Dame Stella delights

21 June 2011: On the summer solstice evening, we went to an evening of the Lowdham Book Festival, with Dame Stella Rimington stepping in at short notice to replace the BBC journalist John Simpson. She was director general of MI5 in the nineties, and probably the inspiration behind having Judi Dench playing the part of 'M' in the Bond movies. She is now a successful novelist, with the character Liz Carlyle (not totally based on herself) playing her part to defend Britain against spooks, spies and saboteurs.
  She really was a good speaker (I think she went to school in Nottingham so this is her old home), and she answered all the questions well, including two from DNC, one about the Iraq 'dodgy dossier' and one asking her if she had met Judi Dench.

Great Notts Bike Ride 2011

19 June 2011: I (DNC) took part in the GNBR for another year on the 58 mile ride. I wondered where everyone had gone, apparently most people had left at 8 am, but as the departure time was any time between 8am and 11, I thought it was alright to turn up at 9 o clock. I rode with someone called Alison who shared the ride with me last year.
    All the way round, we found very few people, the communality was missing altogether. At the half time lunch stop at Kelham, there were only one other picnic table with people sitting. None of the usual buzz of Newark. After Kelham, the route changed from its normal easy Trent side cruise into a nasty ride along the busy A616, and an even nastier long hill climb up to Eakring (where there was no feed-station), and back down the hill again to Southwell.
   I think nobody had thought it through or ridden the route at normal speed. They expected the ride to be 8 hours (including stops), but by 4pm, they were already taking down signs and closing the feed-stations - no tea or anything at Thurgarton, only 5 hours after the latest start time of 11am, and nothing organised at Eakring, the most distant part of the ride. Any Alison's trip computer said that the ride was 65 miles, not 58 miles!
  The original concept of the 50 mile ride was to enable light weight riders like me to extend our normal range by making a 50 mile cruising route that stays mainly on the plain. The hill climbs should be for the 72 mile sportive route. The start should be restored to 9am, with everybody encourage to leave in that hour, and nobody allowed after 10am. The bunching at the start is part of the pleasure of the ride.
  I had a horrible experience.... losing my iPhone somewhere along the route (fell out of the panier), but didn't discover it till we got to Thurgaton, about 12 miles after I last used it. We texted the phone with my home landline, and thankfully, the phone had been picked up before it had been run over by a car, and the cyclist who found it was one of the few people who was actually behind us. So we waited at Holme Pierrepont and he brought it to us, and collected a good reward!
    Hence... No Photographs!