Not the Lake District but it's still Cumbria

Can you see what I see?

  If you follow the west coast of England   northwards alongside Lancashire and     then Cumbria the last town you will         encounter before reaching Scotland is     Silloth. It overlooks the Solway Firth       and faces some of the lowland hills of     Scotland just a few miles across the        bay. Unlike some of the other fairly         industrial towns of the Cumberland         coast Silloth is a surprisingly tidy and     well laid out little place, it doubles as a  neat harbour and a seaside resort. It's    not so touristy now and its heyday was    in the Victorian era when trainloads of    Carlisle workers would come over to      enjoy a bit of sea and sun although we    spotted a number of caravan parks on    the town approaches. We were up too    late to come and take part in the    morning's Silloth parkrun so we nipped    in to Maryport, near where we were staying, and did the parkrun there. But on the Saturday afternoon we trundled up to Silloth and took a walk along the very pleasant promenade. The photo is of me and Skip and 'The Big Fella'.

I saw it first!

We're well away from the big Lakeland hills near Gilcrux which is a pleasant village north of Cockermouth. Primarily we've come somewhere fairly remote to escape New Year fireworks - Skip is terrified of all the bangs, you know firework displays years ago were all about the visual display whereas now it's all about the noise, the louder the better! Cockermouth is a well preserved, modest sized, medieval town tucked away in rolling countryside at the junction of the Rivers Derwent and Cocker. Here Vicky was examining an interesting War Memorial display with some odd looking metal daffodils sprouting behind her. You'll also see a wall painting advertising Jennings Ales and behind that building is the fast flowing river.

Until very recently Jennings was the pride of Cockermouth; the large brewery sits in the shadow of the castle and, between the two of them, these buildings dominate the town. In 2005 the brewery owners sold out to the national brewery chain of Marstons based in Staffordshire. "Don't worry," they said "we'll keep the brewery brewing." But the cynics who said they'd heard that before were proved right in 2022 when the brewery was closed and production transferred to a mega brewery in the midlands, sad days indeed. In our very convivial pub which we ran for a while about 20 years ago one of the popular beers that I sourced for our regulars, many of whom were fell runners, was Jennings Fellrunner Ale a beer now consigned to history...... but, hold on, in a local store we spotted some Bowness Brewery Fell Runner Blonde, on our first night in the area we cracked open a couple of bottles of this refreshing brew and remembered past times. Long may Bowness Brewery thrive!

 

City Life in Australia

 

Welcome to the world of house moving Ozzie style. In most other parts of the world house movers move furniture. In the big burgeoning Australian cities such as Brisbane it can mean actually moving the house! Here's a nice Queenslander style property being relocated, quite possibly to a big field (or in Ozzie parlance a paddock) where it can sit with many other old residential buildings until someone comes along, likes the look of it and buys to one it to a pleasant countryside plot with a view. The home seller wins twice over because they have a lovely big plot in a desirable city centre location where a super duper extra large modern house can now be built where the old Queenslander used to sit. Or a developer can build a lucrative block of flats or office building.

Up, up and away!

 Here's another option, if you've bought  a fairly small single storey property in  the city there are plenty of people called  'House Raisers' who will happily jack up  your home onto something that might  look just like a pile of wooden pallets.  Room for more living accommodation to  be built below, maybe even a separate  apartment! Building regulations seem to  be pretty lax in Brisbane, raising the  height of your house also may well  improve the view from your bedroom  quite a bit, so what if it then obstructs  the view of the people behind you,  there doesn't seem to be much they  can  do about it! We saw one fairly  dramatic example of a house where  they'd dug down to give themselves    a subterranean double garage. And  Aussie garages have to be big in order  to  accommodate all those SUV's.

Even further up!

Of course if you want the best views in the city it pays to live near the top of the highest skyscraper in town. This is what you look down on from the 82nd floor of Brisbane's Skytower. To put it into perspective in the centre of this photo is St Stephen's Catholic Cathedral which is a good sized church building. To the left of it you can just about see a smaller building, this is St Stephen's Chapel completed in 1850; at the time there were very few permanent buildings in Brisbane and a mere 2000 folk lived in the city. In due course the chapel became a cathedral but was eventually considered too small for the rapidly growing populace, hence the need for a larger one which was built next door. Incidentally the chapel's architect was a gentleman by the name of Augustin Pugin who designed a number of 19th century churches of architectural merit in the UK (many of which we have been to in recent years!) An even bigger cathedral was designed in the 1930's, this was going to be the Cathedral of the Holy Name and was intended to be the largest place of worship in the southern hemisphere. They started with the crypt which was actually built but costs escalated and money ran out  - it might have been quite something though to judge by the drawings, the dome would have been 60 feet higher than that of St Paul's in London!

Room for 4,000!

Down Underneath

I can see all the way to LA!

Back in Australia we were based in Brisbane where all our lovely grandchildren live. For a treat we headed down over the Queensland border to the New South Wales seaside town of Yamba. This laid back resort is at the head of the Clarence River and in the nineteenth century the harbour needed a lighthouse to guide shipping into the port. A neat little structure was built and served the local sailors for 75 years whereupon a taller lighthouse was erected and a few years later the decommissioned lighthouse was razed to the ground. This must have upset the locals because they raised the money and with the help of teams of volunteers they rebuilt a replica of the original over a number of years. Here's me on a very hot day in my big hat  - you'll see the lighthouse now serves as the studio for the local radio station. No sign of ladies of the night though - apparently this was the spot for picking up girls selling their wares a century ago!

 

One of the requirements when choosing somewhere to stay was the presence of a parkrun and Yamba had a little beauty just a short walk from our apartment. Here's a shot of the parkrun volunteers at the end of the run including young Ted and his mother who were handing out finish tokens. The wonderful green machine on the left arrived while we were running and over the next hour or so was joined by several hundred other vehicles lining up for the Yamba Hot Rod Rally. 

A couple of blue hot rods.

To my mind a hot rod rally involves souped up old bangers racing noisily round a dirt track cheered on by raucous spectators. But surprisingly there was no racing, the drivers and passengers all parked up and spent the day chatting to each other - a thoroughly amiable social event it would seem. And the locals all got the chance to amble round to look at the gleaming cars and chat to the drivers.

And here's a yellow one!

And another green one, this time on the inside lane going home.

Delft Itself

A night on the tiles!

We've both visited The Netherlands many times for business reasons and for holidays but somehow we've missed out on Delft. It's a pretty little town with an old compact centre ringed by canals - in fact it's a bit like a mini Amsterdam. We stayed in a garret for three nights, well it was quite a roomy garret up three very steep flights of stairs overlooking a canal. It did the trick for us being a short walk from the train station, a short walk into the town centre and a slightly longer walk to the parkrun, our first in The Netherlands. Parkrun hasn't quite taken off yet over here but here there were around 60 runners and walkers trundling round a lovely green park,

Early morning stroll - don't fall in the canal!

 Heading to the left of our front door  and over the road took me along a quiet  canal side walk towards the Oud Kerk.  The Nieuwe Kerk (the New Church -  getting on for 400 feet of height in the  town square) is old enough and dates  from 1398 but the old one beats that by  a fair way. At that time most of the  tallest structures in Europe consisted of  church towers in what are now Belgium  and the Netherlands, the burghers of  Delft were keen that their church should  be on the list but when the tower was  over half way built it started to lean at  an angle, apparently they'd built on top  of an old in-filled canal. Undeterred they  built the remaining bit vertically and it's  stayed up ever since - but you can see  there's a kink in it. My photo shows it  leaning a little to the right. Just to pre-  empt any question about the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Oud Kerk tower is about 50 feet higher. We went a bit gung ho on churches in Delft and also visited the ancient St Hippolytus chapel for a mass (in Dutch) and the larger and rather magnificent Catholic church of St Maria Jessekerk, which together with the Oud and Nieuwe churches is also in the top ten tall churches in South Holland.

Magnificent Stockport (and elsewhere)

 

A whirl on the Wurlitzer anyone?

No reason why we shouldn't go back in time for a bit of nostalgia. In my previous tale of music engines in Treaddur Bay and beyond, I mentioned the famous Wurlitzer company, manufacturer of grand theatre organs. Since I wrote that post I recalled that Stockport Town Hall contains a fine example of the species which we saw a couple of times on our visits to the Stockport Beer Festival in the 1990's. The Paramount organisation had installed Wurlitzers in most of their US theatres and the plan was to do the same in Britain. Only one theatre in the UK was equipped with a Wurlitzer this being the Paramount Theatre (later it became the Odeon) on Oxford Street in Manchester. This particular machine has ended up in Stockport at the  Town Hall.

Stockport Town Hall - on a sunny day!

 And what a  fine town hall it  is, so  many times  we've  walked past and  never really paid much  attention to this grand  public building. Many  posher towns  than  Stockport would  be  very happy to  possess  this fine  civic building.  And Sir John Betjeman  was quoted  as saying  it's rather magnificent,  so there!

Back to the present, August saw us doing a bit of tourism, firstly to Central England again, this time to Stafford and Derby. Neither of these are on the tourist trail but they both have their pluses, Stafford has a pleasant old town centre with a large market place (currently being tarted up a bit) and Derby has several good looking churches including the cathedral which has a pair of resident breeding Peregrine Falcons living in it's tower! A stone's throw away is St Mary's Catholic church which was designed by Augustin Pugin in the nineteenth century - here's Vicky walking across the St Alkmund's Footbridge towards it. This bridge spans the city inner ring road and is the site of St Alkmund's church demolished in the 1960's by the city planners to make way for the traffic. The industrial history of both Derby and Stafford was shaped by the railways and we ran a very straight parkrun on an old reclaimed railway line near the centre of Stafford.

They turned the tap on today!

 A couple of weeks later we took the  short flight to Belfast and ticked off  another Northern Ireland parkrun.  Waterworks parkrun was the first in the  whole of Ireland and goes twice a  couple of reservoirs near  the centre of the city; this is Belfast's principal water  supply and the lower reservoir looked  distinctly muddy! The morning was  appropriately wet and not long after the  start of the run we all got suitably  drenched! However the weather  miraculously cleared up the following  day and we enjoyed a pleasant ramble  round Hillsborough Castle gardens with  our grandsons, not really a castle more  a stately home this is the residence of  King Charles when he visits Northern  Ireland. Following our potter round  several hungry mouths were assuaged  with pizza at the Parson's Nose!

He knows you know!

Spotting seabirds on Anglesey

Who are you looking at?

 On the very western tip  of Anglesey a  series of  steep cliffs rise  dramatically from the  Irish Sea. These cliffs  are homes to vast  numbers of seabirds  including puffins,  razorbills, kittiwakes  and guillemots. An  overnight visit to the  lovely seaside village of  Trearddur Bay allowed  us to zip a few miles up  the coast to the RSPB  South Stack bird  sanctuary to view some  of these in their glory.  The puffins had gone off for a wander somewhere else unfortunately but there were thousands of guillemots chattering away on the cliffside. Here is a group of three old birds in discussion, the one with a white ring around her eyes is a bridled guillemot, the reasons are unknown but about one in twenty of them has this distinctive feature. Apart from gossiping on the cliffs they spend more time diving than they do flying and have been known to reach depths of almost 600 feet! There were a few razorbills around but they have very similar colouring to guillemots and from a distance we couldn't tell which was which. A little further away on the island that houses the lighthouse we spotted a large colony of kittiwakes which are a type of noisy seagull with a short neck.

Come and put a nickel in.....

Our evening meal at Trearddur Bay's swish Ocean's Edge restaurant was rounded off with a Kelly's ice cream at the Sea Shanty where we spotted an orchestrion in the foyer of the cafe. Prior to the advent of juke boxes companies such as Wurlitzer, and in this case Seeburg, devised coin operated music machines. This one, made around 100 years ago, has a piano inside together with pipes and percussion instruments. We're talking here about the golden age of pre-electronic music making and well before the advent of the Hammond organ. From steam powered fairground organs to the mighty Wurlitzer a huge variety of inventive contraptions were produced to entertain the masses. Sadly few examples of these still exist. (The Great Dorset Steam Fair would be the place to see fairground organs - apparently they have the biggest gathering of them in the world, forty at least. Maybe a treat for 2024?)

Flying Bishops and Geese

 

St James in the Evening

On a fine early summer evening we found ourselves in the north  of Buckinghamshire at the village of Hanslope. We'd been invited to attend a confirmation service being delivered by the Bishop of Oswestry at the church of St James the Great, another of the magnificent churches of England and Wales that we've visited recently. (If you're into Norman chancel arches this is the place to come!) The tower is especially impressive and can be seen for miles around - it was 200 feet tall but a bit fell off a couple of hundred years ago when it was struck by lightning and it's now a mere 187 ft. Quite why the Bishop of Oswestry is responsible for diocesan visits this far away became clear when it was explained to me (by another bishop) that he's a 'flying bishop', well it seemed clear at the time!

Heading back northwards the following day we found our route blocked by a gaggle of geese. Calling in at the RSPB reserve at Middleton Lakes near Tamworth we spent a pleasant and peaceful couple of hours tootling round the trails through what used to be a huge system of gravel pits in the middle of the industrial West Midlands. These somewhat assertive wildfowl are Greylag geese which in the 20th century had all but disappeared from the UK due to destruction of their breeding sites, but they're back (and doing a bit of breeding here as you can see, well you can see the results of the breeding!) We carefully skirted round to the left closely monitored by the protective parent birds.

Offa, King of the Midlands

And thence to Lichfield for an overnight stay followed by a parkrun round Beacon Park in the middle of town. We were very close to the city centre and a stone's throw away from the imposing cathedral. Thinking that we could have a gander (!) inside the cathedral we approached  to hear the unmistakeable sounds of Hotel California and to see barriers across the west door. An Eagles tribute band were tuning up for a concert by candlelight later that evening and we could already see one or two aged rock fans trundling around the side streets. And why not if it raises some funds for upkeep of the building, but did St Chad turn in his grave? Before we left we looked up at the cathedral frontage to see an assembly of carvings of various royal figures which have been added over the centuries, there's even one of Queen Victoria which was carved by her daughter Princess Louise. I didn't spot that one but I did manage to get a snap of one of our favourites - Offa, King of Mercia.