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Some friends are arriving at various times today for a weekend at my place, and wishing to act the gracious host I have been cleaning and tidying and getting in supplies - which includes staggering back from Asda with a backpack and a bag laden with various beers, ciders and wines. Should get the weekend off to a good start - cheers!
My swim was good, and although the pool isn't quite as nice as the one in Hathersage (to be honest, it's hard to compete with the hills of the Peak District visible all around) it's always nice to be able to see sunshine reflected on the bottom of the pool, and clouds and sky when you float on your back. There seemed to be a lot of people swimming very seriously, which I think is a bit of a shame when you could be enjoying just being in the water on a warm sunny day. At least the dolphin shaped litter bins on the poolside looked like they were having fun (unfortunately photography isn't permitted but you can see someone else's picture of similar bins on Flickr - pretty neat).
Nantwich itself seems like a nice place (and has a sports shop selling swimming stuff) but after my swim I felt I just wanted to get home, so I caught the bus back to Crewe via the village of Willaston where I saw some signs advertising the "worm charming" championships being held next weekend. I'd never heard of this before but apparently it's a tradition going back to 1980 (if you're intrigued then read more about it at www.wormcharming.com). Funny sometimes what goes on in your own backyard.
Now I'm back home and I think I can still taste some salt on my lips (although it's probably just my imagination). I'm also getting a bit of a taste for this outdoor swimming, and so I might go back to Nantwich sometime in the summer to swim again (and maybe next time also look around the town afterwards). In the meantime Chesire East Council's Nantwich Outdoor Swimming Pool webpage has more information about the pool.
I've never counted how many cars form each train but they are very long and very heavy - much longer and heavier than passenger trains - and when they move it can sometimes feel like a scene from the 1955 film classic "The Ladykillers" - everything in the house can vibrate, including the floors and cheap IKEA wardrobe, and occasionally the bedroom door will swing open slowly. I'm sure that my original stereo got slowly shaken to bits as a result, and it has also caused me a degree of distress (and plenty of needle-wobble) at times while recording my old LPs.
Even so, I do like the trains. I find their constant to-ing and fro-ing reassuring somehow, and it's interesting to see the edge of the otherwise secret world of rail freight. Plus it's fun sometimes on a grey Monday morning to imagine that you might be in a classic Ealing comedy.
The figures themselves are fascinating, spread out quite far apart from each other, some close to the sand dunes and others partially submerged by the sea even at low tide. They're corroding in interesting ways and some are even covered in barnacles. Add them to the farm of huge wind turbines just off-shore and you can't help wondering - if humankind disappeared tomorrow, what would future beings make of this peculiar landscape?
I spent a while wandering between the figures taking pictures of them and the turbines (I love wind turbines! and how they dominate the seafront here) and the beached jellyfish slowly evaporating to nothing in the sun - one of the quietly strangest things I've seen for a while. It was a great place to spend an hour watching ships coming and going, and distant flocks of seabirds darting around like swarms of bees - an angry smudge out to sea.
Walking up the beach I passed a UFO-like building that turned out to be a leisure centre with a very nice looking swimming pool visible through the tinted glass, and I was sorry that I'd decided not to bring my trunks and towel. I like to swim in new places and my recent trip to Hathersage pool had reminded me of the kind of fun water can be when you give up on swimming lengths once in a while. Maybe I'll come back out here again sometime and give it a try.
The Gormley figures are dotted along roughly 2 miles of the beach, and after a while I started to get that Groundhog Day-like feeling that surely I'd already passed this figure a few minutes earlier? In spite of the potential that the figures seem to offer for "decoration", only a couple stood out - I suppose that the sea and other elements take their toll and clean the figures up pretty effectively. Elsewhere the beachfront reminded me a little of the boardwalk around Seagirt and Spring Lake in New Jersey, with big houses set back from the beach behind the sand dunes.
Finally past the figures I followed the trail through the sand dunes, seeing some interesting trees, flowers and butterflies, but at some point I must have missed a turning because I ended up in what looked like a rather well-appointed suburb in Hightown. From here I struggled to find the trail again, eventually finding a path that skirts the Altcar rifle training camp from where I heard sounds of gunfire from behind the sand dunes as I plodded onwards. Finally I found a path that headed back towards the beach, lured by the sight of the blades of the wind turbines (which looked tantalising close but - like the moon - are actually always the same distance away wherever you are).
The stretch of beach that I came out on was like a wasteland, devoid of people but with a line of debris next to the dunes that disappeared into the distance - wheels, road signs, rubber gloves (so many rubber gloves!), trees, gas cylinders, on and on and on. The whole scene was reminiscent of something from the film "Addicted to Plastic" - with the oddest sight being this collection of odd shoes:
Eventually however I made it back to Crosby beach for high tide and a last look at the figures before heading home. It was a long day and more than a little surreal in several places - to be honest the desolate beach with washed up junk was probably the strangest, and my pictures from there don't convey even a fraction of what it was really like. But it was certainly a memorable trip and I'm glad that I went.
See my pictures of the Gormley figures, wind turbines, debris and other stuff on Flickr.
I didn't take any pictures inside the pool (I wish I had asked now) but you can see what it looks like from the Hathersage swimming pool website. There's a set of changing cubicles next to a lawn and a bandstand on one side of the pool and a small covered grandstand on the other. The water itself is nicely heated and there are views of the surrounding hills (Stanage Edge is nearby and clearly visible) as you swim. The great thing about swimming in an outdoor pool on a day like today is being able to see blue blue sky above and the sunlight dappled on the tiles below. (The thing that I always forget about swimming in an outdoor pool is that you're also liable to get slightly sunburned.)
After an hour's swim I went to the pool cafe and sat outside under a parasol eating a toasted cheese and onion sandwich, extremely tasty and served with a little salad that included apple and kiwi fruit and very nice colesaw. While I sat there a cat wandered between the different customers looking for some love and attention. It was a nice way to spend lunchtime.
With around an hour left before my train back to Sheffield I asked the waitress at the cafe if there was anywhere nearby that I could walk to. She recommended going to see Little John's grave at St Michaels church, which turned out to be a great tip - it was only a short walk to the churchyard, with great views over the hills (and also some cows, which I think Kyle would have enjoyed), and the grave was quite easy to find (it appears to have a parking meter next to it, but on closer inspection this turned out to be for donations to maintain the church and grounds).
The journey back was quite uneventful (really, the best kind of train journey to have). The Hathersage pool is really nice and I really hopefully there will be an another opportunity to swim there again later in the summer.
Yesterday evening I went out walking for a few hours around Frodsham with my friend Ronan. It was a nice evening after a very hot sunny day and we followed a section of the Sandstone Trail which rises above the town and through the woods. There's about 30 miles of trail in all but we probably only did 3 miles before we had to turn back.
The great thing about this time of year is how long the days last, and so on the way back we were treated to a beautiful sunset over Liverpool, from the top of the hill above Frodsham that overlooks the Mersey Estuary. We were surprised to come across a whole group of people taking photos with some very expensive-looking pieces of camera equipement (there are more of my own pictures on Flickr). Fingers crossed that we get another chance to walk the trail later in the summer!
The recipe that I've been using for a few years now is neatly written in my best schoolboy handwriting on a page torn from an old notebook - I think it must date from when I did "home ec" at secondary school. (I sometimes wonder how profound an influence the random choice of home economics and Latin, rather than woodwork and metalwork, has been on my later life.) Later someone rather pompously told me that the recipe is actually cake and not bread, but I've since forgotten what the distinction is.
Anyways this effort came out ok on the outside but a bit undercooked in the middle (I used a skewer to test whether it was cooked inside but probably in future a knife would be better). As this has happened before I've wondered a few times if the cake tin I have is the wrong shape somehow, or else maybe I need to cook it at a lower temperature for longer. Or maybe I put too much banana in it. Or all of the above.
It's not too bad with a cup of tea (especially as I like my cakes to be a bit moist), however I'm not sure that I'll be offering anyone else a piece of this one - maybe next time.
