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31 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

Great it was not (in any sense of the word!

It was, at the time, the largest route milage approved in a single Act of Parliament, so maybe Great was briefly appropriate...

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2 hours ago, rocor said:

 

I suffered a mildly dyslexic episode upon first reading your post, and briefly found myself  wondering how a large amount of information had come available about a small pre-grouping railway in Wales.

I think that Cumbria  / Cambria / Cymru all derive from the brythonic word 'combrogi', meaning 'the place where our people live'

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19 minutes ago, CKPR said:

I think that Cumbria  / Cambria / Cymru all derive from the brythonic word 'combrogi', meaning 'the place where our people live'

 

combroglio (n) everyone confused together; cfimbroglio?

 

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10 hours ago, 16Brunel said:

 

As an Aussie, I'll point out that we also have the Great Dividing Range, the Great Australian Bight, the Great Sandy Desert and the Great White Shark (amongst others).  What we seem to lack is a great imagination when it comes to naming things (perhaps we're a bit da Quirmian...).

 

- Scott

 

Jeez, how could I have forgotten how much great stuff we have here! No wonder we are one of the few countries not  clamouring to get overseas holidays happening ASAP again.

 

9 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

 

Great Australian Bight + Great White Shark = Great Australian Bite?

 

My absolute favourite, which I love, is "Great Sandy Desert" it's so ... literal!

 

 

 

A lot of our things  are named as they appear, sounds boring and Billy Connolly makes fun of it but is quite useful.

For example the Brown Snake is the second deadliest in the world, so I know when I see a brown snake its probably a Brown Snake and so I shouldn't poke him with a stick  because as well as packing a punch he's an aggressive ar5e.

 

If I see a black snake with a red belly on the other hand, I know its a Red Bellied Black snake and I can safely poke him with a stick for a bit before he'll go me.

 

The Taipan on the other hand - that's our worlds deadliest snake winner, if he gets you you'll be dead before you hit the floor just about, but how do I know what he looks like? Given his name I have images of some kind of oriental floral pattern with dragons and maybe a pagoda but he's actually dark tan.

 

I could be happily poking some dark tan coloured snake with a stick thinking its  the not-yet discovered Dark Tan Snake 

 and  before I know it I'm lying on a metal slab with a tag on my toe.

 

See also the  Funnel Web Spider, Red Back Spider,  Blue Ringed Octopus and Mount Buggery.

Edited by monkeysarefun
3D
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Well, I managed to go to Oz twice and not encounter any of their deadly wildlife at close quarters, though I did find a little gecko in my shoe one day.

 They won't put me off going back there - assuming we ever can!

Jim

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19 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

Well, I managed to go to Oz twice and not encounter any of their deadly wildlife at close quarters, though I did find a little gecko in my shoe one day.

 They won't put me off going back there - assuming we ever can!

Jim

Did you poke him with a stick? You're meant to.

Edited by monkeysarefun
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3 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Did you poke him with a stick? You're meant to.

No, I gently picked him up, took him outside and took his photo.

 

2015-03-02-1214.jpg.7c370d144b89d49528f136cadc7a2730.jpg

 

Jim

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4 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

No wonder we are one of the few countries not  clamouring to get overseas holidays happening ASAP again.

I'm very much of the opinion that people should stay in their own countries and not take themselves off elsewhere overseas to annoy and irritate the locals.

 

10 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I don't think there can be many line societies that disdain to embrace post-1923 developments on their company's lines. After all, to the end of steam and beyond, in most places the infrastructure remained of pre-grouping origin, with just a thin veneer of grouping or post-nationalisation modernity.  There was someone getting very steamed up a while back on the LNWR Society facebook group - which non-members can join - over posting of a 1950s photo of a "Midland" locomotive. What on earth had this to do with the LNWR? Apart from the fact that the location was definitely LNWR, I had to point out that the 4F in question had been built at Crewe.

I know I grumble about post- 1892 1923 developments on Britain's railways, but you do make a valid point Stephen.  I can almost tolerate an early diesel in black and silver livery running on a steam era railway with much gritting of teeth, but anything from the privatisation error, - no, - not at all, - not for one moment.

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5 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

Jeez, how could I have forgotten how much great stuff we have here! No wonder we are one of the few countries not  clamouring to get overseas holidays happening ASAP again.

 

 

 You failed to mention everyone's favourite sea side holiday destination Intercourse Island in Western Australia .... 

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1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

 

In the UK, many seem to feel that on the strength of a single vaccine dose for the middle-aged and none for the younger, we should all, as of right, be able to fly off to other countries regardless of their third waves, car-crash vaccine programmes (well done, EU Commission for vindicated BREXIT in the minds of our Vaccine Nationalists) or new variants, some of which are potentially vaccine resistant. Sitting in little tin tubes with 100s of others from Feck-Knows-Where and then queuing in airports for hours with no effective way of dividing green and red zone passengers, and milling about in holiday destinations in countries with far higher transmission rates than the UK is, IMHO, irresponsible to say the least.

 

I agree with Annie, people should be clearly told that this is selfish and irresponsible but, of course, Boris-keep-the-beach-open-despite-the-shark-attacks-Johnson will want to see the travel and air industries recover.  Actually, he probably doesn't give a feck about them, but wants to be Mr Popular by letting people have their planet-killing overseas holidays, which, apparently, no one can live without these days. Bah bl00dy humbug, I say!

 

I think people shouldn't be so damn impatient and should write off travel in 2021 and wait until next year. 

 

We are so not out of the woods yet.

 

Once restrictions are lifted, I'll probably take the kids on walks along the Wall.    

 

eurohike-hadrians-wall-mauer-wandern.jpeg.39262dbe905f3979d97d4dd111a512e5.jpeg

 

 

 

Which brings to mind the famous quote “What have the Romans ever done for us?”.

 

Umm kept the Scots out? :jester:

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Oh my, what a stunning photograph James.

 

There were more than a few idiots here in NZ who howled and protested when our government closed off all travel from India just recently.  It was something that was not done at all lightly since shutting your own citizens out is always considered to be an extreme kind of measure for an government to take.  Before the closure every traveller from India entering quarantine was infected and they were infected with the new virulent strains  of COVID-19 as well.  Our government was accused of being heartless by the usual shallow thinking idiots, but the risk was far too high that these new virus strains might get out into the community.  We've already had some smaller outbreaks, - fortunately swiftly contained, - that were due to such things as surface contamination transmission and air conditioning leaks at quarantine facilities so the thought of the much more nasty strains of COVID-19 getting loose doesn't bear thinking about. 

 

My message to the world is stay the feck at home.

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Just now, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Umm kept the Scots out?

I think it was a more a case of they didn't want the expense of "conquering" such a wilful, unruly mob (I say that with the greatest respect and admiration) and merely tried to delineate between civilisation and barbarism (as they saw it)...

 

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1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

well done, EU Commission for vindicated BREXIT in the minds of our Vaccine Nationalists

I have, so far, found one other potentially positive outcome from Brexit, which relates to easing the regulations applied to small banks, so that they are not the same as those applied to "internationally active" or "systemically important" banks, with all the bureaucracy that entails. (The EU approach to implementation of international banking agreements was to apply it to everyone, regardless of whether or not this made sense.)

That said, given that the referendum was 5 years ago now, our own government, via the Bank of England, has been rather slow in getting around to even discussing this benefit. So much for getting Brexit "done". Well, we all have been done, that's for sure.

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10 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

JJJEZUS THATS AN ORANGE SPOTTED DEATH LIZARD!!!

Just as well I didn't poke it with a stick then, eh! Mind you, that would explain all the little human silhouettes stencilled on the side of its head! 

 

Jim 

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24 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Umm kept the Scots out? :jester:

No, kept the English in! :P

 

Confession time. I have to admit that we have booked a foreign holiday in July. However the country we are going to seems to have relatively low case numbers and a good rate of vaccination, though their ability to keep varients out is somewhat doubtful. We just hope the weather in Berwick will be fair. 

 

Jim 

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42 minutes ago, Hroth said:

The Wall is a safe bet, at least you're entirely withn England!

 

Indeed

 

42 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Why not try the Antonine Wall?

 

 

 

Ah, but that will soon once more be a foreign holiday destination!  Perhaps I should see it now, before passports are required!

 

41 minutes ago, Regularity said:

I think it was a more a case of they didn't want the expense of "conquering" such a wilful, unruly mob (I say that with the greatest respect and admiration) and merely tried to delineate between civilisation and barbarism (as they saw it)...

 

 

Yes, well the English tried to conquer the Scots and the Scots have tried conquering the English.  In the end, the two nations called it a draw and the Scots haven't stopped complaining since! ;)

 

All joking aside, I suspect that the English have flattered themselves over how Romanised we became. Not wanting to read too much into a single tablet, but that Brittunculi ("Nasty Little Brits") comment suggests little integration and perhaps that, so far as the Romans were concerned, we remained the hairy barbarous helots to their spartans. 

 

 

 

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Wonderfully, the country wasn't "English" back in Roman times but variants of the inhabitants of the islands who were pinned back into Wales and Scotland by the "waves" of invaders (see 1066 and All That), who became, more or less, English over time. Then England got the Norman disease, which was more or less a continuation of the "waves" via a long way round. It took a while for the Norman bu@@ers to get assimilated, but so it goes.

 

England is a country of waves of assimilation, it just takes time and some waves are more tricky to digest than others.

 

Even Scots who have come over the border get assimilated, and they're tough!

 

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