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The walled garden at Wallington

Wallington Hall overlooks the Northumberland countryside near Cambo (map). It was remodelled in the Palladian style between 1738 and 1746 from an earlier William and Mary house (built around 1688) for Sir Walter Calverley Blackett (right, 1707-1777) by the architect Daniel Garrett. It is believed that renowned landscape architect Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1715-1783, who was born in nearby Kirkharle and went to school in Cambo) advised Sir Walter on the location of the walled garden (3 on the map below), and perhaps even designed the Owl House (2) there.

After Sir Walter’s death in 1777, Wallington was bequeathed to his sister Julia’s family, the Trevelyans, and it remained in the family until 1942, when it was gifted to the National Trust.

Since returning from the USA in mid-June, the weather in the UK has been decidedly unsettled. So we have grabbed every good weather opportunity to get out and about. Unfortunately, due to my reduced mobility these days, I’m unable to walk the distances that we have enjoyed in the past. But provided my pain medication kicks in appropriately, then I can manage a relatively short walk. Around a mile or so is possible.

With that in mind, we headed to Wallington with the aim of enjoying the walled garden in mid-summer. And to compare the garden today with what it was like a decade ago.

My first impression was that the walled garden today is much brighter, so to speak, with a new fiery border along the terrace in front of the Edwardian conservatory and below the Owl House.

Here are some of the plants in that bed. What a magnificent sight to welcome visitors to the garden.

Until quite recently, the conservatory was open to visitors, indeed as recently as our visit there in mid-December 2021, but it is now closed while plans are drawn up for its refurbishment. Which isn’t going to come cheap. Perhaps it was damaged in one of the winter storms that affected the estate.

Ten years on, the garden has developed a lot, and is a credit to the hard work of the staff gardeners and volunteers. Here are two images, taken from more or less the same spot, ten years apart, looking from the water terrace at the top of the garden eastwards down the garden. In the 2013 image, the conservatory and Owl House can be clearly seen.

At least one new ‘garden room’ has been created, surrounded (like the others) by trimmed cedar hedges.

And more, it seemed to me, has been made of the small pond area at the bottom of the garden.

On the south side of the garden, another large set of beds has evolved over the decade. Here are images from 2013 and last week.

The colors are more muted this year, with the fiery varieties moved to the conservatory terrace. Here is some of the 2023 planting.

One of the gardeners explained that it’s a never-ending task to plant and replant all these beds. He mentioned that in the autumn they plant several thousand bulbs, so I think a visit next spring is on the cards to see the early color.

The terrace fountain area at the top of the garden, near the entrance, was ‘dry’ on our latest visit (bottom image below). Normally the small pond is full, and water runs through a rill across the terrace.

I believe this part of the garden is fed from a large lily pond outside the walls. It looked as though there had been work on the earth dam at the eastern end, and the water level was low. Hence the dry fountain inside the garden.

The walled garden is a 15 minute or so walk from the house through the East Wood. Alongside the lake (above) there’s a new addition: a carved owl, from the tree trunk of one of the trees brought down during Storm Arwen in November 2021. There’s apparently another carving, but we didn’t manage to find it. Both are by tree sculptor Tommy Craggs from County Durham.

There are lots of owls at Wallington. Not only on the roof apex of the Owl House (seen in several of the images above), but also adorning the gate posts of the courtyard at the rear of the house.

The owl features in the Calverley family crest, Calverley (a West Yorkshire name) being the former surname of Sir Walter Blackett mentioned at the beginning of this post.

After being cooped up inside for a couple of weeks because of the unseasonably wet and cool weather, it really was a pleasure to return to Wallington. Just 23 miles and around 40 minutes from home, Wallington is sure to be on our National Trust itinerary year after year, season after season.

 

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Time out in Minnesota: 5. Beer, brats, and sizzling steaks

We’ve just returned from a very relaxing vacation in Minnesota, visiting our elder daughter Hannah and her family: son-in-law Michael, and grandchildren Callum (almost a teenager) and Zoë (just 11).

Our last evening in Minnesota.

Since we’d decided not to make any serious road trip this visit, apart from a short, overnight stay to La Crosse in Wisconsin, about 150 miles south of the Twin Cities, I travelled light this year. No heavy DSLR camera, no laptop. In fact, for the first time, I simply used my mobile phone for both images and video clips.

When we moved north to Newcastle upon Tyne in the autumn of 2020, I acquired a new – and better – mobile that allowed me to run many of the apps that so many utilities expect everyone to deploy these days. And, of course, the Samsung model I chose had a far better resolution camera than my Chinese cheepo.

And because of my more limited mobility right now (a painful nerve inflammation affecting my lower back, legs, and feet) Steph and I stayed close to home in St Paul, only taking our usual local walks as we’ve enjoyed in previous visits when I felt up to it. Even so, close to where Hannah and Michael live there is so much to see; their house sits at the top of the Mississippi Gorge bluff.

The weather was incredible, mostly warm (hot even) and dry. Just one afternoon of rain on Michael’s birthday when we had to postpone the planned grilling until the next day.

And talking of grilling. I can’t remember a visit when Michael fired up the BBQ or the Big Green Egg so many times, or we simply ate outside, even at the various restaurants we patronised.

Our flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis-St Paul arrived on time on 29 May at around 12:30, and Hannah, Callum, and Zoë were waiting at the airport to meet us. Navigation through US Immigration, baggage claim, and Customs was probably the smoothest I’ve enjoyed throughout the many decades I’ve been visiting the USA. It was actually quite a pleasant experience.

So, for us, it was early evening British Summer Time, and normally Steph and I would manage to stay awake for only an hour or two before submitting to jet lag, and finally crashing. Not this time. We both had a reasonably comfortable flight over the Atlantic in Delta Comfort+, and managed some sleep.

On arrival, it was bright and sunny and warm and, being Memorial Day, everyone was at home. So we sat in the garden, enjoying a cup of tea to begin with, followed (in my case) by a couple of the fantastic local beers. There are so many to choose from these days. But more of that later.

Late afternoon, and Michael cranked up the BBQ and we enjoyed a very satisfying dinner of Von Hanson steaks, beer brats, and salad. So it must have been almost 9 pm that we admitted defeat, and headed to bed. I’ve never been over jet lag so quickly.

I now wish I’d taken more notice of the various beers I sampled – I could have tried a different beer for everyday of our stay, there are so many to choose from. There’s nothing quite like a cold, cold beer on a hot afternoon when the temperature is reaching 90ºF.

Less than a mile from Hannah and Michael’s home in the Highland Park area of St Paul (map), redevelopment of the 122 acre site of the former Ford Motor Company Twin Cities Assembly Plant (closed in 2011) began in 2020, now renamed Highland Bridge.

The local supermarket, Lunds & Byerlys has relocated a couple of blocks west along Ford Parkway to Highland Bridge. On the first floor they have opened The Mezz Taproom—with a terrace overlooking the new development—where you have the choice of about 20+ beers on tap, plus some wines. Michael took me there one blisteringly hot afternoon a few days after we arrived in St Paul.

It’s an interesting concept. There is no bar. With an electronic wrist tag (which opens the beer tap) you can sample as much or as little of any of the beers on offer, with a wide range of glass sizes and shapes to match. You just pay for the amounts consumed, which are electronically tallied. Simples!

Panorama of the Highland Bridge redevelopment, looking west.

The Highland Bridge redevelopment comprises commercial and residential units, including those for the elderly, and townhouses. Thoughtfully, and together with the St Paul Parks and Recreation department, the developers have created several parks with innovative water features that also act as storm drainage (when it rains in St Paul, it really rains). All parks cater for all ages, with paths, seating, and roller and skateboard parks, beach volleyball courts, and even a Little League pitch as well.

Gateway Park
Gateway Park
Gateway Park
Gateway Park
Gateway Park
Gateway Park
Highland Bridge River Plaza
Highland Bridge River Plaza
Highland Bridge River Plaza
Highland Bridge River Plaza
Highland Bridge River Plaza
Elderly care residences
Town houses

Steph and I took a wander (very slowly) through these. What an impressive development, even though I can’t say I particularly admired the architecture. The water features are already attracting a range of wildlife, and it will be interesting to see how the biodiversity increases in years to come.

Michael’s birthday celebration was postponed one day due to rain on the actual day. He smoked pork ribs on the Big Green Egg. I don’t think I have ever tasted such delicious (and meaty) ribs, that just fell off the bone.

Several years ago, Hannah and Michael adopted a lovely (but occasional crabby) rescue ginger cat called Hobbes, now about 11 years old.

Then, during the Covid lockdown, Bo (a rescue Yorkshire terrier from Alabama) joined the family, followed about 18 months later by Ollie (a combined Yorkie, Shih Tzu, and at least one another breed, also from Alabama). Ollie and me bonded very quickly.

Bo

Ollie

Earlier, I mentioned my reduced mobility during this trip. But one evening, after enjoying another fine BBQ, and with a couple of G&Ts tucked away, not to mention a glass or two of red wine, I couldn’t resist the music (just take a listen, an incredible track from Joe Bonamassa with Australian Mahalia Barnes, Riding With The Kings).

Here’s the outcome, that I very much regretted the following morning (and perhaps posting this video might come to regret for a long time to come).

Compare this with another video, taken six years earlier with a five-year-old Zoë which, given my back and legs, would have been more appropriate.

And S’Mores, of course.

What a great way to take time out . . .

 

Other blog posts in this Minnesota series:

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Time out in Minnesota: 4. Gems at the University of Minnesota

Actually, that should be GEMS. But more of that shortly.

While in Minnesota, I took the opportunity of looking up an old friend, Phil Pardey, at the University of Minnesota. A native Australian, Phil is Professor of Science and Technology Policy in the Department of Applied Economics.

So how did I, as someone working in genetic resources of rice, meet and become good friends with an agricultural economist?

From 1991-2001, I was head of the Genetic Resources Center at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, and between 1993 and 1995, Chair of the CGIAR’s Inter-Center Working Group on Genetic Resources (ICWG-GR). Phil was a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC, a sister center of IRRI’s under the aegis of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

The ICWG-GR brought together representatives from all the CGIAR centers with genebanks, and others like Phil from IFPRI who were conducting research on the impact and use of genetic resources. At that particular time, Phil and a couple of colleagues were analysing the economics of conserving crop genetic resources, and developing methodologies to estimate the costs of running genebanks. I contributed to chapter 6 on rice in this book (right) published by CABI in 2004. It was an important publication as the centers were developing ideas on how to fund their germplasm collections in perpetuity and what it would take to set up an endowment fund for that purpose (now managed through the Crop Trust).

Phil left IFPRI in 2002 to move to the U of M, and I retired in 2010. So with a less hectic schedule this year during our visit to the USA (although we haven’t traveled there since 2019 because of the Covid-19 pandemic) I contacted Phil and we arranged to meet for lunch a couple of weeks ago.

Phil and me beside a bust of Dr Norman Borlaug, ‘Father of the Green Revolution’ in the foyer of Borlaug Hall on the University of Minnesota campus, where I presented a seminar in the early 2000s.

Phil had a lot to tell me about a fascinating new initiative that he co-directs at the university.

Which was music to my ears. Let me explain.

GEMS Informatics, launched in 2015, is a unique public-private collaboration that is forging the future of the Data Revolution in agriculture. Minnesota is the birthplace of supercomputing in the early 1960s and has long been home to the world’s leading agri-food companies, making it the natural nexus for data-driven, public-private partnerships that create solutions to the complex challenges facing local and global agri-food systems.

Phil’s co-director is Jim Wilgenbusch, Director of Research Computing at the university.

What is so special about GEMS is that it brings together an impressive team of experts in super-computing, data management, genetics, genomics and bioinformatics, geospatial analysis, life sciences, and economics. Just take a look at the GEMS website to better understand the scope of what this initiative does deliver. And just imagine what such a combination of skills and resources could deliver even more in the future.

One of the areas that intrigued me most was the GEMS applications for multilocation testing of germplasm. Faced with the challenges of global climate change, plant breeders need to be able to better predict where the lines they have developed are successfully adapted and could be deployed to enhance agricultural activity. GEMS is bringing together data (not just numbers) on crop variety performance (yield in particular), weather, soils, and genomics (among others) to better understand the behavior of these across locations, or what we call genotype by environment interaction (GxE).

There’s an interesting account of GEMS applications for wheat variety development, for example.

I’ve had a long interest in multilocation testing. In 1990, I presented a paper¹ at a symposium in Wageningen, the Netherlands about the challenge of global warming, and how plant breeders should collaborate better across Europe to evaluate germplasm.

Then, in a blog post I published in August 2015, I wrote about the International Network for the Genetic Evaluation of Rice (INGER, managed by IRRI) as it celebrated its 40th anniversary. While recognizing the networks unequivocal and important role in facilitating the sharing of rice varieties and lines globally, I lamented that INGER had lost opportunities to transform itself to permit more critical and predictive testing of germplasm. My criticism was merited, I believe, but unlike GEMS Informatics, we did not have many of its computing and analysis tools. Had we built a database of quality trial data, gathering environmental as well as crop response data, we could go back today, using genomics tools, to ferret out those traits which endow varieties with superiority across environments.

GEMS is already pointing the way. Just look at the case studies that are highlighted on the GEMS website.

With progress like this in just eight years, just imagine where this initiative might take us. No wonder it was music to my ears, even though (being retired) I’m no longer involved in the conservation and use of plant genetic resources.

I really look forward to following future developments of GEMS Informatics. Not only did it take a strong vision to get it up and running, but support from the university and private sector organizations was crucial to implement that vision. Impressive indeed!

As we headed off to lunch, Phil just had to show me a new addition to the university campus, just in front of Borlaug Hall. It was a seven foot bronze statue of Norman Borlaug, who I had the pleasure of meeting at IRRI in the 1990s.

Borlaug was born in Cresco, Iowa in March 1914, where Steph and I passed through at the end of one of our long road trips in 2017.

I now wish we’d taken the time to visit the Borlaug homestead in  Cresco.

Anyway, Borlaug was an alumnus of the U of M, originally in forestry before converting to plant pathology. And the rest is history – the man who saved a billion lives.

The statue on the campus is a duplicate of one sculpted by Idaho resident Benjamin Victor (1979– ) that stands in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. The original was given by the state of Iowa to the Collection in 2014 on the centenary of Borlaug’s birth.

In the National Statuary Hall, each state is permitted to display just two statues, so that of former United States Senator, and Secretary of the Interior James Harlan, which the state of Iowa donated to the Collection in 1910, had to make room for Borlaug. And fittingly so.

Other blog posts in this Minnesota series;

¹Jackson, M.T., 1991. Global warming: the case for European cooperation for germplasm conservation and use. In: Th.J.L. van Hintum, L. Frese & P.M. Perret (eds.), Crop Networks. Searching for New Concepts for Collaborative Genetic Resources Management. International Crop Network Series No. 4. International Board for Plant Genetic Resources, Rome, Italy. Papers of the EUCARPIA/IBPGR symposium held in Wageningen, the Netherlands, December 3-6, 1990. pp. 125-131.

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Time out in Minnesota: 3. The flowers that bloom in the Spring

It was hard to imagine, when we landed in the Twin Cities on 29 May, that only five or six weeks previously there had been snow on the ground and sub-zero temperatures.

Why? The trees were in full leaf (as you can see in this photo below as we landed at MSP – so many trees in the Twin Cities!), many plants were in full flower, and some even setting seed. Spring and early summer arrive quickly in Minnesota.

During our stay (of three weeks) we had just one day of rain (and then not all day), and during daylight hours the temperature never dipped below 70°F, often rising to 90°F or more. I don’t think we’ve ever experienced such a long dry spell on any of our other visits there.

Over the couple of decades or more that we have been visiting the Twin Cities, one of our favorite places to visit is the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in Como Park.

Just scroll out to see its location in St Paul.

The Conservatory was opened in 1915, and in 2002 renamed in honor of Marjorie McNeely (right), a remarkable woman who made many contributions to arts and culture during her lifetime.

Each season, summer and winter, the staff of the Conservatory develop elegant planting schemes, and we always look forward to whatever they have designed, bringing together sympathetic varieties and colors.

We’ve had two particularly memorable visits to the Conservatory. Our elder daughter Hannah married Michael at the Conservatory on a particularly cold evening in May 2006 – although it was beautifully warm inside.

Then, at Christmas the following year, Steph and I spent the holiday with Hannah and Michael in a very cold St Paul. Our first white Christmas. But inside the Conservatory, it was red and pink Christmas poinsettias everywhere.

This year the planting scheme was less flamboyant compared to what we have seen before, but nevertheless quite beautiful.

There is also a tropical wing to the Conservatory, with many moisture-loving (and some edible plants) on display, including a range of orchids and bromeliads.

Outside, you can wander through the peaceful Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden or admire the delicate bonsai specimens on display.

A visit to the Conservatory is always worthwhile. When we arrived, there were loads of schoolchildren already disgorging from their buses. But not to visit the Conservatory (which, unusually, we had to ourselves for about 10 minutes). They were headed to the Como Park zoo.

Entrance to the Conservatory and Zoo is free, but recommended donations are welcome.

The other venue we have visited several times is the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, about 26 miles due west from St Paul. Since we were last there in 2019, the Arboretum has rebranded itself as the arb!

Entrance tickets for adults are $30, but children 15 and under go free.

We took our grandchildren Callum and Zoë to the arb after they finished school for the year. In past years, we have walked quite some distance around the various gardens close to the visitor center or along the Three Mile Drive. Due to my reduced mobility this year, we concentrated on the Three Mile Drive and just a selection of some of the gardens (map).

I think my favorite is the prairie garden, and across the road, the staff have set out to recreate a prairie community that once covered vast areas of the country before agriculture changed the landscape forever.

The whole site was covered in tall Baptisia alba (I think it was) and other species in full flower. Quite a sight!

The Chinese Garden was quite new when we last visited, and there were some large steel dragons, now removed from the garden. But it was a tranquil setting to spend a few minutes of contemplation.

The Harrison Sculpture Garden is located on about 3 acres (1.2 ha) surrounding the arboretum’s High Point. Even though we didn’t notice any new additions to the garden, it’s always a pleasure to view the 26 pieces (some by very famous sculptors like Barbara Hepworth – she has three there) in different light and from different angles. Here are five that caught my attention this time.

‘Canto Notturno’ 1984, bronze, by Italian Mimmo Paladino (1948 – )
‘Disc Spiral’ 2000, green and black granite, by American Jesus Bautista Moroles (1950 – 2015)
‘The Cathedral’ 1960, bronze with green patina, by Argentinian Alicia Penalba (1913 – 1982)
‘Stone Arch’ 1995, limestone, by Swiss René Küng (1934 – )
‘Gahn Dancer II, Apache Mountain Spirit Dancer’ 1993, bronze, by American San Carlos Apache Craig Dan Goseyun (1960 – )

The bedding plants near the Visitor Center had yet to flower in profusion, but the Rose Garden was just beginning to come into its own.

After a quick lunch in The Eatery (and inevitable ice cream) we headed home after an enjoyable visit of around four hours. We’ll be back.

Since Callum and Zoë had a 10 days free between finishing school for the year and summer camp, we had many opportunities to enjoy their company on day trips. Another favorite venue of ours is Taylors Fall on the St Croix River, just over 53 miles northeast of St Paul. There, in the Interstate State Park (with Wisconsin on the opposite bank of the river), there is a fascinating formation of glacial potholes formed at the end of the last Ice Age when the St Croix was one of the world’s greatest rivers.

Then we headed south to Stillwater (also along the St Croix), a small town very popular with tourists, where we took a short walk along the riverfront, and then enjoyed some of the best toasted cheese sandwiches at Leo’s Grill and Malt Shop in the town center, an establishment we have patronized on several occasions before.

The historic Stillwater Lift Bridge across the St Croix River, connecting Minnesota and Wisconsin, now closed to traffic since the St Croix Crossing south of the town was opened in August 2017.

Other blog posts in this Minnesota series:

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Time out in Minnesota: 2. Beside, above, and on the Mississippi

I’m totally unfamiliar with the convention that gives names to rivers.

The Mississippi is only the second longest river in the United States. At 2,340 miles it’s shorter than the Missouri, by just one mile apparently. Yet, when they come together (or the Missouri flows into the Mississippi) north of St Louis, the river takes on the name of the Mississippi. And again, near Cairo in southern Illinois, the Ohio joins the Mississippi, and loses its identity thereafter even though the Ohio is a much bigger river in terms of discharge (but shorter) at that point.

The Mississippi flows through 10 states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. It flows through Minnesota for 681 miles, the most miles of any state.

By the time the Mississippi reaches Minneapolis-St Paul (the Twin Cities) from its origin at Lake Itasca in the northern part of the state (which we visited in 2016), it’s already an impressive river, fast flowing, deep, and wide. Our elder daughter Hannah lives just a stone’s throw from the bluff overlooking the river, which you would easily see if it wasn’t for the dense stand of trees on both banks.

That line of trees across the road from Hannah’s is the top of the Mississippi Gorge bluff.

Nevertheless, there are various scenic viewpoints, riverside regional parks, and overlooks in the Twin Cities where you can admire the majesty of the river. Whenever we visit our daughter and her family, we always take the opportunity of spending some time beside the Mississippi. I somehow feel it drawing me to its banks.

Ford Parkway Bridge over the Mississippi near the Highland Park district of St Paul
Along Mississippi River Boulevard
The Mississippi at Hidden Falls Regional Park
At Hidden Falls Regional Park, looking south
At Hidden Falls Regional Park, looking north

During this year’s Minnesota vacation, we decided not to make any long distance road trips as we have done in previous years (and which you can read about in the USA section of my blog here). Except for one overnight stay at La Crosse on the Mississippi in Wisconsin, about 150 miles south of the Twin Cities. And for a very special reason, that I’ll come to in a moment.

The route south on US61 and US14 follows the river, and you’re never very far from it. In several places the Mississippi opens out into large lakes before continuing its flow south to the Gulf of Mexico. And it was while we were driving along that I realised just how close to the river the railroad line was built, and which we experienced in 2015 on Amtrak’s Empire Builder to Chicago and back.

So why the visit to La Crosse? A couple months back I was contacted by an old friend of 50 years, Roger Rowe, who lives in Peru with his wife Norma. Now 87, Roger was planning to visit central Illinois where his younger brother farms corn and soybeans, and would be celebrating his 80th birthday. Knowing of our visit to St Paul, Roger enquired whether we could meet up, halfway (more or less) between Princeton, IL and the Twin Cities. And that’s precisely what we did on 6/7 June.

Just after I joined the International Potato Center (CIP) in January 1973, a workshop was held to plan for a research program on the conservation of cultivated and wild potatoes from the Andes, and their taxonomy. At that time, Roger was the geneticist/curator of the USDA’s potato collection at Sturgeon Bay in Wisconsin, and one of the participants of the workshop.

Here we are in the field in Huancayo, in central Peru where CIP grew its large potato collection.

L-R: David Baumann (CIP), Dr Frank Haynes (North Carolina State University), Professor Jack Hawkes (University of Birmingham), Dr Roger Rowe (USDA-Sturgeon Bay), and Dr Donald Ugent (University of Southern Illinois-Carbondale).

Several months later, in May 1973, Roger joined CIP as the head of the breeding and genetics department and became my first boss there. He also became a co-supervisor (with Jack Hawkes) of my PhD dissertation. Steph joined CIP in July as an associate geneticist in the same department.

So, 50 years later, we were again reunited on the banks of the Mississippi in La Crosse.

We enjoyed several beers and dinner together, reminiscing over old times, as well as putting the world and the CGIAR to rights.

After I left CIP in 1981 to take up a faculty position at the University of Birmingham, I didn’t meet up with him again until 1993, although I’d met Norma in Mexico during a British Council-sponsored visit to that country in 1988.

In the late 1980s, Roger became the Deputy Director General for Research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) after a spell working in Africa. We met for the first time after many years when attending the annual meeting of the CGIAR’s Inter-Center Working Group on Genetic Resources, held at the ILCA campus in Addis Ababa in January 1993. By then I was leading the genetic resources program at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines.

Members of the ICWG-GR from all the CGIAR centers with genebanks, in Addis Ababa, January 1993.

From CIMMYT, Roger joined another CGIAR center, ICLARM (later becoming WorldFish) as  Deputy Director General for one of its programs based in Egypt. Steph and I would meet up with Roger for Sunday breakfast in Manila whenever he was in town since ICLARM then had its headquarters in Manila.

Before our reunion in La Crosse, the last time I’d seen Roger and Norma was in Lima in July 2016, when I was the lead author for a review of the center genebanks and their management, and I was visiting CIP. We managed to catch a couple of hours together for pisco sours.

At my hotel in Lima, just after I had arrived from the UK.

As I mentioned, our hotel in La Crosse was right beside the Mississippi, and ‘underneath’ the Big Blue Bridges (actually the Cass Street Bridge and the Cameron Avenue Bridge) that cross from the Minnesota side to Wisconsin.

That got me thinking. The population expansion across the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries involved crossing many rivers, and building many bridges. On the Mississippi alone there are at least 130 bridges along its length. In the Twin Cities alone there are nine major crossings and several minor ones. One of the most impressive is the Smith Avenue or High Level Bridge, from where there is a magnificent view of the St Paul skyline and the river.

The Smith Avenue bridge from the river.

As this video pans right, you can first see the magnificent Catholic cathedral, then the white Capitol building, followed by downtown St Paul.

Finally, on our last Thursday in St Paul, we took our grandchildren Callum and Zoë on a relaxing 90 minute river cruise up the Mississippi to the confluence of the Minnesota River with the Mississippi, which is a short distance downriver from where Hannah and Michael live. They tell us that the Fall cruises, when the autumn colors are at their height is a great time to cruise the river.

You can read about some of our other Mississippi adventures here.

Other blog posts in this Minnesota series:

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Time out in Minnesota: 1. Flying after four years

Every year since 2010, Steph and I have visited our elder daughter Hannah and her family in St Paul, Minnesota, one half of the Twin Cities (with Minneapolis). We made our last visit in 2019, and then the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

Travel wasn’t possible in 2020 or 2021, but last year Hannah, Michael, Callum, and Zoë flew over to the UK to spend a couple of weeks with us in the northeast of England, just outside Newcastle upon Tyne.

Even though for most people the pandemic is over, and Covid is perhaps less of a risk right now, it’s still around, so Steph and I have continued to mask when we shop at the supermarket, in fact, in any situation where we could be in close proximity with others.

So it was with some slight trepidation that I went online at the end of January and booked flights to the Twin Cities with Delta, to depart from Newcastle International Airport (NCL) on 29 May, and returning from Minneapolis-St Paul (MSP) on 19 June. And with both schedules transiting through Schipol (AMS). Until Delta made a schedule change for us, and had us returning via Detroit (DTW) and AMS.

On 29 May, we had an early start to get to the airport for our 06:05 KLM952 flight (codeshare DL9627) to AMS. I’d booked a taxi with the local Blueline Taxis for 03:45, and about 15 minutes before it arrived I received, via the company’s mobile app, details of the taxi (make of vehicle, color, registration) and name and photo of the driver. NCL is only a few miles west of Newcastle city center, and just 11 miles from our home. At that time of the morning it took only 20 minutes or so for the journey.

For the past three months I have struggled with my mobility (due to a nerve issue in my lower back, legs and feet) and have to use a walking stick for added stability. However, that has certain advantages when there are long queues at check-in. We were invited to move to the front of the queue, using the business class lane.

That’s our KLM Boeing 737-800 (registration PH-BCK) at the terminal.

We had just under an hour to wait until boarding, when a very kind member of the cabin crew saw me attempting to climb the steps into the aircraft, carrying a light piece of hand luggage at the same time. She came down to meet me and took the bag to my seat.

And there we sat for the next hour, until 07:17. Why the delay?

There was a high pressure weather system over the UK that morning, giving clear and calm conditions at NCL. In the Netherlands at Schipol on the other hand, the airport was experiencing brisk northerly breezes, and had to change the landing runways. However, one of the two used for landing into northerly winds was under maintenance, and so our flight wasn’t given permission to leave NCL until a landing slot had been confirmed. Meanwhile, the attentive crew served drinks and snacks and kept everyone well-informed of flight connection details and any complications.

Fortunately we were not affected since we had more than two hours connecting time between flights. Arriving at Gate D28 (if my memory serves me right) at the far end of the pier, we had to make our way to D3 close to the main concourse. So, by the time we’d picked up some duty free and made our way slowly to our gate, flight DL161 was already boarding, and business class passengers called forward for the 10:40 departure.

Once again, Steph and I were directed to the front of the queue and once on board, settled ourselves into seats 30A and B in the Delta Comfort+ section of the economy cabin.

We’ve travelled in Comfort + several times now, and find that it’s definitely worth the extra premium you have to pay for that little bit of extra legroom that can make a long flight more bearable. Also our seats were against a bulkhead, making access to the aisle that little bit easier.

Our aircraft, an Airbus A330-300 (registration N801NW) had been in service for around 20 years, and was beginning to show its age somewhat. The flight pulled back from the gate 36 minutes late and the taxi at AMS to runway 36L took another 15 minutes. But we were soon on our way, arriving in MSP just over 8 hours later.

Here’s a video of that flight. I was unable to take any video of the flight from NCL to AMS. Seated in row 10, there was no window!

On our return to the UK on 19 June, flight DL2619 (an Airbus A320-212, registration N368NW) departed MSP at just after 09:00, arriving in DTW at 11:35 (taking into account the 1 hour time difference from CDT to EDT).

We had four hours to kill. The McNamara Terminal at DTW is enormous, 1 mile long. There is an express tram inside the terminal—just under the roof—travelling the length of terminal and connecting to the gates at various stops. In the video below, there’s a short clip of the tram.

The Airbus A350-900 (registration N503DN) on DL132 to AMS was a new aircraft for me, and I used Skymiles to upgrade to the Delta Premium Select cabin (seats 22H and J, aisle and window).

Premium Select cabin 2-4-2 configuration on the left (that’s Steph sitting in the third row), and the economy (3-3-3 configuration) on the right.

It’s a beautiful aircraft, and its enormous Rolls-Royce Trent WXB engines swiftly launched us on our way. I think you will be impressed with the take-off in the video. On landing in AMS, after a 7 hour flight, the pilot applied the brakes rather abruptly and you can hear all manner of glass and cutlery crashing to the floor (around 12’36”).

Route of DL132 from DTW-AMS on 19/20 June 2023

Our final 1 hour connection to NCL was a KLM Cityhopper-operated flight, KL953 (codeshare DL9689) on an Embraer E190 (registration PH-EZT).

Despite all the glorious weather in the UK over the three weeks we were away, the approach into NCL from the west was cloudy, and we saw very little of the glorious Northumberland landscape until we descended through the thick cloud layer.

So, after four years, what were our impressions and experience of flying once again? As with so much air travel, it’s not the flying per se, it’s navigating the airports. And having a mobility issue, I’ve come to realise how unfriendly so many airports can be in terms of accessibility. Too many stairs, or broken elevators or walkways!

Then there are the unannounced gate changes. On our arrival in AMS at 05:35 on 20 June (Gate E6), we had to walk towards the main concourse before we found a departure board, listing our NCL flight departing from E21, exactly in the opposite direction from which we had walked, and right at the end of the pier. It was a bus gate. But after an hour waiting patiently there, I noticed that the monitor was no longer showing our flight. But there was no further information nor announcement about a gate change.

After some enquiries I discovered that we had to go all the way back to D6, and although I asked for transport from a KLM representative, she told me it wasn’t anything to do with her, and we’d have make our own way to the gate.

Our flight from AMS to MSP was comfortable and smooth, in the main. I noticed that the safety announcements no longer referred to ‘turbulence’ but ‘rough air’. Perhaps ‘turbulence’ implies much more. Our return flight in the Premium Select seats was definitely more comfortable, with an extendable leg rest.

Overall, I felt that the service offered in Delta Comfort + had declined, and was essentially the same in Premium Select (which had a printed menu, steel cutlery, and a better amenity bag and headphones). The food was the same, served in compressed (and presumably recyclable) containers, but with wooden cutlery in Delta Comfort + that was hardly usable.

Served with ice cream from Northumberland!

I’m not sure I would actually pay the extra for a Premium Select seat, but as long as Steph and I have Skymiles to ‘spend’, then I reckon we might well upgrade again in the future.

Well, that’s how we flew to the USA and returned. You’ll find out what we got up to during our three week vacation in Minnesota in the other blog posts in this series.

Other blog posts in this Minnesota series:

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Chance – but brief – encounters of a special kind

Have you ever bumped into an old acquaintance, even a relative, who you haven’t seen for a long time, just by chance?

This has happened to me on several occasions. The planets must have been in an appropriate alignment.

It was 1969. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Southampton, studying for a BSc degree in Environmental Botany and Geography. On one of the infrequent occasions that I actually used the university library (I burnt the candle at one end more than the other), I was leaving the building on my way to grab a bite to eat, when two young women who I didn’t know asked if I would like to buy a raffle ticket for the city-wide student rag events and charities.

I happily coughed up, and having thanked me, they turned to walk away. But I had to stop them. During our brief encounter, I’d had a very strong feeling that I knew one of them. Not only that, but we were related. How odd. I couldn’t let them walk away without asking.

I turned to the one with very long, almost black hair and asked: ‘Is your surname Jackson?‘ Her jaw dropped, and she replied ‘Yes‘. ‘Then‘, said I, ‘I think your name is Caroline and you’re my cousin [daughter of my dad’s younger brother Edgar]’. And, of course it was Caroline.

I had last seen her around the summer of 1961 or 1962 when my parents and I took our caravan to the New Forest (west of Southampton) and met up with my Uncle Edgar and his wife Marjorie, and cousins Timothy and Caroline.

L-R: Caroline, Timothy, me, and Barley the labrador, and my mum in the background talking to her brother-in-law Edgar, and Marjorie.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2008 that I met her again, when Steph and I joined Caroline’s eldest brother Roger at a special steam event in Wiltshire.

After Southampton, I began my graduate studies in genetic conservation and potato taxonomy at the University of Birmingham. One of my classmates the following academic year, Dave Astley, was, for several years, the research assistant of our joint PhD supervisor, Professor Jack Hawkes.

In January 1973 I joined the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, Peru. By August, Steph and I were settled in a larger two bedroom apartment on Avda. Larco in the commercial Miraflores district of Lima, close by the Pacific Ocean. So, the following January, Dave stayed with us for a few days before continuing on to Bolivia where he joined a potato germplasm expedition led by Jack Hawkes.

By 1976, Steph and I had moved to Costa Rica, where I was CIP’s regional leader for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. In early 1980, I was returning from a trip to the Dominican Republic, and transiting overnight in Miami. Joining one of the (interminable) immigration queues, I looked over to my right and, lo and behold to my surprise, Dave was just a couple of passengers ahead of me in the parallel queue. He had just flown in from the UK, on his way to Bolivia, his second expedition there. He had a connecting flight, and once we were both through immigration we only had about 15 minutes to chat before he had to find his boarding gate. What a coincidence!

During that expedition in Bolivia, Dave collected a new species of Solanum that was described by Hawkes and his Danish colleague Peter Hjerting in 1985 and named after Dave as Solanum astleyi (right, from JG Hawkes and JP Hjerting, 1989, The Potatoes of Bolivia, Fig. 22, p. 206. Oxford University Press).

In 1991, I resigned from the University of Birmingham where I had worked for the previous decade as a lecturer in the Department of Plant Biology and joined the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines as Head of the Genetic Resources Center (GRC)

I made my first visit to China in March 1995, accompanied by one of my colleagues in GRC, Dr Lu Bao-Rong, a Chinese national who had just completed his PhD in Sweden before starting at IRRI in 1993 as a rice taxonomist/cytogeneticist in GRC.

With my colleague, Lu Bao-Rong (middle) on the Great Wall, north of Beijing, and a staff member from the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The first part of our trip took us to Beijing (followed by visits to Hangzhou and Guangzhou). And it was while we were in Beijing that I had my third unexpected encounter.

I think it must have been our last night in Beijing. Our hotel had a very good restaurant serving delicious Sichuan cuisine (Bao-Rong’s native province), and after dining, Bao-Rong and I retired to the hotel bar for a few beers. The bar was on a raised platform with a good view over the hotel foyer and main entrance.

I happened to casually glance towards the foyer and saw, I thought, someone I knew heading for the restaurant. Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, but I had to find out. And sure enough, it was that person: Dr Trevor Williams, who supervised my MSc dissertation on lentils in 1971, and who left the University of Birmingham in 1976 to join the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR) in Rome. The last time I saw Trevor as a Birmingham faculty member was in 1975 when I returned there to complete my PhD dissertation and graduate.

Graduation Day at the University of Birmingham, 12 December 1975. With my PhD supervisor Professor Jack Hawkes on my right, and MSc dissertation supervisor Dr Trevor Williams on my left.

I met him again in 1989 at IBPGR, which had approved a small grant to enable a PhD student of mine from the Canary Islands to collect seeds of a forage legume there as part of his study. And also later that same year when he attended the 20th anniversary celebration of the MSc Course on Conservation and Utilisation of Plant Genetic Resources.

Trevor Williams planting a medlar tree with Professor Ray Smallman, Dean of the Science and Engineering Faculty at the University of Birmingham.

However, by 1990, Trevor had left IBPGR and was working out of Washington, DC, helping to set up the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR, now the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization) that was founded in Beijing in 1997. And that’s how our paths came to cross.

Lastly, I had an encounter last year with someone who I hadn’t seen for 63 years.

I was born in Congleton, Cheshire in 1948 and until 1956, when my family moved to Leek (about 12 miles away), my best friend from our toddler years was Alan Brennan who lived a few doors away on Moody Street. Although we made contact with each other in recent years (he found me through this blog) we never met up.

At the end of April last year, Steph and I visited the National Trust’s Quarry Bank mill, just south of Manchester, on our way north from a week’s holiday in the New Forest. Making our way to the mill entrance, we crossed paths with a couple with a dog. I took no notice, but just as we passed, the man called me by name. It was Alan, and his wife Lyn. He recognised me from a recent photo on the blog!

L-R: Steph, me, Alan, and Lyn

Neither of us had too much time to catch up unfortunately. Alan and Lyn were coming to the end of their visit to Quarry Bank (essentially just down the road from Congleton where they still live), and we had yet to look round the cotton mill before completing the remainder of our journey north, around 170 miles. But the planets were definitely lined up on that day. What were the chances that we’d be in the same place at the same time – and actually meet?

So, there you have it. Chance but brief encounters close to home and on the other side of the globe. It really is a small world.

 

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I’m not religious, and . . .

. . . I no longer hold any religious beliefs. I shed those almost six decades ago.

But Steph and I do enjoy exploring many of the fine—awesome even—churches, abbeys, and priories that were constructed centuries ago by Christian communities to reflect ‘the glory of their omnipotent God’.

On the map below I have marked those we have visited over the years. Each icon is accompanied by several photos, and links to websites, my own blog posts and/or photo albums, where you will find much more information.

Ruins have a blue marker; churches that are still open have a purple one. Cathedrals are marked dark red for those we’ve actually been inside, whereas those viewed from a distance are marked yellow. One 16th century religious curiosity, Rushton Triangular Lodge, has a black icon.

There are also three pagan sites on the map that pre-date Christianity by centuries if not millennia, shown with green icons.

Most of the monasteries and priories were founded by the Cistercians, the Benedictines, and Augustinians among others in the immediate centuries following the Norman invasion of England in 1066.

During the Dissolution of the Monasteries enacted by Henry VIII between 1536 and 1541 many of these communities were disbanded and their assets claimed by the Crown or handed willy-nilly to allies of the King. We only see their ruins today, some more intact than others, but all leaving an impression of what they must have looked like in their heyday.

Fortunately many of the great cathedrals still stand proudly. It never ceases to amaze me—inspire even—just what it took to build these impressive edifices, up to a thousand years ago. Take late 12th century Wells Cathedral, for example.

Some are more recent. For example, St Paul’s (below) in London was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in the late 17th century after the Great Fire of September 1666 had destroyed the original church. It survived the London Blitz during World War II.

In Liverpool, there are two 20th century cathedrals: Anglican and Catholic. The former took 74 years to complete between 1904 and 1978. The latter, a very modern design, opened in 1967 after six years. Another recent cathedral is Coventry (designed by Sir Basil Spence), which opened in 1962 and stands beside the bombed-out ruins of the original cathedral.

Since we became members of the National Trust and English Heritage in 2011, we have visited many of the ruined abbeys and priories under their care. Here in the northeast of England where we now live, there are many ruined abbeys and priories, as well as several early Anglo-Saxon chapels still in use. After all, the ancient Kingdom of Northumbria was a cradle of Christianity in these islands.

Since there is so much more information in the map links, let me just focus on one ruined abbey and two churches that have particularly caught my attention.

Standing beneath a steep slope in a secluded valley of the River Rye in the North York Moors, Rievaulx Abbey is surely one of the best. It is managed today by English Heritage.

Rievaulx Abbey
The south face of the Refectory
The Day Room
The South Transept from the southeast
The North and South Transepts either side of the Crossing from the Nave
Tiers of gothic windows
Flying buttresses on the north side
View of the Abbey from Rievaulx Terrace
View of the Abbey from Rievaulx Terrace

It was the first Cistercian abbey founded in this country in 1132 by twelve monks from Clairvaux Abbey in northeast France. It was closed during the Dissolution in 1538.

What an impressive building, made even more so by its location. From Rievaulx Terrace above, you can get a bird’s-eye view of the whole site.

In the heart of the Gloucestershire countryside in the village of Kempley, the little Church of St Mary’s is an absolute jewel. Built in the late 12th century, it has some of the most exquisite Romanesque fresco paintings. It really is remarkable that they have survived all these centuries given the vandalism that occured during Henry VIII’s reign and afterwards. We visited in May 2015, and I had intended to return one day, but now that we are based in the northeast, that seems less likely. Nevertheless, this small church has left me a lasting impression. It is certainly worth a detour if you are ever in the vicinity.

The north wall with its paintings of the Wheel of Life, and those of St Anthony of Egypt and St Michael and the Virgin, either side of window.
Frescoes at St Mary’s Church, Kempley

Lastly, I have chosen St. Michael and All Angels Church, Great Witley, surely Britain’s finest baroque church. It stands next to the burnt out ruins of Witley Court in Worcestershire.

Completed in 1735, it was originally quite plain inside. However, in 1747, it underwent a remarkable transformation when the owner of Witley Court, the 2nd Baron Foley acquired furnishings, paintings, and stained glass windows from Cannons House that was demolished by the 2nd Duke of Chandos and its contents sold. You can read more about the church’s history here.

Well, those are my three choices. Take a look at the map and see if you agree. They are all special in so many ways. And I always come away with my spirits uplifted, but without religious experience per se.

 

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Black harvest from the sea

The weather has been none too kind in recent weeks here in the northeast of England. And there hasn’t been much incentive for getting out and about. On top of that, I’m suffering from a very painful bout of sciatica that is severely restricting my mobility. At least until the pain medication I was prescribed has kicked in.

A couple of days ago, the day dawned bright and sunny, although none too warm. But, for once, my medication did its job quite quickly, which has not been my general experience. So we decided to head up the coast to one of our favorite beaches at Cresswell, and one of the first we explored after we arrived here in the northeast at the back end of 2020.

Cresswell beach in November 2020.

Just 17 miles north from our home in North Tyneside, the drive to Cresswell Beach took just under half an hour.

The beach lies at the southern end of the much larger Druridge Bay, with rocky outcrops at the northern and southern ends, just under a mile apart. Above the tide line there is a stretch of soft sand, and behind the beach a low-lying cliff, perhaps 10m high, with interesting limestone and coal strata exposed.

On the occasions we have visited, there have been just a few people taking a stroll, walking the dog. But I guess in high summer it can get quite busy on a sunny, warm day, as there is a holiday park (with static caravans) just across the road from the beach.

Here’s another view, filmed from the rocks at the southern end (you can see the nearby Lynemouth power station just south of the beach, and in the far distance the five turbine wind farm off Seaton Sluice beach) and panning round to view Druridge Bay to the north.

Behind the rock platform at the southern end, it appears that the cliff was once excavated (behind Steph in the image below) and perhaps  accessible at high tide as a small quay.

While there is a lovely stretch of clear, yellow sand along the beach, at both ends of the beach there are patches of what appear to be—at first glance—black sand. On closer inspection, it’s clear that the black grains are not sand but COAL!

This coal, derived from erosion of the coals seems on the beach and out to sea, is actually collected. There are larger pieces the size of small gravel.

In fact, while we were there on an earlier visit, one man had driven on to the north end of the beach  on his quad bike, scooping up bucketfuls of the coal.

At the southern end, near the ‘quay’ I asked one ‘coalman’ what he used the coal for. He told me that he heated his shed and greenhouse since it was a free and plentiful source.

Sea coaling at Lynemouth, south of Cresswell.

It seems there is quite a long tradition of collecting sea coal on the Northumberland coast.

Coal is abundant along the coast. Just a mile or two north from Cresswell, the government eventually rejected the development of a large open cast mine behind Druridge Bay, where coal had been mined in the past. In fact several important wildlife reserves have been opened on former open cast sites.

And while doing some background reading for this blog, I came across this other blog.

Just click on the image above to open an interesting post about a feature on Cresswell beach, just north of where we visited. There’s a submerged forest and tree stumps are exposed at low tide.

Now that’s a good enough reason to return to Cresswell before too long.

And while our visit to Cresswell was not primarily for bird-watching, we were very lucky in some of our sightings. Skimming along the cliffs and beach, sand martins were very active, and nesting. Along with five fulmars sitting on a ledge and squabbling. A lone curlew hugged the crest of the waves as it flew down the beach, and out to sea we saw a lone eider duck. Pied wagtails were flitting around the beach.

Sand martin
Fulmars
Curlew
Eider
Pied wagtail

But the greatest surprise, while we were enjoying a picnic lunch overlooking the beach, was a lone male stonechat that alighted on a bush on the cliff edge just in front of us and in full sunlight. What a magnificent little bird it is.

All bird photos used courtesy of Barry Boswell.

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No regrets . . . whatsoever

None!

By November 2019, Steph and I finally decided to up sticks and move to Newcastle upon Tyne in the northeast of England, to be closer to our younger daughter and her family. Our elder daughter and family live in Minnesota, but a move to the USA was never on the cards.

We didn’t actually make the move until 30 September 2020 – right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic!

Locking up and moving out!

We were living in Bromsgrove, a small market town (population in 2001 of just over 29,000), in northeast Worcestershire, and about 13 miles south of Birmingham in the West Midlands.

We originally settled in Bromsgrove in July 1981 after returning from South America, when I joined the University of Birmingham as a lecturer in the Department of Plant Biology. Then, in 1991, I took up a position at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), a renowned international agricultural research center in Los Baños, about 68 km south of Manila, staying there almost 19 years until retirement beckoned in April 2010.

Do we miss Worcestershire? In some ways. It is a lovely county, and within a 50 mile radius of Bromsgrove there are many attractions, into Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Shropshire.

Since 2011 we have been keen members of the National Trust (NT) and English Heritage (EH). Just check out the list of places (and maps) we have visited over the past decade or more.

There are fewer NT and EH properties here in the northeast, but the region has so much to offer with possibly some of the most spectacular landscapes in the country: coast, river valleys, moorlands, mountains, and a huge dose of history, especially the history and remains of the Roman occupation almost 2000 years ago.

March 2021 saw us move into our new home in Backworth, North Tyneside, and 15 minutes on the Metro from Newcastle city center. We are also just 10 minutes’ drive from the North Sea coast. The Tyne and Wear area (comprising the five metropolitan boroughs of Newcastle, North Tyneside, Gateshead, South Tyneside, and Sunderland) as well as the surrounding counties of Northumberland and Co Durham (even as far south as North Yorkshire) have so much to offer.

And since our move here in 2020, we have been out and about exploring our new home whenever the weather permits.

On this map I’ve marked all the places we have visited over the past 30 months. NT and EH properties have a dark red icon, coast and landscapes are green, other attractions are purple, and other historic sites are marked with a yellow icon. I’ve included photographs, and there are links to my blog posts and other websites where you can find more information about this wonderful corner of England.

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Banks of the sweet primroses . . .

Yellow is the color of Spring.

And while a host of golden daffodils point their trumpets, dandelions add bright yellow sunbursts to the green backcloth of lawns (but NIMBY according to my wife), and marsh marigolds fill the local waterways with their golden cups, perhaps there’s no better symbol of the arrival of Spring than the appearance of delicate yellow primroses (Primula vulgaris).

There are over 400 species of perennial primroses in an array of colours, including white, blue, pink, red and yellow. The name primrose derived from the Latin Flor di primavera, meaning the ‘first flower of spring’.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Steph and I visited The Alnwick Garden (where we have a Friends of the Garden membership), and there, at the top of the garden in the shade of trees, was a bank of beautiful pale yellow primroses.

Primroses have long been acclaimed in folklore and literature. On one site, about Shakespeare’s favorite flowers, there was this: There are many legends and myths about primroses. According to a Scottish legend, if you want to see a fairy, you must eat a primrose. Leaving primroses on your doorstep will ensure fairies will bless your house, and putting primroses in a cowshed will convince them not to steal the milk. Not surprisingly, the flower is also known as “fairy cup”. Celtic Druids believed the flower helped ward off evil spirits and could connect us with the fairies.

Primroses symbolise youth and longevity, but there are many other meanings, too. Usually, primrose flowers are seen as representations of young love and of feeling as though you can’t live without your lover. There’s more here.

And in that context, a well-known and old folk song (interpreted below by Fairport Convention on the Angel Delight album released in 1971) Banks of the Sweet Primroses touches on some of these themes.

Besides the common primrose, there are two other common species in these islands: the oxlip (Primula elatior, left below) and cowslip (Primula veris, right), both hybridising with Primula vulgaris where conditions are right.

Primroses have a reciprocal arrangement of the anthers and style, known as heterostyly, in pin- or thrum-form flowers which are self-incompatible, thus promoting cross-pollination.

Pin-form on the left, and thrum on the right. Anthers (3) and pistil (4).

Hybrids between the primrose and cowslip (Primula x polyantha) have been selected in a wide range of colors and are very popular in gardens.

There is one primula species, Primula auricula, a native of the mountains of central Europe, that has particularly striking flowers. Enthusiasts were already selecting striped forms by the 1600s.

In the 18th century, growing auriculas became quite a fad, and so-called auricula theaters were built to display them at their best. There is a particularly impressive auricula theater at Calke Abbey in Derbyshire, but was full of pelargoniums, not auriculas, as shown below when we visited in 2012.

When we visited the 100th Chelsea Flower Show back in 2013 and RHS show at Malvern in 2018 I was very struck by the displays of auriculas.

It was about that same time that Steph acquired several varieties, and although they flowered quite well, they were never displayed at their best.

That was until 2021, after we had moved north to Newcastle upon Tyne. I bought online an old bookshelf for her birthday and converted it into an auricula theater. Choosing one of the ‘traditional’ colors, I painted the outside sage green, and inside a dark grey. And here’s the end result.

Not too bad, even if I say so myself.

 

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Three years have passed . . .

I hope I’m not tempting Providence.

So far, Steph and I have managed to avoid COVID-19. We still mask when we shop at the supermarket, when we travel on the Metro here in Newcastle upon Tyne, or anywhere we might be in close proximity with others. Mostly we are the only ones wearing masks.

And while most people feel that the pandemic is over and done with, latest data from the UK’s Office for National Statistics indicate that the virus is, once again, on the increase.

About 1 in 40 of England’s population (2.66%) tested positive at the end of March. COVID-19 has certainly not gone away, and given some of the horror stories circulating about the effects of long-COVID, it’s better to avoid infection if at all possible. Or at least reduce the risk of infection. That’s why we continue to mask.

And while we have been COVID-free, it has affected our nearest and dearest. Both our daughters and their families were struck down on a couple of occasions, even though everyone had been vaccinated.

As for Steph and me, we received our initial vaccinations in February and April 2021, with boosters in October that year, and in September a year later.

At New Year 2020, who would have envisioned that we were on the verge of a global pandemic. It was only on 31 December that the World Health Organization (WHO) was informed of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. A novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was subsequently identified from patient samples.

Less than a month later, two Chinese nationals staying at a hotel in York tested positive for coronavirus. It was downhill thereafter, with the first lockdown coming into force on 26 March 2020. Other lockdowns followed. The Institute for Government has published an interesting timeline of the various government measures taken over the subsequent year here in the UK.

Daily life for everyone changed overnight. Although with hindsight, we now know that not all the rules that governed the lives of millions throughout the country were followed by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson and 10 Downing Street staff!

Boris Johnson partying with Downing Street staff.

So, in retrospect, how has the COVID pandemic affected us?

Surprisingly little, if I’m honest. Despite all the inconveniences to daily life, the past three years have flown by. We’ve been rather busy. We kept to ourselves.

Another type of Corona . . .

Fortunately, we prefer the quiet life and since we don’t go pubbing, clubbing, or eating out regularly, we didn’t miss those during the lockdowns. And since the rules permitted exercise outdoors with one person in the same family bubble, we continued to enjoy the outdoors, with Steph joining me on my daily walks around Bromsgrove in Worcestershire where we were living at the time, weather permitting.

And once the National Trust started to open up once again, we seized the opportunity and headed off, on a glorious afternoon, to Dudmaston Hall in Shropshire, and several other properties close by before the end of September.

At Dudmaston Hall on 24 June 2020.

The first impacts of lockdown back in 2020 seem almost a lifetime ago. Deserted streets, and long queues at the supermarkets and shortages (caused primarily by panic buying in the first instance) of some food items and other basics like hand sanitizer and toilet rolls, until the inevitable rationing that was brought in.

Our nearest supermarket, Morrisons, was just 5 minutes or 1.6 miles away by car. Being the driver, the weekly shop fell to me since the supermarkets were only permitting entry to one person per household. I also took on the weekly shop for a widower friend and former University of Birmingham colleague, Jim Croft (a few years older than me) who lived close by. In fact I continued to shop for Jim right up till the day we moved north to Newcastle.

And talking of moving, by November 2019 (during a visit to our younger daughter Philippa and her family in Newcastle upon Tyne) we had bitten the bullet and decided we’d put our Bromsgrove house on the market, and make the move north.

Having appointed an estate agency (realtor) to handle the sale of our house, we waited until the New Year for the first adverts to be placed in the local press. Come mid-January 2020, a For Sale board had been firmly planted in our front garden, and we sat back waiting for a surge of prospective buyers. To our surprise—and disappointment, given the location of our house (proximity to excellent First and Middle schools, close to Bromsgrove town center, nearby dental and medical practices, and an upgraded commuter rail service into the center of Birmingham) we expected there would be more interest than we actually experienced.

By the end of March when the first lockdown came into effect, we’d received  fewer than ten viewings. Even under lockdown, the government rules permitted house viewings to continue, as long as they were managed safely (social distancing, hand sanitation, and the like; we were always away from the house in any case during the viewings that were managed by the estate agent).

However, we decided not to accept any more viewings until the rules had been relaxed. Except for one, that had been pencilled in for a week hence. After that, we sat back, wondering when we would finally be able to make the move to Newcastle. We had already decided to rent a house there in the first instance, and use it as a base to look for a new home. But until we had sold our house, it was impossible to make any progress on finding a suitable rental property.

Come the lifting of the lockdown at the end of May, almost immediately we received a request for a second viewing from that last couple. And after a little negotiation, they made an offer which was acceptable. Less than the house had been advertised for (which I never expected to get) but considerably higher than a couple of offers we did receive earlier on, or how other estate agents had valued the house. Happy times! Or at least I thought so.

But anyone who has struggled through a house sale (and purchase) will know and understand the considerable angst that the whole conveyancing process can bring. We were at the top of a chain, since we had no purchase waiting to be completed. There was one solicitor two links below in the chain of four who made life miserable for everyone. By the end of September, however, we had all exchanged contracts and completed the sale on the 30th. And moved out that same day. We had used the intervening months to pack many of our belongings and upcycled many items that we no longer wanted to hold on to.

Fortunately I had identified a nice three-bedroom house east of Newcastle in the Shiremoor district of North Tyneside, and just 10 minutes from the North Sea coast. Offering to pay six months rent up front, I had secured a ‘reservation’ on the property at the beginning of September, not knowing exactly when we would be able to move. We moved in on 1 October.

The removal van arrived at 1 pm and was on its way south once again by 4 pm.

Within a fortnight of landing in Newcastle, we had already made an offer on a four bedroom, and two-year-old house, about a mile from where we were living at the time. It should have been the simplest sale/purchase but once again the solicitors made a meal of the process. However, the purchase was completed on 13 February 2021 and we moved on 6 March.

Moving out of Cloverfield
Moving into our new home

But because of repeated lockdowns, and the rules around meeting other family members and the like, we saw very little of our younger daughter and her family for the next 12 months. Christmas morning 2020 was enjoyed outside in a socially-distanced garden, followed by a solitary lunch for Steph and me.

Unfortunately COVID also put paid to family Christmases in 2021 and 2022.

There hasn’t been a day since that we have regretted the move north. Northumberland is an awe-inspiring county. Our home is only 10 minutes from the North Sea coast. There are miles and miles of paths and bridleways (known locally as ‘waggonways’) on the sites of old mine workings and rail lines. So even just after we moved here, and given the right weather, we have headed out into the countryside, enjoying what we like best: visiting National Trust and English Heritage properties (of which there are quite a few up here with magnificent gardens and walks), and enjoying the fresh air, socially-distanced of course. Just type Northumberland in the search box or open my National Trust and English Heritage page (organized by regions) and you’ll discover for yourselves some of the magical places we have visited over the past two and a half years. Here is just a soupçon of some of those around the northeast.

Seaton Sluice harbor.
The beach at Seaton Sluice.
National Trust Seaton Delaval Hall
National Trust Dunstanburgh Castle
Druridge Bay
English Heritage Warkworth Castle in April
National Trust Cragside
The garden at Cragside
Sycamore Gap on Hadrian’s Wall, in February 2022 just before vandals felled this iconic tree.
The Whin Sill along Hadrian’s Wall
Underfloor heating at Chester’s Roman Fort (English Heritage)
The River North Tyne at Chester’s Roman Fort
Crossing the River Tyne at Ovingham
National Trust Thomas Bewick’s home at Cherryburn
National Trust Allen Banks
Whitburn close south of the River Tyne
Marsden Cliffs south of the River Tyne
National Trust Souter Lighthouse
The Millennium Bridge in Newcastle
The Tyne Bridge, Newcastle
Grey’s Monument, Newcastle city center
Grain stores at Corbridge Roman Town, National Trust
Corbridge Roman town,
Elsdon castle – 11th century motte and bailey
Elsdon Castle
St Mary’s Lighthouse.
Bolam Lake Country Park
Shaftoe Crags
English Heritage Belsay Hall
Quarry garden at Belsay Hall
Christmas at Wallington National Trust
National Trust Wallington central atrium
Prudhoe castle from the pele yard, English Heritage
Upper Coquetdale
Chew Green, Upper Coquetdale
Coquetdale
The cascade at the Alnwick Garden
Cherry blossom at the Alnwick Garden
Looking over Coquetdale
The River Tyne at Ovingham

At this time last year, we spent a week in the south of England—staying at a cottage in the New Forest—and visiting more than a dozen National Trust and English Heritage properties, our first proper holiday since the beginning of the pandemic.

We haven’t traveled to the USA since September 2019, but we are gearing up for a visit come the end of May this year.

COVID restrictions for international travel were lifted sufficiently by July/August 2022 for Hannah and family to fly over from Minnesota, and at last (and for the first time since 2016) we had a family get-together with our two daughters, Hannah and Philippa, husbands Michael and Andi, and grandchildren Callum, Zoë, Elvis, and Felix.

 

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The USA has so much to offer . . .

Our elder daughter Hannah and family live in St Paul, Minnesota, and since 2010 we have visited them each year, until 2019.

With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, our plans for travel that year and the next were well and truly scuppered. In 2022, Hannah, Michael, Callum, and Zoë came over to the UK for a fortnight.

But, at the end of May, Steph and I will once again be heading westwards to Minnesota. And we’re really looking forward to being in the Twin Cities once again. No road trips this time, however. We are just going to take it nice and easy. We’ve not done too bad over the decades in visiting many parts of the USA that I guess will be unfamiliar to the vast majority of US citizens.

Steph and I first visited the United States almost 50 years ago. We were on our way back to the UK from Peru, via Costa Rica and Mexico, and transiting through New York (JFK) for a flight to Manchester (MAN). That was also our first flight on a Boeing 747.

After we moved to Costa Rica in April 1976, my work travel took me through Miami a couple of times a year, as this was the most direct route for flights to various Caribbean islands.

Then, in July 1979, Steph and 15 month old Hannah joined me on a conference trip to Vancouver, and we stopped over for a couple of nights in San Francisco. We returned to Costa Rica via Edmonton in Canada (where my elder brother Ed and his wife Linda lived) and Madison, WI with a side trip to visit a potato research station at Sturgeon Bay, 185 miles northwest of Madison.

On the Edmonton-Madison sector, we had to pass through US immigration in Minneapolis-St Paul (MSP). Little did we realise that the Twin Cities would become Hannah’s home nineteen years later.

Then, in March 1981, after I had resigned from my position with the International Potato Center (CIP), we returned to the UK via New York, spending a couple of nights there and seeing some of the sights, like the Empire State Building.

Steph and Hannah at the top of the Empire State Building, looking out over Manhattan

During the 1980s when I worked at the University of Birmingham, I made only one visit to the USA, for a conference held at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis, just after I’d recovered from a bout of glandular fever.

However, after we moved to the Philippines in 1991, I traveled to the USA quite frequently on work trips, but with little time for any tourism.

In 1998, Hannah transferred to Macalester College in St Paul, MN to complete her junior and senior years, and then stayed on for graduate studies at the University of Minnesota. So whenever I had to travel to the USA, I usually planned my itinerary through MSP so I could spend a weekend or more with her. Hannah married Michael in St Paul in 2006, and is now a US citizen.

Since 2011, our road trips have taken us right across the country. Links to those trips can be found at the bottom of this page.

To date, I have visited 41 of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, but I have transferred flights in Nevada (Las Vegas), and on one flight from Tokyo to MSP, there was a medical emergency and the plane landed in Anchorage, Alaska.

In the map below, tourist hotspots (and not-so-hotspots) we have visited are shown with blue markers. Click on the marker and there will be a link to a blog post and/or a photo album.

Towns and cities have rarely been the focus of our trips, but there are some, with red markers. And the yellow ones show cities I visited primarily on business (mainly scientific conferences).

Although we haven’t traveled much in the Deep South, nor some of the Mid-West states, our coverage elsewhere has been pretty impressive, coast to coast. The USA has so much to offer in terms of diverse landscapes: coasts, rivers, deserts, forests, mountains, caves. You name it, the USA has it. Here is just a small selection of some of the places visited since 2011.

Crater Lake, OR
Coast south of Netarts, OR
Giant redwoods, CA
Monument Valley, AZ
Canyon de Chelly, AZ
The Painted Desert, AZ
The Mississippi at Louisiana, MO
Ore carrier entering Duluth, MN
Mammoth Cave, KY
Grand Canyon, AZ
Grand Teton, WY
Cherohala Skyway, TN
Chicago skyline, IL
Niagara Falls, NY
At the top of Mt Washington, NH
Savannah, GA
Devil’s Tower, WY
Little Bighorn battlefield, MT
Pennsylvania Monument, the largest on the battlefield, recording the names of every soldier who served at Gettysburg, PA
On the MA-VT border
Looking over ME from Hawk Mtn
Herring Cove beach, Cape Cod, MA
The view from Brasstown Bald, GA
The Beartooth Highway, MT
Headwaters of the Mississippi, MN
Mount Rushmore, SD
The Badlands, SD
Hot springs in Yellowstone National Park, WY
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“Jolly old hawk . . .

. . . and his wings were grey. Now let us sing.
Who’s going to win the girl but me?
Jolly old hawk and his wings were grey.”

A variant perhaps on The Twelve Days of Christmas. Singer and collector of folk songs, AL Lloyd (left below) suggested that the tune may have come from France or Flanders in the Middle Ages. Cecil Sharp (right), an eminent activist in the folk revival of the early 1900s, apparently found the song at Bridgwater in Somerset.

The song featured on Frost and Fire, recorded in 1965 for Topic Records by The Watersons, a folk ensemble from Hull, comprising brother and sisters Mike, Norma, and Elaine (always known as Lal) Waterson, and their cousin John Harrison, mostly singing unaccompanied and with a musicality of sublime harmonies.

L-R: Lal, John, Mike, and Norma

Frost and Fire was followed up in 1966 by A Yorkshire Garland, and I purchased that as well, keeping both as part of my collection until they were taken in burglary while we lived in Costa Rica in 1978.

I’m not sure what drew me to The Watersons or how and when I first encountered them. But I must have been taken with them immediately being inspired to purchase Frost and Fire when it was first released.

However, my interest in folk music and dance had begun a year or so earlier, when I enjoyed a couple of BBC television programs. The White Heather Club, broadcast between 1958 and 1968, had Robin Hall and Jimmy Macgregor as resident folk singers. 

Robin Hall and Jimmy Macgregor

The Hoot’Nanny Show was broadcast from Edinburgh in 1963 and 1964. Residents on the show were the Corrie Folk Trio (whose Flowers of Scotland has become the country’s unofficial anthem) and Paddie Bell. But other regulars included the Scots singer Ray Fisher¹ and her brother Archie, The Ian Campbell Folk Group (from Birmingham, including virtuoso fiddle player Dave Swarbrick), and The Dubliners.

These and some other singers like Bob Davenport (from Gateshead) were my introduction to folk music, and on arrival at the University of Southampton as an undergraduate in October 1967, I joined the folk club and the English & Scottish Folk Dance Society. That introduction to folk dancing extended a year later into morris dancing as well.

L: At the Inter-Varsity Folk Dance Festival at the University of Hull in March 1968 (I’m standing in the middle); R: the Red Stags Morris Men (I’m crouching far right) in March 1970.

Among the singers who appeared more than once at the Sunday night folk club in the Students’ Union were Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, among the co-founders of the electric folk group Steeleye Span which formed in 1969.

I didn’t encounter Steeleye Span until September 1970, when I first heard the song Lovely On the Water although it wasn’t released until March 1971 on the Please to See the King album.

Martin Carthy joined the Steeleye Span line-up for their second and third albums although he was mainly a solo artist, but also releasing several duo albums with Dave Swarbrick. 

Anyway, returning to The Watersons, I never thought I’d ever see them perform live. But, on 10 February 1968, when they made their farewell performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, I and several friends were in the audience.

Norma left the group and moved for several years to the Caribbean island of Montserrat. Returning to the UK by 1972, she married Martin Carthy who became a regular in The Watersons line-up. I read that John Harrison left the group in 1966, but I thought he was still singing with them at their 1968 farewell concert.

Martin and Norma’s daughter, Eliza Carthy (a singer and multi-instrumentalist) has become one of the UK’s foremost folk performers.

Apart from Frost and Fire and A Yorkshire Garland that was my exposure to The Watersons for the next 50 years. Until a year ago, when I came across an obituary for Norma in The Guardian newspaper on 31 January 2022. This appreciation was also published in the newspaper on the same day. Lal died in 1998, and Mike in 2011.

Thanks to YouTube and Spotify I have been able to find so much of their music online, and in videos such as this one, they talk about themselves, their origins, and their music.

One song that became Norma’s signature piece, it seems, is A Bunch of Thyme. Here she is singing with Eliza in 2017. Enjoy.

 

¹In 1969, I joined Ray and her husband Colin Ross when they led a group of pipers and dancers to a folk festival in Strakonice, Czechoslovakia.

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Trains and boats and . . .

Buses!

Actually bus, then ferry, and finally train. Not exactly Burt Bacharach/Hal David, nor Dionne Warwick (or Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas for that matter).

Yesterday, Steph and I took full advantage of our concessionary travel cards to make a round trip by bus to the ferry terminal at North Shields, crossing the River Tyne by ferry to South Shields, and returning home by the metro to our closest station at Northumberland Park.

Our travel concession permits unlimited bus travel after 09:30 each day (nationwide in fact), and with an additional Gold Card payment each of £12, unlimited travel on the local ferry and Metro as well.

The Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive, branded as NEXUS, manages an integrated transport system in the northeast of the UK around Newcastle upon Tyne.

NEXUS brings together the bus, ferry, and Metro services across the five metropolitan boroughs of North Tyneside (where we live) and Newcastle upon Tyne north of the River Tyne, and Gateshead, South Tyneside, and Sunderland south of the river, that together once constituted the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear.

So, with that in mind, we planned our excursion that would use all three of these services to get around.

Our journey started at 10:25 from a bus stop less than a couple of hundred meters from home. The No 19 service was supposed to operate every hour, although there was some confusion yesterday since a new operator had just taken over the route, and some services did not show up. Ours was about five minutes late, and the journey to the ferry took about 35 minutes.

The journey was quite interesting since it took us through areas of North Tyneside (south of where we live) that we have never explored. It was a little bit longer than we anticipated, since we did not recognise the ferry bus stop, and so stayed on board while the bus completed its route around North Shields before returning to the ferry stop.

We just missed the 11 am ferry to South Shields. But that didn’t matter. Although quite cold (just 2-3°C), it was a bright and sunny day, so we enjoyed exploring the ferry quay and reading about its history before our ferry, Spirit of the Tyne docked around 11:20.

The trip across the Tyne takes about seven minutes, with interesting views along each bank where heavy industries like ship building once thrived. Nowadays some of the land has been converted to choice waterside apartment buildings, although further up river there is an active Port of Tyne, and quays for the ferry service to Amsterdam and where cruise ships also dock. In port yesterday was the Fred Olsen Bolette, preparing for a cruise to Iceland later that same evening.

The ferry quay on the South Shields side is just a stone’s throw from the town center.

Just beyond the quay stands The Word – that National Centre for the Written Word, which we didn’t visit but we must make a plan to return to.

We didn’t actually have any plan at all yesterday, apart from making the round trip. But as soon as we had landed in South Shields we discovered that the remains of an important Roman fort (which I had read about but totally forgotten) were less than a mile away. So we headed through the town center to reach Arbeia, on a plot of land known as The Lawes high above the town.

And we were in luck as yesterday was the first day of opening this year. Entrance was free.

Founded around AD 160, Arbeia was a key garrison and military supply base to support the troops who constructed and afterwards manned Hadrian’s Wall further west. The remains of numerous granaries (there were, at one time, up to 24 of these store houses) can be clearly seen from the ramparts of the reconstructed West Gatehouse.

In addition to the gatehouse, there is a reconstructed barracks showing what life might have been like for Roman and auxiliary soldiers all those centuries ago.

The first archaeological investigation of Arbeia began in 1870. More photos of the site and inside the reconstructed buildings (with explanations) can be viewed here.

After a quick picnic lunch, we had a look round the museum, before heading to view the mouth of the River Tyne and across the river to Tynemouth and its priory.

By about 14:00 we had arrived back at South Shields’ new Metro station at the Interchange Square, where we took the metro back home.

South Shields is the end of the line, and just as we stepped on to the platform, the next train was pulling into the station.

Trains from South Shields (yellow line) head into Newcastle city center, before turning east to Whitley Bay and Tynemouth on the North Sea coast and looping back to the St James terminus.

Our stop, Northumberland Park, was 24 stops, and almost 50 minutes. Sitting in a stuffy Metro carriage, surrounded (for part of the journey from South Shields to Jarrow) by a class of high spirited and noisy schoolchildren who we’d seen at Arbeia) was a bit trying, but crossing the River Tyne between Gateshead and Central Station (where the line goes underground for a few stops) and seeing all the bridges downriver always lifts one’s spirits.

About 15 minutes later we pulled into Northumberland Park, and the train headed off on its continuing journey to the coast.

Then it was a short 10 minute walk home, relief at being able to put my feet up (we’d walked about 4½ miles), and enjoy a welcome afternoon cup of tea. All in all, a good day’s excursion.

 

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Not 20,000 leagues . . .

Diving at Anilao, Philippines

Actually, 16,504 minutes (almost 11½ days) under the sea. That was the extent of my scuba diving experiences over 17 years from March 1993 when I first learned to dive in the Philippines.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of my first Open Water training dive that I made at Anilao, about 95 km southwest from Los Baños where I worked at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

I received my PADI Open Water Diver certification on 17 March 1993.

We were a group of about ten IRRI staff and family members, trained by Boy Siojo (left below) and Mario Elumba.

After Confined Water dive skills training in the swimming pool at IRRI (right), it was quite an experience to transfer to the ‘open ocean’.

L: About to plunge backwards into the IRRI pool on 6 March 1993; R: With PADI course classmate Crissan Zeigler at Anilao after successfully completing the four Open Water training dives on 14 March 1993.

And although I have mostly been risk averse, never having any interest whatsoever in mountain or rock climbing, potholing, jumping out of planes, and the like, I took to scuba diving enthusiastically, although it had never crossed my mind as an option when I first landed in the Philippines two years earlier. Our elder daughter Hannah had taken the NAUI course in 1992, and I saw how much she enjoyed it. I decided it was a ‘sport’ we could enjoy together, and signed up for scuba training at the next opportunity.

Diving with Hannah, just three weeks after certification in April 1993. By then I’d already bought my own wet suit and other scuba equipment.

Our younger daughter Philippa took the PADI course in January 1995, just before her 13th birthday.

Phil and other students in the IRRI pool for the Confined Water training.

Returning from a dive in April 1995, with IRRI friends (L-R): me, Crissan Zeigler, Philippa, Kate Kirk, Clare Zeigler (Phil’s best friend), and Bob Zeigler (who became IRRI’s Director General in 2004).

I made all my dives around the many sites at Mabini, Anilao, never straying further to other locations in the country.Click on the map to enlarge.

That’s because Steph did not dive, and Anilao was excellent for snorkelling which she enjoyed, cataloging all the fish species she observed over nearly 19 years.

I also made my last—and 356th dive—on 14 March 2010. These photos were taken during my last two dives. Fittingly my last dive was an early one, probably around 7 am, at Kirby’s Rock.

With long-time dive buddy and dive master, Lito Bonquin.
Feeding the fish at Cathedral.
At Kirby’s Rock – a fitting end to my dive career.

With my dive buddy Katie and other members of my IRRI staff after the last dive, heading back to the dive resort for a breakfast of bacon and eggs.

And on that last dive, we were lucky to see a sea snake, a creature that eluded me for most of my 356 dives.

Anilao was very convenient for a weekend getaway, and the dive resort where we mostly stayed, Arthur’s Place, almost became a second home to the many IRRI divers over the years.

As I gained experience, and was more relaxed underwater, I could extend my dives to at least 45 minutes and longer, some lasting an hour or more. But it all depended on whether there were strong currents, visibility, and the capability and experience of my dive buddies.

The shortest dive I made, in August 1997, was just 10 minutes at my favorite dive site, Kirby’s Rock a 20 minute or so ride across the channel from Arthur’s Place. I was diving with an American couple, Bert and Annette Gee who were also staying at Arthur’s that weekend.

The dive started normally, with a back roll over the side of the dive boat, or outrigger banca. We descended the rock face (as you can see in the video below filmed on another occasion), and then, at 90 feet, my breathing equipment (both regulators) malfunctioned and I had to abort the dive. Thank goodness for outstanding training from Boy and Mario. I coped – and lived to tell the tale!

My deepest dive, at 135 feet, was at Kirby’s Rock, and I made over 50 dives there to over 100 feet. I relished the sensations of descending into colder water and increasing water pressure compressing everything, knowing that we’d have only a few minutes at that depth before slowly returning to the surface.

It’s been 13 years since I last dived. Do I miss it? Yes and no. Been there, done that. It was great while I had the opportunity of great diving on the doorstep, so to speak. I have no desire to re-learn so I can dive in the North Sea. For one thing, it’s too damn cold. And for another, I think I’ve been spoiled by having dived in one of the most diverse coral environments on the planet.

A variable neon slug (Nembrotha kubaryana) at Anilao.

 

 

 

 

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Martin F. Jackson (1939-2023)

My eldest brother Martin died a couple of days ago having recently been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer.

Born on 1 September 1939 in Bath, just a couple of days before war was declared on Germany, Martin was the eldest child of four of Frederick Harry Jackson and his wife Lilian, and was named after his maternal grandfather, Martin Healy (1876-1954), and our father Fred.

Here are the four of us, in 1951 or thereabouts, and again in 2006. Left to right: Mike (b. 1948), Martin, Margaret (b. 1941), and Edgar (1946-2019).

Not long after Martin was born, my parents moved to Congleton in Cheshire, which was to become the family hometown until 1956. But with the advancing war, Dad was called up to serve and joined the Royal Navy, and Mum, Martin and Margaret left Congleton to live with her in-laws in the small Derbyshire village of Hollington, about midway between Ashbourne and Derby.

Margaret (center) and Martin with cousin Marian Paxton.
With mum and Dad on the steps of ‘Ebenezer Cottage’.
Hay-making with Bull relatives.

While living in Hollington, Martin started his primary education at the village school in Longford, just a couple miles down the road. After the war, the family moved back to Congleton where Dad was the staff photographer for the local newspaper, The Congleton Chronicle. We lived at 13 Moody Street, which was owned by the newspaper’s proprietor.

No. 13 and No 15 Moody Street. My dad’s boss, Mr Head, lived at No. 15.

Martin and Margaret then attended the Church of England school in Mossley, a village just to the southeast of the town centre (and which Edgar and Mike attended as well when they reached school age).

In 1953 all the local children in Moody Street celebrated the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Martin is the cricketer on the extreme right.

Martin was a keen swimmer, and won a number of trophies.

I don’t remember many family holidays in the early 1950s (before we moved to Leek). But there were a couple where we stayed in a caravan near Llandudno in North Wales, and another year in a camping coach alongside the main railway line to Holyhead in Abergele, just along the coast from Llandudno. I have no idea why our parents insisted on us wearing school uniform, but I guess that was quite normal back in the day.

When time permitted, we’d visit our grandparents in Hollington, and during the summer there would be picnics in one of the meadows, and visits to Dovedale with our Paxton cousins who lived across the road from our grandparents. In 1954, Grandma and Grandad celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with family and friends.

With Paxton cousins
Family picnic
1949
1950
At Dovedale with Thorpe Cloud in the background
The Stepping Stones in Dovedale.
Golden Wedding 1954

By the autumn of 1950, Martin won a scholarship to King’s School in Macclesfield (which entailed a bus and train journey each day from Congleton), and stayed there until he completed his school certificate at the age of sixteen around 1956.

At Macclesfield, Martin had joined the Air Training Corps (ATC) and would go on to join the Royal Air Force in 1957, where he continued his swimming prowess. His passing out parade was held at RAF West Kirby.

He remained in the RAF, with Fighter Command, until 1965, serving in Scotland at RAF Buchan near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, and in Cyprus at RAF Akrotiri.

Martin was a motorbike enthusiast, being the proud owner of a 200 cc Triumph Tiger Cub, and then a 500 cc model, making the journey from Aberdeenshire to home in Leek in all weathers. When he was on leave in the summer months, he would often take me out for a spin on his bike, reaching the incredible Ton (100 mph) on one stretch of road near home on one trip.

In November 1965, Martin married the love of his life, Pauline, daughter of the Revd. Neil Henderson (died 1960, a Church of Scotland minister) and his wife Markie, in her home town of Huntly, Aberdeenshire.

L: Mike, Dad, Edgar (best man), and Martin; R: Pauline and her brother Nigel, who ‘gave her away’.

Leaving the RAF, Martin joined the computer company ICL, and worked for a couple of years in the computer department at the Ravenscraig steelworks south of Glasgow.

By 1968, Martin and Pauline had moved to Filton, just north of Bristol, where Martin had joined the flight testing program for the Anglo-French Concorde.

Their first son Alexander Neil was born in March 1968.

Proud parents and grandparents.

Their second son, Michael Bruce, was born in July 1969.

After the flight testing program moved to RAF Fairford in April 1969 (Concorde could take off from Filton but not land there), Martin had opportunities of joining the flight tests in many parts of the world. It’s poignant that 2 March—the day Martin died—was the 54th anniversary of Concorde’s first flight in Toulouse, France.

Leaving the Concorde project, Martin joined the small commercial jets division of British Aerospace near Manchester, setting up home in North Wales near Holywell, Flint.

However, in August 1993, Martin and Pauline embarked on a new adventure, when they became landlords of the Llyn y Mawn Inn near Holywell. In need of a complete refurbishment, within a few months they had turned the pub around to become of the best in Wales. They even extended the premises to increase space for dining.

Behind the bar at the Llyn y Mawn, flanked by Alec and his wife Lizzie on the left, and Bruce on the right.

I don’t remember how long they stayed at the Llyn y Mawn. Maybe until 1999. I remember Martin once telling me he wanted to retire by his 60th birthday. By 2002 they had retired from the licensed trade and were settled in Crieff, Perthshire to be closer to Pauline’s mother.

Steph with Pauline and Martin in the garden of their Crieff home.

There Martin returned to another interest, model railways, and built an impressive layout in the roof of their garage.

However, after holidaying in Portugal, they decided to make the move there permanently, finally settling in Tomar, north of Lisbon. It was there in 2012 that we had a cousins’ reunion. Martin and Pauline had built this beautiful house standing in several acres of its own land, and large enough to accommodate us all. What a lovely two weeks we spent with them. And although we have seen them briefly on two other occasions, this was really the last time that I spent any time with Martin.

Martin embarked on yet another, and larger, model railway layout based on his beloved LMS theme.

But one of Martin’s most enduring legacies will be the database and website that he began work on in 1980 after the death of our father Fred. Martin decided to research the genealogy of the Jackson and Bull families, taking our family history directly back (on our paternal grandmother’s Bull side of the family) to the late 15th century. His website contains the records of more than 39,000 people related to us in one way or other.

Martin and Pauline were proud parents to Alex and Bruce and their wives, Lizzie and Susie, respectively, seen here at the joint christening of Sam (in pushchair) and Maddie (in Bruce’s arms; Seb wasn’t born then) in 2004.

And Martin being the dutiful grandad in 2006 with Sam and Maddie.

It’s hard to believe that Martin has been taken from us so soon, and quickly. It was only a couple of weeks ago that he called me by video to tell me of his diagnosis. But it’s also a relief that he was spared months of painful decline, and for that we must be tankful.

Martin was always my big brother. For some reason I (we) called him ‘Jake’. I have no idea how this came about. So here’s Jake, me, and Edgar on the beach in North Wales, early 1950s.

Rest in Peace, big brother! I will miss you.

 

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What childhood reading did you enjoy?

It was World Book Day yesterday, to promote reading for pleasure, offering every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own.

The rationale behind World Book Day is that ‘Reading for pleasure is the single biggest indicator of a child’s future success – more than their family circumstances, their parents’ educational background or their income’.

And, the BBC announced that it was reviving its 500 Words story competition for children.

There are so many people writing wonderfully for children nowadays. I can’t say that was the case when I was growing up in the 1950s. No Harry Potter then. No Roald Dahl either. But there was an author who, in her day, was just as popular as JK Rowling, and remains so.

Born in November 1948, I started school around September 1953 just before my fifth birthday, or maybe in the following January.

My first school was Mossley Church of England primary school just south of Congleton in Cheshire. I was seven in 1956 when we moved to Leek, 12 miles southeast of Congleton and I joined St Mary’s Roman Catholic primary. I must have been reading quite satisfactorily by then as I don’t recall any of the teachers commenting negatively on my reading ability. Funnily enough I don’t have any memories of my parents reading to me, although I’m sure they must have.

Like most other children in the 1950s my first reading primers were the Dick and Dora books (or similar), with their dog Nip and cat Fluff. I haven’t yet found information about the publishers or how many primers were produced. Here’s an example of what we worked with.

They were used to teach reading using the whole-word or look-say method (also called sight reading). There were equivalents in the USA (Dick and Jane) and in Australia, the Dick and Dora books were still being used as late as 1970.

The other books that figured significantly in my early reading were the Ladybird Books, first published over 100 years ago and still popular today. So many to choose from. They were also a favorite of my daughters in the 1980s.

They have been referred to as ‘literary time capsules‘.

I joined the public library in Leek, and it was then that I first encountered the stories by prolific author Enid Blyton.

Born in 1897, and publishing her first book in 1922, Enid Blyton went on to write around 700 books and about 2000 short stories as well as poems and magazine articles right up to her death in 1968.

Among her many successes were the Toyland stories featuring Noddy and Big Ears, and a host of other characters, some of which like Golliwog are no longer considered acceptable. These stories still remain popular with young children, and even made into cartoons that can be watched on YouTube.

But it was Blyton’s stories for older children that gripped me: the Famous Five series (21 books between 1942 and 1963), the Secret Seven (15 books between 1949 and 1963), and the Adventure series (8 books between 1944 and 1955).

Each of these books had a group of child characters who had exciting adventures, mainly during their school holidays. Treasure, possible crime, even espionage. And, in the ‘Adventure’ series, a cockatoo named Kiki.

Recently, there has been an initiative to revise some of the language and terms used in her books, to make them more acceptable to 21st century children. The same is happening to the works of Roald Dahl, to much controversy. Besides these there were my weekly Swift comic (and my elder brothers’ Eagle) and the Annuals published around Christmas time.

In addition to the Blyton stories, there is one that has remained firmly in my mind. And although I don’t remember the whole of the narrative in detail, it still holds a special place in my list of children’s book.

Written by Denys Watkins-Pitchford (under the pseudonym ‘BB’) in 1955, The Forest of Boland Light Railway tells the tale of a community of gnomes who build a steam locomotive to transport miners to work, and return with larger quantities of gold. Everything goes well until a group of wicked goblins decide to steal the train and put the railway out of business.

If you ever get the chance to find a copy (that are selling on secondhand books websites for a small fortune) I’m sure you would enjoy it even as an adult.

Watkins-Pitchford, a well-known naturalist, published 60 books between 1922 and 1990, not all of them children’s books. And I never came across one, The Little Grey Men, for which he won the 1942 Carnegie Medal for British children’s books.

Anyway, it’s interesting (for me at least) how an event like World Book Day 2023 stirred up so many memories from almost 70 years ago.

I spend much of my free time nowadays with my nose inside an book. A few years I came across the works of Charles Dickens in a serious way, having despised them as compulsory reading while at school. What a revelation they turned out to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The best job ever?

I was asked recently what was the best job I’d had.

Well, I guess the best job was the one I was occupying at the time. Until it wasn’t.

As a teenager in the 1960s, I had a Saturday job at a local garage, Peppers of Leek, pumping gasoline and helping in the car parts store, for which I earned 15/- (fifteen shillings or 75p in new money), equivalent today of less than £18 for an eight hour shift. What exploitation!

However, discounting that Saturday job, then I’ve held five different positions at three organizations over a fulfilling career lasting 37 years and 4 months. I took early retirement at the end of April 2010, aged 61.

Exploring Peru
My first job was at the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, Peru. I first met Richard Sawyer (left), CIP’s Director General when he visited the University of Birmingham after I’d completed my MSc degree in genetic resources conservation and use in September 1971.  He confirmed my appointment at CIP from January 1973. It was my first encounter with an American.

As an Associate Taxonomist at CIP I had two responsibilities: collecting potato varieties in the Andes of Peru, which were added to CIP’s large germplasm collection; and completing the field research for my PhD at the University of Birmingham.

In May 1973, just a few months after I arrived in Peru, I travelled to the north of Peru, specifically to the Departments of Ancash and La Libertad, with my Peruvian colleague Zosimo Huaman (seen in the photo below with two farmers). We explored remote valleys in this region (that has the highest mountains in the country) for almost a month, arriving back in Lima with a handsome collection of potato varieties.

Looking north towards Peru’s highest mountain, Huascaran (6768 m) in the Callejon de Huaylas in Ancash.

Some of the places we visited were so remote we could only access them on foot or on horseback.

In February 1974 I traveled to the south of Peru to carry out a field study of mixed variety potato cultivation as part of my thesis research in the remote valley of Cuyo Cuyo (below) with its fabulous terraces or andenes, northeast of Lake Titicaca.

And then, in May, I explored the Department of Cajamarca in the north of Peru with a driver, Octavio, seen in the photo below marking potato tubers with a collection number while I discussed these samples with the farmer.

Three years passed by in a flash. It had been a fantastic opportunity for a young person like myself. I was just 24 when I headed to Peru in 1973.

Working in CIP’s potato field genebank at Huancayo, 3100 m (>10,000 feet) in the central Andes.

Not many folks enjoy the same level of freedom to pursue a project as I did, or to travel throughout such an awe-inspiring country. I continue to count my blessings.

I also had a fantastic supervisor/head of department in geneticist Dr Roger Rowe (left).

Heading to Central America
I stayed with CIP for another five years, until March 1981. But not in Lima. It would have been fun to remain in the germplasm program, but there wasn’t a position available. The only one was filled by Zosimo. In any case, I was keen to expand my potato horizons and learn more about potato production in the round. So, after completing my PhD in December 1975, I joined CIP’s Outreach Program (that, in the course of time, became the Regional Research Program), not entirely sure what the future held. Costa Rica was mooted as a possible regional location.

In January 1976, Roger Rowe, Ed French (head of plant pathology at CIP), and I made a recce visit to Costa Rica, where we met officials at CATIE in Turrialba and it was agreed that CATIE would host a CIP scientist to work on adaptation of potatoes to warm environments. My wife Steph and I finally made it to Turrialba in April, and I set about setting up my research.

CATIE plant pathologist Raul Moreno (left) explains the center’s research in Turrialba on multiple cropping systems to (L-R) University of Wisconsin professor Luis Sequeira, Ed French, and Roger Rowe.

Quite quickly the focus changed to identify resistance to a disease known as bacterial wilt.

Evaluating potatoes in the field at Turrialba in 1977 (top). Potatoes showing typical asymmetrical wilt symptoms (bottom left) and bacterial exudate in infected tubers (bottom right).

Not only did we test different potatoes varieties for resistance to the bacterium, but we developed different agronomic solutions to control the amount of disease that was surviving from one season to the next.

I also worked closely with colleagues in the Ministry of Agriculture and the University of Costa Rica, and with potato farmers to reduce the high use of fertilizers and pesticides, as well as setting up a potato seed production project.
We developed a major regional project, PRECODEPA, during this time, involving six countries in the region and Caribbean, and funded by the Swiss government.
I was just 27 when we moved to Costa Rica. This was my first taste of program management; I was on my own (although I did receive administrative backup from CATIE, where we lived). My boss in Lima, Dr Ken Brown (left, head of the Regional Research Program) managed all his staff outside Lima on ‘a light rein’: encouraging, supporting, correcting program alignment when necessary. And always with great humor.

We spent five, happy years in Costa Rica. The work was enjoyable. I had a great couple of technical staff, Jorge and Moises, and secretary Leda.

I worked with the CIP team in Toluca, Mexico, and after the regional team leader left for the USA to pursue his PhD, Richard Sawyer asked me to take on the leadership of the program, which I did for over three years.

I learnt to grow a potato crop, and work alongside farmers and various government officials from the region. I learnt a lot about people management, and was all set to continue my career with CIP.

However, by November 1980, I decided that I needed a change. I’d achieved as much as I could in Central America. So we returned to Lima, with the expectation of moving with CIP to Brazil or the Philippines.

Joining academia
But fate stepped in. I was asked to apply for a lectureship at Birmingham, in my old department, now renamed ‘Plant Biology’. In January 1981 I flew back to the UK for interview (at my own expense!) and was offered the position to start in April that year. So, with some regret—but full of anticipation—I resigned from CIP and we returned to the UK in mid-March.

With the forthcoming retirement in September 1982 of Professor Jack Hawkes (right), Mason Professor of Botany and genetic resources MSc course leader (who had supervised my PhD), the university created this new lectureship to ‘fill the teaching gap’ following Jack’s departure, particularly on the MSc course.

I spent the next ten years teaching and carrying out research on potatoes and legume species at Birmingham. I had quite a heavy teaching load, mostly with graduate MSc students studying the theory and practice of the conservation and use of plant genetic resources (the same course that I had attended a decade earlier).

I co-taught a BSc third (final) year module on genetic resources with my close friend and colleague Brian Ford-Lloyd (left), and contributed half the lectures in a second-year module on flowering plant taxonomy with another colleague, Richard Lester. Fortunately I had no first year teaching.

Over a decade I supervised or co-supervised ten PhD students, and perhaps 30 MSc students. I really enjoyed working with these graduates, mostly from overseas.

Around 1988, the four departments (Plant Biology, Zoology and Comparative Physiology, Microbiology, and Genetics) making up the School of Biological Sciences merged, and formed five research groups. I moved to the Plant Genetics Group, and was quite contented working with my new head of group, Professor Mike Kearsey (left above). Much better than the head of Plant Biology, Professor Jim Callow (right above, who was appointed in 1983 to succeed Hawkes as Mason Professor of Botany) who had little understanding of and empathy with my research interests.

By 1990 I still hadn’t hadn’t made Senior Lecturer, but I was on that particular pay scale and hoping for promotion imminently. I was working my way up the academic ladder, or at least I thought so. I took on wider responsibilities in the School of Biological Sciences, where I became Second Year Course Chair, and also as vice-chair of a university-wide initiative known as ‘Environmental Research Management’, set up to ‘market’ the university’s expertise in environmental research.

Nevertheless, I could see the writing on the wall. It was highly unlikely that I’d ever get my research on wild species funded (although I had received a large government grant to continue my potato collaboration with CIP). And with other work pressures, academia was beginning to lose its appeal.

Returning to international agricultural research
In September 1990, I received—quite out of the blue (and anonymously)—information about a new position at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, as Head of a newly-created Genetic Resources Center (GRC).

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I threw my proverbial hat in the ring, and was called for interview at the beginning of January 1991. My flight from London-Gatwick to Manila via Hong Kong was delayed more than 12 hours. Instead of arriving in Los Baños a day ahead of the interviews, I arrived in the early hours of the morning and managed about two hours sleep before I had a breakfast meeting with the Director General, Klaus Lampe (right) and his three deputies! The interview sessions lasted more than three days. There were two other candidates, friends of mine who had studied at Birmingham under Jack Hawkes!

To cut a long story short, I was offered the position at the end of January which I accepted once a starting salary had been agreed. However I wasn’t able to join IRRI until 1 July because I still had teaching and examination commitments at the university.

Quite a few of my university colleagues were surprised, concerned even, that I was giving up a tenured position. I’ll admit to some qualms as well. But the die was cast. I flew out to the Philippines on Sunday 30 June. Steph and our daughters Hannah (13) and Philippa (9) joined me at the end of December.

Not long after he joined IRRI in 1988, Klaus Lampe launched a major reorganization of departments and programs. The Genetic Resources Center combined two of the seed conservation and distribution activities of the institute: the International Rice Genebank (the largest and most genetically-diverse of its kind in the world), and the International Network for the Genetic Evaluation of Rice (INGER). Besides overall responsibility for GRC, I had day-to-day management of the genebank. INGER was led by an Indian geneticist and rice breeder Dr Seshu Durvasula who made it quite clear from the outset that he didn’t take kindly to these new arrangements nor having to report to someone who had never worked on rice. Such inflexible attitudes were not part of Lampe’s plan, and Seshu lasted only about 18 more months more before resigning. That’s yet another story.

I quickly realised that many improvements were needed to enhance the management of the genebank and its important rice germplasm collection. I took six months to familiarize myself fully with the genebank operations, consulting frequently with my staff, before making changes and assigning new responsibilities. Working with the genebank staff was a delight.

I convinced KLaus Lampe and senior management to invest appropriately in improving the genebank’s facilities, and to upgrade the positions of more than 70 staff. Since they constantly claimed that ‘the genebank was the jewel in IRRI’s crown‘, all I asked them was to put the money where their mouths were.

Our efforts paid off. We made the genebank ‘a model for others to emulate’. Not my words but those of external reviewers.

During my time in GRC, I had the privilege of meeting VIPs from around the world: presidents, prime ministers and other government officials, members of the diplomatic corps, and Nobel Prize winners.

In 1995 we initiated a major research and exploration project funded by the Swiss Government, which lasted for five years. We expanded the genebank collection by more than 25% to over 100,000 seed samples or accessions (since when it has grown further), many of them having been collected from farmers’ fields for the first time. This was a great opportunity to collect in more than 20 countries in Asia, Africa, and South and Central America where there were gaps in collections or, as in the case of Laos for example, war and other unrest had prevented any collections being made throughout the country until peace was established. In the photo below, taken in the Lao genebank at Vientiane in 1999, I’m with one of my staff Dr Seepana Appa Rao (center) and two genebank staff. On the left is Dr Chay Bounphanousay, head of the genebank, and now Director of the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI).

I had international commitments as well, chairing the Inter-Center Working Group on Genetic Resources (ICWG-GR) and establishing the System-wide Genetic Resources Program, the only program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (or CGIAR) involving all fifteen centers. In 1994, the ICWG-GR met in Kenya, and stayed at a hotel in the shadow of Mt Kenya (below). The ICWG-GR was a great group of colleagues to work with, and we worked together with great enthusiasm and collegiality. 

The early 1990s were an important time for genebanks since the Convention on Biological Diversity had come into effect in December 1992, and this began to have an impact on access to and use of genetic resources. However, one consequence was the increased politicization of genetic resources conservation and use. As the decade wore on, these aspects began to take up more and more of my time. Not so much fun for someone who was more interested in the technical and research aspects of genetic conservation.

 

A directorship beckons
Then, quite out of the blue at the beginning of January 2001, Director General Ron Cantrell (right) asked me to stop by his office. He proposed I should leave GRC and join the senior management team as a Director to reorganize and manage the institute’s research portfolio and relationships with the donor community. I said I’d think it over, talk with Steph, and give him my answer in a couple of days.

I turned him down! The  reasons are too complicated to explain here. I was contented in GRC. There were many things I still wanted to achieve there.

After about six weeks, Cantrell sent word he’d like to discuss his proposal once again. This time we came to an understanding, and my last day as head of GRC was 30 April 2001. I became IRRI’s Director for Program Planning and Coordination (later Communications) or DPPC, with line management for Communication and Publications Services (CPS), Library and Documentation Services (LDS), IT Services (ITS), the Development Office (DO), as well as the Program Planning and Communications unit (PPC).

Here I am with (left to right): Gene Hettel (CPS), Mila Ramos (LDS), Marco van den Berg (ITS), Duncan Macintosh (DO), and Corinta Guerta (PPC).

When I set up DPPC I inherited a small number of staff who had managed (not very effectively I’m sad to say) IRRI’s relationships with the donor community. IRRI’s reputation had hit rock bottom with its donors. I had to dig deep to understand just why the institute could not meet its reporting and financial obligations to the donors. After recruiting five new staff, we implemented new procedures to keep things on an even keel, and within six months we had salvaged what had been quite a dire situation. Data management and integration of information across different research and finance functions was the basis of the changes we made. And we never looked back. By the time I retired from IRRI, we had supported raising the institute’s annual budget to around USD 60 million, and IRRI’s was shining bright among the donors.

Here I am with PCC staff on my last day at IRRI, 30 April 2010. Left to right: Eric Clutario, Corinta Guerta, Zeny Federico, me, Vel Ilao, and Yeyet Enriquez. After I left IRRI, Corinta became head of PPC and was made a Director, the first national staff to rise through the ranks from Research Assistant in 1975 (she was originally a soil chemist) to a seat on the senior management committee.

As a Director, I was a member of IRRI’s senior management team taking responsibility for the institute’s strategy development and medium term plans, performance management, and several cross-cutting initiatives that enhanced IRRI’s welfare and that of the staff.

It wasn’t a bowl of cherries all the time at IRRI. There certainly were some impressive downs. The institute had a bit of a bleak patch for just under a decade from the time Lampe retired in 1995 until Bob Zeigler’s appointment in 2005. The institute had lost its way, and I guess that was one of the reasons I was asked to create the PPC office, to coordinate different functions of institute management.

But all good things come to an end, and by 2009 I’d already decided that I wanted to retire (and smell the roses, as they say), even though Zeigler encouraged me to stay on. By then I was already planning the celebrations for IRRI’s 50th anniversary, and agreed to see those through to April 2010. What fun we had, at the Big Show on Sunday 13 December 2009 and earlier.

With the Big Show production crew on stage afterwards.

The best?
Having thought long and hard about this, I believe that the DPPC role was the one I enjoyed most. That’s not to say that everything else I accomplished has not been cherished. But DPPC was different. I’d moved into a position where I could really influence events, I was managing areas of the institute’s portfolio and making a difference.

IRRI gave me the honour of hosting my despedida during the institute’s 50th gala anniversary dinner on 14 April 2010.

Do I have any regrets about the career choices I made? Not for one second.

I made some useful contributions to science (some of which is still being cited 40 years after publication). I traveled the world. I became fluent (for a while at least) in Spanish. And I have worked alongside many great scientists, fought with a few. Made many great friends, some sadly no longer with us.

Who could ask for more?

 

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Meandering across North Tyneside

I always said I’d never buy a house near running water. But that is precisely what we did in February 2021.

The Brierdene Burn is a small stream in North Tyneside, just over 4 miles long (and a catchment of around 3¾ square miles) that flows in a deep ditch close by my house. Fortunately, the ditch is full of plants, and these slow the flow of water considerably. Even during periods of very heavy rain that we experienced recently, the flow didn’t increase appreciably.

That’s because the length of the Burn from its source west of the A19 trunk road (in a field at the top of a slope) to here is less than half a mile, if that.

As near as I can be certain, its actual source is close by the tree in the top image below. In the lower image, the housing development where I live can be seen on the east side of the A19, perhaps only a quarter of a mile away.

From here it meanders eastwards under the A19, through the lower section of Backworth and onwards until it meets the North Sea at Whitley Bay.

The Brierdene Burn meets the North Sea at Whitley Bay.

Just beyond our housing there is an overflow pool, where the Brierdene Burn is joined by a southern, shorter tributary.

Now I’m not sure if this pool was constructed when the houses were built to reduce the risk of flooding, or whether it’s a natural, ‘ancient’ feature in the landscape. The whole area was once covered in coal mines, and maybe the pool was dug when the mines were opened to reduce flooding. I just don’t know.

I often follow the Brierdene Burn and past the pool on many of my daily walks. They are havens for biodiversity, a changing flora throughout the year, and so many different birds. I haven’t seen any mammals in the pool, although I’ve heard reports of otters. I have seen roe deer a little further east.

The Burn flows under Station Road, where common reeds (Phragmites spp.) flourish.

The Brierdene Burn as it emerges from the overflow pool and just before it disappears under Station Road.

Common reed bed.

And in the Spring, the Burn is an excellent habitat for marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris L.) and yellow flag (Iris pseudacorus L.).

Marsh marigolds in Spring, and emerging yellow flag.

And just yesterday, there were the first signs of Spring, with these hazel catkins shaking in the breeze.

A year ago I decided to take photos of the overflow pool every week from two different locations, and make them into these two timelapse videos.

From the dark dismal days of January to the height of midsummer, there is a succession of different species, with a ring of bulrushes (Typha spp., right below) around the perimeter of the pool developing throughout the year and flowering around August, a flush of bedstraws (Galium spp., left below) in June/July, followed by the purple common knapweed (Centaurea nigra L., middle below).

These are some of the birds¹ which I regularly see around the pool all year round.

Heron
Bullfinch
Goldfinch
House sparrow
Song thrush
Magpie
Jackdaw
Starling
Great tit
Blue tit
Long-tailed tit
Coal tit
Robin
Mallard
Moorhen
Pied wagtail
Herring gull
Wren
Carrion Crow
Dunnock

In summer there are some delightful visitors to the pool, and the occasional species that pass through like the little egret and Canada goose.

Reed bunting
Reed warbler
Whitethroat
Canada goose
Little egret

And on the fields along the Burn on the west side, several other species including winter visitors like the redwing, fieldfare, and golden plover, as well as many of those I see beside the pool.

Golden plover
Grey partridge
Fieldfare
Kestrel
Redwing
Yellowhammer
Rook (by Adrian Pingstone). – My own photograph, taken with a Nikon D5300 DSLR and Nikon 18-200 mm lens., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79435171)
Wood pigeon

Just the other day, I stopped to take this photo, looking east from Hotspur North towards the pool. And disappointed that folks had decided to drop litter instead of taking it home (an issue I commented on not long after we moved to North Tyneside).

Anyway, just as I took the photo, a small bird flew into a gorse bush beside me. My first reaction was a wren. But to my surprise and delight it was a goldcrest (below), Britain’s smallest bird. I’ve only seen a goldcrest once before and then not very clearly. This one stayed there for almost five minutes, hopping through the branches, and giving me a spectacular view.

There’s always some new delight to inspire me around here. I certainly look forward to exploring more of this fascinating landscape that has come to life 40 years after the coal mines were closed.

¹ Bird photos courtesy of Northamptonshire-based photographer Barry Boswell.