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!

Angel, Romans, Scots and heather

August is traditionally a very wet month here. Enough said, I'll not bang on aboot t weather, there is much to report over the last month. I left off promising news on our trip to Scotland. We did enjoy ourselves and Gail was able to relax in the company of family and ancestral lands. Our northern odyssey commenced with a quick drive to Newcastle, or Gateshead more correctly, where we wanted to look closer at the Angel of the North, It is ten years since Anthony Gormley installed his work overlooking the Great North Road (A1) and while Gail has driven past it before many times neither of us have got out and "seen" it. The photo shows the scale and the weather , I wasn't going to mention the weather,,, the mood and the majesty that the sculpture evokes is indescribable, I love grand passion, that and the engineering required are awe inspiring.. If you want to know more about it www.gateshead.gov.uk/angel will do it for you. If you look at a map of the UK you will see that the latitude of Newcastle is also the shortest distance across England east to west. Not only that but it is where Emperor Hadrian declared the limit of Roman occupation of England in 122 A.D. It was then that he started building his wall crossing the country strategically to keep those nasty early Scot tribes out, but probably more likely to enable him to gather tolls and taxes from the boarder trade. There are a number of restored sections of the wall and forts at various identified gateways and it is amazing to walk through the reconstruction and wonder at how civilised the Romans made their time here.. Even more interesting perhaps is how little humanity has changed over 2000 years. The facilities and comforts of a senior Roman were indeed as good as would be comfortable for us now. With their homes having central heating, internal courtyards, fresh water and managed sewer systems, the most senior officers had it very good indeed. Evidence of letters written to and from home, fine jewellery, soft leather shoes and beautiful fabrics on display in the museums all show that life in these relatively peaceful and obviously profitable fort and towns was very pleasant, even for the lower ranks who were granted pensions and benefits on their retirement. Retirement was a common event and many soldiers continued to live as free men around the forts when their service was finished. Anyway enough about the romans....

We headed up to Arbroath via Jedburgh in the Border Towns of Northumberland and on to Edinburgh. We chanced the day of the start of the Edinburgh Festival so the place was buzzing with crowds, parades, pouring rain, I'm not mentioning the weather, blocked roads, traffic and music of all types blasting out.. Gail was disappointed that nobody knew the steps to the Nutbush music but I dragged her down a back alley before she could do a show and tell. We found a below street level garden cafe for a great lunch, got into the mood and did some passive sightseeing. So many people we talk to love Edinburgh and I guess we need to give it more of a visit to enjoy it when there is not so much disruption. While we did not walk up to the castle, we did reach a grand vantage point from where we digited off these photos. Then onwards north to Arbroath, famous for a number of things, First it was here, in the Abbey that on April 6th 1320 Scottish Independence was declared. Look up The Declaration Arbroath on google for why the Scots hold this event and the name of Arbroath in some historic reverence. Then there is the famous Arbroath Smokey, sadly in decline due to over fishing by the EU and competitive pressures but there are still some dedicated entrepreneurs smoking the flat fish that every Scot loves for breakfast. I had one last time we visited some 22 years ago and the memory lingers, in fact I was still belching smoked fish a week later... Finally the good citizens of Arbroath earlier last century needed a water tower to supply their their town and as it was to take a prominent high position they had it designed as a feature. I am sure you will agree they succeeded and while it and its grounds are obscured by tree growth now it is a spectacle. Before meeting up with Gail's family we took ourselves off to Glamis castle (pron. Glams) where the Queen Mum used to visit and where Princess Margaret was born... Still run by the current Earl of Strathmoor family but now very much open for tourists. Great day out, lovely grounds and wonderful walks... we did the tour and the walks and had tea and scones etc. Sorry, no photo's of Gail's cousin Erica and Stephen and their kids but we did have a great night in with them discussing their emigration to Perth Australia in October.... On our way back home to Wetherby we decided to take the coastal route, lunching at a magnificent Restaurant in St Andrews after a wonderful walk through the town, over the beach and around the famous golf course. Staying overnight in Edinburgh but right out on the south bank of the Firth of Forth. The photos show a glimpse of a summer night in Edinburgh, no I am not going to mention the weather. Which stayed with us all the way home and stayed all August. We did some lovely day trips through the Dales and over to Lancaster but after a great start to the month Gail was back off and away at work for days at a time. On her days off we did manage to visit some not so distant pubs known for their fine food. While enjoyable in itself we were making sure we had a selection of places to go when our friends Peter and Ann visited us from London. They were due up at the end of the month on their way to Durham for a friend's birthday party and it was likely that the rain would endure. Our planning was appropriate as it turned out the weather did not encourage walks , no I'm not complaining about the weather. We spent a delightful day in Harrogate, had a beer in the old Swan Hotel where Agatha Christie hid out for a few days of national intrigue early last century... Then on to the Harrogate Ladies College as Peter had memories of dire back seat journeys from Lancashire over the moors in mid winter to drop off his sister at the beginning of school term. It is a grand place and his sister enjoyed her time there so it was an interesting detour. A quick walk through the fading majesty of the Majestic Hotel and then on through the Blubberhouse moors, towards Bolton Abey for a posh luncheon snack at the Devonshire Arms. Slotted the little Astra in between the Range Rovers and Bentleys and had a delightful meal, some fine wine and felt right at home. A drive back through the moors with the heather in full bloom was a delight and we stopped off at our favourite pub in Siklinghall for a pint of ale before waddling home. Next month is life as usual except we are heading back up to Scotland for 4 days as Gail has a couple of days work there and then mid-month we have hired a canal boat for three nights where we are going to have a real relax with David and Carolyn our neighbours, chuffing along the highland moors, fully catered and guided by the owners of the canal boat we expect to really enjoy ourselves. So , more later!