Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Thanks to Mick and Gibbo who made contributions to Devon's Day in the spotlight.

__________Devon Done___________

Time to select Friday's County of the day

Only 4 left now...
1 Durham
2 Huntingdonshire 3 Kent
4 Renfrewshire


Random Selection number/County 2 Huntingdonshire for Friday.
Definitive Map
https://wikishire.co.uk/map/#Huntingdon ... 24/zoom=10

Not many towns and Peterborough mostly just outside the borders of the historic county and already covered.

Major towns
Huntingdon
Ramsey
St Ives
St Neots
Falling partly within Huntingdonshire:

Peterborough suburbs including Fletton and The Ortons

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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by mickthemaverick »

Something different for the flag:
BFTW
BFTW
Details here.

The location:
BFTW
BFTW
Some places to consiser:
BFTW
BFTW
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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

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Notice the Chinese Bridge
Notice the Chinese Bridge
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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by mickthemaverick »

Although not on the scale of Devon, Huntingdonshire has had a few differing effects on my life. The young lady I referred to in the launderette story for Devon's grandparents had a smallholding on Wistow Fen where they bred Rottweilers!! My daughter used to holiday up there with her mate for a week during the summer holidays and I stayed up there myself when my ex brother-in-law and I went for a weekend fishing in the fens.

Their stud rottweiler was called Max and his kennel and run were alongside the track which led past their place and on to another two smallholdings deeper into the fen. We used to take much amusement in watching visitors to those places walking past the front garden and then Max's kennel usually to be greeted by a horrendous volley of growling and evil sounding barking with Max leaping at the side bars of his run to protest their passing!! Jim, our host, used to claim he was only playing, but I was never too sure and a number of the passers by fled for their lives!! :-D
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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

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The Wikishire page tells us a little about Huntingdonshire and links to other pages with more.

https://wikishire.co.uk/wiki/Huntingdon ... ngdonshire

In the Famous People from Huntingdonshire it mentions Oliver Cromwell, and Henry Royce.

It also notes that
The county's highest point is Boring Field, near Covington at 263 feet above sea level; the lowest highest point of all the counties.
It also has a list of villages, I make it 86 ish, grouped into 20's here with 1 counted for where villages, have been grouped. So 3 at random for me to pick out 77, 26, and 7 for a spotlight. (77 came out twice had to regenerate)
Villages
Abbots Ripton, Abbotsley, Alconbury, Alconbury Weston, Alwalton
Barham, Bury, Bluntisham, Brampton, Brington, Broughton, Buckden, Buckworth, Bythorn, Catworth, Chesterton, Colne, Conington, Coppingford, Covington

Denton and Caldecote, Diddington, Earith, Easton, Ellington, Elton, Eynesbury
Farcet, Fenstanton, Folksworth & Washingley, Glatton, Godmanchester, Grafham, Great Gransden, Great, Little and Steeple Gidding, Great Paxton, Great Staughton, Haddon, Hail Weston, Hamerton,

Hartford, Hemingford Abbots, Hemingford Grey Hilton, Holme, Holywell, Houghton, Keyston, Kimbolton, Kings Ripton, Leighton Bromswold, Little Paxton, Molesworth, Morborne, Needingworth, The Offords, Oldhurst,
Old Weston, Perry, Pidley, Ramsey St Mary's ,

The Raveleys, Sawtry, Spaldwick, Somersham, Southhoe and Midloe, Stanground, Stibbington, Stilton, Stow Longa, The Stukeleys, Tetworth, Toseland, Upton, Upwood, Wansford, Warboys, Waresley, Water Newton, Winwick, Wistow,

Woodhurst, Woodwalton, Woolley, Wyton, Yaxley, Yelling
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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by Gibbo2286 »

Some clown wrote this on a forum this morning Mick.

"My Rottweilers love vegans, they ate two today."
Man is, by nature, a lazy beast, he does not need twice encouraging to do nothing.
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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by mickthemaverick »

Another of my connections with Huntingdonshire concerned the village of Alconbury. When I purchased my Car Finding Franchise for Phoenix Vehicle Consultants the head office was in Peterborough but the servicing and preparation workshop was in Alconbury. My initial role was simply finding customers and then finding their cars for them. Once located the cars would be purchased by the head office, transported to Alconbury for Preparation and PDI and then delivered to the customer. Because I was the customer contact it usually fell to me to co-ordinate any of the customer's requests with the preparation team at Alconbury and I soon learnt that the best way was to visit the workshop and talk directly to the mechanic foreman as any instructions given to the office staff there generally either got changed or forgotten and it would be me that would have to deal with the resulting irate customer.

Eventually I got to the point that we altered the process and had preparation work completed, then an inspection by myself or other franchisee and finally the PDI paperwork for the customer. That worked much more efficiently and resulted in a virtual abscence of customer complaints. However it did not avoid the one situation which gave me the greatest grief throughout my time working with the company. A customer had contacted me and asked me to find a Vauxhall Vectra SRi. I went through the usual search routines and found the right car at ADT Blackbushe. As the head office had an arrangement with ADT we were able to procure the car before it went through the auction and had it dropped off at Alconbury. The foreman rang me and asked if I was aware that the car had no radio and what would I like him to fit. Trying to be helpful I contacted the customer and advised that we had sourced his car but the radio was faulty so we would have to replace it, did he have any preference? "I'm not bothered as long as I can get the news" he said. Accordingly I advised my man in Alconbury to fit the standard radio and deliver the car at the forthcoming weekend.

Well, the car was delivered and within the hour the customer called me asking why it did not have a cassette player, which should have been standard on an SRi at the time. There followed the easily imagineable back and forth discussions between me, the customer and my Alconbury man which after much resistance from the mechanics resulted in them visiting the customer's house in Bishops Stortford and swapping out the brand new radio they had fitted for a recovered Vauxhall unit from a written off car. I think it was almost a week before the customer was back on to me complaining that his cassette player had chewed up his daughter's Michael Jackson tape and what was I going to do about it. I decided to draw a line at that point, visited my local record dealer and bought a replacement tape, then went to Halford's and bought a Sony Radio Cassette player which I then took to his house and fitted myself demonstrating its performance with his daughter's replacement tape. Finally all was well and I had a satisfied customer, a happy head office and an antagonistic mechanical workshop foreman who thought I'd done his job!! The net result of the whole deal was me losing £143 in total once I set all my costs against the commission I earned from the sale!! A lesson learned again, if you want anything done that is not the norm, do it yourself!! :-D
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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

First up Bury

Yes its got Holy Cross Church and a convenience store but it was where this sport was invented.

Bury Fen is the birthplace of bandy, surprisingly a popular sport accepted by the International Olympic Committee. According to documents from 1813 Bury Fen Bandy Club was undefeated for 100 years. A member of the club, Charles Tebbutt, wrote down the 1st official rules in 1882. He was also contributing a lot to spreading the sport to many countries.

Presumably when the fens were frozen
geograph-1669727-by-Alison-Rawson (1).jpg
So this is Bandy,, popular in Scandinavia and Canada, Ice Hockey with a Ball on a football pitch sized rink, with bigger goals, and more players.



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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by mickthemaverick »

Gibbo2286 wrote: 01 Jul 2022, 13:48 Some clown wrote this on a forum this morning Mick.

"My Rottweilers love vegans, they ate two today."
That reminds me of the postcard on the board of a village store:

Wanted
A new home for my goat, friendly, loveable, will eat anything, loves children! :-D
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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by mickthemaverick »

Another tale about Huntingdonshire concerns my ex wife and her friend. One morning her friend came round and asked my ex if she would take her to the Woodgreen Animal Centre in Godmanchester and help her pick out a cat for rehoming. We had been considering doing the same thing so I piped up " Why don't I drive us all up there, and maybe we can find a cat too?" That suggestion went down very well as my ex wasn't overkeen on driving that far so we set off in her car, me at the wheel. We used her BX19 Estate for the load carrying capacity rather than my Celica of the time.

On arrival we had to go through a 15 minute oral suitability test before we were allowed to go and view the cats in the shelter. Then came the walk round with my ex and her friend leading the way and me wandering along behind glancing in each penn as we passed. Suddenly there was excitement ahead as her mate had found the cat of her dreams, a long haired black and white mongrel with some persian in it. I stopped and glanced sideways at the cage beside me to see a small looking silver tabby crouching in the corner. As I watched him I read the card attached to his cage which said "Wilbur, 5 month old orphan born in the shelter when his mother was run down and had to be put to sleep." As I looked back at the cat he winked at me!!!!!!!! I called my ex to come back and see him which she did. We agreed he was the cat for us and promptly went and made the arrangements to home him. We paid his innoculation fees and bought a carrier as we had gone there off the cuff with no means of taking him home and my ex refused to have him in the standard cardboard carriers they provided. Once her mate had sorted out her own new pet we loaded the back of the car and set off back to Watford.

In the car on the way home I told them about the wink but they didn't believe me and he never did it again in my eyeline, so to this day I wonder if I really saw it but hey we had a great cat for the next 17 years, outlasting our marriage and he went to live with the ex when we split. However the one thing I haven't said is that neither of us liked the name Wilbur and he didn't respond to it anyway so we renamed him having watched him investigate every nook and cranny of his new home. You guessed it we called him Snoopy!! :-D
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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Next up Elton....

No particular claim to fame. Elton John has no connection and it wasn't where he got his first name from.

Can't beat a thatched pub

Image
Crown Inn - geograph.org.uk - 2780305
Crown Inn by Chris McAuley, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Or messing about on the River (Nene)
geograph-4617520-by-Richard-Humphrey.jpg

Just a nice little Village really...
geograph-4900086-by-Mat-Fascione.jpg
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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

The Nene Valley Railway is a gem but it weaves in and out of Huntingdonshire/Northamptonshire but a goodly part of its length is the southern part of Peterborough within Huntingdonshire.

Enough to include this little video on the line, and always nice to see a Spam Can.

Bond fans familiar with Octopussy also get a bit of info from the video...



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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Vehicle Registration Area Codes

I think the only one we need to trouble the Scorers with is EW

Peterborough is a bit of an awkward customer being a bit of a border straddler between traditional Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire, and we covered some reg for the "Soke of Peterborough" in our Northamptonshire meanderings.

So EW it is, and the most appropriate vehicle would be a Rolls-Royce, seeing as Mr Royce was a son of Huntingdonshire.

Let the pursuit commence, Tally Ho!

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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

NewcastleFalcon wrote: 01 Jul 2022, 18:01 Vehicle Registration Area Codes
I think the only one we need to trouble the Scorers with is EW
So EW it is, and the most appropriate vehicle would be a Rolls-Royce, seeing as Mr Royce was a son of Huntingdonshire.

Let the pursuit commence, Tally Ho!
Not a rolls Royce but a nice image
First up someone very pleased with his purchase, a BSA motorcycle and an open sidecar.



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Re: Today's County in the Spotlight:Part 2

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

On to my next randomly selected Huntingdonshire Village Waresley

Straight away its got a decent old fashioned signpost
geograph-331977-by-Martin-John-Bishop.jpg
and St James Church in the village was designed by William Butterfield, a celebrated Gothic Revival church architect, and it contains some fine examples of his work, including "Structural Polychromy" decoration in the chancel of contrasting red, green and yellow tiles. The Great Storm of 1987 destroyed the church's spire but it was rebuilt.

Structural Polychromy has me interested but is there an image of it... :?:

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