Say Cheese Please

A change from literature to gastronomy today, and I'm off to the Wensleydale Creamery at Hawes in the Yorkshire Dales.

There's a fleet of vintage buses operated by Cumbria Classic Coaches who run a service to Hawes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This seems like a good idea as I will get to enjoy a trip through the dales where I can take in the scenery instead of the road ahead.

The bus can be boarded at their Ravenstonedale depot at 10am says their brochure. Knowing that a trip of even a short distance is prone to adventure, I set off in good time. And jolly lucky I did, as it turned out.

The lady who lives in my Sat Nav and I have a love-hate relationship, and by the time I eventually hop on the bus, that relationship is strained to breaking point.

The brochure of the bus company has a postal code printed with the otherwise vague address of 'Ravenstonedale'. I put in the code and set off with an air of bon homme.

My Sat Nav friend directs me to Ravenstonedale, in one end and out the other. The road narrows as I get further along and eventually turns into what could only be described as a farm track, with sheep wandering across here and there, and an increasingly sheer drop off one side.

Eventually, as a collection farm buildings hove in sight, what I remember as a small apologetic voice comes from the Sat Nav: 'recalculating, in 600 metres make a U turn'. 'What the hell ...', bursts from my incredulous lips. I try hard to refrain from strong language lest I offend my erstwhile friend and send her into a sulk.

Back to Ravenstonedale, relieved that I haven't had my tyres shot out by this farmer who possibly hasn't seen anyone from the outside world since the War.

What now? I pass a roadside bus stop which I see has the bus company flyer stuck to the post. As luck would have it, a lady is loading up her car nearby and in answer to my inquiry says, 'Oh, don't bother looking for the depot, you'll never find it, (really?) just go down the road to the school and park in the triangle and the bus will come along'.

'Right, thanks very much'.

Down the road, there's the school, and the triangle? Hmm, the triangle consists of a wedge of tarmac where two roads converge. Is it legal to park here? I know the Brits make up their own rules regarding parking, but this seems a bit extreme even by their standards.

There are already three cars parallel parked along the base of the triangle close to the school fence, which seems reasonable, but I have to make inroads towards the narrow end. It is a big triangle and I'm not sticking out into the road, but, oh well, she did say to park here, so I park.

I'm looking around for the bus stop, nowhere to be seen, when the occupants of one of the other cars appear from around the corner. I discover that they too are looking for this elusive (and possibly phantom I'm suspecting by now) bus. They have inquired at the store and been told to stand in the triangle and the bus will pick them up. A further discussion reveals that they too have visited the remote farm thanks to their Sat Nav!

All is well when, ten minutes later, the 1959 cream coloured double-decker rattles around the corner and on we hop, in the company of what turns out to be the most entertaining of old Dalesmen by the name of Jimmy.

It's market day in Hawes and I'm guessing Jimmy makes this trip each week to check out the price of fat lambs, just for the heck of it, and have a pint or ten at the Drover's Arms (or whatever the local pub is called).

It's a good thing the Wensleydale Creamery is well worth all this effort. I wander through the museum which gives the history of the company and has on display all the paraphernalia associated with cheese making through the years. I discover that a milking stool has three legs because three is better than four on the uneven floor of an old milking shed. Well there you are, there's a reason for everything.

The thing that always fascinates about old equipment and tools, is the effort that went into making an item not only functional but also beautiful. Totally unnecessary decoration bringing art into everyday life. Heaven knows, everyday life was hard enough for a farmer and his family, too hard perhaps for the enjoyment of such trivialities.

After the museum it's into the factory where large glass windows allow one to watch the famous (and delicious) Wensleydale cheese being made in what looks like a series of very large stainless steel bath tubs, actually called vats. Each vat holds 4500 litres of cooled pasteurised milk, and it takes four hours to convert it into 500 kilograms of scrum-diddly-umptious cheese.

Five vats have the milk at five different stages of production, from fresh milk to the set cheese which is being shovelled out of the vat and into the cheese mill where it's shredded then packed into moulds to be pressed. All of these processes are carried out by hand. The whey that is separated during the process goes to a local pig farm and each pig drinks 20 litres of whey a day!

After a pleasant few hours in this charming little market town we all pile back on the old bus, named 'Harvey', and head for home.

Our conductor, suitably attired in 1950s uniform, is a friendly chap who keeps up a running banter with the travellers while he sells us some bus related postcards. He says it's his ambition to sell Jimmy a postcard before the summer is out. It seems that today's the day and Jimmy lashes out and buys two!

Jimmy is in a very cheerful mood after his day out and chats away, mostly to himself. 'Aye, that's a grund 'un', says he to nobody in particular, and I look out the window to see a young deer just trotting across a field!

Back in Ravenstonedale Jimmy, the other couple and I alight from 'Harvey' and he disappears around the corner. I have a peculiar Harry Potterish feeling that it has driven through a curtain in the scenery to another dimension. Now that would explain the non-existent bus depot!