THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

thriftwizard

And in the meantime, I live in a town of something not far over 5,000 souls! It's a town by virtue of more than one church, (one of them a large & historic Minster, just a bit less holy than a cathedral) a Town Hall, a theatre/cinema, a Square, lots of pubs & coffee houses, two supermarkets and a large number of upmarket hiking shops. Not to mention 4 state schools (2 first, one middle and a 2,000-pupil Sports College) and a 5th going up, two prep schools and a moderately famous public school. It has a suburb that is bigger than it is, at 6,000+, which just has a church, a hairdressers, a chemist & a corner co-op & 2/3 schools. The numbers are changing very rapidly, with all the new-builds going up, but all the same, a number of important shops have withdrawn from here because the "population numbers don't warrant their presence" i.e. computer says no.

What the computer doesn't see is the vast rural hinterland, stretching 10 miles in one direction and nearly 20 in the other, that this town serves and services. It contains lots of villages, many of them with top-heavy populations of bankers, doctors & finance people, who all shop here & send their kids to the schools. But they're not going to shop here any more if all they can buy is hiking boots & a latte... sigh!

But it does make the point nicely that it isn't size that defines a settlement, it's function.

moneyistooshorttomention

thriftwizard wrote: »

And in the meantime, I live in a town of something not far over 5,000 souls! It's a town by virtue of more than one church, (one of them a large & historic Minster, just a bit less holy than a cathedral) a Town Hall, a theatre/cinema, a Square, lots of pubs & coffee houses, two supermarkets and a large number of upmarket hiking shops. Not to mention 4 state schools (2 first, one middle and a 2,000-pupil Sports College) and a 5th going up, two prep schools and a moderately famous public school. It has a suburb that is bigger than it is, at 6,000+, which just has a church, a hairdressers, a chemist & a corner co-op & 2/3 schools. The numbers are changing very rapidly, with all the new-builds going up, but all the same, a number of important shops have withdrawn from here because the "population numbers don't warrant their presence" i.e. computer says no.

What the computer doesn't see is the vast rural hinterland, stretching 10 miles in one direction and nearly 20 in the other, that this town serves and services. It contains lots of villages, many of them with top-heavy populations of bankers, doctors & finance people, who all shop here & send their kids to the schools. But they're not going to shop here any more if all they can buy is hiking boots & a latte... sigh!

But it does make the point nicely that it isn't size that defines a settlement, it's function.

Hence my saying earlier that the number of facilities available also helps decide what "title" to give a settlement. The 6,000 strong nearby settlement doesn't have enough facilities for anyone to be able to live there totally if they "had to or chose to". I couldn't live there, for instance, with only one hairdresser and a chemist that I could use (even if I rated that particular hairdresser). I'd be thinking "Where's the rest of my shops?", "Where's my social facilities?", "Where can I eat out?" etc.

fuddle

Where's the 5th school being built thrifty? I'll put my paw up and confirm that what you describe (very well ) is very much a town. Interestingly, that town has a smaller population than the village I grew up in with 6000 people. That is very much a village. It expanded years ago to cope with the amount of miners it needed to house. It then expanded to cope with demand in terms of the commuter, as it is smack bang in the middle of two towns and a city.

Even though my old village is more populated than thrifty's (mine too for a couple of years) and also a commuter village there are, by far, more people mulling around thrifty's town than my old village. And traffic? There's no comparison - thrifty wins that hands down, mist probably down to the very busy by-pass not able to cope as a by-pass due to the amount of tourists using it.

No wonder there's no real definition and each county kind of goes by what it's got in their surrounding areas as to how they label their villages and towns.

moneyistooshorttomention

..and there's some things one can't prep against with the best will in the world it seems.

The earth moved - and much of Wales felt it and a good bit of the rest of the country (ie as far as reports from London).

We've had a mini-earthquake and there's certainly a lot of people on Welsh Facebook pages at the moment checking out who else felt it.

DigForVictory

Now that is *tricky* to prep for.

I'll lay odds the livestock are a bit twitchy?

fuddle

Did you feel it money?

moneyistooshorttomention

Yep...and wondered what on earth was happening - as it felt like the chair I was sitting on was shaking.

Had a quick check outside my house to see if I could spot anything unusual and was then telling myself I must have imagined it - until all the Facebook entries started up...

People seem to be a bit half-and-half as to having noticed it on the one hand and, in an area like this, lots wondered if it was a heavy tractor or something. Others seem to go through it sublimely unaware anything had happened.

thriftwizard

Where's the 5th school being built thrifty?

It's going to be where largest collection of new houses are going up, on the road north up to the Chase, past the famous craft centre, the bridge & the former pub known as the Anchor. One field being built over to the left, and two to the right. New mains water & 'leccy being laid down across all the fields to the north there, thus conveniently leaving them open to further development too.

When I found out about the earthquake, I fell about laughing at the thought that OH's brother in Somerset had though it was his plumbing malfunctioning. Until I realised that that was just about exactly the moment I ran out to Mum's kitchen to check that her dishwasher wasn't spewing water out everywhere, as there were suddenly lots of knocks & bangs going on out there & that was the only thing on...

[Deleted User]

We had a 5.7 mag earthquake when we lived in Germany, in the early hours of the morning as there is a fault line running right down the Rhine. The house was bouncing up and down and side to side at the same time, doors on wardrobes were flapping madly and the noise was like boulders in the washing machine from hell! lasted about 30 seconds and all that we could find the next morning was a bamboo cane fallen down in the garden. In Cologne though there were houses with collapsed ceilings and walls and quite a few injuries too. My friend who was staying in the apartment in the basement slept through it!

[Deleted User]

I love Germany. Berlin is possibly my favourite place of all time.

I was there for the 25th Anniversary of the fall of the wall.

I even took a video at the celebration concert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjvoULEVd1o

I've also been to Cologne, where we visited the Lindt chocolate museum, and Aachen, where we partook of more than a few bars of Printen.