Who needs O Level Maths?

 Sunday 14th June 2026

My brother has just posted his tribute to David Hockney on his blog and I have replied as below.

David H was also a contemporary of mine at Badford Grammar School albeit he was a year ahead of me, and like you I don't think I ever spoke to him and I have little memory of him at that time, except for admiring some of his artwork displayed in the art master's room. I have much more distinct memory of him in my post school days, often seeing him pushing his pram full of easels and art paraphernalia around Bradford city centre.

Whilst ticking off the English Marilyns there was a lonely one in a field just off the A166 in the middle of nowhere. I later found that it was just beyond Garrowby Hill, now the subject of one of David H's more well known paintings. I now have a small print in my living room.

There will be many anecdotes I suppose but it was rumoured that when presented with his O Level Maths exam paper David wrote across it "I can't do maths but I can draw" and proceeded to do just that.

Especially with my somewhat tenuous connection I feel as though some vital ingredient has gone from our lives, BUT WHAT A LEGACY!

Go and see the Hockney collection at Salt's Mill in Saltaire at the heart of David's West Riding beginings; certainly for me always a significant experience from several visits during my eighty odd years.

Warton Crag - no fairies

 Friday 22nd. May 2026

"Have an objective for a walk" has been a recurring suggestion of mine.  On Friday Bowland Climber took me up on it wholesale:

Two caves and three boulders.

1. Fairy Hole,    2. Harry Hest Hole,    3. The Thtree Brothers

But for starters we parked under disused Warton Quarry: nearly half a mile of exposed limestone with a height of around 300ft and today shining white against the contrasting clear blue sky - impressive.

Off we set climbing steadily to find Fairy Hole on evermore confusing paths. We had OS Grid references which showed the location perhaps fifty yards off a minor path at the foot of an escarpment, but guarded by woods on perilously steep ground densley populated with trees, fallen trees,  holly, brambles and thick shin deep undergrowth, almost impenetrable. but BC was not dettered and I was similarly keen to find our objective. We both had heroic attempts to no avail and sad to say we saw no fairies out to play. Some may say that octogenarians should have more sense? BC had one more desperate attempt because we thought we could see a vaguely looking possibility but retreat was then made.

We retraced previous steps and I may say joy of joys when we found Harry Hest Hole, but this was a less than impressive affair on the side of the path filled with a dump of dead branches and cuttings which showed little respect for what is marked as a landmark on the map. We pressed on,and our earlier woeful navigation became even woefulier but after  toing and froing, BC heading off in one direction and me in another, we found Three Brothers, huge boulders left behind by the Ice Age, one perched in umlikely balance, but all three almost hidden in dense woodland shrubbery and. brambles and apparently not much visited.

More  footpaths followed often not marked by OS and those those so marked were not accurate according to our GPS. 

Eventually we manged to arrive at the summit of Warton Crag and had a late snacking at around 2:30 I think.

I seemed to have had a block on taking photos on this trip, asnd many of dense green jungle and nothing else have been deleted.

Footpath confusion persisted to the end past the rim of the quarry and back down to the car park. There we chatted to a small party of bird watchers who were monitoring a pair of Peregrin Falcons nesting on the cliff.

I'm not sure how far we walked with all our diversions and jungle thrashing, but not much more than three miles I think but it seemed like more on this the hottest day of the year so far. I was grateful for the hot bath and an evening's chilling back home. With all the intrepid exploration this had been good fun, and as always in excellent company.

It may have been wiser not to show these photos to close relations and friends back home? And to think we used to worry about what our young offspring were up to in those days of parenthood

Only an approximation of our wanderings. Anti-clockwise from the south

Masongill and Tow ScarRoad

 Sunday 10th May 2026

This morning I had trouble finding the screw stopper for my flask. I had another flask in the garage and I I settled for that but I was not happy. My proper flask has more to it than its physical manifestation, it was with me on many of my Munros and hundreds of other day walks, but not backpacking trips where its weight counts it out. It has some little dents on its main body and also on the cup/lid, and all in all I have developed an attachment to this friend which does not apply to many of my possessions. Later, back home I did, much to my relief, find the stopper in the bottom of the dishwasher.

Then I was off down the A65 and turning off for Masongill on yet another thrill a minute single track kilometre hoping I wouldn't meet anything oncoming. I had researched using Google Earth a parking spot next to the telephone box in the village, and after the relief of the unhindered road I was again relieved to find the parking spot vacant. There was a noisy rookery on the other side of the road. 

It was a long uphill haul on trafflickless single tack cul-de-sac tarmac to get to the high point of this walk, but oh! so enjoyable to be in that limestone country when the white rock and the emerald green turf of the fields contrasts stunningly with today's cloudless deep blue sky; reminded me of  films at the cinema prefaced with "This film was made in Technicolor."

Where the tarmac ends there is one of those elevated covered water installations not marked on the map and looking at the remains of infrasrructure it is no longer in use. A right turn onto Tow Scar Road  continued my walk now more or less downhill or level. Tow Scar Road has the limestone crag of  Tow Scar hovering high up on one's left. There could be some minor scrambling or bouldering on those small crags. The lane is one of many such in the Yorkshire Dales following the high ground flanked by dry stone walls and steeped in history from centuries ago when transport relied on foot and domesticated animals.   The sheer extent of the miles and miles of those walls in the Yorkshire Dales is truly beyond comprhension. If you were to consider them all as a singular creation they would rival any other man-made wonders of the world, partly from their method of construction, but overwhelmingly for the combined volume of their proliferation.

Tow Scar road eventually reverts back to tarmac afer an uplifiting kilometre.

I had noticed a waterfall off route when I was plotting this walk and so I diverted. That turned out to be a dried up, steeply descending small  rocky limestone stream bed.

The rest of the walk was mainly through easy going sheep pasture, and passing the disappointing Masongill Hall which,although a decent four bedroom farmhouse hardly lived up to the title of hall.

On my return there were only one or two white slpashes from the rookery on my car.

Ingleborough.
 My camera struggled with this. Orginally Ingleborough was hardly visible, just a gohstly whitish  apparition. I did the best I could with Photoshop Elemnts.

End of the tarmac.Tow Scar Road off to the right. The disused water installation to the left. The onward  track inviting the way to Tow Scar summit and its trig. Perhaps another day?

Looking down Tow Scar Road from the top of the water installation

Tow Scar

There were two of these on the side of the track. See photo below. Something to do with water I guess?

Looking back down the old road

No "waterfall"

This barn had been well restored - see also below

Ok. It's not a tractor but somehow it looked friendly

?

The optimistically named Masongill Hall

Communication

 Tuesday 5th May 2026

I suppose there will be readers who think this is just another cliché "Frustrated from Arnside" missive, but I don't care. I can't help feeling  so cross at being duped whilst dutifully performing one of my my most hated domestic chores.

I have just sent this message to Westmorland and Furness Council recycling department:

At age 86 sorting my recycling is an onerous task but as a good citizen I do this properly all the time. Today I saw your collectors just put all the sorted items into one wheelie bin which was tipped into the collection wagon. That is an insult to the effort I have put into trying to do the right thing, and a deception to the public who  now wrongly assume our local authority is conforming to environmental requirements.

If there is a pragmatic and justified reason for this action we should be informed about it. Communication can avert so much angst but is is so often woefully ignored.

Gragareth, Leck Fell.

 Wednesday 29th April 2026

Today's walk brought up a minor question of linguistics.

 On my way back down the road from my ascent of Gragareth I entered  a fenced off area off the road containing what is named on Ordnance Survey maps, and almost everywhere else as "Lost John's Cave"

It seems at some time perhaps late in the 19th.c. two friends, both called John entered the cave with candles but unfortuntely, candles exhausted, they died there. The point is that the singular possessive uses 's, but this was plural possessive which should use s'

Lost John's' was explored properly from the 1920s onwards. The word cave is misleading in that it forms part of the massive Three Counties System. From Wikipedia:

The Three Counties System is a set of inter-connected  limestone solutional cavesystems spanning the borders of Cumbria, Lancashire and North Yorkshire in the north of England. The possibility of connecting a number of discrete cave systems in the area to create a single super-system that spans the county borders was first proposed by Dave Brook in 1968, and it was achieved in 2011. The system is currently about 90 kilometres (56 mi) long, making it the longest in the UK and the thirty-fourth longest in the world, and there continues to be scope for considerably extending the system.^[5]

I can't help yearning to get onto higher ground and proper hills, but my breathing problem does not help. Anyway, I decided to give Gragareth a try because one can drive to about 400m. but there is still a stiff road climb followed by an even steeper ascent of the fell. From car to summit is about 1.7miles and it took me two hours. Memory Map gives 1007ft. of ascent for my route.

Driving up there from the A687 through Leck is on nail-bitingly narrow roads with some serious potholes. The possibility of meeting oncoming traffic fires the adrenalin, but on the two occasions I was lucky enough to be at points where passing was possible with skilful manouvering by both parties.

Views on this perfecly cloudless day were extensive but I was battling into a very strong wind, and on the summit it was definitely gale force preventing any desire to linger, but oh! it was so worthwhile to be out on the tops looking in all directions at endless limestone hills and terrain with views right out to Morecambe Bay and distant Lake District.

On my descent I passed by the Three Men of Gragareth, large cairns erected back in 16th.c.

The day was well rounded off with a hot soak, a good meal, a good bottle, and some of the best snooker ever with John Higgins robbing Neil Robertson of a place in the semi finals next day.

There is much talk of such folk performing at high standrards at supposedly advanced years. John Higgins is only 51. I was 68 when I walked from Land's End to John o' Groats and climbed most of the Munros in my 60s finshing at age 69. and I'm still having little adventures like this one at 86.

A steep road climb from the car. If you click photo to enlarge you can just see the Three Men of Gragareth om the skyline

From road to fell

One of the other cairns seen on the ascent

Your guess is as good as mine. Gragareth summit

The Three Men of Gragareth

Leck Fell house (farm)

Lost Johns' Cave

Ignore blue routes, today's is the red one

Longridge Fell with BC

Wednesday 22nd. April 2026

Bowland Climber has had an arm in a sling for several weeks but it has now been liberated, however he is still not allowed to drive, and he is homesick for walks further afield. I have offered a trip out.

The evening before I was making sure I had everything ready for my off to Longridge in the morning. My car keys were not on their hook. It was now 11:00 pm. I searched to no avail, then sat down and did some thinking. Ah! I remember going to the local shop in the car and noticing a reduced tyre pressure light which pops up every two weeks or so. I had re-inflated when I arrived back home with my cigarette lighter plug-in.  A dash out to the car confirmed what I then knew. I had left the key in the ignition switched on - battery now flat. I call Green Flag. They message back saying they will land at "00.15 tomorrow." I panic thinking that "tomorrow" will not do until I realise they are using the twenty-four hour clock and it is now before midnght. They arrive at about 11.45. I then have to set off and drive for about half an hour to get the battery properly charged. Evrntually I get to bed sbout 1:00 am.

I have a welcome black coffee at chez BC  and off we go with long awaited default spring warmth and glorious blue sky. In consideration of my problem with steepness we drive to the highest road starting point for Longridge Fell.

Wide forestry tracks provide steady ascent, and dog walkers are greeted at intervals. Emerging onto the ridge of the fell we have one of the finest panoramic views anywhere in the country and at its best today in this brilliant weather.

We ascend to the Ordnance Survey trig pillar, a place of outstanding beauty well known to both of us over the years, and a venue to be savoured for its solitude and quiet contemplation, and appreciation of nature. But horror of horrors, it has been turned into some sort of commecial "destination" with information boards and a vistor's log book system all spoiling the timeless natural appeal of this wild scenery. One of the notice boards actually blocks the panoramic view to the distant Pendle skyline. This area is designated as an AONB and one wonders if they have given permission, if so, shame on them.*

Further on we turn off the ridge  to start descending through a series of frightening mountain bike tracks with jump-offs for the junior hards and reminding me of going over the handlebars myself on a descent of the Walna Scar Road years ago. As one gets older such escapades become become increasingly susrprising at their reembrance.

As we sit for our sandwich and coffee I fire up Merlin, the birdsong ibentifying app. A willow warbler is detected, and then BC maanges to spot this bird about about eighty yards distant perched on the  pointed spikey top of a forestry pine tree. We have the pleasure of its melodious song for several minutes before we see it fly off, perhaps to find a willow tree? My bird book says, "...wide variety of wooded habitats, from forests to bushy commons."

Our convesation has been wide ranging throughout. At one point, for a reason I don't remeber, I recall my reading years ago of A.J. Cronin's The Citadel. The novel is set in 1927 and edscribes the efforts of a newly appointed young GP in the Welsh valleys and his contribution to improvement of health care which  eventually lead to the fomation of the NHS in 1948. The title, The Citadel reperesents the  impenetrable self seeking bastions of the medical profession at the time.

Further descent gets us back to the car. This has been ome of my most enjoyable walks for some time.

--------------------------------

*

From AI:

"Planning permission for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs)—now often referred to as National Landscapes—is administered by local planning authorities (LPAs), typically the local district, borough, or unitary council. 

While the AONB Partnership (or Conservation Board) often provides advice on planning applications to protect the landscape, they do not have the power to make final planning decisions."

Steady ascent to gain Longridge Fell ridge

Each one of the regular named storms brings new tree falls. This one was not evident on BC's last visit back in January I think

Parlick and Fair Snape Fell, a small section of the panorama from Longridge Fell

On the ridge approaching thr OS trig, and...

...Mc Donald's next?

Mountain bike tracks

BC takes what I suspect is yet another photo of what he tells me is his favourite tree. Of course it will look different on each visit.