Category: Miscellaneous

Odds and ends that don't fit into the main categories usually holidays, photography and personal stuff

Aug 14 2010

A piece of land

I am the under-gardener to The Inelegant Gardener, more specifically I am the under-allotmenteer. For those outside the UK, allotments are standard sized vegetable gardens enshrined in UK law. We took possession of our first half allotment plot on 1st October 2006.  I remember our visit to the colony to see the allotment; we’d taken our traditional Saturday morning wander around town when The Inelegant Gardener mentioned, apparently in passing, that she’d like to look at an allotment (or rather a half-plot). I was instantly wary of this idea, I remember watering and weeding on my dad’s allotment as a child, back breaking and boring work. But when I stood at the foot of the overgrown plot I was instantly converted. A strange feeling came over me, of land, food, honest toil and soil – it was like my own Soviet propaganda film. Here I could work the land and provide!

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The half-plot on possession, October 2006

But more was to come: walking back to the car some months later, after working on the half allotment, I pointed and laughed at the risible start someone had made on digging a neighbouring whole plot. A sheepish Inelegant Gardener admitted to being the owner of the risible start and a new whole plot. It turns out she was an aggressive territorial expansionist, albeit a pathetic digger. The Inelegant Gardener did her best “feeble female” look, and I agreed to dig the new allotment. A task I was to complete some 18 months later, almost exactly two years ago.CIMG0807

A risible start to the digging of the whole plot, April 2007

As under-gardener my principle tasks are digging and construction: sheds, paths, compost bins and the like. It’s rather satisfying work compared to my day job, which mostly concerns generating abstractions inside a computer. Allotment work produces tangible output: an hours digging produces a patch of turned soil and a bucket of roots. Construction produces sturdy, useful structures of which a man can be proud. As a result of this toil I am able to identify perennial weeds purely from their roots: dock, bindweed, nettles, couch grass, horsetails, ground elder. I sometimes worry that The Inelegant Gardener will pimp me out to other allotmenteers for digging work.

The Inelegant Gardener is still subject to unrealistic fancies, having directed me to spread about a ton of farmyard manure on the potato-patch-to-be she seemed to believe the worms would quickly incorporate it into the soil. Bollocks would they, not in two weeks, not without the aid of little squad of wormy JCBs! It was muggins wot’ dug in the manure. I still think potatoes are magic though, turning over the soil with a fork and white egg-shaped edible things appearing – it’s magic. More realistically the potatoes came out all manner of shapes and sizes, several years they suffered from blight.

For us allotmenteering is a bit of fun, if a crop fails it doesn’t matter. Seeing the blight-wilted potato-tops and unearthing the rotten, stinking tubers gives an insight into what it is to rely so closely on the vagaries of nature for your livelihood. Seasonality becomes much more obvious; despite being relatively clued up about agriculture in truth I had little sense of when what vegetables were in season. Now I know, and it’s cabbage for most of the winter. Currently in season are courgettes (bloody hundreds of them), carrots, sweetcorn, potatoes, mangetoute, French beans, raspberries, beetroot. It’s fair to say we haven’t entirely cracked planting appropriate quantities, to start with we had one or two exemplars of any particular vegetable per meal, now we have massive, short-lived gluts.

We achieved a crop on our second visit to the allotment or rather Henry, a fellow allotmenteer, gave us some produce to keep us interested. He has continued to provide advice ever since, but now we swap vegetables and fruit. When we started only a small fraction of the plots on our colony were in cultivation, and Henry seemed to be keeping the place alive. These days most of the site is cultivated, it’s a friendly sort of place – most people will stop to say a few words as they pass on their way to their own plots. I can do a passable impression of a someone who knows how to grown stuff, if interrogated.

Our other neighbour at the allotments keeps chickens, at one point they had free range across the whole site they would come and supervise digging, jumping into the trench at inopportune moments to pluck out a tasty grub. Nowadays they are behind chicken wire, but still come to the fence if you’re digging or weeding by them, making approving clucking noises. There is something very reassuring about this companionship.

These days the allotment is looking almost ship-shape, at least it does when we’ve caught up with all the weeds. I continue to be proud of my construction efforts.CIMG0844

New paths! June 2010

Jul 10 2010

The Lake District – Santon Bridge

Wast Water with Great Gable

Once again we return to the Lake District for a holiday. This time to Santon Bridge, close to the foot of Wast Water, at Hallflat Farm where we have a one bedroom converted cowshed rather more modern feeling than our previous stays in the Lake District with rather fine exposed wooden beams making it feel almost tent-like. The farm has been turned over completely to tourism, with half a dozen or so rentable units. We have a little area to sit out in the sunshine and neighbours to whom we can merely nod if we so desire. Shopping seems to be best done at the village store in Gosforth, a few miles down the road. There are local great-spotted woodpeckers the male apparently sports a natty red beret, the female is a little more subtle. Mrs SomeBeans managed to capture some video, I’ve never had a clear sight of a greater-spotted woodpecker – here they’re regular visitors to the bird feeder outside the kitchen.

It is traditional for each Lake District holiday that I show Mrs SomeBeans a campsite with it’s distant toilet block and flimsy canvas walls and highlight the comparison with the great luxury in which we stay. I saw much of Europe and the UK from a tent as a child, and whilst this no doubt greatly broadened my horizons I intend never to sleep under canvas (or nylon) again.

Last year we stayed at Chapel Stile in Great Langdale, a fine location from which we walked everyday with only one brief trip in the car to the head of the valley to ascend Bow Fell (whose head remained steadfastly in cloud). The cottage we stayed in was good, with an excellent kitchen the only drawback slightly restricted parking (not a problem if you never use the car) and rather limited outdoor seating. My parents honeymooned at the Dungeon Ghyll Hotel (famous amongst climbers), a mile or so up the road from our cottage. For shopping we used the local village general store which furnished our needs admirably, providing in addition to food, two very light macs which turned out to be rather useful. The previous two years we stayed in Borrowdale, at Rosthwaite, again providing walks from the door for most of a week. A slightly quieter location with fewer neighbours. Shopping this time was in Keswick, or rather Booths – a rather fine slatey version of Waitrose.

Alfred Wainwright is the undisputed king of the Lakes for people like us, not only was he intensely well-organised – planning his fantastic guides to be completed over a 13 year period which he hit almost to the week, he was fond of peaks and hated people. We differ only slightly in that we like the valleys too, and enjoy the wide variety of nature. A successful days walk for us is one in which me meet no other people and see some interesting nature: sundews, butterwort (carnivorous plants), miscelleous beetles, birds, orchids, and rocks. It’s unlikely that Wainwright strode along the broader, flatter paths with the Imperial March from Star Wars running through his mind, which is what Mrs SomeBeans and I do – it’s the syncopation of marching foot on gravel path.

What we did on our holidays this year (sounds like a school project):

Sunday: We venture out on a short walk of our own devising over to Nether Wasdale, part way around it starts raining VERY heavily, and we trudge through the rain for an hour and a half or so. Towards the end my well water-proofed boots are squelching vigorous and I struggle to identify any part of my body which is not wet. On our return to the cottage I wring out my socks. In the afternoon we head out to the local countryside: visiting Seascale, neighbour of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant, Drigg (low level waste disposal). Ravenglass (we return here for a walk on Friday), sporting the terminus of a dinky steam railway. Later we head up towards Eskdale Green, a mile or so from Boot where the Cumbrian shooter finally met his own end. We’d passed flowers by the roadside on the way to Seascale (a grim settlement whipped by the wind, featuring much gray concrete render). Eskdale, in which Boot lies, is different – almost fairy tale with heavily mossed deciduous woodland and little crags.

Steam train at Ravenglass

Monday: we do a walk from “the book” (#12 Wast Water and Irton Fell), taking in the foot of Wast Water and heading up Irton Fell. The walk is very varied with some meadow on the valley floor, lake side, steep brackened climb, forestry woodland, and high moor. The view up Wast Water towards Great Gable (scaled on a previous holiday) is excellent. Nature-wise we catch our first sight of sundew, a very large caterpillar and note we are walking on granite, not the slate of Borrowdale. Very few people seen.

Tuesday: a trip to Ennerdale to walk around the Water and then onto St Bees where we looked in rock pools. We did the book-walk (#13) around Ennerdale Water, although it’s a very simple affair. The path on the left of the lake is a forestry road, and hence well-made, we met no-one on this stretch although a few vehicles passed us in each direction. The path back along the right of the lake is much more rugged and was much busier, this is part of the coast to coast path. For lunch, naturally overlooking the lake, we were joined by a frog. St Bees and Egremont seem to have seen better days, they both have quite significant buildings (St Bees a smart school, a hall and a large church) which don’t seem consistent with their current situation. Honeysuckle seems to be the flower of the week.

Wednesday: another trip of our own devising, today the weather was uncertain in the morning so we made a relatively late start to walking (10am). We parked close to Nether Wasdale and went up to Whin Rigg and then on to Illgill Head then dropping down into Wasdale Head. As it was clouds wafted across us for an hour or so in the morning then it cleared, and as we finished walking just before 4pm it was fairly clear and sunny. For the first time on a walk, Mrs SomeBeans and I parted ways at Wasdale Head. I walked along the near shore of Wast Water, whilst Mrs S. took the road. This was for fear of the screes, probably justified, there are two bands of scree: the first is fairly civilised with a path across it. The second is rather more challenging, with no discernable path just a jumble of boulders of man-size and above. I collected an impressive scrape on the approach to the screes, spotting a distant Mrs S across the lake apparently pulling ahead I hurried on rather quicker than was wise and ended up head first in bracken! I am forming a fine scab, the like of which I have not had since childhood.

Thursday: We walked up Overbeck to Dore Head from where fantastic views of Pillar and into Mosedale are available. The original plan was to head up on a great loop over Red Pike but this turned out to be a bit over-ambitious. We contemplated Yewbarrow which looks quite difficult to get onto, Wainwright appears to agree but finds a easier route. Cows were used in the valley, and each cowpat had it’s own little forest of mushrooms.

Friday: A wet day with intermittent showers most the morning as we did the Ravenglass and Muncaster walk (#15), this is a fairly long walk (7 miles) well suited to the poor weather, with a large fraction of the route under cover of trees and relatively low altitude – even so we briefly entered cloud on the Muncaster ridge. Highlights were the ruins of a Roman Bath on the outskirts of Ravenglass, these ruins comprise walls several metres above ground level including complete arches and an alcove, very few Roman ruins in the UK extend above ground level. A second highlight was a infestation of tiny frogs on a forest path.

Tiny frog!
Ravenglass Roman Baths

All in all not a bad holiday, weather about par for the Lake District with 2 days seriously affected by rain, and the rest threatening rain at some point. Not as much big mountain walking as we have done in the past, but more varied with trips to the seaside. The area feels quieter than the central areas of the Lake District, with free or honesty box parking. Once again mobile phones entirely useless for the entire length of the holiday due to lack of reception.

Apr 04 2010

Caerwys – a breezy spring walk

Off to Afon-wen and Caerwys today for a brisk walk featuring steep walking through woods, spring flowers, llamas, highland cows and a newt. You can see the route here:


View Caerwys in a larger map

It’s a walk from “Walking in the Clwydian Range” by Carl Rogers, real men make up their own walks from OS maps and scouting missions but I’m lazy. A cool spring day today, in the distance we could still see the odd patch of snow on the hillsides. The trees were bare but the flowers had started to come out:

Clockwise from top left: Primrose, violet, wood anemone, and celandine
There were many birds out, singing away enthusiastically. I was going to show a picture of a woodpecker which we heard tapping away very close by, but we didn’t see it so it would really have been a conceptual piece so I’d like you take that conceptuality one step further and imagine a picture of a tree with an unseen woodpecker in it. Caerwys is the home of llamas, which I also treat with a degree of respect, since they spit if you offend them:

Although it’s a very rural location there are both signs of modern industrialisation in the from of quarries and sandpits and also the remnants of older work, including this lime kiln:

And also this rather creepy corrugated iron building which put me in mind of “Jeepers Creepers” or “Deliverance“:

With a vivid imagination, a walk in the countryside is never boring! We walked through the village of Caerwys, which is quite pretty – many of the houses seem to be well-made from the local limestone. No photos though, mainly because the streets were full of parked cars which are an aesthetic abomination and I don’t like photographing people’s houses in close up – it seems rude. However, I had no qualms about photographing this fine house across Ysceifiog Lake which was created for fishing by the Earl of Denbigh in 1904:

We next passed through a small nature reserve: Y Ddol Uchaf, which is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) whose information board promised newts, and lo – I saw that there were newts and it was good:

On the final stretch back to the car we were treated to these handsome chickens:

And some Highland cows, we first sighted some of these in the distance across a field then we passed close by to another group behind a photography unfriendly fence then eventually coming to some easily accessible ones in photogenic mud:

This one, is the bull in the group, I’m a country lad and was easily able to identify him as such by dint of his sizeable testicles (which I refrained from photographing):

So there you go, a memorial of our Easter Sunday walk immortalised for when I am old and incapable of leaving the house.

Feb 21 2010

The Misanthrope

This is a blog post about other people, and their cow-like impassiveness whilst obstructing the path of the righteous. It’s also a chance to be a bit pretentious since I discover that Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in his play, “No Exit”:  that “L’enfer, c’est les autres” or “Hell is other people”, and the title of this blog post itself is that of a play by Moliere.


Mrs SomeBeans and I have just returned from holiday, so the focus of today’s rant is largely the people we have come across in the process (v. nice holiday, some pictures here). A similar species can be found around most supermarkets, on the streets of Llangollen.

It starts off in the airport, where mysterious large groups of sociable people travel together, weird extended families. Typically you’ll first meet an outrider in the queue to check-in (for us this usually happens at about 5am when we are not at the peak of our reasonableness), but then a gathering horde appear who can’t join the back of the queue: they have to join in front of you with the outrider. And nothing is simple for them, once at the check-in desk there is a great shuffling of passports and luggage as they casually mention that one member of the group will be along shortly.

Then there’s the security control, here my ire is split between authorities and punters. I mean, how the hell am I going to injure anyone with Lipsalve? To credit the cow-people they slowly seem to be coming around to the idea that they have to do a load of weird stuff for the benefit of security theatre. 


Then there are the duty-free shops, I’ll ask the rhetorical question “Why, oh why is so much space committed to the sale of duty-free which could so much more usefully be dedicated to something useful like seating?”. I know the answer, it’s because shops pay rent, punters are just self-loading cargo. It doesn’t make me less angry. I spent an hour in Salzburg’s post-security hell-hole wondering how best to foment revolution. I considered standing on a bin and urging the crowded mass to invade the duty-free shop and cast the merchandise to the floor, and lie down upon the vacated shelves.

Then you get on the plane, and it seems no one has planned for this eventuality and spends 10 minutes taking things out of their carry-on bag, putting the bag in the overhead locker, sitting down, standing up, taking more things out of the bag and putting some away again, repeat. All the while the cabin crew keep saying “Please get on and sit down so we can take off”.

Then you get off the plane and a group of teenagers have made it down the stairs off the plane and just stopped dead at the bottom. This is a recurring theme: there are places to stand, an infinity of them, where you disrupt no one elses business. However, the cow-people seek out those places where they maximally obstruct others, gazing at each other with cow-like eyes, lowing gently.

Next is baggage reclaim. At the risk of sounding like an old fogey here, there’s no way that my parents would have let me frolic about the luggage carousels in the airport, as modern children seem to be encouraged (partly because we never flew to go on holiday). There’d definitely be sharp words and clips round ear, but not these days. If it was down to me I’d be equipping luggage carousels with special finger-slicing blades.

Skiing offers special opportunities for standing in the way like a cow-person; ski lifts are natural constrictions: a world of skiers is funnelled into a narrow gap, through electronic barriers to some lifting device. So naturally you’ll find half-wits that zoom into the constriction and only then decide that they cannot proceed without friends or family. And you try acting nimbly whilst wearing skis. The people featured here:


… look like they acting purposefully, but they’re not – they’re dithering.


Naturally, through all of this we never say a word. Except now.

Feb 21 2010

Westendorf

Mrs SomeBeans and I have been skiing for the last week, and this is a small set of photos from our trip. The family will be subjected to the full 120 photos but you, gentle reader, get the edited version. We went skiing in Westendorf, in the Austrian Tirol, this is where we learnt to ski in January 2001 (a tale of misery, pain and addiction).

On our return we discovered that Westendorf was the village my mum visited most summers. We’ve been back a few times since, each time there are a few more ski lifts, pistes and restaurants to try. Last week was half-term in the UK and several European countries, so airports and so forth were pretty busy. We managed to avoid most of the crowds by making an earlier morning start and keeping to the quieter bits of the mountain.

The first few days of our trip were cold and clear, actually that’s not quite true, it was clear at the top of the mountain and murky at the bottom because of an inversion layer (meterologists: feel free to correct me)

The cold weather was associated with snow, which covered the trees:

We saw sundogs, once again, but I found them impossible to photograph using my compact camera, however I did catch an okayish picture of a related effect – the pillar of light is a real effect you can see with your own eyes – not lens flare.

If I’d have dropped down the slope a little to take the photo the brightest spot would be floating a little way above the ground. Mrs SomeBeans saw this but kept quiet, assuming she was hallucinating! I believe it’s caused by a reflection of sun from aligned plate-shaped ice crystals in the air.

Over the last few years there’s been a big change in ski wear – most people now wear ski helmets, here you can see me sporting my new purchase:

Mum was with us this time, she’s a bit leery of trying downhill skiing but does a bit of cross country skiing:

You’ll notice that few people feature in my photos, this is because I am something of a misanthrope – more of which later. As we left Westendorf it was snowing once again… and we returned to England yesterday to more snow overnight.