When is a mile knot a mile

March  came in like a lion but hopefully will go out like a lamb as the old saw has it.  Certainly it is looking that way.  The local farmers must be heaving a sigh of relief.  The hill men haven’t started lambing yet  but those closer to sea level are well into it.  Last year was a disaster with freezing cold, driving rain killing many young lambs.  This year the sun is on their backs and they are thriving.

The fine weather took us up on to the path that snakes along the cliff tops with spectacular views along our beautiful coastline.  Not a route for the vertiginous.  Trying to  photograph a little waterfall to add to my collection of linns, made me aware of the two hundred foot drop to the rocks below.

Waterfall

  Rafts of guillemots are collecting for their annual return to shore to breed having spent the rest of the year riding the waves. Their numbers seem to be down from  previous times and only a few kittiwakes are to be seen the cliffs.

The Admiralty, in the days of empire and dreadnoughts, erected two marker posts along the cliffs as a  “measured mile”. Deep water close to shore allowed mighty steamships to be paced over one nautical mile  checking the top speed possible.  No longer necessary, the posts still stand as mute reminders of the days when Britannia ruled the waves.

Measured mile post.  The other is just visible at the highest point on the distant clifftop

The great liner Mauritania had  her sea trials off  St Abbs Head in 1907, captured on a glass plate by local photography pioneer John Wood.

http://www.coldingham.info/galleries/johnwood.shtml

RMS Mauretania passing the lighthouse after completing a speed trial over the measured mile, 1907.

 One knot is one nautical mile per hour, a nautical mile being one minute of arc of the Earth's circumference  .The metric equivalent is the meter/second   1 knot is equal to 1.94384449244 mt/secs.
 Somehow is just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
 " The Cutty Sark reached 17 knots on the wool clipper run from Melbourne... The battle-cruiser could do 28 knots,..."  Just doesn't sound the same in meter/seconds.
There is a romance, a poetry about miles, knots, leagues, fathoms and furlongs  that the metric measurements can never capture The words create images in the mind from stories heard as a child but like the Admiralty measured mile they are all part of history now. 


Skirting the outline of a semi-circular Iron Age fort that never needed complete encirclement, perched as it is above an unscaleable cliff, we headed inland and back to the village.
My companion, of course, was all set to go again !

Where now?