Elaine's Tearooms and Smearsett Scar

Wednesday, 31st. October 2018 - Feizor, Nr. Settle.

On 17th October 2007 (pre blog) I was mopping up the last few of the trig points on OS Sheet 98. One of these was Smearsett Scar (SD 802 677.) I've just looked back at my journal. I must first of all register my current antipathy to blood-sports. Here is an extract from that day.

"I set off from the farm at the end of the road in Little Stainforth and had a chat with the farmer who let me park there. Conversation lead to me mentioning that my father had been secretary of the Airedale Beagles for twenty five years. The farmer told me they used to come onto his land, and they said they were there to "exercise the hares."

Smearsett Scar turned out to be a jewel of a mini mountain on that glorious October day similar to today's ascent. Despite  preferring to seek new places to visit rather than repeating previous trips there are a few that I have a special feeling for meriting  re-visits.  Smearsett is a qualifier. My next visit was serendipitous, that is, it not being the main aim, but fortuitously turning out to be within ten minutes from the route of the Dales High Way which I backpacked in April 2010, and enjoyably made that small diversion, again in fine weather. From the Scar trig the Dales HW passes through the pretty village of Feizor, and since my original visit a café had opened there and gained a reputation for good food with people fully booking tables at weekends, but unfortunately it was closed. I have always had it in mind  to go back and walk a circuit including the Scar with a visit to the café halfway round, and so it was today.

The café was open with a friendly welcome, a bacon butty and a pot of tea, and it lives up to its reputation.

Smearsett Scar was ascended with pleasure on the return leg, this time from the  north.

Limestone country, the old lanes, leading to green cropped turf - my favourite country - the Yorkshire Dales - scene of so many esrly adventures in my fomative years - all nostalgia.
Next photo looking back down the same lane. 

I seem to be getting paranoid about gates.
There may be more to come in the next couple of posts.
I think this one is competing for the Turner Prize.

Feizor

The now quite famous Elaine's Tearooms at Feizor

Pen-y-Ghent

On Smearsett Scar ridge.
 The summit is behind the camera.
 Feizor nestles down below the hump at the end of the ridge

Smearsett Scar and Pen-y-Ghent ( a change from Ingleborough which seems to be photographed so often from locations near and far)

Rusland Church and Bethecar Moor

Friday 26th October 2018

If it hadn't been for my walking friend Bowland Climber I may not have been typing this.

Halfway round our walk we entered a large area of unfenced pasture. Two hundred yards ahead were some cows, but they were guarded by an enormous bull. BC stopped in his tracks. I was all for walking on - the beast looked docile to me. BC explained that he comes from farming stock and has had experience of folk being killed by these animals. "You carry on" he said, "I'll go round." Of course I agreed and we took a massive detour including a bit of height loss thus eliminating the sight line between us and Mr. Bull. As it turned out this worked as a short cut on our route.

BC had phoned me and suggested I concoct a walk in my area. BC has walked everywhere and it was a challenge for me to find some uncharted territory for him. I settled on a start at Rusland Church which has the added interest of Arthur Ransome's grave. We had a look in at the church as well - a party of three or four walkers arrived and I mentioned the grave to them which they were unaware of and grateful for my direction. I am glad that there is no great promotion of the grave - it just seems right that it should be there understated and peaceful.

From Rusland we walked to Force Mills, another of my secret attractions where a lively Lake District stream bifurcates and cascades and tumbles down a steep hillside, and today it was  pretty energetic with the recent rains.

Further on we came across the most complex gate fastening I have seen to date. Four foot metal  push/pull bars extended on each side of the gate fixed to separate posts at their extremities, and operating intricate mechanism fastened to the gate. I wonder who created this - it must have needed engineering drawings and a lot of specialised, galvanised metal fabrication, and at what cost? What is wrong with a simple hook and eye?

Our route took us across Bethecar Moor which was new to me. Looking at the map this could have been a quagmire nightmare, and I was apprehensive about leading us into such a mess. Bethecar turned out to be all delight on a good path with a huge expanse of wild country in all directions with many attractive rocky outcrops, and as BC observed several possibilities for small scale rock climbing.

This was a brilliant autumn day in good company and the best of Lakeland scenery.

Click first photo to view all as slideshow

BC photographs Ransome's grave

Force Mill Beck below the hillside where it descends in two streams to join as one just above here

Zoom to Humphrey Head

Crossing Bethecar Moor

The location is between Windermere Lake and Coniston Lake

Killington Lake

Thursday walk with Pete (on Wednesday) - 24 h October 2018

After five weeks or so of shed fixing I am liberated for walking.

I plotted a route on footpaths and prepared a snack and flask of coffee - on my shorter walks with Pete we don't do that. I had phoned Pete to cancel our walk tomorrow because it would be granddaughter Katie's seventh birthday and I would be involved with birthday treats.

After fuelling the car at Crooklands, about six miles from home, I was off again when Pete rang  and suggested we walk today instead of tomorrow. I went back to Arnside and picked up Pete and plotted a shorter and revised route on tarmac to suit Pete.

In February 2013 we circumnavigated Killington Lake:

click to view that post

It has remained a mystery to me ever-since that "Circuit of Killington Lake" has been one of the most frequently viewed pages on my blog - 736 hits since publishing. There is nothing in that post that I can identify to cause it to respond to some keyword. The Stats on Blogger Dashboard have always been incomprehensible to me.

Our walk today was on some of the same route as that much viewed post. The road was bounded much of the time by larch trees which, although apparently coniferous are deciduous, but today had not yet shed leaves - they have their own unique and enchanting colouring which was a pleasure to see illuminated by the autumn sun, especially since I understood some time ago that larch were threatened with extinction by yet another of the botanical  bugs that are going the rounds.

Worth a click to enlarge

Endmoor and a bit of paparazzi

Thursday walk with Pete - 11th October 2018 - Endmoor


Pete has the Met Office weather app on his iPhone and I had the BBC one on mine. Today Pete's predicted rain at 13:00 hrs. and mine predicted sunshine at the same time. Yesterday Pete had spent the day gardening - planting bulbs. Gardening has no attractions for me, and planting bulbs which will give no results for several months is against my nature which demands a bit of action immediately following my efforts. A notable example of gardening patience arises at Inverewe Garden in Scotland situated on an exposed coast. The founder wanted shelter first. He went to an island on Loch Maree and obtained pine tree saplings and planted them to form a windbreak, then waited twenty years for them to provide enough shelter before he seriously embarked on constructing his garden. That would not be for me, but the results are magnificent.

Pete's gardening had left him more than usually tired and we opted only to walk about two snd a half miles. We had not placed bets on which weather forecaster would prove correct. Pete's Met Office app came up with the goods as we felt the first spots of rain on the stroke of 13:00 hrs just before we got back to the car.

I have now deleted BBC and installed Met Office.

Our routine takes us to Café Ambio for tea snd cake. Ambio is attached to the purpose built livestock auction mart near Jct. 36 on the M6 and is frequented by farmers on auction days and we are fascinated and entertained by observing these characters with their flat caps, old tweed suits snd waistcoats and long shepherds' crooks. We suspect that meeting at Ambio is as much a social occasion for the farmers as is the selling and buying of their livestock. Today, with s bit more time on our hands, I took some clandestine photos without using the flash. I am not sure about the ethics of this kind of photography and I did feel s bit guilty about it, but you can see the results bellow.

Today's photos are a bit dark although I have played with some of them in Photoshop, and especially the Ambio ones will benefit from "click to enlarge."

If at first...

There may be some correlation between my problem with the lock and the book I have just finished. This morning in the peace and quiet of my study after a refreshing night's sleep I studied the lock and bludgeoned my brain. If you look at the photo you will see the spring has two legs sticking out. The counter-intuitive solution (to me) was to cross these over and hook each onto the opposing sidebar so that they became cross-legged and therefore under much more tension. Manipulating that and holding everything together whilst replacing the back plate was akin to brain surgery, more of that shortly. Having solved the locating of the spring I found the dam thing still didn't work and I had to disassemble and reassemble several times until I found out how the circular piece of metal attached loosely to the back plate fitted so that it would pick up the inside mechanism when the key is turned but I got there in the end. I am still awaiting a reply from Securit and the lock is fitted and the other woodwork tidied up.

My version of mechanical surgery didn't have the potential for total paralysis or death risked by Henry Marsh, an eminent neurologist specialising in brain surgery, which he describes with candour in his book Do No Harm.

Brother RR who comments here suggested this book to me over a year ago and I think he thought I was too squeamish to take it on. For years I have attended a small reading group and Henry's book was suggested by one of the other members as our latest read, so I was committed. I read the first hundred pages at one sitting and rattled on through the rest pretty quickly even though it did become a bit repetitive. There are twenty five anecdotal chapters describing individual case histories intermingled with  the agonies of communicating difficult information to patients and relatives and the the burden of decision making on all concerned.

In Henry's early career he seems gung-ho, and he has much to say about his frustrations with the NHS, but experience over the years sees him becoming more tempered. I did question his motivation for writing the book, was it partly egotistical? He is obviously caring and compassionate about his patients, and he has spent a lot of time travelling to the Ukraine on a voluntary basis to assist with neurosurgery in primitive and unpleasant conditions and this is obviously altruistically motivated.

Unless you have had direct and upsetting experience of brain surgery with close relatives or friends I would recommend this book as a rewarding read. One member of our group had unfortunately had a related family experience and had been unable to read the whole book but had just dipped in but still made a strong contribution to our discussion.

No luck with a lock

The new shed needed a lock on the door.

I bought a clone Yale item (Securit Standard Nightlatch - S1740.)

It came in the usual tight plastic wrapping on a card. There were no instructions. I did look at a video on You Tube that gave me some idea. I fitted the main body to the door, then the keeper on the other side, but then I realised that the bolt part is curved on one side and straight on the other - mine was the wrong way round. I then lost the plot and tried to modify and ended up with a dreadful mess of split wood and shavings from the door jamb and it was getting late and cold. I became totally frustrated and depressed and decided to leave it all for a clearer head next day.

I came in and ate my meal, but couldn't help puzzling about this problem and I knew I was overlooking something obvious. "Are these items left or right handed,." I was trying to imagine the lock fitting on a door that opened from the other side, but my brain is not very good at such spatial awareness imaginations, a sad failing for an aspirant DIYer. There was no indication on the packaging. At about 8:00 pm I suddenly thought "is that bolt reversible?"

Off I went to the shed in the dark armed with my torch. I unscrewed the main body of the lock from the door, turned it over and saw a tiny screw securing a backplate. I unscrewed and lifted the plate. A small spring jumped out like one of those miniature frogs I have seen so often on the Scottish hills. The spring landed on the decking and it took overt five minutes to find it in the dark. I brought everything back into the house, and after turning the bolt I tried to refit the spring but there was no way I could see how it went. I searched the manufacturer's website to no avail. They had no phone number, just the option to send an email. I typed my SOS to them and now await their reply.

Long live DIY.

I am too ashamed to show a photo of the mess on the door jamb.

The vital point it seems, which I found out later, is whether the door opens inwards or outwards , but the retailer, the manufacturer and You Tube had failed to point that out, or that the bolt is reversible. 

Old Hutton and Peasey Beck

Thursday walk with Pete - 27th September 2018 - Old Hutton

My post entitled Holme has now clocked up 75 comments:

Click here

RR's latest and my reply should really signal the time to move on. RR has suggested that comments on older posts will rarely be seen, but I have pointed out that if you look under Comments in Blogger Dashboard any comments on older posts will appear there, so blog authors needn't miss comments put on older posts, and it is also worth looking at Spam in the same location because I have found that Blogger occasionally places valid comments there in error.

I have a sort of obsessional aversion to driving on part of the route I have selected before we start, on the grounds that it could spoil the enjoyment of discovering points of interest and views to be gleaned on the walk. But finding somewhere to park on narrow country lanes sometimes makes that inevitable, and so it was today. We had to drive about a third of a kilometre on the B6254 which was part of the short section of that road on our walk. My obsession also extends to objection to a there and back rather than a circular, but Pete has pointed out that you get a different view on the way back, and he has no empathy with my problem, and that has tempered this second obsession for me to some extent, which is fortunate because I have just about run out of circular routes that match our required parameters.

Shortly after our start we passed through tiny Beckside and glancing upstream from the bridge over the infant Peasey Beck we spied a half decent waterfall tantalisingly half hidden in the trees - it was more reminiscent of territory close to the Lakes and a pleasant little surprise, and I was glad that I hadn't noticed beforehand the it is marked on the OS map.

However narrow and purposeless are the little roads that we walk on there is always some traffic these days. We had to get off the road onto uncomfortable grass verges every now and then for passing vehicles. On one very narrow lane we had a tractor-unit pulling a huge, empty low-loader, and as it carried on we saw it confronting a farmer's tractor coming the other way laden with hedge cutting machinery. The tractor skilfully diverted off into a field and so pas de problème, but oh, why didn't I remember to take a photo. As we continued we were walking on a carpet of chopped up multi species of hedge clippings. Apart from a  number of private cars, heading who knows where in view of the very few habitations in the vicinity, we now as always  were plagued by home delivery vans. I can't complain about those because I am as guilty as others of buying on t'Internet.

I have over dramatised to some extent the volume of traffic, but it is becoming more and more noticeable on these little roads. The one exception that we don't object to is the little red Royal Mail van - it usually  passes us somewhere, disappears up a rough farm track, and then passes us again on its way back, always with a friendly wave, and even more emotive today with the passing of Postman Pat's creator John Cunliffe the other day.

AS USUAL WORTH CLICKING ON FIRST

PHOTO TO SEE ENLARGEMENTS

Peasey Beck at Beckside and the waterfall

This array of solar panels was far bigger than I could encompass in the photo.
We wondered if it was a private enterprise or one set up by power generating bodies. There were no signs, just high barbed wire fencing and security cameras

I wouldn't want this macabre scene greeting me each morning on my gatepost (if I had such a gatepost)

Taken from my living room window later in the dsy as the sun was setting behind and casting this glow on Farleton Fell and Hutton Roof