Little Thetford .org

It is not too late to enter this years Ely Standard 22^nd Grunty Fen half-marathon which takes place on Sunday 9 September 2012. This event is chip-timed. The organisers are accepting on-line entries only this year. Entries must be received by Wednesday 5 September 2012. Fill in your entry here.

Please do let us know if you will be entering this year by commenting at the bottom of this page. We would really appreciate your photographs of this event. Send them to us here.

Would you be willing to display the poster? If so, download it from here (PDF) then print it.

See also
2011 page on this web site
2010 page on this web site. Note that it includes a map of the 2010 route. Please check the up-to-date route map on the official site.
Ely Runners – a community amateur sports club
Ely Standard 22^nd Grunty Fen half-marathon and 1 mile fun run

*Photograph: Copyright © 2003 John McCullough. Some rights reserved. A version of this image first published on Flickr Oct 2006 with the following caption: “New York marathon, 2003. Jenny Crain was the second U.S. finisher, placing 16th overall in 2:38:49. Look at the skin wrinkling on her knee!”

Remember the evening “A brush with an old vicar” on 15 July 2011? The painting, completed that evening by the Reverend John Sansom, is for sale. The funds raised from this sale will be donated to the Friends of St George’s to help raise money for the roof fund.

Contact Robert Young on 01353649379 for viewing details

Sensei Lee Nash tells us of his family oriented Karate class held in the Little Thetford village hall on Tuesdays 7—8 pm.

Read more…

A New Year walk

Next time you are walking in Little Thetford, take your camera. You never know what you may find. If you are unsure what you have seen, send us your photograph and we will identify it for you.

Whilst walking from Little Thetford to Ely on New Years Day with six friends, Judy Young spotted this unusual goose enjoying a swim on the River Great Ouse. Colin Saunders, one of the party, was so intrigued he looked it up on his return. The large black dewlap and knob  distinguish this as a brown African Goose.

Colin reports: “The African Goose should be of about the same size and height as the Embden Goose . According to Oscar Grow the African Goose appears physically a cross between the Toulouse Goose , and the Brown Chinese Goose, with some of the size and dewlap of the Toulouse Goose, and some of the carriage and ‘knob’ of the Chinese Goose . Also Known as L’oie de Guine’e in France

The African Goose is said by some breeders to be a distinct breed imported from Africa, but the evidence a large genetic part of the Chinese is indisputable; see Tegetmeir 1873. They were known as a pure breed in the USA from the 1850′s and although often crossed with the Toulouse as a commercial meat cross are a definite species descended from the Swan goose (Anser cygnoides) rather than the greylag (Anser anser).”

Also spotted. Well not spotted actually, crested! In any case, crested ducks were seen during the same walk. Unfortunately, we do not have a Little Thetford photograph of them, so Colin Saunders found this image on the web. Colin again “Crested ducks are basically an aberration appearing in any colour and as such have a mixed history. The crest is essentially a mutation associated with skull deformities and known for hundreds of years. There are those who claim that crested ducks first appeared in Britain, which is unlikely but they were certainly first shown here and appear in many early poultry books . Genetic mutations appear occasionally all over the world. Selective breeding would then have increased the numbers of birds with the same characteristic. 17th century Dutch paintings show crested ducks on wildfowl such as Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1636 -1695) and Marmaduke Craddock (1660 – 1717) from Somerset in the UK showed them”

John McCullough

We have started to produce an interactive map of the parish showing footpaths and points of interest. We hope our visitors will find this of interest. We look forward to hearing what you would like to see added to the map.

We’ll be adding information to the map over time, but in particular, we would love to get photographs to show at points along the parish footpaths, so if anyone with a digital camera who uses the footpaths can help out by sending us pictures (photos at littlethetford dot org) and tell us exactly as possible where they were taken, that would be fantastic!

Enjoy!

We’ve added a couple of new items to the archaeology section including some broaches and fishing weights. (see the Archaelogy page)

There’s also a local Witchford walk which takes in part of Little Thetford (see the Walks section)

We’ve added some audio of Janet Braybrooke – our village post woman singing Don’t cry for me Argentina (See the Music page under Recreation).

And finally we have a nice new weather widget on the right hand side of the page showing the 5 day outlook. Click the arrows to the side of the map to show rain, pressure or temperature.