30 DAYS WILD : 27 - THE WILD SIDE OF TOWN

E Mill, Dean Clough. The mills at Dean Clough were built over time.
E Mill was built in 1857

I invite you to draw an equilateral triangle with its base parallel to the bottom of the page. Put an X part way along its right hand side. Now, from the bottom right hand corner of the triangle draw a vertical line of about the same length at a right angle to the base. You are creating a not-to-scale diagrammatic map of the area I've been covering in recent weeks for Loose and Leafy. Doing it this way is in the tradition of the London Underground Map. It doesn't precisely show what things are like 'on the ground', you couldn't use it easily in order to walk from A to B, but it sets things enough in relation to each other they can take a place in your mind. 

Roses and coronavirus street plants at an entrance to
Dean Clough, Halifax, Calderdale, England.
June 27th 2020

The base of the square is the town centre. The apex is Warley Moor where we saw the meadow pippit (or lark), the Large Heath Butterflies and the Hare's Tail Cottongrass. Going down the left hand side we are descending into the Luddenden Valley - where we walked in the woods and looked along the stream by a bridge. The Tale of Three Levels noted some of the changes in the terrain in between.

Roses and coronavirus street plants at an entrance to
Dean Clough, Halifax, Calderdale, England.
June 27th 2020

The X is where I live and the vertical line is the Hebble Valley which is so steeply sided in places I think of it as a ravine. Where it meets the base of the triangle there's a huge, renovated mill complex called Dean Clough, which was once one of the largest carpet factories in the world and is now converted into offices, art galleries, a theatre and restaurants. In its hey day,  Crossley Carpets employed 5,000 people - the majority of them there. (According to Wikipedia this number was reached in 1900 after nearly a hundred years of manufacturing. According to the 'Let's Look Again' site it didn't reach this number till 1923.) Now, around 4,000 people work in the replacement industries. Or, rather, they do usually. There's a pandemic and the car parks are empty. And this week, because of the rain there are few people wandering around at random. Perfect for my first foray into 'town' for months.

To be blunt, the contents of Dean Clough are not as exciting as they sound on paper (though they could be!) but unlike the residential areas high on the banks either side, it is usually pretty well manicured. The coronovirus is 'seeing to' that and plants are on their way in, springing up between the stone paving slabs in front of the rose beds at one of the access points on the west side.

Nettle growing through cobbles in street. Halifax, England. June 27th 2020.

Walking through Dean Clough is not only to dip into the combined history of the area and the hopes for a Halifax 'on the rise', it's very good for leg muscles. You go down lots of steps to the buildings, then can climb even more on the other side of the valley to reach the park by the Bankfield Museum in Boothtown via a steep cobbled street which is unkempt at the best of times. But with less traffic and fewer pedestrians, plants here are beginning to get even more of a hold than usual. Nettles are one thing 

. . . the tomato plant was a surprise!

It's a little disconcerting. A bit 'end-of-the-world-ish'.

An extraneous fact: 

during the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester (1819) many escaped injury or death because the horses of the Manchester Yeomanry couldn't managed the slippery cobbles of the steep streets in the rain. Manchester is nearly 60 miles away but I think of Peterloo as well as the mill workers in their clogs when I am walking these kinds of streets here. I am amazed the clogs gripped.

LINKS

Dean Clough on Wikipedia

Crossley Carpets on 'Lets Look Again'

Hebble Brook on Wikipedia

Bankfield Museum

Peterloo Massacre on Wikipedia

Manchester Yeomanry on Wikipedia

British Clogs on Wikipedia

Wearing Clogs in Yorkshire in the 1920s on the Bancrofts from Yorkshire Blog

Buying clogs in Calderdale now - the Walkly Clogs site.

   

This post is for Day 27 of the '30 Days Wild' challenge organised by the Wildlife Trusts.

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30 DAYS WILD : 25 - TODAY I WALKED IN THE WOODS . . . WATER

Today I walked in the woods.

Cuckoo spit. Woods in Luddenden Valley. June 25th 2020

There was cuckoo-spit in the grass. (Cuckoo spit is a damp froth which conceals the nymph of an insect called a 'froghopper'. I once brushed the 'spit' away and found a little green monster inside. It was nothing like its adult form. It would seem cruel to repeat the experiment for the sake of a photograph so you will have to imagine what it looks like!)

I came to a gate.

The gate led to a grassy stone bridge.

At the far side of the bridge was a style into a field.

Luddenden Brook. West Yorkshire. June 25th 2020.

But I didn't go into the field, I went under the bridge.

And looked along the brook.

And into the water.

(This reads as if it's a story for very little children learning to read so perhaps I should finsish by saying

"THE END"!)

This post is part of the 30 Days Wild Challenge set annually by the Wildlife Trusts.

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30 DAYS WILD : 24 - I WENT WALKING AND I SAW . . .

This is where I went for a walk today.

It's hard, currently, not to be overwhelmed by heat. Today is sunny and clear. Before that the weather was heavy and oppressive. And before that the sky was dull and overcast. A letter arrived from the hospital with a list of nine series of vaccinations I will need to replace my immunities but my new GP practice seems to have shut up shop. I don't understand! There was a leaflet with the letter. I mustn't forget there's still time for me to get Graft Versus Host Disease and because of the transplant I am more at risk from a selection of cancers so I must use high factor suncream, wear sunglasses, get out of breath for thirty minutes a day to keep myself fit (this can be in ten minute chunks) and have ten minutes a day with my skin exposed to sunshine (for the sake of vitamin D).

Butterfly being observed by a fly. June 24th 2020

So when I go for a walk I feel like the invisible man - my woolly hat has been replaced with a flowery sunhat and I wear large dark glasses in between it and my flowery mask. The sunglasses change how I see the world. They enrich all colours. Butterflies, pretty at the best of times, become absolute stunners. The sky is bluer. Clouds more dramatic. Leaves greener. The earth is enriched and warm. Photos don't look the same when I get them home! This butterfly was bright orange when I saw it through my glasses!

It's National Insect Week. I spent an age before I set out, trying to photograph bees on local poppies. Bees never stop moving and when they ping off the poppy and on to the next one, its petals are left vibrating. It's easier to photograph bees on sturdy bramble flowers I have discovered. However fiercely the bee wriggles, the flower stays still. (I've used one of the blurry poppy photos for a temporary header in honour of National Insect Week.)

Today's walk was in the country, through some woods between the moors and a stream. There was bracken and there were ferns, This, I think, is bracken. Who knows the difference between bracken and ferns?

Wasp pollinating a wild rose. June 24th 2020

There were wild roses and brambles. 

Here, a rose is being pollinated by a wasp.

Moss in woods on dry stone wall. June 24th 2020

And in the woods, perhaps my favourite observation today, this little moss on an old dry stone wall.

30 DAYS WILD

Today's Random Act of

Wildness is to

go for a walk.

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30 DAYS WILD : DAY 14 - FINDING A FEATHER

One of the things we are invited to do for '30 Days Wild in June' is to create a nature table. We are even provided with a squared chart to print out so we can place our treasures in order. The first square is 'Rocks, stones, fossils and bones'. I put a badger skull on my virtual table on the third day. You can read about it here.

The third square is 'Feathers and Fur'. The second is 'Pinecones and Seeds' but there's no obligation to 'do' them in order so I'll fill that in another day. For this morning I went for a fantastic walk down a very steep hill into a secluded, wooded valley with a stream at the bottom and on the way back I found a feather. It was seven inches long, black, with a little white bit near the tip. I don't know what bird dropped it but I'll place it on the virtual table.

It was the kind of walk which would take a book to describe so I am likely to come back to it over a few posts. And I was more than usually aware of everything I was seeing because this weekend we are also invited to take part in the Great Yorkshire Creature Count. How many creature-observations can we record during any period we set ourselves during the twenty-four hours? I'm not doing this but knowing it is happening induced a sort of 'counting mode'.

I saw one ant,

two buzzards (they may have been buzzards) 

three horses / ponies,

a young deer out on its own

a flock of yellow birds (finches?)

a flock of brown birds with an orange tinge (don't know what they were)

starlings

and innumerable (buff-tailed?) bees 

The count is only of creatures but there were lots of buttercups and clover flowers, lichens and masses of grasses that I'd not seen before. The contrast between the top of the walk and the foot of the hill was immense. It started with a huge landscape. The dot in the middle of the photograph is a man - that should give you a sense of scale!

And on the way down, on the top of a very steep slope, was this tree. One of the most characterful of trees I've seen in ages. Further down was a little grove of oak and silver birch. This struck me as an unusual combination. What do you think?

And right at the bottom, I stood on a bridge and looked at a stream - before having to go all the way up again. Thunder and storms had been forecast; rain damage and power outages. I was wearing a woolly hat, a jumper, jeans and a donkey jacket. Did it rain? No. Instead it was blazing hot sunshine, just as one should expect in June! Because of the stem cell transplant I am especially vulnerable to different kinds of cancer so I am supposed to wear high factor suncream and sunglasses when I go out in the sun. I wasn't expecting sun. I was expecting to be rained on. 

30 DAYS WILD
Today's Random Act of
Wildness is to
find a feather!

Another day I will return, better prepared and more appropriately dressed. Suncream instead of winter-wear. Dark glasses. A flask of coffee and a picnic. If you see anyone sinister roaming the Yorkshire hills and valleys over the next few weeks, it may well turn out to be me.

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A WALK AND AN UPDATE

I've never been inclined just to 'go for a walk'. I've walked because I need to get from a to b, I'm taking photographs for a blog, I'm exploring a neighbourhood, those kinds of things. Now I'm walking for my life.

As some of you already know (I left a note in the comments attached to the last post) I came out of hospital on 18th March. Unfortunately the chemo had only worked to a certain extent and the leukaemia has come home with me.

Last week I had a discussion with one of the doctors who arranges stem cell transplants. Right at the beginning she warned me that everyone who has this discussion with her leaves the room feeling grim. May as well share the grimness - and the hope.

The only way forward now is to have a bone marrow/stem cell transplant. If I don't I will die in about a year's time. They haven't got a named donor yet but they have samples in the lab and are working out if they can find a near enough match. If they can, and the donor checks out as healthy and still willing and available . . . I'll probably go back into hospital in about six weeks time. The chances of dying as a result of the transplant itself are about 5%. The chances of the transplant 'working' are 50 - 60%-ish. I'd be in hospital about five weeks. (Though after the previous chemos it took my immune system a lot longer than expected to recover so I'm bearing in mind that this 'five weeks' might stretch.) Even if it works, chances are that I'll be ill as I get over it - perhaps a couple of readmissions with infections. And I'll always be at an increased risk of other cancers, especially of the skin - will always need to wear suncream. An increased risk of cataracts too. Various other aches and pains. She didn't want to suggest this is going to be an easy ride!

'Transplant' makes one think of general anaesthetics but no. Chemo (and radiation?) will kill off my bones' ability to create 'my' blood cells. A transfusion will introduce 'someone else's' blood-creating cells. They will make themselves at home in my bones and from then on I will be producing 'their' blood. (I think this is it.) To go through this I have to be fit. My heart has been tested; and my lungs. And I'm walking. After more or less three and a half months in bed it was hard to get up the stairs when I got home. By 'going for walks' I'm getting stronger - ready to get knocked back again!

. . . And one of the places I walk is the People's Park. (I first told you about this park in December 2017 - A Parade of Bare Bottoms.)

In this urn dandelions and other non-planted plants have gone to seed.

I've never before met such a purposeful park. There are nearly always people striding out along the paths clearly for the sake of their health. Sometimes they are alone (maybe in tracksuits - tracksuits seem to be an early morning thing) often in groups. When I lived in Dorset I found myself getting irritated with joggers and runners. I'd be poking around in a bush to see what was living on the underside of a leaf and they'd pass at a steady trot, apparently oblivious to anything except their bodies. I'm trying to disentangle my prejudices. People who run - I admire. Just as I am stunned by the cross country cyclists in Yorkshire. So why I took against the keep fitters who lived near me, I don't know. It was something to do with changing the atmosphere of the place. Maybe it's because I guessed they were finding the track 'useful' rather than beautiful. But in this urban park, it feels very cheerful, people marching along and saying 'hello' to each other as they cross in opposite directions. Maybe it's because they seem very ordinary. They are ordinary people who want to be healthy and well. They are not a special race with water bottles. Meanwhile, there are others who come to sit and relax around the fountain which has water in the basin but none that squirts in the air. There's a little playground too - swings, a small slide, a climbing frame. There's something very purposeful about the way children play there. They don't hang around. They swing for a bit then leap off and run to the next thing to do.

Dead Nettles and Shepherds Purse in an untended urn.

Tell me, do you find yourselves reacting in a huffy or hostile way to people doing things in one place that you'd not object to elsewhere? Buskers might fit. There are good places to busk where the music adds to the atmosphere. And there are places where the same music would be downright irritating. Walking purposefully in a park is one thing. If I had to share the paths with joggers, that would be another. 

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HEADING FOR OGDEN WATER

On my other blog, Message in a Milk Bottle, I've posted photos from time to time of a little of the countryside within reach of Halifax.

So you may already have seen a view from Jerusalem Farm

or from Burnsall in Wharfedale

or caught sight of the beautiful bowling greens in Todmorden with hills beyond; not that bowling greens are exactly countryside!

But on this blog, Loose and Leafy in Halifax, I've so far concentrated on the town itself; for that is my immediate context - home. Perhaps now I should widen the field and introduce you to more of the wonderful and very varied countryside near at hand.

We're heading for the green deep in  a fold between the fields and moorland.

And as I do, I should also point you to Everyday Life. Lyn has been writing and posting photos about this part of England since 2009 and has been warming my heart to it ever since I first came across her blog. Our experiences and approach are very different and the reasons I moved to Halifax are broadly based on money, culture, work opportunities and a need for change. The choice of Halifax specifically was largely down to chance. So arriving here is pretty random. However the strong images of some of the country walks she has introduced us to over the years have been nudging away at me. "Cor," I've been thinking, "that's not an 'arf bad place to live!" Blogs have a lot to answer for!

In previous posts I've mentioned the Greek Village books of Sara Alexi. There are masses of them and in the same way as we have moved from Dorset to Halifax, people in the village don't necessarily stay put. In the first book (The Illegal Gardener) one of the main characters is Aaman from Pakistan who finds work re-shaping an English woman's newly acquired garden. Later, in 'Saving Septic Cyril' he and his wife travel (legally, this time) from Pakistan to England where they rent a house in a tiny village near Bradford.

Bradford is quite near Halifax. Indeed, they are linked vaguely by a sequence of fields and villages; and between the two we can look down the hill . . . beyond the sheep . .  not to to where Aaman and Saabira live (for their place is much smaller) . . . but to a village which makes me think of them. (Saabira and Aaaman are, by the way, in my mind, perfectly real people.) 

Through the village and a bit further . . . Ogden water. A fifteen minute drive from my house. What can I say in a short post? That we walked round the reservoir. That when we go back, you can come too.

(Quite a large stretch of water along the right-hand shore was frozen.)

Wherever I live, wherever I go, there are places where I like to be alone; I feel almost possessive about their isolation.

And there are places where there are so many people I can't cope and want to go home.

But here - it was such a jolly atmosphere I felt swept up in the happiness; masses of people walking beside the water before or after their Sunday lunch - and the woods ringing with laughter. There were people of all ages, little children, parents, older people; and teenage boys who were putting great efforts into shuffling awkwardly round slushy patches so they didn't get their flash trainers spoiled in the mud: people bringing Christmas trees to be re-planted or turned into dead-hedge wind-breaks. And, hurray, hurray, no cyclists! I've nearly lost friends over this cyclist issue. As a pedestrian I've had bad experiences with cyclists both in Dorset and in London. I have only one recurring nightmare and that's of hoards of cyclists bearing down on me waving their arms and shouting. It's horrible.

I've always liked the look of wind turbines - but am not yet entirely convinced they are the way forward. Having complained about cyclists I'll try not to raise your hackles further by worrying about their proliferation. Hopefully they are nothing but an early stage in the development of 'green' power and with any luck won't last long. But against a dark sky they are pretty impressive don't you think?

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