Oxenholme to Heathrow in half the time?

This week on the drive home I managed to catch the last part of Lakeland Radio's news bulletin which mentioned the possibility of travelling from Oxenholme to Heathrow in half the currently time that being in just two hours.  I thought this very strange, why Heathrow, is there a need to travel there when we have airports closer at Manchester, Liverpool, Blackpool, and don't you have to travel into London first then back out to Heathrow.

Back home I did a search of the web to see if I'd heard things right and was only able to find two media outlets in the North West reporting this story, one of them being this news report by Lakeland Radio and the other from the Blackpool Gazette.

From reading these two online reports it became clear that they were probable mostly copy n pasted from a Department for Transport press release that is trying garner support for the proposed High Speed Rail link (HS2) and seems to make out that it's be possible to travel from any North West station to Heathrow in two hours - the press release must be written by someone who thinks England doesn't pass the bounds of the M25

Does this two hour claim stack up?  I've tend to do the train journey into London from Oxenholme once or twice a year and it's possible to get down to London Euston from Oxenholme in 2 hours 45 mins, just enough time to settle down and watch a movie.  If you want to then goto Paddington then the train times allow you 1 hours to get on the tube to Paddington then it's a 15 minutes train to Heathrow.

Keeping the Euston to Heathrow times the same that would mean the journey between Oxenholme and Euston would need to be done in 45 minutes to meet the 2 hour claim - so is this possible with HS2.

Short answer is No.  Well HS2 could have a speed of around 240MPH and London is around 250 miles away so at best the journey would be over 1 hour into London.  Now the HS2 proposed will only get as far north as Birmingham although the release implies that it's go as far as Manchester as uses this as the basis for the 2 hour claim.  So lets say HS2 was to get as far as Manchester, could that help, I don't think so - all trains from Oxenholme tend to stop at other North Western stations which take up to a hour of the journey, I can't the number of stops reducing, so I can't see any time savings.

Conclusion is I think the report is pie in the sky, at best I think it would reduce journey times by upto 30 minutes but that will be lost if you have to change trains on route to London.

I wonder why more of the local media hasn't report this, is it obvious it's not a going or is it bad timing publication wise.

Secret Kendal - Royal Observer Corps Monitoring Post

Not a lot of people will be aware that hidden away on top of a hill just across from Kendal Castle towards Heron Hill is a Royal Observer Corps Monitoring Post, it was closed in 1991 as the Cold War ended and was designed to detect radioactive fallout.  In the 80's our scout group were shown down inside the bunker, we were shown how they detected movement outside which didn't strike me as reliable as examples we were shown were the result of cloud movements.

Below 2 photos are what I took last summer, you can get to it by taking the footpath straight up the hillside from the entrance to Wasdale Close - I don't recommend exploring inside the bucker and previous visitor comments that there is asbestos inside. 

Following is a photo of the inside from a Jun 08 / Mar 09 visitor who posted photos here link1 link2

Layout plan

More Info:-

Wikipedia - Link

Location 

Best approach from Valley Drive or Parkside Road ends, take the public footpaths to the point marked with blue X, then take the upper path southwards to point mark with a red X, look left to see the site (marked green X).  The footpath is slightly below the level of the private land, recommend tripod/monopod to aid any photography above eye level height.

BBC2's Antiques Road Trip - Kendal - Levens Hall - Cockermouth

Got home on Friday to find rest of household switched onto BBC2, different from the usual fair of Ch4's Come Dine With Me.  Reason - they'd been tipped of that a local antique shop in Kendal would feature.

It's a series that follows two antiques experts in competition with each other, they spend the week travelling to various places buying antiques with the aim of selling them for a profit at the end of the week at auction - sounds familiar !!

This episode saw them visiting auction shops traveling between Morecambe, Lancaster, Kendal then at an auction in Cockermouth.  One of the experts after buying all his antiques visited Leven's Hall for a guided tour by the wife of owner Susie Bagget, the other expert was up the Kendal to visit Sleddall Hall Antique Centre on Wildman Street where he bought a picture from owner Robert Aindow for £30.

The episode can be viewed on BBC iPlayer until Friday 14th January 2011, watch from 24mins in for feature on Levens Hall then Kendal

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xc5kv

ITV Series - The Lakes - My view on 1st Episode

On Monday at 8pm saw the return on ITV of The Lakes above people living and working in Cumbria (yes they're very loose with The Lakes).  Locals who are watching this series have love/hate relationship with this programme, mainly due to the over exposure of hotelier Thomas The Gladiator Noblett and his right hand man Andrew The Admiral Tighe repeating the same thing in each episode / series, and also how the series is presented in that the peoples stories are limited to sound bites across many episodes.  Following is an overview of the first episode, yes I was abit anal in working out the timings:-

ITV have put the programme in a prime time half hour slot at 8pm between Monday nights two Coronation Street episodes.  The runtime of the show is 22mins 55secs, excluding a 2min 23secs break in the middle  (Although it finished around 8:25pm the end break was short as Corrie started around 8:27pm).  So what did we get in the way of juicy content, well....

• 3mins 7secs - Starting titles and preview of what was coming up in the rest of the series
• 3mins 29secs - Sailing instructor Joe Pester and his wife Lindy who are preparing for their perfect lakeside wedding 
• 4mins 31secs - Rob Rose and his micro pigs
• 0mins 13secs - Short preview of Thomas The Gladiator Noblett then into a break
• 2mins 23secs - Commercial break
• 0mins 58secs - Preview of whats coming up in rest of the series
• 2mins 54secs - Another preview of what Thomas The Gladiator Noblett will be doing in the rest of the series including why he's now laughs at being refered to as The Gladiator
• 3mins 23secs - Back to this episode with Rob Rose's micro pigs
• 2mins 50secs - Joe Pester and his Lindy Wedding
• 1min 30secs - Preview of what's coming up in the next episode and end credits including Joe and Lindy's Honeymoon

So in summary the 22mins 55secs episode was broken down into 8mins 42secs of titles/previews/fillers that will get repeated from episode to episode and just 14mins 13secs of actually watchable content.

This series could be a whole lot better if they didn't keep stringing us along and gave us more of a characters story in an episode.

Recommendation is to record the the show but to fast forward through the soundbites.

Cumbria Earthquake - 21st December 2010

Last night at 10:59pm I was in the best room in the house for reading, yes I was on the toilet when there was a large noise like a heavy goods vehicle passing close by (impossible where I am) and the house shook for a second or two.  This is not the first time I've felt an earthquake in Kendal so I knew what it was straight away and went straight to the Twitter to see whether others had felt the same.

Twitter light up with local's reporting what they felt was an earthquake, wanting confirmation, one posted a picture of a crack that had appeared in his wall.

The US Geological Survey were first to report the quake as a 3.6 in the hills south of Honister Pass, this was later revised once the British Geological Survey data became available to a 3.5 on the scale with the epicenter of Red Gill Head Moss which is 1.5km north of the Coppermine's Youth Hostel near Coniston.

This is the fourth earthquake I've felt in the north west of England, three I've felt when at home in Kendal (including last nights) and one I felt at work in Lytham last year, I had a phone call from a work colleage in Arnside asking if we'd felt the earthquake, at that point we hadn't but within a minute we'd felt a very slight tremor.

We are not near any plates that cause the big quakes you hear about around the world, but Cumbria does have alot of geological fault lines, in an interview on Radio 2 today an Geology expert said that it's not really known why we get these earthquakes but it's thought to be the related to faults created during our last ice age. 

Here I've pull a drawing of the geological faults from Cumbria RIGS and imposed it on a Google maps, you can see how close last nights quake was to a fault line.

Surprisingly we get alot of quakes in the UK but only 10% tend to be felt by the general public, following is a map of all earthquakes detected in the Lake District - yes there are a lot.

Reading from the Keswick sensor

Kendal Pubs

Last Friday I was out for an annually tour of a few of Kendal's town centre pubs, two things jumped out at me, how quiet some pubs are and the wide range in the price of a pint.  In some pubs it was close to £3 a pint !!

The Fleece had half the pubs closed of with half of what was open devoted to a dance floor that cleared every ten minutes, totally different to 10 years ago when it would be full the bursting.  The Wine Bar and Bootleggers held it's own being , Wetherspoon's had good ale at reasonable prices.

The Fleece received some unfounded interest in a news report in the Gazette a couple of months back on the struggling Punch Tavern's, the gazette placed a photo of the Fleece by the report which made customers think The Fleece was at risk of closing, based on my evening visit last week I would probable of thought the same thing.  In the comments the landlord/lady of The Fleece wrote about the impact the report had made, from their posts to me it looks like they have looked to other income streams (food, group bookings) to mitigate the reducing evening trade.  A week later the Gazette did a report to try and rectify the confusion that inclusion of the photo made.

Kendal used to have a lot of pubs, always popular, possible a high ratio per population than most places, so why have Kendal's pubs been closing, these are few suggests which may apply to some or all:-

Brewery/Chain Rents
I know of at least one pub in Kendal that closed as a result of notice of a increase in rent, landlord rightly wasn't willing to run at a loss and gave notice back to the pub chain that wanted to put in a rent increase.  I think this is the biggest problem, the industry not helping themselves

Wholesale Beverage Pricing
Tide pubs generally have no choice but to buy from the one supplier at the prices dictated, another example of the industry not helping themselves

Business Rates
Rates are charged based on the valuation of the size of the premises, Gazette ran a report this month on 3 local pubs complaining about the rates, but have the chain's just got themselves to blimey for increasing the rents.  Would it be better to decrease the rents and then push to have the rates reduced.

Cheap Supermarket Prices

The industry tries to put the decline in the pub industry down to cheap beer in the supermarkets, but I don't buy that argument, if you have a good pub people will come.

Pub Landlords
For some pubs it can be down to the management, alienate the regulars, be unwelcoming and people will desert in the droves.  Pubs that do well know their customers and welcome new ones.


Change in Customer Base
People are finding other things to do, weekends in front of the TV is king again, go into work after a weekend and people will be talking about TV.

Sainsbury's Supermarket & Sport Village plans

Nearly a month has passed since I went to view the plans Sainsburys had for Kendal Cricket Club's current ground.  Looking at the plans I was more disappointed as the lack of consideration for how to deal with increased traffic that the development would create to an area that already has a big effect on Kendal's traffic.

Looking at the plans they want to add a set of traffic lights on Shap Road - yes more sets of lights for Kendal.  It reminds me of Tesco at Carnforth which has a similar set of traffic lights on a busy A6 road, try to go through it once and you'll know to avoid the area next time round.  For Kendal it'll be even worst as we also have the Appleby Rd junction, usually you can filter of Shap Rd but I can see this set of lights creating a new bottle neck for traffic coming from town.  

Also as this end of town in the coming years we will getting more traffic, today I found out that the group that own Kendal Auction Mart will in the next two weeks announce formally plans to build a new auction mart on a 24 acre site near the M6 junction 36 between Moss End Lane business park and the Lancaster Canal.  As part of the deal (subject to planning permission) the land on Appleby Rd will be given over to the developer for house builds in return for some land at the new site and the developer also building the new auction mart. The developer plans to submit planning applications for both sites in early 2011.  The original application for a new auction mart was turned down and the developer withdrew the housing application I assume as a result of the turning down of the mart application.

Getting back on topic above is an drawing on the proposed store, looks like a clone of national stores, doesn't look like it's been adapted to take account of the buildings in Kendal

The Sports Village doesn't appeal to me, It struck me that all the facilities are mainly aimed at the cricket club rather than across all sports on the site, which indicates that the design is intended to persuade Kendal Cricket Club to move rather than for the good of the local sporting community.  The site is on a flood plain, locals know how much water hit the site every couple of years (becoming more frequent), this drags dead bury on to the site that needs cleaning up.  There have been a couple of letters in the Gazette relating to flooding in this area, one putting over the point for the flood problems and another countering the flooding issue point mentions something I wasn't aware of.  In the consultation document it implies that the site will be flood protected which I took to be fully protected, turns out only the cricket ground and some of the pitches will get the flood protection.  The majority of the site with just get drainage, a clean up will still be needed when it floods.

I'm disappointed that the village doesn't capture for any popular outdoor activities, walking, mountain biking, climbing etc...  Nearby is Kendal's climbing centre, it would of been good to have some small boulders for boulder climbing on.

Lastly I found this 1898 of Kendal with the Cricket ground labeled - start of 110 years of cricket history.

Mintfest Review - Sunday

For Sunday most of Saturday's afternoon entertainment was out again, I did more watching performances in full rather than wondering around.  Even though I have was out everyday there was so much on offer that I didn't get to see everything.  Year on year Mintfest has got better and better. 

Pen-Ultimate A Day on the Tiles

Cinemarionnette La Cabane de Pepe

Steve Cousins - The Balloonatic

Bread & Butter Theatre - Sports Day

Banc Public Cafe de la Gare

Oddlings (Netherlands) - Mannekino

Le Montreur

Big Rory & Morag - Get Hitched

More photos from Sunday

Mintfest Review - Saturday

Mintfest is bigger this year with the normal Saturday town centre performances extended to Sunday as well.

The Krishnous were one of the performances coming from Mintfest's Street Arts Summer School, the three of them were very good at interacting with the audience.

Back from last year Motionhouse with a performance called Cascade inspired by the Cumbria floods, I watched it a couple of times during the weekend 

These were a hit with the kids attempting to feed the silver lady without being seen by the grumpy maid

This old guy Vernon Ponder - The Thinker puzzled alot of people with his thoughts.

Dr Butler's Hatstand Medicine Band

RickshawAirship were very good this their performance 

Calamity Jane performed an entertain knife throwing set with an audience member

The Temperance Society strolling round Finkle Street

Basso Doble entertaining the public (frightening the odd toddler)

The Krishnous get a new member into their clan

Sport Day back again this year

Lee Hayes combine his passion for whisky and juggling

Rory and Morag on Mr & Mrs

Evening main event Blank Page, six people doing live painting

More pictures from Saturday

Mintfest Review - 2nd night

Second night and show were taking place Kendal's Abbot Hall and Fletcher Park, I expected the crowds to be at Abbot Hall so decided to spend the evening seeing the shows in Fletcher Park.


Walking to the park I notice something strange was going on the river Kent, people dressed in white wandering round a table situated in the middle of the river, by late evening it would become apparent what they were there for.

First performance in Fletcher Park was Sufi: Zen doing a performance based around styles of Indian dance.

Next was Schraapzucht, I didn't know what to expect from what I read in the Mintfest programme but the large fly wheel get me attention to come and watch.  Sitting down the covers hiding the stage were brought down, it was a 10 minute wait till the start.  As we waited we casually looked around the stage, focus was on a body in a sack with shoed feet sticking out, we were trying to workout if it was a live person inside, nothing moved.  Also on stage were 3 sacks hung up, no much attention was paid to these as their was not movement.

The performance started with an explorer coming on and looking round the strange array of wood and rope, pulled the figure on the floor to safety (still didn't know where a person were real but assumed not).  He examined the wheel and the rope that worked it, from a pull of the rope the wheel started turning.  As the wheel turned the 3 hanging sacks descended, then shock on the faces of everyone in the audience to find 3 actors realise themselves from the sacking (we had no clue they were in the sacks whilst we were waiting)..

The story flowed in that the flywheel now pulled by the 3 work people was creating a living space which the explorer enjoy as each piece rose to life, table, chair, bookcase, window frames, fire

The performance reached a point and then went in reverse ending with the 3 work people back in the their sacks where they stayed for a minute or so, half the audience thought the show had finished have were head of before the all four actors took in the appreciative audience response - an excellent show  

On the way back saw the last minutes of Page Blanche (more in next post) before heading back to the river to watch a little of the feast taken place in the middle of the Kent (I could spend 3 hours stood in the cold Kent)

Few photos from the evening

Mintfest Review - 1st night

This years street arts festival was certainly packed with events jammed into 4 nights and 2 days.  I was out everyday, night and with so much on offer their was still lot that I didn't manage to see due mainly not being in the right place at the right time but this is one of the positive of Mintfest. Following few posts are an overview of what I managed to see starting with the first night.

First night it was a short journey south of Kendal to the Westmorland County Show ground for the main event Bombs Per Minute.  We get there early managing to beat the traffic jams by a quarter of an hour.  Before the grand finally we were treated to a local performance of Adrift a musical piece with lots of drums, light and small fireworks

From Mintfest 1st Night

Highlight of the night was Bombs per minute best described as 45mins of drum based music timed to multiple pyrotechnic explosions going of in all directions of the performance area.

To describe how excellent this was is understating it's greatness, I've never seen a firework display like it before, so many fireworks going of the same time in all directions.  Local displays are minos in comparison to this, alot of Kendal folk will be disappointed come November 5th when they watch the fireworks at Kendal Castle.

Cumbria Live TV have an excellent video of Bombs Per Minute, watch the last half to see how much fireworks were getting set off.

My photos from the 1st night (not many - too dark) - link