I had not expected to be sitting at my keyboard this afternoon. The sun was shining, there was blue in the sky, and it would have been an excellent opportunity to drive to one or two of the places here in the Eden Valley where I’ve been wanting to take photographs but have been waiting for the weather.

So why am I here? Well, I got to the car, put the key in the ignition, turned it, and ….. Nothing! So here I am, temporarily stranded at home, and instead I’ll just have to write to all you good people who read the Around-England blog.

Tomorrow I’m planning to publish a post outlining some of the good things planned for the Around-England sites during 2012. Today, though, I thought I’d look back over 2011 to some of my favourite posts of the year.

• Wordsworth and the Lake District Rivers was a January post, anticipating several further items referring to Wordsworth and his Cockermouth birthplace which followed as the year progressed.
• In February I stopped one morning at Devil’s Bridge, Kirkby Lonsdale, and a further visit to the town later in the year produced photographs including Ruskin’s View.
• During the Spring there was an “Around-England hiatus”. We moved from the East Midlands to the Eden Valley in Cumbria and couldn’t get a broadband connection for several weeks (moan, moan, yes I’m still moaning at the almost ‘criminal’ neglect of non-urban areas by the broadband service suppliers). By June, though, I was able to upload photos of the Appleby Gypsy Horse Fair week.
• Being now based in Cumbria gave many opportunities to re-explore parts of the Lake District, and here is another of my favourite views – Bassenthwaite Lake from the Whinlatter road.
• In August the Yorkshire Dales drew me back, with a post about Bolton Abbey, a beautiful spot by the River Wharfe. (I posted another photo of Bolton Abbey in November).

Much more followed, but that’s probably enough for now. England as a whole is a beautiful country, and I’ll be trying increasingly on this site to spread out beyond the North – but there’s so much to cover in the Northern counties alone with their four National Parks and other Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Mountains, rivers, lakes, coastline, history; the North has all of this and more. During this new year I’m hoping to be able to add more on the North Pennines and the Yorkshire Dales, but for now, here’s a photograph from the Eden Valley in the Autumn.

River Eden at Appleby - An Autumn View Looking Dowstream from The Sands

White Fronted Goose
(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

This morning I spotted two reports of White Fronted Geese arriving from the frozen north. David Simmonite wrote from the RSPB Dearne Valley reserve about the tremendous achievement of these birds, flying high over the Greenland icecap to winter here.

Then Ben Calvert gives us a video glimpse of a group of these intrepid travellers feeding on the grassland at RSPB Saltholme, where he says they’ve stayed longer than usual.

Apparently there are two races of White Fronted Geese that visit us each winter, one from Greenland and the other from Siberia. Whichever direction they arrive from they fill me with amazement, as do so many other migrating birds. They may not pay us for their presence (except in interest and enjoyment) but they deserve our respect and our welcome each year, just as do the human tourist visitors of the summer.

>>> Places to enjoy Nature in the North >>>

This past weekend I was sifting through some old (pre-digital) photographs – prints and 35mm slides – when I came across a picture of Bolton Abbey in the Yorkshire Dales taken somewhere around 1991. A few weeks back I blogged about this very special part of Wharfedale but didn’t at that time have anything like a panoramic scene to show, so I’m putting this one up here to give people who’ve never been there some idea of the general appearance of the area.

Bolton Abbey - General View - c1991

It’s a pity the picture isn’t sharper (it was scanned from a print) but it shows the open spaces leading down to the River Wharfe, with part of the ruined priory in the distance. On this particular day there were considerable crowds, but the area open for walking and picnicking is so large that popularity doesn’t spoil it. With 80 miles of footpaths on a 30,000 acre estate there’s plenty of opportunity to get away from it all.

Just behind the point from which the photograph was taken is a cafe and shops in the old cottages, with a car park just a couple of hundred yards away. Further along the road is another entrance with a long driveway down to the other end of main site a mile or so beyond the old church buildings.

This is wonderful Yorkshire Dales countryside. If you’re in the area, don’t miss it.

Congratulations to the Yorkshire Dales National Park for their new award for the Far Moor bridge. This innovative design and timber construction was developed with the help of the Forestry Commission and provides an important river crossing on the 200-mile Pennine Bridleway national trail currently being developed, and opening next year.

Far Moor bridge in the Yorkshire Dales picked up a special award at a British Construction Industry event. Officers from the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority thought they had missed out on a win after another project gained the award in the bridge’s category, but the structure, over the River Ribble, was given a judges’ special award in the London ceremony.
>> Read the Full Article at grough >>

Far Moor Bridge last winter (photo by YDNPA)

Yesterday I was in Lancashire attending the funeral of an old friend, and driving from the church to the cemetery passed the studio of landscape artist Keith Melling.

Keith Melling book - "An Artist in the Dales"

Click here or on the image to order from Amazon.

This morning, looking in any direction from my home in the Eden Valley it seemed clear (although actually it’s ‘misty’ and unclear in a literal sense) that whether to the north (The North Pennines), to the west (The Lake District) or to the south-east (The Yorkshire Dales) it was quite probable that people were going to get rained upon today.

The Dales Countryside Museum, Hawes, Wensleydale

Here’s the first, of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s “Dales Countryside Museum” at Hawes – telling “the story of the people and landscape of the Yorkshire Dales past and present … school days, home life, leisure time, religion, transport, communication and tourism, farming, local crafts and industries”. The museum shares the building with the Hawes National Park Centre, and is wheelchair friendly. Now, where next? Yes, there’s still lots more to do in Hawes.

The Wensleydale Creamery, Hawes, The Yorkshire Dales

With your mind thoroughly informed about the Yorkshire Dales from your visit to the Dales Countryside Museum you can now turn to thinking about your body and visit the Wensleydale Creamery. I suggest that, in common with the other 200,000 or so visitors that come here every year, you forget slimming for an hour or so and enjoy the creamery’s visitor centre with its museum and observation area – then, of course, there’s the shop with its Yorkshire Wensleydale Cheese and lots of other goodies!

Enjoy your Wensleydale “Day in the Damp” – and don’t forget the Wensleydale heritage railway with its station right next to the Dales Countryside Museum.

The River Wharfe, with bridge and stepping stones, at Bolton Abbey

Growing up in the Lancashire-Yorkshire borderlands I quite often found myself crossing the Pennine watershed from the red rose into the white rose county. One of our frequent outings was to Bolton Abbey. As a child, following in the footsteps of former generations, I did exactly what the children are doing in the photograph above – take on the challenge of the stepping stones over the River Wharfe, sometimes getting very wet!

This beautiful spot on the Duke of Devonshire’s estate (now managed by the Cavendish family’s Chatsworth trust) is a favourite destination for thousands from the large cities of the North and much further afield. The 30,000 acre estate has 80 miles of footpaths. You can walk along the river bank, wander through woodland, admire the power of the Wharfe forcing its way through the rocks of the Strid, or climb higher onto Barden Moor and Barden Fell. Alternatively, for those less energetic, there are tea rooms and an area allocated for barbecues.

The “Bolton Abbey” itself, although its has been known as such for centuries, is not strictly an abbey but a priory. It was founded in the 12th century the land having been given by Lady Alice de Romille, mistress of Skipton Castle, to the Augustinian order of monks who had earlier set up a small monastery at nearby Embsay. It developed over the next four hundred years in spite of occasional setbacks due to destructive visitations by Scottish raiders. At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s the main priory buiding was still work in progress. The shell of the east end still stands proudly over the river whilst the west end continues to serve as the local parish church.

Bolton Abbey, by the River Wharfe in the Yorkshire Dales

Bolton Abbey should not be missed by any visitor to the Yorkshire Dales. To my mind it is probably the most beautiful spot in the whole of Yorkshire. Check the Bolton Abbey web site for more details.

One of the great mistakes made by people who know of the northern counties of England as the cradle of the industrial revolution, but have never visited, is to assume that they are “wall-to-wall” blackened dereliction.

Not one bit of it! I must protest, and often do, at such caricatures. Not only do we have wonderful moorland open spaces, imposing mountains, and beautiful river valleys but we also have splendid coastal areas. Here’s Bridlington in East Yorkshire.

The Yorkshire Coast at Bridlington

This is a wonderful area in which to spend an holiday, as we did last year when this photograph was taken from the cliffs on the sea front. Not far away is Flamborough, about which I blogged recently, with its lighthouse and fantastic cliff scenery complete with seabirds in their two-hundred acre nature reserve. Then inland are several very attractive country houses to visit if that’s to your taste. And there’s so much more. I’ll be saying more about this area in future posts.

A week ago I wrote about an unusual lighthouse at Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset.  Moving from the southwest to the northeast today I’m posting a photo I took last year of Flamborough Head Lighthouse, between Bridlington and Filey on the Yorkshire coast.

Actually, if you loook carefully you’ll see that it’s a photo of more than one lighthouse.  The chalk tower in the distance to the right is the seventeenth century lighthouse, now replaced by the modern structure but still in remarkable condition.

Here are two shots which show the reason for the lighthouse. The chalk cliffs are beautiful but dangerous to vessels sailing by this coast.

The area is a Special Area of Conservation, and more than two hundred acres are protected as a Nature Reserve. There is a wealth of seabird life, with one rather large one standing guard.

Driving down the M1 south of Leeds I’ve often noticed the signs for the National Coal Mining Museum but until today had never taken the time to investigate. My wife and I were driving home from North Yorkshire and had nothing else planned so thought we’d take a look.  We were not disappointed.

The main museum, by the A642 midway between Wakefield and Huddersfield, is on the site of Caphouse Colliery and also includes neighbouring Hope Pit. The first surprise on entering the modern entrance hall was that when we asked for a ticket there was no request for payment.  Museum entrance is free. This, however, in no sense should be taken to imply a cheap and amateurish presentation. The Gallery areas include modern multimedia displays and provide a comprehensive picture of English coal mining and of the mining communities and their lifestyles.

Especially emphasised in one area is the awful cost in human life that from time to time was involved. Listening to the recorded news reports of the 1951 Easington Colliery disaster in County Durham I could not help recalling a dark day in March 1962 when the whole town of Burnley was shocked as Hapton Valley Pit exploded.  I was studying in the local college that day and knew that a friend of mine was a miner there; he is alive today only because he’d exchanged shifts with a colleague.

Not only are there the indoor displays at ground level but we were told that we could also have an underground tour. The next one was not for a couple of hours so we decided to leave it for another visit, and certainly a second visit is called for.  We sampled the services of the excellent café, and as usual spent money in the gift shop, then continued on our way home highly satisfied with our detour.

If you’re anywhere in the area of Wakefield, Huddersfield or Barnsley don’t miss a visit to the National Coal Mining Museum.