Apparently, with the demise of feed-in contracts, the installation of photovoltaic solar panels across the country has come to a shuddering halt; numbers have crashed by 94% since the hey-day of the big subsidies, and the industry here in the…
Month: June 2019
Ok, let’s have some sunshine
I was taken by a vox pop comment the other day about Chernobyl, the new holiday destination; one gentleman opined that he preferred natural sunshine to the radio-active kind! But it’s almost getting to the point that we’d settle for…
75 years on from hell
This week the country, and much of Europe, Canada and the USA, have been commemorating the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings on Normandy, which heralded the end of WWII’s war in Europe within the following nine months. Many of…
Yoga with Val
Val Duncan sends in a few words from her mobile phone, laboriously keyed in and dictated as well for a second time, about her Yoga sessions: Allendale Yoga Group meets every Friday morning at 10 -11.30 in the well-appointed purpose-built …
Dreams of a rural idyll
As the long and slow process of my recovery continues apace, I find myself thinking intermittently of just what sort of rural idyll I’d imagined we’d find ourselves in, at this point in our lives. You don’t usually plan ill…
The disappearing speed bumps
Back around the end of October last year, while we were away enjoying ourselves in sunny Portugal, the county council roads department came into Allendale Town and laid down speed bumps that quickly became a cause célèbre. Apparently the Parish…
Travels, with or without the grands, on the 688 bus
Paul Mingard writes in with a lyrical essay on the joys of the rural bus route: “For some people riding the 688 bus is so mundane they hardly think about it. For others who never travel by bus, the trials…
Last of the summer term at Allendale Primary School
It wasn’t until, as a substitute teacher, I was finally assigned a whole half-term in one place, that I realised more or less how the school year is organised into six, six week half-terms, or three full terms with a…
Allen Valley Churches Together . . .
Ann Potter writes to chat about a walk organised by AVCT recently: ” Allen Valley Churches Together organised a local walk from Allendale to Sinderhope last month. The total route was 7.5 miles and, to ensure accessibility for walkers able…
“Where’s the nearest petrol station?”
It’s probably the most common question asked at the Post Office/MarketPlace. So let’s be absolutely definitive, using Googlemaps as a guide, to mapping the distance from Allendale’s Market Square to the nearest petrol stations around the place: MarketPlace/Post Office NE47…