Ancient trees: Sandsend

What a day for meeting some really ancient trees it was. You can't really feel the age of these trees in photographs in the same way that you do sat next to them. Historic as the castle was, it didn't really connect you to the past in any way. Sure you can read up on its history but with a tree you don't have to. Its history is all there on every twist of branch, scarred amputation and its questing height. And it's still alive with new history yet to bud.
Having contemplated trees, trains and ducks we returned to Sandsend for a quiet pub lunch and a drink. After that we visited Mulgrave Woods just as Mina and Lucy did in the early portion of Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel Dracula. I believe this was the only day of the week during our short break that the wood was open to the public. A stream runs alongside the path back toward the sea. I don't really get to go that far into many woods as the paths are not always the best for exploring wheelchair users but in this case I did manage to forge a little way in at least. We turned around when we got to the logging buildings. Probably just as well. In previous years separate parties of family members have ventured too far in here and ended up quite lost. Harry was loving it of course. He also found himself a suitable stick.
We left the woods and were confronted with the best duck photo opportunity of the week. Harry ignored them as another Labrador approached. Both dogs were wary that the other coveted their stick too much. So what was the photo opportunity? I'll tell you. A great line of ducks stood along the grass verge looking down to the stream below. All posing. Some spreading their wings. I have no idea what they were doing but it looked great.But my camera battery was dead and Debbie had filled hers up with pictures of steam locomotives. Shame. Phil left to get some more vittles and stuff from the village shop. Debbie and I went and looked at the sea. Two riders made their way down to the beach. One of them was a young girl on a pony. The pony was not very happy at having to cross a very shallow stream that fed into the sea. They tried everything to try to get it across. Eventually it got the idea.
We loaded up and drove back to the Raithwaite Estate. I think Phil quite liked the electronic security gates.
That night was a really clear night. You could see all the stars arcing above us. I tried to read but zonked out on the first page. I woke up blinking and wondering where I was about an hour later. Sitting on the bed next to me was a black cat. Even though I was sleep befuddled my brain was still sharp as a razor. I reached out for it grunting a perspicacious, "Urr, cat?" But my hand just grasped thin air. It was a shadow. But it had looked just like a small black cat.

The cat's meow

I've noticed The Guardian has been running quite a few articles with a bit of an anti-cat bias in recent months. Lots of people have pets, so it comes as no surprise that news services like to publish articles that feature them. They probably have people on staff who write nothing else other than articles about pets, desperately trying to engage us by telling us something we didn't know about our moggies, pooches etc. So far this year there has been quite a lot of articles written using the recession as an angle. First there were stories about cash-strapped pet owners abandoning their animals, or having to put them down. This was followed up by articles giving advice on how to cut the cost of owning pets. Every so often there is the obligatory hero dog article and recently the anti-cat article has crept up and pounced on us like... well like... cats on poor mices. We have had features about their bird killing habits. Another trying to tell us that cats aren't all that clever after all. They have been compared to our MPs; we need them but be wary of trusting them. And this week they've focused on scientific studies suggesting that cats deliberately use a sound in their cries for attention that mimics a high-frequency element that occurs in the sound of a baby crying, which we are hard-wired to respond to. To disguise this the cat purrs at the same time. Here is the article. The BBC ran a similar article the day before.