Rebecca, of Fake Flamenco fame has suggested with typical generosity of spirit that we send virtual flowers or autumn colour to Becky, Queen of Squares and to Cee, Queen of Challenges. Becky, in England, has kept us up to date with the health difficulties currently being experienced by Cee, in America.
I’m sending flowers from a phone box to each of them. These cheery additions to the urban scene can be found in Bath, where I spent yesterday with both Becky and Anabel, The Glasgow Gallivanter. Lucky me! Spending time with fellow bloggers is quite the best fun.
The header photo features the central box, which is the work of Mr. Doodle.
Well, we ‘did’ the Chillingham Cattle. So now, maybe some culture, some history at the nearby Chillingham Castle, parts of which date from the 12th century?
Perhaps we should have guessed. We drove through the gates, then bumped along the drive, deeply pitted with pot holes. The parking area was filled with random notices relating to a golf course that was nowhere in evidence. We found the entrance, where a slightly surly individual examined our pre-booked tickets and gestured us through a door. ‘Ramshackle’, rather than ‘weathered’ was the term that occurred to us as we passed through the courtyard. Still the cafe offered home made soup and cakes, so that was alright.
But our visit! An ill-lit room offered instruments of torture, in no way explained or contextualised, but which included a broken down skeleton in a broken down wheelchair. Progressing further, we found halls scattered with elderly croquet mallets, rooms featuring peeling table tennis bats, torn and yellowed newspaper cuttings roughly pinned to a mantelpiece – one drawing pin having fallen out. A box of magazines from a bygone age tossed into a Fyffes banana box. Windows dressed with rotting and ripped curtains. Somewhere in among all this, it was just about possible to pick out a family story, and witness at first hand a high-born family descending into genteel poverty.
Actually, the formal gardens weren’t too bad. Here’s a view from the roof.
But perhaps we’re miserable old curmudgeons, unable to recognise a National Treasure when we see one. Here are some reviews from Trip Advisor. There are those who loved their visit. Is it now on your ‘must visit’ list?
Venture to north Northumberland near the Cheviot Hills and the Scottish border, and you may find yourself near Chillingham. If you do, be sure to visit its wild cattle. Yes, for maybe 700 years, a herd of cattle has lived and prospered here, always untouched by man – no farmers, no vets, no medical treatment, no cowsheds, no milking.
Though their territory is large, there is inevitably a fence round their domain. But there are no other cattle like them anywhere (except cousins in Scotland who are kept there just in case anything happens to this lot). so genetically, they are in-bred. Normally, this leads to all kinds of problems. Remarkably, not with these creatures.
I seem to have snapped females and youngsters – play fighting as young animals do. The males have bigger thicker horns and have greyer hind quarters.
These feisty cattle – the females anyway -can bear a single calf at absolutely any time of year: snow, hot summer – they don’t care. Males will fight – sometimes bitterly – for the privilege of breeding with females. They’re herd animals, and their society is matriarchal, so an older female will call the shots in deciding where they’ll move off to next for safe and worthwhile grazing. Here’s a matriarch summoning her companions with her slightly underwhelming ‘moo’.
It was Charles Darwin who encouraged records to be kept on the breeding behaviour and numbers of the Chillingham cattle. They’re still being studied today. And visited too, by interested onlookers like us, who definitely keep a very respectful distance.
We popped to Bamburgh yesterday afternoon to enjoy views of the castle and a healthy stride along the beach. What greeted us was the group of photographers in the featured photo, all pointing their lenses out to sea. It turns out they were all twitchers, alerted by some bird-enthusiast-bush-telegraph to the presence of a bird whose home is normally North America and Canada: the White Winged Scoter. We couldn’t see it. It was too far out to sea.
Here’s a view of the Castle. Other castles are available in Northumberland. I’ll be reporting back later.
Bamburgh Castle
I thik I’ll be cheeky and make this a late entry to Debbie’s One Word Sunday challenge: Shadows.
Why does anyone visit Alnwick, Northumberland? The castle, with its long history going back to the 1300s is one. Though if you’re a child, you may be more interested in the fact that scenes from Harry Potter films were shot there. In fact there was a Quidditch lesson taking place when we got there. We found the real history, and the political intrigues and bloody battles of the Wars of the Roses and after more interesting.
Alnwick Castle
And another reason is to visit Barter Books. This emporium of second hand volumes is housed in a whole railway station. You’ll need to make use the refreshments in the waiting rooms.
This week’s Monochrome Madness theme is proposed by Aletta of nowathome: and she’s chosen Steps or Stairs. It’s an interesting idea, and one where I could have chosen the grand and elegant staircases gracing the finest palaces and country houses of the rich, titled or famous.
Instead I’ve chosen the steps trodden by ordinary folk on their daily round in Barcelona (featured photo), Newcastle and Sitges; or by monks engaged in their spiritual duties at Fountains Abbey; or by a hiker, needing to nip over a few drystone walls on her several mile journey from A to B.
Or there’s the worker helping construct la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. It might be one of the most famous buildings in Europe, but shinning about its heights looking for footholds is just part of his 9 – 5, every working day.
Works conttinues at La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona
And I’ll leave you with one little treat. A harpist at Jervaulx Abbey this summer, playing at the wedding of some good friends of ours. She was working, even if the rest of us weren’t.
On Friday afternoon, I was back on duty in the deer park at Studley Royal. This time as a sheep dog. Two of my colleagues were leading interested members of the public on a walk round Studley Royal at a time of day when deer tend to be more active. I was there to make sure nobody got left behind: and to enjoy this particularly lovely autumn afternoon.
Red deer are rutting. The stags are collecting themselves a harem so they can breed the next generation. They roar loudly to attract females, and to deter other males from seducing ‘their’ does. If necessary they’ll fight – noisily – with those heavy antlers. We saw harems, which included a few males who, though they had antlers, were too young and inexperienced to have a hope of breeding ths year. It’s a hard life being Top Stag.
Top Stag has a rest.
We saw a stag chasing females on whom it had Breeding Ideas. Mainly, they lost the race, but a couple of does succumbed – briefly and reluctantly – to being impregnated. The act is so brief – no pictures. Anyway, who wants to be a voyeur?
Sika deer, originally from China, are not even thinking about the rut yet. They’re handsome creatures, with simpler antlers than the red deer. We spotted them in smallish groups, but here are a couple of stags.
Sika stags grazing
Fallow deer – living on this site since the 1600s -are only just beginning to think about the rutting season. We saw two young bucks practising: heads down, their antlers clacked and clattered noisily together. No harm done. They’ve no chace of a harem this year.
But our walk was’t just about the deer. We enjoyed the trees, just now decking themselves in autumn finery. We relished the afternoon shadows, striping the fields: and enjoyed seeing long-legged versions of ouselves as we deer-stalked. And sky too, streaked with evening colours as the sun began to set.
As we finished our walk, and dusk was indeed beginning to fall, the moon was rising between the trees. A fitting finish.
A few last images. The quality isn’t great, because my camera was on Zoom on a high setting. But they record memories of a happy autumn afternoon.
What did I let myself in for? Rebecca, of Fake Flamenco fame, sets a monthly poetry challenge. Here’s what she’s decided on this month: ‘For October, we will each create a poem about a place we love. Write a poem in free verse (unrhyming) of fewer than 50 words about a favorite location.’ Rebecca’s own poem uses only words beginning with ‘s’. I had to join in.
I knew I wanted to write something about our years in France, when we lived in a small town in the foothills of the Pyrenees (hence the name of my blog). Our own town’s name is a bit cumbersome for the purpose – Laroque d’Olmes. So I chose a hamlet nearby, a bit higher up the mountains than us, simply because it begins with a P. Don’t ask me why P seemed a good idea. You can decide when you’ve read my offering.
Péreille Picturesque Péreille - prettily placed. Population? Puny. Previously peopled by productive peasants - potatoes, peas, poultry, a pig, pastureland….
Presently preferred by Parisian pleasure-seekers. Pourquoi pas? Pastoral, perfectly peaceful Péreille: proximate prominent peaks - a Pyrenean playground. Plateaux, peaks & pinnacles!
On Tuesday morning, I was quietly dreading my shift as volunteer Roaming Ranger in Studley Royal Deer Park. ‘Raining’ was an understatement. As I was driving over, the wipers sliced savagely across the windscreen, ineffectually sweeping away the rivers of rainwater cascading over the car. Signing in, we volunteers on various parts of the estate commiserated wanly with each other, and went our separate ways.
But outside, the rain had suddenly and unexpectedly decided to stop. Instead, familiar trees, now turning autumn gold and russset could just be perceived through the mist. A familiar autumn scene, especially here where we have three rivers in town to add to the general miasma of an October or November day.
Much later in the morning, as I was completing my shift in a much cheerier frame of mind, autumn’s third and best mood showed itself. Omnipresent autumn colour in the form of leaves cascaded to my feet to be eagerly shuffled and crunched through as I willingly connected with my inner child.
I offer a selection of photos to illustrate these different moods. I didn’t take my camera with me on Tuesday. The weather and the forecast were so very poor I just didn’t dare expose the poor thing to the elements. More fool me, to believe the weather forecast.
My featured photo is looking through our kitchen window on Tuesday morning. There’s more of the same on the way …
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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