3 posts tagged “gloucestershire”

The Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway held their Autumn Diesel Gala on November 3rd this year.  Unfortunately I was not rostered on the trains so I was able to take some photos and video.  In fact I spent most of the time taking video with a Canon HV20 high definition video camera.  I have just finished editing the video in iMovie on my MacPro and have produced two sequences, one based at Toddington and the other at Winchcombe.  The Toddington video shows 47105, 37215, 24081, and D8137 in action.  The Winchcombe sequence shows 37324, D8137, 24081 and 47105.

I just realised that I haven't blogged about the water crisis in the UK - actually I've been feeling a little off-colour so I haven't done any blogging recently.  Well we had loads of rain and the whole of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire and all sorts of other places were flooded.  Unfortunately in Gloucestershire the main water treatment plant got flooded and sewage got into the main water pipes so we had no water.  The result was lots of bowsers everywhere.  If bowser is not a word you've come across, we're all familiar with it now - it's a water tank that sits on the side of the road containing enough water for several households for about a day - or less, especially if it's for quite a few households.  The distribution of bowsers around Cheltenham seemed very random - at one road junction I counted six bowsers, whereas where I live there seems to have been one for at least two streets.

Btw, I don't know why our bowser says Gas on it!!!
There are also water bottle distribution centres.  Because the water in the bowsers isn't for drinking but for flushing loos and washing and stuff, the water companies were dishing out bottles of water - again varied amounts - could be anything between 8 and 16 litres per person per day (well actually per visit to the distribution centre).  There was some violence at some of the distribution centres so police were in evidence,and the water companies couldn't sort out the logistics so the army were called in to organise everything.  Sometimes you got 2 litre bottles sometimes half litre bottles - it's fun washing up the dishes using half litre bottles!
So now that the tap water has been turned back on (but only for flushing and showers - it's not drinking qaulity yet) what do I think?  Well having just come back from Uganda where we lived on bottled water and no running water out in the country, it made mefeel like I was living in a third world country - actually worse.  It made me feel the UK is falling apart especially when I heard that the government nearly evacuated the whole are -350,000 people - because the power supplies were nearly lost.  That would have been third world.
I don't know when our tap water will be fit to drink -could be another fortnight - but I'm off to California for a holiday - hopefully there will be no problems with water there.