Category Archives: Buckinghamshire

There’s a chill in the air, nobody could care.

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It was a tad nippy last night. The mercury fell to -11C or in old money 12.2F. That temperature is also 471.87 Rankine, -8.8 Reaumur and 262.15 Kelvin.

The Plough and Anchor pub almost caught fire last night.  They had installed a wood burner, but placed the flue against the wood lintel. This was smouldering quite fiercely when I entered the pub. The chef was spraying water inbetween the stonework and the wood. Pub talk was all about the Crooked Billet and the planned New Year rave. Let’s hope it goes ahead without any trouble.

Today it has started to snow and has been doing so for the past 3 hours. The traffic on the main road is now quite limited.

Expensive Chair – It’s a Beautiful Thing

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This morning we set off to go up to London to go to the V&A to see a couple of exhibitions. Went to our new Chiltern Rail station. Instant suspicion, only two cars in the free car park.  No trains cos of engineering works and no railway-run bus link from that station to one with trains.  Drove to Haddenham.  They had bus links, but the next “train” wouldn’t get us into London until nearly 2 hours later and the tickets were £23.80 each!  Decided not to bother, too expensive & too little time there.  Prefer a lunch out at those prices.  I looked into a railcard.  It gave 1/3 off but only to the holder & it cost £26 for a year.  I don’t catch that many trains.  No wonder few people use public transport.

Bicycle Race

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Fantastic, my Bike voucher has arrived, I can buy my bike now.  Rang the shop, out of stock, won’t be getting it now until after Glastonbury.  I’ve ordered a racing bike, millions of gears and carbon fibre forks, I can pick it up with my little finger.  All road users, you have been warned, here comes Tour de Buckinghamshire with team Blasdale Tour in his yellow jersey.

Wotton Underwood open day and Tony Blair’s pad

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The country residence of Tony Blair, the Wotton fete on his back door.

The country residence of Tony Blair, the Wotton fete on his back door.

Tony Blair's spy camera, monitoring who enters by the back gate.

Tony Blair's spy camera, monitoring who enters by the back gate.

Back view of Tony Blair's house

Back view of Tony Blair's house

Visited Wotton Underwood for their open day.  Looked around a few of the gardens, participated in teas and cakes and purchased a few items at the book/bric-a-bracstall.  Alas this year the
trains were not running.

We had a tour around Wotton House, guided by the owner. This gave us excellent views into Tony Blair’s garden. Alas all we saw where two rather bored armed policemen enjoying the sunshine.  Rosemary said she didn’t think much of them as garden ornaments. Tony Blair and Cherie Blair were not is residence at their country pad.

You are my Little Bird

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Greenfinch at the feeder

Greenfinch at the feeder

Trying out some action shots with my new Canon EOS 550 on the local bird population.  (Feathered variety alas.)  One wonders with all those extra pixels whether a new pro lens is in order.  Looks like I will have to keep on working a while.

Some more wildlife at the local oasis.

Needless to say, as soon as I went indoors, two pairs of Goldfinches arrived, but not the Greater Spotted Woodpecker who is often to be seen on the peanuts.  We’ve also had Long Tailed Tits who were charming.  The Greenfinches are highly aggressive and bad tempered.

Cold sweeps Buckinghamshire

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Wednesday produced another inch of snow during the day.  Not a nice day, always overcast, few photo opportunities.  As evening came, the sky started to clear and the mercury plummeted.  I have not seen minus 10 for many years.  The wood burner definitely had to be run a little higher last night to keep the house warm.

This morning Rosemary went to work, she did have to walk the last few hundred yards. Steve attempted to go to work, but failed the steep hill out of the drive onto the main road.  So yet again he is WFH in this ski clothes.  Given a chance the camera may be aired.

Snow at last

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Yesterday it started to snow at around five in the afternoon.  Today we have six inches of snow, measured with a ruler and measured in several places on flat hard ground away from walls.  This is not a Blasdale exaggeration, so no need to divide by 2.  Nice fluffy snow because the temperature is still below freezing.

I hope the sun will come out so I can get some nice photographs, but for the moment here are some I have taken.

Snow scene taken in Kingswood, Buckinghamshire on the 6th January 2010 after overnight snow fall of 6 inches.

Snow scene taken in Kingswood, Buckinghamshire on the 6th January 2010 after overnight snow fall of 6 inches.

Snow scene taken in Kingswood, Buckinghamshire on the 6th January 2010 after overnight snow fall of 6 inches.

Snow scene taken in Kingswood, Buckinghamshire on the 6th January 2010 after overnight snow fall of 6 inches.

Snow scene taken in Kingswood, Buckinghamshire on the 6th January 2010 after overnight snow fall of 6 inches.

Snow scene taken in Kingswood, Buckinghamshire on the 6th January 2010 after overnight snow fall of 6 inches.

Plough and Anchor, Kingswood, Buckinghamshire on the 6th January 2010 after overnight snow fall of 6 inches.

Plough and Anchor, Kingswood, Buckinghamshire on the 6th January 2010 after overnight snow fall of 6 inches.

The weather

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As soon as it gets a little cool, and that white stuff falls from the sky, chaos ensues. Here in the UK we have had some snow, I am sure you have all heard of  Eurostar and fluffy snow putting a hold on travel plans. The Eurostar operators blame a very cold France, where the weather has been the coldest for at least 15 years.  Interestingly I never realised how many people now traveled by Eurostar.

Closer to home Easyjet cancelled hundreds of flights from Luton.   I expect the cold will not last, and flights will be back to normal in January.  Important for me, because I have some work in Scotland starting in January.

Even closer to home, there are stories of people taking 2 hours to travel through Aylesbury.  I don’t understand that one, I see at most 2 centimeters of snow outside on the drive.

It is cool, last night was the coldest, going down to -6 Celsius on our thermometer.  (That’s outside, not inside our house.)   Google tells me Oxford was actually -9.  Rosemary’s brother living over in Canada sent a cutting from a local paper where the temperature had made a record low in the nearby city of Edmonton.  A minus 46.1 Celsius.  This record was 10 degrees colder than the previous record.  The previous record was set last year.

Europe is suffering the cold as well.  I suppose with global warming, there must be some places suffering incredible heat to make up for our record lows across Europe and Canada.

Christmas is now almost on us, so on a Christmas spirit thing, take a look at Santa’s check list.  This is suitable for children to view, as if I would put anything that was not 🙂  christmas-risk-assessment

Christmas is in a couple of days, rain is predicted for later today, so there will not be a white Christmas. 🙁

Butterfly Days

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Despite the recent bad weather, we seem to have had some lovely butterflies in the last few sunny days, so Steve took their portraits and has posted an album of them –

http://www.blasdale.com/blog/picture-albums/blasdale-picture-gallery-2009/2009butterflies/

We have yet to add their names – Small Tortoiseshell, Peacock, Red Admirals (is one just faded into that “Orange” Admiral?), Comma, Painted Lady.