I don’t actually. I was only six months old when we moved away from York to Alne, near Easingwold in North Yorkshire. And today I visited Alne again.
I lived there till I was 4, and my earliest memories come from there. I remember our house having a long garden, with an espalier apricot tree growing against an ancient brick wall. I remember my father gardening and growing vegetables towards the bottom of the garden, spending hours doing this hated task because he couldn’t find paid work. My mother had no choice but to be the only breadwinner, and as a female teacher, earned less than her male counterparts. Every weekday, she would cycle the 12 mile journey to York, where she taught, with me strapped firmly behind her.
My very earliest memory of all dates from the time when, aged about 2, I wanted to pick my mother a bunch of flowers from the garden. I chose the best tulips, and carefully snapped them off with about an inch of stem attached. I couldn’t understand my mother’s fury and the hiding that followed from my father. I must eventually have been forgiven though. When I came downstairs on my 4th birthday, there was a home-made swing hanging from the branches of the apple tree. I used to spend hours playing on it, but then, as now, I never learnt to propel myself up and down in a satisfying rhythmic swinging motion.The back garden today: not so very different from the back garden I remember.
We weren’t at all well off, but this house, like so many others in the village is now only affordable by someone with means. When we found it today, the owners were out, but a painter was tackling the garden gate and invited us to look round the garden. He assured us the owners wouldn’t mind. The old stone-flagged kitchen, where my mother had to skin the rabbits my father used to catch must have been re-vamped, and there’s a modern extension at the back of the house. The fields at the bottom of the garden have been built over.
Some things remain. The Village Hall is still there. I can just remember that about twice a year, a mobile cinema came to the village. I was too young to see the films, but I remember everybody turning to to arrange hard wooden benches in the hall so the villagers could gather round the screen. I remember too the very occasional visit of an ice-cream van. Cornets or ‘sandwiches’, 2 flavours, vanilla or ‘pink’ (Yes, I do mean ‘pink’. ‘Strawberry’ doesn’t cover it at all). There was a wood at the edge of the village, and it’s this wood that to this day illustrates the tales of Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood in my imagination. I used to half long for, half be scared witless by the prospect of being irrevocably lost in this forest, which I now realise was little more than a glade of trees.
Alne’s become quite ‘twee’ commuter country I think. Back then it was a fairly isolated community offering housing to farm labourers and other country workers. I’ve just found our old home on Rightmove, because it changed hands some 5 years ago, and there’s not a chance we, or anyone else in our family could afford to think of living there now.
One of the daily pleasures of our Life in Laroque is watching the birds of prey, particularly buzzards and red kites, wheeling above our heads, catching the eddying breezes.
One of our pleasures here back in Yorkshire, is doing exactly that, now that red kites have become almost common round and about Harrogate.
It was back in 1999 that red kites were first re-introduced to Yorkshire, to Harewood. Back then it was a rare treat to spot one, a newsworthy event to share with all your friends. Gradually they became more common, though no less exciting. Then last time we were here, we spotted one lazily coasting over the Yorkshire Showground, only a very few miles from Harewood as the kite flies. Later that day, there were others, this time over the relatively urban Knaresborough Road estate. This visit, we’ve spotted them for the first time in the part of north Harrogate where we used to live.
And then today, after lunch catching up with a good friend – thank you Cath – I took myself off for a walk. Soaring above me, then plunging down, so very close that I could clearly see his breast plumage, was a red kite, nearer to me than one has ever been before. It made my day.
Well, our French friends have been and gone. It was a busy week full of discovery for us all. Despite the almost unrelievedly awful weather, Yorkshire’s sights, both rural and urban, gave a good account of themselves. But here are one or two of the more unexpected discoveries our friends made.
Harvest Festival. Saturday evening found us in church for a very special concert by the St. Paulinus Singers, a Ripon Chamber choir. As we entered, our friends were struck by the celebratory pile of pumpkins, cabbages, carrots and Autumn fruits assembled for harvest-time celebrations in church. They’d never heard of such a thing. Oh, and the concert began dead on time too. Another first for them.
Harvest Festival
Charity shops. The French have little other than away-from-town-centre large warehouses given over to the sale of donated goods and run by Emmaus. The often carefully dressed shops we’re so accustomed to on the British high street are unknown to them.
St. Michael’s Hospice shop, Ripon
Closed for business: open for business. As we know, shops here tend to be open through the day. But what a surprise for our French friends to see them closing for the day at 5.30 p.m. rather than around 7.00 p.m! To find supermarkets open in some cases 24/7 was even more astonishing.
Closed at the moment
Houses without shutters. Evenings walking round town fascinated them. Instead of shutters there were curtains, which might or might not be drawn. How exciting to have glimpses of another set of lives! This is denied to them in France as shutters are usually firmly closed there as night falls.
A night-time window
Buttered bread. As born-and-bred Ariègeoises, our guests were unused to the idea of having butter AND cheese or ham or whatever on their bread. They rather felt it was gilding the lily. But they weren’t keen on the fact that bread is not produced routinely at the average British dinner table. It’s odd, we too have come to expect bread as part of a meal in France, but never in the UK
Milky coffee and tea. The default position for both in France is black (strong coffee, weak tea)
At the butcher’s. Of course our guests wanted to cook a slap-up meal for us. We all struggled a bit with this one, as French and English butchers cut their beasts up in different ways. As a recently-lapsed vegetarian, I’m re-learning slowly all I ever thought I knew, and starting at page 1 in French butcher’s shops.
A Friesian: until recently, these were the cows I most frequently saw in England
Today, three friends from Lavelanet are coming to stay in Ripon (with friends of ours: we can’t cram them into our tiny flat). They’re members of Découverte Terres Lointaines coming to Discover Yorkshire in Six Days. Over the next few months, you’ll find out why.
But Yorkshire in 6 days? That’s quite a challenge isn’t it? Especially as it would be good to show something of what the Ariège and Yorkshire have in common: dairy and sheep farming, a textile industry long past its glory days, mining and quarrying ditto, a religious past coloured by conflict…. If you were Tour Guide, what would YOU choose?
York: The Romans, the Vikings have all been here: a day won’t be long enough
The Dales? Swaledale, Wharfedale, Nidderdale….etc. Which is your favourite?
Swaledale
Hawarth: A chance to see a bit of the wonderfully bleak landscape, and visit the home of the Brontë family.
Hawarth
Bradford: its textile industry brought the workers from Pakistan and India who are now such a significant part of the town’s population
Textile Machinery at Bradford Industrial Museum
Saltaire: a model village built by philanthropist Titus Salt in the 19thcentury as a decent place for workers to live. Philanthropists like Salt built others in the UK – such as Port Sunlight on the Wirral and New Earswick inYork.
Salt’s Mill, Saltaire
North York Moors:
Rosedale, North York Moors
we’ll see the views on our way to……………
Whitby: fishing port and holiday resort
Whitby
Leeds: the city centre – a mix of Victorian civic pride and modern business district.
Many of the Victorian Arcades are now an up-market shopping destination
Harrogate Turkish Baths: time for us to relax and re-charge our batteries.
The Turkish Baths at Harrogate
Fountains Abbey: this Cistercian monastery is, like Saltaire, a World Heritage site. And a beautiful and peaceful place.
Fountains Abbey
We’ll need to include a pub, fish and chips, preferably eaten on the seafront out of soggy paper. Curry too. But why is the totally inauthentic chicken tikka masala apparently now our national dish?
I’m so looking forward to being a tourist in my own birth county. I hope our friends enjoy it too.
Dear reader, perhaps you are feeling quite short-changed. You subscribe to a blog called ‘Life in Laroque’, and for the last 6 weeks or so, have had nothing but news from England: Yorkshire, to be exact.
Well, we’re back in Laroque, where in our absence they’ve had bitter cold, driving rain lasting for days, and astonishing heatwaves in which the thermometer has topped 40 degrees.
But just before we abandon postings about England, here is a souvenir slideshow of our time there. It’s a reminder for me really, so if dear reader, you decide to skip it on this occasion, I quite understand.
Well, a month in Yorkshire really. It must have been one of the best Mays on record: blossom, flowers, lush greenness everywhere. Here are some pictures to convince anyone who doesn’t yet know, that Yorkshire really is ‘God’s own county’.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
You must be logged in to post a comment.