38. Bolton Abbey

CC Site
June 26^th - 28^th

Such a short journey (eight miles) I'm not even going to describe it. I still managed to go the wrong way, though.

Nice small site in a wood on the road north from Bolton Abbey back to Grassington. Got a pitch opposite the toilet block and on the edge of a copse. The van next door has the most comprehensive bird feeder imaginable, so it was with some misgivings that I assembled mine. Wow! Within two minutes it was mobbed. Even a greenfinch and a tree-creeper. A robin has taken to coming into the van to hoover my carpet, hopping right up to my feet as I sit at the table. The third time he flew into the cab and took a fright, flapping at the driver's door window. I managed to catch him and pop him outside, but haven't seen him since.

The TV here is analogue (they have a digital signal into the site so weak that they distribute it as analogue). It makes you realise just how crummy TV was before digital. It's blurry and the TV can't tell you the name of the channel you are on. You see, some things do get better, so just look on the bright side.

I put Wimbledon on for the first time. Two gents called Raonic and Sock were playing, which reminded me I must go into Mountain Warehouse In Harrogate and get some raonic socks.

I am losing interest in the World Cup. I find this to be a feature of my getting older; I can't seem to maintain an interest in anything for very long. Unless Cook resigns, is sacked or has an incapacitating accident soon I fear my interest in cricket will go the same way.   

I had planned to go into Ilkley on the first day and Skipton on the second, but let the cold, damp, grey day get on top of me and spent the day in bed reading a Sjowall and Wahloo and a Maigret. I did lower myself to have a shower and do my washing-up. The Simenon, “Maigret in Court”, is his best, I think, because it shows his defining qualities, his doggedness and his compassion. In her review of the book in the Sunday Times, Muriel Spark says “In a great courtroom drama, Maigret has to explain why he does not believe that Gaston Meurant was capable of slitting his aunt's throat for money and smothering a small child. But in saving him from the gallows, Maigret must expose some dark secrets about Meurant's life. A painful story of an oppressive domestic tragedy and the compassionate insight of a remarkable detective. A truly wonderful writer ... marvellously readable - lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with that world he creates of run-down hotels, cold, dark barges, quayside canal-taverns, lurking prostitutes, pot-bellied burghers, taciturn youths, slippery barmen”. I've read many detective writers now, but I always return to Maigret. With his acute understanding of human nature for me he is the Master.

The Winter Gardens, Ilkley

So I stirred myself the next day and went to Ilkley on the bus, and I didn't take a hat. What a smashing little town, wide streets, elegant stone buildings and a small outbreak of cast-iron canopies à la Harrogate. The railway station, a terminus, is a gem. The old goods shed behind the buffers has been turned into a very comprehensive M & S Food shop and there is a nice old-fashioned coffee bar. Outside there are lots of tables and chairs for a Pizza Express.

In the nineteenth century, Ilkley was a dormitory town for Bradford and Leeds and there are trains direct to both cities. It's genteel but not stuck-up and has a pleasant feel to it. It has taken to the Tour just like Hawes and Grassington and there is bunting and be-ribboned and painted bikes everywhere.

There is also a nice, circular Booth's supermarket, which I had visited six or seven years previously with Katie, my daughter. Booth's is a northern phenomenon, more Lancashire than Yorkshire, and is probably about equivalent to or just a shade better than a Waitrose. I remember buying some bottles of Yorkshire beer here to take back for John O'Neill, the old farmer who was our neighbour in Ireland and who had worked much of his life on the land in north Yorkshire. Many Irish men came to Britain during the war to fill-in for the men who had been conscripted and most of the Mayo men went to Yorkshire.

From Ilkley I got the bus west to Skipton on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Skipton is bigger and livelier than Ilkley. It even has its own small House of Fraser department store, Rackham's. This being a Saturday there was an excellent street market and a flea market in the Town Hall and these and the weekend had attracted hordes of trippers from Leeds and Bradford. I bought the world's greatest olives stuffed with garlic from a nice man on a Greek stall. After being there for half an hour it suddenly dawned that I had come here with Katie as well.

 

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal goes through the town, right next to the bus station and I snapped some nice narrow boats. Unfortunately, I got very tired and, when I got back to Ilkley and found I had three hours to wait for a bus, decided to take a cab back to the site. The cabbie estimated £12, which was more than my pocket money for the week, but needs must. When we got there it was £18 and the cabbie got a very small tip. The tip I really wanted to give him was “Don't tell porkies”.