goin’ up the country

Since we came back to Penrith at the beginning of June, Paula and I have been going for long walks in the countryside around town. These walks have taken us north, south, east and west, but the most interesting have been through the area north of the town, which is covered by the following map:

This account is specifically about an extended walk that we did last week, which started through the Thacka Beck Nature Reserve (not marked on what is quite an old map). Thacka Beck is an artificial watercourse constructed in the fourteenth century to provide the town’s first water supply. It starts from the River Petteril, about 6km to the north (see below).

After passing through the nature reserve, we reached Thacka Lane, where we turned left. Within a short distance, we spotted several horses in a field on the right. Naturally, we stopped to take a few photos:

We often see horse-drawn vehicles on this quiet country lane, which leads eventually to Newton Rigg, including carriages pulled by four animals. Where the road passes under the motorway, indicated by the red circle on the map, the plan was to continue straight ahead along a rough track parallel to the motorway. We came across another group of horses, all of which in this case watched us intently, where the track turned abruptly to the right, away from the motorway:

The plan had been to use what appeared to be an official crossing point over the railway, but just before we reached the line, we encountered a padlocked gate. With a lone pig on guard duty!

At least we assumed that it was meant to deter casual intruders, although it was fast asleep.

We decided to backtrack to the underpass and follow the original road. However, on the far side, an extremely rough track signposted to Catterlen seemed a much better option:

I took photos at regular intervals along this track, starting with this ewe and her offspring:

I took the next photo to illustrate the rose bay willow herb, which is just beginning to flower, on both sides of the track:

More sheep:

Notice too the dry-stone wall in the foreground. As the name implies, this method of construction, which is the standard throughout the north of England, does not use any mortar. Apart from one sandstone block on the top of the wall, the rest of the stones in the wall are irregular pieces of Carboniferous limestone.

A little further on, we came across an open gate on the left:

I took the photo because the open gate effectively frames the mountain in the distance, which is Blencathra (‘Saddleback’). I conjectured that although there was no evidence of a path, if we had turned left here we would probably have ended up in Newton Reigny, which we didn’t want to do. So we continued straight on.

The problem with dry-stone walls is that they tend to collapse if people try to climb over them:

The next photo shows our first encounter with cows. As you can see, they are curious animals that want to take a closer look at any humans who pass by:

Luckily, there is a fence in the way!

I took this photo of a barn on the right because of the round arch over the entrance. Such an architectural feature is surprisingly common in such structures, even though it would be more difficult to construct:

The track had become very overgrown after passing the open gate (more evidence that we should have turned left there?), but it quickly came to an end shortly after passing the barn. The path ahead lies across an open field:

You can make out the course of the River Petteril at the bottom of the slope. And this is a closer view of the river, looking upstream:

There is a convenient footbridge across the river:

…with a splendid view of the river, looking downstream:

The continuation of the route lies up the hill on the far side of the river, but it isn’t clearly marked, and when we reached a fence, we turned right instead of left. This brought us back to the river, where we spotted a second footbridge a short distance upstream:

Let’s go that way instead, we both agreed:

And it is also a designated public footpath, as indicated by the yellow arrow alongside the stile in the next photo, which looks back towards the footbridge:

The river passes under the motorway hereabouts, and the path runs alongside the river as it does so, after which it emerges into a very large field. The exact direction to walk when crossing the field isn’t at all obvious.

Oh! Oh! A large number of cows were making their way towards us from our right. I sensed danger.

I did manage to chase them off, although Paula failed to capture this on video. She did shoot this video though, which shows the route we eventually took towards a group of trees, while the cows, which I’d chased off to the left, made their way back to the part of the field on the right from where they’d come originally:

We did encounter another herd of cows as we crossed the next field, but they were in an adjoining field and thus not directly threatening:

Thankfully!

From this point, we made our way to the A6 and thus back into Penrith by the easiest possible route, but we’ve since been back to locate the route to Catterlen, in the course of which we encountered yet more trouble with cows, which will be the subject of my next post.

photographic highlights 2022–23: part 3

…continued from Part 2.

The last three photos in Part 2 were taken on a bike ride ‘down south’, and four days later I was cycling there again, this time with Paula. The cycle track between Taipo and Shatin runs close to the shore of Tolo Harbour—yet another silly toponym assigned by the British during their rule of Hong Kong—and we stopped next to a small artificial island close to the shore that was covered by hundreds of egrets:

Further on, we stopped at a convenient ‘balcony’ overlooking the Shing Mun River, which flows through Shatin, for a short rest (there is a convenient bench here). From there, I took this photo of the Hong Kong Heritage Museum on the opposite bank of the river:

From the resting place I’ve just described, our route took us to the most southerly point on the cycle track network in Shatin, from where we returned via various cycle tracks on the opposite bank of the river. I don’t remember why we stopped, but I took the next photo, of the way we’d just come, when we did:

The river can be seen on the left, and the pedestrian walkway is on the other side of the railings. No motor traffic anywhere in the vicinity!

When I wrote about The Garden of Earthly Delights in April, I noted that the gardens on the opposite side of the footpath were ‘conventional’, and I took the next photo, of a cluster of unidentified flowers, on that side of the path:

There are three bottle-brush trees in our village, and this is what one looked like in full bloom:

I think you can see how this tree got its name.

When I was looking through the photos that I intended to use in this collection, I couldn’t remember where the next photo was taken, but a short time later, Paula and I were walking along the top road when I happened to glance down a side road. Ding!

The bamboo on the left creates a quasi-tunnel effect.

The next photo is of a Longan lanternfly (Pyrops candelaria):

This individual is about 5cm long, including its preposterous proboscis.

The bike ride that I call ‘the final frontier’ (because it passes through an area that was part of the ‘frontier closed area’ until 2016) follows an unnamed road between the villages of Leng Tsai and Tai Tong Wu at one point. Running alongside the road is a gigantic water pipe like the ones that I featured in Part 2, and to my surprise I spotted some graffiti on the pipe. They’re unlike anything that I’ve recorded in Fanling, so I’ve included them here:

The tag on the left looks as though it should be turned through 90 degrees clockwise.

Fanling Wai is an interesting historical site in the centre of Fanling. Although wai is Cantonese for walled enclosure, nothing remains of the walls, apart from the gatehouse that you can see in the following photo, which is a view of the north side:

Did I say that nothing remains of the walls? All the houses that you can see on each side of the gatehouse have incorporated parts of the walls in their construction. Notice that there are no doors. These are all on the inside of the wai. Incidentally, the houses inside the wai are packed extremely close together, and I certainly wouldn’t want to live there. Almost no daylight. The pond in the foreground is full of tortoises—you can see some along the water’s edge in the photo, which also shows some ancient cannons to the right of the gatehouse.

‘The final frontier’ follows a path out of the village of Chow Tin that eventually reaches a dirt road. The original route turned left here, but when I recently decided to see whether turning right was a better option, I came across this mural:

I get the impression that it’s unfinished, so I will have to check it out again next winter. The mountain in the distance is in China.

I included a photo of a flowering shrub in A Grand Day Out #4, and this is a close-up of one of the flowers:

Part of the redevelopment along our local river has involved replacing shrubs with flowers that I’ve described as ‘red pom-poms’ along the river bank with these rather dull purple flowers:

I preferred the red pom-poms!

After I’d written an account of a walk around North District Park, I went back with Paula to show her what I’d seen there. And that is when I took this photo of three tortoises on the edge of the park’s ornamental lake:

More flowers, this time on a tree:

I simply cannot remember where I took the photo, although other photos taken on the same day are of subjects in my neighbourhood. And I’ve not seen any other tree like it anywhere.

I don’t know how I’d never seen this mural before, because it’s located in the entrance to an underground car park that is part of Regentville, one of three private housing estates on the eastern edge of Fanling that I walk through regularly:

I think I was trying a possible short-cut to the local bus station. The three towers in the mural are clearly the buildings that comprise Regentville.

The only reason I took the next photo, of a shop in Maritime Square, a spectacular shopping mall adjoining Tsing Yi MTR station, is because you would never see a shop with such a name back home:

Paula and I attended a trade expo next to the airport in April, and when we’d seen everything, we decided to take advantage of a free bus to Tsim Sha Tsui, from where we could walk along the waterfront to Hung Hom to catch a train home. I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this bear on the waterfront, constructed entirely from Lego:

The village of Shek Wu Shan is just a row of houses along a rough path that runs parallel to the Ng Tung River, but it does have a ‘tin house’ temple. I took the next photo in front of the temple’s entrance:

The pot in the foreground is a miniature lotus garden with two flowers, flanked by two porcelain elephants with pagodas on their backs, with a laughing Buddha behind.

Sau is the immortal who represents longevity, but this figure, which I photographed next to the path that runs alongside the Ma Wat River, doesn’t look very happy, perhaps because he was alone:

He usually holds a peach, also a symbol of longevity, in his right hand, but what he’s holding here in his left hand doesn’t look remotely like a peach! By the way, this figure is almost a metre tall.

Many of the graffiti that I wrote about in Graffiti Grotto back in February were painted over shortly afterwards by the Water Supplies Department, but the graffiti on the Drainage Services Department’s wall remained untouched. However, when I checked the location, between the main railway line and the Sheung Yue River, last month, to see whether there had been anything new, I found that the ‘1812’ graffito had been replaced by this one:

I can’t interpret it, but I do like it. Does the lettering spell ‘wisdom’?

I took this photo of an Asian long-horned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) recently in our neighbourhood:

I took the photo of the Hong Kong Heritage Museum above from the convenient ‘balcony’ on the opposite side of the river, but when Paula and I stopped at the same place on a bike ride ‘down south’ last week, I was surprised to spot this engraving of egrets and bamboo on pink granite as I sat on the bench there:

I’ve no idea how I didn’t notice it on our earlier stop here.

For our last bike ride before heading off to the UK for the summer, Paula wanted to check out a lotus pond that we’d discovered just outside the village of Ha Wan Tsuen, at the western end of the frontier road. We both took several photos, and this is the best of mine:

previous highlights collections
Photographic Highlights: 2015–16
Photographic Highlights: 2016–17
Photographic Highlights: 2017–18
Photographic Highlights: 2018–19
Photographic Highlights 2019–20: Part 1
Photographic Highlights 2019–20: Part 2
Photographic Highlights 2020–21: Part 1
Photographic Highlights 2020–21: Part 2
Photographic Highlights 2021–22: Part 1
Photographic Highlights 2021–22: Part 2
Photographic Highlights 2021–22: Part 3