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Where is London's most central sheep?

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Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#101

Post by pyrale »

baxtr wrote: post #78
barrkel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only makes sense if you enjoy the English countryside. I'm an Irishman. I grew up in the countryside, in the west, and spent 15 years living in London in my 20s and 30s. I can count on one hand the number of visits to the English countryside I made that weren't on the back of a motorcycle, and then, I didn't stop except for petrol. The city is what I enjoyed, the chaos, the diversity, ambition, variety. No small…

Your preferred metric is "time to chaos" I guess then?

Time to cow dung, the higher the better obviously.

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#102

Post by j4coh »

barrkel wrote: post #76
steerpike wrote: post #3

When my wife and I lived in Bristol we developed a metric designed to measure how enjoyable a city was to live in that we called "time to sheep". Basically it's a measure of how long you have to travel from the center of the city before you're in the English countryside surrounded by sheep and the best cities have a low (but not too low) "time to sheep" metric. It helped explain one of the reasons we loved living in…

This only makes sense if you enjoy the English countryside. I'm an Irishman. I grew up in the countryside, in the west, and spent 15 years living in London in my 20s and 30s. I can count on one hand the number of visits to the English countryside I made that weren't on the back of a motorcycle, and then, I didn't stop except for petrol. The city is what I enjoyed, the chaos, the diversity, ambition, variety. No small…

Time to sidewalk puke

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#103

Post by wmanley »

sandworm101 wrote: post #70
steerpike wrote: post #3

When my wife and I lived in Bristol we developed a metric designed to measure how enjoyable a city was to live in that we called "time to sheep". Basically it's a measure of how long you have to travel from the center of the city before you're in the English countryside surrounded by sheep and the best cities have a low (but not too low) "time to sheep" metric. It helped explain one of the reasons we loved living in…

A better metric imho would be time to a wild animal. I'd go with distance to a wild bear, or anything else that could threaten a human. That is where wilderness starts imho. For London, that measurement is likely hundreds of miles. In much of north america, it is probably be less than one. I've been to the English countryside. It is more city park than open country.

Richmond park has Adders and Deer, both of which have the potential to kill you - but in practice would be very unlikely to. To get to the nearest wild wolf you'd probably have to look as far as the Ardennes in Belgium, which is roughly 400km away. For bears you'd probably be looking at 1000km or so in the Pyrenees on the French/Spanish border.

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#105

Post by simmonmt »

alt227 wrote: post #87
steerpike wrote: post #3

When my wife and I lived in Bristol we developed a metric designed to measure how enjoyable a city was to live in that we called "time to sheep". Basically it's a measure of how long you have to travel from the center of the city before you're in the English countryside surrounded by sheep and the best cities have a low (but not too low) "time to sheep" metric. It helped explain one of the reasons we loved living in…

> a metric designed to measure how enjoyable a city was to live in Your metric of how enjoyable a city is to live in is based on how long it takes to leave that city? The logical endpoint of that is moving to the countryside where the TTS = 0, which is very easy to achieve. Begs the question, why are you even living in a city at all?!

You can enjoy living in a city but also enjoy outdoorsy pursuits. TTS is a measure of your ability to do both.

It can also be a measure of the maximum size of city you enjoy. There are people who like cities but still wouldn't want to live in NY/LA/London

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#106

Post by mattkevan »

We used to live just a few minutes from the Oasis Waterloo farm and I can confirm there are indeed sheep. Pigs too.

For being so central it was surprisingly rural - there were horse stables and an apple orchard with all kinds of rare varieties just over the road from our flat.

As an aside, a family member recently became a Freeman of the City of London which means they're officially allowed to drive sheep over London bridge.

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#107

Post by themaninthedark »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #95
macintux wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Indiana, my favorite dinner theater is in a town of 500 people. For a while, someone was trying to start a theater in an even more remote spot, an unincorporated community about an hour from there with maybe a dozen homes nearby, but they finally moved it to a large town.

I think by "theater" the OP was implying professional theatre. Lots of small towns have theater, but professional theatre is a much higher bar. In my case, my old workplace in Ottawa, Canada had a "time to moose" of about 5 miles and a "time to theatre" of about 1/2 a mile. Sadly, the professional Opera company in Ottawa went bankrupt so we only have amateur Opera now, but we do get regular professional Broadway prod…

>"time to moose" of about 5 miles and a "time to theatre" of about 1/2 a mile.

Unit of measure error: unit specified it time, unit supplied is distance

:P

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#108

Post by eitally »

I can't speak for further up the peninsula, but the nearest sheep to me in San Jose is almost certainly at Emma Prusch Farm Park (http://www.pruschfarmpark.org/), which like the city farms mentioned in the blog, is a nonprofit farm in the middle-ish of the city.

Depending where you live in SJ, though, you may be closer to Happy Hollow Park & Zoo[2], which also has sheep.

From there you get into actual farms, and there are at least two within a few miles:

Ray of Sunshine Farm in Almaden Valley (mostly focus on produce & goat cheese, but do have sheep): https://www.rayofsunshinefarm.com/

and Deer Hollow Farm in Cupertino (another non-profit): https://deerhollowfarmfriends.org/

From there, there are a bunch more sheep farms heading south toward Gilroy & Hollister, but that's getting a bit too far afield.

Frankly, I'm actually surprised there were so many civic farms in the south bay.

That said, for south & east bay folks, I think it would be a lot more interesting to track the roaming herds of goats used to keep dry grass & brush to a minimum in fire hazard areas.

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#109

Post by themaninthedark »

sandworm101 wrote: post #70
steerpike wrote: post #3

When my wife and I lived in Bristol we developed a metric designed to measure how enjoyable a city was to live in that we called "time to sheep". Basically it's a measure of how long you have to travel from the center of the city before you're in the English countryside surrounded by sheep and the best cities have a low (but not too low) "time to sheep" metric. It helped explain one of the reasons we loved living in…

A better metric imho would be time to a wild animal. I'd go with distance to a wild bear, or anything else that could threaten a human. That is where wilderness starts imho. For London, that measurement is likely hundreds of miles. In much of north america, it is probably be less than one. I've been to the English countryside. It is more city park than open country.

We had a wild bear with cubs go into the dumpster for food at our university campus, this is North America of course.

I don't know London at all but I would hazard that you have foxes and other wild animals living in the city, just well hidden. We have coyotes that have taken up residence in many American cities.

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#110

Post by xenocratus »

j4coh wrote: post #102
barrkel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only makes sense if you enjoy the English countryside. I'm an Irishman. I grew up in the countryside, in the west, and spent 15 years living in London in my 20s and 30s. I can count on one hand the number of visits to the English countryside I made that weren't on the back of a motorcycle, and then, I didn't stop except for petrol. The city is what I enjoyed, the chaos, the diversity, ambition, variety. No small…

Time to sidewalk puke

Yes, obviously no small town has sidewalk puke, surely not in England!
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