shewhomust | Time and place (Reply)

A piece in the Guardian Travel about the west of Sicily. Sicily is one of the places I'd like to visit, the combination of Greeks and Vikings (well, Normans) in its history is irresistible. And it's an island, and they grow lemons, and... Now, it seems, I am to be more discerning, and aspire to some of the lesser known parts of the island.

Alternatively, still via Saturday's Guardian, how about Birmingham? I've touched before on the Jewellery Quarter (their website is infuriating) plus canals and Pre-Raphaelites and the hauntsa of durham_rambler's youth.... (And speaking of the Pre-Raphaelites, there's that Arts & Crafts house at Wightwick Manor).

We were in Newcastle on Sunday, at Live Theatre for a dramatisation of Chris Mullin's diaries: I was greatly entertained, if a little wary of a two hour play quarried from two very solid volumes of writing. But the area around the theatre has been transformed since last we were there: I knew they'd been building there, and that there was a new car park (where, indeed, we parked): this doesn't sound promising, does it? And certainly it has some of that quality of 'big modern buildings which could be anywhere'. But there's also something almost magical in the way the narrow old streets feed dpwn into the airy modern space.

We've not been walking much lately; a mixture of doing other things and being deterred by the weather. Yesterday we were determined, drove out to Bowes (through the traffic hold-ups caused by caravans on their way to Appleby for the horse fair) and climbed up out of the valley to meet the Pennine Way, then across the shoulder of the hill, back down to cross the A66 and the river Greta, and back along the valley into Bowes. The sun actually came out for that last section, and the riverside walk was pretty, though the hum of the A66 was audible all the way - and it's one of those infuriating walks which waits until you're almost back to your starting point, weary and with your destination (Bowes Castle on this occasion) in sight - and then confronts you with an intermnable sequence of small fields, each of which you enter by negotiating a stile which is slightly too high. But it was wonderful to be out on the hills again.