Among England and Wales’s 53 ‘thankful villages’ – ones whose soldiers all survived WWI – Norton-le-Clay and Cundall, east of Ripon in North Yorkshire, are the closest together: neighbours, in fact, only a couple of kilometres of farmland lane apart. Today was baking hot and I wasn’t up for a long ride, so a bus-assisted jaunt with my folding bike sounded about taxing enough. (Though, like most writers, taxing is rarely something I have to worry about. I’m too far below the threshold.)
I took the 82 bus from York to Boroughbridge, a market town on the Way of the Roses a short distance from Ripon. I’ve ridden here many times. It’s a favourite stopover for cyclists generally, thanks to being well-provisioned with cafes and bakeries. (And a Roman town you can visit, with a mosaic and everything.)
Butchers, too: Appleton’s, in the market square, does the best pork pies in the region. They even sell Pork Pie Vouchers, up to £50. That will buy you twenty or so pork’n’chillis, which should last you a week or so.
Boroughbridge has another square with its WWI memorial, a reminder of why I was here. Bunting was still up marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day in WWII. I spent a sociable half hour in Tourist Information chatting with the volunteer guide.
She couldn’t tell me anything about thankful villages, but did tell me there is a kennels in Cundall run by her daughter.
YORKSHIRE’S THANKFUL VILLAGES
Catwick, near Beverley
Cundall, near Ripon
Helperthorpe, near Driffield
Norton-le-Clay, near Ripon
Scruton, near Richmond
I cycled the few almost-flat miles north from Boroughbridge, past the scenic little stretch of narrowboated canal and on the bridge over the surprisingly rural looking Ure. Norton-le-Clay showed as a little cluster of houses with the North York Moors – Kilburn White Horse and all – in the background.
There’s not much to Norton-le-Clay, just houses and a few farms. Like so many settlements in rural Britain, there are no shops or cafes, and a few buildings have names like ‘The Old Post Office’, ‘The Old Forge’ and ‘The Old School’.
A small plaque records the names of the 16 villagers who went to battle in 1914 and all came back. It’s on the front wall of Ripon Cottage, on the eastern edge of the place. The plaque also commemorates a Belgian refugee, Maria Roell, who came here in the war.
That’s it for thankful references in Norton, though: no village sign, no commemorative info boards. But a mile or so up the road, Cundall – rhymes with ‘trundle’ – seems totally oblivious. They don’t even thank you for driving slowly through the village. (The sign just says ‘40 Cundall Please drive carefully’.)
Cundall has a well-regarded boarding school, Cundall Manor – over £30k a year, in case you’re wondering – whose students won’t be getting up to much mischief in the village. Because, again, there’s nothing here except houses and farms. For a snack or drink, never mind a can of cider, packet of fags, or fiver on the second favourite at Newmarket, they’d have to go to Boroughbridge.
It had been a rather low-excitement day, but it was so, so, hot that I’d had quite enough cycling already. I headed back to Boroughbridge to await my bus back home and sipped a pint of IPA from the 13th-century Black Bull.
Two would have been nice, but buses don’t have toilets, and York is an hour’s ride away…