September 2019
Did we land on the Moon?
It is a question that has been asked over the years and decades since the grainy pictures were beamed into homes across the globe. “Did we (mankind) really land on the Moon?” Keeping in mind the power of computers and their size back in 1969 it does seem an unlikely event. Many people speculate that…
Whatever happened to you?
There are certain TV shows that remind me of my childhood and bring back such pleasant memories. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads is one such series. The follow up to the original Likely Lads series from the 1960s reminds me so much of both my childhood and my early 20s. I lived not too…
A prediction of death in Cotherstone
In 1512, George, the 7th Baron Fitzhugh, was a young man of 25 years old. Like many wealthy young men of his day, he loved to take the hounds out and hunt. His particular hunting ground was in Teesdale near the village of Cotherstone. The forests there are the time were not densely packed and…
Time to Look Up
As the Summer draws to a close, the nights are becoming darker. That makes it the perfect time to start looking up at the sky again. While in town there is plenty of light pollution from a wide variety of sources such as street-lighting, signage and traffic, in the country there is no such extraneous…
That Big Old River
I always liked this song by Jimmy Nail. It reminds me so much of my younger days living in Wallsend on the north side of the River Tyne. You couldn’t move in Wallsend without some sort of connection to the river. In you couldn’t see it, you could hear the traffic moving along it. It…
Staxton Wold
Nestling, quite inconspicuously in the Yorkshire Wolds, is Remote RADAR Head Staxton Wold. It is a RADAR facility operated by the Royal Air Force as part of the UK’s Air Surveillance & Control System. The base itself is fairly innocuous and easy to drive by without realising, unlike the ‘big wedge’ at RAF Fylingdales. However,…
Being A Reprint From
It is probably my favourite opening line to any book I’ve read. “Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.” It is the first line in my copy of “The Complete Sherlock Holmes“. It’s a beautifully bound hardback collection of all of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Born on 21st September…
A Night Visit To Upper Weardale
There are two great dales in the County of Durham; Teesdale and Weardale. I always think of Teesdale as the pretty, agricultural dale. Whilst I tend to think of Weardale as having a great industrial heritage as well as its share of agricultural heritage. The Place Tonight’s visit was to Weardale. If you wound the…
