This last weekend saw the annual Masham Steam Engine and Fair Organ Rally take place. Unaccountably, we’d never been before. But at 6.00 in the evening we turned up to watch these lovingly restored vehicles parade through the town. And before the Parade Proper started, these rather charming miniature engines had their moments of fame.
The parade of the Real Steam Engines is for another day.
This week, A Canadian blogging pal, Rebecca of Rebecca’s Reading Room reflected on re-reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. It made me think of a post which I wrote six years ago, in which I described a walk in Emily’s footsteps. Now it’s not really playing fair to re-post something I published before for the Lens-Artists Challenge: Tourist Attractions Near and Far. But I’m going to do it anyway. How many walking routes does anyone know in the UK where the way-marking is in any language other than English? Here, they’re in Japanese. This wild and often unforgiving part if England has become an unlikely tourist Mecca for devotees of Brontë’s story of the passionate and tumultuous love affair between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.
28th July 2018
Haworth: a charming village on the top of a high and steep hill, in an area of high, bleak and steep hills; home to the Brontë sisters and the surrounding moorland countryside of Wuthering Heights.
Everyone knows that you can expect ‘weather’ when you come here, whatever time of year you arrive. As you stumble along the church path to leave the village, slashing rain tumbling from sullen hostile skies needles your skin, slicks your hair to your face and saturates your clothes. As you set your face against the wild wind, your boots sink into the sodden peaty turf as you trudge onto the moor. If you dare to glance up, you see unending moorland before you: bleak, barren and bare, with sheep huddled against the dry stone walls which march across the landscape. This is Nature-in-the-Raw, and we expect no different.
I went there earlier this week. None of the above applied.
We are in Week Five of a heatwave. I doubt if either the Brontës or even Heathcliff himself had ever seen the like. Brittle coir matting now carpets the brooding moorland fells: and several weeks early, the heather is almost in flower, rich and purple. Yellowing grasses replace the dense green turf the sheep prefer, whispering and rustling in the light breeze.
There’s a little brook in the valley here. Angry peaty water jostling officiously along its path has been replaced by still, clear shallow pools.
The Brontë sisters would cheerfully have paused here to rest, reflect and write a little. Then, like me, they would have slogged on, up the peat-and-stone pathway that leads upwards, ever upwards, towards Top Withens.
Top Withens may have been the isolated upland farmhouse that Emily Brontë pictured Cathy Earnshaw and family living in when she wrote Wuthering Heights. It’s a ruin now, the roof torn off in a violent thunderstorm in the 1890s. Just as you’d expect.
It was the perfect picnic spot for me. The moorland stretched before me, its hillsides rhythmically rising and falling. The world was silent: not that silence in which there is no sound, but that of the living countryside: the low susuration of the swaying grasses; the humming of the wind in my ears; the occasional complaint of a bird sweeping overhead. Beyond the moorland, greener fields lay, chopped centuries ago into rough rectangles by drystone walls. Some held sheep, some cattle, others recently cut hay. The sun warmed my rocky seat, and I was perfectly content.
Except for the sky. The day was sultry, sweaty, but freshened by a soft breeze. I knew the sun might be chased away by gusty rain. Ash-grey clouds swelled and receded, revealing granite tones behind: and beyond that, cornflower blue once more. It was a signal. Haworth takes weather seriously. Never be tempted to climb these uplands without a very capable waterproof in your kit.
The moorland I saw this week was not the Brontë’s moorland. It’s been a little sanitised. There are helpful finger posts pointing the way at every junction, in English and … Japanese.
The pathways the sisters trod are no longer springy peat tracks, or sticky muddy gullies. Instead, heavy slabs line the way, to prevent footfall damage to this fragile area from the hundreds of people who tramp these paths looking for the Real Brontë Experience.
My day was far too comfortable for that. I was not returning to a draughty parsonage with self-destructive brother Branwell to worry about. If you want to see the Brontë’s life through his eyes, read Robert Edric’s ‘Sanctuary’. You’ll be glad to get back to bustling tourist-destination Haworth for a nice cup of tea.
This post should qualify for a mention in Jo’s Monday Walk, I hope.
Perhaps only British readers will be interested in this one. Let’s see. We’re going to visit Masham, our neighbouring market town: population – just over 1000. Main employers: two breweries – Black Sheep and Theakstons. It’s an attractive place, much loved as a stopping off place and watering-hole by visitors to the Yorkshire Dales. But it’s nobody’s idea of the beating heart of the country, or even the county.
What I’ve only just found out is this. Boris Johnson, one of our (several) recent Prime Ministers (2019-2022), and Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party from 2015 – 2020 both had antecedents in Masham. No love was lost between the two politicians as they faced each other across the despatch box. Yet once upon a time – about 170 years ago, when Queen Victoria was on the throne – their ancestors were neighbours up here in Yorkshire.
A saddler called Mr. Stott lived in the Market Square. He was twice married and fathered 7 children, so you might think this makes him Boris Johnson’s forbear. No, he’s Jeremy Corbyn’s ancestor. His neighbour was a confectioner, a widow, a Mrs. Raper. And her sister-in-law was Miss Raper, who married the Prime Minister’s great-great-great grandfather Thomas John Johnson.
Both families had probably lived here for generations. Mr. Stott and Mrs Raper were certainly neighbours from before the census of 1851, and still lived next to each other when Mr Stott’s second wife Sarah died in 1871.
And both were buried in Masham Churchyard, though I haven’t yet spotted their graves.
*This is a reference to the BBC documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? which traces the family history of people in the public eye.
Since several of you commented on that cheeky black-headed gull (In winter plumage – no black head) esconced on Neptune/Poseidon’s head on Saturday, I thought I’d give herring gulls a moment. The header photo is of a youngster, the rest are adults.
The featured photo is of a juvenile tidying up the beach.
Monday Portrait.
And IJ Khanewala’s Bird of the Week.
For Debbie’s One Word Sunday. And for once, I have no words. Unless you count the post title.
Monochrome Madness this week asks us to feature statues. I could show you Michelangelo’s David. I could feature statues of The Great and The Good, as featured in all big cities everywhere. Or Nymphs and Greek Gods from set-piece fountains everywhere. But I’ve decided to go low-brow and show you pieces destined to appeal to children, or adults in search of their inner child.
Let’s begin at the Arboretum at Thorp Perrow.
Then we’ll stay local and inspect the Alice in Wonderland characters you’ll find in Ripon Spa Gardens. Lewis Carroll spent part of his childhood in Ripon, because his father was a canon at the cathedral here.
I hope you recognise the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts.
Then there’s this fellow, part of a sculpture trail promoted recently in London by the children’s charity Whizz Kidz.
Here are some gargoyles, not necessarily designed for children, but certainly appealing to them: from the Hospital de Sant Pau, Barcelona, and the Església de Sant Julià in Argentona.
Monks and the Christian faithful – or certainly the masons working for them – generally weren’t above fashioning satisfyingly scary pieces. Here are two battered relics: one from Rievaulx Abbey, and the other from Rheims Cathedral.
My last image isn’t of a statue designed to be amusing. But Neptune at Studley Royal always makes me and any children I happen to be with laugh when the poor fellow is sporting a seagull headpiece.
And my feature photo? Are they even statues? Well, I don’t know what else to call these two. They’re from Valencia’s annual Fallas Festival, where humorous figures, originally made of wood, are toted round town in March each year to celebrate the arrival of spring.
For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness, hosted this week by PR, of Flights of the Soul.
And Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.
And Natalie’s Photographing Public Art Challenge (PPAC).
It was Ripon’s third Theatre Festival last week, and the weekend was to be given over to the streets and the park for theatre-in-the-street. The first two festivals had been sunny, warm, and everything good the weather could offer. Last weekend’s forecast was unremittingly vile. Rain, wind, thunder … everything you don’t want. Ripon’s luck had run out.
Except it hadn’t. Apart from one short sharp shower in the middle of Sunday, the weather was – sunny, warm enough, and everything anyone could have wished for.
Come and have a stroll. We could join Struzzo the ostrich and Maxim as they wander round the park.
Kit and Caboodle told a good yarn from their laden mule- cart. It was nicely illustrated by a moving picture show, transcribed onto an apparently unending scroll of paper unfurling before our eyes. And with added paper puppets.
We could watch the swirling-skirted clog-dancers rhythmically and musically clickety clacking their clogs.
Or we could wait for a train with the Rhubarb Theatre and their Three Suitcases as they try to set off on holiday. We’d have a long wait. Ripon doesn’t have a station.
Oh, hang on! There’s plenty going on near the Market Square too…. such as Fireman Dave …
… I want to catch the Bachelors of Paradise …
… and Logy on Fire, who does astonishing feats of acrobatics and balance with batches of discarded cigar boxes …
And there’s so much more. I only managed to see Four Hundred Roses, whom I photographed here, as they wandered up Kirkgate between performances.
I wish you could have been actually – rather than virtually – there too. Maybe next year?
We went to a barbecue last week. It was already July, remember? Mid-summer. I wore, on top of my underclothes:
- a vest
- a polo-necked jumper
- a winter-weight cosy jumper
- thick socks
- and to top it all off, this ...
I was – just about – warm enough.
The header image comes courtesy of Andrik Langfield: Unsplash.
On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.
Kate W: Books are my Favourite and Best
This month’s chain began with Jenny Erpenbeck‘s Kairos, translated by Michael Hoffman, which as it happens I reviewed in my post in May. It gave me the idea though that I would make works in translation this month’s focus.
My first choice is Adania Shibley‘s Minor Detail, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette: another story about living with the consequences of war. The first part of this book is set in 1949, in Israeli- Egyptian border country, and a platoon of Israeli soldiers are seeking unsuccessfully for hidden weapons. They kill a group of Bedouin nomads whom they encounter. Only one young woman – a girl really – survives. She is taken back to camp, and systematically gang-raped before being killed. We hear all this from the point of view of the commanding officer – clipped, without emotion, without judgement. 25 years later a nervy young woman, living and working in Ramallah steps in and takes over the narrative. She’s read about this crime and wants to find out about it by travelling to and investigating it on site – difficult and risky to achieve. This quixotic journey doesn’t end well – how could it? This is – intentionally – an uncomfortable and unsettling read, written with suppressed passion by its Palestinian author.
My next choice is also about living in the aftermath of war. Philip Claudel‘s Monsieur Linh and His Child, translated by Euan Cameron. This is a haunting book that will stay with me. Monsieur Linh is in an unnamed country, living in a refugee centre for those who have, like him, fled on an elderly ship from his homeland which has become a war zone – surely Vietnam? His family members have all been killed – except for his baby granddaughter, whom he keeps close and cares for every second of the day and night. One one of his daily wanderings, he meets Monsieur Bark, similarly lonely and isolated since the death of his wife, and the two men, despite having no shared language, develop a deep bond of friendship. Then Monsieur Linh has to be re-homed … This is a restrained and simply told story, which evokes a compelling picture of a gentle man, deeply traumatised by the loss not only of his community and family, but of his homeland, landscapes and daily rhythms. A compassionate, moving book, with an unexpected twist that reveals even more about the losses this elderly man has sustained.
Guadalupe Nettel‘s Stillborn, translated by Rosalind Harvey also has a child at its heart. Two young women, Laura and Alina, know for a fact they don’t want children. So Laura, the narrator, has her tubes tied. While Alina enters a relationship, and changes her mind, even to the extent of having fertility treatment when pregnancy just doesn’t happen. Life gets in the way. Alina becomes pregnant but before the birth, is given the awful information that her grossly disabled daughter will not live. This book is one which looks a the wider definition of parenthood, through the omniscient eye of Laura, who seems to know every intimate detail of Alina’s life with her partner Aurelio and daughter Inés, as well as of their childminder who’s unable to have children of her own, and of Alina, of her own mother, and her neighbour Doris and son. It examines the emotional conflicts and burdens of motherhood: their overwhelming presence in each woman’s life. A startling and forceful story.
My next book also has children at its core. Homesick, by Jennifer Croft is not translated. She wrote the book first in Spanish, then in English … This book is a haunting one, presenting the childhood of Amy and her younger sister Zoe in a series of vignettes, often extremely short. We gradually build a picture of two extremely close siblings: the elder gifted, the younger dogged by frightening ill-health – a rare but benign brain tumour. Tragedy after tragedy strikes -indirect, but significant. Then Amy gets into University aged only 15. A much shorter section details Amy’s post-graduate life until her mid 30s. Like the earlier part of the book, it’s fragmented, yet intimate and sensitive. I was kept at a distance from the two girls: I felt something of a voyeur, though a sympathetic one. I was privy to some of the many disasters that had struck the girls, without really getting to know either of them. Which felt appropriate. Complex lives make for complex characters. How can we really know what goes on in someone else’s head?
We leave Amy as a young woman, and it’s a young woman who is centre stage in my next choice. I’m not normally a fan of dystopian fiction, but I found Yoko Ogawa‘s The Memory Police, translated by Stephen Snyder to be a powerful and unsettling read. Simply yet lyrically written , the writer – this is told in the first person – lives on an island in thrall to the Memory Police. Things comprehensively disappear: in the early days, simple things like roses, and the inhabitants soon lose any memories of the things that have vanished. Those unfortunate people who find they do not forget – and the writer’s parents seem to have been among them – simply are removed by the Memory Police and never seen again. The ‘writer’ of this book is herself a novelist, and we are privy to her efforts. We never find out more about the Memory Police, or know to whom they are answerable. But we are left with a lot to think about – totalitarian regimes, life, death and the process of letting go and of dying. I’ll go on thinking about this book.
My last book also looks at a life where things are not as they seem: Georges Simenon‘s The Little Man from Archangel, translated by Sian Reynolds. When Gina, the free-loving and much younger wife of Jonas Milk, Russian emigre, small-time bookseller and stamp dealer disappears, Jonas lies, and says she’s away visiting a friend. It’s almost immediately clear that this isn’t true, and Jonas has impotently to realise that his soon-disbelieved untruth has consequences. He’s increasingly made aware that his experience of being both Jewish and a migrant has accounted for his being less integrated into society than he had believed. A powerful evocation of 1950s small-town French life, which though bleak, is also atmospheric and elegantly told.
With my last book, we end where we began: the far-reaching consequences of long-over war. I’m aware that my choices this month have a touch of earnestness about them: they’re not beach-read territory. But they’re well-worth your time.
Next month’s starting point is Heather Rose‘s The Museum of Modern Love.
All illustrations are from Unsplash: Ben White; Jewad Alnabi; Redd F;Omar Lopez; Tom Morbey; Giuseppe Mondi.
Just beyond the walls surrounding Fountains Abbey estate is a farm rented by a tenant farmer. It includes a small patch of land, untended and fenced off, because several trees got here first. They’re yew trees, and they’re thought to be about 1400 years old.
Think how long ago that was. It was only a couple of hundred years after the Romans had finally left these isles. It was several hundred years before the Norman invasion of 1066. By the time a group of monks from York had come to the site to build a Cistercian community here in 1132, those trees were already some 500 years old. This area would have been wooded, wild and interspersed with occasional farms. There would have been wolves, wild boar, lynx, otters, red and roe deer. But no rabbits. There’s no archaeological evidence for rabbit stew in any of the nation’s cooking pots from those days. They probably came with the Normans.
Those trees – once seven, now only two – would have been witness to the monastic community maturing: to the abbey and all its supporting buildings and industries developing. They would have seen the community grow, then all but collapse during the Black Death in 1248: and slowly prosper again. Until Henry VIII dissolved all the monastries, and Fountains Abbey’s roof was hauled down in 1539, leaving it pretty much the ruin it is today. By then, the trees were working towards being 1000 years old.
They’ve always been a bit out on a limb, these trees, and that’s what has made them such a rich habitat. They offer protection and nest sites for small birds, who can also eat their berries . Caterpillars feast on the leaves. These days, they’re home to eight species of bat, and a wide variety of owls. Yew trees are famously toxic to most animals – that’s why they’re fenced off – but badgers are able to eat the seeds, and deer the leaves.
I can’t show you any of the creatures for whom these trees are their neighbourhood – apart from a grazing deer at nearby Studley Royal. Just the ancient trees themselves, the nearby Fountains Hall, built in late Elizabethan times when they were already 1000 years old, and a slightly more distant view of Fountains Abbey itself. My featured photo, the last image I took in June, is of those yew trees, looking as though they’re ready for the next 1000 years.
This is for Brian’s Last on the Card, and – somewhat tenuously – for this week’s Lens-Artist Challenge from Tina: Habitat.
The phrase ‘Half as old as time’ was actually coined by John William Burgon in 1845, in his poem ‘Petra’.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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