The Big Freeze - that never was!
Below were headlines in the Daily Express of 13th November
2013 and the 29th November 2013, presumably compliments of the Met Office long range forecast but no doubt suitably enhanced for sensationalism!
How wrong could they be!
How wrong could they be!
For those in foreign parts, or who weren’t paying attention, it has been one of the mildest wet and windy winters for quite a while.
I suppose forecasting a bit of local winter weather is much more difficult than forecasting the climate of the world over the next 30 years.
Mind
you I commented around then that I expected snow the week before Easter (it often does) and I got it
completely wrong too.
For those who have forgotten what snow looks like, a few pics from around here when it did - though not this year.
Fun for a while
But enough is enough!
Being snowballed is not always fun!
Sport Relief Tandem Tour de Yorkshire.
The
Tour de France is due round our way and destined to cause chaos for many who live on or near the route. I read that they expect up to 80,000 people on Holme Moss! I wonder if there will be enough toilets as I gather they will be corralled there for some time. More on the subject later maybe. My brother is a keen cyclist, a southerner so no real hills to worry about, and will no
doubt be boarding here so he can watch the spectacle. In fact I will post a pic of him in glorious
Technicolor.
Clearly very serious stuff!
BBC
Look North is our local TV News. Recently two key
presenters and Yorkshire celebrities, Harry Gration and Amy Garcia took it upon
themselves to cycle the 241 mileTour de France route around here on a tandem to raise money
for the charity Sport Relief - Sport
Relief Tandem Tour de Yorkshire.
(
Not
all 241 miles in one go! Six days I think in mid March)
The latest figure I saw was £125,000 raised but it
may well be more by now. Some days they had some pretty dire
weather. The leg of their ride that included Holme Moss must, I imagine,
have nearly killed them off. The photo below was taken at the beginning
of the steep climb just after the village of Holme, having toiled up from
Holmfirth to get there.
There
was a wild gale blowing. A few seconds
after this photograph was taken there was torrential horizontal driving sleet and
icy rain. They just made it to the
top. Going down the other side, even if
they had been fit to continue, which looked pretty doubtful, was regarded as too
dangerous as that side was really catching the gusting high winds. It was a fantastic effort to do this whole
trip and also spend time at so many locations for appearances, interviews and fund
raising.
I suppose one benefit of the Tour de France will be that when I try to tell people which part of the country I live in and mention Holme Moss as a point of reference, currently mostly to a blank look, they will probably have heard of it afterwards.
HG and AG on YouTube on Holme Moss
You Tube - biker going over Holme Moss
Moorland restoration
There
is a big project underway to ‘rejuvenate’ the moorland around here, which must
be costing a packet. Helicopters have
been flying around for a long time taking bags of heather brash all over
Wessenden and the moors by Holme Moss and Black Hill, and probably others, to be redistributed by
hand to reseed them. So a pic or two of
Heli-Lift Services doing work around Wessenden a little while ago, much of it
in foul weather.
G-UHGB is a Bell 205A-1
Pictures
taken around End February.
