Newfield Hall

Walking is a sport for the cautious. Climbing, cycling, white water rafting, even ballroom dancing offer spicier fare, a higher risk/reward quotient if you like, than traversing the land by putting one foot in front of the other.  Thus it is a pastime for the elderly, physically challenged or simply unimaginative. Gradually, I'm beginning to tick all three boxes.  So the selection of a walking holiday is a simple trade-off: what's the most stimulation available for the lowest anxiety premium?  Our holiday in Las Chimineas illustrates this well.  The scenery was spectacular but the prelude to all walks was Land Rover incarceration for mouth-desiccating ascents on roads scarcely wide enough for a mule, with more hairpins than a fifties hairdresser.  The prospect of a sojourn in Arran in July was discarded for different reasons: voracious midges, according to the reviews, are the walkers' bane and susceptible to no amount of chemical armour. In his hilarious account of walking the Appalachian trail, Bill Bryson enumerates the hazards awaiting unprepared novices ranging from from black bears to deranged hillbillies. Having discarded most of the remaining summer walking venues through metereological factors (ie any hint of temperatures over 20C) the process of elimination yielded northern England. There 18C qualifies as sultry, nowhere is more than an afternoon's stroll from a tea shop and the most apprehensive traveller would hard-pushed to raise a tremble.

Newfield Hall, originally a manor house, has been sympathetically restored by HF Holidays (HF no longer stands for Holiday Fellowship - in these secular times the associations are deemed offputtingly devotional) and taut-sinewed guides stood ready to escort our party of elderly gentlefolk, plus a couple of Americans, on an introductory stroll.  In an unaccustomedly warm late afternoon it seemed the perfect introduction to a week of Dales dallying.

As a seasoned Ramblers walks leader, I respect the need to brief groups on safety matters and the tanned northerner took this duty seriously. There might be horseflies, he cautioned.  They land 'on their teeth' he claimed so we should give them no quarter; attack was the best form of defence and we were encouraged to swat freely, an appropriate sentiment in the week parliament is poised to overturn the ban on hunting foxes with hounds. Ticks, too, were a problem and long sleeves and trousers were advised.  I could already feel the skin crawling on my bare arms but before I could decide whether to retrieve a shirt from my room, the catalogue of terror continued. Fierce water buffalo has been spotted on a local footpath recently and although the farmer had been castigated by the council, there was no guarantee they would have been moved.  The final flourish in this awful menagerie was the local Hereford bull, recent proud father to half a Smithfield's worth of prime beef and there was a stern injunction not to make eye contact, let alone enter the field where he resided with his harem and progeny. Eventually we set off. I half expected the leader to offer additional life insurance before we left the car park but he contented himself with scowling at my rucksack and muttering that a walker 'in the south' had recently been snagged by a passing car as a result of injudicious backpack management.

The walk was idyllic: a small river bordered by meadows seemed to offer little in the way of terrifying hazards.  Then a German member, unused to the natural history of Britain, brushed against a stinging nettle.  Our leader rose to the occasion. Brandishing a handful of dock leaves he grabbed her arm and rubbed it vigorously, assuring her that the antihistamines in the leaves would sooth her, although possibly the Chinese burn he gaily appeared to be inflicting simply masked the earlier insult.  Botany again triumphed where zoology fell short.  Soon we encountered some giant hogweed whose legendary toxicity made it a miracle that humankind had survived at all within a 100 mile radius. In case we were not adequately intimidated, our leader recited a cornucopia of dangerous plants, including foxgloves, none of which were in the vicinity.  Against the odds, the party returned intact to the Hall.  Of the three walks offered for the next day, I couldn't help noticing that his route
had the fewest takers.





© David Thompson 2015