Mo and I like to take our annual holidays around the end of September, when the remnants of Summer still linger in the air, but there is also that beautiful early Autumn glow. This morning we walked across Lodge Meadow in an early morning mist with the sun piercing the trees in slanting shafts of light. It is a perfect time of year.
This time last year we were in Yorkshire, striding over the moors or through the dales. That was a glorious carefree fortnight staying in a small cottage by Arkengarthdale Beck running down to Swaledale, about three or four miles away. The year before that, we enjoyed two weeks on the Isle of Mull, and in 2017, to celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary and Mo’s seventieth birthday, we treated ourselves to a delightful month on Lipari, a small island north of Sicily.
Currently, we should be languishing for two weeks in a tiny cottage just outside the fishing village of Glandore, County Cork. But quarantine restriction would have meant us staying indoors for the entire time, staring out of the windows wondering what Southern Ireland was like. We have, at least, been able to postpone that booking until the same time next year, when we all hope this terrible pandemic will be behind us.
But for now we are consoling ourselves with a week, commencing Friday, in a one-room cottage in Hoff, a tiny hamlet near Appleby-in-Westmorland. Hoff itself stands on the banks of Hoff Beck, and from what I can see on the Ordnance Survey map, consists of a bridge, a telephone box and a pub. Sounds good to me.
Appleby, charmingly and with an admirable doggedness, still clings to the old county name of Westmorland, although this ceased to exist in 1974 and was incorporated into the newly formed county of Cumbria.
So, for the remainder of this week we will be preparing for our trip north, planning little, except for the possibility of calling into Reeth Market to buy some bread and artisan Yorkshire cheese, then heading up to the lovely Tan Hill Inn for lunch. But we know what Robbie Burns said about the best laid plans.
Postcards From The Land That Time Forgot 