Ilkley's Cow and Calf, Leeds Playhouse and Wakefield stroll

YAY SUMMER!  Been here four summers now, this is the first time I have been warm.  Its 29 degrees as I write this in early July. 

But what have we been doing since last blog at the start of June?

Got to admit, I thought June was a bit of a slow month as far as interesting things to report on these pages went.  But I know even a boring month here still means we go places we haven't been before and take photos. 

The last few weeks have even provided sunny warm English summer days so I can attach some shots that are actually interesting;

We enjoy the Ilkley Cow and Calf pub for its good meals and great service but it always rains there.  So one fine June weekend we returned  for a walk through the old mill stone quarry, a lunch naturally, and a pint.  The photos here are a selection of the day. 

The Cow and Calf pub sits on a ridge overlooking Ilkley in Wharfedale and the iconic Cow and Calf rocks which you can see behind Gail in the photo above and from which the pub takes its name.

 The rocks provide climbers with practice and walkers with great scenery.

But enough about lunch.  Some time during June we also went into Leeds again this time for the partaking of some last century culture by going to the Yorkshire Playhouse to see a performance of Noel Coward's Hayfever. Excellent performance marred only by the director and or producer who failed to take any opportunity to modernise the play, probably due to some sense of purity and fuddy-duddy respect to the script.... I guess I should have expected a somewhat time-lost story and creaky portrayal of an arts/society family in the 1950s.  As I said, it was well done excellently acted or hammed, and at least we can now say we have been to Leeds' premier theatre venue. 

We also spent the day taking lunch over the canal, walking the city streets ( a shot here of Leeds' 45degree cemetery),

and even did another bloody church. 

Photos of which are here by inserted as well as I can now do given Google's draconian and unilateral up-stuffing of what was a good photo handling blog platform... but I digress.                                                    I don't want to set the theme as a whole month of looking at churches, although........  We also went down to Wakefield on another fine day to look at a business for sale there.... yes another adventure of the mind.  Did I tell you I had too much time on my hands?  Anyway while we were down there (it's a bit south east of Leeds) we stopped off at a couple of places of interest.

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--So Wakefield, a very old city mostly lost in the bombings of the war but with some lovely and enjoyable relics.  The original Wakefield Bridge was the only all weather river crossing for a while and any traveller heading off across the country was in fear of being attacked, robbed and generally made to feel unhappy.  The church, sensing an opportunity, built a chancellery right on the middle of the only all weather bridge out of Wakefield. 

No god-fearing traveller could hope to pass it without offering prayer and the obligatory tithe to ensure a christian god protected them on their journey to Leeds or parts west. Cunning buggers, the church. There is no record suggesting if you didn't pay up then the church would hire thugs to beat you up on the other side of the river and I don't know what made me think this would ever have been the case.  But I was told this chancellery collected more money than any other church or king at the time...

After stopping to marvel at the stone carving of the chancellery, (partly intrigued by the "and more recently" phrase on the blue plaque, we saw there are weathered and worn ancient imposing stone faces on one side and new carved images of modern faces, probably council members, on the other side, really strange.  I can only imagine what level of ego would make you say yes to the question, "do you want your head carved into the stone of Wakefield Chancellery?"  So if they are not local politicians then there are some supposedly humble clergy with a lot of explaining to do.

Time for a drink we thought. Whenever we are in a place we don't know much about we look for the canals and seek out a pub.  Stanley Ferry is a large British Waterways dock where they make the huge oak canal lock gates, check and register boats, run marinas and control traffic over some really impressive water filled boat bridges.   One of these bridges is supposedly the model for the Sydney Harbour bridge.  That makes two bridges in North England and one in New York that we have been told this story about.... I am beginning to wonder..... There is also a great big modern pub called the Stanley Ferry Pub.  We spent a fantastic afternoon talking to some mad locals, looking at narrow boats, watching dogs and animals gambol in the fields and generally having a fine summer evening.  

Just to close off, I know a blog page would never be complete without a pretty animal picture so here are some Stanly ferry mute swans. Note the reflections of canal boats.  There is a quietly brewing theme here.... maybe another canal boat hire trip is in our future.

 For now though, it is early July, we have just come back from a fantastic couple of days in Manchester where we looked at a block of units, a house and, together with a couple of really good friends may have started an above-table cracker eating trend.  More on all of that and a report on our holiday in Germany when next I update the blog again. 

Do keep in touch.

Gail and I are both on Facebook now so add us to your friends list if you wish.

Haworth, Bronte country May 31st.

This was the last weekend of May and a public holiday. We spent one day out looking at homes on canals again but as I guess you are less than interested in looking at the backs of houses, I thought this was a much nicer scene from a canal at Foulridge, or Silsden or somewhere on our walks along the Leeds Liverpool Canal this weekend .

Monday was also a national holiday, no I have no idea why, every national holiday is called a bank holiday so I never know if it's VE day or Queen's birthday, or what. But a national day off is always good if Gail is not working and even better if it isn't cold and wet. Monday was a sort of an alright day and we decided to go west to Bronte Country, where the sisters grew up. Its about an hour from Wetherby. The drive is through some of the typical grotty, crowded, lets face it, ugly towns of post industrial Yorkshire from which the expression 'Íts grim up north' obviously originates.

But with all things Yorkshire it is worth persisting as just around the corner is a gem of a place, a spectacular view or a fantastic pub or cafe.

The town we were heading for was Haworth, where the Bronte family was raised by their preacher father in the Parsonage and from where they wrote their various bleak tales of the Yorkshire moors, sultry relationships and all things Heathcliff and Wuthering.

The sun and tourists were out and in good form on the day as you can see from the shots.

There must have been some American tour company selling discount Bronte tickets and that, coupled with a holiday special Steam Train running to the town made the usually quiet, cold ad wet streets take on a totally carnival feel.

Still it is always great to get into the village shops and seek out a tasty morsel and a good lunch. I didn't notice until I posted the photo that the White Lion pub we chose to eat in sported my surname boldly on it's frontage.... strange thing that.

It was a good day out, a leisurely stroll to the top of Penistone Hill with all the dog walkers, http://www.walkingenglishman.com/westyorkshire04.htm and then through Father Bronte's churchyard and into the town main street. The photos here will give an idea of the place but I do think a less crowded day would provide a greater sense of place. There are many web sites about Haworth but the photos and words in the one I have slotted in just above are quite good.

Partly due to the number of people in the town, Gail's desire leave in time to have a Pimms on the lawn when we got home, and our mutual lack of Brontemania, we didn't feel like queuing and paying to look at where Charlotte et al slept, washed or fidgeted in church. It is a lovely town regardless of that and, heck, we have to be able to say we have been there don't we? I mean Yorkshire wouldn't be Yorkshire without the Bronte stories.

In this snap Gail took I was caught looking at cellar lights set into the pavement but the photo doesn't seem to catch what I saw in them on the day. They did look much more colourful and sparkley. Honest.

Leeds as we've never seen it

It it relentless this sun, been out now for a week. The good folk of Yorkshire are lapping it up. This is not always a good thing as the number of beer bellied white male whales basking on every bench ad strip of grass quite puts an aesthetic dampener on the visual enjoyment of a vista. More than made up for though by the summer frocks and the minimal outfits sported by the Leeds lovelies. We saw on the local news that Leeds had attracted it's very own open top double deck red tourist bus this year.... Had to have a go and got on for it's first lap of the town last Saturday. I will not try and relate all the facts the recorded voice delivers but it is an hour of solid infotainment the likes of which I was unaware Leeds could support. We got all drowned in history, fame and interesting stuff.

For example Leeds ad the first mobile steam engine, they used it to haul coal from the mines to the foundries and mills. The rail thing got so important they even dug up a graveyard to run it into Leeds city. The shot above shows the only 45degree graveyard in the world which resulted after the vicar demanded the stones be re-laid over the grave sites after the embankment was built.

What I will do is just make some notes next to the shots Gal took so you can take an abbreviated ride of our days out. reflections in The Bourse windows

This bloke is the Black Prince, father of Richard II who was killed in Pontefract Castle in 1399. The black prince at age 16 defeated the French at Cresy in 1346 but there is no link to the city of Leeds other than the Mayor in 1902 at his own expense commissioned a foundry in Belgium to make the thing, shipped it to Hull then up the canals to Leeds. One interesting thing the Mayor did was insist that the statue travel all the way, from the moment it left it's molds in the Antwerp foundry to its plinth in Leeds City square, with the horse facing the direction of travel, to the point that it was mounted on the plinth from the end rather than from the side.

The Civic hall with it's gold clocks and Owls. Built during the Depression of 1920's-30's as a civic project to give local trades something to do. no expense spared, the best of materials. Magic inside and out.

The square in front of the civic hall

This old barge gives reference to Leeds/Liverpool canal history and is now DryDock, a popular University bar. Leeds Univesrity employs about a third of the Leeds workforce and covers over 100 acres of the city.

Broadcast House, known as the rusty building or the rusty nail. High grade steel exterior rusts only on the surface and self-forms a barrier to further corrosion.

Kids benefiting from the fountain in city square

Corn Exchange building and

Kirkstall Markets, the largest covered /open city markets on the planet, or Europe,,, anyway they are big and lots of fun.

As Part of our Saturday Bus fare , seven quid for the two of us (until June) we also got a trip on the Black Prince river barge which runs from Clarence Dock to Granary Wharf. We spent Sunday getting on and off it and walking Leeds before using the barge to get back. This is a shot of the Armouries from the Canal. We have been there, it is England's historical weapon museum and another mind-blowing day out. They do jousting and falconry exhibitions and have an elephant in full armour among other things.

Leeds is Yorkshire's biggest city and its canal warehouses and vacant lands are slowly being converted to offices and apartments.

Bridgewater Office tower, currently leeds tallest building.

The arches of the River Aire beneath Leeds Railway terminus.

Granary Wharf

Lunch at Zizi's outside the Corn Exhange

Brewery Wharf

A horse in the city.... not every day but this stable hand is taking it for a stroll through Clarence Dock after the jousting exhibition at the Armouries field.

Anyway that's it for the photo tour, we both got a lot of sun, had a go on a boat and are happy little Aussies again.