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Whilst many southerners ( me included, I must confess) fulminate about so-called "wind farms" in remote upland areas, few seem to comment on the defacement of many of our beautiful village roofscapes by the unfettered proliferation of solar panels. I have observed this with a growing feeling of despair.

Whilst out with Miss W this afternoon I was stunned to see one of the views that I enjoy obliterated. What I expected was a view across a meadow (usually with a few cows or sheep) to an exceptionally fine group of victorian farm buildings.

What I saw was this.

Victorian farm goes green

The irony is that our local power station (Sizewell B) is capable of supplying the daily domestic needs of every home in Suffolk - and Norfolk too. In fact it produces as much power as every windturbine in the UK put together, around 3% of the total daily requirement of the UK

With the removal of subsidies for these solar horrors (in part at least) hopefully we can expect to see a similar approach to the wind industry from Cameron, Osborne & co. The squeals and squawks of anguish and indignation from the double glazing solar energy salesmen was music to my ears. De-subsidise the lot, I say. Then our money can be spent on reliable, secure energy generation.

We don't need this - just Sizewell C, please. And a few more.

Labels: Technology

Phil's home-made Market Harborough pie

... and statistics.

The latest scare being the shock news that eating the odd bacon sarnie will render you 19% more likely to die of pancreatic cancer.

Bollocks. 19% of what? Well an increase of 19% over and above what it would be if you never ate bacon. This provokes two questions:

1) How did the "researchers" ensure that their control group had never touched a bacon roll or pork pie?

2) The base risk of contracting pancreatic cancer is infinitesimal until you are into your seventh decade, when it rises to (wait for it) around 0.75% - tops.

19% of 0.75 is 0.14%. So eating red meat, pork pies and enjoying a bacon buttie is increasing your risk overall, not by 19%, but by 0.14%. One might argue that such a small difference falls within the margins of error that any survey has. Not so dramatic now, is it?

A typical health scare

Doesn't make for an arresting headline either.

Burrowing a little deeper we begin to find the truth - the "study" was nothing of the sort. It was in fact an analysis of other people's research which may well have been looking at other factors and with differing controls and standards. From the Independent:

They analysed 11 studies involving over 6,000 people with pancreatic cancer. The results showed red meat consumption also increased the risk of the cancer for men by 29 per cent for each daily serving of 120 grams. But there was no significant increase in risk for women, raising doubts about the robustness of the finding.

I suspect that the researchers are more concerned about the robustness of their funding than their finding - note that they analysed 11 studies by others, not their own. No doubt they will now obtain the funds to embark on a long and fruitful study of their very own.

Cynic - moi?

Not really. As what the press would term a "cancer survivor" myself I am all for good solid research - but I am also all for honest presentation of the facts. It is regrettable that researchers feel compelled to present their findings in such sensationalist terms to get the backing that they need. This sort of misrepresentation of the real facts can sometimes get out of hand and destroy people's livelihoods. I bet our local butchers, pig and beef farmers loved it - not.

And if you think I'm over-egging this point, cast your mind back to another case of over-egging by Edwina Currie. That destroyed many egg producers almost overnight, both feathered and human.

Labels: Food and Drink, Health, Scares

Howard and Hilda

They make an incongruous sight as they emerge through the sleet. Dressed in identical bright red jackets and purple mountain caps, from a distance Howard and Hilda could be mistaken for twins. They are in fact husband and wife.  As they approach you note the matching walking poles and rucksacks. Far from the slowly evolved ragbag of kit favoured by most walkers it is clear that these are carefully chosen ensembles, apparently brand new. You stride past on a wave of disapproval, although you can’t say exactly why matching outfits should provoke this reaction.

Two hours later as the weather clears you spot them again, plodding purposefully over the snowfield. And could they be – yes they are – cutting steps on the last steep approach to the summit. Which turn out to be jolly handy as you, the experienced and seasoned walker, had decided that an ice axe was not really necessary today.

“Hello,” they chorus as you approach them at the cairn. “Isn’t it a splendid day? And what a lovely view.  Makes it all worthwhile, doesn’t it?”

They are seated very tidily on identical inflatable sit mats with a veritable picnic spread out in front of them: sandwiches, Fruit cake, a large thermos of tea and a wee one for the milk. The mugs, you note, are china. "Tea is so much nicer out of a proper china cup, don’t you think?"

Your own lunch – a Ginster’s pasty  and a couple of Snickers bars washed down with water and a slug of Laphroaig - is positively uncouth by comparison.

Close to, it becomes apparent that their immaculate kit is not brand new, just very well cared for. A copy of the mountain weather forecast tucked into one of their map cases confirms that they were prepared in advance for both the snow showers and the spell of sunshine that you are now enjoying. The conversation takes in the Pyrenees, Corsica, Picos de Europa and other destinations that belie their apparent domesticity. You feel slightly embarrassed by your initial assessment of "all the gear and no idea".

"Time to pack up," declares Hilda after a while. "Sunset’s at  4.17 today". The picnic rapidly disappears and within minutes they are ready to go. Howard asks about your return route, nods approval and advises you to watch out for a nasty cornice, "Easy to be caught out there – it looks straight on, but best to head here and then bear off here."

Careful examination of the contours shows that he’s right too, and with a slight tightening of the tummy you realise that you could well have been caught out.

By the time you’ve packed, they are two tiny red dots toddling off into the distance, their footsteps arrow straight as they head for their turning point. Tomorrow, their holiday over, these immaculate mountaineers will drive back to the trim bordered lawns of their bungalow in Scunthorpe.

"What a lovely couple," you think. "I hope I bump into them again."

Labels: Outdoor Stereotypes

No need to buy special sausage meat specially blended with exotic herbs and unicorn droppings. Good quality plain meat will do just fine. Here's a tip from my old mum. When making your sausage rolls, add half a tablespoon of medium curry powder to each pound of sausage meat and mix it in well. Then make the rolls as usual.

The result will be absolutely delicious sausage rolls, not with a curry flavour but an indefinable extra something that makes them very more-ish. Mmmmm.

Labels: Food and Drink

The Gear Guru

Once a promising Queen’s Scout, technology seduced the teenage Gavin and he slowly mutated into a gadget and gear guru. Now, as an unofficial (and unpaid) reviewer for “Trudge” magazine, he not only owns an example of almost every type of GPS receiver made since 1997, but publishes highly detailed accounts of how to modify their software on his outdoor blog “Wilderbytes”.  Withering about Windows, offhand about Apple and firmly anti-Android, Gavin extols the virtues of the most obscure and specialised navigational software from small “cottage industry” producers, who tend to go bust and disappear within weeks of his review.
As well as being a technology expert, Gavin is highly respected as a pioneer in ultra-lightweight backpacking. In his home made vacuum chamber a chemical balance is currently weighing rival toilet tissues to a tolerance of 0.01 mg. His dedicated readership awaits his recommendation with bated breath and clenched buttocks.
Under piles of Pizza boxes, discarded phones and Coke bottles lie the remnants of Gavin’s previous experiments in ‘lightening up’. A Scarp tent (with the groundsheet cut out and guy lines removed), a tarp (reduced to the size of a large handkerchief by over-zealous remodelling) a Gore-Tex jacket (with the sleeves, hood and torso removed) …  and an unmolested pair of home-made cuben fibre trousers  … but thanks to Domino’s excellent delivery service, Gavin outgrew them long ago. Not that it matters. Gavin doesn’t get out much anymore.
Deep in the gloom of his bedroom lit only by the glow of a screen and flickering LEDs, Gavin Blogs, Twitters and Tweets with the cream of outdoors elite. There is little he doesn’t know about the great outdoors, from extreme mountaineering to gentle country rambles. No outdoors blog or forum can escape Gavin’s well informed advice and comment.
It’s easy to scoff at this indoors outdoorsman, but Gavin deserves the respect of all who aspire to a green lifestyle and care for the delicate ecology of our wild land. Creating zero path erosion, leaving absolutely no trace and with a nil carbon footprint, Gavin is truly an outdoorsman for our time.

Labels: Gear, Outdoor Stereotypes, Technology

Doodlecat is not a UK citizen. His servers live in Dallas, Texas. Owing to several power outages at the existing centre (or center) the servers are being physically relocated to the Databank in Dallas over the next couple of week ends. This may result in loss of service for 2 - 3 hours until the new center (or centre) is powered up.

As the moves are scheduled for the early hours (12am to 3am EST) it should be all over by the time we've finished breakfast here in Blighty ... but if there is a glitch and Doodlecat disappears, don't worry, the old moggy will be back very soon.

And for regular readers wondering where the next "Outdoor Stereotype" has got to, wonder no more. The next ones are coming up very soon.

Oh yes ...

I had some dead spooky photos to accompany this post, but since completing this walk (and a couple of others) my camera has disappeared, no doubt lying in some far flung part of the county. Ah well, it was nearly nine years old, so an excuse to buy another. The photos that do appear are therefore culled from the Bury St Edmunds museum website.

Corder's Death Mask. Moyses Hall

When we first moved to Bury St Edmunds back in 1987 we visited Moyses Hall museum, on the market square, to get a bit of a feel for the place. Amongst all the exhibits that one might expect of a pleasant rural market town – references to its abbey, mediaeval heritage, bronze age pots and axe heads and so-on, I was drawn to one particularly macabre exhibit – the death mask of William Corder, his features still distorted and engorged by his death at the hangman’s noose.

And that was not all. Accompanying this disturbing effigy was his preserved scalp (complete with one ear) and an account of his trial, bound with his tanned skin. A criminal of some notoriety you might surmise, and you would be right, for this was the murderer of Maria Marten at the Red Barn.

Corder's scalp and ear Moyses Hall

Needless to say over subsequent years visiting nieces and nephews were treated to a visit to Moyses Hall as the highlight of my greatly embellished and ghoulish account of the crime and punishment. Kids love this sort of thing, and they gleefully related their experiences of a day out with uncle Phil & auntie Tini to appalled parents. As a result we were seldom given charge of our siblings’ children a second time.

And yet we have never, until now, visited the site of this very Suffolk murder, and a bright sunny autumn day seemed ripe for a visit to the pretty village of Polstead. Set in rolling countryside, with half-timbered houses, a huge duck pond and secluded from the hurly burly of the outside world, Polstead today betrays no clue as to its notoriety in 1828.

There is a lay by beside the village pond from where it is just a few short steps to the churchyard where Maria Marten is buried. There is no visible trace of her grave for the casual visitor, as it was plundered by souvenir hunters, but on a wooden out building a simple sign states that her final resting place is nearby.

The rest of the walk is well described by an AA guide – the only additional notes that I would make is that we took in the magnificent church and buildings at Stoke by Nayland, discovered that there is now a new footpath from Stoke by Nayland alongside the B1068 avoiding mingling with the traffic, and on the final leg we wandered a little further to pass the site of the Red barn and eventually emerge opposite the Cock Inn. Well. You can’t have a murder walk without taking in the actual site, can you? And it’s a great story too – inspiring more than one contemporary melodrama, and several since. All the dramatic ingredients are there:

• The wicked squire
• The simple country girl
• The honest father
• The deceiving stepmother
• The elopement
• The false lover
• Murder most foul
• Sensational trial
• Public hanging and dissection
• The gruesome remnants still on display

The sign in the Churchyard

Maria Marten was the daughter of the village molecatcher. An attractive, sociable girl, by the age of 24, she already had two children as a result of her liaisons with the local gentry.The story is full of intrigue. Corder was, by all accounts, a shifty and dishonest character – thief, fraudster and womaniser.

She was due to elope with Corder, and they met at the Red Barn (she dressed as a man) where Corder shot her and hid the body. There it would have remained but for her stepmother (herself a young woman, barely a year older than Maria) having dreams that Maria was buried in the barn. After nagging her husband for some weeks, he went to the barn and probing with his mole spud, discovered the body.

By this time William had left Polstead and married. It has been suggested that the stepmother was having an affair with him and Maria was getting in the way. The wicked stepmother therefore plotted with William to get rid of her. True or not, it does seem odd that the stepmother’s ‘dreams’ only began after she heard of William’s marriage!

The full story is there for you to read and judge for yourself on Wikipedia and the Bury St Edmunds town site. It’s worth the reading if you don’t know the story – and adds colour to the play if you ever get a chance to see it.

And indeed it added to the atmosphere of the walk. The countryside offers a pleasant bucolic ramble on the borders of ‘Constable Country’ but with shady secret ways too through dappled sunlight and dark trees. The way past the site of the old Red Barn leads down to a small valley where scratched on the door to an abandoned enclosure were the words "Maria Marten RIP," the only explicit reference that we saw  in Polstead.

The village now seems to quietly discourage the curious souvenir hunter and ghoulish day tripper, to allow Maria to rest in peace at last. And Polstead has returned to being just another picturesque backwater deep in rural Suffolk. Like many others, it keeps its secrets to itself.

Labels: History