This morning I took Miles driving again and he is really getting it. This is a big load of my mind as well as his! This afternoon because the lads felt unwell Fiona and I went out on our own for a walk around Durham. The weather was very cloudy very low cloud in fact but when walking with my lovely wife it feels like the sun is always shining. As soon as we started walking into the centre we had the surprise of our life when we saw three Goosanders cruising around the River and one of them hunting for fish. It has been nearly a year since we last saw them on the River Wear and they are a welcome addition to the diversity and interest of the area. They are a joy to see not least because there are only 2600 breeding pairs in the UK and around the 16,000 pairs overwintering. A rare treat. It is interesting that we mostly see them over the winter period. I have also seen them last year right in the centre of Leeds which was totally amazing. These birds are pretty wild and that was the case today because when we first saw them going into the city centre and they were on the opposite side of the river they had no problem with our presence but when we saw them roughly in the same spot going back to the car we were on the same side of the river as them and they saw us and flew off. They certainly like to keep their distance. They are also known as saw bills because of the serrated nature of their beak which enables them to keep the fish firmly gripped before swallowing. Today we also saw a couple of herons and it is quite startling how well camouflaged a heron is against water. One of them was right beneath the weir and was quite hard to spot so much so that Fiona couldn't see it for a few minutes. It made me think in a speculative way that about the only predator of a heron is a fox and it can only approach a heron from land but when the bird is in the river I do wonder if it is quite hard to see with its grey and off white feathers. Who knows but I will look this up. We had a great cup of coffee at Starbucks and that old romantic feeling kicks in. Of course it does not last long because we are joking too much to get really heavy man. When we got back home we came in all giggly and considering the boys were very subdued with whatever bug they have got we both just pointed out that the show goes on. A nice afternoon. Oh, I also met a good old friend of mine Alan Riley who I have not seen for a few years and he is a drummer who plays with various bands in the Dales and tomorrow there is a blues jam night at the Town Hall pub in Richmond and I am going to play their with my harmonica. It will be a bit of a blast from the past because I used to play in a band with him when I was 16 right through to when I was 18. I reckon I'll see quite a few old faces from my past as well and that will be nice because some of them I will not have seen since the 70s. Something to look forward to!

Yesterday was a good day. In the morning I did a lot of countertenor singing practice and my voice is finally getting stronger particularly in the lower notes. It is nearly fit for public consumption. I am sounding like a rougher version of Jimmy Somerville of the Communards. I cannot sing as straight as he does because I am primarily a jazz player but that's good as it is nice to develop originality. Because over the next month I will be going out playing with various people on my harmonica I did quite a bit of harmonica practice for once. Although, because of a lot of neglect I have become a bit out of practice all my former glories are returning! I improvise a lot better these days on the rock and pop songs because I keep it simple. I still overplay when I do jazz but I am trying to learn that less is more.

At three o'clock in the afternoon with my family we went for a walk in Durham in the evening light. Miles drove us there and that was really good because he is getting the driving at last. We started walking from Shincliffe just outside Durham and the river was fairly high because of the previous rain and as we walked into the centre along the river in the gathering light we saw two herons and a salmon attempting to jump up the weir. I am still struck by seeing salmon in the River Wear in Durham but there you go! We were going to be Inshanghai restaurant but it was a bit early so we decided to walk around the town up to the cathedral. At the moment, I am running up every slope little or large that I come across because I want to get my legs in training for running up a Lakeland mountain as soon as possible. So every time I see a hill I dash off yelling "hill training" and quite often my family comes running up behind me. It sounds crazy but a man has to do what he needs to do and I really need to do a mountain : running! By the time we got to the cathedral we realised we could not go down the back path because it was closed so we had to walk back through the town again. The food at the restaurant was great as usual.

After getting stuck into two large platefuls of food and the boys did even better than that we went up to St Oswald's Hall to Baha'i event: the Celebration of the Birthday of Baha'u'llah. It was a really good do and I saw many Baha'i friends that had not seen for a while because we do so much in our own community directly being involved with the public as well as doing the family thing with our children and relatives. We tell people about the Baha'i Faith wherever we go but only if it is relevant to a conversation. The last thing that anybody wants these days is to be "told" about our beliefs. Sure, if somebody brings up why they think things are going wrong in our society on any issue as a family of individuals we give our view about that which is a mixture of Baha'i beliefs and what we personally think needs to be done. What I liked about the event last night is that a lot of the people were just talking about ordinary subjects although I had a good discussion with a very nice man from Iran who was a Muslim although he also said that he was an atheist. An atheist Muslim I think that makes sense but I do understand what he was getting at. He said that there were a lot of problems in Iran and he was particularly against religion : any religion. I asked him why he came to a religious event and he said he was just interested so I made the joke that coming from a country where it is popularly perceived in the West that it is full of religious fanatics that we at this Baha'i event were making him feel at home because he thought all religious people were fanatics ! He is a good man and I gave him my card and hope to see him in the near future. I think I will. He is studying sociology at Durham University and back in Iran he was studying engineering. I told him he should go back to engineering! Our lads also managed to woof even more food down at this event after the restaurant and I seriously wondered where they put it!

We left the Baha'i event at about nine o'clock and we walked back to the car taking a shortcut which seemed like a good idea at the time but when we went down this path it was completely black. It was a hoot and we should do that again. When we left the Inshanghai restaurant our lads wanted to walk around the river when it was all dark and I said quite firmly "No". It is all right doing that sort of thing on your own but when there are four of you there is a high chance somebody (my wife!?) will indeed go straight into the river. Next year though we will take torches and go by the river as it will be good fun. Miles drove us back and again he is picking up the driving quite well now and on a scale from one to 10 he has been at one for about 15 hours worth of driving just not being able to get first gear basically. But yesterday he rose up to five and I am sure that he will be able to take his test early next year.

Last night I had a really good conversation with a friend of mine Darren Howell a Durham Baha'i who is now married and for quite a long time I always teased him about getting married. Well now he has finally done it and he has a lovely nice baby as well. His wife is a delightful woman and from what Darren was saying about boys needing fathers, really good stuff, I know that he is a good dad as well as husband and will continue doing that. It is funny but some people you just know are going to do it all right which is good for everybody. It was quite funny because he was sat with his baby in front of him in a car seat baby carrier and when the lad woke up he looked at his dad and then started just gazing at me for about 10 minutes I think. I do not know what it is sometimes , children just seem to lock onto me. One time when I took the boys skateboarding a couple of years back in Richmond there was a five-year-old playing in the skate park and I just sat there reading my maths textbook minding my own business. Within a few minutes as the boys were doing their thing on the ramps she came over and started asking me questions about what I was doing so I asked her what she was doing on her own so she told me all about her mum and dad working and that she had a woman looking after her at the other end of the park but as she was doing this she started to get cosy and snuggled herself into my side which I was not best pleased about because I really did want to just get on reading but we continued on with the dialogue. I asked Fiona about this while some children home in on me sometimes and she says it is because I smile at them and notice them with my eyes. Apparently this is something that primary teachers do all the time to get the children's attention. Oh well that is something I must try and stop but have not succeeded yet but it has also been the case, maybe because the boys have got a lot bigger now that small children do not approach me in skate parks these days! Mind you, there are plenty of teenagers who talk to me in Rkade skate park in Redcar.

Today, Sunday, I took the lads down to the skate park or should I say Miles drove us down there and he is really getting into it. The lads had a good session and I had a good laugh with two of my friends down there two of the mums who take their lads on a Sunday. Scooters have been really good for the skate park and it is nice to see lots of young people really going for it and getting a lot of exercise. It will put years on their life although there may be a few broken wrists on the way. It's worth it! In the afternoon we went to visit my mum and she was very well but after she heard of the woes of Miles learning to drive she said she would light a candle for him in the Catholic Church that she goes to. I said that was okay so long as there was an "L" on it! I think just the thought of the prayer was working even before she went to the church because Miles took us home and had an excellent session doing pretty much everything right. Good dog and for all the worry he has given me this week with his driving : bad dog! Still that's kids they drive you crazy and worry you but they do get there if you give them intelligence and a good push along. Direction and motivation are all that most children ever need. A good weekend.

Yesterday was a good day. In the morning I took Miles out for a driving lesson and he is now starting to get it. In the afternoon with the family I had a really good walk around Durham. We did a different walk because I wanted to look at a driving route for Miles to take us to Durham avoiding the motorway. So we parked up near the Durham crematorium and walked through the woods and on to our usual route. In the woods, because it had been raining very hard the night before there were large amounts of leaf debris and sand strewn across the path carried by the rainwater. The woods were really good because the leaves falling off the trees had become quite deep. When we got down to the weirs in Durham we saw salmon attempting to get over the weir right between a pair of cormorants who were looking hopefully no doubt to try and get a meal. The trouble was the salmon are bigger than the cormorants so they had no chance. It was remarkable to see salmon because about 20 years ago the River Wear from just above Durham was quite dead and polluted and now it is alive and vibrant with life. No matter how bad it looks for the ecology on our planet there are some positive moves happening. It is the same on Teeside where the River Tees also has salmon running up it because several years ago we saw them attempting to leap over the Tees barrage. Our usual perches in the centre were all taken up so we had to have biscuit break up by the St Oswald's Hall Park .

We had a good evening set up because Fiona and I went to see Digital Earth at Kennedy's Bar in York. This was the first night out just Fiona and me for as long as I can remember at least 10 years I think. It was a great drive down because we played Bob Dylan and when we got to York we walked in from a Clifton past York District Hospital and as we were going past I noticed that we could see into the corridor of the maternity unit and off the corridor where the birth rooms for women to have babies were. This is where Fiona gave birth to our 2 fine boys. I had mixed memories about this because the birth of Miles was quite difficult but Clifford's birth was very easy. That's if you can say that giving birth to a child is easy. I may regret saying this! When we got to Kennedy's Bar Digital Earth were having a run through and the band sounded pretty good . I really enjoyed talking with Sybil's husband Jon Wood and then I went to talk with Nicky Young the wife of the keyboard player David Young. It was really nice sitting there and noticing all these club, party type people going by because the last time I ever was in a pub was when I went to the Irish sessions in York and they were mostly folk people there who were very different! Digital Earth started playing at 11 o'clock and they were really good. I really enjoyed getting swayed away by the brilliant rhythm and keyboard section and then listening to Jon Woods excellent flugelhorn playing and the vocals of the lovely girl singer and a man who was a MC doing rap like speaking alongside the singing. I thought he was excellent and the rhythms reminded me of bebop rhythms which is quite interesting. Very syncopated and catchy and I actually wonder if anybody else has noticed how bebopish rap rhythms are. It has inspired me to think of my own songwriting having some sort of rap talking going on as well or before and after the words I write. An interesting idea. I also found it really funny that these big bouncers were walking through the club to make sure everything was all right which made me feel quite reassured. These characters I always find quite interesting because whilst they are very big and strong which is quite good for grabbing somebody quickly and subduing them to propel them out of the club they absolutely cannot run! It was lovely seeing Sybil again the last time being at the Peace Festival in York. Fiona and I also talked for a bit with Jon Woods mother June, Sybil's mother-in-law who is a really nice lady and she told us to get in touch with her to go and see her when we have another night out in York. We left the Bar at about 12:30 a.m. and walking through York was interesting because there were so many people around. The last time I walked around York at that time of night in the late 1980s there was hardly anybody around. York certainly has a more late night cosmopolitan feel about it than it did in the late 1980s and this is really good. On the way back going through the Vale of York we went through a huge rainstorm but given that Fiona was asleep after 10 minutes in the car she left me on my own to fight my way through it and listen to Leonard Cohen as well. She didn't actually wake up until I parked the car on our drive at around 1:45 a.m..

A lovely day and a really good night out. Thank you very much Sybil, Digital Earth and my lovely wife for wearing a nice short skirt which really showed off her hiking legs. I have never seen my wife wearing such a skirt out and about and I noticed myself staring at it several times during the evening particularly when she was dancing through the Digital Earth set. She and Sybil danced through the whole thing. Two fine wives, mothers, and ladies!

Today, myself and the whole family went over to visit Fiona's mum at Dalton in the Southern Lake District. We stopped off at Whitbarrow Hill a huge chunk of limestone about 700 feet at its highest point and about 3 miles square in area. It stands up from the coastal plain and from the top you can pretty much see most of the peaks of the Lake District. We walked up by the disused quarry where there is a lot of limestone to be seen and because Fiona and I are trying to get even fitter we jogged up some of the slopes to the top. There was a breeze and the leaves were fluttering brown and golden as we went to the woods to come out of them at the top and on to the fairly desolate landscape. There is a lot of limestone pavement and we overturned a few rocks to see some fossils which we saw but they were only fragments. Alongside one of the limestone pavements we saw where the glacier had gouged out a notch from the pavement and the remains of the rocks were splayed out in a drift pattern downstream so to speak. I find these landscapes are very exciting. Just before we got to the top I noticed some sort of owl pellet but in this case it was full of the hard outer shells of orange and yellow berries and there was a beetle mixed in with it as well. We know it wasn't an owl pellet because there were no bones so we are surmising at the moment that it was a crossbill dropping. I'll have to further investigate it may not be either of these but it was fascinating to see such a wet and sticky and well formed orange pellet a bit like a fat sausage perfectly formed on the path. I saw another one on the way back but it had been trodden over by hikers. The views from the top were magnificent and we could easily see the Langdale's and up to the Sca Fell Pike's. Looking north-east we could see right over the Howgills. It was a good walk and right at the start of it we saw a buzzard which is always very exciting. I also saw what I thought was a peregrine falcon but when I finally located the bird it was actually a kestrel about 200 feet up in the cliffs and very hard to find. One day I hope to see one of the peregrines that nest on the cliffs. Coming back down from the top Fiona and I did some more mini jogging up the slopes and when we got to the moderately steep descent going back to the car I jogged down the path which was great fun because it was a bit slippy and I sort of slipped down some of it.

When we got to Fiona's mother's rest home Veronica was really well and pleased to see us. The time we spent there was a mixture of good conversation, quiet moments of thoughtfulness, reading the Sunday Times whilst Fiona and Veronica looked at photos on the net book and some laughter. Miles and Clifford have got very good talking with her which is a bit difficult because she has vascular dementia which means her attention span is quite limited but her capacity to think is as good as ever. I was proud of the lads today because it is an indication of how they will be with Fiona and I and any other older citizens when we all get really old. The clocks were put back today and it was a very dark ride back over the tops of the Pennines which as always I find a bit disconcerting at first but the next time we do the journey it will be as easy as pie. It was also chucking it down with rain which didn't help but I always take pride in getting everybody back quickly and safely. I am hoping the next time we go over to see Veronica that Miles will be able to drive some of the journey. An excellent day and a great end to the holiday. Everybody is fully primed for the coming half term's work!

This afternoon with the family I had a nice 4 mile walk around Richmond starting off from Quakers Lane and then going down to a place called Round Howe which is a round hill carved out from the surrounding bank when the river was diverted during the last ice age. It is known as an oxbow river because the river used to go around the small hill and now it just goes straight on. The caravan site nearby for static caravans looked gorgeous set against Billy Banks wood the leaves nicely browning off the National trust wood on the other side of the river and Fiona and I often comment about how nice it would be to live in one of the static caravans right next to the River Swale. We walked up to the top of the bank so we were walking in the trees and Fiona and I jogged up the steep bits because we want to get our legs stronger for hillwalking. I really enjoyed that style of jogging but I noticed that we were only going as fast as the boys were walking! There were also huge piles of leaves because it had been windy for the last two days and we were kicking through them like little children! From the top of the bank we descended down to the Green Bridge through a forest of very large sycamores and elms. At the football pitch opposite the castle we had a good chat with one of the football organisers who was telling us that dog owners want the football pitch reassigning by the council to be a village green so they can continue to walk their dogs actually on the pitch which of course leaves doggy poo all over the place. These sports league people want the pitch staying as it is so they can keep dog owners off the playing field and I must point out that there is a huge area for dog owners to walk dogs in Richmond all over the place! So this really is from the dog owners point of view a very nitpicky bit of political action which I hope they lose. There is full access to the actual field because the Coast to Coast walk runs alongside the river and there is also a 10 metre stretch up to a new fence that has been put in to stop the football players ball from rolling into the river! It is nice to see politics in action and it will be interesting to see what happens. We signed his petition. The dog owners will win because they have more influence on the council and whilst there has always been a lot of sport in Richmond there has never really been a lot of support for it. Richmond is not a good place for young people to be which is why so many of them do really well academically because getting into college and trades is the only way out of a traditionally quite repressive town for young people unless you have a job and happen to fit in with the country style activities that go on there for example lots of walking, shooting, folk clubs and riding horses. If you are into any of those Richmond is a great place! Saying that a lot of the nicest people I have ever known live in Richmond it's just everyone is very set in their ways is the most diplomatic way I can put it.

We went to the old railway station because the boys wanted a "good ice cream", sniffy children, and then went back into town where I saw an old friend of mine Dave Price and I was amazed to see a friend from York called Jackie come strolling along. Jackie who I do not know her surname because even though I have known her for nearly 30 years I have never asked her what her surname is. The last time I saw her she had moved from Gunnerside right at the top of Swaledale to Healaugh near Reeth in the middle of Swaledale, and then back into York which is where I saw her last. Today she told me she had moved back up to Reeth after a spell in Brighton and was living above the ice cream parlour. No matter where I go in Swaledale or York over each year period of the last 30 years I have always run into Jackie. She knew a former partner of mine Toni Bunnell and she always asks me how Toni is and I have not seen Toni for quite a while although we are in contact via e-mail because she is a really great woman. Jackie looked very well trim and fit as usual and she is about 10 years older than me. Our lads are sometimes mystified at the simple fact that we always run into Jackie! Well, Jackie is always nice to run into! I also got the good news that a long-standing friend of mine James Player who I have known for around 40 years has actually settled down with the lady who he had an on off relationship with and now it is permanently on and they are living in York together. This totally amazed me and Fiona because we were just saying that James would never settle down. Well, we were both wrong because James has settled down. Go James! A really nice afternoon out.

This morning I kickbiked 8 miles around the outskirts of Durham and then through the centre back to Shincliffe. I could not find the right path to go on even when I had asked a local the way so I went out over this field and a local guy waved me over to the path! And I always tell the boys to take an OS map! The journey was a mixture of kickbicking and walking and I enjoyed the off-road sections. It is still the case that when you kickbike you do not see as much nature but it is really brilliant swooping around. On one section of road going through the various Durham University Halls of residence I was doing at least 30 miles an hour! Kickbicking is very sociable because it is easy to step off the bike when walkers are around in fact it is very comfortable to do that because it is more strenuous than cycling and because it has a more limited range of movement I find I get a bit stiff so the getting off parts are more than welcome. As usual riding a kickbike is quite a head turner because it is really a giant scooter and when I stopped for a coffee in the centre the young man who worked at Starbucks asked me loads of questions about it. I am always quite surprised how timid some people are because I offered the man a ride on the bike around the square but he declined. A couple of years ago in Newcastle when I got waylaid by a group of old age pensioners because they were so interested in my kickbike several of these fine old ladies actually had a go on it! A nice morning and I have finally got rid of the stiffness out of my legs from going up Skiddaw last Monday!

Yesterday afternoon with the family we had a 5 mile walk around Whitby. From the clifftop we headed down to the beach to walk up to Sandsend walking alongside the well eroded cliffs. The beach had changed since we were last there because the waves had formed a very shallow mini gorge parallel to the cliffs removing the sand in the process and exposing a load of rocks and gravel. Amongst all of these were rocks from the Lake District and from the Yorkshire Dales. We saw Permian pebbles all red because the UK was a desert at the time, little vegetation hence a high iron oxide content because plants take it out of the soil which is why we know there was a desert at the time and red rocks now, and limestone rocks which were full of fossils and which we usually see when we are up in the Dales. Those rocks had done a bit of travelling! The whole of the beach had changed from a high sand content to a high gravel content. A few days ago there had been quite a storm on the north-east coast and we saw lots of uprooted seaweed, loads of starfish and some crabs which unusually were completely whole and had not been picked apart by the seagulls. We only walked a mile up the beach and then back down again but it was super interesting. For once our attention was not taken up completely by the erosion features in the glacial till cliffs.

We then walked through the town which was not that busy and worked our way over to Whitby steps which take you up to the abbey. Fiona's legs had got a bit better but she went up pretty slowly and I was feeling fairly bullish so I lightly jogged two thirds of the way and then I had to walk the rest! The path was closed at the top so we had to go through the Youth hostel premises to pick up the path again on the other side and that was a very nice diversion. Back in the town Fiona bought some Lapsong souchon tea and the lads wanted some kippers so we got four pairs of those. Very nice! It always amazes me how the Whitby area changes slightly every time we go there mostly because we notice the changes on the cliffs and beaches but the light and the mood of the place is never the same. Decidedly sleepy yesterday! We had tea at Hadleys as usual and then an episode of Star Trek when we got home. A good afternoon out.