Heading North
I knew that Friday would be busy;
work, then home in the afternoon to meet Dorothy to help set up her exhibition in the hut. This was about the local events of the last year. I had seen this already and it tells the story of our notable village activities very well. They are many and varied, including, today, a dog show, which unfortunately I couldn't attend, as had some emergency dental work yesterday afternoon and my jaw hurts. Dorothy has also compiled a cuttings and ephemera book for 2008, and has started on the current year, too. Interesting enough now, but as time passes, this work will be a wonderful, detailed history of how we do things here.
After setting up the exhibit boards we sat for a while on the bench by the river and talked about lots of things, including my trip north the following day. Dorothy said that when I got to Glasgow, I should look at the Necropolis.
Later on, in the evening, I went out to the pub quite late, but early enough to catch all of the Smokin Hogs http://pearl.bandvista.com/indexf.php?pagename=home. They are very, very good bluesmen, just what you need on a Friday night when there’s 10 days of not working stretching out in front of you. They played some old Cream and Clapton stuff, plus John Lee Hooker and lots more. I had seen them last year and packing or no, I was not going to miss them. I did miss most of that weekend’s beer festival, but had 3 halves, just to get into the spirit. This included just one half of ‘Beast of Essex’; dark, full of taste and 6.2%. I had to moderate my natural instincts and restrict myself severely because of the drive the following day. So, like Cinderella, at midnight I was letting myself into the house and thinking, well, what’s packed goes in the car, what’s not, I will do without.
I left at 7am on Saturday with a full car, and some nicer clothes (for Glesga- as I have been a city woman, so I know how these things are done) across the back seat..(‘have y’not got a suitcase…??’).
Before 8.30 I was on the M1 and felt quite excited that in a few hours more, I would be properly north. Although I was born in the Midlands, ever since I went to university in Sheffield I have had a feeling from the pit of my stomach for the spacious landscape, crags and fells, and the lovely little ache in the back of the knee that comes sometimes from walking in those places.
The M6 is an awful long road and I did not stop until the service station just before Lancaster. I needed fuel but I also knew it was time to have a break because I was starting to drive too fast. This place was dispiriting and I wandered about like a zombie, buying 3 cds out of service-station induced ennui and because I needed something new to listen to. I bought a Frank Sinatra - as I have none of his and they remind me of my childhood, but I have not played it yet. I also bought the music from ‘Goodfellas’ - because it is one of my favourite films. I love the last bit of music on this cd- which is from ‘ Clapton’s Layla’- the end bit, with no vocals, that goes on forever and inexorably. It is quite sad in tone and has a slightly plaintive quality in parts, and seems to become slightly slower as it winds down. This is what is playing when Ray Liotta is heading out from his home to collect a family member from the airport, just before his house gets raided. He is driving and this music is playing and he is looking in the rear-view mirror as helicopters come in and out of view and police sirens get louder and then recede. He looks, and when they go, maybe he thinks, ok, it’s not me this time.. ...but he’s never sure. I love the beginning bit of this sequence of the film, where they are all cooking beautiful Italian food, together and intimately as a family; then at the end there is the frantic disposal of the cocaine; and this car journey with the Layla music in between. So domestic and so real but unreal and utterly compelling, because as observers we can feel the approaching end and so can Henry Hill, because he has lived in the shadow of threat for all of his adult life. Whenever this track came on over the next few days, I looked in my rear view mirror for the helicopters.
Because the service station break was unsatisfying and I was still driving too fast, I stopped at Lancaster for a look around. The castle is partly a prison, which I did not know until I saw some visitors being let in. Then I noticed the searchlights and the wire defences above the battlements. Round the back end, it is just a castle that you can visit. I had a look around and about, enjoying the look of the stone buildings- ours in East Anglia are mostly brick, timber and flint. One quite unusual thing I noticed was in the window of a charity shop. The display was entirely of black PVC garments, and well crafted, but unusual, I thought. They must have had someone’s collection given them.
On the way back to the car I stopped at ‘The Lord Ashton’ for a half and a Hotpot, chips and peas. This was quite nice, and I got talking with barman, Hughie, a Scot, and a chap who had ‘moved the Para’s to Colchester’ . I had thought he was an ex-soldier, but after he mentioned ‘moving’ someone else, I realised he was a removal man. I had already asked someone in the street about the tower, topped with a greenish cupola type of thing, that I had seen distantly. He had said, Oh, that’s Lord Ashton’s Tower; but it was too far away for me to go and see on that day, as I had many more miles to travel. So the Lord Ashton pub or my late-ish lunch was the best compromise. Being only a little pub, Hughie also did the food, and left the removal man, two older ladies, and me, in charge, while he got it organised.
The more exciting parts of the road trip started on leaving Lancaster- although I had crossed the Thelwall Viaduct before that point- which had marked for me a transition into dipping Northern moorland, chrome-yellow gorse and deer crossing.
Just after getting back on to the M6, I crossed the River Lune, from which Lancashire and Lancaster get their names. I tried to look at the river and could see what appeared to be three canoes, quite close by; it was a sunny day.
The most wonderful thing about this travelling (and one of the reasons for coming up north on the west side) was the Howgills. There is an amazing view travelling north and looking to the right hand side (east) of the M6. http://www.visitcumbria.com/peaks/howgills.htm. Shivers up spine, but unable to stop and photograph, so have copied someone else’s from a visitor website. I promised myself that I will walk there within the year.
And my ears were popping all the time, with the height. Living at sea level for so long, I am unaccustomed to height, but after a little transition time, it goes away.
When I reached the Carlisle junction, I thought briefly about how they were doing in the league table and recalled seeing them lose 5:0 to Colchester last autumn. It was Colchester’s first win in our new stadium, and I saw it, with Maz’s ticket from the Harvest Festival charity auction.
I was staying at Greenhead for the next three nights, so it was an east-ward turn, but before I got there, I stopped off at Lanercost Priory, which is a beautiful, airy and peaceful place. The first records of this place got back almost a thousand years, but the bulk of it was built in the fifteenth century. Inside, there are three windows by Burne -Jones and these are quite lovely. I bought a tea towel for Maz because it had printed on it an image of a nineteenth century engraving of the partly ruined church. She has started looking at old buildings with interest since I took her out to St Osyth one afternoon and told her some of the saint’s alleged history and we had a look round the church.
Thus I arrived at Greenhead…