MadsWorld

Slow Boat on a Bonus

2011-05-15T16:59:00.006+01:00

Day Fifteen: 17 July (Bonus Day One) Braunston to Yelvertoft.
Originally, we'd have been handing the boat over at the time I'm writing this, but thanks to AW we're in Braunston Marina, and the Shore Party have gone to the gift shop! It's locks today - and of course, after a blue and shiny start to the day, it's clouding over and the wind's getting up, just in time for us to do the getting-out-of-marina manoueuvre.
Thoughts on the naming of boats... they seem to fall into several clear categories.
: - the Name-Combo - either the names of the kids/grandkids (Brittany Lauren) or the owners (Philjean)
: - the Traditional - three types, the 'work ethic' (Valiant, Warrior, Stalwart) and the floral (Gypsy Rose, Daisy) - or traditional girls' names like Martha and Ruby.
: - The Alternative Lifestyle - Chillin', Far from the Madding Crowd, Second Chance... these sometimes spill over into...
: - The Quirky - 'The Kid's Inheritance', 'Piston Broke' ...it goes on!
Hire boats tend to have their own set - either class (Jupiter is 'Planet' class), yard - for example the 'Valley' boats, or the Viking ones which have Nordic names. Canaltime seem to be the most random, almost as if they've had a competition to name the boats - 'Wilsons Chaos' springs to mind!

We're moored next to 'Moriarty' at the moment, which I think comes under Quirky....
Shore party returned triumphant with books, postcards and a couple of gorgeous brass miners' lamps, and we made an elegant departure to meet our time slot of 1000.
Up the Braunston Flight, mostly in company with 'Daisy' - an old traditional boat which has wheels to control steering and engine. One of the locks had a cascade running over it ('short pound' said the Daisy skipper). We let them run ahead at Top Lock, and followed then through Braunston Tunnel (2042 yards) - very uneven, and with some interesting features - air vents casting pools of light, an odd side-vent, a pipe feeding water in a stream into the canal, reflections and shadows from the boat lights. Quite spooky and strange, but not claustrophobic. As we finally came towards the tunnel's end, we could see movement - turned out to be a bat (probably Daubentons) hunting the last 50 yards of the tunnel. As we got nearer, it flew up onto the tunnel wall and hung there until we were halfway past, before letting go and zipping past our heads - light through the part-translucence of the wing membranes - to go back into the depths of the tunnel.
Out into the light in a green cutting, and on across Braunston summit to Norton Junction. Kingfisher whizzed past, a flash of orange and electric blue (Mum was looking in the right direction for once, but still failed to see it despite my strangled squeak!) Tied up for lunch, then, after being battered by wake-wash for a while, went on to the Watford Staircase. Now we're officially back in the north - Watford Gap Services are just a little way beyond the fence. The lock keeper is in charge here, so we waited in the queue, some boats up, some down before we can go up; with any luck we'd get through before the locks shut for the night at 1900. Drew went off to take photos.

...well, that was an experience! A few hiccups further up were caused by an Important Personage who had a table booked for dinner in Braunston and thought He could start organising traffic- the lock keeper soon disabused him, and set him back up and out! We got through last one up (to His disgust, as we'd been there 10 minutes later than Him), and headed for Crick.

Crick Tunnel (1528 yards) is wet. Very drippy, lots of flowstone. Crick is full of marinas, and consequently full of boats, so we pushed on to overnight at Yelvertoft, opposite where they're creating yet another new marina - the whole area will be one big marina soon.
13 locks/13.5 miles/2 tunnels/Grand Union Canal, GUC Leicester Branch

Day Sixteen: 18 July (Bonus Day Two) Yelvertoft to Welford.
A short day, across green farmland (sounds of peacocks amidst hanging willows) and a kingfisher that Mum DID manage to see this time!
Went up the Welford Arm to the highest point of the GUC system - designed to bring water from the reservoirs to feed the canals. One small lock to go through (3 foot 6 inches), but a very odd set-up, with a narrow section almost like a half-lock before a 'pseudo-pound' and then the lock itself. It's a leafy backwater, with a lot of boats moored up the arm into the village. We turned at the marked winding hole and moored by the marina entrance - Drew went to investigate and found a few spaces higher up and another turning point - too late!

As we started the tedium of packing, a pair of familiar trousers went past - Matt the Engineer, and his dog Woody; he stopped to see how we'd got on, and have a chat. Drew caught up with him later at the pub (he lives in the village) and bought him a beer or two; he also ran into Jane from the yard, who gave us a late pass to return the boat in the morning!
1 lock/11 miles/GUC Leicester Branch, GUC Welford Arm

Day Seventeen: 19 July (Last Day) Welford to North Kilworth.
Up and sorting by 0800, and heading for the yard by 0900, to return the boat at a reasonable time. One last, small lock (number 103 for the trip).
Down to Welford Junction whilst cleaning sinks and sweeping floors, and the last three-quarters of a mile to North Kilworth, touching the wharf to tie up as the last breadloaf went into the crate. Unloaded reluctantly, chatted to Jane and Matt, and packed the car. The day turned hot and sunny as we drove home, not conducive to making the transition from 3-4 mph to 70 mph up the motorway
It's done, for this year.
1 lock/3 miles/0 tunnels/GUC Welford Arm, GUC Leicester Branch
I'll end with the usual collection of boat-and-bank dogs!

There's a Googlemap of where we went here.

Slow Boat up the Junction

2011-05-15T16:00:00.003+01:00

Day Thirteen: 15 July. Coventry to Brinklow.
Drew went off to look at the centre of Coventry and the Cathedral , leaving Mum and me to sort ourselves out leisurely. Rain again, and very windy, which made getting out of the basin a somewhat awkward process, with a lot of backing-up. Not helped by what we found when Drew went down the weed hatch by Electric Wharfe and untangled what looked like a shirt and shorts, several bits of net and a whole heap of weed from around the prop. Oddly enough, Jupiter ran so much better afterwards, though she may have added to her collection going through the mess under Bridge 4...
Moored at bridge 8 for a Tesco trip and the rain began to really hammer down at around 1400; I began to think the shore party may be drowned. But at least we didn't have a 'distracted by rat - bump' moment today (so far!). Soggy shore party returned eventually, and the weather improved for a while as we went back to Hawkesbury Junction, trying to get pictures of the various artworks along the canalside. Hawkesbury's attractive but a bit complicated, though Drew did a fine job of negotiating it, and got into the lock - which is a stoplock with a rise/fall of about 6 inches! Lots of interesting canal architecture - the old Engine Shed, and lovely ironwork bridges. Chatted to folks who were on a lock-free holiday and were checking out the how-to of it.

After a late start and the shopping, we made it to Stretton Stop by Brinklow, and moored up on the towpath - first time we've used the mooring pins this year - and Drew managed to find unpleasantness underfoot in the overgrown verge. Sleep to the constant rattle and whoosh of the trains on the adjacent line.
1 lock/11.5 miles/0 tunnels/Coventry Canal, Oxford Canal.

Day Fourteen: 16 July. Brinklow to Braunston Junction.
Not a bad night, considering the trains and the occasional downpour, but the loud and over-excitable Jack Russell in the next boat made us keen to get away.
The first hazard would have been the swing bridge at Stretton, but that was open - the gap being filled by a bloke who had racketed past us earlier and was now dead in the water with a prop jam that he couldn't clear. Eventually he towed his boat round into the adjacent yard to let the traffic jam clear - which meant we didn't have to stop to shut the bridge!
Then it was through the vastly unstable Brinklow cutting - dead slow required to avoid any bank wash, as the whole place looked ready to slide downhill into the canal. We were on the lookout for somewhere to get a pump-out; most marinas were pretty full and/or inaccessible, so it was onward, ever onward, through sun and showers and blustery wind.
Newbold Tunnel was a delight - they've put coloured lights in it which show up the flowstone formations. There are supposedly bats, so they switch off at sunset...I'm not sure about the logic of that!.. it was all very pretty, so we stopped and Drew went back to take more photos.
Then we scurried through Rugby - nice sporting murals under the bridges, but again nothing much in the way of real industrial architecture. Couldn't get into Clifton Cruisers (inconsiderate nerd taking up all the service space to refuel) so on, to Hilmorton Locks. Like Sawley, these come in pairs - two locks, no waiting! Things fell pretty much right, so it was a quick ascent, and Drew got to try the 'stick the nose on the gate' technique.
Past the aerial farm (it used to transmit the time signal), and through rolling farmland marked by extensive ridge and furrow - some so deep that the sheep could shelter from the wind in them. There were some odd antics amongst the cows... and why are nearly all the horses black and white?
Coming into Braunston, the boats were double-moored, putting the lie to Pearson's claim that there were usually plenty of moorings! We're not even at peak holiday time, and it's full of boats. There was a tight turn by the Junction bridge, and a lot of slow manouevring trying to see if we could get into and of the small places - naturally, not possible. Everywhere we found was just past the end of permitted moorings, or at a waste station, or water point, so we made use of the latter, and Drew nipped into Braunston Marina to check out pump-outs. This was perfectly possible, hoorah, so with a dint of fine manoeuvring we went under the bridge into the wharf, to find someone else had just slid in ahead of us (to empty an Elsan, for goodness sake - don't need to take up the pump-out space to do that) so we pulled in alongside - and the heavens opened. Once the other boat left, Drew went to do the negotiating. I had a bright idea for once - rather than face the lock flight and tunnel before we could get to a mooring, which was the option - why not see if we could moor at the marina? Again, this was perfectly possible.

Drew now got promoted - he is now Grand Panjandrum, King of the Kharzi - as another new holiday experience happened; our first DIY pump-out! Smelly, but not messy, is perhaps the best way to describe it.
Then there was another bit of fine boat-handling to get us into our berth for the night, after which he celebrated by going to the pub for a beer and free WiFi. Mum and I read and relaxed, and enjoyed another heavy downpour complete with thunder and lightning.
3 locks/15 miles/1 tunnel/Oxford Canal, GUC Main Line/pumpout.

Slow Boat goes to Coventry

2011-05-13T22:50:00.056+01:00

Day Nine: 11 July. Fradley Junction to Polesworth.
A gentle day with very few locks to try us, although the ones we encountered were deep and slow to fill; looks like this will be the way of it from here on. Tomorrow we tackle the Atherstone Eleven, so an easy day was a good idea. It was breezy, which did cause a few problems with crosswinds on the bends, and a rather closer-than-we'd-have-liked encounter with a couple of British Waterways working boats, who were fortunately very understanding!
Through open countryside again, and the horsiculture belt; many of the horses had fly masks which led to comments of 'who was that masked horse?'
The railway line runs alongside the canal for much of the way, and electrification means that the overhead gantries are very intrusive and ugly. There are also several (Roman) roads, all carrying a lot of traffic. Quite a lot of boats, but very few obviously hired ones, and it was all very busy - Fazeley Junction wasn't quite as bad a turn as Fradley, but equally packed.
Through the suburbs of Tamworth, up Glascote Locks and past Alvecote, stopping for lunch and a bit of canalside retail therapy with a bloke doing nice leather goods. Drew got himself a proper belt and holder for his lock key, and now feels very professional.

Moored for the night at Polesworth, which is nice; deeply wooded with a cutting on one side and an embankment on the other which overlooks the river Anker. Drew went for a recce, and I encountered a swan which seemed determined to peck my trouser bottoms. There's a very good Indian takeaway in Polesworth, with generous portions!
12.5 miles/2 locks/0 tunnels/Coventry Canal

Day Ten: 12 July. Polesworth to Atherstone.
And of course, our first wet day... not merely damp.
Not 'a bit rainy'.
WET.
Stair rods. All the way through the Atherstone Flight (which is more a series of short pounds and locks than a staircase). Slow going - althought there were some boats coming down, we sometimes had to empty a lock down to get in (which makes you feel quite guilty). Mostly we were followed by a family in the first 'Viking' fleet hire boat we've seen; they were entertaining, with a small terrier that seemed to be enjoying itself hugely, and a gaggle of kids who vanished below at the first sign of rain, leaving their parents to brave the weather. General chat to folks as we went along, and plenty of lovely dogs, including one very stubborn black labrador that utterly refused to walk across the top of the gate of Atherstone Top Lock, no matter what his person did to encourage him.
Drew got quite adept at hopping across between the lower gates, which saved no end of foot-miles going round. It all adds up. We moored up for shopping, and decided we may as well stay put overnight rather than go on a couple more miles.

We were amongst various working boats, carrying smokeless fuel and gravel - some had been as far as London, and I wondered if they'd been taking materials to the Olympics site - I somewhere remember reading they were using canal haulage.
Last night's curry stretched to leftovers!
4 miles/11 locks/0 tunnels/Coventry Canal

Day Eleven: 13 July. Atherstone to Shackerstone.
Another day of rain and wind. Headed down through Nuneaton to Marston Junction and the Ashby Canal, watering up at the 'Valley Boats' marina, where Mum got postcards and a plaque of the Foxton Flight. Drew went looking for chandlery bits with no luck, but did manage (finally) to get the Lockmaster map for this holiday.
Leaving, we were chased desperately by a bevy of confused ducklings (surely their mum wasn't big and green?)
Ashby Canal starts with the remnants of what turned out to be a stoplock - very narrow - and went on to be serpentine, blowy, and extremely shallow for much of its length; Drew remarked it was like driving through thick gravy at times. There were lots of moored boats too, and we discovered that 'tickover' varies from boat to boat - trying not to overhaul the boat ahead, we ended up having to overtake... it was like the world's slowest boat chase...
Water vole near Bridge 4, buzzards over Bosworth Field (yes, THAT Bosworth!).

Mostly small and pretty villages (apart from Hinkley) and cornfields. The idea was to get to Snarestone tonight, but conditions were against us, and after a couple of hours of almost-arguement, we compromised on a mooring at Shackerstone. Some of the scenery lovely, but mostly in a 'rural-neutral' way, without so much as a derelict shed to break the flow of fields and weeds.
0 locks/25 miles/0 tunnels/Coventry Canal, Ashby Canal

Day Twelve: 14 July. Shackerstone to Coventry Basin via Snarestone.
An early start, and a spell of fine-ish weather saw us up to the end of the canal - the scenery up here is much more interesting, with another SSSI through Gopsall Wood - wish I could remember all the plant names!
Snarestone Tunnel (228m) was quite fun - it has a bend in the middle, and gets lower towards the top end so you do have to duck a bit! Turned round just after the tunnel - little else to do, although the canal association are trying to extend to the old terminus at Moira; it's a work in progress.
So now began the long run back down to the basin at Coventry, and a day of frustration for me; I tried to help share the steering but got constantly caught by the wind, ending up getting us stuck again and again, and having to hand over to Drew (with his boat-handling experience etc from diving, he's so much more clued-up) to sort out a problem I'd created. Better stick to what I'm good at, which is going in and out of locks, and dropping-off and picking-up.
Weather was better than yesterday, but still wet in patches, so on and off with coats etc. We eventually left the waterproofs on, which seemed to deter the rain until around Hawkesbury Junction.
A thunderstorm (with lightning) hit at this point, as we were passing all the moorings, so I retreated into the boat and stayed there until we'd nearly reached Coventry.
It's another odd place; the old slapjowl with the new, big with small. Some interesting features - Electric Wharfe, Cash's Hundreds - but less 'proper' canalside warehouses etc, mostly things that have been cleared by demolition, like the old Ordnance Works, or rebuilt-on-the-site-of, like Electric Wharfe. Lots of pieces of 'public art' (mostly covered with graffiti) and although there was some good graffiti, much of that had been defaced. Sad, like the amount of crud floating in the canal, although the mooringhens and mallards don't seem to care.

Some really lovely buddleia bushes overhanging the canal, odd orange lights making spooky shadows under Bridge 5a, new flats, amiable drunks, and a lot of late evening fishermen...we eventually made it to Coventry Basin just after 9 pm, and got the last mooring (there is room for more boats, just marked 'no mooring'. Frustrating!) Drew went hunter-gathering, and returned with Nandos, which Mum and I had never heard of!
32 miles/0 locks/2 tunnels (return trip)/Ashby Canal, Oxford Canal, Coventry Canal

Slow Boat back on track.

2011-05-13T20:46:00.037+01:00

Day Six: 8 July. Pilling's Lock to Shardlow.
And we're back on the water and on our way; at least, after a shower that made me feel a little less like Pinkie McStinkie, the Slut of the Cut....
We cover the same ground - er, water - back to Loughborough, but turn right up the river instead of into the city. It's back into the countryside, with wide reaches, loads of metallic blue and green damselflies, dragonflies like helicopters, ducks and moorhens herding their broods of young out of our way.
We travel in part-convoy with a couple of other boats, which means less banging about in locks and more hands to work them. One guy coming the other way says that the Trent & Mersey is getting short of water, and some folks have bottomed. We push on, with cross-winds.
The confluence of the Trent and Soar, near the cooling towers of Ratcliffe Power Station, is a vast expanse of water, more like one of the Norfolk Broads, with at least 3 canals leading off, and there is a huge weir to avoid.

Splatters of rain start as we head up the new canal - quite refreshing, really! - and face the confusion that is the Sawley Mechanised Locks. These are supposedly manned, but all we see is one officious beard that told us to wait while another boat came out, and then promptly vanished, leaving us to hover off the 'island' between the parallel locks, tall stone walls to either side. We finally get into the lock, and see the notice saying 'ropes must be used', so there is a bit of a scramble. Drew figures out the mysteries of the automated system, which button does what... we escape with little trouble, save for the shortness of the pick-up point on the island and, with a bit of deft manoeuvring, get onto the water point.
An encounter with another boat at this point draws my attention to how many boats have huge dogs aboard - this one had two German Shepherds, and one last night had an enormous black Newfoundland (and a one-eyed cat!). Maybe they act like supplementary heaters in the winter...

Drew helps another guy throught the lock - the controls on this side are totally different to the ones on the side we came up - and we water-up. Naturally, it overflows, but fortunately the whole system is geared to dealing with excess water.
Derwent Mouth Lock is badly damaged, one paddle is as loose as a catflap, and the whole RH gate is stuck fast. Awkward, but it's wide enough to sneak through (and gives us an idea for dealing with wide locks!) Looks like it won't be the last damaged lock on this stretch, either.

Tied up in the middle of Shardlow - a very pretty place - across the road from the Malt Shovel (classy but expensive) and the New Inn (plain pub food but good, and plenty of it) - guess where we went! Sat outside in the sun, admiring the motor show that developed in the car park, and chatting to the owners of a rather nice Ducati bike.
18 miles/10 locks/0 tunnels/River Soar, Trent & Mersey Canal

Day Seven: 9 July. Shardlow to Branston Lock.
Made our way through the picturesque and historical waterside of Shardlow; heading west now, and some quite deep locks. Pretty open land all around, with no significant settlements apart from one or two pubs and a remote, but prosperous-looking Indian restaurant. Got a phone message from Matt, checking that we were okay (nice of him), and called ahead to check the best time to call at Barton marina for fuel and a pumpout. Not that we'll get there today. Still several widebeam locks to deal with until we got to Burton-on-Trent; Dallow Lane came as a pleasant relief as the first 'smaller' one encountered.
We're still roasting in the sun, getting quite brown (and pink), although upper arms and shins remain resolutely peelie-wallie.
Burton-on-Trent is odd. It's a biggish town ('Largest in the National Forest' according to a sign we saw in a very small copse) but, although the canalside is quite nice, there is little industrial (and we like industrial) - you can see Marston's Brewery and the Coors maltings - and the rest remains stubbornly suburban.

Moored initially by the (clean, antiseptic, modern) industrial estate, but couldn't figure out how to get through it to the shops, so moved up to the moorings (and the mooringhens) by Bridge 54, after Branston Lock. Pearson's Guide said that Morrisons was about half a mile, but Drew vanished for nearly two hours, returning sweaty and disgruntled, having walked 'miles'. Filthy MacNasty was quickly sent to the shower and despatched.
18 miles/7 locks/0 tunnels/Trent & Mersey Canal

Day Eight: 10 July. Branston Lock to Fradley Junction.
Slow start, as we need to be at the marina after lunchtime. Two locks and a very tight entrance to Barton-under-Needwood marina, which is vast, and very posh. We drifted, elegant and windblown, alongside another AW boat, 'Foxton'. and negotiated the fuel and pumpout. Grumpy chap became less grumpy when he found we were the 'propshaft boat', and said that 'Foxton' had picked up a tyre round her prop in Birmingham, and had to be hauled out to have it cut free. Exited the marina somewhat poorer but quite competently (until we hit the opposite bank... oops!)
Down to join the river again between Wychnor and Alrewas (love these names!), where it's wide with yet another huge weir. Pretty countryside, loads of dragons and damsels and lots of flowers by the waterside. We'd planned to stop at Fradley Junction, to get a better look than the last time we were here some years back, but it was not to be - the whole place was jam-packed with boats and gongoozalers, so we went carefully round the junction on a rope, to find the swing bridge open; with a guy behind us, that meant we didn't need to stop and shut it, and we sailed through happily.

Boat after boat after boat lined the canalside, unitl finally we found a space on a rather overgrown bank opposite a housing estate and slotted in there, with only a few nettle stings. Mum battled the shower this time, and Nellie O'Smellie was no more.
8 miles/9 locks/0 tunnels/Trent & Mersey Canal, Coventry Canal/fuel & pumpout

Slow Boat High and Dry

2011-05-13T20:23:00.004+01:00

Day Five; 7 July. Dayboat to Loughborough
...and guess what - with all the fuss I'd nearly forgotten it's my birthday!
So.. They turned up about 0915, with the AngloWelsh guy who has the spares, and we disembark to the (very nice, with free WiFi) cafe. The boat is hauled up onto the trolley and is out for inspection. They reckon 3-4 hours, but the AW guy is looking for a bigger welding kit; they're replacing the entire assembly, which means cutting a chunk out of the hull. I try not to think about it.
We have coffee, and then sort out the dayboat.
'Kittywake's a small fibreglass cruiser, rather elderly, and very twitchy on the steering compared to the stolidity of Jupiter. Drew's steering is tested several times on the way to Loughborough (that's Luffburra, not Lugaboruga) - as we exit the marina, an enthusuastic springer spaniel leaps off the bank in pursuit of a passing swan, landing practically under the bows! A little further up, we encounter a small narrowboat-style dayboat crewed by a gaggle of females (looks like a hen party!) who seem to be navigating by bank-braille....
We make it to the City wharfe unscathed, and the shoreparty head off in search of supplies, while I catch up on my diary.
'Kittywake' is due for some TLC. Not long after being repainted last winter, she was stolen, and recovered in rather a sad state. Now she has a shiny, and very efficient, new engine, and is due a lot of bodywork improvements, a new screen and a seat for the helmsman. Nice to know she's going to be cared for.
I make contact with Tracey (who now lives near Nottingham) and organise a meet-up with her and the clan for dinner at the marina tonight. The shoreparty returns, and we head back to the marina.
Jupiter is still up on the cradle, so we set up in the cafe for a beer or two. Eventually we're joined by the AW guys, who have finished 'one of the more major jobs we've had to do'... The boat is back on the water with a whole new propellor and shaft, and a welded section in her hull, and Paul from the marina gives us a very convenient-for-the-facilities (especially the bar) mooring.

Back on board to inspect the work (very impressive) and a short snooze before meeting Tracey and Co for dinner. The food was excellent and the company wonderful, so a lovely evening, apart from the whole bar singing 'Happy Birthday, Whoever You Are' as they brought the birthday cake in (thanks T!)
5 miles/0 locks/0 tunnels/River Soar

Slow Boat Up the Creek

2011-05-11T22:34:00.005+01:00

Day Four: 6 July. Birstall to Pilling's Lock.
And this was the day things stopped going according to plan....
After breakfast and a quick shopping trip, it was business as usual, with added clunk. A grass snake swims across the river ahead of us as we leave; naturally the lens cap is on my switched-off camera.
The clunk gets worse. We don't like the sound of it, and there seemed to be trouble with the steering, so after Thurmaston Lock we stop to check the hatch again.
Plastic bag.
Extracted.
Still clunking, so we get to a reasonably accessible stopping place, and ring the boatyard, who send out helpful mechanics who arrived with about an hour.

Spirits plummet, and

we halt. Going nowhere fast

we call the boatyard.

After poking about in the bowels of the boat, they deliver their verdict.
Not good news.
The bearing on the prop-shaft has popped out, so the shaft etc isn't properly supported going through the hull to the prop. And it's hitting the prop on occasion...so it needs taking out and refitting - which means finding a yard and taking the boat out of the water. I can feel the holiday falling apart around us.
So we wait, to see if there's a yard that can handle us...

Help is soon at hand.

with stilson wrench and grease:

Matt, our new Best Friend.

Well, Pilling's Lock Marina can take us, but it's quite a distance away, so Matt the Engineer is coming with us to make sure things don't get worse, and AngloWelsh have been real stars - they've offered to either pay for us to have a day out somewhere while the boat is fixed (on a reimbursement basis) or the boatyard will let us have a dayboat for the day. PLUS as we'll be losing 2 days of our holiday, and Jupiter isn't booked out next week, we can stay out until Monday morning instead of returning to base on Saturday. A couple of quick phone calls and it's all agreed - so as long as it gets fixed tomorrow, all is better than good!
So here we go, letting Matt and Drew do the locks and steering.
Cossington Nature Reserve slips past, with terns screeching overhead. Lots of sizeable weirs (mostly dry-ish), some very posh houses, long gardens, some boats, overhanging willows (of course you always meet the oncoming boat where the willows mask it!). Not quite sure why one house appears to have cannon on the waterfront...

The river widens rapidly after Montsorrel, very rural and lovely. We get to Pillings Lock by 1700 and then there is all the messing about getting to our mooring, and finding someone who knows what's happening.
They say they'll start at 0700...
8 miles/7 locks/0 tunnels/River Soar

Slow Boat on the Leicester Ring, 2010

2011-05-11T22:06:00.006+01:00

Well, it seems to be becoming a habit to write about last year's holiday not long before going on this year's, so here we go again!

Day One: 3 July 2010. North Kilworth to Foxton.
Left home after the usual 3D jigsaw of carpacking, Mum wedged in the backseat amongst the bags. All the way to North Kilworth, we kept remembering things we should have packed. Got to the wharf at about 1515, to be met by very helpful staff, unloaded all the gear and parked the car, and once everything was aboard, it was time for the regular walk-through and handover checks on NB Jupiter, all 62 foot of her. By 1600 we were casting off. Headed up towards Foxton, through greenery (the first tree-I-have-been-dragged-through of the holiday was hawthorn).
Husband's Bosworth Tunnel - nearly 1200 yards and, like all the tunnels on our planned route, wide enough to pass another boat - was a long way in the dark, being dripped on. There were some very long stalactites, and two boats coming the other way - 'breathe in' said one, taking up most of the tunnel.
Emerged into more greenery, through the broad bean fields of Leicestershire.

Passing the bean-fields
Cows, sheep and dozing horses,
Yellowhammer sings.

Finally moored up just by Bridge 59, on a clear and peaceful bank in the late sunshine, to sort out the gear and start making dinner.

6 miles/0 locks/1 tunnel/GUC Leicester Branch.

Day Two: 4 July. Foxton to Kilby Bridge
And up and at it with the Foxton Flight!
Which was an interesting experience - not so much for the actual locking (not too awful, despite there being 10 locks) but more from the point of view of being a tourist attraction! I don't know how many times Drew did the 'this is how locks work' talk to the numerous gongoozalers... meanwhile we'd watered up, chatted to fellow boaters, breakfasted..not sure where we're aiming for, but there are a lot of locks on the way.
Thought about a side trip up to Market Harborough, but an inadvisably moored boat and an unexpected swing bridge meant a mid-corner change of plan and direction straight up the Leicester Canal.
Saddington Tunnel supposedly has bats, but there was no sign apart from a rather well-made bat box shaped to fit the wall at the NW end.
Very rural, with sheep, and hedgerows full of dogroses; most of today's trees-I-have-been-dragged-through have been ash. Mum and Drew work the locks and I do the driving through them, cill-avoidance a speciality, and also act as Drew's relief driver. Feels strange to have such big locks (all double width) with few boats around to share the water. Jupiter drifts like a graceful brick from side to side in the locks, seldom ending up where I expect her to be. The wind catches her too - it's a gusty day and we have a few encounters of the bank kind.

We finally moor up at Kilby Bridge; most of today has been on a stretch of canal designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, for water plants, though I have no idea which ones!
10miles/22 locks/1 tunnel/GUC Leicester Branch

Day Three: 5 July. Kilby Bridge to Birstall.
Another day of locks, and what Wogan used to call the 'Lost City of Leicester'. Fairly rural to begin with - one field seemed to be planted with both wheat and barley - muesli-in-the-making? Quite a lot of bank traffic, cyclists and walkers, some of whom were helpful with locks. The locks before Leicester have a key-opened padlock system, to try to stop malcontents and ne'er-do-wells emptying the locks (hardly a point as most of the gates are so badly balanced that they swing open if left without water pressure). Naturally, this means that the malcontents et al now satisfy themselves by cutting off the padlocks or filling them with superglue.

An enticing smell of baking cookies welcomes us to South Wigston - perhaps the Jacobs biscuit factory? Polite back gardens lead down to the water, but not the number of boats I would have expected, At Glen Parva, the houses are bigger and the back gardens (and inevitable decking and gazebos) better off too.
Back into the country for the last descent to Leicester, and the beginnings of our river adventures at King's Lock, where the Soar joins the canal, or vice versa. There is a system of warning markers to say if travel is safe - the river is subkect to flooding, but no rain means we are well into the green zone (unless - uneasy thought - it's just the algae).
The water is immediately clearer, with lots of weed visible, and more people fishing. Didn't see any fish, though!

A whole herd. Horses

black-and-white, pied like magpies,

contentedly graze.

And then - the weirs!
These are highly impressive, and in the case of Freeman's Meadow, huge. The path of the canal isn't always clear, so it's 'take it steady' and figure it out as we go, wave at the kids and chat to folks at locks.

Oddly, in the city, there are no padlocks. There is, however, a lot of graffiti, and an awful lot of rubbish. A coot uses a floating black bin bag as the base for a nest.

There's no room at the Castle pontoon, so we chug on to Birstall, via locks full of floating chunks of wood which make getting through a bit of a trial. After the last lock of the day, there's a bit of a pother as we help recover a football stuck on the wrong side of the canal, an operation involving some very deft use of the bargepole.

We moor up and inspect the weed hatch for an odd clunking. Find a piece of wire wound round the prop, extract same, and then take advantage of the locality to send Drew out for fish and chips.
12 miles/16 locks/0 tunnels/River Soar

Home on the Range

2011-05-07T17:58:00.002+01:00

We have ponies! Well, the RSPB has them really, but we all feel quite proprietorial about them. They are Konik horses, strictly speaking, brought in to help manage the rough grazing in the marshes and improve conditions for breeding waders. They are quite a long way from the Visitor Centre, and are rather elusive, seeming to like hiding amongst the gorse bushes, so when we got the opportunity to go to see them (after a very early start on the last goose count) we clambered into the reserve truck and bounced off over the fields.

There are eight, four fillies and four geldings, and they are quite young, and still in their fluffy winter coats. They were basking in the sun, and seemed less than impressed at the disturbance, but posed nicely before heading off into the marsh to continue the hard work of eating.

Go West!

2011-05-07T17:47:00.002+01:00

A year or two ago, I made a trip to the far North, ending up at Ledmore Junction, where the fading light forced me to turn for home. I said at the time that I wanted to continue the trip down towards Ullapool, and in mid-April this year, while Mum was staying, we decided it was time to do just that. So, packing a few sandwiches and cereal bars, we headed west.

The weather along the Moray Firth was beautiful, until we got to Nairn, where an unexpected haar rolled in. Normally the fogbanks stay offshore (or sit over my house) but some twist of the weather meant that they followed course of the inner firth, and it wasn't until we had gone quite a way inland that the sun broke through again.

It took around four hours to reach Ledmore again, and the great lumps of Assynt rose before us. Last trip, I posted a picture of Suilven in the rear view mirror - this is the way it should look!

The road south runs through the Geopark - the whole area is fascinating from a geological point of view - and we couldn't resist a diversion through the heart of it, past Stac Pollaidh towards Achiltibuie and the Summer Isles.

The road is one of the usual single-track-with-passing-places, and there are several small car parks for hill walkers, all full. Small lochs lie in the hollows between the hills, and we were delighted to get a great sighting of a black throated diver in full breeding plumage - not close enough for a decent photograph, unfortunately. Further on, we pause beside Loch Raa, where a flurry in the water turns out to be two otters! Again, they were not photographically obliging...

The sheep, on the other hand, were quite content to pose.

Not far from Achiltibuie, a small ferry takes visitors across to the Summer Isles. (and yes, they do exist outside of the 'Wicker Man' - in fact they have nothing to do with it at all.)

Turning back, we look again for the otters, but they have gone, as has the diver. We rejoin the main road and head for Ullapool, on the shore of Loch Broom.

It's an active fishing port, and full of tourists so we don't linger, heading instead for Gruinard Bay. Gruinard Island is more notorious for being the site of anthrax testing in the second world War, and was only decontaminated in 1990. On a previous trip, we saw a white-tailed sea eagle on the island; today the bay held more divers - red-throated and Great Northern - which are hard to follow as they do exactly as their name suggests - they dive, and usually surface a long way from where they vanish!

Time to go. Past the naval refuelling station at Loch Ewe, the gardens of Inverewe, to Poolewe at the end of Loch Maree.

We follow the lochside, towards Achnasheen, and come to a sudden halt in a convenient layby. 'There's a black grouse in that tree!' 'What - good heavens, so there is!'
And there was.

Next time, it's Torridon and Applecross, and the third highest (and most dramatic) road in Scotland...unless we go to Skye first! we shall see...

Up Country

2011-05-07T16:45:00.002+01:00

April 3rd. Amazed by the good weather, and in dire need of an escape from the computer, we decided to take a trip up Deeside; in the end we went much further than we expected. We followed the winding road along the southside away from the main tourist traffic and, with a minor diversion (well, round in a circle actually!) along a backroad, ended up in Braemar where we headed northwest to the end of the highway.

The Dee is a salmon river, and all along its length there are bothies and benches and parking places for anglers who have the money...the last, I think, being the critical element.

Mar Lodge lies beyond Braemar, up towards the headwaters of the river (the Dee rises in the Cairngorms, somewhere in the Lairig Ghru) - the valley is broad, flat-bottomed, the result of glaciation, and the river loops lazily across it in wide meanders. It's a lovely spot at any time of year, and there was a real feel of spring in the air at last.

Still plenty of time, and the weather staying fine, we decided to go back the long way, over the hills to Strathdon, the other river valley leading to Aberdeen.

The pattern of muirburn show that the land is managed for grouse shooting; it's a pity the grouse don't realise it. At this time of year they are more interested in displaying to each other, and we crested one hill to find this chap strutting his stuff in the middle of the road.

Finally he wandered off into the heather, and we headed for home.

Geese leaving Strathbeg

2011-02-27T17:25:00.002Z

Turning Seasons

2011-02-27T17:07:00.007Z

Getting up at an unearthly hour to count the geese every month can sometimes be a bit of a trial, but there are some things that make it worthwhile - the song of a skylark, giving it laldy somewhere overhead in the darkness before dawn; groups of roe deer grazing along the field margins, coming within twenty yards before catching sight or smell of the car, and bolting away into the sunrise, or leaping over the fences with astonishing grace; a flight of whooper swans skimming low over the wood and straight over the car, 'whoong-ing' to each other as they pass overhead. And of course, the geese, in their thousands, rising from the loch and the Low Ground where they have been roosting and feeding to head out into the dawn in search of more food, building strength for the new breeding season.

And the sunrise... each early morning this year, the sun rises a little bit further north. In mid-January, it rose in a scarlet and fuchsia glory behind the Rookery Wood. This morning, it was a full hands-width further round, beyond the airfield; pink filigree lighting the clouds before the gold-on-blue brilliance made using my binoculars a distinctly unsafe business. It marks the changing seasons as much as the snowdrops that flourish in the damp woodlands, or the sudden appearance of lambs, which pop up as if hatching from the turnips their mothers are feeding on. (Or are they helping them to hatch? My passing aliens might suspect so.) Spring is finally showing signs of returning.

And one day I'll figure out how to stick a video into a blog post without have to do it separately!

Random Thoughts from the Festive Season...

2011-02-01T22:15:00.004Z

Afflicted with cabin fever over Xmas and New Year, I have spent an inordinate time in the companyof the haunted goldfish tank, aka the TV. And the inevitable hoardes of adverts.
Which set me to thinking...what would any passing alien make of Earth, if this was what they picked up (and given the tedious repetition of much of it, it's probably more likely that they'd pick up the uncomfortable mix of Can-can and Heavy metal that was Why Mums Go to Iceland than something more intellectual).

In the run up to Xmas, the TV was populated by an inordinate number of sulky girls and moody men, wearing pouts that left them a hair's breadth short of becoming goldfish, glowering at each other, getting it on in lifts (and did the one who broke her Diamond necklace on behalf of Armani have to wait in line until the Beckhams finished?) or spilling flammable liquid across the floor and rolling about in it.
Obviously all this heavy breathing wore them out, one way or another, as the post Xmas schedules centred around replacing beds and sofas. Our passing aliens might wonder why these primitive Earthlings spent so much money in December, when the prices of nearly everything were immediately cut afterwards; why, they might ask, do they not do the Xmas thing at the end of January, when the sales have happened?

Wandering aimlessly through the supermarket (oh, how we spend our days!) another thing caught my eye. Seasonally-scented air fresheners/candles/electronic gizmos. Apart from wondering idly why anyone would want these things in the first place (they make me sneeze, for a start. Open a window, for goodnesss sake!) the sheer variety of 'scents' was astonishing. And in such combinations! Cinnamon and nutmeg. Cranberry and holly. Cotton and mulberry. Soft cashmere and vanilla... hang on a minute. Cashmere? Doesn't cashmere come from goats?

Can anyone explain why I would want my festivities seasoned with goat scented ice-cream?

Snow Laughing Matter....

2010-12-04T00:33:00.001Z

As usual, we are surprised by the British weather. This time, it's really caught us out, and there's not a thing we can do about it. However much grit we stocked up with, however much we polished up the snowploughs, traffic havoc was going to be the result when that much snow drops in that short a time. What bites now is how long it is taking to restore some semblance of order.

But it's pretty. It's like M*x F*ctor super-smooth foundation for the landscape - that fresh-as-a-daisy 24 hour slap advertised by some vapid bimbo. 'Get the Scotland Look'...
But I do want it to go away before Xmas.

Notes from the Lochside

2010-10-30T15:50:00.001+01:00

The far side drifts in and out, grey veils of misty rain swirling across the still water. The robin darts onto the deck, grabs a piece of something from the birdfood scattered on the railings and vanishes again, only to return in a flurry of wings to send an inquisitive chaffinch packing. Falling leaves look like small birds flying to the ground; as the rain grows heavier, the drops hit the remaining foliage, drawing the eye – was that another bird?
No, just a bouncing leaf.
A bedraggled great tit, feathers askew, lands on the bird table and tucks into the birdcake, caution and hunger in equal measure as the bird looks over its shoulder for predators then returns to its feast. More arrive, great tits, blue tits and the occasional coal tit. For a while it looks like a game of feathery billiards, each bird that lands on a feeder sending the previous incumbent bouncing off in another direction, to the table, or the hanging coconut shell, or the debris scattered below on the decking, none willing to share their position. Gradually they settle down and seem to become more tolerant, and even the robin slacks off his sentry duty.
A flash of yellow catches my eye and makes me look twice at the bird that's just arrived. Smaller than the chaffiches, with a deeper notch in the tail - female siskin. Another joins her, and finally a male arrives, smart in black, green and yellow.
The loch slowly reappears, punctuated by a small group of cormorants, their flight low and purposeful, heading southwest. Mallards squabble at the water's edge. The far side emerges as the rain eases off, a tapestry of green and brown and russet. The trees are beginning to turn colour; as if someone is tweaking the hue and intensity settings.
For a brief half-hour, the skies clear, and the birds, strange to relate, vanish.
Then the drizzle returns, and the far side starts to disappear once more.

Eye to the Telescope

2010-10-12T14:10:00.006+01:00

Where did summer go? The last few swallows - late fledgelings of the last broods - are gathering themselves together, eating as much as they can before the long haul south. The geese have been arriving, dropping in in large numbers, whiffling down from the north to land in their old familiar fields. The rain continues to encourage the snails in my garden...

At this rate it'll be next year before I can blog this year.... so I've decided to do things out of order.

It's fifty years since someone had the bright idea of counting the geese, to see how many pass through and overwinter, and to find out how well they are breeding. 0545 on Sunday morning found Mum and me lurking on the edge of our usual field, waiting for the sun to come up, and the flocks to head out to feed. Naturally, things didn't go according to plan. It was about an hour before we could see more than the vague outline of the landscape, and the geese decided to have a Sunday morning lie-in, which left us feeling rather envious. By about 1000, only about seven thousand had left, and the rest were hanging about on the fields.

Which means taking a different approach to counting.

Back to the Visitor Centre, and set up with a telescope trained on the dense mass of grey-feathered bodies packed in 'tight as ticks on a hedgehog' on the Low Ground marsh, and in the grazing fields beyond. Counting is in clumps of five, rather than strings of twenty, and can only be a 'best guess' - how do you account for the rise and fall of the land, or the awkward geese that hide behind the gorse bushes?
I entertain thoughts of air traffic control - 'All geese in field 59 please proceed to the runway, take off and circle before landing again.' They are so much easier to count in the air!

My eyes ache by the time I'm done, and the traditional goose-count egg-and-bacon sandwich is very welcome as we tally up the count.
It's looking like a funny year. Although there were a lot of geese to begin with, most seem to have gone further south, with only 16-17,000 remaining at what is usually the peak time. Signs and portents? Or just geese being awkward?
Ah well. See what next month brings!

Slow Boat in the City - Part 2

2010-06-20T18:23:00.006+01:00

15 July. Sometime today, we will have to turn round, but we’d like to see how far we can get! We’re heading deeper into the urban zone, beginning with Sale, and suburbia starts to blur into one long stretch of canal and back garden, with boats in various states of repair. At Stretford, we come to Waters Meeting – not far from Old Trafford – and a piece of modern sculpture almost hidden from view. Really urban now – towering piles of containers, and wharfsides, the old Pomona Lock, derelict sites and modern apartment blocks.

We make it all the way to Castlefield Junction and Quay, pretty much in the heart of Manchester, under a network of bridges which I find utterly fascinating.

Even here, nature is existing side by side with man – a young heron stalks fish from the canal bank, unconcerned by our passage.

We can’t go any further – from here it’s the Rochdale Canal, which requires negotiation with British Waterways – sounds fascinating though! So we turn round, and head back south, and the inevitable end of the journey. We make it as far as Moorefield Bridge, just beyond the lights of Daresbury

16 July. Another tunnel morning, and fine-timing! After successfully sliding through with few hold-ups, we stop at Anderton again, to take advantage of the shower block, and visit the Lift shop, before heading for Middlewich once more, by way of the Canal Craft shop at broken Cross, where Drew buys a traditionally painted stool.

As we go through Big Lock, we’re helped with the locking by a chap we met over a week ago, who just happens to live nearby. There is a moment of faintly hysterical hilarity as we rise up through the Middlewich Locks to come face to face with what I can only describe as a daisy-chain of dogs…
Back on the Middlewich Branch and the deep Wardle lock proves to be awkward, throwing us against the forward gate despite my best efforts to hold the boat in the middle of the lock; I am reassured by the lady in the lock cottage that this always happens, and just to let the bow sit against the gate. We moor up a short way after, below Bridge 30, and have fish and chips for supper.

17 July. Our last full day of cruising, and we plan to be almost back at the boatyard tonight. Back across the Cheshire plain, with the deep locks, and we find ourselves wishing that we’d found somewhere to do a second pump-out. There is the expected queue at Cholmondeston Lock, and a short visit to the Venetian Marina shop; no chance for the pump out here, we’ll have to make it to the morning! The weather seems to have settled into a routine – clear and sunny mornings, clouding over by mid-day and throwing it down in the afternoon, and today is no exception; it’s coming down in stair rods by the time we moor up for the night back on the Shropshire Union proper at Calveley, and do our packing.

18 July. All that remains is the last couple of miles and the Bunbury Staircase; we moor up at the yard by 9.00 am as required, and then it’s just emptying our gear from boat to car, and final handover stuff in the office (and complementary coffee, which was nice!) End of the journey, all 202 miles, 64 locks, (182 lock gates) and 329 feet and 5 inches up and down again, time to download all the photos, and figure out our next trip!

a couple of collections from the trip....

boat names

boat dogs

and for the interested, a Googlemap of the entire trip is here

Slow Boat in the City - Part 1

2010-06-20T18:11:00.008+01:00

12 July. North! At least as far as Barbridge Junction, where we swing onto the Middlewich arm of the Shropshire Union Canal, (a low bridge marks the turn, and it’s a blind corner –lovely!) The locks along here are extremely deep, and can apparently get very busy – they take ages to fill, so the boats back up waiting. There are a couple of big marinas as well, so it gets pretty hectic at weekends. We make our way to Middlewich – a pretty sharp turn with locks involved. By the time we’ve navigated our way through the town, negotiating the masses of moored narrowboats at the yards, and stopped for water, we’re ready to stop for the night. Mooring is just before Big Lock (and it is!) and the conveniently placed Big Lock Pub. Of course we did, and very good it was too.

Big Lock pub, Middlewich

13 July. Now we’re on the Trent and Mersey Canal, and the first task of the day is Big Lock. Fortunately there’s someone else to go through with (it’s one of the double-width ones) and we’re away up towards Manchester. Some interesting features of the canal here are the flashes beside the channel (keep to the marked bit!) where there are the rusting remains of scuttled boats from the fifties. Many have been raised and restored, but some are beyond help.

derelict in Billinge Green Flash

The landscape takes an industrial turn after we go through Broken Cross, the canal passing under the pipes of the ICI works, where an unexpected club mooring makes things interesting.
After passing the Lion Salt Works (seen on the BBC’s ‘Restoration’ programme, we have lunch at Marbury Country Park, before going a little further to moor up at Anderton, where the shore party investigate the Anderton Boat Lift.

14 July. Timing is the thing, heading north from the Anderton lift. There are tunnels, and they are on a timer…first comes Barnton, and then Saltersford – you have a twenty minute slot between the hour and twenty past going north, and then it’s a two hour run to Preston Brook tunnel if you don’t want to wait around. There are no towpaths in the tunnels, and it’s easy to imagine the old boatmen ‘legging’ their way along while their horses went the airy route over the top. Passing the Black Prince boatyard is a bit of a squeeze, too. Just before Preston Brook is Dutton Stop Lock, with a grand fall of six inches…not so much a lock as a water control mechanism, but it seems very strange going through the motions for such a small change in level!

Dutton Stop Lock

Preston Brook Tunnel is impressive, with an almost cathedral-like space below the second airhole from the west; we emerged to find ourselves now on the Bridgewater Canal, and after passing under the M56, we head further north, past Daresbury ( a very modern ‘innovation campus’). The canal is wide, and although Mum’s search for a post office is in vain, the scenery’s not bad. There are no locks, and we chug peacefully along some way above the Manchester Ship canal.

Lymm (above) seems to be almost all marina, with a boat at the bottom of the garden the order of the day. We finally moor up at Little Bollington, on a windy canal bank.

Slow Boat in the Sky - Part 2

2010-06-20T16:48:00.012+01:00

Yes, well…before this year’s holiday overtakes us I reckon I’d better finish writing about last year! Where were we?

Oh yes, moored up at Llangollen, listening to Barbara Dickson…

8 July. Next morning saw a shore party heading off into the town to have a look at what was happening – dancing in the streets, and plenty of music. Back on the boat, the sounds of the Eisteddfod drifted across from the festival ground, all the international competitors taking part in the various competitions. The horse-drawn barges clip-clopped past on their way to the waterfalls, and the day was spent just chilling out, and looking at where our boat might take us over the next week or so.

round the town, and the horse-boats

9 July. Another high-in-the-sky day, with the excitement of crossing the aqueducts again. One thing about doing an out-and-back route instead of a circuit is you get a second chance at the photographs… there was the usual throng of boats at Trevor, though fortunately not so many dayboats causing chaos, and we waited to get into convoy across the Pontcysyllte. More tunnels and the Chirk aqueduct, and we were back to locks and an over night stop (and dinner) at the Jack Mytton pub.

on the Ponte (Drew)

between the tunnels.

10 July. The main aim of today was to get a pump-out. (Oh the romance of boating!) We found a helpful boatyard at the Blackwater Marina, and once that was done, took a side-trip up the Ellesmere Arm for some lunch and to replenish the stores. The highlight was Vermeulens’ Delicatessen, which provided a wonderful selection of delights; we’d recommend anyone taking the trip to make appoint of stopping and shopping! Drew made a very elegant three-point turn of the boat up by the new wharf (much to the disappointment of the gongoozalers on the bank) and we headed off again, through the open farmland and mosses to our overnight mooring at Grindley Brook, ready to tackle the staircase in the morning.

Ellesmere and around

11 July. Tonight finds us back at Hurleston Junction, in almost the same place as we spent our first night, planning new explorations. Farewell to the Llangollen Canal. We’ve got almost another week, and we’ve covered the ground (or water) we’d planned to do – so where now? We’ve done the countryside – how about some urban landscapes for a change?

Slow Boat in the Sky - Part 1

2009-09-09T18:49:00.003+01:00

First part of the holidays – Bunbury to Llangollen.

It’s holiday time again. After tackling the Broads last year, we figured it was time to go back to the canals. With only three of us, we thought it prudent to try to find a route that wouldn’t have too many locks on it, so the Llangollen canal looked perfect. It also has the added lure of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, another masterpiece by Thomas Telford. Something we hadn’t thought about, of course, was that every year, at the beginning of July, Llangollen is the site of the Eisteddfod… quite what this would mean in terms of moorings and how busy the canals would be, we would have to see. It always helps to have more than one plan…

4 July: Bunbury to Hurleston Junction. Having picked up the boat (almost identical to the one we had two years ago), the first thing was to turn it round. First find your winding hole… (it’s pronounced ‘wind as in weather’, rather than ‘wind as in wrap up’) At this point, the rain starts. After a few close encounters of the branchy, leafy kind, we manage a several point turn, and head back past the boatyard to Bunbury staircase lock. This is the first one we’ve done that is wide enough for two boats; always an advantage if you can find another boat to accompany you – more people to work the locks! The weather improved, and it’s a short trip today, being late afternoon already, so we chug along down the Shropshire Union canal at between 3 and 4 miles an hour to a overnight stop at Hurleston Junction, just below the first flight of locks on the Llangollen canal.

5 July: Hurleston Junction to Willey Moor Lock. So the first thing we were faced with in the morning was a set of very narrow locks (Drew had been to investigate last night, and reported one boat that tried several times but eventually gave up!) and Mum’s first go at wielding the lock handle. Up we go, because from here it’s climbing all the way to Wales. The canal is fed by the River Dee, so there is quite a strong flow of water, which tends to push the boat around a bit; fortunately it’s a gently meandering route across the Cheshire plain, between herds of cows, who take a vague interest as we pass.

It’s pretty quiet, with a few locks, and the real excitement comes at Wrenbury, where we meet our first lift bridge. These require winding up for the boat to pass, and then one has to retrieve the crew member who must wind the bridge back down to cross and rejoin the boat. Even more exciting is the bridge in the middle of Wrenbury, which carries the main road. First, stop the traffic! It’s controlled by lights, like a level crossing; fortunately it’s also electrically powered. It’s quite a sharp turn round the corner, but I manage it without my usual pinball approach to locks and other narrow things!

There are more lift bridges to follow, though these are hand-wound, and we hopscotch along sharing the work with another boat. Tonight’s mooring is at the pub beside Willey Moor Lock, which also provides a convenient place for dinner and a pint or two.

6 July: Willey Moor Lock to Hindford. We start the day with another interesting set of locks – the Grindley Brook flight and staircase. Fortunately, there is a cheeky lock-keeper to assist and co-ordinate the boats going up and down, and we get through without incident. It’s a pretty place, and I would have taken pictures, but I was a little occupied with boat-handling. We moor up at the top of the locks to water up and have coffee, before heading onward.

There are more lift bridges to come as we pass Whitchurch, and start out across one of the largest lowland raised bogs in Britain, the Fenn’s, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve, and we cross and re-cross the border between England and Wales several times.

As we approach Ellesmere, the weather decides there is not enough water around already, and it begins to pour with rain. Leaving Drew to steer, Mum and I take refuge in the cabin and peer out at the passing greenery.

There’s still plenty of daylight, and after Ellesmere, we pass through more peaceful rural scenery, slowly drying out as the sun comes back. We pass the entrance to the Montgomery Canal at Frankton; we thought about going up there, but it requires booking to pass through the locks at a particular time, and we’re seldom that organised. Add to that a comment from another boater that midge numbers were astronomical in the upper reaches, and we figured it was one to miss. Mooring was at Hindford, not far from the Jack Mytton pub.

7 July: Hindford to Llangollen. Only two locks today, and then there are no more until we meet these coming back. That’s not to say there are no interesting features today! There are lift bridges, tunnels, narrowings, busy boatyards and delinquent dayboats ahead, not to mention two aqueducts…

First there is Chirk Aqueduct.

This has a wide stone cladding, and runs beside the railway bridge, and goes almost immediately into the Chirk Tunnel. We emerge from the dark into a deep cutting, which leads into Whitehouse Tunnel.

Before the Big One – the Pontcysyllte itself – we have to navigate narrows before the village of Froncysyllte, where moored Waterways Board boats make things even tighter. Fron also has a lift bridge, and a lot of folks watching to see the boats go by.

Now comes the hairy bit… unlike the aqueduct at Chirk, Telford’s masterpiece has no stone cladding. The canal crosses the valley in a lead lined iron trough, and it feels a little like we are hanging in the sky. It is, of course, a difficult thing to take photos of. You’re on it, and there are very few ‘long’ views as you approach. It’s an astonishing thing. Eighteen stone piers hold up a thousand feet of waterway, up to 127 feet in the air. You have to cross in convoy, because once you’re on, there’s no going back.

We moor up at Trevor, so Drew can go back and take some more photos, and to look for postcards. While we wait to head up the last, narrow bit of the canal to Llangollen, we watch the antics of the dayboats. They don’t seem to recognised that it takes time to manoeuvre a narrowboat, and they don’t go backwards with any ease or grace; as a consequence there is often a little conflict when the space gets tight. Like going under a bridge on a corner…..

The canal runs halfway up the valley side, with glorious views away across to the Welsh mountains. It’s green and lush, with overhanging trees, and as we approach Llangollen, it gets narrower, with one-way working at some places, where the canal has been cut into the rockface. It’s busy, with a lot of boats strung out along the canalside moorings. There are a couple of places left in the marina, though, so we pay our mooring fee and pass the middle of the town, the slate rooftops below us.

We moor up, not without incident; the boat is heading beautifully towards the pontoon when a sudden gust of wind hits the slab side of it, and shoves us irresistibly into the side of another moored boat. No damage to either, and apologies seem to suffice. The Eisteddfod ground is only a couple of hundred yards away across the canal, and we have dinner listening to Barbara Dickson in concert. A fine evening, and a free gig… I’m not complaining! And it’s my birthday!

Day Tripping at the Top End

2009-09-05T10:33:00.005+01:00

Time to catch up!
Back in about May, we actually had a spell of really good weather, so I decided to take a day out and do a road trip I haven't done for years - all the way around the top end of Scotland. Not exactly a green activity, but the scenery is fabulous, and the trip practically impossible by public transport (certainly, you couldn't do it in a day!)
So off and away - later than I'd hoped, about 9.00 in the morning, and heading west towards Inverness and the Highlands. From here, I turn north, crossing the inner Moray Firth, across the Black Isle, and over the Cromarty Firth, with the tide right out and vast expanses of wader-friendly mud and sand.

Keep going north. The road follows the shoreline, the hills rising away to the left, covered in gorse and glowing like some crazed artist has splashed everything with chrome yellow. This is clearance country, a thin strip of farmland crammed between mountains and sea. The railway shares the route as far as Helmsdale, often running with its tracks almost in the water, before heading inland to Georgemas Junction and the northern towns. I follow the coast.
Passing a stand of conifers, it looks as if someone is burning off brushwood, or applying chemicals, but the yellowish fog spreads through the entire plantation, blowing inland on a strong easterly; I realise in amazement that it's pollen from the trees, windborn and guaranteeing a good crop of cones later in the season.
The road is quite winding and with some steep sections; not the place to find a gigantic slow-moving crane coming the other way. I pull in and let it roll down the hill.

Above the last valley, the road crosses an open and quite bleak landscape, treeless, hedgeless; for previous visits I remember fences made of flagstones and look for these, but most seem to have been replaced by the ubiquitous barbed wire. Older houses are roofed with the stone, though. Unlikely to blow off in the wind, I think.

I pass through Wick, on my way to the northern tip of mainland Britain. There are houses here that have been around for centuries; old fortified places that look more like small castles.

I'm on the way to Dunnet Head, the real northern point - but first, a more traditional and better known place - John o'Groats. It's busy on a day as fine as this, with bikers and happy-snappers, and souvenir shops. I don't hang about.

There's a haze along the horizon, which means the view across the Pentland Firth isn't as clear as I'd like, but some of the distant lighthouses can be made out on Stroma and Hoy, as well as some of the ancient sandstone seastacks; you can't quite see the Old Man of Hoy from here.

Dunnet Head is now an RSPB reserve, and there is time to chat with a group of birdwatchers; what have you seen? The lighthouse is as far as you can go by road, and overlooks a steep cliff thronged with birds, and the glinting, choppy water far
below.

Westwards now, and into the wilds of Sutherland. Mountains rise abruptly from wide Flow country - expanses of bog, where plover and redshank breed amidst pools of brown peaty water. Beyond Bettyhill, the mountains take over; the journey so far feels like I've been climbing from green soft shores to ever wilder and desolate country.

Ben Loyal is the biggest of the mountains laid out before me, forcing the road to follow the coastline, winding along the edges of the deep inlets, the Kyles of Tongue and Durness. There are gorgeous beaches along here, hidden gems of pale sand and unexpectedly blue sea.

At Durness there is no choice but to turn south. You can get to Cape Wrath from here, by means of foot ferry and a minibus along a rackety road to the far west corner, but it's well into the afternoon by now, and there's no time; instead I head down through the mountains towards Assynt. The name means something like rough land....

I'm running out of time. If I'd set off earlier, I might have made it as far as Ullapool; as it is, it's time to turn for home, and do the rest another day. At Ledmore Junction, I turn south-east, back towards Inverness, with the bulk of Suilven rising in my rear-view mirror.

Almost home now, and the light fading rapidly - well it is almost 11.00 pm! I pause at Cullen to take a final shot of the distant hills across the Moray Firth.

And people ask me why I want to live in Scotland?

Forge Valley

2009-01-09T22:00:00.005Z

Well, you can't spend the entire holiday indoors knitting, can you?

So we took ourselves off to a regular haunt, to see what the birds were doing. Forge Valley is inland from Scarborough, on the south side of the North York Moors. The valley is probably glacial, and the River Derwent starts here somewhere. It's closely wooded, steep-sided, and has several stopping places, one of which is specifically for birdwatchers - there are lots of bird tables and hanging feeders, and after Xmas these are piled high with food for the local birds - and they are not shy about coming to take advantage of it. If you sit in the car, reasonably quietly, they ignore you; on occasion we have put food on the bonnet and had the birds queuing up on the aerial to feed! There is great variety, blackbirds, pheasants, woodpigeons, and loads of 'small stuff'... like these...

Treecreepers are one of the less common visitors, but this one seemed quite comfortable.

Long-tailed tits travel in flocks and don't often come to bird tables, but there was a small flock of about six or seven hanging about. In winter, they gather together at night in huddled groups to share warmth.

Great spotted woodpecker - if you're lucky, they'll even come down to the bird feeders... but not today. This was as close as this one got.

Of course, even with a lot of feeders, there is sometimes a queue.

And everybody has to wait their turn.

But there's enough for everyone. Blue tits aren't shy about a bit of push and shove.

At this time of year, the light fades too soon, especially at the bottom of the valley, so we headed home after about an hour, partly frozen but happy.

Bloomin' Knitwit!

2009-01-07T21:03:00.009Z

I don't do domestic.

I say this for the start, in case someone gets the wrong idea.

When I used to cook for the Scout troop, they reckoned that my middle L stood for Lucretia. I was asked to leave Domestic Science at school; the teacher refused to teach me. I made a pair of pyjamas with both sleeves and both legs set in backwards.

Later, I made ball-gowns from scratch, building them like engineering projects. They were pretty good - mind you, I need engineering rather than dressmaking, being on a larger scale.....I learned to knit out of bloody-mindedness.

Now, being a bit arthritic, I need to keep my joints warm, otherwise I grind to a horrible stop. I've found the ideal thing for my wrists and knuckles - "mitten-thingies".
These are basically tubular with a hole for the thumb, simple, practical and effective. A friend and I discussed how they might be knitted. Seemed simple.

Can you see the flaws yet?

So I was at Mum's place, and needing to do something... she has plenty of spare wool from old Fair Isle sweaters. Ideal!
I acquired wool and round needles. These make life incredibly simple by allowing you to just knit on and on and on round and round.

I cast on 76 stitches, and knitted.

After a couple of rounds, I realised things were not going quite to plan... somewhere in joining up the threads, I'd managed to turn the thing, and had now managed to knit the beginnings of a wonderful Moebius glove.
Stop. Unravel. Knit back. Start again.
Cast on 76 stitches and knit three successful rounds. Try the thing against my wrist. Hmmmmmm. Too big.
Unravel. Start again. Discover that 76 stitches is the minimum the round needle will hold. Ah. Too big.

Oh hell. I need to try to do this with 4 needles. How much do I REALLY want to do this?
Come on. It's just wool and stuff. How fearsome can it be? It's not french seams, or white sauce, for heaven's sake!

So here we go. I reckon 50 stitches. Cast on. Ok.
K2P2 for about 15 rows (I'm knitting stripes, so about 3 rows per colour at this point).

AUGH!! How the heck do you shift from one needle to another? After a while it becomes clear, and I decide I need to knit at least 4 stitches on from the previous 'changeover' each round, in order to prevent holes at the corners. Yes. I think I'm smart, huh? Smart is not having the left needle stuck up your right nostril...

So here I am, knitting with 4 needles for the first time. It is not going well.

For a start, my eyes want to focus on the needle I have just deserted and which is waving around loosely under my nose. and threatening to insert itself in that same organ. I need to focus on the business end of the thing, not being one who can watch TV and knit at the same time - I need to see what the needles are doing, as they are inclined to do random stuff if I take my attention off them. There is also another needle waving about errantly, likely to get stuck in my ear, or my jumper. Do NOT wear knitted jumper whilst knitting. Everything ends up stuck in the stitches...or your underwear.... I am knitting with 2 active needles and have 2 'hangers-on', most of the time. My decision to carry stitches forward means that sometimes I only have 3 needles in play. The spare I stick in my mouth, as a convenient place.

The only trouble is, I tend to forget the needle in my gob. If I'm not talking to Mum, particularly. If I am, it's still likely to get overlooked, our conversation being of the muffled kind. Which means that - on occasion - I'm likely to end up with all the knitting on two needles, and a problem turning the corners.....

And so it progresses. Knit one, purl one, slip one, drop one, scream as half the last 10 stitches fall off the needle, change colour, discover a new stitch where one has failed to slide the stitch last time round, count the stitches and find an extra 4, cast off extra 4, knit another round, discover one is 3 stitches under target....

The whole thing is a bloody mystery to me. It's a women's thing, and despite gender, I just don't get it. I knit the bloody thing, and end up with a tube of the right size and shape, finally cast off the k1p1 top end (see, I do know technical!) and then... oh shit. I have to do another one the same. Including the bit early on where it all went inside out and the knit became purl and I ended up with an inside out bit, which I thought I'd wound back but when I knitted the next couple of rounds I found there was still a reverse row there..augh....And the bits where I missed stitches and will have to tie them in again. Gods, why did I start this???

They're pretty, though, and they're warm. Mum's modelling them here...

I am not designed for domesticity.

the Rules of Yellow

2008-12-17T22:16:00.003Z

because there are rules - trying to keep things a wee bit scientific here, folks!

1. You have to be travelling. On the bus, in a car, in a traffic jam. Watching out of the window doesn't count (Mum, I'm looking at you! The yellow car you can see out of the back window doesn't count!)You need to be on a journey.

2. Parked cars only count once. If you see a parked car - and you can count dealerships - you can count it, but if you pass the same car again on the way back, you can't count it.

3. You can't count cars/vans which are wearing yellow as livery. (This is where lorries are left out) If a van/car is yellow because (for example) it belongs to the Council, it doesn't count. Plain yellow vans with lights on the roof don't count. If it looks as if it is yellow as a matter of happenstance, it's OK.
Taxis which are yellow do count, as long as it isn't the entire fleet - look and ye shall learn!

4. Gold doesn't count - it's metallic beige. If you see a metallic yellow, you will know!

Happy hunting!

I Am Curious about Yellow...

2008-12-06T04:54:00.006Z

Cars, that is...

OK. It began when I was heading south, and being bored, started to count 'Unsuitably Coloured Cars' as a diversion. Well they are out there... puke green, blood stain red, deep bruise purple (the last branded as 'Envy' - dear gods, what colour do they paint the adultery version??) And in the midst of things came the yellow cars.

So I started counting precisely how many 'orrible coloured vehicles I saw on a journey. But in doing so I became very aware of yellow. Not gold - it's just metallic beige, in most cases. (There is one variety that is metallic yellow - you know it when you see it.)There were a lot of yellow cars around - or was it just my perception? They ARE obvious, after all. And (as an aside) some are better than others... a yellow Mini is cute. A yellow Volvo looks like a travelling slab of butter. And it depends very much on the shade of yellow. A pale yellow Fiat looks OK. A saffron yellow Citroen looks ... hell, just weird. (And, as a disturbing aside, there are suddenly more orange Fords around... are the damn things ripening??)

And then I drove down to Mum's place and a wee while later, went to visit a friend in Nottingham (hi Tats!). And on the way, I counted the yellow cars. As you do... (to quote Richard Hammond).

From home to Mum - 420 miles. Yellow cars - 41. (1:10(ish))
From Mum's to Tats' - 100 miles - 20 cars. (1:5) and the traffic was MUCH busier.

Which made me wonder.

(a)Is there any correlation between traffic density and the number of yellow cars you see on the journey?

(b)Is the distribution of yellow cars significant? Do they exhibit any migratory pattern - are they urban or rural - can I find any correlation?

So I've been counting yellow cars... and (so far) it's proving interesting (although I ain't sure it's a statistically sound analysis, so don't kick me yet!).. on 'average' rural + urban roads (eg, from home to Aberdeen and back, or on my way to work - sampled over 3 months)I get an average of 1 yellow car per 10 miles. So I'm taking this as the baseline figure. Anything more means busy traffic, anything less means quiet-ish. OK, if I was being very scientific, I'd break it down to urban and rural (and I'm trying to find out how I can do that sensibly and safely - at the moment I just click a mechanical counter when I see one and check the mileage at the end of the trip..)

And so far, the (a) theory is holding up.

And there are odd features that support the (b) theory...vis:

Yellow cars are an urban species.
Yellow cars prefer daylight - ie. they are diurnal - and on the whole are more commonly seen when the weather is warm.
Yellow cars are biassed towards the East coast. (Have they migrated in from the Continent?)
Yellow cars are - on the whole - clean... I've only seen one dirty one in six months.

The study continues - made more difficult by the onset of early dark - with sodium lighting, it becomes harder to pick out definite yellows - but I'm still recording cars seen per miles (visible).

And once in a while, you get a perfect 'yellow car moment'... at a roundabout in Aberdeen, I saw a primrose-yellow small Peugeot approach a roundabout. From the opposite direction came an identical primrose-yellow Peugeot. They hit the roundabout at the same precise moment, and passing, exited from opposite roads. Synchronised yellow.

Bliss!

I'll keep you posted...

Loch & Awe

2008-11-22T22:52:00.011Z

Autumn, changing colours and the hint of oncoming winter.... what do you do? Sounds like a good time to take a break, relax and go on holiday, which is what Mum and I did in October. Some years ago we went to a Forestry Commission site at Loch Awe, which got sold off - this year we found that some of the cabins were again for rent - (have a look here) - so we decided to go back, and so glad we did!

This is the cabin, overlooking the loch....

It's compact, cosy, very reasonably priced, and fully heated!
We didn't expect the weather to be good - and were not disappointed - it chucked it down on a regular basis - when we woke up, the loch was usually calm and still, the wind picked up during the day becoming quite fierce by nightfall. Nevertheless, one morning I woke to the sound of thunder so loud that I thought it was blasting at a nearby quarry - the blast reverberated through me as I lay in my bunk, and the sound of the rain on the roof was deafening! But the cabin was snug, and we had a great deal of pleasure just watching the rain, and the loch rising...at least a foot during the week...

We put out bird-feeders, as we'd done in the past, (and had on one visit attracted a pine marten)and were soon discovered by the locals - I don't think I've ever seen so many coal tits, chaffinches, great tits, and blue tits - who soon proceeded to eat us out of house and home....

There were also siskins, a wren, and a robin who appeared to be the only vegetarian robin I've ever encountered - we got in some mealworms for him which were studiously ignored in favour of breadcrumbs..

The most striking visitor to the feeders was a red squirrel, who appeared on the second day, and then came back every day - several times a day on occasion. The peanuts were the main focus of his attention, but he paid visits to the sunflower seeds, and checked out the whole deck in case he'd missed something.

The weather meant we stayed in the cabin quite a lot - which was excellent, as it meant we got to see all the visitors - but we still managed to get out and about on a few occasions - through Kilmartin Glen with its standing stones and burial mounds (the ancient heart of the kingdom of Dalriada) down to Crinan - across the Moine Mhor (Great Bog) Nature Reserve

...and the Canal itself, with the huge locks that connect the inner loch to the sea and formed the basis for much of the trade in the early part of the 20th century - the heart of 'Para Handy' country.

We went down through the islands to Seil and Easdale (and managed to flatten the car battery by leaving the lights on whilst having lunch!)where the wind was whipping the sea up.

We stayed at the cabin for a week - utterly relaxing, quite enchanting, and rather soggy! Wet, mossy forests, sudden storms, and the glorious reds, golds and bronzes of autumn bracken and leaves. We came home through some of the wettest weather - floods in Oban and the higher end of Speyside round Laggan, where the autumn colours were still developing.

The trees were thick with lichen - a good indicator of clean air, and strange in its own right...

We side-tracked towards the headwaters of the Spey (defeated by floods) but paused at this old house, before finally heading for home, and fish and chips.

Loch Awe....Wet it may have been, but I'd utterly recommend it as an out-of-the way spot for relaxation!

A'Broad - day ten to the end....

2008-10-01T23:21:00.003+01:00

Day Ten: Hickling to Barton Turf: a lot of today was spent waiting for the tide to fall far enough to get under the Potter Heigham bridge!!! Had to fill up with as much water as we could, and the pilot was planning to get extra manpower to weigh the boat down if needed... as it was we went through at full speed, heads ducked low and cleared it by about 2 inches... Moored up at a point about 30 minutes from the boatyard, to return in time the following day. (my only mooring manoeuvre! I actually did it, after all this time!)

Day Eleven: from Barton Turf to returning the boat at Stalham. I'm very glad we didn't do this at the weekend, given how busy the boatyard was.....

We had fun.... I think we managed to cover just about all the Broads - at least as far as we could given the size limitations of the boat - and maybe we pushed the envelope a bit there too! Glorious scenery, wonderful wildlife, and the weather wasn't bad, except that it chose to rain whenever we had to take the screen and canopy down to go through a low bridge!

a Googlemap of our travels is here.

A'Broad - day seven to nine.....

2008-10-01T23:14:00.004+01:00

Day Seven: Berney Arms to Potter Heigham, which involves going across Breydon Water again, through Yarmouth, and up the River Thurne. Potter Heigham has a Very Low Bridge, so we waited til the next day to go through.

Day Eight: Potter Heigham to Horsey Mill. The pilot has to take you through the bridge, which is quite a relief, given the low clearance.... Horsey Mill is National Trust - shore party went exploring!

Day Nine: Horsey to Hickling. A short trip, mostly within the nature reserve. An evening spent experimenting with cameras...

A'Broad - days four to six......

2008-10-01T23:07:00.007+01:00

Day Four: My Birthday!: Stokesby through the tides of Great Yarmouth to Beccles. Very carefully planned, and rather hair-raising! You have to cross Breydon Water, which is large and sea-like.....following this, at breakfast, I got my present - telephoto lens!!!

Day Five: Beccles to Brundall. Slumming it amongst the big posh cruisers....

Day Six: upriver from Brundall to the middle of Norwich, (which, unlike Birmingham last year, doesn't seem to want folks to access it from the river - it likes riverside cafes, but you can't visit if you're on a boat!) and back down to the lonely windmill and pub at Berney Arms (one of those places you can't get to with a car)- which is a great place, with some terrific folks in charge!

Abroad on the Broads - day one to three.

2008-10-01T22:49:00.007+01:00

I have been reminded by she-who-must-be-obeyed-occasionally that I haven't written anything about our summer holiday....so for those who haven't seen it yet, here we go.

The Family set sail from Stalham, to explore the Norfolk Broads for 10 days or so..... some of the pictures are composites, made up from photos taken by all three of us.

Day One: Stalham to How Hill/Turf Fen Drainage Mill - we picked the boat up in the afternoon, and after some quick instruction, made our way south of Barton Broad to the gorgeous mill at How Hill. The most wonderful sunset...

Day Two: How Hill to Coltishall via Horning and Wroxham - revisiting old haunts, the area around Coltishall, where I spent almost 3 years of my life. We had to get the pilot to take us through the bridge at Wroxham - thank goodness!!

Day Three: Coltishall to Stokesby - we'd hoped to moor up at Acle overnight to head down to Yarmouth (the navigation from North to South Broads requires careful planning to go with the slack of the tide) but the moorings were full, so we ended up further downstream. No problem, though we met some right idiots in the process...

Web Rage

2008-10-01T10:30:00.001+01:00

So I’m sat in the car outside the chip shop, waiting for Mum to emerge with our supper, when I notice that, stretched between the wing mirror and the side of the window of my door, are two spiderwebs, one slung behind the other as if to catch prey if the first breaks. Ingenious, I think. A rather rotund spider is wandering about on the one nearest the car, checking for midgies; it finds one, and hastens back into the left side of the recess behind the mirror to have its own supper.

Halfway along the top, a pair of wee spindly legs pokes out, and a much smaller spider emerges, very hesitantly. It steps out onto the second web, exploring. Well, that explains the ‘double web’ I think.

Suddenly, from the right hand side of the mirror, another larger spider rushes out onto the web. Obviously, the small spider’s footsteps have set the web thrumming, alerting the other to the presence of Something For Tea. Small spider freezes at the sight of the bigger one, which advances slowly and menacingly. I begin to think there will be carnage…

Smallest spider makes a dash for the top of the mirror.

Bigger spider goes in pursuit, and it looks like it will soon catch up. I’m almost biting my nails, willing the small one to go faster. It reaches the top and with true spidery ingenuity, flings itself off over the back, abseiling rapidly down the finest of thread to dangle six inches below the mirror, out of sight of the bigger spider. Perplexed (I don’t think the bigger spider is particularly intelligent) the latter seems to shrug, and heads back to its own side of the mirror, vanishing into the gap behind the glass.

Small spider dangles in the wind for a while, a little like Indiana Jones on the broken rope bridge, before clambering back up to the wing mirror and cautiously tiptoeing past the others to its own lurking spot.

Mum wonders why I’m chuckling.

Things go better with Shell

2008-09-20T22:56:00.001+01:00

Driving down the road to the garden centre, to buy some sticks to use in making a game about migration (don’t ask, it’d take longer than I have to explain), I had the strangest feeling I wasn’t alone. Glancing to my left, I realised there was something on the passenger-side window. Somewhere in the night, an adventurous snail had dropped out of the fuchsia bush that overhangs my garden wall and had been exploring the car. Not noticing the inquisitive wee soul, I’d set off and was happily bowling along at around 50 mph. My unexpected passenger seemed somewhat alarmed by this – no doubt it was the fastest he’d ever travelled, for although my snails are no slowcoaches (watch them head up the wall to the chimney on disco night) they lack wheels.

With another car behind me, it wasn’t possible to stop and leave the freeloader in a convenient hedgerow, so I willed him to hang on and we’d part company at the garden centre. He seemed to take heart from this, and started to explore the window, riding along with his wee feelers blowing in the breeze. Up to the top, and halfway down, sticking to the glass by sheer force of will and a sticky foot.

I tried to keep an eye on him, but after coming close to the verge a few times decided that his fate was in the lap of whatever small gods snails have, and concentrated on my driving.

We made it to the garden centre, both unscathed, and I contemplated finding a suitable flowerbed and setting him down in safety there… then I thought again. Garden Centres are not known for their friendship with those of a shelly persuasion, and in leaving him there, may well be condemning him to an early demise. After his tenacity, and plucky determination, I felt this was not something I could be party to, and suggested to him that if he was still on board when I came out of the centre, I would drop him off in the leafy haven of the lay-by just north of the village.

When I came out, he had wandered down to the wing mirror, and was making cautious investigations of the spiderwebs. (Of the spider who lives behind the mirror, there was no sign – obviously reluctant to get involved with one with so many fewer legs than herself). Well, hang on and we’ll soon have you sorted, I said, wondering if anyone was listening to me talking to my wing mirror.

There was a lorry in the lay-by, and no room to pull in behind it. Snail had climbed higher, over the door pillar and onto the corner of the windscreen… less likely to be blown off, I thought, and watched him from the corner of my eye as he clung on like some out-of-place hood ornament, feelers still extended in curiosity at the speed.

So I took him to work.

If you’re still there at the end of the day, I’ll try and take you home, I said, as I got out and unlocked the office door. But you’ll have to be patient – I have to do some shopping and I can’t guarantee what may happen in Tesco’s car-park.

Some six hours later, I emerged to find that he’d settled down for a snooze at the edge of the windscreen, where there’s a bit of a lip that offered some security. Wise lad, I thought. Hang on, here we go again. A seasoned traveller by now, he didn’t even stir as we set off, and remained tucked down and shell-bound all the way.
I guessed he’d had enough of the travelling life when I found him still in the same place after I’d done the shopping. I guess people don’t look closely at the cars when they’re parked – nobody seems to have noticed my car was customised.

So we came home, and after unloading, I carefully lifted him from the windscreen and placed him back in the fuchsia bush. I think he was still snoring. I wondered what he’d think when he woke up – do snails dream of speed, like humans do of flying? And would I know him again, if I saw him sprinting up the wall one rainy night, on his way to the chimney pot?

Wind of Change

2008-02-11T00:18:00.002Z

So what gives with this weird weather? It’s been odd for the last four years or so – and where it’s becoming noticeable is with the geese. Today was the regular goose count – normality (for some ten years or so) for January and February has been around 8,000. Regular wintering population in the area. They don’t tend to start building up for another month or so, on their way back to the breeding area in Iceland. But last year, January ran to 20,000, dropping back to normal in February, and this year January was around 18,000 and today we checked in about 24,500… now January can be accounted for in that there was horrible weather in the Central Belt, so we probably hadtheir geese, from Vane Farm and Montrose Basin, and maybe even from further south, Morecambe Bay and even the Wash. But it hasn’t been so bad in the last week or so – so where have they all come from? They don’t seem to stick around during the day; the reserve staff were surprised to see so many. And it isn’t our counting – if anything we undercounted – I was on my own on the usual station, and dealing with a wide front of geese all at once, so if I missed some it wouldn’t have been surprising. (even us old hands get ‘augh, me head's on fire’ moments!)

So what’s with the weather?

The first flying thing I saw this morning, once it stopped being impenetrably dark, was a midge. It was not alone. This is February, for gods’ sake – we shouldn’t have midgies!!! The roe deer, and most of the ducks, are getting frisky – this is normal….but we should have been freezing our socks off even in our thermal underwear, not boiling gently because of the same! There is even a Little Egret on the reserve, and has been for the last month or so – notionally, a Mediterranean bird!

I’ve lived here since 1985. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the weather has changed in that time. Snow has shifted from January to March (ooh, I hope not - there is too much to do in March this year), February has got warmer, November windier, and the whole of the winter wetter and dreicher… I could go on.

We are doing something to the climate, whatever the nay-sayers claim. The Earth has, historically, warmed and cooled; this much is true, it’s all to do with wobbling around its axis, but the speed with which it changes seems to be increasing. We should, apparently, being an inter-glacial period, coming up from the depths of cold and the frost fairs of Olde London, when the Thames froze over, and this much I can accept, but should it be happening so fast we can see it year on year?

Wherever you look, someone is making capital out of ‘climate change,’ ‘global warming,’ (and wouldn’t it sound more ominous as ‘global heating’? Warming sounds far too cosy, to me!) and all the various bells and whistles attached to these emotive phrases. One half says it’s dire and dreadful, and the other half says it’s natural and normal – sit back and enjoy the warmer summers! (And to hell if you’re flooded out!)

But do we really want bluetongue disease in our livestock when the winters stay too mild to kill the insect vectors, and to lose ptarmigan and snow buntings from Cairngorm? All of this seems pretty certain, as far as it goes at the moment. Next come malarial mosquitoes in Kent….

The thing is, we don’t understand exactly what’s going on, and how what we’re doing affects it, all we can say is we are doing something, and it may be too late to stop. But maybe, just maybe, we can slow it down until we know more. One of the arguments against reducing CO2 emissions is that by the time it’s a threat, technology will soon be able to sort the problem out. (Thank you for your insight, Mr GW Bush!) But in a race like this, which one will come first – the technology, or the irrevocable damage? Why can’t we help the developing countries, trying to make progress (and understandably narked when we, from our technologically superior (?) criticise their less-developed technology) by giving them the assistance they need to bypass the ‘bad old days’; is the ‘dog in the manger’ race to economic/monetary supremacy worth our future?

The Earth will survive. It does that, very well. It’s just that, like the dinosaurs, and the trilobites, and the giant dragonflies, we may find it won’t support us any more. And I, for one, don’t blame it.

Waters of Philorth

2008-01-26T22:26:00.001Z

First public even of the year, and a chilly afternoon on the estuary. We’re doing a joint bird-watching thing, between the Council Rangers, RSPB and my own organisation, looking at what is on the estuary and beach to the west of my village. I guess it’s pretty good, having two nature reserves nearby – this is the ‘lesser’ one, the Local Nature Reserve(LNR). LNRs are a way the local Council can protect anything interesting, and help prevent the constant degradation of habitat that seems to be a feature of our world.

So we set out in a chill wind, enough to bring tears to the eyes. I (being of limited mobility) took up post on the river, to check on whatever turned up on the inland section, while the rest headed over the dunes to the beach and the mouth of the river, braving the wind-whipped sand and sea spray.

It’s a place where people come to walk their dogs, and they were present in abundance – from small jovial terriers to aloof lurchers, juvenile retrievers that growled at me as a ‘new & therefore weird’ person, springer spaniels that leapt into the river with a joyful bark and a constantly wagging tail, senior sheepdogs that try to round everyone else up – the prevalent smell in the cars heading homeward must be ‘wet dog’…

Some of the owners are responsible, cleaning up the mess after their pooches dump last night’s dinner. But many don’t seem to feel it’s a problem – you would think that, coming here day after day, they would notice the build up of dog crap around the site, but they seem to have selective vision. Indeed, a local councillor has been reported as saying ‘Well, the bin isn’t near where my dog does its business.’ Good example, guys.

So the place is pretty much a ‘watch where you walk’ endeavour, and even the responsible owners aren’t entirely blameless – I watched a guy with three dogs on leads and three running loose… the ones on leads he cleaned up after…the others had done their thing before he got to where I was standing, and of course he didn’t know they had dumped by then…I do wish people would be aware of what their animals were doing when not under their immediate control, as this would prevent a lot of confrontation between visitors and managers of sites…

Sigh. Enough of crap. Literally. Just clear it up, that’s my view.

There weren’t too many birds around – gulls, crows, jackdaws – last year, we did this walk a month later and there were quite a lot of waders – but this could have been a factor of the tide.

Today was the day after a high spring tide, and coupled with a lot of recent rain, the estuary was pretty full. You expect the tide to fill, hit the top – slack – and then retreat, but it seems this isn’t the way it goes. Watching the water come and go, using a fence post and several clumps of grass as markers, it became evident that there was much more to it.
The water seemed to go up and down several times, the grass islands flooding and emerging as I watched. What drew my attention to the changes was that I noticed a small mammal making its way across the flow to one of the islands, and then staying there - hiding in plain sight as several dogs went past.
The water slowly rose – eventually there was no more island, and the beastie (which I believe(though I wouldn’t bet my life on it!) was a was a water vole –a rarity these days) made its way to the ‘mainland’- chin up and doggy-paddle, determinedly – to the bank.
While I watched, (being interested in the relatively rare sighting) I became aware that the water levels were rising and falling, almost as if the river and the sea were breathing in and out as it hit the top of the tide…the post in the water emerged, snagged trailing debris and then disappeared, releasing the raft of reeds to drift away downstream. Then it appeared again, my attention drawn that way by the loud ‘plop’ of a little grebe making its way downstream on the tide and diving as it went. Up and down. Islands emerging and drowning. Tides are a much more complex thing than they seem, written down in the black and white of tables.

We all met up again, to swap sightings and comments on the weather. The wind whispered in the reeds, dry stems rattling, and a blue tit foraged amongst the foliage for insects and seeds. A flock of jackdaws took wing over our heads, and, distant and clear, the call of pink-footed geese rang clear on the air. Grey skies and cold winds, and the edge of a rain shower, brought an end to our survey.

Swan Lake

2008-01-03T23:00:00.001Z

Winter, for me, starts officially with the return of the whooper swans from Iceland.

One of the best places to see them is Welney, a Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve on the Ouse Washes near Ely, so on a chilly, damp day in November ‘07, Mum and I headed down there to visit them; an afternoon feeding session guarantees a good turnout!

The Visitor Centre is new since the last time we were there – it’s very eco-friendly, with a reed-bed water-treatment system, and an excellent café.

Crossing the bridge, you reach the hide – well, I call it a hide, but it’s centrally heated and far more comfortable than any hide has a right to be. It looks out across the flooded Washes – watermeadows that take the brunt of the winter’s rainfall, and managed to provide an ideal habitat for the migrating wildfowl and for summer visitors in their turn. There are three types of swan here – mute swans, whoopers, and the smaller Bewick swans, although the latter don’t come in close, being kept off the grain feed by the other, bigger birds. (At the moment there is also a black swan, an escape from a local collection and rather unexpected!) As well as swans, there are any numbers of ducks. Most of the ones close-in are mallard (the usual village pond ducks) and pochard – these are the rather dapper grey and chestnut chaps.

Duck Fact: And they are nearly all chaps… the males leave the nesting grounds earlier than the females and young, and consequently take the northerly wintering sites, making the females go further south to Spain. (Hardship, girls!!) The males head back to the breeding grounds in Scandinavia at the start of the season, taking up territories ready for the arrival of the females who, of course, have further to come. The boys bustle around, jockeying for position to be in the right place when the warden comes with the grain barrow, prodding and pushing, diving down and popping up, often underneath an indignant swan, with a flurry of bubbles and a shuffle of feathers and a quick dash to avoid an indignant swan beak. The mallard don’t tend to dive, and have their females with them. They are more inclined to simply shove each other aside in the general melee.

As the light dims the swans start to arrive in greater numbers – up to 4,000 of them at the moment – and they start to parade back and forth in front of the hide, all competing for the right to be first at the food. Below us, the floodlights go on, and excitement builds amongst the birds. A sudden rush to the right alerts us to the warden with his barrow of grain; he makes his way along in front of us, casting scoops of grain into the water. All dignity amongst the swans is immediately lost, and the ducks become a feathered frenzy.

Twilight descends, and with it more swans, white shapes in the gloaming winging over our heads with a melodious and melancholy whooping song, slipping down the cold evening air onto the water, greeting each other with bobbing heads and touching beaks, small family groups – parents and this year’s ashy grey young – staying together amidst the growing flock. We stay until it is too dark to see any more, then take the road northwards, to home and bed.

Winter’s here.

Shetland Sojourn III

2007-12-30T17:26:00.001Z

Our last day in the islands. We pack, feed ourselves and the gull, tidy up and haul all the gear into the car, bidding a fond farewell to our temporary home.

North-east this time, to Vidlin, Delting and Lunning, the Whalsay ferry terminal (no otters this time – but no ferry around) and an almost Scandinavian landscape of painted wooden houses and boats on the firths. The weather has improved, which bodes well for our trip back to Aberdeen tonight.

Shetland sheep come in a variety of colours….

Heading down the coast we stop to check out the seals on the rocks north of Gletness, and spot something else in the water – another otter! It catches an eel, and hauls out onto the rocks to eat it, but the distance- and the activity of the otter – make the photos awkward. We miss the otter, but do manage to catch a few seals, basking like sausages on the smallest of rocks.

We have lunch (very nice, highly recommended if you are ever there!) back at the Shetland Museum, with no need of lamp-posts this time. It’s a beautiful place, very new, nicely laid out, and covering all aspects of the islands’ history.

There are some weird art installations, too. The one on the left is Mum….

Time for a bit of shopping in the Lerwick rush hour – warm woolly Shetland knit hats from Jamieson’s, and some bits from the Shetland Soap Company.

There is just time to take a few twilight pictures before we are due to check in at the ferry terminal. Clickimin Broch lies close to the heart of town, an ancient tower-dwelling in the heart of modern housing, beside the leisure centre and within sight of the supermarket.

The ferry to Bressay runs back and forth all day, taking commuters to and from homes on the neighbouring island and Lerwick. It’s time for us to catch our own ferry.

Well, I say ‘time’ but after check in we have to wait almost an hour while the heavy goods containers are loaded (I have to wonder why they don’t get these aboard in advance of the passenger load!) and we eventually find ourselves driving aboard down a narrow canyon between container wagons. It feels rather risky, a view that isn’t helped as the ‘Norröna’ ferry (Bergen to Tórshavn) limps into Lerwick, having managed to hole itself on a stabliser, the hold cargo shifting so that a container fell onto some cars, (flat!)and a total of 80 cars damaged….

Fortunately, we have no such drama, and spend a comfortable night. We arrive back in Aberdeen at about 7.00 am, the lights of the city coming up rapidly along to starboard. It’s still too early, so we take a short trip up to Torry Battery to watch the dawn come up, before finally heading down to Tracey’s for breakfast, and to sort out all the heap of gear in the car.

Shetland Sojourn II

2007-12-30T17:13:00.001Z

Sunday morning found our visitor back, looking for breakfast. It’s not easy eating porridge under that watchful eye……

South today, all the way down to Sumburgh. The main airport for Shetland is set in a low-lying, soggy and sandy flatland below the rise of Sumburgh Head. To reach the very south of the island, you have to drive across the end of one of the runways – interesting. Especially when a plane comes over your head…
The airport electronics also had a weird effect on the car – fortunately we were stopped at the time – the engine cut out, the trip meter reset itself…baffled, we paused at Grutness, where the ferry to Fair Isle departs (and there are some fond memories there!), in a squall. The locals didn’t seem too impressed with the weather either…..

No further interruptions to the running of the car, and we head up towards the lighthouse. The car park is below the lighthouse itself, with a clear drop to the sea just over the wall. The sea is rough, snow squalls are followed by bursts of bright sunshine, and the wind harries the fulmars and gannets along at a great rate.

The lighthouse, in spring and autumn, is a wonderful place to see migrating birds and the seabird cities that fill the cliffs of the Head, but in winter, there is little around and we head north again, via the dune lochs of Virkie and Spiggie, the mill at Quendale (shut for the winter) and the western coastal route to St Ninian’s Isle. The island is joined to Mainland by a tombolo – a thin sand spit caused by tide and current. The waves run along the sandbar, breaking tops white and misty, whipped by the wind.

We stop for lunch near Maywick, and look up from divvying up the sandwiches to see a wall of whiteness coming up the road towards us; in a moment we are engulfed in a hailstorm, pellets of ice bouncing off the bonnet of the car and hammering on the roof until we can barely hear. Moments later it has gone as fast as it came, heading southwards. The old line is true – ‘if you don’t like the weather, wait a couple of minutes and it’ll change.’

We spend the afternoon investigating the small, causeway-linked islands of Burra, and the end of today’s trip takes us to Scalloway, the second town of Shetland, home of the maritime college and the wartime ‘Shetland Bus.’

The light is fading fast, and we head back to Lerwick.

Shetland Sojourn I

2007-12-15T22:22:00.001Z

Saturday morning we scraped the snow off the car, and headed north, to the top left-hand corner of Shetland Mainland, to Eshaness, where the geology meets the sea. Literally. Here the sea has cut through the flank of an ancient volcano, different types of lava flow stacked up like a layer cake, a cross section of an explosive past. There are gas bubbles, ash and volcanic bombs, the fine grained flows of runny lavas, the blobby agglomerations of the stickier stuff. Different hardnesses of rock give way to the sea at different speeds – in places the cliffs are like giant’s staircases, in others, arches and needles rise from the Atlantic rollers like the teeth of a fossilised monster.

The power of the sea is evident. Rocks lie along the cliff-top, thrown up by storm and tide, to be swept off by other waves reaching 40 metres above the sea, and the waters offshore are littered with wrecks. Yet people have lived here for many thousands of years, their presence recorded in the stone age cairns, Pictish brochs and in the remnants of pre-clearance villages.

The wind is bitter. As I step from the car to take photos, my eyes immediately stream, and the cold slices into my bones. It’s not a day to hang around.

Eshaness Lighthouse – now a private house (lucky people!) – is one of the few that has a square tower. It stands foursquare against the wind and weather, staring out across the Atlantic. I snapped the picture and dived back into the warmth of the car.

We head back towards Sullom Voe, where the tankers discharge and fill their tanks with the oil from the hostile fields in the seas between Shetland and Norway. It’s actually not that imposing – the Flotta terminal in Orkney is more obvious, and the St Fergus terminal at home, with its huge flares of burning gas, more dramatic. Nearby is Mavis Grind (pronounced, I think, with a short ‘i’) which is designated the shortest distance between the Atlantic and the North Sea - a mere stone’s throw (if you have a small stone and a very strong arm!) We head to the northern ferry terminal at Toft, where the inter-island ferries head out to the low-lying, peat-covered island of Yell. No, we’re not going to Yell, but there is purpose in our trip.

Years ago, on Fetlar, we were chatting with a local gentleman about the likelihood of seeing otters. Go to the ferry terminals, he said, it’s almost guaranteed – they like the disturbed water where the ferries come and go, it stirs up the fish.

He was right, as we’ve discovered on numerous occasions since that conversation.

We sat and ate our sandwiches, watching the ferry load up and the seabirds go back and forth. Ferry terminals are also a good place to find well-maintained public toilets, so we took advantage, and I was just getting back into the car, when Mum noticed a disturbance offshore.

Binoculars snap to attention, and with delight we spot two otters, fishing in the bay. They roll around each other, diving and splashing, and then separate. They are some distance off the beach, but I take a picture anyway - honest, this IS an otter! While we watch, it catches a butterfish and, gripping it firmly between its paws, happily chomps it in front of us.

The light is fading rapidly – twilight comes at around 3 p.m. - so we head back towards our base, and our warm and cosy apartment.

Northern Exposure

2007-12-09T21:17:00.001Z

So how on Earth did we come to be lugging drainpipe and old curtains to Shetland, and why was Mum wrapped around a lamp-post in Lerwick?

Well…..

Some time ago, I won a ferry ride for two plus car to Shetland, through a prize draw associated with the annual Beach Clean-up. (Thanks to Northlink Ferries and the East Grampian Coastal Partnership) Yippee! Mum and I hadn’t been to Shetland for years, so it was a really nice treat…the only caveat on this enterprise being that the trip had to be taken before March 2008. Given our winter weather, it seemed vaguely sensible to take it sooner rather than later, and as my friend Tracey was heading up that way to deliver a teacher training course on school grounds (something we’re both involved in) it made a kind of sense to tie it in and give her a hand. So we booked a self-catering apartment in Lerwick, and all three of us headed north in early November, the car laden down with all the gear for the course (this is where the drainpipe and curtains comes in).

Now I have to say, the weather in November isn’t always kind. We’d been watching the forecast for several days before we went, and it was holding true to form, so we were quite relieved that the Wednesday ferry was scheduled to sail as normal. We duly checked in and boarded, and soon found our cabins. It’s a reassuringly large ferry, very clean and polished, with friendly staff, and is very comfortable; the trip takes around 12 hours overnight, so we headed for the restaurant for dinner, before the trip really began.

We watched the lights of Aberdeen fade behind us, went over the details of the course we were delivering in the morning, and, as the ship began to rock and roll in the worsening weather, headed for our cabins.

There’s a very good reason why the bunks on our old friend ‘Leader’ run fore and aft. In a bunk that runs from side to side, (as on the ferry), as the ship rolls, you slide. First towards your head, and then towards your feet. Gentle rolling from side to side is OK, sliding up and down until your head hits the bulkhead is less entertaining. Sleep was a long time coming…..

Overnight the weather got gradually worse. As daylight broke through the window on Thursday morning, we were relieved to see the island of Bressay, and a choppy sea in the approaches to Lerwick harbour.

We rolled thankfully ashore, and went to sight out the terrain – we couldn’t get into the apartment until lunchtime (Mum’s task, to check in and set up camp) and Tracey and I were due to be at school until about 3 pm. So we unloaded our cargo of drainpipes, curtains and other stuff at school, dropped Mum down at the centre of town and went back to work. As the day went on, we saw the weather deteriorate rapidly as blizzards whipped through, and the walls of the school hut we were in flexed dramatically. We had to reduce the amount of actual outdoor activity we were originally planning, in case we lost a teacher or two over the nearest horizon. The southbound ferry was cancelled, all the inter-island ferries tied up, and Shetland battened down in the teeth of a storm-force wind.

Meanwhile, Mum had discovered the local museum , and had spent a happy couple of hours wandering around. On emerging, she found waves breaking over the seafront, and by the time she got to the road, had to cling desperately to a lamp-post to prevent herself being blown over. Fortunately, a nice local lady (thank you whoever you are!) in a 4x4 stopped, rescued her, and gave her a lift to the apartment, where we all met up later, to swap tales of wind and weather.

I can thoroughly recommend the place we stayed. Warm, comfortable, and with all the bits and pieces we needed. Plus a nosy neighbour, who visited each day to see if we had any spare food.

On Friday, Tracey and I went back to school to deliver another day’s training, followed by her departure – on the fortunately reinstated ferry – back to Aberdeen, family, and the joys of moving house. Mum and I stayed on over the weekend to rediscover Shetland, which will be the subject of the next entry in this blog.

Watch this space.

Splashing About

2007-12-09T00:02:00.002Z

Well....there are those who wanted to see what I was painting down at the RSPB reserve.....

the idea is that it's what you might see out of the window at that time of year, (including underwater) the picture done so far being winter. (Summer is to be done in the depths of this winter.... hmm...will this make me feel warmer when I'm doing it?)

Anyway, here it is - a patchwork version of the whole thing, and a couple of 'highlights'...

this is the bit to the right that you can't see..

...enjoy!

Slow Boat Under Birmingham

2007-12-08T21:22:00.002Z

The canal network stretches throughout the heart of England, and used to carry much of the country’s goods. After years of neglect, enthusiasts have managed to restore much of the system, and it now carries a different cargo – holidaymakers. Amongst whom, this summer, were a motley collection – Mum, Brother, the Temporary Dog, the Temporary Dog’s real owner, and your humble correspondent. One week, four people, a singularly unenthusiastic dog, 95 miles, 93 locks, and one lost foot of height.

bargedog, but not by choice....

With a canal holiday, you book the boat, take food, and plan your route day by day, aiming for a reasonably accessible pub in which to spend the evening. Fortunately this is not hard! You can’t go fast – around 4 miles an hour (partly to protect the banks from erosion, and partly to prevent the poor souls in boats that are tied up from being thrown around too much!) Locks take around the same time as a mile of travel, so you calculate in ‘lockmiles’. Going through a lock is an interesting procedure – and can be a little Edgar Allen Poe-ish….

On Being Locked Up.

Half-ton gates slam behind me. Dank, slime-covered stones rise above my head, mosses and liverworts dripping coldly down my neck as I turn to see what’s coming.
Somewhere above me, there is a clanking as hidden doors are opened; water starts gushing into the narrow chamber. I am thrown forward and backwards by the torrent, fighting to hold my position and stop myself being hurled against the gates by the water’s force.
I rise on the flood to the top of the chamber, into sunshine now, and engage forward gear. The gates ahead open - we’re clear of the lock.

You get the picture?

Ryder's Junction

The boat is easy-ish to handle – you have to remember it’s around 60 feet long and turns like a brick, and although it has a very shallow draught, sometimes the canal is even shallower….OK, we got stuck a few times, and had to resort to pushing off with a long pole, but that’s why they give you a long pole in the first place! There were some stretches of canal that were better kept than others, too – navigation by means of avoiding sofas, shopping trolleys and children’s bicycles – and I hereby warn all those who venture onto the waterways to avoid the Wyreley and Essington (otherwise known as the Curley Wyreley) unless you have a particular fondness for stopping every half mile to unload the weed hatch….. a singularly unpleasant business where one halts the boat, vanishes under the rear deck-plates, unscrews the hatch lock, and goes headfirst down the subsequent hole with one’s arms in freezing water, groping around the propeller to disentangle a variety of substances, from weed to rope to angler’s line to plastic herons and thorny twigs……

Other stretches were pure delight, with kingfishers, wagtails, and shoals of fish darting amongst the weeds, and it was a simple joy to hang over the side and watch the world drift past below your fingertips, interrupted only to note what new bank vegetation the current helmsperson had just dragged you through!

So why pick on Birmingham?

In truth, it was the revelation of the trip. There are more miles of canals in Birmingham than in Venice, and waterways thread their way through the heart of the city, looping around, though and under the buildings.

It is a very weird feeling to be climbing through a series of locks that lie beneath a building under construction, or to sail past a restaurant that lies between locks – knowing that on the up-lock side, the restaurant wall holds back millions of gallons of water…

There are odd places down there, under the city. Urban mythology lies in wait. Under the Telecom tower, beside the canal, there is a wide area of gravel, beyond which is a wall, with a series of openings. Each opening has a gate of wrought iron, each with a different design. It’s not hard for the imagination to see these as holding pens for trolls, or as merchants’ market stances, waiting for the late night secret market where rare, dangerous, and esoteric items are bought and sold…..

To rise from a series of locks into a narrow gap between buildings, windowless faces staring blankly high above your head, to find a vast, colourful mural depicting the history of the canals in the city – just for your delight – is a reassurance that there are still people to there who understand the fun of the unexpected and unnecessary. At night you tie up (for free!) in the heart of the city, not far from the Indoor Arena, in the upmarket waterfront yuppie-zone, adjacent to pubs, clubs and café-culture.

Then the following morning you set off and find yourself somewhere under Spaghetti Junction, in an alternate – maybe parallel – world where there are thundering juggernauts overhead, and slow, peaceful waterways below, and below that, a river or a forgotten road.

Fishermen know these places, and keep them to themselves. Locking-down, you suddenly realise that the sheet of metal to the side of the lock and towpath is a motorway sign. An aqueduct carries you along beside the M6. Do the drivers, rushing to work, caught up in the frenzy of meetings and time-keeping, ever notice the slow-boat-people?

And the lost foot of height? Well, I did the research afterwards, and found we'd gone UP 309 feet in height, and DOWN 310 feet.... so am I now living a foot below everyone else?

Thanks again to my brother for some of the photos...

Mea culpa

2007-12-08T20:23:00.001Z

I know - I've been remiss. Much of the year has gone by without comment..... well, actually, I made quite a few comments, but many of them were the same as last year (albeit greyer and wetter), so it seemed daft to re-blog them. That, and being up to the proverbial ears at work. Which is why it's been so quiet around here.

With any luck, and a following wind, I hope to update things in the next few days.

But don't hold your breath!

Whale Tale

2007-08-07T20:55:00.001+01:00

I was just getting the paints sorted out for the next section of the picture I’m doing for the RSPB reserve, when the Reserve Manager appeared at the door.
‘There’s a minke whale in the harbour at Fraserburgh.’

What could I do but down tools and go see…..?

You may well have seen this in the national news – young minke whale followed a fishing boat into the harbour and got stuck. (If you were looking closely (hi Sue!!), you may even have seen me on the evening news report, one of the many watchers on the quayside.) I was in two minds about going to see it – these things nearly always end up in tears, and I didn’t want to be a voyeur on a sad tale. On the other hand, I did want to see it – I didn’t believe that it could actually be in the harbour itself. But it was.

Standing on the quay, we watched as the whale circled the harbour pool, coming up to breathe every four minutes or so. It didn’t seem too stressed, though there would be no food for it. There were no ship movements as the big pelagic trawlers were tied up, though this may have confused the sonar picture. Why couldn’t it find the gap and the way out to sea?

One of the gang went off to find out what was happening. Apparently, on the entry to the Balaclava Basin (the bit of the harbour in question), there is a concrete ‘lip’ – at low water there is about 3 metres of water over this, and chances are the whale’s sonar was bouncing back off the lip and making it think there was no way out. To make matters worse, if it got over the lip, the harbour wall was straight ahead, leading off left at an angle towards the open sea, but a sonar picture could well seem to show no exit.

The whale circled. A couple of grey seals wandered in, to see what all the fuss was about – they sometimes get fed from the quayside, so possibly thought their luck was in. They made their way out with no problem, but the whale kept going round and round. I had a real sinking feeling about this. I perched on a set of steps by one of the fish warehouses, and felt slightly sick.

Nothing to be done. High water wasn’t until mid-afternoon, and there would be attempts to lure it out then. So I went back to painting rushes, reeds and reflections, and kept an ear on the news. One of our regulars reported sighting larger whales feeding off Rattray Head.

The first attempt failed. I watched familiar faces crop up on the news reports, explaining the plans to help. The whale started to look weary – the dorsal fin started to droop. I began to think this would go the way of so many recent whale encounters in Britain.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

It took several days and a lot of effort, but as you’ll probably know, the whale escaped safely to sea. What wasn’t on the news was that I paid for my prurient curiosity – in perching on the steps of the warehouse, I got at least ten ant bites. That’ll teach me.

Blackbird Hiatus.

2007-08-07T20:13:00.001+01:00

Guess you may have been wondering where I’ve been.

My life has been subject to blackbirds. Comings and goings have all been closely monitored, and commented upon, usually loudly. To venture out through my door, for a while, became almost a crime, punishable by pain in the eardrums.

They have been nesting in the honeysuckle by the front door. I didn’t realise to start with until, looking out through the window one evening, I noticed the female with a huge beakful of grass and twigs, determinedly poking about in the leaves beside the window. To put this position into perspective, the nest was built at my eye level, halfway between the door and the front window, less than a metre from the door itself. Going in and out, I found myself confronted by a beady stare: what are you doing now? How dare you?

I guessed she was laying eggs after a week. Blackbirds have nested in the garden before, but usually without success; on the window-ledge, they were ousted by the jackdaws, in the fuchsia bush they gave up when it was very windy. Now there were two birds, taking turns in brooding whatever lay in the cup of the nest. I resisted the temptation to look and see how many eggs they had – if she wasn’t sitting when I went out, she was lurking in the bushes and chuntering at me, an under-the-breath muttering of ‘well, get on with it, go to work, go away’ that was oddly compelling. In the evenings I watched them through the window, high-fiving with wingtips as they changed over brooding duty. They are not very elegant birds, and did everything with a great fuss and kerfuffle.

Then came the day I saw her coming into the nest with a huge caterpillar. I rang Mum: ‘we have babies!!’ The female did most of the work, aided occasionally by her more laid-back mate, who seemed to expend most of his energies on singing from the TV aerial, announcing his territorial claims to the other blackbirds down the road, who tend to dispute his ownership of my small garden.

Feeding continued apace, more and more caterpillars sacrificed to growing young. I wanted to blog, to tell everyone, but had the uneasy feeling that to do so would be the kiss of death, so kept quiet. One evening, there was a great scuffling in the honeysuckle, a flurry of wings and an inexpert flapping. They had fledged. As is the way with blackbirds, they immediately hid, and kept very quiet, except when the youngsters tried to fly – this was more a controlled crashing around the shrubs. The starlings in the chimney fledged at around the same time and were nowhere near so discreet; flappings and shoutings and persistent demands for food from every rooftop and telephone wire. I think the blackbirds thought the neighbourhood had gone downhill.

I see them occasionally now, speckled brown and still inexpert, lurking around the garden, skulking amongst the plant pots. (I think there were at least two young raised.) My life is my own again, without the constant criticism.

A bit later in the year, I’ll take the old nest down, and use it at work to show the children how it’s done. Maybe they’ll try again next year.

On Being Spotted – a cautionary tale.

2007-04-09T18:25:00.001+01:00

One of the lesser joys of working with children is the potential for catching things from them. Until recently, this has been – in general – coughs and colds, mostly easy to shake off, but this last week has changed the record.

Last Tuesday, I had a headache. I put this down to working on the computer all afternoon, concentrating on the end of year accounts and getting my reports up to date, ready for the evening meeting with my Management Committee, and the actual meeting itself – never the most stress-free of occasions! Paracetamol (and a small bar of free-trade chocolate!) made me feel better, and carried me through to 9.00 pm and my eventual supper.

Overnight, I felt horrible. Woke at around 1.30 am, couldn’t stop shivering, my feet were freezing, although I was quite warm otherwise, so at around 3.00 am I threw my dressing gown across the bottom of the bed. This seemed to solve the ‘ice-block on the end of the leg’ problem and I dropped off to sleep, only to wake at around 6.00 am absolutely roasting! And I mean boiling. Well, I put this all down to being a woman of ‘a certain age’, and headed back into work, to go over the accounts with our treasurer and figure out why things weren’t coming up in the right columns in the computer printouts. We sorted it out, and felt rather pleased with ourselves, and I headed off to get ready to travel down to Mum’s for the Easter break in a small haze of achievement. Still felt ‘heady’ but put it down to the lack of sleep, and thought – ah well, it’ll be OK after a decent night tonight and then we’ll be off on holiday and I’ll be fine. Had a shower before bed and was slightly askance to find a few spots here and there – put this down to excessive sweating, and possibly a change of hair conditioner.

As we drove South on Thursday, with the dog mumping and grumping in the foot-well as usual, I noticed one or two more spots appearing on my arms. Odd, but it could still be a minor allergic reaction, so I thought no more of it.

Friday morning, things were very different. I looked in the bathroom mirror, and realised I was turning rapidly into a Dalmatian. This was NOT an allergy, but a definite spotty outbreak. We consulted the family encyclopedia. A virus – measles, rubella or chickenpox seemed the most likely. I felt OK, apart from being concerned I would frighten passers-by, but it would be useful to know what it was I had, and how long I might have had it, and who I might have infected on the way and now needed to tell…

Process of elimination on symptoms brought us down to – oh joy – chickenpox. As a mate of mine who caught it a couple of years back said – ‘I’m covered in unsightly bobbles!’ Every time I looked, there were more – my head felt like it had a bad case of sunburn, and my skin like someone had planted a crop of lentils just beneath the surface. And then highlighted the subsequent lumps with red paint. And then stuck little dabs of custard on the top of the lumps…

So the holiday has been spent quarantined. Infectious until tomorrow. Can’t do all the things we planned to do – no trip to IKEA, no trips to more garden centres, no taking the rubbish to the tip…hey, maybe there’s an upside to this after all!

Perhaps not. It’s been itchy, sore in places, and for one who is no oil painting to begin with, the join-the-dots facial embellishment is not a terribly successful look. But apart from that first night, I’ve felt fine. I haven’t even lost my appetite – in fact the major gripe has been frustration! I’ve been trying to find out what the ‘join-the-dots’ puzzle actually makes when done, but unless it’s a map of the far side of the moon, craters and all, I’m flummoxed. It occurs to me to wonder – if they’d all joined up, what would have happened then? Would I have turned into a chicken? Why is it called chickenpox after all, if not?

But it’s going away, fading and drying up. Somewhere in Aberdeenshire there’s a parent who’s been sat up with a spot-ridden child, the statutory bottle of calamine lotion, and far more worries than we’ve had. But, looking at the possible complications, far fewer potential major side effects. We used to take these things in our stride – measles, mumps, chickenpox, and the rest - we used to deliberately try to get our kids infected early in life, when the risks are lower. I know this was the case with me – I just didn’t ‘catch’ the darn thing when I was supposed to, though we thought at the time I had. (Moral of the tale – one spot doth not a pox make!) Nowadays, we go straight for the inoculation. I’m not sure which is the better move, myself. Being left to catch everything has resulted in me having a resilient system that fights infection, and this has been an exercise in patience more than anything else.

Now I need to know – was the one apparent (measly) measle I had back in 1960 the real thing, or is that still lurking out there too, waiting for me?

Doggerel

2007-04-02T19:56:00.001+01:00

i'm being stared at by a nose -
the other end's a tail that goes
around in circles, up and down;
a hairy dog that's small, and brown.
she's fond of cheese and walks and sleep
and blankets left all in a heap;
she mumps and grumps
and moans and groans,
she bounces, flounces,
chews up bones.
a welcome bounce can soothe your woes
but i'm being stared at by a nose.....

The Stare - DogBlog II

2007-03-27T19:41:00.001+01:00

I am being stared at by a nose. It’s attached to a small hairy dog, who thinks there is an outside possibility that I may have cheese about my person. Or within reach. Or in the same room. It’s a penetrating stare, which has little to do with eyes (well, they’re getting a little less than perfect), and she’s able to maintain it for hours. If I move chairs, she shifts round to keep The Stare on target. I am – to her small doggy brain – She Who Gives Cheese.

In the same fashion, Mum is She Who Walks. If she moves from the sofa, she has a hairy shadow. Just in case she’s going out. Even if it’s only to the kitchen. Or to the bathroom – we get accustomed to being escorted (and mump-grumped at while we are in there). The Stare (it has developed a personality of its own) follows us wherever we go.

The joy of dogs.

Happy Mother’s Day

2007-03-18T18:28:00.001Z

‘You have got to admit,’ I say to Mum, as we peer out into the gloom through the windscreen, ‘there are not many mothers that get to celebrate Mother’s Day like this.’
‘Hmmm.’ she sounds singularly unimpressed.

It’s 5.30 in the morning, in the dark, and there is a howling gale blowing from the north-west. Somewhere out in the dark, there are geese….. yes, it’s counting time again, and here we are, waiting for take-off!

A harsh rattle of sleet hits the back of the car, and the sky grows a bit lighter, lowering stratus clouds flying away above us, dumping their load of precipitation as they pass. At about 6.00 a.m. a few geese can be made out struggling through the murk, fighting a strong head wind that blows them straight back to the loch, where they give up and land again. The rooks and jackdaws are enjoying the wildness, tumbling and diving in the wind, but little else seems to be happy about it. Three roe deer cross the field, pausing to check out the car parked in the middle before springing easily over the fence and heading for the shelter of the Badger Wood. The wind rocks the car, and a gusting veil of snow reduces the visibility to a few hundred metres. I wipe the condensation from the windscreen and crack open the side-window a few millimetres. The howl of the gale is too loud to hear what is happening among the geese that I know are out there, but cannot see. I put the window back up. We spread a blanket across our knees to try and stay warm, burrowing into our fleece jackets and pulling woolly hats low on our heads. In a gap between snow-showers, a few more geese try to make their escape, wheeling around overhead only to be blown back again. One or two groups of very determined birds actually manage to make it, heading out to forage.

The snow has built up on the window on Mum’s side of the car, blocking her view. We slide down the window to clear it, and a small drift falls in, onto her lap. A car pulls up behind us.
‘This is ridiculous!’ Vicky sticks her head in through the rear door ‘we’re abandoning it for today. Breakfast back at the farmhouse!’
We are not sorry to retreat.

Later, after bacon butties, we go over to the visitor centre to see if we can see anything. The field to the left of the centre is full of geese, packed in tight, heads tucked down into feathers or feeding in a desultory manner on the grass. Fortunately, the winter has been so mild (until today!) that it hasn’t stopped growing, and they can find a decent meal. The few ducks visible are tucked well in under the banks and in the reeds. There’s no sign of the visiting sea eagle; it’s either sensibly tucked down somewhere out of the storm, or – if it’s tried to fly – is probably halfway to Norway by now.

Before we finally go home, we call in at Kinnaird Head to watch the gannets wheeling and diving offshore. The sea is a mass of white-marbled slate green, foam whipping off every ripple and crest, breaking over the rocks, spume flying through the air. A couple of scoter duck, black against the whiteness, battle their way rounds the point. An eider rides the surge, white on grey. As we drive round the harbour, a large bull grey seal bobs up in the sheltered water, safe in his refuge. We take the hint, and go home.

Sex and Violence in Suburbia

2007-03-18T18:26:00.001Z

Early March, and there is an amphibian orgy at the bottom of my mother’s garden.

Go out in the dark and there is a constant sound, a low throbbing underlying the distant hum of traffic and the barking of the dog in the next street, audible even from my bedroom. It’s the croaking of frogs. Recent warm weather has spurred them into amorous action, and they have gathered in Mum’s ponds to indulge in some hot frog-on-frog action. Huge billows of spawn bear testament to their activities, and there is a mighty splashing whenever we venture down the garden path, as they dive below the surface in a flurry of waving legs. In twos and threes, or even more, they cling together, each male trying to grab hold of a compliant female, even if he has to share her with several other males. He locks his forelegs around her ponderous middle and hangs on until she’s ready to lay her eggs, to make sure he’s in the right place at the right time. But it’s a wise frog that knows its own father, as any one of the attendant males could be Mr Right. Sometimes their cumulative enthusiasm is too much, and the female is so beset by suitors that she drowns.

Feeling rather the voyeur, I venture down the garden and try to count heads (or legs). It’s a losing battle, as they pop up and vanish all over the place, in the ponds or in the undergrowth – I lose count at thirty, and under the reproachful stare of many gold-ringed amphibian eyes, retreat to the house.

In revenge, they croak loudly all night.

Count the legs and divide by two.

2007-01-24T15:14:00.001Z

Seven-thirty on a cold Sunday morning and there’s no sign of the sun.
The sky is starting to shade to deep blue, the fields around the car are a featureless mass, and there is a distinct aroma from the large pile of manure to the right. A chill breeze blows through the window, and my companion rubs his hands briskly, and peers through his binoculars into the gloom.
‘I think I can hear them.’
I stick my head out of the window. It’s hard to tell where the sound is coming from - definitely from in front of us, but there are elements that may be behind and overhead.
‘I think you’re right - they’re on the move.’
We stare hard into the darkness.
A flicker of movement? Yes - a darker mass moving against the sky, only visible in the reflected light from the sea.
‘Damn! Something’s put them up!’ I clamp my binoculars to my eyes and grab my click-counter. From the hollow to the right they come, a great streaming, clamorous flock, dark shapes stringing out, shifting, coming together and then moving apart, shouting reveille to the brightening sky.

Pink-footed geese, heading out from their overnight roost to feed.

So why am I sat in the cold next to the dung-heap?

It’s the monthly Wetland Bird Census. All over the country, hardy souls are out looking at lakes and lochs, estuaries and mudflats, counting geese, ducks and waders as part of a long-term survey designed to see what’s around, where it is, how many are there, and how the numbers are changing. Our ‘patch’ is the local nature reserve, and today there are five of us looking it over; one at the north end checking the beach, the estuary, and the grazing fields, one south, counting birds on the main body of the loch, one at the top end of the loch, checking amongst the reedbeds, and two of us on the western side, where the majority of the geese head out from the low wetlands into the surrounding countryside. It’s an unglamorous location, in the entrance to a stubble field on a low rise of ground, beside the aforementioned manure pile (awaiting the attentions of the muck-spreader). At least this time it’s to one side - last year the farmer piled it straight in front of where I usually park the car, completely blocking the view! I have counted geese from this place for years; sometimes from the car, occasionally from the reserve truck, and on one memorable occasion stood in a snowstorm in the lee of a large fencepost.

Today the geese are leaving practically in the dark, which makes the counting a little more awkward than usual. I swear they look for new ways to confuse me; flying low along the hollows in the land to suddenly pop up, or all taking off at once in a mass resembling an explosion in a bedding factory (we call this ‘feather-bedding’), or sitting tight and stretching the count (and my bladder-control) out for hours and hours!

I peer into the patch of sky between the manure heap and the rookery wood, where the flocks are just visible, black shapes heading westward. As they pass in front of my binoculars, I count them. At the other side of the car, I can hear Angus doing the same, the steady click of his counter as he tallies the flocks leaving to the northwest. There is little in the way of a break today, the geese seem determined to get to their feeding areas as soon as possible and as the light grows, we can make out more and more of them rising from the low ground in flocks of anything up to six hundred birds. We get some warning of large take-offs - the constant background noise builds to a cacophony of calls as they wheel into the air. Occasionally there are groups of whooper swans, huge and elegant, white wings beating steadily, small family parties with their greyish youngsters, or wheeling flocks of lapwings and golden plover in their thousands.

So how do we count them? It’s a question I’m often asked, and I’m often tempted to give the reply shown above… Actually, if they are in small groups, they can be counted individually. Skeins can be counted in groups of five, hitting the clicker every time you get to twenty. For bigger flocks, where the individual geese can generally be made out, count in groups of twenty (see how big a group is and then ‘size up’) - and as the flock gets bigger and more densely packed, work in fifties or hundreds. Or use combinations of these methods. You get better with practice! It’s not utterly accurate, but accurate enough for the census, and with the same people doing the count each time there is a type of standardisation. What they don’t tend to factor into the equations is the co-efficient of frozen fingers, steamed-up binoculars and windows, or random clicks of the counter caused by shivering!

It’s a dull, grey morning, with the sun hidden behind a dense layer of cloud. Inland there is snow, although it’s clear at the reserve with occasional sleet. A fox, thick winter coat fluffed up against the cold, trots across a distant field with the remains of a goose carcass; it’s nearly the end of the shooting season, so he’ll have to work harder for his breakfast next month. A buzzard calls from somewhere above us, a high mewing cry, and in the field beside us a large group of partridges fusses about amongst the remains of the crop, small bustling brown bodies popping up amongst the dry grasses and taking to the air in an explosion of wings.

The stream of geese slowly winds down, the last few family groups taking to the air, and we head back to the visitor centre to thaw out and count the ducks and waders on the ponds there. Afterwards, we tally up the numbers over bacon sandwiches in the kitchen. Around 20,000 geese in all - about twice the norm for this time of year, probably driven in by the bad weather further south.

Not a bad morning’s work, and next month, we'll do it all again.

Inferno Re-Visited

2006-12-22T12:42:00.001Z

Dante was wrong. There are ten circles of Hell.

A foretaste of this last, and deepest, darkest circle, is vouchsafed to those who venture out at this time of year… From years of such observation, the full extent of the nightmare can finally be made known.

Beyond Limbo, beyond the city of Dis, at the bottom of the Pit, lies the Door. It glows with a hellish light, and is girt about with glittering sigils and symbols.

Above the door, an archaic sign reads ‘Lucifer, Asmodeus and Beelzebub, licensed purveyors of wines, spirits, beer, tobacco, despair and game. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’

The Door is guarded by a demon, who does not try to keep out the poor damned souls clustering at the entryway; rather, it forces upon each a torturous device of metal, wheeled and cage-like, and hastens them through the portal. Barriers swing wide of their own account, drawing the damned deeper into that which lies beyond. A hot, burning wind blows over the damned souls as they enter, a foretaste of what is to come. Eyes wide, the souls behold a huge cavern, stretching on for eternity, and find in their hands a piece of parchment, a list of such length as to take almost forever to glean from the serried ranks of razor-edged shelves that line the endless aisles…

And thus they set out upon their futile quest – to gather everything on the list in their trembling hands. For if they succeed, and gain the FinalCheckOut, they will be released from this torment, and will forever rest in peace – or so they believe, for none has ever succeeded in escaping. For many are the trials and tribulations that lie ahead, and loud is the Infernal Muzack playing all around.

The wheeled devices go not where the damned direct them, but follow a path of their own that takes the soul not past the cool Havens of the Frozen Foods but onwards to the Sprouts of Doom. A cry of woe rings the Vegetable Department – for Lo, there are no leeks until Tuesday! The hot breath of the mighty Heaters increases. And the damned are forced to loose their collars, and sweat breaks out on each face. One soul reaches the Infinite Shelf of Baking Products, but alas – there are raisins, sultanas, dried apricots, dried apple flakes, sunflower seeds, self-raising flour, self-deflating flour, organic flour, inorganic flour, gluten-free flour, flour-free flour – but no chocolate chips. Perhaps they have been relocated?

The damned soul beseeches a passing imp, pallid and be-spotted, which calls to its brood mate, ‘Sharon, where are the chocolate chips?’

The imp Sharon scratches the tips of her horns with her tail, tilting the festive baubles hung thereon, and responds, ‘Aisle 134,237,901, with the biscuits. Been there since the new EU regulations came in.’

The soul sinks its head in its hands and weeps.

In Seasonal Goods, a fight breaks out as one damned soul pounces on the last roll of wrapping paper and bears it off in triumph.

They cannot leave until their list is fulfilled, precisely As It Is Writ, with no substitutions or alternative manufacturers, for Our Dad will only eat a certain brand of beans. Which are currently out of stock. And no item shall be Past Its Sell By Date, for this renders it invalid. Should a persistent soul, after many millennia crawling the aisles, finally see ahead the haven of the FinalCheckOut, it is certain that the queue will stretch to the rear of the Great Cavern, beyond even the Bread Counter. And it will not proceed, for there will be those who try to substitute items, or who have forgotten the frozen peas. Or have cartons of milk that have split. And if by some chance the damned soul finds itself at the end of the eternally halted conveyor belt, the demon at the till will close the checkout as the soul starts to empty the trolley’s contents onto the conveyor. And there will be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth.

And ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ will begin again on the loudspeakers…

Travels with a Temporary Dog

2006-12-06T15:41:00.001Z

For reasons that are too complex to go into, Mum has become temporary custodian of a small dog. Consequently, when Mum comes to visit, the dog comes too. Like now.

Looks cute and innocent, doesn’t she? Hah!

She is a ‘combination terrier’ - Lakeland, Yorkshire and Border, to be precise, but in terms of attitude and personality her breed is now designated ‘Monstrous Baskervillian’. It’s very deceptive; she is small, quite dainty in a fluffy sort of way, and all of 12 years old, so you would think age would have brought some sort of decorum to her.

Not a hope.

For a start, she hates other dogs. She wants to tear them to bits. It is, quite frankly, embarrassing - Mum takes her out, and if they meet another dog, the snarling-like-a-banshee begins. Other owners wave at their dog ‘Oh, it’s OK, they won’t hurt her’ and Mum has to reply - ‘no, it’s her that’s the problem!’ Now, if Mum sees another dog in the distance, she takes evasive action. The streets in my village are linked by a maze of alleyways between the houses, so it’s no problem to simply sideslip off one road on to another - but she feels she’s becoming known as 'the disappearing woman' - one minute she’s there, the next time people look up, she’s gone. I feel a myth coming on…

Then there’s the business with the food bowl. She eats the dried mixed biscuit stuff, and eats when she wants to - which is mostly at night. She likes the big meaty chunks, and eats those first, working her way gradually down to the boring beige and green bits, which get left until last. She doesn’t get a refill until she’s finished the last lot; at this point she lets us know by bringing her bowl into the living room and dropping it in a marked manner in the middle of the floor. She has been known to tip out the last few green bits onto the kitchen floor and pretend the bowl is empty. If we are busy, and ignore her, she is quite likely to whack one of us across the shins with the bowl. (Coming in from a long car trip and wanting a drink, she once threw an empty bucket at Mum) If she finishes her food at night, one is quite likely to find the bowl placed carefully in the middle of the bathroom doorway, where it can be stepped on during a nocturnal foray to the toilet…

She is also very vocal. Not in a ‘woof-woof’ or ‘yap-yap’, or even a ‘whine-whine’ sort of way, though. Nope. This dog makes a strange, throaty noise rather akin to the creaking of the front door of the Addams Family mansion. It’s known, colloquially, as ’mumping and grumping’. Like 'hrmfh.. grmph... urrrrnnn.... mmfphmmfph'. This happens when she thinks something is up - or if something is not happening that she thinks should be - like walks, or attention. In the car it's constant at low speeds, (she's quite settled if we're going fast) and the complaints when we go round corners and roundabouts increase in pitch and volume and can be expressed in Human as something along the lines of 'ohmigodyou'renotgoinginastraightline.. you'regoingroundsomething… your'egoingtokillus…augh'.....

She travels in the passenger foot-well - I tried using a harness in the back but being an escapologist of Houdini standard, this was doomed from the start. Plus, being attached to the seatbelt, she pulled this forward, and I was inclined to get a wet nose in my ear at inopportune moments. So the foot-well it is, ideally with Mum as guardian, and she’s reasonably OK there. One just has to get used to the idea of reaching to change gear and encountering a wet nose instead of the gear-lever. Going from ‘second’ to ‘dog-nose’ is not the most pleasant manoeuvre.

And she’s a drama queen. If we encounter a sudden bump in the road, she is quite likely to take off vertically. (I must point out - she doesn’t do this with her real owner. ) If you stand close to one hair of her tail, you’d think she’d been murdered. She has a range of facial expressions from smug to disdain to utter horror (like when we go out without her).

She loves people. She loves heat. She loves games and walks.

She reminds us why we haven’t had a dog for forty years……

Climate Control

2006-10-31T17:27:00.001Z

The weather is being peculiar. Here at the end of October, it’s been ludicrously warm, interspersed with high winds and lashing rain. All of which conspires to give me a problem: windscreen fogging. The warmth means that as soon as it rains, and the outside temperature plummets, the residual warm air in the car (and this is with the heater on cool) hits the cold glass and - POW! - instant loss of visibility. Usual response - to put the blower on the windscreen - fails miserably, only causing more fogging. I try turning the heat up, as I do in winter - it just gets worse.

I try to approach this logically.

Fogging is caused by condensation - warm, moisture laden air passing over a cold surface, the water condenses out onto the surface. It’s meteorological.

I need to equalise the temperature somehow.
To clear the rear window, you put the inbuilt heating element on - this heats up the glass and stops the condensation. Heating up the windscreen - by using the hot air blower - does not have the same effect. It doesn’t prevent the condensation, it makes it worse, except for a thin strip at the bottom, which clears a bit. Hmmm. OK - so there’s even more moisture in the air now, with it being warmer. (And I’m melting…) So I need to take the moisture out of the air - dry it out. I stick on the air conditioning and the air recycling, whizzing the moist warm air through the drier, in effect, and not letting any new damp stuff in. This isn’t very effective, but does reach halfway up the windscreen. Something is working, I’m just not sure what.

SO - if heating up the screen fails, try the opposite! Cool the air down.

Turn down the heater, and blow cold air across the screen. This still fails to give me visibility. Take it down a notch - I stick on the air conditioning, turn up the blower, and wheee! The screen clears almost immediately. I freeze, but I can now see where I’m going.

So the answer, at least in warm-ish weather, is to cool down the air that’s actually hitting the windscreen - effectively putting a thin layer of icy air between the screen and the moist air. Now that’s quite logical, but given the meteorology involved, it leaves me with one question. When the moist warm air hits the icy layer, why doesn’t it condense out? My guess is that the cold air is moving too much - but I still wanna know - why aren’t there clouds forming just above my head?

Vehiculonimbus!

Being a Tourist – 16 October

2006-10-27T21:32:00.001+01:00

Duties concluded, we are free to sight-see! This may take some time, so I recommend you get a cup of coffee (or the beverage of your choice) and settle in for a while.

I decide to have another lie-in; you understand, these are not late lie-ins, merely to about 9.00 am, when the noise of traffic, trams and people outside drives me out of my bed to the shower! I forego breakfast in the hotel and decide to do the real tourist thing – to find a café and sit outside, watching the world go by whilst sipping on a café au lait.
I set out to find the cathedral. Of necessity born of joint damage, I move slowly, so it’s a gentle amble, checking out the shops as I go, (and beginning to understand Liz’s fascination for the shoe shops!) and soak in the difference of the place. It reminds me of York, in a way, trendy shops giving way to the more tourist-trap versions as I near the cathedral itself. It rises from the houses much in the way York Minster – or indeed Beverley Minster in my home town – does; there is no clear view of the building, just glimpses of facades through gaps between other buildings. I find a road leading to the North doors, and stop to take it all in.

It seems to be red sandstone – the only time I have seen this before is St Magnus in Orkney – of course I may be wrong, not having a geological hammer with me (and I doubt I would have been allowed to take samples!), and the details in the carving are still very clear, which I wouldn’t expect in something subject to the weathering of centuries. The North Porch (apologies if I get this wrong, but I’m guessing direction!) is fascinating, and I stop at a café, order petit dejeuner and sit down outside to take in the view.
Croissant, café au lait, et cathedral.
On one side, the Wise and Foolish Virgins look smugly at each other. On the other, the Vices backstab the Virtues. Above the door, the Virgin Mary dies and is buried. Higher still, Kings on horseback ride around the sides of the towers, and above all – gargoyles. Crowding each buttress, each cornice, they hang out halfway to the sky, open mouthed at the antics below.

I love gargoyles! The chief beauty of Gothic architecture, for me, lies in the gargoyles. I wish our modern architecture had room for them, it would be so much more fun!
Off to my left, an old merchant house looks more German than French, reflecting the mixed nature of the Alsace region.

A strange noise attracts my attention. There is a man with a barrel organ to my right, and another group that I can only describe as the local equivalent of a mariachi band to my left, but another, deeper, more visceral noise underlies it all. Finishing my coffee, I pay the bill and go to find out what’s happening.

Russian horns! They look more like old brass telescopes, but the sound is wonderful. They play classical music, sounds Russian to me (but what do I know!) and it clashes deliciously, in a way that makes me want to laugh out loud, with the accordion/mariachi version of ‘Delilah’ that is still playing around the corner.
I wander back to the tourist office to meet up with Liz and Lucy, who are halfway through the walking tour, cleverly guided by mp3 directions. We head for the cathedral to see the astrological clock, only to find that demand means that the doors are closed before the 12.30 pm ‘performance’. So we wait for it to finish (quietly cursing!) on the steps below the outer clock.

Once the doors open, we make our way inside. The clock is a masterpiece of automata; created in the 1400’s, and repaired and extended in the 18th century, it has some of the oldest moving mechanical figures in Europe. But the first thing that meets the eye as you enter by the (probably) West gate is the Angel column. It represents the Day of Judgement, gospel writers below angels below archangels and holy figures, and it’s quite beautiful.

OK, back to the clock. It’s absolutely huge, and I don’t know if the picture gives any idea of how big it is. I apologise for wobbly bits in the picture, as I’ve stuck two together to show you what it looks like. What are we looking at?

Top left – a rooster, which crows – apparently represents Peter’s denial. Below this, a lot of mechanism which drives (bottom left, behind the grille) an ecclesiastical clock – which, I guess, is something that will tell the date of Easter or something of the sort – it goes into epochs and all sorts of things. The pictures are of the muse of astronomy, Urania, Copernicus and…umm. Guilty, don’t remember!
Top right – and below – the stairway that rises for the maintenance man (very narrow steps!)
In the middle: at the top, I think, it’s the figure of Christ and the apostles parade past him each day at noon - hence 12.30 – the clock works on astronomical time rather than official time (remember Leap Years?). Below that figures representing the ages of man parade at intervals – childhood, youth, maturity and old age. Under them, a black and gold globe shows the phases of the moon, and below that, the astrological signs revolve around the heavens. At the foot of these sit two cherubs, one with a bell (which rings the quarter hours) and one with an hourglass (which turns on the – half - hours?). Between them, there is a clockface with two sets of hands, one showing official time, one showing ‘real’. Under these - (I told you it was huge!) – and this is under the dark shelf at the lower third of the picture – are a series of Roman chariots representing the days of the week – today it’s Luna, in a chariot drawn by stags (how appropriate!).
The big disc below that shows the Earth, with hands that reflect the length of the day at this time of year. I’m guessing that the globe revolves to show the side of the Earth facing the Sun. Behind the man who is inconveniently standing in the middle is an orrery, mapping the heavens.
And one small detail, which I love and which I have failed to represent clearly, is the light coloured band to the right bottom corner. This has the months of the year on it, from top to bottom and back up again (and the appropriate sign of the Zodiac) and in the door to the right of it is a slit, which makes the midday sun shine on the appropriate time of year. I love this clock!!!!
On either side of the big disc at the bottom are the emblems of Night and Day. Day is a chap in Roman armour, who points at the current time. Night, on the other hand, is to be quite frank, a bit of a floozy. I mean, look at that frock…

Liz and Lucy head off to finish their tour, and I set out around the cathedral to se what they’ve already seen. It’s gorgeous, and not that huge – it bears comparison with either Minster – and has a number of rather enchanting features such as this -

On the left, a representation of the preacher’s dog, put there to keep him company during long hours in the pulpit! And then there’s the organ loft, hung like a swallow’s nest high in the vaulting, (I doubt it still works, but it’s amazing! And think of the organist climbing all that way up there…) After a while, I venture back into the word outside, blinking in the sunshine, and take a trip on the wee tram that runs round the old part of the city. It travels through the more picturesque streets, bucking over the tram lines, squeezing through the narrow lanes of Petit France, crossing and re-crossing the river. It’s a nice way to see the sights.
I met up with the others back at the cathedral, for quick refueling stop consisting of patisserie, and we head down to the river to take in the sights on the boat trip. The day has become warm and sunny, and we opt for the open top boat. For the first part, we cover relatively familiar ground, seeing the old part of the city from the water, traversing a couple of locks, passing the old washing stations and the tanners’ houses, before turning upriver towards the more modern elements of the European Parliament buildings.

It’s a relaxed and relaxing way to see the sights, (and you can get off on certain trips and see things more closely) and we finally wander back ashore with thoughts of shopping and coffee. Liz heads off shoe-shop-wards, and Lucy and I decide to be a little more leisurely and find yet another café –this time with a more Germanic flavour. But before we split up, I find another gargoyle, this time on the downspouts of the Rohan Palace…

Tomorrow we head back to Scotland, via Orly and Charles de Gaulle, over the cloud covered land, before dropping down through the grey layers to an Aberdeen little different for our absence. Tonight, wandering back towards the hotel, before a final meal at our favorite haunt, we see that we have made some form of impact on the city. In a plant-pot on one of the main shopping streets, Excalibur waits for the Once and Future King…

Random memories?

The panic of trying to by a tram ticket and finding the machine broken – and the delight in discovering how to get it to tell you what to do in English! And the tram system itself – regular, efficient, and cheap. And clean!!
The bats swooping over the Music Hall.
Small, silent, smiling children.
The Eiffel Tower, lit up and glittering at night.
Finding words in French that I didn’t know I knew suddenly at the front of my brain.
Sunrise through mist, and the cathedral rising through it, clad in scaffolding that looked like part of the building – a lacework tracery edging the steeples.
Discovering – as if I should have thought different – that kids are very much the same, wherever you are.
A wealth of very charming men!
Sun on the water.
Plane trees, reminding me of the old slogan – plane trees aren’t.
Market stalls, farmers’ market on Friday, antiques market on Saturday, neither of which we had time to see (or spend money in!)
Politeness.
The Eiffel Tower during the day, from the window of the coach between airports.
Nightfall rushing towards us across the clouds.
A crazy idea, that seemed to work!

Home again, how long ago it feels…

Encounters - 15 October

2006-10-25T20:13:00.001+01:00

So I had a lie-in, of course…what did you expect?

Sunday morning in Strasbourg is relaxed. The trams still run, naturally, and there is a to-ing and fro-ing of people, but a lot sit out around the squares, just taking in the ambience and enjoying the sunshine. Which is what I did, for a while. Until I got into conversation with another taker of the morning air – he passed by with his dog, and smiled. Being polite, I smiled back. He commented on the weather, and I replied, in my fractured French. He enquired if I was German – no, Anglais. He spoke fractured English. He asked if he could sit down on the bench I was on. There was no-one else on it, and it’s a free country, after all. We began to chat – the usual niceties, the weather, where we were from; he was from Mauritius, did I know where it was – yes, in the Indian Ocean – he seemed surprised. He was an ex-sailor, he had been to England but had come to France and now had his dog. We considered how places had changed over the recent past – wages, job opportunities and the like.
Was I here with anyone?
Yes – I explained about the science fair.
Was I here with my wife?
I blinked, but reckoned he meant husband – no, some colleagues.
Was I married?
In retrospect, I guess this is the point where alarm bells rang. Quietly. And I should have invented a large hairy man lurking in the background. But being me, I told the truth.
No.
Children?
No, I work with them, which is quite enough!
‘Do you not like sex then? There is plenty in France! If you like women there are some hot ones!’ the conversation became more graphic.
I’m not exactly sure what I said here, but I made my excuses, politely thanked him for his company and scurried back to the safety of the hotel and the ‘Bringing the Cows Down the Mountain’ celebrations on the local TV channel. And the weekend meteorological programme.
I shouldn’t be let out without a keeper.

Meanwhile, Liz and Lucy had made their way to the Museum of Modern Art, and had discovered, amongst other things, the exhibition of erotica...

We meet up at the tent just before 2.00 pm, and as the doors opened, a positive flood of people come in, and it’s non-stop thereafter. Joanna has difficulties getting away to catch her plane, being in the throes of tree-making. One very small and utterly enchanting little girl comes in with her mother, and proceeds to make a tree, with my help. I can tell her Mum wants to get on and get home, but the wee lass is engrossed, and won’t quit until the tree is completed to her satisfaction. Mum has the rueful, ‘I know we’ll be doing this at home’ look I’ve come to know, but she is very patient. Eventually, they leave, clutching a tree, partly in pieces – I’d explained it was best to take it that way so bits didn’t become ‘perdue’. When I next look up, the little one is back again, busy with paper. She cuts and folds for a while and then silently presents her creation to me.
‘Pour moi?’
She nods, silently smiling, and goes off to find her mother.

Outside the stag herd grows apace. David the Security Man is now a convert ‘I thought this was stupid when it started, but it is all about families, which is the important thing - it is wonderful!’ he confides to Lucy.
One lad has been coming back for three days now, making part of a stag until he has to go. The first day, his half-built creation had ‘gone for recycling’ at the end of the day; when he came back and it wasn’t there he had set to and rebuilt it, and this time it was saved overnight – he’s back again today and is very intent on his task. He finishes just as the event does, and proudly displays his creature. He then has to go home on the tram (he was late yesterday, we expected him to be grounded!) and so leaves it, content that he has finished it at last. He takes the last of the ‘giveaways’ with him.

Time to pack up. The tent is stripped down in about 45 minutes, all the stands a mass of frantically packing people. We say a sad farewell to Eric and Delphine (and leave her with the last of the marshmallows!) The organizer is delighted – she reckons we’ve had 11,700 people through the tent since opening on Friday (I don’t know where the numbers came form, but there was semi-controlled entry, so maybe it’s not too much a case of creative accounting.) I reckon we’ve seen at least 700 to 800 of them on our stand(s) over the three days. She wants one of our stags for her office, and we give her my little fellow, as he’s small enough to fit and strong enough to have survived this far. I’m glad – I didn’t want to witness the moment when he would be broken up and sent for recycling. OK, so I’m daft! It’s not news!

The three of us head back to the hotel, to clean up and relax. From my window, I watch a distant plane draw a contrail across the clear blue sky, and am staggered that we have only been here four days; it seems much longer.
Then it’s out for supper at the tavern at the back of the square – a seafood and local produce place, wonderful langoustine bisque, steak the way I like it (shown to the grill briefly), and a large measure of beer. We make plans for our sightseeing trip tomorrow – Liz wants to do a walking tour, Lucy wants to see the astronomical clock at the cathedral, I want to do the river trip. The shoe shops are also exerting a certain call on Liz…

We agree to meet up at the cathedral at 12.15-ish, and take it from there. We leave the tavern, which has suddenly turned into THE place to watch the football, and head back across the square, early for a change. Above the Music Hall, small shapes are flickering back and forth. Bats, chasing moths drawn in by the lights illuminating the building at night. It’s air combat to rival anything previously seen in the skies over France, wingtip turns, dives and barrel rolls. The bats don’t have it all their own way, the moths drop like stones to evade their pursuers, sending the bats off course, skimming the roof tiles at high speed.

We watch, the only ones on the square looking up.

“Another Ten Hours of Fractured French …” - 14 October

2006-10-23T22:51:00.001+01:00

And that pretty much sums it up – 9.00 am to 7.00 pm, straight through with no breaks! There is a phenomenal stream of people coming through the exhibits. One woman asks if we are to be a regular feature in Strasbourg – ‘the children need something like this, something to do, to gain their interest.’ More teachers ask for details of the activities. The second projector produced has no more effect than the first; the projector screen looks unused and lonely, and Eric and I decide to go for Plan B. I design a poster, and he translates it, we stick pieces of A4 together and I draw it out, and together we stick it up on the screen. It explains the rationale behind what we are doing on the stand, the theory behind ‘Simple Science’. My paper stag stands atop the wooden booth at the front of the stand, inviting explanation.

Outside, the Saturday morning school groups are head-to-head building stags. Security Man David shakes his head, and grins. Gradually the school groups give way to families, all ages involved in serious stag creation. Elegantly clad ladies crouch, sticky tape in hand, as their children get down to the serious business of rolling lengths of newsprint. I’ve wrecked my thumbnail taking staples out of papers, and today have brought my nail clippers to take up the duty. At home, I’d have had my penknife, but there are some things that just won’t pass airport security!

The herd grows bigger. Even Bill Oddie and Simon King haven’t got this many beasts in their AutumnWatch programme. Fortunately, ours are silent, although their makers aren’t; constant chatter and laughter mark the place outside the tent beside the monument. One teenage girl remarks that it’s the first time she’s had fun in this place. It’s not all children. Adult groups take part too; some serious paper engineering resulting in fine, upstanding creations with multiple-branching antlers – here, Lucy presents one of the finest of the morning.

And so it goes on, all day. Our French improves, more in desperation than by skill, and every so often we check our newly-produced lists of ‘words we need’ with Eric and/or Delphine. By the time 7.00 pm rolls around, we’re shattered, and head back to our hotel. I realise I haven’t mentioned this so far – not having had much time to think beyond paper and photographs.
It’s very nice, the Kleber Hotel, just off the square beside the crossing of the two tram lines. Each room is individually ‘themed’, and named as well as numbered – a blessing to the confused visitor. My room overlooks the tram station, at Homme du Fer (named after the first train), and is decorated in grape colours – fresh green and deep aubergine-purple. There is a flat screen TV – it’s taken me until now to find the French-speaking stations, to try and find a weather forecast. I’m surprised at how warm it is, 20C on the first day, and it stays pretty much the same throughout, although mornings are slightly cooler and misty. The heat means I leave the windows open, and all night long, if I wake, I can hear the soft rumble of the trams as they cross the junction below.

They blow their horns to warn of their approach, but seem to suspend this in the small hours – not for a lack of people, for the streets seem constantly busy – starting again at around 6.00 am. Liz is less fortunate – her room is near what is probably an air-conditioning plant, and is constantly noisy. Lucy has a room with two double beds, and we threaten her with being the venue for an all-night party on the last night.

We head for the Tête du Lard again for dinner. Tomorrow is the last day of the festival, and we work from 2.00 until 6.00 pm, and then do the final clear up – a short day, and an opportunity for a little sightseeing in the morning. Or for a lie in!

Paper Trees and Challenging Stags - 13 October

2006-10-23T22:44:00.001+01:00

Hmm, Friday the 13th.
Actually, that’s usually a good day in my family and so it is today - my luggage has finally arrived! Oh, the joy of using my usual toothpaste - relegated to the hold baggage by security restrictions, along with shampoo and moisturiser- little things gain unexpected significance.

We open to the public at the tent in Place Broglie at 10.00 am, and it’s pretty constant from then on, with troops of visiting school children until lunchtime, followed by families in the afternoon and early evening. Our activities for this day, and the rest of the weekend, are constructing paper trees using only four A4 pieces of (recycled) paper and scissors- ‘pas de scotch, pas de colle’ as I grow used to explaining - and making ‘Highland Stags’ from newspaper and tape - papers cannot be cut or torn, and the tallest is the winner. All deer should have antlers, ideally branching, and both trees and stags should be free-standing. It’s an exercise in strength of construction, in counterbalance and cross-bracing, in planning and thinking through a design, and in the subsequent execution. We also relate it to the actual living things, to the shape and structure of a tree, with the roots to hold it up and a strong trunk, and to the way a stag has a strong neck to balance the spread of the antlers. Simple materials, simple ideas, and more complex than it appears. It’s a far cry from much of the other stuff that’s going on at the fair - we are next door to a wonderful solar-powered oven, designed for use in Central Africa to reduce the deforestation for fuel, and opposite us, something looking at all the things that cause pollution in homes - there is a particularly disturbing picture of a dust mite! There are stands promoting solvent-free glues and mastics, medicines, and to be quite frank, a lot of stuff that is beyond my dodgy translations! Much of the ‘hands on’ involves looking at pictures, down microscopes and doing quizzes, as far as I can make out. Which makes us even more of an oddity!

We are constantly asked what we are doing, how and why is this science, and when we explain, it’s like a light-bulb going on - teachers in particular want details of the activities to use for themselves.
Our fragile French is bolstered by the arrival of the inestimable Eric. He is serious, meticulous, and dedicated to correcting our linguistic mistakes.
He’s also great to have around - our explanations to visitors are often punctuated by cries of ‘Eric, what’s the word for…’ and he’s utterly unflappable.
Lunch is taken on the run - Liz dives out to the bakers for baguettes - and the paper forest grows steadily.

Outside, the herd of stags is also growing, much to the amusement of passers-by and the security man, David, who shakes his head in gentle Gallic derision. Lucy is brilliant at conveying what to do by means of a broad smile and one-word exclamations. ‘Voila! Formidable!’
‘Say it with conviction’ she says ‘…and you get away with a lot!’
The solvent-free glue man is entranced, and brings offerings of apple tart. I can’t resist having a go at building a stag of my own – he’s not the tallest of beasties, but quite stable and not a bad-looking lad, if I say so myself!

The trees seem to be the favourite of the smaller children, whist the adolescents - and later, adults - seem to enjoy the stags, often competing between groups to see who can make the tallest. Liz and Lucy are kept on the hop measuring and recording, and awarding prizes. I go between activities, taking pictures and updating the rolling slideshow - the projector fails utterly, so we have two laptops constantly showing pictures from the activities in Scotland and in France. In between cursing the vagaries of technology under my breath, I help out Annette and Eric with trees. In the middle of the afternoon, Annette turns into Joanna, also from the BA in London, a running handover punctuated by tree building. Joanna bravely dons the red t-shirt we all wear as ‘uniform’ (we look like a mis-matched punnet of tomatoes) and dives in.
In a similar vein, at 5.00 pm Eric turns into his sister Delphine - or rather she takes over the shift - she’s bouncier, less serious, and quite an artist in her own right - she has to have a go at making a paper tree - with astonishing results.

Suddenly it’s 7.00 pm, and it’s over for the day. We stagger as far as the café next to our hotel for dinner, and at some point before we collapse into bed, Lucy comes up with the title of tomorrow’s diary entry…….

Marshmallows and Spaghetti – 12 October

2006-10-22T22:56:00.001+01:00

Morning arrives far too soon. After breakfast, we head out into the gathering daylight, to take the tram to our first destination.

The cathedral rises beyond Place Kleber, shrouded in the early mist. It’s busier than I would have imagined this early, with people heading out for their work, and the tram – a modern, sleek and very clean machine – full of commuters. We are heading south of the city, to a secondary school– to deliver our first workshop; building towers from dry spaghetti and mini-marshmallows (see, I told you I’d tell you why Lucy’s luggage was full of them!).

What’s this to do with science? Well, it is a great way to teach the basic principles of engineering – strong shapes (triangles) versus weak (squares), material limitations (the marshmallows can only take so much!), task constraints (limited materials), and the need for precision (you need to make sure your spaghetti strands are broken to the same length, or suffer the consequences in terms of tower instability). Using simple materials makes it very accessible, and the sheer daftness of some of the ideas makes it a lot of fun. We have to explain this many times over the next few days, starting with the contact teacher at our first school.

Annette is the picture of calm, armed with maps and directions, and we alight from the tram on a wide street, tree-lined and cool. A brief consultation and we make our way to our destination. The sun is starting to break through as, at ten to nine, we arrive at the school gates, and the mist begins to clear.

It’s not quite what we were led to expect – we thought we were operating throughout in the International Schools, where most of the children speak English. Not so. Is this the time to explain that none of us is fluent in French? This school is in an Educational Priority Zone (ZEP) – which means a certain level of deprivation, and a certain level of - umm – how do you put it in this age of political correctness? – behavioural challenge. Apparently. In fact, we didn’t see it – the kids were great. Admittedly they looked at us as if we were mad to start with, but in this job you get used to that. They listened carefully, they grinned, and they set to with a will. And made some wonderful structures.

We had two classes at the secondary school, before heading back into town for lunch, (having had no dinner, by this time we were ravenous!) - and a date with the International School in the afternoon – three classes of primary level children, from five years up. Now, we haven’t done this with kids that young before, so it’s a challenge! We decide, for the youngest, to make triangles and squares, and take it from there – and they came up with some terrific constructions; the main problem was preventing them from eating the marshmallows, even though they had been on the floor by then. Fortunately, English is the main language here and we can explain in more detail why not! It was still an extremely sticky experience for all of us, and I hope the school cleaners will forgive us…

School finishes at 4.30 pm and we take our leave, heading back to the tram and to Place Broglie, where the Strasbourg Fête de la Science is taking place over the next three days. Two long tents in the middle of the market place, one for talks and one for stands; we discover that we have one small booth in which to do both workshops – building trees from paper without using tape or glue or staples, and building stags from whole sheets of newspaper and sticky tape – both aiming to make the tallest construction possible. It just ain’t possible in the allocated space (given that the nuclear physicists next door have nicked six inches of our space anyway!). One activity will have to go outside – which makes our original plan of two or three to do the activities at a time while the other takes a break rather unlikely. We are due to get a couple of students to help with translations, which is a blessing!

We set up as best we can, although it turns out that the projector provided to show the running slideshow (my job) doesn’t cope well with sunshine. By 7.30 pm we’ve done as much as we can, and head back to the hotel, to clean up and check on our luggage. Liz and Lucy’s has arrived – mine is still stranded in limbo somewhere….I go to wash out things for tomorrow.

We are recommended a place called ‘La Tête du Lard’ for dinner. To British ears this sounds a little off-putting, but it turns out to be excellent. We try the local speciality, ‘Tarte Flambée’ – like a very thin pizza with bacon and onions and – well, a selection of other things, such as cheese or mushrooms. Delicious! And an alcoholic ice-cream sort of dessert, and – because we obligingly moved halfway through to accommodate a large group – a complimentary glass of wine from the management!
Tomorrow we need to be back at the tent for 9.00 am, so head back to the hotel and bed.

Here Comes the Night – 11 October

2006-10-22T18:57:00.001+01:00

With a ‘thunk’, the wheels retract, and we climb from a damp, grey landscape into nothingness. Outside the window, blank grey-white. Inside, a narrow aisle lies between the leather-look padded seats, one to the left, two to the right. We swallow hard, equalising the pressure in our ears as the plane climbs, lifting above the thick rolls of stratus into a gap between the layers, the sky brightening as we ascend. Suddenly we pop out into sunlit blueness, over a fuzzy white blanket that covers the whole of Britain.
‘The weather’s better up here’ I try a half-hearted joke to cover my apprehension. The ironic secret is, I’m not that keen on flying. I gaze out of the window to take my mind off what I know of flaps and ailerons, lift and control procedures. I’m not reassured to see another aircraft away to port, leaving a clear contrail in the thin air. Sunlight paints it white, glinting off metal.
We’re heading for France. Strasbourg, by way of Paris (Charles de Gaulle), to be exact. It’s part of the European Science Festival, and we are Britain’s contribution to the year-long series of events, where each participating nation sends a team to another country to demonstrate ‘science activities’ for schools and the general public. ‘We’ are Liz, Lucy and myself, from Scotland, representing the British Association for the Advancement of Science (the BA), and we’ll be delivering some of the activities that have been used during North-East Scotland’s National Science Week over the last three years. Which is why Lucy’s cabin baggage is full of mini-marshmallows. And mine contains a laptop computer which makes it weight half a ton. And I think Liz has more marshmallows in her luggage, too. I’ll explain why later!

I continue to look out of the window, contemplating catching a few minutes sleep; it’s been a long day already, helping to run a training session for teachers on how school grounds can be used throughout the curriculum, and I could use the downtime. Outside, the sun is going down, a glory of coral and gold to starboard, catching the tops of the few clouds that rise above the flat layer below our wings. Away to port, where sky meets cloud, a thick dark-blue line runs straight as a ruler from north to south, moving inexorably towards us.
The terminator.
Not Big Arnie, but the edge of night, hastening across the face of the Earth as it turns away from the sunlight. Cumulonimbus rise below, edged in pink and gold, sending long blue shadows out towards the onset of darkness. I guess we’re somewhere over the Channel by now, and beginning our long descent towards Paris. No stars yet, but a deepening blueness, the last few glancing rays of light catch the tops of the cloud as we slide back down into the featureless nothing. The hard bump of clear-air turbulence rocks the plane, marking the gap between cloud layers. The flash of strobe lighting and navigation lights is the only illumination as we find more cloud and sink ever downwards.

No stars? Below lie constellations, glittering rivers of light and nebular clusters against the blackness of the land. I glance to starboard and am struck by the shimmering lights of the Eiffel Tower – good grief – it’s just there - just like its picture…
I’m still feeling faintly amused by my ridiculous reaction when we are instructed to fasten seatbelts for landing.

Wheels down, flaps down, bump. We slow down gradually, lights racing too fast for comfort past the wingtips. Taxiways lead inexorably towards hardstanding.
‘Passengers for Strasbourg and Pau will be met at the foot of the aircraft steps.’ We exchange baffled glances.
Right enough, we are met by a man in a yellow jacket, who hastens us and our cabin baggage aboard a minibus, and takes off across the airfield as if in the Paris-Dakar rally. We have very little time to make our connecting flight, and we have been battling a headwind all the way south from Aberdeen. This is how Air France solves the problem – personal escort by a charming chap called Pascal, who guides us all the way, reassuring us that it isn’t far, we will catch our flight, all is well… Charles de Gaulle is a vast airport – we’re at terminal 2F, we need to be at terminal 2D, but we need to go via 2B to go through immigration – and we must hike from 2B to 2D, which is no small distance. Red-faced and sweaty, I follow the ever-calm Pascal, who, true to his word, delivers us to the check-in for our onward connection to Strasbourg. We join the queue, which seems to be going nowhere.

This is perhaps the point to relate that Liz has a long history of being separated from her luggage on overseas trips.

The flight to Strasbourg goes without a hitch, an Airbus conveys us to our destination in wide-bodied comfort and around 45 minutes. We reach the baggage hall, and wait.
And wait.
One lone suitcase is left to make the endless circuit of the conveyor belt. It’s not one of ours. A lady from the airport comes to meet us. Our luggage has not arrived, it is still in Paris, it will be put on the first flight in the morning; if we could just accompany her and give some details? Dutifully, we do as asked. She gives us overnight survival packs, and tells us to call her if there has been no result within 24 hours.
We slump into a taxi to our hotel, and the lights of Strasbourg pass pretty much unheeded. It’s after 11.00 pm, local time, when we arrive, and meet up with Annette, who is the representative of the BA’s Head Office, and who has done the recce for tomorrow’s school visits. Breakfast at 7.00 am. I stagger into the shower in my room, and turn it on full blast, thanking whatever small household god drove me to pack a spare t-shirt, travel towel and clean set of underwear around the laptop in my cabin baggage.
Sleep, to the rumble of the city trams.

Bee in his Bonnet?

2006-09-28T20:40:00.001+01:00

The new postman doesn’t like my garden. There are too many things in it. He leaves me notes – ‘can you cut back your bushes because of the bees’. He threatens to leave my post at other houses. I feel like saying – you’re a postman, you should be brave – after all, what about dogs? Surely a few bees aren’t a problem? They don’t want to bite your ankles! If I’m home, I see him bending down as he pass the window, preparing to duck under the honeysuckles that run along the wall and over the front door - and incidentally act as a porch, giving shelter when I come home in the rain and am grovelling about in my bag or pocket trying to find my keys. He doesn’t like the honeysuckle 'massive'. It has bees. And moths. And spiders. And various other wildlife. It shelters my snails. And one part of it has big blousy cream and pink flowers in summer, and the other has smaller, delicate white and cream flowers in the early spring, sometimes when the snow is still on the ground, and it defies the worst of the weather.
I don’t think he likes the fuchsia bush by the gate either. From small beginnings it has grown to about two metres in height, and three wide, and at this time of year it’s dripping with red and purple flowers, humming with honey and bumble bees, a clarion call of colour as the sere shades of autumn creep into the rest of the garden. But it doesn’t get in the way. It’s been trimmed back so it doesn’t hang too far over the wall, or get in the way as you come through the gate. There’s a clematis somewhere in the mix as well, a small-flowered blue alpine one, with feathery seed-heads late in the season. This also defies the weather and the salt wind to surprise me with its delicacy and toughness.
The last postman liked my garden – since he’s retired (and taken the job of school crossing guard) he also delivers papers, and we swap gardening thoughts and seeds as the year goes round.

But we all have to get on, and so every so often, I trim the honeysuckle. But not very often!

Aliens in the Undergrowth

2006-09-28T15:45:00.001+01:00

Damp mornings, heavy with dew. Cobwebs - or to give it the local name, slammach, - hangs wet on the gorse bushes like pieces of cloud ripped off and caught up in the spines. Cows loom out of the fog, strange in the half-light. And in the undergrowth, something odd is appearing. Overnight, they have appeared, aliens from another world. They troop through the woodlands, small trolls transfixed by daylight, or raise their strange heads through the grass of suburban lawns. One or two are breaking through the pavement in the village. Others emerge from the bark of trees, or cluster in whispering congregations as the rain drips from the leaves on their heads, raising small clouds of fine dust to be carried away on the slightest breeze. They are friends, killers, and clean-up merchants.

Fungi.

It’s a great time of year for them, and after the warm summer, this damp autumn has brought them out in their hundreds. Much misunderstood, coveted by some and reviled by others, it’s time they had a proper place in our everyday lives. In fact they do - we just aren’t aware of it most of the time.
So, some years ago, a group of us got together to develop a programme for schools which looks at the wonderful weirdnesses that are fungi, to help children understand how they grow, and their place in the natural and unnatural world around us.

This week has seen ‘The Good, the Bad and the Fungi, 2006’. (Yes, I know! Groan!!) We have discovered spores and how they travel, how they grow into fungi, the mystical world of mycelium, how fairy rings develop, how the fungus got its spots. We have come face to face with a wide variety of the real thing - the red and white fly agaric waiting for the fairytale to begin: white-weeping ugly milk caps: the solid shelf of the birch polypore: clusters of yellow sulphur tuft: the delicate glistening white of porcelain fungus, high above our heads on the dead branch of a beech tree: the blotches of tar spot, breaking down the fallen sycamore leaves, and a host of others. We have discovered how fungi help trees and other plants to grow by exchanging mineral salts for food, how they break down dead material, and how some can kill through parasitism. We’ve considered how this fits into the environment, how dead wood provides food and shelter for other creatures and how fungi fit into food webs. We’ve played parachute games, blown up balloons, made badges, discovered the small beasties that appear when you leave fungi to rot - and we’ve had to clean up some of the aftermath too!

And we’ve learned to look very carefully into the undergrowth.

Equinox Days

2006-09-28T14:47:00.001+01:00

Swallows improvise
A coda to the summer
On telephone wires

The opening bars
herald autumn’s symphony,
a fanfare of geese.

I’ve been doing a bit of time travelling over the past couple of weeks - my own personal TARDIS being a combination of my car and the road between North East Scotland and East Yorkshire. Unexpected necessity means I have been up and down twice in three weeks - eight hours each way gives time to observe the passing landscape.

It’s a bit of a contest between summer and autumn - which is further advanced? Earlier in the year, as the harvest was being gathered in, south was well ahead of north - now, with the turning of the season and the rapidly shortening days, it has swapped over, and the north has the autumnal ascendancy. Travelling up and down, I find myself moving between the seasons. Here in the North, the leaves are already falling, crisp brown and yellow, filling the guttering and clogging the drains. The autumn fogs lie heavy, hiding the hills and clinging in the river valleys, clammy in the residual warmth. Wearing a jacket keeps out the wet, but is too warm yet for comfort.

South, in the one short week between my visits to Mum’s place, her Virginia creeper changed colour from green to crimson, scarlet and orange, burning up the side of the house in one last defiant outburst. The leaves there haven’t fallen yet, but will soon lie in brilliant drifts along the driveway, waiting for the garden vacuum and the collection bags where they will lie through the winter, turning into rich leaf-mould for the garden. The hedgehog leaves tracks in the heavy dew on the lawn, but we haven’t seen her recently - too busy with motherhood, we suspect. The hedgehog box will be installed soon, to provide a snug retreat for her winter hibernation.

The country seems to have been split; south of the border the summer lingers with sunshine days and kick-off-the-duvet nights. Driving through it reveals ploughed fields and stubble, and the last calves of the year with their mothers. As the evening descends, straw bales rise like ancient monoliths, black against deepening blue. North of the divide, there is rain. The sky hangs low, like a grubby wet dishcloth, spray and rain mingling on the roads. Safety lies only in the dim gleam of red tail-lights, for little else can be seen through the mist. Returning home, I wonder if there has been a power cut - even the flares from the gas terminal are invisible in the thickness of the murk - only the occasional glow of houses as I pass reassures me that there is still a world beyond my windscreen.

Evening’s fading light
shows monsters in the hedgerows.
Gorse becoming ghoul.

In my eye’s corner
tree becomes giant, stone wall
turns to crocodile.

Sunlight cannot show
this hidden face of the land
only dusk reveals.

Brief Encounter – Eigg Anchorage

2006-09-24T10:01:00.002+01:00

So we’d sailed over from Barra, and at the end of the day, dropped anchor on the south side of Eigg harbour. A shore party had been exploring the island, we’d had dinner, and were enjoying a glass of wine and some music on deck when a passing prawn boat gave our cook a notion for next day’s lunch. After a short discussion, the skipper and two of the female members of the party set off in the dinghy, and returned with a huge bucket of langoustines and some smaller prawns, traded, in best nautical fashion, for cans of lager. OK- it may be stereotypical, or even sexist, to send the bosun to bat her eyelashes at the fishermen, but it works!

It was a strangely calm night – strange, because the forecast had sternly said ‘Force 8 Northerly gale, imminent’, which was why we anchored where we did, sheltered from the oncoming winds. It never materialised, though they kept warning us about it! A few stars were showing through broken cloud, their numbers growing as the sky cleared. Out here, free of the intrusive lights of towns and cities, the sky seems immense – a swathe of brilliance curving from horizon to horizon, some stars seeming close enough to become tangled in the rigging, others as far away across time as to be nothing but a distant memory of something that once was.

The last few night-owls were loafing on deck, idly chatting and finishing up the wine, when there was a faint splash from the starboard side. We look at each other, and go to the rail to see. There’s something in the water, sliding quite quickly along beside the hull. ‘A seal’ says someone. I’m not so sure, and flick my torch briefly into the darkness. Not a seal. A long body and tail, broad flat head with a short nose, thick fur. The otter turns his head to look up at us, powerful tail driving him through the water. He’s about five feet long, or so it seems, and unconcerned by our presence. He swims alongside, vanishing under the overhang of the stern, before reappearing briefly, then diving with a hint of a splash. Bubbles trail away in the torchlight, heading for the prawn boat. It’s obvious where his interests lie.

Next morning, we tell Mum. She turns an interesting shade of green.

Dolphin Days - August 2006

2006-09-11T18:27:00.002+01:00

OK, so I haven’t been around much recently. Like most people involved with schools, summer is the time to take off on holiday, lay back and relax, and watch the world go by. At this point in my life, this has become inextricably bound up with sailing off the west coast.

Travelling as the wind and tide dictates, watching the weather come in off the Atlantic and the changing light on the water, you see the land from the outside, a different, older face of Scotland. This is the road the Vikings took, and the lost stragglers of the Armada, the way of the Lords of the Isles, the main highway of the early settlers and traders, the lifeline for the isolated communities up and down the fringe of the land. It bustled with fishing fleets and small ferries and steam puffers plying their trade from the Clyde to the Summer Isles.
Now it’s left mostly to the tourists, and the trade is carried on the red and black liveried Cal-Mac ferries, the scatter of small fishing boats is outweighed by the cages of fish farms, and, far out in the Minch, the low-slung forms of tankers head for the northern terminal of Flotta, or beyond, their potential for environmental disaster a thin rust-clad steel wall away from actuality.

It’s still a wonderful place for wildlife.

Previous trips have brought contact with sea eagles, porpoises and whales, and great gatherings of basking sharks, sifting the waters north of Canna for plankton. Phosphorescent plankton danced in Loch Dunvegan, an underwater firework ballet glowing green under midnight skies. Gatherings of seals have watched us sweat on the halyards, or haul up the anchor from remote bays. There’s always something different to look forward to.

This year, our first encounter is the resident seal in Mallaig harbour, idly watching us load up the boat and refuel. It’s an Atlantic grey seal, the larger of the two species found regularly round our coasts, and it views us regally down the length of its long Roman nose.

The next couple of days see us heading out past Rum and Canna, across the Minch towards the Outer Hebridean islands, Uist, Benbecula and Barra. Porpoises slide past us, small and dark, and the ‘phooff!’ of their exhalations recalls one of their old local names – “puffin’ pigs”. They roll along as if they are wheels, with little splashing, and they don’t stay long. A small pod of common dolphins dashes past on their way to somewhere, slapping the water with their tails as if revelling in their speed and grace – and leave us trailing in their wake. Heading towards Castlebay on Barra, I’m at the wheel, holding 110 tonnes of ship with over 3000 square feet of sail on a course for the evening’s anchorage, when I notice a flock of birds away off to starboard. I squint against the light, and can just make out something large in the water, so I call it out to the rest of the crew. At this point it launches itself into the air – a minke whale, breaching. It drops back with a flurry of white water, and vanishes into the depths, as everyone rushes to the rail to try and see it.

The following day, as we head back towards Eigg from Barra, after a night of ceilidh music and dancing on the deck, (and there are a few sore heads this morning!) we spot a gathering of gannets. Plunge-diving in large numbers, they mark another shoal of fish, a bait-ball, and a magnet for predators, both above and below water.

Out of the grey water to starboard comes another pod of dolphins, around twelve of them, including one small calf. This group aren’t playing today, and head straight into the bait-ball, chasing the fish back and forth, until we can see the splashes as they leap clear of the water. More dolphins come from the port side, another fifteen or so, and five of them break off to join us, riding our bow wave for the next few minutes before turning back to join the feeding frenzy. It’s exhilarating to watch them sliding effortlessly from side to side of the bowsprit, a stream of bubbles rising from each blowhole as they come to the surface, the arched back and sharp fins cutting through the water. Dolphins are very sensual creatures and these are, in fact, indulging themselves in full-body pleasure; the pressure waves from our progress and the waves acting like a natural version of something bought in an Ann Summers shop. The skipper grins at me as we explain what’s happening to the others. “Dirty wee divvels!”

There are more seals, more porpoises, ravens and red deer, skuas and shearwaters, before the voyage is over for this year.

Sail Training Vessel ‘Leader’
Trinity Sailing

(All photos courtesy of my brother!)

It's not quite International Rescue...

2006-08-09T16:23:00.001+01:00

Our local nature reserve is having a bit of work done.

Over time, willow scrub has encroached on a lot of the marshland, and the nineteenth-century canalisation of the burn that runs into the loch has resulted in the water becoming eutrophic - full of nitrate run-off from the surrounding farmland and from the ‘deposits’ of the thousands of geese that spend the winter here. Years of rough weather have eroded the islands in the loch, reducing the available nesting space for terns and other seabirds. With only two sluices, controlling the water flow through the site is difficult, and there are permanently flooded areas where it would be better to have seasonal changes in water level.

Recent grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and from the EU have enabled much of this to be put right, and improved; new sluices and changes to the topography of the main wet grassland areas will enable the water levels to be controlled more precisely, to enable ideal grass and invertebrate conditions for spring nesting waders, such as redshank and lapwing, and winter grazing for the geese. The burn is being diverted to run on its old course, winding through reedbeds; this has the advantage of slowing down the flow, trapping the silt and nitrates in the reeds, preventing them reaching the loch, and providing better habitat for other waterbirds such as bittern and marsh harrier. Ultimately, the loch can be cleaned up and water quality improved. There will be better access to hides and improved disabled provision. All in all, a major project and one that will have significant and positive impact on the reserve.

Of course, all this work has to be done whilst taking care of the marshland - so it’s taken some pretty specialised machinery. Two of the original islands have been reinstated, by means of a very ingenious monorail system which transported reinforcing edging and gravel out into the loch in a matter of days before being taken down with little or no impact on the ground. All the remaining machinery is ‘big footprint’ stuff - wide tyres to spread the load and cut down on soil compaction and compression, and the schedule carefully organised so that scrub is taken up and burned on site in a specialised burner, before the ash goes on the surrounding fields as fertiliser, the cutters and burner making a slow and precise progress through the old willows. It has been planned like a military campaign, trying to get it done in before the birds return in autumn. Naturally, there is some disturbance now, but the terns on the island in front of the visitor centre haven’t been put off (over 130 pairs nested this year), and the moorhens seem to be multiplying faster than ever! With the resident ducks in eclipse - all are brown and growing new feathers - Mum refuses to try and sort them out while they are like this, (she says it’s just too much effort) so we went just to see how the work was progressing from the vantage point of the visitor centre.

For a Saturday afternoon, it was still busy. A bulldozer was remodelling the wet grassland area in front of the centre, shoving the soil (to the evident delight of the gulls who were picking it over for worms and other wee beasties) into a big heap, which was being loaded by a digger into a tipper truck, which took it elsewhere in the field where the levels need building up. Scrub cutters were busy, away to the right by the lochside, where the burner was doing its job. Another digger was busy to the left, several fields away on the other side of the burn, cutting the new channel, and yet another parked in the field beyond that, attracting the attention of the cows. The burn itself runs from left to right at the back of the field directly in front of where we were sitting. Much of the willow scrub to the right has vanished, leaving clear views across to the old wind pump tower. Another cutter, truck and a quad bike were parked at the back of this field, near the burn.

We played ‘Spot the Machinery’ for a while, and idly tried to sort Arctic from Common terns. After about twenty minutes of this, we were contemplating going home for tea, when the driver of the parked cutter returned, got into his vehicle and went to do some work on the willows by the burn to the left of the field. This is an area bounded by reedbeds and willow scrub, rather narrow where the bank of the burn runs at the bottom of another field, and required taking the cutter across the top of one of the sluices. He hadn’t been there long, and we wanted to see how the machine worked, so we watched through binoculars, agreeing that he seemed to be at a somewhat precarious angle.

The long arm of the cutter waved about a bit, hauled a few bushes out, and then waved in a more uncertain fashion. The machine looked to be well down the bank by the burn. After a minute or two, the cutter arm appeared again swinging round and we got the feeling that it was trying to get purchase on the top of the bank. This was complicated by a nearby fence-line and another field of cows. The driver got out and jogged back towards the other machinery at work in front of us.

‘He’s got it stuck’ says Mum.

The driver of the bulldozer parked his machine, got out, and walked back to the cutter with the original driver. They stood around for a while, scratching their heads and inspecting it. The ‘dozer driver had a go at getting it out of the ditch, and failed. Meanwhile, the drivers of the tipper and the digger parked their machines, and wandered over to have a look. There was more head scratching.

The digger driver went back, and carefully drove his machine up close to the cutter, and seemed to be rearranging the cut scrub to try to provide less slippery footing. This didn’t work. The ‘dozer driver had ago at the same, with similar lack of success. More scratching of heads. A mobile phone was put to use. At this point, the tipper driver and the digger driver took the quad bike down to join the rest of the incident. There were now four of them, standing around the cutter. Evidently the power of head scratching wasn’t working.

The pair on the quad vanished, somewhere into the willows. Evidently they crossed the burn somewhere higher up, as the quad appeared some time later on the far side (with only one of them on board) and headed up the field to the parked digger. Then a white van appeared from behind the willows, and headed up the field at speed; when it stopped for the driver to open the gate and get out onto the farm track , we could see it was driven by the tipper driver. He took off at speed down the farm track towards the area where the machinery is generally parked when not in action.

‘Wonder where he’s off to?’ we said. ‘Shall we stay and see if they get it out?’

The digger driver collected the other digger driver (who had been sitting in his cab) and headed in the direction of the gate. No sooner had they got there than the white van came back, and both vehicles set off for the incident site.

Now there were five men, all stood around, looking at the cutter and scratching their heads. The original driver of the cutter got out a camera to take some pictures. The second digger driver now got into the stranded cutter, and the ‘dozer driver assumed control of the digger. The tipper driver brought the quad bike round, and hitched a chain from the digger to the cutter, before beating a hasty retreat. With much effort and a cloud of diesel smoke, the digger began to move backwards. The arm of the cutter waved around precariously again, and the original driver took more photos, before waving instructions about avoiding the fence. The importance of this was obvious, as the cows in the field were, by now, gathering to see what was happening. The digger continued to move backwards.

Slowly, majestically, and in another cloud of diesel smoke, the cutter emerged from the ditch.

I don’t know if they heard the cheering and applause from the visitor centre.

Life’s Little Mysteries (3)

2006-08-02T13:38:00.001+01:00

The weather, never settled for long, has changed again. After baking heat - always welcome when venturing into the city to shop (aye, right!) - Saturday night brought heavy rain. Driving home late, I became aware that things were moving in the headlights’ beam. Frogs. Lots of frogs. They’ve spent the hot spell hidden under the dry stone walls or in deep undergrowth, until the rain came. Then it’s way-hay! Look chaps - puddles! Which made driving the back roads rather more akin to a slalom course, avoiding frogicide.

Arriving home, we unpacked the car; another slalom session as we avoided the snails sliding happily across the path. With rain dripping down my neck from the tailgate of the car, I turned and noticed around fifteen on the end wall of the house, all heading upwards. One slid purposefully up the edge of the gable; all seemed bent on reaching the roof, or even the chimneystack. Those on the path made their slow and stately way to the wall, and proceeded upwards. I couldn’t see anything up there that might attract their attention, no algae, no moss, no tempting plants at all.
Were they trying to tell me that flood were expected? Is there a snail nightclub somewhere on my roof? Do they gather up there in the first rain after the last full moon in July for some esoteric snail ritual? Baffled, I took the last of the shopping indoors and went to dry off.
In the morning there were no snails to be seen. And none that night on the window pane. I began to wonder if some silent interstellar space-shell had descended in the damp night and taken them away, to report on their observations of Earth life.

Wherever they went, it was a short trip - five were back last night. Of course, it was ‘Mastermind’ and ‘University Challenge’ on the TV. How else can interstellar snails learn?

Life in Slow Motion

2006-07-21T12:13:00.002+01:00

The snails live on the walls of my garden, hiding under the shrubs, or clustered together in the evenings on the living room window, where they gather under the edge of the sash frame. Are they watching the TV? On wet nights they can be found idly perambulating across the path, and in the morning as I go to work I see their silvery trails across the doormat, or on a plant pot or two. I don’t begrudge them the small amount of damage they do; for some reason I find snails quite appealing. Slugs, on the other hand, have little to recommend them; they lurk under the rims of the plant pots, lumps of slime and gristle that surprise your fingers when you go to move the pot. I find it odd that I regard them so differently. What difference does a shell make? The snails, I will admit, are great performers when, on occasion, I take them to schools. Set on the back of my hand, they soon come out of their shells and extend their long eyestalks, peering myopically at the children as if to say ‘What’s this? Who are you?’ The children, for their part, seem equally fascinated by their small alien visitors, and talk back to them.

Snails in this part of the world are usually found at the seaside. Most of the underlying native rock is granite, which doesn’t provide sufficient calcium for them to grow their shells; by the sea, they take advantage of the crushed shell in the sandy soil, taken up by the plants that they eat, and they grow to the size of golf balls. It must be a precarious existence in some ways, being close to the sea. After all, how many of us have gone out with the salt pot at night to put an end to crawling lettuce lovers?

The warm, damp weather has spiced up the lives of the snails on the walls. Yesterday Mum caught several of them flagrantly mating, moistly entwined amid the foliage. Snails love-lives are complex; they are hermaphrodite, so each fertilises the other. In courtship - for snails do choose their partners - they fire small ‘arrows’ at each other, reeling each other in on thin white thread until their bodies are pressed together. D-I-Y Cupid? Or have they been watching old westerns on the TV, in the evenings? Whichever, I wait for the eggs to appear, and a new generation of snails to make their slow way to the window pane.

Haar, Haar

2006-07-21T12:10:00.001+01:00

So here I am, back home. While the rest of the UK has baked in record temperatures and relentless sunshine, my little corner of Scotland has remained cool and green. Driving north is like stepping back a few weeks in time; the tired greens of the trees perk up, the crisp brown lawns turn green, and the wildflowers rewind. The crops, being harvested at the beginning of my journey, are barely turning golden. Sometimes, if I travel up and down enough, I can end up with two springs, or two autumns.

Waking to cool grey daylight after two weeks of heat comes as a bit of a shock. Stepping out into a damp, foggy morning is like walking into middle of a pearl - a gentle luminescent glow as the sun tries to penetrate the mist. (Hmm - that image leaves me as the grit in the oyster - ah well!) As I drive inland to work the mist thins, becoming a fairly bright and sunny day.
It’s been a feature of this area as long as I can remember. Waking to the bull roar of the foghorn, leaving home in dank dimness, only to find that ten miles inland has been basking in sunshine. It’s the haar. The sea fog. It lies along this coast like a grey veil for most of the summer.

So why do we have the dubious privilege of this phenomenon?

When the air gets warmed up by the sun, as happens in the summer, it can hold a lot more moisture. When this is suddenly cooled, the moisture condenses out. Pass warm air over a cool surface such as the sea, and this happens; and the North Sea is cold. Believe me, I’ve been in it, it’s cold.
So fog forms. Add an on-shore breeze, and the fog is pushed inland, covering town and countryside indiscriminately. Now although the land is warmer, and this clears the fog, the breeze pushes more inland to take over - where I used to live, you could watch it ebbing and flowing like the tide, making its way up the fields, sneaking along the hedges until it was beaten back by the land’s warmth. So there’s a band of land along the coast that stays foggy. With a stronger breeze, or if the land is cooler, it can travel a long way inland, tracing cold clammy fingers up the rivers and glens.
Sometimes the sun is strong enough to warm the land; it burns through and the haar clears. Sometimes it doesn’t, and we spend our days in a strange shadowless brightness.

And the name? Haar - I’m not sure where it comes from. The word has a Scandinavian feel to it. South of the border, it’s called a sea fret, and locally in Yorkshire a sea roak. (Bird-watching one day at the seashore, someone commented that there was a sea roak. After a short while, a visiting birder enquired what was the difference between that and a normal rook….)

It’s a feature of the east coast, and is why the land stays greener, and the inhabitants paler, than elsewhere. And why we shout at the radio, when the newsreader talks of heat-waves.

Humber Mud

2006-07-15T17:48:00.001+01:00

To the south and east, there is water.
South is the Humber Estuary, a slow brown ooze; East, the cold grey blue of the North Sea. Where these meet, a long crooked finger of almost-land juts out into the tide, an ever-changing desolation of sand and shingle and mud. Each winter brings a realignment, a chance to breaking away from the mainland, and is followed by the need to rebuild the road that straggles to the end of this impudent finger.

The road itself is a patchwork of concrete slabs, some inlaid with old railway lines, and odd strips of interlocking blocks which can be dug up and re-laid, at least where there is sufficient land to put them. A single track, with occasional passing places and lay-bys, it connects the isolated lifeboat station and coastguard to the rest of the world. To leave the road surface is to risk grounding, and becoming stuck in deep, soft sand. High banks, covered in bramble, leathery grey-green sea buckthorn and spiny marram grass both protect the roadway and threaten to engulf it. Convolvulus twines through the scrub, turning striped trumpet flowers towards today’s blue sky. It’s not always so welcoming. There are gaps, views of the estuary. Wide mudflats shimmer with mirages in the heat, dotted with distant birds wavering in the haze. Oystercatchers probe the mud deeply with carrot-coloured beaks, triumphantly hauling out ragworms, a lone grey plover potters about mournfully, poking a shorter beak into the semi-liquid ooze for small crustaceans and shellfish. No wonder it looks miserable.
Curlews, longest beaks of all, stalk the outer flats, searching the deepest mud. A distant line of black dots out on the water resolves itself through the binoculars into a flock of scoter, black seaducks gathered together to moult their spring feathers. Surprised by a seal, they take to the air in a flurry of dark wings, only to land with a barely controlled splash a few hundred metres away.
On the seaward side lies the beach, lined with scattered concrete blocks – tank barriers – like children’s toys left out and weathered in a forgotten corner.
A slick of muddy water spreads from the river mouth beyond sight of land. Container ships wait out beyond the channel for the tide to turn, bound for Hull and Grimsby, or up river to Goole. To reach there, they will pass under the span of the Humber Bridge, 25 years old today and only just visible on the horizon.
At the end of the land lies the small community of Spurn – houses, for the lifeboat men permanently stationed here; the road is too risky to rely on its being passable during a storm when they might be needed. The old lighthouse and landward tower now are home only to pigeons.

Wending our way back along the track, we come across a patch of sea holly, crisp silver grey-green, flowers tinged with electric blue. A survivor, like Spurn itself.

High Moor

2006-07-15T17:38:00.001+01:00

Yorkshire is a big place. Not quite as vast as Texas, I grant you, but big enough to be diverse. My teenage years were spent exploring various parts of it, bird-watching along the muddy Humber estuary, hiking over the high expanses of the Moors; the rolling chalk of the Wolds and the boulder clay of Holderness are always a part of my childhood. Over the last couple of days, we’ve revisited some of these places.

North and west of Mum’s place lie the Wolds – a long ridge of chalk running from the bird-covered cliffs at Flamborough Head to the Humber Bridge, and stretching on south through Lincolnshire. To get almost anywhere outside East Yorkshire, you have to cross these uplands, once medieval sheep pasture and now covered with arable fields, barley and oats parched and ready for harvest under a bleach-blue sky. I wonder vaguely why there are no ancient chalk figures here, as there are on the Downs; perhaps the tribes that inhabited this area held to different gods, perhaps there were fewer regiments to carve out military memorials as they have around Salisbury, perhaps the land proved too fertile to use in this way. I don’t know. The chalk lies very close to the surface; some fields, overploughed, are nothing but pale rubble wastelands. This used to be an open expanse of prairie fields, a result of ‘big is best ‘ in farming, but more enlightened farmers have restored the hedgerows and shelter belts, there are trees again. Roadsides are billows of blue meadow cranesbill and violet scabious; candy-striped convolvulus makes intricate mosaic patches on close cut turf. Vast purple-blue fields of borage, a new crop for the new millennium, punctuate the pale gold of the cereals.

Coming down into the flatlands of the Vale of Pickering, (an old lake bed) we can see the moors rising to the north. A haze of purple-brown, lush green in the folds and gullies, they lack the homeliness of the chalk. From a gold-grey stone that makes for picturesque villages full of coaches and tourists, the land changes; harsh grey drystane dykes trace possession across the hillside, marking inbye from outbye, home farm from common land. Winding narrow roads lead up to the tops, through dales rich with greenery, flourishing oak and ash by the sides of the stony, brown-water becks; bracken, an unwelcome green invader, spreads from mooredge to roadside, and provides concealment for the sudden sheep that materialise in our path. We search for ring ousels amongst the tumbled stone walls, but find nothing but straggly rows of young rooks, dotted along the fence lines, waiting for food, and numerous woodpigeons. Pigeons have an odd, and annoying, ability to look interesting – disguising themselves briefly as falcons, cuckoos, anything – before revealing themselves with a mocking clap of their wings.

The high tops are wide open spaces, ablaze with magenta bell heather, patterned with the dark scars of muirburn. The lurking hummocks of heather-clad shooting butts mirror the rounded forms of the tumuli on the ridges, ancient burial mounds linked by the network of old tracks over the moors. Standing stones and old carved crosses mark the crossing of these ways, tracks used still by long-distance walkers. My feet remember long days and nights, hiking these dusty, peaty, muddy, stony trails.

We turn for home. Far away towards the sea, the distant carious tooth of the Fylingdales early warning radar rises above the heather, its truncated pyramid a degree more sinister than its three round forerunners. On Egton High Moor, we stop the car and listen. A contented buzzing of bees, the ever-disgruntled bleating of sheep, the haunting whistle of curlew building to a wild crescendo – does someone have to come out every morning and wind them up? (Sorry, dear, can’t stop, have to go and reset the curlews…)

You can go back.

Take Your Partner for the Hedgehog Waltz.

2006-07-11T22:02:00.002+01:00

The hedgehog situation grows more complex.

Tonight, our small visitor turns up for her mealworms as usual, only to be joined after about ten minutes by another, larger, hedgehog.
He is slightly lighter coloured, and a bit scruffier - designer stubble? He feeds his face briefly, before his mind turns to other things.

He begins to snuffle at 'our' hedgehog, and they begin a long slow dance around the lawn. He snuffles his way towards her back end, she backs away, and they gradually go round in a series of small spirals, orbitting around the end of her nose. She sits down firmly, making a point; he snuffles along her side, she gets up and backs away, he changes direction - is he getting dizzy by now? - they swing like a small binary star across the lawn and under the azaleas. The bushes shake. The pair emerge, rotating back across to the rockery, and back once more to the azaleas. Is she really not interested or is she merely being coy? She certainly doesn't take the opportunity to escape when he briefly backs off.

They vanish again, and the bushes tremble. It's getting hard to see what's going on, and to be honest I'm beginning to feel a little voyeuristic. Mum peers out of the back door and comes in to report that they are sitting side by side under the arch that leads to the lawn, under a rainbow of clematis. Hmm. Has she succumbed to his rough charms? No - merely a brief break in the dance - they head off in front of the garage, still circling.

It's a long slow courtship, with hedgehogs. And a very careful one.

The Visitors

2006-07-05T21:47:00.002+01:00

Hummingbird Hawk Moth – 3 Jul 06

Waiting for the bus, conveniently outside the house, we’re inspecting the shrubs that grow over the wall, debating how far they need to be trimmed back to prevent decapitation of passing pavement cyclists, and how high they need to be cut back off the ground to prevent dogs using the convenient cover as – well, a 'convenience' – when we notice something strange in the honeysuckle.

A hummingbird hawkmoth. Flashing subliminal terracotta red hindwings, soft beige and black-and-white-striped body, hovering beside the flowers, extending its long proboscis like a refuelling probe on a fighter aircraft connecting with the tanker, it moves with delicate precision.
Is this an indicator of warmer summers? We haven’t seen one here for over 20 years. We watch it working over the flowers, until it vanishes with speed somewhere over the garden wall, and the bus arrives.

Hedgehog – 4 Jul 06

Mum peers out of the back window, and whispers.
‘She’s here.’

It looks like someone has left an old coconut on the lawn. Snuffling about, minutely inspecting each blade of grass, each small patch of the lawn for the dried mealworms my mother leaves out. Heat and hard ground mean fewer worms and beetles, so every little helps. Almost every night she comes – Mrs Tiggywinkle in person - around 9.30 to 10 pm. Sometimes she lingers, but mostly she stays for about 20 minutes. Well, we don’t really know if she is really a ‘she’, but we make an educated guess. She’s small and neat, light brown fur edging a tidy bristle-cut hair-do, black-eyed and black-nosed. She has surprisingly long legs, moving with a rolling sailor’s gait. Trundling about like a small clockwork toy, leaving a trail through the grass, she disappears into the undergrowth of the flowerbeds, to reappear and cross the path before vanishing into the gathering darkness under the hawthorn tree at the bottom of the garden.

‘Think I’d better get some more mealworms,’ says Mum.

Sneeze or Freeze...

2006-07-02T12:42:00.001+01:00

The colours are changing again - yellow hangs on tenaciously in the form of fields thick with buttercups, and in the vast, almost indefineable range of dandeliony-things (OK, I know I'm supposed to know what they all are but a summer idleness creeps in - hawkweeds, cat's ears, hawksbits, coltfoot, and dandelions are just some of the range to select from), the white is there in the form of ox-eye daisies, but is slowly changing; the 'palest-maiden's-blush-to-hot-flush' pinks of dog roses, tall spikes of foxgloves in every shade from white to carmine, red campion, vibrant scarlet of field poppies, the red haze of grasses... it's glorious, but somewhere in it all is a lurking hay-fever trigger.

Driving whilst sneezing is a hazardous occupation. And driving for over 400 miles whilst sneezing is not conducive to road safety. Fortunately, the car has air conditioning, which comes complete with - fanfare - pollen filters! Which saved the day, but revealed a slight downside - you need to keep it switched on. Which is all very well when the sun is shining and its 20 degrees or so, but when it starts to rain and the temperature drops, being in the car becomes rather like stepping inside one of those big freezers in the supermarket. There is a likelihood of frostbite. But what is the alternative?

So this summer, if you see someone, on the hottest of days, driving around with the windows closed, wearing woolly gloves, hat and scarf... it could be me, avoiding hayfever.

All the Fun of the (School) Fair

2006-06-25T12:58:00.001+01:00

Did you know it is practically impossible to paint the face of a child who is eating popcorn?

Or that rubber ducks can fly higher that teddies when indulging in 'Extreme Sports for Soft Toys'?

And why is it that middle-aged men always think they know the best way to put a tent up - and almost invariably get it wrong?

All these interesting facts and questions were demonstrated yesterday, when I was inveigled into helping out at a friend's PTA fair. Strange how people believe implicitly that, if you can paint on paper or canvas, the wriggling surface of a child's face should be no trouble at all! So there I was, bespoke butterflies and gruesome monsters to order, as the rain pelted down outside the tent. The bouncy castle was awash, the 'How far can you throw a Welly Boot' stall was utilising the missiles as they had been originally intended, and the aforesaid airborne ducks and bears needed umbrellas rather than parachutes!

Still, everybody seemed to have a good time (well, we're in Scotland - nothing stops for the weather!) and we raised a decent amount for school funds.

...and of course, as soon as the packing-up began, the sun came out!

SPLAT!

2006-06-22T10:45:00.002+01:00

splat. a fat raindrop
falls from wet honeysuckle
down dry back of neck.

Hmm. I guess I should trim the greenery round the front door, but it's growing so well!

Yesterday was a splatty sort of day. The song says 'sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug' - but why, with around one-and-a-half square metres of windshield, does the bug always splat right where I look out of it most of the time? And why, if there are a lot of bugs, is it always the biggest, juiciest, most messy bug that splats in this position?
Why is it that if I am behind a lorry, it's nearly always one carrying wet gravel (splat - dirty wet mud all over the front of the car) or a refrigerated fish wagon (splat - salty fishy water all over the front of the car)??
And this is the point where I discover that the washer bottle has now run dry, after bug removal. Deep joy.

And then there was the gull that whitewashed my windscreen on a roundabout in Great Yarmouth...but that's another story.

Summer is definitely here - that harbinger of the season, 'unfeasibly extensive roadworks', is seen in the land.......

Red light. More roadworks.
Lots of men doing nothing.
A two mile tail-back.

No safety in numbers

2006-06-20T22:38:00.002+01:00

So I blearily stumbled out of my door this morning to take out the trash and thought - where the heck's the bowl of flowers? Some b*stard's nicked some of my plant pots!

Now I know my garden's overgrown - (but it's intentionally like that, the owner squeaked) - but nicking my plant pots is a bit much! By the look of it, there's three gone. It's difficult to tell, as I have a lot of them - it's a small garden with a chunk of concrete -hence pots on the hardstanding - but it looks like the ones that are currently out (like - flowering with a vengeance, looking great, cost a lot!) are among the vanished. Rhodohypoxis, I mourn thee - ten years I've had these, and they've dutifully flowered every spring/summer, they have been the subject of mystery - why did I plant half red bulbs, half white, and they all end up white? - they have cheered me up every year. Gone, now, probably to some a**hole's stall at a car-boot sale. It's not as if it would be awfully easy - walking down the road with a pot of plants would be a bit obvious, let alone several - has to be a car heist. And they'd have to be looking closely - the garden ain't that self-evident.

What, or who, can profit in plant-pot heists?

How does it know?

2006-06-19T14:23:00.001+01:00

Barbecue. It rains.
We have a secret weapon -
Mike's polytunnel!

Which kinda sums up Sunday. The rest of the week has been lovely, (apart from a damp Saturday, but as that's 'domestics day' it made little difference.
Naturally, for the barbecue on Sunday, the weather decided to be as helpful as possible, and proceeded to chuck it down, grey and overcast, for most of the day.

However - friend Mike had a cunning plan to deal with the problem - he is a resourceful lad - so set up the barbecue in his big polytunnel (he grows organic veg - for our Antipodean readers, he's known as VeggieMike) and we sat amongst the courgettes, warm and dry - if a little kippered from the smoke.

Driving home at about 9.30 last night (still broad daylight - you gotta love Scottish 'summer' evenings!) noticed a hedgerow consisting almost exclusively of laburnum - about 500 metres just dripping with golden chandeliers. It's definitely a yellow and white time of year. Flower colours seem to come in waves - first the white of snowdrops, then yellow primroses, then the blackthorn kicks in, white again. Daffodils are followed by hawthorn, and gorse, broom and laburnum are hard on the tail of that. Occasional punctuation by bluebells and red campion...... and this morning I noticed that the tiny dune pansies are showing along the roadside, blue-violet and palest yellow.

I still haven't put batteries in the camera....

Life's little mysteries (2)

2006-06-17T18:14:00.001+01:00

Why is it that the hair on your head - however long - when it dangles down your back or brushes across your shoulder - doesn't tickle, but as soon as one itty-bitty hair gets detached from your head, and goes down your back or across your shoulder - it itches like hell?????

What is the evolutionary advantage of this?

Surfing the Season

2006-06-15T23:21:00.001+01:00

Drove inland today. Felt more like being back on the beach - great waves of greenery crested with white foam breaking over the road, tumbling down in billows of creamy blossom to break just above the car, smaller waves of cow parsley in foamy clouds on the roadsides, yellow Gondor-beacons of gorse bushes and broom blazing warning - summer's almost here!

One of these days I'll get the camera out.

OK - consider yourselves warned - poems happen here. I started writing 'sort-of-haiku' a while back; my Mum didn't quite catch what I'd said and asked 'OK so what are these hoboes?'
It stuck.
Peripatetic poems.
Bum un-verse.
They'll happen, given time.

Be afraid. Be very afaid.

Clout Casting

2006-06-14T14:57:00.001+01:00

As the saying goes - 'Never cast a clout 'til May is out'.

Apparently, it means 'may blossom', not the month of May - up here in the North-East of Scotland, it isn't too confusing in this year of weird weather, as the may blossom ( aka hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna unless someone has changed its name while I wasn't looking) didn't appear until last weekend, so both May the month was out and so was the blossom - all at once.

And oh boy, is it out - I wondered for a moment if there had been a major whitewash explosion over one hedgerow - the trees are absolutely covered with thick white blossom, and the bumblebees are loving it.
Butterflies seem to have emerged at last - there have been a few painted ladies and this morning a red admiral flew over the beach and (rather appropriately) headed out to sea...

This morning saw the last beach session of the summer term, and with the tide well out, we found a lot of stranded jellyfish, both moon jelly (Aurita aurita) and the metallic blue Cyanea lamarki, which caused excitement amongst the kids (0nce they'd finished digging holes, of course). Bucketloads of wobbly jelly were brought for identification - 'can it sting?' 'can I pick it up?' and of course 'can I keep it?' (The brief panic that passes over the teacher-in-charge's face at this point is priceless!)

As to clout casting - well, it's the first day I could leave my jacket in the car, so I guess it counts!

Riddle of the Sand

2006-06-13T13:45:00.002+01:00

OK - I take it back - working outside AND a beautiful day! Doesn't often happen.

What I want to know is - what is the deal with kids and sand? All that space on the beach, all the interesting stuff to beachcomb, and what do they do?

Dig holes.

Huge holes. It's as if there's a primeval urge to get to Australia. And then when the holes fill up with water, it's the most exciting thing that ever happened. But why is it that, with this crazy love for sand, they want to take bucketloads home but hate it in their wellies?

Kids. Go figure.

Life's little mysteries (1)

2006-06-12T14:12:00.001+01:00

Why is it that when the weather is fine, the sun is shining and everything is hunky-dory, I am stuck indoors in the office?

Naturally, when the wind blows a northerly gale, the rain lashes down and icicles hang from my nose, I am destined to be working outside..........

Mother Nature has a warped sense of humour.