Chit Chat

A bit of a miscellany post today.

Sad news on standing astride longitude at Greenwich. It will now cost an adult a tenner. Ah well, at least the majority of 0 degree longitude is free to stand on!

Picked up Modus, the RICS corporate magazine today. It was full, as ever, of property articles, but this U-tube site caught my eye. It's amazing what you can build in 2 days - well shell in 2 days, internal walls completed in 6. That's mighty quick.

And to continue the time lapse theme my Dad sent me this construction of new railway bridges at Reading Station. Fun eh?

Off for a trig hunt with my daughter tomorrow I hope. She doesn't yet know but once the words 'tea and buns' get injected into the conversation I'm sure she'll come around. Still not finding benchmarks easy to espy. I certainly haven't got my eye into those yet.

And to end my miscellany, a measurement quiz for those who haven't picked it up earlier. I suspect you will all beat my paltry 4 out of 9!

Sad but True

Went with the family down to the Quayside today. I went armed with a list of benchmarks and map; my husband took a GPS receiver and geocache hunt. We didn't find the geocache - mainly because after 3 clues we realised the cache was up a hill and across a mainroad. We were having too much fun at the Quayside to bother. But we did locate 4 benchmarks. They were all hard to find but perhaps I haven't got my eye in yet.


These rivets are small aren't they?!

Trigs and a Trig Lookalike

Decided we needed to bag some trig pillars today. Well, I did and the girls were dragged out on the promise of lunch out if we found 3.

Well we did. And we didn't.

First off is our nearest trig pillar which I'd never hunted before - it's on a railway embankment so we had to view from the bridge.

Then we went to find the trig on Constitutional Hill.

Here it is!

I was surprised there was no evidence of a spider or FB but I assumed this was a cheap and nasty OS version.

On returning I read the details properly and, lo-and-behold, there is the real trig pillar 100m further up the trail. Doh. What I want to know is why are there two trigs 100m apart from each other - one the official one and the other a poor cousin. It's exactly the same shape as an OS trig pillar and fooled me (no comments please). I wonder if the OS installed this one and then changed their minds for a slightly better location? Can anyone enlighten me?

Lastly, a real trig. This one involved a tramp across very gloopy mud but the views were worth it.

I Blame Glyn

I met Glyn Hunt a year or so ago (and he's the only person I know to have their own website - not sure what to make of that). It didn't take me long to realise he's as obsessed about benchmarks as I am trig pillars. I tried to ignore the pull. However I have just spent the week in Keswick with the family and realised quite soon on that the trig pillars were too high for us to reach . Sad but sensible when it's below freezing, ice/snow on top and the girls only had enough clothes to keep them warm at the foot of the hills, not 900m above MSL. So what to do except to cut my losses and start hunting for benchmarks? I didn't get too far as (a) the family only allow me out for brief periods and (b) we had no internet connection so I couldn't pre-arm myself with grid references to locate them.

So in the 30 mins I had last week (!) I/we found two.

Keswick Moot Hall and Keswick Post Office.


The beginning of the obsession starts.

Alvin - Space Shuttle of the Oceans

Wow, wouldn't this be a trip and a half? Good luck on the new model Alvin.

A Memorable Meeting

We had the RICS Geomatics Professional Group meeting at the RICS HQ, 12 Great George Street, on Thurs. It was Stuart Edward's first full meeting as Chair and our international reps were there. We knew, due to the vote on university fees, that there would be protests in Parliament Square, but no idea of the scale.

At 1350 a whole raft of students arrived from the Whitehall area. Actually I'd realised they were at Trafalgar Square 30 mins earlier as I could see the helicopters buzzing over that area from our 5th floor meeting room.

We went out on to the terrace to watch proceedings. It was increasingly confusing with demonstrators breaking through baracades and police lines moving. The students broke into the grass area of Paliament Square and pretty soon there were fires blazing (incl a bench) and someone had erected a gazebo - which certainly shows some planning ahead.

Poor Stuart had a job on his hands to keep us focused on the business of the day when events outside were far more interesting.

At 1500 we were told the police wanted us out in 20 mins. They were struggling to keep Paliament Square closed and, for our safety, wanted us out of the building. The RICS building is across the road from Treasury. We evacuated in 10 mins and then spent 30 mins walking to our hotel just the other side of Westminster Bridge. Of course we couldn't take a direct route so walked up Marsham Street (giving a wide berth to the Tory HQ in Millbank), across Lambeth Bridge and along the South Bank. We reconvined our meeting in a spare hotel meeting room - which was kind of them. This gave Peter Dare and I had an opportunity for impromptu chair race which I won (ha!).

Martin Pratt, from IBRU, was due to give the evening lecture and receive the Michael Barrett award which, obviously, had to be abandoned. I was really looking forward to it but hey ho. He'd travelled down to London for no more than a meal with us lot before returning the next morning. I was delighted to sit next to him and have a good chinwag about datums in the Gulf ever over dinner, like you do.

Around 2230 our hotel was surrounded by police vans and the entrance closed . We were also hearing rumours of tube stations being closed etc. I now realise that there was a group of protestors kettled on Westminster Bridge. We stood there in the bar, glasses in hand, and watched the proceedings. A very bizarre end to the day.

Let's hope, for Stuart's sake, next time round it's all a lot more normal.

Glonass Hiccup

Oh dear oh dear. More here.