BBC2's Antiques Road Trip - Kendal - Levens Hall - Cockermouth

Got home on Friday to find rest of household switched onto BBC2, different from the usual fair of Ch4's Come Dine With Me.  Reason - they'd been tipped of that a local antique shop in Kendal would feature.

It's a series that follows two antiques experts in competition with each other, they spend the week travelling to various places buying antiques with the aim of selling them for a profit at the end of the week at auction - sounds familiar !!

This episode saw them visiting auction shops traveling between Morecambe, Lancaster, Kendal then at an auction in Cockermouth.  One of the experts after buying all his antiques visited Leven's Hall for a guided tour by the wife of owner Susie Bagget, the other expert was up the Kendal to visit Sleddall Hall Antique Centre on Wildman Street where he bought a picture from owner Robert Aindow for £30.

The episode can be viewed on BBC iPlayer until Friday 14th January 2011, watch from 24mins in for feature on Levens Hall then Kendal

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xc5kv

ITV Series - The Lakes - My view on 1st Episode

On Monday at 8pm saw the return on ITV of The Lakes above people living and working in Cumbria (yes they're very loose with The Lakes).  Locals who are watching this series have love/hate relationship with this programme, mainly due to the over exposure of hotelier Thomas The Gladiator Noblett and his right hand man Andrew The Admiral Tighe repeating the same thing in each episode / series, and also how the series is presented in that the peoples stories are limited to sound bites across many episodes.  Following is an overview of the first episode, yes I was abit anal in working out the timings:-

ITV have put the programme in a prime time half hour slot at 8pm between Monday nights two Coronation Street episodes.  The runtime of the show is 22mins 55secs, excluding a 2min 23secs break in the middle  (Although it finished around 8:25pm the end break was short as Corrie started around 8:27pm).  So what did we get in the way of juicy content, well....

• 3mins 7secs - Starting titles and preview of what was coming up in the rest of the series
• 3mins 29secs - Sailing instructor Joe Pester and his wife Lindy who are preparing for their perfect lakeside wedding 
• 4mins 31secs - Rob Rose and his micro pigs
• 0mins 13secs - Short preview of Thomas The Gladiator Noblett then into a break
• 2mins 23secs - Commercial break
• 0mins 58secs - Preview of whats coming up in rest of the series
• 2mins 54secs - Another preview of what Thomas The Gladiator Noblett will be doing in the rest of the series including why he's now laughs at being refered to as The Gladiator
• 3mins 23secs - Back to this episode with Rob Rose's micro pigs
• 2mins 50secs - Joe Pester and his Lindy Wedding
• 1min 30secs - Preview of what's coming up in the next episode and end credits including Joe and Lindy's Honeymoon

So in summary the 22mins 55secs episode was broken down into 8mins 42secs of titles/previews/fillers that will get repeated from episode to episode and just 14mins 13secs of actually watchable content.

This series could be a whole lot better if they didn't keep stringing us along and gave us more of a characters story in an episode.

Recommendation is to record the the show but to fast forward through the soundbites.

Cumbria Earthquake - 3rd January 2011 - Update

British Geological Survey have updated details on tonight Earthquake

Seismic Alert PDF of event

Location was near Ripon

View Larger Map

Earthquake Details

• This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.

Magnitude	3.7
Date-Time	Monday, January 03, 2011 at 21:03:09 UTC Monday, January 03, 2011 at 09:03:09 PM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location	54.181°N, 1.633°W
Depth	11 km (6.8 miles) set by location program
Region	ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
Distances	45 km (25 miles) N of Leeds, England, UK 85 km (55 miles) NNE of Manchester, England, UK 90 km (55 miles) S of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK 315 km (195 miles) NNW of LONDON, United Kingdom
Location Uncertainty	Error estimate not available
Parameters	NST= 3, Nph= 3, Dmin=162.3 km, Rmss=0 sec, Gp=209°, M-type=local magnitude (ML), Version=5
Source	British Geological Survey, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Event ID	us2011frb5

Cumbria Earthquake - 3rd January 2011

Blimey these are becoming too regular, this evening at around 21:03, some in Kendal including me felt a quick tremor and a sound like a heavy gust of wind.  Having now alot of experience of all this earth moving malarkey it was straight on to Twitter first to post that I'd felt the house move and then to search on keyword 'earthquake', loads of tweets were coming in from the Yorkshire, Bradford area.

These are the details from here, which centre the quake need Ripon, these details may get updated on the main site once the reading from the UK are taken into account.

Earthquake Details

• This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.

Magnitude	3.7
Date-Time	Monday, January 03, 2011 at 21:03:14 UTC Monday, January 03, 2011 at 09:03:14 PM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location	53.767°N, 1.508°W
Depth	10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program
Region	ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
Distances	NEAR Leeds, England, UK 45 km (30 miles) N of Sheffield, England, UK 55 km (35 miles) ENE of Manchester, England, UK 270 km (165 miles) NNW of LONDON, United Kingdom
Location Uncertainty	Error estimate not available
Parameters	NST= 3, Nph= 3, Dmin=115.5 km, Rmss=0 sec, Gp=205°, M-type=local magnitude (ML), Version=5
Source	CEA Lab. de Détection et de Géophysique, Bruyères-le-Châtel, France
Event ID	us2011frb5

Here the screenshot from this evening geological sensor in Keswick