So as well as looking for the confluences of some of our local Northern rivers, I am seeking out some of those battlefields that shaped Britain as it is, or perhaps England more so.  What I like about battlefields is that fact that they are really nonexistent, they need to be conjured up in the mind as all you get when you find the site is a field, and often a flat and boring field.  However, there is little genuine interest in how England then Britain was forged as can be shown by the fact that the memorial for the Battle of Boroughbridge was moved in 1852 from Boroughbridge and now stands proud, but forgotten, in the village of Aldborough just outside of Boroughbridge.

Memorial To Battle Of Boroughbridge

The Battle of Boroughbridge was in 1322 and was important for two reasons: (i) Sir Andrew de Harcla, King Edward II’s commander, defeated Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and his rebel barons, cementing the power of the Crown over the Earl of Lancaster, the second most powerful baron in the country and perhaps at the time the richer person; (ii) it was the first battle to show the power of the longbow in battle, as well as mainly using foot soldiers rather than mounted warriors.  While the former point is generally the one cited in history books, it is the success of using archers that perhaps had the greater impact for England with one of the first great battles in the English memory bank – the Battle of Crécy – happening just over 20 years later in 1346.

The walk is more of an amble than a walk as it is very short, so I actually augmented it by doing it in two stages.  The first part was a walk along the north side of the Ure, where Harcla was positioned and then I drove a short distance and walked along the south bank and towards Aldborough, where the memorial is located.

For the first section, you go over the bridge in Boroughbridge, and just before you get to the roundabout, park your car in a car park just by the river.  From here, you walk back towards the bridge and then pause to look at the bridge as this is the position of the original wooden bridge, even if it is not the actual one; we are standing where Sir Andrew de Harcla would have stationed his pikemen, mounted knights and perhaps 2000 archers to stop less than 1000 attempting to come across.  

On the opposite side of the road and just before you go over the bridge, you cross over and go through a gate onto Milby Island.  Milby Island is not a natural island, but was created when a short strech of canal was built to by-pass the Ure at this stage, carving out a section of the earth to become Milby Island. 

It is a short pleasant stroll amongst the sycamores and hawthorns to Milby Lock at the tip of the island, however before you get there and about 500 yards in, you can look across to a beech tree that I reckon is the line across which Lancaster tried to ford the Ure.  The usual local historical view is that the point at which Lancaster and his troops tried to ford the River Ure is further on at the tip of Milby Island, which then of course was not an island; as you can see from the photo, the anglers were out in force having a fishing match this Sunday morning.  I crossed over the lock and walked a short bit further along the river and looked back at the Ure and Milby Lock before retracing my steps.  For variety, I then walked along the north side of Milby Island beside the canal that was dark and shaded in the sunny light, and then after passing several narrow boats, walked up some steps and came out opposite the car park.  A motor boat had passed by in the canal, chugging along to the lock, while the narrow boats here were a little bit bedraggled compared to the brighter and happier looking ones that I had seen recently at Ripon.

Fishermen By Milby Lock on River Ure

Milby Lock In Yorkshire

Boroughbridge Canal In Yorkshire

For the second part of the walk, I drove to a gate beside Boroughbridge Primary School and walked down to beside the river and then walked along the Ure and into Aldborough on top of the local flood levee.  At the start of the walk, you can walk down to the river’s edge and try and work out for yourself where Lancaster and his troops would have attempted to cross the River Ure.  My favourite point is somewhere between the copper beech tree and the tip of Milby Island, however we will never know for sure. 

River Ure Crossing At Boroughbridge

In Aldborough itself and by the village hall, you can see the original memorial to the Battle of Boroughbridge that used to stand in Boroughbridge.  As I walked, I was amazed to be the only person out and about for a walk here, but the sand martins were flying around, as was an oystercatcher.  The fields were beginning to turn to a golden yellow and the elder flower were out in the lane coming into Aldborough – I must collect some and make some elderflower cordial.

The backdrop to the Battle of Boroughbridge was fairly simple – Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, who was also the King’s cousin, had fallen out with King Edward II because of his weak rule (he was eventually deposed by his wife Isabella in 1327) and his favouritism for Piers Gaveston at Court.  In fact, Piers Gaveston had been granted land all over England including the Manor of Aldborough just beside Boroughbridge.  Along with many others, Lancaster had forced King Edward II to banish Piers Gaveston in 1311, but he returned from France in 1312, so Lancaster and his army attacked King Edward and Gaveston at Newcastle, defeated them and the King went south to raise and army while Gaveston fled to Scarborough, where he surrendered to the Earl of Pembroke.  On his journey with Pembroke, however, he was captured at Oxford by the Earl of Warwick and taken to Warwick Castle; then on 19 June 1312, he was taken to Blacklow Hill and murdered.  King Edward II swore vengeance on all those implicated in Gaveston’s murder, which included primarily his cousin, the Earl of Lancaster, who was also the second most powerful person within England.

In the period from 1312 to 1322, the differences between Lancaster and the Crown widened as King Edward led a failed campaign against Scotland in 1319.  In November 1321, Lancaster mustered a large force at Doncaster and pushed south, however Edward crossed the River Severn and succeeded in obtaining the surrender of several marcher lords and then one of Lancaster key retainers, Robert de Holland, switched sides to the Crown.  King Edward advanced northwards and after a stand-off at Burton Bridge on 10 March 1322, he was forced to retreat towards Dunstanburgh Castle in Northumberland.  Before he get get there, however, Sir Andrew de Harcla coming from the north was to block Lancaster’s retreat northwards at Boroughbridge.

The Bridge In Boroughbridge From the North End Like Harcla

Having spent the night in Ripon, Harcla marched his force towards Boroughbridge, where they set themselves up on the north side of the River Ure.  Harcla put pikemen and knights on the north end of the bridge, which in those days was narrower and made from wood but still at the same location as today.  Then somewhere between half a mile and a mile downriver, Harcla positioned pikemen in a schiltron formation at a ford across the River Ure.  Both positions were supplemented by archers beside each crossing.  In total, Harcla is recorded as having 4,000 men, but it is likely that this figure has been inflated over time.

Lancaster’s plan was to attack with his smaller force using cavalry to cross the bridge, however it is unlikely that mounted cavalry could have crossed the bridge in numbers.  Sensing this, many of his men disappeared in the night and come the morning, Lancaster was quickly defeated and surrendered.  Lancaster was taken to Pontefract Castle and executed, together with many of his followers.  King Edward remained very unpopular, was usurped by his wife and finally killed in 1327 probably by suffocation although the more popular account is that of Thomas de la Moore that records:

“On the night of 11 October while lying on a bed [the king] was suddenly seized and, while a great mattress… weighed him down and suffocated him, a plumber’s iron, heated intensely hot, was introduced through a tube into his anus so that it burned the inner portions beyond the intestines.”

Ahmadiyya Girls Singing Song

The first was a really special event called “Building Bridges”, which was a curry lunch together with members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Bradford (note i).  I have to admit to not having a clue what this was going to be like, so was gobsmacked to find a packed marquee, including local Mayors from Bradford, Ripon and Pateley Bridge as well as at least 50 from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and over 100 from Ripon Cathedral Choir School, including the Dean and the Canon in Residence at Ripon Cathedral and lots of children.

Links to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Bradford were forged by the former headmistress, Tish Burton, and are a great and growing part of the School’s ethos.  I am not here to preach or even explain – you can find all this out at www.alislam.org and www.mta.tv – rather I simply want to say that peace, understanding and integration can best be solved through meeting together over good hospitality and talking together in the right mental space.  As a result, I talked about football and cricket, while have blagged some of the delicious recipes (which I will hopefully be emailed), and we have agreed that the Steenberg family and at least one other family will visit their mosque in Bradford during the summer holidays.

Football Game At Ripon Cathedral Choir School

My enduring image of the lunch is actually not the food, although it was delicious, nor the speeches by Dr Iqbal and the Dean of Ripon Cathedral, which were both poignant, but of the children playing outside the marquee – the boys in a fully integrated football game and the girls all on the zip wire; my son says they were really good forwards as well as decent goalkeepers.  No racial barriers even considered.  If our children can have open eyes and have no prejudice then the world will be a better place.  It brings to mind possibly one of my top ten songs – Youssou N’Dour’s song with Neneh Cherry called “7 Seconds” (note ii) and the lines:

“And when a child is born into this world
It has no concept
Of the tone the skin it’s living in
It’s not a second
7 seconds away”

Which says to me that no child is born with prejudice and that it takes time for that to be instilled into them.  But that loop can be broken, and will be, if parents and adults prevent it from creeping into their psyche.  Events like Building Bridges, the World Cup (and football generally) and music showcase how all people are one and the same.  

The second event was Choral Evensong in Ripon Cathedral sung by the joint boys’ and girls’ choirs of Ripon Cathedral Choir School.  This was Ripon Cathedral Choir School at its musical excellence, with a full church and the beautiful sounds of a sung evensong, with the senior brass group playing Telemann’s “La Réjouissance” as the Choir and Clergy processed, finishing with the eerily spiritual Dismissal echoing out of the South Transept.  I found the complex musicality of the Anthem that combined words from Ecclesiasticus 1 with Psalm 119 to music by Philip Moore truly magnificent and baroque.

I was also intrigued by the Old Testament Reading as read by the current Headmaster, Christopher McDade, poignant as it captured my thoughts from within the Northern Thornborough Henge the other day:

“Some of them have left behind a name, so that others declare their praise.  But of others there is no memory: they have perished as though they never existed; they have become as though they had never been born, they and their children after them.  But these also were godly men, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten; their wealth will remain with their descendants, and their inheritance with their children’s children…Their offspring will continue forever, and their glory will never be blotted out.  Their bodies are buried in peace, but their name lives on generation after generation.  The assembly declares their wisdom, and the congregation declares their praise.” Ecclesiaticus 44

Enough said.

(i) Ahmadiyya Muslims are a minority and integrative strand of Islam that believe in peace.  They suffer persecution within Islam itself due to their peaceful and integrative outlook as well as their belief that their own founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a prophet since the rest of Islam believes that Muhammad was the last prophet.  In May 2010, about 100 of their believers were killed in two mosques Lahore by the Taliban.

(ii) As an aside, I remember watching this video almost daily on MTV when staying in Dublin, while working on the flotation of the Irish Permanent Building Society.  My love of this song and all Youssou N’Dour’s works has grown every day since then and I never tire of N’Dour’s style.

Silt Pits At Nosterfield Nature Reserve

When I went to track down the Thornborough Henges, I parked initially at the Nosterfield Nature Reserve.  Nosterfield was formerly a sand and gravel quarry for Tarmac that has been restored to open water and shallow pits.  It has become one of the best places in North Yorkshire for passage and wintering waders and the birds were making a jolly, happy racket while swimming around on the waters.  It is claimed that there are 150 species of birds, 25 butterflies and 297 plants that are to be found on the site.  Perhaps even more lovely is that fact that when I visited the other day it was basically empty of visitors – there were 3 others tootling about.  They were all garbed out in proper twitching clothing with huge, showy cameras and binoculars and (as always) proper sturdy walking boots, while I had my camera, a notebook and a cheap pair of trainers on from Sports Direct.

There are black-tailed godwits, avocets, moorhens and ruffs (note to self: get bigger zoom lens).  I was particularly taken by the butterflies and some awesome small bee orchids that I came across.  The photos I managed to get of the butterflies included mainly common species but they are still beautiful as there is still beauty in the commonplace, which is one of my main campaigns in life, i.e. for people to realise that life is good and to see the beauty on your doorstep in the seemingly and supposedly mundane.  I saw cuckoo spit, ringlets (with very feint ringlets), speckled wood butterflies, burnet moths (really gorgeous), green-veined whites and small skippers and many more that just would not stay still! 

I shall be back to look more closely as it is just on my doorstep by West Tanfield.

Pretty Pink Flower on Common Bindweed

Bee Orchid Flower At Nosterfield

Cuckoo Spit By Footpath

Small Skipper On Bramble Flower

Speckled Wood Butterfly

Green-Veined White Butterfly

Ringlet Butterfly

Two Burnet Moths

The Thornborough Henge has been described by David Miles of English Heritage as “the most important prehistoric site between Stonehenge and the Orkneys”, yet hardly anyone has heard of it outside of enthusiasts like the Friends of Thornborough Henges, Timewatch and a small group of new age pagans – they celebrate an annual Beltane event in the central henge, camping at a nearby farm.  How unknown it is can be best shown by a search I did at The Open University Online Library, where there was 1 document mentioning Thornborough Henge, Avebury Circle has 190 documents and Stonehenge 963.  Even worse than this, local people have had almost constantly to fight a rearguard action against Tarmac who own much of the land and want planning to quarry for roadstone.  But we, the people of North Yorkshire and Riponshire, do ourselves no favours as the website for the Friends is not very complete and some of the links are broken on its site and that of Tarmac, including the microsite at Newcastle University on finds at the site.

While the Thornborough Henges site are now a national monument, this prehistoric site from about 5,500 years ago is on privately owned land.  No-one really knows why it was built, but our region of North Yorkshire is very rich in ancient history, including many prehistoric monuments, including the Devil’s Arrows at Boroughbridge and other henges at Hutton Conyers and Nunwick, Roman monuments at Aldborough and York and Viking archeaology at York; I even reckon that Ripon Cathedral was probably the site of something beforehand as it’s just too prominent a site to have been ignored by people for thousands of years prior to St Wilfrid turning up to build a monastery.  Some people do claim that the henges are aligned with Orion’s Belt, but that is only speculative.  However, the region has always been very fertile and the River Ure has an important place in the heart and soul of North Yorkshire, becoming the Ouse before York and flowing into the Humber.  The River Ure is equivalent to the power of the River Tyne for Northumbria and the Tweed for the Borders.  And the henges are located close to the River Ure and seem to mimic the shape of the river as if they are seeking to pull energy from the river’s curves; I think the power of rivers was just as important to people as the stars, so you often find prehistoric sites close to water.

I started by parking at Nosterfield Nature Reserve which is a wetlands and bird sanctuary built on reclaimed land that has been mined out by Tarmac for roadstone.  I will write about my walk there in my next blog.  I walked around the edge of the nature reserve on the permitted pathway and then walked out on the public footpath that would take you to Nosterfield, but doubled back and then walked off the road into the Northern Henge which is nowadays a copse.  It was planted up in the 1800s as a fox covert, meaning that ironically it is a wood whereas in prehistory it would have been open to the elements and covered in white gypsum to allow it to stand out in the green landscape.  I walked around and had a peaceful time, listening to the rustle of the leaves from the elder, beech and sycamore trees and the chitter-chatter of the birds singing away to themselves oblivious of mankind. 

I was alone with nature and sat and thought of life while sitting on a decaying tree trunk roughly in the centre of the henge.  I wondered about how blasé we are with the past, perhaps as an embarrassment of local riches, or just the fact that the north is ignored and unimportant to the political power that centres on the south and more specifically London.  I imagined the people who built these henges, tamed the countryside, drained the swamplands, built all the local villages and fought many skirmishes and battles to shape England as it is now constituted.  There was nothing to show that there was an important ancient monument nearby, no information, no signs and no access; if this was the south, it would have been bought for the nation and visitor centres would have been built.  All these forebears of the north have been forgotten, shadows in the past, for whom no-one sings their histories.  I apologise for my sentimentality but trees do this to me; they have a power that sends tingles down my spine – churches, mosques and temples do nothing for me as they are just stones, but give me trees and I connect to the earth, the planet.  Perhaps religions should start building their places of worship outside, sticking up a cross or mihrab in some copse and then I may believe in something bigger, some overriding power.  But stones are just cold and dead for me; sorry.

Trees In Thornborough Northern Henge

Tree Swing And Graffiti Etched Into Trees At Thornborough Northern Henge

Diggers At West Tanfield Landfill Site

From here, I drove past the West Tanfield Landfill Site, parking just beyond there and walking along the road towards Thornborough.  Here you can see the cursus running along a North-South axis with the Central Henge in the middle.  I left the road and snuck into the field where the Central Henge is located and sat on the edge of the earth mound edges, sharing the day with rabbits who have made the earth embankments their home.  It is in this site that New Pagans celebrate their modern version of Beltane.  I measured the diameter of the circle as about 150 medium steps and the embankments are about 2 metres high; the official diameter is 250 metres and the circle of the henge has 2 entrances facing North and South.  Looking Northwards, you can see the Northern henge as trees in the distance, while the fields have been left to become wildflower meadow which was very pretty; there was a cock pheasant that flew away in alarm as well as 4 partridges that came out of some gorse.  It was peaceful sitting on the bank, even with the throbbing sounds of the digger in the distance and the regular rattle and crash of the trucks coming to collect the earth.

I will need to go back another day to find the Southern Henge as it isn’t easy to access (well you shouldn’t really access it at all).

View From Central Henge To Northern Henge

Top End Of Central Henge At Thornborough Near Ripon

Southern Curve Of Central Henge At Thornborough

View From Central Henge Towards Southern Henge

Jennyruth Workshops is a wood and metal craft workshop that provides people with disabilities the opportunities and skills to make things for sale.  Currently, there are about 16 colleagues with disabilities and 30 carers, most of whom give a little time here and there, but some are more permanent like Mark, one of the permanent helpers, who showed us around yesterday with Jonathan, one of the disabled workers, who has been there since the start as his father founded the place.  Jennyruth Workshops is based at Red Farm on the Newby Hall Estate in a large building that looks nondescript on the outside, but has been well built and finished inside with help from prisoners and soldiers.  Although Jennyruth Workshops has been around for some time, having been founded about 15 years ago by Jonathan’s father, it was opened in this new complex in 2004 by the Countess of Wessex. 

At Jennyruth, they make all sorts of items from bird and bat boxes through to meditation stools, as well as rainbow crosses and wooden clocks; they also make cards and sew products including some brilliant shopping bags from empty, hessian coffee bags donated by Betty & Taylors in Harrogate, who are big supporters of theirs.  They also do a lot of one-off items, for example there was a wooden sign for a toy library in Sharow in progress that was shaped as a giant teddy bear with each letter for “Borrowers Toy Library” being individually cut out and painted.  And Jonathan proudly showed us a farm that he had made with buildings and animals all cut from wood, pieced together and painted; I was awed by Jonathan’s pride, skill and enthusiasm for what is being done at Jennyruth Workshops.  Yesterday, there were also 2 teenage boys from The Forest School in Knaresborough (another amazing place) who were working on a week’s work experience and were busy screwing in the hinges on the kneeling-style meditation stool. 

What I love about the concept of what is being done at Jennyruth and many other similar places is they are trying to ensure that all the disabled workers get involved with every stage in the process from the cutting, through to the piecing together, the painting and varnishing, the packing up and dispatching, so there is no Smith-style division of labour.  It is, therefore, a fun and meaningful place to work.

I was humbled by them all and hang my head in shame that I never help enough, getting so wrapped up in our own relatively mundane and small problems of the daily grind.

What Sophie and I would like to do is start by selling a few of their items on the Steenbergs web site, such as bird and bat boxes and perhaps meditation stools and hopefully spice racks.  We would simply sell them at Jennyruth’s retail price, so making not a penny on these ourselves, and see what happens.  If it becomes popular, then we may add a few extra items, but more importantly we would seek to widen the circle of other great places that also work with people with disabilities and bring their products to our customers on the same “no profit for Steenbergs basis”, since we are all concerned that customers are aware that making such products takes time and that neither Jennyruth Workshops nor places like Botton Village up at Danby are factories but wondrous, traditional crafting places for people with disabilities who should be treated respectfully.

I think it is sad that we as a culture are great at buying ethnic products from the developing world that are fairly traded, but that there is not such a great network for selling products made by people in our own country whether with learning disabilities or just trying to get started and out of a poverty trap.  As they say, charity starts at home, so let’s see if we can develop this more. 

What do others think?

I went on a very short amble before the football to walk past the Devil’s Arrows in Boroughbridge.  These are 3 large sandstone grit menhirs that comprise what was once a line or series of 4 or 5 megalithic structures from around 2000BC, which were mined from Plumpton Rocks by Knaresborough.   In the 1560s, William Camden described “foure huge stones, of pyramidall forme, but very rudely wrought, set as it were in a straight and direct line… whereof one was lately pulled downe by some that hoped, though in vaine, to find treasure”. 

While they have been called many names, they are now generally known as The Devil’s Arrows, as (so the story goes) the devil felt slighted by Aldborough a settlement near to Boroughbridge, so he flung these stones at Aldborough from How Hill, near Fountains Abbey outside of Ripon, but being a poor shot or a bit of a wimp, his arrows fell short.  It is, also, claimed that you can raise the devil by walking around the stones 12 times in an anti-clockwise direction – who knows?

Three of the stones still stand close to the edge of Boroughbridge near housing and roads called Arrows Terrace, Arrows Crescent and Druids Meadow.  The missing two are thought to include one in the grounds of Aldborough Manor and another in the structure of the bridge over the River Tutt within Boroughbridge itself.

Many theories abound as to their purpose, but I like them for their mystery and the fact that they are just plonked their inconspicuously in a field and by a house within Boroughbridge.  History stretches back thousands of years in this region and will continue for thousands of years in the future, and we will toil on and survive whatever is thrown at the region by the devil or the Romans or Vikings or Kings and Queens of Northumbria or England or passed by ukase from London.  Soon the actions and demands from Parliament in London will become lost in time, a mystery, but life here will continue undiminished, unaffected and timeless.

The Largest Devil's Arrow

This is a very gentle walk.  I parked my car opposite Charltons, the Renault car dealer, and then walked about 50 metres before turning left into Roecliffe Lane.  Crossing over, you walk past modern housing that fills the space between Horsefair and the Devil’s Arrow fields.  At the brow of the small hill, you cross over to the largest arrow that stands 6.9 metres high (22 feet 6 inches) beside the road.  I like to touch the stone and feel if there is any power that emanates from it, but it never does as that’s just New Age garbage; I do the same with trees and similarly feel nothing unlike the tree-hugging Fins who think that it centres their souls. 

Grooves On The Devil's Arrows

This megalith soars upwards, and you can see the grooves that are perhaps relics from when the local tribes cut and dragged the stones to here, and you look up to the trees and the sky, seeing the awesome space that stretches above us towards infinity; frightening, so I return to earth and contemplate the understandable.

I crossed the road and before following the footpath down to John Boddy’s Timber, I walked around the wheat field to the other 2 standing stones – one of these is stranded in a sea of short wheat stalks, while the squatter final stone is in the grasy verge.  This one is a bit squatter and also has the grooves that you could see on the first larger stone.  It’s a decent view back along the three stones.  Now you walk back, then take a small ginnel into the housing area.  Here I paused and watched a thrush and a tiny wren jumping about in the hedgrow and singing out their songs to anyone who wanted to hear, but there was no-one but me.

View Of The Devil's Arrows In Boroughbridge

You are in a housing estate with pretty, neat little bungalows made from red brick and tidy gardens of all shapes and sizes and styles.  This is Druids Meadow that stretches from Roecliffe Lane to Valuation Lane.  Valuation Lane runs alongside John Boddy Timber where you can get all sorts of fancy woods that have been used to refurbish Windsor Castle and York Minster, for example. 

Valuation Lane Through To Horsefair

As you get to the end of Valuation Lane, turn right back up Horsefair and passing the Methodist Chapel and St Helena to get back to the car.  Horsefair was originally the Great North Road and was a busy staging post and postal area, plus the area of the traditional June horse fair, the Barnaby Fair, where there was a fortnight of horse-trading followed by three days of cattle, sheep and hardware trading plus time for pleasure.

I want to do this in part to find something close to perfection, but also it will give me an opportunity to find some of the best local producers of breads and beef and other ingredients.  But here’s the downside, I have to put limits on my search, otherwise I will need to travel the world – I will let others do that for me and I would welcome your input for other great producers or recipes.  My rules for producers are that they must be located north of the Humber and south of the Tweed and on the east coast of England; those rules will seem arbitrary to most, but for me they are logical – I am a born and bred Northumbrian who lives in North Yorkshire.

So how to start this quest.  Well, I can only think about doing it very systematically, almost like a science project.  I am firstly going to do two things in parallel – I am going to test a number of recipes to find the best (in my family’s opinion) burger recipe, while simultaneously looking for the best local burger bun and/or recipe.  I have decided to do these together as I expect my wife and kids to get sick of very similar tasting burger recipes, so I will need to mix up what I am doing to keep this quest moving forwards rather than getting stuck in the culinary doldrums.  I will then run on into cuts of meat, proportions of fat and best local sources of beef etc etc.

As for recipes, I am going to stick only to beef, but we will be hunting for two recipes – one the best simple burger recipe, and the other, the best more complex recipe.  The former will be able to showcase the best beef when we get there, letting the meat do the talking, while the second can be a bit more showy.  I completely expect to change the rules as I go along, so don’t expect me to be overly strict.

Ripon Canal Head In North Yorkshire

So following on from my last walk along the River Ure, I have spent some time putting together some thoughts on walking along Ripon Canal, together with some photos. 

The concept behind the canal is simple: the River Ure becomes difficult to navigate on stretches upstream of Boroughbridge, so the building of the canal and other small sections of canal along the Ure made it possible for boats to pass from Hull and York to Ripon, especially with core industrial products like coal into Ripon from the Yorkshire coalfields and back the other way lead and other products.  

A quick history of the canal is as follows: it was authorised to be built by an Act of Parliament in 1767, with construction work being completed in 1773, but it fell into a rapid decline from 1844 when the Leeds and Thirsk Railway Company opened successful negotiations to buy Ripon Canal.  Leeds and Thirsk Railway became part of the North Eastern Railway in 1854 and the Canal was left to decline; by 1892, no traffic was going along the Canal and the railway companies tried to abandon it, then to offload it on the Corporation of York.  When all other canals were nationalised in 1948, Ripon Canal was excluded and was officially abandoned in 1956.  From 1961 until 1996, private boat-owners restored the canal for recreational boating and it now is actively used by enthusiasts.

I start this walk usually by parking outside of Wolseley Center on Bondgate Green, then cross over the road and walk back down towards Ripon Canal Head before turning around and doing the walk properly.  Ripon Canal Head has been renovated and includes some compact canal view houses, a farm shop and an embroidery and craft shop called Barnyarns, as well as a renovated warehouse.  There were four boats moored just beyond Ripon Canal Head and I briefly chatted to a gentleman who was enjoying a glass of red wine and reading a book beside his narrow boat – the Moorhen – and discovered he was based in Retford in Nottinghamshire and spent much of his time travelling the canal network.  It is a short gentle walk to the first lock beneath lovely lime trees, with a few industrial buildings on the left – such as Ripon Builders Merchants and Wolseley Center – and just before the bridge you might get the curious dry, yeasty smell of bread wafting across the canal from Ripon Select Foods on Dallamires Lane, which is one of England’s main manufacturers of breadcrumbs for the food industry.  It is reminiscent of the damper, beery yeasty smell of Edinburgh, which was one of the first memories I had when at university there back in the 1980s.

You amble under the dark, gloomy concrete bridge into the outskirts of Ripon, with Fisher Green on your left.  The canal bank here is covered in grasses and beflowered with meadow buttercups, white and pink wild roses and white ox-eye daisies and everywhere you look there are ducks and ducklings gliding busily along the waterway.  On your right, there’s a quaint wooden bridge, painted white and black, that leads onto Dallamires Lane and down to one of the mooring points where you will sometimes see a long boat with the name, Belly Button, that has got a pub-sign-style painting on the side of a man carrying his large beer belly along in a wheelbarrow.  Today, it was empty save for drake resting his weary head on the concrete.

Sleeping Duck On Ripon Canal

Just before the first lock – Rhodesfield Lock – there is the pretty whitewashed former lock-keeper’s house and then you angle down about 3 to 4 metres to the new level alongside a caravan park and berths for narrow boats.  At Rhodesfield Dock, a local boat, the Graceland, had just completed coming up the lock system and the owner was pushing her off the side and was taking her to dock by the wooden canal bridge.  On the right, you can see sometimes see the blue-painted narrow-boat Söll, which has a row of beautiful carved birds on its roof; I don’t know whether it is its Germanic name or the wooden birds on top, but it reminds me of Bornholm and its eider ducks (I know Bornholm is not Germanic but Danish-Swedish, but that’s the way my thoughts erroneously wandered).

Ripon Lock-Keeper's Cottage

Rhodesfield Lock On Ripon Canal

We now walk from Rhodesfield Lock to Bell Furrows Lock, which is beside Smeaton’s Marina, named after one of the engineers who built Ripon Canal.  You can cross over Bell Furrows Lock to the other side, giving you a decent view back along the route you have travelled so far.  A common frog scuttled across the path.

View To Smeaton's Marina On Ripon Canal

From Bell Furrows Lock, it’s a half mile walk to Nicholson’s Bridge and Ripon Motor Boat Marina.  On your left, you have a bird sanctuary beside Ripon Race Course; it is a wetland that has been restored from gravel pits, forming part of a larger wetland area along the River Ure and all the way down to the Humber Estuary.  On the other bank, there are some fields and the well manicured ends of some of the posher residences at the edge of Ripon, while the trees have changed to a mix of sycamores and elder.  I couldn’t see much of interest the other day except a few swans and tufted ducks, while I raised a grey heron that had been calmly fishing in the canal and languidly started its laboured flight off the canal onto the wetlands, with its strange cricked neck folding back on itself.  By Nicholson’s Bridge, you have the edge of Ripon Race Course to your left and the edge of Ripon to your right and move on to cut through farmland to the meeting of the Canal and the River Ure about one and a half miles further on.

Ripon Motor Boat Marina

Canal Boats By Nicholson's Bridge Over Ripon Canal

Narrow Boat Under Rentons Bridge

From Nicholson’s Bridge to Ox Close Lock the walk opens out and you have Ripon Race Course to your left and then farmland on the right bank.  On Saturday evenings in the summer, there is loads of activity around the marina and up and down the canal.  Everyone is full of spirits and cameraderie, while proud narrow boat owners are bringing their boats in to a resting place for the night.  Boat names are an art in themselves, while the colours of the boats’ painting are glorious and the flamboyance of the pots of flowering plants atop the boats is full of gaudy joy.  The air is suffused with the smells of hedgerow flowers interspersed with the smoke from charcoal burning in barbecues.

Mayfly By Ripon Canal

After you pass one of the starting points at Ripon Race Course, you seem to be walking along a wide garden path.  On the opposite bank, cows come down to the water’s edge for an evening drink.  At Renton’s Bridge, I crossed to the other side to the sound of several joyous song thrushes with their evening choral mash-up.  Mayflies were flying around, bobbing up and down in a weird dance.  At Ox Close Lock, there were quite a few boats hunkered up for the evening, with several more including the Rivendell coming into the canal system off the River Ure.  I walked beyond the canal to a lone oak tree and rested for a while, looking at Newby Hall a short distance to the west and back towards the small hidden opening of Ripon Canal. 

Entrance To Ripon Canal from River Ure

I pondered on why so many people were on boats and in caravans, constantly moving around and why we all felt the need to escape rather than to enjoy the here and now of where we live.  I realised that it’s because we are so disconnected from reality and the natural world in the artificial edifice that mankind has built and calls “life”, so that we need to reconnect with the natural world, rediscover where north is and listen to the music of the nature.  It’s mankind’s fictional “life” that is wrong, and in the end irrelevant, and whenever people realise that deep down, they must rediscover reality for themselves, somewhere, somehow and they need to go on a journey, and that journey is personal and the solution is unique for each individual or family and is beautiful and right whatever the solution they arrive at for restoring their own inner harmony.

On Saturday 23rd May, which was a warm and sunny evening after a scorching day, I parked my car on Magdalen’s Road and started my walk along the footpath over North Bridge Green.  North Bridge Green is a floodplain for the River Ure that stretches from the north side of North Bridge and follows the south side of the River Ure as it arcs round from the Bridge to where it meets with the River Skell by Fisher Green.  It is public land that floods regularly and is a green swathe of grass, however it would be great if more trees were planted, which would allow the ground to hold more water when the river is in spate and would also give more woodland for local biodiversity to thrive.

It’s a gentle 30 minute walk along the edge of the river, which languidly flows towards the Skell.  The water had a peaty brown hue to it and looked temptingly cool on an evening like it was.  There are shingle beeches every so often that you can wander down to and watch the river flow past, look for fish, watch the ducks swimming and the insects swarming on the water.  There were some teenagers enjoying skimming stones across the water, but most were enjoying the delights of “Over the Rainbow – The Final”  or some other TV delight.

Hidden Bench By River Ure

Around half way around, the land rises to a small height where you can look across to Ripon Cathedral as it keeps an eye on you, before you slide back down to river height.  As you get closer to the meeting of the Rivers Ure and Skell, there’s an old bench hidden beneath bushes and covered in nettles, where once there must have been a lovely river view – a romantic sign of decay - while a newer bench by the meeting of the rivers has no seat and just the concrete base – a sign simply of neglect.  Once again, you can turnaround and see Ripon Cathedral checking up on you…

View From Skell To Ripon Cathedral

At  Fisher Green, we cross over the stepping stones across the River Skell and then follow the footpath along the south side past Yorkshire Water’s wastewater treatment plant coming out on a field called The Green, which is opposite Ripon Race Course.  It flooded here last December after a snow melt in the Yorkshire Dales and covered over the road, and the field itself floods at least once every winter.

Hewick Bridge In Ripon , Yorkshire

Sanctuary Marker By Hewick Bridge

At Hewick Bridge, you need to be careful as you cross the bridge as it’s busy and there’s no footpath.  Just over Hewick Bridge, there’s a footpath and a sanctuary marker that marks the start of a walk called the Sanctuary Walk, where you can walk around the ancient limits of one league from the monastery.  We just use the part that goes along the northern banks of the River Ure.  A few yards in from the start there is a concrete section that goes into the river and comes out the other side – I always thought this was a car park but apparently this is where tanks used to cross over the river.

This section of the walk to Sharrow and back to North Bridge takes another hour, bringing the total walk time to a good 2 hours.  This section is a decent walk in the countryside, save for the sound of cars constantly moving.  Soon you blot these out and can hear only the sounds of the birds with their evening chorus – swallows, thrush, ducks, blackbirds, pigeons, the high pitched chirrup chirrup of house martins and then the loud honking of a couple of geese as they flew overhead like 2 bombers.  The trees and flowers alongside the river were in full bloom – hawthorn, chestnut, white butterbur, nettles, wild garlic, bluebells and then you had the white parachute seed heads of the the Old Man’s Clock’s and downy female catkins on some small shrubby willow bushes (I think it’s a type of Osier Willow or Salix viminalis as the leaves are definitely spear shaped, but I am not convinced about this), as well as a patch of forget-me-nots in the middle of nowhere as if someone had just dropped a pack of seeds as they wandered idly by.

Forget-me-nots Among White Butterbur

As I got to the point that the Rivers Ure and Skell meet, I walked through nettles and elder, climbed over an ineffectual fence and clambered down the riverbank and stood over the river on the trunk of an elder tree and took a picture of the confluence.  It was probably not worth the effort as it was decidely undramatic, but it was something I had been keen to do, and it satisfied a curiosity.  I still need to find the meeting places of the Ure with the Ouse Beck and also Kex Beck with the River Laver, having found the meeting between the Rivers Skell and Laver earlier.

Meeting Of Rivers Ure and Skell In Ripon In Yorkshire

Near here it is worth looking east towards the Blackamoor Pub and looking over the perfectly landscaped farmland and the patches of Van Goghian yellow of rapeseed flowers, then to the north a derelict farmhouse that I will explore another day.

View Back To Blackamoor Pub

Beware Of Witches And The Gruffalo

Two-thirds of the way along, you follow a pathway off the river bank and upwards onto Bell Bank, which is a National Trust owned wood that’s about 30 metres above the Ure.  It’s a steep slope upwards covered in trees clinging to the riverbank, so there’s an out-of-place sign warning those who enter the wood that they do so at their own risk – what of: witches or the gruffalo or that I might not notice the steep slope down to the river.  The wood was shaded and dappled with the setting sun and with patches of bluebells here and there, adding a colour contrast to the greens and browns of the woodland.

As you come out of the wood, you get a good glimpse of Ripon Cathedral staring at you, then you are down and nearly out at Sharrow.  As you follow the path along, you go under the Duchess of Kent Bridge, then out and over North Bridge.  Cross over to the opposite side of the bridge and look over the floodplain at one of Ripon’s curiosities – a white wigwam, why?  And you’re back at Magdalen’s Road.

White Teepee By North Bridge In Ripon In Yorkshire

Thinking about it, do you know what I hardly have seen when I do these short potters – people fishing.  Only once have I seen someone and that was in the centre of Ripon, but few people seem to be sitting on the bank, idling their time away trying to catch brown trout or whatever is in the river.  I know there are fishers out there, but where are they hiding?

PS: I must get a filter for my camera as I regularly get the blue sky whiting out in the photos I am taking.

Shake Up! is a neat, small shop on Westgate, and although there’s no real place for parking, everyone simply parks on the double yellow lines outside.  The decor is as you would expect a light pink painted wall, and then inside it’s sparse and utilitarian – a counter and then shelves with every type of sweet or biscuit that every parent wouldn’t want their kids to eat.  The aura is 1960s nostalgia, with the feel of English seaside resorts.

The whole experience was indulgent and – as a treat – allowed everyone to enjoy everything they’re not normally allowed.  The milk shakes are made from milk, ice cream and then any of a huge array of flavours you want.  The cost starts at a mere £2.20 – what huge value.  We went for the following 3 flavours – Toblerone, Skittles and Oreo (all differently not mushed together), but you can be healthy and have banana from real bananas and other fruits, however that would have missed the point. 

Did they taste good – yes, and the kids are already planning what evil, unhealthy concotion to have next.

My advice: go there, be tempted and enjoy yourself.