The Pinnacles National Park - October 2018

In early October we paid a short visit to Pinnacles National Park for a couple of nights camping.  Pinnacles are in the middle of California, on the eastern edge of the Coastal Range. They are a series of tuff and breccia volcanic peaks sitting adjacent to the San Andreas Fault Line.  

Early Morning Sun on the Pinnacles High Peaks

There are two entrances to the park, an east and a west but no road through connecting them.  We stayed on the eastern side where there is the only campsite at Bear Gulch. I picked a nice quiet site just the right distance away from the toilets with no close neighbors.  After our site was set up along come a family with a baby who make an incredible amount of noise erecting their tent - hammering stakes in the ground so it would withstand a hurricane.  What was worse was the baby - crying incessantly. I know babies cry but this went on for a long long time. There were lots of other campsites why did they park themselves there.

The baby did eventually get settled and we all slept well at last.  There was a fair bit of rain in the night and for the first time in many a year the tent’s flysheet got tested.  All was well and dry inside.

The park is not very big and it can be hiked across in a morning.  We took something called the Bear Gulch Trail to a series of “caves” which we scrambled through.  They are not really caves in the classic sense merely tunnels formed by boulders falling into narrow gorges creating space to crawl through.

The Reservoir 

After the caves we climbed up to the reservoir area, a beautiful reservoir built to supply water to who knows who or where.  The water level was quite low in this late fall season.

After the reservoir we took the High Peaks Trail which climbs through the higher peaks of the Pinnacles complex.  There are some beautiful rock faces, much loved by the climbing community, and some interesting narrow pieces of the trail where steps have been cut into the rock.  The section known as the Narrows are quite steep and of course, narrow and are well protected by metal fencing.

We made our way back to Bear Gulch via the Condor Gulch trail.  Unfortunately today the Condors were not cooperating in showing themselves.  There is a breeding colony here that after the captive breeding program has successfully established itself in the wild.  Possibly later on back in camp there was a sighting of one soaring high over the peaks way in the distance.

There were other wild life sightings though - lots of Pileated Woodpeckers, Phoebes, California Quail and even a rare red-legged frog and a bobcat.  I don’t think I have seen a bobcat before and this one was a beauty.

In the evening due to a lack of acceptable wine we made a 60 minute run to fetch wine from the nearest town which is Paicines.  Not that it is a big town, blink and you miss it, but it has a store that sells wine, albeit cheap wine.

Balconies Trail

That night we moved campsites to avoid the crying baby but as far as we know the baby was quiet.  In the morning we broke camp early and I went for a run (training for the half-marathon at the weekend).  A gorgeous 5 miler along the Chacone Creek on the Balconies Trail. As the sun came up the early morning light was catching the peaks and the light was just wonderful.

There are more photos here.

Chesterfield Canal - September 2018

Near where I grew up in Derbyshire there is a canal, the Chesterfield Canal.  In its original form it ran some 46 miles from Chesterfield to West Stockwith on the River Trent which then allowed water access to the North Sea.  It was designed by James Brindley and was completed in 1777. It allowed goods and materials from the Peak District to be transported out to the Trent and thereby the North Sea and the world outside.  Among other things cannonballs were produced in Chesterfield for use in the Napoleonic Wars and stone for the building of Westminster Abbey were transported on the canal.

I have a very hazy memory from my childhood of seeing an old canal barge being pulled along by a horse but that must have been when I was very young as by the end of the 1950’s there was no commercial trade on the canal and it fell into disrepair and much of it was filled in.  

Railway Bridges near Chesterfield

Since the late 1970’s there has been an effort to rebuild the canal for leisure purposes and and there is now a 5 mile section from Chesterfield to Staveley that is restored and is navigable by canal boats.  This new section has become one of my favorite places to run - it is a great

surface and being a canal it is flat except for the odd lock.  There are some quite beautiful sections along the route and all the reconstruction work on locks and bridges has been done to a very high standard.

I ran with my phone the other day and took some photos along the way.  It is truly a treasure of the area. One day it is hoped that it will be completed all the way out to the River Trent again but the completion date keeps getting pushed back.  There is a new housing estate to be bypassed and a now collapsed tunnel to be rebored. That being said there is only 9 more miles of the original 46 miles to restore, but it is a difficult 9 miles.

There has been a resurgence of wildlife too.  In my youth everything was so polluted you rarely saw much wildlife, but now there are geese, swans, kingfishers, deer along the banks, and even fish in the canal.  

Chesterfield Church - the Crooked Spire, not too crooked from this perspective

The restoration work continues in Hartington, Staveley.

One of the interesting historical notes along the way is at Newbridge Lane between Brimington and Whittington.  Apparently in 1603, well before the canal was built, there was an outbreak of the plague in Brimington and there was a bridge at this site over the River Rother that runs alongside the current canal.  The bridge was pulled down to stop the spread of the plague.  The replacement bridge built after the plague was therefore called New Bridge.

There are more photos here.

Latvia and Lithuania - September 2018

In September I had a few days off from caring for mum in Derbyshire and I flew to Riga, Latvia for the weekend.  It was a ridiculously cheap outward flight on Friday morning for around $35 with a more expensive $100 return on the Monday.  That is a great deal for what is over a 2 hour flight each way despite it being on the bare bones carrier RyanAir - no luxuries there.

Landing in Riga, it was a simple and easy bus trip into the center of town. It dropped me off at the main bus/train station and since it was only lunchtime and too early to check into the hotel I set off to explore.  

The National Academy of Science, Riga

The Academy of Sciences Building, Riga

Nearby the bus station was the Latvian Academy of Sciences Building. It is a fine Stalinist piece of architecture affectionately referred to as Stalin’s Birthday Cake by the locals.  It was built after WWII and seems a bit disheveled now. I believe the Latvians don’t appreciate the Soviet period so it is not being cared for. I took the lift up to the 17th floor viewing platform where there was a nice view over the city below - the old town with its cathedral and many churches, the Daugava River and its bridges and the TV tower which is the largest tower in the EU.  It is a picturesque city.

Riga View from Academy of Sciences Building

Riga View from Academy of Sciences Building

Not far from the Academy of Sciences Building is the Public Market. Quite a large market accommodated in five old German Zeppelin hangars. These were brought over from Germany after WWI and reassembled here to provide a home for the previously open air market. It’s always interesting to browse the markets and there was some interesting fare - flowers, fruits and vegetables, meats and a lot of fish - weird fish, smoked fish, smelly fish.  There were several stalls just selling what looked like red currants. They looked delicious.

Red Currants, Riga Market

I then crossed over into the old part of town and checked into my hotel, the very fine Neiburgs Hotel located in a renovated old Art Deco building with some beautiful decorations on its exterior.  

The Neibergs Hotel, Riga

After check in I set off again to explore the old part of town.  First stop was the Cathedral, a magnificent large church, once Catholic, but now Evangelical (how does that work?).  It has a most wonderful organ that according to the guide book has some 6,768 pipes. That number of discrete pipes is hard to comprehend.  It also a majestic tower and for a fee you can ride the lift to the viewing platform where there is another great view of the city below.

Riga Cathedral

Pipe Organ, Riga Cathedral

There are a group of old houses in an adjacent street dubbed the Three Brothers (Tallinn has something similar called the Three Sisters).  They are some of the oldest in town and they are somewhat photogenic. I walked on through the old town following a walking tour route in the guide book.  I passed the Castle, which really doesn’t look too much like a castle from the perspective I had, the Tsarist Imperial Arsenal, the Jacob’s Barracks - a restored row of barracks now hosting restaurants and cafes, a tower called the Powder Tower from Swedish occupation times, and then out to the Freedom Monument on the edge of the old town.

The Three Brothers

The Freedom Monument, Riga

The Freedom Monument was built in the independence years in between the two world wars and it was quite the symbol for the Latvian independence movement during the Soviet Occupation.  In Soviet times there was a Lenin statue nearby and that was one of the first things to come down after the Soviets left. Now there is no sign of it.

One of many Art Deco Buildings, Albert Iela, Riga

Ornamentation, Albert Iela, Riga

There are several nice parks in Riga and a particularly nice one runs adjacent to the canal that flows through the town.  I had a pleasant walk through the park area over to the Art Deco area of town. I wasn’t aware of this but Riga is the city with the largest number of Art Deco buildings in Europe.  Most of these were built in the early 1900’s and there are some spectacular examples. Many are located on Albert Iela (iela means street) and just off this street is the Stockholm School of Economics which is a true work of art.  Apparently the architect responsible for many of these gems is a Mikhail Eisenstein, who was the father of film director Sergei Eisenstein.

The Stockholm School of Economics, Riga

I continued walking north to St Gertrude’s Church and then south past the spectacular Nativity of Christ Orthodox Cathedral, back into the old town. I stopped for a beer at a cafe in the main Cathedral Square. There was some surprisingly good music being performed by a young woman singer accompanied by a guitarist - a nice finish to the afternoon.

After the refreshment I went to a concert in the cathedral.  It was an organ and violin concert and while the organ is not my favorite instrument when the organist let loose on those 6000 odd pipes it was quite something. The music was all Latvian and I didn’t recognize any of it.

The Blackhead's House, Riga

The Blackhead's House, Riga

Next morning I got up early to take a walk around while the streets were still empty.  Past the Blackhead’s House, which is perhaps the most spectacular old building in Riga, and out to the bridge over the Daugava River.  The view from the center of the bridge is very nice in the early morning light - the new and impressive National Library glistening in the sunlight, the river stretching out towards the TV Tower, the many towers and spires of the churches in old town.

The Latvian National Library and Daugava River

Back along the river bank to the statue of Big Chris, someone associated with the mythology of how Riga came to be located in that spot (he carried a small infant across the river at nighttime and for this act of kindness he was rewarded with gold enough to start building the city or something like that).

After breakfast I did more old town wandering and then made a visit to the Photography Museum.  A collection of old photos of Riga and of old camera equipment. One exhibit focused on Valters Kapps or Walter Zapp as we know him in the west who invented the Minox Cameras, a range of miniature cameras much loved by 60’s spies.  He was born in Riga and he made his cameras in Latvia. I owned a Minox 35mm miniature camera in the 70’s, it took great photos and it was really, really small. It was not a very big museum, nor was it very popular, they went around ahead of me turning on the lights and then turning them off after I left each room.

Next stop was the Mentzendorff’s House, a museum showing how life was lived by a prosperous trader in the early 1700’s.  Again I was the only person in this very small museum, and again they turned on the lights for me as I moved through.

George Armitstead Statue, Riga

To the park by the canal again and the very fine Opera House.  In the park near the Opera House there is a statue to an interesting character - George Armitstead.  He was a Yorkshireman and he ended up being the Mayor of Riga during its belle epoch (early 1900’s). He is commemorated with a statue of he and his wife along with their dog and in recognition of his significance to Yorkshire and Latvia none other than Queen Elizabeth came to Riga’s to unveil the statue.

One final museum for the day as I visit the Riga Historical and Navigation Museum.  The Riga History is the main bit with lots of artifacts from various phases of Riga’s history and the Navigation bit is just a couple of rooms with a lot of models of ships.

At around 4:00 I head over to the bus station to catch my bus to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.  It was an international bus, traveling from Tallinn, Estonia through Latvia, Lithuania and on to Warsaw in Poland.  For the vast sum of 17 euros I was transported in comfort on the 4 hour journey to Vilnius. The landscape along the way was not very dramatic - very flat, agricultural.  I didn’t even notice when we passed from Latvia into Lithuania - both Schengen countries.

Tallinn to Warsaw Bus

Arriving in Vilnius I had a 20 minute walk in light rain, to my hotel in the center of the old town.  I don’t know what I would do without Google Maps on an iPhone - I had an offline map guiding me through the streets to the hotel front door.  

Vilnius on a slightly wet Saturday night was quite busy.  There is a main pedestrian street through the old town called Pilies Gatve and it is full of restaurants and bars and they were doing good business.  As the rain eased later in the evening I took a walk around the old town.

Vilnius

The next morning I took another early morning walk around town - the University, many many churches, a 17th century fortress on the old city wall known as the Bastion, and then over to the Uzupis neighborhood.  Uzupis is a bohemian neighborhood that declared itself a tongue-in-cheek republic. It has its own constitution displayed in many languages on plaques along one of the streets. It apparently celebrates its independence on April 1 every year.  It’s nice enough but nothing outstanding. At the far eastern end of the neighborhood there is the Bernadine Cemetery - a lovely picturesque cemetery with beautiful old gravestones.

Vilnius view from Gedimas Hill

After breakfast in the hotel, it was off for a more serious exploration of Vilnius.  The Cathedral, the Palace of the Grand Dukes, a climb to the fortress on top of Gediminas Hill, a walk down the other Main Street, Gedimina Prospekt.  On this last street there was a street market - lots of stalls selling meats, cheeses, honey, jewelry, beer, just about everything. At the top end of the street is the Museum of Genocide Victims housed in the old KGB Building.  An interesting museum detailing the horrors that were subjugated on the Lithuanians first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets. The KGB cells in the basement were quite chilling. I remember one young girl walking through and crying - these horrors of the Soviet era are not long gone.

The KGB Cells, Vilnius

I then visited the Jewish Holocaust Museum.  A small museum housed in an old wooden cottage.  I was the only visitor. Small and unpretentious but no less moving.

Frank Zappa Memorial

Not far from the Holocaust Museum, in the parking lot of an apartment building is a bust of Frank Zappa sitting on top of a pole.  Frank wasn’t of Lithuanian descent and he never visited Lithuania but someone here admired him and thought he should have a memorial and why not, he was a great musician.

Romanov Church - Vilnius

A lot more walking around to look at a couple of Romanov style onion domed Orthodox churches and then another cemetery, the Antakalnis Cemetery.  Vilnius is not a large city but I certainly did a lot of walking. My iPhone Health app told me I did 18 miles during the day. Since most of the streets are cobbled the going was quite hard and my feet really ached by the end of the day.

Vilnius is a nice city and it looks quite prosperous.  They have done well since splitting from the Soviet empire, and it looks like the EU has done them good too.  However, Vilnius does not have the charm of Riga. There are some nice buildings there but nothing quite to compare with the attractiveness of Riga.

The Very Modern Airport Train in Vilnius

At the end of my day in Vilnius, I walked over to the Railway Station and caught the train out to the airport.  In the hall of the station there was an upright piano for anyone to play and this young lady was doing a fine job filling the hall with some beautiful piano music.  The modern train to the airport was 0.65 euros for the 15 minute trip - there’s a lesson there for Heathrow Express in London. It was a nice smooth 30 minute flight on Air Baltic back to Riga.

Piano for anyone in Vilnius Station

I was back in the same hotel for the night in Riga, the Neubergs, and then I had a couple of hours in Riga before going out to the airport for my flight to East Midlands on Monday morning.  I had pretty much covered the city on Friday and Saturday so I just walked around a few of my favorite spots - the Cathedral, the Blackheads House, etc.

A Soviet Hind Helicopter

I got to the airport a little early and I had noticed a lot of old aircraft adjacent to the terminal.  I walked over to find it was a sort of museum. There were a lot of Soviet era aircraft, helicopters, and missiles all arranged in a junkyard format.  Some wonderful old stuff but it was sadly all decaying out in the open air and rain. The most impressive thing was this huge Hind transport helicopter - what a beast!

Arriving back in East Midlands airport I was in the longest immigration queue you could ever imagine.  East Midlands is no longer the small airport it once was, there is a lot of traffic going through there.  

There are more photographs here.

x

South Wales - July 2018

At the end of my recent stay in the UK, in July 2018, I joined old college friends in 3 South Wales for a couple of days.  We were all together in 1970-73 in the Geology Department of Queen Mary College, London University. Steve Dutton, Mike Pawluk, Colin Simpson, Rob East and their respective wives, Yvonne, Cate, Mel and Sulis.

The QMC Geology Boys

I started the drive early Sunday morning from Derbyshire and drove over towards North Wales.  I had the idea of taking the scenic route through the middle of Wales rather than the motorway route through England.  I had heard of a ship moored in the Dee estuary that might be worth a look at. The Duke of Lancaster was an old ferry boat that was moored at Mostyn and converted into a entertainment center and shopping facility. As a boat it could avoid the Sunday Trading Laws that restricted activities on a Sunday. The boat is impressive and it has been raised above the current high tide level so it sits up quite prominently on the side of the estuary.

The Duke of Lancaster, Mostyn

Access to the area around the ship is restricted but I managed to go around the low tide on the beach and get a closer look.  The security guard residing there was quite nice and didn’t object at all and we had a chat before he let me out through the locked gate.

I then headed south towards Swansea.  I thought it might be a nice drive and yes it was but it was not the epic countryside of Snowdonia that I was expecting. Just nice countryside.  

The QMC Reunion Folks

We were all meeting in the village of Llangennith, where we were staying at the Kings Head Inn.  It is a nice little village on the Gower Peninsula - a church, a nice pub with hotel, a few houses and a surf shop. Surfing has become popular in the UK.

Llangennith Church

The next morning we set off on a walk up the hill that shelters Llangennith from the coast.  From the top there were lovely views of the coast below. Stretches of almost deserted sandy beaches, views out to the Bristol Channel and over to the Isle of Lundy in the far distance.  The area has been declared as an “Area of Outstanding Beauty” and I must agree, beautiful it certainly is.

Rhossili Beach

We walked over the cliff tops towards the village of Rhossili.  From the top there were nice views of of Rhossili Beach and of the Worm’s Head, a peninsula jutting out into the Bristol Channel that is only accessible at low tide.  

Rhossili Beach and the Worm's Head

The Worm's Head

There is a nice church in Rhossili, St. Mary’s. Inside the church there is a plaque commemorating one of Rhossili’s residents Edgar Evans, a member of Scott’s team to the South Pole.  He died on his way back from the South Pole having been beaten to the Pole by Amundsen’s team.

St Mary's, Rhossili

Edgar Evans Plaque

After a beverage in the Worms Head Hotel we walked out to the peninsula for a better view of the Worm’s Head.  There was a Coastguard Station on the cliff top out there.

We walked back to Llangennith along Rhossili Beach.  A lovely stretch of sand and an easy walk back towards Llangennith.  At the end of the beach a few of us went for a swim. It was nice cooling water but not very deep.  You have to go out a long way to get out of your depth in this part of the world.

That evening we had a great meal at the Britannia Inn in Llanmadoc.  Lots of good time reminiscing with old friends.

Broughton Bay

Next morning I had an early morning swim in Broughton Bay.  That required walking through this fairly large caravan site.  Not very pretty - lots of cheap identical looking mobile homes near the beach.  The UK seems to have a lot of these places that kind of spoil the views in what is a stunning area.  As with the prior day, the water was shallow and I could barely get it above my waist.

Broughton Bay Beach

After breakfast a walk from Llangennith out to Broughton Bay again and along the beach for a while before I turned back leaving everyone to continue.  I had to get back to London for my flight to the US the next morning.

A few more photos here.