Bad news weather wise; there would not be a two day fine stretch before we left Barnsley. That was not so important when we were near shelter, but we weren’t going to choose to walk in the mountains in the rain. Instead, with Maureen’s help, we worked out how to walk to Cannon Hall, only about ten kilometres away. This would give us a decent walk with an interesting destination and allow us to catch up with Rohan and his friends at the Walkabout Pub at about four o’clock.
We walked along the now familiar countryside paths past the Monk Bretton Priory, along the river and up into Barnsley town centre, making an extension to the ten kilometres and giving us a very pleasant start to the walk. We followed the Huddersfield Road until I was wondering if I had got the directions wrong. I had, but luckily at the next major intersection, where I thought we would be turning right, a sign to Cannon Hall pointed left and I realised that we had not gone as far as I had thought. This road was a delight to walk along, with lovely houses looking out over gardens and fields in the countryside. At last we reached a milepost that said ‘Cawthorne I mile’, and that was very encouraging since Cawthorne is the village near Cannon Hall. We passed two entries to Cawthorne, with one town name having been placed on a millstone at the first by the ‘Wives of Cawthorne’. Immediately I was intrigued, but we think the mystery was solved when, at the other entry we saw a much older mill wheel sign, with the wives just wanting to tidy up the entrances and give them the same treatment.
At last we turned down the road to Cannon Hall, where hundreds of families were enjoying the grounds, the ducks on the river, the open farm, the picnic facilities and the bouncing castle. The house and grounds were free to visit and provide the most fantastic asset for the area. As we strolled up the hill we passed the deer shed, which was a shelter built for the estate deer. It looked as good as a folly so if I hadn’t read the sign I would have thought it was for people.
The Spencer-Stanhope family lived at Cannon Hall, which was started in the 1760s. The family home is now a museum which houses interesting collections of furniture, china, glassware, pottery (including a huge collection of Moorcroft wares and the history of their manufacture), paintings and antique Chinese items so beloved of English gentry. We wandered through the collections, some of which are set out museum style and others of which are in the rooms, as in décor of the times when the house was in its hey day. Capability Brown was employed to design the parklands, and while the intended effect is one of uncluttered views of shrubberies and woodlands, there was still an enormous amount of work for the gardeners. We saw a small mirror set into the shutters of one of the rooms, where the master could spy unnoticed out the windows to make sure that the garden staff were on the ball.
Upstairs we saw the bedrooms of the last two generations to live in the house, with some fellow visitors commenting that a room entirely panelled in dark wood would have been scary for the little boy who grew up in here. It certainly was a contrast to the other bedrooms, and may have had a different use originally. Another flight of stairs took us to the Regimental Museum of the 13th/18th Royal Hussars (QMO) and the Light Dragoons. It was a very thorough and well presented display with an audio-visual presentation telling the story of the Charge of the Light Brigade. It is the sad tale of orders being orders, and even though the commanding officer on the spot questioned the orders, and they had been issued with a different spot in mind, the deliverer of the orders insisted that they be followed and the men charged to death and defeat.My favourite aspect of Cannon Hall was the walled garden, which is still in full production even though it only has two full time gardeners and relies on volunteers. The high brick walls are covered in espaliered fruit trees, mostly pears of many different kinds. New pears have been planted in the last year with the garden continuing to be developed. It is now famous for heritage fruits, with a big tasting festival and regular sales of the fruit and vegetable produce to the public. The walled garden also had a glasshouse requiring work to make it useable, a decorative lawn with a lily pond and a vine covered walkway, a soft fruit garden with raspberries, gooseberries, currants and others, herb gardens and beautiful vegetable gardens. We were lucky enough to meet one of the gardeners and have quite a chat about his seasonal tasks. He was doing some pruning on the pear trees and told us that there are more that fifty varieties of pears, his favourite being the Jargonelle.
By this stage we realised that we had better hot foot it to the bus station to catch a bus back to Barnsley to meet Rohan and his friends. I have never walked so fast for so long – in the distance we could see the bus leave the main road to go around the villages and knew, that, with only one service an hour, we had to race if we were to make it to the further Cawthorne entry to catch it. It felt as if my hips were dislocating to allow me to take a very long and low stride and for the next few days the echo of this effort caused a bit of discomfort. Nevertheless, courtesy of the bus being three minutes late, we made it and enjoyed the company of a chatty passenger and a comedic driver – one of the little moments that made Barnsley an easy and friendly place to be in.Rohan was not at the pub when we got there but his former colleagues recognised us and we settled down for a drink and a chat with Sarah and another workmate. Gordon, who we had come to meet, raced in with a backpack of cash and asked Sarah to keep it there until a convenient moment. Were we about to meet a hit and grab criminal who was using the pub to launder his ill gotten gains? Rohan arrived, and shortly afterwards Gordon arrived afresh. He must have noticed us on his first trip in because he apologised for not knowing who we were and coming over to say hello. He was most amused to hear what I had been thinking about him, and explained that British banks are no longer interested in taking change, so he brings it in to the pub where it is a help to them. He accumulated the money by emptying his pockets of small change daily, so all my theories were shot to pieces.
We had a pleasant time chatting and eating cheesy garlic bread, discovering a bit more about Sarah’s work as an artist. We were able to go over to her studio and look at her paintings, some of which will be appearing in a magazine article about Barnsley that she had written. The paintings were big and bold, with my absolute favourite being one in progress of The Shambles in York. The more muted colours and the angles of the buildings gave a real sense of time passing by and yet of today as well. Her flat was full of fascinating collections of snow domes, manuscripts and other antiques objects which she and Greg have accumulated. From Australia, England is currently Sarah’s home. There is no way it would be possible for her to back pack out of here with all her precious goodies and paintings.
A consultation with some pool players who had worked for the railways established that our trip to York with Rohan on the coming Monday did not need to be booked, but since we still had to sort out transport to Lymington after that, we called at the station. The man at the ticket office was less than helpful and quite rude. He said that the trip would be seventy pounds ($150) each – fifty pounds each more than on our last enquiry. He didn’t explain the big disparity or offer the information that a train half an hour later would be a lot cheaper. The train prices here are difficult to understand. It is much cheaper if you can book way ahead and prices change the closer you get to the travelling date. There are different prices for different times of the day. The same man had told me that I couldn’t book on the internet because I would need to book ten days in advance to get the tickets in time. We checked out the buses and they were better. The man we spoke to was so helpful, and he told us that he had recently been married at Cannon Hall. He married the sweetheart he had once had at sixteen who had thrown him over because she did not want to marry someone in the services. Many years later they had met again, discovered that they got on well and fell in love all over again.
We set off for home to make a bus booking but when we rang it turned out that the cheap price was because there are two towns that sound like Lymington and the one we got the quote for was not so far away from Barnsley, and not our Lymington at all.
On the Internet, Keith read that it is possible to book train tickets any time because the tickets should arrive the next day and there is a procedure to follow if they don’t. Keith discovered that it was much cheaper to book a ticket to London, and then to book a separate ticket from London to Lymington. It did involve six trains but that turned out to be fine and it saved us more than half the cost of the ticket man’s price.
We spent a relaxing evening watching a DVD called Across The Universe which is a love story set in the sixties with a sound track entirely of Beatles songs. Keith thought the story was weak and just a tenuous vehicle for the music, but I thought that the story raised many issues of the times and suggested new ways to interpret the Beatles lyrics. Rohan had rented it, and had enjoyed watching part of it with Madge, who was a major teenybopper Beatles fan when the group were the ‘lads from Liverpool’.
This fisherman is on one of the many fisherman´s landings on the edge of the Barnsley canal, where they can fish in a little seclusion without tangling lines with other anglers.
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