Dockray: High Force and Watermillock Common

by Miss Penny Black

As my blister isn’t getting any better or worse, I thought I’d take it easy today and break the day into two small walks, one on either side of the village.

In the morning I climbed halfway up Gowbarrow Fell and would’ve gone higher but I wasn’t keen on trying to climb a drystone wall.

I walked up to that tiny dark clump in the middle then down again. I really should’ve checked the map properly to see if there was a way to the top.

Then I walked down the valley to the first few sections of High Force and was then told by some people that the main section was closed due to a fallen tree.

It was another stunningly beautiful day, so I had a sandwich and cider in the sun. The sandwich was so good I order a packed lunch for my walk onward to Troutbeck tomorrow. Curried chicken – I’ve never eaten a sandwich quite this brightly coloured!

The photo doesn’t really do it justice, I feel like it was almost glow-in-the-dark yellow.

After lunch I rested my feet for a bit and had a phone call with Luke and his parents. Lea and Pete have just arrived in Lille, so they are much closer to my time zone. They are travelling around with friends of theirs and then meeting Luke and I halfway through May when we come back to the Lake District.

Next was a walk up the hill behind the pub. It looked like a Goldilocks level for me – not too steep, not too gravelly, not too busy! In fact, I didn’t see a single person between leaving the pub and getting back.

First I headed for the nearest small hill and made it to the top quite easily. The ground was mostly sphagnum moss and lumps of dry grass.

I hadn’t taken any water so I didn’t want to go too far, but I decided to head up to the next rise, then the next rise, until I realised I was up very high!

High enough to see Helvellyn in the distance. Helvellyn isn’t the highest fell, but it’s where Striding Edge is. Mum had to walk it when she was a kid because grandpa was a mountain climber and thought it was totally fine for a small child. I’ll find a photo from the internet to show you what it’s like.

Anyhow, it was exciting to see it from a distance. But then I saw something even more exciting, a fighter jet! I saw one on my last trip, whooshing down over Coniston. This time I saw one almost skim Ullswater, it was much lower than where I was standing. It was going too fast for me to get my camera out but here’s a photo with the level it was flying.

Am I too excited about this? It seemed very thrilling at the time but maybe it was just really loud.

Anyhow, I thought it was cool, then I did manage to get a photo of a much larger airforce plane going overhead.

Also fairly low but not quite as impressive.

The whole while I was climbing the wind was getting stronger and stronger. Despite the sun it was quite cold.

But I just kept going up and up. The tufts of grass made good footholds and not carrying a bag made it all easier. In the end I made it to the top of the disappointingly-named Common Fell. Literally the worst name of all the fells. There’s fells named Dollywagon Pike, Stang, Swineside Knot, High Spy and Crinkle Crags. I manage to have my best day yet on Common Fell. Oh well. Maybe the reason no one else was there was the unassuming name?

One day I will lose a shoe. But not today!

Maybe it was because half the surface of the fell was ankle deep bog. At one point I started singing that Annie Lennox song ‘Walking On Broken Glass’ but I changed the words to ‘walking on spagnum moss’ and thought… maybe I’ve spent too much time on my own today.

The moss was a lot better than loose shale though, and I don’t mind wet feet. The softness under foot was probably quite good for my joints and I didn’t feel very tired when I got back to the hotel.

I washed my hair then went out to sit in the sun in the beer garden. Earlier in the morning I’d had a chat to a lady from Montreal and her partner and then they (and their son) asked me if I’d like to join their table in the beer garden as I was sitting alone.

Well, you know me. I sat with them outside for an hour or so then we all went in for dinner and sat together. We talked about our journeys – the man’s father had died (at 103!) of Covid and they were taking his ashes from Scotland to Dorset, where he had wanted them buried. They had stopped in Cumbria for two nights on the way and had visited Wordsworth’s cottage this morning. A perfect time of year for celebrating the life of the man who single handedly made daffodils synonymous with the Lake District.

The man had been an artist and they showed me photographs they had taken of many of his artworks. They were all very beautiful and many were of the English countryside.

We also talked about books. Their son’s favourite genre was science fiction so we swapped authors and talked about our favourites.

All in all another delightful day spent doing things I love!

I finally got a photo of people I’ve met!

16Jan2023

Majestic Princess Day 10, Port Chalmers/Dunedin

by Miss Penny Black

A later docking in Port Chalmers today, which is just as well as Luke and I stayed up late watching Romancing the Stone, which I’m sure I saw at least five times when I was a kid but remembered almost nothing of this time around. It had not aged well, if you’re wondering.

I’ve managed to get through four books since the cruise started and would probably have managed another two but for headaches and Luke wanting to go do things outside our room, which is a good thing but I’ve just started a new and excellent author, T Kingfisher, and I’d happily lie in bed all day reading. Plenty of time for that when I get home, I guess!

View over the port and the ubiquitous tugboats.

Port Chalmers/Dunedin is another of the ports, like Lyttelton/Christchurch and Picton/Marlborough region, where you have to pay quite a bit and spend time getting to the main attraction. It’s a bit annoying, more so if you’ve come from a lot further than Australia and want to see as much as possible. I guess if you were really desperate to see heaps of NZ you probably wouldn’t do a cruise. I hadn’t really thought a lot, prior to boarding, about the demographic of people who would be on the ship but there are a lot of people of all ages with mobility issues and it really is an ideal way to travel if you struggle with stairs, packing, going distances, etc as not only is everything flat with lots of lifts but there’s lots of people to help. Mum has complained about walking along all the corridors but also commented that she feels like she has gained some fitness too, which is not what you expect from this type of holiday.

There was a lot of walking from the ship to connecting transport too.

The weather is a lot chillier today, we sat outside with Mum and Michael for a short while at 9:30, Michael is keen to get into Dunedin as he and Izaac have had Covid and stayed in their cabin since Auckland. Michael’s very first Covid bout too, poor guy! Still, it was very mild and passed quickly. I don’t think Izaac showed many symptoms at all.

Everyone else decided to go into Dunedin, but Luke and I left the ship at about 11 and walked through the port buildings to the Main Street of Port Chalmers, which runs uphill. The very first building was holding an indoor craft market so we went in to have a look and ended up buying a couple of things and chatting to some locals, one of whom was a possum skin dealer. Possums are a pest in New Zealand and I can’t imagine why anyone would bother bringing them from Australia, but killing them is illegal at home so when people want possums skins for Indigenous rites, such as cloak making (a family at my school organised this for all our indigenous students, it is used all the time in ceremonies) they get them from trappers here.

After the markets we walked around town a bit, then up to a garden and lookout on one side of town. It would have been amazing to see when all the rhododendrons were out, but as it was the Japanese maples were very pretty and it was a good place to get a different view of the ship, looming over it while it looked over the town!

There were lots of wild flowers around Port Chalmers.

Then we walked down the harbour and up to the lookout on the other side of town. We got there just as the ball dropped; a ball drops from a tower to allow people with pocket watches to set their timepiece to precisely 1pm. Apparently it fell into disrepair for quite a number of years but the historical society raised $50,000 to rebuild it. Money well spent? Probably not, but it’s a thing and we saw it.

After a quick wander around a small and boring sculpture garden that also apparently cost a lot of money, we walked back to town and managed to get the prime window seat at the most charming-looking pub (The Portsider). Luke was much more thrilled by this than the ball drop.

They had a wide range of beers and several delicious ciders. I’d recommend popping in to try some if you’re in the area, the lady behind the bar knew a lot about each of the selection.

They also had good wifi so I spent quite a while drinking cider and updating the blog. If I manage to get some done during our waiting time in Sydney I’ll have completed it all before I get home and that would be very satisfying!

In the evening Mum, Dad, Michael, Luke and I met up at the buffet for a few drinks before we visited the Asian-themed Harmony restaurant onboard. It was fairly quiet but the food was nice, with the red bean brûlée standing out as particularly good and an interesting take on French brûlées. We had three bottles of wine between us and many laughs, particularly at Dad’s stories and Michael making fun of Luke having a small sized head while my family all have massive heads. Apparently now that he has married in he’s fair game for teasing;-).

After Mum and Dad headed to bed, Michael, Luke and I hit the dance floor in the piazza, and then had a bottle of red wine before going to the casino lounge to talk for a while. I went to bed early and apparently missed out on the part of the night where they went to the Hollywood Bar at the top of the ship and Michael ended up trying to restrain a guy who was being aggressive to staff members, shouting and gesturing at them. Eleven years as a publican came to the fore and he tried to stepped in but fortunately Luke rerouted him. Michael had apparently forgotten it until security turned up at his room the next morning and told him that, although he was trying to do the right thing, it wasn’t the ship’s policy to encourage patrons to lay hands on other patrons. A bit of excitement, I suppose!

17Jun2018

Eltham Palace, a Medieval Festival and NEON!

by Miss Penny Black

I spent a rather varied day yesterday. I discovered a medieval tournament was going to happen not too far away so I caught a train, then light rail, then a bus, and arrived at Eltham (pronounced elt-am) Palace just after the event started. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that the thing was going to be held in a field so I only ended up staying for two hours (hay fever) but they were very enjoyable!

Tickets to the tournament also entitled everyone to wander around the buildings.

Eltham was originally a church, then a royal residence for one of the Henrys, then fell into disrepair. At the beginning of the 20th century it was bought by a very wealthy couple who restored it and built on a stunning art deco house.

They were keen entertainers and everyone from politicians and royalty to movie stars came here to get away from it all. The ceiling in the photo above was my favourite part – not lights, it’s a glass and cement dome.

However much of it was damaged in the Second World War and the owners moved away. Eventually it was taken on by the National Trust and is used today for a range of events including weddings.

The tournament was happening in a field out the back and so I had a wander around, watched the falconry show, and chatted to the guys in the beer tent who told me that rubbing nettles on myself might cure my hay fever. Nice try, I said, and didn’t.

I drank some rhubarb cider…

And ate a traditional medieval burger…

And listened to some story-telling…

Then it was time for the main event! The jousting!

The jousting was an entirely authentic experience (well, as much as could be). The four men and horses who performed the jousts were professional jousters, which I didn’t realise was a thing, and I learned ( in the beer tent) that each horse cost a thousand pounds to insure for the day.

The jousting, once the talking-it-up and the make-the-crowd-hoarse-with-cheering bit was over, was quite fast paced and very impressive. The rules were explained and everyone in the crowd got right into it.

If my eyes hadn’t been filled with pollen or grass seed or whatever I would’ve stayed all day.

Before I left I had a walk around the interactive tent-displays and chatted to various stall holders about how they got into doing what they were doing and historical accuracy and the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism, a global medieval revival group that I was once part of) which is not very big in the UK, since they probably had all their historical recreation stuff in full swing before the SCA got going in America.

After leaving Eltham I caught a dizzying array of public transport to Walthamstowe. Even though I had to change buses and trains a bunch of times the longest I had to wait was 10 minutes and having Google maps to direct me at every stage made the whole thing so painless I couldn’t help but reflect on what a difference technology has made to travel in the last two decades.

I was in Walthamstowe because I’d read there was a neon store that was Instagram-tastic.

And there was.

God’s Own Junkyard was terrific.

It was glorious. I love lights and colour and this place immediately lifted the spirits.

I think I heard someone say all the signs were for sale!

When I win the lottery I will come back.

There was also a craft brewer and a gin place next door. If you have time and you’re in east London on a weekend I highly recommend making the trip and trying the apple pie, which I feel goes well with something as all-American as neon.

23May2018

Cambridge: Gardens, Churches and the Beer Festival

by Miss Penny Black

I’ve made an effort to see a few things that I didn’t do when I lived in Cambridge. So before I get into the Beer Festival here’s a couple of things I did when I wasn’t taking advantage of Andrew’s washing machine, tv and couch.

Kings College Chapel

Despite the fact that this is one of Cambridge’s most iconic buildings I didn’t even consider going in until one of my co-workers, Tim, came here a few years ago and I saw pictures of the inside.

It’s £9 to have a wander around. There are side rooms with informative displays but the main attraction is the long room and it’s astonishing fan ceiling.

The big dark thing in the middle of the first photo is an oak room divider that was donated by Henry VIII. I think it’s awful but my opinion seems to be in the minority. It houses the pipe organ and keeps the riff raff in the back half of the chapel out of sight.

When visiting these kinds of edifices it always pays to look for amusement in the small details.

I don’t know what led up to this scene, but this guy’s thinking ‘I have made a terrible mistake.’

This guy looks like the textbook definition of ‘chief executor’. Or possibly ‘grand vizier’ .

The Cambridge University Botanical Gardens

I wandered down here before our first Beer Festival session. Beautiful.

The gardens were much bigger than I expected and full of students, draped like cats over every available sunny bench and table.

The gardens have lots of ‘rooms’, as well as actual rooms in glasshouses. All are well-labeled and interesting.

The chronological bed was a concept I’d never seen in any other gardens.

I had two favourite parts to the gardens. The first was the lovely scented garden, which is a bit hard to share on a blog page.

The second was the way that grass/meadow plants had been left to grow into islands and borders around perfectly manicured lawns. The contrast of soft meadow and smooth green was delightful. Also difficult to really convey in photos but you’ll just have to trust me.

I sat for a while and read my book – Great Expectations. If anyone had told me how funny Charles Dickens was I would’ve read it years ago. Although perhaps I wouldn’t have appreciated it then? Who knows.

The 45th Annual Cambridge Beer Festival

One of the longest-running beer festivals in the UK (and probably the world.. outside Germany maybe?) it is put on by CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale society, who are a group that works hard to promote small scale brewers and keep traditional English Pubs out of the hands of criminals who gut the insides and replace all the dark wood with IKEA pine board or worse – turn them into offices.

The Cambridge Beer Festival is no small deal. It runs for six days, two sessions a day (12-3 then 5-11) and costs £3 to get in (per session), unless you’re a CAMRA member, which costs £20 per year and gives free entry to all their events.

I attenedd the festival with Andrew, who is thrilled to have my company.

This year we’re here on Tuesday evening and then both sessions Wednesday as I’m off to Belfast on Thursday.

I decided to approach my cider and perry choices this year (beer is revolting) in the same way I choose horses at the races – amusing names.

So far I’ve had ciders called ‘Virgin on the Ridiculous’, ‘Weasel’s Wevenge’ and ‘Monk and Disorderly’. I also tried one called ‘Ghandi’s Flip Flop’ but it was revolting.

Of course it’s not all about drinking. There’s an outstanding cheese counter too.

And don’t forget the pork pies. There’s also terrific curries, roasts and fish and chips.

Could anything be more British?

We were even first in line on Wednesday – and what a line it was.

If you’re ever in Cambridge at the end of May, and particularly when the sun is shining, I highly recommend going, it’s a great day (or six) out.

11Oct2013

Nottingham (again) and a Beer Festival (again).

by Miss Penny Black

For someone who can’t stand beer I spend a lot of time at beer festivals. Although if you take away the beer there’s nothing about beer festivals I don’t like. The people are great – they’re down to earth, span all ages and wear silly hats. The atmosphere is laid back, there’s delicious food, new things to try and everything’s cheap. The only way they could be improved is a liberal application of sunshine.

Cheers!

Luke and I drove up yesterday and met Matt and Lucas at the festival. The Cambridge beer festival was the only one I’d known anything about and I’d been impressed by its scope. However the Nottingham beer festival was even more extensive. Approximately 1100 different beers. Lucas pointed out that about a mouthful of each would still equal 33 litres of beer to drink. I don’t think there’s that many individual beers produced in the southern hemisphere. On top of that there’s over 200 ciders and perries. There was also a fantastic range of food options, from cheese platters to zebra burgers.

Just part of the cider selection.

We stayed for about four hours then headed to England’s oldest pub, ‘The Trip To Jerusalem’, which was almost under the beer festival, as it is partially built into the hill on which sits Nottingham Castle, where the festival was held. We had a drink there then moved on to the Canalhouse, which is a pub with a section of canal in the middle and bridges to walk across. After that we stopped at the Vat and Fiddle, which is attached to the Castle Rock Brewery. After that we wove our way back to Matt’s (some weaving more than others).

Friday we took a break from the festival in order to drive out into the countryside and… drink more beer. We stopped at a pub called The Unicorn for lunch and then visited a farm shop. Farm shops in the UK are big sheds full of local, top-shelf produce. They almost always have venison, fancy sausages, pheasant and whatever is in season plus jams and chutneys and posh shortbread etc. They, foolishly, had an untended bowl of chocolate covered almonds out for people to try and I ate quite a few before Luke’s frowns shamed me away from them.

It was a rather miserable day so we ditched our plans to visit the extensive Clumber Park and went to see a cathedral that, fortuitously, was filled with the sounds of an army band (although they sounded more like an orchestra to me) rehearsing for a performance that evening. They were very good.

Cathedral interior, right before I was told ‘no photos without a permit’. AGAIN. Bah.

The boys decided to do their own beer tasting at home that night and bought a range of beers to share. We watched more Archer, ate a roast chicken and then went to bed early (well, earlier than we’ve been going to bed lately). ready to face another day of festival on Saturday.