22 and 95.1

Why the numbers?

Well, it's still two weeks before the first day of spring, but it certainly felt like a May rather than mid-March. This afternoon we started to clear the garden, it felt so warm I just had to get a temperature gauge out - 22 celcius - can you believe that?

9th March.....fabulous!

It being Spring an' all, Maisy's in the local caravan repair place having all the niggly little faults we've found over the last nine months sorted out. So we decided to test out the new Thule car bike rack we bought yesterday. When we bought the electric bikes we had not anticipated that their longer wheelbase (48") and weight (26kg) would rule out using our existing tow-bar bike rack. Since the van is stored at a local farm, we can't fetch it every time we want to go cycling, no choice - we needed a new bike rack strong enough to take the two bikes. There's not a lot of choice for e-bike strength racks - either a Thule or a Westfalia - both £300+ .... ouch!  In the end we went for the Thule - seems it will do the trick, it's pretty heavy though.

Anyway, although I've been out and about on the e-bike since Christmas, Gill has not. Time to get a bit of practice, firstly on the Tissington trail, then testing the bikes on some of the country lanes around Hartington. I was glad to get off the trail -, firstly, there was a really annoying headwind - there always IS an annoying headwind on the trail. Secondly, it's really busy on a Sundays. On the whole pedestrians and cyclists share the trail pretty well, except for said pedestrian's furry four-legged friends who seem to be fatally attracted to throwing themselves in front of  any passing cyclist. I suppose it did give us an inkling of just how good the disc brakes were. 

Hartington was pleasant, if busy. We stopped-off at the Charles Cotton Hotel for a coffee. Illy sign outside, nicely balanced Macchiata with yummy biscuit. We sat at the picnic tables at the front admiring the bikes....

Where next?

Summer in March

Warm enough to sit outside without a jacket

We headed out of Hartington by Hide Lane which climbs sharply out of the village then tracks along the ridge above Longdale. You get a nice view towards the head of the Dove valley, which, since the electric motor is taking a bit of the strain, you actually get to enjoy. There is no doubt about it, given the slightly rickety state of our almost sixty year old knees, the electric bikes were a good purchase. I'm looking forward to using them in Southern France, in the Languedoc and the hills of the Southern Rhone valley. In hilly country co-ordinating the electric power with the derailleur is a bit of a knack, but we'll soon get the hang of it.

We'd just been discussing cooking omelet for lunch when we came across a table outside of a farm with boxes of eggs and an honesty box. Lunch solved. In the pens beside the road sheep were being dipped - all very pastoral.

Which brings me to the 95.1 figure. It's a percentage. I'm working on an essay at the moment - well actually that's not quite true, I'm writing this blog-post as a way of avoiding working on the essay - anyway, the piece concerns the development of the Picturesque, and in particular Wordsworth's view of this. I got sidetracked into looking at how many of us live in 'built-up' areas as opposed to more rural places. Well, the Office of National Statistics (as it would) have a strict definition of what constitutes a 'built-up area': 

The definition follows a ‘bricks and mortar’ approach, with areas defined as built-up land with a minimum area of 20 hectares (200,000 m2), while settlements within 200 metres of each other are linked.

So, now you know; but hang in there, I am getting to the point really.... Just a shade under 50% of English people live in 'built-up' areas as defined above. So, guess what percentage of the land these built-up areas occupy? Just 4.9% . That means the other half of us are distributed over the remaining 95.1%. Not really so densely populated as you'd think. So why does England feel so busy and overcrowded? 

Here's my theory - because we mostly live, work, shop, drive, within the built-up areas and the roads that connect them,  we perceive that the country is much more crowded than it actually is. 

The way tourism is organised re-inforces this. The Peak District is the UK's most visited National Park. Nearby, on the well organised, signposted, much advertised Tissington Trail it was packed. However, the road by the farm, less than a mile from the trail, was empty. In five miles, cycling back to the car-park, we passed three other cyclists and a couple of cars. The landscape was peaceful, empty and felt timeless. Here's to the 95.1%, long may it remain. Don't tell anyone, it's just our little secret....

Winter Days - Marina

Marina - no, not Morris, nor the weird speechless puppet in Stingray with boobs based on Brigitte B's - not even the much overlooked paean penned to his long lost Russian mistress by New York poet Kenneth Koch, nor the gargantuan Marina de Baie des Anges blotting the Cotes d'Azur at Villeneuve Loubet with three curvilinear concrete pyramids that even Cheops himself might envy....you just know I'm talking about Aston Marina, on the Trent Mersey canal near Stone, Staffordshire.

Yep, it's been a long rain-soaked winter, although more than half way through, as the above diatribe shows, cabin fever is creeping in. We have, though, stuck to the plan, religiously taken Maisy for a jaunt every fortnight, made sure she starts, checked for damp, and having crawled around the van,  discovered loads of minor faults that we need to attend to before we start using it again in the Spring.

In the meantime though we have discovered that canal-side marinas are a good place for a day out, or at least the two on the Trent Mersey canal in Staffordshire are. First of all, their car parks are free and motorhome friendly, they've usually got a place that will drum-up a coffee that passes the GMT (Gill macchiato test).

Barton Turn Marina

This place is just off the A38, south of Burton-on-Trent. The marina seems to be part of the National Forest development, one of those infamous 'millenium projects', a typical New Labour grandiose plan which never quite lived up to its hype. It's a nice idea, a new National Forest for Central England - and it does link up a few patches of woodland, existing footpaths and cycleways - but as for a forest, well, there doesn't seem to be many new trees!

It was nice, nevertheless, to wander about looking at the brightly painted barges; I guess the narrow boat fraternity are a bit like motorhomers in as much as they enjoy the feeling that having a moveable house - and relish the sense of being 'at home' but on the move, simultaneously.

The architecture of the marina development is interesting.- a kind of pastiche of East Anglian waterside warehouses or breweries, brick- built with steep slate roofs, dutch gabled, part wood cladded. Not really in keeping with the regional vernacular, but pleasant enough. The development has a small shopping mall selling locally sourced produce - the range of sausages looked tempting - somewhere to stock up for summer BBQ's - I made a note to self.

Beware of the swans....not friendly!

There's a couple of places to eat - we tried the Apple Tree cafe - it claims to be the number one in the country for hot chocolate...we did not try that, but the coffee and cake is excellent, the service good and the high ceilings and comfortable seating reminded me of a place we'd eaten out in Maine - odd that!

a good choice!

We had planned to go for a walk, but the weather in the previous couple of weeks had been so wet that most of the paths were flooded or too muddy without boots or wellies, so we gave up.

Aston Marina

Having had such a good time at Barton Turn, then the next time we took Maisy for a toddle we thought we'd try another marina on the Trent Mersry canal, this time just off the A51, a couple of miles south of Stone. It's a similar set-up, moorings for lots of barges, a restaurant and farm food shop, the same rural style new-build architecture.



 It was a Sunday, a rare sunny one at that, so we could not get a table for lunch, instead we took a walk along the tow-path, then had a coffee on the ouside terrace. Pleasant enough in the Winter sunshine. It was great just to be outside in the fresh air rather than watching the rain stream down at home.

It is difficult not to be charmed by English canals. Of course the sense of balance between industrialisation and the countryside which we see in them now is a complete myth, but an alluring one. As I fiddled with the SLR's  f. stops, so the photograph would capture the sunny foreground with the misty steeple of Aston church, poking through the trees behind the whitewashed waterside cottages, a chunk of Auden came to mind, as it does....

In my Eden we have a few beam-engines, saddle-tank locomotives, overshot waterwheels and other beautiful pieces of obsolete machinery to play with: ...... I have only to close my eyes, cross the iron footbridge to the tow-path, take the barge through the short brick tunnel and there I stand in Eden again, welcomed back by the krumhorns, doppions, sordumes of jolly miners and a bob major from the Cathedral (romanesque) of St Sophie (Die Kalte):

In truth though, we have to live in England as it is now, not how we would wish it to be, and the pleasant new houses built alongside the canal on the outskirts of Stone are just as much a part of the landscape now as any canal side cottage, and it's important to remember that in 'picture book' England most people lived in very poor conditions indeed.

The  marinas are part of our new landscape too; the farm shops sell local produce, the facilities at the marina, including a boat building business provides employment within the rural economy. We should celebrate these, I think, just as much as more traditional aspects of our landsscape. In Auden's day, he had to hightail it to Ischia to find a decent cup of Italian coffee - Gill was quite happy with the macchiato served up in the depths of North Staffordshire - proving, progress is possible!