Bigbury Day 5

We started the day with another windy walk along the beach, this time heading up-river. As usual, the rocks sea heavy seas had dug large depressions around the rocks. It was interesting to observe how much these differed from one day to the next. As we walked upstream there was more seaweed, presumably because the rocks are better protected from the heavy seas and this allowed some interesting rock pools to exist. We turned over a few rocks and found

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Bigbury Day 4

A quieter day to rest in the middle of the holiday. In the morning Mum and I had a walk along the beach as far as Burgh Island. It was still wet and windy and on the way back the heavens opened and we got rather wet. In the afternoon and wearing dry clothes we took a short trip over to have a look at the village of Aveton Giffard. It was pleasant enough, but we didn’t venture too far

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Bigbury Day 3 PM

Some background: Very many years ago someone bought me a copy of Paul Karau’s excellent “Great Western Branch Line Termini – Volume 2” (I never had volume 1). Reading this inspired me to the idea of one day modelling Princetown station in Devon. With retirement now not that many years away, I have started to embark on this project and am currently in the “historical research” stage. A key task for the holiday was to visit the site of Princetown

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Bigbury Day 3 AM

I started the day with a bracing walk along the beach to Burgh Island and back. The cliffs are well worth a closer look with a wide variety of different rock formations and several small caves. After a short break we all set off for a walk over Folly Hill and down to the Avon on the far side. The views from the top across the mouth of the river were well worth the climb although the route down the

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Bigbury Day 2

In the morning we drove over the Bantham on the opposite bank of the estuary. Parking was a whopping £6.50, but fortunately I noticed that parking restrictions 100m back up the main street ended on the 30th September! We walked around the headland and then up above the cliffs. It was still very windy, but the sun came out occasionally. In the afternoon we drove over to Kingsbridge. By the time we got there it was getting towards the end

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Bigbury Day 1

The first day of our Devon holiday in Bigbury-on-Sea, much delayed from our original Easter booking which had to be re-scheduled due to the pandemic difficulty. The weather was poor with strong winds and occasional rain but the view from the flat over the Avon estuary was still excellent. There were a lot of kite surfers in evidence and with the high winds they were going jolly fast. We had a walk down to the beach below our flat which

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Garden concrete

The lawn is not in good shape. Years of poor management – mostly my fault due to insufficiently frequent lawn moaning – have left it in a sorry state. This year, under the “Golden Age of Horticulture” banner I had hoped to improve the situation, but the almost biblical drought has put paid to that. Frequent lawn moaning only helps if there is enough water for the grass to sprout new blades as a result and with a lawn the

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Scope smell

This afternoon, I tried to instil some A Level physics knowledge into Sophia by giving her a practical electronics lesson. Unfortunately, part way through, my trusty oscilloscope made a nasty crackling noise and emitted an unpleasant smell. It did however keep working, so as we were near the end of the lesson we pressed on but switched the scope off whenever it wasn’t needed. My scope is a Phillips PM3217 which I bought more than 30 years ago as unused

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Stephenson Clarke 6 plank wagon

The main parts have arrived for my first wagon model for nearly 40 years! It is the Brassmasters Stephenson Clarke 6 plank with associated 1907 underframe. The body is resin, but as you can see from the photo the underframe – which is fully sprung – is brass. I still need to get some other associated parts such as wheels and buffers together with some more specialised tools so it will be a while before I make much progress with

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