Hooptedoodle #190 - A Grand Day Out

The new trains have pictures of the countryside painted on them - maybe this
is to render pointless the efforts of graffitti artists

This morning my son and I went on something of an adventure – the first day the new Scottish Borders Railway was open to the public.

Well, “open” is not quite accurate. The service will be open for fare-paying passengers as from tomorrow, and the official opening will be on Wednesday, when HM the Queen is to travel on the line. We were lucky enough to be guests on a special “Golden Ticket” day, which was mostly by invitation (for those and such as those), and included a contingent of guests of the local authorities and the people who had been involved in the construction of the new line.

Early start from our local station, to get to Edinburgh

First surprise of the day was that the train, which at certain times of day
goes on to Glasgow Central, now goes to Ayr, on the West Coast. We have no idea
what day it arrives, but it must be a slow run - good though - must go there one day

Chairman of Edinburgh Council performs the unveiling of a plaque bearing his
name in the same sized font as that of the name of the railway - as usual, he
includes his popular "Le Petomane" impression

There may be festive bunting, but this is grubby old rolling stock - not a problem

The Edinburgh Evening News saw fit to complain that the scenery was not up to
the standards of the West Highland Line - erm - that's probably true
- not many Alpine ranges, either

Somewhere near Stow

The northern suburbs of Galashiels - the A7 winding up into the hills

The new railway is 30 miles in length, which sounds laughable in view of the publicity given to the opening, but it is the longest new stretch of domestic railway line built in the UK for over 100 years. Read that last bit again, if you will, for emphasis. The line has seven stations, and runs between Edinburgh and the village of Tweedbank, which is between Galashiels and Melrose in the Scottish Borders, and in part it follows the old Waverley route which was built in the 19^th Century, and which was closed around 1969 as a result of the infamous Beeching Cuts.

It is a very pleasant, quick run, and it provides an alternative to a fairly slow, arduous drive up the A7, so it really might get a few more cars off the roads, and the commercial, social and tourist benefits of having better access to the Borders are significant. Beeching gets a bad press these days, it’s hard to tell how botched his programme of cuts was – his main offence, if there was one, was that his assessment of the viability of particular lines was cost based; whether or not the various rural areas would thrive without their local railway was a lesser issue. The remit he was given by the government of the day has a lot to answer for; there are suggestions that the calculations were flawed, or that the answers were already in a separate envelope. Certainly poor old Dr Beeching did not have the correct quality of crystal ball available – subsequent improvements in railway technology, the long term effects of increasing oil prices and environmental damage make the idea of cutting back on public transport rather strange now, but we have to remember that the (nationalised) railways of the 1960s were very inefficient, provided what was regarded as a poor service and were paralysed by restrictive practices by the Trades Unions.

It is apparent now that we could have made excellent use of some of Beeching’s closed lines over the decades, but it would be stupid to believe that this new railway is a direct replacement of what the old Waverley Line would have become. Let us just be pleased that, if this initiative works, it may lead to more of the same.

Let it also be admitted that I am old enough – just – to have travelled on the Waverley Line. When I was a student, Sunday rail travel was a lengthy and sometimes surprising business, as repairs to the line caused some re-routing (in fact, I think Sunday tickets were cheaper as a result). The official run for Liverpool to Edinburgh in those days was, as at present, via Preston, Carlisle, Carstairs, but on a Sunday anything was possible – I remember passing through exotic places like Kirkby Stephen, Blackburn and Galashiels. I also once – with my bicycle – caught a train from Kelso to Edinburgh, which joined the Waverley Line near Galashiels. The Scottish Borders area contains many towns which have a Station Road, but in which there are very few people old enough to remember a station.

Today’s train was not one of the new machines supplied – since the special trip was to carry many more passengers than the normal timetabled run, some rather elderly diesels were called into service for the day. They did the job nicely, of course, though it took a little of the shiny newness off the experience. No complaints at all, though – it’s a nice, useful little railway, and it should prove invaluable to people commuting between Galashiels and Edinburgh. I think it’s a positive move, and hope to see more along the same lines (see what I did there?).

Bamburgh Castle Again

Here's that silly old fool Max Foy pretending to fire a big carronade. Ironmongery in
the background includes a 32pdr mortar and some 18pdr iron cannons - all Napoleonic
period. It is instructive to consider what serving one of these things would be like - you
have to wheel it back to load it (unless you have a very tall colleague outside the
walls), run it forward, then fire the damn thing, then reload and run it back into
position. A lot of work. I wouldn't fancy it at all - most especially if some beggar was
shooting at me while I was trying to concentrate. 

This week's problem is a lack of electricity. Because our power travels some distance via overhead lines, some work is scheduled to update the kit, and we have two days in the diary - Monday and Friday - when we have what is described as a Planned Outage (or "outrage" in our terms) from 9am to 4:30pm.

Since we seem to be totally dependant on electricity, wifi and TV and are rather lost without them, we took advantage of the good weather and went for a trip to Bamburgh Castle (on the Northumberland coast not far from Holy Island), which is just 75 minutes down the road from where we live. We got there not long after the doors open, but it was quite busy. We spent about 2 hours there and then retired for lunch to the Blue Bell, at Belford, for fish and chips, and very good too.

Back at home, power was restored only 30 minutes later than the scheduled hour, and we had had a good day out, but it is faintly depressing that we are at such a loss without a mains supply. Now the precedent is set, we'll have to think of something worthwhile to do on Friday. Hmmm.

The Danube - Now I May Have to Go Back!

Regensburg

In September 2013 I went with a friend to realise a long-held fantasy and visit Napoleon's 1809 battlefields on the Danube. If you wish, you can read something of my trip here.

It was a great adventure for me - it's a wonderful part of the world, and we met some marvellous people - I was, as I said at the time, staggered by the kindness and the assistance we received from local enthusiasts. We had to scope our visit carefully, because of the time and funds we had available - we decided, reluctantly, not to visit Aspern-Essling or Wagram, and we never did make it to Landshut, but we spent some excellent days at Abensberg, Eggmühl, Ingolstadt and Ratisbon (Regensburg), and then moved on to enjoy the Army Museum and the cream cakes in Vienna.

Napoleon's 1809 campaign is something of a pet topic. I can hardly claim to possess a great deal of expertise, but it has always had a strong appeal - the Emperor and his Grande Armée maybe in their final glory, fabulous setting in the heartland of ancient Europe; I have spent some years collecting books on the period, and promising myself that, when I was retired, I would make it a serious study to keep my wits sharp.

Well, of course, I have now achieved the retired bit, and our 2013 trip was a great success and something I still think about a lot. As preparation for that visit I struggled to get an overview at the right sort of level to do some planning, and to see how the parts dovetailed. I experienced the latest in a series of ghastly failures to come to grips with Claudio Magris' literary travelogue, Danube, and probably decided, once and for all, that I am not worthy. I made better headway with Patrick Leigh Fermor's epic journals describing his walk along the Danube in the 1930s, but PLF, sadly, did not get to the Regensburg area. On the history front, I found John A Gill's four wonderful books on the 1809 campaign to be too detailed for a fast pass, and promised myself that they will form a major element in the "serious study" period which is yet to come. The general histories, such as David Chandler's and a couple of John Elting's books, did not get into enough detail - excellently written, but aimed at a high enough level to fit into a broader narrative.

Eventually I did my scoping based on F Loraine Petre's 1809 book, plus one by Gunther E Rothenburg - that worked OK, though the maps in Petre's book are beggars to unfold, and are definitely not recommended for windy battlefields. I also brought back a great stack of archive material from the Abensberg museum and elsewhere which has taken a place in the heap for future study.

Well, almost two years later I have finally got hold of just the books I should have had as a starting point. I recently bought James R Arnold's Crisis on the Danube and Napoleon Conquers Austria, which, respectively, cover the whirlwind period at the start of the campaign and the later period near Vienna. Highly recommended - these are moderately sized paperbacks (the latest editions are self-published, primarily because Mr Arnold was not prepared to settle for the kind of quality associated with modern publishing and manufacture), written in a sensible, lucid style of which Petre himself would surely have approved. The level of detail is excellent for an introduction to the subject, or for setting a framework for deeper study. I particularly appreciated the nicely-constructed diplomatic timeline at the beginning of the Crisis volume, and the battle descriptions are clear and concise and supported by useful monochrome maps and illustrations. I am enjoying making good progress through the first volume - this is exactly the sort of overview I could have done with in 2013, and will set me up nicely for a more detailed potter with Gill's books and the Elting & Esposito atlas (and, if I can find a decent one, an appropriate boardgame would be good, to follow the moves). Only things I will miss now will be the beers and the walks and Dampfnudel Uli's steam dumplings.

You know, I may have to go back sometime. I have mentioned the subject to the Contesse. She would not be up for standing in the rain on the Isle of Lobau, I think, but the other aspects of such a trip would probably be fine.

Arnold's website is worth a visit, by the way.

I'm also currently reading John Gribbin's excellent In Search of Schrödinger's Cat - a layman's guide to quantum mechanics. Thus far I have been following the historic development of the ideas - he hasn't lost me yet - and we are fast approaching the bit where I may get a little spinning of the head and a violent craving for caffeine. I am not intimidated - the whole topic is explained in a straightforward, clear manner which I have found to be excellent (even for an absent-minded old goat such as me). Though the academic fields are (literally?) light years apart, Dr Gribbin's book offers a pleasing contrast to the Claudio Magris' volume I mentioned above, which is mostly a monument to its own cleverness.

I am not embarrassed to be seen to be reading popular science - most of the physics I covered in my mathematics degree course would have been very familiar to Good Old Sir Isaac, so this is a rewarding area of, well, gentle enlightenment rather than education, I guess; rewarding if I can avoid explosion of the cortex. There seems little risk of my using this blog to further our shared understanding of the quantum, but it is going well, thus far.

Cortex intact? Check...

Hooptedoodle #169 – Weather Here, Wish You Were Beautiful

Loch Lomond - bonny, bonny banks etc - as featured in tourist brochures

We took a crafty, early Easter break, as soon as my son broke up from school, and thus managed to rent a holiday lodge at a fraction of the normal price, right on the shore of Loch Lomond. That’s where I’ve been this last week.

The lodge was brand new, and in fact was better than anything of the sort I have stayed in before, so that was very good, except that some of the advertised facilities hadn’t arrived yet. It was obvious that the site managers are working very hard to get ready for the full season, and there was a lot of work going on – laying tarmac, landscaping, all that – and a fair amount of noise. In fact, as we were based at Inveruglas, on the Western shore of the loch, it was a bit noisy generally, since the main road and the railway take up most of the land at the water’s edge, and there is a lot more traffic than you would think. We had intended to get some decent hillwalking in, but it rained fairly solidly for the whole time we were there, and the need to start off any outing by playing chicken along the nightmarish A82 proved a major disincentive.

We did manage one proper walk, and it was a short one, but pretty harrowing from the weather point of view – we walked up Glen Sloy to have a look at the hydroelectric dam, and it actually snowed while we were up there. We told jolly tales of Captain Scott’s lads, to amuse ourselves and take our minds off the cold.

Foy the Younger and Elder during the assault on Glen Sloy.
The hydroelectric dam in the background dates from 1946,
and apparently the resultant artificial Loch Sloy behind
it has drowned the traditional lands of the McFarlanes.
All disgruntled McFarlanes please form an orderly queue to
register complaints. This was April Fool's Day - the snow
appears to have stopped briefly at this point - we were
pretty much soaked through, though.

We drove to Inveraray on Tuesday, and visited the famous Jail (an interesting, if overpriced visit), and we had an absolutely splendid lunch in the George in Inveraray, which apparently was awarded the accolade Best Pub in Scotland in 2011, and is still pretty damn good now. Great traditional atmosphere, log fires, fantastic food – high spot of the holiday, I reckon.

Because of the weather we saw very little in the wildlife department, but yesterday while I was getting dressed I could just make out (through the murk) an enormous bird of prey sitting on the grass, not far from my window.  Since it had to be an eagle, at the very least, I rushed off in a state of high excitement to find my spectacles and my camera, and came back to find that it hadn’t flown away (as I had thought it would), since it was, in fact, a large stone.

Got home at lunchtime today, to find that Hermes (the courier – definitely not the deity) had left a parcel safely tucked behind a plant pot on my front doorstep. It had been there since 31^st March, sitting in a puddle, and the wrapping had gradually disintegrated. As luck would have it, it was my shipment of Spanish cavalry from Hagen, not a book I have been expecting from Spain, and the figures themselves were completely unharmed by their experience - another stroke of good fortune to cherish.

The cavalry are excellent – more will be heard of these once I have sorted out some plans for painting them. They will become the Dragoons of Pavia, plus 3 units of Line Cavalry that I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I have them written down somewhere.

Now we have to finish unpacking and put our boots somewhere to dry.

Oh yes - I seem to have wriggled past the 300K hits landmark, so thanks again to everyone who reads, or has read, this blog!

Late Edit: Taken by the Contesse - Inveraray Jail uses some effective techniques with
recorded voices and scenes set in the courtroom and the prisons depicting real events.
Your bloggist could not resist the temptation to join the other dummies in the public
gallery at a Victorian trial of a man who burned down a barn filled with animals.
He was found guilty, of course, as he was again 30 minutes later.

The Chester Trip

Evidence - there's not a lot of contemporary stuff left, but here the repair to the main
breach in the wall is clearly visible

On Sunday, I went down to Chester for a few days looking at the ECW sites. I went with an old friend, whose name – as it happens – is Chester. Merely a happy coincidence, but I shall take care to make it clear to which Chester I am referring, as necessary.

Our preparation for the trip was mostly in reading John Barratt’s fine The Great Siege of Chester, and booking ourselves on to a couple of guided tours.

Monday we walked around the walls – there is a very good set of visitor information boards for the ECW period, featuring excellent artists’ impressions of how the various locations looked in the 17^th Century. As far as we can tell, these painted views are not available in any publication or online – I am still checking, but they probably should be.

In the afternoon we went for a guided walk around the battlefield at Rowton Moor (about 4 miles outside Chester’s walls) with Ed Abrams, who offers a fine blend of enthusiasm and expertise – his Civil War Tours enterprise is heartily recommended.

In the evening, we had arranged to have dinner at The Brewery Tap, in Bridge Street, which was the home of Francis Gamul during the siege, and is where Charles I spent the nights before and after Rowton Moor. I was very pleased with this little bit of historical tie-in (and the food was great). I guess our meal was rather more cheerful than Charles Stuart’s must have been the night after the battle. In passing, I was also delighted to learn that Gamul’s daughter was christened Lettuce, a name which appears to have drifted out of fashion lately.

Original, with new bits - the Water Tower, near the old port

A tax called murage was collected to pay for maintenance of the walls. The
officials in charge of this were called Murringers - here's a list of some of them 

Captain Morgan's cannon - OK, it's a monument - certainly, an iron gun
carriage would take a bit of shifting

Gone but not forgotten

Chester (the person) at the Phoenix Tower. Legend has it that King
Charles watched the battle of Rowton Moor from the top. He
must have had remarkable eyesight - you can't see Rowton from here.

Looking down Foregate Street from the Eastgate - much of this part of the city
was destroyed in the siege, and most of what you can see in this picture is Victorian

Eastgate Clock

Near the South-East corner of the old city - this area saw some of the most fierce bombardment

The rear portion of this pub was the house of Francis Gamul, who was Charles' host
at the time of Rowton Moor

The scene of the first stages of Rowton Moor - there are three modern villages
built on the old battlefield

Ed Abrams, the expert guide (left), discusses the role of dragoons at Rowton with Chester

There are very few contemporary buildings still visible at Rowton - this one, by
local tradition, may have been a dressing station for the Royalist wounded.
The farmer has refused permission to survey the field.

This is almost the only official recognition of the fact that an important
battle was fought here. The monument is close to what is thought to be a mass
burial in an old lime pit.

Tuesday morning we joined Ed’s colleague Viv (who was in costume) for a tour of the Civil War sites within the city, so we were back on the walls again. Informative and very entertaining – again, recommended.

Behind many of the shops in The Rows, in the old city of Chester, are these vaulted
medieval cellars, which were used as storehouses and also as bomb shelters during the bombardment

The Bear and Billet - this pub was originally the house of the keeper of the old
bridge over the Dee, and the copious windows were originally access to a warehouse,
to store goods coming over from Wales

Different time, different approach. As roads improved and commercial transport
became larger, gates changed from  being a means of keeping enemies out to a way
of letting friends in. The Wolf Gate on the right is one of the original gates, the
much larger New Gate next to it is clearly intended to give a prestigious welcome to
the city.

On the Wednesday, we set out on the trail of King Charles. We had intended to move on to the battlefield at Montgomery, south of Welshpool, but the weather warnings for the following day were a bit alarming, and we decided, since Montgomery is not far from the same latitude as Birmingham, that we should not stray so far south. In the event, we went to have a quick look at Denbigh Castle, which is where Charles stayed after his visit to Chester. We stayed overnight at Maeshafn, near Mold, and the next day we had a rather stressful drive home through howling gales and very serious rain. No real problems for us, but we saw a number of large trucks which had blown over, or blown off the road.

This is fine - what has become a standard approach - but I have some misgivings.
Jolly signboards give bilingual information so that Miss Williams' class from the
primary school can identify with life in a medieval castle, and it's great that kids
have such a resource available, but you won't find very much about the actual
history of the place. I checked in Denbigh town library, and there wasn't much there,
either. Is there a tacit assumption that primary schools are the only people who visit such sites?

ECW Movement Rates and a Renaissance Joke

My early games with my ECW miniatures rules based on Commands and Colors have shown a common theme – a tendency for the cavalry to race around the place, wiping each other out, while the foot are pretty static in the centre – slow to get into action and ponderous once they get there.

This may well be an authentic representation of what 17^th Century warfare was like, but I have been giving some thought to making the foot a little more mobile – nothing outrageous, but a little more – how do you say? – oomph when deploying. For my next couple of games I propose to allow foot to fire only if they stand still, to move 1 hex and still have the capability to initiate a melee combat, or to move 2 hexes with no option to carry out any combat. This double move is not allowed to bring them nearer than 2 hexes (musket range) of any enemy, and must not compromise any terrain rules, so they may not make a 2-hex move if they are within 2 hexes of the enemy, and must stop when they get to 2 hexes from the enemy. I am doing some consistency checking to see how this sits with the terrain rules and the Command Cards.

This change may, of course, distort the entire game, but in principle it seems reasonable, so I propose to give it a trial.

Subject 2 – on my September trip to Bavaria and Austria, I saw the remarkable Glockenturmautomat in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, in Vienna. This astonishing clockwork device was made in Augsburg in 1580. We did not get to see it working when we were there (it’s much too precious for that), but I have subsequently found a little film about it on YouTube (of course). It is an odd piece of whimsy – a tower with bell-ringers working away while some merrymakers are boozing on the balcony. The film shows that, in close up, the weathering of the drinkers makes them look a bit sinister, but it is a terrific piece of workmanship.

If you like a touch of Rabelais in your humour, watch to the end…

[Because Blogger's video linking tool isn't working properly, please click here]