Free English Heritage August Membership with British Gas

Everybody loves a freebie, and so it was like a shot that I signed up for an e-mail offer from British Gas giving away several thousand English Heritage memberships for August. The membership covered two adults and up to six children, who seemingly didn't even need to be related to you.

We are National Trust, Historic Houses and Royal Horticultural Society members, which always seemed like more than enough to keep us going. To join English Heritage as well felt excessive. Plus we've been a bit snippy about English Heritage properties in the Yorkshire region since most of them are, not to put too fine a point on it, ruins. It didn't seem worth paying to go in them since you think you've kind of seen enough just walking or driving past them. They haven't got a roof, furniture, wallpaper or windows so what could they possibly have inside?

Well, here was our chance to find out what they were hiding. Quite a lot more than we thought, to be honest. The chance to step back and enjoy a beautiful setting, for one thing. A little museum or two of salvaged artefacts. The eerie atmosphere of abandonment. The consequences of wanton destruction by Henry VIII's army. A batty sheepdog. The chance to brush up on some important history and imagine a bygone age.

We made it to:

1) Clifford's Tower.

I'd been before as one of my 40 challenges for turning 40, but given that it is down the road and it was going to be free, it would have been crazy not to go again, this time with daughter in tow. She loved climbing up the spiral staircase to the ramparts and trying to spot our house from the top. You can't actually see our house from the top, but you can see the Terry's chocolate factory tower, which was good enough for her.

2) Kirkham Priory.

This has a peaceful setting beside the River Derwent, and the slightly less peaceful York to Scarborough railway line. There were cows. Our daughter assigned us each a house amongst what was left of the buildings so that we could all play happy families. Sigh. Mummy and Daddy aren't very good at these sorts of games.

3) Rievaulx Abbey.

We have often looked down on the abbey from the National Trust owned Terrace above, but never ventured down into the valley. More fool us. The abbey is absolutely stunning, with a delightful, well presented museum. A children's trail helps you locate the monks' toilets.

4) Helmsley Castle.

Similarly, we have often looked up at Helmsley Castle from the Walled Garden, but had never been inside. It is much more substantial than the severed keep you see from the market square. It being a castle rather than a former monastic establishment, this is one of the few local ruins not destroyed by Henry VIII, but rather by the Civil War, and a bit of neglect. Walking around the mound above the moat ditch was a particular highlight. Our daughter spotted her beloved chickens in the walled garden below.

Helmsley Walled Garden

Above the moat

5) Byland Abbey.

Home of the aforementioned batty dog, who actually lives on a neighbouring farm, but spends his day hanging out at the abbey seeking out unsuspecting visitors to throw him sticks. Our daughter is terrified of dogs, so ran off screaming as soon as she saw him, but eventually came around to his persistent pestering. Good dog.

Batty sheepdog

6) Brodsworth Hall.

Not a ruin! A beautiful house and garden just outside of Doncaster that we'd always wanted to visit. Loads of activities for kids - a mini beast hunt in the garden, and a trail of giant knitted insects around the house that were to be identified as friends or foes, depending on how much damage they tend to do to building fabric. The house was kept in the same family for years and years, and they continually patched it up or just let it evolve, so it's an odd mismatch of period and repair. A beautiful wooden Victorian kitchen table with a Formica top, for example. A lift that was forever breaking down. A lot of it is currently undergoing more significant structural restoration - mainly the window shutters, and the billiard room, which had everything in tea crates. But the garden is just stunning - a fern grotto, sun room and croquet lawn amidst a formal parterre, rose dell and arboretum. And statues of whippets. The usual play area and tea room you would expect in such establishments.

As it was school holidays, and there are 31 days in August, really we could have got a lot more mileage out of this freebie. But despite best intentions, owing to various prior commitments and visitors, days and weekends ran away with us, so we didn't quite manage to get to as many places as we hoped. Notable local places we missed out on included Richmond Castle, Whitby Abbey, Scarborough Castle, Middleham Castle and the York Cold War Bunker. Further afield, I would have been tempted to revisit places like Eltham Palace and Audley End (which definitely aren't ruins), and Stonehenge. Maybe next year, we will add English Heritage membership to our list so that we can see the rest.

Richmond Castle (taken June 2016)

Eltham Palace (taken July 2015)

The Last Leg

Not quite up to Hannah Cockroft's speed

The summer holidays are over. I feel like I am on my last legs, but more on the past few weeks another time. This post is of course a reference to Channel 4's quite brilliant paralympics coverage. This time from Rio it's less about the ad breaks and more about the achievements of Team GB as they bask in much deserved glory. It's about learning people's amazing stories. And about what we Brits do best - irreverence. The Last Leg's now well-established team of Adam Hills, Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker have cheered up my evenings for the past week, and made the world seem a better place. Their unparalleled enthusiasm and passion for the event is infectious, and their ability to turn zany into cult status is sheer genius. The Brookworm dance. Jonnie Peacock in a tutu. Jody Cundy finding his inner Zen against all provocation. Shower caps for the Zimbabwean rowing team. Swimming coats. Johnny Vegas powerlifting. Johnny Vegas just about everywhere. Never has sport been so funny, so powerful, or so inspiring. I'm also very grateful for the nightly round-ups as so much of the "action", to use Clare Balding's favourite word, happens overnight. During the Rio 2016 Olympics I missed all the swimming and athletics as most races were on around one in the morning and the BBC completely lacked an evening highlights programme so I could catch up the next day. Yes, I know that technically it was all out there online, but sometimes I just need someone to do things for me. Here, I get the more earnest view with Clare for half an hour, then The Last Leg take the piss for an hour, and then a bit of live stuff happens before I crash out in bed. I feel informed, involved and enthused. What's more, I feel proud.

Compare this to the Last Night of the Proms, which this year I had to turn off in disgust. (Or rather turn back to the Paralympics.) I am so not in the mood for jingoistic nonsense and flag waving when it's about Rule Britannia and Land Of Hope And Glory. (And as Alex Brooker pointed out, these things have no place in the Paralympics either - why sing a national anthem about God saving a multi-millionaire when there are all those disabled people out there?) To me, all that smacks of UKIP and the Tories trying to turn our country back to the days of Empire, when we had no National Health Service, purely elitist education, sickly air in our cities, no European Union to listen to, and hanging and smacking were allowed (although not necessarily in that order). Frankly, they have almost succeeded.

I don't often prefer sport over music, but this year, we are living in very different times. Thank you, The Last Leg, for reminding me that there is something to love about being British after all. And it seems it took an Australian to do it.

Our family's medal haul for the summer. My daughter got one for reading.
My husband got one for running. I got one for a bike ride I didn't do.

Rio 2016

I greeted Rio 2016 without much enthusiasm. A bit like I'm greeting life at the moment. For what's the point? This will surely be the last Olympics when we can enter as Team GB, when a Scottish tennis player will carry the Union Jack at the head of our team during the opening ceremony. It will be the last Olympics before government austerity bites and all the sports funding dies out. From now on, it will just be shitty old England failing dismally and getting nowhere unless your parents are rich enough to send you to Eton with all the Saudi sheiks and Russian oligarchs.

How we all long to return to London 2012, when the nation still embraced multiculturalism, diversity, and helping those worse off than ourselves to achieve great things. We welcomed foreigners, basked in sunshine, made our children excited, and grinned from ear to ear. Britain felt good. Britain was good. I was there at the 30th Olympiad. In Newcastle. It feels like an age ago. Everything seems to have gone wrong since.

So, with it not happening on my doorstep this time, and with me not feeling the slightest bit proud to be British right now I had decided to pretty much ignore the Olympics in Rio.

But, you know, the sight of Tom Daley in his swimming trunks does wonders for drumming up a bit of enthusiasm.

So I've been watching quite a bit of diving this week. And gymnastics. And it's given me a flicker of hope in the world. Despite the doping scandals, at least the Olympics is still a place where stupidity, madness and a whole lot of money can't win the day. Just a lot of talent and hard work. Unlike in EU referendums. Or (dreading November) American Presidential elections.

The British seem to be feeling very at home in Rio. The lousy weather, boiling hot one minute, freezing cold wind and lashing rain the next. Buildings a last-minute rush job. Nothing quite working properly. A cycle track being gaffa taped back together after a crash. A swimming pool turning lurid green. Everyone at risk from a nasty virus. It's kind of how we expected London 2012 to be. So no wonder we are well prepared for coping with adversity, and things just being a little bit rubbish.

Good luck, Team GB. I will miss you.

New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands

This was a stunning documentary about New Zealand's wildlife - batty penguins in a quagmire, prehistoric forests, nocturnal birds, giant snails, even more giant whales, cryogenic wasps (very Fortitude) and a heck of a lot of sheep. Crill vomit, abandoned eggs containing miniature dinosaurs, and farming by helicopter: things are very different on the other side of the world. New Zealand has been separated from any other land for so long that it has evolved in a different way, but without large predators, which is why it has so many flightless birds.

More dangerous is the geothermal activity bubbling under the surface, and often exploding through it. There are geysers that erupt 20 times a day. Patches of land can vanish. The Alps are still growing taller, there are slurping, sulphurous mud pools, and the city of Christchurch is still recovering from the devastating earthquake of 2009. There is also a lot of weather in New Zealand - cyclones, typhoons, seemingly endless torrential rain. It isn't called the Land of the Long White Cloud for nothing.

Christchurch Cathedral in 2006

There was also footage of the camera crew that went to film the penguins - sailing through terrifying seas (the Roaring Forties) to a remote offshore island; a lot of people with a lot of camera equipment crammed into a boat way too small for them and lacking much in the way of facilities. There was a toilet shack built on the land, but it had been commandeered by a smelly, angry sealion who was up for a fight.

A reminder of our wonderful three weeks in New Zealand ten years ago. The never-ending bush, the tropical plans, the steaming hot pools, the towering snow-covered mountains, the glaciers and reflecting lakes.

Southern Alps from the air

Lake Matheson

As for the wildlife, a lot of the animals we saw were farmed (deer being readied for venison, cheeky lambs nibbling on sauvignon grapes) or contained (kiwis in a nocturnal hut on a bird reserve). There were a lot of dead possums on the road, and a bird bone punctured one of our tyres. A cat wandered into our motel room in Franz Josef one night. Ducks begged for food at Lake Taupo, but they just seemed so terribly English. We tried to go and see the thieving keas on the road to Mount Aspiring, but the track turned to dirt and was banned for our hire car (especially a hire car lacking a spare tyre). Judging by the film footage, it looks like the keas would have wrecked the car anyway. The wildest creatures we saw - apart from a school of dolphins swimming alongside our Wellington to Picton ferry - were the cloud of sandflies at Milford Sound, who seemed determined to eat me alive. There was no time for whalewatching at Kaikoura or to stop at the glow-worm caves south of Auckland; our schedule was too pressing. For this and for so many other reasons, we would love to go back.

Too English

Seagull at Lake Taupo, also too English

Motel visitor. The English girl had drunk too much wine.

En route between Wanaka and Mount Aspiring. Too rough.

Gloom

I haven't posted for a while. I have been in post-Brexit despair. This may not be how you feel, but I do, and as this is my blog, allow me to wallow a while.

You see, I lived in my lovely York bubble, surrounded by Remainers. We've all worked or studied abroad, can speak foreign languages and love our Polish neighbours. Staying in Europe was just the obvious thing to do. We all went to vote on the 23rd of June fully aware of what we wanted and why. And then we woke up to find out that yes, York wanted to remain European, but across the UK as a whole, an extra 3.9% of voters didn't think like us. And this tiny amount was enough for the government to decide to decimate all our experiences and opportunities. We  - as part of the 48.1% - were all in tears in the school playground on Friday 24th June. The future for our children, as I feared, had been wiped out by ignorance.

Yes, ignorance. Of course, many Leave voters had true and informed reasons for their choice. But many did not. Many Leave voters had fallen for the lies about immigration and extra funding for the NHS. Many only read the “Be-leave in Britain” Sun headlines or the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the Daily Express and Mail. Many believed it was an excuse to chuck out foreigners from anywhere in the world. Many voters apparently didn’t know what the EU was in the first place, or how it might even have helped them, through the funding it has given projects in poorer areas of the UK. This alone is a grave indicator of the distance between the elite in Westminster and the realities of life in this country. Many didn't understand that, unlike in a general election, in a referendum every vote counts, so they thought it was OK to vote Leave as a protest vote against Cameron and the establishment. And because Corbyn refused to share a platform with Cameron, lots of people didn't even realise that much of the Opposition wanted people to vote Remain too. I understand Corbyn's resentment of the Tories - it's not like I can stand them either - but his behaviour struck me as arrogant. Politics is only progressive when people enter into debate together and make compromises to find solutions. 

I cannot believe – and am so upset - that the new government of Theresa May is so desperate to pursue Brexit, despite it being such a narrow win for Leave. Essentially it was a fifty-fifty vote, which gives a clear mandate neither to Remain nor to Leave; it just shows we are a country split down the middle and that there are problems with the EU, and problems in the UK. Personally, I believe it's better to stay and talk about things than run away and turn on ourselves. But whatever, as the whole Leave campaign fell apart after the referendum, with its key politicians admitting that they had no plan and that they had lied, there is now absolutely no justification for Brexit to be pursued with such vigour.  

May herself, as a supposed Remain campaigner, could stop all the “madness” (as David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, describes it) in an instant. The madness of putting our economy, our currency and so many businesses at risk, as well as our environment and important university research programmes in science and medicine. May became Prime Minister without pro-Leave opponents (or any opponents at all - there's that undemocratic EU for you!), with Leadsom leaving the race and Boris Johnson and Michael Gove in disgrace. And yet "Brexit" (apparently) has to "mean Brexit" and suddenly all the Brexiteers have key positions in the Cabinet. I realise one can argue that this is in fact a canny move by May, as she has made them put their money where their mouth is – in sorting out issues for farmers, business and foreign relations. But why do it at all? It's political suicide for whoever triggers Article 50. And if you know it will be a disaster, why go through with it? But then yesterday, May said she would gladly nuke 100,000 people at the push of a button, so why should she care two hoots about what I think about anything?

But really, Boris as Foreign Secretary? While it gets him out of the country for much of the year, it’s an embarrassment, just as Nigel Farage was a terrible representative as the face of Britain in the European Parliament.

But to be doing any of this without a vote in Parliament to back up the decision of the referendum (which was in essence advisory) or to fully investigate the legality of the situation or the constitutional issues just makes me feel so sad, lost and frustrated.

"Get over it," the Leave voters tell us. "We won." But how can I “get over” something that has such drastic and terrible consequences and that eradicates my identity as a European? And what exactly have they "won"? Pending economic catastrophe and disgusting racial hatred erupting on our streets? Some things won't change, they will find. People will still migrate to the UK, and the NHS will still have no money. For under the Tories, the poor will only get poorer, and the rights that workers earned under the care of the EU could now be stripped away from them entirely. We never “lost” our country to get back - we had control of our borders, and without EU collaboration between intelligence agencies we could be at even greater risk of terrorist attack than before.

I am feeling ignored. I don’t know what I can do to be heard. The party I have always voted for and supported is in disarray. It should be really easy to be in Opposition right now, with such a destructive and shambolic government having been in place since May last year, but there is no voice in Parliament from Labour to lambast them for what they have been doing. And this concerns me greatly. I admire many of Corbyn’s principles, but he can't win an election, with the right-wing press so determined to ridicule him. He doesn’t have the support of his own MPs, and he is too stubborn to move on. I don’t want to see navel-gazing and in-fighting when we are on the cusp of something as massive and as horrible as leaving the European Union.

So - ironically - I now want to leave my country. "Good riddance", the Leave camp will say. But I hope that in time Britain may find it needs the 48% after all.

York Says No To Brexit March