Hackfall Holiday

It's rare that I use anyone else's photos here, but my friends Madame Morbidfrog and Mr Romeburns have been celebrating their anniversary by travelling to Hackfall near Ripon and staying in The Ruin. I realise I was there so long ago it was before I even began this blog: Autumn 2008. Hackfall wasn't my first introduction to the concept of the 'Gothic Garden' - that had been Hawkstone in Shropshire the year before - but it crystallised the idea in my mind and confirmed my theory that there was a series of these dramatic landscapes around the country. The Landmark Trust's restoration of The Ruin (or The Banqueting House, to give it its more correct and less interesting name) was the first step in rescuing Hackfall from its decades of obscurity and neglect, work which has carried on under the aegis of the Woodland Trust and Hackfall Trust: the follies that inhabit the woods have been stabilised, the great Fountain restored, and the walks tidied up - so far as they can be. This time of the year they will be an ocean of mud if my experience was anything to go by.

I loved The Ruin: it's one of the Landmarks I might return to, notwithstanding the fact that none of the three rooms communicate with each other, so to have a wee or retire for the night you have to go outside onto the terrace, teetering on its precipitous drop down to the valley of the River Ure far, far below. My first night was marked by howling wind and rain and strange noises: finally I went to the window to investigate and found myself being stared at by the reflecting eyes of a sheep. I think. Realising that Professor Purplepen wasn't far away in Leeds, I invited her to dinner (actually, Leeds turned out to be farther away than we thought, but she came anyway). On the second day I'd come back from a trip and there was a knock on the door. A woman in a wax jacket and wellingtons with a dog asked me whether I was Mr Weepingcross. She handed me a letter: 'This arrived at the farm for you. I think the postman delivered it to me as it's the closest address to The Ruin'. The missive turned out to be from the Professor who couldn't remember whether she'd told me she was a vegetarian, and had lost my phone number. Royal Mail to the rescue.

Madame Morbidfrog and Mr Romeburns look like they are enjoying themselves immensely. Only proper Goths take all their gear (it's nowhere near all their gear, but never mind) to a field in Yorkshire even though nobody else is going to be there. And don't quibble that Madame is barely wearing black at all, it still counts. 

It's very encouraging to see the restoration work elsewhere in Hackfall. This was The Grotto when I visited, a tumble of stones with a bench in the middle:

The Grotto hasn't exactly been restored, because it can't be, but its remains have instead been transmuted into a splendid arch which you'd never believe had only been in place for about ten years.

I can feel a return tempting me even now (though not this year, I am booked elsewhere).