install 12

Install 12 Mon 18 june
Well yesterday we moved down to just north of york to bob and daphne....have known them since the 70s also and they farm near the town of tollerton...although they have downsized in recent years and lease out a fair bit of their property these days....bob has a small flock of texel stud ewes to keep him out of trouble and he drives part time for a fairly big bus company....they have also stayed with us in nz a few years ago
Today we went over to the coast to whitby for daphne's birthday..(where capitano cook came from)....on the way we stopped in pickering as we were going to take the scenic steam train over the moors to whitby....however train fully occupied with carrying what has become a new-age british institution...ie the olympic torch...or to be more specific...some of the 8500 olympic torches which they have made....what they do is cart them around by bus mostly and when they come to a village they get a member of the uk olympic team or some noted sportsman to run with one for about 300 meters and then he or she uses their torch to light the next one who repeats the process and they then get to keep the torch....so there are a lot of torches floating about and a huge enterage to cart them around and no-one can understand why they dont just use one torch....anyway relay was over when we arrived and they were all lining up for the photo shoot.....i asked one of them what he was going to do with his torch...."use it to light the barbecue" says he....i asked him what his sport was...rowing says he....i said "keep an eye out for kiwis coming past"...he thought we were looking good in the singles and doubles but thought he might be in for a chance as he is in the 8s
Whitby is a good little town to wander around though there are always a lot of "loopies"(tourists for the uninitiated) under your feet....and a lot of the town excluding the concrete entrance to the harbour, would have been standing when jimmy sailed out in the 1760s.......
The trip over to whitby crosses the north yorkshire moors which are pretty spectacular and where in one place is the town of gotland where they filmed "heartbeat"
Tue 19th june
Well had a boys version of what women call "shopping therapy"....bob and i hauled the back wheels of his ford 4000 and replaced them with rowcrop ones ....then we put the spray unit on the back and i sprayed a paddock of barley for him with a fungaside....at home all of our spraying is on grass paddocks using gps tracking....here it is mostly crop spraying and crops are sowed with tramlines at whatever spacing you want (ie the sowing unit leaves a wheel sized strip for later on) and all you have to do when spraying is to drive up and down the tramlines which is easy- peasy...and made a nice change from being a tourist for so long !!
Wed 20th
Today bob and daphne took us up north to county durham where we went to the beamish outdoor museum.....about 1970 an estate gifted a preservation society a 300 acre farm....what they proceeded to do then was to transplant old buildings from all over britain to the site where they rebuilt them as seperate villages....a 1920s one ,...an edwardian one..a coalmining one complete with pit and of course the farm and i would defy anyone to pick out that these sites have not always been there , such is the detail that they put into rebuilding them....a lot of people work there as each shop business ,etc is staffed by people in period dress and they actually sale a selection of what they would have originally....including the pub of course !! and the villages are all linked together by a vintage tram and bus network...entry ticket is not expensive and is valid for a year
On the way home we called into the centre of durham to have a weatherspoons tea and a look at the cathederal which has the largest gothic arch in europe...it was closed but had a good look around outside....is made of sandstone and is badly eroded ...man what a huge bill will be required to restore the outside of that.....dont think i would like to be inside there in a decent earthquake !!
Thur 21st
More "shopping therapy" today...cut down some "crack" willows that were blocking the house drains....same variety of bloody weeds that we have in nz and they are also chocking a lot of rivers up here as well......job made more interesting by raining all day as well
Fri 22nd
Still bloody raining....man are they having a crap summer up here....just as well we didnt come for the sun.....got a bit of a break after brecky and we manage to load 3 big fadges of wool onto back of bobs double cab which we fortunately covered and we all set off for bradford....man it hosed down all the way and these big motor ways up here have so much spray coming off vehicles , it is like driving through a carwash.......got to bradford and dropped off wool at woolstore....hopefully not too much water has forced its way in.....went to center of city to see what a 24million pound fountain looks like.....by looks of it it a good place to take your dog for a bath and not very spectacular....i think a working bee of cockies or a school comittee workday could have knocked it up for 24 thou....is of course very contoversial in bradford as most people talked about prefering more housing to a white elephant like that but it is bang in the middle of town ouside a very impressive city hall.and they say it looks better at night!!....but there was high wind , rain and very cold....and from what ive heard of bradford before or since....ideal conditions to get a feel for the city......thank the stars for a good warm pub lunch across the square...weatherspoons....my favorite pup chain
After lunch bob and daphne took me to one of my favorite institutions and my first one for the whole trip.......a museum...in this case the museum of photography and cinemotography.....very interesting and free as well...appears to be heavily sponsored by the bbc and other big corps....they have recording studios from across time all set up and you can wander around them and fiddle with the equipment like cameras etc and special effects...film yourself wandering among the dinosaurs etc etcwatch countless stuff from the past ...also contained a full sized imax cinema ....so could have spent a week there but reluctantly we had to move on
B & D dropped us to the nearby village of steeton where we were taken over by becky and michael who a lot of you may have met at home late last year and earlier this year......they were woofers at home for us on two occassions (willing workers on organic farms) and in january the three of us tramped the northwest circuit of stewart island in 7 days instead of the suggested 9 and it was a gut buster and if it hadnt been for those two driving me on each day , then i would probably still be down there.....they say they would be happier over in west otago tailing lambs but alas they had to come back up here to regroup...michael is a structural engineer who works from home and consults on projects all over central britain....over here they have a lot of privately funded public works and becky works for one such group who are building state houses...she is qualified as an estimater and or quantity surveyor and her job is to make sure they are using the right materials and not cutting any corners.....but there are a lot of people living over in that part of west yorkshire and commuting is tedious so she works about 4 twelve hour days a week and has three off...they are both keen trampers and push bikers....michael is lining them up to do "the three peaks" which are 3 hills spread over 25 miles and you have about 12 hours to do it in
They sacrifised their weekend to take us up into the yorkshire dales which lead north from the town of skipton and are part of another national park...very scenic but a lot of flood water around due to continual rain
And on the sunday we went to a world war 1 and 11 reinactment day nearby ......here boys (and gals) who happen to own tanks ,field artillary and machine guns dress up in period uniforms and attack each other across a very boggy field....on this particular day the germans won and kate who only had on open towed shoes had mud up to her knees much to someones mirth....and bugger me but on the way home in the middle of the town of keighly we came upon crowds of people lining the streets....stopped to inspect...olympic bloody flame again , but this time it hadnt arrived yet so we waited while a convoy of support buses and sponsors vehicles came thru the route not to mention heaps of police escorts on motor bikes....an finally the torch bearer ran past.....a good keen englishman who was grinning from ear to ear and waving his free hand like he was trying to detach it.....the humorous thing that struck me was that his country of birth was obviously......................................china !!
Mon 25
Very good of michael it was to cart us back across to bob and daphnes this morning ,a bit of timewith them and we were picked up by derick and yvonne....i worked mostly with dick in the 70s and for part of it lived in his parents pub(the station hotel) at tollerton (now a chinese restaurant )....they live in a village on the outskirts of york called wiggington and dick has a hedge cutting business and believe me there are a lot of hedges in this part of the world so he is real busy
We are ty-howing at dick and vons this week and next mon we fly back up to sweden ( having made phone contact with the people i worked with up there when we called there on boat , it struck me afterwards that it was a pity that we couldnt catch up in person as i havent seen them for 37 years and who knows when we will be up here next.....so while we were at bobs , he went on line with ryanair and managed to get us a good deal...so next mon morn that is where we will be for most of that week so more later