Constable's Cartographer

As a Salisbury museum trustee David has always given tremendous support to the museum; loyal, dependable, cheerfully sustaining others while his personal integrity shines through. Above all, his practical common sense approach has served the museum extremely well over the years and is perhaps not fully appreciated by everyone because his modesty is such that he never promotes himself as a leading figure at the museum.

I worked with him closely over the Constable trails in 2011 when his enthusiasm and expertise were wonderful. Whether producing a superb text for trail images in the Close, struggling with the practical difficulties of collecting and erecting the museum marquee, gluing broken trail frames in his garage; his immersion in all things ‘Constable’ appeared total - I’m sure that Heather would endorse this last statement! His keenness took him on days out with Heather to Osmington and Weymouth Bay where he insisted on working out exact Constable locations.

On one bitter January afternoon, still in the planning stages, his enthusiasm overran itself. After working in telecommunications he insisted on using his latest hi-tech toy on a trial Constable walk around the Harnham water meadows. The results are below but needless to say this was a completely flat 2 mile gentle walk although David with his satnav managed to walk 4 miles at a maximum speed of 11.5 mph (not bad for a man in his late 60s!) and our ‘elevation gain’ was 653 ft across the water meadows. In his defence he does add that ‘this is the first time I have used the ‘My Tracks’ app and you will see that, according to it, I was walking in the river for a significant part of the journey! It is not very useful to have all my meanderings though so I think that that statistic is pretty useless.’ But far more important is his next comment, ‘must stop, need to erect a travel cot now’.

The picture looks to be a Cinderella moment. Is David waiting for Constable to appear?

Enjoy your birthday.

Ruth

Harnham trail Created by My Tracks on Android. Total Distance: 6.39 km (4.0 mi) Total Time: 2:03:22 Moving Time: 52:46 Average Speed: 3.11 km/h (1.9 mi/h) Average Moving Speed: 7.27 km/h (4.5 mi/h) Max Speed: 18.55 km/h (11.5 mi/h) Min Elevation: 85 m (279 ft) Max Elevation: 114 m (374 ft) Elevation Gain: 199 m (653 ft) Max Grade: 4 % Min Grade: -7 % Recorded: Fri Jan 28 13:56:47 GMT 2011 Activity type: walking