A lovely circular six mile Probus walk today from Linton to Burnsall (and back again) in the upper Wharfe valley. An unpromising weather forecast and a drive through heavy mist at Greenhow didn’t put us off, and the group of seven headed off along the valley.

This is a familiar location to most of us, but Bill, our walk leader, rang the changes this time with an anti-clockwise version – plus a few modifications.

The hamlet/ village of Thorpe is always pleasing to visit – this time we were greeted/ delayed by a herd of sheep being moved along the road by the farmer. (should have been a picture of them here – sorry!)

Much of the walk was across grassy fields in rolling countryside- with lovely views across the valley and beyond. The drizzle petered out, and we started to tackle the variety of different stiles ahead of us, that allowed us to cross/climb the many very high stone walls separating the fields. 

Having been told that there were a number of these stiles on our walk, we started to realise that it was a large number! 

Coffee break on the bank of the river was followed by the sight of someone wild-swimming in the deep pool downstream of some interesting geology exposed by the river cutting into the limestone cliffs. Unbelievably, given our experience, the group relaxed in the certainty of a brief, flat walk back to Linton, but true to his reputation Bill directed us back up a steep hill, assuring us that this was a short cut!  It proved to be so, at the ‘cost’ of many more stiles – some with wobbly stones, others dizzyingly high, a few with precipitous drops after the steps ended! Consensus was that the number of stiles we had conquered was about 80 (but I’m not going back to check!)

A pleasant level walk then took us back to Linton, and a marvellous meal at The Fountaine Inn.

A superb way to spend a day!

My first regular Probus walk for a while, after an all too brief holiday in Italy. Since I’ve been back it doesn’t seem to have stopped raining, and our walk day opened to the patter of raindrops – with the web-based weather forecast suggesting a greater than 100% chance of getting fairly wet.

Starting our walk from the Tiger Inn, Coneythorpe, we made our way across attractive farmland, through and alongside large fields of wheat, oilseed rape and broad beans. The path was clear, if single file, and as the rain continued to fall …. the clay base of the path started to develop a distinct slipperiness (claggy?)

We also passed by a lagoon, where many hundreds of geese were flocking on the water, and through a field populated by a large herd of very nosy, skittish bullocks, who were fairly easily shoed away – though they quickly returned and crowded round us. Nervy times! 

Of course the usual banter took place as we completed the walk. Lots of Brexit- related talk, mostly despairing. Some concern about the World Cup cricket taking place that day between England and Australia (later found to be fully justified), and the usual discussion of our varied health and social related issues. It’s a great way to put your troubles in perspective!

Finally, after a surprisingly long walk (7 miles – really? It felt like more!), we made it back to The Tiger Inn, where the steak pies were marked as 8.5 out of 10 – a high rating compared with the substantial history on this subject kept over the years by our member Peter!

Good exercise, great fun and now I’m off the clean my boots and waterproof leggings of all that clay!

Lovely Probus extended walk last week. Beautiful weather! We revisited Hackfall woods, near Grewelthorpe, repeating a walk from about three years ago.

A visiting speaker from the Woodland Trust at one of our recent Probus meetings spoke about it glowingly, so it seemed right to do the walk again,

The walk didn’t disappoint. It’s a five mile walk through the woods – down to the river Ure, stopping at the numerous follies and features that make this place such a treasure, before looping back up the side of the valley to a ‘mock’ ruined castle.

The previous walk had been in the autumn, rather muddy underfoot – much better this time, though even after this dry period that we’re in currently there were a few genuinely muddy spots.

The paths are well signposted, so the chances of us getting lost were …. smaller!

One lovely feature is a large pond, with a very large fountain that could be started by cranking a handle. Spectacular!

Then we got lost. Fatally not ‘walking the plan’,  having planned the walk, we went off on an interesting diversion. Very pretty stream and waterfall, a beautiful path, disappearing into bluebells and the wild garlic ground cover. A scramble up a steep slope took us back to a ‘proper’ path, sadly the wrong side of a gate with a ‘no admittance’ sign on it! uh oh!

We safely negotiated the rest of the lovely walk, and had a nice lunch at the Sawley Arms with four non-walking Probus colleagues.

It’s good to be alive!

I’ve had an interest in artificial intelligence over the years. When I was a university researcher in the 70s and 80s I ‘dabbled’ with what was then called ‘expert systems’, in an attempt to improve decision making in medicine. A colleague and I developed a system to help medical researchers choose an appropriate statistical test to apply to the research data they’d gathered, and then apply it and attempt to interpret the results – without recourse to a statistical expert (me!).

It showed limited ‘intelligence’ – giving results that were generally as good as ‘experts’, but when it got it wrong, it got it really wrong! It didn’t really ‘understand’ the context it was working in. Not a good attribute if the expert you are trying to replace is a doctor!

Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant first got into Iphones and Ipads in 2011, so she’s (I think of her as female, but it could be any gender or nationality)  only 8 years old, but she’s pretty smart. Siri uses voice queries to answer natural language questions, make recommendations and delegate requests to a variety of internet services. She’s personalised, so gets to know what you’ve done before, and she uses machine learning to improve her responses to your questions as she gets to know you better.

So far so OK (I hope). Fast forward to the present. I was telling my wife about the excellent talk we’d had at Probus about zeppelins, and the fact that Count von Zeppelin had picked up the idea from a trip he’d made as a young man to observe the US Civil War, where they’d used hydrogen balloons carrying people as a way of observing what was going on in a battle.

Well, I was suddenly interrupted by the iphone in my pocket telling me all about the American Civil War! Amazing, but a bit worrying. I hadn’t asked Siri a question – indeed I’ve never knowingly used Siri. And here was this ‘advisor’, unbidden by me, being very ‘helpful’ in providing me with information (that I could have looked up by pressing a few buttons – but obviously don’t ever need to now!).

So, what worries me now is that, as I tend to keep my Iphone on all the time, just what is Siri listening to? I’ve got a spy in my house, apparently! And just what information is Siri passing on to companies about the views that I, and my family and friends, are discussing?

PS If I’ve ever said anything uncharitable about any of my fellow Probus members, it’s not true – Siri’s made it up! I don’t think she really likes me…. Paranoia rules K.O!

Lovely Probus Club regular walk this week. A large turnout, with fourteen on the walk and an additional five coming along to the meal afterwards.

OK, I know we’re spoilt at the moment with the lovely weather – slightly above average at the moment …. This was highlighted for us because this walk, starting at Fewston car park, is a Probus favourite on which we have previously experienced a six foot deep snowdrift!

Bill, our walk leader, always likes to make minor adjustments to keep the walks fresh for us. This time

he reversed the direction of the walk, so that we started off with a steep climb up to the moors (!!!!), with a magnificent view behind us, and then

added a new bit at the end, just when we thought we were nearly back at the car park, that went up a steep hill, albeit with compensatingly lovely views. Some of the language among the ungrateful group was ripe, and not just focused on the views!

Seriously, as you can see from the photos, it was a wonderful, varied walk. We saw kites and buzzards soaring overhead, pheasants and grouse in the heather, and saw our first frog spawn, complete with frogs caught in the act!

The conversation while we were walking was well up to standard – diverse topics as usual, with politics playing some, but not a dominant part in our discussions.

The coffee break during our three hour walk was located in a beautiful spot by the river Washburn (pictured), and the post-walk meal at Chez la Vie was a great success, though I think our large party kept the staff on their toes!

I’ve just been to the dentist to have a root canal filling – at 2.40 pm, not 2.30!

If you’re squeamish – look away now!

It’s the first time I’ve had this sort of treatment, and I’d heard all sorts of stories about the pain etc.

What a sensory experience!
• Sound (that awful high pitched whine – no, not me!),
• Smell (burning tooth?), and
• Taste (some strange unguent, or was it just fear?)

At one stage a rubbery cloth was put over my mouth – it certainly wasn’t because I was talking too much!

Apparently this has many purposes:
• keeps saliva out of the gaping hole in the tooth,
• prevents some of the nasty-tasting stuff being put into the filling from getting into the mouth, and
• is there to catch any small drills or other fitments that might fall down the gullet!

The overall effect, however, was that of a jellyfish trying to give me the kiss of life – rather unpleasant!

I’d expected a lot of drilling, but that didn’t go on for too long, nor was it painful.
There was much more pushing and shoving, with an amazing amount of instrumentation shoved into what I regard as a rather small mouth!

The nature of the procedure: take top off tooth, drill hole, ensure that hole has nice edges suitable for new filling, squirt stuff under pressure into the roots, fill, tamp down etc. made me think that dental expertise might be useful in tackling the huge number of Harrogate’s roads’ potholes!

Well, an hour later and it was all over – and I’ve had no after effects either.

Relief from someone who generally has just a routine check and a quick brush and polish, but this time got rather more than he could chew!

Well if you are ever required to have a root canal filling, at least now you know the drill!

And I’ve been toothful!

I do tend to go on about Probus walks in these pieces – but I guess that they’re an important part of the club’s activities for me and for many of our members.
The latest Probus walk started from Swinsty car park and was a 5 mile mixture of
• the familiar (around the reservoir),
• the ‘seen it before’ – but not sure exactly where or when (along the river Washburn below Swinsty dam and on the fringes of Timble village), and
• the new (how do you get across Timble Gill?).

The distinguishing features of this walk were:

• The fabulous weather – clear, crisp, warm in parts (much better than a curate’s egg)
• The glorious countryside and the great panoramas
• The gill crossing – where until the 2007 flooding there was a footbridge, and now there is a tricky crossing on foot using random mossy stones in the Gill and a bit of paddling, and
• The stiles

I’ve never seen such a variety of stiles as means of crossing from one field to another. There were:

• Staggered stone steps, some several metres high, imbedded (not always securely) in stone walls
• Wooden steps of varying heights, often with accompanying (and temptingly large) dog access holes
• Deteriorated wooden steps with the last step rather high above ground level, apart from a single large wobbly stone
• Wooden fences, clearly intended for straddling, but with the ground dropping away sharply on the far side and the only assistance available being the end of a 2 by 2 inch stake driven into the ground.

Such diversity, offering a range of challenges for our group, made me wonder how we managed before Amazon and DIY stores were invented!

Individual farmers and local hired labour responded to each situation requiring a stile with individual, sometimes quirky, solutions. None of your ‘one size fits all’ – more ‘everyone is different’.

The Ramblers Association, and local farmers, do their best in maintaining this agricultural heritage, but it must be a never-ending ‘Forth Road Bridge’ task – like my personal To Do list!

We very rarely have a disappointing walk, and then it’s usually due to weather. This walk was voted ‘one of the best ever’ by members taking part.– and it was followed by a fine boisterous meal at the Station Hotel in Birstwith.

It is a Happy New Year!

Well, it’s been a lovely Christmas. I was looking forward to a Happy New Year when I had a bit of bad luck! A plumbing incident!

Mysterious signs of damp on the kitchen ceiling from no visible source in the bathroom above. It got significantly worse, as they do, and a call to a plumber established that…. it was difficult to identify the source without putting a ‘keyhole sized’ hole in the now rather damp kitchen ceiling!

After I had signed a disclaimer, the ‘small’ hole suddenly became much bigger with a rush of water from above. A ‘snap tight’ joint in a plastic pipe in the ceiling void had apparently ‘snapped loose’ and caused all the problems!

So we’re ‘seeing the New Year in’ through a hole in the ceiling – but at least there’s no waterfall now!

It struck me that we have a load of proverbs and sayings about water – such as:

a drop in the ocean, a fish out of water, wet behind the ears, raining cats and dogs, water under the bridge, lead a horse to water etc. etc.

Obviously water is essential to life, and this is reflected in our use of water to describe human situations.
I recall Jack Nicholson’s wonderful statement to his psychiatrist in the 1997 film ‘As Good As It Gets’
‘Here am I drowning, and you’re describing water to me!’

Well, I’ve stopped drowning – now we just need to get the hole plastered up!

Happy New Year!

Now I know (a bit) how Father Christmas feels. He rushes around in the period before Christmas delivering letters and parcels ‘just in time’, a process known as ‘frictionless’ in political circles.
Well I admit I haven’t delivered any parcels – though I have written and posted all our Christmas cards! How are you getting on?

Probus is keeping me, and fellow Probus members, busy with all our seasonal events.
So far it’s been the Christmas lunch at Oakdale Golf Club, the walkless lunch at William and Victoria’s and the Christmas Carol concert at The Harrogate Club – and we’ve barely got into December!

I think that Father Christmas must be doing some special training to prepare for this onslaught, or perhaps he has had a special diet (not mince pies, and certainly not venison!) in order to cope.

I’m flagging somewhat, already, and we’ve still got the Christmas walk in the Fountains area (followed by a slap up lunch at The Chequers Inn). Oh, and there are a few family events too!

Perhaps I sound a bit of a killjoy – but it is really a great time of the year. Seeing Probus friends as well as family and other friends makes it feel a really special time – whatever the weather is doing.

I can just imagine the snow falling, even if the weather is somewhat wetter and windier in reality.

Have a great Christmas!