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.

The Slaithwaite Moonraker Chippy Incident

We took a trip just over the border from Oldham to Yorkshire yesterday evening, not something that comes easily, you know. We went to experience the Moonraking festival at Slaithwaite.

Each year the villagers of Slaithwaite (they say Slawitt - don't ask me why) celebrate the nineteenth century triumph of local smugglers over the customs and excise officers of the day. The story is quite simple: the smugglers were caught raking barrels of illicit liquor from the reeds on the canal bank; the quick thinking chaps claimed to believe that the reflection of the moon on the water was in fact the real thing, the moon having fallen in the water. They were merely raking the moon out in order to return it to its rightful place.

The customs and excise officers who believed the tale left them to it. Thus was born the Moonraking festival and its glorious winter procession of paper lanterns through the streets.

The streets were teeming with people and the cold winter wind had whipped up a bit of an appetite among me, Mrs C and her mum; so I joined the queue that snaked out of the Captains Table chippy - a nautical name, I know, but I put it down to its proximity to the canal - I suppose narrow boats have captains too.

After an age, I reached the front of the queue and spake my order:
"Two lots of fish and chips, and a fish on its own, to eat now please. Oh, and a buttered muffin."
"A what?"
The queue hushed, and I swear people in streets outside stopped what they were doing. I stood my ground,
"A buttered muffin, please."
"You, mean a teacake."

At this stage I'm sure I heard an Enrico Moriconni tune play in the distance. Mothers pulled their children closer, shopkeepers pulled down the shutters and the undertaker with his tape measure whistled cheefully.

"I whipped my poncho to one side, stuck a cheroot between my teeth and met the challenging stare of the assistant with what I hoped was a Clint Eastwood look. Then I remembered Mrs C and her mum stood in the cold outside, and sighed.

"Yes, a teacake please."

The world relaxed and we stood outside eating our food with greasy fingers, happy with glistening chip fat lips while we watched the lovely winter spectacle.

But it was a close thing; it's not safe over that border you know... it was a muffin though.

Here's a photo of one of the fantastic giant lanterns in the parade. I know it's a bit blurry - I'm sure someone, Lisa, will have something technical to say about light, shutter speed and movement, but you get the idea.

From A Spark To A Flame

My last post was about our Scottish trip and this was going to be about our camping in North Yorkshire but then this happened. It's not entirely unrelated to our North Yorkshire camping in that it involves trout; it also involves fire. And some of you will be thinking by now that Crofty's record with fire is not a good one. You'd be right.

Let's start with the trout: lovely big ones from the trout farm at Pickering, excellent value from the farm shop and irresistible when barbecued, stuffed with parsley butter. Which is what we did last Sunday and it was gorgeous. Later that night when the barbecue was cold, I deposited it in the bin (which, just to set the scene, was at the side of the house alongside it's green companion bin, recycling box and bag full of recyclable paper and card).

Let's now cut to the morning when, after an undisturbed night's blissful repose, the Croft family breakfasted together.
"Can you smell smoke?" asked Mrs C.
"Yes, and quite strongly." I replied sipping at my morning tea before sauntering through the patio doors to sniff the air, noticing that the smell was stronger and then noticing that where the bins were was a pile of smouldering plastic welded to the driveway.

After a few well chosen words and my insistence that this could hardly be my fault (pointless really), we decided to seek the advice of the local Fire Station, after all we wouldn't want to come home to find that a stray spark had lodged in the rear dormer and then ignited the house would we? The Fireman was very nice and said he would create an incident log that would generate someone to pop along to check it out for us. What he didn't say was that the Fire Service seem to only have two grades of response: either 'we're coming' or 'we're not coming'.

Four minutes later the road was blocked by two huge red fire engines and a man was running up my drive with his dribbling hose in his hand. I explained, after he had spread most of the debris in a soggy mess over the rest of the drive, that they needn't have rushed and that I hoped I hadn't got them out of bed, something that didn't seem to endear me to them. A chap in a big white hat offered me a look through a device that looked a bit like one of those 1970s View Master things through which you could look at crap slides of London but in 3D. It wasn't one of those but rather a thermal imaging camera (illustrated right) that reassured us that all was cool at chez Croft.

Meanwhile a wellied fireman was idly scraping his boot through the debris and came across the only surviving identifiable item: one disposable barbecue. He looked down the drive to where his colleagues were clustered in a knot at the bottom of the drive; he mouthed the word 'barbecue' to them; they mouthed the word 'tosser' in reply. Then they left.

Just so you know, North Yorkshire was fab. Here are some pictures, including one of a responsible man with a firey engine.