Today we went to the Tauber Valley. We were off for kaffee and kuchen with Stephan and Gina’s family, and we planned to be tourists on the way.
Here is Weikersheim. It’s a mediaeval town. It’s a musical town: every summer it welcomes an international cohort of young musicians keen to work and play together.
It’s a town with a fine castle and gardens. And as we arrived, the long promised deluge arrived, so we only briefly glimpsed its fine Renaissance exterior, its Baroque statues, and its whimsical little dwarfs that populate the garden.
Earlier, we’d visited Tauberrettersheim, a town boasting a bridge designed by the architect of Würzburg’s Residenz, Balthazar Neumann.
After hail and driving deluge, we visited a church high up on a hill, the Bergkirche at Laudenbach, a pilgrimage destination for those en route for Compostela in Spain.
Later still, there was cake in excellent company. Three kinds of cake. A good day.
I had no idea that Würzburg was a tourist destination till today. Now I know that it is, and it’s worth it. If you haven’t visited yet, put it on the list. It’s a lovely city.
But we had our own personal Tour Guide, our friend Gina: knowledgeable, informative and fun.
Today, I can’t show you the Residenz, the extraordinary project of two 18th century prince-bishops. Photos not allowed.
I’ll tell you instead the shameful story of how Würzurg was all but destroyed at the very end of World War II. By us. In March 1945, Würzburg was one of the cities identified as a target of the Baedeker Raids – designed to decimate culturally significant communities. Twenty minutes of bombing on 16 March destroyed 80% of the town’s buildings and killed 5000 citizens in an attack that can only be described as a vindictive act of vandalism.
That Würzburg in general and the Residenz in particular has rescued and restored its rich heritage owes much to an American soldier, John Skilton, who worked indefatigably with both Germans and not-very-enthusiastic Allies to protect what remained of the Residenz.
I shan’t give you a conducted tour now. That may come later. Here are a few pictures: of the Marienburg Fortress above the town
A night on a ship. A day on the road, speeding through through the Netherlands (very flat) and then Germany (increasingly hilly as we approached Franconia, our destination).
This is what German motorway service stations have to teach us. Plastic free is possible. Sandwiches are wrapped in paper. Food is served on ceramic plates with metal cutlery. Proper coffee cups. Drinks (from glass bottles) are served in glasses. Paper straws.
All the concessions we saw danced to the same tune. Apart from Burger King and Costa. There it was disposable everything as usual.
… this is an allusion to the mediaeval Yorkshire thieves’ prayer when facing justice. I can’t elaborate when blogging on a smartphone. Google it.
We’re just on board the Pride of Rotterdam, heading for …. Rotterdam, on our way to Germany.
So we spent the afternoon in Hull, a city with a proud history as a port, but these days suffering a bit from being on the road to nowhere much. Andrew Marvell, William Wilberforce and Philip Larkin were all sons of Hull, and the city makes much of them.
We plan to come and explore this city properly, when we’re not in transit. It deserves closer inspection. For now, I’ll share two views of England’s largest parish church, Holy Trinity, built in the 13th century. One is a conventional view. The other is the same church as seen in the windows of the office block opposite.
It’s been quite a treat to stare out of our kitchen window these last two days. We have three lilac trees, one purple, one mauve and one white, which put on a spectacular and perfumed performance for one week only in May. Two mornings ago, there was not a bud in sight. By the evening, tight little green buds had appeared. Yesterday they were bigger. Today they’ve revealed their colours. Tomorrow they’ll be out. Then we go on holiday ….. and miss the rest.
Here’s what these hot few days in early May have produced in the garden. A few early flowers: narcissi , primroses still survive – just.
Naked trees have suddenly unfurled tender young leaves. Blossom blossoms. Bluebells and dandelions and poinsettia have appeared. The first wisteria flowers shyly peek from behind their delicate leaves. Spring has sprung.
And here is some May time music: Thomas Morley’s ‘Now is the month of maying’, sung by the Beaumont Singers.
We’d never heard of Coniston Pie before. Best head over that way then, and find out all about it.
Coniston’s a tiny village in North Yorkshire, wedged into the glorious limestone scenery between Kettlewell and Grassington. We couldn’t go there without exploring a bit and working up an appetite for that pie.
The rocky path lies between those two trees.
We began with a bit of a scramble, a bit of a climb before hitting a steadily climbing path leading us upwards between dry stone walls and statuesque and wind-shaped trees. Sheep were our constant companions as we continued to plod ever upwards, 1000 feet in all.
Wind-stunted trees tucked behind dry stone walls.Sheep. Always sheep.
We rested at the top. We had a snack (just a biscuit, no pie for us), before taking the winding turfy track downwards towards the valley bottom, then turning sharp left to join the Dales Way back to Coniston.
Our view as we trecked downwards.
And that’s when we saw it. Coniston Pie. It’s not hearty fare to be tucked into after a hard day’s lambing apparently, but this: the view the shepherd sees as he does his daily round.
Coniston Pie.Coniston Pie.
Still, it does look exactly like a pie, filled with good things and topped off with a thick pastry crust, doesn’t it?
This week’s WordPress challenge asks us to post something unlikely.
If you’re in Ripon, you could amble down Fisher Green Lane, with the allotments to one side and the River Ure to the other. It’s a nice enough little spot – just the place for a little stroll, or for walking the dog. It’s best not to keep your eyes on the ground though.
Because of the litter. Maybe it doesn’t look too bad at the moment. The nettles have done a sterling job of covering up old cigarette packets, discarded cups from McDonald’s (McDonald’s is a mile away for heaven’s sake), cans and bottles. But once you start to poke around, as the litter-picking squad from Plastic Free Ripon did on Sunday morning, this is what you’d find. Armed with high-viz gilets and grabs from the council, and protective gloves from Surfers against Sewage, we searched the verges and released litter from the nettles.
Twenty bags-worth of the stuff. On under 200 yards-worth of road. And that’s not counting the discarded excavator bucket from a small digger, the broken glass and a selection of planks.
We could be busy 24/7. But we’re volunteers and we can’t do that. It would be nice to think that people watching us working away might be encouraged to join us, or to think about whether they themselves are litter-louts. In fact we had fun together. And ate cake. And fruit donated by Brian-with-the-fruit-and-veg-stall. But it would still be better not to need to do it at all.
We were walking on Thursday, near West Witton, Swinithwaite and Redmire. Because it was April in Yorkshire, it was bitterly windy and cold with occasional hail: that was after we’d confidently started off in deceptively warm sunshine with a light breeze.
The final slog was along a long ridge, with a just-as-long line of dry stone wall keeping us on the straight and narrow every step of the way. Here it is.
Earlier though, while the sun was still managing to shine, we passed a different sort of line. Solid stepping stones crossed the river in a gentle curve, inviting two of our number to take the challenge and leap from boulder to boulder to the other side, then back again.
The London Marathon. Sunday. The hottest on record. 40,000 runners, 100,000 spectators. Team Support Ellie, all members of her wider family, split into manageable units to chase from place to place all over the Marathon route to spot her and cheer her along. Malcolm and I, as the oldest supporters joined up with two year old William and his mum, as Team Slow.
We all had the Tracker App. All the runners had a device on their shoe to report where they were, and how fast they were going in real time. 100,000 users in London, and thousands more beyond ensured the poor overworked app was often on strike, so we often guessed at her whereabouts as we zipped about over London trying to get to a vantage point before she did. WhatsApp messages kept us all in the loop.
We didn’t spot her at the start……
…. but we did spot these rhinos, who amazingly, all completed the circuit.
‘We didn’t manage to spot her at the start.’
‘ We missed her at Greenwich.’
‘Couldn’t see her at Cutty Sark’
‘Never saw her at the Isle of Dogs.’
‘Where was she on the Mall?’
Hmm. Maybe it’s not all that surprising that we didn’t spot her at Greenwich.
Which was all a bit disappointing for us, and more so for Ellie, who having trained in sleet and frost wasn’t looking forward to running in the temperatures of high summer and must have thought we’d all pushed off to the pub.
But Tom and Alex reported spotting her at the Tower of London, and sent a picture to prove it. Team by team we reported our successes – Team Slow finally saw her only yards before she finished.
Ellie draws breath at the Tower of London.
She did it. She got her medal. And thanks to many many friends – and quite a few of you – she’s smashed her fundraising target to raise over £6000 towards oesophageal cancer research. She says she’s done her first -and last – marathon.
It was on a day out in Sitges near Barcelona that I had my light-bulb moment. It was a gloriously sunny January day, and we had the beach almost to ourselves: a clean, sandy and utterly unpolluted beach. Here it is.
Sitges, one bright January morning.
And yet …… I took it into my head to spend just five minutes having my own personal Plastic Litter Pick on this apparently plastic-free beach. Here is my haul.
From the beach in Sitges, one bright January morning.
When we got back to Ripon, we found that a new group had been formed. Initially a group of two, it quickly grew. These are local people looking for a Plastic Free Ripon.
Plastic is part of all our lives (you try eliminating it and see just how hard it is), but single-use plastic doesn’t have to be. We’re 60 miles from the nearest beach, but it’s coastal communities who have perhaps woken up to the threat that plastic in our oceans represents, and Surfers against Sewage who have provided Ripon, and dozens of other communities with a toolkit to help us begin eliminate needless plastic from our city.
Thanks to a small group of foot-soldiers marching to local businesses and spreading the word, neighbourhood shops have committed to discouraging customers from having plastic bags. Some takeaways have invested in compostable food containers. There are bars that have decided against issuing plastic straws. Commit to taking three decisive steps to eliminate plastic, and your business in Ripon can be awarded plastic free-status. Many have eagerly responded to the challenge.
There’s much else to do. Hotels and bed and breakfast establishments are still providing little single-use plastic bottles of shower gel and lotions. School dinner providers still issue single-use bottles of water. Garden centres sell their wares in single-use plastic plant pots. Residents and passers-through who should know better sling bottles and packaging from car windows or outside take-aways. So that’s why there will be regular community litter-picks.
I wish I could say I was in the vanguard of all this action. I’m not, though I’m a small part of it. There’s a small gang working utterly indefatigably, and already they’ve made a huge difference. All the same. Like so many others, Malcolm and I have gone old-fashioned and eschew the plastic milk cartons in the supermarket. The early-morning milkman delivers us our early-morning pinta in a glass bottle for us to rinse out and return. Just like the good old days.
Drinka pinta milka day. (1959 slogan from the Milk Marketing Board)
‘Prolific’ is this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge.
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