Back home after a week of adventure, discovery and unforgettable moments in
Yorkshire, and now I must try to keep the magic alive as we return to routine
and all those mundane necessities of daily life that try their hardest to
distract us.We stayed in a small converted barn just outside the small town of Helmsley. I instantly bonded with the landscape that surrounded the building, and I already miss it. It had its own spirit, and a perfectly organised community of wildlife. The owl lived in the trees to the left. The rooks gathered in the tree to the rear during the day and migrated over to the trees to the right as dusk approached, squawking away until the sun vanished behind them. The bats lived at the farm, and at the same time each evening began to circle our barn, swooping past the front door and back again where moths gathered in the light. And what was that in the undergrowth..? One evening we saw the most beautiful sunset, with a double rainbow opposite, and on another occasion part of a halo around the sun.
During the week we explored 12th- and 13th-century abbey ruins at Roche, Fountains, Rievaulx, Byland and Whitby, walking in the footsteps of monks, Reformists and of course Bram Stoker, who drew inspiration from the latter site for his novel Dracula.We visited regal estates such as Castle Howard, featured in both the television series and recent film of Brideshead Revisited; Brodsworth Hall (the interior of which is almost exactly as I imagine Miss Havisham's house to be in Great Expectations - minus the cobwebs and wedding feast!); and the atmospheric Nunnington Hall and its nearby All Saints church, which houses an effigy that rather disappointingly did not turn out to be of the legendary dragon-slayer Peter Loschy, as I had read prior to our pilgrimage.
We also found fossils under the cliffs at Staithes, and ate seaweed offered to us by a passing fisherman, and our mild fascination with the paranormal took us to two haunted pubs, the
Malt Shovel at Oswaldkirk and the Golden Fleece in York. Alas, there was
no welcome from beyond the grave!By far the most magical experience, though, was Mother Shipton's cave. As we walked towards it through the moss and the twisted, grasping roots of the trees that make up the last remaining strip of the Royal Forest of Knaresborough - and some excellent modern-day sculptures that are in perfect harmony with their surroundings - with squirrels scuttling and fairies flitting in our peripheral vision, it became increasingly evident just how special a place this is.
Little wonder, then, that it produced such a visionary woman! Ursula Sontheil,
or Mother Shipton as she came to be known, was born to a young single mother on
a stormy night in 1488, in the dark cave at the end of this forest path, next
to a waterfall that turns objects to stone, and she became a renowned
prophetess, witch and wise woman.My Oak King and I couldn't resist a second visit on our way home on the last day, after a final twilight outside the barn, where a golden waning moon emerged from a black dragon's mouth and a distant storm flickered on the horizon, while the bats circled and a meteor flamed above our heads.
