I do like to be beside the Deeside

That's me!

 

Well I've been trying to upload new content to this blog for a couple of months without success but after lots of tinkering around I finally uploaded one photo so I might as well make some comments on it. This is me at the end of one of the Deeside Off-Road Thursday night race series. I'd not done any of these for eleven years so I thought I'd give it a go. 

Warbling in Ohio

17 roller coasters!!

 So where would you go  if you were in Southern  Michigan and had a few  spare  days at short  notice? It had to be no  more  than a couple of  hours or so driving, and  by the shores of one of  the Great Lakes would  be nice. When I looked  at the map Sandusky,  Ohio looked just the  job, and  doesn't just  about everyone come  for Cedar Point, one of  the biggest amusement  parks in the world? We didn't and thank goodness it was still closed for the winter break although the forthcoming reopening was already being vigorously promoted, the hotels were being scrubbed up and prospective employees were queuing up for interviews for summer jobs. Sandusky is a pleasant lakeside town in its own right but the huge amusement park over the bay dominates the local economy. However at the end of April there are few visitors, we were able to find a lovely AirBnb cottage close to the centre of town.

Sandusky has quite a history, in the 1850's it was the last stop on the underground railroad for refugee slaves on their way to Canada and freedom. Local families would take them in hiding them from the authorities until they could be taken across the lake by boat. By the early 20th century the town was booming, freight trains from all over the Mid-West would bring vast quantities of coal and other goods for onward shipment from the huge docks. We visited the local museum to see a working model of the gargantuan coal loader which has been transferring coal from trains to ships for over 70 years. The industrial side Sandusky is all on the west side of town now and today it's a tidy town with wide streets and plenty of greenery, which seems to suit the large numbers of Canada Geese raising their young in and around the houses (we saw more than one chain of goslings following their parents and stopping the traffic as they crossed the roads.) 

We discovered a couple of local breweries peddling their wares in town, the closest, just ten minutes walk away,  was the Bait House Brewery. Based in a largish shack this fine brewery and restaurant was formerly a fishing tackle store and indeed has a fish oriented menu. However I ignored the lake perch sandwich and had a nice beefy burger accompanied by a hoppy Bicentenniel Ale brewed on the premises - fab! 

Our neat little cottage was on the east side of town and was a steady walk away from the Pipe Creek reserve right by the lakeside where bird watching is very much on the menu. We'd already seen plenty of interesting birdlife such as terns, waders, finches and even vultures but this was the time and place for spotting warblers! We were very lucky to be in town for the visit of thousands of American Warblers on their way from Central and South America to the vast forests of Canada. Having forsaken their wintering grounds for the northern summer, they traverse the US until they reach the Great Lakes, pausing for a breather before they set off across the water. For a couple of weeks they settle down in waves sheltering a places like Pipe Creek attracting the attentions of twitchers from all over North America. So what's the fascination? Unlike the rather drab warblers of Europe, where it's not easy to tell the different species apart, American Warblers (only distantly related to the ones we see back at home) are much more colourful as you can see. Around 30 different types of warbler pass through Pipe Creek in spring and autumn and the game is obviously to tick off as many as possible. Some of the watchers we met had rather expensive fancy looking binoculars and cameras, but yours truly was quite happy using pocket bins to spot just four different warbler birdies (not the four illustrated here but as soon as I sort some decent photos out I'll post them.)

USA via Iceland

 

Well we certainly didn't expect to be in Iceland in early May. However a hastily arranged trip to the US saw us booking flights with Iceland's national airline and travelling to Detroit via Rejkjavik. Not only is it a shorter overall flight time but it's a good price to boot. Our visit to Iceland consisted of a brief spell at the main terminal of the airport but that's enough to get a hint of what Iceland's all about. For example just half an hour's car journey from the airport is Grindavik and in the vicinity of this harbour town there have been volcanic incidents and seismic activity occurring for the past four years. In fact as we descended out of the clouds the pilot took delight in pointing out the plume of smoke emerging from the latest eruption. Grindavik currently has a population of zero as it was evacuated in November 2023, in addition to this I discovered that it's twinned with Penistone, South Yorkshire. I wondered about this connection and did some internet digging and found that both towns have (or did have) mountain rescue teams which seems to have something to do with it.

As I have indicated this wasn't a planned trip but on arrival we made our necessary visits in Michigan and then headed south to Ohio where, yes you've guessed it, we found a parkrun. This was an event in a nature reserve a few miles east of the fascinating lakeside town of Sandusky. The event director, also Martin, had come across parkrun in England near Southampton and decided to start his own one in the US, I'm not sure if he'd just misinterpreted something I'd said but Vicky was looking very puzzled in this photo. So Osborn Metropark parkrun was great, it was a low key affair with just 19 runners who mostly turned up about five to nine. Following a short briefing we set off along a green track into the distance. I was a little worried when I found myself in the lead but after about one kilometre the short athletic looking chap who'd been stalking me took off into the distance. So another possible first evaporated but I was happy with second place. 

Edmund Fitzgerald - down to a watery grave.

Vicky had travelled out a few days before me and had taken in the Canton Lower Rouge Trail parkrun, an even more low key event where she finished in third place behind our Lyndall who came in second! The trail runs along the Rouge River between Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan and further towards the city is the town of River Rouge. It all starts to get a bit industrial here and Rouge River was where the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was built, this ship capsized in a storm in 1975 and is the largest ship to have sunk in the Great Lakes area, perhaps the largest boat ever to have gone down in fresh water seas. By the way Edmund Fitzgerald was nobody particularly famous but happened to be the chairman of the ship's owners' board at the time.

And I couldn't resist including the Osborn parkrun facebook page which has us starting off on this very pleasant Saturday morning ramble. Vicky is hidden directly behind me and slightly further back in a pale coloured cap also mostly hidden, is the guy who caught up with me, ran alongside me for a while and then took off like a whippet.

County Towns of England Part 2

 

Church on Bridge.

Warwick was a stop off for us on the way home from Oxford. It's definitely a town, a county town no less. It's quite a grand little town with a fine extensive medieval castle, much visited by tourists who take lots of pictures of this very photogenic and much restored structure. The remains of the town walls include Eastgate and Westgate which for some reason that I have not been able to discover, have churches built on top of them! This photo is of Eastgate and maybe the congregation didn't enjoy worshipping above the street because St Peter's was only used as a church for about 150 years -from the 16th Century until around 15 years ago it was a school. You can now rent the building as holiday accommodation! And note the red pillar box standing between the pedestrian arch and what was formerly the archway for wheeled traffic which has been standing there since 1856.

Here's another 1856 pillar box in Warwick, this time at Westgate, where again there's a church (St James's) on top of the entrance arch. The two post boxes in question were among the first to be erected in Britain and are very rare examples of the very rare 'Doric' style named for its  fluted design as found on ancient Greek columns. Vicky was very happy because she was wearing her pillar box red shoes that day. Curiously despite not having a cathedral there is a Bishop of Warwick (or rather there isn't at the moment because the post is vacant.) The position is actually that of an assistant bishop (or suffragen bishop) at Coventry Cathedral. I know a little about suffragen bishops having met the Bishop of Oswestry earlier this year at a church in Northamptonshire - it's a long story which I'll maybe expand on another time.

And guess which new up and coming band are coming to Buxton this month. Just two weeks ago they'd released their first LP  'Please Please Me' and they were riding high in the charts (girls were screaming!) Of course this all happened 61 years ago in 1963 and that year The Beatles hit Buxton for a second time returning in October. That must have been fun, and quite a late one by Buxton standards as it was scheduled to finish a bit before midnight. How did they all get home, and who went to these early gigs? (And who remembers The Trixons?) Buxton is neither a county town nor does it have a cathedral but it is a rather special. In April 2024 we ourselves returned to Buxton for a long weekend involving pottering round Buxton Brewery pubs and generally re-exploring old haunts. We found this Beatles poster on the wall at our AirBnb, a handy apartment close to the Pavilion Gardens, handy because it was less than 5 minutes from the start of the Pavilion Gardens parkrun which turned out to be a pleasant saunter round the park on an early chilly spring morning.

Thanks for the photo Eamon!

County Towns of England Part 1

 

The centre of Oxford Town

Many of the county towns of England, such as York, Lincoln and Worcester, have actually been cities since time immemorial. So what's the difference between a town and a city? In the late middle ages, a new city would be created by royal charter, and it would generally have to have a cathedral. By the twentieth century things had started to become confused and we had towns with cathedrals and cities without cathedrals; some towns wanted to be cities to enhance their status and it eventually reached point the point where any old towns can apply to become a city. For example Milton Keynes, not much more than 50 years in existence anyway, became a city in 2022 as part of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations! The postcard here depicts Carfax in 1960, which is recognised as the centre of Oxford; in the early 1960's I passed by here every day on my journey to and from school. Apart from the pedestrianisation of many of the roads it has changed little since my day. The WH Smith's branch on Cornmarket Street is still there - I bought my copy of Sgt Pepper's there on its day of release - probably got a detention for being late.

Staying with the music theme in 1962, round about the same time I was on the bus to school going through the centre of the city of Oxford, Bob Dylan was recording one of his finest LP's which included a song entitled 'Oxford Town'. This had nothing whatsoever to do with my Oxford as it was actually referring to Oxford, a town in Mississipi, USA. The song was an account of the riot which broke out when the local university admitted their first black student. 

Girls on the RAZZ!

On our recent trip Vicky was visiting Oxford for a hen party to which I hadn't been invited, so I spent an afternoon rediscovering the backstreets with delight, albeit having to dodge a huge number of tourists from every part of the globe. The girls meanwhile hit the Oxford branch of Brown's Restaurant for a boozy lunch followed by Crazy Golf. I later picked Vicky up and, not having had a drop of ale all day myself, I took her into The Dewdrop Inn in Summertown about a mile out of the city for a pie and a pint - inside the main bar is a plaque proclaiming that this was the local haunt of Colin Dexter, the author and creator of Inspector Morse. 

That morning we'd run round the University Parks in a very busy parkrun - nearly 600 runners galloped three times round the cricket pitch where, in the mid 1960's, I watched Australia playing the university side on the way home from school. That's me hanging on behind the young lad in black, I wasn't quite sure how to pace things, I'd left my barcode at our hotel over a mile from the start so I ran through the finish and back to the hotel to retrieve that precious bit of plastic arriving back to have it scanned just as the final parkrunners were finishing - phew! So, looking back at this post I've described our day rather haphazardly and a little bit back to front but I think you'll agree that we'd packed quite a lot into one day! And at this juncture I'll return to my pondering of the fuzzy boundary regarding the distinctions between towns and cities. When I was young I'd always thought of Oxford as a town and the locals referred to it as a town (e.g. we travelled into the town centre). In fact the phrase 'Town and Gown' originated in Oxford following violent confrontations between students and townspeople back in the 14th century. Fast forward to the 21st century where the people of Reading, who presumably disgruntled that they'd failed to win city status on four occasion no less, have now produced road signs with 'City Centre' written on them! Does it really matter?

March Winds and March Showers

"Puff, pant..."

So there I was charging down the final hill at the British Masters Cross Country Champs at Rhug in Denbighshire. Just look at that lovely close cropped green sward that I'm floating across. The photo doesn't do it justice - 90% of it was a muddy quagmire and I felt as if I'd been running through treacle for the last half an hour! It seemed to be worth it as some time later, revived by a cup of tea and a large picnic lunch, I found that our over 65 team had come third to win some nice shiny bronze medals. Oh the memories will come flooding back in years to come when I show them to the great grandchildren. 

Put that bow and arrow away!

  The venue for this    years race was the  Rhug Estate which is a  12,000 acre farm and  manor house right by  the A5 on its way to  Holyhead. Travellers  flashing by on their way  to catch the Irish ferry  are likely to look twice  as they pass the  spreading pastures for,  having sailed past  plenty  of flocks of  sheep on the Welsh  hillsides, they are likely  to suddenly get a glimpse of a herd of American bison! The current Lord Newborough (a runner himself) has played host to national cross country events several times now and he enjoys welcoming runners and supporters who gather at the estate farm shop and cafe where the farm's organic produce can be purchased. Yes maybe I should have bought a couple of their bison steaks - maybe next time!

The Brewers House.

One week later we  were off to Northern Ireland to take part in the Hillsborough parkrun accompanied and cheered on by our Irish side of the family. Rather a chilly morning it was but over the weekend we were well entertained and fed and watered to a high degree. The pub in the photo is The Brewers House at Donaghmore. This place is over 200 years old and originally brewed ales for the locals, over the years it fell into decline and became a run down boozer. A few years ago it was revived as a pub/restaurant and now serves fine food as we can testify - we chased in convoy down twisty back lanes to find it and then we tucked into a grand family lunch. (I did hear a rumour that they were considering dabbling in the noble art of brewing once more but there was no evidence of this on our visit.)

Before the feed at The Brewers House - working up an appetite.

Shrews or Shrows?

A couple of months ago I uploaded a photo of the Catholic Cathedral of Brisbane as it might have been, the current cathedral had been deemed too small and in the 1930's a larger 4000 capacity edifice was designed which would have been the biggest church in the southern hemisphere. But due to a lack of funds (and the impact of the Second World War) it was never built. Just a few days ago we visited Shrewsbury Cathedral, a modest sized church that is depicted here. It's just that the spire and tower were never built not for want of money but because the ground was found to be too unstable to support such a structure, shame as it would have been a striking addition to the city skyline. Coincidentally this pleasant building was designed by Edward Pugin, whose father Augustus designed the chapel which preceded and still stands next door to, Brisbane Cathedral! So what do the locals say Shroosbury or Shrowsbury? Listenng to people in the city (and as we'd previously gathered form our discussions with other Salopians, it's Shroosbury (well you wouldn't call a shrew a shrow would you!) And the Shropshire Star conducted an online poll which overwhelmingly favoured Shroosbury as the accepted pronunciation, Shrewsbury being an affectation adopted by people form down south who don't know what they're talking about.

They wouldn't have called this one Paddy's Wigwam!

And here's another church - this one hardly got off the drawing board and only the crypt was completed. This would have been the fourth largest church in Christendom back in the 1930's but financial woes meant that the catholics of Liverpool would eventually have to put up with a more modest, (and futuristic) design now known by the locals as Paddy's Wigwam. The crypt still exists underneath the church and is the long running popular venue for the annual Liverpool Beer Festival.

Here's one of the finalists in the 1889 competition to design the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York. This enormous construction was, of course, in keeping with the bigger and better ethos of the city. A slightly less ambitious design was ultimately selected and construction commenced a few years late - and it's still not complete! The usual conditions applied - ground that was not solid enough to support the weight of the main tower, shortage of money and interruptions due to the constraints of various world wars. The local nickname for the building is 'St John the Unfinished'.

So, we've done parkruns in Brisbane and Liverpool but not New York, our most recent bit of parkrun tourism was Shrewsbury of course, a lovely route along the river bank in the city centre, Vicky's first in her new age category! Shrewsbury is notable for many reasons, Henry VII stayed there on his way to the Battle Of Bosworth Field where, against the odds, he defeated the Yorkist army once and for all thus ending the War of the Roses and establishing the Tudor Dynasty. He, unlike his son Henry VIII, only had one wife. Following our jog along the river bank we spent the morning pottering around the medieval town centre and came across a busker who'd been halted by the police on his way from John O'Groats to Lands End. Something to do with the fact that the piano he was pulling along wasn't roadworthy.

It's a long way to Lands End!

Footnote: there are estimated to be over 100 billion shrews in the worlds (definitely not pronounced 'show'!!) Here's a picture of one of them:

Looking very shrewd!