Number Seventy News

Bus to Malton, then up and away on the folding bike to Settrington - lost my nerve at the ford with small wheels and a gravel bottom - then up onto the Wold to Settrington Beacon - almost 300 degrees view to the far distance - what a well chosen site.  Then South to Duggleby and on to Thixendale via the glorious descent into Fairy Dale and the long, winding Water Dale.  A pint of Jennings Cumberland Bitter in the Cross Keys at Thixendale went down a treat - smooth and thick.  The Cross Keys is still quite eccentric - less so than 30 years ago when it wasn’t sure if it served beer to strangers, let alone food.  Kids still have to eat in the garden though.

Then off to Millington, skirting Huggate.  Had to push the folder up the long hill out of Thixendale but then what a delight the long dry (almost -there’s a spring part way down) valley to Millington is - a first for me.  Didn’t have time for the excellent tea-shop in Millington, alas.

And all the way from Settrington to Millington, on the wolds, on the chalk, cowslips in such abundance as you have never seen.  And larks, and the last of the bluebells.

And so to Pocklington, and the bus.

Ferroequinologists will think at once of the Bluebell Railway, in Sussex, but in North Yorkshire we have our own displays of this wonderful woodland flower.  Walking from Crambeck into Castle Howard Woods and up onto the ridge which overlooks the main parkland, one passes through the richest possible sea of colour, spreading up the hillsides and lit up here and there where the sun comes through the new leaves on the overarching trees.  And then one can drop down to the Crown and Cushion in Welburn for a pint and some grub before heading back to catch the bus at Whitwell on the Hill.

(And for those of you who think, how quaint, a bus, rest assured that they run every half-hour, Monday to Saturday, between Leeds and Malton via York (hourly on Sundays) and will also take you on to Whitby, Scarborough, Filey and Bridlington in safety and comfort. And many are double deckers so you can see over the hedges.  Don’t use the car - it just doesn’t make sense)

What does it mean ?

These are the names of a couple of Norwegian musicians who I saw at a concert recently. Trygve plays saxophone, an obvious disciple of the great Jan Gabarek, and Frode has a symbiotic relationship with a huge black caterpillar of an accordion out of which he produces the most amazing noises, most of them music.

Beautiful evocative sounds - mostly free jazz - which means that a conventional “tune” is a rarity, except briefly - but it’s that soaring sax which takes one up into the blue, underpinned by sensitive backing on the accordion.  Apparently they are recording a CD for ECM later this year - I expect to have it in my Christmas stocking.