My day in Court

I have already alluded to my dislike of speed camera's. I see them as a money making vehicle much more than an accident prevention measure. I am also proud of my clean driving license.

So imagine my frustration when a fixed penalty notice came through my letter box indicating i had been caught speeding on the M62 motorway. Now the speed I was doing ironically was 62mph in a designated 50mph area designed to encourage cars to slow down as they approach the Rocket intersection at the end of the motorway. Clearly I was decelerating, but not fast enough for Councillor Merseyside and his chums!

My period of grumpiness did not, however, cloud my thought process, and on further investigation of the summons, I noticed the time was inconsistent with the actual time I had been driving on the M62. As things would have it I had been travelling from London via the M6 toll road and had a toll booth receipt timed for exactly the same time as the alleged speeding offence. It was impossible for me to be in two places at once.

Further research confirmed what I had suspected. That morning the clocks had gone back an hour, and while the toll booth technology had coped, the speed camera had not. My initial representations to the Merseyside speed enforcement team met with a party line response. Apparently there is case law to allow the operatives to adjust the speed camera when next the film is changed. I was in impish mood however and indicated to them that it should be tested again in court as the fact the clock was incorrect could sow seeds of doubt that the speed gun calibration was also inaccurate. Time to mobilise my in-house legal team.

The case was initially adjourned  to allow the CPS to assess whether they wished to progress it. At the next hearing they indicated they did, but would apply to re-issue the summons with the correct time on it. Come the third hearing my solicitor argued that they were out of time to do such a thing. They have six months from date of offence apparently. The prosecutor offered no counter argument so reluctantly the magistrate presiding had to throw the case out. As a bit of a bonus, he awarded us costs.

What goes round comes round, however, and I have just got another notification of prosecution, this time 37mph in a 30mph zone. Might not be able to wriggle out of this one.

Fanny Street

We have just spent the weekend exploring the Yorkshire Dales. Some of it was by design, other bits were forced upon us by the great British motorway system.

Our main objective was to travel to Whixley near York to visit the latest art exhibition by Neil Simone, a surrealist artist we both like. We have a couple of his prints and thought an original oil might be a good idea. We left Liverpool in good time, knowing the gallery shut at about 4pm. A quick detour to Knutsford allowed us to drop Maxines engagement ring into a jewellers to get repaired, and then off the the M62 for the majority of the trip. Wrong.

J24 -J23 near Huddersfield were closed, so a quick(sic) detour ensued. We went to Harrogate via Halifax, Bradford and other quaint sounding Yorkshire villages, driving across the Penine Way en route. If I hadknown Brentford were playing Bradford we might have taken a break there, but as it was, we crawled along a number of A and B roads along with everybody else who had been diverted off.

We got to the gallery just after 4pm but luckily Neil and his wife were still there and were very welcoming, providing tea and coffee to ease us into the viewing. Sadly for them, we did not see anything we wanted to purchase, but it did give us a few ideas about the pictures we already have, and how the newly positioned piano may be made more an integral part of the furnishings.

Luckily SWMBO had suggested we stay over in Harrogate, so that we did. We had a room overlooking the Styne, a large public space, which had a free firework display. We could enjoy it from the comfort of our hotel room while deciding on which attractions of Harrogate we should enjoy.

A pub full of women dressed as GI Jane, and a very pleasant french restaurant filled the evening and an (average) full English set us up for a cruise back home.

It was quite a coincidence that the Leeds-Liverpool canal seemed to plot a path for us to follow. We picked it up at Skipton after passing close to the Menwith Hill listening station and seeing the beginnings of the new wind farm on the other side of the valley. It is a real shame that high, exposed moorland needs to be exploited by such monstrous structures, simply because height and exposure is their key to successful operation.

Anyway, we enjoyed exploring the basin of the canal around Skipton, and then moved on to pick the canal up again at Saltaire, the philanthropic development of Titus Salt, who built the village to house his mill workers, in the same way as Lord Levelhulme built Port Sunlight on the Wirral to house his factory workers. Salts Mill is now a gallery specialising in David Hockney works as well as home design shopping and an antiques fair. Salt himself was a god fearing man so built his village on strict Presbyterian lines. It does bring a smile to the face to see the local bistro and bar named "Don't tell Titus".

We lost the canal after going from Shipley to the M62, which thankfully was open this time, but picked it up again on the outskirts of Liverpool in Crosby and Waterloo. This is the part of the canal which I used to run along when we lived close by. It looked a bit too obstructed to be navigable now, although plans to open the Western end of the canal to the Albert Dock and the River Mersey may see all that change.

With Tesco now delivering to their major supermarkets in London via the Thames, who knows what the Leeds-Liverpool has awaiting it?