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!