More firewood: birch this time

The neighbour had mentioned to me before that he thought some of the trees lining our little street are getting so big they are taking the light away from his windows and his solar panels. He was thinking of doing something about that. And one day I came out of my house and saw him busy doing just that. And he asked me if I wanted some logs. Of course I did!

He is not a tree surgeon, so he couldn't reasonably cut down the biggest birch there in its entirety, but he cut off some sizeable branches, and took down a smaller tree entirely. So now I have, in addition to the processed willow and walnut wood already there, some birch in the garage that I need to cut, split, and let dry for a while! I'm always happy to replenish my stock. And I must say; just like that far corner of my garden, the end of our street now looks a lot tidier than it did before. And I'm sure my neighbour now has to make a smaller appeal on fossil fuel reserves. Everybody wins!

The biggest piece; we needed to carry that together

The rest of the wood

Tidy! 

Annoying lamp issues

When I bought the house, I had it entirely rewired. I figured that would mean everything would be OK. But I am not entirely sure if that's true. Would it be another case of me not being critical enough? Not that I have any idea how I would keep an eye on the quality of what an electrician delivers. What do I know about that stuff? I hire a trade person for a reason! But anyway; I noticed that it so happened a lot lightbulbs would either break, or otherwise only radiate very dim light. They're not supposed to do that! A lightbulb is supposed to have a pretty long life. 

There is one lamp in the living room that I have practically given up on. I have replaced the bulbs so often! I don't want to spend my monthly salary on lightbulbs. I will just do without.

And then, suddenly, the light in the storage space next to the kitchen did the same thing. It only emits such weak light you can't really see what you're doing. If you're looking for something you know exactly where it is, you can still find it, but sometimes retrieving something from storage require some rummaging. And there is no light to do that by.

So now what? Maybe I will just Google if anyone else has had this issue, and if there is something to do about it. I will also and firstly just try to replace the lightbulb to see if that works. It's annoying! I wish I knew more about this topic. But then again, I think that about a lot of topics…

Not light enough

Contractor vanished

I'm not very strategic and I am too trusting! For instance; I had my garage reroofed, and only a few years later I noticed all the cement was already falling out of the roof ridge. That didn't look very sturdy. And I had bumped into the roofer at a race, who said he would contact me, but of course he hadn't. And I couldn't contact him either, as I had never communicated directly with him. What I needed to do was contact the contractor. But a voice says "this number is not in use" if I phone him. And if I google his company, I find nothing. I think he has stopped trading! So I can't really talk to anyone who is responsible. I'll have to have this fixed by someone else. Will I learn from this? I hope so! I'm sure that owning a house, I will forever have to deal with three people. Can I avoid any of them going out of business after they deal with me? No! But maybe I should just have acted earlier. Maybe he would still have been in business then. But for now I will just put the roof on the to-do list. It might linger there for a bit!

This only makes sense after zooming in

Sustainable transport after all!

I don't think he reads the blog. But not an awful lot of time after I had mentioned on the blog I was having my doubts about our Sustainable Transport idea of a local ‘cycle to work’ day, my phone rang. It was Chris, our facilitator! He apologised for not responding to my messages earlier, and said that we could advertise the event through me handing him the necessary materials, and him disseminating that. That works for me!

I have a lot of commute pictures, and I didn't think sending them by email would be a good idea. So I downloaded a whole lot from my phone onto my computer, downloaded a bunch of maps that represent the various routes I take to work, and put them in a folder on Dropbox. I also included a file where I listed which picture was taken at which section of my commute (I had only some six different sections, so that wasn't too detailed), as I am a bit of a pedant, and I wouldn't want him to plot a map with pictures that were taken somewhere else! And he is a local, but that doesn't necessarily mean he recognises every little part of the local bicycle paths.

I also added a file with some calculations. How much CO2 do I avoid emitting by not going by car? How much fuel am I saving? How much money does that represent? How many calories do I burn when I do that commute? All sorts of things that might sell the idea to people.

It's out of my hands now! I don't know where Chris will put this material. If it is places like TikTok and Instagram I will not see it. But I hope it will get spread far and wide. And that it motivates a few more people onto these bicycle paths in country lanes!

One of the maps

Another two commute pictures

St David’s Day: lecture about Mary Jones

How many people who read this blog would have heard of Mary Jones? She is quite famous in Wales, but that only says so much. I had heard of her since a Welsh class in which her story popped up. 

On the 1st of March it's Saint David's Day, and for that reason, on that day there was an online lecture about her and her significance. In Welsh. And I decided to attend. It was chaired by a bloke from Philosophy and Religion that I had seen around at meetings of the Bangor branch of the National College of Wales. And the lady who did the talk was from the Bible society. And that gives you an idea of the significance of Mary Jones.

The story of this lady is that she was very religious, but also very poor. She had learned to read and write, and really wanted to have a Bible. But that wasn't so easy! For someone who is poor they are quite expensive, and there aren’t many around written in Welsh.

She just saved for six years, and then, at 15, went for a walk to the nearest shop that might sell them. She was too poor for shoes, and it was 26 miles. Quite a hike! And what happened when she got there is not entirely clear, but it seems that the most likely course of events was that the shop actually sold out in Welsh language Bibles. But not to panic; there was a delivery due, and she seems to have managed to get home with her Bible a few days later. Maybe even several Bibles, to share around.

Why is this relevant? The shopkeeper seems to have been very moved by her actions, and decided that Welsh language Bibles should be cheaply available to all. And he founded a society to make that possible. And when he was at it anyway, he branched out to include the rest of the world as well.

And now? The Welsh have largely lost their religion. Those who have been here will have noticed the huge number of chapel buildings dotted around, many of which now derelict, or turned into outdoor shops or cafés or any other secular use someone had for them.

I suppose, in a way, the story still stands. I can see parallels with Greta Thunberg. If you are 15 and really stubborn, you can do things other people think are weird and not worth the bother, but before you know it you inspire either a few influential, or lots of less influential people, and are at the beginning of a big change. I can imagine why the Welsh have not forgotten her! And maybe now a few more people have heard of her…

Not much sustainable transport

I am in the sustainable transport group of this valley’s sustainability initiative. We are just a bunch of volunteers with full-time commitments, and one professional facilitator. We try to make a difference with the limited facilities we have.

One of the ideas we had was do a “cycle to work" day. There already are national and/or international ones; if you google when they are, you get the impression there are several. But we thought we would encourage some people from our area who normally commute to the Bangor area by car, to try it by bike. The idea would be that we, from the sustainability transport group, get together at a central place in the morning, and would ride to Bangor/Menai Bridge with the people who would show up. There might be some people who would give it a go that way. And we may be capable of sorting out coffee and cake on the other side. There is a small budget for these things! It might draw people in who need a little bit of encouragement, but not much. And we didn't have to stick to an official cycle to work day. We also thought that the winter was probably not the time.

We agreed on a day in April. We figured we needed to advertise it a bit, to get people interested. I have my project Strava; I make a concerted effort every day to post a pretty picture of my deniably beautiful commute on the platform. If I'm doing that anyway, we might as well publish this far and wide. People who follow me on Strava are already on board with cycling to work! Or at least the possibility thereof.

We don't need to restrict ourselves to pictures, of course; additional useful information could be maps of how I get to work, and information such as how much CO2 emissions you save if you leave the car at home, and how much fuel money you don't have to spend. I asked Chris, the facilitator, to either think of places where he could put all that, so I could send it to him, or for him to give me access to these places so I could put it there myself. He is paid by Gwyrddni, sustainability organisation, which has other close ties with Partneriaeth Ogwen. Surely these organisations have pages on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or any of these places? If I could post on these I would reach a much more suitable audience.

It is already March and I haven't heard anything from Chris! In spite of repeated reminders. Time is ticking. I am starting to wonder a bit if this will happen. If we don't advertise it, no one will come. And then my fellow cyclist Pete and I would just stand there alone, and then just bike to work as we always do. That wouldn't make much of a change. I hope something will start happening soon!

Below some pictures from my Project Strava:

Not quite successful day in the field

My MSc student had done a lot of work on the samples that were still available from the earlier projects that her project was built on. But the day came we needed to go and collect some of our own. And I thought it would be good if we could resample some of the locations of her forbears. And I had booked the GPS with which that would be possible.

Late morning I tried to find out how you can make it navigate you to a waypoint. I know it can be done! I've seen Martin use it that way. But I didn't quite manage to make it work! The technicians in charge of the GPS didn't know how it’s done, but I found a YouTube video that showed it. Unfortunately, you had to give it the waypoints. No problem, I thought; just make a CSV file and put it on the SD card. But my computer didn't recognise the SD card! So that failed. But you can, of course, just keep an eye on the northing and easting as it is shown live on the screen, and make the numbers run in the direction you want them to. I had made sure I had the coordinates ready in that format. 

Then we set off. We drove to the estuary, and I unpacked the GPS. It worked fine! In a way. The GPS part saw a plethora of satellites and indicated it could measure at high precision. The handset had established contact with the GPS. Also seemed to be going well! Except that it didn't tell us our location.

The previous time I had an issue with this piece of kit I had phoned the technician, and he had recommended I switch it off and on again. I should have managed to think about that myself. But at least it has solved the problem! This time I decided to do the off-on trick before phoning him. We did it twice! But to no avail, so I phoned him. 

No easting, no northing 

The technician said he didn't know what the problem was, and couldn't help me from a distance. Now what? We could either go home, or just take some samples while we were here, and hope for the best. We all carried mobile phones; they can also determine position, albeit not as precise as a very expensive DGPS. And we wouldn't have a chance of finding the exact locations of the master students who had come before.

We decided to sample. It wasn't ideal, but at least it was quick. We already knew that once you get into the sandflat, you don't find much pollution. So if you want to relate foraminifera assemblages to pollution, just a few sandflat samples will do. We didn't have to walk all the way to the far end of the estuary, as one of the earlier students had done. And that was nice, given that it was very cold.

Looking down the estuary 

Looking up the estuary 

Every time something doesn't work out as planned, such as bad foram preservation, or equipment failure like this, or anything, you lose time. These master students don't have much time! And I think I know how we can speed up this project, but for that to work, the DGPS really has to do what I want. Ideally, I would want a technician (or Martin) with me in the field, to troubleshoot when needed! But I think they are quite overworked. So that might not be feasible. We might just have to keep our fingers firmly crossed!