Best Of

Farmers’ fury over ban on watering crops during heatwave
Growers warn the restriction, imposed by the Environment Agency on around 240 farms in East Anglia, threatens significant harvest losses

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/12/farmers-abstraction-ban-watering-crops-norfolk-heatwave/

At least one of my local farms has a private 'reservoir' (it's a very big pond really)

Lots of those in East Anglia. Some are really large. But so is the area of land they water.

A broad area?

An area frequented by tigers. Fen Tigers. None of that man-made mamby-pamby 'broads' nonsense.

The fens are full of failed Anglo Saxon rebels, King Johns treasure and criminals. They are useful only for keeping foreigners out of Norfolk

And that's meant to be a bad thing?

New online safety rules are here - but as tech races ahead, expect changes

But the debate over whether the changes will have the right effect is already raging. In private, the government freely admits the new rules already need an update.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0mn7gmpplo

Read as even more rules and regs.

Some of the new rules and regs don't conflict with previous rules and regs. Which is a pleasant surprise.

I still enjoy - almost daily - being legally compelled to both minimise data retention and also retaining all data for 10+ years depending which law I'm paying attention to that day.

Good morning everyone.

FPT:

Hmmm. Raynor Winn reverse ferret beginning ...

https://news.sky.com/story/the-salt-path-author-raynor-winns-fourth-book-delayed-13395448

One missing piece of information in the story is what on earth the husband was doing for income? If the illness is fake, he should have been working. Keeping up the mortgage on a 250000 house shouldn't have been too hard even with two low incomes - and recoverable even with the alleged fraud.

Middle class people with low incomes are a fascinating breed.

I don't know - I had never heard of them, despite seven figures of sales since 2018.

The latest book has been delayed. The statement is very blurb:

On Winter Hill sees Winn undertake the Coast to Coast walk in northern England, this time alone. “Despite 45 years of walking together, setbacks in her husband, Moth’s, health have led him to see his decline as inevitable, which Raynor refuses to accept”, according to the publisher’s description. “Feeling trapped, she is drawn north, like a migratory bird, seeking the peace and hope that walking brings her”.

The Coast to Coast is a great walk, but it's only 70 miles. Was not @JosiasJessop planning to do it on a pushbike in one day?

Nah, and certainly not on a pushbike!

For some reason the C-to-c is one trail I've got little interest in doing. I've walked all the national trails, aside from the Southern Upland, the Yorkshire Wolds, and a couple of recentish extensions to other trails, but the coast-to-coast leaves me cold. I don't know why.

When I was walking past St Bees Head on my coastal walk, I met some people descending the cliffs. They said proudly they'd just walked from Robin Hood's Bay in a couple of weeks. I replied I'd just come from there in ?five? months, but had come around the long way...

The question is whether I need to do the English Coastal Path when it opens - I've walked the coast before, but that wouldn't have been the 'official' trail, so probably doesn't count...

I did the coast to coast thirty odd years ago before it had become so ridiculously well known.

It was longer than 70 miles that's for sure.

Has the route changed?

We (OK - me) may be at cross-purposes.

My 70 miles is the approximate length of Hadrian's Wall, which I have always treated as the Coast to Coast walk since a friend did it the week after his University Course finished. And I don't really see the point in a "coast-to-coast" which is longer than necessary; that's like building the Panama Canal through Belize, Guatemala and Mexico.

One of my favourite long bike rides was a coast-to-coast-to-coast across northern Scotland. Fortunately, the wind backed through 180 degrees in the twelve hours otherwise I’d have been stranded a long way from my bd for the night.

Farmers’ fury over ban on watering crops during heatwave
Growers warn the restriction, imposed by the Environment Agency on around 240 farms in East Anglia, threatens significant harvest losses

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/12/farmers-abstraction-ban-watering-crops-norfolk-heatwave/

At least one of my local farms has a private 'reservoir' (it's a very big pond really)

Lots of those in East Anglia. Some are really large. But so is the area of land they water.

A broad area?

An area frequented by tigers. Fen Tigers. None of that man-made mamby-pamby 'broads' nonsense.

The fens are full of failed Anglo Saxon rebels, King Johns treasure and criminals. They are useful only for keeping foreigners out of Norfolk

Farmers’ fury over ban on watering crops during heatwave
Growers warn the restriction, imposed by the Environment Agency on around 240 farms in East Anglia, threatens significant harvest losses

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/12/farmers-abstraction-ban-watering-crops-norfolk-heatwave/

At least one of my local farms has a private 'reservoir' (it's a very big pond really)

Lots of those in East Anglia. Some are really large. But so is the area of land they water.