If we hadn’t been so parsimoious when we built our railways, and only left enough height for a man with a top hat to stand up in an open third class truck, and only made our carriages as wide as a stage coach, then we could have had wonderful double decker trains as they do in Holland and France and Germany and Switzerland. The Swiss ones seem the best designed - wider stairs and more room for luggage. And what a delight to sit so high above the countryside !
Lake Constance, or the Bodensee, lies between Germany and Switzerland, with a little bit of Austria at one end. The Rhine flows in at the East, and out at the West, past Konstanz, and on to the famous falls at Schaffhausen. Germans are inclined to be lyrical about the Bodensee, especially in Spring. On our first visit in April, we were a little early, and this time, in July, a little late for the full beauty of blossom around the lake, but it is really, truly, stunningly beautiful. We stayed in Uberlingen, which is off to one end, on an arm of the lake known as the Uberlinger See, but it’s a delightful medieval town with a bustling promenade on the lakeside and tour boats and ferries heading off in all directions. Our hotel had an ice-cream parlour on the ground floor, and our room overlooked the lake - also the Promenade Festival, which we hadn’t known about, and which went on into the small hours. It’s a good thing we sleep soundly and are tolerant of German oompah music. (There’s also German folk music with accordeon, lederhosen and furry clogs).
Hire bikes gave us the opportunity to potter along to the stone/iron/bronze age village on stilts which is fascinating but you have to go on the tour and it’s only given in German - so learn German. On to Meersburg - more delightful medieval buildings.
Main reason for being near the Bodensee was to hear daughter Beth sing in Haydn’s St. Cecilia Mass as part of the choir. The performance was in the Birnau, a stunning pink Baroque building high above the lake, flanked by vineyards, and inside a confection of glacial white marble, some coloured marble, fat little angels with golden flags and crosses, sad saints, precipitous altars - all too too much for mere protestants, let alone Quakers - but an absolutely stunning place to listen to Haydn (and one’s daughter too, of course).
Top tip: German ice-cream parlours are the best - though often run by Italians.
Innocents abroad in York ! As part of the late music festival the National Centre for Early Music put on Gilad Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble - a jazz gig. And jazz it was - sax, keyboard, bass, drums - melodic, driving, moving to contemporary blasts of noise. What I didn’t know, and should have picked up from Gilad’s insistence that he wasn’t going to make any political remarks, was that he is a prominent anti-Zionist - jazz musician first, he says - but novelist and polemicist too. Good to have him here - pity I hadn’t done my homework so I could appreciate him in the round. Music impressive - but concert stuff - not sure how it would go down in the living room.
Briefly, we were enchanted by North Norfolk. Not only the North Norfolk railway, which completes the landscape just like a railway should, but also the wide marshscapes of Blakeney, the rich woodlands, the fine country houses, and the excellent pubs and pub food. And most of it isn’t flat. ! PS - saw avocets for the first time, and a barn owl hunting towards the end of the afternoon.
The National Railway Museum means well, bless its heart. Hoping to make a little money, no doubt, from folks who had not a lot to do at half-term, they set up a 1968 nostalgia fest. (40 years on from the end of scheduled steam on BR). Alas, I fear that for the organisers this had been research into ancient history, for the flavour of those heady days in summer 68 was not recaptured at all. (And I don’t mean les evenements at the Sorbonne in the same year either). It’s all very well having Oliver Cromwell and Evening Star and Clun Castle and a Jubilee and a well-tank and a couple of delightful freight locos lined up in light steam but the only things moving were piddly. Those of us who travelled through the night to see grimy 8Fs and Black 5s lit up by the first rays of the June sun, who stood in fields of willow herb to watch the last railtours of the last weeks of steam blast double headed over the hills and viaducts in Lancashire, who cherish the steam locomotive as a live, powerful, working machine don’t get a lot from a static display like this. I’d rather have had dozens of screens showing film of those last days. The railway museum does a great job - but a few acres in York can only be a museum - they are never going to re-create the steam railway. Nice try, and I’m glad the NRM’s there, but it’s reminded me that I should visit and support more preserved lines.
By what serendipitous telepathy I know not, but something told me to head to Elvington and Sutton on Derwent via Heslington, rather than cut across to Murton after leaving yet another tedious evening meeting at the office. A light summer drizzle was falling so I had donned the much abused and down-at-brim Tilly hat as protection. Now, at 8.45 or so, one would expect the Portland Street Pedallers to have moved on swiftly from their first port of call and be cosily ensconced in the second, so my glance into the beer garden of the Charles XII was intended to be no more than that. However, sheltering from the barely noticeable drizzle, there were the pedallers, getting in another pint. Anything, even the negligible charms of the Charles, to keep them from the damp and the prospect of a further few miles in the balmy and by this time extremely pleasant evening air. So we huddled there amongst the student masses, who clearly have either no taste or no ability to get off their backsides to find a decent pub, until we agreed to pootle across the Stray to the Wellington, where it was a relief to find a well-kept pint and a bar full of real people.
Cognoscenti amongst my readers will note that this hardly qualifies as an evenings cycling (even taking into account advancing age and infirmity). Perhaps our highest aim should be to breach the ring road. Onward !
What a delight a May evening can be ! Especially after staying late at the office for a meeting of the Audit Committee, surely one of life’s non-pleasures, but heigh-ho, we still need the bacon.
So off into the north-westering sun and a serendipitous rendezvous with the rest of the peloton outside Moorlands, where the rhododendrons were not yet out. A short ride between burgeoning hedgerows to the Jacobean, a quite undistinguished building pretending it was once a royal hunting lodge and with only one acceptable ale - Last Drop. The inside of the pub is quite plush, even over-stuffed, but outside in the smokers shelter on the verandah (not because we had any smokers with us but it seemed a shame to miss the birdsong and the 15% waxing moon) there were some relatively comfortable cast iron chairs and benches. (Inside there had also been some local boors who probably do a lot to curtail trade).
Off to the west on the ride back towards the city the horizon red and smoky - and the air rapidly cooling. So after navigating the shopping-trolley-booby-trapped underpass at the A19/ring road junction some of us were ready to settle into the fake rustic charms of the Dormouse - only to be encouraged outside by someone who wanted a ciggy. Real rustic coolth out there, gazing at the ersatz 19th century terrace (c.2002).
The Portland Street Pedallers set out in search of the original pickled egg once again ! A modest start, taking in the Deramore at Heslington, which I missed, but then I found the intrepid foursome sitting outside the Blacksmiths at Naburn, discouraging the ducks and glimpsing the first bats of the season. The beer was good enough, although I can’t remember what it was.
Then off to the Selby-York cycle path, the traditional stop on Naburn (former) swing bridge where the trellised fisherman had got his catch tangled round his rod, and a leisurely spin back to the homely comforts of the Golden Ball, where a pint of well-kept Deuchars, a comfy chair, and the sound of live blues from the public bar were about all a chap could wish for out on a Thursday night. If the Golden Ball were the only pub around one would never feel the need to go anywhere else.
Italian magicians ! Enrico Rava on trumpet and Stephano Bollani on piano. Hammering some driving rhythms out of a Steinway, using not just the pedals and the keyboard, but walloping the case for percussion, and leaning inside and plucking the strings too. The rapport between the two players is wonderful to see, all done with such humour, and almost cheek from the younger Bollani to the older Rava. Rava really gives Bollani free rein to develop his piano solos. It’s great live jazz - I wondered whether it would work on disk, and didn’t buy one in the end. But I’d go and see them again, without a doubt
The Hayburn Wyke pub sits just below the former Whitby-Scarborough railway line (now a walking/cycling route) a mile or so north of Cloughton. It apparently dates from the 18th century as a pub, although what route it was on for passing trade at that time, and what local community it served is not clear. Its brochure implies that smuggling may have had something to do with it but as the anchorage at Hayburn Wyke is hardly sheltered (though certainly remote and inaccessible) I have my doubts. Anyway, it now seems to have a good weekend trade of families wanting a pub lunch (looked fairly average pub food) and walkers / cyclists on the former railway line or the nearby Cleveland Way. We had some Black Sheep or coffee and set off into the delightful woods which cover the steep sides of the valley which carves its way down from the moors to the West towards the sea. When it reaches the beach, the stream falls over a 20ft waterfall. The tide was right in and because of the strong easterly breeze over the last few days there were some respectable waves. On previous visits the sea has always been calmer, and the tide further out - it’s a favourite place for piling rocks into towers a la Andy Goldsworthy. The rocks are from tennis ball to bigger than football size, smooth and round, grey streaked with brown.
We returned towards the pub by a different route, at the bottom of the valley. Very lush and wet and green under the trees, before they come into full leaf. Lots of wood anemone, dog’s mercury, wild garlic, bluebells (neither yet in flower) and large clumps of primroses. A few shy plants of wood sorrel. Not many birds, though a wren did break cover from under my feet. (Much smaller and much noisier than the four deer that we flushed out in a wood near Heilbronn a few weeks ago). Delightful as this was, it struck me that a visit in 3 or 4 weeks time, on a sunny day, could be quite spectacular.