A WANDERER’S NOTEBOOK.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19958, 27 November 1926, Page 2

A WANDERER’S NOTEBOOK.

OUT AND ABOUT IN YORKSHIRE. » XL By Charles Wilson. ex-Pnrliamentary Librarian “Biggest, bonniest, and best,” is how the Tykes proudly describe their county, and, as a loyal Yorkshireman by birth, and, a travelling New Zealander who aas of late seen not a little of England, I must cordially confirm the trifold adjectival and alliterative designation. How big is Yorkshire, that county of broad acres and impressive vistas, you can see for yourselves, on the map. It has its industrial area, which in parts, I must admit, can be desperately ugly. But il is, on the whole, one of the “bonniest”— which is real good Yorkshire for prettiest—of all England’s fair shires. No one who has seen Fountains and Bolton Abbey, to go no further than these two famous ruins in their lovely woods, can deny the special charm of North Country scenery. At the Yorkshire Society’s foregatherings—now, alas, discontinued—at Wellington. I have heard many an encomium (" Yorkshire’s picturesque spots, some at the time seemingly just a trifle over-enthusiastic. But, after a fortnight in my native country, the second visit in 50 years and more, after sojourning in airy, breezy Harrogate—7ooft above sea level—after pottering about quaint old Knaresboro, and historically famous York, after motoring over the moors to Whitby and Scarborough, ftcr visits to Fountains and Bolton Abbeys, to the curious exposition of glacial energy at Brimham Rocks, after sauntering along in such delightful old rural towns as Ripon and Pateley Bridge—well, I find myself more than ever in love with ‘ho rightly-named “biggest, bonniest, and best” of counties.

ROTORUA WITH THE FIRES OUT. When I left Harrogate for New Zealand—heigho, in far away 1879 !—the famous Yorkshire Spa was but a tiny town of under 10,000 people. To-day it has, I believe, close upon 40,000 residents. Englishmen, lam glad to see, have now no reason to travel to Homburg and Wiesbaden, to Aix-les-Bains, and other Continental spas for hygienic purposes. For here at Harrogate, in the splendid suite of Royal baths for the conception and carrying out of which a home-staying brother of my own was, I am proud to remember, mainly responsible, they can be treated for almost every conceivable ailment where mineral waters are of value. Personally, I have no desire to drink the celebrated sulphur water for which the place is famous. _ It is, I believe, de rigueur for the visitor to walk down to the Old Sulphur Well, discovered in the eighteenth century, in what was then the Forest of Knaresboro, and carry out a system of personal spring cleaning by imbibing the contents of a twelveounce glass of slightly warmed sulphur water. Personally, Ido not enthuse over an odour of ancient hen fruit and, despi'e entreaties not to go back on your old place, I say “no bid” to the famous spring. I call Harrogate “Rotorua with the fires out,” but I am told that he diversity and perpetual wealth of ts famous mineral waters is due to glacial action which has made water from a higher elevation percolate through strata which permeate the liquid with its special mineral elements. Anyhow, the mineral waters are here, sulphur, magnesia, iron, and goodness only knows how many others in such variety and never-failing quantity as no other European spa can boast. HEALTHY HARROGATE.

After leaving stuffy London and passing through such busy, but, honestly, rather ugly industrial areas as those around Sheffield and Leeds—alas, as I pass through these towns, scores upon scores of mill chimneys are smokeless, owing to the sinister activities of that selfconfessed “disciple of Lenin,” the great Mr Cook of Coal Strike notoriety—it is a veritable joy to emerge from the long Arthington tunnel, one of the longest in England, and look out on the beautiful valley of the Wharfe. At Harrogate we are well up on a plateau, and the air is so wonderfully fresh and clean and pure that I do not wonder at so many thousands of those who live as a rule in the smoky areas coming here for their annual “cure” or ordinary holiday. There is a big resident population of West Riding industrialists who travel daily backwards and forwards to their mills and offices at Leeds, Bradford, and places further afield, but the main wealth of the place comes from the hundred and odd thousand folk who, I suppose, might •»o classed as “patients,” but who, judging by their well-nourished appearance, do not seem to be greatly in need of aught save a lower dietary scale. Three at least of the hotels are huge edifices standing in their own extensive grounds, with tennis courts, winter gardens, and jazz rooms of their own, and life can be very gay here for those who have the necessary “beans” for “owt like thaat,” as a stout Bradford —“Bradforth” in West Riding dialect—informs me as we meet on a seat in the picturesque Valley Gardens. You can be jolly or restful in Harrogate, according to your desires. At a huge and most luxuriously-appointed Royal Hall—in pre-war days the Kursanl —there is a nightly entertainment which is assuredly the acme of cheapness. The night I am there I listen to a supc b orchestra, which gives me, amongst other musical delights, a fine Wagner selection (“Tannhauser”), and a Tschaikovsky Symphony, a selection from “The Gondoliers,” and so forth, the evening being filled with songs by a fine soprano and terpsichorean agilities by some of the inevitable Russian ballet performers from London. And all this for one shilling and fourpence for a most comfortable, velvet-lined stall seat! IN NIDDERDALE.

We are here close to some of the most picturesque of Yorkshire’s dales, and it is a special joy to a long-expatriated Englishman to renew acquaintance with some of the many beauties of Nidderdale. My first visit is to one of the quaintest of all Yorkshire towns, Knaresborough, where the pretty river flows deep between thick woods on one side, and the queerest of all towns, built up on limestone rocks, on the other. Here I explore the keep of a fourteenth century castle which Noll Cromwell is said to have bombarded from across the river with stone missiles from his cannon and visit the famous Dripping Well, where the descending drip, drip, drip of centuries has been responsible for some very remarkable petrifications. Close by is the birthplace of the celebrated Yorkshire prophetess. Mother Shipton, who, as far back as the fifteenth century, is credited with having predicted the coming of railways, of flying machines, and many other modern wonders. Not far away, on the northern bank, is the cave in which the schoolmaster, Eugene Aram, whose story is told in Lord Lytton’s novel of that name, buried the body of his murdered victim, Daniel Clark. From the Castle Hill one gets one of the most picturesque views in all England. AT RIPON. The ancient town of Ripon, on the day of my visit, is mildly overrun by tourists, many from very distant towns, who travel in the comfortable motor coaches or “charries"—char-a-bancs —with which present-day England seems to team. Ripon is another resort of my youth which I now revisit in the lordly Rolls Royce of a schooldays friend, a great West Riding commercial magnate, and, like most of his kind, the very soul of geniality. Ripon only became a, bishopric early in Queen Victoria’s time, and though it is not in the same street with the great Minster at York, the cathedral possesses an exceptionally wide nave, and a stone choir screen which is a special local pride.

For my own part, I take more interest in Ripon’s quaintly named narrow streets. In one, Stammergate, I am shown an interesting old chapel, the Hospital of St. Mary Magdalen, founded for lepers as far back as 1140. There must have been a large number of lepers in twelfth century England, for at three seperate places, in districts very widely apart, I see holes in church walls through which the unfortunate lepers —the disease was brought to Britain by the Crusaders—received the Communion. I am too early in the day to witness the curious sight to be seen each evening, at nine o’clock, when the ancient custom )f the Wakeman’s or Mayor’s official curfew blower steps forth to the Market Cross and solemnly sounds his horn but the American tourists, as a Ripon man tells me, generally make a point of so doing. Brass door knockers, with an effigy of the Ripon Horn-blower, are exposed on every side in the “antiques” and postcard shops. FOUNTAINS ABBEY. From quaint old Ripon, on a glorious summer’s afternoon, my kindly friends from smoky Leeds take me to the historic Fountains Abbey, one of the finest and most wonderfully preserved of Yorkshire’s monasteries. To reach it we pass through the noble park of the Marquis of Ripon at Studley Royal. The Abbey grounds, rich in tall, dignified trees, and with much cleverly-planned ornamental water, are a positive feast of scenic beauty, where Nature’s own glories have been accentuated by Dutch and Italian formal gardens At one point, high up above the little river Skell, into which the famous but popular outlaw Robin Hood is said to have been thrown by a doughty monk of the Abbey, the Curtal Friar, wooden doors are suddenly, thrown open and a perfectly superb view of the Abbey is seen. “The Surprise” is one of the many special glories of the place. I must not, however, be tempted on into any detailed description of what is admittedly one of England’s most famous beauty spots. And so I ruthlessly scrapheap a whole budget of notes on the subject. ROYALTY AND YORKSHIRE.

As a good Y orkshireman, and I trust, a good loyalist, I am naturally proud to find that Royalty itself is openly glad to get away ''from stuffy London and rejoice in the clean, sweet air of the Yorkshire dales and moors. Motoring through one Sunday—the better the day the better the deed—to York, and then on to far away Whitby, I am shown, Goldsborough Hall, where, as I pass, Lord Lascelles and Princess Mary are in residence. They are often in Horrogate, and, so I am pleased to notice, are not the victims of any snobbish mobbing by the visitors, but are allowed to roam about undis turbed. Princess Mary’s special weakness ,is, it appears, to roam round the numerous “antique” shops, at which she is, I am told, a frequent and cleverly discriminating buyer of old furniture and various objects of “bigotry and virtue,” here displayed in such temptjng profusion. At Bolton Abbey, to which I motored one day from busy Keighley, where, by the way, I see a big crowd of quite young mill-hands—some of them, I notice, not too poor to own motor-cycles. They receive the weekly “dole.” I hear the King himsejf is expected at Bolton Hall for his annual grouse-shooting on the neighbouring moors, and hear everyone talking about the monarch's lack of “side,” his unfailing courtesy to men and women of all social ranks . There can be no question of King George’s personal popularity with his subjects. To even the most pronodneed Communists in this part of England at least. King George is “ good laad, and don’t thee mistake it! IN BOLTON WOODS. At Bolton Abbey—guide-book details again forcibly expunged—l revel in the sylvan beauties to be seen in the famous woods' on Wharfside, and I visit the Strid where the nobly bom ‘‘Boy of Egremont” was drowned, missing his leap over the rockbound torrent through his dog hanging back on the leash • Every year that passes some daring wight will persist in making the leap, the special danger of which is that it is a leap upwards, and that the rocks are often very slippery, and more than one accident has occurred. The place, however, is generally watched in the tourist season, and long poles are provided close by to throw to the unwary who may attempt the leap and fall into the river. Anything more beautiful than the view of Barden Tower, high up on the wooded slopes over the Wharfe road could not, I fancy, bo surpassed in all England. New Zealanders visiting the Old Country should on no account leave Yorkshire's two great abbeys out of their itinerary. ■ OLD YORK. To all who visit the biggest, bonniest, and best of England’s counties, a special visit to York is, of course, imperative. There are more than 80,000 inhabitants in present-day York, which has its industrial side—a speciality in confectionery—and where the; is a fairly considerable military establishment. But it is old York. York of the great Minster, the Cnhtedral Church of St. Peter, York of the ancient Guild Hall on the Ouse, wi.b its famous Water Gate, and its splendid fifteenth century hall, York of the numerous City Gates or Bars; York of picturesque narrow streets, such as the Shambles, a street of butchers shops, where the overhanging top stories of the old houses nearly meet; York of the ruined St. Mary’s Abbey; York of the ancient Roman Wall, the city where “Robin Crusoe, of York, mariner, was born in 1632; York in one of whose streets, Castlegate, lived “the Jew Isaac of York,” and his lovely daughter Rebecca, of whom you shall read in Scott s ( “Ivanhoe”—this is the York I shall ever love to recall. As to York’s chief pride, the Minster, in which I spend two happy hours in, I dare not trust myself to cmbark upon a brief account of its glories and beauties. Its special attraction is its possession of the most exquisitely lovely stained glass, in particular the most" superb of painted windows, the Five Sisters. On this and other beauties and wonders of England’s one could dwell at length, but to me a snecial charm of the Minster is the act that it is not overcrowded b Y SCulpture. effigies of past great men. Westminster Abbey strikes one as far more of a national Pantheon than a sacred edifice. It is a glorious national possession, but S a. At O t bring Churerf county pride, my vote must go to Yo.k Cathedral.