August's Mid-Month Musings: A change is as good as a rest...

Last month, I said I would let you know how the revamped garden is getting on. However, we've done nothing to it since then, so I'll save that for next month. Instead, here is a piece about what we've been doing this summer, with a few activities for you to do...

Wish you were here...

The picture above is of myself and my husband, P, at Helmsley Walled Garden. This is the best photograph we have of ourselves since our wedding in 2021. Yes, the sides of both our heads are cut off. Yes, my shoulder looks unnaturally high up as I had rested my arm on the back of a high-backed bench in order to 'interfere' while P took the selfie - ie, to straighten the camera and attempt to take the picture in the split second when we were actually smiling. Yes, P's hair needs cutting and mine looks lank and greasy despite having been washed, blow-dried and tonged only three hours before the picture was taken. Nevertheless, this - for us - counts as a successful shot.

        We are both photo-phobic - not intolerant of light but scared of having our photographs taken. We both find it embarrassing and smiling makes us feel self-conscious - neither of us has particularly straight teeth. It is also irritating that all grey-haired, middle-aged-to-elderly men with beards end up resembling Harold Shipman or Rolf Harris.

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P is unused to taking selfies so he doesn't know the tricks, like looking up at the camera to hide your double chin and stretch out your wrinkles. But he has longer arms than me, so it's easier for him to take selfies of us both. Here are two of our bad holiday selfies to give you a laugh - they also give you a false idea of the weather conditions, as it was actually very sunny for most of our visit to Helmsley:

Me, looking like someone is blowing a hairdryer

in my face and I', trying to put on a brave face -

P looking simple-minded

Both of us looking like we're trying to show that we're having fun

                     

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We haven't had a holiday of more than three nights in years, mostly because of P's mum, who lives alone and is in her 90s. P organises carers to go in to check on her, each day we're away, but she won't actually let them do anything for her, despite her constant complaints about being tired. She just makes them a cuppa and tries to do small-talk until they leave, then accuses them of stealing her letters.

        Our first trip away this year was back in early June when we went to London for our friend, D's, 60th birthday party. I told you about this in a previous post.  I booked two nights in the Novotel in Greenwich, but stupidly booked the wrong two nights. We couldn't get down there on the first night I'd booked, so we had to forfeit the cost of the room for that evening. We enjoyed the party and spending a few hours in Greenwich Park on Sunday morning, but the Novotel must have sprayed air freshener around - or maybe it was some sort of cleaning fluid - but it caused me to have what I will refer to as 'hay fever', though it obviously wasn't caused by pollen as it improved outside. So our first mini-break in 2025 was not a complete success.

        Keen to have a proper break, we decided to book three nights at The Plough in Congleton, Cheshire [highly recommended], where we stayed last year. It wasn't too far away so we could get home easily if necessary. What could go wrong?

      

Little Moreton Hall

We told P's mum that we would be away for three nights, but this didn't stop her from asking us every day, on the phone - including the evening we arrived - whether we'd got home yet...

        The break was a tad spoiled by my having severe diarrhoea during our first night there and spending the first full day in bed unable to eat and rushing to the bathroom every few minutes. 

            Finally, I started feeling better and decided to take a bath, but the bath was very high, very deep, with no hand rails. The bottom was concave rather than flat, and after I had bathed myself and washed my hair, I found that I was stuck. Every time I tried to get out, I found myself slipping and panicking. The side closest to the wall had a very narrow lip so it was virtually impossible to get a secure grip. I was feeling light-headed too, which didn't help. There was a long moment when I genuinely believed I was stuck there for good, or that we'd have to get the hotel staff or the fire brigade to rescue me!

        There are few things in life as humiliating as being stuck in a bath in a hotel.

        Finally, P saved the day by hoisting me out. I was scared that he would hurt his back, as I am not skinny, but he turned out to be less feeble than he looks. He didn't even laugh at my predicament, or lose his temper - and I have friends and relatives who certainly would have [you know who you are]. He was just kind and sympathetic, which is why I married him.

        

An outside view of Litle Moreton Hall, taken from the courtyard,.

We did manage one outing during our stay - to Little Moreton Hall, near Congleton. This is a 14th Century half-timbered mansion house with an impressive great hall where the Tudors held candle-lit balls so they could be seen for miles around. I wondered how the women ever got up the narrow spiral staircases in their huge dresses, and how they avoided setting fire to themselves and the house. With my clumsiness, I'd have gone up in flames within minutes of arriving. The house is now run by the National Trust and is well worth a visit if you're in the area. 

        The entire house is fascinating, but the great hall attracted my attention most. For one thing, it was apparently more or less plonked down on one wing of the house with little if any thought for whether the building below could hold it up. It is astonishing to me that it still exists. The whole house has become charmingly uneven, with wonky floors and no-longer-completely-vertical walls, but the great hall feels particularly rickety, though it is a beautiful room. Apparently, the children of the house would play tennis in there. Standing in the hall, you can easily imagine them running around, or beautifully-dressed ladies taking a stroll round the room during the evening get-togethers.

 

Large window at one end of great hall.

Gorgeously ornate ceiling beams.

While there, I kept craving Diet Coke so I had some in the nice little cafe there, and found it did seem to settle my digestive issues. I have craved Diet Coke on the rare occasions when I've been travel sick over the years and have generally found it to be effective in such circumstances, but I have always assumed my recovery following a drink of Diet Coke to be simply my imagination, or at best a placebo effect. However, my friend B told me recently that Diet Coke contains ingredients that do have a tummy-settling effect. It is the Imodium of the fizzy pop world, apparently. I have done some online 'research' since, but found little other than anecdotal evidence of Coke of any kind helping with digestive issues, however. But it seems to help me, at any rate. Have any of you found it helpful in periods of digestive distress?

         While I'm waffling and going off at a tangent, let me also comment on sandwiches. I might have mentioned before that cheese and tomato sandwiches appear to have dropped off the menus in cafes and tea-rooms, in recent years. P and I noticed this last year and, once we noticed, everywhere we went for lunch seemed to confirm our theory. It isn't that I am especially fond of cheese and tomato sandwiches, though I do like them, and nor are we ancient fuddy-duddies who only like plain, old-fashioned fillings in our sandwiches - but, every so often, you just get sick of hummus, roasted red pepper and spicy roast cauliflower flatbreads,  pastrami, caper and smashed avocado wraps, sweet potato falafal foccaccia, and leek and emmenthal toasties, don't you? I mean, sometimes you just want a simple, non-fussy sandwich.

        You can still get cheese and pickle, or cheese and ham, or even cheese and onion sometimes, but very few places seem to sell cheese and tomato sandwiches these days. However, the cafe at Little Moreton Hall does!  Admittedly, the tomatoes were those semi-dried ones, but the staff were happy to replace them with fresh tomatoes. They probably set my colon off churning a little, but I enjoyed them nevertheless, and it was nice to know that it is still possible to buy a simple cheese and tomato sandwich in these hurly-0burly days...

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Below are my six favourite sandwiches, in no particular order: 

1. Salt beef, mustard, gherkins, salad - basically the famous NY 'reuben'

2. Thin-slices of rare beef with rocket and horse-radish sauce on white onion bread [a speciality of Waitrose cafe]

3. Cheese and onion crisps on soft white bread - a fond childhood memory

4. Chicken salad with grain mustard mayo on seeded bread

5. Tuna melt - tuna mayo [sometimes with sweet chilli sauce instead of mayo] topped with melted cheddar on toasted panini

6. P's bacon, brie and cranberry baguette

What are your favourites [and your least favourites]? Leave a comment on the blog.

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Helmsley

A few weeks later, we tried to have another three-day break, this time in the beautiful little town of Helmsley, in North Yorkshire.

        We stayed in a pleasant guesthouse with a slightly eccentric landlady. She had a marked West Yorkshire accent despite having been born and bred in North Yorkshire, and she put this down to living with her husband who was from the West Riding. Her husband seemed to be unenthusiastic about her running their home as a guesthouse, though I'm sure it brought in the money that allowed them to live in the large property in a highly sought-after location. The individual 'rooms' were actually a terrace of three outbuildings in the large, well-kept garden, but guests had to go inside the house for breakfast. The breakfast room was separated from the kitchen by a conservatory which had a settee and a TV - guests entered the dining room via this conservatory and the husband seemed to be lounging on the settee watching TV, with their elderly half-blind little dog on his knee, each time we went in for breakfast. We would say good morning and give him a smile, but his usual response was a grunt and maybe a nod after he'd got to know us. The dog just ignored us.

        The rooms were very small - they had double beds and a built-in wardrobe, with tiny en-suite bathrooms, a mini-fridge with fresh milk and cool tapwater, a TV on the wall [though you couldn't get many channels - I am so sick of having to watch re-runs of Family Guy in guesthouses], wifi, tea/coffee facilities with biscuits. There seemed little point in the large chest of drawers which just took up space unnecessarily. The rooms were cool at night, which I like, and the bed was sufficiently comfy but not the most comfortable one I've ever slept in. It was spotlessly clean, however - cleaned every day with fresh chocs on the pillow and fresh milk in the fridge. 

        When we arrived, the landlady was looking after her daughters' three Llaso Apsos, along with her own dog, and she thrust one of the dogs into my arms without waiting to hear whether I wanted to cuddle a dog I didn't know at that particular moment. I love dogs, but I am quite allergic to them and I didn't want my clothes covering in hair and dander, not to mention tiny muddy paw prints. I rapidly began enjoying the impromptu cuddle with this tiny, very affectionate, dog - but nevertheless I advise any landladies reading this to make sure guests truly want to cuddle a dog before you make it a fait accompli.

        The guesthouse was nice, and in a perfect location, very close to the castle and the walled garden. There was an off-road parking space for each set of guests. the breakfasts were nice enough, the landlady was friendly. However, P was clearly allergic to something in the room - the rooms were advertised as 'pet-free' and they were very clean, there was no smell of cleaning fluid or air-freshener [unlike at the Novotel in Greenwich which set me off], the bedding was hypo-allergenic. P's sniffles were much worse in the room than they were outside, so it wasn't hay fever.

        This, and the fact that the guesthouse seemed very expensive for what it was, are the only things putting us off going there again. We have stayed at West Acres guesthouse in Alnwick many times, and that is a similar price, but the house is far superior - the rooms are spacious, comfortable and beautifully decorated, the breakfast excellent, and the hosts are extremely friendly and helpful. It might be the North Yorkshire location that makes the Helmsley guesthouse so expensive, but Alnwick is also a beautiful town with a stunning coastline only a fifteen-minute drive away.

        Anyway, we were pleased that neither of us was ill, though I was very achy. The weather was good too, despite some glowering clouds in the mornings. Helmsley itself is delightful, full of nice restaurants and cafes, and quirky shops. I'd definitely recommend it. It's only about 45-60 minutes to the magnificent north Yorkshire coast [Scarborough, Whitby, Robin Hood's Bay, Runswick Bay, Staithes, Bridlington, Filey - even Sandsend and Saltburn are within a reasonable distance], and it's set in the stunning north Yorkshire National Park, with the moors fairly close, and lots of charming villages in the area.

Helmsley Castle

A 12th century wooden structure surrounded by a double ditch rather than a moat, Helmsley Castle was first built by Walter L' Espec, around 1120. In 1186, Robert de Ros began the task of converting the wooden structure to stone. The Castle was improved and strengthened by succeeding generations of the de Ros family - Robert's eldest son William, his son Robert and his son William [they were obviously an unimaginative family when it came to names - sadly, Zakk Starburst de Ros never inherited the estate]. 

           The de Roos family [who had apparently added the extra 'o' to their name at some point] owned the castle until 1478 when it was sold to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard III [of hunchback and Leicester car park fame]. Richard never lived there as he preferred the fitted kitchen and central heating at Middleham Castle. After Richard's death at the Battle of Bosworth, the castle returned to the de Roos family. It's ownership went back and forth so often that it should have been called the Bouncy Castle.

        It was later owned by the Manners family [the first one being George, Earl of Rutland] who continued to improve it. By the time of the Civil War, it was in the hands of George Villiers. After holding out for three months against the roundheads, the castle's defenders [who were loyal to the king] were finally defeated and Parliament ordered the castle to be 'slighted', ie deliberately damaged and disfigured. The impressive tower was partially blown-up. Villiers later married the daughter of Sir Thomas Fairfax who had led the assault on the castle, and took over its ownership. I told you, Bouncy Castle.  

        The castle was sold to Charles Duncombe in 1695. His son later built Duncombe Park, another local landmark, and the castle was kept in its ruined state as a picturesque backdrop to the house. They liked having romantic ruins on their estates in those days - I suppose it's like having a dilapidated shed in your garden, but on a bigger scale. 

        Throughout the nineteenth century, the castle grounds were used by local people for events, picnics, games, etc.  In 1923, the castle passed into the hands of the Office of Works, and the clearing of debris and trees from the site began. It was even planned to use the castle's remarkable earthworks as part of an anti-tank defence during the Second World War. The castle is still owned by the Faversham family of Duncombe Park, but is now in the care of English Heritage.

The tower damaged in the Civil War

The outer keep

P leaning against a statue of a Knight Templar

We enjoyed traipsing round the castle ruins, despite the cool weather. In fact, we found the weather invigorating. It is an interesting castle and English Heritage provides an audio tour to explain things as you move round.

       

        

Rievaulx Abbey Ruins

Due to Henry VIII's pillaging of the Monasteries, the ones you visit in this country are virtually all in a state of picturesque dereliction. In fact, for years, as a child, I actually thought 'monastery' or 'abbey' meant 'a big old ruined building'. Yorkshire seems to have a plethora of abbeys, monasteries and priories - Rievaulx Abbey near Helmsley, Bolton Abbey near Skipton, Whitby Abbey on the coast, Fountains Abbey near Ripon, Kirkham Priory near Malton, Jervaulx Abbey in the Dales near Ripon, St Mary's in York, Mount Grace near Northallerton, Byland Abbey on North York moors, Kirkstall Abbey on outskirts of Leeds, Roche Abbey near Rotherham, Beauchief Abbey in Sheffield, Monk Bretton Priory in Barnsley - making you wonder whether there were any people in the small villages near which they are usually located who weren't either choir monks [the educated ones who had Holy Orders, and wrote the scrolls, slept in dormitories, prayed every few hours and lived off a bowl of pottage each day - two bowls in the summer, apparently], or lay brothers/sisters [the uneducated ones without Holy Orders, who did the hard work]. 

        I have to admit that Rievaulx Abbey, home for hundreds of years to a Cistercian order of monks, is a beautiful ruin with a distinctive atmosphere of tranquility and serenity. It might have been simply because it was a sunny afternoon, or it might have been echoes of the monks' daily routines stamped onto the environment. I am normally slightly freaked out inside religious buildings, but the abbey had the same deeply calming effect as I get when I visit Durham Cathedral.

        I would recommend Rievaulx Abbey to those of you who are members of English Heritage, and who love old buildings. There is a pleasant, modern visitor centre with a nice cafe and the usual gift shop. They have an audio tour using small digital machines on ribbons which you put round your neck - you can click them on and off as you walk round, though [unlike Helmsley Castle] the information boards didn't seem to have numbers on them so it was difficult to get the right recording at the right moment/location. 

        The other thing I would mention about English Heritage is that they are very hot on the hard sell. At both Whitby Abbey and Rievaulx, we were given a lengthy, enthusiastic spiel about the advantages of English Heritage membership. We were asked where we lived and told about local properties owned or managed by English Heritage. I was actually impressed by the staff's knowledge of these locations as they didn't seem to need to look them up. However, this hard sell really put us off. The young man at Rievaulx even persisted after I had told him very clearly that we weren't interested in joining. It is very good value, if you are someone who wants to visit a lot of places, but we're already members of the NT and RHS, and we don't generally visit properties enough to make it worthwhile. If you do visit a lot of places, then it is definitely worth it, though we often find that we visit places that don't belong to any of the organisations we are members of, so we have to pay for entry, and we tend not to visit places more than once, except for parks like Clumber.

        

Helmsley Walled Garden

This is a beautiful garden which was rescued from complete dereliction in the mid twentieth century by a local woman, and has since become a fabulous place to visit if you're into gardens. It isn't huge, but they have made the most of it. It cost around a tenner to get in, but you can visit the excellent cafe without paying an entrance fee, and members of the RHS can get in free on Wednesdays. This was my favourite place to visit in Helmsley.

 

                     Some sort of allium, I'm guessing...                  Wildflower raised beds

  

Apple tree

Distant shot of hospice tree showing statue of choral monks and close up shot of hospice tree showing coloured ribbons tied on by grieving people 

Fountain                                                                        clematis

  

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Do you know what the following plants are? I have a vague idea of some of them but I'd love to know all of them.

Number One

Number Two

Number Three

Number Four

  

Number Five

Number Six

Number Seven

I have several apps which are supposed to help you easily identify plants simply by taking a photograph of them on your phone in the app, including one from the RHS. However, when I have tried these apps out on plants whose identities I already know, they never seem to be accurate. If anyone knows of a genuinely good one, let me know.

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A TIP FOR TRAVELLERS

Our pleasure in visiting these lovely places was slightly diminished by our making an error of judgement, however - an error that was just dawning on us as we walked around Helmsley Castle. We are members of the National Trust and the RHS, but we haven't visited many NT places this year [just Little Moreton Hall and Clumber Park], and so far we haven't used our RHS cards at all since we joined. 

        We decided to drive to the coast on the first day of our holiday, but Whitby was so crowded we decided to go to the ruined abbey instead, which I thought was NT. However, it is actually English Heritage. We were told that we could join English Heritage on a special offer for around £110, but we had already visited it some years ago so decided we wouldn't bother. We just had lunch there, bought some over-priced fancy marmalade in the shop, and drove back to Helmsley. 

        However, we then discovered that Helmsley Castle was also English Heritage, as was Rievaulx Abbey, which we planned to visit in the afternoon. Rievaulx Terrace, which we have visited before, is NT, but it only opens at the weekend when we would be back home. The cost of us both going to Whitby Abbey, Helmsley Castle and Rievaulx Abbey would have been close to the cost of English Heritage membership, and we'd have had the card to use for the rest of the year. There are several English Heritage places quite close to us, so we could have easily saved money throughout the year. 

        Then, to make it even worse, we got to the Walled Garden and read a notice that said it was an RHS Partner Garden, so P went back to the car to get our RHS tickets which we'd left in our luggage in the boot. At least we'd get some used from the RHS membership, we thought excitedly. However, it turned out that you can only use the RHS card on Wednesdays at Helmsley Walled Garden, and predictably it was Friday.

        "Oh well," said P. "We can always visit Nunnington Hall, which is NT, on the way home."  

        Guess what? We didn't.

        So, a warning to all of you who spend money on such memberships: do your homework carefully before booking a holiday, to maximise your savings.

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WRITING PROMPTS

Visiting these old buildings, gardens and other tourist places is a great way to revitalise your imagination and inspire stories and poems. There is nothing quite like being physically present in a location to get your writerly instincts tingling.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Meditative Contemplation

Find yourself a quiet place to sit, somewhere among the abbey ruins. Make sure you have your notebook and a pen with you. Sit quietly and possibly shut your eyes.  Use your senses: smell, touch, hearing, sight, taste. What can you hear? If you hear birdsong, try to identify the bird, or at least describe the noise. If you smell freshly mown grass, again record it and describe it. Think about the monks going about their daily business. Imagine how it would have felt to get up in the early hours and creep down in the dark and the cold to the chapter house for morning prayers and readings from St Benedictine's doctrines. Imagine what it would be like to sleep in a dormitory with many other monks, to eat a simple meal of vegetable soup in the company of others, to never really have any privacy and to feel hungry and tired most of the time. Try to let your mind fall deeper into the lives of the monks. Every so often, jot down your impressions, phrases or images that come to you. Once you've finished, look at what you've written. It might be just a series of images or it might be lots of specific details. Later, you can use your notes to create a poem or a story. You might need to do a little research at that point, but this will hopefully feed into your imagination.

2. Constructing a story from a single character

Create a character who lives near or in an abbey or castle you have visited. Choose a time period. The person might be a wealthy landowner, the person who owns the castle or the Abbot or Abbess of the Abbey - or they might be a poor person, someone who works the land, or weaves cloth, or tends animals. Or somewhere in the middle - a lay brother at the abbey, a blacksmith, a publican, a cook, or whatever. Ask this character a series of questions about themselves and jot down their answers. Questions might include:

1. Do you enjoy your job?

2. What clothes do you wear?

3. Do you have children?

4. How old are you?

5. Did you go to school?/How were you educated?

6. What's the worst thing that happened to you?

From their answers, a story might emerge. You might do further research into such a person living at such a time, and the research might suggest a story.

3. Starting with film or TV

Watch as many films or TV series or plays set in the time period you have chosen to see how people from that era are portrayed by other writers. Do they give them modern speech? How are they dressed? What are the settings like? You could also read books set in that time period.

4. Stories based on or inspired by real events

Read up on your tourist attraction of choice. There might be specific episodes you'd like to write about. For example, the artist J.W.M.Turner painted Helmsley Castle - you could use him as your character and think about what happened to him there. The East Tower was partially destroyed during the Civil War - what would this have been like for someone under-seige inside the castle walls? The lady of the house was in charge of running the household, particularly when her husband was away - what would that have been like? Or what about Aelred, first Abbot of Rievaulx? Or Count Dracula's famous arrival in Whitby?

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Bye till next month!