Big J

In Norway this week cycling. My view this morning:

Morning everyone. In Norway for a week with my bikes for some alpine climbing fun. It's raining though, so day one is going to be wet. Ah well!

I still pay keen interest to the UK political landscape, even if it doesn't really affect me anymore. I also closely listen to the US election coverage too. I have a lot of time at work on my headset to listen to podcasts. The UK election result is (for the most part) a foregone conclusion. The Tories will be booted out, Labour will have a massive majority, the SNP will lose overall control in Scotland and the Lib Dems will regain a fair few MPs. Reform will take a massive chunk out of the Tory vote, a bit out of Labour, and still (due to first past the post) might not get a single candidate elected. Sunak is fighting the campaign like he's trying to lose. Starmer is saying and committing to virtually nothing as all he has to be is not a Tory. There isn't much air between Tory and Labour policy, sadly, and I hope that Labour move left after election. It'll be great for Scotland to have the Nationalists unseated, though I must admit that I do think Stephen Flynn is a sound guy (even if I disagree with his Nationalism). Farage, whilst a talented orator and populist, is devoid of moral fortitude, and his attempts to get elected to parliament are entirely self-serving. He doesn't give a flying f**k about anyone or anything except for himself and has absolved himself of playing a pivotal role in the clusterf**k that is Brexit. It's all someone else's fault, apparently. How much will change in the UK after the election is debatable. I doubt it'll be much. With rampant inflation, widening inequality and a general aversion to paying tax, it's difficult to plug the budgetary black hole in the UK and address the core issues that voters regard as important. I think one of the biggest issues really is the NHS too. In 1990, the NHS budget was 5% of GDP. It's now 11.3%. With health care inflation far outstripping actual inflation, how on earth is it sustainable? I'll be the first to admit that I'm pretty fattist, but I really have no sympathy for people who through lack of exercise and healthy eating ruin their health and then expect the NHS to pick up the tab. But equally, I wouldn't want to see a US style system, which is patently unfair and represents terrible value for money. It's certainly going to be an interesting 4 weeks. And then a week later, the orange turd gets sentenced. What entertainingly awful times we live in.

Haha! A very amusing thread There is a niche within the UK for low impact forestry. Mike does it far better than I ever did, in terms of marketing and sticking to his niche. I kept getting distracted by all sorts of different kit to expand my capacity, which ultimately didn't work. The niche here in Sweden for small scale forestry is more limited to forest owners. It's too commercial here for anything under 5t really, and even then, some areas (like ours) are really too rocky for machines as small as that. The issue with the really small machines, like Logbullet, Kranman and Alstor is that yes, you can run them very productively and they also cost next to nothing to run. But run them hard and they will break. If I were to summarise it: Small machine pros: easy to transport, low running costs, light footprint, good public perception, cheap to repair Small machine cons: break a lot, limited capability, relatively low productivity Big machine pros: can do virtually any job, very productive, reliable Big machine cons: heavy footprint, bad public perception, cost a fortune to repair when they break (often due to propriatory parts), high running costs, high transportation costs For the record, I no longer work in forestry. I run a resaw line at a large sawmill. I still spend a lot of time in the forest, but it's mainly on my gravel bike. I much prefer it that way.

Hot as fook today. Out with a friend for a leisurely bike ride this afternoon and it got up to 24c in one sheltered spot. More typically 19-22c. Hotter tomorrow. I expect that I'll be in the lake again (jumped in this morning after getting sweaty felling and processing a couple of trees in the garden). The water was only 12c this morning, but will likely be over 14c by the end of the tomorrow.

Summer has finally arrived. It's currently 21c, sunny and with a fairly decent breeze. I was up on the ski slope earlier working on the MTB trails and it felt quite ridiculously hot. Our forecast going forward is very pleasant:

It's been a chilly week or two here. We've had frosts every morning this week, and the occasional dusting of snow. It's to markedly warm up from tomorrow though, and next week is 15-19c with the long term prospects looking warmer still. Finally!

It's been quite nice here this week. A dusting of snow on a few mornings (really only a few flakes) combined with some decent frosts. I've been taking the gravel routes to work on my bike and the wildlife count has been through the roof - the cranes are back in great numbers now, and yesterday I saw 22 deer on my way into work and 25 on the way back. The gravel tracks are still a little damp, but they'll dry out soon enough. It's funny to note that some of my colleagues at work follow English football and they've all remarked on the fact that it always seems to be raining when they watch matches! The climate here is so dry by comparison - especially in the cooler months.

Winter is still trying to cling on. Cold for the last couple of days, a decent easterly and a dusting of snow this morning and yesterday morning. To be up to 11c by next weekend though. Spring will be welcome when it takes hold

Lovely weather here at the moment. Every night a few degrees below freezing (no frost though as too dry) and every day sunny and 4-8c. A little greyer, windier and colder at the weekend, but back to more of the same next week. Feels like spring is coming.

Yep, crack on! Josh has a wealth of knowledge too, having been here much longer than me.

Where abouts are you? As an adult, I've lived in Scotland and Devon, so not the driest places!

That's honestly how I felt after the winter 19/20. Trying to run harvesting sites through constant rain on Devon red clay and Somerset green clay was almost impossible. It started raining on (if memory serves) the 7th or 8th of September and didn't stop until the third week of March 2020. Longest dry period in that time was 3 days and my fairly crude measurements at the house indicated an average of nearly 200mm a month. We had to shut our site down for three weeks in February due to waves of liquid mud sloshing around the site. People complain about the rain here sometimes, but they've got no idea! 😄 All I can suggest is either find another line of work where the weather doesn't play such a large part or emigrate to somewhere with a better climate. No doubt it'll just stop raining at some point in March and by the end of May the farmers will be crying out for rain. Interestingly, a great many fields here are irrigated as a matter of course. There is just the assumption that there will be the need for watering, and infrastructure is in place in the fields to provide it. I don't recall it being commonplace in the UK

Fairly accurate, with the usual drifts in timescales and severity. Being more of a continental climate, it's a lot less changeable and extreme. We genuinely haven't had a single storm over the whole of the winter season, and no wind speeds over 8 m/s sustained. Precipitation is much lower over winter than summer (56mm last month, as opposed to 182.6mm in Cullompton, where we used to live) and even though it can be quite cold (down to minus 22c this winter), it doesn't generally get in the way of getting outside. Total annual precipitation is 480-550mm, with about 100-125mm of that over winter falling as snow. Summer rain is usually short lived and heavy. Still looking forward to spring though. I really love the routine of cycling to work and stopping for a swim 1200m before I get there at the lake. The lake only lost it's ice this week. I might start next week - there are changing rooms and a nice jetty.

Drizzling here this morning. 4c. Due to return to daily frosts on Monday. No precipitation forecast for a couple of weeks at least. Should be quite pleasant.

At least they're doing something proactively. I agree with you though - drainage is the way to go. The geology and landscape is totally different here. Quite a few bits of forest are flooded at the moment with the snow melt (usually planted with alder and birch in those areas) but the sandy soil means there is almost no mud. I went for a 6km walk up the ski slope and back through forest tracks with my wife this morning and the shoes were just as clean when we got back as when we left. It was about 4c and thick mist/light drizzle. It's not just the UK though. I've got friends who cycle in Germany, and their photos on Strava look pretty similar to that footpath.

That's grim. What can you do with that? What if you have restricted mobility? Or a pushchair? A sign of times to come sadly. As the climate warms, British winters will get wetter, windier and warmer. Far fewer frosts, more flooding and increasing difficulty in doing anything outside without needing to be a shareholder in Persil.

My friend's (he's a deputy chief forecaster at the Metoffice) weather station just north of Exeter recorded over 180mm of rain for February (final total still to be confirmed). That's more than Feb 2020, which was the month that resolved us to leave the UK (after wading knee deep in liquid mud on a clearfell site for a month). It's been quite mild here this month, which has resulted in the ski slope closing a little earlier than usual. The ice has only just melted on the lake (after 2 months of it being frozen) and there is no snow no except for on the slope. A few mm of rain is forecast over the weekend with 8c, and then returning to slightly colder weather next week with daily frosts and 4-5c highs. No rain, minimal wind and quite pleasant really. I do feel that the persistently and increasingly wet winters in the UK really inhibit people's ability to get out and enjoy the outdoors. Landowners don't want people on their land as everything gets churned up and the public get sick of getting plastered in mud. There is obviously no actual solution to this, but it's notable that folk tend to spend a lot more time outdoors here in winter, despite the climate being far harsher on paper.

Totally understand the need to tow heavy - I did it for years and years in the UK. What I never understood is why they put so little power into pickups. We had the Navara, the Berlingo Van (160ps - actually towed superbly) and the 4x4 Sprinter. And then I got the V10 Touareg. By modern standards, it's power output wasn't that high (370ps) but it would happily accelerate up a 12% hill towing 3200kg at 50mpg. Any other tow vehicle I've ever had would be grinding away at 25-30. That's always the issue though isn't it. There are vehicles that are outstanding at particular jobs but very few that can manage everything.

If ever I were to get a pickup here, I'd just go American. The roads are massive and empty compared to the UK, and a Yank pickup is more suited to my size. I'd say you probably see as many American pickups here as Japanese. Our family car is a 4x4 T5 Caravelle. Not super cheap to run but it's bloody versatile. I've transported pianos in the back of it, driven very long distances and on Friday pulled a Kia out of a ditch after it pulled too far over to let a car pass.

I think it's just more the extremes. More winter, more rain, more sunny periods. It's like the weather has been turned up to 11. Minus 6c frost last night, but up to a couple of degrees above freezing now. Snow forecast for this evening, but a longer term forecas of generally bleh weather. Scraping a frost some nights, 4-7c through the day. Looking forward to Spring now. We've had 10 weeks of snow cover so far this winter, and I'm sure that we'll have more. I enjoy the snow, but there does come a point where a bit of warmth is welcome.

I had a Sprinter 4x4. It was an impressive machine and damned comfortable too. A bit heavy for offroad work in the SW, though pretty much everything got sucked into the mud there. A lot of people have smaller 4x4 vans here. Dangel converted Citroen Berlingos are very popular and as are 4motion Caddys. We don't have anywhere near the same mud issues here though. I think part of it is probably specific to me. I really, genuinely struggled to fit into any pickup if I had work gear on (chainsaw trousers and boots). I don't know why they build the cabs so small. Vans are so much more massive, internally.