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.