We started the day with the promised visit to the Roman baths. They stand on the edge of a field, a little way out of Ravenglass along a private road through woodland:



And stand they do, the masonry is massive and - says durham_rambler - 4 metres tall. They are also full of water, so we didn't poke around, we just admired from the perimeter. There is a cluster of notice boards, one of which told us that this was the beginning of Hadrian's Cycleway: I am not convinced that the emperor was a cyclist, but pleased to have included this Hadrianic point of origin in our trip.

A half hour's drive brought us to Senhouse Roman Museum at Maryport: There isn't a road that follows the coast, but it was so misty that we wouldn't have seen anything even if there were. But the museum itself is worth seeing: not just the collection, though that's impressive, too, but the building, a Victorian Royal Naval Artillery Volunteer Drill Hall and a listed building in its own right. It houses mostly Roman stone carvings, including an extraordinary collection of altars:



It seems that one of the obligations of the commander of the fort was to dedicate a new altar every year; these are only the ones between CE 122 and 138. I'm accustomed to seeing Roman altars where you can just about - sort of - by referring to the transcript - decipher the text, but these were so clear, both in the carving and the preservation, that it was easy to read what they said.

We were less successful at exploring Maryport itself. It looks like an attractive eighteenth century town with some quirky details, and on a fine day it would be a pleasure to park up the hill and wander down to the harbour. Instead of which we rushed into the town centre in search of a late lunch, parked in a one-hour zone, dived into the nearest pub (the Lifeboat, I think, and they do a good ham and lentil soup) and only afterwards realised we could have carried on to the harbour, bought as much parking as we were prepared to pay for, picked up a map at the visitor centre and eaten in a café overlooking the harbour. Another time we'll know better.

After days of we will never be ready in time!, we got away and we are now in Ravenglass on the Cumbrian coast, where the Esk flows into the sea. I can see the estuary from my window.

On Tuesday we Zoomed a LTYLR gig with Will Finn and Rosie Calvert. If I had known that they had been touring In Person, and had had an actual gig in Newcastle the previous night, I would probably have made a big effort to get there. They are one of the more successful acts at conveying their live performance through the internet, but a live gig would have been lovely. Oh, well. Anyway, I liked their version of the Swimming Song, so here it is:



Yesterday was all about finishing off one last work task, and a bonus visit to the doctor to have a second try at giving a blood sample (successful, hooray!), and ironing and washing up and packing... I wasn't sure until the last minute that we would have time to go to the pub quiz, but we managed it: we didn't get there early to reserve a table, but outside term time this isn't so necessary. I'm glad we went, because the team was very much on form: after two successive weeks in which we failed to win the tie-breaker for third place, we came first with a good score, and were very pleased with ourselves.

This morning we were away by midday. I had hoped for earlier - I always do - but it was fine. We lunched at the tea rooms (and ice cream parlour) in the shadow of Brough castle: unicorn ice cream is strawberries and cream, apparently, while dinosaur is blue (but it's vanilla). Elderberry-and-ginger was pleasant, but didn't taste strongly of either of those things.

durham_rambler had programmed the satnav to bring us through the Lake District, which sounded pleasant. He may need to have a word with the satnav. We skirted Windermere, with pretty views of the lake, glimpses of gardens (all daffodils and magnolia) and intensive tourist development, but then things got wilder, and we found ourselves driving narrow winding roads, admiring the fluffy sheep in tasteful shades of designer grey. The road got narrower and steeper, and it became evident that we were heading through Wrynose and Hardknott passes, and we were in for some serious stunt driving. We should have known this. Great fun, if that's what you're looking for, but wasn't durham_rambler supposed to be taking things easy?

We stopped at the parking space for Hardknott Roman Fort, and completely failed to spot any sign of the fort itself. It was damp and blowy, and we didn't know where to look, and then it started to rain. We got back in the car, and drove down the Esk valley to Ravenglass. Tomorrow we will retrace the last part of the journey in a steam train.

We started the day with a panel on banned books - comics censorship in the 21st century. Waiting outside, I fell into conversation with a lady dressed in a black suit, complete with black lace wings and a silver badge: she explained that she was role-playing a character from a comic by a friend of hers, about a retired fairy godmother who joins the Vancouver police force as a detective. If I had had my wits about me, I would have asked if I could photograph her (and the copy of the book she showed me): but I didn't, so there is only this verbal record, and a note that the book might be worth a look, if I came across it. The panel itself brought together five interesting speakers, any one of whom I would cheerfully have listened to at greater length, but who somehow never added up to more than the sum of their parts. Charles Brownstein of the CBLDF was a polished and sympathetic speaker, and Elyon's, a Cameroonian working in Congo Brazzaville, brought a different perspective to the question.

We had just time for a little shopping before our next events: the Oxfam bookshop, where I found a copy of Astérix en Corse, and Page 45 for less random purchases. The durham_rambler stuck with Plan A, and went to the launch of Rain, and I headed back to the Brewery to hear Benoît Peeters talking about Belgian comics from Hergé to Brecht Evens. This fell into the inevitable trap, was too leisurely talking about Hergé and ran out of time to consider the more recent and less internationally known artists: I was going to say I would have liked to hear more about Brecht Evens, and that remains true, but I'm embarrassed to see a familiar cover on his website: did I actually order one of his books from my comics supplier, and is it in a to-be-read pile somewhere? Takeaway fact: the use of the term ligne clair to describe Hergé's style originates with Joost Swarte, in Dutch, so we really ought to be talking about klare lijn.

Lunch was enabled by the Flemish government:



I think a chip van is an excellent form of cultural outreach. I was next to Duncan Fegredo in the queue, and was tempted to squee at him: the Graphic Novels Reading Group is currently revisiting some Vertigo titles (there is a Post in Progress on this subject) and I have just enjoyed rereading Enigma. But never come between a man and his chips...

After lunch I went to two separate panels titled Belgian is Best, in which first Paul Gravett and then Alex Fitch attempted to wrangle some sort of coherence from a disparate bunch of creators. Alex Fitch was slightly the more successful of the two, in that he had gained a degree of control over the slide show: we still had a selection of images from the featured artists in constant rotation, but at least now they could call on him to stop! there! no, back!.. Even so, I came away from both panels thinking I could probably match image to artist for about 60% of the slides. Paul Gravett's task was complicated by the inclusion of one artist who required an interpreter, but then Alex Fitch had one who hadn't asked for an interpreter and probably needed one. In addition, this being Belgium, it wasn't always clear what each artist's original language was: I was grateful to Joris Vermassen for commenting, very late in the panel, that he had had to come to England to meet fellow professionals from as small a country as Belgium, and launching us at last into a conversation about that fractured culture.

And that, bar a little book buying in the International Marketplace, and a visit to Booths to buy chili for dinner, was that.

What I like best about Kendal (apart from its comics festival, obviously) is its 'yards'. As you walk along the main street, you peer into the gaps between two properties, expecting to see an ordinary backyard or parking space, and instead see another, miniature street sloping away down to the river, or up the side of the hill. Some of them have names, but most of them are too small even for that. This, for example, is Yard 77:



If I had to choose one of my photos of Kendal to show you, I'd pick this one, in all its monochrome glory (it was taken on Sunday morning, just as the rain stopped). Luckily, I don't have to make that choice...

( ...and there are more pictures under the cut. )

There's a long post - less unfinished than barely begun - about the comics festival, but rather than delay until that's completed, here's a single frame from Zara Slattery's image for Radical Roots, which I photographed from the Festival's Windows Trail.

It's been a weekend of contrasts, with Friday's winds and yesterday's torrential rain fizzling out into today's golden October afternoon. After the morning's comics sessions, a little light retail from the dealers' rooms and a sandwich from the deli in the Market Place, we agreed that durham_rambler would return to our Hideaway from a quiet afternoon at home, while I took my camera for a walk around the town. Which worked very well, and I took many pictures - and again, some of them will doubtless appear in due course, but I won't delay this to accommodate them.

All was well and happy, in fact, until I returned home, and could not open the gate. Not, this time, the door which had previously given trouble, and which has been behaving much better as the weather improved, but the gate into the yard. The problem was not the latch at the top, but lower down, almost as if someone had shot the bolt. This was evidence, at least, that someone was at home, and durham_rambler is inseparable from his mobile phone... Except that on this occasion, he had decided to take it off, and while he rather thought he heard some noises outside, he didn't come out to investigate. No doubt sooner or later he would have begun to wonder where I was, but I had hoped it would be sooner rather than later. In fact it was a neighbour from further down the lane who came to my rescue: he was tall enough first to confirm that the blt was closed, and then to reach over to the yard broom leaning in the corner, and to knock the bolt open. It turned out that all three of us had contributed to the problem: I had remarked this morning that if durham_rambler wanted to lock something overnight, rather than enclose us behind a locked door that we might not be able to open in a hurry, he should shoot the bolt to secure the yard; helenraven remembered this when she returned home and noticed that the keys weren't in the safe, suggesting we were home before her. But I do blame durham_rambler for choosing this moment to cut himself off from the telephone...

This lock-in also provides an element of symmetry, since Saturday morning began with an entirely different piece of lock-related entertainment. But that's another story, and one which, since durham_rambler has just gone out for Thai takeaway, I won't tell now.

I couldn't include any pictures in my posts from Kendal, because my notebook had decided to log me out of Flickr, and Yahoo declined to log me back in. For once this wasn't because I had forgotten my password (I didn't get that far) but because Yahoo didn't recognise either of the e-mail addresses I offered it. The sensible course of action would be to return to the attack, armed with a note of my password and ID, and I will, but first, here are the pictures I would have posted - and maybe one or two more, because I can!

( Under a cut, because pictures! )

We listened to the weather forecast, which told us that Storm Ophelia would hit the north of England around midday, and decided to cancel the visit we had planned to make on our way home, which would have delayed our return until the early evening. But we wouldn't take the fast road, either; after all, it is both high and exposed. Instead we took the scenic route - and scenic it was, until we hit thick fog as we descended into Weardale. But the road out of Kendal was lovely, and we stopped in Melmerby for lunch at the Old Village Bakery (no longer the bakery, which seems to have been taken over by a toymaker, but still a good café). As we stepped out of the Bakery, the clouds thinned just enough for me to see the disk of the sun, clear and red - and then it vanished into cloud again. (The Guardian blames this phenomenon on Ophelia bringing in sand from the Sahara). We crossed the green to visit Andy Goldsworthy's Washfold (part of his Sheepfolds project):



And then we came home.

We continue to explore routes between our cottage on Greenside and festival venues in the centre of town. This morning we picked up Captain French Lane (the internet won't tell me anything about Captain French) and followed it all the way down to Highgate; this evening, having shopped at Tesco (microwavable paella for dinner) we climed up the side of Wainwright's Yard,and so directly to Beast Bank. In between, there were comics-related events. For the first time, the Festival offered - and we bought - passes which give access to all daytime events. This is great, because we didn't have to decide in advance what we wanted to do, and it's an encouragement to try an event we wouldn't have paid separately for. The downside for the organisers is that they don't know in advance when events are oversubscribed, and they have tried to counter this by scheduling events at quarter hour intervals, so that if you can't get in to your first choice, there won't be too long until another event starts. Which is clever, but means that events may clash, not because they are scheduled at the same time, but incrementally, because they overlap. I would have found this very frustrating, had Peter Milligan, a guest I had looked forward to seeing, not had to cancel - which was a disappointment, but made life simpler. Now, provided I gave up any idea of getting books signed, or enjoying any of the restaurants and cafés of Kendal, I could attend all of my first choice of panels.

We split up for the first event of the day. durham_rambler went to see Tony Husband, whose work he knows from Private Eye. Verdict: couldn't hear, speakers were too far from the mike. At the 'Chip on Chip' panel (Chip Zdarsky interviewed by Chip Moser) I had the opposite problem: Zdarsky held the pair's single mike too close, causing distortion and breaking up. Unlike, I suspect, the majority of those there, I've never read Sex Criminals, though people keep recommending it. I'm a fan of Howard the Duck, both Steve Gerber's original and Chip Zdarsky's reboot, so I knew it would be a fun panel, and it was (though maybe even more fun for the panellists than for the audience): typical of the flavour of the thing is that when Chip M asked Chip Z for some images, he was told Oh, just use whatever comes top of a Google image search. This news story provided one of those images, which confused me because I was convinced that what I was seeing was a man dressed as the Marsupilami (no, it's Garfield).

I'd identified a promising source of all-day breakfasts at the Farmhouse Kitchen, but we didn't have time before our next event, so we bought pasties and hog roast at the market, and headed back to the Brewery to hear Bryan Talbot talk to Peter Kessler about the final chapter of Grandville. This was just an opportunity to eavesdrop on a really interesting conversation, while admiring images from all five volumes of Grandville blown up on the big screen. There were things that seemed to bother Peter Kessler which I didn't find puzzling (like why you would use a computer font for your lettering) or where I saw what the issue was but not why he was so concerned about it (these people are fish! and they are eating fish!) but he was an interested and intelligent questioner, and drew out some interesting remarks from his interviewee. We didn't follow them across the road to the signing, as we wanted to go to the next event (and although I did buy the book an hour later, the signing queue was still ridiculous)^ETA.

The panel on the life and work of Tove Jansson was titled 'More than the Moomins', and consisted of Paul Gravett in conversation with Sophia Jansson (Tove's neice) and Tuula Karjalainen (her biographer). It was illustrated by a slideshow of photographs of Tove Jansson, a few of her paintings and plenty of Moomin drawings: I wished that instead of the cycling images we could have had the one that was relevant to what was being discussed at any given moment. Then again, it was warm in the theatre, and I slept badly last night, so it's no reflection on the panelists that I was tending to drift off. If I came away from the event thinking that I'd have liked to know more about the more than the Moomins, it may be my own inattention that's to blame. (If I really want to know more, we might be able to get to the show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery). Meanwhile, Jonathan Edwards was making a pretty image while we watched (doing things I didn't realise you could do with watercolour), and I hope to see more of his work at the Wildman Gallery tomorrow.

Finally, a fun panel on 'the greatest comic book cover of all time', introduced by Peter Kessler again. This was absolutely not about the greatest cover of all time, but a fascinating glimpse of practitioners talking about specifics, and often at its best when they cut in to comment on each other's choices. Duncan Fegredo proposed his copy of Halo Jones, because it was signed with kind comments about his portfolio; Chip Zdarsky proposed Aunt May's wedding to Doc Octopus, because seriously; Mariko Tamaki praised Lumberjanes and The Wicked + The Divine - which was on my list, though she chose the first sequence, the big portraits, and I prefer the more recent ones... Actually, what's brilliant about the Wic+Div covers is the way they work as a sequence. There was no discussion of whether covers of trade paperbacks work in the same way as singles. Other things not discussed: Watchmen (another brilliant sequence of covers) although it was included in the opening montage; Duncan Fegredo's own cover work; Brian Bolland (his name was mentioned, but that's all); Dave McKean's Sandman covers. It's the mark of a good panel, I think, that you emerge wanting to continue the conversation...

But not now. It's been a long day, and there'll be more tomorrow, for which I'd like to stay awake.

ETA: In fact, having decided not to pursue Bryan Talbot across the road in pursuit of a signed copy of Grandville: Force Majeure, I went to Page 45's room after an hour-long event, to discover that people were still waiting for signed copies. At first I thought I would join them, but realised that it was once again a choice between a signature and the next event, so I bought my book and left. Good decision. This morning Bryan told me he had been signing for four hours.

We left home this morning (just) on a mild autumn day, with a promise of high and gusty winds. Despite which we braved the A66 (notorious for its exposure to gales and other weather). It was indeed blowy at the top, but more dramatic was the grey curtain that came down as we passed the 'Welcome to Cumbria' sign. It is misty, and it is wet. Back down in the valley, there is less mist, but more wetness: we can see far enough to realise that - although last week's flood warning has been downgraded to yellow - the rivers are all still very high.

Our cottage this year is on Greenside, not a part of town I know. We seemed to take a very long way round to get here, and I'm hoping there's a more direct walking route down to the Brewery, where most of the festival events take place (the map suggests this would be easier if the Brewery had a back door). We seemed to be climbing quite high up, which given the general wetness is probably just as well. We have, as you can tell, grappled successfully with the keysafe and the wifi, and made a pot of tea. I have reacquainted my notebook with Dreamwidth, and decided I can do without Flickr for the duration of the weekend.

Later we will go out and collect tickets and a programme (because although the programme is online, there's nothing like a dead tree document you can scribble on). Until then, I have a book...

I deliberately hadn't visited the sales areas in the Clocktower before Sunday: shops in town would be closed, these wouldn't, and there'd be plenty of time before our one event of the day. After a leisurely breakfast we plunged in. I was - um - reasonably restrained: I bought a number of comics, and a poster, but I resisted the puffin mug and the hand-knitted mythical mice:



I had planned to buy a copy of The Red Virgin, but Page 45 had sold out: there might be some available after the talk that afternoon. We'd heard Bryan and Mary talking about the book the previous year, but would probably have gone to hear it again, if it hadn't clashed with Dave McKean's performance. I'm not regretting that choice: Black Dog - The Dreams of Paul Nash is a sound-and-vision rendering of McKean's new book, an extraordinary fusion of McKean's voice and art with that of Paul Nash. I hadn't planned to buy the book, but now I want to (having been launched the previous day, it was already sold out, which was probably just as well as far as my budget is concerned). I see they are repeating the performance alongside the exhibition at the Tate. and I recommend it (also see that the exhibtion will in due vourse come to the Laing, which is more good news). Still dazed and overwhelmed, we trotted back to the Clocktower, bought our copy of The Red Virgin and had it signed, chatted briefly to Kate Charlesworth about the event we had just shared, and how it was sparking thoughts about her work-in-progress -

- and that's it for another year. ( Not quite all - with pictures. )

I think it's just luck of the draw that our selection of events at this year's festival has been weighted toward the visual artists.

First up, Duncan Fegredo, working on an image of Hellboy while conversing with Sean Phillips. Im always interested to hear artists talking about their process, and the ability to turn a camera on the drawing board so that I can see it happening at the same time - well, that's a great bonus for me. I'm a great admirer of Fegredo's work - I wasn't surprised when a closer examination revealed that this particularly eye-catching reinterpretation of Beatrix Potter was his - although (and I was already saying this when we came to the first Lakes Festival) Hellboy I can take or leave. Still, Fegredo seems to be enjoying working on it, and we take what we can get. And for once the format of two pals chatting actually worked: it doesn't always, but this time it paid off.

Lunch break, in the bar at the Brewery, because the restaurant area where we ate last year had been turned into a guests-only green room. But all the cool kids were in the bar, honest. The man at the table next to ours had a stylish hat, and a notebook in which he was both writing and sketching, and I was so curious. I recommend the Festival beer (dry and seriously hoppy) and the vegetarian pizza of the day (spinach,artichoke and blue cheese), but the timing failed, and durham_rambler was denied his dessert. He helped me out with my ice cream (liquorice good, 'thunder and lightning' a bit nondescript) but it's not the same. Over by the door, three young men with beards were discussing the his-and-hers matching tattoos of a couple of their acquantance (was one of them'him'? Don't know). I won't say what the image was, because evidently one of them had passed on information which was supposed to be secret, and another of them had been telling everyone, because he thought it was cool and didn't know it was supposed to be secret. Oh, dear...

Gilbert Shelton in conversation with Warren Bernard was a fun ramble through the life and high times of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: it wasn't long on introspection, but turned up some unexpected facts and connections. I would never have guessed that the Brothers started out in Texas, for example. I was tempted to title this post 'I sang with Janis Joplin', because Shelton did, apparently, back when she was a folk singer (he claims to have tried to turn her on to the blues, but she wasn't interested...). The session ended with Gilbert Shelton quoting T.S. Eliot (in answer, of course, to the question "Does Fat Freddy's cat have a name?")

A quick visit to Knockabout's kingdom in the Maltroom, just long enough to take Tony Bennet's advice about which edition of Jerusalem to buy (I went for the three slipcased volumes, which is allegedly easier to read), then on to the final session of the day, Martin Rowson ("in confrontation", it says here, with John McShane - but McShane's job was mostly to keep the slide show in sync while Rowson held forth). I don't think I had a mental image of Martin Rowson, but I hadn't expected him to be tall, urbane, suited: I thought of a young George Melly. Otherwise, much like his cartoons, only funnier (I find his cartoons angry rather than funny, and it's hard to find fault with that).

We had a short walk round town to look at the comics-themed shop windows, but we didn't really have the energy to do much more than come home for the evening.