Postcard

MALTA, MEDITERRANEAN SEA JUNE 12th 2013
Arrived safely. Warm but windy. Hotel Soreda in Qawra - good. Today visited catacombs in Mdina and prehistoric  "Clapham Junction" cart lines. Also saw ancient cave dwellings nearby after negotiating frothing hounds - not all on chains! Moving on to Gozo tomorrow. Wish you were here.

Love,

Yorkshire & Shirley Pudding

P.S. Our hire car is an Opel Corsa.

Ouch

We had a couple of old garden chairs to cast away. I'd brought them to the front of the house intending to drive to what was once called the Dump-It Site but is now Blackstock Road  Recycling Centre. I noticed the half-empty skip (US dumpster) in front of a neighbour's house and so toddled up the street to knock on their door - seeking permission to leave our old chairs in the aforementioned skip. Unfortunately, the neighbours weren't in so, as planned, I did the decent thing and set off for the dump-it site recycling centre instead.

On the way, for reasons I shan't explain, I had to do a U-turn and very slowly this involved mounting a kerb - whereupon there was an alarming mechanical noise - as if the suspension had been badly jarred. I carried on to the recycling centre and discovered that in fact I had a flat tyre.

Previously, I had never had to change a tyre on this car - a Seat Ibiza - so I checked the manual before attempting the operation. Everything was going fine until I discovered I didn't have my vital wheel nut key to loosen the last wheel nut. I looked everywhere and realised I'd have to check at home - three miles away. Up on the main road I flagged a taxi down but when I got home - no wheel nut key to be found anywhere!

Then for more reasons I shan't explain, it registered that I hadn't renewed my Green Flag breakdown insurance so I'd have to pay £108 to receive attention - possibly vehicle recovery too. Another taxi and I was back at the recycling centre. A repairman arrived in his green van - bizarrely a former pupil of mine who has recently become a grandfather! With all of Wayne's sockets and wheel nut keys, he couldn't help so the recovery vehicle was called and both the car and I were ferried back home.

The thing is - we are driving down to Luton at midday today (Monday) for our holiday flight to Malta - no time to get the wheel nut issue sorted. So at eight thirty last evening I caught a train up to Leeds to retrieve Shirley's little Hyundai car which our daughter Frances borrowed whilst I was in Thailand. Then back down the M1, getting home just before eleven.

And as I turned into our street I noticed the yellow skip was still there and by now the neighbours'  lights were on...And the moral of this story is either (a) honesty isn't always the policy or (b) shit happens!

Sheldon

Rose Farm, Sheldon

This past week the weather has been gorgeous here in the heart of Great Britain. Bright, clear days revealing the glories of nature - with human modifications - in technicolour. Yesterday, in just skimpy shorts and flipflops, with bulging oiled biceps,  I tackled the privet hedges in our back garden - forty metres on both sides. Armed with my trusty JCB hedge trimmer, it took nigh on three hours - creating a pile of clippings the size of a family-sized igloo. Job done. Then on to barbecue duty before Shirley arrived home from work bellowing "Where's me tea?" For a treat I brushed big slices of yellow pepper with olive oil and grilled them next to the pork chops and homemade burgers. Eat yer heart out Gordon Ramsay!

But on Thursday I rambled in my beloved Peak District once again. I parked  up in a picture postcard village called Sheldon with its limestone farmhouses and quaint miners' cottages, its little village greens, its red phonebox and its curiously named public house. A sheepdog came to greet me as I donned my boots and I rubbed him below the neck which seemed to make him smile.

Then I set off across the limestone landscape with its ancient walls towards beautiful Deep Dale. Down the steep green banking then up the other side to Over Wheal Farm where I caught up with a sixty-something couple from Derby who seemed slightly appalled that I was clad in only my tiger T-shirt and shorts. They had fleeces and rucksacks - no doubt containing flares, sleeping bags, water canteens and Kendal mintcake. If possible, I like to travel light. Just my A4 map and camera.

Leaving them behind I reached an old drovers' track that strikes north westwards towards Taddington but at Taddington High Mere - a remote and ancient watering hole - I turned southwards for Flagg. A woman was walking two greyhounds - the black one had a hind leg missing. Then another woman on a muscular but stumpy brown horse trotted up the lane with her daughter on a frisky white pony behind her. There was so little motorised traffic out there.

From Flagg I walked on the Limestone Way footpath towards Knotlow Farm then down into the high peak village of Monyash where I stopped to photograph the old pinfold. A pinfold was a village enclosure used for the temporary accommodation of stray animals. Errant farmers were able to reclaim their animals for a small fee. Many Derbyshire villages still retain their pinfolds though of course they are never used these days - like many things they have become just a reminder of past times and the way things were.

The pinfold in Monyash

It was a long walk on tarmac from Monyash - all the way along Horse Lane. I turned right at the road junction because I wanted to investigate the site of Magpie Mine - an old lead mine that operated for two hundred and fifty years. Its pit wheel is now forever still but the site reminds visitors that northern Derbyshire was never just about sheep farms and gorgeous country vistas. No - the mining industry affected the area from before the coming of the Romans. Men died here. Miners' wives wept. Generations trudged across these windblown lanes to exploit seams of lead, knee deep in water, under the yoke of greedy mine owners who liked to keep their wage bills as suppressed as possible to maximise profits. Has anything changed?

Back in lovely Sheldon, I went into "The Cock and Pullet" which in spite of the suggestive name is not a gay bar I can assure you! I drank a refreshing pint of orange cordial with soda water and chomped on plain crisps containing not any old salt but "Cheshire salt". Oh yes, my friends, I know how to have a wild time.

Bringing in the hay on Horse Lane

Magpie Mine near Sheldon

Another view of the now derelict Magpie Mine

Back in beautiful Sheldon. Time for a drink in
"The Cock and Pullet"!

Clues

I've been back in Blighty too long. It's time to get away again...So on Monday afternoon Shirley and I are leaving Luton airport on a Ryanair jet plane. And here are three picture clues as to where we are going:-

Mmm...now that was difficult wasn't it? Never been there before. It's a nine day trip and because Shirley only gets four weeks holiday a year this is her main vacation. I'm just going to carry the bags and to negotiate the Ryanair pitfalls - designed to trip up unwary air travellers and to bleed their wallets. One of the very irritating techniques this cunning airline have recently introduced is to use advertising in word verification so that you find yourself typing slogans or phrases from Ryanair or partner companies. They didn't used to be as ruthless as they are now. I just hope we are able to manage all the hurdles before we get to.....

Winner

The "geograph" project receives hundreds of  new amateur photographs of the British Isles every day. There's a weekly competition which ultimately leads to a decision about the "Photograph of the Year". Between May 18th and 24th, 6396 eligible photographs were considered for the Week 21 competitition. A shortlist was drawn up and the judge - winner from the previous week - was left to pick his/her particular favourite. And guess what - he picked mine!

I know I have shown you this picture before but here it is again. It was taken on Stanage Edge - an exposed mile of millstone grit which looks westwards to the Hope Valley and beyond. This wasn't a picture I had much time to compose. I just noticed that confident rock climber having fun, crouching on the jutting rock, calling to her companion below.

Perhaps recalling his younger days, this is what another geograph-er called "Silver Whiskers" said of my winning photo:-

A lovely picture!!! Quite apart from the top class composition, just look at her face! Doesn't that just illustrate how wonderful it feels to be up there doing it. Gingerwhiskers remembers, back in the old days ....... well I rarely did more than a scramble when not on a rope ... but just doing the odd v-diff while watching friends on more severe tasks - it was great to be out. Aaaaaahhh!

Okay, okay I know I am blowing my own trumpet in this post but like a kid with his first bicycle, I feel right chuffed! It's been a long time since I  was last a weekly winner in spite of numerous nominations and if you saw the other candidates I think you'd be right chuffed too!

Edale

Edale, Derbyshire on a lovely June day. It's a secret green valley where once all that there was to do was to raise sheep and cattle and children. Manchester and Sheffield would have seemed a million miles away. Now there are holiday homes. People retire here. Some of the old stone barns and houses are tumble down - yet they whisper tantalising echoes from a bygone age.

It's a lovely place to walk when the weather is clement - especially on a Monday when the weekenders have returned to their workaday world. I came across one fellow rambler - a Mancunian - urinating merrily by a stile as I approached. He was mortified but I promised not to inform the local constabulary that there was a flasher on the loose. Surely he could have gone to the visitor centre two miles away even though I appreciate that Mancunians are a rather uncouth lot.

Pressed by agents in Hollywood, I have crafted my second major film. It took me ages to recapture the amateurish flavour of my first home movie. In this artefact, you will find deliberate discolouration, blurriness, strange transitions and shakiness. Roughness can be very effective in film don't you think?...

Morthen

Morthen before the motorways came

Some things get lost. The history of England is written in the field patterns, the ancient tracks, the tumuli, the earthworks, old documents, oral legends and in the stone remains of bygone ages and yet still some things get lost.

Yesterday - another beautifully sunny and clear day - I was walking in an area just east of Sheffield. The walk brought me to the agricultural hamlet of Morthen. It was the first time I'd been there. It's off the beaten track and there's not much to see but its name is tantalising.

Close by there are two larger villages called Laughton-en-le-Morthen and Brampton-en-le-Morthen. And it seems that in medieval times some other villages in the area were appended in the same manner. Morthen? What could it mean?

Here are three suggestions from "Rotherham - The Unofficial Website":-

• Morthen may derive from the Old Norse term morthyng meaning moorland district with a common assembly.
• It is also possible that Morthen was part of the site of the Battle of Brunanburgh around 936. A Saxon cross still stands at Morthen which is said to commemorate those slain at the battle where 50000 warriors are reputed to have died. It would therefore mean the field of slaughter.
• Morthen possibly comes from the French 'morte' meaning death. Morthen being the place of death for the reason above or others.

Whoever wrote the above was perhaps unaware that there are other theories about Morthen. It is said by some that when the Romans departed these islands they left behind a political vacuum in which new Viking, Angle and Saxon kingdoms formed and that one of these small kingdoms was known as Morthen. Historical speculation surmises that each June for two hundred years or more, Viking elders and leaders would gather at a gentle moorland ridge between Morthen and Upper Whiston to parley, sort out differences and look to the future. Hence: "moorland district with a common assembly".That ridge is now cruelly dissected by the M1 motorway.

Who knows? As I say, some things get lost and maybe that's a good thing. There's too much dispelling of mystery. Too much rationality and too much science. It's nice to have an area called "Morthen", hiding its mysteries for ever more. And its nice to walk there on the same pathways that long dead men and women used so many years ago. Do we really need to know everything?

Entering Brampton-en-le-Morthen last autumn

Horse riders on York Lane, Morthen yesterday afternoon