Wally of the Month, and Little Grey Fergie

 Thursday 17th October 2024

I am still doing modest Thursday walks with my old pal Pete . He is now 90. We walk half an hour each way on preferably level tarmac and then retire to Café Ambio close to  Jct. 36 on the M6. 

Today we walked along the original version of the A590 running parallel with the new dual carriageway. This is now a quiet lane with pleasant views of Whitbarrow high up to our left.

I parked up where there is several hundred yards of space available along with other parking possibilities in that vicinity.

When we returned to the car A.N. Other had parked right up to my front bumper. See the photo below. Mine is the white one.I had to reverse in order to set off.

WALLY OF THE MONTH AWARD.

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Here is the finished Ferguson tractor affectionately known as The Little Grey Fergie. I have set it up on a small diorama. I am well on now with The English Electric Lighting aircraft. Looks like all this is turning into a series of icons.

CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE

St. Sunday's Beck with a mystery

 Sunday 6th October 2024

!!!!!   *****. !!!!!

I have just spent two hours trying to upload these photos. Blogger has introduced a new interface to upload photos which just adds another step for no purpose that I can see. On top of that my camera has been uploading photos in reverse chronology and there seems to have been some collusion between my camera and the Mac, and the latter seems to be trying to do the same. These two animated bits of tech have formed an alliance to upset me.I do know how to fix how folders are listed  but I ended up  with my brain frazzled. At last I can now start writing this post.

Since changing to Memory Map for the Mac I now have 2024 OS mapping. A new symbol I hadn't seen before appeared on the new map, not far from home - more of that later, except that it provided an objective for a walk. I could have persisted and identified the symbol but it seemed like more fun to go and find out what it was on the ground.

St Sunday's beck from Halfpenny (see map below) is a delight that I have previously walked, but there is often something one has missed, Today it was a substantially stone built ornate tower in a field in the middle of nowhere. The map shows this as "Syphon Well," and it is part of the massive engineering feet of constructing a 63 mile gravity fed water pipe from Haweswater to Manchester between 1935 and 1941. There is a relatively concise account HERE which is worth a read. If you Google "Syphon well" you will find technical details of its working.

At my furthest point north Blease Hall features. There is much on the Internet about its architectural features and internal fixtures but I was taken by this little bit of tittle tattle:

 

hearsay:-	Built by Roger Bateman, cloth manufacturer, 1600. The house has a dobbie stone, a charm against spirits.
ghost story:-	The daughter of the family living in an earlier house on this site died of sorrow when her lover failed to return from the Crusades, 13th century. Her ghostly funeral procession is seen passing, now and then.

I was now nearing my mystery objective a bit further south. It was in an enclosed field. However I could see nothing because as I followed the northern edge on a track Pease Beck lay sunken in between with trees and undergrowth on each bank completely restricting any view into the field. After a few hundred yards I turned right over Blaystone Bridge now following the eastern boundary on a tarmac road. Views were still totally restricted by high trees and hedge. Eventually after another couple of hundred yards I found the entrance to the field revealing its confinement of a massive solar panel installation. The field measures quarter of a mile in length on the map and it is filled with the installation. I couldn't get  a photo showing the full extent.

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I plodded back to Blaystone Bridge to follow my plotted route. I was able to divert to the summit shown as spot height 117. on the map from where I took s better photo, but it still didn't convey the full extent.

I descended to Greaves farm from where I had intended to follow the footpath to Ellenwray but the path was blocked by a  chained gate also elaborately tied with blue bailing twine. The gate overhung towards me. I tried to climb it but had a premonition of disaster and broken bones so I bailed out back to the road. Further road walking and tracks had me back to Halfpenny after a jolly present 5.5miles walk.

Setting off from Halfpenny

St. Sunday beck along line of trees

Syphon Well

Blease Hall

Steep descent to buried, rotten stile.

First sighting of mystery symbol, and below.

This and below taken from higher vantage point

Note orange dog poo bag - WHY?

Home discoveries.

Tuesday 1st. October 2024

I have followed theBBC regional North West Tonight news for the twenty plus years I have lived in Arnside. It is almost like a family group with a small number of likeable presenters that become like old friends as they make you feel welcome and included as they interact with each other with good humour. 

The other night there was an update about the Ukrainian folk who were welcomed to Arnside in 2022 after the invasion. 

I am trying to do at least a local walk from home each day to keep the old body ticking over. Branching off Silverdale Road just beyond Redhills Road a footpath winds its way through trees and shrubs with many branching alternatives. These paths are elevated above the Kent estuary and every so often splendid views occur through gaps in the trees. One alternative path goes through a gate into a wild meadow exiting after a couple of hundred yards back onto the main path. Today, not having been through there for a long time, I diverted. Halfway through the field I came across a tree planted in recognition of our Ukrainian friends. 

Further on the path descends down to sea level and the Beach Café. For ages now I thought this was closed during winter but I had another little surprise when I found it open. I had one of the best cups of coffee for some time, barring Booth's Black which we buy as beans and grind at home.

Not far from home I met my neighbours Mark and Paula who only live three houses down the lane. Back in June 2012 Paula and Mark tied the knot on the summit of The Knott CLICK  and I have known them as fellow outdoories over all that time, but recently only said hello as I pass them on occasions when I walk down the lane. Today I met them a bit further from home coming the other way and we stopped for a more prolonged chat. Since we last did so they have been off and walked part of the GR5 from Lake Geneva to Chamonix and have plans to return and continue.

All this goes to show that it is worthwhile getting out and about in your own locale and making things happen.

The Beach Café.
 The Kent estuary with the Arnside viaduct in the distance - CLICK TO ENLARGE

 

Fancy a bit of ploughing?

 Monday 30th September 2024

 Much has prevented walking of late though I have regularly trudged around the village, but not noteworthy enough for a post here.

Since  retuning to scale modelling in Lockdown I  have made about forty kits. Skills have improved over that time, but certainly not exponentially. Disasters still happen but less frequently and I am spending less time crawling about on the carpet looking for a bit of plastic one millimetre long which has taken life from the tweezers imitating a well flipped tiddlywink. What amazes me is how far such a piece can travel after hitting the carpet.

However, after forty plus models my latest is in my opinion the best so far. This was an intricate kit demanding many skills now learnt along the way, and I managed to achieve satisfactory weathering  portraying a well used but cherished piece of farming equipment. The inital painting, prior to weathering, was less demanding with everything being a blanket grey. My blogging friend Alan will almost certainly spot some detail that I have got wrong or misplaced

I have made a bit of field scenery diorama for my masterpiece to sit on but it is not quite finished. I have been trying to find a 1/24 scale figure looking something like a farmer, either sitting or standing, but after much time on the Internet I have not succeeded. A further photo or maybe a video will appear when I have sorted this.

Whatever I choose to build I must have some respect for in its real life form and that certainly applies for The Little Grey Fergie. Although I have no farming background I have seen plenty still being used despite their now historic production period from 1946 to 1958. Harry Ferguson invented the Three Point Linkage which enabled different implements to be attached and that is still being used in updated form on  tractors today. Before Fergie many farmers were still ploughing fields with horses.

the Ferguson Club is well active and here is a quote from their website and if your imagination has been galvanised with you desperately wanting to learn more on this absorbing subject you can CLICK here.

The ‘little grey Fergie’ is the machine that’s widely regarded as being the one that changed agriculture around the world, forever. The brainchild of Harry Ferguson, this fantastically functional little tractor with its revolutionary three-point linkage – and the system of dedicated implements and support networks that he masterminded around it – probably did more for farmers across the globe than any other tractor you could think of.

I now have an English Electric Lightning aircraft on the way. Hold onto your seats!

Comment posting problem

 Thursday 5th September 2024 

TO ALL READERS

I am having computer problems at the moment and it is causing difficulty with comment postings. I hope to get it sorted. You may find a way of posting comments with your identity, but if not it does seem possible to comment as "Anonymous" and if you do that it would be helpful to identify yourself in the text.

Thanks.

C.

"Boots and Brews" 2 - Glasson

Sunday 1st September 2024 

I continue to cherry-pick from Boots and Brews. I thought I may find some previously missed terrain not far from home from this guide but I have covered most of the ground before  and today was no exception. The  first half of the walk from Glasson and down the coast to Cockersand Abbey is familiar but certainly worthy of repeat. From there this route heads inland to complete all on tarmac. I can usually tell from the map if roads will be well used or not, and I reckoned these would be quiet lanes. I was wrong.  Despite these roads not being a through route to anywhere I must have encountered fifty or so cars on the second half of this walk, as well as half a dozen huge tractors with gigantic machinery attached, forcing me to stop and step off into the edge of these narrow single track roads. A short section back on the Glasson canal was heaving with people on my way  back to the car park, where this morning at 9:45 I was one of only two cars and now there were fifty or so.

There were good views back to the Bowland Hills from the toposcope on Tithe Barn Hill, my high point at about 17.5 metres above sea level.

I was then off down Marsh Lane to access the coast path. A bunch of malevolent looking sheep interrogated me at one point,  like a bunch of hoodies in some undesirable suburb - "Are you looking at me!" I'm proud to say I managed to stare them out.

Just after crossing Jason Pool there was an enclosure in isolation in the middle of the field, about twelve feet square with reinforced concrete supports at each corner about eight feet high and the whole encased in wire fencing and  overgrown with brambles and shrubbery. I couldn't even guess what its purpose may have been, see photo below. Any suggestions?

The walk down the coast to Cockersands Abbey made this trip worthwhile and would probably have been better as a there-and-back walk to that point. I spotted what I thought was a decent sized yacht crossing the bay about half a mile out. Back home when enlarged I identified it as a Wayfarer dinghy. As dinghies go these are seriously seaworthy and I've read of folk sailing to Iceland in them from the UK

Plover Scar Lighthouse was prominent. It was built in 1847 but was severely damaged by storm in March 2016. An heroic operation had it dismantled stone by stone in exact order and rebuilt and reopened in May 2017. 

At Cockersands Abbey I met an Austrian couple. They asked me if they could do a circular walk back to their car, but when I showed them the map they couldn't even show me where their car was located on the map, so I couldn't be of much help. They were pleasant and we had some chat about the contrast between their picturesque Austrian mountain country snd this windswept seashore of desolation on the west coast of England.

Cockersands Abbey dates back to 1180 and there is information on the Internet if you want to delve. 

 I have a couple of previous visits here on this blog. Here is a an extract from February 2020 about a memorable walk of mighty wind, waterlogged terrain, and some exhilaration after one of our now frequent violent storms.  I was inspired to a bit of what one may (or may not) call blank verse:

The abbey of Cockersand more bedraggled than I.

 How long I ask has it here endured?

A modest red stone cube tortured by nine hundred years

Of violent storm. The camera is too unsteady in the gale.

There is a kind of thrill, but this is no place to linger

As I turn to complete this rebellious forbidden day,

And reflect on those of stronger heart who here spent harder days

And many harder months and years.

Turning back inland the rest of this walk was on boring tarmac which did not inspire me to any further comment, and perhaps thankfully for my readers more "verse."

Glasson dock from the car park.

This lock gives access to the sea and Morecambe Bay from the Glasson canal. A bit dodgy in a flat bottomed narrow boat I think?

The toposcope on Tithe Barn Hill.
 A bit presumptuous to give this prominence of only 17.5m. above sea level the title of hill?

They should be dressed in hoodies

Jason Pool on its way to the sea, and just beyond...

...any guesses?

Crook Farm. The way to the coast path just up left of the house - next photo.

I think this is Lighthouse Cottage. Interesting stonework and the angled window for viewing out to sea

Plover Scar Lightouse. I think it is accessible on foot at low tide

This derelict farmhouse just fifty yards behind Cockersands Abbey adds to the atmosphere of desolation here

It had been too hazy from the start to see the distant Bowland Hills but now skies had cleared just enough

Boring!

Looking down Glasson Canal on its way to join the Lancaster Canal.

Anticlockwise from Glasson