Bunting High And Low

Joe Fusniak would have been well looked after when he appeared at the White Lion, which remains a great, unpretentious pub. Not a few places in the Dales have been gastrated with varying degrees of success. I've heard of stares and even outright hostility toward visitors wanting just a pint and some crisps rather than a glass of Barolo and a bisque-infused crab and pea risotto with sun-boiled onions. None of this, mercifully, at the Fox And Hounds at bunting-wrapped Starbotton where we stopped for a post-Pike quencher. It's a classic Dales Inn - bow back chairs, flagstones, old shotguns on the walls - and a polite notice asking walkers to remove muddy boots. There are never any surprises with beer in a Dales pub. Jennings, Theakston. Maybe a Taylor's. There's always Black Sheep Bitter, which must surely have a claim to be Yorkshire's Official Pint with the demise of Tetley.



The Fox's guest was the Yorkshire Dales Brewery's Nappa Scar, and we took a couple of pints out front to watch chartered accountants wobble past on their Harleys. On our last encounter with an unsparkled Nappa Scar, I thought it smelled like a farmyard. Here it was all hops, billowing facefuls and huge mouthfuls of the stuff. I don't know much about IBUs - but I bet this wasn't far off the Stone Ruination that I tried t'other month. The hophead's perfect pint after a four-hour walk. And we didn't even mind that it was £3.20 - about the same price it would be at the Harp just off Trafalgar Square.

Sets Neat Prints Into The Snow

Royal Wedding Day, Upper Wharfedale. Union Jacks flutter with Yorkshire flags in the late spring sun. Trestle tables are being set up on village greens, cakes brought out from ovens in ancient stone cottages. You couldn't have asked for better weather, everyone said.

Unless you were up Buckden Pike, like Our Lad and me. The Pike wore a thick mist, which blew in like a sinister blanket from Kidstones, directly to the North. The temperature was several degrees colder than the valley bottom. Walls and bog dissolved into grey after only 50 yards or so. Still, fortified by our miraculously still-warm pies from Lunds we found what we were looking for.

This memorial commemorates the crew of Polish Air Force Wellington N2848, which crashed here in a blizzard on 30th January 1942. The only survivors were the wireless operator Sgt Jan Sadowski and the rear gunner, Sgt Jozef Fuzniak. Wrapping the badly-injured Sadowski in his parachute, Fuzniak attempted to make his way down the mountain for help. He had a badly smashed ankle, not a clue where he was and it was snowing heavily. Fuzniak limped off in agony, using a broken wooden strut as a makeshift crutch. After a time he noticed the tracks of a fox heading in the opposite direction. Knowing that the animal would seek shelter and food, Fuzniak followed the pawprints, an action which undoubtedly saved his life. He emerged from the Pike several hours later and almost delirious with pain and hypothermia near the White Lion at Cray. The weather was so bad that rescuers could not find the wreckage for another two days. Help came too late for Sgt Sadowski, who had succumbed to his injuries.

"Joe" Fuzniak returned to flying, and was again a sole survivor when his Wellington was shot down on a raid over Duisburg later that same year. He survived the war - including the Death Marches - and settled in Bexleyheath, where he still lives.

Assisted by several locals, Joe built the memorial to his comrades over three days in 1972, camping on the fell as he worked. Set into the base is a bronze fox's head, its nose rubbed shiny by hundreds of visitors.

Molefinder General

Upper Wharfedale is the last place in the country to still have a mole-drying industry. Here's a late spring catch, desiccating nicely on a rack just outside Starbotton. Wharfedale Mole is a prized delicacy in Southern Europe, particularly in the Pyrenees where the rocky landscape makes the little critters very rare. There are perhaps a couple of dozen of these drying frames remaining in the Dale, though when Daniel Defoe passed through here in 1724 writing his A Tour Thro' The Whole Island Of Great Britain, Divided Into Circuits Or Journies there were several hundred. He wrote:

"Wharffe Dale is famed for moles, and they make a sort of dried meat here for the Spanish and the Porto trades; and though their moles here may not be as fine as Welsh, they told us their meats are as good. But that is not my business to dispute, the Welsh moleers deny it; and so I leave it as I find it. But there are rackes as far as a man can see, and a good living can be had by a skill'd moleer. The people here are dressed better than any London Dandy, tho' they suffer terrible from molegut if they do over indulge."

The local producers co-op is making tentative steps toward getting the likes of Waitrose to stock it as 'Yorkshire Biltong'. I've never tried it myself, but I was once chatting with an old farmer who swore by dried mole as the secret of a long life.

"What does it taste like?" I asked.

"A bit like cat." he said.

Deeper Underground

A few shots from a visit last year to The National Mining Museum near Wakefield. It's on the site of the old Caphouse Colliery, which began producing in the late 1700s and closed, empty of economic coal, in 1985. It's got the lot - pit ponies, winding gear, steam boilers. And it costs nowt to get in. Much as I am in favour of museums being free - this is one that deserves a cough up for the donations box. It ranks with a trip to HMS Victory as one of the most educational days of my life. There's an astounding amount to see, though the highlight is a trip down the actual mine in a small group accompanied by a genuine miner, complete with a music hall Yorkshire thee-and-thou accent. No pictures from this, alas - anything that risks producing a spark has to be left on the surface.

These days the cage ("Nivver a lift - allus a cage") trundles down the original shaft at a sedate pace, though in its working life it plummeted at 45ft per second, which according to our guide "Felt like skydiving". The mine itself is a network of ancient and modern galleries shooting off in all directions, and of a darkness so complete that it swallows your torchlight. It's considered a 'wet' pit - a million gallons of water are pumped out each day. There's lots of brutal and massive equipment down there, but it surprised us that in some parts the coal had been dug out by hand, the seams being too thin for machinery. An hour down there left us all with the opinion that miners deserve every penny that they earn, such are the many and extravagant ways to lose your life or be permanently disabled. Indeed, a miner was killed at the museum this january, while extending an underground classroom.

The Underground

This sign's next to the intriguingly named Slaymaker Lane, just outside Oakworth. The Lane is a place of childhood dares, myths and folklore. Pleasant in the daytime, at night the high stone walls and the thick curtain of trees make it darker than normal, even on a full moon. It's a place where your footsteps quicken, even if you don't know about the resident ghost of a horse and rider.

Not to take anything away from Mr Swaine's undoubted catching skills, but there were three fresh molehills in the opposite corner of that field.

Porc En Croute Avec Pois Écrasés

In the same way you don't visit Yorkshire to get a sun tan, you don't go there and expect to lose weight. On my week-long visit I consumed* fish and chips three times, a curry and three pies - two of which came with mushy peas.

Pie and peas is the great Yorkshire meal. Classless, simple - you can eat it with a spoon - nutritious, filling and with the exception of Bradford beer festival, (great pie, not enough peas for £3.50) cheap. It's comfort food par excellence. A teatime favourite as well as a staple of football terraces, after-match rugby, village cricket lunches, bonfire night and Christmas eve. I've even eaten it (£1.50) in the grade 1 listed magnificence of Leeds Parish Church. The mushy element is very important - purists will only accept them made from dried peas, soaked with bicarbonate of soda and boiled for hours. You can see the difference above - the lower picture is the tinned variety. But It's the pie that really matters, and a butcher's reputation is only as good as his last porker. There are some heavy hitters in Airedale - Stanforth's, Affer faves Drake and Macefield and Ted Lee in Skipton. Lunds and Herd's further down the valley in Keighley, where people still talk about how good the long-gone Midgely's pies once were. I've said it before, and I'll say it again; If pie and peas was from the Ariége it'd be on the menu of the best restaurants in London.


*not all in one go.

Silent And Grey

A february sunday in Whitby.

A Deep And Dark December

There’s a Yorkshire dialect song that we used to sing at school. I can’t remember the title, or much else – just the line “Nivver bin warm sin ah left me bed” – ‘warm’ pronounced to rhyme with ‘calm’, obviously. This line kept appearing in my head during my recent, pre-christmas visit home. It was cold. So very, very cold. One day we took a walk to the top of the Five Rise Locks, looking at the ghostly, frozen valley below us. Nothing moved except woodsmoke lazily curling up from chimneys, and a group of kids sledging down an iron-hard field.



In the five days I was up in Keighley, the temperature never got above minus 4. One shocking night it was minus 15. It’s the sort of weather where you never feel entirely, properly warm – except in about three places: My mam and dad's house, my grandma’s living room (hotter, in fact, than a nuclear reactor) and sat in front of the fireplace in the Boltmaker’s Arms, where I took this short film while supping Ram Tam - Taylor's famous winter warmer - with my dad and my uncle. I hope it captures a little of the welcoming banter of this very special pub.

Happy Christmas, and many thanks for reading my humble blog - see you next year!

David Vs Goliath Vs Valuev

This is one of Marks And Spencers British beer range; Yorkshire Bitter. Not a bad drop - bottle conditioned, a chewy, fruity mouthful. It's made for M&S by Cropton, currently undergoing legal proddings from eccentric Tadcaster brewer Samuel Smith. I don't know about you, but the first thing I notice about this bottle is that large white rose. It's the white rose on Cropton's Yorkshire Warrior labels (which actually show the Yorkshire Regiment's cap badge) that caused Samuel Smith to get in touch with their learned friends. I wonder if one of Europe's largest companies - who presumably have a correspondingly large legal department and very deep pockets - can expect a letter from a Tadcaster solicitor?

Hopeful

Central Keighley must be one of the few places to escape the decimation of its pubs. In recent years the town has permanently lost the Eastwood Tavern, The Masons Arms and The Market Arms - and that's about it, although a number of pubs in outlying villages are said to be struggling and just lately The New Inn at Crossroads has become an ironmongers.

Several pubs have closed and reopened - one example is the Hope and Anchor freehouse on the outskirts of the centre, just round the corner from Timothy Taylor's new site. I've only been in once, several years ago. It was like walking into an episode of the Likely Lads, a 1960s time capsule complete with redundant buttons to summon a waiter and tin ashtrays for defunct brewers like Whitakers of Halifax.

Whitakers - founded in 1848 - had the usual post-war trajectory of mergers and takeovers before having their own brewery (trademark - 'Cock O' The North') demolished by Whitbread in 1969. Their ales became nothing more than a proprietory name on a pump, made elsewhere in Whitbread's empire. They faded away sometime in the early 70s. A similar thing happened to fellow Halifaxoneans Websters - closed by S&N in 1996 - and whose beer is now brewed by John Smiths for the club trade. I always associate Websters with bleak, wind-blasted Calderdale villages where there wasn't much more than one of their mid-Victorian pubs, a silent mill, a few houses and a dripping-damp Wesleyan chapel. Their Pennine Bitter had a few fans but to be fair, I don't ever recall anyone saying they could murder a Websters.


This sign was found in the Hope and Anchor's cellar during the refurbishment and fixed to the pub's back wall where it was photographed by my mum and dad on a recent visit. "Pretty good. Irish and friendly" was their verdict. The pub that is, not the sign.

In The Club Style

Now it can be told. I'm a member of a club where men go to meet other men, and women are not allowed.

There used to be dozens of these social clubs throughout the North. They were set up during the inter-war period by what were once patronisingly termed the 'progressive working-class' as a more respectable alternative to town pubs of the time. There are very few men-only clubs left, but two or three linger on in the Keighley area. I joined through tradition and because my dad and my uncle have been members for decades, and you really can't beat having a pint with your dad and your uncle. In our club there's a TV room, a small library and the click of dominoes. You get frowned at by older members until you remove your hat. The two full-sized slate snooker tables are immaculately maintained by the same local firm that installed them in the 50s. There are three handpumps, one for Timothy Taylor's Best Bitter and two for Golden Best, the stealth mild that is Taylor's biggest seller in their home market. Guinness is by the bottle, and Tetley Cask has recently been usurped by its ugly cousin, Smooth. I'm pretty sure that on my first visit a few days after I turned 18 they still weren't selling lager (no ladies, see), but these days there's a Carling tap.

When my dad, uncle and their mates joined there was a two-year waiting list and it would be three deep at the bar on a friday. Prospective members had to attend at least twice a month for those two years, and then present themselves to the committee to prove that you were of good character and had no criminal record (and presumably, not a woman). When I joined some eight years ago, there was no waiting list, and my exile Down South gave me special dispensation not to have to prove my worth in person. Fridays are very much quieter and the club no longer opens during the day. Times change. There's still an annual club trip - usually to Scarborough - though these days it's limited to veteran members and a crate of Landlord is no longer hoisted onto the coach.

The only female permitted on the premises is the Steward's wife - and she's not allowed out from behind the bar, even to collect empties. Some may consider the place a sexist anachronism, but it's a well-loved sexist anachronism, and one that nobody really minds too much about. The club's constitution doesn't actually bar women, but none have shown the slightest interest in joining (as my mum has pointed out) what amounts to two rooms of middle-aged and elderly Yorkshiremen complaining about the state of Rugby League and (in summer) cricket, and at all other times, the government.

Members still talk about the only time a woman got over the club's front threshold. One night an unknown elderly bloke pulled up in a Bentley and doddered in with a fur-coated peroxide blonde half his age, before being frantically but gently ushered out.

"I'm surprised they didn't rebuild the place after that" noted my mum at the time.

Spot The Difference

The Tadcaster brewer Samuel Smith seems to embody many of the attributes of the music hall version of the professional Yorkshireman. Stubborn, self-reliant, shrewd and reticent to the point of only getting a website in August 2010. They're certainly eccentric and somewhat secretive - they never seem give interviews. Their London pubs are a bit love-or-hate, but they certainly care for the fabric of their buildings. A few years back, they closed their famous gin palace The Princess Louise for several months while they restored its 1891 interior. Given the quality of the work, literally no expense was spared. As far as I can tell, they didn't even bother with a press release saying what they'd been up to. There's something nicely old fashioned about their flagship ale, Old Brewery Bitter. It's not to everyone's taste, but I like it - it's a decent standby for a swift quencher, and one of the few beers still drawn from the wood. They have a cooperage at the brewery. Local deliveries are by drays pulled by shire horses. Traditional isn't the word.

Just one bit of folklore about Smith's claims that the reason OBB is so cheap is that tax and duty apart, the brewery hasn't raised prices since they first started brewing it. Ah, yes. Folklore. And Rumours. For fear of getting my wheels sued off I won't go into any here, but speculation about one or other members of Smith's senior staff on this site might somehow help explain why they're taking the Cropton Brewery to court.

In 2008, Cropton launched Yorkshire Warrior, a 4.4% ruby ale. Profits from sales go the Yorkshire Regiment Benevolent Fund. More than £10,000 has so far been raised. The bottle displays the regiments' badge, which of course features the Yorkshire Rose. Samuel Smith, in their wisdom, say that having the rose on the Warrior bottles is 'confusingly similar' to their own labelling. A writ has been served for 'copyright infringment'. You now have the absurd situation of seeing Warrior bottles and pump clips with the county symbol on it blacked out.

Cropton, y'see, are a Yorkshire brewer. Go to Leeds on a match day and half the men (and I dare say a few women) in the city centre will have a white rose tattoo on their arm. How many businesses in the county incorporate it into their own logo? It's everywhere. It belongs to Yorkshire. It does not belong to Samuel Smith, who in any case use the symbol upside down. They may have been around for 252 years but Sam Smiths shouldn't take their great age as a guarantee of brand loyalty, especially when it comes to something like this. It's so petty and wrong-headed it defies logic.

The case will reach the High Court next July. Cropton have said they will fight the claim all the way, but if they lose they are likely to face bankruptcy. I don't know about anyone else, but I won't be darkening the doors of any Smith pubs for a while.

The Diaspora

Being lazy. Three trains cancelled. Tuts and frowns as I squeeze my bike on at a colourless Stratford. Elbows. Feet. Blackberrys. Ipods. The Metro. Mortgages. Dan Brown.

Liverpool street. Doors, suits, barriers.

A public school accent.

"Yorkshire? Saw the sticker on your bike"

"Yes. Keighley. You?"

"Harrogate."

Two bright grins in the walls of grey, and we are gone.

Mr and Mrs Storey's store

"My grandfather opened this shop. It's still doing OK. We're retired now, but we come in to keep an eye on things. When we took over from my dad there wasn't even any lighting on the top floor. Those are the original windows up there. We could have modernised and gone self service, but our customers like things the way they are. We don't owe anyone anything. We don't even have credit cards. Do you remember Russ Abbott? The Blue Bell is next door. A lot of his characters were based on the pub regulars. He was very kind to Mrs Pinder in her last days."

Blue Bell? Would.

I'll try to get to the end of this post without using the tired old pub reviewers word 'gem'. But I'll struggle.

I first heard about the Blue Bell about three years ago, after my mum and dad found the place on one of their visits to York. IN PUB U'D RLLY LUV - came the text from my 70-year-old-dad, whose messages are apparently ghostwritten by a Walthamstow yoot - BLUE BELL INNIT.

Our visit last saturday afternoon was almost thwarted by a handwritten 'private party' sign on the front door. A bloke with a cig cupped in his palm sidled up and theatrically whispered "Go on in. Yer all right. That's to keep idiots out". So, officially recognised as not being idiots, in we went - back to 1903, the year the the pub was last given a makeover. Much has been written about the BB's untouched Edwardian interior, which has survived thanks largely to an ain't-broke-don't-fix-it approach from the family who ran the pub for decades. The last family licensee, Edith Pinder (by all accounts a redoubtable character - "she used to sit here like Mrs Haversham"), retired in 1992. Doubtless it was present owners Pubmaster who stuck the godawful sign above the marvellous tiled exterior.



Everyone remarks about the size of the Blue Bell, which has a street frontage of exactly 13 feet wide. It may be small for York, but it's not a lot smaller than the Mitre in London, and it's almost cavernous compared with the pocket-sized Boltmakers in Keighley. There are two rooms, front and back, split by the bar and connected by a dark, narrow corridor with its own serving hatch, presumably once there for off-sales. There are six hand pumps and a rack of continental bottles - La Chouffe and St Bernadus among them. We settled for an excellent Roosters Leghorn and a perfect Camfell Flame, which was a new one to us. The other beers were reliables like Deuchars, Landlord and the ubiquitous Black Sheep. I suspect this is more to do with Pubmaster than the tenants, who have an obvious enthusiasm for beer - the Blue Bell hosts one of the country's smallest ale festivals. The landlady reportedly knows the names of over 200 of her regulars, who were a mix of young and old and all backgrounds and classes. We were drawn into conversations that involved the whole room, and its possibly a good thing that we we only had time for a couple of pints, otherwise we'd still be in there now. The Blue Bell is one of those things that leaves your soul singing to know it exists, like Bolton Strid or the Merlin Engine or the Polar Bear or the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a much loved, much-used boozer, welcoming to everyone. Except idiots. An almost perfect pub, then, and oh, alright - a gem.

New Brew

I think it was the Sunday Independent who once described Airedale as 'the Loire Valley of beer brewing'. There certainly are some respectable er, chateaux in the area; There's the mighty Taylor's of course, as well as Goose Eye, Naylor's and Old Bear, all in or around Keighley. Further up the Dale there's the reborn Litton, the mysterious Dark Horse and Copper Dragon - who are doing really well or are about to implode, depending on who tells the tale. Back toward Bradford, there's Saltaire and Salamander. Further still, there's the Leeds Brewery which will be flying the beer banner for that great city when Tetley hits the road. A cricket ball chuck from Airedale is Harrogate, where you'll find Daleside. The list goes on and on. Breweries everywhere.


These brewers are about to get some extra competition in the shape of Bridgehouse. This is the realisation of Keighley man Grahame Reynoldson's childhood dream of brewing his own cask ales. This will be a 10-barrel plant, working out of Pitt Street in the town, not far from the original site of the Taylor brewery. Pitt street is also current home to Old Bear until they move to a bigger site later this year.

The five core beers will be: Diken Gold at 3.6% - "a golden/straw coloured ale"; 3.8% Best Bitter - "traditional style, well balanced"; A 4% "dry and malty" Buffers Bitter; 4.4% Barnstormer - a "chestnut coloured, well balanced"; 5% Headshunt Stout - "rich, intensely flavoured". Expect to see these on sale at the Boltmakers, The Brown Cow and probably the Cricketer's in Keighley town centre. Hopefully some of these will make it South. Bridgehouse are having an offical launch event on 28th of March, from 2:30 until 4. Admission is £6, with a pound donated to the Sue Ryder charity.

More info here. As Fuggled pointed out recently, a lot of microbreweries have shockingly bad websites, so it's good to see that Bridgehouse aren't following that trend.

Goodbye To Yorkshire

It's offical. Tetley's is to be brewed by Marston's in Warwickshire from 2011. That's proper, Tetley cask ale - not the weird 'Smoothflow' beer-flavoured drink with all the character of a McDonald's Thick Shake. That will continue to be synthesised in God's Acres, albeit in Tadcaster rather than Leeds. I'm not actually a Tetley drinker - but a lot of people are, especially in West Yorkshire which must still be the beer's core market. It's the pint of choice at my dad's club, despite the Taylor's brewery being 200 yards away. There will probably be some sort of boycott by the more patriotic Tykes, but ultimately the once-legendary brand will fade away to nothing more than a memory of a monocled hunstman.

Pete Brown has interviewed Darran Britton of Carlsberg about this sorry state of affairs.

(picture from newswampthing)

The Jolly Butchers

Until a couple of years back, your satnav would claim you were several miles distant from your actual position when you drove past the sinister "golf balls" of the Menwith Hill tracking station. Why this paranoid measure was deemed neccessary by the Men In Black is anyone's guess, it's not as if the place is hard to find. As I watched the Garmin in Our Lad's Mini as we zoomed up the B6451, I was a bit disappointed to see that it wasn't insisiting we were on the A65. Maybe the CIA have been Obama-ised.

On our trip we stopped off at Ripley, a 'model' village built by the Ingilby family after the original was wiped out by plague. The Ingilbys still live in nearby Ripley Castle, which seems to be the venue for every single wedding in Yorkshire Life magazine. The village has a fantastically good butchers, Hutchinson's, which is where I picked up the half-dozen pies my colleagues in London now insist I bring back. The staff at Hutchinson's were everything you'd expect a Yorkshire butcher to be; red-faced, rotund, big grins and loud voices. As we entered, one of them was cutting up a pig with skill of a surgeon. "ALL FOR TOMORROW'S PIES" he boomed like Brian Blessed.

Apologies to any vegetarians for this picture. Unfortunately, the butcher was more camera shy than the pig. The pies were great, by the way.

Porky

Just back from a visit up home. Surprisingly few headlines like this in The Evening Standard.

The Pleasure Killers

Daft as it may seem, one of the world's first 'modern' theme parks was at Shipley Glen in Yorkshire. For the Victorian and Edwardian mill workers of industrial Airedale, the fresh air of the Glen was a welcome escape from the often unhealthy (and at times lethal) living and working conditions of the valley bottom. Local entrepreneurs constructed what we would now term tourist attractions as early as the 1880s, including cablecar rides, toboggans and something rejoicing in the name of the Royal Yorkshire Switchback. These rides came and went over the years, though some - presumably the ones with the least accidents - became permanent. Until 2004, Prod Lane at the eastern end of the Glen was still home to a collection of ancient rides at the tiny amusement park called the Pleasure Grounds. Here could be found the Aerial Glide (pictured at the top of this post - image from UK Rides), built in 1900 and the oldest ride of its type in the world. Despite its age the Glide was still definitely a thrill for the kids of Airedale until it closed. You'd sit in a chair suspended from an overhead track, an attendant would give you a hefty shove and gravity would take you whizzing over the boulder-strewn hillside. Hopefully, another attendant would grab you at the other end of the ride where you'd dismount, shaky-legged, to be reunited with your grinning parents who'd taken the same ride in their own childhoods, just as their parents had.

Inevitably, the owners of the Pleasure Grounds realised that the land was prime real estate, so the whole site was cleared in 2003-2004 for - sigh - executive housing, despite attempted protection for the Glide and a lot of legal jousting, protests and heartfelt articles in the Telegraph And Argus. No doubt this unique ride is now being recycled somewhere in China for mobile phone components. It should be pointed out that the little fairground was actually thriving. It was no dead duck.

I was up at Shipley Glen on Saturday, with my dad and grandma, both Pleasure Ground veterans. The place is now a brownfield site with no sign of building work, or even a hint of it. It is literally a waste. The only remaining attractions from Shipley Glen's themepark heyday is the marvellous Glen Tramway, which I wrote about some years back for Nothing To See Here.


Nearby is a Dodgems, rotting gracefully back into the moor, the original cars hidden under shrouds like corpses. This was functioning two or three years ago - I went on it with my mum - but now it looks likes the kind of ride seen on Scooby Doo.