Walking the Walks

One of the tree lined walks in the Walks, King's Lynn.

In this brief interlude between two phases of non-existence it really seems otiose to have favourites that may, like us, be here today and disappoint tomorrow. Despite this City Daily Photo in what it assures us is its very last first day of the month thing has chosen 'favourite photo' for its theme. Is this a favourite photo? Meh! It'll do for now; until the next one.

Just some trees

Here we're back in King's Lynn in the Walks. Peeking out the background is that old Red Mount Chapel but the trees in their late winter finery are the stars here.

A Twenty Twenty Vision

Remember back in the bad days, the days before the glorious Fat Controller took us all under his gross, adiposal care and smothered us with lock downs, useless, health threatening face muzzles and quarantines and testing (always with the testing) and , now, whisper it softly, a vaccine! Yeah Laissez les bons temps roulez as nobody ever said, ever. You'd have be a "nutter" not to take the vaccine and save lives (it's not about you it's about saving lives, don't be so selfish and wear your mask!) ... Remember when life was so evil that the country was rich with a booming economy, there were shops that sold stuff, bars where you could get a drink, restaurants where you could eat, transport you could use freely, go anywhere without a care, without the glare and the stare ... Do you even recall the simple Referendum to leave the European Union? (or even remember the EU? No, me neither, strange how quickly the memory fades... I had to check yes; it's still there and still falling apart, still wants to fish in UK waters and have the UK pay for its follies, plus ça change...) The madness back then inspired this monstrosity though it seems to be talking more and more of the divisive insanity that strides the land these days, with mass hysteria and ovine compliance with ridiculous politically inspired dictats from ministers who are drowning in their vain, incompetence. The UK is no longer a Parliamentary democracy, no, the land that was the Mother of Parliaments is now run by statutory notices, the rotten, stinking vestige of medieval Royal prerogative, supposedly vetted by MPs but in practice just pushed through without so much as a whisper of a debate, and Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition are just compliant ninnies in this coup d'état. It's dictatorship in all but name. Oh he's a bumbling, avuncular dictator, but that is what he is, have no doubt. I hear he's a classical buff, can recite the Iliad in the original ancient Greek, then no doubt he'll recall the words of Brutus as he shivved old Julius: "Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis". His turn will come, it always does.

The weekend in Black and White is here.

A little bit special

Whenever I see this tree on my way back from the shop I say to myself I must take a picture of it in its springtime glory. Finally I had my phone in my pocket and so here it is. I think it's a maple of some sort but don't trust me on trees, certainly stands out from all the green stuff round here.

The New Walk

Early in the 18^th century someone had the bright idea to construct a walk or mall from the town eastwards across uncultivated, vacant and I'm guessing somewhat swampy land to the Guannock Gate then part of the town walls. It was hardly a long slog being just some three hundred or so yards long but then maybe folk had not made a fetish out of walking as essential to a healthy body and mind but as a means of getting from A to B if you didn't have a horse and cart to help you. Here if you had stuff to strut was where it could be strutted outwith the grime of the town, with ruined walls and meandering Gaywood River to view it was akin to a country park in an urban setting. Anyhow it was the start of something as the New Walk was improved, lined with fine trees, and later a second walk crossed it and then more walks were added as the thing spread out beyond the now demolished town walls. I write all this trivia because I wondered why the place wasn't called something like Le Strange Park or Losinga Gardens or after some other notable local bigwig, it's called the Walks because, though now it may look like a park and walk like a park it is, historically, a collection of walks. So now you know.
By way of comparison Hull when it finally spilled out of its walls in the late 18^th century it dug a big hole and filled it with water; it was the biggest dock in the country, the Queen's Dock. Hull did not get a public park until the 1860s courtesy of gun-running property developer Zach Pearson. However the Queen's Dock is now Queen's Gardens ... with walks.

The Walks are lined with lime trees and horse chestnuts. Somebody has carved this out of a dead one.

St Nicholas Chapel, King's Lynn

While in Lynn this was the view that greeted me each day on my way to get the newspapers in Norfolk Street. Bit different from the usual streetscene.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Whole trees in motion

For the past three or four days they've been at it again. Barely had one little storm faded away than they issue warning of impending doom with another approaching Atlantic depression. They've called this one Dennis and it promises the usual big blow and a whole ocean of wet stuff. Maybe a month's worth of rain in a day, there'll be flooding, there will be recriminations ... But as of now it's just a fresh breeze stirring up my neighbour's birch trees and a little drizzle, time to walk the dogs and get the shopping done or just put your feet up and forget about it.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Blue skies and trees

Snuff Mill Lane

The anticyclonic gloom of the past week has been briskly blown away by a cold front, well, I say cold it's down to a comfortable 6°C so really just a tad below average for late January. Here's some trees from Snuff Mill Lane, Priory Road and thereabouts I took on my morning walk.

Priory Road

Priory Drive

Near Hotham Road North

Near Hotham Road North

Golf Links Road

Winter Trees

In this bleak midwinter rain has fallen, rain on rain ... and so Snuff Mill Lane fields are nicely awash and home to a few wary gulls and it's all a bit otherworldly.

I know it's hard to believe but I have seen a farmer try to grow a crop in these fields a few years ago. Every now and then it gets ploughed, harrowed and sown with barley or some such; I'm not qualified to say what sort of yields comes out of here but it can't be good since it's been fallow for a few years now. I think this is protected land, as in the Council's 'local plan' does not have in its sights, and it's also a site of scientific interest (but that means diddly-squat if developer wants it).

I've mentioned before that it's a great place for seeing the things of nature with birds, roe deer, weasels and so on. Best thing I saw this year was a buzzard being attacked by some crows. I took a not very good picture ...

Driffield Navigation

It is said that you cannot step into the same river twice but that doesn't stop you trying to photograph it. So, pace Heraclitus, here is the Driffield canal (or navigation, if you please) once again and it looks just the same as it ever did, nothing much seems to have changed in the fifty odd years since I first came here (well I've changed obviously, but this is just a virtual scrapbook not a philosophical treatise). Appearances can be deceptive, however, and some nearby things have changed and maybe I'll come to that another day. Meanwhile the old cranes are still there waiting for their close-ups ...

and there's a delightful little seat should it all be too much and you need to rest a while and maybe ponder Wittgenstein's word games and how you really can dip your toes in the same river twice; just mind the ducks ...

Seemed like a good idea at the time

Sometimes a good idea gets just a little out of hand ... this magnificent silver birch adorns, nay, dominates majestically the delight that is Coltman Street.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Whispering sweet nothings

I posted about this delightful surreal carving in Pearson Park before showing the thing being carved and to be honest I thought I'd posted about it again to show the completed work but you know what thought did ... so to put things right here's a few more images. While taking these pictures a man rode by on a bike and clearly he hadn't noticed this before and he nearly fell off craning his neck round  and gaping in disbelief ...

I recall the artist telling me that he was trying to make the figures a bit more child friendly and less scary towards the ground which appealed to Margot who took this picture.

The weekend in Black and White is here.

“Trees, how many of 'em do we need to look at?”

A few years ago I noticed that the two elm trees on Nelson Street were going a bit patchy in the foliage ... oh no, I thought at the time, not the dreaded Dutch Elm Disease again ... still hope for the best I said to myself with no real expectation ... so it came as no great shock or surprise to find that they've recently been removed. Just two more casualties in the long running decimation of millions of these trees across this country and indeed the world.

Here's one of the beautiful beasts back in 2016 just starting to show signs of distress recorded, as it were, for posterity.

Elms produce hundreds of thousands of these 'seeds' every year from what I heard and read not one of them is fertile ... all English Elms are genetically identical clones (brought here by the Romans along with rabbits and pheasants, gratias vobis ago), which doesn't help things if you are looking for a disease resistant variety.

OK I admit I enlarged and fiddled with contrast on this to see how many rings I could count; somewhere around 170 was my best guess which puts our young elm here around 1850ish which would fit in nicely with the opening of the Corporation Pier for the ferry to Lincolnshire.

Green and Blue

I've mentioned before that Cottingham has a fair few splendid trees so I thought I'd post some again because they are still splendid and other things goings-on in the world are somewhat less interesting. This grand old specimen you've seen before but that was in its winter attire; it's a near neighbour of that red beech I posted the other day.

Ambitious Plans for Civic Vandalism

A few weeks ago Hull Council announced what it called "ambitious plans" to capitalise on the city's maritime heritage, you know the kind of thing a museum here, a dry dock with an old trawler there so far so yada yada ... the plan was to put in for some cash from the National Lottery heritage funding ... and all seems pretty harmless but then for some godforsaken reason, they propose the ruination of this road by Queen's Gardens, Guildhall Road I believe is its name. Yes this delightful grass verge with its dozens of mature flowering trees and shrubs has somehow caught the eye of developers and so inflamed their ire that it must be ripped up and replaced by a brick paved desert just like the rest of the City of Dull. Quite how this goes with the maritime thing is beyond me ... but this is the one-horse-town that gave permission for the extension to Burnett House so I guess the abomination will get the nod from the asses who decide these things. I can only hope the National Lottery people reject the begging bowl from these idiots.

You think I exaggerate? ... well go feast your eyes on this illustration of  civic vandalism and tell me I'm wrong.

Bring back the birch

The birch is a pioneering tree, so I'm told, spreading rapidly and colonising clearings and waste lands. It is short lived (if 80-100 years can be called short lived) and makes way for longer lived species such as oak and pine. I don't expect to be around for that development but we plant trees for future generations to enjoy or so they say. There are signs around town telling us "Change is happening"; how true that is.

So to the building itself, well, what can I say? It's a bit fancy and somewhat overdressed for the surroundings the now closed M&S to one side and a hideous brick thing (also, as is the style on Whitefriargate, unoccupied) to the other. Nowadays it's a butcher's shop, or rather a purveyor of meats since I doubt any actual butchery takes place there and everything is wrapped in sealed plastic and looks like it came out of a box rather than a grazing animal... A minute's research reveals the place was originally a public house (yes, yet another ornate Victorian boozer) built in 1884 (the boom years for Hull) with alterations to the ground floor which are so dull they need not detain us.

Big Hidden Treasures

When they came to build on the farm known as West Bulls just to the west of the Hull/Cottingham boundary they arranged to leave a triangular patch of land about 500 sq yards between the houses to allow for service roads or ten foots as they are known in these parts. In so doing they left behind a pair  trees one much older than the other. I think they are beech trees but don't rely on me. Old maps from 1830s show a big tree at this position, the girth of the larger tree puts it at over three hundred years old ... And for the last ninety years or so they continued to grow, out of sight out of mind, giving home to countless generations of crows until one day not so very long ago some stupid oik(s) with a box of matches and no sense of the fine things in life set a fire to the younger of the pair doing considerable damage to the base. That tree was due to be cut down last year but somehow it has survived and is now putting out new leaves into the chilly April air. If this had been in Hull (which it ain't by a few yards) it would have been long gone. We'll see what East Riding of Yorkshire Council do about it. The trees are according to ERYC under tree protection orders.

A lost necropolis

They say there is no returning from the grave but that does not stop me returning to Spring Bank Cemetery with a couple of shots of its leafy summer splendour and Victorian taphophilic excess.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

The Wicked Witch of the Wych

Here's another set I should have posted last year before the grand ennui set in. You might recall an old dead tree being reshaped in Pearson Park and you might also recall me saying there was another dead tree close by that might be available. Well most of last summer someone was busy with a grinder transforming that tree into a mix of faces and animals.

We happened to be passing this tree and saw the guy at work; he stopped and made some kind of hand gesture indicating "would I like to come up and have a closer look?" So after much struggling ( I have the acrobat skills of a hippopotamus ) I eventually got onto the scaffolding and took a few pictures.

"What did I think this was?" asks the guy, "A clown?" says I  having in mind Punch and Judy. He was not impressed, "No, it's a witch! And why would I put a witch here?" he asked (it was beginning to feel a bit like the Spanish Inquisition) I shrug, "The tree was a Wych Elm!" he says with a gleam in eye ...

Here's the nice guy with grinder and  the skill to make things appear out of the wood, his name is Julian Barnard and his work was for the Trustees of Pearson Park. He was given a brief of “poetic” (Philip Larkin's old lodgings are directly opposite and the toad figure is again another Larkin thing) The piece, which is now finished, has the title Whispering Sweet Nothings.

Orange, White and Green

The willow trees on Paragon Street are getting new surrounding walls and some fresh soil by the look of things. I hope the new walls are as comfortable to sit on as the old ones.