The Lemon Fool

Snorvey wrote:A US Airforce C17 roamin' in the gloamin' (Probably on it's way to Wick International Airport to pick up some Dounreay fast reactor waste...)

Its not waste - its highly enriched uranium fuel! Full story:-
http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/ ... -UK-to-USA.

Snorvey wrote:

scotia wrote:

Snorvey wrote:A US Airforce C17 roamin' in the gloamin' (Probably on it's way to Wick International Airport to pick up some Dounreay fast reactor waste...)

Its not waste - its highly enriched uranium fuel! Full story:-
http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/ ... -UK-to-USA.

These things have to take off from Wick with a light load of fuel because the runway there is too short.
They then come into Lossie for a top up.....
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/ne ... from-wick/

The length of the Wick runway was quite satisfactory for its main purpose - all the natives of Wick learned to drive on it when no one else was inconsiderately landing planes. Access was easy - there was a road across the end of the runway. Then a (German) tourist parked his vehicle on the road to get a good photo of a plane landing over the top of his car. And the spoilsports closed the road and erected a fence.

scotia wrote:Access was easy - there was a road across the end of the runway. Then a (German) tourist parked his vehicle on the road to get a good photo of a plane landing over the top of his car. And the spoilsports closed the road and erected a fence.

Can't say we miss the C17s (and their prop driven C15 predecessors) that we used to have based at our local RAF base at Lyneham. Damn things would come over at treetop height in groups of eight or ten (or more), and the cows would panic and small children would scream, and I'd be sitting there wondering how much I could screw the ministry for if they shook our stone tiled roof to pieces?

But the sad day finally came when they were all moved to somewhere else, and after that it was the other locals' turn to complain four times a day about the noise. Not before they'd claimed a few casualties, though. Bored squaddies had started playing a very special game of chicken, in which they would stand under the planes as they came in at low altitude.

This one didn't end so well. Squaddie had forgotten that Hercules often fly with their tail ramps down. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/raf- ... 27162.html . Except when carrying plutonium, perhaps?

BJ

BJ - I have personal experience of very low flying Hercules aircraft coming near to causing road accidents on the A9 Perth to Inverness road. If they come from behind, you don't initially hear them, then this giant shadow passes over you and there is a roar of their engines. Meanwhile you are almost panicked into emergency action, since you have no idea what is happening, but it sounds like you should be doing something to avoid a crash with this unseen object. Once it has passed, your heart rate drops back an octave, and you utter a stream of abuse at the pilot (which he doesn't hear). There is plenty of vacant territory in this area. Low flying over major roads seems inconsiderate, to say the least.

Another one from my Assynt holiday - the Kylesku Bridge looking from the NW, with Quinag behind

Its a magnificent bridge, especially to those of us who remember (pre 1984) having to wait patiently for the ferry, which always seemed stuck at the other side - and a 100 mile detour was not an option.
The bridge has won many prizes - including earlier this year being Listed as a Category "A" structure by Historic Environment Scotland. They also decided to award it an alternative new name - Drochaid a Chaolais Chumhaing. Which I'm sure we will always remember to call it
And I should also say - Quinag looks magnificent from the bottom, and I'm sure others will agree that its also magnificent from the top.

scotia wrote:Another one from my Assynt holiday - the Kylesku Bridge looking from the NW, with Quinag behind

Its a magnificent bridge, especially to those of us who remember (pre 1984) having to wait patiently for the ferry, which always seemed stuck at the other side - and a 100 mile detour was not an option.

Ah, those were the days. Far more style than a bridge:


--kiloran

kiloran wrote:Ah, those were the days. Far more style than a bridge:

You have got me beat on that one. By the time I was travelling on that route with two small children, the boat had improved somewhat - I think it was called the Maid of Glencoul, although I seem to remember that the old Queen of Kylesku was still anchored on the south side. The only ferry I have crossed on with the rotating deck was the one at Glenelg to Skye.

I have been on the old Beachley to Aust ferry across the Severn. I gather that those went to the Shannon in Ireland. Not rotating deck, though.

TJH

kiloran wrote:Ah, those were the days. Far more style than a bridge:
--kiloran

Ah, yes. Scotia lives in a developed country.

We have lots and lots of those ferries on our estuaries. Places with no bridge, so it's a long way round if you want to go overland. Most of them far smaller than yours: for example this three-way crossing. Torpoint, a big boat on a small crossing, is the exception.
This one's my favourite.

tjh290633 wrote:I have been on the old Beachley to Aust ferry across the Severn. I gather that those went to the Shannon in Ireland. Not rotating deck, though.

TJH

The Severn Princess is the last of the three still in existence. It does (or did) have a rotating deck, though not in quite the same way as the one shown above:

https://www.sungreen.co.uk/Lydney/Sever ... _1966.html

Despite this article saying that restoration was about to start, it was still laid up in a derelict state in Chepstow when I was there a year or so later.

https://www.gazetteseries.co.uk/news/11 ... ly-starts/

DM

I see from the photograph in that article that it had a turntable. That rings a bell as we loaded from the side and then got lined up.

It was a toss up between taking the ferry or going round via Gloucester. That was an hour longer than going down to Beachley, so if you missed two sailings while in the queue, you missed out. This was long before motorways, of course.

There are a lot of interesting pictures on the Sungreen site, including some of mine.

TJH

56 years ago today (11th June 1963), Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk, burned himself to death to protest religious persecution in Southern Vietnam.

Photographs of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm government.

John F. Kennedy said in reference to a photograph of Đức on fire, "No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one."

Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of the monk's death -



Wikipedia Source - https://tinyurl.com/mltyakb

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

On my return from Assynt, I made a diversion, as usual, to visit Inverewe Gardens. We were a bit late in the season for the best of the rhododendron bloom, but there was still plenty to see. This one particularly caught my attention:-



I think its an Aeonium (from the Inverewe National collection) - which should be more at home in the Canary Islands rather than outdoors at a latitude 57.78 degrees North. Any correction to my guess is welcome!
Its the Gulf Stream/West Wind Drift/Conveyor that keeps this coast from suffering the fate of Labrador. But there are reports that global warming may have a deleterious effect on this warming current - and its a bit worrying that once again Polar Bears, Arctic Fox and Reindeer could return to Assynt - where their bones have been discovered in the Inchnadamph limestone caves.

scotia wrote:I think its an Aeonium (from the Inverewe National collection)

Bonney Lassie https://bonneylassie.blogspot.com/2019/ ... -time.html here https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3e2Zejxh0Z8/ ... G_9881.jpg suggests it might be an Aeonium 'Swartzkopf'.

PinkDalek wrote:Bonney Lassie https://bonneylassie.blogspot.com/2019/ ... -time.html here https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3e2Zejxh0Z8/ ... G_9881.jpg suggests it might be an Aeonium 'Swartzkopf'.

That's impressive - it took you 9 minutes to find the specific variety! It took me most of the morning to work out that it might be in the Aeonium family!
(I couldn't find a top of the class smilie - but I hope an Uber-Geek will do)

scotia wrote:

PinkDalek wrote:Bonney Lassie https://bonneylassie.blogspot.com/2019/ ... -time.html here https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3e2Zejxh0Z8/ ... G_9881.jpg suggests it might be an Aeonium 'Swartzkopf'.

That's impressive - it took you 9 minutes to find the specific variety! It took me most of the morning to work out that it might be in the Aeonium family!
(I couldn't find a top of the class smilie - but I hope an Uber-Geek will do)

I'd never heard of an Aeonium, let alone the variety. I cheated by right clicking your image and searching the inter webby for similar images. Something I learnt from TMF back in the day and a useful trick for this non geek!

I cheated by right clicking your image and searching the inter webby for similar images.

I didn’t know about that trick. I did (as it was such a good picture) try it with the phone PlantNet app. which thinks it is Aeonium arboreum

That is a helpful free App which allows you to add pictures of flowers, leaves, bark, fruits etc as appropriate, and will try to find matches and runners up. It has access to a huge database of material and will often show many examples of leaves, flowers etc.

madhatter wrote:I didn’t know about that trick. I did (as it was such a good picture) try it with the phone PlantNet app. which thinks it is Aeonium arboreum

That is a helpful free App which allows you to add pictures of flowers, leaves, bark, fruits etc as appropriate, and will try to find matches and runners up. It has access to a huge database of material and will often show many examples of leaves, flowers etc.

If I may, https://plantsam.com/aeonium-arboreum-nigrum/ looks a great deal darker and flatter than Scotia's image.

PinkDalek wrote:
If I may, https://plantsam.com/aeonium-arboreum-nigrum/ looks a great deal darker and flatter than Scotia's image.

The species name I quoted was the binomial Aeonium arboreum
The trinomial incuding the nigrum subspecies suggests that there is a dark variant.

Looking again at the App, there are variants with green or dark leaves and flower colours from yellow to purple. Wikipedia even refers to a variegated variety!

I have yet to try the “other pictures like this” option although for trees or flowers with a commonly occurring arrangement like 5 petals, the App would have the advantage that you can submit separate pictures of different details of the same plant at the same time.

All the same I had assumed other pictures like this would maybe find a bunch of photos of bears, or birds, but had not guessed it would be anywhere near being specific enough to pick the right genus.

madhatter wrote:

PinkDalek wrote:
If I may, https://plantsam.com/aeonium-arboreum-nigrum/ looks a great deal darker and flatter than Scotia's image.

The species name I quoted was the binomial Aeonium arboreum
The trinomial incuding the nigrum subspecies suggests that there is a dark variant. ...

Aha, I searched for Aeonium arboreum (taken form your post) but clicked on the suggested Aeonium arboreum nigrum and had assumed that's what you had typed!