The Fair Maid of Goole

I've been though Goole many times by train but never set foot in the place or, to be honest, given it much thought. So what can I tell you about Goole that you don't already know? You'll know that  a Dutchman, one Cornelius Vermuyden,  diverted the river Don (~1629) into a navigable cutting known to this day as the Dutch River which met the Ouse just above the confluence with the Trent. Where the Dutch River met the Ouse up grew or rather developed the village of Goole. (Goole is first mentioned in 1362 as Gulle, a word meaning channel or drain outlet.) The village of Goole was used then for shipping coal from the south Yorkshire coalfields in barges. It developed into a large inland port with the arrival of the Aire and Calder canal. This led to building a town proper, known then as New Goole. The railways arrived in 1848, it's on the Hull to Doncaster line, the motorway, M62, is close by. It now has light industries, Siemens are building a train factory there and the port is thriving and some 18,000 souls inhabit the place.

Now as to landmarks Goole I'm told has a church (below) and two water towers (above) known as Salt and Pepper. There's apparently  a fancy crane or hoist in the docks but I couldn't see that from the train...

... and as our train is departing so we must bid this place adieu...

The Ouse

So to avoid any confusion this is the Ouse. Not the Great Ouse the we met in King's Lynn, nor yet the Little Ouse not even the Sussex Ouse; just the plain old Yorkshire Ouse that runs down from above the city of York until it reaches the Trent and forms the Humber. Like the Great Ouse, this river brought trade and invaders up into the heart of the country to the ancient trading city of York. It has been estimated that a sailing ship could reach York in a few hours from Hull on an incoming tidal bore known locally as the aegir. In 1066 Harald Sigurdsson, king of Norway, aka Hardrada (the hard ruler) took his Viking fleet of several hundred ships up the Ouse to York in one day and defeated the inhabitants at the Battle of Fulford.

So the river is historically important, less so now that Hull took away York's trade, sea going vessels go no further inland than Goole and Vikings have found oil and gas in the North Sea and have settled down to making detective films instead.

The bridge we are going over is the Ouse rail bridge near Goole for we are on a day trip to Sheffield on an  errand so ridiculously silly that you really wouldn't believe grown up, responsible adults would countenance such behaviour.

Hull Fair Rides Again

Photo by Margot K Juby

It's that time of year again when a car park in west Hull is taken over by the biggest travelling fair in the country. It's the week of Hull Fair again, just as noisy, bright and brash as ever, just as crowded as well. This year more folk than ever have crammed into the place, so many the police had to close the street off at one point last weekend. I don't much like the thing itself but, as Margot reminds me every year when I moan about going, it marks the passing of the seasons, autumn can begin now the Fair is here.

The weekend in black and white is here.

A Big, Beautiful Wall

Before we leave Castle Rising to its slumbers just one last gaze upon the earthwork ramparts that reach 120 feet in places and the ditch that surround the keep and the two external baileys.

Such defences might make you think the place was under threat and was somehow of military importance. It seems, however, the place had no strategic value and was just a vanity project, an expensive, over done hunting lodge. The ramparts were just meant to impress and they still do.