sense of place

White Christmas

Well a white Christmas Eve anyway. Beautiful. A run out through the parks to Clough Lane to revel in the whiteness. Snow is transforming. It monochromes and simplifies and creates a sense of peace and calm. It accentuates and highlight structure and enhances the beauty of trees and shapes and hedges. It adds a crunchy, sensual, textural layer and induces stomping and jumping and snow angel making. Like sunshine it makes people smile for the sake of smiling. It makes dogs and people slightly hysterical and playful. It changes the pace of the world and forces a humbling slowness and carefulness. It is great and I wish we had more of it each year. Happy Christmas. x

Where there's light there's life

Above all else plants respond to light. Contemplating the magical internal machinery that ensures plants adapt to the changing seasons Monty Don has this to say:

"We can mollycoddle winter seedlings, use mulches, cloches and fleece and windbreaks to keep them cosy. But none of this is any good without enough light. It is not the chill in the evening air or the lashing autumn rain that carries the message, or even the weak sunshine, but the subtlest changes in day length. I in my profoundly unscientific way, find this astonishing. Falling light overrides fine weather, and increasing light makes it worth the risk of ignoring the cold and putting on growth. That a flower can tell the difference between a day of hot Indian summer sun and a modestly mild one that has half an hour more daylight is spooky." Monty Don, My Roots, p.225 

I'm less astonished. I'm pretty sure humans respond in much the same way. Having just moved back to Yorkshire from Scotland even the extra 15-20 minutes or so of extra daylight we get down here already makes the winter seem less intimidating and increases energy levels. I was reflecting on Monty's quote today. I have just started to train seriously for the 2010 London Marathon. A few weeks ago I tried my first longer 12m+ run via a route I love out across Stanage Edge. I tried it again today. By half way through the run I felt like I had much less energy and 'psychological drive' than I had a fortnight ago. Last time the wind was stronger, I had cycled a long way the day before and it was more of an 'unknown quantity.'

So I was trying to figure out the difference. And the main one was the light. Today at 3.00 it felt like twilight. Low dark clouds were blocking out any of the dwindling daylight that was there. Last week at a similar time, althought it was wet and windy the clouds were high and there was a brightness to the sky that made the wet, wind and cold invigorating. Today it felt like running at night. If I was a plant I think I'd probably shove any remaining energy into a nice cosy bulb in the ground and wait till the days were longer till I came back out again. Not being a plant I'm instead anticipating a wet winter with lots of 'doing the miles' round the dark streets of Sheffield. I think I might come back as a daffodil.

Hare and grouse

Sunday walk round Edale Moor. Up Golden Clough past Nether Tor and Upper Tor and back down Grinds Brook. At the rather splendidly named Ringing Roger we stopped by the limestone rock formations. An unleashed dog chased a hare in a wide circle in front of us, before being whistled back by its owners. Tired hare went to ground. Another walker managed to get within about 3 feet and identified it as an arctic hare. He got some great photos. I got some average ones of hare departing. We then followed the bobbing path of a very tame seeming grouse snapping close ups before it flew off grumbling. Life on Earth eat your heart out.

Peak Weekender

Two consectutive days of experiencing the elements in the Peak this weekend. Saturday involved 2 wheels and an out and back route from Langsett Reservoir out across Midhope Moors via Mickleden Edge and Cut Gate, descending to Derwent Reservoir then back over. Singletrack climb leading to a fair bit of pushing some bog snorkelling, river riding a mixed descent to Derwent, slog of a push back up then a descent back to Langsett that made the whole thing worth it. Sunday involved 2 legs and a run out to Stanage via the Porter Valley, Redmires and back through Ringinglow. The roaring sound of rooftop water during the preceding lie in suggested deluge scale rainfall. Which had been blown through by force 6 winds by run time. Having left an epic legacy in the landscape. Porter Brook was in full blasting force. Many of the routes out to Redmires blocked by floods. A wind battered Stanage featured six or seven inverted waterfalls, huge plumes of water shooting skywards, then blasting back across the footpath. Beautiful and invigorating in the bracing 'slap of cold gravel to the face' sense of the term.

Moorland management

Fire on the moors.

Fear not local residents. This is not some sort of omen of the impending global warming induced apocalypse. There have been instances of accidental moorland fires in the last few years. But this is management not accident. In the informative words of the moorland association:

"Controlled burning, principally by moorland keepers, gets rid of over mature heather, enabling new roots to generate from roots or seed. The fires are planned to move steadily with the wind, burning old growth while doing little more than scorching the ground below."

A fair few of these smoke plumes out on the moors today, with teams of 2 keepers using long fire brooms and water sprays from their quad bikes to control the burn. Lit, burned, out and on to the next one pretty quickly.

Beyond Limits

I struggle with stately homes. Chocolate boxy reverence about our aristocratic heritage generally gets me grumpy. I'm sure in the right hands they could be reinvented to provide a more balanced historical education. A bit more of an EP Thompson meets Monty Python type mash up and a bit less National Trust. Chatsworth is no exception. Its a rather soulless and gaudy blot of bad taste in the midst of the calm beauty of the Peak District.

But I do like Sculpture. Especially big sculptures which create a jarring sense of 'presence' in the spaces they inhabit. And once a year Chatsworth goes all Yorkshire Sculpture Park on us with Beyond Limits. And there's some great stuff.

I particularly liked the craggy faced 'Eros Bendato Screpolato' by Igor Mitoraj. Who looks like he's been quarried from some clay baked plain and and transplanted rather unceremoniously to the lush gardens of Chatsworth, waiting patiently for a latter day Ted Hughes to come along and rebuild him for the purposes of some sort of poetical world righting crusade (watch out Duke of Devonshire).

The other Iron Man in the show proves that place really does matter with these things and that maybe rich folk shouldn't be just picking them up and putting them down anywhere. Poor old Angel of the North gets shrunk back to the scale of the original model. And rather disorientatingly placed as Guardian of the Chatsworth canal pond. A rather shameful parody of the real Angel's protective stance overlooking the epic grandeur of Gateshead. Hopefully his bigger cousin will ride to the rescue and fix Junior up with a decent view.

Yayoi Kusama's Narcissus Garden is joyful. Every garden should have a big pond with a load of silver balls floating in it. Watchable for ages. Even though they don't really do anything. Although frankly post Rover in The Prisoner I never trust anything spherical that looks like it might have agency. I suspect these ones get up to all kinds of sinister stuff when no one is looking.

My own personal 'oh look I'm a millionaire after all I'll have that one please' vote goes to Ju Ming's Tai Chi series. I really like the parallels between sculpture and Tai Chi. The sense creating form out of energy and in turn that form giving energy back to the space its in. Earthy and elemental. But also in these sculptures just a tiny bit ungainly and inelegant. Humorous and human.