Ghosts and grasshoppers

We've been closely examining the local tide timetables recently. The tide goes out a fair way where we are leaving vast areas of sand on which to run. This is a photo of the lighthouse at Talacre at around 4:30 pm on New Year's Eve. It seemed very dark at the time but my phone camera has picked up the available light and come up with a fairly good snap, the lighthouse is no longer operational so that lighted window is more likely to be evidence of the ghost of Raymond, a former lighthouse keeper who is reputed to haunt the building and its vicinity. I did read somewhere that one of those Dulux adverts from many years ago was filmed here with an Old English Sheepdog running around the lighthouse - however the paint is peeling a bit so it was clearly quite some time ago. Here's a young English Shepherd dog sniffing about in the gloom.
Apparently the tide can come in quite quickly so we've always been very careful to time our runs well before the tide is turning, there are parallel channels through the sand bars that fill with fast flowing incoming water - my Strava plot here shows how I had to backtrack several times to avoid getting wet!

Zig-zag beach running!

I recently found out the reason that there are no more giant grasshoppers around - they've all been shot! I thought I'd not seen any for years and it turns out that the last one was bagged by a farmer in Yorkshire on a hot summer's afternoon in the 1980's. I couldn't find a photo of the Yorkshire Grasshopper but here's one from the USA which is a record of their largest catch in the 1930's. It seems that the 'dust bowl' conditions of the Mid West where grazing dried up and farms were abandoned was, in part, due to the predations of these creatures. They didn't even make particularly good eating!

Last one of the day - I'm all out of cartridges!

Virtuality and running!

Can't stop!

Virtual is not what you might call an accurate descriptor by it's very definition. It usually means something along the lines of almost. Hence virtual meetings where technology such as Zoom is allowing people to 'almost' meet each other. Virtual running has also become popular as a means of allowing runners to compete whilst not actually running alongside each other. (Although why we should not be allowed to run together out in the open air but we can 'virtually' rub shoulders with strangers in supermarkets seems bizarre to me.) However I guess we'll have to continue to go along with this for the time being. Realising that my Billy Whizz legs might be losing some of their speed over the long lockdown months I felt I should join the fun.

 

It's a bling thing!

Thanks to some enterprising organisers we've been lucky enough to 'compete' in some 'virtual' events. Vicky and I ran part of a marathon relay and picked up some nice medals as a result. And more recently I clocked 42.51 in a Virtual 10K coming 3rd overall - I did take advantage of the fact that I could choose my own course and I selected a slightly downhill route - so that I could get back home earlier on a cold day (of course). So to get back to the definition of virtual - is a virtual 10K almost a race? It didn't feel like it really, but I did manage to sum up a bit more oomph and adrenalin than I would normally do on a training run so yes it must be doing me good!

On the run in North Wales

 

Devon is very special and Dartmoor in particular has been wonderful to explore. But for us you can't beat the Vale of Clwyd - here's Vicky on her way up to the summit of Moel Famau on a sunny November day. We'd decided that it was time to return to Denbighshire. Our time in Devon was marvellous and we enjoyed our time there but COVID and associated travel restrictions were enough to prompt us to bring forward our move back home. Mind you moving house is fraught at the best of times but when different parts of the country are in different tiers and Wales goes its own way then it's a little more stressful, and on top of that our completion was delayed because of problems further down the chain of house deals which were at the top of. 

We've made it my lovelies!

Well would it all fall apart or were we on? Fortunately the transaction went through and thanks to the very accommodating family removal firm of Packfirst we made it back to Wales. They were a friendly bunch and they certainly took much of the hassle out of moving day - but it seemed strange to the ear to hear their round Devon vowels in Prestatyn!

And without further ado on our return to North Wales we managed to find a fell race! Having done just one race on Dartmoor in February that could definitely be categorised as a fell race I was having withdrawal symptoms, the chief of these being that my climbing legs had disappeared. This event on the Clwydian hills was our first entry into the night time Out-Fit Winter Handicap series - not feeling super fit in climbing terms Vicky and I decided to 'run with poles'. Having invested a couple of years ago in a set of British made Mountain King running poles I thought I'd take them through their paces. I thought they might be a bit cumbersome going downhill and maybe they were a bit but they sure helped on the last long uphill. There's a funny little loop at the top left hand side of the map and it was indeed a funny little loop which we're glad we got right.

Here we go - Westward Ho!

Westward Ho! is the the name of a novel by Charles Kingsley - it's also the name of a seaside town in Devon (complete with exclamation mark!) Kingsley was born in Devon and set his story in Bideford on the north Devon Coast. In the nineteenth century local entrepreneurs decided to capitalise on the popularity of the novel and named a fledgling tourist spot a few miles away with the name of the book. It's now an attractive seaside resort and we thought we'd spend a few days there to cheer up our November. We pottered along the seafront and explored to surrounding nature reserves with Skip and had a thoroughly relaxing time. Kingsley is not the only literary connection which the area possesses and Rudyard Kipling  spent some time being educated at the United Services College in Westward Ho! where he wrote some of his early work. His short stories entitled Stalky and Co were apparently based on his larking about with chums on the cliff sides overlooking the town. We were aware of the Staffordshire Kipling connection as we'd run around Rudyard Lake several times, this is a reservoir in attractive surroundings near Leek which was quite a tourist trap in the 19th century - and indeed Kipling's parents met there on a day trip from the Potteries - they liked it so much they named their son after it! And a further curiosity - the lake was named for Ralph Rudyard a local chap who was reputed to have been the soldier who killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

No we have no doggie ice cream!

No trip to the seaside is complete without ice cream and even on this bracing but sunny morning we found a van from the world famous firm of Hocking's who ply their trade in several North Devon locations. They are very traditional in respect of their fare - it's vanilla or vanilla but it's vanilla of the highest quality. You can have a cone or a wafer, you can have a Cadbury's Flake stuffed in it and there are several other variations of style but it's vanilla only. Scrumptious

Do come again!

A red post

It's the pillar box from Easter Island, sloping backwards slightly (perhaps from a collision with a vehicle) this iconic letter box is on Le Molay Littry Way. No we're not in France - this is Bovey Tracey in Devon which has, as a twin town, Le Molay-Littry in Northern France. The road you see is a by-pass which takes some traffic away from the middle of town to break the speed limit. Like a lot of letter boxes nowadays this one was looking drab and dirty until someone knitted a very nice combination waistcoat and hat for it to brighten things up. After a couple of weeks the knitwear was removed and, guess what, it's has a very spruce paint job! Was the Royal Mail embarrassed into painting it up? I must take a look at other local pillar boxes to see if it's just a one off or a new broom policy by the post people. Or maybe a local resident has crept out at the dead of night with a tin of pillar box red!

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Well this is a new one to me! There is a whole society devoted to surveying historic graffiti in Devon. These are especially found in medieval churches and rather than getting the idea that churchgoers 500 years ago got bored and started to scratch their names on the wall there are other reasons for the appearance of graffiti. In many cases it seems that symbols such as pentangles were created as ritual protection marks, others were stonemason's handiwork and could have been the equivalent of their signature. The Devon graffiti surveyors seem to have particular fun trying to decipher some of the writing styles of long ago, with varying degrees of success.

Here's St Winifred's in Manaton a fine Devon church brimming with medieval graffiti. Manaton (as opposed to Manhattan) is a pretty village on the edge of Dartmoor and on a sunny day we packed a picnic and set off on a ramble having parked our car near the village green but at a judicious distance from the cricket pitch. We didn't go into the church to survey any graffiti but this photo gives an idea of the fine clear day it was. We set off past the remains of a large granite cross in the graveyard - this was sabotaged by the vicar in the mid-19th century as he wanted to stop the villagers carrying coffins thrice round the cross before burials took place. He considered this to be the relic of a pagan rite! There seems to be no record of whether or not villagers carried on carrying coffins round the rather substantial remains of the cross. We took our lunch up to Manaton Rocks a secluded viewpoint well worth the rough climb up.

And to round off this post full of miscellany, here's a selection of beers suitable for mountain runners. Scafell needs no explanation but the brewer, Northern Monk is continuing to come up with superb ales, one of our favourites. Brewdog have a new clear pale ale - and we've traversed many jagged edges on the hills. Buxton Brewery have gained an international reputation and I'm sure the beast on the front of this one chased me on a particularly dark night in Derbyshire. Finally another Derbyshire brewery, Thornbridge has recently teamed up with the North Brewing Co in Yorkshire to produce the excellent North Bridge which is described as a 'Mountain Ale'.

Darting round on Dartmoor

What sort of dogs were around 3000 years ago?

Skip's resting here at the top end of the old stone row on the eastern slopes of Cosden Hill. We'd run up there from the village of South Zeal and were on our way to the top of what is one of the highest peaks on Dartmoor. The stone row is a bit of a mystery and there are many theories as to the function of the many Bronze Age stone rows scattered all over Dartmoor. This row does seem to point towards the summit of Cosden but tracing an exact line towards the peak shows that it misses the top by some distance. Heading in a southerly direction on an old track marked as a bridleway on the OS map we made dismal progress through the bog. We saw no sign of this route being used by any horse riders and the Dartmoor ponies didn't seem interested in wading through the wet ground. And the local council have obviously not done anything about maintaining drainage for this ancient byway - very remiss of them I'd say! The track headed up and round the southern end of the ridge south of Cosden and suddenly, having not seen a soul since we set off, we spotted a couple of runners travelling rapidly along the skyline. A few minutes more of our painstaking progress led us to a clear wide north-south track - what a relief! We plodded up with renewed vigour and close to the peak we bumped into Tim L, whom I recognised from several races I'd done in the past, he was happy to stop and have a chat and we were happy for the opportunity of a breather.

Dartmoor is full of unexpected surprises, for a start what looks like a clear path marked on the OS map may not be found anymore (at least not where they're meant to be), and elsewhere broad tracks exist which are not indicated on the map. You have to have an open mind about route-finding and it's a good idea to avoid a misty day. Following one such broad track recently on Trendlebere Down I decided that I should be heading right down towards the river which could be heard gushing in the distance - I followed what looked like a path but soon found myself (with Skip) scrambling down a steep gully having to look very carefully at where my feet were landing. And what did I nearly tread on - an Amethyst Deceiver (laccaria amethystina) a vivid purple mushroom! What a spot! And a few days before we found a very fine specimen of amanita muscaria which is also known as the Fly Agaric. This is the classic toadstool of children's fairytales and it has a multitude of uses. Not only has it long been known as a hallucinogenic but it's also used to catch flies, hence the name. There are many agarics and the genus agaric encompasses toadstool and mushrooms with gills. Fly Agaric is thus a gilled mushroom as opposed to a grilled mushroom - you can eat them though provided they are parboiled twice before cooking! Here's our photo followed by another one of the Amethyst Deceiver (also edible) which I nearly stood on!

Fancy a bite?

Eat me for a Purple Haze!

Lighthouses and Ale

 

A nine-legged lighthouse!

Here's an interesting lighthouse! This is at Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset and it's on the beach. We'd just been up to Bristol for the day and on the way back we decided to stop for a walk and a run by the seaside, we'd done a parkrun here earlier in the year and we knew it was just off the M5. I galloped along the promenade through the middle of town and moved onto the beach on the north side of town heading up for this unusual structure. Burnham faces the Severn Estuary across sandbars and the like and the two strategically sited Burnham lighthouses performed a vital function. This is the Low Burnham Lighthouse which was decommissioned in 1969, but after the High Turnham Lighthouse was sold as a residence they had to switch this one back on in 1993. You can if you like stay at the holiday let in the High Lighthouse! 

Thirsty work pitching forks!

You will know of The Waldorf Hotel in New York, The Ritz and The Savoy in London, even Raffles Hotel in Singapore. The Royal Clarence Hotel in Exeter ranks with these historic rooming houses as it was the first establishment to be called a hotel in England in 1770. However The Royal Clarence Hotel that I ran past was in Burnham-on Sea and is slightly newer dating from 1792. The reason I am dwelling on this fine establishment (as opposed to dwelling in it!) is that it was the home of one of the earliest microbreweries in the UK and I recall driving down from Bristol in the 1980's to enjoy a fine pint looking over the sea at a glorious sunset. The brewery has moved and changed hands but some of the excellent ales are still in their portfolio including Pitchfork, a golden light ale which won Champion Beer of Britain in 1998. This was a regular on the bar during our stewardship at the George and Dragon, Macclesfield - always in fine form and a firm favourite with the locals!

Whilst on the topic of lovely beer another of the pioneers of micro brewing from the last century is Roosters from Knaresborough in Yorkshire. Roosters was founded by Sean Franklin as Franklins Brewery in 1980, he was one of the first to bring hops from the US over here and his regular bitter was fabulous - I came across it at the Bridge Inn in Otley and thought that couldn't be beaten, Ian Botham said the same in his autobiography a few years later, he'd also been to the Bridge Inn. Roosters under new owners has gone from strength to strength and here's a tinny of theirs named for a Manchester United football manager!