From Pyrenees to Pennines

The Ramblers Return

West Burton village green

An early view across the fields.

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.

A stroll in the park, a cup of tea.

When I was younger, I couldn’t be doing with formal displays in civic parks: the unwieldy floral clock, or the town’s name picked out in vividly orange French marigolds, or the little red begonias marching stiffly round a perfectly rectangular flowerbed. I felt sorry for the poor over-disciplined flowers and longed to release them to grow more freely under the trees.

These days, however, I quite enjoy the burst of colour that these formal displays offer as they welcome you into the park. I sense they aren’t quite the rigidly organised affairs of a few years back, and certainly they attract attention.

Yesterday, for instance, whilst in Ripon to do some jobs, Malcolm and I made a detour to idle away a little time in Ripon Spa Gardens, a really rather small park that’s a real oasis of relaxation very near the town centre.

There are those colourful beds to meander through. There’s some trunks of thinned out cypress trees which have been transformed into a celebration of Alice ‘s Adventures in Wonderland. This is where grandparents stop to reminisce about this classic of childhood, whilst their grandchildren make it into an impromptu climbing frame. The Ripon connection with ‘Alice’ is that Dodgson was at one time Canon-in-Residence at the Cathedral here.

Alice's Adventures in Ripon Spa Gardens. — Alice’s Adventures in Ripon Spa Gardens.

There are trees fringing the edges of the park, making it seem larger and more extensive than it really is. There’s crazy golf, and a bowling green. There’s a bandstand. And best of all, there is a café.

I was resistant to calling in for a cup of tea. Cafés in parks are often dismal affairs, lowest-common-factor places offering indifferent tea, cheap fizzy drinks and industrial biscuits. But Malcolm was correct in insisting we try it out. He rightly pointed out that a café with this wonderfully quirky bicycle parked outside, sporting knitted versions of everything on the café‘s menu couldn’t be all bad.

In fact it’s all good. The Sun Parlour Café is cheerily decorated in yellow, and already anticipating le Tour de France’s visit to Yorkshire by having lines of tiny knitted jerseys strung at every window.

There’s a choice of a dozen or more home-made cakes or biscuits (coffee and walnut for Malcolm please, orange-and-lemon for me), and freshly baked scones all at unbeatable prices.

Every day they offer a roast dinner and hot pudding with a drink for an excellent value £9.00. It’s run by a lively and welcoming woman who answers to the name of ‘Lefty’ (‘My surname was Wright before I married’, she explained). She clearly has regular customers. She’s just acquired two more.

Ripon’s living up to expectations. We’ve now added the Spa Gardens to its list of attractions.

Time to go home. Nobody's relaxing on that park bench. — Time to go home. Nobody’s relaxing on that park bench.

The pirates return

Alex and Ben rush down the gangplank of the pirate ship.

This post probably won’t make much sense if you’re not from the UK. It won’t make sense even if you’re British if you’re not at least in your mid- 50’s. You won’t know of a world where your radio listening choices were limited to the Home Service (much like Radio 4), the Light Programme (much like Radio 2) and the Third Programme ( much like…. yes, Radio 3). What’s missing from this list? Yes, indeed, Radio One.

If you were a teenager before the mid 1960s, you weren’t going to get much joy listening out for a diet of pop music by choosing the BBC. The only option was to tune in to the commercial Radio Luxembourg. The amount of music it offered grew rapidly throughout the ’60s, but anyone from my generation will remember the commercials too. Hands up anyone who can remember Horace Batchelor’s ‘Infra-Draw’ method for winning the football pools, turning the previously obscure Bristol suburb of Keynsham, ‘spelt K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M’ into a household name?

I’d listen whilst allegedly doing my homework, but in 1964, along came another listening choice, broadcast, for goodness’ sake, from a ship anchored four miles off the coast of southern England. This was Radio Caroline. By broadcasting from the waters, it avoided the need to be licensed, and that’s why it quickly became known as a ‘pirate’ radio station. The single southern ship was augmented by others broadcasting from around the British coast . The tag-line was ‘Your all-day music station’, and like Radio Luxembourg and certain American stations, the top 40 was the usual diet, presented by names who later became the mainstay of mainstream radio: Tony Blackburn, Simon Dee, Johnny Walker……..

By insisting that the broadcasts potentially interfered with radio messages to shipping, legislation succeeded in making the pirates illegal in 1967. They continued nevertheless, but their hey day was over, because the BBC gave in. Radio One was born (and Two, Three, Four, and later Five), and most young people exchanged patchy reception from the pirates for the more certain transmissions of the BBC.

Why the history lesson? Because this last month celebrated the 50th birthday of Radio Caroline. It still broadcasts via the internet, but up in Liverpool, for one month only Radio Caroline North set itself up on Lightship LV23, in Albert Dock, for a 1960s and 1970s nostalgia-fest. DJs from the era were wheeled out to have fun and give listeners fun too, playing old favourites and patently enjoying themselves as they chatted over the airwaves.

And one of those presenters was my son-in-law, Phil Sayer. If you lived near Manchester in the 1980s, you might remember him as one of the presenters of BBC North West, and later he was on radio stations such as Piccadilly Radio and Smooth FM. These days he and my daughter run a successful voice-over business, but both still enjoy a chance to do a spot of work on the radio when the chance arises.

We all made a trip to Liverpool on Radio Caroline North’s last Saturday: daughter Elinor, the twins, Malcolm and me. On the way over in the car we demanded, and got, a mention on air. Once on board ship we clambered up narrow stairways to get to the cramped studio with its blast-from-the-past transmitting equipment, and found ourselves in the company of radio-geeks and nostalgia seekers from all over the north-west . Fun all round. And here are some pictures as a souvenir.

LV23 dwarfed by Liverpool old and new.

View through a porthole on board.

Phil’s gone off air and has just handed over.

Remember all these? And old money too?

Another porthole view.

The pirate flag.

Out on deck.

A view of the Albert Dock.

Goodbye, Radio Caroline!

Ransoms and bluebells

Little tells me more forcefully than a walk through the woods at this time of year that we are back in England. Instead of crisp brown leaves underfoot, from the Autumn before and the Autumn before that, there are narrow damp paths through the rich carpet of undergrowth.

Wild garlic, ransoms, bear's garlic, ramps — Wild garlic, ransoms, bear’s garlic, ramps

And that smell! As you walk, inevitably bruising the leaves that crowd onto your path, you’ll smell the pungent notes of garlic: because those leaves, topped off by a mass of star-shaped flowers, are wild garlic (or ransoms, ramps or bear’s garlic), and they’re unknown in the part of France where we lived. In among, competing for the sun which dapples in through the tree canopy, are bluebells. At the moment, they’re largely still in bud but give them a few days and they too will carpet the woodland floor in a shimmering violet-blue. And these are our English bluebells. They’re more graceful than the upright, paler Spanish bluebells that we sometimes saw in France.

The blogosphere is crammed with suggestions for making use of the garlic, among the earliest greenstuffs available after the winter months. Here‘s what David Lebovitz suggests.

Well, I rely on David to supply ideas for delicious grub, so off into the woods I went for garlic leaves. I was careful to pick only leaves, rather than yank up entire plants with their tiny bulbs, so that they would grow again next year, though a few bulbs crept into my harvest despite my efforts. I’d taken my haul in any case from the woodland edge, as the garlic plants made an escape bid into nearby fields.

And here’s the resulting pasta dish. Frankly, we were a little disappointed. It wasn’t the most interesting dish we’d ever eaten. But I could see the charm of these leaves to those who’d struggled through the winter months on a diet of beans, swede, and the odd bit of salted pork. Wild garlic has a bright, ‘green’ flavour, mildly garlicky of course, and I will try it again, maybe substituting it for spinach in a tart with walnuts and a sharp cheese for instance. I always enjoy an excuse to forage for food.

Wild garlic pasta, David Lebovitz style.

Our Bank Holiday excursion: Castle Howard

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.

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.

A new address

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.

An evening stroll in the grounds.

A honeymoon in the Valley Gardens

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.

‘…. a host of golden daffodils’*

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.

Daffodils at College Lawns, Ripon

Daffodils at College Lawns, Ripon.

A roadside at Ripley, North Yorkshire.

Ripley, North Yorkshire.

A traffic roundabout in Ripon.

The main road through North Stainley.

*William Wordsworth: ‘The Daffodils’

Last news from Laroque

Our removal men travel weekly between northern England and southern Spain with all stops - including Laroque - in between. — 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. — 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.

What to do next?

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? — The Yorkshire Dales. They’re not bad either, are they?