Enjoying retirement
In The Red Rose County
Day 1 and a T20 match at Old Trafford (Lancashire thrash Notts). In the interval we walked along to the 'other' Old Trafford as I wanted to see the Hotel Football set up by Gary Neville. We had a drink there...what a tawdry place. I was quite happy however to see the statues of Best, Charlton and Law - proper football heroes. Day 2 and we decided to go back to Trawden from which base we had done our house-hunting. It was as we remembered, a pretty, strung-out village. In fact immensely long. We did the circular walk to Wycoller, with the usual mix for the area of pasture, moors and woods..... There were some very interesting stiles on the route. Here one you had to climb up to. I really must write up something about the huge variety and regional contrast of stiles you can find. This little oasis had been created since we were last here. I can't imagine many visitors. The wood leads you down to Wycoller........ ....where you cross a clapper bridge (last seen in Cornwall)......... to roam around the ruins of Wycoller Hall thought to have been visited a lot by Charlotte Bronte on her rambles ( she walked a heck of a lot further than we did! ). It is only a tiny hamlet, but quite special....... .......we called in the new community pub (for which locals raised 500k), the Trawden Arms. I expected to find a great atmosphere and a warm welcome. But really there was no atmosphere and we felt very much outsiders. Everyone kept to themselves. Not what I expected from a community pub at all. Never mind.
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Chetham's School is an amazing place. It was the collegiate foundation for the parish church (now the Cathedral), and together thr church and college buildings represent one of the largest and most complete examples of a late medieval collegiate foundation in the country - of national importance both architecturally and historically. If the Cathedral were in an archetypal historic town like Lincoln or York we would rave about it. Because it is in the archetypal industrial city we tend to overlook its magnificence. But we were here today not to admire the buildings and library which itself is of international importance (the oldest public Library in the English speaking world). We were here for a talk on some of the diaries held by the Library. The talk was by the archivist Jane Muskett, and she had pulled out some of the diaries which she regarded fondly. Some old and very precious (not to be touched) and some more contemporary ones (still not to be touched!). The talk was fascinating and given by someone who has great enthusiasm for her work, and probably doesn't get the chance very often to show it. The first diary (which was right under my nose) was an anonymous diary of someone who went with the Earl of Sandwich on his extraordinary embassy to Spain in 1666, which contains an early day by day account in the back of the fire of London. A rare survivor. The next, Edmund Harrold’s early eighteenth-century diary, is well known for its record of the writer’s sex life, his bouts of drunkenness and his often comically fumbling attempts at courtship, but is also full of religious meditation on his sins. Fascinating, and beautiful in its way, was the diary of Dora Turnor, a sickly teenager who documented her privileged life in Lincolnshire and in Belgravia in the 1870s. She was mostly confined to her room and therefore had plenty of time to write and sketch. We then have a collection of over two hundred diaries produced by four generations of the Leech family of Manchester. This is one of the largest collections of diaries ever produced by a single family, beginning with a childhood journal from 1815 and ending with a series of journals and notebooks from the early twenty-first century. One of the 'diaries' was that of the family car which recorded every trip, every repair, every last thing you could imagine about the car. It runs from 1926 to 1935. An absorbing hour and a half. Our evening proved just as good. We were treated to a wonderful rendering of Rachmaninov's famous second piano concerto, a modern piece by the astonishingly named Missy Mazzoli (very good) and, to end, a swaggering Dvorak's Eigth Symphony. All brilliant.
A huge traffic jam delayed our progress but, before going to Chester, we were going to see the Duke of Westminster's gardens at Eaton hall, which are only open three times per year. Extensive they certainly were but to be honest I was not impressed. We have seen much better gardens on our travels. Still, they allowed us to wind down from the traffic jam! I liked the long grass in the orchard. However the Camellia house which boasts it is the largest in Britain had but a few solitary blooms and was very disappointing. Surely camellias don't need to be under glass anyhow? Older houses had been on the site, the latest by Alfred Waterhouse, but as these deteriorated they were knocked down in the Sixties and odd buildings left intact. A new house was built, but its design was not considered to be sympathetic to the local landscape, and in the late 1980s it was 're-cased' and given the appearance of a French château. There were some very impressive carriages in the stables. Here is the inner courtyard of the Victorian Waterhouse building......the statue is very fine. Hunting must remain in the blood........ What we did appreciate much more than the grounds of the Hall was the Estate villages which all had beautiful brick houses with blue design work. We took a back road to Chester and there were some very fine houses indeed leading into the suburb of Handbridge. Our destination was the Abode hotel. We had one of the better class rooms which was very spacious and with a lovely view...... The views from the 5th floor restaurant where we had a light lunch were brilliant too. Suitable refreshed we set off on our first planned walk around the North-West quarter, admiring many fine houses (there were merchants houses all the way down Watergate to the River. God's Providence House is so-called because of the carved inscription (also found on other Chester houses whose owners survived the plague). We ascended to the old butchers' row..... Luckily The Rows seem to be picking up with specialist traders and the likes of Waterstones encouraging customers to head aloft. Bishop Lloyd's Palace built in 1615 supports biblical scenes...... Another palace we hoped to visit later (not open to the public, but I had been in touch with a Trustee) is the Stanley Palace. Built as a town house for Sir Peter Warburton in 1591, it has since been apartments, a boys' school, and a museum. Stanley Place contains fine Georgian houses on both sides........ and nearly all have elegant bootscrapers. We passed the Victorian terracotta frontage of the Queen's School and next-door the house where the Georgian doctor John Haygarth practiced. He did a lot of work on preventing fever and small pox. We soon arrived at Telford's Warehouse, alongside the Shropshire Union Canal, now converted to a very popular bar. and walked along the canal basin with some good apartments (some student accommodation). The roving bridge was interesting built for horses to cross over whilst still maintaining their towrope. Walking further along the canal we noted some very nice apartments and houses...... We returned to the City walls and found the sculpture depicting a broken cannon together with a broken barrel from which lies a spilled cannon ball. It commemorates the Siege of Chester, during the First English Civil War. There are a surprising number of Roman remains (some under shops)....... Wherever you walk in Chester there is something to admire in the street architecture and houses. The building next to the Red Lion (now an Italian restaurant, so we didn't feel able to explore the Fifteenth Century braced kingpost roof) has parts which may date from the Eleventh Century. This back lane is within the old Abbey precincts and may be the medieval Bell Lane. Here the Little Abbey Gateway. The lane led to what was the Westminster Coach and Motor Works, now nicely converted and in front of it some Roman column bases. After an average meal at the hotel we strolled the streets once more Next morning we walked the circuit of the Walls. Here the castle the river Dee the Fourteenth Century Grosvenor Bridge bleak Seventies flats (along with two atrocious car parks the biggest eyesores in Chester) many fine streets abutting the Walls........ When we reached the Roman Gardens we enjoyed watching some school groups training to be Roman soldiers..... But,past there, a group of derelict buildings just asking to be converted..... Here the footings of a Roman tower.... We took a pic of two Chinese girls at the Eastgate Clock. They reciprocated! Next was the Cathedral with its unusual modern belltower. Inside there was of course plenty to admire.........the Cloisters.... the Cloister Gardens.... .....masses of monuments.... ....a recently constructed Lego model...... a rather nice abstract window...... and the famous wood carvings...... .......splendid roofs...... .....old Norman fabric....... We had a small snack ( a cup of tea and one biscuit each) in the Refectory. Our afternoon's visit was to Beeston Castle which I had always wanted to see. The approach was dramatic. Our afternoon's visit was to Beeston Castle which I had always wanted to see. The approach was dramatic. Beeston Castle is a former Royal castle perched on a rocky sandstone crag 350 feet above the Cheshire Plain. It was built in the 1220s by Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester (1170–1232), on his return from the Crusades. In 1237, Henry III took over the ownership of Beeston, and it was kept in good repair until the 16th century, when it was considered to be of no further military use, although it was pressed into service again in 1643, during the English Civil War. The castle was slighted (partly demolished) in 1646, in accordance with Cromwell's destruction order, to prevent its further use as a bastion. During the 18th century, parts of the site were used as a quarry. The outer gatehouse contained a small and interesting museum, and the model of the castle gave some indication of how extensive the building was. The outer bailey seemed huge, and the views were extensive..... including in the distance Joddrell Bank.... The inner gatehouse was impressive.... and reached over a deep protective ditch......The defences consisted of two parts. Firstly, a rectangular castle on the summit of the hill, with a sheer drop on three sides and a defensive ditch up to 30 feet deep in places cut into the rock on the fourth side. Secondly, an outer bailey was built on the lower slopes, with the massive entry gatehouse protected by a 16-foot wide and 10-foot deep ditch. The outer bailey was roughly rectangular, with 6-foot thick walls faced in sandstone and infilled with rubble. The walls, parts of which still remain, contain a number of D-shaped towers, an innovation in English castles at that time. The towers allowed defenders to shoot across the walls as well as forwards, and their open-backed design meant that they would not offer cover to any attackers who gained access to the outer bailey. The inner bailey was on the rocky summit at the western end of the crag. To provide the castle's inhabitants with a supply of fresh water, two wells were dug into the rock; one of them, 370 feet deep. This is one of the deepest castle wells in England. We took the woodland walk on the way down and saw the reconstructed roundhouse...... Next stop for a light supper the well-known Pheasant at Burwardsley. Very pretty with fine views of its own...... And finally to The Churchill Tree at Alderley Edge, a fine new opening for the Cheshire Pub Co. It was once part of the sprawling Stanley family estate, originally used as a ballroom for lavish parties by the Stanley family who lived in the neighbouring Alderley Hall sadly destroyed by fire in 1931. It is very stylish, like one of its paintings which I like.....
MGS First XI were hosting the MCC today so we decided to combine watching the cricket with a tour of the school. The cricket was fascinating, not at all men against boys. When we left for lunch MGS had got 5 wickets. The first one was taken by one of Freddie Flintoff's sons (two of his sons were playing). We also learned that on the football team for MGS is the son of a certain Wayne Rooney. Sporting riches! On our tour with Simon Jones, Development Director we saw MGS's owl symbol everywhere, here on the front fence. But it was on every boy's blazer as of old (ie the Sixties when I was there). Simon was hugely enthusiastic about the school and its ethos as I am myself. And, as the largest public independent day school in the country, it continues to thrive - in lots of areas apart from just the academic (where of course it excels). It was interesting to see that much was the same and much had changed for the better. However it is still disappointing that out of roughly 1400 pupils around 230 are there by virtue of the Bursary Scheme. The Scheme needs to be much bigger ie with a much bigger endowment. One of the things that was new was the existence on site of a large and very successful Junior School. This is housed in what I would call homely wooden buildings. Indeed everywhere there was a seeming mish-mash of buildings, some not of the highest standard. Just that morning the cricket pavilion (where we otherwise might have sat) had been closed due to falling masonry. The fabric of the school as it is seems disjointed. Julie Wright from the Development Office had arranged everything for us and indeed took us to lunch in the canteen (fried hake which was a bit of a surprise). The canteen had not changed except that now it has to cater for an incredible number of dietary requirements because of the very multi-ethnic composition of the pupil body. We also met Rachel Kneale, the school's archivist who had looked out my hand-written entry to the school. It was interesting to see the varied occupations of the parents of my classmates in the Sixties, ranging from Swiss Consul to 'stripper' (cotton of course!). We didn't have time to explore the museum she has created although we will do so in future. Later that evening we went to another concert at the Halle. The programme included Sibelius Karelia Suite Beethoven Triple Concerto for violin, cello and piano Andrea Tarrodi Paradisfåglar II (Birds of Paradise) Sibelius Symphony No.7 "Undoubtedly one of the season’s highlights: this concert features the hugely anticipated Hallé debut of Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Completing a dream team of artists to perform Beethoven’s ‘Triple’ Concerto, Benjamin Grosvenor is no stranger to Hallé audiences, together with virtuosic violinist, Hyeyoon Park. Dalia Stasevska, Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, also makes her debut with the Hallé, framing the concert with music by Sibelius; the youthful Karelia Suite and the Seventh Symphony, his taut final word of symphonic mastery. The works of Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi have been described by BBC Music Magazine as having ‘a powerful emotional core’ as in her Paradisfåglar, ‘inspired by BBC Planet Earth films about the strange and beautiful birds of paradise, their many different colours, the way they fly, sound and sing’." My only disappointment was that Nicola Benedetti was due to play the violin part in the Concerto, but was ill. The last-minute replacement Hyeyoon Park was amazing though. A brilliant concert yet again (with a big audience - expecting Benedetti!). The days are getting more summery now and the following day's walk to Waddington was no exception.
It is always a pleasure to visit Kirkby Lonsdale, and today was no exception. We walked along the river and into town where we had another fine lunch at Plato's. Great chef, terrific short and reasonable menu. We then just wandered about (like tourists) finding some new areas and some delightful 'shutts' or passageways....... We discovered a new way back down to Devil's Bridge........ ....and spent a short time watching a cricket match between whatever the good school is in Kirkby Lonsdale and Sedbergh (judging by a mini-bus we saw earlier). Terrific ground. At the Bridge we decided to walk along the river in the opposite direction to what looked like a bridge on the OS map, but turned out to be an aqueduct. So we retraced our steps. A pleasant walk however. We drove home by a different remote route across the Trough, and passed by Wrysedale Tower, a superb viewpoint, but as it was quite hazy we shall reserve that for another day. We still managed to see Morecambe Bay which was quite a surprise. We ended at the Inn at Whitewell for a leisurely drink.
We'd visited the beautiful village of Ripley before but never the castle which had always been shut. It is a Grade I listed 14th-century country house (the tower building), flanked by later additions. The Ingleby's have been the resident family for hundreds of years and as usual in any Northern large house , there are tales of bravery, sacrifice, service to country, persecution (Catholic of course), gambling away of fortunes and acquisition of grand art and artefacts. The tour inside was interesting if brief and rather general and of course no pictures. Afterwards we explored the grounds which were magnificent and worth repeat visits. And the village was just as nice as we remembered..... The Boar's Head pub was great too....... Ripley is only 3 miles from Harrogate so off we went - parking as usual by the side of the marvellous Valley Gardens. Walking through town we appreciated even more of its quirkiness......... Brunch in Weetons was lovely. This same week I spent two days watching Lancashire v Somerset at Old Trafford. Conditions rather warmer than the shot suggests. And it is nice to see our backyard blooming at last........
Alighting at Victoria Station as usual we crossed to examine another of Manchester's famous Edwardian buildings - the old headquarters of the Co-op. Also outside was a statue of the founder of the co-operative movement Robert Owen. We made our way by foot and bus along the Oxford Road Corridor which is often referred to as “the busiest bus route in Europe” to the Manchester Museum which has recently re-opened after a multi-million pounds transformation. The buildings, like all the older ones of the University (for the Museum belongs to the Univerity) retain their Edwardian grandeur. Jesse and Marianne Haworth were the museum's major benefactors We went first to the 'Golden Mummies of Egypt' Exhibition. Manchester is in fact the only place where you can see these golden mummies, and a very impressive exhibition it is too, of the museum's world-class collection of Egyptian artefacts. The Guardian raved about the exhibition ...... "Flinders Petrie dug in the Faiyum Oasis south of Cairo where perfect conditions miraculously preserved painted mummy masks in encaustic on wood. These are simply some of the most stunning works of art that survive from the ancient world – and this exhibition has a whole gallery of them, women and men, earringed, shaved, bearded, all depicted in perspective depth. They have an eerily calm presence. Here the show’s argument falls apart, beautifully. It insists that mummies are images of the divine and perfect, not preserved individuals. But the people who commissioned painters trained in the Greco-Roman realist style to create these exquisitely individual images obviously did want to think of their deceased loved ones as unique people. This is even more unmistakable when the painting is still attached to a mummy. A thickly bound mummy from the reign of the emperor Hadrian has a portrait over its face of a sensitive beardless young man, looking at you with piercing, energetic eyes as if about to speak: the spooky effect is to grab at heartstrings by opening a window to the beyond." Maybe these portraits of the dead reveal attitudes to mortality and the individual soul at a time when the new sect of Christianity was attracting followers, or maybe they simply prove that ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans – whose worlds meet in this show – shared the same burden of mortality that all human beings face. Can the individual survive death, somehow? These paintings dare to hope so. Few archaeological remains remind you of the frail and universal condition of being alive as touchingly as these miraculously preserved Faiyum portraits." You are first introduced to the various cultures, here an amazingly well-preserved Greek helmet........ and here a Graeco-Egyptian stela with a Greek inscription. a tax document...... and, amongst other things, what is surely a child's toy - perhaps representing the story of the wooden horse at Troy. A mummy shroud of a young girl. Death masks with the suggestion that they might be mass-produced...... A dprecating quote from Flinders.... A mummy cover for a young girl.... Modelled in the form of an adult this young woman appears as a wealthy Roman in her guilded mask and is covered with Egyptian symbols. I hadn't realised quite how multi-cultural Egyptian society was. But of course Egypt was ruled first by a Greek royal family, ending with Queen Cleopatra VII, then by Roman emperors (between 300 BC and 300 AD). Here a man holding a papyrus indicates his status and education The golden mummies were truly astonishing in their detail...... But so were other types of funerary monuments.... Here a double-sided portrait of the Emperor Hadrian's reign Who would dare argue these are not life portraits?! A thin layer of gold highlights this young man's lips. This mummy is very unusual in showing exposed breasts perhaps highlighting the importance of sexuality for re-birth. As I say the exhibition was excellent and we only had a very short time to look at one other of the new displays, the Lee Kai Hung Chinese Culture Gallery which, as per the museum, 'draws from historical and contemporary links between Manchester and China and a wide range of Chinese perspectives. It offers a diverse and dynamic understanding of Chinese culture. The gallery highlights personal stories of migration, friendships and collaboration to inspire empathy and build understanding.' Again a marvellous mix of mediums and ages..... This scroll was particularly spectacular.......22 metres long and showing a glimpse of Beijing life in 1713....... We then had 5 minutes to rush round a display of archaeological finds from the North-West.... before exiting via the obligatory shop... Our walk to find the nearest bus showed a range of Uni buildings... Our next stop was to eat at one of Manchester's newest restaurant openings - Climat, perched on top of an office building and given glowing reviews especially by Jay Rayner. The views were great and included the still gift-wrapped Town Hall. The service was amazing and the food full of flavour and unusual. We just made our concert at the Bridgewater, the main element of which was Mahler's First Symphony which was a blast. I really do think hearing music live exceeds recordings by a factor of ten (at least).
Almost half the world's bluebells are found in the UK – they’re relatively rare elsewhere. And in Middleton Woods, Ilkley we have some astonishing bluebell woods. I reckon the woods cover an area one and a half miles wide and perhaps half a mile from top to bottom. It is almost impossible to describe the sheer extent of the seas and seas of bluebells. We first got the sweet scent of the flowers on the other side of the River Wharfe before we had even got to the woods. The experience is unique.
We found in Cornwall that doing a walk the other way round sometimes gave a completely new aspect. So today we did one of our regular walks in the opposite direction. We started at The Rum Fox in Grindleton. We climbed up the main street, quite steep, and soon entered the open countryside. Doing the walk this way was a revelation. We saw less of Clitheroe's cement works..... ......and much more of Pendle. We also went down to the hydro house (beautifully restored), instead of climbing the very steep path from it. We were soon at the little stream that we follow down to the River Ribble. For a change we saw several fish rising (lots of flies about). And we had a lovely stroll along the river back to the centre of Grindleton and our pre-booked lunch at The Rum Fox, which was very enjoyable indeed, more so since I wasn't paying! As in Cornwall, the walk had taken on a new aspect that was much more pleasing in every way. We shall do it 'backwards' every time now.
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August 2023
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