The lockdown has now eased to allow overnight stays. Hotels have opened up. Pubs are allowed to have indoor drinkers. Attractions and cinemas can with limited numbers. However, the Spring weather has been shocking. Hospitality has had a slow from the long hibernation. The most hardy and desperate of drinkers must have winced about sitting outside in the cold and damp just to savour a pint. There have been plenty with sun on their minds, who have been hankering after a trip to one of the Green list countries. Portugal has won hands down. Iceland and others in permissible territory apparently havent captured the public imagination.
We are at the Outlaws. The NEPSR is looking more December than May. The wind is blowing, the clouds threaten and the temperature has hit the highs of 6 degrees. The Algarve it is not. I consider my options for the day - options preferably where football is available and water falling from the sky wont ruin totally ruin the day. A plan hatched.
SUNWACD. A totally meaningless collection of letters, but a helpful aide memoir. I remember it from school to this day. The major rivers of Yorkshire, listed North
to South. Swale. Ure. Nidd. Wharfe. Aire. Calder. Don. The Yorkshire Dales. The reference to education is ironic, as the last time I can recall being in this neck of the woods was ironically on a school trip in our last year at Junior School. I am sure a bit might have changed in nearly 50 years. I set off for Wensleydale.
On my theory of Yorkshire Dales above, I should be heading in modern day terms for Uredale. However the valley of the River Ure takes its name from the small market town of Wensley, a few miles west from Leyburn. Wensleydale it is then and Yoredale, as it was known in ancient times, is just a name on Medieval maps. I cut off the A1 near Catterick and head through the barracks area of the Garrison. The military still rule the roost here and the are very much in evidence either side of the road. When we were growing up, this was just Catterick Camp. It changed to Catterick Garrison in 1973 and it projected to keep on growing to an anticipated population of 25,000. There were new housing developments springing up everywhere after the
village of Colburn - armed forces discount available, proclaimed the advertising signs. The majority of the barracks I pass are named after First World War military actions. I am soon out on to the higher ground, where tanks and sheep dominate. Every few hundred yards, warning signs announce tanks crossing or tanks turning. I saw none.
A sign of a rams head on a stone plinth announced my arrival into the Yorkshire Dales. I detour off the road to photograph the castle overlooking the valley. This is Bolton Castle in the village of Castle Bolton. The Castle was built at the end of the 14th Century and remains in the hands of the same family. The Castle is most notable for being the prison of Mary, Queen of Scots, for a 6 month period in 1568. After her initial abode on fleeing Scotland in Carlisle was deemed unsuitable, she was brought to Bolton. The word prison seems fairly loose, given that she had 51 knights, servants and other household staff with her. She remained a potential threat to Elizabeth 1 and was moved further south to Staffordshire in January 1569. Mary never made it back north of the
border. Apart from Mary, other famous visitors have included the casts of various feature films - Ivanhoe (1958) and Elizabeth (1998). Wensleydale is also All Creatures Great & Small territory and I read that James (Christopher Timothy) proposed to Helen (Carol Drinkwater) here. I drove on to Caperby.
The village centre of Carperby is dominated by a Cross, dated 1674. It denotes the former Market centre status. The village was on the main Richmond to Lancaster turnpike road and was once a centre for the Quakers in Wensleydale. Today, all was quiet. The really came to the village in January 2011 with TV crews and national media attention.
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