Residents encouraged to sign up for Beat the Street 2019
Beat the street is back! Beat the Street is set to return to Swindon and residents can now pick up their cards ready to join in the fun when the game launches.
2019 is the second year of the initiative running in Swindon. Beat the Street encourages people to get active outdoors. It turns whole towns and cities into a giant game. Players tap cards and fobs against sensors called Beat Boxes while walking or cycling to earn points. Whether competing as a team or an individual there are prizes to win.
Last year’s event was a huge success. An unprecedented 32,000 local people took part. They walked and cycled a massive 313,000 miles in six weeks. A record for any of the Beat the Street challenges so far.
This year’s challenge begins on Wednesday, 25 September and runs for six weeks.
A launch event will be taking place on the day from 4pm – 6pm at the GWR Park on Faringdon Road. There will fun activities and double points available on Beat Boxes.
Beat the Street starts on 25th September, and cards and maps will shortly vavailable from distribution points including Swindon Central Library.
From left: Peter Barrett and Omelia Legg, library and info assistants at Swindon Central Library pictured with Stuart Arthur from Beat the Street.
Primary school pupils will have a fob given to them. Other players can collect cards and a map for free from distribution points across Swindon. They include selected supermarkets, libraries and leisure centres.
Councillor Brian Ford, Swindon Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Adults and Health, said:
“Beat the Street is only one week away. So make sure you pick up a card and map so that you’re ready to start earning points for your chosen school or team straight away.
“We’ve already seen lots of excitement ahead of the game kicking off. Primary schools are eager to travel even further than last year and lots of workplaces and community teams are signing up to play. Beat the Street is a fun way to get active and explore new areas of Swindon. So I encourage people to get involved. Last year we were one of the top towns so let’s beat that this year and be the top town in the country.”
On the theme of exploring Swindon have a root round:
Hello listeners. Welcome to the second post in my tour round Swindon in 50 Drinks.
Because I don’t want you all getting the idea that I’m ONLY interested in alcohol (almost but not quite) the subject of this post is that magic bean – coffee.
Now Swindon has more coffee shops than you can toss a finely ground Arabica bean at. Thus it’s no hardship to find coffee and coffee shops to talk about. There’s plenty of Costa outlets for sure. But Swindon finds herself also blessed with a good number of independent coffee shops – both in the town centre and in Old Town. But of course we all have our own favourite place to go. Love Brownies on Faringdon Road is one of mine.
Black Coffee
Coffee and cannolo in DaPaolo’s – sadly no more. Paolo retired. Harrumph!
Cortado (from the Spanish cortar, known as “Tallat” in Catalan, “Pingo” or “Garoto” in Portugal and “noisette” in France) is an espresso “cut” with a small amount of warm milk to reduce the acidity.
The ratio of coffee to milk is between 1:1 – 1:2, and the milk is added after the espresso.
Flat White
A flat white at Baila coffee and vinyl on Victoria Rd, Swindon – sadly a victim of the pandemic I think?
According to the North Star roasters a flat white is: ‘an espresso-based coffee drink accompanied with steamed milk and microfoam.
This microfoam is made up of steamed milk which is gently infused with air. This results in silky, textured milk containing tiny air bubbles. Air bubbles should be barely visible to the coffee drinker when perfectly made. It traditionally comes in a small size only (5oz-6oz), much smaller than typical cappuccinos and lattes.’
‘The Blog Frog has a simple mission. To provide insights on the best blogs across sixteen categories. We identify the top blogs so you get the best content.
We consider BlogFrog a next-generation influencer marketing platform. Because we know how important to find good quality content for your business can be, we network communities and websites together to create a larger interest-based social network.’
There’s an awful lot of coffee in Brazil … or Ethipioa
As the 2ndmost traded commodity in the world, coffee has a rich history. Thought to have originated in Ethiopia, this beverage was also used in the Middle East to aid concentration. Here are the most interesting facts about coffee:
It Forged a Revolution
So powerful is coffee, that it led to a social revolution. People used to drink it at home and in public coffee houses that sprung up in cities and towns across East Africa and the Middle East. Soon enough, these coffee houses were the go-to places for socializing – as the blog Coffee or Bust explains this.
Drinking of coffee was accompanied by different types of entertainment, including chess games, musical performances, gossip, and dancing. Coffee houses became the places where people went to know what was happening in the world. Therefore, you can say that coffee sparked a social revolution by bringing people together.
Goats Might Have Discovered It
According to legend, a goat herder in Ethiopia discovered the intoxicating effects of coffee after his goat got excited after eating the beans. The herder went to the local monastery and told the abbot, who decided to dry and boil the beans to make a beverage. The berries were thrown into a fire and the roasted ones taken from the embers to make coffee.
The monastery’s monks found that the drink gave them energy and kept them awake. As soon as word spread about this drink, people loved it.
A Yemenite is also said to have discovered coffee after seeing birds that ate the berries flying more energetically than usual. After tasting the berries, he also became more alert than usual.
It was Thought to Be Sinful
Like alcohol, this beverage also has a long prohibition history. Coffee has attracted religious disquiet from different corners. Had these fanatics gotten their way, coffee would be illegal today. In 1511, the beverage was banned by scholars and jurists who held a meeting in Mecca.
A Meccan governor led the opposition and was afraid that coffee would cause conflict because it would bring people together to discuss his shortcomings.
In 1524, the ban was overturned by a Turkish Sultan. This same Sultan ordered the execution of the Meccan governor and declared coffee sacred. A similar ban occurred in 1532 in Egypt and coffee houses were raided.
It was Called the ‘Devil’s Cup’
Countries in the Mediterranean also received coffee with some suspicion. Catholics called it the ‘bitter invention of the Devil’ and outlawed it. It caused such disquiet that the pope had to intervene by sampling the brew and declaring it to be a Muslim and Christian drink.
A Saint from Mocha Brewed It
Another story claims that the first person to discover coffee was a Sheikh known as Omar. While in exile, the man felt hungry and sampled the berries but found them to be bitter. He found that roasting them turned them hard and boiled them to get an aromatic beverage that gave him instant energy and kept him awake.
This miracle drink made it possible for him to return home and elevated him to sainthood. By the sixteenth century, coffee was a beloved drink in Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. Merchants from Yemen started taking the berries home and growing them.
Sufis prized the drink and used it as a spiritual intoxicant as well as to increase concentration. From the Middle East, this drink spread to Italy, Europe, and the Balkans.
I, like many other people I daresay, had formed the impression that the only piece of Ken’s Swindon work, still in existence, isthe Golden Lion mural.
So imagine my surprise when, just t’other day, a tweet appeared on my Twitterfeed from the friends of Lydiard Park with an image of a painting of Lydiard House, that Ken did in 2005. I rather get the impression it’s been in storage or something. Certainly, I’ve been in that house more than a few times and never seen it. Even now it’s leaning against the wall in a tucked away corner of the rooms that are open.
Ken created the triptych as a joint project between Ken and Intel. Some Intel staff did some of the painting. The idea of the artwork was, according to Ken, for children to find things in the painting around the house.
Indeed, hidden in the bottom right hand corner is the image of a very famous Swindon figure.
What else is there to see at Lydiard House?
Well. Quite rather a lot actually. The member of staff on duty, Adrian Smith, gave me a bit of a tour explaining some of the paintings etc. He’s really very knowledgeable – as you’d expect – and I must seek him out again and pay more attention. Why? Because, TBH, I was too stunned about the Ken White triptych to concentrate fully. That and thinking, as Adrian spoke, that small in number as the available rooms at Lydiard might be – there’s a heck of a lot of stuff that is simply not shouted about enough. WHY is Swindon so bad at this?
For example on this visit I noticed a couple of watercolours that I rather liked, created to accompany a 1951 newspaper article about the house written by none other than Aldous Huxley of Brave New World fame.
Now, more than once in recent weeks the topic of covering Swindon in 50 Drinks arose. It was somewhat tongue-in-cheek TBH. But then I got to thinking ‘Why not?’ Something a little different for this blog. I hasten to point out that this series of posts WILL feature non-alcoholic drinks too!
So these posts are not about drinks that are #madeinswindon – that would be beer and nothing else I imagine. Though no doubt someone can put me right on that. No, this series of posts are intended as a light-hearted journey around drinks once can enjoy in Swindon. I aim to namecheck 50 different establishments on this journey.
‘There is an old Greek saying that “ouzo makes the spirit” and this is especially true in Greece. The Greek spirit or kefi (KEH-fee) is found in hearty food, soulful music, and the love of lively conversation. A glass of chilled ouzo is the perfect companion to all of these things.
Most people would agree that ouzo is Greece’s most popular alcoholic drink. No other beverage is as uniquely Greek or as closely linked to a culture as ouzo is to Greece. In fact, in 2006, the Greek government won the exclusive rights to use the product name ouzo.’
