Up the Ben and Down the Boozer

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.

Gales in Wales

 

Porthcawl, Wales, Late November

It doesn't take a  BBC weatherwoman to know which way the wind blows. It blows on me and thee and the great North Sea--and I for one look out sharply for Oregonian coastal-like sneaker waves when we are walking anywhere within a mile's distance of water.  It's the kind of weather that leaves you drenched in the five minutes it takes to find your car in the Europcar hire lot at Heathrow. In the wake of the largest amount of rainfall in the shortest amount of time in recorded history, bridges across Cumbria are collapsed or closed, as are schools and work. Local authorities advise people to ignore their satnav (there are apparently no settings to rule out downed bridges) and stay away from water. Sadly, some people have been swallowed (or have 'gone in' as the news reports) by the River Usk and the River Dart.

   The Workington Bridge over the Usk (Cumbria) is about to come down leaving residents with no access to schools, food--and work, other than by a bad, bad carbon footprint 90 minute diversion.Residents are fearful of their local economy suffering irreparable loss. On Sunday, a local Reverend, exhorted her congregation to, "Pray for the Brewery" in hopes that Jennings Brewery, the town's largest employer, now on the "wrong side" of the bridge, will stay, despite the absence of a way in--or a way out.  By comparison, Wales, if it weren't for the winds,  and the great sea waves, would seem lame.

But the Welsh winds are anything but ignorable. The sea here in Porthcawl (home of  one of the great annual Elvis Festivals) is a-roil and the wind, ceaseless.The Sunday outing for many people, in cars lining the promenade, is to have tea while watching the sea; throwing sandwich crusts to gulls who find it nearly impossible to land long enough to snatch them before the wind does.It is so windy that the bags are sucked out of rubbish bins, ebbing and filling with volatile air, tossing their contents to the sky. 

A short drive down the coast to Kenfig,  leads to the gorgeous stone Prince of Wales  where the locals are taking refuge from the wind but as it's Sunday--no food,  and on to the Angel for a hot meal, where our neighbor looks morosely at what must surely be his last pint. The bar tender orders him a cab, and he says sadly, "Not quite yet lovey.  Soon, soon."

 
Our little car rocks and rolls in the gusts, but the Fairway Hotel seems stolidly rooted and only the sound of the gale, and the age of the bed keeps us awake. We eat a full  (well almost full--skip the beans, fried bread, fried mushrooms but yes to black pudding, egg and  mushy seaweedy lavah bread), Welsh breakfast at a table defiantly inside the great picture windows, watching the weather head across the sea. Tom says it may be just too windy to leave.  The car is speckled by white sea foam, seats sodden with rain blown up through the undercarriage.

Who visits Wales when it's wailing?  You get quite used to the wind after a while. The Chippy on the  promenade is open, despite the risk of one strong gust's sending it seaward, and dog walkers are actually buying ice cream cones to slurp as they walk backwards into the gale, their dogs hopeful that chunks of vanilla cornet will blow their way.

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.

North York Moors--Reservations needed on the Inn Way

North Yorkshire, July
It's getting dark and I'm hungry. Really hungry--and cranky and muddy and I'm pretty sure that my  absolutely favorite-of-all time irreplaceable shiny Italian red leather sandals are history. This forest is  impenetrable  and Tom has admitted that we are, as he puts it, "path free" which is his unique way of avoiding having to say those inflammatory three little words: We Are Lost. I know we're lost, he knows we're lost, but Tom is more likely to focus on the what next and I am thoroughly engrossed in the what now.

When someone asks me if I'd like a stroll to the pub for dinner, and when that pub is the  Plough Inn  in Fadmoor, North Yorkshire  which combines ambiance,tiny rural village pub location, and lovely food which might include a  creamy Wensleydale pasta and will definitely offer something fragrantly lamb and rosemary; my shoes  (as  in this case the now sadly wilted red leather Italian sandals) are on and I am out the door.

Tom has thoughtfully extended that invitation this evening as we have been pleasurably walking part of  the Cleveland Way for a large part of the day, arriving back at our self catered  cottage  to discover that the cupboards are bare and our supper choices are limited to oatmeal and a bottle of Old Peculiar.  

The pub is a good distance by road and I don't pay much attention to Tom's suggestion to take a short cut--always a cautionary sign.That was hours ago, well at least one hour-- and the sun was still high on this North Yorkshire summer evening  when we followed the little red line on Tom's TIC  map  to the local leg of  The Inn Way, off the hard packed earth road, into the deep deep woods.

What could be more delightful than following a walk called The Inn Way? The map shows it as a six day 89 mile circular walk Helmsely to Helmsley connected by--inns. Our little jog of it would take us to our little inn, The Plough and Tom does not notice--or somehow chooses not to let me know he's noticed-- that this section includes the highest point of the entire walk, which I sincerely hope is behind us-- Sleightholmdale (cottage)  to Fadmoor (pub).

The path we've been following seems to have been either an old path used possibly once or twice a century, a newer one that was a poor idea, or Not The Inn Way At All and   has pretty much petered out by the time we've slid nearly vertically up a muddy embankment, crossed over another forest road to nowhere, and we've had to make the kind of decision that involves direction and setting sun and whether Fadmoor is to the west, the north west or just plan north.

I like to wet the tip of my finger and hold it in the air to test direction which Tom says is ridiculous because (he was a multi-badged boy scout) that is how you test for wind direction not for direction direction, but it works mysteriously well for my personal radar and as Tom has had a serious credibility dip what with the getting lost and all--we go my way which does self righteously lead us out of  the forest  over and through a many -hectared  barbed wire sheep field--and then another one and three more just like it, so that by the time we stumble around a huge farm and through the sort of  muddy and animal- rich ground detritus huge farms tend to collect and onto the Fadmoor road and into the Plough Inn, we are instantly stopped at the door and asked if we have reservations.

Reservations? At the pub? Ummm...no, could we just eat at the bar? What no bar dining without--a reservation? Could we just get a drink and (I beg) possibly some crisps? We are shuffled to a corner of the bar where none of the spiffy diners (where do these people come from?) have to see our poor, bedraggled selves.

Slinking out when we are done, we walk very, very slowly all the way back down the village road out to the main road, and the long hard packed earth road, down the steep hill, to the stable that is our food- free self catering cottage. I drink the  beer. Tom quietly makes mush.

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.

 

Cotswold Mud

January

It's nearly night but the wind has lulled to a dusky stillness and I say to Tom, let's take a walk.  Just a little one as we spent the day in the wind walking  the Cotswold Way up to Broadway Tower and down through woods  and meadows but our rain gear has satisfactorily dried by the cottage fire and the air smells lovely.

We agree we'll just mosey down the lane a bit past the pub which is not yet open but Tom brings map and torch anyway because we have now agreed that map and torch go together like boots and coat-we shouldn't leave home without them.

My boots  (high top cozy green hunter wellies same as the queen--so they say-- wears to walk the corgis) are good. My  rain coat is a  foil to the fleece that is my must layer in an English January and I throw on a waterproof cap with visor--just in case.

The lane leads to a gate. The gate leads to a trail. We look at each other,shrug and go through over the bridge down the path. Tom stops to look at his map. There is a circular  walk we might just squeeze in before real night, the air is still soft and the  brook lined path ahead inviting. Why not?

Soon we meet mud. The cow trodden farm hillside we are climbing is so slick that I  telemark vertically up the slippery  slope.  The farm itself sits comfortably mid hill surrounded by ancient outbuildings, fragrant smoke issuing from its several chimneys, lights softly glowing from its low windows. The trail circles above the farm's yard on a single track lane as we cross the top of the hill in what the Scots call the  gloaming--a blue twilight whose rich deepness yields an equally deep pleasure at our being here in this place at this time.  We see the lights of the village we've walked from blink on across the hills. They seem surprisingly far away.

Does the circular track start here? Or over there? Tom gets out the map and the torch, carefully studies it and leads us down a fenced perimeter--into the  deep--dark--woods.  Like a shade pulled against the sun, the thick trees, even in leafless winter, eclipse the light and we are blinded by the dark.  My eyes have trouble making the transition  and the trail having turned again to that slick muddy slide,  I do the sensible thing and grab Tom's arm for balance.  Okay, okay I admit I also grab it because the trees are really enormous and it is really dark and there are some odd little  crunchy noises coming from that  shadowy patch below us. 

Tom balances me, the map, the torch and himself as we negotiate the hairpin turns pocked with tricky holes that make our boots squelch and slide. The teeny torch does nothing more than show us  feet and as it is in Tom's hand it is his feet we are staring at.  The crunching noises have ominously stilled when suddenly a violent gust blows in rain and all of the tree tops above us become huge winged creatures who rise up angry, flapping and screeching and way too close. My feet shoot out from under me, I grab Tom harder--AND HE LETS GO. I shoot down the slope  sure that I'm about to be monster dinner and stop only when the mud grabs hold and leaves me sitting in its slimy tentacles.

"YOU dropped me!" I yell at Tom even though he  helps me up and does the best he can to not laugh and says that he didn't mean to drop me but the good news is that he saved  his map and glasses and they are not muddy at all.

I am so mad that I stalk off dripping mud and leaves and tears and even though the rain increases with my foul mood it does little to hose me off. I slog up the long hill until finally reaching the village road, tramp down  it in what is now a full tempest arriving at the cottage well ahead of Tom but have to wait to get in because he has the key. We do not talk for the whole hour it takes me to try to wash mud from my hair, my face, my boots, my trousers and my jacket.   Realizing that this is the best I can do in this trying situation I allow Tom to join me at the pub's fire where he placates me with scampi,  a hot baked potato and a large Chardonnay.

It isn't until we are ready to leave for the airport two days later and I catch site of the back of my jacket that I come to a fuller comprehension of the tenacity of Cotswoldian elements. I will fly back across the Atlantic Ocean branded by streaks of what I can only hope my fellow passengers know is just mud.