South of Edinburgh in the Scottish Borders
country, you could easily be fooled into thinking we were back at home. The
rolling hills and farmland are very reminiscent of the drive to from Mortlake
to Casterton, even the place names sound familiar; Newtown and Coldstream and
signs to Darlington! Through this area they even have cyprus windbreaks tinged
with the same rust disease that’s killing ours at home.
We stopped briefly to take an obligatory
border crossing photo. There’s no fanfare at the English border, not even a
flag. There is one on the Scottish side though so we drove round and went back
through again. Now we can say we’ve been to Scotland twice!
We drove off course a bit to look at the
remains of Hadrian’s Wall. How amazing to eye ball a structure that was built
by the Romans! And then, because we were so close we stopped in Hexham. What a
picturesque town this is in England, a far cry from the deserted namesake
hamlet of ours. There was a market on so
we bought some bread and visited the abbey. Its just beautiful and we could
only wonder at what the Duke would have thought about the Australian Hexham if
he could see it 200 years down the track.
Beyond Hexham the stone walls give way to
hedgerows as you enter Yorkshire and County Durham. With the Yorkshire Dales on
one side and the Yorkshire Moors on the other, we arrived in our home for the next 5 nights, Thirsk
Thirsk is a quaint old market town with a
big market square in the middle. This is boundaried by lovely old shops but the
road that runs through the square is very busy so you have to be careful not to
gawp too much at at the olde worlde surroundings in case you get hit by a modern
day car!
We’re staying in a mews by the river in Duck
Cottage. It’s as cute as pie and so named because of the ducks that frequent
the banks of the river behind us. The cottage is only metres from the centre of
town so it feels like we’ll have a very authentic ‘village’ experience.
On Saturday morning we walked straight out
our mew’s gate onto the footpath and into the market square. We bought some
delectable goodies from the bakery (the food has got much tastier since we
crossed the border!) and some meat from the butcher, where every cut of meat is
labeled with the name of the farm it came from.
You don’t have to drive far in Yorkshire to
come across another quaint little village. In the course of a 20 km drive out
and about from Thirsk we came across at least a dozen of them. One was Pickhill
and the local school were having their fete so we dropped in to have a sticky
beak. Its a little two room primary and the principal told us she has 34 kids
in her 3-6 class. It’s always good to get some perspective about your own
working conditions. We did our collegiate bit to support the school by donating
a pound to all the raffles and Geoff and Taine both took a turn at holding one
of the giant owls they had on display.
We also dropped in at Masham, another
market town. There wasn’t much of a market (in fact it reminded us very much of
our own market square stalls) but Taine bought some hematite from the gem shop
and the man who was running it was quite knowledgeable about the stones and
even had his own olivine bomb.
Thirsk is home to James Herriot, author of
the ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ series of stories and subject of the long
running TV series of the same name. Geoff and I are both fans of the stories so
it was fun to discover that there is a James Herriot World in Thirsk, a cross
between a museum and tourist attraction, in the actual house from which James
Herriot (really Alf Wight) lived and practised. It’s a real ‘hands on’
attraction with each room lovingly restored to its 1940 -50s style. It was like
being transported back into my Nanna’s house. They also have sets from the TV
series and a startling array of horrendous looking veterinary surgical
implements.
Our UK vodaphone sims don’t work in Thirsk
and there is no internet access at the cottage. This is proving a challenge for
3 ‘always on’ travelers. The first night I read an entire book. Last night ,
much to the amusement of the local church neighbourhood watch, we walked down
to the information centre to hook into their wifi to check our emails and plot
the next few days on Google Maps.
My family on my dad’s side, the
Hinchcliffs, originated from Yorkshire. William Hinchcliff’s death notice
states that he was previously of Horsfall House in Holmfirth so we took a drive
down the A1 today to check it out. I had done some homework before we left home
and printed off the address for Horsfall House. Unfortunately, somewhere in our
travels, I managed to lose the folder of ‘interesting things to do’ and of
course we have no internet access so disappointingly we couldn’t find the house
itself but we did find the town and had a wander around. Holmfirth is built
into a hill with some very steep streets , including a ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ main
street. Taine thought the sign to the ‘bottom shops’ was hysterical. It rained
all morning making the place look a bit dour but most of the architecture looks
to date back into at least the 1800s so a lot of it would have been around when
William and Elizabeth and their children left for Australia. The sense of
walking where they must have once walked was pretty special. We found some
standing tombstones near the bridge, 2 of which referred to different
Hinchcliffs and the name was quite prevalent, in lots of spelling variations,
throughout the town. This in itself was quite exciting for me because
Hinchcliffs are now few and far between where I come from.
From the Holme Valley we drove south again
to York. We’d been warned about trying to park in York and advised to take the
park and drive bus service. Unfortunately we blinked at the turn out for the
bus and found ourselves smack in the middle of the castle area. Luckily it was
Sunday so parking wasn’t too hard to find and we saved ourselves from having to
wait for the bus. York is history overload and I found myself wishing one of
our history teacher friends was with us to upskill us while we walked. The best
we could do was recite ‘the Grand Old Duke of York and mutter vague mentions
about Richard the 111. Hopefully the visit will have piqued Taine’s interest
enough for him to research the real history of York for himself. We climbed the
steps of Clifford’s Tower and paid the, (as steep as the steps), 22 pound to
get in. This gave us a brilliant view over York with its stone enclosing wall
and the beautiful Minster.
A wander through town unearthed more quaint, fairy
tale, cobbled streets, similar to the ones we saw in Switzerland, with higgledy
piggeldy roof lines and bowed walls.
We made it as far as the York Minster in
the icy wind but the entry fee of 15 pound ($30) per adult was too steep for
us, especially since we’ve recently walked through Notre Dame for free.
Time to get home to the warmth of our
little cottage and a home cooked Sunday roast.
