Leeds 3

So I have shown the beauty and the improvement, but there is always a good chance of a despair shot as well. This was in a park at Potternewton, which was where I first lived in Leeds with Steve and Jane when I was 17 and had just left school.

Leeds 2

I walked on a Sustrans route for a great sweep through east Leeds, including this new bit of parkland. A great improvement, and well used by the look of it.

Podcasts

Podcasts are pretty important in this household. We were all always big radio fans (as opposed to TV) so it made sense that podcasts and audiobooks took their place alongside catchup radio. For me live radio is now limited to listening to the football.

I have found that podcasts have to really merit their continued popularity with me, or else I simply don't bother to listen to them, even if they are downloaded and appear right up my street. If there is not a deep-down incentive to click on then they drift away.

Football Weekly on the Guardian which I started listening to in 2006 kept me up on board until Covid when I switched over to Totally Football. So now I listen to one of the other twice a week. 16 years is a long time in podcast land. The other that I started about the same time was American NPR (national public radio) All Songs Considered which was a weekly about new music. I eventually tired of it.

So here are the ones I listen to right now;

1 Totally Football. 

2 Cocaine & Rhinestones. An absolute work of art from Tyler Mahan Coe about 20th Century country music. Season two has just finished. Impossible to describe, but brilliant even if you know little about the subject.

3 The History of Rock in 500 Songs. Just as impressive this is a great undertaking by Mancunian Andrew Hickey, providing the first (in my opinion) comprehensive description of how R&B turned into Rock&Roll. Each episode (he is up to 150 or so by now) is an impressive piece of work of research in itself.

4 The Cycling Podcast, when the season gets going. Not brilliant but a good companion through the Grand Tours in particular.

5 A Good Read, a BBC book podcast with a great format that I continue to find a good way to spend 25 minutes and learn about 3 books recommended by a wide range of guests, with a great lack of pomposity and earnestness.

Lots of others come and go, In Our Time, The Rest is History, More or Less etc, but that is the top 5 at the moment.

There is an attempt to re-create a pre-historic trackway on Hatfield Moors using the technologies in use then.

Leeds 1

Rowan has been revising with us for the last couple of weeks, for her CFA exams. Tuesday I drove her over to Leeds to take the latest exam. 5 hours, starting at 7.45am. Whilst she slogged through it, I took a great walk through Leeds the garden city. Some beautiful bits, like Gledhow Lake, pictured here early in the morning.

Snow

In amidst the endless storms we have been having (garden fence RIP) we got some comedy snow for light relief; arrived in the morning, gone by tea time.

Sofa

Milo was never allowed on the sofa. Nor was Layla, until she convinced us that she was. No doubt who pulls the strings in the family. She does deign to share it with us, as you can see in this symmetrical snoozing shot. 

Bleak

You probably get the idea of the kind of day it was on the moors. Just right for the three witches to appear.

Trigger

It was a wet old day when I walked the dog on Rievaulx Moors this week, but still good. Layla has worked out that Trig Points are of value to me, so will seek them out and sit by them. A great companion.

Moonshine

This is not a great photo, just an idea of the crazy moon that greeted me last night as I walked across the moor.

Damage

Well, Storm Dudley (has to be said with a midlands accent) got to grips with our fence. We had it put in 20 years ago when we moved to this house. Going to have to replace it.

Santa Fe

Six years ago Danielle and I were in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is a place that we are both keen to revisit at some time. Santa Fe is a surprisingly small town, this shot was taken just a short walk up from the market square.

Snowdrops

The snowdrops in our garden remind me that it would have been my Granny's 122nd birthday today. A bit of a mind-boggling thought.

After The Fire

After the heath fire in 2020 Hatfield Moors has recovered very will. The birch, as ever, are proving resilient in their reclaiming of the moors.

Hatfield

I am conscious that I post a lot of photos from Thorne and Hatfield Moors, and they may seem a bit like more of the same. But it is, to me, the special place. So I have to record it.

Don't Fence Me In

Pablo, one of friend Sandra's dogs, was so keen to see his mate Layla that he managed to enter our garden through the fence. Luckily Layla has no desire to leave the garden so it is still secure.

Portrait

I took a series of photos of various Quakers at meeting in York. One was Danielle, so here she is looking good.

Method

Researching the Elmet book I had discovered that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, had been born on the Isle of Axholme in the town of Epworth in what used to be Yorkshire. As I walked to Old Street to meet Paul, I came across John Wesley's house, statue and Methodist church. All adjacent to what is now Epworth Street. So there you go. 

 

Lanterns.

In the evening before catching the Grand Central train back home, I met Mark for a pint at Euston. A good little foray.

It was Chinese New Year, so there were plenty of lanterns about.

 

Nest

The next day Rowan was off to work, and I walked to meet Paul for a coffee at Look Mum No Hands. On the way I passed this collection of nesting boxes on a tree in Duncan Terrace, Islington.

 

Post-Modern

We also started the Post-Modern tour, and liked this building; The Janet Street Porter House at Farringdon. It seems a bit of a post-modern, steam-punk hybrid.

The Hardy Ash

Another gift from Rowan was a couple of special maps of London. One features notable trees, and the other notable post-modern buildings. So before the show we made a start on them both. In this shot we are in front of the Hardy Ash tree in St Pancras church yard. Named after the novelist Thomas Hardy, an architect as a young man, this ash tree and its buttress of surrounding gravestones was created when St Pancras churchyard was reduced to allow construction of the nearby Midland railway.

Totally

Rowan and I both enjoy the Totally Football podcasts. She got me a surprise Christmas gift of tickets for a Live show from the podcast team. So I was down for a couple of days in London. We both enjoyed the show a lot, really good entertainment; I was very grateful for her making the booking.

Peat

One last shot from the Pennine walk: the peat waters often produce great reflections.
 

Scout

Layla is a great companion on the moors. At a junction, like in this shot, she'll wait to find out which way we are going. (Unless she doesn't of course.)

Pennine Way

Next adventure was off to the grim West Yorkshire Pennines. Walking along Blackstone Edge via the Pennine Way and round various reservoirs and aqueducts, with the hum of the M62 and power lines for added colour. Love it.

Many Laylas

Rowan's google feed collected "similar pictures" together in a collage. No comment necessary.

Church Rides Continue

On our first Church ride in quite a while Robert and I found a beautiful small church in Marton, north of York. I do like these wall boards.

Thorne Moors

I had another great walk on Thorne Moors with the dog last week. From March to October dogs have to be on the lead, so I make the most of the winter months. We walked for five hours and, apart from a couple of people in the first ten minutes, I saw no other humans. A real adventure.

New People

One of the good things about having a dog is that there are always new and interesting people to meet. Sandra is from Bosnia via Sweden and has three dogs that all tolerate Layla. She dropped round the other weekend for a chat whilst the canines tore the garden up.

More Aire

The Aire navigation used to be extremely busy with coal barges taking Yorkshire coal to the port at Goole for export. There is no more Yorkshire coal, no more coal barges, and not much of a port at Goole. But the canal is still there as is the odd leisure boat. It is a lovely sight, but more than a little sad at the same time.

Aire Navigation

Danielle and I walked along the Aire navigation at the weekend. A pleasant stroll. This shot shows the sun just lighting up a bit of the canal bank.

Tug of War

I was walking in Bishop Wood to give the dog a good run out with some deer-chasing thrown in. We met a woman with her dog, a goldendoodle called, I think, Rufus. We chatted for a good while, the two dogs were perfectly suited to each other and had a tug-of-war tournament that would have gone on all day. Layla is on the left.

Come On In My Kitchen

The kitchen at Dent station. Just made for sharing a pot of coffee in the morning.

Toilet news

The station at Dent was very well appointed; including this fantastically engineered loo, I assume it came from the original station. One of Mr Crapper's designs, 100% better than the flimsy Crap in most modern bathrooms.

Inversion

Dent Station is so high up on the moorside, that temperature inversions are common. This means that the valley below can be full of cloud, with the station and the moors above being in clear blue sky. This happened on an evening walk when the valley cloud was creeping up, but the far ridge was still catching the bright light. Strange.

Dent 4

We returned to York by way of Spennithorne where Layla's mother Mango lives with the couple who raised Layla and her four siblings two years ago. Here are mother and daughter re-acquainting after two years.

Dent 3

This is the front room at the station, with an amazing view down the Dent valley below.

We were due to walk back to Dent from Ribblehead after taking the train there. However once on the train a woman told us she had seen Danielle's phone fall to the platform as we ran to get the train. (That is the trouble with staying in the station building, you always think you have more time than you do.)

So the train guard (who was incredibly helpful) said he would ring his colleague on the next train that was going through Dent and ask him to pick the phone up and return it to the depot in Skipton.

That would have been fine, but it got better. I walked back over Blea Moor with the dog as planned. Danielle decided to take the train back to Dent and hope to find the phone or collect it from another train. Once back at Dent she rang her phone to see if anyone had found it. Three older gentlemen had found it on the station and were now walking across the moors back to Ribblehead. So it was agreed that Danielle would meet them in the pub at Ribblehead, buy them a pint, then return with the phone to me, Layla and Dent. Amazingly it all went to plan.

Dent 2

We had a great walk up over the moors, able to let the dog off the lead as the sheep were in fields leaving the open moors to us.  

Dent 1

We had a mini-break at Dent Station, the highest main line station in England, on the Settle-Carlisle line. It has been really well renovated and is owned by a trust. We arrived on Wednesday evening, when I took this shot. We were in the station building lit up on the right.

 

It is a sign

Coming off the moors the sun was doing its best to burn the cloud away. I always love a signpost on the moors; incongruous and mysterious.

Up Again

Up onto to the North York Moors at Urra again today. Felt great to be there. Even a bit of sun breaking through the clouds.

Cooking News

Rowan got me an air-fryer for Christmas. This was very kind of her, and a perfect gift for me. I really dislike frying stuff, and amazingly the air-fryer does the job without oil. So far we have had pakora, spinach balls, and fish and chips.

Meantime Rowan went with a friend to a Migrateful class in person (as opposed to on Zoom) for the first time, and rustled up this Moroccan delight.

Training

Rowan has gone back to London; it was great having her here over Christmas. She works upstairs when she is here, and also does a workout up there. Layla usually assumes that she can join in the workout and lie on the yoga mat for the duration.

In the background is the rampant chilli plant that is still going strong.

Sleep

 A Pile of Palmours Asleep. The rigours of Christmas finally take their toll.

More Wharfe

The river was high, the trees were bare.

And there was, no one there.

Went to the Audiology Department at the hospital yesterday for a hearing test and new hearing aids. They now have bluetooth which means I can stream my music, podcasts and phone calls straight to my hearing aids. This is really good, and it seems to work well.

Got me to thinking how much hearing aids have improved since I first started using them 25 years ago. There is no comparison, todays hearing aids are smaller, lighter, miles more effective, connected, more comfortable (without the need for ear moulds.) I really appreciate the improvements.

Bright Walk

A beautiful crisp bright day for a walk. Rowan is studying hard so Danielle and I walked by the Wharfe south from Tadcaster.

 

Pond Light

The light on the old railway pond is constantly changing and hard to resist. This was taken last week. 
 

New Year Walk

This year's Boxing Day walk was on New Years Day. Arranged the day before the turnout was gratifying. A warm dry day, Eddy even wore shorts.

The Cone of Shame

Layla hurt her foot, and so we had to stop here from licking it all the time. The Cone of Shame proved too much for her to bear (as seen in her expression here) so we settled on putting a sock over her foot which seems to work, without causing her any angst at all.

Happy New Year

 

Happy New Year everyone