Epiblog for The Feast of St Wystan

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The weather changed on Monday, back into its summer clothes. The sun, an unfamiliar face of late, peeped out through the clouds, and the rain stopped. Things began to steam and dry out, at least, and we were up and about betimes, because Debbie had declared it a holiday; it was half term, it was sunny, and we were off in the camper!

I remember once reading, somewhere, a description of Henry VIII’s heralds engaging in the frantic preparations for the tournament which was the climactic event of The Field of the Cloth of Gold, and our efforts last Monday morning must have looked very similar to the untrained eye, except for the bit about throwing up earth banks and revetments while shouting “Harr! Harr!” at the top of their voices. Actually, my interest piqued by this, I looked it up in Hall’s Chronicles, and it would seem that I mis-remembered, and it refers to another, different tournament:

The second daie of Ianuary, threw was muche talking of the assault of the Castle, and so after long debate, Sir Francis Brian, and Frances Poyntz, enterprised to defende the Weste braie of the Castle, with Pike Target and Sworde, poynt and edge abated, against Sir George Cobham, George Harbert, Ihon Poyntz, and Willyam Kneuet, and when thei were all armed, the Trumpettes blewe, then toward the braie marched the foure gentlemen with pikes and swords, and cried harr, harr, there was foynyng, lasshyng, and striking, they within fought mightily and when any without clymed vp the banke, thei within bet them doune thei within were sometime beten doune almoste; but surely thei fought valiantly, and then they seased for a while.

Whatever the tournament, Matilda slept through it all.  It was impossible to tell from her gentle snores if she was totally oblivious of our presentations, or resigned to her fate at being cared for by Granny for a week, but either way she displayed her supreme indifference in a way that only a cat can, by totally ignoring.

Misty, however, sensed what was afoot, and joined in the mad rushing back and forth, usually getting under Debbie’s feet at crucial moments, especially when she was carrying something that restricted her forward view.  A couple of times, Misty even got as far as the camper, self-loading herself to make sure she wouldn’t be forgotten. The second time she did it, Debbie gave up the struggle, went with the flow, and just packed the bedding in around her.

Soon, Granny had arrived with Zak, and he, too, was soon loaded and ensconced in his usual position. This just left me. I was quickly shoved up the ramps by Debbie in my travelling chair, and then transferred onto the front seat. I couldn’t believe we  were ready so early, but we were! Therefore, we were correspondingly early arriving in the Lakes. The weather was duller there, but there was still no sign of rain. We took in the scene. Over on the horizon, way beyond the windfarms, the low lumpy hills of the Isle of Man looked for all the world like the whalebacks and loops of one of those ancient sea-serpents that medieval cartographers drew into empty bits of sea in order to frighten sailors.

There was one other camper van already parked up on the headland, a rather salubrious “gin palace” in gleaming white. The sort of camper van that has an upstairs and probably a spare room for when Tarquin comes home from Uni for the weekend.  Altogether more upmarket than us. Despite this, Debbie decided there was sufficient room for us to park up behind them without invading “their” space, so we did.

Debbie returned from a brief explore on the beach with the great news that she’d found and gathered some seaweed (sea-lettuce, to be exact) which she was going to get me to fry up for her breakfast with some mushrooms she’d brought from home, some soy sauce, and some garlic.  I reminded her that Sellafield was just up the coast.  “Do you think it’ll be alright, then?” she asked. Well, says I, you’ve got a nuclear reactor just up the coast and a nuclear submarine factory in Barrow just behind us. No, I’m sure it will be fine, what could possibly go wrong?

By the time I’d transferred across to sit on the edge of the bed in the back, fed and watered the dogs, and unpacked out own food to start tea, it had somehow got to be 9.30pm. I, for one, was looking forward to a simple progression; food, possibly accompanied by a noggin, tincture and/or snifter or two, delete as appropriate, then bed.  Especially as the first night of any trip sleeping in the camper is usually one of fitful, broken sleep.  So I was quite surprised when Debbie said she was going to light a fire. Actually, surprised is probably the wrong word. Wearily accepting would be nearer the mark. As I have said many times before, if pushing the envelope was an Olympic event, my wife would be a gold-medallist.  I stayed awake as long as I could, but by the time the embers had died down and she came inside and shut the door, I was snoring, as were the canines.

Tuesday dawned bright but cloudy, and we had the predictable late start that accompanies the second day of any of our trips, when it all catches up with us.  The dogs seemed to have more energy, and went scampering off down the beach, taking up their positions in expectation that Debbie would want to play “stones”, the game where she throws a pebble and they bring a different one back.  Debbie, meanwhile, was making herself presentable for the outside world while I made coffee for her, a steaming tin mug of tea for me, and some breakfast for both of us, in her case her preferred dish of glow-in-the-dark stir fry.  She broke the silence by saying “I didn’t know you could see over there from here.”

“Oh, yes,” I replied. “And you can see over there, as well.” Not for the first time in my life, I have no idea what she was talking about. In the background, Radio 4 was warbling on about how Nick Clegg had insisted he was right to debate with Nigel Farage.  That may well be true; his mistake was not so much in having the debate, as losing it. Eventually, we were ready to roll and we set off in the general direction of Gummer’s How, which Debbie has climbed several times before, it being a mere pimple of a Wainwright, in his book on the outlying fells, where he describes it as “an old man’s mountain”. In truth, this was really just a shakedown to see how things progressed, break in the gear, make sure the dogs behaved, and make the best of the remainder of the day, which was fast slipping away from us.

I was hoping, also, that the relatively early finish would enable us to fit in a visit to Booths Supermarket in Ulverston on the way back, as there was some stuff we needed, notably in my case, a tube of Volterol pain killer, my existing one having run out that morning.  Debbie had already chided me about my enthusiasm for Booths, not least because, in a bout of old-age feeble mindedness, I referred to it in conversation recently as “Underwoods”, which is actually the name of the mythical supermarket in The Archers.  Anyway, Debbie agreed to stop off on the way back, and I handed her my list of five things.  An hour later she came back to the camper with four bulging carrier bags. This is actually par for the course for Debbie, she can’t go shopping anywhere without looking at all the shiny things twice, but nevertheless…

“Did you get my Volterol?” I asked

“You must be joking, it’s £4.99!”

“Yes, but what is the price of a husband’s pain?”

“£4.99, I just told you. I can get it for £1.00 in the pound shop back home.”

Fortunately, a subsequent fossick in the camper’s first aid kit produced a tube  of Nurofen topical Ibuprofen, which I must’ve brought on a previous trip and forgotten to take back in the house, so all was well.  Back on station at Walney Island, we were eating our evening meal when we were joined by a night fisherman, who unloaded what seemed like several tons of gear fro a van and set up two enormous sea-fishing rods on the shoreline, where he proceeded to plonk himself, presumably until dawn. Debbie remarked that she couldn’t see the point of night fishing and I said that it was probably because at night the fish were all sleepy and therefore more vulnerable to getting caught. (If that’s true, of course, the ones in aquariums must get really annoyed that people leave the light on all night.)

Wednesday dawned wet and windy, which was a triumph for alliteration, if nothing else. We watched glumly as the showers decided to knit themselves together into more prolonged periods of sustained rain. Whatever else it was, it wasn’t a day for climbing mountains, but Debbie was undeterred. We decided to set off in the general direction of Grasmere in the hope of finding an envelope to push. Given the weather, I hoped it was a waterproof envelope, and not gummed. By the time we reached the layby at the side of Dunmail Raise, in the shadow of Helm Crag, it was raining steadily and showing every sign of turning into one of those total washout days that the Lake District does oh so well.  “I think it’s fairing up!” said Debbie.

Eventually, she decided that she could just about, in the remaining time available, “bag” High Raise, the Wainwright that she’d failed to incorporate in the previous trip when she’d ended up on Sergeant Man instead.  I worked out a route from the Steel Fell car park at Armboth, up the Wythburn Valley, where it joins the path from Greenburn Edge and you turn left and hey presto, there’s your summit.  It wasn’t actually raining when they set off, but by the time they’d been gone about half an hour it was bucketing down again.  And continued to do so until they came back, about four hours later, soaked, bedraggled, and clarted with mud.  The dogs looked especially woebegone and no sooner had they been towelled dry than they both jumped on the bed and within five minutes were curled up, fast asleep.

Deb changed, and hung up her wet gear as best she could. She had at least reached High Raise this time, though to be honest, there wasn’t a lot to commend it apart from featureless boggy terrain. This reinforced something which I had been thinking a lot of late: these mountains are now enshrined as “The Wainwrights” (although the self-effacing, extremely private, curmudgeonly old Alf Wainwrght would himself be horrified at such a development) but apart from the fact that he chose to incorporate them in his guides, quite a lot of them are – frankly – pretty boring and unprepossessing. I’m fast coming to the conclusion that the Lake District’s peaks are a bit like Wagner’s operas – some wonderful moments, but some truly dreadful half hours.

Anyway, the soaking weather left us with a bit of a quandary. We could either trail all the way back to Walney, and then repeat today’s process tomorrow if the weather was better, or try and hole up somewhere round Grasmere so that if it did improve in the morning, we were already “on station”. A quick mobile phone call to the farm at Town Head which allows all day parking for £1.00 to climbers of Helm Crag and Steel Fell elicited the information that yes, we could park overnight in the yard and yes, it would still be £1.00. Result. By the time we got there, we were both flagging, so we made the best meal we could and then called it a day.

Thursday dawned damp and soggy, and that was just inside the camper! The weather outside didn’t look that bad, actually, cloudy and windy. It was a good job we’d wanted an early start because the farmer decided to load up a trailer load of gravel at about 10 to 8, which proved far more effective than the alarm on Debbie’s mobile. Still seeping rainwater from every orifice, it warbled, gargled, and died. 

Sadly, the day’s early promise went unfulfilled, and by 11AM it was spitting with rain again.  The walk today was rather poetically entitled “A Troutbeck Medley” from Stewart Marshall’s book on how to bag all 214 Wainwrights in a series of 37 circular walks.  We arrived at the grid reference where the book says you can leave your car to a typically warm Cumbrian welcome. NO PARKING! It turned out that Mr M had actually meant a small layby just the other side of Troutbeck Bridge, which we eventually located by cruising up and down the road a few times.  Opposite it was a gate to a beautiful fresh green meadow absolutely stuffed full of thousands and thousands of celandines, giving a huge blast of sunny yellow colour, so bright it almost hurt to look at it, and on the gate was a National Trust notice saying NO ACCESS. Right, thanks for that. They must going to harvest the celandines and turn them into Beatrix Potter tea towels or something. If Wordsworth wanted to re-write his poem that starts, “There is a flower, the lesser celandine…” today, he may have a problem. Somehow, though, I think he would have just climbed the gate and strode off across the field, declaiming as he went.

Mr Marshall’s book was proving to be every bit as impenetrable as Wordsworth at his woolliest.  The main problem was translating his instructions onto the OS map. Eventually, after getting Deb to read it out loud to me in digestible chunks, I had constructed a pencil line of the route, or so I thought, and Deb, Misty and Zak set off up the bridleway, intending to “bag” Sour Hows, Sallows, Troutbeck Tongue and Wansfell.  Just after they’d gone there was a massive noise and a huge shadow fell over the road as a C-147 Hercules flying at little more than treetop height “buzzed” the Troutbeck valley before pulling up to port in a tight stall-turn and hopping over the shoulder of Wansfell. Bloody hell, I thought, if Misty was off the lead when that came over, we’ll be spending the rest of the week looking for her. As it is, such is the vague nature of the Lakes, they hadn’t either heard or seen it, having been screened by a fold of hill up the way to Sour Howes at that point. Just as well. I know the RAF have to practise, and this wasn’t the first time we’d seen than this week: a couple of Tornados streaked over Windermere at low level while Deb was en route to Gummer’s How. But I was amazed that they’re allowed to do such low level jinks over populated areas. One error of judgement by pilot of that C-147 and a considerable area of OS outdoor leisure The Lake District: South East would need to be re-written, not to mention three or four volumes of Wainwright guides.

Deb and the dogs were back considerably earlier than I had expected, and it was clear things had not gone well. Her comment was “That book might just as well be used to light the fire”. In fairness to Stewart Marshall, he does make the point that his book is for people with some experience of walking the fells, but despite having GPS, compass, and a map, Deb had been unable to locate the route after having climbed Sallows, had pressed on regardless (that envelope again) and found herself eventually near enough to Ill Bell to climb it, which she duly did (it is a Wainwright, though not one of this particular walk) and then they’d worked their way back along the bridle track that follows the line of the old Roman road down the Troutbeck Valley.

Still, as we used to say in the 1960s, it’s an ill wind that blows no minds, and at least their early return meant that we were able to get back to Walney in time to light a fire for our barbecue. Not with Stewart Marshall’s book, though, she’d calmed down by then.  Debbie stopped off briefly in Ford Park in Ulverston to gather some wild garlic, which I told her had probably been widdled on by every dog in the town.  She did, however, this time, resist the temptation to have a go on the zip wire, having nearly crocked herself on it last time we were there. (My fault for pointing it out to her. I knew I should have just kept my mouth shut.) The radio news was still full of UKIP crowing and the Lib Dims imploding left, right and centre. I kept getting that mental picture of Farage holding his pint, and applying the pint test to the leaders of the other parties. Cameron would have a pint with you, then forget his daughter. Clegg would be sent to the bar by Cameron for some pork scratchings. Miliband would have a skinny latte, and the leader of the Greens, whose name escapes me, is an Australian woman who knows how to shear a sheep, so she’d probably be brewing potcheen out the back.

At some point on Thursday night I lost my phone in the back of the camper and we only just found it on Friday morning before it disappeared into a slot from which the only way to get at it would have been to take a panel off the outside! Too close for comfort, that one. The dogs were hopping in and out of the side door, lying in the grass outside or wandering off down the beach. Occasionally, Misty would get fed up and “round up” Zak to get him to come back within agreed bounds. It just goes to show, she can do rounding up when she tries, though I am not too sure to how many decimal places.  

The BBC news, meanwhile, was telling us that the Chilcott Enquiry into the illegal war in Iraq would have to make do with the gist of what Blair and Bush said to each other while they were cooking it up, and not the actual verbatim transcripts. Some tame American they were interviewing welcomed this, because if it had gone the other way, “No American President would have been able to speak to a British Prime Minister.” Er, no … no American President would have been able to lie to a British Prime Minister. To be honest, any other outcome was about as likely as Harold Shipman getting a caution and community service, but nevertheless. If it looks like whitewash, covers like whitewash, and tastes like whitewash, it’s whitewash.

I comforted myself by watching a single oystercatcher which was wandering u the beach, chirruping to itself for no apparent reason. I wondered if it was a bit elderly and confused, like me, and the chirrup was the equivalent of “Now, what did I come up here for… oh yes, oysters…” Further down the beach, two or three families had turned up and were busy erecting tents in what looked at first like an attempt to re-create the refugee camp at Sangatte. However, it turned out that they were just having a cheap holiday, and who can blame them. It was quite a good idea, really. The adults shared the child care while the children ran up and down the beach, hooting and screaming, in the company of a small Yorkshire Terrier which was having the time of its life. Later on, a whole tribe of them trooped down to the water’s edge with buckets and spades and started digging, presumably for mussels, cockles and/or whelks. I’ve noticed people doing this on Walney beach before, and I hoped this time, as I hoped then, that it was out of choice and not necessity. Still, as I said to Debbie at least they’re all getting a camping holiday in the open air and it reminded me of the sort of budget holidays I used to have as a kid, at Kilnsea, when the highlight of my day was a present of a balsa-wood glider to fly on the beach.

Debbie had vetoed a walk for that day, so after a brief foray to Booths/Underwoods, we returned and started putting together another barbecue fire, with roast spuds and sweetcorn done in foil in the embers.  The camping families were trying to light a fire of their own, not very successfully, it has to be said, mainly owing to lack of fuel.

“Do you know what would be a really nice gesture,” I said to Debbie, “To offer them some of our wood. We’ve got plenty, and if you did it, it would be a gesture of kindness that those kids would remember and maybe carry forward into their own lives!”

“There’s more than enough of them to go and gather wood and if they can forage for cockles they can forage for fuel,” was her reply. So that little foray into Muscular Christianity died on its arse there and then.

Saturday, predictably, because it was the day we were going home, dawned bright and sunny, although  felt, personally, anything but.  I thought I was coming down with a cold, and was correspondingly shivery and achy. Debbie dropped the tomato sauce bottle on my foot, which did at least focus my attention. She had, actually, during the week, also dropped her mirror onto the same toe, and miraculously, it didn’t break, either the toe or the mirror, though it did feel like bad luck at the time.

I transferred into the front seat and we were off, bidding farewell with one last game of “stones” on the beach for the dogs. Zak decided to bring home a souvenir, jumping back in the camper with a large pebble in his mouth. He deposited it on the bed, where no doubt the unwary sleeper (c’est moi) will find it during the next trip.

We were off to Keswick, which was exactly the wrong direction for home, but Debbie wanted to look in the camping shops, which are of course rammed to the gills with shiny things.  We passed over Dunmail Raise yet again, and this time, aided by the drawing of it in the Wainwright book I’d been reading the previous day, I was able to identify correctly the cairn marking the burial place of Dunmail, last King of Cumbria, who died in 954AD.  It is said to mark the place where he fell in battle and was buried after being defeated by the combined forces of Edmund of England and Malcolm of Scotland. Rather prosaically, it is now in the central reservation of a section of dual carriageway, and, just to rub it in, poor old Dunmail has a multiplex in Workington named after him.  Acccording to The People Called Cumbri, by F. C. Carruthers (1979)

Others of Dunmail's warriors fled with the crown of Cumberland, climbing into the mountains to Grisedale Tarn below Helvellyn, where they threw it into the depths to be safe until some future time when Dunmail would come again to lead them. Every year the warriors are said to return to the tarn, recover the crown and carry it down to the cairn on Dunmail Raise. There they strike the cairn with their spears and a voice is heard from deep inside the stones, saying "Not yet, not yet; wait awhile my warriors."

Keswick was much more concerned with 21^st century matters, and was heaving with Saturday shoppers. Debbie left me parked up near to Crosthwaite church, where I attempted a very wishy-washy painting of it, in between dozing in the sun and trying to remember who it was who was a) famous and b) buried there. To save you the trouble of looking it up, as I did when I got back, it’s the poet, Robert Southey, he who wrote “Jenny kissed me when we met, jumping from the chair she sat in…” and for a bonus point, you could also have had Canon Rawnsley, one of the co-founders of the National Trust, and his wife, who founded the Keswick Society for Industrial Arts.  By the time I had finished my musings, dozings and paintings, Debbie was back, and we turned our wheels homewards, pulling up outside our drive about two and a half hours later.  We unloaded only what was necessary, located and fed the cat, fed the dogs, fed ourselves, and by the time I had downloaded the 214 waiting emails off the server onto my laptop, with a mixture of sighs, depression and despair at their contents, I was ready and able to sleep.  After a good might’s sleep in my own bed, I do feel considerably better today, though still not brilliant. In one way it might have been sensible to come back a day earlier, but as I said to Deb, when I am lying on my deathbed, am I more likely to say “Oh, I wish I’d spent more time in the mountains” or “Oh, I wish I’d spent more time at home, struggling with boring admin.” Life is not a dress rehearsal, it’s an uncertain business. Eat dessert first.

Which saw out the end of May, anyway, my favourite month of the whole year, and brought us to today, the feast of St Wystan, whose chief claim to fame has got to be that W. H. Auden was named after him.  Wystan, who died circa 840AD, was a saint and martyr. He was a grandson of the King of the Mercians, and supposedly was murdered by Bertulph, sometimes known as Beorhtfrith, King of Mercia, for refusing to accept Bertulph’s planned marriage to Wystan’s mother.  His relics were originally buried at Repton, but were translated to Evesham Cathedral.

The place of Wystan’s martyrdom has been disputed – the main candidates are Wistow, Leicestershire and Wistanstow, Shropshire. The facts of his martyrdom are that Bertulph went to visit the young King in peace, but when the two met, Bertulph struck Wystan on the head with his dagger and Bertulph’s servant ran him through with a sword. 

Wystan’s remains were supposedly discovered by a beam of light shining on them from heaven, and were collected and buried at St Wystan’s Church in Repton, in 849AD, where a cult of pilgrimage grew up.  About 1019AD, Cnut had Wystan’s relics translated to Evesham Abbey, which was, of course, slighted in the Dissolution.

I’m unsure what spiritual lesson today’s saint holds for me, other than “choose your friends wisely”, but then I do that anyway.  I know I am going to need to patience of a saint to get through next week, having created another massive backlog for myself, including all the people who need chasing up because they haven’t responded yet to stuff I have previously sent them.  Ah, well, on the plus side, I have spent a few days outside of these four walls and apart from picking up some foul bug, no serious physical harm seems to have accrued to my account. I did come across some rather shocking news on my return, which is that one of my Facebook friends has died suddenly, at the same age as me.  She was an erstwhile cat-rescuer and cat-rehomer, and the world is the sadder for her loss.  It’s become fashionable to deride online friendships as being somehow less real, and indeed it’s possible to pretend to be something you’re not, and put up a false front, but that wasn’t DS’s style, she was obviously a warm, caring, knowledgeable and true person.  Humans cats and indeed other animals have lost a doughty ally. 

I did, strangely enough, find some time for prayer and contemplation myself, while we were away, in those hours I spent waiting for Deb and the dogs to come back off the fells. The mountains seem to be my cathedral these days more and more, and, although I have come back to a “right bag of mashings” as they say round here, I don’t regret having agreed to go. I’ll catch up with the work eventually, and DS’s death is a reminder that there are no guarantees I’ll ever see Helm Crag again, so, if I have a message, which is an increasingly rare thing these days, this Sunday teatime, it is to cherish the ones you love while you can, and drink and drink and drink till you’re drunk on the joy of living.