Last updated 11:20, Thursday, 28 August 2008

Completing in a month what took Wainwright a lifetime

Paul and Gill Mackrill: Wasting no time in rediscovering the Fells

Paul and Gill Mackrill told the News of their recent “holiday a little out of the ordinary.”

“We returned to the UK this summer [we used to live in Gosforth and moved to work in France]. My wife and I walked all the 214 Wainwright summits in 25 days as a continuous walk.

“We managed the challenge in spite of the sportingly wet weather the Lakes has provided this year. And, amazingly, my wife and I are still talking to each other after days of walking between 10 and 14 hours a day!”

Alfred Wainwright’s widow, Betty, died last week. The author’s second wife, died at her home near Kendal. She had been ill for some time. Wainwright married Betty McNally in 1970. Alfred did not drive himself so relied on Betty to chauffeur him around the Lakes.

Our first reply came from Paul Callister from Canada, telling us that the creature was a female Ichneumon wasp, sometimes called a sabre wasp. It’s one of the largest ichneumon flies in Britain and is found in Europe, north Africa, North America and Asia.

They may look menacing with their long, sting-looking tail, but it’s infact harmless to humans and uses its sting to lay their eggs.

And 14-year-old Laura from Cleator Moor is obviously something of an insect expert. She wrote to say: “It is known as a wood wasp, or horntail but do not be fooled by the name, it is not a wasp, but a sawfly.

“Sawflies are from the same family as bees and wasps but it is a common misconception to assume that this creature is dangerous. It is quite harmless. It’s long abdominal section is an ‘ovipositor’ used to slice plants so that it can lay its eggs inside which feed on the plant.

“Although the insect can grow up to a menacing 40mm, it is harmless and very shy. From the picture, I also think that the horntail that the couple found was male, as females are much longer.”

We think Bill Oddie and Kate Humble should move over and give Laura a seat on their couch.

In the build-up to a conference in Manchester this October the NDA has published options for dealing with all the plutonium stored at Sellafield. And one option revealed is mixing the plutonium with old uranium and encapsulating it for disposal.

The NDA document explains: “Low specification MOx is essentially MOx pellets, (i.e sintered uranium/plutonium), which are not ground to strict Quality Assurance sizes, stored in cans. The plutonium is diluted in this form and results in an increase in volume.

“The main advantage of this waste form is that MOx production technology is relatively well established. As complex pin and fuel assembly is unlikely to be required, and grinding pellets to size is unlikely to be needed, the manufacture of a low spec MOx plant is likely to be much simpler and therefore less expensive than a “standard MOx fuel” plant.

“There is a need to determine if low specification MOx has comparable repository behaviour to alternative waste forms. Recent research work has been sponsored to establish leaching characteristics of unirradiated MOx.

“Given the throughput problems associated with the plant, it seems unlikely that the SMP could be converted, and its required workload executed, before it has reached the end of its design life. Therefore it seems most likely that a new MOx “waste” plant would need to be designed, built, commissioned and operated if this option was selected for further development.”

The irony of this option for the ‘greens’ will be that all the work on nuclear reprocessing to separate out the elements comes full circle and the elements are mixed together again. No wonder recent government White Papers now favour leaving future spent nuclear fuel un-reprocessed!

Still the good news would be for local jobs if another Mox plant has to be built on our Energy Coast!

Our seagulls are twice the size of Australian seagulls and make different squawk.

The cost – and trying to find change every time – of parking made them think twice about ‘popping into town’.

They were very disappointed to come down in the evenings and never see the Wave or Crows Nest lit up. One would expect the harbour to be lit in August for tourists.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to see the town as it really is.

Do we diligently correct all the spelling (as we do with readers’ letters) or leave the mistakes as an example of the continually developing English language? We’ve opted for the latter – which means we can claim any mistakes are deliberate!