OUT on the wild, windy moor, there was no one around but the dogs and me. The sleet was unremitting and cruel like parody, too thin, too seedy, to be proper snow. Light snow remained on the ground, however, left over from the wuthering flurries of the night.
On a clear day standing on Chimney Bank atop of Spaunton Moor, you can see 360° to the rim of the encircled world of heather. Not today; today, the moor was strangely, squinty close, conscribed by the ice in the eye, and was strangely intimate for vast moorland. I'd driven up from Thirsk, 20 miles away, where the family and I were staying at the Golden Fleece on Market Square. In James Herriot's books, Thirsk is fictionalised as 'Darrowby' and the Golden Fleece is 'The Drovers' Arms'. This is Yorkshire's Herriot Country.
I'd left the town just after dawn, the Christmas lights of the Market Square reflecting off the cobbles, the sash windows of the close-packed Georgian buildings festooned with baubles and tinsel; a Dickensian Christmascard scene. Art became Life. I was unconcerned by the night's snow shower, even with the infamous 25% gradient of Sutton Bank along the route, as I was driving a four-litre farm 4x4. (I know, I know, climate change, no one should have a gas-guzzler, but you try farming with a Nissan LEAF.) Such is hubris that, a quarter of the way up Sutton Bank, my knuckles on the wheel were as white as the driven snow and my mind went to Herriot: how the hell did he manage, in a 1930s Austin, with bald tyres, to do his wintry rounds as t'vitn'ry? But they were resourceful and tough, that generation. They did for Hitler.
Denne historien er fra December 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra December 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
