A Proper Holiday
‘On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again’
Johnny Cash
And we’re off! Back in the camper van and on our way to the Yorkshire Dales for a week-long break. We stop to say hello to some people in Doncaster on our way up the A1.
So, where you off?
The Yorkshire Dales!
Ah right, what’s to do there?
Oh, some walking, cycling, cooking some great food in the van, that kind of thing!
Oh well, maybe you’ll get to go on a proper holiday next year!
What’s a proper holiday? A gathering of European middle-aged mid-range luxury car drivers in tight swimming shorts under-cutting a swollen midriff? Add sun, a marble-clad hotel, fancy swimming pools, as much as you can eat and drink, particularly drinks which include colourful blends of alcohol and large umbrellas, and bingo! A proper holiday!
Perhaps it’s a fair point. What do we love so much about the camper van and British landscape? After a three-hour drive at an average speed of a hay-bale laden 1950’s tractor, and fuel consumption akin to an Apollo space launch, our camper van arrives at a location north of Settle which would probably be described by advocates of ‘proper holidays’ as a re-arrangement of ‘forsaken’ and ‘God’.
But we roll into town with a well-oiled procedure for establishing our pitch. Getting up at what-the-fuck o’clock to maximise our holiday time was a great idea as I cooked up our demob-happy pre-holiday meal the night before. Twenty hours and two whopping hang-overs later and we remembered too late, our previous decision never to drink the night before a holiday. Ah well, there’s always next year…
We check in. Campsites are considerably more modern then they used to be. As is the level of security. We’re issued with our secure digital key fob, so secure that a combination task-force of GCHQ and an American election team would struggle to hack their way into the recently-improved shower and toilet block.
Driving down to the campsite proper, our secure digital key fob bleeps ineffectually at the barrier. So secure is our secure digital key fob, that even we, legitimate holders of said secure digital key fob, are denied access at a security barrier sufficiently secure, that Donald Trump is said to be considering a hostile take-over of the parent company, with one eye on his Mexican border. Campsite security’s contingency strategy kicks in, and a large man in a baggy tracksuit wanders down and manually lifts the barrier, and we pass seamlessly into the ‘secure zone’.
We go into full pitch-establishment mode as a well-drilled and long-married team. Rolls are assigned: hook up the electrics; fill the water tank; chock the wheels; switch on the gas. The combination of hang-overs and the simplistic campsite ‘manual’ (badly spelt A4 sheet compiled by 12 year old son of campsite owners) inevitable results in ‘holiday bickering’.
Why are you standing there? Are you not hooking up the electrics?
No, I thought I’d invent a new source of renewable power instead! What do you think I’m doing?
We’re such a great team, I’m only surprised no-one has asked us to man a space mission…
Houston, we have a problem…
Go ahead Mars Mission One…
Carol says she won’t initiate the launch sequence if she can’t have the Tracy Chapman CD on!
Say again Mars Mission?
Well, it’s totally out of order, we’ve had her bloody Adele all through training and we agreed we’d have the Fun-Loving Criminals for the launch!
Tensions are soothed with a dinner of steak and Mediterranean potatoes (cubes the potatoes small, add two quartered onions, one lemon in eighths, four whole garlic cloves, dried or fresh oregano, salt and pepper, olive oil, cook in oven at 180 for 40 mins), and a bottle of good red wine (to take the edge off the previous night’s hangover).
The following morning begins with a security alert, as the secure digital key fob refuses entry into the toilet block, and repeated attempts to access said facility results in the approach of the same man in a baggy tracksuit who constituted the previously-discussed crack campsite defence team. Why the operation of anyone’s lower intestine requires such close scrutiny, God only knows. As space and decency precludes expansive comment, sufficient to say that discussions resulted in the re-configuration of our secure digital key fob. And a poo.
Reinforced and readied for our first hike with bacon and brioche rolls and Italian espresso, we drive to Wharfdale and consider the view before us. All of life is relative, so there are different ways of interpreting the vista. In one sense, the veil of ethereal mist wreathing the hills and hollows of this other-worldly river-valley, suggests a liminal space, a border between reality and a wild literary landscape. Listen carefully, and the maddening wails of Heathcliff and Cathy roll off the tops of tors and the rippling tarns. In another sense, it is Yorkshire, and it is pissing with rain.
So why do we do it? I could tell you all about the best game pie I’ve ever eaten at the Craven Heifer in Stainforth, the incredible rabbit at the Game Cock at Austwick, or our evening sampling the taster menu at the Traddock Hotel in the same village. I could equally extol the virtues of the local ales and wines, or I could admit that my comments about the campsite were mainly for comedic effect, and the camp site at Knight’s Stainforth is actually the best and one of the most beautifully located I have ever experienced. The site includes a genuine restaurant with a menu and bar so good, one could happily never leave. I could utter platitudes about the stunning countryside, and stunning it is, even in rain.
The following day, I consider all of this whilst ascending the
limestone escarpment of Smearset Scar in beautiful sunshine. I eschew the carefully marked track which winds its way up, and opt instead for a precipitous and fear-inducing but life-affirming scramble. Looking out from the top, I spot all the summits of the Yorkshire Three Peaks and exchange ‘how do’s with a smiling elderly couple who arrive at the summit cairn as I’m leaving.
Later, we get a sense of the inspiration which led Turner to
sketch Thornton Force at the very same spot from which we watch the rain-swollen immense power of nature crash over the lip of the waterfall. This sense of awe and helplessness in the face of the all-conquering natural world is what Turner and his fellow nineteenth-century travellers called sublime, the same feeling recalled in Turner’s depiction of Hannibal crossing the Alps.
The rain has also swollen the River Wharf. It’s tormented waters carving down Wharfdale present a backdrop to the ruins of Bolton Abbey and an altogether Gothic sensibility. Turning away and hiking back towards lunch at Old Hall Inn outside Grassington, we make our way up a steep incline to a covered resting area which looks out on the river from a lofty perch. We are not alone. An Asian family with a triple buggy-full of toddlers puff their way up; a Dutch couple with expensive kit and racing walking poles appear to be taking part in some kind of Olympic qualifying event; an old chap hacks and coughs his way forward with a set of lungs which suggests a life-long commitment to tobacco, but still he crawls skywards like some old wheezing steam-driven funicular.
All seek respite at the top and we seat ourselves, all smiles and the knowing eye-contact of shared experience. I am struck at how a little exertion in the natural landscape mocks the artificiality of the divisions of age, race, colour, nationality, religion and so forth, which we idiot humans choose to impose on ourselves. Our little impromptu gathering sweats, pants, smiles and shares, as the hills, the river, the ruins, the landscape seems to quietly laugh…You’re all the same up here! This is an experience that money can literally not buy, one which requires an investment of effort rather than cash, one which cannot be paid for by anyone else either, you’ll have to divvy up the entry fee yourself.
Later in the evening, back at the bar we share a single malt with Paul, one of the owners of the family owned site. Paul, his brother Chris, their wives and kids, all live in a large rambling house across the road. Chris and Paul have never known another home, or another view other than the beauty which has greeted them every morning for the last forty-odd years. Nor have they felt any change was necessary. The moment gives me an insight which suggests that travel is not necessarily measured in air-miles, it is an internal act of imagination as much as a crossing of physical space. And it can take you wherever you wish to go.
These are all reasons I could use to persuade you of why we don’t go on many ‘proper holidays’ these days. I suspect however, that the old adage holds true: for those who understand, no explanation is required; for those who don’t, none will suffice. If you haven’t already, you’ll just have to pay the piper of the Dales and make the investment to find out for yourself.
