How to use a bank holiday

Daughter is presently awaiting an interview to reapply for her present job. Even if successful the new job description does not include a certain responsibility she currently holds, and her salary would be reduced. We have contingency plans to set up a combined retail/on-line business and I am helping with that.

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

As a retiree I find bank holidays a nuisance and rarely stray far. My friend and commenter on this blog, Bowland Climber, visited on Monday. We drove twenty minutes to Halfpenny, a village near Kendal often featured on the North West Tonight news weather map. Enthusiastic followers contact weather presenters Dianne or Eno requesting the name of their domicile to be shown on the map.

We followed footpaths up the sparkling St Sunday's Beck, and walked on old tracks and through bluebell woods at their peak. We saw a stoat and watched an unbelievable aerobatic display put on by a crow chasing a buzzard from his territory. The only other beings encountered were people in their own domain, no other walkers hereabouts on this bank holiday. Crossing a long grass meadow there was a strip cut short down the middle. Distant buildings and a wind sock, and then a small aeroplane emerging from one of the buildings informed us of an aerodrome in the middle of our quiet country walk. The path went through this unlikely complex. We had a long talk with the farmer whose land we were on, and who was about to take off in his microlight. This guy told us of his shock horror on a one time visit to Bradford and surroundings, and I sympathise to some extent - I tend to panic myself these days if I get south of Carnforth. Later we watched our farmer pilot in the sky.

A well educated guy with a farm and horses seemed comfortable enough to treat his farming as a hobby. He had allowed sunken meadow to flood creating an attractive lake quarter of a mile long not shown on the OS map. We had another long, wide ranging chat here topics including the dearth of cuckoos and the undesirability of opening his lake as a commercial angling venture - "...you don't know anything about the people who would come or what they would get up to..."

Back at home I watched a likely all time classic final of the World Snooker Championship accompanied by a glass or two of vino.

Not a bad bank holiday.




St Sunday Beck and The Helm, our local mountain








Any comments on this recent development in agriculture?







One for you tractor fanatics. Judging by reg plate it must
be before 1962 and apparently still in use







An old root-crop chopper by Bamfords of JCB fame.
It's almost part of the tree












That's PROPER stile for the modern age of knee replacementees