Which walk to do...?

As the time for the move approaches, I am starting to think about which walks to do when we are finally safely ensconced in Cambridge. I know the area like he back of my hand, and have walked a great deal in the county (see map at http://www.britishwalks.org/walks/Counties/Cambridgeshire/index.php)

Yet I have done no walking in the county for nearly four years, and am keen to revisit some of my old haunts. So what do I do first?

The obvious walk would be to follow the Fen Rivers Way north from Cambridge to King's Lynn, an easy fifty-mile stroll beside the rivers Cam and Great Ouse. It is a walk that means a great deal to me, as it is one that I used to walk getting back to health. I have also not walked most of it since 1999, so I will not be overly familiar with it. On the other hand, the long miles atop the flood banking north of Littleport can get a little monotonous.

What else? Well, I love the Devil's Dyke, a massive 7.5-mile long Anglo-Saxon ditch and bank that runs across the centre of Newmarket Racecourse. I have walked it ten or so times before, but not in the last eight years, and amazingly I have no photographs of it.

Then there is the Hereward Way, a long-distance path that runs for 110 miles east from Stamford past Ely into Norfolk. I have walked all of this in the past, but not all of the walks are on my website.

Further afield, I would love to do the Peddar's Way once again (last walked in 2003), and the entire Norfolk Coast Path. The various Suffolk paths (such as the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Path) also appeal.

I have no idea which of these - or any other walk - I will do first. Cambridgeshire is not seen as being a classic place to walk, and it certainly lacks the grandeur of most other parts of Britain. Yet there are many good walks and great sights: fog rising off the flood plain of the Great Ouse, or Ely Cathedral rising like a ship out of the surrounding Fens.

Then again, I like walking along canals through cities, so perhaps I am no judge.

Tube map

My friend Terry sent me this link to a map containing a detailed map of the London Underground, including almost every siding (warning: large size). I am sad enough to have spent an hour (when I should have been packing...) studying it, tracing some of the stations and lines that I know well.

I love maps...

Union insanity

Some of my friends went to John Port School in Etwall, Derbyshire. At the time it was generally considered a good school, and my friends left with good exam results (unlike me, it should be said).

I like to keep up with what is happening in areas that I have lived, partly out of curiosity and partly out of misplaced nostalgia. Therefore I was flabbeghasted to read this story on the 'This is Derbyshire' website.

Teachers at the school are going on strike for five days. We are always being told by unions that strikes are the last resort, so it is interesting to see why the teachers and NASUWT union are putting the education of 2,200 children in peril during the run-up to exams.

It turns out that John Port School is considering becoming an academy. Note that they are only considering the change, and have not yet decided. If the change occurs, the supposedly-intelligent teachers think, then it *may* cause changes to their terms and conditions. Therefore they are striking because the school is *investigating* something that *might just* adversely change their conditions. (Or, of course, it may also improve their terms and conditions).


I will not even get started on NASUWT's following claim: "The intention has never been to damage children's education and I will be meeting with the head on March 2 to discuss how exams can be protected."

How can teachers striking for five days in March - a couple of months before exams - not damage the children's education? If it is true it begs the question as to what good the teachers do when in class.

I have a simple message to them: strike against specific changes to terms and conditions, not just because you fear changes. Were they so keen on striking during the previous (Labour) government's changes, including the initial introduction of academies? Of course not.

The union have bluntly admitted that they are striking because the school has not ruled out the conversion to academy status. This is insanity, and can only be seen as politically-motivated blackmail. The teachers who voted for strike should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Spam

Hotmail has a fairly good spam filter, which captures the majority of spam whilst only getting a few false positives (i.e. characterising 'good' emails as spam).

I like to carefully go through my spam inbox to check for non-spam messages. Today, amongst the usual viagra and other spam saying that I need to 'enhance' my manhood, there is a message called 'Tax Refund Notification'. It appears to be from an HM Revenue and Customs email address, and the image looks official. It is the fourth time I have received this message, always claiming that I am due a refund of £468.50.

Of course it is spam. There are some obvious signs: a poorly-designed link to click on that goes to a website 'balearicproperty' instead of HM Revenue along with a couple of spelling mistakes, including lack of punctuation and full stops. The character set is also Cyrillic, which would be unusual for a British Government address.

The reason I mention this is that it is one of the more believable spam emails I have seen. The image and accurate 'from' addresses are things that would initially take people in, along with the greed of receiving a refund. Worryingly, if they were to take away the spelling and other mistakes, make the target link address more believable and add a great deal of official-looking small print, they would catch far more people.

I am not stupid enough to say that I will never be taken in by spam and other scams - all it needs is for someone to push the right buttons for greed and flattery to overcome my innate paranoia. But by examining spam message in this manner I learn to be more cautious.

Strange names

I once knew a girl called Josaline; not the normal form of the rare name Jocelyn, but a much rarer, Anglicised form, as if her parents had either been incredibly intelligent or so deliriously happy that they utterly misspelt the name.

My wife's name is Şencan, meaning merry soul. It is rare even in her native Turkey. It also, apparently, rhymes with 'little coffee cup', both of which are apt for her (*).

Do I have a thing for women with strange given names?

(*) We just found out that Google Translate translates her first name as 'Vampire'. Which, again, is most apt...

A great response...

Airbus and Boeing have been having an ongoing spat about direct and indirect subsidies. Late last year the World Trade Organisation gave a ruling on Boeing's claims against Airbus, and found that Airbus did benefit from launch aid granted to it by European governments.

Now the WTO has ruled on Airbus's complaint against Boeing. Although not yet official, it looks as though it has found Boeing guilty of unfair pracitices with the US government, mainly through receiving R&D and other development benefits (for instance, by NASA sharing fundamental research with them).

This page on FlightGlobal shows an advert run by Boeing in light of the latest findings, and Airbus's hilarious response.Take a look at them and see the way that a responsive advertising and publicity department can win the day (*).

Well done, Airbus. You not only responded to Boeing's claims, but you managed to make them look childish as well. A brilliant example of reactive advertising.

(*) A couple of decades ago there was an article in the Daily Telegraph about some Coastguards who had driven off high cliffs in fog. Their Land Rover had been wrecked, but they escaped with cuts and bruises. The next day, the newspaper carried a full-page advert by Land Rover, with the original article in the middle. Above, in a large font, were the words: "We apologise for the cuts and bruises".

Genius.

Thirteen more walks on the website.

There are many more walks on the website. this update has been particularly fraught as I decided to update all of the scripts that generate the 'site as I moved them to my PC. The scripts had been hacked together over more than a decade and are mostly written in a language called Perl; some of the old code was incompatible with the newer versions of Perl. As I had to do some changes to get them to work, it seemed sensible to do some more general improvements...

With hindsight, this was probably a mistake ;-)

All the pages now seem to be in order. Each page has another section added, as requested by a reader, detailing some walks near to each walk. Otherwise the page format should be unchanged.

The walks from 2010:

876	West Parley to Blandford Forum	19.5	13/12/2010
875	A circular walk from Iford to West Parley	14.9	09/12/2010
874	A circular walk between Hengistbury Head and Bournemouth	15.8	29/11/2010
873	Seaton to Sidford	12.4	27/11/2010
872	Charmouth to Seaton	11.9	06/11/2010

The walks from 2011:

884	Marnhull to Gillingham via Stourhead	21.4	03/02/2011
883	Blandford Forum to Pillwell	20.2	01/02/2011
882	Yarmouth to West Cowes	17.4	27/01/2011
881	A circular walk from Yarmouth to the Needles	18.9	24/01/2011
880	Ventnor to Freshwater Bay	19.2	20/01/2011
879	Ryde to Ventnor	19.0	19/01/2011
878	West Cowes to Ryde via Newport	17.6	04/01/2011
877	A stroll around Christchurch Harbour	13.0	02/01/2011

As you can see, I've been fairly busy...