I Must Down to the Seas Again ....

...to the lonely sea and the sky... (John Masefield) I've been pining for the sea for quite a few weeks now - growing up in land locked Leeds I never realised how wonderful living by the sea would be - Then we moved to Northumberland - and lived near the sea- it was a liberating feeling of spaciousness - sometimes of desolation and always of tranquility and peace. I have found walking on the beach to be one of life's greatest pleasures and when we moved back in land I found I missed it more than I ever could of imagined...

We took a van trip to South Gare Redcar - there were no tall ships just huger tankers - it was a wee bit grey for a July day but we managed to miss the rain and had a lovely uninterrupted walk on the beach listening to the gulls screech and the waves make chiming sounds as they rushed into the sands. It was low tide and there were a few people about - not many but that's hardly surprising as it's not a scenic beach - its interesting with the vast desolate expanse of wet sand dominated by the slowly decaying urban sprawl of the old steel works - there is still something quite magnificent about the slow rust rotting the now totally defunct buildings in to weird and wonderful shapes and colours - I remember the first time I went to south Gare a very windy blustery day and the furnaces were lit and you could hear and smell the fires and from the right place see the glow - days long gone now but it left me with a sense of magic - that transformation of metal -now transforming in a totally different way....

Now out to sea there is a shiny new wind farm - todays answer to John Masefield's tall ships! white gleaming giants todays answer to technology - a complete contrast to the steel work looming in the background.

There were was one huge disappointment though and something that will probably put me off revisisting - piles of bags of dog waste just left for the dog waste fairies to pick up - surely leaving your dog waste in a bag is worse than just leaving it out - and to be honest there didn't seem to be many dog waste fairies about so it was pretty grim!!!

This litter and dog waste issue is becoming more apparent - we have always advocated wild camping and most importantly a leave no trace policy - we have often taken home much more litter than we ever arrived with - sadly it's like everything else, the small minority spoil things for the responsible majority and dogs will be banned from beaches - wild campers are being hounded out of quiet locations and there is still litter and dog mess in abundance because the people that do that kind of thing just don't care!!! Personally I would like to see a bigger effort made on fines for littering and the whole issue taken seriously! an Impossible situation to police but allegedly police are out in full force moving wild campers on so may be they can tackle dog fouling at the same time!

Rant over - and its a waste of effort really as I'm as always on social media preaching to the converted!! be vigilant I say - but how else to resolve this problem I have no idea!!!

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful. There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...

The Blue Dot

Excellent evening spent at the first Blue Dot festival held at Jodrell Bank. Clever use of the radio telescope as back drop for the main stage... there were some major teething issues which hopefully will addressed if this event happens again - mainly access and parking.. it was a nightmare approach to the festival and fortunately as we were only doing one night we decided to ditch the car and chose to walk the last mile and half into the site... what a relief as if we had queued we would most certainly missed Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the reasons we were going.. anyway we caught them and then enjoyed fantastic set by Underworld - danced much of the night away in the rain - my trusty solfest poncho almost kept me dry.. it was a splendid evening and the telescope looked brilliant when lit up when it got dark. There was a rather fab "installation" called a luminarium, lack of site information - another hiccup meant we were really lucky to catch it just ...

Goodbye Dissertation!!!

The dissertation is finished... it took me ages to do all the detail stuff Harvard referencing ect... the simplest tasks were starting to drive me mad!! I cant believe how long it took me to work out how to number pages excluding the first two pages aagghhhh... I suppose I should be grateful that its not like the olden days where you had to get it typed and bound before hand in - this essay has been a hard slog, a subject which I felt was interesting - how the digital explosion is ruining traditional creative methods turned into a fairly unexciting - pretty boring unexceptional topic! there will never be a next time but my advice is think of something funky - does Danny Boyle like garden Gnomes - Racoon meets Lady Gaga - anything that might surprise you but not too grown up!! I have worked hard and will be rewarded with a mid grade because there is no passion in this essay - the hard slog is evident as is the lack of enthusiasm - C'est la vie you cant win them all....

Planet Ruby Starrs

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