Pt3 - 12: 

TRAVELLING NORTH

Oxford had proven a disappointment. The city of Mathew Arnold’s dreaming spires is now the city of exorbitant parking fees and hilariously inept public transport which made our visit a waste of time and energy. For a few reasons I was hoping for a more positive experience in Cambridge. Firstly, it’s the alma mater of John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle of Monty Python fame, as well as Australian icons Clive James and Germaine Greer and a host of other comedy and intellectual luminaries. Secondly, it spawned the nest of Cold War spies known as The Cambridge Five: Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross and, most notoriously, Kim Philby. Cambridge was also the template for the original sandstone buildings of Sydney University, my own alma mater from 1975 to 1978 and again in 1981. I wanted to see if the quadrangle had the same hallowed atmosphere as Sydney, where I spent many a happy hour smoking pot and lying in the sun, all in the spirit of intellectual inquiry, you understand.

We were delighted and relieved to discover Cambridge a much friendlier place than Oxford. We motored straight into town, found a cheap parking space within three minutes of the punts and had ourselves on the river before we knew it. The skill of punting took a bit to master, but before too long I felt comfortable enough to aim the bow along what they call The Backs and make for the Bridge of Sighs. The river was calm and peaceful and relatively uncrowded with amateur polers like me so the trip was very enjoyable in a bumpy kind of way; despite my best efforts, every now and then we’d end up entangled in riverside foliage or narrowly missing the stone walls of a low bridge. More than once I had to take evasive action to avoid wiping out oncoming traffic. A gondolier I aint. The banks were mostly open lawn interspersed with ivy-clad buildings, some right up to the river’s edge. It was all very charming.

Back ashore, the quadrangle – minus Sydney’s venerable jacaranda tree – kindled many happy memories and for a brief moment I was transported back twenty-odd years to times illuminated by an incendiary passion for knowledge… and the search for mind-expanding drugs; I could smell the sandalwood incense and patchouli oil.

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I’m getting as bit too used to these big fry-up breakfasts. This morning kicked off with the full English, including fried tomatoes and mushrooms. Definitely not certified by The Heart Foundation or particularly good for my figure. On the other hand, it’s the perfect fuel for a full day’s pootling around Norfolk.

Norwich is a pleasant, manageable city richly endowed with superb Norman architecture. The parish churches are a special feature, with their square towers and buttressed walls of rounded stone. Mini cathedrals for two or three hundred parishioners, there’s one every couple of kilometers, six within the shadow of Norwich Castle alone. In the surrounding countryside they are swallowed up by small woods with just the top quarter of the towers visible above the canopy.

From Norwich we took the road to Horning, that’s Horn-ING, a pleasant little spot on the River Bure recommended by the landlord at the Old Crow in Yaxham, one of those English country pubs I’m studying for my doctorate. Anyway, Horning is right on the Norfolk Broads where the water lapped gently at the wall of the park beside the Swan Inn. A steady procession of pleasure craft drifted round the bend to the boat club. Circulating on a set course to starboard, the traffic danced slowly past a row of large fine houses with cruisers penned in the back lawn. The Southern Comfort steamer, all tricked out like a Mississippi paddle wheeler, drew up in front and disgorged a crowd of mainly English holidaymakers who immediately swarmed our position to photograph each other with the boat for a backdrop. As we left forty minutes later the crew were loading a new bus full of elderly folk for the next departure.

We broke the North Sea coast at a little place called Walcott to the east of Cromer. The brown sand looked like brown sand in the watery sunlight. A cool northerly breeze fanned us as we strolled along the sea wall, the size and length of which hinted at the battering this place cops in winter. A succession of wooden groynes receded in orderly file away from us in both directions, I suppose to control sand erosion, although how they withstood the seasonal swells was a mystery. We drove on through well-spaced coastal villages, some with incongruously grand manor houses perched amongst the fish ‘n chip shops on the clifftop, all with the mandatory Norman church.

The architecture along the front at Cromer reminds you this was once a prosperous and fashionable resort. It was comfortably crowded now, though it’s hard to tell whether these are day visitors or vacationers. I try not to be too smug, but coming from the land of golden sands and ceramic blue skies it’s hard to get excited about the dishwater sea, grey beaches and damp skies; I suppose the alternatives for English seaside holidaymakers hardly bear thinking about. This was brought home to us at West Runton, where a fungus of mobile homes – mining dongas to us – has colonised the headland so densely any native vegetation has long gone. A two-week stay here would be the fourteenth circle of Hell.

Our little coastal tour finished up at Wells-next-the-Sea. Actually, the little village is wellish back from the sea, about a 2 kilometre walk along the dyke or a train ride on a little puffing billy.

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The most striking moment of the otherwise dull drive to York came on the approach to the Humber Bridge. It loomed like a phantom out of a gritty mist rising from the muddy swirl of the river below, its grey form fading to white half way across. It was so supernatural it felt like crossing the Styx.

York is a large, mostly red brick city trading on its Viking heritage. The Jorvik Centre is one of those “theme park” style experiences much derided these days, though for the life of me I can’t see why. It was well worth the half hour wait to get in. An electric car took us on an imaginative and thoroughly immersive journey backwards through time to the year 948AD. Here, the car turned around and brought us forward through a detailed reconstruction of a Viking village complete with animated waxen figures, sound effects and – here’s the funky bit – smells. Doubtless diluted to avoid offending delicate 20^th century nostrils, they were nevertheless evocative enough to capture the raw nature of life, and public hygiene, back then. It all reminded me of my teenage sneakers.

The village of Goathland on the North York Moors is only an hour’s easy drive away. A mist enveloped us as we ascended the heather-clad highlands north of Pickering, all very atmospheric and mystical. Black-faced long-tailed sheep ranged freely on the fenceless heath and roadside signs exhorted us to drive carefully during lambing. This is a romantically desolate landscape, the stuff of myth and legend; the mist, the topography, the shifting palette of colours played tricks on the mind, distorting distance. Grey stone houses, two storey with four to six chimneys, stood just off the road as we entered the village itself which is the setting for the 60s TV show Heartbeat. On the telly it’s called Aidensfield and the storefronts bearing this name sell a cascade of the inevitable merch from t-shirts to tea towels.

As we settled into our second floor room on the edge of town I looked out the window just as a steam loco of the North York Moors Railway drew theatrically out of the stone station below and passed under the stone bridge on its way east, it’s whistle echoing like a startled owl around the valley. I had a mind slip; I swear I was peering into the 1950s. We wandered back towards town proper, speculating as we went which of the houses Nick and Kate lived in and which pub was the real Aidensfield Arms. We fed and watered at the Mallyon Spout, the local pub named for a waterfall hereabouts.

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Snapshots of Whitby:

·         * bleak and drizzling

·        *  infested with tourists and Bank Holidaymakers

·         * the brooding ruins of Whitby Abbey on the windswept East Cliff

·         * on the West Cliff near the whalebones, Captain James Cook stares sternly out to sea through a pair of pink knickers pulled over his head…

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The pathway to Mallyon Spout ran down the side of our accommodation at Prudom House. The narrow track fell and rose and fell again through damp bush and along the edge of open fields, along dry stone walls, through trap gates and over stiles until it suddenly descended steeply into an enchanted realm of dripping forest and burbling beck. The gnarled branches sported beards of bright green moss; it’s not a crazy leap of the imagination to visualise them as living spirits, nor is it difficult to see how ancient people might have venerated those spirits. The busy stream bubbled happily along the valley floor, following a course through narrow chicanes and over time worn rocks. The path took us across a wooden footbridge and deeper into the forest of oaks setting their acorns. It was cool in the soft light and the humus gave off that earthy smell of fertile decay. Here and there the path turned to slippery mud and forced a few detours. Eventually we heard the sound of falling water and rounded a corner to find the spout cascading down a ten meter drop of moss covered rocks. It produced the most delicate lacework of sparkling silver as it fell into a rock fringed pool; it reminded me of an intricate, living chandelier. The sights and sounds filled me like a cup from the bottom of my brain to the top of my head. On the way back to the village we paused on a rise to watch the rags of cloud snag on the treetops like smoke from so many fires drifting lazily through the valley. Happily, the track came out right beside the pub.

We did the quintessentially English things in this quintessentially English village; Yorkshire high tea in the quintessential English tearooms, listened to brass bands on the quintessential village green, enjoyed roast beef and dumplings washed down with quintessentially English bitter at the quintessentially English country pub. On our last night here Derek Fowlds came into the bar, for tomorrow they begin shooting a new series of Heartbeat.

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The way to Windermere in the Lakes District took us from the east coast to the west via the Yorkshire Dales. The heather clad moors quickly gave way to undulating hills dotted with picturesque stone villages and miles of dry stone walls crisscrossing the green carpet like lines of ancient poetry. The land began to rise gently on either side of the road, then more dramatically into bald tors in the far distance. The road itself occasionally laced between two meter high stone walls so that at times it felt like driving down an alleyway.

As we crossed the county border into Cumbria there was an immediate change in the architecture. The buildings were mostly two storey, of more roughly hewn stone and seemed finessed together like the rural dry stone walls so much a part of this landscape, their rooves heavy with glistening slate. It was such an abrupt transformation you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d just passed into a new country, a new culture.

We wheeled into bustling Windermere around mid-afternoon and against the considerable odds landed a room at Almaria B&B. We took advantage of our luck and a rare burst of sun with a leisurely stroll along one of the many paths beside the lake. The dappled light and glistening leaves created a wonderland feel enhanced by the funny little dry stone buildings, more shed than house,  that occasionally appeared in the forest; I had the same sense I’d had in the Mallyon Valley at Goathland that any minute a little woodland faerie would wave at us from one of the paneless windows.

The drizzle was back the following day so we shelved our plan for a swim and took the scenic drive down to Haverthwaite on the southern tip of the lake. I was a steam train virgin until we boarded the little puffer for the sedate sixty minute round trip to Lakeside; I loved it, even the little flecks of soot patting my face as I leaned out the window. We took the thrillingly narrow roads from Haverthwaite to Coniston. Windermere might have the Lake District cache but Coniston has the spectacular location at the foot of some of the most rugged cliffs we’ve seen so far in England. The farther heights seemed even more forbidding with their crowns enveloped in low lying cloud.

Coniston Water is famous as the lake on which the world water speed records were repeatedly set and broken, first by Malcolm Campbell and then his son Donald. Donald finally came unstuck on Coniston is 1967 when his craft Bluebird, flipped at 320 miles per hour (515kph). We also learned about The Lady in the Lake. Several weeks ago a woman’s body was retrieved from a ledge 20 metres down in the lake where the cool currents had stalled the decomposition process for 21 years. Yesterday, her erstwhile husband, Gordon Park, appeared in the local court charged with her murder. As it happens, the woman who runs our lodgings has the same surname…

At 10:06am on day 191 I took the A591 north to Keswick, destination Scotland.

Coming up: Bonnie Scootland...and a world of grief