Day: 31 August 2025

Weeknotes #136: to and from the Island

Busy travel week ends with sunshine, laughter, and shared Sunday lunch.

Week commencing Monday, 25 August 2025

Families and beachgoers relax on Ryde beach on a sunny bank holiday Monday, with colourful windbreaks, beach tents, and people scattered across the golden sand. Bicycles are parked along the promenade in the foreground, whilst the calm blue waters of the Solent stretch towards Portsmouth's distant skyline under clear skies.
Visitors make the most of the glorious sunshine on Ryde beach

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 6/7; Move 6/7 (90%). Morning walks: 0/3 (days in the office don’t count). Office days: 1/4. Total steps: 42,163

Life

  • Bank Holiday Monday brought beautiful weather. I’ve never seen the Ryde beaches so busy.
  • T and guests arrived by 11:30, and the women were in the sea before 12:30. We went for a quick snack at lunch. They were fine in the flat all week.
  • On Monday afternoon, we left them in the flat and headed towards London. The 2:45 pm FastCat crossing was a bit bumpy, but it didn’t stop the scramble for the sundeck. We had too many bags, so we enjoyed the front indoor window seats instead.
  • The return to the Island on Friday evening faced more travel delays. Not trains this time — Wight Ryder I was taken out of service just as we were about to board, and Wight Ryder II was brought in to replace it 20 minutes later.
  • Trains weren’t going to let the ferry take this week’s delay crown. On Monday, split tickets saved us money on the return journey, but then we missed our connection, and I wished we hadn’t tried to save a few pounds. Early on Sunday morning, my Avanti service left Euston 20 minutes late when it should have been rushing me towards Shrewsbury, and later in the day my London Northwestern service was cancelled due to staff shortages. I log these now so that one day I’ll be able to say, “it got better”.
  • Sunday lunch was excellent in Shrewsbury, and later we had coffee outside a hotel bar that we all thought used to be a fitness club.

Media

Roaring Night

It’s a brilliant experience to see the conservation work of the park up close. If you’re thinking of somewhere for an unusual night, surrounded by the sounds of safari, then Port Lympne comes highly recommended.

The Barbary Lion is extinct in the wild.1 It was the lion that battled with Roman gladiators in the Colosseum and was, at least according to Wikipedia, kept in the menagerie at the Tower of London. But the Atlas Mountains, where they once roamed, are no longer home to any of the animals.

Science, being a mysterious and wonderful thing, is attempting a breeding program that may be able to breed back the lions by finding descendants of the original creatures.

I learnt about Barbary lions on a visit to the Port Lympne Animal Park in Kent, where there’s a pair of lions housed near one of the cafes.

The Animal Park is owned by wildlife conservation charity The Aspinall Foundation2 and is known for work to breed rare and endangered species for release into the wild. It’s also home to the world’s largest ‘gorillarium’ -which is a word I can only find in relation to Port Lympne – yet watching gorillas & lions in their cages is a strange experience. I know they’re effectively extinct and therefore the charity’s work is invaluable, but these animals are still in an enclosure – large as it may be.  On balance, though, the work has got to be worth it.

I spent a night in one of Port Lympne’s amazing ‘treehouses’3, which feature unforgettable views across the park and across Romney Marsh, with what I think was the wind farm in the far distance. A complimentary golf buggy allows you access to the park after the day crowds have gone, when, at dusk, some of the animals seem to be more awake. You can get quite close to some animals and watch them in fairly natural habitats. Many of the 600 acres are devoted to the African Experience where, from the safari vehicles, giraffes & black rhinos can be seen wandering the park.

It’s a brilliant experience to see the conservation work of the park up close. If you’re thinking of somewhere for an unusual night, surrounded by the sounds of safari, then Port Lympne comes highly recommended. The accommodation and the staff were superb and, if the thought of the 35 steps to the treehouse and to see the amazing balcony views is a bit daunting, take the golf buggy around the back.

About BEWA 2016

BEWA (Blog Every Wednesday in August) is a project aimed at getting me writing in a blog style again.  The 2016 season featured cycling in the city, fascinating maps, and an underground tour of Clapham South Deep-level Shelter. There is a page with the #bewa collection (including those from last year).  Fingers crossed I am back next week. I’m sure @curns will mention it.

Footnotes

1 Barbary Lion, Wikipedia
2 Our Mission, The Aspinal Foundation
3 Your Treehouse, Port Lympne

Data Data Everywhere

Google knows all, but how much does it really know?

Since Google announced the Gmail service, there must have been a small rainforest of paper written about the privacy implications of scanning email. It’s never really bothered me (which you should not read as I don’t care about it – it just doesn’t bother me right now), and my lovely Gmail account remains somewhat underused at the moment (oh, and I do have a spare, if you’re interested and give me a good enough reason to send you the invite).

Anyway, Hublog has an interesting list of things Google knows about you(plus an interesting follow-up). Froogle is not mentioned there, but thanks to this link, they could believe I’ve just searched for dog beds twice in 10 minutes. If they infer that I have a dog (or am about to get a dog), they would be misreading this data.

Lots of organisations have access to lots of data about you. That should never be a problem. Personally, I am on CCTV for about 10 minutes after I have left my house until I arrive at the office. Anyone who cared to could tell you quite a lot about me by observing my travel patterns daily. My bank knows where I spend my money, and my doctor knows about my illnesses (although I have been to other doctors that my main doctor is not aware of).

The point is that mountains of information about me are out there. The problem is that none of it constitutes a full picture of me as an individual, and that is the real danger. Recording the data is not a problem until somebody tries to look at it. In itself, that’s not a great problem until somebody acts on an event because of that data. However, inferring something about me because of it is not a good idea.

Time

This is the last day of August. Why is it that time seems to go by much more quickly as you get older? Is this just an age thing? Clearly, time passes at the same rate – although I probably spend more time asleep at this point in my life (and, to the best of my knowledge, I haven’t slept for six months).