Scottish Geo Finds

I've just spent a week in Scotland on leave.  I started in Glasgow, swung by Dunblane and Stirling and finished my week in Ayr.

Glasgow is a truly beautiful city to wander around.  The architecture is fantastic.  Not only that but the building stone makes it dead easy to spot benchmarks.

Look at this beauty - higher than usual due to the building buttress.

I realised quite soon that the benchmarks were so easy to spot across road junctions that I nearly got run over a few times; being far more focused on the BM opposite than the traffic.  Doh.

Glasgow Central Station is a bit special.  I've never seen this before. I wonder if they put in the second higher BM when the lower one was covered?

As I walked towards Kelvingrove I liked this company's sign for obvious reasons.

And, hey, it has it's own benchmark too!

A stroll around the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum unearthed these

And a larger orrery.  This is by John Fulton built in 1833.  It contains only 7 planets: it was before Nepture and Pluto were discovered.

One thing I wanted to do whilst in Glasgow was the Glasgow Geek Guide.  I was particuarly keen to see the measurements in George's Square.    Standard measures at 62 deg F.

The guide says there are more in the North Lawns.  It took me a while to realise that these weren't easily accessible due to pre-Commonwealth Games construction work.  However, armed with a good idea where they should be a gap in the hoarding, I sort of 'bagged' them.
 
If you look carefully you can see the chain length marked out.

Maybe when I'm back next summer I'll be able to have a better look and perhaps see the RICS plaque too.

No geo finds in Dunblane but Stirling was oozing with them.  Or perhaps not?  Is this British Telecom graffiti?

And this is?

Now this one is a bit special - BM with bolt.  And I presume the info about is by the War Department?

More War Department info on the walls surrounding Stirling Castle.

The Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery was a nice find. 

Queen Anne official weights, 1707.

Imperial Yard.

And a chain.

Lastly I visited Ayr. I had decided to bag a couple of OS bolts on the promenade. The first was up on the south arm of the harbour.  As I walked towards it I came across this  unusual lampost.

Not a mile I've come across in my geodesy career.  It is apparently1984 yards, 224 yards longer than a standard mile.  Whatever 'standard' was in those days.  It is not at all surprising that measurements varied locally; I'm still smiling at the Smoot length we found in Boston last year.
 
At the end of the south arm of the harbour entrance is a very rusty light beacon.

And a few metres away is the bolt.  A local fisherman moved his foot so I could take a photo.  I got the 'you look a bit mad to be photographing the pavement' look from him which I am well used to seeing.  Anyway, TP11614 all bagged and blogged.
 
The second bolt, a Lang Scots Mile and a bit away, was equally unexciting to look at.  But I still sadly took a photo. TP11612 bagged. 

Babbacombe Trigs

Decided I needed a bout of trig hunting today.

First off found The Beacon which is just south of Teignmouth.  An easy bag - helped by the now familiar well worn path up through the hedge to the trig - and some wonderful views across the bay.


Looking north towards the River Teign.

Happy days.

Next we drove to Watcombe walking south and bagged this golf course trig pillar, Easterfield.  I never linger at these types of trigs conscious that a stray ball may be coming my way.

And our last trig was Petit Tor.  I thought it was helpful previous trig hunters who had created such an easy scramble up to this.  But as I passed condom packets and a pair of pants hung in the tree I quickly realised that trig hunters are probably the lesser of the traffic up this path.  I shall spare you the photos!

The trig is at a beautiful spot.
 

Annoyed at some earlier picnickers there who left their McDonalds rubbish in a carrier bag hanging off the trig.  Lazy idiots. Who on earth do they think is going to sweep buy and collect their gash for them?  We took it down (thanks Rog).

Ah well, beautiful views in the sun.

 I'd considered bagging more but it started to rain and I was wondering if I'd stretched teenage patience enough for one day.

Few French Findings

I have just returned from a holiday in France.  Sadly not much geo collateral to report.  I surprisingly didn't trip over the cobbles of Annecy as I wandered around, my gaze not at the beautiful buildings or even objects (usually people) in front of me, but focused on a point approximately 10cm up walls, buildings and corners searching for bench marks.  There are lots of interesting disks nailed to walls at said height but they all seem related to utilities.  I really should do my homework in advance and see if the nation I'm visiting actually uses buildings for control of height.  Would save me the bother I suppose. But then I'm so tuned into this 10cm up-from-the-pavement purview that I look for benchmarks everywhere, including inside buildings, brand new shopping centres, supermarkets etc.

When I did look up I saw this lovely sign. It looks pretty old to me which makes me wonder when France adopted the metric system.

41km and 8 hours to Geneva suggests a slow travel method.  Horse?

I did eventually strike lucky on a walk up the Taillefer Ridge.  OK this wee trig isn't going to win any beauty contests but it's a control point none-the-less and it deserves to be blogged.

No other markings on it.

The Ducks Have It

I have just finished reading Moby Duck by Donovan Hohn.

OK, the duck wasn't quite this big but I like this one.  It has sadly popped.

The book is an absolute must for any budding oceanographers.  I read it as I have oceanographers working for me and I thought it was about time I paid some attention to their noble art.  It covers the study of what happened to the plastic bath toys that fell into the Pacific Ocean in 1992 when a container fell off a ship. It's a mix between a study of ocean currents and ponderings on man's environmental impacts.  Plastic pollution scores high.  I particularly liked it as it was written by a non-oceanographer who got hooked by the study of the oceans as any right minded person should.  Perhaps I'll be an oceanographer in my next life?

Late last week on Radio 4's "show my your instrument" (is it only me that giggles at that?) Helen Czerski showed us her buoy.  Here it is.  As one of my team said, if you didn't see the picture on the website you'd think she was talking about a giant lollypop.  It's worth listening to - bubbles are the way to go.

Longitude and Venice - with a very tenuous connection

I recently was pointed towards a BBC article on Longitude.  Nothing new on the John Harrison front but interesting to note some of the crazy - or do we now call this "thinking outside of the box"? - ideas that were postulated.

I have recently been to Venice and snapped this ship: sort of on the same theme.

And alongside the standard holiday photos of gondolas and canals I found a few maritime treasures.

Nice anchor.

I didn't visit this naval museum.  If I'd been by myself I would have wandered in but I couldn't be bothered to suggest it to my holiday companions.  Mind you, if I'd known it was only 1-55 EUR entrance fee I might have suggested it.  Ah well, something to look forward to for next time.

Piazza San Marco has a wonderful astronomical clock.


You'll note the V and 40 above the clock.  And, indeed, it was 1740.  I double checked when I went back a couple of days later.  At 1020 funnily enough.  It only displays to the nearest 5 minutes but that'll do me.

Geo Musings

After a flurry of postings in May, my June and July have been a lot more sedate (boring?) on the geo front. Last weekend, though, armed with local map I decided to go check out some old benchmarks.

I suppose I should have guessed that most OS BMs marked on this map had long been superceded, but it was fun wandering around Exeter as it was 100 years ago.

I did find a newer variant though on South Street Baptist Church. I must have walked past it 100s of times.

On the Sunday I took myself east to Dorset to the Golden Cap.

What a beautiful viewpoint.

I love this shot although, apparently, it would have been better if I'd moved my rucksac first.

During the past month or so I've been bagging the odd geo fun item too.

Some wrapping paper which is far too beautiful to actually use as such.

Birthday presents - cool or what? Tubular Fells mug and Church Stretton.
And my absolute favourite. A new brolly. 

Let's hope this doesn't get left in a taxi ever.

Shipwrecks and Hastings

My last couple of days in East Sussex only unearthed one further trig.  This was mainly as I got distracted by work, RICS input and random wanderings in Hastings and Bexhill-on-Sea which didn't go past any trigs.

I tried, vainly, to find the trig on East Hill but ran out of time. If I'd done my homework - it's TP2984 - I would have discovered that a quick glance in the general direction wasn't going to unearth this one. I strongly recommend you click on this link and read the comment posted by senrabyar on 13 Aug 09 - very amusing. Anyway, Hastings was nice when the sun shone and you looked away from the burnt out pier. I stopped by the Shipwreck Museum for a bit.

This looks familiar.

Some octants.

I like the title of this book "Practical Navigation - or an Introduction to that Whole Art".

The next day I was similarly distracted by lunch out with good company, so I only managed the one - TP5130.

As I collected by daughter from the Space Geodesy Facility, she showed me the Flush Bracket BM from which they had been levelling the day before. My explanations of levelling using optical levels with inverted images made her smile - "no bar coded levelling staff?" she queried. I got very excited when I saw the BM she had levelled from.

I don't think I've ever seen a BM that starts with a G. Most flush brackets I see, invariably stuck on trigs, start with an S which date from the levelling campaign of the 1920s onwards.

I quote from the BM website, http://www.bench-marks.org.uk/flush. "The G-series flush brackets first appeared at the start of the Second Geodetic Levelling of Scotland in 1936. Unlike the S-series, numbers below 1000 do not have a leading zero. On most G brackets the letter appears as a prefix, but for a small range from G1000 to G1099 the G appears above the number. The G-series flush brackets are found only on walls, never on triangulation pillars".

I read around this BM website, on their flush brackets page, but now can't work out how the flush brackets on the two trigs TP6562 and TP0011 came about.