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I suppose I should have guessed that most OS BMs marked on this map had long been superceded, but it was fun wandering around Exeter as it was 100 years ago.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

Beachy Head

Did some more of the South Downs Way today.  I started at Willingdon Hill and passed the site of a bomber crash enroute to the trig.


I then visited Beachy Head.  Stunning views.
 
An easy trig to find.

And another memorial - to the RAF.  Beach Head was often the last point of England they saw before they flew off on their mission.

And Beachy Head lighthouse.

And finally I bagged East Hill (between Wilmington and Beachy Head on the South Downs Way).  A trig standing proud on a small mount next to a pond.

Very blustery!

Mad Jack

Today I was on the trail of mad Jack Fuller and his many follies.  In the late 16th century, after what appears to have been many years of philanthropic donations, Jack decided to spend some money on himself.

I first found his 'Sugar Loaf'.

Which handily enough had a trig pillar nearby - no idea why it is called Jury's Gut.

I then drove towards the Obelisk.  I am obviously well trained to find (or not) trig pillars and therefore approach each new find wondering if I am going to spot it or not. As if I'd miss this!

What you can't see from the photo is that it has a wee moat around it.  Cute!

I then drove into Brightling and stopped by the church

having noticed something somewhat egotistical in its graveyard.

Jack's tomb in case you hadn't guessed.

And then I saw the tower and drove towards that.

What fun - the gate on the tower was unlocked and I could climb up inside.  Health and Safety eat your heart out.
 
I spotted the temple from the tower but decided not to walk over to physically touch it.  Sometimes a distant shot is enough.

Which is just as well as the next trig I tried to bag didn't quite come good.  I was stopped on the edge of the field by the owner (?) asking what I was doing. I told him I was simply after the trig but he explained there was no public right of way (confession - I had passed a sign saying so) and that he was trying not to encourage people to visit it.  Looking at the trig pointing website for this trig it appears I'm the first to have encountered any difficulty.

Anyway, we had a little chat and he let me take a photo from a distance.

We then carried on our conversation as I left.  He thought there were more exciting things I could be doing with my spare time (oh how little he knows) but it turns out his daughter is an MRICS rural surveyor.  We had a pleasant chat about Jack Fuller and I wouldn't say we were bosom buddies by the time we parted, but he certainly isn't going to sue me.

So that's Jack and what a mad and fascinating guy he must have been.

Herstmonceux and Long Man

My daughter has work experience at the Space Geodesy Facility, Herstmonceux, so I'm in East Sussex for the week with her.  After dropping her first thing today I just had to sweep up the 3 trigs in the Herstmonceux grounds.

I've yet to work out the raison d'etre for there being 3 here although the names are a bit of a clue.

First we have 'Solar'.

Which has a mighty fine receiver on top.

And an SLR for a backdrop.

Next we have 'Transit Meridian'.

No longer monitoring anything and looking somewhat sad for itself.

And finally we have just plain and simple 'Herstmonceux' which is sitting in front of a magnificent old observatory.

So that was 3 trigs bagged by 0915.  I suspect I will never trump that.

Later on in the day I headed to Wilmington.  On the side of the ridge is the Long Man of Wilmington.

And then on the top Wilmington trig.  Newer than the chalk man and to most people far less interesting.

It was pretty windy up there but the views were wonderful.

Back to Herstmonceux tonight.  Hopefully if the skies are clear we get to play with lasers.  How much fun can one possibly have?

Three Trig Sunday

A 3 trig day today. First off tackled one that had eluded me last year. I'm not the only one and others have struggled to find Lowman's Farm. That made it even more appealing for a hunt so in jeans, long sleeved top and gardening gloves I set out to find it. Actually, it was easy to spot from the road. Just a pig to get to and I had to fight through brambles to get to touch it (it's not a true trig bag unless you have contact with the trig). I drew blood on a thorn at one point which made it even more fulfilling. The best trig hunts are the ones you fight for.

Some damage to the top.

Next off was an easy one, Widworthy Hill. Now isn't this a beauty?

Plug intact. Sight holes blocked. Fine views across East Devon.

Lastly it was Longbridge Farm. I was a tad nervous about this as the descriptions mentioned circumnavigating fields of bullocks which is not my thing. However, a clear run on farm animals and, give or take the odd thorn in my hand, a nice find.

This is what weekends are for.
 

Hunting Great Theodolites

Ever since I bumped into a Great Theodolite in Cape Town in 1995 I have been transfixed by these massive, beautiful instruments.
 
From my research I believe there have been six large theodolites. The first two were built by Ramdsen.  The first was bought by the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain and the second, although commissioned by the East India Company, was deemed too pricey and also bought up by the Ordnance Survey. The third was ordered by Switzerland in the late 18th Century but never quite made it there before it was cannibalised (some French/Swiss warfaring got in the way).

The East India Company turned to William Cary and Barrow to make them a theodolite of similar size (late 18th C, early 19th).  In the early 19th Century they ordered another theodolite from Troughton and Simms.  And another theodolite was ordered mid/late through the 19th Century. This last one was made of steel and even heavier than the previous theodolites.  It proved too heavy to be of use to lug up mountains and was eventually sent on permanent loan to the Cape Observatory.

The first theodolite was destroyed during the second world war when the Ordnance Survey HQ was bombed.  The second resides in the Science Museum in London.  The third is no more.  The fourth is in the Survey of India offices in Dehra Dun where it is given pride of place next to the Assistant Surveyor General of India's office.  No idea of the fifth but it may be in Calcutta but I've heard no mention of it so preusme it is no more.  And the sixth is in Cape Town (again below).

So of all the extant great theodolites I've seen them all - the Science Museum in London, Cape Town and, last but not least, the Dehra Dun theodolite.


The Harris and Co inscription on the vertial circle is confusing me.   Although the horizontal one is etched with Barrow 1833 which fits in with my research.

To wind the clock back a tad, Ken and myself have been after this theodolite for a while (or was it just me?).  When we realised that we were within spitting distance of Dehra Dun this spring we invited ourselves to visit the Survey of India offices.  Once we arrived in Dehra Dun you can imagine the excitement (OK, mine) when I realised that our Dehra Dun hotel was under 30m from the entrance to the Survey of India offices.  Ken and I went for an explore.

And we got more excited as we walked down the road.

OK, you can call us sad, but I prefer to say 'inspired'.

And here we are.

We had tea with the Assistant Surveyor General of India - how humbling is that? - and then the great theodolite photos.  Awesome.

As if that wasn't enough geo excitement in one day, on our way down town that evening to celebrate our 'theodolite bag'  we passed a familiar Ruth sight.

By the time we'd finished the photo shoot we were surrounded by over 15 Indian guys with very quizzical looks on their faces.  You could see the thought bubbles coming out of their head: to summarise I think most of them said "crazy woman".

The next day we were privileged to go to another Survey of India office which included their museum.

We said hi to Everest on the way in.

We spent over an hour soaked in surveying memorabilia - Everest's telescope, the transit telescope of the Great Arc of India, subtense bar, drawing instruments from Montgomery, surveying subterfuge (prayer beads used to survey in Tibet - pray and survey simulataneously) and the most amazing tidal harmonic calculating machine I've ever seen.  Sadly we couldn't take photos but I was gobsmaked by the surveying gems we found.  Absolutely wonderful stuff in the survey capital of India.