Monday, August 05, 2002
Notes from Yorkshire
Evensong in York Minster, people gather in the choir of the cathedral as the candles are lit in their glass covers. I sit in one of the single carved stalls which form the walls of the choir and the first great chords of the organ make the wood at my back tremble. Dressed in dark blue cassocks the choir files in and into a waiting silence sing out the opening psalm. What follows is for me a time of pure pleasure, a homecoming to a place where I belong, simple joy.
The Hotel Royal at Whitby faces the East cliffs with the Abbey ruins and St John's church standing against the horizon. My bedroom on the third floor under the eaves gives this fantastic view above the mouth of the harbour. The gulls wheel permanently about the little port and one comes regularly to the window, hugely white, staring in for minutes on end. He gives the impression of intelligence, as if he has a message to deliver when he has thought long enough about it.
I am woken a 2.15 am by a howling, wuthering wind and a banging window. I get up and look down at huge waves lashing against the harbour wall, and white horses rising out at sea. The tide is coming in, driven by the gale. I kneel at the window with a cup of coffee and watch till dawn comes up all grey and drenched. Mid-morning we walk out on the jetty dodging the spray. Two labradors bark at the breakers. As we turn back to the town, the wind drops and the sun comes out. God is personally controlling our holiday climate.
At breakfast a colony of Scots are at the next table. We saw them in the bar last night, the men in kilts. Two couples, fortyish, good lookers. The men are still ringers for the bloke on the Quaker Oats packet and the women, slightly worn, are thin and blonde and wear much gold jewellery. Each glamorous couple is accompanied; the first by his mother, a plain, dumpy lady in a too-short print frock whom they treat with great sweetness and deference. The second couple push in her mentally-handicapped sister in a wheel-chair, bibbed and laughing she is fed by her sister. They are happy and talk in high Glaswegian, planning the day. The staff are delighted with them, and the young Estonian waiter showers them with toast and extra eggs.
Turning in towards the North York Moors from Staithes above Whitby, we see the first banks of heather in bloom, there is still a little gorse out and the skylarks are up in a rather washed-out sky. Having climbed, we park and take a steeply descending walk through spruce forest, where deep pink rosebay willowherb stands in huge drifts. We stop, still, and listen to total silence.
Near the moors edge, at Riveaulx Abbey, a ruined place easy to fall in love with, we notice that swallows have built nests in the arches of most of the empty nave windows. They fly at scary speed through the arches straight to their own nest, feeding young. Above the little, green enclosed valley, they screech about catching flies. The baa-ing of sheep sounds loud in the surrounding fields. Smoke rises from a small thatched cottage adjacent to the old refectory; it looks like a Samuel Palmer scene.
For the first time I get a personal sense of what the dissolution of the monasteries must have meant to many religious. Sitting on a stone seat in the convocation hall where the monks met and heard their fate, I listened to the record of the break up of this Benedictine house, the savage stripping of its beauties, the turning out of its monks. Henry, you bastard. But ruins are so beautiful.
Harrogate, visited for a day is a classy, moneyed spa town. We walked in the beautifully planted Valley Gardens where sixteen milky springs run through. Ate toasted teacakes at 11 am in the sweet old park cafe, served on thin china.
The long anticipated "Chinese" bed and breakfast at York is OK, but there's not much oriental about it after all. Mrs. Lin has a double-barrelled English surname, and her British husband is not quite Fawlty but built along those lines. Breakfast offers huge bowls of luscious fruit; we notice that all the many Chinese guests eat 2 or 3 pieces each. We are the only Brits and there is much smiling and bowing. The beds have draped canopies of brightly coloured fabric which don't match the patterns on the carpets, nor the curtains - all very cheerful and migraine-provoking. We are close to the hospital & ambulances whine all night. Mozart symphonies play permanently somewhere in the house. Its great asset is being located near Gillygate only an 8 minute walk to York city centre..
Evensong in York Minster, people gather in the choir of the cathedral as the candles are lit in their glass covers. I sit in one of the single carved stalls which form the walls of the choir and the first great chords of the organ make the wood at my back tremble. Dressed in dark blue cassocks the choir files in and into a waiting silence sing out the opening psalm. What follows is for me a time of pure pleasure, a homecoming to a place where I belong, simple joy.
The Hotel Royal at Whitby faces the East cliffs with the Abbey ruins and St John's church standing against the horizon. My bedroom on the third floor under the eaves gives this fantastic view above the mouth of the harbour. The gulls wheel permanently about the little port and one comes regularly to the window, hugely white, staring in for minutes on end. He gives the impression of intelligence, as if he has a message to deliver when he has thought long enough about it.
I am woken a 2.15 am by a howling, wuthering wind and a banging window. I get up and look down at huge waves lashing against the harbour wall, and white horses rising out at sea. The tide is coming in, driven by the gale. I kneel at the window with a cup of coffee and watch till dawn comes up all grey and drenched. Mid-morning we walk out on the jetty dodging the spray. Two labradors bark at the breakers. As we turn back to the town, the wind drops and the sun comes out. God is personally controlling our holiday climate.
At breakfast a colony of Scots are at the next table. We saw them in the bar last night, the men in kilts. Two couples, fortyish, good lookers. The men are still ringers for the bloke on the Quaker Oats packet and the women, slightly worn, are thin and blonde and wear much gold jewellery. Each glamorous couple is accompanied; the first by his mother, a plain, dumpy lady in a too-short print frock whom they treat with great sweetness and deference. The second couple push in her mentally-handicapped sister in a wheel-chair, bibbed and laughing she is fed by her sister. They are happy and talk in high Glaswegian, planning the day. The staff are delighted with them, and the young Estonian waiter showers them with toast and extra eggs.
Turning in towards the North York Moors from Staithes above Whitby, we see the first banks of heather in bloom, there is still a little gorse out and the skylarks are up in a rather washed-out sky. Having climbed, we park and take a steeply descending walk through spruce forest, where deep pink rosebay willowherb stands in huge drifts. We stop, still, and listen to total silence.
Near the moors edge, at Riveaulx Abbey, a ruined place easy to fall in love with, we notice that swallows have built nests in the arches of most of the empty nave windows. They fly at scary speed through the arches straight to their own nest, feeding young. Above the little, green enclosed valley, they screech about catching flies. The baa-ing of sheep sounds loud in the surrounding fields. Smoke rises from a small thatched cottage adjacent to the old refectory; it looks like a Samuel Palmer scene.
For the first time I get a personal sense of what the dissolution of the monasteries must have meant to many religious. Sitting on a stone seat in the convocation hall where the monks met and heard their fate, I listened to the record of the break up of this Benedictine house, the savage stripping of its beauties, the turning out of its monks. Henry, you bastard. But ruins are so beautiful.
Harrogate, visited for a day is a classy, moneyed spa town. We walked in the beautifully planted Valley Gardens where sixteen milky springs run through. Ate toasted teacakes at 11 am in the sweet old park cafe, served on thin china.
The long anticipated "Chinese" bed and breakfast at York is OK, but there's not much oriental about it after all. Mrs. Lin has a double-barrelled English surname, and her British husband is not quite Fawlty but built along those lines. Breakfast offers huge bowls of luscious fruit; we notice that all the many Chinese guests eat 2 or 3 pieces each. We are the only Brits and there is much smiling and bowing. The beds have draped canopies of brightly coloured fabric which don't match the patterns on the carpets, nor the curtains - all very cheerful and migraine-provoking. We are close to the hospital & ambulances whine all night. Mozart symphonies play permanently somewhere in the house. Its great asset is being located near Gillygate only an 8 minute walk to York city centre..