Canoeing the River Esk North Yorkshire

Monday 1st December.

A clear but frosty morning after a day of continuous rain on the Sunday and it looks like a good day to go for a paddle. I'm soon at Grosmont, several miles upriver from Whitby.
I drop the canoe off next to the bridge, drive back to Sleights where I leave the car and jog the few miles back to the canoe. It takes just over 40 minutes and I put my paddling boots on and a warm fleece as I'll soon cool down.

A paddle of about two hours downriver to Sleights or beyond looks on the cards. The section between here and Sleights is varied paddling through woods and fields and passes under the Esk Valley railway a number of times. It's a quiet paddle and well sheltered. There's plenty to interest paddlers. It's fairly straighforward and is the best section on the river Esk for an open canoe. Between Lealhom and Grosmont there is plenty to interest the keen Kayaker

The put in at the ford in Grosmont. The river has been very high, look at the debris hanging in the tree top right! It looks line fun.



Plenty of grade II makes for an interesting paddle between here and Sleights about two hours paddling away, through a mainly wooded valley and past a few interesting man made structures.



The first one being a fishermans shelter partially built into a cliff. The air temperature is hovering just above freezing and I'm having difficulty keeping my hands warm.



Plenty of small drops, some easier than others but enough to keep you interested. Gravel bars, and twisting turns.



And for those of you old enough to remember, this is the actor Ian Carmichael's house, camera shake notwithstanding - but I was paddling aswell!



My bowman, Jilly, with canoeing & mountaineering experience in Ireland and England. She's fine at the bow but only knows doggy paddle.



Some of the river passes by undercut cliffs but none of this interests her



There's some interesting wildlife to be spotted. These are (I think) otter tracks, we see kingfisher, dipper, a little grebe, several goosander and a pair of red breasted mergansers and numerous grey wagtails. The odd deer scurry away from the bank Jilly jumps ship at one point and dives overboard on seeing a squirrel and chases it along the bank requiring me to go ashore.



A good chance to stretch the legs!




And so the river continues, passing through woods, ravines, twists and turns, the odd island, and here, demonstrating the height the river reached at the weekend by several log jambs



The first take out point is easily noticed by a huge metal bridge (The road to Pickering) replacing one, previously washed away in floods in the 1930s.



And here's the take out point at Sleights Weir. It's an awkward carry out to get to the car park next to the Salmon Leap pub, but you can carry on to Whitby or another take out just before Ruswarp boats, where beyond that is the only other weir which involves a carry over.

I've heard of people paddling over Sleights weir in kayaks, but there is a strong undertow in high conditions and I'd not chance it in any condition!. At extremely high conditions there is only a foot drop but who knows what lies underwater.

In the many years I've lived here I've never seen another paddler on this or any other stretch of the Esk other than below the Dam at Sleights which is heavily used by a couple of local outdoor centres. __________________

Ian Bailey (2)

We never told any of our visitors about the murder. Nor did we tell them that the only person arrested for it, and the only person who confessed to it lived up the road.

Ian Bailey sued several papers claiming they said he murdered Sophie du Plaintier.. He lost.

It was around this time that Mr Bailey's behaviour towards me changed alarmingly. For several years I had walked across the fields bordering Mr Bailey's property (actually it belongs to Jules Thomas, his partner, but never mind). More recently I'd used the fields for walking our dog. The fields belonged to my good friend Richard Connell.

Then one day I was crossing the fields and Bailey appeared at his boundary shouting and screaming. I don't know exactly what as it was windy.

I thought I'd give the police this information as he was rather an odd character.

Too late, I was informed by the Schull team. "He's made a complaint about you". And so came to pass numerious episodes of Ian Bailey complaining about me walking the fields where I live and had permission to walk. More upsettingly the country police manning the 'barracks', as Irish police stations are known', were out of their depth. On one occasion I had one of them, an unpleasant fat and rather lazy man called Guarda Kellihier come to me, interview me under caution and accuse me of making, "Obscene pig noises outside Ian Bailey's house on the public road".

Quickly realising Kellihier was out of his depths I asked him what an 'obscene pig noise' sounds like. He couldn't tell me. "So I can't really comment, can I", replied.
"Will ye sign this?", he asked me, after having written out his statement of our meeting. "No" I replied. And he realised that he'd spent the last 5 minutes of writing out his acount of his interview for me to sign was wasted.

He then told me I was being unreasonable. I quickly told him that if you come to someones house, tell them they have been making obscene pig like noises, they can hardly be called unreasonable if the person making the complaint cannot tell me what they sound like in the first place.

The next phase now involved threatening letters from Ian Bailey's defence lawyers.

Living next to a suspected Killer

On December 23rd 1996 French film maker Sophie du Plantier was brutally murdered at her West Cork home in Ireland. The killer was never convicted and there was only one suspect, Ian Bailey who lived with Jules Thomas. (You can google "Ian Bailey+Schull and you'll get dozens of links!)

Ian Bailey lived with his partner Jules Thomas about 150 meters up the road from us. He beat here up a number of times, sometimes enough to hospitalise her.

I have been asked many times what it was like living next to these two. And many times I've been asked, did I think he was the murderer? I'll answer the first question only, although it is public knowledge he beat Jules up a number of times, once so badly she had to be rushed to hospital in Cork City some 65 miles away. You can make up your own mind whether he you think he murdered Sophie.

Although my relationship with Ian Bailey was initially cordial he soon showed an unpleasant streak and was prone to angry outbursts.

Although later we bought the house from them, initially Jules let me rent the place until the contracts were signed. My first brush with them occurred after the water supply broke down. Ian Bailey brought a litre bottle of water round. "we are getting someone to fix it" he said, as he bid me a jolly goodbye. No one came, that day. Or the next. So I got someone to fix it myself. A couple of weeks later Jules came round demanding the rent. I told her I had no money at hand but perhaps she'd like to settle this, and i handed her the bill for the water repairman. "You just can't win' she said as she threw the bill on the floor, and that was the last time I spoke to her.

Some weeks later just prior to the contract being signed I put outside one of the rusty old fridges that were rotting and rusting in the corner of what was left of the kitchen and stood it outside. I couldn't believe anyone would have wanted it anyway it was so rusty and dirty. Ian and Jules saw it and came immediately knocking at the door. Ian was tense and obviously angry. Jules sat quietly in the background. "You being here is costing me money" he frowned at me. I asked why and in reply he said that this was his studio where he wrote his material!! - I felt like telling him that he needed to ask Jules why she was selling the house to me then!. But he was angry and it was obvious there was no reasoning with him. Beads of sweat formed on his brow. He was clearly angry.

There were one or two unpleasant exchanges but nothing untoward until some time after we bought the house he approached me angrily swearing and shouting about me spying on him. Obviously he didn't like me birdwatching in the vicinity of his house.

Other than that we never spoke much as he was always rather sullen. But it all got worse once he'd taken the many newspapers to court for liable, claiming they had wrongly accused him of the murder.

Upset and angry that he'd lost his legal challenge and not liking the fall into obscurity he took some of his anger out on me.

His behaviour towards me changed dramatically. I'll post future posts about his outbursts, complaining to the police, my neighbour and of the numerous solicitors letters I received. Slightly more worrying he was collecting pictures of me whilst I was out walking!.

Royal Navy

Well, here I am receiving a little prize from the Captain of HMS Mercury for taking part in the Nato Naval Communications Competition in Brugge, Belgium. Just in case you are wondering why I look so young - this picture was taken in 1971 ( ish?). I joined up in 1966 and left in 1974.

Saltergate Gallows fell race

Lovely clear Sunday morning and decided to take part in a 8.5mile route with just about 1000ft of ascent at Saltersgate on the North Yorkshire Moors.

Only just made the start as I forgot my trainers and had to turn around to pick them up. Car park at the Hole of Horcum was jam packed full of runners, many of whom were warming up when I arrived. I only just managed to pin my number on before I got to the start!.

The route can be seen here.

I managed to run 99% of the course apart from a couple of up-hill sections. Not bad for a 59 year old!! I came 60th out of 120 runners and was 2nd out of 12 in may age group . Finishing time was 80 minutes. I may even partake in a few more!

Autumn visitors to Robin Hood's Bay

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From our home at the top of the bank I could see skeins of geese flying south, high in the clear blue skies un-noticed by the remaining visitors admiring the views from the top of the bank. And more came by that night calling in the moonlight in their thousands, unheard by customer sitting outside the Grosvenor Hotel.

The following day saw the first autumn gale and I noticed a pair of House Martins were still flying around houses along Mount Pleasant. Not all our avian visitors had left either. But these birds will make their massive migration south across the Sahara to southern Africa to join the swifts which left the village much earlier, a journey of several thousand miles without stopping!. But it’s nothing for a swift. One adult feeding young was ringed bird in the UK at it’s nest in a school belfry, was caught later the same day in Germany. Released a second time it was back feeding it’s young later the same day. A round journey of five hundred miles to feed it’s young.

When many of our human visitors go home for winter they are replaced by many thousands of other visitors, mostly unseen and ignored as they fly at night. Yet these birds have made some of the most dangerous journeys to get here. Even before they start some will have survived encounters with Wolves, foxes or Grizzlies in the great arctic tundra maybe only a week or two ago!

Brent geese, make the dangerous journey flying from Northern Canada over the Greenland icecap, across the ocean to Iceland and ending up in Ireland and the UK. A distance of over 4000 miles covering around 800 miles per day. It is a dangerous journey indeed. I wondered whether the geese overhead were the very ones we’ve heard Cree Indians in Northern Canada imitating to lure them within range of their guns whilst canoeing on a remote northern tundra river a couple of years back.

One radio tagged goose named Kerry was observed to have stopped flying near Resolute bay in the far north of Canada. Anxious to learn what had happened the trackers traced the signal to the home of an Inuit hunter. It was laid frozen in the freezer, food for winter, the tracking device still attached.

Geese have also been observed flying thousands of feet higher than Everest in air so rarefied and cold that would render us humans dead, and frozen in minutes.

Walking along the cliff path at Bay Ness I could see another visitor. Far below the walkers enjoying the late summer sun, a Red Throated Diver fished in the sea below. These too are visitors from the far north and one species even makes it to the shores around Ireland from it’s summer home in Canada. You’ve probably all heard these birds on TV as their eerie, evocative and haunting calls are often heard on programmes about Canada’s wilderness.

Walking on the beach today I saw some other visitors, Dunlins, Redshanks, Turnstones & Godwits, waders from also from the far north, busy feeding on the waters edge, most refuelling before continuing south to winter on the Humber estuary. A visitor walking too close scared them into flight not knowing or caring that these birds were tired and very hungry, having lost a large proportion of their body weight to make it this far. High above the cliffs of Bay Ness a pair of Peregrine falcons searched for likely prey. Some of these waders won’t make it through the winter and many will never make it back to their northern breeding grounds. Many will be blown off course and perish unseen at sea.

Soon our hedgerows, fields and trees will throng with Fieldfares and Redwings, visitors from Siberia and northern Europe gorging on hawthorn, mountain ash and other berries, hungry after their long journey. I have no doubt that one clear night soon I’ll hear these calling above our house as they cross the North Sea to safety in our fields. Some of the Redwings may have flown from Iceland, which will have required a night time flight over the sea of 800 miles. Many other winter visitors cross the North Sea to avoid the harsh central European winters including Robins Chaffinches, Bramblings, and Starlings.

So next time you think all our visitors have gone just spare a thought for those visitors passing overhead unseen in the dark or resting on the beach or in the fields. And the next time you look outside remember that the Robin or Chaffinch you see may have just flown in from Siberia!!

Busy Week

Well, we've been busy getting the house done up. Almost everythings done. We have a functional bathroom, dining room one bedroom and a sort of office cum library.

Out with the Hawk and Owl Trust on Fylingdales moor on Friday and we saw a Merlin. As we returned through Maybecks a Goshawk appeared over the trees. In the car park I noticed that the Piri Piri which featured in several papers which reported on the park's efforts to eradicate this invasive New Zealand weed was unsuccessful. In the very area where several people had been pulling out, I found several more plants and seed heads. This was an area the size of a bed!!

Saturday I was out as voluntary ranger with my partner Trish. Our first outing in 'uniform' Very self conscious but a few people asked us questions, something which they normally do not unless you obviously look like a local. A small drama occurred when I noticed my magnetic badge dropped off un-noticed. Half an hours hunt for it and I discovered it where I'd lent over a fence!!