Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Author: Geoff

Bradfield Wood circular walk with Cambridge Rambling Club

Today we were back with the Cambridge Rambling Club A team for a walk led by Debbie. It was a bit of a jaunt to the starting place, 35miles from Cambridge! but 17 of us made it to the start. With me giving my shorts the first airing of the year!.

Twas a glorious spring day with a cold wind, spring is well upon us now in evidence with the lambs & kids in the fields plus all the blossom and the leaves starting to appear,  In fact as the day went on it seemed more blossom was appearing by the minute.

Lunch was at Beyton which interestingly still has a 1950’s kids playground with the original Wicksteed roundabout and swings all of which are distant memories in Cambridge, due to the health & safety gestapo prohibiting them!

An interesting walk especially seeing the coppicing in action at Bradfields Wood, although the products seemed quite expensive to me, Hazel bean poles at £8.75 for 10 and Hazel pea sticks at £4.25 a bunch!

Here is the walk on Everytrail. Poor Debbie was a bit upset that the walked turned out slightly longer than her little map measuring wheel had indicated!

Bradfields Woods circular walk

Map your trip with EveryTrail

Map your trip with EveryTrail

Walking childhood memories around Creswell Crags

This weeks walk was a visit to my childhood adventure playground of The Welbeck and Clumber estates. After school in the 50’s when I was probably 8+, Stan and I would take off on our rickety bikes and charge around these grand country estates to be chased by gamekeepers and angry young lovers who we disturbed 🙂 We also explored the many tunnels on the Welbeck estate, later on I hung out with the guys who sailed Enterprises on the Welbeck lake plus we got to meet the grand old Duke himself once, a charming guy in his beat up Morris Minor!

This Sunday it was a far more sedate walk with Sally and Renata, I was pleased to see that Welbeck is as well fenced of as ever, although my guess is no kids now stray that far after school from Creswell! Creswell Crags is totally transformed, the sewage works installed in 1952 has disappeared to be replaced by an uber modern Cafe/museum/visitors centre that proudly proclaims folks have been visiting Creswell for 50,000 years 🙂  The only miners in Creswell now are young kids (minors) with all the safety kit on to explore the caves we once hung out in.

A very enjoyable day out traipsing on the newly laid red ash paths, ironically made from the ash created by the old pit tips burning with all the smoke/smell pollution we endured as kids. Renata did really well doing the 19 or so miles on her first ever long walk with no blisters or aches & pains. Sally had an enjoyable day out to, her first 15+ miles day of the year!

Here’s the walk with pictures of the many fine gate house lodges etc,

Clumber Park – Creswell Crags circular walk

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Braughing Circular walk

Another excellent walk with the Cambridge Rambling Club, Carolin led 13 of us on a circular 15mile jaunt through the beautiful Hertfordshire countryside, past splendid 16th century houses  and brand new mansions! A little bit hilly for Cambridge folk but on such a gorgeous warm spring day delightful.

Here are the photo’s and route on Everytrail:-

Braughing circular walk

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Other photos may be found over at Sally’s place or even John’s site

Blogging & Independence

Dave Winer nails blogging

“One of the reasons I’m proud of it is that blogging was created without the lock-in you see in systems like Twitter, Facebook and though they’ll argue for sure, Buzz. Even Posterous, Tumblr and WordPress.com don’t give you easy ways off their servers. Blogging started without the concept of a single server, so there was no place to get off of. The whole point was to be as distributed as the web itself, to give people independence, to let billions of websites bloom. This is such an obvious feature of blogs that people don’t usually see it. But it’s there, and it’s hugely important.”

He is so right – Having your own blog is far better than been locked into the likes of Facebook.