Hill

There's a hill nearby with a telecommunications mast on top of it. That mast is a useful landmark. You can see it from miles around. It is like the centre of a massive compass. I drove up there today - just to get out of the house and to breathe in some fresh air, knowing that the early afternoon weather forecast  was more about sunshine than precipitation.

The mast overlooks both Eyam and The Hope Valley and it is by an ancient byway that takes its name from the hill it crosses - Sir William Hill Road. It is most likely that the hill was named after Sir William Saville, the 2nd Marquis of Halifax, a grandson of the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury who became Lord of the Manor of Eyam. During the English Civil War, Sir William Saville commanded Royalist forces, which occupied Leeds and Wakefield. After an attack on Bradford had been repulsed, the Parliamentarians under Fairfax forced him back to Leeds. Later, Sir William became Governor of Sheffield and was killed near York in 1644. But there are other theories for the name which I will not go into just now.

Thankfully, I had come well-prepared for a hike up to William Hill - long johns, a woolly hat, fingerless gloves and so on. There was a sprinkling of snow and hypothermic sheep were nosing about in the turf as a biting wind lashed across the landscape from a north westerly direction. Here are two more of the images I captured up there:-

Erosion

Detail from a visitor information board by Hornsea beach

It is estimated that since Roman times. the coast of Holderness in East Yorkshire has lost about two and half miles to erosion. So when you look out to sea from Hornsea or Aldbrough or Withernsea you might pause for a while to think of those lost acres of rich farming land. But more than that - out there where the North Sea waves churn in the wintertime there were villages, hamlets and even two very significant ports called Ravenser Odd and Ravenspurn - the latter being mentioned in three plays by William Shakespeare.

Each winter, ruthless waves come along in storms to chew at the land. The boulder clay of the coast offers only limited resistance but in a good winter only a metre or so of land is lost to the sea. In bad winters up to ten metres might go.

Some of the lost villages had parish churches and stone crosses. Graveyards and cockerels crowing from fenceposts. There were byways and lanes and humble cottages, farms and memories. People passed the time of day by their doors, hardly thinking that one day their settlements would disappear - lost forever, as if they had never been.

Auburn, Hartburn, Northorpe, Monkswell, Monkwike, Waxholme, Dimlington, Turmarr, Orwithfleete, Tharlesthorpe, Owthorne, Hoton, Sunthorpe and Old Kilnsea are just some of the lost places. These names are rooted in Yorkshire's Viking ancestry.

And when you walk along the beach at Hornsea you are never sure of the stories that the stones beneath your feet could tell. From more recent years you will see bricks that have been rounded by wave action - but once they belonged in the walls of barns or houses - all taken by the unforgiving sea.

Hornsea is protected by a concrete seawall that was first developed at great expense in the early years of the twentieth century. Later this was extended. I walked along to the end of this new sea defence to witness the way in which the waves are eating away at the South Cliff under a large holiday caravan park that gets smaller each winter. And this is what I saw...

Lumps of boulder clay gathering beach pebbles

Drax

From Beverley, there's a road that strikes out westwards over The Yorkshire Wolds. You cross ancient commonland known as Beverley Westwood and soon you are in the "traffic calmed"village of Walkington with its duck pond and pretty houses. Then the road climbs towards a group of farms on top of the chalk wold at High Hunsley. Half a mile later and you see a panorama of The Vale of York - its broad acres stretching out like a carpet  About eighteen miles distant there's Britain's premier coal-fired power station at Drax. It pumps out plumes of steam and smoke that merge with the clouds. Above my picture of Drax from High Hunsley - snapped last Wednesday afternoon and below a picture of the same power station captured last April from the Barmby Barrage - across the River Ouse.

Okay

Tom Gowans in a London hospital earlier this year

He's okay. For anybody who hasn't "met" fellow blogger Tom Gowans from the outskirts of Luanda, Angola, let me tell you that this fellow has lived a remarkable life and his blog, "Hippy on the Lawn", is well worth reading. In fact it won the prestigious "Blogger of the Year" award last year. It is full of joy and of the trials and tribulations of life and is stylishly well-written too. Tom Gowans is a sweet swashbuckling real life action hero, a man who can do anything until that is he is struck down by infection - caused (naturally) by a snakebite that at first he thought he could simply ignore. The crazy fool!

I was slightly worried about him because he hasn't blogged since August 9th and you know how the blogosphere is. Sometimes people simply disappear. So I dropped Tom an email message to reassure myself that he is okay and this was his reply...

Hi Yorkshire,
First signs of progress but still a long way out of the woods. Once I am, I will have plenty to write about!

Regards

Tom

_______________________________________________

Original message- 

Dear Tom,

I keep clicking on your blog - "Hippo on the Lawn", wondering if you will ever come back. Obviously there are lots of reasons for not blogging - you got bored, somebody stole your computer, you had nothing to say, there was a big family or health issue etc.. All I want to know is that you are okay. If you get this, please drop me a line. I know I am not the only one who is missing your witty and erudite blog offerings.

Best wishes,

Yorkshire Pudding (Sir)

Hornsea

Hornsea on the east coast of Yorkshire. Going back there felt as if I was walking through part of my inner self. Six miles east of my home village I was often there in my salad days. It is where I found Joy and Pam - my first proper girlfriends and it's where I felt the magnetic pull of modern music in The Floral Hall. I saw Roxy Music there on their inaugural tour and later the tragic songwriting genius who was Tim Hardin:-

If I listen long enough to you

I'd find a way to believe that it's all true

Knowing, that you lied, straight-faced

While I cried 

But still I'd look to find a reason to believe

And when I was the lead singer for a teenage band called Village we also performed in Hornsea.

Years have passed since I was last in Hornsea. It had hardly changed. Still The North Sea trundling up the beach. Still the anglers patiently waiting. Still beach walkers and pebbles and the boulder clay cliffs that suffer erosion each winter - unkind waves gorging on the land. More of that in another post - I bet you cannot wait my friend!

The "Fry Days" fish and chip shop in The Marketplace is now "The Trawlerman" and that is where I enjoyed a wonderful lunch with a china cup and saucer for my tea and a slice of lemon in a stainless squeezer for my battered codfish - expertly prepared and golden brown. To die for.

Clickable pictures from yesterday morning.....

Lunatics

In those far off days they kept thousands of people in mental hospitals on the edges of villages, mostly far away from cities. We thought of them as lunatic asylums and we called their residents loonies. They were forbidding places surrounded by trees with big iron railings and local legends to protect them from prying eyes.

There was a small one on the edge of the next village - Brandesburton. Sometimes the loonies got loose and the police had to hunt them down. Once a loony stole my Hercules bicycle from outside our house. It was my pride and joy - a surprise present on my ninth birthday. It had maroon paint and was never designed to be ridden by a grown man. I rode it everywhere until the loony stole it. He pedalled all the way to Hull on it which is where the bobbies found it. They brought it back and the loony was locked up once more.

One summer the local youth club leader took a bunch of us to Brandesburton Hospital to play cricket with a team of loonies. We weren't too keen. I mean, perhaps being a loony was infectious. We didn't want to become loonies ourselves. I remember that one big, strapping loony climbed up on the pavilion roof. A couple of nurses were yelling at him to come down but he took out his willy and urinated on them. You don't see this kind of thing at Lord's or even at The Gabba in Brisbane, Australia.

When I was eleven I was a choirboy with an angelic voice. Every Sunday I sang in Holy Trinity Church where I had been christened in the year of my birth. It was the tradition that the best choir boy got to start The Christmas Eve Service with a solo rendition of the first verse of "Once in Royal David's City" before leading the choir down from the vestry and along the aisle to the front of the church. So in 1964 it was my turn.

Once in royal David's city,

Stood a lowly cattle shed...

I was standing at the top of the steps in my white surplice over a black cassock feeling a little shaky. Even before I had reached the word "shed", the loonies were turning round to ogle at me with lolling tongues, pallid cheeks and rolling eyes. They had been bussed in as usual from the mental hospital to fill the rear pews. And I can tell you it is not easy for a nervous choirboy to sing a solo like that when he has aroused the special interest of twenty or thirty loonies.

In the carol it says that Jesus lived on earth with "the poor, and mean, and lowly" but it doesn't say anything about loonies. And I doubt that when Jesus was a carpenter's apprentice he had to sing a solo to a full church. He might have been God's only begotten son born of a virgin but he would not have felt so smug and holy if he'd seen a loony pissing from a cricket pavilion roof.

Forgive me for I am rambling on. What made me post about lunatics today? Well, now that the mental hospital sites have been turned into exclusive housing estates for the middle classes, the loonies have been let loose within the wider community. I saw several this morning as I drove to and from Hillsborough - close to another massive mental hospital of yesteryear called Middlewood.

There was a woman driver sitting alone in a Ford Focus, nattering away to herself and even laughing. I swear it's true! I was next to her at some traffic lights. There was nobody else in the car! She must have been a loony. And there was a pedestrian. I had my window wound down and he was walking along with an earpiece in his lughole talking to himself about Christmas shopping and what his dad had said. He also must have been a loony.

I left my car at the "Seat" dealership and wandered round the back of Sheffield Wednesday's football stadium. I counted fourteen pedestrians glued to their mobile phones - checking texts, checking the weather, checking their Facebook pages. Now they just have to be loonies too. Normal people wouldn't do stuff like that. And there was another fellow marching along, grinning inanely while he rabbited on about some imaginary business deal. He kept saying "yeah, yeah, yeah" like a loony at the back of a village church in the early sixties.

And He leads His children on,

To the place where He is gone.

Further

View to Win Hill and Lose Hill from Stanage Edge

Further? Further along Stanage Edge. After a largely grey week, Sunday appeared brightly - as if she had cast off her November clothes. There was blue sky and  I was up very early. After partaking of breakfast in "The Hammer and Pincers" (£2.99), I was back at Stanage Edge but further along the escarpment than where I was for my last Stanage photos. Remember "Sunset"?

There were already a good number of people around - enjoying the countryside that is on our doorstep. Walkers, cyclists, rock climbers and a woman flashed by me in a skin hugging black lycra suit as she ran towards the rocky Edge. Victorian ladies would have never dressed like that! It was as if she also had cast off her November clothes.

Up along the track that is known as The Long Causeway past The Buck Stone. The dramatic autumn light illuminated the old rocks beautifully. Jagged teeth. Roughly hewn building blocks. Always looking westwards. At this time of year the  the bracken swathes and the heather are chestnut brown - one of the costumes of death. So different from the greenery and bee humming heather fields of mid-summer.

The Long Causeway

I met a path that took me northwards on the crest of The Edge, stopping by a wooden stile to chat with a seventy something couple who were striding out together with walking poles and rucksacks containing God know's what. When  I see some Peak District ramblers with all their outdoor equipment kit, I sometimes think - Where the hell are you off to? Antarctica? In England's first national park, you are never more than two miles from a road. This isn't the Australian outback or the northern tundra of Canada. This is The Peak District for heaven's sake. Survival bags. Compasses. flasks and sandwiches, ordnance survey maps in weatherproof folders that they hang around their urban necks, flares, GPS instruments, whistles, spare socks.

Win Hill from Stanage

Over the moorland below I could see the volcanic summit of Win Hill. Nearby there was a stone shelter constructed specifically for posh grouse shooters with hip flasks. When I clambered down from The Edge, I passed the remains of an old millstone quarry with various abandoned millstones in the dying bracken. It was past midday now and as the chummy weatherman had promised, clouds were now moving in to smother the bright morning. Back to the car and home.

Grouse shooters' shelter

Triangulation pillar at High Neb

Abandoned millstone below High Neb