Crofty Eschews Tesco for Local Northumbrian Holiday Heroes

Fresh back from a week's camping at Bellingham just over the top of Hadrian's wall in Northumbria, I thought I'd share my holiday heroes.

Determined to avoid Tesco and contribute to the local economy we sought out local food producers (and purveyors of excellent gardening and music in the process).

So here are my local heroes, starting with food:

Kielder Organic Meats: This farm literally next door to the Camping and Caravanning Club site at Bellingham does exactly what it says on the tin. They produce pork, beef and lamb of the highest quality possible, butchering it on site and selling from their farm door shop.

If you have any consideration about animal welfare it's worth going to see their happy rare breed sheep, pigs and cattle contentedly allowed to roam and grow unenhanced by artificial accelerants. They couldn't be happier apart from being offered the unlikely - and unsustainable - option of survival.

Ridley's Fish and Game: We sought out this local dealer tucked away on the uninviting Acomb Industrial Estateindustrial unit, and it was worth the effort. Mr Ridley is knowledgable and passionate about food; and was eager to promote the benefits of local business - I'll bet Terry Leahy's ears were burning when we'd finished our grumpy-old-man-rant that listed the number of small businesses run out of town by Tesco's arrival, including local food producers initially invited in to the Tesco web only to be trapped and forced out of business by the unreasonable demands of the food giant.

The barbecued Mackerel plucked from the sea that morning, and the Rabbit stew the following day were just perfect, and all the better for knowing where they came from.
OK, that's food, now on to music.

All over Bellingham were posters advertising Bellingham All Acoustic Club (or BAA Club - gettit?...Baa, rural England, sheep?). Not only that but during our week away Rod Clements, ace guitarist, ex-Lindisfarne (the group that were so good they named an island after them), was playing their small hotel based venue. It was touch and go whether we got a place - we had to put our names on a list - but went and were welcomed to the sort of folky club that deserves encouragement. On the bill with Rod were Clockwork a group of young adults from a Hexham school playing traditional music with energy and obvious enjoyment that said more about the real future of live music than any of the wannabe celebs queuing to prance before a panel of experts with an eye on a commodity rather than art.

Also on the bill were the club's founders: Landermason. Paul Mason and Fiona Lander are a fairly well known duo who play an impressive range of instruments and styles - Paul's guitar playing is the sort that wants you to stick your guitar on the campfire and not bother again, he's that clever.

Rod Clements himself is one of the UK's, not unsung, but undersung, songwriters. He writes well observed bluesy songs about real life with a lovely turn of phrase that can be both challenging and emotionally charged. His guitar playing is superb ranking him among the UK's best slide guitarists, and his solo performance is warm, witty and a great evening's entertainment - check him out if you can.

(Oh, and just to get geeky for a minute, is one of the very few people to be playing a 1970s Harmony Sovereign guitar like me)

Finally, on to our top tourist destination.

The Garden Station: Another 'does what it says on the tin' highlight. At the former Langley Station on the old disused Hexham rail line is a garden created between station platforms that would have once bustled with local travellers. Now set in mature woodland it is a delightful garden that has that 'nature-just-restrained' feel. But more than that, the whole site breathes peace and oneness (sorry if that's a bit hippy-dippy), but the station has been converted into a vegetarian cafe with excellent meals created by the CordonVert chef and current garden custodian Mike Winstanley.

The station no longer bustles but oozes peace and tranquility, making it the perfect setting for a range of creative courses on gardening, poetry, art and much more.


So eschew Tesco, forget National Trust and their pestering for membership: seek out the small and support them.

Why I Will Never Be a Great Poet

I've really enjoyed the BBC series on poetry this spring, the programmes featuring Simon Armitage on Gawain and the Green Knight; Sheila Hancock on her favourite poets and most recently Cerys Matthews have all been lovely viewing, not least because they've reacquainted me with some poems I'd forgotten.

Sheila Hancock read Philip Larkin's Poem - The Mower, a beautiful sad little poem and exhortation to general niceness. Here it is:

The Mower
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

I too was once moved to write about a not dissimilar experience with a hedgehog. For those of you who do not remember the 'Hedgehog Blog Post' Click here to be reminded why my response to events such as these will never qualify me to be a true artist.

All Is Not Equal Under The Skye

Skye is a beautiful place, a far away wild mountainous island where it's still possible to believe - despite a bridge to the mainland - that you have left the UK for another land where people have Viking blood and no telly. It is a place of enormous skies, towering mountain vistas and roads that go for tens of miles to only one place.

We camped at the Loch Greshornish Camping and Caravanning Club site, in May, and learnt that a small island, sitting almost at the Northwesterly corner of our land, gets whipped by the spinning outer edges of the weather with pole twisting, canvas flapping force at times.

The Camping and Caravanning Club franchise has recently been bought by Dave and Nicky - English comer-inners to Skye who bought the farmhouse, croft and existing campsite two years ago. Since taking on the C and CC mantle they have had their work cut out - as well as bringing the place up to standard they must manage the substantial tract of land with sheep, ducks, chickens and long-horn Highland cattle they inherited with the land.

Chatting to people on site who knew it before it's apparent Dave and Nicky have done a lot of work - hard standing for caravanners, new roads, and greatly improved facilities - new toilets and showers to name a couple. But stood up to my elbows in suds in the outdoor washing up hut listening to the conversations , a noticeable divide is apparent in opinion on the site. There seems to be two camps (sorry!): those who need cosmetic improvement and those whose needs are simply functional.

Take the outdoor washing-up area. An electric light might be a nice thing to have, one day; but it doesn't go dark until ten o'clock on Skye - but you should just have one, right, everyone want to wash up in the dark after ten pm, don't they? That seemed to be the illogical stance of one of the site's detractors.

Others complained about the poor quality of the joinery inside the shower block, the door handles admittedly looked like they had been there since they were salvaged from a house in the 1970s; but they worked, everything worked. It was just a bit tatty and very much a work in progress. Work that means 12 hours a day for Dave and Nicky.

So who are in these two camps? Those who seem to need things to look nice, by and large, seem to be caravanners and motor home owners who have not been tent campers. They compare this site unfavourably to the regimented sounding, highly efficient Caravan Club sites; whilst tent campers and carvanners who have gone soft (sorry again) seem much more tolerant of this lovely loch side site, realising that there is more than enough beauty on Skye without having to rely on the inside of the toilet door for it.

If you are considering camping on Skye do go to the site at Loch Greshornish and stay with Dave and Nicky where they will for this year, be run ragged by their C and CC mentor while he drills them in the ways of the club. Eat Nicky's eggs for breakfast less than an hour after she has collected them from beneath clucking hens and quacking ducks. Join them in a lock side walk as the sun sets and chat about the life changing decision they made to come to Skye, and understand why it is worth the hard work when they end their day with that lochside stroll rather than watch The Apprentice on telly.

This site will get better, the new owners have the drive and vision to make it work, but I sort of hope it doesn't get too smart and snazzy. Skye isn't like that - the Crofters Hebridean life was always about surviving against the elements with the resources around you, not stamping your impression on the landscape insisting you have your way - I doubt you'd succeed much in any case.

Is This The Best Boy's Day Out Ever?.. Trains, Beer and Food

The tour of station bars on the Leeds rail line, made famous by Oz Clarke and James May in their Drink To Britain series may possibly be the best blokes day out ever. It has it all (excepting sport perhaps), real ale, great hearty food and nostalgic bars packed with enough railway memorabilia to entertain for hours.

The journey for the St John The Baptist Church, Hey posse started at Stalybridge station with good intentions. On my part an intention to make copious notes of beers sampled and passing observations of each station and journey. My notes, at the end of the trip that took in Huddersfield station (twice), Dewsbury and finally the Railway Hotel at Greenfield consisted of the following: Stalybridge - 1/2 pint of Viaduct Gold, lovely!

Like I said, good intentions.

So don't expect this to be an erudite exposition on real ale and heritage rolling stock. Thank goodness there was sufficient planning ability among our group of builders, teachers, authors, retired company directors, police officers (retired military and serving) to realise the importance of the dynamic between food and real ale. Like this:

"Let's eat at Huddersfield, they have the best food."
"Yes, but lets eat on the way back, otherwise we'll get stuck at Dewsbury: they have the best beer."

And so it was, the best buffet bar is Stalybridge, without a doubt with it's maze-like collection of warm rooms that ooze nostalgic hellos and farewells. The best all rounder is Huddersfield where you could easily spend a whole evening, with a meal and music, on one of the many nights they have live bands.

The best beer is definitely at The West Riding, Dewsbury where, even though I've enjoyed it many times before, Timothy Taylor's Landlord excelled itself...we would have got stuck there too, had we not been more than ready for the fabulous fish and chips at Huddersfield. I guess the souvenir tee-shirts that state 'I missed the train at Dewsbury' are very popular.

The Huddersfield bar, The Head Of Steam, served up Cod, battered just enough to just see the white of the fish, chunky chips with skin on, and mushy peas, that we were sober enough (just) to appreciate above run of the mill food that could have been served up to us - it were lovely!

You'll be pleased to know that over tea, what with us being a church outing, we discussed some of those headier intellectually taxing subjects that thinking men ought to.

For example: in a fight between a shark and a tiger, who would win?

(this was silly, it would obviously be the shark every time - all he has to do is taunt the tiger into swimming out to sea for the scrap and stay out of his way until he drowned. Even if we allow evolution a place in the argument, to allow the shark to get on land and be beaten up by the tiger, it can only at best end in a stalemate because the evolutionary trend would be for the tigers to get smart and evolve into creatures who could rise above the tiger's taunts and not go in the water in the first place, so by the time evolution provided the sharks with legs, the tigers wouldn't want to fight them....just saying Tony.)

There was more...when we got onto a railway trivia quiz, it flushed out the real trainspotters, there were a few surprises there, I can tell you!


Anyway, finally we ended the night in the excellent and local (within 40 minutes walking distance from home) The Railway Pub, Greenfield, where there was plenty more real ale (don't ask me what we drank, I haven't a clue, I remember it being good though)

So, not a classic CAMRA day out - no real ale review with all it's expert ramblings on hops and malt, nor a railway buff's collection of train references nor (do they really do this?) numbers in little books. But it was a grand day out!

Helmsley Walled Garden - A Yorkshire Treat

Yorkshire Dales National Park was the perfect destination for our first camping trip of 2009, and in that single long weekend we took in thousands of years of history. From the ruined Cistercian Abbey at Byland and Carthusian Priory at Mount Grace. Each is in its own oasis of tranquility that anchors you to the peace and solitude that brought those seeking spiritual quiet millenia ago. Then there was the far from ruined, truly thriving Benedictine community and Catholic college at Ampleforth with its stunning, soaring church.

But each of these tourist destinations has advantages over the one I'd like to share with you. To find any of the major National Trust or English Heritage sites you simply follow the brown signs. Don't expect to see brown signs though for Helmsley Walled Garden; this jewel of restoration wasn't sufficiently restored before the rules for signage in National Parks changed. The Helmsleyteam learnt they couldn't have signs and therefore miss out on the passing visitors who rely on signs to choose places worth visiting; and that is a shame.

Helmsley boasts an orchard of beautifully trained apple trees - old English varieties, the ones you won't get in Sainsburys - and a collection of Clematis that demonstrates why of all climbing flowers they are rightly the most popular. The gardens are a treat for anyone with a passing interest in horticulture - the white framed green houses backing on to the warm worn brick walls are testament to the skill of the gardeners that raise sufficient vegetables to keep the excellent vegetarian Cafe, The Vinery, in business.

And incidentally, even if you don't want to visit the garden, the cafe alone is worth going out of your way to for lunch.

Best of all though, wandering around, I couldn't help but have that lovely safe and warm feeling that you associate with childhood pleasures. I couldn't place it at first, but it finally came to me. It was the slow measured pace of an enclosed world, that relies on the rythmn of the seasons. It was really relaxing - that and the fact it reminded me of watching The Herbs and Hectors House as a child.

So how do you find it?

Take the B1257 for Stokesley and then look for the next car park (they are allowed to have signs apparently), once you've parked simply resist the tempation to pop into the nearby bakery for a curd tart and follow the hand made signs to the garden.

I've Set Sarah Off Again!

I walked into a right royal rant at Sarah's house this morning. Her dad was reading this week's edition of The Week magazine - he and I often chew the fat over his excellent coffee while discussing the week's woes.

I've reproduced the cover here to show you what set her going; and after she had vented her spleen, we had a reasoned conversation that she agreed to let me reproduce on her blog 'News From The Nick'.

Click here to see what she said.

Watchmen - Crofty Discovers the Graphic Novel

Sometimes people do you a favour without realising it. That happened to me when Linda at USUnlocked changed her mind about the way she wanted me to help her test her excellent shopping website. Rather than allot me a ten dollar voucher to spend at will, she selected a specific product to buy, so she could make sure the site did what it was supposed to.

I knew I was getting a book called Watchmen, I didn't know I was getting probably the world's most famous graphic novel. The bright yellow book slapped me awake as soon as I unwrapped it, and although I'd not heard of the book (go on say it, I must have been living in a vacuum!) I immediately recognised the DC Comic artwork of my childhood. But this was anything but childish.

I saw past the comics of my youth, to gritty gripping artwork, each frame demanding that you examine every facial expression; scan each half torn image of a poster and read the headline of each luridly drawn newspaper for clues and meaning.

The more I read, the more I appreciated the narrative as well as the artwork. In a regular novel you can, if you like, write sentence after sentence, wringing every last detail from the scene in your head onto the page. If you make films, you can let the action unfold in real time as each scene unfolds; but this tight punchy medium demands you choose a millisecond of time to represent the developing frame of a scene, and choose thirty or so words, from all the words in the world, to fit a speech bubble, and represent the depth and intensity of the mood and action.

That is the gift that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons have in spades.

Their doom laden tale draws you into its pages and grips you as you gather up each casually dropped hint. And that's not all: the narrative is driven along by supporting text - excerpts from books, or crime reports - and even there the symbiosis between the text and look of the book is vital. The supporting documents look like they are supposed to, so they drive the plot along, keeping you in the moment, rather than taking you out of it like a cheesy B Movie scenes going 'five years earlier' or 'ten years later'.

All in all this is a real treat for the senses, it does not let you rest for a second and is rightly placed at the top of the worlds best fiction. Let the literary purists sniff - if the purpose of literature and art is to reach into you and twang your emotions, then this is art and literature at its best.

Finally, call me devoid of up-to-the-minute culture, but I didn't know, until a colleague saw the book in my briefcase, that they were making a film of this. I won't be going to see it, I'll be busy seeking out my next graphic novel to read. I'm hooked!