A walk high above Seven Bridges in Studley Royal. A walk I’ve never done before – a hidden one and not easy to spot. But see what treasures there are here.
Now that’s a characterful face!
For Monday Portraits …
… and Jo’s Monday Walk …
… and Becky’s Walking Squares
Today I’m taking you (again) to Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal. We’ll walk up the High Ride, through glades of trees, in relatively young maturity …
… before descending to saunter through the parkland of Studley Royal. I’ve got a lot of ancient trees to show you next week, but today I’ll show you just one. A cherry tree, or what’s left of it. It’s about 400 years old, which is unfathomably old for a fruit tree. I must say it looks its age. But isn’t it remarkable?
A newer branch has somehow grown from that ancient trunk.
For Becky’s Walking Squares, and Bren’s Midweek Monochrome.
Lockdown in 2020 taught us to value the tiny slivers of the unexpected in our necessarily limited ‘Daily Exercise’. Here’s yesterday’s unexpected: a cluster of tiny mushrooms in autumn-leaf red, cheerfully growing in the middle of the village cricket pitch. I don’t know what they are. Do you?
They’re multi-tasking mushrooms, because they’re here for Becky’s Walking Squares, as well as for Brian’s Last on the Card for October. Brian insists that we don’t edit our photos, but if I need a square photo, I’ll just have to make a subtle clip, top and bottom. I might get away with it.
A concert in the cellarium of Fountains Abbey last Saturday.
Pitch black, cold.
The singers gather,
muffled up.
Sing loudly, like long-gone monks -
conquering the dark.
And to lower the tone, that’s the scene once the audience had departed.
For Bren’s Mid-Week Monochrome.
I went on a bit of a safari yesterday. Only down the road to Studley Royal’s deer park. Here are some snippets from the afternoon.
Autumn is the time of the rut, when stags compete to get the biggest and best harem of does, to secure their own blood like survives to the next generation. They wallow in the mud to leave their sexy scent behind, score trees and trash vegetation- they may even aim to toss leaves and grasses to their antlers to make them look even more imposing. We saw none of these behaviours. But we did hear them roaring and making that strange loud roaring belching noise that can be heard from quite a distance, and which warns other males that They Mean Business.
It doesn’t pay to get too near to deer at this – or indeed at any other – time of year, so all of my photos use zoom at its highest setting, which doesn’t make for the crispest of images. But you’ll know you’re in the deer park when you see trees looking like this. That horizontal finish you can see is the browse line – the highest that a red deer on its hind legs can reach to get a mouthful of leaves.
We saw these fellahs next. They’re young stags. They know they haven’t got a hope this year of attracting the females, so they just sit it out. Maybe a bit of play-fighting to get a bit of practice in, but really … it’s just not their party. That first one posed for Monday Portrait.
On we walked. Over the old bridge where females often give birth and shelter their young, to the crest of a hill where we have far-reaching views over to Ripon and the North York Moors beyond, And below, deer: fallow deer and sika deer, browsing and grazing together, with their stags keeping a proprietorial eye on them. We kept our distance and just enjoyed watching them.
Younger, older, does and stags …
Then onward, past the sweet chestnut trees they love so much at this time of year, for their tasty chestnuts, past a popular wallowing place (oops, forgot to take a photo).
So let’s finish our walk with a few shots of those views I mentioned.
In the shot above, that’s Ripon down below. The eagle-eyed will just be able to spot the cathedral in the centre of the shot, in the distance.
For Monday Portrait and Jo’s Monday Walk.
For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.
Kiplin Hall. That was our destination on Sunday. We first went there a few years ago for joyful Shakespeare productions, such as Romeo and Juliet, by the irrepressible Handlebards. These days, we go if we need a quiet few hours at a country house whose grounds are extensive enough to offer a walk, a view and coffee and cake after. Here are my picture postcards – monochrome, as picture postcards always used to be – for Mid-Week Monochrome #110 – and to send to Jo, of Jo’s Monday Walk fame.
Kiplin Hall was built as a hunting lodge in the 1620s by one George Calvert, who was Secretary of State to King James VI. American readers may like to know that he was made Baron Baltimore, and was granted a charter to found a colony in America. This colony became – the State of Maryland.
Here’s our first sight of the hall:
Goodness, it was breezy that day. But walk we would, all the way round the lake -into the wind at first – one of the images give an idea of the scudding waves. We set off to get various views of the lake and hall. Here’s a clutch of postcards.
There are woodlands to explore: but the wind was picking up. Better to find shelter and explore the huge walled garden perhaps, where they grow all the fruit and vegetables used in their tearooms, and to make the jams, jellies and chutneys on sale. But wait! Suddenly it’s quite forbidding … Hallowe’en is on the way…
We’ll take our courage in both hands and enter anyway … there, that’s not so bad …
Although …. who’s that sitting on the bench over there?
We decided the tea room was a better option. Coffee, date and pecan cake anyone? No photo available. We ate every crumb before we gave the camera a thought.
I promised you an account of a Sheep Dog Demonstration after our visit to Masham Sheep Fair. Maybe you’ve amused yourselves wondering which sheep would get hustled and herded into pens as each dog did her work. Big and super-woolly? Lean and super-curly? Well, neither …
The field behind the church was roped in such a way that we spectators gathered round the edges, so we could look at the arena, scattered with wooden gates and obstacles, traffic cones, a play-tunnel, and in the far corner, a sheep pen. We spotted two sheep dogs, panting eagerly beside their trailer.
Their trainer, a farmer from Cumbria, took centre stage and introduced her dogs, each of whom would perform in turn. But where were the sheep? Not here at all it turned out. The dogs would be herding … first geese …
… who went between gates, round obstacles, round again…and into the pen …
… then ducks ..
… round obstacles, over the bridge and wheee! Down the chute and into a paddling pool (I missed the photo opportunity there), in and out the traffic cones and into the pen …
.. and finally, ducklings …
Through the gates, round the field. Then … can you see the ducklings scuttling down the play tunnel? The sheepdog’s about to follow them. Then, no pen for them. Just back into that big grey hutch.
I love to watch sheep dogs at work. They are so eager to get the job done, and done well. And on the whole, the creatures they chivvy seem happy enough. They put up with it anyway. A happy half hour.
Yesterday, we went to Masham. Here were gathered sheep: dozens of sheep; hundreds of sheep, from every corner of North Yorkshire and beyond. They were all to be put through their paces and judged on whatever esoteric characteristics sheep are judged on, hoping to be awarded rosettes – even cups – as evidence of their good breeding and upbringing. We went early, and talked to owners, many of whom were keen to save rarer breeds from dying out: dying out because their meat is too slow-growing, maybe too flavourful for the mass market. And, as we discover round here every year at shearing time, the wool they provide is no longer a passport to wealth, or at any rate a steady income, but quite simply a drain on the farmer’s budget as there are shearers to be paid. With some exceptions, only traditional spinners, weavers and knitters seek out traditional wool.
Now then, hands up if you thought a sheep was just a sheep.
Or that wool was – quite simply – wool.
Here’s judging taking place ..
And they start ’em young here. There were classes for Young Handlers, and even an Under Fives category …
We had to go to the Sheep Dog Demonstration, of course. But that’s worth a post all on its own. To be continued …
This year has offered proof after proof that the times they are a changin’. Here, harvesting was started in mid-July, and was all done and dusted for early August. Yet schools and churches will probably continue to hold their traditional Harvest Festivals in late September, early October. Blackberries have withered a whole month early, so the Devil must have been along and spat on them. Autumn-ripening apples are already at their best. And, most worryingly of all, the reservoirs are drying up. Here are some shots of Scar House Reservoir in North Yorkshire. The header photo, and the last one of all were taken two years ago. The rest, only last week.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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