Mountain Biking

Even I, who am not a great fan of running, admit it has certain advantages over mountain biking when the ground is wet and slippery. Round here the mud is mostly not too thick, but it is quite slimy and the limestone is slick. But we thought that it might not have been raining quite as hard recently, so last week we risked a bit of mountain biking: the Whernside Loop. Only sunk the front wheel of the tandem, into mud once. Must have bounced off my handlebar as I still have a huge bruise on my thigh. Then the soles of my shoes fell off. But apart from ha we had an excellent time.

Great Victorian enterprise: Ribble Viaduct, with James for scale. Great Californian enterprise: the Ventana El Conquistador.

But now poor James has had to go and represent the team in Ringberg, Germany where they are discussing climate sensitivity (See #Ringberg15 on the twitter). What you don't hear about on the twitter is about all official Germanic "fun", eating three very large meals a day, going up mountains, and even, um, singing. Unfortunately I was too busy to attend. My talk was on Wednesday morning which happened to be quite sunny.

Actually, it was't the busy-ness. I am testing a theory about meetings, and it is that it is better if just one of us attends so that we don't spend he whole time conspiring together but instead actually talk to some of the other people. Furthermore, as part time workers without a hoard of postdocs to do our work for us we could easily spend the whole time preparing for, going to and recovering from meetings. And then we'd get no work done at all. And it's slightly less harmful for the planet. Especially this time; James showed not just my slides and his slides but also those from Dan Lunt (Bristol) and Ayako Abe (Japan)!

Read more...

Fountains Abbey

It was dissoluted by Henry the Eighth so is no longer a proper church, but last Thursday we visited Fountains Abbey. Faced by about 15 members of the Cambridge Uni Society of North and West Yorkshire (plus me and James) the tour guide tried really hard to fill the hungry minds before her in the hour long tour. It was all extremely interesting, with the history of the foundation and growth including explanation of the historical differences between common all garden Benedictines and the back to basics Cistercians (Fountains Abbey was the latter), and there were many insights into the daily lives of the monks. Quite a lot has been deciphered by archaeologists analysing the features of the ruins. To me it all looked like piles of stones of many colours (see pretty pics at the bottom of this post), but they can see cupboards and notice boards,  can identify who the sculptures are of,  and even find plumbing. Yes medieval plumbing!

In Japan, quite a lot of religion occurs out of doors, which really is as it should be, but over the hour long tour I grew to appreciate why this is not very practical in Yorkshire. Fountains Abbey no longer has a roof (thanks to Henry, who also realised this was the best way of making the place uninhabitable), and even on  pleasant March day, it got very cold. By the end everyone was hoping that the warm and furry dog that someone had brought along would come to them to be petted.

Walk through the Abbey and you get to Studley Royal Water Gardens and the tea shop. Then walk through the deer park and you get to St Mary's, which, like our house is a Gothic Revival Church.  Unfortunately it is only open from Easter so we couldn't go inside. Some similarities in style between St Mary's and our house are apparent, but St Mary's is really very beautiful. It had a famous architect.

The water gardens may be a historical feat of engineering, but they are a bit dull being just grass and water and statues. There is also a stately home built mostly from stones taken from the Abbey after it was ruined, and a Mill which dates from when the Abbey was a big profit making enterprise. We had only the afternoon so no time to visit these two places. Together all of this is a World Heritage Site. It is a bit strange that Kamakura failed to obtain this status a couple of years ago. Just its water gardens are much better let alone the many temples. 

Read more...

Cat update

Someone (Steve Bloom) asked after the the foster cat. I think Riley is now pretty much living the life of Riley. He's adjusting quite well to home life, and is now awake and playful in the mornings, becoming more peaceful in the afternoons. He's more settled. Only in the last few days did he get brave enough to snooze on rather than behind chairs. Now he like to position himself rather regally, centrally positioned on a chair or cushion. He still does not fully appreciate that toys are for chasing and hands are not, which is not fantastic when he gets very excited. But he's improving. And is actually now not all that bad at playing fetch, considering that he couldn't do it at all a week ago. Shockingly, he didn't seem to mind when I slipped a harness on him today.  Let me know if you'd like to adopt him! I reckon he needs an equally rambunctious cat friend as well as a new owner, but people tell me that cats often do not get on when newly introduced to each other as adults.

Read more...