Titty's tooth and London's beaver

As with many sailors, I have fond memories of the Swallows and Amazons book series and the 1973 film of the first book. I've posted before about the behind the scenes eBook of the filming by she who was Titty, namely the multi-talented Sophia Neville who reminisced that:

“The film ends with Ronald Fraser playing 'What shall we do with the drunken sailor?' on his accordion. As a twelve-year-old I noted in my diary that he was completely sloshed at the time.”

During the filming, the 13 year old Sophie apparently lost a tooth and recently wondered what happened to it, mentioning the incident on BBC Cumbria.

And listening in was the film's make-up designer, Peter Robb-King, who kept it in a film canister labelled "Important: Titty's tooth". 

As a heart warming end to this story, he was able to return it to Sophie after almost 50 years.

Another heart warming story was the return of beavers back to London. A male and female beaver have recently been released into an enclosure in Forty Hall Farm in Endfield. Apparently they're not just amazing animals, they also help the ecosystem because the dams they make ponds and dams.

Hurrah!

And the April Fool is - these are not April Fools, but real stories!

Lea Valley Walk: Impressions

If I had to sum up the Lea Valley in three words, they would be Industry, Olympics and Regeneration, representing the past, the turning point and the future of this region.

The past of the Lea Valley is one of industry, such as Three Mills above, using the power of the river to grind wheat. That led to conflicts over water and the development of the Lee Navigation with its guaranteed depths of water to allow barges to transport goods.

As the industrial revolution kicked in, the area became more and more developed, from iron works to rockets. But then there was deindustrialisation and heavy industry was left to decay:

What remains are mostly faceless buildings that could contain anything from a server farm to a cutting edge performance space:

At the heart of the story of the Lea Valley in the 21st Century is the Olympics and Paralympics during that glorious summer of 2012:

Such happy memories from what now feels long, long ago, before the Brexit battles and Covid.

One of the buzz words of London's Olympic bid was 'legacy': what hosting the games would do for this part of the city. How much the Olympics actually made a difference is one for future historians, but there can be no doubt as to the regeneration that is now on display.

All up and down the Lea, centred on the Olympics Park and Stratford, are countless building sites, with new stations, colourful new apartment blocks, museums and performing spaces:

London is expanding east. It needs all these new homes, for its population has just exceeded nine million. This regeneration is generally to be welcomed: land is too precious to be wasted and there is space and housing for thousands upon thousands, with opportunities for green spaces, colleges, museums and the arts.

But there are casualties of gentrification, with some arguing that too many of these new apartments are priced out of the budgets of locals.

There's also been questions out on the Lea itself, with protests from the narrowboat owners. I hope a compromise can be found where the Lee Navigation will have less of the feel of a trailer park or scrapyard, so that in the future the banks are not one long line of boats, sometimes doubled up, blocking views of the water:

The water quality too requires more work, for the Environment Agency must live up to its name and not allow the continued over-extraction and pollution of Britain's rivers and waterways:

Yes, the Thames Tideway Tunnel is a good thing, but it's not enough. It wouldn't stop the flow of sewage I saw into the brooks of Meridian Water or Southern Water's pollution at Whitstable.

We need a new Bazalgette, someone driven to improve the waters of England, as was done at the Abbey Mills pumping station and all its supporting tunnels:

I can certainly recommend the Lea Valley Walk, in particular around the Olympic park and Three Mills, though all parts (apart from the Greenway) have their attractions. 

It's a good way to learn about London's past and where this great city is heading.

Lea Valley Walk 3: Three Battles over Water

There's a lot of history behind the Lea Valley, for its river brings all sorts of opportunities to many different types of user. But they can't all be satisfied at the same time, which leads to conflict, of which these are just three.

1. Navigation vs. Power 

At the top of Hackney Marshes, where now the Lea River and Lee Navigation part, there used to be water mills. These were used to all sorts of tasks, from grinding corn, to boring tree trunks to even grinding the points to pins and needles (see history panel above).

These water mills needed water (obviously) so the millers wanted to control the water flow. But that caused problems for the bargemen who had different needs. The millers sometimes abused their power, deliberately lowering water levels so barges were grounded.

The solution was the Hackney Cut, so each could keep using the Lea, the mills grinding corn and the barges transporting it down river. That split continues to this day, with the Lea River and Lee Navigation.

2. Narrow Boat Owners vs. Water Safety Zones

This one is more recent - in fact it is still ongoing. All along the Lee Navigation were these banners and fly posters:

So what were they all about?

I had a search and came up with this story about a protest against "water safety zones". Apparently the Canal and River Trust (CRT) are concerned about "very high or competing waterway uses" and want to put in additional signage and restrictions in parts of the Lee Navigation such as in Hackney.

But boat owners say it could displace boat to move elsewhere.

This is not a new problem: boat numbers in London have been rising and putting a strain on 200 year old canals and resources. See this post from the CRT and this from the National Association of Boat Owners.

The wider picture is the high price of living in London which makes the low costs of narrow boats seem attractive. Of course the reality of boat life can be pretty tough, with sometimes basic facilities and lack of permanent moorings means a constant need to move on.

It's also the case that this overcrowding can make the canals and navigations a bit of a mess. I much preferred walking down the Lea River to the Lee Navigation as the latter was basically a long boat park. And many boats were pretty tatty - it felt at times like a cross between a trailer park and a scrap yard.

There must be some sort of compromise as the current situation seems unsustainable. Maybe placing tighter limits on number of boats in exchange for better facilities?

3. Water Companies vs. the Environment

The day I walked this bit of the Lea River was a bit of a scorchio and so locals had headed into the waters to cool off:

This might look fun but is actually rather risky, as all along the Lea River were signs like this:

I don't get this. 

Hackney Council admits the Lea River is "very polluted water" and its response is not to clean up the river but to put up signs against swimming.

This is just bonkers but alas is part of a trend. Last year, water companies discharged raw sewage into English rivers more than 400,000 times!!

Look at the yuck left on the trees:

There are only a small number of chalk streams worldwide and 80% are them are in England - they are a natural resource to be protected and the water companies first extract clean water from them and then discharge raw sewage into them.

This is a disgrace!!

If you want to find out more about this issue, follow campaigner and ex-Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey on Twitter.

Boats! Boats! Boats! ... in Bristol

Bristol was in the news today as Greta Thunberg was leading one of her demos to try and get those politicians to actually do something about global warming.

I was recently in Bristol myself, and had planned to visit Isambard Kingdom Brunel's famous SS Great Britain but alas it was just closing as I arrived. It was also a rather cold, wet and windy day, so I got the next train back to London.

But there were lots of boats to look at so I'm already planning a return some time.

Storm Dennis and the Thames

Recently the UK has been hit by a series of storms, most recently Storm Dennis, and the Thames has not be unaffected.

On several days the Thames Barrier had to be closed to prevent storm surges and high tide flooding London. Even so, a BMW Z4 floated away from Putney Embankment, later found full of nasty brown water.

There also have been casualties amongst the trees, include the one above, rescued after floating down river. It could have been a danger to navigation so was extracted by the PLA and towed up river. One of the branches broke off:

But it was retrieved and also taken upriver:

Hopefully the next few weeks will be a little calmer.

Save the Chalk Streams of England!

The number one top priority of our age must be the environment. We see the heroic efforts of the likes of Greta Thunberg to push reluctant leaders to doing the right thing at a time when the Greenland ice cap is melting and the Amazon burns.

But there is an environmental problem much closer to home that needs attention too, namely our chalk streams. Of the 210 known globally, the vast majority of them, 160 in total, are in England. They represent a unique and precious environment.

Yet the vast majority of them are in poor state due to water extraction and pollution, typically sewage but also agricultural waste. These include the Cam (above) and the Nailbourne (Little Stour). This map from a report by the WWF shows the state of the rivers at the time it was written:

Since then things have only got worse, and a more recent version of this map can be found here. This shouldn't happen as the Environment Agency exists to manage our rivers - a task for which it has clearly failed.

One pushing for change is Feargal Sharkey, once of the Undertones, who is now campaigning on behalf of these lovely rivers, and you can follow him on Twitter here.

A good summary of the problem can be found in this article in the Observer.

Save our Chalk Streams!!

Book Review: The Seabird's Cry by Adam Nicolson

If you are interested in seabirds then I can not recommend Adam Nicolson's The Seabird's Cry highly enough. It is fascinating, researched with many details and shows a great depth of understanding while remaining poetic, not dry. It combines scientific analysis with a passion for the environment.

Each chapter describes a different seabird, including:

• Fulmar
• Puffin
• Kittiwake
• Gull
• Guillemot
• Cormorant and Shag
• Shearwater
• Gannet
• Great Auk and its cousin Razorbill
• Albatross

A key concept is that of Umwelt, which means "surrounding world" and is about how each animal lives in its own world, driven by its needs, skills and environment.

At first I was thinking to write about each bird, folding down corners of pages of interest. But there were too many amazing moments and the edge of the book is now full of gaps. To pick just a few, flicking through at random:

• How gulls can turn into sociopathic cannibal superkillers
• How the fishing patterns of kittwakes follow the phases of the moon
• How puffins can dive up to 220 feet over two minutes
• How albatrosses tack their way around the southern oceans
• How boobies are traumatised to turn psychopath and even rapists
• How shearwaters fly between 10,000 to 20,000 miles a year by understanding the trade winds and knowing their location by its smell
• ...

The final chapter, named the Seabird's Cry, is about how we humans are destroying our planet, with global warming, loss of habitat, depletion of fish stocks and endless plastic waste. It is a call to action to help protect these incredible animals.

Full of details and personal experience, maps of routes of seabirds gathered using GPS trackers,
this is an brilliant book, a masterpiece even.

Photography Blog: A6500, GoPro 5 and DJI Osmo Pocket 4k comparison

Following on from the blog post "Do you need full frame?" here is a short video of a bike ride in Richmond Park on New Year's Day that gives a comparison of the output from three cameras.

It was made using the Sony A6500 (with 18-135 lens), head mounted Go Pro 5 and the DJI Osmo Pocket, and hopefully you can see the difference. The most stark is between the A6500 and Osmo Pocket, particularly when videoing wildlife like deer where you can see much more detail on the APSC camera.

The Osmo Pocket shows the deer fur as being a bit mushy, without much detail, but despite that it can be used to tell the story of walking towards the herd.

Partly the difference is sensor size, partly lens and partly better processing (i.e. higher data rate capture)

Visiting London's Underground Farm

More adventures underground, this time visiting the Growing Underground farm in a WW2 bomb shelter in south London.

I'd been down the Clapham shelters before for an art installation (natch) and was told tunnels nearby were being used for a farm. That intrigued me so when tickets appeared for a visit I snapped up one quickly.

The aim is to produce low emission high quality food within urban areas. The idea came from the vertical farm but the initial concept in that book has difficulties, not the least cost, but also temperature control.

Using empty tunnels is not just cheaper, it is actually beneficial to keep the plants to the required temperature, particularly if horizontal (like here), rather than a shaft, as there is less height differences and hence less temperature difference.

In the racks shown above, salad is being grown, and the colour isn't wrong, that's what it looks like: the LED lamps only emit the frequencies used by plants i.e. excluding green.

The seeds germinate in one hot and humid tunnel (below) that still looks like the air raid shelter it is, before being transferred to the growing tunnels such as the one above.

The seeds are "planted" on what looks like carpet with the roots below picking up nutrients directly using hydroponic techniques:

We got to try some of the crop and wow! was it tasty! Intense flavours - my favourite were the pea tips.

It was all very high tech, indeed these types of farms are being studied by NASA for future space colonies.

But its also potentially very useful here on Earth. The two biggest environmental problems with have are global warming and loss of habitat, and farming contributes to both of these. Putting the farm underground means land can be returned to wildlife (surely better) and the LEDs can be timed to come on when there is spare renewable energy (e.g. wind farms at night).

And there are lots of potential sites for expansion, from cold war bunkers to coal mines. According to this BBC article, in the UK there are 25,000 km^2 of disused mines and tunnels. And with the potential to have up to 60 crops per year, that could be very productive.

Plus, have I mentioned it was delicious? Already its products are being used in restaurants, and one of their advisers is none other than Michel Roux Jr.

Absolutely fascinating, another of the wonders beneath the streets of London.

Birds by the Thames

Can you spot the fish this heron has caught? It was still wriggling!

The numbers of birds out there suggest there are many other fish in the river:

I'm currently reading a book about sea birds and there was an interesting section on why cormorants need to dry their feathers:

Got to keep those feathers out of the water:

Greenland Glaciers: Melting in London

Earlier this year I saw the damage that global warming is already causing to our planet. The glaciers in Svalbard are retreating so fast that charts can not be updated quick enough and indicated our yacht was stuck in the ice when the reality was we were floating freely.

But not many get a chance to head up to 80N to see that for themselves. So ice blocks were brought from Nuuk, Greenland to the City so that Londoners could see this melting for themselves.

It was an art installation by Scandinavian artist Olafur Eliasson and there were multiple sites, including one in the City (above & below, which I saw a week ago) and also another outside the Tate Modern.

If you put your ear to the ice, you could hear quiet pops as it melted, and see the blue layer going through it (top).

I'd rather see them in the amazing wildernesses of Greenland but global warming is all too real, too serious and it is time to do something about it.

Wildlife of Svalbard

The last post described two of the depressingly sights of Svalbard, namely the signs of global warming and widespread plastic on the beach, so to balance that here are some positive aspects.

As well as polar bears we saw walruses (above), seals (below), reindeer (as posted earlier), puffins, other birds (sorry bit vague on that) and interesting plants (again, alas, not my speciality).

Didn't see any whales... maybe they were too busy making their way to London?

There was this arctic fox, but rather a long way away:

The birds got a lot closer:

On land we spotted a couple of interesting plants like these ones: