But where is the farthest sheep from the center of London?
Where is London's most central sheep?
141–150 of 174 posts
Re: Where is London's most central sheep?
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I'll caveat this by saying we were a couple of Australians living in the UK and one of the big differences we noticed between Australia and the UK is just how damn clearly delineated the seasons are in the UK. In Australia they all kind of smudge into one another while in the UK it's really very clearly 4 very distinct phases of the year. One of the byproducts of this is that we found UK winter in London to be pre…
On your 2nd paragraph, I love in London and go hiking every now and again. What about London made it hard to get to the country? 30 mins on the train and you're out there!
It's just a question of ease. Where we lived in Bristol (Hotwells) we were exactly 28 minutes walk from Queen Square in the center of the city where I worked and 29 minutes in the other direction to Ashton court estate which is a deer farm and 340ha estate owner by the City of Bristol.
Re: Where is London's most central sheep?
#143When 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…
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Re: Where is London's most central sheep?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Time to something I haven't seen or experienced in the past 3 years" Having spent more than 5 years in small towns, London has fixed my utter boredom.
I have lived my entire life in a a rural area, not even a town and it seems to me that every time I go to a city it is the same as the last. Everyone has their thing I guess.
You’re not meant to just go to a city. It’s not like the zoo.
Re: Where is London's most central sheep?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure how it is in Ottawa but here in the US Midwest distances are frequently measured in units of time. I might say I'm an hour from Green Bay or two hours from Madison, though I don't remember the actual mileage. That said, it usually only applies to distances over 20 minutes (between 7 and 25 miles, depending on speed limits).
That practice is pretty widespread in Canada. Ever since metrification nobody is really sure whether the person they're talking to is more comfortable with miles or kilometres. So they just use time.
When I was very young in Canada, before the metric changeover, it was still common to measure distance with time.
Re: Where is London's most central sheep?
#146Hmm, not sure where the closest sheep is to me here in the inner suburbs of Chicago, but there is a goat farm a couple miles away in the Austin neighborhood. It’s pretty wild seeing them take the herd to their pasture a couple blocks away from the house where their shed is in the back yard.
I'm in the same inner suburb. Where's that goat farm?
Re: Where is London's most central sheep?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Meanwhile, in Canada, I lived in a metro area of 2.5m people--in a nice little quiet neighbourhood--where the 500 acre park down the block had signs warning people to keep an eye out for bears.
Re: Where is London's most central sheep?
#148When 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…
If your metric is time or distance to large amounts of nature, I recommend Ottawa, Canada where the 140 square mile Gatineau Park starts 5 miles from downtown.
That's probably about a good distance. Too little distance to nature is... a thing. I'm like a half hour out of Ottawa.
Gotta take it slow down the driveway because sometimes the deer like to hang out there. And in the yard. And generally everywhere.
More than once I've wandered out and found a fox standing at the sliding door staring at a cat. (They are super cute though. Watching them they look like really playful dogs.)
We have cats because of the mice.
When the snow melts we get enough standing water that the ducks come and nest here. They're not much of a nuisance, but I worry about them with the foxes prowling around.
The rabbits aren't bad either, but there seems to be a lot of infighting with them.
Had a coyote show up one time. Opened the door and asked him what the fuck he thought he was doing and he hasn't been back that I've been able to see. I'm not a great tracker or anything but I can do a decent job of differentiating the tracks in the snow.
I'm told turkeys are hard to hunt. For a good chunk of the year if I just opened my door and tossed a brick there's no way I could miss.
Made the mistake of seeing some groundhogs around and thinking "eh, they're all the way over there they're not hurting anyone and we have lots of space" and then found the posts supporting the roof of my garage sitting on top of a big hole. Pretty sure I've been hearing one under my house trying to chew his way in when I'm trying to sleep. Tried all the deterrents suggested and they really don't care. My wife wanted to trap them and go release them on someone else's property. I started out with lots of patience, .22 rounds, and good aim until they seemed to catch on. Now I've been haphazardly throwing some 7.62x39 at them.
The mosquitos are atrocious. Thankfully that meant I had some decent pesticides on hand for when I walked into the shed one day to a pile of sawdust and found out there are ants that will eat wood. They'd also decided to move into my mailbox.
I also have some herbicides for the poison ivy and do my best to not mow it because I don't really want to be hospitalized. It's hard though because when you're up on a tractor we have a _lot_ of plants that look pretty close and if you don't mow the hell out of the edge of the forest it expands very quickly.
Speaking of hospitalized--made sure I was up-to-date on my tetanus and stuff. I don't know if I'm the only person crazy enough to care but that was a whole fucking thing to find someone to do that preemptively.
Oh, went out to clear the snow today and chewed a mouse up with the snowblower because of course.
I bitch, but I really do just try and see myself as the keeper of this nature. If it weren't for the mosquitos and groundhogs it'd all be pretty good.
Re: Where is London's most central sheep?
#149Hmm, not sure where the closest sheep is to me here in the inner suburbs of Chicago, but there is a goat farm a couple miles away in the Austin neighborhood. It’s pretty wild seeing them take the herd to their pasture a couple blocks away from the house where their shed is in the back yard.
I'm in the same inner suburb. Where's that goat farm?
Re: Where is London's most central sheep?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Foxes are everywhere in London, including the City, and are a common sight.