Phil Royle Music

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One of the things I want to do to keep busy during my early retirement is to make music, so I’ve created a new ‘Music’ section of the website where I will post any music that I make.

I’ve always had an interest in making Indie / Alternative music, but have recently discovered a love of electronic music as well, so I plan on making music in both of these genres.

I contemplated whether to release everything under one name, but have currently chosen to split the genres into separate projects.  The first of these projects is Solitude Fallout, which will be the home for most of the electronic music that I make.  When I’m ready to release music under other projects I’ll add them to the site.

This is a good way for me to exercise my creativity and learn new skills, but I’m not expecting anything out of it, so all the music will be available to listen and download for free.

New Walking Pages

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A number of years ago I wanted a better way to organise the growing collection of walking and cycling routes I had, and in the process of sorting that I decided to publish them on a separate website called OpenRoutes.  In an effort to simplify the organisation of things, and to save some money, I’ve now decided to close that website and have just finished importing the walking routes from there into a new section here.  Behold… Walking Routes.

A screenshot showing a map with a walking route marked in green.

I’ll be working on a better way to display the list of routes (most likely via a map), and adding more detail to each page shortly, and I will hopefully be adding more routes in the future.

I’ve also added a few pages from a previous iteration of this website, which show my progress towards ‘bagging’ various hill summits in the UK – although progress has stalled on them in the last few years, since the pandemic.

YesCymru Rally – Talacre

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On Saturday June 11th 2022 several local YesCymru groups gathered on the beach at Talacre to raise awareness of the campaign to devolve the Crown Estate.  This was part of a weekend of similar ‘Banners on Beaches’ events throughout Wales organised by YesCymru.

At present, profits from the Crown Estate in Wales go to the UK Treasury, which then gives 25% to the monarchy.  This has been devolved in Scotland, so the profits there go to the Scottish government, but Westminster has rejected requests for the same thing to happen in Wales.  YesCymru is a campaign group for Welsh independence, and having control of the profits from Welsh resources would help to prove that Wales is big enough and rich enough to be an independent nation.

More details are available in this Nation.Cymru article, which includes one of my photos of the event:

YesCymru groups at Talacre lighthouse.

Welsh Learning Journey

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Dw i wedi bod yn dysgu Cymraeg.

I have been learning Welsh for around two years now, and as I approach the end of the Say Something in Welsh course I thought I’d take the time to think about my Welsh learning journey so far, what I’m going to do next, and to write here about what has or hasn’t worked, and share some advice and tips on learning Welsh that may be useful to anyone reading.

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Withnail Weekender

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View over Haweswater

When I first watched the movie Withnail and I… I don’t remember when that was exactly, but several years ago… it was with great anticipation.  I’d heard it quoted many times and people had mentioned it as a great film, but when I saw it for the first time I was a little underwhelmed.  It was OK, but I didn’t really understand the fuss about it.  The next time I watched it I enjoyed it more, and the third time I began to understand why people liked it.  But then something strange happened the next time I watched it; I couldn’t make it all the way through and ended up switching it off.  Perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood that time, but I started to think that maybe I actually don’t like it and I’d been trying too hard to enjoy it previously?  Anyway, I didn’t watch it again for a few years, but the next time I did… wow!  I finally “got” it.  I’ve watched it several times since and it just keeps getting better.

So when I booked an AirBnB apartment for a long weekend in the Lake District and included in the information was that the phone box right at the end of the access road had appeared in a scene in the movie, I started looking at where else they may have filmed locally and found that most of the Lake District scenes were within a few miles of where I was staying, so I began planning to visit as many as possible.

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