Visit Cumbria in 2006! (Part One)

The Fox Tower Reporter would like to announce a project taking place within this online journal in 2006: Visit Cumbria!

Now I realise many readers reside in Cumbria, but for those of you outside our beautiful county, this project will furnish you with news, information and internet links of many destinations in Cumbria, confident you will follow up by visiting the featured destinations.

The first destination of the project, taking us into the New Year, is the historic city of CARLISLE, the Great Border City. Carlisle has many appealing features, beginning with the Castle, home of the King's Own Royal Border Regiment. Visitors are very welcome to the Castle, which has its own Museum charting the history of the monument. The Castle can be found to the north west of the city centre.

If you enjoy open spaces, just to the north of the Castle is Bitts Public Park, over the River Eden is the Cricket Ground, The Swifts Pitch & Putt to the east (behind the Sands Leisure Centre), over the Eden again (Memorial Bridge) to visit Rickerby Park. Over Memorial Bridge again then cross the bridge over the River Petteril to visit Stony Holme Golf Course. If you enjoy sport, the short tour just taken ends with a view to the south, taking in Carlisle Rugby Union Football Club on Warwick Road, with the impressive sight of Brunton Park Football Stadium, home of Carlisle United Football Club, only a couple of hundred feet away. To visit these clubs from the Golf Course, take St Aidan's Road, joining Victoria Place, follow the A69 to Warwick Road.

I hope this opening article of my project has been of interest, I hope you follow the link above and visit the city in the New Year (or even before!)

I'll have more ideas for Carlisle and the county very soon I'm sure.

Visit Cumbria - Visit soon!

A Cumbrian at Christmas

Meet the lovely Roxanne Pallett, whom you may recognise (if you watch a television) as Jo Styles of the soap 'Emmerdale'. Roxy is a local lass, spending Christmas at home in Currock, Carlisle, where she grew up. She has a website of her own at the News & Star and in the New Year, as well as appearing on 'Emmerdale', Rox will be appearing in 'Soapstar Superstar', the X-Factor contest for soap stars - All singing and dancing, also featuring the highly attractive Sammy Winward (Emmerdale's Katie Sugden).

So there you are, you learn a little about someone in the public eye and I get to place a picture of another attractive woman in this journal. It's a hard life sometimes...

Seasons Greetings

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas

Have a great day!

From the Radio to the Web

At the beginning of the month, I spent an evening or two beside my wireless, and here are the results.
On Monday 5 December, I listened to the Medium Wave band and on Saturday 10 December I listened to a programme on the Short Waves. Almost all have a link to their page in their station name, so please have a look at their sites.

Monday 5 December:

• 1161 kHz: Tentative reception of a broadcast from Ain - Salah, Algeria (No link here, sorry).
• 1170 kHz: Magic 1170, Stockton, Teeside.
• 1179 kHz: Radio Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden (English).
• 1197 kHz: Virgin Radio, broadcasts from London, various low power transmitters on this frequency.
• 1206 kHz: France Info, Bordeaux, France.

Saturday 10 December:

• 9655 kHz: Adventist World Radio, English language service to Africa via Meyerton transmitter site, South Africa.

And there you have my logs for Monday 5 December (Medium Wave) and Saturday 10 December (Short Wave).

I hope you enjoy the links, learning about radio broadcasts from the UK and Europe, indeed, the World.

Whilst I was browsing Google for the Radio Sweden site, I found "Thank You For The Music". Follow the link, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

That's all, take care, good listening!

What I'd like for Christmas...

Hello Everyone...

Just a quick update to say Hello and that I'm fine... I'm sure by now you're fed up of clicking on here and seeing the 'Bonsai Kittens' at the top of the page, so thought I would write a couple of lines of 'trash' to keep the page ticking over... I do care, honest! I'll try my best to come back this weekend and write a few lines about some more radio stations I've been listening to, as well as the run up to Christmas - One week! Hope you're all ready....

See you all again soon!

Bonsai Kittens

If you do follow the link to the Bonsai Kitten website, then do prepare yourself.

'Bonsai Kitten' is, I hope, a passing 'fad' enjoyed by Chinese-Americans and the Far East, in which ten day old kittens are injected with a muscle relaxing drug then pressed into a bottle or jar, so as the kitten grows, its skeleton takes on the shape of the container, unable to move.

Personally, I think this treatment of animals is an absolute disgrace, and as soon as it is stopped the better. Please voice your comments here or on the site, which has a guestbook in which - the cheek! - they say what they do is right! I don't think so some how!

I hope the RSPCA take a look... Must be stopped!

Take care...

Christmas shopping...

... in Carlisle today really was an experience. I don't think I've ever known the Great Border City to have been as choc-a-bloc as it was today. I sympathised with the staff at Past Times who were simply over run ... imagine what it must be like to work in a store as popular as PT was today, it was absolute mayhem!

I visited a couple of other stores, also heaving, had a nice pot of tea with jam doughnut (or two) at a store restaurant before heading up into an outdoor orientated store which, to be fair, was having a 'slow day'. Considering everyone else elsewhere were kicking each other's heads in to get in and out of the stores, this place was like heaven. I'm pleased I did find a place which didn't have the edge of disharmony to it, and so was a little less 'het up' as I made my way back to the Citadel Station to enjoy the train ride home (£3 return with a winter railcard - Beat that you car drivers!)

Don't let me hurry you but you only have 22 more days to endure the madness - then the new year sales! Have fun :0)

BBC sporty thingy ( no more after this, honest! )

After I may have had a slight poke at the BBC last night, re: BBC best sporty person award hall of fame whatsit, I'd just like to make a slight point towards a sportsperson deserving of the Overseas sports person of the year 2005, see picture on the right - yes I think Miss Sharapova should receive the award because, for a start, at least she even tries to succeed in her sport, she hasn't made it to the top by saying "Oh well, another game lost, let's see what else I can do", like a Miss Kournikova, who fell by the wayside in the tennis world - hey, at least she had a modelling contract and a marriage to Enrique Englesias to fall back on - Never short of a job or two then! ( Not too sarcastic, I hope ). Yes, the BBC panel should despatch the award to Maria asap and aspire all young people to take up sport and at least GET SOME EXERCISE!

As for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, I *exclusively* revealed yesterday the award is going to Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff, yet - lo and behold! - the annual sabotage has begun! Fans of Liverpool FC have been voting in their droves for Peter Crouch (eh?!) , yes, the same Mr Crouch who, today, has scored his first goal for the club. So if one goal every three months entitles an award, then Everton certainly are team of the year. Oh ok then, that was harsh on the 'Toffee men'. I meant Sunderland. That's more like it!

You asked me the result of the Test match in Lahore today - Goodness, is that the time? Really...

Over 'n' out...

The Best Ever

Does this qualify, BBC?

I see the BBC are heralding the arrival of their 'Sports Review of 2005' in a week or so, with the award of 'Sports Personality of the year' going to, say, Andrew Flintoff. Has that let the cat out of the bag, I wonder? So here am I, with a nice picture on the right, about to take a tongue - in - cheek look at what might just sneak through into the BBC review of the sporting year, and which sporty events we might see coming up in 2006 and beyond, especially here in England we have an Olympics to look forward to in 2012 ( London over Paris, a result even sweeter! ) and - who knows - maybe even hosting the football world cup finals in 2018! Those dates way seem such a long way off now, but the day will arrive and yes, we will be saying "Hasn't time flown"! And yes, you know you will be saying that too.

So let us allude to the picture in the right and see if El Presidente ( Formerly known as the Prime Minister Tony Blair, all seeing eye of good and evil for the electorate in the UK ) will induct a new award for the BBC peeps, namely the 'Still a sport but with a new name' award, for the example is a man with a pack of hounds who now is taking up 'Hound exercising', which I think is worthy of an award... 2006 could see the advent of 'Longest hound run' which - hey! - might even make a government have a rethink on policies!

The future is young sporting people, especially in the world of tennis, be it Scotland's Andy Murray or Russia's Maria Sharapova, more power to your elbow, young people! Oh but will Timmy Henman win anything in 2006... I'll let you decide that one.

That's the over ( Ashes England 2 - Aussies 1 Hah! ).