HS2 Archives - Scribble by the Ribble

Misty Dales and foggy promises

More cloudy and foggy Dales weather doesn’t mean we retired folk just lie on our settees drinking hot chocolate and watching Homes under the Hammer every day. I managed a few pleasant strolls in the misty Dales this week. One was alongside the River Wenning from near its starting point where the becks of Clapham and Austwick join together. There’s an old saying about ‘when gorse blooms, it’s kissing season’ … the inference being that the lovely yellow flower blooms somewhere in the UK 365 days a year so you’ve no excuse not to be kissing. There was plenty of blooming gorse in this part of Wenningdale, even on a miserable, cloudy January day. Sadly, no blooming kissing.

By Friday I was itching to get out again and drove along the single track road up to Bowland Knotts. I walked across the squelchy, peaty commons to the trig point, which stands at 1,114ft on Crutchenber Fell, in the full knowledge that visibility would be very poor. But it’s a dramatic landscape whatever the conditions. I could just about make out the Three Peaks in the distant mist; Stocks Reservoir was barely visible. The surrounding brown, brooding moors looked formidable. Unseen over the first brow is the River Hodder, the traditional ancient border with Lancashire.

I’ve ‘collected’ quite a few trigs in my time but never recorded my visits. There are folks who do, and like some train spotters they are meticulous in their attention to detail. Out of interest I looked up this one on the interweb-thingy and found this anorakic description:
“Pillar completed 25th September 1949 costing £17.15s.10d. Computed as tertiary triangulation station SD96/T8 in 1951. Levelled for height in 1953. Last maintained by the OS in June 1976. Pillar in good condition. Spider centre plugged with tar. Flush bracket faces northwest, ~329°. Vented through three sight holes, SW face plugged, pillar bolt photographed. Full 360° panoramic view includes Whernside, Ingleborough, Pen-y-Ghent, Pendle Hill and Longridge Fell.”
Well there you go.

Dales sadness

Sad news about Gayle Mill (see link below). My late brother Peter, who lived in Gayle, helped with the restoration. I hope for his memory the necessary work can be carried out and that the important Dales project is not strangled by red tape.

Gayle Mill to close just ten years after £1.2m restoration work

Interesting that the Tories are choosing now to make political promises about the environment – perhaps they fear the eloquent and intelligent Green Party leader Caroline Lucas more than any other opposition. You’ll notice that they have guaranteed nothing immediate and that they are reluctant to commit anything to the statute books. I don’t think they’ll want us to look too deeply into their ‘northern forest’ idea. The cost of this 25-year project they claim to be around half a billion pounds but what they haven’t shouted about is the fact that government will only be contributing £5.7m and expect the rest to be raised through charities. They don’t tell you either that their High Speed 2 rail folly project will destroy around 100 ancient, irreplaceable woodlands, or that permission to destroy other precious woodland for fracking exploitation has been granted despite much local and national opposition.

I also wonder if the proposed woodland across the M62 corridor will include reforesting the swathes of land denuded by the landowners who over decades have purposely prevented trees from growing so they can preserve their shooting estates? This action has helped cause devastating flooding in nearby villages and towns for many years and created a totally unnatural and unbalanced landscape. Good piece by Patrick Bamford here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/08/promised-northern-forest-diversion-hs2-shale-sherwood-forest

I took a financial risk yesterday and invested £2 in a lottery ticket. I lost. Money I’ll never see again. Lots of better-off people took a risk buying shares in Carillion – who just so happen to win a contract to build HS2 – hoping to rake in loadsa profit for doing nothing but gambling. But it’ll be ok for them, the taxpayer will probably help them recoup some of their brass. Investors should not be bailed out but those who work for them should.

Sorry to go all political. Here are some odd-ball pics taken this week to lighten my mood:

When we had an outside loo, Mum told me not to be afraid of the spiders. Don’t think she had this one in mind (at Malham Tarn Field Centre).

Two falls and a submission in the Dales

The blog (+12 pics) title refers to a Dales walk I did on Monday. Many locals will know the 5-mile circuit from Langcliffe in Ribblesdale. Starting from the village head down to the mill and around the mill pond to cross the Ribble at Langcliffe Locks. Follow the river up to Stainforth Foss, over the packhorse bridge and up into Stainforth. Take the road by the church up to the stepping stones over the beck, then up the steep track to Catrigg Force (the submission part is where you wrestle with the path and have to stop several times for a large breather and take a photo). From the falls head up to Winskill then take the path down the Langcliffe side of Stainforth Scar back to the village, enjoying the fabulous views down Ribblesdale. Sadly, Langcliffe no longer has a pub to round off the walk properly but if you do the route on a summer Sunday there’s usually yummie tea and cakes available at the Village Institute (2-4pm). Above and below are a few pics along the journey.

Friends of the Dales is the new brand name of the Yorkshire Dales Society the only registered membership charity campaigning for, protecting and enjoying the Dales. I renewed my membership this week – why not help keep the Dales special and vibrant for years to come? Visit https://www.friendsofthedales.org.uk

On a brief respite from rain I took a short walk around the tiny settlement of Keasden, near Clapham. Quiet roads and barely visible paths across fields and through woods make it ideal for exploration. Centuries ago this would have been a busier place but now there are just a few farms and a church – St Matthew’s. Keasden’s name stems from old words for ‘cheese valley’ – I wonder if there is an old recipe for original Keasden cheese lurking around somewhere. There’s a thought for some local cheesemonger and marketing whizz to latch on to…

On Friday, not for the first time this year, the electric was off in the village, and it was chucking it down so I didn’t fancy another walk. I looked around the house for something to read – nothing new so off I set for Sedbergh and a mooch around the bookshops. Now I’m proud owner of a first edition (1956) copy of The Yorkshire Dales by Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby. I already have some of their books and I just turned the first few pages when the power came back on. I like the pair’s fussiness and little personal asides which offer a glimpse of their upbringing and lives in the post-war Dales. Their observations of Dales life are always backed up with detailed research; they have an authoritative writing style which seems to proclaim ‘we are always right in what we say’! I also love Hartley’s sketches and woodcuts.

I travel by train as often as I can but it’s not always easy. Settle is my nearest station, so invariably I have to travel via Leeds (even if my destination is in the other direction, such as Manchester). Leeds is an hour away, trains are infrequent and the last one back to Settle leaves Leeds at 19.19 (17.41 on Sundays). I’ve been on Settle-Leeds trains when passengers have had to stand the whole journey, and often at Leeds station there is a rugby scrum of people trying to board the service. So it is with increasing dismay I see the predicted costs for the new HS2 spiralling out of control. The first phase alone (London to Brum) started at £32bn, then it went to £56bn while latest figures from DfT suggest the cost will double. There’s absolutely no justification in spending so much money when there are far greater priorities in this country. This folly will wreck so much countryside and ruin so many people’s home lives. Spending £100bn+ to knock half an hour off the journeys of those who will be able to afford a ticket is scandalous. HS2 symbolises a country run against the interests of the many and in the interests of the few. Far less could be spent on creating better local services, restoring old lines and adding to the current ‘low speed’ (apparently 125mph isn’t fast enough) rail network over the next decade. Maybe we should have a referendum on it … oh wait a minute, they don’t work do they. Or how about just letting politicians do whatever they want and have their rich friends pick up all the lucrative contracts, and sod the consequences?

Harking back to a bygone era – steam engines heading along Ribblesdale this week

I see that a video of the beck rising in Kingsdale has ‘gone viral’ this week (I also saw on tinternet that the Daily Bile (Mail) described the water’s steady progress as a ‘torrent’- apparently people actually buy this disgraceful excuse for a newspaper). The sudden rise of Dales streams isn’t uncommon. I remember seeing similar happening in neighbouring Chapel-le-Dale. You can witness the Skirfare suddenly appear in Littondale when rain soaks the surrounding hills. Also, near Cowgill at the top of Dentdale the dry bare rocks on the bed of the River Dee can instantly turn into cascades. Still a cracking video though – gotta love the Dales.

Dog do, dozing and Dales de-light

The long days this week have created some great lighting for photography in the Dales. The best times have been in the evenings – which has was good for me as I’ve had a busy time during the day at my computer. Locally I’ve driven the short distances to Kingsdale, Chapel-le-Dale, Crummackdale, Silverdale and Littondale – and of course Ribblesdale. The Three Peaks proved once again to be perfect subjects as they caught the late sunshine. They seem to be dozing like three sleepy cats after a hard day’s play, keeping their distance from each other but still having a wary eye on what’s going on. Fantastic, too, to see people enjoying the extra daylight – I’ve encountered road cyclists, walkers, runners and on Thursday evening around the massive bulk of Ingleborough, mountain bikers and paragliders. (A strange aircraft with propellors flew low over the top end of Ribblesdale as I drove home on Thursday evening. Even I don’t take pics while driving – so did anyone else capture it?). The top shot I’m calling ‘playing with light’. It shows patchy late evening sunshine over Ribblesdale. Other evening shots are spread throughout the blog.

One of my favourite pastimes is watching other folk work while I laze about doing nowt. I was leaning on a wall one day this week near Austwick, admiring the Dales view; nearby, two chaps were putting up a timber fence around a small thicket. I couldn’t tell what wood was being used but it reminded me of an old country proverb I once included in Countryman magazine www.countrymanmagazine.co.uk when I was editor. It went something like: ‘If you build a fence of elm you can forget it for 20 years. If you build it with oak, you can forget it’. A timely reminder that what we do today affects what we’ll need to do in the future.

It’s been a week for contemplating life hasn’t it? While sitting on a small hill during a short spell of sunshine in the Dales on Friday evening I watched several sheep wandering aimlessly around a field. Which one was leading the gang was hard to fathom; maybe they all believed the one with the dodgy hairdo, or the one with the loudest baa as they intimated that the grass was greener through the open gate. The ewes didn’t question the leaders and led their young into the unknown, never thinking the leaders could be telling lies or just having their own interests at heart. They didn’t seem to have a plan as to what to do once through the gate – I do hope there wasn’t a cunning fox waiting for them all on the other side. I didn’t hang around to see.

Doggy do in the Dales

Now that it seems we officially exist in an intolerant society I feel happier about having a moan about certain dog owners. I’m sick of finding these bags of dog crap all over the Dales, at the sides of paths or jammed into drystone walls. I’m sure I’ve seen a lot more crap about since we voted to come out of Europe (that’s a lie, by the way, but it seems lying is acceptable nowadays, too).

This sign near Penyghent Farm on the wonderful Stainforth to Halton Gill road, says: ‘The Countryside Stewardship Scheme – Part funded by the European Communities’. I wonder if there’ll be a sign here in future saying ‘Left to rot after England turned its back on the European Communities and went bankrupt’?
At the moment I, along with many experts (whom I listen to and believe, Mr Gove), don’t feel very optimistic about what will happen to our countryside or local wildlife and heritage projects once the exit from Europe kicks in. During the referendum campaign leave leaders either lied through their back teeth or genuinely just guessed when asked about what would happen to the countryside after leaving. Currently I can’t see where money will come from given the predictions of economic gloom, yet I’ll bet that pet vanity projects like HS2, which revolve around London and which will rip up the countryside for no good reason, will somehow survive.

I have a habit of saying stuff that shows my age. This week I said to a youngster (someone under 30), ‘What’s the recipe today, Jim?’ – a phrase which anyone over 60 will probably recognise from radio of the past, but to which the person listening to me responded quizzically by saying that she was not called Jim.

I was very pleased to see the initial plans for The Folly in Settle on Monday. It’s vital that this unique building is kept in good order, is utilised by the community and helps attracts visitors to the Dales town. The Folly’s development will help boost the local economy and provide another welcome focal point. All they’ll need to make the plans come true is some funding … oh, wait a minute though.

I’m pleased to see that from tomorrow (27 June) train services on the Settle-Carlisle line are to be extended to run as far north as Armathwaite instead of the current terminus of Appleby. The existing train times between Leeds and Appleby will continue with revised timings for journeys between Appleby and Armathwaite. There will be a number of changes to the bus connections so passengers should check the updated timetable before travel. www.settle–carlisle.co.uk/ Remember, the original purpose of building the line was to access Scotland – this could be handy in the future if there’s an exodus from England to Scotland – let’s hope that repair work on the track north of Armathwaite is completed before the Scots shut the border.

(Don’t worry, friends and family who voted to leave – my bitterness will eventually subside. And I understand clearly that besides the racists and far right who want to take over the country as a dictatorship, there were other factions adding support to the leave campaign – such as disenchanted people wanting to teach Cameron & Osborne a lesson; those who think they are being told what to do by Jonny Foreigner and don’t like it; and people who think the EU is a useless bureaucratic mess and want out. Unfortunately, when all that support was added together, the combined vote was claimed as a victory by a bunch of hapless liars and bigots who don’t want to understand the bigger picture.)

Seeing red (and black-and-white) in Ribblesdale

Funny how we take everyday things for granted. Postboxes for example. On my regular Ribblesdale stroll this week I noticed snowdrops growing by a postbox — and have to admit that until I’d seen both snowdrops and postbox together I’d not taken much notice of that bright red metal thing. It got me thinking about other postboxes around the Dales. I hunted through my photo archive for some more examples … and found these in Chapel-le-dale, Langstrothdale (above) and Mallerstang.

If you know of any postboxes in picturesque Dales locations let me know – I might do a bit of ‘collecting’ myself. Apparently there is such a thing as the Letter Box Study Group www.lbsg.org with a website and more than 600 members. I shan’t be joining, but surely taking photos of postboxes is more acceptable than searching the country to capture gas holders? I read this week about one chap who has this as a hobby. His pastime came to the notice of the newspapers when it was decided that the famous gas holder beside the Oval cricket ground in London (yes, non-cricket fans, it really is famous) is to be saved from demolition because it is seen as some kind of icon. Historic England adds: ‘…but our other beautiful gas holders are going’ [to be demolished]. Beautiful? Come on! Seems it is acceptable to churn up hundreds of miles of priceless countryside for the pointless HS2 railway, and to allow our green and pleasant land to be fracked up to kingdom come, but not to knock down a rusting, useless gas holder? It’s a mad, mad world.

Ribblesdale sunsets

Took my first sunset shots of the year last Sunday up on Winskill Stones in Ribblesdale. The late evening sunshine lit up the limestone and also the distant western side of Penyghent. The last few minutes before the sun disappeared over Lancashire provided some startlingly vivid colours.

The following time-lapse shots are a bit arty-farty for me, I know, but I display them only to show the speed of the water at Stainforth Foss on Tuesday following heavy overnight and morning rain in Ribblesdale. The shutter speed is set at just one-fifth of a second which tells you much about the volume and speed of the water passing in front of my camera lens. If you’d like to join me for a couple of minutes at the popular spot you can see a video here https://youtu.be/Agba6D6Txvg Excuse the quality — it’s taken on my normal camera not a video camera, and I was being buffeted by a strong wind.

After the rain came Wednesday’s snow. The village (Langcliffe) took on a different persona — cosier, somehow. The photo of St John’s church (above) looks like a black-and-white, but it isn’t. And despite seeing them a thousand times before, I just had to take a trip further up Ribblesdale to see how the Three Peaks were looking in the snow – and they didn’t disappoint.

This week I’ve had to endure one of life’s greatest hardships. It’s not been easy for me, especially living on my own. Having no kids or partner around to help out has been a total nightmare. Yes, the TV remote broke. Getting up to manually change channels or just to turn the damn thing on and off has left me exhausted and frustrated. Must be the batteries (the remote’s, not mine) I thought, so off I trotted in the snow in search of power. Alas, new batteries didn’t solve the problem. So, another trip to town for a replacement zapper — no one had anything suitable for my TV. Amazon it was then. Three days delivery they said. Aargh! Just how did folk manage before remote controllers?

Regular readers will know of my fondness for the deserted Ribblesdale hamlet of Thorns (pictured above), just a mile or so from Ribblehead Viaduct. Thorns was an important location on a former packhorse route. Records of the settlement I often visit for quiet contemplation, date back to 1190, when it belonged to Furness Abbey. Wills, parish records and censuses indicate that there were five tenements in 1538, three households in 1841, and one uninhabited dwelling in 1891. Those stats are courtesy of the charity Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust (YDMT) which this week announced it was looking for budding archaeologists to take part in an archaeological survey of Thorns. Visit the website www.ydmt.org for more information.

Yesterday was my birthday. It’s the 63rd time this as occurred so I’m used to birthdays and I don’t take much notice of them now. However, I must admit I was a bit taken aback when I read that a birthday flypast tribute by the Red Arrows had been arranged. How pleasing too that my big day was also the 80th birthday of the Spitfire and I could share my special display with that great invention.

Ribble Rant

The village school closed back in 2007. It was sold six years later for £230,000 and remains unoccupied, the new owners’ plans being refused permission by the National Park. I’ve often wondered who pocketed the money and what was done with it. What I do know for certain is that some accountant somewhere declared that the school as an education establishment was ‘economically unviable’ and shut it down. Its closure certainly wouldn’t have been decided by locals or teaching staff. Village schools help keep dales communities together – but that’s not something an accountant working on behalf of government can quantify in monetary terms so it is ignored.
I know a lot of teachers – or more precisely ex-teachers (many of them jumping ship as soon as their pensions would allow them to do so) – and I’m probably more sympathetic to the plight of teachers and how the education system is being run than a lot of the general public. I attended teacher training college before finding an opening in journalism and I was married to a teacher for many years. So I’ve kept an eye on education matters – as we all should, really … after all, this is the country’s and our children’s/grandchildren’s future we’re talking about.
The problems and solutions are far too numerous and complex for me to go into in depth here. But I will say that I wish politicians would just leave alone something about which they know and understand very little. Many of them attended expensive private schools which bear no co-relation with the education of the masses. Most have no idea about the everyday life of teaching a class or running a school, yet ministers (and accountants) decide the rules and regulations by which our children are educated. I have the feeling that government would prefer if teachers just brainwashed children so that they don’t have any individual thoughts, or think creatively or question their elders.

One of my singer/songwriter heroes is Tom Paxton, and this week I listened again to one of his songs from the 1960s, called ‘What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?’. The verses, although based on the USA at the time, could well ring true today in this country and elsewhere. Here are some of the words which his little boy said in response to the question:
…
I learned that Washington never told a lie.
I learned that soldiers seldom die.
I learned that everybody’s free.
And that’s what the teacher said to me.
…
I learned that policemen are my friends.
I learned that justice never ends.
I learned that murderers die for their crimes.
Even if we make a mistake sometimes.
…
I learned our government must be strong.
It’s always right and never wrong.
Our leaders are the finest men.
And we elect them again and again.
…
I learned that war is not so bad.
I learned of the great ones we have had.
We fought in Germany and in France.
And some day I might get my chance.

That’s what I learned in school today.

Fire-breathing monsters in Ribblesdale

I love maps. From where I’m typing this in my Ribblesdale cottage I can see about 20 of them, balancing precariously on a shelf. I have an 1841 tithe map of Langcliffe framed and hung on a wall. I often read maps instead of a books; I’m forever scouring them for new features or to compile fresh walks. There’s probably a polite name for someone with such an obsession. But I wonder if the end of the large folded paper map is upon us. I hope not. This week the OS were trying to flog a new deal for online mapping for smartphones. You can get unlimited mapping plus a host of other clever do-dahs for an annual fee. I can’t afford a smartphone or indeed yet another annual fee, so when I’m out in the Dales I’ll continue to bumble along in my quaint old-fashioned way – so I hope they are kept up to date. One day last summer I was out on the moors above Dent, sitting on a rock, eating a sandwich and reading a map. A couple of hikers approached me and asked for guidance because their gizmo had ‘died’. Smug, is how I would describe my mood that day. They were foolish not to take a proper map – no batteries required.

Ribblesdale mayhem?

In last week’s blog I went off on one about HS2 and how the high-speed railway will destroy much countryside just to cut a few minutes off a journey. I compared my anger to that of people of Ribblesdale when the Settle-Carlisle line was cut through the dale. Out of interest (it was raining again) I pored over a pre-railway OS map of the route – published in 1842. As much as I admire the engineering feat needed to take the railway through some very tricky parts of Ribblesdale, its construction must have caused mayhem. And let’s face it, as much as many people enjoy seeing the big old steam locos chugging up and down the line today, residents at the time would have dreaded the great fire-breathing monsters spewing out filthy smoke and making a noise like a herd of rampaging elephants. The incline from Settle to Ribblehead passes over some tough terrain – everything from solid rock to boggy marshes. Much of the work was done manually as the line inched up Ribblesdale; so hats off to the poorly-paid workers whose section is still providing services.
The same can’t be said about the route further north, near Appleby, where ground saturated by unprecedented rainfall has become unstable. The line could be closed for several months for repairs. I hope this doesn’t put passengers off coming to Ribblesdale or using the line between Leeds and Appleby. http://www.settle-carlisle.co.uk
I hope too that there is a good service available by April 29 when the Tour o’ Yorkshire (I’m refusing to use the ‘de’ – what’s it got to do with the French?) comes to the area. There will be a public meeting at Victoria Hall, Settle, on Monday Feb 29 (6pm) to discuss local plans.

Lovely to see snowdrops appearing around the village once again. Their brief show is said to herald the arrival of spring. I suspect as usual in these parts that their appearance is premature.

I snatched an hour or so out on the fells above Malham one bright breezy day this week. Hardly a soul to be seen as I wandered along the Pennine Way between Watlowes valley and the Tarn, normally quite a busy trail at the weekend. Note to self: do this walk in the morning so as not to get the dark shadow on the west slope of Watlowes. The Tarn took on a deep dark blue hue when viewed from a little knoll just off the path.

Mind clearing

When my head is full of all sorts of daft stuff I’ll often drive the car over to Halton Gill on the Stainforth road to try clear my mind. There are only half a dozen farms from one end to t’ other along the seven miles or so. The landscape and views are breathtaking. I get out of the car, mooch about, find a new spot from which to take a photo, or as on Friday sit and stare at two daft beggars cycling up that incredibly steep hill from Halton Gill.

The light changed rapidly as the clouds scuttled across lovely Littondale. For a few seconds the tiny hamlet was bathed in sunshine. Behind it, the domineering moors switched from moody browns to inviting orange, while the tops kept on their dreary, misty hats.
The smaller, less populated dales have always appealed to me – Kingsdale, Coverdale, Raydale, to name but three – and they’re all firmly on my to-do-again list in spring. The top picture in the blog was taken from Coverdale, looking back down the valley towards Wharfedale. Here’s one looking across Kingsdale.

Well, it’s St Valentine’s Day again and in true Yorkshire bloke fashion I say ‘thank goodness I don’t have anyone to waste mi brass on’. I expect all my cards and gifts will arrive via a fleet of home delivery vans tomorrow, it being Sunday today.

Take HS2 south to see north’s assets

Ever wonder how the good folk living by the Ribble reacted in the 1870s on being told that a railway was going to be built along their peaceful dale? Most ordinary residents probably thought they didn’t have a choice in the matter and just got on with their lives. Today we think and react differently – but in the end, as in the Victorian era, our protests will more often than not go ignored. Those with money and power will have their way, as it seems with the proposed High Speed 2 railway scheme.

Countryside destruction

‘HS2 has come to symbolise a country run against the interests of the many and in the interests of the few.’ That’s a great sentence, sadly not one of mine, written by Patrick Barkham. It sums up my feelings about yet another ill-conceived fantasy project from which London will be the biggest benefactor. Latest estimates predict it will cost £57 billion – yes, fifty-seven-billion pounds, let that sink in – to cut 32 minutes off the journey between Birmingham and London. Our Northern Powerhouse (falls about laughing at the shallow attempt being made to deliver that promise) will eventually link in with this project (price yet to be properly determined) and – whoopee! – uncouth Yorkshire oiks like me will be able to take out a mortgage for a ticket and get to the capital to improve my flagging social status, some 45 minutes quicker. To achieve this, thousands of square miles of beautiful English countryside will be destroyed, wildlife habitats torn up, homes demolished and many a village life wrecked. Meanwhile, we are being fed a load of bull about job creation and that this super highway will bring great benefits to the north – don’t believe a word of it. Shareholders and contractors will make sacksful of dosh, most jobs will be temporary with workers being paid minimum wage, and I have yet to read one single persuasive argument showing how the North will benefit as a region.
Don’t get me wrong – I like trains, I think they are a sensible form of transport – but why not spend £57bn+ improving what we already have, by providing more local services or opening up old lines so that ordinary folk – not just the rich or businesspeople – can use and afford them? Patrick wrote a splendid monthly column for me when I was editor of The Countryman. Read his article on HS2 here http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/17/hs2-the-human-cost-of-britains-most-expensive-rail-project
Also visit stophs2.org

Last February near Fountains Fell

Museum asset stripping

I’ve visited the National Media Museum in Bradford dozens of times. I’ve taken children there, attended functions and exhibition openings. I’ve always been proud to have a ‘National’ museum on my doorstep. It even hosts the International Film Festival, promoting the city and Yorkshire further afield… well, it did, anyway. Museum officials have just announced they are abandoning the festival after 20 years and followed this by saying they were sending 400,000 unique photos from its impressive collection to be exhibited permanently in London.
So the asset stripping of the museum is well under way. To be discussed is the renaming and streamlining of the museum. One suggestion involves relegating it from the premier division of ‘National’ to (Division One) ‘North’. Eventually, I see the title becoming ’Yorkshire’, then ‘Bradford’, followed by ‘a rear room of an independent camera shop in Idle’. Pardon the pun but there’s been a total loss of focus here. If we can afford to host top-class exhibitions and museums in London why can’t it be done in the north? What’s next to disappear down south – the National Railway Museum?

Harking back

Bad weather, extra freelance work and problems with contact points on a camera lens have conspired to curtail my own photography this week. So there are a few older photos included in this week’s blog. Make the most of them because I got a call from Boris Johnson who says he wants the best 20 per cent of them exclusively for visitors to look at in a trendy coffee house in the capital. The top photo in the blog showing Penyghent was taken this time last year. The one above shows the hill from t’ other side just a couple of days later.

A song for the Ribble

On Tuesday a cleaner at BT pulled out a plug so the vac could be powered up (I could be wrong there) and the internet went kaput. So, despite the howling gale, I went for a walk. Sadly, the path through Castleberg Wood to the rock overlooking Settle was closed due to a fallen tree, a victim of the strong winds. I headed back to Langcliffe beside the Ribble via Giggleswick and Stackhouse. These perching pigeons caught my attention: a music score with Stainforth Scar, as a backdrop. The ground was decidedly sticky and further rain over the next three days won’t have improved the situation. The walls of the older cottages like mine are becoming saturated so let’s hope for a prolonged dry spell very soon.

I snapped this one quickly at the mill pond in Langcliffe and was surprised it turned out virtually black-and-white. I’ve not tampered with the photo at all. I do sometimes make adjustments to photos where I feel it is necessary – or just to amuse myself. Using Photoshop or other digital editors is no different from what used to happen in photographic darkrooms, yet for some reason viewers can get all hot and bothered by ‘touched-up’ photos. Some photographers are looking for an accurate representation of a subject; others want to add their own interpretation. Viewers can have an opinion on what’s been created but should remember that with ‘art’ there’s no right or wrong. That’s why we all have different artwork hung in our homes; why we decorate our walls differently or wear different styles and colours of clothes.

This time last year: Just one set of footprints to the honesty box at Dale End Farm below Penyghent – mine. Which, I know, doesn’t prove that I paid. The picture got me thinking whether it would be worth putting an honesty box in the Houses of Parliament… but then again…

Priorities

The train spotting fraternity were out in force up and down the Ribble yesterday hoping for a glimpse of the revamped Flying Scotsman and the internet and Facebook groups are plastered with photos of the iconic engine. So where are all my piccies of this great event, you ask? Sorry, but on a Saturday I have to indulge in my own anorakic passion – watching Huddersfield Town. I admit to the addiction, and I know that each time I watch them it takes years off my life. If you have a cure please let me know.

A bit of poetry by the great Bob Dylan came to mind after re-reading this week’s blog:

I like to do just like the rest, I like my sugar sweet,
But guarding fumes and making haste,
It ain’t my cup of meat.
Ev’rybody’s ‘neath the trees,
Feeding pigeons on a limb
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here,
All the pigeons gonna run to him.
Come all without, come all within,
You’ll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn.

Flaming June, fishing, Facebook, Fellsman, bullies and trolls

One of the great pleasures about having kids AND a camera is that you can store up a great deal of ammunition to be used at a later date for embarrassing or threatening them. Instant access to their friends and family through Facebook means you have everything a parent with an evil streak needs to pass away rainy days. This week I was accused of being cruel to my son for posting a photo of him when he was in a brief punk phase, so I’d like to apologise to him via this week’s blog and promise not to do it again … this week.

Early doors on Monday this horse and I were up enjoying the summer flowers in a field between Langcliffe and Settle, while on Tuesday I had more of a mission. I’d come across an old Victorian drawing of Thorpe, near Burnsall in Wharfedale, and wondered how much it had changed over the years. I called in at Linton on the way and just managed to get a photo of the bridge without any cars in the shot.My last visit to Thorpe was a few years back when I interviewed an artist there for Dalesman. Little has changed since then but that earlier Victorian artist would have noticed several differences. It looks like one of the buildings in his drawing has disappeared now, many houses are now second homes, and large 4-wheel-drive machines cruise the narrow roads in and out of the village as I found to my cost – how come it’s always the smaller car who has to do all the reversing? Bullies.

I walked by the river in Burnsall, a place like Bolton Abbey which I normally steer clear of during the height of summer (I’m a miserable old bugger who doesn’t like crowds). A fly fisherman seemed oblivious to the constant foot traffic along the riverside path, in his own little world, pitting his wits against a fish which more than likely didn’t realise it was taking part in a game. I hope the chap isn’t recognisable as I’d hate him to have told the boss he was at his grandma’s funeral, or his wife that he’ll be late home from work because of an important meeting.

I don’t like grey squirrels – tree rats, taking over our parks and countryside at the expense of the reds – but I admit they can look cute and I spotted this one by the Wharfe, no doubt full from tit-bits fed to it by pub-lunchers at the Red Lion.

The cloud which tends to hang around the Dales had completely broken up by the evening so I drove up Ribblesdale for some stock shots of Penyghent from Horton. Cliches perhaps but they always attract a lot of comment on Facebook and Twitter so people must like them.

On Wednesday the Fellsman train was hauled by Galatea and I watched it trundle across Ribblehead viaduct on its way back to Lancashire. I find it so annoying that these special steam trains can use the line from Blackburn and Clitheroe via Hellifield and Settle but there’s no direct passenger route which would easily link this part of the Dales with Manchester and all points west. With more rail finance cutbacks announced this week no doubt the route will never open in my lifetime, yet the multi-billion HS2 link for the wealthy and London commuters, which will chew up millions of acres of our countryside when built, will no doubt somehow be found the brass.

I paused during Thursday evening’s stroll by the Ribble to look at the ducks. Yeah, big wildlife guru admiring common ducks … but really, when you observe them closely they really are beautiful, colourful birds – especially the mallard (can’t seem to get trains out of my mind at the moment).

When I was buying my cottage, the conveyancing solicitor (an internet company from down south) told me they’d have to state a minor flood risk for insurance purposes because I was within a certain distance from the river. I called him to ask if anyone in the office could read an OS map because if they could they would see that the cottage is actually more than 100 feet higher than the river – ‘brown contour things on the map’ I said sarcastically – and that if the river flooded to this depth then it’s also likely that all of the York Plain, Norfolk and London would also be totally submerged. ‘We have hills in Yorkshire’ I reminded him. I heard nothing else on the matter. Anyway, the point of this rambling is that there is a path from the village down the hill which leads to a mill pond alongside the river. It’s a lovely little spot, full of wildlife and plants. I risked being attacked by biting insects to take a couple of photos on Friday evening. The pond is being gradually taken over by iris pseudacorus which are flowering now. The overflow which heads to the river has little bridge over which the sheep play Billy Goats Gruff to annoy the troll.

Countryside rip-up is a rip-off

The thought of ripping up thousands of miles of beautiful countryside, blighting properties, wrecking wildlife habitat and ancient woodland just to create a high-speed rail link to London (HS2) leaves this normally placid chap seething. That’s before I even mention the cost. As far as I can see the only benefit will be that you’ll be able to get far away from the capital a little bit quicker. If the hypothetical figures about creating thousands of jobs and how the North and Midlands will be so much better off actually comes off I’ll eat my flat cap. I’m not saying I don’t believe in railways, I just think we should be making better use of what we’ve got, improving stock, bringing back more local lines and increasing the number of people working on the railways.

I thought of this while I was struggling up a hill outside Horton-in-Ribblesdale last week. I made the excuse to stop to watch this train working down the Settle-Carlisle line beaneath Penyghent. The line is underused by the quarry owners who prefer to send huge clanking trucks through the villages. And there’s a perfectly good line from Lancashire that joins up with the Settle-Carlisle line at Hellifield… but there’s no passenger timetable for it. Tourists bringing business and prosperity to this to this part of the Dales have to take an hour or more detour.

I assume the locals and landowners were up in arms when the Victorians decided to rip up this bit of the countryside to build the Settle-Carlisle railway but now it’s here – thanks mainly to volunteers – we should be making the most of it instead of pandering to some political pipe-dream.

Tag: HS2