Running on somebody else’s legs

I was out again before dawn this morning. As I approached the wood that lies below the moorland I startled a deer that darted away up the stony track and disappeared into the undergrowth. I couldn’t tell what species it was in the half-light but it was probably a roe deer as they are the more common round these parts.

I felt as if I was running on somebody else’s legs today. I stumbled along feeling heavy and tired. The wind was coming from the north-west and moved the dense fog present on the hilltop from one place to another but never blew it away.

It’s hard somedays to tell which is low cloud and which is hill fog, although that in itself is cloud by any other name. When the wind is in the west it blows across the sea then reaches the land and rises slowly as it crosses the Lancashire plain. When it hits the line of the Pennines it is suddenly forced upwards and the mild moist air cools as it gains altitude. The cooler air is unable to hold as much water vapour and so water begins to condense forming a hill fog. It then spends its time skulking about on the moors, occasionally creeping further down in order to make its presence felt in town. The wind will normally carry it off as the day wears on but it often returns overnight and fills the sky with a heavy greyness the following day.

So, to combat the damp I’ve included a recipe for ciabatta bread, an ideal accompaniment to those winter soups. The recipe is from allrecipes.com.

Ciabatta Bread

The dough is very, very sticky but the resulting bread is excellent and very like shop-bought ones in texture.

• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 3 1/4 cups bread flour
• 1 1/2 tsp dried yeast

1. Put ingredients into pan of bread machine in order recommended by the manufacturer. Select dough cycle and start.

2. When cycle is completed remove dough from pan. It will be very sticky, resist the temptation to add more flour. Let it rest on a lightly floured board for 15 mins.

3. Grease and lightly flour 2 baking sheets. Divide dough into 2 large loaves or 6 smaller ones. Roughly shape into oblongs and cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for approximately 45 mins or until doubled in size.

4. Preheat oven to Gas Mark 7 (220C/425F).

5. Dimple dough and place loaves in oven. Bake for 15-20 minutes for smaller loaves and 25-30 minutes for larger loaves. Swap tray positions over halfway through and spritz with water every 5 to 10 minutes during baking to give a crispier crust.

 

‘Sighted a mackerel with stripes on his back’

I set off this morning in the bluish pre-dawn light. The dusting of snow on the ground made the paths more visible especially in the darker areas under overhanging trees.

I walked up across the moors to the trig point. The pillar is only easily accessible when the ground is frozen. It sits on a concrete platform in the midst of a bog and I gingerly crossed the patches of ice covering the dark patches of water. They crunched and crackled underfoot but I didn’t go through.

The view was breathtaking, which is remarkable when I consider the number of times I have stood on that skyline and looked across to the north and east. It was the clarity of the air that was unusual. Mostly, you are either peering into a mist close at hand or glimpsing shrouded grey shapes in the distance.

Today, I could see the Pennines rolling away before me, line after line of elongated, rounded hills that remind me of a shoal of fish breaking through the surface of the water. Beyond these, I could make out the peaks of the hills in North Yorkshire, they were covered in snow and gleamed in the early morning sunlight.

I spent some time gazing across this distance not knowing when I might make out those distant hills again. I walked away from the trig point and crossed a stile to come back to the main path by a different route.

It was one of those mornings when you are loathe to abandon the moors, their beauty is captivating on days like this and I found myself taking in deep breathes of air like it was some wonderful vintage wine I might not taste the likes of again.

The trig or triangulation point is part of a network of pillars erected all over the UK in the 1930s to aid with mapping the country. In these days of satellites and lasers, the trig points are defunct. Some of them are being removed from their, often high and remote, locations. Why, I don’t know? It seems a little shortsighted, they are not ugly, bulky things that impinge on the countryside in the way, say, that the endlessly multiplying mobile phone pylons do. They are a little part of history and should be preserved as such. Also, if they are ever needed again, it would prevent the need to re-construct them.

I reluctantly trailed off back down the hill and home, glancing up at the sky and noticing the formation of a ‘mackerel’ sky. The barred clouds glowing pink, quite pretty really but a sure indication that the weather is about to change and these few crisp days are soon over.

 

Thro’ the Crisp Air

A biting north wind was blowing today. It was so refreshing to feel cold. The hills were covered with a thin layer of snow, not much thicker than a heavy frost. All along the top lane the early morning sunshine bounced off ice-covered puddles.

An area of woodland has been fenced off after the storm of last week and peering over the wall I could see many trees at an angle to the other trunks, great tall trunks of pine, the whole effect was like an open weave tapestry.

The sheep on the common land above the lane were set against the snow like a Joseph Farquharson painting. Some of them looked dumbfounded at what this cold white stuff could be.

I ran along the bottom of The Pike taking care over the icy patches, sometimes taking to the narrow grass verge for better traction, then walked back through the grounds of a long-demolished house that had once belonged to Lord Leverhulme.

The grounds are extensive and modelled on ancient Chinese gardens, or possibly Japanese, nobody seems sure on this point. They are planted up with all manner of non-native plants that were popular in Victorian times and even now the old borders glow pink and claret with Pernettya berries.

The local park wardens have hacked back the Rhododendron, which are a legacy from that Victorian planting. Every few years they are razed to the ground to reveal the stonework beneath and what magnificent stonework it is. Beautifully appointed follies, cascading waterfalls and hidden grottos are all built out of the local millstone grit and look so much part of the land that it is hard to remember that they are a contrived landscape.

I left the icy stillness of the gardens and wended my way back home only stopping to watch the motorway which, because the wind was from the north and not the west as it usually is, is playing out in the distance like some silent movie as people hurry, each to their various workplaces.

 

The West Wind Doth Blow

The weather yesterday was astonishing. When I first ventured out in the morning there was a damp wind flicking up litter but no hint as to what was to come. For the last 72 hours the weather people had been promising violent storms and sending out warnings by the hour. A warning had been given on the news in the morning regarding not going out unless it was absolutely necessary but that was a non-starter on a weekday. Nobody’s boss is going to accept the excuse, ‘I can’t come into work today because it’s windy.’

By the end of yesterday afternoon we had seen winds topping 91 miles an hour, as recorded by the weather station at the local TV mast on Winter Hill.

There had already been a lot of rain put down overnight which was now cutting channels through any loose debris and bubbling up through storm drains. I was visiting my mother where we sat drinking cappucino and watching the windows in the house opposite shimmy as the winds rose higher and higher. The contents of builders’ skips were flung up the street and ‘For Sale’ signs stood no chance, bending swiftly as the wind struck them. Through the kitchen window, in the back of the house, garage doors alarmingly took to flight like pieces of paper in the factory yard.

The aftermath is clearer today with gaping spaces on roofs where tiles have been ripped off and fences blown down. Several trees in nearby parks have been uprooted whilst, amazingly, my old, cankerous apple tree is still standing. The roof of a local Royal Mail delivery office has been partly ripped off and several gable ends have been blown in.

Six people lost there lives in this area, most through falling masonry. One man died as his lorry overturned and another man had a heart attack as he battled to secure his fence against the wind.

Yesterday was stark and frightening, many people escaped just in time as they fled from crumbling buildings. Several schools in the area are closed today as teachers and pupils look at the smashed walls and shattered roofs of their classrooms. It was often people’s vigilance that enabled escape in time as buildings came apart.

Today is quiet, it’s probably windy but not so you’d notice.

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Another recipe suitable for a breezy day.Tomato and Rosemary Soup

The secret of the excellent flavour of this soup is allowing the tomatoes and onions adequate cooking time so the flavours develop. Suitable for vegetarians.

Serves 2

• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• a small bunch of rosemary, chopped
• oil for frying
• salt and pepper
• 2 oz of Feta, cubed, and ciabatta for serving

Method

1. Gently fry onion for 10 minutes.
2. Add tinned tomatoes and rosemary.
3. Simmer, covered for 45 minutes, not allowing mixture to become dry and burn.
4. Add a cup of water then puree.
5. The soup is now ready to serve with cubes of feta and ciabatta.

Can be frozen.

 

Stargazing

It is a cold, clammy morning. A mist is blowing over the moors, constantly changing the horizon. The wind is cool but not cold, not like the icy blasts one expects in January especially as the winds blowing across the country at the moment are coming from the North Atlantic. It’s interesting to hear that New York is experiencing a mild spell and I caught on the news yesterday that Russians were worried by the lack of snow.

It was quiet out, the only other creature being a solitary crow feasting on a dead sheep, it uttered a guttural cry as I walked past and lazily flapped away.

Coming down the hill I could see rain drifting eastward across the Lancashire plain. I thought it would take about half an hour to reach me as it was several miles away but no, I was wrong because ten minutes later I was trudging through a sweeping downpour, it quickly blew over and has left a blue-patched sky in its wake.

Unless it clears tonight I won’t be able to do a recount of the stars in Orion. The British Astronomical Society are conducting a survey to judge the effects of light pollution on the night sky, they are using the constellation of Orion as an indicator. Apparently on a clear night you can see up to 50 stars with the naked eye. On Sunday, the only clear night so far, I saw 6.

At one time the garden was an excellent viewing point for the night skies, the milky-way often being visible. Over the last five years there has been a deterioration in viewing quality. This is not due to street lights but the overuse of security lights. There are so many, some piercing with a white glare into the bedrooms, that I’m often reminded of the border towers along the iron curtain during the cold war. I’ve even had to scuttle low down when going out to star-watch to avoid setting off the neighbour’s searchlights.

If you want to join in the star count, it’s on for this week only, go to the star count page and follow the instructions. Orion is easy to find as it dominates the southern sky mid-evening this time of year.

 

Rotten stuff

Another grey, drizzly morning. The wind has dropped so I am able to put my hanging-basket back up. Last week it was swinging like a pendulum with the little pansy heads jiggling about over the sides. This mild weather has been a boon for the likes of the Viola family. The cold weather normally brings their blooming to an abrupt end but this year as the mild weather continues they have gone on and on.

The basket I have here, is planted with a variety called Arabian Nights, a mixture of pinks and purples. When I bought it, back in October, the colours looked insipid against a radiant sunny backdrop but now under this heavy grey sky the colours glow delicately .

The storms have kept me out of the garden over the last couple of weeks. There has been little damage, the hedges serve as a good windbreak. The plastic covered greenhouse travelled over the garden a short distance and I have now got it weighted down with a few stones and a tub of compost in case it feels adventurous again.

About the only task I have completed recently is sorting out the compost bins. Instead of the usual two bins, where you fill one whilst emptying the other, I have three bins on the go.

A year ago I decided to compost all the paper household waste as well as the usual kitchen and garden offerings.Two of the bins are large, square monsters that must hold at least a ton of compost, the third bin is of the more normal garden variety. The two large bins were filled more rapidly than I thought they would be, so now I fill the smaller bin and transfer its contents to the other two bins as the compost in them rots down.

The main difference I can see, due to the inclusion of paper waste, is the compost is much drier. I am wondering if the paper wicks the water out of the heap. Consequently, the compost is taking longer to decompose.

Well, it’s an experiment and as with all experiments, some problems you anticipate – will the presence of all this paper lead to nitrogen deficiency when it is applied to the soil? – and some problems are unforeseen.

So, watch this space and see how the great compost experiment turns out.

 

Running on the Spot

Yet another stormy morning with winds gusting up to 70 miles an hour. As I sit here typing the wind is buffeting the whole place and sounding like the boom of the sea on rocks. The tree-tops are dancing to and fro occasionally casting a brittle branch to the ground.

I don’t know if it was sensible to go out this morning, by the time I’d got up to the level of the moors the wind was roaring and moaning and when it rained the force was so violent you had to face the other way.

Still, I soldiered on and at times the wind was so strong that I felt as though I was running on the spot. I didn’t bother trying to reach the highest point of the hill, it’s too exposed. If I’d been able to get up there I may have been stuck, sheltering behind the folly on top, waiting for the wind to drop. I’ve done that before and had to wait for the wind to fall or risk being bowled over the edge and tumbled down the hillside, only having my momentum stopped by the fence at the bottom of the slope.

I saw another sheep with a deficit of wool today, its pink skin showing through. Most of the sheep were sheltering in the lee of a stone wall that ripples and folds over the moorland, they lay down grey and bedraggled against the jewel green of the ground that is more moss than grass at the moment with the amount of rain we’ve had.

On return home I finished off preparing a soup for lunch which is welcome food for anybody outside on a day like today. It can be prepared in advanced and heated through when needed.

Tomato and Pepper Soup

A simple recipe with a warming chilli kick. Suitable for vegetarians.

Serves 2

• 2 red peppers
• 1 medium onion
• 1 medium can of chopped tomatoes
• 1 tsp vegetable stock
• 1/2 – 1 tsp dried crushed chilli flakes
• olive oil

1. Heat oven to gas mark 7 (220C or 425F).
2. Cut peppers in half, remove seeds, place on oiled baking tray.
3. Cut onion in half, peel, place on baking tray with peppers.
4. Brush peppers and onion all over with olive oil.
5. Place in oven and roast for 1/2 an hour. The onion should be soft and the peppers beginning to brown.
6. Remove vegetables from tray put on a plate and leave to cool.
7. Roughly chop the cold vegetables and place in a blender.
8. Add tin of tomatoes, stock and chilli to blender then whizz for a few seconds.
9. The soup can now be left in the fridge until required.
10. Add up to a cupful of water to the soup to get the desired consistency. Heat soup to boiling then allow to simmer for 20 minutes to bring the flavours together.
11. Serve with decent bread or crusty rolls.

Garlic can be roasted along with the peppers and onion to add further flavour. This soup can be frozen after it has been allowed to simmer for 20 minutes then left to cool.

 

Sorry Sheep

It has certainly been windy over the week, the type of wind that likes to bustle about gathering all the litter from the picnic points and decoratively placing it on nearby shrubs giving them a, not out of place, festive look.

Today has been mild, compared to yesterday, with occasional downpours. Yesterday saw gusting winds driving the rain horizontally over the moors and when it wasn’t raining the wind raced across the grass making a sound like fabric ripping. At times it was all you could do to stand up against it let alone walk.

The sheep on the open moorland are in a sorry state, they appear to be losing their wool, I saw one yesterday with its naked, pink flanks exposed to the brutal wind. The ram was in with them last month though the moors don’t seem the place to give sustenance to in-lamb ewes. The moorland sheep around here are no longer shorn in the summer, they used to be a vigorous flock but now there are only a few dozen scattered over the hill tops.

 

Cloudy Days

This has been one of those days where the daylight is brightest at 9am. Beyond that point it gets darker and darker until by mid-afternoon the cloud cover is so grey and heavy that you’ll be happy when night falls once again and ends this day of twilight.

This seems to be the weather pattern now, from October onwards many days are this sludgy colour, sometimes it rains sometimes it doesn’t. I’m not sure if it’s merely my imagination or if there are more of these dark days now, with dense cloud cover through which little sun can penetrate.

Is this a result of global warming?

If global warming is a real trend and not just a meteorological blip on a large time-scale is this what it will be like? Everybody knows from schooldays geography that the more heat you’ve got the more water can be lifted up into the air and what’s it going to do when it’s there? That’s right, hang around in great big cloud formations.

The media are frequently promoting global warming as a move towards an Australian beach climate where we’ll spend most of our working day listening to the whir of the air-conditioning then have a ‘barbie’ on the beach when we get home.

Does global warming equate to more sunshine? Probably not unless there is a shift in the axis of the earth and if that happened then beach barbecues would probably be the last thing on our minds.

What it does mean is – more energy. More heat, more wind, more air being lifted up, more storms, more rain. I know people complain of drought conditions in the south-east of the UK but is that a change in the weather pattern or more demands being made on the water supply? You tell me.

One interesting thing to note in all this climate-related angst, besides the fact that it will certainly mean introducing yet more taxes, is that it was not so long ago that scientists were predicting the next ice-age. Of course, like the film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, we may get global warming followed by an ice-age. Then everybody will be right.

 

Memorial forest

The clouds are hanging low over the hills today. There are no sweeping views down to the sea or umber vistas across the hill tops. Everywhere a uniform grey covers the world. A persistent drizzle is falling, slowly soaking into the bare soil and clinging in droplets to clothes.

At a point along one of the lanes that climbs up the side of the hill there is a gateway into the site of an old reservoir. It’s surrounded by a mossy stone wall, low enough in some places to allow the onlooker to peer over into the scrubby wilderness that now coats its sides.

A few years ago the local wildlife trust bought it from the water-board. It was no longer needed as a functioning reservoir as it had been replaced by a new one underground. The new one hasn’t the presence of the old its position only being marked out by strange plastic mushrooms dotted over a close-cut lawn situated behind a high, chain-link fence.

The wildlife trust got to work immediately.