0Scaife family history, ancestry and heritage

Published by & filed under Musings.

I’ve been work­ing on a fam­ily tree for the last few years and one of the things I’ve dis­covered if that almost any­one offer­ing inform­a­tion wants money in return. Whilst I have mem­ber­ship of one or 2 of the most well known sites I have ofdten stumbled across inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions on oth­er threads but have been unable to post a reply without sign­ing up, or someone has left an e‑mail address that has since been aban­doned. So I thought I’d share a little inform­a­tion here about some long dead ancest­ors in hope that someone search­ing for inform­a­tion might find it and get in touch
… Read Full Art­icle

0Local Wildlife

Published by & filed under Environment. Last updated .

I’ve recently taken an interest in the loc­al wild­life pop­u­la­tion as news of spe­cies decline is always in the news and we have done lots loc­ally to try to help the wild­life thrive. I could­n’t think of a good reas­on not to share the pic­tures some­where so here they are

… Read Full Art­icle

0Helping the Environment

Published by & filed under Environment. Last updated .

I’ve been mean­ing to start writ­ing some “polit­ic­al” art­icles for a while, and thought I’d start by shar­ing some ideas for little changes you can make that are good for your envir­on­ment and often good for your health and your wal­let too. Where I live in Eng­land we only have 2 real choices for gov­ern­ment: a party that believes in indi­vidu­al liberty and cap­it­al­ism in an almost totally unres­tric­ted sense, which leads inev­it­ably to sig­ni­fic­ant wealth dis­par­ity; and a party that believes to vary­ing degrees in some policies to redis­trib­ute wealth and a fairer soci­ety but also seems to find itself want­ing to over-reach and inter­fere in areas of peoples lives that gov­ern­ment need not and should not meddle in. Some­times it is genu­inely dif­fi­cult to find a bal­ance, but very often both parties miss easy wins. My sug­ges­tions are for those kinds of “easy wins” and whilst not all of them are suit­able for every­one, I hope every­one can find some­thing use­ful
… Read Full Art­icle

1Collection of model railway designs

Published by & filed under Model Railway. Last updated .

In the last few months I’ve made a col­lec­tion of mod­el rail­way designs as pos­sib­il­it­ies for a new lay­out.  Whilst I wont end up build­ing most of them I thought I’d share them here in the hope they might inspire oth­er people.

… Read Full Art­icle

0EU MapTravel Books

Published by & filed under Trips. Last updated .

Read­ing is one of the great joys of being on hol­i­day, but since most of my art­icles are about trav­el­ling around Europe, I’d like to use this art­icle to recom­mend some European travel books spe­cific­ally.

… Read Full Art­icle

0Controlling pests on indoor plants

Published by & filed under Musings.

I grow toma­tos, cucum­bers, chil­lis, lem­ons and olives in a south facing con­ser­vat­ory.  Over the last 5 years I’ve suffered with a range of ver­min attack­ing my plants, it seems to be a dif­fer­ent type of pest each year after I’ve conquered the pre­vi­ous pest.  Below I cov­er a few suc­cess­ful ways I’ve found to con­trol a range of pests.

… Read Full Art­icle

0EU MapMust See Europe

Published by & filed under Trips. Last updated .

There are lots of “must see” lists for Europe, but they all seem to fol­low one or anoth­er stand­ard for­mula: either selling hol­i­day links, or a blog­ger pick­ing out their favour­ites in their own coun­try.  Many of the longer lists tar­get US read­ers and include lots of loc­a­tions in the UK, which those of us in the UK can vis­it at a week­end without the time or expense of a more sig­ni­fic­ant break.  Below I will try to bring togeth­er a healthy list of the places I’ve loved and still want to see in Europe, exclud­ing the Brit­ish Isles.

… Read Full Art­icle

0EU MapTravelling Europe

Published by & filed under Trips. Last updated .

I have already writ­ten twice about plan­ing a driv­ing trip around Europe, but since those art­icles I have also done a non-driv­ing European trav­el­ling hol­i­day, and am cur­rently plan­ning anoth­er trip. This post is inten­ded as a com­pre­hens­ive start­ing point for plan­ning any trip around Europe.

… Read Full Art­icle