coastalview

A bit of an attempt to get an earlier look, and a quick go at getting rid of the bloke in red.

I might have a go at getting rid of him some time lol

I had no idea but looking at a different photo I could clearly see the number and found this https://www.svrwiki.com/GWR_9055_Nondescript_Saloon

Going through some old photos this afternoon and came across this shot from the Severn Valley Railway almost exactly 21 years ago. It is I believe Taff Vale No 85 and I had completely forgotten I had taken it as it was in the wrong folder. I thought it might be of interest to a number of our brethren.

It seems that our cruise from Istanbul to Venice in late May has been cancelled as the ship, which, was on a world tour was scheduled to come through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. Due to all of the problems it is being rerouted to go around Africa meaning that both our leg and the Dubai to Istanbul legs will be cancelled. We have put aside tomorrow to plan a new holiday.....

Had an interesting day today with a visit to AFC Telford football club (I wouldn't recommend the sausage baps TBH). It was the Attingham Park annual property meeting to brief all of the staff and volunteers on what new initiatives the year will bring. The financial year of the NT is from the beginning of March and it was interesting to discover that in the last financial year we had almost 590K visitors and were the most visited NT site over Christmas. We also now have the second highest number of volunteers of any NT site which was quite surprising. It was fascinating to discover how Attingham is working with The Environment Agency as a pilot project to help reduce downstream flooding from the Rivers Severn and Tern, as, with climate change this is only going to get worse. On the point of training, the culture wars we have been subjected to would suggest that the NT is a "woke" organisation and only concerned with PC things and as such if you believe some of our daily newspapers we volunteers spend all our time being trained in all sorts of woke things. However the only training we volunteers who meet the public every day have to do is around safeguarding every two years and Data Protection annually. The former is an online interactive course which takes about 20 minutes and the latter a two page refresher document that takes about 5 minutes to read. Both are very practical and sensible and in my experience none of the volunteers really mind doing them.

Applied online for a new passport last Tuesday. Amazed when said passport turned up with Royal Mail today. The passport office web site says typical turn around is three weeks which I thought might be a bit optimistic so getting it in just over a week was rather impressive.

In our experience they are often the worst , when it comes to doing things in the most cack handed way possible

Have a great Christmas all.

Just had a mobile phone delivered by DPD and you have to enter a four digit pin that they sent by text into the handset he uses. Certainly improves security

I can of course confirm this and also confirm that I am not under duress and make this statement of my own free will. Help come and rescue............

Well I didn't know you could do that. Thanks

Amazon delivery. The enormous brown box which is also full of brown packing paper was used to transport just the white box to us today. I am so glad they are doing everything they can to reduce waste. The only plus is the brown paper will be very useful for starting the fire 🤣

Youngest son who happens to be 38, not sure where the time has gone, still has an interest in railways and normally comes along to Warley with me. He has been spending some of his meagre spare time playing around with some Arduino kits and automating a couple of tracks and locos. I doubt it will go far as he has so little spare time working in IT support. Still it can be quite useful having a "willing " volunteer at times. 🤣

I'm afraid its not green or red but I do like it in blue. I happened to be in Church Stretton and managed to grab a shot of 60007 on the Welsh Marches Express on 10th May this year.