Thursday 29th October 2026 - Damage Update, Not Interactive, Dark Skies and Experimenting

Sad to say, I got it wrong when I said in my previous blog, following the feisty winds, ‘the branches have been small, nothing that could result in major damage’.  Yesterday, I was shown some photos of a property, in the village, with a fallen tree on its roof.  Fortunately, the damage to the roof is not severe but it will definitely need some repairs, after the tree has been removed.  The winds have subsided and with warm sunshine today, it’s been a pleasure to be out in the garden raking up leaves and giving the borders a general tidy.  I should add, the winds we experienced at the end of last week and over the weekend were the ‘tail ends’ of storms, Austen and Boelo, which in other parts of the country caused considerable wind and flood damage.

The interactive information unit on the car park is now connected but despite the screen displaying adverts and, words to the effect, touch the screen anywhere for more information, this currently isn’t working.  We walked past it on Tuesday evening.  It was lit and very bright, illuminating the toilet block.  Does it need to be lit at night when there are no tourists about?  We think it’s too bright for an area which is supposed to support dark skies; where light pollution is discouraged.  The unit is quite noisy too.  Installed near the public toilets we could still hear it further along, where the picnic tables are.  Will the touch screen work properly or will it end up like the electric car charges, wrapped up in black plastic because they don’t function as they should?  The photo at the end of this blog, was taken on Tuesday evening. 

I’m trying an experiment.  We don’t like green peppers preferring them red, yellow or orange, when they’re sweeter.  We have a number of green peppers on the plants in the garden and with cooler days and nights along with less daylight hours and sun, they are not going to ripen.  Today, I cut them off the plants, placed them on an old metal grill pan and put them in the greenhouse.  I am hoping when the sun warms the greenhouse it will encourage them to ripen.  My other recent experiment, with the conkers, has left me undecided as to whether they deterred spiders from our conservatory storm porch.