Caravan route to Thirsk

That is how  to go from Old Malton to Hovingham to Coxwold to Thirsk  and then Leyburn , we take the caravan route , not to avoid Sutton Bank, but just because its the scenic route and full of delightful surprises. The meeting point for the converging family cars was Jervaulx Abbey this year, always a treat , and this year we were blessed with sunshine and the free bench overlooking the park for our picnic.

It was a special Holiday for us, all the family in 4 different cottages in our very special place . We have been going to Leyburn for years and staying just off the Market Place in cottages overlooking Wensleydale towards Middleham . Its perfect, because for us , Leyburn is perfect. Ive known it all my life , as my father fished the Ure staying at the Cover Bridge inn for years in the 50s, and then the Rose and Crown ,Bainbridge in the 60s . His week away every May was the eager climax to a winter tying Mayflies and Brown and Olive Duns, and the one we children loved to hear him say , The Bloody Butcher. Its just a year since we found that my mother had never parted with the tins of trout flies, all hooked into disintegrating foam , and made by my father , who died in 1975.

Cover Bridge Inn, Ancient Order of Trout! OKA York Fly Fishers

Picture taken by my father in 1958 ish , l to r: Alan Crosby, Fred Farrow, Vic Leggett , Bob Dales and Colin Dales, my father Benjy Bruce took the photo. So Wensleydale was a very special family place, and is becoming so all over again as the next generations are already  planning another visit.

My father used to say that West Burton Falls were his favourite waterfalls of the many in Wensleydale. The Family found some no one had heard of , a short evening stroll from Leyburn at Harmby, and said they were lovely . Spouse and I however went with daughter 2 and family to West Burton falls  which I had never viewed before. If Id known how picturesque and charming , quiet and with easy parking I'd have got us there in earlier years. Now that spouse is not able to clamber or climb , West Burton with easy access and a seat, and no other people was just a joy for us all. I never realised how constraining health and mobility issues may be . (so recommend West Burton Falls for any one who has them and a car, though the great little White Dales Bus , the Wensleydale Explorer stops in the village )

West Burton Falls Wensleydale

Son in law from Brighton told of a guidebook to Wensleydale that he has that belonged to his parents, both Yorkshire Born. He told of the lovely illustrations and the interesting and well written text. So in every shop in Leyburn  and Hawes  I looked to see if he was talking of the books of Ella Pontefract , Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby my heroines of the Yorkshire Dales, but could not find any of their  titles amongst the shelves heaving with brash photo books of Yorkshire Ghosts and Yorkshire , (not mentioning them incidentally , or Kit Calvert, but of Herriot and Hannah , worthy but accidentally so , the way of celebrity). 

Home in Filey my first task after completing the empty caravan route home  was to seek out the Hartley Woodcuts serving as the illustrations for the 1936 book Of Wensleydale by Ella Pontefract  . I hope that woodcuts come back into fashion, as they are labours of love. Marie Hartley  illustrating Joan Ingilbys text  in the 1950s had abandoned woodcuts for  black and white line drawings, which in  postwar modernism do not have the charm of the earlier medium  for me . 

Barbara Rattenbury nee Bowen  Woodcut

This is a poor repro (didnt want to unframe so glass shine)of my own woodcut done by friend of the family, and dear neighbour in Sutton on Hull,  Barbara Rattenbury nee Bowen . I've known this small woodcut for over 60years and love it. Its not Wensleydale of course , but a coastal location , I know not where.

I'm going back to my nurture/younger  years in other ways without being sans everything . On my allotment I am happily beginning to grow plants for Dyes. Wensleydale has nailed it , seeing all the wool caught on fences, which years ago I gathered and took home to use in class, as we boldly learned spinning and dyeing . A whole generation taught by me probably still remember when we were allowed to boil up onion skins and chemical mordants, when the classroom reeked , and we eagerly awaited for the stones and string to be removed from the pieces of cotton sheeting and beheld our creations Tied and Dyed. Its coming back to me , Ive made enquiries about getting a Spinning wheel for my dotage when I'm going to sit in the corner and be in no ones way . 

Spring has sprung ,the grass is riz ..

We are on our way to London by the Sea *, and then London . In Brighton many people do not celebrate any Christian Festivals , so Its Happy Winter Holiday, Happy Winter Solstice ,  Happy Spring and  Happy Vernal Equinox. That is ALL PERFECTLY CORRECT. The seasons and the turning year have been vital loci and the Cycle of the Year,and have been so before Abraham was called out of Ur. For those of us in Temperate Regions of the Earth  I feel we are blessed to have four distinct 'Seasons', with or without Vivaldi and Robert Herrick.

This year we have not had a proper Winter on our Filey Allotments. 

• The frosts have not come so all the slugs have been chomping away on my chard 
• The water in the baths has not frozen so my duckweed mistake has not cleared up. Here I explain . I have a small pond , well actually a washing up bowl sunk into a cold corner behind the greenhouse. It was accidentally  colonised by 3 pieces of duckweed when I was careless in acquiring some frogspawn last Spring . I netted it all out into the water baths , but now my 3 pieces is now 3000 . I was hoping to have a goldfish or two in my water baths . I try to keep them on my plot as they eat some duckweed, and the mosquito and midge larvae which I hate , being  one who just cant afford to be bitten , and why I never go to Scotland after May . 
• The grass on the paths has had to be mown since February
• Geoff ,two plots away has overwintered some huge Echiums in his cold frame without fleece
• The Green manure Phacelia is germinating nicely already between the rows of Autumn Fruiting raspberries

Self righteously I have sifted through every plant pot in our back yard which bear only last years compost and the remnants of the Pelargoniums and V bonariensis which never made it through . I'm blaming the Vine weevils which I have delighted to find like treasure and abandon to the Starlings on a saucer. 

Bernard has been at work in the greenhouse with Jeyes Fluid. I am self righteous for him , modest as he is with his thoroughness. 

He wants me to clean out the water baths but I am pretending I have not heard him. I have found dozens of Water Shrimps,Gammerus pulex swimming happily , where they have multiplied from the one or two which were hiding in the duckweed, and a surprising number of StoneFly larvae. I always hope for the ephemeral and thus eponymous Mayfly larvae , remembering a childhood of watching for them to emerge as adults by the River Dove (off )at Kirkby Moorside  and thus enable my father to tie the trout fly with the three tails . I am intrigued by the title of the newly published How to read water (from puddles to the sea). Its a book with my name on it. 

Its all change on Filey Allotments as plot holders move to smaller or larger bits of land , and we all settle into new relationships with our new neighbours. It doesn't take long to realise where one fits in the lines of measure, where 10 is optimum 

• Tidy to messy line 7
• Pristine to ragged edges 1
• Quality of  maintenance of sheds 2(I have a new roof)
• Provision for disposal of perennial weeds 10 (incinerator)
• Provision for disposal of of rubbish 10 (Bernard and I take it all home)
• Condition of soil 10
• Condition of boundary fencing 3
• Efficiency of water storage 7 (yet to put drainpipe on greenhouse)
• Brilliance of planting schemes 10 in my eyes, 
•  nod to companion planting 9 
• microhabitats 10
• Tidiest water bath lids 1(neighbour is 10+)

By doing the no-dig cultivation I hope to eradicate all weeds on my plot. Its very hard for me to weed. I did my Thesis on WEEDS, and they fascinate me to the point of tedium for others. Last year I was delighted when a Black Spotted Medick Medicago arabica appeared without permission amongst my Chard with several Violas and a Lobelia seedling , until I realised that my meticulous allotment partner emptied all his bedding plant containers and garden pots from home into our compost heap. My thick mulch round the Chard row had housed the seeded anomalies much to my delight . I am wondering where the piece of info that Twitch grass is killed by secretions from the Mexican Marigold has actually come from and whether it helps me at all .
So Im leaving you with a picture of a  tiny Pearlwort the weed of the Filey Pavements . I like it ,but it is an invasive species, and walking on it in trainers may transport the seeds everywhere.

*post started 2 weeks ago .