Albert Promenade and Wainhouse Tower, Halifax

That’s Albert as in Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband.  It was built in 1861 by Henry Charles McCrea, an Irishman who moved to Halifax and became a locally well known businessman.  He gave the walk to the town together with West View Park.

It looks down a rocky cliff, known locally as The Rocks, towards the valley below. This is the valley which has the Rochdale Canal, the River Calder, the trans Pennine railway and the A58 road all funnelling through a fairly narrow gap in the hills.  It is a convenient walk when the unpaved paths are muddy and gives some lovely views, changing day to day depending on the weather and angle of the light.

Wainhouse Tower is a folly, originally built as a chimney for a dye works in the valley below.  Above is the view of it from Albert Promenade.

And this is the view of Albert Promenade from the top of the tower.  More photos by AdamKR can be found here.  It gives a good idea of the plateau on which that part of Halifax is built. Off the left of the picture is an area known as Skircoat Green, the most expensive part of Halifax for property.  There is an area of about 73 acres of open land owned by the Savile Family from the 13th Century until 1892 when it came into the ownership of the Halifax Council.  

As ‘Skircoat’ came, so I am told, from the word ‘Schircotes’ which means building on the rocks.

January Stay at Homes

It has been a strange few weeks.  The weather has been so unseasonal with high winds and drizzle.  There have been days when it has never seemed to get properly light and we’ve had the lights on all day.  Even cars have been driving around with their lights on in day time.  We’ve been kept busy with working on photos and websites so we don’t waste the good weather.

Jon came to lunch as he was seeing a client in Bradford and then driving on to Manchester for a meeting.  It was great to see him and catch up on news.  I suppose it’s a sign of the times that he just logged into our network and checked his work emails and dealt with queries.  Keeping in touch is so much easier nowadays.

We have booked our flights to the USA for the summer holidays.  We are staying on Cape Cod in a lovely traditional house.  It looks as if there will be eleven of us with the possibility of another two.  Rosie and Mike will fly over on the same flight and stay on an extra week in the Boston area.  Dave, Tara and Simon will fly up and so will Vickie, Jay, Darvik and Danika.  It is going to be great, especially as we thought we wouldn’t manage a family holiday this year.

We’ve been diving out the door whenever it has been fine and not too windy to get in a few walks.  We’re lucky round here with a lot of public parks.

This one is just over the main road from us and you can see the back of Bankfield House, once the home of Colonel Akroyd who built our village, and it is now a museum.

That is winter heather above, flowering on a bank in the park and below is Pule Hill, which we can see from our house as well.

One of our favourite parks is at Lightcliffe, about three miles away.  It is known as The Stray and is a very open area of 11 acres of grass with trees.

I had always assumed that an area called ‘The Stray’ – there is one in Harrogate as well – would be associated with the gathering of stray sheep.  Apparently I was wrong and the one at Harrogate was set up to protect the springs.  Why this is called ‘The Stray’ I have no idea and Mr Google offers no clues that I can find.

The church shown above was the Congregational Church, though it is now offices. It is unusual, as a Congregational Church, for having a steeple and also a full ring of bells.  The park makes for a pleasant walk all through the year and the criss-cross of paths make it easy to get back to the car if the weather suddenly closes in.

We’ve made one longer trip in the second half of January. Last Saturday (28th) we woke to find a thin carpet of snow and bright sunshine so we decided to try and find some more snow by driving up to the the Lake District.

There was no more than at home as we climbed up to Ovenden and, when we started the run down to Denholme, there was none to be seen.  Not deterred, we drove on and, eventually saw snow on the hills in the distance and we chased it with the determination of thirsty travellers following a mirage in the desert.

Crossing Lake Windermere at the Hawkshead Ferry – the last time we shall make that journey at £4.30 for about 5 minutes of crossing! – and drove up narrow lanes to Hawkshead with the snow still a glint on the horizon.  When you meet a bus on a lane like the one below, you swing in your wing mirrors, snuggle up to the wall and think thin thoughts!

We only go to the Lake District in the winter as it is just too crowded in the summer.  This was perfect with plenty of room to swing the proverbial cat and we headed for the Queens Head for lunch.

An Inn since the early 17th century, it is welcoming and cosy with an open fire, low ceiling beams, and warm wood panelling.

Enormous pieces of beer battered fish and thick, perfectly cooked chips were consumed with no regard to cholesterol or calories.

Eventually, replete and in no mood to take the exercise we so desperately needed after such a meal, we staggered back to the car and resumed our search for snow.

Still it eluded us and we decided to take the Kirkstone Pass.  Surely there would be snow on the highest pass in the Lake District?

Alas, the pass was closed – whether to snow or for some other reason the sign did not say – so we metaphorically shook the snow of Cumbria off our car tires and set off back for home.  We were rewarded by a lovely view of Ingleborough, well covered in snow and arrived home at dusk, needing only a sandwich for supper.

Now we wait to see what February brings.

Friday the 13th–A Lovely Day

Despite its reputation as a day for disasters, Friday the 13th January 2012 showed us the best weather so far this year.

It was cold, crisp, there was no wind and, best of all . . . it was sunny.

So off we went to the hills above Haworth for a walk. This lane has some spectacular views across the valley and is quiet enough for a walk – the fields are still very muddy from all the rain.  Incidentally, this deserted lane is a bus route.

The sun is so low in the sky at the moment that the contours of the land stand out starkly.

We came back by a different route to avoid the traffic jam that is Cross Hills and collected a short list of places to go back to, including what looked like a planned village but was Keighley Workhouse in days gone by.

Alan had this exciting Christmas gift from Dave and Tara.   It is now mounted outside his study window.  The bar down is the decorative leading on the window, not a precaution against falling out of the window!

I said in my last post that we were off to research paving for the front garden.  Earlier in the week, we duly ended up at Gordon Riggs Garden Centre – not the one pictured on the front page of their site but the original one near Todmorden.  I think we have decided on paving and tubs but it’s a bit too early in the year for setting things going.

Opposite is Bottoms Mill Shop and Cafe and we popped over for lunch – a bacon buttie for those who want to know.  M’mmm!  I think we appreciate that sort of food all the more because we don’t have it often.

In the shop, is this lovely antique which will play a tune if you put 20p in a slot.  Isn’t it delightful?

January 2012 – Where Does Time Go?

That was a rhetorical question and I don’t expect an answer – unless anyone has a better knowledge of ‘The State of The Universe’ than I do – or even more importantly than Professor Stephen Hawking does.  Happy Birthday! to him – a few days late but I don’t suppose he will mind.

A quote from Hawking is "Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet."  I like that and we will continue to try and meet that target this year.

I’d like to follow his advice literally as well as metaphorically so perhaps at least one meteor shower will arrive when we have a clear sky?  The first didn’t so I have to wait till April to find that out.

We hope to make another trip to the USA this year for a family holiday and to see places we have not visited yet.  It looks as if there will be 10 – 13 of us and finding a house we can rent for us all is difficult.  After all, how many families nowadays plan trips with that many members?

We’ve also got a list of places to visit with the caravan this year that would require  some manipulation of the space-time continuum to manage.  We do like a challenge and are bidding on e-bay for a Police Box.  Worth a try?

Alan’s book comes on apace and he still gets a lot of contact and information from his old students – I should, perhaps, call them Alumni rather than ‘old’! To catch up on them go to his website.  It may take a bit of scrolling but we are hoping to improve that soon.  Web technology has come a long way since he started it 7 years ago.  In those days, you had to learn Dreamweaver to build a site and neither of us had the time or inclination to do that.  This blog took me less time to set up than Alan’s site.

My venture of A Yorkshire Cook, born out of numerous queries about recipes and cooking has come on well.  It is climbing the Alexa rankings nicely and visitors are beginning to comment.

As we get to eat the results of my experiments, Alan is happy.  I’m enjoying writing it and also the photography – though food photography turns out to be a tricky new skill to learn.

The weather has been as unpredictable as ever!  Far from the nasty snow and ice of last winter, so far, we have had mild weather.  The rhubarb crop is hampered by lack of frost which is needed to set it into growth. 

We have been lucky in a couple of weeks dominated by high winds.  The most we have seen is the dash for freedom of local wheelie bins which may have caused problems for those who had to go out – we just hunkered down and waited it out.  Then we handed a stray waste food bin, which had wandered into our front garden, to the recycling collectors when they arrived (a day late).

Halifax did make it into the national news when a dormer window was blown off, over a house, taking the chimney stack with it and crashing into the street!

Now we are beginning to put our heads above the parapet and today we are going on an expedition to find the right surface for our front garden.  Small as it is, I can no longer manage it and it depresses me to see weeds and a tangle of growth.  I kick myself that I didn’t think of this when we sorted the tiny back yard which has worked very well with a raised bed.

We hope to sort it this spring and leave me with a rather nice raised trough to play with.  Photos will follow when we have the job done.

End of Year Round Up - 2011

I can’t believe that it is nearly the end of the year.  They do say that time passes quickly when you’re having fun – so I guess there’s a lot of fun in my life.

We seem to have spent a lot of this year chasing Charles Darwin.  He came from Shrewsbury, where there is a shopping centre named after him – of all things!

And he left on his famous voyage aboard the Beagle from Devonport. Today we think of Plymouth as a famous sea port but Devonport was one of the three towns, East Stonehouse being the third, which were merged in 1914 to form the Borough of Plymouth in 1914.

We stayed with Rosemary and Mike for a weekend towards the end of October and visited the beautiful park at Devonport where this Darwin mention is part of a fountain.

We were so lucky with the weather and even managed a boat trip past the dockyards.  The large building in the above photo is Babcock International where Grandson Dan is now an apprentice.

We made a return trip to Mackenzies Smoke House towards the end of November to stock up and to have lunch to celebrate Alan’s birthday.

The journey up went so smoothly that we arrived much too early and pottered round the lanes for a while, passing the ‘golf balls’ of Menwith Hill.

These geodesic domes house the very latest in communications and intelligence support to the UK and US.  Nearby there used to be one of the more amusing of military eccentricities in the shape of HMS Forest Moor, a navy base on a hill which had to be named as ‘Her Majesty’s Ship’.

The biggest news of the autumn was the birth of Danika, a daughter for Victoria and Jay and sister for Darvik in Kentucky.  Alan travelled over for a few days to meet her.

They stayed most of the time at Old Rice Farm in Victoria and Jay’s cabin.

Last week we travelled to Fountains Abbey which is in North Yorkshire for a dinner followed by a performance of ‘A Christmas Carol’ by The Pantaloons.  We had a lovely evening and then a drive home on a crisp moonlit night.  Perfect.

At home, we have both been busy on various projects. Alan’s website is popular in the Tourism world and among his ex students.  He hopes to have a book coming out some time next year.

Pat has started to put her recipes and cooking knowhow onto a website – A Yorkshire Cook.  It had been suggested by several people but the time involved has never been available till now.  It is proving great fun and, of course, we get to eat the food.

In other family news, Layla is now at university, studying design. Tariq is studying for A levels and is specialising in literature. Kalif is working towards GCSE and doing well. Jon has joined a company which deals with cleaning up after emergencies and disasters.  He is finding it more satisfying than his previous job.  Kerry is enjoying organising music and drama at two secondary schools.

Rosie is still a teaching assistant, happier in her job after a re-organisation and Mike’s company is weathering the recession.  As I mentioned earlier, Dan is an apprentice with Babcock, beating a lot of competition to get the position.

Dave and Tara are still in California and Simon is doing well at school.  Their latest adventures can be seen here, including Simon’s Christmas performance at school – he’s at the back left in the video.

In the wider family, we have had two deaths this year. Orlando, Joy’s grandson, died in a light plane crash in May.  It was a great shock as he had come back safely from Afghanistan when he was in the Marines and was a very fit and active young man. 

Last week, Shirley’s brother in law, Bob, died after a long illness. Even though it was expected and he had beaten the medical predictions by a couple of years, it is still a sad loss.

We’re looking forward to a quiet Christmas.  There will be Dr Who and plenty of relaxation.  If the weather is good we will get out and about but that is not something to plan too rigidly at this time of year.

A Happy Christmas, everyone!

West View Park, Halifax

 

West View Park does what it says on the tin.  This is the view and it is due west towards Lancashire.  Like so many people, we tend to neglect our local attractions but are trying to get round them.

Certainly, with the lovely Autumn sun and the leaves turning, we will not find anything better farther afield.

 

The park is on the west edge of Halifax and was proposed by two local businessmen, Mr H C McCrea and Mr E Robinson, in around 1894. The Parks Committee Minutes do not refer to the design of the park; it is implied that the benefactors, McCrea and Robinson, undertook responsibility for the park's layout. In July 1896 the park was opened. We forget how much we owe our Victorian ancestors for establishing such lovely green spaces in our towns.

Most of its ambitious design is now lost but it is still ‘a nice place to be’ and traces of the original design can be found here and there.

And this brave soldier from the Boer War has looked out towards Lancashire since at least 1905.  Perhaps he anticipates a return of the War of the Roses.

Wainstalls and Luddenden

This morning was so bright and sunny that we just had to get out and take advantage of the weather.  We went past Mount Tabor and down a road which goes nowhere except past the popular Cat-i’th-well Inn.

We parked just before the Luddenden Dene Wesleyan Cemetery and walked along the narrow lane to the Cemetery where some orphans from Liverpool, brought over the hills to work in a local mill are buried.  We visited the grave back in February 2010 and haven’t been back since.

One thing I hadn’t thought of before was the amount of room left on the stone for further burials.

It is a lovely spot with views across the valley.  A shame that these children probably never got to enjoy the view.

At the other end of the Cemetery, where the modern burials take place, we found someone we had never heard of – though I wish we had known him as he sounds quite a character.

‘Sithee lata’ is our local dialect for ‘See you later’.

A Google later and I found that he was just known as Malcolm Lund of Wainstalls and died 31st March 2011.  He left 6 children and a partner but I can’t find out anything else about him.  If anyone knows more, I’d love to hear from you.

We walked on and I’ll just share some of the beauty with you – it doesn’t need words.

The last of the blackberries

A woodpecker lives here.

And home for lunch.