These days, weeks and weeks into Life-with-Covid 19, I crave a nice quiet dinner with people I know, tea parties with friends, or a chinwag in town over a good cup of coffee and a fresh-from-the-oven buttered scone. And I can’t have any of them.
Instead, I’ll settle for memories of a tea party from a few years ago, when we met with good friends to celebrate a couple of birthdays. No tea shop for us, but instead a jaunt on the Wensleydale Railway, a Heritage Railway which runs in normal times through the heart of the Yorkshire Dales .
As we rattled along, enjoying countryside views, smart serving staff plied up with elegant little sandwiches, properly fattening cakes, and the all-important scones served with jam and cream. And tea, of course. And prosecco.
It’s not often that afternoon tea with all the trimmings includes an ever-changing bucolic view through the window.
I’ve always loved looking at the contributions to Thursday doors, where bloggers from around the world share images of their favourite doors. Somehow, I’ve never got round to joining in. But looking through my photos for something or other yesterday, I realised that I had the makings of a post about windows. Here it is.
Here’s an image from the last March for Europe in London in June. I’ll be there again, probably as you read this, marching for a People’s Vote on the Final Deal. I’m not sure how much I believe in another referendum, but what other hope have we got to turn the tide against the national disaster that is Brexit?
Happier times, happier pictures. I started off by including images from Europe too. But I’ll do England today, and maybe travel further afield another time.
Hull Minster, as seen from the office buildings opposite.
And Ripon Cathedral glimpsed through a camera obscura in early 2017.
There’s an osteopath in Ripon who always has a delightfully quirky window display. Here’s winter.
Through the car window, a snowy winter landscape near Kex Gill in Yorkshire.
Train windows: a view of Canary Wharf through the windows of the DLR line.
‘Everything stops for tea’. Not if you take it on the train it doesn’t. Just imagine. You and your fellow guests are seated at an elegantly appointed table covered with a damask cloth. Here are china cups and saucers, heavy cloth napkins, weighty cutlery. Before you, a Proper Cake Stand, prettily stacked with sandwiches (cucumber, of course, but also egg mayonnaise, ham and chutney and so on), two kinds of scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam on the side, and properly English cakes: chocolate cake, sponge cake, cream-filled meringues, tiny eclairs. Attentive and charming service. Unlimited pots of tea, of course too .
This was the scene that greeted us as we climbed aboard. The cucumber sandwiches have yet to arrive.
We were on the Wensleydale Railway, at the invitation of Susie and Pete, old friends from France and currently visiting England.
This is a heritage railway, staffed by volunteer enthusiasts, with engines and rolling stock from earlier times. Our carriage had been built in about 1913, at the behest of the infamous director of the Titanic who dressed himself as a woman in order to make his escape from the sinking vessel in a lifeboat. Our tea time experience was masterminded by the Institution at Bedale.
Here we are, enjoying our feast
Our tables were ranged down the middle of the carriage, enabling us all to have views of Wensleydale as we sat enjoying our tea. The train chugged steadily along the track, offering views quite different from those available to us as we travel by road, or walk along country footpaths. We were in another less hurried age, and enjoyed passing through little stations, past signal boxes pressed into service once more when trains like ours are on the move.
A level crossing, a signal box: just as I remember from childhood.
At Redmire, we had to dismount as the engine chugged away to turn round and pull us back once more to Bedale. We had time to admire the rolling stock.
Our steam train was off for repair. This youngster dates from the 1960s.
This was afternoon tea at its finest: a leisurely experience enabling us to put present worries aside, just for a couple of hours.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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