August Images.

Photography is a significant part of my strolling.  It acts as a record of change and a jogger of memory.  I take a great many simple snaps, hundreds adding up to perhaps two thousand a month.  It is fairly mind-bending just keeping the catalogue of the images so they can be searched and sorted in some fashion.

I am a hoarder of memories.

Every so often from the painfully mundane an image that can illustrate a point on the blog can be culled.  A good many photographs just go onto my flickr account, a slideshow runs on the left hand side of the blog if you are interested in seeing the photostream.

As with everything else I hope to be on an upward learning curve when it comes to photography but it is debateable.  I spend a lot of time enjoying other people’s snaps, some of the work is breathtaking.  They are all inspirations.

Here are some of the images which mean something to me in August.

The month itself is far to short in the way that February is much too long.  Winters might be milder, spring might be arriving earlier, but none of this has yet to save us from the misery which is Feb.  The two months August and February are calendar opposites but somehow February always seems closer to hand than August.

The most dramatic early feature of the month were butterflies.  It has been well recorded this was the year for the Painted Lady, it made national news.

By the end of August I seem to have lost sight of the butterflies, perhaps I am just looking in the wrong places.  I miss them.

The farmers have been busy bringing in their crops for us, a process which has escalated as the month has drawn to a close.  Fields that were gold will soon be brown and with the first rains, mud.  The harvesting has obliterated the footpaths across fields in many instances, the three inch of stubble makes walking more difficult for me, it is a serious inconvenience to my dogs who are only 6 or 7 inches off the ground.

Giant circular bales which always look on the point of movement now dominate fields.  They don’t move, I tried it once, even with the strength of ten pints it was not an easy task and not one recommended.  Some fields still have a more traditional square bale, sometimes piled high, echoes of urban skylines, towers 16 bales high, 5 across leaning drunkenly dot the fields.  The effort will have an efficient purpose, the size will be determined by some reasoning that eludes me.  I can guess, but I don’t know.  There is always something to learn.

Again this year I have failed to take a picture of the harvest that matches the one that is in my head, maybe next year.

So the farmers have danced with nature again and brought in the colourful crops for us.  In the meanwhile the plants, left to their own devices have simply got on with it.  Fruit has ripened, seeds are being distributed.

This has brought about another problem for walkers with dogs low to the ground and rough coated, seed heads.  One walk was totally ruined by continually, and literally, having to cut thistle heads out of the dogs coats.  In the end I had to carry them 3 miles.  The accumulation of the heads had become too much, walking became impossible for them.  The dogs coats were beginning to look moth eaten with my continuing ministrations.  Cutting thistle heads out of wriggling dogs with a 1 inch pair of scissors does not make my top ten list of things to do.

This combined with the issues created by harvesting has meant field walking has been somewhat curtailed the last few weeks.

Before the seed head problem a recent walk took me past Langham Church.  It was staging a wedding ceremony, so it did not seem like the appropriate time to go wandering in.  Unfortunately for most churches, there is no longer a good time to wander in.  The idea of the open church has long gone in many areas now.  The population has retreated from church and the churches make themselves less approachable.  The only church I have found open was no longer a church.

This was a great shame as Langham Church is reputed to have the oldest church chest in Essex.  An oak dug-out dating from the 12th century.  The venture to augment my walks with some fine historical church interiors is only going to be possible if I can solve the problem of the locked church.

The chest shown is from West Bergholt Old Church (the church that isn’t any longer) and dates from the 15th or 16th century.  I am hoping to add to this image collection but the modern world may have put paid to that.

August was a month of small pilgrimage for me, the visit to the first Augustinian Priory in England.  I did not capture the building that I saw, my snaps were workman-like, they are on flickr if you wish to see them.

The days are growing shorter now, noticeably so, sunsets are currently at the 20:00 mark, sunrise just before 06:00.  Good news for the lazy photographer.  No longer is there a need to get up desperately early to capture a sunrise and it is not so late that it affects the needs created by a working day.  Likewise a sunset has been and gone and I am back home at an hour which means there is almost enough hours to sleep in.

August is a time of sunrise and sunset, the hint that autumnal colour is on its way and the next great season will soon be upon us.  I am very much looking forward to this, even if the shorter days will start to impact on the available free time I have outdoors.  I have my plans for September, if I am lucky half of it will get done.

Technorati Tags: August,Autumn,Church,sunset,sunrise,harvest,fields,walking,butterfly,insects,Priory,Summer,photography

The three tella’s.

It is the Clacton Air Show tomorrow.  I had not realised what sort of commercial excitement this aroused in the bosom of the town.  Large catering vans have come from far and wide.  Never over-estimate the distance someone is willing, or able, to walk to hammer down food.  Heaven forbid the throngs of people had to go into town to get food, or visit the pubs.  Walks of 200 yards are not wise for some people.

I am not sure of the relationship these vans have with the local business community.  If I were to guess the council sell trading concessions on the basis it is good for everyone.  Everyone but the local shopkeeper, but tough on them, unable to move, a captive when the business rates fall due, what does the council care about them.

One pub, built on the remains of a Butlin’s Camp which disappeared under a housing estate long ago, trumpets it is open all day serving food, for the duration of the airshow.  It gives a hint of the sort of economic whirl they live in.  The airshow runs from 1pm to 5pm for two days.

When the show starts only locals will know of the secret parking places which will allow them to get within two miles of a decent view of the activities.  Today there is no problem, I drive past the spot I hope to make my viewing platform tomorrow and continue on.  The pub with the proud boast it has the economic stamina to stay open for 2 whole days is my general destination.

Clacton seafront sort of fizzles out at this point, but the iron grip of the by-law pertains.  No pleasure to small not to have an associated by-law, which begins “Do not…”

The ones which relate to me are dogs banned from the beach, dogs to be kept on a lead at all times.  The one that don’t relate to me, no drinking in public and various restrictions as to what cannot be done in the sea and carparks.

I only have to get past the outfall pipe to shrug off these by-laws.  It say’s so on the signs, the outfall pipe is even named on the OS, it is a feature.

Near where I parked is a lump of rock and upon it is screwed a rectangular plaque.  It garners as much interest as brown plaques on brown rocks in slightly out of the way places can expect.  It marks a terminus of a Churchill trinity, one I have been meaning to do for some time now.  If I am honest with myself, I don’t really want to do it, but having thought it up it is going to nag me till I do.  Sub-consciously I am in search of a shorter or better Churchill trinity.  In the meanwhile I keep searching for facts and stories about the places that will be walked past to help breathe life into the landscape.

The stone marks where a young Churchill came spluttering to shore after an incident involving an unreliable aircraft whose feeble engine ditched him into the sea nearby.  All this long before World War Two and by-laws prohibiting this sort of accident.

The weather is just gearing up for the airshow and bank holiday generally.  The wind is fresh enough to blow the cobwebs from your mind, that is if you can keep your head attached to your shoulders and it rains.  Not a deluge, but we are not talking about romantic strolls on dog free golden sands, sun glinting off the outfall pipe, just beyond which you can only make out the merest hint of the sort of bedlam a world in which dogs roam free can be.

Suits me fine, I don’t cart a rucksack about to be ill-prepared.  Okay, I admit to having a dog under each arm because I forgot the dog leads.

This walk is of course part of the “ragged edge tour” and from the title you can assume, a trinity.  The ‘tella’s are Martello Towers.

29 were constructed along the East Coast, the line starts from St. Osyth, near Clacton and continues Northwards to Aldeburgh in Suffolk.  Of the 29, 18 still stand, 3 only by willpower and are on the buildings at risk register.

They were built between 1808-1812 and have the architectural fashion of massive, slightly out of shape, sandcastles.  There are certain design variations, but most people think of them as round which they sort of are.  There is another line of these defences on the South coast, but they are inferior in build.

They were designed to give Boneparte second thoughts when it came to invading, in the same sort of manner pillboxes were organised against Hitler.  Neither invaded so the defences were never tested, a good thing.

The first of the towers, will be visited last, it is nearer the town than I want to go with dogs lacking leads, full bomb bays and much to much energy.  We all make tracks for the not so imaginary demarcation line, the outfall pipe.  The rain is persistent but not unwelcome, the area is left to the underclass of dog walkers.  Water quality is on the upward trend, probably as much to do with falling tourist numbers as anything the water companies do, but the water companies take the glory and raise prices.

The second Martello Tower sits on the edge of the coastline, erosion stopped by a sea wall, and now sand dunes have developed, the sea no longer having the willpower to stray that far up the beach.

This in large part due to the hideously ugly Y shaped breakwaters comprising of green slimed boulders, if there was a cheaper uglier option I am sure they would have gone with it.

The dogs are let loose, they run and gambol, fighting each other playfully, you would think they never got out.  A fishing boat, flat bottomed, sits on the sand, waiting patiently for the tide and a return to its intended environment, it will not have to wait long.  Three or four large seaweed festooned ropes lie near it, presumably for other boats to be moored.  Last time I was here there were some tired tractors sitting in the dunes used for the movement of boats, they are not here now.  It raises questions in my mind, is it a decline of industry, a tidying up exercise by the council, or do these things return when there are less tourists about to be tempted into vandalism?

The dry sand is soft, walking ten miles on that is going to be difficult for the dogs, last year, admittedly on a much hotter day, dog 2 got into difficulty and had to be carried.  With this in mind, we walk lower on the beach, firmer sea washed sand, but it is a balancing act, the breakwaters have calmed the sea, soft mud has developed, and they mean it.  Go too low and you can feel yourself sinking, the evidence clear in ever deepening footprints. In 2001 a man went a step too far, sank straight up to his waist in mud, water was lapping around his chest by the time he was released with the aid of compressed air.  The story could easily have ended differently.

Boulders have been brought in to help the feeble native sands withstand the onslaught of the sea.  A lot of these boulders having interesting patterns, folded sediments from eons ago, one is naturally a bright green.  I like them, pictures are taken.  Weather rusted signs, apparently dating from the 2001 incident, but looking much older than that warn of the mud.

The charming coves created by huge boulder strewn breakwaters are mine alone.  Peeping over sea defences is the shanty town that is Jaywick.  Created as a cheap holiday retreat, poorly constructed for the poor, were built 50 years ago.  Today people live permanently in the same houses, even if they look boarded up.  The Jaywick page on wikipedia and I quote at time of writing :

“Shotings have been knowan in Jaywick and stabbings are a regular accurancs.”

Perfect summation.  Rodent faced youths don’t look you in the eye, they check out your trainers, bad luck for you if they have a high resale value.  Making eye contact is a prelude to a fight, not a greeting.  Humans are the most dangerous, unpredictable animal you are likely to meet, treat accordingly.

The sea defences were erected after the 1953 floods killed 37 of the 700 inhabitants, others died later of exposure.  The place got rebuilt, a shabbier version of itself.  Just last week a google news alert arrived hot off the presses.  Local Jaywick people were up in arms at the suggestion they should move out of their shanty dwellings and do the area a favour.

Head down bully and shove.  Seawick is ahead.

Just before you reach Seawick, the third and for this part, final Martello Tower.  This one is open to the public, painted white, and is in fact an art gallery, in the local sense of the word.  It is free to enter and I am sorely tempted, but with two dogs, no leads, I don’t.  It will be a part of another journey one day.

The weather is improving and so is the walking, the thought of turning back and repeating what I have just been past so soon drives me ever forward.

If you can avoid the “shotings” and other “accurancs” then all is fine.  Let us gloss over Seawick, a place of homes with pretensions to being mobile, any direction but upwardly, by the looks of it.  I confess by now a certain melancholy is setting in.  Next to the mobile homes that don’t move are garages with picture windows with great views of a sea defence wall.  Cars are parked outside, the people live in the garages.  This is where you end up if you do actually slip through the cracks in the pavement, it just takes fate a little time to process your application.  You don’t mean to end up there but life often comes down to two bad choices.

I am on the beach though.  If I look at the beach, or out to sea I could be anywhere.  Well anywhere with ugly breakwaters, death trap mud and a large windfarm being built on the sea.  Windfarms are the green answer for people that don’t live near them.

The things I am happy to do in the name of trinity.  Eventually though even the last pretence of housing is over.  I imagine the area to be a more civilised version of gold rush towns of the US, just with less hope.  I am trying to shift perspective, make the place mentally more appealing imagining it populated by Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.  Maybe 100 years from now, some extravagant myth-telling and a needy heritage industry will come to the rescue of a place where “Shotings have been knowan”.

Line dancing and dressing up as a cowboy is common enough to not be a laughing matter in these parts.  It is probably fighting talk to suggest different, but then most talk is fighting talk around these parts.

One final surprise, the most unappetizing naturist beach. 1000 metres of mud and rock, the only people on it sensibly clad in jackets.  This attempt at hedonism does not last long, wrong time, wrong place, very wrong bodies.

I am in the prairies now, clinging to my illusions, land below sea-level stretches before me, two farm silo’s pierce the horizon, it has even stopped raining.  The sea wall is an emergency measure rather than a regular necessity by the looks of it, a large expanse of marsh separates me from the sea.  Various man made structures litter it, purpose lost in time.  Lichen grows on the concrete defences, blackberry bushes grow on the seaward side.  A place the sea does not want.

There is a row of telephone poles, perhaps electricity, I cannot be sure.  The wires are strung between them and a flock of birds have gathered.  Every so often they swoop down in great number feasting on the blackberry bushes, they are surely packing their stomachs getting ready to leave for warmer climes.

The march of the wire hints at something else to come, something more remote than what has gone before.  There is, it is Lee-over-Sands.  This is the remains of a 1930’s holiday park, what Jaywick would have been like if they stopped rebuilding it, less being better.

There is not much left at all, just an unmade road which leads up to a sewage works.  A fine pillbox remains along with the concrete blocks either side of it, to make sure nobody sneaks around it.  I have reached Colne Point Nature reserve.  Another excuse to demand dogs are put on leads.  Large green signs explain what you cannot do there out in the back of beyond.  The small print on the back of the large sign explains reckless or intentional disturbance of the flora can lead to a 20,000 pound fine.

These ludicrously large fines are fair indications of the chances of being caught.  The higher the fine the smaller the chance, the sheer size of the fine designed to stun you into obedience in the absence of any possible enforcement.  Reckless plant disturbance would have once been worthy of Monty Python sketches now it is the purview of large ugly signs telling us how delicate and important the wasteland is. 

I am finally defeated, I take a picture of a house which surely must be the end of the line.  It is time to return back to the car.

Walking back there are a few surprises.  The weather has improved enough that it is possible for people to venture out in coats and jackets.  People of all ages are filling buckets with sand and imagining themselves to be having a good time.  Some young ladies are actually in bikini’s.  They go to the water, I slow my pace just a little, I want to hear the reaction I have heard a thousand times but never grows stale.

“Its bloody freezing” they shout over the wind, so their companion can hear.  Their companion never accepts this without first hand knowledge, venturing in they find out for themselves.  Only rarely will they get in over their ankles before rushing back up to the beach wondering what it was all about.

The remarkable thing being what do they expect?

If they were at home, would they be walking around in bikini’s hurling themselves into a local canal?  Would folk of all ages be in their back gardens filling small plastic buckets with earth making mud-castles?  What is it about a sea-breeze that drives all common sense out of people’s minds?

12 odd miles, there and back again, the exercise was nice.  I have no real conclusion, mentally I am conflicted about what I saw.  Emotionally though I am depressed which is probably the litmus test, it was a depressing place.

Epilepsy of obloquy

Or to put it another way, “Lost in translation”.

It seems my post Give a walk a name was picked up by one of those blogs that has no concerns regarding repackaging original content in an effort to flog some tat for their own profit.

So far so mundane, but what has given this effort an extra edge and makes it noteworthy is the slant it has put on translation.

So here is my text as it appears on someone else’s blog:

“I realised this many eld past with the brainstorm axes went by assorted names, weight and appendage length existence the criteria. In the epilepsy of obloquy you attain your possess up. A artist warning for me existence “Rabbit log”. Rabbit log defines a patch of connector most 10 foot by 3 foot. It is featureless, it has no study on some map. 25 eld past a friend's canid caught a rabbit, such to everyone's astonishment, but having caught it was at a loss as to just what to do next. ...”

The blog is concerned with weight-loss patch flogging by all appearances. (Here is my unexpected guest appearance)

We are most certainly on the wrong side of the looking glass here.  I write in English and the blog that copied my work is in English, but clearly at some point it has been through a translator and then translated back.

It seems to just scan for phrases that might be about articles associated with losing weight, what happens next is something of a mystery.  Now this page has a good deal of weight loss content and words associated with the losing of weight.  See where this is heading?

This is not a copy and paste rant, don’t put anything on the internet if you don’t want it copy and pasted.  There is plenty of my thought scattered far and wide across the internet in various guise, orphaned words with only the vaguest memory of parentage, it is part of the deal.  We all know what it is like reading your own words in unexpected places.

This funfair mirror approach to blogging is great, what is reflected back is a twisted version of what was and is.  It is creating its own partially original form in the process.  Certainly my writing can lose focus, but at no point have I considered axes appendage length.  The phrase “epilepsy of obloquy you attain your possess up” is fantastical and all the more wondrous as my original the phrase is “In the absence of names you make your own up”.

Obloquy is not a word you get to use very often, it can be termed as a disgrace suffered from abusive language, one who denies or disputes (here it is).  I don’t think the phrase “epilepsy of obloquy” is ever going to be bettered, like a small child I am desperate to incorporate it into a conversation at the earliest possible opportunity, it might be a while.

The fact the blog entry was about it being easier to follow and copy than have an original thought just adds to twisted landscape we find ourselves in.  Initially it was a sly dig at my own expense given Martin at Summit and Valley had flagged the Munro changes which was the jumping off point for my blog post. http://summitandvalley.blogspot.com/2009/08/yawn.html

Back to business as usual tomorrow, whatever that actually is, but I could not resist sharing this.

London Orbital by Ian Sinclair.

Ian Sinclair is dense.  Not in the mentally subnormal meaning, but in the other meanings, many meanings.

The writing attacks you from page one and just refuses to let you go, it is an assault on the mind.  Apparently it is around the quarter of a million word mark, I am not going to verify that.  The small group approach the 122 miles of M25 as section hike, day walks.

To be honest, those first few pages, I had serious misgivings as to the chances of finishing the walk with him.  When I first read Stephen King it felt like my IQ had been cut in half.  Short blunt sentences, easily digested words.  When I read the only Jeffery Archer novel I will ever need to read I wished my IQ would be cut in half.  Sinclair makes you wish you could borrow Stephen Fry’s brain for the week.

The idea is simple enough, walk around the M25 getting as close as possible to the road.  Sometimes that is actually walking along the hard shoulder.

Ian Sinclair and his walking companions are made of more urban desire than me for sure.  The text seems to rejoice in the blat of traffic which is their guide.  I try to avoid it, they seem lost without it, the walk losses it’s purpose.

The suggested reason as to why they are walking it is too find out where it leads.  They walk it anti-clockwise, although they are not sure why, Ian thinks it has something to do with winding back the clock.

By now you might be beginning to get the idea, this books is jammed with ideas that have no real resolution.

Really “because it is there” would do the project justice.  The book is shot through with political spleen venting.  Maggie gets it in the neck, "Margaret Scissorhands" opens the road in 1986, the exact location kept as official secret.  Blair gets it in the neck.  The failure of the Millennium Dome is given as a motivation for the walk and is continually referenced.  The timescale is to walk the M25 before 1 Jan 2000, it is a year for them to do it in.

The area they walk is richly layered with history and Ian does not miss any of it, or seems not too.  He is a psycho-geographical exponent and is admired by Will Self.

A lot of the walk is in transitionary landscapes, old buildings with secret pasts awaiting the developers to re-invent them.  Mental asylums closed by Thatcher being re-imagined by property developers, the water towers remain to give the game away.

Sometimes the lunacy in the way we treated the “mad” takes your breath away.  A friend of mine went into the field of mental health treatment at the fag end of the 1980’s.  There were elderly folk there who had spent entire lives in mental institutions because they were high spirited youngsters.  Parts of the book touched a nerve with me having seen the old walls in lost rooms.

Sinclair feeds into this constantly, referring to the walk as a fugue.  It seems the French went through a stage of fugue walkers, maybe best illustrated recently with that passage in Forest Gump where he just sets off walking till he stops.  In a typical bit of thinking it is described as not walking to forget but walking to forget the walk.

Layer upon layer of knowledge is heaped onto the reader, it builds continually, even encompassing a visit to one of his companions vaguely remembered grandparents house which is partly on the route.  They meet security guards along the way, travelling as they are in a half-world where walkers are looked upon with suspicion, not to be trusted.  There is a lot that is circular about this book, including the revisiting of themes continually.

The central concept of the book is a challenge to walkers, there is more out there to be discovered than the hills.  There is more to be considered than what is on the menu.  Walking is as absorbing and as diverse as you are willing to make it.  What you can learn is only limited by your capacity to seek out and accept knowledge.

I really enjoyed this book and suspect it will be re-read one of these days.  Like any great walk it can be done again and again and new things discovered.

In the meanwhile, I have other books of his to read and re-read, it might well be I am on my own circular route around his literary output.

Give a walk a name

A few days ago Martin on his blog highlighted this:

http://summitandvalley.blogspot.com/2009/08/yawn.html

The list of Munro’s is being revised, once again. 

They are named after Sir Hugh T Munro, who in 1891 published a list of Scottish mountains over 3,000 feet.

283 made the list, it also included “tops” which are peaks over 3000 ft but do not have enough re-ascent to be classed as mountains in their own right.  This brought the list up to 530.

That could well have been that but Munro either was fortunate or unfortunate in the timing of his list depending on your viewpoint.  OS Maps appeared soon afterwards and they were not in whole-hearted agreement over the classification of the 3,000 ft hills.

Munro died in 1919 while revising his original list.  Life is a work in progress, but this does seem somewhat harsh on Sir Hugh.

The first two people to achieve compleation, that is bagging (what normal people call climbing), all the munro’s were men of the cloth.  First to do so was in 1901 and then it was done again 22 years later.  There seems to be many energetic clergy during the Victorian era.  It probably bears out the joke about only working 1 day a week, or it might be a desire to experience all god’s work, or it might be because they were stuck into the wrong job as something to do with the “spare” who was not going to inherit the family fortune.  Every hole in Dartmoor at the time seemed to have a clergyman at the bottom of it scraping away, finding “little of interest”.  When not doing that, they could be discovered repairing stone rows and circles, although “re-imagining” might be a more modern term for some of their efforts.

We have got more sophisticated with our measuring techniques over the years, which may or may not include metrication.  This now means Munro’s are 914.4m or higher.  Metrication has not improved the romance of Munro bagging.  The list is revised, like Saints, some hills are promoted, some relegated.

The Munro’s are now a product, and part of the tourist industry.  On the understanding “there is no such thing as bad publicity” change that gets talked about is good and who doesn’t like the idea we can still disagree about the height of a mountain in this day and age?  Local newscasters with that slightly bemused expression they develop when such stories are about to be shown, just love them.  It is a chance to send the new-boy/girl out in hideous weather, hopefully up to their waist in a stinking bog.

So another revision is pending.  In 1997 eight Munro’s were discovered, and one thought to be a Munro was revealed to be an imposter.  One of the new Munro’s was 4,127 ft in height.

All good news for guidebooks, tourism, and generally getting your product back in the public eye.  “New and Improved”

Like any other successful formula people love to repeat it.  Developmental costs of original thought is very high afterall, much easier and quicker to adapt someone else’s work and stick your name on it. “Winterings, made with Munrovium technology”, this sort of thing being a favourite of advertising.  Vaguely scientific names that on reflection are daft.  I spend rather to long making up pseudo-scientific names in this manner.

So now we have a most unlikely series of named elevations.

Corbetts · Donalds · Fells · Grahams · Hewitts · Marilyns · Munros · Murdos · Nuttalls · Wainwrights

Humans just love naming and categorising things, even better if you can get your own name on it.  I realised this many years ago with the discovery axes went by different names, weight and handle length being the criteria.  In the absence of names you make your own up.  A classic example for me being “Rabbit log”.

Rabbit log defines a patch of ground about 10 foot by 3 foot.  It is featureless, it has no name on any map.  25 years ago a friend’s dog caught a rabbit, much to everyone’s astonishment, but having caught it was at a loss as to exactly what to do next.  By the time we caught up with it, the rabbit was in a sorry state, but still alive.  I had the job of dispatching it.  The rabbit met a swift, violent end involving my boot and a log seat, not pleasant.  Rabbit log has long since gone, it is a bare patch of ground, but it will forever be so named on my mental map.

The naming of it has made it a destination, part of a dog walk.

Wainwright created the Coast to Coast walk to show people they did not need to follow guidebooks, there were plenty of walks just waiting to be discovered by those able to see.  Few of us have Wainwright’s vision, so we simply follow his footsteps on a walk that although pre-existing, would never have been done.  Now it is an industry, grinning fresh-faced TV presenters jog along it with rucksacks which put ultra-light hikers to shame.  All you need is a camera crew to achieve this effect.

I am currently walking The Essex Way, among various more nebulous walking ideas.  There is no way on Earth if that named walk did not exist would I be walking from Harwich to Epping.  Why on earth would I do it?

Map it, name it, produce a pamphlet about it and it becomes more attractive.  A few years ago I fell into conversation with another hiker, it is a rare event.  He tells me about his Essex Way experience, it was a group thing.  The idea of getting away from it all with 20 other people talking about blisters has a distinct lack of appeal. I tell him about my early forced march version of it over a long weekend. We really are on different wavelengths but the walk is a point of reference we both understand.  If he had said, “I walked from Harwich to Epping last month with 20 people” the conversation would have been totally different, probably non-existent, as I took a few steps back from what was clearly a mad-man.  The name gives it legitimacy.

More and more walks are being “created” for us, pre-packaged by a tourist industry which knows heritage sells but to keep it selling new angles have to be created to keep it in the public eye.  As our attention span shortens the changes have to come faster and faster, the internet feeds into this.

All this by way of saying, no need to be shocked to discover you cannot even rely on a list of 3,000 foot mountains.  This opens up a whole can of worms regarding what compleation actually is.  That road is for another day.

Walking Dartmoor 6

Previously on walking Dartmoor.

A combination of remembering the importance of choosing the right place to camp;  It has to look flat as a billiard table.  Tiredness, and getting used to sleeping on the moor again, meant I had a cracking nights sleep.  Dog2 as far as can be judged simply does not move.  He is not too keen to start the mornings and chooses to get back into the bivvy bag at any opportunity given him.

4am went past, I barely batted an eyelid.  Indeed I did not stir till 5.30am.  This is normal waking time, so things seem to be just about fine.

Out of my bivvy bag, avoiding a cold shower from condensation from the tarp.  Technically I did not really need the tarp, but it creates a sense of place, of home, its an illusion of security and normality.  Illusion is all we ever really have.

I felt good, no stiffness, which was largely a product of not actually pushing myself, it is not about the miles travelled, it is about the experience gained.  Rush hour is for rushing.

Today was Nun’s Cross Farm, a big destination for me.  But first there was a lot to be seen and explored before that happened.

I had no intention of visiting Pew Tor and surrounds this time, but from my vantage point and the clear morning air, I could make out the square of the hedged off cottage garden which nestles at the base of Pew Tor.  I knew at that moment, time was going to have to be set aside.  I saw the occasional glistening glass of a vehicle travelling along the road near Merrivale.  That was the road which would take me so easily there from Princetown.

Merrivale itself could just be made out.  The collection of stone rows, circles and menhir, mystical meaning.  Once so powerful the passage of time had robbed us of their original power and given them a different one, perhaps the same one just wrapped up in different terms.

I sat in a thousand year silence which was an illusion itself, 100 years ago and less this was an industrial landscape busy with men working granite, a hard life pitted against a hard substance.  The ponies remain, but they are animals of leisure now.

If stones could talk what lessons would we understand.  Had the Merrivale rows gone mad?  Did they jabber nonsense?  Or were they talking to us now, with so much time on their hands they gave up their secrets to successive generations if we only had time to stop and listen carefully.  Archaeologists must learn to listen to the stones.

You can get lost here, the past to present ratio is unbalanced, here it is all past.  Everything is the past, the future is about preserving what was once.  A place of lost memory and some of those were forgotten for a reason.  Time to move forward on my journey, I know there is a bleakness central to these introspections which it is not good to touch on.  The day is beautiful, everyone from grunting caveman to rocketman can enjoy days like these, they connect us all in shared joy.

I am back, one chap and his dog on the moor, my place in the passage of endless time relocated.

I stand at the hummocks and earthworks that once made sense, but without the tracks to guide and clarify the times when one siding was active or not, it is just a confusing jumble of rounded grass banks.  Foggintor Quarry, an impressive ruin leading the eye, the  feet follow.

Large granite blocks are embedded in the hard ground at regular intervals.  The original purpose clear.  The wooden horse-drawn railway was lain on top of them to move the granite.

This was the quarry from which Nelsons column was hewn.  It is a landscape of monument.  London Bridge just down the line, the Falklands memorial on the horizon, Nelson’s column here.  And that is just the tip of the iceberg.  Standing here I am connected by granite seams to the monuments which were meant to endure.

The quarry itself existed, but nature is reclaiming it, the buildings are ruinous.  For all our bluster man had only borrowed this landscape for a while, nature is healing the wounds over timescales too mind boggling to even look into.

The quarry approach is boggy, water runs out of it, I have no desire to venture into the cauldron.  Signs are posted warning those with more adventure than sense what could befall them.  I have nothing to prove to my little dog, I am his hero.  No daredevil pranking needed to impress an audience.

John Noakes had famously scrambled too the top of Nelson’s column to clean it.  Boosting himself over the parapet to lay panting at Nelson’s feet.  My young stomach had done flip-flops, Noakes was very brave.  Seeing the clip again, Noakes was very stupid.  “He wasn’t insured” is the modern complaint, but it seems minor compared to the real risks he took.

We visit the big house, a one wall ruin occupied by sheep lazing in the sun.  Another destination has been ticked off, too long has this building been a hazy image, semi-organised granite against a jumbled backdrop.  It’s not there forever that is clear.  A 1942 image shows buildings with roofs, the bustle of industry has gone, but the mechanism remains.  I am witnessing a fleeting moment in time and glad to before it is just an old photo, the last fragment.  What was once so solid, imposing, is now fragile, failing.

The building has the hint of an upper storey and a back wall.  It stands on the edge of its own mini-quarry, an odd archway is beneath it, purpose unknown but it looks all function.

I linger here, the place is mine to explore, nobody else is about this time of day, just the woolly guard and a sign telling me I have been warned if I get into difficulty it’s my own stupid fault.  A bird sings to me while I am there, stands on a boulder to do so.  These birds are the soundscape.  When I leave, I leave it to nature, it is their place really, we were just a passing phase.

Water has begun to occupy my mind.  There is always something which takes dominance.  One year I developed a craving for a kebab with extra chilli sauce.  It was the year of the bland food.

I had packed what was needed and forgotten to pack any taste.  Soups, porridge, the over-riding memory is of grey food.  I remember clearly the discovery of a bright red packet of crisps.  Ready Salted, it was like manner from heaven.  Salt, the taste was of the gods.  I have never been able to recreate this taste sensation, but enough of the experience lingers that it is recollected each time I dig into a bag of red crisps.

As a taste sensation water is not up there, but as a necessity it pretty much beats all.  The sun beats down relentlessly, water sources are limited and look rather more “in case of emergency”  than I would like.  This has meant my journeys are limited to the 5 odd litres of freshwater I start with at each resupply.

It is enough, but it does not leave much room extravagance.  It is the limiting factor to my wanderings. Day and a half.  I trek out to a “furthest north” and then return setting up camp on the journey back.

I could carry more, but weight is an issue and it only extends my range and immersion marginally.  Without water sources I am tied to the supply in the back of the car.

I am soon back in Princetown, return journeys always seem shorter than outward bound ones.  I suppose it is the fact things have been seen, it takes less time to process, more effort is involved in forward momentum, wanting to see the next bit of new experience.

Fact is, this was solvable with a bit of effort.  The fact that bit of effort was not put in told me I was comfortable with the compromise reached.

Crawling up the slope to the car, I felt out of place in an urban environment but nobody made me feel it.  I notice what was initially taken for decaying pubs was the opposite.  Now they had got new top coats.  I had caught the pubs undressed by local painters and decorators being prepared for their new summer coats.  I went past a small entrance way from which wafted the very clear smell of fish and chips.  I knew what was on the agenda when I had first dropped my pack off.

The area where those wishing to “take out” was small and we were crammed together.  It could not have been a pleasant experience for those around me.  I had a small dog under my arm and to everyone’s credit neither me nor the dog caused anything more than smiles and the odd hello.  This was a place used to the assault on the senses a hiker with dog brings.

The restaurant was very busy, at least it was for the 1 cook, the 4 staff waiting for the cook to keep pace with the orders being fired at him seemed more impatient with his failure to warp time and space to create instant food from the cookers.

Two sausage, portion of chips.  One sausage was for the dog, his treat.  Having existed on dried food this was a welcome break for him.  The vet says the dry food is just the stuff for him, but it does have the look of “healthy” about it.  A rather spartan and dull looking fayre of carefully balanced vitamins and minerals the modern dog needs.  Dog 2 would be more at home eating the scraps thrown carelessly over Henry VIIIs shoulder, but he had the misfortune of being a “modern dog” on this walk.

Given he only weighs a slightly overweight 8lbs I keep a very close eye on him.  When you only weigh that much, weight loss can be a rather serious thing.  I can carelessly drop 5lbs and barely be any the wiser, dog2 does not have that luxury.

Back in the car we eat the sausage and chips planning the latest attempt at getting to Nun’s Cross.  I now realise, the soldiers emerging from between the two pubs near the roundabout had been the key.  It was there the footpath to the farm began.

In the next part of my Dartmoor stroll, I get to Nuns Cross Farm (finally).

Technorati Tags: Dartmoor,walking,hiking,quarry,mining,granite,foggintor,disused railway,tramway

When does the madness stop?

It is a fair question, but on the understanding prevention is better than cure, the better question is, where does the madness start?

Madness is largely a social construct, I am not worried about overstepping that line.  I am able to survive within conventional society.

But there is another sort of madness, more a turmoil, when you have more thoughts than you have categories to put them in.  An overspill of thought running about free of label.

The problem with tearing off the blinkers, removing the filters is sensory overload.  We must have all had the experience when surfing the net.  You are reading an article, its interesting to some degree or another.  It has a link to further reading, you cannot resist, “click”.  This is more interesting, it gets a bookmark.  Now thoughts are going through your head, “there must be books on this subject”.  Bring up the library service.  There certainly are books, it is easy to get a few reserved.

A few days later the library informs you the books have arrived.  Excellent, now you have a week or two of reading ahead of you.  You are learning exponentially, the books have further references, you want to read them too.

So far it is relatively healthy but you are fast approaching a line.  This is when you ask yourself, “How can I be actively involved in this?”

For me there is a looping mechanism at work.  I go for a stroll, an insect is seen, I wish to know more.  The internet is the instant educator.  Its turns out to be a common example, but there are many questions to be answered regarding this.  I see there are rarer examples, there is a survey going on, I can get involved, help map out the migratory habits of this brown object.  It can do no real harm to me, it will just be an added element on the walk, it will be fun.

It is fun, it adds something to the walk, I can identify various bugs as I stroll along.

I walk into a churchyard, as ever looking for the old and curious gravestones but the church itself is not of great interest to me.  But then I find an unusual element within the architecture of the Church, something not seen before.  How old is that oak chest that just sits there by the font?  How old is the font?

Now I am sinking deeper, there is easily 1000 years of church architecture to consider in most UK townscapes.  My history education is relatively extensive, British history 1485 – 1700 being a focus of it, religion is a major theme.  It interests me at the amateur level, freed from the constraints of having to learn it to regurgitate it onto A4 for an exam board it has become interesting again.

Things are beginning to get un-manageable.  I contemplate walks which will encompass esoteric church architectural feature.  But it does not come easily, this stuff has to be researched.  It can take days to organise a walk which was once just a matter of stepping outside the front door.

The experience is much more rewarding though, so it is worth the added effort, the planning, the effort is part of the process.  Ideas are springing into my head constantly.  Constructing the shortest possible walk between 3 churches with towers, 3 with spires, 3 with no such thrust, 3 with lychgates.  How many churches can I walk too in 3 miles.  The “Trinity tour” my basic building block.

Now I get there, its no good just seeing it, there has to be a record of it, my record of it.  There might be 10,000 photographs of it but there is a strong need for me to capture the moment I was there.

The photograph does not come out right.  It looks nothing like the better efforts I have seen.  My memory has been cheated, that blurry grey blob was not what I saw.  The answer is simple, more learning, more technique, more practice.

Interest piles on top of interest.  I am walking down the street, trying to see a bug which moments before was just a shadow on the pavement.  I am framing images in my head, trying different sentence forms for blogging.

I walked south of Mistley a few weeks ago, and just through a small section of Manningtree.  Along the walk I saw two hares in the field.  Hares long associated with witches.  Mistley and Manningtree, a dark history of persecution, stamping ground of the Witchfinder General.  He is said to be buried in a churchyard that is now only ruins.  Walks are planned based on witchcraft trials.  Once again the internet is surfed, the library consulted, the process continues, another layer of complexity and interest added.

This is still well within the sphere of the sane.  Planning a walk between my name (an old Hall) and my brothers name (a farm that no longer exists) begins to show signs of flakiness.  Given our names, there is probably only one such walk in England, certainly that can be done within a day.  Other “name themed” walks are considered.

Having discovered I can walk from my name to my brothers name in a day, via a farm that no longer exists a plan forms in my head.  A whole new walking theme.  Walks to places that don’t exist and of course walks from places that don’t exist.  Old maps are studied, place names, farms, barrows carefully plotted.  Can I follow old field systems that are now carparks, is there any evidence of the rural past?  A whole theme of rural walks in an urban environment exist develops in my mind.

This is just the stuff amassed to amuse myself between major, perhaps more mainstream, walking goals.  There is only one certainty, the next time I step outside of the door, it will be the start of many more walking ideas than it will complete.

As long as not for one moment do I think any of this will ever be completed in one lifetime a grip on reality will be maintained.

The madness starts when the ideas stop.

Butterflies July – Aug 2009

Here is my collection of butterflies July – Aug 2009 that were slow enough to be photographed.

The idea of this was just to shift my focus somewhat from “what’s coming up next?” mentality.  I considered a number of potential projects.  Birds were just too Bill Oddie, I did not want that to happen to me.  Birds also have a nasty habit of being brown and moving at high speed in the middle distance.  My best hope is to try and identify the various alarm squawks emanating from them.  It did not seem to fit what I was looking for at this juncture.

Flowers were a real possibility.  I have tried it before, too much variety, too mind-boggling and rather too “girlie”.  So they were ruled out.  Tree identification was ruled out because it had the limiting factor there had to be trees and that was not always a possibility.  Also the vast majority of them can be described as “brown and sticky” as per the schoolboy joke.

Flowers and trees had the significant advantage, they did not move, or at least had limited and fairly predictable patterns of movement.

Eventually though, butterflies, quintessential insects of warmth, were going to be in the frame.

Hopefully the days of huge collections of butterflies pinned to boards are over.  My grandfather had plenty, dusty and broken, their brief lives brought to a premature end.  It was a sad collection in so many ways.  Physical evidence of a grandad’s youth falling apart behind glass.  Time eats everything.

Photographing them is more of a challenge, the killing jar replaced by microchip.  So many eluded me, many photographed were unfocused blurs.  Others that did stick around and focused were brown blobs of considerable disinterest to anything but experts.

Some ruled themselves out by just being too small.  This was a shame, but with my skillset the Skipper family looked like escapees from a roll of woodchip.  It soon was obvious this was going to be about the strutting superstars that happened to float my way and pose.

This was the year of the Painted Lady.

It made headlines, a colourful invasion, every flower and hedge was carnival.  Certainly the most beautiful and striking profusion they were ever present on walks.  Now they are flying on faded wings, worn out from the sheer exuberance of flight.  It is a melancholy sight too see them on dusty fading wings, youth gone.  I have many pictures to remind me of their myriad beauty this year, this one is my favourite.

The Peacock butterfly is a true beauty and possibly the longest lived of UK butterflies.  A potential lifespan of 11months, although 5 are spent in hibernation, seems possible.

The Red Admiral is the defining butterfly of my youth.  Everything largeish and reddish was a Red Admiral.  This year though I found it rather tricky to find one, so I was pleased to see this fellow on my birthday.  An interesting day for it to appear given its association with a youth I am now observing through the wrong end of the telescope.

The large white cannot really be missed, strong fliers, they are everywhere.  Probably more commonly known as cabbage white, a name they share with the small white.  The larva like a bit of cabbage.  Suits me if they ate every cabbage on earth, they seem to make much better use of them than we do.

The Speckled Wood.  Wonderfully marked, just a shame its so darn brown.  Where there was one, there were many.  Most certainly an insect of those shaded wooded areas.

The Comma, a very distinctive butterfly with its ragged wing shape.

The Gatekeeper, a wonderfully colourful butterfly.  I might have a tendency to muddle these with the Meadow Brown, they look quite similar with just a casual glance to me.  Consequently not many of these have been seen, but a great many Meadow Brown’s have been seen.  The distribution might not be as one sided as I imagine.

Tortoiseshell butterfly.

I had a real job getting a half decent picture of one of these.  I did not see that many and those were too quick to capture.  The markings are beautiful and that blue piping is so eye catching, it is wonderful.

Brown Argus.

I dont think it is the Common Blue, but its not easy to tell.

I have only seen these on a meadow near Fordstreet while walking The Essex Way this year.  Very fortunate to get this picture as mostly they are too small and quick to get any sort of picture at all.

Clouded Yellow Helice Form.

I followed this butterfly for a quarter of a mile or so down the banks of the River Stour.  When it first went past me I thought it was going to be a Brimstone and really wanted a photograph of it.  As I got closer, there was a possibility of it being a Pale Clouded Yellow.  These are very rare in England and would have been quite a find.  Anyway after consultation with an expert on things butterfly assigning it as the Helice form seems the sensible thing to do.

I also have images of the Meadow Brown and the Ringlet, but these are poor images, but good enough for me to claim them.

The rest of my flickr photostream:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40131473@N06/

 

Technorati Tags: butterflies,photography,summer

August pilgrimage

The calendar has been melting of late, time oozes in the summer heat.  Lying very still watching cricket is the order of the day, activity is relegated to the margins, sunrise, sunset.  There is frantic activity outside the window, hordes of people in a fearful rush to enjoy themselves, exposing as much skin to cancerous rays as possible, unaware a breeze they are un-used too means they are blistering faster than expected.

A number of coastal walks have been cancelled, just too much like hard work navigating the colonies of basking fatties.  If they do stir, it is to tell me some rule they imagine is in place regarding the tethering or banishment of dogs.  I ignore them once, if they repeat themselves they wish I was able to ignore them twice, unpaid jobsworth’s with no training.  It is not worth the strain, fatty will be gone soon, taking the sunburn, leaving his rubbish.  The yobbish bores are not going to Spain this year, the familiar British export has stayed at home and we were not prepared for them.

All this and I became aware August was escaping me and there was a pilgrimage to do.

Colchester is a town of history, ruined history.  Boadicea ransacked the place during Roman occupation, the English Civil War laid siege to it, even earthquake, the planners, developers and neglect have done the rest.  So now the oldest recorded town in England is a succession of glimpsed remains in carparks.  Dismal.

Initially the plan was to plot a route through Colchester and feast on some history, this was too sweeten my visit to the place which while not actually under duress was not my idea of a good time.

Crammed between two short stay car-parks and a small train station is a patch of green.  Dotted about this little green lung are bins overflowing the empty dented cans of strong lager.  A sub-contracted clean-up crew are leaning out of large vehicles nearby taking about whatever the lowest common denominator of television they had watched the night before.

Obviously I had more interest in this area than seeing a haunt of deadbeats or compare the prices of short-stay carparks.  This is St Botolph’s Priory, or the remains of it.  It stood just outside the Roman city walls, in what today can be considered town centre.

It has stood for nearly 1000 years, the first Augustinian Priory in England, founded at the end of the 11th century built on the land which once stood a Saxon church.  Within the ruinous remains, in which a good deal of Roman brickwork was recycled, can be made out a little over a quarter circumference of a circular window.  Apparently the first significant circular window in English history.  There is a sketch of it still existing in 1718, together with considerably more of the ornate west wall.

Henry VIII looms large in English religious history and the priory was dissolved in 1536.  It remained in use as the parish church but the Siege of Colchester in 1648 badly damaged the structure and it brought an end to its working life.

The Colchester earthquake of 1884 did considerable damage and probably accounts for most of the discrepancy between the 1718 sketch and what we see today.

 

Next to the ruins is the current church.  A plaque on its side gives the date of build 1836, “having been without a church for nearly two hundred Years” its slightly accusatory message reads.

All the while a nervous youth was fiddling with the thin blue plastic supermarket bag, how he wanted to drag out the first super-strength brew of the day but there was still just enough left of him to not do so while I was there.  It was 07.30, a bit early to start in on the beer but it would have reduced he knew it would reduce the shakes and make him feel a whole lot better.

I nearly made good on my promise of a walk through Colchester history but I had lost the drive, the morning rush was starting, noise was gathering, most people were drowning it out plugged into their ipods.  My car was in a short-stay car-park, I was going to be unable to make the mental adjustment which would allow the history to speak to me.

It had waited 1,000 years, there is a lot to see, a lot of walking to do, timing a walk in townscapes is critical though.

There are more images of this and other things on my flickr photostream:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40131473@N06/

Technorati Tags: Colchester,Romans,history,ruins,decay,derelict,church,priory,earthquake,August,pilgrimage

Travels with my camera

I enjoy photography, which is very different to actually being any good at it.  What I lack in talent is made up for in volume.  This is a particularly harsh blow for those that get inflicted with it.  Not only is it mediocre, but there is tons of it.

“Practice makes perfect”, is such a well worn adage it has somehow become true.  A simple experiment will illustrate the point.  Stand in the middle of the room and start flapping your arms, first one of us to fly to the ceiling should write to the Smithsonian.

Practice will improve your arm flapping, but it is not going to enable you to fly.  I will get better at taking pictures but the images will still be mundane.  Interesting in itself.

I dabbled with photography in the days of film and darkrooms.  For a while I was a studio based photographer on the high street taking portraits.  Odd for someone that does not really like people, a dislike which grows as the age of the person reduces.  Being inside is also rather tedious.  Being in a windowless, airless room trying to make brattish kids smile may not be an inner circle of hell, but it is on the periphery.

Also it was for a photographic chain, no self-expression or experimentation allowed.  The classic poses you see in a thousand publicity shots of TV personalities taken 30 years ago which they fondly imagine fools everyone was the norm.

“Oh, how young he looks”, followed by “Who is that wrinkly old fool on stage now?”  Forget airbrushing, much cheaper to have a picture published when you had your own hair and teeth, shame about the flares and the kipper tie, but they will come back into fashion one day.

The days of gunslingers posing in Wild West towns and buttoned up Victorian gentleman with massive beards were long gone.  Photography had lost its allure, for most there was no great sense of occasion, most were their on sufferance to appease a not particularly favourite aunt.

Thankfully those days are behind me and well forgotten, mention it and “cheap wedding photographer” instantly pops into people’s heads.

My love of photography never really left me though, as long as people are not cluttering up the scene, unless they are humorously obese, in shell suits or dressed as cowboys in charity shops.  Admit it, who can resist.

Then digital photography hit, a revelation.  I was not an early adopter of the technology, way to expensive, way to useless, but for the last few years it has been more than fine for my happy snaps.

Now some form of digital camera is with me all the time.

Getting an image is a powerful motivator for me.  I find myself going to places I have very little interest in, because there is a style of picture I wish to experiment with or a subject I want to try out.

One of the great advantages of a year wearing down is sunrises and sunsets become within the reach of almost normal people.  I got up at 04.30 to catch a sunrise over the sea.  It was rubbish, but the dogs got a walk somewhere else, it was warm enough.  It is within the bounds of normality.

When I get home the images are carefully filed away for some future reference point.  With the ever increasing disk sizes and lowering costs there is never any reason to delete even the most terrible of image.  Blurry pictures of blurry objects are lovingly catalogued, another picture of my thumb goes on record.

Over the next 7 days there is an airshow to go to, a classic car event to see, a funfair to witness and a carnival to stare at.  I have no great interest in any of them beyond there is an image of them in my head and I want to capture it on film.

For the longest while I have wondered am I walking or taking photographs, what is my primary motivation for the trip.  There is no real answer to it, seeing things is the reason I go walking, extending the lifespan of the memory by taking a photograph is important too me.  Eventually the image is the walk.

Essex Way Walk 4 Part 2

Previously on The Essex Way.
As I set off in a new and unexpected direction, ie not The Essex Way, I half wondered if I was actually on The Essex Way without knowing it, or perhaps it would spring at me from behind a hedgerow.
Mud accumulated on my feet.  It was the special sort that accumulated around your feet until it looked like a pair of rather rustic snowshoes.
I reached a road which descended towards Chappel and hopefully the viaduct that had been seen in the distance.
I don’t know if the locals saw it as a hideous eyesore when it was being built.  The Victorians seemed to have been great improvers and could not wait to tame nature that for countless generations seemed to have held sway over them.  The Victorians liked getting their own back, and the railways certainly did that.
I am sure plenty would have viewed it all as a mixed blessing but this brick monster now seems as part of the landscape as anything else.  That is probably because in the pantheon of development horror a gracefully arched well proportioned brick railway viaduct scores very low.  We are subjected to worse and expect the future to bring worse, our expectations of future are not as high as they once were.
It was built over 150 years ago, its a bit late to mount a pressure group to stop its construction.  There would only be howls about its destruction now.

1066 feet long (easy to remember that) 32 arches of 30 foot each, 75 feet high.  Took 2 years to build, reputed to be the 2nd largest brick structure in England.  The stats of the thing reads like one of those clever memory association schemes which are so fiendishly complex to remember.
The first official passenger train ran 2 July 1849, so I was a bit late for the celebrations commemorating the 150th anniversary of this event.  Well I hope someone raised a glass to it in the village pub which dates back to the 13th century at least.
There is an annual beer festival here complete with commemorative glasses, so it may not have gone un-noticed, its just the ripple of excitement it perhaps caused did not register on my senses.
Strolling down the road, dog under arm (he rarely goes on a lead and he has walked a long way, this is his rest period) I see an advertisement sign that needs a picture taken.

It is looking a bit sorry for itself now, in a field which is turning into a small piece of wilderness.  I have a dislike for the modern trend in council signs, all health and safety treating you like an idiot.  Advertising signs of yesteryear though, with all the originality and flair so missing today, that is a whole different story.
This sign is studded with reflective cats-eyes so you will see them at night in your headlamps (all but the LTD added later presumably).
Economic history of Earls Colne.
Full of information concerning businesses sliding into “forgotten memory” status.  T & AJ were sons of Thomas who by 1881 had extended his cooper business (employed 8) to add timber merchant to his list of achievements.  He dies in 1889 and the two sons take the helm.
They specialised in oak for railway sleepers and willow for cricket bats.  The business closed about 1983.  This sign probably being one of the last vestiges of its existence recognisable.  Presumably some oak rail sleepers are on the viaduct and maybe the odd bat lying in an attic somewhere maintain a thin thread back to Mann and boys.  There is at least 150 years encapsulated in that sign as it fades forgotten in a field by the road.
There is a footpath that takes you under and along the viaduct, on past World War Two pillboxes and defences you walk.  I was avoiding the water draining off the tracks.  Train sanitation might have improved over the years, but water from a railway line dropping onto my head is something I can live without.
I enjoyed this in a muscular Victorian taming nature sort of way.  The pillboxes might have disappeared behind summer growth but nothing was touching the mighty viaduct.
I really enjoyed this and it was well worth leaving The Essex Way to explore it further.
The footpath I was on, tore off through a muddy field past a profusion of butterflies and all manner of insect life busy in the sunshine.  I followed it happy to see where it took me.

It took me to some, by now, very familiar looking sheep. They nodded their heads at Dog 2, they were near life long friends now.  Well by a process of elimination The Essex Way had to now be the only cardinal point I had not walked.  What had confused me was there was no sign of a footpath leading in that direction.
I headed towards a farm on top of a rise with a large St George’s flag painted and peeling on the side of a steel barn.  If you own an ugly building in a state of semi-disrepair which holds commanding views might as well make it a patriotic statement.  I am always slightly dubious about patriotic display.  The “more English than you” brigade taking themselves a bit too seriously.
Bacon’s farm.  Presumably the owner of all the “Bull in field” signs and gates which are difficult to open and close along with sundry other paraphernalia of mild obstruction.  Certainly the owner of the flagshed.
Cows have been known to attack and even kill, put calves in the mix and maybe a bull, we could be walking on bovine dynamite, not just dodging massive drug-filled cow pats.  I always think small dog under arm is the best option, keeping him as much as possible furthest from the cows.  If things do get hairy I can just let him go and he will be free to take whatever evasive action he deems fit.  We stuck to a fence line which was the planned escape route if the mobile larders did cut up rusty.
Getting closer to Bacon’s farm (no pigs) a large pen designed to keep a dog in place is evident, along with a sign, “Do not touch the dogs”.  It is written in a style which suggested the pen was held in a large meaty fist more used to cow punching than writing.
Dog 2 was under my arm as he had been for a while now as is right and proper when going through someone’s property.  He could be on a lead, but getting him through / over stiles etc is easier this way.  One of the many advantages of having a small dog.
There was no sign of the dog(s) I was under orders not to touch.
Bursting out from under a broken bit of farm equipment came flying teeth and hair.  The dog made a bee-line straight for me and leapt up to bite the dog in my arms.  Fortunately I reacted and avoided the first bite, it did not deter this dog, who made several other attempts to bite Dog 2.
Now clearly this was more than a game but less than a savage attack.  The sheepdog was well within its physical ability to leap and bite Dog 2 in half if it so wanted.  The attacker has the pale brown eyes of a dog you have no reason to trust.  I put up a spirited defence on the part of my defenceless hound.
A farmers voice bellows to his dog, which gets it under some semblance of control.  I have gone from shock/reaction to anger but was rather too laden down with precious cargo to do much more than be worried about my return trip through this farm which intended or not is devised to obstruct peoples rights of way.
I cannot imagine there is anyone lunatic enough to want to touch the dog(s) but the nature of the dog(s) seem to make it all but impossible for unwanted physical contact to take place.
I was angry and angry thoughts went through my head.
Crossing a small railway bridge I try to draw a line under the incident and continue with the walk.  I am, afterall, back on track.  The return journey looms large in my mind.
We are back among the open fields with the knee high crops, product of selective breeding and genetic tampering I am sure.  We enter a tree shaded area, glimpsed between the trees were vehicle wrecks.  The junkyard dog looms in my imagination, a large fortress like kennel can be seen, there is nothing between us and it, but a line of trees and I am on a sunken road.  I do not like the odds and we go by as quietly as possible.
The one advantage (and there are not many more) to not carrying a map is it allows the element of surprise to come into a walk.  There are adventures around each corner.  I am not being foolhardy, I am in Essex, on a well marked route, I know how to get back.  I walk past peoples houses for goodness sake, this represents a stroll to the shops for some people.  Bear Grylls might find the need to knock a bunny over the head and squeeze moisture from cow dung in such environs while sneaking off to the TravelLodge.  Me, I will do without the dung surprise and shortcut straight to the Motel if need be.
I step out onto a road, one I recognised from my earlier mapping difficulties, Marks Tey.
The church at Marks Tey is a very odd affair, it dominates a road junction.  It has a lychgate, but it is a gate without a wall, its more effort to walk through the gate than around it.  It takes a moment for this to register.  It is a “what’s wrong with this picture” moment.
The graveyard because of its position and lack of wall has a village green feel to it.  The dead play very quietly and are not prone to causing too much fuss.  Some of the grave markers are cast iron, in fact a good many are cast iron and all from the same mould.  Small brown Norman arches.
The church itself is all out of proportion.  Victorians have been at work.  I say Victorians as a shorthand, it was actually 1829 that the West Nave along with North and South transepts were demolished.  Even complete the Church tower, massively built Norman edifice much of it built from recycled Roman bricks would have looked more appropriate on a fortification.
What the 1829 vandals have robbed us of though is the original footprint of this great church which was cruciform.
We stroll around the perimeter of the graveyard.  There might not be a boundary wall, but the living and the dead are never that easy with one another’s company, interaction is as limited as possible.  A jolly pink property guides us along The Essex Way.
Across a patch of land which is well tended but seems to have no clear function and then down an avenue of trees which lean in close, almost hiding the path.  My nose wrinkles, the un-mistakable architecture of sewage farm can be glimpsed close to the path.  It seems to be in a state of semi-decay, but what sewage farm isn’t?
This section of the walk is reaching its completion, it has been an adventure from start to finish and has taken unexpected paths inbetween.  It is time to turn around and head back, the return journey will be quicker, no need for meandering detour.
For those wondering, the mad farm dog was on a chain when we went back.  Within the limits of its tether it was a snarling beast but it was now essentially powerless.  I felt like taking advantage of his change in fortunes but really I was just glad not to have to wrestle it with one arm while holding a small dog in the other.

H.P Lovecraft

H.P Lovecraft (HPL) died before the age of 50 without a lot of fuss from cancer.  He never dragged himself out of poverty but seemed to live a fairly well paced life writing a lot of letters and some cracking good horror yarns (you can keep the poems).

He could look back on a failed marriage and a largely failed writing career (if you take prosperity as a measure of success).

Since his death his horror writing (weird tales for sure) have never been out of print and due to uncertain copyright issues can be found readily on the internet.  He would be rich by now if he had lived (which would have been impressive as he would be getting on for 120 years old).

He was a racist.

He was born Aug 20th 1890. Hence this blog entry.

The thing about him which intrigues me beyond all else is the the anecdote that he kept a bottle of poison (cyanide?) with him at all times so he could end his life at the moment of his own choosing.

I like this idea very much, although I take solace in the fact there is always a handy window from which to leap, not for me the melodrama of poison vials.

What is interesting about HPL and this bottle is he never drank it.  He had more reason than most to take a swig of the thing but despite a life of genteel failure in the end he chose to die of some rather painful cancer.

So given the power to end your own life at your own choosing when is it you should choose to do so?

Anytime will do of course but that is part of the problem.

Should you when your life is at its lowest ebb?

Or do you decide, well it is going to get better from this point on and live on.

In HPL’s case it was not going to get better and he knew it.  So did he just decide the activity of killing himself was just too much effort given nature was going to do it for him without any effort on his part.

So if you don’t kill yourself when life is at it’s worst, then perhaps when life is at its best.  This arrangement would suit churches, as weddings and funeral services could just be rolled into one great orgy of celebration and despair and no need to send out extra invites.

This seems ludicrous also.

Which only leaves the option of just randomly killing yourself, but life seems to be so much more random (check the newspapers).

Perhaps fiddling with the natural order of things is a bad idea.  It seems as if there is never a good time to die.  This is heartening only if it was an optional extra you could turn down.

Nebulous voice: “Do you want the dying option sir?”
Me:”No thanks, I’ll stick with the standard eternal life package”

Suicide is of course looked on very dimly by the Church (despite the clear benefits outlined above) and the law is not so impressed with it either.  It seems rather odd these institutions have sanctions against those wishing to kill themselves.

Over the years I have spent many an hour wondering what the optimal height is for the window from which I can hurl myself.  I don’t say this too shock, I am well past those youthful years when shocking people seemed a worthwhile pursuit.

Too low and you risk a variety of ignominious results from looking foolish to crippled.  Too high and it appears you have rather too long to consider your imminent death at which point most survivors have explained they had changed their minds half way down.

Getting it right is serious stuff, lets face it.

It might be one of those things in which there is no optimal height, one of those little cosmic jokes the universe is so filled with.  Or would it be more funny if there was a church tower built at the optimal height?

Studies suggest a penalty spot is placed a fraction too close to a goalkeeper.  The goalkeeper has to guess which way the ball goes before it is kicked.  If he does not, the ball will be in the back of the net before he ever reaches it with the despairing dive.  The length of the cricket pitch however is just long enough that the cricketer has time to take in the ball and wallop it for six without need for guesswork.

HPL was good friends with Robert E Howard.  He wrote Conan the Barbarian.  A life long depressive he killed himself with a .38 after visiting his Mother in hospital to be told she was not going to recover.

Although he must have shot himself at point blank range (difficult to be more than an arms length without elaborate ceremony lets face it) he still managed to miss enough to linger for eight hours.

One of the pleasures of walking is you get to turn these sort of odd little facts over in your mind.

A BT advert used to say “it’s good to talk” they would say that wouldn’t they. 

It’s better to think.

“Only thoughts which come from walking have any value”

Nietzsche

Ninety Degrees North: The Quest for the North Pole

 

Fergus Fleming charts North Pole exploration, up to the point of its discovery, which is not as well defined as you may imagine.

Having read his previous book which dealt with British exploration under the guidance of Barrow (Barrow’s Boys) this seemed a natural next read.  This tome deals with a number of countries all wanting to claim the North Pole first while pretending science was the real winner.

I was rather concerned as my hardback edition only had praise for Barrow’s Boys and a distinct absence of comment for this book.

I need not have worried.  This book had more wit in it to my mind.  The same attention to research was evident.  Mr Fleming was never short of an obscure quote.  They were never pulled out of the hat with a flourish for applause but were usually illustrative, even if the language was painfully Victorian (dense, grimly wordy and strangely punctuated, no I am not Victorian).

Some of the schemes were imaginative to the point of plain bonkers.  While Britain laboured under the old fashioned methods of man-hauling, suffering privations and dying nobly, the rest of the world turn out to be more imaginative.

Peary’s achievements are given some close examination, which in the case of Peary’s documentation is usually fatal to his case.  So it goes here.

Mr Fleming maintains Frederick Cook is a totally different league to Peary.  Fleming does not quite suggest Cook never left his house while claiming the North Pole but I am sure it would have delighted him if he could have proved it was the case.

All the claims and counterclaims about who reached the North Pole first, Cook or Peary are discussed.

If not them does Amundsen in a hilarious airship expedition which seemed to have been hi-jacked by some comedy Italians count as conquering the North Pole?

Exploration was not helped by the various theories as to what would be found at the North Pole.  Favoured was the idea of a warm sea with a North Pole island handily placed for flag planting.  Less useful was the idea that it was in fact a whole which lead to various inner earths (Hollow Earth theory is still followed by a few people living on the outer edge of rationality).

So not only were you hindered by the fact you did not know what you were looking for, when you got there the instrumentation of the day was not really up to the job of telling you.

One explorer (I will not ruin the fun) claimed he would know when he reached the North Pole because he would be standing under the North Star.  He found the whole idea of it being difficult to locate absurd.

A rewarding book to read and anyone with a passing interest in the subject cannot help but be entertained and educated by this tome.

Inner exploration.

John Wayne on-screen tough guy:

“What do you want me to do? Draw you a picture? Spell it out? Don't ever ask me! Long as you live, don't ever ask me more.”

The Searchers.

There is a special Ray Mears programme.  He goes into the jungle with a very eager Ewan McGregor.  I am not sure if it was a pilot concept, but it seems never to have been expanded on.

This was no “I’m a celebrity get me out of here".  Here being a hotel carpark somewhere leafy by the looks of it.  Knee deep mud and if you want a nights rest you better get your camp in order, nobody else is doing it.

The programme charts Ewan from enthusiastic ignorance to knowledgeable misery.  At the end of the programme, the helicopter lifts skyward, Ewan is glad it is over.  But, it gave him the opportunity to work out “issues” he has left a lot of mental baggage in the jungle.

This seems to be a common theme, while out in the “wilderness” inner exploration is going on, you get in touch with your inner being.  Things become clearer, mental knots untie, surplus weight shed.  It is all a bit new age, smacking of rebirth and touchy feely.  Ethan, as portrayed by John Wayne would not be having any of it.

At the age of 11, eager young students, legally obliged to attend students with nowhere else to go, were set an essay.  What is heaven, what is hell.

My effort boiled down to, hell is the repetition of your life for eternity with the sure knowledge of what happens next, it runs on rails, a journey you know.  Heaven is new experience.  Personal growth does not seem to be a priority for me, I’ve not really changed this attitude.

While walking I do plenty of thinking, but it is usually a forward projection from the point of now.

I suspect the “walking cure” is an extension of the “talking cure” concept.  Healthy mind, healthy body.  Talk about it and it gets better.

It cannot be very contentious to assert a persons inner landscape is at least as complex as the landscape of the natural world.  There are many places in the natural world having been mapped that clearly would be a bad idea to go and visit.  The core of a nuclear reactor would be an extreme example.  Not much good is going to come of popping in and giving it a look-see.

Why then is there the idea that exploring your inner landscape is a good idea.  There is much danger to be uncovered and harmful materials locked away.  “Get it out in the open” seems to be the consensus for these thoughts, but people are not so keen to open up plague pits or anthrax dumps.

If you are skilled enough at handling these toxic thoughts and are able to jettison them into the rainforest then by all means do so.  If you are not, medalling might be a very bad idea.

Introspection must be doomed to failure.  There are people that profess if they had their time again they would not change a single thing.  Either they are totally devoid of imagination, incapable of introspection, or lying.

Finish this sentence in seven words or less : “I would like to be reincarnated because…”

I would hope those that write “to do it all the same again” would be eternally damned to wander the earth as shades.

Introspection finds the cracks, the fracture, and like an old gramophone needle gets stuck in it.  “What if….” begins and it never ends.

Even if you divine the correct path, the one you should have taken, the phrase you should have used, you cannot be sure how it would affect the next instant.  Even in the movies, the most controlled of lives, you only have alternate endings, they don’t do alternate beginnings or middles, it makes no sense, the complexity is total.

Imagine the horror if you could plot your alternate life from that crossroads, the result would drive you mad.  It’s a path never travelled however beautiful it will be eternally denied you.

Travelling the backwaters of memory is a bad plan, you could very easily get lost.

The advice “Don’t look back” has never been more apposite.  I think there is a simple truth.  Those that do not wish to be lost realise it is not worth travelling back, the surest way to avoid the backward glance is to forget or by sheer strength of will never return to it. 

It is as simple as that, like so much excess weight, the memories are not untied, made coherent, understood.  They are simply dropped as the complex tangle of unexplainable, unchangeable clutter they are revealed to be.  There is no resolution just an understanding, the past has past.