HAPPY FATHER'S DAY
Shallilo is more or less comfortable with inspired ageing
Shallilo at Ladybower - inspired older people, a climb and a horrid descent
by Dave Walker 12th June 2018
Excellent day out for shallilo, childbride and friend. The start and maybe half the walk was a water board road; like any other. Then mostly a mild challenging uphill, a level stroll with Hope on our right and the final assault. Horrid descent through attractive woodland, but underfoot were uneven stone blocks on which the childbride's friend, Judith, stumbled and fell. No after effects. No helicopters and ambulances. The Yorkshire Bridge and The Yorkshire Bridge Inn were waiting at the bottom.
Shallilo does inspired ageing yet again. We are still able to do a 6 mile walk and 1000ft ascent. Judith is nearly 75. Dicky knees which struggled downhill. But we all completed it.
Derbyshire is easily reached from Holmfirth, though some days there are lots of people about.. Saddleworth and Dovestones are only 25 minutes away. Eric and I have had many a trip into Derbyshire. The Goyt Valley. Kinder in the winter went 'white out' and we followed a stream off the hill. Fern, our golden retriever, was with us. She didn't seem bothered. Derbyshire has a reputation for sudden freak weather and we had plenty of gear. We also did the White Peak Walk which was a marathon - in aid of the Nolan Trust (clic here for more).
We once had a surreal walk around Hope (clic here for more). Rivers was a psychiatrist famous for treating Siegfried Sassoon and other soldiers from WW1 with shell shock. In this case it's a pseudonym for Eric who was also a psychiatrist. Dyce is my pseudonym. In 1999, when we did the 'WPW,' I was still a bit muddled after 5 years or so of difficulties. In 2016 when I revised the 'Hope' piece, I think I'd improved from that state. Only others could tell really. It sounds like an example of what Booker refers to, in his 7 Basic Plots as a 'Voyage and Return' story.
One way of making sense of stuff is telling and retelling stories. The retelling allows story revision in the light of further experiences and a more balanced view of the past, within the context of the life stage, in this case, the older person. Some would say this is rationalisation 'the action of attempting to explain or justify behaviour or an attitude with logical reasons, even if these are not appropriate', in other words, some form of self-deception. Others might say it is simply getting to know yourself better. Some of our stuff is comfortable, some of it isn't. It's how we live with and celebrate our stuff that can help us make some sense of it.
From Peveril Castle over to the rugby pitch
Hope Show
One of the well-known stones up on Derwent Edge next to Howden reservoir.
staying forever young - Anglesey May 2018
We've always steered well clear of Anglesey. Studying and working in Liverpool and S. Wales with a variety of medical welshmen (1966-78), Anglesey and N. Wales assumed the mantle of holy places. Where only the pure and true welsh lived. Speaking in tongues. Sadly, there have been more than a few examples of deliberate use of the language to exclude non-believers. Henry Jones, my boss in Cardiff, was from Anglesey and not one of those - a gentle quiet man who spoke fondly of all things Welsh in English, even when talking to an excluder in my presence. Odd when the conversation was half and half, Welsh and English. He took me and the childbride to Portmeirion one year to deliver a lecture on my MD research. We survived.
So quite a trip down to Llandudno and beyond, to join older brother and Hazel in a small cottage, part-owned by my neice. Memories of walking in Snowdonia, for example the national 3 peaks (Snowden, Scafell, Ben Nevis), singing in the pubs with New Mill MVC and a very brief drive and back across the Menai Bridge to say we'd done it. Recently the choir did a wedding job near Beaumaris and we had a great time. Anglesey appeared to be little different from anywhere else. They even spoke English. And so it proved again, even in deepest Anglesey - Llannerch-y-medd.
Two bedrooms in the village centre. McColl's supermarket where one staff member didn't know the weather - affectionately known as the doll from McColl. Two pubs, The Bull, a modern Man U spot and somewhere unpronounceable where two slurred guys thought we were funny in Welsh - the only example of a go at exclusion. As a lifelong provocateur, I styled us as the Liverpool lot in no.16. The cottage also doubled as the bus stop where the front steps were the queue.
We parked next to the railway. Though it no longer runs, we came across various incarnations of its journey from the main Holyhead line up to Amlwch, even out on the coast at Red Wharf Bay. The station yard at Llannerch-y-medd is a community garden, adjacent to a cafe which was platform 1.
The bridge at Aberffraw on the west coast is there because older brother likes it. On the A55 between Newborough and Rhosneigr. Picturesque estuary with bridge leading to the village. No monsters, though the cobblers that Steve talks about bridges is a monster right there. We walked across and up to the pub in the village - a spot for a drink and a sit - worse places.
Our chronological first trip was to Amlwch, a port which used to export copper from the Parys mountain mine. This is now worked out, though older brother thinks there is another on the horizon, waiting for the copper price to climb. There is a walk around the mountain. It's not really a mountain, more of a massive hole with the ore mostly gone. Lots of colourful rocks - brown to gold and blues, reds and purples. 250th anniversary and the largest copper mine in the world in its day. Before the ore was discovered, the population was barely in the hundreds. After it soon rose to more than 7000. Families in one up one down. Average life span of a miner about 45 years. Hundreds of pubs as the local water was tainted from the mine and beer was safer. Two owners, London and Liverpool. Paid the miners in copper coin manufactured at the mine. So a truck shop. All information from the museum curator on the harbour wall at Amlwch. The highest point of the mountain hosted a ruined windmill, said to supplement the power generated by a steam engine. Not sure why. Beautiful day and stunning views over to Snowdonia.
Lush green woodland and bog. Hence the need for a boardwalk. The old railway splits it into two. Supposedly red squirrel territory but I never saw one. A park ranger was on hand to give us information. Nice chap with that strange north wales english accent, as if he was not really comfortable speaking it. We'd just been to Asda which was full. Dingle was refreshing.
Popular Newborough in the south west. Several walks up the beach, but most families stayed near the car park. A ruined church which was the devoted to the patron saint for lovers. Unsurprisingly medieval tourists made the church very rich. Free ranging cattle and sheep, more great views of the straits and Snowdonia, and preserved 'pilot' cottages. A community of seamen and women in rowing boats who guided ships through the treacherous Caernafon waters to the safety of the harbour.
There are no pics of Moelfre where we had a day. Pleasant bay with lots of craft and in the distance several guys making a row on jet skis. Further still Snowdonia. I sat on the headland with the lifeboat station over to the left. The inshore boat came in and was winched up on to the top floor. Brand new sparkling red lifeboat name Kiwi after a guy who donated his fortune - over 2 million. Something about a rescue during the last war when a N Zealander survived being torpedoed. Another guy who was rescued and resuscitated, recovering very quickly, is their main fund-raiser.
So in the short time we were there we did a lot, and you have to drive. Most journeys from Llannerch were 30 minutes or so and we got a taste for the island. Lots of families enjoying seaside holidays which we were not expecting. Away from the coast is farming, not quite as neat as the mainland.
We rarely spend time together with Steve and Hazel, so valuable catch up time and reminiscing. Interesting that memories do not always coincide. Telling stories which involve others does need some agreement.
Yes, we would visit again.
Shallilo reminisces as he watches sheep being sheared
Sheep shearing - Cannon Hall Farm
I was fortunate to watch this in the flesh back in the early 1980s up on the fellside in Swaledale. Nicholas, my young nephew, and I were camping at Usha gap (see It started at Usha Gap). We walked a little, and somewhere near Low Row we came across a sheep fold where a very hot farmer was shearing sheep with an enormous pair of scissors. Here it's electric, but just as hot. Soon after the Swaledale trip, I started my first senior medical job in Northallerton. On the doorstep of the Dales.
Sheep shearing is the first step in a long path to a piece of cloth. From the lowliest millhand to the exalted company director, almost everyone in the West Riding relates to the processes of textile manufacture. In the 1820s, Eli Walker, from Yew Tree Lane, Lindley, was a clothier. I suspect this meant he worked in some way with wool, rather than in the business of buying and selling cloth. His son William, born 1854, helped run the boiler at Sykes' Mill, Lindley, before labouring in a card clothing company (the machines that disentangled wool fibres). William married Harriet Bailey in 1882 at the New Connexion Chapel, Lindley. Harriet's father, Eneas, was a smallholder from Cowrakes, Lindley, described as farmer, weaver and journeyman. Prior to the growth of the factory from 1830 onwards, textiles depended on families in scattered homesteads up in the hills of Halifax and Huddersfield (see early family trees). Journeyman meant he had served his time as an apprentice. Subsequent generations worked in the mills and dye works, right up to my granny Addy, who died in 1994 and who was a woollen twister (part of yarn spinning).
To know your personal heritage helps keep your feet on the ground. Despite mixing with rugby union toffs and plummy hospital medics, I managed to keep one foot in the back streets of Hillhouse and Waterloo, albeit with the dubious reputation for being a professional Yorkshireman and quite brittle with it. I still regularly polish my shoulder chip.
In the early 2000s, I played cricket for a Huddersfield Sunday team called the Almondbury Casuals. The history of its early players in the 1950s and 60s was of owning and working in senior textile manufacturing positions, part of well-to-do families who could afford private education. The team I played for was more eclectic, but the shadow of the past loomed over us. When I started a Casuals archive (see Casuals History) and perhaps overstated some of my views about golf clubs and public schools, the word went round. Sadly the club has now ceased and the guys from the 1950s and 60s are dying out. Everyone remembers the club with fondness.
It's another story of square peg in round hole. A consequence of parental pressure, passing the eleven plus, attending an ambitious grammar school and seeking fame and fortune in a foreign land (the medical profession). All remembered by taking my grandson to Cannon Hall and watching a man shear a sheep.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)