Chepstow - re-visited from a different angle.

I went into College to do some report writing this morning, then into town by car for a change, to collect Ashley for a visit to the headquarters of our radio equipment supplier, PMR products, at their Chepstow home base. The company office is in the vicinity of Chepstow railway station. Trains to Birmingham pass through there and a few local trains stop daily. The old grey stone station buildings are now occupied by commercial companies, as they are surplus to the requirement of current railway use. They testify to a much busier era, when the wonderful scenic line up the Wye Valley was still open. What a tragedy it was ever closed, when it had such potential for development as a tourism resource.

Our initial task for the day was to agree a deal on the purchase of a batch of radio handsets at an attractive price which can be of particular operational usefulness to CBS. Once that was done, we were given a demonstration of the GPS tracking facility inherent in our radio handset's operating system. A mapping display of the area ibn question can be superimposed with location data - just like on the movies! Is it as good, as accurate and speedy in updating? My experience in GPS enabled digital cameras left me with doubts. 

A clear account of this handset function by Adrian, PMR's chief programmer, was reassuring. Then I became part of the demo, sent out into the wilds of Chepstow with a live handset to be tracked on screen by Adrian and Ashley. Every now and then I would report my location and have it confirmed by Adrian from the map on-screen, or else, he would tell me where the screen reported I was standing, and I would confirm it. It was quicker than I'd imagined, plus, I  discovered that the GPS update speed was configurable - useful in a sudden emergency. Just like the movies!

My brisk walk around lower Chepstow was a nostalgic affair, revisiting part of the town where we'd lived as the family was growing up and I'd been working for USPG. It looks a lot cleaner and tidier than it did in those days. It's gratifying to see how many of its 18th and 19th century houses have been restored, rather than swept away in the cause of progress. There's a new Tesco's. Town centre shops and eating houses have been up-graded. It's a nicer place to live now that it was when we lived there in the eighties, but nowadays, I suspect we couldn't afford it.