It's only the depth that varies!

Our friend John has a saying that he is "always in the shit, it's only the depth that varies".
As this is my first winter here I have now applied that saying to the status of the snow in Garrigill, it just doesn't seem to stop and even when there is not a speck of it on the ground you still see tiny flakes of it drifting through the air.

This morning was an amazing crisp white, it was the crispy snow. Now people who read this outside of the UK may not understand this, but we British know that there are many different types of rain ( I will link this back to snow in a minute).

It's true, in this country we have seen so much rain that we can identify it by different types. Because we can identify each rain drop by type, we also know what kind of snow these drops make and so this morning I can safely say that we have crispy snow.
Crispy snow is made from raindrops just a bit smaller than normal, it would be the type of rain that the British would describe as a wisp of rain. But when it freezes and falls it becomes crispy snow. A type of snow which sits nice and deep and goes 'crunch' when you stand on it. However, it doesn't stick together, so it blows about in the wind moving from place to place like white sand in a freezing desert.

In the last week we have had thick snow, light snow, none snow (that's the stuff that doesn't settle anywhere and just flies around) lump snow, xmas snow, sticky snow, pretty floaty snow, wispy snow, invisible snow (you turn around and there it suddenly is) and the most important of snows which is snowman snow. Now if you count up and there are more different types of snow fell than the number of days that I mention you should probably also know that all of these fell in just three days.
The rest of the time we had the none snow only it was floating around the air in a depth that varied.

One of those mornings as I let the dogs out (you can see it was a wispy snow day) I practically had a conversation with a robin that was sat on the wall opposite me. His red almost shone as he sat under the sun and I said to him, "you sit there while I get me phone for a pic" and he said "mrreeeptet" which I took to be a yes. I came back with the phone and he had his back to me so I said "Oi....I'm back" so he spun round hopped about a bit and said "weeep" all of the time looking straight at me without thinking I was any kind of threat at all.
I was quite touched by this little conversation with nature, it sort of made my day just a bit.

I'm looking out the window, I have sticky snow stuck to the windy and a covering of crispy. The falling snow seems to be thick, that's three at once. I wonder what the rest of the day will bring?

New

 You can tell by the picture that the snow has gone.
Also, this weekend was quite warm, the sun shone and the sky was blue, there is a fresh watered greenery to the grass as it shakes off the layer of snow and drinks what remains. The river seems to be carrying a snowy sparkle to it too as most of the melt water washes in and gets carried away to the sea.

Everything has a twinkle of newness today and for the first time the village had a few cars parked with people stopping to eat picnics on the village green.
Unlike the first bird of spring, the first bee, the first bud we watch out for the first bread packet. The tell tale wrapper of bread that shows that tourists have been here eating sandwiches, admiring how wonderful and clean the place is, wishing that they lived in a place as nice as this and then leaving their crap to make our village green look as welcoming as Sunderland city

centre.
 
I like people coming here, it's nice to see lots of people in the village and having them wander round and look through your living room window for a nose.
I like that people come in their cars just to sit for a few minutes and listen to the sound of nothing going on and then head back to a place of street lights and sirens with a memory of the serenity of silence in their minds.
I'm quite bad, so I also like the look of jealousy when you come out of the door and they realise that there are some people lucky enough to live in this beautiful place and I like it even more when they take their bread wrappers away with them.

As mentioned in the last blog, I have been away for a week in Milton Keynes, the NEW city of wonder designed by modern people for the modern lifestyle and providing everything anyone could need. Whatever you could want by way of food, shopping entertainment, it was all in the wonder that is Milton Keynes.

We managed to go out for valentines night

 and we had a lovely time in a place of concrete valleys, well lit streets, strange smells like there was always something too hot or melting and lots plastic blowing around our feet.
It was ok for a visit, but I can't understand why anyone would want to live there. I know that the designers of Milton Keynes have heard of tree's as there are lots of them and they are in nice straight rows down every street and at every side of every street and all the buildings look the same and it is gray and lifeless and has no soul at all.

I'm happy to be out in the Arse End of Nowhere, and I think the dogs like a place where they can jump too.

I'm not sure if the guy that made these has ever seen a cow!

In A Different Land

This week I am in a new Arse End Of Nowhere. I have to work in Milton Keynes, the new town of concrete cows and attempted greenery.

Rather than stay in the concrete I found a cottage to rent for a week that is just a few miles out of MK and actually when purchased for the week it works out cheaper than a hotel.

It's on a farm and not far from the rolling hills of somewhere not far from London and right now covered in snow.
On the whole I don't mind snow, I have lots of lovely warm snow gear thanks to the girlfriend and christmas combined so the white stuff isn't a problem....well not until I have to drive in it!

In the end it was using her Land Rover again and hope that I get there.

 The snow combined with a wind in one direction has produced some fantastic snow patterns on trees, lamp posts, even stone columns but I loved the way the snow on this tree seemed to separate the wood from the reality of the grey white background. It doesn't look as eerie in the photo as it did standing beside it. I wouldn't be surprised if this look ends up in a painting.

Clues!

There are times when something just doesn't seem right. These things play on your mind and in many cases they are the mother of invention or discovery.
I imagine that once upon a time Marie & Pierre Curie thought to themselves that there was a missing 'thing' and then after looking for a while radium appears, which just goes to show that if you look for something long enough you will find it eventually.

I have had such a thing playing on my mind for about 6 months. It hasn't led to a new element (yet) but it has at last come to a resolution that I am happy about.

In the picture to the left is the view from the road  we walk down with the dogs. The view is across the river to a gate.
If you enlarge it you can clearly see the gate, I have walked through it and onto the riverside bridleway many times over the last 6 months. To get to the gate you walk 200m further down said road, across a bridge, through another gate into a field and then through gate in above picture.
Every time I walk past and I see the gate in the picture there is a thing that niggles in the back of my mind. Then about a week ago I realised what it was that had been bothering me.

It's the river bank....do you see it....
Yes, it's man made, supported, not natural, so to me that meant that there used to be a bridge there, a bridge that led from the road across the river and through that gate. At last, all of those years watching Time Team were starting to pay off.

This morning after the dog walk I decided that if there had ever been a bridge that someone would have photographed it at some point and that if that were the case then it would be somewhere on the internet.

This led to a Google hunt that eventually led to a page on flickr that was full of pictures of old Garrigill ( www.flickr.com/photos/alstonmoor if you want to have a look) and then a further search (once we had a name) to find the image on a page where it wasn't copyrighted...oh thank you interweb...

So here it is, proof that my niggle in my head every time I walked past this gap was for real, a long lost picture of....wait for it....the original Tyne Bridge in Garrigill.

And how it looks today.

Covering Picture

It doesn't look quite as beckoning in the winter does it?
However....strange though it may be people do keep coming through, there may not be as many people who want to do the coast to coast either on foot or on two wheels but there are some who want to up the challenge by doing it in the winter.

The winter walkers tend to be better wrapped, more wet weather gear and with the addition of flares (which they don't have in summer)
I am guessing that you all understand that by 'flares' I don't mean the baggy trouser that was so common in the 70's...although saying that, it's quite hard to see what is under the wet weather gear and some of these people are a bit retro.

Cyclists however wear exactly the same skin tight lycra, perhaps there is such a thing as winter skin tight lycra and if there is I don't know about it.
But the cyclists all wear the same, in any season, in any weather.


A whole group of them have just cycled past my window as I write, short sleeved tight fluorescent t-shirts, skin tight shorts and a bright hard hat and shades and talking about how cold it is....

It's White Out!

Everything happens at the wrong time, usually the worst time, the time when everything was planned to go so well and what on earth could go wrong after all you have calculated for every eventuality....except SNOW!

For months I have been working on the migration to a new email server. Close enough to 200 employees, various groups and a business that is 95% reliant on email. I have been working on this for months, setting up the server (it's in the cloud don't y'know) getting the accounts set, checking groups, aliases, forwarding, making sure that the new server mirrored everything the old one was doing and even then I knew that come switch on I would be working until 2am on the Saturday night and in the office all day on the Sunday and then MOST IMPORTANT!!!! THAT I WOULD BE IN ON THE MONDAY MORNING BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE to make sure that nobody tried to log into the old server and that they were all aware of the changes to operation and then it would all be great.
Sunday night....I let the dogs out....no snow.... Monday morning....see above picture!
Crap!
Crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapandutterbollocks!
You can quote me on the above!

I tried to get my car out, it went well backwards and then I tried to go forwards.....It didn't go forwards....I couldn't imagine reversing the 60 miles to work....
However...there was no panic, we have a plan for this, first we ring the 24 hour insurance line and then we get me on Kasha's insurance for Sissy and then I go to work through the snow aided by the power of the Land Rover Company.

This sounds easy doesn't it? It's 2012 and indeed Kasha's insurance company do have a 24 hour line. The 24 hour line is manned by a man called Jim, he is a nice man, his granddaughter is at Uni now, he has been manning the line for the last 12 years, he answers the phone to tell people that you have to call your local office because they don't have the ability to do anything for the full 24 hours. I think that it is nice that they provide a real live person to do this rather than a machine. It is good because as Jim says....he needs the work, and after the mills closed....or something like that. We get away as he starts to tell us about his ailments....

I need to be at work at 8am....the local office doesn't open until 9am, it takes me 75 minutes to get to work, and that is when we don't have the height of two large pixies (in pointy hats) of snow sitting on the ground.

At 9am we ring the local office, it rings and rings and rings. It is still ringing at 9:15 but at 9:20 we get a very breathless woman who has just fought her way through the snow. She hasn't got her coat of yet she says, we don't care we think but we remain pleasant and get my name on the documents.

This is great, I have never driven Sissy before and she is my girlfriends pride and joy and now I am taking her out for the first time ever in two pixies (in hats) worth of snow with ice underneath. This is a thrilling time for me but Kasha seems to want to chew cushions and wring her hands...women!!!!

By the time I get up the hill and into range of my mobile phone I have 32 messages from work....
Happy Monday everyone, it's white out!

Today I am in....

Yes, I know that the blog is called "Arse End of Nowhere" and that the question is are we really in the AEON or the AONB?

Today was one of those days when I found the answer.
I have been told many times by Mark and Louise about a waterfall just a few minutes from their house, so today Kieran, Kasha and I decided to drive up the valley, park at our friends house and wander off to find this wonderful place.
We were told to expect snow today, and so as we were setting off into the Eden hills you prepare for what may come so there was warmth with jackets and special hats and gloves and the correct footwear and all the other stuff.
Cold kills you out here. We may be Geordies and like all Geordies not need to wear more than a T-Shirt when wandering in and out of busy bars on Newcastle quayside in the dead of winter, but it's different here. In this place no one may pass near you for days, and cold kills you in hours. It's been an eye opener for me and my son since we came here, you may not need a coat for the few hours you are out, but you take one anyway.
And so kitted out..... we set off.

We were told that we would find a river and that we were to follow it upstream.

We traipsed through woodland and mud

And then....there it was.

It's the darker days right now, winter, cold and not very pleasant but even then the sight and the aura of the place just hits you. I can't wait to see this place in the warmth of summer.
I can't wait to spend long days here. 

We were told that you can walk behind the waterfall and so Kieran set off at a run.

 
Eventually the two of us got there














In case you ever wondered what it looked like to stand behind a waterfall.

Today I am in the most beautiful place in the world.


There is a reason they call it Eden.

It's that in between bit.

The first full week back at work never really feels right. It's that point in the year when you know that it is now 2013 but when writing the date you still find yourself writing 2012....and everyone agrees with you...

I am still buzzing and feeling great about what was a fantastic Xmas week and brilliant New Year. I had to take Kieran back to his mum New Years Eve, but he is back with us again soon and looking forward to being back at the cottage.

New Years day morning I got up and took the dogs out while Kasha struggled with the daylight in true vamp fashion.
Sweep has now discovered how to open the garden gate, luckily he still waits just inside for everyone which gives the other dogs a chance to catch up while also giving any sheep that have sneaked in a chance to slip out of the hole in the wall and back into the safety of the sheep field.
The dogs love a good runaround but we do have to keep them away from any livestock as farmers with shotguns really do shoot first and ask questions later.
We have had one of those 'busy' weekends where you really want time off but you have promised to do something. This weekend it was a promise to paint part of Kierans room so while he has been away that has been what we did.

After painting I managed to get up to see Dave the blacksmith who was working on a Saturday again. 
Dave is one of only 8 blacksmiths in the UK that is allowed to work on historic metalwork so he does things for many of the castles, historic building and historic organisations. It's always fun to go in there, last time I was in I was handling a 13th century winding mechanism (cranaquin) for a crossbow.
It has been a few weeks since I have seen him and there have been some changes down there.
Dave has been talking about doing weekend courses but he needed more than just the one forge. He had two others ready but not installed but when I went in today they were sitting in place ready, they just need the chimney vents in and that should be them ready to fire up.

Kieran has been talking about going into the forge and spending a day there learning how to make things, perhaps some time in the summer he will get a chance to do that.

I like the idea that the old village still has a traditional blacksmith and that he stands at a forge sweating, beating steel on an anvil and making things as they were always made in the way that it was always done.
It sort of feels right around here, Garrigill is like that strange nowhere space of time just after Xmas, it's a place that's old but new and seems to be sat in the middle. The in between bit.

Hi Hoooooooooo!

 My Xmas week is over and I had to take Kieran back to his mums this morning so I dropped him off on the way into the office.

It's always a sad day when he goes back, however it's New Years Eve so I imagine that tonight I won't be my usual 'Kieran has gone away' miserable, or if I am at least I may be very drunk when doing it!
There has been a fairly large amount of rain over the last week which has led to the ford on the river being higher than usual, luckily this isn't the way out of Garrigill, but that isn't to say that the drive this morning didn't

involve various flooded roads and bridges. It kept our interest when every time we turned a corner there was a bit of a splash. It makes the journy more fun anyway.

Earlier in the week the hills got a touch of the white stuff, it was a surprise when it didn't work it's way lower but yet again we seem to have escaped. 
The morning drive in is getting noticably lighter too as that extra 11 minutes a day starts to add up.

At work I have hung up my new calender. This year I will be treated to the dream of a VW camper van every new month, and meanwhile Akasha keeps painting things that remind me of summer....and driving around in a VW Camper.... Perhaps one day!
It has been a fantastic week, one of the best christmas's for a long time.
I'm feeling all warm and content, must be the new hats...or the company I am now keeping
:-)

A Man of Many Hats

The shortest day may have passed but it is still very much winter.
In the summer this place may become an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) but right now in the dead of winter it truly is the Arse End Of Nowhere, and as it has different types of rain, hail, snow and other cold wetness falling from the sky, you really do need a variety of hats to deal with them all.
I have mentioned in the past 'ways to tell the weather' in the AEON and another one of the ways is to look at the types of hats that the locals may be wearing when out.

Most people have some sort of leather or oilskin fully waterproof for the torrential downpourings and after that you go into hats of various stages of wet weather and warmth right through to summer ones for eye and sun protection.
A quick look out of the window at any time and as long as you can see through the lashing rain at the hats you can always tell just how much it's raining and how cold it is.

This year I received many hats as Christmas presents as my stock of various weather hats is low. This is because I am still a newbie out here and I have yet to set myself up fully for the various weathers that I see out of the window. hats and gloves and various coats are much needed and very well received, but by far the most talked about and best hats this year were a present from Karl, Sue and family over in the USA.

Without any prior knowledge of the importance of headwear to this very climate sensitive area they sent us matching AEON hats which have gone down a storm in the George and Dragon.

Yes, in a place where hats are a way of life (or death) a good hat is a conversation piece and our new hats have really gone down well with the friends.

Over the last few days there have been a few flickerings of power and once or twice we have wondered if we would be plunged into darkness for a day or four.
It hasn't happened yet, but we are expecting it, probably at the time when the snow is deepest and the logs for the burner are low.
You can tell I'm an optimist eh?

So far it's been a damned easy Christmas. We have not been snowed in, not once! The rain has fell in buckets, but this is the place where all rivers start and so we don't flood, all the water from here usually ends up around the cities causing problems for those who don't live in the wilderness, so we may have to have very fine hats of various types, but we leave the choices of waders to the people in the lowlands.

The lights just flickered again! I am told if the power goes off that the village meets in the pub!
I'm not sure of there is any reason for this other than the ale is hand pulled and they have a huge log fire for warmth it may even be because everyone checks that everyone is ok. I imagine it's the former as that seems to be the better reason, and everyone here likes a reason to meet up so perhaps losing power is a sure time to arrange to meet your mates and have a laugh about the power going off.

Whatever the true reason is, I don't feel (being a newbie) that I should try and change a schedule brought on by years of power loss and community spirit.

It's winter! It's cold, and this is the Arse End of Nowhere!
I have a hat to prove it. I'm not about to fight tradition so if those with more experience think a trip to the pub in the dark is the way that things should be, who am I to argue,  because for sure you can't argue with a man who knows the right headgear for any circumstances, no matter how foolish he looks.