A former physics teacher has completed a 700-year-old pilgrim's journey using only medieval clothing and equipment. Steven Payne began walking from Southampton's Mayflower Park to Canterbury on 16 December, carrying a goodwill message from the Pope. The 52-year-old slept in his cloak, sometimes in fields and hedgerows or in structures built in medieval times. He was greeted by the mayor of Canterbury and canon of the cathedral when he arrived on Tuesday afternoon.
Pilgrimage Update: Success!
I thought it was a dodgy choice to do this in December instead of April as Chaucer recommended, but he claims to have had a Medieval antecedent who left 'on the same day' in 1365. Of course, that was in the Medieval Warm Period! But perhaps God favored his endeavor. Certainly here it's been the mildest winter in a long time.
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His strength was indeed that of the strength of ten, for his heart was pure.
Certainly here it's been the mildest winter in a long time.
You also just had to jinx it, since now it's 5 degrees above freezing after morning.
Given Georgia weather, the warmer things are in Nov and Dec, the colder they go in January. Later on, it goes one week warm, one week dead cold. Then afterwards, it's 1 day warm, 1 day cold, 1 day warm, 1 day freezing, 1 day hot.
Jinx it? You could take it as further evidence that God arranged this just to help this guy's pilgrimage out. We got a warm winter just as long as we needed one for him to make it safely to Canterbury and back. :)
I was reading the Weather services' remarks yesterday, actually, and they suggest that the second half of January and onward will be both colder than so far, and much wetter than average. So brace yourself for snowy weather, which Georgians do not always handle well.
That would defeat the entire Dogma of the Gaia cult of Global Warming though, if God is arranging weather patterns. Some people may find that troubling.
The last time they had snowy weather here a long time ago, some ice froze on the roads and people started getting out to carve it out. Unfortunately I didn't have my steel sword hobby at that time, so people were using all kinds of weird implements, including wooden whatevers that just broke on the 1+ inch black ice. A lot of people came out because that road branches off into the main road, and it just happens to be at a 15 degree incline upwards... so that a lot of cars couldn't go up it, it would just backslide down due to the ice... that was pretty funny until I realized what it meant.
It's good for my martial arts practice though, go outside without a shirt on, light silk pants, and attempt to use internal gut power to keep warm instead of using muscles or fat. It's getting somewhat popular now, I hear.
Been waiting for that chill ever since it started raining like a Flash Flood. Usually there's one or two more cycles, before the deep freeze hits.
Today, it wasn't so bad, but I'm out of practice. If things ice up again, it'll make for good cutting practice. Will have to use the back end, to prevent the concrete from eroding the edge however. These concrete rock mixes are pretty hard.
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