{"id":6453,"date":"2025-09-12T14:47:30","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T14:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=6453"},"modified":"2025-12-24T21:49:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T21:49:30","slug":"1-heading-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=6453","title":{"rendered":"1. HEADING NORTH."},"content":{"rendered":"

Why would anyone take a 7.6 m long caravan through the narrow lanes of rural Somerset?\u00a0 Or, for that matter, the microscopically constricted roads of villages like Banwell?<\/p>\n

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Banwell’s Castle Hill above and West Street, below (As driven!).<\/p>\n

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Well, why would you?<\/p>\n

We are heading to Danby Wiske near Northallerton.\u00a0 For us that’s a two day trip.\u00a0 We want to drive the second leg on a Sunday.\u00a0 That’s the bit that includes the M5, M42, M1, M18, and A1M.\u00a0 \u00a0All “charming” roads!\u00a0 So we leave home on the Saturday.\u00a0 We have to pick up a carpet for our new sun canopy just south of Bristol.\u00a0 Then we will overnight at Droitwich.\u00a0 Good plan!\u00a0 But the weekend we chose to travel happened to coincide with the last weekend before schools went back after the summer holidays!\u00a0 One of the busiest days of the year on the roads!\u00a0 We should have left at first light.\u00a0 But we didn’t.<\/p>\n

Leaving Torbay it was busy.\u00a0 At Exeter, traffic from Cornwall joined the fray and it got busier.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Temporarily.\u00a0 We gradually picked up speed as the traffic automatically thinned itself from the front of the jam.\u00a0 But by Burham-on-Sea, we were at a virtual standstill again.\u00a0 The sat nav was saying turn off the motorway, urgently!\u00a0 So, on the spur of the moment, we dived off towards the A38.\u00a0 That was, basically, the main road out of the south west 50 years ago.\u00a0 In those days the M5 didn’t start until somewhere north of Gloucester!<\/p>\n

Well, putting a three lane jam onto single lane roads with towns and roundabouts basically just gives you two blocked roads!\u00a0 It transpired that there had been a nasty multi-vehicle crash on the motorway and the road was closed for three hours.\u00a0 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!<\/p>\n

We did all that (although my stiff drink turned out to be an alcohol-free beer!).\u00a0 And back on the road for the second half of the day’s journey!\u00a0 That bit turned out to be busy but otherwise unremarkable!<\/p>\n

As the first glimmering rays of the Sunday sun appeared over the horizon, we were off.\u00a0 We had learnt from yesterday!\u00a0 No flies on us (today)!\u00a0 There were other cars about, but not many.\u00a0 The biggest hazard was driving straight at the rising sun on the M42 just south of Birmingham!\u00a0 We hesitated at Woodall Services and followed the signs for caravan parking.\u00a0 There were just two spaces – and one of those had a car parked in it!\u00a0 The lone lady driver of the Zafira had broken down the previous evening with a failed clutch.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Disgraceful!\u00a0 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!<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 We gave up after had passed 50 in under 20 minutes.\u00a0 I guess all the council workmen are working from home – or indeed, just not working.\u00a0 Certainly, the roadside and central reservations need a serious clear-up of scrap rubber (not to mention abandoned drink cans!).<\/p>\n

There is almost always more than one way to skin a cat, navigationally speaking.\u00a0 Approaching Danby Wiske is no exception.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We dithered and changed plans several times.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 All went swimmingly until just after Thirsk (James Herriot’s home).<\/p>\n

The A168 was closed for business just near Thornton le Moor.\u00a0 The deviation sign (the ONLY deviation sign installed) took us up the interestingly named Grindle Carr Lane.\u00a0 A right turn took us back to the A168 via Thiefhole Lane.\u00a0 But the main road was still barricaded to the left.\u00a0 So back to the sole deviation sign.\u00a0 Picture the scene.\u00a0 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!\u00a0 The barrier completely blocked the road!\u00a0 So while my faithful followers waited patiently, I dismantled half the barrier and turned right, back into Grindle Thingy Lane again.\u00a0 This time we avoided Thiefhole and headed straight on into the country lanes of South Yorkshire.\u00a0 After several miles, a few tight spots and a couple of hump-back bridges we found ourselves on the outskirts of Northallerton.\u00a0 Still with a bunch of ardent disciples astern!\u00a0 The words ” I told you my way would have been better” echoed round the car.\u00a0 I only got lost (well, temporarily misplaced) once in town before heading the last four miles to Church Holme Campsite in Danby Wiske.\u00a0 (We later learnt that shortly after midnight the previous night, there had been a fatal accident on the A168.\u00a0 We shouldn’t complain!\u00a0 Better a bit of delay than that…<\/p>\n

Local schools don’t go back until two days after we arrived.\u00a0 So there was quite a number of (very well behaved) youngsters staying on the camp site for a last fling of freedom.\u00a0 They were absolutely no problem.\u00a0 It’s just we aren’t used to camping with minors!<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0 We tried a few before we settled on the correct format.\u00a0 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..<\/p>\n

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And now we are ready to go exploring.\u00a0 We always enjoy visiting Osmotherley and walking round Cod Beck Reservoir.\u00a0 We had been told that the village post office did a really good line in pasties.\u00a0 Well, we found three pubs, a convenience store, a catholic church and the public loos in the village.\u00a0 But no post office.\u00a0 Our info was a bit lacking in correctness.\u00a0 It was the village shop we should have been looking for.\u00a0 But sadly they had no pasties that day, so we settled for a couple of pies instead.\u00a0 Plus a couple of cappucini.\u00a0 All consumed in the sunshine on a convenient bench outside the shop.\u00a0 And all very nice it was too.<\/p>\n

During lunch, a couple emerged from the steps opposite leading to the catholic church of our Lady of Mount Grace with handfuls of apples.\u00a0 Apparently, there was an orchard on the common land by the church.\u00a0 This had to be explored.\u00a0 We haven’t had pudding yet.\u00a0 Sure enough, there were half a dozen heavily laden apple trees behind the church.\u00a0 We filled the two bags our “non-pasties” had been served in by the “non-post-office” with juicy fruit.\u00a0 On the way out of the garden, we saw the sign on the open gate saying “Private”!\u00a0 So we’ve been scrumping apples belonging to the Pope!<\/p>\n

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And we are still eating two each day with our morning fruit salad – eight days later!<\/p>\n

After all that excitement the walk round the reservoir was delightfully uneventful.\u00a0 Pretty, but uneventful!<\/p>\n

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We discovered that, had we walked the other way from the car, we would have been at the start of the Lyke Wake Walk.<\/p>\n

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This is one of the long and very serious walks hereabouts.\u00a0 A challenging 40-mile trek across the North York Moors from near Osmotherley to Ravenscar.\u00a0 It is designed to be completed within 24 hours and commemorates the “corpse routes” used in ancient times.\u00a0 (In Yorkshire dialect, “lyke” means corpse.)\u00a0 The walk traverses high moorland, with significant “elevation changes” and potentially boggy sections.\u00a0 The first of these two hazards cut in more or less from the start but I explored the first hundred metres or so.\u00a0 I wanted to be able to say that I had walked part of the walk!<\/p>\n

Another day, another serious walk.\u00a0 The “Coast to Coast” path passes the entrance to our campsite.\u00a0 We managed several miles of this one!<\/p>\n

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At this point we had another 130 miles to go to St. Bees on the Cumberland coast.\u00a0 Strictly speaking,\u00a0 I think we are heading the wrong way.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So that’s two grand walks ticked off!<\/p>\n

Time for a rest!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why would anyone take a 7.6 m long caravan through the narrow lanes of rural Somerset?\u00a0 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… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yorkshire-and-northumberland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6453"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6505,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6453\/revisions\/6505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}