h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dartmouth is best seen in the film 'Ordeal by Innocence' starring Donald Sutherland, Faye Dunaway, Christopher Plummer and Ian McShane (though there's no other point in watching it as every bit of dialogue is drowned out by a badly-dubbed dave Brubeck soundtrack). If anyone remembers the BBC TV series 'The Onedin Line', that was also mostly shot in Dartmouth - even the scenes set up the Amazon! The worst film shot there is undoubtedly 'The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea' featuring Sarah Miles and Kris Kristoferson....

Roger Moore swanned around Torquay in The Saint, under the delusion that he was in Monte Carlo. The only thing ever shot in Paignton (which is a ghastly seaside dump) was some material for a certain telly series featuring Messrs. Jones, Palin, Cleese, Chapman, Idle and Gillian......

I think that should be Gilliam, unless he's had a sex-change...

Hi PF
Did you notice that the locations often change wildly within one scene. Some years ago a 30's drama was set in my then home of Minehead. We had numerous cases of a car going around a corner and appearing in a village 7 miles away, and then back to the town around the next corner. There was also the big romance scene, filmed along the sea wall which brilliantly managed to keep the bloody big Butlins holiday camp and the nuclear power stations out of shot at all times

Yes, in Ordeal by Innocence there is absolutely no respect for geography, trying to keep track of locations is very confusing.
Somewhere I have a wonderful photograph of a BBC crew filming a sailing ship weathering a storm at sea for the Onedin Line. The amusing thing is that the ship is firmly moored to the quay, with bucketloads of water being thrown at the actors, and a smoke machine being used to disguise the car ferry passing directly behind. A small group of men are apparently employed literally rocking the boat!

Hello GreyDesk. Howyadoin?

I don't have much respect for geography, either ...

I don't have much respect for geography teachers...

Ooooh not fair. I got on fine with my geography teachers. Our A-level field trips were a riot. Two weeks of drinking, then half a day of arsing around making up some data

I'll admit I never had geography. They tossed it in somewhere in 10th grade world history.

Well Shea, then you wouldn't be aware that DNA's thing about the shoe event horizon actually has a basis in provable fact

The more shoe shops that there are in area, the more likely that another shoe shop opening in the same vacinity will be a success. Shoe shops it seems gather together. This relationship is even stronger for hat and glove shops, but the reverse is true for convenience stores.

I remember some splendid A-level geography field trips spent 'sheltering from the rain' in pubs...

Well, now I'm sorry I missed it!

I've often wondered about why the shoe shops all congregate in one area in shopping malls. Now I have an answer.

The convenience store thing makes sense, too. Since they would only be convenient for one neighborhood, and terribly inconvenient for another. They would have to change the name!

My A level geog. field trip was to The Yorkshire Dales in summer - a recipe for rain and sitting inpubs for sure Actually though, we had to schlepp up to the top of Ingleborough Hill in conditions which would probably result in a lawsuit from the parents of any kids who were made to do that these days. Where were yours?
GD

Oh, and we have fireworks on November 5th elwood, to celebrate the occasion when a bunch of men tried to blow up the King and Parliament. Ridiculously over-advertised sales happen mostly in January, and also in July.

Ahhh Guy Fawkes. The last man to enter Parliament with honest intent

What is A level compared to American schooling hierarchy?

And why all these trips over hill and dale?

At two times during my school days we took trips - the forth grade trip to Lansing (the state capital) and to Toronto in sixth grade (the Science Center). Both trips on trains! (very exciting for kids from the Motor Car capital of the world)

I'm not sure elwood, but you need three of them to get into university. The trips are over hill and dale because that's where the most interesting geography and geology is. There's not a whole lot of limestone pavement or examples of glaciation to see in the centre of a big city

We were taken to a ridge in the city and told that it was the Terminal Marain (unsure on spelling) the furthest point glaciers progressed through Michigan.

The place where I went to school, right on the outskirts of London, is supposed to be the southernmost limit of glaciation in Britain, and there's a hill not far from the school which our geog. teacher said is a terminal moraine. When I left school and had to cycle over it every morning and afternoon on the way to and from w**k, it was just a bloody big pain in the bum

Imagine how difficult it would have been if the glacier was still there!

Now I sound like my Dad: "A mile to school! Ha! I had to bike over the glacier there and back...after I invented the bike!"

(thanks for the correct spelling of moraine)