February 2012
FEATURES
So you think you know Southwold?
Valentine’s Day is upon us. If you don’t get a card, here’s a little quiz to take your mind off your broken heart.
First of all, the very obvious. Last month, we asked you where a statuesque gull was. The answer obviously is on top of the new Southwold sign situated just over Mights Bridge.
This month, where is this plaque?
As always, you will be able to see this while walking around Southwold.
A tip o’ the hat to Brian Burrage again.
And that’s not all . . .
Not a quiz in this bit. Brian also wants to share the following picture with us. Let him take up the story: ‘I am also attaching a photo I found when going through some old things. It is a group of Southwold Scouts taken, I think, in 1946 on a bike ride to Dunwich. I am the second from the right, sitting between Brian Burley and Peter Crick, both I'm afraid no longer with us. The Scout Master is Lancie May and Ronnie Waters is the Assistant Scout Master. Others on there are the May twins, Ronnie Smith, Rex Goldsmith, Leslie Hambling, Paul Blyth and Mr Stannard who drove the Brewery horses for many years. It may be of interest to some people should you have room to include it.’
The 71st in our series of articles specially written for The Organ by astrophysicist Professor Michael Rowan-Robinson.
The campaign for dark skies
The British Astronomical Association, which represents amateur astronomers in the UK, has been campaigning for dark skies for some years now. This January 20th–27th, they organised an ‘Orion Star Count Week’, where the public were invited to count the number of stars they could see with the naked eye in the constellation of Orion. In a similar exercise in 2007, only 2% of respondents could see more than 30 stars, corresponding to clear skies, while over half saw fewer than ten stars, indicating severe light pollution. BBC2 got in on the act with its Stargazing Live programme, hosted by Brian Cox and Dara O’Briain, in which they persuaded the inhabitants of a village to turn off all their lights to see the stars better. Unfortunately, on the chosen night, it was raining heavily, so no stars were visible, but Stargazing Live was a great success in encouraging people to look at the night sky.
The Campaign for Dark Skies claims that inefficient lighting wastes over £1 billion per annum in the UK. They also claim that street lighting can help criminals see what they are doing. Apparently, in Saffron Walden, Essex, police reported that night-time crime almost halved after street-lights were turned off at midnight.
Here in Southwold, skies can be pretty dark if you can get away from the streetlights. We’re still left with the orange glow from Lowestoft, which represents a great waste of energy and of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere. City and town councils need to consider installing lower pressure neon lights. Streetlights should also be capped so that they do not radiate light up into the sky. And careful consideration needs to be given to the option of switching off at least some street lighting at midnight. I don’t see why, for example, the Pier car park needs to be illuminated all night long. Obviously, we need enough lighting so that people can get home safely after evening events.
Street lighting is currently an issue for Waveney District Council, who are looking for ways to reduce spending. Suffolk County Council have already introduced what they call an Intelligent Street Lighting System with a view to saving money in this area. I hope we won’t be too quick to condemn these developments because we will all get pleasure from darker skies. And we in Southwold ought to be especially interested in reducing our carbon footprint, so that global warming and the consequent rise in sea-level can be minimised.
Stars’n Tides now has an e-mail address for you to send comments and queries: starsntides@southwoldorgan.com.
Past Stars’n Tides articles can be found at http://astro.ic.ac.uk/~mrr/starsntides/
© Michael Rowan-Robinson 2012
It's
the Wine
Talking
by Leslie
J Brinton of 'In the Pink' 01986 872579
Wandering around Suffolk and coming across wines from Adnams is one of those pleasures that is none the less appreciated for being quite a common experience.
Down at Snape in the delightful Maltings complex, I am often to be found propping up the bar at the Concert Hall, and buying wine by the glass there, as with any bar, can be a bit of a lottery because it is not always very clear as to when the bottle has been opened. Thus the Casa Rivas Merlot is often found there, but is variable in the pleasure it offers to my palate.
Not so at The Plough and Sail nearby: with a dinner recently, and specifically some enticing rib-eye steaks, this Chilean red brew, which has come all the way from the Maipo valley south of Santiago to Snape (via Southwold), was top-notch.
A newer palate than mine can give you the flavour of this 14% brew:
‘Egg-white like aroma. Velvet texture with notes of vanilla and dark fruits – subtle but flavoursome.’ Thank you Emily.
In that most congenial restaurant, you are looking at an investment of £16.95 the bottle: back home in Southwold, Adnams are asking £6.50 a bottle, which you can whittle down to £5.85, should you invest in a case.
Leslie J Brinton
inthepink@southwold.org
View
to the north
The weather over the past month has been very strange, with warm and cold spells. There were very high winds at the beginning of the month, which resulted in a number of ships mooring off the coast, presumably waiting to access Felixstowe, which was closed for a while. Just before the New Year, the skies were clear, but the night-time temperature was 11°C. There were very good views of Jupiter and Venus, but the temperature was warm enough for unexpected creatures to venture out at night.
The wildfowl this winter on the fields to the north still puzzles me. There are far fewer geese than normal and still no sign of gadwall and shoveller ducks nor of lapwing. The red-breasted geese continue to appear on an irregular basis, and one day there were six brent geese. The heron has been a regular visitor, occasionally accompanied by a little egret. I also caught sight of about 20 curlew flying inland over the fields, their downward curved bills very apparent. In the garden, there appear to have been fewer greenfinch than normal, but it was a delight to see long-tailed tits appearing suddenly, feeding upside down on the maple and then disappearing as rapidly as they arrived. There is still no sign of waxwings in my garden, but I am told that 40 or so have been seen in Reydon on the Halesworth Road.
Towards the beach end of North Road there is a field in which there are four white geese. The other morning, they were accompanied by a pair of muntjac deer, which clearly were unimpressed by the gaggling that the geese were making. However, they did make off quickly when they caught sight of me. The green shoots of the bulbs are just breaking through, but I was surprised to see daffodils in flower when I drove up to Wrentham mid month. Also numerous catkins could be seen in the hedgerows on the Wrentham road. Bumble bees have been flying around the garden.
There have been some very high tides, which have reduced the available foreshore to the turnstones, and I have regularly seen them on the Promenade and sometimes feeding on the grass verges on the cliff top. The high tides have also lowered the beach levels again, particularly just south of the Pier below North Parade. Early-morning clear skies have also brought out parties of photographers to capture images of the rising sun. On my early morning walks, during the colder spells, it has been interesting to see the sand turn white as it is covered in frost; and the days are becoming noticeably longer.
Halcyon
halcyon@southwold-northroad.com
www.southwold-northroad.com
