Fertility!

--> We've been congregating - meeting friends at a Coruna's smart little airport (touch down, walk out into the public area 6 minutes later with your bags). And we've been sitting about a bit.

It's weird having Andrew willing to 'do' nothing for maybe half an hour at a time. But it's good for us, especially for catching up on sleep.

Yesterday we took Lulu and Snelling into Pontedeume to see the start of the fiesta. We'd been told it would be packed, parking would be difficult etc etc, so we were there well before eleven, for a fiesta start at midday. Hot chocolate with churros seemed to be the order of the moment - as we chose our table with a view, the rain started. We retreated to a dryer but darker table - and then in great waves, the rains started. If you could mechanise this rain it would make the greatest car-wash or street-cleaning machine in the world.  It batted through from low soft grey skies which appeared not to move but nonetheless gave us great sequences of soft torrents. 

A sequence of warfront explosions up in the air over the river made children scream and adults flinch.  We didn't count - maybe it was 21.  By getting drenched to go and look at the explosion zone, you could see the tiny fierce flash, then see the puff of smoke and then the huge sound pounded down into the streets. For the last one, I also heard the thin whizzing screech as the shell shot up into the air.  All for fun, while some places in this wicked world get those bangs for real, right inside their houses, onto the breakfast table, in their children's faces. 

At a few moments past midday, having failed to get to the main square because we were wimps and didn't want to get wet, we seized a momentary break in the monsoon to go and see the carnival. The tight little square was filled with families, with a discernible wash of people moving away from us in the far corner and up one of the pretty balconied alleys.  We skirted round, taking one of the horizontal paths to reach the next road up, and Lulu and I pressed on to meet the crowd where the lanes converged. Andrew and Snelling stayed behind, more staid, as Snelling had a bad back and walking uphill and back down would be too much.

At the turns of the tiny streets we could see a huge twirling pink skirt.  At the top of our lane, we found them - the two momeri (?) - a double-height man and woman, he a stern Roman centurion, she a pouting staring matron with white gloves on her hands, and a coronet and gold earrings.  Under her crinolined skirts a pair of hairy masculine legs ended in a pair of trainers.  These two monstrous creatures made a slow, unsteady progress up to the higher square, stopping occasionally for the men inside to rest, leaning forward from time to time to leer over a child or a shopfront.

Behind them, a quartet of pipers and drum gave them a throbbing squealing accompaniment, the musicians dressed in very smart black and white, with shoe pompoms, and the local Galician bagpipes hurling their squeaky bouncy music out to echo in the narrow streets. The crowds pressed round on all sides, shrinking back as the two giants pushed towards them, this way and that. As the creatures - queen and king, lord and lady, goddess and god, good luck and bad (who knows?) - twirled round occasionally, their arms flayed out, just above head height for the crowds, scattering a kind of benison or threat.  The tops of their great papier-mache heads just passed underneath the electric cables strung across the streets for the festival - neatly avoiding collision, or drenching, or electrocution.  Up there in the top square, the two colossi faced each other in a silent conversation or stand-off. There was a small space around them, as they contemplated each other. Mothers lifted children forward to touch the hand of the lady.  The pipers fell quiet. Then, the two great creatures advanced towards each other, and held their great faces together in a prolonged snog. The crowd went wild, cheering and clapping, whistling and laughing.  The band struck up again, and from within the crowd itself, a tribe of smaller creatures appeared, with great swollen heads - monsters, cartoon characters, beasts - little children inside them pushing through the throng to get as near as they could to the giant parent couple, who were starting to make their way back down the crowded lane, past the carved stone pilgrims' crosses and windowed balconies and dark little bars.

By this act, a metaphorical sexual coupling, the prosperity of the town will have been affirmed - and indeed, the 'holy' couple stopped in front of many of the businesses on their way back down towards main markets, and stood staring with their rather accusing eyes at the name-boards over the doorways, and leaning forward - especially that impassive dark Grace-Kelly of a queen - to loom over someone on their way. 

We took shelter again in another café beside the market as the rain started, and eventually that tiny band of black and white minstrels made their way round under the colonnade where we were sipping wine or bitter-orange, and nibbling at our empanadas of atun, and they serenaded each business, each little shop or café, spreading the jollity and promise of a happy year ahead for the proprietor. The rain bashed down, causing even the herring gulls to look gloomy.  But it was warm, and people dashed across the street to various umbrella-roofed tables, and formed happy groups with children dancing about. Hours unwound.

Lunch was taken in Redes, round the bay to the north - ordered up in advance, and our table of ten (mostly from Faversham) feasted on pimientos de Padron, succulent morsels of pulpo (octopus), a salad of asparagus and crisp sweet onions with tomatoes and lettuce, and then two great dishes of merluza (hake) with pale sweet crisp chips. The rain hammered down. We drank local fragrant white wine and sparkling water, and then they gave us bottles of three liqueurs to serve ourselves - a coffee syrup, a cream-based one, and something called herbas - bright yellow and slightly bitter. The rain stopped. 

Lulu and John's daughter Katy elected to walk back along the coastal path (which we, one year ago, had found very arduous up and down, in and out), and we fixed a rendezvous nearer to Pontedeume - the bar where I was serenaded on my birthday nearly a year ago.

Home - bed.  Lulu was violently sick. (She's feeling better today, btw).

My god, this is amazing!

After the drive from Santander, the evening carousels in Miguel's stylish new bar, and then getting lost for an hour at midnight, today we had a rest-day. We texted the landlord to say the hot water no va, and said we'd get the cash for him for the rent rather than trying the rather unreliable bank IBAN system again. 

The local supermarket is smallish - crammed even - but it is a TEMPLE of cuisine… The tinned fish department is a wonder and the fresh fish counter holds a rhapsody of species… the octopus and squid alone taking up a couple of square yards of the catch, gleaming fresh and full of variety. It puts our miserly culture to shame… not so much in the slaughter of innocent creatures but in the joyous celebration of the bounty of the earth.

We did very little - walked down to the beach, had a glass of water in a café (and each of us served with a trio of free morsels - deep-fried squid, a little portion of melting tortilla, and a small chunk of freshly baked bread. All that cost €2.40).

Lunch was in another popular looking resto - the clientele mostly in the retired age-bracket - the menu vocal rather than written.  My paella was quite different from yesterday's - this time, only saffron used to colour it, and no fish in it at all - just little chunks of melting meats. 

(By the way, I slept very little at all last night, very tired but utterly unable to go to sleep. My stomach was slightly tender and I decided it must have been the food colouring in the delicious fishy paella at LLastre which did it. I finally drifted off about 5am, having read three times, played Mahjong three times, and wandered round in the dark trying not to wake Andrew up).

It goes against the grain leaving anything on my plate because of growing up with rationed food, and of course I am a greedy girl too - but I did not finish anything like all my lunch. It was delicious but I was too full.  I regretted this because the sardines in particular were amazing - sardinas shureff-something I think he said - salted to a dry stiffness and then deep fried… utterly delicious, crisp and tangy.

This afternoon we took a siesta - the shower now works because the landlord brought in an electrician who flipped one tiny little switch inside a complex fuse-board. The bliss of the water was only modified by the very small area allotted for the shower….  It would be better if the whole thing was a wetroom, but this is a block designed by builders, full of irritating and quite unnecessary snags - the loo paper holders set so far back you have to do yoga to get a bit of bogroll, the opening of a window making it impossible to walk past a bed, not enough electric sockets - or, rather, setting them in unreachable places, etc etc etc.

On the other hand, the parquet floor is fantastically shiny, and the doors, though not very wide, are made of the most beautifully figured hardwood.

I had an email today from America suggesting I might be interested in a domain name which is about to come back onto the market - foodie.com    Indeed I would but I think there will be a bidding war and I will not go for it.  My own monicker is ffoodie.info or something like that - can't remember.

The point is that here, everyone fully understands the opportunity offered by food… it is respected, cherished, uplifted, celebrated, displayed, discussed, talked about. It is not a matter of money or class or education. Everyone takes part in the process.  The Spanish are living in a Golden Age of food and wine, and they know it.  How miserable and scruffy and industrialised our food experiences are by comparison in Britain, for the most part.  Fewer and fewer people cook, or know how to cook. New homes are sold with barely functioning kitchens. Masses of people get their culinary kicks from watching Bake-off, and that's it.  Children don't know where their food comes from, don't recognise (will not even try) most of the vegetables available to them. They are stuffed with rubbish, on the speedway to an early ugly death.  Oh woe!

It is not only the food I love about Galicia and Spain (as you know, it is also the architecture, the landscape, the history, the friendly people, the archaeology…..)… but my god the food is amazing.

Tonight we will go back to Pontedeume to Miguel's new bar/cafeteria/restaurant called La Bodeguita, 19 Avenida de Coruna, and eat a small salady supper and then listen to the guys singing and playing…. The concert starts at 10pm. These are the magicians who serenaded me last year on my birthday, on the other side of the river, one misty soft evening, almost exactly a year ago.      

Tomorrow evening, Lucie and our friend Dave Snelling are coming out to stay with us. I am looking forward to showing them the sights…..

Piqued

Our friend John Finnis texted to say they had 34 degrees at our destination, but Santander was barely 20, and the skies were low and grey. We slipped away to the west into the glories of the north coast of Spain - those fabulous rolling wooded hills and then the spectacular Picos - mountains so spiky and dramatic as to be almost unbelievable. But the clouds and mist hid almost everything.  I notice how the human eye is drawn to the peaks and slopes, but the camera - with its convivial lens arrangement - looks for panoramic views and squashes and flattens everything in sight. I wonder if humans are wired to take note of heights as part of our evolutionary equipment.

We had several challenges ahead of us but nothing spoiled our pleasure in pushing through on the almost empty roads and soaking up the atmosphere.  We stopped for coffee at Ribadesella - one of many charming and historic natural harbours on this Biscay coast. Its neat houses and quays disguise the fact that immediately behind the wooded headland which backs and hugs the curving waterfront, there are some truly spectacular cliffs best appreciated from an aircraft. This is the area known as the Jurassic coast, with scary model dinosaurs gracing the roundabouts as endorsement.   We had a coffee (wifi!), bought some beach sandals and contemplated lunch - but we were too early. We found that one of the local cave systems has fantastic ancient cave-paintings - horses, and female genitalia.  Not enough time to explore, but we will come back.

We pressed on - to LLatres, or Latres, depending on which map you look at. This is another lovely harbour-town and port and we edged cautiously down the steep and narrow lane to the fishing quay to find the last possible parking space, and a place on a café terrace for lunch. I found myself trajecting photographs of each stage of the meal to my pals and the rest of the world on Facebook. Crazy. It was pretty marvellous - for twelve euros we had three courses of local fresh food, with a choice of 4 dishes per course, and including bread, wine, water, and coffee.  Such a comparison with that wretched Sussex pub offering one course for £10.95 or something, and that all too clearly from an industrial supplier.

Now our troubles started, though we had 'known' about it beforehand. Our map is an insufficient scale - not enough detail - and also about 5 years old. Our satnav is about 30 months out of date. So our route-finding ability was limited… and in the year since we were last here, whole stretches of motorway have been opened. Yes, folks, all your preciousssss European money has been spent improving the road access to Galicia.  Why can't the UK govt get Europe to pay for HS2?  The land is  utterly mountainous - traditional roads had to go where they could, rather than directly to the chosen destination. The new roads with modern engineering can cut through previously inaccessible places. Hence we had quite a few lost turnings, as we tried to make sense of conflicting information from maps, satnav, signs and gut feeling.

I wouldn't want to use too many superlatives to describe the look of the world up here, but it really is just plain gorgeous, still relatively undeveloped and domestic, with little farms (and delightful black-faced golden cattle with big horns), woods and forests all actively managed, tranches of impressive industrial development with coal-mines and fishing development plants, buzzards flying overhead (or was that an eagle?), and increasingly Galician place-names with lots of 'x's to lure us on.

Where they have cut through the mountains, the rocks are revealed in layer after layer of brilliant colour and conformation, ranging from orangey sandstones to steely-looking limestones and shales, like rainbows.  The motorways bash through the mountains' higher flanks in a series of tunnels, some only a few yards long but all requiring you to put your headlights on, according to the road signs. Then the road soars out over deep steep valleys, carried across on breathtakingly high viaducts or bridges. These have signs to announce how long they are but not how tall which is a shame because one or two of them are shudderingly far above the ravines beneath. It's a fantastic feat of engineering. The Ancient Romans would be proud to see how their ideas have been developed.

We swept down into Cabanos, then over the ancient bridge to Pontedeume, and met up with John and Hilary, whose satnav actually recognised the address of our apartment which ours did not. They kindly led us the 15 miles or so to Mino, which our satnav refused to recognise - though, to be fair, there are several places called Mino around here.  We met up with Emilio the landlord who was very small but absolutely bursting with pride showing us all the features of the place - assuring us that everything worked including the hot water. It's modern, smallish, but well equipped and sparklingly clean. The views are entirely urban and confined. The beach is about 5 minutes away, but 

sunbathing won't be exactly simple for our daughter when she arrives on Saturday.   We talked to the bored girl in the local tourist office and collected some info.  We did a small shopping in a tiny little grocers shop.  We settled in, and had a very small supper - then set off again to Pontedeume to meet up with John who is celebrating his retirement. Unknowingly we drove right past the restaurant he and his Galician friends were in - it has just been opened by his friend Miguel who looks like Acker Bilk.  Someone came down to show us the way - we had another tiny supper while everyone - about ten in all - had a tapas banquet…. We are beginning to recognise the food and the people too.  We found that Abelado is friends with the chief ranger at the Fraga d'Eume (a protected local landscape found here and only otherwise in Killarney). This will please our friend Snelling who is travelling out with our daughter on Saturday - he is a keen ornithologist and we are hoping to connect them.

We got hopelessly lost for about an hour trying to get back to the flat - no satnav, no map, no road-signs - aaagh!  It was the railway line which did it, we were on the wrong side.  Back at the apartment, hot and sticky from the long and rich day, we found there was in fact no hot water and no means of finding out why  - no switch, no control panel, no timer….  So ended our day of arrival. We have the Pontedeume fiesta to look forward to… starting on Sunday. And we have to find the cash to pay Emilio for our rent, because the IBAN has not worked as expected.

All this is too detailed.  More of a record for me than anything else. Sorry.

Knobbly knees

When we wandered out of the hotel to find supper, we passed a row of older local people sitting companionably on a bench. If I had had the nerve, I would have photographed them. And asked how old they were. Impossible to say.
They were all about 70 or 80, thereabouts. Men and women. Seven of them.
They sat in various comfortable poses, legs akimbo, leaning backwards slightly, or forward, or onto a stick which helped to balance even while sitting down.
They wore Spanish old people's stuff, which is old-fashioned but instantly recognisable.
They looked like a fantastic statue or artwork.  They were still, or peaceful, rather than animated, so their quality as an installation was more to the fore. 
Their knees were very lovely.
They had lived through a lot - and they watched us wandering up to them with steely eyes - not hostile but seeing us as different, foreign.
I wish, I wish I had photographed them, but it was out of the question, objectifying them.
The Santander Seven.

Edgy

The ferry from Portsmouth to Santander is a marvel - the Pont Aven - a beautiful modern vessel, beautifully run. It's stylish, sparkling, with excellent restaurants and bars, a pool, spa, shops, thousands of tiny but well-designed cabins and an ageing but cool clientele.  The lifts are very swish.  It helps having sunny calm weather (unlike our infamous cruise on the Balmoral a few years ago in the same waters). But we met nice folk, sat about, I had a massage (swoon), we ate and drank nice things and arrived on time despite leaving late.  Our first acquaintances were the mysterious Irish couple, then we met an aeronautical engineer and his wife from the Hamble, then an electrical engineer and his wife from Birmingham.  Very good chat all round.

No-one really much under 40 apart from a few families. Those with dawgs had their pets in a special kennel suite, with dog-walking space right up away from anyone else. Loads of motor-bikers. Some cyclists. A discerning bunch on the whole. The cabins are minute but very adequate and we slept ok apart from the juddering of the whole thing due to the engines. 

The food was exemplary - delicious, classy and cheap. Puts that Thatch place to shame. We gave the restaurant a miss, and loved everything about the cafeteria.  I totes forgot to mention my purchases in the shop - some spidery-looking things called Beffra - which you can use to put your satnav or phone up onto the dashboard of your car, or make into legs for the gadgets...made of sturdy pipe-cleaner sort of rubberised wire. Genius.

We saw hardly anything on the trip across the bay.  Arriving at Santander was intensely romantic, with distant mountains shimmering into view, clouds piled up over the land, and eventually rocks, islands, headlands, the police and the pilot out to help us come in. Weirdly, although the port is on the north coast of Spain the city actually faces south, as it's on a sweeping headland (complete with palace and parks) which swerves towards the east, creating a huge sunny natural harbour away from the open sea, with beaches and villages and attractive developments all around.

The Pont-Aven edges in sideways. We clear our cabin, get to the car, say goodbye to the Dublin couple, and eventually get away.  Andrew has booked us into a place which is a training hotel on the hill overlooking the city. We drive round in circles for a bit as the satnav is out of date, my phone-map can't get a signal, and the printed map we brought with us is a bit lacking in detail. But - glory be! We find it Las Carolinas! Super private house from the 1920s, pretty garden of trees and lawn. The front is entirely done out in white marble mosaics. A friendly man (tutor?) explains how it all works. Our room is large, blood-red, with full bathroom, twin beds, lots of class. The floors - like the stairs - are all made of beautiful old wood, and highly polished.   Our friendly concierge directs us to a local restaurant for supper….    We call into a bar along the way and take in the scenery.  The district is rather like Swiss Cottage - some traffic flowing through, lots of shops and bars.  Old people, young people. A meteorological building. Views between apartment blocks. 

The restaurant - la Radio - is BANGING.  Bar, tapas, quick meals or smart restaurantat the front. The waiter speaks no English but helps us to choose two tuna dishes - one a carpaccio, the other a tartar… These are divine.  We eat, slowly, watch the waiter serve some other diners a whole huge turbot using only two spoons to divide it. A family on the next table has three little children - all happy to be up and eating at 9pm.   We walk back to the room, marveling at how civilized it is.  Tomorrow we head west to Galicia.  I am looking forward to seeing those Picos mountains.   It is worth noting, we are in Cantabria - I am sure this is the same word as our home country - Kent. It means, the edge. 

Bloody awful value for money - English pub food

We have been hydraulic engineers in preparation for this trip, installing a couple of automatic plant-watering systems in the garden, so as to lighten the diligence load on our neighbour Margaret who for many years has valiantly been in to tend my green babies on all our previous trips. We weren't as efficient as we could have been in setting it all up, but you learn with practice, and got most of the precious pots linked up and then tested for timing and quantities. It seems 5 minutes of trickle, twice a day is more than enough - but she has agreed to come and check for wilted or droughted plants every other day or so.  We spent more time getting the garden sorted than packing up for the holiday.  I am not ashamed of this somewhat obsessional performance, because the garden has been our great creative project this year and has aroused widespread admiration: young people say they'd like to get married there, and older people have asked to come and sit in it for other rather spiritual reasons. I have even been doing a little blog about it (MyTinyGardenBlog).

We set off not long after 9.30 - all was well. I am - these days - juggling with the satnav and comparing its instructions with a different instructor on my phone, waiting for 'a signal' for both devices, staring at these mad screens and trying to find somewhere to put them (rather than balancing them on my lap), and missing the rapturous countryside as a consequence. Bah!  The phone-route-planner is called Waze and is rather good, being interactive and able to warn of impending traffic jams. I think I really prefer road maps.

We think about coffee. Andrew employs his usual search method which involves gradually thinking about how he needs a pee, gradually thinking this moment could be combined with having a coffee, and gradually looking for somewhere suitable. They are not all that common in the backwoods of Kent, to be honest. The first few obviously won't do. So he drives past. We drive past several, then right through Burwash which we had chosen ahead (from the map).  Nothing there, and we sail past the entrance to Kipling's house, Batemans. (National Trust. Open. With a restaurant, also open). I get stroppy. "Turn round, go back."  He does. Down the lane to this idyllic English estate - we park under trees. The loo is beside the carpark. The café is inside the gates…. We cannot go in without a ticket. Membership is like hundreds  of pounds, no, not that much but a lot and ours has lapsed this year. We have been members of course, but have become bored with the way the Trust do things.  The pretty ladies on the gate won't let us through… but I persuade them all we want is a coffee and I promise not to look at the house. They let us through, and we saunter inside, watch the gardeners working on hands and knees, sit on the terrace on treacherous mesh-seated chairs which hold a secret supply of rainwater to make your bum wet, enjoy a coffee and a pastry each, and then dart back to the entry. The ladies in the wooden kiosk say 'We don't know how you did that. We NEVER let anyone in. How are you so persuasive?'…..

On we go, and I have the bright idea of finding (if possible) a replacement power lead for my laptop as the original has wrinkled its way into worrying non-function. I need to find one while we're in England, so the mobile phone is diverted away from satnav duties and we start to make phonecalls. Yes! There is one, at Hassocks. Somehow we lose our way, divert to Frant (how?) but eventually find a pleasant IT man in his house, who sells me his own spare cable for £15 and recommends the local place The Thatch for lunch. 'It has a thatched roof', he says.  It does.  It's a 30s roadhouse in the process of being re-thatched, with extravagant quantities of reed being bundled up to the hat end.  Inside, quite a lot of older people are settled in and we join them, perusing the wildly extensive menu for something not-too-extravagant. All mains are £10 or more, and it claims to be home-cooked, but who knows?  When it comes along, it turns out to be the kind of meal which makes you both cheerful (clean, hot, something to be grateful for), and at the same time utterly depressed. Its components are all dull. The tastes and textures are dull. The burger bun is the cheapest kind of pap. The salad has no dressing. The cheese in the filo pastry tart is completely anonymous. The vegetables have come from a microwave and have no adornment - three kinds all rammed into an oval dish, plain and over hot.      It's café food at restaurant prices. I fantasise about opening a tapas bar along the road, in competition. In truth, the view of the downs through the archly faux-Tudor windows is the best thing about the meal.

We walk up to the local windmill in the hot sunshine, Andrew trying to rescue a moth from a cobweb, and greeting a cheery party of walkers when we get to the top of the hill. It's charmingly named Oldland Mill, founded in 1703, and snuggled in between some ravishingly beautiful houses and cottages. Two men are painting the mill, using a cherry-picker to get round. Its pretty cladding is gleaming brilliant white in the sun. Dr Dulux doing his thing on an ancient structure. 

On we go, and chase round Southsea and Portsmouth to find a NatWest bank for Andrew who needs to cancel a lost bank-card. The satnavs argue with each other and with the road signs. We sort that out and drift into the dock. Panic!!!! Where are the passports? Not in the folder!  Ah, there they are, under the seat.  We wait.  It seems because the boat was totally full coming in and will be totally full going back to Santander, the turnaround time is longer than usual. We sit and wait in the milky hot sunshine. Our queue neighbour in his Jaguar has a thrilling old-world Etonian accent, and Dublin number plates - I say that is where our son lives. He says 'Whereabouts?' and when I say Blackrock (which usually does the business), he trumps it with 'Howth, round the bay'. Aristo beats middle class.   He kindly shows me on our roadmap the general whereabouts of a delightful palace he and his wife stayed in, in the Picos.  She meanwhile is telling Andrew years ago they'd been to Santiago because he being Catholic wanted to go to mass there, but the famous swinging censer was being mended or something so it didn't happen.  Quite a couple.

We get on board, our cabins are still being cleaned, so we go on deck with our little bit of luggage and sit in the sun. The British navy is on show, with a three-master (HMS Victory?) in the distance. With a sparkling water and a sangria we sit and unwind.  The cabin is delightfully small (no windows). We take a stroll round the decks, head for the café. We join another couple for supper - make friends, talk about caravans and aeroplanes and social injustice.  We're in bed by 10 or so, and find we may as well have been sleeping with a horse - the shuddering of the boat is like a great animal flicking its withers.  Sleep is fitful, but we chug along out towards the ocean. Beneath us, there are octopus and dolphins, if they are not driven frantic by the rumble of the engines.

People

It's really noticeable how much more friendly and open people are here... children, old ladies, shop-keepers, mums, everyone... all happy to chat, explain, talk. Settle is a great base to explore from. Yesterday we went out to 'do' the Settle-Carlisle railway, bought our tickets, crossed the splendid iron bridge onto the right platform (which was thronged, btw, with happy tourists like us, vindicating all those who worked so hard to maintain this amazing stretch of railway line). The train was on time, there was a rush for seats. We trundled along through the astonishing countryside. I managed to make one little watercolour - a bit drear as there was no sun, but I found the swooping curves and the rich palette of colours mesmerising.
The town of Appleby is ancient and historic of course, saved and glorified by that heroine of the 16th and 17th Cs, Lady Anne Clifford. She was 15 when her father died, when King James I was on the throne, and she was nearly disinherited of her estates by her uncle. But she married, and waited, and learned, and in her 50s (after the Civil War) wrangled her lands back. Her daughters were all married by then, so she came north from courtier-land and established herself in Appleby and revived after all of Cromwell's depradations. The main street leads up from the river and the church to the gates of her castle at the top of the hill. On either side are houses of great antiquity, some empty now (it must be said) and some beautifully kept. Her almshouses - 13 now, and double-storied - cluster round a charming little flowery courtyard, with a small field at the back (maybe once they grew their beans there), and there is a perfectly gorgeous little chapel off one corner. Communion is held once a week on Tuesdays, and the plate is kept in a stout nailed and adorned chest by the door. The seats are choir-style, face-to-face across the room, which has painted panels urging people to take care of widows, and the Creed and the Lords' Prayer.
We had a delicious fishy lunch in the Tufton Arms Hotel.  The hotel, by the way, has had a design make-over on the ground floor, very arty and stylish. But the carpet leading up the stairs (though of excellent quality and condition) reveals an earlier sense of propriety, with a mass of swirling colours. The ladies' loo on the first floor is (hoorah!) capacious and well-appointed. The tiny window over the loo has its own purpose-made pelmet-with-curtains, all in one, though no-body could possibly see into it from outside. But it's a nice, classy touch.
Appleby is not that far from Settle but it looks utterly different. Sandstone, and red too, instead of limestone. I mentioned this difference in appearance to the nice lady in the tourist office and she said 'Oh of course. That's limestone there'.  Explains everything.
Then we had time to kill, to wait for the train back. We saw round the church... earlier it had been closed to visitors because of a funeral.  The sense of sadness still hung in the air.  They say it has the oldest working organ in the country. They also have plans for an extension to the north of the church, for a meeting room. It looks very well thought-out, if they can avoid floods from the river - which borders the churchyard. 
At the river, we watched a happy gun-dog chasing ducks over and over again in the shallows. His owner tried in vain, over and over again, to call him back, but the joyous dog was having none of it.  In the end, the man had to put boots on and get into the river himself to drag the dog out. That was ok til he let go of the dog's collar... Guess what? The dog sprang back into the water.   Eventually, Fido was made to see that it was time to go home. The ducks regained their gravelly playground.  Andrew bought an ice-cream and we poddled back up the hill to the station... a lady gardener explained that the sun never reached her front garden, and bedding plants always get leggy, but the Pieris do ok.
It is hard to see the famous Ribblehead Viaduct when you are actually on the train, but you get a good feel for how remote it all is, how the navvies must have laboured, and what an astonishing piece of construction it is. No wonder people come from so far to see it. The railway line itself must contribute hugely to the whole regional economy. Would that we had more such lines in use.
We came back to Settle, shopped in the very up-market Booth's supermarket, and then cooked our brill for supper. Slept like lords.
Today we went to see the Ribblehead from the ground.... it's been a misty, moisty day, but worth the slinky drive out to the moor there. A lady approached with two black dogs. One snarled at me, bared his teeth, kept his distance but was very cross with me.  The lady said, this dog was a rescue dog. He had originally been reared up as a gun-dog and had been 'trained' by the use of electric shocks and beatings... He hated wide-brimmed hats (my waxed rain-protector), and camouflage jackets (my Sainsbury grey and pink floral kagoul), and to him, she said, cameras look like the butt-end of guns..... so I was his baddy.  I took off my hat and the dog was instantly transformed into a charming, friendly fellow.  She has an autistic daughter, she said, who found Canterbury to be a very calm place. She had visited because her brother lives at Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey.  We said, surely Canterbury was not as calm as this remote moorland... nothing in sight except the famous viaduct.  She agreed, and said that calmness is the most important thing.
Later we arrived at Ingleton - a higgledy-piggledy Anglo-Saxon village of charm, bridges, courtyards, trees, cafes, tourist shops, etc. We bought hand-made soap, a pair of bamboo socks and some black pudding.  Our coffee was made by a lady who said she'd always been in the pub trade, then worked as a cook in the Ingleton Nursing Home. But when her husband died 4 years ago, she couldn't face the Nursing Home any more, and eventually, this January, opened her own cafe. She let us use the loo ('You see, I'm not insured, so you must not slip over').  She has two sons, both in catering, and a nephew who's a chef, who works for racing drivers. Whenever he comes back to England she pounces - 'How should I do this? How would you arrange that?'     She makes up plated meals for two old ladies, as she thought that one pie a day was not a balanced meal for them; one of these she delivers herself by hand.  The cafe is allowed 8 seats inside and 8 on the pavement, as it is classed as a carry-out. Although it was her new business, it looked 50 years old.
We tootled back to Settle, met up over lunch with an old friend who'd driven over from Lancaster. Loud laughs. She and I sauntered round the town, and we called into the local professional-amateur history society - a charming little cottage stuffed with books and computers and manned by a sort of hobbit (Mr Hudson) who said the boss (Mrs Hudson) was away, but that this historical society is full of many retired professors who continue to do their research in his front room. In any case, he explained that the people now running The Folly which we enjoyed visiting on Tuesday have nothing to do with them.... sad, as his gang had done the surveys and have written an interesting book on the history of the building.  I am all too familiar with how small communities can have these deep rifts running through them.  Geological, like the limestone/sandstone extremes, or that ancient/modern tectonic rift which happens to lie right under North Craven....
So, we brought Mary back here for tea and cakes, and reminiscence, and she said how difficult and necessary it was for her to have resigned as head of a primary school in Lancaster...she just couldn't face another summer term.  'Why', she said, 'do teachers put up with all this OFSTED?'  But later, she admitted, that (having come from London where we first met her) the standards in Lancashire were pretty dire and the national curriculum had been the best thing to happen to schools around there....  It seemed to us she has done the right thing in giving up her profession.  She will continue to teach special needs children, but with any luck will get more time off and time to travel too, and play music.
Now it's our last night. We're having that black-pudding in a salad, with duck-eggs and tiny tomatoes. Tomorrow we pack up, and head home. We've only been here 4 days and it feels like home. Settle is really lovely. And so is North Craven.