A lucky escape from the waves. Ranting at the news.

Monday 6^th January.

They say the sun shines on the righteous. West Cumbria can’t be very righteous at all then. It was sunny last Thursday morning. That has been it for ages now. I decided this morning to see if Cockermouth Pool had adult early swim sessions. It seems they do but the hours change daily sometimes starting at 7.30 sometimes at 8.00. We toddled down at 98am and had a splash about. Not as quiet as the pool at home but good all the same. Being shorter 100 lengths were finished in no time. Just like home, though, the showers still leave a chlorine smell afterwards! So a second shower was needed at Dad’s.

It is amazing how invigorating getting back into an exercise routine is. After breakfast we decided to walk the dogs at Mawbray Dunes. It was very windy, but not a cold wind. It was blowing from the south and seemed to be sending the rain clouds over the fells rather than along the coast. Despite the pups having run their little legs off on the beach and then back through the dunes we decided to head up the coast to Silloth.

I may have mentioned Silloth before. It is delightful. If the weather here was the same as in the South Coast of England it would be one of the best places to holiday I know. It is old fashioned and Victorian feeling and has a huge green which stretches from the shore line about half a mile inland to the first road and shops. The promenade is two miles of concrete steps and walls from the harbour mouth up to Skinburness, where there is a huge faded and derelict hotel. We parked up by the light tower at the Skinburness part of the prom [where there is a public toilet] and we stolled into the town.

Here the righteous were rewarded for the sun did come out and it shone on me and Laura and the whole of Silloth for about two hours. The difference it makes is incredible. We walked upto the Lifeboat station, but the shop wasn’t open [closed for winter]. We had a look in the Estate Agents window and decided which house we would buy for our retirement. We then bought a couple of bags of chips from the chippy on the corner of Lawn Terrace and took them to the refurbished Victorian Pagoda on top of one of the sea side dunes.

I like eating chips at the seaside. It is a typically British thing to do [although it is popular in Australia too]. We sat in the Pagoda, sheltered from the wind and ate our chips whilst admiring the view. I had a cup of tea from the chippy, Laura had a coffee and it was like our own mini picnic. The clouds were so heavy though, they eventually cut the sun off once more and all the time we were at Silloth we were unable to see the Scottish coast, just a few short miles across the Solway.

After strolling back to the car we decided to drive back along the coast road, turning off at Crosscanonby to get to Dad’s. Mistake.

Earlier in my blog I mentioned being swamped in Sue’s car at Dubmill point when I was little, well it almost happened again at Dubmill Point once more. I was following a stupid idiot in a Hyundai fake 4x4 and at Dubmill the prat slowed right down to watch the waves breaking on the sea wall. I had to sit in horror as I watched a huge wave head for the wall, hit it with a loud whoosh and then break over both vehicles! We must have been going at about 10 mph but for the split seconds after wave hit we were in a silent static world. It went right over the top of the Hyundai and Dad’d Land Rover. The screen was obliterated by the water as the wipers couldn’t keep up. I could feel the car’s 4x4 kick in as the back wash tried to drag us back towards the sea wall. It was pretty scary. I had the sense to put the clutch in and rev the engine in an attempt to avoid the water making it cut out. When the wipers had got control back I could see the Hyundai was almost touching the sea wall where it had been pulled back across the road by the waves, but luckily its engine hadn’t cut out either and it was able to drive back on the right side of the road and move on past the danger zone.

During all this Laura had gone “Arrghh!” Very loudly but very low pitched. Not a wailing scream or anything, just this almost primal howl. I felt inclined to join her but I was too busy concentrating on keeping control of Dad’s car.

As we rounded the corner by the farm house I could see that Highways Agency vehicles were putting up road closed signs to prevent any other idiots driving through the high tide waves crashing over the road. I pulled into the first car park we came to at Allonby and said, “Jesus H Christ. That was bloody scary!”

Laura’s reply was, “You’re telling me!”

I know Dubmill Point is notorious in West Cumbria as a dangerous place when the tides are high, and one year the tide washed away the sea wall and about twenty feet of road too, but I hadn’t even considered the danger as we drove back down from Silloth. If the Hyundai had crashed we could have been in quite serious trouble as I couldn’t have just driven on by, leaving it there. I think this incident counts as another Guardian Angel event, like the falling branch during the Autumn on our drive to work, which hit the oncoming car, not us! Phewee Musky, as Deputy Dawg would say.

The cloud stayed for the rest of the day. Which was disappointing and it was raining so hard at last walk time for the dogs I did a “Fly Drive”. That is my name for taking the dogs out up Tall Hill in a car and letting them out to do their walk from there. It saves me walking them through the village on their leads before letting them off to perform. It’s about half a mile from Dad’s to where I let them run free, we’d be drenched before I could let them off. Tonight I also excavated the Lobby wardrobe and found their waterproof coats. There was even one for Callie, who wasn’t a happy bunny at wearing it but it meant she, and they, were much easier to dry off when we got back.

Tuesday January 7^th.

Wow. It looked like sunshine was on the cards this morning. There were beams of sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window. After a swift drive into Cocker for more swimming we decided to head off to Borrowdale and stroll around the Castle Crag area.

It just shows how bloody fickle the weather is up here. By the time we had got to Higham Hall it was clear that the sunlight was just a few isolated beams breaking through the clouds. At Castle Inn we could see there was no chance of walking in the fells without getting drenched. The cloud ceiling was lower than Catbells and any sunshine had vanished completely.

Four dogs in the back of the car would soon make a huge protest if we simply went back to Dad’s so we drove on and parked up in Portinscale. The plan was to walk around Derwentwater shore to about Lodore and then catch the Ferry into Keswick, and finally stroll back to Portinscale from Keswick. The best laid plans etc etc.

The woods were as muddy as hell and the dogs got absolutely slathered in minutes. Why do Labradors have to coat themselves in a layer of muck? The two Weimarners were pristine in comparison. I had forgotten we had to walk along the road a bit from Swinside to Hawes End which was a bugger, but only four cars passed us on our tramp down the tarmac.

More serial disappointments followed. The path to the Chinese bridge was muddied up to hell. We stayed on the wooden decking but the dog went and splashed about. The path after the Chinese bridge was completely flooded. It was a good job we had decided to walk in wellies and not walking boots! At one point the water was so deep it threatened to engulf our wellies too!

The next disappointment was the fact that the Shepherd’s Crag Café wasn’t open! I should have known it wouldn’t be as it only opens at weekends in the winter. Laura did volunteer to give my head a slap but I graciously declined. Luckily there was a Ferry running so we caught that and headed to Keswick. Of course the dogs were far too wet and messy to even consider going into the Dog and Gun so we settled for a Cornish Pasty from the Cornish Pasty shop and a take away drink too. More disaster struck by the Moot Hall, as the end of my pork and apple pasty detached itself as we were walking and didn’t even get to hit the ground! An eagle eyed and ravenous Lab snaffled it on its descent! People must think they never get fed!

We did as much window shopping as is possible with four exceedingly dirty hounds in tow and then squelched our way through the fields to the Derwent bridge near Portinscale. The river was really high just here and the meadow to the north of the bridge was completely underwater. I thought it would be a good spot to let the dogs have a splash to clean themselves up, so we let them have a play in the river for a while.

Back at the car Laura said, “Well, that was a bit messy but it could have been worse!”

“Worse? How?”

“It could have been raining!”

She was right. For all the horrible dark grey cloud swirling over our heads on the stroll we hadn't been hit by a single splash of water from above. OK, you must exclude water being blown from the branches of trees in the woods. As if to prove the Lollster wrong the heavens decided it was time to show us who was boss and they poured bucketsful of water down onto the car.

As if to add insult to injury, back at Dad’s house it was still dry with hardly any cloud at all! I dislike Cumbrian weather!

Wednesday January 8^th.

More swimming and more people. I am not sure that I like this pool as much as I like the one at home. I suppose it is the shock of the new. The shorter lengths mean you feel as though you have done more “proper” swimming as it takes you less time to do 100.

We [well Dad did] had a letter from the caravan park on Arran so I Skyped Aus to see if I should open it. He said to do so and read it out over the net. They are expecting delivery of the new caravan next week, weather permitting, which will mean it will be connect to the services and ready to be used by the weekend after next! Rah, rah and indeed rah!

We are actually bogging off to sunny Sheffield tomorrow as we are going to see the Nutcracker on Friday night, with Mum. I have been checking the google maps pages and it seems driving home the way I usually do is about 3 miles longer than going across the A66 to Scotch Corner, where we’d join the A1 which eventually joins seamlessly with M1. It claims that the journey will be about 15 minutes quicker too. I think we will try that way back tomorrow. It will be interesting to travel by a new route.

I also checked that the kennel was still OK to take Dad’s woofs at short notice. It is and they are doing Dad a deal on all three being there at once. It is a good job he left the usual wodge of house-sitting cash in the tea caddy, I’d hate to be having to pay for the dogs being kennelled too! We will be back up on Monday and down to Sheffield again next Friday [more Theatre commitments]. Next Friday we will probably stay down in Sheffield and leave Dad’s dogs in the kennel until he gets back from Australia – that is the end of January sometime.

I had a few minutes Skyping time with Jill while Annabelle went to fetch Dad so I was able to ask her the burning question. “Well, have you? You know…” Her answer was “No” which I am immensely pleased to hear, this is quite odd for someone who blathers on about the emancipation of women and how we should be masters of our own destiny. She also managed to get in, “I’ll send an e-mail,” before the angelic niece dragged the aged parent to the screen. That doesn’t imply that Jill is the demonic niece or anything, it is just that Annabelle is so much less worldly and still naïve compared to her older sister.

The one thing they did go on about, which made me really jealous, was the weather. It was really hot and sunny and they we hoping for rain. I promised I would try and send them some of Cumbria’s as there is definitely plenty to spare. Dad asked about the Ceilidh and we had to admit we’d forgotten all about it. We were so miffed on Sunday morning to realise we had missed it. He also said he’d got an e-mail from Sue and Iain and they’d commented on how his little girl had turned into a confident young woman plus they thought I was a sort of like a female version of him! Well, thanks a lot Sue and Iain. 

He thought it was very funny; I was a bit annoyed, TBH. I don’t normally get to see S & I without the restraining influence of Dad being present too, so I guess it will have been unusual for them to have seen the “real me”.

We spent another day spot dodging. There wasn’t as much as was forecast on the radio news but we still went fully prepared to the back of Skiddaw hills. I was hoping there would be some snow at lower levels so we could go survival bag sledging but it was well over the height of Knott which, at about 2300’, is the highest fell behind Skiddaw. It was very, very muddy though. I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised by that. The walk we did took us past Chapelhouse reservoir, which is a surprising feature to the ‘unknowing’ in the Lakes. It is a ribbon of a lake just south of Uldale and would be most northerly lake if it wasn’t man made (that honour goes to Overwater a few hundred yards away from Chapelhouse). At Uldale the tea room was open so we had a cuppa and some cake before returning to the car [parked at Longlands] and heading back to Dad’s.

We ate up whatever was left in the fridge for tea, ready for zooming off tomorrow. I used the last of the steak we had to make a Shepherd’s Pie to take down with us for our evening meal when we got in, so it would save us cooking from scratch.

We had a relatively early night, hitting the charp just after 10.30pm.

Thursday January 9^th.

Up pronto to have a final swim of the week at Cockermouth. I wish they would sort out their opening times, it varies with no real rhyme or reason, why is it 7.30 or 8 o’clock? Why not just one standard start time?

After the splash and second shower I whizzed the dogs to their holiday home for the next few days while the Lollster packed the car and drove round to her Mum’s to say bye until Sunday. While she was there, Molly told her we needn’t have taken the dogs to the kennel, she’s have dealt with them. I think that was noble of her but too much of an imposition really. She is going round to Dad’s to give it a clean after we have left. She will have a job to find anything that needs cleaning to be honest, but it will keep her happy.

I was locking up Dad’s Land Rover in the garage as she pulled back onto the drive, so I had a quick check round the house to make sure that we’d not forgotten anything and we headed south. It was strange driving straight over the M6 at Penrith but worth it. The A66 is a brilliant road. It isn’t fully dualled but there are long stretches which means the traffic flows pretty quickly. The best bit is crossing the Pennines at Stainmore. We even spotted the old Stainmore Railway Line Summit marker as we went through the gap in the hills before we began the long descent to Scotch Corner.

Somewhere to the south as we drove is the Tan Hill Inn, that would make a good diversion either going down or coming back when the weather is more clement. We stopped to let Callie answer the call of nature at Scotch Corner and then plunged on in our voyage of discovery down the A1. After about 10 miles south from SC the A1 became a three lane motorway and it was like this all the way down to Sheffield. It made the last section of our journey much less fraught that the M61, M60 mucking about we have to do to the East of Manchester. There was one hairy spot where the road became four lanes for a while as the A1 branched off and the road became the M1 link. Here you had drongos cutting across from the outside lane of the main carriage way to swoop onto the A1. I thought it was a pretty dangerous bit, but as the planners had given the junction well over a mile of manoeuvre space it wasn’t as dreadful as it could have been.

We left the M1 at the point where we normally join it when we are going to Phil and Jane’s and were pulling up the steep lane to my little house in minutes. I forgot to check the trip counter when we arrived but as it was reset to zero before we left Dad’s it won’t be a problem to see if we actually did travel fewer miles. We certainly seemed to be quicker than going the old way down, that’s for sure.

Callie seemed happy to be home and Muriel came out to greet us as we arrived at our back door. Inside was a mini mountain of post, including lots of Christmas cards. I guess that is a problem with going away over the holiday period.

The answer machine had a dozen messages on it and only 30 seconds recording time left! Only two were any use the rest were just stupid advertising and three hang-ups. One was Felice who has lost her phone and all her contact details so can I e-mail stuff to her at her Uni address? She really can be so disorganised really. The second was from Uncle Hilmar looking for Dad and upset because the weather in Germany has been so mild he hasn’t had any grapes freeze on the vine to make into Eiswein this year. At least, I think that is what he said because, although the message started in English, he finished it in German. He speaks at the speed of an express train and I may have not quite understood it properly. I made a copy of it and have sent it in an e-mail to Dad, he is still fluent after all these years.

I phoned Hilmar and got cousin Heinz instead who was able to write down Susannah’s phone number and Dad’s e-mail address so that Hilmar can try speaking to him in Australia. There are still relatives of his living in Fremantle and the surrounding areas so he probably call there quite often. Any way I think I have done all I can do. The dutiful daughter, eh?

I had roughly the same proportion of real mail as I’d had real phone messages on my answer machine. The amount of junk that has been delivered in these three weeks is dreadful. I may look into having it stopped.

The shepherd’s pie went down a treat and so did the last of the apple cakes from the freezer. I can’t believe we’ve eaten them all. The plan for tomorrow is to go and buy lots of apples from the market and bake some more apple pies and apple cakes. We are having dinner at Mum’s prior to the Ballet which will be good. [That’s the meal, I don’t know about the ballet. They may be useless. Although I very much doubt it.]

We actually watched some TV tonight. “Silent Witness”. Do programmes like this deliberately set out to make the police look stupid, I wonder. You watch something like Bron, from Sweden and their portrayal of the police is much more supportive. I suppose situations like the so called Plebgate and the Duggan fiasco make them easy targets.

I can’t get over the fact that people are concentrating on the use of the word Pleb rather than the fact this fucking Tory bastard used identical language to what I have just written, to serving Police officers doing their job. That is the scandal here. Obviously the fucking Tory bastards think it is acceptable for Government Ministers to fucking swear with the fuck word at the police! In my eyes that is enough grounds for the bastard Mitchell to have been sacked in the first place!

The Duggan thing too… This bloody scumbag had a gun and was a criminal. Now a hand gun in the hands of a twat like him, is only used to shoot people, so the scumbag was obviously about to do something criminal with it. His scumbag family should shut the fuck up about their angel son and nephew. If he was an Angel I am the Queen of bloody Sheba!

Sorry. Rant over.  Often watching the news makes me so angry. Sometimes for the obvious misreporting and misrepresentation of the fact and figures [this is so apparent if you listen to BBC Radio 4 news and then watch the rubbish called TV news] but mainly because of the content and the people being reported upon.

Laura told me I need to chill out and she had the perfect solution. She was right! Mmmmmmm……