52 days ago
As we drive back from Chester we pass over the small trout river Alyn which flows into the Dee a few miles downstream from us. By yesterday afternoon it had already burst its banks. The Mrs texted through a flood warning for the Dee and by the time the kids and I got home the waters, normally a good four or five feet below the old orchard, were lapping at its edges.
68 days ago
The preparations for an 1880/81 North Dakota style “long cold winter” continue. My wood shed may be bulging but what happens if President Putin cuts off the UK’s gas supply just as a blizzard sweeps up the River Dee making a journey across the farm yard to my wood stack both hazardous and chilling?
120 days ago
Sharestock is looming. The date is September 7. The lawn is getting into shape. A team of helpers led by my two eldest daughters are lined up as are the speakers. All we need now is you! For what, I increasingly think, will be my last ever show.
150 days ago
The strawberries keep on coming but as you can see below we now have blackcurrants aplenty and the first raspberries, golden and red. It is almost time for summer pudding. Meanwhile I have been active in the top field where one day I hope to keep goats.
151 days ago
The car below is another every day reminder to me of how everything the State is meant to do seems broken despite taxes being at a 70 year high and debt being almost 100% of GDP, on bodged numbers. The real number is even worse. And so to a pal from Oxford who asked and to anyone else who cares, I just say that I do not really care who wins. But egged on by a vile establishment hit job on Nigel Farage, with whom, as long term readers know, I have often disagreed, I am going to vote ReformUK just as a screw you vote against that same establishment within the political and media class GroupThink. The lavatory seeping shit into the River Dee photo article is HERE and expressed a similar sentiment to this podcast.
285 days ago
The water is not that high on the Welsh side. It has just reached the first trees of the lower orchard. In summer they sit a good five feet above the River Dee. But as you can see in the second photo, over on the English side it is water water everywhere. As my kids put on their Welsh shirts for the rugby, the infidels are already well under water.
315 days ago
I start with the weather. The Rain in Wales only stops when it hails. The River Dee is rising and will, I predict, breach a bank tonight – this relates to my great obsession in life (other than Cheryl Cole ) as you can see HERE. Then it is into Optibiotix (OPTI), Pennpetro (PPP) and Victoria (VCP)
395 days ago
The River Dee which flows at the edge of my fields is meant to be a clean home to salmon and trout. Its banks should be home to a range of wildlife including Kingfishers, I saw one a few weeks ago, and a rare sort of dragonfly. My, now water-logged, fields are home to frogs, toads, snakes, aquatic birdlife and much more. This morning, as you can see below, there is a large compostable toilet stuck on the English side of the river, leaking shit. The story of that loo and its shit is one which leaves me in despair at a broken Britain with a Police and local council ( Chester and Cheshire West) who are not underfunded but are just useless, protecting those who break the law and telling we honest taxpayers to go fuck ourselves.
398 days ago
Yesi am a geek and this is my pet subject. Outside at the edge of my garden and fields, the River Dee is running high and fast and with non stop rain for most of the past day set to continue overnight, I am braced for the waters to breach the lower orchard. And that prompts me to revisit my specialist subject of water levels in the reservoirs of the United Utilities region and especially here in Wales.
477 days ago
I start with a question: £100 + 3 points or a speed awareness course by Zoom? Then I look at the track record of the new bird CEO at BT (BT.A) and ask why she is worth £1.1 million ( plus up to 200% bonus) a year? Then Wandisco (WAND), Chill Brands (CHLL), Optibiotix (OPTI), Skinbiotherapeutics (SBTX) and IOG (IOG)
600 days ago
Back in August of last year the sight of a parched Lake Vyrnwy in the hills about an hour from where I live was a posterboy for those predicting more and more droughts thanks to man made global warming. As someone who remembers my local reservoir drying up in 1976 but refilling very quickly the next year I thought that this was media bull at the time and with data from United Utilities and a site visit I have demonstrated a number of times that I was right and the MSM was talking GroupThink cock. But the mainstream media has not apologised, indeed over at the Guardian they have doubled down.
680 days ago
For what it is worth these are the 30 most read articles on this website during 2022. And there are some bloody good pieces here using the sort of hard data that the mainstream media ignores as it carries on spouting GroupThink gibberish. Enjoy.
680 days ago
I am sorry if this sounds a bit obsessive but I like dealing in facts, that is to say what has happened, hard data. Those in the Global Warming GroupThink, the followers of the Doom Goblin Greta Thunberg and employees of the BBC engage in wild speculation. And so I return to my specialist subject of reservoir levels here in Wales.
730 days ago
The global warming cultists and their publicists at the BBC and across the liberal deadwood press in Britain had a field day in the summer of 2022. On July 19th the record high temperature for the UK of 40.3 degrees centigrade was recorded. The recording station was at RAF Coningsby at the side of a runway being used by after-burning Typhoon jets. And if you suggest that that might be a bit of a fix you are obviously a global warming denier, not following the experts and might as well admit that you are a Nazi right now. A month later came the dramatic photos from Wales…
782 days ago
For some reason, I am snowed under with apples from the orchard by the river Dee this year. This week I brought in two 25 litre buckets of apples. I could easily bring in another twenty if I had the time and energy to process them all and enough bottles to store the juice in.
820 days ago
It s just 16 days to Sharestock and I bought the big tent for it yesterday!. It will not just be about shares to short. Peter Hambro will talk about gold and how to play it. Chris Bailey will talk about making money from long only value investing in a bear market and 3 CEOs will face a 15 minute grilling from me, including Optibiotix boss Steve O’Hara and Cathal Friel of Open Orphan. But the short sellers presenting are legends.
828 days ago
“Can I do my chat with you via video link?” said the least well-known person attending Sharestock on September 10 as a CEO speaker? “No! You are uninvited” said I. He missed the point about this event, it is personal. You can listen to all the speakers on stage but then collar them in the drinks tent before or afterwards for a one to one chat.
845 days ago
I start with a few reflections about being alone on holiday for the first time in two weeks. It is a short respite but blissful. Then it is onto Julie Meyer and why she is so wrong about the economic prospects of her latest bolt hole, Greece. It is doomed. Then onto delusion among shareholders in the fraud Supply@ME Capital (SYME). And finally why you should book your tickets for ShareStock, on the banks of the river Dee in Wales, on September 10 HERE
898 days ago
Just like the Greek Hovel - which, in reality, is a luxury eco-palace (book here) - the Welsh Hovel is not really a hovel, either. It is a listed building that, after three and a half years, is almost entirely renovated. I refer you to the “new” annexe.
915 days ago
On June 11, myself and seven other rogue bloggers will walk the 34 miles from Winchester Cathedral to Woodlarks. I can now say that I will complete the walk after yesterday’s training effort of 23 miles. But that is three weeks away so now is a great time to sponsor me HERE. To encourage you to donate, let me tell you about the pain of yesterday and show you the reason: the cows, or bulls as they were advertised.
1003 days ago
Later on I have a few snaps of the River Dee at the Hovel itself but first a few from last night and this morning from the 1300s bridge about 1000 yards downstream over to the infidels in England. First a couple from yesterday looking downstream on the Welsh side.
1024 days ago
I have abandoned the young mums group on Tuesday’s as I just seemed unable to make any small talk with alll the other primary carers. It’s partly down to my own lack of social skills and partly down to the fact that I was the only person in the room not to have certain shared experiences as a young mother. Instead I am starting my training for Rogue Bloggers for Woodlarks with a weekly walk with Jaya on my back. To date I have been doing two and a half miles every day and that will continue. But now, Tuesdays and one weekend day will see a longer bonus walk.
1053 days ago
As you may recall my thirsty daughter Olaf has been brought up in Islington and has therefore picked up some freakish liberal traits such as wishing to not only rejoin but to work for the accursed EU, bleating on about polar bears and the global warming cult and being a pescetarian. That means she will not eat meat so for her late Christmas meal with us, I prepared a whole salmon, not hooked in the Dee from our garden but bought in. Starting to fish in the river is a resolution for 2022.
1061 days ago
A brief walk was planned with my kids and the Mrs and her sister, brother in law and 17 year old niece before they headed back to South Eastern England. The destination, the Telford built aqueduct that takes the Llangollen Canal over the River Dee.
1156 days ago
On the side of the new raised lawn and Ha Ha at the Welsh Hovel which faces the River Dee, the grass is now almost three weeks old and the slope looks even greener than when I showed you pictures last week. But now, something of a miracle, that is to say a couple of days of dry weather here in Wales, has allowed us to almost complete the works as you can see below.
1247 days ago
I support Northern Ireland so do not give a hoot about the woke prima donnas of the England Football team so as the nation sat glued to the box I carried on working on bringing the lower, old, orchard next to the river back into shape.
1308 days ago
It was 13 days ago that I did this walk – just over 20 miles. Last week my woke snowflake daughter Olaf joined me so I did just 11 miles not wishing to be accused of breaching her human rights with an act of patriarchal oppression. The route is the same as ever: along our fields by the Dee in Wales, the Bridge over to England and then walking the English side of the Dee towards Chester and back. This walk saw me end up walking past some of the smaller houses belonging to the Duke of Westminster on his extensive lands by the Dee. It does make you think a bit about the nature of inherited wealth.
1322 days ago
The good news is that we should be up to 12 rogue bloggers for Woodlarks by the end of the weekend. The bad news is that Lucian Miers has walked the course and it is indeed 34 miles, not the usual 33, and the last 1.5 miles are all uphill, just when one is ready to collapse. And thus I must train ever harder as this walk is the most important I have ever done and I must finish.
1327 days ago
As I continue to work on reclaiming the fields around the Welsh Hovel, the list of buried horrors grows. I have already spent almost £5,000 clearing this place of asbestos in barns, in sheds and where I have found it buried by the previous owner in various places. I am almost there. But now to the tyres and to the folly of Wrexham Council and every other local authority in Britain.
1335 days ago
Because of the lockdown rules and because so many of its campers have immune deficiency issues, Woodlarks cannot open this year and so it has no income. So if the Rogue Bloggers do not do another walk and do not raise £48,000, Woodlarks may not reopen at all next year so please do donate now HERE. As such, we band of seven have pledged to go the extra mile. This year it is 34 not 33 miles from Winchester to Woodlarks on May 29. And I am not in great shape.
1350 days ago
I thought that Robert and his team, who do the big jobs on the land here at the Welsh Hovel, would laugh at my idea of creating a huge lawn and Ha Ha. But I had been kept awake at night working out in my head how it could be done. And to my surprise they did not laugh. It was viewed as creative. Objection after objection of logistic issues were raised but each one was dealt with so we will go ahead. You may ask what is a Ha Ha? The Mrs did.
1361 days ago
Some folks accuse me of being a pirate. Au contraire I am quite the law abiding citzen these days except when it comes to daft covid lockdown rules. But there is a pirate at the Welsh Hovel on the banks of the River Dee, one who – like all good pirates – wears Paw Patrol socks and a dinosaur top.
1400 days ago
The first call was mid-morning. On that occasion it was two young WPCs. If one was a filthy old man with a thing about uniforms it would have been a bit of a treat but my initial concern was that someone had read my writings about my crime family flouting daft lockdown laws on my birthday and snitched. Oh no. It was about the floods – the two young ladies just asked if there was anything they could do for me. Well since you mention it officers…
1400 days ago
Before tedious, Guardian-reading loons yak on about how global warming, sorry climate change, is not the precursor to widespread droughts in Britain – as we were told up until c 2010 – but now causes floods, I offer a few facts. The river Dee, as I write, is 9.624 metres deep here which is the highest since October 2000 (9.36 metres). But it is less deep and the area less flooded than in 1949 before all that global warming nonsense was invented. Rivers flood from time to time, get over it. Having said all of that, this flood is a pain as you can see below.
1400 days ago
I woke up to find that we have severe floods here on the River Dee. By 9 AM, the waters at the nearest measuring station to the Welsh Hovel had burst through the 21st Century record (from 2000) which was 9m 36 cm. Right now the depth is 9 metres 61.8 cm and rising. Later on, I shall show you life at the hovel, for now here is what I encountered as I tried to drive Joshua to nursery in England earlier.
1400 days ago
My joy this morning is somewhat tempered by the fact that the River Dee which flows past the Welsh hovel in which I live, is at its highest level this century and I have wasted much time putting sandbags by the doors at the river end of the house. Fingers are crossed as, right now, the waters have just reached door level. Notwithstanding that, it is ouzo on cornflakes time, as shares in con Supply@ME Capital have been suspended at my instigation, albeit two days too late.
1401 days ago
It seems that one reader reckons that the lavender which arrived yesterday will be drowned by the River Dee rising as a result of man-made global warming. The water from the Dee came within one inch of the bottom of the back step of the part of the house nearest the river in 2000 at its all-time record high and in 2020. At that point, the river was, in the middle, 29 foot deep. I reckon that to reach the first lavender plant it would have to climb another 15 foot meaning that most of the house would also be underwater as would many others in the village and half of Chester and Wrexham.
1432 days ago
“Are you alright?” asked my Aunt L who lives about 15 miles further into Wales. It seems that her daughter and my first cousin C – who made me feel rather old but also rather young by becoming a granny a week after I became a father again – had been driving close to our village and noticed that there are floodwaters everywhere. Indeed there are.
1472 days ago
I discuss why they scan and reflect on the links between pointless lockdown and suicides. I discuss the final victory of Joe Biden and then look at house prices and why they have not yet collapsed and why this is not a re-run of the 1970s.
1511 days ago
Lockdown in our part of Wales starts in just under two hours. The Mrs has already escaped to England with Joshua. I am staying here but need some supplies so must rush to get them from a store where they don’t make you wear a face nappy before the North Wales fuzz sets up roadblocks on the bridges over the River Dee. Before my Dukes of Hazard style contraband run, I discuss various conspiracy theories over Rolls Royce (RR.) and IAG (IAG). I look at the massive issues now hanging over Verditek (VDTK) as I expose its latest desperate ramping and another past lie. Finally, Dev Clever (DEV), what is going on with Asimilar (ASLR) and Mark Horrocks as its share price slides again.
1654 days ago
When, in a post Covid 19 world, our political leaders look for a new way to squander taxpayers cash, one inevitable option will be a public enquiry into what happened. Since the entire political & media class agreed on almost everything and will never admit they were blundering idiots in thrall to Prof Pantsdown it seems a pointless way of burning my hard earned cash but then when did that stop our leaders? If there is an enquiry I do hope it looks at the cretinous buffoons who are meant to be in charge of the rain sodden second world nation where I live, that is to say Wales.
1689 days ago
My beef with Angling Direct (ANG) is that I view fishing as a sport increasingly enjoyed by old codgers. I look at the local club that rents our stretch of the River Dee and fear that after each cold winter it will be needing rather fewer pegs. I see a business growing its online sales sharply but whose offline operation still accounts for half of sales and which, for all the usual reasons, must be in decline. And today we have a Covid 19 update and a big warning on cash which, for reasons I am sure you can guess, does not actually say how little cash is left.
1739 days ago
The Dee at the local measuring station hit 9 metres 28.4 centimetres in the early morning just 8 centimetres below the 2000 high. The effects on the Welsh Hovel were, as you can see below, dramatic.
1851 days ago
The 1600s fireplace revealed by Brokerman Dan at the weekend is now shown in its full glory… can you see how large it is? Joshua is very excited as it now means that Father Christmas has an easy way to come and visit us. Meanwhile…
1853 days ago
The water that passes through Llangollen today flows past the Welsh hovel less than 24 hours later. And after heavy rains the Dee upsteam is, as you can see below, already raging. Meanwhile at the Welsh Hovel it has again burst its banks, rising at least a yard and a half, starting to flood our orchard and turning the first field in England, on the other side, into a lake.
1875 days ago
The excitement is now over, for now. Two floodings in five months makes me think that winter could be interesting. What you see below is the high point from Wednesday. As you can see, the orchard was flooded and in photo two the field over the river in England was a lake. The wooden fence at the end of the formal lawn was not breached, in June as the Dee got to a nine metre depth, the waters encroached about two or three yards up the lawn.
1986 days ago
I have not reported for a couple of days and I am glad to say that the waters are now receeding here at the Welsh Hovel. They have left our garden and the levels in the Orchard are down by a good foot and a half. The photos below are from Thursday and are from the area around the bridge I cross each nursery day walking Joshua off to “borstal” in England.
1987 days ago
The water levels here at the Welsh Hovel are about a foot up up on yesterday but the waters, while encroaching further into the main garden, remain at least ten yards from the house. So no panic. Yesterday Joshua and I went to inspect “Joshua’s fields” which run along the banks of the Dee up from the house to close to the bridge to England.
1988 days ago
I was unable to take photos from exactly the same spot as yesterday to show you how much the river Dee has risen as that would have left me in a couple of foot of water. But it has risen and will continue to rise as the rain from Bala makes its way down and because it is still raining. Joshua and I went to inspect it this morning and he is terribly excited and convinced that there are snakes in “his lake”. If that keeps him away so much the better. The far bank of the river, the English side, has now all but disappeared and so the “lake” streches almost without interruption, for hundreds of yards. Here in Wales…
2019 days ago
In twelve days time I will walk 33 miles from Horse Hill to Woodlarks with 11 other rogue bloggers to try to raise £40,000 for a charity that really needs that cash. So if you are yet to sponsor me please do so now HERE. Sagturday saw a training walk allowing me to explore the area around my new home, the Welsh Hovel, on the River Dee.
