June 4th and 5th
63
mile drive down the M6 to this site south-west of Kendal at Sedgwick.
It's in a National Trust deciduous forest and used to be the site of
a gunpowder factory. The pitches are just clearings in the forest and
from mine I can't see anyone or anything except trees. An ideal
situation for catching-up on my e-mails and the Blog. A warm rain
fell nearly all day.
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| The River Kent in Kendal |
The
warden lent me a write-up on the gunpowder factory. The first was
opened in 1764 and, after it had closed, another on the same site in
1857. The area was a centre for gunpowder production, with
readily-available water for power and high-grade charcoal for the
process itself. Salt-petre was imported from Chile and sulphur from
Italy. The Sedgwick site was particularly suitable because of its
dense forest and undulating terrain. The trees were used to test the
strength of the gunpowder, missiles being fired at the tree trunks
and the depth of penetration observed and the undulating terrain was
a safeguard against explosions. I had been surprised by the almost
total lack of any ruined factory buildings, but then discovered that
the Explosives Act 1875 had stipulated that any gunpowder factory
which ceased production had to be destroyed. A fragment of the staff
canteen does remain, so this was presumably not seen as being
dangerous. The gunpowder produced was used initially solely for
military purposes, but in time was used mainly by the mining
industry.
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| My own personal forest clearing |
Watched
England's hilarious performance against Ecuador. Against Peru they
were competent but stultifyingly boring, against Ecuador they were
shambolic but worth watching. Rooney again seemed to me to be a waste
of space, unless you judge him as a defensive midfielder, and the
hype following his scoring in an empty net from twelve inches was
beyond belief. Milner seemed to be playing (badly) at right back, so,
if Wayney must be in the team, why not play him there? Johnson is
pretty useless defensively, so he couldn't do any worse. The high
point was when Ben Foster came roaring out to save the missing
defence again and took a flying hack at an Ecuador forward, just
failing to sever his head. All in all, it was great stuff. I hope Roy
plays this team in the World Cup. Football can be fun, even when
England are playing! Sir Alf had the courage to leave Jimmy Greaves
out of the team and I hope Roy will leave Rooney out.
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| Low Wood Caravan Club site, Kendal |
Watched
Pointless. They do seem to have more sentient beings on there
than on other TV quiz programmes, but two young lads excelled
themselves on questions about the Battle of Waterloo. One thought it
had occurred in the 1500's, the other that the British commander was
Nelson and the first, who was the real star, that the village of
Waterloo was in England. Should this sort of ignorance be made an
offence? Or what about having forfeits? What was that thing called in
Tiswas when people got swamped by green slime? The two lads on
it, Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman, are funny enough anyway,
but I'd love to see them trying not to laugh when a plonker was
deluged.
Well,
Thursday, just a perfect day. Cycled in to Kendal and back, about
20km and very hilly, by way of the A6 on the way (very scary) and by
way of country lanes along the valley of the River Kent on the way
back (much more enjoyable). Kendal is just a wonderful town, quite
easily the best place I have been since I became a man of the road.
Mere words are just not enough to describe how great it is, and it
got even better when I found in the Oxfam shop six Maigret novels
which I didn't have, £1 each and all in mint condition. It's been so
long since I found a Maigret in a charity shop that I couldn't
believe my eyes or my luck.
The
site here is similarly indescribably wonderful. I would need a stroll
round it with a video camera to convey to you its perfection. The
scent of wild garlic and the sound of trickling streams. If they had
seasonal pitches I would definitely take one and stay here as long as
I could and cycle in to Kendal whenever I damn well felt like it. The
next three days are going to be the most amazing contrast to my stay
here.
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| The site again |
Now,
here's another article on one of my heroes. My mp3 player was playing
'Fools Rush In' by Ricky Nelson (don't ask), which made me think of
Johnny Mercer, who wrote the words. He was also a talented singer
himself and went on to found Capitol records. He was a little bald,
gap-toothed bloke who wouldn't impress you if you saw him in a Tesco
check-out queue. He was the scion of one of the top families of the
old South and had a privileged upbringing. His father was a lawyer
and property developer in Savannah, Georgia, who lost his money but,
rather than declare bankruptcy, worked to pay-off his $1million
debts. Mercer himself was an alcoholic, but worked all his life to
help pay off his father's debts, because it was the honourable thing
to do. When his father died still owing a substantial sum he sold
his share in Capitol Records to pay it off. He wrote the words of
many great songs, including 'I Remember You', 'That Old Black Magic',
'I'm Old-Fashioned', 'The Shadow of your Smile', 'Laura', ' Autumn
Leaves', 'Days of Wine and Roses', 'Moon River' and many more and won
four Oscars. He first won my admiration because he coined one of the
greatest ever quotes. When asked what he thought of an immensely
popular song (can't remember which) he replied “I could eat
alphabet soup and shit better lyrics”. Sorry about the language.
The BBC still have some footage of him on Parkinson (who greatly
admired him) shortly before he died in 1976.
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| Johnny Mercer |
That's
all, folks. To-day, Friday, I'm off on the road again.
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