Big J

The Touareg is now at it's new home with Andy (Dumper) in Essex. It was lovely to meet him, and for his assistance with Stansted parking and such like I miss it's ludicrously comfortable pace, but I couldn't justify it anymore.

I take your point, but (objectively) as a form of heating, £130/cube is much to expensive. We get through a cube a week if it's properly cold. It's the massive inefficiency in the whole process from start to finish in the UK that means that we have to charge so much more. I'm in Sweden this week and a cube of perfect, dry birch logs is £50 delivered. That's standard. But then everything is harvester cut here, there is a flawless road network and production is quick and easy. But then think of the work we have to do to produce a cube in the UK. At least with us, the job we're on presently, much of the timber is winched, it's then processed by hand (with assistance from a 14 tonner with a grab). There is a primary extraction by little forwarder to trackside and then a secondary extraction by tractor/trailer. Then the lorries that come to site only have one way in and one way out due to half a dozen width restricted roads and weak bridges. So conceivably there could be a customer a mile from site that would have to haul the timber 10 miles to avoid those. Then the cost of production is sky high too. Yard space is rare and at a premium now due to so many barns being converted for housing under the class Q planning exemption. What you can find is often wholly inadequate, muddy, doesn't have 3 phase, doesn't have lorry access etc. And all the planning issues about change of use and NIMBY neighbours who will happily buy your logs whilst dobbing you into planning because their utopian vision of rural life doesn't actually include anyone working rurally. Then there is staffing. It's so hard to find reasonable, reliable guys to process logs at a fair price. And then there is delivery - trying to shoehorn your delivery vehicle down daft little lanes and driveways to drop off only 1 or 2 cube at a time because no one will order in advance. My point is this. £130 is way too much for a cubic metre of firewood, objectively. But within the nuthouse that is the UK it becomes subjectively justifiable. The cost of doing business here is extremely high.

Thanks for posting the figures. There is so much misinformation and fear mongering about heat pump systems in the UK at the moment. I think the primary issue is that they serve to highlight just how shocking our insulation levels are here. Of course they aren't going to be economical in your average UK home with average insulation. We insulate our homes like we insulate our cattle sheds. We have a Swedish friend a few miles away whose parents don't like to visit (Devon) in winter. They are from Mora, which is at the start of the mountain chain that divides Norway and Sweden. The beginning of the wilderness really. And they say they find it uncomfortably cold inside and out here in winter. It's the driven rain and damp that means we really do need good insulation here. The heat loss from a wet wall is extraordinary. The best way to illustrate this is to stick your hand out of a car window at 50mph when it's cold outside. First do it with a dry hand, then with a wet hand. I wish more people took the climate in the UK more seriously. We seem to deny that we need proper insulation or heating, and then on the flip side endure weeks and sometimes months without A/C in summer because "it doesn't get that hot in England". The funniest thing I saw recently was a reply to a comment I made on a Guardian article about heat pumps. I raised the issue of insulation, and that we need a lot more of it. A chap replied to me saying that if he insulated his house more then the heat wouldn't be able to get out in summer and he'd overheat. It really was a Picard faceplant moment. 😆

Its a ridiculous amount, I know. The house we're in presently is the worst insulated I've ever lived in. It's roasting hot in the summer and very cold in winter. We use a little bit less than our last house in Scotland, but then that one was 30 square metres larger and the climate is colder. I'm in Sweden at the moment and the houses here feel so warm and comfortable by comparison to home. I was out walking with some German friends who recently moved here and parts of their house is quadruple glazed. With ground source heating, they are very warm indeed.

Jammy barstewards. We've had 70mm of rain in three days and this is what my ground conditions look like:

Kranman are a great company to deal with. Excellent support and lovely people. I've been to the factory and they take pride in producing top quality machines.

Correction - 40mm in the last 24 hours according to the rain gauge. 70mm in the last 2.5 days.

After 11 days of beautiful weather, we're back to full on autumn. A little over 40mm of rain in the past 2 and a half days, and it's coming down very heavily as we speak. My site was about an inch deep in water this evening. Everywhere 😲

I did think about doing the same when I had one too. I don't imagine that 6t will be an issue for splitting Swedish timber. It's so straight and knot-free that you sneezing at it would probably split it.

She's doing well and I've adapted my work a bit to accommodate her. I try to avoid doing long distance extraction, and she generally does the full morning tramping about and then sleeps the afternoon off. She's happy and eager to get out Broadleaf woodlands like that aren't too common there, and whilst I'm enjoying myself at present, I won't miss them. Big ugly trees (from a timber point of view) and no brash to run on.

Very much so. It's wonderful! Some cracking days of late.

I agree. The notion of two people trying to physically injure each other as a form of entertainment doesn't hold much appeal. I sparred in semi contact taekwondo and part of its appeal was the restraint. The fact that you could spar against people of lower and higher ability, male or female and come away from it unscathed. I enjoy watching some sport, and having completed a bit in various sports, have enormous respect for the discipline and achievements. Boxing is anachronistic though. As you say, it harks back to a more primitive time, and the entire sport is entwined with ego and obscene amounts of money, which for my part reduces it's appeal still further.

So busy now. Finally finished the conifer first thinning (700t) and a quick stint at the Woodland Trust site to clear 95 cube of ash cut by horse loggers. Then uplifted to the National Trust site for a sneaky week to try to put most of what the chainsaw operatives have cut in the past 4 weeks trackside. It's not possible of course (well not in 5 days) but I should get close to 450t in that time. This was load 17 of 20 today in 6.5hrs on the machine, and an estimated 80-85t at trackside for the tractor to haul out to the loading bay. It's funny how mentally taxing short distance forwarding is. You've got very little time to collect your thoughts on the drive out as it's all crane work.

I don't claim to know much about boxing. I have followed Thor's transition to boxing (a bit) in order to fight Eddie Hall. I respect the training and the athleticism, but as a sport it's very dull. I competed at a high level in taekwondo as a teenager, winning a couple of national sparring competitions at green belt. Being very light with an extremely long reach was very beneficial. My point is that I feel that the eastern martial arts are much more elegant and require a more rounded fitness, strength, flexibility and skill base. Boxing is very one dimensional.

Heavyweight boxing seems to be mostly about two big, sweaty and slightly dazed men having a cuddle. I just cannot see why it's so popular. I've tried watching the fights, I really have. It's just not elegant or entertaining. Unless I'm missing something....

Peat isn't mud. It's heaven 😍

I've never come across a Scottish whisky that I would describe as too peaty. With a few exceptions, I just stick to Islay single malts. Everything else is too sickly sweet. Ardbeg Uigeadail is my first choice these days. Laphroaig Quarter Cask my second. I actually find Speyside whiskies pretty nauseating. A friend described them once as 'breakfast whiskies', as in you'd have them with your cornflakes

Outstanding 😆

Really sorry to read this Gary. She was a beautiful mutt, truly.

There's been the odd day with a bit of sun this week but a crap load of rain overall. It is now absolutely slashing is down, battering the windows.

According to the DVLA, the plate sold last in July 2019 for £53k. Remarkable 😬

Travelling back from Derby yesterday, I was somewhere just north of Birmingham and a track edition (or at least it looked like it) Aston Martin DB11 pulled out infront of me. Immaculate and a striking car. I say that as someone who isn't a fan of Astons. What was odd though was the number plate, which was "2020". It seemed a genuine plate, and was on a very expensive car obviously. Punched that into the DVLA and it's apparently invalid. Has anyone else seen this mysterious Aston on their travels?

Yes, Devon. Prices have gone up around 20% in the past 18 months. We were close to buying a house in Autumn 2019, but winter 19/20 almost crippled us with the crashing log price and hideous weather (6.5 months of almost continuous rain). Then covid to top it off. We moved here primarily for family reasons. We have a lot of family in the area, which is of course lovely, but nothing else about the move has really worked for us. The timber market is incredibly unstable, the weather is generally awful (we've had about 5 inches of rain on site in the past 6 days with another 2 inches to come in the next 48 hours) and the infrastructure for work is a tricky. Beyond that, the actual quality of life is pretty poor. I was up at my mums today in Derbyshire. I don't often go back due to time constraints, but on a long walk I was really struck by the profusion of footpaths and rights of way, the feeling of space within villages and houses are far more affordable there, being about 20-30% cheaper than Devon. I have two young children and a starter home would be entirely inadequate. I've put my money into my business and as such missed the boat on a first time buyers house. I've made some good financial decisions and some poor ones too. Not everyone has the clarity of vision aged 20 to buy their first house, or even the capacity to do so. Entry to the housing market shouldn't be predicated by either being in the right place at the right time, or having family wealth.

Can get a one bed flat in milton keynes for about 100k I think. Personally I wouldn't live in one if they were giving them away but hey ho. The absolute minimum you can buy a reasonable family house here is about £500k. By reasonable, I mean 4 beds (so as to have a spare for visiting family - important when they aren't just around the corner) and about 130 square metres on a plot that isn't a postage stamp. It's genuinely out of reach of us, and so many others.

I'm very happy for your friend but how ridiculous is it that you have to hide building a house on your own land? The planning laws need to be overhauled to favour self builders and small, sustainable developments. At the moment the government is in the pocket of the big developers like Persimmon.