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The Snow Dinner (Sunday Telegraph 29 December 2008)
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“I am just going outside and may be sometime,” hiccups a florid-faced guest, fighting his way through a tent flap and out into the blizzard. But unlike the brave Titus Oates, he promptly falls over and is heard singing very loudly in the snowy darkness.
I have often imagined a full-on traditional Christmas party after a serious snowfall but this only happens in movies. Except this time it has in early December 2008. At around 5am this morning almost a foot of snow had fallen in Wensleydale, much more than anywhere else in North Yorkshire, and a deep layer covered our tents where a dozen friends are now engrossed in a slightly surreal black-tie feast.
How I love snow. A party in a tent in winter is not as stark staring bonkers as it sounds and, if you have a larger number to entertain and have not enough room at home, it is a cheaper and wholly original alternative to taking over a room in a restaurant or a pub.
We are in a field near my home but could be equally happy in a garden or on the village green or sports pitch. Using two 10-year-old Indian marquees and a mini-one to join them together – imported by a company in Wiltshire and as much to buy as others are to hire – we have created a kitchen, a drinks area and a candle-lit dining room larger than we have at home. |
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Outside it is -7 so why aren’t our toes cold as we tuck into our venison? The frozen grass is covered with builders’ planks, plywood and old doors and swathed them with rugs and a few pieces of old carpet but the real answer is a horrible rusting monster of a wood-burning stove. Fed by a pile of logs it is unimaginably hot so, given the marvellous insulation properties of double skinned cotton canvas, we are all glowing.
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With walls and ceilings festooned with red-berried holly, ivy, bracken and mistletoe and inset with stuffed foxes and game birds – think Sleepy Hollow and The Company of Wolves – the terrible conditions outside add to the soporific theatre within. A central rectangular table – a cunning 16’creation in MDF by the local joiner fits around two tent poles – is covered with a white cloth and overhung by a dozen flickering candles.
This is a special dinner for the Chase Club – a hunting dining club that I’m a member of – and Yorkshire Party Company rises to the challenge with a precisely-judged and perfectly-conceived menu.
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“When you consider you’re in the middle of field in December, a party like this is as impressive as it is understated,” says Belinda Williams, its executive chef and director. “And you don’t need granite work tops and state of the art induction ovens to produce amazing food in amazing situations – you just need one gas ring.”
The tent flaps whip open again in a flurry of snow flakes and the missing guest makes quickly for the fire to revive. “Best party I’ve ever been to,” he hisses, glass in hand before falling over again, this time into the log pile.
Tents by www.bazaartents.co.uk
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The Great Raft Party (Telegraph Magazine 25th July 2009)
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Hebe, my 15-year-old daughter, takes one look at the pieces of wood, inflated tractor inner-tubes and coils of rope and at the table and chairs and then at the roof of a marquee that are strewn in the grass on the banks of the river where we are intending to stage her birthday raft party in less than an hour, and her father’s prehistory as a chaotic party fixer comes flooding back. ‘Daddy, are you sure this is going to work,’ she says, remembering her younger sister, Ruby’s extreme camping party in December when it snowed and temperatures hit -5C.
Eating and swimming are a great combination. For years we have invaded the meadows along this perfect stretch of the River Ure in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire, and have been under the stars more often than in our beds in better summers. In the 1980s my wife and I dreamed up a spate of floating wild food adventures. There was a memorable lunch and two catastrophic dinner parties in high summer. Each foundered on rapids half a mile downstream incurring losses on the cutlery and furniture fronts But they still inspire years afterwards; our rafts are now bigger and the introduction of a tent onboard gives shade from the sun and shelter if it rains. All that is needed is a mix of enthusiasm and grim bravado and we agreed that another float was way overdue.
Not sure what to expect, eight teenagers and a smattering of adults – all of them good swimmers with big appetites – assemble on this same pretty reach just below the horse-racing town of Middleham when the weather takes an unexpected turn for the better in a week of torrential rain. The fact that Hebe still warmed to this silliness when her friends were hankering for alcohol-fuelled parties with a degree of sophistication was the impetus for the most wildly-optimistic raft party ever.
After roughing out a design for the craft on a scrap of paper, I built a floating platform in kit form on the scale of a North Sea oil rig. Assembling it in a field at home it consisted of four identical 8 ft sections that, when bolted together on the river bank, form a single wooden floor. Although extremely low-cost and low-tech it had still taken two days to create. Earlier this morning the dismantled frames, floors, inner-tubes, barrels and ropes are loaded into a trailer and taken to the bank where we reassemble them. The four quarters of the raft are then heaved between the willows that overhang the water’s edge and eased into a deep pool where they are pushed together and fixed to form a floating dining room. Over this is pitched the canvas roof of a small marquee - as it is sure to rain again - and we festoon the sides with bunting from the Queen’s Coronation in 1952. Two hours later than intended we cast off.
Outdoor onboard cooking on a wood fire feels enriching. And not half as hazardous as it sounds, we set a galvanised tray on raised stones as Ruby and a friend returned in an open canoe with more rocks from the water’s edge. Lugging them on deck they are arranged in a circle on a metal tray to form a low hearth, which is placed on the edge of the raft beside a sack of driftwood found on the bank. I light the pyramid of twigs and blow close to the flames.
Fifteen minutes later the fire dies down to cooking heat and a mother, Rolline Frewen (founder of The Admirable Crichton) wearing a single rawhide glove opens a cool-box and get to work with a long fork and some giant metal tweezers. Nothing beats open-air grilled food. Although a degree of preparation at home helps, it isn’t often that fish, game and locally-grown vegetables are cooked perfectly in front of your eyes as you drift idly downstream.
For a delicate taster, king prawns, garnished with dandelion leaves just picked from the fields, are passed around in a giant heavy-based frying pan and we peel off the shells and suck gloriously on the lemon-infused contents. On the grid above the smouldering embers, a lunch of half-a-dozen wild trout stuffed with thyme cook away alongside beetroots and baby carrots wrapped in foil while bite-size sliced pheasant breasts sizzle away for just a few moments in another pan. |
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| The fish, caught on a fly on the same river, are plainly foil-grilled with lemon and herbs and they smell heavenly when we un-wrap them. The pheasant, which were retrieved from the bottom of the freezer and marinaded overnight, are cut into fine slithers and turned for scarcely a minute in the hottest pan. The subtle flavours of the thyme in the marinade makes them a delicate snack and children love them because you eat them with your fingers. |
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Finally, strawberries and raspberries are devoured from an exquisite ice bowl, made by my wife, Janie, in which, the petals, foliage and greenery, hips and berries were plucked from a hedgerow and frozen the night before. It is a masterpiece and the children cannot take their eyes of it. Raft parties can always be improved on. Keeping dry and afloat with just a few simple low-cost components is, in fact, dead simple but with tables, chairs and tents, it is also about weight ratios. It is clear that the design of our raft is deeply flawed; the four decks, although they do float, don’t butt together as well as they might, which, depending where you are sitting is – I imagine – rather like being on an ice-flow that is starting to break up. |
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As Hebe and two friends want to swim and leave their seats at the same time, their sudden movement swamps the decks in ankle deep water and the central pole supporting the tent roof and the circular table that fits beneath it begins to tip and slide. ‘Do look-out," shouts Ruby, appearing from under the table where she has been hanging on to the tent pole. ‘Daddy, you’ve got to do something, we’re definitely breaking up.’ With the buckling floor shifting in four directions, a father begins singing Nearer, My God, to Thee as a mother catches a toppling vase of flowers and empty glasses fall over. I wisely drop anchor. With shouts of ‘women and children first’, grown-ups stand up and hang on to plates, bowls and the furniture as a line of semi-feral teenagers, their cheeks ritually streaked with beetroot juice, leap into the water for another cooling dip.
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Penine Bridleway (Weekend Telegraph 1st June 2006)
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Drive 20 miles through even the loveliest countryside with most children and you will recognise the mantra “are we there yet?” But when we made ours cover almost the same distance on ponies for three consecutive days, barely was there a whimper of dissent. We have just ridden the Mary Towneley Loop, a 48-mile bridleway circuit on the Lancashire-Yorkshire borders. It is part of the Pennine Bridleway National Trail, which will be complete in 2008. For 350 miles, it will run from Middleton Top in Derbyshire, east of Manchester through Lancashire, the Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria to Byrness in Northumberland. The ‘Southern’ section – from Derbyshire to Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria – is expected to be open in 2005. Over two decades ago, the late Lady Mary Towneley, in whose memory this daisy-fresh loop is dedicated, conceived the idea of linking the latticework of bridleways that run along the backbone of the Pennines to the Borders to Northumberland, a distance of 350 miles. She was tenacious; she approached the Countryside Commission – now the Countryside Agency – and it too embraced her vision. Routes were approved by Parliament and landowners were consulted before missing sections were created or newly reinstated, gates put in and wet places drained and resurfaced with £1.8 million from the Sport England Lottery Fund. Sadly, Towneley, whose husband’s family has an estate near Burnley, part of which the loop runs through, died from cancer two years ago. Long-distance anything, particularly something that involves hours going quite slowly on the back of a horse, would normally have me stifling a yawn. But after this trip, I have changed my mind. Quietly hacking an awfully long way turns out to be good fun; it was June, the sun was shining and the Pennine rain never fell nor did the mist descend. |
| The Mary Towneley Loop, which opened last summer, climbs, falls and sidles its way through the Pennines of East Lancashire and West Yorkshire, is proving a popular departure for those with their own horse-power and a pair of stout jodhpurs. Even if you have to travel to get here – and some have come from as far as Kent for this short break - you will not be disappointed by the scenery and those providing you and your nags with beds, huge breakfasts, dinner, and a packed lunch and, at one stop, even a sauna. Peers Clough Farm at Lumb in Lancashire was our start point. The plan was to loop clockwise along the Rossendale Valley although you can go the other way. As directed by our first hosts, Chris and Ian Thomas, we had moved ourselves into the first farm the night before our first day in the saddle. This is where we leave our lorry as we finish here in two days time. |
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| An early start is perfectly feasible but we didn’t leave any of the three farms before 11am. It didn’t matter. It was high summer so, even with 7 bottom-chaffing hours riding in front of us; there was no risk of losing the daylight. We travelled light; Janie carried a water bottle and a map, the girls had backpacks for their sandwiches and I carried a hoofpick. Gratefully, our luggage and horse kit was transferred to each next location so there is no need to bring a packhorse. When it comes to gates, children have their uses and the girls - one is nine and the other, seven - must have opened and closed 20 in the first hour as this was stock country; the route winds through small walled enclosures that all had gates on their boundaries. Most had a lever that meant you didn’t need to leap off but many were stiff so dismounting was the quickest solution. Not that I had to. After two busy road crossings, fields give way to some very bleak moors before dropping into the valley to the youthful River Calder in the village of Holme Chapel. Here, in the churchyard, is the grave of Colonel Scarlet, who led the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava, but we couldn’t find it. The ponies – a Shetland and a Welsh Mountain – I guess, appreciate the rugged terrain and one, Harry, would drop down and roll happily in the heather given the slightest opportunity. The two horses – Dopey, a resting hurdler – and Pipe Major, who was once a winner at Newmarket and York - are on their toes at first but slip down several gears; they are soon crossing streams, railway underpasses and narrow bridges like donkeys as we skirt the windswept heather on Worsthorne Moor, part of the Towneley’s estate. It is very hot but there is always a stream if not a water trough along the route, which passes a network of reservoirs to the east of Burnley. But for the fishermen and the walkers we meet when the bridleway joins the Pennine Way itself on the edge of Widdop Moor, we have the trail to ourselves in this sparsely populated landscape. Navigation is a straightforward enough although, had it been windy, wrestling with a map I hadn’t cut down would have been a problem on a thoroughbred. As it is, the way is well marked with understated blue circles screwed to posts at each change in direction so you are unlikely to get hopelessly lost. After 18 miles, the unshod ponies are a little sore and not as tall as they were when we arrive at the Whittaker’s Badger Fields Farm near the village of Jack Bridge. It is a working farm with sheep and a few suckler cows but Gordon Whitaker, through necessity, also drives a tractor for the council so business from the loop is a welcomed diversification. He and his wife, Miriam, have a lambing shed that doubles as four large stalls and also offer the use of an adjacent field for turning out. When we cross the main road between Hebden Bridge and Todmorden next morning, an old packhorse trail takes us below Stoodley Pike, a monument on the skyline commemorating Napoleon’s defeat. We slips through tiny villages, the houses inset with weaver lights, and in the valley below, the Rochdale canal winds along past the many former wool mills with which this region is synonymous. Paul Marshall gallops out of a heat haze late afternoon. Our host for the final night at Hindle Pastures, he gamely appears on a Shire x Hanoverian and escorts us the last few miles past Watergrove reservoir which swallowed a small town when it was built. A retired businessman, he and his wife, Jill, saw the opportunity to offer a complete package and, with the two other couples, formed Towneley Trailriding Farm Group last year. “We had 55 riders staying with us in May and there’s been a lot of interest,” he enthused. At £144 per person with your horse or pony for the three days, it is excellent value and, with further ‘loops’ being planned elsewhere on the trail, it is something that should appeal to any rider looking for a short break who cannot bear to leave their horse behind. If two wussy old racehorses can come back sound with all their shoes on, anything you care to bring should survive it. |
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