A Potted History of Up Helly Aa

Ancient Roots


Up Helly Aa, as it's known today, is a relatively recent introduction to the Shetland calendar, though its origins are rooted far back in time. The torchlit procession and burning of the galley (Viking longship) stem from the ritual cremations of Norse chieftains and the ancient pagan ceremonies held to welcome the return of the sun following the winter solstice. The elaborate use of disguises seen today echo prehistoric fertility rites; even until the Middle Ages people dressed in straw costumes to encourage the gods to bless them with bountiful crops and productive animals. The feasting and all-night partying is reminiscent of the Viking drinking halls of times gone by. Norse skalds were known for their sharp wit and today this tradition is continued in the form of the 'Bill' which is displayed on the Market Cross from early morning on the day of Up Helly Aa.


A Different Calendar to the Rest of the UK


Shetland retained the Julian calendar long after the rest of the UK adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. This meant Christmas was celebrated on the modern-equivalent of January 5th, New Year on January 12th, and Uphellia which marked the end of the Yuletide festivities was celebrated 24 days after Christmas making it the 29th January. The celebrations involved fire and feasting, but not Vikings.


It's all Napoleon's Fault


The Auld Yule and Auld New Year (old Christmas and New Year) were celebrated in Lerwick with guizers (people in disguise) grouping together to visit private houses and be treated to food and drink. The festivities were lively and lasted all night. Uphellia festivities, on the other hand, are thought to have been more of a rural tradition, presumably because appeasing pagan gods in the hope of ensuring a good crop was of far more relevance to the country folk than the townsfolk. The festival only really spread to the main town of Lerwick when soldiers and sailors returning from the Napoleonic Wars brought their newly-acquired tastes for firearms and debaucherous partying with them. The adoption of Uphellia was a good excuse to let their hair down, kick their heels up and set fire to things.


This year's Up Helly Aa programme quotes the diary entry of a Methodist missionary who visited in 1824:

'the whole town was in an uproar: from twelve o'clock last night until late this night blowing of horns, beating of drums, tinkling of old kettles, firing of guns, shouting, bawling, fiddling, fifeing, drinking, fighting. This was the state of the town all the night - the street was thronged with people as any fair I ever saw in England.'

A Merging of Traditions (and calendars)


Over time the Auld Yule and Auld New Year traditions in Lerwick melded with the rural Uphellia celebrations in the beginnings of the Up Helly Aa festival we see today. By 1879 it was decided that Christmas and New Year would follow the rest of Britain and be held on the 25th December and 1st January. The Uphellia celebrations continued to adhere to the old calendar and were still held on January 29th.


Burning Barrels of Tar


Around 1840 burning tar barrels were rolled down Lerwick's narrow main street for the first time. Rum or beer casks were cut in half and filled with wood shavings mixed with coal tar (the tar being acquired as it was 'accidently' left outside the gasworks). Up to ten barrels would be fastened to a trolley and pulled, burning, through the street. This continued until the 1870s when the ideas that are still seen today started to come into play. The tar barrels had been dirty and dangerous, more so because rival groups often came to blows when they met in the street. Special constables were introduced to little effect. Despite complaints by the middle classes and interventions by the town council it seems that the tar barrelling only came to an end because the interests of the participants were changing and enthusiasm was developing in Shetland's Viking past.


And then there were Vikings


Firstly, the festival began to be known as Up Helly Aa (sometimes Up Helly A') and, rather than the 29th, the last Tuesday in January was fixed as the date. Guizing was introduced in a much more elaborate form, as was the torchlight procession. The first clear Viking themes were introduced in 1877 and in 1881 the first torchlight procession took place with 60 torches carried through the street. By the late 1880s the galley (Viking longship) had appeared. In 1906 the first Guizer Jarl (chief guizer) was appointed.


It was only after the First World War that the tradition of the Guizer Jarl having his own squad of Vikings became an annual event. Although money was tight in the 1930s the festival limped through. It was in these poverty stricken times that the 'Bill' poking fun at those in charge became the greatly anticipated proclamation it is today. The BBC filmed the festival in 1949 and it was from this year on, that the previously haphazard timings became the tightly adhered to schedule we see today. Since 1956 there has also been a Junior Jarl's squad.




For more about the modern celebrations see here for a post I've previously written.
You can find the Up Helly Aa website here.

Software for Authors

Word was getting completely unwieldy. 

In the past I've written essays, reports, letters and manuals using Microsoft Word. I even used it to write my Master's dissertation. I've always been happy with it. Then I started trying to write a book. I've never written anything this long before and it was soon getting out of hand. 

My book on the Kungsleden is gathering pace and the word count is creeping up and although this is good, I was beginning to feel very chaotic; scrolling through reams of pages whenever I needed to add or check anything was not leading to a state of authorly tranquility. I knew I needed to find a solution before I went any further.

I asked the Google gods and found that there are generally two choices of software for authors out there. I'm sure there are more, but as I have no knowledge of writing books and so don't really know what I need until I need it, I wanted to choose something mainstream and with good reviews.

Of the two software choices - Scrivener and yWriter5 - the first is pay and the second is free. I didn't particularly want to pay for something until I knew what I really needed and fortunately the freebie yWriter5 seemed to have everything I wanted and I only found good reviews. So without further ado, I decided to give it a go.

It was really easy to install and just as easy to figure out how everything works. I've copy and pasted my book from Word and been able to set each chapter up in its own folder which can then be sub-divided into different scenes. The chapters are listed in a left-hand column and by clicking on a chapter I can bring up a list of scenes. I had briefly considered setting something like this up in Word but soon realised that as every chapter would be a separate document, this would probably be even more unwieldy to use than just one long document. With yWriter5 each chapter is always easily to hand.

Once I've clicked on a chapter, I then have options for adding planning notes, character profiles, locations, goals and a description of the chapter as well as the actual content. Clicking on different lists reveals exactly how many, and in which, chapters each character and location has been mentioned.

I've been using yWriter5 for a couple of weeks now and I'm finding it very intuitive and really user-friendly. As the work on my computer becomes more organised and less chaotic I feel as though the same is happening to my brain. I'm thinking more clearly, noticing errors and repetitions, knowing where more detail is needed, fixing omissions and generally starting to feel like a real writer.

From pictures I've seen of Scrivener, it looks to be a lot fancier and to have even more functions to play around with. As with yWriter5 I've only read good reviews of Scrivener and so would like to have a test run with it to see how the two compare. For now though, I'm very happy with yWriter5 and the way it's working for me.

I'm going to Up Helly Aa!

Up Helly Aa has fascinated me ever since I started visiting Shetland and first heard about it. There are various Up Helly Aa festivals held between January and March in different parts of Shetland, but the main festival, the biggie, the Up Helly Aa to end all Up Helly Aas is held in Lerwick on the last Tuesday of January. This presented a problem for me as the last Tuesday in January is always smack-bang in the middle of term time. And it's not as though Lerwick is a place I can just nip up to for a few hours in the evening and be back in time to get a good night's sleep ready for school the next morning.


Because of this, I made a pact with myself that the first chance I get I will be there. As I'm not teaching at the moment that chance is now. I've been keeping an eye on the ferries and at this time of year there are a lot of delays and cancellations due to the weather, so I need to plan to arrive a few days in advance just in case. Imagine shelling out all that money and getting really excited just to turn up in Aberdeen the day before the festival to be told the ferry isn't leaving tonight. It's not a risk I'm prepared to take.


I'm going to go up in the van so I have a place to sleep. It's expensive taking a vehicle on the ferry and as I'll be alone I won't have anyone to split the cost with. Add to that the cost of fuel and this isn't going to be a cheap trip. But without the van I'd have to pay for accommodation and would be limited in what I could do as public transport isn't the greatest. I'd also have to add on the cost of train fares to Aberdeen and if I arrived off the train in Aberdeen to find the ferry wasn't leaving I'd be left hunting for last minute accommodation and shelling out again.


I'm wondering if I'm a little mad planning to spend a week sleeping in the back of a van on a small North Atlantic island in January. But, thanks to the Gulf Stream, Shetland doesn't get anywhere near as cold as other places on the same latitude do in winter; there's not a lot of snow and temperatures don't drop much below zero. So I'm sure I'll be fine, but I will take my duvet as well as my winter sleeping bag.


I wrote about Up Helly Aa here

I can walk 1000 miles ...

...  But I would walk 500 miles

And I would walk 500 more

Just to be that (wo)man who walked 1000 miles

Just to fall down achey and sore ...

Ok, enough of the song butchery and apologies to The Proclaimers, but seriously ... could I walk 1000 miles?


I used to get out walking every weekend. Sometimes on both days. I'd spend a lot of my holidays walking too. 1000 miles over the course of a year was easily achievable. But over the last few years, life has got in the way and my walking has got less and less. Now I rarely walk at the weekend and I've been doing less of it in my holidays (apart from my long walk in the Arctic last summer, that is).


When I walked regularly I really noticed the benefits. As well as being a generally enjoyable activity, I was fitter, less stressed and felt like I had more energy. I also felt more in tune with the time of year as I noticed the subtle changes as the seasons morphed from one to the next. It didn't matter whether I walked alone or with others, each had its additional benefits. Walking alone gave me time to think; walking with a friend or two gave me time for chit-chat and enabled us to catch up with each other's lives; walking in a group was sociable with lots of light-hearted banter. I miss all of this and really want to get this important part of my life back.


Last year Country Walking magazine challenged readers to walk 1000 miles over the course of the year. To ensure this wasn't too easy a challenge it could only include proper walks and not strolls up and down the aisles of Tesco. It doesn't have  to be done in one epic hike but can be walks fitted in at lunchtimes and at weekends. I had too much going on at the beginning of last year to even think about taking on something like this, but as a strong believer in the philosophy of 'better late than never', I'm going to challenge myself to do it this year.


For it to be a proper challenge, I need a few rules. Here are the ones I've come up with so far. I may need to adapt them or add to them as I go along.


1) I will include walks of 2 miles and above so long as it's a continuous walk and not 2 miles over the course of a whole day, in which I'm stopping and starting all the time. To monitor this I will set the time limit of 2 hours for a 2 mile walk. This may seem like a long time, but it will allow for walks in which I walk a mile to get to somewhere interesting, spend some time exploring and then walk a mile back. For walks over 6 miles I won't set a time limit so long as it is completed within the same day.


2) No bonus points for hills or tricky terrain. Clocking up the miles is the only thing that counts.


3) City walks can be included as long as they are proper walks such as circumambulating the city walls, taking part in a guided walk or following a themed trail (e.g. a Dickens' trail in London).Wandering round the shops does not count.
 
4) Pounding the treadmill in the gym doesn't count.


And, well, that's it really. Simple.


1000 miles shouldn't be difficult to achieve physically. My problems are usually with time, but having a goal to aim for will hopefully make me prioritise walking and give me some extra incentive.


Here are some maths:


1000 / 52  = 19.2 miles per week
1000 / 12 = 83.3 miles per month


On an average weekend I should be able to walk on at least one day. If I do a 10 mile walk that leaves another 9.2 miles to be walked during the week. I could try to walk 2 miles each day, or try two mid-week 5 mile walks. Of course there will be weeks when I can't do this, but as long as I achieve it most weeks, then the slack can be taken up on holidays when I'm more likely to walk every day.


I'll set up a spreadsheet to note down each walk and for extra incentive I'll include a countdown column.


I'm going to make a good start by kicking off the new year with a walk on New Year's Day. Better stop messing about on my computer and get those maps out and start plotting and planning.


You can find the link to the original challenge here.

The Thames Path - Marlow to Henley

I had to drive home from Kent on Saturday and as it was such a beautiful day, despite being the first day of November, I really didn't feel like spending it sitting on the M25 and the M6. Instead I detoured to Marlow and spent the day walking along the Thames to Henley and only completed my drive in the evening. 

I parked in Marlow as this is an easy place to return to by bus from Henley and the street parking is free. I had wanted to walk from Bourne End as this was where I'd had to finish when I walked the Thames Path at New Year and flooding prevented me getting through to Marlow. Backtracking to Bourne End from Marlow proved quite difficult as the trains were only every two hours and my timing was out. I didn't want too late a start as I knew I'd have to be finished by 5pm as it's getting dark so early since the clocks went back last week. I never thought to check out the buses, so with hindsight maybe I could have got there. But not to worry, I'll try to do this 'missing section' next time.

Marlow was buzzing with Saturday morning activity. The sun was out and so were the people. Some were wandering up and down the high street, others wandering by the river. The local park was full of families with young, and not-so-young, children and the ice-cream van was doing a roaring trade.

I popped into the church, an impressive building with a chequer-board tower just by the river. All Saints was rebuilt in 1835, replacing a 12th century church. Inside I met a sprightly old lady who spotted my walking boots and informed me brightly that she was 93 years old, and not so brightly, that she'd recently had to give up walking as an activity. Her face momentarily clouded over as she remembered the day she'd taken her boots to the thrift shop. She brightened as she added that she's still driving and still attending yoga and aerobics classes regularly. Feeling inspired, and determined to make the most of my next fifty years' walking before I have to hand my boots over to the charity shop, I strode down to the river and started walking west.

A man sat on the river bank shouting commands and encourgement through a loudspeaker to rowers whizzing past making it look easy. Large boats with families and groups on board chugged past, not allowed to exceed 4 knots per hour. 

 








Bisham Church soon came into view on the opposite bank. Next to it, one of the UK's National Sports Centres can be found at Bisham Abbey, the 13th century manor house near the church which replaced the original priory. It was on this stretch of the Thames that poet Percy Shelley spent his time bobbing about in a skiff whilst writing about a boat and river in 'The Revolt of Islam'. 

Passing Temple Mill Island, I soon reached Temple Lock. A young couple were launching dinghies which they then paddled out of the lock and downriver. I sat and ate a sandwich, watching a boat pass through the lock as I enjoyed the sun on my face. 

Remembering I still had a lot of walking to do before I'm 93 I didn't linger for long and was soon off towards Hurley Lock and Islands. First I had to cross to the other bank using Temple Bridge which, with a span of just under 50 metres, is Britain's longest hardwood footbridge. Once at Hurley Lock I followed the path over a shorter bridge to reach Hurley Island, then walked the length of the island before crossing back to the towpath.

The path, which so far had led through trees and was deeply littered with autumnal leaves, now took me across open meadowland and fields. Looking back, the opposite bank rose into a high cliff with a mansion house sitting right at the top. This is Danesfield, named after the Danes who built a fortification in the field here. The present-day mansion is a hotel. 

A large caravan park lay to my left, the river was to my right. Large, expensive-looking houses soon came into view and the path joined a road labelled as private. The houses were to the left of the road and what seemed to be private gardens alongside the river were to its right. I puzzled for a moment, before realising that the path doesn't follow the road, but actually goes right by the river through the gardens. A couple of them had seats, lanterns and potted plants and looked like wonderful little spots for sitting and reading or just watching the world go by. 

Medmenham Abbey soon came into sight across the river. The Abbey had been founded in 1201, but all that remains of the original building is one derelict tower. The rest has been rebuilt over the years and now forms a luxury hotel. In the 1700s it became infamous as a meeting place for Sir Francis Dashwood's notorious Hell Fire Club. Members became known as 'Franciscans of Medmenham' after their host was said to have performed obscene parodies of religious rites there. 

Walking through more meadowland and crossing several bridged ditches led me to Culham Court. The strange looking sheep I saw from a distance turned out to be a very large herd of mostly white deer. A few were browner with spots and as far as I can make out they were fallow deer. I could be completely wrong on this. The house with its sixty-five surrounding acres is a privately owned family home, bought by financier Urs Schwarzenbach and his wife Francesca in 2006 for £38 million. 

 

After passing in front of the house the path then veers away from the river to reach the small village of Aston. The Flower Pot pub is a local landmark with chickens running around the garden. Outside was the largest pumpkin I'd ever seen. It was carved for Halloween and the inside could easily have held a small child. I touched it to check as I couldn't quite believe it to be real.


Walking from the pub along Ferry Lane to return to the river I passed several more huge pumpkins. One had an array of 'normal' sized pumpkins around it which looked tiny in comparison.

Back at the river, it was through a kissing gate and just a short way along a grassy path until Hambleden Mill came into sight. A long weir glinted in the low sun, backed by a splendid display of autumn colour. Realising I'd easily make it to Henley before dark, I sat awhile on a bench scoffing a snack and looking at my map. 

Greenlands was the next mansion to appear. White and palatial it stood proudly on the opposite bank, facing the river, and making me think of the White House in Washington DC. It had been built in 1853 for bookseller and First Lord of the Admiralty W H Smith. These days it houses Henley College. 

The sun was started to set behind the trees as I approached Temple Island. This is the start of the Henley Royal Regatta which runs to Henley Bridge. The 'temple' on the island, now a private fishing lodge, was designed in 1771 by James Wyatt who added frescoes inside. It was originally built as a folly to draw the eye to the view from Fawley Court which is situated a little further upstream. 

 








Facing Fawley Court is the hamlet of Remenham with its 19th century church. It was built to replace a Norman church and has its apse built on the line of its Norman predecessor. 

Houses and dog-walkers started to appear more frequently alongside the path and, rounding a bend, Henley itself came into view. The light was fading now and lights on the bridge and in the shops and houses along the bank produced bobbing gold reflections in the water. A raft of ducks, strung out in single-file, were out for a final swim of the day. I walked into Henley as the town was closing up for the evening. A bus was waiting at the stop when I arrived and twenty minutes later I was back in Marlow. 

 









Distance: approximately 8.5 miles.

Researching and writing

After a lot of research into travel books (good excuse to do lots of reading) I've come to the conclusion that most books have around 200 pages and 100,000 words. Give or take 10-20%. This is reassuring because this is what I'm aiming for with the book I'm trying to write at the moment. I'm not looking at bestselling travel writers as they tend to have much longer books, but more the sort of writers you only discover when researching books on a particular region or way of travelling.


At the moment I'm about a third of the way there with around 32,000 words. I've divided the writing of my first draft into three phases:


Phase one was typing up my diary notes. I kept quite a detailed diary as I was walking, but as I was hand-writing and, more importantly, not wanting to add a huge notebook to my load, it was in note form. My typing up in phase one involved writing it up into proper sentences and paragraphs rather than just copying up notes. As I'm a fairly fast typist this was completed quite quickly.


I'm now working on phase two, which is much slower going. Phase two involves the factual side of my walk and means lots of research. One of my USPs (unique selling points) is that the book will be useful for anyone planning, or thinking about, a walk along the Kungsleden. Although it's not intended as a guidebook, I do want to get quite a lot of solid information into it. One of the reasons I wanted to write this book is because so few people in the English speaking world are aware of this walk and there is very little written on it in English. The very reason I want to write the book is also the reason my research is going quite slowly - there's very little written on it in English.


I'm finding quite a lot on the internet, but it tends to be in Swedish. Although I picked up a few Swedish words, my language skills are definitely not of the proficiency needed for reading Swedish websites. I'm ploughing through, picking out the words I know and finding myself doing a complicated process of translating into English via Dutch. Yes, Dutch. When I was in Scandinavia in February I noticed how a lot of the words in both Danish and Swedish seemed to share a similar root to Dutch. I don't speak Dutch, but my Dutch vocabulary is far more extensive than my Swedish vocabulary and whilst I was travelling over the summer I found this came in very useful. I'm finding it just as useful now. When I've read through a page and got the gist of it in Dutch and English (Dutlish?), I'll put any relevant bits into Google translate to double-check. Although it comes up with a few strange translations and the word order is sometimes rather jumbled, I'm quite impressed with it. I wouldn't use it to translate anything of importance, say a legal document, but for my purpose it's fine.


Once I've done some research and made my own notes, I'm then inserting this into whichever part of my draft I think it'll best fit. This is all taking quite a long time. I'm aiming to have roughly 50,000 words by the end of the phase two. That'll be half the book dedicated to my first USP. Only 18,000 words to go then ...


Phase three will be dedicated to my second USP which is something along the lines of stressed, middle-aged woman/teacher gives up job and goes for a long walk in the Arctic wilderness. I think I'm going to enjoy writing this part. Not that I'm not enjoying what I'm doing at the moment, but I'm conscious of time and want to get as much done as possible before the need to pay bills means I have to go back to work. 


Of course, once it's all done, that's only really the start of it. My first draft will be a collection of disorganised ramblings and will be in need of some serious editing. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Why won't my balloon fly?

Three times a friend and I have booked a hot air balloon flight and each time it's been cancelled because of the weather. I knew when I first bought the voucher for this that balloons are dependent on the weather, but I didn't realise just how perfect the weather has be.

 

Wind, rain, storms, temperature and visibility all affect whether the balloon can be flown and some even affect whether or not it can be inflated.

 

Wind

 

• The optimum speed for a balloon flight is 4-6 miles per hour.
• The balloon is inflated with cold air using a fan. The fabric of the balloon is basically a giant sail and winds over 6 miles per hour can make it difficult to fill the balloon. The wind will cave the side of the balloon in and cause it to roll around and drag anything it may be attached to. This can damage the balloon and basket as well causing harm to participants.
• The wind has to be blowing in the right direction - the balloon can't be steered in a particular direction and so the pilot has to be sure it won't be blown into an area that could be unsafe or where there aren't any suitable landing sites. Unsuitable areas include: built-up areas; wooded areas; large bodies of water; and restricted air space.
• Once airborn, if the wind speed is less than 4 miles per hour, the balloon won't really go anywhere. If it is more than 6 miles per hour, it can be blown off course, over-reach the landing place, and will also need more space to land. The basket may bounce along the ground, eventually tipping over, before the balloon comes to a standstill. A balloon doesn't have brakes and relies on the friction caused between the basket and the ground to slow it down and bring it to a stop. The balloon will be travelling at whatever speed the wind is. The stronger the wind the more friction will need to be built to bring it to a standstill and the further the balloon will need to travel along the ground.
• Just because the wind seems ideal at ground level, doesn't mean it's not blowing a lot faster higher up. The pilot will not only check the wind speeds at ground level and at the level you will be flying at, but also wind speeds much higher up as these could drop to the flying level during the flight, or cause other problems such as turbulance.

 

Fronts

 

• There must be no fronts in the area where the balloon is being launched and flown. Fronts usually come with a change in wind direction or increased wind speeds.

 

Visibility

 

• Balloons do not fly at night or in fog.
• There needs to be at least 1-3 miles visibility depending on the area and the hazards and the terrain.

Rain

• Rain can damage the balloon as well as decreasing visibility.

 

Storms

 

• There must be no thunderstorms within 100 miles of the launch point.
• Thunderstorms present hazards to any type of aircraft, but balloons are affected most of all. A plane can turn around and fly away from a storm; a balloon will get sucked in to it.
• Not only is there the chance of lightning striking the balloon, but gusts of wind can occur up to 100 miles away from a storm.

 

Temperature

 

• Hot air is lighter than cold air and so rises. The air inside the balloon is heated and this causes the balloon to rise up through the colder outside air. If it is very warm outside it may not be possible to heat the inside of the balloon to a temperature that is sufficiently higher than the outside temperature.

So there you have it. With the weather needing to be SO perfect, it's a wonder anyone ever get to go on a balloon flight at all.