Another guidebook updating trip, this time to Wensleydale. The lower dale benefits from the wonderful Wensleydale Railway, a heritage line enthusiastically maintained by volunteers with a sequence of station buildings furnished in the style of various 1900s eras. Some of their rolling stock is so ancient that it offers lavish bike spaces, a vision of a lost, distant era – 1980s Pacers, for instance.
I’d not been to Bedale before, and was pleased to see the old Leech House, apparently Britain’s only surviving example, where conmen would convince gullible members of the public that draining them of their own blood was good for them. As so often, I was put in mind of the Conservative government.
I was more pleased though to find a bike-shop-cafe I didn’t know about: the excellent, welcoming 360 Cycleworx of neighbouring Aiskew. Unfortunately my bike didn’t need any attention, so I had no excuse to stop for coffee and cake while-u-wait.
In Wensley I had a quick look at the surviving fragments of 15th-century frescoes in the old church. (They’re not mentioned in the guide; I think they should be.) One blogger identifies one of them as St Eloi and the Demonic Horse, which sounds a great prog-rock album. The other is an equally enticing LP, The Three Living and The Three Dead. That one’s particularly gruesome, evidently depicting a nasty case of guinea worm.
A busy day, ending with me pitching camp at the Aysgarth Falls Hotel campsite. Yes, I did enjoy Aysgarth Falls, very much. Not the water feature, but the hotel’s house beer of that name. And just £4 a pint, which I thought very good for a touristy place.
I like this job.