Someone's got acorns for brains.

 
New Recipe on packaged food items.

Cheaper ingredients or reduced portion size.

 
Youtube travel vlogger Paul Stewart's most recent video (06/04/2025) saw him fly from Houston, TX to Manchester, UK for a kebab! Straight back to the US the same day.

He was also commemorating the final Singapore Airlines direct flight between those two airports.

https://youtu.be/RwD3a6HXZkI

 

His name is Dan Okey, not Dan Oakey, and it's Okehampton, not Oakhampton: more examples of shoddy journalism - perhaps using autocorrect, without bothering to make sure it is in fact correct. 

 
One of my pet hates in newspaper reports is "10am in the morning".   Well it wouldn't be the evening would it?

 

Similarly, the word "unique" is also overused by media folk, often betrayed by the contradictory "more unique" - it seems they think it means "somewhat unusual".

A favourite of railway operators' electronic signage staff is "Delayed", which seems to mean "Late, don't know how late, and cannot (or cannot be bothered to) find out why or when it might turn up"

 

I wonder when someone will tell the Government that .........

 
Luckily, the Wiltshire Metro will sort all this lot out.
https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2025/04/plans-discussed-for-a-metro-system-for-bath-and-wiltshire.html

 

 

Use them or lose them! 

 

I've just notices that every digit in the post count is odd (and, yes, this post will destroy that) and it only happens once in every 64 posts.    I also note that at the moment the answer to another question is 42, and being much more tuned than Deep Thought actually know the question - "How many posts have been added yesterday and so far todaY?"

 

Repeating that to highlight it,  and thank you.  I plan to walk it later this month - today was tempting but I would be pushed for time with the last 4 trains this evening cancelled (sarcastic Thank You, GWR!!) and no evening buses being a Sunday.

 

I was just waiting for XC to suggest to me I pop down and get it done at my local station (which doesn't have a ticket office). Yes - I will probably follow the spirit of your suggestion though at Bath Spa where there's a probability of the ticket office being open at the time I'm there and not rushing for a connection.

 

Or pop in person to a local ticket office?  Chippenham?  Trowbridge?

 
The Devonshire Tunnel flooding issue is hopefully addressed with a system the installation of which took a good few months. The existing drain, which still copes for much of the time, is now backed up by a chamber beneath the tarmac at the entrance to the tunnel: an increase in levels in the chamber triggers an electric pump in the chamber that sends excess water to a filtration tank at the top of the rise, from where it is taken downhill and off the route and into the street drainage system. We'd expect the pump to be called on only very occasionally.

Meanwhile, further along the route, for the last several months there has been a large puddle across the route where... the tunnel drain there, showing a sense of humour (not) has part-blocked. Not ideal but the puddle can be evaded at one side. This drain has done this before - and there's still a healthy flow into the stream where it emerges so all is not lost.

Something I'm not sure I dreamed and perhaps someone else can remember - visiting the tunnel in the late seventies(?), I found that the cutting there was obstructed some way between its start and the tunnel entrance by a large earth ramp crossing it at an angle, something I thought to be  connected with the construction of a pipeline. At the time I thought "That's it as far as the continuity of the route goes, as that looks as if its there for good". At the next visit, it had vanished as if it had never been there. If it did exist it would have been removed again as it blocked access to what was now Wessex Water's tunnel.

Something else: the audiovisual artwork in the tunnel... is not working again, and we have an enquiry in as to when it will be fixed. That aside, the Two Tunnels route's hopefully reliably available for use

Mark

 
First thought: Buy a Seatfrog upgrade in the week before travel. comes with reservations in 1st.

Second try - their "10minute" text reservation will work from the start of business on the day of travel - no guarantee but better than nothing.

Third: Buy a ticket, reserve seats, refund tickets just before travel. I believe seat reservations don't cancel.

Ask Mark Smith, Man in Seat61 - he'll know & is on Twitter/X

 

The K&A is (now) the posterchild of back-pumping. The Devizes flight has a part solar-powered installation, here's its information board with some useful figures. Backpumping remains expensive though. Solar, that day, was not doing too much heavy lifting at that moment as this was the end of  a damp morning albeit in August - and 2025 panels might well be more efficient than the 2012 variety.

I'm not sure how the K&A backpumping compensates for its long pounds - which the canal engineers typically laid out with a small gradient along their length to reflect the fact that the water they held would need to move between lock flights and its surface would therefore not be level but have a slight downhill gradient. Reverse the flow and the gradient needs to swap ends...

Evaporation plagued certain canals - think it was the Thames and Severn canal's management was concerned that its thirsty summit lost water any way it could, including by evaporation and did they attempt to tackle this by planting (thirsty) trees to provide shade and relief from drying winds?

Mark

 
12 years ago.  Wow.

Can someone please confirm the current (April 2025) status after engineering issues that have arisen which inevitably have lead to periods of restriction and closure

 

But you don't very often, Bob - you use personal messages.   

 
Lisa and I are travelling on a Cross Country train next month - long distance and it's likely to be crowded - so I dropped them. note (with journey details) asking for a reservation.


The Interrail people say that reservations are dealt with locally by the train operators - reasonable in many ways as common systems are not set up for all 33 countries and all TOCs within those countries ... but if  TOC can't (or won't) reserve you a seat on their trains, who can?

 
Perhaps I won't email Graham again.   

 

I would agree - so strongly that I'm writing to say so and not just hitting LIKE.

 
A useful read on the link below, with some of the background. Still not sure how this has suddenly become a crisis for the Canal and River Trust. Presumably the canal's intake is measured, it would be interesting to know the figures.

As an aside, concerning the canal, there are hopefully some engrossing** legal documents in some archive or other.

Mark

** For certain very specific definitions of 'Engrossing'.

https://wyeuskfoundation.org/our-work/usk-and-wye-abstraction-group/

 
There's a current infestation of third rate local news reporters who describe nearly every building they report on as 'iconic' when what they really mean is 'well known ' or 'prominent'.
Similarly, a lot of journos don't seem to to know what an epicenter actually is....or it's corresponding hypocentre for that matter as well.

 
One allegation of rape is timed in the 2020s - and and a second allegation of misfeasance in public office seems to indicate an allegation while mayor?

 
WMR station, so that would be effecting their services too - so they are responsible for arranging onward transport.

 
Yup. Complete crookery.

Mark

 
'Only 4 left' on the LNER booking engine against a number of ticket categories, which actually seems to mean that loadings on the service in question are pretty low - as confirmed by a quick perusal of the seat map - and they would like us to buy more; I booked 3 seats from a ticket category labelled in this way yesterday but miraculously there are still (only) 4 seats left today.