Laxton, Notts

Famous for its surviving remnants of the mediaeval open field system,it also has a large church, which underwent some restoration in Victorian times. 

I'm not sure they're making the most of the tourist potential!

There are the mounds of a motte and bailey with a wide view. Access via a very muddy bridleway.

It's also one of the highest points in Nottinghamshire - not an upland county.

Sherwood Pines

Visited Tuesday 3 June 2014

Entry £4 per car.

Joseph and Adrian followed the Gruffalo Trail - there are playgrounds, a Go Ape activity, cycle hire and plenty of walks, as well as a reasonable cafe.

Rufford Abbey

Visited Monday 2 June 2014

Just a few miles up the road from where my grandparents used to live, but I don't remember visiting as a child. It was probably not even open to the public then.

Parking is free mid-week outside school holidays, there's loads of room for kids to run, and anything else is a bonus!  We spent Monday afternoon there.

The abbey began as a monastery, now in ruins, then became a private house.  

There's a rose garden with a heliochronometer - ok, sun clock - and very accurate it is, so long as the sun is shining.

The abbey building is almost like vertical crazy paving, with different styles of brickwork in a kind of patchwork.  

The main area, open to the sky has a fine collection of grotesque figures - more recent than  the abbey.

Below is the cellarium, with the monks' refectory area.

Outside we visited the sculpture garden and children's garden.

old dogs, new tricks still ticking over . . .

Yes, still truckin' along with Memrise and Duolingo.  Learning facts about music, stars, "famous art", and Spanish and a bit of Scottish Gaelic. Good fun. Little and often etc etc. Building up my cultural capital or something.

An affair of some gravity

The weather has been dull, uninviting and soggy for the past few days. On Wednesday we decided to branch out and tempt fate with a walk near Belvoir Castle. But the cloud refused to lift, and views were limited.

Belvoir Castle looking gothic. Photo by HH

My planned parking place looked horribly isolated and the ground sodden.  So we adapted.  We called in at the local pub - The Chequers in Woolsthorpe-by-Belvoir. Surprisingly they do sandwiches - rather superior ciabatta with feta and salad, all heated. A little more pricy than my usual lunch, but still under a tenner each including a drink and extra water offered too.
One Woolsthorpe leads to another, and this was not Isaac Newton's birthplace. He was born, tiny and premature, in Woolsthorpe Manor at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, twenty miles away. Not the original object of our outing, but it seemed like a good place to aim for.

Manor House and outbuildings

This is also the place where falling apples led Newton to think of gravity, and where he conducted various other experiments concerning light and motion.

The apple tree - regenerated from the original fallen trunk

Harry paying homage

No photos allowed inside the house - it has been refurnished with items from Newton's time, though none are the originals.  The rooms are pretty spacious, but it's definitely a home, and not stately.  Newton's parents were yeoman farmers - reasonably high on the social scale, and certainly not peasants. A big contrast with the cottage in  Alloway where Robert Burns spent his childhood.  

Highlights for me - the servant's bed in the alcove by the kitchen fire, which had to be kept alight at all times, ready to cook breakfast at some unearthly hour.
Then the copy of the parish register entry for Newton's birth.
Then the model of a mouse mill, and replicas of the telescope he made. Oh and the cat, which has a second home here in the daytime.

In this Manor House
Sir Isaac Newton
was born 25 December
A.D. 1642

Lots of info boards are spread around the outbuildings, and there's a cafe and a learning centre where you can play around with equipment showing some of Newton's ideas and discoveries. Lots of volunteers to answer questions in the house and learning centre. All run by the National Trust now, and not a bad £7 per person.

Herons

A walk along the Grand Union Canal was rich in heron sightings.

Bird, watching . . .

heron

under a tree

eyes us and the water

flies up

stitches the canal side in loops

wary as we walk

snapping

pauses, poised,

dips in to fish ,

then takes off, 

neat-legged

across the water

The biter bit?

but takes revenge . . .

Hard roads make the walking tougher?

We have been so fed up of ploughing, or skating, through mud, going ankle deep and occasionally more, that we’ve taken to exploring the world via the quiet minor roads in the area.

In some ways it’s been a revelation – so many of the roads are indeed quiet, though you need to keep your ears open, and be prepared for the odd vehicle. The roads have added a new dimension to my view of the great jigsaw map I’m building in my head. I just love the way places interlock. Call me sad, but I get a buzz when I cross a path I walked a couple of years ago, but from a different angle.

However, I think a nine-miler feels harder on the feet and legs when you’ve been walking on roads. Unless it’s my fitness level just now. . .

However we plan our walks, we often come across odd stories. Yesterday it was about Thomas Jarman of Clipston, a prolific writer of hymn tunes and master of the local chapel choir. He died at the age of 85, and is buried in the grounds of the Chapel at Clipston. Online searches revealed that he spent some time exchanging unpleasant verses with the local Church of England vicar, a Mr Bull. They didn’t see eye to eye about music and life in general. There’s some information here :

http://www.immanuelsground.com/composers/Thomas_Jarman.htm

and my silly take on the story in my Poedoodles blog.

The walk is described in my walking blog

Buxton - the highest market town in England

We've chosen the wettest few days possible for our stay in Derbyshire - so after a leisurely morning in the cottage, we visit Buxton.  Museum, art gallery, coffee shops call. 

We've been here before.  I stayed in the Youth Hostel in Harpur Hill when I was a teenager - going back a long way.  I think we'd walked about 15 miles in the rain! 

Then years later, when Esther was a youngster we all cycled in from somewhere near Wirksworth along the High Peak trail, and sought out waterproofs.  There could be a theme emerging here! 

and one of Harry's photos - from Buxtonne sur Seine?

It's a glorious place - but does the sun ever shine?

Wirksworth Festival 2013

We were up there on September 8th 2013.

We had lunch at the Mistral, excellent food and ambiance with a French flavour - omelette for Harry, crêpe à la ratatouille for me.  Good service, but a slightly claustrophobic cellar experience - no windows and one too many tables for the space available.

We walked up to the Stardisc, where musicians and a theatre group performed in the spectaular setting.

Looking over to Alport Heights

The quarry and Middleton Top

We decided to watch the congregation "clypping the church" - embracing it as the centre of the community. People form a circle around the building, holding hands and singing.

As spectators we were roped in to join hands with the congregation. Hence no pictures! But see these from two years ago.

A lamp from Buenos Aires.

Then down to see Linda Taylor-Fry's exhibition - we watched her sell one of her striking graphic paintings, admired her garden and looked at Colin Halliday's work, which was on show in a marquee in the garden as well.

Why do I walk so much?

Is it the nearest thing I can find to meditation, or my way of paying my dues to my inner nomad?  Is it for the exercise that’s in it?  Or for the easy companionship when I walk with others?  There are elements of all of these, but it comes down to the fact that I love it.  The reasons don’t matter.  It’s the time I feel most myself, most at peace, and most interested in life. When I’ve been walking I can enjoy other activities even more.

Walking in remote countryside clears my brain. Walking in cities may lead to odd encounters and discoveries.  It makes little difference if it’s somewhere I know well, or somewhere new.  Though if I had to choose I would probably go with the new. Like Baudelaire in his poem Le voyage and like many people – novelty enchants me.

But this search for something new mustn’t be too superficial – and walking gives me the chance to feel I belong to a place, and to lay hold and possess it in return.  I think it’s on the same level as learning a language, which is a way of understanding a country and feeling at home there.

I tend not to philosophise about this in my walking blog, but I have certainly put some miles under my boots this year.

Trinity Chapel near Highoredish

I may have first heard of Trinity Chapel when I found out that my great-great-great-grandfather ( that's my grandmother's great-grandfather) was baptised there in 1792.  Or it may have been when I looked at a map of the area around Highoredish. No matter - I learned that it existed, and had some connection with some of my ancestors. Enough to tempt me to explore, of course.  To reach it you have to walk - it's hidden away in the woods below Highoredish, not far from Mathersgrave. 

I've just searched through my photos - I have four from 1998, before I went digital - in the days of film sent away for developing and printing, and although they were stored in an album, one or two look a little faded. 

The chapel is in a beautiful area - I must revisit and walk nearby. 

According to the Derbyshire Heritage website

a church was recorded on the site in the Domesday survey of 1086 and a 13th century reference in the documents of Darley Abbey mentions what is now merely a footpath to the church as Churchgate Lane. The will of Hugh Revell of Shirland dated 15th May, 1504, states: "I will that the Trinitie Chapel have my chalez, the which is now in their possession, for ever." There is no subsequent record of this chalice, which may have gone missing during the Civil War.
The present Chapel is believed to have been completely rebuilt in the early 1500's, possibly a short time before the Reformation, about 1520-1530. According to tradition, the two bells which the Chapel once possessed were stolen by Oliver Cromwell during the Civil War.

Up to 1758, the Chapel served as a chapel of ease to the parish of Morton, and services were held there four or five times a year.  It was deserted after the investiture of the new Brackenfield Church in 1857.  By 1841, it had already fallen into disuse, partly because of its inaccessibility, and partly because most of the population of Brackenfield now lived around the green, over a mile away.

There is further information on the Brackenfield page of the Amber Churches website.  One interesting item is this:

The ruins of “Trinity Chapel”, the remains of a sixteenth century replacement of the original chapel now hidden in trees, can be reached from a footpath and a village tradition developed of a pilgrimage to the Chapel on Trinity Sunday. This lapsed in recent years but was picked up again in 2010 when a church walk stopped in the chapel for a short service.

So far, I have no knowledge of any paintings or photographs of the chapel before it fell into ruins.  I must thank Charlie Wildgoose of Matlock for putting the idea into my head, in a discussion about one of his photographs.