Balancing Britain (1)

 a telephone, a centroid, a bus and a hill walk

A Telephone ...

... so our tale does indeed begin with a phone box, a working phone box, no less. At least it was in use when StreetView toddled past. It is plonked in Dunsop Bridge, one of a collection of Northern place names than can sound made up for a comedy sketch show. Not far away, you will find Bashall Eaves, Cow Ark, Slaidburn, Tosside, Wigglesworth and Rathmell.

Dunsop Bridge (in Lancashire) ...

... is, sort of, near Clitheroe ...

... and has a bridge ...

... over the River Dunsop (there's original!) ...

... which joins the River Hodder near Thorneyholme, the 'big house' of the village.

The Best name on the map is "Knot of Sugar Loaf"! 

The village has a car park with toilets ...

... a shelter for bus passengers in one direction right next to an unofficial bike park ...

... and a bus stop pole and flag for travel in the opposite direction.

StreetView revealed no obvious timetable information at shelter or pole; but, on closer inspection there is a timetable frame directed at toilet and car park customers, not those waiting on the roadside.

This miniscule village has a post office ...

... and a cosy tea room.

Were the intrepid tourist to enter the phone box, there would be revealed a plaque.

This humble BT payphone, it claims, marks the "centre of Great Britain".

It isn't!

But it may be the nearest payphone to the centre of Great Britain.

fbb will dutifully return to whatever stops at those stops in tomorrow's expository eclectic episode; but, for the time being we must make our acquaintance with a Centroid.

No, not an android, but a  centroid.

A Centroid

A centroid is the point at which a two dimensional shape could, in theory, balance on the point of, say, a pencil.

You can even have a centroid which is in thin air, being the balance point of a shape you could never balance.

So the best way to find the "centre", (i.e. the centroid) of Great Britain would be to balance GB on a pencil. There are a number of problems with this plan, even assuming you had a big enough pencil.

The big problem is that GB is definitely very not flat.

But the sainted Ordnance Survey decided that the best they could do is find the centroid of GB assuming it was flat, technically a 'plane figure'.

We need a bit more geographical definition.

What IS Great Britain?  Yes, the creator of the above graphic has left out the flag of Northern Ireland. So here it is:-

And here is a graphic explaining the difference between the various names used for, well, our bits of world geography.

The British Isles is the whole lot. The United Kingdom includes Northern Ireland but not the Republic of. 

Great Britain is the big island, sometimes including it's accompanying little islands. The OS includes the little Island's in its sophisticated centroid calculation.

So where is the centroid of Great Britain, i.e. England, Scotland, Wales and their associated island appendages.

A Hill Walk

We can start at Dunsop Bridge ...

... striking north along a path on the western side of the bridge ...

... along the River Dunsop to Brennand Farm.

Then it is due horth across open moorland.

High on the hills of Brennand Fell you will find Whitedale Hanging Stones.

These picturesque lumps of rick mark, according to the OS, the true and accurate centroid of Great Britain.

To complete their growing knowledge of geometry and topology,, readers might like to explain how you can find the centroid of a simple triangle.

It is much easier than finding the centroid of Great Britain.

Tomorrow - A Bus. 

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Delay Repay Repaid

Readers my remember that the fbbs arrived back from their recent trip to the Isle of Wight TWO hours late.

The Ryde Esplanade to Axminster tickets were duly photographed and the long list of questions answered. 

So, after a frustration morning filling in the "easy-to-use" on-line form (!) fbb was told that the refund was on its way.

Yesterday afternoon note was received on-line.

fbb was expecting just the return half of the fare, but nice kind South Western Railway sent the full £161.60 for the two return fares.

Apparentry that is the correct procedure if your journey is delayed by two hours or more. fbb simply did not know.

A cheap holiday!

======================

 Next Balancing Britain's Bus : Thur 5 Nov  

Tuesday Variety

 Car Free Care Free Oxford Street

Although the number of buses along Oxford Street has been reduced over the years ...

... there were still buses nose to tail at busy times.  

Until recently, there were plenty of taxis and a few private cars willing to pay the congestion charge.

So, said Lord Khan, make a hearty chunk of this road traffic free (nearly, see below) and send buses round the back.

Westminster Council didn't want it. The shop keepers didn't want it. The bus companies didn't want it! So, in true democratic style (!) it happened just over a week ago.

Wigmore Street, the parallel route fot all diverted buses, certainly did not want it!

So, in true democratic style (!) It happened just over a week ago.

Artists' impressions suggest Oxford Street will look lovely when it is all beautifully landscaped ...

... but all we have at the moment is a picture of His Lordness proudly repelling anything on four wheels with an engine!

Oddly, in the first few days, most pedestrians stayed on the pavements.

In the picture above, those walking 'in the road' were mainly avoiding the narrow pavement blocked by barriers shielding some building  refurbishment work!

Vehicles can access most of the closed bit ...

... but only between midnight and 0700 via a complex series of back street access routes. That will be fun if the driver is not too sure where to deliver OR if he has multiple deliveries along the Street.

It will also increase delivery costs and imply a need for extra staff to receive their goodies at 'unsociable' hours. So yet another poke on the consumer nose on behalf of the cost of living crisis.

It will also be a challenge finding your bus stop!

But the ever resilient resident will get used to it. Visitors from UK and overseas often have no idea where they are, where they have come from and where they might be going next! So they will notice no change at all.

The environmentalists will be thrilled whilst they wander on Oxford Street, but infuriated with Wigmore Street. 

Many casual shoppers will give up and 'enjoy' East Westfield or West Westfield! At least once you have got there, the 'mall' is traffic free, packed to the rafters with escapees from Oxford Street, but traffic free.

Cheers!

Lumo-nescence? GROAN!

Grid Groans : What's Going On!

The press keeps reporting worrying snippets about the UK's lack of resilient power supplies. This may affect our  homes, our electrified railways, our electric buses, our electric cars , our industries and, most significantly, our Christmas lights.

Is there something "They" are not telling us?

Some will remember the 3 day week of the 1970s ...

... homework by candle light ...

... office work by Camping Gaz?

But nowadays ...

It could be much, much worse!

Never mind, Wes has all the answers ...

... buy a wind-up torch and stock up with cans. Wes has issued an encouraging picture of his own store cupboard at home.

But beware! Make sure you don't just have one of these!

The Government points out that there are low-low-tech alternatives for breaking into your can of beanz.

But ...

Is there something "They" are not telling us?

Tomorrow: a telephone, a centroid, a bus and a hill walk?

 Next Balancing Britain blog : Wed 4 Nov 

Monday Variety

 The Best O' Leicester

In 2020 Arriva took ove route X6 between Leivester and Coventry after Travel de Courcey went into administration. The X6 was then every 90 mins Mon to Sat only.

Nowadays we associate Arriva with retrenchment, service reductions and sales of unprofitable bits of their business.

But the X6 is something of a success story.

It now runs every hour Monday to Saturday and has recently gained extra peak and later evening journeys.

There is a respectable Sunday service.

It has benefitted from coaches in a very un-Arriva-like livery.

As well as extra journeys, the X6 now runs a simple timetable with trips that ran via an alternate route withdrawn. Everything goes that same way.

Sadly the latest livery is boring blue Arriva ...

... with a brand "sticker" added.

That is the good news. The bad news is the complete lack of printable PDF timetables on line; the above scrollable table is all you can get.

Of course there are no useful maps; only incomprehensible cartography created by poor-quality bought-in software.

As usual with Arriva, it is easy to work out where the bus goes if you know where the bus goes and have a top-grade knowledge of the Leicester street map!

It is a real pity that an improving service is let down by inadequate and poor quality publicity.

Worrying At Westfield

We are back at Westfield, West Lothian. Google Maps shows two bus services at the tatty and information-less bus shelters in the village. Route 6 is tendered by West Lothian Council ...

... and runs from Westfield (map, top left) ...

... south to Whitburn and Avonbridge.

There are, however, evening journeys on service 29 ...

.... operated by McGill's Midland Bluebird

... which helpfully take you south to Bathgate (but NOT Whitburn!) or north to Falkirk.

A similar route was operated by Bluebird's predecessor ...

... First Bus.

Even more helpfully, West Lothian produces no timetables, not even for it's own tendered services! You are referred to Traveline Scotland ...

... which fails to mention the 29!

Good, innit?

As well as the computer driven 29 table, Midland Bluebird also offer a PDF of the complete timetable (extract only shown here) ...

... and  full map which emphasises the limited evening service via Westfield.

But what, our readers may ask, led fbb to the West Lothian Westfield.

'Twas this article:-

It seems a lot of money, but a noble decision, to fettle up a viaduct that is utterly disused.

It is slightly worse than that. The passenger service via Westfield ended in 1930! But, if you follow the line of the viaduct towards the village ...

... you can spot the site of the station to the north of the road ...

... and, across an acute diagonal, a splurge of grass where once chuffed the very occasional train.

Bad News For New Operator

Readers will remember fbb's  report on this new operator in South Yorkshire.

This statement has appeared on the company's Facebook page:-

It is with sadness we report that last night there was a fire at our depot, resulting in us losing a large amount of our vehicles. This incident is under investigation, but the cause has been deemed as accidental and deems no risk to the wider community.

During this time, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone involved in responding to the incident to help us continue our services for our communities.

Impact on our services

Earlier today we let you know that services 63 and 43 would unfortunately not operate today (31st October).

We understand the inconvenience this disruption has caused, and for that we apologise.

What’s happening now

We remain determined, resilient and rely on teamwork. Despite the circumstances, we are proud to confirm that we have secured sufficient vehicles to restore our scheduled services, thanks to the hard work of our team and support networks.

From Sunday (1st November) our services will resume as planned, this includes service 43 and 51.

From Monday we expect all our services to operate as normal, with no disruption anticipated.

Thank you for your patience and understanding during this time.

Should any unforeseen operational issues arise, we will communicate this at the earliest opportunity using our Facebook page and website.

We look forward to welcoming you all onboard tomorrow.

So congratulations to the whole team on a quick and positive result to what could have been a much worse disaster.

Cottage In Situ - Possibly

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Screaming AbDabs Department

fbb couldn't get the sound to work on his laptop. The sound was jiggling the little jiggly bit that said sound was making a noise, but it was doing it silently.

Checked that internal speakers were working on laptop. OK.

Checked the 500 places where you can adjust the volume. All OK.

Called technical support (No 3 son) who tried it all again.

Tried on Mrs fbb's laptop. Silence.

Downloaded a different video. Beautiful sound!

Tech support looked at the Video Download App.

Whaaaaat?

It had apparently re-set itself to download videos SILENTLY - i.e. without sound.

This is how it should be:-

This is how it was:-

Question : Why would any sane person, or even fbb, ever want a sound video without sound?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Re-downloaded video - all O.K.

==================

More Oddities Tomorrow. 

 Next Variety blog : Tuesday 3rd Nov