Yesterday my wife and I began our journey back to Totnes from Edinburgh after a month in the Scottish capital. When I was younger I could drive the journey back and forth to Scotland in one go as my Dad did when we were children on our journeys back to Dundee.
About ten years ago I decided it was too much for me. I am sure my wife would have shared the driving, yet while she does all the short distance driving because she is much better than I am at manoeuvring the car in tiny spaces there is something machismo in me which makes me insist on doing the long distance driving and so with my mojo in decline I resolved to break the journey into two stages. Going north we determined to rest overnight at the Castle Green Hotel at Kendal in a beautiful area where the Lake District encounters the Yorkshire Dales.
Resting here left us with only a journey of 150 miles to Edinburgh on the second day. Going south we stayed at the Evesham Hotel, in the heart of the fruit growing area that lies some miles east of the Malvern Hills.
We chose these hotels not only for their astounding situations but also because each has a swimming pool where we can bathe gently before enjoying our supper. In the last year the initial 300 miles stretch has become too much for me and so we split the journey into a relay of three stages each of just over 150 miles and so we now stay at both hotels on our journeys north and south.
About ten years ago I decided it was too much for me. I am sure my wife would have shared the driving, yet while she does all the short distance driving because she is much better than I am at manoeuvring the car in tiny spaces there is something machismo in me which makes me insist on doing the long distance driving and so with my mojo in decline I resolved to break the journey into two stages. Going north we determined to rest overnight at the Castle Green Hotel at Kendal in a beautiful area where the Lake District encounters the Yorkshire Dales.
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| A meadow pond nearby the Castle Green Hotel, Kendal |
Resting here left us with only a journey of 150 miles to Edinburgh on the second day. Going south we stayed at the Evesham Hotel, in the heart of the fruit growing area that lies some miles east of the Malvern Hills.
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| In the garden at The Evesham Hotel with boy hiding from his friends |
We chose these hotels not only for their astounding situations but also because each has a swimming pool where we can bathe gently before enjoying our supper. In the last year the initial 300 miles stretch has become too much for me and so we split the journey into a relay of three stages each of just over 150 miles and so we now stay at both hotels on our journeys north and south.
Last night we stayed in Kendal and I had a dream. I am going to tell you it. I can see little connection with the dream and what I’ve written up to this point. The dream may be something and it may be nothing. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who knew the Lake District well through his close friendship with William Wordsworth and the latter’s sister Dorothy, famously had a dream while living in Nether Stowey in Somerset. The dream came while he was under the influence of an opiate based drug known as Kendal Black Drop. On waking from the dream Coleridge began to make note of his dream but he was interrupted by a “gentleman from Porlock” who called at his cottage. The intervention caused Coleridge to forget his dream and all that has remained is the uncannily mystic fragment Kubla Khan: a Vision in a Dream.
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| Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
The dream which woke me early this morning at the Castle Green Hotel in Kendal has none of the romance or mystery of Coleridge’s and you may find it mundane. Certainly I was neither under the influence of Kendal Black Drop nor Kendal Mint Cake! Nonetheless the dream startled me from my sleep and made me wonder. I can offer no explanation for it. All I would say is that I was somehow an invisible observer and took no part in the dream and the two principal characters were not known to me. Here it is :
The time is now. We are at the top of the stairs of an Edwardian or Victorian town house, not grand but respectable. There are a number of children of perhaps two, three or four years playing excitably in the sizeable passageway at the top of the stairs. Near the very top stair is a boy who is looking down to the ground floor. Behind him a girl gives him a firm shove. She has a clear intention of pushing him downstairs. He begins to topple down the stairs and falls head over heels several times before he lands at the bottom. He must be badly injured. The girl looks on at what is happening with intent curiosity. On reaching the bottom the boy gets up. He is uninjured. The girl, not in an anxious way, descends the stairs and looks at the boy. The boy addresses her, “You shouldn’t have done that. You might have hurt me and now you must give me a hug.” The girl and boy hug each other.
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