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Paul Bigland

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Paul Bigland

Tag Archives: Environment

You learn something new every day…

01 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by Paul Bigland in Community rail, Environment, Railways, Travel

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Community rail, Environment, Travel

In my case, today was the discovery of the fact there’s a Bilberry bumblebee!

I’d been on a Zoom call with the friends of Buxton station as part of my role as a Judge for the Community Rail Awards. Buxton has an excellent friends group who’re a great example of the work station friends do in their community beyond their local railway station. Whilst we were talking about their recent achievements Dave Carlisle mentioned that they’d built a huge flower bed outside the station using old railway sleepers donated by Network Rail (and there’s a long story about getting them from Crewe to Buxton during lockdown, but I won’t tell that here), what surprised me was that Dave mentioned 1/3 of the flowerbed was being dedicated to helping a local endangered species – the Bilberry Bumblebee!

Now, I knew there was many species of bee in the UK through working with my former CRA judge, Paul Cook of the Royal Horticultural Society. One of the delights of visiting different stations during the judging was seeing station flower beds literally buzzing with bees, but Bilberry bees? Here’s what Buxton have been up to (in their own words)…

“Buzzing Stations” project – along with Friends of Glossop Station, FoBS initiated this idea that has crossed the whole Peak District to included stations at Buxton, Edale, Glossop, Hadfield, Hope, Bamford, Grindleford & Hathersage.

The High Peak is home to the Bilberry bumblebee, under threat of extinction. Our work aims to help it thrive and survive. We built a huge (2m x 5m) planter unit from recycled railway sleepers (negotiated donation from Network Rail’s Redundant Assets team at Crewe and encouraged long-term partners, DB Cargo to collect them for us!), filled it with donated compost (from SITA/Suez) and plants, mostly donated (some from Morrisons, through their Community Champion, Rob Harrison). The plants were chosen to provide nectar to our bees prior to hibernation.

We are proud that the Bumblebee Express (the name of the planter unit devised as a media vehicle) was built under strict socially-distanced controls during lockdown.

We also intended to run Bumblebee Safaris from the station, but covid ruled this out, so we prepared a Self-guided version in leaflet form – launched on Heritage Open Day to complement their theme of Hidden Nature, 2,000 leaflets were printed. We were very proud when Jimmy Doherty commended our work as part of his recent TV campaign work, Jimmy’s Big Bee Rescue.

Legacy bumblebee artwork takes the form of an interpretation panel, bumblebees of the Peak District “spotters guide” (we negotiated permission to use the artwork directly with the Artist, Becca Thorne), “Make a Bee-line to Buxton” travel promotional poster (we purchased a special Licence to use the 1950’s image by Kenneth Steel) and commissioned a bespoke “special bees on a special landscape” mosaic from local community Artist, Jo Spencer.

Here’s Becca Thorne’s very attractive work.

It’s great to see the co-operation and information sharing that goes on between station friends groups and the innovative work this inspires. Living in the Pennines in West Yorkshire where bilberries are plentiful and bilberry pies are a local delicacy I was curious to find out if the bees existed here. Sure enough, they do, Here’s an illustration how the bees look from ‘Blooms for Bees’. The fun bit for me is how they remind me of railway workers high-vis!

Copyright Blooms For Bees

You can find out more about this type of bee here from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

It’s fantastic to see the work community rail volunteers are doing in so many ways – despite the depravations of Covid and the difficulties that social-distancing and lockdowns have caused.

Perhaps, when all this is over, you might want to pop along and visit one of these stations and see the great work the groups are doing to grow the railways, help the environment and build their local communities. Your visit might even inspire you to get involved…

You can learn much more about the work and world of community rail here – an if you want to learn more about the Friends of Buxton station you can find them on Facebook here.

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The anti HS2 circus staggers on…

27 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by Paul Bigland in Environment, Hs2, Rail Investment

≈ 19 Comments

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Environment, Hs2, Rail Investment

Regular readers will know of my growing cynicism around certain conservation charities, especially the single-issue ones like the Woodland Trust who play fast and loose with facts and deliberately exaggerate and distort the effects of HS2 on the environment. These organisations are doing the wider environmental movement no favours at all. People like me should be their natural allies (and donors) but I find there’s now a growing list of them I won’t touch with a bargepole and certainly wouldn’t dream of helping financially. Here’s the latest.

Tomorrow, HS2 is due to take possession of land on the edges of the Calvert Jubilee nature reserve at Calvert, Buckinghamshire to begin the early stages of constructing HS2. The reserve is bordered by the former Great Central main line on the East and the route of East-West rail to the North.

Here was the reaction on Twitter of Estelle Bailey, Chief Exec of the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust who manage the site in response to unrelated news about the IPA…

BBOWT

“Destroy” the nature reserve? That sounds serious! There’s only one tiny problem, it’s complete cobblers, as looking at a (publicly available) design map of the area shows. Calvert Jubilee is at the bottom of the map (link here)

calvert

When challenged about her comments and on being shown the above map, this was Ms Bailey’s response.

bailey 2

A “heck of a chunk”? That’s emotive nonsense and hardly a recognised measurement! The map shows it’s also completely untrue. The HS2 line itself passes the edge of the reserve in a deep cutting to cut down on noise and where that edge is on the nature reserve side the cutting will be constructed of vertical piles to minimise land take. The real impact on the reserve is a small auto transformer feeder station and service road, along with a landscaped cutting to drop the existing road under the E-W railway line, plus a narrow road to allow access to the inverted siphon pipes connecting the existing lake with the new ponds on the opposite side of HS2. “Heck of a chunk” Give over!

Here’s how the area looks now on Google maps.

calvert google

Notice that for the little bit of the reserve that’s taken there’s massive compensation for wildlife in the fact that the monoculture farmland to the right of the railway on Google maps becomes a huge area of new planting which is ringed by ponds, meaning there’s no net loss of biodiversity. Exactly the opposite!

Of course, this doesn’t stop some of the local Nimbys bemoaning what they say is ‘irreplaceable’ loss, but there’s several huge holes in this argument.

For a start, Calvert Jubilee is a brownfield site. It used to be a brickworks! Calvert brickworks was a massive undertaking and major employer that finally closed its doors in 1991. The website of the Great Moor sailing club which occupies one of the five former clay pits that’s now called Grebe lake contains the history of the site, mentioning that “Pit No.2 was formally opened as a nature reserve on 20th March 1978 by Sir Ralph Verney, a local landowner, and owner of the nearby Claydon House (now run by the National Trust). This 50-acre lake with surrounding 30 acres of land is now run by the Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Naturalist Trust”.

So, this 80 acre site has only existed as a nature reserve for just 42 years, in which time nature has completely reclaimed it – which says a lot about how resilient nature really is. Not bad considering some conservationists insist it’s ‘irreplaceable’ once gone – as it was when the clay pits were dug and the brickworks was in operation (from 1902 -1991). The work HS2 will be doing will be far more sensitively managed and the disturbance it will cause will heal a lot quicker – as we can see from the experiences of High Speed 1 in Kent and Essex.

It’s the doom-laden predictions of ecological disaster by conservationists opposed to Hs2 that really get my back up. Calvert has proved they’re nonsense once and it will do so again. It’s these predictions of disaster that do the conservation movements credibility no good at all. Yes, we should all do our best to ensure these projects have the best environmental mitigation possible, but when you get such dishonest claims bandied around, it really doesn’t help anyone. Here’s an example from Facebook posted by one of the locals.

griffin

The only catastrophe here is the use of language! They’ve seen the plans, they know the plans, yet they still peddle scaremongering like this. I’ve been critical of HS2 Ltd’s PR and public engagement policies in the past but I’m using these as example of what they’re up against. No mater how open and informative HS2 is, when you’re up against people who deliberately distort and exaggerate like this, you’re facing an uphill struggle – especially when one of these people is the Chief Executive of a charity who supposedly has a professional duty to tell the truth!

HS2 Ltd have countered this misinformation before. They’re quoted in response to yet more scaremongering in this article in the local Bucks Herald newspaper, where it turns out that the ‘heck of a chunk’ is actually just 20%, leaving 80% untouched!

calvert 20

 

Of course, there’s another irony here. The old railway line that Hs2 will be reusing at this point is the route of the former Great Central. The very line some of them tout as an ‘alternative’ to HS2 that should be reopened instead. Only they don’t seem that keen on the idea when it becomes a reality! Is there any finer example of hypocrisy?

Let’s see if tomorrows threatened protests actually materalise….

 

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StopHs2, where are you?

14 Saturday Mar 2020

Posted by Paul Bigland in Environment, Hs2, Railways, StopHs2

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Environment, Hs2, Railways, StopHs2

I’m returning to an old topic to take a look at the state of play with the campaign to stop HS2. The Government’s announcement that HS2 was going ahead in its entirety and the obvious commitment and enthusiasm for the project from Prime Minister Johnson has really knocked the remaining wind out of the sails of those opposed to HS2.

The sole remaining national group (StopHs2) which in reality is just two people (Joe Rukin in Kenilworth and Penny Gaines in Bournemouth) is to all intent and purpose redundant. There’s no point to a political campaign to stop HS2 anymore as it’s painfully obvious there’s no support, exactly the opposite. Many of those who’ve opposed HS2 in the past have accepted the futility of continuing their opposition. A good example is former Minister Andrea Leadsom, the MP for South Northamptonshire, who recently Tweeted a video where she said her focus now is on getting the best deals for her constituents from HS2 Ltd.

With the collapse of the political element StopHs2 have sod all to report as they’re not actually doing anything themselves. Both they and what’s left of the ‘action group’ network are redundant. Many ‘action’ group members were elderly, middle-class homeowners worried about their house prices. They’re the last people you’re going to catch traipsing around muddy fields or chaining themselves to bulldozers. A few of them are still fulminating about HS2 on social media, but there’s been a noticeable drop-off there too.

Apart from tedious tweets about every time HS2 is (or isn’t) mentioned on ‘BBC Question Time’ or sending a stream of pointless commentary and spin about someone being questioned about HS2 in a Parliamentary Ctte Penny Gaines might as well not exist. Joe Rukin isn’t much better. His only usefulness now is in throwing his weight (resist the puns, Ed) behind those protesting on the ground at one of the handful of protest camps on Phase 1 although even those appearances are becoming fewer. It can’t be long now before StopHs2 finally folds as it’s completely redundant.

For once in his life, Joe Rukin is right…

Nowadays most of the real running against HS2 is made by the mixed bag of people who gather under the ‘Extinction Rebellion’ banner and occasionally attend one of the protest camps on the Phase 1 route. These can be divided into three categories.

1. The ‘hardliners’: Those who spend their time living at one of the camps for at least several days. Most are self-employed. They return home every so often to do some work to top up their money supply. They fit the image of the ‘eco-warrior’ of old. Those of us who’re old enough and remember the days of the free-festivals and the ‘convoy’ will know exactly the type of people I mean. You have to admire their commitment but they are woefully misinformed about the issues. There’s a sociological study for someone’s PhD to be had here – and it would make really interesting reading!

2. Route Dwellers: Those who live on the route who have the time and inclination to protest and will turn up when they can. The vast majority seem to be middle-class women. Many seem to be using ‘green’ issues as a fig-leaf for Nimbyism. Most will have absolutely no history of concern for environmental issues before HS2 came along.

3. The ‘good timers’: These are a mix of people who’ll turn up to an organised event, especially if there’s a celebrity name behind it like Chris Packham, or those who’d turn up to the Harvil Rd camp of a weekend to party and get pissed/stoned before going home again. Both are equally useless at stopping HS2 as they don’t actually disrupt any construction activity. There’s one such event this weekend and it’ll be very interesting to see how many actually bother turning up.

What has been obvious from social media is that people haven’t exactly been queuing up to go as this shows.

In the end, the few people going are car-sharing. They couldn’t even fill a minibus, much less a coach!

Quite what this little gathering will achieve is open to question. They’ll have their little ramble, then go away – then HS2 will move in soon afterwards to begin work. Any protesters who remain in the area will be removed as HS2 has applied for a court order which will be heard next week on the 17th March. It names two people, Joe Rukin and Matthew Bishop, plus ‘persons unknown’. The order is to restrain future trespass, effectively making the named areas no-go areas to protesters and nipping any more protests in the bud as such actions will be illegal. This injunction will form a legal template for other areas.

Few of the protesters are willing to risk criminal convictions, so the injunctions will act as a huge deterrent, leaving the hardliners out on a limb. That number’s dwindling already as one of them, a woman called Sarah Green, has been noticeably absent from events of late. The number of people who fit into this group is less than a couple of dozen. Most noticeable are serially failed Green Party Candidate Mark Keir. Alan Woodward, Matthew Bishop, Elizabeth Cairns and Sarah Snooks.

They’re all fighting a rearguard action as it is because their numbers are so small. They’re an inconvenience to HS2 rather than a credible threat. This fact is borne out by all the videos they post on their various Facbook pages or YouTube sites. I’ve never quite understood how a video showing a single protester utterly failing to stop any work at all is meant to act as an encouragement to anyone! Here’s an example from Alan ‘Budgee’ Woodward on YouTube.

Stop Hs2 when you can’t even format a video properly?

A cynic might wonder how many of these videos serve any other purpose than narcissism. Even some of the protesters seem to be realising that it’s all very well providing hours of voyeuristic material for your Farcebook ‘friends’ or YouTube followers but their support very rarely materialises in the real world. It may give you a feeling of self-importance, but they don’t matter a damn when it comes to actually trying to stop Hs2. It’s the same when it comes to raising money, as this appeal shows.

Whichever metric you look at it’s clear the campaign’s collapsing. Here’s today’s numbers for their latest petition on the Government’s website.

After two weeks only having 2700 signatures is the lowest amount they’ve ever had in 10 years…

Notice that only HS2 phase 1 features on the petition? Contrast that to this map of their 2017 petition when they had over 26,000 signatures.

The phase 2 routes are conspicuous by their absence! Rother Valley, the only phase 2 constituency that got into four figures has only got 28 signatures so far this time.

So, politically their campaign’s dead. It’s also hopeless on the ground as the numbers turning up are tiny and ineffective which only leaves the legal angle and antis have pinned their hopes on Celebrity environmentalist Chris Packham’s legal case. But there’s one rather large problem. Packham hasn’t even got permission to proceed with it. Before he does he needs to convince a judge that his argument has merit and there’s a case to answer. If he falls at that hurdle, it’s toast. Even if a judge does let him proceed it won’t stop Hs2 in the slightest as the process HS2 went through to get approval is very different to the legal argument over Heathrow. Watch this case go nowhere…

UPDATE.

So, how did today’s token demonstration in Kenilworth go? Badly, although those who took part try and pretend otherwise! Looking at the videos from the event (and being generous) I’d say that around 250 turned up to posture and parade. They weren’t actually stopping anything of course. It was purely symbolic. The problem? Over 2.5 million folk live on phase 1 of HS2, so 250 is politically and statistically insignificant. The only message it sends is – “is that it?”

Roll on Tuesday…

Why single-issue campaigners are part of the climate-change problem, not the solution.

15 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by Paul Bigland in 'Green' madness, Environment, Hs2

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'Green' madness, Climate Change, Environment, Hs2, Railways

As the countdown to the Government making its final decision on building HS2 the opposition has ramped up their anti HS2 PR, the latest being today’s overly-long 34 page report from the Wildlife Trusts.

It’s a masterpiece of speculation and scaremongering. Long on apocalyptic predictions of what HS2 will do the UKs flora and fauna but woefully short of facts. It also ignores the critical question. If not HS2, what?

The report’s been collated using responses from 14 Wildlife Trusts and a number of conservation and landowning organisations along the full route of HS2 who’ve all been busy staring into their crystal balls in order to predict a future where HS2 has supposedly laid waste to this green and pleasent land. Here’s some examples. Here’s this from the Executive summary.

“HS2 will result in the loss of irreplaceable habitats, including ancient woodlands, veteran trees, wood pasture, old meadows, mires and wetlands. A total of 108 ancient woodlands are known to be threatened with loss or damage under current plans. Many other important wildlife habitats will be negatively impacted by the construction of HS2 and will not recover their existing biodiversity value, under the timescales used in HS2’s calculations”

At the risk of being flippant, the old expression “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” springs to mind here. The idea that we can build anything on the scale of HS2 in the UK without affecting something or someone is pie in the sky. The point is to ensure the least damage is caused as possible, to mitigate the losses and to ensure there’s replacements for what has to be lost. Because (make no mistake) there’s something much bigger at stake here. It’s called planet Earth – but more of that later….

Here’s some more examples.

“1.3 Species at risk
It is anticipated that HS2 will impact a wide range of wildlife significantly”

Anticipated? By whom? This is a good example of the language used throughout the report. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen the words and phrases “risk”, “potential risk”,”jeopardised”, “may”, “likely”,

Then there’s these classic bits of daft scaremongering from the introduction.

“HS2 is a huge infrastructure project, which will cut and divide England’s natural habitats in two, from London to Manchester and Leeds”…”HS2 will cut right through the heart of England, slashing a large part of the countryside in two”.

Err, hello? This is a railway, it’s not the Berlin wall! And, it’s a damned sight more permeable for wildlife than the alternative – more motorways. It’s this sort of blinkered thinking that is so frustrating, because at no point in the report are any alternatives considered – or a comparison of the destruction they would cause even mentioned. Because – if you did that, the effects of HS2 on the environment would look very different indeed to the bleak picture painted by these groups.

It’s that lack of a bigger picture that makes organisations like this part of the Climate Change problem, not the solution. They’re single-issue campaigners. They daren’t look at the bigger picture, because if they did it would make people realise that they (literally) can’t see the woods for the trees.

Great, say they managed to stop HS2. What then? The need for it won’t go away. Instead, the Government would have to come up with an alternative and the only obvious alternative is more motorways. The old axiom ‘be careful what you wish for’ is very appropriate here. If ‘green’ groups think building a new railway is too higher price to pay, what price is several hundred miles of new motorways?

Of course, the stock answer you get from groups like the Wildlife or Woodland Trusts is “not my problem Guv, we’re only here to campaign about UK trees, or newts, or bats”.

Which brings me back to planet Earth – if only I could bring these groups back there too!

Transport is one of the biggest emitters of Co2. If we’re serious about tackling GLOBAL climate change we need to get modal shift from road and air to the greenest form of mass land transport: Rail. But we can’t do that without the vastly enhanced rail capacity HS2 gives us as our existing network is full and can’t be expanded in any meaningful way. Oh, we can tinker around the edges, removing a few pinch-points here and there, but the truth is we need a new line. The rest of the world has realised that High-Speed rail’s the solution, but many here are too blinkered, too conservative and (seemingly) incapable of grasping the scale of the problem.

Great, we get to ‘save’ a tiny patch of ancient woodland. For now. But in doing so we put the whole ecosystem at risk. Not just in the UK but across the planet as there’s a clue in the name ‘Global Warming’.

This is ultimately my frustration with these supposed environmental groups. Their inability to see and deal with the bigger picture won’t save anything. Just the opposite! There’s another hypocrisy here. ‘Green’ groups constantly shout about the ‘climate emergency’ and the need to act NOW! Yet, when it comes to building HS2 they say “not so fast, we must go back to the drawing board”, thus delaying the means to enable modal shift for several years if not decades. Some ’emergency’! It’s taken us 10 years to get to this point, yet HS2 still won’t be ready for years!

I could spend hours critiqueing the rest of the scaremongering in this report, but I think you get the drift. I want to see the environment protecting too – after all, I’ve got to live on this planet as well. I just wish we had a decent environmental and truly ‘green’ party in the UK, because what we’ve got now is just doing the road lobby and oil companies jobs for them.

Despite all this there has been one very refreshing thing and that’s HS2 Ltd finally taking the gloves off by starting to challenge these factual inaccuracies and spin rather then leaving it to people like myself and Gareth Dennis. Here’s a sample of their ripostes on Twitter.

This challenging of factual inaccuracies and willingness to stand up for the project rather than rely on people like myself, Gareth Dennis and RAIL’s Nigel Harris amongst others is long overdue but nevertheless welcome. Maybe now we can start to cut through the crap and talk about the serious issues as construction of HS2 gets underway.

UPDATE: 16th January.

I know I’ve been a stern critic of the environmental movement in this blog, but I’m going to share this with you as evidence of why this is. Here’s a tweet from Craig David, who is the CEO of the England and Wales ‘friends’ of the Earth (FoE).

This mind-numbingly banal and intellectually bankrupt comparison is the best that a CEO can come up with? Seriously? If anything makes me worry for the future of the planet it’s the fact that these people are the ‘leaders’ of the ‘green’ movement. Talk about out-gunned and out-manoeuvred. Christ on a bike…

Sunday miscellany

11 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by Paul Bigland in Calder Valley, Environment, Flooding, Miscellany, Mytholmroyd, Rail Investment, Rail Moderinsation

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Calder, Environment, Flooding, Miscellany, Rail Investment, Rail Modernisation

It’s another dismal day here in the Calder Valley as we’ve suffered from high winds and waves of sleet and snow showers. In fact the whole weekend’s been a washout due to the changeable weather. It’s prevented me cycle training and left me catching up with household chores, paperwork and some picture editing.

Some of the pictures are from Friday’s visit to nearby Mytholmroyd, which is still recovering from the devastation caused by the Boxing Day floods of 2016. For those of you unfamiliar with events, have a look at this article from the Guardian newspaper.

Whilst most homes and businesses have now been re-occupied, a row of shops that were sandwiched between the main road and the river Calder were seriously damaged and have been demolished by the Environment Agency, they’ve been replaced with these ‘Lego’ blocks which form part of the new flood defences that are still under construction around the town.

DG289401

The view from the road bridge over the River Calder, showing the new flood defences which occupy the site of former homes and shops.

A few hundred metres up the road, behind the Shoulder of Mutton pub the Environment Agency’s rebuilding the shattered banks of Cragg brook that were overwhelmed. Flooding the pub, nearby homes and the housing estate opposite.

DG289403

Looking upriver along Cragg Brook towards Cragg Vale. The housing estate behind the wall was under several feet of water after the floods.

DG289410

Looking in the opposite direction to the previous photo. The Shoulder of Mutton pub can be seen on the right. The River Calder is a few hundred metres beyond the railway viaduct.

I only hope that once the Environment Agency’s finished the work Mytholmroyd will be protected from such devastation in the future and the problem isn’t simply moved downriver…

On another front, the resignalling of the Calder Valley line is continuing apace. More and more new signals are springing up along the route. Some are straight replacements for older signalling such as this pair at Mytholmroyd where the new signal has been moved forwards

DG289394

Others are new, installed to reduce the size of the signalling sections, such as this one in Sowerby Bridge which is protecting the station.

DG289502

What’s immediately noticeable about the new signalposts is the absence of ladders that previously allowed S&T staff to reach the signal head. These have been made redundant as the post is hinged at the base so that it can be lowered to the ground.

It’s now Sunday evening and the weather’s deteriorated as the temperature dropped. One minute you could see the other side of the valley – the next you were lucky to see 50 metres!

20180211_152624

The calm before the next storm. Looking down over Sowerby Bridge from by the Wainhouse Tower. The next snowstorm is coming in from the West  (to the right of the picture).

The wind whipped the snow flurries so that they were almost horizontal. Then, suddenly – blue skies would appear, giving a blissful few minutes peace before the next lot of flakes stormed in. We abandoned attempts to go walking and sought solace in the local pub for an hour of fun and laughter with friends.

20180211_155200

The Big 6 is a traditional pub of the old school. There’s no wifi or TV, you go there to drink good beer and engage in conversation with people. Beer like this…

20180209_183602

After the pub the two of us settled in for a productive evening at home. Dawn had promised to make another batch of her Thai style chilli pickle so the pair of us spent ages cutting up a large bowl full of red and green chillies which produced these jars full of weapons-grade pickle for ourselves and some friends.

20180211_210429

This stuff isn’t for the faint-hearted & should probably be banned under the Geneva convention – especially the next morning when its had chance to work its way through your digestive system. Johnny Cash summed up the effects perfectly…

Goodnight folks!

 

 

 

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