Some of the more eye-catching sculptures were fashioned by Sophie Ryder.

In addition to a number of school classes exploring the park at the same time the other noticeable group of lifeforms were the sheep. We were acutely aware of where we were standing and did a pretty decent job of not treading in too many sheep droppings as I recall.

While it was still early in the year there was a little bit of nature on show to catch my attention as well.

From there we ventured inside and up onto the roof of Coughton Court which afforded us lovely views and photographic opportunities of the Warwickshire countryside in all directions.

We finished our fleeting visit to the pleasant country house by coming back down through the main house then taking a short walk into some of the nearby woodland and garden areas surrounding it.

We started with a walk of the grounds of the place in order to take advantage of the good weather which we suspected might change. The landscape gardens of Upton Court were wonderful, sloping down from the main house and including a swimming pool, a lake, and a walled garden area below the line of sight of the long lawn. The pool in particular looked very nice with its steps descending into the water at one end.

The decor inside Upton House was in keeping with a 1920s aesthetic which meant there were lots of art deco period pieces here and there. Outside brutalism it’s my favourite type of design so this was lovely to see and made a nice change from the older periods that make up the bulk of trust properties of this size. The bathroom was a true marvel to see with its reflective, metallic surfaces. I’d probably have to say that Upton House is one of the most memorable buildings I’ve explored in the United Kingdom and it’s one I should make the effort to pop up to Warwickshire and visit again one day.

The day before we’d driven to Yorkshire from our home in Hampshire and we’d stopped along the way to visit Coughton Court and Upton House National Trust properties before arriving at our hotel, the Best Western Hotel St Pierre. After breakfast and before taking the car into Wakefield for a look around we thought it would be a nice idea to take advantage of the crisp, clear weather and wander down to and take a walk around the nearby lake that formed part of the Newmillerdam Country Park, a local nature reserve. A pretty level path twisted and turned through the woodland along the water’s edge and ended up making for a great way to walk off the food and take in some spectacular sights across the mirror-like surface of the lake on this beautiful morning.

We weren’t alone on this walk in the nature reserve. We encountered numerous other people out for a stroll too – all very friendly and wishing us a good morning in that northern way that can sometimes be unsettlingly overfamiliar to southerners – and we started to spot wildlife too. Ducks we’d expected but happening upon a heron was a surprise to us. I think we startled it as much as it startled us because it soon took off and started flying low over the water up and down the length of the lake with occasional dives in attempts to locate its own breakfast. Photos were taken but with the sun behind it and the general speed of the bird it was difficult to get any sharp shots of the fishing action so I’ll spare you the blurry imagery.

Newmillerdam gets its name from New Mylle on Dam, the term used to describe the area from around 1285 when a corn mill was built on the lake. Prior to that it had been known as Thurstonhaugh, an old Norse name, and we spotted a nod to the heritage of this attractive suburb of Wakefield in the discovery of a wooden carving with Viking-like features. There were other artistic findings too on the walking route we took, such as wooden toadstools.

For the most part we were content to simply admire the views across the flat lake and I was keen to get around the southern tip of it on our anti-clockwise walk when the sun would start to be at our backs and it would make taking photographs a lot easier to do and with more chance of capturing some of the deep blue colours of the sky.

We spotted more herons and one of them could well have been the one we’d been surprised by earlier on the trek. With Newmillerdam Country Park being a local nature reserve it is home to a number of types of wildlife during the year. Originally, there were gameskeepers’ lodges around the lake to protect the animals from being poached as the area was managed for commercial purposes but these days it’s a public beauty spot. If you’re a keen birder then you can expect to see the Great Crested Grebe courting in the spring while if you’re more of a mammaler (yeah, I know that’s not a word) then grey squirrels inhabit the woods and the summer months bring the UK’s smallest and largest bats – the Pipistrelle and the Noctule, respectively – along with the Daubenton’s bat which can typically be seen flying low over the water, taking insects from the air.

Another surprise to us, though, and one we only just noticed because of the slightest of movements, was the appearance of terrapins on logs in the lake. I can honestly say we never expected to find terrapins in a Yorkshire lake. It’s likely that these were abandoned pets at some point and it’s equally likely that while it might be difficult for creatures like this to breed in cold climates generally that’s something that’s going to become less of an issue as the global temperature continues to rise.

We continued our walk and I continued to take pictures of the beautiful scenery, and we soon reached the site of the Boathouse which was probably the original location of the mill from which Newmillerdam gets its name prior to being moved around 1633. The Boathouse dates from the 1820s and was constructed merely as a place for entertaining, allowing men to shoot game from punts launched from the site with ladies later joining them for lunch.

Coots aren’t spectacularly rare but their feet do amuse me much to the irritation of my wife who thinks my laughter and pointing will give them complexes. What was unique for us about this walk in the country park, though, was coming across a coot on a nest in the lake with eggs in it. As I’ve mentioned before on this site in other travelogues, we aren’t the sort of people who go out of our way to look for exotic animals when we travel and when it comes to birds, whether in the UK or abroad, we’re okayish if it’s something that would have appeared in an illustration in a children’s book we’d read growing up but after that anything goes. All that said, I am fascinated when we happen upon wildlife no matter how commonplace and will always want to capture the moment and spot unusual or novel behaviour, or admire what evolution has wrought upon the surface of the planet; in that respect Newmillerdam nature reserve really excelled at fuelling that desire.

That more-or-less brought our circuit of the lake at Newmillerdam to an end but there was one more brief encounter with some local fauna when a duck decided to check out my wife before we headed back to the hotel. What was this behaviour about? No idea. We didn’t have food on us and my wife doesn’t resemble a giant breadcrumb so the fascination – and even standing on boots at one point – was odd and amusing in equal parts. Perhaps it was that Yorkshire friendliness again.

The May Fayre tends to be held annually at this location in our home city, although pandemics have been known to put paid to those, and Victory Morris – probably Portsmouth’s most well-known Morris side, but certainly not our only one – seem to be regular attractions there.

When I first met my wife she had very little interest in sports at all, but as time went on I introduced her to the strategic warfare element of American Football and she eventually became as big a fan of that sport as me. So much so, in fact, that with the conclusion of the season in February of each year there was a gap in her sporting life that she wanted to fill. I could understand this. After some random viewing of various sports on TV we started to take an interest in Rugby League. It had elements of American Football in it – move a certain distance in a certain number of attempts – and it was fast-paced and nicely brutal.

Now, Rugby League is not a big sport in the south of England so we were limited to what we could watch on TV. We decided we’d pick a team each to follow and that would be that, so my wife chose Bradford Bulls and I chose Leeds Rhinos. I can’t remember why. For a year or so those were the teams we cheered on.

In 2010 we decided that we’d like to go and see a game of Rugby League properly. We checked the fixtures list and tried to find a game that would feature both teams playing each other at a time of the year that worked for us, but we ran into the issue of not really liking where available hotels were related to the grounds, or what else there was to do around them. After much dithering and researching, we ended up opting to just watch one of those teams – Bradford – playing away at Wakefield. We liked the look and location of a hotel on the outskirts of the city, and we liked Wakefield’s position relative to other things in Yorkshire that would make exploring this part of the country easier.

The photographs below are a small set of those I took while we stood on the terraces at Wakefield Belle Vue Stadium on a Friday evening in May, 2010 to watch Bradford Bulls pretty much demolish Wakefield Trinity. At the bottom of this post I’ll explain what happened as a result of travelling to Yorkshire to watch this game.

So, Bradford beat Wakefield, and you’d think that we’d be happy about this – my wife especially – but in fact we’d already had a couple of days based in the city and exploring, and we’d already had some nice encounters with the locals, and we’d really enjoyed the atmosphere at the stadium. It was fantastic to see so many kids involved on the field before the game and during half time, cheerleading or dancing, and to see such a friendly, family feel on terraces with both sets of fans mingling and with youngsters more-or-less left to roam around without worry.

“You know,” I told my wife. “I think I’m going to change allegiance and start to support Wakefield.”

“Yeah, I was actually thinking the same thing,” she replied.

And so we did. And for the next few years we made the effort to return to Wakefield, both to use it as a base for visiting interesting sights in and around Yorkshire, and to watch them play some Rugby League. It was several years before we saw them win, though. We’re still Wakefield Trinity fans now, but it’s been a while since we last went to watch them play. We’ll have to rectify that at some point.