Weighing Things Up

Serious,  weighing things up, at Hope  Show.

Social, chewing the cud

Aspirational, a young handler with his cade lamb

A throning, or a party by any other name

I’ve a string of posts to deliver,  I’m behind schedule, I’ve been distracted; they are going to tumble out randomly, it seems to match the mood of the nation!

You’d be hard pressed to call where I live a street, but it didn’t stop us having a street party to celebrate the Queens 90th Birthday a few weeks ago.

There were a lot of planning meetings (Mr Uphilldowndale will tell you  what I mean by this, is that there was a lot of drinking of prosecco  on Sunday afternoons for the previous month) I’ll tell you the planning was just as sociable as the party.  We then went on holiday and left the neighbours to all the hard work, arriving back in time for the sound of popping corks.  They did a fab job, we had  music,  flowers, porta-loos, road closed signs, bollards and bunting, a proper party.

We even had very official notices to close the road, who could resist a throning of neighbours?

 

We didn’t divert any carts as far as we know, a few cyclists and a couple of walkers meandered through the tables, most took  the diversion in good  heart.

We brought out the finest vintage food (the ‘food miles’ of some of it could be measured in inches rather than miles)

Ate proper pie (Yorkshire pie, brought over the county boundary under special licence).

I may have mentioned the prosecco before

So many cakes

and a few gate crashers.

We raised money for charity too, we are very lucky to have such lovely neighbours…

Salted Seasons.

I pulled in the car park at the top of Holme Moss for all ten minuets today and watched four seasons of weather whizz by.

There was hail, sleet and a dash of show

Emly Moor mast,  briefly sparkled in the sun, it stands at over a thousand feet in height and is a Grade II listed building, it puts the wind turbines in the shade.

These dark satanic looking  turbines emerged out of the swirling hail, they brought to mind the film, War of The Worlds, as the seemingly marched across the moors.

Back over the county boundary from Yorkshire into Derbyshire, I met the gritter lorry climbing the steep hill casting its cargo of salt. That’s a shame I thought, I’d have liked a photo of that,  I rather like the bleached grass, the empty road, the tar black winter heather, the flash of orange; but  there was no where to pull over. 

Then it occurred to me that it would, being a Derbyshire county council lorry, turn at the summit and county boundary, and come back down the hill again,  so I swung into one of the big laybys (designed I suspect for when in heavy snow, the gritter lorry can’t make it up the hill and needs to  turn and retreat).

Got it! 

Framed

I was over in Holmfirth this week, the weather was bright, a little nippy, but I didn’t mind that.

It’s rather a stunning drive from here to there (or a hair-raising one in bad weather). I paused at the summit of Holme Moss  you could see for a long way.

Kindly they’ve  framed the view, sort of a Yorkshire contemporary, creative, version of the Claude Glass,  splendid.

It’s a popular route for cyclists, but not many of the Lycra clad clan were out and about on the  Le Col de Moss when I passed by,

It was once was a different story

Swanning around

Whilst out and about on our first excursion in our new campervan, we called in at Hopton Hall, we admired the snowdrops, said hello to the mossy lady. It wasn’t the most pleasant of weather whilst we were there, sleet is never quite as pretty as a light dusting of snow, so we ate cake and drank tea whilst it passed.

We admired the pair of swans on the lake, swans mate for life.

 

Overseas readers might like to know that in the UK there is an ancient ritual called ‘swan upping’,  this isn’t it.  This is  a swan feeding.

Swan Upping is actually all about an audit of the queens stock of swans and takes place on the river Thames.  Could you ever own a swan? I imagine they please themselves? No, look,  I’m wrong again,

The Queen has a prerogative over all swans in England and Wales. The Swan Keeper also despatches swans all over the world, sent as gifts in the Queens name

They do look regal.

It got me wondering, how they keep their necks clean? I mean there is only so far  round that a beak can preen?

It all looks very high maintenance to me

well worth the effort though.

Growing Old Gracefully

The gathering of moss is no bad thing… 

At Hopton Hall, we went to see the snowdrops.

Magpie Mine

Magpie mine, an ancient and historic lead mine, near Sheldon in the Peak District, here having a bit of a winter solstice type moment. 

Lead smelting has been going on in Derbyshire for 3500 years  It a fascinating place,  let me give you a tour round, but let’s take care.

There is something about the place that doesn’t feel quite right, I think it is the lack of accoutrements to the working life that once thrived here. It would have teamed with life,  there would have been noise, smoke, the rattle of harnesses as horses turned the gin wheel. But now It does feel rather eerie.

You can almost feel the life it once had but not quite. It’s as though there is a life inside and below that we can never know.

Something going on behind these locked doors.

As though the shadow of the gallows frame, might start to turn.

Mr Uphilldowndale however is less fanciful than me, he wants me to point out to you, how the lower section of  the chimney in this image is out of plumb* and when a later  brick extension to top has been built they’ve built it vertically, he’s forever the engineer.

We both admired the tunnel flu to this chimney, now partially collapsed

we admired the view too

All around the site are the remnants of spoil from the mine, a bing 

Spoil from lead mines, still poses a problem for farmers, and can kill livestock .  You can often see  clusters of trees, usually with walls around them,

the trees to cover the spoil with their roots,  and the walls as an added deterrent to livestock

Nature takes its course though and flowers and plants grow here that can tolerate the toxicity of the soil ‘metallophytes’,

plants such as the nationally scarce spring sandwort (known locally as leadwort) and alpine penny cress, and Pyrenean

survy grass and mountain pansy.

 

*Plumb, did you see what I did there? [Middle English, lead, a plumb, from Old French plomb, from Latin plumbum, lead.]

17/2/16 Edit…   Lost and now found, the link that has to go with this post,  Peak District Mines Historical Society