Kippers, "Macaroni" and a B2

Just back from a very nice week's holiday with the family in Whitby, where government anti-smoking regulations are impacting local traditional industries...


The sign, which reads "It is against the law to smoke in these premises", seems strangely at odds with the process described on Fortune's own website... "Smoking is a long-established method of preserving fish and Fortune’s have been producing smoked kippers and smoked fish from the same premises in Henrietta Street, Whitby for over 137 years using unchanged traditional methods which are passed down from one generation of the Fortune family to the next."

While we're on the subject of fish, I spent an enjoyable couple of hours at the Pickering Trout Lake. This is a strange mixture of the family fishing lakes you find in France and a more traditional English fly fishery. Fishing buzzers I was rewarded by four recently stocked juvenile trout around the pound-and-a-half stamp and two real fish (below) before the cold wind and rain got the better of me ...

A nice feature of Pickering Trout Lake is the North York Moors Railway line, which runs alongside the boundary fence - it is good to fish whilst watching trains hauled by an interesting array of steam locomotives pulling into and out of the Terminus a few yards from the lake.

The cheapskate radio enthusiast in me was pleased to find a copy of Gavin Weightman's interesting biography of Marconi on sale (60% off) at The Whitby Bookshop, which was a good read...


The treatment of rival innovators (Fleming, Armstrong, Fessenden, de Forest) is a bit dismissive - but this is a biography of Macaroni, so no more comment.

En route for home, we stopped off at the Eden Camp museum, where the temperatures inside the display huts reminded us how miserable it must have been for the PoWs incarcerated there!

There is a B2 tucked away in one of the displays (dimly lit, awkwardly positioned and, therefore, poorly captured by my iPhone)...


There's also an interesting collection of military communication equipment, some of which is seen here...


There's the usual WS19s, an AR88 (I embarrassed the family by saying "I've got one of those"), some interesting test gear and a collection of field telephones.

A good end to a very good week,

...-.- de m0xpd