Walked to Adel Dam today – haven’t been for a while. The first hide was busy and the feeders needed refilling so not a lot about. Usual blue tits, great tits, long tail tits, chaffinch, moor hen and mandarin duck. At the second hide it was the same apart from a bullfinch in the trees. Rather disappointed, I walked around the outside and was rewarded with a Redwing.
This is not my own picture – one taken from the internet for illustration purpose. As you can see it looks like a thrush but has red under its wing. So it was worth any while. Then I walked back over the fields to Pauls pond where there were some very fine swans and tufted ducks. Then just as I was about to leave I spotted a flash of incandescent blue as a kingfisher sped past.
Below is a link to a website that has my New Zealand trip documented on it. You use an app called Polar Steps to record your travels. Its brilliant – you can give people a link that enables them to travel with you as you keep a diary, adding photos, every day. Then when you get home you can relive it all again.
I often travel over to Gisburn from Leeds to meet up with a couple of my Lancashire friends for lunch at the White Bull. I love the journey – the A59 is one of my favourite rides. Just north of Addingham, I’ve often noticed a large hill on the right which looked like a good place to climb up for some great views and made it my ambition to find out what it was called and make it to the top one day, which is just what I did last weekend.
Above is the view of the Beacon from Addingham where we set off from. We parked near St Peters church, which is well worth a tiny detour to see. It seems as though it has been a place of worship since Anglo Saxon times. Click on the photo of the information board pictured below and enlarge it to read about it.
Theres an interesting board about Addingham too. So back over the tiny bridge onto the road through Addingham for a short while, we meet the Dales Way and go down some steps to a bridge across the River Wharfe.
Along a path beside a small stream and through a gate by a farm onto another country road. We walked up the road a short way passing one footpath and joined the next one on the right over a gate and crossed a very muddy field. You then hit an incredibly narrow bridleway. Fine to walk single file but how the hell a horse gets through I will never know and thank goodness we didn’t meet one coming the other way!! This eventually meet another country road and we turned left walking for a few hundred feet until we climbed over a small stillest over a wall by a large house and through some woods, coming out onto another very boggy field. We then hit the road which comes up from Beamsley to the bottom of the Beacon.
From there we climbed to the top to these magnificent views.
Here are some plaques on the trig point. One commemorating the crew of a Lancaster bomber that crashed on the slopes of the Beacon in 1945 and the other about the Beacon where bronze age burial mounds have been found. Again click on the photos and enlarge them to read the info.
So to carry on with the getting fit vein, Ive booked a squash session with Mike tonight! Eek! Not sure how long I will last coz its been a while.
Ive been doing exercises every morning – well nearly every morning – stretching and the dreaded plank. Ive cut down my beer consumption to just Fridays – mostly. The weather has put paid to my cycling every day but i have done a few 8 milers.
I intend to go swimming and ice skating and haven’t yet started pilates but one thing at a time.
I suppose I should weigh myself and make it public to jolt me into keeping it up.
There I’ve said it and made it public to my shame. Maybe now I will do something about it. I have made a start and hope that anybody that follows me will help, by keeping tabs on me and asking how I’m doing.
This is a photo of me when I was 20. Ffs, look at me, I’m soooo slim.
Ok so 42 years have gone by and I’m not expecting miracles but if i could just loose the fat round my stomach, legs, arms and bum it’d be fab.
This is me now.
I often wear a jacket as it covers a multitude of sins ie: bingo wings and hanging belly!
I made a start back in April by buying a pedal assist bike. I thought cycling being non weight bearing would be a good idea and I love getting out in the country side. I knew I’d never get far in Yorkshire if I didn’t have some assistance when needed, so a pedal assist was vital. With these bikes you can’t just glide along by engaging the battery, you still have to pedal, but its like having a gentle push to help you up those inclines. Mountain bikes were a thing of the past for me and I opted for an old fashioned style of sit up bike. I spent quite a bit on a gorgeous Volt Kensington in powder blue.
I have been out on it several times and have done up to 20 miles but I haven’t been regularly. I do the 9 mile one from my house most often and have done this twice this week. I just need to keep it up.
This week I have been doing a few exercises in the morning before I get dressed. Mostly stretching and the dreaded “plank” which I can only hold for 30 seconds and only three times so far. I can feel the affects so hope its doing something. Now I need to stop eating cakes!!! Must find something I can substitute.
I’ve found a pilates class and will start that this week or next. We’ve found a badminton group in Ilkley who play just for fun so hopefully will take that up again.
Mike had booked a few days holiday at the end of June, so we decided to go and get a taste of Anglesey. I’d never been before, although Mike apparently visited as a child but couldn’t really remember it. We picked a certified location Caravan club site, which only allows for five pitches, which makes them fairly quiet and are our preference. We have a Bailey Pegasus Verona GT, which is our most luxurious and comfortable van.
Below are manufactures photos of the same van.
It’s brilliant having a fixed bed and not having to make up the front seats every night.The van has a mover that’s fab for manoeuvring into awkward pitches.I love the large front window that makes the van so light.
So onto the site. We went to Gorsgoch Farm on the Holy Island part of Anglesey, almost as far as you can go. We were obliged to use our own facilities as the site only had electric hook up and waste disposal, but it was no problem as our van has a good toilet and shower .
The blue dot is where we were.
From our large caravan window we had a great view over the fields and sea, which gave us some wonderful sunsets.
From the site we could walk to a heath on the headland called Penrhosfeilw Common or the Range. A beautiful quiet area covered in heather, some very rare wild flowers and lots of birds. We saw skylarks, stonechats, whinchats, skylarks, possibly a rock pipit and linnet, loads of pied wagtails, swallows and house martins, jackdaws and choughs.
a gull and young
possible rock pipit
and another
linnet or stonechat?
not sure – ideas?
same
We walked from the Range to the next town – Trearddur (Bay) a 9mile round trip in beautiful sunshine and a gentle breeze. It was so quiet.
It was a lovely peaceful “far from the madding crowd” holiday, helped along by the weather, because there’s not much to do there otherwise.
Moving on from the death of a close family loved one is hard but it just has to be done. I think about her more now than I ever did when she was alive. I regret not spending more time with her but that doesn’t get you anywhere. She was a very practical person and I can hear her speaking in my head :
” get on with your life, savour every minute, do everything you want to do if you can, don’t waste a minute and be happy”.
And that is what I intend to do and writing it here is an affirmation of that.
One of the things that I enjoy is being creative, whether it is writing, gardening, playing my musical instruments, cooking , decorating my home, photography, planning holidays or walks and its one of the things I miss about teaching. I loved thinking up new ways to inspire the kids and planning music or guitar lessons. That is until I felt I was being forced into a box and things had to be done one way and one way only. So I left.
And so at the end of this summer, better late than never, I have spent a great deal of time redesigning my garden. Building raised beds, planting and rearranging. It’s been creative, fun, physically demanding at times, and it kept me feeling positive and fulfilled. Theres still stuff to do, but that’s good. Its been fun wandering around garden centres and trawling the internet for ideas and learning which plants will go where.
The grass is proving difficult. Thats because our dogs wee kills it leaving areas of bare ground, so its very patchy. I have re-seeded one patch with”Aftercut Patch Fix” which is specially recommended for re-seeding areas damaged by urine, with grass types that are supposed to withstand our dogs liquid outpourings!! Nothing much has happened in a week.
The concrete patio looks very drab and weary so I’m looking into coverings for that.
Our raised bed kit came on a very sturdy wooden pallet, which I painted with green fence stain and potted a load of autumnal plants in it – see photo. It looks good and covers up a wall of pebble dash, which i don’t like. We will see how long the plants last in the small pots.
The raised beds took an awful lot of filling with many bags of top soil and compost. Even though the bed comes with a 15 year guarantee, I lined the sides with a pond liner . I’ve planted herbs in them, to use in my recently reawakened love of cooking. (See the first picture – you can also see what I mean about the concrete patio). I also painted the fence with green one coat Cuprinol Fence Paint, but as you can see one coat has not covered it well enough. The fence, it has to be said, is pretty knackered but it belongs to next door. The third picture is of some window boxes I bought and filled with pansies which always seem pretty hardy. The last picture is of my “Wendy House” and the decking we had done a couple of years ago, which makes use of that corner of the garden. I absolutely love my girl cave and spend loads of time in it. I have a little portable gas heater for when its chilly and I do a great deal of my writing in it. As you can see our dog is rather fond of it too and nearly always accompanies me.
The decking need to be kept clean by sweeping and once a year I scrub it with washing up liquid and water, then use a decking protector. I want to get rid of the compost container which you might see in the corner – it looks stupid and we don’t use it. So am considering making it smaller and into a table area or something – watch this space. I think the table and chairs we have at the moment are too big. And Im going to get some nice paving stones for the little path to the house.
Today I decided to start one of the projects that’s been in my head for a while. I want to start photographing and finding out about the history of the area in which i live. To this end I’ve started locally by finding old buildings and by old I mean at the very least 100 years of age. The older the better.
So I started with one I know well – Adel St. Johns church.
The church is of Norman design built between 1150 and 1170 with alterations made over the years. Its a grade 1 listed building and the mountain g block for those with carriages is grade 2 listed.
The door had iron studs and a 13th century bronze closing ring depicting a man being swallowed by a monster. This was replaced with a replica after the original was stolen in 2002.
The Romans had a fort in Adel and left wells, a temple including alter stones and various other artifact which are in Leeds museum. Before that there was an iron age fort. There was an Anglo Saxon wooden church when Adel and most of Yorkshire was part of the kingdom of Northumbria. Anglo Saxon coffins and the head of a c10 cross have been found – also in Leeds museum.
If you click on the photo above in the left corner, to enlarge it, you can see the grotesque heads, these are called corbels.
The vestry at the back of this photo has a chimney.
Graveyards are fascinating places. You can learn so much from them. The one on the right at the top shows a man who died of cholera – there were a few epidemics in Leeds. The Victorians certainly liked to mark their deaths with some grand monoliths.
So I’ve been told many times that i think too much! How can you think too much? I mean thinking is what brains are for! But I know what they mean. I overthink, ruminate, question and wonder and that’s what keeps me awake at night because quite often its all the negative things that I overthink, question, ruminate and wonder about.
Recently, we lost a close family member at 66 years of age, completely unexpectedly and suddenly. It was a massive blow to us all and perhaps a wake up call, that life is precious and precarious. Its made me question loads of things. For instance: how can a person so alive, with so much character, that touched so many hundreds of people, that did so many worthwhile things, that was the cornerstone of a family, that was so full of knowledge so eagerly imparted, be here one minute and gone the next???
I don’t believe in god or the afterlife – its a lovely idea but like Santa and the tooth fairy, a made up idea, to keep people happy and under control. As for formal religions – just don’t get me started!
Now I’m starting to move on because there are no answers only the here and now. I’ve made a promise to myself to start to live my life to the full. to do things that I’ve been saying I’m going to do and to keep in contact with family and friends that I care about. Most of all I’m going to start to think positively.
My Twitter feed is full of tweets about animal cruelty, Brexit, Trump, the oaf that sits in 10 Downing Street at this moment in time, the antics of the far right and racists, climate change, wars, protests etc etc. I like to be informs of things going on in the world and I think its important that i do whatever I can to support things I believe in – even if its only signing petitions or writing to my MP or donating to charity (I always investigate the charity first though to see where my money goes). But I am not going to get bogged down with it all. there’s loads of good going on in the world too.
So today as I walked with one of my best friends – my dog Tetley – I let the wind and rain wash over my face and was glad of it. When the sun came out and spread its rays through the leaves of the hundreds of years old trees, I marvelled at the sparkling diamonds on the lake and the wildfowl that swam on it. I sat for a moment and watched fields of golden wheat blowing in the breeze
