Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 8:05 pm
by wilsontown
I did my undergraduate geology fieldwork on Harris. It was glorious, at least on the days that the cloudbase was significantly higher than sea level. I've also been to Arran and Skye for geology purposes.
Does Brownsea Island count?
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 9:23 pm
by veravista
And Mersea, Sheppey and er Dogs?
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 9:48 pm
by nekomatic
I’m ruling all of those in except Dogs. More than a bridge.
C51BC6B8-75D1-4718-8B17-A4466A3F488E.jpeg (537.47 KiB) Viewed 1559 times
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 10:22 pm
by Chris Preston
In addition to some of those listed, I have also been to Inchmahone Island and the Ness Islands in Scotland.
Bull Island and Valentia Island in Ireland.
Isle of Sheppey in England
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 10:38 pm
by discovolante
If we are getting into listing, there should be a handicap for younger age and ability to drive. Otherwise it's just unfair.
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 11:19 pm
by veravista
Burgh - one of my favourites of my childhood
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
If we are getting into listing, there should be a handicap for younger age and ability to drive. Otherwise it's just unfair.
I took the train/bus to the Isle of Portland when I was a teenager. A rare Collared Flycatcher had got lost on migration and was hanging around some suburban gardens, so I went down to see it.
We should have a separate low-carbon competition. I think Portland and Isle of Wight are the only ones I've done on public transport. Plus Great Britain in that I was born here, but I've been watching a lot of battle rap recently and don't want to provide a setup for describing my mum as "public transport".
Also went on a school trip to an activity centre on Rubha Fiola in the Hebrides when I was 13, they had their own boat with lots of us on it so that's kind of public transport I guess? If you google it you'll see a bunch of grim stuff but nothing like that happened to me, and the place was beautiful. One day I'll visit my friend on Lewis who's a dolphin scientist.
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2021 12:28 pm
by nezumi
Right then, I am about to delight and amaze with my list of travel destinations which are:
England
Wales
That is literally it. I've been to London once in my life - nearly died walking out of Kings Cross into the smog, stayed one night, went home, never again.
The furthest South I have been in my life is Taunton. The furthest North; Berwick. I live in the furthest East, so the furthest West I've been within England is Liverpool.
Never been abroad. There's always been more important things to spend time and money on. I've got a list of a hundred places I want to go one day, but I probably never will because it's just not that high a priority. I have a crumbling house to try to put back together and three/four cats I can't bear to leave. Since I've never been abroad in my life, I don't have the faintest idea how to go about going abroad! I'd need Going Abroad For Dummies (Ultimate idiot edition). I've been invited to Spain, Aus, Lanzarote... I'd love to, but I'm completely lost with it all! Mr Mouse is no help, since he's only ever gone abroad for a weekend for a gig. Assuming the pandemic buggers off soon, this year I want to make it out of the UK for a bit.
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2021 1:00 pm
by Martin Y
That's set a pretty high benchmark for BoaF's carbon competition which should be pretty hard to beat. I'm guessing that means you've never flown anywhere?
It's not completely unbeatable though: a mate who worked at Radio Jersey covered the most local news item ever. An old chap had got to his umptieth birthday and was notable for not only having never left Jersey, he had never been out of his home parish. In fact, he claimed never to have visited the seaside.
I know there's that thing where people don't visit local attractions because you could do it any time and don't get around to it, but this guy lived his entire life on an island where you can't get more than two miles from the sea and never went and looked at it.
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2021 1:08 pm
by dyqik
I've done the Isle of Wight, Wales and Scotland by train (and ferry). Admittedly, by driving to Berwick-on-Tweed from Eastbourne, and getting the train to Edinburgh there in the latter case. And NI by driving from Cambridge to Birkenhead before getting the ferry without the car.
My American wife has me beat, I think, in that she's done the train and/or ferry to Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France, starting from London, the latter three in one round trip.
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
If we are getting into listing, there should be a handicap for younger age and ability to drive. Otherwise it's just unfair.
I took the train/bus to the Isle of Portland when I was a teenager. A rare Collared Flycatcher had got lost on migration and was hanging around some suburban gardens, so I went down to see it.
We should have a separate low-carbon competition. I think Portland and Isle of Wight are the only ones I've done on public transport. Plus Great Britain in that I was born here, but I've been watching a lot of battle rap recently and don't want to provide a setup for describing my mum as "public transport".
Also went on a school trip to an activity centre on Rubha Fiola in the Hebrides when I was 13, they had their own boat with lots of us on it so that's kind of public transport I guess? If you google it you'll see a bunch of grim stuff but nothing like that happened to me, and the place was beautiful. One day I'll visit my friend on Lewis who's a dolphin scientist.
A fun challenge. I'm having a look at getting public transport to Mull from Glasgow, which is a relatively modest distance. Fortunately Calmac has a nice easy journey planner! You can do it in 4-5 hours by getting a train from Glasgow to Oban, and then a ferry. Easy peasy.
If you wanted to get to Tongue on the north coast, you could do it in just under 20 hours from Glasgow (according to Google this time). There were lots of random options but the shortest one on a Friday seems to be getting a bus at 8:10pm from Glasgow to Inverness, arriving at about midnight, and then getting the 7am train to Thurso, arriving at 11am. Then at 2:30pm you get another bus from Thurso to Tongue, arriving at about 4pm on Saturday. Driving would take 5-6 hours from Glasgow.
You can get to Lewis from Glasgow in just under 9 hours: bus to Inverness at 11:10am, arriving at 2:55. Then a very quick and hopefully punctual scoot over to another bus at 3pm to get to Ullapool at 4:20pm. Then get on the ferry at 5:30pm and arrive in Stornoway at 8pm. That's not massively different from driving but I don't like that 5 minute window to change buses.
Once you're there you would probably want to be comfortable with cycling because there don't seem to be tons of buses.
I miss the ferries!
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
I'm guessing that means you've never flown anywhere?
Never even seen a plane up close.
They're bigger than you expect and they smell of paraffin. Otherwise they're not all that.
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2021 10:08 pm
by veravista
Epic derail, but the best public transport journey I ever heard of was a couple we met in Ha Long bay in Vietnam. They live near us in Derbyshire. They got on a train at East Midlands Parkway and took the train to Hong Kong, then bussed down to Hanoi.
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Epic derail, but the best public transport journey I ever heard of was a couple we met in Ha Long bay in Vietnam. They live near us in Derbyshire. They got on a train at East Midlands Parkway and took the train to Hong Kong, then bussed down to Hanoi.
Seriously, you don't need to read this... Spoiler:
Sounds like it ended up more as an epic debus
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Epic derail, but the best public transport journey I ever heard of was a couple we met in Ha Long bay in Vietnam. They live near us in Derbyshire. They got on a train at East Midlands Parkway and took the train to Hong Kong, then bussed down to Hanoi.
The first couple of times Mum came to the UK involved a lot of overland.
First driving from Malaya (as it was) and driving home via the Americas before getting a boat back to New Zealand.
The second, driving from Cape Town.
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:41 am
by Lew Dolby
I quite like the story of Goran Klopp. A Swede. he got on his bike; cycled to Everest; climbed it; cycled home.
Sounds pretty epic to me.
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:12 pm
by rockdoctor
Earlier there was discussion about the different scales of ‘ancient’ history, with brief mention of geology being at the oldest end.
Geologists have subdivisions too. Archaeology refers to ‘now’, geologically.
The ice ages are very recent, and include kilometre thick ice sheets over much of the uk and North Sea, and a land bridge to France.
Then you get all the layers of sediments - the younger ones from Permian to Tertiary are relatively undisturbed down in the SE of the country. Older sediments from Cambrian to Carboniferous have been faulted and folded and variously eroded.
Finally you get the deep time rocks of the Pre-Cambrian, mainly in Scotland but also scattered bits elsewhere. Their billions of years of history boggle the mind
Re: Which of bits of the British Isles have you actually been to?
Earlier there was discussion about the different scales of ‘ancient’ history, with brief mention of geology being at the oldest end.
Geologists have subdivisions too. Archaeology refers to ‘now’, geologically.
The ice ages are very recent, and include kilometre thick ice sheets over much of the uk and North Sea, and a land bridge to France.
Then you get all the layers of sediments - the younger ones from Permian to Tertiary are relatively undisturbed down in the SE of the country. Older sediments from Cambrian to Carboniferous have been faulted and folded and variously eroded.
Finally you get the deep time rocks of the Pre-Cambrian, mainly in Scotland but also scattered bits elsewhere. Their billions of years of history boggle the mind
In my cosmology mode, the formation of the Milky Way and the solar system is recent news, and everything gets boring once electrons and protons get together to form atoms. .
In my event horizon telescope mode, there's an attempt to map 30 minute time scale variations in the accretion disk around the center of the galaxy.
Back in the cosmology project though, there's also a side project that deals with transients on hour to day timescales.
.