Northumberland 2008

We want to start this update by wishing you a fantastic 2009. The past 12 months have been variously interesting, challenging, frustrating and wonderful for us, all at different times and levels of intensity and only the good bits have been reflected in these blog pages, which is only right for a blog page. We are keenly feeling the change in the world, so it is with real meaning that we wish the next 12 months will provide all of us with more solutions than obstacles, more fun than trial, more reward than penalty and that the fiscal correction is swift and a balanced recovery can soon be charted. We will continue the monthly blog updates through 2009, partly to ensure Gail and I remember everything we have been doing, partly for your enjoyment, but mainly to tempt you to consider visiting Yorkshire and to help us explore this part of the world. To that end I have decided to make all photos we take from now on available on http://www.flickr.com/photos/wetherbyadventures/ as well as selecting some for these pages. The shot above is of us in a little pub near the middle of Hadrians Wall. That sort of brings me to the monthly update I guess..... Well, December has been cold, damp, grey and best spent indoors. Gail has also been doing lots of extra work days because of the holiday season and due to lots of bugs circulating the ranks of her colleagues. Thankfully we have remained untouched by disease, I think it is because we are immune after years of exposure to the more virulent tropical viruses, these tender europeans are all a bit soft... Let's hope this is the case and we remain free of germ infestation. We did get out to dinners and some gatherings and towards the end of the month we had the usual xmas focus. Our neighbours David and Carolyn had us and our other neighbours round for a fish pie dinner and apple flan dessert. the night was fuelled by far too much red wine, fantastic company and good cheer and set the two of us up perfectly for a nice xmas day in front of the fire with a big roast meal and pudding. Boxing Day took us up north to look at Vindolanda ( http://www.vindolanda.com/ ) near Hadrian's Wall. This is an active archaeological site in the summer months where Englands oldest record of writing is slowly being recovered on wooden tablets some 2000 years old, preserved in the anaerobic sub soils. We got interested in the site on our last trip north and the visit to the museum and walking site was really rewarding as well as educational, if a bit chilly. We stayed overnight at a nearby B&B http://www.saughyrigg.co.uk/index.html where we enjoyed a beautiful trout meal (the owner's sister farms the trout and is one of Rick Stein's food heroes.... a cultural plus apparently) Food was grand, four poster canopy bed a treat and the surrounding scenery a great experience. We dawdled along the road to Newcastle stopping off to see the views from the top of Hadrians wall. We arrived in Newcastle the same day and had a quick stroll along quayside and over the Tyne into Gateshead where we visited the Sage http://www.thesagegateshead.org/ building (performance venue ) and the old flour mills http://www.balticmill.com/ where Yoko Ono was having one of her conceptual art exhibitions over three floors. The old mill also allowed space for an extensive collection and display of international works from the fluxus artists movement on the lower floors..... I will say that, after studying all the works on display, the restored Baltic flour mill is a wonderful display space for high quality modern art. Shame there was none there. Call me biased but the MCA, Sydney Art Gallery and Biennale are world-leading art venues. The river Tyne is crossed by some 13 bridges, tunnels and viaducts between Newcastle and Gateshead but the two just outside our hotel were of real interest. The Tyne bridge is sort of a mini Sydney Harbour Bridge and was built around the same time. The SHB's span, temperature extremes and the fact it used siliconised steel to cope with the loads made it the technological masterpiece of its time. The myth endures that that the Tyne Bridge was the model for the Sydney Harbour Bridge... it is a myth. Tyne Bridge was completed and in use by 1928 and the Sydney Harbour Bridge opened in 1932, but design and engineering was all done and work had started for the SHB by1923, the first Tyne sod wasn't turned until 1925. Most likely the Hell Gate Bridge in New York , completed in 1916, was the design inspiration for the SHB. The millennium bridge is interesting because it tilts up so the wire stays become horizontal to let ships through but regrettably there was no call for it to do that during our stay. We did walk over it though and all the bridges, the Sage building, old shipping buildings carved from stone and the Norman period churches make this part of Newcastle very appealing. The night was spent with some of Gail's workmates in the Centurion Bar at Central station, a fantastic space of edwardian grandeur having cavernous rooms with glazed tiles and wonderful skydomes. Great company and conversation, not all work related. We returned home via Durham, a cathedral city which we have decided to return to and investigate in detail as it is a very nice old town with great little cobbled side lanes full of interest. January is forecast to be cold and chill again so we will have to see what adventure we can eek out of it but rest assured we will have some photos to post and a few words. Keep well!

Hola! Barcelona

It gets quite cold and damp this time of year in Yorkshire..... Sort of makes you want to be somewhere else for a while. Gail was scheduled off work for four days in a row so we decided to escape the overcast sky here. The short amount of time we had to plan left us with only a few choices of flights but Spain flights were available, Barcelona is a place on our list of boxes to tick, so we booked in and headed off... The snap is of Barcelona's Port Vell, all re-developed big and modern, very smart. It is our second visit to Spain and we do like the bits we have seen and the people and the feel of the places we have been, we find the relaxed style of life is nice and homey. More on Barcelona later on.

Back in Wetherby it is all a glitter with it's chrissy lights and with little chrissy trees illuminated on every shop, so late afternoons and evenings are very pretty. November has bought with it the first flakes of snow, last winter it was January before it snowed. Guy Faulkes night was again a crowded event in Wetherby, a massive bonfire gets lit in the sports grounds next to the river, it is organised by Wetherby Rotarians as is the 45 minute firework spectacular which boomed and blinged and reflected off the River Wharfe. We could see it all from the warm comfort of our front room window now all the leaves have fallen from the trees opposite and our view of the wintered valley is restored for a few months. We hosted a small neighbourhood firework show of our own as we can buy fireworks here and we are like kids in a candy shop whenever they go on sale. Our display was not as spectacular but much more hands-on and enjoyable for that. It was a cold night though so the party continued inside.

Leeds city has also turned on it's christmas lights, it is normally a party city anyway with it's fair share of cheer. This year Leeds council invited a Frankfurt kriskringle market to set up in the town square just behind the town hall. There are german sausage stalls, garlic and cheese toasties, hot mulled wines and pretzel vendors, delicious stollen and cake stalls and merry-go-rounds, dodgem cars and music. There is also quite an interesting selection of continental gifts and trinkets, all of which adds to the mood and has made Gail even more determined that next year's xmas plans will include a trip to Germany or Prague or Brussels for a "real" Christmas market experience.

But let's talk more about our time in Barcelona. We have been told by many people it is their favourite city. We were only there for three days but we can understand the attraction. It is a big city so whatever takes your fancy can be found. There was a lot we thought we would find interesting but although we had a little prior knowledge of the unique "Modernista" architecture in Barcelona we were surprised and totally entranced by what we found. We had not intended to dedicate most of our trip to looking at old buildings but in walking past the L'Eixample & Grácia area near our hotel and by going through buildings designed by Antoni Gaudi we learned so much. We lost hours touring through the Temple Explatori de la Sagrada Familiar (the official web site is http://www.sagradafamilia.cat/sf-eng/index.php ) and the Casa Battlo ( http://www.casabatllo.es/ is its web site if you are interested), and we even travelled up to the Parc Guéll, where Gaudi had his home (there is a good, if uninformed, 6 minute video by a USA tourist about the parc at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7J8Qa9psS38 ) each of these structures are monumental modernista works in their own right. We were most taken by the Sagrada Familia temple, smitten in fact. Work started on it over 120 years ago (1882) and it has been continuously under construction until now. It has, at best estimates, another 40 years to go before it reaches Gaudi's completed vision. He modeled it in plaster and drew detailed specifications and plans so the current builders and craftsmen clearly understand the vision and design. Having said that, the artwork, embellishment and carvings are of their time. This means the building is a record of recent art history and development. The Western entry depicts the nativity story and is in the soft flowing style of the early 1900s modernista artists. The eastern portal displays the facade of the passion and was completed in the 1980s, It is all about the crucifixion story and carved in the Picasso/modern cubist style which was the big artistic fashion when that entry to the temple was commissioned. Both artistic styles are well anchored in Spanish cultural roots. The other portal into the temple is yet to be commenced, the facade of the glory entrance will be carved in a style yet unknown, by artists also not known nor probably even born yet. The roof line currently sports only eight of the twelve massive tiled bell towers and the future main six central towers are an impossible engineering challenge so far. Gaudi knew when he set the temple out in the 1800's that the materials and technology did not exist to meet the design requirements but he had faith that as it would take a long time to build each section of the temple, the architectural ability, materials and technology would be invented in time to meet the future challenge. And so it has proved to be, over the eighty years since his death, engineering has improved and materials are being invented so the project does continue to evolve as he foresaw it. Modern computing power is resolving the structural issues of the design and improved materials are being invented. The temple is providing cutting edge challenges not just for for everyone involved on site but for the construction industry globally. Jorn Utzon had similar design belief's to Gaudi, in that he also was dedicated to nature being reflected in forms in construction, his Sydney Opera House has much in common with the Sagrada Familia, Utzon used an orange's segments to get the sail shapes, Gaudi used tree models for his columns, the construction of the external Opera House shell tiles seem to borrow much of the technology from the tiled ceiling light wells in the photo above. The temple is now being completely drafted into CAD which will speed things up quite a lot, especially in planning the restoration works to the older built parts now needing maintenance. We were so impressed that all this enduring passion, commitment, dedication and excitement comes from one man's vision which was laid out over a hundred and twenty years ago. Quite amazing. Equally amazing is that the construction has always been funded only by donations and more recently entry ticket sales. Both of these have increased since the 1992 Olympics and the subsequent tourist boom.

As an example of how a grand passion endures and how passionate commitment can overcome all obstacles, this project is an object lesson beyond comparison.

We can strongly recommend, if you ever have the opportunity to get to this corner of the world you just must spend half a day there. Take the excellent guided tour through the temple and the museum attached to fully appreciate Gaudi's vision and the commitment of the generations of tradespeople who pass on his vision. It is a project of a magnitude equal to the scale of works that built the enduring monuments of the ancient world.

Our accidental architectural odyssey didn't finish at the temple though, now bitten by the moderniste style of architecture we continued our adventure.

The Casa Battlo also has an audio tour (we went early Sunday morning and beat the crowds) which is just as stimulating to the sense of space, balance and craft but in a much more residential and approachable scale,

and the Parc Guell is a day out that rewards at every turn. We walked the landscaped paths and bridges and sat and had a sandwich and a jug of sangria as we watched the sun settle over Barcelona on a cool but sunny Friday afternoon. Caught the 24 bus back to town.

Saturday was a wetter morning but we got out and about anyway, bought a couple of brollys and strolled the markets and lanes of the old town. We took ourselves off towards the harbour and rode the recommended elevator trip up to the top of the Christopher Columbus tower (to where the sun is glinting off the top window in the photo) to see the city from above. Even from up top we couldn't see the limits of Barcelona, it's a huge city resting in a curved valley. We did get great views from the ocean to the mountains and it gave us a good idea of how far we had walked over the two days!

We then strolled down to the Port Vell marina area and had a tapas special for lunch at the restaurant at the end of the mare-magnum harbour pier. We walked to the world trade centre but the cable car was out of commission for maintenance and later we had a delightful but expensive evening meal in la Taxidermista restaurant just off LaRambla (the tree lined street in photo below).

LaRambla is a pedestrian mall between traffic lanes and is populated by flower sellers in one area, artists doing portraits and stuff in another section, pets, bird and rodent sellers all grouped in a different area. Then there are the jugglers, minstrels and tribes of those silver and bronze painted people who stand very still wearing all sorts of costumes pretending to be sculptures.....Why?... also Cafés and newsagents, lottery and other stall holders go to make it a very interesting, if a bit of a touristy, walk.

If you are in any way interested in retail therapy then Barcelona is therapy heaven with the Passieg de Gracia (which continues west from LaRambla) being known as the Champs Elysee of Spain and at the heart of what must be the biggest defined retail area of any city in the world. Beautiful stuff is in every window, from inspired fashion and shoes to wonderful designs for bathroom fixtures and furniture, for mile upon mile, in every direction.

Our extended walks through the city back-streets also rewarded us with lots of different sights, like the locals gently dancing something called the sardana at the markets and our visit inside the Bari Gotic cathedral where god keeps his ducks.

It was a shame in a way we had only the three days for this city as we didn't get to wander into the wonderful museums, galleries, antiquarian displays or to visit the beaches, mountainside villages or any of the olympic projects and stunning modern buildings. . Gail says we will return...Greg says he has ticked the Barcelona box and there are so many other places to see.... we will see.

And that was what November held for us, December is looking very quiet, the credit crunch has bitten everyone hard and we are not spared, so belt tightening is called for. Having said that ,Yorkshire does continue to reward us and I am sure we will have some nice things to report of December in the new year. We wish you a happy christmas and we hope 2009 will be everything you want it to be.

Whitby, mini and ploughing

It is the end of October and the winter chill has blown down from the North with a vengence. As I write this it is minus 2 degrees outside. I doubt I will ever get used to the cold that these months bring... It means that we have to say active I suppose .... October saw us do that. Gail has been returned to the land of normalcy now the company has hired more people. She has previously been working up to 56 hours overtime in a month so a normal month provides welcome sleeping in days and time to relax and enjoy.

I can't let the update go too far without a photo of the new little car in our life. It is a delight to drive, and yes I do fit in it. It has a disappointing Satellite Navigation girl in the dash though, we have called her 'Sandy". Sandy does not have the same level of pleasant if annoying directions nor the same amount of map information as "Beryl" in the old Astra . We are occasionally seen doing U turns, having missed or wrongly interpreted an oblique or indistinct direction from the bitch in the box,,er,,, Sandy..

Despite the wrong turns we did get to see lots of things this month. We had a couple of house guests too. James, our friend who lives in the Caribbean and occasionally visits his family in Liverpool, dropped in for a night and a couple of days. We enjoyed some very nice ale sampling in local establishments and a lot of catch up chat, very nice to see him again and hear of his plans to open a cafe on the island.....tempting us to visit. We also had a visit for a couple of nights and days from our mates John and Sarah from Kendall NSW. Had quite a few good meals out and a day trip to Whitby which saw me sit in the car mostly due to a bit of illness unfortunately. Whitby is a lovely town if a bit crowded with tourists. It is the port where Captain James Cook was apprenticed onto the Whitby coal ships by a kindly Quaker ship owner and from where he was to leave for London and his famous career in the Royal Navy. Gail and I returned to Whitby two weeks later on Cook's birthday as it turned out and we saw the Australian flag flying in his honour. Bought a lump to the throat seeing the Oz rag flying proud in Yorkshire. Whitby is also known as the source for the UK gemstone Jet, a black stone which is petrified monkey-puzzle tree some many millions of years old. It soared in popularity when Queen Victoria started to wear it as part of her enduring black ensemble she wore continuously after the death of her Albert. Every fasionable lady of course had to wear Jet from then on. Gail now has a nice pair of modern jet earrings. We also trailed north up the coast a bit to visit Staiths where Cook was first employed and where he was attracted to the life of sail while working for a local trader in what was a typical smugglers coastal port. It is interesting to walk streets and bays older than the written history of Australia and to ponder Cook's life in those times.... Except for technology nothing much has changed, the challenge of study for a career, the dedication necessary for success, the importance of establishing good relationships and the challenges outlined in the history of Cook's life are all similar to current times...Having said that, a stroll through the Cook museum in Whitby does give you an idea of the extreme levels of commitment and challenge he faced and the hardships he and his family had to endure.

During John and Sarah's stay we also visited the Inglby family's home, Ripley Castle which is just up the road a bit from Wetherby. We enjoyed a very interesting tour by the well informed guide through five rooms of this ancient home and among many other things we were told of a recently discovered link to the NSW Webster family name in the Ingleby history, dating back to the gold rush years in Victoria...... A coincidence I am sure, but I was a bit tempted to look into my genealogy to see if there was a personal link, not so tempted to actually do anything , but tempted a bit as it is a lovely and historic home...with ties back to Cromwell and to royalty. Later on in the month, as Gail had yet another couple of days off in a row, we set off to walk the walls of York. Ended up only doing a small stretch as we decided to pop over to the rail museum and ride the giant wheel and get a look at York from up high. As the photos show, it was a pleasant if chilly day. We have been fortunate that the sun has shone quite a bit in October but without anything resembling warmth accompanying it. Still it is nice to have bright light instead of grey sky which is aptly referred to as leaden, an expression I had not related to before I experienced so may dull days. Wetherby continues to surprise us by the events that get held here. Last weekend for example we has a Ploughing Challenge organised in one of the local fields..... This involves ancient and modern tractors and some horse and even some man powered ploughs and seed drills all competing to win prize money of up to 20 pounds! You can gather it is not therefore an event for the money, rather the tradition and pride in straight and even ploughing skills and mechanical/ horsemanship ability . The programme book of the day's events laid out the judging criteria and went to some lengths to lay damnation on the Government for declaring ploughing events 'non-agricultural' and therefore not eligible for rural fuel discounts.... As you can see it seems rather agricultural to us.

One other event was a night out with Tina and Rod, Tina works with Gail occasionally and we were invited to their place for an evening meal to thank us for looking after Rosco their dog..... Well, that dog minding never happenned because of plans changing but that didn't stop us going for dinner. Tina and Rod are restoring/converting an old barn into a very swank and charming home. All oak beams, stone floors and "period features". Very beautiful home and located in a small Pennines village about an hours drive from us and to the south west of Leeds City, closer to Manchester really. A very pleasant night and a chance to play with Rosco and a much needed doggy experience for us. Tina laid on a great meal and Rod hosted us to the local Pub for a quiet ale prior.

On the theme of a quiet ale, Gail and I headed off today for one at the Morrisey/Fox pub I spoke of a few months ago, Neil Morrisey is the skinny bloke from the 'Men Behaving Badly"comedy series on the tele... the Fox bloke is a good Yorkshire chef. The pub, Ye Old Punch Bowl, has been open for about four months now so we thought it would be good to go and taste their ale and food hoping they will have settled into their routine. The pub is in a little place called Martin-cum-Grafton, sort of half way between those two villages if you like and about 15 minutes north of Wetherby. Their ale and food was very good, service on the day was a bit off and the place was cold and crowded..... It seems last night the first of a TV series all about the two of them setting up the pub was aired on Channel 4 and the whole of Yorkshire decided to come for lunch.... I'd recommend the place in summer (no heating in the pub) and after the TV crowds have settled down, we had a good chat to the manager who was a nice bloke and got a peek into the micro brewery they have set up.....I don't think the ale is sufficiently good enough to win them the hoped for national distribution but it is ok ,,so with the TV show, his celebrity status and the genuinely good food, maybe there will be Morrisey-Fox ale available widely.... I am pleased to say they resisted the temptation to call the ales MoFo .... Blonde and Best Bitter are good enough identifiers. The pub has a great selection of ales on tap and a huge bottled beer selection.

So that is about as much as we could jamb into October, between the rainy days. November and December will see us enjoying Wetherby's Folk festival where Jazz and Folk musicians from all around come to perform in our little town, art shows are scheduled and who knows what else... Of course the town centre will be getting decked out with the annual christmas lights and there is Halloween and Guy Falkes nights, fireworks and bonfires so all that will be in the next few blogs... Hopefully we will continue to enjoy some sunny days and warm company!

Hogs, bats, picts, glens and canal boats

Thought I'd start off showing you these two pictures. The tiny bat (Pipistrelle) Gail is holding found its way down our chimney and onto our curtain. I won't bore you with everything we now know about these micro bats but I will say there is a large group of charming bat nutters in this country and one took care of our little bloke and released him two nights later when he was fed, watered and all strong again. The hedgehog is of course our King Russell and I attach the shot because we rarely see him in the backyard and had feared he was the spikey road pizza we saw on our street, thankfully not and he is now in residence preparing to hibernate in the twig and wood castle we built him. September this year has been wet but with dryish days when we wanted them as the photos below will attest. On one not so wet day we went to see the Mouseman Furniture factory in Kilburn. http://www.robertthompsons.co.uk/ They make beautiful heirloom quality oak furniture, each piece of which has a little mouse carved somewhere on it. Really good story behind it all which is why the web page is attached. Kilburn is also where one of Englands big white horses was cut into a hillside. This one in the 1800's so not so ancient but worth a look and the local pub does superb food and ale. Gail worked up in Scotland, in Angus, for a couple of days so we decided to go up together by car.... took us six hours, her colleague flew up and including drive from Aberdeen took under two hours door to door...lesson learned. It was great to spend the time together though and I had two days to follow the Pictish trail and walk Glenesk. The Picts, now you ask, were the original tribes of Scotland. Called Picts by the Roman invaders because of their beautiful tattoos, carvings and artwork, http://www.pictart.org/. The Picts were pagan warrior agriculturists with matriachial leadership who fought the Celts (Scots) when they invaded from Ireland wanting to occupy Pictish lands, We are talking pre-history times here but by the time the Romans came the Picts and Scots joined against the common Roman enemy and the result is that the picts were integrated into the Scots and their art and folklore lost forever. What we have now are large stones and beautiful carvings scattered around Scotland and it is a trail of some of these stones that I explored and took Gail to some of the finest examples. Stracathro Hospital is in Glenesk (the valley of the Esk river) and my walk through the high waters is best explained by the two photos here. We had been waiting for months to take a short break on the narrow boat "Me&My Shadow" www.shadowcruisers2.com with our neighbours David and Caroline. Again the photos tell more than words but I will say that our hosts Mick and Chris were lovely and ensured we were as relaxed, informed and well fed. We are now experts on all things canal boat, locks and marine plumbing. It was perhaps the last item and the compact quarters that made us delighted we had chosen three days rather than a week. That said, we relaxed and enjoyed and laughed and did all the touristy things in the towns and pubs we passed. I would recommend it to any who would enjoy but might suggest a larger vessel, wider than 7 foot anyway.... Gail and I also took ourselves off to Leeds city as there was a celebration of the Leeds town Hall, 150 years, and they were allowing folk to abseil down the front of it. I paid my ticket, stopped trying to convince Gail to join me, booked my jump off time for later that afternoon and we went to lunch in a great brasserie nearby. We returned to find the organisers running 3 hours behind schedule, they couldn't meet the demand and I was refunded and apologised to..... never mind, a good day out. Next update will be for October and as yet not much planned, it is Autumn though so maybe a trip to see the leaves colour up. James (who we met last year in Italy) will be dropping in next weekend for a local pub crawl of fine ale sampling as we are repaying him for the tour of Liverpool he gave us in April, but as that is just one night I doubt it will warrant any blog space. Of course our great mates John and Sara (Mando) are doing their infrequent odyssey to the old blighty so we are having them stay for a few days and Gail has the time off. Some pictures are sure to result. More later, keep happy!