Up the Ben and Down the Boozer

Lost in Hembury Wood

 Dartmoor, Devon, November

 Somewhere in the great wood lies a castle. Long ago and beyond memory it may have been a remarkable place. Motte and bailey structure, it lies buried under soft leaf mold leaving only a suggestion of shape. The surrounding forest harbors nuance and guards against discovery. I'm sitting under a tree caught somewhere between now and then, with no idea in which direction lies out.

It was Tom's idea to take a woodland walk after we had taken a moorland walk and I was post my best adventure mode. The wind had blown in our faces from all directions up on the moor and after a a couple of hours of wiping hair out of my mouth, my arms  and eyes got weary despite the bracing air and the tantalizing views.

Descending into the woodland dells that make a vague sort of tree line below Dartmoor, we park in an empty National Trust forest lot and go for a walk without a map. Again.

A word about trees. Living in New England as we do, we have a lot  of them but as our family farms fail we lose the balance of meadow/tree, meadow/tree of the past 350 years and totter between forest, housing estates and strip mall. Left to themselves, the forests have reclaimed the hard-won clearings made by those yankee farmers and there are some who say that a squirrel can still run branch -to-branch from Maine to Tennessee.

In the UK trees have never really made it back since the great forests were channeled into grazing and villages and cities and colonial fleets and  the M-1.

A recent move by the Tories to "privatize" (as in sell off) great tracts of British forest met with resounding opposition by walkers and birders and riders and hunters and resulted in Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman having to drop her bid and issue a public apology.

So a walk in the woods is a fortunate treat and would have been to us as well if we had not been clueless about where the castle path was and  had that tiff over which way and gone our separate ways and, unfortunately, lost each other. 

I like a nice soft wood. Who doesn't? When Tom heads his way and I head mine neither of us thinks we can get too far out of earshot to holler, "Okay I give up," only Tom does. I lose him within five leaf-stomping minutes. After another five of not hearing his stomps in a crackly wood, I start calling; gently at first and then with all the great lung capacity I inherited as the descendent of opera singers and hotdog salesmen. I hear nothing-- and Tom has the car keys.

After another half hour of slogging through the leaf mold of yesteryear and finding neither Hembury Castle nor my  spouse I start that whole Blair Witch Project reel in my head and have trouble shaking it out. These woods are eery. A big black bird which may be a raven plunges  through the trees and startles me into a full stop as I watch it caw its way to the sky.  There are legends about these woods which if true, mean there are legions of Roman and Danish soldiers buried deeply beneath the soft ground I am treading. Legends lead to ghosts and I am prey to suggestion.

I stop and call again. Where earlier I simply called a gentle enquiry, "Tom? Tom?" now my word choice is less lady-like. I am counting on there being only me, the birds, the squirrels ("skweeralll in Brit-speak) and hopefully Tom, as my voice bellows across the wood and its silent, hidden past. 

"What?" Tom neatly pops up just behind me and gets the galvanized jump from me that he had hoped for. I expand on his query ("What?") with some additions to what that make the skweerallls run for cover and we debate who heard whom for a bit before agreeing to strike off for the castle path which we find and follow and walk around a hump in the ground which must be IT and head back to the car park. 

Oddly, later as we talk the walk over a pint at the Rock Inn  snug in Haytor Vale, Tom insists that he never heard me call until he was right next to me. I am convinced that even the long-dead could hear me and we bat that around for a while until we run out of steam and realize that one of us could not hear the other and wonder why.  We also find it compellingly curious that the well-marked path to the Castle was clearly apparent once we had re-discovered each other but seemingly invisible on our first sortie. If we had wandered off the map and into long-ago--how would we know? I for one cross Hembury Wood off my list of must-returns. Tom says he had a delightful walk and will come again next chance. 

In the Shadow of Castle Drogo: Sitting With Mabel

   Drewsteignton, Devon    July

Signing away your week's holiday on an unknown, unseen, not-sure village/cottage and in this case--pub, is both intriguing and unnerving. We knew we wanted to be in Dartmoor but we weren't sure where.   

Rule of  Thumb: when in doubt book through the National Trust Holiday Cottages. While not cheap (a caravan is cheap and while a week with the National Trust is increasingly Not Cheap they are dropping their rates--next year), reliability, location/location, ambiance, hot water and bath tub, fireplace/stove, and double bed with duvet. Some people (according to the guest book I always read in the first ten minutes of our tenancy while drinking my "welcome" cup of tea, eating my "welcome" biscuit and watching Tom bring our stuff in) get excited about the welcome tea tray, while others declare a life-long love with the cottage, the area, and the woman who prepared the tea tray. You can count on the Trust. 

  So here we were, week- long tenants of Trinity Cottage smack dab in the middle of the village square, thirty footsteps to the Drewe Arms pub and high above the glory of Dartmoor. We parked the car in the square right outside our cottage which was one of a long row of medieval cottages called Glebe on this side of the square. We unpacked suitcases from home filled with items necessary to a week away and some hot sauce,  items from the Sainsbury's back in Dartmouth: wine, beer, real butter, real bread, eggs, bacon, garlic cloves, yogurts, cheese, toilet paper, paper towels, cling wrap, some nice Spanish salami, five candles and Hello magazine, and went to the pub.

The thatched pub was originally the Druid Arms until 1915-ish when Julius Drewe (Home and Colonial Stores tycoon and creator of the peculiar Castle Drogo which stands crumbling high over the  nearby River Teign) paid the brewery to change its name to Drewe Arms to match his. Let us all be Drewe. Outdoor seating on tables tucked away from the wind in front and in the garden behind, the pub has recently been renovated but the original part has been left largely undisturbed. This means that you walk in a narrow aisle, order a drink at the  tiny bar drawn from carefully coddled shelf- casks in the original tap room and carry it either outside or into the snug unless you want the more upscale experience in one of the dining rooms.

Our first drink at the Drewe Arms was in the back garden under a summer sky, all by ourselves.  Trees in heavy green leaf, a nice breeze and a blue sky, we congratulated ourselves on a choice well made. Later, after a home-cooked dinner of real bread and real cheese  and Dartish chicken we went for a long walk where we got only modestly off-piste through some meadows, over stiles and past cows, circling back through the village churchyard which landed us right in front of the pub again. Leaving the evening's  gloaming for the cozily lit interior, we were warmly welcomed as neighbors for the week and forgiven for cooking our own meal rather than eating out.  The pub lends itself to a few people just standing in the hallway with drinks,  minding the doorway and chatting to the bar staff. Tom stayed to talk and I took my chardonnay into the snug. 

A British pub snug is just what it sounds like--a cozy place to sit with a drink. Think settle or stool, often an open fire and room for a few couples or a group of after-work celebrants. On this evening it was just me-- and Mabel. Taking in the satisfactory fire, the dart board and the small hatch into the bar, I turned my head  and met the  rather critical glance of a small round woman with arms made powerful from years of pulling pints.  Gazing towards the dartboard from her portrait gracing the far wall, she struck a familiar chord. It wasn't  just because she was portrayed sitting just where I was (where she would have been looking out the small window opposite me), nor was it that this (according to the plaque beneath the photograph) had  been her pub for 75 years.

No, Mabel and I had met before and it wasn't until that night that I woke remembering when.

We all make memories of where we've been or where we would like to be. I tend to buy books and it was in one of those purchased years ago that Mabel had made her appearance. A small collection of photos of British pubs, hers was a riveting face  and I remembered every detail of that well worn snug and her tired slump. You could tell her feet hurt. A small book of ancient buildings and their as-they-were interiors, I'd enjoyed flipping through it for as long as it sat accessibly on a living room table. I'd marked pages of pubs I thought we should someday visit. Even when it was eventually disappeared to a bookshelf I had occasionally pulled it down to "be there" and had spent many a moment with Mabel. Hers was an uncanny portrait, one of those that make you imagine an entire history. I sometimes thought I could hear Mabel sigh and wondered what she was looking at. Now I knew.

According to a 1995  article in the British Independent which chronicles the village's brief fling with running the pub themselves; Mabel Mudge, known to one and all as "Auntie", officially retired as Britain's longest-serving pub landlady on October 4, 1994. It was her 99th birthday. In 75 years at the Drewe Arms in Drewsteignton, Devon, she presided over one big change: the installation of running water and electricity.

Suffice it to say that we had a delightful week exploring Dartmoor, getting lost as night closed in on the Two Moors Way from Fingle Bridge past Castle Drogo, avoiding oncoming cars on high-hedged single-track lanes and finishing each day at Auntie Mabel's, as the Drewe Arms is still called in the village. We joined most of the surrounding population in the pub's Long Room for the final (and disappointing) game of the World Cup. Mabel's great-great nieces and nephew chased after their dogs in the square in the long summer evenings and their mother brought us a dinner tray of home-made roasted baby courgettes.   

When we returned home, I dug out the photo book and looked for Mabel. There she was (page 22) and will be. Turning back to the front (they are all lovely pubs) I laughed at what I had written to Tom on the flyleaf:

     "Oh down to the boozer we'll go, down to the boozer we'll go.

      We'll hold hands over Black and Tans 'til the candles burn down low."

Looking back at the Drewe Arms, I thought Auntie Mabel would have had a thing or two to say about that. 

 

 

 

 

Dartmoor: Whinging Our Way Up Hookney Tor

 

Dartmoor, July

  The wind comes up sharply as we climb towards Hookney Tor on a deeply ravined  path hidden by the lush man-height bracken that jumps up in midsummer, crowding out the grazing --and the view.  Puffing a little with the incline, we reach this enormously impressive granite beacon, which looks either like a giant's building blocks or a giant pile of  poop, depending on which way you look at it.  Dutifully climbing it to look across the valley, the county,  and possibly the nation and  the world (I think I can see Russia from here) and managing not to be blown off the highest rock, we  trudge on to the next surmountable mound of stone, Hambledown Tor.   Dartmoor pony foals cavort goofily across the hillside, annoying their mothers but  pleased with themselves. 

We can also see (and definitely hear) a long line of  teen-aged walkers carrying very new full packs, headed our way. On closer inspection they are also wearing crackling new rain trousers and jackets.  It's not raining.  Bedrolls on their backs and plastic map covers  dangling around their necks, they look  moderately miserable.  Climbing down to make room for the first of their limber legion,  we meet several pairs on their way up walking in a very loose interpretation of a school crocodile. Two girls tell us they are on a school outing and have to walk the whole #*#* Two Moors Way in four days. Asking us how far it is to the  next #*#* tor and despite our reassuring, "Not far," they announce (colorfully) that they are not climbing another #*#* tor, swing left and downhill off the main trail--  ditching the group who stretch  back along the trail behind them. The kids on the tor top loudly hoot and holler, their voices echoing along the moor.

We've wandered the Two Moors Way (which connects inhospitable Dartmoor with inhospitable Exmoor) several times now, and not just because we can start (or end) at the  ever-hospitable ever-burning  log fire at the Warren House Inn. There's something incredibly inviting and ancient about this tract of moor. Once, on a bright spring day,  we heard a cuckoo in the trees by the old mine  and despite the Brits  pronouncing it cuck--oo, the one we heard  definitely said koo koo, no small trick.

The drop from the Warren House takes us sharply down to  Headland Warren  past the buried and pleasant mining works and the old  home farm evidenced only by stone fences and a hardy cherry tree which still survives by what must have once been a front  door.  These warrens have been home to centuries of rabbits who have clearly enjoyed the  decline of a national  craving for lapin stew.  A long circuit along the valley bypasses  the 13th century longhouse at  Headland Warren Farm tucked into the tiny valley where you can just make out the small march of standing stones on the  opposing hillside.  Up across the tarred road it's a straight  climb to  Birch Tor which  in a  windy moor climate has no birches) past the Four Aces; stone enclosures used to protect the miners' vegetables from the rabbits, then on to Hookney. 

The great rocky tors are of course what we all come to see in Dartmoor.   Some hikers "bag" tors the way they do bens in Scotland, madly running up and down as many as they can in a 24 hour period. Tour busses pull up to the easy- looking access to Hay Tor on a regular basis, and walkers can visit the less accessible tors via a network of paths which intertwine with the Two Moors Way. The tors draw us to them; marking where we are, where we were-- affording us a chance to climb them so that we can see the far distance--and more tors. 

 Grimspound Bronze Age settlement  sits neatly and forever just one side of the hill between Hambledown and Hookney Tors. A  meadow-sized stone circle surrounds 24 stone huts which housed very short people here when the weather was warmer, about 1300 B.C.  Tom wanders off to sit in one of the circular stone foundations and I plunk myself down higher up the hill in  what I assume is the chief's house, admiring what was surely a chief's view and  noting the ongoing arrival of sixteen year olds. Those who  have already reached Hookney Tor are now doing what teenagers do when they climb a pile of rocks, and I wonder idly where their grownups are.  The girl duo short- cutters are no longer visible when a teacher-type clad in neat cargo shorts  whizzes by hauling his own heavy backpack, and  sprints tor-wards in admirable leaps.

A few moments later his female counterpart pops up near me in my little hut   and politely asks if I would like her to snap (my) photo.  Caught off guard I say thanks but not really, I'm just hanging out here for a while. I like this house and its view and have come to appreciate its setting  tucked in to the hill, away from the wind. I ask if she is with the school group and when she nods yes, I think I'd better, teacher-to-teacher rat on the two who've escaped. She very accurately describes them for me;  ("One dark hair wearing the map and the other dark hair wearing the attitude")and when I say that's them officer,  she sighs, thanks me and runs  to head them off at the pass, informing me that she is keen not to lose any students on the first day out. Running easily with a full pack on strong legs up the tor that we had just straggled down, across the moor in hot pursuit of the scoundrels, she is impressive. 

I rock back in my mysterious little  round house and wonder what it was like to be nearly grown around here 3000 years ago.   After a while I get lonely and  go  join Tom in his little house where we both sit for awhile reflecting on life, the past, rocks, and teenagers.  When you're sitting in what is left of a very small hut on a barren hillside, in a very small village which ceased to exist an  incomprehensibly distant time in the past, even the non believers (Tom) can sense those other lives. 

We watch companionably as the last of the stragglers catch up to the larger school group and   disappear over the horizon. Taking a purposely different track than the school group, we head back to the  log fire at Warren House.  Climbing up the last long hill,  we hear a lamb plaintively baaing from one of the bracken ravines, and hope it has the good sense to find its way out.   Teenagers. Bah.

Templar Mystery

Gullane, East Lothian, Autumn

Having been possibly the last person on the planet to have read the DaVinci Code, my knowledge of Freemasons extends only to secret handshakes and the seedy local  Masons' bar that  housed our kids' annual soccer banquets. I did see the movie (twice--on airplanes, I really liked the part where they gallop into the fancy museum party) and developed a mild interest in the idea of an ancient order of Templar Knights. 

 We took Tom's mother and sister to visit Rosslyn Chapel, which was shrouded as it always is, in scaffolding, and filled with people who'd read the Da Vinci Code with far greater passion than I. An unfulfilling drive down the four lane A1 to Old Craighill Junction, Rosslyn Chapel doesn't look like much from the outside. We  eavesdropped a tour, and I stood for a few minutes looking at the maize glass, an impossible piece of insider's information about North American corn, that pre-dated the European "discovery" of North America. Or, was it impossible? Weird place. I bought the Rosslyn Chapel bottle opener, the one with the Templar Knight as handle, and a piece of  pretty good shortbread at the Chapel's cafe and store.

Back in Gullane   I had  been coveting the tomatilla-like Chinese lanterns growing  in the abandoned forecourt of the empty Templar Lodge with the big For Sale sign. These lovely, delicate orange autumn flower pods dry beautifully and are a staple fall stock for us here in Massachusetts. They brighten the house from  autumn  harvest through long, cold winters.  I wanted those flowers; that piece of home. Now.  Checking out the scene, just across the street from  the Oxfam charity shop , the Gullane Delicatessen and behind the Gullane One Golf Club  first tee,  I slipped  inside the border yews, gathered an armful of  glossy smooth horse chestnuts (also a mainstay of a New England autumn) and snipped a bouquet of Chinese lanterns. I  greedily went back the next day for more, and hung them in upside down bunches on the whitewashed wall of our fisherman's cottage. They looked swell. 

Stealing flowers from the Templar Lodge gave me a bit of the heeby jeebies. I kept looking over my shoulder at something not quite there, and Tom refused to come any farther than the  horse chestnut tree.

There are all kinds of odd stories about this place.  The most recent one was a few years ago, when a Japanese film company put up a  'round the clock  rooftop webcam  streamed back to Tokyo internet. They aimed to track UFO activity on volcanic, Traprain  Law. A slab sided, sugarloaf shaped hill, home to ancient peoples for thousands of years, it stands in direct view across the fields to the Templar Lodge.  Steven Prior, the defunct hotel's manager, who himself dabbled in the paranormal, told BBC reporters at the time, "Some Japanese golfers on holiday here saw something strange up there, and word of this seems to have got back to Japan. There is a long Celtic tradition of fairies on the hills ... you wouldn't take your baby up there for fear of it being turned into a changeling." Ethereal starships, hovering  faeries, a million points of light; old tales talk of Templar treasure offloaded on the nearby beach,  secretly borne to Rosslyn's underground chambers and vaults.

Who planted those flowers?  Physalis,  sprouting through macadam in one large clump, they looked purposeful and non-invasive, while they are prone towards taking over in warmer climates. Why?  Did they arrive from a scattering of seeds sown by the ever present wind off the Firth of Forth? Pods from another galaxy? A last gasp effort to throw a little color at a last gasp hotel?

 The Lodge was,a very long time ago, a  Scottish "fortified house"built in the High Middle Ages, modestly prepared for attack. How it became a Templar Lodge, a  black leather bar hotel, and eventually a conference site for UFO enthusiasts  who featured shapeshifter replacement witnesses, reflects more about time and place than it does mystery or intrigue.

The village of Gullane pushed hard to retain the Templar Lodge as a hotel, but no bites. Approved recently as  renovation flats and private homes; the Lodge is history. Whether or not the Knights of the Templar, alien illuminati, or simple Scottish ghosts disturb the high end conversion, is anyone's guess. I can totally imagine a brace of  lost-in-space knight- ridden war horses racing through the parking lot, scooping up magical Chinese lanterns (said to be good for gout), and galloping on, over the hill, down to the sea; splashing across to Fife.

 

British ghosts

 

Spring, Devon

I have to, at the very beginning, admit that I have a tendency to see ghosts. It's not my fault,and it's always a surprise. I come from a long line of tea leaf readers and people who who have convincingly two -way conversations with relatives who have 'passed over'. My mother, on the advice of her Séance- enthusiast English mother, banned Ouija for two generations after an unfortunate experience in 1927.  My "other" grandmother  (Russian) did eerily accurate  Yiddish fortunes; predicting babies,  events and bad weather.

 When I say ghosts, I don't mean wispy smoky see- through things,  I mean real people who don't apparently exist in the here and now. Sometimes they bump in the night  or  walk by with a martini in hand, and others they stubbornly insist on getting into what I think is my bed, and they think is theirs. Once I demanded that we leave our week's farm cottage rental on a Blue Flag beach on the Dingle Peninsula after our first 24 hours, because an old man squeakily rocked all night in our bedroom chair, insistently saying, "Geddout geddout."  I have probably the world's longest suffering husband.

So--this time it was Devon, in an old coastguard cottage high on a stormy cliff.  I hadn't  slept well  after an intense weekend of visitors and activity, and woke up in the middle of  the night, in that way that says you won't fall back asleep unless you get up.   Deep  country pitch dark, I opened  the curtains for a bit of moonlight as I had done many times before (sometimes the moon shone straight over the sea, round and full  into our bedroom window). I headed downstairs to make a nice cup of tea.

 Opening the door to the landing,  I sleepily noticed a person tucked into the comfy hall chair, huddled into a wool blanket gripped closely by his or her two hands, distinctive in the shaft of moonlight.  I  sleepily said,” Oh sorry,” closed  the door and went to look for the landing light. All the light switches in the cottage were hard to reach and it was dark. I needed help. “Tom?”  We were, I thought, the only ones in the cottage. No answer. Back to the landing.  Tiptoeing a bit closer,  looking again at the person silently curled into the chair, I stage whispered,  “ Tom is that you?" Tom yawned an answer from our  bedroom, “What?"”. 

Waking up a lot faster than is advisable for anyone at any age, I  very nearly  fell backwards down  the long, steep stairs, but fortunately my arm shot out a  life- saving grab at the railing. The person in the chair thoughtlessly made no move to help me, even though I was fairly voluble in a rather unladylike way about my near -miss dive down the staircase.  In fact the figure did not move at all. Asleep...or?

I ran back into  our bedroom to check to see if Tom really was still in our bed (yup), and  back again to  to see who was in the  hall, already really annoyed that I'd been startled--and scared, and ready to have a few words with our midnight visitor.  Gone. Poof. Tom got up and patiently, helped look for my ghost.  The chair was empty--no blanket, no coat, nothing that could have tricked me into thinking it was a someone.  Bedrooms-check, landing- check, windows-check.  I sat in the chair too--very briefly, just to see if it was still warm and it wasn't--in fact--it was cold.  Tom, who has learned over the years not to patronize me about these ghostly sightings, sat briefly in the chair, pronounced it neither warm nor cold, reminded me that the whole house was cold,  and went back to our hot water bottle- cozy bed.  I stayed awake for hours.... listening. The two dogs snoring in the kitchen, said nothing. I switched the lights on and off for awhile and tiptoed around opening and closing doors, trying to recreate the scene--but my ghost had, apparently, taken his woolen blanket and fled. 

We woke to bright sun, and two men putting up painters' scaffolding outside our bedroom window. Tom agreed that we would make breakfast and drive up to  the moors.  We walked. And walked. The weather was gorgeous and the moors were incredible and the huge circular walk had tors and fields and jumps and medieval villages and bogs and French school  children and chocolate bars and a picnic by a bucolic stream. We  wandered through little  moor villages and had dinner in lovely Harberton, at the nine hundred year old Church House Inn (broccoli bake and Lost in the Woods ale) with its ghosts, then back to dogs and the cottage--and our ghosts.

I have to admit that I made myself stay in bed at night once I was in bed-- all the weeks that followed. Some nights the dogs or the wind or the sea or the creaks of an old house kept me awake and I took to reading with one of those silly book lights which gives just enough illumination to read three lines and to double check the shadows.

Cautley Spout

June, 2007 Sedburgh, West Yorkshire

Even though we  have had a wonderful stay at Cumbria's Cross Keys Temperance Inn I've probably ruined any chance of our being welcomed back.   Ever.   It's not really my fault.  The traveling sisterhood will understand the demons that visit when it's been raining for hours and you've read all the books, eaten the last KitKat and sort of extemporaneously decide to cut off your hair. I didn't mean to dump it all in the definitely non 21st century toilet when I mindlessly hit plunge.  It just happened. 

We've been on our way "north" from weeks spent "south" and a few days stop in the Lake District where we've booked at Sedburgh's  Cross Keys Temperance Inn  in West Yorkshire's Howgill hills.   The driving rain which has hounded Yorkshire all summer has pushed us up the hills and along the A-66 past tanks and troops who are ready for flood assistance.

It's rained and rained-- and rained.  No, really, it's amazing--as though those deepest lakes of  Coniston and Windermere have sprung enormous leaks and geysered their waters heavenward.  Not good driving weather we nearly miss the Cross Keys and when we pull into the small parking lot ours is the only car. The Inn isn't really much as size goes with only the two rooms but opens for meals at lunch five  days a week and dinner on weekends.  Our confirmation e-mail warned us not to arrive when we have as no one will be here,  but  it's raining, and the door is open.

A fire in the downstairs library is old but still warm. We peerinto the dining room and nose around a little until we hear jangling pots and pans and voices laughing in the kitchen where two women  cooking our dinner tell us just to go on up and choose a room as we will be the only guests on this wet night.  The narrow little  staircase takes us up to another cozy  library with a bedroom at either end and we choose the cheery pink flowers , double bed and deep bath with a window that looks over the farm next door on one side and the  rain slick A683 on the other.

I have a core need born of  Yankee life  in a cold climate that drives me to take  full advantage of a deep, hot bath when on offer  and when I emerge it has stopped raining.  Tom and I look at each other, grab our shoes (and my clothes) and sprint outside because as lovely as the Cross Keys is, what we have come to see is Cautley Spout .  Sliding down a small bank and over an even smaller footbridge--there it is.  A spout is a thin, powerfully long waterfall and this one, the longest in England, drops magnificently as the  Dales- driven River Rawthey falls 200 meters to the plain where it  regroups as river and rushes between pasture banks to meet us. 

We walk as far as we can in the evening dusk knowing we have no chance of climbing  the  ridge of the Spout which is  part of the Coast to Coast Path before nightfall.  Accompanied by  wanderingly friendly, hairy black Fell ponies as night falls, we  walk back. 

Our meal at the Cross Keys is wonderful (we are one of three tables and I have the recommended buck shot -free rabbit pie) and as a National Trust- owned historical Quaker temperance inn we are, in these liberal times, allowed to provide our own wine.  When they tell us we are the only ones staying here, they really mean it. The rain starts again as we climb back to our room, the lights downstairs go out, the key turns in the lock and the last car edges wetly onto the road-- leaving us both guest and landlord of ourselves.

 We sit in the library reading from its eclectic offerings and savouring the sense of  being alone in a wild  storm in a  sixteenth century inn.  I find a book about William Penn's journey through Yorkshire in 1684 when he stayed here--back when it was a hotbed of radical Quakerism.  Too early for bed, I watch the rain for a while,  take another bath and cut off my hair.  If there are any ghosts they are  thoughtful  in a Quakerly  way and allow us to  sleep easily to the sound of  steady rain.

It is still raining the next morning but we can see  the Cautley from the breakfast room window even if we can't climb it.  I guiltily thank the nice woman bringing us our food who is also our host and full of stories about climbing and riding up over the Spout and the generations of locals who come to the Cross Keys for its famous green eggs and ham and don't own up to the hair fiasco even though Tom thinks that all plumbing is in working order.  I take my oddly  lightened shorn head to our next stop and a wet  walk  along part of Hadrian's Wall Path where any ghosts foolish enough to be out and about will  be those of  second century Roman soldiers miserably yearning for sun and warmth.