Peak District perambulation

While in the north of England some old friends took me on a nice little bushwalk - OK a nice little ramble -  in the Peak District.











We started in Glossop, Derbyshire, and made our way, partly off-track, up onto the Bleaklow plateau. It's all quite scenic, up on the moors. And though the weather was fine and the hills not so high, it's easy to see how people could get lost - it's all so undulating and the weather's not always fine.

Despite the hills not being that high, many aircraft have managed to collide with them over the years. We visited the site of a 1948 crash of a US Air Force B29 Flying Fortress. The entire crew of 13 perished, and the remains of the aircraft are still scattered on the moor, serving now as a memorial.






Here's Wikipedia's piece on the area and the plane crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleaklow

The Mill

As well as wartime nostalgia, the English are really good at showing off their industrial archeology. And there's a lot of it about, of course, what with them having invented the industrial revolution after all.


One very fine example, and well worth a visit, is the Quarry Bank Mill, near Styal in Cheshire. It was a cotton mill, and it's now a museum of the industry. It's on the Bollin River, the waters of which used to power its water wheels.

It's owned and run by the National Trust, and their volunteers were doing a fine job of showing us what it was all about.




There were lots of references too to a British TV series which had been made there, and by all accounts was an attempt to dramatise and also educate about early industrial life. It was called 'The Mill'. Reviews were mixed, I understand. Wikipedia tells me that it was well received by viewers, but Ceri Radford in The Telegraph summarised it as: "Take every cliché you can think of about the Industrial Revolution, mix them all up into one gloomy morass of woe, and that’s pretty much last night’s opening".

I liked my visit a lot. Especially those massive water wheels. Here's the National Trust page on the place:
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/quarry-bank

Pokemon No!

The Pokemon Go craze was at its peak during our time in England, and a couple of times I came across unusual crowds of young folk, glued to their screens, chasing imaginary digital monsters. And frequenting places I'm certain they'd never ventured into before.

Like the grounds of St Philip's Anglican Cathedral in Birmingham. Look at this motley crew of cathedral visitors!

Riding a Birmingham canal boat

Birmingham was a main hub of Britain's canal network in the 18th and 19th centuries. They claim to have more miles of canal than Venice. Canals don't shift much freight any more, but there's lots of canal-based leisure activity going on.

The easiest way to get a taste of this is to take one of the public boat rides, from Brindleyplace, like we did. It didn't cost a lot, and for an hour or so we could sit back and enjoy an unusually tranquil city experience.

We went southwards along the Worcester & Birmingham Canal, via the Gas Street Basin, and the Mailbox development, out past Birmingham University, and 'into the country'. It wasn't the country. I happened to know that was several suburbs away. But it looked and felt like the country.

Here's a link to the company's website: http://www.away2canal.co.uk/

Everything old is new again (even Birmingham)

Growing up in Birmingham in the 1960s we were all very proud of the modern makeover the city got back then. Especially that funny little round Rotunda building. Then over the following decades it all got a bit ragged and old and decrepit.








Well they're well into the next makeover now, and much of the city centre looks like it actually does belong to the 21st century. Lots of bright and airy shopping centres, a pink tram, and a strangely shiny new New Street Station.












Another somewhat strange apparition is the Selfridges store, which has actually been there since 2003. It's got lots of architectural awards, but I think it's just odd. Celebrated local newspaper cartoonist, Bert Hackett, seems to have thought so too.

Man on the Moon

When I grew up in Birmingham, there was a nearby pub called the Man in the Moon. I never actually went there, but it was a very well-known local landmark. Lots of people can see a man in the moon when they look at the full moon, at least in the northern hemisphere, where it's appropriately oriented. Mind you, in some cultures, they see a chicken, or a rabbit. (I see mountains and plains and craters, but that's another story.)

When NASA landed the Apollo 11 astronauts on the Moon, on 20 July 1969, lots of people chose to watch it on TV at the Man in the Moon, where free drinks and a big party were on offer. That night the pub changed its name.

One small name change for Man..........


I finally made it there on my recent trip. Opinion among locals I consulted was divided about the merits of the place, so I consulted Tripadvisor. And it came up pretty good. Take a look: https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Restaurant_Review-g186402-d3502108-Reviews-The_Man_on_the_Moon-Birmingham_West_Midlands_England.html

Sombre Somme commemoration

We were walking through the Worcestershire town of Bromsgrove, when we came across this strange scene. At first it looked like there had been a coup d'état. The post Brexit political ructions must have gone a bit too far for the establishment. Or maybe there was filming going on for yet another nostalgic British wartime drama. It's what they do best, of course. (And they hadn't been all that good at being Europeans, so maybe they were just doing what they do well again.)

But no, it was something more unusual. It was a rather memorable and thoughtful historical commemoration. On 1 July, 1916, the Battle of the Somme started. That day was the worst day in history for the British Army, with more than 57,000 casualties. By November 300,000 soldiers were dead (roughly equal numbers on both sides), and over a million injured.

The Bromsgrove event was one of several hundred such performances up and down the UK on 1 July this year. Actors were secretly hired and dressed in period uniforms. When people approached (like me - I spoke to a couple of soldiers) they remained sombre and silent, but handed over a card bearing the name and rank of the fallen soldier they were representing.

We couldn't decide whether the little "Have you got a light?" episode we witnessed was part of the act, or whether the lady just happened along and wanted a light. It was interesting theatre either way.

Broken Britain?

This chap's looking appropriately horrified about the results of the Brexit referendum. I'd shown him the coverage in a Sydney newspaper I'd taken with me.

Needless to say, the Brtish newspapers (and TV news, and much personal conversation) were also totally dominated by the subject during our visit. We saw with our own eyes how the issue had 'divided families'and 'split friendships', just as we'd heard.

I'd tell them all what a good job Britain was doing keeping the whole world entertained, what with all the ructions and multiple plot-twists every day from both sides of politics. Both major parties experienced leadership resignations or rebellions. And neither seemed to have very clearly defined procedures for appointing new leaders. It was all being fought out in a very scrappy way, seemingly with rules getting made up along the way.

As for the Labour leadership election (ballot closes 21 September), registered supporters were being frantically recruited by supporters and opponents of the incumbent (proudly socialist) leader, Jeremy Corbyn. When I met up with four of my old uni friends for a get-together, it turned out that two of the four had just registered for the vote. Both were going to vote for Corbyn. One admired the man and wants him to run the country. The other supports independence party UKIP, and wants Corbyn to win because he's sure this will destroy the Labour Party!

Baddesley Clinton

Green and pleasant England was fairly green and pleasant again this trip. And one of the things you need to do in the green and pleasant land is to visit a stately home.

This time we chose the moated manor house, Baddesley Clinton. It's in Warwickshire, just outside Solihull, and it's also been described as an average early modern home of the lesser gentry.

It's got a rich history, priest holes, and a gunpowder plot connection. There are gardens to explore, a pleasant cafe, and the tour of the house itself was particularly informative. The volunteers seemed exceptionally attuned to selectively giving just the right amount of attention and information to those likely to want it, I thought.


Here's the Gunpowder Plot Society's piece on the place:
http://www.gunpowder-plot.org/baddesley.asp

Cream of the crop

My Austrian relatives here run a thriving family business. As well as the dairy farm, they supply a range of fine dairy products, meats, and breads. They work very hard, and in Austria (unlike so often in Australia) hard-working dairy farmers can be well rewarded. They have a good life.

We watched the evening milking session, and then admired the certificates of merit on the wall of the milking shed. Lauda, Liza, Lotte, and Lady, among others, had done themselves proud, with lifetime milk production of up to 80,000kg. I checked, and this is considerably more than a typical worldwide average. They haven't yet reached the 216,891kg produced by a cow named Smurf, in Ontario, Canada, up until 2012,but maybe they'll get there yet.

Austria's Open-Air Museum

We spent several hours exploring Austria's Freilichtmuseum (Open-Air Museum) at Stübing, near Graz, and it wasn't long enough. You'd really need a whole day to do it justice, or even two or three days.

It's a collection of about a hundred traditional rural houses, brought from all corners of the country, and resurrected in one valley. You stroll around, and learn lots about traditional rural lifestyles.

It was a bit dark and gloomy inside some of the dwellings. That's how life was before electricity, of course.

But the bright floral displays would have helped to compensate. Modern day Austria is still a bright, pretty, floral sort of place too.











And I rather liked all the water wheels, powering flour mills and sawmills.

(Not so) evil creek

In Austria we stayed in the village of  Übelbach, which translates as 'Evil Creek'. Most of the time the creek that passes through it is more like a babbling brook, but after a sudden summer thunderstorm, it showed its darker side for a while.

The creek was indeed rather wild and dangerous looking, and after the weather cleared, the village had an unusually dramatic look to it.
















Usually it's bright and cheerful though. An idyllic, picturesque place.










As the tourist brochure puts it: "Gar nicht so übel", sagt jeder, der schon in Übelbach war. "Wirklich einen Ausflug wert." ("Not so evil", says everyone who's been to Übelbach. "Really worth a visit.")











The same publication describes the inhabitants as 'Lauter lustige Leut'. (Cheery, colourful people.) And that can't be bad either.

The hills are alive with ........ oompah music!

In Austria we kept coming across little festivals of singing, dancing, drinking, and best of all, oompah bands!

Half the population seemed to be in on it.

Sometimes it's an annual event, celebrating Maypole Removal Day, children's end of term day, or a religious holiday maybe.


And it was always the case that you'd come across a pub on just about every mountain. But of late it seems that the pub-on-mountain business is booming as never before. The increase in leisure time and in prosperity means there are armies of hikers and mountain bikers criss-crossing the hillsides, and partaking of fine alcoholic lunches, washed down by big slabs of breads, cheeses, and all kinds of meats and relishes.

And they all have resident (or maybe roving) musicians ready to entertain the crowds. It's rather wonderful really!

Like musos everywhere, they're very attentive to the ladies.