Sorry for the long break from blogging but there’s just been one thing after another that’s kept me away from scribbling down my thoughts and activities. Now things have settled down a bit. I have free time at hand and can pick up the (metaphorical) pen again. So, welcome to my first blog of November!

Whilst I’ve not had time to write I’ve certainly been busy having hardly moved from Bigland Towers since I returned from Europe. Much of my time was spent editing the 1000s of pictures from my trip but I’m pleased to say that the end of all that is nigh. Having waded my way through Swiss pictures (you can find travel shots here and railway ones here) I moved on to Italy and added travel images here and railway ones here on my Zenfolio website. All the Italian and Swiss galleries contain pictures of the superb Bernina railway that traverses the Alps from Chur in Switzerland to Tirano in Italy. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I did taking them!

Now all that’s left to do is finish the Innotrans pictures (which are slowly appearing here) then shots from my side trip to Deurne in the Netherlands – the only country I’ve yet to add pictures from. Talking of Deurne, my visit was timed rather well as the station is entered in this years community rail awards – and in a section that I’ve spent most of last week judging! My fellow judge and I had 38 stations to look at, from Scotland right down to the garden of England. There’s amazing entries that showcase the best that community railway stations have to offer, and I get to learn something new each time. Now I know there’s one station in the UK whose gardening repertoire includes growing avocados (and olives) – not something I expected to find at all!

As if that wasn’t enough to do I ended up having to run some new pipework to the loo in Bigland Towers due to a leak having developed. As one was lacking I added a gate valve to the pipework, allowing me to be able to isolate the loo rather than having to turn off water supplies to the entire cottage every time I needed to do something with it. The plumbing was accomplished with a little bloodshed and a lot of swearing!

Having completed my tasks by Friday I’ve now joined Dawn at our retreat in Todmorden where we’re spending the week cat-sitting whilst friends enjoy a holiday. To be honest, it’s a break for us too as we both enjoy the shops, restaurants, pubs and market here – not to mention the chance to walk amongst the hills, although the weather’s not been very conducive to such activities. Like many parts of the country we’ve seen a lot of fog and mist these past few days, although that didn’t detract from an excellent firework display that was laid on in the town on Saturday.

Today I handed in my judge’s scoring sheets for both ‘It’s your station’ and the shortlist for the photographic competition, which frees me up to be less office-bound and more mobile. As Dee has to work in Huddersfield tomorrow I’m going to cadge a lift with her so that I can explore progress on the Trans-Pennine Route Upgrade (TRU) which I’ve not seen for a while. Then, on Wednesday it’s our 9th wedding anniversary which will no doubt involve a few drinks and some good food!

As you can see, there’s plenty to blog about this next week. Now’s a good time to be back and out and about as the autumn colours are still evident in the copious woodland that the Calder valley is blessed with. I managed to nip out for a couple of hours this afternoon, so I’ll leave you with this shot as an example.

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Cheers,

Paul