Rousing from sleep

On September 29th 1935 the narrow-gauge Lynton & Barnstaple Railway closed. The following day the Barnstaple stationmaster laid a wreath on the stop-block; attached was a postcard from a well-wisher that read, "Perchance it is not dead but sleepeth." For the next 44 years the old railway slept soundly and nothing much happened, except that the track bed became overgrown, ploughed up, built on or otherwise obliterated. To all intents and purposes, it had died.

Then, almost imperceptibly, the long-dormant beast began to stir. I freely admit that when we heard of a preservation society being formed, we dismissed their ambition as a pipe dream.  We were wrong!.. though another 23 years were to pass before the first length of track was laid, in 2002.

By this time the old railway had been closed for almost twice as long as it had been open. Unsurprisingly, the task of restoration would be enormous.

We joined the preservation society in the mid-1990s and in 2001 took a week's holiday in North Devon, determined to help in some small way with the work.

Here I am at Woody Bay Station, enjoying a break from filling in a cable trench.  The guy I'm talking to turned out to have employed my father-in-law on his farm, before the war. Small world!

That cable was destined to power a lamp on the 'up' platform starter signal. Here it is, about 15 years later.

The photo is not mine, but I can't help but look at it with a certain sense of pride. Others, as you can see, have put in a lot more work than me since 2001.

A little over a mile of the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway is now operational.  Only 18 miles to go! Efforts are currently centred on a stretch of track bed at Parracombe and last weekend we joined the team for one of their Winter Working Weekends.  Here are three photos of the hard work.

 

One of the important tasks for this particular Working Weekend was restoring the lineside fencing. I never cease to be amazed by the number of skills that come together on days like these.  How many digger drivers and fencing experts do you know?

Finally, just in case my rich uncle (of whom I've never heard) reads this, please will you buy me this house?  The owner only wants £325,000 for it.

The garden used to extend across the track bed, so the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway bought the house, trimmed back the garden, then sold it again.  Now it's on the market once more.  The Kay family could be very happy here.

Two Smart Watches Angie

Do you remember Two Jags Prescot? I wonder how many
smartwatches he had.

Just over a week ago a friend of mine gave me her Fitbit smartwatch, having upgraded to a newer model. The timing of this unexpected gift could not have been better as I'd just re-enrolled with Slimming World and was looking for inspiration to exercise a little more.

Readers of this blog may recall that I already had a smartwatch. Back in 2018 I bought a Delvfire Fitness Tracker and used it for about a year, before losing interest and reverting to my old wristwatch.  Was it just coincidence that my weight then began to rise above my Slimming World target?

But why would I accept a gift of a Fitbit when I already had a smartwatch? Well, the Fitbit ought to be superior as it cost about three times as much as the Delvfire and it did indeed appear to have better fitness tracking software.  Perhaps, with my love of statistics, that would inspire me to greater fitness.

Before finally consigning the Delvfire to the dusty recesses of some seldom-opened drawer, it would be fun to pitch it against the Fitbit. And that's how I came to wear two smartwatches for a night and a day – the Delvfire on my right wrist (blue strap) and the Fitbit on my left.

I've never been over-keen on monitoring my sleep and prefer not to wear a watch in bed. As long as I get about 7 hours sleep on most nights, I'm happy. However, the nighttime data from the two watches did make very interesting reading.  You may need to click the images to get a clear view.

The Delvfire data (left) is a lot less detailed, and credits me with 1hr:2min more sleep and considerably more deep sleep than the Fitbit. Indeed, it's quite difficult to correlate the two graphs, though both do show a more broken sleep pattern from about 6am. In truth, I did wake up about then, and spent some time lying awake before drifting off to sleep again and being woken by my alarm clock. So I'm inclined to believe the Fitbit and dismiss the Delvfire as little more than a rough approximation.

I also like the Fitbit's ability to detect REM sleep, when I would most likely be dreaming. And yes, I was dreaming just before being awoken by the alarm clock – I seem to recall standing alone in the garden, feeling cold and wondering what one of my cats was doing in the greenhouse!  Sadly, the Fitbit seems incapable of interpreting this great mystery.

After breakfast the sun was shining and the Met Office weather app assured me that it would stay that way. What better than a 4 mile walk in the Forest? Unfortunately, on this occasion the Met Office were very, very wrong. Not half an hour into the walk the skies blackened and it began to rain heavily. I pressed on for a while but with no sign of a break in the clouds, briskly retraced my steps home.

The Delvfire (left) has recorded more steps and an extra 0.1 miles, but that might just be because I was wearing it on my right wrist. I'm right-handed and perhaps jerk it around a bit more.  The huge difference, though, is in the number of calories burned – 247 on the Delvfire, 901 on the Fitbit.  According to an Internet site I accessed, I would expect to burn about 300 calories when sleeping. I burned another 300 during my brisk walk (according to the Fitbit), so by any measure the Delvfire figure is seriously low.  But 900?   It was time to look at heart rate.

Both show the result of that quick walk home in the pouring rain. Somewhat illogically, though, the Delvfire's y-axis starts at zero. I sincerely hope that I don't record a heart rate that low any time soon! By starting with a value of 40bpm the Fitbit certainly wins on clarity. Whether my average heart rate should be 57bpm (Delvfire) or 54 (Fitbit) I know not.

What's really impressive with the Fitbit, though, is that, without being prompted by me, it has detected the start of my walking exercise and recorded it separately – 303 calories burned in 61 minutes, with 11 minutes of 'cardio' quality exercise. I must strive to be caught in downpours more often.

I conclude that the Delvfire's data is little more that an approximation, though it's still a good incentive to exercise and the longer-term trends would be of value.  For its price, it's a reasonably good fitness tracker. I reckon that I've shown, though, that the Fitbit is an altogether more accurate device. Moreover, the clarity of its data presentation is more than sufficient to keep me enthused.

And guess what?  I've even continued to wear it in bed.

Goodbye Red Button News. Breakfast will never be the same again

The end is nigh. From the 30th of this month the BBC will end their Red Button TV news service.  It's going to mean a whole new way of having breakfast in Chez Angie.

I think it must have been in about 1979 that we bought a television that displayed Teletext – a digital information service from the BBC (who called it CEEFAX) and ITV (ORACLE). Unrepentant technophobes, we were the first in our circle of friends to have one.

In those pre-Internet days it was an instant hit with the whole family. Now mum and dad could read the news and weather forecast at any time of the day, the kids could access pages of jokes and quizzes and we could check programme listings on all 3 channels (remember that?) without buying the Radio Times or a daily newspaper.

To modern eyes the graphics look crude and, even after a 'fast text' service was introduced, there could be a l-o-n-g wait for ones chosen page to appear, but it was still a lot quicker than waiting for the next news bulletin. Moreover, unlike the news on TV or radio, one could skip stories that were of little interest.  

Breakfast time assumed a new pattern. Cereals and coffee were now consumed in the lounge while we caught up with the news of the day, starting on CEEFAX page 101, then page 160 for the local stuff and rounding it off with page 400 for the weather.

CEEFAX finally succumbed to the digital age in 2012, but long before that we had upgraded to a TV that accessed the BBC's Red Button Service. It was much faster than CEEFAX though the pattern was very similar. Initially, even the page numbers were the same. One little extra that we appreciated, though, was that we could read local news for regions other than our own, so since moving to Gloucestershire we've been able to keep abreast of news from Cornwall.

Back in 2015 the BBC announced their intention to phase out this hang-over from the Teletext age, but then appeared to have second thoughts. The old page number-based service survived for older televisions, but for those of us able to access it, the new red-button service was really rather good, with somewhat edited versions of the news stories from the BBC website and the excellent smartphone app.  Here are a couple of screen shots from this morning's news...

Now we are to lose it. "There are lots of ways to keep up with BBC News on your other devices" declares the ever-confident BBC, but none deliver a text service that can be enjoyed in company.  Caroline Abrahams, a director of AgeUK, made a point that is not applicable to our situation, but is still a good one. "Millions of older people,"  she wrote, "do not use computers and so for them this is the end of news delivered in this way. This so-called digital divide really is becoming more significant in our society. It is tremendously important that those older people who are on the wrong side of it are not disadvantaged or, worse still, completely shut out as a result."  But by the end of this month, shut out they will be.

For our part, we will probably tune in to the 7.55am local news and the 8am main news headlines. Then, to get the news from our old homeland, we'll switch to iPlayer and watch the previous day's news from Spotlight Southwest.

Sky News have a sort-of alternative – a menu of news story videos that's available as an app on our Internet-enabled TV. We looked at them this morning but they failed to impress.  Notice, by the way, how 'US News' comes before the rest of the world and the UK. I think that says a lot about Sky's world view.

Sadly, but predictably, BBC Weather is going the same way as the News, so we also checked out a collection of alternative apps.  Best of the mediocre bunch was this one from Macropinch.

Nice of them, I thought, to fill a quarter of the screen with a rain cloud graphic. The wavy line on the right is supposed to indicate temperature, but doesn't have a scale. As I drove to my friend Bridget's home this afternoon in a torrential downpour, I recalled Macropinch's Moderate Rain forecast and resolved to rely, henceforth, on the far superior Met Office smartphone app. For the benefit of those sharing breakfast time with me, I'll even read it aloud.


Postscript

This was the Met Office forecast for Lydney this morning – less than 5% chance of rain, and sunshine by noon.  That silly Macropinch app was forecasting rain all morning.

Fancying a brisk 4 mile walk , I dressed lightly and headed into the Forest. Not 5 minutes from home, it began to drizzle – just a passing shower, I reasoned.  Then it rained... heavily... and kept raining. Unusually for me, I abandoned my walk and turned for home.

I arrived home wet and bedraggled.  Outside, it continued to rain for most of the morning.

Perhaps Macropinch are not such silly people, after all.

Rejoining Slimming World

This is a post I had hoped never to write.

Back in July 2016 I joined Slimming World. By December 21st, and just in time for Christmas, I surpassed my target weight of 11st:6lb. I had lost 32lb and was justifiably feeling very pleased with myself.

That evening I was treated to a meal at an Italian restaurant. Since that date I've never been 11st:6lb again!

Slimming Word have an excellent scheme that encourages target members to attend Slimming World sessions free of charge, so long as they stay within +/-3lb of their target weight. However, my local group had closed the week before I achieved my target. I went along to another group to claim my certificate but came away with tears in my eyes, intensely missing the support of my Slimming World friends and more than a little pis**d off. I vowed to go it alone.

For the following 18 months or so I managed to keep my weight around the top of the '+3' band, but then it began to creep up. By the Spring of 2019 the new 'norm' was 12st:3lb, then it became obstinately stuck around 12st:7lb for most of the summer. With Yuletide excesses about to commence, I recorded a weight of 12st:9lb.  Little wonder, then, that when I jumped on the scales this morning, my weight was a disgraceful 13st:0½lb.  I promptly rejoined Slimming World!

The thought of my chosen group closing again at the critical moment was just too ghastly to contemplate, so this time I've gone for On-Line membership. In doing so, I shall deny myself the camaraderie and support of group members, and there'll be no Slimmer of the Week and Slimmer of the Month awards to fire my enthusiasm. I'm hoping, though, that the simple act of having to fork out £20 a month will keep me on the Straight & Narrow Way.

One 'plus' is that I once more have access to the Slimming World food database and their smartphone app, on which to record my progress.

Disappointingly, I couldn't revive my old membership number so, as far as Slimming World is concerned, I'm a new inexperienced member. O well.

There is, of course, no justifiable reason why I could not have simply resumed the Slimming World diet. I have all the information; I know what to do. But, weak-willed woman that I am, simply knowing has failed me.

Back in 2016, getting from 13st to my target weight took 18 weeks. This time I'll set my target a couple of pounds higher, so let's see what happens. With determination and a following wind I should arrive, fit and slender, in mid-May.