Roger's Rambles

Grafham, Cambs — November 2011

The Camping and Caravanning Club has a quiet little campsite at Grafham, near Huntingdon, where I spent a week. It’s close to the village and half a mile from the reservoir at Grafham Water. Footpaths and bridle paths criss-cross the area.

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There’s nothing much in the village – no shop, pub or garage, just some houses, a church and an Indian restaurant (in what was the Montagu Arms pub). The reservoir is the star of the show.

Before taking its present name, Grafham Water was first called Diddington Reservoir (after the brook whose valley it flooded in 1966) then Grafham Reservoir. It’s a mature lake now, covering 1,500 acres (600 hectares) and with a well-vegetated shore.

Buildings dot the perimeter. They include a visitor centre, bike hire depot, pet food shop, restaurant and sailing club. A large aeration tower, shown in all three photos, stands in the water near the northern shore.

A popular local activity is birdwatching, the lake being both a nature reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest (or SSSI).

On a couple of evenings, while walking Jenny, I stopped to listen to an early evening recital from a Song Thrush that was serenading the neighbourhood. (A friend, John. identified it for me from a recording I made with my mobile phone.) The thrush’s song is wonderful at any time but in the dark and that late in the year, it was entrancing.

Like many of our wild birds, its numbers have declined, falling to half what they were 40 years ago. See here for more data on it and other species.

Fishing is another favourite pastime at Grafham, the water containing Trout and some Pike and Zander. The fishing I saw was either from a boat or on foot.

I saw no coarse fishermen by the waterside. You know the type – slouched motionless on a folding seat, surrounded by a cartload of paraphernalia and looking depressed.

Angling is reckoned to be the most popular participant sport in Britain, with over a million people engaging in it regularly. That means big business for owners of water rights and suppliers of equipment and bait.

The equipment makers have persuaded many fishermen that they can’t follow their hobby properly unless they have the latest gear and newest gadgets. It’s the same as with golf, hiking, photography, cycling and, of course, caravanning. Marketing works.

Bletchley Manor

I recently remade contact with Peter, whom I’d worked with about 10 years ago but had lost touch with. We agreed to meet, Peter suggesting we do so at Bletchley Park, the wartime code-breaking centre near Milton Keynes.

Formally known as the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), Bletchley Park employed over 9,000 people at its busiest, yet its existence was a closely held secret. With the aid of the first computers in the world, cryptographers were able to decode up to 4,000 messages a day from all branches of the German, Japanese and Italian military.

The centre’s contribution to the Allied war effort was immense, yet the world did not know about it until the 1970s. Wikipedia (for once) provides a good and detailed account.

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I knew a little about the place, having read Robert Harris’s book, Enigma, and watched the film based on it. They’re fine entertainment but you can’t rely on works of fiction for guidance. (U-571, anyone?)

Peter came with his wife, Karen. They live not far away and had been several times before but this was my first visit. We met on a sunny Sunday morning in the booking hall, which was thronging with visitors.

Our first stop was in the same building, to see a copy of a Bombe decoding machine being demonstrated. Bombe is a nonce name, supposedly deriving from the Polish name of a different sort of decoding device and in turn jokingly based on the name of an ice-cream (think bombe surprise).

The Bombe was the brainchild of that ill-starred genius, Alan Turing. Once its design was stabilised, it went into production. British Tabulating Machines, a forerunner of ICL (now, ironically, part of Fujitsu), built over 200 Bombes at its factory at Letchworth. Most were destroyed after the war.

The Bombe was whirring and rattling away, working its magic on a piece of text from a German Enigma code machine. It reminded me of this much earlier device, which you can see at Coldharbour Mill at Uffculme, in Devon. (Worth a visit if you’re down that way.)

Both machines were noisy, smelly, dirty and dangerous to use, and required constant fettling, usually over long hours, by young people with nimble fingers. At Bletchley Park (and its five outstations), Wrens did the work. At the mill, and at others like it throughout the country, it was mainly children.

Where the devices also differ, apart from in their purpose, is that the spinning machine is wholly mechanical (and was driven by steam-powered belts). The Bombe is electro-mechanical, reliant on electrical switches and relays to spin its own sort of yarn.

Some other devices in the museum, such as the Colossus computer, used valves. These were faster but also expensive and fragile and gave out heat, sometimes in bothersome quantities. Valves are hard to get hold of today but the museum gets regular donations from attic clearers.

(The transistor did not exist until after the war. It revolutionised computing, telecommunications and many other aspects of modern life. Everything from power stations to wristwatches now relies on these tiny devices.)

In the same wing as the Bombe was a collection of German coding machines, including several Enigmas in glass cases. The Bombes and other devices at Bletchley were there to reveal the riddles wrapped in a mystery that the Enigmas produced. (Churchill was a firm supporter of the activities at Bletchley and visited often)

Upstairs in the same block was a charming museum of wartime toys and household furniture and fittings from the time. I remembered much of it, which makes me feel ancient.

Peter jokingly remarked that the housewife pictured is an untidy worker. She has also left the fridge door open. (Yes, I know it’s for show.)

One of the exhibits in the toy museum was a pre-war kit for making lead casts. On the box was this warning: “Please ask your mother which saucepan you can use before melting the lead.” I can’t see that being allowed to go on sale today!

Elsewhere in the museum

We next went to the manor house, stopping for a light lunch in Hut 4, next to it. Today, the mansion is a conference and wedding centre as well as housing some Churchill memorabilia. Pictures and photographs hang on the wood-panelled walls.

I thought the house unattractive. It had been built in a hotchpotch of over-ornate styles and was gloomy inside. None of that matters, really, since it was its historical significance we were there to absorb, not its architectural qualities.

The wartime buildings cluster around the Victorian manor house and meander off to the north east. Some of the code-breakers worked in simple wooden huts. Others were in low concrete structures made in the usual spartan War Department style. The contrast with the mansion is stark.

Our next, and final, stop was at the Colossus display. This is another rebuilding project undertaken by enthusiasts. Here is a BBC video about the project that also gives you an idea of the context within which Colossus operated.

A different charity runs the Colossus section; it’s only £1 extra for oldies. Before you get to the computer, there is this long room full of other equipment.

There were demonstrations in progress here as well, but my attention was wandering by then (and the Colossus demonstrator had an unfortunate speaking style).

I liked it

The technicalities of the machines on display would have gripped me when I was younger but not these days. Besides, I know I can always read about that sort of stuff afterwards.

The key was seeing the machines working and doing so in situ. It gave me what I went there for – a fuller appreciation of the remarkable achievements of the people who worked at Bletchley.

In that, the museum succeeds brilliantly. The state of the buildings, the homeliness of some of the displays and the low-key enthusiasm everywhere lend the place an authenticity that a more professional operation could only fake. Everyone gave visitors a friendly welcome, even the chap at the gate.

I of course also enjoyed meeting Peter and Karen and going round with them. We had a relaxing afternoon and managed to fit in a lot of catching up.

There’s some lottery money possibly coming the museum’s way and some from Google, which is sort of good news. I hope the place doesn’t become too smoothly polished. It’s its makeshift and amateurish air that is a large part of its charm.

The museum wouldn’t exist if it were not for the work of those amateurs (in both senses). They correctly saw that this is a national asset and we have much to be grateful to them for.

Successive Governments had suppressed information about the work at Bletchley and destroyed many of the machines and their designs. They left most of the buildings to rot or be sold off to developers. The people working there were even required to keep their activities secret until 30 years after the war. It was a poor way to thank them for helping to save the nation.

You can’t cram in everything at Bletchley with one visit, that’s clear from this list, but if you’re anywhere near you should go at least once. You’ll feel differently afterwards about some aspects of the Second World War and you’ll see what geniuses, and ordinary people, can achieve under pressure.

Prices are reasonable and the guidebook is worth the money.

When I got back to Grafham, I bought the Kindle version of Sinclair McKay’s The Secret Life of Bletchley Park…. It’s light on technology and concentrates on the people and what it was like living and working there. I’m already halfway through it and have enjoyed what I’ve read.

02. December 2011 by RogerGW
Categories: On the road | Leave a comment

Pitsund, Sweden — July & August 2010 (part 3 of 3)

And here’s the last part of the tale of my stay near the northern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. I begin with some backtracking, as I haven’t told you about Piteå itself.

On the road to Piteå

As I said in Part1, I drove mainly up the E4 to get to this area of Sweden. It’s a good, fast road but boring. Rest places (rastplatser) break the monotony and allow one to freshen up. I pulled into one at Ljusvattnet, in the province of Västerbotten (“VEST-eh-bott-en” = West Bothnia). It’s by a lake, 60 miles south of Pitsund.

As well as the usual amenities, there was a motorhome belonging to Trafikverket. This is the Swedish national traffic authority, formed only that year. Two cheerful young employees sat outside, ready to tell people about the work of their organization.

There was a table covered in free maps, leaflets, pens and such. I took one of their maps of rest places, which proved useful. Sweden has nearly 350 rastplatser; there’s an annotated list here.

We don’t have an equivalent map in Britain but, then, neither do we have enough rest places to make it worth printing. The best we caravanners usually get is a litter-strewn wasteland at the back of a motorway services area.

In Piteå

I liked the place. It’s large for a town, with a population of around 40,000 (similar to that of Salisbury or Stirling), but feels small. The streets are open and airy and, of course, clean. Much of the centre is pedestrianised and there are museums, an art gallery and a theatre. See the official Web site for a list of attractions.

Piteå has many independent shops as well as the big supermarkets — Coop (not the same as Britain’s Co-op), ICA and Willy:s [sic]. There’s also a branch of Systembolaget (“Sys-tame-BOLAHG-et” = system company), the state-run chain of off-licences. They are the only shops in which you can legally buy wines, spirits and strong beers.

Separate from the town’s 17^th-century wooden church is a bell tower (behind it here) sheathed in wooden tiles. The campanile stands squatly, like a spaceship poised to propel its clangorous cargo into polar orbit.

Near the church is this handsome building from 1894 that houses the local high school.

Tourism and leisure are important sources of employment and income; there are sandy beaches, marinas and even a golf course. On the outskirts are paper mills, a huge electricity generating station and a science park.

To Jävre

My final excursion was to the village of Jävre (“YAIV-ray”). This lies 6 miles south of the campsite, just off the E4 and adjoining a fjord with the same name. That leads to the Gulf of Bothnia – everything does.

For me, the main attraction was an exhibition of the 1960s. This resides in a dumpy building (culprit unknown) that also contains the tourism office for people entering Norbotten from the south.

The centre was part of a mid-60s development called “Nation-One”. This fell into disuse when Sweden switched to driving on the right in 1967, leaving the building on the wrong side of the road just two years after it opened.

Following a period of disuse, the building was restored as part of a local scheme called “Entrance Jävre”. The scheme is, I believe, a success but nothing’s going to make me like that building, even though it’s now listed.

Adjoining the building is a restplats, with some shops a short walk away. It’s also the start of an archaeology trail around some Stone Age barrows further inland.

The centrepiece of the exhibition, which was free, was this Ford Anglia saloon from 1961. In the boot was a picnic set and on the steering wheel a fluffy cover. No dangling dice, though. Perhaps they came later. (Note the plastic lampshades on the room’s ceiling.)

Other period objects included furniture, domestic appliances, magazines and record sleeves. Most of it looked naff through modern eyes. Not an era I’d want to return to, except for the music, although I wouldn’t mind being as fit as I was then.

On the other side of the E4 is a small harbour.

Alongside it is a fishing camp with caravan pitches, and a museum containing a collection of about 6,000 old woodworking tools. My father would have enjoyed that. He served his apprenticeship building wooden trawlers in Grimsby before moving south to manage the repair of (mostly metal) naval vessels at Portsmouth Dockyard. Despite the change, Dad still loved wood and woodworking.

Also on the dock side of the road is an old lighthouse, Skags Fyr (“Fyr” means lighthouse; “Skags” is the short name of where it was). Nils Gustaf von Heidenstam designed it in 1871.

The lighthouse stood for many years at Skagsudde, about 190 miles south of Jävre. (You can probably guess which coast that is on.) It was replaced in 1957 and put in storage, being erected at Jävre in 1970.

Swedish food

At last we get to the final topic. This section won’t be encyclopaedic; just a few random observations. (Wikipedia goes into the subject in detail.)

As you might imagine, a land with deep and long winters will go in for hearty food – solid grub that sticks to your ribs. Piteå has its own speciality in this, the Pitepalt, a kind of potato dumpling. This is filled with meat (usually pork), jam or berries and boiled in salt water. I tried some but gave up after one. I wanted to be able to move again that day.

Although normally made at home, Pitepalts are sold as a takeaway food in Öjebyn. What’s said to be the world’s only Paltzeria [sic] is there, part of a motel. I didn’t go in.

On the subject of takeaway food, I mentioned earlier the Swedes’ love of hamburgers. The main local rival to MacDonald’s is the Max chain. (Any resemblance of name is, of course, coincidental.) Max reportedly once had a riverside branch with a drive-through for jet-skis!

Berries

The Swedes are mad for berries. In late summer, they go into the woods and pick various low-growing fruits for eating, cooking with and jam-making.

Blueberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) is a favourite. It’s a member of the Heather family, with vitamin-packed fruit the shape and size of peas. The Swedes know it as blåbär, skomakarbär or slyngon. It has have several English names, too, including bilberry, black whortles, blueberry, blaeberry (in Scotland), huckleberry and whortleberry.

Local shops sell special gatherers for them.

Another popular Ericaceous berry is the Lingon or Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea — cowberry in Britain). Two local favourites from the Rose family are Arctic Bramble (Rubus arcticus or, in Swedish, Åkerbär) and Cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus — Hjortron). The latter likes damp ground.

Commercial pickers are also active in the woods. Some of them are people from poorer countries who have been tempted over with promises of high wages. These don’t always materialise. Pickers come from as far away as Bangladesh, China, Thailand and Vietnam.

Stalls for strawberry sellers are common in shopping precincts and malls. Here’s a comely Jordgubbar seller I photographed in Örebro, in the south of Sweden.

Other foods

Swedes like their nibbles.

And have a sweet tooth.

Most food stores carry a wide range of breads and rolls, some of them deliciously nutty. Cinnamon features in many of the sweet pastries, so I was lost. One of my favourites was an apricot bread revved up with cinnamon and ginger. Ruinous.

Lennart introduced me to a favourite bread of his. It’s a dark and sweet Finnish loaf called Malax. I guessed from the taste that it has black treacle in it. The list of ingredients includes syrup, so perhaps it does.

Malax is famous for being long lasting, the maker saying it can be kept at room temperature “for several months”. Mine never stayed around that long.

Dairy products are popular. Yoghurt comes in 1-litre tetrapaks, not diddy little plastic tubs. (Tetra Pak is a Swedish company.) Mayonnaise appears on everything. I found it next to impossible to buy any kind of salad or sandwich that was without it.

And in case you’re wondering, the Swedish for a Swede, as in turnip, is Kålrot (“cawl-roat” = cabbage root).

Fish

Sweden has a long coastline, so seafood is a staple of the national diet. A favourite fish is the Baltic Herring (Clupea harengus membras) or Strömming. This is a subspecies of the Atlantic Herring that has adapted to brackish water.

The Strömming is threatened by pollution. Russia and the Baltic States have for years used the Baltic Sea as a dump for industrial effluent containing dioxins. Baltic Herring is therefore sold only when young, before it has accumulated too many pollutants. The EU has banned its export.

One of the ways this fish reaches the diner is as surströmming (sour herring), a notorious delicacy. It stinks, which is no surprise as it will have been fermenting in a tin for at least six months. The tin should be bulging when you buy it.

Lennart invited me to dinner with his family one evening, warning me we would be eating surströmming. He had described it to me some days before, so I wasn’t surprised that we ate outside.

The table was laid like a smörgåsbord (“smergos_BOORD” = table of open sandwiches), including five other varieties of pickled herring. We ate the fermented fish on tunnbröd (thin bread — a flat bread like a matzo). With it we had sour cream, hard-boiled eggs and chives.

I don’t think I’ve had my eating so closely watched before. The family approved of my daring to try the surströmming and was surprised when I asked for seconds.

There’s nothing I’ve ever eaten before to which I can compare the taste. It was quite bland, really, and much, much better than it smells. All the same, I wouldn’t go out my way to have it again.

We washed the food down with local beers and akvavit (from the Latin, aqua vitae = water of life). This is a distilled grain alcohol flavoured with herbs and spices (mainly caraway), which makes for pleasant drinking.

As my contribution, I introduced my hosts to the ethereal pleasures of chilled Amontillado, bought in the local systembolaget. I wanted to correct their idea that sherry is something sickly sweet, typically served from a bottle that had first been opened months before. I think I made my case but doubt that dry sherry is now a regular feature of the mealtime table at chez Moren.

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That’s it! I think it fitting that I end on something involving Lennart, since he had done so much to make my stay enjoyable and memorable. If I’m up that way again. I’ll be certain to visit Mohem Camping once more.

07. November 2011 by RogerGW
Categories: On the road | Leave a comment

Pitsund, Sweden — July & August 2010 (part 2 of 3)

Here’s the second part of my account of what I got up to at Pitsund.

Luleå

About 30 miles north of Piteå is the university city of Luleå (“LOO-lee-oh”). This is another port, one that does get iced in during the winter. It’s slightly larger than Piteå.

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Luleå has been in the news recently as the chosen location for Facebook’s European computer centre. Not only is its climate helpful, the city offers a ready source of skilled people. There’s much high-tech industry there and Facebook’s new site is next door to Luleå’s science park, near the university.

Facebook’s plans were not public knowledge when I went to Luleå last year. I was interested in the old town or gammelstad (“gammel stod”), which is also on the north-western outskirts of the city. Several places in Sweden have a gammelstad (from gammal = old, stad = city or town). A few also have what Luleå has, which is a kyrkstad (“kerkstod” = church town) in its gammelstad. I explain below.

Kyrkstads

Sweden was a religious country until recently, professing a form of Lutheran (Protestant) Christianity. This was the state religion from the time of the Swedish reformation in 1523. So confident were the authorities in the attractiveness of the new-style religion that they made it a crime not to attend one’s ‘home’ church at major festivals. The ruling applied until the 1860s.

Anyone living or working distant from his or her home church was thus presented with a difficulty. It would be hard, if not impossible, to get to a service and return the same day, especially in northern Sweden. Worshippers needed overnight accommodation. Church towns were people’s solution to the problem.

According to one version of history, parishioners built simple wooden houses that they could dismantle and take by cart to near their church. There they reassembled the houses where they could find space. The simple dwellings, sometimes numbering a hundred or more, remained as permanent structures. Shops, stables and meeting rooms appeared later, turning each church town into a community of its own..

At one time there were over 70 church towns in Sweden but only 16 remain. There are now strict rules on who may own them, when people may use them and how they must maintain the building. Anyone owning a listed building in Britain will be familiar with that last set of restrictions.

Luleå’s kyrkstad

The church town in Luleå is the largest in Sweden, containing over 400 buildings. In 1996, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Today, it is a busy visitor attraction.

The church at the centre has been there for over 500 years. Its bell tower is from the 19^th century.

Here you can see how the tower dominates the town.

When you look behind the frontages you get a better idea of how things must have been before street lights and Tarmac roads. Now imagine it in the middle of a Lapland winter. Brr!

The red colour of the houses is characteristic of much of Scandinavia. It comes from a paint called Falun Red (Falu Rödfärg), after its town of origin in south central Sweden. The paint is based on a by-product of the copper mining that has taken place in Falun for over 700 years. It protects raw timber and is cheap to make – two reasons for its popularity.

I found the church town impressive and the church itself stylish (but the heating was on, in high summer!). For me, the historical atmosphere was diminished by the emphasis on tourism. There were too many advertisements for commercial activities and direction signs to attractions. It’s hardly surprising, I know, but still a shame.

Öjebyn

The next time I met Lennart, I mentioned my trip to Luleå. He told me there’s a nearer church town that isn’t spoilt by tourism. It’s at Öjebyn (“OY-yeh-been”), which is the old town of Piteå and is just three miles to the north of it.

Lennart said that his family owns one of the houses. Next thing I know, he’s fished out the keys to it, drawn me a map and invited me to visit it any time I liked. What a lovely man.

I took up the offer a short while later and found Öjebyn gammelstad to be as described, being smaller and more intimate than at Luleå. It’s a local kyrkstad, for local people.

The church is charming, as was the guide from the nearby museum. She let me into the church and offered to hold Jenny while I explored. I knew what to expect — non-stop crying from Jenny all the time I was inside. Poor woman, having to listen to that racket.

Here is the inside of the church, which dates from the 15^th century.

And here are some of the church houses, which are much like those at Luleå.

I took several photographs inside Lennart’s house. Here is a wide-angle view of the bedroom.

The house is about 200 years old, and has been in the family for 100 years. It was like a time machine, full of old furniture, tools and pictures. I sat in the living room for some while, absorbing the atmosphere and imagining how different life must have been when it was built.

A floral surprise

On leaving the house, I walked around the church town and found myself in something called the Solander Garden. This opened in 2000 and is in memory of a Swedish botanist called Daniel Solander.

Solander was born near the site of the garden in 1732. In his late teens, he enrolled at Uppsala University, many miles to the south. The professor of botany there was the famous Carolus Linnaeus (later ennobled as Carl von Linné).

Linnaeus popularised the binomial system (genus + species) we use today to classify plants and animals. He himself identified and named thousands of species, which therefore have the suffix “L.” applied to their scientific names.

After studying with Linneaus, Solander went to England to spread the word about the Linnean system. It’s a measure of Solander’s ability that Sir Joseph Banks selected him to help with the scientific work on Captain James Cook’s voyage to the Pacific in 1768.

There’s more about Solander on Wikipedia and on the Solander Society site. I’ve been interested in botany for years but am ashamed to say I had never before heard of this remarkable man. The garden, and adjoining museum, are an affectionate tribute to him.

Good gracious! Is that the time?

I’m rabbiting on here but still have one more excursion to mention, as well as Swedish food. This had better be a three-part article, then. Part 3 will probably be out next week.

01. November 2011 by RogerGW
Categories: On the road | Leave a comment