Letters

Gordon Harris, Frodsham:
I would like to add to Michael Behrend's comments (letters, NE 74) on Philip Heselton's article on straight line plotting on maps (NE 73).
Philip wrote: "The difficulty comes when one is dealing with more than one 1:50000 maps... There is an adjustment that needs to be made to deal with the Earth's curvature... and one would need to bring in an expert". In practice, none of this is true.
I got to grips with this problem in the early 1980s and in my first article in an e.m. magazine (Earthlines 3, 1984, p.11) I wrote "forget the myth that alignments longer than 40km (equivalent to the width of a 1:50000 scale map) cannot be accurately plotted on maps because of the curvature of the Earth. It is fundamental to the Transverse Mercator Projection of Great Britain that there is no deviation at all between lines of sight and lines on a map in the E-W direction (anywhere and for any distance) or along the central meridian (N-S) at 20 W. Deviations become greatest on N-S lines furthest from the central meridian, but simple trigonometric calculations using Ordnance Survey Projection Tables show that for most of mainland Britain the maximum such deviation over a distance of 80km (i.e. 2 x 1:50000 scale maps) is only about 2m on the ground or 0.04mm on a 1:50000 scale map. A thin pencil line indeed!"
The above example applied to a worst case N-S line, 100km E of the central meridian. The calculation was made by Prof. R.J.C.Atkinson in a letter to me dated December 1982. Prof. Atkinson was of course the arch-opponent of the ley hypothesis in the 'Great Ley Debate' of 1981.
At about that time the Computations Group of Ordnance Survey were calculating such divergences for N-S lines, 100-200km long, off the coast of Scotland, presumably to do with oil rigs. In their case the divergences were larger, but still less than 5m on the sea, i.e. 0.1mm on a 1:50000 scale map.
So if there are any other old straight trackers like me still out there, don't be put off by the scaremongering spirit liners. Draw your lines across as many maps as you like; the curvature of the Earth matters not a jot!

Philip Heselton, Hull:
Linda Simonian's article in NE 74 on the 1999 Total Eclipse of the Sun is a good summary, but I must disagree profoundly with her conclusion that we should stay at home and enjoy what will here be only a partial eclipse.
There is a wealth of difference between a total and partial eclipse. With a total eclipse, darkness comes in the middle of the day, the birds stop singing and, if it is clear, the stars come out, as Linda describes. There is magic over the land for a minute or two and then all returns to normal.
Such an experience will only occur this once on the British mainland in any of our lifetimes. I have been looking forward to this event for over forty years and I intend to be there in Cornwall to experience it, even if I have to walk the whole way! If "the roads to Cornwall are closed" I shall use the footpaths, walking along hedges and across moors - I shall get there to experience what I have long felt to be a watershed in my life.
Experiencing a partial eclipse from the comfort of Yorkshire would be a pale reflection by comparison.

Paul Screeton, Hartlepool:
Your correspondent Andrew Riley, I feel, missed the point in Bellamy's being filmed on Croft Bridge. It is here that every new Bishop of Durham is presented with the falchion supposedly used by Conyers to dispatch the Sockburn Worm (or, as NE typographically had it, 'work'!). Dr David Jenkins theatrically swung the sword above his head to rid Britain of the twin dragons of unemployment and social injustice.
Also, it's the Transporter, not Transport, Bridge over the Tees.

Jeremy Harte, Ewell, Surrey:
This business of turning up Indian arrowheads is a curatorial perennial. In Surrey these are conventionally attributed to Canadian troops massing here before D-Day, who presumably carried them as good luck charms, dropped them, and therefore never survived on the beaches to come back and confess to having dropped them. As Charles Fort said, there was never an explanation which did not itself need an explanation, and in this case there are just too many of the things being turned up by flinters - sorry, lithic study groups. I've had Egyptian flint flakes found in the village here - very long and thin - fortunately the flint is different from normal and you can spot them that way. There was an American Indian arrowhead in someone's private collection in Broadwindsor, W of Bridport in Dorset, which was where I first came across one; and at the Montgomeryshire Museum there was one in a case proudly labelled Bronze Age. I was too tactful to tell them*.
Also note in NE 73 the face of Christ appearing on a potato crisp in Halifax - is this not a confused version of the Virgin Mary appearing on a pork scratching, which was on Fortean TV? Then again, these may be two examples of a craze that's sweeping the nation.
[*Ed. This reminds me of an archaic head I found in the now-defunct Littleborough Local History Museum a few years ago, which had been found in the river at Rochdale. It was labelled equally proudly 'Iron Age Celtic Head'... on closer inspection, I found it had a short-back-and-sides hairstyle, not generally known among Celtic coiffures, and thus - less tactful than Jeremy - I suggested that the head was probably Victorian or Edwardian. The lady wasn't having any of it, since they'd been told 20 years before by a chap from Bradford (i.e. Sidney Jackson) that it was Celtic, so Celtic it would stay!]

Yaroslav Koryakov, Dept. of Psychology, Ural State University, Ekaterinberg:
Dear friends, please forgive me for troubling you and for my request. I wonder if you could help. In Russia (especially out of Moscow) we have almost no literature and information on many aspects of earth mysteries, indigenous cultures, traditions and related subjects, and of course foreign ones aren't available here. And you know, unfortunately it is impossible for us to pay for books, periodicals, etc. abroad... could you do us a great kindness and send us any back issues or other materials, whether old, damaged, spare no longer needed? We should be extremely obliged and it would be so helpful!
[NE has sent a small selection of recent issues. Readers and other magazines who may wish to contribute material - though we should point out that we have no definitive confirmation of the eventual destination of the material in the University library - should send it to Mr Koryakov at Gottwald St 11-33, Ekaterinberg, 620034, Russia. Please mention where you read of this appeal]

Contents Issue contents