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For the first 15 years of my life I lived in Preston, for the last 15 I have lived in York. There was a light Easterly wind. It was fine. I felt good. Obvious - ride to Preston from York.
The route was great, skirting Ilkley Moor and Pendle Hill with some great little roads down the Ribble Valley to Preston. One of the best days on a bike. The train journey home took me nearly as long as the ride.

The Bog

The bog on the walk got to the stage where it looked pretty toxic. All natural of course but it looked more like a garage forecourt with spilt diesel. Grippen Mire had nothing on this.

Peak Times

On Bank Holiday Monday we met up with some friends from London in the Peak District at Baslow. We had a great walk on the moors then a meal in the Robin Hood Pub that was fantastic; as Rowan says "You think that all Pub's still serve horrible food, but they don't" and she is right.
Danielle met Lorraine at a pregnancy yoga class in Archway when Rowan and Robert [their eldest son of four] were imminent. Rowan is going to do her work experience with Robert next month and will be staying in London for the duration.
The walk included off-piste bog trotting, which went down well with the younger boys and less well with the older folk. In the midst of the bog we saw an Adder, resplendent in the grass.

Edinburgh

We all went up to Edinburgh on Saturday, Danielle ran the half marathon on the Sunday. She set a new PB, but found it an atmosphere-free, badly managed event. Not to be repeated. Rowan and I wandered around the city whilst Danielle ran. I love the vertical aspect of Edinburgh - the hills are high and steep and this added dimension means you can look over a wall and see a shot like this.

Wine Tasting

We do love a good wine tasting. Friday night there was one at Rowan's school. Very relaxed affair, and we met some new people - she wants some photos doing, he is a keen cyclist - so it was a good evening.
Rowan is two thirds of the way through her GCSEs, and all is OK so far.

The Mound - Acomb

Tai Chi

I first heard of Tai Chi in the early 80s, from a friend who put me off. Then in about 87 I started hearing of it again from a volunteer I was supervising. That led to me giving it a go and learning a long form. I enjoyed the way it was taught - with very little spiritual padding, just concentrating on the movements. The day my father died I was due to go to a big Tai Chi evening, which I missed, and it put me off the whole thing for a while. Then I re learnt it in about 92 and have been doing a short form on and off ever since. I know not why I feel better for doing it in the morning, but I do. And that is good enough for me.

Milo on the Moor

Portrait Photography

I have decided to give the portrait side of my photography business a bit of a push. So please pass this on to anyone who might be interested.

Favourite Road 1

This is one of my favourite bits of road. After a long and gradual climb up a dry valley out of Thixendale with a little sting at the end, you are on top of the Wolds, with a very gentle freewheel through this wood. Through the wood and the steep descent begins. So this is a few hundred metres of heaven.

May Blossom

Danielle was rowing on the Tees on Saturday. Her boat came second and she enjoyed it a lot.

Cup final weekend usually coincides with the best display of Hawthorne blossom. This year was no exception. This shot is in one of the parks / wildlife areas that lie nearby.

Willow 3

And this is how the garden looks now the Willows have been well and truly pollarded.

Campione!2014

Rowan is the 2014 Yorkshire High Jump champion. She won in 2012, but missed the event last year, so she was pleased to get it back. The event was at a pit village called Cudworth near Barnsley, and it was a lovely hot sunny day. 

2014

2012

Willow 2

Half way through the process the tree looked like this.

I got quite excited yesterday when I noticed that the Oaks were in leaf yet the Ashes were barely budding. The old adage goes;

"If the oak before the ash, then we'll only have a splash, if the ash before the oak, then we'll surely have a soak"

So I was thinking of a long dry summer. I then found out that the Oak is nearly always out first nowadays, for reasons unknown. So as an indicator of future weather it is not reliable, if indeed it ever was.

Willow One

The Willows at the bottom of the garden needed sorting. Two years ago one of them crashed to the ground. Now the remaining three all look ready to go. So I decided to get them pollarded by the tree man. All is done now, more logs than I can ever imagine burning, more woodchip than anyone should ever want. A good job all round.
So here it the before picture, taken from upstairs [bee hives in the foreground]

Exams

Rowan's GCSE exams started this week. 4 down, 24 to go. Not too happy with one of them yesterday, but she is taking it all in her stride.

The photo is another shot of the University. That round building sticking into the lake is a pod that you can use for meetings etc.

New Build

The building work at our Quaker Meeting House in York is phase-one complete. The new rooms really are fantastic and there is a great aura in the building. It should provide good quality rooms for the many community groups that use the building, a real asset for the city.

This shot is of the Quiet Room which is open to anyone to sit and think in quiet.

Fairport

The photo is at the new University site, taken as I waited in the lovely evening sunshine. There are quite a few of the elements that I like in a photo here. Emptiness, stark light, good sky, a touch of the surreal. But it doesn't quite work.

I have seen some strange gigs in my time - Elvis Costello on the Mersey Ferry for starters - but last nights of legendary folk-rock giants [Fairport Convention] at a village hall outside York [Poppleton] is up there with them. Quite how a local mover and shaker persuaded them to play there is beyond me but it was a great gig.

Court Two

Rowan took this photo of me after the University Court dinner. That's two photos of me on the blog this year already. Enough.

Court & Spark

It was the York University Court meeting yesterday http://www.york.ac.uk/about/organisation/governance/court/. Danielle is a member and I get to go to the dinner after the meeting. It is always an interesting event and this year we met people involved in applied science projects at the University. One scientist was growing replacement bladders for people with bladder cancer [she proudly pointed out that they could grow one the size of a football pitch if need be] and another was developing means of monitoring correct drug dosages for people with Parkinsons. All very inspiring. Turned out the Parkinsons man is an electronics engineer, so we got onto guitar pedals and that he also plays bass, so we may have an extra band member.

The photo is of one of the new direction posts on the Wolds Way.

Technology 2

The Garmin.
I gave up on bike-computers a long time ago. Fiddling with wires and sensors was more trouble that it was worth for me. Then, last year a friend showed me their Garmin gps gadget. No wires, no link to the bike, just a gps that maps where you have been, distance, max speed, average speed, height gained etc. Download it to the laptop and I have total distance cycled in the year etc etc. All this for the price of 32 coffees from Starbucks. It is amazing, and like the iPod I do not take it for granted. There is plenty wrong in the modern world, but there are some things that are right.

Rodney and family, who stayed with us last month, sent us a thankyou card and Milo a squeaky slipper that he is most fond of.

Technology 1

I try hard not to go on about technology and gadgets on the blog. There are far too many people doing that already. But. There are two things that have made life better.

1 The iPod: having all my music and radio plays in a little box that fits in my pocket is just marvellous. It suits me fine, I was never one for worrying about owning albums or having the cover-art, what mattered was the one or two tracks that I wanted to hear again. Having the ability to hear what I want and where is a privilege I try hard not to take for granted – it really is great to be walking the dog and think “I'd really like to hear that Carla Bley track again” and to be able to do it.

The photo is the last from the off-road trip.

Off Road 3

Across the track from yesterday's shot was this pastoral scene.

Off Road 2

Further on the ride I came into this field of yellow spring near Spofforth. It really did feel good to be there.

Off Road

The best time to ride on bridleways on the mountain bike is about now; when the ground is drying out yet the undergrowth has not grown over. I went a ride on a great 80k off-road route at the weekend, and the ground, although a bit wet in some the fields was pretty good overall. It was a lovely sunny day, this photo is of Wighill church which is usually our first stop out of York. It made me realise how easy it is to take the English village church for granted.

Merchant Taylors

I exhibited a couple of photos at an Alliance de France function at the Merchant Taylor's Hall last night. Us artists [about 10 of us] got to talk about our work and enjoyed the champagne and canapes; so it was worthwhile. This shot shows my work with some good collage work by another artist.

Gorse

This is another of my vertical slice shots of the Wolds. With the gorse in full flower I thought I had to keep the colour in the shot for once.
We had the Open Studios post-match analysis meeting this week in a bar in town. I met up with an artist who does work based on the Wolds too, so we might collaborate in the future on a joint show of some type.

Spring

In the Wolds yesterday the cowslips were out for Spring, with the lazy Ash as usual lagging far behind all the other trees.