St Gregory's Minster

Driving back from Sutton Bank we decided to stop and have a look at St Gregory’s Minster in Kirkdale, near Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire. St Gregory’s date back to the Anglo-Saxon period and has a rare sundial set into the outer wall of the nave above the south door. The inscription on the sundial tells how Orm bought St Gregory's Minster when it was all broken down and fallen and let it be made anew from the ground to Christ and St Gregory. The dial and the reconstructed Minster date to the mid 11th century. Which was nice.

Sutton Bank

On Monday, Bev and I decided to visit Sutton Bank in the North York Moors National Park. Sutton Bank is one of the most spectacular inland cliffs in Britain with a near vertical drop of 140 metres. The views across the Vale of York were absolutely stunning. From the top, I managed to bag a (grainy) image of York Minster (bottom left) and Drax power station in the same frame. Not that remarkable but if I tell you that the Minster is 20 miles away and Drax is 36 miles away, you might be more impressed.

Sutton Bank has a flat top made from limey grit stone that survived the gouging action of the last ice age. It’s home to a gliding school and you can watch them being towed up from a path that runs right next to the grassy runway. We had a fantastic time exploring the area on well constructed paths radiating out from the inevitable visitor’s centre. For a meagre £2.20 you can park there all day and that’s not bad in a recession. Highly recommended.

The Town That Never Was

Ravenscar, actually. This little village on the Yorkshire coast between Scarborough and Whitby is a charming little place. At nearly 200 metres above sea level, it has some of the best views in England (in my humble opinion; the image on the left is Robin Hood's Bay from Ravenscar,) and would have been a trendy holiday resort if the Victorian town planners had got their act together. It was marketed as a sort of early Milton Keynes with terraces, gardens, an Esplanade and shops, all based on a grid layout. It never materialized because the development company went bust in 1913 and much of the site is now in the hands of the National Trust.

Yesterday, Bev., and I decided to explore Ravenscar's other feature, a disused Alum works. Between 1640 and 1862, Alum was mined at Ravenscar and used extensively in the textile and tanning industries for fixing dyes and making leather more supple. The finished product was lowered by winch to ships waiting at a small quay below. The story of Ravenscar has been told in a couple of TV series recently (Landscape Mysteries and Coast) and, I recall, that it's possible to see cart tracks worn out of the rock on the beach. Well, it would be if you could find a way down to the beach. It took us about four hours to find the unmarked public path leading from the Ravenhall Hotel's member-only golf course (image right,) by which time the tide had come in and the weather had turned wet. Call me cynical, but I reckon that the hotel owners deliberately make things difficult in case, God forbid, we spoil some tedious middle-manager's "fun."

I can strongly recommend a visit to Ravenscar because the views are magnificent, its history is interesting and you have an opportunity to piss-off a few golfers. All-in-all, a rather satisfying day out.

Photography Portfolio

I've just moved some of my best images to Picasa. Until recently I've been using the Photoanswers web site galleries until they made some "improvements" and I discovered that only registered members can see them (duh!) Anyway, follow this link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/CarlJacq/Portfolio?feat=directlink

...or the one in the "Essential Links" section on the right, if you're interested. Apologies to people who may have seen them before.

The Curious Case of Match of the Day

This is a true story that happened to Bev last week.

It's 6:30am, just getting light. You and your dog are alone on a large public sports field, surrounded by trees and dense undergrowth. You throw the ball for your dog to chase and are aware of a sound in the distance. A very thin sound that is vaguely familiar. You listen hard and then it stops. Your pooch retrieves the ball and you throw it again. After a few seconds, the sound reappears, this time in a different direction. What's going on? Are you being followed by a stalker, hiding in the bushes? Does the person have their mobile 'phone switched on? Is it a cheap ring tone? This time you recognise the sound; it's the theme to BBC's Match of the Day. By this point, you are becoming scared. Every time the tinny music is coming from a different direction, sometimes loud, sometimes soft. Time to put the ball away and hurry home.

This happens on and off for several days. Always in the morning, always when you're alone.

At 10:00pm, you decide to take your dog for a final comfort break walk before bedtime. You reach for your coat and the Match of the Day theme starts up again, this time it's coming from your coat pocket. You investigate and discover that the noise is coming from a small rubber football that your dog found on the field several days ago. It is equipped with a motion sensor that plays the tune whenever it is knocked hard or bounced on the floor.

Should've Stayed In Bed

Yesterday was Bev's day off so, despite the cold easterly winds, we went out walking and birding for the day with Kylie. We've been exploring the (highly recommended) disused railway line from Scarborough to Whitby in recent weeks, however, we decided to try another disused line, the Hudson Way, running from Beverley to Market Weighton, for a change. To be honest, it was the most boring walk we've ever been on. Just mile upon mile of trees, gravel, thick brambles and, well, that's about it. I wasn't expecting Kilimanjaro, sweeping dune fields or stampeding Wildebeest but this was the pits. The trees were so dense that you couldn't see any Wold's scenery, apart from a breif glimpse of a few golf bores. Even the birds stopped singing. I commented early on that there was very little litter about and now I know why - people lose the will to live after half an hour and commit suicide in the hedgerow.

In a desperate attempt to salvage the day, we spotted a promising place on the map called Watton Nature Reserve. After a short drive we found ourselves walking beside a land drain next to the River Hull. This was slightly better but there were notices everywhere put up by the Environment Agency politeley reminding you to F**k Off, Go Away Now and Entertain Yourself in some other Manner. The only bird hide, positioned behind a wire fence, covered in Are You Still Here? signs was accessible for a mere £2.50 per person, no dogs allowed, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. I've never been to such an unfriendly place, so we decided to have an early tea and go to the bird colony at the RSPB Bempton Cliff reserve.

Result! Plenty of birds, hardly anyone around but so COLD and windy. We had four layers on and it was still absolutely bl**dy freezing. I couldn't hold my binoculars still enough to see anything. It didn't matter because my eyes were running so much that the world was just a blur. After 10 minutes we'd had enough and returned home. We did see a few Puffins, Gannets and Kittywakes for our efforts but we were glad to get back to a warm house and a hot shower.

BBC One Show Homage

Christine Bleakley - 1,152 Dominos

Adrian Chiles - 1,152 Dominos

Because I don't get out much and I have an opposing thumb, I thought I would share a couple of images with you. They are portraits of the BBC One Show's presenters Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley made from ordinary dominos. Adrian is made from 551 sets and Christine from 380 sets. These are low resolution versions to fit on the Blog pages and it helps if you view them from a distance (or squint!) What do you think?

Worms eat my Peelings

A few weeks ago, I saw an ad., in the East Riding News asking for volunteers to take part in a food waste trial. The scheme, run by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council, aims to reduce food waste by trialing a number of products, including Wormaries. Well, to cut a long story short, we have been selected for the trial and will take delivery of our Wormary and several thousand inhabitants within the next couple of weeks. I thought it might be fun to document our experience in a sister blog http://wormseatmypeelings.blogspot.com/ over the next few weeks. Watch this space.

Dazed and Confused

Bev and I were out walking Kylie the other day when we caught up with a well dressed, elderly man wandering towards Flamborough. He asked us, very politeley, if this was the way to Durham? He had a north east accent and was lucid but confused. He told us that he had been walking for hours, his feet hurt and he was hoping to get a lift home to Durham.

Typically, we hadn't brought our mobile 'phone with us so we knocked on the door of a large, posh looking house with plenty of expensive cars on the drive. The lady of the house said that they were having a 60th birthday party and when her son arrived, he would take our mystery gent to the police station. We continued to find out more about this chap when the son arrived. We explained what had happened and he looked at the old man and said "It's Mr Brown, isn't it? Tom Brown, my old science teacher? From the 1950s? " The old man's face lit up and he was invited in the big house to join the celebrations. The son agreed to sort out the situation andbelieved he knew where the old chap lived.

You couldn't make it up.

Still looking North

I managed to get my picture called "The Roost" in the viewer's picture slot of the BBC's local news offering, Look North, last Monday. A video grab is here if anyone is interested. Incidentally, listen to how much the presenter, one Peter Levy, sounds like Alan Partridge when he says "Top of the tree."

Go Suck an Orange

In the beginning there was FreeServe. It morphed into Wanadoo and it was good. Then Wanadoo was eaten by an Orange and they took the pith out of their customers. Support involves being patronised by a fact-shitting Geek on a premium rate 'phone number and their Web mail is so flaky it's practically unusable. As an ex-FreeServe mail account holder I can't even configure the anti-spam settings without receiving an incomprehensible message about my message having the characteristics of a virus. Sorry guys, I'm changing my settings, not sending a message. The final straw was being asked to stump up and extra £3 a month for my Web space. Those generous Orange boys offered me 5 free Web pages generated by a piss-poor authoring tool designed for the Facebook generation, so I told them to spin. Alas, no more New Bridlingtonian.

So kiddies, I'll be using this (rather impressive) blog site for the foreseeable future. I'm still exploring its possibilities so it'll take a few weeks to settle down in style and content. Please be patient - I'm doing my best.