Kittiwakes nesting and a juvenile herring gull at Bridlington Harbour; a quiet corner of Bondville Model Village; harebells at North Landing, Flamborough and ring-tailed lemur and Humboldt’s penguins at Sewerby Hall.
Gulls and Penguins
Coastal Flowers
Restharrow, pyramidal and common spotted orchids, sea plantain and kidney vetch at Whitby and Scarborough a couple of weeks ago.
The orchids and vetch were growing at the foot of a hummocky slope on South Bay Scarborough, the result of a massive landslide in 1995 which undercut the Holbeck Hall Hotel at the top of the slope. The slope has been stabilised using imported boulders and hardcore.
Pickering Castle
A couple of weeks ago I got to return to Pickering Castle for the first time since a school trip there in the 1960s. It hasn’t changed much but an improvement is that the grass on the steep slopes of the motte is now cut only once every three years its now a steeply sloping meadow with marjoram, lady’s bedstraw, knapweed and dog daisy.
Enchanter’s nightshade grows by the ‘secret’ emergency exit from the castle, the postern gate. This was built on the verbal instructions of Edward II when he visited the castle (which were later confirmed in writing). Edward had seized the castle from rebel leader Thomas Earl of Lancaster after the Battle of Boroughbridge.
Can you draw people?
“Do you draw people?” the editor asked me as she looked through my sketchbooks.
If I could draw gorillas surely it would be obvious that I’d be able to draw people too? But I decided to make a special effort.
I enrolled on a weekly life drawing evening, which I kept up for years and I set off to the local market and, over the period of several weeks, filled it with drawings of people. Wakefield had a large open market and a market hall and you got a full range of different people shopping or just browsing there.
45 minutes with Hogweed
It’s forecast to be the warmest day of the week but sitting in the shade at the foot of a woodland slope at Newmillerdam it’s like having air conditioning as I draw the hogweed.
William Baines Centenary Recital
Robin Walker tells me that we’ve now got a date for a recital to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of Yorkshire composer William Baines. After the recital I’ll be leading a walk to some of the Bainesian corners of Horbury.
Thanks to Horbury Civic Society and Horbury Methodist Church for their support.
Osla’s Camp
Ossett is a Viking place name, which might mean ‘Osla’s seat’ or ‘ridge camp’.
I’m transferring my 1998 booklet Around Old Ossett from the Microsoft Publisher version on my now defunct PC to Adobe InDesign on my iMac and taking the opportunity to spruce up my cartoons of local place names in Adobe Illustrator.
In my original booklets I wanted the blackest of blacks possible so I went for bit map format where each pixel is either black or white – never grey but this gives a slightly pixelated image. In Illustrator I can use the ‘Image Trace’ function set to ‘Black and White Logo’ to get a smoother effect.
Robin, Hudds
I’m delighted to have my Robin Hood artwork featured in an exhibition, closing next Friday, at Huddersfield University alongside – amongst others – Louis Zansky’s comic strip version. It was first published in 1942 in what was then the ‘Classic Comics’ series so, not surprisingly, there’s more than a hint of Errol Flynn’s 1938 Technicolor movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Dr Todd Borlik and students in the School of Arts and Humanities have examined Robin Hood in history and literature, especially in the early ballads set in Yorkshire locations such as Sayles and Barnsdale near Pontefract.
My Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire tours locations mentioned in the ballads and follows the career of a Robert Hode who features in the Manor Court Rolls of Wakefield. It’s likely that he was outlawed after fighting on the side of the rebels – led by Thomas of Lancaster, the Lord of the Manor of Wakefield at the time – at the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322.
Kirklees Priory is the scene of the story of Robin Hood’s death at the hands of his cousin, the Prioress and her lover Roger of Doncaster, who, according to a caption in the exhibition, may actually have been a ‘Roger of Huddersfield’.
The story gets a sumptuous Victorian gothic makeover in a stained glass window designed by Chance & Co. of Birmingham.
Link
My Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire is available from Willow Island Editions, £2.99, post free in the UK.
Sir William Bruce
It’s likely that this albaster effigy of a cross-legged knight in Pickering church is Sir William Bruce (c.1295-c.1345) who founded a chantry chapel there on the Feast of St John the Evangelist Saturday 27 December 1337.
He’s said to have fought at the Battle of Boroughbridge (or possibly at a tournament held there). His family home was at Beck Isle, Pickering, where there’s now a museum of rural life.
Pocket Plum
Amongst the ripening sloes on the blackthorn are a few pocket plum galls. Pocket plum, also known as bladder plum gall, Taphrina pruni, is caused by a fungus.
There were plenty of ringlet butterflies weaving about at grass-top height in this meadow between Cawthorne and Cannon Hall Park. We thought that we spotted a single meadow brown and a skipper too.
Settling more often than the ringlets were a few fresh-looking commas. I say fresh-looking but they look like a ragged-edge dead leaf when the wings are folded shut.
Sitting outside at a table at Hillary’s cafe in Cawthorne village, I couldn’t resist drawing this chimney on a cottage across the road. It includes chimney pots of various vintages, stone, cement, brick and lead with some textured rendering on the stack plus on a tuft or two of grass and a television aerial as a final touch.
