Saturday 14th July – Saturday 4th August
UK – Derbyshire and Yorkshire
What a long day Bastille Day was – ‘twas an early start as we negotiated all the Champers corks and snoring bodies lying in the town’s quiet streets after their massive celebrations and headed for Dunkirk and our 2pm ferry. It was an uneventful Channel crossing with an arrival in Dover in steady rain (what else?) with caravan in tow. We headed straight for Northampton to leave Kevin for a few days…he’s having his first annual check up and immunisation. How soggy is England - the land of wellies, macs and sou’westers.
This part of the trip is about slowing down, occupying the van, taking our time and really exploring the local area wherever we pitch up. We now park the van for 10 days at a time and head off on bikes, or in the car, for a “bumble” across the dales. A few historic highlights thus far have been Bolton Abbey and Priory, Chatsworth, current home of the Duke of Devonshire (as odd as it sounds for a Devonshire-ite to call Derbyshire home…but, hey, this is England!) and Skipton Castle, the only royalist stronghold in the north to withstand Cromwell’s siege.
York is a beautiful ancient city – as we’ve come to expect with such old centres of commerce, education and religion, it’s had a few owners – this time it’s been Celts, Vikings, Catholics, Protestants. It’s now full of museums and cobbled streets with names like “Whip ma whop ma gate” – named after the whipping block on the corner and “The Shambles” - a narrow street where the butchers once threw the blood and guts onto the cobblestones and left them to wash down to the river…imagine the smell!
So now our days are filled with views of drystone wall paddocks, rambles around the National Parks, having a pint (or glass of wine) at the local village pubs, bicycle riding along country lanes and spotting little kids doing show jumping with eager parents taking it all in…we enquired as to whether it was an Olympic event…you’ve seen the stoney glare before haven’t you?
So need we say that London 2012 has started and we are amidst UK patriotism, UK flags, UK Olympic avatars and UK commentators. It’s reminiscent of the pride we had back in 2000 in Australia when we expected every Aussie competitor to win on our home ground; and so we are here in the van park, well away from the buzz of London and we’re flying the flag for Oz. We occasionally see a snippet on the telly of an Australian match…but only if we’re up against the UK…but it’s all good! The girls’ beach volleyball is still Jim’s showstopper, though!...hmmm…
One question…was Elton John represented at all in the Opening Ceremony? Maybe he’ll be there at the Closing Ceremony along with The Spice Girls, The Bay City Rollers, Cliff Richard and the Stones…”and John Martyn” shouts Jimbo……we await with keen interest….
Our National Trust memberships are being put to the test during this part of the trip! If you’re travelling as we are they’re great value as there’s so much history to explore. We spent yesterday at Fountains Abbey (ruins, of course, thanks again to Henry VIII…) we learnt so much about the brutally tough life of all but the favoured few during those centuries – a short, brutal life of coldness, repetition, meanness, coarseness, superstition, fickle justice. Eating was a caloric necessity, not the pleasure we experience today. Work was a repetitious shackle for life until death and the working world was usually cold, usually wet, often dark, often risky and often tenuous. Colour was bland except for the rich interiors of churches…phew, no wonder the next life seemed so attractive; no wonder the church, as the media management team for that next life, was so powerful! Amazing, too, that Henry was able, at a stroke, to re-align a millennium of popular allegiance to Rome to a brand new religion with himself, rather than the Pope, as our interface with God…that he could get away with it…breathtaking. To put it into perspective, imagine Gillard banning cricket in Oz and forcing us all to love baseball…so what can we expect from Charles III when (..if?) he gets a crack at the top job?
I’d always thought that architects as a mob were suspicious, furtive and over-cautious, but the sight of the “green man” at Fountains Abbey confirmed all those suspicions – always with an eye on the devil, he’s built into the apex of a window, still as clear as the day he was crafted, still sprouting branches from his mouth, still staring out wide-eyed to ward off satan…or other architects perhaps?
Now, how are we going with our new bikes you might ask….we have been seen “bumbling” around the back roads and lanes of North Yorkshire, narrowly avoiding old ladies in Humbers and Daimlers, trying to cut back on the number of pubs we stop at for afternoon tea…but each day the muscle cobwebs are falling away and our six-packs are being re-defined…Rio 2016 maybe? Our rambles have led us to small town equestrian events and junior boys cricket games…which we stopped to watch of course!
A drive through Swaledale was supposed to be full of memories of my only other visit, in 1975, where I’d wandered through gorgeous little villages and scenic dales…but as we’d found in Enkhuisen, 37 years of natural history had changed everything – nothing was familiar - still sleepy, slopey, misty and moisty, but quite different…and where do names like Cloggerby Rigg and Thorpe Norton come from? The place is so slow even the sheep refuse to move out of your way…no matter how threatening you appear…maybe a week in chains from Clifford’s Tower would sort them out.
The Yorkshire Princess’s birthday surprise was a langorous lunch at Grey’s Inn followed by a night at “The Mystery Plays”, York’s version of the biblical nugget of good vs bad. It was fantastic! Despite the rain and cold wind the cast of mostly ordinary locals provided a first class performance within beautifully functional and adaptable sets…there was more to-ing and fro-ing under and over the stage than you’d see in a vice pit in Cairo…or so I’ve heard.
Our diet is becoming troutcentric as we move north and keeping stumbling across farm shops selling these beautiful little fishies for next to nothing! They taste delicious, too.
