Bank holiday

With reference 1 suggesting that it is well over a year since we visited a car boot sale, we thought a proper bank holiday activity this morning was to visit the giant, bank holiday, car booter at Hook Road Arena. So we were out at 0900 sharp, and arrived shortly afterwards at the end of the queue stretching around the roundabout. Bit of nifty work on the roundabout, and we were parked up within about 5 minutes.

Marker oak

Conveniently, there was a slot just by the last of the line of oaks across the arena, one of quite a lot of old oak trees dotted about the borough. Some of them heritage trees, being medieval pollards, while others get chopped down to make way for bigger roads. Although, to be fair, this last has not, to my knowledge, happened for some years now. And note the large number of cars. We were told by one saleslady that she reached her pitch around 0630, one of the last. This despite the action not being scheduled to start until 0700. At least that is what is says at reference 2.

Souvenir teaspoons

We passed on a fine collection of souvenir teaspoons. On the other hand BH fell for a variety of stuff for small people and I fell for some cooking pots and a Times Atlas.

The haul

The motivation for the cooking pots was the trouble with the pots, or rather plates, that I use to bake my bread. Trouble noticed getting on for a month ago at reference 3 and since when I have made some progress. But I am on the lookout for new pots. The three metal ones, all with loose bottoms, were knocked down to 50p as I only really wanted the largest one, at the top in the snap above. Maybe a touch small for the loaves I am making presently, but in other respects it might be a good solution and BH advises that it is still possible to buy such things new, so making up the two that I need - it being a bit wasteful of time and fuel just to bake one loaf at a time. And now, some brillo pad action later we are ready to go. Further report in due course.

The two brown plates are some sort of what I take to be cheap Spanish earthenware, rather like a glazed version of what you make flower pots out of, and nothing like as sturdy as the stuff from Taiwan.

Warning

And what I can make of the 'do nots' stuck to one of them does not encourage. I ask Bing about the company, and while plenty of people sell their stuff, they did not seem to exist. However, Google did rather better, getting me to reference 4, where I find quite a lot of eco-stuff about the merits of cooking in clay pots. Not so much about the suitability for high temperature baking. We shall see.

Last but not least we had the Atlas, a Times Atlas from 1968, what might be thought of as towards the end of the glory days of atlas production. Too much competition now from free products from the Internet. Fine products in their way, but they do not do the same job as a good atlas.

This one is a large format affair, bigger than any other book that I own - apart perhaps from the larger volumes of the OED - at 18 inches high by 12 wide and 1.5 thick, including the covers. Compared with the 15 by 11 and 1.33 of the Britannica Atlas of 1989, bought from a forerunner of the Hook Road Arena car booter in the Hook Road multi-storey car park, at the opposite end of Hook Road. Interestingly, the Times Atlas was actually printed by the Bartholomew's of reference 5, clearly the people to go to for this sort of thing.

The core of the atlas is the country maps, along the lines of that illustrated, about 100 two page spreads. Maps which show height above sea level by bands of colour, principal rivers, towns, roads and railways. General purpose maps not trying to do too much at once. Rather less colourful than the corresponding maps in the Britannica Atlas, which go in for stronger colours and shading of the mountain ranges. Will I find the Times' maps easier on the eyes?

Six two page spreads for the British Isles, including Eire. With Greater London appearing on three of them, as is proper. By way of comparison, Kenya occupies most of one page of its two page spread. But no fancy binding in the way of the atlas noticed at reference 5, and some of the maps does get lost in the gutters.

These core maps include street plans of important cities like Moscow and Istanbul and for more complicated parts of the world one gets simplified maps showing the countries, states & provinces with distinctive coloured borders. There is one such, for example, for Africa.

While at the front there is all kinds of other stuff, including the planets, the moon, ocean salinity and sea floor topography.

A good buy, taking our total of such things to five. With there being as many again smaller, more specialised affairs.

Back at the car

Having filled all our bags and starting to get a tad hot and bothered, we had no trouble finding our marker tree. And no trouble getting out of the nearby exit. Having been reminded that there is no need to leave Epsom to see the world. I don't suppose there were many countries that were not represented at Hook Road today.

PS: later, idly perusing the new atlas, I got to wondering about how the Danube, having risen not far from the headwaters of the Rhine, gets through the mountains between Belgrade and the lowlands of southern Romania. Is there some massive gorge? Time to turn to a free product from the Internet, as mentioned above, that is to say gmaps, to find Street View alive and well there. Massive, but not really a massive gorge.

Danube at gmaps 44.6644572, 21.6993821

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/car-booter-fame.html.

Reference 2: https://www.hookcarbootsale.com/.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/disaster-one.html.

Reference 4: http://valdearcos.com/.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/books-from-honiton.html.