Knowing your area.

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jansman
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Re: Knowing your area.

Post by jansman »

grenfell wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 9:55 am jansman mentions the bricks from a skip and the free coal . I've a,ways looked out for stuff like that . This week I have ended up with some more garden tools including two hover mowers a petrol strimmer and a petrol leaf blower ( yes I know they are evil but...) . Practically al my firewood comes from similar sources too . I've always had the attitude that if something is offered or iiis free there for the taking then take it and think about what to do with it latter. If it turns out no use to me I can always pass it on to someone else.
With regards to things like foraging I know the locations of certain nearby areas where such and such grows , I know several gardens that have certain plants in or vegetable patches but there are probably gaps in my knowledge , the world isn't static " development " makes sure of that.
I am the same grenfell,grab it first and find a use later.
In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on.

Robert Frost.

Covid 19: After that level of weirdness ,any situation is certainly possible.

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Medusa
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Re: Knowing your area.

Post by Medusa »

Related in a security kind of way. I live at the far end of a village. Lucky enough not to be bothered by many door to door sales people, hawkers and only the occasional religious group knocking at the door. Most of the people who walk past the house are walkers, hikers, people on horseback. school kids, neighbours from further up than us and staff from the local eatery who are normally in some kind of uniform along with the normal delivery drivers. I am generally suspicious and strangers knocking about, strange cars hanging around etc generally catch my eye when I am at home. Being aware of your area is not just useful for resources and free items etc but also makes you more aware of suspicious people and activities.
Growing old disgracefully!
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Arwen Thebard
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Re: Knowing your area.

Post by Arwen Thebard »

Kind of also security related.....
Mrs A was walking the dog on Monday (@7.30am) so it was only just getting light and she confronted a youngish guy of Mediterranean appearance, next to a white Iveco van, who was hanging around very visibly trying to get a mobile phone signal which due to our location is very poor. When she asked him if she could help, assuming he was a delivery driver looking for an address, he gave her a sideways look and made no reply, instead got back in the van drivers seat and sat there looking at his phone. Given that he was parked in a rarely used car park, not known to many people and just 2 or 3 mins off road walk from the landing jetty and boat yard, her suspicions were rightly raised. The van was gone 30 mins later when she went by again, but the incident was posted on our village forum page and to the police, several people in the village commented on similar things being spotted by them. (We are about five to eight hours sail time from the hook of Holland Ostend, our river is tidal and open to the North sea near Felixstowe / Harwich) The point being if you do notice something or someone out of the ordinary it is worth mentioning as others have probably spotted it as well and it could be important in the bigger scheme of things.
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Arzosah
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Re: Knowing your area.

Post by Arzosah »

Oh my word, Arwen, that could have got very dodgy.
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Arwen Thebard
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Re: Knowing your area.

Post by Arwen Thebard »

Arzosah wrote: Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:00 am Oh my word, Arwen, that could have got very dodgy.
We were a little surprised how "uninterested" the police were. :? Better things to do maybe?
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Arzosah
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Re: Knowing your area.

Post by Arzosah »

Better in *their* judgement, maybe :( I'm just reading the first novel that Stella Rimington wrote, the MI5 woman, and its based exactly on that kind of event, "ordinary" illegal/economic immigration being used as a cover for a terrorist. With the addition of an accomplice who's a home-grown terrorist and who arrives on Eurostar (this is all the first few chapters, there's no spoilers in that).

I drove out of my town today in a direction I don't often travel, and I was shocked to see how many new houses have been built. I knew the population had increased by maybe 20%, this looks like 30%. Trackways have become dual carriageway, that sort of thing. If you had to be getting home on foot, and hadn't updated your planning (cough, cough ....) then they'd be a bit of a maze.
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diamond lil
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Re: Knowing your area.

Post by diamond lil »

Reading Arwen's post reminded me of a very odd thing that happened to us a couple of summers ago.
We live remote, and were taking a shortcut to the A68, driving up a very little known single track road over a hill. We pulled into a place off the road to use the phone as the road has no signal for miles - a clearing in the forest that you would never spot unless you knew it was there. And in there we found two cars full of what sounded to me like Romanians. One was very polite and smarmy and came over to say good afternoon.. we were nice and polite back but got out of there asap. Dead creepy!
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Arwen Thebard
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Re: Knowing your area.

Post by Arwen Thebard »

diamond lil wrote: Sat Jan 19, 2019 8:57 pm Reading Arwen's post reminded me of a very odd thing that happened to us a couple of summers ago.
We live remote, and were taking a shortcut to the A68, driving up a very little known single track road over a hill. We pulled into a place off the road to use the phone as the road has no signal for miles - a clearing in the forest that you would never spot unless you knew it was there. And in there we found two cars full of what sounded to me like Romanians. One was very polite and smarmy and came over to say good afternoon.. we were nice and polite back but got out of there asap. Dead creepy!
Did you report it? If so, were they interested?

The authorities say that they need the eyes and ears of the public and when you do phone something in do they follow it up? There have been numerous empty boat sightings and beaching along the shores of the East coast recently and sometimes it is the local harbor masters and private sailors who end up taking them on tow and into safe dock until the police can attend, sometimes days later. I get the impression that the coastal authorities are very short handed and under pressure at the moment.

And to get back on track..... we have a local guy who did an experiment where he chose to live on only what he could forage for seven days, within walking distance of his home. Not easy apparently even in July / August / Sept period. I need to get more info from him if it included river forage and trapped / road kill meat, or just plant based diet. Will let you know later.
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Arzosah
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Re: Knowing your area.

Post by Arzosah »

Sightings like those are really important in knowing your area, I think, and they link in to a series of interviews I did by pm, for an update to my little kindle book. If you *do* ever need to bug out or bug in, and travel through areas you don't usually go through, it could be a lifesaver to know the areas that people congregate, whether they're home grown or foreign. Smuggled and stolen goods (and people!) still have to be dispersed around the country or exchanged, after all. So in some particular places, like the forest clearing that Lil mentions, if you see people there, you know not to stop (and not to back away once they've seen you, which was recently dealt with on another forum).

Taxi drivers are a good source of information: when I first moved to this town, one of them told me about a particular block of flats, a couple of hundred yards away from my house, where a lot of whatever problems the town has were coming from, though I've never had any problems there.

It's right by a marshy little stream designated as a nature reserve, and right by a couple of dozen huge apple trees where I can easily pick a kilo at a time, plus lovely fresh nettles, dock, blackberries, all sorts. Before the new houses were built, deer were known to make their way "in" from the countryside to graze on summer mornings.
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diamond lil
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Re: Knowing your area.

Post by diamond lil »

That's so sad Arzosah, thinking before they built the flat that was a nice bit of land with clean living life on it lol instead of toerags.
No Arwen I didn't report it. It's absolutely in the middle of nowhere, kind of place you could sit all day in dead silence and hear maybe 1 or 2 cars a day go by. The cops aren't going to hide men behind trees for a week or more just on the offchance these people come by again. I just hope they got caught at whatever skulduggery they were up to.