BEER AND A BLETHER

Friday 12/02/2010. Today is my wife Joy's birthday time was when we would go out and celebrate that but we are now passed the stage where birthdays are celebrated. I have got her a cheapo digital camera and will do my best to get her conversant with it's use. I would love her to keep an ongoing record of what she achieves in the garden, fingers crossed and we shall see. At lunch-time I went into Middlesbrough to meet up with an old mate of mine from my part time work with the Debenhams Department Store over the Christmas/New Year period of 2008/09. I worked with Keith (Hutcheson) in the warehouse department and we got on very well and he borrowed a book of mime - Crush the Cell by Michael Sheehan the guy who ran the New York counter terrorist operation following 9/11 - we share an interest in these things. Sheehans platform is that we need to get clever by infiltration of terrorist groups and understanding them rather than indulging in wholesale eradication of civil liberties etc., he makes a good case too.

Anyway we had an hour or so in Lloyds Bar in Middlesbrough chewing the cud and discussing the people at Debenhams and life in general. It was good to see Keith again and just chill out a bit. As can be seen in my picture, we are having a nice time.

SAMARITAN WAY DAY 3

Monday 01/02/2010. Another cold night on the moor, in the morning my water had frozen in its bottle inside the tent and my boots were iron-hard, it all adds to the time I take to get packed-up and away. I find in winter it takes me a minimum of two hours between waking up for the morning brew and getting back onto the route. Still we have another wonderful day the sun is back still shining in it's heaven, the trail beckons and I have a couple of lovely gentle miles over the two Hograh Moors into secluded Baysedale. From here I took the easy option of walking up the road to join the Cleveland Way on Battersby Bank for the final six or so miles to Guisborough. There is a more direct route steeply up the hillside but I chose the snowed up road rather than the snowed up hillside on the basis thta the road is slightly less likely to collapse under foot! At the top of the escarpment I met a group of walkers out for the day and on asking me about what I was doing, I don't think they quite believed me when I told them I had been camping! A mile of so or wonderful (level) walking along the top of Battersby Moor and I begin the descent down Park Vale to the hamlet of Kildale. There is a good cafe here, but I approach with some apprehension as I always seem to arrive here on the day the cafe has it's closing day, I can never remember which day of the week it does so. (No problem today, it closes on Thursdays). After some tea I climbed back uphill then keeping faith with the Cleveland Way made my way to Captain Cook's Monument. I have been here many times so usually don't hang around, but this is the first time I have seen the Cleveland hills stretching across the Teesdale plain to the far Hamblton Hills under a layer of perfect snow and it's quite beautiful. I spent some time with a couple of walkers having a break we chatted and I took some photographs. After that it was along to Highcliff Nab and then down through the Gisborough Woods back to town ending a quite exceptional walk thanks to the perfect winter conditions, this is one for the scrap-book if ever there was.

SAMARITAN WAY DAY 2

Sunday 31/01/2010. Very cold overnight but I slept and rested well enough but was glad to get moving and get the blood circulating with a good tramp in morning sun up onto the moorland plateau. Today the weather started of wonderful and only improved as the day wore on. Sunshine clear sky little wind and not a soul on the moors, sometimes it all comes together to make a perfect day and this is such.. My route covers a couple of miles before dropping down to traverse Little Fryup Dale to it's head where I made a stiff climb - I'm sure I was off-route here but couldn't see a better alternative, up onto the plateau to the north of Trough House, I passed the House then down into Rosedale and on to the Lion Inn on Blakey Ridge, a pint of shandy didn't half go down well, it's Sunday lunch-time and despite the isolation of the Inn it was full to brimming with families taking the easy way to the Traditional English Sunday Lunch. I should have liked to join them, but mine is a harsher road to travel! From The Lion it was a brief walk down the road to Farndale Junction then along the trackbed of the old Middlesbrough/Rosedale mineral railway which in it's day delivered ironston to the blast furnesses of dirty industrial Teesside, but now it's main use is recreational. It was only on this section with the conveniently placed pub and parking, that I encountered other walkers on the 18 miles of today's route, so most folks seem to be keeping close to civilisation if they venture out at all, strange the conditions are perfect here, or maybe the moors are just so much quieter than so many other places, but after the buzz of the Lake District, this is no complaint. On then into quiet Westerdale where I had a bit of unscheduled fun crossing the river near New House then uphill to spend the night near the mouth of the dale. My picture is of Trough House.

SAMARITAN WAY DAY 1

Saturday 30/01/2010. Today sees me off on another anytime challenge walk round the North York Moors. My walk is called The Samaritan Way and supports the Middlesbrough branch of the Samaritans, a charity dedictated to assisting those contemplating suicide - a worthy cause and I'll be happy to send a small donation after doing the round. The route starts in the lovley town of Guisborough, famous for it's Priory, but I'm keen to get on with my hike so will leave a closer inspection for another visit. The route is given as 38 miles but "from bus-stop to bus-stop" I clocked 42 miles on my GPS, so obviously in a couple of places my route choice proved longer than essential, though I have to say route finding presented few problems and I was blessed by wonderful weather and perfect visibility which helped with navigation and in making the walk such a pleasure. I started at 12.15pm and completed eleven miles before pitching for my first wild camp on the moors south of Danby. The full route from Gisborough takes a clockwise direction to visit Commondale, Danby, Castelton, Rosedale Head, a short refuelling stop at The Lion Inn on Blakey Ridge, across Westerdale to Baysdale, up onto the Cleveland Way and north to drop down to Kildale (a grand tea stop) back up to Captian Cooks's monument, pass Roseberry Topping, surmount Highcliff Nab and finally back down through Gisborough Woods to the town and the finish of the walk. My walking time was 20hrs. 40mins. with two nights wild-camping. My full photo-diary can be seen on my Flickr page. My picture shows the town of Gisborough from the summit of Gisborough Woods.

TICKETS FOR ARC 2009

Friday 29/01/2010. My last entry dealing with the Articulate show at ARC in Stockton-on-Tees got me thinking of the shows I have attended there in the last year. I have quite a few show stubs in my little ARC ticket folder (see my picture) but I suspect a couple may be missing and as the Cafe Scientifique events run by Durham University are ticketless
they are not represented, my tally looks like:

Spoken Word Events
11/02/2009 - Found in Translation
12/05/2009 - Phrased and Confused
23/09/2009 - Articulate

Cinema
18/02/2009 - The Reader
14/03/2009 - The Lord of the Rings Part 1
14/03/2009 - The Lord of the Rings Part 2
14/03/2009 - The Lord of the Rings Part 3
20/05/2009 - The Damned United
08/07/2009 - Is Anybody There
12/08/2009 - Looking for Eric

I think I attended three or four of the Cafe Scientifique lectures which would suggest that I make a visit to ARC about once a month. It's a valuable resource and time spent there is much better than a night in front of the telly!

VOLUNTEER DAY AT RSPB

Thursday 28/01/2010. It's Thursday so it must be Saltholme RSPB day when I volunteer as a Reserve Assistant, essentially we voluteers are involved in any out of doors work which needs to be done. Today Toby Collett, our line manager, wants us to help build up the soft verges on the roadway leading up to the reserve centre. The problem is due to vehicles overriding the tarmac and creating ruts in the soft ground. In turn this problem is caused by the rather narrow width of the road itself, this was a cost decision and no doubt justified as it is a long driveway and another yard wide would have been very expensive. It seems likely that this will not be the last time time we have to do this type of running repair. My picture shows Yvonne and Mike fellow volunteers. Yvonne is also a very capable hide-warden and I'm keen to pick her brains.

AN EVENING AT ARC

Wednesday 27/01/2010. Tonight I went to a spoken word event at ARC in Stockton curated by the local poet Mike Edwards, his "Invisible Man" was excellent but my favourite of the evening was "Mrs. Robinson's Dress" by the lovely Jo Colley (see picture). "Articulate" is the general title given to an ongoing series of events at ARC featuring various acts of multi-media performance, poetry and the spoken word providing a platform for writers and poets throughout the north east of England. Mike Edwards "curated" the performances and was no mean performer himself, though unfortunately a quick search has failed to reveal any of his work which if it has not yet been published certainly deserves a wider audience, a name to watch.

Mrs Robinson's Dress by Jo Collley

oyster moygashel, silk lined
in palest pink only a pearl
would dare to insert herself.

into that world. She projects
her lighthouse beam across
every dollared pageant

of Los Angeles. She's so tall
in her stilletos she can see
clear across the top of her husband's

balding head, his thick specs
level with her cone-shaped breasts
she locks double lashed eyes

with Benjamin, tender
as a new born rabbit
he is a snack a morsel

a between the courses treat
He's meat. He cannot speak
later, she throws the dress

into the trash, Her maid
retrieves it, gives it closet space
until her eldest son comes out.

His Mrs Robinson act, a revalation
from port to shining port
gains him access to

the captain's table
the first mates bed, until
he jumps ship at Shields

shreds the dress
his loss, my gain
so here's to you Mrs Robinson.

The inspiration for this poem ocurred when the author discovered an expensive American designer label dress in a charity shop in Recar and got to wondering what story lay behind it washing up in Redcar. It's why we need poets really!