Driffield Navigation

About 18 miles due north of Hull is Driffield, the Capital of the Wolds. It's a pretty enough little town that has probably seen better times. The picture shows the Navigation built to connect Driffield with Hull and the Humber. This waterway is really the River Hull straightened out and made navigable. Nowadays it mainly pleasure craft that use it; the last commercial traffic was in the 1940s.

A green thought in a green shade

As I'm sitting here it's been raining more or less continuously for a day with another day's worth waiting to come in off the North Sea. Still if it didn't rain ever this place would soon disappear. The land around Driffield is pretty leaky with lots of springs where the rain that's percolated through the chalky Yorkshire Wolds spurts out. The Keld (from the Scandinavian/Viking for spring) is one such water hole that used to be part of a water powered mill. The whole area is now protected as part of the Millennium Greens project and is well worth searching out (it's not well sign posted).

Driffield Beck

Driffield Navigation

No visit to Driffield would be complete without a quick check that the canal is still there. You never know they might have sold it off to some sovereign wealth fund along with every other asset in this country.

Driffield Church

This is the fifteenth century tower of All Saints Church, Driffield taken against the light, in fact against all that opticians advise, straight into the sun. 

The Weekend in Black and White continues here.

Driffield Amusements

Driffield once had a proper post office in a fine old building, now it's gone ... actually been gone for ten years or so but I only photographed it the other day, I like my urban decay to mature a bit...

& next door, the amusement arcade, is coming along just fine.

Old Crane, Driffield

Took a little trip out to Driffield the other day. It was an unseasonably warm day; as you can see Autumn has barely affected these trees. I've posted some more photos here.

Angel wing

Oh dear. This poor swan has angel wing, a deformity of the last joint of the wing that causes feathers to stick out from the body instead of lying flat. From the little I've read about it, it's thought it could be caused by too much protein in the diet and this guy swimming in a pond near Driffield was very fond of the white bread being thrown to him by little children. So if you're tempted to feed the ducks and so on chuck them some seeds instead.  I've also read that the outlook for birds with this condition is bleak but either there's a lot of this about or this guy has been lurking around Driffield for at least five years since I took the picture below in 2010.

Weekend reflections are here.

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 ...

Sitting in the railway station

I had a few minutes to sit and ponder on the 169 year old Driffield station and what's left of its glory. Above is the old stationmaster's house and the brick stand for a water tank, those white vans are parked in the old coal yards, while behind me the former goods yard is now modern houses. Just up the track to the right there were cattle loading facilities to take beasts to west Yorkshire from the cattle market in town. Below is the passenger station which once had a fine roof like Beverley station but now just awnings keep out the rain. Nowadays just four small trains an hour pass through whereas in the 1940's there were up to 125 train movement in one morning!
Well good riddance to all that I say. Coal is a foul stinking fuel, steam engines are inefficient mucky things and the great British railway system was a complete and utter unco-ordinated shambles with hundreds of uneconomic lines running hither and yon. There's a progress of sorts in all this, canals put out the wagoners, train put out the bargemen and diesel lorries put out the trains. No doubt the lorries and vans will be put out by something as yet unknown (though I don't see drones taking off, if you pardon the pun).
In the UK, unlike just about every other country,  the state played no part at all in planning or building the rail infrastructure. The early 19th century saw a mad rail glut as it were, completely bonkers and bound to fail which it duly did along with much criminality and fraud. After the last war rail was nationalised and rationalised and was working pretty well until monetarist ideology sold it off. Nowadays our rail system is officially much better organised with a mere 28 companies receiving between them a meagre £4 billion in state subsidies though it is said that this may rise (or skyrocket as one opposition MP put it). But surely it is only right and proper for the latter-day successors of George Hudson that the costs inherent in owning a licence to print money from a natural monopoly should be placed firmly on the broad shoulders of the long suffering taxpayer.
I'd better go now, I'm beginning to ramble incoherently ...

If you really want to know just about everything there is to know about Driffield station then follow this link.

Yet More Driffield Amusements

Driffield, let's be honest, is not a big place. A visitor would be stretched to say it had more than one street, named rather sweetly as Middle Street. Now Middle Street is not to be mocked; it is long enough to have two halves: Middle Street North and Middle Street South. But the visitor need not worry about such quaintness, Driff has one street and most everything is on it. So let us just say that we are at the southern end of the strip and here's the Butcher's Dog, which I assume is a public house of some sort. I post only because I think the sign writing is superb ... I don't go in pubs these days, haven't for years. I'm told that now you can't smoke in them they reek of farts, sweat and stale beer ... delightful!

But what is that piano keyboard peeking out on the left? Why it's nothing less than a singing barber ...

Now this has three of my pet hates all in one window: Hallowe'en (boring commercialised Yankee reimport of a Scottish export), the Beatles (vastly overrated crud) and Elvis (just plain emetic yuck from the get go!). So well done  them! Barbers, with or without singers,  I also haven't been in since even longer than pubs. 

A poor life this if, full of care,

...We have no time to stand and stare?

These beauties were by the Driffield canal the other day; not once did they let me out of their sight. 

Barmston Drain

The Beverley and Barmston drain to give it its full name drains the land between Beverley and Driffield and runs to the west of the river Hull joining it just before the mouth of the river. The pictures here are from the stretch near Sculcotes Lane in Hull. It's pleasant enough now with a tarmac footpath, almost civilised, but when the gas works and electricty power station were operating up to the 1960s the drain was used for cooling the plant and waste hot water was pumped back into the drain making it steaming and polluted. Houses backed on to the drain it was all very Dickensian. Here's Philip Larkin in 1964 having a stroll by the drain while reading one of his more depressing verses.

Now the drain is crystal clear and well stocked with fish and there's abundant wildlife. Of course where there's drains there's rats.

The pump don't work 'cause the vandals took the handles

Took myself off to Driffield yesterday afternoon, don't know why I bothered since there's nothing much there but it's a trip out of the house. By the beck I came across this old pump that's seen better times. Why they needed such a tall pump I don't know but the road is called Laundry Lane so that might have something to do with it.

The Old White's Sugar Mill, Driffield

This old building is gradually falling in decay. I believe there are plans to demolish and build flats.

Riverhead Apartments, Driffield

Nothing much changes or so it seems at this place. It was just like this when I first came here nearly half a century ago. Maybe the warehouse apartment developments are newish but it looks much the same.

The weekend seems to have crept up on us again. See it in black and white here. Or see its reflection here.

All Saints' Day

A church tower is a beacon to direct the faithful to the house of God; it is a badge of ecclesiastical authority, and it is the place from whence the heralds of the solemnities of the church, the bells, send forth the summons. Let no one imagine that a tower is a superfluous expense, it forms an essential part of the building, and should always be provided in the plan of a parochial church.

Augustus Welby Pugin

I thought there had to be a reason for these things that pepper the countryside, there I was thinking they built them for the view. But then again this is Pugin speaking and he was a distinctly odd fellow. Here's the tower of All Saints church in Driffield built around 1450. As I mentioned earlier the church was revamped by Gilbert Scott in the 1880's when eight additions were made to the tower, not to everyone's delight. The church's own website says of them "The eight pinnacles at the top, 110 feet from the ground, also elaborately panelled, are somewhat unsatisfactory and heavy in appearance:...which gave them a distinctly debased type of crocket decoration". Still it's an impressive pile of stones for all that.

Today, the feast of All Saints (somehow I don't think that'll ever include me), is also City Daily Photo's theme day with the subject 'Heights'. See what others have got up to here.

A bend in the river

 The weather is stuck at the moment under a high pressure which means for the east of the UK we get good old anticyclonic gloom, day after day of cloudy skies drifting in off the North Sea. At least it stays dry so I can get out and about. Here's the River Hull taking one of its many twists and turns near the source at Driffield. The area around here is a protected site of scientific interest with many special plants and animals.

Driffield Navigation in January

I posted a shot from this spot in June when all was green and leafy. It was so gloomy when I visited the other day that I thought why not a monchrome shot.

Blackheaded Gull

Took a trip out to Driffield the other day with a view to taking some photos. I managed this one and about half-a-dozen more when the batteries in my camera went flat. I had another camera but the batts had died in that too; so I was not the happiest of bunnies.

*Insert the usual seasonal cliché here*

  

I'm feeling even lazier than normal so the next few days may be filled with trees going orangey-yellow like it has never happened before. This scene is near Driffield keld last seen in verdant splendour here.