Miscellany

The Banff Mountain Film Festival is probably a world leader in its genre. I think the festival takes place in Banff in October or November, when there isn’t much else happening there. A selection of twelve films then goes on tour to the UK and elsewhere. There are two separate screenings of six films each, in a programme lasting a couple of hours. I don’t know how they decide which venues get which set of films. The tour lasts from 19 January to 24 May.

On Saturday Sue and I were joined by Cary and Penny for a visit to the ‘Blue’ programme at the historic Plaza venue in Stockport.

The films covered the antics of a 97 year old runner, a lady who set out to climb all 82 of Europe’s 4000 metre summits in one season, a nineteen year old woman’s bid to climb grades never before achieved by a woman, an Asian mountain biker, mountain bikers on a near vertical ski run, and the retracing of an 80 year old journey of survival in Australia’s outback.

All quite exhilarating, despite the stiff necks we came away with. (Note our position in relation to the screen…)

Sunday mornings at home have, for me, got into the habit of starting with a 5km jog around Wythenshawe Park. This takes place under the auspices of ‘great run local’ and is aimed at novices and others, with a 2 km route and a 5 km route. About 100 people take part, including many children. As with the unrelated parkrun events, it’s a very friendly community event, with some folk trying harder than others. It’s a good way to get some Sunday morning exercise and justification for eating any cake that might appear later.

Here’s the start line. The children in particular enjoy a lap of the running track at the start, and everyone finishes half way around the track at the end of their run.

Great stuff!

So there was nothing holding me back from eating a fair number of young Kate’s cakes when the opportunity arose later. Thanks Kate.

I’ll finish with a note from last week’s bike ride. When we cycled past the section of the Rochdale Canal that was being drained and cleaned, Richard and I didn’t stop to enquire as to the niceties of what was going on.

Since then, Jan has brought to my attention a video that shows how the canal is drained via a 215 year old trapdoor into the culverted River Tib. The position of the trapdoor is given by this arrow at the edge of the towpath just near where the above picture was taken:

The hidden (in culverts) River Tib flows into the River Medlock, with the water eventually seeing daylight where the Medlock drains into the River Irwell/Manchester Ship Canal.Here’s the link to the 26 minute video:

https://youtu.be/OZeXcH4hmtY

Enjoy!