Back of Beyond (28 page)

At the George and Dragon a morose group of grouse-shooting “guns” sat around the fire on high-back benches conducting a postmortem on the day’s activities.

One stout gentleman in “plus twos” (breeches-like trousers), with a tiny deerstalker hat perched on his head, explained, “I never shoot well when I have to look after others.” The group nodded and went on to moan of wet shooting butts, slow beaters (“a bunch of lazy school kids”), wily ground-hugging packs of grouse that were hard to spot, and half-blind pickers-up who collected the “bag.” “I know for a fact they missed four of mine,” grumbled one elderly participant with a purple face. A gamekeeper sitting nearby had heard it all before and winked slyly at the barman.

The “glorious twelfth” of August—start of the grouse-shooting season—is a key date for Pennine landowners who depend on the substantial income from wealthy “guns” (many from the United States, Germany, and Japan) for effective moorland management. Anti-blood-sport groups and Ramblers protest the occasional closure of moors for shooting, but Lord Peel, owner of a 32,000-acre shooting estate around Swaledale, gave me his emphatic rationale: “Shooting is part and parcel of good moor management. The heather habitat is very vulnerable, and its retention falls squarely on the shoulders of the landowners. Overgrazing of sheep and inadequate ‘burning’ can soon ruin a good moor.” I didn’t quite understand the logic. Spending small fortunes just to bang away at a few harmless grouse still seems the epitome of idiocy to me. But I suppose it fills the coffers of wealthy landowners.

I stayed that night at the Alston Youth Hostel sharing a room with five other Yorkshire walkers and learned a terrible secret in the morning. I awoke around 6:00
A.M.
to find all eyes on me.

“Tha’s kipped well then?” asked the biggest walker.

I thanked him and said I’d enjoyed a splendid night’s sleep.

“Well—tha’s one out’a six then.”

Five puffy-eyed heads nodded in unison.

The penny, as they say, had not yet dropped.

“Tha’ snores like a bull in heat,” said the big one.

I was stunned. Could it be that my wife has never told me the terrible truth or was it just a chance occurrence? I mumbled apologies and decided it might be more considerate to fellow walkers if I slept rough or used farmhouse bed-and-breakfasts for the rest of the journey.

Alston was once known as “the town of widows” after the high proportion of married men killed in the lead mines that litter the fells here. It is also the highest market town in England, set on a ridiculously steep hill—a lumpish huddle of bowed roofs and thick stone walls; a place with a sturdy enduring character.

And Alston has surely needed endurance. A few years back the town’s steel plant, the major source of local employment, closed with the loss of hundreds of jobs. But rather than dismay here I sensed some of the same optimism and determination that helped bring new life to the Calder Valley. Small businesses seem to thrive; the Congregational Church is now a craft gallery; there’s a narrow-gauge railway (one of several in the Pennines) for tourists along the beautiful South Tyne river to Haltwhistle; Moira McCarty runs a second-hand bookstore with a café where people can drink tea and browse through books by the fire, and Kate Webb produces 180 pounds of cheese a week at her home in The Butts, a tiny square behind main street where local archers once refined their long-bow skills.

“Hold your nose,” she warned me as we entered the tiny dairy complete with pasteurizing machine, brine vat, and cheese presses. She produces three distinct types: a pungent and crumbly goat cheese, a Tynedale from Jersey and Ayreshire cow’s milk, and a blend “for those a bit nervous of a real goat cheese.” Upstairs in the aging room were around sixty cheeses on the shelves (traves), all at various stages in the aging process. “I never keep many more than three months, they go so fast. The problem is the goat’s milk—I can’t get enough locally. So this winter I’m going to France to find out more about the small cooperatives they have over there with the goat owners. I’m sure I could do the same.”

Other residents here take their gardening very seriously, particularly in the fall when most pubs around Alston hold their leek and onion shows. “Blood, beer-barrel dregs—you name it, ivrywoon has their ooon concoction for feedin’ the soil,” said David Thompson in a singsong Northumberland (“Geordie”) accent as he laid his three-foot-long leeks on the judging table at the Miner’s Arms show in nearby Nenthead.

Ken Armstrong was bashful about his first prize at the Turk’s Head show but was impressed by what one of his competitors had just offered him for half a dozen of his shoots. Jimmy Walker, who came in second, nodded and smiled: “Aye well, its the Swan’s Head show next week and my best’ll just be ready for then.”

The woman serving at the fish-and-chip shop across the road was fed up with it all. “Nothin’ but blinkin’ leeks and onions for weeks now. Roll on Christmas!”

I had intended to take a ride on the narrow-gauge diesel railway, but the lady in the ticket office whispered: “Someone’s gone off with the key,” adding mysteriously, “and I know who it is!” So, no train, and instead, a slow walk through flowery pastures, along a section of the Romans’ Maiden Way, to the ruins of Thirlwall Castle and the great bastion of Hadrian’s Wall.

The Wall takes a while to become impressive. For centuries local builders found a source of cheap cut stone in the abandoned structure, ordered by Hadrian in 120
A.D.
to mark the northern limit of the Roman empire. In addition to the wall itself a series of milecastles with gates every Roman mile were constructed along with major forts, a parallel ditch to the north, and the great Vallum ditch to the south. If all this elaboration were not enough, the central section follows the craggy undulations of the Whin Sill, an enormous sheet of dolerite that emerges in a waved line of shattered cliffs—such a natural form of defence that Hadrian’s additions seem almost incidental.

The partial reconstructed wall rollercoasts along the sill, offering splendid opportunities for photographers and artists, who (if they sit atop the wall as I did) have problems holding their sketchpads steady in the wind that always seems to blow here.

Another one of those ravens joined me for lunch—large, shaggy, and obviously ravenous. It stood, giving me the most unnerving stare from eyes like black holes until I submitted and shared my cheese and onion sandwich. When finished, it took a lopsided look at my apple, shook its head, and flapped off over the crags.

Turning north from the remnants of Housesteads Fort, I could see little else but angular blocks of Sitka spruce massed along the ridges like legions. I had reached the southern tip of the vast three hundred-square-mile Border Forests. The Forestry Commission has often been lambasted for blanketing popular tourist landscapes with its “pole factories” of spruce and pine plantations and chose these hills and heaths for their remoteness and inaccessibility to car-borne travelers. Walkers however must contend with muddy tracks through dark crypts of conifers, shadowly regimented.

Silence reigns here; sounds sink into thick blankets of pine needles. All that can be heard are the soft sighings of breezes in the highest branches, like ocean lappings on a lonely seashore. Mosses and fungi flourish and the most delicate of mushrooms with stems as thin and straight as horsehair. Warty toadstools ooze a deadly looking black fluid, and puffballs wait to explode under piles of pine cones. In the gloom, nothing moves, and it all smells of a slow rotting death. I was glad to be out on the open moor again.

Down in cozy Bellingham the menu at the Cheviot Kitchen restaurant read like a poacher’s priority list—venison, hare, wild duck, grouse, teal, partridge, woodcock, pheasant, and pigeon. I ate every nuance of a very gamey grouse in front of a roaring fire and wandered off over the bridge to enjoy an hour at Jubson’s traveling fair, newly arrived in town. But something had gone wrong. Poor Luke Jubson stood by his motionless dodgems gazing at the empty shooting galleries and unclaimed Teddy bear prizes.

“If I could just get the men’s wages I’d be satisfied. My father did this most of his life. Started just after the great war when it used to be really good, but this is just plain daft.” Luke’s displeasure was shared by the three other families who traveled with him around the small villages of “Geordie-land” (Northumberland). They agreed it was the evening dance that had eradicated trade although in their hearts they knew times were changing and little fairs were not so popular nowadays. So I went to the dance and pranced the floor with the village lovelies until my blisters burst for the second time.

At the Upper Redesdale Show the next day in the hamlet of Rochester I peered inside the main exhibits marquee where a dozen granite-faced judges were testing a wonderful array of homemade sausage rolls, scones, rock buns, slabs of treacle toffee, swiss rolls, “edible necklaces,” chutneys, and fruit wines.

Up the hill, beyond sheep pens full of Swaledales and Black-faces “bonnied-up” for competition, the three judges at the sheep dog trial sat huddled in a horsebox lunching on beer and hefty beef sandwiches. Six shepherds stood around, leaning on crooks, waiting their turn in the pasture.

John Dixon, a local farmer, quietly explained the essentials. “The shepherd stands by that post and his dog’s got ten minutes to get the three sheep round and do a ‘shed’—he gets the sheep facing all one way and sheds the last one before taking them into the pen. Looks easy when it’s done well.” He stroked the head of his dog Phyl. “There’s no dog in the world with a brain like a border collie. She’s not too fit though, are you lass? Pregnant again. You’ve got to look after ’em—a good one can cost you over three hundred pounds nowadays.”

We watched a competition shepherd become irritated by the erratic behavior of his dog. Whistles and angry commands of “come-by”, “away-here,” and “stand there” seemed to make no difference. “Dog’s either got a bad ‘eye’ or he’s not just payin’ attention,” said John. “They’re like that at times, showin’ off. Now look—he’s sniffed at something and he’s lost the sheep again. He took his eyes off and lost ’em.” The dog failed to complete the course in time and the disconsolate shepherd, reluctant to blame him, complained, “that Blackface had it in for us.”

I was curious how conditions were changing for the hill sheep farmer. “Well there’s still a lot of shepherds around,” John explained, “but they mostly whip about on motorbikes now. Some farmers have a hard time with three hundred acres—that’s enough for more than two hundred sheep, but even with subsidies it’s tight work. Ideal size is around six hundred or so ewes with ten tups for breeding in autumn—about seven hundred hill acres and some good inbye land near a stream for hay. Cheviot sheep are good but Blackfaces and some of your Swalesdale mixes breed better. A while back we got quite a lot of these rich ‘dentist farmers’ playing around but most seem to have gone into forestry now. It was a bit more complex than they thought. You’ve still some ‘heafing’ going on, especially on the open moors where you’ve got to teach the flocks their territory. In the past the shepherd used to live up there with ’em and then the farm was always sold with its heafed sheep. Then there’s still the dipping and clipping in May although wool’s lost a lot of its value now, and the September dipping, which used to be done by salving each sheep by hand with a mix of tar, Brown George (old fat), and buttermilk! Messy business that was!”

The little country show rolled along into the evening with a Punch-and-Judy show for the kids, a fell race, a pet dog competition, and a husband and wife bagpipe-and-drum team (“They couldn’t afford the whole band!”).

Off in a corner of the field the ancient game of quoits was being played using 5¼-pound cast-iron rings to encircle an iron post (hob) in the ground. The pitch was the traditional eleven yards in length and a skinny teenager, David Milburn, was impressing the old-timers with his skill as a “ringer,” and his ability to land the first of his two throws as a “gater,” which usually blocked his opponent’s quoit. His second throw, hurled in a flat “wibbly-wabbler” fashion, was aimed at knocking his own “gater” into a ringer. He was very modest about all the attention—“Jus’ been gettin’ th’ hang of it this year.”

The equally popular sport of Cumberland wrestling was the star attraction at the larger Alwinton Border Shepherd’s Show a few days later in the eastern foothills of the Cheviots. And here I made a big mistake.

“We need more in the All-Weights,” said the tiny woman keeping the lists of competitors. So I volunteered. It looked simple enough—one arm under and one over your opponent’s shoulders, nice tight lock grip across the back, then a bit of skipping and tripping to fell him. Best of three falls wins. Simple.

But no one mentioned I’d be matched against George Harrington, a Cumberland and Westmorland champion.

“It’s my first go at this,” I said lightheartedly as we walked to the wrestling area, ringed by scores of spectators.

“Makes no difference to me,” said George.

And it didn’t. I heaved and tugged and tried fancy footwork but I was soon back in the changing tent having been felled twice by this blond giant. “You didn’t do so bad out there,” he said peeling off his vest and colorful pants.

My shoulders and back ached for a week.

The walk north to Byrness offered more bouts with tussocky moors and segments of dank spruce forest. I saw three roe deer looking as fed up as I felt in the mushy earth but managed a grin at a place with the longest single name on the Pennine Way for nothing more than a modest farm. They call it Blakehopeburnhaugh, a wonderful kit-of-parts word consisting of “Blake”—a familiar place name in Northumberland; “hope”—a sheltered valley; “burn”—the border term for a hill stream; and “haugh”—a Norse term for flat land beside a river. As it was a farm they could have added a “garth” and a “helm”—Norse words for enclosure and cattle shelter.