Season’s greetings to all our readers and regulars. I thought I’d post a few photos from my Spain trip last week for a taste of festive cheer.
This is the Plaza at the top of the Calle Marques de Larios in Malaga, which is the wide boulevard shown below the break.
I also got the chance to return to El Chorro, one of my favourite locations. This is the sunrise view along the lake from the campsite.
And this is the view from the upper reservoir of the hydroelectric system, looking across the valley to the massive rock faces above the village, topped by the hulking form of Huma.
And here are three Czech climbing friends I made at the campsite, raising a glass to celebrate life.
Cheers everyone, have a great Christmas!
Tim writes
I wish everyone a Peaceful and Happy Christmas
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Happy Christmas to you too, Tallbloke!
As we’re posting photos, here’s one of my latest pet.
PS how do you get photos to display as photos?
[mod: Ask? 🙂 Answer is sometimes no, security, load on servers, etc. –Tim]
Have a happy xmas Rog and all the mods, and all who post. Certainly won’t get bored with all that you’ve left to go through so I am penciling in some time once the kids are sorted.
CW: Beautiful, is that a MK V version of the Douglas Dragonfly?
Merry Crimbo all. I don’t comment often, leaving it to others to make complete ***** of themselves but I like the site and always read.
TB, if you like mountains come to Wales. Tryfan in winter is a classic. I am happy to be your guide.
Talking of Czech females, I was in a hotel in Ostrava once and….
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This has been censored by the Norfolk Constabulary.
At midnight caught my eye, a bright shooting star.
Hi five TB and a Merry Christmas to all, readers and posters alike. May the New Year also bring health, wealth, prosperity and happiness.
tallbloke says: December 24, 2013 at 10:14 pm
“CW: Beautiful, is that a MK V version of the Douglas Dragonfly?”
There’s a lot going on atop the crank, no oil tank (so wet sump), no rear suspension (it’s an early frame), so, is this an ‘early’ BMW CW?
My fave was the Vincent HRD, but the in-line V2 always had cooling issues for the rear pot. A pipe dream instilled by ‘big bruv’. The best I ever got was a ‘T Bird’ (Triumph Thunderbird). Rubbish front forks in the wet! Though, an ‘RE Comet’ (Royal Enfield Comet) came a close second favourite. 🙂
Yours until the desert sands freeze and the camels come skating home (yup, corny, but someone out there probably hasn’t seen this signing off phrase). 🙂 🙂
Ray Dart.
Marry Christmas to all!
May you have an interesting New Year. 😎 pg
Great photos, wonderful places.
My relatives seem to end up somewhere between Malaga and Gibraltar in their declining years. My choice is Estepona.
Merry Christmas and thanks for your wit and wisdom.
Indo-European peoples celebrated in these days of holiday lights. The core of “vid” (druvid) is common in all languages. Let the saints be light.
Peter: Last time I stood atop Tryfan we had ascended via the gulley to the side of Bristly Ridge and over the top of Gldyr Fawr and Glyder Fach. When we got back to our campsite some kind soul had unzipped our inner tents and let the farm dogs in to scoff all our food. The landlord at the local pub served us in glasses rinsed in salt water and told us the kitchen was finished for the night at 7.30pm Saturday evening. Wales was shut on Sunday so we retreated to Cheshire…
TB;
Hope you didn’t let those Czechs lead you astray. Disreputable-lookin’ lot, they are.
TB, I have known sheep to break into zipped tents by the Clachaig Inn, Glencoe. They didn’t just eat the food, they used it as a toilet too. Still, the hours were always good in Scotland.
A Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year to all.
Brian, more the other way about. I bought an extra round at 11 when they had a two hour climb back to their bivouac…
Happy Xmas & NY to all
Thanks for the photos, but especially thank you for the work and time you put into the site and your posts.
Best wishes for a very Happy Christmas and fantastic 2014.
Merry Xmas to all
Tallbloke you should see lower stratosphere forecast for January 2014.
Hi ren
Currently the stratosphere’s temperature has just dropped to lowest values on record
unlike last December when the Kamchatka’s volcanoes were very active, for now they are asleep.
Therefore tekie remarkable anomalies can occur in North America.
The temperature dropped in the whole the stratosphere. Also decreased cosmic rays.
Hi Vuk. Temperature is not everything. More important is the temperature distribution over the the polar circle, which remains the same.
Yes, distribution does matter, polar jet stream direction etc .
I was alluding to the lack of SSW (sudden stratospheric warming). MetOffice , NOAA and NASA all associate cold European winters with the SSW.
If the Kamchatka’s volcanoes stay quiet this winter extent of the SSW (virtually unknown in the Antarctic) would prove/disprove my hypothesis, and at same time type of winter weather we get would prove/disprove MetOffice etc. assumptions.
Next 2-3 months will settle any uncertainty.
For all of you in the cold, wet Northlands, season’s greetings from the cold, wet Tropics:
Roger A: Yep 10C and rain/wind here.
But you have heating systems in your houses. We don’t. Living in the tropics we don’t need them 😉
“CW: Beautiful, is that a MK V version of the Douglas Dragonfly?”
Yes, that’s exactly what it is. 1950 vintage according to the logbook. I’ve had it about 6 months now, it is very pretty, but what one of my friends called a ‘museum restoration”, so I’ve been sorting out the details such as the operation of the throttles, stopping the exhausts falling off etc.
Now it’s running nicely.
CW: A bit of a lottery when buying classic. Look for wear on footrests…
Roger A: throw another IPCC report on the bbq
Sorry, but you have to see.
Ren. No problem. What altitude?
Tallbloke, a height of about 7 km. Pay attention to the wind speed. This will be the Arctic air and hurricane winds over 100 km an hour.
It will be very, very cold. A deep low pressure than for Canada and the wind from the Gulf of Mexico indicates blizzards.
So it will be early next week. Polar vortex split up.
Decreases solar activity. A marked increase in cosmic radiation.
“CW: A bit of a lottery when buying classic. Look for wear on footrests…”
All done up when I got her, certainly no more than 50 miles on her since complete rebuild. That was most of the problem, she hadn’t had anything remotely like a proper shakedown, very nice looking but no attention to detail. Cables were a mess, silencers weren’t properly attached – and on a Douglas, there are no brackets, just the clips holding them to the ends of the pipes. I drilled them under the clamps and put short nails through to stop them sliding off and beefed up the brackets holding the pipes to the frame. The very complex front suspension/mudguard arrangement was misassembled, and needed some rebuilding, as one of the brackets appeared incorrect. Remarkably, all the electrics work, including the horn. One reason I bought her was when I went for a viewing, we pulled her out of the shed, turned the fuel on and tickled the carbs, and when I put my foot on the kickstart to feel for compression, she sprang straight into life!
On her first decent speed run, she nipped a bit due to leanness presumably caused by modern lead-free petrol, so now she has bigger jets (the full range for the 275 carbs is still freely available from Amal, surprisingly).
Now she’s going nicely, remarkably quick for a 1950 350 so long as you rev her, unbelievably smooth, too. I think the only bike I’ve ever had as smooth was an S7 Sunbeam back in the 1960s. Good handling, despite the – er, curious – torsion bar rear suspension, front seems to have sagged a bit and I’ll pick it up an inch or so over the winter. Steering is absolutely perfect, very light indeed, I found I was turning too soon and having to pick her up and start again at first. Gear box takes a bit of getting used to, engine speed clutch and all that…
Brakes are about what you would expect for seven inch boot polish tins, of course.
Still some jobs to do (as always with British bikes), but all in all, I’m very pleased. I’ve never had a Douglas before, I was mostly a big twin and high performance single man in my youth, but I’m pleasantly surprised at the quality of construction and general performance. Looking forward to some proper riding come the good weather…
Very nice. I would advise using some octane booster/valve lubricant addition to unleaded. Preserves the valve seats…
You might be able to lean the main jets again too.
Ggraphics temperature anomalies in the stratosphere previous winter should give a thought to.
Rog & Tim,
Thank you for your contribution to the fight for science, reason and freedom.
Here’s hoping you had a great Christmas and will have a fantastic new year.
It may be intense right now, but in future years you will look back and laugh. Norfolk police kicking in the door? Meh!
Years ago I was working with a limited international crew on a Russian war movie –
All good, blowing everything up, until it went pear shaped. We had designed the perfect “air strike on building” blast. Walls (cork and foam) shattered with det-cord and blown out with sand mortars (double sived). But the Russian pull back rig failed. Two stunties (who had refused the ear plugs and slim line goggles) took 100 grams of PETN (7500 m/s) full in the face. One of those “wincing so hard while biting your fist, you find you have swallowed your eyeballs and you are missing fingers” moments.
After the Russian stunties had recovered from the shock, they assured us it would have been far worse in Russia, and that “we could blow them up anytime”, the pyro guy I was working with told me something you will, in time, realise is applicable to the climate debate –
“fun” is the past tense of “shit”.
– True. We laugh about it now.
Happy new year!
Come on Roger, join the other blogs laughing at the Climate Science fools stuck in the Antarctic Ice, give us a post.
Skunk Works “Cheap Energy for All” solution: A series produced 100MW compact fusion reactor that runs on plentiful and cheap deuterium and tritium (isotopes of hydrogen). https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/solve-for-x-charles-chase-on-energy-for-everyone
Happy New Year
Hi ACO: I’m in A wee village in Galloway with little data connectivity. Might try later.
Roger, sorry to have bothered you, it is just so funny that I thought your readers would like it.
Scientists trapped in record sea ice announce “it’s disappearing”
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/scientists-trapped-in-record-sea-ice-announce-that-it-is-disappearing/
They’re no scientists, they’re zealous propagandists.
Nice to hear their problem “is disappearing”. Call off the rescue.
The latest on the Arctic Expedition ship stuck in non existing record sea ice: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/29/saving-the-antarctic-scientists-er-media-er-activists-er-tourists-trapped-by-sea-ice/
The amount of ice around Antarctica.
Connectivity is awful here. Patchy GPRS fails 3 times out of 4 requests. Sorry for poor service. Off to make spag bol dinner for 3 now. Will try to upload some nice pics I took out walking later.
A significant increase in cosmic rays, which will cause greater changes in the polar vortex.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=24&startmonth=12&startyear=2013&starttime=00%3A00&endday=31&endmonth=12&endyear=2013&endtime=00%3A00&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on
Moving polar vortex over the Canada.
Ren – care to elaborate on cosmic rays? You say significant, is this breaking new ground for recent history? For those looking for light relief or a hangover cure…
The Ice Man Cometh
Euan, you need to get to know mechanisms and dependence. The data itself is not enough.
I guess I’m wondering if and when we begin to see a change in the production rate of cosmogenic isotopes. But now is probably not the best time to be finding out….
Interestingly, the system stopped Nair December 18.
http://sol.spacenvironment.net/~nairas/Dose_Rates.html
Heading out first footing on this Hogmanay evening, so I’ll take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year and all the best for 2014.
Happy New Year everyone, from Rog (via telephone) and from Tim.
Thanks and all the best TB and TC and readers.
The temperature in the entire zone of the ozone sharply increasing.
In the article below I summarized some facts. Bronek is the name of my grandson.
http://losyziemi.pl/przyczyny-nietypowego-przebiegu-zimy
The strong increase in temperature at a height of 45 km.
“There’s a lot going on atop the crank”
That’s the Magdyno assembly. Notice above and to the rear of it is the voltage regulator/cutout box, cunningly mounted upside down and entirely lacking any waterproofing so that if you go out in the rain it fills up with water. True design genius, not for nothing was Joseph Lucas referred to as “the Prince of Darkness”!
“no oil tank (so wet sump),” Correct.
“no rear suspension (it’s an early frame), so, is this an ‘early’ BMW CW?”
Actually it does have rear suspension actually, but you would have a job spotting it if you didn’t know it was there. There are torsion bars along the bottom runs of the frame with cranks on the rear end, coupled to the swinging arm with very over-engineered spherically jointed links. They are just visible in front of the aluminium caps on the rear ends of the torsion bars. I haven’t bothered counting grease nipples, many/most of which are inaccessible, but there are a Hell of a lot!