When I stay with my children in London, in Barcelona and in Bolton, come bedtime the streets are as silent as a monastery. Though to be fair, in London we can sometimes hear the foxes in their lairs near the railway line yelping like very cross babies.
I live at the edge of a village some distance from Ripon. That’s usually a pretty silent place to sleep too. But for the last few nights I’ve been woken at about 3.00 o’clock by this…..
It’s a Little Owl. He (she?) is extremely persistent. He sits on the roof, I think, and keeps up a constant calling: sometimes measured, sometimes more agitated. The other night, after an hour or more I fell asleep again. Little Owl didn’t.
I’ve never seen him. It’s not surprising. He’s probably only about 22cm. long, and weighs in at perhaps 180 grams. The farmland which surrounds us will suit him very well, supplying insects and small mammals. He’s probably breeding now. I wonder if he’s found a place in the old barn which is currently home to a young family of rather messy blackbirds?
This species was only introduced here at the end of the 19th century, though his kind are widespread throughout Europe Asia and North Africa. Despite his being a noisy blighter, he’s very welcome here.
I have no photos of my own. Enjoy these images from contributors to the Unsplash collection.
A chance to look round an organic farm, just a few miles away? Oooh, yes please!
Five hundred acres. That used to count as a big farm, but in these days of agri-business, many are easily double that acreage. Here are sheep, cattle, oats and grassland – grassland that includes flower-rich meadows too.
We saw sheep, fed exclusively on the rich grassland which farmer Mark works hard to keep in good heart. Without good rich friable soil, no farm can function well. They’ve just finished lambing, and mothers and lambs foraged contentedly in the fields.
That good soil, full of organic matter and worms and grubs as well to keep the birds happy.
Oat fields are divided by traditional dry-stone walls, and by hedging, deliberately little-pruned, and with wide margins before the crop is planted to give abundant wildlife corridors.
Wide margins for flowers and wildlife to enjoy.
There’s a small lake, home to oyster catchers which nest there.
A distant view of the small lake.
Curlews and lapwings enjoy the site too, and Mark’s meadows are not cut for their sweet flower-rich hay until after July 15th each year, when ground-nesting birds have finished rearing their young.
We enjoyed a sheep-dog show. Eleven year old Jess was pleased to demonstrate her skill, as she dashed round in a wide circle, quickly bringing the sheep together into a compact group. It was good to see her eagerness, her enthusiasm for a job she does so well.
Finally, cattle. Mark brought us down quickly to the bottom of their field. The cows have recently calved, and are extremely protective. Best let them approach us. And they were curious, but ran (yes, ran) down the hill to get into the next-door field, as their calves, in some cases only a day old easily kept up with them.
And that was it. Apart from greeting the last-born lamb, only a day old. Her inexperienced mum had only had the one baby. Next year, she’ll probably have the more usual twins.
We’ll visit the Hospital de Sant Pau every time we go to Barcelona. Well, we will while it remains the city’s secret treasure: uncrowded, simply beautiful and offering balm to the soul just as it did to the patients who were – and are – cared for there. I wrote a little about its history last year.
I won’t repeat myself. Instead, I’ll try to convey something of the peace of this city site: something of its space, its lush greenness which was such an important part of its design. Doctors heal the body: gardens heal the mind.
I call it a city site, and these days, so it is, situated on busy main roads surrounded by buses, taxis, cars, shops, city workers, tourists. When it was built, it was outside Barcelona and rather hard to reach, along rutted tracks and surrounded by fields. The area looked like this:
We made another discovery on our visit this time. Nobody seems to mention the church on the site. We stumbled across it by accident, and I’ve had real difficulty finding out anything about it. But the modernista Esglesia de l’hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau is definitely worth a detour. Pillars soar heavenwards. Austerely plain walls are broken up by horizontal bands of blue tiles. Stained glass is in earth-and-sky colours. Most astonishing of all are the two – yes two – pulpits. One is borne aloft by the bull who is the symbol of Saint Luke; and the other by the lion who symbolises Saint Mark. Do visit it. You’ll have the place to yourself.
Most people pass the doors of this church without thinking to pop inside.
Every time we come to Spain, we know we could easily buy a carton of orange juice, a pack of coffee, a box of cereal and some milk and make our own breakfast. But where’s the fun in that?
No, when in Spain we do as Miquel does. We do as so many Spanish do. On our way out to begin the day, we call in at a local bar or bakery-with-café attached.
We sit down, maybe glance at one of the newspapers lying around, and order a coffee and a pastry and enjoy a few quiet moments before launching into action.
Our breakfast of choice includes a large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice – such a treat. We may choose a wholemeal croissant: I promise you, they’re delicious. Or even better, pan tostada con tomate. Chased down with a café solo, and a few minutes of people-watching, there’s no better start to the day.
Were you a collector as a child? I was. Stamps; seashells; those evocative sheets of fine tissue that they used to wrap individual citrus fruits. Another month, another collection. By the time I was ten, I’d abandoned the lot.
Not Frederic Marès though. You may not know him, but he’s Catalonia’s foremost 20th century sculptor, and you’ll find his work on public buildings and in churches here.
How he made time for his work is a mystery. He was an obsessive collector. He collected sculpture to inform his own studies, and …. stuff, because it was interesting.
ThisisMarèssuitcase. He seems pretty well-travelled.
By 1947, his collection was so large that he made it public. On his death in 1991, he bequeathed it to the City of Barcelona. It fills an entire museum.
Here’s the place to come to find an eclectic mix of religious sculpture: crucifixions and Pietàs by the score, as well as Christmas crib figures from the 19th century. It sounds dour, but it’s not. His personal choices make for fascinating viewing…. but if it all gets a bit intense, pop upstairs.
Here are tin soldiers; toy theatres; pairs of spectacles; early bicycles; pipes; dolls; door keys; clocks: walking sticks; extraordinary glass domes that seem to be full of dried flowers – look again. Each flower is made from dozens of shells – this was 19th century seaside art.
This museum, in the heart of Tourist Barcelona, is not crowded. Which was fine by us. But those tourists who amble past, never noticing it’s there, are missing out.
Three days. Three days to build memories and new connections. Ellie’s partner Ed has three children, and the two youngest made an instant Gang of Three with William, sharing a bedroom and every waking moment together. Adults and older children mucked in and just had fun.
There was a snag, and it was a big one. Poor Ben woke up on Friday with tonsillitis, had to see s doctor for drugs and advice, and vanished to his room to feel rotten for two whole days. Day three had him making up for lost time.
We spent lots of time sharing meals.
Aside from that there were praying mantises to admire…
We’re in Spain. Emily and Miquel had invited us to celebrate her 30th birthday with them, so off we went to Barcelona on Thursday. Where they immediately announced ‘Some friends have lent us their holiday home near the coast for the weekend. Don’t unpack. We’re off in an hour.’
The sun was setting as we arrived at a village, somewhere near Girona. As we arrived, I was sure it must be the wrong place – there were cars in the drive, and this was no small holiday cottage. We got out anyway…. and a line of people appeared on the balcony singing ‘Happy Birthday’…. to me.
It was my family. My whole family. My three children, their partners and children, who had all secretly plotted and contrived to come here for a long-delayed 70th birthday celebration, just for me, here, this weekend. And I hadn’t suspected a thing.
On the actual day, two years ago, Ellie was in the middle of chemotherapy and celebrations were in short supply.
So here we are, all 15 of us, all in the same place at the same time – something that almost never happens. For a whole long weekend of glorious weather, spending our days playing with the children on the beach, and our evenings on the terrace outside eating, drinking and talking, always talking…..
Lunchbythebeach
Emily’s birthday hasn’t even had a mention yet. That’s on Monday. We’ll celebrate that then, back in Barcelona.
Phone photos are hard to come by in bright sunshine. Here’s some fun in the pool at our weekend home.
I’m an indifferent housewife and Malcolm is worse. What’s the point of dusting until you can actually see a result from doing so? Malcolm would probably say ‘What’s the point of dusting? All it does is re-arrange the dust.’ Hoovering happens when it has to.
So last week it was a terrible shock when I decided to have a really good spring-clean, hoiked the edge of a rug out from under the radiator where it’s normally firmly wedged, and found this…..
…….. the corner of our Persian rug chewed to a fragment. By clothes moths. Of whom I could see not a single sign.
Well, we cleared up the mess and left it at that. Until today. Malcolm had a little sort out of the jumpers in a drawer, and found this….
….. and this ……
Well. Spring cleaning it is then. With a vengeance. We’ve ransacked the shops for nasty chemicals, packaged for the most part in plastic (so much for our eco-credentials), and set to with the vacuum cleaner, dusters, scrubbing brushes, mops. It’s either that or face the world with every item of clothing interestingly decorated with a filigree of little holes.
Will it make us less indifferent housekeepers? Probably not. It’ll take more than that to change the habits of a lifetime. But then, it turns out that both Harrogate and Ripon are suffering from a serious Invasion of the Clothes Moth. Even Houseproud Housewives are not exempt.
Overlooking the lake at the Himalayan Gardens, Grewelthorpe.
I couldn’t be doing with pink when I was younger. I thought it was an itsy-bitsy sort of colour, suitable to be worn by annoying little girls of the Violet Elizabeth Bott persuasion (You do know who I’m talking about here, don’t you? Violet Elizabeth was the lisping, spoiled creature who tormented Richmal Crompton’s delightfully grubby-kneed and accident-prone Just William, as popular now as when he was first created in 1922).
I declined to dress my young daughters in pink, or to wear it myself. I despised its sugar-sweet prettiness.
These days I’m rather less hardline. I even have a raspberry pink shirt.
All the same, I think pink is happiest in the garden. It’s here that flowers can celebrate the colour in all its variety, from the softest most delicate shades of baby pink through to vibrant, vivacious flamingo pink. Pastel pink. Shocking pink. And pinks that use flower names: cherry blossom; rose; fuschia; carnation; cyclamen; dogwood.
Here’s a picture gallery of May time flowers taken over the last few years. All of them are pink. And I like every single one.
Many of these pictures were taken in our garden; in our village; at Newby Hall; and at the Himalayan Gardens at Grewelthorpe. It’s my entry for today’s Ragtag Challenge: pink.
Several of you commented on my coastal pictures from Northumberland, remarking on how relaxing the whole thing must have been. Well …. it recharged the batteries alright … but not by lying down on the beach with a good book. Certainly not.
Only birds sunbathe here……
We were at Nether Grange, an HF hotel, with our walking group. And we were there with other walkers – some in groups, others not. At Nether Grange, walking is what you come for. That and good food eaten in good company. We’d opted for guided walks. Three levels of difficulty are offered each day so there’s no excuse not to get involved. I chose one of each, so finished the week with 15.3 km, 12 km and 17 km. walks under my belt.
Moorland near Etal.
This is hill country. The Pennines, the backbone range that bisects northern England becomes the Cheviots as it marches towards Scotland. In the car you’ll swoop thrillingly up and audaciously down those hillsides. They provide a backdrop to the area which is at once dramatic and bucolic.
On foot, you’ll get to know about those slopes….. actually, we weren’t often faced with gradients that had us gasping, panting and begging for mercy. But we rarely had a long level stretch either. And our leaders were there to encourage, chivvy along, provide good humour and background notes on all kinds of topics … as well as read the maps, so we didn’t have to.
We walked moorland tracks, bouncy with springy turf nibbled short by sheep. We crossed hillsides bright with golden gorse. We tracked through woodland carpeted with bluebells.
A woodland glade … no bluebells this time.
We passed Ford Moss, an extremely ancient raised peat bog where we excited the residents: Exmoor ponies charged with grazing the vegetation and keeping it in trim.
Exmoor ponies going for a gallop.
We passed farms with shire horses and hissy geese.
Shirehorse and foal.
Hissing goose.
And on the last day, we walked the local coastal path: St. Oswald’s Way. The section between Alnmouth and Craster-where-the-kippers-come-from is characterised by craggy cliffs, and are home, like the nearby Farne Islands, to many thousands of seabirds such as kittiwakes and fulmars. Here’s what the zoom lens on my new camera can do.
Cliffs and Dunstanburgh Castle seen from afar. The next three shots zoom in ….
Craster: cottages, a safe harbour, and a few tourists.
Our group, the 17 km one (10 1/2 miles to the non-metric) finished just beyond Dunstanburgh Castle. It was built in the 14th Century by the Earl of Lancaster, who was openly hostile to King Edward II – never a good idea, because the king had him executed in 1322. This fortification was built to make a bellicose statement, in an area crowded with castles. Now it’s a ruin, and an impressive one. We slogged to the top of the keep for the views, marvelling at the extra-thick walls as we climbed.
Leaving the castle behind us.
We finished the day, and our three days of walks, with a paddle. Gotta have a paddle. Or ‘plodge’ as the locals call it.
Plodging towards home….
With thanks to our walk leaders Chris, Helen, Paul, Richard: to Reuben and Team Nether Grange, and to our own Mike and Angela for organising the holiday.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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