Gladys on Top Form for the 2020s

Gladys Emmanuel:

absolutely flew up the notorious Buckhaw Brow yesterday morning en route to Clapham Street Fair.   In top gear too despite her 105 years.  We were able to get a good run at it and there was just me as payload.

As per the previous post we could have aquaplaned back down in the afternoon!

A major item of interest for visitors was the newly installed reversing camera on Gladys:

This C21st addition sits inconspicuously under the rear of the car but inevitably the monitor screen is prominent.   Especially with the hood up the rear view is almost nil so reversing without assistance is tricky.  The problem is acute for anybody like me with limited neck rotation.

I imagine that almost all new cars have this kit and I think it would be good if all cars had them retro-fitted.  I think Henry Ford would have approved.

They are absurdly cheap too - £14.99 on E-Bay, postage included!  If I was getting another I would not bother with the LED lights on the camera, making it all but invisible.

Not only does it assist reversing, you can leave it on as you drive along, enabling you to detect angry looking BMWs coming up from behind.

Clapham in the Rain with Gladys

That sounds a bit like a book title doesn't it?  Today, Saturday 27th of July 2019 I drove Gladys Emmanuel to the annual Clapham Street Fair - a delightfully English indeed Yorkshire Dales event which included an amazing array of old cars - mainly by invitation to keep out the riff-raff, y'know.

This year was special.  I was on my own (Pat is doing a grandmotherly visit to Gerrards Cross) and it was the first time for two years at least since I had been able to be there, what with the neck etc.  After the hottest heatwave ever in the UK it decided to be a wet weekend which makes it all the more important to attend in support of good people who organise such things.

The predicted rain came overnight so I set off in the dry, which held good for the morning, the about 1pm the heavens opened. Big time.  By 2pm everybody had vanished - stalls, Morris Dancers, even the Cave and Mountain Rescue had packed up - or been called out, more likely.  At leisure I prepared Gladys for the return home just as the downpour intensified to the extent that I considered delaying departure. Besides lacking windscreen wipers and with tyres that aren't exactly water shifters and rear brakes only that much prefer to be dry.

The journey includes the locally fearsome Buckhaw Brow whose descent is just as uncertain and far quicker than the ascent.   Over Buckhaw Brow we (me and Gladys) experienced heavier rain than either of us had encountered in a very long time.  The road was a temporary river but Gladys coped.  Thank you Henry Ford!   We are now back home and my first job was to look at the rain radar on mylocalweather/settle:



The Sputnik in the middle is Settle.

I am off up to the roof room for a medicinal and recuperative glass of wine.  I shall feel complacently warm and dry.  But I shall be thinking about those people who must be out in it.  Especially the emergency services, the Cave and Mountain Rescue volunteers especially.

Cladding all Down

This morning has seen  the last of the rain-screen cladding and its fixing fails thanks to Hopley's men Chris and Trevor.  The cladding components will be re-used on the new exterior walls which will therefore match exactly with the north end cladding which remains undisturbed:

By mid morning all that remained were the six black vertical channels.  CSi had fixed them well  in 2011 and they took some unfixing!  But unfixed they were, to reveal the existing extensions block-work in its entirety

The squareness and levels of the steels are now being measured to the millimetre before massive steel angle brackets are fixed to the original tower's external wall and those of the now exposed annex.

Things are really taking shape.

Phew What a Scorcher

Well, yesterday was the hottest day on record.


OK, not quite as hot as elsewhere but we are 500 feet above sea level, and in the 'frozen north'.  The weather station screen-grab  yesterday shows almost no wind and a feels-like temperature of 34.2 C.

Inside the main body of the tower though it was a comfortable 24 C.

The red bits on the rain radar on the right are thunder storms but we have largely avoided them.

Our main excitement was the fire alarm activation ay 0103 last night.  Turned out to be a back-up battery failure in the roof room but it took until 0200 to diagnose that and silence the system. 

The dog was mildly perturbed by the noise, which I can still hear in my ears 8 hours later!   Still, proves the system works.

Architects

That title is likely to ensure this is read by at least one Blog follower.  Architect Stuart Green and his erstwhile firm CSi of Hull have been doing a heroic job here - just as they did with the main tower steel and glass-work.   Here is a flashback:

Intricate and unforgivingly hard steelwork placed to the millimetre in an unforgivingly large stone opening in the tower's east end.

Stuart is not just a pencil and paper man - though he prefers those tools to computers, leaving that nowadays necessary stage to others.

I have been acutely aware that I am physically weaker than before my accident - and much more vulnerable.  I have been frustratingly unable to lend a hand.   Not though Stuart.

The other day as the steels were being assembled Stuart was pitching in with the rufty-tufty builders moving and positioning heavy components.  As a mere bystander all I could contribute was 

verbal encouragement.  During one lull in proceedings I remarked to the builders "I guess you don't often get an architect who rolls up his sleeves and gets his hands dirty do you?"

'That's true" came the reply, accompanied by what my father would have called an old-fashioned look.  "But we really like the ones that can do sums."

Baa Baa Black Shed is Very Useful

 Our much travelled black shed which now sits above the north garden is serving time as the site office, meaning the plans are there.   But so too a very comfy chair for those times, like last evening, when it is too windy to sit properly outside in comfort.

Of course, when the extension is finished there will be no view of the upper summer house from the black hut but both will enjoy fantastic views to the west.  The grassy bank to the left will be easily mow-able from the path below.  The upper summer house will have a veranda / decked and railed area on the two sides visible in this view.

First Steels In

Amazing progress today as the galvanised steel components were manhandled up the hill to their locations, there to be bolted together with eight large bolts per fish-plated joint:

click pics to enlarge

British Steel too:

 And here is the fist part of the steelwork assembled.   Everything fitted together perfectly:

There are still some final checks and adjustments to be made before four 18mm holes are drilled into the concrete foundations per supporting leg.  The supporting legs and the outer edges of the steel work are designed to be seen.  The final cladding panels will be removed when electric wires are isolated and removed.  The final three horizontal steels will span right across from the main rear longitudinal beam to the original tower wall, with intermediate supports