Wolds to Airedale

Starting off uphill to Sledmere, where we didn't linger, we drove via Malton to peep at the new Stanbrook building works. After a happy chance chat with the Abbess, it was off to Coxwold, to the Pottery. Alas Peter the potter has died, so potless we moved South-West to find lunch, birdlife and other solace at Harewood. (It was Caroline's first visit.) A Henry Moore exhibition was a bonus. 

Signs of Le Grand Depart remain everywhere, not least the massed marigolds at Harewood. Having all but climbed the Cow and Calf rocks, we now overlook - from our B&B - the River Aire.

Lord Harewood RIP

I last visited the magnificent Palladian Harewood House whilst on my bike trip through Yorkshire in May 2009. The current (7th) Earl clearly not only cherished his immense inheritance, but had enhanced its collections in so many ways. Of his renowned collection of 20th Century paintings and sculpture, the first glimpse you have upon entering the house is Epstein's still-shocking "Adam". My photograph shows Astrid Zydower's 1984 work, "Orpheus".

As an eager opera-goer in my 20s, my bible was Kobbé, in its radical revision by the same Lord Harewood, who seemed to know everything there was to know about opera. And so indeed Tom Sutcliffe confirms in his comprehensive obituary of the 7th Earl in today's Guardian.

It mentions "the competition between the Wells and Sir Georg Solti's Garden, which faintly echoed the royal operatic rows involving Lord Harewood's Hanoverian forebears in Handel's day." I wonder if he knew this: the 1st Earl's younger brother, Francis, 14 when Handel died, never married, but fathered ten children by one of the day's Covent Garden superstars, Ann Catley. A properly comprehensive biography of her is eagerly awaited, but from what we already know, she (and therefore Francis Lascelles) would certainly have been at the centre of many of the operatic controversies of the day.

Our children (no opera singers amongst them, alas) are part of Francis and Ann's immense brood - 4th grat-grandchildren.

One & other

Six weeks having elapsed from my bike accident, I have at last been released from wearing the Big Boot Cheltenham Hospital gave me to protect my broken foot. So, to celebrate, I took my new bike with me on the train to London yesterday. And I couldn't resist a detour to Trafalgar Square, to see for myself - rather than via the webcam - what One & other was all about.

Shortly before the accident, when I was cycling through Yorkshire, I visited Harewood House, where I found myself almost alone inside while viewing great portraits by the likes of Titian and Veronese. Outside, however, the crowds were thickly gathered - in the bird garden! The twittering and tweeting of our feathered friends behind netting was clearly of much wider interest to the general public than acclaimed likenesses of great historical figures. And so it seems to be in Trafalgar Square since One & other started life last Monday: the crowds around the 4th Plinth no doubt comfortably exceed those looking at any of the celebrated portraits in the National Gallery a few yards away. Those on the plinth all seem to be tweeting on Twitter, whilst we on the other side of the netting shout encouragement - just as we do to get the Harewood penguins to flap their wings - or our abuse.