Readers with a functioning memory will, of course, remember this story we ran 9 years ago: answers-on-a-postcard-please. To save you clicking and looking, I asked what the hell is this little salt pot thing I saw hanging beneath a power pole in a remote valley in mid Wales.
Well thanks be to Chris Morris from Newtown who was also wondering what these are and so took a pair of binoculars to find out. Turns out, they are Fault Passage Indicators. According to Chris they are completely wireless and detect faults by analysing the phase currents and their imbalance, by analysing the electromagnetic field(s).
For the really curious out there they are made by a company called Bowdens whose registered address is Spook Hill (I write this on Halloween – you couldn’t make this up).
This from their online catalogue of hard-core nerdy gadgets. I couldn’t find an “add to basket” button otherwise I’d have bought one and turned into a mug.
“Being late is the sincerest form of rudeness” – Martin Evans, Founder, T.P.A.S.
You can quote me on that. I have been known to be a whole day early for appointments. I’ve been at the railway station so “in good time” that I caught the train 3 trains before the one I was meant to go on. And I’m always at the turnstiles at Park Avenue just as the yawning caretaker arrives to let the football club staff in.
This is how we ended up cruising the R173 just north of Dundalk. On our way south to catch the good ship Stena Adventurer and Mrs TPAS refused to spend four hours waiting in the car for Dublin terminal 3 check-in to open.
We were ostensibly going to look out for curlews and oyster catchers on the mudflats near Bellurgan point. I have photographed these poles before. But 3 years have passed and I did find another one further up the same road. At least one of these should be pole of the month, but I can’t choose which.
Now, we weren’t 100% sure of the way back to the ferry terminal from here. Luckily, the last pole had the answer. My life hasn’t been the same since.
“In honour of telegraph appreciation day I’ve gone through some old postcards. A couple have stamps and date from 1910, I’m no telegraph pole expert but I hope some of these are of interest 😊 “.
They are indeed Jane. Anything with even a hint of telegraph pole on it piques my interest, girds my loins, stirs my porridge so to speak.
They’re not great resolution so I’ll tell you that they are mostly of a place called Didsbury. Which now, in the present tense, would be called Doesbury and soon it will be called Willbury surely. Did you see what I did there? 😉 Thank you Sarah-Jane.
This is a tale from over there. Mike (whose surname never made it the 3,327 miles across the Atlantic) wrote to us from Seaside Heights, New Joizy wherein he is a lineman for an electric utility company. He sent us the photos you see below accompanied by the following missive:
“There once was a Lineman named Russ and a Telephone repair man called Tom. They were always playing jokes on each other, such as , if Russ saw Tom’s truck in town, he would go put dielectric grease on his door handle or his steering wheel or tool bin door or all three.
So Tommy made a sign with the stencil kit they use to make tags for the poles and that’s where this came from. I’ve been working here 20 years and I know Russ retired way before I started, so I don’t know how long that’s been here.”
This website and society leans, say, 95% towards Britishness, so over here a more relevant, accessible, phrase stenciled into a telegraph pole might be “Russell is a Knob“.
If you are at all affected by things you’ve seen or read on this page you should call “Hope & Healing” on 866-202-HELP
Three photos for your delectation this Telegraph Pole Appreciation Day. Picture #1 is from a recent foray into England. Ostensibly on family business but in actual fact to sample the uniquely quaffable ale that is Haymaker’s IPA at source in the village of Hook Norton, Oxfordshire. This wee DP largely lost in foliage but unmissed by this keen spotter’s eye.
Second and third are photos of photographs in a shop window display in Llandysul, Ceredigion. I know this little town well and these poles made my day and if they don’t make yours then you have no soul.
HAPPY TELEGRAPH POLE APPRECIATION DAY 🙂
Hook Norton, near a pint of Haymaker’s IPA last week.
I bet, that right now, Ben Schwartz is thinking “bloody hell, I sent these photos in yonks ago. I thought they must have gone into their spam folder or something”.
Everything comes to he/she/they who waits Ben. And it just goes to show (a) how long our publication queue is and (b) my extraordinary inefficiency at getting these things on to the site.
Anyway, the answer to the question posed above is Weaver birds, that’s who. Ben has just*1 returned from a trip to Namibia where he took great pleasure in photographing these Sociable Weaver birds and also the giraffe you see in front of the poles. He told us: “This species of bird is endemic to southern Africa and they build enormous community nests on trees and similar tall objects, including telegraph poles.*2 “
“Interestingly, I learned about the Society (TPAS) from the podcast No Such Thing As A Fish, which shared the fact that telegraph poles in the African bush have minimum height restrictions to avoid becoming a danger to giraffes and you can see from the photos that there is plenty of clearance in this case. Sadly, high voltage lines still appear to be a threat in some parts of the continent: “
Anyway, thanks Ben, we appreciators appreciate your appreciation of these fine birds.
*1Due to items (a) & (b) in para 2, Ben has no longer “just” returned from Namibia, it is now probably best described as long since. *2Yes, we know, they’re power poles, not telegraph poles. But remember our mantra? If it’s tall, wooden, sticky-uppy, got wires coming out the top etc….
I’m using this post to come out… as an enthusiastic e-biker. I have managed to wean myself off “turbo” mode now, finally – which is quite something given my great age and also the landscape around here.
Yesterday morning, 3rd August, on a 20 miler in to the hinterland (y Gwyll*1) around Bethania and Trefenter, Ceredigion, I came across this gorgeous remnant.
I had climbed from home in the well of the Aeron valley to the wildness that is to be found above 1,000 feet. Where the hedgerows give way to grassy banks and rosebay is supreme. Underneath, yellow rattles to brown, harebells nod and yarrow and tormentil snatch a peek at the sun.
This is one of only two of this type remaining on the run. The rest having long since been replaced, tidied up. The “D” plate suggests these are not long for this world either. The doby marks quite worn away with the bleaching wind in this remote place: GPO / 20L / ’58 Note the pair of intact telenduron terminators not to mention the ragged fleece of lichen.
The run of poles petered out shortly afterwards – presumably at Bancyllyn farm opposite Llyn Eiddwen (the source of the river Aeron) – I wasn’t paying attention at this point though – I was much too conscious of the sonic boom I was leaving behind from my great speed at this point.
According to folklore that I either read somewhere or have just made up thinking I’ve read it somewhere Llyn Eiddwen, is one of the portals to the fairy world. The other being the bottom of our garden. I didn’t see anything remotely fairyish here mind you, but then I refer you to my previous statement about sonic booms and going really fast etc. On my e-Bike. I’ve got one you know.
Laurence Langley wrote to tell us of his new role – that of responding to Openreach’s hazardous equipment within 2 hours! And herewith one of his more interesting poles.
“This pole feeds the entire island and due to the river crossing & boats the pole is 15m to avoid collision. TW17 9LN – DP107 CP1 – 15m Medium. The only access to the island is by barge and will require a crane to transport the pole across, if the Water Authority do not require the current wire height then we would be looking at a 10m hollow pole, this would save us transporting and will be easier to install the pole.”
Apologies for the low-resolution of the images. WIGIWYG (What I get is what you get)
NB. The value of an outside loo from one of those properties would probably be five times what my house is worth. And I live in a castle. In Wales.
I’ve been rather lax in my updates of this good site lately. For which I apologise and for which I proffer excuses #3 & #12a. I realise that my tardiness in this respect has denied readers their regular ingestion of telegraphular intelligence but unless #12a *1 happens again, this neglect may or may not be repeated.
Now, Martin Cummins… There’s a man whose anorak is thicker than mine. Longer, stronger, more weatherproof, more anoracky, and with a rim of faux fur around the hood which serves no apparent purpose. Martin has dedicated almost his entire adult life to finding out what the little tubes are that stick up from the ground at the side of many telegraph poles.
My correspondence with Martin on this subject has been ongoing for many years and I feel it has reached zenith now as he introduces us to:
It’s funny how things seem so obvious once a UK patent application shows you how. But this doesn’t quite apply for me here. I’ve studied this document <read it in full here> and whilst, superficially it looks like it would be able to tell you how deep a pole was planted, I can just imagine that gauging pen snagging and snapping off at, if not the first, then the second, time you use it. This patent idea though does have the bonus in that it comes from God’s own country. I feel I ought to know the patentee.
A reminder of why we need “depthing tubes” in the first place came from John Scott to whom we are grateful. “These tubes have been fitted to the sides of poles since some silly pole installers decided due to digging and finding rock in their way, they would simply cut the butts off the poles and make it look like the poles were installed in the correct depth while some may have been installed less than a meter and thus endangering future engineers climbing the poles.”
Anyway, back to our original correspondent, Martin. I can’t help but wonder does he feel that life is complete – now that he’s found out what those little tubes are for what else is there? Such dogged determination needs a new purpose and I hope he finds it around the subject of telegraph poles.
Actually, here’s an idea. This conundrum Answers on a postcard please has been outstanding since 2012. Perhaps, Martin, you could dedicate the next part of your life to solving the “Saltpot Conjecture”. i.e. what the hell is one of these?
The world certainly needs tenacious folk like Martin Cummins. Anyway, he did also tell us about Basingstoke Museum, where they have an old GPO Maintenance Van, replete with everything to make you self-sufficient when lost in the Trossachs. It’s on my list of museums to visit before I die.
