Today, I was stitched up by my boss (on holiday) and my colleague (who claimed a prior appointment) to attend the Transport Technical Group (of the Regional Assembly) in Taunton. The lead Drivel-ist talked humourlessly about TOG (which to me is a Wogan aficionado, not a Transport Officer Group) and 2 and 1/2 hours talking over my head about RFA and SSTC and POG blah blah blah.
Fortunately I found the time before and after to do a couple of geocaches in the Town Centre. Taunton is a place I only visit by train, so reachable caches are becoming increasingly hard to find on foot, or by fold-up bike, so these two new ones were a piece of good fortune. Unfortunately, neither of them were there. However, right by the Brewhouse Theatre (our venue) was a cache (not found;-( that marked the end of the Somerset Space Walk. (And if you can be arsed to click on a link, make it this one)There is a little marker with a scale model of Pluto. The planet is scaled down to the size of something smaller than a pea (a polystyrene globe from a beanbag perhaps) and yet the sun is 11kms away! God knows how they spotted it (Actually, it was tracked down by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, using a new telescope, mathematics and the research of the late Percival Lowell. And now, of course, it is not even considered a planet. Shame!). M and I fully intend to cycle the 22kms of the Space Walk along the Taunton and Bridgwater Canal at the next opportunity
4 comments:
Did you see Uranus?
Sounds like a plan!
Remind me, who was the Chief Drivel-ist again?
I grew up in the 50s and 60s believing Pluto was a planet - all the truly great astronomers accepted it was... no bloody revisionist is, therefore, going to convince me otherwise...
they can all go and rot in a jolly warm place which, I'm sure they're convinced, doesn't exist!
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