My Two Stones Lost Certificate - at last!

Hurrah! I've done it! At last! Yesterday evening at Slimming World (at Louth in Lincolnshire) I recorded a thumping weight loss of six pounds for the last week, and finally won my Two Stone Lost Certificate!

I wanted this so much. It's a personal landmark. Now I have just nine pounds left to go before I get down to my target weight. That'll still take two or three months, but the end goal is now in sight. In fact I burst through that two-stone barrier with two and a half pounds in hand. So there's some slippage available for next week's birthday celebrations, although such is my steadily-developed self-discipline where food and drink choices are concerned, I don't think I will throw this wonderful achievement away.

This is the cherished Certificate:

I'm getting close to the end of my four-week holiday. I've visited the East Midlands (losing two and a half pounds at SW in Stamford), Yorkshire, Northumberland (losing one and a half pounds at SW in Alnwick), Fife in Scotland (gaining an unexpected and disastrous three pounds at SW in Glenrothes), the Lake District, and lately the Lincolnshire Wolds (with this amazing spurt of six pounds lost at SW in Louth). Of course, the holiday isn't primarily about losing weight! It's about seeing places old and new, and just travelling - with all the charm and creature comforts afforded by my caravan. The caravan is the key to all this. It's my mobile self-catering accommodation. I need not eat out at all, and can have complete control over my food and drink intake, and therefore the extent to which I can keep to plan. I love meeting up with my widely-scattered friends, and enjoy relaxing that strict personal control for a meal or two while seeing them, but being on your own is the very best thing for sticking to a regime without deviation.

Of course I've had the odd portion of traditional battered fish (but only at Scarborough and - much more poshly - at Cornhill-on-Tweed) or a bag of chips only (at Whitley Bay and Silloth). But no ice cream. And since the 7th June my alcohol consumption (alcohol is a serious threat to weight-loss progress) has been limited to two social occasions with friends: a glass or two of white wine and a gin-and-tonic one lunchtime and evening at Cornhill-on-Tweed; a glass of red wine one evening in Fife. Such abstention has a very good effect. I will inevitably slip into slightly more bibulous ways back home, with more meals out too - I'm not a slave to strict eating control - but I'm confident that I'll still get those remaining nine pounds off, and then maintain the desired weight (twelve stones, five pounds), which I still think is the optimum weight for me, a state of attractive slimness that hasn't been taken too far.

I shall maintain my ideal weight with small morsels of cheese and crackers, which will counteract the ongoing tendency, with my current regime, to get lighter and lighter. Cheese again! I can't wait! But not yet, not yet. It'll be my final reward, my pay-off. And the moment of triumph may not come until I'm on my next caravan holiday (in the West Country again, taking in the Appledore Book Festival) in September. That's fine. I always think one should have achievable goals (with attendant well-deserved celebrations) to look forward to. And this one may be only three months away. Say ten weeks. Can do.

Station Hopping

One technique I like to use when exploring the area around a holiday base - the current Caravan and Motorhome Club site - is Station Hopping. I identify railway stations in interesting places, especially if they are in picturesque countryside, and plan a route to take them all in. It generally involves driving Fiona along lush valleys, over bleak moorland, and down meandering country lanes. I will typically pull in, park, walk onto the platform, take a few shots, and then drive off to the next station. Sometimes I see that a train is shortly due (I'm quite lucky with this) and so I'll linger to shoot the arrival and departure.

But usually it's just me and the station and peaceful sunshine, and nothing else happening. I like these moments, in between trains, when everything about the station - its bucolic setting (quite possibly with a fine view), its mellow buildings of Victorian vintage, the weeds between the tracks, the sense of suspended time, all ease the mind of concerns. There are often extras: a local railway society, or a gardening group, has taken the place in hand and added historical information and flowers to enhance the experience. Within a National Park, there will certainly be official posters recommending walkng or cycling routes and nearby tourist sights not to be missed. Stations seem to be cherished nowadays: so different from the run-down and dingy places they were before 1980 or so. In the last days of British Rail, in fact. There is much talk now about 'renationalising the railways', but I'm afraid it would simply lead to a return to the bad old days when the railway was starved of cash and left to rot. So please don't ever vote in Mr Wacky Corbyn and his old-fashioned notions.

While I like to visit photogenic stations in lovely locations, I am also interested in more workaday stations that serve a town or city but have been ruthlessly modernised. Big City stations tend to have lots of money spent on them, and may resemble important airports, in atmosphere at least. This generally means that an elegant nineteenth-century shell - certainly the roof and porticoed entrance - will have been preserved, but the interior has become aggressively twenty-first century, as have the sleek expresses that glide in and out. But even a bare suburban platform, with only a 'bus-shelter' as its 'buildings' can have a mystique. All stations are places of transit, where people of all kinds briefly stand and wait for a train that might, just might, take them on an unexpected adventure. Having photographed the departure of a train, I often contemplate what I could have experienced, if, on impulse, I'd got on board and just seen what happened. One day I'll do that, although I will make sure it's at a station that has a return service on the same day. I mean, it would be no good (for instance) getting on the Saturday-morning train at Pilning (near the Severn Tunnel), which sees only one train a week...

I've rather gone overboard with Station Hopping on this present holiday. Here's the list of stations visited since 7th June, in order of seeing them:

Thirsk
Battersby
Kildale
Commondale
Castleton
Scarborough
Hexham
Haydon Bridge
Acklington
Alnmouth
Chathill
Newcastle
Whitley Bay
Cullercoats
Tynemouth
Markinch
Dunkeld & Birnam
Pitlochry
Perth
Ladybank
Springfield
Cupar
Leuchars
Wigton
Aspatria
Maryport
Flimby
Langwathby
Armathwaite
Lazonby & Kirkoswald

I'll most certainly try to work in a few more when I leave the Lake District (where I am just now) and move on to the Lincolnshire Wolds. I have Barrow Haven, Thornton Abbey and Thorpe Culvert in my sights! But while in Scotland I should have made a point of visiting Breich station, which I've just discovered is likely to be closed because only three passengers a week are using it. Oh well, maybe that'll get me back up to Scotland all the sooner.

All stations are called something, and some have most evocative names. The list above has several that sound intriguing, even if the on-the-ground reality is more humdrum. I've photographed many a dull station in unattractive surroundings - South Bank on Teesside springs to mind - but I will give any station a chance if it has a name that calls to my imagination.

Obviously I go to many other places while on holiday, for entirely usual reasons that any tourist would recognise. Mere scenery is often the draw. Or a cathedral in some city, or an abbey in some town. I wouldn't base a holiday completely on visiting railway stations. But one couple have. That's Geoff Marshall and Vicki Pipe, who I've mentioned before in these chronicles (see my post The ghost train of Newhaven Marine on 5th January 2014). They have used crowd-funding to raise the money to visit all the 2,563 stations in the country. Geoff is a professional video producer, and his excellent productions can be viewed on YouTube (just search for 'All The Stations'). They started at Penzance on 7th May this year. There seems to be a team of project helpers in the background (see http://allthestations.co.uk/team/) and the crowd-funding website, which explains what they are about, is at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/562621903/all-the-stations. Impressive. But I think I'm doing quite nicely on my own. There are now 434 Britsh stations in my personal collection, all with photos taken by myself at various dates from 1973 onwards. From Penzance to Wick, and from Fishguard Harbour to Lowestoft. I've also got quite a few taken abroad, such as in New Zealand. I keep them all on my laptop, backed up of course.

Gosh. I don't think Geoff Marshall was even an embryo in 1973, and Vicki's mum would have been still a teenager. Makes you think!

6,000 shots in seven weeks

It's very difficult to keep blogging when on holiday! It's such a chance to do unusual things, and see unusual places, and meet people not ordinarily encountered. Combine a wish to get out and around, exceptionally sunny weather, and a photographer's eye, and pictures can and will get taken in profusion. They have to be dealt with. I've spent most of my holiday evenings on them - well, after cooking, eating and washing up, anyway - and I'm still five days behind.

Don't misunderstand me. I love taking photographs. I linger over them as I process them, and look at them again and again afterwards for all kinds of reasons.

I very often see details in my pictures that I missed when actually there in person. That's why I object to paying good money to visit something, and yet being denied the right to take pictures while there. In fact, if I know that in advance, I won't bother visiting the place at all. For instance, in Brighton they prohibit you from shooting the interior of the famous Royal Pavilion. Why? I mean the days when it would harm 'postcard sales' are long past. Possibly some aged fuddy-duddy on the governing committee has visions of the hoi polloi blitzing the place with flash bulbs - not realising that ordinary modern cameras and phones have fast lenses, and don't need flash of any kind. Anyway, I am not going to revisit the Pavilion again until their silly photo ban is lifted.

I personally think that the various organisations that run places like the Royal Pavilion just like inventing Rules. They don't really welcome visitors, only their cash. People endanger the vital preservation effort. They really want to be belligerently discouraging, repelling all boarders. Or failing that, herd the paying public - who are in any case mostly meek and well-behaved - into manageable groups with a no-nonsense guide in charge, making sure that we pay attention and touch nothing. But listening to somebody droning on about historical and artistic stuff that I already know something about, and not being able to wander about as I please, is to me as uncongenial as being forced to sit still and watch a film that may have generated several Oscars, but bores me stiff.

Another case in point. I'm now in Fife in Scotland, half-way through my long holiday, and yesterday I went to see Falkland Palace, a National Trust for Scotland property. All turrets and royal history. It was a lovely warm sunny day. I had notions of seeing the Palace first, then the famous Gardens. I flashed my English National Trust Life Membership card, and duly got in free.

But right at the beginning of the signed route upwards, via a spiral staircase, was a 'No photography' sign. What? No photography, when the English NT - clearly more enlightened in these matters - normally allowed you to take non-flash pictures? Hmph. Not impressed.

It would have looked a bit odd to back off and slink out right at the beginning of the tour, so I continued upwards and joined a small crowd of visitors in a nice room. I was warmly welcomed by the guide, who had started on a well-rehearsed lecture. But I stayed at the edge of the throng, near the door, thinking: did I want this? Was I going to shuffle with the crowd from room to room, and endure lecture after lecture, all the time unable to take pictures to make my visit memorable? I quickly decided to opt out. I turned, ignored the signed route, and departed the way I'd come. Fortunately, a coachload of fresh visitors had just arrived, and the ticket girl didn't see me escape. Outside, I illegally stepped over a chain and into the Palace Gardens. They proved to be very pleasant, and I shot away to my heart's content.

The old scroats who decide the Rules for Palace visiting need to change their thinking. Otherwise I won't be back.

Falkland Palace was an exception to my daily habit of blitzing every place that I've never been to before. I've done it even more than usual, since I discovered that Tigerlily, the new phone I acquired on 28th April, has a fantastic camera. In the seven and a half weeks since our first acquaintance, I've taken over 6,100 photos with her, a lot of them while on holiday. You can see why the necessary processing time on my laptop looms so large in my life! It's one reason why I always holiday alone. If I had a companion, they would feel lonely and neglected; and I would begrudge giving them any time. I'm very much devoted to photography. Not the equipment and the technicalities: I prefer to keep those very simple. But I do want an impressive collection of shots that perfectly recalls where I went, and fully captioned so that retrieval and publishing is easy.

Some day-trips have yielded an astonishing crop of pictures, in terms of both quality and quantity. Six days ago I walked around Newcastle for the first time ever. I went there by train from Alnmouth (quite an adventure in itself). I saw the central station, the riverside, the bridges, the Baltic arts centre, the old commercial heart of the city, the Cathedral. Then I took the Metro out to Whitley Bay, Cullercoats and Tynemouth. I averaged one snap per minute. The cream of the 400-odd shots taken will appear on Flickr, and in blog posts to come once home. Believe me, it took serious commitment to process those 400 shots, but it wasn't a hardship. I was in the mood to do it, well-fed and comfortable. I had Classic fm to listen to. It just went on and on for hours; but I enjoyed every minute of the task. And there are some striking shots to show for it.

This is the first rainy day I've experienced north of the Border. So I can actually find time for blogging! However, it seems unlikely that I'll be able to write many posts before I get home. The photo work comes first.

Sorry, I mean having a holiday comes first. I need to remember that.

Suspicion and envy in Scarborough

Much to my astonishment, I have wanted to use the camera on my new Samsung Galaxy S8+ smartphone for well-nigh every shot since taking the first few experimental pictures at the end of April. And now, almost 4,000 shots later (that's 4,000 shots in just six weeks), I am satisfied that the future lies in buying phones that feature a camera as good as this one.

That's quite a change of attitude on my part, towards cameras on phones. A couple of years ago I was prepared to scoff at them. No longer. In fact I think the camera I bought two years ago in 2015 - the Panasonic LX100 - will turn out to be the last 'conventional' camera I shall ever buy. In the future, it will only be necessary to buy a smartphone with a camera that suits my kind of picture-taking.

And those personal needs are pretty straightforward. A glance at my Flickr pages will instantly reveal the mix of subjects I regularly tackle. A phone with a good camera is adequate for almost all of it.

You see, you have to distinguish between the shots you actually do take, and the shots in dreams - you know, the sort of picture that the photo-equipment manufacturers splash across their webpages and glossy brochures, to feed desire for expensive, high-status equipment. The images captured by professionals might very well require 'proper' big-name beasts with monster lenses attached. But if all you actually do is wander around snapping things that catch your eye, or recording happy times with friends, then there is no need to tote such imposing kit. In fact, I rather think that only beefy men wanting to be thought 'real photographers' spend cash in that way. The rest of us, with no need to impress anyone, prefer to travel light.

I think the latest 2017 generation of phone cameras is now good enough to replace an ordinary camera without the loss of any capabilty that matters. My 4,000 shots say it's true. Tigerlily's camera can deliver the kind of shot I want. Which is: impeccably exposed, richly coloured, and full of detail. And - vitally - with everything in focus. For I want to examine everything in the shot, and anything out of focus spoils the picture so far as I am concerned. In that I'm at odds with the current fashion, which favours having a narrow depth of field to make the main subject stand out in sharp focus, but the rest of the picture gently softened. A large sensor and a clever lens will achieve that. But no thanks. It isn't what I want.

But a smartphone can give me what I'm looking for. A smartphone is thin. This imposes restraints on the camera design, so that it's impossible to achieve a picture with some things sharp and some things deliberately blurred, unless you resort to clever software that creates a not-very-natural illusion of soft focus. You can't do it optically, unless the subject is right under your nose. Some must deplore this severe limitation. I embrace it. The output of smartphones is exactly what I want.

I was in Scarborough yesterday. It was a sunny afternoon, and I was wandering around with Tigerlily in my hand, and every now and then I'd take a shot, or a number of shots, of something I had noticed. It was very easy to do this with the phone. Easier in fact than deploying a regular camera would have been. Quite a number of people object to being in a shot. I don't know what's up with them. These people notice proper cameras. They peer and stare and often frown. They look stiff and unnatural. Oddly enough, they are often the last people you'd really want to shoot seriously. But by staring straight at you they call attention to themselves, and may spoil the shot.

But phones are almost invisible. They seem to be in everyone's hand. And so many people are taking fun shots with them. They are harmless gadgets. Phones are not threatening. They indicate - if noticed at all - that you are nothing more than a happy snapper taking a casual shot that won't be of any great quality. It's a shot that can't matter. So the self-conscious don't mind nearly so much, and (mostly) remain natural.

That said, I was getting a few stares. I wondered why. Was it the way I was taking my shots? I do compose them with obvious care. But then surely a lot of other people do as well. It wasn't because I was talking to Tigerlily, either. Saying 'capture' wasn't possible in the sea breeze, nor where the background noise was intrusive. Then it occurred to me. My phone was tethered to my wrist with the lanyard. That was something you might see and wonder about. Absolutely nobody else was using a lanyard with their phone. It was surely getting me noticed. Worse, it was perhaps making some people wonder whether what I had in my hand really was a phone. What else do people tie to themselves? Did they think it was a suicide bomb? Hmmm!

There was perhaps another more down-to-earth explanation as to why some people were giving me scrutiny. Tigerlily was a recently-launched and very, very expensive smartphone, and looked like no other. Perhaps they wondered what kind of swanky show-off madam, with too much money for her own good, was walking through the holiday throng? I'm inclined to put it down to ordinary human envy more readily than anything else.

Ebbor Gorge, Eastwater Cavern, and the Mendip Flood of July 1968

There are one or two leftovers from my last caravan trip. I'd better get them out of the way before setting off again!

This post is about a day out in the Mendip Hills, an upland area south of Bristol that includes the famous Cheddar Gorge. It's limestone country. That means that all rainfall disappears underground, and there are no running rivers on the Mendip plateau. Limestone is permeable: it's jointed, and the water finds its way down these joints, dissolving the rock as it goes. Over thousands of years it creates a system of caves linked by tortuous passageways, the kind beloved of potholers. It's a renowned area for potholing. Here's general map of the area covered by this post:

I have been in caves, but only the sort you walk into for a short distance, occasionally on a guided tour. Personally, I find them slightly oppressive. You can't help being aware of the weight of the rock above, and how dangerous it would be if there were a rock fall. You are also very well aware of the danger from water. It's easy to imagine a rain shower up on the surface leading to a rush of water through those passageways, and caves filling up, and hapless potholers being caught underground. Or indeed mere hapless visitors!

A little more on this theme later in the post.

I was meeting up with Angie and S--- for lunch one day last April at the Queen Victoria pub in Priddy, a classic Mendip village. There used to be another pub there, the Priddy Inn, but it was closed, having changed hands for refurbishment and a relaunch as a gastro pub with its own micro-brewery. That would be a step up from its old status, which was as an inn for hearty booted hill-walkers needing no-nonsense overnight accommodation. If the relaunch actually takes place, Priddy will gain an ambitious eatery that may put the village on the fine dining circuit. But it will have to charge prices that some won't like paying. And its atmosphere might not be pubby enough for many others. At the Queen Victoria they were confident that a revamped and upgraded rival wasn't likely to steal their customers. The lunch and drinks were very pleasant, and I tended to agree with them.

We were going to head south first, towards Ebbor Gorge. Whereas the plateau was mostly farmland with dry stone walls aplenty, and some far-reaching views, the edges of the Mendips featured several deep, wooded ravines like Ebbor Gorge. Here's myself, at the point where we began to head downhill:

It was April, of course! I wouldn't need to wear a jacket like that in the current warm weather.

The Gorge was very green, very mossy, and with bluebells coming out. How lovely to see them.

Our walk contemplated going only so far down the Gorge, just enough to get a feel for it. Then we'd head up to the plateau again, but at a different spot from where we came in. At the point where we stopped descending, it got narrow, rocky, and very steep. We watched some people coming up. It was clearly an unexpected climb for them:

You can imagine a torrent of floodwater from a sudden thunderstorm rushing through there!

Let's consult the map:

We'd come south from Priddy using the West Mendip Way, and had got to the footpath-crossing just below where it says Ebbor Rocks. Now we were going to head north-east using Monarch's Way to East Water. After that, to Priddy church, then back to our cars at the Queen Victoria.

It was proving to be a decent walk, in good weather too. The dry stone walls were picturesque. So were the trees that dotted the open landscape. 

At East Water, we struck off across the field to have a close look at Eastwater Cavern. Or at least the entrance to it. I was last here on 10th July 1968, a fateful day. I was aged sixteen, and I was one year into my A-Level Geography course. It was a special day trip by coach to limestone country from Southampton. 

The day was a washout. We were meant to study typical examples of limestone scenery, swallow holes among them, these being water-formed pits leading to cave systems, into which any temporary surface water drained. But the worsening weather rendered quite a lot of the day's programme impossible. 

Rain fell all day long, and that field was very sodden as we rather unwillingly left the warmth of the coach to inspect the Cavern, notebooks and pens in hand. I remember slithering down to look into the Cavern, which already had a little stream of water cascading into it. Actually climbing down into the Cavern was clearly out of the question, although I rather think that our Geography masters - an all-male team clearly used to trekking without oxygen or KitKats in the Himalayas - had had some such notion in mind. I felt saved by the wet weather, and secretly thanked the rain gods. But I still had wet feet, which was distressing enough. Getting half-drenched in some hole would have been a matter for tears. (I admit it, I was a complete wimp at the time) 

I'd never been back there since. But now, forty-nine years later, here I was with two friends - on a sunny afternoon too. The swallow hole seemed to have grown deeper! I didn't fancy climbing down, and stayed up top, with S---. But Angie was game, which is why she was able to take these shots, which are hers and not mine:

When I was there in 1968, there was an iron grating over the entrance, which I think some local caving body had padlocked to deny the reckless a chance to kill themselves. I wondered why it had since been removed. 

Hmm. Instructions for a cave rescue in the event of an accident or emergency. Definitely not reassuring! Surely nobody would want to go underground, if it were risky? Well, clearly some daredevils do. 

I had mixed feelings about coming here again. It wasn't a fond memory, which is perhaps part of the reason why I didn't join Angie at the Cavern entrance. She had no such problems, and in any event is a brave soul, and happier than I am with steep slopes. I'm still not a seeker of thrills and adventure! It's not just holes. I've never climbed a tree in my life. That said, I've stood close to many a cliff edge for the sake of a photograph.

Back in 1968, the coach motored on towards Cheddar, entering via Cheddar Gorge, already streaming with water. We were allowed a couple of hours to look around the packaged tourist attractions and the gift shops. The rain continued relentlessly. Not fancying the attractions and shops - and not having any money - I did climb up Jacob's Ladder, a long series of steep steps up the side of the Gorge, but the rain-swept landscape at the top was disappointing, and there was no view to admire. I went down again, and decided to wait out the next hour or more in the coach. To my surprise, everyone else was there well before me, and the engine of the coach was running, the driver impatient to go. It turned out that fears of a flood were growing, and the masters were very eager to depart, and get their charges out of harm's way. So in fact we all left much earlier than planned. I was the last back on board.  

We were lucky to get away. Later that day the rain got even worse, and the consequences - awful floods - made the national TV news. Some people must have been underground at the time, unable to get out. I didn't hear of fatalities, but reports now on the Internet recount how bad it all was. See for instance:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/somerset/content/articles/2008/07/10/july1968_floods_feature.shtml

http://www.northsomersettimes.co.uk/flood-gallery-1968-1-1451589

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRlRSaeu7PE

We were out of immediate danger by the time the coach edged through Wells. But it had been a scary thing. I couldn't help thinking that by climbing up Jacob's Ladder I had wasted time, delayed our departure, and had inadvertently put everyone else at risk. (Obviously, the coach couldn't leave without me. And I might have taken even longer to turn up) That notion sank in on the way back to Southampton. 

Thereafter I was very, very reluctant to do anything that might involve someone else rescuing me at their peril. 

I felt just the same when in Easter 1969 I was on the Isle of Arran in Scotland on an extended A-Level Geography Field Trip to study the geology there, which involved some pretty awful scrambling up the sides of mountains, and over sharp corries carved by glaciers. We were led by the same Alpha-male team, but they had the sense to see that I would only go so far, and it was no good pushing me further. So I was able to duck out of the worst, and just enjoy the sunshine, the wind in the heather, and chatting to the coach driver. Nobody offered me any scorn. I should hope not. I'd had the gumption to stand my ground and do something different. And I didn't mind being the only one to make a fuss. 

If I'd given in, and attempted things that I knew would scare me witless, I'd have become a problem for everyone, spoiling the day's expedition and diverting effort away from the purpose of the trek. So I felt my recognition of personal limits was thoroughly sensible and did us all a favour. And coming from a youngster, a mere student with no personal clout whatever, and far from home, it might have had - in an odd kind of way - certain elements of bravery. 

It wasn't the last time I stood my ground, although in my working life it didn't always go down so well. Big career fish don't appreciate opposition, and in 1996 I stood my ground again and got thoroughly hammered for it. You can't behave like a wimpy girly (or a stubborn old owl) in the adult world and get away with it. 

At least, not until you retire. Once that glorious event occurs, once you are free, and once there is nobody - not family, nor anyone else - who can push you around any longer, then you can insist on whatever you think best and wisest. Sure, you have to stand by your decisions. But you don't have to follow the crowd. And you can be as deaf as you please to other people's arguments, be they ever so eminent, so long as you have properly worked out your own plan and are prepared to follow it through, and will blame nobody else if you come unstuck. That's what I think being grown-up is all about.