Derwent Walk and Charles Darwin

As I am sitting here waiting for the snow to arrive, I thought I would share a film that I put together yesterday of some of the views along a track called the Derwent Walk. Just to remind us all of late summer early autumn.

The Derwent Walk is a trail, used by horses, cyclists and walkers that runs along the bed of a disused railway. Here in Britain in the 1960s we ripped up a lot of railways in favour of the Car! Then in the 1980s a number of these routes were converted to recreational routes and are used as part of a national Cycle network. The Derwent walk runs to Consett and beyond to Lanchester. That part I have not strolled along yet, but next year...

putting together this film showed the limitations of my computer, it struggled to cope with rendering the film and refused to do it three times. But then I spoke nicely too it and it finally worked. It also took a long time, to little memory in this steam powered device.

However while I was waiting I was able to read five chapters of The Origin of Species a book that I am rereading. I first read the book in 1978/9 and while I understood the concepts that Darwin was talking about, it is no easy read. But even now, a hundred and fifty years after its publication, it is still a powerful book. I doubt that many people have read the full text, there are shorter paperbacks out there, but I do have a full text (Sixth Edition) that benefits from amendments that Charles Darwin made to make it easier for a non specialist to understand the theory. However the aspect of the text that was and remains remarkable is that Darwin had obviously thought of all the arguments against Evolution and discovered the evidence to repudiate those arguments.

I was once asked, when I was about eighteen, what I wanted to do in life, I answered;

“When I grow up I want to be David Attenborough”

Well I think that if I were be asked the same question now, I would wish to have the intellectual prowess of Charles Darwin.