Flying High

Once more we must board the magic carpet in an effort to catch up with that illusive traveller who flits off to the next adventure as we trail along behind.

We'll pause for a moment over the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society near Harrogate and admire the sweeping lawns, the tranquil lake, the stately trees and the beds overflowing with flowers. A whole area is set aside to display garden styles through the centuries, and horticultural students hone their skills in the trial beds nearby.

Now look down if you will to see the magnificent Castle Howard, setting for the dramatised version of Brideshead Revisited. An ostentatious flight of fancy built for the 3rd Earl of Carlisle and designed by John Vanbrugh, a playwright who'd never built a house before in his life!

Leaving Castle Howard, look back as we pass over the Hambleton Hills and you'll see Yorkshire's White Horse looming on the hillside near the little village of Kilburn. But what's that fellow doing down there? By George, he's painting the thing! This not being a chalky region, it's necessary to give him a make-over every so often. I wonder who thought a White Horse was a good idea in this area?

As we fly south you'll see the spire of the great York Minster come into view, crowning glory of a city still surrounded by ancient walls and steeped in history. Train spotters will head straight for the National Railway Museum in York. Some, like me, may have their hearts set on seeing the original Flying Scotsman, but they will discover that it's currently in a million bits being restored! Never mind, there's afternoon tea at Betty's Tearooms to look forward to, except the queue to get in the door stretches halfway down St Helen's Square!

Then across the southern-most point of the Pennines to alight at Hilderstone in Staffordshire. Not far away are the ruins of the Stafford family seat, Stafford Castle. I'll be off on the morrow to see how well they're looking after the ancestral pile. Rumour has it that it's glory days are in the past. Perhaps the present Lord Stafford won't be much good for a loan after all!

All Things Bright and Beautiful...

A day in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, looking for the real James Herriot is a day of fact, fiction and film.

I arrive early in the morning and find 'Skeldale House' with no difficulty. The house with the distinctive red door is otherwise know as 23 Kirkgate, and it was from here that the veterinary practise of Donald Sinclair and Alf Wight tended the needs of the livestock and pets of the local community for around 50 years.

Thousands of people still visit this shrine, preserved to the memory of Alf Wight, seeking perhaps a little of the perceived simplicity and downright homeliness portrayed by this reluctant hero in his hugely popular books first published in the 1970s.

Although Alf's parents were not Scottish, he was brought up in Glasgow and so, unlike his portrayal in the 'All Creatures Great and Small' series, he had a true Scottish accent.

Alf's boss and later partner, Donald Sinclair, better known to the world as Siegfried Farnon, was what has been described as a true eccentric. He had no concept of himself as others saw him, and as a result was seriously put out by the way he was portrayed in Alf's books.

His brother Brian, Tristan to us, had quite the opposite reaction, and spent the latter years of his life giving regular 'All Creatures' lecture tours in the United States.

The house at 23 Kirkgate is set up as it was when Alf and Joan (Helen) lived here with their two small children, Jimmy and Rosie, and Joan's mother, a quiet and gentle soul who resided with them for the rest of her days, helping Joan with the housework and the children.

One of the best remembered features of the house is the French doors in the sitting room that open onto the long narrow garden. They are here still, along with the garden which these days has lost half its length through the inevitable sale of excess land. Today, at the end of the garden, there is a large replica cow byre, set up as a byre would have been when Alf tended his patients during his long working life.

There are seats here where you can sit and watch a video presentation by Christopher Timothy, who played the part of James in the TV series, giving us the low-down on the real James Herriot. Parked just outside is the car that was driven by James in the TV series.

The audio tour is narrated by Alf's son Jim who became a vet like his father, and was also part of the veterinary practise at 23 Kirkgate. We get some wonderful behind-the-scenes insights from Jim who was there amongst it all and can testify to things like the existence and generosity of Mrs Pumfrey and Tricky-Woo (real names escape me at the moment), he still remembers the arrival of those wonderful hampers from Fortnum & Mason!

There's a display of olden days veterinary instruments in the upstairs rooms and, in the adjoining house which now belongs to the Herriot Museum there is a re-creation of the set for the TV series. As you walk past that familiar telephone it rings, and if you answer it you will find a farmer on the other end of the line with some dire emergency that needs immediate attention!

Interestingly enough, it was the American public who put the James Herriot books on the map. They had been a moderate success in England but when the omnibus edition comprising the first two books was released in the USA it became an immediate hit. Large numbers of American tourists still flock to Thirsk each year seeking a little of that Yorkshire magic.

When Alf died in 1995, his memorial service was held in York Minster and was attended by over 2000 people including cast members from the TV series. Alf's stories revolving, as they do, around farm animals and their unsophisticated owners, touch the hearts of people to this day.

Unforgetable Fountains Abbey

We must leave the beautiful Lakes, the enchanting Dales, and the storybook Appleby behind us and move on to the tiny village of Grewelthorpe in North Yorkshire.

Grewelthorpe consists of a pub, some houses, a church, and a very charming duck pond skirted by a little green. It's a bit hard to interact with a town that has no store so I mostly leave early and return late.

Not far away, just outside Ripon which is six miles from Grewelthorpe, are the majestic ruins of Fountains Abbey, and the water gardens and deer park of Studley Royal.

This World Heritage site is a wonder to behold. It is reputed to be one of the largest and best preserved Cistercian abbeys in the country.

The abbey was founded in 1132 by a group of monks who'd had a bit of a set to with their fellows and were given their marching orders. The Archbishop of York came good with a plot of land in the Skell River valley for them to set up a monastery of their own, and they were admitted, within a few years, to the Cistercian Order, a very strict rule established in France some thirty odd years earlier.

They had a pretty hard time of it for a start because while they were quite good at praying, they were not much chop at building, or anything else very useful. The Archbishop sent along some practical help eventually, and building got under way.

The Cistercians, as an order, had a cunning plan to get all the tedious work seen to. They recruited lay brothers, who were illiterate peasants, to do it all, allowing them, the monks, to get on with hand writing copies of the Bible and such like.

Now in the 12th century it was very difficult to get into heaven it seems, and so to give yourself a sporting chance you needed to spread your wealth around in places that were likely to give you a foot in the door of the next world. The new order of monks soon attracted attention because of their austerity and piety, and so funds rolled in from those anxious to purchase a good seat in heaven.

Within 100 years it was one of the wealthiest religious houses in the country with vast land holdings stretching all the way to the Lake District. Their major industry was sheep farming, as wool was a much sort after commodity, but various other pursuits were filling the coffers as well.

The 14th century saw an economic downturn, and in the 15th century there was a decline in their free labour force of lay brothers. They weathered those storms and were still a wealthy and powerful abbey when, in 1539, Henry VIII shut them down along with all the other religious houses in the country, and snitched all their goodies.

Perhaps the substantial remains we see today is due to the fact that the abbey was not surrounded by a town, making it more difficult for the local population to make off with the stone of the walls to use for building materials, as happened in other places.

The ancient water-driven cornmill belonging to the abbey continued to function commercially right into the 20th century.

What a sight this ruin must be on a moonlit night when you might imagine ghostly monks filing silently down the stone stairs into the great abbey church for 2am prayers.

Ready to Ride

But what about the bike I hear you ask.

The bike, I must tell you, is my close companion and dearest friend. We are inseparable. It lives in the car, ever ready to be pulled out at a moment's notice to transport me across town, down a country lane, along a canal path, over to the station, around to Tescos etc.

I may have already mentioned my abhorrence of paying good money for parking. I know that councils have to cover the costs of providing parking lots and all that stuff, but there are plenty of people obviously quite happy to pay up so good for them. In six weeks I have paid exactly two pounds and forty pence for parking. I'd say at that rate I've paid for half the bike in saved parking fees already!

I've cycled on the Isles of Lewis and Skye, around Dingwall, Strathpeffer, Inverness, Forres, Fort Augustus, Mallaig, Stirling, Falkirk, Aberdeen, Appleby, Temple Sowerby, Coniston, Windermere, Keighley, Haworth, Ripon, Harrogate, Grewelthorpe, Thirsk, Stoke-on-Trent, Stafford, Shrewsbury, Ironbridge, Llandudno, Glatton, Mildenhall, Ely and Wicken Fen.

In fact I've put a new slant on 'Park and Ride', normally associated with leaving your car in a parking lot and taking the Park and Ride bus into town. I Park in the street and Ride into town. Or ride to the station, and take the bike on the train.

There's scarcely a day when it's not in use. Britain is a bike friendly country, and motorists are very considerate of cyclists. Even so, I'm surprised to find that the standard headgear for a day's cycling is a floppy hat!

Potter Mania

I'm going for the total immersion Potter treatment today. Rabbits, ducks and hedgehogs all the way.

We grown-ups head for Hill Top, the part-time home of Beatrix Potter whenever she could escape the society of her clingy mother in London.

Folks with small children head to the kid oriented 'World of Beatrix Potter', where the larger than life size characters are set in their own little scenes from the books. I may have to borrow a small child to get in without looking like a sad old lady playing with her dolls.

There's an uneasy truce between me and the lady in the Sat Nav today, but just to show me who's boss she takes me through the dreaded Kirkstone Pass (I'm assuming it's dreaded, if it isn't it should be), before delivering me to my destination at Near Sawrey, close to Windermere. I quietly hatch a plan to get home by a different route. Not that I'm becoming paranoid or anything, you understand.

The National Trust web site advises visitors to Hill Top to be early to 'avoid disappointment'. I arrive just after nine o'clock for a ten o'clock opening, as there's no way I plan to be disappointed. Three cars are here already, and by 9.20 quite a queue is forming at the ticket office. One lady has stayed in the village over-night as she was one of yesterday's disappointed persons. They open up at about 9.50 and we either pay up or, like me, show our Nat Trust membership card (love that card).

We all troop down the road to Hill Top after collecting our tickets, and linger in the charming garden until our ticket time is called. I'm a 10.05 so I have time for a few photos if only these people would get out of the way.

Inside, the house is just as it was when Beatrix lived here. She kept it as her studio after she married and moved to Castle Cottage. It's a cut above Wordsworth's Dove Cottage but still oozing rustic charm. Every room has a reminder of one or other of her books. The Tale of Samuel Whiskers is easily recognised as set in the kitchen and on the stairs. In The Tailor of Gloucester we see the dresser and grandfather clock, and the 1902 coronation teapot appears in The Tale of the Pie and The Patty-Pan.

After her marriage to solicitor, William Hellis, she bought farming land in the Lake District and became a much respected breeder of Herdwick sheep and a dedicated conservationist. On her death she left 14 farms and 4000 acres of land to the National Trust.

In nearby Hawkshead, the former office of William Hellis, also left to the Trust, is now the 'Beatrix Potter Gallery' where one can view the original sketches and paintings that illustrated her books, along with photographs and information about her life achievements.

It seems I still haven't had enough of the Potter Experience yet so I set of for Bowness-on-Windermere to find 'The World of Beatrix Potter'. Like most things in this country, it's well hidden and poorly signed. I raise this issue with the young man at the town Information Centre where I purchase my ticket, and he tells me it all has to do with the fact that the great British public love to complain and, of course, need something to complain about!

When I arrive I look around and find there are other mature persons sneaking into this kiddies paradise so I toss my head and stride boldly through the door and into a Potteresque fairyland, with each display recreating one scene or another from all your favourite Potter books. Peter is there as the star of the show along with Jemima, Squirrel Nutkin and friends, Mrs Tiggy-winkle in her kitchen, Jeremy Fisher in his pond. It would have been a shame to miss this.

My Potter day ends with a cup of tea from the Thermos, sitting on a rock by the lake finalising my plans for returning home NOT via Kirkstone Pass.

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!

A Day by the Lakes

My newly acquired devotion to the cult of the Swallows and Amazons requires me to set off early on Sunday morning to Coniston Water for the Wild Cat Island Cruise. The cruise is organised by the National Trust, sailing on the 150 year-old steam yacht Gondola, which was rescued from its watery grave by the the Trust and completely restored to the elegant and sumptuous Victorian splendour of its hey-day.

Arthur Ransome, the author of the twelve Swallows and Amazons books, lived in a house overlooking Coniston Water, and so it is here that he set his novels about the children of the Walker family, sailors of the good ship Swallow, and their one time rivals, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, captain and crew of the Amazon.

Their first adventure is set on the fictitious 'Wild Cat Island' which is in fact a real island in Coniston Water, not far from Ransome's house.

It's a beautiful morning as 'Gondola' steams into view to collect the eager seafarers. The advertisements for the old steam yacht make a point of noting how quiet this vessel is, and that is perfectly true. Not an engine sound to be heard. She glides through the water as if drawn along on an invisible line.

On board, a family of S&A fans from America are sitting near me as we pull away from the jetty and the children are eagerly looking out for various points of interest along the way. Me too!

The children in Ransome's stories were loosely based on the children of his friends who did really live here, so we see the boat sheds where the Amazon was moored and the the farm, Holly Howe, where the children stayed for their holidays. We see the houseboat that inspired the character, Captain Flint who lives on a houseboat, and we pass Cormorant Island where the treasure was hidden.

Then at the far end of the lake we arrive at Wild Cat Island, where the children have their camp. Our captain navigates us into a good position to view the entrance to the secret harbour and there's a decided list to port as we all move across for a better look. We bemoan the fact that the lighthouse tree is no more, and I'm sure we'd all like to go ashore and look for the camp-site. But, alas, we must leave that to our imagination.

As we head back up the lake away from Wild Cat Island, I think I see a wisp of smoke from their camp-fire wafting up through the trees!

Back to reality and off to visit Dorothy and William at Dove Cottage. This humble abode was home to the Wordsworth brother and sister and later William's wife and family as well, until they outgrew the place (which wouldn't take long).

It is all very charming and pleasingly rustic on a summer's day in 2010, but I suspect it was not quite so in 1800. William was known to avoid the downstairs domestic areas of the house, confining himself to the more cheerful upstairs sitting room, which also doubled as his study, and leaving the house via the garden door. He was, after all, a poet and one can't be expected to pen those golden lines in the kitchen, can one?

The poetry for which he is best remembered was written here, and you can quite imagine him scribbling away in this romantic house.

William wasn't the only member of the household with a literary bent, we know that Dorothy belatedly (and posthumously) hit the headlines in 1897 with the publication of her Grasmere Journals, a record of their years at Dove Cottage.

And it turns out that the two best lines in 'Daffodils' (according to WW himself), were written by his wife Mary! In the kitchen I wonder?