Coniston - 31/7/09

Well, the day which seemed unlikely earlier in the week, when it was bucketing it down and I was coming down with cold: Scafell Pike with Christine and Gav. The morning was bright and even Christine remained resolute, despite this being her first mountain for about seven years. There was a horrendously long drive and Gav's style betrays a man who watches too many episodes of Top Gear. But it was worth it when Wasdale came into view. I'd forgotten how forlorn and beautiful the valley is. It's dominated by huge mountains, the most ostentatious being the rocky faces of Great Gable. Half the valley floor is swallowed by the bleak Wast Water; the other section is a labyrinthine of dry stone walls. (Surely the product of a benign but naïve EU grant.) And acting like a lighthouse is the white walls of the Wasdale Arms. (“Home of the world's biggest liar” though they didn't say who.) We parked near the pub and began on a path snaking up the flank of Great Gable. Across the valley, Scafell Pike was looking increasingly impressive; great buttresses of crags with the peak, well, peeking up behind, two gulleys scouring deep wounds into the hillside. Wast Water soon opened up behind us and, finally, the distant gleam of the sea. The path was nicely varied too. A gently rising track; a rather nasty slog across shale; and a good semi-scramble up to the pass of Sty Head. This gave us our first great view of overlapping fuck-off mountains; and if a man is tired of views of overlapping fuck-off mountains, he is tired of life. The route also became unclear here, partly because we had three generations of wayfinders. There was Gav's chilling GPS system. There was Christine's slightly more subjective reading of the OS map. And there was Wainwright offering highly useful advice like “Many good men get lost here.” Eventually we located our path, the Corridor Route which traversed under the cliffs of Great End back along Wasdale. It gave us some good views of Great Gable, which has weird patches of red rock near the top mitigating its grey flanks. Crossed those gulleys, which seemed as impressive at close hand, eating our lunch in one. Hit another pass and, for the first time, the wind. Not the truly malicious wind which tried blowing me off Coniston Old Man but definitely a breeze nonetheless. The way was becoming increasingly crowded, with all routes converging into one. There were a few drop-outs though, and I can't really blame them. The final summit ascent was a bit grim. In fact it was a dreary five hundred foot slog over broken rock, a 'Frodo's trek through Mordor' with additional wind. At least, to my amazement, there was no cloud. We saw Scotland and the Solway Firth, we saw the sea and Sellafield. And finally we reached the summit and saw the world. Well, not really – the light was too bad even for the Isle of Man – but there were some outstanding panoramas of the Lakes at its best. Enjoyed the sights for as long as the gale would permit, then dropped down into the pass of Mickledore. We gaped at a man climbing Scafell by Lord's Rake, an apparently vertical scar of shale. Then we found our way down was almost as bad. It began as an apparent dried stream bed, then widened into a sort of unofficial scree run. The descent finally became gentler but was on one of those god-awful constructed paths, made of stone slabs which are really slippery in the wet. And so, before you could say “This was almost my favourite walk ever”, it started to rain. A lot, for quite a long time. We slogged on for a time, crossing a rushing stream with some difficulty. (All those rocks, bags of extra rocks by the wayside, and they didn't even make any steppy-stones.) Weather and ground seemed to work in tandem on this walk, however. As soon as the track became a proper path again, curling around a hillside back towards the car park, the rain stopped. So we got back to the car feeling knackered but happy. And I achieved my two objectives for the holiday: one day climbing Scafell Pike, one day tramping the hills alone like a miserable old get. And if there's been a large 'pretty good, considering...' factor to this holiday, it was nonetheless still pretty good. The house wasn't perfect – dad was on the phone to the unfortunate landlord this evening pointing out its many imperfections – but it was good enough. Still, I note our plan for future holidays is to get back to Patterdale and Broad How as quickly as possible.

Coniston - 30/7/09

OK weather for once so we had a kind of Super Strolls Thursday. First drove up to Tarn Hows, at the top of the Coniston valley. As mum said, it's a kind of mini-Lake District, a little wooded valley with an artificial lake. The best feature are the looming mountains of the actual Lake District all around. We took the inevitable walk around the lake, about two miles all told, with Christine setting Lorna a nature spotting test to distract her from her many – possible apocryphal – stitches. Sadly there wasn't all that much nature to see, with even ducks shunning the lake like it was poison. It started to rain as lunchtime approached, in a rather predictable way. But then it stopped and we got to have a picnic outside the car for once, in a spot with a very good view of Cumbria's Dead Sea. By now the girls were set on the Beatrix Potter Experience. Me, Bill, mum and dad, not wanting to experience that in any circumstances, split off from them. We weren't sure what we did want to do, but after lengthy discussion stayed at Tarn Hows for another stroll. This one was downhill through the woods, alongside another noisy and tempestuous beck. Unfortunately the path was a bit too Alpine for Bill so we soon had to turn back. I darted along a bit further until I got in sight of a road, seeing en route another decent little waterfall. Next we drove over the top into Langdale. This looked more like a proper Lakes valley to my eyes; Coniston is OK but it's a bit too borderland and civilised. Langdale has tiny slate villages, high hills on both sides and, at the head, the rocky and towering Langdale Peaks. We stopped about halfway down and strolled down a path supposedly leading alongside Eltenwater. It actually did everything it could to avoid the lake, though capitulated about three quarters of the way along to give us a trademark water-and-mountains view to photograph. Had tea at a weird café-cum-grocery-cum-outdoors centre, and got home just in time for our usual meal out. This was at the Red Lion, a small and lively pub just down the lane. Pub food too, which meant it was decently priced and concentrated on actually tasting nice, and a “folks from round here” landlord straight from Central Casting. He even had a West Country accent, which was a bit odd. Mum and dad insisted on breaking into a churchyard on the way back, but otherwise a good evening.

Coniston - 29/7/09

Mum and dad went off to Walney Island today to get attacked by gulls, which is apparently something they enjoy. The rest of us, noting it was bloody raining again, headed to Barrow for the Docks Museum. Originally one of those “ho ho, let's go to the Docks Museum, that must be almost as interesting as the Pencil Museum” deals, it was now our only feasible wet-weather option left. And it turned out to be pretty good. Though small – it was free – it was lively and informative, and fortunately about Barrow itself rather than just docks. The town flew up out of nothing in the nineteenth century when mineral mining in the Lakes took off and the railways opened up the Cumbrian coast. It also turned its hand to building ships and, more recently, nuclear submarines. But it's been in hard times for a long while, getting bombed to shit in WWII and contracting dramatically due to economics. The museum was also quite defensive about Barrow being a bit of a dump. Certainly, from the bits we saw, it seems largely composed of bleak industrial estates. The weather had cleared up by the time we left, so we decided to head for the nearby zoo. Now, I'm never entirely sure about zoos. The best ones, I think, are like Barrow Zoo, which lets some animals wander all over the place as if they own it. We mocked the signs at the entrance warning us of the wild lemurs. But there the buggers were, scampering all over the playground. In another area emus were wandering leisurely across the path. Otherwise the primates were the star attraction: the spider monkeys scampering over the raised walkway, the gibbon casually making a heart-stopping drop to a branch twenty feet below. Best of all, a monkey lying on a giant tortoise; and giving us a glare which clearly said “Well? Why shouldn't I lie on giant tortoises?” Less impressive were the lions (asleep, as always) and the tiger feeding session, which was a twenty minute lecture followed by a five second glimpse of a tiger eating a chicken. Anyway, the girls enjoyed themselves, and Gemma got a cuddly lemur to compliment Emily's gibbon which she wears everywhere as a sort of rucksack. Lorna has a dinosaur egg but it's not hatched yet, and I'm a bit worried what will happen when it does.

Coniston - 28/7/09

Well, the cold has arrived at least. And the rain's back, varying from drizzle to torrent all day. Throw in a tendency of everyone to lose everything and you've got something called 'not exactly a perfect day.' Started with yet another trip to Coniston, this time with some plan to go on the steam launch. But a storm was a-brewing, allegedly, so we had to settle on yet another walk around the village. Said storm never arrived but a lot more downpours did, so it was basically a morning of diving into shops to keep dry. Had packups in the cars, then drove around Coniston Water to the home of the man who looms over the parts almost as tall as Beatrix Potter: John Ruskin. He was buried in Coniston itself, and intended his house on the lake to be one of those Arcadias for thought and enquiry. Apparently it worked so well that late in his life he had to move out of his main bedroom because it kept giving him too many inspirations and doing his head in. I don't know much about Ruskin but apparently he was one of those Renaissance men who dabbled in everything. This included designing some wallpaper and a zither for his house. And very nice they were too. It was an interesting house, the design done more for originality than showing off piles of riches. But it did have an over-reliance on thumping great views of Coniston Water; good in the first room, less so by the seventh or eighth. We went around the grounds afterwards, which proved to be a great maze of zig-zagging paths up and down the hillside. The kids had fun scooting along them doing some nature quiz, the rest of us enjoyed some very weird plants and the rare phenomenon of not getting rained on. Had tea at a converted stable after a 14 hour wait, drove part of the way home, drove back again when dad thought he'd left his Visa card behind (it later turned up in an unexplored part of his wallet), finally managed to drive home. Not a bad day but, as I said, not exactly perfect; and at dinner we indulged in a spot of “At Broad Howe” (the perfect house in Patterdale we'd been for the last three years) “things are better.”

Coniston - 27/7/09

Rapid change of plans today. The forecast said the rest of the week will be monsoons, basically. So I decided to get a day's walking done while it was only raining occasionally. Scrounged a lift off Gav to Coniston and set off on the same lane as yesterday. Well, actually I set off on a different lane initially, but all my walks begin in confusion. Crossed the stream on an extremely old and quaint miner's bridge and took a path climbing up the hillside out of Coppermines Valley. Got wet on the lane with the shelter of the trees; got absolutely drenched in another shower on the exposed hillside. The top of my target, Coniston Old Man, was resolutely covered in clouds and I did start doubting my decision. Soon reached the remnants of the old mines, a few interesting derelict buildings but a hell of a lot of spoil heaps too. And what with the parties shrieking up and down the mountain, I was soon agreeing with Wainwright on all points. A reliable sign of old age, I'm told. There were some views as I got higher, allowing me to witness every other part of the country save mine bathed in sunshine. And they vanished as I broke the cloud barrier. Slogged through increasingly grim country; got lost, thankfully surrounded by people getting equally lost so I felt less silly; passed some spots which I'm sure would have yielded spectacular views if, you know. The summit offered uplifting sights of a party of gets taking the only shelter from the phenomenal wind which appeared from nowhere. It now has my fags and lighter, which I dropped in a protracted moment of confusion. The sensible thing would have been to just go back. So I set off on the ridge path, thankfully well marked by cairns, towards Swirl How. And it was odd – the wind, the isolation and the total lack of visibility, or indeed point, somehow made it enjoyable. This feeling rather vanished when I was hit by a shower with drops the strength of a hailstorm. But gradually, grudgingly, the cloud started to lift. Eventually I was getting more views of Coniston; still in sunshine, the bastard. Even better was the sight of the Real Lake District on the other side, a mass of looming peaks. Swirl How was another trudge up but the descent was fun, a semi-scramble down something called Prison Ridge or thereabouts. The pass below was where I originally intended to begin the descent. But that isn't how my walks work and the peak ahead, Weatherlam, looked too inviting. It turned to to be a bit further than I thought but there were even better views, the cloud having lifted from the top of all the peaks. Including the Old Man, but never mind. Descended on a path which simply vanished half way through. You could see where to get to but there were some sharp drops with apparently no safe way down, and all around the hillside there were people staring at it with quizzical expressions. Finally got down, reaching a path curling back to Coppermines Valley and safety. A surprisingly good walk by the end. Less hearteningly, I've got both a bugger of a cold and a seizure on the way.

Coniston - 26/7/09

Clichés, clichés. Chucking it down with rain this morning – and I mean real, torrential, start-gathering-two-of-every-animal rain. So this morning the only trip was back to that tourist hot-spot, the supermarket at Ulverstone. Emily and Gemma, incidentally, are turning into right little buggers. They piss about, you tell them not to and they just laugh at you. And I'm babysitting them in a couple of week's time. Anyway, we had one of Christine's trademark enormous buffet lunches, by which time the rain had stopped. There was even a few hints of sun at times. With the Harvey girls repeatedly chanting “Aquarium! Aquarium!” (a place were you can stroke a sting ray, apparently, as if you'd want to) me, mum and dad struck out on our own. Drove along a typical Lakes road – windy, hilly and full of sheep – for a time alongside Coniston Water and finally reached Coniston itself. I swore I'd been here last year but apparently it was an almost identical Lake District town. Namely, fully of walkers and tourists, built in the odd local style of dark stone walls and slate roofs, and overshadowed by a great fuck-off hillside. We started walking along a little lane running alongside an understandably full and roaring stream. There were little waterfalls all along the stream, but I still think the tiny hydroelectric dam at the top was a bit optimistic; it might power two light bulbs but no more. Beyond this, the gorge suddenly opened into Coppermines Valley. This would once have been a standard beauty spot; a wide, shallow river at the bottom, little rocky nodules on the flanks and, at the head, the looming mass of the Coniston Old Man range. But they weren't joking when they named the valley. This used to be a thriving industrial centre. The old mine buildings have been converted into holiday homes and a YHA, but there's still two thumping great spoil heaps in the centre and yawning holes in many cliff faces. Wainwright spit acid at all this, of course, but I think it gives the valley some character. We walked along for a while, dad trying to locate a boulder he climbed on when he was 14. We did eventually see it, but it was laughing at us on the far horizon so we just turned around and went back. The insect problem has been solved by fly paper, temporarily turning this house into a series of hanging graveyards. And how stupid are flies anyway? When they see a strip of paper festooned with corpses of their cousins, why don't they think “This is something to avoid”?

Coniston - 25/7/09

So once again it's the Lake District for us. Which has become the new Scotland, which in turn has become the new Cornwall, I guess, which... anyway. The poignant note on this holiday, of course, is that Granddad is no longer with us. An ever-present on these family trips and, for that matter, the one who paid for them all.

Picked up my my parents this morning at the rather decadent time of 10.00. A new route was devised which mainly involved crawling along really slow roads and getting stuck for about half an hour in Harrogate – not a good place to get stuck in any circumstances. We eventually made it up to the Dales, which looked very nice in the clear sunshine. Stopped at a Little Chef which amazed us by not being awful, saw a bunch of cows standing in a lake as a sort of protest, passed a factory specialising in 'wound management' (i.e. plasters). Finally saw the Lakes in the distance and then, after an age, got out of bloody Yorkshire. Had lunch on a tiny road halfway up a hillside with more mountains in the distance – and that's been the theme of the day. We're not at Patterdale this year, right in the heart of the Lakes. We're on the edge, in an area officially known as 'kind of near Coniston', and the 360 degree view of the peaks which Patterdale enjoys is more like 20 degrees. We're also travelling back in time somewhat; the villages we passed through seem to have been preserved in the 1960's without the help of a Sunday evening TV show. Stopped at Ulverstone, the nearest town of any significance, for shopping, drove alone a rather good estuary for a while, made several turns up increasingly narrow and windy lanes and finally found the house, despite the best intentions of the designers. It was allegedly once a vicarage and the Ye Olde aspect is being pushed mightily. Open fireplaces, creaking roof beams, a bath suite that seems to have been pinched wholescale from the Castle Museum and legions of flies in the pantry-cum-kitchen. For once everyone didn't arrive at once. We were here miles before the others, allowing me to pinch the only bedroom with that 20 degree view – of the Coniston range, incidentally. My stepbrother Gav and his kids finally arrived, having got repeatedly lost on the way here. A bit later came my sister Christine and Uncle Bill, who's got a week's pass from psychiatric hospital. And he must have felt he was back there again after I spent a lot of time running after my nieces Emily and Gemma, all of us screaming. Though I'm glad to say the elder girl, Lorna, seems to be cultivating a more restrained, bookish persona. Only another seven years or so and she'll be ready for full teenage angst.

Nature Is Closed For The Forseeable Future

Legislation That Seems To Have Been Inspired By An Episode Of The Simpsons Part 512: Arnie 'I'm As Stupid As I Look And That Takes Some Doing' Schwarzenegger has come up with a new solution to California's budget deficit. That's the budget deficit he was elected to solve and which has now grown to $26bn. He's proposing to shut down virtually all California's national parks. Terminate them, if you will.

Now, I'm a little shaky on the American national parks, but I gather that they're not quite like the British ones. They're the only rural places where people are allowed to wander freely, the rest being private farmland with no rights of way. Arnie is basically wanting to close nature.

Two thoughts come to mind. One is that Californians are going to get really fat. Even fatter than they are now. That's what happens when you deny people the chance to exercise. So if obesity starts to suddenly rocket, for once McDonald's Ginormous Size Burgers (or whatever) won't be to blame. It will be Arnie and his superbly chiselled body. The other thought: how do you shut down nature anyway? I guess there are two possible things Arnie could do. He could simply fire all the park rangers, close down the information centres and let the areas become wildernesses again, free to man and beast. Or he could put whopping great fences around them all and shoot anyone trying to get in. Arnie is a member of the Republican Party. Which option do you think he'll choose?

Some of the many criticism of the plans say they are short sighted on economic grounds. Closing the parks will stem a revenue stream for the state, however meagre. Unfortunately I think Arnie is less myopic than people suspect. He will be left with a great deal of land doing nothing, costly to police but much of it in spectacular locations. How soon before he starts accepting bids from developers looking to build yet more Exclusive Executive Housing? And even if California decides in the future that it can reopen the parks, the sold land will be lost forever. A plan worthy of C. Montgomery Burns himself.

Yet Another Gate

So that's this week's Grand Villains sorted out. The group who excite days of inflammatory headlines, public – i.e. media – outrage, chin-stroking analysis and calls for regulation, castigation and annihilation. I'm surprised there's anybody left. After expense-fiddling politicians, greedy bankers, crooked TV companies, women in burkhas, children in hoods, worshippers of Islam and (time after time) asylum seekers comes... the print media. The ones who always lead these moral panics. There's a whiff of the French Revolution here, the original persecutors ending up on the guillotine themselves. Though it's rather less bloody, of course, and much, much duller.

Basically, the claims go, the News of the World hired a legion of Philip Marlowes to bug and burgle assorted public figures. Then, when the figures found out, it paid them thumping out-of-court settlements to stop the cases coming to light. Which they have now anyway, largely thanks to the hush money paid to PFA head Gordon Taylor. The BBC has been gleefully leading with the story, probably still sore from the kicking which the NotW gave it over the phone-in scandal and the Queen docu-fiasco. The motive of the Guardian, which broke the story, is slightly different. “Murdoch's £1m bill for hiding dirty tricks” bellows the headline, and phrases like “Murdoch executives” and “Murdoch company” appear throughout. Nobody has yet profited by going after Rupe, as Setanta has just discovered, but the Guardian clearly thinks it worth another shot.

What stands out, as is so often the case, is the absurdity of it all. Gordon Taylor is one of the few high-profile union leaders left and so a hate figure for the NotW. There was conceivably an effort being made to destroy him. A couple of politicians, Tessa Jowell and John Prescott, were also bugged. But so were two agents, Sky Andrews and the egregious Max Clifford. The paper wasn't conducting an investigation into the secret mechanism of Britain here. It wanted gossip and tittle-tattle. Surely it could have just made all that up, as it usually does? Instead, though, it paid a lot of money to private investigators and a lot more to camouflage their actions. Even with Murdoch's funds to draw upon, this is a shocking waste for an industry supposedly in crisis. There is also similarities to the great scandals of the 1990's. From Bill Clinton to Jeffrey Archer, what got them was not the original act but what they later did to hide that act. If everyone wasn't so damn cautious all the time there would be a lot more happiness around.

Anyway, the journalists have been exposed by the journalists. We know how it works now. More papers will probably be pulled into the miasma. The whole industry will don a hair shirt and promise to reform itself. A great many self-righteous articles will appear; Gordon Brown will fire off some pompous sound bites and maybe appoint someone like Alan Yentob as Journalism Tsar. And then the next Grand Villains will appear. Personally I'm hoping for the novelists. They're too smug by half. And they must have done something. Everyone has; which is why these calls of outrage are always so shrill. Get your torches, you vengeful mob, and head off to Bloomsbury.

Rome 16/9/08

Well, the Galleria Borghese is one thing I'm destined not to do. Yesterday, like everywhere else, it was closed. Today I climbed up from Plaza del Popola, past the amazing viewpoint over the city and the disturbing beggar who sits on the stairs. Had a pleasant stroll through the Villa Borghese, once a private estate and now a public park. One highlight was the Piaza di Siena, a large oval space where you'd expect a lake or a lawn. Instead there's just a load of packed earth. To add extra surreal touches, parrots were squealing in the trees overhead. Finally got to the gallery to see a sign saying, full, advance tickets only. How can a gallery be closed? Especially this one, it's huge. So had to got to the Gallery of Modern Art elsewhere in the park. It was OK, if rather dominated by some bloke whose one idea was that large means good. There was some interesting pieces behind him, though, particularly from the Italian wave of Impressionists.

Meandered back to Popola afterwards and popped into Santa Maria dei Miracoli, one of the churches which frames Via del Corso. It was a nice, unpretentious little place, another rotunda with refreshingly subdued decoration. I then tried once more to navigate to the Trevi Fountain.
Eventually managed it this time, after losing my way and temper occasionally, and got a surprise. I was expecting, well, just a fountain. Instead it's a huge structure taking up the whole façade of a substantial building. A fountain does form part of it, but is almost incidental. You'd definitely call it baroque, you might easily call it hideous, but it certainly tries hard. Then went another backstreet way back to what I call the Dogs Bollocks of Rome, noting en route an alley which decided it had to have four covered bridges over it. Had lunch on a wall overlooking Trajan's Markets, Trajan's Column, Trajan's Anything Else. If it's Trajan's, as a rule, it's good.

Unable to stop myself I then took a farewell look at the Forum. I said it all earlier, so will just add: the place seems just as astonishing in later views. Then went into the Capitoline Museum. This was allegedly the first proper museum in the world, built in the Renaissance to house Roman relics. The first floor especially is fantastic. Part is housed in an ancient Roman temple, so the air of antiquity is enhanced by ancient brick barrel arched ceilings. There's also galleries overlooking the Forum and Palatine, giving me yet more farewell views of them.. The Renaissance rooms are almost overwhelming, each wall covered in a huge mural which illustrates part of Roman history. They have the famous bronze she-wolf, with its two suckling twins unfortunately added in later times. There's also the huge Marcus Aurelius statue, once housed in the Piazza del Campidoglio until they noticed it was falling apart. A lot of Renaissance paintings are upstairs, which reminded me that one can quickly grow bored of Renaissance paintings. They certainly didn't skimp on the paint though; one canvas must have needed a cherry picker to complete. Fantastic museum, despite the excessively snotty staff.

Afterwards I made a brief call to the Mametine, the old Roman prison. There's just two rooms open, an entrance chamber and a cell underground. It had the grim, claustrophobic air of all old dungeons, with added clamminess to the air. St Peter once allegedly nutted the wall, causing a fountain to miraculously spring up; after long in there I'd have been doing the same. (The headbutt, if not the miracle). Then popped into another church, where the presence of a single genuine worshipper eventually cleared the premises of all tourists. And then there was more wandering of back streets. Rome is a great place for it, with picturesque old buildings lining remarkably clean alleyways. The only trouble is that even here you're at risk of being run over by crazed scooters. The few pedestrian 'streets' are not so much alleys as cracks. Visited another church – if you're low on funds you tend to dive into any open church doors you see – this one a bit more Catholic. A daffy Bernini statue stood up front, and I'm not sure of the old lunatic designed the building itself but he might as well have done. Garish, and over-decorated again, with some beautiful paintings adorning the walls of the many side chapels. Nice to see some stained glass for once. Less sure about what seemed to be the waxed corpse of a past bishop underneath an alter.

Later on I managed to visit the Piazza Navona without it bringing on any seizures. It stands on the site of an old Roman arena and still has the contours, being a huge, sweeping rectangle. Three fountains decorate it. Sadly the central one, apparently the best, was under scaffolding. This, however, was one of the few examples I saw of the alleged Roman custom of keeping all their sites closed for perpetual maintenance. Walked back along the underused Tiber, got another look at the wonderful Sonte Sant Angelo bridge and found a novel way to get lost; following a city wall when I should have been following the Vatican's defences. And that was more or less it. I'm rather aware that each day on this vacation was slightly worst than the previous one. Nonetheless, they had a hell of a high point to descend from. Wonderful place.