It's always sunny in Yorkshire, except when it's not

Back in the summer, I was on my way to watch football in Tadcaster. There were bank holiday engineering works, and transport mayhem had been predicted, so I left home in plenty of time. I need not have worried, and found myself in Leeds with a couple of hours to spare for a wander with the camera. I therefore did what any self-respecting person finding themselves in Yorkshire should do and started walking back towards Lancashire.

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal was built to serve industry, but now provides green space in the city.

Where the canal crosses under the western approach of Leeds station, there is a mural telling us of Yorkshire values.

Ee ...

... ba ...

... gum

It is where I found the title for this post. It is a valid point.

Swans are always good for a photo.

A mile or so out of the city, someone had left some advice.

It soon became apparent it would be a long walk home, so it was time to get back to the city, and the bus to the football.

On the way back, I passed Emmerdale - I remember when it was a farm, but like so much else it has become a fairly anonymous warehouse, one that did not even merit a photo. Up to this point, I had enjoyed its always being sunny in Yorkshire, but it demonstrated when it is not with a ten minute downpour, which brightened up the roses. White is traditional in these parts, but I had to work with what I found in Park Square.

On the sporting, and LGBT, theme, Olympic Boxing champion Nicola Adams has the post boxes for her gold medals in London and Rio.

It is probably not that well known that Leeds has two Bishops. The Catholic one has a Cathedral, neatly tucked away opposite the Art Gallery.

The Anglican Bishop has three cathedrals -  none of them in Leeds.

The rest of the pictures from the day can be seen on Google Photos here for those who like to see apertures and the suchlike, and on Facebook with some captions here.

Remember, it's always sunny in Yorkshire - except when it's not.

Out & about Summer 2014

In the past, I have used this blog just for those photos where I have something to write about, and put the rest of my non sports photos on Facebook. However, I know a few photography entusiasts who like to see metadata - focal lengths, exposures etc., so I shall put a link on here, as the information is available viewing in Google+, whereas it is not on Facebook.

So, here goes for the first collection, with some from the Giant Spectacular in Liverpool over the summer ...

Grandma Giant & Little Girl Giant

... a wet weekend in Scarborough ...

A Yorkshire special offer

... and a mainly nocturnal walk in London.

Looking east from the Millennium Footbridge

The collection on Google+ can be seen here.

Train spotting

There's one!

Not the best view you will ever see of a train on the Bluebell Railway's Hill Place Viaduct

On 1st August 1882, Francis Whitehurst, soon to become the tenant of Hill Place Farm in East Grinstead, saw the first service train crossing the viaduct to which the farm gave its name. This was not the scene from the 1830s, with people and livestock scattering from the spark spitting, smoke belching monster. Locomotive design had advanced to make a more civilised beast: the Bluebell Railway, who now own the viaduct, still operate two locomotives, No 55 Stepney, and No 72 Fenchurch from that time.

Works plate from Fenchurch, the oldest railway locomotive continuously in service in Britain

The first railway reached East Grinstead in 1853, cutting through the neighbouring Copyhold Farm, a slightly misleading name, as all farms in Imberhorne Manor were copyhold until they were enfranchised in the 1850s. The name was preserved in 1921, when East Grinstead Council built Copyhold Road, its first social housing, on the other side of the viaduct from the picture above.

Francis left Hill Place in around 1896, when the Blount family of Imberhorne Manor purchased the freehold to farm it with their own staff, increasing revenue without increasing costs, and avoiding the fate of many estates in the agricultural depression of the late Victorian years. He went to farm as a tenant of the Ford Manor estate in Dormansland, until he retired to the village a couple of years before his death in 1926.

My great-great grandfather's last farm

Not that our family's association with Imberhorne was over. A couple of deaths in quick succession in the 1950s meant the Blount family had to sell a substantial part of the estate to pay death duties. Most went to housing, but some was used to build Imberhorne School. In 1974, Francis' great granddaughter, my mother, needed a job fitting my school holidays, and where better to find one than in a school? She worked at Imberhorne for 25 years until her death in 1999.

With this connection, I was keen to catch a shot when the Bluebell Railway started their service to East Grinstead on March 23rd. My plan was scuttled by unseasonable weather between my home and East Grinstead. So, I travelled a couple of weeks later, following the Medway from Maidstone, where I had watched the Isthmian League Cup Final, to its source, taking the picturesque Medway Valley Line to Tonbridge, then, in a reverse of the East Grinstead Song, the 291 bus from Tunbridge Wells.

When Channel 4 made a documentary in 1985 called God Rot Tunbridge Wells, about the composer Handel, the title based on his reported comment after a bad reception at a concert in the town, my mother remarked what a sensible man Handel must have been - she could not stand the place. I found it quite pleasant, but when I had checked the time on the Millennium Clock ...

... looked round the museum and the Church of King Charles the Martyr (attended by Princess Victoria before she became Queen), and perambulated through the Pantiles (originally surfaced with tiles shaped in pans) ...

... I felt I had exhausted all it had to offer the casual visitor.

The Bluebell were still running their opening gala service, with a train up and down the line about every hour and a quarter, so I did not have long to wait.

The view from the train includes some of my great-great-grandfather's fields, although not the farmhouse, hidden from view by more recent buildings.

Turning back to our first picture, I would have found a better place to stand to get the train in if I had paid attention to a picture from earlier in the day. For some reason I thought in front of the tree peeping up from below the parapet might be a good vantage point.

Garden Wood Road from the Viaduct

Our journey has also been following Francis' middle son Alfred, my great-great uncle. He was born in view of the viaduct when it was being built, spent most of his life in Groombridge, through which I came on the 291, and died in hospital a few hundred yards from this picture. Our last task of the day is to pay our respects, in Dormansland, where he shares a grave with my mother and grandmother.

We can see how cold the spring has been, we are well into April, but the daffodils (remnants of those planted in 1964 - I keep thinking about planting more, but usually at the wrong time of year) have still to bloom.

There are some more pictures from the trip here.

Completing the walk in the woods

In 2011 I started a small photo project called A Walk in the Woods. I say started, which suggests a deliberate plan: I got lost taking what I thought was a short cut to a rugby game, and used the camera and 70-300mm lens I had in my bag to take pictures of the flora of the woods in which I found myself.

There was no particular intention to avoid the fauna, but when I capture a plant, it is at least in the most part judgment, as I will have time to look at it and get the angle that I hope will make an attractive picture. If I capture an animal, particularly a wild animal, I class it as luck, as I will need to see the creature, have the right lens on, point, focus, shoot and get a picture, preferably of its face rather than its backside, all before it runs away. Whilst I enjoy the stories of outstanding patience accompanying some of the photos in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibitions, I am not tempted to emulate them, these albums are called a walk in the woods for a reason.

This consideration does not apply, as anyone who has been to Seurasaari Open Air Museum or Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki will confirm, to Finnish squirrels, which happily pose for you.

"Päiväâ!"

I posted the results of the first four walks, and took the photos for the fifth at the beginning of November.

However, I forgot to edit and publish them. Still, not to worry, it would not be long before I would be out to get again to catch the woods in the snow.

I had to think again, as there was one morning of snow last winter, which had melted almost as soon as I had got my boots on. So, I had to wait a year before completing the set.

Our woods are on the Wirral Peninsula, which has a very mild micro climate, so even when it has been snowing, there is no thick blanket, more a white highlight on the plants, which makes for easier lighting.

The rest of the pictures from part 5 can be seen here, and those from part 6 here.

The Autumn trip home

Over the last few years, it has become my habit to go home in the autumn.

St John the Evangelist Dormansland, Autumn 2005

It is a quick trip. In the spring and summer, if I am in London and have time to spare, I often head out into the Surrey Hills or the High Weald, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, both excellent walking country. I pass on that in the autumn, as it is not the weather for it, and it is usually a Saturday in the football season, so I want to get back to London for the match.

When I was growing up, Dormansland, and east Surrey generally, was a fairly quiet backwater. Although it was in easy reach of London, and many people commuted, it was not stockbroker belt like the rest of the county, a spot for those in the know. Whilst I do not live or have family there any more, I get the impression that a lot of that has gone. There is one reason - frequent electric trains, making for a more attractive commute. They had been talking about electrifying the line from Croydon to East Grinstead since 1938, and it finally happened in 1987.

Not that it has made much change to the journey, past the Downs with the trees still changing colour, a few weeks later than back in the north, the long downhill run to the Eden, not quite such a bouncy ride as the old trains, then climbing again towards East Grinstead, more quietly than the Diesels.

It was a dull grey day this year, so when I got my camera out (my little Wildfire phone on this occasion), I knew I would not be getting anything like the picture above. The trees still gave a splash of colour in our wood that used to be a field.

When my mother died 13 years ago, I buried her with her mother, who died at the tail end of the first post War polio epidemic in 1947. With my grandfather not being around - my best guess is he headed back home with the Canadian Army, well there was a war on - my mother was brought up by her grandparents, who had been born in the 1880s, which may explain why I can be a bit Victorian.

The main purpose of the trip is to perform some routine maintenance on my mother's memorial. When I arrived, the firm who maintain the churchyard were finishing their work, and everything looked neat and tidy. When I was growing up, Ernie Walls, a lifelong resident of the village, worked on the churchyard into his seventies and eighties. When you look closely, you can see the difference between work done by a committed volunteer and a professional team. The people who maintain the grounds do their job well, the paths and grass are always immaculate. I am not sure if Mr Walls was paid for his work, but he went well beyond any hours for which he may have been remunerated, and the difference shows in the individual plots.

My mother, grandmother and great great uncle

My great great uncle Alfred is keeping his memorial above the rising ground, my mother is easily made visible again by clearing the leaves and a good stout pull at the encroaching grass, but my grandmother is lost to record - there is a now buried kerb on the left to match that you can still see on the right. Even the Gravestone Photographic Resource, a voluntary effort to record information in churchyards and cemeteries before they disappear to overgrowth, erosion and, sadly, in some cases vandalism, came too late to record her details.

Mr Walls was looking after his friends, relatives and people he had known in his long life in the village. When I was growing up, there were a dozen people I could think of who shared his knowledge, all now gone or frail, and with modern mobility, no lifelong residents to replace them. With them goes the motivation to sweep the leaves, trim the grass and edge the kerbs of the individual plots, a task that takes more time than could realistically be paid for.

After my maintenance, there is time to walk around to pay my respects to those I knew myself, those I knew by name, those who played their part over the years in the life of the village, and some who played their part in our national life - a Member of Parliament, an England rugby union player, a Dean of Arches, and two who signed up to serve their country in the First World War, but died in accidents before they left these shores.

On these trips I often have time to round off with a quick trip to the Plough - a constant beer range, with the Harveys Sussex Best always well kept - before heading back to London.

There was no time for that this time, as the football was out of London, in Burgess Hill, so I had to leave only just after they opened, one less roadside hostelry to be visited from here to there.

Once in a Blue Moon every Preston Guild

Most people are familiar with the expression "once in a blue moon" to describe something that does not happen very often. Less familiar to those outside northern England is "once every Preston Guild".

There are 2 popular definitions of a blue moon: the older being the third full moon in a quarter (between solstice and equinox) with four full moons; the newer being the second full moon in a calendar month. By the second definition, the full moon at the end of August was blue. It also coincided with the funeral of Neil Armstrong. As an aside, my mother told me I fell asleep during the television coverage of the Moon landings, but to be fair, I was only 1 at the time.

Whichever definition you prefer, a blue moon occurs 7 times every 19 years.

A Preston Guild is an event with formal ceremonies, accompanied by processions, exhibitions and performances, the only survivor in England of the mediaeval Guilds Merchant. It takes place, as the event's publicity tells us, every 20 years. Strictly speaking, that should be every 20 years except when there is a war on - a sequence of Guilds every 20 years since 1542 was interrupted by the Second World War, with the next Guild taking place in 1952. This year saw Preston's first Guild as a City, the status having been awarded to commemorate The Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002.

The Guild Court, the main formal event of the Guild, is on the Monday after the Feast of the Beheading of St John the Baptist, on 29th August, so our blue moon neatly coincided with the start of the Guild.

As well as the formal ceremonies, some of the most visible parts of the Guild are the processions - Trade, Community, Torchlight and Churches. The last is the newest - until 1992 each of the three main churches in Preston each had their own procession. In 1992 they combined, and this year, it was expanded to include all the churches in the City and outlying areas. I was aware that the city has a strong church tradition - one possible derivation of the name is from "Priests' Town"; it is reputed to have been founded by St Wilfrid, and the emblem of the city of the Lamb of God, with the letters PP standing for "Princeps Pacem", or Prince of Peace.

However, even I was surprised by the scale of the event, with nearly 200 floats and groups of walking participants. Each of the churches or groups of churches had their own design, using the theme of The Living Christ, and incorporating the six Guild themes of Creative, People's, Merchant, Green, International and Welcome.

The participants ranged from the traditional ...

... through depictions of characters from the Bible and Christian history ...

... to a few that were a bit more colourful...

... and some bands that did not necessarily have much to do with church, but kept the parade flowing along.

Even The Queen came along, in the company of the Scouts.

The church at which I worship is not in the Preston area, but if it had been, I suspect our contribution would have been one of the more traditional processions. I might even have taken the thurible along: I am surprised none of the churches did, although as the procession took over an hour and a half, the biggest logistical problem would have been disposal of the ash.

I am not sure when the next blue moon falls so as to coincide with a Preston Guild. As the moon is on a 19 year cycle, and the Guild is every 20 years, the next time the cycles exactly coincide is in 380 years, but there are 7 blue moons in the cycle, so there may be other coincidences. These can, however, only use the definition of the second full moon in a month - the third full moon in a quarter cannot be late enough in August to fall after the Beheading of St John the Baptist and still have time for another full moon before the autumn equinox.

Some more pictures from the day, and some from around Preston can be seen here.

A strange place to put a castle

Mention a castle, and most people have a mental picture - an imposing stone building of varying states of preservation, on a prominent site, with views of the surrounding land. It would probably not be tucked away in the middle of a wood. However, on my way to a football game in Buckley, I went to see one in just such a location, at Ewloe in Flintshire.

The castle was built by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last of the Welsh Princes of Wales, after he had reconquered this part of Wales from the Anglo-Norman Lords in 1257. It sits, conventionally in this respect, on a sandstone outcrop between two streams, which defend it from the north, east and west, even if the woods make it difficult to see anyone approaching.

The woods have not grown up round the castle - they were there when it was built, the Chester Plea Rolls of 1311 refer to a report sent to Edward II, advising that Llywelyn had captured Ewloe in 1257 and "built a castle in the wood". They now form part of Wepre Park, managed by Flintshire County Council, and are a Site of Special Scientific Interest, as semi ancient broadleaf woodland.

The Castle's main weakness lies to the south, as it is overlooked by higher ground - the land continues to rise behind the camera position.

Given this, it is not surprising that, unlike nearby Hawarden, it did not see action in 1276 when Edward I's armies drove Llywelyn back to Gwynedd Uwch Conwy (west of the River Conwy). Edward's forces had no need for it, and it was allowed to fall into ruin.

The castle is managed by CADW, who I have found to look after their sites well, but sometimes fall down on their signage. This was a case in point. The road was signposted in Ewloe village, and there was a helpful sign on the road to tell you that you were nearly there, but when it came to the footpath across a field that gives access to the site, the only sign was for the park, and as we have established, the castle is not visible for miles around.

Talking of signs, I spotted this one on a bench.

I think the left part is encouraging priority in using the bench to be given to people with restricted mobility, but the right defeats me.