Remember the Alamo

Where did you get that hat?

Growing up as a boy in the 1950's rarely a day went by without me hearing mention of that famous cowboy Davy Crockett. The Walt Disney film, released in 1955, was big news in the UK and Crockett could be seen on TV on a regular basis, the programme being introduced by refrains of the Ballad of Davy Crockett - was it Tennessee Ernie Ford singing 'King of the wild frontier'? I can't remember, but, knowing the BBC, the version we heard on Uncle Mac's Childrens Favourites at the time was more likely to have been by Max Bygraves.  (Davy Crockett's March was another piece of music altogether.) However this post researches the connection between Davy Crockett and Poplar trees....???? Read on my friend!

I do wish they'd build that bridge!

Yup you've seen this before, it's The Haywain by John Constable - the cottage on the left still exits and is now a tourist attraction. But what no longer exist are the trees in the background. These are Black Poplars (populus nigra) of which very few examples still survive and it's Britain's most endangered native tree. North East Wales is home to a significant number of Black Poplars and there are over 200 mature specimens in the Vale of Clwyd. We recently walked past a stand of around half a dozen by the River Elwy in St Asaph and fine trees they are too.

50 foot tall at least - what do you think Skip?

Here is a healthy mature Black Poplar spotted by a footpath just off the main Ruthin Road in the middle of Denbigh. I'll keep my eye out for more in our neighbourhood! And there's a fine example of an English Shepherd Dog relaxing in the foreground - not many of those in this part of the world either. I was quite staggered to read a recent report with a story about the number of folk in Britain who know so little about trees, or nature in general, to the extent that less than one in five can identify a Hawthorn! Mind you we did have some Merseyside children walking past our smallholding some years ago who were quite surprised to find out that, what they had identified as a breed of dog, were in fact Oxford Sandy and Black pigs!


In the same way that a type of plane tree was planted widely in London (hence the name London Plane) as it was pollution resistant, Black Poplars were planted widely in Manchester a hundred years ago or so. They're not quite the same as our native poplar as they are a subspecies (the Manchester Poplar - populous nigra subsp.betifolia) that has recently been shown to be vulnerable to disease - they've survived the smoke and grime of the last century but are now disappearing fast from Manchester's streets and parks thanks to a nasty little fungus. And many of our limited number of existing native Black Poplars are reaching the end of their lives without being replaced. These glorious poplars (or 'alamo' as they're known in Spanish!) may soon be but a memory.

And here's Constable's famous painting with the poplars edited out -

Still no bridge eh? And no, this is not the River Elwy!

Footnote: Oh yes - about the title of this piece - to avoid (or create) confusion, the Spanish word for Poplar is 'alamo' whereas the Spanish for Elm is 'olmo'! In 1836 the Mexican army besieged the Alamo Mission in Texas (and killed Davy Crockett!) - the Alamo name may have come from the cottonwood trees that grew nearby, cottonwoods being a type of poplar tree. So there you have it!

Friars and Abbots

How did that get there?

This took some finding and we seemed to be going down country lanes in circles occasionally glimpsing towers and turrets in the distance. We eventually tracked it down in the middle of a patchwork of fields; Ross Errilly Friary, a magnificent set of extensive well preserved ruins on the Galway/Mayo boundary. This was a Franciscan community of monks until almost 200 years ago whence it was abandoned. Certainly it seems to have escaped the ravages that many other old buildings have suffered - presumably because nobody could find it! On a fine summer's day it was a very pleasant spot and we were the only visitors apart from a couple of cheerful Irish girls of about 12 years old who seemed to be practicing their mountaineering skills. On a cold winter's night however, it would be rather spooky methinks! One oddity was that there were gravestones littered around the place which were of fairly recent vintage - here's one recent burial portrayed in the foreground of the photo.

Postcard says it's an Abbey - not true!

By way of a contrast, here's an old postcard photo of the Denbigh Carmelite friary, of which there is very little remaining. I thought I'd throw this into the mix as it's literally a couple of hundred metres from our house! It's hidden away down a narrow cul de sac at the back of Townsend builder's yard and I would guess that many of the citizens of Denbigh would have no idea of where this is or that it exists at all. It certainly does not figure in the list of notable buildings of Denbigh. The problem with old ruins in towns is that they have been plundered - they were excellent sources of building stone all nicely dressed and ready to use!

Now this is an abbey as opposed to a friary - not far from us is Valle Crucis at Llangollen which is in a lovely setting. This is a Cistercian abbey (abbey or friary or priory? It depends on what make of monks are living there.) Rather spoilt in a way by all the caravans on three sides but I guess it must pay for the upkeep. This particular abbey actually had central heating (at least the abbot had it in his quarters) - I had thought that Cistercians were the hardiest of the lot! The fact is they were a pretty advanced clever bunch of monks - the Cistercian Abbey at Rievaulx in Yorkshire had an advanced working blast furnace in the fourteenth century - if Henry VIII hadn't had it all dissolved and destroyed the Industrial Revolution might have started two centuries earlier.

Nice photo but the caravans are peeping through from the back on the left hand side. 

The Best of South Derbyshire

And they're off!

Here's me puffing and blowing at the interestingly named Brooksie's Bash Trail Race near Repton in South Derbyshire. This was a warmish 10 mile gallop through fields and woods starting from Foremarke Hall, a nice looking minor stately home which is also the preparatory school for Repton School. My painstaking research has since turned up the fact that one of Repton's alumni was the Olympic champion Harold Abrahams - so in hindsight I think it's odd that they didn't play the Chariots of Fire theme music during our run! Still I managed to get round in 78 minutes which I thought should bag me a V65 prize - but no! In the rarefied atmosphere of old age running, age groups are hotly contested but I found there was no V65 category and I was beaten into second V60 by a local runner (who had only just turned 60! Drat - must try harder next time!)

The bar at the dog-friendly Burnt Pig.
Give us a scratch!

South Derbyshire is quite different to the northern part of the county, the Peak District doesn't go that far down. It's all a bit post industrial with not much regeneration and Ilkeston, where we stayed, is a case in point. However one very fine example of regeneration is the Burnt Pig, a new pub which recently opened up at the end of a row of old terraced cottages on a side street near the town centre. It's well worth a visit and you're lucky if you get a seat most evenings, you won't get a seat at all on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as they don't open then! A special feature of the pub, apart from the superb beer, is the case of extra large pork scratchings (seen in the photo behind the Citra pump.) I'm sure there's a connection between the scratchings and the pub name. Anyway Simon, the enthusiastic landlord sells tons of them.

During our visit we actually stayed in Kirk Hallam which is on the urban fringe of Ilkeston, it's a fairly unremarkable suburb composed of a series of housing estates from the middle of the last century. However the town planners had the foresight to retain Kirk Hallam Lake as a wildfire sanctuary. It's right in the middle of the village and it attracts large numbers of birds including Swans, Canada Geese, Greylag Geese and various ducks, coots and moorhens. Most of these species breed around the lakeside so at this time of year it's quite congested. The local residents are justifiable proud of their good fortune in having all this nature in their backyards and here are a couple of the visitors:

Honk, honk!

Irish Ramblings

Is that where we're going?

And here's that mountain! Nephin is historically one of the 12 chief mountains of Ireland. Goodness knows why 'cos it's in the middle of nowhere in the Mayo countryside. This photo was taken last year when you could see the route from the start. Race HQ is in a narrow country lane - forty of us jumped over a barbed wire fence to the start - a not quite so wet area of the field in the foreground. This was my fourth time of running this race and this year, as with the first time when several of us got hopelessly lost, Nephin was shrouded in mist. There are no paths or trails and you have to follow the right hand ridge up traverse the summit ridge and descend on the left hand side. Thankfully I managed to get round without any diversions and won a bottle of ale brewed in the village up the road. It's a wonderful race - pure fell running with nearly 800 metres of climb in the first couple of K's. We will visit again!

A valuable cargo!

We stayed in Ballina, Co. Mayo, which is a bustling little town and we were lucky to be able to be present for the beginning of the Salmon Festival. Not that we saw any freshly caught salmon but we did find the town thronged with craft stalls - it was heritage day and all the tinkers and wood carvers from miles around descended on the main streets. Of course there was a funfair and other attractions included the traction engines, Irish country dancing, including tap dancing and lots of competitions including a draw for a substantial supply of peat turf for the living room fire. I didn't have a tow bar so I didn't see any point in laying out 5 Euros for the local hurling club. A quick trip up the coast took us to the Ceide Fields where 5000 year old dry stone walls, but not much else, have been found up to 9 feet under the bog - and we had a nice cup of tea in the visitor centre. Just to round things off didn't we both just enter the Ballina Salmon 5K in the evening? Entries were taken in Rouse's Bar - what a fine pub with the draught version of Jack the Lad, which was the local ale that I'd had a bottle of following the Nephin race!

I'll have a drop or two!

Red Devils!

Almost there - phew!

Dashing through the streets of Brecon at the end of Stage 15 of the Welsh Castles Relay, looks good but it wasn't good really. I'd been up in the night with a heavy cold and maybe should have pleaded for someone else to take my place. However it was a nice day for it. That's knocked me out for the week!

On the two stage journey back from Rome we caught a Brussels Airlines jet into Manchester. This is the brightly painted plane - a one off to commemorate the Belgian national football team. Very appropriate for a return to the home of the Old Trafford Red Devils. (And of course the Salford Rugby League 'Red Devils".)

Not the best photo but it was the best beer we'd found in Rome. There are some microbrew bars in Rome but we were on the north side of the city and well away from the nearest. However the street cafe that we repaired to for refreshment after slogging the tourist sights had a fridge full of interesting bottles so we tried a couple. The Hophead IPA was made in Germany at the renowned Bitburger Brewery, seemingly still independent, and very good it was! The beer on the left of it was from the small Lancelot brewery in Brittany - this was a tasty stout like beer, but what struck me was the name, Telenn Du. I knew that Du is the Welsh word for  black and, on returning home, I found that Telyn in the Welsh for harp. So here is a bottle of Black Harp in the Breton translation!

Canicrossing

And that's Skip just in front - "a bit of a help at times!"

And here she is doing well in the Mynnydd Myfyr hill race at Trefonen on a lovely Sunday morning. Vicky was first in her age category and won a marvellous cake! I made the error of faffing around at the venue before the race and completely missed the start - I eventually got over the start line about a minute or so after everyone else - still I did have fun overtaking over half of the field and still won a bottle of plonk despite my silly mistake.

Shouldn't ease off should I!

I should really try to lean forwards instead of backwards when running downhill. However on this occasion we were just about to hit the finishing line at Southwick Country Park parkrun in Wiltshire - the young guy ahead of me had just gone hurtling past me and I just knew I wasn't going to beat him. If I'd known I was going to finish a mere five seconds outside the V65 record then I might have pushed it. But we had a wedding coming up later in the day and I must have been saving myself (ha ha!) It was quite a wedding as well, the weather held and everyone had a great time!

A banqueting hall not a chippie!

Here's a church. Well it was a church, or to be more precise it was a basilica, the Corpus Christi Basilica in Miles Platting, an inner city area of Manchester. The slums are long gone, the large congregation, largely of Irish descent, is long gone and the impressive building is now the Usmania Centre, a banqueting suite specialising in wedding parties, many of them Asian. The eminent architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner noted that it was "large with pale sandstone dressings, in the Italian Romanesque style."and it's good to see that the building has been preserved. What intrigues me is that the basilica was the home of the Norbertines who had a priory at the back of the church. The Norbertines were followers of St Norbert who founded the order in 1160 in Belgium. And who is England's favourite Norbert? Why, World Cup winning footballer Nobby Stiles of course. And where was he from? He was born in Collyhurst which is next door to Miles Platting. I knew that Nobby was a Catholic and I like to think that his parents attended this church and, impressed with the saintliness of St Norbert, or maybe just the unusual name, decided to endow their son with the name Norbert (when did they realise that it would be forever Nobby?)

As a footnote to this last story - another footballing Norbert was Nobby Lawton, a former Manchester United youngster who captained Preston North End when, despite dominating the game, they lost to West Ham in the 1964 FA cup final, Lawton was considered to be man of the match. And he was born in Newton Heath which is also next door to Miles Platting!

Yummy

All my favourites!

Thought I'd post a selection of recent photos that we took down under - this is from the kitchen wall of a very nice motel that we stayed at in Rotorua. This place, The Malfroy Motel, was run by a Chinese family and at the back of the motel they had a hot pool fed straight from their own hot spring - full of nice minerals it was, so a very good relaxing soak for our aching limbs was called for. (Note for those who are puzzled with the first item - Kimchi is a fermented Korean dish that we never quite got round to sampling.)

All good stuff!

However what we did try (well Vicky did) was something called Emma Datshi, from a Nepalese street food merchant in Christchurch - this is the national dish of Bhutan and is apparently made using Yak's milk! I did a mountain race in Dunedin two days later - maybe I should have had some of this tasty grub as well. Christchurch had a strange feel to it - well the city centre did! It's still not recovered from the earthquakes of a few years ago and the middle of town is full of building projects and car parks on land that clearly had been cleared of demolished buildings. There's some controversy about what to do with the ruined cathedral which sits behind rather unattractive fences - do they repair, rebuild or knock it down - nobody seemed to know.

Invisible chair?

And here's a bit of levitation on the streets of Brisbane! I dropped a couple of dollars in the hat and he/she gestured me over and gave me a fortune cookie (nothing to eat for me though - I just got the slip of paper with a motto on it - mine said: "You will own a brand new sports car soon.") So that was goodbye to Brisbane for another year or two - it's a lovely city with a mix of very friendly people originating from all over the world. It can be quite hot and humid in midsummer but the beer is nearly as good as that in New Zealand and the pies are nearly as good as Kiwi pies. The Lions' supporters are bound to be enjoying themselves right now whatever the results.