This one’s for our French friends: a stone and gated style, walkers-for-the-use-of.
Another valley, another view.
Spotted in a village garden, and obviously nicked from outside some French hamlet. Not Rimont, then, but where?
Another view across the Dales
Swaledale sheep: the image of the Yorkshire Dales.
A rather fine dry stone wall.
Our lunch time view.
Our lunch time companions.
Setting forth after lunch.
The River Ure at Aysgarth.
The falls at Aysgarth.
A final view of the river.
A few late primroses, still bright and fresh.
About time too. Five weeks in England, and still we hadn’t got out and done a Proper Walk. With a Proper Group. Blame the general business of unpacking, organising furniture, pots and pans, clothes, books, pictures and day-to-day Stuff in our new home. Blame constant strings of communication with officials who Need-To-Know our new details. Add in those who fail to respond, perhaps because they no longer have local offices and, understaffed, are too overwhelmed with work (DVLA ?), and you have all, well, some of the excuses you need for our having failed to get a decent walk in.
There was a certain reluctance too. So many of our happiest times in France were spent discovering the region with our Sunday and Thursday walking friends. Apart from the scenery, we remember with so much nostalgia the conviviality and the leisurely picnics, as we all produced cheeses, charcuterie, bottles of wine and home-made cakes to share at the lengthy midday pause.
All the same, we shouldn’t have worried. Yesterday we met members from a local group, unsurprisingly the one from Ripon. We got ourselves to Wensleydale, to a picturesque village called West Burton, and had a hearty, but not too hearty, walk across to Aysgarth, before winding our way back. We loved it. The group was welcoming and friendly. The walk had just the right amount of challenge – we have become just a bit unfit – and the views were all we hoped for. The weather was good too. Breezy, but not cold, and plenty of sunshine.
There was only one small disappointment. At lunch time, British walkers sit with their own personal sandwich, get it eaten, then move on again. But even that disappointment was relieved when at the end, Our Leader spotted a tea shop. Sitting round over a large pot of tea, cakes for some, as we reviewed the day was a pretty good end to a pretty good walk.
Stately homes. Back in the day, they were home to the landed gentry, and were local employers par excellence, what with large households to cook, clean, furbish and refurbish for, ornamental and vegetable gardens and even farmland to nurture, children to rear and educate, hunting grounds to stock and maintain, guests to cater for.
Nowadays, they’re where the English like to go on a Bank Holiday. They provide the chance to get a glimpse of other, very different lives, to learn a little history and to enjoy a stroll round gardens on such a different scale from that little patch you potter around back home. And because it’s a Bank Holiday, a little entertainment doesn’t go amiss either. People arrive in their hundreds, expecting to spend the entire day exploring house and gardens, snacking rather well in one of several tea rooms, mooching round the gift shop and having a little bit of extra fun too.
Castle Howard
Emily had come over from Barcelona to visit, with boyfriend Miquel in tow. Castle Howard seemed a good place to spend a day. Thanks to its frequent starring role in TV costume dramas and films, there can be few Brits who aren’t familiar with Castle Howard, even those who haven’t ventured north of Watford Gap. Me, I’m the ‘Brideshead Revisited’ generation, and back in 1981, Tuesday evenings (I think) were put on hold for weeks and weeks as we turned the television to ITV and followed the Evelyn Waugh saga, feeding our nostalgia for a very different pre-Second World War Britain. Castle Howard was pretty much star of the show.
And really, why not? You can read its history here, but just spend a little time strolling round with us, as we re-discovered the parkland; the woodland; the walled gardens; the splendid 19th century Atlas fountain; The Great Hall – where columns & arches covered with carved decorations rise towards the splendidly painted dome; the chapel decorated by Burne-Jones… and so on.
The cupola
The Atlas fountain
The Atlas fountain.
And yet another view.
Castle Howard glimpsed from the gardens.
Wandering through the woodlands.
First view of the interior of the castle.
Gaze upward to the vaulted ceiling.
A glance through the windows.
From the other side, you can see the lake.
Part of a Crown Derby dinner service. Each plate is different.
Burne-Jones was responsible for the stained glass in the chapel.
Back outside again. The walled garden: not yet at its best.
But because we went on a Bank Holiday we had extra things to do. There were sheep dog displays. We admired the skill of those so-well-trained dogs as they expertly rounded up not only sheep, but a gaggle of geese and a fussy line of ducks.
Sheep dog rounding up geese for a change.
There were falconry displays. Here is the splendid and majestic Ferruginous Buzzard who made a break for it and got away: last seen in a distant field, regarding us all with thorough disdain. I hope handler Ben found him again: he was a very handsome beast indeed, as were all the birds of prey we saw that afternoon.
Ferruginous buzzard, contemplating his get-out plan.
A final wander round the grounds, the walled garden, then we too made our excuses and left, just before closing time and the mass-escape for the car park. We’d had a fine day.
A final glance at the parkland surrounding the house.
You’ve probably given up on me. I have been silent. But life has not been silent or tranquil. We’ve been in England a month now, and since then, we’ve found somewhere to live, moved in and started, but not finished, unpacking. We’ve started to explore our new neighbourhood, and begun, tentatively, to put down roots.
All of which has been complicated by our being somewhat incommunicado. We had, until today, no land-line or internet connection. Our (shortly to be ex-) mobile provider offers no connectivity whatsoever for several miles in every direction, so the whole business of communicating with the outside world has been put somewhat on hold, at a time when whole swathes of people and organisations require to hear from us, or to contact us.
From today, however, we’ve rejoined the 21st century, as BT came to install a phone line, bringing with it access to the internet and TV. So here’s an update.
We arrived in England with a ‘must-have’ list when it came to house-hunting.
We wanted:
to be in Ripon itself, within walking distance of its shops, library, cinema and so on.
to have a house with a small garden or courtyard: apart from anything else, how else do you hang the washing out?
to have a garage. Not necessarily for the car, but to accommodate the mountains of ‘stuff’ we still seem to have despite our efforts to downsize.
On the first Monday back we found:
a flat at the edge of a village without a shop, about four miles from Ripon
with no personal outside space
and no garage.
It was perfect. We signed immediately.
You see, this was no ordinary flat. It’s the oldest part, tucked at the back, of a largely Georgian country house, set in gardens and grounds which include formal lawns and borders, a secluded walled garden, woodland and grassland.
In fact, it’s not even a flat. Downstairs, beyond the entrance hall, is an enormous room which we plan to make into our library and study, and which currently is our warehouse. Upstairs is generously proportioned living space. Every window offers views of those gardens, and the fields and countryside beyond.
Looking out of the kitchen window towards the walled garden
Our landlords are the charming and generous owners of the Georgian house, and other members of the family live in nearby buildings converted for their use. They insist that they want us to enjoy the gardens which give them so much pleasure – and hard work. They even provide us with extra storage in part of a stable. We’ve spent the little ‘down-time’ we’ve had exploring the gardens, the adjoining country walks, and getting to know a little about the village: more later about all of this.
We’ve decided that being four miles from Ripon, and just a little further from Masham is a very small price to pay for living in such utterly idyllic surroundings, with delightful landlords and neighbours. Here’s just a taste of our new surroundings: we shan’t invite you inside just yet – we’re still unpacking.
Those upper floor windows are all ours: this shot’s taken from the walled garden
And this too is a shot showing the flat from the walled garden.
We’ve been back in England exactly a fortnight. In many ways it’s been so easy to slip back into English life. We’re quite fluent in the language and cultural mores, after all. In other ways, it’s been a honeymoon, despite our difficulties in re-registering , re-taxing and insuring the car, which continues to be a frustrating, irksome, time-consuming and frankly ridiculous task.
We’re rediscovering sights and experiences with the eyes of a lover, both blind to faults and delighted by characteristics which may one day exasperate rather than charm.
For the time being, we’re discarding the pleasures of French food in favour of a cheeseboard that includes a sharp, crumbly tasty Lancashire or a creamy blue Cropwell Bishop. When buying vegetables, we have to include handsful of purple sprouting broccoli, still unknown in southern France. We’ve gone native.
Purple sprouting broccoli at Masham Market
We’re going back to old haunts. For instance, having gone to Harrogate (to try to sort out car insurance, grrr), we found ourselves with an hour or so to spare to visit the Valley Gardens. This park has always charmed us, and yesterday we fell in love with it all over again.
It was developed for visitors to the spa town as an attractive place to walk as part of their exercise regime after taking some of the many waters on offer. 36 of Harrogate’s 88 mineral wells are found within the park, and no two have exactly the same mineral composition. Back in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, visitors arrived in their thousands, attracted by the apparently curative powers of these waters. A boating lake, bandstand and tea room were built and still exist, but the Parks Department has chosen to focus on developing spectacular floral displays, formal in character towards the town centre, and becoming increasingly natural as the visitor walks upwards towards the pinewoods.These days, there’s a children’s playground, a skateboard park and visitors can play tennis and crazy golf too. Somehow, though, these attractions don’t dominate. The gardens are a place to visit to be at peace with nature, to spend quiet moments with a few friends or your dog, to enjoy the trees and flowers, both formal or less organised displays. Come and share our walk with us.
That’s Harrogate’s Pump Room, now the town’s museum. Sulphur water is still freely available here. Try it at your peril.
When I realised that we were likely to move from France to England in the Spring, I immediately became anxious – no – panic-stricken, at the thought that this year we might be too late to enjoy one of the glories of English life: daffodils. Of course, there are daffodils in France, and spectacularly so in hidden woodlands such as the one we visited last April.
But whilst the French have daffodils, they don’t do daffodils as we do here. All over England, they’re in pots in urban courtyards, crowded into suburban gardens, rambling over country gardens. They form part of the roadside verges on tiny D roads, march along urban by-passes and ring roads, line dual carriageways, and romp across traffic roundabouts. Householders buy them two and three bunches at a time and place jugs and vases full of them all over their homes.
I shouldn’t have worried. Since the moment we arrived, they’ve been at their spectacular best. It’s impossible to feel anything but joyful when passing by whole armies of those bright yellow flowers nodding cheerfully in the breeze.
And goodness knows, we’ve needed distracting from the tasks in hand. Since we arrived ten days ago, we’ve found a home to rent, started the daunting process of re-registering our car in the UK (you can’t buy a tax-disc without having an English MOT, you can’t get an English MOT without an English number plate, you can’t get an English number plate until….. you get the picture), organised moving our goods, registered ourselves hither and yon, started the process of catching up with British friends, tried to maintain contact with French friends…..
…and finally, of course, I’ve changed the title of the blog. The header, showing our transition from the Pyrenees to the Pennines, was master-minded by our friend, the talented amateur photographer Richard Bown. He already has a family history blog, but I really hope he’ll begin a photography blog soon and share some of his fantastic images with you. If he does, I’ll let you know. Because you will want to subscribe.
Our removal men travel weekly between northern England and southern Spain with all stops – including Laroque – in between.
You’re making your last visit to Laroque today, for the time being. We left 3 days ago, and now we’re in Ripon. Those last days were a furore of packing, cleaning, ‘goodbyes’ (though never, never final farewells), and two visits from the removal firm, who couldn’t fit everything in, first time round. At this moment, perhaps, the person who bought our house is planning his own removal to Laroque.
I never told you, probably out of sheer superstition, the story of the house sale. The housing market’s incredibly tough in the Ariège just now. House prices have tumbled 25% since 2008. Properties remain unsold for one, two, three years, as unhappy owners reduce the price of their homes in hopes of at last attracting a buyer.
Whereas we had nothing but luck. A man from near Paris, house-hunting here, in the area where he’d grown up, saw our house, arranged to view, and said he liked it. A week later he came again, showing his ‘coup de cœur’ off to his mum and dad. He made a low-price offer, as you do. We refused it, as you do. But we offered him our non-attached garden, being sold separately, at a generous discount, and said we’d include some of the furniture in the house sale. Reader, he offered full price, and the rest is history. Vue-vendue.
We’d just locked the door for the last time. And helping us wave ‘Goodbye’ are Martine, Francis and Anaïs, almost the very first friends we made when we arrived.
So here we are in Ripon, ready to house hunt and begin our new lives here. Oh, and there’s the Tour de France starting in Yorkshire too, in a couple of months. We’ll keep you posted.
One of the views from our walk last Thursday. In the distance, the ruined castle of Lagarde. In the far distance, the Pyrenees.
It’s come at last. The week we move back to Yorkshire. On Saturday we did ‘The Long Goodbye VI’. This time next week, we’ll have been back in England almost three days.
So that’s it for ‘Life in Laroque’. Maybe one more post. Maybe not.
So what do I do about it? Shut up shop and start again? Or simply change the title and keep writing? I don’t know how things will change for me once I get back to Yorkshire. I’m fairly sure I’ll want to keep on writing a blog. I’ve enjoyed the discipline of getting memories recorded. I’ve loved having feedback from friends. At first, these friends were people I’ve shared part of my life with, people I’ve worked with or spent time with socially. Increasingly, they’re cyber-friends: people who take the trouble to comment, criticise, offer suggestions and memories of their own, and whose blogs interest me.
Yesterday, though, Malcolm made a suggestion, remembering the exhibition I’d had a hand in organising here, comparing the Ariège with Yorkshire. Why not change the title of my blog to ‘From the Pyrenees to the Pennines’? That’s what we’re going to be doing after all : exchanging one set of hills for another. For quite a while, having been away so long, I expect to be something of a foreigner in my own country, and this might be reflected in what I choose to write about. Or not. I just don’t know.
I’m sure I’ll lose some of you, dear readers. Perhaps your interest is in France, specifically this part of France. But I’d love it if some of you choose to continue the journey with me, as we settle back to life in the UK and travel further afield from time to time. We’re bound to come back to the Ariège too. There are favourite people to see, favourite places to visit, and new places still to discover.
So ……. new blog? Continue with this blog under a new name? What do you think? I’d love to hear from you, especially if you’re one of those bloggers with whom I have cyber-conversations. Thanks for coming with me this far. I’ve enjoyed your company.
The Yorkshire Dales. They’re not bad either, are they?
We’ve all heard of Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, endings and transitions. He’s the one with two faces: the grizzled lived-in one looks back towards the past, while on the other side of his head is the younger version, looking with optimism and hope to the future. He puts himself about at this time of year, and indeed gives his name to January.
He’s been putting more energy at the moment however, into clambering inside our heads, mine and Malcolm’s. He’s got us at our own game, as we look both forwards and backwards at every moment
The grizzled half of my head is fully occupied in reminiscence. It doesn’t even try to understand why anyone would want to look at a future in England. It thinks about our walks, particularly our Sunday walks with our Laroque friends. What scenery! However characterful, green and lovely English scenery might be, nowhere is going to provide the snowy summits of the Pyrenees as a backdrop to every walk. And there’s something about those midday picnics too which I’m not expecting to see repeated at an English walker’s lunch spot. The aperitif that gets handed round, the bottle or two of wine, two or three home-made cakes, coffee and digestif….. And last Sunday, a mid-December Sunday, it was so warm that one of our number stripped off his tee-shirt to get the sun on his back.
The Pyrenees: always there. The constant backdrop round here
Apéro anybody?
Towards the end of Sunday’s picnic
View from the picnic spot, near St. Julien de Gras Capou.
The grizzled half of my head realises that tomorrow’s concert with the choir will be my last one ever and makes sure that my eyes mist over and my throat constricts as I try to follow the music. It points out that those summer evenings spent in our back yard over a leisurely meal and glass of wine are now things of the past. Those moments with friends, those trips to explore, discover and re-discover the area we’ve called home these last few years area are all but over. Grizzled Janus is holding all the cards when he’s in the mood. He knows very well that we’re finding it tough to say ‘Goodbye’ to all this.
Ripon Canal in spring (Nigel Homer, geograph.org.uk via Wikimedia Commons)
But Janus has two equally potent faces. The young version is optimistic and cheerful. He points out that we’ve never fancied growing old, much less infirm in France, and this is the moment to get involved in life in Ripon, a community where we already feel comfortable, but where there is so much more still to discover. Much of what we most appreciate in France is available to us there too: wonderful walking scenery and an active community that welcomes people who want to join in. Theatre and concerts will be within easy reach and we’ll be able to mix small-town life with easy access to bigger towns too. And do you know what? I’m going to appreciate those English summers, if not the winters so much. I can’t be doing with those days when the temperature is in the high 30s: and I used to be a sun-worshipper. It’ll be good to return to speaking English and to understand most cultural references : though I expect we’re dreadfully out of touch.
Thwaite in the Yorkshire Dales (David Dunford, geograph.org.uk. via Wikimedia Commons)
Dear two-faced Janus, you’re a terribly mixed up sort of chap. We expect to be terribly mixed up too. We made a decision, and we believe it’s the right one. But we don’t think we’re going to get through the next few months without periods of excitement, periods of mourning, periods of confusion. Often all on the same day. It’s probably all going to be a bit exhausting….. and it might end in tears.
We were Christmas shopping in Toulouse yesterday. A day in this, the fourth largest city in France, is always a treat. It’s affectionately known as ‘la ville rose’, because of the predominant building material, a deep pink brick. Elegant long tall terraces of town houses, public buildings, hidden courtyards wait to be discovered and re-discovered on every visit. We have so much more still to find and explore. There are fabulous churches and museums, wonderful and often quirky independent shops, appetising restaurants and bars to suit every budget and taste. The River Garonne and the Canal du Midi pass though the city offering a feeling of space and fresh air.
Toulouse roofscape from Lafayette
Old building, new shop
Always plenty of interest if you keep your eyes open. Silk stockings once made here.
The Cathedral of Saint Sernin
The Garonne passing through Toulouse
The main square in Toulouse – the Capitole – at night
And yet…..
By about half past three, we’re footsore, weary and confused like Aesop’s poor dear Country Mouse who decided the simple, yet safe country life was preferable to the riches and dangers of life in the city. We want to go home.
A couple of more recent Pearly Kings
I was always a city girl. Raised in London, I had a childhood enriched by Sunday afternoons at the Natural History Museum or frenetically pushing buttons at the Science Museum. We’d go to watch the Changing of the Guard at Horseguards Parade, nose round hidden corners of the city, still scarred in those days by the aftermath of wartime bombing. We’d go on our weekly shop to Sainsbury’s: not a supermarket then but an old-fashioned grocery store, with young assistants bagging up sugar in thick blue – er – sugar paper, or expertly using wooden butter pats to carve up large yellow blocks of butter. If we were lucky, there would be a Pearly King and Queen outside collecting for some charity.
It was Manchester for my university years. I loved those proud dark red Victorian buildings celebrating the city’s 19th century status as Cottonopolis, as well as the more understated areas once populated by the workers and managers of those cotton mills, but developed during my time there as Student Central. I loved the buzz of city life, the buzz of 60’s student life.
Then it was Portsmouth. Then Wakefield, and Sheffield, and Leeds. City life meant living with up to 750,00 neighbours. And I thrived on it. I never felt too far from wide open spaces, yet a short bus ride brought me theatres, cinemas, exhibitions, shops, choices of schools for my children. When we moved in 1997 to Harrogate, with a mere 75, 000 inhabitants, it felt small.
This is the Valley Gardens in Harrogate. I must say it doesn’t look too crowded
Then we came to the Ariège, to Laroque, population just over 2,000. The largest town in the whole area is Pamiers, with a mere 19,000 inhabitants. How could we still think of Harrogate as really rather tiny? So we needed to change the way we saw things. We’re accustomed now to at least recognising most of the people whom we see round and about. We enjoy the fact that we count many people in the community as friends, and that we all turn up to the same events. We relish the space, the more relaxed pace of life, the sense of belonging that we have here.
These are the kind of traffic conditions we’ve got used to
Now, as we plan our return to England, the idea of the clogged roads of the Harrogate rush hour is unattractive, the busy streets unappealing. Ripon, where we more recently lived is much more like it: 14,000 people. But we ask ourselves – is even a town this size too big and scary for Country Mice? Should we continue as we’ve started? Perhaps we should look at Galphay, Gargrave, Greenhow or Grewelthorpe, average populations about 400? Or Masham, about 1,250? All of these are near our centre of gravity, Ripon.
So much to think about. But wherever we end up, we’ll still want the odd sortie to The Big City. Toulouse hasn’t seen the back of us yet.
Photos 4, 5, 6 0f the Toulouse series; the Pearly Kings and Harrogate’s Valley Gardens courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
That exhibition, ‘From the Pyrenees to the Pennines’, about Yorkshire. It’s over and I’m not sorry. I loved working with the children in schools and in Centres de Loisirs, but the whole business of getting the exhibition for the general public up and running was stressful and exhausting.
Still, it’s good to remember why we did it. We wanted to introduce Yorkshire, particularly North Yorkshire, to local people here. We wanted to show how much these two areas have in common.
Both North Yorkshire and the Ariège are largely rural areas, where sheep have an important part to play. In no small part, they contributed to the development of the textile industry. Once the most significant part of the economy in the communities where the industry once thrived, now textiles have largely left Europe for the Far East. Formerly prosperous areas such as Bradford and Lavelanet are now struggling to find a new role. At the same time, immigrant textile workers have changed the face of these communities for ever: Spaniards in southern France, those from the Indian sub-continent in northern England.
Mining is similarly in decline. Coalmining in the north of England is the most obvious casualty, but industrial archaeologists in Yorkshire and the Ariège can point out many signs of a mining past – in disused and decaying workings of lead, alum, potash and talc. Jet, the black gemstone popular in the 19th century was worked here too, and a local historian here in the Ariège has uncovered correspondence between manufacturers here and in Whitby.
Both areas owe much of their character to limestone scenery. That’s why I’m going to give you a little quiz. Have a look at these photos. Where were they taken do you think? Yorkshire? Or the Ariège? It’s not always easy….
1. Limestone rocks. But where?
2. And this?
3. Does this sheep baa in English or French?
4. And these?
5. Where’s this?
6. And this?
7. More scenery.
9. And a typical market in, er….
10. And a bridge.
11. And a ruined house
12. Last one
13. Oh, an afterthought
Answers
1. Rocks near Marc, Ariège
2. Goredale Scar, Yorkshire
3. Herdwick sheep
4. Tarasconnaise sheep in Troye d’Ariège
5. Axat, Ariège
6. Bridge at Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire
7. Grassington
8. Cap de Carmil, Ariège
9. Otley Market
10. Bridge at Grassington
11. Le Taulat
12. Roquefixade
13. A Yorkshire terrier. Often seen here in the Ariège. I wonder how many owners know these little dogs were originally bred in the 19th century in Yorkshire to catch rats in the textile mills?
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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