The Following is For Reference Only.
One year ago, on the very same weekend at the end of April, I made the second of my trips to Manchester with My Good Friends from Calderdale, for beers, food and the music of RVW, which marked the final collapsing of the public social interaction bubble which had been forcibly imposed in March 2020 and which I chose to maintain for more than three years, and at the remove of 12 months I find myself at an entirely different philosophical place than I did when the passing of the Covid Pandemic seemed to have happened, almost entirely due to the lingering after effects of my own infection, six months ago. This time around, I'm ripping it up to Mytholmroyd and Manchester again on Saturday afternoon to enjoy a long weekend in the company of my still enduring Support Bubble, even though the wider climates have completely moved on, as a sociable weekend with them is good reason to take time out from the walking year and get in some proper R'n'R after the third stalling of my walking year, not that there will be too much activity going on as it's been a tiring few months for all, and friendly ears will be leant as we chat about enduring the effects of a post-Covid syndrome and living with CFS (which I really hope isn't the path I'm on). Chatter over food and wine, and whatever sports are on the TV, is all very well, but we also need additional entertainments, and the Sunday os the focus for these, as my visit manages to coincide with the Cragg Vale festival which sees the Cragg Road being closed for the morning as many local runners and cyclists take the opportunity to run and ride the length (or at least part of) the longest continuous road ascent in England, and back again, and these energetic feats need to be observed as we stroll up the valley as far as Lower Clough Fold before we get to the real meat of the May Day weekend. This sends us in the direction of the Bridgewater Hall, where an afternoon concert brings us the Poulenc Organ Concerto and Saint-Saens Symphony #3 (avec Orgue) as performed by the Halle Orchestra for one of the loudest, and busiest shows, that we've seen in a long while, where the opportunity is also presented for beer and food at Society, where Vocation Brewery still having a thriving business with a surprisingly diverse clientele, where three pints of their finest ales and pilseners can be consumed, along with Chicken Katsu Curry that literally hits all of the spots that it needs to.
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| Cragg Vale Festival, Mytholmroyd. |
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| The Halle Orchestra, at Bridgewater Hall. |
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| Vocation Ales, at Society (I didn't take a picture of my Katsu Curry, as I was hungry enough to eat it without remembering to do so, which is unfortunate) |
The hospitality offered by IH and AK is always most welcome, and with this walking year not really going great guns, we might be seeing a bit more of it in the Summer and beyond, as I can't see every weekend of the year getting filled as I aim at a distant target, as at three months into 2023, we still haven't reached the 6,000 miles marked that has been less than 80 miles distant since this season opened up, not that we'll be getting the opportunity to put down any miles come May Day as we all have other business to attend to, in the shape of assembling a new office chair for myself. I can feel particularly fortunate that My Mum was Up Country last weekend, having attended to My Niece doing Theatre work in Bolton on the days prior, as that allowed us a dash to Ikea to sink money on a like for like-ish replacement, which itself proved to be a challenge to get into my flat by lugging it up the stairs, with my labour being reserved for a week to get it put together, and the old one taken apart, which pretty much put me out of circulation for the remainder of today, so it's just as well that I had something new and clean to settle down upon. Otherwise, we find ourselves with another months passed, and that must mean that it's time for an astronomy update, where the difficulty of stargazing in the months of BST really becomes clear, as the fading dusk comes on so much later as the weeks progress, which means you have a very short time window for catching any notable activity in the sky, such as the waxing gibbous moon passing Spica in Virgo on the 6th, which has to be spied through the trees from my actual window, or attempting to see Mercury in its brief twilight appearance at its greatest western elongation around the Easter Weekend. As I've mentioned, the trip out to Bruntcliffe and back on the 8th yielded nought but a bank of cloud obscuring the lowest 15 degrees of the western horizon, but another trip out on the evening of the 13th gave us a clearer aspect allowing the wing-ed messenger to make a brief appearance in the constellation of Aries, where it clearly couldn't be mistake for Hamal, as late as 9.05pm and only 10 degrees above the horizon at a very modest magnitude compared to the blaring bright Venus which hung high in Taurus, in the north-western sky, a true revelation and another astronomical first for me, on what will probably be my last planet spotting trip before the evenings elongate impractically.
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| Waxing Gibbous Moon, and Spica in Virgo. 06/04 |
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| Unsuccessful Mercury Spotting at Bruntcliffe. 06/04 |
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| Venus and Mercury above the M62. 13/04 |
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| The Winged Messenger revealed at last! 13/04 |
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| Venus and the Pleiades, in Taurus. 13/04 |
2023 Total: 45.6 miles
Up Country Total: 5,487.1 miles
Solo Total: 5625.2 miles
5,000 in my 40s Total: 4557.6 miles
Next Up: Exploring West Yorkshire with a New Sense of Purpose
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