Today we woke up to the first snow of this winter. It wasn’t forecast! My new header shows the front garden and the photo below is of our back garden. See another photo David took this morning – here. As you’ll see he wished for snow!
A Saturday Snapshot post – see more on Alyce’s blog At Home with Books.
A few Saturdays ago I posted photos of Newcastle uponTyne’s bridges. Today here are some more photos I took on that grey, gloomy day. This time they are of Newcastle’s Castle Keep and Black Gate.
Our first sight of the castle was as it appeared behind the railway line:
The Castle was was built in stone during the reign of Henry II, between 1168 and 1178, at a cost of £1,144. There was an earlier castle on the site, a wooden motte and bailey castle built by William the Conqueror’s son, Robert Curthose. This was replaced by the stone castle – hence the name of Newcastle! It stands high above the River Tyne – Newcastle upon Tyne.
This is the Castle Keep, which is the only remaining part of the 12th century Castle:
It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is open to the public, but we didn’t have time that day to go inside. On our next visit to Newcastle, we will make time to have a proper look at the Castle Keep!
The Gatehouse to the Castle is still standing – the Black Gate. It was added to the Castle site in 1247 by Henry III. The wooden footbridge was originally a drawbridge.
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books.
I came across I Never Knew That About England by Christopher Winn, soon after I decided to read my way around Britain in my Britain in Books project. This book is a collection of stories ‘that have England as their backdrop’.
It’s arranged alphabetically by the 39 traditional counties of England, so it fits in very well with my project. Winn writes in his preface that he has made every effort to get the facts right, but notes that many of the stories
are not eternal truths but have been handed down through time, sometimes by word of mouth only. Details can vary according to different sources, but the essential substance and essence remains. (page 7)
The book is a miscellany of stories, anecdotes and a ‘smattering of fascinating facts and figures.’ I’m going to dip into it every now and then and post little snippets as they appeal to me, starting with my home county of Cheshire.
Cheshire - click on image to enlarge
Cheshire is in the north-west of England, bordering Wales. Readers of Mrs Gaskell know that Cranford is based on the town of Knutsford, but what I never knew is that the village of Mobberley, near Knutsford, where one of my aunties lived, is the birthplace of George Mallory (1886 – 1924), the mountaineer who died attempting to climb Mount Everest. His father was the Rev. Herbert Leigh Mallory, the rector of Mobberley and it is said that he practised climbing up the church tower. I found this article in the Knutsford Guardian about the family home, Hobcroft House.
When asked why he wanted to climb Everest, Mallory replied: ‘Because it’s there’. It’s never been discovered whether Mallory did reach the summit. The camera Mallory and his companion Sandy Irvine took with them as they set out to make it to the top has never been found. Irvine’s body too has never been discovered, but in 1999 Mallory’s body was found on the North Face, 1,000 feet below the summit. There is a memorial window in the St Wilfrid’s Church dedicated to Mallory, inscribed:
lost to human sight between earth and heaven
On Wednesday we walked alongside the River Till in Northumberland, England to its junction with the River Tweed, in Scotland.We started at the medieval Twizel Bridge – the bridge crossed by the English Army on their way to the battle at Flodden in 1513. The bridge is now a pedestrian route, the traffic speeding along a new main road. Both bridges across the River Till are shown in my photo below. (The medieval bridge is in front of the new bridge) :
Here is a closer look at the medieval bridge:
As we went along the river bank the salmon were leaping out of the water, but no matter how quick I tried to be with the camera I couldn’t snap a fish as it leapt out of water. This is the closest I got:
The nearer circle is where the fish jumped out and the further one where it went back into the river!
We carried on down the river bank to Twizel Viaduct. This stands 90 feet over the Till and used to carry the Tweedmouth to Kelso railway line. It was built by the York Newcastle & Berwick Railway between 1846-9. This line closed in 1965:
The autumn trees still have most of their copper leaves:
But when we got to the junction of the Till and Tweed there were these leafless trees on the opposite side of the river. The angle of the trunks is just amazing:
We weren’t the only people out enjoying the autumn sunshine – the fishermen were there too.
There is a ruined castle on the ridge overlooking the Till, but more about that in a later post.
A Saturday Snapshot post, hosted by Alyce, At Home with Books.
We’ve been having a mix of weather recently what with wet days, windy days, dull grey days and a few beautiful sunny days. Wednesday was one of the days when the sun shone the sky was blue and it even felt a bit spring-like. So that afternoon Dave and I decided it was time we took a walk in the Cheviot Hills.
We’ve lived just north of the Cheviots for nearly two years now and have been saying ever since we arrived that we must go walking in the hills. I don’t know how many hills there are that form the range, but there are many of these rounded hills bisected by valleys. They straddle the border between England and Scotland, that area of land fought over in the past, a land where the Border Reivers held sway. The Cheviot, itself is the highest point at 815 metres and the last major peak in England, but we decided to start small with Great Hetha above College Valley and work up to walking the Marilyns.
The photo above shows the view at the start of our walk with Great Hetha on the skyline. It’s 210 metres at the summit where there are the remains of an ancient hillfort. We parked in the car park just south of Hethpool and the walk began easily enough along the private road through the Valley. The photo below shows the Valley looking south:
After a short distance and turning right it’s a steep uphill climb described in Walks in the Cheviot Hills by David Haffey as a ‘strenuous climb‘! I was soon struggling for breath. We stopped halfway up to look at the view northwards to Scotland (and to get our breath back!).
Looking up at that point we could see a small cairn on the summit, still a steep climb ahead.
It was worth the climb to reach the hillfort. This is an Iron Age hillfort dating from about 500BC. The remains of the stone ramparts are still there and it was easy to imagine what it must have been like in such an isolated place, being able to see for miles around, aware of any approach to the hill. According to the Walks guidebook such hillforts would have contained several timber-built round-houses within the stone ramparts, probably being occupied for several centuries.
From there we left the route in the guidebook and walked down the other side of the hill to the valley below and crossed the Elsdon Burn. The sky was most dramatic:
It was getting towards the end of the afternoon and as we headed back to the car, the sheep were being rounded up in the field, below a wooded dome-shaped hill known locally as the Collingwood Oaks (after Admiral Lord Collingwood – there is a hotel in Cornhill called the Collingwood Arms, more about that another time maybe). I wasn’t quick enough to take a photo of the running sheep (they were galloping!) but I managed to snap the farmer and his three sheepdogs on their way back, with the Collingwood Oaks in the background.
There are more photos of our walk on Flickr.
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce, At Home With Books.
I’m stepping back in time again this week for my Saturday Snapshot, but not quite as far back as last week. This is a photo of the two dogs we used to have, enjoying running for a stick in the Chiltern Hills, near our home at that time, in Great Kimble in Buckinghamshire. We were on the footpath below Pulpit Wood looking down on the old rifle range.
Zoe is the golden retriever, who always had to get the stick first with Ben, the border collie cross following on behind.
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books.
I have a scrolling photo viewer on the computer desktop and this photo greeted me this morning when I switched the computer on. It’s the view from the field near to my previous house looking towards the town of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. The grey tower block in the background is where I used to work at the County Council offices – I was on the 8th floor, just over halfway up the building.
I like this photo because it shows the contrast between the old and the new, although the County Hall tower block is not new, completed in 1966, it’s certainly centuries older than the timber-framed house in the foreground.
Believe it or not, the tower block, sometimes called Pooley’s Folly after the architect, is a Grade II Listed Building. It’s constructed out of concrete and glass and whilst I was working there it was discovered that the core of the building was crumbling and it had to be reinforced. We were surrounded by scaffolding for months. It’s also a most inconvenient building to work in, boiling hot in the summer, freezing in the winter, draughty windows and only two lifts serving 13 fours and no service lift. I spent hours in total over the years I worked there just waiting for the lift. Still, that meant I had more time to read whilst waiting.
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce of At Home with Books.
I posted photos of a ruined castle last Wednesday. Today I’m featuring a much larger castle – Alnwick Castle, which is the second largest inhabited castle in England. The Duke of Northumberland and his family live here; the family have lived at Alnwick for 700 years. The castle was used to film parts of some of the Harry Potter films – the castle was Hogwarts in the first two films and Harry’s broomstick flying lessons were filmed in the Outer Bailey. Other films made there include Elizabeth and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.
We went there the week before last with our grandson, a lover of Harry Potter. He liked the historical setting, the battlements and the canons, but most of all I think he liked the Knights’ Quest and the Harry Potter magic show, with Harry and Professor Dumbledore:
We’ll have to go back for another visit as there is so much to see and we only had time for a quick walk round the State Rooms, which are very grand, although I was amused to see a Table Football in the Library (I think that is where it was), definite proof that Alnwick Castle is also a family home.
See more Saturday Snapshots at Alyce’s blog At Home with Books.
As a lover of history (as well as books) I love castles, particularly ruined castles – or as my grandson calls them smashed castles. Here are some photos of one near us.
This is Norham Castle, high above the south bank of the River Tweed, parts of it date back to the 12th century.
It was repeatedly attacked and besieged and was largely destroyed by James IV of Scotland in 1513 before the Battle of Flodden Field.
The photo below shows the remains of the huge Great Tower, where the Bishop of Durham and his guests would stay when they visited the Castle.
J M W Turner painted several views of the ruined castle – they are in the Tate Collection. And I like this 1836 engraving of Moon Rise at Norham Castle by William Miller:
An ABC Wednesday post for the letter C.
It’s not even August and already there are signs that autumn is on its way! In our garden the leaves are turning yellow.
And some have already fallen to the ground.
I’ll have to change my header photo!
An ABC Wednesday post for the letter A.