'fish' flag outside the entrance. The place seemed fairly normal apart from that, until we read some of the plaques on the animal cages and fences. Sign after sign questioned evolution and kept waffling about 'god'. A lot of laughs and headshaking ensued!

Things got more serious when we visited the animal show. It started off okay, but as soon as a donkey was brought in the old dodderer giving the show started screaming about 'Jesus'! Needless to say we, and many others, walked out. It was DISGUSTING that children were subjected to this rot.

There was more evidence elsewhere (photos available to researchers), the shop was like any true Brit's nightmare - pop up bibles, christian videos, morbid singing. Outside there was a 'Noah's Ark' exhibition where the poor fools tried to claim that Noah's Ark was REAL, that the earth was 'created' 13,000 years ago and there were only 120 species of animals then, all the other 3,000,000 having evolved since! Whilst making these extraordinary and impossible claims for the power of evolution, other signs claimed it was only a 'theory' (the bible isn't?????) and that evolution 'couldn't exist'.

We've all shook our heads in wonder and pity at deranged leftie anti-women pro-white Americans expressing this rot, but I NEVER thought I would see it in Wessex of all places. This is a PAGAN country, not a superstition-riddled island full of half-bred lunatics, and christianity can only ever be a joke 'religion'.

A day later I still feel disgusted that this affront to reality could exist. If you visit their website or see their brochure you'll see that they keep all this idiocy under their hats, as they realise that visitors would dwindle to zero. In fact it's only after you've paid their (exhorbitant) entrance fees that the true nature of this disgraceful place is revealed. 

ahhhhhh ...

Some of the furry and feathered friends we saw yesterday. But behind the pleasant exterior there was something VERY sinister going on ... 

serious chill out

Back to earth after a couple of days in an idyllic retreat on the edge of the New Forest. If you haven't tried stress-free clothes-free living then you're seriously missing out! The downside was that it rained all day we were there, the upside was that the evening before the pool was open till midnight on a very sultry evening, the jacuzzi and sauna were great fun with the rain falling outside and the food was excellent! And all for thirty quid a day! And despite the picture above, yes this was England, not southern Spain or a Greek island. We've booked again for August!! 

hot!

Not dead, but merely sleeping! This was Elvie and Pyewackett's reaction to the current hot spell.

And this fellow knocked on my door asking for a drink of water ... 

revisiting the past

Off to Littlehampton with Wulf and Trin to visit family and old haunts.

This used to be the meeting place of the Smart's fairground workers, but was changed beyond recognition years ago. There were some characters, stories and ultraviolence at this place! Now it's a Brewsters, who always surprise with pretty good food for the type of place. And you get Nectar points.



Littlehampton beach on a very hot Saturday. Of course this will all be gone in 50 to 100 years time, as the coastline is very vulnerable to sea level rise and has already been written off by the government as indefensible.



Wulf plays with a Brewsters' menu.



And now ponders on whether to buy a very large ice cream.