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27-Nov-2021

Last week I had a "saving things" theme, which has coincidentally continued into this week.

Given the way Storm Arwen has been ripping through the country today, I'm glad all my leaf photos have saved that colour for posterity, because I'm not sure there's going to be much of it left tomorrow...

But hey, it's winter, right? Today we get just 8 hours and 5 minutes of daylight (quite a bit less than last week, you will recall). The sun will be going down at 1553 (these things hold a kind of fascination for people who normally live in the tropics...)

The seasons are changing:

pumpkin
Hallowe'en is behind us...

poppies
Remembrance Day likewise...

xmas
And more and more signs of Christmas are appearing, including this adorable postbox hat

But it could be SO much worse:

floodmarker1
It floods here...

floodmarker2
The water level in 2000...

And there's still plenty of blue, so I'm really not complaining:

bike

house

baldertonlake1

baldertonlake2

Anyway, saving things...

SAVING CHILDREN

This week the accolade goes to Ethel Harrison, a local woman who worked as a nursemaid, and sacrificed her life to save one of her charges when he fell into the Shropshire Union Canal.

memorial

SAVING TREES

The sycamores have definitively been reprieved. Yay! More trees; fewer carparks. Definitely the way to go.

SAVING OLD ROUTES

Here's a bit more of the street art on the Newark-to-Cotham rail trail:

streetart1

streetart2

SAVING CANALS

It's a nice walk up to Nether Lock, which they're currently fixing:

bridge

netherlock

workboat

steam
The steam from the beet works is always photogenic (and I love the caramelized sugar smell)

SAVING THE PLANET

We also discovered there is a hydro-electric power plant at Nether Weir: "A single 70KW Archimedes screw turbine is used at the plant, turned by the force of the water running over the weir, which generates enough electricity to supply the average requirement of up to 175 homes. The plant is connected to King’s Marina and supplies it with the electricity needed to run the business, such as lighting and the electric hook-ups for boaters."

turbine1

turbine2

Every little helps...