To Finchale and beyond!
Apr. 8th, 2024 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustOn Friday, as is our habit, we marked my father's birthday, with a visit to Finchale Priory, somewhere he knew well as a child. It's a good reason for a local outing, somewhere we like, in the spring, and there's always something new to see:
I've probably ranted before about the devaluation of the pilgrimage; and the Northern Saints' trails are at least a couple of years old. But the claim that if you are at a pilgrimage site anywhere in England, you are probably on the way to Compostela - that's a new one on me. Actually, I thought that the camino ingles, the route to Santiago particularly associated with English pilgrims, started in Bordeaux, the port they would have sailed to...
Apparently we weren't the only people with birthdays on our mind:
The card reads "Happy birthday Dad (in heaven)!" It would never - never! - have occurred to me to bring flowers or a card for Tom, and I don't know what he would have said if I did. (Actually, I do: he would have said nothing, and his silence would have been eloquent.) So I record this with mixed emotions.
The daffodils were in bloom all along the road to Finchale, but around the priory ruins they were already over. And we didn't take our usual stroll along the far side of the riverbank, because it was very muddy and we weren't wearing boots: so we didn't see the carpet of wood anemones and the sprinkling of violets which are usually there. The river provided plenty of visual interest, though, rushing along high and fast. Usually there are ducks walking about on the flat rocky riverbed, but today there was no sign of either ducks or riverbed.
The reason we weren't wearing boots is that we - or rather,durham_rambler - had another appointment on the same day, a medical follow-up, not at the local hospital but at another hospital half-an-hour away. For whatever reason, he decided to go to the appointment on his own, while I sat outside in the almost sunshine, and read Jan Morris's Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. So I don't know exactly what happened, but I can confirm that the cold nose of which he has been complaining is a recognised side-effect of one of his new medecines.
After which we went to Knitsley Farm shop for a late lunch.
I've probably ranted before about the devaluation of the pilgrimage; and the Northern Saints' trails are at least a couple of years old. But the claim that if you are at a pilgrimage site anywhere in England, you are probably on the way to Compostela - that's a new one on me. Actually, I thought that the camino ingles, the route to Santiago particularly associated with English pilgrims, started in Bordeaux, the port they would have sailed to...
Apparently we weren't the only people with birthdays on our mind:
The card reads "Happy birthday Dad (in heaven)!" It would never - never! - have occurred to me to bring flowers or a card for Tom, and I don't know what he would have said if I did. (Actually, I do: he would have said nothing, and his silence would have been eloquent.) So I record this with mixed emotions.
The daffodils were in bloom all along the road to Finchale, but around the priory ruins they were already over. And we didn't take our usual stroll along the far side of the riverbank, because it was very muddy and we weren't wearing boots: so we didn't see the carpet of wood anemones and the sprinkling of violets which are usually there. The river provided plenty of visual interest, though, rushing along high and fast. Usually there are ducks walking about on the flat rocky riverbed, but today there was no sign of either ducks or riverbed.
The reason we weren't wearing boots is that we - or rather,
durham_rambler - had another appointment on the same day, a medical follow-up, not at the local hospital but at another hospital half-an-hour away. For whatever reason, he decided to go to the appointment on his own, while I sat outside in the almost sunshine, and read Jan Morris's Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. So I don't know exactly what happened, but I can confirm that the cold nose of which he has been complaining is a recognised side-effect of one of his new medecines.After which we went to Knitsley Farm shop for a late lunch.
