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Thursday, 2 June 2011

1st June

Margaret suggested Saltaire ...

... so after walking Ginny from the Cow & Calf we went over to Salts Mill and parked up for a walk around the streets. Margaret told us about the World Heritage status and that all the houses should be of a certain shade of brown, though quite how the relevant authorities achieve this now, with most inhabitants trying to be a little different, is going to be interesting! I must say though, the smartest houses looked like they were trying to keep and make the most of the original facades.
Margaret also told us that you could tell the importance of the house owner (or renter?) depending on the floors to the house as well as the type of door or ornamentation.
The Congregational Church was of interest - including the Greylag geese (Anser anser), and their goslings, that were feeding on the grass all around. Margaret told Roger & Beryl of Sir Titus' grumpiness towards his rather snooty wife - and the balcony tale.The shame was the building was closed until 2pm, and we were ready to come away at noon so missed out on the inside .... The Glen Tramway too was closed - and is not due to re-open, (if they can find sufficient volunteers too), until late June. Still, Roberts Park looked good. The mill was interesting too, I hope. Roger bought a poster and a card - neither he nor Beryl had come across our famous son, Hockney, before! So ... I expect that David Hockney should find a real boost in interest in his work back in Geelong, near Melbourne, next year! Should come as a shock to some as well, to realise the The Australian National Gallery of Art paid about 4.5 million dollars for his painted version of 'A Bigger Grand Canyon'


See http://www.saltsmill.org.uk/david_hockney.htm and (not shown at Saltaire) - my favourite of Hockney's has to be what the Tate got as a gift ... 'Bigger Trees Near Warter'



I took Roger & Beryl up to Malham in the afternoon, after a lunch at home.

However at the start of Malham, realised the locals had the Safari Trail going on and there were loads of visitors so I drove up and parked at the Tarn. Then we set off to walk down to the top of the Cove - looked at the cove ... looked grand. (About two and half hundred feet high and 1,000 feet wide - some sight!). Then we walked over to look at the limestone pavements.


I couldn't remember the details of the formation or the names of the clefts and slabs. Now, (thanks to a refresher) can reveal that it's all formed as part of a glaciation phase as the advancing glacier scrapes away the tops of the rock and exposes horizontally-bedded limestone. Then as the glacier falls back, leaving a residue of clay that forms a soil under which the limestone, because of it's solubility in water (and other salts and gases that make the water more acidic), helps rainfall erode the weaker links in the rock forming or causing the so called "clints" or slabs - all separated by fissures called "grykes". (These are often deep - quite a few feet - even collapsing into larger cave structures underneath the pavement. Allow shade loving - and some rare - plants to exist such as Harts-tongue Fern
Wood-Sorrel, Wood-Garlic, Geranium, Anemone, Rue, and Enchanter's Nightshade
. Then wind or other erosive factors stripped off the 'clay soil' leaving the bare level pavement. The fissures can be written "grikes" - both "Clints" and "Grykes: are Yorkshire terms - probably Scandinavian? All this glaciation activity happened over 350 million years ...

This site has a good explanation http://www.limestone-pavements.org.uk/geology.html

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