41. Castleton and Buxton

CC Sites
July 4th to July 6th

One night and the question is why? Why did I come here? Why did I come for only one night? Did I subconsciously want to go pot-holing or rock-climbing? I don't think so. But there is nothing else to do here, except perhaps to go on a pub crawl. Castleton is half the size of Billingshurst and it's got six pubs. It's a lovely village at the heart of the High Peak, set at the end of a valley before it goes into a narrow pass over the top towards Kinder Scout. It's a centre for spelunkers but I managed to survive my stay without spelunking.

The drive over was quite unpleasant, largely because of Chesterfield and it's appalling signage. I needed diesel and air, but couldn't actually get into the filling station at the Tesco superstore because it was so busy. Then by mistake I managed to get into the covered car park of the store, which, given the height of the van and no height restriction signs anywhere, was really scary. I got into a fury and stormed off back the way I had come to the Sainsbury's superstore. I got my diesel but no Tesco Card points. I needed the A619 from Chesterfield to Bakewell, but it disappeared when it got to Chesterfield. There were no signs to Bakewell at all, so I went down a wide dual carriageway called the “Great Central Way”. It had obviously been designed as an urban through-way for the town, but was completely empty. I soon discovered the reason; all the traffic was sitting in jams on other roads around the town. I discovered the revived A619 after I had driven through the town centre and thought I was escaping when I encountered my own personal bête noir; lane arrows on the road. This is how it works; you see an arrow on the road showing you should be in the left-hand lane if you want to go straight ahead and a bent arrow showing you should be in the right-hand lane if you want to turn right. So, which shall I choose? Well, I don't know, do I, because they haven't given me a sign telling where the two choices would take me. They wait until I make my choice and then give me the sign or write the information on the road, where I can see perhaps some of it peeping out from under that giant artic.

All this changed the indifference I felt towards Chesterfield to something much more toxic.

On the way I saw a road sign to Eyam. This was the village with the remarkable plague story. In 1665, when the plague was raging in England, although largely confined to London, a tailor ordered some cloth from London and it was infected. When the first villager died, the others, in an amazing act of altruism and self-sacrifice, decided to seal-off the village and quarantine themselves to save the spread of the plague. In all, 260 villagers died but the contagion was successfully contained. Good story. There was an excellent TV drama about it a few years ago. The BBC could show it again if they could find time amongst all their cooking and property programmes.

I walked into Castleton, bought the most expensive loaf of bread in the world and counted the pubs. That really was the extent of the excitement to be had. Walking back I saw a sign saying “Footpath to Hope” (Hope is the next village up the valley). A walker was just coming to the end of it and he looked very cross and disappointed. Perhaps the sign the other end says “Footpath to Despair”.

The setting of the village is quite beautiful. Look up in three out of four directions and you see hills, really quite high, green and rounded and soft pillowy-looking. In some places the meadows had just been mowed almost right up to the summit. It was quite warm and there was the sort of frowsy, laid-back atmosphere you get in the West Country or Kerry or Brittany. I got back home just before the skies opened, and it was still raining, banging on the roof AND WAKING ME UP AT THREE THE FOLLOWING MORNING.

On to Buxton on Saturday morning, a fabulous drive. A roundabout route because the more direct route through Chapel-en-le-Frith goes through the Winnatts Pass, a graveyard of caravans and motorhomes. I passed through Tideswell, where the church of Saint John the Baptist is known as “The Cathedral of the Peak”. I soon saw why. It is exquisite, just like a cathedral in miniature and the lovely stone village matches it. Tideswell, and the next village, Miller's Dale, are mentioned in Flanders and Swann's great song “The Slow Train”. Every time I play it I hear the little devils cackling as they pop another coal on the fire burning eternally under Doctor Beeching's fat backside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6OHD2uCpfU

After Blackwell I picked-up the A6 which made its way into Buxton along the narrow, gorge-like, heavily-wooded Wye Valley. The river, clear and fast-running over a shallow rocky bed, runs alongside the road for most of the way. This must be the most beautiful major road in Britain. Well, maybe the A9 in the Highlands. A fabulous drive.

The site is about two miles south-west of the town on the Leek road and sits in a limestone quarry in a country park. The bus service is non-existent, so tomorrow I will walk through the country park to the town, which, according to the warden, will take me about forty minutes. In the meantime, I've been writing this and watching the first stage of the Tour de France in Yorkshire. 230,000 people at the start in Leeds this morning and an estimated 800,000 in total to-day. Such fantastic enthusiasm and some brilliant TV coverage. I've just seen Hawes and the entrance to the site where I stayed. 

At this point I should apologise, dear reader, for not having written for a while. I've been rather unwell for a while now and have spent most of the last week lying-down. It's very difficult to type while you are lying-down. There, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Bit better to-day (Sunday, July 13^th) so here goes.

The walk into Buxton through the country park was very pleasant. The park is riddled with lime-kilns and the houses built by the lime-burners from the burned-out kilns. Kilns and houses and the piles of spoil are now just mounds against the hill, covered in vegetation. The Duke of Devonshire, who seems to own most of the world around here, planted the woods in 1820 to hide the lime workings overlooking the town. The path through the woods brought me to a car park at the top of the town and I carried on down through Buxton's quiet leafy avenues to Pavilion Gardens, a lovely public park with boating lake, sunny seats and shady footpaths. On the boating lake a fine model yacht and a remote-controlled speedboat were happily avoiding each other and the many circling ducks who seemed totally oblivious to them. I walked along the side of the gardens on Broad Walk, which is flanked by impressive stone three-storey buildings, originally the houses of the super-rich who came to take the waters and now mostly doctors' or dentists' surgeries, insurance brokers' offices and the offices of charities.

Pavilion Gardens

 

I reached the Old Hall Hotel at the end of the park. The very common plaque “Mary Queen of Scots slept here …..” That flaming woman slept in so many places and spent so much time sleeping I don't know how she had the time to cause so much trouble.

The main street, pedestrianised, is quite scruffy, given that I was expecting a Guildford High Street in a posh town like this. Then I spotted the new shopping centre. Ah. I didn't go into it, but walked up the steep Terrace Road to Higher Buxton, the old town. Not much to shout about here, and I made my way back up the hill to the top of the woods. I needed a long rest and took it on a wooden bench dedicated poignantly to a young local man killed in the army.

A bit of an anti-climax, then, Buxton, but I wasn't on top form myself and possibly didn't do it justice. One boarding house on Broad Walk bore a sign calling it “Buxton's Victorian Guest House” and I had a feeling that Buxton wanted to think of itself as a Victorian town.

 

A long journey tomorrow.

40. Staveley

CC Site
July 2nd-3rd

Yorkshire is a big county, big mass, high gravity. By the time I had reached its escape velocity I was going so fast that I was catapulted clean past Leeds and Sheffield and landed in Derbyshire, seventy-two miles further south. Staveley is four miles from Chesterfield and the site is two miles from Staveley. Here we are right bang in the middle of what used to be the York/Notts/Derbys coal field. The site itself is on the reclaimed, beautifully landscaped Ireland Colliery, once one of the biggest in Britain. Now, you would never know there had ever been anything here but lakes, fields, hedges and trees. Astonishing!

I remember driving through this area in the early 'Seventies. I used to drive up and down the M1 and A1 twice a week after our company moved up to Washington, Tyne and Wear, from Horsham. I used to stop off for a rest at Junction 26 or 27 or 28, which was about half-way. As soon as you stopped you could smell the coal in the air. It was so thick you could almost see the coal dust in the air.     

Some time later our company was negotiating to buy a file foundry in Sheffield (engineering files, for shaping metal, not those paper things that the Metropolitan Police keep losing). Had this deal gone through the company would have moved to Sheffield from Washington and I had a look at Chesterfield and the edge of the Peak District for places to live. Choosing Chesterfield would have been a mistake, although I believe Emlyn Hughes used to live there. Forty years later I was going to have a closer look.

 

I spent my first afternoon getting the Blog up to date and then went to bed. Waking later I watched an old Wycliffe, which was about the Beast of Bodmin. That reminded me of the Beast of Bolsover, Bolsover being just five miles to the east. Dennis Skinner, possibly the last of the old Labour left-wing, eighty-two years old and still, incredibly, in the Commons as member for Bolsover after forty-four years. He must be very lonely in the House amongst all those designer suits, Rolexes and political correctness. Now his old mate Chris Mullins has retired, who does he have a pint with?

Off on the bike this morning to Chesterfield via the Trans-Pennine Trail which passes close to the site. It's a great trail, well-surfaced and eight-feet wide, but is very badly signed. In fact, you have as much chance of crossing the Apennines as the Pennines. After re-tracing my steps twice I ended in another old colliery, the Arkwright. I had to retreat again and climbed up a footpath on to the A632 Bolsover-Chesterfield road. Luckily there was a pavement all the way into the town.

Chesterfield is probably just fine, but it suffered in my eyes in comparison with Harrogate. Harrogate has style and class, Chesterfield has a twisted spire on its parish church. It's a bit worrying when the main asset of which a town boasts is an aberration, a deformity. It has a big central square and this, and most of the rest of the town for that matter, was filled with the regular Thursday flea market. My cycle ride was twenty-six kilometres there and back and I'm not entirely sure the arriving was worth the journey. I enjoyed the ride itself, though. On the whole, I would probably not make a detour to visit Chesterfield gain. It certainly has a twisted spire on its parish church though.

39. Knaresborough

CC Site
June 29 – July 1

Just a short trot along the A59 through Harrogate. Knaresborough is a quaint little town on the River Nidd three miles outside Harrogate and the caravan site is at Scotton, two miles outside Knaresborough. I was very early, so drove into Knaresborough and had a good look round. The river passes through a rocky gorge at the bottom of the town and there are some lovely stone houses with balconies overlooking it.

Just across the bridge as you leave the town is Mother Shipton's Cave. Mother Shipton was a fifteenth-century lady who foretold, apparently, lots of forthcoming events such as iron ships and the Spanish Armada. The website claims that the cave is Britain's oldest tourist attraction. The main attraction is the Petrifying Well where objects left in the lime-saturated water are turned to stone. The website says “It takes between three and five months to petrify a teddy bear.” Now, I can't even begin to imagine the degeneracy of a creature who would want to petrify a teddy bear and I'm hereby declaring a fatwah against anyone who does. I thought of holding my clenched fist in its waters and then punching David Cameron very hard on the nose, but they wouldn't guarantee that the petrification would wear-off and I decided against.    

It was quite hot by now and I spent the afternoon relaxing in the sun and reading. The bird-feeder again is a great success, mobbed by tits and finches and by a small bird I couldn't identify. A pair of blackbirds waited at the feeder's foot to pick-off seeds dropped by the smaller birds. Although the birds were only about ten feet from me they weren't disturbed.

"Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens", as Schiller said. "Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain" In my case they can struggle until they are blue in the face. I went into Harrogate and found that I had left the camera at home. I wandered around, noting all the things I wanted to photograph, did my food shopping and then went back to the bus station to catch the bus which would drop me outside the site. It was very hot and unfortunately I fell asleep and missed the bus. I got a bus to Knaresborough which dropped me at the end of the road to the site. I had thought it was less than a mile to walk and set-out with a swagger. It was very hot and my bags were very heavy and it was two miles and my swagger became a stagger. You see what I mean; the gods have no chance with me. Doh!

 

So the next day I went to Harrogate with my camera and had a lovely time. It really is a cracking town, one of the best. In fact, someone told me it had been voted “The Best Place in England to live” or some such award. The bus takes forty minutes to do the three mile journey, but it's well worth it. Buses like this remind me of the old Guinness advert, my facourite of all time, where the young bloke is trying to dance his way up to the bar but keeps getting repulsed by gravity or something. The music is great, too. Da DA da, da DA da da DA da da DA da. And so on. This bus got nearly to the town when it shot off down a lane and went into a technology park with Harrogate College and a big shiny glass pyramid building. The pyramid, if you think about it, is a perfect metaphor for a company. A big floor at the bottom with lots of toilers and then progressively smaller floors as you proceed upward until at the pointy top there is room for only one. At last the bus broke free and made its way across the Stray into the town. The Stray is a huge common (very like Clapham Common, in fact, but without the muggers) and its common status is protected in perpetuity. A bit like Horsham's football ground was before they built houses on it and left the club without a home. Sorry, I was in positive mood until that slipped out.

 

I saw the queue outside Betty's Tearoom and counted the blue rinses through the window. Actually, there were lots of young people in there, which was nice to see. I spent the book token Matt had given me for my birthday on Rod Liddle's recent book “Selfish Whining Monkeys” which is very entertaining. Because of my shrinkage I also had to get myself a pair of trousers and a pair of shorts. I've lost six inches round my waist since Christmas and when I wear my old trousers and shorts have been going round with all the spare material bunched-up at the back, looking, I imagine, like Quasimodo with his hump having slipped.

 

Like everywhere else, Harrogate is festooned with Tour de France bunting, but with one notable difference. The bunting here is made from tiny knitted jumpers. I was so impressed I went to the Tourist Information and asked the lady who had knitted them. “Oh, just local ladies”, she said. “How many are there?” I asked. She had no idea, but said she had knitted nineteen herself. Well, I told her I thought it was a brilliant idea and I hope she was pleased. Well done, the Local Ladies of Harrogate and Knaresborough.

 

I saw one strange thing. Someone had gone to the trouble of painting an old bike but they had painted it blue. Blue?

I was enjoying myself sitting in the sun on the wall outside St. Peter's Church in James Street and having my lunch. It's quite a wide street and totally pedestrianised, but I noticed that most people were walking on my side of the street and getting too close to me for comfort. I thought this behaviour strange, thinking they just wanted to be close to me, but then noticed they were all engaged in Chugger Avoidance. Poor chap, it's a dark and lonely job, but does anyone really have to do it? There must be a more honourable way for charities to raise money, surely?

 

The magnificent Odeon Cinema

 

I love Harrogate. I first went there in 1965 and have been since, but not for quite a few years. It just gets better.

Wonderful. I managed to catch the correct bus this time, too.

38. Bolton Abbey

CC Site
June 26^th - 28^th

Such a short journey (eight miles) I'm not even going to describe it. I still managed to go the wrong way, though.

Nice small site in a wood on the road north from Bolton Abbey back to Grassington. Got a pitch opposite the toilet block and on the edge of a copse. The van next door has the most comprehensive bird feeder imaginable, so it was with some misgivings that I assembled mine. Wow! Within two minutes it was mobbed. Even a greenfinch and a tree-creeper. A robin has taken to coming into the van to hoover my carpet, hopping right up to my feet as I sit at the table. The third time he flew into the cab and took a fright, flapping at the driver's door window. I managed to catch him and pop him outside, but haven't seen him since.

The TV here is analogue (they have a digital signal into the site so weak that they distribute it as analogue). It makes you realise just how crummy TV was before digital. It's blurry and the TV can't tell you the name of the channel you are on. You see, some things do get better, so just look on the bright side.

I put Wimbledon on for the first time. Two gents called Raonic and Sock were playing, which reminded me I must go into Mountain Warehouse In Harrogate and get some raonic socks.

I am losing interest in the World Cup. I find this to be a feature of my getting older; I can't seem to maintain an interest in anything for very long. Unless Cook resigns, is sacked or has an incapacitating accident soon I fear my interest in cricket will go the same way.   

I had planned to go into Ilkley on the first day and Skipton on the second, but let the cold, damp, grey day get on top of me and spent the day in bed reading a Sjowall and Wahloo and a Maigret. I did lower myself to have a shower and do my washing-up. The Simenon, “Maigret in Court”, is his best, I think, because it shows his defining qualities, his doggedness and his compassion. In her review of the book in the Sunday Times, Muriel Spark says “In a great courtroom drama, Maigret has to explain why he does not believe that Gaston Meurant was capable of slitting his aunt's throat for money and smothering a small child. But in saving him from the gallows, Maigret must expose some dark secrets about Meurant's life. A painful story of an oppressive domestic tragedy and the compassionate insight of a remarkable detective. A truly wonderful writer ... marvellously readable - lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with that world he creates of run-down hotels, cold, dark barges, quayside canal-taverns, lurking prostitutes, pot-bellied burghers, taciturn youths, slippery barmen”. I've read many detective writers now, but I always return to Maigret. With his acute understanding of human nature for me he is the Master.

The Winter Gardens, Ilkley

So I stirred myself the next day and went to Ilkley on the bus, and I didn't take a hat. What a smashing little town, wide streets, elegant stone buildings and a small outbreak of cast-iron canopies à la Harrogate. The railway station, a terminus, is a gem. The old goods shed behind the buffers has been turned into a very comprehensive M & S Food shop and there is a nice old-fashioned coffee bar. Outside there are lots of tables and chairs for a Pizza Express.

In the nineteenth century, Ilkley was a dormitory town for Bradford and Leeds and there are trains direct to both cities. It's genteel but not stuck-up and has a pleasant feel to it. It has taken to the Tour just like Hawes and Grassington and there is bunting and be-ribboned and painted bikes everywhere.

There is also a nice, circular Booth's supermarket, which I had visited six or seven years previously with Katie, my daughter. Booth's is a northern phenomenon, more Lancashire than Yorkshire, and is probably about equivalent to or just a shade better than a Waitrose. I remember buying some bottles of Yorkshire beer here to take back for John O'Neill, the old farmer who was our neighbour in Ireland and who had worked much of his life on the land in north Yorkshire. Many Irish men came to Britain during the war to fill-in for the men who had been conscripted and most of the Mayo men went to Yorkshire.

From Ilkley I got the bus west to Skipton on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Skipton is bigger and livelier than Ilkley. It even has its own small House of Fraser department store, Rackham's. This being a Saturday there was an excellent street market and a flea market in the Town Hall and these and the weekend had attracted hordes of trippers from Leeds and Bradford. I bought the world's greatest olives stuffed with garlic from a nice man on a Greek stall. After being there for half an hour it suddenly dawned that I had come here with Katie as well.

 

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal goes through the town, right next to the bus station and I snapped some nice narrow boats. Unfortunately, I got very tired and, when I got back to Ilkley and found I had three hours to wait for a bus, decided to take a cab back to the site. The cabbie estimated £12, which was more than my pocket money for the week, but needs must. When we got there it was £18 and the cabbie got a very small tip. The tip I really wanted to give him was “Don't tell porkies”.

37. Grassington

CC Site
June 24th-25^th

A strange thing. AA Routefinder said it was a twenty-two mile journey, but when I reached about half-way and the turn-off out of Wensleydale, the road sign showed twenty-two still to go. I think I must have given it the wrong destination postcode.

Never mind, because the drive itself was stupendous, over the top from Wensleydale to Wharfedale, over Buckden Pike, 702 metres high. This road, the B6160, is on the Tour route and this is a real climb. I descended in third gear most of the way at 30mph and I wonder which gear the riders will use to ascend it. How do they do it? Every village on the way was decked-out in bunting and banners and decorated bikes. One bright spark had completely covered a racing bike in yellow tape. Difficult to find polka-dot tape in even the best stationers.

I had never noticed how many really impressive limestone escarpments there are in the Dales.

Pretty standard CC site, £13-30 a night. Listened to the Test match, had a nap then watched England's last game in the 2014 World Cup. Why does Jack Wilshere fall over so much? Rather a grey day. Tomorrow a cycle ride into Grassington, I think. The cricket is so depressing. Cook doesn't look like resigning or being sacked and I can't see any hope for the future. I'm joined by the cricket writers in The Times and The Daily Telegraph. We may have to lose the series against India before someone sees sense. Please God we don't have to lose the Ashes next year as well. There was a small crowd throughout the match and hardly anyone there on the last day. Disappearing income may make the ECB act, since they care only about money.

Why would anyone want to pay £70 a day to see such an abject, hapless, directionless display as Monday's? The trouble is, shrinking test match income will mean less for the county game and will surely hasten its demise once the current generation of OAP's pass on. I hope I don't live to see cricket in this country consisting wholly of one-day bashes.

The bird-feeder is very popular here. I think there may have been a tree-creeper on it. I must swat-up and improve my recognition. To-day there was a hen pheasant, several pigeons and, apparently, a grey squirrel on it. I'm awaiting the flying pig. Luckily, the small birds also got a look in. A nice old gent with two lovely whippets in a small motorhome opposite me told me about the squirrel. He said one of his dogs had “got three of the buggers yesterday”.

Opposite me is a Team Sky van with a large motorhome and an amazing streamlined trailer. Could it be one of the riders? Chris Froome? Nah, saw the bloke tonight and he looks like a mechanic. Oh well, never mind.

Well I cycled in to Grassington, only a couple of miles. Oh calamity! Twelve days since I rode the bike, and twelve days ago I was a well-honed racing machine. To-day, my knees had seized-up and I had no puff at all. I was exhausted after half a mile. It was terrible. There is a steep hill up into the village and I just had to walk up it. Two proper cyclists overtook me and my paranoia fancied it heard them sneering when I saw them sitting outside the cafė in the square when I arrived. On the way back I discovered my derailleur was on the middle ring at the front, so that I had been starting-off in 8^th gear instead of first and operating seven gears higher than I had thought. So, I'm not a complete weakling after all. Just an incompetent cyclist.

Sitting reading my newspaper in the square, I was the object of much interest. Country people in the North do stare a good deal more than normal people, but this was exceptional and made me check my flies. I think my fundamentalist beard was causing the trouble. I may have to trim it a bit, because I like to pass unnoticed through society, like a neutrino through butter. One man spotted my Bradford Park Avenue 1951 replica football shirt and came over for a chat. The village could be unkindly described as “God's Waiting Room”; I did see two young people, but they looked out of place.

Well, it's farewell then Peter Matthiessen, author of one of my few very favourite books “The Snow Leopard”, a book which had a tremendous influence on me at a difficult time. Matthiessen was described in his obituary in the Daily Telegraph as “an author and naturalist whose personal landscape was as wild, dangerous and eclectic as that he detailed in prose; he was, variously, a novelist, travel writer, deep sea fisherman, environmentalist, peace protester, Zen Buddhist and CIA agent”. The book was published in 1979 and is a strange mystical and inspirational read. “What began as a practical search for the rare snow leopard,” said one reviewer, “developed into a quest for the meaning of Being.” 

 

 

36. Hawes

CC Site
June 22nd - 23rd

A forty-mile drive through Kendal and out along the A684 eastwards though Sedbergh along Garsdale into Upper Wensleydale at Hawes. Sedbergh is a lovely little town, not much more than a village really and taken-up mostly by the school, founded in 1525. I stayed here once a few years ago in a funny old-fashioned hotel and just took a liking to the town.

It was Sunday and Hawes was heaving, packed with people, mostly middle-aged motor-bikers, not difficult to pack it as it is tiny, even smaller than Sedbergh. It is on the route of the Tour de France this year and has whole-heartedly entered the festival spirit of the race. There is bunting everywhere and displays in the shop windows and bicycles painted in polka dot patterns and all sorts of advertisements. The glorious smell of fish and chips was in the air, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for the race cyclists who will have to endure the enticing scent while looking forward to their suppers of pasta, bananas and vitamins. The information centre in the charming old stone-built railway station was selling Tour memorabilia, but at extortionate prices, £20 for an interesting but poor quality tee-shirt and £15 for a baseball cap. Ridiculous! I fancied a white tee-shirt with red polka dots and the caption “Le Départ, Yorkshire”, but the material was so thin I would have seemed to be in a wet tee-shirt competition; not a pretty sight. I was puzzled by the colour of the bunting, repeating sequences of red, white and polka dot pennants. Polka dot is for the King of the Mountains and white for the Best Young Rider but I don't know what red is for. And why were there no yellow and green pennants for the race leader and the points classification leader? Strange.

Hawes - a picturesque village

After doing my food shopping on Sunday I had a lazy day on Monday, finishing “Rendezvous with Rama” by Arthur C Clarke (brilliant) while sitting in the scorching sun and getting my medication from the Health Centre. Wherever I have travelled I have found the people in these NHS health centres friendly and helpful. Where would we be without the NHS? Defend it to the death! 

Waiting at the station (to be restored)

 

I also enjoyed listening to Test Match Special on the radio. Graeme Swann has been drafted in and he is just brilliant and has made a big difference to the programme. I sent an e-mail to them asking if he could become a permanent fixture, replacing Geoff Boycott, but they didn't read it out on the air and didn't reply to me. Disappointing. Swann's experience of the game is bang up to date and his anecdotes are topical. Sadly, England's performance didn't match the excellence of the commentary team. The bowling by the pace attack, particularly by Anderson, was pathetic and Alistair Cook, supposedly the captain, did nothing to influence the game. He really has to go now, surely? Also, I'm very tired of the bowlers, especially Broad and particularly Anderson, looking and behaving like sulky teenagers if they don't get success. English cricket really is in a dreadful state now, I think. And you think the footballers are useless?

Don't fancy a Category 1 climb on this!

I watched the World Cup matches on Monday evening, but still can't see anything special in Brazil. Matt is supporting Chile now that England are out, and I think they have a good chance of beating the hosts.

35. Coniston and Windermere

Horrible drive from Morecambe. The AA Routefinder sent me

round the north end of Windermere for some reason, and I got stuck in traffic jams showing their support for the Great North Swim. Once I got past that, the drive down from Ambleside was vile along a spiteful serpentine road flanked by stone walls, of constantly varying width and with loads of traffic coming the other way. When I looked at the Caravan Club guide it said “Make every effort to approach the site from the south”. Pity I hadn't read that earlier. Doh!

The Old Man of Coniston (in the background)

The site is another one where the pitches are in clearings in a dense wood. This one slopes down to the lake and is enormous, 280 pitches and the first CC site I have seen with three toilet blocks. Snuggled-up close to the one nearest to the lake. Tomorrow I'll drive in to Kendal to meet Matt at Oxenholme station. I wonder what he eats?

Well, I watched England last night and I thought they did well. This is fulsome praise from me, believe me. They were watchable and I didn't fall asleep once even though the game extended well past my bed-time. I still think Rooney is useless, though. I'm quite enjoying this World Cup, as teams seem to be trying to win. A bit worried about the referees, though.

Picked Matt up when he arrived on the Euston to Glasgow train. It was great to have his company and we had three really pleasant days on and around the lake. The blighter made me walk to the village every day and one day we had a trip in a launch around the lake. This is where Donald Campbell was killed trying to break the world water speed record in his jet-propelled boat “Bluebird” in 1967. The boat and Campbell's body were recovered only in 2001; the boat is being re-built, with plans to use it for demonstration runs at 100mph on Coniston, while Campbell's body is buried in the churchyard in the village. His teddy bear mascot was also recovered.

 

We also had a couple of barbecues, the weather being hot and dry throughout Matt's stay. He was pleasantly surprised to see how friendly people on the site were (with the exception of Grumpy CycloWoman next door to us. She was amazing, and refused to do more than grunt grudgingly even when I fixed her with a wide smile and said “Hello” very loudly. On our last day a bloke arrived to cheer her up, but he wouldn't speak either. Some people are strange). Luckily, everyone else and their many dogs made up for her).

I had been fascinated by the unusual chimneys on Coniston Hall, which we passed on our walks to the village. We learned from the nice young lady who was steering the launch and doing the commentary that a family called the de Flemings were given mining rights in the area by William II Rufus (1087-1100) and made such a fortune that, when they built the house they gave it the biggest chimneys they could to show just how great they were. 



Coniston Hall, with big chimneys

 

After three days we set off up the Road Through Hell past Ambleside to Bowness on Windermere, a Caravanning and Camping Club site which used to be a Caravan Club site. Bowness and Windermere are pretty much joined and are quite big and busy; well, they are after Coniston anyway. Bowness was absolutely full of tourists and was probably a bit too busy for our liking. Unfortunately there was no TV signal at all, so we had to find a pub where we could watch the crucial England match. Well, we found a real corker, right on the lake, with lots of high-definition screens and excellent food. Then came the match. That's all I have to say about that.

Lovely old cinema in Bowness

 

I took a photo of a Morris 8 which, I think, is the same as the car we had when I was a child. Dad spent many happy hours working on it in Standing's Field at the top of New Street and we even went out in it a few times. The engine exploded going up Bury Hill when we were going on holiday to Hayling Island. I'm not sure it was ever mentioned in the family after that.

34. Morecambe

Private site
June 12^th - 14^th

Fifty miles up from Southport, into Preston then up the M6. Not bad site here, just behind Morecambe's new football ground and with a cycle path into the town one way and to Lancaster the other. Good TV and radio reception, so will be able to watch the opening World Cup match tonight, and my Three dongle works fine. All good then.

Just before I left Southport I was talking to the old chap in the van next to me. He was getting a push-chair out of his van and explained to me “This is for the dog. He's thirteen and gets very tired, but he likes a walk and doesn't like being left in the van. We'll walk down the town and put him in the push-chair when it gets too much for him.”  Priceless.

Across Morecambe Bay

Having good radio reception means I can listen to the ball-by-ball commentary on the First Test against Sri Lanka. Oh, bliss! And the sun is shining. In fact, it was so warm in the van on the way up that I had to use the fan for the first time. Ain't life grand? Isn't it strange that so many towns in this part of the world have been named after famous entertainers? Eric Morecambe, George Formby, Bing Crosby, Chuck Bury, Billy Preston, Burt Lancaster, the list is endless.

The Stone Jetty

So, after settling in, having lunch, a read and a snooze, I did my now usual preliminary scouting outing on the bike. There is an off-road cycle-track right to the sea-front, so I took that and rode along the promenade from top to bottom. Half-way along there is the Stone Jetty which has an old station building on it. The jetty was built in 1851 and the station was the terminus for boat trains for ferries to Ireland and Scotland.

 

 Another old station now contains the Tourist Information office, which is excellent and which provided me with a free cycling map of the area. A third station is actually the station where trains to Morecambe stop and start. As I rode along the promenade I enjoyed a lovely view of the fells in the Lake District across Morecambe Bay. There is a nice sculpture in steel on the prom of the fells with their names so you can see what you are looking at across the bay. The bay itself is amazing, the sands stretching out towards the Furness peninsular as far as the eye can see.



Steel fells on the promenade

On Friday I attacked Morecambe for real. In along the cycle track, which apparently used to be a single-track railway line, then south along the promenade to Heysham. The track made me climb a very stiff hill then disappeared when I got to the top; unkind, I thought. So I turned round and rode north, along the length of the Morecambe promenade and up to the coast road to the north. Set into the promenade were some metal discs engraved with interesting facts about Morecambe Bay. It would take twenty-four million years to fill the Bay from a bath-tap. The West End pier was damaged by fire in 1907 and destroyed by a storm in 1977. The Central Pier was damaged by fire in 1933 and demolished in 1992. The Central Amusement Arcade was destroyed by fire somewhen or other. Since I had just passed the Mega Zone laser tag attraction (whatever that is) still smouldering from a fire yesterday, it seems there is a long-term problem here with things catching fire. The fire brigade were on strike, incidentally, so the police had to deal with the fire.

Not the one with short, fat, hairy legs

On a wide grassy area next to the promenade were two old geezers having a chat, each of them with a golden retriever. The two dogs were sitting quietly, virtually nose-to-nose, and at first it appeared that they were just ignoring each other. When I looked closer, though, I could see they were talking:

Rover: Blimey, Towser, these Owners are something else, aren't they? Mine watched the Brazil match last night and now he thinks England can win the World Cup!

Towser: I know. What are they like? Mine listened to the Test Match this morning and now he reckons we're going to win the Ashes back. Did yours have a glass of sherry before we came out?

Rover: Yep, it always spells trouble, doesn't it? They'll probably want to go down the pub now instead of going for a proper walk.

A number of breakwaters formed from piled-up rocks have been built, and this has had the effect of creating a succession of little sandy bays along the seafront, making a most attractive sight. Another attractive sight is the bronze statue of Eric Morecambe, real name Eric Bartholomew, on the promenade near the Clock Tower. These features, together with the amazing Art Deco Midland Hotel, the Stone Jetty, the Lifeboat Station and the backdrop of the Fells make for a really outstanding promenade.

Sadly, the town itself, behind the facade of amusement arcades, rock-shops, pubs, ice-cream parlours and boarding houses, is not an attractive sight and is just appalling. It was a frightful shock to the system after the delights of the promenade. Dereliction of both buildings and of people. It even has an Arndale Centre, which is always the kiss of death. I didn't have the courage to go in. I've never seen so many derelict-looking, demented-looking or dangerous-looking people together in one place. Fertile ground for Channel Five documentaries.

I had decided the charity shops and the plaque about Thora Hird, who was born here, were the highlights of the town centre when my sanity was rescued by finding a brilliant model railway shop in a back-street. Half an hour's chat with the owner and I was ready to face the town centre again, but I escaped without waiting around. I did, though, sport an exquisite 148:1 scale Southdown bus from him and it's now in pride of place in the van together with Tintin and Snowy and the two cats.

I feel sad about Morecambe, because it has obviously at some time been an elegant town of some note and the people I met were friendly and nice, although they sounded a bit like Caroline Aherne. Will its decline continue, I wonder, or can the restoration of the Midland Hotel and the Winter Gardens and the new football stadium inspire a return to former glories? I think the life of the town has been sucked-out by Lancaster, just three miles up the road, with its university and county town status. By the way, I read that Caroline Aherne has lung cancer. I hope she makes it because she is a talented girl and we can't afford to lose talent early. Her “Mrs Merton” used to break me up totally.  

The fabulous Midland Hotel

I was so traumatised I cycled to Lancaster to reconnoitre in readiness for a proper trip tomorrow, and tomorrow I'm going by bus because I've cycled another 30 kilometres today and my bus pass is going rusty. 

On my last day I got the bus to Lancaster as planned. I had forgotten it was Saturday and was a bit overcome by how busy it was. It was also very hot, the hottest day this year for me so far. I enjoyed mooching around and had a pleasantly cool walk alongside the estuary of the River Lune, but didn't stay too long. I had been here a few years ago for work, but couldn't remember anything about the place. The vulcanologist (don't mention the ears) with whom I used to develop computer earthquake models did his PhD at Lancaster and had a research facility here. I later went to Bogota in Colombia with him and he was good company. He told me a very funny story about the crowd throwing meat pies at the players at Oldham Athletic, but I can't remember enough detail to make a go of it for you. I can, though, remember the one he told me about watching the Old Firm match (Glasgow Rangers v Celtic). Someone was taken seriously ill in the crowd. The paramedics came and took him away on a stretcher, but had to walk round the perimeter of the pitch with him (they couldn't stop the game, could they?). As they were walking along a true Christian threw an empty bottle, which hit one of the paramedics on the head, laying him out and causing him to drop the stretcher. “That's not funny”, I hear you say, but I can hear you tittering from here. 

A tremendous coup at the Oxfam bookshop when I got two completely mint Sjowall and Wahloo paperbacks (iconic pre-Wallander Swedish police procedurals). What a result! If England lose tonight it won't seem so bad now.

It took me only five minutes to decide that Colombia were going to be my favourite “Other” team. They were great against the stodgy Greeks and played like madmen on drugs, doing everything the hard way, hogging it when they should have passed it, obviously not talking to each other and generally playing like Under Thirteens. Brilliant! England could be playing them in the next round. Mental! If they ever decide to listen to their coach they will be a real handful.      

 

"The Shrimps"

 

33. Southport

CC Site

June 9^th - 11^th

A fairly innocuous drive of 40 miles via Preston with torrential rain throughout. The A565 brings you into Southport from the north and you drive right through the whole length of the town centre to get to the site on the south side. Wow! The town is really nice, colonnades and arcades and giant stone buildings. It's a bit like Tunbridge Wells by the sea. Definitely anti-Blackpool. I got a bit lost and trawled some back streets (or should I say 'back boulevards', because there were the most amazing mansions everywhere). This is definitely Millionnairesville. Had a quick cycle around after settling, just to get the lie of the land. This stage is going to depend very much on the weather. If it's fine tomorrow, Plan A (bus to Crosby to see 'Another Place', Antony Gormley's giant figures standing in the sea). If wet, Plan B (mooch around the town and hope for fine weather on Wednesday). 

Lord Street

 Oh dear, I've just been tidying up older Blog pages and for some reason or other the software has moved my first stage (Cambridge in February) to the front to make it the most recent. So, if it sounds familiar...................

Had a pleasant Tuesday walking around Southport. The main avenue, Lord Street, very wide, is lined with colonnaded shops on one side and parks and gardens on the other. Also on the 'other' side are the massive war memorial and the town hall and library and behind them the main shopping area. I went into British Home Stores to try to get some more of their brilliant anti-blister socks, but no joy. I shall have to stick to the Vaseline. Ho, ho! Lots of joy, though, from the shop itself, which looks to be unchanged, including some of the staff, since the place was built. No escalators, but three lovely lifts with Art Deco surrounds.

Lord Street again

The Town Hall and Library

In the town there are loads of seats for resting and people-watching and there is a great relaxed atmosphere. One nice arcade contains a bronze of Red Rum but the others are quite run-down. Red Rum won the Grand National three times and was second twice and never fell in a race, an unparalleled record. His trainer, Ginger McCain, was a Southport car dealer and trained the horse on the beach. His success is remarkable, given his unusual diet of oven chips. The bronze wasn't life-size, which rather spoiled it for me and explains why I didn't take a photo. One arcade, with a splendid Art Deco stained-glass entrance, contained a huge junk market with loads of old Dinky Toys and railway models.

Nice arcade (can you see Red Rum?)

I trawled the charity ships and found an interesting novel by a Colombian author but otherwise drew a blank. There was an awful lot of chick-lit, especially by the appalling Louise Bagshawe/Mensch. Maybe this is another place where only the ladies read books and the gentlemen go to the pub. Or, possibly, play crown-green bowls in Victoria Park. I sat on a wet bench and watched some playful oldies enjoying themselves in spite of their execrable dress-sense. One of them even took the time to explain the rules to me as he went along, although his broad scouse accent, which is quite common here, was almost impenetrable. In crown-green the green comes to a point in the middle and you play across the slope, not straight up and down as in flat-green. One old bloke was absolutely brilliant and got his wood, and sometimes both of them, closest to the jack almost every time. His opponents survived only by concentrating on knocking him out of the way. You could tell that everyone knew he was The King.

Ice cream - or body parts?

I passed (and then returned to take a look at) a sweetshop with every kind, shape, colour and flavour of rock imaginable and a grotesque display in the window of ice cream studded with assorted fruits and lumps of confectionery. This bizarre display, obviously intended to be attractive and to stimulate the sweet-tooth, looked truly disgusting, a bit like the internal organs of a post mortem subject laid-out for inspection. The photograph can't do justice to the horror of the sight. So I bought two scoops. Just kidding.

Well, my decision to wait until Wednesday to go to Another Place was proved good. Torrential rainstorms but no thunder and lightning after I got back home at 2 o'clock and they have continued into the evening. Tomorrow promises to be fine, so I think I will cycle to Crosby, twenty-eight miles there and back according to the AA Routefinder. No rush, take it easy, drink plenty of water and it will be flat, of course, along the sea front. The atmosphere has wrecked my TV signal, so no Endeavour or Fast Show for me tonight. Bugger. I shall have to read a book.

I'm just finishing one of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley thrillers, possibly her last one, called “The Boy who Followed Ripley”. There's not really any mystery or puzzle in these books but a nerve-racking feeling of menace and suspense, ratcheting-up as the book progresses. You need a lie-down in a dark room when you finish one. 

Wednesday, last day at Southport, a fine day. Off to Crosby, just outside Liverpool, to see Another Place, Antony Gormley's sculptures in the sea. The round trip proved to be forty-eight kilometers, about thirty miles. It started by passing through the extensive grassy sand hills either side of the coast road and by skirting Royal Birkdale Golf Club.

The sand dunes here are the home of the endangered natterjack toad, Britain's rarest amphibian. Some years ago there was a real possibility of their extinction, but careful conservation work of the very best kind has ensured its safety. When the site on which I am camping was extended there was a risk that one of their habitual areas would be threatened, and the Environment Agency took a very close interest in the development. It must be very difficult to inspire interest in protecting a toad; everybody loves furry creatures but few are enthusiastic about toads. There is a very good article on this, the Sefton Coast, on the BBC Countryfile website:-

http://www.countryfile.com/days-out/natterjack-toads-southport-lancashire

After the dunes, much of the journey was taken up by the Formby by-pass, but there were segregated cycle tracks most of the way and the cycling was pleasantly relaxed. Just before Crosby I passed through the village of Little Crosby, eight miles from Liverpool, where the only church was a large old Catholic church, surely a very rare occurrence in Britain. The Wikipedia article on Little Crosby is interesting:-

The village is perhaps the oldest extant Roman Catholic village in England, the squires being the notable recusant Blundell family. The village character has changed little from a 17th-century description that "it had not a beggar, ..an alehouse ..[or] a Protestant in it..." In 2009 Protestants reside in the village as old values change - Protestant inhabitants however must be 'vetted' by the local Squire before occupation of one of the 50 or so dwellings. In 1986 a senior member of the hamlet was quoted in the Liverpool Echo as saying "Protestants are discouraged from settling in our village".

How strange and rather disturbing to read that about a village in England. I was OK though; I had a book of papal indulgence vouchers and was allowed to pass through without being vetted by the Squire.

Crosby itself seemed a bit of a dump, but the brown-sign directions to Another Place took me north along the coast to Blundellsands, a very wealthy area. The sculptures themselves were individually wonderful, looking wistfully out to sea, but the whole scenario was rather disappointing, with the figures, one hundred of them, quite widely scattered and the whole not striking the eye with any vivid impact. I had expected them to be more closely grouped. The fact that they were gazing at a wind-farm and a drilling rig also detracted from the magic. To quote from the Visit Liverpool website:-

According to Antony Gormley, Another Place harnesses the ebb and flow of the tide to explore man's relationship with nature. He explains: The seaside is a good place to do this. Here time is tested by tide, architecture by the elements and the prevalence of sky seems to question the earth's substance. In this work human life is tested against planetary time. This sculpture exposes to light and time the nakedness of a particular and peculiar body. It is no hero, no ideal, just the industrially reproduced body of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe, facing a horizon busy with ships moving materials and manufactured things around the planet.

Another Place

Well, I may have been disappointed but I was glad I had been to see them, another little pilgrimage completed.

The return ride was easier, but I had to spoil it by an act of random vandalism. I was buzzing along, plugged-in to Bruce Springsteen and, of course, as deaf as a proverbial, and didn't hear a racing cyclist trying to overtake me. My first sight of him was when he burst past me, got his front wheel (very skinny on a racing bike) on to the rubbly edge of the track and fell off. I stopped and apologised and he was very forgiving, but I could hear his teeth grinding (well, I think they were his teeth, because he was quite old). He remounted and took-off at high speed and, thankfully, I didn't see him again. 

I had a really good nap when I got back home. I'm very glad I came to Southport; I really liked it here.