Damn View

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Dad and I went for a walk in the Peak District this morning. Some fresh air and exercise to blow the cobwebs of the last few days away. We parked up at the delightfully named “Cutthroat Bridge” (map) and headed up onto Bamford Edge, where, despite the smoke from the nearby heather burning (sorry heather), we got some lovely views over the Ladybower Reservoir:

9km and a few hours later, all autumn-coloured out, and having traversed quite a lot of bogland and negotiated a whole barbed wire fence, we made it back to the car, upon arriving at which we almost instantly decided that a pint at the historic Strines Inn was called for. And who are we to ignore that sort of calling?

I have tacked the photos from the morning onto those already in this album. The Vernal/Autumnal Cross-Hemispherical Juxtaposition therein makes for some interesting viewing. See if you can see the join…

Sheffield Autumn

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It might be October, it might be thinking about winter already, but Sheffield is still looking rather lovely, be it in the city centre:

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Or out towards the Peak District:

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That second one was taken from my run on Saturday morning. I took it just before I got attacked by a pair of sparrowhawks. You’d have thought that I’d have been a bit big for them to tackle, but these are Yorkshire sparrowhawks, and they know no fear.
The doctors say that the physical scarring will probably diminish over the next few years. My ensuing – and completely reasonable – terror of Northern English birds of prey may take longer to recover from.

Brian’s Rugby World Cup Comment

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Busy though I am right now, I am still occasionally finding time to catch up with the stuff that I would normally catch up with. Regular readers will know that this includes Brian Micklethwait’s blog, and I rather enjoyed his recent take on the Rugby World Cup, replete as it was with this sort of observation:

…freed from the torture of hope, I find I am settling down to enjoy the rugby

Because yes, for the neutral, this has already been a great tournament. But the fact is that there aren’t many neutrals out there. Or rather, there weren’t. However, with England out, the pressure (for the English people, at least) is off and we can get down to the business of just enjoying the games for the sheer joy of it. Not that egg-chasing fills me with sheer joy, if I’m completely honest. I’ve only watched two games: Canada v Romania on the plane on the way over here (live TV on an aeroplane – what a time to be alive) and – as briefly documented on here – England’s dead rubber against the might of Uruguay.

But even though England are out, I might watch some more over the next three weeks because it will be good to watch – as Brian tells us:

We may be crap at playing these games, but we invented them all, and we have lots of great stadiums.
We know how to organise a game, even if we can no longer play it.

To be fair, I’m a little iffy on that last bit. One of the Tier 1 nations was going out of Pool A, and would Australia or Wales have been quite so ridiculed and vilified had it been them? Probably not.
When the Quarter Finals happen, and Tier 1 team A lose to Tier 1 Team B, will we all laugh at them too?
I doubt it.