Tapp's Travels

Why would anyone take a 7.6 m long caravan through the narrow lanes of rural Somerset?  Or, for that matter, the microscopically constricted roads of villages like Banwell?

Banwell’s Castle Hill above and West Street, below (As driven!).

Well, why would you?

We are heading to Danby Wiske near Northallerton.  For us that’s a two day trip.  We want to drive the second leg on a Sunday.  That’s the bit that includes the M5, M42, M1, M18, and A1M.   All “charming” roads!  So we leave home on the Saturday.  We have to pick up a carpet for our new sun canopy just south of Bristol.  Then we will overnight at Droitwich.  Good plan!  But the weekend we chose to travel happened to coincide with the last weekend before schools went back after the summer holidays!  One of the busiest days of the year on the roads!  We should have left at first light.  But we didn’t.

Leaving Torbay it was busy.  At Exeter, traffic from Cornwall joined the fray and it got busier.  By the time we got to Taunton, tourists from north Devon added to the chaos and brought the busyness factor to 100%, at which point, we came to a standstill.  Temporarily.  We gradually picked up speed as the traffic automatically thinned itself from the front of the jam.  But by Burham-on-Sea, we were at a virtual standstill again.  The sat nav was saying turn off the motorway, urgently!  So, on the spur of the moment, we dived off towards the A38.  That was, basically, the main road out of the south west 50 years ago.  In those days the M5 didn’t start until somewhere north of Gloucester!

Well, putting a three lane jam onto single lane roads with towns and roundabouts basically just gives you two blocked roads!  It transpired that there had been a nasty multi-vehicle crash on the motorway and the road was closed for three hours.  We zig-zagged cross-country for a couple of hours and arrived (via Banwell and similarly silly places to tow a caravan) ready for a stiff drink – and lunch – and a breather!

We did all that (although my stiff drink turned out to be an alcohol-free beer!).  And back on the road for the second half of the day’s journey!  That bit turned out to be busy but otherwise unremarkable!

As the first glimmering rays of the Sunday sun appeared over the horizon, we were off.  We had learnt from yesterday!  No flies on us (today)!  There were other cars about, but not many.  The biggest hazard was driving straight at the rising sun on the M42 just south of Birmingham!  We hesitated at Woodall Services and followed the signs for caravan parking.  There were just two spaces – and one of those had a car parked in it!  The lone lady driver of the Zafira had broken down the previous evening with a failed clutch.  She had been towed off the motorway and unceremoniously dumped there at 02.30 am to await onward transport – which hadn’t arrived by 09.30.  Disgraceful!  And that word equally describes our bacon and egg baps, the coffees and the almond-croissants-with-no-almond-paste-filling bought in the service station!

As there was so little traffic (probably still all stuck on the M5 in Somerset), we started counting abandoned, wrecked tyres to pass the time.  We gave up after had passed 50 in under 20 minutes.  I guess all the council workmen are working from home – or indeed, just not working.  Certainly, the roadside and central reservations need a serious clear-up of scrap rubber (not to mention abandoned drink cans!).

There is almost always more than one way to skin a cat, navigationally speaking.  Approaching Danby Wiske is no exception.  Basically, we were faced with a choice of main roads with a transit of Northallerton town centre or a more “countrified” route with a couple of narrow stretches but bypassing the metropolis of Northallerton.  We dithered and changed plans several times.  In the end, with memories of recent travels in country lanes fresh in my mind, I overuled the navigation officer and followed the sat nav’s route.  All went swimmingly until just after Thirsk (James Herriot’s home).

The A168 was closed for business just near Thornton le Moor.  The deviation sign (the ONLY deviation sign installed) took us up the interestingly named Grindle Carr Lane.  A right turn took us back to the A168 via Thiefhole Lane.  But the main road was still barricaded to the left.  So back to the sole deviation sign.  Picture the scene.  A fairly slow moving caravan which had attracted a queue of traffic blindly following it, arriving back at the original barrier from the opposite side!  The barrier completely blocked the road!  So while my faithful followers waited patiently, I dismantled half the barrier and turned right, back into Grindle Thingy Lane again.  This time we avoided Thiefhole and headed straight on into the country lanes of South Yorkshire.  After several miles, a few tight spots and a couple of hump-back bridges we found ourselves on the outskirts of Northallerton.  Still with a bunch of ardent disciples astern!  The words ” I told you my way would have been better” echoed round the car.  I only got lost (well, temporarily misplaced) once in town before heading the last four miles to Church Holme Campsite in Danby Wiske.  (We later learnt that shortly after midnight the previous night, there had been a fatal accident on the A168.  We shouldn’t complain!  Better a bit of delay than that…

Local schools don’t go back until two days after we arrived.  So there was quite a number of (very well behaved) youngsters staying on the camp site for a last fling of freedom.  They were absolutely no problem.  It’s just we aren’t used to camping with minors!

Our newly purchased sun canopy went up with no difficulty – once we had mastered the art of reading the pressure in the air-beams AND worked out which way round the various panels attached to each other. There are only four bits, but I think there are 32 ways these 4 items can be assembled.  We tried a few before we settled on the correct format.  I’m certain we can erect the thing much more quickly next time – and it’s much lighter than our “winter awning” – a real bonus..

And now we are ready to go exploring.  We always enjoy visiting Osmotherley and walking round Cod Beck Reservoir.  We had been told that the village post office did a really good line in pasties.  Well, we found three pubs, a convenience store, a catholic church and the public loos in the village.  But no post office.  Our info was a bit lacking in correctness.  It was the village shop we should have been looking for.  But sadly they had no pasties that day, so we settled for a couple of pies instead.  Plus a couple of cappucini.  All consumed in the sunshine on a convenient bench outside the shop.  And all very nice it was too.

During lunch, a couple emerged from the steps opposite leading to the catholic church of our Lady of Mount Grace with handfuls of apples.  Apparently, there was an orchard on the common land by the church.  This had to be explored.  We haven’t had pudding yet.  Sure enough, there were half a dozen heavily laden apple trees behind the church.  We filled the two bags our “non-pasties” had been served in by the “non-post-office” with juicy fruit.  On the way out of the garden, we saw the sign on the open gate saying “Private”!  So we’ve been scrumping apples belonging to the Pope!

And we are still eating two each day with our morning fruit salad – eight days later!

After all that excitement the walk round the reservoir was delightfully uneventful.  Pretty, but uneventful!

We discovered that, had we walked the other way from the car, we would have been at the start of the Lyke Wake Walk.

This is one of the long and very serious walks hereabouts.  A challenging 40-mile trek across the North York Moors from near Osmotherley to Ravenscar.  It is designed to be completed within 24 hours and commemorates the “corpse routes” used in ancient times.  (In Yorkshire dialect, “lyke” means corpse.)  The walk traverses high moorland, with significant “elevation changes” and potentially boggy sections.  The first of these two hazards cut in more or less from the start but I explored the first hundred metres or so.  I wanted to be able to say that I had walked part of the walk!

Another day, another serious walk.  The “Coast to Coast” path passes the entrance to our campsite.  We managed several miles of this one!

At this point we had another 130 miles to go to St. Bees on the Cumberland coast.  Strictly speaking,  I think we are heading the wrong way.  The walk as devised by Alfred Wainwright, starts in St Bees and ends 190 miles later in Robin Hoods Bay on the North Sea coast.  So that’s two grand walks ticked off!

Time for a rest!