Railway videos

More for my own interest I have uploaded a few videos of Little Foxwood with three trains running. I spent much of the day in the village today as the wind and rain prevented anything outdoors happening. In fact, the wind has been howling all day and is extremely severe!

I've tidivated bits and added bits and then decided to take some mobile phone video of it all running to see how it came out. It's not great but it gives an idea!

Netbooks!

Ever since seeing the launch of netbooks, I have wanted one! I am a bit of a self confessed gadget freak I have to admit and the thought of having a fully blown laptop small enough to take to school and on courses as well as when I go off to London or camping and not have to unplug, de-wrire and carry my full sized laptop with me, was something I have aspired to.

Last week, I saw one in action and had the chance to play with it and was very impressed. I have now bit the bullet and bought a very nice little Samsung NC10 netbook.
I have just about set it up and with the 160GB hard drive, I have been able to load most of the applications and files/documents that I need so I can now carry everything with me everywhere I need it!

Wonderful walking!

Just returned from a fantastic few days of walking in the Yorkshire Dales. I love it there! No boating holiday this half term, the need to simply 'get away' and clear my head was just too much. We left on Saturday and returned today having conquored Penygent and Whernside and almost reached the summit of Ingleborough but the wind and fog was just too much and we weren't able to stand as we approached the scree slope so gave up and returned to base.

Believe it or not, the views here are stunning as we descend Penygent!
....and here on the summit!
....and here as well - this time on a beautiful scenic drive!However, with this view to return home to each evening it more than made up for things!We did stumble across this. A fascinating project of Hydro Electric Power in Settle. They have an excellent website and blog here. We stopped and took loads of pictures as we happened to stumble across it at the very time the 'screw' was being installed - very exciting!

We also stumbled across the most amazing pub/hotel/restaurant. The Harts Head Inn at Giggleswick. The food was outstanding and so reasonably priced that we returned each evening for our evening meal. Highly recommended if ever passing through!

Tomorrow, back to school for prep!!

Counting down!

I know I've only just gone back to school from the summer but after a week of late evenings including one where the day lasted from 7.30 in the morning when I arrived in school to gone 10.00 in the evening when the Governors and Parent association meetings finished and having had no break whatsoever in between times - I feel I need a holiday! This week promises to be almost as bad with parents evenings on 2 nights and a course on another so I am looking forward to the half term in 2 weeks time.

Half term is a non boating affair this time with a caravan booked for a walking holiday in my favourite place - the North Yorkshire Moors.

In preparation for this, today I went shopping. A visit to Go Outdoors in Coventry allowed me to buy a new pair of walking boots...

...and a new sleeping bag!!

I also popped in to Castle Trains in Warwick to get a few more bits for my growing colliery scene in Little Foxwood.

Once finished I shall post some pictures of it.

Tomorrow - a huge pile of marking to get done as well as all next weeks planning!

BBQ and trains!

Still recovering from a serious lack of sleep from as a result of our annual end of season BBQ here at Brinklow. The evening was a huge success and a great time was had by all. A good couple of hundred people attended and over £100 was raised for the Warwickshire Air Ambulance through donations. As usual Eric, one of the harbour masters, sang and entertained us accompanied by Pip on her drum and Ray on his harmonica. Wea were also treated to some awesome singing by Pete and his brother Dave.

My City of Sheffield that blew up the other week has now been returned from Hornby - fixed under warranty and sounding better than ever.

I also have the first parts of my colliery that have arrived. Here is the headstock ready to be positioned and that scene created once the winding house and other bits have all arrived.

....and a couple of general pictures of some of my local rolling stock.

Education, education, education!

In the absence of anything 'boaty' to report on, (well, anything boaty and interesting at least,) I shall diversify this post to something education. Discussions this evening on 'The One Show' turned my thoughts to the topics of, 'who rules the classrooms these days?', 'should parents be held responsible for their chidren's actions?' and 'why is there so much youth crime?'

Well, one thing led to another and I have now joined the large number of educational professionals who have turned ta t'internet to express views and opinions and engage with others on relevant issues.

Headucate is the latest blog offering for teachers, social workers and others involved in the education and care of children - a profession that is rapidly expanding to include everything from surrogate parenting through to local policing!

The name 'Headucate' comes from the encouragement of educational professionals to think through and reason on educationally related issues and consider ideas and theories from the head rather than simply as emotional 'heart tuggers' or political 'vote winners'.

Stunning weather!

This weekend the weather has been stunning! In fact, most people at the marina think it's been the best day of the year!

Friday evening gave us an amazing sunset and sky...

....with the rest of the weekend looking like this....

Still, cloudless blue skies with a very hot sun meaning a mass exodus of boats leaving for the weekend with a few venturing out to chance it for a week or more and equally as many people visiting their boats to simply sit outside or by the pond and use their boat as a base to enjoy the rolling countryside and the incredible array or colours beginning to be present in the surrounding trees and hedges.

As for me - I mowed the grass, (we have our end of season BBQ coming up soon and so we want to keep on top of the grounds,) and spent some time in Little Foxwood. Talking of railways, yesterday I had a loud bang and real smoke coming out of my City of Sheffield! Somehow the sound module managed to blow up. A quick phone call confirmed that it was still under warranty and so I took it back to the shop to be sent back to Hornby for repairs.

Becoming a habit!

Not an everyday sight on my way home from work but I have to say it's becoming increasingly common!

Driving home from work the other day and I had to brake hard as my peripheral vision caught sight of a car on its side in the canal just up from All Oak's Wood.

You can see how it got in by looking at where I parked my car to photograph it. Obviously stolen and festooned with 'Police Aware' tape the 2004 Ford Focus Zetec was obviously crashed and then pushed into the canal in an attempt to get rid of all evidence. Let's just hope the little delinquents didn't succeed and are soon rounded up, (probably only to receive a little telling off by some pompous and out of touch QC!)

It was gone by the following day so someone must have received the bad news about their pride and joy.

Fed up with quangos!

I don't know about anyone else but I am utterly fed up with Government quangos that have no purpose! My brother mentioned the frustrations of a rediculous canal related one in his last post relating to the Ashby Canal.

Here's my contribution relating to an educational one - The General Teaching Council, (no link given as they don't deserve it!) Huge amounts of money have just been spent setting up a Code of Conduct for teachers; a sort of playground charter for the people who manage the playground. I have just emailed them to ask them to clraify their status and the following extract sums up my frustrations.

I have scoured their website and contributed to the consultation of the 'code', (all of my comments were completely ignored incidentally,) and I am still totally at a loss as to what exactly the GTC does to enhance the professionalism of teaching. It would now seem quite evident that the GTC is yet another pointless Labour government initiated quango set up to further undermine the professionalism of the status of teaching in any way possible with little, if any, positive benefit to teachers or educators. Furthermore, subscription towards our own demise as a profession is forcibly taken from our salaries and registration is compulsory. I would suggest that the implementation of the new ‘code’ actually has implications that could soon be tested through the human rights courts and certainly leaves the readers and enforcers open to the widest interpretations that will inevitably lead to enforcement abuse.

I understand that the GTC has to fight to confirm the validity of its existence, indeed in this current economic climate the creation of any employment is an admirable notion however, having given the GTC evaluative time since its conception, it would now be quite apparent that its existence and worth is, at best totally pointless and at worst highly corrosive and detrimental to the last vestiges of teaching as a noble ‘profession’.

The biggest mistake the GTC do is to stamp 'GTC' across all the mail they send out to teachers - it gets put straight in the bin without even being opened - including my membership card! When they were set up, there was such an outcry amongst teachers that we all refused to pay our subscriptions - they now have a law that simply extracts the money from our salaries and there is nothing we can do about it!

I know there is a medical equivalent and has been for some time - perhaps someone from the medical profession could tell me how it is perceived for them. I guess I would have doubts as to the validity of that one too but that's not my field so I can't comment; all I know is that the GTC does nothing positive for my profession whatsoever!

RANT OVER!!

London calling!

Monday saw me travel down to London to my father's house to spend some time with Fleur and catch some shows - our favourate past-time! I arrived on monday and early Tuesday morning my father travelled up to Rugby to spend a few days with my brother on K2, (I will leave his blog to tell you about that trip!) Tuesday evening saw us in town watching Sister Act - the musical.

A good show but not the greatest! I think Fleur enjoyed it more than me. The humour was less funny than in the films and at times quite slap-dashed but the acting was good, the stage set was spectacular and it was very entertaining none-the-less.

Last night we made up for it however! For all the theatre going we do, neither of us had ever seen Phantom of the Opera so we saw that last night!

WOW! The most mesmerising show we have ever seen. A 100% standing ovation at the end and I defy anyone to watch it and not be on their feet by the end. The storyline is, of course, fantastic, the stage scenes incredible, the effects amazing but the acting was phenomenal with such passion and energy - a total must see for everyone before they die!

Today we had a day off before tomorrow evening we go to see Stomp!

There's the possibility of seeing Les Miserables on Saturday but we're not sure yet if that will work!