across the North Yorkshire Moors with two friends looking for somewhere to have lunch. Beautiful countryside but no sense of how to feed hungry travellers. In Manchester pubs that serve food, SERVE FOOD! Not on the North Yorkshire Moors though. We visited a number of pubs that advertised food but did not serve it. Pubs in North Yorkshire only serve food between 12 noon and 2pm, not a moment before, nor a moment after. In our first pub The Cracked Mind, the waitress who took our order became distracted by a spider and never spoke to us again. We were shown the door by a cackling old crone with a single tooth who whistled about it being 31 years since she had last seen a dentist. Opposite lay The Dripping Innard which looked promising but for a scarred crone who wouldn't let us in. In the nearby hamlet of Much Weeing we found a hostelry called 'A Rotted Stump' apparently owned by MacDonalds so we gave it a miss. Some miles on we reached the ancient settlement of Jutting Mandible wherein was situated, 'The Slaughtered Lamb'. A place eerily familiar, more so when everyone stopped talking as we entered. Being only midday the locals soon ignored us and returned to their business. I remember the landlord as a strikingly hirsute man who responded to our order with growls and that pained look one gets when troubled with excess acid. Shaking his head and grasping in his paw a lump of chalk he scrawled across the bar, 'It's gone two'. Disappointed we drove away just as a mist rolled over the village until it seemed as if nothing had ever existed in that blasted place. Our Ordinance Survey parchment indicated a crossroads four miles further and we set off just as it began to rain. The high moorland was suddenly cut with jagged shadows as lightning flashed and thunder boomed. We drove on, following that crooked track past terrified faces of sheep that loomed then were gone, their fearful eyes bulging with every roar of the storm. We saw many stoats and some criminal sheep who were laughing just because they could. A group of razor lambs kicked down a section of dry stone wall for pleasure. Suddenly the narrow path gave way to a flat open area where centuries earlier a tavern and assorted buildings were built to serve what back then must have been an important junction. The road was very slippy but the pub cat provided extra traction when it became stuck under the front wheels, indeed were it not for that cat's sacrifice we might have carried right on through.
More of this in the next post.
9 comments:
No photos of the hirsute or the crones?
Not even the 'it's gone two' on the board?
Come now. Break out that camera.
for me the words are enough. I am transported to the shadowed underside of England, a place I feel I've glimpsed in many countries, in rural moments.
Dan, you should do a collection - something along the line of "The Paranoid Traveler"
Buffy,
I did take photos but spookily once we had driven off the moor the camera's memory card was BLANK!
What do you make of that?
Hayden,
What you read there was the God's honest truth. People know Dartmoor is strange from Sherlock Holmes but so are the Yorkshire Moors believe me.
Ahhh, ye olde moors. I always wondered what they looked like. I read about them in The Secret Garden.
Laughing sheep and all, that's good, but where are the contented cows, Dan, where are the contented cows?
Dan, there's a place in Jamaica, in the parish of St. Mary, that looks like the moors of England.
gg, go to scotland for the contented cows.... eilan' coos.... (highland cows) prettiest, silliest, gentlest looking cows ever.
G,
Afraid there's nothing contented on the North York Moors. It's a weird place that time forgot, or perhaps time has been exluded from. There's too many unexplained fogs, and roads that return you to your starting point, and villages that are not always where they're supposed to be, cows don't like it on't moors. Only sheep survive, strange sheep that are furtive and can pick pockets, and the laughter, the terrible terrible laughter, that's all around, in nooks, under crannies, just out of sight, just out of mind...
Oops, sorry was carried away there for a moment. But hey, that's t'moors for you. And Hayden's right, friendliest cows in the UK are to be found in Scotland, but that's only because they all drink whisky. In fact the famous Scottish dance, The Highland Fling is really a warning of the consequences of drinking too much alcohol.
Thanks for visiting my photo site. I think you quite the eye as well. Maybe it's the digital influence, but I believe our eyes to be very similiar (light and shadow, architecture, and similiar angles). I love your work. You are equally gifted with words.
I once spent 2 weeks traveling the rural roads of Ireland. I could never find a place that would serve food. I was starving and living off toasteds (or toasties... I still don't know how they pronounced it).. what turned out to be the equivalent of a grilled cheese sandwich.
I'll most likely visit you again. Fantastic blog
Shandi,
As ever your kind words are much appreciated, especially so as they're from someone whose photography I admire.
Re the toaties thing, they are still popular in the UK, can't speak for Ireland, however they've long passed their peak of popularity precisely because they're so boring as a food. Sorry to hear you suffered for so long however, what about Ireland? Stunning or what!
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