Two go exploring in Appleby

For a complete change on Saturday we headed to the east of Cumbria, to a small town we’d never been to before – Appleby, or Appleby-in-Westmorland to give it its full name.

Appleby lies on the River Eden not far from the Pennine heights of Cross Fell, Great Dun Fell and the like. It’s famous for a number of reasons – being the only town to retain the original county name of Westmorland in its title; holding an annual horse fair which attracts hundreds of travellers and horse traders, many in colourful traditional caravans; and flooding with monotonous regularity. It flooded during Storm Desmond, and the effects are still being felt. Indeed, there was a massive earth-mover trundling around in the river bed while we were walking around, no doubt carrying out dredging or restructuring of some sort.

Appleby is also a very ancient settlement, with a Norman church and a castle that dates back to around 1100, and many beautiful old houses surrounding the market place, the main street up the hill towards the castle, and the river crossing. It’s surprisingly small, though, with a population of only around 3,000.  We were both expecting something a little larger, with more streets, more shops, more cafes, more, well, everything really!

We had a good potter round anyway and took lots of photos. But there was a keen wind blowing off the river, the temperature was only about 11c, there’s an admission charge to go in the castle (even though it’s a hotel?!), and we sort of ran out of things to do. I was particularly annoyed about the castle, as it’s reputed to be haunted and holds regular paranormal tours and events, but the main bit was closed on Saturday anyway. So we hopped in the car and headed back to the pretty village of Orton, in the moors a few miles to the south, where we had an excellent home-made lunch at the Orton Scar café and came away with a neat little wooden cabinet for the kitchen wall.

It was lovely to see Appleby; it’s old and full of character and interesting nooks and crannies, and on a warmer day we’d have been tempted to do a long walk along the banks of the river. As it is, we’ll almost certainly go back some day for another look. As long as it isn’t under water!

Here’s a handful of photos of the church, the castle and the main street.  Oh, and that digger in the river, which suddenly decided to drive straight at me while I was taking the photo!

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Tales from the Bunker (abridged)

Last weekend was the Heritage Open Days event, when dozens of otherwise inaccessible (or expensive!) historical properties fling open their doors to the general public.  This doesn’t just mean stately homes, but all sorts of smaller, less-well-known, or downright unusual venues.  In previous years we’ve visited everything from Unitarian chapels to art installations in barns, and fascinating they’ve been too.

This year there was a new place on the list – the Cold War bunker under Kendal’s County Hall.  The hall, built in the late 1930s to provide council offices when Kendal was still the county town of Westmorland, is already a listed building – partly because of its architectural style and partly because of that very history.  And for the first time ever, the council were allowing people in to take a look around.  It sounded so amazing that we cancelled all our plans for Saturday and shot into Kendal instead.

The bunker proved to be a lower ground floor, beneath the main council offices but still above ground – and it probably was amazing.  Sadly, the people who’d organised the event had completely underestimated the number of people interested in secret Cold War history.  They’d advertised on local radio and in the local press, and they’d even got the marketing department at Kendal Library to send a mail-shot out.  The result was hordes.  We arrived soon after it opened at 1pm, to find a long queue snaking through the car park, and quiet chaos inside.  And more and more visitors kept on turning up.

Where about 40 had been expected, several hundred arrived.  The building wasn’t designed to cope; corridors became clogged and the ventilation system blew a fuse.  It was packed, uncomfortable, and very, very hot.  And too busy to do more than one tour at once, which meant hanging round in the county archives room for the best part of an hour.

The staff did their best to keep their tempers, keep cheerful, and keep everyone informed.  There were leaflets, books, and maps of the bunker scattered about, and we spent some time scaring ourselves silly reading those.  (The absolute reality of potential nuclear war, back in the mid to late 1960s, was brought crashing home – a bomb on Manchester, for instance, would have wiped out my old family home.)  But in the end we couldn’t take any more.  We had a quick look round the bits that were still accessible, peering over shoulders, round heads and virtually through people’s legs.  We saw some of the control rooms, and a plan of where the 40-or-so occupants would have lived and worked, and the ‘over-pressure’ ventilation system that would have protected them from radioactive fallout and kept them safe.  And then we headed for the exit, and cooler air outdoors.

We’re hoping next year will be better.  Hopefully the organisers will realise just how popular this sort of history is, and arrange timed entry and official guided tours.  If they do, we’ll be at the top of the list, because it really was a window onto another world.  Although if current world events keep going the way we are, we might just need nuclear bunkers all over again!

A bit more exploring in Kendal

What do you do on a damp September Monday morning, when you’ve had your latest novel rejected and are feeling a bit down in the dumps?  In our case we stuck two fingers up at work and headed into Kendal to do a bit more poking about.  And had a surprisingly fun time again.

This time, we took a leaflet we’d picked up at Oxenholme station, published by Visit Kendal and called Kendal Walking Trails.  Although only small, it contains maps and fascinating facts and figures about three separate walks set in and around the town centre: one taking in culture, one history, and the third various bits of woodland.  We didn’t really have time to tackle all three, or even the whole of any one of them, but set off along one of the routes anyway to see what we could find.

Starting off up the ferociously-named Beast Banks (a former livestock slaughtering area which even Alfred Wainwright describes as “steep”), we tracked down the footpath leading to Castle Howe, the site of Kendal’s first castle.  The current ruin on the eastern side of the River Kent is well-known and plain for any visitor to the town to see.  But how many people realise there was an earlier castle on the slopes to the west of the river?  Probably not many, because it’s tucked away at the back of a load of houses, with barely a sign that it’s there.

Possibly this is because it’s not in the best of repair.  There’s a small and attractive park at the foot of the mound, but the mound itself is muddy and overgrown.  We slithered and clambered around the steep steps and rough paths to the top, and found nothing more than a strange obelisk celebrating the “Glorious Revolution”, a handful of sweetie wrappers and a stunning view.  It would have been nice to have a plaque, perhaps, giving some dates and a sense of the history of the place.  As it was, I’ve taken to Google but can’t find much information, other than that it appears to pre-date the second castle which was begun in 1206.

We slithered back down again and poked about Beast Banks some more, finding a fascinating sign celebrating the life of local architect George Webster, responsible for many of the town’s finest buildings, and a small statue of him perched on a rooftop clutching a scroll of architectural plans.  We also trotted along Garth Heads, a recently restored medieval lane cutting across between Beast Banks and Gillingate, with some intriguing-looking stairways and even narrower lanes to explore another day.  Then it was off to Brew Brothers café for a well-earned lunch.

This time, annoyingly, I forgot my camera so there’s no photos to share.  I’ll try to remember it next time and we can always retrace our steps.

Two go exploring in Kendal

Saturday was a day of what’s optimistically described as ‘intermittent showers’, which means it alternates between thick drizzle and bucketing.  We didn’t fancy kicking our heels round the house all day, so buzzed into Kendal with our brollies to do a bit of poking about.

Although the town is only around 10 miles away, and although we pop in and out like the sun on a showery day, we’re usually too busy heading for appointments, or rushing round the shops, to bother exploring.  However, every now and again it’s worth taking the time for a closer look, as this is an ancient and fascinating place.

There was a settlement on the River Kent nearby in Roman times, and the town easily dates from the early Middle Ages.  The market charter dates from 1189, the church is over 800 years old, and the town (often called the ‘auld grey town’ because of its beautiful soft grey limestone walls) still retains its medieval street pattern of high street, market place, and dozens of old ‘yards’.  The latter are a real feature, often opening up into hidden spaces containing old warehouses, cottages, or alms-houses.  And everywhere you look, there’s intriguing details: artwork, old milestones, intriguing signs and plaques, and a plethora of blue, green and brown plaques placed by the local heritage society to mark places of special interest.

This time I deliberately took my camera, and spent a morning (in between showers) happily snapping away.  I took around 30 photos and have barely scratched the surface, so there’s plenty more material for future visits.  Here’s a couple of pictures to give you some idea of the town.  Top is the steep section of Branthwaite Brow; middle is the ‘New’ Shambles!  And the third is the Highgate Hotel, with its wonderful inscription which reads in full ‘To the dwellers in this place God grante peace’.  I’ll be posting more soon, on my Instagram account.

Liverpool trip

Although I’m originally from Liverpool, I hadn’t been back for over twenty years, ever since a disastrous visit in about 1995 when the streets were piled with filth and everything looked so scruffy it broke my heart.

That all changed yesterday, when a sudden realisation that my passport had expired meant a hasty trip to the passport office for a renewal – and that’s our nearest branch.  We got the train down from Windermere, got the paperwork lodged with them, and then had four hours to kill in the city while they prepared the actual passport.  So we set off to explore… pretty much everything!

We must have walked over 4 miles, from Lime Street Station to the waterfront, to the business district, to the huge new shopping area of ‘Liverpool One’… and then back again.  On route we saw lots of interesting ‘things’ including the famous Beatles statue (I queued up for a photo), some of the original old buildings, new venues like the museum on the waterfront (where we had a really good and cheap lunch), and lots of new bits of sculpture, art, and heritage trails.

It’s changed out of all recognition from that scruffy place of the mid-90s into an incredibly smart, cosmopolitan, bustling city that beats Birmingham, Manchester and even Glasgow into so many cocked hats, in my opinion.  In fact, wandering the streets, the feel was far more of a London of the north than any other city I’ve visited in the last 20 years.  Even on a drab, wet day of constant spattering rain, it was vibrant and interesting, and we’d have loved to stay and see more.

Sadly, we couldn’t as we had things on over the weekend, but we’ve made a mental note to go back soon and stop over a few more nights so we can visit some of the new museums, get up the hill to the cathedrals again and generally mooch around more.

Here’s a few photos I managed to grab in spite of the drizzle, including some rather damp pigeons… and that Beatles statue, minus John’s foot.

Arts & Crafts

Bank holiday weekends in the Lakes can be a tad hectic, especially when the weather is as nice as it was last weekend.  So we tend to try to get ‘off the beaten track’ and steer clear of the main tourist hot-spots.  Luckily, there are still plenty of places to choose from.

One we keep for just these occasions is Blackwell, an amazing Arts & Crafts house just a couple of miles south of Bowness.  Built as a holiday home for the Manchester brewing family the Holts in 1901, it was designed by the well-known architect M H Baillie Scott in a [ ] Arts & Crafts style where everything from the structure to the interior décor and furnishings adds to the overall design.  The result is stunning.

The house sits on a terrace overlooking Lake Windermere, but unusually the main rooms face south, away from the best views, in order to catch the sun.  There are odd glimpses of the fells from some of the windows, making sudden dramatic ‘statements’ as you move around the house.  And if you like Arts & Crafts, then the interiors are to die for.  The main living room resembles a medieval great hall complete with vast inglenook fireplace and minstrels’ gallery, while the smaller drawing or sitting room is a confection of delicate white pillars and foliage, more like some of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s iconic designs.

And although most if not all the original furniture has vanished, the new owners Lakeland Arts have done an amazing job of filling the house with appropriate and complementary pieces by the likes of Knox, Voysey and Benson, as well as furniture designed by Baillie Scott himself, and other pieces by local Arts & Crafts designer Arthur Simpson of Kendal.  It all fits remarkably well and gives a good indication of how the house would have looked in its heyday, while still giving plenty of free space for visitors to wander about.

My own favourite bits are the fireplaces in the main rooms, all built as inglenooks with stained glass windows overlooking the garden, and beautiful tiles.  The garden, although comparatively small, is pretty, and then there are those amazing views.  It must have been a stunning place to live (even for part of the year) and it’s still a lovely place for a mooch.

Here’s a selection of photos I took on Saturday including the windows in the main reception hall, the impressive south-facing “back” of the house, a detail of the garden, and the spectacular view across the lake.

Beautiful buildings

There are some stunning photographs of architecture in this gallery from the BBC web page yesterday.

I particularly like the one of the Flatiron Building in a blizzard, but each one demonstrates a clever eye for spotting the unexpected view or the strange beauty in artificial, built environments. I just wish all the captions explained where the various photos had been taken.  I’d love to know where that very Starship Enterprise style control room was, for example!