from the Wick of Skaw to the Golden Valleys



15 October 2009
The North Atlantic Arc Home
SeptemberrrrrOctoberrrrrrrr
S M T W T F S
7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15

Thursday 15 October 2009--I leave Castleton at 8:45, in fog and drizzle. I'm told that it's about a forty-minute drive to the airport, so I expect it'll be an hour and a quarter, at least. I think about playing some appropriate farewell music on the way, but decide to leave the iPod on shuffle, where it's been for the past three weeks or so. I'm about halfway along, I guess, when the Unthanks' rendition of Terry Conway's Fareweel Regality comes on. After that, I turn the iPod off. What could possibly be a more fitting coda to my voyage?

And now it's time to say farewell,
And though I hope that we may meet again,
And all things may be reet again,
We've lived and spent the day.

And what is time that flies so fleet?
But just a bird that flies on merry wings,
And lights us down in happy spring,
When winter's neet is past.

Aye, but the curlew sings her sang,
And winds her sorrows doon the Rowley Burn,
And drear as winds the hunter's horn,
The call is all farewell!

And as I set the mossy stones,
And do me bits of jobs, and gap the dykes,
I hear the whisper doon the sykes:
Farewell, they sigh, farewell!

Do I remember? Do I dream?
And did we rightly meet in Viewly Side?
For all this, and much more beside,
Has got me sore beguiled.

But on some golden autumn morn,
Or when July is hazing Dipton Slopes,
By Whitley Mill, or Westburnhope,
We'll live and spend the day.

We'll cry farewell, Regality,
And cry farewell, the Liberty;
To honest friends' civility,
To winter's frost and fire.
And there's nowt that I can bid ye
But that peace and love gan with ye,
Never mind wherever call the fates
Away from Hexhamshire.

2010





Clyde thanks you.

SeptemberrrrrOctoberrrrrrrr
S M T W T F S
7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
The North Atlantic Arc Home













Mr Tattie Heid's Mileage

Results may vary