The Walk (Part 3) –Wales Coastal Path 2013

I posted this on the wordpress version of this blog a couple of weeks ago. It’s only just come to my mind that I neglected to post it here. Sorry. I’m sure nobody noticed.

 

 

After having carefully planned my working week to coincide with a visit to the North West to make it easier to travel to Wales, I set off from Liverpool on Thursday morning bound for Pistyll near Caernarfon to begin the third phase of the walk around the coast of Wales.

View Stegzy & Nick's Wales Coastal Walk

in a larger map

At this pace, I suspect I will have completed the walk some time in my late 80s. Probably on a mobility shopper. Regular readers will recall that last year we ended our walk at Porth Towyn having set off from Porth Oer. Because we were starting further up the coast, it made sense to change our usual campsite to a new….untested one. This year’s campsite was at the amusingly named Penisarlon Camping Farm near Pistyll. The camp site was very clean and peaceful with fantastic views across towards Nefyn (our goal for the Friday) to the South west and towards Nant Gwrtheyrn  to the North East with St George’s Channel to the north.

Penisarlon Farm looking towards Nefyn

Looking towards Nant Gwrtheyrn

However as we had arrived earlier than expected we decided that, though too late to start our walk properly, we could start a bit of next year’s planned walk. This took us towards Nant Gwrtheyrn, though we did not reach there until later in the weekend. Instead we were treated to a lovely bog blocking our path, sheep, second homes and a quaint little church, St Buenos.

St Buenos Church near Pistyll

On the Friday, we awoke to a lovely rainbow across the bay. Little or no rain during the night but plenty of snoring from me.

Up above the sea and houses Rainbow flying high

This year we began where we left off and made our way across the once more sunny cliffs and dips leading towards Porth Dinllaen.  Glorious views. Glorious weather.

Nick at the start

Four hours of walking later we crossed Nefyn Golf course and reached Porth Dinllaen. During the previous night we had espied a strange structure out in the bay. It looked like a drilling platform and part of me was concerned that the greedy oil people had set their eyes on a protected area of outstanding natural beauty.

Is it an oil rig? Is it a fracking point? No! It's a slipway submarine construction diving platform

Fortunately, this was not the case. The platform was actually for the construction of a new RNLI Lifeboat launch slipway. So it wasn’t too bad.

 

 

The construction site had an interesting staircase winding its way down the cliff side allowing access to the official coastal path bringing us out at the lovely Ty Coch Inn where we ended our second day’s walk with a delicious and rewarding pint before heading back to the campsite.

After a rather sleepless night for Nick (my snoring again!) who ended up sleeping in his car, it was agreed that completing the short trail up to the campsite would be sufficient for this years walk. Before that we needed sustenance in the form of a hearty breakfast. On the inbound trip, I espied a brown sign directing the visitor to a place called Nant Gwrtheyrn which had a cafe. Nant Gwrtheyrn is an old village built for quarry workers in the 1800s. If you were to follow the link above you will be able to read the history.  The landscape there is a bizarre mix of post industrial archaeology and nature. There’s a church there, a cafe and a collection of stone cottages available for rent by holiday makers.

The start next year

However, the cafe didn’t open for breakfast so we scuttled back to Nefyn and the continuation of our walk. The short trail continuation took us from where we left off the day before and along a winding cliff top pathway. Again, plenty of luxury cliff top homes for the wealthy and privileged. Glorious views. It’s places like this that make you realise that no matter how hard the average Jo works, they will never attain a picturesque view (like that in the panoramic picture below) without luck, windfall or skulduggery.

The path turned in land and took us through the village where we had earlier eaten our hearty breakfast before heading up a very steep looking hill. Eventually the path turned into something resembling Borneo. Overgrown gorse bushes, brambles and scratchy things took their toll on our bare shins, bitey creepies made a meal on our blood, and burny heaty hot sun scorched our flesh from on high. Yet, after three hours of walking, we reached the campsite and the starting point for our continuing adventure next year. -

 

----- Welsh Coastal Path – 2012

------Welsh Coastal Path - 2011

Filter this: Or how an entire history class ended up on report due to web filters

Way back in the noughties I had the misfortune to work in a sixth form college. Regular readers will recall this was in the post industrial landscape that is Yorkshire. Cameron's recent moral panic calls to mind the overbearing system of "safe guarding" that was in place at the college.

I must provide some back story. The IT manager could quite easily have been diagnosed with Aspergers had he been twenty years younger. He didn't like change. Not one bit. Dingleberry, as I will refer to him, was one of those people who insisted on particular ways. Deviation from which would bring calamity, disaster and the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

For example, one hot sunny day in May he insisted that the units, switches, servers and tape machines in the server cabinet be taken out and arranged in numerical, colour and size order. Why? No reason was given other than aesthetics.

Every piece of software had to be installed with default settings. "Out of the box". Same with hardware. I dread to think of the security issues that he made with such a work ethic. Indeed, such was the "DO NOT TOUCH" attitude, the Active Directory contained accounts of people that had left the college over 5 years ago. That is the level of finickiness he operated on.

One day a whole class got into trouble for not submitting their history homework on time. The students were required to email their work to the teacher who would then assess the work and send it back. Only the teacher didnt recieve any work.

The teacher was a bit shit to be fair. She, like several other teachers I've met over the years, seemed to suffer from paranoia probably brought on by inadequacies, stress and plain stupidity. This particular teacher was convinced that this particular class had a grudge and were out to get her.

Sadly this was not the case.

However what happened was much more convoluted than any of her minor conspiracies.

The class were insistent that work had been emailed from home. The teacher became convinced that the class were telling fibs. Eventually she came to the helpdesk door to see me.

She told me that there was a problem with email.

Not so. I told her, demonstrating how I was able to send emails from an external account to my work account with ease.

The problem morphed into one to do with attachments.

Not so. Again, I demonstrated me sending emails with attachments with no issue whatsoever.

Aliens.

Don't be stupid. But I'll investigate further.

I asked the IT Manager if there was any issue with emails.

None that he could see.

I asked the IT Technician if there was any issue with emails.

Only an issue with the space between the chair and the keyboard.

I asked the Server Troll if there was any issue with emails.

No but there was an issue with his latest game of Dungeons and Dragons.

I asked the head of IT.

None that he knew of. However, I should check the newly installed spam filters.

I checked the spam filters. Therein there was over a hundred thousand emails. This was going to take me a long time to investigate.

Turned out that the spam filters contained "Out of the box" keywords. A whole lexicon or rude words, curses, inappropriateness and the like. Included were words such as: Pharmacy, penis, length, cock, schlong, kiddies, nazi, hate, escort, kill, death, murder, hitler, vagina, gash, flange, white power, drugs and much much more.

So you'll probably now have guessed. The out of the box filtering had picked up that the emails sent to the history teacher with the assignment on the Second World War contained foul language such as hitler, nazi, gas chamber, anti-Semitism. The very same settings that Dingleberry refused to allow me to change.

So I changed it anyway and released the history homework (Nazi, Hitler etc), the chemistry homework (pharmacy, drugs etc) and the biology homework. I released the personal messages sent from divorce approaching husbands regarding them picking up the "kiddies" in the Escort after work to their end of the line with you wives.

I added a keyword.

I won't say what.

But let's just say that Dingleberry no longer received emails. Certain...important emails.

The 27th Hollowell Steam and Heavy Horse Show 2013

The 27th Hollowell Steam and Heavy Horse Show 2013 from stegzy gnomepants on Vimeo.

Letter to the BBC

Dear BBC,

I notice that you are increasing the regularity of the appearance of people who seem to be experts on everything and have opinions on everything which, for some reason, you think reflects society at large.

I would like to offer my services as a gobshite. I too have strong opinions on everything from David Cameron’s underwear to the cost of prawns in the Middle East during the Byzantium Empire. I am an expert on everything and nothing. I have several years experience of spouting utter crap to backup people’s clandestine agendas and I am happy to cast aspersions and morals to the wind without forethought for the wider consequences.

Hope this will cover everything. 

Lots of Love

Gnomepants