Two Hours
Posted: Mon 8 December, 2014 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Geeky, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Over the last couple of weekends, I’ve looked (again) at just where I can get to in a two hour drive from home. As has been said before, I live between Milton Keynes and Bedford, so I’m sat right between two decent North/South access roads (The M1 and A1) as well as vaguely decent cross-country connections with the A428 towards the West, and the A14 to the East.
What this means is that a two-hour drive covers one heck of a lot of the country, and I decided to have a look at just how far (via use of Google Maps, and their route predictions) I could get in each direction.
Two hours North takes me up to Sheffield, and South gets me to Brighton. That’s a total distance of 225 miles top to bottom.
Two hours West gets me to Bristol, and East gets me right across to Felixstowe and Aldeburgh – roughly 234 miles in total.
The area within that circle comes out as roughly 43,000 square miles (if my maths about area in circles is correct) or 111,000km², which in terms of the UK is just under half the area of the UK as a whole (going by CIA’s Worldbook figure of 243,610km²)
Not bad, all things considered…
Coastal – Brighton
Posted: Sun 7 December, 2014 Filed under: 2014/15, Domestic, Driving, Five Year Plan (now Ten), M1, M25, Photography, Travel Leave a comment »Following on from last week’s day-trip to Felixstowe for coastal stuff, today I’m off – assuming vaguely decent (or at least non-abysmal) weather – down to Brighton for similar reasons.
I realised afterwards, looking at maps, that actually the two places are a very similar drive-time (and indeed mileage) away, so sod it, go for something different.
I haven’t been to Brighton in yonks – well, I had an interview there a few years back, but that doesn’t really count – so it’ll be fun to go back, and have a wander around, plus spend some time on the beach (I know, it’s stones rather than sand) and see how things go.
That’s the plan, anyway. I’ll update later/tomorrow with how it goes, and any relevant photos etc.
Coastal – Felixstowe
Posted: Sun 30 November, 2014 Filed under: A428, D4D™, Domestic, Driving, Photography, Thoughts, Travel 2 Comments »Over the years, I’ve always known that I love being by the sea. It’s an environment I love – although it makes a lot of other bits of life more complex. (For example, working in London or other techie environments) I’ve lived by the coast a couple of times, and would certainly consider doing so again.
Which all makes it a bit weird that the location I live in currently is about as far away from the sea as it’s possible to be in the UK. And I realised recently that I haven’t actually been to the coast properly since I moved here. Which is quite a surprise for me, it’s fair to say.
So today I upped sticks, and buggered off to Old Felixstowe. It’s an easy run, but still two hours. (And all coast is at least a two-hour run, from the look of it) It made for a really enjoyable day, leaving earlyish, getting over there, walking along the seafront, having lunch, walking back, sitting on the grass above the – well, it’s not a cliff, I don’t know quite what to call it – and just enjoying the sound of the sea on the shingle and so on.
I had been going to take the camera as well, but in the end I couldn’t be arsed. I did get some nice stuff with just the iPhone though, so even that qualifies as a bit of a win.
Felixstowe Ferry
I had sort-of forgotten how much I like that environment, and it’s certainly something I’m going to look at and consider as part of the plans for 2015 and 2016, depending on how things go. Ideas are bubbling, so we’ll have to see how things go…
Looking Back
Posted: Thu 6 November, 2014 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Thoughts, Time, Travel Leave a comment »While looking back at historical D4D™ stuff for other birthday-related reasons, I realised that this month it’s eight years since I moved to Norfolk with Herself.
How time flies, eh?
Of course, in that time I’ve lived in
- 2 places in Norfolk
- 3 in Suffolk
- 1 in Bedfordshire
Six places in eight years. Some things never change – but apparently my living situation isn’t one of them.
Miss Transit
Posted: Sat 19 April, 2014 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Public Transport, Travel Leave a comment »Back in September, I wrote a small bit of cynicism about Luton’s Guided Busway, and why I was rather unconvinced about the reasoning behind the current glut of Busways, Tramways.
This week the first operating quarter’s passenger figures were released – and they’re only 41% of what they were projected to be.
Luton Borough Council revealed there were 346,854 passenger journeys between October and December 2013.
The 2008 busway business case projected usage of 9,000 daily trips, indicating 828,000 journeys for its first quarter.
But of course there’s someone else to blame – and it’s not the council, nor is it the bus companies involved in the project.
“If you want to blame anybody, blame the bankers,” [Colin Chick, the director of regeneration] said.
“When the country starts to recover and sites are developed and we create new jobs in that area and the airport expansion goes through, within a few months those figures will go back to what was anticipated.”
I remain unconvinced – but apparently the figures for the second quarter will be published soon, so it should be fun to see what they reveal…