Posts

Start Here : Explanations

Image
  Section One is about the blog and how to use it. Section Two   is bike routes, maps and notes. Section One  The dictionary defines 'pootle' as 'to move somewhere slowly and with no real purpose'. This isn't a diary or (usually) a diatribe. Rather, it is a home for: * My collection of  bike routes in the countryside outside N & W London.  * A  gallimaufry of notes. Some provide context on history and landscapes for the bike route and others are simply things about offbeat places and that interest me.  The format  is configured primarily for reading on a phone so  brevity is (usually) my lodestar. One result is inconsistent formatting between platforms, and typos are almost my trademark, but at least it proves I am not using AI!  Everything will always be 'work in progress' and I do this to enjoy it and grant myself a dispensation to  digress, widely, frequently and pointlessly and to update older stuff when I get around to it. I am not treating walking

Mapping Apps Review

Image
Some Revisions. March 2024.  For years I used the excellent 'Viewranger' app for maps and planning trips but this disappeared into the vortex of global capitalism and re-emerged, much changed, as part of Outdooractive, a German company with international aspirations.  I have searched far and wide for a better replacement, applying three main criteria namely whether the free versions: Gave you good quality maps, preferably usable offline,  Allowed me to upload my routes and for you to access them.  Would import my detailed notes on interesting or entertaining places on the routes.  This wasn’t straightforward mostly because my needs will probably be different from yours as a user and my experience is muddied but also because I am a paying user of some of the apps and not others.  Starting at the end, my conclusion was that, compared to Viewranger, they were all inferior, imperfect and irritating.  Two major issues for me were: They want to subjugate your ideas about where you

The Albert Memorial

Image
  In 1840 Queen Victoria, the last Hanoverian monarch in Britain, proposed marriage to her cousin Franz August Karl Albert Emanuel of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. This was the Royal's family name until during World War One they decided that the optics were unhelpful and changed it to Windsor.  Initially, the Great British Public did not see Albert as a Premier League signing, but just another German wannabe, but it transpired that he was a good egg. He championed education, science, the arts and the abolition of slavery worldwide and promoted Britain's claims to pre-eminence in them through Great Exhibition, just down the road in Hyde Park. He was also a good husband, covering both state and parenting duties for Victoria when she was pregnant or off running her Empire. But in 1816 he died, aged only 42. She was distraught and for the remaining 40 years of her life, only wore black. This sounds a bit extreme to me, but it must have simplified the wardrobe choices. The Great Exhibition

The Rough Guide to Hell

Image
Pandemonium This is an introduction to my short series of posts what Hell was though to look like.    I like to write about places, mostly real but sometimes imaginary. When we think about them, the distinction between the two blurs. What would Tintagel mean without Arthur, Dedham Vale without Constable or, further afield, Olympus without gods?  These relationships change over time. Now, in a world increasingly defined by technology, dreams inhabit landscapes shaped by science fiction, fantasy or escapism. I haven’t a clue what people dreamed of in medieval times but would bet that their hopes and fears were far more influenced by their relationship with the almighty and that heaven and hell were very real to them. We haven’t quite shaken that off. Centuries later Ian Paisley was stoking the same hellfire from his pulpit in Antrim. How did people once imagine heaven and hell? The attractions of heaven were described in terms that were cloudy in every sense, so I wanted to explore their

Bosch's Garden of Delights

Image
  Hieronymus Bosch is a man of mystery. He left little besides his paintings. We only know that he was born in the mid-1400s and died in 1516 in Brabant in what is now the Netherlands. He seems to have had a conservative take on his Catholic faith and   a poor opinion of the great mass of humanity. His painting allowed the old sourpuss to vent and revel in imagining  the possible fate of the ungodly.  His most famous work is the triptych pictured above, which hangs in the Prado in Madrid. The first two panels show the Garden of Eden and the sardonically named 'Garden of Earthly Delights'. The third panel depicts hell.  The picture is both frightening, amusing and captivating and  I am not alone in being drawn to it. An e ye-tracking study at the Pardo showed that most visitors shared my sadomasochistic predilections. Here is the Triptych 'in situ'.  The Triptych in the Prado  The pic below gets you closer to the hell panel. The  thumbnail is small but the actual file is

Danté's Inferno

Image
  In Florence in the 1300’s, in his book  ‘The Divine Comedy’,  Dante Alighieri imagined himself taken led on a tour of hell by the Roman poet Virgil.  Hell just wasn’t a hazy religious concept in those days, people believed it to be a real place. Danté pictures himself as lost in a forest, this being a neat allegory for his confused mind. Virgil’s itinerary is aimed at clarifying things for him by pointing out the horrors in store in the afterlife for the impious or sinful. I thought about writing this post as a riff on ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’ but decided against it. What goes on there is thin gruel compared with some of the horrors here. So, don your hazmat suit and let’s follow them on their pootle around hell.  Trigger warning. This isn’t really a comedy unless you are a sadomasochist. A ‘commedia’ was a story with a happy ending. And the original is not an easy read, even in translation; the phrasing is alien and the tale is obtuse, with lots of allusions to people