Postcards from the North

I remember everything.....

The Queen's Arms, Litton

I've been down this road before.....

And I have used this song, by John Prine and Pat McLaughlin, before, but it's true, and it's good, and it fits.....

I have been down these roads before, but I don't tire of that, there's always something new; the light is always different, as is the mood.....

Littondale

Almost ten years ago I was in Hubberholme, where in 1934 J B Priestley wrote that, Once up there you seem at first at the world's end; and indeed you are a long way from anywhere....

Inside the church the Buckden Knit and Natter Group show their take on the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales; Priestley's ashes would approve: 

Over the hills, we stop to admire the Aysgarth Falls, where the River Ure careers down into Wensleydale.....

And then we drive on to explore Bishop Auckland, whose castle was the home of the Bishops of Durham, though after the closure of the coal mines the town went into a decline. The castle re-opened on November 2nd, 2019, after renovations by the Auckland Project; the founding partner of the group being the owner of the castle, Jonathan Ruffer, who purchased the property and all of the contents in 2012, including the artwork by Francisco de Zurbarán.....

Zurbarán's paintings of Jacob and his twelve sons adorn the walls of the Dining Room (though two are currently on show - until August 23rd - in the National Gallery in London):

Also in the palatial complex there is a brand new Faith Museum (A unique museum exploring 6,000 years of British history through the lens of faith).....

And then, in the Market Place, apart from the Mining Art Gallery, we find the Spanish Gallery (The UK’s first gallery dedicated to the art and culture of the Spanish Golden Age).....

Here there are copies of El Grecos:

And explorations of Velasquez:

I have to say, however, that, though the aim is to make the town a significant tourist attraction, it is all a little over-whelming, and it may not surprise you that Wetherspoon's The Stanley Jefferson, also in the Market Place, seems to be more popular on a Saturday afternoon than either the Castle or the Spanish Gallery.....

Anyway, it was an experience, and we have an appointment with Music in Country Churches at the Church of St Mary, Wycliffe.....

And then a dusky drive over the moors to stay with friends in Stanhope:

It's a blowy day on Sunday, but the rain holds off and we drive up to the northern edge of the Roman Empire, first at Vindolanda, an extensive settlement just south of Hadrian's Wall, built originally to service the Stanegate Road (pretty much between modern Newcastle and Carlisle), but later used as a garrison camp for the wall.  Excavations have been going on here for 50 years, during which time over 5 million people have visited the site, but it is estimated that there are still at least 150 years worth of archaeology to be explored.....

From Vindolanda we move on to Housesteads, Britain’s most complete Roman fort, standing on the dramatic Whin Sill escarpment, flanked by stretches of Hadrian’s Wall. Here we see Fairy Foxgloves and Wall-rue clinging to the north face of the wall:

And to the East and to the West the wall snakes its way across the land, an extraordinary stretch of imagination and engineering, still standing after nineteen hundred years.....

The day is fine, but I know how bleak it can be up here, and am reminded of W H Auden's Roman Wall Blues:

Over the heather the wet wind blows,

I’ve lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,

I’m a Wall soldier, I don’t know why.

And so, on our return, we pay our respects to Auden at Blanchland Abbey:

Where in the 1930s the poet stayed in the 12th century Lord Crewe Arms and, apparently stayed up late drinking champagne and playing Brahms on the pub piano.  His view was that, No spot brings me sweeter memories.....

Monday is grey and cloudy, and we head south, back to the Yorkshire Dales, where Hardraw Force still spills down the cliff despite the recent lack of rain....

Then, again through cloud and over winding hill roads, to Muker:

From where we walk up Swaledale toward Keld, through hay meadows some of which are protected as part of the Muker Meadows Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and the Northern Pennine Dales Meadows Special Area of Conservation (SAC). 

The fields here are ablaze with meadow buttercup, selfheal, pignut and red clover:

And here are some wood crane's bill:

The river is half full, if that, but there is still a great deal of life to be seen: common sandpipers flit up stream away from us; dippers bob in the gushing rills and martins whip past at speed, 

The valley is decked with ruined farms and barns, where life went by for centuries, it is now in part abandoned:

But at Reeth we find tranquillity, the river calmly slipping away to the east,

The sky cloaking the hills, as night begins to close in and our journey north comes to an end....

And I remember every town

And every hotel room.....

I've been down this road before

Alone as I can be

Careful not to let my past

Go sneaking up on me

Got no future in my happiness

Though regrets are very few

Sometimes a little tenderness

Was the best that I could do

I Remember Everything

Pat Mclaughlin / John E Prine

*****

Should you wish to see more pictures of Hadrian's Wall and the Yorkshire Dales, please see:

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2014/08/hadrians-wall.html

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2017/07/mrs-yorkshire-dales-diary.html

and for the Yorkshire Sculpture Part (and John Prine) 

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2025/04/north.html

*****

*****

North by North-East

Over the Hills

Bolton Castle 
where Mary, Queen of Scots, was held prisoner in 1568

Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil's Dictionary, defines Belladonna (n) thus: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English, a deadly poison.  A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.....

Which has nowt to do with owt, for the moment, but I may return to this later.....

Let me track back a bit.  We were recently having a good time in Swaledale:

A goat - [No idea why, Ed.]

And in Swaledale I wondered lovely as a clown [Stoppit, Ed.], quoting Robert Frost to no-one:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

Mending Wall

(I'll come back to this) and I passed by the hamlet (I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw. Hamlet, II.ii.312–13)  [Get on with it!  Ed.] of Muker.....  

'Nuff said.

So I retraced some steps and revisited Wensleydale.....Gromit, that's it! Cheese! We'll go somewhere where there's cheese! [Gromit is confused; looks at "Cheese Holidays" magazine] Now, where were we? Places you find cheese. Lancashire, Cheddar, Wensleydale, Philadelphia, Tesco's...

Yes, but it isn't only cheese!

Wood anemones and Common Dog Violets

I pause at Aysgarth.  Another time I was here in the rain, and, apart from my (late) friend Lindsay, there was no one else, just rushing brown waters.  Today the sun shines, there is less water, but there is space.  I relish the sound of water falling, the Ure driving down 30 metres in a kilometre, step by step, upper, middle and lower falls giving easy pleasure to visitors who, like me, have a little time and no reason to be elsewhere.....

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Leisure

William Henry Davies

Now you may find this a leap too far, but Jimi Hendrix comes to my mind.  

Waterfall

Nothing can harm me at all

My worries seem so very small

With my waterfall

I can see

My rainbow calling me

Through the misty breeze

Of my waterfall

Some people say

Daydreaming's for all the

Lazy minded fools

With nothin' else to do

So let them laugh, laugh at me

So just as long as I have you

To see me through

I've got nothing to lose

Long as I have you

Waterfall

Don't ever change your ways

Fall with me for a million days

Oh, my waterfall

May This Be Love

Jimi Hendrix

1967

[Not necessarily Nobel winning poetry but when coloured by the Experience it becomes beautifully fluid:  https://youtu.be/T4MBwvZWOQE]

Onward.....

Whoops!  

Anyway.  One has to keep on keeping on....  So I walk amongst the fields and barns of upper Wensleydale from Askrigg (whose white towered church, dedicated to St Oswald, has stood there since 1180), and my thoughts are transfigured by the upland air, the folding shoulders of the hills and the confused pleasure of being alone in the world.

Then to Hardraw, to check in again with JMW Turner and review the highest single drop waterfall in England, though a little rain would add some force.... 

Then, heading north, but barely a crow's tone from where Amanda and I lived under Ingleborough way back when, up the Mallerstang Valley (England's last wilderness - David Bellamy) following the River Eden, where freight trains hark back to times of industrial power:

And Red Scar and Mallerstang Edge rise to the East, bare and craggy, like the lives of farmers (and their sheep) hereabouts:

Then, it's over the hills again. Through Teesdale, then up, skirting Warcop Fell training ground, where I am reminded, by the red flag, of the 1966 World Cup and the excitement of Geoff Hurst and extra time (watched by 32.3 million people) in the Warcop Camp NAAFI (not all in the NAAFI) before we were driven in a three-tonner (rehearsing Hymns Ancient and Modern - amongst other songs) up onto the high moors to bivvy amongst the coughing cattle.  

Like Roman soldiers....

But I find comfort in Stanhope, with kind friends David and Sarah, whose hospitality smoothes away the emptiness of the stony hills.  We walk by the Wear and watch a pair of Dippers bobbing and splashing and frolicking in mutual affection:

And then, high across the Derwent, low across the Tyne and here is Chesters, a cavalry fort known then as Cilurnum, dating from around 124 AD, home, at that time, to around 500 men and horses.  Details from then on are unclear, though we know that the 2nd Asturians occupied (and rebuilt) the barracks around 180 AD.

{It may be of interest at this point that Ambrose Bierce defined a Barrack (n) as: A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it is their business to deprive others.}

Anyway, onwards and upwards, over another hill, and here we are above Housesteads Roman Fort, walking the wall that Emperor Hadrian designed (AD 122: 60 miles long, four metres high, garrisoned by some 10,000 soldiers) to stop Mexicans [Some mistake? Ed.] and fentanyl [Surely you mean Woad? Ed.] from being drug into the Empire by wayward Scots and others......

It is impressive. It is imperial.  It is imperative. It is rough. [It is ruined, Ed.]  It is long and cold and windy and very up and down along the Whin Sill (I know: I have walked at least half of it).....

And it is a wonder not only that it exists, but that, in a world without mobile phones, TV, laptops, air fryers and takeaway pizzas anyone survived in these draughty roofless, unplumbed hovels.....

Over the heather the wet wind blows,

I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,

I'm a Wall soldier, I don't know why.

Roman Wall Blues

W H Auden

And so, to flip back to my opening quotation, just think that at least some of these guys would have been wondering why the only Belladonna they could avail themselves of was bitterly poisonous.  They were a very long way from home.....

Still, it does give teachers the excuse to get out of the classroom......

{I know:  I've been there....}

I look up Wall in Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, but the only reference is to Wall Street, n: A symbol of sin for every devil to rebuke.  That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in heaven.....

Well, it's apt I suppose.....  (I wonder whether the yellow infanta has read any of this?)

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.....

Robert Frost

Mending Wall

Before I turn south I pass another stone building, seemingly part ancient castle, part pill box.  This is Crindledykes Limekiln, one of three hundred in Northumberland that were active in the nineteenth century.  Another reminder of things that are over the hill.....

It's cold and windy up here, and I begin my return to warmer climes, pausing at Corbridge to view yet more Roman remains, then through Slaley Forest, onto Blanchland Moor, idly thinking of Hamlet and Hitchcock, as one does, glad that I am not being chased by a crop duster.  I stop the car at the top of a rocky outcrop.... 

....and find myself leaning down through yellowing grass over the waxy orange cliff of President Trump's forehead, sculpted into the mass of Mount Crushmoor, and I grasp the outstretched hand of Eve Marie Saint, and, then I ......

.... find myself staying  with more old friends, the superb wildlife sculptor Simon Griffiths and Heather and family, in Castleside, County Durham.  How I got there I haven't a clue, nor can I say where Eve went, but that's partly the point of North by Northwest, (Cary Grant didn't know what was going on either, and Hitchcock liked that - and anyway it's my prerogative to make some things up.....)

I am but mad north-north-east....

But the truth is it was great to catch up with friends who put up with me, and to roam over the hills and far away in the north of this land.  

Thank you all.... Keep looking up.....

Simon Griffiths, Wildlife Sculptor

https://www.simongriffithssculpture.co.uk/

And thus, after another convivial overnight, I drive the long way back down into the Mezzogiorno, returning, like a faithful puffin to its burrow, like an Easter bunny scampering to its warren.....

[Just sign off, Ed.]

That high sound in the air

Is nothing but the draught in cold chimneys

Drawing taut the note of longing

As I listen northwards.

Lament

David Craig