The purpose of this thread is so that members who have pictures offsite but linked to the site can announce changes to their albums which may be of interest to readers. Being offsite changes will not show up under the site's Recent Changes heading.
New pictures from The Rest & Be Thankful are now linked at
What a difference a nice day makes, much less drab view of Portkil, and more details, than my slightly damper and more autumnal visit a few years ago - and someone to talk to too!
'Beat the Boss' - they had already been absorbed when you posted (dance)
Don't those building always look ominous - even genuine, school dinner buildings (and I reckon the ones I have in mind were actually ex-war buildings) didn't look that worrying.
The Larkfield pics certainly confirm and earlier comment that the site is remarkably well preserved, especially compared some in more remote spots that have been 'well worn' over the years.
The ramp on the Control Room is interesting. I think I'm fairly safe in venturing far enough to say it's unlikely to have been the GL radar vehicle ramp, as the mat/groundplane would have to have spread radially from it, and there seem to be a lot of buildings adjacent that would simply have interfered with such an installation, and its technical reason for being.
Maybe they hauled a litte Light AA gun up there, just for a wee bit of confidence boosting
A bit more seriously, maybe it was either a mistake, or a change in plans for the site layout, and it is a GL ramp, but redundant?
I too am puzzled by the ramp but my concern was would the roof take the weight of the caravan? I think it is quoted somewhere as weighing 2 tons.
If there was a GL Mat there it was not within the perimeter fence and the rest of the field is on quite a slope so getting a large area of mesh level would have needed some lengthy poles. The woodland to the East was a spruce plantation which blew down and was removed after the hurricane of 1968. It was quite mature and must have been planted before the war. So where was the mat? RCAHMS seem to think there was one.
The page currently called Spigot Mortar Bases complete with map is the area concerned. The glen does not seem to have a name of it's own but the land the bases are on is named Green Hill on the OS maps it is next to Knockendon reservoir. Martin Briscoe found a couple of the bases but not the rest of the remains. What went on there I do not know except that it definitley does not look like a defensive position so it must have either been a training area or a testing area for Ardeer.
Picture Galleries now linked to the High Mathernock and Decontamination Centre Kilmacolm Pages.
Mathernock pics are not as good as I would have liked since the weather was very changeable. Some may be repairable by digital means ( when I get the time ) and some may need to be taken again.
Mathernock looks fine, and I fix anything squiffy anyway, since the reduction to 640x480 for web hosting can need a tweak to keep the image looking good anyway.
The new Decon centre looks good. Were you pointed at it, or just a happenstance?
A bit of both really. When I was at Larkfield several weeks ago an old chap mentioned similar buildings to the Gourock DC at Kilmacolm. I was passing through yesterday when it clicked about the Kilmacolm Scouts and their go-carts racing round an old building so I decided to have a look at it.
Houston looks like it would be one to have turned into a Preservation Site. Interesting detail and remains there.
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As you know, I don't use Picassa, but I am a Google account holder.
I logged in to try adding comments, but even though I'm confirmed as logged in, the comments are still not active.
Is this something you have to enable to allow visitor's comments?
I don't want to add comments as such, but had it in mind to see how they looked and worked, as a means of tagging either galleries or images so I could tell which ones had been raided to provide a few images on SeSco, as they all "Look the Same" after a while, if you know what I mean.
Strange about the comments, unless 'OFF' is the default for visitors comments, but I'd have expected that to remove the option. It's a while since I managed any online galleries, but I'm sure turning user comments off did that.
I'll maybe try someone else's gallery, and see if the same happens.
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I didn't realise I'd a view about descriptions that was contrary - it wouldn't be the wiki way!
I must have dropped an unintended hint
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Just had a bash at Commenting on someone else's gallery, and nothing comes up there to allow a comment to be added. So, presumably something that need to manually enabled by the user, or might not be active in Picasa yet. They're tempting folk
It might be that you have to be a picasa member. When I unearth my picasa details ( why are computers so difficult?) I'll try mine and somebody elses. Watch this space.
re descriptions it just that mentions of site visits seemed to have a short shelf life!
There is nothing to beat the use of the Mk1 Human Eyeball in these situations. I/we probably have more time to poke about sites and to revisit them than the likes of J.Guy and I for one am learning a lot more about them and their features. I'll try a blurb on Mathernock and Houston describing their salient features and differences. Do you have any suggestions for a section title?
The syntax in the wiki to bold it as a proper bolded section heading with a line is:
!!Site visit 2007
or
!!Site visit April 2007
Rule is no unnecessary punctuation or capitals - why? - just a rule for simplification.
Originally, I'd envisaged a mixture of pages: the ones that you're used to now, which are broadly historic records, and now being supplemented by current reports or reviews if anyone has additional info; the other would be more along the the lines of single articles, and examples would be those like Doune or Strathallan, where the page is a trubute to something lost, to record it.
On that basis, I should really go and reformat the Blantyrefam battery page.
Incidentally, Blantyrefarm has a nice collection of concrete fence posts and a gate.
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I am a member, that's why I don't understand why the Comments are dead.
The instructions only say you need a Google account, which I have, and gets me into every other Google service. I don't have a Picasa web album, but it doesn't state that as a requirement to post comments, just a Google account, so
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