Hooptedoodle #233 - Hannibal, Me, and Napoleon Makes Three

Useful hiker's map of the Zillertal area - our grand walk seems insignificant,
up in the top right hand corner, starting from the blue reservoir and heading
towards the corner

Yesterday we arrived back from our family holiday in Austria. We had a really great time, for a number of reasons, though it was a bit hotter than I find comfortable, and we have duly started sorting through our photographs. There's a sort of drill when we get home - check the house is OK, check the goldfish are still alive, switch the phones and the water heater back on, look at the mail, unpack the bags, put the dirty clothes in the laundry basket, and check we have enough to eat for the next 24 hours. This year we had the additional task of summoning the man from Lothian Pest Control to sort out a mighty wasps' nest in the roof space over the South Wing of the Chateau, and only after that did we have the time to check over our photos.

Funny things, holiday photographs - if you look through them as soon as you get home you see lots of stuff that is familiar because you have seen it very recently - it's basically just more of the same, and the tendency is to judge a photo by the quality of the composition (or something); a lot of them can get ditched because they aren't significantly interesting. Fine - now go and look at some holiday photos you have kept from 5, 10, maybe 20 years ago. Apart from the fact that everyone looks so much younger (ouch!), the pictures will leap at you, and will bring back places and events and feelings and people which would otherwise have been forgotten. What I am trying to say, I think, is that the criteria by which we judge very recent pictures are likely to overlook the main reason why we store away pictures at all - to jog the memory. Stryker recently commented here that once upon a time he carefully excluded his schoolmates from his snapshots of a school visit to the Tower of London, and now rather wishes he hadn't - with the passage of the years, those long-gone faces would be more interesting than the cold old stones of the Tower. I think that is significant - something to keep in mind.

One of the events we recorded in our photos from last week was a major hill walk on Wednesday - major by our own standards, that is. It was a wonderful day's outing which I shall certainly never forget, and as a result of it I am pleased to consider that I have joined a select group of people - some of them rather famous people - who have walked over the Alps into Italy. No matter that my route was not especially historic, nor that the definition of Italy for my purposes is rather new-fangled (post-1918) - that's close enough for me to claim Hannibal and Napoleon as potential drinking buddies. Also, if my own march lacked a bit of classical authenticity, I can claim the distinction of being older, by quite a bit, than my distinguished predecessors at the time of making the journey. Better and better.

We started by taking the public bus up a spectacular toll-road to the reservoir at Schlegeis - right up at the southern end of the Zillertal, and then trekked up the valley to Pfitscher Joch and the border with South Tyrol, which - thanks to President Wilson's crayon alterations to the maps at Versailles - is now in Italy. That probably sounds pretty unspectacular, but for a family day out this is tough going. The walk is about 5.5 miles each way, the start is at about 1700 metres and you climb up to something over 2200 metres. The path is rocky and steep in places, the temperature on Wednesday was about 30 deg Celsius, without a cloud in the sky, and the air is thin, offering reduced oxygen and pretty trifling protection from the sun. The trees gradually disappear as you climb, and there was still plenty of ice up on the hillsides - even in a heatwave in August. This is serious boots and walking poles and plenty of sun-cream, and no messing about. We took about 2-and-a-half hours on the way up, and a fraction under 2 on the way down. Marvellous - unforgettable views and a real sense of achievement for humble hikers like us - my knees are still stiff now!

The magical reservoir - what a place!

So off we go, climbing steadily...

...and the trees start to peter out, and it gets steeper...

...and more rugged...

...and steeper, and hotter...

...and we try not to think too much about the fact that the only way back
is the way we have come...

...and we drank about 2 bottles of water each - the stuff evaporates without trace...

...and eventually, with my Polar pulse-meter reading a steady 140+ because
of climbing in the thin air...

...we reached the border...

...courtesy of the Treaty of Versailles.

Here's a peek into Italy - I was interested to remember that Andreas Hofer and
many of his Tirolean rebels of 1809 would technically have been Italians
in the modern world. I wonder how they would have felt about that! 

Here are some of Hofer's pals on the monument in Innsbruck - doing
some serious skulking - it was a speciality.

We also did a few trips on the excellent narrow-gauge railway which
serves the Zillertal - it's efficient and it's cheap, though if you want to go
anywhere outside the valley you have to travel to Jenbach and get on to a
proper OBB train

And we did some cycling along the valleys - I have put my son's chain back in place
in some surprising locations, over the years.

It's always good to get some insights into someone else's culture.

The Catholic church is everpresent - the inescapable social, as well as spiritual,
core of the community. Here is the church of the little village of Hippach - this
was the weekend of the Ascension.

Moo. The Austrians manage to to make farming pay. After WW2, a great many
demobilised soldiers were given land grants to set up smallholdings - the
intention was that they would learn new skills, would feed their communities,
 and would eventually sell off the land and work on bigger farms. In fact, the
majority of the smallholdings are still there - the small farms were
kept in the families, and agriculture is the second most important industry,
 after tourism. The cost of living in Austria is not particularly high, but
farmers get about 28-30 euro cents a litre for milk, while their British
equivalents average about 19 pence (which is about 21 cents).
Differences? - subject for a lengthy debate, but the use of co-operatives and
the absence of chains of middle-men are contributors.

The rest is simply a series of things which amused me:

Not sure what this is (anyone remember Harry Worth on British TV?) - it seems
to be a very compact device for coming and going around town.

A warning of the potential dangers of walking on the river

...and of possible drastic measures for unathorised parking at the shoe shop. 

Here's an attractive sight for those who like their knackers smoked...

...but a street sign from the Old Town in Innsbruck reminds us of the need to avoid overindulgence.

Hooptedoodle #228 - A Few Days Away

View of the bridge over the Dee at Chester - yes, the actual bridge by which
Charles I left the city after the Bad Day at Rowton Heath - legend has it that
they put up sheets of hide to conceal his departure - you'd think the townspeople
would have suspected something though, eh? 

We spent a few days this week in Chester and in Denbighshire - very pleasant. As part of our fitness preparation for the Alps we walked up Moel Famau, in the Clwydian Range, and of course it rained - but why would you want to walk in the Welsh hills in atypical conditions?

Once again I had a vague idea about stretching the Welsh bit of the trip to include the battlefield of Montgomery, but it was really too far for the time we had available, so I shall content myself with a tabletop game based on Montgomery in the near future (note for self). Considering the wealth of good eating and drinking places in Chester, I was a bit unlucky to get a touch of mild food poisoning on the first night, so my diet was largely bottled water and Immodium tablets for the next few days, but I survived.

We hit crazy traffic queues on the way home, on the M6, on Friday, but otherwise we had no logistical problems at all - very easy travelling. Here are a few pictures - just to give a flavour of our trip!

Bunter Sandstone - the reason why Chester is a red city, and the reason why the walls
need constant refurbishment - the stuff weathers quite rapidly. The Victorians did a
lot of improvement to the walls, which is the sort of thing the Victorians did, and
they often destroyed the real history while they were about it, but in this case
there would probably be no walls left at all if they hadn't.

The King's Tower - formerly the Phoenix Tower - from which Charles I
may or may not have been able to watch the Rowton Heath disaster unfolding

And suddenly I find someone has put me in my miniature Tey Pottery ECW
siege town - Chester's Rows - as you see, the place has had a coat of paint and a
few new businesses have opened up...

Just a brief moment of hope for us old guys, and then you realise the place has closed
down. The worst bit is the notice you can't read, which states "SORRY FOR ANY
INCONVENIENCE". Not with a bang, my friends, but a whimper.

Please take note

We called at Conwy to visit the castle, which is a phenomenal place

The lovely, peaceful town of Ruthin

Back to my siege town - here's the original of another of my Tey buildings -
this is Ruthin's Old Courthouse - now a bank

Monument to a local hero - the racing driver Tom Pryce, who was killed
in a freak accident at Kyalami in 1977

This, of course, is one of the chief reasons we were in Wales - pleasing view
of the Clwydian hills, taken from our B&B, on a farm near Pwllglas, about
4 miles from Ruthin. These are not very spectacular, really, but it's a lovely area.

Foy the Younger on top of the Jubilee Tower, at the summit of Moel Famau.
The Victorians at work again - they felt it was necessary to build a tower
on the top to make the hill up to the full 2000 feet, so that it would class as a
mountain. This, again, is the sort of thing that the Victorians did, and they
saw fit to dedicate it to Queen Victoria, as a monument to their own
victory over Nature. Bless them. Last time I climbed up here was in 1963
(I am astounded to calculate), and the tower was a heap of rubble
- it's been restored since then, though it's a bit battered.

This may not be very high, but it's a rugged old puff up to the top! 

It was raining, of course, on the hills, but we were comforted to see that it was
mostly dry and sunny in the valley below.

Hooptedoodle #207 - Talking about the Weather...

Grey sky, grey rocks, grey water

It's a noble British tradition - if there isn't much time, let's waste what there is talking about the weather. My first wife used to spend a lot of each winter telling everyone she met how cold it was - you can see this was a serious responsibility - they might have failed to notice otherwise.

The thing which is notable about this morning is that it is the first time this year it has not been raining here - by Malaysian standards that would not be very impressive, but we have seen very little in the way of daylight during the past week - the security light on my garage keeps switching on because it thinks it's night time. Also the skylight windows in our roof are turning green with algae, or some form of aquatic plant, anyway. We have been relatively lucky - further north in Aberdeenshire they have been very severely impacted by wind and water - we at least have no flooding.

All this is just an excuse to post a photo I borrowed from our local community Facebook page - this was taken on Monday, when it was, as you see, a bit breezy. This shows a walkway over the rocks next to our harbour (you can see the handrail) - a recommended stroll in Summer, less so now. That's the Firth of Forth out there, people - almost the North Sea. Somewhere through the murk is the Kingdom of Fife.

Someone on the Facebook page commented that it looks good for surfing - there speaks someone who has never been surfing, sure as you're born.

Carlisle Castle

Just about a year after our last visit, we spent the weekend at the Crown, in Wetheral, Cumbria. Very pleasant – it was mostly misty and wet, so we didn’t do a lot of walking, but we had a good time, and – once again – I am pleased to record that I ate far too much.

Wetheral station

On Saturday morning we took the train into Carlisle – just one stop – the last hop of the Newcastle-Carlisle service – cheap and quick and easy. Carlisle is a significant, ancient Northern city in its own right – I saw some of it while walking through from West to East in pouring rain, three years ago, in search of Hadrian and his jobbing builders. Its cathedral is imposing, the castle has been an important garrison from Roman times (though its importance dropped off a bit in the last two centuries, since the Scots became less of a threat – discuss), it was the site of a siege during the ECW (more of this in a moment), and it is generally familiar as a big railway station on the West Coast line (the old London, Midland & Scottish route up through Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester to Scotland) and as a city with a big Post Office transmitting mast, somewhere alongside the M6 motorway.

I regret to say that I found the pedestrianised city centre to be clean and tidy, but dismal – uninspiring - I'm sure the weather didn't help. The range of shops is very poor – predictable for a provincial English town, maybe – there is no local character at all – it seems that the people of Carlisle spend their money on mobile phones, birthday cards, sweets, cheap shoes, body lotion and burgers, much like everyone else. Franchises and mediocrity – the place wasn’t even busy, for a Saturday. Astonishingly, I was unable to purchase any kind of town map or guide – drew a complete blank. The station bookshop had a visitor’s guide to New York, any amount of stuff about the Lake District, souvenirs of London (discuss) and nothing else. The manager told me that her head office refused to supply guide maps for Carlisle, and that she would be grateful if I would make a complaint. The man in the newsagents looked at me as if I had made him an indecent proposal, and shook his head. The girl in the book department in the sizeable WH Smith (which, strangely, seems to have a Post Office as part of  the upper floor) said that she’d never been asked for such a thing before, and wondered if anyone ever visited Carlisle. Hmmm.

Waterstone’s had a few books about local history, and a Nicolson’s street map, which simply gives a plan of the entire city and surrounding area, with no information. We gave up, and headed for the castle.

The castle is pretty good. It is not cheap to get in (it’s cheaper if you are a member of English Heritage), and I was a bit disappointed to learn that you must pay again to get access to the Cumbria Museum of Military Life, which belongs to the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment Museum Fund. The museum was small, but worth the extra admission charge.

View of the Captain's Tower and the gate out of the Inner Ward

View from the walls, across the Inner Ward to the massive keep

Nothing in the view to tempt the ECW garrison out, though a change
from stewed rat might appeal

The rest of the castle is dominated by a working barracks – the Outer Ward contains a number of Victorian buildings which until 1959 were the home of the Border Regt (which regiment became part of the King’s Own Royal Border Regt at that date, having been formed in 1881 from the amalgamation of the 34^th (Cumberland) and 55^th (Westmoreland) Regiments of Foot). The garrison buildings are currently the County HQ of the Duke of Lancaster’s Regt, whose main depot is at Preston, down the M6 a bit.

Official photo courtesy of Visit Cumbria

Beyond that, the older Inner Ward holds the tatty but pretty complete remains of what has obviously been a working castle for many centuries – this has never been anyone’s stately home, neither did it benefit from any major Victorian makeover. The old keep is remarkable – not only is it still standing, but I found myself wondering how it could ever be demolished.

Oh yes – the ECW. Carlisle was a Royalist stronghold from the beginning of the Civil wars, but was largely ignored until the King’s influence in the North was diminished by Marston Moor, after which date there was a formal siege at Carlisle from 1644 until the following year, when it surrendered. The claim that it was the longest siege of the Wars only stands up, I think, if you include the passive period from 1642 to 1644, but the actual siege was notable for the sufferings of the garrison. One Isaac Tullie, who was the teenage son of a local merchant, wrote a diary of the siege, and this very morning I have ordered a used copy from Amazon. I have to confess that my track record of reading such eyewitness accounts from the ECW is not great – I find the style of written expression of the day rather fatiguing – I have a growing collection of partly-read booklets…

Very pleasant - view of the River Eden at Wetheral, from the railway bridge

On the way home we stopped at Rothbury - I noted that we were too early for a talk on Waterloo by Capt Cavalie Mercer of the RHA, in the guise of Northumberland lawyer, historian and battlefield guide, Dr John Sadler. For those who didn't know, Rothbury is on the River Coquet, and very nice too.