Into the fading light

As I've suggested in previous posts, what England does best is villages. These are the repositories of British culture, tradition and values. The architecture and the landscape is mellow and human in scale. The Derbyshire Dales, full of stone-built villages nestling in the gentle hills, look prettiest on a summer's evening, as the setting sun casts long shadows across woods and fields. Above: Duffield enjoys the last rays of the fading light. Below: a herd of cattle near Hazelwood.

We went for a long circular walk from my brother's house in Duffield, taking in footpaths, country lanes and a disused stretch of the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway. Below: Clouds, trees and a setting sun

Buzzed by Fat Albert

While visiting Matlock Bath with Moni, Eddie and Cousin Hoavis, we were buzzed by a low-altitude flypast from an RAF Hercules ('Fat Albert') flying down the Derwent Valley at what looked like treetop level. It must have skimmed over the cable car linking Matlock Bath station with the Heights of Abraham that we've just been on. I'm not entirely sure of the purpose of this flypast - might have been something to do with a military reenactment held nearby. Note the trails of smoke left by the Herc's four turboprops (below). It's worth comparing the Lockheed C-130 Hercules with its Soviet counterpart, the Antonov An-12.

Down the line from Duffield

It's always a great pleasure to see abandoned railways coming back to life. Spending some holiday time at my brother's in Derbyshire, we took the opportunity to see the nearby Ecclesbourne Valley Railway, linking Duffield and Wirksworth, some eight miles away. Closed to passenger traffic in the 1950s, the line is being re-opened to tourists and enthusiasts, with work underway on the section running into Duffield station (served by Midland Mainline). With some extra donations and voluntary work, Wirksworth will hopefully soon have a rail link to the outside world. But apart from the appeal to rail fans, the line has a practical use, as it will also serve the quarries at Wirksworth, allowing for a more environmentally-friendly way of transporting the rock. The sleepers are in a very bad state, many have totally rotted through - not surprising since the line was built in the 1870s. Above: A works train leaving Duffield. Below: Cousin Hoavis, Eddie and Moni walking the disused section of the line.

This time last year:
To the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution
Over the Peaks by bus (Moni and I were to retrace this journey this year - same bus driver!)
Memory and Comfort (Dziadzio Tadeusz has recovered from his operation a year ago)
Tissington Trail (another disused Derbyshire railway put to good use)
Of stained glass, rainbows and floods
Bouncing queen, see her bounce on the trampoline

Through the wetlands, on foot

Despite the recent evening thunderstorms, the watertable in the wetlands at the end of the road has been subsiding. I reckoned it would be dry enough to wade through the reedbeds from one end to the other. Eddie and I donned our Wellingtons and forced our way through over 300m of dense vegetation, tall reeds and bullrushes. I shipped some rather foetid water in my left welly, but otherwise we got through OK. On the way, I snapped some good birdlife - this kite (right - can anyone positively identify this bird of prey?) and three herons that fly between here and the pond on ul. Pozytywki. Below: A grey heron coming in to land, another already perched in a tree top.

At the deepest, the water was some 80cm deep, though the bottom was muddy, our boots would often get stuck. The reeds towered over our heads and their density made progress difficult. The right approach is simply to power through regardless.

It was hard physical work but worth it - this is my first crossing of the wetlands since October 2004 (a year of drought, when the reedbeds were bone dry). Left: Eddie the Explorer manfully making his way through the two-metre high reeds. Having such unclaimed, wild terrain so close to our house and within the city limits is a great privilege; I hope that development and the city hall's desire for Order and Progress does not deprive us of our suburban wilderness. Below: The epicentre of the wetlands. Still quite watery here.

This time last year:
Rainbows and rainfall records
Miserable grey little island

Summer sunset triptych

July is Poland's wettest month. Each day's been similar - fine start, then bit by bit, clouds start building up; by the evening there's a full-blown thunderstorm with a deluge of rain and lightning. Today fitted the pattern perfectly. By sunset, the rain had passed, the sky looked spectacular. Compare with the past two evenings (see previous days' posts). All pics taken from my bedroom window looking north-west.

This time last year:
England's rural suburbias
Best fish and chip shop around?

Nawałnica

It started with an almighty wooshing of wind, like the sound of a huge jet plane passing. But the sound did not pass; it intensified. Then the heavens opened and from them poured biblical volumes of rain. I opened a window and held out my hand, it was coming down like an intense spray. The air was full of water droplets. This is a nawałnica, a torrential squall. Within minutes the drive in front of the house was under water; spray bouncing up from the ground. The gutters and downpipes were choking, regurgitating rainwater. An airliner was battling to get into Okęcie, its tail swung out to the left by the fierce easterly wind. A darker cloud moved in, bringing with it steadier, less intensive rainfall. And so it passed.

This time last year:
On the road to... Derbyshire
London - constant, yet constantly changing
Ealing, home from home

Shepherd's delight?

Eddie ran in just after twenty to nine. "Quickly! Get the camera! Look at the sky!" The result - taken from my bedroom window, is the reddest, most spectacular post-sunset sky I've yet blogged. Another pic worth clicking on to enlarge, then staring at and meditating. Incidentally, nothing tweaked on Photoshop. This is the raw data straight from the camera. Compare to this sunrise, photographed in November, along with an analysis of this hoary English saying. Shepherd's delight? We'll see in the morning.

Morning update: I awoke to a dismal rainy morning. So the saying does not hold true here.

Wheat and development

"Summertime, and the livin' is easy. Fish are jumpin', and the cotton is high...", well the oats and the wheat, anyway. Time for a walk. Up the end of Trombity, across the tracks, to the end of Kórnicka, through Zgorzała, across the fields to Mysiadło, and home past the Rampa.

Arising out of the wheatfields between Zgorzała and Mysiadło is the huge Little Boxes estate, on the wrong side of the tracks as far as ul. Puławska is concerned.

The wind rustles the ripening wheat, cockerels, cicadas and skylarks add to the rustic summer soundtrack - but in the distance the sound of power tools being used by new residents adapting their new homes for dwelling.

How long before this wheatfield I'm standing in becomes a housing estate, a shopping development or a tarmacked road?

Above: This aerial view, taken three weeks ago, shows in the foreground just how intensively Mysiadło has become developed in recent years - most of the housing has appeared since 2002. Note also the estate featured at the top of the post (centre), the wheatfield behind it. As the local land use plan suggests, there's nothing to stop all of the land between the tracks, Zgorzała to the west and Nowa Iwiczna to the south, from being swallowed up by intensive housing. Beyond Zgorzała is where the S7 (Puławska Bis) is projected (the long strip fields running left to right).

Above: Puzzling grafitti in Zgorzala. On the wall of the village Hall of Culture, in cyrillic, the words "Min Nyet" ('no mines', or 'clear of mines'). These words were painted by Red Army sappers after the Soviets had occupied Warsaw in January 1945. At huge cost to themselves (Stalin did not count human lives lost in pursuit of his goals of power), these brave sappers cleared Warsaw house by house of mines, booby traps, unexploded bombs and shells. Why has someone chosen to use this slogan here? What does it mean?

This time last year:
Waiting For The Summer Rain
Magnificent July sunrise