Monthly Archives: February 2022

Glorious Northumberland & Yorkshire – Week 7 : 2022

Journal, Travel

I mentioned in my last blog about taking on a tour guide job for a few weeks during the summer. This week saw me spending time visiting and familarising myself with parts of the Northumberland coast and the Yorkshire Dales along with other trainee guides. I was the only complete beginner and whilst the other guides were not familiar with this sets of walks and routes they were all experienced. What a delight and what countryside to understand! Any visitors will be spoilt (especially if the weather is 10 degrees warmer and the sun peeps out.) Most of the trips are walking holidays with sights at the beginning or end of the walk.

After collection at Newcastle Railway Station the first stop was Holy Island

The weather was grey and blowy but with our time constraints we were not encouraged to walk the Pilgrims Way from the mainland shore across the sand to the island itself. This can be taken at low tide. It’s advised to do it in bare feet as the sand clogs everything. Many of the future guests are walkers and will leap at this. We took the tarmac causeway that is only passable at low tide. Personally I’d contemplate the walk in a sedan chair only! From here it was Berwick- on-Tweed. Despite swapping between the English and Scottish over a dozen times it’s been English since the 18th Century. It has a magnificent set of fortifications to walk along.

A quick lunch and then back in the bus. The guides will have to drive this. As the passengers will have, in effect, paid to ride in the bus the driver needs a private hire licence. This means taking a number of tests. Back to school and learning the Highway Code for me. So what colour are the cat’s eyes on the outer edge of a dual carriageway?

Our drive back south took us past the magnificent Bamburgh Castle. At this point the rain was coming at us horizontally.

Next and last was Craster. Famous for it’s crab catches. No such luck for us but we checked out the parking and did a couple of the walks from the village.

Dunstanburgh Castle
Craster harbour

The party was getting to know each other and used to hopping in and out of the minibus!

The boss, Will, is sat on the gate with Colette, James, Ceri, Neil and Peter

Day 2 saw us leave our trusty Travelodge and head up first to Walkworth to see my favourite amazing castle.

Walkworth Castle

Next to Alnwick for a planned walk and to visit the castle.

From here it was time for a toasted teacakeat the amazing and famous second hand book shop, Barter Books.

A drive inland took us to Cragside, the first house in the UK to have electricity, and a walk in a forest. Again these form part of the walking tour with Explore!

Cragside
Storms had blown down trees

On the last day in the North East it was time for some Roman history and in increasingly gale force winds we saw some of the sights on Hadrian’s Wall. All these brief visits were not to dwell or enter the sights but work out the route and logistics for when the guests are in our company.

Hadrian’s Wall walk
Neil and Peter engaging a member of staff at the YHA’s The Sill

This was all for the day as the weather got dangerous and awfully wet. We drove down to York and the next day was in the Dales. We got to York in a virtual monsoon! We started early on the last day in Skipton and concentrated on the sights around here.

Watching us walk past!
A Highland cow on the drive to Malham
Janet’s Foss
Gordale Scar

A couple of weeks before I’d been up in the Dales with Peter, the regional manager. We’d visited the llamas near Pateley Bridge, Wensleydale Creamery, Settle and the various hotels that the guests would be staying at. I may now know a lot more about my home county than I ever did before.

After this there is a lot to study and think about. It’s another thing to take strangers around a part of the world that you yourself are not overly familiar with. My first tour is in May and so there’s plenty of time to get that pesky driving licence and become more expert on the history.

Record Of The Week # 126

Music

Buck Ford – I’m Gettin’ There

The first five minutes of research of any artist is the most revelatory. Some are corporate entities with fawning biographies and some are journeymen holding down two jobs who don’t have a web page! Less is more I find. Buck Ford may have a website but information is scant to say the least. He hails from Vacaville in north California probably most famous for the fact I once stayed there overnight as I descended the Sierra Nevada on my bicycle on my way to San Francisco. I may have stayed longer if I’d known something as sublime as this fellow was around.

Despite his tender years Ford has several albums to his credit and I’m Gettin’ There is bordering on perfect. He wrote or co-wrote the songs and lyrically we swing between the usual beer drinking and broken hearts. Musically it’s pacey 90s modern yet traditional country with lashings of pedal steel, picking guitar, fiddle and honky tonk piano. Maybe more critically he can sing, an expressive baritone that delivers the stories with the assurance of a seasoned and lauded star.6

There’s not a poor track here. Lonely relies on his vocal, a catchy chorus and some electric guitar that commands your attention. Honkytonk Ambition is a gorgeous melody. Harmonies and the fiddle give way to another James Mitchell (Willie Nelson and Cole Swindell) guitar solo before pedal steel joins. Michael Johnson’s (George Strait and Reba McEntire) pedal steel adds such beauty to all the compositions. This is a hot Nashville band and the elevation of the whole album is evident. As required by proper country, banjo and fiddle accompaniment is always to the fore.

Heart That’s Gonna Break leans on the pedal steel, fiddle and electric guitar as he sings of a city girl finding life tough in the country. It’s a winning easy rolling melody which only needs his voice to complete. Banjo kicks off the title track with a swooping fiddle before we learn of his accelerated drinking due to withdrawal symptoms created by his departing squeeze. It’s that type of ‘devil may care’ ditty with wry humour. This type of song is part of every mainstream male’s repertoire. Showing his versatility we get the album highlight a brisk two step I Don’t Know. Greg Cole’s close harmonies give this a splendid sound as acoustic guitar and fiddles weave around the vocals, a timeless piece of 60s joy.

I’m not familiar with his back catalogue but if it’s remotely as good as this I’m ashamed I missed out: ignorance is no excuse. The other missing piece of the jigsaw is why isn’t this artist getting the breaks and promotion similar to troubadours such as Cody Jinks, Cody Johnson or Charley Crockett? Whatever you do don’t compound the felony and miss out.

Long Faces In Selby, My Darling Clementine – Week 5 : 2022

Journal, Music

Selby Town Hall welcomed one of the UK’s most respected country duos, My Darling Clementine. For those not familiar with Selby it has an industrial heritage and the industrial bit left decades ago; the town is now mainly a dormitory for workers and families in Leeds and York. The Town Hall is a cultural oasis and a credit to the organisers. They curate an interesting selection of acts including country, americana, bluegrass, blues, rock and stand up comedy. The acts veer between several worthy but unknown US acts to UK heritage bands from the 1970s or 80s.

Ordinarily acts play, surprisingly, to a full house. The ticketing arrangement is that if you buy three tickets you get a fourth free. Yorkshire knows value for money when it sees it and there’s not a better offer midweek in winter. However, this season the attendance has been dented by Covid hesitancy. Those who brave the cold and dark nights still often don’t match the acts they’ve bowled up to see in age group, taste or humour. Just as English comedians ‘died’ on stage at the Glasgow Empire then I’ve seen Selby break several creative hearts. California’s Dustbowl Revival were bemused at the indifference to their lively show, blues sensation, Sugaray Rayford wandered amongst the audience to check pulses and I’m surprised someone hasn’t quipped that the only thing that moves in Selby is the smoke from the crematorium chimney. However, whilst Colorado’s The Railsplitters’ bluegrass didn’t get feet moving they did provoke some outrage. The lead singer said she liked the ‘village’ of Selby. The natives grew restless and were quick to demur that the settlement was certainly larger!

So onto our erstwhile impressive duo. This was their first post pandemic gig and the start of a long tour that would see further UK nights followed by a European jaunt and then some dates in the US. In front of depleted numbers Lou Dalgleish and Michael Weston King trod the boards with a backing guitarist and ran through 20 songs from their back catalogue including some from their Elvis Costello covers album. King’s strong voice leads the way whilst Dalgleish, his wife, takes a number of leads clutching her red handbag and scarf. The traditional acoustic country is a delight and the voices meld well and often a special atmosphere is created by the poignancy of their lyrics.

King tries to engage with the audience and soothes any fears of anything too racy by confirming this will be a laid back show (how little he knows) to help them ease back into playing live after the pandemic lockdown. His first misstep was introducing “Our Race Is Run” from their 2013 The Reconciliation? by calling the Prime Minister a bastard and that this song was for him. I’ve sat through many acts apologising for Trump and even more cringingly an excoriation of Nigel Farage by Fairport Convention’s Chris Leslie. What artists don’t realise as they fail to ‘read the room’ is that these UK politicians get a lot of votes in North Yorkshire. Whatever happened to not discussing politics and religion with strangers or in polite company? I digress, other musical highlights include a wonderful “Yours Is The Cross I Still Bear”. King attempts some bants with Dalgleish: if they’re enjoying it then the audience isn’t reacting. As we approach the break Lou implores the gathering to have a drink and return ‘pissed.’ With slumped shoulders they shuffle off for their own stiff drink. I feel their pain.

The second half sees the the adaptation, into duets, of several of Elvis Costello’s country songs. The strength and timbre of King’s voice approximates to Costello’s and the interpretations are superb, not least “Indoor Fireworks”. The explanation of the co-writers that Costello worked with from Jim Lauderdale to T Bone Burnett adds to their performance. King plays “I Felt The Chill Before The Winter Came”, a Costello co-write with Loretta Lynn. He opines that this has  miraculously racked up 6,000 plays on Spotify in Russia and pertinently suggests ‘that maybe Vladimir’s gone country?’ When the audience prematurely applaud “I No Longer Take Pride” before the end, but after his vocal finishes, and before Dalgleish’s starts he ruefully comments that in the ‘duet game’ prenuptial agreement then both parties will have to sing on each song and we’d overlooked this clause!

The crowd is hardly on fire as the set concludes and King turns to another tragic crash. He notes that today is the 63rd anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death. Prior to the encore a rousing “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” is sung as a tribute. I hope they recovered their mojo following Selby. They are superb and I’ll be checking out their quality catalogue. Oh yes, and this is the second time they’ve played Selby. Now that is the stuff of a song!